I dont usually write posts about critical role but this episode did things to me and I have to talk about it right now right now right now don't mind me just yelling into the ether for a minute

the last half hour of ep77 just made me love Ashton (really everyone) so much more. They're being an INCONSIDERATE DICKSHIT and a HYPOCRITE with a MARTYR COMPLEX who makes HORRIBLE DECISIONS yesss gimme the complicated relationship dynamics and the morally gray moments AND THE ANGST. There's gonna be some good ass roleplay moments from this I feel it in my bones and it's gonna be DELICIOUS. Hey ashton greymoore my beloved shithead what is wrong with you <3

And it was such a sweet thing to look at Ashley Johnson/fearne and say "I see you don't want the shard and I want you to keep your characters agency I will take it" but then they were a fuckhead about it!!! Literally did a nice thing in the most fucked up way possible that it circled around to being terrible. I love that!!! Say what you will about this episode but by god is it entertaining. I ship callowmoore even more now that they have shit to work through. I love complicated relationships in fiction I am living!!!!

(i genuinely didn't like the very real tension at the table and had to skip it on Thursday night but! Im excited anyways!!! I'm having the time of my life)

Anyway <3 i love this show thanks for reading

hi :) i hope you’re having a wonderful day

you’re literally the only blogger i trust when it comes to non-duality, and your advice has been the one i’ve been most easily able to apply/understand. I hope this doesn’t come off as a vent, but it probably will just because this question is so complicated and problem riddled, and tbh idek if you’re actually going to respond, but yea. it’s like star wars you’re my obi wan kenobi! my last hope lol

basically i’ve put my life on hold and procrastinated everything i’ve needed to do. (TW: death?? health problems/sa?) I went through a really bad year, last year. the human character i identify with (non-dualistic terms, bc ik this character isn’t me?) was sa’d in the beginning of the year. really traumatic. i dropped out of school, i couldn’t go out of the house because i feared for my life. i became super paranoid. i reported it and filed charges, but the justice system is fucked so.

anyways, after because the amount of stress i was experiencing, i became very ill. my biological father wished death on me, and i believed it at the time, because my sibling wished for me to get raped, and then it happened. i can see now, how my belief may or may not have been the cause of what happened. i then got cancer. the doctors couldn’t figure it out for months, and even ridiculed me- saying how i relied on google.

i finally went to a specialist who was immediately concerned, and then confirmed my suspicions. i was sort of friends with a blogger on here who got into the void and manifested their dream life. they went into the void for me and affirmed that i no longer had cancer, and that i could tap/wake up in the void. the next day, the huge lump/tumor on my neck was gone. all of my ailments- trouble breathing, patchy and rough skin ceased. i literally told my mother what happened which made her start believing in the power of “manifestation”.

because of the paranoia, and then cancer- i didn’t go to school my last 2 years of school. i switched to online, but never felt the need to complete my classes because i knew i would get into the void. i’ve gotten into the void, both by waking up/tapping into it but i haven’t been able to change my awareness, or “manifest” bc i was just mumbo jumbing words or poetry. i didn’t apply to university, because i thought i’d enter the void before then and revise my school grades + make it so i got into the university of my choice.

now, i have a week left before i have to finish my classes- which i have 7 of them, and so many assignments. i have to move out in the middle of august because i lied to my parents and said i got into university, because i thought i would’ve already changed things with the void by now. my life was fucked, then i fucked my life. after discovering non-duality i gained hope that i would be able to turn things around by now, yet i haven’t. i don’t know what i’m doing wrong, because i was able to show myself the truth of reality (as lester levinson said).

i am really stressing because now everything is falling down on itself. i try to forget my problems, and don’t give them life by letting go, yet it’s so hard when teachers are bombarding me with messages how i have to finish the classes, or how i have to move out soon. i know this is probably ego driven, but i feel as if i can’t see a way through because of how attached i am to this. my health has also been abnormal, which makes me fear that the cancer has returned. what should i do?? im kinda freaking out.

anyways, i am so sorry if this came across trauma dumping/venting. i am just at a point where i do not even know where to begin to conceptualize this into understanding. this took a lot of courage to type, as im a bit afraid still- that people who hurt me from last year will see this (even though i know they won’t, but still). i totally understand if you wish not to post this or answer it, as it is very long and limiting. thank you though! i hope you have a wonderful week:)

this was quite difficult to answer as i've never been through so much turmoil all at once. i hope this answer helps and you'll continue taking care of yourself! (i'm sorry i linked way too much lol just don't read it all at once!)

firstly i want you to rest.

you've been through a lot and you've also been putting off a lot to get into the void. stopping life for manifestation is common it seems, its not healthy either. so much pressure is coming from time. you put all your expectations on a method, and i'm gonna guess that you also put so much onto your mind to get you into the void.

practically: your biological father sounds abusive and so does your sibling, i would be more careful around him. idk if your not around him anymore, it sounds like it? but you need to plan accordingly for your lie. are you gonna tell your parents or ?

theres a massive chance you'll just go crazy trying to figure out all these moving parts, so i suggest do what you can and leave the rest. do the minimum to keep you safe, then figure out the rest as it comes. do whatever you need to do, just remember to not take on too much at once.

ask for breaks on work at school for medical reasons, maybe think about jobs, etc. you see how much more could come into the picture? but this is all the body-mind can do. its easy to treat it as god, but its not god.

"but i feel as if i can’t see a way through"

You fail to do the works of God, because you take the body to be God. - Ada B. [4dbarbie]

take a look at these meditations:

butter meditation

peace meditation

surrender meditation

un-identification exercise

crying meditation

i'd like you pick one of these exercises:

feel all the shit. feel bad. just do it. let all the bad feelings out. put on sad music and fucking cry. cry it all out.

let yourself rest, with no problems. if a thought or feeling comes in just let it, because its not a problem remember? :) just put on some calming music or visualise a calming place. and let yourself have some time with nothing. no conditions. no perfection. no obligations. no 'have to' 'should' 'must'. let that go for this time

feel as if you've died. feel as if you've been completely forgiven, feel as if there was a powerful white light that washed you away of all the crap. really feel as if the divine came down, hugged you and said 'i love you and forgive you'. its all over. finally its all done. you can rest. (i suggest kickstarting this with imagery or music, its hard to generate feeling such grace on you own. i saw a jesus holding a baby lamb picture that made me burst out in tears and realised that all i wanted was just to be, no obligations. i imagined waking up in a heaven, in a gaint flowerfield. do what you want)

one time i did the 1st and 3rd exercises (i made it up on the spot) and it was worth it. the next few days felt much better. its like an exercise in rebirth. let yourself be reborn.

some days you'll just do one or all 3. pick what ever feels right in what ever order. but i suggest that 'feel as if you've died' or 'no problems' comes last! the whole point is to let the painful emotion pass through and settle in a neutral or grateful place.

"after discovering non-duality i gained hope that i would be able to turn things around by now"

here's the problem, you went into a philosophy intending to manifest. yes,, (1) you can do that (2) its okay, AS LONG AS YOU DONT MISS THE POINT. the point being that there is no person! the character is a character, not you. manifestation is just another concept, you can use it as long as you understand that its not real. thats why i shared the BOOKS, you need to READ.

"i try to forget my problems, and don’t give them life by letting go"

don't force yourself to forget (don't say you're not forcing it, otherwise you never would of wrote "TRY"). just let them be. deal with it when it comes up. the mind'll want to make a bazillion plans and stress. if you can make plans without spiriling, then do it. if you can't, don't. there will probably be some things you need to plan and thats okay. but everything else, leave it.

you haven't actually let it go, you're here in my inbox. you do not need to force letting it go. you naturally let it go by realising who you are in relation to it all. if you think you're the body-mind then its impossible to let go, because its your life and it involves you and if you let it go to shit, you might die!! - says the mind. but if you're Self, then this is not you. all those stories mean nothing compared to Infinity, Absolute Perfection and Love!

the Self is who you truly are. Self is still underneath it all, it is all. its imagining itself being a human. the character is the wave, YOU are the ocean. ultimately this is about realising all the identities, images and roles that "you've" taken on and used as reference are not you. how can a story be you? how can the past be you? are you the past? are you currently living in the past? you can be if you keep bringing it into the now.

when you stop using the past as a reference point, how much more posibilities come up now?

this is because the mind only knows what it knows. it cannot know anything more than what it knows right now. it can't access infinite intelligence. that's why it'll try to project into the future, and make plans. but it doesn't truly know. all it does is give suggestions based off the past. it is a combination of identity based off feelings, thoughts and memories that is collected and turned into a habit.

the past, memories, feelings, thoughts, identifies, roles etc all pass through you. they all come up like waves and then leave on THEIR OWN. if you hold onto these (which the character wants to do, it thinks thats all it is) it'll be painful when they are threatened in some way. a simple remark of "oh you look xxx" can be so painful for some characters because they based their whole life on a singular identity that WILL go.

Most of you can't change because you are so desperate TO change... but there is nothing to want to change. Things just are. Don't work with changing self, just realize who self actually is. [4dbarbie]

this is not a forcing thing, its just a rememberance. its done out of love, passion, a desire to just be free! with no ties to whatever identity! its takes courage, not convincing or denial.

Disbelieving you are Vanessa and denial are not the same thing. Denial is when you deny reality to something you're already giving reality to. Disbelieving was meant as an experiment, you never thought yourselves to be anything but this body, what will happen if you did? What are changes in your psyche, do you feel more confident, do you feel like you could take on the world? Don't you love Vanessa now that you know that she always was a choice? Even if she wasn't the greatest, what's so wrong with her? She is just somebody, she just lives a life. Things are only so serious when you're identified with her, you get scared, you get hurt, you feel stuck. But when you know that she can't hinder you? That she was never you? Don't you just want to laugh and hug her? [4dbarbie]

are you sure you're reading books and posts? a lot of this is already answered. your case is just more to deal with, but the point is still the same: you are not the body and mind, see what would happen if you questioned them.

just KEEP IT SIMPLE!

i'd like to leave you with this.

Once a young woman came to Hafiz and said, “What is the sign of someone knowing God?” And Hafiz became very quiet and stood in silence for nearly a minute. Lovingly looking deep into the young woman's eyes, he then softly spoke: “My dear, they have dropped the knife. The person who knows God has dropped the cruel knife so often used upon their tender self and others.” [source]

some extra resources

eft - health fear

eft - afraid to feel

we cannot practice letting go

heart of an emotion

i want to wake up with everything

hafiz - love's victory (PLEASE WATCH IT)

trust yourself

"You think you're doing it all for nothing, that's why you don't do it. But is freedom from pain really nothing? At least you are, for once in your life, sighing from relief from all this never-ending sense of doing."

health anon

apply

"All the process requires is letting go of thinking you are Vanessa."

behaviour

letting thoughts and emotions pass

challenge yourself

stories

everything brings you back to your Self

you've been through a lot and i'm glad you still are full of love! otherwise you never would've tried in the first place to change anything. use that love, take any anger and turn it into love for freedom! for Self! i know you can do it!!

also: the feeling of bad health coming back is a sign to me. you've put so much on hold: your healing from the sa, the healing from your family, the lying, LIFE in general. you can't keep doing that. turn inwards. the fear won't consume you.

HIIIII your Just Kiss Already series has consumed me!!!! I’m OBSESSED! Do you have any idea how long it’ll be in total? I adore slow burns but also the painnnnn of waiting. I totally understand if you don’t know but I am constantly refreshing for updates even though I know this stuff takes time! Do you happen to have any recs for radioapple fics that are similar or you’d recommend to hold me over?

Hello! Sorry for the late response.

I'm still doing a bit of reading myself, I haven't gone through all the fics I've wanted to read, but here's some of the RadioApple I've found so far that I enjoyed:

Lucifer and His Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Relationship by keelywolfe - A series following the overall dysfunction and strange terrain of Lucifer and Alastor's relationship...of sorts. There is smut involved. I really enjoy the fun, disjointed dynamic between them, especially with Lucifer having to learn/figure out how Alastor thinks to get a grasp of how to interact with him. Do mind the tags, there is some unhealthy relationship in there, miscommunication on both sides, lots of dysfunction involved, and smut, but I really enjoyed their interactions and how they're learning to read each other. Also, it has bottom!Alastor which is my favorite :3

My Kingdom Come Undone by literalmetaphor - Charlie roping Alastor and Lucifer into doing trust exercises to help them get along. Heheh I really like the humor in this one. Both Alastor and Lucifer are such petty little bitches, and it amuses me to no end. They do not hold back their verbal punches. I also really like a lot of the author's descriptions. They're fun and scratch my brain in just the right way. I haven't finished it just yet because I've been busy, but it's still open in my browser so I can get back to it whenever I get time.

Unhealthy Attachments by keelywolfe - More dynamic between Alastor and Lucifer, and what Alastor gets out of having sex with Lucifer (Rated E in case that wasn't obvious). Alastor and his strategic brain, and how that bleeds into the dynamics he builds with other people. I love getting insight into his brain like that. (Another bottom!Alastor fic because 😫👌 I love that shit).

And...huh, that's it, actually. I have a few more pulled up in my browser that I'm gonna get around to reading, but as for RadioApple these are the ones I bookmarked. LOL I'm actually just noticing how many RadioStatic fics I bookmarked.

Hope you enjoy these! I love fics with a fun, bitchy Alastor and a deep-dive into his brain and social interactions with other characters. It's my bread and butter.

EDIT: I forgot to answer your question at the beginning of the asks XD Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying the series! I'm not sure how long the series is going to be just yet. I know, at the very least, they'll have to kiss, per the name. My brain loves developing plots though, so it may span longer and REALLY deep dive into Alastor and Lucifer's relationships and the trials and tribulations that put it to the test.

Hopefully, I can get around to writing the next part soon!

Worm and Ward and Familiarity

I saw a really great analysis of Worm working with tropes while Ward works against them by @greatwyrmgold, and it reminded me of a more general contrast that I noted:

Worm is coming from a very familiar place and being pulled out of that. The Undersiders have fairly relatable experiences (on average). Poverty, bullying, neglect and abuse by guardians. I'd argue that, as extreme as Alec's experience is, it would resonate with many who have dealt with indoctrination in their youth (like me). Brockton Bay is a city on economic decline, struggling to stay afloat, and afflicted with violent crime. There's superpowers thrown in, sure, but it's fundamentally very familiar human shittiness and problems that drive a lot of the story.

The powers are definitely weird and creative, but it's still unmistakably a superhero story. Bugs, darkness, flight and strength and durability, contact biokinesis. Superheroes and supervillains in costumes fighting each other, hijinks and blood loss.

Except that there's Endbringers, and Echidna, and Cauldron, and Scion. The culmination of the story is peeling back the mask of a familiar superhero setting to reveal a cosmic horror story.

Ward is set in the aftermath of that.

There's a massive megacity that still doesn't have a name. It's basically a country, but it's led by a mayor. Infrastructure is just barely there, lots of people are still living in tents, the internet is just barely running and not everywhere. People with superpowers are no longer just superheroes and supervillains, they're... what, exactly? So many threats that were once contained are now running free, the ratio of normal territory to gonzo hellscapes has been turned on its head. The skyline is torn apart by portals to other worlds, and it's fucking with the weather. There's a political movement against people with superpowers, and there are people affected by superpowers with their own identity, and both of those groups are very conspicuous in how hard it is to treat them as an analogy for any other groups. People are estranged from their own environment, and it's a brave, terrible new world in the shadow of a slain god.

The superpowers are less straightforward. Being unable to be pointed at, impregnation tentacles that fuck with the effectiveness of other powers, lots of cluster triggers and grab-bags, etc. The powers are more obviously reflective of the cosmic horror story people have had to wake up to, unfamiliar, weird, and deeply upsetting.

The characters are also pretty dang weird. Rain is a lot like Alec, and I think he might actually be the most normal of the bunch. Body dysphoria+, sharing a body with a sibling, attachment issues, living as a clone or as a sort-of clone. Not totally unrelatable, to be sure, there are parallels with real life experiences, but these are more their own thing, not so recognizable.

This makes Victoria kind of the perfect protagonist, matching the themes: she's estranged from who she was and her old connections; her home city is gone; she's gone through something absolutely mind-bendingly terrible that is among the worst that people can experience IRL and then some; her power has changed; she was raised into the weirdness of superheroics and is pioneering how it looks in this new world; she's knowledgeable about the weirdness surrounding powers, giving her a good eye for understanding the new world.

I think a decent fraction of Ward's relative unpopularity sadly comes from this: estrangement from the once familiar. The characters can't be related to as easily, the powers aren't so iconic, and the setting feels undefined. I don't think Ward is inherently worse for it, it's just a bit of a tougher sell.

i love ur bloodmoon thoughts sm and i agree with all of them ‼️‼️

they squandered his character sm and theres barely been any development since he got brought back to life… especially on the KC side. id love to see how youd rewrite it tbh- or if you want feel free to just use this ask as a bloodmoon thoughts dump

ALRIGHT SO We can run along with bm2 But also them going 'no their NOT the original thus we dont need to think about their charascter' as they seemingly established a bit with that but also not? Like that kinda furthers BM's whole arc of being treated like a murder machine (he was LITERALLY rebuilt for that, nothing more than tool!), and yet instead of USING THAT (which like.... we kinda got a bit of that with Eclipse, no i wont get into that.) they go 'HMNNN no, we dont wanna develop this further hes just villain' LIKE. SURE. ALRIGHT. BUT... YOU LITERALLY HAD SO MANY SET UPS WITH LIKE... His weird attachment to monty that one TIME yknow the 'hes my dad!' even tho hes not and its very debatable with Eclipse and KC depending how you wanna go about it (In terms of WHO made bloodmoon its Eclipse whos derived from KC and Moon and SUN.) Where was I YEAH HIS THEME OF NO ONE IS FAMILY BUT BLOODMOON. Only THEY understand that theyre not a tool or worthless! (Yknow just completely missing a way to use their codependence to help further their own coping of SEVERAL THINGS.) Yet he still STILL seeked out and called KC father, he still somewhat has thoughts on family. He's going after EARTH who's just vibin' trying to be accepting, even jealous of LUNAR for 1) being brought back and two) survived Eclipse and lives happily (sorta) and while begrudgingly i must say forgot bloodmoon. (WHICH LIKE. THATS THEIR OWN FAULT FOR NOT DRAGGING LUNAR INTO THAT PLOT EVEN THO HE HAD ALL THIS BLOODMOON INFO DURING THAT WHOLE THING. not used it ONCE. they purposely left lunar out of that and thats annoying. chaos sibligns 4 lyfe) Anyway you COULD so still use that in regards to Sun trying to reach out to them ('I wouldve loved another brother' will forever be brought up. also literally in the same convo sun does admit hed kill em again but WE'RE FOCUSING ON THE FAMILY PART GUYS) I'd have to scrap some like... lets see here.... UmMM i CAN use the attacking lunar thing still. Cause whole jealous thing they didnt understnad their own thoughtS (THEY THOUGHT MONTY WAS THEIR PARENT WHICH LIKE??? a stretch honestly. cmon we know this. theyre definitely making their own excuses) iDK ABOUT attacking earth, cause by that point everyone is kinda dead set on murdering them its actually pretty bad by that point unless KC comes back jesus style and goes 'NO. I'll handle this' proceeds to drag bloodmoon off into the desert for family bonding time (and rehabilitation.) Which he wont but we also gotta remember Bloodmoon is deliberately being used a scapegoat (despite yknow... he did DO all that by his volition still like he WOULD NOT have gone after kc like that if not for ruin going 'hey u wanna see ur dad who totoally didnt care for ur ass' or 'you should totally go kill a bunch of people. and then threaten lunar and earth BUT WAIT no killing ill shock u!' im losing focus but THEY WERE... sort of going somewhere with Bloodmoon not wanting to be a tool. AND having solar interfere (I still hate that whole 'he reminds me of my moon thus he must die'. Retcons... everywhere. Remember when he wanted to save his moon?? yeah? cool cause ill never forget that actually.) KC dying actually WOULDNT have been so bad (aside the... suddenly being an ass about it. But he was direct to bloodmoon about 'BRUH UR BEING USED.' and them never actually... bringing that up too much) angering BM enough to kill KC is actually pretty solid way to use the whole 'Bm not satisfied with Killing' as a very direct way KC's words last on BM especially BM's whole unstable emotions of NOT understanding the feelings theyre going through because of that other than anger (denial, grief, confusion and conflict of how Hurt that mustve been they wanted more family) oh this is getting long and im losing focus.

Also I need to say SOMETHING because I've been tormented by this for the past few days after having been made aware but yandere Pearl makes me so upset, imo it's such a disservice to her character!! That or other interpretations that just make her out to be evil. I understand the appeal of the trope and for AUs and stuff, ofc go wild!! But that is very much not what happened in DL canon and anyone who thinks that she's only interesting with the yandere trope attached is a fake fan!! Pearl was labelled crazy and of course she leaned into it, because what else does she do? Nobody wants her, everyone believes she's lost it, so she might as well!! At the very least it serves as some intimidation that Pearl CAN use to her advantage but did she ever want to? She's not crazy for Scott, not by any stretch of the imagination. She wanted some kind of approval, or acceptance. She didn't just want Scott to herself or whatever argument people try to make and she most certainly wasn't evil or cruel. Many times when people were getting up to mischief, Pearl didn't take large part if at all even if she was there. She often played along and, yeah, she played along, like most Lifers would, no? I can see how her behaviour could be observed as obsessive when she keeps trying to settle near Scott but, I don't even know how to articulate my thoughts other than to reinforce that that wasn't her obsessing over Scott. I suppose you could view Pearl as evil depending entirely on what you classify as evil in a death game where most everyone has to kill anyway, and where a lot of people commit arson and stuff (Joel killed some Jellies, loved to bully Jimmy, retaliated having the Relationship burnt down by burning every other establishment he could, is he also evil? What makes Pearl evil? Does she just get called that more because Joel is expected to be a menace by default?), but there is so much more nuance there than some form of "she flipped on a dime in session 1 and immediately became a crazy ex after a breakup". But you know what, that's what Scott wanted people to believe and if anyone in the fandom does then I have news for you

Also I'm not trying to say that playing a villain character is bad (Scott is such a villain though not at all a plainly visible one, and he's very compelling as a character) nor am I trying to make Pearl out to be some totally innocent sweetpea. Or maybe I am. #Pearl did literally nothing wrong to warrant this (but like, art of her being girlboss and stuff goes hard still, she OWNED the scene still when she embraced the label. She was mad cool, but it's not "being evil" that makes a character mad cool)

(PS don't take this too seriously, although I do heavily disagree with this interpretation personally, I'm not police and also I love all the Lifers including Scott dearly. Reminder that this is just about the characters they play and it's reasonable for viewers to believe his story foremost if they've only watched his POV and such, I think)

Heya! I was wondering if you had any recommendations for ttrpgs that are easy to teach the basic rules of in ~10 mins and good for running one offs!

I work with an organization that runs dnd games at conventions and breweries and we've been trying to branch out from DnD lately, but unfortunately since so many people know how to play 5e already it's the easiest to just keep using that.

THEME: Easy To Teach

Hello there, I totally sympathize with you on this! I’m first going to direct you to my First-Time GMs post just to take a look at some of the games I’ve listed there. I definitely recommend Pugmire and Visigoths vs. Mall Goths as the top two from that list. I’m also going to stick to games I’ve personally played before. I'm also going to @gayandtrashy because they asked a very similar question.

Enjoy!

The Vampire Next Door, by Cat Elm.

It's the late 2000s, school's out for summer, and you're headed out of town to stay with your grandparents in the idyllic Yorkshire village of Wymton-on-Tee. Your summer plans include exploring the countryside, and most importantly enjoying Grampy's famous chocolate chip cookies…. except that you're pretty sure that Vladimir Alucard, Grommy and Grampy's new neighbour is an evil bloodsucking vampire.

And none of the adults will believe you.

The Vampire Next Door is a roleplaying game for 3-7 players, intended for single-session or short form play. It's an homage to classic shows like Scooby Doo, Mona the Vampire, and Gravity Falls, where it's down to the kids to be smarter than the adults and save the day.

I’ve played this game with a first-time GM, and it was fantastic. The GM had an outline of the village that she could use to reference when the players wanted to go somewhere new, and the rules were very easy to understand - 4 stats, 4 dice attached to them, and 3 levels of difficulty. The goal is to acquire 4 pieces of evidence indicating that Vlad is a vampire, so once your kids have the evidence, it’s just a quick ending narration scene and you’re done! (If you want a shorter game though, I’d recommend reducing the evidence required to 3 pieces instead.)

Kids on Bikes, by Hunters Entertaiment.

Kids on Bikes is a Collaborative World Building RPG set in small towns with big mysteries. It is a rules-light storytelling system that gets players into the action fast. Kids on Bikes takes place in a more mysterious time, where anything and everything could happen. 

I’ve run a hack of Kids on Bikes for friends before, most of which hadn’t played much outside of D&D prior to playing. The tropes that are present in Kids on Bikes streamline character creation, because each trope presents you with dice already assigned to stats, and recommendations for strengths and flaws. Worldbuilding can be done by the GM or collaboratively depending on what the group is more comfortable with. The GM is presented with a a Difficulty chart that they can reference to determine how difficult its is to do something. If you have a larger dice, you’re more likely to succeed, but players also have resources such as adversity tokens, which can be spent to add bonuses, ignore the effects of fear, or activate special abilities attached to each character.

The best thing about Kids on Bikes is that once you’re comfortable with the system, you can branch out into the other games that use the same rules! This includes games such as Teens in Space, a game about science-fantasy exploration, or Kids on Brooms, a game about magic schools.

Cats of Catthulu, by Joel Sparks.

In Cats of Catthulhu, players take on the roles of a variety of ordinary-seeming cats fighting conspiracies of cosmic chaos. Mighty spirits such as Snarlyathotep, slimy Phatphroggua, and Hastpurr of the Yellow Eye inspire their cultists to destroy civilization-but that’s where all the comfy furniture is! One person acts as the Cat Herder, arranging the secret plots, challenges, and rewards and guiding the others through the process of making an adventure. Rules are light and quick, emphasizing player cleverness and the fun of being feline. There’s plenty of darkness and chaos in the world, but our fuzzy heroes can handle it!… Usually.

This is another game I’ve run for new players before! The game mentions special d6’s with cat dice on them, but you can honestly use any old d6. There is a short, defined list of character options with helpful charts to give your players some inspiration. To do something, you’ll roll 2d6. You’ll want to get at least one Success on your dice, although in some situations you might need 2 successes to get what you want. If you are the Right Cat for the Job, then the task is easier for you, and if you have a Treat that you can spend, you might even get to re-roll!

This game is cute, humorous, and excellent for short games, although there’s definitely room for longer stories if there’s interest.

Spectaculars, by Scratchpad Publishing.

Spectaculars is a tabletop roleplaying game where players create their own comic book universe, craft heroes and villains to populate that universe, and then play through full-length campaigns to tell incredible stories of heroism and villainy in a world of their own creation. This box set game gives a gaming group everything they need to play the game, and to create their own consistent campaign that spans multiple comic book genres.

Through play, each copy of Spectaculars evolves into its own unique comic book universe; in essence, the players create, through play, a rich backdrop against which their heroes and villains clash. The nature of the setting is determined by the players. Spectaculars makes it easy to create a fully fleshed-out setting, guiding you the process of creating the setting’s major elements at the time they come into play.

This is another game that I’ve seen a new GM pick up with excitement - and continue to run! This is a superhero game that takes a lot of inspiration from recognized superhero media, so it’s great for folks who are looking to emulate what they’ve seen on television. This is a really big game, with a lot of tools to help the GM run the game - including adventures with plenty of places to slot in thematically relevant villains and obstacles. There’s also plenty of collaborative world-building, giving the players a say in what they want to see, while also taking the burden off of the GM.

The physical copy is also really good at making you excited to play. It comes with tokens, dice, character pads, and plenty of GM tools and toys!

If you’re interested in a similar game that uses the same system but takes place in a fantasy city of crime, then check out Dusk City Outlaws, which is by same publisher!

External Containment Bureau, by Mythic Gazetteer.

External Containment Bureau is a game of paranormal investigation and bureaucracy using a lightweight, hackable version of the Forged in the Dark design framework. You play as trained agents of the External Containment Bureau, an organization tasked with the study, identification, and containment of paranormal phenomena. The Bureau authorizes agents to make use of these phenomena to give yourself incredible powers (so long as the proper forms are in order). But take care: using paranormal energies inches you ever closer to joining the ranks of the paranormal yourself. Will you transcend humanity in the line of duty? Play to find out.

External Contaiment Bureau is great for fans of SCP or Control, and is also a sleek, simple introduction to the world of Forged in the Dark games. Your players will add dice to their pool from a list of resources on their sheet, whether that be from their background as paranormal academic, or their special weapon commissioned from R&D. It simplifies the Controlled, Risky, Desperate pool from Blades in the Dark, and also imports the Mystery Clock from games like Brindlewood Bay and The Between, which also have a good reputation for being beginner-friendly. There are also a number of adventures available for new GMs to run, such as the Sidhe Conservancy of Portland, which pits you against the Fae, or Checking Out, which places you in a hotel that slowly erases your memory.

Other Posts to Check Out

Top 5 TTRPGs for Beginners

Introductory Games

First Time GMs (repeat of the first link at the top)

Some Final Advice

If you have any regular GM’s who you’re hoping to introduce to new games, find out what pieces of media they really like. Then go hunting for games that fit that description. When it comes to picking up a new game, nothing is more motivating then finding out there’s a story you want to tell, regardless of whether or not it means learning a new system.

One of my friends started running a Pokemon campaign because he loves the games so dang much - and he’s got a dedicated party of players! Another friend found Mausritter and got really excited because he just loved the idea of playing tiny mice on adventures. A third friend is starting to determine if she wants to hack the Cypher System to make it work for Horizon Zero Dawn. If I can compare popular pieces of media to the games that I want to run, I get folks signing up in droves - I’ve advertised Studio Ghibli, Star Wars, Really Gay Teenagers, and Bloodborne to great effect.

Who’s Afraid of Alex J. Newall? by Newt Schottelkotte is definitely worth a read to everyone who’s a fan of Rusty Quill Productions.

I count myself amongst those. Which is why I want to add to something mentioned in the article that I, alongside @nossorgs​ have special insight into:

The Transcripts.

In light of everything that has happened this year, the way people inside of RQ have been mistreated, abused, and exploited, the transcripts appear to be a minor issue. But as Newt has pointed out beautifully: They’re a symptom of something much bigger, namely disregard, miscommunication, incompetence, reliance on free fan labour and pretending to be something they’re not. In this case the producer of inclusive and accessible content.

The official RQ transcripts were launched early this year and it was immediately clear how terrible they are. Countless fans have surely reached out to RQ to let them know. After all, there’s a handy feedback form. A feedback form which, incidentally, is neither up-to-task, nor easily accessible as it isn’t linked anywhere near the transcripts, but only in the 26 January 2022 “news” update.

However, Nossorgs and I, as professionals in the language service industry, had concerns that couldn’t be addressed in the feedback form. So we sat down together and wrote a very long email, which we sent to RQ on 22 February 2022. We have received no reply.

I’m now, after checking with Nossorgs, publishing the email here, because I don’t want anyone to say “well maybe they didn’t know”. They knew. They just didn’t care.

They didn’t even care enough to fix these issues by today.

Here’s the email and all the exemplary screenshots are below a cut.

Dear Rusty Quill Team,

congratulations on launching your new website and releasing the transcripts for the RQ original shows.

Upon review of several transcripts (in particular the ones created for Rusty Quill Gaming), we wanted to voice some concerns with the company or software used to generate the transcripts, since there appears to have been a grievous lack of quality control and a large number of errors have made it to the released transcripts. Screenshots are attached and a list of general concerns can be found below.

As professional linguists, who variously have been or are currently employed as editors, translators, transcribers, or project managers in the language service sector (each with QA responsibilities), with over a decade of experience, we would highly recommend requesting a partial or total refund from the companies involved in generating these transcripts. As provided, the transcripts lack any form of serious quality control and may even indicate that the supplier(s) you have partnered with are fraudulent.

With the professional experience we have, we understand the difficulties that come with transcribing audio of this type. One speaker having multiple voices, crosstalk, and "unusual" turns of phrase (i.e. Pathfinder mechanics and terminology) being used pose great difficulties. However, the concerns we would like to voice are unrelated to the content of RQG, but basic issues that any professional linguist should have been able to avoid.

Many of the concerns we have can be traced to a lack of consistency, which could have been avoided by the simple creation and adherence to a style guide. Did your transcription supplier provide or request one? With a project as big as this, it would have been standard practice.

Please find a list of general concerns below, the file names of relevant screenshots have been added in brackets:

Many spelling and grammar errors, which indicate a lack of language skill (Spelling001 to 005). Professional linguists should only ever work in their native language to avoid such issues. There are official ISO guidelines regarding linguistic qualifications, which any agency of worth is aware of and regularly audited on.

Misspelling of player and character names and misattribution of lines (Spelling001 to 005). We do not know whether RQ provided a list of cast and character names to the transcription provider, but they should have realised that many unusual names are included and references are needed. They should have reached out and requested a list if it hadn't been provided. If it was provided, it was clearly not consulted.

Lack of organisation: The very first episode is mislabelled as episode 25 in the transcript (Episode1_mislabeled). Episode 25, in turn, only seems to be available in a word format, not as a pdf (this also seems to apply to other episodes, such as 203). The transcripts are not labelled in a consistent pattern, meaning that they are not sorted consecutively by episode number in the RQ Sharepoint, making browsing difficult (Filing001).

Lack of consistent speaker tagging: In most transcripts, the players are not distinguished from the characters they are playing, and the formatting is inconsistent in the episodes that do note in-character speech (Characters001 to 003). This is probably due to your transcription provider splitting the work over multiple people. This is a common and reasonable approach to spread the workload. However, the linguists should have agreed on a common system, or the central project manager should have dictated one. Lack of cast/character distinction renders the transcripts as good as unreadable.

Lack of basic QA regarding completion: Episode 183 includes internal formatting remarks of the supplier, which should have been deleted by them prior to delivery (CW001).

Content warnings: Listing of content warnings is inconsistent, if present at all, with one remark noting that content warnings were unavailable because they were not listed in the (fan-made) wiki (CW002). It is concerning that the transcription provider would refer to a fan-made, unofficial source, when RQ provides content warnings with all episodes in the episode notes. Surely, these are also available at RQ internally in a centralised document which could have been requested by the supplier.

We understand you are probably very busy creating and promoting your new shows and troubleshooting your new website, but transcripts of this quality actively harm your reputation as an accessible and inclusive company. The mantra "better than nothing" only applies to a certain extent here. Low-quality transcripts, such as these, are of no help to those who rely on them. Clear labelling of actors vs characters is needed in order to follow the podcast, and content warnings should have been included whether they are available on the fan wiki or not. Even if these transcripts are intended as first drafts, to be revised and polished at a later stage, they are at best unuseable and at worst dismissive towards those members of the fan community who are hard of hearing or have auditory processing issues.

Professionally, we recommend that you reach out to your supplier with the list of concerns and screenshots we have collected and request corrections. Whether or not you also request a (partial) refund is up to you, but we also recommend you do. If you do not trust your original supplier to take care of the required corrections accurately, it would be standard practice to request a quotation from another supplier and contact the original transcription provider with this quotation in order to bill them for the additional financial burden. Before choosing a (second) supplier and contracting them for all 200+ reworks, it would be advisable to do a small batch of transcripts first, in order for you to get a feeling for their quality, as well as allow them to make an accurate estimate of the effort involved and ask any questions that may already have come up.

In the language service industry, it is not uncommon to have to rework one's deliveries. Language is subjective and linguists are people. Mistakes happen. We understand this better than most fans. However, no professional, qualified linguist would have signed off on these transcripts with the feeling of a job well done. There are human errors, and there is a gross lack of basic quality assurance. Unfortunately, the RQG transcripts, as they are, fall into the latter category.

If you would like to get in touch, we would be more than happy to share our professional knowledge and experience regarding linguistic projects such as these, in order to help you avoid such problems in the future, for instance if and when you decide to add transcripts for side quests, specials, and bloopers. We are aware that you don’t usually work with fans and understand and respect the reasoning behind the decision, however, many linguists in the fan community are prepared to offer their own services as transcribers. You have a wide range of professionals in your fan community, and all of them come with the additional benefit of being familiar with the source material and understanding what format these transcripts should take in order to be of use.

With kind regards,

Spelling001

Spelling002

Spelling003

Spelling004

Spelling 005

Episode1_mislabelled

Filing001

Characters001

Characters002

Characters 003

CW001

CW002

I’ve seen a bit of mixed opinions about how exactly Rafe would be in a relationship, some write him as just plain abusive and cruel while others characterize him as a alpha male hellbent on being the provider and very dominant instead of (mentally, emotionally) abusive. And because I love your characterization of Rafe and how you write him in relationships, I’m so curious to see what’s your take on him with a gf, canon and/or headcanon.

I also know that things like this are often up for interpretation when it comes to the writer and whatever their choice is for the creative direction they want to go in but still 😭. Like I’ve fell in love with Rafe being soft to and for his significant other and not downright abusing her.

aw thank you so so much 💘 i may have accidentally written another very long-winded character analysis…

so 100% like you said, every writer has the control to interpret him differently and they’re all valid - that’s part of the reason there are so many rafe fics that i adore. there are so so so many good approaches to his character

i can definitely see rafe being abusive and controlling. he carries the trauma and self-loathing that would make him behave like that. i mean lbr babygirl is a murderer and has physically harmed people 👀 so i can imagine him treating someone he’s supposed to love very poorly. i understand the angle that fic writers take that he doesn’t know how to show love or take love or even feel love because of who he is, so it makes him cruel and domineering - BUT i think he can be crass and violent and deranged due to nurture and not nature, which is why i think he has a side to him we don’t often see

he carries a tragic amount of trauma. he struggles with addiction. he feels remorse for his actions. he cries for help from his dad and gets told to toughen up. he fears losing control of his intrusive thoughts and that they’ll lead him to do things he shouldn’t do. he has terrible mental health. and it’s all from his upbringing and the way his father dismisses him and punishes him for having feelings. he wants to get better and he just needs someone to believe in him (see this edit that owns me) idk i like to think when rafe is given the opportunity to love, he can and he does :( that’s why i rly enjoy writing him as being a bit more tender

ngl i hate ward but he ATE when he said “the devil’s got you” lol because it’s rafe through and through. he’s not evil itself; evil finds him and he’s crap at fighting it

OK SORRY to actually answer your question about how i think rafe is as a boyfriend - it would feel like i’m diverting from canon too much if i wrote him as a total sweetheart. imo he’d have toxic traits like jealousy and possessiveness in a relationship. i can see him being controlling and overbearing and bossy and short-tempered, too. but i think in the snippets we’ve seen with him and sofia, he also can be playful and flirty and sweet and actually calm

i see him with an anxious attachment style - clingy, hypervigilant, jealous and deep down, always expecting for his fear that he’s not truly loved for who he is to come true. he is insecure as hell

i also think his love language is physical touch. i’m biased bc i write so much smut lmao but i think his favorite (and maybe at times, only) way to give and show love is through intimacy. and lowkey i think he would have a praise kink because he wants to be reminded of how much his girl loves him hehe

imo rafe is the type of character that can be soft - he just needs to feel safe to do so. he requires extra care and unconditional love. he needs to feel like no matter what he does, he’s special to his girl. i think there’s an inner child in him that needs to feel like he’s valued just the way he is and doesn’t have to prove anything to be loved

rafe does not like himself, let alone love himself. he literally tells himself, sobbing, in a quiet and vulnerable and solitary moment, that he sucks. his self-loathing makes him treat others very badly, but i think in the right setting with the right person, he wants to give and receive love. he just doesn’t always know how to do it

Howdy, Sex Witch! I'm hoping you/your many lovely followers might be able to help me figure something out. I've realized recently that I may be demisexual, but I'm just not sure. I'm 25, have recently started dating, and I'm getting to know the way my sexuality responds in a relationship. I grew up in a very repressive culture, and I was on hormonal birth control for years; I thought I was either asexual or a Very Good Girl because there was just nothing going on for me sexually. But I ditched the bc and suddenly things changed. I now have a very healthy libido and act upon it frequently, but never with other people. I get hot very easily for fictional characters, but I do need to get attached to them first. They can't just be hot, they have to be compelling.

But I've started dating this guy who I think is a great fit for me, and the sparks just... aren't flying yet. It's been the same the last few people I went out with. I feel like, in theory, I should be getting hot for the guy (he's objectively good-looking, our values align, we have a lot to talk about), but all I have so far is a sense that there's potential, if that makes sense. I can think about being sexual with him without feeling repulsed, but it feels "too soon" and kind of weird. The good news is he feels the same way; he described it as being "romantically slow to warm up". So maybe we're both demi? We've decided to keep seeing each other and either wait for the heat to happen or, if it doesn't, to keep hanging out as friends (we have lots in common and friends are hard to make).

Does this sound like demisexuality? Or am I just not attracted to this one guy? Maybe I'm allosexual but kind of slow to warm up? It's weird to want to be attracted to someone but your hormones just won't kick into gear. Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks for all you do!

hi anon,

respectfully, you're going about this just. totally backwards. your sense of self isn't something that you can test into by exhibiting all the right symptoms; I can't diagnose you with demisexuality. labels are just words for you to use or discard as you see fit, and the only qualification necessary to call yourself demisexual is whether or not you want to do that.

does the idea of being identified as demisexual bring you any kind of sense of happiness, peace, relief, or better self-understanding? awesome, then maybe you should do that. congrats on learning something about yourself!

does it not spark any particular positive emotions for you? alrighty, maybe that one's not your thing. congrats on learning something about yourself!

ultimately, what you call your sexuality isn't nearly as important as what you actually do, especially when it comes to recognizing your wants and boundaries and actually honoring them.

Thoughts on Carl x Flynn?

EEEEEHHEHFOEAOEODJFDJABSODNJEHBEHJ!!!!!!!!!!!!! JUMPS UP AN DOWN AT MAXIMUM VELOCITY sorry anyways

This is gonna be a long one so buckle up! some spoilers for METAPHOR, BENEFITS, Jenna's good ending and parts of Flynn's route

You already kno thats my shit fr fr lmao

But if i had to go in depth about em, i would point out many things, such as the way that both pretty much sway with each other effortlessly, their interactions feel natural and nice, and granted, theres no hanging tension on them compared to Flynn and everyone else in this fucking group.I think thats moreso a side effect to Carl being so chill tho, you just...vibe with him.

I think first and foremost they're good friends, and that's what they really need in a fucked up place such as Echo, people they can trust and be with without much conflict and be themselves, hell, Flynn states multiple times that Carl is the one thing keeping him sane in this town and giving him a reason to keep going on about his life there, and i dont doubt Carl feels the same by the way he reacts to Flynn possibly leaving (and he even steps up and says he'll go back to Pueblo after they escape Echo, promising to bring Flynn with him. So its not about "Stay here with me" like someone, it's "Anywhere as long you're there")

I can totally understand how people can see their relationship as platonic considering Flynn shows mannerisms with Carl that he shared with Sydney when young, and the fact it's implied Flynn and Syd viewed each other as brothers, but i think that's just how Flynn is; a protector, making sure the people he cares about are alright to the best of his abilities regardless of how fucked up the situation might be, keeping his head high and levered so the others can hang on to him- with some exceptions, of course.

Do I think they make a good couple? i believe yes!

Their presonalities could seem clashing for some but they make it work very well, and they attend each other's weaknesses, such as Flynn helping Carl on his anxiety an depression to the best of his abilities, and Carl allowing Flynn to open up about what's on his mind and being there for him when he needs him the most, and defending him given the chance, no strings attached. Those are their sore spots as characters, and they just make it work without it seeming toxic or one-sided, at least for me

They already have good chemistry as friends, and theres a growing feeling there if you pay attention to the small little things on almost each route when it comes to them, blink and u miss it type stuff, until u get to Flynn's route and its straight up longing for each other: Carl shows jealousy for Flynn talking about Chase and what transpired between em, but he doesn't intervene (Perhaps his own low self-steem?) because he still cares for Flynn's happiness. And Flynn on the other hand is looking for a meaningful emotional relationship, and literally all the interactions he has with both Chase and Leo are turbulent and bring in a new layer of issues to the friend group, this doesn't happen with Carl, he even says he's happy to have this loser around- wishes he could sit beside him in Leo's van- and even indirectly asks him about his feelings about him ("If this wasn't real...is there anything you want to tell to not-real me?")

LIKE YOU TWO ARE SO DOWN FOR EACH OTHER IT MAKES YOU BOTH LOOK STUPID!!! and the part where they talk in Flynn's room??? JENNA'S REACTION? CARL'S REACTION??!??!?! you won't see me shutting up about it. The fact characters keep interrupting them on those moments is just so telling

and man if i had to go in depth about Flynn's route when it comes to Carl uguhhhhhhuhuuhufhdsjfsj rips my hair out

But yea, i love them as a couple, they bounce off each other and vibe together so well, and i think they can both help each other become the best versions of themselves once they leave Echo, together. Thats why i like Jenna's Good ending so much, at least there, theres a promise of them actually getting to that point in their relationship, and living together comfortably (like the waffle house scene....im obsessed, ill never be the same...)

Extra notes!

The fact Flynn fell for Carl despite him not fitting the type of guys he likes to bang just tells me he's genuinely interested in him for his feelings, personality and the way Carl treats him

AND I MIGHT JUST BE INSANEEEE BUT AFTER WATCHING METAPHOR? FLYNN GIFTING CARL A LIGHTER THAT WORKS JUST FINE ITS LIKEEEEEEE HMMMMM EEEEHEHEHEHHE YOU KNOWWWW

Carl caring MORE about Flynn leaving than him possibly having something with Chase because he feels thats how he could genuinely loose him guughhhhhgugh

AND THE WAY FLYNN IS THE ONE COMFORTING HIM IN THE JENNA ROUTE AND CARL HUGS HIM TIGHTER WHEN THEY JOKE ABOUT THEM GETTING MARRIED LIKE ??????EEEEHEHEHEH

I wish they kissed at least once womp

hey i’m really sorry if this is dumb but do you ever feel bad about enjoying whump? if so, how do you deal with it? i’m having a hard time with liking it. i love reading it but it occasionally makes me feel like a terrible person

its not dumb! i have some disorders that make it hard for me to feel bad abt stuff just for moral reasons alone, but i do get the terrible feeling sometimes when im afraid others will think im a terrible person lol if that makes any sense- so yeah i get the shame around it. i was lucky enough to be the quirky fun guy anyway so having slightly stranger interests wasnt a big deal for me.

this got very long bc i always have many thoughts on this

let me just start this by saying u totally dont have to feel bad for liking it. at all. everybody tends to like some form of whump, even if they dont call it that. the middle aged christian woman reading her 100th romance novel packed with fucking angst is an avid enjoyer of emotional whump in my book. and the guy who jokes about whump enjoyers being crazy and then turns around and watches marvel movies with blood and beat up heroes in it, well-

humans are just fascinated with pain. physical, emotional, all of it. it's just how we are, i think. we love to explore pain in fantasy, through characters separate from us, while we sit in our room comfortably (controlled danger! like rollercoasters). it can be cathartic. it can be how we find and understand ourselves. it can be comforting to know hey, this character went through something like that, that means the author must have some experience with it. there's at least one other human who gets me.

enjoying/reading/writing whump can be a perfect outlet, like hitting a punching bag repeatedly. it can be how someone digests their own trauma. it can just be a kink thing. it doesn't have to have deep moral things attached to it, sometimes seeing fictional characters hurt just tickles the brain and that's that. it doesn't matter, because it's all fictional, it doesn't hurt anyone. unless your preferred media is like, literal hate speech and propaganda against real life people, (in which case it DOES hurt ppl), there's literally nothing wrong with looking at a character being beaten and going "hey, thats cool".

also i will never not say this but even the fucken bible is straight whump and no one will ever change my mind. i tried to be a good christian and what did i find? whump.

also, there's like... a huge portion of people who read whump for the comfort of it. yes the character goes through shit, yes it's horrible, but guess what, they come out on the other side unquestionably changed but still worthy of recovery. they find peace, they heal, they find friends and family, they're comforted and listened to. that's something a lot of people read whump for. there's a reason it's called hurt/comfort. and there's also a very good post about how so many of us read it because the whumpees' trauma is always acknowledged. maybe not in the story, but we as readers understand that they went through some shit, and thus their trauma is always validated in some way. that can be a comfort as well, in a world where so many people's issues get brushed under the rug and ignored and overlooked and straight up invalidated.

but even if you're not into the comfort aspect (which i wasnt for a long time!!!!! i was strictly here for the hurt!!!!!!) you're not some sort of monster for it. i'd say quite the contrary. i'd say if you regularly engage with media like this, where the character's emotions are laid out so bare, and explored so deeply, you're more in tune with your own emotions too. i couldve punched holes in walls like some people i know (i have anger issues), but instead i grabbed my laptop and wrote about a character being beaten to a pulp. no damage to person or property. done. others read it and enjoyed it, and i even got serotonin from likes and reblogs, which lifted my mood, so that was a whole net positive.

seriously look at the most popular media too. it's whump. always has been. a good friend of mine whos a little weirded out by some of the gore i write is OBSESSED with game of thrones for example. and he recommended it to me because hey i love bloody stuff dont i? and i loved the torture scenes and he loved to hate and be enraged and a little grossed out by them. we enjoyed the series together. neither of us was terrible for it.

all this to say, you're not the odd one out. even if your interests count as more "taboo", like some of mine, unless you go out there and punch someone in the face, youre good in my books. and again, even punching someone in the face can be morally neutral or positive between consenting adults so. HUMANS JUST ENJOY EXPLORING PAIN. THATS MY HOT TAKE FOR TODAY.

thank u for coming to my ted talk

Mkay my brain is working a bit better today so thoughts on Mirage! Namely his inclusion in the movie instead of Jazz and his change in personality

Rise of the Beasts spoilers below the cut✌️

Now like a lot of folks, when I first saw the trailer I was insanely pumped because I thought Mirage was Jazz. I think we all kinda saw the silver Porsche and lost our minds, and of course, I'm still bummed that we didn't get Jazz because I love him dearly and miss him more than words can express. But! Having seen the movie and had time to chew it over, here're my thoughts on Mirage's character in RotB.

So a lot of initial thoughts regarding the choice to include Mirage, and a very different Mirage at that, rather than Jazz, were of course very valid. But I think ultimately while I would've loved for Jazz to have been there, I understand why they didn't go with him. Cause tbh if everything about the movie had been the same except they called Mirage Jazz, I wouldn't have been happy.

While yes, on the surface RotB Mirage seems really similar to G1 Jazz, they're actually really different in the ways that count. Jazz is bright, sociable, charismatic, and more in tune with Earth culture than most bots. RotB Mirage is also a lot of those things! But the key difference is that for Jazz, that personality is a facade. He's an incredibly grim, ruthless person who's seen a lot and is capable of a lot of terrible things, and he uses that trustworthy persona to mask that and make people more comfortable around him.

Mirage comes off as much more genuine in his naivete. He seems legitimately young, impulsive, and vying for adventure. He does things cause they sound fun, not because he thinks it's a smart idea in the long run. The sad things hiding underneath his bright personality don't come from brutal experience and calculated manipulation, they come from a genuine loneliness and desire to explore the world around him. In a lot of ways he plays a similar role to Bumblebee in most other TF media, the naive young optimist who wants to see the best in people and be a hero. Which narratively makes sense considering Bee was out of commission for most of the movie. He's not necessarily stupid, he's just not wise, and that comes from a lack of experience compared to his so-called "hardass" peers. He sees the other bots as boring and overly serious which contributes to his desire to keep Noah on the team. He wants Someone who he can relate to, someone who's a little closer to him personality-wise, and he doesn't feel like his older and more grim teammates can fill that role.

Which I think also contributes to his likability! Because like I said, Mirage is so genuine. He doesn't usually think things through so everything he says is so honest and unfiltered. I love Jazz because of his complexity and how compelling that facade is to his character, but I ended up loving Mirage because he doesn't feel the need for a mask at all.

I think generally the choice to change Mirage's personality from his G1 characterization was because the writers didn't want too many serious characters? At least that's how it felt watching the movie. I mean even Bumblebee comes off as older and more mature than Mirage. And Transformers is very fond of its goofy, unserious kid-appeal characters who are closest to the token humans. I'm cool with it mainly because big changes between generations are pretty common and this wouldn't be the first or even the wildest change of pace from one appearance to the next. As for why Mirage and not another character, who really knows. Probably the fact that he hasn't had much of an established personality in any of his rare TV appearances. And using a known name is usually easier than making a whole new character, just fan-attachment-wise.

Anyways, sum total thoughts: I liked him! And the movie's enjoyable if you don't go taking it too seriously, though that could be said about most things. It's also better with a friend! It's no ground-breaking cinema, it's an action franchise movie and exactly what you'd expect from one. But the characters have chemistry and personality and that's usually what matters to me. So yeah, all nitpicks aside it's a net positive from me!

Late night SALT activated...

Disclaimer: This post is mainly about really aggressive/hostile fans. Disliking stuff is totally valid and curating one’s online experience is important, but... I’m very strongly convinced that the majority of people who vehemently hate Goro Akechi or Shuake to a really hostile degree either haven’t played Royal, haven’t moved on from base game, haven’t maxed his confidant, or really lack reading comprehension. ‘cause disliking a ship or a character? Super valid! Everyone has their preferences and comfort zones. I would never shame someone who genuinely just... doesn’t vibe with it, finds it uncomfortable, and wishes to avoid content or posts w/ the character or pairing. I also completely understand the frustration of wanting Goro content that isn’t ship-focused, since sometimes fandoms can make a pairing consume a character in fanworks (though I’d argue you can have the pair and still give him agency outside of it, at the end of the day, there will always be people who just don’t want it). But when I see factually incorrect arguments like, “Joker and Akechi hate each other,” I just go... “Did we play the same game?” The game where Joker’s greatest wish was to see Akechi again. The game where Morgana outright states that Akechi doesn’t really hate Joker and Akechi himself laments that they didn’t meet years earlier, and if they had, how they could’ve been friends. A game where it’s made very clear that despite the stupidity of going with the revenge plan with Shido and the lives taken along the way, there was still a disgusting power imbalance with Shido, a grown man in politics, effectively molding a broken teenager into being a hitman... And even the betrayal toward the PT- I feel like Akechi’s offer to have Joker join him was genuine as a sort of last ditch effort to get him out of that situation. The SIU director notes how the plan is way too callous even for Akechi, and after it happens, Akechi tries to downplay the dangers of the PT to Shido, suggesting a part of him, even if only a small one, does feel some remorse.

There’s this messy complexity to Akechi and his relationship with Joker and the PT... and people try to strip it of all of its complexities to make it a bland, black and white matter, and it sucks. It feels like those kinds of people want to turn Akechi into a hatesink when Shido is literally right there. And Kamoshida, and Okumura, and many other awful adults in P5. It’s weird how little flak they get by comparison? And I’m biased- Akechi was a character I developed an attachment to as I reached third sem and his character just came together for me. But it’s so freaking annoying to try and search up art of the character or ship on sites like twitter only to find the worst takes possible. Folks gotta separate their personal feelings from the feelings of the characters. The actual canon interactions and relationships are infinitely more compelling than “Joker/the Phantom Thieves all hate Akechi.” I much prefer what the game presents us- with characters like Haru and Futaba not forgiving him, but still sympathizing with his situation and (perhaps reluctantly) being willing to work with him when it’s absolutely necessary. The friction is just so compelling, because even if he’s a tragic person, his actions still robbed them of loved ones. ...but also, President Okumura requested many shutdowns himself and was an awful person, which also adds to the messy complexity for poor Haru.

Anyway, this is just a late night ramble because I went to find fanart and found annoying tweets. Argh.

When I watched Amphibia, I kinda had a hard time understanding how certain headcanons were developed in the fandom. Especially Grime being Sasha's 'toad dad' and Olivia and Yunan being Marcy's 'newt moms.'

Like...by the end of the series, I totally bought Sasha and Grime as close friends (heck, they sold me as friends partway through season two), but Grime never gave 'adoptive dad' vibes to me. Putting aside the fact Grime's the reason Sasha spent her first month in Amphibia in a cell, he's also a pretty toxic influence on her, indulging her worst traits and only really improving as a person when he and Sasha form the resistance in season three.

And I'm confident viewers only started the 'newt moms' headcanon because of the episode Olivia & Yunan. Which is pretty ironic, since in that episode, Yunan initially objects to saving Marcy (she didn't even refer to Marcy by her name, just 'the human' XD), and like you said, Olivia explicitly states she's motivated to save Marcy because she trusts her and thinks her intelligence will help them defeat Andrias, not because Marcy is someone she's emotionally attached to.

Sure, in The Hardest Thing, Olivia and Yunan hug Marcy goodbye, so there was clearly some fondness for her by the end, but nowhere near familial feelings. And yeah, maybe you could argue Olivia cared for Marcy since she insisted on being 'gentle' when Marcy was being pulled out of the tank, but that's just basic decency; hardly 'adoptive mother' behaviour.

With all that in mind, why do you think so many got so hooked on the idea of these people being found families for Sasha and Marcy? Did they think Sasha and Marcy both 'deserved' a found family just because Anne got that with the Plantars? Did they just like the idea, even if canon did almost nothing to validate it?

I personally think it's because a lot of people thought Sasha and Marcy's parents were abusive (another headcanon I can't get behind), and believed they deserved to find 'better' families in Amphibia. But that's my take; what's yours?

So there's a LOT here to potentially discuss because you're not wrong in saying that it's a dubious claim. Let's start with just my thoughts on them being found families: I like Grime as Sasha's father figure in works but it is much more a mentor and student relationship but where who is doing which is very dubious. The two need each other but how much one or the other need each other is constantly shifting and it's part of what makes their dynamic interesting. Trying to place a specific label on them is rough and I'd agree that saying that Grime is Sasha's first healthy friendship would be accurate because of the push and pull there.

Yunan and Olivia are great in fanworks as having had a real relationship with Marcy but the show just doesn't support it. Yunan seems to look down on her and barely know her while Olivia is a very normal archtype of the proper, Victorian woman who has to deal with childish antics. Neither are bad characters for it but it does mean that the moment in the end with her hugging Yunan and Olivia is more for the sake of a curtain call than it is a big relationship being wrapped up. They honestly symbolize Newtopia, which Marcy definitely should still love, rather than their actual characters in that hug and I think that works.

Now, why are they called found families?

Well, the first reading for why is honestly what I'd probably put my money on: It's a popular trope and people liked the dynamics enough to want to push it into the box they wanted it to be. Like how TOH is praised for its found family despite the family doing so little together, it's a trope with poor definitions, is hard to disprove and is just roaring through fiction right now so its overuse as a term isn't surprising. The fact that it gets used to describe so many people with just dynamics in general (frankly, it feels like it's becoming harder to write best friends in fiction partially from this) makes me unsurprised that it is getting used here since Anne does absolutely get a found family with the Plantars.

Which does bring a second part in: It makes Sasha and Marcy more important. If they're going on similar journeys as Anne than they totally aren't there to help with the themes and the like, the journey is about them too! It brings them closer to being the focus of the story and as narratively important as Anne which, as we've seen, was a big deal to the fandom. I won't even call this bad, fandom will do as it does, but it does also end up diminishing just how big a deal it was for the Plantars to so thoroughly integrate Anne into their family and then how the Boonchuys recognize that work and accept them readily too. If it's as easy as it had to have been for Marcy, Yunan and Olivia, it kind of cheapens the core thrust of the show, almost like it focused on Anne for a reason.

The last one is... KIND OF what you brought up but I think it's a lot deeper than you frame it. I recognize that nowadays I am an outlier. I literally go and take a walk with my mom every morning, or I'm supposed to, to try and help her be more physically active. My problems with my parents are mostly due to my brain not being able to accept anyone actually approves of me, let alone people who's approval I care about. I am so very lucky to have good parents who I am happy to call my parents and who I am glad to have the support of.

All too many kids, even those not in the LGBTQIA+ but ESPECIALLY if they are, have bad family homes. They dream of being able to escape to a new world that's better than theirs, meet people who accept them for them and let them do cool things and be themselves. Escapism, especially isekai, is EXTREMELY popular for a reason, especially as just the world in general sucks, regardless of your relationship with your family.

So then we get Marcy and Sasha still going back. Them ALL going back because sometimes change is inevitable and not always can you bring the ones you care about with you. It's a powerful message that spits in the eye of that escapism and for a lot of people, that HURTS. Like for as much as I defend the choice, I do understand why so many in the fandom reacted negatively to it. For as much as they potentially didn't care about the Amphibians, they don't want to lose the froggy world that they wanted to live in themselves.

And so we get the projection of abusive parents. We get the toads and newts also being found families because it's so much worse to give those people up in your life than just saying bye to your friends. We get reasons why they should have stayed or at least been allowed to travel between worlds. This isn't even all inherently wrong, especially if you are willing to admit that there was a reason why the show chose the ending it did, even if you wish you could have the one that makes you happier.

Hell, we even see some of that with how people treat angst right here. They want Sasha and Marcy to have abusive parents... Because then they can be told it's okay to reject reality, be given a hug and then move on. Not to explore that abuse but to be given the wish fulfillment of that abuse being met with kindness which is admittedly how you should meet that stuff, please take abuse victims seriously and help them, but life is more complicated than that most of the time.

These are arguments I can understand and sympathize with though. I wish I could see someone using mental illness as now their superpower to be something that makes me happy because it WOULD be nice if my depression made me better than others. I just... don't quite engage with media that way though. It's actually part of what I think makes scripted content harder for me because I engage too genuinely and don't just want a pat on the head and a juice box.

And that isn't to say people who do want that are wrong. I still don't want to be actively hurt by the media I consume. I am still there to be entertained and happy and how that happens will be different for each person. That's part of the joy of life.

So I won't tell people who want Yunan and Olivia to be Marcy's lesbian moms they're bad for wanting that. Just don't tell me that's objectively what happened in the story since analysis and headcanon are genuinely different.

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I understand that sooo many things point to time travel in s5, but I have a hard time believing that there's enough time and space to thoroughly and accessibly explore the concept of different timelines in the show. Different timelines will take a lot to explain, and we're just down to 1 season with sooo many characters to give endings to and plot lines to close out already.

I know you and others have picked up on a lot that might be pointing to different timeline stuff, but it's not often big, obvious stuff that the GA have picked up on. Time travel with references in dialogue and the clocks and Nancy's diary, yes, but the timeline theories are very complicated, and there just seems like a lot to fit in with everything else.

Do you have an idea of how it could all be fit in and explained in a way that could be accessible for the GA? That's my major stress with the timeline theories. different Henry's and Edward and multiple versions of the Rainbow Room, like I see your vision and it's really interesting but have a hard time translating that in my head to how it could fit into s5 on screen.

Like what are the themes attached to the idea of multiple timelines? What's the purpose of it, fitting into the existing themes we already pick up on from s1-s4? How does it mesh with what we already have? What is the reason behind exploring that instead of focusing on our main characters? What does it add as far as storytelling that can't already be shown through the party or the older teens or adults that we've known for several seasons already?

And why not make it more obvious in s4? Bc I really do admire how much you've done looking into those blurry ass newspapers, but why wouldn't they plant more seeds for the GA (who aren't combing over the show and those screenshots like a lot of us are on tumblr) to prevent the idea of Edward and multiple Henry's and Virginia's, etc, to not feel like it comes out of left field for the GA?

Those are just some of my thoughts and questions about it all! I'd love to hear your thoughts!

How Does Timeline Theory Stuff Tie Into Other Events In ST and How Does It Tie Into The Themes of ST and How Are The Duffers Going To Pull It Off Without Blindsiding the GA?

YES!!!!!! Hello, anon! I totally understand your concerns, but I actually think that they've set it up in a really great way where it's going to explain a lot of major plot points/gates, and is also going to be tied to the lore of the UD & how it was created (something that the duffers have said that they're definitely exploring in S5 & that there's a LOT left to be revealed about the UD in s5. These are all great questions, let's get into them! So, first of all, what other major plot points is timeline stuff going to help resolve?

Birthdaygate I don't think that people actually forgot Will's birthday. I think that his birthday is likely on a different day and we're seeing two different timelines. Especially with the Duffers joking about making his birthday May 22nd? I think that March 22nd birthday Will and May 22nd birthday Will likely both exist, and that we're either seeing two cmpletely different timelines in S2 vs S4, or Will has switched timelines, or characters like Joyce have switched timelines. One of the biggest criticisms of birthdaygate is "since when does Vecna have the power to make people forget things, and WHY would he do that?" and I AGREE with that crticism. Because I don't think Vecna specifically erased his birthday memories/the memories of others, I think it's far more likely tied to timeline weirdness, especially because in Edward's timeline, the Creel murders happened on Will's March 22nd birthday, making it a significant date for Edward. Edward, who very very likely has TIME-related powers considering that it seems to be Edward who we saw turning back that clock with his mind, and all the imagery of grandfather clocks etc. He’s not erasing memories, he’s messing with time and dates and timelines.

Will's Vanishing I have no doubt that the timeline stuff is tied to Will's vanishing. He's literally dressed like Marty McFly on the night he disappears. Hell, Vecna's grandfather clock was behind Will on the night he vanished. We also here a clock sound when his bike falls, and we hear a clock ticking when El pokes the demogorgon in the void.

We also see two different Wills on the night he vanished, which I've been calling "warm Will" and "cool Will" based on the colour grading. TLDR warm Will is much younger looking whereas Cool Will's hair is longer and he looks more exhausted and is physically older and looks like the vision of Will that Joyce saw when laying on the couch. And two different UD versions of Castle Byers. I'd need to dig and find my poster about this from forever ago, but we get two scenes of Will in the UD in castle byers (one where El finds him in the void and one where we see him singing "should I stay or should I go" to himself) And to top it all off, there's two conflicting articles about his vanishing that seem to be the SAME ARTICLE from different timelines, it's not just two totally separate articles in the same timeline presenting different stories, it's physically the same article with the same title, the same picture, and the same author, just with different content (one of the articles, the one from S1, claims that Will was found as a test subject at Hawkins Lab and that Richard Brenner was running the Narcotics Division, whereas the other article, from S2, claims that Will was found in a cabin in the woods)

There's also the weirdness regarding "how did Joyce and Hopper get out of the UD but more importantly, out of HNL?" And how were they allowed to take him to a normal hospital? HNL was prepared to straight up murder Hopper, and Brenner was convinced that they wouldn't escape the UD. So how did they? We never see them come out of the gate, and we never see them come out of HNL. How did they get through all of the keycard-locked rooms in HNL? But if they simply broke into HNL and took Will out of there, and THAT'S the Will we see at the hospital? In the sense that the Will we saw in the UD with Joyce is a different timeline entirely than the Will at the hospital? It would explain some things for sure, especially considering that the S1 newspaper articles straight up says that Joyce found him as a test subject at HNL. Because as we saw with Terry, breaking into HNL and grabbing a child from the first level and getting out, is much easier than getting out from the bottom floors/UD gate area, especially since there's those guarded/locked hazmat suit areas. And HNL would never have let them go to a normal hospital. It's all extremely weird, and definitely tied to timeline stuff, imo.

How The Blue UD Was Created I talked in this post about the rooms and walls in the Creel house magically changing in certain scenes/retellings, and how I won't be surprised if the Creel house that has the green wallpaper in that one scene during the Massacre At Hawkins Lab Creel house sequences is the Creel house that's currently the UD. We have all of these references to the UD being a "parallel universe," and all of the time references to it, so I won't be surprised if the UD was once a regular timeline, and something happened to it. Like, this house:

And this house:

Are likely physically the same house in the same timeline. And it would tie into explaining why and how the UD looks like Hawkins- because it is. It's just Hawkins in another timeline, a parallel version of Hawkins, a concept that has been referenced in the show since S1.

How Brenner Survived The S1 Demogorgon Attack Brenner should not have survived that S1 demogorgon attack in Hawkins Middle School. It chewed on his face. And we see demogorgons kill prisoners in S4 in half the time that the S1 demogorgon was gnawing on Brenner. That man should not be alive. But maybe he isn't. After all, we have references to both a Martin and a Richard Brenner- maybe one of them died and the other one is the one we see in S4. And even if he did survive, HOW? Timeline theory stuff is very easily connected to this, especially with all the strange parallels between Henry and Edward vs Martin and Richard and the idea of time loops etc and that being tied to Brenner's survival/timeline manipulation allowing him to not have died in S1. What Henry/Edward Was Doing When He Turned Back That Clock?

We literally watched Henry/Edward turn back a clock with his mind onscreen while ranting in 1979 about the constraints of time and escaping said constraints. And we got no explanation for what the outcome of that scene was/what he was doing, and we got no explanation why he was turning back the clock in 1959/what prompted it. We still don't know WHY the grandfather clock is significant to Vecna either. Timeline theory stuff is ABSOLUTELY going to tie into this.

It also answers even MORE questions than this, but hopefully that gives you a base idea of just how connected timeline stuff is to the major unresolved questions and plot points of ST. IMO, timeline theory stuff answers more questions than it creates because the ST team has been very careful about making sure that all of these things are intertwined.

And as far as themes go, with all of the time loop stuff that's referenced in ST, that ties perfectly into the themes regarding the cycle of abuse in ST, and people struggling to escape a time loop much like how it's difficult to escape the cycle of abuse and ALSO difficult to prevent it from repeating.

I think it's also narratively powerful in the sense that it shows us just how differently things could have turned out for people if they'd made one small, different choice, how people like Henry or Edward end up differently based on how their family interacts with them, especially with Mr Clarke's reference to "a timeline where none of this awful stuff ever happened," there's defiinitely a powerful message there about how seemingly small decisions impact peoples' lives, and the cycle of abuse and how people don't realize the impact they're making on other people until it's too late. It brings up the question of nature vs nurture and to what extent a person's circumstances affect who they'll grow up to be, and how differently peoples' lives could have turned out based on minor changes.

You also mentioned "what's the point of exploring that (timeline stuff) instead of exploring our main characters?" to which I say: the two aren't mutually exclusive. They're very much intertwined, exploring things like Will's connection to Edward/Henry, and what actually happened with Will's vanishing, exploring things like "why is the Wheeler family dynamic the way that it is and why does it mirror the Creels so much?" (see: Karen being Daughter-Virginia from the Edward timeline), etc, so I very much think that timeline theory is tied to exploring the characters because one of the core things that makes time weirdness in ST work is the way that the Duffers have approached it from the start- time travel/multiple timelines ISN'T going to be an easy way of just fixing things at the last minute- instead, it's been making things more difficult and complex since the beginning. So, the timeline weirdness has been affecting who these characters are, and how we've come to know them, and how they behave, and how their lives have been/what they've experienced, so it's fundamentally tied to exploring who they are and why they're the way that they are.

You also asked : "And why not make it more obvious in s4? Bc I really do admire how much you've done looking into those blurry ass newspapers, but why wouldn't they plant more seeds for the GA (who aren't combing over the show and those screenshots like a lot of us are on tumblr) to prevent the idea of Edward and multiple Henry's and Virginia's, etc, to not feel like it comes out of left field for the GA?

To which I say: first of all, thank you <33, second of all, how much more obvious can it be? Go to almost any ST comment section or ST youtube video search or GA-written article theorizing on ST, and there's CONSTANTLY people talking about the idea of time travel in ST

Like seriously, Will is dressed like Marty McFly the first time we see him, Back to the Future is playing in S3 in the movie theatre and we specfically hear lines from it about time travel and literally watch scenes from Back to the Future during ST, there's constant references to movies like the Bill and Ted movies, there's CONSTANT CLOCKS, LIKE SERIOUSLY, THE CLOCKS IN S4 ARE NEVERENDING, AND WE LITERALLY WATCHED EDWARD/HENRY TURN A CLOCK BACKWARDS WITH HIS MIND!!! I don't know how much more obvious they can be about time travel references, genuinely, like we literally had an entire letter speech from Hopper in S3 about "turning back the clock," and then also literally watched Henry/Edward physically turn a clock backwards while monologuing about escaping the constraints of time. There's so, so, so many references to time and time travel and timeline weirdness in the show, and not just "super tiny easter egg refrences,' but literally stuff like Back to the Future literally playing on screen, and Nancy saying outloud "your timeline is wrong," and Edward/Henry ranting about time and Hopper wanting to turn back the clock etc etc, it's all stuff that you literally Cannot Miss if you even do a surface level watch of the show! (also my caps here are just Excited ranting, not annoyed <3) And also, most importantly, because all of those things I mentioned earlier, like birthdaygate and the weirdness surrounding Will's vanishing and how it isn't resolved and how the UD was created, are ALL things that the GA has picked up on, even if they don't know the ins and outs of full analysis on it, they understand basic concepts such as "Will's birthday was forgotten," even if they think it's just a production error. They understand that the UD hasn't been fully explained yet, they understand that we haven't gotten the full explanation for Will's vanishing yet. And so, timeline stuff is going to tie into the answers to all THOSE questions.

And even regarding Edward SPECIFICALLY, look at how many GA people are picking up on the references to Eddie "Edward" Munson returning in S5, and the fact that Edward Munson's missing poster parallels Wil's missing poster scene and the fact that Eddie's age is inaccurate on it. The GA is picking up on a lot of the "something is going on with Eddie" stuff, but they just don't quite realize that Edward Munson is meant to deliver subtext about Edward Creel, which is something that is going to be revealed to them in S5, and something that they'll be able to understand, because they'll be like "OHHH, that's why everything seemed so weird about Eddie/why we thought he didn't die, a lot of that was meant to be referencing THIS edward, okay!"

But yeah! I'd absolutely say that the GA is aware of time travel references in ST. I actually think they're more open to the idea than a lot of byler tumblr is LMAO. I hope that helps explain my thoughts! And for me, at the end of the day, even if I couldn't see how it tied into the story, the evidence is there, and so, I feel like even if we don't fully know how that evidence fits into the story, the Duffers definitely do.

For example, imagine telling someone in S1 that all of the clock imagery in S1 was going to be tied to some guy named Henry Creel who shows up in S4! Imagine telling someone in S2 about Starcourt Mall and a secret russian base under Hawkins and how it was going to work narratively.