#narrative play
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Worlds Beyond Number is wild because Brennan Lee Mulligan uses every ounce of his philosophic and empathetic learnings to create the most heartrending situations and scenes
Then, like an emotional devastation katamari, this fucker picks up THREE whole ass other people like him. Lou Wilson, who will make you cry while you’re in the middle of laughing. Aabria Iyengar, who is a fucking genius and dives full ass into her character’s flaws because your heart will die of a thousand cuts when it all hits. And Erika Ishii. At first blush, a bit of a clown, albeit a sultry one when they want to be. More than happy to play the fool. Lets you underestimate them, so you let them get close, and when you realize how deep you’re in it’s too late
So these FOUR chucklefucks, these four geniuses of humor and tragedy, hire a fucking Maestro of Sound Design in Taylor Moore to produce their home game. And everything is tighter. And even more immersive. And heartwrenching and hilarious and cozy and creepy.
Anyway, this team of FIVE people decide that they’re going to make one of the best podcasts currently airing and it’s only nine episodes in.
#worlds beyond number#brennan lee mulligan#erika ishii#aabria iyengar#lou wilson#taylor moore#wbn#wbn pod#wbn: www#podcast#actual play#narrative play#how many times will you fuckers break my heart while I cheer you for it#seriously it is so good and you should be listening#i relate the most to Ame but Suvi my beloved you can do no wrong even when you do very wrong
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VOIDTACK: Chapter 4!
Hey friends! Chapter 4 of my Science Fiction, TTRPG Narrative Play podcast just went live! In the off chance you are interested in the BEST EPISODE we've produced yet, action packed and stuffed with sound effects.
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haven't seen this on here yet so:
in case you don't want to slog through the shitscape that is the bird/letter website, take a peek beneath the cut (shamelessly copied from the something awful forums dungeon meshi thread)
- Her first memory of video games was watching her father playing Wizardry on Famicom, also Dragon Quest, Ultima, and Fire Emblem among others.
- She was a difficult child so her parents didn't let her play. Wizardry is a boring game to watch, but the monster illustrations on the walkthrough evoked her imagination and made her keep watching.
- She only started becoming a serious gamer after the serialization of Dungeon Meshi was locked, for research purposes. Before that, she read fantasy novels such as The Neverending Story (Michael Ende) and The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien).
- The international title for Dungeon Meshi: Delicious in Dungeons was decided by her editor.
- D&D popped up a lot when she researched the history of video games, so she read the rule books, replay novels, and games inspired by D&D.
- One of the first games she studied was the Legend of Grimrock (game's 80% off on Steam atm). Originally, she wanted Dungeon Master (FTL Games) which was famous for "RPG with meals" but hunting down the game and machine was too much.
- She didn't like games other than turn-based RPGs at first, but she decided to stop being picky and play anything that piqued her interest.
- She played Zelda: BotW and TotK on a borrowed Switch from her editor due to the console's scarcity at the time.
- She enjoyed Red Dead Redemption 2 and God of War for their stories. RDR2's incredible attention to detail had Kui engrossed so much that she asked her editor and other mangaka to play it so she could discuss it with them.
- Kui praised The Witcher 3 localization as something only possible with full support from the developer. Cyberpunk 2077 is one of her all-time favorites.
- Papers, Please was her first taste of indie games.
- Disco Elysium is the perfect game for her due to the lack of fighting, intriguing story, charming character interaction, and top-down perspective. She tried playing it in English at first due to an unlikely chance for JP loc, but it was out of her ability. Thus she is forever grateful to Spike Chunsoft for localizing it.
- Kui played Baldur's Gate 3 from the time it was in Early Access. Again, she's grateful for Spike Chunsoft's JP loc. She hoped BG3's success would bring the possibility of JP loc for other titles too, such as Pathfinder: wotr
- She likes games with top-down perspective because they have narration text for monologues and scenery description. Even if the graphic is lacking, the texts show the atmosphere and each character's behavior and psyche. Also, characters that react to your choices.
- She praised Unpacking and House Flipper for being able to tell what kind of person lives there only through their belongings, and that there's no right or wrong for the placements; she would make the best arrangement and then enjoy her hard work while sipping tea.
- The biggest inspiration for Dungeon Meshi was the Cosmic Forge pen from Wizardry VI. With improved graphics from its predecessor, now it could show broken farming tools in the background and many more details that made exploration so much fun.
- At the time of the interview (Dec '23) she still hadn't watched DunMeshi anime, but she attended the recording sessions. She's embarrassed that the dialog she wrote now acted passionately by professionals. Marcille's screaming was wonderful but also made her want to flee.
- Kui was anxious about the CP2077 anime adaptation, but she was relieved it was the Night City she knows and loves.
- Other than minor adjustments, she left it to TRIGGER as to how to adapt
- She's happy that Mitsuda Yasunori was chosen as the anime composer, as she used to play Chrono Cross and rewatched the opening many times.
- Her anticipated games in 2024 are Cloudpunk, Nivalis, and Avowed.
- DunMeshi would be hard to adapt into a game because in the first place, what Kui depicted in the manga are parts that are omitted in games for the sake of brevity.
- If DunMeshi game was Wizardry-like, it'd be told through Laios' perspective and eating was essential not to die
#dungeon meshi#she only started playing video games after dunmeshi got picked up???? damn#that's dedication to the craft#i would *so* play a dunmeshi video game...#likes top-down perspective and strong narratives and character reactivity... she's just like me fr
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“They finally made this theme more blatant-" Why does it need to be blatant. What's wrong with subtlety? Concepts can be underused but subtlety is not neglect.
Blaring all your concepts and themes is not good writing. It's so disruptive to a story's flow when the characters look off the screen to be like "See? This is the concept. The idea. The theme."
If you can feel the hand of the author becoming too heavy that's bad.
For example: I see people saying Azula's abuse in ATLA is more blatant in the live action and it's good because "it's being discussed more". It already was discussed at length. The show made it clear she was a victim at every turn, every behavior, every reaction, it came from a place of trauma. It was made clear that she was scared of ending up like Zuko because Zuko was an example of what would happen to her if she failed. When she says she's better than Zuko it wasn't just because she was raised to think hersef superior to him but because Zuko failed and failures get mutilated and exiled, failures are abandoned. In that final Agni Kai the music is morose and somber because this isnt some epic battle its a fucking tragedy, the burning out of "Ozai's brightest light" and Azula finally succumbing to her terror and trauma she was repressing now that her worst fears are realized. How can you see a fourteen year old girl chained to a sewer grate wailing and writhing and breathing fire desperately as unsympathetic? Even Katara and Zuko are horrified as to what has become of her.
The writers weren't looking us in the eye and saying "See? She's a victim too" when they wrote this, they weaved it in. They weaved it into her obsesison with symmetry, her extreme perfectionism, the way she talks about Ozai, the ways she calls herself a monster, her isolation from those with healthy home lives, all the ways she held herself together and ultimately all the cracks and seams that she shattered down when she fell apart. It did not need to be blatant to be clear.
#Finis Analyzes#Nihil Dreams#ATLA#avatar the last airbender#Azula#I’m so fucking sick of people saying stuff like this#Please learn media literacy I am begging you#The narrative is not going to hold your hand and play tour guide and point out everything#Stop acting like it has to#You can analyze it yourself I promise
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Wyrm on a string
#it was supposed to be a tiny doodle but I just kept on yo-ing#I like her colors a lot hehhehehe#I like how they made her dragon design different from the golden trio. like she has a different shaped snout antlers and smaller ears#like I know the devs want us to know hey this is what zelda would look like as a dragon but following the zonai were descendants of gods/#dragons and zelda is a descendent of the zonai it just feels narratively pleasing to me lol#raurus hair looks similar to the dragons manes with the same undertones and everything. and he has horns where dragon horns would be#makes me wonder if the golden goddesses were incarnated as zonai this time around and they turned into dragons. that would be interesting#I don’t really know if that would make sense bc I’ve never played ss so j don’t have much background on the golden goddesses#totk#tears of the kingdom#totk spoilers#tears of the kindom spoilers#totk zelda#totk light dragon#my art#myart#doodles#loz#loz zelda
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sweet child, you didn't even stand a chance
#oh to be doomed by the narrative#you have taken the underground into your loving arms#and instead if bringing Justice to the Missing- you decided to bring it to the Trapped and Suffering#cole's art#undertale#undertale yellow#undertale yellow spoilers#undertale yellow true ending spoilers#i'm so glad i played this instead of watching someone else do it- please play it guys it'll change your life 😭#uty clover#uty spoilers#uty#ut yellow#oh yeah- also- merry christmas y'all#enjoy this angst ;3
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continuing that "maya tries to contact claire" post, i present you the post-Spirit of Justice follow-up
#post that caters to ME specifically#let me first tag#ghost trick spoilers#lost future spoilers#now that that's out of the way. you know who's on that suitcase ;)#also claire is fucked up by time travel shenanigans so it's possible let's just say#also ghost powers grow and change with time sooooo. let's play with canon#layton “i have a dead girlfriend” and yomiel “i had a dead girlfriend” bisexuals#also yes the whole gang traveled to london they're just strolling around#maya had unfinished business and now that she's more powerful she's BACK#this would take place 7-or-so years after lost future/plvspw so layton is in his mid-forties here. i had to look it so correct me if im not#also yes this is a crossover AU i have rotating in my mind i love the source material and layton's and claire whole thing no shade to that#powerful narrative that made me cry#but with aa and gt magic fuckery we have the technology#also about the jail bit. that's a fic i am writing (one sentence every month)#ghost trick#professor layton#ace attorney#my art#ms paint#GOD. that wall of text is surely something
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the bride walked down the aisle to where the groom stood, and there they exchanged their vows in front of the altar...
#what do you mean this isn't how it goes? The flower girls are there to throw flower petals and wedding bouquets ready on their hands too...#just twt having collective breakdowns over them as usual#it's interesting that both played the role of the bride and the groom at the same time.#only they can pull it off I swear#trigun#trigun maximum#vash the stampede#nicholas d wolfwood#trigun maximum spoilers#vashwood#ish?#actually not really it's just the narrative that plays out like that#myuminjiart#just wanna point out my art a few things: the wine as bouquet. vash holding a shot glass also as bouquet.#vash trying to smile even if he says it's impossible. he tried.#the confetti thrown by the orphanage children...as if they're flower girl throwing flower petals for them....
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Wyll calling his lover his 'star'. Astarion's spawn ending being him adventuring and performing heroics of his own choice. Wyll naming his adopted daughter Lily. The flower Astarion's lover puts on his grave being a lily. Monster hunter turned monster and monster turned hunter. Can nobody hear me
#Clawing at the walls who was in the writer's room making all these decisions#Technically every relationship both exists and doesn't exist simultaneously (schrodinger's relationships) depending on how you play#But the narrative significance of wyllstarion being canon will always drive me crazy#Don't even get me started on shadowzel too my GOODNESS#wyllstarion#bloodpact#Wyll Ravengard#astarion ancunin#Astarion#Bg3 Wyll#bg3 astarion#Bg3#baldurs gate 3#baldur's gate 3
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Btw if you’re calling the Houthi Movement “Yemen” you are lying to suit your political agenda. That’s really not even the most relevant thing here but the Houthis are not the legitimate government of Yemen, they are a rebel militia. And that’s without getting into the morality of stanning the people that forced the last Jews out of Yemen and regularly force women into sex slavery.
#am I playing semantics here? a little but#I immediately get turned off by any attempt to legitimize the Houthis to make it seem like the state of Yemen itself is doing these things#because they really want a narrative where it isn’t a terrorist group so they as per usually ignore the reality
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Still emotional about Fy'ra Rai and Opal, actually. Thought dump time bc i. dont have the energy to cut this down effectively.
Because at that point in the episode, Opal is doomed. Not in the fun little "oh things are getting worse ;)" kind of way we'd been experiencing leading up to the fight, or even IN the fight. At that point in the fight, Cyrus is dead. Dorian and Dariax have their minds twisted, bodies clambering away from the fight. Morrighan has felt, firsthand, just how far gone Opal is, holes in her mind, her friend broken. The heartbreaking sentence of. "You can always come back." understands that she is gone already. She's lost already. Opal has forgotten Ted. Opal has forgotten herself.
So at that point in the fight, we know Opal is doomed. Us as the audience, the cast, the characters. Aabria is running through each of the other crownkeepers and it is more of a goodbye than a round of combat. Defying the Spider Queen invites death, with zero hesitation- Cyrus's body as physical evidence of that. The terms were very clearly set: You leave Opal, you let her be lost. Or you die. (Leaving Opal anyway).
and Fy'ra Rai then. Grasps the crown, understands intimately that she can break it off and it will kill Opal. (I will free you, if you want me to. We would lose you but you would not be taken). And asks, what do you want me to do. What do you want.
and Opal says, I want you to leave. (I want you to live.) and Fy'ra Rai functionally says. No. Sorry. That's not one of the options.
If you wanted to go. I will do that (your blood on my hands). If you want me to stay, I will. But I'm not going to leave you.
There was the point where Fy'ra Rai broke into the communication and I felt my insides sink because. Look. Lets be real, Aabria had already demonstrated the stakes here. The gesture would not be rewarded for the gesture alone. The Spider Queen's terms were: You leave Opal. Or you die.
And Fy'ra Rai said: no.
I don't think I'm overstepping to assume that if Fy'ra Rai had failed the intimidation check, she would have died. This entire thing hits me so hard because I think Anjali knew that too. I think Fy'ra Rai knew that too. Yes, Fy'ra Rai convinced a Betrayer God to negotiate. She carved a third option out of a non-negotiable situation. She knew what would happen if she failed and did it anyway, with no fear, no regret, no waver in her resolve. She had lost enough sisters. She wasn't going to lose anymore, no matter the personal cost. That's part of why it succeeded, I'm sure, but.
Just. Fuck me. The amount of resolve. The amount of love. The amount of conviction. "I am. A protector." You know your friend- your sister- is doomed. So no more negotiating away from that. You step to her side and you grasp her hand and say- doom me with her.
And in some, sideways way, this saves you both, at least for a little while.
Because this story is a tragedy. This ending is a sad one. We know this already. But think about- Opal, under Lolth's bidding, alone in the dark. Think about Fy'ra Rai, alive, intimately aware that she had failed to protect yet another sister.
And think about what we got, instead: the two of them, in deep darkness, danger encroaching- holding hands. Someone they love at their side. A champion. And her champion.
This is still a sad story. But it's not the same one. Fy'ra Rai stared down a Betrayer God and made her change her mind. She stared down a Betrayer God, and her love and conviction changed the nature of the story. It shouldn't have been able to. But she did.
Fy'ra Rai chose to doom 2 people instead of one, and the sheer strength of her love and will managed to save them both, at least for a little while. Isn't it funny how that works? Isn't it devastating? Isn't it. fucking incredible?
#critical role#cr spoilers#c3e93#opal#EVERYONE CLAP FOR AABRIA AND ANJALI AND AIMEE BC I GO MORE FERAL THE LONGER I THINK ABOUT IT#character meta#fy'ra rai#fy'ra rai meta#opal meta#spar speaks#i had to get this out bc i cant Stop Thinking About it.... god..... she really Did That...#its not just about refusing to leave its understanding the consequence and facing it so unflinchingly that the narrative flinches first#UAHHHGGHH.#anjali bhimani do you know how much i respect you for this move. aabria iyengar do you know how much i respect you for setting up the stake#so clearly that this success(?) Hit the way it did. Aimee carrero do you know how much i respect you for how truly and devastatingly#you played opal while keeping the core of her character so poignant.#what the fucmkc. anyway im fine .#anyway this is why a lot of my devastated wailing is going to be reserved for dariax. and dorian. and cyrus.#my meta#FORGOT. I HAD THAT TAG. gotta go back and retag
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Shakespeare: I will create two teenage characters who are explicitly proto-postmodern examinations of the nature of character and fate within fictional narrative. I am their creator and - like their parents within the narrative - I exercise complete control over their fates, no matter how much they struggle against it. They are born like Athena from my mind and doomed to die by my pen, by my complicity in the narrative negligence of them, by my own actions and wishes-
Actor: cool, what's their names?
Shakespeare, father of twins named Judith and Hamnet: uhh…. Juliet and Hamlet.
#obsessed with the Juliet/Hamlet parallels#And how they’re victims of narrative#romeo and juliet#hamlet#shakespeare#willy shakes#these plays are not Shakespeare’s therapy sessions nosiree#dealing with the grief of a child’s death by writing stories where teenagers die because of their parents’ lack of care…. heartbreaking ngl.#the guilt and anguish and horror is just leaking out of the page
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every ship is simultaneously real and non-real depending on whether it fits my narrative at any given moment. schrodingers ship. schipdinger
#i think she should be allowed to like women#and the narrative presented by this could be really interesting if played right#two girlfriends and they're mortal enemies but they dont kill eachother for me#i probably mega flubbed the angles and proportions cause i hate the worker hats and accidentally made liz too short but whatever#i was gonna draw something else but im lazy. maybe later#lizzys textboxes include typos and shortenings and whatever but it doesnt affect her actual speak#murder drones#art#murder drones lizzy#murder drones v#serial designation v#murder drones doll#i dont know any of the ship names you guys can figure it out
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hopeless time loop. the way out isn’t to save everyone. the way out isn’t to save even one person. the way out isn’t to change anything. the way out is accepting how it happened the first time is how it always will be. that’s how you acted, that’s how they acted, that’s how you would have acted every time if you weren’t given the curse of hindsight. the way out is accepting you can’t fix the past; you can only forgive yourself for it.
#there's this game i love called little hope that plays with these ideas (though not with a time loop)#i do love time loops narratives that explore how a person is confronted with their life and their choices#when forced to live the same day over and over again#and i LOVE time loops that try to reverse mistakes made and lives lost#but to see a character put themselves through loops upon loops upon loops#trying to rectify past mistakes (especially in the case where people died) only to be confronted with the reality it isn't working#and even in a loop where they save everyone the loop just resets#because the universe is essentially saying 'no that isn't how it happened and you know that's not how it happened'#it compels me!#i feel similarly about time travel where time 'fights back'#like this idea that there is a central timeline that time does not like being diverted from#so it will try to course correct itself#you save lincoln from an assassination only for him to die in a train crash#it's a cool way to confront the idea of fate#anyway all tragedies are hopeless time loops thank you for coming to my ted talk#a shout into the void#1k
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Trevor Hills from American Arcadia
#trevor hills#american arcadia#trevor american arcadia#fan art#american arcadia fanart#I KNOW IM PLAYING INTO THE META NARRATIVE#I KNOW AT THE END THE AUDIENCE IS THE VILLAIN#not vivian or javert#but they are so neat 😔
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