Just had the sleep-deprived idea of combining my Cryptid Batfam Au with @phoenixcatch7 's Possessed Doll Au into a combo au, some distant timeline where the two combine and meld into one thing.
Honestly would be slightly body horror probably, maybe with Bruce starting with building wings and then it... escalates. There's a reason that people don't go down in the caves under Gotham, and Bruce is incredibly lucky that It welcomes him.
Perhaps welcomes him too much, what with it seeming to build him another body each time he gets injured, even if it's just bruising. Not to mention that another is forming when he takes Dick in, and then another when Barbara joins them.
There's something not quite the same the first time he wakes up in a body that is his but not, something organic but not. Testing on it is fine, small tests that is, anything larger and his head starts to pound and ring.
It's easier to just accept the shadows' gifts than question it.
Honestly I like to think the body is something between inorganic and organic, like veins of flesh and fur wrapped around bones and metal. Like a flesh puppet of sorts, starts all skeletal and mostly metal and wood but the veins of black and red start to grow over time as the whispers about the Bat spread.
Honestly I also like to think it's more animalistic than the original possessed doll au, the wood easily mistaken for things like chitin, especially with the segmentations.
Combine the chest cavity with the harness that the kids cling to, and you have a back cavity lol. The 'Spine' seemingly splitting open to hide things inside.
Bruce probably does have clothing for the body, but I wanted to figure out the general body first lol.
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I promised myself I wouldn't get mired in the weird moral chaos that is bg3's fandom, but I have a legitimate question: for a lot of fans, is this the first time playing with Choose Your Own Adventure stories?
The writing seems to be classic CYOA in the epilogues, at least with the evil post-game companions I've experienced. If you roleplay someone happy with your choices, the game generally reflects that those choices were satisfying in the exact way you'd expect. If you roleplay someone who regrets your choices or has doubts, it usually reflects that you should regret those choices. Either way, the "reader" is given a predictable response in order to fulfill their desired narrative.
Don't believe me? Go through the epilogue and try to play a character who both likes and hates every companion or where they ended up. Some changes are subtle while others are more dramatic. A few quick examples, all from a single save:
Playing a character who hates Halsin, though you romanced him, your conversation is short, civil only because Halsin is too mature to rise to your insults, and stilted. He's a distant companion that you've pushed away successfully.
Playing a character who loves Halsin and romanced him, the conversation between you is extraordinarily long and sweet, and you are written as dear to each other. It includes, potentially: sharing stories and teasing him about his more salacious ones, talking about his love of children (and them loving the bear), learning how he's settled into his new life, hearing about him finally finding happiness, being welcomed into his community, welcoming him to share in drinks, and even joyfully adopting an owlbear. This image is just the very beginning of it.
Playing a character who disapproves of Shar but encourages Shadowheart to follow Shar anyway, you get a zealot's lecture about how you're being naive, thinking that Shar's exploiting people, likely confirming your feeling that she's a lost-cause cultist now. The happiness in the conversation is one-sided (from Shadowheart).
Playing a character who is fine with Shar and encourages Shadowheart to follow Shar, you get a short, sincere thank you, and she immediately starts trying to bond with you. The tone of the conversation remains upbeat as she expresses how pleased she is with the church despite its difficulties and how she'd do everything again in a heartbeat.
Playing a character who doesn't like being an immortal consort, but ascended Astarion and agreed to it anyway, gives you an Anne Rice-like fight between bitter eternal lovers. You also get some petulant dragging of your friends.
Playing a character who loves being an immortal consort and ascended Astarion gets you the dark fantasy of all-powerful monsters in love, gleefully ruling and exploiting the world (along with your friends and probably each other) together.
These are all valid endings to the exact same story with very different implications for the future. It's easy to muddy the potential narratives if you try to hold all the unique, mutually exclusive dialog options together.
Remember, at the end of the day, this is written as a linear experience. Everyone's epilogue choices are self-contained in their own story, even if it's possible to reload and choose a different final page. Have fun fishing for unhappy endings if the drama gives the flavor you enjoy, or seek out happy endings if you want to feel fulfilled by your choices. Just know that not everyone will experience or want to experience the same ending for an otherwise identical set of choices in game. That's the cool part of getting to choose your own adventure.
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As satisfying as it would be to have Sonic movie 3 stay faithful to SA2 regarding the death of Maria, I genuinely don't see paramount having the guts to write her being killed by government agents. Even by agents from a fictional military like G.U.N.
If they do touch it on anything more solid than just vaguely implying it happened, you just know the SA2 comparisons will be hyped up as much as possible until the last second, then instead you get to watch a "new but still just as cool!" take on the event where actually, a token scapegoat villian was responsible for her death! All the G.U.N. agents will get to stay part of the goofy comedic relief cast to fullfill the studio's "misguided :( but still likable" military propaganda quota.
Or, have Maria survive and play it as an amazing new "fix" to a plot point that doesn't need fixed. (Recent news about the new ATLA series Sokka comes to mind, where an embarassing effort to play it safe causes them to miss the point of his arc. Entirely.) Maria surviving is a fun concept to play with, but also a nuance-deserving change I would absolutely NOT trust in the hands of paramount.
I'm staying excited, but trying to keep my expectations in check. I honestly hope to be proven wrong.
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Saw someone who followed me simping so hard for antipsychotic medication that they went as far as to say that questioning or doubting whether you want to be on them counts as a delusion, and so I blocked them lol
We support non-medicated schizophrenics here, Sir
Everybody gets to choose their own paths of treatment and recovery, just bc you have a psychotic disorder instead of depression or anxiety doesn't mean you have less autonomy or choice in how you want to manage your symptoms. We can make our own medical decisions, idc if everyone in the world has been preprogrammed to think a schizophrenic person off their meds is the worst thing in the world and they must not be thinking reasonably - we are capable of making our own medical decisions and yes we do have rational concerns and valid justifications.
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