gristlegrinder

[gristlegrinder]

unfortunately i have been vibrating for like three days straight. i was briefly reinvigorated in my attempts to finally wrangle down character sheets for those two, but i’ve hit the cruel mental roadblock of needing to design somebody’s goddamn interlocks—

#okay interlocks themselves aren’t that bad (< GMed demon for four years) but i need to figure out the TRAJECTORY #anyways enjoy my 2am yelling. these two have existed in my mind palace for— oh god. like four years.

[gristlegrinder]

okay but like i have to share a little writeup for my favorite tabletop ocs ever. they’re not even for a campaign (even though i constantly think about making them npcs in something), i just really, really, really like them and their weird little situation.

meet orlando and kate, my DTD/MTC 2E crossover chronicle power couple. they are, basically, a stigmatic mummy and the demon witness that runs her cult, a postmodern theatre and arts collective operating mainly out of a cabaret club they’ve fixed up.

(transcript / full text under the cut)

Kate (or Katjakadja, although nobody calls her that anymore) is Deathless— thousands of years ago, in a nameless empire lost to the sands of time, she pledged eternal servitude to the Gods of the afterlife, and hasn’t been allowed to rest ever since. There is work to be done, after all, to usher in the next aeon of judgment. Like empires, she rises, falls, and rises again, whenever she is needed. She strips away parts of her former selves in every iteration and she puts in the endless work without question, torturing herself for art and commerce. The original Katjakadja is a fleck of sand lost in an hourglass, constantly slipping through her fingers and reinvented in every reincarnation.

When she killed her Sadikh (an immortal lover who flew too close to the sun while managing their affairs) in service to her eternal Judge, it shocked Kate out of blind faith— leaving her jaded to the entire arrangement. She knows that she’s stuck in her duties, and she doesn’t particularly want to be cast into the fires of Duat, but she’s looking for a way out whenever her Gods aren’t watching, and that’s a careful act to balance, even for a serpent like herself.

Orlando’s “God,” if you can even call It that, was much more material. Ae was created as an arm of the great Machine that has buried itself into the core of the Earth, the terrible foreign parasite that builds Itself into civilization and exists only to perpetuate Its own existence. You’ve probably met It without realizing, Its heartbeat resonating in the thrum of rush-hour traffic and corporate office white noise. It turns, and It turns, and It turns, in Its own kind of vapid infinity, with little regard for anything that cannot be regulated into nothingness.

Aer job in the Machine was data analytics— sending quality reports, reviewing infrastructure and process lines— until that wasn’t enough. Bored out of aer mind, Orlando broke away from the Machine to go play with the humans, to learn what their bodies can do, to learn what it was like to feel. And so ae became light untethered, learning how to take human souls and live in the hollow bodies they leave behind. Pressing aer luck as a rogue agent in danger of being hunted down and recycled, ae spends the next few decades looking for something on Earth better than the orderly system that ae rejected. It only makes sense to call yourself a Demon after all that.

They first meet in 1976, after a downward swing for the both of them. Kate has no memory of the last twenty years of her life, but her resources are gone and the guilt from whatever happened in Berlin still eats at her stomach. Orlando is washed up after a forgotten stint at being a mid-tier funk guitarist, having experienced all of the earthly pleasures that ae went looking for in the first place, but not being able to find fulfillment in any of it. They talk sex, politics, religion, escape routes. Kate wants the freedom that Orlando has managed, wants to know how to slip in between the cracks, how to challenge the cosmos; Orlando wants a real spiritual awakening, wants to experience something better than machinery.

This is the game plan: Orlando knows the boundaries of reality itself, and how to exist in the in-betweens. They create shadows where their old masters can’t find them; Kate covers Orlando’s mortal shell with centuries of documentation and a tight-knit circle of cultists, and Orlando teaches Kate the art of lying without twitching and building plausible deniability with the universe. Whenever Kate comes back from the cool bliss of oblivion, Orlando is waiting for her with an analyst’s collection of spreadsheets, diary logs, and financial records. She holds Orlando’s face between her hands, and ae bears witness to thousands of years of mortal history before kissing her in worship.

It’s a dangerous game, and they’re playing against loaded dice. But they’ve got a strange little love that goes beyond initiation rites and dotted lines on contracts, and nobody said they couldn’t help each other cheat.

#babylon #i always feel like i should tag my sims screenshots with ts4 but like. does this really count #if you’re curious. she’s a mesen-nebu/usheb and ae is an analyst/tempter #i am sooooo self indulgent all of the time. #chronicles of darkness #you are formally invited to babylon btw they do drag brunch on sundays and burlesque on thursdays.

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my teeth were perfectly designed to tear abd rend the soft white flesh of the gentle beast known as the mozzarella

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ritsu is the funniest fucking character in this show without even trying like. whats up w him

#mp100

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Always love how much folklore especially creature folklore emphasizes that there is a way for you to win. These are the steps to ensure the dead don't rise: take them out through a hole in the wall and give them iron shoes. Vampires cannot abide sunlight. If you hear a dog howl on a churchyard path turn around and get home as fast as you can. Iron and salt and the colour red. None of this doomed idea, the world is incomprehensible but if you're a bit clever you'll survive it just fine, there's always ways out.

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happy birthday to nagito komaeda

#danganronpa

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i like to design my general / ttrpg-focused ocs in the sims because it’s a little more customizable than a picrew and requires less consistent spoons than doing reference art. anyways. You Must Perceive Morgana, they’re a washed-up mermaid/swimmerskin changeling who now collects tokens and other arcane oddities.

unfortunately have not been thinking much about the guild wars (got back into tabletop and the sims)

#and maybe runs with a local werewolf pack. haven’t figured that one out yet #at the very least i think they’re pals with my sorcerer. because dedalus finch cannot have normal friends

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unfortunately have not been thinking much about the guild wars (got back into tabletop and the sims)

#we will resume regularly scheduled siyaposting probably after SAB ends #too busy blowing kisses at morgyn ember ya feel me #tragic though. i was almost finished with my character page with all my ocs

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all things considered i need to start posting more changeling propaganda on this blog, considering (waves in the direction of my username). but. yknow

#unfortunately i have no rps going on right now so there ain’t much for me to talk about #context: gristlegrinders are one of the player archetypes you can pick at character creation #they’re gross flesh-eating beasts. i think they’re neat

[gristlegrinder]

anyways i am once again thinking about changeling the lost. truly one of the best tabletop games. i will always, always be deeply in love with the narrative design space of arcadia as an explicit metaphor for emotional trauma, taking you when you’re lost and giving you a narrative. becoming that idea, and then taking that in your hands and reclaiming it. making your way out of that time and space— you’ve changed, you can’t go back to the way things were, your emotions are delicate and your memories fragmented, arcadia still wants you— but it’s not the end of your own story. it keeps going. the entire concept of changeling courts as queer networks of mutual aid, people who have themselves been pricked by the thorns and promise to protect you from the huntsmen that call for your bounty. turning and facing whatever shadows remain in the woods and finding strength in what you are, despite everything.

it’s just? it’s good. it’s so good.

#i’m making a swimmerskin because i have been DESPERATELY craving some mermaid horror lately #wow! tumblr user gristlegrinder likes changeling? what a fucking surprise #anyways i really want to do something with it but life has been complicated recently #so i haven’t really had time to actualize any GM ideas or vague rp concepts

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lost three hours of work in the sims because i didn’t save. i will now be going to sleep for ten thousand years

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god I fuckign love ocs. my characters. my friend's characters. the characters of mutuals ive never spoken to. the characters of artists ive followed and maybe spoken to a little more. the characters of complete strangers I see in passing and think "aw that's cool". if you have ten fans I am one if you have one fan it is me etc etc. I love you

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that screenshot game i keep seeing people doing is really speaking to me but i must’ve missed when everybody reblogged the original post because i have no idea what the asks are referencing and i’m definitely a couple days late

#i’ve wanted to send people prompts but i’ve been Going Through It and feel like i might’ve missed a window

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i’m rotating a potential new character around in my brain and i’m kind of mad at myself because like……… i don’t need three and a half commander timelines to balance and differentiate from one another

#and this guy would probably be a mesmer. because i’m predictable #i just. i want zoof to have a guy with her. like they could split being champion and commander #and i keep thinking about what that dynamic could be like!

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ladies who look like they could kill me make me go 😍🥵❤️‍🔥💫

#sly cooper #YEAAAAH YEAH YEAH YEAH #NEYLA!!!

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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

#i spend four weeks trying to get IOP figured out and none of them take my insurance #gamers i cannot spend $400/day for like five weeks #can you fuckers PLEASE cut a mentally unwell man some slack. please!!! #this is personal. sorry. the past two months have just been a bureaucratic nightmare!

[gristlegrinder]

sara mrad