#its SO an unnamed npc shit

[pseudowar-archived]

ok activision. who the fuck is this stop playin with me

#mun » ooc #its SO an unnamed npc shit #and not HIM and im going to be furious for years

[ns-imagines]

Marine Corps Birthday Ball

RAAHHH THE BEST DAY OF THE YEAR JUST PASSED. NOVEMEBER 10TH THE MARINE CORPS BIRTHDAY!!

All U.S. Marines in COD x USMC Birthday Ball

| Word Count: Not sure its a lot w/ videos| SFW

A/N: *Rips someone into two pieces with my bare hands* Shit makes me so happy that im a U.S. Marine. RAH. Keegan please be my date to the ball &lt;3 Sgt Russ and Sgt ****** <3

Context: Every year throughout the month of November we have our Marine Corps Birthday Ball. There's a ceremony and fancy dinner and of course a lot of alcohol and tabaco. Enlisted wear our Marine Corps Blues uniform and get to show off all our fancy awards and medals. The officers wear their sick uniform as well. Guests wear a formal suit or dress!! We get drunk, have cake, and dance. Its fun and one of the many traditions we have in this service. This year it was the 248th Birthday!! Let me give you the run down for todays event <3

Military Lingo Key at the end

1845 - Venue doors open

1900 - Cocktail Hour

2000 - Cocktail Hour ends all bars are closed

2005 - 5 Minute warning for the ceremony

2010 - Ceremony begins

2100 - Ceremony ends

2110 - Dinner service starts and Bars reopen

2200 - Dance floor opens / DJ starts

0130 - Venue doors close

Okay now that we have the schedule down. Lets list all the Marines in COD. Were gonna pretend everyone's alive and in the same unit for tonight. Whos going to be your date for tonight? Skip past the photo when you're ready.

All unnamed Marines <3 (damn npcs)

-MARSOC Marines, 2nd MarDiv

1st FRP (MW1) Source for info below click here and here (<- Has character pictures as well for some)

-Lt Vasquez, Cpt Pelayo, Sgt Paul Jackson, SSgt Griggs, Pvt Massey, Pvt West, Pvt Royzewicz, LCpl Lopez, and LCpl Gaines

DRT Stalker Units With Air Squadrons (All games) Information Source click here

Cpl Baker, Sgt Baker, Capt Weston, Cpt Keating, and Lt Volker

GHOSTS Platoon prior Force Recon Platoon (COD GHOSTS) Information Source click here

Sgt Keegan Russ, Sgt Alex Johnson, and Cpt Gabe Rorke

Lemme know if I forgot anyone!!

Okay, you have your date or friend group that you're going with. You as the guest are in your formal attire. Lets get this party started! (Every year and in every venue its the same setup, same ceremony, and same food)

1845-1900

You show up to the venue with your date. The ball room is set. There are about a dozen round tables draped with a beautiful white table cloth. There is a round red and gold table cloth in the center of the table. On it sits two pitchers one with water and the other with iced sweet tea. In front of each seat is a set of silverware for each course, a wine glass, a water/tea glass, a pamphlet with tonight's events, and a neatly folded napkin. Each section is sat with each other. A chair left empty next to your Marine for you of course.

Usually the Commanding Officer or Executive Officer will put money down for everyone to get one free drink. The venue offers two bars. Both the lines are a bit long but you can just chat while you wait. There plenty of people to be introduced too and everyone is saying "Happy Birthday" to each other. If you're stationed in an allied country like Japan there are guests from their military as well.

The bar has a wide variety. Wine, shots, mixed drinks, and juice if you arent drinking. They even sell cigars. You and your date get your drinks and socialize. You get to meet their peers and squad members. This is also the time to take pictures! You walk towards the entrance of the venue with your date. There is always a professional Photographer waiting. The American flag and Marine Corps flag are proudly displayed in front of a royal red backdrop. The backdrop has accents of gold.

The photographer asks if you want their pictures or just on your phone. You both pose and smile. The pictures came out amazing. Your Marine will take some photos with their shop and then you'll head back into the venue. Another drink?

2005

Man that hour went by fast! The five minute warning has just been called. You and your Marine go to your seats and wait for the ceremony to begin.

2010

The ceremony starts. Everyone is seated and quiet. There's always one rushing back to their seat from the bathroom. (You can watch a full ceremony from last year here but im going to summarize it. Im speaking from my experience overseas but the video is stateside Marine Corps)

The band does their introduction segment commencing the start of the ceremony. The march forward turn and march back. Next comes the sword detail. There are 4 pairs that walk through. There are both Enlisted Marines and Officers in the sword detail. They march in pairs to their position and once are all in place the Commanding Officer, Sergeant Major, and XO march past the sword detail to the front of the stage. Everyone stands when they walk by to show respect. Next comes the color guard with the American Flag and Marine Corps flag and two rifles march onto stage. Everyone stays standing to honor the colors are they pass. The National Anthem is played followed by Anchors Away and then the Marine Corps Hymn. Which every Marine sings!!

The cake is then marched onto stage while the band plays. A traditional speech is made. Then the CO cuts the cake with the NCO sword giving a slice to the guest speaker. The another slice to the oldest Marine. The oldest Marine takes a fork full and passes it to the youngest Marine for a fork full. This symbolizes the passing of traditions!

After that the color guard marches off stage followed by the cake detail and oldest and youngest Marine. The CO, XO, and SgtMaj exit the stage. Then the sword detail. The guest speaker will then give their speech and then the birthday message will play. I have it linked below. It was fire this year!!

2110

The ceremony ends and the bars open. Half the Marines there rush to the bathroom and the other half to the bar. The venue staff start to bring out a shrimp cocktail appetizer. After 15 minutes they bring out a salad. Then after about another 15 minutes they bring out the main course. There are four options chicken, steak, fish, and vegetarian.

2200 - 0130

The dance floor opens. You are free to leave at this time if you want. The venue service starts clearing off the tables and the DJ starts playing music. Marines go outside to smoke cigars others hit the bar for the 4-5th time. The dance floor gets crazy. The CO will even bust some moves on the dance floor. Medals come off so no one looses them (Plus they are so freaking expensive) and everyone has fun till the venue closes.

I hope you enjoyed your ball <3

Happy Birthday Marines!! Semper Fi

Military Lingo Key:

Section - who you work with basically

Sword detail - you can read about that tradition here

cake detail - you can read all about it here

#call of duty #call of duty x reader #keegan russ #keegan russ x reader #cod x marines #just a random post for fun!!

[gammaliminal]

Who are we? What are we?

we are gammaliminal, or liminal creatives. we are an account run by two entities, with a shared interest in obscure & mainstream source games and source itself, theory-crafting fan work & concepts as a love-letter of sorts to the work that inspires us, and are indie enthusiasts.

our two members are close. this statement will not be elaborated on.

ΔΘ | she/it - a brief introduction.

i am ΔΘ. i am a therian, neurodivergent and disabled queer game enthusiast with interests in old competitive titles such as classic tetris & melee, casual titles like minecraft & animal crossing, and source titles, including team fortress 2, counter-strike, half life (the source versions), fistful of frags and others. For miscellaneous game interests, i enjoy games such as combat master, celeste, ultrakill, vrchat and any game produced by stress level zero.

i created this blog for me and Ξλ to have a shared space to post about our ideas, and also for us to just casually lurk through tumblr. partially due to account restrictions on post viewing.

notes

- i did not come up with the idea of associating ΔΘ with an indicator of being therian. I am simply using that tag as a self-indicator here due to how significant being therian is to me.

- contrary to Ξλ's notes, it did not bother me for this page. it just kept lightly asking for a lil while because i kept forgetting :3c

- i may accidentally ignore questions, responses or anything of the sort. i forget to respond to those things a lot due to recurring memory problems o-o

Ξλ | it/its - a brief introduction².

i am Ξλ! a self-described "mad artist" who's heavily neurodivergent and very queer with a from-birth enthusiasm with games. examples of favorites include anything source engine related*, rivals of aether, darkwood, most frictional games stuff, deep rock galactic, receiver 1 and receiver 2, world of horror, ftl and into the breach, gloomwood, and alien: isolation.

if you don't know some or any of those, then yeah that's expected >:3c

i bothered ΔΘ for us having a shared space to post and share our weiirrrddd ideas. also, to let us be able to browse tumblr without being accosted, by tumblr.

notes

- Ξλ is a tag i came up with by myself, i have no idea if it means anything beyond as my tag.

- *does not include the cautionary tale of Hunt Down the Freeman.

Current Projects

- Neon Troupe

- heavily inspired by OW and TF2, basically ripping off the feel of playing TF2 since no game has done it before, also will be built in source - we are heavily underqualified - project intro

- Project Theta

- potentially a half-life fangame? currently ironing out things like the campaign, different NPC's and weapons. - meant to be more so a scrappy survival-horror upward battle

- Unnamed TF2C Projects

- team fortress 2 classic mods that add various bits of content! including cut content that will be revived, our own regular custom content ideas, and absolutely outrageous, silly shit.

- Project Strangelove

- inspired by the tone of tf2, this is a spoof on spy thrillers set in an alternate 60s where you are assembling a conspiracy! also may be known later as How to Stop Worrying.

- Project Liminality (finally something relating to liminal spaces /lh)

- a 90s corporate cosmic horror roguelike job survival sim inspired by amnesia: the bunker and alien: isolation.

- Project Spite

- a strategy-horror game based around being a ragtag group of survivors, surviving a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-style zone of magical shit (TM). - main theme is surviving with your comrades no matter what, subsisting on spite alone if nothing else.

- A Catastrophe, In Hindsight

- a retrofuturistic coop class-based game about surviving the workday hopefully unscathed - Has a social-deduction-style gamemode layered on top of it with most traitors still wanting to get through the day - project intro

#introduction #blog intro #introducing us #project #games #source engine #team fortress 2 #tf2 #hl2 #half life 2 #neurodivergent #queer #duo #liminal #gaming #casual gameplay

[transjarlaxle]

ok so. kaine has obviously existed longer than bg3 and gale have, so with that in mind i have two questions

first of all, who was kaine before bg3 and gale? did kaine have a different partner? did kaine as a character change at all when you put him in bg3? is bg3 canon now?

and secondly, what made kaine x gale make sense? what made it happen? what made it grow to this immense size?

one of these days i could probably sit down and share all of kaine's history + lore but that would require my brain to work in some organized way so likely it won't happen</3 but this i can do

[deep inhale]

the first thing to know about kaine is that they were born entirely of whatever the fuck happened to my brain the first time i watched the music video for move by taemin. they were an idea way before this, but literally within 24 hours of this album drop they became a fully realized creation.

in their very earliest iteration, kaine was the only child to a minor noble family in an unnamed nation somewhere in faerun, and they were born very sick and as such grew up intensely sheltered. prior to their first campaign (hoard of the dragon queen lmao) they ran away from home in an attempt to prove to themself that they were strong enough to... well, to live.

eventually, they became the central part of an original setting, which i then created a homebrew dnd campaign centered around. the first time i ran a game in their setting circa 2018 they did have a bit of a fling with another npc, but it was more or less a tactic to tie their two parts of the story together. that game fell apart and when i began it again, rewritten (more than a year and a half ago!) that npc was no longer a part of it. they're still the main driving force behind the campaign - it was their prophecy that brought the party together, and they're using the party as their ticket to the outside world.

kaine didn't necessarily change much when they were stuck in bg3. i changed their lore a little bit, of course - the crux of my homebrew setting (osoa) is that it's a small place inside what is essentially a demiplane snowglobe, and what the people there perceive as the "spiritual plane" is the layer of the cosmos that separates them from faerun. in that version of events, kaine learns the truth through an arcane connection across the planes with another character (we don't have to get into his crazy ass rn) and kaine's efforts (along with the efforts of a cult of fanatics) end up shattering the glass and reconnecting their demiplane with faerun.

for bg3, all i did was push that story up, and made kaine more passive in it - osoa was reconnected with faerun when they were young, partially as a result of the ritual that imprisoned their magic, and by the time they grew up, it was old news.

so no, bg3 isn't their "canon" - although it's not any less canon than their original story, i think. there's the kaine that exists in their og story, the kaine that exists in my dnd campaign, and the kaine that exists in bg3 - all loosely related but equal in the end. i use them for basically anything i get the excuse to, anyway.

now. kainegale. [grabs you]

i hadn't actually intended to romance gale when i started playing bg3! i didn't play early access and my first campaign was a different character altogether, who i abandoned about 12 hours in because i fucked up a bunch of shit and also because gale had grabbed me by the dick.

i made kaine for gale early on because i saw him as a good foil for them. kaine is a sorcerer, but they spent their whole life studying magic theory. they weren't allowed to use their magic to their full potential because of its volatility and the nature of its imprisonment, so they were made to study everything they could in an attempt to ensure their safety. this, of course, built up resentment for magical theory and school and lessons and whatnot. gale, of course, is a wizard, and loves to read, but more importantly he loves to teach.

it is vital to understand this in the context of their relationship - gale changes everything kaine thinks they know about what magic is. not only is he a practitioner of a different type of magic altogether, but when he speaks, kaine wants to listen. they can hear the value in it. he makes it matter to them. and if there's more than a little bit of a professor/student complex in there, well. that's just the effect a little bit of positive reinforcement has on a motherfucker innit

and the more i got to know gale, the more i really felt that he and kaine were made for each other dkjsdfkjksd that sounds so corny but it's true.... there's just so much about them that i didn't do intentionally that makes me absolutely insane.

the symbolism. his name is gale for fuck's sake - the storm imagery is built in to his character. kaine is a blue draconic sorcerer - they're lightning, they're thunder, they're a raging windstorm.

as if this wasn't enough, they really are two sides of the same coin. they've both been dehumanized without realizing it, in totally opposite ways. gale by his relationship with mystra - she built him into something she could use, she made him think he was nothing without her, and then ripped everything away from him when he acted of his own will, effectively proving it. when we meet him, he thinks he's nothing. even in act three, at the carnival - "gale thinks that he, and the world, would be better off if he were dead."

compare this to kaine. they've grown up being told over and over that they are the strongest mage their bloodline has produced in generations, that they are the scion of house silva that is going to lead valais into a new era of prosperity, that they deserve all this and more - but they're not allowed to feel it. they're not allowed to leave the palace, they haven't been named or coronated to their people, their existence has been all but kept secret outside of their country, and they're not allowed to use their power. they've been magically shackled for as long as they can remember. their power is nothing but a tool, and it's not a tool that's at their disposal.

kaine teaches gale how to choose himself. gale teaches kaine how to be themself.

and their personalities, too. idk. i have these Thoughts and Theories about gale's time as mystra's chosen, and how he essentially has to adjust to being mortal again, and how kaine is all new to the world and experiencing everything for the first time, and just. im fucking holding them so tightly in my hands

of course all of this just exacerbates the most harmful parts of themselves, and everything gets worse before it gets better, but they are so. they just get each other. idk. it was like i didn't even try - they just became this thing that i am merely a conduit for. my muse, as it were

thank you so much for asking<33 there's so much more i could say about all of this i'm sure. i'm just so crazy about them both

#ask #this is so long..........dskjfddfk #kaine silva #my brain is a tangled mess. i love them. im going insane. #oh #otp: souls of steel #and actually ill maintag this. fuck you #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios

[thetruemxpink]

Okay so I'm playing Fallout NV for the first time and I never realized just how fucking terrifying this game is. Like what the fuck, no one ever told me this. Worst part is is its in multiple different ways of terrifying. Terrifying as in "Holy shit I'm going to die", "Holy shit that thing won't die", and "Holy shit thank God I didn't choose a harder difficulty or else I'd die".

I played Fallout 3 and 4. 3 had really tough fights that just needed me to be smarter about fighting them, or just have a lot of bullets. 4 was just a power fantasy, didn't need to spend a lot of time thinking during fights, even legendaries weren't all that difficult. New Vegas? Nah, man, that's a completely different story.

You meet a baby death claw and the fifty shotgun shells thrown into its face don't even scratch it. You go into a "Kill these ghouls for me" quest, your 10m pistol has a good hundred rounds in it and you're feeling pretty confident. Next thing you know, you're down to single digits in ammo, the ghouls you hear could be right next to you or across the building, the atmosphere is terrifying, your head, right arm, and both of your legs are crippled, Nightkin are hunting you down, you're completely lost, and you maxed out your gun perk which sucks because the only ammo you're finding is for LASER GUNS. Then the fucking Legendary Caeser's Assassins that come to kick your ass every other hour that you have to spend all of your resources killing.

I'm stuck having to fight battles that happen randomly across the wasteland, leaving me and my potential allies in it pretty bruised, I have to rely on my allies a lot during tough fights, plan out battles, and manage my resources. I can't just keep all my caps, I have to actually buy ammo and food and medical equipment because the irradiated wasteland sure didn't preserve a lot of that, and I can't carry a lot of it because I'm not a strength build. Named NPCs die constantly, unnamed NPCs are kicking my ass, and I have to walk so much.

Worst part is, I'm enjoying every second of it. This is substantially better than Fallout 4. The quests are fun, the characters are lively, the factions are really cool, the world building is amazing, and I genuinely want to keep playing all the time. The world just feels... alive. I am following my own story but countless others are happening throughout it. I haven't felt this strongly about a game since 2010s Minecraft and Activisionless Blizzard. I really do think I'm going to replay this game for a long, long time, and I completely understand why it was recommended so much. Thank all of y'all for telling me about this game and peer-pressuring me into playing it. It is all so worth it.

#fallout #fallout new vegas #good fucking game #play it #spoilers but its a 12 year old game its your own fault at this point #jesus why is it so scary

[old-stoneface]

i have soooo much to say abt fallout 4 so far . so ummm

just did the whole kellogg memory quest and when valentine insisted he get the implant connected to his brain i was like NO!!!!!!! but it was already done and valentine wouldnt have refused a chance to do anything he could to help. it was so nervewracking lmao that was such an interesting quest too because while i do know what happens in the game in general, like i know some of the major spoilers, i also really enjoy seeing it all play out. it reminds me of how it felt to play the final benny quest in new vegas and meet yes-man for the first time.....that shit blew me away.

i want to take other companions around w me in fo4 other than nick, but man im really attached to him, and he just asked for my help with tracking down his white whale. so hes sticking with me for a while. needless to say, i love goodneighbor; i think its a very cool community and hancock is a riot . his introduction was a lot lol he really took offense to someone giving valentine trouble. one of the things that i loved about new vegas was the ability to help sort out community problems and make life easier for everyone in the various settlements, so finding new towns and doing fetch quests or clearing out feral ghouls to make life easier makes me pretty happy. its a bonus that valentine enjoys that too.

anyway, back to kellogg. i kind of dont care about him. i understand, and i get it, he kinda does parallel the sole survivor, but that was on him for being a fucking asshole. like. he knew that shit was gonna bite him in the ass. hes not really anything like the pc from my perspective, and im not excited to hear more from kellogg in the form of his ghost inhabiting valentine's brain.

oh i just remembered i also got the home in diamond city!!!!! which was so exciting!!!!!! i spent like half an hour cleaning it up and adding some amenities while valentine sat on my couch. that was really fun. i am getting a LOT of satisfaction from providing homes for other npcs too, putting a lot of effort into improving sanctuary and telling other people to go there, like sheffield and the (somehow unnamed) vault-tec rep. i feel so bad for that guy. they shouldve at least named him.

anyway 👍 thats all. im just having a lot of fun. im not so good at combat but as long as i have a companion i can handle pretty much anything as long as its not a full-on assault from super mutants or anything

#sam.txt #argghhhh im having so much fun #theres a lot i need to do and i want to put as much effort into it as i can #i hope my attention sticks with this game as long as possible because #there is just so much here #and i want to do a second playthru so i can get other companions like danse #since some of them dont really mesh well w how im playing this first time around :/ #Fuck that brain ghost kellogg fr

[skelegun]

Tried replaying RE6, again. A lot of shit bugs me about that game. One thing that seems really inconsequential on paper but completely throws off the vibe of the game for me is that there are like unnamed random civilian npcs in some levels. It’s so fucking off brand and weird to me. Like it used to be a thing that pretty much everybody (not including zombies or the background corpses) had a name, and a little backstory of some sorts. Like look at RE1 most of Bravo team didn’t even dialogue, but people remember Forest Speyer and such. RE2 had Kendo and Ben, barely in the game but they had little stories and were memorable. The cops and the Helicopter pilot in RE4 while generic, at least had names. Then in RE6 there’s a part as Leon where you have to defend a gun shop against zombies (which run and jump), and there are random unnamed generic civilians in the building who are useless and just like scream and bicker at each other, and when playing as Chris there’s a part where you have to rescue hostages who are just like generic business suit guys and when you rescue them they just say like “thank you” and run away, like its fucking House of the Dead. It weirds me out! It’s sick!

#im only talking mainline series #6 was the bullet that killed the franchise #the new remakes are usually good #7 and 8 might as well be there own seperate franchise though

[troquantary]

Torgrim: Reloaded

I was thinking wistfully of Torgrim earlier (@therealvinelle ’s masterpiece of programming, a vampire with the power to blow up any other vampire on the face of the earth and the most fearsome of the Volturi guard -- or he would be, but his power is completely random).

I really liked that post and its sequel. So ludicrous, but so excellent. What wouldn’t I give to recapture that giddy feeling -- to see Torgrim in action again?

Well. Vinelle did share her code. And even though I’m...very ignorant, in my determination to feel something approaching happiness, I googled some extremely basic stuff, made my own file of characters and NPCs, and Torgrim’s power is now mine to command.

It was almost...too easy.

(For reference, my character list includes all the named, living vampires from the Breaking Dawn appendix, Torgrim himself, 10 unnamed Volturi grunts, 20 witnesses, and 20 vampires who aren’t even present for this but could explode at any time. 101 vampires total.)

(Also, since Vinelle didn’t prewrite who explodes, I didn’t either. Let’s goooo)

---

We’re back at the Breaking Dawn trial. Irina’s dead, things have gotten ugly, but Bella’s got her rage-shield equipped and everyone’s just seen Jane and Alec’s powers fail against it. The time is nigh: ignoring Aro’s frantic and unsubtle throat-slashing gestures, Caius calls Torgrim forward. The Cullens and their witnesses just kind of look at him, because who the fuck is this?

Torgrim’s not in a great mood, by the way. Before they all boarded their jet or submarine or whatever, he overheard some of the lower guards muttering to the effect of, “Why are we even bringing Torgrim, it’s not like they’ll let him actually do anything -- he’s basically just Afton, again.”

They seriously compared him to Afton.

FUCK Afton, Torgrim fumed. If I were Afton I’d do the world a favor and swallow a lit match!

Except he actually kind of yelled it instead of just thinking it, and looked around to find who else but Afton himself standing there. Staring, for god knows how long. What a fucking creep, no wonder everyone hates this guy. Torgrim doesn’t even know what Afton looks like; he can’t bear to pay attention to him long enough to find out. Afton’s just big, goggling eyes and...and limbs, Torgrim supposes. Whatever. It was a really awkward ride over.

But now he has his chance to prove the underlings wrong. This is it, his moment of glory! Thanos snap.

Kachiri explodes.

OH, YEAH. The Cullens and their allies send up a howl of dismay -- Bella’s shield can’t save them! Aro feels faint with relief, which shouldn’t be physiologically possible for a vampire, and yet. The point is made: the Volturi are unstoppable. Like last time, Aro’s signalling to Caius to stop and pack it in. Also like last time, Edward realizes through Aro’s thoughts that this was a random stroke of luck and Torgrim doesn’t actually have control over who he detonates, and decides to tell everybody.

In the face of this insolence, Caius tells Torgrim to go again.

Lower Volturi Guard 1 explodes.

Shitting fuck. That wasn’t even one of the guards who insulted Torgrim earlier. And now this Edward is taunting him, grinning like a triumphant and demented elf, calling for his side to take Torgrim out first!

Torgrim doesn’t think so -- without waiting for an order this time, he lets it rip.

Siobhan explodes.

So much for Carlisle’s theory! Speaking of Carlisle, he’s desperately holding Liam back from a suicidal charge and shouting for Edward to stand down. Bella’s freaking out and her shield’s probably useless -- they’ve unquestionably lost.

Aro, with finality, orders Torgrim back. No more need die on this day. (For the love of god, just quit while you’re ahead, man!)

Once again, Edward has other ideas that involve dramatic speeches about tyranny. Torgrim thinks Edward’s ideas are dogshit, and uses his power again.

Maggie explodes.

Hot damn, everything’s coming up Torgrim.

Carlisle screams at Emmett to stop Edward. Emmett’s got this -- he grabs Edward, flips him upside-down, and slams him headfirst into the earth up to his chest, silencing his diatribe.

An eerie silence descends over the would-be battlefield, but not in Torgrim’s head: X GON’ GIVE IT TO YA (WHAT) FUCK WAITING FOR YOU TO DO IT ON YOUR OWN, X GON’ DELIVER TO YA--

From below the dirt, beneath Edward’s frantically kicking legs, there’s a muffled scream.

fin

(Just for fun, I had Torgrim use his power a fifth time once everyone got home, and Maria exploded. Somewhere, for reasons unknown even to himself, Jasper sighed in relief.)

#and then - because this is kind of addicting - i ran it a sixth time and blew up emmett #:( #rest in fucking pieces #this turned out to just be vinelle's first post all over again but oh well #long post #twilight renaissance #torgrim #therealvinelle

[majorasnightmare]

Do you have a top 5 or 10 for your OCs? I feel you on the D&D character thing- I do similar but never thought of them as actual OCs till recently.

hmm i could maybe do a top 5?? 10??? but that shit varies depending on which blorbos on the brain djsmdmsmfjs

in no particular order

-Adrien (and everyone connected to him, getting lumped together cuz he has a Lot), a multi series oc currently chilling in my dnd setting

-Temperance, a changeling warlock i play in @someoneratherstrange 's dnd campaign with so much trauma and TWO (two!) adopted found family siblings, one of whom is an amnesiac mushroom guy (the other is a sorcerer burn victim on the run from a vampire clan)

-Azarain, a drow assassin-turned-cleric in the same campaign, whos like if a youth pastor was actually cool while still being a huge loser

-Delphi, my first ever dnd pc turned campaign npc, a tiefling warlock currently stuck in Barovia

-Valkan, a oneshot PC turned NPC whos a shadar-kai (shadow elf) necroficer (necromantic artificer), currently helping to keep a major city in the shadowfell from being besieged by monster swarms

-gaius, a restaurant owner npc for a far future campaign, a tiefling and a chaotic bastard who stumbled into community lynchpin entirely by accident

EDIT: far future in that. i wont be running THAT campaign for a while, its not a future setting sjdjsjdjd

-an unnamed family of 3 who work as potters, an orc father, a tiefling mother, and a half orc daughter, whomst i ADORE

-damakos, an evil character ive had for years now who constantly has shit running in the background but is careful never to move to the forefront of the heroes attention. very fun to play with

-solaire, another npc from a players backstory, currently MIA but served in a knightly order of paladins, from a culture of people who pass down the names of legendary heroes to their children in the hopes of granting them heroic destinies (inspired by the dark souls character of the same name)

-Melech, beloved blorbo from my future campaign that i can barely talk about because my players follow this blog smdmsmdjsjd

i have many many more because i spend my free time making npcs, pantheons and various entities for dnd shit and just get way too invested, but those guys are just off the top of my head

[necro-hamster]

danny gfh moment when ?

im going to kiss you on the mouth for giving me such a fun prompt !!!!!!

GUN FOR HIRE : DANIEL GRAY

BLURB:

SPY

DANIEL GRAY

"The Ex-Cultist"

IF UNAVAILABLE ; Help Daniel at the ELKJAW LODGE in WHITETAIL MOUNTAINS to unlock them as a Gun For Hire.

ABILITIES:

THE FLOCK ; Tags all nearby cultist enemies, and won't be attacked on sight by them.

FRIENDLY FIRE ; Takes less damage from cultist enemies, and does more damage to them.

WEAPONS:

AR-C and Colt M1911 with the stock Eden's Gate skins.

MAP RADIO DIALOGUE:

" Hello? Uh, this is, um, Danny, a-at the Elk Jaw Lodge! Uhh... This is a real complicated situation, and, uh, I could really use some help! Like, now? Or soon. Take your time! I'll, uh, explain what's goin' on when you get here! "

MISSION:

After the Deputy liberates the Elk Jaw Lodge outpost, they can approach an unnamed Whitetail Militia NPC inside the lodge and initiate dialogue with them.

NPC dialogue: "Well, shit! If it isn't the man/woman of the hour! Good job getting this place back, seriously. We got a little problem, though; we found some peggie fuck hiding out in here, but he swears up and down he's got some important intel and wants to ditch the cult. Seems kinda fishy to me, but Eli told me not to kill him. Yet. He's locked up in the back room; you can go talk to him, if you want."

After this, the Deputy will gain the mission 'Lock The Gates'. Its description is, "A cultist being held at the Elk Jaw Lodge is claiming to have some important information for the Resistance." The current objective will be 'Speak to the cultist'.

Upon entering the back room that Danny's being held in, the Deputy will find Danny with his hands tied behind his back and alone, and can enter dialogue with him, starting the mission.

Initial dialogue: "Oh, Christ, it's you! Listen, it's- it's not what it looks like! I swear to the Lord, I'm tryin' to help! Cross my heart! Just... hear me out? Some folks that were in here got kidnapped by, uh, well... by some people I know. But- But I know where they are, honest! If you come with me, I'll show you! Those people are gonna get... killed or worse if we don't do somethin'! Just — follow me, please?"

The deputy will then be prompted to undo Danny's bindings, and he'll lead them outside to an Eden's Gate truck. They'll drive the Deputy to the nearby Breakthrough Camp location, and during the short drive, they'll engage in some dialogue further explaining the situation.

Drive dialogue: "I'm really not with them. Honest! Well, I was, but... I'm not anymore! I left. Y'know, I-I just didn't expect 'em to start killin' so many folks! I didn't wanna do all that. I mean, I know The Father says he talks to God and all that, but you don't think God would want us to do this stuff, right? Besides, even if he did, uh, I dunno if I'd wanna do it then either. I don't wanna hurt nobody, y'know? 'Specially if they didn't do nothin' wrong. I mean, these folks were just minding their business! I don't want 'em to get killed. I swear, I don't. You'll see!"

Once the two of them arrive, Danny will assist the Deputy with killing the six cultists and two judges guarding the camp so they can rescue the four Resistance members being held captive. If 2/4 of the Resistance members are killed, the mission is failed and restarted. Once all the enemies are killed and the Resistance members are saved,  the Deputy can enter dialogue with Danny again.

End mission dialogue: "See?! See, I told you! I-I ain't like them at all! Oh, uh, good job, by the way. Um, listen, if you ever need any help, just gimme a call! I'll come a-runnin'! Haha... Uh, I'll just, uh, I'll be around if ya' need me. Or somethin'. Yeah."

The Deputy will gain 600 Resistance Points and have Danny available as a GFH after this.

#kris.txt #this was fun !! #perhaps it's a little cringe but idc #ask #anon #oc: daniel gray #fc5 #far cry 5 #sorry this took me a while btw

[adraveins]

Tagged by @yanara126, thank you!

How many works do you have on AO3?

53 at the moment!

What’s your total AO3 word count?

695,726 words. Holy shit.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? 

1. solivagant: A Breath of the Wild oneshot collection about Link interacting with various NPCs. Technically not a WIP, since it’s a series of oneshots meant to carry on for as long as my interest held, but I’ll probably come back to it when BOTW... 2!!! comes out. It definitely needs some editing, at least.

2. kith and kin and 3. last ones standing: Two fics I wrote in a frenzy after watching the first season of The Umbrella Academy. Most fic is not something I write out of disappointment, but these were definitely born out of a sense of “I could fix him (the show)” and feeling robbed of certain character dynamics. And the fact that these are oneshots/two-shots of gen relationships with so many kudos... that fandom is WAY responsive.

4. anthropotheism: A Horizon Zero Dawn post-game WIP about Aloy searching for the rogue AIs. I desperately want to come back to this one, but the problem is that it really does need to be rewritten. It’s good! But it’s not up to my current standards, because when I started it, I hadn’t written anything substantial for a while, and I was way out of practice. So I’m not sure what to do with this one yet.

5. the sword of damocles: A Magnus Archives WIP and “no apocalypse but things are still wack” AU after Season 4 that just keeps getting stalled because life in the past year and a half has consisted of a pandemic, starting a new job, moving to a new home, multiple hurricanes, chronic illness flare-ups, etc. It’s been a time.

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes! I try to respond to every comment, even if all I have the stamina for is a simple “thank you.” I want people to know that I appreciate their reactions and feedback, because I know it takes time to sit down and read something and then offer input.

What’s the fic with the angstiest ending?

In the interest of not giving easy answer about something involving death, I’m going to say that “a truth whispered at night” is very angsty despite ending on a good note, since it’s about -- and massive spoilers for the book series The Keys to the Kingdom -- the vast gap between a boy-turned-god and his father after said boy-turned-god gives his unknowing father a replacement son/copy of himself. It’s mad fucked up if you think about it for too long.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I actually sat here and put some thought into this, about which fic of mine most embodies joy, since most of what I write is pretty squarely melancholic. I’m going to list two:

1. lightmonger: This recent Pillars fic in which Kit and Bekarna and Onekaza all vaguely flirt in each other’s directions and talk about the stars. I think it’s joyful because Bekarna simply has that effect on people and thus on my writing.

2. love you in my own language: A fic for the The Vagrant trilogy, set after the first book, in which the titular unnamed Vagrant and his husband (ft. their napping daughter) build their house and practice communication. I brought this AO3 tag into existence, lol.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve ever written? 

Like @yanara126 said, they mostly exist in my head. I’ve come up with a lot of narrative swaps in, like, bulleted post format, and actually, I think that Venom AU for Pillars is probably the wildest. Not exactly a crossover, but I enjoy the mental exercise of reformatting a story to fit into another world and its plot/concepts.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

No. Most of my stuff is too niche for that, and I’ve been told that I’m “friendly but unapproachable,” so hopefully that will continue to stave off weirdos on the Internet.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No, I’m not particularly interested in it.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I guess not? Not that I would know, lol. I simply do not pay attention to most things.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I can’t remember which ones, but I’ve had a few requests.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I’ve co-written things as part of RPs and such when I was a teenager, but not lately.

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I don’t know about all-time, but I will say that I’m once again in some feelings about Jin/Yuna from Ghost of Tsushima, and I’m going to start citing them as the Correct way to do subtle, understated, well-written Video Game Romance.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? 

I am far too proud and stubborn to have an answer for this.

What are your writing strengths?

Intense dialogue, mood and straight up vibes, character dynamics, technical skill.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Reusing phrases, keeping character voices distinctive in prose and not just dialogue (although I’ve been working on this), figuring out the balance between “less is more” and just fucking say it in no uncertain terms (whatever it may be), sustaining commitment (lol). In general I wish that I was better at easily switching between styles too. I’m getting there.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? 

“Oh god, what if I sound like an idiot.”

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Man, I don’t even know. I think it might have been Narnia? Like, sixteen years ago.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

This is a difficult one, since the answer always changes. For Pillars, I do really like “a violent collision,” because I enjoy Eothas and Waidwen’s dynamic, and taking little hints from canon and trying to expand them into something coherent. In general, I’ll give a shoutout to a recent Control fic, “the name of the sound,” because it turned out much better than I thought it would, considering it’s from the POV of a semi-sentient eldritch building, and it’s given me a lot of “will you PLEASE write more like this?” feelings @ my brain. I think I just have the most fun when I’m writing about weird things.

#consider this an open tag for anyone who writes fic! please talk about your stuff. i love to hear it #mine

[komatsunana]

The Chronicles of Exandria: The Mighty Nein I

And so I do what I did the last 2 times for the Vox Machina Chronicles of Exandria books, which you can read [here] and [here].

These posts by no means contain all of the information in these books, but plenty of what would most interest other fans.  This is by no means a replacement for actually seeing the book.

My best guess on up to where this book spoils is episode 46.  Anyone who has not watched passed 46 can read this without spoilers outside of vague references that don’t really matter.

First and foremost, as usual, the artistry is the most important part of the book. All of the lovely fan-created art work is even more beautiful in ink than on screen. This I promise you.

As has been noted by other people who have received the book, it is written as though it was transcribed by Beau’s journals by the Cobalt Soul.  Some unnamed writer(s) from the Cobalt Reserve from Tal’Dorei have written all parts that are not excerpts from Beau’s journals.  There are edits by Zeenoth, which indicate that the book is not a final draft.  Zeenoth is not impressed by their work.

The books’ foreword is a dedication to critters.  I won’t transcribe all of it but it ends, “As always, we are richer for your company.  For truly, what good are stories unless they can be shared?”

Unlike the Vox Machina ones, which started with pages dedicated to Vox Machina and their adventures first before branching out for guest and NPCs, this one’s table of contents shows that everything is scattered.

The first section is dedicated to the Storyteller - accompanied by art of Matt as “The Storyteller.”   An excerpt follows below:

“A story walks the land through the songs and tales of those who are touched by its heart.  And then one day, long after all the players within have met the Matron, a story will be told for the very last time.  Unless, by the Grace of the Storyteller, we are let to it. [...]  Through Ioun’s blessing we make his favorite children immortal.  You hold one of them in your hands even now.  Wake it carefully.”

Thoreau contacted the Cobalt Soul immediately after Beau’s first arrest - presumably the one with Tori.  As the monks took Beau away, Thoreau referred to her as “his misfortune.”  It is also noted in the margins that Thoreau is a good friend to the Archive.

Unlike the rest of the M9 and characters, there are no excerpts about Beau herself from her journal... Because obviously she doesn’t need to take notes in herself.  However the Cobalt Soul write their own notes about her and her reputation in the Cobalt Soul and note... more than a few times that Zeenoth thinks she is aggressive, stubborn, and quick to judge and anger and as a result they can’t put a lot of stock into her notes on other people.  However, Dairon was right to put their trust in her because her insight in invaluable and is quick to call out injustice.

Beau’s note taking is exceptional - and color-coded.

Beau’s first notes about Molly is that he is “not that bright, definitely drunk, completely full of shit, and not nearly as good of a liar as he thinks he is.  His outfit is loud, far louder than the man himself.”  His coat contains iconography from at least half a dozen gods.  Beau also noted that Molly’s swords were interesting to which the footnotes immediately made note that Molly’s swords were just swords.  Beau thought, in her first impression of him, that he might be on the run from a family of Warlocks.

The librarians decided to omit all of Molly’s earlier lies that he told Beau and the group about his background, and instead only described the climbing out of the grave and only able to say “Empty” story.  He had scars and 9 red eye tattoos on him at the time.  

There are sketches of the tattoo in full, after Molly had added to it, but it’s noted by Beau that part of the tattoo is covered by Molly’s hair.  Looking at the sketch, it is implied there are more tattoos on his scalp, rather than just the length covering it.

For Molly’s story of climbing out of the grave to be true, it means that Molly relearned to speak both Common and Infernal, learned to perform his skills and duties with the Carnival, covered his eye tattoos with additional, elaborate tattoos, befriended Yasha, and discovered his innate magic ability to use his blood to infuse his weapons with magic.

Beau had made a list of every book she knew Caleb had on his person or expressed interest in.  This includes the erotic books and the 2 spellbooks. 

On the spellbooks, Beau says she isn’t sure about them. One she knows is a spellbook, but she’s not sure on the other as he never opens it.  She wonders if it is a journal of some kind.

There is a page on Beau’s notes in the first arc with the Fletching and Moondrop Carnival - notes about the victim and all her possible suspects of which it is everyone that is part of the carnival.  All of them have a strike through their name, indicating she had eliminated each of them as a suspect at one point, including Kylre.  

Among the notes she has, my favorites are that Beau thinks that everyone in the circus hates each other, never trust a clown (about Desmond), and that everyone has a title such as Molly “The Ice-Spinner” and Yasha “The Brute.”  Beau also notes Yasha as being human.

Outside of Beau’s notes, the best information to be found about Shakästa “Hush” is from an anonymous book from Deastock titled “Heroic Deeds of the Golden Grin.”  It is because of Beau’s notes that Hush is confirmed to be real, not a myth, once and for all.

Because of how cool Shakästa was with his cool bird, Beau notes “I gotta get a bird.”  So we have him to thank for Professor Thaddeus.

Unknown what deity Shakästa draws power from.

Known members of the Tombtakers:

Lucien Nonagon (Molly)

Cree: currently employed by the Gentleman.  Blood powers like Molly’s.

[A name which as been severely crossed out but looks like it says Tyffinl]:  Currently said to be in Nogvurot.

Otis and Zoran:  Still at large, whereabouts unknown

Jurrell:  Deceased

Some lady spellcaster from Rexxentrum 

The Myriad is currently gaining footholds in Tal’dorei as well.  There is also a written notation by Zeenoth to cross reference the Myriad activity with the Tombtakers, indicating that he believes that the Tombtakers and the Myriad might be connected.

Cobalt Soul theorizes that the blood Cree claims the Gentleman took from the M9 to track them might be a new form of blood-based mutagenetic tracking.

Beau’s first impression of Nott and Caleb’s relationship was that Nott heaped praise on him and that there might be some sort of blood debt or magic going on.

Beau’s early theory on Caleb was that he was hiding from a criminal employer and had done a high-level theft.  She made note to watch if he attempted to side-step certain kinds of work.

Everything about Caleb sounded like bad news to Beau, but because he stuck around to get her out of jail Beau comes to the conclusion that that’s endearing.

Beau has made an observation that Caleb was searching for some kind of information in a book, related to transmutation.  She wonders if bartering to get him into the Cobalt Soul library will get her into his good graces, though she hopes he won’t find out that the library is technically open to all if you ask nicely.

There is an entry (in Beau’s second journal, it should be noted) were several pages were ripped out about Caleb.  This indicates that Beau had written down Caleb’s backstory of killing his parents but she, Caleb, or someone else had ripped it out before it got into the hands of the Cobalt Soul.  The Cobalt Soul draws the conclusion that Caleb is connected to organized crime.  They are also unable to find anyone born with the name Caleb Widogast in the Empire and they believe it to be an alias.

There are written notations that say that at least one of the ripped out pages were recovered, in which Beau describes the night Caleb told her and Nott about killing his parents.  Both mentions of Trent Ikathon’s name were crossed out until illegible.  Beau was unconvinced that Caleb’s memories after killing his parents aren’t still jumbled (rather than missing).

Fun fact!  All of the Caleb illustrations in his art section all either have fire or Frumpkin in them.  Because when you boil down Caleb to his essentials that’s all I’m saying.

The strangest thing about the M9, as far as the Cobalt Soul is concerned,  is that they have a goblin among their party.

Beau also wonders if Nott’s relationship with Caleb isn’t also out of love or blind loyalty.  Upon finding out that Nott feels like the parental figure (rather than the other way around, as Beau had assumed) Beau wonders what it is that Nott wants Caleb to be stronger for... Revenge? Or to change herself.

Beau notes that while Nott might have named herself so to call herself not brave, Beau thinks she is pretty brave.  She describes Nott diving into the water for Fjord’s arc twice (even if she complained the entire time) and Nott saving Jester from the blue dragon which “absolutely saved Jester’s life.”  Nott is very focused on everyone remaining together as a team.  Beau believes that while Nott’s loyalty to Caleb has not lessened, her loyalty to the rest of the party has extended to them all.

“I think we might all be her kids now.  It’s kind of sweet, in a really weird way.”

Zeenoth is extremely salty their junior drew lots of buttons instead of researching the crossbow Nott got from Hupperdook.

A list of all phrases that Beau noted in her journals that Kiri had learned in her time with them.

Welcome to the Mighty Nein!

I am Kiri!

Yes, I am very sweet.

It’s sharp.

Ooh, I’m a captain.

Where do babies come from?

Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!

If it bleeds, we can kill it.

I killed people!

Get into trouble!

She’s probably a good egg.

Go fuck yourself.

Zeenoth is VERY upset about the word fuck and wants that entry removed.

Beau thinks Calianna is too polite.

Cobalt Soul believes there is at least one other bowl like the one Calianna destroyed with the M9.

Beau hopes they don’t pick up any more stragglers, as she thinks it is getting crowded.

Cobalt Soul theorizes about why Keg had a four o’clock shadow rather than a proper Dwarven beard, wondering if she wasn’t forced to shave.  This indicates that beards are normal on female dwarves.

Beau thinks Shady Creek Run is so called because it’s full of shady criminals, but the Cobalt Soul notes that Shady Creek Run has a creek that is in near constant shade in the abundant pine trees.

On Molly’s death Beau says:

“Fuck.   That went horribly.  We lost Molly, and I don’t know what to do. [This part is crossed out: Maybe if I had-] I’m trying my best to stay objective.”

Beau also crosses out “I’m starting to like her” about Keg, and replaces it with “She’s fine, I guess.”

On Nila Beau says: “She said something really nice about Molly.  How in her clan, someones spirit never leave you.  They return to nature, and are forever by your side.  I don’t know if I believe it, but I like the thought.”

Beau wants her own “lucky smell bag” that’ll make decisions for her.

The Blooming Grove was built post-Calamity.

Beau’s first impressions of Caduceus is that he is both grounded and flighty.

Because Caduceus hasn’t eaten meat or alcohol in the time she’s known him, she thinks he’s got to have some sort of vice.

Because of Beau’s talk with Caduceus after killing the blue dragon, Beau remarks that she likes her edge and doesn’t want to lose it and go soft. But maybe it is a better, more efficient way of doing things by being there for the M9. “Gross.”

There is a note in the margins telling the editor to contact Archivist Demid (AKA the guy studying the moons) for information on the Dust family.  This indicates that he may have some special information.

Because of Jester’s defacing every town she visits, the Cobalt Soul has been able to track the M9′s movements.

The Cobalt Soul’s 2 working theories on the Traveler is that he’s a smaller/younger deity either from folk tales about a cloaked figure that either rewards or punishes heroes with a ironic twist OR a god of vandalism.

Zeenoth notes that if the Traveler IS a god of vandalism... they may have a secret follower in their ranks because of all the smut doodles in their books lately. Which of course Jester probably drew.

Beau says that as Jester told the group about her prank causing her to have to flee from Nicodranas she was full of her usual bubbliness... But was starting to see that there was underlying sadness in Jester.

Beau has known Jester has had a thing for Fjord since they first met, but after she got Tusk Love it became full-blown infatuation.

“Fjord seems super oblivious, though, which isn’t surprising for a man who occasionally wakes up covered in seawater and confusion.”

Beau stands by her and Jester’s purchase of the owl and blink dog, but she wonders how long the weasel is going to last in their line of work.

Beau wonders if it’s weird to be attracted to your friend’s mom and comes to the conclusion it is so she’ll back off... But the Ruby is smoking hot.

Beau can also see why people who want to release and evil god for Avantika. Not that she would. “She’s hot, but come on.”

No really new information on The Plank King is revealed in his section, but quite a bit is crossed out until illegible.  This could detail what connection to the Cobalt Soul he has, but was redacted.

The Cobalt claims that while the M9 titled a leader, Fjord often took that position.

Beau is making direct reports on Fjord to the Cobalt Soul and his connection to Uk’otoa.  In her latest report, she says that they’ve bought some time until their next trip to the sea............

Waiting for the rest of the M9 to come out of the Happy Fun Ball, after fighting the blue dragon, are among the rest worst few minutes of Beau’s life.

Beau believed Twiggy that she killed the blue dragon, in part because Caduceus believed her.

Beau accidentally writes “cute and dry” instead of “cut and dried” about Yasha’s background.

“For someone dressed in greys, who carries herself like a dark cloud, Yasha sure seems drawn to color and light. I wonder where it stems from.”

On Yasha being tested by the Stormlord by the “man made of lightning” the Cobalt Soul says it is not uncommon for the Stormlord to test his disciples through acts of physical, mental, or spiritual exertion.

The final notes by Zeenoth indicates that whoever wrote the book (outside of edits from Zeenoth himself and excerpts from Beau’s journals) were by someone from Tal’dorei.  Who might it be? Someone we know?

#critical role #critical role: the mighty nein campaign #cr #the chronicles of exandria #critical role art book #i scream #my crit role feels #long post

[ganymedesclock]

Dead Cells and the weight of small lives pt.1 (about Prisoner)

NGL this is at least partially me saltposting about “I don’t really understand how people read the Prisoner’s dialogue and look at his thoughts and see someone who’s a total unrepentant asshole or the same person as the King” but it’s also commentating on an interesting pattern I observe in the game and its worldbuilding.

The setting of Dead Cells is, no two ways about it, a very unpleasant world. It is awash in death. The apocalyptic zombie plague of the Malaise is just the final nail in its coffin, leaving a handful of uninfected survivors on top of the literal heaps of corpses of the kingdom’s inquisition. A fountain of blood flows in the highest castle in the land. It’s grim. It’s horrible. We can hear someone get murdered through an unbreakable door.

The interesting thing is... what the game tells you to do with it, through the perspective of the main character.

For clarity: Prisoner is not here to save anyone. He is not a hero on a quest. He is- well- a prisoner. On discovering he has a kind of immortality, he begins using it to make his way through the island, learning painful lesson after painful lesson, returning, returning, and returning again trying to achieve some kind of change on this degrading looping time. But the fact that you’re not specifically out to save people is that... well... basically nobody’s in a position to be saved. As mentioned, there’s not a lot of survivors, and most of the ones there don’t need you- they’re doing on their own, and if that happens to not be enough, it tends to be enough very suddenly, where you can’t reach them or weren’t there at the time and are left a little shaken, because they were fine the last time you checked.

Also, half of said survivors are trying really hard to kill Prisoner.

Thus, if you’re used to games where objective 1 is to Save Everyone, Rid The Land Of Evil, Prisoner might seem shockingly callous, I suppose. The thing is, I consider myself the emotional equivalent of a glass frog- I’m very thin-skinned with bleak hopeless narratives.

And yet. There is something about Dead Cells’ universe that doesn’t seem like an attack on me. And I think that it’s what the game has to say about “small lives”. The lives that are considered unimportant in a crisis.

The Island in Dead Cells is ruled by a major hierarchy. This is obvious from jump- one of the first bits of lore text you are likely to ever get starting the game up is this one, for the Prisoners’ Quarters, the first area you start in:

In the social hierarchy of the island, there are the dogs, the rats, and just below them, the prisoners.

Prisoner is sometimes called “The Beheaded” by official detail, but he is called “Prisoner” specifically by one of the service NPCs you meet in the corridors- so one of the most consistent entities you talk to that’s not trying to kill you, who is always happy to see you with a sunny, “Well, hello, Mr. Prisoner, sir!”

He also starts the game in a prison cell, his headless state is made clear to us that it was the result of an execution rather than a war wound (there’s a chopping block and an obviously used axe in his cell with him) and his default equipment is a collar that was clearly once used to restrain him. So when the game pronounces this to you about the island’s hierarchy, Prisoner is not speaking abstractly about ‘those other poor sods’-

He’s talking about himself.

The hierarchy of the island is a specter that stalks you through almost every level of the game- through the massive prison complex which is littered with evidence and recounting of the guards toying with prisoners’ lives, of numbered corpses, a revolting sewer containing a shackled, corrupted monster that seems to have lived her entire life in this very same prison; to the astonishingly humble fishing hamlet that lies directly at the foot of the soaring grandeur of the Clock Tower and the even greater heights of High Peak Castle.

To the discrepancy between the teeming, crowded tombstones of the Graveyard, to the sprawling labyrinthine nature of the Forgotten Sepulchre- where a handful of tombs are presided over by entire walls of skulls that we’re helpfully told belonged to the heads of the delegations of high-ranking dignitaries- said delegations were butchered to attend their masters’ burials evermore.

Right away, this is thrown to us not as something we are outside of or transcend, but a slap in the face. The world tells us that our avatar in this game does not matter- that his face and voice do not matter and these things were taken from him by violence.

The thing is... Prisoner does not shut up. The game is full to bursting with his thoughts. He has so much to say that it’s jarring when we’re used to being alone with all his thoughts to meet another person and suddenly be reminded they hear nothing of what he’s saying, like a dramatic version of Garfield Minus Garfield.

Through revival, through cycles, the expectation of the gameplay is we are living the experience of Prisoner and what Prisoner’s experience is, is a one-man raging against a situation that’s telling him to shrivel up and die because he’s not important. It doesn’t want to be fair to him. It doesn’t want to be nice to him. It doesn’t care how much he’s hurting or if he doesn’t own a decent pair of shoes to his name, or if he doesn’t even have a name to speak of.

But Prisoner does not give up. He in fact does the opposite of giving up. After playing this game for a good while, I fired up some Hollow Knight and it really hit me like a truck that Prisoner spends most of the game tearing around near top speed, cartwheeling and sprinting and hauling up ledges and slamming down ledges. The pace of the game is fast, fast, fast, all intense, all in, and you’re encouraged to take risky gambles with an already precarious system like temporarily taking on one-hit-you’re-dead curses in exchange for more damage output or better loot.

The animated trailers make this even clearer. Prisoner gets his shit wrecked.

A lot.

At best, he can have some moments of feeling like an unstoppable god, but just about the time you start to get really worried for that cute little mushroom baby and their caretaker you are reassured that Prisoner’s reign of hubristic wrath comes to a hard stop thanks to inertia, and spikes.

And I will say more than many cinematic trailers, Motion Twin really did a remarkable job of matching this 1-to-1 with the actual experience of playing the game. I have even literally swaggered into a fight with the Giant much the same way Prisoner breaks out that cool spear flourish Moment Of Challenge only to immediately eat shit directly into his laser beam eyes, that I was not prepared for because he hadn’t used them last fight.

Prisoner is not valiant, triumphant, or wildly successful. His final bastion is skill and ingenuity.

This puts a really interesting spin on what I said before- that Prisoner is not here to save anybody, even himself.

Prisoner frankly does not have that kind of power.

There’s nobody in a vulnerable state you even have the option to choose to abandon. People live or die, and it’s really not up to you. There are a few deaths Prisoner takes into his own hands- the King and the Collector notably- but even those people, like... the King appears comatose by the time you reach him, and the Collector not only tries to kill you but is revived thanks to time strangeness- and another death that can happen, and is erased by the time looping- the unnamed sewer prisoner who wants you to go fetch the teleportation rune for him (ahem. he wants you to retrieve his rune, that definitely rightfully belongs to him) ostensibly to get out of jail but when you find his body, not only is he dead of a fate the rune wouldn’t have saved him from, but his objective, revealed, was that he was trying to get to a treasure chest he’d hidden earlier.

The one time it can really be said, outside of the boss fights or executing the King, that Prisoner really decides if someone lives or dies, is...

Mushroom Boi.

For the uninitiated, Mushroom Boi is a little summonable mushroom child that is equipped as a skill. Triggering the skill once will summon him. Triggering the skill while he’s already summoned will cause him to self-destruct, taking out enemies in the area and, by the game description, “violate your very soul”.

After this, you can without any consequence whatsoever summon him again, and blow this poor child up as much as you want. It does not really seem to slow him down any- but the game still, distinctly, frowns on it. You have a reward in the form of an achievement for keeping him with you without sacrifice, aforementioned crack about sacrificing him “violating your soul”, and, just, how can you be mad at this cute little guy? he has a tiny bow! He’s an extremely useful companion! Mechanically, you do not really hurt for want of the sacrifice ability if you summon him and then never touch that button again.

Given that Prisoner spends so much of the game alone with his thoughts, and the person who gives him access to Mushroom Boi, the Collector, has, to put it mildly, a long history of using and discarding people including implicitly children, there has to be some kind of implicit in-universe-source for the idea that you’d feel crushing guilt for detonating your son and boy like that, and the angle that makes the most sense is Prisoner.

So, Prisoner is someone who feels really guilty for painfully inconveniencing a summonable construct mushroom in a way that it does not seem to hold against him at all. At the same time, there’s really a shortage of ways that you can personally hurt anybody who’s not trying to kill you or being particularly exploitative (aforementioned teleportation rune sewer guy, who Prisoner goes as far as to flip off after he lunges and tries to either claw prisoner or grab the rune from him by force)

The most disrespectful Prisoner tends to be are to one of three categories of people:

Dead bodies that cannot feel or particularly care if he kicks them, that he usually kicks either specifically to loot or, as what seems to be some kind of weird bad idea where he plants his naked foot on a waterlogged corpse and then declares “ew” like what did you expect to happen actually

People who have one way or another tried to exploit him for their personal gain directly at his expense so he nearly gets murdered- or in FACT gets murdered- while they sit back and wait for him to succeed and bring them the reward.

Aforementioned people who are trying openly to kill him and even then he only flips off the Giant basically because the Giant flips him off first. This is kinder than I feel about the Giant. I like the Giant but I feel like someone with laser beam eyes that uses them like that deserves more than just one retaliatory middle finger.

And this meshes with other factors, but the post is long enough I’ll break off here.

#Dead Cells #The weight of small lives #readmore

[blookmallow]

some brotherhood stuff, some more vampires, Other Things 

i was out adventuring with cicero and lost track of him for a while so i went to check on him to make sure he was okay bc i absolutely will not be able to live with myself if i kill him on accident 

i retraced my steps and could not fucking find him anywhere and couldn’t even hear him (usually his. constant singing and chattering is a great help in locating him lmao) 

but then i finally found his life aura 

ALL THE FUCKING WAY UP THERE, FOR SOME REASON, 

wHY ARE YOU UP HERE. HOW DID YOU GET HERE. CICERO. 

he wasn’t talking anymore either and was just like. staring at me. standing in a cliffside. i eventually got him down and he was fine (after phasing through rocks a few times) but im just

cicero. my love. why have you done this 

nazir you are going to show him some goddamn RESPECT and he will dance as much as he pleases this is my organization now 

later i went back to visit the destroyed brotherhood sanctuary to pay my respects, as you do, and there was a fuckign penitus occulatus guy just hanging around here. get the FUCK OUT OF HERE haven’t you done ENOUGH

and ever since i lost shadowmere (i still can’t find him. i dont know what to do at this point) ive been coming back here to see if he’ll respawn from his swamp or something and every time there’s another guy here. why are you still here i will kill every single one of you

and i have been. it’s now my personal mission to kill as many of these guys as i can im starting a collection of their armor every time i kill one

i don’t remember where everyone else’s bodies were but astrid is gone now. the flower i dropped beside her is still there but i want to know what happened to her body. did someone steal it,

the only one left is festus stuck to the tree outside. there’s nothing here anymore but it still makes me so sad 

then i got one of the recurring minor contract quests to kill off some official in solitude (which was actually an interesting job. i stopped doing them for a while bc it was always just like “kill this hunter who’s just standing in the woods” i want the CHALLENGE i want ‘kill a target in the middle of a busy city without getting caught’) and i was all set up in my spot out of sight with my poisoned arrows ready to go and then 

CHILD. NOW IS NOT THE TIME :’ ) :’ ) 

(she didn’t catch on to what i was doing and i did complete the quest without getting caught. by my daughter or anyone else lmao) 

ive been picking off all the agents in solitude whenever i see them as well. i havent been caught yet and the guards mostly react to it with mild surprise 

ah. that might be why 

i DID get called out once even though i didn’t have a bounty or anything so i shouldn’t have been seen, i don’t remember who sent this i think it was one of the bard ladies at the college, but like. i went to talk to her and she didn’t have any different dialogue or anything. this didn’t go anywhere,

i dont remember what happened here, this must’ve been another brotherhood contract or something but i love how everyone just like, goes back to whatever they were doing after they notice a corpse sitting there. like. look at them they don’t even care 

i love this guy. i dont know if he actually has a casual symbiotic relationship with The Actual Arkay or if he’s just fully convinced he does but either way i support whatever it is he’s doing with his life 

hahahaha you know how it is with arkay. always a joker 

serana keeps finding dead bodies everywhere we go somehow or another she is just constantly making zombies lmao 

this guy was a dead-when-we-got-there victim in a cave somewhere and she just. brought him out with us. he turned into ash pretty soon after but like. let the poor guy rest, 

god damn it why can serana raise a random dead prisoner but i can’t reanimate the corpse of one of my brotherhood torture victims. unfair

but then i did some quest at some point where there were all these vigilants of stendarr who were under some spell that turned them all hostile, so basically i just had to fight them all off 

I GOT ONE 

I MADE A ZOMBIE I DID IT 

i dont understand why i can resurrect like. someone who was clearly a fighter possibly a mage in life but Random Nord We Had As A Torture Subject For Some Reason is too powerful. ok 

HOWEVER 

FOR SOME REASON, maven sent me an inheritance letter??? they didnt even have a name. its just Charmed Vigilant. im guessing this had to have been because one of them was my undead thrall for a while but i still definitely killed them myself initially before the spell ran out and disintegrated them. why did i get 300 gold for killing an unnamed npc. whats going on here 

i dont remember if i mentioned it before but i had this weird empty side room in riften and didnt understand why it was there but was like heheheh im gonna fill this room with bloody rags and hearts and weird shit 

BUT THEN suddenly i gained a housecarl out of nowhere, i dont know why she wasn’t here before or why it took her so long to appear, but this room spontaneously just morphed into Her Room Now and fucked up all my stuff i was SO mad 

i dont remember what all i had in here, some of it was just on the floor or on furniture or whatever but im pretty sure some things got lost in the void and ill never know what they were. i dont think i left anything valuable in here but still

also this house is really really small so she was just. Constantly in my way, too

then i had her with me and tried to break into the east empire warehouse to do a thieves guild thing, figured she’s my riften housecarl, maven’s the jarl of riften, iona probably knows what’s up, right, but no she was all “bluhhh you’re not supposed to be in here >:(” and i was trying to sneak around the guards to avoid causing a scene but SHE kept just running in and MURDERING them, so i mean, i may have broken into a place im not supposed to be, but SHE was the one doing murders, and anyway there was, uh, this. very tragic accident, you see, and somehow she just didn’t make it. couldn’t have been prevented. very sad. can’t imagine how this could have happened. nothing i could do 

brynjolf your elixir sucks. this is literally less useful than like, a cabbage

how did you... lock... a satchel  

#lucy plays skyrim #scooby dooby queue

[gay-robot]

heres the lore of the entire dark souls series

for some amount of time everything is grey and ruled by dragons, and some primordial race thats not quite human or gods or anything just kinda lives underground beneath giant trees. one day a fire, which has never existed until now, starts, and a bunch of the nondescript people get souls from it, turning into gods, and also humanity as an abstract concept pops up; humanity comes from the titular dark soul, which is a soul that can sort of exist without the fire. the gods and depending on who you ask the humans who were called the pygmies at the time beat the shit out of the dragons and make everything stop being grey; during this time the god of war who is the son of the god of sunlight allies with the dragons but loses and gets struck from history, hes important because hes the one behind the warriors of sunlight, specifically NOT the sunlight god. theres also a dragon who allies with the gods and invents sorceries but he dies in the first game and isn’t too important so dont worry. anyway humans and gods go off and form nations including but not limited to izalith lordran new londo oolacile berenike carim vinheim but only a few of them pop up in games so you dont have to worry about too many of them. theres also the ringed city which wont pop up for a while because of time travel stuff like it exists at the end of time like the restaurant at the end of the universe but thats where the gods put a bunch of the pygmies. anyway things just sort of run along as normal for a while, and one day a giant snake tells some people in oolacile, a cool magical society, that they should dig underground and find the remains of the first human and mess with it, which they do and it goes very badly. one of the knights of the gods who isnt human but isnt really a god either but is definitely not a pygmy(??) named artorias goes off to try and fix things but fails and gets corrupted by the abyss which is a fundamental force connected to the abstract concept of humanity. that gets resolved and everyone says ‘well we should probably try to make sure that doesnt happen again’, at which point it happens again in new londo and a bunch of skeleton dudes murder everyone so the gods flood the city to contain things. around this time someone named ariamis creates the painted world which is a mario 64 painting where a secret half dragon half god woman lives shes sort of important but dont worry right now. things just keep going for a while until one day the fire that gave everyone life starts to burn out, and everyone freaks out; humans start to become undead, coming back infinitely but more and more shriveled. one of the gods, the witch of izalith, who invented fire magic but not the same type of fire as the first one which is in fact called the first flame, tries to recreate the first flame but fails and gets turned into a fucked up tree and also accidentally makes demons and a new type of fire called chaos. eventually another god, the god of sunlight, marches into the first flame and lights himself on fire to give his power to it, extending its lifetime; this is called linking the fire. things go back to normal for a bit until the first flame fades again, bonfires and fire keepers are created to funnel undead into linking the first flame, and now the events of dark souls 1 take place, and you probably canonically link the fire and extend the world because theres 2 more games after this one. notable characters here include solaire, one of the first warriors of sunlight who is unflinchingly happy and helpful, big hat logan from vinheim who has a big hat and makes some new sorceries, andre the blacksmith who shows up in the 3rd game, and gwyndolin who has moon magic rather than sunlight magic and runs the secret magic police funneling people into linking the fire.

some unknown amount of time later but before dark souls 3, humanity continues to have the undead curse and some kingdoms come and go, including tseldora, the unnamed iron kings kingdom, shulva, eleum loyce, heide, and drangleic which is the important one where ds2 takes place, but the other ones are still important. the first human from oolacile in ds1 was split into fragments when he was destroyed, which later formed into women who traveled to flourishing kingdoms and attempted to seize power. eleum loyce, a nation founded to contain the chaos and demons by the ivory king who has a lightsaber, is one such kingdom, but the dark woman ends up truly believing in eleum loyces cause and devotes her existence to it, freezing it over when all seems lost as the ivory king tries to sacrifice himself to stop the chaos. meanwhile, the iron king is off doing his bullshit being bowser and hires a samurai named sir alonne to train his knights. alonne ends up leaving and the iron king throws a fit and falls into a smelter and dies, turning into literal bowser. he also has a place called brume tower which will be important later. ALSO meanwhile the kingdom of shulva, a giant underground city, is created as a sanctum to worship a sleeping dragon. theres a fragment woman here but she doesnt really do anything. eventually the drakeblood knights siege the city and try to kill the dragon but fail and are driven out, and they go found lindelt which is the equivalent to carim. the lost bastille is also constructed by a lost kingdom at some point to contain the reincarnation of the witch of izalith. now, drangleic, the important stuff; a man who is probably human but has enough magic that hes as big as one of the gods named vendrick founds drangleic and starts consolidating magical power from the remains of the old kingdoms for the purpose of linking the fire. at some point he marries nashandra, one of the fragment women, who convinces him to steal power from the giants, which he does. around this time, his brother aldia is off doing weird science shit with souls and dragons and horrifically murdering a bunch of people, and somehow completely removes himself from the both concept of humanity and the concept of the fire and is basically truly immortal; he also creates the emerald herald, an artificial human who may or may not be a fire keeper. anyway, the giants get pissed off at vendrick and invade drangleic, and basically wreck the whole place. around this time, the fume knight, one of vendricks closest advisors, is branded a traitor and leaves, ending up at brume tower, where he means nadalia, one of the fragments who arrived at the iron kingdom like a century too late, and they have a nice time together. meanwhile, vendrick flees into the undead crypt and goes hollow and for a while everything is just kind of in a limbo unable to progress. undead, which as it turns out suffer extreme mental degradation much like alzheimers when they are reborn, around the world occasionally find their way into drangleic through portals in search of a cure to hollowing, at the suggestion of an unknown old woman who may or may not be the old goddess of sin. one such undead is your dark souls 2 character, who once in drangleic is urged by the emerald herald to build up souls and link the fire, but its possible to just straight up find that cure to hollowing from aldia and vendricks advice by retrieving the crowns of old kingdoms, and refuse to link the fire. the world isnt exactly at a point where it needs to be linked anyway, but its definitely stagnating. either way it eventually gets linked. notable characters include lucatiel, a woman who helps you with a ton of bosses like solaire and is slowly losing her memory and sense of self from the undead curse, benhart, who has the moonlight greatsword, and the 3 old fire keepers who live in the void between worlds and give you your starting equipment.

that brings us to dark souls 3, which is like thousands of years in the future. the fire has been linked so many times that it barely gets anything out of a link, and when it fades the world starts to get really weird and clump itself together into a big pile of shit near the first flame, but people are still linking it, including the undead legion who are an army of artorias kinnies, yhorm the giant who barely has any lore but was a good friend of an npc who has armor that looks like an onion, and aldrich who is a disgusting piece of shit that im not going to talk about but who was contained in a cathedral. notable places include irithyll, a snowy city built at the base of the remains of the old city of the gods from ds1, farron keep, home of the undead legion, the profaned capital that yhorm is from which has almost no lore, londor which is inhabited solely by undead and vehemently opposes the fire, and lothric, where most of the game takes place. lothric is another human kingdom built to consolidate power and link the fire, built near the epicenter of where everything comes together; it houses the graves of the previous linkers of the fire who get revived when the fire fades, as well as the unkindled, people who were burnt to ash trying to link the fire and now come back to life like undead. its princes, lothric and lorian, are expected to serve as kindling for linking the fire but really dont want to, meanwhile the king has turned himself into a dragon and gone insane. it also contains a pocket dimension of an alternate timeline where the fire was never linked, which is where the first boss in the game comes from. before the events of the game, a few things happen; the painted world is burnt away and restored as a new world, and one of the founders of londor fails to link the fire but gets drawn into the painting. around this time pontiff sulyvahn leaves the painting and takes over irithyll, turning it into a place of worship for aldrich who is again an awful piece of shit i cannot overstate this enough, and begins throwing obstacles into lothric to prevent the linking of the fire. meanwhile back in the painting the founder of londor friede convinces the leader of the painted world not to make a new one and just let the current painting rot; an inhabitant of the painted world, gael, leaves the painting to find someone to stop friede and also go and find the dark soul itself so an unnamed little girl who is probably the daughter of the half god half dragon woman from ds1 can use it as paint to make a new ideal world. anyway, the player character is awoken to go find the old linkers of the fire who are understandably not too excited about getting lit on fire again and bring them back so they can link the fire. along the way they meet the nameless god of war who allied himself with the dragons and beat up friede. once theyre ready theyre either pushed forward in time or some illusion is taken off but either way they see what the world looks like when the fire isnt linked ie a giant pile of ash and buildings haphazardly flowing everywhere. just before they link the fire, however, they hear about the ringed city, where the dark soul supposedly is, and traverse the mess of bullshit trying to find it, which they do. they then find out that even the ringed city is just an illusion and the entire world is at that point just a barren field of ash. they then find and fight gael who has gone feral trying to eat the dark soul so it can be in his blood and therefore used as paint. you then give said blood to the painter so she can make a new world. finally, you either link the fire, let it die for good, or steal it and give it to londor creating a sort of hybrid dark/fire age.

notable characters in ds3 include greirat, a thief who tried to steal from lothric and share with the undead laborers and also probably protect his mother, orbeck who wanted to be a wizard but was forced by wizard school to be an assassin, irina who is a blind cleric and treated like garbage by her brother whose supposed to be guarding her, sirris who is a knight on a quest and the granddaughter of the merchant at firelink shrine and the old man who runs the purple covenant, and anri who is the opposite sex of your character and wants to beat the shit out of aldrich for murdering children but as part of the londor quest can get stabbed in the face as part of a marriage ceremony.

[downwithpeople]

vampire the masquerade bloodlines

consider this the follow up to the upcoming ep of @fallout-new-vegas-2010​ podcast Lore Never Changes that i’m on where i hazily misremember much of the game’s content.

after playing through the game a couple times and making liberal use of the noclip and notarget functions i think that contrary to popular wisdom the worst level in the game isn't the sewers but grout's mansion. large portions of the sewers can be skipped with judicial noclip but grout's mansion appears to be too convoluted and require too many in-level triggers for that to work (AFAICT). i guess you could also skip it using console commands, which is the preferred way to handle the haunted hotel. the thing about that level is that it's clearly extremely deliberate in its layout and pacing; it's one of the earliest levels in the game and it's too elaborate in its design to be a result of hasty slapdash crunch work like the hallowbrook hotel. it is very deliberately a big action adventure platformer level where you wail on dozens of the same two enemy types while solving puzzles. of course, i wasn't on the troika team so i can't say for sure what factors went into the level design.

the combat is deeply unsatisfying, especially if you want to use guns. even the random human thugs you fight time and again take bullets to the face like it's nothing. in addition, almost all of the gun-wielding enemies in the game use the braddock/mac 10, so the other firearms are practically unusable without spending most of your dollars on ammunition. in my malk gun run i was regularly flat broke, in my current nos melee run i have thousands of dollars i don't need or use. every encounter comes down to running up to dudes and left-clicking on them until they're dead.

the single-shot rifle may as well not exist in this game, considering the majority of levels are boxy corridors with enemies who fight at melee range. it's most relevant in the fight against bach where it reveals itself to be kind of shit and difficult to use.

it's a shame that the unique haven options for the nosferatu and tremere lines don't open up until waaay late in the game. like, nosferatu can't get their haven until chinatown at the earliest, tremere can't get their haven until the fucking gargoyle quest.

i hate the stupid head-on-arms tzimisce monsters they have never not jumpscared me no matter how many times i play.

the plus patch now has this whole beckett sidequest where you're looking for his buddy who was snooping around after you. you figure out there's a lasombra involved, you go down to the public library where there is a huge evil anti-cathedral which becomes the boss fight arena against the unnamed lasombra. it's...cute. the voice-acting is notably worse and of a worse audio quality but that's to be expected. it's basically a breadcrumb trail leading up to an underwhelming boss fight, which actually makes it a pretty good fit for the game. the parting joke in the form of one last tzimisce monster that rides up the library elevator to deliver a final jumpscare was very amusing and really demonstrates how much the unofficial patch as a whole is a labour of love.

the treatment of women in this game really is phenomenally terrible. the majority of female npcs are disposable, interchangeable and scantily-clad sex workers. there is a lengthy series of fetchquests where you track down random bric-a-brac in exchange for salacious posters of the female named NPCs, inexplicably including ming xiao. it's hard to imagine this game being released with this content today. this is a good thing.

you can definitely feel the game closing up around you when you get to chinatown. chinatown feels like a smaller area, has no sidequests that take you to big secondary locations, doesn't even have a nightclub worth going to. it doesn't feel like the kuei-jin are pulling the strings behind the scenes, it feels like there's one kuei-jin who hangs out in a temple.

i was surprised how easy it was to navigate above ground as a nosferatu. it would have been cooler if the designer committed harder to making nos life untenable, but that's another 'if only' to throw on the pile.

the game is at its funniest when it's doing the GTA thing of like, everything is a caricature of a real world thing with its worst traits exaggerated, which is also when the world of darkness is at its most interesting. the ads on the radio are vapid and nonsensical. a billboard promoting a politician depicts him holding puppies. gangs trade gunfire in the CBD. there's a massive multi-level snuff film porn studio underneath an internet cafe on the main street of hollywood because of course there is. everything is dirty, everything is grimy, everything is sinister, everything is falling apart.

the game most succeeds at communicating atmosphere. there are moments in the game that i truly love that capture the singular feeling of walking down an empty street at night. not like, feeling threatened. the feeling of being alone in a place of serenity and stillness.