#honestly i think rivals bring out some of my best roleplaying

[uflucia]

hello! a quick word of warning before i unravel the mess below: i haven't roleplayed, or well, written anything in a creative capacity in a while, so please bear with me as i try and navigate my way around. that being said, i'm still really excited and eager to write with you all, so here are some bullets on lucia von eleyver below the cut! also leaving a link here to her about page, so feel free to check that out for a more detailed insight into my muse!

backstory:

born as the younger twin to the noble house of eleyver, it seemed like she was forever destined to be her brother's shadow. baron von eleyver was delighted to welcome his son & heir into the world, but with regards to his daughter... think, quote daisy buchanan, 'and i hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.'

her brother was the golden boy in every sense of the word - gifted and good, lucien was beloved by all he came across. long story short, he outshone lucia in every single aspect of their lives and continued to do so until (spoiler alert) his death.

this gap between them only grew more apparent as they began to receive training aged seven - in both magic and warfare. eleyver is a city that prides itself on its light magic users rivaled only by those in ganggyn, and naturally, the barons of the city have been light magic users too.

lucia's progress with light magic was virtually non-existent, and her father eventually decided that... well, if lessons with the most expensive tutors weren't helping, then maybe she needed a more practical... approach to learning.

tw: child abuse. this new form of 'training' essentially involved locking lucia up in a dark cellar in the heart of the monastery, caning her, then leaving her alone to find a way to heal herself.

honestly?? you might ask how her mother let this happen. baroness von eleyver was a kind-hearted, weak-willed woman with a fragile disposition - she had her own nightmares to fight; stuck in a loveless marriage, and suffering from post-partum depression. lucia would always wonder if her mother was genuinely oblivious to her pain and suffering, or whether she knowingly turned a blind eye.

her father's form of 'training' continued for a few years until one fateful day, lucia lashed out at her father unknowingly with weak, dark magic. from that point onwards, all form of training concerning magic stopped - instead, she was groomed to make an advantageous match, and assist her parents in forming diplomatic ties between leaders across deyuis.

everything seems to be smooth sailing until the war against etlia breaks out; she's promised to another gleerium noble for marriage, and her brother is thriving as a top student at lotus academy whilst preparing to step into his role as the next heir in line to inherit the title as baron von eleyver.

lucien leaves for war, adamant that it is his duty to carry out the will of gleil & gleeirum, confident in his belief that he will bring glory, and return home. he does return home at the end of the war - in a casket.

a year after her brother's death, and lucia's tentative engagement has now been set in stone. her mother is unreachable in her grief over the loss of her son, and her father is contemptuous in his disappointment and outrage that his pride & joy was killed by rebel etlian forces. lucia is... lost, and desperately lonely.

possible plot prompts:

someone she met as a child during their visit to eleyver, and noticed that she was injured. the encounter was memorable to her because she'd never had her injuries tended to before, and to have such warm attention & care from a stranger, no less, when she couldn't expect it from her family was... odd, but not unpleasant. they meet again many years later, and in a way, some things haven't changed.

someone who was involved with her late brother, lucien. maybe someone who used to be his closest friend/advisor/lover? lucia finds herself seeking them out frequently - she's not sure whether it's because they're the only person who will willingly discuss lucien with her, or whether it's something else, but either way, she finds herself depending on this newfound friendship more than is probably healthy.

someone she meets on a diplomatic mission to another country with her parents. during discussions, it's evident that they don't exactly see eye to eye - cue rivalry, heated debates behind glasses of champagne, petty acts of revenge like stepping on each others' shoes during a dance, etc.

to be added!

[bronanlynch]

beam saber recap time: an ex-osha inspector and an ex-mech sports athlete walk into a secret underground bunker full of scientists who hate each other and now they’re all snowed in together! what happens next will shock you!

(technically a christmas episode, depending on how you define christmas episodes)

starting off strong with kay @girlfriendsofthegalaxy saying concerning sentences to me: “I’ve been playing red dead redemption so I’ve been looking up a lot of pinkerton manuals about union busting” “I love where this is going” “don’t worry about”

“unions?? in my god-fearing underground base??? it’s more likely than you think”

accidentally gave an npc a slightly stronger version of my new jersey accent, which I guess is fair considering they’re an archaeologist who’s trying to unionize so it that not just a self-insert oc at this point

zan @duckswithwings: “that’s my secret, cap, I’ve always been from new jersey”

reappearance of the artist formerly known as hawthorne march aka ballad imperative aka herculine vane

v bought her silence by asking her out on a date. love this awkward fraught spy romance we’ve got going on here

a very fun conversation between v and her rival, holliday rue. I love playing holliday she’s so awful. I didn’t transcribe everything we said but. some highlights

Holliday: “We need to talk”

V: “do we, what do we need to talk about”

Holliday: “I think it will be relevant to your interests”

V: “Relevant to my interests, right, because you know so much about those”

Holliday: “is your continued self-preservation not still relevant to your interests?”

(some stuff that I didn’t transcribe because I started paraphrasing, holliday is threatening to tell someone that v’s been doing shit she’s not supposed to, and saying that she knows v’s up to something, at some point v says “and yeah I am up to things, because I’m a spy”)

V: “I thought you were smarter than to threaten a spy with a gun, my expectations for you were low, the bar was on the ground, but now it’s in the bunker we’re in”

Holliday: “valentine, darling, I thought you were smarter than to assume that I don’t have a gun”

V: “you might have a gun but do you have a bulletproof vest”

Holliday: “think about this sensibly, if you were to shoot me in a crowded room, imagine how that would look”

helpful aside from zan suggesting that v doesn’t need to shoot her and can just stab her with a poison volt meter

kay: “How do I give my rival food poisoning”

V: “Only one of us is a dedicated decorated civil servant (I’m lying, they don’t give spies medals)”

Holliday: “and yet only one of us was forced to resign in disgrace”

the other fun thing abt that conversation is that while v is having a miserable awful time, indigo is arranging a threesome in the background because they’re snowed in and he’s gonna live his best tropiest life

I think this was a mission where I did a little bit too much prep and had things a little too complicated in my notes but I like how it turned out and like. which parts of my planning I decided to keep

especially happy with how some of the stuff with hawthorne/herculine turned out, and the part about her helping some other spies defect from the empire as a way of showing the party one potential way out for them

and then also managing to include some stuff that I wasn’t sure how to fit in until indigo started flirting with some of the people who were defecting, so now he knows that some of them want to join the cirque du soldat, the independent squad his twin belongs to

my other fave moment as a gm this session was when I said that a certain npc would probably join another faction instead of going independent, and I have in my notes that it’s because she likes belonging to a military hierarchy, and before I said that zan said “yeah, makes sense, she seems like she likes the structure” which. love when I can characterize relatively minor npcs well enough that my players pick up on what their motivations are

zan made sure to establish that indigo still had the orb in his pocket during any and all seducing he was doing, leading kay to call him a nevernude and me to say the horrible sentence “instead of leave room for jesus, leave room for the orb”

indigo installed the orb into his mech and then bonded with it like he’s the protagonist of a horse girl movie

my game mechanics answer to what having a sentient orb installed into your mech does was “a mech can make a move at any time”

indigo took one of his several boyfriends on a date

zan: “Have I learned anything about Dr. Boyfriend” me: “yeah his name maybe”

v is having trouble buying a house because her credit score is bad because she’s a spy who lives on a secret base and legally doesn’t exist

zan and I kept saying a distorbance in the forbce and kay made increasingly distressed noises, sorry kay I need to say at least one cursed thing per session it’s how I reduce my stress

[tema-makes-art-sometimes]

002 | germano?

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE

002 | send me a ship and I will tell you:

when I started shipping it.

No idea but it was a long ass fuck time ago. Liked it for years but didn’t really start enjoying it until I started writing Romano myself.

my thoughts:

This ship makes me so genuinely happy man. I know GerCanMano is my flag ship but I love Germano just as much and I at least have a few crumbs of content for them instead of the other which has none. Germano just like-- Seeing Romano in a healthy relationship and seeing Germany happy makes me happy.

What makes me happy about them:

I’m not one for slow burns all the time but Germano to me is one of those slow burn romances I really enjoy. Romano is a sassy and salty flirtatious gentleman who keeps measuring himself up to the big broad and awkward-but-gold-at-heart class president who doesn't understand why the guy gets so upset around him and tries his best to remedy the smaller man’s anger.

The two just slowly developing, starting as rivals with Romano wanting the attention from his brother that Germany gets (and possibly the smallest bit of envy about measuring himself up to ger in macho-ness) and Germany just wanting to understand Romano and just like- how he ticks. Them slowly bonding over the simple things, realizing they both love mechanics and gardening and cooking. Romano being impressed at Germany’s baking (bonus points if say Vene has been bringing home baked goods for ages and he thought they were just from a bakery Vene liked but it was just Ger trying to get rid of the food hes stress baking) and Romano getting to show off his cooking skills. Romano feeling a bit of pride when he makes Germany laugh at some shitty joke or snarky comeback, he just hears that little wheeze or chuckle under Germany’s breath and knows he did that.

Romano having a whole I wont say I'm in love crisis when he realizes hes falling for Germany because sure hes cute and all but like what no. My Romano is very flirtatious but emotionally withdrawn he loves to flirt around but he doesn't actually think about long term relations cause he never expects people to care about him that way so falling for Ger throws him for a loop. But he knows he has to make some decision on it because he can’t get Germany out of his mind but the thought of Germany saying no scares him more than anything else ever has and the thought of breaking Germany's heart makes him more angry than he thought he’d ever feel

Meanwhile Germany is a mess because he has no idea what hes doing all he knows is that Romano’s smile makes him melt and every time he thinks of the future he thinks about the two of them passing tools to each other over the hood of a car and kneading foccacia together and hes doing all of the research he can to try and perfectly convey how he feels and it only works when he for once throws out his plan and just speaks from his heart and stops over thinking everything. And its wholesome and personal and cute and Romano starts crying halfway through which freaks Germany out cause he doesn't want to force anything and oh god did i make you uncomfortable but before he can apologize and backpedal Romano just grabs him by the shirt and pulls him down into a smooch and for once in his life Roma doesn't instinctively jump and when someone reaches out to hug him.

What makes me sad about them:

That they get sidelined for other ships and that people cannot have Germany or Romano exist in a narrative without Veneziano having something to do with it.

Things done in fanfic that annoys me:

People assuming Germany and Romano would be abusive with one another because Romano acts snappy and dismissive around him when in reality he does the same exact behavior to literally everyone else; America, Spain etc. But Germany is the one that’s abusive, and not the others. Germany’s never been shown to hate Romano, confused and rolling his eyes at his insults sure but never hatred.

A lot of people take this in the direction that they hate or abuse each other or worse, like Germany would cheat and use both brothers. Which is just not true, let alone Romano is too much of a blunt mother fucker to let it happen. He wouldn’t take that. Being used or measured second to his brother is so common to him you think he would just lay down and let that happen? No. And Germany isn’t the sleep around without a care or being in a relationship with two people because he can’t decide which he likes more type the guys a romance moron he doesn’t know how to date one man let alone commit adultery.

Which sucks because things like the chauffeur strips show that Romano and Germany are on at least amicable if not friendly terms, Romano is just being Romano, he does the same pissy but nice energy that he does to Spain and America to Germany. And there’s so much there that could be played with, of Romano being reassured by Germany that he’s not this evil bad boy in fact his brother can be worse than he is, and Germany would know Vene has been attached to his side for ages he would know Vene at his worse. Romano showing off to Germany, impressing him that yes Romano can in fact work hard when he wants to and feels inclined to. Which would gain him respect from Germany because he’s so used to doing it himself it’s always a pleasant surprise when people help him or don’t leave him to do everything.

But often in fics this is squandered for the whole ‘Germany’s married to Vene but he’s in love with Romano oh no conflict drama’ and they never make him choose. Or worse he has him two time one and then the other which just isn’t even fucking in character. 90% of the fics I’ve found on AO3 have the under current of how does their relationship effect Vene, how does Vene feel about it or how is he involved and it’s so stupid. It’s only ever done with Romano, never to Vene, Romano is always treated like an extra or an asset to Veneziano and its never the other way around. People don’t write Gerita fics and have the whole story about how Romano feels about it.

Germany’s feelings toward Vene can easily be stated in that ‘he’s just my friend’ it’s so simple but instead often its paragraphs on paragraphs of Germany grappling with his feelings for both and I’m just not interested. If I wanted to read about Germany’s feelings toward Italy, I’d read a Gerita fanfiction. Also you can’t tell me that if Vene found out about the two being interested or even one of them being interested in the other he wouldn’t start playing matchmaker he absolutely would. Hell if you want that “conflict” have Vene be jealous he’s petty enough to do that!

I’m willing to take the L on this and admit I just have higher standards, but I just want a fic that has them in a relationship from the start or they build up to it but not have the fic end the moment they get together or have their first date. One that doesn’t focus on a side plot about Vene and Germany’s feelings toward Vene. Where they just get to be wholesome together, piece their feelings apart together, and develop their love for each other together.

TLDR: I’m very salty about Germano getting the short end of the stick and want to see more sweet domestic germano.

Things I look for in fanfic:

For it to exist and for it not to be a vector to talk about Veneziano’s opinions on their relationship. I just want wholesome content of Germany and Romano building a relationship or a life together, AU or Canonverse wise. The cute dates, working on cars together, gardening, baking and cooking-- Germany playing piano or flute while Romano sings. Them dancing together. Romano taking Germany out to tour and sight see. Romano forcing Germany to cuddle with him in front of the fireplace if they go up during winter to his place cause he hates the cold and his block of a boyfriend is very warm.

My happily ever after for them:

I don’t really think about happily ever afters for them cause as nations their lives move on, they can’t really have kids but they can live together, work together, love together and honestly that’s enough for me.

My kinks:

These will be below the cut, because of ns//fw mentions.

(general sex discussion, bd//m discussion, toys and other such ns//fw things.)

Romano is a bottom little pillow princess but despite that he has the most control in the bedroom. Germany doesn’t lack interest but when it comes to instigation it’s fewer and far between, Romano has more of a sex drive than him. Germany’s more into kinks than Romano, but he has trouble being confident enough to do it so Romano is often baiting him into it. He’s a brat who wants to be tamed and Germany doesn’t mind Romano being rough with him and vice versa.

Romano’s more used to rough and tumble, so when Germany is very slow soft and sincere he gets flustered really fast and can fall apart a lot quicker. He also will cry when Germany compliments him too much early in the relationship. They have a lot of safe words at Germany’s request so if either of them get too overwhelmed they have a safe out and will just vibe and cuddle until the other feels better enough to continue.

Romano will give Germany is rope bunny fantasies every once and a while and tie him up, he’s not into much more than handcuffs and collars but Germany enjoys it so he doesn’t mind. He loves when he can convince Germany into roleplay and let Germany get into a more confident ‘character’. His favorite things are bites and blowjobs. Leaving Germany covered in red marks and scratches is his favorite and he loves the rare sight of Germany squirming under him.

Germany loves to body worship Romano, and messages all of the messages. Romano doesn’t like Germany dragging it out but sometimes he can’t help himself cause he just loves how pretty Romano his and he wants to just touch him all over. He loves when Romano plays with his hair (at least in the bedroom), and since Romano is way more vocal than he is he loves coaxing little sounds out of him through different touches and kisses.

[vcinhyeon]

hello everyone! my name is summer and I am super excited to be apart of this roleplay with everyone. i am bringing you inhyeon aka scarlet, the hitwoman for the night bloods. she’s got an old timey way of talking and absolutely thinks that she is better than you. she’s a sharp shooter and can cut to the bone with her words alone but she’s not all bad, at least if you’re close to her. I don’t have her plots page done just yet (it’s in the process) but you can find her dossier and her background if you want to get a better understanding of who she is. 

the cut is the shortened version of her history if you don’t feel like reading a lot as well as some of the most bare bones plot you have ever seen. anyway, I’m looking forward to writing with each and every single one of you and if you’re interested in getting some connections / plots with me and my little elf, feel free to like this post and I’ll come to you.

BACKGROUND

tw: blood, murder, abuse, gang shit

so her parents were actually murdered when she was about 10 or so and she was taken by an unknown vampire into an organization where they basically threw her and 19 others together to learn how to be assassins

she learned really quickly not to distinguish herself to her peers and was just mediocre at everything so as to not draw attention to herself because when she was 20 they were all basically told that they would have a huge fight to the death melee and the lone survivor would move on (cause you know everyone else was dead)

basically it was everyones mistake to write her off cause she murdered as many as she could in cold blood and was ultimately the only survivor of her class as she had intended all along

from there she basically worked for this organization and quickly became their top assassin. she had a hand in a number of p.olitical assassinations over her long life so far but also just in general. 

about 10 years ago she got her revenge by killing her mentor, all the heads, and anyone important in  her organization for what they inflicted on her and afterwards using a contant with the night bloods she joined their ranks as a hitman. 

now she just does her job but she has no real loyalty to her gang, their reputation and protection was of use to her and thats why she joined at all. she could care less about it, the other gangs, or anything in it because in her mind it doesn’t really pertain to her. she just plays a good girl.

INHYEON AKA SCARLET

so as stated before, she is a mything elf or a high elf so she’s stop traffic in the daylight white, has bloody garnet eyes, and her hair is a pretty lavender so you can clock her species like pretty obviously. she is very small though, stands at about 4′11 (150ish cm)

she has a tendency to observe the weakness of everyone and everything around her just in case she needs to use it for whatever reason. her life as an assassin taught her to always be stronger than her opponents and to her thats....almost everyone. 

she absolutely thinks she’s better than everyone based purely on the fact that she is a mythical elf and also because she has a strong skillset that she relies on (liam neeson from taken anyone?) and she can be dismissive if she thinks she has no need for you

however despite that she can be charming and elegant as well because half of her skill set is being beautiful and charismatic to get people to lower their guards. it just depends on if she thinks that it will work in her favor or not. 

she is fiercely loyal to those that she sees value and friendship in. like go to the end of the worlds to protect you, kill all who oppose you, happy to fuck someone up if they look at you wrong fierce. there are very few bonds she cherishes and when she does? well, lets just say your enemy is her enemy. 

POTENTIAL PLOTS

honestly without going into detail because I can’t and I’m stupid:

female best friend / male best friend

rivals

first love

crushes (of any kind)

fwb

enemies with benefits

just anything antagonistic ever, honestly

someone she’s adopted as her psuedo-child

someone she’s adopted as her pseudo-siblings

someone who on sight means on sight

someone on her payroll (helps her out of things)

someone who knew her prior to her joining the gang as an assassin

the person who got her into the night bloods

[stompsite]

So I Played FFXV

In most of my articles, I start out by presenting a problem. Maybe a lot of gamers hate zombies, and I want to write about a zombie game I love, so I present the problem of the zombie game, explaining in detail why I’m sympathetic to the concerns of people who hate zombie games, before explaining how the zombie game I love gets around that problem.

I do this because we’re rarely wrong about our feelings, but we’re often wrong about why. If I wrote “here’s a good zombie game,” no one would want to read that if they don’t like zombie games. By writing “this is why zombie games bore you and here’s how zombie games can excite you,” I appeal to a broader audience.

This brings me to Final Fantasy XV, a game one of my backers asked me to cover.

Good games writing often happens when an expert explains the ins and outs of a genre they know well to an audience they assume are quite intelligent but aren’t as familiar with the subject as they are. When I wrote about walking sims last year, I sat down and I went “okay, a lot of you are bored with walking sims. Why is that?” My editor’s boss didn’t seem to like it that much, insisting that the walking sim didn’t need any defending (even though The Chinese Room, developers of walking sims, had just shut down, and Tacoma, a walking sim with magazine covers, had sold a mere 10,000 copies). But I think people have strong feelings about things and they want to understand those feelings, so having an expert help them out without talking down to them is wonderful.

A little bit of history.

I may be an expert on video games, but I am most assuredly not an expert on JRPGs.

Unlike most people, I didn’t grow up with video game consoles. I saw a meme posted the other day saying “you can’t argue with me about games unless your first console was a Genesis or NES.” Mine was an Xbox 360, but I’ve been playing computer games for a great deal longer. Since Japan didn’t make many computer games (oh, sure, Final Fantasy VII was developed for Windows 95, but I don’t recall seeing it amidst the Diablo 2, Planescape Torment, and Half-Life boxes at CompUSA back in the day), JRPGs were never really a part of my gaming diet.

It’s not to say that JRPGs weren’t appealing. When my wisdom teeth were pulled, my mom brought our little 13” portable TV into my room and let me watch movies. I stumbled upon UHF channel 53, which broadcast a pirated version of TechTV, which was, at the time, airing Anime Unleashed, a block of awesome anime shows like Last Exile and Crest of the Stars. Most anime I’d seen up to that point was the stuff we got on kid’s shows, like Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokemon. Digimon aside, most of it was garbage. Watching Boogiepop Phantom or Serial Experiments Lain during late nights on this stupid little black and white TV was something else entirely.

Since then, I’ve loved good anime aesthetics, so you’d think that JRPGs would be my jam. I thought so too, which is why I started talking to friends about them, but every time I did, my friends would talk about what confusing bullshit they were--especially, at the time, Final Fantasy X. “...but Final Fantasy VIII is better!” they’d tell me, and of course I’d ask them about that, and they’d tell me even more confusing bullshit. Plus, the whole turn-based gameplay thing was a huge turnoff. I got into other games, like Age of Empires and Unreal Tournament. They were more interesting. Games like Max Payne had way better stories than Final Fantasy VIII, that’s for sure.

Once, someone got me into Earthbound on an emulator, and I fell in love with it, until someone kidnapped zippy--I think she has a ‘real’ canon name but I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to know--and I couldn’t beat any of the fights because I didn’t understand the concept of grinding. Over the years, I tried other JRPGs, because the premise and the art sounded cool, but I bounced off the gameplay or the presentation time and time again. The closest I got to loving a JRPG was Dragon’s Dogma, and that was more of an open world sandbox game than any kind of RPG.

This brings me to another point.

JRPGs aren’t RPGs.

People usually protest when I make this point. Either I’m wrong or it doesn’t matter, they say, but I think it does matter because I’m a game designer, and understanding the specifics of genre is a really useful skill for a game designer to have. When I look at the JRPG, I see a lot of very specific elements that make them stand apart. If I say “I want to make an RPG,” chances are, I will not make something like a JRPG. If I say “I want to make a JRPG,” I will. The mechanics are distinct and interesting and worth examining on their own; no JRPG in existence could ever stand up to even a half-decent RPG if we judged it by RPG terms. The roleplaying just isn’t there.

Judging JRPGs by their own standards lets us see these wonderful games for what they really are. JRPGs are not RPGs from Japan. They’re not even RPGs. Once, when I made this argument, a guy fought back by arguing that a game wasn’t an RPG unless it had a party (Witcher 3 doesn’t), a bestiary (pretty sure New Vegas hasn’t got one), was turn-based (quick, someone tell Dragon Age!), and had a linear narrative (hahahahahahaha!).

“But you’re playing a role!”

Playing a role means following a script, which is what you do in any game without choice and consequence. Roleplay is a specific kind of improvisational acting that’s about creating and defining your relationship with the world around you. Dragon Age: Origins is a roleplaying game: you can be a dwarf commoner or a human noble or whatever, and your various choices will have major impacts on your relationships. You can define the person that you are. They are tabula rasa.

In every JRPG I’ve ever seen, you are a specific character with a specific personality, and while you may have some choices--Noctis in FFXV can choose to let the crew pull over and take a group photo whenever Prompto asks him too--those choices have little impact on the overall narrative or Noctis’ relationships with the characters around him. Lunafreya will always love him, Gladiolus will always get mad at him when Ignis loses his vision, etc.

Different kinds of games.

Pillars of Eternity, which isn’t a great game, but one I enjoyed well enough, let me set my character’s stats prior to playing the game. I defined my character as a rogue with great mechanical skills and dexterity. In Final Fantasy XV, when you level up… you can’t really control how your character’s stats changed.

None of this is bad! It’s just different, like the difference between a third person shooter and a first person shooter. First person shooting lets you focus on the environment and your interactions with it, but third person shooters tend to focus on your character. They have their own unique strengths. You can’t judge a first person shooter by third person standards and vice versa. The same is true with JRPGs and RPGs. They are different games. And that’s good.

The Game:

When it comes to Final Fantasy XV, this is the foundation I have. I’m vaguely turned off by all the stories I’ve heard, I love the aesthetics of most of them, and the gameplay is something I feel is wholly distinct from other games.

Final Fantasy XV appealed to me because it had real-time action combat instead of being a heavily menu-focused turn-based affair.

So, here’s the deal: you’re Prompto, a prince, who is on his way to meet the object--and really, she is treated like an object in this game--of his arranged marriage, Lunafreya, who’s the princess of a rival kingdom, I guess? Except the wiki says she’s a captive of Niflheim, but she seems to get along well with her brother, who is in charge of the armies of Niflheim, so… like… yeah, I don’t really know what’s going on there.

The wiki also says she’s the “main heroine” of the game, even though she barely has any screen time at all. She has magical powers that cures people of some weird plague that’s making nights last longer, except that the nights are still getting longer and more people are succumbing to the plague, so she’s really bad at her job.

Honestly, she’s just there to look pretty and say things like “Noct, please hurry.” Then she dies. Then one time her ghost shows up and uses force powers to save the crew by removing plot armor that was only put there so she could show up to remove it.

She is not emotionally important to you.

This isn’t like Alan Wake, a game that reveals over time the complex nature of Alan’s relationship and just how wonderful of a person Alice Wake is. In that game, Alan was motivated by guilt, and you, as a player, could connect to him because you got to see all of this unfold. You wanted to help Alan find Alice not because “Alice is Alan’s wife,” but because you saw that these two wonderful, flawed people loved and cared for each other and deserved happiness.

Lunafreya is a pantomime of a love interest, but there’s never any real love there, so there’s no urgency to actually chase her down, no sense of loss when she dies. It’s not all her fault though (I mean, duh, it’s Square’s fault). Noct is equally culpable. He’s just… kinda empty. He’s a shell who occasionally feels things when the script calls for it (ur dad died, be sad, ur gf died, be sad), but who doesn’t feel like a real person. I don’t really care about anything Noct wants. I just kind of do the objectives because they’re what’s next.

I spent my whole life being told that JRPG stories were the best that video games had to offer, and… look, being completely honest here, Final Fantasy XV is the JRPG plot as described to me--incomprehensible, pointless, and horribly paced, doing grandiose things because the developers want to do grandiose things, never earning a second of the awe it expects you to have.

“Yup,” I found myself thinking when I finished it, “this is exactly like every JRPG that has ever been described to me except Earthbound.”

Earthbound is great.

Final Fantasy XV makes the mistake of assuming that because it looks epic, it is epic, but since it earns nothing, it isn’t epic at all. It’s a hodgepodge of ideas. Maybe other JRPGs do a better job, but based on every other JRPG I’ve played, like Xenoblade Chronicles and Suikoden, it’s just not a very compelling game.

So it may surprise you to know that I liked it a great deal.

Brotherhood.

In my film education, we talked a great deal about the idea of the “male as default.” A lot of this is rooted in idiotic Freudian psychology (especially all the Lacan stuff), so it’s as bunk as astrology, even when it sounds good, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater here: all media has a perspective, and most media’s perspective assumes the male perspective as the neutral one.

American film does this too: it assumes everything is seen through American eyes. Most Hollywood movies are very, very American-as-default things, but that doesn’t mean they’re American movies. I’m not just talking geography, I’m talking assumptions about customs, camera angles, lighting, and so on. Russian film (European films too, but especially Russian film) tends to focus on specific body parts, using juxtaposition in editing to create specific senses about things. American films tend to favor wider shots, creating those same moods through things like motion and staging.

A film from another country can feel like it came from a different mind than the Hollywood monolith…

...and yet…

...there are very few genuinely American films out there. This is partly because most American films are built for export to other countries, so rather than focusing on specifically American subject matter, they focus on more universal things like drama and romance. Since America is so good at exporting American film, and many other cultures imitate the stylings of American films (because learning from successful things is how you succeed, after all), we end up with a very dominant American culture that has very little to actually say about America. In fact, lots of what America is tends to get lost in the shuffle.

If you’re lucky, you get filmmakers like Terrence Malick, who make films that are really about America and being American, but the significance of this is lost because people look at it and go “why do you make American films? All films are American!” But there is something specific there. Something interesting.

Maleness is the same way. It’s the assumed default in a lot of narratives, but because of this, very little attention is given to it. I once walked into the USAF museum while the XB-70 Valkyrie was in one of the hangars and didn’t see it because it was so big I thought it was the ceiling. Maleness in fiction is like that; it’s rarely examined closely because it’s too busy being big.

Here are two men. They are friends. The end.

We rarely look at how men bond, how they perceive each other, how they fight, how they talk and think because we’re too busy writing stories about the basic, empty characters who travel from point A to point B and the adventures they have along the way.

Oh, sure, sometimes you have people interrogating maleness, but they’re really only doing it to say “look what’s bad about being a man,” because they assume that male-as-default means we already see male-as-good, when really, male-as-default is male-as-nonspecifity. The beauty of maleness is rarely ever explored.

Somehow, despite all its narrative shortcomings, Final Fantasy XV excels at its understanding of maleness.

I think a big part of this is the road trip nature of the game. Sure, they’re ostensibly on the run and simultaneously on their way to a wedding, but that doesn’t prevent The Boys from having a good time. Each boy has a specific personality that is brought out in interesting ways; Ignis cares a stickler for safety and rules, Prompto is energetic and mischievous, Gladiolus is strong and confident and protective of those who are not. Noctis is basically an empty shell, but when he’s interacting with The Boys, there are still good moments to be found.

As you drive through the world, fighting monsters and helping friends, you learn more about these boys and the things they care about. Gladiolus is self-conscious about seeming too caring, but he cares so deeply, especially about his little sister Iris. He recognizes her crush on Noctis and even tricks Noctis into giving her flowers, knowing it would make Iris’ day. Prompto’s lower-class upbringing means he’s tremendously insecure about his relationship with the other boys. They’re not aware of how awkward he feels in the presence of people much wealthier and more important than he is, and when he makes it known, they do everything they can to assure him that he’s their brother and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

There’s something else that I’ve never been able to put into words. It’s a feeling I have occasionally, and one I cherish. When interacting with most men, there’s a degree of camaraderie, like, hey, we’re all on the same team, we’re cheering alongside each other, that kind of thing. There’s a whole second language that men are only capable of employing with other men that’s completely nonverbal, but not all men are comfortable using it with each other right away.

There comes a point in a male relationship where everything just sort of clicks. That guy over there is just a man you know, but that guy over there, you and him are mates and you’d fuckin die for each other if you had to. When you do things together, there’s a sense of rightness and appropriateness to it all. If your best friend asks you to help him carry some groceries in from the car, it’s different than if you help your next door neighbor who you don’t really know all that well.

I’m sure other, better writers have written about this sense of brotherhood. When I’m playing Destiny with a matchmade team and we roll an enemy squad into a mercy rule defeat, it feels good. When my friends and I trigger the mercy rule against the same thing, it’s like, heck yeah, these are the men who mean the most to me in this fuckin world and I am so lucky to have them with me.

Final Fantasy XV does its darndest to put this in the mechanics. The boys res each other during battle. They all have unique combo moves that play off each other. The battle barks are all designed to make you feel like… hell yeah, these are my bros, we kick ass together.

How many games just have two dudes talkin about dude things together? How many games are like “yeah, bro, let’s go running in the sand and whoever outruns the other is the winner!” How many games get that great banter is affectionate? How many games are willing to have a bunch of dudes who love each other and will die for each other whose relationships deteriorate over time but they come back from them stronger than ever?

There are a lot of stories about men in games, but very few stories about being a man.

Final Fantasy XV might be the best of ‘em.

And it’s still… dumb and flawed at times. I think I would’ve liked a more interesting protagonist and central conflict. I think the game is at its best when you’re cruising around a big, open world, humming about chocobos. I think Square had the opportunity to make a huge, incredible game about an adventure and they wasted it on a game that gets progressively linear (in a bad way) over time. I mentally checked out by the end of the game. I didn’t care that some random giant dude showed up, I beat the shit out of him, and then I had to fight a couple more dudes just like him, and then after beating them into submission too… we, uh, killed the guy who was stalking us the whole game? Why would I connect with random giant ghost kings when I spent the entire game playing alongside my brothers? Instead they get knocked out and fall asleep on the floor and I have the ending I was always destined to have.

Man, fuck destiny.

The game is great when it’s being personal, but it sucks when it’s trying to do all this other stuff. There are no affectionate moments between Noctis and Lunafreya. Mister Badguy, whose name I forgot and don’t feel like looking up because fuck that guy, he was boring, has to exposit his backstory (i was gonna be king but then i didn’t get to be king so i decided to have my revenge in like 2000 years’ time! mwahahaha!!! here is my entire personal history!) instead of just being interesting on a dramatic level.

It’s bad when it’s trying to be a grandiose RPG. It’s great when it’s doing something I can’t think of any other game doing before. I think you should play the first 8 or 9 chapters of the game. I think everyone should. That’s where the fun lies.

What about the gameplay?

The gameplay is kind of neat. Some stuff doesn’t feel nearly as good as other modern open-world games (like, uh, driving, which is kinda terrible and inconsistent about when it lets you drive, and interrupts your drive in really annoying ways at night, but the attention given to things like “needing to fill up with gas” is really cool).

Other stuff is clearly channeling How JRPGs Work, which is cool. The way the game gives you XP or deals with magic and abilities feels Very Classically JRPG. But it’s all wrapped up in a real-time action game that’s nowhere near as satisfying as Dragon’s Dogma or Ninja Gaiden or something. I’m not saying it has to be, but holding down a button and watching your character autoattack isn’t very fun. Zipping around with your teleport power is totally awesome though.

Magic is super strong and I probably should’ve used it more, but I was never really in love with crafting it. The leveling grid is kinda cool, but I have no idea how, when I did nearly every quest in the game, someone is supposed to unlock some of those skills. It just doesn’t seem possible considering the game’s content.

Quest design isn’t great; most of it’s just random fetch quests. The open world itself is nice most of the time, especially when you have a chocobo, but because the game’s so invested in making you feel like you’re on a road trip, you end up doing a lot of driving which a more generous fast travel system would have avoided, which means you end up seeing a lot of the same places over and over again, which kinda kills the whole road trip vibe.

And So it Ends.

There’s DLC. I never did that. I kinda soured on the whole epic journey by the end because of how boring the solo stuff was, and the DLC appears to be all solo stuff. Sorry, but the overall narrative and the gameplay just isn’t there. That’s not what makes FFXV good. The camaraderie is. The vibes are. Listening to the sizzle of ignis’ cooking or watching a huge monster fly in from above. There are so many incredible moments in this game. It’s too bad the narrative and the combat couldn’t keep up.

I think FFXV benefits and suffers from being a big 3D real-time game. A lot of classic JRPGs are 2D affairs where you have to communicate everything purely through text boxes. FFXV has the benefit of voice and physical performance, adding a huge layer of nuance and personality to its characters, their wants, and needs. But because it’s a big, bombastic 3D game, it can’t help itself, and wastes time with boring, endless set pieces that look cool but do little else.

Could I recommend it? I dunno.

But it kinda makes me want to try other JRPGs, even though there’s really nothing else like it out there.

[cntcrtainmcnt-blog]

INTRODUCING…. me.

Yoyoyyoyoyoyo I’m Val, if you didn’t know yet, 22, and I go by she/her pronouns. I live in Québec aka I’m a French speaker and I’m in the EST timezone. As for triggers and suc, I don’t really have any? There are things that make me uncomfortable but I just... deal with it. Although incest and rape are big nonos, but I do believe no one rps that anymore. And the only thing I refuse to do is writing smut. It makes me hella uncomfortable so please please if our characters do it, let’s just time skip/fade to black, kay?

INTRODUCING…. the muses.

Okay sorry for the long list, and you B E T there’s more I want abcelqvq

AILEEN CARTER, alexandra daddario, ( 30 ) + the other woman by lana del rey.

ANDREI PETRAN, sebastian stan, ( 31 ) + alabama song by the doors.

CAROLINA TANNER, freya mavor, ( 22 ) + air balloon by tlily allen.

CASSIOPÉE “CASSIE” MONAGHAN, lily collins, ( 24 ) + boys by charli xcx.

CHRISTELLE “CHRIS” PATTERSON, cara delevingne, ( 25 ) + s. l. u. t. by bea miller.

DAVID “DAVEY” MORENO, ricardo hoyos, ( 21 ) + monster by imagine dragons.

ELLIOTT WHITLEY, luke bilyk, ( 23 ) + heartbreaker by pat benatar.

ETHAN CLARKE, gregg sulkin, ( 24 ) + animal i have become by three days grace.

ISABELLA PEREZ, becky g, ( 19 ) + mother mother by the veronicas.

JACOB DUNN, michael b jordan, ( 29 ) + rest of us by simple plan.

KIERAN DOYLE, aidan turner, ( 33 ) + i’m a wanted man by royal deluxe.

LAVINIA DUVAL, elle fanning, ( 20 ) + prom queen by molly kate kestner.

MAUREEN AVERY, emeraude toubia, ( 25 ) + sweeter place by svrcina.

MELODY THORNE, olivia taylor-dudley, ( 28 ) + house of the rising sun by lauren o’connell.

OLIVIA TRAVERS, marie avgeropoulos, ( 26 ) + fight like a girl by zolita.

ROSALIE THORNE, olivia scriven, ( 20 ) + paint it black by hidden citizen.

SKYLER FIELDS, holland roden, ( 27 ) + radio silence by alyssa reid.

WILFRED OLLYSTER, dean geyer, ( 28 ) + carmen by lana del rey.

INTRODUCING…. wanted plots.

I... honestly want everything just hmu with all them plots like... please I’ll give angst and fluff, romantic and platonic and familial(as long as it’s possible) I just want them all. As for what I like... just gonna list a few ones: secret relationships, fake relationships, unlikely friends, childhood sweethearts who promised to marry but then got separated, rivals(with benefits as well is very good), drinking buddies, party buddies, and please someone come fuck me up with a bonnie and clyde kinda plot I’ve been dYING for one since forever.

INTRODUCING…. the favorites.

I’m a freaking Libra and I’m indecisive af so this is gonna be short. Because I can never remember favorites and also they keep changing.

FAVORITE MALE FCS TO PLAY INCLUDE Sebastian Stan, Cody Christian, Jack Falahee, Alexander Koch, Dacre Montgomery, Nicholas Hoult, and that’s about it because my muse for males is always smaller tbfh.

FAVORITE FEMALE FCS TO PLAY INCLUDE Freya Mavor, Kylie Bunbury, Camila Mendes, Emeraude Toubia, Sarah Hyland, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Margot Robbie, Lily Collins, Sophie Turner and probably a bunch of others I forgot.

FAVORITE CS TO PLAY AGAINST I don’t really have I’ll roll with everyone unless they trigger me.

FAVORITE FRANCHISES INCLUDE Star Wars, Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, Pirates of the Caribbean, MCU, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park/World, Alien.

FAVORITE ANIMALS INCLUDE cats, wolves, fishes, lobsters, snakes, lizards.

FAVORITE ANYTHING ELSE I really don’t know how to do it nothing comes to mind tbfh.  I don’t really do favorites so I really can’t think of what else to put there.

INTRODUCING…. future plans.

I don’t really know what I want exactly out of this place, but I know for sure it’s an outlet for me to play new muses and old ones I haven’t been able to in a while. I do know I want CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT for all of my muses, I’m a sucker for that. Like get Andrei out of alcoholism, make Kieran discover he has fucking feelings, have Lavinia feel that gap in her heart, literally e v e r y t h i n g that develops my characters. But I’m really a “go with the flow” kind of girl so we can just plot and write and see where it leads us. And I do have at least like 5 more muses I want to bring in and it’s really damn hard to resist.

INTRODUCING…. why i said fuck it.

I joined because FUCK IT is my new motto. Tbh I’m just done with all those strict activities but with the hypocritical “we know everyone has a life outside of rp” yeah yeah stop lying. It’s just shit how they supposedly know we have a life but give us like 3 days of inactivity and we’re out. Like my work schedule is shit I won’t have time to come on everyday(and yeah I have here but it’s so chill I want to come here every day). Plus, activity limits kinda forces me to write out threads I might not currently have the muse to write and it actually ruins my general muse for the characters and the roleplays. Also, I have some characters(Kieran and Wilfred are examples) that don’t always fit well in any other rps so this place is the best one for writing them. Also I love that there’s no character limit because I always have muse for new characters but then in regular rps, it means I have to drop other characters and it’s... shit.

[utopianparadoxist]

Unifying Myths: Prince/Bard - Royalty

I’m more than a little upset I’m going to have to work these into my Force and Flow essays soon, but I figured I’d write these posts on the Unifying Myths for the Steal and Destroy classes because they’ll help me get my thoughts in order for the Classpect video I’m writing the script for.

(PS: That’ll exist soon! Ideally an easy way to introduce all sorts of newbies to the Classpect system. I’m excited!!)

So let’s talk about the unifying myth for Princes and Bards: That of Royalty. Related terms include aristocracy, nobility, and high blood by association.

I...don’t know why it took me so long to notice this? I guess I got tripped up by the royalty focus on the Fuschias, but I mean, class roleplay is an established thing and the Ancestors, as complex and multifaceted people living in the real world, muddy the water with the multiplicity of symbols they portray all the time. 

Also, both Meenah and Feferi explicitly reject their royalty status and abdicate the crown. So. I really don’t know what was stopping me here. Anyhow, let’s get into it. 

I think this mostly speaks for itself, honestly? Equius attributes Dave’s habit of destroying things to the training Bro--a Prince--gives him. He suggests it makes him nobler than others, and Dave himself likens himself to a King while carrying out the behavior. 

This contextualizes Dave’s habit of destruction during Act 5 as him roleplaying as a Prince, in imitation of Bro. Fittingly given his confused state with regards to his abusive parentage, Dave doesn’t realize that’s what he’s doing or why, but his habit of breaking random stuff is one he mostly drops as he grows out of wanting to imitate Bro on any level (with one notable exception).

If the Royalty classes have a coherent theme, it’s a focus on historical legacy, lines of descent, and inherited destiny. Where other classes draw their interests from fiction, abstract concepts, or their own creative interests, the Royals typically find their biggest interests in the past--that of themselves and of their people.  So Dirk and AR both view themselves as scions of Dave’s legacy.

The Makaras are beholden to their Subjugglator bloodline, and the allegiance to Lord English it represents.  They don’t seem to believe in the cause of the Mirthful Messiahs so much as simply know the inevitable reality of their success well in advance. And why wouldn’t they, with evidence all around them like Doc Scratch, Lil Cal, and Lord English already wandering the Void? 

And while we’re talking about Gamzee, I may as well cover Bard’s link to Royalty. I should note that this is part of a recurring trend with the Classes--one will generally relate to the unifying myth very directly, while the second will come with a host of references and plot beats linking it to the myth indirectly.

So a Witch is a magician by name, while an Heir is revealed as one through the myriad references John gets to wizardry. A Sylph is a kind of fairy by name, but it’s Maids who get described as being “Made of” their Aspect, and so their brand of magic. So on.

In this same respect, while Princes are Royalty manifest by their very name, Bards--though Gamzee--are lifted into the noble circle by implication and continuous reference. 

Gamzee’s allegiance to LE results in the cultural dominance of Subjugglators, both on Alternia and on the Alpha Earth. The Mirthful Executives give us the clearest link to Gamzee, since their rise to horrible, aristocratic power is prophecized well in advance, George Washington describing them as “Salty Bards”.

The relationship between Bards and royalty could actually go back to Hussie’s old adventure Bard Quest, where the Bard’s acquisition of a cod piece much like Gamzee’s earns him the worship and devotion of some random dudes in an alley. So...yeah. Thanks, Hussie. 

The Amporas seem to have two distinct lines of inherited destiny--one related to their Blood, and one related to their Aspect. Their status as scions of the legacy of the Angels sees them as champions of fantasy, belief, and Hope.  It also sets them up as natural rivals to the Makaras, and threats to Lord English.

But both Amporas fail to live up this legacy, and instead of believing in anything fantastical or magical, both stake their self-worth on an unhealthy fixation with their blood color and the presumption that it makes them “Better” than their friends. This, of course, is false and unimportant information, so it’s fitting that it renders them irrelevant and marginal.

It’s also likely deliberate to some extent, since it’s suggested that someone close to Lord English talked Cronus out of his relationship with Magic, and Alternia was all but designed to bring out the worst in Eridan’s entitlement complex and arrogance. 

Since Caliborn had prior experience with the danger of a Hero of Hope, it makes sense he’d want to neutralize the others by prompting them to believe in something darker to believe in.

Which brings us to the arrogance and entitlement the Royalty classes often struggle with--the part of their natures that seems to constitute their greatest challenge before achieving fulfillment and balance.

The concept of High Birth seems to manifest in a sense of inherent superiority for Princes and Bards, and it’s this belief that tends to destroy their ability to make relationships. Both Makaras and both Amporas harbor these intense, megalomaniacal worldviews. 

This, however, is where the best Prince begins to set himself apart. A successful, happy, healthy version of a prince who reaches balance is one who humbles himself, and gets over their sense of arrogant supremacy.

Dirk is actually...pretty close to that already by the point he’s introduced in the comic. Alpha Dirk references this egocentrism as something he definitely struggled with at 13, but 16-year-old Dirk has mostly switched to an intense self-loathing reminiscent of Karkat, with a toxic relationship with a version of himself to boot.

So we can see Dirk as a loose, loose glimpse into what it might look like for Eridan, for example, to chill out after a couple of years--had he gotten the chance. Of course, Dirk was never half as domineering or controlling as Eridan, so this is an unequal comparison, but I think it’s worth noting how their three age difference is meant to influence or readings of the two.

AR/Lil Hal is the version of Dirk that commits most of the abusive/manipulative behavior people usually pin on Alpha Dirk, and fittingly, he’s the one who actually distinguishes himself as Above his friends for most of his narrative.

In AR’s case, he does so on the basis that he is cybernetic and cyber-omniscient, a state he views as superior to being flesh-and-blood, even likening it to an aristocratic position once he’s mixed with Equius.

To swing things back around to Dave’s roleplay, there actually is one final act of destruction in his arc. After talking things out with Dirk and coming to see a version of his Bro as someone with the potential to do good, Dave and Dirk engage in what I can only describe as a 2x roleplay combo, with Dirk serving Dave through his Self and Dave killing Dirk to finish off the Jacks.

I like the sense of inverted symmetry here, and it puts into context why Dave’s attack is a positive thing for him--this moment is about Dave accepting that there can be some good in Dirk’s nature, and being willing to incorporate some of Dirk’s influence into his person at an appropriate time.

By embracing Dirk’s affinity for destruction and giving Dirk the chance to put his fate in someone else’s hands, Dirk can find absolution and Dave can find a coherent understanding of his identity, and Bro’s influence on it.

Anyway that’s about it. I’m glad to finally have coherent myths for Princes/Bard and Thief/Rogue, but we know how these classes work mechanically, so it’s not like they revolutionize my whole understanding of the canon. Feel free to send me asks with your thoughts, but for now...

Keep Rising!

[Patreon] [Hiveswap Discord]

[bookwormguri]

I’m just gonna gush about DnD and my players for a min. Don’t mind me. (There will also be mild bitching because it's not me if I’m not bitching)

So I only started playing DnD a little over a year ago and it was so fun! I honestly had a good time when I started, but little comments from some of the guys (hell, all of the guys) in the group still piss me off when I think about them.

Now, these guys have been playing FAR longer than I have. They know the perfect build for each and every class paired with the optimal race. I, being a new player, did not, and admittedly made some rookie “mistakes.”

I got bitched at because my sorcerer had low Dex and Con, making them VERY easy to hit. (Let’s not mention in that game I got half of the kills, enabled the party to make a sneak attack with a fog spell and was the only one able to read an important plot hook note. But GOD FORBID my stats not all be optimal)

I got told that a certain online DnD game’s rouge was the “perfect rogue” as I played my rogue as the exact opposite of that broody and sullen personality.

I got talked about behind my back because I put “too much of myself into my character” because that actually makes a lick of sense. /s

I thought the games at the time were fun, but looking back now, I never want to play with that group again. I’m not saying their way of playing is bad or wrong, but it’s just not for me. I would have been fine to leave it at that until I found out about the gossiping they did. That told me that they didn’t respect me and my playstyle like I did theirs. They were essentially telling me that my way of having fun is wrong.

So I said fuck them. I decided to DM instead of play. I gathered some good friends and strangers (for all of them it was their first time playing) and ran the oneshot Death House from Curse of Strahd. 

I’m never looking back after that. I may want to play again in the future, but right now, DM-ing is SO much more rewarding to me. As the DM, no one can tell me my fun is wrong because my fun is the player’s fun.

But onto my players: My CoS group is so varied and amazing! The Cleric is so precious (even tho I know the player struggles hardcore to be the Good OneTM). She honestly has carried the team sometimes. More than once we’ve voted her as MVP. She’s sooooo good with the NPCs and has saved the party from having unneeded encounters more than once because of her kindness. 

The Fighter quickly became the impromptu leader, but the player is so good about propping up the others up, remembering their strengths, and giving them their time to shine. She plays the fighter as a gruff bear that really just wants to keep the kids safe. (I’ll never forget how panicked she got trying to catch the Rouge from falling from a third story window)

God the Rouge is something else. I can’t wait to slowly bring out her backstory into the campaign. She’s unhinged in the best way (aka: carrying children’s skeletons in her sack for GOOD REASONS, stealing spellbooks for her mom the Cleric, and wearing a necklace of teeth). She has honestly given the campaign some of THE FUNNIEST moments. 

Now for my current group:

I decided that I hated myself and tried my hand at homebrewing a campaign: Escape the Brothel. My current group is just FUCKING amazing. They are always sure to make me feel appriciated.

Our Sorcerer honestly rivals my other group’s Cleric as top cinnamon role. The player worries so much about how she plays and meta-gaming, but honestly, I can’t find any fault in how she plays. She’s gotten so attached to NPCs that I never even considered to be recurring characters after this arc (isn’t that how it always goes?). Her backstory is SO RICH and well-thought out. I will definitely include it in the campaign because it would be a CRIME to let it be pushed to the side. She plays the character so well and sometimes I’m honestly concerned if I hurt the character or the player’s feelings. The player is so creative and shows such appreciation for the world I built, wanting to ferret out all my secrets (good luck). As a player, the breaks in character for a good joke or references makes it so it’ll forever be impossible for me to obtain a classic DM Stoneface. :D

Our Barbarian.... he’s... indescribable. Honestly, the player roleplays him whereas each and every one of his actions has weight behind them; each one as a reason. The player’s devotion to the barbarian’s story and character development blows me away. He’s constantly surprising me! Any attempt to predict what he will do is for naught (although I think he’d say the same for me :3c). He embraces his failures and seems to thrive off conflict (although I think he’d say it “just happens”). The player’s investment in the game outside session time inspires me to do my best and work hard so everyone can continue to have fun.

Annnnd... our Bard, the initial inspiration for this whole mess. First of all, fuck them. Second of all, fuck them. Maybe third of all, I’m glad you talked me into this. But no, really, fuck them.

It’s nice being able to talk to people about this game. Like I’m sure a lot of DMs get, I’ve gotten a lot of requests to run games for other people. I wish I had more time so that I could run one for everyone and feel this fulfilled and content-ness that I get every Saturday night for other games. 

For now, I’ll be happy just to gush about my players and the awesome things they do every week. 

[heardrpc-blog]

HOW TO ROLEPLAY GANGS AND EX OR CURRENT GANG MEMBERS

this guide will teach you the ins and outs of realistic gangs, roleplaying gang members, and how all of that works. almost all gang roleplays i’ve seen are so inaccurate, glamorized and romanticized. movies are not realistic. even if it isn’t a gang rp - a gang related character could be interesting in any sort of character development plot. so here we go --

all of this is written under the assumption that you’re making up fictional gangs. do not use gangs like crips, bloods, LK, etc for your gangs. the destruction and damage they’ve done is real. make new ones up.

WHAT ARE GANGS & WHO ARE IN THEM?

although i doubt this will effect who people use - it could be relevant to know this. 

AGE: the majority of gang members are above the age of eighteen. this varies slightly. the bigger the city - the more likely they are an adult. when it comes to smaller cities and rural areas - minors tend to be in gangs a little it more.

GENDER: most gang members are male. it is honestly unrealistic to have a female gang leader. i’m sure they’ve existed, but the VAST majority of gang members are male. this honestly hasn’t changed much since 1998. only 10% of members are female. again - this goes up slightly in smaller cities and rural areas. 

RACE: the most recent figures provided by law enforcement are 46 percent hispanic/latino gang members, 35 percent african-Aamerican/black gang members, more than 11 percent white gang members, and 7 percent other race/ethnicity of gang members. while hispanic/latino and african american rates have stayed (around) the same - increase of white and other races have (mostly) increased since  2011.

SO WHAT DO GANGS DO?

it depends on the gang. smaller gangs in smaller areas tend not to do major crimes.  people keep treating street gangs like they are organized criminal gangs - they are not. you’re giving them too much credit. sure - sometimes, some gangs, etc - but KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. gangs are not ultra powerful terrorist groups with unlimited resources. a lot of the time they’re people built on poverty and intimidation. even street and prison gangs are much different.

but to actually answer the question - it depends. some gangs deal drugs and guns. some gangs are simply there and fighting their rivals. gang members aren’t always doing “gang things” when violence breaks out. your best bet with “what should the gangs on my rp do?” - probably deal guns or drugs.

gangs probably aren’t nearly as intricate, thought out, or detailed as you’re making them.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AFFILIATED VS MEMBER?

this one can be kinda iffy cause some people use affiliated in place of member. but for the sake of realistic roleplays - i’ll try to keep them separate. there are some people who are ‘involved’, ‘have known affiliation’, etc as gang members. 

this could be being the sibling/cousin/gf of a gang member. this could be hanging out with gang members occasionally. this could even be running errands  for them, but you’ve never been initiated in and have no plans to be. you still can kind of get in trouble. you can get mostly accomplice charges, or even caught along with them. they could assume you’re a member.

so your rp could even have people that aren’t technically members.

GANG RIVALRIES, WHAT HAPPENS & HOW THEY START?

this is probably the most important roleplay wise. cause 99% of gang rps i’ve seen have the same plot: they were the same gang, but split. gang rivals are mostly because of one thing - land and space. some rivals have been going on so long that it happened for years and years before your character was even born. there could have even been an accidental killing between gangs that were formerly fine, but now aren’t.

what gang rivals are really like is hard to say. violence doesn’t always break out in a “lets meet in the parking lot” way. a lot of gang members could be at a damn local picnic, and violence could break out.

its very hard for people to go through different gang territories. if they have to - they should keep it low key to avoid issues.

HOW DO YOU PLAY A GANG MEMBER?

some of this stuff in this section in particular may come off as offensive. remember - i do not know every gang member or know people who know every gang member. take some of this with a grain of salt.

the majority of gang members live in poverty ridden areas.

a lot of people want to play the “nice” gang member, but try to find ridic ways that a nice person could be in a gang. it really isn’t that complicated  - however. if you live in an areas that is very, very gang ridden. a lot of the times (particularly with young males) there will be a giant pressure to join the gang. even to the point of forced entry.

i personally know someone whose brother was shot because he continued to refuse to join a street gang of his area.

(for the record there is a character in the movie ‘city of god’ that is amazing inspo for this!)

as far as young gang members - say their older brother/sister/uncle/etc was in the gang. that is the most realistic way because if a 13 year old approaches gang members who are 20+ with no connections- they’re gonna be laughed out the door.

to a point gang members are normal people. however - a lot of them are very uneducated. a lot of them are VERY strict about respect, and get very upset if you’re not showing respect. however - a lot of the time it is ridiculous rules of ‘respect’. like you looked them in the eyes (aggression), or not acknowledging them (disrespectful). 

there are wonderful, nice gang members who are decent people who are stuck in a bad situation. that is possible. it does happen, but don’t make every gang member this innocent sweet baby who did nothing wrong.

but however - it is important to know that people don’t join gangs because their lives are wonderful.

but again like i said at the start -i do not know all of them. i would say your best bet to realistisoc gang members is aggressive, strict about respect, and reckless. 

WHAT ABOUT WOMEN IN GANGS?

in all honesty - women have always been in gangs, but lately they’ve had more involvement in activities than they have before. however - women are rarely treated equally in gangs. where as males may join gangs out of social obligation - women have reported that they join more to fill a void for socialization, a “replacement family”, or physical protection in violence ridden areas. although girls may participate in violent activities, some researchers have found that much of the violence they claim to participate in is exaggerated in order to bolster their reputations. So  -iit depends. Females are being more participating in gangs, but guys are still considered more valuable in gangs.

WHAT ABOUT GIRL GANGS?

One survey found that 2% of all gangs in the US contain only female members. If I’m being honest - I hate this trend of ‘omg girl gangs!’ Girls in gangs and female gangs are not cute. They’re not girls in cute cheerleader skirts who pop their gum and bat their eyelashes while wearing red lipstick. They’re violent. Shut the fuck up about your ‘aesthetic’. Its not cute with guys - its not cute with girls, either. They’re not “oh my god cute girls wearing patchwork on leather jackets!”. They’re girls often raised with little education in poverty with lives full of sexual and physical abuse who turned towards gangs for some type of acceptance. Like I said - fuck your aesthetic. Its disgusting how much tumblr and the rpc has romanced female/girl gangs.

Literally the tag ‘girl gang aesthetic’ is gross as fuck. Its full of people thinking girl gangs are just females in leather jackets with omg floral guns!!! Girl gangs are not feminist fucking icons.

But I’ll continue assuming that you’re going to drop the disgusting aesthetic and do a genuine girl gang.

HOW DO YOU PLAY A GANG LEADER?

often living with a false air of supremacy  

there is always someone wanting to take your place - so a little bit of paranoia

often harsh 

some resentment and jealousy from gang members who want that place

but often feeling very respected which can go to your head

i’d suggest having your gang leader not be 18-21. i guess it probably has happened, but assuming we’re talking about ‘big’ gangs - maybe 24+ would be best.  stop trying to play gang leaders as these people who care about everyone's opinions and are so nice and sweet. yes, some are more considerate than others. but just like a ‘boss’ in any situation - it can’t always be nice.

WHAT ARE GANG MEMBERS GENERALLY LIKE?

obviously generally a diverse-personality group. everyone is different.

if i had to make generalizations a lot have an earning to be accepted.

some are on the extreme side as far as being violent and sociopaths.

others are just there out of social obligation or feeling like they could get hurt if they’re not (or had parents in gangs and got sucked in)

some are smart, but most aren’t well educated. there are those ‘special’ cases where they’re geniuses.

HOW TO ROLEPLAY OUT A YOUNG GANG MEMBER?

want to realistically play a character who was gang involved very, very young? its possible! it is definitely a touch-y subject. but in my opinion it is fine to roleplay out as a history if you do it in a tasteful way. people roleplay murder in their characters past - and nobody blinks an eye. so this is fine imo.

have them have some connection. they’re not going to randomly bring in some child. (they might, but you know). they know someone. their parents, cousins, brother, etc. that will be the easiest route.

keep in mind with young characters in gangs - their characters have nothing to compare it to. gang culture is likely all they know. so the activity that is happening is not any type of culture shock.

WHAT ARE RANKS IN GANGS?

eh this one is really debatable. some gangs have very structured roles, and others not so much. i’d say a fair route to go is: gang leader, his second in command, seniors (older people who have been in the gang longer), juniors (people who have been in for a while, but not a super long time), and it would likely go down from age/involvement/and time in the gang.

some gangs have a blood in blood out mentality. this causes some ex gang members to leave and not go home. i found this quote which could also help:

Several of the gang members I interviewed left their gangs through a process of growing older, getting married, and/or finding legitimate employment. "Aging out" of a gang, getting a job, and "fading away", have been suggested by other researchers as reasons why gang members may leave their gang.

WHAT IS INITIATION? WHAT SHOULD MY RPS INITIATION BE?

there are a lot of stereotypical ones. these could involve: getting jumped in, fucked in (with women), pull off a robbery, etc. 

HOW DOES LEAVING A GANG HAPPEN?

this really depends on the status of the gang. bigger more violent gangs it will be harder than lower gangs. one thing that should be noted about leaving a gang is that even if your gang lets you leave - a rival gang might not care. 

IN CONCLUSION

this is a rough subject- so deal with it with respect and with out glamorization or romancing it into this cute thing.  gangs are scary, and although rp is for fun stuff - don’t be unrealistic! 

[berryarmstrong]

Thoughts on Roleplaying and Monk lore.

I've been mulling over posting something like this lately -- even as I type this I barely know where to start.

Recently there have been splits/schisms on monk/chakra lore. Given that I'm here for pretendy fun times and to make friends, I decided to remove myself from that matter entirely for a time. It's honestly been a trip seeing some of the uh -- comments that have been made, but those don't really matter. I suppose I finally just wanted to account for my own monk roleplay, perhaps? I'm not sure if that's worded right.

To begin with -- I enjoy following the lore, a lot more than may be rumored, especially regarding my main. I do have a good time taking some of the more fantastic concepts from it and applying it to the more flashy plots in my own Free Company, as you may see from the Agency tumblr -- but that's neither here nor there. This is about me, my character Berrod and the things I do with him.

While combing through the monk lore back in 2.0, I realised that there was a little hole in it. They always made mention that monks harness the energy of the chakras, but they never went into any sort of detail how . There I decided to extrapolate a bit, and begin assigning in game monk mechanics to chakras. A simple start, but it ended up developing into something more. After a bit of research and conference with some IRL friends, I decided to utilise the concepts of the seven major chakras as pictured in hinduism. Very loosely did I pull from that inspiration, for I knew that one day there would probably be a lore drop to say 'ABSOLUTELY NOT'. So far, there hasn't been one - there has been absolutely no bit of lore that outright states 'THIS IS NOT AT ALL HOW THAT ENERGY IS HARNESSED, AND IT CANNOT BE HARNESSED IF A MONK DECIDES TO UTILISE IT'. If there has been such a bold, black and white statement, I'll probably have to re-evaluate! Who knows, with Stormblood coming, I may very well have to -- and I'd be happy to, honestly! In the meantime, the chakra stuff I posted is what I used, and still use, to fill that harnessing hole.

Back when I was scribbling the concepts for it, I noticed that the chakras in lore did not have names. I didn't want to name them -- but after some thought, I decided that my character, who names EVERYTHING, would work better with named ones. I arranged things so that his master was the one who gave them names so that he could learn better. In short, my chakra notes/scroll stuff is simply what Berrod has been taught by his master in order for him to learn easier, not a declaration of 'THIS IS TEH LORE' or, 'I AM BREAKING TEH LORE AND CALLING THEM THIS'. It...kind of caught on more than I intended it to, but people were having a lot of fun with it, so who was I to snatch it back and say, "NO THIS IS MINE!"

Regarding the whole 'emotions' thing -- I don't think I've ever explicity said that 'CHAKRAZ R OPENED WIT EMOTIONZ'. Rather, with my character relegated to the role of working on opening/harnessing his, and later on being asked to teach others to open theirs, I applied an emotional element to each -- especially regarding meditation, which is only mentioned by name in the monk lore -- another thing on which I firmly believe we are free to extrapolate on. Our characters are men (as in mankind). Emotions come into play in almost every aspect of our roleplay, so why not that? The emotional element that I have applied is a very minor, very individual thing, not against the lore in any direct way, and honestly a very appealing way to get each character to grow outside of NPC status. Exploring endurance, will, passion, fear, anger, and YES, even sexuality during roleplay with those I've interacted with has been an amazing and fulfilling experience, and has not ONCE shaken the pillars of the established lore. It still sits within that hole of 'how the energy is harnessed'. Developers and worldbuilders often tell us that they cannot build/write everything to the most minute detail, and sometimes we need to place our individual flair and speculation into the gaps. I believe this applies to the harnessing gap -- at least for myself!

I'd also like to point out that my character has, not once, referred to himself as a Fist of Rhalgr. He has worn his master's regalia on a few occasions, and spoke on what he believed to be their behalf at one event. Berrod calls himself a 'Son of the Fist', and more recently, thanks to a phrase I enjoyed from the lore book, a 'leaf on the wind'. I'd like to take a moment to emphasize how IMPORTANT that phrase is. It's blatantly giving us the freedom to take what is a lost art and carry it forward in what reasonable ways we see fit as roleplayers. The stuff I've done is just my own part in that.

Anyway, all that stuff aside, there's something else I wanted to say. All the lore drops, lore posts -- I'm all for them. I agree with everything cited; contrary to popular belief, I've always done by best to follow it as best as I can. The thing about my style of roleplay is that I believe in extrapolation. There's literally nothing that says that chakras have anything to do with emotions! No lore on it at all! Good! I agree with that. However, there's absolutely nothing that says, 'chakras are not related to emotions whatsoever'. Extrapolation requires working within the limits of the little holes and gaps, and so far, that has not been a hard set limitation. Chakras are power levels! Yes! I 100% agree with that too! However, with very little lore on their exact nature other than that, why not apply a little flavour to them! I could sit here and write about my four chakra monk being more powerful than your two chakra monk, OR, I can engage in a fulfilling literary journey that explores the nature of exactly why MY individual is weaker than ANOTHER individual -- all within that harnessing hole. A journey that provides character development, forges friendships and rivalries...and makes it an overall, richer experiene for me and the friends I've made here.

THAT SAID -- I will roleplay with you. Whether you are a hard stickler for the lore with no deviation and look down on what I have done, whether you want to use the stuff I prattled out, whether you've developed your own thing within those gaps...I will roleplay with you. If you've bent the lore a little bit to give your character some flavour, if you play a DBZ style crater-puncher, if you play a pugilist playing at being a monk -- I will roleplay with you. Is your character a friend? Is your character a rival? Is your character a student? Is your character someone who wants to kill mine because of the things he follows and teaches? I will roleplay with you -- though don't expect me to have my character killed just like that. He's my baby, after all. No matter what is written as lore, no matter what drops in Stormblood -- it has all been developed so that we, the players, can use it to have fun together. I want to be as inclusive as I can, so I can meet as many of you awesome people AS I can. I won't look down my nose at you. I won't be condescending toward you (BERROD MIGHT BE, JUST A LITTLE, BUT HE'S TRYING NOT TO BE A SHIT ANYMORE). I just want to play with you and have a grand time in this fantastic world that the developers have created.

I've...been sitting on these thoughts for a while now. It feels good to get them out, to be honest. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on it --publicly or privately -- though I beg that everyone be civil. I'm not going after anybody here, and I'm not trying to start a fight. I'm just putting my mind to pixels. I'M LIKE 90% SURE I LEFT OUT SOME SHIT THAT I'VE BEEN WANTING TO TALK ABOUT, BUT YOU KNOW, SCATTERBRAINED AND ALL. But yeah! May He smite your writer's block. THE BIGGEST FOE. 'May Rhalgr smite your foes' by the way, is another one of my extrapolations. AT LEAST I THINK IT IS. I HONESTLY CAN’T REMEMBER IF I SAW IT IN DIALOGUE SOMEWHERE. ALL I REMEMBER IS PULLING IT OUT OF MY ASS DURING RP WAY BACK WHEN. IT'S FUN.

Happy roleplaying, people -- I can't wait to see what you all bring to the table in Stormblood.