#Affordable Adventure Resources

[thriftx]

Budget-Friendly Travel Apps and Resources: Your Key to Affordable Adventures

Introduction :

In the age of technology, budget-friendly travel is more accessible than ever. This guide explores a variety of money-saving apps, travel communities, and planning tools that can enhance your travel experience without breaking the bank. From accommodations to transportation, discover the resources that make affordable adventures a reality.

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[dailyadventureprompts]

DM Tip: The Debt Always Comes Due

Isn't it weird how little we engage with gold as a real gameplay system? Sure, at low level wealth makes a great questhook, the party is usually hurting for a payout so that they can afford necessary gear upgrades/ubiquitous healing potion restocks/their next trip to the magic item shop. After a while though the promise of raw wealth loses its lustre, and the party is less likely to go out of their way to accept bounties, go off chasing treasuremaps, or accept gigs from shady patrons.

Generally I'd advise that this is a sign that your party are done being run of the mill sellswords, and it's time to hit them with a big epic questline that's focused more on emotional and narrative stakes than base currency. That said, sometimes you want to run a longer adventure arc that's centred around the acquisition of wealth, but to do that, you're going to need to go against the grain on one of the foundational assumptions that underpins D&D both mechanically and narratively.

TLDR: If you want your party to be motivated by gold past their first big pay off you should consider using a "wealth hurdle", which in short is a narrative and gameplay challenge that forces them to collect not only more gold than they already have but also more gold than they could get doing what they've been doing so far. This can be anything from a crimelord calling in a debt on them or one of their allies, a powerful monster swooping in and demanding tribute, comissioning some grand construction, or funding the defence of a region. Having the hurdle active should cause problems for the party, and not clearing the hurdle before a perdetermiend deadline will immensely bad things to happen. This will force the party to take risks they otherwise wouldn't, giving a high degree of focus to their subsequent adventures that they wouldn't have if they were content.

What we're trying to fix:

At it's core, D&D is a power fantasy, and a good chunk of its gameplay mechanics regardless of edition are about acquiring new strengths, options, and assets. These assumptions are likewise built into the genre and narrative structure of most campaigns: Heroes undertake quests usually for the promise of some reward, gain experiance/hit milestones along the way, and eventually stumble across some kind of loot drop at the end. There's nothing strictly wrong with this, but it does mean that all the resource problems the heroes face in the early game (and the inbuilt motivations that come along with them) are all but resolved by the time they hit the next gameplay tier.

This is complicated by the fact that outside of 3rd party options there's not much to spend money on. The DMG (which you should totally ignore) say you shouldn't let them buy magic items, and the common wisdom would say "let them buy a keep", but that solution only appeals a niche selection of adventuring parties.

Using Weath Hurdles turns acquiring gold not just into a quest goal but a gameplay challenge, forcing your party to scour the land for potential sources of wealth (and risk upsetting whoever or whatever happens to be currently holding it) and take on challenges they'd never normally attempt if there was only survival/personal enrichment at stake.

Food for Thought:

Tradional d&d structure has the party getting a huge payout at the end of their adventure in the form of a bosshoard or questgiver reward which is a very backloaded "you can have your dessert after you finish your greens" sort of attitude. Consider switching it up sometimes: have the party's patron or employer give them a small stipend to spend on kitting themselves out, have an early game treasure haul so the party can have a mid-arc shopping episode. This is especially useful in higher level games where your party may go weeks to months without a level up as it preserves the feeling of progression and gives them new toys to play with in between the big character defining abilities.

Recently I've been learning my way around blades in the dark (can't reccomend it enough btw), and just like any other time I've wanted to learn a new ttrpg system I'm having to do a bit of neural rewiring when it comes to figuring out how to write and run sessions of the game. Coin in BitD is both an XP (used for upgrading the party's shared crew sheet) a resource (burned to upgrade the results of various rolls) and a stat ( rolled to see if the players can lay their hands on various hard to come by items). It didn't really click for me until my first group messed up really badly on what was supposed to be their introductory adventure and pissed off the local crimeboss. I was just going to have him bully them, lock them up and then have a jailbreak the next session ( it's what I'd do in d&d), but on the fly I had the idea that he'd let them go with a massive debt they needed to pay off, which forced them to either pay him a percentage of their takings on all future jobs, or do small jobs in utmost secrecy so that they could build up their own strength under his nose.

Interestingly enough, the d&d game where I thought player wealth as a resource was most interestingly used was Dimension 20’s starstruck Odessy, which was a conversion of the amazing fanmade  starwars5e system. Starstruck is a parody of hypercapitalism and aptly uses money as both a narrative and gameplay feature. One character is stuck paying weekly insurance premiums on a debt he would never be able to pay down forcing him to act recklessly to acquire wealth in the immediate future. Another character was a economic and political power player and some of the best moments in the series come from her high stakes wheeling and dealing and bouncing money between accounts while the rest of the group engages in epic space battles; the rest of the crew might’ve barely got their ship out of the dogfight, but she’s the one who ensures they can pay for the repairs once they get to the space dock.   None of this would be possible without completely ignoring the normal constraints of wealth per level: gaining and losing huge sums based on moment by moment player decisions, The need for them to play along with the absurist gig economy to boost their rating and get better paying jobs, making a devil’s bargain with a corporate sponsor all so that they could risk their lives in a deadly arena fight all for the (very unlikely) chance of winning the equivalent of a million GP.  Not every campaign should, or even could so focus on money in this way, but it was FASCINATING to watch it in action. 

Artsource

[generalite]

Vclubcc-shop - Mega+

It is possible to get a very large service with Vclub. Vclub, where many privileges are experienced, is waiting for you. Did you know that you can get great services by going inside? Vclub has become a social media platform for many. It is a very large communication network thanks to the community it contains. To take advantage of vclub's privileges, all that needs to be done is to perform vclub login. Afterwards, it is possible to enter and surf the deepest world of the internet. With Vclub, which is among the largest resources in the digital world, many people can get great services. Thanks to all these services, it seems perfectly normal for people to be immersed in the greatest and most extraordinary adventures. The services included in Vclub are useful for many people in social life. It is enough to register to receive these services and privileges at the most affordable prices. After registration, all that needs to be done is to complete the registration process and confirm the membership. Once the membership is approved, it is possible to enter this deep world and benefit from all its privileges in the easiest way possible.

[pathfuckery]

Pathfinder 2e New Player Resource Masterpost

Hey there! Looking to get into PF2e? You’re making a great decision, but you may not know where to start! I’ve put together a handy list of resources you can consult while getting into the game. As always, if you ever have questions about PF2e, please don’t hesitate to reach out! I love this system, and I love helping new players!

Official Resources

The Archives of Nethys are the official host for the PFSRD. You can find ALL of the rules of the game for free there. Literally everything that is not Golarian specific is on the Archives, and all of it is laid out incredibly well. It may not look quite as flashy as beyond, but its search functions and layout are superior. 

If you buy one product from Paizo as you get started, I HAVE to recommend to BEGINNER BOX. This thing is fantastic. It simplifies the rules, gives you GORGEOUS character sheets that highlight all of your abilities, and have a fun little adventure that dovetails nicely into either their Troubles in Otari or Abomination Vaults modules. (As someone who has run both of those now, they’re both fantastic as well and I highly recommend them.) 

Beyond the Beginner Box, I would also suggest picking up a Core Rulebook. It is true that all of the rules information is already laid out in the Archives, but having a CRB on handd is nice for the art, plus the book is laid out incredibly well. If you can’t afford a CRB at this time, though, you’ll still be good! You might also watch for Humble Bundles, as they often have great Pathfinder packs on there, and sometimes it includes Physical CRBs, in addition to a load of other great PDFs. 

When looking to GM, I recommend the following pages in the CRB first. I’ve also linked the corresponding Archive pages: 

Introduction, Pages 7-31. This will give you the rundown on key terms, how characters are created, the base flow of the game, and the action system (the best part of pf2e!)

Playing the Game, Pages 443-481. This is the longest section of the rulebook to read, but there’s a lot of great stuff in here. This will give you the rules for checks, combat, conditions, resolving actions, and the differences between encounter, exploration, and downtime mode. The most important is encounter and exploration mode, so you can feel free to only skim the downtime mode section of this part. 

The Gamemastering section has a lot of great stuff, but for a GM, your two most important sections will be the following:

Encounter Building, pages 488 and 489. The rules for building encounters work in this system, and they work WELL. Obviously, environment, terrain, and how a specific groups strengths and weaknesses compare to a monster affect things, but if you budget a moderate encounter, it can be expected to be moderate. Just be sure you recognize that Moderate encounters are still meant to be challenging in this system, and Severe encounters are potentially deadly. Extreme encounters should be used incredibly sparingly. Maybe 1 or 2 times per campaign.

DC Charts and Adjusting DCs. Pages 503 and 504.  If you ever need a quick DC, these charts are your friend. You don’t need to memorize them, but you’ll want to have them in an easy-to-reference spot.

Youtubers

There are a lot of great youtubers for PF2e. I’ll only be highlighting a few of my favorites here!

How It’s Played  is probably the best resource for a new player, and helped me a ton with all of the rules when I started GMing. They do close looks at different subsystems, and clearly break down how the rules apply. You don’t need to watch all of their content before you jump in and play, but if you watch a few of their main series on PF2e between each session, you’ll be a rules master in no time! 

I also really enjoy The Rules Lawyer. He always has well-reasoned takes on things going on in the hobby, and and has an enjoyable calm/measured tone. I highly recommend his “Combat Tactics” videos, as he highlights some of the major differences with 5e and what things are now expected to survive. A lot of common 5e tactics are a way to a quick death in PF2e, but you do have the tools to survive!

The final Youtuber I’ll be highlighting is Nonat1s. He’s puts out quite a variety of videos, including skits and other fun things, but is also a wonderful ambassador for the game and gives great character advice as well. I want to highlight his “Welcome to Pathfinder Second Edition” video, which is just perfect!

Other Resources

I can’t create a list of resources without calling out Pathbuilder! It is hands down the best character builder, and its available on desktop and mobile. It’s mostly free, with a small donation being required to unlock premium features. At this time, there is no crossover between the web app and desktop besides being able to save and access characters from google drive.

The Pathfinder 2e Subreddit  is a wonderful community of people, and it’s a great place for discussion. There’s weekly question megathreads, discussions about releases, people highlighting great builds and fun things in the system, and it’s probably the quickest place to keep track of announcements. There’s also a lot of love for 3pp there!

Speaking of 3pps, I LOVE the Battlezoo line! One of my players is OBSESSED with dragons, and they have a whole book that was tailor-made for him, and it’s incredibly balanced and fun. They’ve also got a whole bunch of other cool stuff that’s been kickstarted and will be releasing soon. 

What VTT should you use if you’re playing online? My hat is thrown into the ring for Foundry VTT. It’s my VTT of choice. It’s wildly powerful with the Pathfinder 2e system, and a wonderful community of devs have gotten the system almost entirely automated so you can focus on RP! It’s a breeze as a GM as well, and the only difficulty is in self-hosting, but even that isn’t too bad. Their site has a great set of guides, starting HERE with the ways you can host. If you choose to self-host, you only need to make a 1-time payment of 50 dollars for the software, and only one person needs to actually do the hosting. Split between a group? That’s incredibly affordable, especially considering there is no subscription!

I’m gonna shout MYSELF out here. I put together a List of Actions you can take in combat that isn’t just moving or attacking. Coming from 5e, it can be easy to get stuck in the loop of move and attack, but there are so many more options, and those options are very crucial. This isn’t comprehensive, but covers the basics characters can have access to with only minor skill investment.

[nebmia]

When people talk about Blades in the Dark they usually bring up a few big headline mechanics (flashbacks, clocks, load, position/effect etc) and they should because they are really good mechanics. But there are a lot of little things in blades that I think are really important for creating the whole experience and in some cases not all though) are unusual in ttrpgs. SO I thought I'd list some them.

You can't leave:

The 'standard' (but not universal) mode for ttrpgs is 'the adventure' where you travel from place to place seeing new stuff, meeting different people, looting new ruins, solving new problems etc. There might be a hub that you often return to but generally roving about is a core element. And its obvious why this is appealing! But it has two downsides: 1) the players can very easily run away from the consequences of their actions and 2) and the players are constantly being faced with new stuff that they don't really have the hooks to latch onto yet.

In contrast Doskvol is a pressure cooker. Want to leave? Tough! the whole world out there is dead and will kill you. Everything you do will create more characters and plot hooks and conflicts all ready to be pulled into the narrative at any point. If you piss off another faction you can't just skip town, you have to face up to the consequences of your actions. And as you play the players will become more and more immersed in the city and develop a deep understanding of what it going on there.

2. You're a gang of criminals:

A common (again, not universal) base assumption of many games is that you are good guys doing fundamentally heroic things. And this tends to encourage a somewhat reactionary style of play where you are presented with a bad thing that is happening and then attempt to resolve it. In contrast being criminals is a much more proactive endeavor. There isn't a clear threat that needs to be overcome. There's just a situation and its up to you to get what you want out of it.

The scope of play available when you are playing as scoundrels rather than heros is also so much wider. Note you aren't evil, which is equally restrictive. You will do good things and bad things, and struggle so much more with the question of when you can afford to be good and just how bad you are willing to be. You don't just always step up to save the world but instead pursue the things that actually matter to your character, because being a criminal allows your character to be selfish in a way a hero can't be and that massively helps in creating a player driven game.

But you aren't just criminals, you're a gang of criminals, with shared goals and resources and a character sheet to go with it. This really forges a group identity that transcends what is possible in the traditional party (which is essentially just a group of individuals who happen to be in the same place). The crew gives everyone at the table a clear basic goal: build your crew; expand your crime empire. And this is a fundamentally player driven goal! Normally systems reserve this sort of 'domain level' play for high level characters (ie the ones most people never play) but blades puts you there right from the off.

3. Experience:

At the end of each session you go round the table and discuss instances of when each player 'addressed a challenge with [core activities of their playbook]', 'expressed their beliefs, drives, heritage, or background', or 'You struggled with issues from their vice or traumas during the session'. This is incredibly lightweight but also very effective.

Firstly it means everyone at the table is always going to be thinking about and making space for expression of their character and creating problems which is something that can easily be sidelined in favor of optimally addressing the challenges you are facing when there isn't this codified incentive.

And secondly the fact that it is at the end of the session creates this great debrief situation where you go over the highlights of the session and maybe dig a little deeper into why your character acted in the ways they did, which just brings the whole table into having a deeper understanding of each others characters. Again, notice 'drives' as a potential XP trigger. The game rewards (and therefore encourages) motivated characters.

In addition of personal XP you also have crew XP with a similar set of triggers (goals and drives come up again), which really supports building a crew identity, encouraging the crew to be proactive, and centering it as 'the main character' of the game.

4. Rivals:

The concept of rivals only gets a few words in the Blades rules. It appears on each playbook with a list of potential rivals (Just a name and a couple of words of description each) and then again it appears on when you are setting up a scenario in a sentence saying 'Are any enemies or rivals interfering in the operation?' That's barely enough to call it a mechanic. But its incredibly effective! You automatically get a small cast of revolving antagonists, each with some personal connection to a player character, who just keep popping up and causing problems. And 'oh shit, not this guy again! I hate this guy!' is a really great way to tie things together and get players invested in what's going on.

5. Just enough world building:

Blades gives you quite a lot of material to work with on the world of Doskvol. Certainly enough to build out the broad picture. But it is also absolutely chock full of (deliberate) gaps. What this leaves is for you to fill in the gaps to create your version of Doskvol (And it can be quite fun to compare notes with other groups playing blades). The book tells you there is a conspiracy in a faction but it won't tell you who's behind it. The book tells you people are gathering ancient artifacts, but it won't tell you where they come from or what exactly they do. And this means that you can easily set the answer to be whatever would be appropriate for your game. Or even discover the answer through playing!

The book being full of prompts but largely devoid of answers is a very useful tool for the somewhat free form, improvisational style of the game because there will always be things to inspire you but you never need to worry and pausing the game to check what the official stance on something is.

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In general I think the sort of thing I have been talking about is something blades excels at: really lightweight elements that end up having significant impact. A final example of that is the trauma system, which is essentially two sentences long:

If you get too much stress you get a trauma ( one of: cold, haunted, obsessed, paranoid, reckless, soft, unstable, viscous). If you struggled with issues from your trauma this session, gain an xp.

And from that very simple mechanic flows characterisation, character development, and the players deliberately creating more problems for themselves!

Anyway, that's what comes to mind at the moment. I'll add more stuff if I think of it.

You should play Blades in the Dark, its very good.

[whomstwedointheshadows]

I am howling at the sky for the look tonight that Harvey Guillén staked to death, spat on, and made it beg on the red carpet. Instead of just ranting to my queer fashion/fandom retail friends again, I took our collective slobber and tears to outline my plea to the fashion gods.

Why doesn’t this man have a ‘mens’wear line in every American mall? There is a gap in the market for adventurous, queer friendly suiting available through a retailer like Macys/J C Penney. Yes, retail is dying and wedding industry more so, but that’s particular to what’s available for consumers as well. Suiting is turned from off the rack into iconic by proper tailoring, but let me tell you from working all sides of the bridal salon, even up-scale clothing lines are getting rude as hell about quality and assembly to prevent tailoring and longevity.

This kid’s Disney charm would be perfect for introducing a plus size, inclusive line of fashion-forward pieces which include, say a QR code video about taking your own measurements, how adjustments work, with pieces designed to be sleek, with enough allowance for tailoring, and minding the lines in the garment to make the adjustments for plus size bodies easier. It’s no more adjustments than are made on straight size bodies, it’s just straight size bodies have more options to find a line which works with their natural shape.

But in my experience, it’s gender non-conforming folks and plus sized folks who get pushed out of finding pieces they can actually use for celebrations or work, much less pieces with actual personality that spark joy. This man has been killing it for years, really getting some clutch looks for events and invites in the fashion world. He’s showing proof of concept every time he steps in front of a camera.

Watching Harvey’s fashion evolution, I trust his fashion team and judgement to create a mid/high line for workwear to events suiting embracing a gender nonconforming audience. I can’t think of anyone better situated to become the ambassador of a brand with *the* formal wear for queer events and special occasions. I was tickled to see he sells his own merch and hope this experience convinces him of the joy working with artists and connecting their visions to a wanting public, dipping toes into the new ethical, sustainable trends in fashion. His looks alone shows he’s done his homework over the years about timelessness and early adopting trends.

For the years I worked selling/tailoring wedding dresses, there was the prophetic ‘someday… along will come the man who revives men’s fashion for events again’ to save the David’s bridal/men’s wear house lines who keep dropping plus sizes like mine and dying off. As the pet butch in the bridal salon I pleaded to the sky for better suiting options. Add that to my butch lezzy ways and trans masc circle of friends I legit spent this past Friday night drunk in a bar with a seam ripper adjusting jackets and darting pants in an unplanned sewing circle for a bachelorette until it was my round of karaoke. This isn’t the first time I’ve spontaneously started tailoring for the queers, I can’t keep up with the demand! Y’all we are in our twenties to mid thirties there should be better options than this that don’t require a vacation to LA/NY!!

I have ethical, sustainable fashion preferences about slipping in a retailer versus an online brand. But for the vision of accessible clothing to the masses pushing the envelope of the kind of quality only vintage pieces are affording the general public, this is the only celebrity really posed with the image, high energy, and bona fides to be the face of it. His connections in the fashion game are only growing as WWDITS wraps up.

If this man opened a pop-up suiting/fashion shop I’d take my limited time and resources to really dig in to the designers he promoted. I’d be howling in the streets for my celebrants to go get a Gullién. There’s no shortage online pattern makers, but there is a shortage of queer friendly shops to really get pieces that pop and it feels safe to enjoy in a retail environment. For average people wanting to engage with fashion that affirms their identity on their special day, there’s too much fucking compromise. Honestly it’s nice that I have a side hustle sewing to pattern, but I’d give it up in a fucking heartbeat for there to be actually sustainable and approachable options. I wish there was an in between of being ‘affordable’ gnc suiting in an American mall but add plus size availability and it gets sad for your most thrifty, creative friends. Someone needs the step in the gap, and why not someone at the top of the game?

Even if it was just a pop up line every few years, I’d fucking salivate over every image in that catalogue two thousand miles away for what it can teach home sewists just by virtue of curating those artisans with the express goal of queer, fat friendly designs playing together. Just the existence of vintage shops like Proud Mary creates a boom across the inter-webs of new sewists per post. Could anyone really imagine if there were actually accessible stores in key cities/supported by an online catalog with a personable, rising star as the brand face?

Please feed us more fashion, Harvey. Keep those stylists and designer friends close. Please. I cannot stress how many mascs/nb-bebes keep dropping your name every fitting consultation across this nation and it’s for good reason.

[gorbalsvampire]

V:tM at the Movies: a film rec list

THE UR–EXAMPLES

The Hunger is about as close to the Platonic ideal of Vampire: the Masquerade as you can get. Nightclubs! Gratuitous Bauhaus! Lesbian kiss! The aesthetic is spot on: it looks and feels like early Vampire art, or rather early Vampire art looks and feels like this film. V:tM may have come out in 1991 but it's rooted firmly in the 1980s and the vampire chic this film defined. The Hunger will dump the vibe of the game right between the eyes and it's as close as I dare come to "must-watch."

V:tM's Gehenna concept is heavily mirrored/inspired by the novel Queen of the Damned, which was filmed around the time Gehenna was actually happening and the line was coming to a close. The Hunger defines where V:tM came from, all Eighties post-punk writhing - this chuggy post-industrial apocalypse-glam perfectly sums up where it's going.

Although they have no real connection to each other besides parallel evolution, Night Teeth absolutely nails the "rival conspiracies" energy of Hunter: the Reckoning and Vampire: the Masquerade, as well as the burnout, the irony, the neon and the party-at-the-end-of-the-world vibe of V5.

THE META TAKE

Shadow of the Vampire is about a vampire playing a vampire in the first vampire movie ever made. In a weird way I think that's perfect for the sense of the Masquerade, hiding in plain sight, preying on the worst instincts of humanity and encouraging them to let you get away with all the awful things you want to do. In microcosm, it's the perfect analogy for the "vampires secretly run society" vibe.

YOUR FLAVOUR OF BASTARD

Depending on what type of vampire you want to be (and I'm going with V5's categories here), I recommend at least one of the following:

Thinbloods lend themselves well to the What We Do In The Shadows conceit of vampire flatmates (or The Carmilla Movie, I guess, but I haven't seen that one). They're millennial vampires; all the power and resources are concentrated in the hands of previous generations, so they pretty much have to bind together and find something else to enjoy in life, 'cause they're never going to be powerful in the conventional sense. Thinblood games are low power, a bit domestic, and often the closest to "normal life but we happen to be vampires and bigger vampires try to kick our heads in occasionally."

Neonates are your classic Gen X eighties/nineties vampire movie - The Lost Boys. Still weak enough that they're better off standing together, strong enough that they can afford to be a bit cocky around humans. Probably share a sire, mentor, authority figure of some sort and should probably be working on his agenda once they've finished prowling the boardwalks and clubland at night. They're a step further removed from society, but they can pretend to be human for an hour or two if they really try. Also, this is the other one that was in the air and influential when V:tM first came to be - along with The Hunger, I'd recommend it as the closest to a must-watch.

Ancillae (the upper reaches of age and power offered by the V5 corebook) are more your Interview With The Vampire  kind of deal. You've lived a long life, your adventuring days are behind you, and now you're something of a mover and a shaker - you're probably permitted or at least not prevented from siring and you're looking to give someone the choice you never had. Modernity gives you a headache but at least you can work a smartphone four times out of five. Ancillae games are a nice balance between "you're powerful" and "you still have to answer to someone".

If you're extending into Elder territory, settle down with a small glass of something and enjoy one of my favourite films ever, Only Lovers Left Alive. It's a slow story, and not a lot happens, but that's elders for you. They become introverted. They fall into a groove. They keep to each others' company. It's beautiful and haunting until some clueless childe comes along and screws it all up for them and they have to admit what they really are.

Want to figure out the Sabbat? Watch 30 Days of Night and thank me later. The vampires there are getting away with something horrible because they've fallen through the cracks in the world. They act alpha-predator but they still live on the fringe or civilisation, the little savages. (I am told that Near Dark is basically Sabbat: the Movie, but I haven't seen it, so I'm going to have to take that on trust.)

REFLEXIVE ACTION

It would be deeply remiss of me not to talk about Underworld, the film series transparently inspired by V:tM,.to the point where White Wolf as was took the producers of the original to court over it. Underworld reflects V:tM at its most "gamery" – all custom weapons, trenchcoats and corsets, fighting werewolves in the dark, flashing back to the Middle/Dark Ages and preoccupied with impenetrable why-does-this-matter world-building. It sits at the end of that unfortunate tendency toward Desert Eagles, katanas, Dragonsbreath rounds and C4 appearing on every character sheet that found its way into V:tM's DNA from Shadowrun, along with the penchant for double handfuls of d10s and wearing sunglasses indoors. I dislike that sort of game and I'm not mad keen on Underworld either, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that this sort of thing is also peak Vampire.

WAIT, THIS ISN'T VAMPIRES!

V:tM is synonymous with politics and backstabbing, and there isn't in my opinion a vampire movie that really hits that. Thing is, Rein-Hagen also loves Mafia movie and cites them as an influence. Vampires exist as organised criminals, after all, and the concept of omerta is atomic to that of the Masquerade. This is why, to grasp how a Prince or Baron holds court and influences people, you really should just sit down and watch The Godfather. Pretty basic recommendation, granted, but I don't know if anyone else is here for my "Guy Ritchie's V:tM" style of action storytelling...

YOUR OWN PERSONAL JESUS TASTE

What are your top three movies? Why? That'll give you an idea of what you, as Storyteller, are most interested in running. Now grab some friends and ask them the same question. Wherever you find an overlap in your tastes, that's something that's worth focusing on in your actual game. Try to make sure there's a couple of vampire-themed answers in there, but also something else, because "being a vampire" in and of itself doesn't make a story (unless it's a quiet, short one like Only Lovers Left Alive, but that's a one-off, not a chronicle). 

People often expect an RPG to come ready-made and ready-to-go ("We're playing the Lost Mines of Phandelver") and Vampire, at its best, is a bit more bespoke. Asking players about their taste in media is one way to start that tailoring process, making your V:tM something a bit different from everyone else's and getting into that transformative stuff that makes RPGs so gosh-darn amazing.

Mine, discounting the one I've already gushed about up the line, are a nebulous "pick one from Guy Ritchie's early career" and Franklyn. My games run on generally have a couple of seemingly indestructible SPCs nobody likes and a dark secret that can absolutely take them down, someone WILL have an impenetrable regional accent, but there's also a layer of exaggerated Gothickry over everything, neuratypical characters will perceive the world very differently, vengeance and trauma will drive the major players and love may conquer all but you'll have to lose a lot to get there. None of this is essential to V:tM but it's what makes my V:tM different from A. N. Other Storyteller's.

[theresattrpgforthat]

I'm so giddy! I've been waiting impatiently for the askbox to open! Okay, okay, so... could you, please, recommend some free TTRPGS about vampires having fun and vampire adventures/shenanigans in general? VTM is the wrong kind of existential for me, so I need vampires being monsters and having a good time while at it. Also I have problems with purchasing things abroad (not from an English-speaking country), hence the "free" thing. I really love your blog and reading your recommendations, keep up the fantastic work! ❤🎃

THEME: Affordable Vampire Shenanigans.

Thank you so much for your kind words! Let’s see what kind of vampire games I can find for you.

All the Damn Vampires, by Ringo Stalin.

All the Damn Vampires is a TTRPG for vampires who just want to have fun, without the stress of being slain, or having to put on a masque.

This game is an unabashed power-fantasy for the disenfranchised, the marginalised, and the weird folks who always felt out of step with the rest of the world.

All the Damn Vampires uses four basic stats (Vigilance, Astronomy, Motion, and Presence), as well as a resource pool called Deadline to represent how much energy your Vampire has left. Your stats are better if they are lower, as you have to roll above your set number if you want to succeed.

Many typical vampire weaknesses aren’t built into your characters in this game; you can eat garlic and bathe in holy water, although you still can’t survive a wooden stake or a beheading. You also have a number of various vampire abilities available to you, some of which are ’nascent’, or “beginner” abilities, while others can be gained as you grow. If you want a power fantasy that lets your vampires go out and party with just the odd hunter or two trying to take you down, you might like this game.

All the Damn Vampires is currently pay-what-you-want, so you should be able to download it for free if you need to.

Vampire Friend-Group Needed, by SteelWhale.

In this party game, players will first create their very own vampire, and then try to convince the other players why their vampire is a perfect fit for this very exclusive vampire group. 

This game combines all kinds of vampires, from the cartoony Count Chocula to the original Count Dracula. You are all vying for a spot in a special vampire friend-group, and trying to impress your potential Vampire friends. There’s not much when it comes to playing this game, mostly role-playing through the initial conversation, and then voting on whose vampires are the coolest - or the un-coolest, if you want to play it that way. The designer recommends trying this game out as a prelude to another vampire game.

As with most of the games on this list, this is also pay-what-you-want!

VUMPIRE!, by dozens.

Play Baseball. Drink Blood.

You are umpiring the championship game and you are also an ancient undead vampire. You are here to steal some oxygen-rich, elite athlete blood. And also to enforce the rules of baseball and uphold the spirit of sportsmanship.

VUMPIRE is all about infiltrating a baseball game to get high-quality blood. It’s got plenty of roll-tables to make character creation interesting, as well as a few tips on setting up a baseball league of your own. Judging by the table of contents, it looks like you’ll mark some kind of progress over the game; probably both how well the teams are doing as well as how much blood you’re able to procure from your antics. If you want a combination sports-game and vampire game, this might be the game for you.

VUMPIRE isn’t free, but there are community copies at the time that I write this post, so you should be able to pick up a copy, or perhaps ask the creator for a copy if you can’t afford one.

Flesh + Fangs, by FrogmentSoul.

You are the followers of Count Dracula, and he has put you in charge of taking care of his castle while he takes a well-earned retirement. But it just happens that the day the Count is going to do his routine performance check, odd things begin to happen that make you look incompetent! It's time to right these wrongs before you lose Dracula’s respect!

Flesh + Fangs is a hack of John Harper's Lasers & Feelings based on the Dimension 20 season Coffin Run, serving as a way to further the story beyond its end. This is a game of undead havoc, macabre drama, and trying to make your boss proud for once.  

I’ve talked about Lasers and Feelings hacks a number of times before, but the basics is this: minimal character bookkeeping, little to no GM prep, and great for lighthearted, fun times. In this case, you’re all doing your darndest to impress Count Dracula, and failing horribly.

If you’re the one running this game, I recommend writing up a list of potential obstacles beforehand, maybe even writing up some possible room descriptions if you have enough time. These kinds of games are pretty heavy on improv, so having a few things to pull up when the players do something unexpected is a good idea.

Flesh + Fangs is pay-what-you-want, including if that payment is zero dollars.

Vikings vs. Vampires, by CartwrightShop.

Vikings Vs. Vampires is a rules-light role-playing game suitable for all ages created by Ben Cartwright and Jon Merrell. A big inspiration for Vikings Vs. Vampires was the wonderful game Honey Heist created by Grant Howitt.

Only half of the playgroup in this game are vampires, but the premise certainly feels goofy to me, and in a good way. I think it’s interesting that your Viking stats are different from your Vampire stats; the core of each of these character types are different, and therefore they act a little differently. Even though this game is goofy, keep in mind that the Vampires and the Vikings are at odds with each-other, and are designed to go head-to-head.

This is a very lovingly crafted game, and probably the most illustrated out of everything on this list. There’s plenty of backstory to set up the moment where your characters meet, although I don’t know how repayable the game is. It’s also pay-what-you-want: yay!

You Installed the Wrong DLC And Now You Must Fight Mathomagic Dracula, by kumada1.

For long ages, the arch-vampire has slumbered inside his geometric coffin. But now the seals are broken, the formulae are smudged, and Dracula is loose.

As a creature of muddled mytho-historical origin, Dracula is not confined to any one setting or story. He can leap from reality to reality, claiming victims where he will.

And as a creature loosely associated with a pun based on tallying up numbers, Dracula also wields fell power over the nature of mathematics.

Unless he is stopped, he will rain untold terrors down upon the multiverse. Which is where you come in.

This isn’t really a tabletop game on its own, but rather a funny way to warp another tabletop game that you are already playing. “Install” Dracula into another game system, and he will slowly skew the system’s math - you must defeat him before he renders your game entirely unplayable! If you want a goofy game where the fiction jumps past the fourth wall and generates havoc with your table, this might just get you there.

And of course, the game is pay-what-you-want.

Other Vampire Games

Step Into My Coffin, Babe, by Super Sardine Burial.

Bubblegum Vampires, by Gormengeist.

Bloodlite RPG, by HiddenSky Estùdio.

My Alternative Vampires Post.

Fangs, Fangs, Fangs Rec Post.

[fluffer5]

Humans and childrearing

My 3rd entry to humans are space orcs and dang am I seeing our species as the odd one out with all our quirks.

Again, my basis for this would be the movies and stories I've watched or read. So, most information I've got on alien child rearing center on quirks that can be considered as the constant for their entire specie. Like, a new behavior exhibited by the parent towards their young that doesn't conform to the norm is absolutely rare to the point that other parents or those who are old enough to care for a child would immediately go to rescue the youngling who seems to be in danger or in pain. Some who couldn't afford to keep the child would at least have this decency to put the child in foster care where someone could raise and shelter them till they're strong enough to leave or go on an adventure on their own.

Humans though? We're absurdly complex creatures with a malfunctioning sense of familial love on our youngs. We love them one moment, and hate them next. We'd be filled with adoration for this new life in our arms, then feel disgusted and annoyed at them for making too much noise, taking up too much time, taking up so, so much of us until this supposed guardian spirals down into the neglectful, angry person some kids know.

Of course, not everyone reacts that way. But it happens often enough that we have medical interventions, guidelines, and even agencies or social groups that deals with that particular problem.

There are parents or guardians who would hate this unknowing baby for killing their wife, sister, daughter, or mother in the process of their birth. There are mothers who would neglect and feel resentful of the precious bundle they gave birth to for taking up the attention of HER husband, HER family, even though she knows that it's wrong to feel that way with her baby. There are siblings who feel the ugly crawl of jealousy up their stomach, heart, and lungs to the point that they work towards sabotaging the growth and milestones of this new child they see as competition. Heck! There are parents who would continue to give birth even though they KNOW that they're not financially secure and their children might suffer from starvation or a sickness that they can't afford to pay off medicine.

The children? We grow up carrying the scars of survival. Be it visible or not, we have it.

Hearing this information upon opening the topic on how each race care for their young (each one giving the usual rearing they have in a clan and how they always pull out younglings who are more sickly and fragile to be given thorough love and care but never one that is nagging or suffocating because instincts and talent needs to be given time to develop), the Unified Intergalactic Council, one made up of elders, warriors, healers, historians, builders, star-readers, and other reknowned professions would stare baffled at the human representative with horror and worry.

"You say that your kind treasures your young but punishes you for the smallest mistake?" a healer asked looking confused and displaying anger through the minute movement of his brightly colored frills. "Punishment for not finishing food when the hatchling has declared that they are full?! And they had the gall to be offended for this young one for wasting precious resources?!"

"I was too young to question it," the human representative, Kara, relayed the information, not seeing the practice as… punishment, but more of an experience that most kids her age shared. "When I got old enough… Well, I never thought to revisit the wrongness of such practice again since I moved out of our house."

"Well, I, for one, am far concerned when you said some of your wars were fought by children? Did your leaders lose a part of their heads to think that children could fight for their battles? And you said some of those children were trained with the bares of skill and would learn most of it on actual live-combat?!" a veteran General was left in confusing garble and grumbles that is most probably a jumble of curses and profanities if she reads right into the indignant face of said General's wife, a War Strategist.

"I'm concerned for you, child," an old star-reader (their version of a prophet) gently laid their hand on her arm, eyes swirling with the birth of new stars and the death of others, their voice fluctuating from masculine to feminine, pitch becoming a scramble of highs and lows. "You have told us of the joys in your planet. How happy it is to be a Terran. How you love this deathworld even with its harsh seasons and mighty predators and lurking sickness. Yet now that we are speaking of caring for your young, you've been growing more upset, distant."

"Children are considered as gifts to all species," Kara would bitterly remark to them star-reader. "That's what you told me… That's what I've been told by the adult Terrans."

"What do you think then, child?" the star-reader asked even though they already know the sad truth of this youngling's life. And she is a youngling. Kara is 20 cycles old. Still so young since Terrans do not stop their brain development between their 30th or 40th life cycle. They shouldn't have pushed their children to this. Terran young should've been learning new skills and not rushing at that age… and yet….

"I think… I'm tired of working so hard for others and not living for myself. I'm tired of being not enough. I'm tired of having to give a piece of myself to everyone who needed me. I'm tired of being the eldest sibling, Myrtzhg. I'm tired of giving up a lot of opportunities I want because my mother, my bearer, would tell me to give these opportunities to my younger siblings! It's never me, Myrtzhg! And I'm so tired of thinking it never will!"

That was the exact same day the UIC panicked, trying to sooth the Terran youngling from their pent up emotions. Even the strictest of the council members had a mild panic attack when Kara full out wailed and didn't seem to be consoled by their usual Terran sweets and treats. They later learned that Kara got a message from her own bearer to hurry up and give them money because Kara's siblings need it for a celebration, even reprimanding Kara how should stop being such a greedy, ungrateful child.

Earth was but one intergalactic missile away from destruction if not for the swift swat to the head by a fuming Matron saying they should kidnap all the children and good parents first before blowing up the planet… Kara, of course the sweetheart that she is, disagreed to the plan.

[thelostbaystudio]

The Lost Bay - First Look Release

Your one-way ticket for the 90s that never were.

Today is the day! after countless play tests and tweaks The Lost Bay - First Look has been released digitally. In it you play as a young person touched by the Weird, an ancient force that gives you supernatural powers. You roam the Bay with your gang, its malls, arcade games shops, skateparks and beaches, and fight the Horror that has awakened.

Key features of the game:

1. You play Vibes. Each vibe has a distinct flavor and set of powers. You can play as Splinter, Screamer, Scanner, Firestarter, and many more. Vibes are granted custom growth opportunities: every time they fail at using a power they get a Scar, and this can include getting new powers, or discovering something about the Bay.

2.The lore of The Lost Bay is spread throughout the ruleset, tables, and game procedures. You’ll discover it as you create your character and play, without having to read boring lore text blocks. The lore of the Bay is embedded in the items, powers, Scars and NPCs you’ll encounter.

3.Open and play. Three attributes, two resources to manage (Heart and Weird), one mechanic to rule it all: a D6 dice pool. If you have a basic knowledge of tabletop RPGs you’ll need fifteen minutes to familiarize yourself with the ruleset.

GET THE LOST BAY FIRST LOOK

4.Weird is cool. And there’s a lot of it in the Bay: cults, curses, relics, and Living Saints. The Lost Bay is both a familiar playground and an uncanny world that portrays an alternate version of the 90s. It’s wicked enough to give you the chills, and it’s open enough for you to expand it the way you like.

Why the 90s?

Because they’re a decade where the ancient analog world mixes with the modern digital one. This mix creates infinite clashes and conflicts, ideal to spark tabletop RPG adventures, and horror stories.

The Bay itself is the incarnation of this contrast. Ancient creatures and forces dwell right next to modern technology and buildings. Even the playable characters embody this duality: they are archetypes inspired by the late 80s/90s media and culture, but their powers derive from the ancient and mysterious forces.

What you’ll get in the First Look edition? 

Spooky Locations

Scary MOFOs

Supernatural Horror

Powerful Vibes

Loads of items

Relics

Living Saints and immortals

Story sparks

VHS, arcade games, skateboards, evil cults, demons, ghosts, blood and fear.

You can get the First look edition right now at an affordable price. The game PDF is updated on a weekly basis, and its price will increase as new sections are added. Meaning that the earliest you get it, the less you’ll pay for it. Pretty neat right? Funds collected will allow commissioning more art from Evangeline Gallagher and to pay for editing.

Have you ever wanted to play a zombie or a ghost? Now you can!

This week’s update features two new Vibes (playable character classes): the Half-Dead, and the Spirit. To unlock them you have to die first, and if you’re lucky enough you’ll become a Reborn. You might even get a Zombie cat pet.

MINIDUNGEON

If you have little time on your hands and are looking for a ready to play horror adventure compatible with The Lost Bay check UNIT DH-17. This suburban horror mini dungeon has been updated to fit The Lost Bay ruleset.

You can also get them both as a bundle with a 20% discount here https://itch.io/s/99423/the-lost-bay-rules-adventure

Weird is beautiful

Want to know where this game comes from, what it’s really about?

I grew up in an environment where toxic masculinity was the rule. Both at home, and outside of it. And by toxic, I mean horror-movie level toxic. Murders, blood and all. That was just the way things were, the world of the grown ups. Normalcy. I didn’t find that normal at all! I was pretty scared most of the time. But I was lucky enough to be part of a gang of kind souls. We loved each other and helped us survive the harsh world of the Bay. We were Geeks, Punks, Queers and Dreamers. The normies called us Weird. At first that felt hurtful, and it took me years to understand that being “Weird” is more than ok, that “Weird” is beautiful. Eventually, I made “Weird” my one-word motto, and used to wear a Why be normal? pin. I was proud of my Weirdness. Things felt better, the Bay was my playground, I loved its marshes, forests, beaches and skateparks. I was happy.

Then one day, something unexpected happened. I had to leave the Bay, without notice. Like in the movies. At dawn, hiding, in secret. I didn’t come back for more than 15 years. During that exile the Bay grew in my mind like a place of fantasy, and actual memories blended with fiction. The Lost Bay became a dream, partly familiar, partly alien, a place of wonder shrouded in a terrifying mystery.

TAKE ME TO THE LOST BAY

The Lost Bay - First Look is the travel guide to this wondrous and wicked place I’m offering to you. If you accept the invitation you’ll play beautiful and powerful characters, you’ll fight the horror in breathtaking combats, and rewrite the Lost Bay’s history.

[popatochisssp]

I would like more details on ocean boys plz. More Descendtale for us?

Descendtale

A human falls to the Underground.

They’re merciful…mostly.

But maybe not merciful enough.

They make friends with many monsters on their way through the Underground.

They kill some others.

Nobody important, none of the real friends they’d made along the way—just a handful of annoying ones who kept getting in their way, surprising them with Encounters when they were busy on their very important quest to escape the Underground and go back home.

When they leave, they put their fun fantasy adventure behind them, eager to get back to their real life.

They never come back.

The monster ‘friends’ they left behind do their best to move on.

Asgore is gone, and so are the six human souls they’d collected, so close to finally being free.

Toriel has returned, which is something, a comfort of familiarity at least to have a ruler who knows what she’s doing when hope is falling and…other things are starting to go wrong.

The Royal Guard has been disbanded, what with the queen’s mandate that humans falling down should be welcomed as friends. Which is fine, most of them all knew the most recent human as a friend, but…it does leave quite a few dogs and a fish and a few other animals out of a job and consequently, out of a driving purpose in their lives.

A handful of monsters have also gone missing. Not Fallen Down, or moved away, just…gone, without a word or a call or a note. No one really knows what happened, though there’s theories, nobody seems to know anything for sure and the unsubstantiated rumors, ranging from wild to tame, are a little bit scary.

And…the Underground’s resources are dwindling. They have been for a long time, but some of those monsters that disappeared—farmers, couriers, suppliers—their absence has unbalanced the food supply chain just a little more, and what they do have is taking longer to get to the populated areas, costing more, creating uncertainty.

In essence, monsters are getting nervous and losing hope.

Many of these problems have no clear solution, but Toriel tasks the Royal Scientist to one it might be possible for her to solve: the food issue.

After all, it may only be a mild concern now, but with the human souls gone, with how long it took to gather so many to begin with, how unlikely it is for more humans to fall down anytime soon—and to be treated as guests, even if they do fall…

It’s going to be quite some time before monsterkind has any real chance to be free.

They need to survive.

They need to be able to weather the long winter that’s to come, to remain strong and keep from falling to despair.

Certainty that they won’t starve to death in subterranean ignominy is a solid step towards that.

Alphys, happy to have been kept on after her last boss…uh. Well, she throws herself into the assignment, feeling that this is her chance to really do something great, worthy of her title.

The way she sees it, they need some kind of a staple crop, something they can produce in excess without exhausting their resources in the process.

She sets her eyes on the echo flower.

Echo flowers are hardy plants and grow well in any dark environment, in all but the driest of soils, already proliferating wildly in the Underground without any influence and thriving for a long, long, long time. Their petals have been known to make a soothing tea, but the root of the plant—a thick black rhizome—is edible, too.

It hasn’t been actually eaten very much, historically, being that the taste is…not great, a little sour and a lot bitter, no matter how you prepare it.

But it is edible, full of nutrients and ambient magic to keep a monster fed and healthy so long as you don’t mind the taste.

And…can they really afford to mind the taste, at this stage?

Toriel agrees with Alphys’ assessment. The artificial light cycles that simulate day and night are ceased and echo flowers are planted anywhere and everywhere they’ll take, roots harvested and incorporated into monsters’ diets. At first, the farming is only to supplement the scarcity of other foods, but as time goes by and most of those all but disappear, the root eventually begins replacing them almost entirely.

It takes awhile for anyone to notice the changes.

Before necessity, no monster ate or even used enough echo flower root to realize that it had preservative properties.

When monsters begin to notice they’re not aging nearly as fast as they should be, a whole host of other side-effects have started to make themselves known, all dutifully assessed and catalogued by Alphys.

Monsters who consume the echo flower root consistently, at volume, can expect to see many of the following changes in their bodies:

Light sensitivity

Darkening of the extremities

Extended periods of low activity (similar to hibernation)

Lack of appetite

Bioluminescence

Reduced metabolism

Sharpening of preexisting teeth, or growth of new ones

Heightened senses (predominantly hearing sight, and smell)

Decreased sensitivity to touch

Increased physical durability

Thorn-like growths or protrusions

Mental changes and personality drift

In addition to these is something monsters colloquially start to refer to as The Withering, when bodies begin to look thin, gnarled and frail but with no attached physical ailments.

The monsters so afflicted by their new condition…

Accept it.

There’s little else they can do, as reliant on their new food source as they are by this point, and quite frankly, none of the changes seem all that bad.

They have food, they have each other, and most importantly, they have time.

It’s all a little different, of course, but monsters are nothing if not adaptable, every bit the survivors the Queen knew they could be.

The worst thing to come out of it all is that brightness of Hotland and New Home poses a bit of discomfort to most of those who’d settled there, but Toriel oversees a mass migration back to Home and renovation of the Ruins there to make them a far more pleasant place to live.

And naturally, along the way are Waterfall, blissfully dark, and Snowdin, delightfully cold—both equally appealing neighborhoods to move into, with monsters’ new taste for such things.

Life goes on for monsterkind, still trapped in their deep cavern but now…kind of thriving in it.

The next human to fall will be faced with a very different sort of Underground than the one the last human left, darker and colder to be sure, filled with monsters who want to be their friend but are maybe…a little rusty at it.

But there should be plenty of time for them to get used to it.

Kohl (Descendtale Sans)

Not so friendly with regards to humans, these days. He knows for a fact what that last one did to a handful of innocent monsters, and has a pretty strong hunch that they could’ve undone it, or at least come back to free their so-called ‘friends’ after the dust settled…but they didn’t. Despite everything, they were no better than any other human who touched the lives of monsters, and he’s all out of belief and hope and second chances for any of their ilk

Something of a new lease on life, or at least a stubborn determination to live, in spite of monsters’ most likely fate after their abandonment—the influence of the echo flower root has made a lot of his favorite creature-comfort-type experiences (eating, sleeping, savoring warmth) more difficult to enjoy, but he refuses to let that stop him

A slight mean-streak, fond of creeping up on people, unnerving them, enjoying a bit of schadenfreude now and then… but at the same time very defensive of anyone he considers part of his in-group (monsters only for now)

Mostly drifts around his usual haunts, Grillby’s, his place, his sentry station—even though the Guard isn’t a thing and he’s not technically a sentry anymore. He still likes to keep an eye-socket out, and if a human manages to slip out of the Ruins without being caught, or if they come in the back way, he’d really like to be there to give them a good scare, and remind them that he’s watching

A little chilly, a bit avoidant, and with a tendency to push peoples’ buttons to see what they do (…well, he’s always done that one), he’s not the easiest person to get along with but… Well, there is no ‘but,’ that’s the end of the sentence.

Bram (Descendtale Papyrus)

Very, very, very eager to make new friends—yes, even human ones! He befriended the last one, but…maybe he didn’t do it right, because…they left…and never came back…and if his brother is to be believed, they may have also murdered a few monsters before that… That’s probably not his fault. But he can do better! He can be a great friend! The best friend, he just needs another chance!

In the process of reinventing himself, just a bit. With the Royal Guard disbanded, that dream is dead, but the Great Papyrus doesn’t need a dream to be great! He’s working on himself right now, trying new hobbies, exploring new styles, reaching out…reaching out a lot, it’s…it’s very hard to get a call back these days, with everything going on…

Some difficulty with emotional regulation, he can go from feeling not much of anything at all, to feeling one emotion very strongly, which can lead to embarrassing outbursts from time to time. He's managing it, or trying to!

Still patrols around Snowdin regularly, even though he’s not a sentry anymore. He likes to see everyone—all the new and old faces—and it wouldn’t do to leave all his traps and puzzles to fall into disrepair, not when he has so many ideas for how to make them more difficult, challenging enough that even the craftiest human might really need to think on

A little bit scattered, a pinch forgetful, and somewhat prone to saying vaguely unsettling things without realizing they are unsettling (…well, he’s always done that one), but mostly he’s harmless! Just seeking a bit of earnest connection and people to have in his life that won’t leave

[blackjackkent]

Offering Free Software/Web Dev Tutoring Sessions on Twitch Stream Once a Month!

OK, the people have spoken! There was a definite expression of interest in coding tutoring when I floated a vague post about it towards the coding side of Tumblr, which was very exciting to see! I am really excited about helping teach new people in the industry, and I conveniently have a Twitch stream where I do lots of coding stuff on Sundays. Seems like these two things go well together! :D

Here's the deal:

For right now, I will allocate the first Sunday of every month on my coding stream to tutoring! This will be two slots of an hour each, one from 11am-12pm Central Time and one from 12pm-1pm Central Time. (Depending on interest, there may be more slots in the future as well. :) ) If you are interested in requesting a slot for tutoring, please fill out this form!

This is a pay-what-you-can offering, and if I offer you a live tutoring slot it will be at no charge! However, I welcome donations to whatever degree you can afford them, after the session, to help keep my stream and other projects going.

Submitting this form does not guarantee I will give you a tutoring session, as some subjects are more conducive to demonstrating on stream than others and some may be too far outside of my expertise for me to be helpful. However, I will try to at least reach out to you and provide some helpful resources if I have any to offer. 

If you don't want direct tutoring on stream (or even if you do!), feel free to stop by my Discord server at https://discord.gg/k4gDad5, where we talk about coding, gaming, and plenty of other nerdy stuff! :) Everyone's welcome, just don't be a jerk. ;)

I'll be posting more about this in the future depending on the response I get. Feel free to hit me up with questions if I can clarify anything. :)

Finally - this is a bit of an experiment; I've never tried this before so I will also be learning as I go. :) Suggestions/feedback appreciated.

Thanks for your interest and good luck in your coding adventures!

[the-sinful-voice-witch]

TIME TO LOVE STEPHANIE BROWN aka SPOILER

She deserves JUSTICE!

Greek Goddesses! Another character that earned a love post from me, she needs the love, she DESERVES to be loved 💜💜💜 (spoiler alert, this post will be a loooooooooong 😅 )

I found out about her and other characters thanks to the wholesome slice of life comic Batman: family Wayne adventures months ago (I've been a DC Batman fan since I was a kid but I mostly watched shows that didn't include said characters before starting with the comics) and I fell in love with her, I mean she is all purple and her hero name is SPOILER 💘 so she could jump on criminals and say things like: SPOILER ALERT YOU'RE ABOUT TO GET BUSTED 👊😂 HELLO? INSTANT LOVE 💘and then I searched for her, read a lot of comics... and learned SOOO many outrageous things!🤬 Welcome to Hypocrisyland 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️. Here comes the RANT:

So she was an independent girl who made herself the Spoiler persona to "spoil" her wannabe Riddle father's evil deeds and she was a bit morally gray and cynical and wasn't particularly trying to be a hero or a vigilante and then after meeting Robin she started to change her mind inspired by HIM so all her thing started completely separated from Batman and technically it was by associating herself with Tim/Robin that at some point she started to want Batman's approval too and started the whole "fight to prove that I deserve a place here" thing but I think the amount of disrespect this girl faced is ridiculous! Treated like she was hopeless, useless, stupid etc... is she a punching bag? Treated like shit by so many characters for no good reason 😡 and I didn't see any satisfying consequence on them because of it, it was as if the way they treated her was justified because... I don't know, she was compared to Jason, to Dick, to Tim and to Barbara but when is only about her own person she wasn't good enough so they were hysterical about her hurting herself or dying faster than any of them 🙄, so everything is justified because they were worried?

Sorry but NO, I don't care if she isn't as skillful as characters like Cassandra or Damian that were raised to be living killing weapons by assassins or that she isn't intelligent genius detective level with a rich live background that could afford special ttraining like Tim or Batman himself, that she isn't some erudite engineer to build herself taser weapons like Harper Row or a suit flying armor like Luke Fox, that she doesn't have military training like Kate Kane, that she doesn't have hacker skills or a cop dad as Barbara Gordon, or she doesn't have powers like Duke or wasn't trained by ninjas like Selina Kyle or that she started only having good grades at gymnastics instead of having been raised in a circus by acrobats like Dick Grayson... I DON'T CARE, because she had a lot of qualities to start from Zero to Hero that are probably a lot more relatable than the other characters, most people don't have third rate criminal fathers but still she is a lot closer to the normal people than other characters and that makes her great, she is so resourceful even thought that unlike Batman and Tim she comes from poverty and can't get high tech stuff, yet she made herself a costume and helped take down her criminal father in a low budget! How come her resourceness in her situation wasn't impressive to them? How come that she had to endure being dismissed and underestimated constantly over and over until her death? It was exhausting to see! The fact that she started being resentful towards her father and wanted more revenge than justice is enough to ditch her as a hero? (Maybe the Avengers would have welcomed her better in that case 🙄) How much she had to train until the writers stopped making her look unfit and unworthy despite everything?

I don't get why they decided to make everyone around her be an asshole, a jerk, a hypocrite... Specially Tim and Batman (the AUDACITY of these two! Batman "fired" Her from being Spoiler like she being Spoiler had anything to do with him in the first place, entitlement much? Robin mantle I get it but The Spoiler mantle was hers from the beginning he can't fire her from it and then Tim went to comfort her, ironic since he kept telling her to hang the suit all the time, he also said being a Teen Titan was out her league when she was offered a place and told her she can't speak for herself, seriously you fucking jerk? Does he think he is Dick Grayson or what? 😒 the entitlement is spreading! and later when he became Red Robin he DEMANDED her to never be Spoiler again... Oh FUCK YOU 🖕🤬, mister "I discovered your secret so now you have to hire me as Robin" Worse part of that is that he said that after finding out things she was doing on Batman's orders wtf? So is bad always no matter if she disobeys or obeys Batman she can't win) They even made my dear Alfred be cold with at first because "she hurt Tim" but it was actually Batman's fault because he told her his secret 😤 well at least that treatment didn't last, bless Alfred for crying after her death when Dick asked about her and being so happy to see her alive he lose his British.

Why they hated her so much to the point they just doomed her to a horrible death that wasn't even heroic? She was tortured for days after provoking a gang war following one of Batman's plans trying to gain his trust back after he fired her from being his Robin for only 2 months! 🤬 2 miserable months!! because she disobeyed him (sure, sure, no other Robin BEFORE and AFTER her has ever disobeyed Bats orders right? 🙄) and the last person she sees before dying is him who was always comparing her to her male predecessors because he didn't like she was more questioning than them and then lied to her dying face about considering her a real Robin (by the way it felt so wrong that she became Robin out of spite because she saw a girl kissing Tim and she assumed he was cheating... I mean I can't blame her he did CHEAT on his first girlfriend with her, boy I hate this kind of teen drama) . They said it was "unclear" If he was telling the truth, HA! PLEASE. 🙄Of course he is not going to tell the ugly truth to a dying girl (he even "insulted" Her once saying she fights like a girl, wtf? She should have tell on him to Dinah lance) The ones who should have been there were Cassandra and Tim they actually did considered her a Robin, yep even Tim (he even mentioned a few positive things about her time being Robin) after he retook the mantle, they at least loved her! Even if they wronged her at least there was no doubt that they loved her... (Even if Tim's grief for her was short and too dry! 😡, They wanted people to forget about her so hard he was already having new love interests when not even a year passed, he suffered a lot more with his father and Superboy's death than with Stephanie 🤬, at least Cass cried and dreamed about her and thankfully Alfred and Barbara cried for her too even when they weren't that close to her at that time) Because seriously, this was a pitiful sad death, not bothering in making it a sacrifice or falling on combat saving someone noooo, she died after making a huge mistake trying to impress someone who never actually seemed to like her at all! In a gruesome and kinda sexualized way, nobody came to rescue her... Batman only showed up to pick her up after she escaped alone and tell her pretty lies before dying.

What a fucking Joke 🤦‍♀️ how humiliating for a character with a hell lot of potential WASTED! She didn't even get a memorial in the Batcave like Jason! Both their deaths were meant to be permanent but the comics only wanted you to remember Jason but not about Stephanie! Like he never existed! (And later the lame excuse for it🙄, like Batman suspected she wasn't really dead but he didn't tell Tim or Cass about that suspicion? None of them confronted him about the lack of memorial of her? Wouldn't they demand a memorial of a girl that meant a lot to them? He suspected she was alive but he never care to find her?🙄😑 Talk about crappy, tacky writing) it's like the character was thrown like garbage... Indeed that's what they intended to, her death was supposed to be permanent but fortunately for us fans rioted to demand her return very rightfully! 😤 and... Her return was still rushed, lame and lazy 😒 and they forgot to add a LOT of characters reactions seeing her alive 🤦‍♀️, like not even Cass??? I searched and never found a comic with her reaction after finding out she was alive! All out of camera, I hate that, is just so TACKY! Not an epic death and not proper comeback 😬😬

But then we had her run as the third Batgirl! Her solo as Batgirl did a lot of good for her character, with the exception of a few things I disliked like: her interaction with Catwoman that didn't make sense with how they met in the gangs war or that once again Batman has to have all the credit 🙄 because at the end he comes back from a not actual death and it turns out the whole make her a Batgirl was his doing and not Cassandra's doing😑 that would have been better because later they could rub it on his face but they couldn't because it was his idea 😬 but hey at least she got to SLAP him 🤣👏👏 that was epic BRAVO! Ahh that solo lasted too little! She got to put Tim in his place, she became friends with Supergirl and bonded with Damian as a big sister, I swear she should have spent more time with them, she demonstrated her bravery and willpower when she kicked the Scarecrow ass, finally earning Barbara's respect and admiration after she was so bitchy with her, its always so satisfying seeing characters standing up for her after so much mistreatment (i guess she had mixed feelings with the fact that Stephanie is a Batgirl that resembles more to her, Dick also mentioned that and thankfully he stopped being a jerk hypocrite with her too) and did I a mention that she FUCKING SLAPPED BATMAN? Because that is extremely important 😂 and Alfred defended her calling Bruce out in his bullshit test. Then for some stupid out of the blue reason she retired for a year... AFTER ALL SHE WENT THROUGH TO EARN THAT MANTLE? 🤬🤬🤬. Anyway she had to take the mantle back because she was chosen for some tournament where she had to fight Catman and there was Tim again looking down on her 🙄 "why weren't we chosen Cass we are better fighters she is a year out of shape" (Yeah who the fuck decided to make her hang the cape after everything? 🤡) at least Cass defended her saying that she is unpredictable, not like when they were training (Steph was still death) and out of the blue she unnecessarily tells him "you learn fast not like my last student" Really? I recall you enjoying training her 🙄 Sure Cassandra cried and dreamed of her but she used to look down on her a lot, the way she knocked her out in after being fired from being Robin was something we never see her apologize for, it was swept under the rug like never happened, Steph never confronted her about it even though she left her feeling betrayed 🤦‍♀️ and then besties again like nothing 😒. But at least she punched Tim for being an imbecile and then they got together again, so lovely, so happy, she was finally getting respect... BOOM: the new 52 reboot happened. 😃😃

The only thing I liked was that she got triple nunchakus as a personal weapon and that way she doesn't copy Robin's stick and the fact that she went through teen pregnancy and had to give up the baby because I hated that lazy plot that was only meant to make her and Tim have a closer relationship is not canon anymore(they really couldn't think of anything else to deepen their relationship than making her go through that pain so he could support her?😒🤦‍♀️ besides, she had a traumatic sexual assault experience as a child so I find hard to believe she would let herself get pregnant with the scumbag she dated before Tim, I hard to believe she didn't dumped him until he abandoned her in the earthquake) but her origin and relationship with Tim was erased along her time as Robin and as Batgirl(even thought that somehow thankfully now is canon again)and other character named Harper basically took a bit of Steph and Cassandra stories, mixed them and made them her own... pretty lame because Harper's concept was actually cool but she taking their place wasn't cool she also was the one to befriend Cassandra and had a conection with her first instead of Steph and the one who had to fight to be allowed to be a vigilante by Batman instead of her and she was the one that convinced Steph to join the fight instead of Steph wanting to do it by herself but the thing that infuriates me the most in this reboot was that she was accepted into the batfamily without much problem but altmost inmidiatly they made her go against them and againts Batman that this time wasn't being an asshole to her due to the apparent death of Tim Drake, Batman was even being affectionate with her, that hug he gave her to comfort her was precious 🥺 and so satisfying to see but then they had to ruin everything by making her be unreasonable and insufferable to create cheap drama 🤦‍♀️, now that she got the only thing she wanted pre reboot they make her want to walk away?🤡🤡🤡 not to mention I was already pissed of that in her solo as Batgirl they forgot what kind of interaction she had with Catwoman, basically Selina was the last person who was sweet and kind to her before she was killed, it would have been nice to see a proper reaction to her come back but the reboot made things worse! Selina was bitchy and mean to Steph even if she gave her some acknowledgement to her talent but she refused to grant my wish of training her and instead she was trained by the second Catwoman that honesty was disappointed but not that bad because I will like any character that would want to help Steph and Eiko (2° Catwoman) took her in for a while and bothered to teach her something so KUDOS 👍 for her! And Cassandra, Dinah and Barbara too.

And well I'm going to stop the rant here because aside of Tim dumping her and treating her shitty for no reason when they were finally happy so he could be with a random background NPC boy nobody cared about or even remembered so he could prove his bisexuality 😑😑😑, in general things are finally getting good for her: she is finally fully recognized as a Robin and she got another solo with Cassandra and Barbara as Batgirls that wasn't as good as the first one but it was nice and apparently she is now going to have her own team of young superheroes in a new comic.

I wanted to make an statement about things I like about her, the need to make her interact with other characters I think she would get along and my new Ship with her and Jason but all that will have their owns individual posts because I already wrote too much here, if you read it all thank you so much 🙏🙏🙏❤❤ if you felt offended or disagreed with something I said I apologize but remember that this is just the random opinion of a random Tumblr user so... See you in my next posts 😘💋💋

STEPHANIE BROWN DESERVES LOVE AND JUSTICE 💪💜

[thenixkat]

Yeah, I actually do think in a mundane au Laios would be, like, solidly fat if you set that mundane au in any place where there's easier access to food in general especially with like ready-made/frozen/microwavable cheap foods that are affordable to poor people.

Also, if we put him in a similar-ish real-world job to adventuring (effectively low-paying labor intense work in the wilderness that possibly involves fighting hostile wildlife and resource extraction/exploration) he'd still eat a lot better than he would have in canon pre-rescue Falin mission, given there's less social stigma especially in more rural places to eating animals outside of the general norm.

I can also see probably some low-key stress eating from him that combined with how he seems to be built to be great at putting on weight and holding onto it/loses it slowly even when starved (looking at some of the pre-canon extras plus him being from the far north/very fucking cold country would make a lot of sense)

Also, Falin would be thicker too but not as big as Laios, cause I think stress [capitalism, work, the internet, feelings of being a failure/feeling of inadequacy/guilt] would add on to shit for him.

But yo, hear me out, Laios built like a fridge trekking through the woods unfazed, having a great time, hardly worked up a sweat while the rest of the party with their short lil legs and/or poor stamina huffing puffing and asking this man to slow down.

[heliza24]

The Radical Act of Quitting (and Wilhelm)

This is a little more personal than my Young Royals metas normally are. It’s really one-half personal essay, one-half show analysis.  It’s something of a spiritual successor to my post about radical acceptance and Simon’s arc in season 2. And it’s also about the reasons why I want Wilhelm to renounce the crown by the end of season 3. (I am stating that early, because I know many people disagree. Feel free to engage but please do so with kindness; a lot of this is quite vulnerable for me.)

I’m disabled. Specifically, I have a chronic condition that began in my early twenties, and slowly got worse and worse until I was finally diagnosed at 28. I’m 31 now, and I’ve had to grieve the person I once was many times over. I used to be a dancer, I used to be an adventurous eater, I used to love to travel. My chronic pain and restrictive medical diet have taken those things away from me, piece by piece. But the thing I mainly want to talk about right now is quitting my job. At the time of my diagnosis, I had worked at my job full time for three years. For a few years after my diagnosis, I tried to remain at my job part-time, because I loved it. I worked in the music industry, and I had the best team of coworkers. I had a great work/life balance, I was never stressed about work. I looked forward to each day in the office. When I went to events and had to introduce myself during an ice-breaker, I would usually include a fact about my job. I found a lot of my identity there. All of my work directly supported musicians, which was something I was very proud of.

So I tried very, very hard to hang on to my job. My company gave out these ridiculously heavy plaques for employees who had been at the company for 5 years, and I was determined to get one. But it was really hard. I could no longer type sitting up for more than a few minutes, so I did every day from my lap desk in bed. (This is still where I write all of my fic and meta!) I struggled to talk to customers on the phone while I was in pain. The office was closed because of the pandemic, but I would have had to work from home regardless because I couldn’t handle the commute.  Every day was a slog. And my pain and fatigue weren’t getting better. In fact they were continuing to get worse as time went on. Finally, my five-year work anniversary arrived. I made it, but I felt like a runner barely stumbling over the finish line. It was the end of 2021. I talked with my friends and my therapist and my disability benefits lawyer. “I don’t think I can keep working,” I would say. And then I would cry, because the thought of letting go of this last part of my identity, when my illness had already taken so much, was so horrible.

After several months of deliberating and grieving, I quit.  My boss begged me to reconsider (God bless him, honestly). Was there anything he could do to better accommodate my needs? Could I work a different schedule to let me sleep more? Could I work freelance on specific projects they really needed me on? I wanted to say yes so badly. But I knew. The longer I held on, the more I fought, the worse my health would become. And the worse my health would become, the more I would struggle with work. The joy I had felt during my first three years in that office had already drained away. I was fighting just to get through each day, and I didn’t want to fight anymore.

I recognize that having the resources and disability benefits to even consider quitting is a huge privilege. There are a lot of disabled and chronically ill folks who struggle through work at great detriment to their health because they can’t afford not to keep working.  So I recognize how lucky I was to be able to quit. I am so grateful for that option, even as I mourn all the things I have lost.

In my meta about Simon, I talked about radical acceptance and how it has been my guiding light as a disabled person. Embracing radical acceptance means that I have done my best to accept what I can and cannot do, and what I can and cannot control, without judgment. I accepted that I needed to walk away from my job. But how was I supposed to define myself without it?

Capitalism defines most peoples’ self-identity, whether they realize it or not. We identify with our jobs, or with the “grind” culture, or with the moral goodness associated with working hard. But here I was, without a job. And I had my whole adult life ahead of me. I had to find a way to make a new identity outside of work.

Around this time, I started to gravitate towards stories where characters are faced with similar decisions, even if I didn’t realize it yet. And let me tell you, there aren’t many of them.

@bluedalahorse and I talk about this a lot. In our ultra-franchised world, the point of stories, even those that are supposedly about rebellions, is often to return characters to the status quo, so that the next movie/comic/episode can pick back up where the last one left off. And when there is a significant change in the status quo, it is usually because the characters worked, and pushed, and struggled to achieve that change. It’s very rare to see a story about someone who walked away from something that was harming them. It’s rarer still to find something that deals with the aftermath, as characters work to re-establish themselves.

I’ve found a lot of comfort in true stories of people leaving cults and high demand religions, and of queer people forced to leave their conservative families behind. In all of these cases, people are consciously abandoning a predominant belief system that is harming them, and have to start over as they craft their new sense of identity. (I am also queer, which adds an additional level of connection). Often people in these situations come to rely on their found family, a thing I have also found to be true in my own life.

I quit my job in between seasons 1 and 2 of Young Royals, and I don’t think I realized how many themes connected my experience to Wilhelm’s until I was watching season 2. Wilhelm is the protagonist of Young Royals, and his central dramatic question has always been: will he fulfill his duty as a royal? Or will he quit, and discover who he is beyond the system he was raised in? Simon is a huge part of this decision, obviously, but the question has never been strictly about Simon.

While I have no personal experience with the monarchy, I do know what it’s like to consider walking away from a role that you assumed you would fill for the rest of your life. I know what it’s like to think about quitting your job.

There’s so much pressure on Wilhelm to assume the role of perfect Crown Prince. He’s told constantly—by Kristina, by Jan-Olof, by the court-- that he can’t let his family or his country down by deviating from this role in any way.

This is a pretty common experience for people who are trying to quit something. They are told that they will let down those around them if they leave. People who are leaving high demand religions are told that they will not be able to enter heaven.  Queer people in conservative families are told they can’t come out because “it would break [elderly relative]’s heart and kill them.” When I quit my job, I thought a lot about how I’d be letting down my coworkers and everyone who knew me as a hyper-competent career-driven person.(This included some of my doctors by the way, who expressed their disappointment in my failure to adhere to their idea of a “worthy” disabled person, i.e. someone who soldiered through the pain and continued to work. Some withdrew care because of this and honestly I will never forgive them). And maybe I was letting people down, and maybe ex-Mormons really will spend the afterlife in outer darkness, and maybe all the grandmas of queer people will be so upset that they kick the bucket when their grandkids come out. But ultimately, if your happiness or safety or well being depends on leaving, it doesn’t really matter. You have to do it anyway.  You have to abandon the things that you can no longer carry. You have to discover who you are on the other side of religion, of the closet, of capitalism.

I think about this every time people in the fandom talk about how Wilhelm leaving the line of succession will create a constitutional crisis, or impact all of Sweden negatively. I am personally pretty anti-monarchist, but I honestly can’t even tell you if I think that Wilhelm removing himself from the line of succession would bring about the end of the Swedish monarchy or not. Honestly, I don’t really care.  I care about Wilhelm. I want him to seek happiness, to search for the future that must live on the other side of this oppressive system he finds himself in. A constitutional crisis? That’s Kristina’s problem, that’s Jan-Olof’s problem, that’s the government’s problem. Radical acceptance means focusing on the things you can control, and Wilhelm can only control his own happiness.

When this issue gets debated, I often see people argue that Wilhelm is too young to make the decision to give up the throne. But the reality is that we ask teenagers to make decisions about their futures all the time. @bluedalahorse wrote a great piece of meta about that here. I love what she said so much I’m going to quote it directly:

Nonetheless, we ask teenagers of Sara and Wilhelm’s ages to think about decisions that affect their future all the time. We ask them to consider what career they’ll pursue or what university to attend. Teenagers who grow up in various denominations of Christianity consider whether they’re going to go through with Confirmation or sometimes Baptism. Other religions (ones where I can’t speak from as much personal experience) have various other rites of passage around this age, and various cultures have coming of age rituals. For some teens, they do these things willingly and with their whole heart, whereas for others, they do it to please their parents or families or for the social norms of it all.

And if Wilhelm is too young to decide to give up the throne, how can he be old enough to decide to keep it? Surely the decision to take on the governance of a country, even in a symbolic way, requires as much, if not more, maturity than the decision to pursue a less high-powered career elsewhere.

When people in the fandom claim that Wilhelm is too young to make this decision, I hear Kristina telling Wilhelm to wait until he’s 18 to come out, because only then will he be responsible enough to deal with the consequences. That’s a delaying tactic, and nothing more. People who don’t want you to leave will ask you to delay your decision over and over again, because they think that if they can kick the can down the road just a little farther, they’ll never have to lose you.

I also see people argue that Wilhelm isn’t qualified to make a decision because he doesn’t know enough about the “real world” to know what he is choosing. To be honest I don’t think most teenagers know much about the “real world”. I definitely didn’t. But we ask them to make decisions that will affect their futures anyway. And here’s another way to look at this: Wilhelm has plenty of places he can look to for examples of how “ordinary” people live. He can find out what it’s like to be from a noble but non-royal family from the students at Hillerska. He can talk to Simon and Linda about what their lives are like. He can read the millions of books, or watch the thousands of movies and TV shows that feature non-royal protagonists and were created by non-royal artists. But only Wilhelm knows what it is like to be Crown Prince. No one else has had that experience. So I would argue that actually, Wilhelm is the only one qualified to make this call.

Ultimately, the agency and mental capacity of people who are quitting is often doubted, usually by the people who have the most to gain by keeping them in place.

So many people have so much invested in maintaining the status quo. And as soon as you invest in a system, someone daring to leave puts your world view into question. Why are you dealing with so many oppressive rules if someone else can just leave? We see this a lot with high demand religions and cults; if someone threatens to break free, the members often join ranks and work together to pressure them to stay. What has your sacrifice as a woman in a patriarchal religion meant, for example, if another woman can decide to simply walk away? Does Kristina’s grim life of duty and sacrifice matter, if Wilhelm can just opt out and seek happiness instead? 

Then of course, there are all the benefits that an oppressive system confers on its most privileged members. Those benefits are in danger of disappearing if enough people quit, so high ranking people will work to keep others in line.  Think about all the people who benefit from the monarchy: all the staff who work for the royal family, all the nobles who get their reputation by proximity to the monarch, and everyone in Sweden who in general benefits from the image that a long-standing institution of white, straight, conservative power projects.

And those aren’t people Wilhelm needs to be responsible for (or should be concerned with placating, to be honest). If the monarchy fails because Wilhelm leaves, it’s because there’s always been a fault in the system. Those relying on this outdated system have signed their own fate.

No one knows fully what life will be like after they quit. That’s the radical acceptance part of quitting. You have to make a blind leap, and discover a whole new world once you land. Wilhelm is no more sheltered than anyone before they take this leap. Everyone who quits—a religion, a cult, a job—has to go through this process of rediscovery.  You have to learn by doing. People do that successfully all the time, and I believe that Wilhelm can too.

When I was talking about this meta with @bluedalahorse, we talked a lot about Plato’s allegory of the cave. That story goes something like this:

Several prisoners have been kept inside a cave their entire life. They are chained to the spot, and cannot move. They are facing the back wall of the cave. Behind them is a fire, and in between them and the fire, their captors walk back and forth, casting shadows on the wall. Because the prisoners have been kept in the cave their entire life and have only ever seen shadows, they think the shadows are real. They think the only thing that exists in the world is shadows. Until one day, one of the prisoners is set free. He goes outside for the first time, where he is blinded by the sun and overwhelmed by stimulus. But he discovers the real world. He now knows that the shadows he was used to are pale imitations of the real things. He’s so excited that he goes back to tell his fellow prisoners what he has learned. But the prisoners get angry at him for challenging their world view. They don’t believe him, no matter what he says.

There are a lot of ways you can interpret this story. Some people think that Plato is talking about the role of philosophers in society. Some people use it to explain a philosophical concept he writes about elsewhere called “forms”. But I think one thing is clear. Plato didn’t write the allegory of the cave (and it didn’t stick around in human imagination for thousands of years) because he thought you should stay in the cave. Leaving the cave is hard. You will be met with resistance. But discovering the real world, when you were only seeing shadows before, is worth it.

I want Wilhelm to leave to be happy, to see the real world instead of shadows. But I also believe it’s what the story demands. It’s the only answer that makes asking the dramatic question—should Wilhelm conform or rebel?—worthwhile to me.

To be king, but to be the first gay king, would be such an unsatisfactory ending for me. It reminds me of how hard I tried to keep my job—by working from bed, by reducing my hours. My boss could do the best he could to be accommodating, but ultimately working was harming me. You can’t adapt the monarchy enough to make it a non-damaging space for Wilhelm, because there will always be people pressuring him to conform to its straight, stoic ideals. Those ideals have been around for hundreds of years, and to put all of the burden of reforming them on Wilhelm is unfair and unrealistic. If he does stay, I see him struggling to change a system that is not designed for him. Even if he does make small victories for representation or inclusion in that context, it will come at an enormous emotional cost. I just don’t think it’s worth it. Not when there’s a whole world where Wilhelm could be doing good, important work– in whatever arena he chooses– that won’t also come along with inherent emotional trauma. 

Believe me, there’s a whole world to be discovered after you walk away from something that’s damaging you. You grieve, yes, but you also grow. Since quitting I’ve been able to love my friends harder, to treat myself better, to give back to the disabled community.  I think if you talk to most people who have committed a similar act of radical quitting they’ll say the same thing.  I want this future for Wilhelm, but I also want this kind of story to exist for all of us. I want there to be a story that represents those of us who have had to make these kinds of decisions. I want there to be a story that can encourage people who are currently wrestling with their desire to leave and the pressure to stay. And I want there to be a story that shows the hope, the bravery, and the self-belief that is required to walk away and seek a brighter future.

[jacquesthepigeon]

The miracle box is Chinese in terms of base aesthetics and nothing else. Which is embarrassing for a professional work that can afford to hire cultural experts. I do more research for my fanfiction than the professional writing staff apparently did for this mess of a show.

In China, black cats symbolize GOOD fortune, not bad luck. The idea of black cats being unlucky is very Western and also relatively modern when you considered that the box is supposed to date back several millenia.

Ladybugs seem to be associated with good luck, too, but so do lots of other animals and it doesn't seem like a Ladybug is the "lucky animal" go-to in Chinese culture. It's hard to research this since I don't speak Chinese and so many sites spout BS "oriental mysticism" type stuff, but lists of lucky Chinese animals never mention Ladybugs. You have to specifically look for Chinese lore around Ladybugs to find anything. In other words, I don't think a box based on Chinese lore would have a black cat and a ladybug as Creation and Destruction with clear luck themes.

As best I can tell, none of the zodiac powers are based on Chinese mythology around the zodiac either. I mean, Fluff is pretty explicitly designed around Alice in Wonderland, which has nothing to do with ancient China or Tibet. It's glaringly obvious that they just went with the zodiac because it's neat.

In other words, I think it's more culturally sensitive to redesign the miracle box so that it's not tied to a specific culture than to try and make the existing one work with Chinese culture unless you're going to completely rework what the miraculous actually do.

(I'm sending this in partially because I'd love to see comments from any followers who actually know about this stuff and can chime in with thoughts or good resources! I've been curious about the Chinese zodiac ever since Jackie Chan Adventures introduced me to the concept as a kid)

I recall that guy explicitly stating that the reason they decided on Chinese origins was to make the lore ~exotic~ which like

I don’t have to explain the implications