#also now I am conflicted in recommending the game

[lostnotebookgcb5]

Well comrades, I think we all knew that something was going on since the news about making a deal with Capitalist poster child Amazon and now we know

What is there left to be said that most of us probably don't think already?

While I've no interest to wish ill upon the remaining workers of ZA/UM company, anything and especially everything Disco Elysium related from them is from now on is just investors whiping on the cash cow a little bit further and I've no interest in supporting them

It's also a bit sad to see so many people hoping Kurvitz & Co. found another studio to continue the journey. With the cultural association aka the creative minds going their (apparently) seperate ways? And ZA/UM as a company only having been possibly due to the investement (that backstabbed them), with the question of how they should find this second investement that does not want to exploit them? And with talent probably now being stuck with the old company?

I'm pessimistic that they will capture the lightening in the bottle a second time, but I wish Kurvitz still owns the rights to his story and do something, anything, with it and find other ways to gain a living out of it

Overall, F in the chat

[panoffrying]

My Dr. Sozonius LORE Headcanons

✨Warning this is a bit long✨

Sozo is a character that has lived for a very long time. Whatever that mushroom was on their head not only influenced Sozo but kept them immortal. We know really nothing bout Sozos past so I made some headcanons for silly fun and for me to visualize who Sozo was and what his life may have looked like. I want to do my best to keep this as game accurate as possible, so there will be quotes from the game. The quotes are not at all in order! I kinda just bring up random Sozo quotes as I go. Also I apologize if this doesn't make sense or if I ramble (I get excited about certain topics) 

thank you so much @7moonbird for going over and editing this for me, Love ya Pookie!

And so we start:

Sozonius was born in the days of the old faith. He was present the day the Bishops declared the genocide of the lambs and he actually played a big part in assisting the lambs survival. However, he almost got caught and had to stop helping the lambs to keep his family safe. He's never seen any of the bishops(maybe) but his village was part of Darkwood and therefore under Bishop Leshy’s ruling.

VILLAGE 

Sozonius village was mostly a colony of Carpenter Ants, there were a few other species living there too but it was mostly Carpenter Ants. I imagine there are different races of ants depending on the region they’re in; so there could be fire ants, pharaoh ants, and more! Most ants get along nicely and work together but sometimes other races of ants can be more temperamental and cause conflict between colonies. Carpenter ants are a more calm type of ants, they aren't aggressive but they are incredibly strong. Carpenters ants are known to live in trees; they hollow out trees to make their homes and they like to stay off the ground as much as possible in case of floods and other dangers.

In the colony they had their ruler, the “Queen,” who looked over the village and did queenly business (not gonna go too deep into it). Everyone had many different jobs, ants are hard workers and very strong. They made marvelous structures, farmed a lot of crops, and knew how to work together when there was a threat. Sozo’s village was one that many others would try making deals/trades with. I would talk more about his village but that's not why y’all are here lol. 

Sozonius was a fellow damn near everyone in the village knew. He loved his work and he loved to talk about it to anyone that expressed that they wanted to listen. He was that guy that you could get stuck in a conversation with and struggle to end it. He liked to ramble about his work and kids. Other than that though he never really started conversations with others, he would keep to himself unless someone interacted with him.

And I could definitely see him having a science rival but nothing too bad lol.

FAMILY

“Where am I…? Where is… my family…?”  are the words Sozo says when he turns back into Dr. Sozonius. I like to think he had a wife and two children. They didn’t have the best marriage but they made it work out for their two sons. His wife was a bit stubborn and very honest. She would say things before thinking which did cause issues, but Sozonius let it slide because he loved her so much and wanted a happy family for his sons. 

Sozonius was a very funny dude. He made dad jokes all the damn time, his family would pretend to hate the jokes but in reality they did love them. 

Sozo Dialogue “Now all Sozo can think about is mushrooms, mushrooms, MUSHROOMS… They don’t leave mush-room for anything else! Ha!”

(Also, this next idea is inspired off of @kuphulwho headcanons for Sozo. I loved her ideas and I recommend y'all look at her headcanons too!) Aside from Sozonius being a mycologist he had a side hobby of art! He wasn't the best artist, but he was really talented with sketching plants/fungi, he liked to make art of anything that interested him. He most likely wrote an educational picture book about Fungi, there's probably an old copy of it somewhere.

This art hobby caught the interest of his two sons, and they also started to pursue art. Sozonius would take his free time teaching his sons how to draw plants and such. Sozonius would hang his kids' art everywhere in their house, it was like walking into an art museum haha.

JOB

Sozonius studied mycology which means he studied fungi. Sozonius knew fungi could benefit his society and he wanted to help educate others about the importance of fungi. Soon he learned enough of a new discovery of mushroom people, neither plant nor animal…Sozonius then made the decision to go on a solo mission to study the Mushroomo people.

THE MUSHROOMOS 

Dr. Sozonius Dialogue “My name is Dr. Sozonius. I was researching the Mushroomos that live in Spore Grotto… strange creatures, Neither animal nor plant…” 

Sozonius went to Spore Grotto and at first, he studied the Mushroomo people from a distance setting up a campsite near the Mushroomo Village. When the Mushroomo people discovered Sozonius they welcomed him into their home, cheerful happy little things. Sozonius was given the chance to learn more about these strange creatures up close! How could he say no? Sozonius was welcomed into Spore Grotto and was treated like a god. 

Sozonius asked the Mushroomos many questions, but getting any actual answers from them was difficult. The Mushroomos treated Sozonius like he was their most special guest, they danced and sang for Sozonius. They would mimic Sozonius and follow him around, making sure to do anything he asked of them. There would be many times when the Mushroomos would offer to feed Sozonius menticide mushrooms but Sozonius knew a lot about fungi and declined their offers. However, there seemed to be a special Ritual the Mushroomos took part in… 

Sozonius had been in Spore Grotto for many weeks now, it was time for him to leave, he had studied enough and was ready to return home but the Mushroomos were surprisingly sad when he announced this. They wanted to show Sozonius a sacred ritual to them before he left, he wasn't aware of the menticide mushrooms being part of it…

Dr. Sozonius Dialogue “They gave me Menticide Mushrooms, and then… that’s the last thing I remember…”

After Sozonius was tricked into eating menticide mushrooms and also gave Sozonius a crown, a crown that would grow into Sozoniuss mind, he shall be the Mushroomos leader… And the new Sozo was made. (literally just think of Ice Age 2 when the lil sloths take Sid to be their fire king, however they don't sacrifice him)

The mushroom on Sozos head is very powerful, it makes me wonder what it is exactly, it gives the person wearing it immortality, but also causes the user to go insane (don't forget that Sozo is also being fed menticide mushrooms) the mushroom crown kinda reminds me of Chemachs crown. It seems to have a mind of its own and a face. I feel like the Mushroomos for days straight made sure to give Sozo a diet of only menticide mushrooms to make him forget everything and to possibly power the mushroom crown. They would constantly tell Sozo that his mind would be open and free, that it would make him feel better, and Sozo being under the influence of the mushroom listened to them.

A Mushroomo Dialogue "Once you taste the Menticide Mushroom your mind will be opened." 

As the years went by so did all the sanity Sozonius had left, but in some moments Sozonius seems to still be aware but not all there. 

Sozo Dialogue “Sozo had friends... Followers... family... now Sozo has mushrooms..."

Sozo over time seems to start to dislike his followers and call them liars. He even becomes quite cruel to his followers. Yet he also mentions that he trusts the lamb and wants the lamb to protect him from his followers which makes me believe that Sozonius is somehow a little aware and fighting against the mushroom crown’s influence. He is mad at the Mushroomos for lying to him, tricking him, making him into who he is now.

 Sozo Dialogue  “No need to thanks Sozo. Build it at your Cult then come back to me. Sozo shall grant you one last gift. Sozo is always fair. Always repays this debts. Not like those LIARS out there."

"You did it! Now I know I can trust you... not like those nasty liars outside. They are always watching, always listening! Here take this. You are Sozo's best friend, you are Sozo's only friend."

"Sozo can trust you now, Sozo will pledge himself to you! You will protect me from those liars outside and bring Sozo mushrooms!"

(Also a side note that my gf brought to my attention last second lol! Apparently parasitic mushrooms rely on insects to spread. That is probably why they tricked Sozonius into staying and eating menticide mushrooms. Maybe it's been that long since they've seen an insect)

SOZOS IMPRISONMENT

So, this next little headcanon of mine is an interesting one and might be confusing to explain. Was Sozonius imprisoned within his own mind while under the control of the mushroom crown? If he was, I can see him being stuck in a sort of loop, imagining his family and friends. Think like Mabel's Bubble from ‘Gravity Falls’ weirdmageddon. Sozonius is trapped in a mental bubble, stuck in a false reality as the now mushroom-infected Sozo takes over his body and actions. 

In Sozonius’s mental bubble he is in a place where trees are big, tall mushrooms and flowers are mushrooms, everywhere he turns its mushrooms. He knows something is wrong, everything is too strange, everyone he loves is there with him but is it real? It feels like he's living in a dream. Sozonius proceeds to talk to his friends and family as if they are actually there in which I noticed that Sozo will talk to the menticide mushrooms as if they are actual people.

Sozo Dialogue “Precious, perfect little mushrooms, Sozo is here now, Sozo will always be here…”

”Sozo is busy now… Sozo must commune with the ‘shrooms.”

As time passes more mushrooms grow in his mind prison, and they keep growing and growing until they start to grow on the people he loves. He knows something is happening, he's going mad, and he starts to search for an exit, he needs to escape this false reality that the mushroom crown has created for him. 

He starts fighting the mushroom crown’s hold on him which causes him to regain some awareness. This is when a part of him realizes he’s been tricked, and he starts refusing everything the Mushroomos give him and becomes cruel to them. However, the lambs have never done him wrong before and the lamb (from the cult) begins to be the only person he can trust. At least until it becomes too much and well… we know Sozo’s fate.

SOZO’S REVIVAL 

So Sozo doesn't get resurrected until all the bishops become mortal (at least in my playthrough)(I might change this to he was part of the cult before the bishops I’m not sure). So all the bishop siblings are in the cult and learning the ways of mortal stuff and Sozo appears around the same time, still the crazy Sozo we know and love. However, he’s still very addicted to the menticide mushrooms and both the Lamb and night workers have found Sozo digging through the mushroom crops like a lil racoon.

Based on the game, Sozo likes to run around the cult and do his own thing; he often looks very spaced out but the moment someone talks to him he starts spitting nonsense before yelling at them to go away. The only people Sozo will talk to are people that give Sozo what he wants, which is menticide mushrooms! If you do that for him he will talk your ear off with nonsense, in conversations with him he will often talk about his followers, them being liars and disgusting little creatures. One day though Sozo’s personality seems to change? He starts to tell the lamb,

 “Sozo was just here, all alone, thinking about mushrooms... Uh, Sozo means Sozo's little Mushroomo followers!”

”Yes,, they must be so lost without Sozo. They love Sozo! Everyone loves Sozo - especially Lamb!”

“Without their great and beloved Sozo, Mushroomos must be so scared... YOU! You must save them! Save them and bring them to Sozo.”

”They will be trapped in Anura. They are always getting captured when they don't have their great Sozo to protect them. Rescue them and bring them to me.”

But when you bring the followers to Sozo he ends up eating them. At first glance you can assume it's just his addiction, in which it most certainly could be! He sees a big mushroom and he's like oooo~ delicious but there's also a possibility of this being Dr. Sozonius’s anger coming out. The whole fighting against the mushroom crown’s influence and realization that he’s been tricked. Maybe a mix of his addiction and anger for what they did to him? I’m not too sure if Sozo eating the Mushroomos was a problem before he joined the cult.

Of course, this addiction must be stopped so the lamb decides enough is enough and refuses to get more Mushroomos. This causes Sozo to dissent and, with little choice, the Lamb has to put him in rehab. I imagine it would’ve been a struggle getting Sozo to the prison without the Red Crown’s help. With the power of an ant that is Sozo’s size it's a miracle he didnt break that pillory while he was in it. Sozo just stayed silent and didn't fight; the person he had put his trust and hope in has imprisoned him. Sozo is a bit depressed at that moment. 

After Sozo has been re-educated, released, and cured of his addiction the mushroom crown finally falls off his head. Which, like I said before, makes me wonder, was it being powered by the menticide mushrooms Sozo has been eating or is it something else?

But Dr. Sozonius talks about some stuff before saying,

Dr. Sozonius Dialogue “I can’t help but feel that I have you to thank for… something. You have my loyalty, I will remain here and serve you. Please, take this!”

Sozonius was ready to live his life rather than reunite with his family in the afterlife. He wasn't expecting to be resurrected after dying in the cult from old age. But Sozonius gave the lamb their loyalty and promised to stay in the cult and serve them. The Lamb had been so kind as to give Sozonius an immortality necklace, the Lamb didn’t want Sozonius to go yet… and Sozo’s heart was too kind and soft. He will have to wait a bit longer to return home to his family, but maybe some good things will come out of staying longer~

Also! Who do we think Sozo was talking to? 

A Mushroomo Dialogue "Who is Sozo talking to when he whispers in the dark...?"

Is he talking to himself? The mushrooms? Or the Fox?

[vigilskeep]

I'm curious what you don't like about dao Leliana? If you've got any posts about it could you please point me in their direction?

i probably have posts somewhere but god knows where they are now. i will present a little overview

and to be clear, because i know this website, this is completely a matter of personal taste in writing and character, i am not, um, cancelling leliana dragonage or having anything but appreciation for those who like her, i am saying i probably wouldn’t want to hang out with her. i am also not attempting to convince anyone or justify anything, i am explaining my own feelings since i have been asked about them. i am going to use language that sounds a little overly harsh because i am trying to express those feelings succinctly without making this post very long by apologising and minimising with caveats about when i do like her

i find her a little grating. i find her characterisation based on her backstory irritatingly inconsistent, with genuinely confusing naivete for someone with a supposedly hardened backstory. she’s a literal bard, and she’s always always on the back foot in dialogue with quicker thinkers who can easily shock and scandalise her, and she believes horrors are too ugly for anyone to write about (literal bard!). i’m also vaguely baffled by the amalgamation of vibes they went for visually, like, idk for example, repeatedly mentioning the supposedly ragged boyish hair of someone incapable of understanding a lack of interest in high fashion and who expresses friendship by talking about nice shoes and hair specifically. it makes me struggle to buy into her as a character, and i find her hard to picture.

i think her compassion for others rings fairly false, possibly just on a poor voice acting level; if they wanted me to believe in it from listening to her dialogue when she chimes in during side quests, they got it wrong, i don’t. those bland comments, as cloying on the tongue as artificial sweetener instead of real sugar, are a let-down when i could have someone more entertaining in the party. i hear her talk and think: i wish i’d brought someone else. and her kindness is often shallow, buying into prejudice easily when left unchecked. which is again, weird for a character whose entire concept is being more worldly than she appears. part of that backstory is also definitely growing up mostly surrounded by elven servants, which makes those biases in that direction even more notable to me than they otherwise would be. she’s someone who’s absorbed in her own internal struggle yet who has never noticed the struggles of those around her until directly confronted. i am constantly disappointed by the missed opportunities with her character, like her mixed cultural identity barely being discussed in a game where the backdrop of the ferelden-orlais conflict being under-explored is to me one of really very few big storytelling mistakes, or like her mechanic where you can ask her about wherever you are—a really fun idea, for a bard!—and she literally never not once has anything interesting to say. like, come onnn. im the worldbuilding enjoyer. hit me with something

some of this is going to be affected also by me having spent the most time with her as my surana, who happens as a character to be a natural born hater, and also predisposed to share some of these feelings. i do find dao leliana much more fun to hang out with when playing a non-elven, non-mage character, but given the in-world context, that in itself is perhaps not a glowing recommendation? (obligatory note again, i am not up in arms that this fictional character has fictional prejudices against fictional people and i in fact think this part is good writing that suits the world. the version of her i adore is, after all, in dai when she has done significantly more wrongs including against elves and mages specifically.) it’s more that kindness should be what leliana has going for her as one of the most prominently good-aligned companions, and i don’t believe in hers. if i’m committing to this being me disliking the character rather than disliking some writing flaw, i could say that i read her compassion as a performance, and that’s something i happen to never really like in a person or character: when they act because they want to look like a good person, and feel like a good person, rather than because they truly care about the impact of their actions. maybe i don’t prefer her in dai because she’s somehow better written; maybe she just drops that mask i don’t care for. hard to say!

also her personal quest has some of the worst writing and acting in the game i never want to hear marjolaine again. please.

[lurkingshan]

Japanese QL Corner

ICYMI: There are so many Japanese qls airing weekly, so I’m going to start posting this little round up at the end of each week. Most of these shows are on Gaga and I highly recommend watching!

Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna 2

Another great batch of episodes this week, as Kasuga and Nomoto settled into dating life, all the gals got together for various food related events, and Nagumo began seeking treatment for her eating disorder. This show is just always so compassionate with its characters, and manages to find interesting conflicts without going for high drama. I am very much enjoying seeing Kasuga and Nomoto figure out how their relationship should look now that they're dating and also how to communicate and respect each other as they make decisions. Kasuga's tendency to let Nomoto steamroll her feels harmless when it's about picking fruit or vegetables, but it won't be when it comes to making decisions about where they live and how to set up their home, so it's great they're addressing it early. It's also awesome to see them expand their circle of friends and deepen their bonds with Yako and Nagumo--I was high key jealous of the curry and s'mores parties. And Nagumo just has my whole heart. When she expressed profound relief at learning there is a name for her illness and ways to treat it, my mind immediately jumped to Rachel Bloom. Looking forward to her healing. I can't believe there is only one more batch of episodes coming, love and gratitude to @furritsubs!

Chaser Game W

I’ll keep this brief. This show was a mess, and not even in a fun way because unfortunately it was also extremely misogynistic. @twig-tea covered the major issues well in her post. Wild that this show aired simultaneously with TsukuTabe, what a dichotomy.

My Strawberry Film

This one is really not grabbing me. It feels kind of slow and muted and uncertain about what it's doing. I am not finding the mystery or the love rhombus compelling, and this week's focus on Hikaru's infatuation with Minami had me yawning and picking up my phone a lot. But it's early, I am hopeful it will pick up some steam.

Sukiyanen Kedo Do Yaro ka

This was a cute episode about Sakae and Soga getting past their initial awkwardness, learning how to communicate with each other, and moving into a more intimate phase of their relationship, and I think I would have loved it if we'd gotten it two weeks ago. This should have been the episode that followed their initial confessions, but instead the show did a two week diversion into love triangle nonsense, and unfortunately, I think it really threw off the pacing and the connection to these characters for me. It just feels too late in the show for this relationship to still feel so new. We haven't had time to settle in with them as a couple, or for them to develop a strong foundation to make us root for them to overcome the coming obstacles in the final arc. Still, this episode had some delightful scenes--Soga finally paying a visit to the sauna was my personal fav, and I also enjoyed the metaphor of Sakae literally catching Soga's love (and knowing @bengiyo would lose it over another important SPORTS moment in bl). This is a show I really want to love, but something just isn't connecting.

Perfect Propose

I love this final episode and I love this show. Hiro quit his job, Kai resolved things with the shop owner and his son, and they finally got on the same page about their relationship and made out about it. 10/10 no notes for this finale. It was lovely to see Hiro finish his project and make a decision to quit the daily grind--I loved, too, that he is still in touch with his former colleagues--and we saw the change in him so quickly. He looked happier, lighter, brighter. His skin was cleared and his crops were watered! And Kai got to have his moment of catharsis too, sharing his fear that he is a burden on others and having Hiro affirm for him that he wants him in his life and he's a help, not a burden. And I loved that we got all that plus a great kiss, a bed scene (with a very cute leg cramp diversion) and a small peek at their new domestic life together. This show makes me happy and it will definitely be one I return to for rewatches.

Ossan's Love Returns

I'm of two minds on this finale. On the one hand, I really loved it as a single episode of the show, was happy with where all the resolutions landed, and was left with a very warm feeling toward the show overall. The cherry blossom scene especially really got me right in the feels; I've loved the progression of Maki and Haruta's relationship this season and I love the way they talk to each other. They have earned themselves a spot on my list of favorite drama couples who I actually believe are going to stay together. I also loved everything about the big chaotic group scene and all these characters coming together to pour love on Haruta; it felt earned after a season of him knocking himself out for all his loved ones. The end joke with Chief moving in next door, and getting a final Maki/Kurosawa battle, was *chef's kiss*. And Takegawa's perfect life partner being a cat? 10/10 no notes. I will be clutching my aroace Takegawa read tightly to my bosom.

On the other hand, the episode reinforced for me that the way we got to a lot of these resolutions didn't feel quite right. In particular, I don't think the way Kurosawa's health scare played out across the back half of the season worked, and I'm not too pleased about spending three episodes in a downbeat, tragic mode for the sake of a simple pun joke. I think the whole plot would have landed a lot better for me if the audience was let in on Kurosawa's mistake at the start and the tone of his overwrought goodbyes was farcical all the way through. Not only would that have maintained the comedic tone of the show, but we could have used that story time to better seed some of the themes of this episode with Haruta's crisis of confidence and yearning for family. I'm pretty much agnostic on Kiku and Izumi; they never sold me on that pairing but I wasn't mad about their ending.

Overall, I am very glad I jumped into this show and enjoyed the watch experience a lot, despite my quibbles with some of the overarching writing choices. The cast is amazing and all the characters make me smile. If they make another season, I'll be watching!

Bonus: Josi teki Saikatsu

I finally watched this drama this week--I held out for awhile hoping to find it in better quality, but no dice, it's 480p in the grey--and despite the potato lens I loved it so much. This is the story of Miki, a transfemme lesbian, just trying to live her life in the way she wants, and all the barriers she comes up against in that pursuit. Our story begins when her childhood friend, Goto, comes looking for his old pal in a moment of desperation and is stunned to see how she's changed. The show is only four short episodes, but they manage to paint a full picture of Miki's life at home, at work, with friends and lovers, and with her estranged family, and show us how she became who she is. Miki is whip smart and perceptive and generous, but also wary of trusting anyone after she's been let down by so many loved ones. I love her so much, and you will too. This story was written by a trans woman and it shows! Brave the 480p and check it out.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Watch Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022) and then Read...

I absolutely loved Lady Chatterley's Lover (2022). I think it was a triumph of the female gaze, Emma Corrin being the Period Piece Pinch Hitter we all need in a post-Keira world, and fucking in the woods.

To be clear, the book is not a romance. It does not end unhappily (more like "to be continued", without any intention of a continuation and clarification) but it's not a romance. The movie, I would argue... is pretty close to being a romance, or just a romance outright. Joely Richardson looks at the camera and goes "this is a love story", and by God, who am I to question Joely Richardson (who also was Lady Chatterley once). It hits many of the classic notes of a historical romance novel--hardcore fucking and immediately having an existential crisis after, "my god, how could this constant unprotected sex I'm having result in a PREGNANCY???", a douchey rich guy who wants to publish his stupid novella.

After watching it, I wanted to go through my rolodex of books and throw up some recommendations for what to read after watching this movie and getting a bit. Interested.

I tried to focus on a) interclass dynamics or b) illicit affairs. Ideally both, but it's more about the vibe than the readalike nature.

The Leopard Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt. In many ways, a Lady Chatterley vibe without the annoying husband and *with* a murder mystery. Our heroine is a wealthy heiress who travels to an estate she recently inherited on her own, employing an experience steward to help her with the business side of things. And with the business side of things. Elizabeth Hoyt writes some of the best sex in the game, and there's a lot of great class conflict in this one.

Waking Up with the Duke by Lorraine Heath. A Lady Chatterley setup but with less class conflict and more *secrets*. The Duke of Ainsley, genteel and well-mannered, still feels real bad for that time he got into a carriage accident with his best friend, which resulted in said friend's permanent impotency. Friend asks Ainsley to pay him back by fucking his wife, Jayne, in order to ensure that she has the baby she's always wanted. Jayne is like "say what now", because she does in fact hold the accident against Ainsley, and Ainsley is all "I COULD NEVER--but if you're like... insisting..." because of course, he has always carried a torch for Jayne. A month of hot, angsty, "don't kiss me on the mouth" cottage sex ensues, and the emotional fallout for these idiots is MAGNIFICENT.

The Countess by Sophie Jordan. Not out yet, but put this one on your TBR because there is certainly a married lady discovering her sexuality in the arms of another man (wealthy, but of a different social class) around these parts. Out 3/28/23.

Between the Devil and Desire by Lorraine Heath. For the "this coarse man is lighting my ladylike fires" vibe. Our heroine is a recently widowed duchess with a young son, who comes to find out that--what the fuck--her husband left the guardianship of their child to a man she doesn't even fucking know. The hero grew up on the streets and has risen to become a successful club owner, but is still very much lower class. They move in together, and incredible sexual tension and heightened emotions ensue. TW: discussion of childhood sexual abuse.

Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas. This might seem a bit left field at first, but I shall recommend it because a) there is a huge emphasis on class in this novel. Sara is not necessarily a hugely upper class lady, but she is a genteel lady, and Derek Craven's awareness of their social differences and his roughness against her softness is a huge part of their conflict in the first half of the book. B) sexual awakening is very emphasized in Sara's journey. C) Sara does have a boring fucking fiance who's like "Sara, it's okay if we aren't that into each other sexually" while Sara, having just gotten her titties sucked at a party, is like "UHHHHHH NO THAT IS NOT OKAY". D) Much like Oliver Mellors, Derek Craven suffers from "is very smart but sometimes we don't know what he's saying" syndrome.

Duchess by Day, Mistress by Night by Stacy Reid. Our heroine is another widowed duchess with a young son--but this time, she's on the hunt for the governess that ditched in a flash. She hires the coarse, lower class but nonetheless successful fixer in town to help her... And his price ends up being a bit more carnal than monetary. VERY illicit affairs dot mp3.

Notorious Pleasures by Elizabeth Hoyt. No class difference here, but we do have a lot of illicit sneaking around when our heroine begins sleeping with her betrothed's roguish brother--who might just fuck the rigid rule following sensibility right out of her.

Her Night with the Duke by Diana Quincy. A widow has a one night stand with a handsome stranger, only to discover that he's courting her stepdaughter. It's messy, it's angsty, it's hot, and I do believe there are some outdoor activities.

[thydungeongal]

alright from one transfemme tabletop enthusiast to another because I keep seeing you post about Rolemaster and I am nothing if not impressionable and desperate to find a new book to gnaw on and see if I also get weird about it, what's a good entry point for Rolemaster in 2024, what's solid for a sniff test or sampler.

I don't quite want to recommend the latest edition, Rolemaster Unified, as a sampler, because it's divided across four books and only three of those are out as of now. The lack of a good introductory product is one of the worst parts of being a Rolemaster fan. There used to be a version called Rolemaster Express, which was a stripped down version of Rolemaster Classic, but because of copyright conflicts it is no longer available for purchase! (This is incidentally why I think piracy is incredibly cool, because if it weren't for some extremely good people compiling all their Rolemaster Express pdfs onto a cool website that game would be lost.)

But there are a few products I can recommend for a good taste test to see if you too might have Rolemaster brainrot! The first is Lightmaster, a free d20-based clone of Rolemaster. It is not an accurate simulacrum of Rolemaster and it has its own setting, but the vibe of the rules is correct, and it does have the cool attack and critical hit tables while sadly lacking in tables for other activities.

Next is the Against the Darkmaster free quickstart! Against the Darkmaster is for all intents and purposes Rolemaster Lite with some modern game design innovations, so it too would act as a good way to get a light taste of Rolemaster before injecting the raw stuff straight into your eyeballs.

Thirdly, there's this strange GitHub project where some extremely cool person has been transferring all of Rolemaster Standard System onto GitHub, probably to act as a reference and also to preserve the game, because as far as I know RMSS is also no longer available for purchase! This is as good a taste of the actual unbridled Rolemaster stuff as you can get for free!

[blueskittlesart]

hi! im really curious about your thoughts on oot, i'm trying really hard to like it and i wanna see what you enjoy about it

Hi!!! I'm going to do my best to explain exactly why I like oot but there is a TON of ground to cover. i have already written a bit about the story and my thoughts on it in this document, but this is a much more in-depth analysis of the symbolism and implied narrative which i think may be more helpful to you if you're struggling to get into the story and gameplay!

oot is my favorite zelda game of all time and was what made me fall in love with the series, but I will concede that it shows its age, especially with the insane advancements that video games have made over the past 2 decades or so since its release. Try to remember when playing it that it came out in 1998, when a game with any sort of 3d graphics at all was still new and exciting. some of its gameplay is going to be a bit dated, unfortunately, and it's totally reasonable to dislike that aspect of it i think! If you really find yourself struggling with gameplay, i recommend zeldadungeon.net for dungeon walkthroughs. they have very concise and easy-to-follow walkthroughs for the entire game which make the gameplay MUCH smoother for first-time players! there's no shame in needing walkthrough help in these dungeons, ESPECIALLY some of the later ones which get notoriously convoluted and difficult. that being said, even if you use walkthroughs, I'd encourage you to still pay attention to the dungeon's designs and details as a lot of thought was put into these designs and I think they're still some of the strongest in the series! gameplay-wise I'd also say that there are a lot of little collectibles that will seem like they're way more important than they are to new players. you don't need the skulltulas (they get you a bigger wallet), you don't need to complete any trading sequences, you don't even REALLY need to go out of your way to collect any of the extra heart pieces, the game is perfectly beatable with just the hearts you'll get from dungeons. Knowing all these things going in will really streamline your gaming experience and make things easier for you if you're getting put off by the 90s-style game design.

As for what i really love about the series, it's the story. And i understand that if you're not someone who makes a habit of analyzing media to an obsessive degree, at first glance oot doesn't seem to have a lot of story. A simple fact of old game design is that more dialog and cutscenes meant more storage space was needed, and the biggest constraint in game design at the time was the limited amount of storage a disc or cartridge could hold. What this means is that storytelling in older games like oot takes a very different form than the cutscene and dialog-heavy storytelling that games tend to use nowadays. the storage restrictions on the game meant that a lot of oot's story had to be told implicitly, via details and worldbuilding and actions carried out by the player. I know this can make it difficult to grasp at first glance! that's why i love to analyze it and talk about it, because I want people to understand how rich and well-told oot's narrative actually is and i know that most people aren't as willing to put in the work as i am, lol. with that being said, this is where the spoilers are gonna start! i'm gonna recap and analyze most of oot's story here, so if you're not looking for spoilers scroll away now and experience the game for yourself!!

oot is at its roots a story about adults failing children. i will elaborate on this point a bit more later, but for now let's look at our opening segment. We are introduced to our link, the youngest link in the franchise, at nine years old. From the get-go, we as the player are told that link's hylian parents died in a conflict very shortly after he was born, leaving him in kokiri forest to be raised by the deku tree, among the kokiri.

The kokiri are a race of eternal children. what this means, essentially, is that we begin the story with a link wearing rose-tinted glasses. the kokiri live forever without aging or dying, and they never leave the forest. Link has grown up isolated and without any concept of aging or death. he has been told by the deku tree, his father-figure, that he IS a kokiri and therefore will never age or die. Despite this, link does have a crucial difference from the rest of the kokiri that even he is aware of--he has no fairy. If you talk to the kokiri in the initial kokiri forest segment of the game, many of them will talk down to you or make remarks about you finally getting a fairy, reminding the player that link knows SOMETHING is wrong with him, that he's different from the other kids somehow, but he's not yet been able to pinpoint what.

we come to our first dungeon segment, where the deku tree summons link and tells him that he's dying and that link must defeat a monster to save him. when the player completes this objective, the deku tree dies anyway, revealing that he knew all along he couldn't be saved and lied to link about it in order to get him to do the dungeon. with his dying breath, he tells link to leave the forest and find princess zelda. (worth noting that up until this point, link has been told that leaving the forest will KILL HIM.) this is the first major failure of an adult we see, and as the inciting incident of the game it sets the tone very nicely for the rest of the shitshow. The deku tree lies to link his entire life about who he is, and then spends his dying moments lying to link AGAIN, specifically in service of a greater plan to turn link into the savior of hyrule by sending him to help princess zelda. this point is crucial--the deku tree has clear-cut, understandable reasons behind acting the way he does. It would have been much easier on link to allow him to grow up isolated among the kokiri, and it removes a lot of the potential danger he would have faced as an orphan in hyrule in the aftermath of the war which killed his parents. (we will later see that hyrule is in no way a safe place for a child on their own.) Explaining all the magical-destiny lore to a nine year old had the potential to scare him away from the task ahead, as did admitting to him that there was no way to save the deku tree. But lying to him about it all still ultimately deeply hurt him. this is the stage upon which the rest of the game will build.

Link, freshly traumatized by the death of his tree dad, leaves kokiri forest. he goes to castle town and meets princess zelda, a girl no older than him. Princess zelda tells him that she fears for the safety of her kingdom, but that no one will listen to her when she tries to warn them of the danger. this is our second adult failing--the entire conflict around which this game centers could have been prevented if only any adult was willing to listen to zelda's concerns about ganondorf. But because she is a child she is dismissed over and over again until she finally turns to ANOTHER child for help. her plan for link involves him retrieving objects needed to open the gateway to the sacred realm within the temple of time, which i know sounds like a bunch of confusing lore shit but all you really need to understand is that there's a gateway to what is essentially godlike power inside this temple, and zelda wants link to open the gateway and claim the power before ganondorf can. link already has one of the 3 keys he needs--it was the reward for killing the deku tree beating the first dungeon in kokiri forest, and zelda takes this as proof enough that he will be able to find the other two.

in these first three dungeon segments, link is confined to his nine-year-old form. His sword is wooden and deals considerably less damage than it will later in the game, and in each of the dungeon segments there are reminders of the way being a child affects his autonomy in hyrule--the guard at the gates of death mountain won't let him pass, the zora princess berates him for not being enough of a man, several collectibles are clearly visible but impossible to reach with his current size & ability, etc etc. this section of the game is deliberately juxtaposed against the initial segment in kokiri forest, in which everything was built for someone of link's size and strength and no part of the map was unexplorable or all that challenging. What you're supposed to realize here is that being a kid in hyrule is HARD. you have very little autonomy and are constantly condescended to. One of the few hylian npcs your age, Malon, is a good example of this--in her mini-quest she vents to link about how her father can't see that his stablehand resents him and she's constantly having to look after him without being listened to. She is being given adult responsibilities (looking after her father & the animals on their farm) without adult social status. Her situation is a deliberate parallel to both link and zelda's, though during this 3-dungeon segment of the game it's not immediately clear yet just how much adult responsibility link is actually shouldering. in any case, this is our third example of adults failing children, and the theme begins to be echoed in the worldbuilding of hyrule during this stage as well.

now we come to the initial confrontation, the scene which alters the trajectory of the game and divides what i consider the first and second halves of the gameplay (although the second half is probably much longer lol). Link, having found all 3 keys to the sacred realm, returns to hyrule castle, only to find that ganondorf has attacked, forcing princess zelda to flee with her attendant. He catches one final glimpse of her where she throws him the final key needed to unlock the temple of time: the ocarina. although no words are exchanged between them, it's clear that she's asking link to carry out the rest of her plan on his own and claim the power sealed in the temple before ganondorf can. and so link goes to the temple of time and opens the gateway, but link is nine years old and so link doesn't notice that ganondorf, a trained thief, is following him. When he opens the temple, ganon siezes the power zelda was trying so hard to keep him from finding.

we then pan down to link again, but different. he's changed, he's older. notably, he isn't an adult. he is sixteen years old, physically, but mentally, for both link and the player, no time has passed at all. this is important to keep in mind for the rest of the game--no matter how link may look, he is mentally still nine years old. he wakes up to essentially a lecture from the world's biggest dickhead, the sage rauru. Rauru places the blame for ganondorf's rise to power squarely on link and zelda's shoulders, noting that if link hadn't opened the temple of time in the first place, ganondorf would have never been able to sieze power. he tells link that he placed him into a deep sleep for the past seven years because, at nine years old, he wasn't strong enough physically to take on ganondorf and win. But now, he says, link is old enough to be a real asset. it's time for link to defeat ganondorf.

Once again, we have a clear-cut case of adults failing children. Link and zelda took matters into their own hands BECAUSE of the adults in their lives. for link, it was the deku tree (HIS FATHER)'s dying wish that he help zelda. for zelda, her plan was a last resort after begging every adult in her life to see what was coming and being constantly ignored. now that what she predicted has come to pass, she and link take all the blame for it, for being kids in a difficult position doing the best they could with NO ADULT HELP WHATSOEVER. you can't place the fate of an entire kingdom on the shoulders of two nine year olds and expect it not to fall. but that's what hyrule's adult leaders did, and when the kingdom fell they let the nine-year olds take the blame for it. zelda hasn't been seen for years. she's either dead or in hiding out of shame for her mistake. meanwhile, Link has once again become a pawn in someone else's game. The sage rauru decides for him, without ever consulting him, that he can't be trusted to remain conscious for the seven years between gameplay segments. that he will be safer and happier to remain asleep. anyone who stops for a moment to consider what this might do to link's mental state would have not done this, but rauru sees link as a child, which in hyrule is synonymous with an object to be controlled, with no feelings of his own. he needs to be protected and hidden, regardless of what effect it has on him when he wakes up. nothing else matters as long as he can be kept alive and unharmed. this is a deliberate parallel to the way the deku tree treated link while under his care in kokiri forest--he doesn't need to know the truth, because it's easier and more convenient for everyone else if he doesn't. its effect on his mental state doesn't matter. what matters is that he is kept in a position which is convenient for the adults in his life. this is another reminder of the way in which being so young hurts link, and if I can diverge into real-world relevance for a second, it's an obvious metaphor for the way trauma steals one's childhood. Link was never allowed to grow up normally. he went from being a kid one day to an adult the next, with no time in between to figure anything out. his childhood, his coming-of-age, was stolen from him by greedy adults who needed him to be a pawn in their war.

the dungeons in the adult segment of the game can technically be completed in multiple different orders, but the usual order (and what i think is probably the way the narrative is intended to progress) is to get to the forest temple first, which requires you to reenter kokiri forest, all grown up. it's important to note that up until this point in your gameplay, link still has plausible deniability about his race. sure, he didn't die when he left the forest, but maybe that was a lie told to ALL kokiri. maybe he's still a kokiri and he won't grow up. but now he's got solid proof that he was lied to, and that the safe, beautiful sanctuary he's spent the majority of his life in was never actually meant to be his home. When you return to kokiri forest as an adult, you find that it's nothing like the safe-haven you remember. it's been overrun with monsters that are taller than you now, as an adult. This is a metaphor, obviously, for returning to someplace changed. link goes back to his home and it doesn't feel like his home anymore with all that he knows now. And if the monsters weren't enough, if link talks to the kokiri, cowering in their little kid-sized houses, not a single one of them recognizes him. they address him as an adult they've never met before. to them, it's been seven years, and they've never known a kid to grow into an adult before. but to link, it's been a few days at most, and inside he's still the little boy they knew.

the dungeons in this segment of the game are mostly straightforward training exercises to give link the necessary skills and assets he needs to fight ganondorf. I'll skip over most of them, but there are three things i DO want to highlight about this section of the game: malon, sheik, and the water temple.

Malon is introduced in the first half of the game as an example of another child with very little agency and power. Seven years later, if link visits her again, he will find the ranch in an even worse state, with the stablehand having taken over and kicked out malon's father. Malon stays purely out of fear of what will happen to her horses if she leaves them in his hands. She is an adult now, as you are, and yet she has even less power than before. So much of the first half of oot is framed in such a way that the player wishes link was older. It wants you to think, wouldn't this whole thing be easier if I was an adult? Wouldn't I have more power, more agency? but now that you ARE an adult, you're confronted with the fact that nothing has changed. you are still a pawn in a war against ganondorf. Malon is still trapped at the ranch, forced to endure daily abuse or leave her animal friends to die. however, this segment is also the first time you as the player are given the option to fight back. If you, as a child, have taken the necessary steps to befriend malon and epona, one of her horses, you are able to use the bonds you forged in childhood to run the stablehand off the ranch and return power to malon. this mini-arc with malon is a teaser for the overarching arc of the game--having no power in childhood, believing that adulthood will be your savior, but finding the same powerlessness in adulthood, and ultimately returning to pieces of your childhood in order to finally reclaim your power.

next up is sheik, who is deliberately a mystery for the majority of this segment, but. well. we all know he's zelda, so i'm not going to beat around the bush. Sheik is what has become of zelda in the years since ganondorf took power--where zelda was once strong-willed and refused to stand down in the face of danger, sheik now moves among the shadows, darting in to offer link a bit of help or advice but never getting too close. My reading of this is that zelda, after growing up in the aftermath of her failed plan, was afraid of what she'd done to link. She saw her influence as the thing that brought hyrule to ruin--after all, link never would have opened the door in the temple of time if not for her. The way she sees it, her choice to use him back when they were nine destroyed his life and her kingdom. This is why she's largely absent in this segment of the game, only stepping in for brief moments and disappearing the second link tries to reach out for her. Her character at this point is essentially representative of self-isolation as a coping mechanism.

finally the water temple, which I promise i didn't single out just because it sucks, but i will warn any potential players that it sucks. it's the most convoluted ass design in the world and even with a walkthrough it gets confusing and hard to navigate at times. this is not the point of this paragraph, though. the point of this paragraph is that there is a miniboss in this dungeon that is INCREDIBLY important to link's character and to this day is one of the most well-done and impactful battles i've ever had the pleasure of playing. (side note, why the hell did the himekawa manga make this battle happen at the bottom of the fucking well?? ive believed for years that he was a shadow temple boss because of that. whatever. anyways)

about halfway through this dungeon, you come upon a room that looks like an endless sea of water, with bits of ruins and a single rotting tree in the middle. when you walk into the room, you'll be attacked by a mini-boss that takes the form of link's reflection, black and translucent with glowing red eyes. the miniboss dark link will mimic your attacks and block when you swing, requiring players to be crafty and strategic in order to beat him instead of just swinging with the right weapon at the right time. from a purely gameplay-based standpoint, this fight is sick as hell. it rewards you for thinking on your feet and forces you to come up with real time strategy to beat a foe who genuinely seems to think the same way you do, which is REALLY cool, especially for a game released in nineteen fucking ninety eight. narratively, though, there are symbols upon symbols upon symbols to be picked apart in this fight alone. there's the obvious metaphor of fighting onesself--representative of an internal struggle of some kind. pair that with the set dressing for this arena and the information we already know about link, and things start to fall into place. Link was raised in a lush forest, surrounded on all sides by walls of trees that kept him safe and isolated from the world at large. the minute he left that forest, bits and pieces of his worldview started to fall apart--he learned his identity as a kokiri was a lie, experienced the hardships of being a child in hyrule, and now he's grown up and become a pawn in the fight against ganondorf, losing what little agency he had along with the ability to return to his home in kokiri forest. He finds himself in this illusion room, with a shadow version of himself waiting to attack him, clearly indicating that this room is representative of his state of mind. an endless, desolate landscape stretching out into infinity. no walls to keep him safe, no cover at all save for that one single, ROTTING TREE in the middle. This tree is a symbol of link's mental state. (my evidence for this one spans across a couple games but just trust me when i say this interpretation is grounded in reality it would just take too long to explain) and the tree is not looking good. it is dying. and from this dying tree springs a reflection of himself that link must fight to progress. I think there's an obvious message that's being conveyed here: link regrets leaving kokiri forest. he regrets the way he's been used, the hard truths he has had to learn about the world since he left. He is still mentally nine years old, and as a child he still yearns to return to that safety he was promised in kokiri forest despite knowing that it's no longer there for him to return to. Dark link is representative of all link's fear and regret and turmoil surrounding his destiny and what has been done to him over the last seven years. Because this is a video game, he is able to physically fight those feelings, to defeat the reflection of himself that torments him and walk out of that room at peace, having faced his fears and confronted his true feelings. Narratively, this battle is representative of the ongoing internal struggle link is grappling with over the course of this segment of gameplay, and shows the player how link must overcome those feelings of fear and inadequacy in order to gain the power to defeat ganon.

now we finally come to the ending segment of the game. this is where the lore gets a little bit convoluted and trips some people up. if you're not a lore slave you can basically ignore the triforce thing. the only affect it has on the narrative is that it gives ganondorf a reason to need both link and zelda, since they have the other two pieces of the powerful relic he's after. this is why he kidnaps zelda and taunts link to come rescue her instead of just like. hunting them both for sport in the wilds of hyrule.

the final battle with ganon is the culmination of all your efforts throughout the game. in the leadup to it, the final dungeon reminds you of this by having each of its rooms be a mini-version of one of the previous six temples you completed in the second half of the game. once you finish this final dungeon, you're able to get into the castle. I have to mention one of my favorite design choices in this whole game here, which is the fact that the background music in the castle gets louder the closer you get to the final room, and when you finally get there it's revealed that ganondorf was playing it the whole time. the details in this game make me crazy they're all so well-done. anyways. to discuss this battle we first need to discuss a crucial character who i realize i've forgotten to mention this ENTIRE time somehow: navi.

I love navi. i hate the way she became a joke among fans. this is not the point of this post. the point is that narratively, navi is one of the only GOOD adult figures we see in the entire game. (one could argue that she isn't an adult, but she takes on a guiding and mentor-like role for link so i consider her one despite some of her more childish mannerisms.) Navi is the one character who has been at link's side since the very beginning, the only consistent good influence on his life. the only adult mentor who hasn't somehow tried to fuck him over or manipulate him somehow. She is INTEGRAL to his survival through all the crazy bullshit he gets caught up in. the game makes her importance clear to the player in two ways: the first, obviously, is that she's the tutorial character--she tells you where to go, what to do, explains mechanics and puzzles, etc. The second, and the detail that's gonna be super important in our discussion of the final battle, is that she's tied to the game's targeting mechanic. It's subtle enough that I actually didn't notice it my first time around UNTIL this final battle, but every time you target an enemy to attack them (which with the way the camera movement is designed in this game is basically a required element of combat) navi flies to their weak spot and hovers there, which is the in-game explanation for what targeting is--navi is showing link the monsters' weak spots. in the first phase of the final battle with ganondorf, he erects a forcefield which prevents navi from entering the battlefield, removing the player's ability to target completely.

i absolutely LOVE this battle in terms of both gameplay and narrative. removing the targeting mechanic is a genuine handicap that makes the battle genuinely difficult for the player, and narratively it serves to remind you of the importance of navi, a positive adult influence, in link's life. without her, dealing damage is so much more difficult, but as soon as you have her back the battle becomes super intuitive and you're able to strategize much more effectively. Eventually, you deal enough damage to get navi back and flee the castle with the princess, before making one final stand against Ganon, a mutated beast-form of ganondorf. with navi by your side, his massive weakness becomes easily targetable, and you're able to defeat and seal him for good.

the end-credits scene of the game shows link time-traveling back to his nine-year-old self, before any of the events of the game have come to pass, and re-entering hyrule castle to warn nine-year-old zelda about what is to come. this is a time paradox, i know, but i LOVE this ending thematically. As I mentioned extensively earlier, link and zelda's stories are both representative of the way trauma robs you of childhood. they were both stripped of their chance to be children and grow up and come of age due to what happened with ganondorf. Allowing link to go back and prevent those events from ever occurring is a promise of healing. it's a promise that he and zelda will be able to reclaim the childhoods that were stolen from them by war and by adults who wanted to use them as pawns in it. it's a reclamation of the agency that these characters have been consistently denied throughout their stories. it's. a good ending. it's a really good ending. I like it a lot.

So uhhh wow that was a lot! what it comes down to is that i think oot is a story a ton of people can relate to. being a kid with responsibility but no agency and longing to be an adult, but then growing up and wanting nothing more than to return to the childhood you lost... that's something that really resonates with me, at least. and yeah oot has a lot of quirks and convoluted story and stuff but at its core it's a really beautiful coming-of-age that deals REALLY well with trauma and childhood and growing up!! tldr it's just. a genuinely incredible story and it means a LOT to me lol

[franticmelody]

Shows up in your inbox with three emojis for the ask game :] 💘🦈📚

Hiiiiii Aiden!;;!;!!!!!!!

💘 - Is it easier to write angst or fluff

Definitely fluff! My fics are mainly comedy and so those nicer moments come more naturally to me. That isn't to say I don't enjoy angst though. It can be hard to find and find a place for an issue or problem that I think really inspires me to write but when I find that conflict within myself, getting it onto the page is so fun and so satisfying and is usually something I'm really proud of. But I can't just pull it out of nowhere like with comedy and happy moments. It really has to be founded in my real life experiences and things that rile ME up, yknow?

🦈 - What is the hardest character to write

FUCK! uh... It was Shadow, originally! Finding his voice was pretty tough. But now that I've settled into it I think it comes as naturally as most other characters. What is hard, unfortunately, is finding situations to focus on Tails and Amy. Ironic since the two most recent Together episodes are focused on Amy and Tails respectively, but I find that in stories focused around other characters, they show up very often, being important to the core cast of Sonic characters, but in those scenarios, I often find that I don't give them much to do! Which is totally a me problem. I love both of those characters and want them to have as much time to shine as anyone else! Which is WHY I've given them both fully fleshed out and defined stories very recently. And there's more to come for both- Tails in the short term, and Amy in the long term!

📚 - Any fanfics or fanfic writers to recommend

OH BOY DO I - Here's a list!

Reaching New Heights: A Tails Adventure - RegulatedStrawberry

I would be a fool not to mention this. Strawb is of course my beta reader but she's a damn good writer too!!! This fic is about Tails going off on his own after Sonic Frontiers, but is SO much more than just that. So if you love Tails, this I the fic for you, and if you love everyone else, this is also the fic for you!

Unfamiliar - bimboamyrose

This is a fic that has 100% inspired me and the stories that I am going to write in season 2 of Sonic Together. Metal Sonic is injured in a fight with Team Sonic, and Amy brings him home to recover. They grow a bond as Metal adjusts to life outside of being a battle robot. This fic is SO GOOD!!!!

Memories and the Space Between - CatDragron

Okay yes this is YOUR fic. But it's so damn good!!! This is the only fic not written by me that I've dubbed! It's amazing! So dramatic and explores Sonic and Shadows relationship in a totally unique and amazing way. So excited for this to continue!

I would also recommend reading shriekinggeek, Mintenby, and eccentricglimpse's fics! They're amazing! I wish I had enough writing stamina to give in depth essays on all fics and writers I've mentioned here. Some absolutely stunning stuff.

Thanks Aiden hehehehebe

[hojiteaversion]

Mehmed/MC - Fic Recommendations

An asterisk (*) before the title indicates the fic is in Russian! (I read with a browser translator and it's fine! Sometimes some things sound funny and/or pronouns are translated wrong, but it's all understandable!)

All the fics are completed!

Collision by BorgiaBarbie

Laia struggles when the return of Mehmed complicates her already messy love life with Noe. Oh, and she has one week to restore a priceless painting. Can Laia somehow figure out who she is and what she wants before the sand in the hourglass runs out? Laia/Mehmed and Laia/Noe. Mess. Chaos. Jealousy. Angst. Set after the events of Dracula a Love Story Season 4 Episode 3. Chapters 9 & 10 are set 6 months later.

Hilarious? Check ✅ Great writing? Check ✅ Fluff, angst, humor, and smut?! Check ✅

Also, chapter 4 is what most people would call a religious experience. Please, please do yourself a favor and read it.

The Sultan’s request by nesrinslittleworld

Lale Hatun has a conversation with her Uncle when she visits him with the second portrait.

Really well-written short fic. Mehmed/MC is just implied, but I really enjoyed this look into Lale's conflicted feelings about him.

*The trap of excitement by Akulova Anastasia

After her joint incognito outing with Shehzade, Lale continued to avoid Mehmed, fearing her own feelings, and he, having chosen the path of her methodical conquest, found another safe way to get closer, which could not help but seduce the gambling nature of the Sultana: he promised to teach the game of chess, bypassing the prohibitions. The tactics turn out to be correct, but soon Mehmed sets off on a new campaign. On what note will they say goodbye to Lale, and will she agree to one small bet?

This fic has excellent Mehmed characterization, excellent chemistry and development between him and Lale, an amazing dance scene, and a top-notch epilogue. No spoilers, but there's a moment between the two in the smut scene that I find beautifully done and quite touching!

*Obsession by Akulova Anastasia

“Sorry… God, I don’t know what came over me,” I muttered in confusion and embarrassment, for some reason backing away and awkwardly knocking over the paints. Damn it, in this life we ​​have known each other for only a few days and we are not connected by anything except the memories of the reckless passion of young Lale, who probably did not end in anything good, another me, who has long fallen asleep. So why am I now torn by such unbearable thirst and longing? Why did I… kiss him?

Some beautiful and memorable moments between Laia and Mehmed in this one, especially in chapters 2 and 3. To further entice you, I will say one of these excellent moments involves a knife 🙏‍🙌

*Swallow and flame by linalisavv

“I need to run away from you like fire, but I’m flying towards you like a stupid, naive moth, hoping not to scorch my wings,” Lale said almost in a whisper. Her lips collided with the Shehzade’s, and the air around sparked.

This fic (set after 3x11) imagines how Lale and Mehmed could get together in the Ottoman Empire. I think it's very well-written! And while Vlad plays a minimal role here, I think it's fun that this fic is technically set in a Mehmed and Vlad route. Kudos for the sweet epilogue too!

*A fragile tulip in his hands by Seagull with cookies.

Her mind told her: “Get out, run. He is a cruel tyrant. Madman. He will destroy you." And my heart screamed: “It won’t hurt. Can not. His feelings are too strong."

Friends... This one made me insane. It had a lot of things that fit their canon dynamic so well! I want to let you experience it for yourselves, so I'll just say: drawings, teasing, understanding, breathplay (!!!), and falling in love. Please read it.

*On the edge of the abyss by Little_romantic

"I'm scared. I'm afraid it will hurt again…" "I will never hurt you." His whisper sounded so convincing, so soulful that goosebumps ran across my skin. She knew he believed it, but…

I have recommended this one before, and I will do it again! Each chapter is independent from the others, but guys, the sheer longing in these glimpses of them as Mehmed and Lale want, more than anything, to make them work even as they're scared because, you know, it's them... I think it's a beautiful work and it makes my heart just go out to them.

[khaleesiofalicante]

Dani could you please share your book collection with the class

I tried to do a video but tumblr won't let me post it 🙄

But anyway, here's the gay shelf:

The first row is mostly Alice Oseman, Casey McQuiston and Benjamin Alire Saenz. I've also sneaked in Sophie's World there. It's not a queer book, but if you want to learn philosophy through fiction, this is a great choice!

I've read some of these. I'd definitely recommend Seven Moons of Mali or Funny Boy if you want to read queer books from Sri Lanka - they are both based on being queer and growing up during war/living in conflict. 10/10. I also really liked Felix Ever After. It's the worst book I read where an already queer character questions their sexuality and I've never seen a story where someone questions whether you can be non-binary and trans or do you have to be masculine/feminine. Very cool stuff!

I just picked up A Little Life. I am yet to read the rest. I've heard good things about them all! PS - Gwen and Art was an impulse purchase because I found the name cute hehe.

Now my fantasy/fiction shelf

This top shelf is either classic books I love or 'serious' books I loved growing up. The Atonement and The Book Thief are two of my favorite books ever.

I've read both of these series and I love them a lot. (Not a big fan of Shadow and Bone though)

MY BELOVEDS.

This is mostly a collection of chick flicks and romcoms. I don't particularly like or read any of them. This shelf is mostly for my sister who never buys anything with her own money :)

I finished The Hunger Games! I am yet to read the Apollo series, but I've read all the other PJO books here. I've been trying to get into Shatter Me with no luck lol.

My love for reading started with crime fiction and it will always be my favorite genre to read (other than fantasy!). I've all the books here. My favorite authors here are Agatha Christie (duh!) and Stuart Macbride. I love Logan Mcrae (the main character and I still have nightmares from Flesh House...)

That's mostly it! I no longer have a lot of my sets like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings etc because I ran out of space and I know I won't read them again so I gave it away.

See anything you like? 😇

[nyaagolor]

Vex's big fat SV fic recommendation list

Being stressed while waiting for reviews and thesis feedback had me tearing through the SV AO3 tags like a rabid animal. Bright side to this is that I've been through basically the entire tag for a few characters so you don't have to. Below the cut is all the fics that really stuck with me

Invasive Species by hiratake Hassel/Brassius oneshot. You know that popular post that says the holy grail of AO3 is a 10k oneshot that changes your life when you binge it at 3am? yeah that's this one they meant this fic. It's a look at their younger years and the falling in love stuff these two go through and it's fantastic. There's cute cameos, excellent prose and really fun themes throughout

Team Building (and other remedies for loneliness) by viodef Arven Gen multichap. By the time I finished this fic I was convinced it's canon. It fills in the unseen parts of the game absolutely expertly, telling the story of how Arven caught and raised his team, and balances emotional angst and cute moments within his team flawlessly. It actually got me to care immensely about Arven's Toedschol. btw, this fic is part of a series-- and every fic in it is just as excellent as this one. They're some of the best Arven fics I've ever seen and I cannot recommend them highly enough

I Love You (just in case you didn't know) by WizardGlick Hassel/Brassius oneshot collection. "Where are all the incredible writers for SV?" making old man yaoi content. The Hassel/Brassius scene on AO3 is killing it. This fic has been on my mind since I first read it, it's so GOOD. It's tender it's emotional it's cute it has it all. Even if you don't care for this ship you will by the end of it. Read it

normal people by golden_blue Larry gen oneshot. I'm actually astounded at the charm people are putting into fics about Larry, a character designed to be as basic as possible. This is a fic that really just brings the pokemon world to life, giving so much depth to characters and making everything feel so grounded and lived in. If you like Larry, or even if you don't, read this fic, it'll leave you loving Medali and everyone in it

Kitchen Confidential by aclockworklemon Zerotrio Gen Twoshot (for now). People who characterize the player's mom are the most powerful among us and this is as good as it gets. There's a lot of subtlety in how the characters emotions are explored through the perspective of the character's own mom, and honestly I just love a fic that feels so grounded and sweet. Everyone is characterized so well, and the conflicts feel so real and personal. Good times all around

lost in translation by fivveweeks E4 gen oneshot. This fic is fucking hilarious I am actually begging you to read this one. One of the few times a fic actually got me to belly-laugh. Every work in this author's series about the E4 is equally as funny and equally as good so just do yourself a favor and read them all

holding onto the past (just like her) by centispores Arven oneshot, focused on grief. This one absolutely destroyed me. It has a real mastery of prose, a slowly building sense of dread and confusion that really hammers in the emotional core, and a really good understanding of flow. Setting the fic to a flu delerium backdrop lets the author's talents really shine and also gut punch you right at the end! It hurts, highly recommend

Tenderhearted Trust by infaredlove Jacq focused oneshot. SV introduced the best cast of side characters (the teachers) in the history of this franchise and some valiant authors took it upon themselves to just make banger after banger all about them. This is honestly a recommendation for this author's entire catalogue of work because I adore how they characterize the academy staff, Jacq especially. The prose is great, the feelings are tender, and who doesn't love seeing some nice stories about the adults in the room?

kids and their newfangled lingo by rentaldragon Rika/Geeta oneshot. This one is less than 1k words and as cute as it is funny. It needs no introduction, it's got silly lesbians in it!!

Up the Creek by neutralize Arven oneshot, focused on his failed attempts to heal Mabosstiff. Another ouchie of a fic. This one stings real bad, and the depth of emotion in this one is an absolute killer. The ever increasing desperation here and the ways that Arven's own trauma prevent him from reaching out or getting help for his own mental state are absolutely brutal and an incredible way of illustrating the pre-canon events. This one is rough but it's a very worthwhile read

YOUR _____ APPEARS ABNORMAL. by johnchurch Larry oneshot, Geeta POV. This fic is absolutely genius and even if you don't like either character you have got to give it a shot. It's such a fun and clever way to integrate in-game glitches to an in-universe headcanon. Genuinely delightful. Also watching Geeta slowly lose her mind is more fun than I initially expected

Cool, Cool, Cool by Chumpy Arven/Giacomo oneshot. Really and truly who is doing it like rarepair shippers. They are the backbone of fanfic society and I mean this. This fic is pretty lowstakes in comparison to the others on this list, but man is it cute. I love the characterization, the realism of teenage dialogue and all its awkwardness, and just the way the relationship progresses during the story. Sooo cute, give it a read!

Perennial by Seasonal Penny twoshot. Fics that are canon to me. I'm not even sure how to properly articulate how much this just feels like a legitimate explanation of canon events that happened offscreen. This fic is perfect and also canon. Real to me.

The Fellowship of Glimmora by dragons_tree Geeta multichap, unfinished. This is THE Geeta fic to me. The prose is incredible, the characterization is incredible, the worldbuilding is incredible. If you read one SV fic today make it this one, it will leave you with so many new thoughts on Geeta and her relationships with the gym leaders. Genuinely so so so good I think I would kill to get this fic to update again

Ortega's Drag Race by MimeOfATime Team Star oneshot. This fic is canon in my brain. This is so real to me. The characterization is perfect, the worldbuilding is perfect, begging you to read this fic Right Now. Pls. For me.

Push by agendergrim Professor-focused oneshot. This one is short and also just cracked my brain wide open. SUCH an interesting take on what happened to the other professor and well-written to boot. Do yourself a favor and read this one when you have a few minutes

Historical Perspective by n7punk Sada/Raifort exes oneshot. No one understands Raifort like this author I stg. The characterization of everyone here is absolutely fantastic and is filled with concepts and ideas that feel so authentic to the story of the game. I too love disaster lesbians so this fic was an absolute delight

regret, reflected in crystal by Emolga Turo and Arven focused oneshot. This one is INSANELY rough, big tw for child abuse and an absolutely gut-wrenching internal monologue about it. This fic is really heavy but insanely good, I had to sit down for a while to process it all when I was done. I highly recommend this to anyone who's looking for a fic to blow them away, the author is insanely talented and a master of their craft, but also OOF.

oh, just one more question… by pistachiosoda Penny focused oneshot. Such a sweet Team Star character study, it's really neat to see the unique ways that each character speaks and reflects about the boss and how it serves not only to characterize Penny, but them in turn. This genuinely feels like it could be dialogue ripped from some DLC of the game. If you like Team Star def give this one a look

irony by mousewritings Penny and Arven oneshot. This author REALLY understands teenage dialogue. It feels so real it's almost painful, so if you want something that's really gonna captivate you, give this a read. There's something about the way the characters fumble that feels really natural, and this author is extremely talented when it comes to dialogue and attitude. I adore this fic

Endearment by Sarajaye Penny focused oneshot. Centers around Penny's feelings about her dad-- it's like 400 words and super sweet, just do yourself a favor and read it right now. Click on the link and go for it it'll take like two minutes. You'll thank me later.

Glimmer by WolvZephyr Geeta focused oneshot. Good Geeta focused fics are few and far between, so it was fantastic to see one that really delved into her philosophy and attitudes and personality. This is one of those fics that really puts so much depth into a character that it feels like a natural extension of everything in game. Whether or not u think ur a Geeta fan, read this, because it'll absolutely give you a fresh perspective on her

Patch Up by ColourfulVoid Nemona and Miriam focused oneshot. This might actually be one of, if not my absolutely, favorite fic I've read about Nemona. It so perfectly captures the masking she does and the ways that the adults in her life WANT to help but can't because of all the fronts she puts up. This is filed under lists of fics that changed my brain chemistry. Read it

hues by aukai Nemona and Jacq focused oneshot. Similar to the above, this focuses on Nemona's unhealthy habits and masking and I just absolutely adore it. It's a brief glimpse into her pre-story school life and really adds depth to everything happening offscreen. Nemona my beloved

If you don't wanna use a tumblr post for the links, I have all these bookmarked on my AO3 Vex_ation, which is linked here

[shytastemakerthing]

Well now I’m curious and I’d like a matchup too! (Romantic would be preferred but platonic is good too! Do what you’re comfortable with!)

I am an asexual person (she/they) who is very timid and honestly a bit jumpy. I can put my foot down when I feel I need to as I don’t like taking bs from people, but I’m more likely to avoid conflict than to instigate. I like to draw and while I’m a bit out of practice, I like to sing a bit too! My music taste ranges between techno pop, hard rock, soft and sweet little love songs or heartbreak songs, and touches on a lot of other genres here and there. I love me some good fantasy, whether it’s a game, anime/manga or movie. I also like sci-fi and a little bit of horror every now and then. I get tired easy and like to nap a lot, so someone I can trust to let me sleep peacefully or even join my nap would be super nice. I like hugs, like I’m a big hugger if I like you, but I won’t be overbearing if it’s something someone isn’t comfortable with. I know what it’s like to just not want to be touched and I won’t knowingly make someone that uncomfortable. Personal space and privacy are important but so is physical touch. It’s not always easy to find a middle ground… I try my best to hear out and understand people’s perspectives on things but that can also lead to me asking a lot of questions. I also really like the stars and the night sky. I could stargaze until I fall asleep if I really felt safe enough to do so.

I hope that’s not too much! Tysm! :)

Hi! Thank you so much for your request! I'm finally getting these rolled out so thank you so much for your patience! I do hope that you enjoy your matchup, Anon!

CW: None

I match you with.......

Lilia Vanrouge

🦇 He knows that you're jumpy.... and he uses that to his advantage. Man is a chronic prankster, whether that's all just him personally or his fae self kicking in, we may never know (it's a heavy mix of both, he just can't help himself). He will show up at the most random of places at the most random of times just to see you jump. It makes him chuckle every single time.

🦇 The first time you put your foot down and told him off about him spooking you like thay far too many times for your liking, he was honestly and surprisingly impressed and stunned (and he honestly found it extremely attractive). Now, he is a seasoned war general who has seen many atrocities committed, some even by him. But seeing you like that, it honestly intimidated him a bit.

🦇 Man raised a chronic sleeper son (who wad also cursed with such a spell to case these bouts of sleep), so he does not mind when you need a nap, he'll even join you. After all, he needs to rest those old bones of his. He's also a snuggler and no one can change my mind. He will welcome you into his dorm room, and you can both lay in bed, all nice and cozy under the covers. He'll even tell you stories about all of his adventures if that helps you.

🦇 It is Canon that this man plays games. And if you're looking for some good fantasy, he has plenty of recommendations for you. If you want one to read, he's been around for centuries, and he can get his hands on some of the best books there are no matter the year. He once gifted you a book of such a genre (the best in his opinion), that wss well over 150 years old.

🦇 Please join him at the Light Music Club, please. Honestly they would all love to have you there. There is such a mixture of music that all your music desires are met. And if you sing for them one time, Lilia is smitten and is extra cuddly. He just loves your voice.

🦇 By extension, you get Silver, Malleus, and Sebek. Silver begins to love you like a parent and is always making sure you're alright, thank you over and over for making his father so happy just by being there. Malleus has never seen Lilia so happy when he is with you. There is a difference between the familial love that he holds for his boys and the romantic live he has for you. Sebek is fiercely protective of you, almost on the same level of Malleus, and this is only because your with Lilia. But he will admit he is fond of you over time. He just likes that Lilia is happy.

🦇 Lilia does not mind all the questions that you will ask, actually, he promotes it. He has been around for so long so he will quite possibly have a lot of answers that he will be able to give to you. He just loves to be able to tell you things. To have someone ask him all of these questions, to show such interest, it warns that old heart of his.

🦇 The bat fae has seen so many stars in his long life. He's lived under them, mapped them, traveled by them, all of it. He has even seen some come and go. That means more knowledge that he can share to you. He will bring out the old maps that he used to use and he will gladly share them with you. If it's one of those nights where you're both just laying on a blanket staring out at the stars, he will also gladly just hold you close, thanking the stars above for blessing his life with you. If you happen to fall asleep, and it stars getting just a bit too cold, he can and will pick you up and carry you back (maybe even reverting to his true form for this moment) to his dorm, tucking you in all nice and warm.

🦇 Overall, Lilia honestly feels like he has been blessed when you showed up into his life. So much of his life was filled with pain and war and death and destruction. To have you, here, alive and well with him, loving him for all of who he is, it has brought him to tears more than once. He makes sure that you never have to hurt, that you always feel loved. You get someone who is respectful of you, who respects your boundaries, and loves you as you are.

[redflagfan]

"Him, The Smile & Bloom" / Hanakare Review

I just think it's funny that my first review on this blog, called redflagfan, with a Yang layout, is the most wholesome game

Please note that I am following MintLip's rules for publishing content. This review contains some light spoilers!

The Game

Hanakare is based off a series of drama CDs following four men who work at a flower shop called Fill Flower. Each love story focuses on a different MC, so each LI has his own MC. They also each have their own flower which the story revolves around.

Basically...this game is a super trope-y slice of life story. There's no common route, just a brief intro, and each of the four stories (Hokuto Ichige/Anemone, Wataru Tori/Tweedia, Ginnosuke Sugawa/Mimosa, and Tenya Minami/Nandina) don't really have any serious conflict or drama. It's a very fluffy, cozy romance!

The Routes

I started on Hokuto's route, because I love Makoto Furukawa hahaha. There's no recommended route order. As each LI has their own MC, there's no spoilers or anything really, and nothing is locked. This is how I played: Hokuto -> Wataru -> Ginnosuke -> Tenya. I have no strong feelings on that order; it's just how it happened for me. Feel free to play as you wish!

"Now that I'm in love with you, I'm going all in. I hope you're ready."

Anemone: Fuuka and Hokuto have been friends for more than 20 years. Fuuka has been in love with him for a long time, but Hoku only sees her as a little sister. She’s determined to change how he sees her. 

I started with this route because I love Makoto Furukawa and I was not disappointed! I also love the childhood friends trope and this delivered and more. Their relationship was so cute. It was so funny that everyone else saw how clearly they were in love but Hoku didn’t. Both Fuuka and Hoku are a little stupid, but it works for them hahaha. Their lack of communication was a little annoying but they worked it out. I loved how Hoku’s protective “big brother” nature flourished as Fuuka’s boyfriend and I loved how Fuuka was lowkey toxic as hell in high school lmao. 

Also…the spice in this route was everything! The FuruMako moans seriously had me blushing and giggling! Wear headphones or just be entirely alone for that scene…just…hnngh!!!! It made all the money I spent on this game and the length of time it took to arrive physically worth it. Just for that sweet FuruMako goodness alone. 

Also I had no idea there was a flower called anemone til now! But then I looked it up and found out they also go by windflower which then I was like, duh, I know that from Animal Crossing! So…who says video games aren’t educational?

"The one I want to see smile the most, and the one I want to make smile, is you."

Tweedia: Serina is a full time employee at Fill Flower. She has a chance encounter with 19-year-old Wataru - five years younger than she is - and he quickly falls in love with her (seriously, he confesses the second time they meet, lol). He begins working part-time at Fill Flower and takes every chance he gets to tell his senpai how he feels. 

I did not expect to love this route as much as I did! This is pure, unadulterated fluff. There’s no major conflicts or drama. It’s just wholesome and cute! Wataru is so insanely charming, it’s impossible not to love him. He’s so enthusiastic about working (and pleasing his senpai!) and he’s so earnest and open about his feelings. He definitely wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s a lot like Nayuta from VariBari, if Nayuta actually had self-awareness.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the great job Ryohei Kimura did voicing Wataru. He infused so much charm into the character that made him impossible not to love. Major golden retriever energy - no wonder Serina is always calling him cute and giving him headpats. I don’t think he would’ve been as lovable without the amazing work of KimuRyo. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just the way he spoke was so adorable! But I do love Nicola Francesca and Gill Lovecraft so I’m probably biased lol. 

"Can you hear my heartbeat? It's pounding so hard it's almost funny. You're the only one who makes me feel this way."

Mimosa: Ami is a young interior designer who gets assigned the refurbishment of Fill Flower. Ginnosuke, aka Gin, is the “poster boy” of Fill Flower, known as the prince of the store who attracts all the young ladies to come in. He’s also the playboy type, who isn’t interested in serious relationships. 

Okay, I really had no expectations going into this route. But I loved it so much! The progression of Gin and Ami’s relationship felt so natural to me. It was so cute to see how she had crushed on him two years ago when he delivered flowers to her workplace, and then found out his more true self, which is pretty blunt lol. His “prince” self and his self with Ami felt kinda gap moe to me which is probably why I loved it so much. It was so cute how bad he was obviously crushing on Ami and she had no idea. He made the cutest flustered noises. 

Gin is also a very thoughtful boyfriend and I liked how the two of them set healthy boundaries after some (kinda irritating lol) miscommunications. His possessive side was also very cute. Also…this is the horniest route! The kissing sounds were straight up OBSCENE. And Gin just can’t get enough of Ami! Ugh…they’re so cute and sweet! This, surprisingly, ended up being my favorite route!

"Today I love you more than yesterday, and tomorrow, I'll love you more than today. Every day I grow more love for you."

Nandina: Tenya and Miku were high school classmates who had a significant chance encounter that impacted both. Now, seven years later, aloof and quiet Tenya is working at Fill Flower, while anxious Type A Miku has just returned from two years working abroad in Canada. The two reunite after another chance encounter. 

The moment I saw Tenya in Hokuto’s route I knew I’d have to save him for last because I was looking forward to his route most. I love him! This route was so captivating. Tenya, the bad boy and popular guy at school, having a crush on class president Miku for so many years was so adorable. You thought Wataru was crazy confessing his love on their second meeting - once Tenya and Miku reunite he immediately asks her out and tells her he loves her!

And Miku was such a relatable MC for this route. She’s anxious, she has low self-esteem, she overthinks everything. She was my favorite MC in the game because of this. I just loved the two of them together. They suited each other so well. And there’s something about the quiet guy who’s so devoted to his lover…it makes me go crazy every time.

Overall, each route was enjoyable in its own way, and I loved them all! I guess my ranking would be as follows: Gin > Tenya > Hokuto > Wataru. But they were all great!

What I Liked, What I Didn't 

My favorite thing had to be the “Flower Book” system. Beautiful art of the flowers with adorable chibis, and fun information too! I love glossary type things in games and this was no different. I loved unlocking new flowers and getting to see them! Plus, I actually did learn a lot about flowers!

Speaking of art, Yuuya is such a talented artist. There were a great number of CGs with tons of variations in them. It was amazing! And the sprites were great too. I loved how many outfit variations the boys had!

On the flip side, I wish the girls at least had portraits on the side of the dialogue box. That’s just something I prefer personally. It helps me feel more engrossed. 

And I wish they had voiced lines for the girls’ default names, too. I don’t self-insert so I like hearing that stuff! 

My biggest concern going into this game was the translation. And it was…eh. I’m super nitpicky about this stuff because I literally write and edit for a living. I don’t think it’s enough to like, say you shouldn’t get the game, but it’s something you should be aware of. 

The translations were really inconsistent. Sometimes it seemed straight up machine translated while other times it felt like a human was definitely involved (one route used the phrase “read to filth,” lol). Wataru and Gin’s routes had a lot of dialogue that felt very stilted and was poorly translated, with incorrect pronoun usage and Wataru’s last name being spelled like three different ways. On the other hand, Hokuto and Tenya’s routes made more sense in English and were translated better. 

To be honest, while it was annoying, it didn’t really impact my overall enjoyment of the game. The errors weren’t egregious or anything. You could still understand what they were trying to say. So, irritating? Yes. But it wasn’t unreadable, so it’s just something to keep in mind if you’re interested in this game. 

Final Thoughts

I'd say this game was an 8/10 for me. I just finished playing Olympia Soiree, while also flipping between Piofiore and Bustafellows. So taking a break to play Hanakare was definitely a breath of fresh air! If you're looking for a game that's romantic, fluffy and super cozy, I definitely would recommend this one. It's the perfect refresher between playing more heavy games, plot-wise. It was also the perfect game to sit back and relax with after a difficult day at work. I can definitely picture myself replaying these routes when I need a break.

To purchase Hanakare, you need to either buy it digitally from the Japanese E-Shop or import it online to have a physical edition. I got the Special Edition via PlayAsia!

Thanks for reading! :)

[fishareglorious]

If someone were to be deciding between either limbus company or reverse 1999, which would you recommend and why? What would you say are the pros and cons?

I enjoy both R1999's and Limbus' story and gameplay, and both its cast of characters remain pretty intriguing enough. But I will be upfront about the fact that I will a little more biased on R199 since its currently filling up the spaces between my neurons currently, and that I've dropped Limbus months ago due to the company's actions towards its workers. All in all, if you want to play Limbus, all I ask of you is to not give the game any real-life money.

I really do want to give both games a fair chance, so I would say my verdict would be for you to try both games and see if like one or even both?

A whole ass essay under the cut:

Anyhow, when it comes to recommending it, I.. would say to a general audience, R1999's more palatable? Limbus' contents (see: its giant trigger warnings screen when you start the game for the first time) aren't quite for everyone, so if any of these aren’t for you, please take care of yourself.

Limbus gameplay is something that plays in my head even if I haven’t touched it in months. The difficulty spike is infamously vertical, but if you enjoy a good challenge, figuring out battles is really gratifying. Probably is one of the things I really miss about the game, as much as it did frustrate me to the point of insanity.

For the characters, I did really like the fact all of the playable characters take inspiration from classic literature (ie, Ishmael is inspired from Ishmael from Moby Dick, Heathcliff is from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Faust from Goethe's Faust, Gregor as Gregor Samsa from Kafka's Metamorphosis, etc.), and the setting of the City as an ultra capitalist hell that has SCP-esque creatures wreaking havoc after the downfall of an eldritch horror energy company is a very fascinating and intriguing world.

One of the big things I can think people praise about Limbus is that almost all gacha content are actually obtainable with enough grinding; barring the pretty new Walpurgisnacht content, which I think is limited?

The game has utterly banger soundtracks including original songs from Mili is spectacularly weaved into the boss battles, sound design that is immaculately crunchy in a satisfying way (I. admit I sometimes open some character's attack audios. for fun at one point. let us ignore i am the guy obsessed with outis and I play her voicelines because she's. her.) and top-notch voice acting. While it doesn't have a english dub, but I think even if they had one I don't think they'll come quite close to the korean VA's performances.

I may not have touched the game in months but I do still carry a fondness for these gang of murderous morally gray-to-black bastards and their sad sopping wet amnesiac manager.

And let's get to R1999. It's been taking up space in my brain for a while now. The cast of characters are certainly interesting, and there is lore jam-packed into almost every bit of the story. The whole world and the ramifications and effects of the Storm pose an intriguing conflict and I'll surely be tuned in to how the main story will turn out. The events are also a joy to watch and play.

As for the gameplay, if the levels aren't kicking your ass and you're evenly matched with your enemies, I really do enjoy the process of strategizing how to defeat the enemies. Unlike Limbus flinging you out into the world and into the battle; the tutorial on how R1999's battle mechanic certainly eases you better into knowing the basics. My only complaint in here is that the end-game grind is horrific. Farming for stuff for your characters in the highest levels will have you ripping your hair out (at least, that was my experience), but at the last going through the main story content doesn't actually require you to be on a high level with your roster of characters.

I appreciate how it does look like a lot of things in R1999 take context from actual historical things that have happened, though unfortunately I'm not really that much of a history buff to fully get some references and appreciate it, which is a bit of a shame.

The game's soundtrack is simply chef's kiss. I admit I don't really have audio on when i play casually, but when I do have it on while playing through the story, the music really does deliver and drive in what the game wants you to really feel during scenes. The music in chapter 3's various chess scenes drive in Constantine's scheming and the buildup of dread as you see it all unfurl before your eyes. The solemnity of the music in the final scenes of chapter 2. A ping pong game being somehow incredibly intense. That one OST that plays whenever someone goes silly time. Green Lake's absolute bop of an OST can I just link it here man. R1999 composers giving y'all a big plate of your favorite food.

Anyways. I think this has like. gone on and on and I am not good with writing conclusions so. To say what I said at the very start, I think you should both games a fair chance, so I would say my verdict would be for you to try both games and see if like one or even both? Up to you.

Most of all have fun and don't give into the gacha addiction. That is all.

[mejomonster]

Some of my favorite (recent-ish) Thai bl were:

Bad Buddy: if I'm going to recommend any coming of age romcom college set bl it's this one. The way it uses so many staple tropes in a fresh way, Ohm and Nanon are great actors and really bring a whole other level of energy, the actual conflict in the story is very realistic and heavy and a real topic I think a lot of young adults deal with regarding their families and expectations. So it's mostly romantic comedy, but the heavy moments resonate so that it doesn't really feel unrealistic. It's very high brightness overly kind of fantastical rather than real in presentation and tropes used (quite common in fluff bl like 2gether and My School President and Theory of Love etc), but the chemistry of the leads feels executed very realistically and again the actual delivery of tropes and conflicts feels very grounded in a way. Highly recommended to most peoples tastes tbh (and special mention to My School President, while it was a little Too fluffy for my tastes, it also did a balance of romcom and a grounded heart to the conflicts which I think is part of why it had such big appeal, along with really solid leads that are going to be bringing a lot to any project they work on in the future)

Never Let Me Go: THE action bl as of recently. Gave me everything I could ask, from the leads in The Gifted Graduation bringing their acting game with roles that let them truly show off what they can do, to a high body count of murders and action scenes, mafia sons falling in love with people oh so different from them, a batman esque lead, rich boy falls for poor bodyguard whipping boy trope but also Not quite because the show Really wants to comment on class issues and inequality and makes sure the audience gets the point (a core issue in the relationship is how to be equals given who they are), and a reference to the quote about soulmates that Xena Warrior Princess also uses. It also has Chimon. It's also aesthetically pleasing af. Idk what to tell you, I love when Jojo directs something and this Gave me WAY more than I thought I could get. I'm happy to say that in the post Not Me world we are seeing more action romance bls, not just romcom/fluff ones (though there's always plenty of those too). I personally am eagerly hoping this trend continues and we keep getting at least a few action romance bls a year like this one, Kinnporshe, Manner of Death, Not Me. I've started Laws of Attraction and that's looking similarly promising. (And while I highly recommend Not Me the series, one of my top shows PERIOD... I'm only listing newer shows than that right now).

The Eclipse: this show was exactly what I'd hope it would deliver, and more frankly (because I was hoping for at minimum the Blacklist quality and at max dream hopes The Gifted quality). Well it delivered closer to The Gifted. Politically heavy, really well done in that regard from the overt to the subtle, amazing entire ensemble cast (even the side actors are strong actors that have been in other things), Khaotung and First are both particularly amazing (Khaotung impresses me no matter what role he's given frankly). Aesthetically it's exactly what you'd hope if your hopes like mine were The Gifted but only real evil people no mutants, and explicitly gayer. If you perhaps are willing to have a high school setting, but very much do Not want fluff dominant story and instead a tense mystery with at least half the characters already out and proud queer people (but still some of the cute romance tropes executed a bit less fluffily) then this may be your jam.

Moonlight Chicken: if you'd like multigenerational queer stories, centering on a family slice of life realism piece, this show is <3. The second main pairing is the same actors from My School President and I think they really shine here where the romance relies less on tropes and the dialogue is more realistic so the intensity of scenes really leans on actors. I love their characters in this and they stole the show for me. The first main pairing is messy and adult, with adult problems (like actual ones not just romantic drama: like raising a nephew, running a store, working for a company that's destroying your lovers neighborhood). But also not actually that messy, I'd say in terms of messy it's for the most part wholesome and soft. If you liked 1000 Stars (I did) then this shows realistic slice of life feel will be comfortable and homey, and the amount of skinship in this show is less conservative for even more of a cozy natural feeling.

And the one I'm most anticipating coming out: Only Friends. Khaotung and First lead it, so I'm basically certain the main story will be absolute gold (since I eat up every role they play their acting is just <3 like dude I watched the Shipper for First okay and 5555 Never too Late for Khaotung which was an Amazing show btw). Now.. Only Friends is directed by Jojo (yay for me) and in theory it IS going to be as messy as it looks (and it looks at least as messy as Friendzone). So if Moonlight Chicken is too fluffy and tame for you, then you might want this show on your radar. I think it is slated for August but I'm not sure as I try not to get too hype for things until theyre out so I avoid most news.

[illogarithmil]

Warning: some unmarked spoilers for most official 5e campaigns below. Also, long post written over several days with resultant tonal shifts.

If, like me, you find yourself terminally dissatisfied by D&D 5e (and horrified by OneD&D or whatever they're calling it now) but still wanting to run its major published adventures because otherwise what did you *buy them all for*, here are some suggestions! I'm going to steer away from stuff that's too straightforwardly a retroclone or "D&D but with X rule changed," because that's boring. For each adventure, I will explain what I think a good adaptation needs, provide a "played-straight option" which is a system to pretty much directly port the adventure into, only requiring some rules conversion and maybe minor setting flavour, and an "offbeat option," which is going to require major narrative changes and often shift the entire genre. With two exceptions I'm going to recommend games I've played or at least read many times over; if you know of other things that would work then feel free to comment or reblog with them!

So, in chronological order of the adventures I own...

Lost Mines of Phandelver

The important thing about LMoP is that it's a starter adventure, taking characters who start off as basically nobodies but who have either personal connections or moral ties that draw them into a pretty morally straightforward conflict with several groups of bad people working on behalf of a single villain. In the process, it shows off a bit of travel and exploration, a bit of social activity in phandelver itself (mainly of the obtain-quest-hooks variety) and a lot of combat, easing people into the game.

Played-Straight: 24BLUE

A solid but simple old-school fantasy-oriented but setting-agnostic hack of 2400 with light, intuitive but flavourful rules for creating characters and monsters and good guidance on how to convert over from other systems. It's also cheap as chips ($3) and 4 pages long, meaning it puts very little work on a new gm. Frankly, I think flexible and rules-lite systems are the best way to get people into rpgs, so this is ideal. Also, it has something of a tendency to depower more powerful monsters in conversion which might be an issue with larger-scale games but really isn't with the 1-5 scale of Phandelver. Just maybe fudge a bit to preserve the sense of threat with the dragon.

https://deep-light-games.itch.io/24blue

Offbeat: All that I Am

So Phandelver's a game about good-hearted nobodies rising to defeat evil, right? But they're good-hearted nobodies with magic and sword-skills. What if they kept the drive but lost the power? What terrible price might ordinary folks pay to defeat an evil which they are unequipped to face? Also cheap (PWYW, $11.36 recommended) and also simple (albeit less so,) All That I Am is a game about people who have made a pact with a demon and slowly realize that this was Probably A Mistake. It has a really cool basic mechanic based on tossing coins into a magic circle - not one for online play! - and a very flavourful list of demons to mess about with. It's naturally darker in tone than D&D, which is going to affect your story through play, but the setting could honestly probably go unchanged and the only plot alteration you might want to make is reshuffling the adventure so that it starts in Phandalin and goes 1. Get bothered by Redbrands; 2. MAKE PACT TO DEFEAT THEM (going into wilderness to conduct the ritual in secret); 3. Get ambushed by Goblins on way back from wilderness; 4. Return to phandalin and go from there, rather than the standard goblin lead-in. If you wanted to change the setting to the more Renaissance Europe default assumption of ATIA, you could easily enough make the Goblins into bandits or wicked faeries and Nezznar into a human schemer.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/271265

Honourable Mentions: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Burning Wheel if that's your thing

Princes of the Apocalypse

I know a lot of people don't like PotA. Cards on the table: it's my favourite 5e adventure, and I've run it once already. It is, to me, the archetypal D&D story, which made it really hard to pick alternatives which aren't just branches of D&D. It's got a fairly balanced mix of combat, social and exploration/investigation elements through which the characters uncover the works of four tactically diverse elemental cults which are often remarkably subversive of typical expectations of their element, led by well-realized and psychologically interesting villains, all of which both tie together into a single core and branch out into loads of loosely related side quests and plot threads.

Played-Straight: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Four divine cults tied to a single powerful evil force, you say? Warhammer's Moorcockian forces of Chaos fit pretty much perfectly. You could keep the elemental theming, even, with the cults venerating the Four Gods in elemental aspect, or switch elementals for daemons and just retain the front organisations. I recommend associating Tzeentch (god of change and magic) with the fire druids, Khorne (god of honour and violence) with the earth monks, Slaanesh (god of pride and excess) with the air knights and Nurgle (god of health and sickness, who already has a substantial maritime followinh) with the water bandits. True, the game might be a bit more gory and lethal thanks to random injury tables and lower power levels, but if you're playing the 4th edition by the book it probably won't be enough to shift the tone of the adventure especially if you're generous with the Fate and Resilience points. It supports social play, particularly player character psychology, very well, and has some simple but workable exploration rules on a similar level to D&D's (but with a better, more narrative-focussed random encounter table!) Additionally, the adventure doesn't have any major "pay X gold to get some benefit" moments, meaning that warhammer characters (who might well start play as a poor refuse collector or peasant farmer due to random character generation) won't find they're gated out of elements by different expectations of character wealth compared to D&D.

https://cubicle7games.com/our-games/warhammer-fantasy-roleplay

Offbeat: Avatar Legends

OK, so this is one of the ones I haven't played, though I hear good things. I'm recommending it on the strength of the setting, because get this: elements.

More seriously, a major theme in the original AtLA (haven't watched Korra) is "the gang show up somewhere where people have some cool powers/tech/fighting style but there's also Something Creepy and Bad Going On. You could bring the elemental powers of the cults more into the foreground, making them organisations of highly trained benders dominating an isolated region and connected - this being the element that remains a secret - via their mutual corruption by a powerful, trapped dark spirit (replacing the Elder Elemental Eye). The fact that there's an air cult means you'd probably need to set it before the Air Nomad Genocide unless the air knights being a special unique school of different airbenders was a plot point.

https://magpiegames.com/pages/avatarrpg

Honourable Mentions: Worlds Without Number, Burning Wheel, Pendragon, Rennaissance

Out of the Abyss

My favourite adventure that I've never run, Out of the Abyss' key feature is survival and exploration, followed by power scaling. The characters are going to start off nearly naked in an alien environment and end up killing several demon lords, if they don't starve or go mad first, and it's important that a game be able to capture that.

Played-Straight: 18XX Dreams

Sort of played straight. Another 2400 hack, this one works if you accept that the underdark of OotA was set up as a dreamlike space inspired by Alice in Wonderland, because it's a setting built entirely around the dreamworld. Who trapped the characters in the shadowy world of nightmare which is our underdark here? Drawing on Lovecraft's Dreamlands, maybe it was the slaving Men of Leng rather than the original module's drow, or maybe some wicked drowesque fairies will do. At any rate, from there you can pretty much run the thing straight from the module, just with a bit more creative license. The game's player powers might seem excessive at first, but they're really just exploration-oriented where D&D's are often combat-oriented; you'll quickly get used to working around them and if you don't it's an easy game and easily hacked. (Incidentally, Dreams requires a 'waking world character' as a bass for which I recommend you use the compatible 24BLUE system mentioned above. You could also pull advancement from that system, which you'll want to do if you aren't going to emphasise the final ritual as the only way to defeat the demons).

https://deep-light-games.itch.io/18xx-dreams

Offbeat: FIST

Kidnapped by esoteric Nazi explorers, our band of late-80s urban fantasy action hero mercs are now trapped in the Hollow Earth! Will their scavenged gear and hard-won skills be sufficient to allow them to escape and/or best both the pursuing fash and the terrible cthonic deities they have unleashed in their excavations?

FIST is a fast-paced near-modern setting game with one of the most enjoyable and simple combat systems I've seen, which should make the near-endless random encounters a bit more breezy. It's core ethos is that the characters are an overmatched A-team style force (often with surprisingly little gear) who are going to have to lie, cheat, steal and McGyver their way to survival let alone victory, which fits *perfectly* with early OOtA. The alternating zaniness and horror also mesh really well, though you might need to port madness mechanics over. And yes, it already has basic stats for demons of various degrees of power!

https://claymorerpgs.itch.io/fist

Honourable Mention: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Curse of Strahd

Curse of Strahd is a game that I've run twice,neither by the book, and my key takeaway is that it really feels like it should never have been made in 5e. A great, interesting horror story is just broken up by having to have a set-piece fight with a monster every half an hour. That said, what's important to adapt is clearly the sense of dread and the social webs between characters, as well as the power differential between heroes and villains that makes the latter scary.

Played-Straight: Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Strahd is an abusive, manipulative prick who wants to toy with the PCs' emotions more than kill them. Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a game where emotional breakdowns generally replace death (which makes it feel a lot less like the GM is just playing the genius villain as an idiot) and defeating abusive pricks is a big part of the power fantasy. Even if it doesn't initially sound like your thing - it didn't to me - I *seriously* recommend giving it a look. It's an awesome game. No setting or adventure change is really required, but the focus on having action and fights be less a constant than something that happens when and where it's emotionally impactful gives you permission to cut some of the needless violence in favour of more creeping gothic horror if you want to. Also, it has to be said that having rules around romance and relationships is probably a good thing for the game sometimes affectionately known as "5e's dating sim".

https://evilhat.com/product/thirsty-sword-lesbians/

Offbeat: Old World of Darkness (Hunters Hunted+Sorcerer+Ghost Hunters+Mage: Victorian Age)

This was the idea that made me write this post: a Victorian factory town in the hills outside Manchester where the characters become trapped, not by the physical bounds of mist (or not *only* by them) but by ties of class and social obligation, forcing them to remain in the twisted demesne of the local industrialist, a man who is more than he seems (a vampire? An utterly corrupt and evil mage called a Nephandus? World of Darkness has lots of options.) Barovia is shrunk in scale to the town of Barrowdale and its immediate rural environs, creating claustrophobia without breaching the lower-fantasy constraints by having the Strahd equivalent hop on his magic horse. World of Darkness has a modestly complex system, but it's a little lighter than D&D especially for the relatively normal mortals the characters will be playing. They might have a spiritualist medium, a Sorcerer or Psychic capable of a couple of tricks or perhaps somebody whose True Faith in God can protect against the unholy, but for the most part they'll be relying on mundane skills as they uncover the town's shadowier side. I love the idea of the Keepers of the Feather as a group of socialist agitators, the Baron's Vallaki as a disjointed and ineffectual trade union or Argynvostholt as the cellar network left behind by the families whose estates were cleared to build the new rows of red-brick tenements. Just one thing: please don't have Strahd be Eastern European in this set-up, the vampiric foreigner invading British soil is an unpleasant trope.

Rules for vampire powers so you don't have to buy a whole vampire book as well are to be found here:https://saligia.fandom.com/wiki/Saligia_Wikia - use the White Wolf Wiki for guidance on what you're looking for.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/401413

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/114261

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/368774

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/412531

Honourable Mentions: Dread, Dark Age Cthulhu

Storm King's Thunder

SKT is another story reliant on power scaling to make its premise work. It has a massive, almost sandbox-y setting in which the characters gradually pick up plot threads explaining why bad things are happening around them, fight their way through one of several dungeons and then use their trophy from that to unlock the finale in which they go head-to-head with giants, a kraken and a dragon in pretty short order. Honestly, I don't like it as an adventure, but if you're wanting to run it you're going to want at least some support for interesting travel and a solid power scale that will allow some pretty big fights at the high end.

Played-Straight: Worlds Without Number

It may only have 10 levels (sort of), but its lack of bounded accuracy means this fantasy game of wandering experts, mages, warriors and adventurers scales impressively into the higher of those. It's travel rules maintain the interesting elements of resource management whilst being more streamlined than 5e's. Also, and this is a side-note, characters are very customizable with everybody getting a couple of free feat-equivalents. It's very solid and entirely system-agnostic, meaning you can use the great big highly-detailed map and chapter of encounters which are without a doubt the best part of SKT.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/348809

Offbeat: Traveller

Of course if you *wanted* to adapt the map...

Traveller is a sci-fi game, known for extensive and random character generation but which also likes big hex grids! Seriously, look at this thing.

It is pretty setting-agnostic, meaning you can create your own sci-fi setting (and map!) that fits in equivalents to the adventure elements (some people have even made historical or fantasy hacks, for which check out Mercator or Halberts). It has extensive rules for travel, of course, and also modular rules for just about everything else so that whether your characters want to be merchants or mercenaries you can patch in more complex rules to serve that need. In what is essentially a massive sandbox with loose themes that coalesce into a plot at the end, that works really well, and you can still have the big threats that the adventure relies on in the form of enormous alien battleships. I think I'd be using the K'Kree, murderous centaur like vegetarian absolutists, as my giants if running in the official Traveller setting of the Third Imperium golden age, but honestly any of humaniti's alien neighbours could work if they turned hostile.

There are a lot of editions of traveller, but the 2nd edition book by Mongoose is a great modern entry point.

https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/collections/traveller-rpgs

Honourable Mention: Forbidden Lands

Tomb of Annihilation

ToA, the last of these I've run, is to my mind a much better hexcrawler than SKT and indeed 5e's best pure exploration adventure. The PCs have a goal, a timer, and an immense, confusing, murderous obstacle in the way in the form of the jungles of Chult. Once they beat that, it's time for a different sort of crawl as they explore massive puzzle dungeons. A game that works for this needs to be good at both map-scale and site-scale exploration, not just in the evocation of travel in the narrative but also the nitty-gritty survival details of whether you contracted throat leeches today. Oh, and it needs to be a setting that allows for big powerful mass-influence magic or something and for resurrection so the death curse plot point can be set up.

Played-Straight: Forbidden Lands

A game *about* exploring a hex map, with a die-based supply system that reduces bookkeeping to a minimum whilst keeping resource tracking central, detailed travel and camp actions and a slightly low-fantasy tone that fits well with how I conceive ToA. Nothing here would stop you using the official setting, though some of the assumptions about D&D magic it makes might need tweaking.

https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/forbidden-lands/

Offbeat: Eclipse Phase

In the mid-distance future, the shock of an AI uprising that decimated humanity has led us to flee earth, embrace transhumanism and conquer death through the practice of resleeving into new bodies. 10 years after "the Fall," sapients - humans, uplifted animals and limited AIs - live throughout the solar system and, via a series of weird teleport gates, beyond. But now (this plot proposes) something in the outer reaches of the solar system is broadcasting a rare strain of the ai-created Exsurgent Virus, which twists its sufferers into monsters - this one affecting not active sleeves, but backups. Whenever somebody resleeves- like, say, if they broadcast their mind into a new body on the edge of the solar system to find out what's going on - they have limited time left before they become an abomination. EP has pretty solid survival rules, greatly expedited by sci-fi technology, and a system of mental stress that'd fit ToA's horror elements well, but I won't pretend it wouldn't be a faff to convert. It doesn't have much support for something like hexcrawl, though it'd be easy enough to set up a map of outer system habs in a given area of space, and its characters tend to be hypercompetent in a way that could reduce the sense of threat. With the themes of death and resurrection, terrible elder entities and horror embedded in a way that not many sci-fi rpgs do, though, I think it'd be worth it if you're willing to deal with some crunch. All of the big books for it are also available for FREE from the publishers, though I recommend supporting them - they're awesome people doing good work.

https://robboyle.info/#eclipse-phase-pdfs

Honourable Mention: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Other than OotA, this is probably the adventure (I mean, anthology I guess but it's an anthology with some very strong connective tissue) that I'd most like to run some day. The thing Saltmarsh needs most is of course good sailing rules or the ability to adapt the ones in the book naturally, but a functioning mass combat system for the attack on the sahaguin lair would also be helpful, as would anything making it easier to run a horror game.

Played-Straight: Cthulhu Dark Ages+Corsairs of Cthulhu

One of them's set in the 1000s, the other in the 1700s, but between them that basically averages out to the medieval mishmash that is D&D and provides rules for anything you might want. The dark, gritty human-scale tone (well-suited to Greyhawk) can be made low fantasy by using some of the 'folk' - read non-sanity-blasting - magic found in Dark Ages and from there you can pretty much run the setting straight, either in the original setting (you'll need to homebrew some rules for nonhuman species) or in our own (removing non-monstrous nonhumans altogether). Call of Cthulhu's rules in general bring in a system for character sanity that's very well suited to the frequent horror of Saltmarsh - there's even an asylum already in one of the adventures should your character go mad! - whilst Dark Ages brings some detailed, brutal rules for combat with armour and swords and Corsairs, in addition to ships, adds the blackpowder weaponry that always felt it was missing from Saltmarsh. You should probably keep using the random ship events and Encounters in the 5e book, but if you just keep a comparative list of dice difficulties in the two games they won't be hard to convert even on the fly. Honestly, the big issue here is price, because you're going to need the core rules and two supplements to get started. If that's unfeasible, grab the quick-start or starter set rules and corsairs and then send me a message; I'll give you the relevant extracts from the dark ages rules that I think would help. You can find rules for converting between D20 and CoC's D100 systems online, but honestly the game's standard array of monsters should be fine for representing most stuff in Saltmarsh.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/388056

https://www.chaosium.com/cthulhu-dark-ages-3rd-edition-hardcover/

https://www.chaosium.com/call-of-cthulhu-keeper-rulebook-hardcover/

Offbeat: Exalted

OK, hear me out: exalted is a game (d10 system similar to world of darkness but, weirdly, much better social interaction rules) about being reborn, hunted godlings in an almost ridiculously high-fantasy setting, doing incredible things with an array of powers and skills that take competence porn to and beyond the levels of epic D&D 3.5. The world they live in, however, can be as dark and desperate as it is strange and wonderful, and does have a fair number of Normal People who would live in a place like Saltmarsh. That setting also makes the appearance of random island encounters and magical storms popping up out of nowhere feel a lot more natural than it does in Greyhawk. Most importantly, the core game has not only rules for mass combat and sailing, but specific powers to make specialist characters supernaturally good at those things - six pages of options for sailing alone. It might lose some of the classic Saltmarsh horror, and you might want to raise the crew of the first pirate ship to more reasonable levels because even starting exalted will punch through 13 minor enemies with ease, but trust me: it's worth it for how cool it will make your pcs feel and how many rich exploration opportunities will open up to them with increased resilience to harm.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/162759

Descent into Avernus

Most noted for a wide gap between character level and apparent threat, though that's really just illustrative of 5e's design philosophy, for me DiA's main 'deal' is tonal diversity, sometimes to the point of whiplash. You go from morally-ambiguous intrigue in a dark den of crime and iniquity to similar except now in hell and with cultists to Brütäl Mäd Mäx Räcës, aided by a flying golden elephant on a quest to redeem a fallen angel. At the same time, the story isn't really meant to be zany in the same way as something like OotA, so the key is probably finding a system that doesn't enforce any particular tone rather than one that enforces tonal dissonance within scenes like Dreams. Given the critical choices between fighting and negotiating the module presents at points, it's also important that the system chosen not make one of those dramatically better than the other.

Played-Straight: Between the Skies

Using a very loose, modular system - it literally lets you choose your dice system! - Between the Skies is basically a collection of systems for inspiration generation to service a plane- or world-hopping campaign. It makes characters varying from the mundane to the weird (should you want to run DiA as the planescape game it cries out to be) interesting through a lifepath generation system which is a bit more than the usual; how often do you find the option to die in character generation *but keep playing that character?* Then it provides guidance for travel, vessels (in a way that'd work quite neatly with the Infernal war machines) and adventure across the planes with a philosophy of maximising the role of the GM as opposed to the system. Its combat system works mostly narratively rather than relying on dice, but still allows a good deal of complexity where needed: you can zoom into or out of combat scenes according to how necessary they are to the plot, either resolving them quickly without losing danger, useful for many of Descent's random encounters, or running more detailed fights. It is ultimately a toolbox game, and will reward a gm who's also willing to be a bit of a designer.

Offbeat: Dark Heresy

A story in which characters begin investigating corruption amongst mortal powers and then delve into literal hell might be an excellent fit for a mid-high level game of the classic Warhammer 40k game of inquisitorial agents rooting out heresy in the grim dark future. Baldur's gate can easily be a significant garrison world, Elturel its Daemon World neighbour from which the characters venture into the Eye of Terror or Great Rift in search of a rumoured way to "redeem" (read: bring back to the Imperium, itself a theofascist nightmare state) a Daemon Primarch, one of the lost children of the Emperor. Given this is 40k, and that Dark Heresy is full of rules for corruption and horrible death, it's likely to end less hopefully than DiA typically does, but you never know!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/65872

Honourable Mentions: Exalted, Thirsty Sword Lesbians

Rime of the Frostmaiden

It has been well-noted by now that RotF is quite a good horror story and quite a poor D&D adventure. Honestly, I think even as horror it's a bit of a tonal mess, but it definitely has some strong elements there which are weakened by the characters throwing around resurrection magic and fireballs as the solution to all of their problems. This isn't to say they aren't allowed fireballs - it's pretty solidly a fantasy story - but that the game needs to be about problem solving and fear first and foremost, with of course the ever-present threat of the elements.

Played-Straight: Dread

One for the confident improvisers, dread has a single mechanic: if a character does something they aren't confidently capable of, they pull from a Jenga tower. If they make the pull, they succeed or avoid a threat; if they chicken out, something bad happens; if the tower topples, something very bad happens. Normally this removes them from play; for a longer campaign I might have the first topple lead to the character's secret (a very fun part of RotF is that every character is hiding something, often something nightmarish like an alien parasite growing inside them) being revealed and the second killing them/driving them mad/leading them to flee Icewind Dale and return home. Other than this, the major adaptation would be working out how to narratively implement PC archetypes. I think you can be generous with this - for a barbarian PC, they might be able to crush obstacles or slaughter minor foes without a pull, for example, whilst a water wizard could melt large areas of ice or breathe below the surface of a frozen lake. In short, step away from 5e's highly-defined abilities, let PCs do anything that makes sense and focus on threatening them with the things they *can't* control, which is likely to be a lot. When fights, the weather, stress and magic all threaten a single, communal resource, you'll find the kind of tension and caution the module seems to expect much easier to evoke.

https://dreadthegame.wordpress.com/about-dread-the-game/

Offbeat: Doctor Who: Adventures in Space

This is the other game I've not played (though it's designed by Cubicle 7, whose work I trust implicitly). I'm recommending it mostly for the narrative, because it seems to lend itself so well: the doctor and companions find themselves drawn to an 18th-19th century Russian arctic Island/planetary colony where a powerful cosmic being has brought down eternal winter, the cybermen are building a new cyber-king and an ancient alien city lies frozen in ice. You probably need to think of an actual reason why Auril's frozen Ten Towns, possibly something to do with the fallen city, because your resolution is going to be a result of investigation and clever plans rather than fighting, so be willing to put in the work there. On the easier side, the time travel element that can appear at the end won't be as sudden and jarring in a setting predicated on it!

Quickfire Round of Books I Don't Own

Dragon Heist: Dusk City Outlaws/Fiasco/Royal Blood

Dungeon of the Mad Mage: Advanced Fighting Fantasy

Wild Beyond the Witchlight: Changeling the Dreaming

Tyranny of Dragons: HârnMaster/Pendragon

Candlekeep Mysteries: Amber Diceless/Rennaissance

Radiant Citaedel: Between the Skies/Mage: the Ascension

So there it is! My challenge to you is as follows: if you were considering starting a new 5e campaign with one of these campaigns, expose your group to something new and try one of these instead. Let's break WotC's near-monopoly on this hobby, because they sure as hell don't deserve it. If you do do anything with any of these (or, as I say, if you have better ideas) please let me know!