#but i liked this idea enough that it merited an image

[non-plutonian-druid]

hear me out; delores as one of those carousel horses.

hmm. i'm not mad at it

[ID: a drawing of Delores as a carousel horse (or rather, carousel centaur) instead of a mannequin. Her hair is broken off, as well as her arm and one of her legs. Her horse part is red and she has a curly yellow tail. Her saddle and top (which resembles the bodice of a fancy dress, without the dress) are both molded on, and are made up of matching pink, blue, green, gold, and cloudy white. The shading and highlight colors are very bright and chaotic, and the line art has been drawn over by the colors in places. End ID]

It was interesting to draw not just a simplified horse, but someone else's simplification of a horse. Those are different shapes than I do! Also, a note on Delores' hair: she's bald in the show because of course she is, it's pretty common for mannequins to be bald, but why would a carousel statue lady be bald? They're not gonna put a wig on those, the hair would be molded on. So I drew her as having had hair at some point, but broken off by now

[tobiasdrake]

Thinking about redemption yesterday got me thinking about fallen heroes today, and how rare it is to see a character initially painted as a hero be driven to heinousness for legitimate reasons.

Often times, if a hero goes bad, it's because of an external force corrupting their mind. Or it's a misunderstanding and they were secretly still good all along. Or they were just having a rough day and they'll be good again in five minutes.

We rarely see get to see heroes go sour purely on their own merits. Maybe because their values weren't so benign as they'd seemed when pushed to a natural conclusion. Maybe because they expected too much of themselves or of others. Or maybe personal experience taught them to believe something else.

Whatever the case, as often as writers will attempt to examine the transformative power of better angels, we rarely get to see the transformative power of worse devils.

Which brings me to....

Sayaka Miki is a character that holds a special place in my heart, not for overcoming her flaws but for being consumed by them. She's a cautionary tale into the perils of righteousness.

I need to preface this by bringing up that the characters of Madoka Magica are children. They're irrational, judgmental, ignorant of risk, and quick to throw themselves into horrible mistakes with absolute confidence. Because they're children. That's how this works. The villain of the series is a psychological predator who feeds on the impulsivity and poor judgment of youth, grooming them into self-destruction.

The entire system of Magical Girls exists to give these children enough rope to hang themselves with and then to kick the ladder out from under them. That is the plot, with Sayaka being the primary means by which the show demonstrates the complete journey from rope to ladder.

I just. I need you to understand that even at her worst, Sayaka is a victim of predatory incentives and calculated coercions meant to cultivate her worst traits while stripping her of hopes and dreams. To drown her in mistakes she could never take back. She didn't have the life experience to know better. That's why her predator targets children.

Sayaka's rope is woven from virtuous self-image. It's not immediately apparent when we meet her, but Sayaka's fatal flaw is ego. Her moral compass is wound extremely tight, and it's only later that we realize it's wound around her neck.

Like many children, Sayaka is trying on an identity moreso than expressing her inner self. She wants to be altruistic. She wants to be selfless. She wants to be a true hero. She wants to live by nothing more than high-minded ideals, expecting no reward for her efforts (but receiving it all the same).

She wants to be the kind of person that Mami was.

But she has no idea who Mami was. She wasn't there to see Mami fracture. To see her break down in vulnerability and express the isolating misery she lives in.

Sayaka didn't see that. She only saw how cool Mami looked when she was killing Witches. So when she tries on an identity, she's specifically trying on the identity of Mami - blissfully unaware that her interpretation of Mami was nothing but a mask. She is emulating the behavior of a victim already consumed by the predatory incentives she's accepting.

Sayaka was doomed from the moment she made her wish.

Once again, the show does a brilliant job of concealing this at first. Right off the bat, it's easy for Sayaka to be the hero. She saves both her BFFs Madoka and Hitomi from a Witch in her debut adventure, before being immediately thrust into a moral argument that's super easy for her to win.

This is what a hero looks like! Should we stand by and let monsters eat people YES/NO

Sayaka says no. Sayaka says letting monsters eat people is bad. Solid Bioware-level moral dilemma she's got here. Sayaka won +10 Paragon points for the choices she picked out of this conversation tree, lemme tell you!

Moments like this work to disguise what's going on here with Sayaka. Obviously Sayaka's making good choices and doing the right thing when the alternative is Kyoko going "Want me to break your crush's limbs so he needs you for life support?" That's awful, so since Sayaka's against it then that means she must be right. Right?

Kyoko is the devil. Sayaka is the paragon.

But this is a story about nuanced and complex people. Sayaka isn't that person. Sayaka likes the idea of being that person. She's being dishonest - With herself, with others around her, and with the universe.

She's trying on an identity, not fully understanding who she really is or what her limitations are.

Incidentally, so is Kyoko, which is what makes their Yin and Yang dichotomy so potent. Having never been tested like this before, Sayaka is more selfish than she truly understands - While Kyoko, damaged by trauma, is more selfless than she wants to believe.

The thing Sayaka doesn't quite grasp is that, to an extent, it's okay to be selfish. It's okay to want things for yourself. Again, the identity she's trying to live up to was a lie to begin with. She only saw the mask; Never the humanity underneath. So she fails to recognize her own humanity; Her own needs and wants and desires.

She imprisons her own mind in a cage of altruism.

Sayaka is warned multiple times against spending her wish on another person. But she doesn't understand the perils of it. She lacks the necessary perspective to grasp the level of sacrifice she's making. (Because she is a child. I cannot stress this point enough.)

When she makes her wish, Sayaka wants her sacrifice reciprocated. She wants to be rewarded. But she doesn't want to want that. She wants to be the selfless hero for Kyosuke. To silently grant him a miracle because it's the right thing to do for her friend. But she expects, without consciously thinking about it, that the universe will deliver her nice things because she is good.

But life doesn't work like that. It doesn't give you things you aren't willing to reach for. Sayaka said she just wanted him to be happy. She just wanted to help people. She just wanted to dedicate her life to virtue and altruism, with no wants or needs or desires of her own.

Kyoko was being cruel and unfeeling when she suggested crippling Kyosuke; She was trying to express a mask of selfishness, the same way Sayaka's been trying to express a mask of selflessness. But she wasn't the only person telling Sayaka that it was a mistake to do this. She's just the only person who said it after the fact.

So the universe calls her bluff. While Sayaka waits for her sacrifices to be rewarded, fracturing more and more from learning what those sacrifices truly entail, someone else claims her prize. The work gets harder, not just physically but emotionally. And she only gets what she asked for. Nothing more.

This is what a hero looks like. She wanted to be Mami.

Remind me. What was Mami's reward for her sacrifices?

Oh. Yeah. That's right.

The thing of it is, there is a reward for a Magical Girl's sacrifices. There is a prize you're meant to receive for the unjust hardships and self-destruction that you're volunteering to undertake.

It's the fucking wish.

That she, in her righteousness, gave away.

Sayaka's rope is woven from virtuous self-image. Her fatal flaw is ego. She was undone by arrogance expressed in ignorance, not of glory the way we often think of egotistic people, but of righteousness. She held herself to a standard no reasonable person could ever live up to, and it crushed her as it came crashing down.

And yet, she was a victim all the same. Because she was walked, hand-in-hand, to that pier by a predator. Children are meant to learn from their mistakes. Not to die for them.

[roobylavender]

the depiction of bruce's rich trust fund kid image is really interesting to contend with over time bc i feel like at least pre-no man's land it was more of an amorphous idea where everyone knew who he was peripherally bc of his parents' murder but other than that bruce wayne wasn't necessarily anyone of much importance. he existed and the manor loomed over the city from its own quiet corner but no one was realistically discussing so and so wayne industry to make small talk in the every day bc unless they had a job with him he wasn't relevant to them. so the post-no man's land image that progressively pandered to this idea of him as a larger than life millionaire that permeates every conversation in the city to the point his children are like little celebrities has never managed to click with me. like it feels nonsensical. granted i understand the events of murderer and fugitive coupled with the testimony he gave during no man's land may really have pushed him to the forefront but what i would imagine to be only a temporary one. like what are the people of gotham going to do. at best the events of those books would evolve into mythic lore but the world would continue to turn and people would move on and certainly none of bruce's children would be relevant to any of it. so why the need to push them as microcelebrities. why the need to get them involve in his industrial endeavors when we already know bruce didn't bother to maintain much involvement in them anyway aside from assuring that all of his shares were distributed to more worthwhile causes. the development of the batman mythos alongside the military-industrial complex can contribute to this conversation but at the root i'm not sure what treating bruce's children like anything other than normal children in a civilian context really merits. maybe it's the new york setting and social strata structure that i'm unfamiliar with but at least from my own experience i can't say that children of rich people in business are that isolated from normal public school life. i went to school with a kid whose family has their own bank with multiple endorsed branches across the city (when i say city i mean a major us metropolitan city). maybe that's lesser in comparison but the point is that their kid was still normal and went to school with the rest of us. i didn't know him long enough to learn where his politics developed but the fact that he came from a entrepreneurial family didn't magically whisk him away from the ordinary life that people in at least the general middle class lived. it didn't come up more than once or twice what his family did. so why the contrasting need to attach bruce's social legacy to his children when there is little chance he has one that would actually matter to other children their age? what would they even do with someone being bruce wayne's adopted kid? make a joke or two about how he never comes out of the manor? idk. i'm rambling here but idgi like what's so hard about bruce's kids just.. going to school and that being it

[etoiline]

that thing you used to be

(read with tags and characters on AO3 instead)

“I’m gonna go record a bedtime story for Kata,” Bode says, and Cal reaches out to snag his sleeve before he can turn.

“Stay,” Cal says, emboldened by their hug. “You can tell me a story too. Force knows I need some sleep.”

Bode looks down at Cal’s hand, his whole posture stiff. When he looks up at Cal, his lips are pressed so tight the skin around them turns white.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Bode says, finally, and Cal feels like there’s something he’s missing. The Force is silent around Bode, even when Cal reaches out for him.

“Stay,” Cal says, and pushes himself upright, so he can take Bode’s gloved hand. The leather is soft under his fingertips, worn smooth in the divot between thumb and forefinger where the grip of his blaster would rest. Cal traces it and smiles, thinking of the callus that’s forming on his own gun hand.

Then he looks up at Bode, lips parting as he catches the intensity in the older man’s eyes. Cal doesn’t know what he’s done to merit such a look, but he tries to match that dark gaze, stroking over the leather. A relter calls from deep into the ruins, and Cal is glad of the excuse to tear his eyes away. His cheeks are warm, even though the Jedha night is cold as it edges toward dawn.

“If you really wanted me to stay you wouldn’t ask me to give up Tanalorr to the Hidden Path,” Bode says, his voice so quiet he might have just been talking to himself.

Cal’s mouth falls open, but he’s not sure what to say. Bode had been so accepting of the idea earlier, he’d thought, and the joy that coursed through him then, that he was doing the right thing, for the Jedi, for the galaxy, what had gone wrong?

Bode shakes his head as if he can hear Cal’s confused thoughts. “I have to keep Kata safe,” he says, staring past Cal into the desert. “There’s no way she’s gonna be safe if the Empire finds out about Tanalorr. And they will find out, Cal, if we’re flying the hyperlanes with fugitive Jedi. The Empire already knows about this planet, and they’re so close to finding the Jedi right under their noses. All it takes is one stray transmission, one spy in your ranks—you don’t know, one could be here already.”

“What are you saying? Bode, no one here is a spy,” Cal says. “And it’s not like we’re going to blast a map of the route to Tanalorr all over the holonet. We’ll keep folks safe there. Even Kata. But I thought she was with friends? Someone’s taking care of her, makes sure she gets those bedtime stories you send all the time, right?”

Gloved hands suddenly squeeze Cal’s shoulders, tight enough that he wonders if he’ll bruise. Bode’s expression is wild, broken, the remnants of the fire flickering across his face. “You don’t understand, scrapper. I made a deal to keep her safe. And I thought that Tanalorr was a way to get out of that deal, but not if you want to open up this haven. If it was just us—then we could survive. But the moment we start ferrying more people there—void, the second we start supplying the place, because we don’t even know what in the seven hells is on that rock—you know the Empire will find us.”

Cal frowns. “I don’t think it could be that bad,” he says. “We’ll be careful, disguise our movements, vet the people we work with; they haven’t found us yet.”

Bode closes his eyes, exhales, the breath stirring Cal’s hair. “They already have, scrapper.”

He drops his hands from Cal’s shoulder and reaches into one of the pockets on his belt, holds out the holopuck he’d shown Cal on Coruscant. Cal takes it, brushes over the control to send the wavering blue image of Bode’s daughter spinning in the air. But there’s something else shining on the puck, an echo, tightly curled against the duraplast. It’s a bleak and angry one, Cal can tell, without even touching it, and dread curdles in his stomach. But he can’t resist an echo, so he lays a finger on it, because he has to know.

“...there, Denvik, you know everything about Jedi terrorist Cal Kestis. He thinks we’re best friends. Now let me talk to my daughter.” It’s Bode’s voice, the echo burning his anger through Cal’s veins.

Denvik chuckles, and Bode imagines the man to be steepling his fingers in that metal-filled Imperial office, and Bode wants to reach through the commlink and choke the life from him. “It sounds like you’re more than friends,” Denvik says, the words oily even through the spotty connection. “I find myself wondering if you’ve lost your way, Bode. If you’ve fallen back into old habits.”

Bode seethes, but he can’t say anything in protest, or Denvik will realize just how close to the truth he is. “Remember, Bode, the ISB is not an organization to be trifled with. I took you back because I trained you, and it would be such a shame to lose your skills. But if you continue to string out this...this infatuation with the thing you used to be, well. I’m afraid your daughter will just have to wait a little longer for her bedtime story, hmm?”

Cal is quite surprised to find the holopuck still intact in his hands as the echo breaks. Bode’s rage shudders through him, and there’s only one thought swirling through the white haze in Cal’s mind. Bode is an ISB agent. It’s on repeat, a holoprojector stuck in a bit of code. Bode is working for the Empire.

He realizes he’s shaking when his knees buckle, but Bode’s strong hands are there to catch him, to hold him, and Cal wants to sink into that hold, but he keeps thinking Bode=Empire like he’s a glitchy droid and pulls away.

The rock wall at the edge of the platform is right there, and Cal sags against it. The holopuck echo still pulses in his hand and he wants to throw it away, smash it to the ground, let it shatter against the boulders far beneath, but it’s Bode’s only link to Kata, and no matter how much he hates—yes, hate is the right word here, even if it breaks Cal’s heart to think it—at this moment, Cal can’t bring himself to destroy that tether.

Cal sets the holopuck on the rock, so gently the duraplast doesn’t even click against the stone. The Jedha sands stretch out before him, red rocks turned purple in the false dawn. False. More than friends. Lost your way. To think, Cal had wanted him to stay, the longing thick in his voice however he tried to hide it. Bode is working for the Empire.

The man is a strange warmth at Cal’s back, close enough to feel but holding an artificial tension between their bodies. Cal could break it with a breath, could draw his saber in a Force-quick motion and spin before Bode could stop him. Bode would heave back, hands up, the yellow blade close enough to crisp the leather of his holster. All this time, Bode was a spy.

“Was any of it real?” Cal says, and hates the way his voice breaks on the last word. A scrape of boot on rock and Cal sees Bode come up next to him, placing a hand over the holopuck, his fingers millimeters away from Cal’s. It might as well be parsecs, Cal thinks, as streaks of light appear over the horizon. His eyes slide to the gloved hand next to his, and he wonders if the Empire provided those gloves, if anything about how Bode presents himself is real, or just a skin provided by the enemy.

“I never lied to you, Cal,” Bode says, rough. “but I never told you everything, either. I was just trying to keep Kata safe, and at first the way to do that was to feed my handler information. But you, and your crew—I made myself into the person you needed, and it felt good. And then I made a mistake, Cal. I fell for my own line. And for a while I let myself believe that it didn’t matter, that I could keep going that way, that I could let myself fall for a while. But then you wanted to give away our haven, and—and I couldn’t pretend. My life’s in your hands now, Cal. Mine and Kata’s. I have to hope that it’s enough to at least make you think about the consequences about opening up Tanalorr.”

Cal closes his eyes against the brightening dawn, against Bode’s revelations, against the chill that rushes over his skin. He’s been spying on us since the beginning. But he won’t be able to do that anymore. Can’t spy on your mark when the mark knows you’re spying. Bode is useless to Denvik now, not that the man knows it yet. He’s lost, and a tiny smile sneaks past Cal’s guard to think of it. A blow to the Empire without having to fire a shot.

Sunrise is nigh; Cal can feel it in the Force, a held breath planet-wide. He narrows his focus to the man beside him, testing the borders of nullity. Bode feels the same to Cal’s senses as he always has. Nothing about him has changed since Cal’s learned the truth, only Cal’s understanding of him.

So Bode has likely reported on their movements, given his handler their profiles. So far, nothing has been done with that information; there’s been no chatter to suggest anything in the works. But soon enough, if Bode stops reporting, there will be, Cal is sure of it. And Kata will pay the price of her father’s defection. Determination rises in his chest. He won’t let that happen.

But not using Tanalorr as a base for the Hidden Path? It’s not up to him anymore. Preparation has already started. Maybe—maybe Bode was right, though. They really don’t know anything about Tanalorr other than it exists, and is presumably habitable to most species, from Cal’s dizzying walkthrough of Dagan’s memories. Maybe someone should go check it out first. Makes sense that a Jedi should do it, especially one who’s been there before, even if it was only in echoes.

Fog rises around them as the incipient sunrise warms the rocks, and everything turns soft and dreamlike. The two of them seem like the only solid things on the planet, and even Bode’s form, so close to Cal’s, seems to waver, a void in the Force where there should be light.

Needing assurance that this is real, Cal lets his pinkie finger move just that little bit so flesh meets the tiny strip of skin between Bode's glove and his sleeve. Even Denvik noted they were more than friends. Maybe Cal can figure out a way to move past Bode’s lies—or omissions, as it were. But that oily voice had also said old habits, and the thing you used to be, and what is that supposed to mean?

He stares down at their barely-touching hands, and sighs. “What was the thing you used to be, Bode?” Cal says, his voice lost in the fog. It seems important to know, if Cal is going to try to trust the mercenary again. “You owe me the truth, I think."

Bode inhales beside him, but doesn't say anything for a long moment. Call realizes he can feel the man's anxiety, but before he can parse that, Bode seizes his hand and pulls Cal toward him. Cal can't resist his strength, doesn't want to, but all he can muster is a palm to Bode's chest. Which doesn't really help the dizziness he's feeling, honestly.

Because Bode cradles his face in his hands and touches their foreheads together, and Cal's senses are filled with Bode, as the man opens himself to the Force.

Cal gasps, fists his fingers into Bode's collar, his other hand flailing until it lands on Bode's waist, holding on like his belt is an anchor in rough seas. The sensation washes over Cal like a wave as the sun finally breaches the horizon and makes him squeeze his eyes shut against the sudden brightness, and he revels in the glorious connection and loses his breath to it and asks why why why as his throat closes over hurt cries.

“I couldn’t tell you before, scrapper, and you know why,” Bode says, so quiet. “But you asked for the truth. Stars, you reached out so many times and I couldn’t reach back, as much as I wanted to. But if you’ll—if you’ll just think about what I’m saying, like I think you are, then it’s worth it, to stop hiding.”

How and how could you and you know I wanted to find other survivors swirl in Cal’s head and into the Force and wrap around Bode in a complicated cloud, and Bode chuckles wetly. “So many questions, scrapper, but look—it’s dawn. Things are already moving. What are we going to do about it?” he says, and Cal can feel his uncertainty in the Force. He can feel Bode in the Force, and Cal swallows his anger and disappointment and betrayal and just soaks in the sensation of a fellow Force-sensitive as the fog burns away around them.

Of course the sun has come up again. Of course time moves forward. Cal can only sway there in Bode’s arms as they embrace like they did before the sunrise, feeling like everything has changed.

Bode tightens his hold on Cal, then releases him and steps back, a wondering smile curving his lips. Cal keeps their hands tangled and knows he has a similarly silly grin on his face. The rising sun halos Bode’s head and makes Cal blink away tears. Bode wipes them away with gloved thumbs, and places a gentle kiss on Cal’s forehead.

Cal closes his eyes and listens as they breathe together, coiling his aura around another, awestruck to feel Bode reach back the same way. The sun warms his forehead as the last of the fog drifts into nothingness. His questions can wait for another sunrise, he thinks, and captures Bode’s lips in a kiss.

[comicaurora]

Heyo, it's the fool who wants to make a comic with zero experience in drawing or finishing stories again. A lot of people, including you, I think, mentioned that "Your first work will be bad". Any tips how…not to do that? I don't expect it to be a magnum opus or smth, but I at least want to make something people would genuinely unironically enjoy, and "first story is always not good" notion everywhere is very discouraging

It's not like I never tried anything creative ever, but this is my first attempt of putting it down on paper with intention of completing it, instead of having vague ideas of "I know what would be so cool when I make it a thing" in my head for months without acting upon any of these ideas

It's definitely a disheartening adage, even if it's supposed to take the pressure off young creators.

Unfortunately, no matter how good your starting point gets - and you can get it very good, don't get me wrong - you are still going to find it unbearably bad when you look back on it with experienced eyes. You might eventually circle back around to finding it impressive, considering it was your absolute first starting point and you had no experience, but you still won't be able to see its merit the way your audience will.

The thing is, your first project is going to teach you a lot of things you couldn't have known you needed to learn beforehand. This means everything you make after learning those things is going to be smoother in process and better in result. There's also just the fact that the more you do this sort of thing the more practiced you'll get at the mechanical side of it, making it faster and easier for you and leaving you with more energy to punch things up. Compare the Big Fight Scene from chapter 3 with the one from chapter 17 in terms of visual complexity:

Particle effects, ambient glow, soft lighting, atmospheric depth, metallic effects, light and shadow. The seeds of these ideas are present in the earlier shot, but executed in a much clumsier way. Fourteen chapters of gradually increasing complexity and just raw practice got me to the point where drawing that second panel was fun rather than exhausting. If I'd tried that in the first chapter I would've probably been so worn out just trying to finish the lineart that the quality of the rest of the image would've suffered from sheer exhaustion.

And even before that, those first chapters only flowed as well as they did because I'd been drawing hundreds and hundreds of video frames for years at this point, which had gotten my lineart muscle memory polished enough that I wasn't agonizing over every single stroke.

I was absolutely determined to start this comic off at the best level of quality I could, and that determination kept me kicking the can down the road for a decade. I think this was a good thing; if I'd started it any earlier I think I would've been a slow enough learner that the quality increase over those first few chapters wouldn't have been as steep as it was. And that first chapter was as good as I could've made it at the time; I didn't take any shortcuts or laze around, and I used every skill I'd learned over the previous decade of physical and digital art. Of course, if I knew then what I knew now there's loads of stuff I'd have changed about the way I handled the intro. In fact, I'm going to break my One Rule about "never going back or redoing things" and I'm going to walk you all through chapter 1 and what I would change/fix if I was drawing it now.

Remove the outline on the background mountains, add color variance to the further mountains so they appear farther in the background, un-muddy the color of the sky and make those clouds a little more impressive; this could've looked like a full glorious noonday sun. The forest was drawn with an experimental brush I'd created for foliage that I ended up deciding didn't produce the effect I wanted; I'd probably go through and use the technique I developed for Gleicann's forest to cel shade blocks of foliage.

Add at least the bare hint of buildings behind the sword pedestal - just gradient outlines would be fine, similar to the extended backgrounds in Zuurith. Also slap some blue cinder-y particle effects coming up off the sword. Clean up the shading layer so there aren't as many holes. Add metallic shine to the blade and marbling/stone texture to the pedestal.

Un-muddy the colors on this background; they match The Collector's color palette but that matters less than looking nice. The background needs something - speed lines, the implication of foliage - etc. The poses could also be more dynamic and drawn with more confidence. To show the power behind the blows, re-choreographs the fight to show more of the damage it does to the environment - the sword carving through rocks, ploughing furrows into the ground, starting to spark with starfire, etc.

Same problem with the foliage; the special brush adds too much detail, drawing the eye away from the important parts of the scene, and the colors are muddy to cover that up. Brighter greens and cel-shaded layers would produce the effect I actually wanted and be faster than hand-drawing every treetrunk and then shading them so they're indistinguishable anyway. Also, more intense shading on the foreground figure - a neutral tan shadow layer is functional, but it could look a lot more dramatic, and he's shaded much more lightly than the extremely muddied background is.

Of course, "if I knew then what I know now" is a meaningless turn of phrase. I needed to draw these pages this way in order to learn what I know now. If I had jumped straight into the shortcuts I've painstakingly developed without having had that intervening practice, the end result would've been just as bad - if not worse, because it would've been executed shakily, without the confidence that accompanies muscle memory. The techniques I used in this first chapter had served me well up til that point. The techniques I use now were built on these foundations. Lamenting that I could've done it better if I'd started now is like saying the pyramids would be so much taller if they'd laid the foundations at the top part instead.

There's a degree to which this work is sisyphusian. You do your best, you push yourself, and then your "best" gets better. At some point you have to accept that what was your best is still okay, even if you can't see it that way.

When I was working on this comic in the pre-actually-drawing-it years, I came to a realization that helped me get unstuck: "good enough" is a mask that "perfect" wears. Striving for perfection is a pointless task, and this is pretty well known, but it seems a lot more reasonable to just try to get "good enough" at art to guarantee that your work will be good enough. But if you unpack that concept, you likely find that your definition of "good enough" is basically "without flaws." Which is "perfect." Which is, as mentioned, unattainable. Those pages are as good as I could've possibly made them at the time, and they aren't perfect, and I never thought they were perfect, because I knew if I waited for them to be perfect in my eyes I'd never make them. I just had to grit my teeth, make them public and hope that people got something out of them that I couldn't.

There is a baseline level of artistic skill and preparation that I do recommend cultivating - figure and life drawing, anatomy studies, landscapes, reading Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics" cover to cover - but there is no hardline starting point at which you are guaranteed to be good enough to make the story and art good. This is because "good" is subjective, and as long as you are improving as an artist, your own perspective on your old work will never be that it is "good." You have to trust that the audience that likes your story likes it for their own valid reasons.

The thing is, I know this is a bummer. This whole thing is a bummer perspective. Artists want to make good art and the nature of artistic creation is being unable to see your own art as good for long. If you believe that your art must be a certain baseline level of Good to be worthy of existing, this truth seems to be a condemnation to an eternal and pointless purgatorial struggle.

The most valuable skill an artist can develop at this stage is strangling that insecurity with their bare hands.

Trust your audience! Trust that they enjoy what they enjoy, and trust that they see something in your art, even if all you can see are the critiques you'd use to polish it! "Perfect" and "good enough" will tell you that your creation will always be hideously unlovable and must be hidden from scrutiny until it's "ready", but like all insecurities, underpinning this is the axiom that anyone who likes you or your work is lying. Strangle this falsehood, trust freely and openly that your audience is being honest with you, and while you work to improve on the creation side of things, trust that in the eyes of the people who like your work, it is Good Enough.

[randomingoftherandomness]

Sometimes Yuanzhi wonders if someone will notice if he disappears. It's probably just one of his bad days but the loneliness is choking him.

Ziyu is fooling around with Zishang and Jin Fan under the loving eyes of his wife.

Shangjue is glued to his wife and their stinky and noisy kid, Jin Fu protectively following them.

But him? He has no one, the servants don't like him, his brother doesn't care anymore about him. And for romantic love... he doesn't know if he is even capable of that, the whole idea of letting someone touch him in that way disgust him.

He's better alone after all, or, at least, that is what he is constantly telling himself.

He has his work, that is enough.

A/N: I took some liberties with this one Nonnie, I hope you don’t mind x

—

It’s quiet.

Why is it quiet?

Sluggish gossamer thoughts flit and slips through his fingers. It’s life holding on to fine grains of sand. Flashes of emotions and images flicker in front of him.

The scene of Ziyu kissing Jin Fan as he is expounding on the merits of a particular sword oil during a family dinner while Zishang jie and Yun Weishan are chatting on their own, unperturbed by the way their husbands are practically sucking each other’s face.

“…di!”

A short sliver of Elder Yue smiling at Elder Xue and Xue Tongzi while they discuss matters about medicinal research.

A sun drenched scene of Gege with his son astride on his shoulders, laughing and playing while Shangguan Qian looks on with her hand rubbing her very pregnant belly.

The whispers of his residence’s servants who scurry away at the sight of him.

“…up…”

An absolute and soul crushing loneliness.

Yuanzhi is exhausted. Bone deep and gnawing at his heels. He’s tired of being left behind. Of being the one that everyone forgets about in moments of happiness. He’s so sad. Breaking apart at the crudely sewn seams with the sheer enormity of the waves that threaten to take him whole.

Yuanzhi relaxes into the nothingness.

He just wants to be done with it.

In the floating darkness, he thinks he can taste the tang of salt on his lips.

“Y…zhi…”

There’s something he did. Or didn't do? It is hard think when—

Another flash of memory.

One that leaves him bereft when he realised that it’s the sight of him sitting alone just a half a step behind everyone while they’re cuddled up together in pairs and groups while they’re watching the winter moon.

Yuanzhi has a fleeting sense of… something. An emptiness that gnaws at him. A sort of haunting that rattles around in the empty rooms of his soul. Because that’s what he is, isn’t it? Empty.

He is poison personified.

A bane on everything and everyone he has ever loved. A venom with no cure. The thing everyone leaves behind the second they can. He has no place in the happiness of others.

“Wake—“

How work is his last lifeline.

If he can prove his worth, if he can somehow make himself useful, maybe… maybe someone could love him back?

“Didi, please…”

Yuanzhi feels so sleepy. He just wants to rest. He wants everything to stop and be quiet just for a second. Just long enough for him to think.

He just—

Waking is anything but a peaceful event.

There’s a flurry of activity around him. Doctors who are shouting about him waking up and pressing their fingers to his pulse point, servants who are running in and out of the room with basins of water and medicinal supplies.

Then.

Then, there are hands on him and voices calling his name. An ache in his belly that burns. He vaguely thinks he should remember this.

Yuanzhi closes his eyes.

He remembers none of it.

Sunlight is the first thing he registers when he opens them again. He groans, throwing his arm over his eyes.

“Let me get that.”

Yuanzhi jolts a little at the voice.

Gege returns a moment later after pulling down the blinds, gently coaxing his arm away from his face. The sight of him is hazy and distant. Yuanzhi doesn’t have the energy to do anything more than whimper quietly when Ge checks his temperature with the back of his hand. Satisfied with the results he finds, Gege moves to hold Yuanzhi’s hand between his palms.

Neither one of them speaks and Yuanzhi soon feels his consciousness swim a little.

“We almost lost you,” Shangjue gege says, voice dense with an unnameable emotion. Yuanzhi blinks his eyes open. Mouth shut, he tilts to face to him.

Shangjue squeezes his hand. “Do you remember what happened?”

Yuanzhi exhales slowly. There’s a huge chunk of his memory that moves through him and his mind swims, but eventually he seizes on a singular moment.

“I… Was in my workshop…”

Gege nods, rubbing his thumb over the back of his hand. It’s soothing and feels a lot like how he would sit by Yuanzhi’s side when he was a child and less able to withstand the poisons he was testing.

He’s not a child now, but this still feels nice.

“I was running an experiment and I—“

“Second Young Master, Young Master Zhi.”

There’s a wince on Jin Fu’s face that he can’t quite hide in time as he bows. Yuanzhi feels Shangjue’s touch still.

“Did I not say I wasn’t to be disturbed while I’m with my brother?” Ge says slowly, resuming his comforting arc on Yuanzhi’s skin.

“My apologies, but it’s from furen,” Jin Fu replies. “She says that the little master is seeking you.”

Yuanzhi’s heart stops beating at that. Biting the inside of his cheek, he pulls his hand out of Shangjue’s. Tucking the blanket around his shoulder, he turns himself to his side, facing away from Gege.

“You should go,” He whispers. Curling into himself, he ignores the way Shangjue gege calls his name.

Feigning sleep becomes real sleep, and when he’s back to the land of the waking, it’s nighttime again and Yuanzhi thinks that he has about enough of being unconscious.

There’s no one in the room with him but the lamps are lit. Mentally running through a checklist of his well-being, he deems himself healthy enough to not need another second in the sick room.

He’s in the middle of tugging a coat around him when there’s a rustling of robes coming into his space.

“And where do you think you’re going?”

Jin Fan is frowning, crossing the room to take him by the arm. Looking him up and down, the divot between his eyebrows deepens.

Yuanzhi tries to wrench his arm out of his hold but he’s still too weak, and it does little more than make him stumble forward into Jin Fan.

“Let go.”

“No.”

“Let go of me!”

“No,” Jin Fan repeats, tossing him over his shoulder and stalking to the bed. Yuanzhi braces himself to be thrown unceremoniously onto his back. Just as he stiffens his body, he is surprised when Jin Fan carefully, and perhaps a little preciously, lays him down. Dark eyes search his own before the Jade Guardian steps back, expertly stripping him out of his half worn coat.

“Young Master Zhi, you’re a very difficult fellow to love, do you know that?”

Bristling, any budding warmth in Yuanzhi’s chest is immediately extinguished and he grits his teeth. “I’m very well aware of my failings, thank you very much.”

“That’s not what I—“ Jin Fan sputters, sighing deeply before he moves on to take his shoes off. “I meant no offence.”

“You didn’t say anything wrong, so there was no offence in the first place.” Yuanzhi tugs his collar tight around his neck. Shuffling until he is pressed to the far side of the bed.

Dimly, he is aware of Jin Fan muttering something to the effect of, “I’m really the last person who should be doing this.”

Yuanzhi just keeps to himself, choosing to wallow in his failed attempt at escaping. He turns his mind to plotting another one. Maybe through the window, though he’s concerned about getting winded if he does. It wouldn’t be a long trek back to his quarters to barricade himself in. No one would look for him then and he doubts any of his brothers and sister will even be bothered to care.

Yes. That could work.

He just needs—

Jin Fan has his hand around Yuanzhi’s wrist, the warmth of his palm making him shiver and gasp.

“If you’re thinking of jumping out the window, you should know that the Zhiren has a net trap set outside to catch you,” He placidly says.

Damn it all!

Yuanzhi huffs, flicking his sleeve and hugging his knees to his chest even though that just makes things hurt a lot more.

The bed makes a creaking sound. Jin Fan is back again, tugging him by the ankles until he is laid up. Without a second word, he bundles him up under the blanket.

“Alright,” He sighs. “Apparently I’m the man for the job, so here goes.” Jin Fan pinches the edges down, effectively trapping Yuanzhi under his weight and gaze. “Your family is worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” Yuanzhi sullenly snarls. He’s going to be difficult about this, damn his health. “So you can just—“

“In what version of the word fine are you, because from what I’ve seen, you can’t even hope to match me now!” Jin Fan raises his voice before exhaling with a short groan of misery.

Good, Yuanzhi thinks viciously, be fucking miserable.

“I keep going about this the wrong way. What I meant to say is that your family has been worried about you for the longest time and no one more so than your Gege.”

Yuanzhi does stiffen at that. The blanket is hot over his body and it’s starting to be uncomfortable. The room is starting to swim again.

“There’s nothing to be worried about,” Yuanzhi says, affecting his most nonchalant tone. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“Oh heavens, they can’t say I didn’t try!” Yuanzhi has barely any time to register that shift in his voice before he is picked up and thrown over his shoulder again.

“What are you—!”

“You want to leave the sick room so bad? Fine! I’ll bring you out myself!”

Yuanzhi squeezes his eyes shut. Pursing his mouth tightly shut as he is bumped and carried, all while still in the rolled up blanket. He breathes as shallowly as possible, scarcely daring to even do anything other than focusing on not vomiting all over himself.

He feels it the moment Jin Fan kicks open a door.

“Tell him yourself. He isn’t listening to me.”

[starry-blue-echoes]

I just remembered this idea and needed to tell you before i forgot again

AU were Dio's mom (we need to give her a name) is fucking tired of her life with Dario and decides to run away with her son, but to were?

Then she remember's. The accident, the talk between Dario and the surviving man and a favor

So going to the Joestar manor it is

(To spice things a little, if you want, we could put a bit of Behind Cloosed Doors and Dio's mom kicking ass later)

I didn't thought much after that but i did have a little thing with Speedwagon and Dio's mom were they knew eachoter and she helped him at some point, i just think it's cute (and to be even funnier when at some point she shows him Jonathan and he goes "i'm going to marry him")

Man, i just want the moms to be more appreciated :(

~(Maybe i will come back with another AU for the victorian moms again, just a warning)~

Y E S S S S S S S S S S S S

(And for the sake of the au and so I don’t have to keep referring to her as Dio’s Mother……. Let’s say her name is Ida)

Just. Ida arriving at the Joestar mansion with a much younger Dio and requesting safety. Explaining the whole situation with Dario, maybe telling him Dario’s true intentions and even saying that he doesn’t need to take her in just as long as Dio’s safe

but whatever she does, George agrees to take her and her son. Maybe she simply becomes a resident of the mansion, maybe she's hired as Jonathan's nanny/caretaker, but yeah she ends up staying the mansion

and maybe in a bit of twisted fate from canon...... the two boys end up being close friends. Dio's still hardened from his time in the slums with Dario, but given how much younger he is and the fact his mother hadn't died, there's still a bit of childhood wonder left in him. Just enough that with his mother's encouragement, Jonathan is able to slowly worm his way into the other boy's heart no matter how much he denies it

that isn't so say Dio is nice. While he may be much kinder than canon, there's a difference between kind and nice and he's still Dio. He's still terrifyingly smart, still incredibly cunning, still silver tongued...... just now he's not trying to ruin Jonathan's life because he genuinely likes the guy

these two end up balancing each other out in many ways. Dio ground Jonathan to reality and stops him before he can get taken advantage of, and Jonathan in turn shows Dio how to be happy and that vulnerability isn't always dangerous

(and ofc I LOVE the mental image of Ida silently helping Speedwagon as he pines and Dio is debating the merits of shovel talking him)

((also also Behind Closed Doors is going to be I N S A N E in this AU, Ida is doing every possible thing in her power to make Jonathan happy but also absolutely terrified upon realising she essentially escape one lions den just to stumble into another. I'll admit, I'm torn on whether Ida Des up being brought to the castle with Jonathan, or if she ends up learning Hamon with Speedwagon and Erina))

[anthrotographer]

Challengers (2024) | A review w/ spoilers*

Tumblr is not going to like my review, I already know. I acknowledge this movie wasn't made for me, but I feel I give credit where it's due.

Last night I had a staggering movie going experience. I felt like I was being sold a lie a minute sitting through the agonizing commercials, the movie previews, and till the end of Challengers. Back to back promos for military branches, painting them as organizations of peace and innovation (a rally during war time). I understand there’s nothing new about that experience. Consumerism and propaganda tactics have a long tradition at the cinema. We’ve been advertised a false reality for so long it’s hard to think about our world without using the images fed to us to line that canvas. Take how modern horror treats rural living. It’s very common to see (in fact I saw) a movie trailer where a young couple vacations in a secluded part of the country to get away from it all. The idea of ruralism as a peaceful alternative to stressful urban living is benign and actually has some merit to think about in a country as urbanized and unhappy as ours. Yet the common movie trope is that there are evil forces lurking in the dark outskirts, that living ‘out there’ turns people into kooks or murderous cultists. One movie by itself with this premise can be harmless, but within a whole genre that trends this way it feels insidious. Almost like we are supposed to all fear each other. Challengers is another example of a genre movie that warps human reality into a lifeless opportunity to sell things. 

When a movie feels more like a commercial or a music video then why even bother with the movie going experience. The distinguishers between television and film are fading away over time. In one particularly unabashed scene we cut between three different product placements for Coke, Adidas, and the U.S. Open. It was shameless, the way Josh O’Connor was most likely told to hold that CocaCola label perfectly centered in the frame. Those three brands are far from the only ones displayed. Tennis, and sports events in general, flash a ton of advertising so I understand that the film’s stuck in that universe. Still there are ways to artfully sidestep brazen product placement. 

I don’t want to spend much time trying to analyze the relationship between Tashi, Art and Patrick. The film doesn’t give you enough about why these three are fatefully attached to each other besides vapid attractions. Yes all three are enamored by one another but what’s the motivation to stay in this toxic ménage à trois dynamic for so long? Zendaya plays Tashi, a master manipulator trying to mold her husband Art Donaldson into the star tennis player she was supposed to be before her injury. And her “little white boys” Art and Patrick feel like pawns that are content to be pawns. Men who don’t have any freewill and are solely motivated by their lust for this supermodel of a woman. In a way I don’t blame them. My disconnect comes because there’s a lack of depth with the characters and their relationships. Each of them seems to have a singular focus; Tashi wants vicarious glory through Art, Art wants to be loved, and Patrick wants Art’s life. But there is no depth to the desires. Time is never spent on why Tashi loves tennis more than people or why Art and Pat let their, supposedly strong bond, get broken so easily by a “home wrecker” that forecasted her own home wrecking. And look, as a seductive art piece it succeeds, for the most part, but as a story about real people it reduces its characters to their base desires while pretending they are complex. Maybe I don’t understand Romance—as I’ve been told. I am content to treat it as just a romantic fantasy and give it credit for being hot, but it was also a long drawn out tease. 

There was no reason for this experience to be more than two hours long! Half of it was in never ending slow-mo where I felt like the same tennis ball was being served for half an hour. The dreaded slow motion, which can be good for a sporty movie to capture athletic movements and build suspense, but here it was overused to a point where it left us thinking “get on with it already”.  Thank goodness some of my theater neighbors were also moaning about this because I felt alone, trapped in a drugged fugue state. So much of the film was disorienting. For a period you are meant to feel like a tennis ball being battered around through the camera. Editing wise this movie had the same problem that so many modern movies have; death from a thousand cuts. And the slowly unraveling chopped timeline executed so many arbitrary flashbacks and flash forwards. Eight weeks before, two days forward, then a five year flashback, all when you could tell this story sequentially with similar suspense building and less confusion. 

Seeing this movie was a spur of the moment, going in blind experience. I know now that I was not the target audience. Today I mentioned it to a friend and he ended up watching the trailer. The text I got back: “looked like a bit of a teenager movie”. I don’t mean to spoil the enjoyment for anyone with this review. From a certain angle I did have fun with Challengers. Sometimes simply devouring some eye candy is what the mood demands. 

If you found my writing at all interesting please visit and follow it on Substack!

[katyspersonal]

🤔 I've randomly started thinking about interpretations of Doll creation (and "abandoning") again.

"Mania" and "Even the Doll, should it please you" were drastic mistranslations and both Doll's clothes and Hair Ornament suggest he felt strong emotional warmth (strong enough to make Doll cry a tear of joy), not "creepy sexual desire", but the rest of the things are up to interpretation and like.... after all, there IS a merit in the idea that Doll was created not in grief after Maria's death, but when Maria was still alive. It is the context that makes it perplexing!

So what if he just really liked Maria, but felt terribly guilty for it. Age gap, status gap, Maria seeing him as father figure and him realizing he is "failing" her by feeling "wrong" kind of love to her and not what she'd need, whatever. He was not a creep, but he felt like one, he hated himself and felt like a garbage teacher and a garbage friend. Even if he didn't do anything wrong towards Maria and never would.

So what if he created the Doll not to take, but to give. He created a version of Maria that he could hold with his most genuine affection and tell all the warm words of love and cherishing that he wanted. To "protect" the real Maria from his feelings that he was 100% convinced were inappropriate and would only make her distrust him or hate him. Maybe being in love is not something that awful, but negative self-image is a bitch, you guys probably know this. He did not want her to lose a friend and/or father figure in him by making things "weird", so those tender feelings begging to break loose got redirected and told to a doll, with him getting lost to the fantasy. Perhaps, separating real Maria from the Doll even helped him to deal with the crush, and he loved that fantasy like her own being now. Not crafted to his tastes, but able to BE loved.

The gem that the Doll cried appeared in a responce to holding Hair Ornament and feeling the warmth from caring for it, but the description does say that he wished these feelings from the Doll, but in vain. I still think that her being "abandoned" refers to the state of Abandoned Old Workshop in general which she is a part of, but if, IF to follow the 'he abandoned her for not meeting his expectations' take? What if, again, it was not a matter of wanting to take, but to give? He wanted to care for her and to love her, and what was so bad about her becoming alive was absence of emotional responce. She didn't feel any happiness or joy or safety; she felt nothing but wish to serve the Hunters and the Dream, in fact. A hollow being with no autonomy or personality. What wrecked him and make him not want to interact was not that she didn't love him, but that she didn't love herself no matter what he'd do or say.

Jhghigh I still think the idea of Doll resulting from Maria's death has more evidence in canon and holds more appeal logically, but also loving someone can just hurt. Like I agree with the sentiment that fumbling for most "accurate" story becomes pointless as soon as right emotional appeal is found and tbh there IS a big potential for sadness. And cute that such bittersweet things could still persist within the horrors of the hunt and death and insanity and general Yharnam desolation. Infatuation is when you are hurting from not being able to GET what you want from the person, but love is when you are hurting from not being able to GIVE.

In either case Gehrman exists just to suffer no matter how his story goes siggghhhh

[gorbalsvampire]

Vampire: the Requiem (2e) Readthrough Review (Repost)

About eighteen months ago I picked up the second edition of Vampire: the Requiem and, while laid up with the first instance of mortifying acid reflux (it would not be the last) I decided to do a full readthrough review. Then I went insane and deleted my accounts at least once. But! Wayback Machine to the rescue! The text survives and here it is again.

I don’t want to make too many comparisons to Vampire: the Masquerade because “is it better?” comes up every couple of weeks on the White Wolf RPG subreddit and has done for years and I’m tired. I want to talk about Requiem on its own merits where I can. That said, I cannot avoid being an old hand who knew VtM first and has been playing V5 for two years: I’m bound to evaluate what I discover in terms of what I already know.

Images are from the book in question, sourced via the Storytellers’ Vault, spirit of fair use, purely for illustrative/visual handhold purposes.

A Date with the Night: world building

The onboarding is solid, with the key questions asked and answered (in sightly purple prose, but still):

what do we do in this game? (we predate, but we also philanthropise, we also party: we are trying to be something other than a machine that eats blood forever) 

what’s the internality of the characters like? (who you are as a vampire is precariously balanced with who you pretend to be as a human and you need to do both, in very practical terms)

what’s the core conflict? (Strix have existed for as long as Kindred have, they are the old-school pre-literary revenant vampires, and they hate you) (VtR 1e was pretty bad at this, it didn’t have a fallback for when your brain wouldn’t turn over, and the Strix answer this need: when you don’t know what to do with your players, throw a Strix at them)

Clan presentation, again, really good. The focus on what kind of predator they are, how the human experiences them; the range of example personas presented; the recommendations on stats, sweet Jesus yes, it’s about damn time. The game explicitly says “hey this signature power uses those numbers and this one uses these, bear that in mind, here’s what priorities here or there on the sheet might look like as a character so you’re not feeling like the system mastery has crowded out your vision.”

Covenant presentation is a bit weaker; it doesn’t feel anchored into the processes of gameplay to the same extent, there isn’t that “hey, you’re Lancea et Sanctum, here are some Merits you might want to consider” – I don’t know why that might be yet but it feels a bit lacklustre after the very table-focused material on the clans.

I do like how the clan origin stories and the extinct clans and covenants suggest a metaplot without beating me over the head with it. There was a thing called the Camarilla in Rome, it was the first proper vampire society, it fell apart because historical pressures but also Strix, it survives in these ways. But there’s no Grician bias stuff here – no specifics for the brain to snag and snare upon, no numbers and no iconic signature characters into whose biography the game texts can deteriorate.

As I read it I’m thinking “OK so how does that plug into the European history I’m interested in exploring, how far from Rome are we here?” or “OK but how does this place much further away talk back to any of that, we’re beyond the frontiers of Rome with this one, did they ever have a Camarilla or are we looking at Circle-Town from the year dot?” The covenants feel inspiring from a storytelling perspective but in terms of character generation they’re not quite made concrete.

The All Night Society is an in universe introduction to setting concepts like the Traditions, the processes of hunting and ghouling. I find this sort of thing accessible enough but there are bits where I’d like to be told how it works. The Cacophony, for instance: I can grasp the idea from this impressionistic and dreamlike prose, but mine is not a life of underground parties or graffiti tags, and I could do with this shit translated into Parochial Geek through the medium of concrete, at-table example. Just walk us through how it manifests in an example of play. Oddly I don’t get the same effect from Solace even though I’ve never been a habitual drug user.

There’s a shadow of things to come, with the spread on feeding grounds and havens, but it isn’t reified with recommended Backgrounds to represent that stuff. (I stand by Predator and Coterie Types as the quiet best innovation of V5, by the way, more definitive of how you do vampirism than any amount of sect allegiances.) All in, it’s a good chapter for hooks and eyes.

Building a Monster: chargen (and rules) (and then chargen again) (but also reference)

Laws of the Dead runs pretty long – character generation and all the Disciplines are in here. I’m going to stat up my old character (since I lost his sheet anyway and didn’t really know what I was doing when I made him) along the way for another perspective on all this material.

Aspirations are a useful early feature: pick three things your character wants to achieve in the game, one or two relating to Kindred existence and at least one relating to the human world. Characters need to want things, not just “be rounded” by events in their past – they need to be moving toward events as yet unresolved. Personally I think it should be one pre-mortem one post-mortem and one space to allow emergent gameplay, as I always end up going off down some strange tangent for session after session and then feeling bad because it’s not what I told the Storyteller I wanted to do with the game.

Adrian Royce is a Ventrue and a member of the Carthian Movement: his concept is “Weird Left Zine Correspondent”. His human-facing Aspiration is to pay off an enormous debt – he dug a deep deep hole of expenses researching his first book and he’s got to square that somehow. His Kindred-facing Aspiration is to uncover a secret that gives him leverage over/among his fellow Ventrue – I imagine he’s a bit shit by the clan’s standards, a wrong side of the tracks Embrace for all that he’s the best possible version of himself.

I’ve always liked the nWod/CofD “grid” of Attributes – cross-reference the kind of challenge (mental, physical or social) with the approach being taken (power, finesse, resistance) and you’ll know exactly which one to roll in a given moment. Couple that with a robust “let’s think about what this word means” approach to the Abilities and you’ll be calling the dice pools with confidence in no time. It does help to be up front about this approach, defining the Traits with players, just in case they think seducing someone is a Subterfuge roll by default when you see dice pools more as “what are you trying to achieve with this seduction – do you want to make someone believe you because you’re hot, or do you want something material out of it?” kind of decision.

Adrian isn’t a particularly finesse-oriented person – he gets what he wants through force of personality, occasional acts of violence, and sheer tenacity. He’s not particularly smart, although he works hard. Social prime, then Physical, then Mental. Mental Skills take a higher priority though, he’s well trained and makes up for his lack of exceptional smarts with a rigorous approach to investigation. Physical gets bumped down: he can handle himself in a fight and he’s picked or planted the odd pocket in his time, but he’s nothing spectacular. His specialties are in Investigation (Conspiracy Theories), Expression (Journalism) and Brawl (Boxing) – I’ve decided he has a hobby that makes him a little bit tastier in a scrap. His clan gives him an extra dot in Presence, which is a nice way to pick up a four-dot ability without sacrificing anything else, or compensate for a sacrificed dot somewhere.

Beats kind of sneak into the middle of character creation. These are super important as beats – as in story beats – convert into experience points. From the sessions I played a few years ago I remember beats coming thick and fast, a core part of the gameplay loop. Is the list of things that give a beat on the Storyteller Screen? It is not (they needed that space for half a page of grappling rules, obviously).

New Disciplines are sensibly gatekept – the clans’ unique Disciplines require a teacher and a sip of the ol’ vitae, the covenants’ unique Disciplines require a teacher, everything else is up for grabs.

There’s a list of archetypal Masks and Dirges (your pretend human self and your real Kindred self, respectively) that restore all or one of your Willpower points when you live up to them (I’m hoping Willpower is the ‘extra dice’ ‘reroll’ or ‘auto success’ generator it’s been in other versions of the game – I honestly forget how that works – but there’d better be lots of incentives to spend it!).

Touchstones appear here, but they’re both a little more nuanced (it’s acknowledged that they can be a place or a thing, although a glance at the ST screen has revealed that spending time around humans is mechanically enforced by the Requiem rule set) and a lot more developed (there’s a good two pages of examples for you to build off, why the hell didn’t V5 do this?).

I’ve adapted the “Former Patron” for Adrian. He has a close friendship with a ‘zine editor, the only person who’ll consistently employ him and pay him steady money for whatever he turns in on or about the deadline. Ricky – for ‘tis his name – isn’t stupid, he knows Adrian is Kindred, but he’s taken a “don’t ask don’t tell” approach and Ade is grateful for the mercy, since not being asked means he doesn’t have to lie.

At this stage we get into a cluster of more in-play rules, and���

On the whole, page for page, this book is beating V5. The layout is sensible and consistent, the art assets aren’t gratuitous, the artified text boxes generally draw the attention to a key idea summarised in direct and emotive text, and I haven’t ever had to follow two ongoing arguments across two sets of different coloured columns in a six column spread. But the information flow through chapters is just as bad as V5, and really shits the bed at this point: I’m trying to make a character and there’s page after page of core gameplay activities in the middle of the chapter between Touchstones and Merits.

If I’m walking someone through chargen and getting them to read the words so they understand what they’re doing with the dots (instead of just learning the summary and not really doing the process in full depth) this is bad, because it breaks flow and we lose momentum and concentration. If I’m looking for a rule during play, this is bad because core activities are clustered up in the middle of a section about something else and there’s no marshalling of information onto spreads or anything. This is just about acceptable in a PDF, with search and hyperlink at your side, but it’s rubbish in a physical book.

We get into the rules for damage, and for vitae, and the Blush of Life casually tosses off that for one (1) vitae, vampires can keep a meal down for most of the night, or have sex. That’s that. No lengthy “at Humanity 4 you can’t get it up but you can fingerbang” granularity. Neat and tidy. It’s just another biological thing they might need to do sometimes.

Predatory Aura is also neat: an explanation for just why Kindred society has all these customs and all that elaborate rigmarole. Kindred know Kindred; the Beast stirs, and can be incited to lash out. This is the bare-fangs-and-hiss routine; this is the stagey, theatrical sexuality; this is the sneering and posturing behind polite words. And it’s got some simple, hard and fast rules keyed to Willpower and Power Attribute rolls. And it gets past the "how do I know that you're a vampire?" stage in meeting the NPCs. Do like.

Rules for posthumous Embraces and the rise of the corpse as a Revenant – nice touch. Another threat that can find its way in should the session or story need some sizzle, as anyone who’s been bitten can rise if they come into contact with vitae after death or are fully exsanguinated on a later feeding (which is how we get the Lucy-in-Dracula moments). Lovely stuff.

Feeding is in here: there’s the simple way, and the “well, you have to grapple first” combat option (ahh, that’s why grapple rules ended up on the ST sheet – but the beats would have been nice to have!) And certain chestnuts about blood and vitae are described explicitly: the physical fluid nourishes more or less depending on where it comes from, so different amounts are needed. I wish the exact processes and amounts were on the goddamn sheet (I won’t need weapon damage in every session, but I will definitely need feeding!) though. Finally an example of play as well, to cover the no-dice feeding option, which definitely needs it.

I’m going to stop complaining about the stupid ST sheet eventually, but why isn’t the frenzy modifier chart on there? Frenzies can come up in any scene, god damn it…

There’s a long and disorganised list of Merits. Some of them – the Carthian Merits I’m trying to pick out for Adrian – come in multiple tiers and I can see the shape of the Loresheet system from V5 in there. They seem to have been sorted by “Kindred only” and “Mortals can take these too” but they’re the wrong way round (I’d put bedrock stuff like Contacts and Status up front, since a lot of the Kindred ones refer to these or have them as prerequisites). Also, the lack of sub-sorting means that if, for instance, I’m building a Carthian, I have to flip back and forth a lot just to figure out what all my options are and what I need to chain into this or that to make them go. Chalk this up to something Masquerade has always done better (either by skimming specific ones off into clan and sect supplements, or dumping a lot of them into an optional appendix and having the core focus on the important Backgrounds that locate your character in the world).

Adrian has ten Merit points to spend. I’m going to start with Human Merits, because they’re more concrete bread and butter assets like “living indoors” and “having money”, and go into the weeds of Kindred Merits once I’m happy that he’s grounded. He has a dot in Allies, representing the activist community who know and tolerate him because he occasionally turns up something extremely useful. Area of Expertise (Investigation) makes him really good at that due diligence and Barfly will help him blend in when he’s doing the legwork. True Friend doubles down on his relationship with his Touchstone, Ricky T: Adrian strikes me as a hard man to like, but faithful to the bitter end in return. Finally, I’m going to buy him some Carthian Status as a prerequisite to his Kindred Merits: I’m starting to feel like Adrian’s a bit of a sofa surfer, leeching off his covenant and repaying the favours with hard graft and the occasional truth bomb. Carthian Pull and I Know A Guy will work for this at low level, giving him access to the odd low tier ‘background’ dot in exchange for a story-generating favour. I have one dot left and pop back to the Mortal list to pick up Trained Observer, just to lean harder into that “works hard, pays attention” feel.

The chapter closes out with Disciplines, which I am absolutely not going to talk about at any length. I’m just going to remark that the multiplying XP costs of other Vampire iterations are long gone, that Devotions (what I know as Amalgams) are sidepieces with an experience cost based on the number of dots that go into them, and that every Discipline has a stat+skill+discipline pool as standard.

As a Ventrue Adrian has access to Dominate in-clan, so I’m going to go hard on it as his unique selling point. Two dots there give me the simple four word command and the option of chaining three of those together into a series of instructions or extended control. His dice pool for it isn’t great, so I go back and swap his Attribute priorities; three dots in Intelligence to make the Discipline go. Looking at his dots now, he’s got a powerful intellect and forceful personality but he’s not very quick or delicate in his approach, and while he can throw hands if he has to, he probably treats them a bit too much like an amateur boxing ring and starts shit he can’t finish. He gets a dot in Resilience to round him out, and give him a chance to stay on his feet in these tight spots.

And we’re done. That took longer than I’d have liked, largely because this felt like three chapters (some core rules, the Disciplines writeup and character generation) rammed into one poorly-organised whole. The writing is on point, the layout is good, the art assets are unobtrusive and feel relevant, but the flow is all over the place and I suspect it’ll be actively annoying to refer back to this section in play. At least now I know where things are.

Playing With Your Food (game rules) (the rest of them)

Rules of the Night (hopefully this will go a bit faster!)

Usual stats-n-skills breakdown, but I like the suggested equipment and sample actions that come along with each skill to guide use of them – that should avoid the dead dots problem where someone takes dots in Etiquette and the chronicle never uses it, since it’s a player’s responsibility to suggest things like dice pools in order to move the story along. (I mean, Etiquette is a tiered Merit here, but you get the idea.) A very good page and a half on commonplace activities and their dice pools, which is built into the section on dice rolls and doesn’t make weird claims about what kind of fuckin’ is good fuckin’ (V5, take note!). I don’t always like these (as I’ve said, sometimes seducin’ someone is Charisma and sometimes it’s Manipulation, the approach and desired outcome should set the pools) but if people want a usual roll, there it is.

Social Man… eo… that word I can’t spell

Good things about this system: it’s specifically for players to use on non-player characters.

Bad things about this system: it introduces trackables in the shape of Goals and Doors that need to be calculated, modified, and tracked in a long chain of rolls that may take days of in-game time to fully resolve. It’s a very roundabout way of figuring out how many rolls of varying types are involved in the extended task of getting someone to do what you want. It does reduce down to a formula (take lowest of Resolve or Composure, add 2 if a breaking point would be met, add 1 if an Aspiration would be thwarted, add 1 if a Mask would be compromised, you need that many successful rolls – not successes – to get what you want) and I like the concept of introducing not-social rolls to the process (on the grounds that fixing someone’s garage door will make them like you more and feel indebted to you) but it all feels a bit protracted.

There is the shape of something good here but I dramatically prefer the approach V5 takes of introducing Social Conflicts with Willpower as a “damage tracker”, resolvable in three rounds, each of which can be instantaneous or protracted.

Combat is fine, it’s the usual stat + skill – target’s defence dice pool. Dodging doubles your Defence and turns it into a dice pool you roll against your attacker, which I’m not sure about the odds on. I think I’d rather have the blanket dice penalty imposed on an attacker’s pool as not letting them roll dice is surely better than rolling my own to see how many 30% chances of cancelling out their dice I can muster. Perhaps Dodge is there because people roleplaying fight scenes want to be able to dodge, because they don’t want their character to throw hands. That seems more likely.

I am going to do another “V5 did this better” – I am trying to rein it in, I swear, I know this is an older game – and say that V5 has the only initiative system I will ever accept as better (for my theatre of the mind playstyle) than “just start with the player on my left and work around the table”. Instead of all this “roll dice add character trait bonus subtract weapon malus” stuff V5 works off the dynamics of the scene, ticking down through existing close combat between already engaged parties, then ranged, then fresh close combat, then everything else. This works because what’s important isn’t the realistic simulation of real combat or the random factor: it’s building scenes in a way that makes sense and helps everyone grok what’s happening and serves to organise who rolls dice when and in what order turns are taken.

Equipment is more granular than I’m used to but I don’t entirely hate it: it’s things that are useful, expressed in terms of the Merits needed to acquire them, and I think that’s a better way of using Merits than the rather vague “I have Resources 5 so I should be able to hire NPCs to do everything for me”. Availability is a dot rating which you can match with Merits or successes from rolls – so if something’s Availability 4, you need Resources 4 or you’re rollin’ to see if you can blag it somehow.

Conditions get bumped into an appendix for ease of reference. I’m ambivalent about these. Once you’ve got them into your head they’re probably fine but it might well be easier to just say “characters affected by this mind whammy get a -2 to Social Resistance rolls” than constantly cross-referencing to the Mind Whammied condition. I feel these work better with the reference cards – something tactile you can toss across the table so a player can refer to it, and hand back when it’s done – but I forget what it was like trying to wrangle them on Roll20.

The World Against Us (adversaries, locations and ref advice)

The World We Die In takes us through a series of sample domains: Athens, Beijing (with a localised version of the Ordo Dracul), Berlin, Montreal, North Carolina (with a Jiangshi clan that remind me of the very heart of the old Wan Kuei from VtM), San Francisco, Swansea (Swansea?), Tokyo (with localised covenants – zaibatsu – replacing the familiar five)… I think this is a nice answer to “Requiem has no lore” and “Catholics and pagans are not global phenomena you Eurocentrist pillock”, which are pain points I've heard in more than a few of my Masquerade groups.

Storytelling is a busy but focused chapter, which talks about how to emphasise each aspect of play – Mask and Dirge, Aspiration, Blood Potency, Vitae, Conditions and so on – offering a Twist for each one that really brings it out of the morass of play. My favourites are the Vitae Twists with tokens passed across the table and no numbers said aloud when feeding, and an option to say “chuck the character sheet, Vitae are dice, you can roll as many as you want, but when you’re running low, you must feed”, with damage coming out of the Vitae pool as well, and a five-dice no-control Frenzy at the bottom. (I really like this one, it’s the most… vampirism is all that matters… of the whole lot so far.) I’d use that with the Blood Beats twist as, let’s face it, conventional experience doesn’t really matter here, what matters is accumulating experience to become More Vampire by adding Blood Potency.

I also like the Twist to replace health trackers with Conditions applied as characters take hits. The mathematics involved seems like it doesn’t so much replace the health tracker as add a layer to it – I think I’d base this on margins of success during combat rolls rather than doing sums to see how much each character can take.

And there’s a really neat mode for character generation – a 12 step programme for fleshing Your Dude out with the other players and the storyteller, basically a collaborative relationship map that you build during character creation. I love group character creation and I also like when players bring me NPC ideas. Colour me pleased with this. I’d want to do this before even putting dots down; basically, concept, then Climbing the Ladder, then building the characters and setting.

An appendix for ghoul characters (with unique ghoul merits – for the first time ever I might actually think a ghoul chronicle is worth doing, as an extended Prelude), an appendix for conditions, and we are done!

Would I run this? Yes. It’s not perfect – the information flow of the rules is all over the place, especially interrupting the character generation is a no-no, and I really don't like Doors – but those are the only two tooth-grinders, so it’s walking in with a credible 7/10.

Additional, after the fact: I did end up running half a V:tR story, and came to the conclusion that Requiem has some incredible ideas about how vampires work but doesn't quite boil them down into efficient systems, at least not ones that I can run over Discord. With a face to face group and a deck of Condition cards and tokens to track feeding it would probably be easier to do. I do think it's superior to V5 on at least one systemic front though, and that's with Humanity... which we will come to very shortly.

[bluegekk0]

do you think there are any book series' vyrm or the kids are interested in?

this is completely biased but maybe something like warrior cats with hallownest wildlife? sorry i have to include the silly cats in my brain

I'll be completely honest, I don't think I've read enough book series that I can still remember to properly answer this question. But I suppose I could talk about the family and book genres they'd enjoy?

Vyrm would struggle a bit with focusing on large plots, he's definitely more into more technical books. Anything about tinkering or engineering would be right up his alley and he would be completely lost in any well written book on that topic. That being said, I think it was my friend who had this idea, but I love the mental image of him picking up some romance books prior to hibernation, and after separating with WL. He never really thought about romance before (WL wasn't really the romantic type, and for the longest time he thought he was the same way), but once he started suspecting he might have feelings for Grimm, he gave romantic novels a try, to see if what he's experiencing matched their portrayals of love. Despite that, however, he didn't get the confidence to confess until after he woke up from hibernation. These days he doesn't read them, as I said, he's not actually a novel type of person, and he finds learning romance through his experiences with Grimm much more pleasant.

Grimm on the other hand loves sappy romance novels. It definitely hits right into his desire for intimacy and affection that he experienced for most of his life. He'd imagine himself in those romantic situations, though for many years the realization that he'd never find that life only made him feel worse afterwards. After meeting Vyrm, those thoughts finally had some merit, and he found comforf in picturing himself and Vyrm in such scenarios, as this time there was a chance he could finally get to live that life. Well, he got his wish at last, though he still finds enjoyment in the genre. But doesn't limit himself to it, he fancies all kinds of stories, he has a large collection of various books in his Troupe chamber that he collected during his travels.

Hornet really likes adventure books, I think she'd enjoy Lord of the Rings for example. Stories are an escape for her, she lived many years convinced that loving anyone would just bring her pain, but deep down she really wanted something more. And books let her immerse herself into experiences that were perhaps more hopeful than her life. Of course, she now has a family again, and despite her fear of attachment, that sense of escapism isn't as strong of a driving force for her anymore. She still absolutely loves books and has read through Grimm's entire collection at least twice. She tries to hide it, but she's always ecstatic whenever Grimm brings new books from his travels.

Holly enjoys slice of life type stories, they grew up wanting that type of peaceful life, though unfortunately they wouldn't get their wish for a long time. They prefer stories with low stakes, something they can read to find comfort and reassurance that things are going to be okay. Though I think they'd like poetry as well, particularly that of very personal kind - it's difficult for them to interpret, but they're always willing to learn, especially in areas that give them a better understanding of emotions and things others struggle with. They didn't get to develop good communication skills in their childhood, but they really want to be a proper part of the Dirtmouth community, and exploring such themes in fiction certainly helps.

Zote claims he's above reading, but deep down he loves literature about knights and heroes. He always pictures himself as the great hero that saves the day and gets all the fame and appreciation for his heroic actions. He does struggle with separating those fictional heroes from reality, and he'll often start quoting his favorite knight characters pretending to be them, much to the amusement of others. It certainly feeds into his conviction that he's a great knight, but as he tones down his arrogance throughout the span of the AU, it becomes more endearing than harmful.

Lewk can only read very simple books for children, but he loves whenever someone else reads for him. Vyrm and Grimm would always read him various stories to bed, those of heroes and villains, of family, and who knows, maybe also some kid-friendly equivalent of a Warrior Cats story like you mentioned. He particularly enjoys looking at the pictures in Vyrm's technical books, and asking him what those things are and how they work. He's incredibly curious about everything, and is definitely shaping up to be an avid reader like Hornet or Grimm.

Asta and Milo are way too young to read, and they don't fully comprehend things that are read to them either. They do understand some words, but mostly those they hear often - mainly things like "papa" which they hear from Lewk, that they repeat to get the attention of Grimm or FPK. They like when someone reads them to sleep, but it's mostly due to the comforting vibe created by their soft blankets and their dads' voices.

[randomluck-ofthe-universe]

Ok here me out and I'm in no way trying to be antagonistic. This is just something I've thought lately when fans get mad at Timmy's gfs.

If the relationships are fake for PR sake or as a cover then it shouldn't matter who he aligns himself with, right? At the end of the day it doesn't mean anything.

If the relationships are real then it's his business however he chooses to handle it in public and private, right?

I only ask because I see so many fans getting upset with each new gf and the fact checking and looking for clues seems like not a good time for fans. But more importantly, the derogatory hate that gets slung at his gfs is not a great look for us. In reality Timmy and anyone he dates are not above anyone else but I would hope that we as people would not bash these women for the perceived notion that they are not "good enough" for him and are somehow inferior. I don't know Timmy at all but I would think he wouldn't like what many say about these women.

If it's fake it doesn't matter and if it's not our business.

Personally, I see a pattern of him publicly having gfs leading up to movie premieres and then the relationship fizzles pretty quickly after the publicity run. Is it a coincidence, maybe? Is it a PR stunt to get attention for upcoming projects and something that is mutually beneficial while it runs its course to whatever goals they set; maybe? We know stunting of this sort has and continues to happen. I tend to lean towards them being fake but it's also not really my business.

I guess I just feel like no matter what, if it's real or not, how the fanbase reacts says a lot and the hate is so ugly. Even if we don't like someone...attacking their intelligence, self-worth, parenting skills, etc., is beneath us.

I used to be so wrapped up in everything about Timmy and anytime a picture popped up or a mention was made of him with some girl he might be dating, my stomach would tie up in knots and I would try to find every piece of information I could trying to figure out if it was real or not. But I realized how much that was feeding into my already diagnosed anxiety and depression; so I took a step back. I have zero control over the situation and it's going to happen one way or the other.

If it is fake, it is so sad that this stuff is still going on; whether it's for business purposes or personal. I wish this stuff didn't matter and that celebrities private lives also didn't matter but more so I wish people wouldn't let these things bother them so much so they could be happier.

I don't know if any of this makes sense and I know I rambled a lot but I've just noticed all the hatred getting worse and worse. We have so few things right now that are good/positive in the world, let's try not to add more negativity for things that have nothing to do with us?

hi 😊, I understand your feelings, anon, and agree with you.

and yes, you've no idea how I fully agree it's so sad that this stuff has still to go on.. whether it's for business or personal purposes.

first of all, in total honesty and with no hypocrisy I want to tell you that I don't like Tim's "girlfriend" at all, as well as her entire family cause they represent for me what most negative and offensive there can exist about the image of a woman and about a human being in general.

get and buy visibility and popularity only thanks to money, so much money, without having any professional nor personal qualities or merit and promote shamelessly the idea that a fully fake aesthetic beauty based only on your body entirely redone is the only effective way for achieving any type of success and fame, is for me something really toxic, wrong and frankly disgusting at every social and human level.

having said that, you can dislike someone but for this reason getting to the point of hating her madly and erasing him or calling him out in the worst ways, is something that I find absurd, absolutely unfair and I strongly disagree with, for a lot of reasons that I won't be here repeating because I've already expressed my opinion quite clearly about Tim and about judging his life and his choices.

I truly appreciated your thoughts, anon, and I would love if you'd want contact me in private to talk more in depth about them.

thank you for your message. 🤍

[merionettes]

Hello! This is a rubicon ask. I love the program you gave to Sylthea, the concept of being together but isolated. So I wonder is there a certain pair skating program that this idea came from? Or is there any program you want to suggest your readers to watch in order to image Syltheas' program better? I'll be so grateful if you can answer this and gimme your recommended watch list! Love you so much!

anon idk if you're still here but! just in case!!

very sadly for me, sylthea under pressure does not exist anywhere outside my own head. it's about Themes, and actually one of the things i struggled with a bit was visualizing a program that could both hold up the necessary storytelling pillars and live and breathe on its own merits. so i'm legit thrilled to hear it was convincing enough to seem like it could really be out there. :D

for general sylthea style, you can't do better than mid-career virtue/moir. like, sylvain and dorothea are not ultimately at their level, they're not one of the greatest ice dance pairs in history (...yet), but carmen is 100% their wheelhouse. having said that, i definitely ended up pulling influences from multiple sources—weaver/poje is another pair that was hanging out in the back of my mind a lot. i've got a program list here that's got some links!!

(mild spoilers under the cut lol)

for the record, if they'd stayed together they would have ended up developing in a different direction, which you can sense from dorothea by the end. by the time she does get her gold she's gonna be doing Weird programs and Abstract programs. chock/bates' touch/contact, aka the daft punk alienfucker program, is in the link list above and it's not an actual sylthea program for a number of reasons but it's sort of indicative of the choice to move away from the aesthetic of like, moulin rouge.

[enaelyork]

[Nebuleuse - NFSW WIP]

Am i sorry for this ? I don't know guys. Really i dont...

Tags/Warnings: age gap, trash talk, smut, oral sex (M! receiving), masturbation, sex in public place. 🫣

Tags : @fenharel-enaste, @starlady66, @alotofrandomfangirling

+18 DNI

I had stayed for a good hour in the street next to the offices, devouring pasta that I had reheated in a hurry, as if their digestion could do the same to me with the events that follow one another in my life.

Gobbling them up without thinking, as my heart tried to swallow my emotions until it sickened. The smell of tomato sauce and spices mix with the stifling and bitter atmosphere of the capital. A feeling sent back to me by the city and which strangely made me think of Krennic.

This city was in his image: Cold, ruthless, acid, the infamous smell less, of course. He smelled good, as long as his smell still haunted me several days after he touched me.

When I couldn't swallow anything more, I resigned myself to returning to the office, thinking that my stomach was as full as my soul was empty.

Broken.

Martyred.

The tumult of the building left me indifferent and when I took the deserted corridor reserved for our service I was exhausted. Nervously, psychologically, emotionally. I couldn't take any more of all this unsaid, of all this blackmail, I was tired of being a puppet at the mercy of the Tarkins. To have had to sacrifice my ideas to satisfy values ​​that do not belong to me. Then, suddenly, a violent shock brought me out of my torpor. I had just hit something as hard as a wall, but way too hot to really be one.

Krennic.

—What ? I groan at his piercing gaze. Now was not the time to get in my way. I didn't want to see him. Don't want to play. And it wasn't just because of the oath I had sworn to my grandmother and my father had just burned. Not just because of the shit Ellie was getting us all into while fucking with Thrawn.

But it was him. It made me mad with rage to realize the power this man had over me and I couldn't accept that anyone other than Father could afford it.

He remained silent, his shadow advancing towards me, forcing me back against the wall where my back crashed. He took his ranks from his pocket and slammed the plate against the identification window. A satisfied beep sounded and the elevator door opened to release my back from its grip, allowing us to step inside.

I was shaking, my legs were struggling to keep myself upright, and my heart was probably going to stop any moment now.

—Something wrong, Orson?" I say in a wavering voice. Because it seems to me that you got what you wanted and that was enough to move on.

He looked almost as serious as a death.

— It's more easier.

I blink. He wasn't drunk, not a single ounce of alcohol escaped his mouth when he blew against my forehead.

— Simple ?

— To be ruthless. To play. That's why they call me a monster. But people make me sick. Their looks, their contempt, their endless flow of absurd words. They like to listen to themselves, they like what they are when they have no merit, when they were born like that, whereas I...

If I opened my mouth now I was going to miss something very important, so I was so petrified at the thought of him getting discouraged that I almost couldn't breathe.

—That's why I hate them. They don't have a clue what it means to everything I do, everything I've worked for. So I play to survive. I play because I convince myself that they are no more valuable than me, and you, you...

Me ?

I wasn't going to know. Not immediately. But it wasn't necessary. He didn't need to tell me what I already knew. It took my breath away so much that I barely realized his hand was already unhooking the opening of my uniform pants. At that precise moment I couldn't push him away, I didn't want to, I never wanted to.

—I need to fuck you. he whispers in a shaking voice in my neck, pressing me a little more against the wall. That's all I think Vicky. You. I need it and it's messing up my existence, my galaxy, my head and especially my priorities.

—Do it. I moaned. My hand slipped into his pants to grab his dick. His erection was so strong it instantly took my breath away.

I wanted it too.

I needed to feel him inside me, needed him to make me forget the shit we'd gotten ourselves into. To forget that life was just a dramatic series of disappointments that bound together to form a pitiful tragedy. That was the reality. Him, me, Ellie, Thrawn, we were all entangled in a war machine that crushed our souls and we wanted more and more. We were instruments who had decided to do as we pleased, dreading the moment when we would have to fall into line for good.

Krennic turned to press the emergency stop button on the elevator and then lifted me up to allow me to wrap my legs around his waist. My mouth crashed into his, devouring all of the air that was trying to escape. I bit him almost bleeding, desperately, greedily. It was as if my life depended of his mouth and what he was going to do to me.

He devours me relentlessly, crushing my lips in a destructive kiss. He kisses me without stopping, lips, face, jaw and my closed eyelids. I was ready to die like this. In his arms.

Adored by the only motherfucker in the galaxy who could make me see the stars.

Beyond his pants, I tried to caress him, to feel his penis swell even more between my fingers and this feeling made me lose the little reason I had left.

— Please. Please…

—Please what? his voice was deep, and i can see desire in his eyes.

—Please fuck me.

He laughed nervously. I had never had to beg anyone in my entire life. No one had resisted me, no matter the area of ​​my existence. Except my family, except them, so it was up to me to bow down and accept the obligations. I couldn't take it anymore and never thought I was going to fuck them off begging someone to fuck me. But it was Orson Krennic. And with him there was always that moment of ruthless resistance that preceded a destructive explosion.

— It is complicated.

He was right. No time, no resources. One bastard in the family was enough. Nothing that allowed us to be able to do it in the rules. But it was too late to back down, too late to tell him to stop touching and biting me like he was doing. He had already given me too much and I wanted more.

—I want you inside me, you can't, you...

— I have a solution. He said with a smile, kissing the corner of the lips. He pulled back and dropped me to his knees, pulling his cock out of his pants before grabbing my hair to bring my face closer to the tip of his glans. I finished pulling his pants down to his ankles and grabbed his cock with my hand before kissing the end.

My desire for him was so depraved that I didn't feel a shred of shame at the thought of anything I wanted to do to him. So I took it as far into my mouth as I could, covering it completely before sucking it like candy. My hand moved back and forth around his base as we were captivated by noises that were sure to drive him crazy.

— Crap. He whispered as he wrapped my hair around his wrist. I was still pinned against the wall as he moved back and forth in my mouth, losing his balance so much that he had to hold one hand against the wall to keep from falling.

—Why do I always come back?" Why are you controlling me like that? What makes you so irresistible to me? Fuck.

I had no intention of responding to him, picking up my brisk pace and when my tongue pressed against the tip of his cock, the salty nectar tickling my tongue drove me crazy.

—Touch yourself, or I'll have to deal with you real quick.

And I comply, like the docile girl I was for him. Too curious to know where this little game will take us. But when I plunged into the throes of a pleasure that I barely discovered that I was interrupted by several shocks against the wall of the elevator.

— Somebody there ? Maintenance Droid!

— Shit ! Damn droid! he growled half-consciously, clutching my skull to hold me down as he sped up and down in my mouth. Tears welled up in my eyes from his repeated thrusts down my throat, steadily intensifying a little more.

—Keep on going. Touch yourself and let go of my cock. I'm going to cum, Vicky.

Hearing it rumble above me sent a shiver down my spine. We were about to get caught having sex in an elevator in one of the largest Imperial buildings and I couldn't see myself explaining how Krennic's cock had ended up deep in my throat. Because this droid was going to come back, write a report and it was going to sink us both. I should be panicking, but the situation was so exciting that I wasn't sure I would stop even if the robot were to force open the door.

— I will cum in your mouth. He repeated like a litany. It was delicious to hear the tone of his voice twist under the effect of the approaching orgasm. He was at my mercy, vulnerable, he literally depended on my mouth.

—Someone here ? launched the droid again through the metal wall. Krennic punched the wall hard.

—Director Krennic and Chief Engineer Tarkin. Can't send us help instead of bellowing? He roared in anger. I almost wanted to burst out laughing at how absurd the situation was. His body was starting to shake and his legs were starting to falter around my fingers. He was close, as long as he stroked my cheek as if to ask my permission. I nod gently and it doesn't take more than a few seconds for a warm, thick liquid to fill my throat. I had done this before, swallowing as fast as I could so the taste wouldn't soak into my mouth, but not this time. I let it sink into me for a moment before swallowing it while touching myself.

— Shit. He whispered, grabbing me by the hair and pulling me up. I hadn't reached orgasm and I fully intended to. He presses me against the wall, my hand still firmly anchored in my panties.

—I want you, Vicky. Entirely. Tell me you'll give me anything I want when we're down and I'll make you cum before that droid comes back.

—No. I say in a placid voice. I'm not excited enough, I lied. And now that I know that droid is coming back.

—He won't come, you'll come. Here. Provided you promise me that your little ass will be mine soon.

I laugh like a drunk. I was drunk to him, his scent and the feel of his body against my sweaty skin. His fingers, which rested on mine to guide them between my thighs, which I spread even further, made me dizzy. His middle finger slowly slid over my lips and moved up to tease my ass before returning to my drenched pussy and I pursed my lips not to give him what he wanted right away.

—You are very quiet today. he whispers in my ear. My eyes met his before hovering above us, letting myself be carried away by the delicious feel of his hand.

—I thought that was what you liked. The silence.

—Not with you. You are not like others, you are like me, you hate this world in the same way.

—Liar. You love this. Wealth, opulence, glory. You feed on it.

— Error. I'm just playing the game to get myself a place of choice, little star.

—Did you just give me a stupid nickname again, Orson?

My muscles contract gently around his fingers. This way he had to guide me in my caresses was a pure delight and I was too proud to admit it.

—It's always better than Honey

— I like that nickname.

—Would you rather little star, or baby Tarkin.

—No.

—Keep kidding yourself. He digs his fingers deeper into me and I scream as I cling to him, his teeth digging into my neck as I explode around his hand. No. I'm literally shattered. It was as if he had just slammed me against a wall and shattered me into pieces so violently that I wondered if I would ever be able to fix myself for good. The tremor that ran through me was so violent that I felt like I couldn't breathe. Knocks sounded outside.

—Director Krennic? K5W and K9SA for extraction. Stay calm.

Krennic looked at me smiling. He was buttoning his pants while I was doing the same with mine, my cheeks flushed. My face ravaged by what had just happened. I was persuaded to carry his stigmata for weeks and I literally consumed myself from within. Yet, I had never been so relaxed in my entire life.

—They said to stay calm. He put a mocking smile on his lips. His breath hit my forehead and I chuckled against his shoulder. If those poor droids knew what they had just escaped.

—Physically, I've never been this good. But here, we have just entered a dangerous zone, Orson. An area where I have never set foot before. I swallowed, fearing that my frankness would give me away completely. But the serious expression that crossed his electric eyes led me to believe that he was immersed in the same torments as me.

— Me neither. But I'm not afraid of the unknown. And you too, baby Tarkin, you survived on Geonosis, this kind of hostile terrain shouldn't scare you anymore.

[tea-of-destiny]

(Prompt: "Shark")

“Look, kid.” Standing up from the card table, Mark clapped his hand onto Clive’s shoulder. “I can tell you’ve got a good heart. No idea what you’re trying to accomplish by getting mixed up with the big boss, but whatever it is, I want to see you succeed.”

“So… what’s the problem here?” Clive asked warily.

“You might’ve won me over with your words, but most of the Family ain’t quite so, ah, receptive to concepts like ‘compassion’ or ‘intellect’. If they sense any weakness in you, they’ll turn on you at the flip of a coin. And I can’t be caught helping you if you don’t show you have the backbone to command the rest of ‘em.”

“You think I’m not tough enough to achieve my goals.” Clive crossed his arms in front of him, unamused.

Mark simply shrugged. “Well, not so much the ‘being’ part as the ‘acting’. If the big boss has thrown you to the sharks, it doesn’t have to mean you’re also a shark now—the humble crustacean has its merits, too. But are you going to let them tear you to shreds where you stand… or are you going to make them believe you’ve got the claws to fight back?”

Clive studied the man’s face for a long minute. Then he turned his gaze away, pursing his lips. “What do I have to do, then?”

“Lie. Cheat. Backstab. Play their game, and play it mean, kid," Mark replied, voice firm. "Act only in your own interest from here on out, and make it clear that no one is safe from you.”

The image of his family’s smiling, innocent faces immediately sprung to Clive’s mind. He swallowed hard. “…No one?”

“No one.”

[oxygenbefore1775]

Hi I’m still thinking about your Reijean Venetian AU. The Moretta and Bauta masks fascinated me so much! I was wondering if you have anymore headcanons/thoughts/ideas you have of this AU that you want to share 🥰

Hello!

How kind of you, I'm very happy that something made by me managed to interest someone in this way

To be honest, not that much. Aside from that moretta and bauta mask post, I only ever expressed musings about the two of them being head-over-heels idiots in love (because it's hilarious) and that other involving Venetian Inquisition (because that's what the most of my research would involve). It's very hard for me to think of something both exciting enough so that I would find it meritting a share and be specific to the setting of the Venetian Republic and not just vaguely period-adjacent.

I. But I've been thinking about some mirror-related musings, considering that by the 16th century Venice made the highest quality mirrors (with France being a close second)

How normally 16th century mirrors were quite small and distorted the image a lot especially as it got closer to the edge. But in Venice they managed to come up with a new method of mirror-making that allowed for enhanced clarity and bigger size (up to 40"). Just thinking about Jean getting Reiner one of this mirrors for his palazzo — maybe even the one tinted with oxides to a specific color should Jean's wealth afford it — gifting it to him so that Reiner could look at himself at any moment and see what's consistently getting Jean all hot and bothered all the time (spoilee, it's everything of Reiner). And maybe just maybe, Jean gave Reiner this huge mirror so that he could finally observe them fucking in all detail.

II. Or maybe about how in the Republic golden hair were considered very attractive — and how Jean trying to be in fashion would spend a lot of time out in the sun to get his hair naturally bleached (Reiner lucky bastard is already predisposed to having fair hair thanks to his genetics). Normally to achieve that but at the same time not to get tan (since it was an attribute of a peasant) one would wear a hat with a cut-out top so that the hair is exposed while the face remains hidden. So Jean would wear something like that. Luckily, he's too tall for anyone to see the top of his head and find out.

III. Or I would sometimes imagine them with a codpiece (ah 16th century fashion my beloved)

Other than that, I really don't have anything specific in mind