#dr. righteous

[secret-unburnt-guitars]

Hi i don't know much abt styx aside from general prog fandom osmosis but kwh has always intrigued me a little bit. Can you explain it in excruciating detail? (genuinely i'm not being sarcastic)

*cracks knuckles*

on february 22, 1983, styx released their eleventh studio album Kilroy Was Here. it was a concept album/rock opera though dennis deyoung likes to call it more of a "rock theatrical experience" in recent interviews. they even made a minifilm they played before the concert!!!! you can find it and the rest of caught in the act on youtube

it was made partially as a response to the rise of the satanic panic in the early-mid 1980s. people started to believe that rock music was evil and hiding satanic messages. the band was targeted by the public when they were accused in particular by the government of arkansas (i think?) of putting backwards messages (called backmasking) in their song Snowblind (the line "i try so hard to make it so" sounded like "satan moves through our voices" to some people. i own a copy of paradise theatre, that track in particular is damaged.).

and then dennis deyoung had a GREAT IDEA!!!!!!!!

imagine a big ol lightbulb flashing over him while the rest of the members of styx watch in mortal dread

so basically the album follows a sort of loose and vague backstory that's somehow still solid enough for people to follow some sort of a plot in their head (which is slightly backed up by Caught In The Act, the designated KWH "concert," which i'll get to in a second). the basic synopsis (paraphrased but still in excruciating detail) is as such:

set in a futuristic chicago(?) rock and roll has been made illegal under code 672 (prohibits the playing and purveying of rock music). Dr. Everett Righteous (played by JY), who was responsible for this, is the leader of the majority for musical morality or the MMM for short. the MMM is one of the strongest organizations in this universe since you know. they literally convinced congress to criminalize an entire genre of music for the entire country. righteous also hosts a television show where he encourages the public to burn guitars and records in a huge bonfire during “nightly rallies”. he also projects himself onto a big triangle over the skyline which i think is fucking hilarious i haven’t been able to get over it

Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (played by Dennis DeYoung, of course he's the title character), was a prolific rock musician at the time of the ban. he was thrown in prison for breaking the law and after being framed of murder. they accused him of bashing an MMM crusader's head in (which he obviously didn't do) after they raided one of his concerts at the paradise theatre. he then goes to rot in prison and is subjected to attempts of brainwashing by the dr. righteous show with the other “rock n’ roll misfits” they’ve arrested. it doesn’t work lol. i don't understand how it would work BECAUSE IT'S NEVER EXPLAINED

the prison kilroy is rotting in is maintained/monitored by japanese import, mass produced robots dubbed the "robotos," hence the title track. ignore how racist they look, it was 1983, this is not my fault

i mildly dislike them but it sucks how they’re essential to the plot ANYWAYS

here comes Jonathan Chance, (played by Tommy Shaw, albeit reluctantly) who is a rebel that is part of a underground resistance (that's only really mentioned once). with his friend, he breaks into some unknown area that is most likely a recording studio and hijacks the live television recording of the dr. righteous show. he proceeds to namedrop himself and then run off

credit to @mccoys-killer-queen for the gifs!!

kilroy sees this happen, which inspires him to attempt to escape the prison. kilroy incapacitates a roboto that visits his prison cell and disguises himself as it so he can escape without being noticed (i do not like the way he does this)

after kilroy escapes, he goes throughout the city and leaves messages for jonathan, leading him back to the paradise theater which is now the Dr. Righteous Museum for Rock Pathology

it's got a bunch of shitty animatronics that include people like jimi hendrix and elvis presley, but at the very back is an animatronic of kilroy repeatedly bashing in someone's head

this is my favorite part of the minifilm which i've basically explained sorry. you see like what you think is another roboto emerge from the shadows, and then it takes off its mask AND IT'S THE ACTUAL KILROY!!!

(this is taken from the live show, the transition is so goddamn dope)

and then dennis deyoung prances around and has his little pick me theater main character moment and sings mr. roboto and dances and stuff it looks so stupid. the live version of mr. roboto is way funnier than the official music video i don't know. i posted it about here before but i love this part in particular

so that's how kilroy and jonathan meet and that's basically the plot of one of styx's most popular songs!! sorry i gave kind of a play by play of the minifilm

now here's the fun part !!!! (unfinished lore/controversy)

unfortunately the reception of this album was less than satisfactory for most people back in '83, since KWH was way far away from the brand that styx had made for themselves in the 70s. they made art rock and prog, but this was just straight up synthpop. some people liked it though. i read somewhere in an article that it "alienated their male audience" and honestly if you're alienated by a little bit of gay pick me theater bs from your favorite band, that's a you problem

caught in the act was the designated "kilroy concert" that styx did sometime in 1983. the concert, however, doesn't give any. depth. to any additional explanations of multiple plot holes present in the story. as much as i love and cherish dennis deyoung he didn't do a very good job at writing this.

caught in the act felt more like a compromise than a show, seeing as the banter after the performance of mr. roboto was very bare? kilroy explains to jonathan that he was framed for murder, and then he goes in depth on the night it happened. "the crowd was totally psyched," he says, and then it goes to JY performing a guitar solo, which leads into the rest of the concert. the entire concert was portrayed as a flashback and gives no real backstory to any of the established characters. and then at the tail end of the concert they get "raided" by the MMM and you watch as an MMM officer murders one of righteous' own followers with kilroy's guitar. they cut back to kilroy and jonathan, they sing haven't we been before, and then kilroy hands jonathan this sick ass glowing guitar, then they perform the world's worst finale. the dance party ending of caught in the act. it sucks. it's horrible. i hate it. also there is no dennis deyoung in the kilroy was here universe lmfao

i'm still grateful for the concert though don't get me wrong!!! amazing concert

if the rest of styx didn't want to rip dennis deyoung apart for making them do this (i recently learned from a manager that DDY made them turn down an opportunity to perform at one of the largest concerts of the 80s, because he was like "but muh kilroy"), i believe songs off the album like High Time and Double Life would have been performed at Caught in the Act. both extremely lore-heavy songs, especially double life. i really wish they played double life. but c'est la vie, i guess.

literally everyone in the band hated dennis' guts so much while they were making this (justified, he was a stubborn asshole during production) but god was it worth it. for me at least. i imagine one of the conversations about production went like

JY: dennis have you considered that maybe this is a bad idea Dennis: i'm gonna make you the villain of the story if you don't shut the FUCK UP

i still think that JY had a little bit of fun though. he was hamming it tf up as dr. righteous i'm sorry you need to watch the mv's which you can find on youtube as well

but unfortunately tommy shaw wasn't having a good time at all, he literally quit on stage and stormed off and styx split for a while bc of this album i mean LOOK AT HIM HE'S SO PISSED OFF

overall this album is both cheese AND corn, worst album i've ever listened to, and yet it's given me a purpose in life. i've written 7,000+ words in one document about this album just to try and fill in the blanks the lore has, it's got so many. it's a running joke on this blog, i really hope you check out the album, because i think it's wonderful and it's endearing regardless of the controversy, it's too late for me. save yourself

[secret-unburnt-guitars]

OHHHHHHH MY GOD HAHAHAHA

What do we think

[leaveharmony]

[xxcherrycouturexx]

heyy i'm Matthew!

im 18 and married!

my pronouns are he/him, proud trans masc

i'm really into y2k aesthetic, hello kitty, juicy couture, gothic subculture, animals, plus cowboy aesthetic/lifestyle!

my current media interests are Z Nation, Doctor Who, ReAnimator, horror movies, Supernatural, Righteous Gemstones, Abbot Elementary, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

i wanna meet new people and get some mutuals! like+follow and i'll follow you back 🥰

[crisisofinfinitemultiverses]

X-Men: Before The Fall – Sinister Four 1 (2023) by Kieron Gillen & Paco Medina

Cover: Lucas Werneck

[why-i-love-comics]

X-Men: Before the Fall: The Sinister Four #1 - "Lonely Hearts Club" (2023)

written by Kieron Gillen art by Paco Medina, Edgar Delgado, & Fer Siguentes-Sujo

[sinistermusings]

X-Men: Before The Fall – Sinister Four 1 (2023) by Kieron Gillen & Paco Medina

Cover: Lucas Werneck

[sato-motors]

actual photo of me on stage

[25000yearcycle]

🔑 U THE KEY 🔑

Stop acting like the doormat.

Organize yourself into political parties and action groups and set agendas for your own growth and development; so you ain’t crying like a lil bitch when you get about something like Project 2025.

25000yearcycle.org

[secret-unburnt-guitars]

The 1983 Kilroy Was Here Tour Program (...and its glaring issue)

There is in existence a tour program that was made to promote KWH. Printed in 1983, (when else would it be?) the program most likely was distributed at the concert itself.

I first found it on eBay, and god, did it piss me off when I read it.

For the most part, it does a decent job at bringing the reader and/or audience member up to speed with the plot behind... whatever they're about to witness. Feasible design work too, good photos, just a little large in my opinion, but who am I to complain?

(Sorry if the quality's low, my scanner stopped working so this is from my phone camera.)

The program is supposed to be in-universe, explaining the "recent events" that have occurred, including things like Dr. Righteous' rise to power, Jonathan's hijacking, and Kilroy's escape. It touches on specifics such as Kilroy only serving five years of his life sentence among other things such as excerpts from faux articles about Hyde and Vanish being hired to be Righteous' official cronies.

The very large problem here (plain to see) is the members' biographies. "Oh but Rosie I don't see what's wrong with it, it's just some corny way of listing off the members while staying in character it's not that important" I'm going to be honest with you. I am looking you directly in the eye now. First of all, hang on for a moment. I'll explain. Second, no, it's not important. Not to you, maybe, but have you ever had a rock in your shoe while you walk and every time you take a step you feel that rock stab directly into your pinky toe, and when you finally get a chance to take off your shoe, you realize somehow it's in your fucking sock, so you have to go through all the trouble of sitting down, taking off your sock, shaking out that stupid rock that turned out to be probably the tiniest pebble you've ever seen in your entire life, putting on your sock again, and spending 2 minutes re-lacing your shoe because you decided to wear Converse that day like a bumbling moron, wondering how in the hell that rock even managed to make it in? That's what this feels like to me. This has been bugging me for almost a year. It's never going to stop bugging me.

Sorry, anyway, if you've watched Caught In the Act, you would know that the entire concert takes place within Kilroy's flashback. To recap a previous post: after the minifilm was displayed and Mr. Roboto was... performed, the show briefly transitions into a scripted banter between Kilroy and Jonathan. Jonathan asks if Kilroy was actually responsible for the death at the show, in which Kilroy reveals that he was framed by "that son of a bitch Righteous" and proceeds to explain how the fateful night at the Paradise truly went.

"The crowd was so psyched. There was so much tension and excitement," he says. "But when JY started the show in his guitar solo, the place went wild!"

This goes into a full-length concert. A full-length concert, in fact, with each existing member of Styx at the time. The actual Tommy Shaw, James Young, and Chuck and John Panozzo were all there and playing their guitars and drums and bass and whatnot under the name Kilroy. Narcissistic much? Not to fear. Dennis DeYoung unintentionally erased himself from this story, as the show was Kilroy's flashback. Obviously, this means they very much exist within KWH as themselves and at roughly the same time as their fictional counterparts. There is absolutely no way that any of them would be the same person, inevitably creating four sets of doppelgängers that scamper around Chicago.

Now the thing that makes me want to scream as loud as I can at 5 AM:

As shown above, each bio lists the members' names and their 'aliases' as the characters they play. Again, you would probably think "oh that's probably not to be interpreted the way you are right now," in which I would curtly remind you about the rock in your shoe. Look at JY's. Really look at it.

"Reformed guitarist." Who the fuck reformed him?????? Hyde and Vanish I can somewhat understand, but Righteous is the founder and leader of the Majority for Musical Morality. I'm speaking completely within the officially established canon here and I'm not referencing any of my own fanlore. You go "oh well maybe someone else reformed him and then he became Dr. Righteous" What's in your shoe right now? Huh? Do you want to tell me what's in your shoe right now? Righteous is at the very top, who would reform him??? He's been like this from the beginning. JY couldn't have been reformed, because he was at the concert playing the guitar when the band gets raided by the MMM. The existence of the organization AND Code 672 confirms the simultaneous existence of Righteous. They're two different people who coincidentally look the same.

I want to focus on Jonathan real quick too because I think this is the second-most blatant out of all of them, right behind JY.

At the tail-end of their concert after the raid, that one nerdy guy from the Heavy Metal Poisoning number gets killed off. This ends the flashback and brings us back to the present and especially back to Jonathan, who most definitely did not know about any of that and sings a little song. When he gets that weird glowing guitar in the finale it is made absolutely clear that Jonathan Chance does not know how to play, thus separating Jonathan from Tommy. (On a side note, this means that the person that raided the Dr. Righteous Show in the HMP music video was probably Tommy. Good on him.)

This physically hurts me to think about but I try and keep my peace by reminding myself that there's nothing I can do about this. I wouldn't have much of a problem with this if it wasn't actually (albeit unintentionally) canon.

This isn't a plot hole, this is a plot trench. I can't keep my peace. This is hell on Earth. Save me.

[busterblackcherry]

I did not agree to have this beamed into my head on my drive home today.

@secret-unburnt-guitars

[gloriousmonsters]

read camp dama.scus. enjoyed some stuff, really wish i didn't have the experience so often reading a book that's Good and Progressive and about Queer Affirmation etc of feeling like i'm side-eying the author like 'and you know that delineating the people that oppose you as pure evil that therefore deserves torture or death or being eliminated from society entirely is bad, right? you know that, right??'

[donnatroyprincessofthemyscira]

[t-oppenheimer]

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Review

Steam said my original review was too long so I had to butcher it to fit it in. Here's the full and original intended review.

This game has excellent writing, and I can't understate that. It's the obligatory shell which ultimately forces me to turn away from an excellent story.

The first problem extends from the central conceit, even before the plot of a crusade against demons: a CRPG conversion of the Pathfinder roleplaying system. This comes with many hurdles, and this game clears them with finesse and clumsiness in equal measure. They have simplified the long list of 26 skills into a streamlined 11, not only because there were simply too many (I am not sure if the separation of Escape Artist and Acrobatics, or Use Magic Device and Spellcraft, are justified in the original rpg. Clearly Paizo agrees with me to some extent as will be discussed) and a number of them simply do not have application in a CRPG with necessarily finite interactions (sorry, no human writer can account for the player attempting to flirt with important NPCs at any given point of the narrative in advance) on a simulated two dimensional map (no flying, here). What's left is simple and efficient, Intelligence and Wisdom both get two "knowledge" skills to preserve the place that a high amount of skill ranks served, and all uses of all skills are intuitive.

What has come with more struggle is the refusal to address the "rocket tag" dynamics of gameplay which manifest themselves shortly after level 5. There are people who love this type of gameplay and I am not saying in and of itself it is a bad design direction: the first edition of Pathfinder endured so long for reasons. The way the 'machine', the way the rules of the game are interpreted, adjudicates certain situations turns precise and remarkable combat situations into eye twitching slogs. Two examples, both relatively early in the game (Act 1 and Act 2) with minimum spoilers:

Your party enters a room with 4 Dretches, sloth demons. They are at such a distance away from you that your melee fighters cannot strike them in the first turn, or maybe they won initiative. At any rate, each of them begins the combat by casting stinking cloud, a DC 13 Fortitude Save. In my experience of running these games, I might have the dretches cast the spell in strategic choke points, or around themselves to encourage indirect combat (archery) or compel magical counterplay (dispersal with wind). As it is a utility spell with too few applications, no wind spells are available in Wrath of the Righteous, immediately stripping spellcasters of use in this type of encounter. That in and of itself is inelegant but there is one more thing that the machine decides to do which makes this low level encounter a hassle every time it happens (and it is by no means uncommon throughout act 1): The dretches all place their clouds directly on top of allies. The original description reads: Any creature that succeeds on its save but remains in the cloud must continue to save each round on your turn. This is a poison effect. They incorporated this rule element correctly. I argue that allowing the clouds to stack has only negative effects on gameplay, and must be categorized as an incorrect ruling. When each spell is cast, every party member in the area is forced to make a save. And then, when their turn begins, they make a new save against each cloud individually. This spell can completely disable characters for up to five rounds since they leave the cloud. If a game master looked me in the eye and told me I needed to make upwards of five saves against an identical disabling effect per character in a row, every round in some rooms, I would not tolerate a DM which expresses such clear animosity for me.

Second situation, you are forced to enter a room with ghouls pouring in It does not matter how your party entered the room, if it is possible for the ghouls to aggro your main character they are aggrod on your main character. That is annoying, but actually exploitable. I decide to reload the save and have my character slip into the next room which has a tighter door and make a choke point with two tanks, and from there we're running them down with cleaves and arrows, I cannot ask for a more efficient configuration. That is, until the game decides that seven ghouls mashing their face into two suits of armor doesn't make sense. Rather than change any of their tactics, the game simply started allowing them to pass to attack my character. I would simply stand up and leave if a human game master gave this situation to me. I don't need to be here, I don't need to put up with this.

This game is glitchy, and nearly every glitch happens to fall to the enemy's favor. I don't think I can recommend this game in good faith based on how, even when everything goes right, I cannot convince a machine to not have a personal animus it does not in fact possess: this game master is presented to you "as is" and the best you can do is drop the difficulty all the way down, as if to say "fine, I never even liked the stupid game anyway, screw this". This is no victory, though, as even if your whole party can now move through the game as wind passes over the plain, other problems rear their head.

Your party moves intolerable slow over maps, and the best thing you can do to mitigate takes resources it shouldn't. In the tabletop game, dragging pieces to where they need to be is a matter of a hand gliding over a mat. Moreover, to leave an area all that needs to be done is the declaration, and the whole scene is swept aside for the next. But in this game, all space must be recognized so all space is walked. Nothing is taken for granted, and this drags the pace of the game out.

The game maintains an inequity between classes, and creates new ones with it's attempts at streamlining. The Rogue is a simply bad class-- they have to fulfill special conditions to merely meet the damage of a well built fighter while having worse armor, for a benefit which is typically irrelevant, as you can shape your party of six to have all of the skills you need. Spellcasters have all of their utility options stripped of them as described before, so if you're not optimizing for damage you're not optimizing for anything. Take all spell penetration feat taxes or watch spell after spell fizzle. This also goes for all party members.

Speaking of the party of six, your character's "protagonist" role makes the game unforgiving in a way that the Pathfinder RPG was never meant to be: When your character dies in the original RPG there were a thousand solutions to that problem. Maybe your party could seek a resurrection ritual, and that could be as simple as visiting a cleric or a whole plotline could be created out of it. Maybe that quest alone could splinter into so many roleplay possibilities-- a party member could look into becoming a Lich in order to protect you forever into the afterlife, or another party member could seek to exchange their soul for yours in a heroic sacrifice. Maybe they need to make a massive diversion from the main quest to seek out a wizard's tower, or battle down into the boneyard to retrieve your soul. This is not to mention that maybe it's not a problem to be solved at all per-se. Character death can be an opportunity to rethink your strategy, to make a new character who won't suffer the problems of the old.

None of this is possible in Wrath of the Righteous. If your character dies, you reload a save and that's that. Experimenting with builds is a no go. All tactical decisions in and out of battle have to revolve around your character surviving. You will need to adopt every habit of bad faith gaming which sucks the life out of many tabletop groups; you will have to meta game, you will have to rest after losing a more than marginal amount of resources no matter what, you will have to create new kinds of tedium simply because tedium works.

And on tedium, the Crusades system is simply that bad. It is a scaled down strategy game which takes too long to work through (mostly due to the forced animations) and it nearly totally disconnected from your main story. There are, again, difficulty options to attempt to curb this annoyance, but that can make the situation far worse: if you relinquish control over the Crusades, you will inevitably and automatically build things which will cause disapproval among your ranks.

This game has a modding scene, but there devs have a slightly obnoxious attitude towards it. They disable achievements while it detects that you have gameplay mods on, as if to 'tut tut' us for cheating. That in and of itself would be merely eye roll inducing except that most Quality of Life mods also triggers the achievement disable. That means you are at least heartily discouraged from fixing the game yourself, which isn't great for a game so obviously flawed.

Finally, I must give a thought about the implementation of alignment. Wrath of the Righteous lives and dies on the alignment mechanic-- your character's morality and where it places them in the polarized cosmos. A story like this will likely become impossible to tell, since Paizo has now moved on from publishing for the Pathfinder RPG, in favor of Pathfinder 2nd Edition. This massively overhauls most of the rules of the game, and now they seem intent to sweep away many artifacts of the original rpg which were intent on making the transition from one to the next easier. It was decided that alignment was, at the best of times, contradictory and confusing. Given that, the choices for approaching this story may fall between a ten year old set of books which require a group of competent players to run or this piece of software. It is a shame that I have to report that, even in terms of convenience, just buying the books and reading through them may provide an easier, if incomplete experience.

I thought I'd complete the game before making this review, but two abandoned characters and a hundred hours on, my hand was forced, and it was forced to a negative review. A glitch of some kind broke the main quest's progression, and I cannot move on to Act 4 of the story. Realize that all of these severe problems I have mentioned to you crop up fairly early in the game. None of this is mentioning Act 4, which seems to get universal derision for having a needlessly difficult to navigate map and quest lines.

There is an overwhelming amount of good writing in this software, but time and time again the 'game' will present you with obnoxious hurdles before you can get from one piece to the next. So many unique and interesting companions don't get their time to shine because their niche overlaps with yours too much, or they're just not that useful. Getting locked into certain kinds of decisions gives replay value, yes, but that involves going through all of that again. And I can't for the life of me recommend a game which has proven so difficult in every way it shouldn't be.

TL:DR Great story which is all gas no breaks all the way through… but a glitchy, frustrating and inadequate shell of mechanics and systems entrap it and keep it from soaring to the heights it needs to.

[am-ace-stelaire]

hmmmm

OC ask meme: drawing studies

Tag the post with the names of your Original Characters when you reblog it, so that people can request a specific one, if they want to.

🖐️ - draw your OC’s hand or hands. What’s distinctive about them?

🥾- draw your OC’s boots. Not shoes - boots. In what circumstances do they wear them?

💃 - character in their dance, party or wedding outfit.

🐝 - character with their daemon (or animal familiar.)

🌈 - represent the colour palettes used in your OC’s clothing.

🎨 - represent the colours you use to draw your OC - hey, this might be a useful reference…

👶 - OC in their youth; or, if they didn’t have one, at the beginning of their journey; this may be shown as background.

👵 - character shown older, or if they do not age, at the end of their journey; this may be shown as background.

🗝️ - character depicted with something revealing of their personality, secrets or motivations.

👜 - Personal items carried by or associated with your OC, in an arrangement, labelled.

🦺 - character’s work uniform or work outfit. If they don’t work, reinterpret or take 🎭

🎭 - character study (happy) and character study (sad), presented together.

🪞- draw character with a mask or mirror used to represent an aspect of themselves.

🤟 - drawing representing the culture, native language, national origin, or other formative influence of the character.

🏇 - drawing based on most recent emoji + your character.

[why-i-love-comics]

X-Men: Before the Fall: The Sinister Four #1 - "Lonely Hearts Club" (2023)

written by Kieron Gillen art by Paco Medina, Edgar Delgado, & Fer Siguentes-Sujo