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hythlodaeus-mynewoldfriend · 4 months

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♥ (18) Does your OC have a “type”? For all of them. Yes I know that's a lot.

Thank you Jess and @mimble-sparklepudding for asking! Sorry it took a hot second but like Jess said its a lot of ocs (7 in total) and I am prone to rambling (however i tried my best to not get too rambley so things make sense). Anyway hope you enjoy!

She doesn't have too much in the way of looks, but taller than her while a default is also a preference. What Sib gravitates towards most are people that feel or offer some kind of freedom. While she had many one night stands (she had to catch up to the thancred numbers i'm sorry) they were only offering the freedom of expectations because none of them really wanted anything more than just sex, except for that one lancer npc in the HW trusts she broke his heart a little sorry my dude. When it comes to longer term relationships she wants someone that can free her from the life she's lived and will continue to do so when needed, but also more importantly give her the freedom to be herself and explore what that is and means. Thancred gives her the most freedom and agency of her major relationships all while still keeping her grounded in reality. Not to say the other ones didn't offer any its just that with Haurchefaunt he offered her agency but not the freedom from her sheltered life since he was still within high society (her parents would have given him their title nullifying bastard status). Ardbert offered freedom from the choices and life she had been leading up to that point, but not the agency to explore what it all meant for her because there would be an obligation to be whoever they needed her to be. Her first love Jalshir was in the middle but they were both so young and so idealistic that it would have translated in disaster if Sib had managed to run away with him. So all in all Sib's type is someone that offers some kind of freedom and agency in her life.

It would be quite simple to say that Demos when it comes to females his type is "Ones who could easily kick his ass" but its a bit more than that. The women that he gravitates towards are ones that are self assured and have a connection or love for their home. Its the connection to home that really strikes a chord with him, as he's someone that was a mess of a person being so far from his, like he didn't feel like himself or that he would continue to be who he found himself to be there, while Sib had no idea who she was he was very sure only to start doubting it and having a hard time assimilating the new ideas of what that meant until the end of ShB. So women like Yugiri and Lyna really resonate with him even if he's not fully aware of it, and they vibe with his quiet listening and observation of the world around him.

When it comes to male partners he's drawn to those that are extroverted and hypemen to an extent. Demos is someone that just listens and observes so having a partner that will do nothing but talk for hours on end doesn't bother him, he finds it interesting and fun to see the world they weave and share. He's also drawn more to the artsy types because they seem to just understand each other better and are more accepting of his ways of communication that can at times be simply drawing a picture to express his thoughts and feelings. Like there's this kind of artistry that comes from people who have experienced the world and a multitude of people that just translates to this understanding that just works and hard to put into words.

They're drawn to the more gentle spirits of life. While a gentle spirit themselves its very comforting to find someone else that fits and understands that. The main ships I have for them is Hythlodaeus and aus with Hermes, both of whom also have different perspectives on the value of lives which can be placed on a scale of "Everything deserves to have a chance". Hyth with his inability to say no to concepts and Hermes in his determination to rule out all options before putting a creation down. It also has to do with their ways of not disregarding imperfect things, Anthea is so susceptible to creating things that aren't their creations even when making multiple of the same things is a lot like baking homemade cookies in that they're all cookies but they all are slightly different shapes have different ridges and chocolate placement, and both find this kind of value within them. Like these are people that see their insecurities in the day to day and gives Thea hope without even fully knowing it by having this more positive outlook on such things. Unfortunately though I will note that this is a curse along with a blessing because the timing is everything for Hermes and Thea to work out in a positive manner, if it doesn't work out the two will feed off one another's despair and it will become a never ending cycle.

To preface, Deimos is aroace so what his descriptions refer to are the platonic relationships in his life. This man though seeks people that will take the time to see him and only him. See growing up Deimos was a prodigy (until Menphina he was the youngest for many things) and it was discovered pretty quickly in his schooling and because of it was moved to higher grade levels where the only reason he stayed where he was, was because his parents didn't think it the best idea to have him be in classes without Hades there since there was that age gap. Because of this the two were always paired together and many teachers referred to the other as the other's cousin eliminating any individual identity, which while that is almost a norm this kind really would have stifled any talents, creativity, and drive to seek the positions they ended up in the two had that were valued in Ancient society. Outside of academics and society at large though no one really took the time to engage with Deimos because there was a misunderstanding of just what was happening, that Hades eventually understood because he answered every question that boy had and noticed that Deimos wasn't simply moving about or having his hands do something constantly because he was bored it was just a way for him to focus, because no matter the question thrown at him Deimos had an answer for it that was thoughtful and correct. Hyth was the same way in that he listened and engaged with Deimos ignoring the supposed "boredom" behaviors which led to the same conclusion. When he got older and looking for his own passion in life, Lahabrea was the one (future) mentor that didn't outright disregard the far fetched idea of a creation he presented and offered a quick critique of it before promptly leaving to some meeting or another an interaction that the man hardly remembers as Deimos was very much prone to just asking strangers just anything he felt they could have an opinion on and the old man was preoccupied with other things. Like despite all the relationships he has to people in a superficial sense the deeper ones really do involve those that right off the bat didn't lump him with Hades, seeing him as his own person, and listen to him and will respond in kind so he too can listen and have engaging discussions which leads to him opening up more.

Now this is kind of going a little into the different universe he originally came from but it's important that you know of his prior relationships. This man gravitates to people that are very decisive in life. People that have this wonderment for life and the world around them. People that take in moments and somehow manage to keep their head in the clouds. Because as much as he likes to put an air on that he's not like this at times he very much is and it does take being around people that are always like that and unashamed in it. People that encourage him out of his shell and also just see him for him and still love that about him. Now there's probably some questioning on well how does Themis fit into this? To which the answer is, in this universe Conner is the archetype that he gravitates to in other universes, whereas Themis is Conner. There are things that will always be true of Conner, but there's been no opportunity for him to be shamed or need to be hidden that put these walls up (no being a stranger in a strange land, no hiding because someone is trying to kill off your family line, no illicit deals to a mob boss so you're in debt to them, no being undercover in a place that detests your kind because that was the favor the mob boss cashed in) so he's able to be decisive, have his head in the clouds a bit more, and just be more open about his wonderment. And from everything that I've seen and my interpretation it seems like Themis very much has these same qualities but there is a wall there because of his duty. Themis is a man that found joy in the antics of Azem when it came to the whole saving an island because of some good grapes, a man that cheekily used his position of power to win one over Lahabrea, a man that took a chance on a supposed prophecy (the validity of which varies from Azem to Azem, my personal little guy was simply joking/being a little sarcastic so it was coincidence) and waited for the arrival of a falling star that may or may not have come. Like there are many hints of who he was outside of the title Elidibus and part of what makes it such a tragedy, and it was that person that Conner gravitated to. He saw beyond that title and mask, and sure the wall was thicker and harder to get through than Conner's in his og universe, but it was still there, it came through behind closed doors and those times when the uniformity of their society worked in their favor to be out in public. So like all in all, Conner gravitates to decisiveness, extroverted, wonderment, and a dreamer.

Stasia isn't one to have many relationships in her life both platonic and romantic/sexual, there's a danger to them and so its safer to just not have to deal with it at all. However! this doesn't stop them from happening and it is different in terms of gender. Females Stasia gravitates to those that hold anger, feel they've been wronged by the world in some way, and want to serve in some manner. Like her partner will always be equal to her but there's a trust that has to be earned first, so there's some servitude to be expected, but Stasia also loves a woman that can and wants to take care of herself and is ambitious. Even if they are not successful yet the fact that they are is what Stasia is after and will help them. This is what happened with Carly and why Carly is always her primary partner, though they do bump heads now and then which results in minor dramatics of break ups. In terms of men, Stasia gravitates the ones that talk (which is a bit of a broad definition), that let her do her own thing, but still have this tenderness about them and how they treat her especially in the night. In her original universe Stasia had two male love interests, the first of whom was the father of her child, and he was a man that respected her and treated her status as legitimate as the woman just made her own kingdom, but he liked to tell stories of his adventures and complimented her and listened to her when she did speak. It could never be more than a few times a year that he would visit as he was married and had his own duties to tend to, but it was the treatment of her that just spoke to her and what made him be her choice to have him be the one that fathered her child. Her second one was that of her creator that really gave her a lot of power but he, at first, took a lot of what she had to say into consideration and kept her as an equal from the start, man loved to talk and be dramatic in the same vein as Lestat from the movie version of Interview with the Vampire, so suffice it to say he didn't last long and really was mostly for sex. Now! for ffxiv this becomes Urianger that she kind of has a thing with but not really but yes they do. The two met though when handling the Void Ark and in some of the minor dealings Stasia had with the WoD, but most of their interactions happened in the Void Ark storyline. Now this is a man that is willing to try and look past initial impressions and which side a person is on, which works for Stasia and he manages to get some conversation out of her that comes easily to him because he hides it in his words and thoughtful responses. He also sees the benefit of her style of making choices and executing them, but he also cares for those around him and there were plenty of times he could have let her just die or be in pain and he opted not to do that and Stasia in her life hasn't really had anyone that chooses her and chooses to care what happens to her. Now this isn't to say that he forgives all her wrong doings or is in agreement of the choices she made/makes but he has an understanding and acknowledgment of when they can provide positive benefits. Like there's just this air about him that calls out to the parts of her that have been hurt and broken from the people in her life. And really at the end of the day that's what Stasia gravitates to, people that validate who she is and her beliefs but also have the ability to heal parts of herself that she will never acknowledge outside of very specific circumstances and choose to do so.

It is so easy to just say she loves evil people but its not that simple. Because the two love interests Carly has in ffxiv (one of whom is from the og universe) are not as simple. We can start with the fact that Carly does not want to ever feel powerless, she spent her entire childhood being powerless and abused, so she wants a gravitates to people that will either grant her power or not stifle her ambition to have more power. Stasia and Zenos both check this box. Stasia in that Carly was still pretty low in the ranks of the Garlean army when they met having just been passed up by Gaius as he chose Livia over her, so Stasia coming in and offering her a position of protection at the royal family level only to then find out what Stasia was capable of magic wise, and who she was working with, it was a no brainer. It was then the treatment of Stasia to Carly that just cemented her loyalty and love as Stasia never looked down at her, treated her like an equal, and stood up for her until she had the confidence to stand up against the Unsundered and their orders (she wasn't loyal to them what did it matter). Zenos fulfills this because he showed time and again he does not care to be around people that cannot hold their own both on and off the battlefield, he actively encourages her drive to gain power to achieve her goals, and he gave her more power because near anything he had and gained he shared it with her. The other thing that Carly gravitates for is validation for her past and present. Stasia always knew the anger and hatred carried for the world, but she never let it be something to hold that woman back, she justified how right she was for doing so without ever once asking just why she held such emotions. Zenos is the only person that ever actually got to see Carly in her "true" form (aka the body she had before becoming a dark knight and letting her esteem take over full time) and confirm that she really wasn't that person anymore, that there was strength for who she was but she is beyond that woman now and nothing else matters or exists. Like for someone that internally at times felt like she was still that girl that was so desperate to leave her mother she killed her and then kept finding more and more reasons why that young woman wasn't good enough, it was such a solidifier in her mindset to know that she was and will never be seen as that version ever again. Which I guess the short of it is Carly wants someone that will grant her power, give her the freedom to pursue what she wants, validate who she is and not judge her for it, and if you do all of that then congrats you have her undying and unwavering loyalty and love.

#look there are concepts in my brain that make a lot of sense and i tried #but anyway enjoy the novel!#siberite akagane oc #demos reyes oc #anthea oc #carly oc #stasia oc #constantinos oc #deimos oc #siberite headcanon #demos headcanon #anthea headcanons #carly headcanon #stasia headcanon #deimos headcanons #constantinos headcanon

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sbeep · 3 years

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Okay but! I am deeply disappointed with how homosexuality was handled in Skyrim. Thoughts on Nords and the gays?

I actually am fine with how bisexuality and homosexuality were handled in Skyrim. I like that it was so much of a non-issue that no one commented on the genders of spouses.

Sometimes I just want to play in a world where LGBTQ+ people EXIST, and its not any kind of big deal. To be accepted without comment, sneer, or second glance? To choose a m/m or f/f marriage in a Viking-esque genre usually so mired in machismo? To simply be bi or gay in an open world game and have that choice be as open and in your hands as the armour you choose to wear? Luxurious.

Of course, the lack of them out in the wild (lol) NPC cast is always something to be worked on, but given how much more same-sex couples and gender-nonconforming people crop up in the NPC population of TES Online, their learning curve was so fast that I am not going to pick Skyrim apart for it. It was 2011. 10 years ago gaming culture was very different.

Skyrim was more revolutionary than most Bioware games for letting you marry any of the options regardless of your player character’s gender. (No one ever says ‘sorry I’m not into you that way’ after hours of flirting like Cassandra from DAI, which is an experience I still feel negatively about 7 years later).

THIS. BEING. SAID. I do, sometimes, want to explore the issues and quasi-realities of same-sex couples in fictional universes. My personal canon may reflect this. Now, on with the fiction.

TLDR: Nords don't care who you fuck, only who you marry, and those two things aren't always related anyway.

Some actual canon I’m interested in preserving:

Nords and the governing/religious bodies of the region simply do not care what gender of person is standing in front of the altar, be they man, woman, nb or any other.

Nords elect their kings and jarls, take apprentices and anoint heroes by their deeds. Skyrim is not a culture obsessed with blood legacy.

The Nord goddesses of marriage and sex are separate and different entities, but both are deities of love.

Shor, the now-dead head of the Nord gods, had two partners.

In order to keep this from meandering, I’m going to broach it from a specific perspective.

My character, Tal, is bisexual. He was born in Bruma, the nord-majority city of the Empire’s central province. I don’t think he had good experiences while living there. The Empire is a culture of hereditary emperors, assimilated culture and huge emphasis on legacy. I don’t think the Empire is an especially welcoming place for LGBTQ+ people. Of course they’re present, but not public. Plenty of married commanders and governors and commoners take same-sex lovers. Magic and alchemy exists to help people transition.

But I think at the end of the day in the Cyrodiilic empire, if you cannot marry and make a legal biological heir, you are not fulfilling the cultural mandate placed on marriage. Imperials, like Ancient Romans, won’t care who you go to bed with but eventually expect everyone to produce children and continue a family legacy in a biological way. I think they dismiss bi and gay people as frivolous, short-sighted and more interested in selfish pursuits than duty and responsibility.

For this reason I think Bruma and Skyrim are havens for same-sex couples.

We see example in TES4, Oblivion, of nords living together out of wedlock. I think for most classes of people in nord society, this is a great way to live. Weddings are expensive and wasteful, and if you keep the gods in your home and heart why would you need to prove your love in front of a priest?

When Tal moves to Skyrim as a teen, he’s presented with an extremely different culture to the heartland of the Empire. He sees men hold each other by tavern fires, women laugh and kiss after they throw each other to the ground in the training ring. He’s quiet and takes a while to be open about any of his preferences, but the open attitude of nords to love and partnership only helps him on the way.

Nords are ancient-- their Atmoran culture has been around for so long and gone through so much strife that they know you can’t always count on a blood tie to survive, but you can fall in love and choose a family every single day.

If you’re a noble Nord, or someone who worries about their reputation in circles further afield than Skyrim, then it might be a different story. Other cultures-- Imperial, Breton, Altmer, i think-- will always recognise a legitimate natural born heir over a bastard or adopted one. In these cases a nord might choose to marry a spouse against their preference and make a child for political or inheritance purposes, while engaging with other partners on the side.

The once-leader of the Nord gods did this. Shor was wed to Kyne, but his bed-wife (consort? concubine? lover? second wife?) was Dibella. Kyne is a mother-goddess. Dibella is deity of beauty and physical pleasure. Mara- the goddess of marriage, family life and protection-- isn’t even involved! Nords have a whole goddess that overlaps marriage and platonic love! Marriage is only a romantic affair in more recent Imperial-influenced times, I think. Marriage for nords is an alliance, an oath. If you romantically love your ally and make heirs with them? So much the better.

Tal married Eivør, a woman, in the end because he loves her. He games fame and renown and so does she, and they want to declare their union for all to hear. Tal and Eivør also love and live with Kato, but Kato doesn’t marry either of them. Whatever the Ashlander or Orc attitudes to marriage, Kato doesn’t want it, and their relationship has always been intensely personal. It’s not a love that they feel the need to shout from rooftops, they’re not promising to fight at each others side in this life and the next.

But Skyrim is the kind of place where they can sit in the shittiest backwater inn in the country, and the innkeep with smile and ask if they’d like to share a room.

Nords know that sometimes, that’s all you need.

#skyrim trash tag #had to rein it in because its 3am #but good ask #Personal canon

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utilitycaster · 3 years

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Wizard breakdown tracker week 2: episode 132

Welcome again to the post in which I assess how close the various wizard NPCs of Exandria are to Losing It, an exercise in reminding me that though things may seem dark now, one day Trent Ikithon will be brought to justice, which is the fun euphemism I have for “zero hit points and also on fire”.

I suspect we’re really only going to see Essek for a while such that this may eventually become a space for real thoughts on Essek, wildly speculative thoughts on the volstrucker wizards, Allura/Kima domestic fluff, and elaborate jokes about Eadwulf’s name and Yussa’s predicament, but I am committed.

As a reminder: Caleb Widogast is not eligible due to being a PC. Wizard NPCs for whom I have no updates, whether it’s because they have not appeared recently or simply because I don’t find them interesting enough; my deepest apologies to the Oremid Hass stans.

Someone in my notes from last week’s post asked where Known Gem Wizard Hotsauce Lutefisk was. The answer is that he is in a gem. Hope this helps.

Archmage of Antiquities Lady Vess DeRogna is still dead.

Ludinus Da’leth: with Yussa (hopefully temporarily) out of the running he’s suddenly feeling more confident in his chances at winning Wildemount’s Least Fucks Given competition but doesn’t know why, and with Jester in the north a sudden sense of peace has come upon him.

Conclusion: 0/10. He’s taking a nap in his tower in a sunbeam like an evil cat as we speak.

Trent Ikithon: It’s only been a day or so since Caleb delivered what is truly probably the sickest burn he’s ever experienced; this man probably doesn’t care about 99% of what people say to him but Caleb saying he’s not the biggest thing on his mind? That’s gonna hit. Also presumably the trail went cold after Nicodranas, in more ways than one.

Conclusion: 5/10 and simmering; by the time the Nein return to civilization he should be about ready to explode.

Essek Thelyss: While it’s only been a few hours honestly I think he’s already doing better. He’s in a weird freezing ruin and there was a fight with another one coming, but he’s being useful! He’s been given trust and friends! He got to show off a lot of very cool spellcasting! Also have you ever been super anxious and your friends, rather than trying to talk through anything, are just incredibly fucking weird to the point where it takes your mind off things because what is happening even? That’s the mood. Oh and also, he may still be worried about the Assembly bearing down on him but I have to imagine Yasha’s display of swordcraft is helping.

Conclusion: 7/10. To paraphrase Caduceus there’s a certain baseline of happiness when you’re in a freezing ruin full of brown mold, but the distraction is welcome.

Astrid Beck: It’s tough that she’s offscreen because like, her mental state is going to be governed heavily by Trent’s but specifically if he seems on to her. Also while my bets are against the volstrucker trying to teleport into the ruins of Aeor she’s probably going to be in a worse state if she might have to face Caleb again.

Conclusion: holding at 8/10 until further notice.

*Black Francis voice* I believe in Mr. Eadwulf Grieve: *sits backwards on chair* Look, son/daughter/child, we all at some point in our lives project a lot of things on to a mysterious but intriguing NPC. Your Verins; your Urayas; your Vandrans. Mine? Well, mine is a wizard whose name we don’t entirely know how to spell and who we mostly know is strong and likes the Raven Queen and was not exactly the third wheel we long believed him to be. Anyway, I like to imagine Eadwulf as a calming presence, with Astrid the more-high-strung leader, albeit calming presence because he immediately gets drunk after stressful situations.

Conclusion: I’m going to say 4/10. I think he’s one of those people who’s like, super smart but also when the problem is not directly in front of him he’s like well nothing to be done now.

Pumat Sol: Much as I love him, no updates for now and he will probably be moved to the “not recently seen” group. I hope a heavily disguised Yeza has stopped by though for more top toys after one of the mobsters got really into it.

Conclusion: 1/10, respectfully.

Allura Vyesoren: She is assuming at this point no news is good news, which will change after a few days, but also Lady Kima keeps busting in with a sword the size of herself yelling “I JUDGE THEE, MAGICIAN”

Conclusion: holding at 3/10.

Yussa Errenis: WE BUILT THIS CITY! WE BUILT THIS CITY ON WIZARD’S SOULS!

Congrats on the gender, sorry about...you know.

Conclusion: to ℵ-null and ℵ-null and beyond/10. In related news I am submitting a bug reports to both Tumblr and Google Docs for not accounting for the outlier formatting case of Cardinality Georg.

#as mentioned elsewhere nothing is funnier than just calling Ikithon Tront #but puns on other wizards' names are very funny #critical role #critical role spoilers #wizard breakdown tracker #your music references this week were Mr. Grieves by the Pixies and We Built This City by Jefferson Starship

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pemfrost · 3 years

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D&D interest check/info

This is something I've been debating about doing for a while... with my current campaign ending soon now seems like a great time :)

I've sent a msg to those who responded to my original post :) Here is some more information:

Basic Information:

Beginner Friendly

No D&D experience necessary!

We will do two small introductory maps (one combat heavy and one rp based) before jumping into a full story/campaign

Character creation will be done on dnd beyond. The website is amazing and walks you through the entire process so you can focus on your character and not numbers.

I will guide you on when/what to roll, and combat will be simplified a bit because we are playing via text instead of live.

All time zones welcome

This will be a text based campaign over discord with no set session/meeting times

There may be optional live sessions, and we will take time zones into consideration for everything (My current campaign has players from multiple countries, so I am familiar with the difficulties live sessions can create lol)

Content

We will discuss any triggers or squicks players have before beginning. The goal is for everyone to be comfortable. This will be done anonymously, though you're also welcome to talk to me directly anytime.

I ask all players be 18+ even if it is a completely sfw story.

I'm still deciding on a campaign, but I plan on using a premade oneshot to acclimate us before diving into a bigger story.

The goal is to have fun, so the larger campaign theme will be tailored to fit the players' preferences (ie, sandbox, dungeon crawler, epic quest, ext).

Game play basics

Text based 'play by post' with supplemental maps/images

No minimum words per post

Rolling will be done straight in discord via a bot

Gameplay will be slower than traditional games, a session spread out over days/weeks/months instead of one 3-5 hour session

Pacing will be dependent on how often players are available.

Each player will have a set time period to do actions/roleplay before we progress. We will work out what works with everyone's schedule. Ideally, players will be able to post within 2-3 days, with a max stretch of 1 week.

I will be fairly active as the DM, responding as needed with NPC actions/World info. (Lite stuff between 11-4 est and heavy/detailed stuff between 7-10 est during the week, weekends vary for me).

Roleplay your comfort level. Feel free to describe in detail or simply state what your character does. Everyone will have different preferences and playstyles.

If you read that wall of text and are still interested HURRAY! Reply to this post or send me a private message. I'm working on setting up the dnd discord with information and stuff. My goal is to send invites soon and start to get a feel for the type of campaign everyone is interested in so I can get started on prep

#long post #Pem does things

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rainofaugustsith · 3 years

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SWTOR asks

Going to answer these for myself because I am trying to get my head back to writing. 1. Least favorite class story?

Jedi Knight. Hands down.

2. Least favorite companion on the Imperial side?

Skadge is the obvious choice.

3. Least favorite companion on the Republic side?

Doc. No fucking question.

4. Least favorite expansion?

Oricon or Iokath. Both because there's no way to complete the story without Ops, and that simply sucks. Also Iokath because it kicks off the traitor arc and the Commander doesn't have a way to say "I'm not allying with any of you. All of you need to get off my lawn now."

5. Least favorite Kotfe/Kotet chapter?

KOTET chapter 1 because of the walker, and because it actually is hard to see Voss being destroyed. You go through the same areas you played through in the class story/planetary arc and seeing it all in pieces is sad. Also because of the ridiculousness of it being a dark side choice if you don't want that Zakuulan in your Alliance.

I don't begrudge the game giving players a chance to save that person if they want. Obviously, a lot of people want to save him, and cool, you do you. I do have a lot of very strong criticism for Bioware's decision to only allow for extremes, and to make refusing a DS choice. Like if you don't forgive and actively, closely associate with someone who has directly caused you great physical and emotional harm, and if you don't want that character to be there instead of Lana and Theron in the end, that's somehow bad? Okay, Bioware. Please fuck off now and keep fucking off until the end of time for that one.

Runner-up: chapter 8 because that choice was NOT necessary. If you had enough Alliance Specialist influence or had done enough Alliance alerts you should have been able to save both. It's awful. And there's a walker again. The only reason this is not first is because you can pull back the lost companion at the Odessen terminal and I certainly have on my bounty hunters.

In KOTFE, chapter 10 because no, I actually really don't want to help Kaliyo.

6. Least favorite romance?

I don't think it's a good idea to say. There are very few romances in the game I do - I'm sapphic and so are my characters, generally. There are some romances that I honestly personally think "I cannot even begin to understand WHY a single person anywhere in the universe would ever like this or want to romance this character." But people do like them and they have that right, and I don't need to understand it. I just filter out those characters' names and ignore it.

7. Least favorite planet?

Hoth. In addition to the confusing maps that always get me lost, the screens of solid white snow tend to induce headaches for me. I usually get on and off Hoth without doing any side quests because it's physically painful. I really wish they would make a night mode for Hoth. I had a graphics bug once where the sky was dark and it was so lovely.

8. Least favorite flashpoint?

Either of the Ilum ones tied with Spirit of Vengeance because they are like seventeen hours long each and boring as hell. I really like the purple crystal you get at the end of Battle of Ilum but I have enough of them and I can't be induced to run that arc anymore unless it's a Viri clone OR a character who can stealth through the flashpoints.

9. Most embarrassing or bullshit way you have died in game?

Walking across a room. Walking in my ship. Opening a fuse box. Clicking things. It's not a bug, it's a feature. ;) I've also done plenty of falling off cliffs and buildings, forgetting I'd left a character in a combat zone when I went to get a snack, and so on.

10. Worst multiplayer experience?

Most of the last year or so on Star Forge. I invested in transferring most of my characters off Star Forge because that server had become unplayable. Ninjas, people stealing objectives, people trying to drag me into their mobs so I'd fight their NPCs, duel spammers, people who dress their companions in slave costumes - I'd had way too much of that. If I had not transferred them all I think I would have quit the game because it was unbearable.

11. Worst fandom experience?

Eh. There are always fandom sheriffs. There are always people wailing when certain characters get screen time. There are always those who are behaving badly in other ways. As someone wise once said, the worst thing about Star Wars fandom is the fans. I filter and block very liberally and do not fucking engage. It's not worth my time or energy, it's just worth blocking them. It's why I have asks turned off entirely and PMs turned off unless someone is a mutual. Fandom's supposed to be fun and nobody has to give even a second of attention to those who are trying to make it not fun.

#swtor #swtor critical #fandom critical #kotet spoilers #doc critical #arcann critical #I don't think I HAVE to tag Skadge critical because I think most of us don't like him?

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writing-frenzy · 4 years

Text

Airplane gets Ghosted~

Brain: :D

Me: Oh no, what did you do.

Brain: Let’s make another Airplane Harem~

Me. 🥺 why are you like this?!

Note: Inspired by A Crowd of Evil Spirits Lines Up to Confess to Me; pretty funny horror unlimited flow story, with some good scares that leave ya at the edge of your seat. (I really love the Protagonist, so good and pure and I headcannon as Aro-Ace~) So anyways, for those who don’t know, in the novel, the Protagonist Gu Wuji is a genuinely good person, an aspiring actor on hard times who suddenly gets pulled into this horror survival game. Here is the thing; while for others this is a truly cursed and terrible thing, for the protag this is just a regular day, just with some people who need some help; he will help Ghosts just as much as he would help a human.

Ghost: *being Scary*

Gu Wuji: Oh no, let me help you? *smiles*

Ghost: *either a blushing mess, happy to be helped, or can feel how strong this human is and is the one scared instead*

So yeah, here this man goes, bewitching everyone he meets, especially terrifying Ghosts who want him to die so they can stay together forever 🙃 Lucky he is so charming, and that with every Instance cleared, he can get points to get items and information/hints from the store.

And then I though about Airplane being in this position and I just grinned.

So, to preface this, I’m going to go on how I think Airplane has been raised in this AU.

Basically, since our favorite writer was young, Airplane was pretty much raised by ghosts. With two increasingly furious and arguing parents who couldn’t care less about him, they don’t notice at all how weird their kid is, not wanting to be reminded of old memories. So thus start’s Airplane’s growing up more comfortable with the headless car-crash victim who helps him know when his bullies are around then actual living people who only seem to try and tear each other apart more then most dead ever want to. Not to say he hasn’t met some mean dead too, but all they seem to care about is just scaring him off so they can be alone. Which, fair.

Just... Airplane is still Airplane, but for him, normal is dealing with the Ghostly Neighbor who will at least hear him out most of the time, especially since most Living people are assholes.

(Also, Airplane will have some of the strength that Gu Wuji is known for, but he mostly just has a really good head for intelligence, logistics, plots, and strategy... Let’s just say Airplane has seen and been through some shit in his younger years.)

I am also being a gremlin and making Shen Jiu and Yue Qi be the friends Airplane makes in middle school, Shen Jiu being superstitious as fuck and Yue Qi going along with it, even as he because more WTF the longer they are friends with Airplane and fully realize ‘Shit, ghost are fucking real, nope, nope, nope.’ It is a beautiful, disaster of a trio and their friendship is eternal... (even if Shen Jiu will never forgive/hold over Yue Qi for leaving him with the ghost in the fucking burned down Mansion, even if Airplane fixed it; apparently it had something to do with their previous incarnations?)

So yeah, these guys are released out into the world, where Airplane writes really good, if bloody dramas, asking his Ghost Friends if he can use some of their stories and them either not caring or excited as they give him the go ahead. (The Police have some questions...)

Sure, he writes some bad porn on the side, but with some of his Ghost friends able to beta read for him, Airplane is able to stay a float nice and easy, if still anxious every time he has to pay the rent because human interaction is so hard when you’re dealing with the living. (Don’t have to worry about meeting someone’s eyes if they’re gouged out after all)

And then we get to the Instances :) (Now, besides the first one that does happen First, these others could happen with one or two between them.)

First Instance(Novice): The Traitor’s Secret~

The fresh new Players, with some older ones here, is part of a Merchant Caravan that they just have to ensure gets from point A to point B, and just live. Simple mission as this is a Novice Instance for innocents pulled in. And it would have even remained a simple one, only having to deal with the wondering dead that are manageable, as they have plenty of supplies to ration and work with, if one of the Older Players wasn’t here with ulterior motives.

See, this ‘Senior’ managed to buy information that there is a great item that can be obtained; the thing is, one must betray their comrades in order to get it, with the first betrayal making the difficulty rise from the Novice to Intermediate immediately, as this as awakened a terrible Boss.

It probably would have gone smoothly (maybe....) but here is the thing.

As it turns out, ‘Senior’ didn’t buy enough information; after The First Betrayal, the Boss Ghost will sneakily become a part of the Party, acting much like a helpful NPC when really he is a trap; if the Betrayer betrays him, it is game over.

But the game is different this time; No one expects Airplane, who has the ability and instincts of a cockroach who was completely willing to hug a Ghost’s (well, NPC’s) thighs

Cue Shang Qinghua who is very confused, because after he sneakily becomes part of the group, this human has decided to cling to him of all people, the Creepy/Grumpy NPC, and not his fellow group members...

Airplane grows on SQH like a fugus, makes amazingly funny commentary, and even tells some interesting stories. On Airplane’s part, Shang Qinghua feels not only like the strongest guy here, but also the most reliably competent...

Not to mention he feels comfortable to be around, which is weird since Airplane doesn’t usually feel to comfortable with the living~ (ha ha ha, maybe because he’s a NPC? Though he still freezes with those guys too...)

As it is, because ‘Senior’ needs to betray everyone, he tries to get Airplane, who, again, is still a very, very morally ambiguous guy, sees this guy trying to kill him, and simply pushes them instead into a throng of the undead.

Airplane: Ah, sorry for the terrible sight Senior brother, but he was trying to kill us? Are you alright? Do you want a massage?

Shang Qinghua is incredulous, but becomes more charmed as time passes.

(Remembers, how his martial brothers, people who he had lived and worked beside all his life, so easily sold him out, trying to kill him only for him to suffer a fate worse then death. It was only so much time was passed, after having to spy and betray those who betrayed him before he finally had the release of death; but even then, his resentment was too strong, even the blood sealed onto his jade hairpin filled with resentment.)

It is this item he gives to Airplane, blushing as he does as he says if the other ever needs help, to just use the pin and it won’t lead him wrong.

When Airplane leaves the instance, he gets a system notice about the points he got, increased because of the Instance’s sudden level increase, as well as information on the item he received from Shang Qinghua

Shang Qinghua’ Hairpin: A Hairpin with deadly secrets, belong to A Spy with a vast network of information, be able to uncover hidden secrets with ease and learn anything you wish of with loyal shades at your command,

Level One: Summon two shades to gather information. (Each level up gets you another shade to do your bidding)

(He only has the information from level one, but once he levels it up, this is what else it can do)

Level 3: Your shades can now help you escape dicey situations

Level 5: Able to uncover the deadly poison hidden in the hollow of it, this deadly substance can poison Living and Dead both

Level: 7: Able to use the Hairpin like a deadly knife, the resentment enriching the wood to be harder and sharper then ever before.

(Past Level Seven, must full on stab someone in a vital place to discover this ability: Able to release one ensured fatal attack from the Hairpin; after that, it will continue to drop to a fifty-fity chance and before renewing each Instance.)

Level 10: be able to summon Shang Qinghua, the deadly competent Spy to your side to aid you; note, he will only help as much as he likes you and you are only truly safe from him for an Hour before he gets free range to do whatever he wants.

So yeah. this is Airplane’s first instance~ It was so terrifying, having to be around so many people and freaky monsters, but he thinks he made a friend? He hopes?

(He certainly gets one heck of an admirer.)(¬‿¬)

Second Instance(Novice): The Healer’s Broken Heart

So, next Instance, Airplane finds himself in an ancient, fantasy hospital with a group half novices and novices who at least survived two or three games after this. The challenge this time is two pair up into teams of two or threes and try and treat as many ‘patients’ in the hospital as one can. First, they have to collect all the medicine they need, prepare the Nursing rooms, and then, of course, treat at least five patients each, or face death for failing.

See, the patients are sorta, kinda, Undead they need to treat as if they were living, so they Have to do things like bandaging sliced throats, sew back on sliced limbs, and drain puss and other gross gory things to give nightmares. Not to mention that they have to follow regular rules like in most hospitals, so no running in the hall, no loud sounds, things like that when their are Ghosts everywhere. (As long as someone doesn’t break the rules, the Ghosts won’t notice you.)

As Airplane is a nervous wreck around people, and with this being a bad day for his anxiety, no one but one guy is willing to partner up with him, this gentle, sweet guy called Mu Fan, who’s amazing chill affects Airplane’s own chill and helps him feel a little better about the situation.

Ha~ Mu Fan is so nice and even knows so much about all the medicines and what to do here! He’s even helpful and nice when Airplane was about to have an anxiety attack, following what Airplane warned him about not touching him, but if he could, maybe hum if he could?

Of course Airplane can’t just let the other carry him the entire way! Mu Fan is just too nice and really helped him back there, so he wants to pay back at least a little. So, being this disaster that he is, instead of thanking Mu Fan and asking him if their is anyways to pay him back, Airplane uses his Hairpin instead to see if he could help the other out.

He gets an... interesting reaction...

Apparently, Mu Fan is actually Mu Qingfang, a Boss Ghost (tho Airplane only knows the other is a ghost) of this area, who can be activated in some ways; examples, if the Players try and hurt the Patients, if Players try and kill each other in cold blood, or try and steal Medicine. Mu Qingfang’s most sincere wish is to free his patients from this cycle of pain, hopefully be free from it for good.

This is the information that Airplane gets, what Mu Qingfang has been trying to discover for years with no luck.

Airplane: QAQ Mu Qingfang is truly too good, too pure for this world, wanting to help the other ghost past on and be out of pain.

On Mu Qingfang’s part, he saw this poor, distressed man and the doctor instincts in him went on fire as he did his best to help the other with their heart demons. But he was really, extremely impressed by them with how they treated his patients, taking care of their wounds like it was nothing, joking with the decapitated head as he sewed it back on, getting a breathless laugh from the woman as she cried happy tears from it. The doctor went really gooey though with how Airplane spellbound his audience of twins who needed to be separated after their parent had sown them together, the two young (very creepy as fuck) children begging for more, distracting from the pain of having to reattach their arms in the right places one more.

(Tries not to cry when this disaster of a Man says he has to do something first before he leaves after he finishes the five patients, only to bring a true gift back as he does. Mu Qingfang has nearly given up on his poor patients ever being free from this constant cycle of pain, their Bandit Killers, for such a small, evil group, never brought to justice only for Airplane to catch them all, bringing them to the hospital so that all their grievances can be aired out and payed back once and for all. It took a bit, and Airplane accidently raised the Level of the Instance himself this time doing it, but he got all the baddies round up and incapacitated as he did.)

Mu Qingfang is ever so grateful, even as Airplane offers to help the man finish up here before he leaves, the last doctor’s visit these ghost will ever need to have. He blesses Airplane with a powerful healing ability, along with a Doctor’s kit that is full of useful supplies, refilling ever day if needed.)

So, Airplane is back in his space, cleaning his hands and body because that was still gross (but not the worse thing he has dealt with) with new points and some good prizes once more, even if he isn’t sure why the level went up all of a sudden? The Bandits honestly weren’t that hard to trick and sabotage?

Mu Qingfang’s Medical Bag

Basically, like the Hairpin, full of goodies that can do more and more OP things the higher the Level it goes (and yes, has a secret poison function as well; Now Shang Qinghua can refill the Hairpin if he ever need to :D And yes, Mu Qingfang can be summoned with an Item in the bag once he gets to Level Ten..

Same with the Healing ability, it just gets more OP the higher the level, tho it doesn’t have a summoning ability, but will let you heal others as much as you want at Level Ten

So thus, this is Airplane’s second Ghost ‘Friend’~ (〃￣︶￣)人(￣︶￣〃)

Instance Three (Intermediate): Guards of The Icy Village

So, Airplane is confident in himself, seeing as he’s managed Instances that go from Novice to Intermediate all the time, thinks ‘why not try an Intermediate, since my Novice experience will probably turn out like that anyways? (the fact that all the choices he has left are either Intermediate or Hard does not matter!)

Looking through his choices, he see a Limited Event One, with a Special Link to it; not knowing what this means but being effected by the Limited deal, he picks it.

(What this means is that there will be an Event in this Instance that will literally only be open this one time and can not be done ever again; Special Link Means that this Event will and can effect in even Higher Level Instances in the Future, depending on how Many +’s are in the title of it.)

This Event has a Max Number of +’s :)

So, he picks his choice and finds himself in this beautiful Icy wonderland with a group of other people. Everyone has to be set into teams here, guarding the snow village from evil spirits and monsters that would prey on it for five days and five nights. And because I want to, Airplane has been teamed up with Gongyi Xiao, Qin Wanrong, Qin Wanyue, and Qiu Haitang. As long as they protect their part of the Village, they will be able to pass the Instance and everything will be swell

(Is this me indulging in having some badass girls, and letting these characters not only get some damn scene time, but be able to be happy and live? Yes, yes it is, because let me explore these guys in this traumatic AU where they have to do all they can to live, and still be able to trust to have each other’s backs dang it)

So, the Huan Hua High Schooler group have already been through two instances at this point, Airplane has been through a lot, and Qiu Haitang has had one game that turned from easy to hard in a minute that she survived with luck and her wits (and gave her a crap ton of points and a need for survival classes she took asap before her next game). Airplane, because he doesn’t trust the fact that they’ll be okay if other parts of the Village they’re in are invaded, sends his spirits and some nifty golems he got from the shop to help patrol everywhere.

Because come on, if one place gets breached, of course the rest will be vulnerable! He’s played the Empire Building, Fortress Making games to prove it!

(Everyone nods, because this actually makes so much sense, how could they have ignored such an obvious trap! Intermediate Instances are no joke!)

Cue really scary as fuck ice monsters and evil spirits. Things are going good, Airplane and co are making it through, with Airplane discovering and making obsolete yet another trap unknowingly because he’s making sure everything is rationed(and using some points to actually buy some fooof) and checking in with villagers all over; because they are literally in charge of protecting and managing all these people, and with everything around here with the blizzard and seize, they have to make sure there is enough food and supplies for everyone.

(That this prevents making evil spirits and monster from rising with the Village is a big thing actually, because some of them are made from the dead.)

So then, the forth day comes; it starts out nice, no more harsh snows, people are coming out of their houses now, Airplane is nearly tearing his hair out from stress and too many people, but he can make do. (has had to make do with worse really)

And then he hears some of the Villagers are about to riot, planning to go at something with stones and pitchforks. Panicking, thinking these NPCs that he has to protect are trying to go outside their weight class, Airplane gets the others in his team and other teams who are useful to hopefully get the weak peasant class NPC out of danger as he goes about handling the problem himself, only to stop and start at the literal child bleeding in from of him.

For a moment, Airplane blanks... (Sure, he knows, from experience, that Children Ghosts are in fact some of the most, if not the most deadly ghost out there... And yet... for all the pranks and cruelty they played, they were always the ones who understood Airplane’s loneliness the most, being the most truthful and blunt and just honest with him...)

So, when Airplane sees this light blue demon child with horns and nasty claws, tear stains on his still baby fat cheeks even as they scowl and bare fangs, fear and anger in their eyes as they tremble before him, Airplane does not kill the child or run them out of the village.

It takes some coaxing, and it’s mostly hunger on the child’s part that wins in the end, but with the last of Airplane’s Jerky being torn through, he is able to treat the kid with his kit in his tent, even get them some cold soup to eat before they sleep.

Airplane has enough time to possibly panic over the fact ‘Wait, if there is a child there must be a parent’ before said Child’s Father appears in the Village the next morning, KO’ing two teams before almost killing his own before Airplane shakily presents them their well treated and contented child...

who doesn’t let go, until their parent raises an eyebrow, makes an amused huff, and easily grabs their child, even if it leaves Airplane with some nasty scratches and one less lucky charm necklace.

(The Future Mobei-Jun, still Mo Bolin, nearly cries, but stubbornly bites his lip as he does, glaring at anything and everyone around him, especially his parent and the warm person he has to leave here. He wants to keep them! They saved him when their was no gain for it, and even used much needed supplies to treat him, which Mo Bolin knows are important and guarded fiercely! They told interesting stories and had good food! He doesn’t want to leave them.)

Mo Bolin’s Father is very amused, and gives Shang Qinghua an ice power(shield) and a Teleporting Token.

So, when Shang Qinghua gets back from this instance, he gets some friend requests, a bunch of points for the best possible ending ever achieved in a game, and info about his new things.

he’ll only be able to make Shields and Barriers with his new Ice Ability, with the strength and number he can make increasing with each level.

With the Token, it allows him to teleport a limited range and places he either sees or has been. It can’t be leveled, but apparently, if he fulfills some sort of condition, it can be upgraded.

So, those are ideas I have for some of the Instances. Things not mentioned:

Time with the Instances is weird; Time still always moves forward, but it can easily skip around... So the next time Airplane accidently gets into a high Nightmare Grade Instance, He might see a fully grown Mo Bolin, now Mobei-Jun~

Another example of Time being weird with the Instances; Airplane obviously met Shang Qinghua first, but Shang Qinghua had been Betrayed and sold out to Mobei-Jun, the same Mobei-Jun that Airplane saved as a child :D

(Yes, Airplane will summon Shang Qinghua in an Instance with Mobei-Jun, and it will be gloriously awkward, even as Shang Qinghua is smug, because he can still see Airplane anytime the other wishes to summon him)

(This will probably lead to Mobei-Jun upgrading Airplane’s Token, making it to where it’s range is even greater now, and can summon him if Airplane wishes it.)

I am still on the fence of making Shen Yuan either a Ghost and part of the Harem, or a player who is bros with Airplane.

There is an Instance in their Real Life, where Qiu Haitang, Shen Jiu, Yue Qi, along with Airplane go along one hell of a Blast from the Past as they find out terrible secrets, things get resolved, there is much crying to be had, and everyone agrees to never mention the Instance ever again or so help them Shen Jiu will make them forget.

(Shen Jiu likes having a sister. Qiu Haitang likes having a brother she actually likes.)

Liu Qingge is a disaster; is he a player, is he a Ghost, is he a monster? Who knows, Airplane doesn’t. (I’m going to say he is a fellow player~ he just likes messing with Airplane.)

And thus, here is this AU~ Hope you guys like it~ EDIT: Noticed this was weird to read, so I added spaces: hope this helps.

#SVSSS #Scum Villain's Self-Saving System #Scum Villain's Self Saving System #Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky #Shang Qinghua #OG!Shang Qinghua #Mu Qingfang #Mobei-Jun #Ghosted Airplane AU

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onslaughtsixdotcom · 3 years

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Scaling Up Dragon Heist

Around April or May of 2019, I started to run Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, one of the official WotC 5e hardcovers. I’m still not done with it, although that is largely the fault of COVID and my own extensions to the campaign.

I think Dragon Heist is one of the better 5e modules by WotC. I think it’s got a strong playground for the characters, and Waterdeep has 30+ years of publication history to draw on. The release of the module also heralded in a HUGE amount of third party extension content, including the famous Alexandrian Remix. I hadn’t heard of this before I started running my campaign and having ideas about how to do it, so it didn’t influence me--although I’m sure we came to a lot of similar conclusions and ideas, based on common perceptions of what the actual flaws are of the module.

Still, despite those flaws, I think they help the module rather than hinder it. It gives the DM a shitload of room to improvise and draw in the margins, rather than some other 5e adventures which feel like they can’t be fucked with in the least.

Here’s the kicker: I started my adventure at level 4. We had a pre-existing party that I had run through the classic N1: Against the Cult of the Reptile God. (Fun fact: A map that I drew is the 3rd Google Images result for that. Woah.)

The party spent a few real-world weeks traveling across about 7 days of overland travel where I ran some drop in one shots; including Mike Krahulik’s Dusk (a Twilight parody) and a really fun 2 hour diversion where the players saw an ancient blue dragon take off the roof of a church during a wedding. Then they arrived in my city: Dawnharbour.

I don’t run the Forgotten Realms. I find it not to my taste. Most of the names suck. The lore is invariably boring or weird, and not the fun kind of weird. I was going to run Dragon Heist, and I was going to put it in my own city. I gave the players some justification previously for why they would want to go there: The cleric’s sister had been kidnapped by the Cult of the Reptile God and turned into a Yuanti; a snake person. The bard had stolen a golden statue of the Reptile God and wanted to melt it down and plate his violin with it. I told the cleric that they would need a high level magic user and someone in Dawnharbour could probably help them; ditto the bard needing a highly skilled magical blacksmith. The third player didn’t really care where they went since he was on the run from his home country. So, off to Dawnharbour. They reached level 4 when they got to the city.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the details of my city or everything I changed for the campaign. Instead, I’ll talk up some hard and fast ways to make the adventure work for a higher level party. Most of them revolve around the encounters. I’m assuming the party will start around level 4 or 5.

Chapter 1

The book opens with the players in the Yawning Portal, a famous tavern with a big ass well to a megadungeon underneath. (More on this later.) They’re hanging out doing whatever when a troll and some stirges pop out of the well. The book says that the players get attacked by the stirges while the owner of the bar, a typical Forgotten Realms 15th level Fighter running a fucking bar for a living deals with the troll.

A troll is CR 5. They can handle a troll. If they can’t, you have a bigger problem.

Next up the book leads them to a Zhentarim warehouse. When they get there it’s abandoned and there are (ugh) 3 Kenku. Kenku are like tengu if they sucked. They’re bird people who can only speak in mimickry, like parrots. They can only repeat words they’ve heard before. This is stupid as fuck (especially when a player wants to be one) but more importantly, they are incredibly weak. I think the kenku are just hanging out or they got captured by the Zhentarim who left them there after they bail or something like that. Whatever.

I put the Zhentarim there instead. I put like 20 Zhentarim. I used the Spy statblock; they don’t have a lot of CR and at level 4 or 5, the players are real slice and dicey about killing them. They can basically carve through two of these dudes in a turn. It was *really* fun to just have the players mow down these mooks. They used the 2nd floor to their advantage, casting Grease on the stairs and creating a bottleneck and then picking them off with ranged attacks and spells. I think I might have given the Zhents 1hp and treated them as minions (see 4e).

I think I had the police show up after they were all dead; someone heard the commotion and called the cops. I think I also put an NPC there; I shuffled around a bunch of the NPCs the module uses. (They got their quest to save Volo from Bigby in the Yawning Portal; instead of finding Volo here, I think they found my equivalent of Renaer Neverremember.) There was a day’s break between this and them going into the sewers in the next part.

The sewer introduces the Xanathar’s minions. I believe a Duergar is actually there and I took this as a sign--I made most of Xanathar’s mooks Duergar, and then decided--this dude is a Beholder and he has a Mindflayer for a lieutenant. The Xanathar’s forces should ALL be classic D&D dungeon monsters, like rust monsters and umber hulks and ropers. This gives you a wide variety of weird shit you can throw at your players at different CR levels, and the idea of a gangster Beholder who thinks hiring a bunch of umber hulks to go shake down a local deli is fucking hilarious. But, it doesn’t make them any less dangerous. Throw some umber hulks or something in this lair. Go nuts--the weirder, the better. Xanathar’s crew should have no qualm about hanging out with a gibbering mouther or a carrion crawler.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is the least developed chapter in the book. It also revolved around a bunch of Forgotten Realms faction nonsense that I wanted nothing to do with. I used this time instead to formally introduce the Xanathar, the Cassalanters and Jarlaxle. After they foiled his plans to rig a goldfish competition (think a dog show but for fish), the Xanathar became convinced the players worked for the Zhentarim and invited them to have a sit down about their intentions; if they worked for the Zhents he wanted to formally declare war. The players hated the Zhents--they killed an NPC they liked back during N1, partially to set this all up. Xanny was cool with that.

The Cassalanters were a way to introduce a new player. They call up the Blackstaff to say, hey we have a magic item, can you send a guy here to deliver it? (Magic item possession is illegal on the streets in my setting, but if someone important hires you to transport it, then you can do it. This makes being a courier a very lucrative job; lots of people are just carrying around other people’s stuff for a living.) They almost immediately knock out the new player sent to pick up the item, and replace him with their dofflegagher. The idea was that the dofflegagher player would then infiltrate the Blackstaff’s organization.

Blackstaff is no dumbass and hired a random dude off the street--my new player. Then, Blackstaff hired the rest of the party to go rescue him--mostly as a ruse to snuff out the Cassalanters and get evidence that they were shitty.

When they encountered the Cassalanters, I used a Cambion; one of their servants turned into him. This guy slowly became a recurring lieutenant; he was basically the Goldar for the Cassalanter’s Lord Zedd and Rita Repulsa. At the time, I hadn’t read any lore for Cambions; I’m not particularly concerned with monster lore the way the guys who make the game write it. I literally thumbed through my deck of monsters, saw this winged devil horn dude, and said, “Right on, he looks like he’ll work.” A Cambion is CR5, more than suitable for the encounters the party will have with him over the next few levels. The Fiendish Charm ability is fun and can really fuck with the players; I ruled, of course, that anyone under its affect would obviously be free if the Cambion was killed. Even after it was killed, he just kept on coming back, because he’s from Hell and killing him on this plane doesn’t really do anything.

As the players continue to face the Cassalanters, a go-to seems to be spined devils. This is fine but not very powerful for a level 4, 5, 6 party. Therefore I suggest supplanting it with barbed devils. They’re CR5. Adding one or two of those to an encounter with spined devils can make this a real fun encounter that isn’t too horribly overwhelming, especially if at least one of your martial characters has a magic weapon (which they fucking should; they’re level 5!)

IMO you can also introduce Jarlaxle in this chapter; a fun way is through his Zardoz Zord persona. It could simply be that Jarlaxle knows Volo (or any other NPC the players know) and wants to invite them to a free meal to get to know them. In my game, Jarlaxle operates openly as himself (I found it would just complicate things if he was someone else) and invited the players to his yacht shortly after they met the Xanathar, to formally tell them all about the Vault of Dragons, the Stone, and how everyone they have met in the city is after it.

Chapter 3

I am not the biggest fan of this part of the module. I think nimblewrights and similar creatures are really dumb and don’t fit my D&D world. A lot of the stuff in this chapter is investigation stuff, and you can play that out however you like. It doesn’t drastically need scaling up, though you may have to account for something like Zone of Truth that they might not normally have access to. It also helps if you do the opposite of the book, and make the police a bunch of shitheads who don’t care about the city--this way the players are actually motivated to help. I’ve seen a LOT of posts that open with “the fireball happened and my players shrugged and said they would let the police handle it.” Horrible! The police should either be incompetent, apathetic, or (best case) both. They don’t care who did this and if they did, they wouldn’t be able to catch them. Now it’s completely on the players.

IMO it also helps if you do the leg work to make the NPC someone they actually care about. In the book it’s an NPC they’ve never met but they have a mutual acquaintance through--it would be nice if they get invited to a dinner with this NPC or something similar prior to this. Or, change it to be any NPC they like who you don’t mind killing. Hell, they’re level 5 or 6 at this point--if they got a cleric, they can even cast Revivify and wake the dude up. They could even cast Speak With Dead and immediately find out who blew him up or what he was doing here!

Moving on, there’s the Gralland Villa. I retooled the name to actually sound like a good name; sue me.

The book has a bunch of Zhents hanging out here. A simple way to make this dramatic and hard is to pull the trigger and make the players fight their way in. The stone is right here at the villa and they need to steal it. Sounds simple enough.

Things got complicated for my party when a recurring NPC appeared. She was an ex girlfriend of the bard in our party; they were both Tieflings. She now worked for the Zhentarim and was basically their second in command. And she was here to steal the stone, come Hell or high water. The bard, still in love with her, was perfectly content to let her steal it and even cover her getaway. The rest of the players, not so much, but when the chaos was ensuing and she was literally running past them with the stone in hand, made the decision that it was smarter to try and help her escape and then figure out how to get the stone from her later, than try and get it from her now.

This led literally directly to chapter 4.

Chapter 4

By now it’s obvious: I used all 4 bad guys.

I ran through the chapter and picked the coolest maps and best encounter ideas, including the rooftop chase, the theater, the sewer and the courthouse. I weaved them together carefully, and all the changes I had made to the groups paid off when they entered the theater, chased by barbed devils and our Cambion friend, only to have an Umber Hulk with the Xanathar’s logo painted on his face crash through the stage, flanked by two Duergar. Add in some Drow gunslingers and it was a fucking party.

(the large hexagon is where somebody cast Darkness; the big scuffed circle is a grody spot on my grid tiles. I still need new ones...)

The courthouse had a great scene where the Cassalanter dofflegagher impersonated the chief of police, interrogating the players for the code word to activate the stone (I added one; who cares?) until the real chief of police showed up! The players had to do an entire encounter with this guy while handcuffed; thank god for verbal only spells, right?

From here the stone ended up with the players, and then it ended up with Jarlaxle who they are working for. Jarlaxle attuned to it and told them the Vault of Dragons is inside Undermountain; 3, 5 levels deep? Who knows? And it requires 3 keys: The Crown of Asmodeus, the Ring of Winter, and the Robe of the Archmagi.

I gave these 3 magic items to the Cassalanters, the Xanathar and Manshoon. This is a pretty common hack and it means the lairs in the book actually get used. I made up one of the magic items (Crown of Asmodeus) and stole another from a module I don’t intend to run as written (the Ring of Winter is, I believe, in either Tomb of Annihilation or Storm King’s Thunder). They’re fun!

So the rest of the campaign has been the players bouncing between going deep into Undermountain, the megadungeon underneath the Yawning Portal, and going to the 3 different villain factions to steal their shit.

The villain lairs are NOT statted for level 5 players AT ALL. The players have no hope of actually killing ANY of the villains at level 5; to fight the Xanathar is a pure TPK at level 5. But at level 8, like where my players are now? One of them died and then got Revivified; the others all survived or made their saves when they were hit by death or disintegration. (In the spirit of the Xanathar, I rolled every eye beam randomly, rerolling if I had used that ray in the last round.) That’s about the best you can hope for with a Beholder IMO!

The rest of the lairs you can mostly run as-is. Any very low CR mooks, basically anything lower than 1 or 2 CR, I would probably replace with a higher CR variant. We’ve already discussed what you can replace them with above, and if you’ve made it this far into the module, you should have a pretty good sense of what your players can handle.

#dnd #dragon heist #waterdeep dragon heist

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starfighter10 · 4 years

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tlou2 opinion

So I really had to share my opinion(rant) on the last of us part 2 and boy I have a lot to say. I am gonna dwell deep into this one, so bear with me if you can and want to

But before that I have to share the feelings I hold for tlou1.Back when I finished tlou1, I knew I experienced something truly magical. I was pleasantly surprised by the beautifully crafted story, the execution of the characters, the music, the gameplay , and the effort that went into shaping the journey of the game,the character arcs and bonds. You could see and experience the uniqueness and passion that went into the first project. This game immediately became a favourite of mine.

When tlou2 was announced, my expectations were skyhigh,was elated to continue Joel and Ellie's journey and how it unfolds. The bar set by the first one was exceptionally high and probably impossible to achieve, but I had trust and faith in naughty dog, thought they couldn't go wrong with this one. After experiencing tlou2 , I am speechless.... not in a good way. I have no words to express my disappointment,frustration and anger I feel right now. I don't even know where to begin.... the absolute mess of a plot, the original characters being blatantly ignored, retconned and disrespected in favour of new bland characters, the plotholes in the story, the false advertising and marketing, naughty dog's hubris, making a complete mockery of your fans who are paying money to play something but getting baited for something else. I am utterly heartbroken and angry.

The plot - the driving force of the game is over ambitious, lazy,sloppy and nihilistic. It felt forced. Naughty dog bit off more then they could chew with this one. Tlou2 could have gone several ways in terms of plot with the existing characters, yet we get the cliche revenge plotline with the character abandoning the quest altogether to realise revenge isn't the answer. This trope has been done several times before, with more finesse and better execution. The writers aim for the " Ellie breaks the cycle of the revenge" but it really fails to achieve this as she blatanly annihilates several characters,npcs along the way in quest of her revenge. The damage has been done practically speaking. According to naughty dog's logic , I should expect Nora's sister or a random npc's friend/relatives in tlou3 hunting down Ellie in their revenge quest. Also Abby's quest literally does nothing for me. This character was so poorly written, executed and shoved down our throats, I didn't have any sort of attachment or empathy for her. I simply don't care about this character.

The circumstances that lead to Joel's death was out of character as well. Since the trailer drop in 2016, I was prepared for his inevitable death. Thought he would probably go out like the badass he is, maybe sacrificing himself for Ellie/tommy. The Joel I know from tlou1, a hardened survivor who has fought tooth and nail to survive the past 20 years would NEVER end up in a situation like that. Joel was intensely alert, critical,clever and intuitive. The argument here may be that he has softened in Jackson, but I feel at this point this should be 2nd nature to him. Something that is automatic. Yet the writer's now want you to believe he is a dumbass who would trust a group of strangers, make small talk and introductions and end up in a situation like that. One of the bigger issues was the constant reinforcing that Joel wiped down the fireflies in cold blood and doomed humanity for death by robbing them of their cure for survival,Ellie believing the cure would have been a guaranteed sure shot success ..... WHY? This retcons the first one completely. The beauty of the tlou1 was it's moral ambiguity and uncertainty. We were constantly hinted that fireflies is a mess of a group whose agendas weren't clearly known, whose actions caused the sacrifice of many people for the sake of a slight possibility of a cure.They were power hungry and were cruel enough to send a 14 year old girl to her death with no remorse,consent or any proper investigation or medical research. Joel initially negotiates to find someone else, gets shut down immediately, gets his means of survival snatched and was practically marched to his death. He had no option but to wipe clean these people who planned on killing someone dear to him, for something that is uncertain or in vain. And yes this was a selfish decision on Joel's part, and that was the beauty of it. The moral ambiguity. He was right or wrong or both - open to your interpretation. BUT NOW NAUGHTY DOG WANTS TO TO ERASE ALL THAT DEVELOPMENT. The active reinforcement that Joel was a cold, ruthless murderer who killed fireflies and deprived humanity of its cure? Trying to erase the fact that he was surviving and trying to keep his dear ones safe in this cold, brutal and unforgiving postapocalyptic world. So that we sympathize with Abby and enjoy golfing the tf outa Joel?. Ellie seems like a different character in this one, but again this character is immediately pushed to a whirlwind of traumatic events right from the start of the game. I missed her spark of joy,humour and enthusiasm. The treatment of the main chatacter in her own game is utterly cruel and disappointing, and seemed unfair to me. By the end, Ellie is broken beyond repair. Though she thematically chooses to be the better person and gives up on her vengeance and hate, she still manages to be on the losing side as she ends up losing her father figure which was her closest bond, loses Dina and the kid , she doesn't have her community, her people, her fucking fingers as well. Why? So Ellie could suffer a little more and be unable to do most important thing that bonded her to Joel. Not to mention she loses her switchblade too, her mother's final memory. Surprised that ND spared her mother's letter . Feel her pain and despair. Why does Ellie get such a shitty,depressing, worthless, futile and a hopeless conclusion while Abby not only gets her revenge successfully, forms a close bond in Lev and gets to escape possibly to a fresh start. Ellie? Nah she gets to suffer alone. Her BIGGEST FEAR has become a reality by the end. The least they could do is let Ellie have some solace and calm, surrounded by her loved ones on that farm,her trying to recover from her trauma slowly but surely, it's what joel would have wished for. But no, she is left all alone, absolutely traumatized, all by herself with nothing to look forward to. Oh and tommy is whole new character in every scene. So keep your eyes peeled for various versions of tommy throughout. The character inconsistencies are ridiculous.

The gameplay, beautiful sceneries, and new characters like dina and jesse are few of the positives of game - leaning more towards Jesse. Dina felt perfect for Ellie and Jesse did manage to lighten up few of the moments. The space shuttle cutscene, the museum flashback sequence, ellie and joel's flashbacks were the only parts that remotely captures the magic and beauty of tlou1. I got emotional watching them. The space shuttle sequence hits you with the feels. Joel slaying a bloater with a machete was cinematic art. (Hot too)

Abby... the forced deuteragonist, is an utter failure of character execution. Her character was forced onto us, felt hasty and lacked real build up. She starts off on the wrong foot by killing one of the most popular characters. If ND really wanted this character to work, the only possible way would have been to play her point of view and backstory prior to her mercilessly killing and torturing a guy who just saved her life. What was ND thinking? That a few hours of her pov,forced out of the blue background story, her getting to play with dogs while ellie has no option but to attack the dogs, the abby-lev bond which is pretty much discount or the walmart version ellie and joel would be enough to side with her over ellie and joel???? The part where they force you to play as abby against ellie? It made me sick. I felt cheated and disgusted.

The false advertising to make us believe joel is alive and good? That this is an ellie and joel centric game?To tug at your heartstrings like this. A complete mockery of the fans who waited 7 years to see their favorite characters get horribly treated,retconned, disrespected and thrown under the bus in favour of new unlikable characters. Butchering the heart and soul of the last of us - Joel and Ellie's bond. The fact that these two don't even get a heart to heart before his death, that Joel dies uncertain of ellie's future, maybe thought he could not save Ellie in those final painful moments, that she had never forgiven him, Ellie never getting her closure with Joel, or really getting to tell him how much he meant to her.... all these thoughts legit made me shed tears. Broke my heart. This is how much ND wanted to honour and respect ellie and joel.

The game's conclusion is hollow, futile, worthless and depressing. And in my opinion, this is non canon. This is the only way I can cope with this unsastifying conclusion. It is immaturity I guess... but I will feel better about it.

Though I utterly despise tlou2, tlou1 will continue to remain one of my favorite pieces of work in fiction. JOEL FUCKING MILLER WILL ALWAYS BE THE BADDEST BITCH AND NOTHING WILL CHANGE THE LOVE I HAVE FOR HIM.

If someone actually read it all the way, thank you for your time and effort. Really needed to rant and let these negative emotions out.

#the last of us #the last of us part 2 #tlou spoilers #tlou #tlou2 #tlou joel #tlou ellie #my rants #ellie #joel miller #joel

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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Whats the appeal of WOW? Every time I try to play any MMO it quickly feels like a second job and busywork. I can see the fun if you have a group of friends, but I can't imagine doing daily quest and all that just for yourself.

That’s definitely a tough question and you’ll no doubt get different answers from different people. When we talk about the appeal of video games we often talk about flow: the state of complete immersion achieved when you know what you need to do, have the skill to achieve that goal, yet are still being challenged by the game itself, resulting in an almost loss of consciousness where time passes without you realizing. Flow is that excellent feeling when you’re so into the game that three hours pass in the blink of an eye. The best games have a balance between microflow (short, intense interactions) and macroflow (the game adapting to the player’s skill level in order to consistently allow microflow to exist), but both, at their core, work to avoid boredom. And repetitive tasks are boring... right?

Ignoring for a moment that repetitive tasks can be engaging for a lot of people (I personally like the satisfaction of “busywork,” something I can achieve without having to have my mind 100% on. Because let’s face it, I don’t want every game to be Riven or Hollow Knight. Sometimes you need a mental break lol), we also have the other addictive element of gaming: reward systems. Perhaps the task itself isn’t the most enthralling, but the reward you get for it is great. More importantly, games like WoW have an incredibly complex tiered system of rewards that feel really satisfying because you’re slowly building towards something epic. Sure, killing 15 of this mob each day isn’t inherently the most exciting thing, but when you do that you get a bit of anima. Get enough anima and you can update your covenant. Update your covenant to participate in this event. Participate in the event to hopefully get some of these resources (gambling). Use the resources to level up your trade skills. Use your trade skills to make a better piece of armor. Use the armor to - finally - enter the latest raid and get something even better. It’s an intricate web of rewards that makes doing “boring” tasks enticing. It’s even more complicated when you chuck in additional rewards like reputation and gold. Each task provides a variety of ways that you’re forwarding your character, meaning that you get a whole lot for a little effort.

Which alone probably wouldn’t be enough to sustain WoW’s popularity. After all, most mobile games have the most simplistic of busywork (tap the screen) with even faster rewards, but we usually drop them within a few minutes. WoW works because it’s the reward system on top of a lot of other game elements:

The skill needed to complete daily tasks (it’s not always as easy as we’d assume. “You’re just clicking buttons” misses aspects like how to play your class, or how to manage different kinds of mobs/the area around other players. As a hunter, I am VERY familiar with the intense hatred that comes if you’re not deemed “good enough.”)

Daily tasks functioning as mini games (match things, fly through hoops, answer riddles, etc. Things that we already enjoy, just set into another game.)

Daily tasks (can) forward the main storyline, so you do them in part to find out what happens to the characters you’ve grown attached to (I am LOVING this expansion’s story and crossing my fingers we get a Revendreth novel).

Getting to read the additional story elements attached to each quest (NPC characterizations, history of the zone you’re in, funny references, etc. I’d happily do a thousand more tasks with the Maldraxxus dude who thinks I’m his apprentice.)

The unpredictability of other player interaction.

WoW’s daily/questing/reward system is already massive enough to keep people engaged for a variety of reasons, but it’s also, notably, not a single player game. If doing stuff with friends is a crucial part of enjoying a game for you, WoW offers that in spades. I know players who pretty much only engage in PvP battles. Players who most enjoy being part of a guild. Players who run quest or dungeon groups. Even if you’re not doing something that strictly forces player interaction, you still get it in a lot of cool ways. I was chatting with a girl last night as we helped each other with a world quest. A few weeks back my battleground turned into an AMAZING two hour turtle and the whole party was making jokes about our new blood bond. I was laughing just an hour ago at someone calling out a rare and 7 other people responding “omw,” then dragging one another for being predictable. I’m not going to pretend that WoW is all sunshine and roses - it’s easily the most toxic game community I’ve ever been in - but it can be very social and when those social aspects are good, they’re good.

So it’s a lot of fun to run something like Torghast with people, all of us suffering together. It’s also fun to challenge myself and see if I can complete a run solo. One of the great parts about MMO’s is the sheer variety they have. You can do those daily tasks... or collect battle pets, work on trade skills, PvP, earn gold to buy that cool mount, talk to other players, go hunt treasure, try to figure this riddle out, earn achievements, slowly take over the auction house... it’s like a whole life. Which, yes, means that like real life you may have “chores” that you “have” to do in order to receive a certain reward, but it’s usually something you’re willing to do because you want what comes later/the task itself is engaging for any number of reasons (skill, story, mystery, etc. There are world quests I adore doing each day because they’re just plain fun). Or, you can simply not do it. It may not be the “correct” way to play the game, but WoW is an open world with an insane number of things to do in it. If you want to ignore the daily quests and just fish non-stop, no one can stop you. It’s only like a job if you force it to be one. Which, admittedly, is an easy mindset to fall into. Sometimes I find myself going, “Ugh I hate this quest I don’t want to do it!” and then I remember oh, right, I don’t have to lol. Let’s wait until tomorrow when there are different quests and go work on this achievement instead.

A lot of WoW’s flow is long-term. You still get those intense moments - like PvP and raiding - but the immersion largely comes from investing in this character of an extended period. Me? I’ve played the same character for nearly thirteen years. Not to be, you know, weird about it, but she’s absolutely a part of my identity now. Whether you’re focused on a main or bouncing between alts, it’s a long haul sort of enjoyment. That means you may not enjoy every second of your play time, but you enjoy the overall experience of building this person into the type of character you want them to be. I absolutely lose hours to WoW not because every task is 100% enthralling, but because where you’re taking your character has satisfaction and pride attached to it. “One more task and then I’ll have achieved ____” is really addicting, both for yourself and for bragging rights with your friends ;)

#gaming #world of warcraft #Anonymous

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goddessmuacheat-blog · 4 years

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starlightinhumanform · 5 years

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The Art of Love: Chapter 7

Fandom: She Ra (2018)

Ship: Glimadora

Summary: As the project continues to come together, Adora and Glimmer’s friendship grows.

Warnings (for this chapter): Mild language (please tell me if anything needs to be added)

Genre: High School AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, Rivals/Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Fluff

A/N: Ok I know I said the last chapter was the end of the angst but it turns out I was lying. But it’s really cute too ;) The last chapter got so much positive feedback and it’s so so appreciated. I love you guys. All notes (especially reblogs) are so meaningful to me. Love you all 🖤✨

Ao3 The Art of Love Masterpost Fic Masterpost Fic Request Info

Glimmer woke up to a tense chest and and clenching fingers, having dreamt about failing chem; she did love anxiety.

She groaned quietly at her glaring phone which told her it was three in the morning. Adora was still sleeping soundly beside her and Glimmer blushed at the realization that her arm was wrapped around Adora’s waist. Quickly withdrawing her arm, she thanked her lucky stars (or maybe just the ones glowing sickly above her on the ceiling) that she had woken up before Adora.

Adora murmured something at the movement but did not appear to be returning to life anytime soon. Glimmer wondered if there was anyway to continue the much needed work without disturbing her. There were two problems: 1) she would need to clamber over Adora to get out of bed and 2) she would need to turn the light on to be able to paint. Ugh.

Glimmer was almost grateful that she didn’t even get through the first step. Almost. Almost because Adora had decided to wake up at the exact moment that Glimmer’s knees were straddling the slighter girl’s thighs in a way that would make heat rush to Glimmer’s face anytime but especially if Adora happened to open her eyes just as Glimmer moved, trying to ignore the blush spreading across her face. But of course, simply of course, Adora did flicker back to life in this specific moment.

Adora blinked her eyes open slowly, adjusting to the difference between whatever she was dreaming and the world around her, before looking up into Glimmer’s face that was quickly turning from pink to burgundy.

“Hello?” Adora asked in a happy but half asleep voice. She rubbed her eyes and as the glaze was lifted from their blue, the curtain of sleep seemed to rise from her mind as well. She clapped her hands lightly, commanding the overhead light to flicker on.

At that point Adora looked down at the space between them- or, more presumably, the lack of space. Adora’s face was quickly becoming as flushed as Glimmer’s, the blush shining through her cheeks until she looked like a stop light glowing red. Glimmer was scared to wonder what it meant, scared to let herself overthink it as she inevitably would.

“Oh. Hi?” Adora was stuttering, her voice no longer carrying its earlier blissfulness; oh, good another thing for Glimmer to overthink.

Glimmer hurried to move away, distance herself from Adora as much as she could or at least get out of the horribly awkward position. Unfortunately for Glimmer, her bad luck and poor coordination coupled to create an even worse situation. Her foot caught on the edge of the comforter and as she attempted to practically run away from the bed, she found herself instead sprawled over top of Adora, nearly nose to nose. Close enough to count every freckle splayed across the shine of Adora’s blush, close enough to see every fleck of silver in her eyes, close enough to feel Adora’s breath fanning rapidly against Glimmer’s lips.

She finally managed to stand up, tripping backwards and stuttering out an apology, “I- I’m so sorry I was just trying to get up without waking you up and- you know- it’s a small bed but then you did wake up-“

Adora gave a small smile, almost an apology herself, “Glimmer, it’s ok.”

“-so you know I really don’t know what I excepted but,” Glimmer was still rambling on, “God, this whole project is a mess and- wait what?”

“It’s ok.”

“Oh. Right. Ok, then.”

“Yeah.”

They stayed there frozen for a moment, Adora only half sitting up and Glimmer standing next to the bed awkwardly like some video game NPC. Finally Adora patted her hands on her thighs, an obvious attempt at saying Can we please change the topic now?

“So... what were you doing?” Adora asked and Glimmer was grateful for the distraction her question offered.

“Uh, I just woke up and thought I would get started on the project,” She left out the fact that her anxiety and some stupid dream about her grade was the reason she had woken up.

Adora shrugged, “Ok, cool let’s get to work.”

“Well, I mean, you can go back to sleep; I can keep working on it by my self.”

Something flickered on Adora’s face for a moment that Glimmer couldn’t quite place. Part of her wanted it to be disappointment, another part calling her a fool for thinking Adora would care, and the last part chasing the other two with a broom for being so obsessed with the stupid girl.

“No, it’s ok, I wanna help. Besides, you told me you would wake me up when you needed my help again,” Adora’s grin was almost a smirk, “Well I guess you did wake me up... not exactly the way I was expecting, but I’m up none the less.”

Glimmer resisted the urge to tell her that she doesn’t need her help (and hold back that what she really needed was some space) but the looming piles of art materials made her hold her tongue. Because the problem was she did need Adora’s help if she wanted to get this done anytime before six in the morning.

She sighed, the adrenaline wearing off slowly but surely enough that she was feeling the soft touches of exhaustion on the edges of her mind. She could either tell Adora to go back to sleep and have lots of time to think about her while she struggled to get this stupid thing done or she could let Adora stay up and help her. Things would get done a lot faster but... that would be a lot more time spent with Adora and a lot more material for her brain to process and analyze and store away to obsess over later. But getting another hour of sleep would be nice too...

“Yeah, ok,” Glimmer rubbed the back of her neck with one of her hands and then gestured with the other at Adora’s little pile of clay that was far smaller than it had been at the beginning of the night. Much like Glimmer’s sanity.

Adora stretched up from the bed, yawning as she stood and pausing with her hands over her head so the hem of shirt crept just above the waist band of her black sweatpant shorts. Somehow it had escaped Glimmer’s attention that Adora was wearing literal actual booty shorts. Not that it was something she would need or should be paying attention to. She also hadn’t noticed the way Adora’s hair swept over her shoulders when it was completely down, in no way hindered by some clinging rubber bands. Not that Glimmer had ever really had the opportunity to see Adora this- god, what was the word she was looking for, had been looking for the whole night? She settled on authentic this time, but it still didn’t seem right.

Adora plopped down in front of the clay and it wasn’t until she started talking that Glimmer realized she was still standing there, awkward as always. Adora had her eyebrows scrunched together and the blue of her eyes had become glossy with sleep, once again vacant of their usual shine. Glimmer was tempted to tell her to go the hell back to bed before she face planted into the clay, but then she saw the look of determination in Adora’s face as she silently counted, her mouth moving in wordless concentration, and decided it was best to let the girl go right on ahead if that’s what she really wanted to do.

But Adora was talking and Glimmer was forced to break away from watching to actually listen to what she was saying, “How many more do I need to make? Like only ten, right?”

Ugh, she was asking Glimmer to deal with numbers this early in the morning? Painting she could do with her eyes closed; numbers? No thank you. Glimmer scowled at the little painted balls and the plain ones next to them add some, subtracted others, shook her head because Wait, why am I subtracting? and finally decided that Adora was probably right and that eight was close enough to ten, “Uhhh, yeah, ten is right.”

“Ok, cool,” Isn’t that like the fifth time she’s said ‘ok, cool’? “I’ll get to work on those ten more then!”

“Right, yeah, ok,” Glimmer was still standing.

She edged around Adora and begun pouring more paint onto her palette where it had dried. Her brushes were tacky and somewhat crusted with paint because she had forgotten to clean them between developing (aka admitting to) a crush, having a break down over said crush, and then being lead to bed by- oh, what a surprise- the previously mentioned crush. It wasn’t really a big deal though- the brushes, that is- just another frustration like the cherry on top of this weird, chaotic mess of an assignment. A giggle escaped from between Glimmer’s lips and it was almost hysterical.

Adora turned to look at Glimmer, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she did so in order to make direct eye contact with her. She had a curious but upturned expression, like she was actually interested, “What’s so funny?”

Well, you see, I have a big fat crush on you and you look really cute sitting there with messed up hair and your head turned to the side like some puppy trying to understand what’s going on and this is probably the only time I’m ever going to be able to tell you because I’m so exhausted that all my anxiety and shame and guilt over the fact that I like you has been completely thrown out the window with the rest of my self control. Glimmer shook her head, trying to dislodge the run on sentence of a thought that was trying to make its way through her vocal cords; ok maybe she had some self control left. Enough to manage, “Yeah, I’m just kinda losing it right now and my brain’s all fuzzy so everything’s kinda funny, you know?”

Adora snorted, “Boy, do I- that’s when I get my best work done.”

It was Glimmer’s turn to look at the other with mild confusion, “What do you mean? You always seem to be on top of everything; like, always.”

“Ha, that is my greatest trick of them all- illusion,” Adora raised one of her hands from the clay to wiggle her fingers like woo, magic before shaking her head downwards and laughing, “I have, like, nothing together. Nothing. Between classes and soccer and volunteering and babysitting to get some cash, I have precisely zero seconds to breathe. I have to get up at around four almost every morning so I can do the homework I couldn’t get done the night before.”

Glimmer stared at her like she was crazy. At this point Glimmer was pretty sure the girl was, “Oh my god, you can give yourself a break sometimes! It’s ok to relax with us slackers.”

Adora rolled her eyes- When did she start doing that- and gave Glimmer a questioning grin, “Oh so now you’re a slacker? Miss I Woke Up At Three To Finish A Project? Also Miss I Refused To Sleep Until I Was Literally Dragged To Bed.”

Glimmer faltered; it was the first time either of them had brought up or even eluded to the whole bathroom incident, “Yeah well, I am compared to you, Princess Perfectionist.”

It had slipped out of her mouth without any thought and Glimmer immediately wished she could take it back. A thousand expressions flit across Adora’s face, Glimmer’s mind taking a snap shot of each but not understanding any of them. Adora settled on a strained smile and Glimmer knew she had struck a nerve. God that was stupid; she pushes herself too hard and you shouldn’t have brought it up.

“Ha, yeah, I guess that is me,” Adora tried weakly to bring the mood to where it had been before.

Glimmer shook her head, unpracticed in the art of actually apologizing to anyone, “No it was dumb of me to say something like that and, and I’m sorry if it bothered you at all.”

The fake smile fell from Adora’s lips; Glimmer didn’t like the frown she was facing, but at least it was real. Adora took a deep breath after chewing on her lip for a moment and then began speaking. Her voice was quiet, almost timid, “Why do you call me that?”

“Oh, god, um. I guess it’s just because you kind of are a perfectionist- at least it seems that way! I understand if that’s like just a front or something- no, uh, front isn’t really what I meant to say- but like I do the exact same thing so it’s cool. But just, you know, everything you do seems perfect. From your grades, to your hair, hell even your hand writing is perfect! So, like, I just always thought of you as a perfectionist but like-“ Glimmer was rattling on, grasping on to literally any words that seemed to correlate and smashing them into sentences and praying Adora would stop her soon.

“No... I mean Princess. Why do you call me Princess? You did it just now and you said it when we were texting earlier. But I do think you might have been kind of mad that time.”

She remembered something I said? There was definitely warmth rising to Glimmer’s face as it dawned on her that she had called Adora a pet name not once, but twice. Uuuuuuugh.

“Oh, I don’t know, “ Glimmer didn’t look up the clay in her hands that she continued to paint- rsssh, rsssh, rssh. She hoped the pink of her hair hid the red tones her face was beginning to take on

“Yeah, ok,” Disappointment, maybe even sadness, thinly vailed by casualness. Glimmer recognized Adora’s voice because it sounded much like her own.

“But I mean, you do kind remind me of a princess. Like, you’ve got the not-a-hair-out-of-place look, and those big shiny eyes, and you’re so nice to everyone so like, yeah. Watch out Disney, next princess coming through,” All Glimmer could think about was getting the sadness out of Adora’s voice- she could over analyze the cause later- and tried to ignore her growing blush and the stupid ache she was feeling in her chest.

“You really think so?” Adora gave a tiny laugh- Glad that worked. Glimmer could’ve sworn Adora was blushing as well. But it was probably just the light.

“Yeah, I’m not a liar,” Glimmer smirked playfully and Adora beamed back.

“What, you mean a liar like you thought I was?” Adora wiggled her eyebrows but there was a small coldness in her eyes and enough seriousness in her tone to make Glimmer’s stomach do a flip.

“Well it turns out your not a liar- as far as I’m aware- so your point doesn’t really stand,” Glimmer was trying really hard to be nice; really, really hard. Everything inside of her was telling her to push Adora away, keep her at arm’s distance or further, was telling her that liking Adora was wrong and would only lead to her getting hurt... but Glimmer couldn’t stand the sad little notes in Adora’s voice. She couldn’t help but try to push that away.

“Hmm, I guess so.”

“Do you even have the ability to lie; like at this point I’m wondering if you were granted magic productivity powers in exchange for being able to lie.”

Glimmer was rewarded by the laugh that burst from Adora and continued on, “Hey maybe that’s your Disney princess plot! Like Ariel and her voice or whatever!”

Adora’s laugh was ringing through her room again and once more the tension in Glimmer grew, her thoughts competing to hold power over each other and arguing over which had the correct stance on making Adora happy. Some were disgusted, others terrified, and a small bundle in the corner celebrating. Glimmer thought it was all rather stupid.

But Adora sat up from where she had doubled over laughing and was talking now, “More like I traded mental stability and a normal sleep schedule for productivity.”

Glimmer snorted, “Ahh, the glorious life of a teenager, isn’t it beautiful?”

Adora giggled, “Amen. Tell you what though- I am a shit liar.”

“A princess must not cuss!” Glimmer pretended to look aghast before remembering that she wasn’t supposed to be playing along.

Adora let lose another one of those laughs that made Glimmer pray her mom hadn’t come home early, “Mmm well that just proves it, doesn’t it? Not a princess. But I mean really- you’ll know when I’m lying because my hands get all sweating and fidgety and my voice gets so squeaky. You could tell from a mile away that I was lying.”

“That honestly sounds like me on a daily basis. Not that I lie or anything on a daily basis,” That’s a lie, “I just look like a complete weirdo every time I open my mouth.”

“That’s not true,” Adora was frowning so sincerely it made Glimmer squirm, “You seem really chill most of the time.”

“Chill?” Glimmer puffed out a laugh that lacked any sort of humor, “Woo boy, that is not me.”

Adora’s stupid frown had shifted to a gentle smile that was even worse. She ducked her head down so she could make eye contact with Glimmer, “Hey, no really. You’re really cool. You’re a lot of fun to hang out with. And I think a lot more people agree with me than you know.”

Something felt like it was forcing its way up Glimmer’s throat and she wasn’t sure if it was her dinner or her heart. Her words were choked out when she spoke, “Oh wow, well ok thanks.”

Adora nodded, seemingly satisfied with Glimmer’s conssecion, “I mean really, you seem to get a little flustered sometimes, but that’s not too unusual. We all do that sometimes. You know I can’t lie now so, you know I really mean it- you’re cool.”

Glimmer huffed, hanging her head backwards, “Adora, I had a panic attack because I had to move to your seat today. It’s pathetic, ok? I over react to everything and it’s nothing near ‘cool’ ok?”

“Oh, Glimmer, it’s really not a big deal. I mean come on- you’re funny and smart and you’re such a good artist. Just because life is too much sometimes, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or pathetic or anything.”

“Then why does everybody hate me?! If I’m really that great, why do most people avoid me as if I have the plague?!” Rssh, rsssh, rssh- the bristles of Glimmer’s paint brushed hard as ever against the clay even as her hands shook.

Adora opened her mouth to respond but Glimmer dove right back in, “I’ll tell you why- because I’m a crybaby! And I’m negative and cynical about everything and I don’t trust anyone so I push them away. How much is it going to take for you to realize I’m not someone you want to be around?!”

“Glimmer,” Adora leaned forward and reached out with her arm she could place her warm, but probably dirty, hand softly on Glimmer’s shoulder, “you don’t have to push me away. I know you’ve been trying to since we got assigned to each other but you really don’t need to. I’d love to be friends with you and I’d be even more honored to have your trust in return. You can trust me; I promise I won’t hurt you.”

The last sentence was almost a whisper and Glimmer wasn’t even sure it was real. When she finally spoke, she didn’t mean for her voice to sound as incredulous as it came out, “What?”

Adora’s hand moved to push a thick wave of Glimmer’s hair behind her ear and then rested itself lightly on Glimmer’s cheek, “I said I won’t hurt you. And that I want to be your friend.”

Despite her best judgment, Glimmer moved her own hand over Adora’s and looked into those big blue eyes. Their intensity made an electric buzz dance up and down Glimmer’s spine, “Ok. Cool. Yeah, um, cool.”

Adora smiled, always gentle and sweet, “So no more trying to push me away, right?”

Glimmer nodded, her and Adora’s hands hardly shifting with the movement, “Deal.”

After a moment Glimmer snorted, “Bad choice, really.”

“What?”

“Bad choice- being friends with me. You’re never going to have peace again.”

Adora laughed as they moved their hands away from each other. Somehow the movement didn’t feel awkward at all, “Good, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Glimmer shifted away from Adora but didn’t try to increase the space between them. Adora seemed to get the clue and moved her hands back to the clay; her body was still leaning towards Glimmer.

They fell into silence but it held a sort of warmth that Glimmer didn’t quite understand but wasn’t about to argue against. Friendships weren’t exactly easy to come by for Glimmer and even if all the logic in her mind was telling her this one was going to end in poison, she refused to to cut it off, wasn’t going to be the toxin spreading under both their skins. She couldn’t, not now, god not now. Not now that her heart had latched onto this girl- this cute, smart, funny girl who seemed to be under the impression that Glimmer held all these qualities too. Every time she thought about Adora, her heart fluttered and her mind screamed about how impossibly stupid she was for liking Adora. And that’s when Glimmer knew she was in deep trouble.

“Hey!”

Glimmer snapped her attention to Adora’s exclamation, “What’s wrong?”

Adora beamed one of her ray of sunshine smiles at Glimmer, “I think I finished!”

Glimmer looked down at her own pile which contained at least 30 more spheres in need of painting. Oof. She tried to muster a smile, “Ok, great.”

“Is there anything else I can do?” Adora turned her head from side to side, as if looking for a big sign that said STEP #2. Glimmer laughed to herself; she could use some signs like that.

“You could start stringing the dry protons together,” She pointed at the pile on the other side of her; it was a tangle of wire and twine disguised by the sorting Glimmer had done earlier as having some sort of organization, “Then we’ll just have to let these ones dry- oh and these ones that I haven’t painted yet- and wire them all together and then we’ll be done.”

“With exactly,” Adora looked down at her wrist, checking an imaginary watch, “5 minutes to spare.”

Glimmer gave a dry laugh; cynicism was a new look on Adora and, oh boy, did that work with Glimmer’s sense of humor too well. She couldn’t help but wonder why she hadn’t seen it before. Was it because it was late and she was tired and that’s just when this dark side of Adora’s humor came out? Or, dare Glimmer even think of it, was Adora becoming comfortable enough with her to drop some of her sunny, innocent persona she thought she needed to get people to like her? It struck Glimmer suddenly that she had only been actually talking to Adora for the past three days. Maybe this was just who Adora is, maybe Glimmer just didn’t know anything about her.

Glimmer was startled out of her thoughts by the delicate but strong hand placed on her shoulder as Adora walked behind her. The pressure was light but it made her skin crawl; it was pathetic how she was overwhelmed by everything Adora did. And then it was gone. She forced a casual laugh, “What was that?”

Adora looked up from where she had already settled on Glimmer’s other side, “Oh I don’t know. It’s just a thing I do when I walk by someone so I don’t like spook them or something, you know? I didn’t want you to jerk and mess up you painting.”

“Oh,” Why does she sound embarrassed; that’s pretty normal, right? “Well thanks.”

“Sure, anything for my friend,” Adora gave a wink that made her eyes sparkle and her nose wrinkle.

Glimmer’s paintbrush skewed to the side, brushing pink paint over hand that very nearly matched the shade of her face. Shit.

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mechadress · 4 years

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Saw a literary challenge to write about one of your average days in quarantine. They picked Tuesday May 12th. Since all of my days keep blending together, I thought it would help me set a benchmark for how I handled quarantine. So here it is-

May 12th 2020,

My alarm goes off at 7am. I roll over to turn it off and promptly go back to sleep. This was a normal practice even before the world shut down. I don't have set hours at work, but I prefer to start around 8am. Since my work computer is only across the apartment, the motivation to wake up before I absolutely have to is extremely low.

8am rolls around and I can't bring myself to leave the bed yet. It all seems so pointless as no one seems to care what hours I keep and I don't have any early morning meetings. I scroll through Facebook and Tumblr on my phone, I check my email more times than I really need to, and pet whichever cat is closest, usually Sierra. I find a post from a page that I follow that talks about Victorian parlor games and I share it to the Steampunk group I administer. There hasn't been much content in the group for awhile. I wonder if it's because steampunk isn't as popular as it once was or if no one has anything to say. It gets a few likes and one 'Care' emoji. I think it's because it indicates that people miss hanging out together.

Around 8:15 I need to use the toilet, which is enough to get me out of bed and sign into my work computer. CY yells out from his work station at the living room table to remind me to buy the camper table and a spray bottle he wanted for grilling. I order them from Amazon and feel guilty about getting nonessential items in the middle of a pandemic. I spend the first few hours of work scrolling through FB or Tumblr and knitting. While I knit I watch an hour and half long youtube video from ContraPoints about different types of second-hand embarrassment or 'cringe'. I identify a lot with what she says.

I am knitting a pair of socks simply because I have the yarn and I've never done it before. I tested out the gauge to make sure I had the right sized needles and I do. They are long dpns that were given to me by CY's mother once she realized I enjoyed knitting. Apparently she used to knit as well, but it would hurt her hands so she gave up on it. I had tried to use the dpns as intended, even looking up a video and practicing a few times, but I kept dropping stitches and getting annoyed with them. I eventually decided to order a circular needle from Amazon to use instead. I felt very guilty about this since there's all sorts of post-people and delivery people out there who are at risk moving all these boxes around, and here I'm ordering a stupid pair of needles that are a duplicate size to ones I own, but I just don't want to use. The circular needles are extremely nice and easy to work with and it is a pleasure to knit the socks. I still use the dpns as a stitch holder while I knit the heel. Today I'm connecting the insole and knitting along the foot. It's easy and enjoyable work especially after already completing the first sock.

I eat a prepackaged ube cake while I drink my tea and appreciate the nice pairing of flavors.

I feel bad about not getting more of my actual work done. However, I can't bring myself to concentrate on anything related to work. I keep moving my mouse around every 10 or so minutes so it looks like I'm active.

An old D&D friend of mine named Sam posts on FB about how he is proud of his company for continuing to let people work from home despite Ohio loosening some of the Stay at Home restrictions. I reply "We were told to expect to work from home until at least August. I'm grateful since it's one less thing to think about." Sam and I go back a forth a bit more, expressing gratitude and an interest in meeting up again once its safe. It's the first I've interacted with him in about 5 years and it makes me glad to hear from him.

I start lunch early because I don't have anything better to do. For lunch I make myself and CY a sandwich. We have some really good Italian bread we got from the grocery store that we can make into a decent replica of a Philadelphia style hoagie. I already chopped up the veggies so I can just take them out of the fridge and start layering them on. CY likes his sandwich with mayo and turkey. I don't like handling either of those things, but it's easy enough. I make his first then make a veggie version for myself. We use the new hoagie oil which isn't as bad as I had originally feared, but it isn't as good as the name brand one we had before. Pity they were out of it at the store when we went.

My 2019 tax refund from Ohio lands into my investment account. I plan to use it to invest in assorted stocks I feel will bounce back once the economy recovers.

After lunch I watch a few more youtube videos while I knit. One is a career review of the one-hit wonder band 'Living in a Box' and another is a recording of 'the world's worst singer' Florence Foster Jenkins. I had found an article that talked about people who had a medical condition which made them unable to percieve how poorly they performed a skill. In her case, she was a renowned as a very poor singer who believed she was very good and people would come to watch her ironically. I try to watch a congressional hearing where they discuss the health crisis with Dr. Fauci, but it's too depressing so I stop.

My anxiety related to work continues to grow. I figure that I'm not able to bring myself to do any investigation on my own, but I'm still able to ask people questions. I reach out through Skype to a colleague who I believe had worked with this business group before. I am surprised by how helpful she is and how quickly she is to respond. We get on a call and she shows me some reporting she did that is similar and directs me towards a table she thinks would have the values I'm looking for. She recommends another colleague to talk to and I schedule a meeting with him for the next day since he was busying for the rest of today. I feel instantly better. My anxiety about my work plummets and I find the energy and motivation to start investigating another task I've been given. I quickly find 1) the task was way easier than I initially estimated and 2) the data I want isn't available where I thought it would be. I even find out a new way to pull code out of Tableau and I excitedly share my discovery with another colleague. Around this time it's getting close to 4pm, my usual time to stop working and just become available for questions, should anyone need to reach out to me. I feel better about myself and allow myself to take more pleasure in my activities.

I start to prepare for the online D&D game I host each week, Tuesdays at 7:30pm. One of my favorite things about quarantine is that it's given me the time and ability to play again. I've missed having a regular D&D game badly. We had a very good game the previous week and I'm excited to make new material for this new game. I decide to include a villain who is a Banksia Man, one of the anatognists from the Australian fairy-tale Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. CY had helped me over the weekend come up with a cool backstory for him. I take notes and save some pictures so I can display them to my players through screen share.

A group of our friends are doing a Plank Challenge while we try to stay in shape while in quarantine. Colette set up a FB group with a list of exercises to do for 13 days. Each day, you do your assigned exercise then you post to the group to indicate you completed your day's tasks. CY and I made a point to work out for a bit each day after work and were already doing a fair amount of planks so the challenge as it was written was too easy for us. We tend to double the amount of time for each exercise or we double up the reps. My tasks for today are 30 seconds each of planks, rocking planks, hip dips, and up downs. I do all the exercises straight through twice with a short break in between sets then post to FB in the group.

After doing planks, CY and I go out to a nearby park to walk for a bit. We go for about 2.5 miles. It's a nice day, nearly 60 degrees. I am happy to see wild flowers starting to sprout up and the leaves coming back to the trees. Most people in the park are polite and keep their distance. It's rare to see people wearing masks while they are walking or running, so it almost feels normal.

We make it back with enough time for me to start getting my notes ready for game. CY offers to make me food and asks what I'd like to eat. We had just gone to Trader Joe's the weekend before and gotten a truly ridiculous amount of frozen food. He insists I pick something from the freezer to eat. In the end we decide he'll cut up the jackfruit crab cakes and make them into 'seafood tacos'. He even makes some sriracha ranch to go with it. The crab cake is surprisingly greasy, but it's very tasty and filling. Not sure I'd get it again though.

I go into the gaming group call and we quickly realize that only Gene and Aaron are going to be able to join game. We don't think it will be enough to continue the campaign I prepared for so I offer to do a one-shot just for them. I show them a cute rpg I found awhile ago called 'Fuck! It's Dracula' and we give it a shot. We have fun but I feel a bit unprepared since I have to ab lib most of the plot and come up with secret plans on the fly so they can be betrayed by their NPCs. The game is much shorter than I initially anticipated and we finish up around 9:30pm, much earlier than normal. I don't feel like Aaron and Gene enjoyed this game as much as they would have enjoyed the larger campaign I made, but at least we got to play together for a bit. I appreciate the social contact at the very least.

We dismiss ourselves from game and I join CY on the couch. He is watching some cooking tutorial videos, trying to teach himself how to smoke brisket properly. I go back and forth between different apps on my phone, not really paying attention to the TV. I try to read for a bit, but we eventually settle down to sleep before I get very far. I feel good about how the day went and I'm proud of myself for getting work done on the sock and researching my projects. I feel better about my life than I did when I first woke up this morning.

#journal writing #quarantine #may 2020

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thereismagicinthesepages · 5 years

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Pop Culture Entity Challenge: Hircine, Part 1

Stolen from @highpriestness

This is meant to be a sort of bonding and questionnaire in regards to spirits, entities, and deities you may work with in Pop Culture.

You can use it as a 30 day challenge, an ask meme to ask for questions, or simply write them all however you feel.

General Questions:

1. What is the name of the entity and what is their canon universe?

Hircine. The Elder Scrolls anthology.

2. What drew you to this entity? What drew you to their world?

The Elder Scrolls universe has been close to my heart for a very long time. In particular, Skyrim. It’s a beautifully created fantasy world full of colorful characters and lore, and it came to life for me. I’ve put many hours of playtime into the game, running new characters with varying skills and trying new things. It’s always a unique experience and one I never regret diving into.

Hircine himself interested me from the first time I met him in-game. He is the Great Hunter, and the quest in Skyrim (my first encounter with him) leads you to him by way of helping a werewolf NPC who had been cursed by him. Many of the characters in the game frame Daedra as being evil or bad, they are considered demons against the godly presence of the Aedra; the Divines. Hircine’s actions throughout this quest are harsh, but he is also one of the more agreeable Daedra.

Hircine appears in the game as a white stag that you need to hunt down and kill, then his Aspect will appear to tell you to hunt down the same werewolf who asked for your help. You can refuse, but he will warn you that other hunters will be going after the werewolf regardless. You then have two options; Defy Hircine and save the werewolf from the hunters, or join the hunt and kill him. Either way, Hircine will reward you with one of his artifacts. I always choose to spare the werewolf.

What actually draws me to Hircine is my already great love of nature. Deer and Wolves have always been very close to my heart, wolves in particular. Hircine is the father of lycanthropy and thus werewolves are his people. Also while I myself am not a hunter in the strictest sense, I do support and respect those that do hunt, and I respect and make use of animals’ sacrifices on a regular basis. I often pick up roadkill or take hunter waste and use the bones, pelts, feathers, ect. in crafts, as offerings to my gods, or just as general decor,

Also, going back to Hircine’s Quest, if you choose to kill the hunters to save your werewolf friend, Hircine remains impressed with you for “turning the hunt inside-out.” He appreciates alternative thinking, and he just wants to see his Hunters overcoming obstacles to reach their goal. That’s the true Hunt, and he reminds me of that frequently. I don’t have to dawn a bow and shoot a deer, my Hunt can be any goal I’m reaching for, every obstacle I am trying to over come, regardless of how small or massive. Afterall, hunters take on prey of all sizes, right? From a hunting spider catching a tiny insect, to a dragon hunting a mammoth.

3. Did you choose them or did they tap you? How?

A little bit of both. I am a fairly recent baby witch and pagan, and at first I was really only looking into “real” gods, in particular I started with the Egyptian and Greek pantheons, as I already had very strong connections to both. However, I did begin to see others weaving pop culture into their witchcraft, and I eventually discovered Pop Culture Paganism. It clicked for me, it made so much sense, that these worlds and characters that I put so much love and time into, that someone put heart, soul and life into, could be considered “real” and hold power in their own rights.

I already believed in the Infinite Universes theory, wherein there could be a universe out there somewhere where literally anything could exist. Hearing that others worshiped gods based on works of fiction, or even other non-deified entities from those works, was eye-opening for me. I started researching. I wanted to learn more. I found a particular tumblr user who worshipped the Daedra and that clicked with me. I love so many of the Daedra, something about them always spoke to me. Clavicus Vile, Sheogorath, Molag Bal, Hircine....

Shortly after this revelation, I started researching how to worship PC entities. I wasn’t really all that solid on my more “traditional” pagan beliefs, let alone branching out into mostly uncharted territory. There was so little help on how to begin. I found posts about manifesting, about working with them as spirits, as archetypes, creating thoughtforms and servitors.... It was a lot of information to pick through, and a lot to think about. Even now I’m having some trouble beginning working with some entities I’d like to approach, because thus far all of the beings I’ve been working with are considered gods in their own rights. I am having a harder time figuring our how to work with a mortal character who may not want to be deified.

Regardless, while I was in the midst of all of this research and soul-searching, Hircine did tap me. I had actually forgotten the initial feeling, I had to go back to my journal to remember. I was asleep in bed asleep one night and heard a sort of crinkling sound. I got a vivid vision of large, leather boots crunching through dried leaves in a dense forest. My mind immediately screamed Hircine.

I put off contacting him for a bit after that, as I was still unsure, but upon realizing that the Hunter Moon was coming up, I couldn’t ignore the signs. I found a young buck skull that I got from a roadkill deer I processed a few years ago, and set it and some crystals out near a window where they could absorb the moonlight. I left him some bread and water, and waited.

I don’t remember if it was the following day, or a few days later, as I’m terrible at keeping an up-to-date journal, but I know that shortly thereafter, I was heading to work early in the morning. As I was walking out to my car, I felt a compulsion to look out at my back yard. There were a number of deer standing there. That’s not so uncommon, we have a doe that seems to frequently hang out behind the house, I see her often. What was unusual, is that she was accompanied by three other does. I usually only see the one. As I cautiously stepped forward for a better look, a large buck suddenly bolted past, leading the does back into the woods.

The feeling of elation that rose inside of me was amazing. I love seeing deer anyway, but to me it was very strongly a sign from Hircine. I sensed a presence there that I’d never before experienced. I thanked him, watched the herd leave, and continued on my way.

Since then, I get occasional messages from him, either in similar form, or just hearing his voice. I get this with most of my main deities, either hearing them in my head, or just getting a strong feeling about a situation and knowing it to be one of my gods communicating. I have a fair number of deities I appeal to, so sometimes it’s hard to decipher who exactly is trying to speak. I have no such ambiguity with Hircine, as I always distinctly hear his voice from the game, that clever, echoey sort of voice that emanates from the Stag aspect.

4. How do you typically communicate?

This is what I get for writing too much for each question;; As stated above, he often speaks directly to me, in the voice I know as his from Skyrim. He often gives me advice, though it’s usually in a sort of “tough love” form. If I’m feeling frustrated or discouraged, he’ll tell me things like “a hunter presses on regardless of hardship” or “the hunt is not yet over”. Usually it relates to hunting, but it always fits my circumstances.

5. What role does this entity play in their universe?

Hircine is the God of the Hunt and Father of Manbeasts. He created the various forms of lycanthropy in Tamriel. Every Era, he will put on a Great Hunt for which he will choose a number of mortal candidates to participate in. It could be as simple as sending hunters to kill a rogue werewolf, to making his champions navigate a maze of Daedric creatures while transformed into hares.

Hircine is revered by hunters and offers his followers the chance to hunt with him for eternity in the Hunting Grounds, Hircine’s Oblivion Realm. He has a fondness for predators, and values Strength, Speed, Guile and Cunning.

6. What kind of relationship do you have with this entity?

I offer my personal “hunts” to Hircine, using his wisdom to overcome the obstacles in my life. He offers me advice and council, occasionally being stern about it, but really only when I need it. We have a pretty positive relationship, I think. I have always had a reverence for nature, and I think he appreciates that. While I don’t actually hunt animals as prey, I still am able to take the lessons he teaches to put towards everyday life, and I am still able to offer him what I consider traditional offerings, like bones and pelts from animals, due to my taxidermy work.

7. What aspects does this entity reside over?

Traditionally, the Hunt is his Sphere, called many names (the Great Game, the Chase, ect). I also consider the other traits he values as being part of this. He values strength, speed, guile, and my personal addition; cunning. He often appears as a fox to trick people, and will grant those he finds to be clever knowledge and tricks of their own. He takes pride in seeing someone openly defy him and turn a hunt around on his chosen hunters.

He values loyalty. He values nature and animals and a respect for them. He values pride in oneself and strength of heart and character. He values independence, but also the ability to run with a pack or herd. He values both the hunter and the prey, and he values someone who can flip on those roles very highly.

8. What kinds of offerings do you/would you give this entity?

I am still discovering this myself. Certainly a very traditional offering to Hircine is the act of hunting. Again, I alter this to be overcoming challenge or reaching for a goal. I will sometimes dedicate such things to him as offerings. I would also offer him animal bones or pelts. I believe he would like prey animals, like deer or rabbit in particular, but also predators like wolves or big cats. I often offer him cool water, which is a traditional offering for many old gods, and in the wild is such an essential thing. Though I have not yet, I would offer him natural foods; berries, fruits, thinks like that.

I offer him meat sometimes, usually whatever I have, though I think he would particularly appreciate things like venison, rabbit or bear meat. I have given him a number of stones and crystals in the past, things close to the earth. Alcohol is another thing I have and would like to offer him. Particularly I think he would appreciate red wines and mead, though I have access to neither right now.

Arrows, arrowheads, daggers or hunting knives, bows, and other hunting tools would be other good things to dedicate to him, I think. Especially if they’re used to hunt with. Imagery of deer, wolves, bears, foxes or werecreatures would all be good as well. I also associate him with crocodiles, mostly because of his Daedroth creatures. I feel like he would also appreciate tattoos as well, particularly of a tribal sort.

9. What kinds of animals, stones, elements, plants, etc do you associate with this entity? Why?

Stones I used for him were clear quartz, like a clear lake or like the full moon. Moonstone, for obvious reasons; bloodstone, representing blood from his prey. Red or orange stones, representing the blood moon. I’m still learning and experimenting with others.

Animals that I associate with him, I mentioned some, but really any hunter animal. Wolves, bears, foxes, crocodiles, spiders, and birds of prey in particular. Deer and elk are also very strong associations for me, as well as other antlered or horned prey animals like gazelle. I also associate him with other creatures in Tamriel such as Daedroth, dragons, unicorns, sabrecats and werecreatures. I also have a loose association with him and sharks, again for the predator aspect.

I strongly associate him with the element of Earth. I always feel a connection to the Earth with him, to plants and animals and nature. He makes me feel very grounded and in touch with my surroundings. I could also connect him to fire, for the occasional harshness he exhibits, the flaming reds of the blood moon, his ability to go from warm and gentle to fierce and burning. I could make connections to air and water as well, but Earth is certainly the strongest elemental association for him, to me.

Plants are tricky, I’m still learning meanings and correspondences so I have trouble pinning them to spirits and deities, though I do strongly associate him with Hemlock and evergreens in general. As well as with fall foliage. I have the image of a stag moving through a forest of evergreens and that feels very Hircine to me.

I associate him with the smell of musk, pine, and a general earthy smell, like freshly disturbed soil. I associate him with the smell of the forest, with the crisp mountain air. The sound of birdcalls and wolf howls. The full moon.

10. Are there any songs, books, or quotes you associate with this entity? Why?

I’m still looking for things like this that remind of of him. Of course there are his in-universe books such as The Totems of Hircine, and any of his spoken dialogue in game (”Well met, hunter” springs to mind), but as for things in our world, one song I really strongly associate with him is “The Stampede” from The Lion King soundtrack.

11. How and when did you first encounter them as an entity?

Told the story above, but there was the strange dream/vision of him walking in the woods, and then the buck in my back yard.

12. How are they particularly involved in your life? Do they teach you anything specific? If so, what?

He teaches me patience and control, dignity and pride, perseverance and strength. He reminds me that a successful hunter has to be aware and in control of her surroundings. He reminds me that sometimes the prey escapes, and that’s okay. He reminds me that even the greatest hunters sometimes lose their mark and go home hungry. He reminds me that it is important to keep trying and keep improving. To keep my eyes on the target, but not to get lost in it either. The wilds are dangerous and they require my attention. They are also beautiful and demand my reverence.

There is excitement and also sadness in a successful hunt. You have taken something very beautiful and precious from the world, and that demands a moment of introspection. But you have also triumphed over your trial, and you will continue to thrive now with all that the hunt provided you. You have food, tools, clothing and shelter. The good sometimes comes with the bad, there is balance in all things and that must be accepted to be able to move on with one’s life.

He teaches me that there is a time and a situation where one should rely on the pack, be content and dependent upon the presence and assistance of others, but there are also times when the hunter must venture out alone. Some prey are best taken down with a group, some are best to be hunted solo.

He reminds me that all things are not as they seem. The hunter may hide himself from the prey if he is skilled enough. I must take care not to become the prey myself, and if the hunt should turn upon me, I must be clever and resourceful enough to escape my hunters. I must be mindful of those hidden hunters, and I must be hidden myself to be successful; either as a hunter or as prey. The strong and the smart survive, I must be one of the two to live; I must be both to thrive.

13. Do they have any identifying symbols in canon or otherwise?

Deer, mostly. Hircine is most known for appearing as a stag, or having the head or skull of one. But he has also appeared as a fox, a bear and a man. His children are the skinshifters, the werecreatures. His weapons are the spear and bow.

14. Do they have alternate versions, verses, or canons? Do you communicate with all or some of them?

Hircine appears slightly differently in each TES game, though it is always the same entity. I have based most of my worship on his appearance in Skyrim, as that is the one which I have the deepest connection with.

#pop culture entity challenge #popcultureentitychallenge #pc pagan #pop culture paganism #pop culture pagan #pop culture magic #my gods: Hircine #pcp Hircine #pcp gods #pcp entities #my gods #hircine #TES

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thatboomerkid · 6 years

Text

Twist of Deadly Wishes

Twist of Deadly Wishes -- Pathfinder Feat

... Glancing away, the mage visibly struggled with his emotions. “Any wish, then. Is mine.”

“Yes.”

“Mine to make as I see fit.”

The demon smiled. “Oh, indeed. Most certainly and truly, master.”

“Any ... any wish at all?”

Shadibriri shrugged. “Within ... ah, limited guidelines. Barring a wish for more wishes, there is little of which I am not capable. As I have said before, to other men in other places: I can call forth any spell, I can resurrect the dead, I can rewrite time and space. I can create from nothing, and make you wealthy beyond your wildest dreams; I can open doors to other worlds, and cast you across the infinite pleasures of the planes as you desire. I can turn lead to gold, pig-farmers to pigs, and day to night. With but a word, I can unmake mountains, reshape flesh and topple kings ...”

“Very well.”

The demon smirked. “I was not done, master, and am still bound to speak the truth. The whole truth. I can also rewire your brain so that you think you’re a hummingbird, or set your bones on fire, or turn you into a pillar of salt and throw you into the ocean to dissolve, as a certain nameless sorceress once discovered. My abilities are not much limited; you drink from the very waterfall of creation’s torrent when you unleash my gifts. Be careful, I suppose they say, what you wish for.”

“It is to you, then, to interpret the meaning of my wish?”

The demon shrugged again. “My powers are great, and call on majesties older that your species can fathom; even I do not truly comprehend the full scope of what I do, any more than you understand the mysteries of digesting a glass of warm milk and turning it into blood and flesh, nor how it is that you fall to sleep, and dream, and then wake again. I would be careful, were I you, to know exactly what you want, and to make it clear to me what you want, and to phrase what you want as precisely as possible. Barring that, you should also hope that I’m in a good mood, and that my values coincide rather perfectly with your own.”

The mage swallowed, hard. He then allowed himself a thin smile, but it was wry, and without much humor. “Heh. Yes.”

-- from Twisting Amongst Mages

You command the very waterfall of creation’s torrent.

Brought to you absolutely free to enjoy, to test & to share – as always – by the fine folks of my Patreon.

original image from here

Prerequisite: Ability to use spells, spell-like abilities or supernatural abilities of any kind; non-good alignment; see Special, below

Benefit: When you gain this feat, roll three ten-sided dice and arrange them in order from highest to lowest; you will generate a three-digit or four-digit number from your result (somewhere between 111 and 1099). If your highest score is a ten, it represents 1,000; otherwise, tens always represent zero.

For Example: Mike rolls a 3, a 9 and a 10. His final result is 1093. Amber rolls two 3s and a 7. Her final result is 733. Kelsey rolls two 10s and a 1. Her final result is 1,001.

This is the total Twist Score you much reach to Cash-Out your wish. Each time you Cash-Out, you re-roll this 1d100 and once again begin the long climb to your new target score.

If any magical attack you make – or supernatural ability you use – would ever kill a living intelligent creature outright, you may choose to reduce your damage by any amount and thus leave the creature alive; if you choose to do so, you may demand that your victim make a wish.

If your target hears and understands you, and freely chooses to make this wish, you gain the ability to grant this wish (caster level 21st), much like an efreeti or glabrezu.

A wish made in this way must be a statement that can be uttered, in full, in six seconds or less.

Demanding that your target make a wish in this way ends your turn. On your opponent’s next turn, she may speak her wish as a free action. On your next turn, you may then grant this wish as a full-round action.

You may not grant more than three wishes per day. If you are a PC, you may not grant the wish of a fellow PC. Whether you are a PC or NPC, you may not grant a wish to an ally of any kind; if you attempt to do so, your attack’s damage is not reduced in any way and your ally is instead slain.

You may always freely choose to fulfill a wish of this type in a destructive or even deadly manner, although you must TECHNICALLY fulfill a mortal’s stated desires by use of this magic: if a target states that she wishes she could see in black-&-white, rather than in color, you could not, for example, just summon a horde of baboons to beat her to death and then say “your wish is granted.”

If your target says “I wish for limitless riches,” however, you are 100% percent within your rights to crush them beneath a tide of gold coins Plutokinesis-style or banish them to a section of the Elemental Plane of Earth composed entirely of diamonds ... but without a breathable atmosphere.

Your GM is the final arbiter of what are and are not legal responses to the granting of a wish; strong, open and above-all honest communication with your GM is not simply encouraged for this feat but is instead required.

If your GM cannot decide what a specific character would wish for, she may choose to roll 3d6 on the chart below (ignoring any result and rounding down if that option has already been used too many times) to determine the character’s wish; possible responses from you are also listed after each choice:

I wish I wasn’t here! / I wish I was somewhere else! [You may plane shift your target to the Abyss, to the City of Brass or to another location of your choice]

I wish I could escape / I wish there was something I could do to get away safely! [You may baleful polymorph your target into a rabbit or a frog]

I wish you weren’t here! / I wish you would just go away! [You may use greater teleport, moving to any location that is outside of your target’s immediate visual field]

I wish I was home! / back home! / at home! [You may teleport your target back to their home, bringing along yourself and your party or other combatants if you desire]

I wish this hadn’t happened! [Your target is teleported, unharmed and healed of all conditions & wounds, back to where they last awoke or to wherever they were 12 hours ago, whichever is greater]

I wish you would just let me go! [You and your target are both teleported 100 feet into the air, with you grappling your target. At the end of your action, you are teleported back to your previous location]

I wish you were on fire! [You gain the benefits of fire shield]

I wish you would leave me alone! [Your target is subject to a maze effect]

I wish I could kill you! [Your target is given one round to kill you. All other creatures in the area benefit from a sanctuary spell. If you are not dead at the end of the round, your target dies]

I wish you couldn’t see me! [Your target gains permanent natural invisibility, as per an invisible stalker. She also gains a permanent overwhelming scent of rot, death and the grave (or some other scent, as you choose); all opponents within 30 feet may freely detect her purely by sense of smell. If she is upwind, the range increases to 60 feet; if downwind, it drops to 15 feet. Her exact location is not revealed, only her presence within range and the general direction toward her. When she is within 5 feet of any creature with a sense of smell, that creature automatically pinpoints her location even if otherwise blinded to her. She may also be tracked by her smell: any creature may attempt to follow from where she has been by making a Wisdom (or Survival) check to trace her movements and current whereabouts, even if she possesses the trackless step ability. The typical DC for smelling her out is 10; this DC increases by 2 for each hour since she departed the area. This otherwise follows the rules for the Survival skill.

I wish I was immortal! / I wish I was undefeatable! [Your target gains the benefits of the Immortal Creature template and is subject to a baleful polymorph effect]

I wish I was invincible! [Your target is transformed to adamantine, as per a special flesh to stone spell]

I wish your magic would fail! [You may gain the benefits of transformation]

I wish there was another way we could settle this! [You and your target are both teleported to another location, as per a maze spell. You may challenge your opponent to any test of skill -- that is NOT combat! -- that you desire; if you opponent fails against you, she dies]

I wish you would face me alone! [You and your target are both teleported to a location of your choice]

I wish you were dead! [You instantly split yourself into a pair of creatures: your spectral true self and your corporeal false self. Your true self becomes both invisible and incorporeal, and must remain directly adjacent to your false self until this effect ends. You may take no actions while you are so disjointed, nor interact with your environment in any way except to observe. Your false self dies for one hour per character level you possess or until you choose to end the effect. At any time while this effect is active, you may choose to end the effect as a free action: thereby collapsing yourself back into a single creature under your full control. All reversible effects related to your death are undone instantly at this time, just as though you had not died; this includes any damage and/or all secondary effects that would have been avoided if your false self had not died. You are the beneficiary of a true resurrection effect.

I wish ... I wish ... uh ... (stuttering) [your target is forced to answer the following round]

I refuse! [you may not force the creature to make a wish]

You are not required to grant a wish made of you in this way. For example, if a victim says “I wish your bones were all broken,” you could offer to your GM the option “Very well ... I gain all the benefits of an elemental body (or fluid form) spell, and all of my ‘bones’ are ‘broken’”; if your GM doesn’t like that, however, you are within your rights to simply say “I will not grant such a wish.”

If you choose not to grant a wish, you lose one Twist Point from your current Twist Score. This does not count against the total number of wishes you can grant each day.

Each time that you grant a wish by use of this feat, you add a number of Twist Points to your Twist Score equal to your target’s Hit Dice. Once you have reached your goal, you may Cash-Out all of your Twist Points as a full-round action and immediately gain the benefits of a wish spell.

Special: This feat assumes that your GM will establish additional specific, in-universe backgrounds and requirements for gaining this ability; the prerequisites (above) for this feat are thus left intentionally vague, entirely up to the storyteller. In a traditional fantasy game, this power might be limited only to elves or to other creatures with ties to the First World, only to demons and their mortal kin, only to wishcrafters or witches with specific Patrons, only to members of a certain lineage or arcane tradition, only to mad chaos-gods and their spawn, to the seventh son of a seventh son, or to certain “chosen ones” who are born to fulfill a dark destiny.

—

NOTE:

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#pathfinder #spellcaster #demon #effreet #wishcrafter #wishtwister #villain #feat

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