#like i very much used to try and work within that framework and use this language too

[violentviolette]

genuinely nothing i hate more these days than the word "supply"

"narcissists need supply" "npd is the need for supply" "how to get supply" "what to do when u have no supply" ect ect into infinity. it's so unbelievably ableist and othering and disingenuous and the more i see other ppl with npd adopting this language the worse and worse its getting

"supply" is not some unique need that only we have. it's validation. it's attention. it's acknowledgment. its feeling valued and wanted and seen. it's a human need that literally everyone on earth has and requires for healthy mental stability. it's why isolation is considered torture for humans. but calling it "supply" as a shorthand because u dont want to write out all those specific words is a horrendous decision that only adds to pathologizing ur entire self and worsening ur disorder

the reasons people with npd seek out that normal human need in unhealthy and maladaptive ways and cannot generate those feelings internally is what makes things different for us. abuse means we were never taught how to properly develop healthy feelings and skills surrounding those base needs because they were used against us and exploited in abusive ways. thats what makes the way we seek it out and our inability to cope with its lack disordered symptoms. but the thing we are seeking, the validation and attention and acknowledgement, is not some "other" thing that only narcissists need and needing those things at all is not what means u have npd. npd is not at all, in any way, "the need for supply" and to say so is being hugely ablest.

there's been this trend of taking ablest language and stigma's against us because narc abuse ppl have flooded the lexicon with these terms and so they're the most well known and putting positive language around it and just using it like it's fact devoid of any critical thought or nuance. u see it with supply, with malignant or covert and overt narcissism, narc rage, ect. like. this stuff is othering and ablist and stigmatizing af at best and flat out incorrect at worst. there is no way to meaningfully reclaim that language and use it to describe our experience

the push to use buzzword language and label every emotion had by a cluster b with a Moniker does absolutely nothing to actually help ppl with these disorders better understand and learn to cope with them and in fact is actively harmful and patholigizing. u stop engaging with the actual real specific things ur feeling because u stop naming them, u put distance between the uncomfortable truth and urself by slapping a title on it and not fully engaging with it. all the while othering urself and ur needs. ur now no longer just a person with specific needs ur a "narcissist who needs supply" which gets watered down and misunderstood until everyone has a different meaning of the words and u cant have a useful conversation about peoples problems and struggles and the support they need

people with cluster b disorders are normal people. we are human beings. the emotions we experience, even the disordered ones, are human emotions that everyone is capable of. our needs are normal human needs that everyone has. the specifics of them will be different, the exact how and when and why will be different. lots of it will be disordered and unhealthy and incorrect by nature and need to be reevaluated or relearned or adjusted. but the core base emotions and needs that we have are *normal and human*

[actual-changeling]

No Nightingales

or: the one time they are actually on the same page

Welcome back to Alex's unhinged meta corner—we once again find ourselves in the final fifteen because I am far from done with them.

I already dove deep into the potential meaning of that phrase, you can find the meta post here, but regardless of what it stands for, the important part of today's post is their mutual recognition of it.

During their entire argument, they are on two different levels of understanding, and while Crowley is somewhat aware of that, Aziraphale very much isn't. But then, right at the end, Crowley invokes the nightingales, and suddenly they find themselves on the same plane of communication.

Let's start from the beginning. Well, not the beginning beginning, but rather the beginning of the end of their conversation.

Aziraphale is visibly upset, there's a strong undercurrent of genuine anger within the hurt, and he reverts back to an almost petulant expression when he tells Crowley "there's nothing more to say".

The movement he is doing with his mouth—maybe biting his cheeks from the looks of it—is the same one as at the end of their very first argument of the season. In the back of the bookshop with Jimbriel being the centre of their discussion, he eventually tells Crowley "but if you won't, you won't". When he sits down and throws his little temper tantrum, it's the same expression of 'I am kicking you out, go leave'.

In episode 1, Crowley does indeed leave, although we all know he comes back later that evening, but not this time. He knows Aziraphale, he knows exactly why he is doing what he is doing, why he is saying what he is saying, and while it broke his heart, it also means he is out of patience and energy.

For six thousand years, he has been trying to get Aziraphale to understand—and he simply refused to do the work necessary for that, preferring to stay in his cognitive dissonance framework of the world.

They are as done as they can be in that moment, and yet Crowley stays and tries one more thing: No nightingales.

"Listen, do you hear that?" is not a question Aziraphale expected, which is quite obvious in his annoyed reaction.

(side note: If someone I love were to talk to me the way Aziraphale responds to Crowley here I'd slap them and walk out. The absolute disrespect in his tone is appalling and Crowley deserves a reward for putting up with it.)

"I don't hear anything," and he isn't getting it just yet, still angry and petulant, still upset.

But then that changes. "That's the point. No nightingales," and Crowley is looking at him like it means something, begging him to listen, to understand—and Aziraphale DOES.

Look at the change in his expression, all that angry annoyance is gone and replaced by a sad dawning of understanding. If you compare this expression with his earlier one, the shift is as obvious as a blinking neon sign on a dark road.

Whatever the exact meaning of 'no nightingales' is, it is unambiguous and a fundamental part of how they communicate about their relationship with each other. Aziraphale has his oh moment, he is forced to confront the entire argument they just had and what it lead them to, what it destroyed.

That is what Crowley tells him, what hits Aziraphale hard enough to completely push him off-balance, to make him sad and visibly hurt instead of angry and upset. Michael 'microexpressions' Sheen strikes again.

Focus on the look in his eyes, the small, almost imperceptible shift, the shame that appears, and the tears it brings. He averts his gaze at first and then raises it back to Crowley because he understands now, he finally realised what Crowley has been trying to tell him the entire time.

No nightingales. It means we're done, we're over. It means I cannot come with you, I have to leave and safe myself. It means I love you, I know you love me, but it isn't enough.

It means we could have been us—but not anymore. Crowley sees him understand, and THAT is why he calls him an idiot; it's not about him returning to heaven or any of the other shit he said. It is about Aziraphale not listening to Crowley, of being so caught up in his bullshit he did not understand the simple message he was being told.

"You idiot. We could have been us."

I love you I love you I love you but now we are ruined and I blame you. If you had listened we could have been happy together, but look at where we ended up instead.

Aziraphale is still staring at him, but once those words leave Crowley's mouth, the tears begin to rise. Lips pressed together to keep himself from crying, the little wobble disturbing them, the pure, distilled pain etching itself into his face.

Shame. Guilt. Anger. Blaming Crowley, blaming himself. Aziraphale is confused, forced to make decisions without getting the space to breathe, to think, and he fell back into the easiest option—be a good angel and do what heaven says.

A part of him KNOWS all of that. It knows what he just did, what he ruined, how much they ended up hurting each other. So the tears come, and when he can no longer keep himself from crying, he turns away.

Crowley understandably combusts at that because really? Really? You dare to turn away from me after all this? I ripped myself open in front of you, and when I FINALLY manage to make you understand you turn your back on me?

He is desperate and hurt, heartbroken beyond repair, and there are six millennia of hopeless love spilling over—so he kisses him.

Hear me, listen to me, understand, I love you I love you I love you, I am losing you, I don't want to lose you, we're done. I know this won't change anything. I know what you will tell me, but I need to try. I need to make sure you know how much I love you.

I need you to understand what you are leaving behind.

There is no secret conversation happening, there's no trick, otherwise this moment of realisation would not exist.

But it does. It is right there for everyone to see.

After everything, this was probably the most painful moment for me, because you see him get it. You see him process, you see him understand, you can practically taste the chaos unfolding in his mind.

Aziraphale understands, but it is too late, and so he finishes what he started and leaves anyway.

[ranticore]

I wanted to keep drawing some pern dragon stuff because I'm now writing a full AU set in weyr but I didn't want to put this stuff on my main blog or patreon due to it being basically for my own reference, though i felt others would like it too! so here is My Take On Dragon Wings By Type...

It's no secret I love drawing bird wings and prefer them a lot over traditional dragon wings. Growing up, I read the pern books featuring cover art of dragonfly-like wings with lots of little translucent panels, which I always loved. So I thought I'd try to nail down some wing shapes & structures by blending those two things i like together. I am aware dragons fly by telekinesis but I prefer a more realistic type of creature design so I will be choosing to ignore that fact. I do not care about strict canon compliance but I do like to keep some of that framework there as well, for fun.

The wing is made up of three main sails, as well as a propatagium sail (in front of the elbow). They are relatively polymorphic and can expand or contract to an extent to change the shape of the wing in response to flight demands, like the wing of an airliner. The trailing edge can expand and the slots between the spars of the 1st wingsail can deepen or become shallower (where those are a feature). The main structural matrix is opaque, while the membranous 'sails' are translucent and let light through like stained glass. These are a bilayer of membrane with air sandwiched between, which forms part of the air sac & respiratory system.

It makes sense for the original engineers of dragons to diversify dragon wing types by colour so that when fighting Thread, there's a dragon for every conceivable aerial job.

[individual descriptions under the cut]

Queens have the longest wings, though the largest bronzes can rival them for surface area. Gold wings are high endurance - a queen can fly further than any other dragon in active level flight, leaving even the swiftest bronzes behind if they can't muster up the energy reserves to catch her. She is an effective flier at all elevations and can pass very low over terrain without issue as well; she is an expert at taking advantage of the ground effect, where extra lift is generated within one half of a wingspan above land. This way, she can pass low below the main wings fighting Thread to catch any stragglers without expending too much energy. However, she is not very agile and may need a bit of a run-up or cliff-edge to get airborne.

Bronzes are suited for command positions during Threadfall, rising highest and maintaining that altitude effortlessly by soaring on thermals. From this vantage point they can easily survey the wings of riders below and make tactical decisions to direct the tide of battle. They have the size and stamina to chase queens, but might find it difficult to keep up on the flat, so they continually select for fitter hatchlings as only the best manage to mate. It takes a very clever and agile bronze to catch a green, if they are so inclined.

Browns are swift, highly agile, and the fastest vertical fliers, ideal for diving through the Thread mass from top to bottom while the other types pass horizontally. During earlier Passes, browns were capable of using their speed to catch queens, but as queen & bronze endurance gradually increased, browns struggle to keep up if they haven't managed to immediately catch their mate in the starting scrum, which is unlikely due to the bulkier bronze dragons being able to shove the browns aside.

Blues are fast on the flat and nicely manoeuvrable, with enough endurance to last a full Threadfall. Good all-rounders with a characteristic vertical take-off, they work best in the horizontal plane in battle but really they can do a little bit of everything. They often beat browns to catch greens, being very precise in flight and almost as manoeuvrable as their green mates.

Greens make up for their low stamina with their extreme manoeuvrability. Their short and elliptical wings let them turn on a dime, hover, and even fly backwards if they are sufficiently skilled. They have the fastest wingbeats, flying with a distinct thrumming sound. Of all the types they are least likely to be hit by a stray Thread, but they tire easily on the flat and have no soaring ability at all, often tapping out midway through battle in favour of replacements. In battle, greens excel at catching odd and skewed clumps of Thread that don't fall as predicted, or ones that are missed by the other riders. Green mating flights are a whole different beast to gold mating flights, where extreme aerial acrobatics are favoured instead of endurance and altitude, and these flights may be over within seconds. You need to be able to withstand a Lot of G-force to be a green rider.

[familyabolisher]

Do you think any of the frameworks you've developed for analyzing love in TLT could be applied to Pyrrha's relationship to cam/pal? Since Nona doesn't understand it well, it's hard for me to get a handle on how those characters relate to each other, but I was wondering where it might stand on what the series considers "perfect love," what the significance of its presence/ambiguity is, etc.

I’m really locked on to this idea of illegibility, actually, and the kind of work that gets done in Nona to problematise efforts to easily name, define, & categorise a relationship or set of relationships. I’m thinking of what Muir said here:

It’s a very strange household. And they are a found family, but I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that in the last movement of the book Nona questions what that even means—their motives, what they all truly wanted out of each other, their pretenses: are they a family, or are they all just a psychosexual mess of roleplaying and bad meals? (The answer is yes.)

and like, her suggestion that ‘family’ can plausibly be collapsed into a ‘psychosexual mess of roleplaying’ and that the drive of Nona is less about asking whether Cam/Pal/Pyrrha/Nona ‘are’ a family as much as it’s about asking what it actually means to identify them as such; and particularly to identify them as such in a text which does very significant work elsewhere to identify ‘the family’ as a site of violence, a mechanism by which particular forms of violence can be enacted. I’m honing in on that ‘last movement of the book’ comment to say that, like—so, the two narratives in Nona (the ‘main’ narrative ie. Nona et al. on Lemuria, and the John narrative) are spliced together, right, so it makes sense to try and read them as though they’re in dialogue with one another, and the obvious entrypoint for doing so is the fact that they’re both working as an account of the ‘creation’ of Alecto; first through John literally creating her and then through Nona remembering his having done so and thus rebecoming what she had forgotten she was. What does it mean to ‘create’ Alecto?—what are the conditions that Alecto’s creation ushers in, what are the conditions that her creation does away with? The ‘last movement’ of the book is to ‘create’ Alecto for the second time—so, what does Alecto represent, and what about her ‘creation’ leads the text to ask what it means to describe something as a ‘family’ in the first place?

The reason I’m drawn to this reading of Cam/Pal/Pyrrha as like, ultimately illegible, incoherent in that we as audience cannot coherently put words to it and make sense of it in the language readily available to us, is because I think the text understands these processes of ordering, taxonomising, delineating, and categorising as tactics of fascism. This is a tension also at play in Lolita; Humbert ‘orders’ and constructs his narrative via the available tools of literary discourse and similarly constructs his ‘Lolita’ as a labyrinth of cultural references and taxonomies; but Dolores is a ‘Haze,’ Annabel Leigh is a ‘tangle of thorns,’ there exists a being who is able to remain indistinct and impenetrable in a narrative which enacts violence on her by trying to make taxonomical sense of her. Coherence and legibility are mechanisms of visibility; under fascism, to be easily made sense of can be dangerous. The first two books were all about coherence, legibility, interpellation, and the consequences of Living In A Society; what it means to ‘be’ or ‘become’ a cavalier, what the necromancer-cavalier relationship ‘means,’ what Lyctorhood ‘means,’ how these relations of hierarchised sexuality and the interpersonal relationships articulated within the normative language given to them exist to shore up conditions of imperialism. This question of ‘ordering’ goes right down to eg. enumeration (First, Second, Third, etc.) and pretty tightly contained and atomised cultural associations, and the fact that that enumeration can be traced back to Alecto—

D’you know why you’re really the First? Because in a very real way, you and the others are A.L.’s children … There would be none of you, if not for her.

—which cribs this passage, from Lolita:

‘[…] for I must confess that depending on the condition of my glands and ganglia, I could switch in the course of the same day from one pole of insanity to the other—from the thought that around 1950 I would have to get rid somehow of a difficult adolescent whose magic nymphage had evaporated—to the thought that with patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans la force de l’âge; indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time a vieillard encore vert—or was it green rot?—bizarre, tender, salivating Dr. Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad. In the days of that wild journey of ours, I doubted not that as father to Lolita the First I was a ridiculous failure.

—very evenly ties together ideas of reproduction as imperial sustention figured in the language of sexual assault. The point is: as far as the empire is concerned, processes of ordering and taxonomising are equivocal to the mechanical maintenance of conditions of fascism.

Conversely, Nona is a text about when John’s precise demarcation of the world starts to fail and people have to make sense of themselves between the cracks; from Pyrrha as both failed cavalier and failed Lyctor to Cam and Palamedes and then Paul as if not ‘failed’ then at least a new ordering of necromancer/cavalier-ism to the Tower Princes as John’s kind of scrambling effort to rearticulate hegemony post-losing all but one of his Lyctors. Regarding how we are to read Cam/Pal/Pyrrha, I think it’s pretty clear that the text understands the obligations, normative assumptions and expectations, and material consequences of normative kinship relations identified as ‘family’ as part and parcel with the social ordering of a fascistic imperial hegemony; Kiriona, Alecto, and Harrow make up the three key points of contact for this reading, though it’s pretty diffuse across the whole work. We see kinship relations as structuring imperialist hierarchies and we understand the currency of those hierarchies to be death/abuse/sexual violence/totalised control, articulated most profoundly through Kiriona; we also see the destruction of social formations as part and parcel with conquest—

Palamedes said mildly, “You know we’re conversant with the concept of family in the Nine Houses, right?” Pash seemed genuinely surprised. “Why the hell would it matter to you? [...] You don’t give a fuck about families when you’re carving them up—”

—this of course being in keeping with the general conditions of mixed cultures, mixed languages, variances on kinship structures, refugees seemingly thrown together on Lemuria. The bolstering of the social articulations of the conquerors and denaturing of the social articulations of the conquered is rendered as a tactic of conquest; ‘family’ here is figured as a cudgel of imperialism.

Diegetically, as I said, Cam + Pal + Pyrrha + Nona’s social arrangement is not ‘normative,’ neither in the fact that others on Lemuria can make easy sense of it (and thus attempt to do so by referring to peripheralised and marginalised social relations ie. sex work) nor in the fact that they can coherently make sense of themselves via the imperial taxonomy (is Pyrrha a Lyctor greatest thread in the history of forums). Nor is it normative on our end; relative to the nuclear family structure, it’s the ‘wrong’ number of parents, the ‘wrong’ configurations of gender, the ‘wrong’ configurations of blood relation (Nona is a ‘child’ but not an ‘heir’ to anything and not a blood relation of either; Cam and Palamedes as ‘parents’ are blood-related), even the ‘wrong’ overall kinship relations—I put ‘child’ and ‘parents’ in quotations there precisely because I don’t think they’re conditions uncritically reified by the narrative as much as they’re discursive gestures made for the sake of being problematised. Is Nona their ‘child’ in a text where to be the ‘child’ of someone means to be what Kiriona is to John? Is this a ‘family’ when ‘family’ is the mechanic of imperial refortification? Again, like—what does it mean to call them a family at all?

‘Family’ is a label we deploy to give legibility to relations that we are otherwise struggling to make sense of. Setting aside Paul for the moment because I don’t quite know what to do with them and probably won’t have a Take that I can confidently commit to until after Alecto—I think the kind of difficulty that the text has in articulating exactly what Cam + Pal + Pyrrha ‘had’ between them that we see in that final scene is intentional, and I think it’s best understood left that way rather than wrangled into a taxonomy that the rest of the text is v determined to critically unpack. So to answer your question, I think the ambiguity is key—one overarching theme of the series is how people can love each other and articulate that love when the language available for them to do so carries obligations of disparate power, hierarchy, serves a particular purpose that we come to understand as ethically unconscionable; whether that love has to be made sense of within hierarchy, or contravene it, or try and stake a place outside of it. Cam + Palamedes + Pyrrha become the next stage of development in the unravelling of such a discourse; to try and make coherent sense of them could all too easily mean falling back on the language that the text works to identify as socially constructed and thus as limited, and thus imposing those limitations.

[autogyne-redacted]

Ok, so let's talk about "misandry."

(Heads up that I use terrible US foreign policy as an example of underlying gender ideology, Death to America of course)

1) if we're working within a social justice, privilege-oppression type framework, there is no systemic oppression of men as men, or trans men as trans men (beyond transphobia). Within these privilege oppression frameworks treating misandry or transandrophobia as a real thing is gonna have disastrous consequences.

2) But we need to be abandoning the identity politics social justice orthodoxy as fast as we can. Occupying a position of privilege within the discourse is dehumanizing and hellish, it has a terrible track record with transmisogyny (not a coincidence), and trying to map gendered power just by looking at identity groups means you miss a ton of what's happening within the groups, and in less straight forward ways.

3) a huge part of the gender binary is between camab ppl as (instrumental) subjects and cafab ppl as (responsive, feeling) objects. And this is fucked all around.

To pick one of the more egregious examples, US military directives make heavy use of the category of "military aged males." People outside this category are (theoretically) assumed to be non combatants while "military aged males" in ~warzones~ are basically valid targets by default. https://tinyurl.com/4skt53tx

This category also faces extra exclusion from refugee and asylum status: https://tinyurl.com/4txsmepy

We could explain this as a symptom of misogyny. That women should also be recognized as being capable of enacting violence and treated equally. This is the most straight forward application of orthodox gender theory and likely the worst.

Or we could say that there's something about the intersection of being Arab/Muslim/young/read as male that leads to a unique oppression.

But it's not like it's just this intersection. If we look at prison populations, or who gets hit by police violence, or weaponized accusations of Sexual Assault the logic is actually fairly consistent here, if a little messy to talk about.

Ppl seen as men are seen as capable of wielding power and this leads to benefits if they're seen as basically good. If they're seen as crazy, dangerous, evil, hostile, or at risk of being any of these, being seen as capable of violence makes shit way worse. Lots of intersections push you further towards being viewed as a threat.

(A pretty good bite sized model of transmisogyny is that it misgenders us as men + we get negative respect since we rejected masculinity + it frames us as crazy/dangerous).

Ppl seen as women are going to be seen as less competent, in need of guidance, control and protection by default. But it comes with certain (conditional) protections. Violence against women certainly happens, but the fact that it's a special protected category says a lot. (There's a lot to say about how much these protections are worth, who they really apply to and when they disappear and what happens then, but it's very clear that they exist and that they mean something).

4) so am I arguing for the existence of misandry? Absolutely not*. Gender is just a fucked up system of division and control all around. Privilege frameworks suggest that women are going to experience the same shit as men they share identities with + misogyny + possible extra intersectional oppression. And while this approach is sometimes helpful, I think a better default framework is that gender is just a way to create more social categories for a more complicated system of control with common threads like the subject-object binary that can play to different ways in different contexts.

The whole thing needs to be dismantled and we need to see ppl across gender categories as whole human beings with a meaningful interiority, the capacity for violence, etc. And if we recognize that gender is a complicated system of control, it follows naturally that our gender discourse shouldn't all ask men to sit down / shut up / listen.

5) the issue with transandrophobia BS is that it really wants to exceptionalize the trans masc experience. "It's fucked up that I'm being seen as suspect and capable of violence like terrible cis men, I'm obviously one of the good ones." And as they fight for the best of both worlds ("I should be respected like a man but still seen as incapable of chauvinism") it pushed naturally for trans fems to get the worst of both worlds.

6) returning to feminist "man-hating" there's a lot i oppose for being essentialist or doubling down on subject-object binary. Beyond that, a lot of it is just mean. And like, ppl can be jaded and mean sometimes. But a lot of social justice feminist dogma was ppl developing a bristly defensiveness from constant harassment and trolling. Ppl defending this as an understandable response, and then that shifting into codifying and valorizing it. And I just think it's a miserable way to live and it's miserable to be on the receiving end of it.

I think some grace and understanding for ppl being jaded and bristly is rly helpful but I'm done with valorizing it.

7) all of this said, basic feminist takes about men having lots of pressure and motivations to be chauvinist still apply. And they certainly apply to trans men. But there's a difference between having social expectations that you be a chauvinist and bowing to that pressure. And lots of men are chill and nice! Yes even cishet men!

It's easy to want to draw a hard line where you're "one of the good ones" and are categorically separated from the possibility of being sexist (ontologically incapable of violence, even?) and that goes really poorly.

(most of my beef with transandrophobia is that it's doing this + exceptionalizing trans masc experience in a way that fucks over trans fems).

But I'm not gonna ask ppl to constantly self flagellate or be hyper vigilant to make sure they don't slip up. Sin frameworks are miserable and it's not like being interpersonally shitty in a way that lines up with oppressive systems actually has consequences that much worse than just being an asshole.

So much of the more aggressive side of social justice just feels like ways to treat enemies, not your friends or ppl you want to be in community with.

I'm glad we've been moving on from it.

*editing a footnote since this has already come up a couples times / this post seems to be leaving my immediate circles: by saying misandry isn't real I mean: there isn't a systemic oppression of men as men that parallels misogyny. Gendered oppression isn't a "both sides" situation. When "egalitarian" or mra types brought "misandry" into the discourse this is what they were pushing for.

While I object to the idea that all men evenly oppress all women, patriarchy absolutely has men at the top. It's a complex and multi-directional system of power but there is an overall gendered slant to it. My framework here is still a feminist framework.

[trans-axolotl]

I went to the anarchist/abolitionist healthcare conference this weekend, and it was really a beautiful experience that I don't even have words for. Being able to share resources, knowledge, dreams, and joy together with other people invested in this work was so special, and I gained a ton of hope by seeing the many ways that other people are actively engaged in resisting these fucked up systems and building care into our communities. I gave a presentation about psych abolition, talked about resistance within the psych ward, and got a standing ovation from a room filled with 50 people, many of whom were mental health professionals looking to build solidarity. I legitimately almost cried because of being to have that experience with my mad comrades. I met so many beautiful crazy people who intimately understand what it means to survive as a mad person, and just gained so much knowledge from people actively putting their abolitionist values into practice. I want to share a few of my favorite resources that I became aware of at this conference, and I'll make another post later with some of my key takeaways.

Mutual Aid Self/Social Therapy: This is a support framework designed by one of my friends that provides an intentional structure for providing therapetuic support within communities, especially organizing communities where there's a lot of burnout. It offers so many resources for skills training to allow anyone, whether you have a background in emotional support or not, to set this up within your community. The framework is purposefully not hierarchial or transactional, and allows for actually addressing people's material conditions as well as providing space for emotional processing.

Of Unsound Mind: Incredible archive and research on psychiatric history. Mostly focused around America, but also has some info on other countries. The author of the website will be coming out with a book later this year, which I think is mostly going to be about the Trieste, Basaglia, and that history of psych resistance in Italy.

Power makes us Sick: Collective that focuses on autonomous healthcare and emotional support, especially in terms of autonomous trans healthcare. Has some fabulous zines and resources.

A Corpse among Corpses: Incredible documentary about asylum graveyards in the Midwest and the trade of graverobbing for experimentation in medical schools, and how this connects to settler colonialism, slavery, eugenics, and modern gentrification. Really do want to emphasize a trigger warning for genocide, eugenics, medical violence, self harm, antiblack racism, instituionalization, and lots of discussion of death. I talked a lot with the filmmakers, and really appreciated their care and intent in making this film as a way of bearing witness rather than exploiting atrocity in the name of art, but do want to be very clear that this film is incredibly heavy to watch and might be something worth doing with other people. It was deeply impactful for me, and made me tear up many times.

The Living Museum: Through transforming the old Creedmoor hospital grounds into a musuem and workspace for current patients to showcase their art, this space celebrates psychiatric resistance, transformation, struggle, and joy. I really want to go visit and share in that space, as it seems just so fucking cool. It seems like you might need to contact directly to schedule a visit.

Cahoots Crisis Response Model: This is one model for crisi intervention teams that respond instead of police. They are not perfect, still have some enagement with police, but are an interesting example of how to try to implement these types of programs. Since theyv'e been around for 25 years, they have a lot of knoweldeg and could be a good first group to reach out to if you're trying to create this in your community.

Overall this whole weekend was a beautiful example of how to put our values into practice, and really just wanted to share these projects with you all!

[blacktabbygames]

Good mornighternoon. Do you have any advice on making writing and/or coding branching dialogue less confusing?

It's always going to be confusing and difficult to keep track of branching, but here's some things that I think have helped. Gonna break this down into a few sections to make it a little easier to follow.

Foundations and Research

So much practice for me came from being obsessed with Bioware games growing up, especially Dragon Age and Mass Effect — just keeping track of complicated branching world states in complex games you already enjoy is extremely good exercise, and the best way to get better at thinking about a medium is to consume and discuss things in that medium.

Building on that, I think that the best media to take a deep dive into to improve your own craft is something that you really like, but that feels like it missed the mark in a few areas that are important to you. Again, revisiting Mass Effect and Dragon Age, I absolutely loved the way that those games set up challenging decisions, but was frustrated at how easy it was to circumvent those choices entirely. By the time Abby and I started work on Scarlet Hollow, I feel like I had a strong foundation from obsessively consuming those works and the two of us discussing at length how we wanted to handle branching compared to games we've enjoyed in the past.

The Big Picture

The bigger your project, the more important it is to have intentionality to your choices. With both Scarlet Hollow and Slay the Princess, we decided on the major themes of the story and wrote down and outlined all of our Big Plot Points before we wrote a word of the actual script.

It can also help to come up with Rules for your piece that fit within your outline. These aren't necessarily ever words that are directly communicated in the game, but rather something for you to personally follow (and to break, on occasion). To give some examples of rules we've come up with for Scarlet Hollow: Every chapter must have a "major" decision with seemingly only bad outcomes towards the end. Each of these decisions must have a secret "out" mapped to a trait. Each trait gets exactly one out. Every episode must contain at least one decision where the focus is the player's relationship with Tabitha. The story must come back together in a recognizable structure after a split. As an extension of that last point, subsequent playthroughs must feel both Similar and Different. Again, these aren't hard and fast rules, and one of the joys of writing is knowing which rules you should break and when you can break them. (So if you're reading this post and trying to use it to theorize about future plot developments, good luck!)

Having a finished outline and rules are important because then, as you work on the minutiae, you'll already have a strong framework to build around. Suddenly, when you're crafting decisions and thinking about cascading consequences, you're not just branching out into an infinite void: instead, you're actively working to draw everything into a set of predetermined thematic and structural points.

The Little Details

When it's time to write your script, it's very important to remain focused in the moment — if you think too long about the scale of a branching narrative and the work it requires, you'll find yourself easily overwhelmed. Just work on one menu at a time in one scene at a time, and you'll find a way to keep things straight and to get it done.

When writing a menu, define your player's options with intent. What are the things (within reason) that you would want to do in a scene? What emotional range do you want to grant the player? Do two options cover the same intent and emotionality? If so, condense them, and keep the option that's more fun.

Emotionality is very important here, so I want to take an extra line to emphasize it. Ask yourself, "what are the different reactions a player might have to this, emotionally" and find a way to let them express those emotions. Letting them express those emotions doesn't always mean you let the *action* behind those emotions work — it's more about acknowledging those feelings and letting them bake into the narrative.

Bolding this one because it's very important track everything. A lot of the callbacks and references in Scarlet Hollow aren't actually pre-planned — we just make sure to track most player decisions so if we realize we want to make a reference to something that might have happened, there's already a variable in place for it. An example of this that comes to mind is the "dead moms" callback in Episode 4, which we didn't plan in advance, but when we realized how right that callback was for that scene, we already had that information tracked.

I think I accidentally talked about a lot of stuff outside the scope of your question, but narrative design is such an interesting subject and I like talking about it. Hopefully this is helpful!

[torturedpoetemotions]

Stede Bonnet Deep Dive

(aka repository for all the fucks I refuse to give to all the terrible takes on this hellsite after season 2)

I decided to do a deep dive into Stede's character finally, because I keep seeing the absolute WORST takes about him since season two aired.

I'll preface this by saying I don't agree with the majority of the negative or critical takes I've seen about season 2. I don't think the harsh readings of Stede's character are based in a good faith or often even in a sensible reading of the source material. And I don't have the time or inclination to spend all my time refuting bad Stede takes on tumblr, so this one meta in explanation and defense of my goofy little guy will have to suffice.

This is not a carefully crafted piece of creative writing. This is basic five paragraph essay shit, but with way more paragraphs. Claim, supports, transition, repeat to conclusion. Don't say I didn't warn you!

First off, no, Stede is not the villain of this story.

Yes, that's a take someone actually put into my notifications with their full chest. By no definition of the word is Stede positioned as a villain in this story, and he isn't even a compelling case for an accidental villain. This show has done a wonderful job of setting down clear and specific criteria for what makes a character villainous or not in a fictional world operating on a very different moral and ethical framework from our own. And while you could maybe argue Stede would be a pretty bad guy by real world standards, to be this is a moot point. By that measure every character in the show is a pretty bad guy. It's a nearly useless metric.

Within the show, villains are people with privilege and power who use that power to harm others and refuse to change for the better. Stede begins the story with an immense amount of privilege and power and gives all which is in his power to give up at the end of season 1. He gains a different kind of power in season 2 and by the end of season 2, he's relinquished that as well. He rarely uses his power to hurt people, and never does he intentionally seek to hurt innocent people for no reason. That isn't to say no innocent people GET hurt. But he's never trying to hurt people unless they've hurt or threatened the people he cares about. He in fact uses the power he has to stand up for the people he loves, repeatedly.

From the very beginning, he uses his wealth and power to create a space where he, and by extension everyone on his crew, has the space to be themselves. In 1x05 he uses his class privilege and knowledge to punish the partygoers who denigrated Ed simply for not being "one of them." In 1x08 he uses his power as captain to stand up for Buttons against Jack's callous cruelty and remove him from the ship after Karl is killed.

In 2x03 he uses his relative familiarity with Zheng Yi Sao (second only to Olu in terms of members of his crew who have any such familiarity) to plead mercy for Ed's crew. In 2x05 he uses his position as Captain to convince the crew to give Ed a second chance, while also hearing and working to address and mitigate their concerns as much as possible. In 2x06 he takes the responsibility for rescuing his own crew from Ned Low, negotiates a peaceful resolution with his crew, and punishes only Ned as the admitted and obvious orchestrator of the attack and torture of his crew. In 2x07, he doesn't start picking fights to show how big and bad he is. The only two people he shows any violence toward at all are someone walking toward him with the stated intention to kill him and someone poaching a third of his crew right before his eyes.

These aren't the wanton abuses of power characteristic of a villain. These are the understandable actions of someone who feels a lot of attachment and responsibility for the people around him.

No, Stede is not a cruel person who likes hurting people.

Jesus fucking Christ. Like I get that we all have our favorites, but I swear to god some of y'all think that means that you need to turn every other character into pure evil just to justify your character's existence. This isn't even remotely true.

Stede does NOT like hurting people. He hates hurting people, in fact, often even when they kind of deserve it. He really hates it when they obviously don't deserve it! Nothing he does in all of season one is motivated by a desire to harm other people. Yes, even piracy.

Stede enters the show with a very romanticized view of piracy. The violence isn't the point for him, the point is adventure and wanderlust, and possibly primarily, escape. Escape from the confines of a life he didn't ask for and has never wanted. Escape from a marriage he didn't choose and didn't want to be part of. Escape from the rigid strictures of a social structure that doesn't make room for people like him (whether we're talking about his queerness or his neurodivergence). The point is to create a space where he can be himself, and then extend that to others as well. If I wanted to get real sad, I'd say the point is the hope that by creating such a space, he will finally find people willing to tolerate him, or even be his friends.

He also doesn't leave Mary or his children to hurt them. He leaves them because Mary makes it clear they won't be going with him, and he knows he can't bear to stay. And he's riddled with guilt about it, it's not something he looks back on with pride or with glee.

And let's get real dark for a second and acknowledge: for a man in Stede's time and position, if he was actually a cruel person who enjoyed hurting people and he wanted to hurt his wife and children? There would be very little if anything to stop him from doing exactly that. If he wanted his children and his wife to live in fear of his cruelty, he could do that without consequences. But the one instance where he does something that does make Mary afraid--attacking Doug in 1x10--is something he does on instinct and immediately regrets, apologizes for, and feels awful about. He then goes a step further to continue making amends with both Doug and Mary for the rest of the episode.

And that's another thing: Stede's reaction to finding out he's hurt someone is to be upset by that, and then to try and rectify it immediately. When Lucius calls him out for not asking how he is, Stede immediately re-engages with him and starts looking after his well-being, encouraging him to talk about what's bothering him and not to shut out the people who love him. When Ed tells him how much Stede leaving without a word hurt him, Stede accepts that and tries to correct Ed's assumption that it's because he, Ed, wasn't enough or wasn't cared about. When Ed voices uncertainty and regrets about the pace of their relationship, Stede--though quite obviously hurt by what he thinks Ed is saying--immediately puts his focus on making Ed feel secure again, telling him this relationship can be whatever they want it to be.

Now, Stede gets a lot of flak for his reaction to Ed's fishing job news, but let's be real here: it IS incredibly random. It comes out of nowhere and genuinely makes not a lick of damn sense. And it's a wild thing to drop on someone you've been building a relationship with, a wild thing to have decided in a single afternoon before you've even talked to them about it. I'm not going to take Stede too harshly to task for not reacting perfectly seflessly there. It doesn't erase all the times when he DID react by immediately putting the other person's feelings in focus. And those aren't the actions of someone who enjoys hurting people and revels in cruelty to those around him.

Hell, Stede doesn't even revel in hurting people who've actually done something to warrant it, most of the time. Stede isn't excited or gloating about killing one of his childhood bullies in 1x01. He's horrified by what he's done. He wasn't even trying to kill him! He was going for the "stun move." He's so racked with guilt for it the entire season that he hallucinates the man berating him. He takes clear pleasure in manipulating the French partygoers and turning their own game against them, but he's still primarily motivated by making Ed feel better (and fine, that's his one time out of ten, I guess). He also takes no joy in Chauncy's death, in fact he's horrified and traumatized by it. The Badmintons are two people who tormented him throughout his childhood, but he shows an incredible amount of regret and guilt about both their deaths, especially considering Chauncy's really wasn't his fault in any possible way.

The final scene with Chauncy on its own would counter the idea that Stede likes hurting people! Stede is distraught by the thought that he hurts people, sobbing about it in fact. He doesn't leave Ed to hurt him! He leaves Ed because he thinks that is IS hurting him, and wants to stop.

Even Ned Low in 2x06 is not something Stede savors or revels in. Sure, he enjoys the fame it brings, later on. But he doesn't kill Ned in service of that, and he doesn't revel in killing Ned. He isn't smiling, gloating, or smug when he does it. He's deadly serious, and protective of the people he loves, in a pretty blatant mirror of his confrontation with Jack in 1x08. And even once it's done, he doesn't derive satisfaction from it. He's blatantly and obviously distraught by it, flashing back to one of his most traumatic childhood memories. It's the rest of the crew that cheer when he pushes Ned overboard. Stede is silent except for excusing himself to go to his quarters. When he pulls Ed into the room a few minutes later, there are tears in his eyes and his expression is well...agonized, frankly.

Stede's also quick to forgive even pretty serious transgressions against himself, like Ed plotting to burn his face off in 1x06 or Izzy selling him out to the navy in 1x09 (yes, there was a time gap there, but Stede began acting friendlier toward Izzy and showing concern for him basically as soon as he realized Ed wasn't actually dead). That's not the behavior of someone cruel who enjoys hurting people, either.

Yeah, Stede revels in piracy and doesn't have big compunctions about hurting people who threaten him or hurt the people he loves. I'd say the latter, at least, is true for a lot of people even in real life. And as for the former, well. If we're going to say Stede is cruel for enjoying being a pirate, I think we'd have to throw a lot of other characters into the cruel pile, too. Like almost all of them.

Stede is not lacking in care for the members of his crew.

I've already written an entire meta on this, so I'll just link that here and reiterate that if this were true, at minimum, Jim, Frenchie, Izzy, Fang, and Archie would all be dead.

So he's not a villain, or cruel on purpose, or careless.

So who is Stede Bonnet, actually?

Stede at his worst is somewhat thoughtless and oblivious. We see this throughout both seasons, but it's far more prominent in season one. Stede at his best is generous and gracious and forgiving and kind. Stede when provoked acts to protect himself and those he loves without hesitation or pulling any punches, as already referenced several times in this meta.

Stede is, textually, canonically, a gay man forced into marriage with someone he couldn't love who also couldn't love him. Stede is a survivor of a childhood filled with emotional abuse at the hands of his father and physical abuse at the hands of his peers. He does not know how to reach out to people, both because nobody ever reached out to him and because any attempts at all that he did make were met with the kind of shit we saw from Nigel, Chauncey, and his father.

But Stede wants, so very much and so obviously, to have people to be kind to and generous and loving with. Look at how eagerly and excitedly he opens up to Ed, when he sees Ed meeting him with interest instead of mockery or scorn in 1x04. Look how readily he shares his things with Ed and with the crew throughout season 1. In fact he voluntarily left an economic system where it was acceptable for him to hoard wealth for himself, and entered into a system where it was expected for him to share any and all spoils among his crewmates. He loves to share things with people! He loves to try new things with them and show them new things. He's so eager to have any kind of friend.

Stede also begins learning almost immediately how to reach out to people, once he has an environment where he feels secure doing it. And he loves doing it! He'll even do things he doesn't like to make someone else happy, like take Ed to a party he really, really wants to go to even though Stede knows it will be awful (1x05).

He is quick to take feedback and course correct when someone points out to him that he's been hurtful to them or wronged them, like with Lucius in 2x02. Arguably this would also apply to Izzy egging him on to do the fuckery in 1x06. Izzy appealed to his sense of obligation ("I stuck my neck out for you") and his affection for Ed ("he adores you") and it worked! It worked because Stede cares about other people, about their feelings and their needs and wants, and what they think of him. He cares so, so much.

He has flaws, too, of course. As stated, he can be thoughtless and oblivious. He's new to having friends, and new to love, and he makes a lot of mistakes. But he also corrects those mistakes, once he realizes them or they're pointed out to him. And it rarely takes much urging. If anything, Stede's more stubborn when he knows he's right in a situation, but even when he's technically right, he ultimately prioritize other people's feelings (as with the probably-not-actually-cursed suit in 2x05).

He's a goof. And he loves beautiful things. But he's not the entitled, lazy shit his father accuses him of being. He doesn't have a lot of physical or combat skills, but he can learn those skills simply by doing it enough. We see this in season one with how he gets better at getting on and off the ship over time. He's also great at putting a positive spin or an optimistic face on difficult things. We see this with how he treats the patrons who come into Jackie's in 2x01, and also with how he approaches challenges throughout the season. He's someone who, nine times out of ten, looks on the bright side and tries to problem solve, rather than despairing.

He's much more skilled when it comes to coming up with and executing plans, even on the fly...something we see throughout the show. First with getting into piracy in the first place. Then with his first defeat of Izzy in 1x03. Then there's the quickly thought up and delightfully executed revenge on the French partygoers in 1x05, the quite ridiculous but ultimately successful fuckery in 1x06. The fuckery to fake his death in 1x10!

This characterization carries over into season 2, with Stede's nearly successful execution of a robbery at Jackie's in 2x01. In fact that likely would have gone off without a hitch if it hadn't been for Ricky's nonsense, and ultimately did put Stede and his crew in a much better position than they were before regardless. Then in 2x03, he planned the escape of his and Ed's crews and it went off beautifully!

He came up with the plan to escape Ned Low and his crew in 2x06 literally second to second, improvising on the fly as the situation developed until he and his crew were safe again. He successfully got the drop on the two British soldiers in 2x08, he just couldn't actually fight two well-trained men on his own. And it was his plan, ultimately, that got his crew and ship out of an entirely besieged and surrounded Republic of Pirates.

(That plan did not go off without a hitch, to tragic results. But I don't think that overrides Stede's skills in this area. Many of his plans do not end perfectly, but they end remarkably well given the odds. And given the odds he was presented with, the numbers they were up against? One single casualty is wildly successful (even if I'm wailing and gnashing my teeth about it and will be unless and until David and Co. fix it in season 3).)

And finally--and this is the one single gripe I have with the season, that Stede and Ed both said this and seem to actually believe it--this man is not fucking whim-proned. Ed. Ed is fucking whim-proned. That's a pretty core element of his personality, actually. And it's not always a bad thing, and sometimes it's quite fun. But Stede? No. Stede isn't whim-proned. Stede is motivated. Stede is decisive. Stede is tunnel-visioned, perhaps. But he actually doesn't just change up his entire life on a whim. He makes a decision about what he wants, once he realizes he can actually do that, and then he fucking sticks to it like a mosquito in tree sap.

He decided he wanted to become a pirate, so he took the time, expense, and effort required to commission a ship, have it built, outfit it with supplies, and hire a crew. He realized he was in love with Ed and rowed a dinghy from Barbados to wherever the fuck (if you go with history it was Topsail Island, which is nearly three thousand fucking miles away), rejoined his crew, and set about working in a place he was miserable, trying to slowly save enough scraps of money to buy a ship to get back to his beloved. He wrote Ed letters, it's implied every day while they were at Jackie's. He had his goal, and he didn't stop working toward his goal until it was met and they were back together. And once they were back together, he didn't quit just because Ed didn't "melt back into his arms," and--*gesticulates wildly at all of season 2*.

Where Stede thinks he's whim-prone has less to do with caprice and more to do with trauma responses. Every single time we see him do something impulsive, it's as a response to something traumatic. Braining Nigel with the paperweight? Impulse in response to Nigel triggering memories of his childhood bullying. Running back home? Impulse in response to being dragged out of bed at gunpoint, having every single one of your deepest fears and insecurities thrown at you, and then watching the person throwing them basically prove them true by shooting himself in the face trying to kill you. Pulling Ed into his room? Impulse in response to the trauma of being invaded, tortured, watching Ed and all their friends be tortured, and thinking they were going to die (and yeah killing Ned too).

All of this to say...Stede has layers, y'all. He's got good and bad points. He's got strengths and many, many weaknesses. But he is in no way the one-dimensional mustache-twirling villain or bumbling total incompetent id-driven asshat people are trying to paint him as for whatever ridiculous reason.

[kathaynesart]

I love your storytelling! I was wondering if you’d give tips for outlining and planning a story, I adore your pacing and different arcs. I’m new to writing and I’m having trouble keeping things cohesive even with an outline and I just wanted to know if you had any perspective or tips to share. Don’t feel pressured to answer. I love your replica au and hope you are doing well!

Aw thank you so much!  Sure I can talk about that.  Mind you aside from a screen writing course I took in college I am entirely self taught.  This is just information I’ve absorbed and worked out over the past couple decades of personal writing. More below the cut.

WRITING/OUTLINING STYLE

For starters you need to figure out what style of outlining works for you.  I’ve been told there are two types  of writers.   The Architect and the Gardener.  The Architect is someone who has the entire framework plotted out and builds off of that.  The Gardener starts with a basic setup and lets the story flow naturally and chronologically from there, basing it entirely off of their extensive knowledge of the world, characters, and how they interact within it. 

There are draw backs to both sides. Gardeners can often times write themselves into a corner or lose track of where the story should go (leading to lots of unnecessary fluff and loose ends).  While architects have a habit of ignoring a lot of the important “middle stuff” that leads to their major predetermined plot points and sometimes don’t realize how the story is naturally leaning in other directions, making it jarring when they try to force it back on track. 

I like using both methods but in different situations.  For example before I even put pen to paper I already knew what I wanted the beginning and ending of Replica to be as well as a few pivotal scenes. I had a basic framework.  However that framework has grown and changed over time as I’ve nurtured it.  So I’ve come up with my own term I like to call “the Greenhouse Method,” where you may create the basic framework but understand that things within it can change and warp the structure to something entirely new. Just make sure it doesn’t go too off course. 

That method may not work for everyone  so I recommend looking inward to see what variation of the methods work best for you.  Because if you’re not enjoying the process then there’s no point. 

With this method I tend to list out major scenes of importance and then slowly figure out how they flow or cut into each other.  Doing this involves several other factors I will state below…

THEMING

One important thing is to know what is the theme or message of your story.  This doesn’t have to be obvious but every good story normally has an underlying theme.  There needs to  be a point.  For example, Sherk is about accepting yourself for who you are.  Jurassic Park is a warning about playing God.   

Replica at its core is about cherishing your self worth and holding onto hope and loved ones even in the darkest times.  Even when they’re not there anymore.  

Whatever it may be, find that theme that means something to you, and make sure that feeling stays with you and the plot, even if subtly.  

CHARACTERIZATION

Have a strong knowledge of the characters in your story.  I achieve this by doing little exercises on how they would react to certain incidents or answering questionnaires.  By doing this it allows them talk to each other within any scene I have setup but leave void of my own input. Instead I simply take notes rather than force them to say something they’re supposed to say (very Gardener style).  Often times letting the characters be themselves allows them to say and do things I find far more entertaining than what I initially had planned. 

It’s important with characters though that you make sure you let them be themselves rather than have them act out for pure drama/plot sake.  I see that a lot in fan communities where characters will begin to cry or overreact in ways that seem out of character and it can really break my immersion. So know your characters.  Know everything about them from what their favorite cookie is to how they deal with trauma.  It’s all important to lead to the most natural of interactions. 

SCENES

When plotting out scenes make sure that every one of them has a point. Every single scene.  If there is nothing new to be learned, or changed, or shared, then there is no point beyond a few brief sentences to transition it to the next important scene.  Avoid fluff that is just fluff for the sake of fluff.  You can have fluffy scenes, sure, but make sure there is something else to be gained from it.  I’ve read scenes that are literally just the same character harping over the same issue they’ve been dealing with without coming to any new conclusion or going through any sort of change, be it internal or external from the plot.  I don’t like having my time wasted as a reader and neither should you as a writer!

THE ZONE

I don’t see many people talk about this but I think it’s important for any writer to find a space where they can zone out and let the story bloom in their mind. No judgement, no analyzing, just pure fun. For some this happens in the shower, or sitting in front of the laptop with a cup of tea, or me driving too fast down the freeway blasting music in my ears.  I come up with all my best stuff while driving.  Sometimes I will extend a drive just to finish a scene properly.  Whatever it is, find what helps you get in that zone and see if you can play something out in your head.  It helps keep me inspired for sure. If you've managed to come up with something you like, make sure to write it down and then come back to it later to look at it from a more analytical perspective. Does it work with my theme? Are the characters reacting realistically? Where does this happen in the timeline and how can it impact future store plot points? Etc.

EXTRA: EASY MISTAKE TO AVOID

This isn't so much about outlining, just writing in general, but when you start writing, be sure to choose a tense and stick with it.  Many writers, myself included, prefer past tense.  Though I’ve seen some people do present that can work well.  Just make sure whatever you do stays consistent. 

Example BAD: “Jane WENT to the store, hoping to find some crackers.  She  SPEAKS with the clerk to ask if he had any.” 

Example GOOD: “Jane WENT to the store, hoping to find some crackers.  She  SPOKE with the clerk to ask if he had any.”  

SUMMARY

Know your theme/message

Know your characters

Know your genre

Every scene should have a point and be interesting in some way 

Recommend for beginners having an idea of where you want the story to conclude and see how that links up with your theme

Hope that helps.  Sorry if I went off on a tangent but I feel like a lot of the story telling process is interconnected when done correctly.  Let me know if you have any more specific issues you want addressed!

[zzzzzestforlife]

🦋 Falling In and Out of Love 🧡(with your job)

a.k.a. how to recover from burnout in 3 steps~ 🍰

My job has taken me on an emotional rollercoaster lately and it got me thinking about how much I invest in my career the way I invest in my personal relationships. The advice I've gotten to address the stress/anxiety I feel has always been to detach and disconnect more, but the more I try (and fail) to do that, the worse I feel and perform. So instead of fighting it, I reflected on my relationship with my work as I would a personal relationship and implemented some of my realizations. It seems to be working well, so of course I wanted to share~ 😉

🏇 Do more of what you're good at

People tend to naturally take on certain roles in different relationships. The mom-friend, the mood-maker, the hype-upper, etc. Being the person you naturally gravitate towards being anyway can make you feel more needed and appreciated because you're using the specific talents and skills that make you unique.

You might not know what you're going to be good at. It might even be something you think you're really bad at. For me, despite being an introvert, I was given the opportunity to take on an incredibly rewarding project coordinator role. So if you're willing to push yourself, be sure to communicate that.

🍊 Communication is key

No one is a mind-reader. And the tendency when having a hard time to shut down and clam up is very strong. A good partner (or friend or boss) may notice and take action to help you, but you can make both your lives easier by speaking up. It's not complaining, it's just taking responsibility for the relationship.

I was very daunted at first because work doesn't seem like the right place for "feelings" to exist, but the fact is that you're a human, your colleagues are all human. Talking things out can help make sure that no one (me) takes feedback on the project personally, and that everyone (me) has clearer guidance on how to take their careers to the next level.

🔥 What motivates you

Working for the next promotion is like studying for the grades or getting close to someone for superficial reasons. But if you're motivated by wanting to learn (about the topic or the person), the promotion (or grades or deeper, more fulfilling relationship) will follow naturally.

Sometimes talking to someone about your motivations can help crystalized them. Feeling like I had no motivation to work, I gave my manager a very honest five minute word-vomit that she, with absolutely no judgement, distilled into simply: "Oh, so you value human connection and feeling useful." Being able to put names to what I'm looking for means I'm better equipped to actively seek them out, especially when they sometimes goes missing in the busyness of the work day.

💌: Like any relationship, how I feel about my job will ebb and flow with time, but viewing it within this framework of "a relationship" helps me better accept that somehow. Hope it can help you too! ☺️ How do you like/tend to see your job? How do you stay motivated? (Genuinely asking because I never know how long these little strategies of mine are going to last due to my novelty-seeking nature 😅)

[friend-crow]

I sarted following you because of the crows but I got interested in the witchcraft things you post sometimes...

I was raised catholic but currently I don't follow any religion or beliefs so i'm interested in learning different things. Even when I was catholic I never experienced any sort of connection or anything in the church. On the other hand I have always felt very connected to nature and animals, which ended up leading me to becoming a vet.

So seeing this aspect of witchcraft that seems more in tune with nature interests me.

But I know pretty much nothing.

Would you have a book to recommend me so I can start learning?

Hmm... I have a hard time recommending books because there aren't really any that I agree with on all points. Especially if, like me, you're not particularly interested in worshiping gods. Most books on witchcraft are pretty heavy on deities, so if you're interested in a more secular/animistic approach, you end up wading through a lot of material that's not that relevant to you (though you can still find lots of useful ideas in the process). I don't know if that's you, though.

As mentioned, I work within an animistic framework. Animism isn't a religion or a monolith (though some religions are animistic), and the concept of "everything has a spirit" can be taken in a lot of different ways. Some people see it primarily as a way in which everything is interconnected, while others take it in a more literal "everything is a dude and I can talk to them" way. I'm kind of in the middle with "everything is a dude but not always like a sentient dude, at least not in a way that we'd understand, but I respect and try to connect with my fellow dudes" type beliefs. If any of these ideas resonate with you, then you might want to look into animism!

With that said, witchcraft is in and of itself not an inherently spiritual affair. For some people it's really just a means to an end. Many practitioners (myself included) have magical practices which are informed by and intertwined with their spirituality, but I see the two as separate things. You've got your spiritual beliefs, and you've got a set of skills by which to achieve various goals. With this in mind, you might ask yourself if you're primarily interested in doing magic, or feel more drawn to the spiritual side of things. Over the years I've had phases where one or the other took precedence, so it's not like you have to decide now (or ever) -- it's just something to think about.

If you're saying to yourself "I like the sound of animism AND witchcraft" then you might want to look into something like Traditional Witchcraft. This is not without gods, but also emphasizes some useful skills for working with spirits which are not reliant on believing in gods. You are going to run into a lot of pseudohistory (it's damn hard to find a practical guide on how to do magic that doesn't contain pseudohistory). My advice is to leave history to the historians and just focus on the parts about how to do magic. Like I said, you don't have to accept any author's take in its entirety.

I hope this helps!

[bioethicists]

it's really frustrating that the pretty much the only ppl who are working to visualize and actualize alternatives to institutionalization + pathologization are people who have been hurt by these technologies of power. obviously we are well-equipped to do this work because we know this pain intimately (and thus what to avoid) but i am often so wounded from trying to center it as part of my own work, when it is still something that is actively burning me up inside.

not only that, i feel like most of us are compelled towards completing this work because even the barest mention of our abuse is met with "WELL WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE THEN???" like i owe it to provide an alternative option to my own abuse or else i should just accept it. do i need to create the alternatives to you punching me in the face? do i need to become an anti-violence advocate in order to justify speaking about you punching me in the face?

i have been reluctant for many years to center anti-psychiatry in my academic work because psychiatric abuse is still an open and festering wound within me (that is still agitated every time i have to utilize the system), but i've come to conclude that i cannot trust non-survivors (or even many survivors) to come at it from a true liberation + autonomy based framework. i just wish more people could understand the pain that comes from having to create the very frameworks that could have saved your childhood self.

[qqueenofhades]

hiii ❣ it's a bit random but do you have any advice for a beginner writer?

i want to write web series and while i'm going to write for my pleasure, i still would love my work to be good enough to have readers.

but while i read stuff and write fics, i don't think it's enough to help me write an original several episode work. + i want to write in english but i'm not a native english speaker.

do you have a textbook or any resource in mind that you'd reccomend to a beginner writer?

Unfortunately, I don't have one single one-size-fits-all resource or silver-bullet magical writing improvement tool that I can recommend, as everyone learns/practices in different ways and some people swear by things that don't work for other people. I can't speak to the value of Grammarly or any other online tool that promises to make you a better writer, as they can often be used to feed your work into AI, make bizarre and/or flatly incorrect suggestions, or otherwise be confusing and unhelpful for a newbie writer, especially someone whose first language isn't English. If you work better within an interactive framework or just want to see if it does seem useful, then by all means do check it out, but don't feel like you HAVE to use it (or anything else) if it doesn't offer much to your process.

As ever, and unhelpfully, my advice for becoming a better writer is to write a lot and read a lot, in all kinds of genres. There's really no get-good-at-writing-quick hack to suddenly get you where you want to be overnight, but you CAN get there by dint of steady and sustained progress. You say that you already read things and write fics -- which is great! You clearly already have some practice with the overall concept, and you are not starting from total scratch. While a lot of writers have a goal of something they really want to do (i.e. in your case, write a web series) and feel like the first one they write has to be The Real and Good One that they only launch into after appropriate years of practice, that's not the case. You can start writing the series now, if you want to. You'll have to also share it with people who you trust to give you helpful and honest feedback (the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc) while also respecting the skill level that you're currently at and not tearing it down for being up to professional standards or something else that doesn't accurately reflect where you are and what you need feedback on. But yes, you will have to write steadily, share your writing with others, and challenge yourself to read and write in different kinds of texts -- i.e. not just fic or amateur fan content, but literature, nonfiction, genre fiction, academia, special interest subjects, and so forth. Writing by professionally published authors is not necessarily always better, but it does give you a sense as to what is deemed marketable, what the general skill level and standard is, and what you might like to emulate or try to do with your own projects.

Also, as a side note, I think that plenty of amateur or fan-written content on the internet is not necessarily outstandingly good, technically speaking. This doesn't mean it's bad -- plenty of people read and enjoy it anyway, and aren't coming in expecting it to be an award-winning piece of fine literature. Standards for what is good, enjoyable, or well-written vary dramatically by genre, medium, what your audience is expecting and/or paying for, and so forth. Some people also have high and/or picky standards for what they will read or what they find enjoyable to read, while others will just go along with the story and don't care as much about the format or technical prowess or so forth. So it is very much a subjective measurement, and if you get to a place where you enjoy reading your own stuff and find it engaging -- regardless of what arbitrary skill level you feel yourself to be on -- chances are that other people will too.

[titleknown]

So, a new anti-AI-art post is making the rounds because of course it is, and while I have not breached the paywall to read the paper, I do think the summarized version of it the author provides has some holes worth poking.

Past the break, because this gets long.

Anyhoo, their core argument is that AI art people are just capitalists who see art as a profitable object and do not exhibit those four fundamental values of But like... this is just casual observation, but I have seen a lot of those values in the AI art community amongst itself.

They share models and tips on how they use the tool! I rarely see them doing it for lucre! I see creators who've used AI art to integrate into other mediums they've worked with! I've seen people with major motor disabilities welcomed. I have seen authenticity in garbage AI art; in aggregate from singular creators.

There is a reason I say that to make good AI art, you need to approach it like an artist.

And like, AI art has genuine logistical issues that make it uniquely difficult to integrate into communities, the "flooding" that turbofucked Deviantart and the harassment problem that is "spite models,"

But beyond that I think it is not just, as they blithely dismiss, "AI art can be used for good" but I think it is even possible to integrate AI artists into communities that share those values. Because I have seen those values at work in AI art communities.

There are simple things that can be done, like normalizing charging as much for AI art commissions as traditional ones, or normalizing showing one's prompts when possible or observing DNP (Do not prompt) lists and so on!

But there's a desire to put up a wall there, specifically because of the fear of original sin, because of the unique nature of the process and the dubious origins of the programs; even if you didn't pay a dime to use them.

Which like... even if the privacy issues side of things is relevant and one I see validity in, in terms of the issue of "they didn't get permission," as friend of the blog @o-hybridity pointed out when we were discussing this, the assumption of the need for permission to adapt (Which is also what annoyed me in this post) is basically a cargo cult for how IP law treats art, attempting to integrate the framework of IP law into a system of communal production that IP law is more or less designed to kill.

Like, the idea that permission is required for derivative works (A notion also in this post I am very annoyed by) resembles none of how art has actually worked in-practice for all but the tiniest sliver of our species' existence, it's tunnel visioned in a way that ignores; say; the history of things like the blues, or jazz, or sampling, or folklore, or hell even fanfic.

Most art has historically been built on top of other art, without permission, because requiring a contract for every derivative work (Especially those "orphan works" without known originators) would make it unworkable.

IP rights becoming essentially inherent to art at the moment of creation and making those contracts almost entirely mandatory have basically killed a lot of models of how art is made within the commons via that sort of unauthorized-adaptation, and IDK about you, but this is an abomination, and the loss of those modes of production wouldn't be fixed by making it a tier system as the article proposes.

The notion of eternal tiered permission ignores that history of art by way of trying to shove the means of communal production into an ideological framework it can't exist in, due to the collective failure to produce better ways of helping creators make a living.

I would also say the idea of tiers system obfuscates the real issue; which is power not permission; and the need for collective organization of labor-power as well; by way of trying to hybridize it with that folk politics system of contracts that dilutes it, but that's its own digression.

But beyond that very long digression, inherent in that fear of the powerful working without permission, I feel there's a conflation of "small-scale creators shitposting or integrating AI art into their work" and "megacorps that want to replace you with an intern on Fiverr and a copy of Stablediffusion," which I think is best evidenced by the insistence on calling all AI art supporters techbros, conflating the small-scale users of the technology with the makers even though we don't do that with; say; artists who use fucking Adobe and the way they normalized walled gardens in their field.

I am not saying the techbro assholes don't exist or even that they aren't prominent, I probably don't run into them because I hate Twitter, but I am saying there are AI art communities and users that are not Like That, and that it is possible for AI art to exist within those norms.

It is not No True Scotsman because, even if it is not the norm (Which I am doubtful on) it is simply a demonstration that is possible and; with some effort and outreach akin to groups like @are-we-art-yet, doable.

But there's a further problem, that their argument heavily relies on the idea of moral rights, as evidenced by their image morally quantifying re-using art. But moral rights are not usually how we enforce most of these issues in a legal sense, in the US they do not even exist in a legal sense.

So their communal rules, drawing from moral rights, have no real material power. At least, aside from strikes, but the small online artisan community is not protected by them in a lot of ways I think are a part of the problem, but that's its own tangent so moving on.

Their argument on operating procedure, if it were to be truly materially effective by legal means, would be implemented by the mechanisms of copyright, which would be merrily smash those communal rules with a hammer, because those rules are scrublord shit in the world of raw power.

And if they don't... well, a wall can only hold for so long, and I think keeping workers within AI art away from the solidarity that is extremely doable is going to bite people in the long run. For an example of that, see how CGI's disrespect as an artform lead to it being wildly undercosted and used to drive out the union-run practical effects folks.

And they have no tools against it because, again, power does not give a shit about your communal rules, and conflating small creators with the assholes in power isn't helping.

Like, you're making the same argument artisans in things like the Arts and Crafts movement or the Luddites made back during the rise of factories, while forgetting that they fucking lost.

And Karl Marx had some ideas why wrt how mechanization uses raw power to make the displacement of individual artisans inevitable, even if I think the way people use them in response to this issue is... wildly unhelpful and cruel.

Like, it's still shitty to say "You're destined to lose your livelihood unless the revolution (Which we are bad at convincing you will happen) happens, no we won't help lol," as I've seen from those in my community.

I think the solution to traditional/digital art surviving if AI art is the existential threat it says it is (Which I have my doubts about) is unite or die, which dovetails into my ideas on the Creative Commons in a way I need to write on further one of these days.

But like... what I'm trying to say is, in all my experience, the way they describe the values of the art community are fundametally not opposed to the practice of AI art, not the people I have seen, and I think the efforts to treat that as untrue is unhelpful at best.

[monstersinthecosmos]

🔥 + Marius and Santino in TVA

[ 🔥 asks! ] LORD HELP ME

(tldr it’s the saddest thing ever and I’m obsessed with it)

first of all lets take stock of these two important moments they share in between Santino nearly having Marius killed and Marius having Santino killed:

Santino arrives with Pandora to rescue Marius from the Shrine in QOTD

Santino helps Marius clean up the Vampire DNA after Armand's attempted suicide, before they know he's alive.

I find this tension VERY VERY GOOD, it’s horny, it’s heartbreaking, it’s devastating in that trademark VC way where it’s so so so so fucking dark and just throbbing. I’m obsessed!!!

It’s interesting to me bc I have many many times yelled about how vampires have all the time in the world to grow past grudges and how they aren’t as constrained by human emotion and YET. There are are a few characters we meet in the series who are petty bitches until the end and can’t ever get past the grudge. (Marius, Rhosh, perhaps Eudoxia or the twins). So it makes me think back to this quote from TVL

“None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are.”

So I wonder how much of this quality is innate; maybe if you aren’t capable of growing past a grudge, you simply won’t.

At the same time I don’t think it’s ever fair to talk about people in absolutes; certainly not real humans but also characters in a universe with so much emotional texture. Because this isn’t a condemnation of Marius to never grow or be better; I don’t think that’s the case with him at all. But I think he’s an incredibly injured person who has a lot of healing to do, and it feels like every time he almost gets there in the books, something catastrophic happens to retraumatize him and set him back.

And I think because he tries SO HARD to be an old Roman stoic that he never really gets time to be honest with himself about his own emotions. Even in B&G he talks about this often, like the “I have lived lies” quote—he KNOWS he’s got unhinged emotions on the inside that he can’t process. And he’s never quite ready to process them.

Like, maybe he was almost there but he lost Pandora. Or maybe he was almost there when Rome fell and he had to have a depression sleep. Maybe he was almost there in Venice and Santino raided the palazzo. Then he healed with Bianca and fucked it up. Then he was ready to invite Lestat into his home and Lestat woke up Akasha. THEN AKASHA ROSE UP AND BETRAYED HIM. THEN ARMAND KILLED HIMSELF. THEN HE FUCKED UP WITH SYBELLE & BENJI. THEN HE KILLED ARJUN IN A FIT.

But like. There’s this violence and anger inside where he’s not processing his emotions, and how much of it is like the human half of him and how much is vampire nature? I think it’s really powerful that Blood Communion ends with him painting a mural and finally accepting vampires as their own people and their own subculture. It makes me think he’s ready to be kind to himself and honest about what he needs to do and who he needs to be.

Anyway I say all that because like. It’s just so fucking sad dude.

We don’t get a lot of information about Santino so a lot of this is like backward engineered and blanks I try to fill in but like, we know he was religious, and within the framework of VC there’s so much Catholicism just baked into the universe anyway. So like, him working with Pandora to save Marius, and him being with Marius as they try to grieve Armand together feel so much like an attempt at atonement that just doesn’t sink in for Marius. He just can’t get there.

And like. I JUST THINK OFTEN ABOUT HOW FUCKED UP ARMAND’S INDOCTRINATION INTO THE CULT WAS, but Armand STAYED and he was a LEADER. So it makes me wonder if a similar level of depravity is what brought SANTINO into the cult, as well, like if this is a cycle of abuse. And I feel that Santino is trying hard to break that, to be someone else now, to apologize to Marius through these actions. And I think he knows he fucked up and I think he’s willing to be patient and do the penance for everything, but he’s up against such a seriously injured, hurt person who is not ready to accept.

But gosh like. Santino is so gentle and comforting even in those scenes when he first takes Armand, and it’s so much like Marius. THEY ARE HIS TWO DADS OKAY. And they both are such calm energies and it’s so disarming!

And like I wonder too if Marius sees that. I FEEL LIKE I’LL GO INTO A SIDE ESSAY DON’T LET ME GET CARRIED AWAY ON THIS TOPIC so put a pin in this but: Does Marius realize how similar they are? Does he lash out because of self loathing? I often wonder if he chose Lestat to share the secrets with because Lestat reminded him of himself, as well, so I wonder how often he’s compartmentalized parts of himself and lashed out at others who embody these things???? But he and Santino truly have so much in common, almost like funhouse mirror versions of each other. And I think about like, in family units how the ones who are most alike are always the ones at each other’s throats. (See also: Lestat & Claudia.)

So anyway I think like, BACK TO UR QUESTION. The scene in TVA is like one of the most absolutely devastating moments in VC for me. Santino trying to do his penance, be supportive, trying so hard in these few decades to apologize to Marius for everything that happened. Marius playing the role he’s supposed to play, trying to be chill about it, trying to cooperate. And if we never went on to B&G it could be happily ever after and maybe we’d never know that his progress collapsed afterwards, or that it wasn't progress at all and he was just going through motions that he felt he was supposed to.

And it’s just so heartbreaking and ironic that like these two are maybe the only two in the world who know Armand in a certain way, and maybe Santino would have been someone who could help Marius grieve if they could just share it and help each other, but it’s not how it went.

(also I hope this isn't tacky and arrogant but I wrote a fic about this one time that I think sums my feelings up 😭😭😭)

[theresattrpgforthat]

My friend is trying to make Sun and Moon from security breach as a dnd character but it is definitely not the right system. is there a game that would work better with animatronics and stuff like that?

THEME: Dual Personalities

Hello friend, so I have a few routes that I’ve gone with this prompt. Finding a FNAF game is a bit of a tall order, but I think the most important of Sun and Moon’s dynamic is the switch in personality - with Moon being an inverted, terrifying version of Sun’s personality. There are two common tropes that exist in fiction that have that same dynamic - werewolves and the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I took those as leads, but tried to find games where the setting might be flexible - or hackable. I’d also love to hear what other kinds of games other folks suggest!

Eat God by @prokopetz.

Eat God is a game where you take on the role of a small gremlin-like creature. Though you're just as much a person as anybody else, the setting's dominant human culture tends to regard your kind as clever vermin, which means you don't get a lot of respect – but it also means you usually aren't seen as a threat, which may occasionally work to your advantage.

Unfortunately for the people in charge, you're not just any clever vermin: you and your companions are God-eaters, wandering practitioners of an esoteric discipline – part existential philosophy, part martial art – which affords you a limited capacity to bend the laws of reality to your will. As its name suggests, the God-eater's creed also has serious objections to authority in all its forms.

Eat God is still in playtest, but there’s one character option in particular you might be interested in - Polycephalous. This gives your character a second face - and this might be a second personality, a second head, etc. It allows your character to attempt certain things that might usually require two people. Combine this with something like Fast Feet (that help you scuttle very quickly) Languorous Lure (which gives you glowing eyes) and you’re well on the way to having a double-personality.

A Modern Prometheus, by Mitchell Salmon.

A Modern Prometheus is a gothic horror roleplaying game for 2 players based on the Mobile Frame Zero: Firebrands framework by D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker (Lumpley Games).

Players take on the role of a scientist dabbling with dark forces at the edge of the natural sciences, and the creation that they bring to life as a consequence. Together, you and your partner will discover through play who is human, and who is monstrous.

This is a game where the relationship between the “Sun” character and the “Moon” character is the whole point of the game. The creation of the monstrous is explored through play, and the highlighted themes are vengeance, humanity, and rage. The game itself uses mini-games that you can order in whatever way you like - create a story of horror together one step at a time.

The Monster Within, by Felipemuky.

The Monster Within is a duo RPG where players play a human dealing with their monster within. They must fight for control of their body or cooperate to survive.

One player will be the Human, a person tormented with a monster living in their body, an the other is the Monster, a creature eager to take control of the body to satiate its appetites.

This game brings rules to emphasizes the conflict between the two parts and the tension of losing the control in difficult times. 

This is a game for one game-master and two players, or two players using an oracle to facilitate GM-less play. It’s a one-page zine game, with some simple rules to and a few basic traits to determine for both the Human and the Monster. The players can fight each-other or work together to confront challenges, with the default state being that the human is in control, and the monster is trying to take control of the body. There’s no rules as to what the monster looks like, so if you were to pick this up, you could attach some Moon-like attributes to the monster character, and perhaps change something about the setting to make it make more sense for the kind of characters you want to play.

Cypher System (and Expanded Worlds) , by Monte Cook Games.

The Cypher System is the critically acclaimed game engine that powers any campaign in any genre. You may have heard of it as the system that drives the award-winning Numenera roleplaying game. Lauded for its elegance, ease of use, flexibility, and narrative focus, the Cypher System unleashes the creativity of GMs and players with intuitive character creation, fast-paced gameplay, and a uniquely GM-friendly design.

Cypher System characters are built from the concept up. A descriptive sentence provides not just an easily-understood overview of the character, but also the mechanical basis for skills, abilities, and stats. And the Cypher System gives players amazing narrative engagement, rewarding player-driven subplots and giving players resources to bear on the tasks and situations they most want to succeed at.

The base rulebook for the Cypher System has a character option (dubbed a focus) called Howls at the Moon which is typically a were-creature concept, but I think it could be used to create a threatening-yet-powerful alter-ego that has nefarious motives. There’s also an option in the Expanded Worlds supplement, called Changes Shape, which changes your physical form, without taking away your ability to think for yourself. Even if neither of these foci aren’t exactly what you are looking for, the Cypher system gives you tools to help you create your own custom focus that replicates the dual personality that Sun and Moon embody.

Apocalypse Keys, by Sword Queen Games.

The Doomsday Clock is ticking down and emotions run high as you and your team of DIVISION agents struggle to find the Keys before the villainous Harbingers unlock the Doors of Power and bring about the apocalypse.

As an Omen class monster, you are the only thing capable of holding back the apocalypse. Combat occult threats and investigate supernatural phenomena alongside your team of supernatural agents working for the shadowy DIVISION. But in a world that shuns monsters like you, only your deepest, most heartfelt bonds can grant you the power to stop those who seek to unlock Doom’s Door.

There’s a couple of different ways I think you could replicate Sun and Moon in Apocalypse Keys. One way could be to embody the Hungry, a character who houses a hunger for blood, souls, or something more. You could personify that hunger as an alternate personality, that surfaces every time your character has to feed. I’ve also seen something similar done with the Surge and the Fallen playbooks - with the Surge, the player could create an alternate personality that arises when they use their power, or use the Ruin move My Dark Patron to give their alternate personality more power over your character. With the Fallen, another playbook, the alternate personality was a fallen god, housed in a human shell. I think there’s a lot of untapped possibility in this game, as all of the characters are wrestling with a monstrosity that has great capacity for harm, but also empowers them to solve problems that threaten the world they all live in.