now i've watched a fair amount of d&d i've started to pick up on the differences between dm style i think
like brennan IS all the bad guys. every game he dms is brennan vs the players. he makes npcs and battles that make his friends throw things at him and he smirks the whole time. he makes them tell him their worst fears and then he makes them do it. and it's awful and amazing and really funny
matt IS exandria. his characters and battles never feel written or constructed, they just feel like things that already existed in the world. it's all about verisimilitude with him, and he's amazing at it. he tends to fade into the background and let the players react to the story and it makes everything he does incredibly cinematic
aabria dms like she's just another player at the table reacting to the story, right up until someone gets lulled into a false sense of security and tries to fool around and THEN she throws a curveball by making them deal with the consequences of their choices. she's like oh you think that's funny?? then i'm about to be hilarious, bitch. and she keeps getting away with it bc she's just that good!
basically, brennan's an evil bastard, matt's the world, and aabria's the queen of consequences
or:
brennan - fuck
matt - around
aabria - find out
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I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears
I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!
The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.
More:
Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.
Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)
Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.
Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.
Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.
The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.
They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.
And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.
I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.
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ghouls. is this a safe space. bc i actually really love vaggie and i really really want to love her relationship w charlie but series charlie sometimes makes me want 2 eat drywall in the not-fun way
to tldr it: shit just didn't live up the way i thought it would be lmao
idk what it is that's giving me the bad taste in my mouth but particularly off the dome it's her desire w BEING GOOD and her disdain for hell, the show's pacing, and her inability to stand up for herself? like. why are you apologizing to the angels trying to kill you‼️‼️
sometimes it felt like charlie only rlly cared abt heaven and being good rather than loving her people for what they were, and doesn't seem to mind violence as long as it's undertaken for her own gain. and i don't have a problem with that! i thought they were interesting traits/conflicts that would get some more focus but they. didn't.
and vaggie. i LOVE vaggie so much. i love her design, i love her voice, i love the fallen angel background, i love she has so much love for charlie. ik that last bit is a point of contention for people but i loved it, and i thought all of it would also get more focus and it also didn't
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☆ lost in orbit
{☆} characters tsaritsa
{☆} notes cult au, drabble, gender neutral reader
{☆} warnings violence [ implied ], unhealthy relationship
{☆} word count 0.6k
She had resigned herself to apathy – to burying her love beneath the cold, hard soil and letting it rot amongst the graves of a long dead civilization, burned to ash in only a day. Yet how quickly it all fell apart in her hands, slipping through her fingers like sand, no matter how desperately she tried to cling to it.
Was she not diligent enough? Was she so weak that she faltered at the first person who showed her genuine trust and affection? Had all her work been for naught?
A part of her revolts – the same woman who watched the sky burn and the ground beneath her feet crumble into ash. It would be so easy to wrap her hands around your delicate throat, to squeeze until you finally saw her as the monster she knew she has always been.
Yet she doesn't think she could. The look of betrayal, of fear..oh, it would ruin her, she knows.
Perhaps that makes her weak. Perhaps you have made her weak.
Perhaps she does not mind as much as she should.
You trust her, after all – enough to sleep in her bed like she couldn't just kill you before you ever knew what was happening to you. Your body was so..fragile, in this mortal shell you descended in. How easy it would be to snuff out your life, here and now.
Yet she doesn't.
Instead, she looks at you like an old lover – with all the love of a woman who had died in the ashes of a dying civilization, of a woman who thought she could love no longer. Emotions she fought so hard to suppress well up in her chest and fill the empty space where she knows her heart should beat. Try as she might – and oh, how she tries – she can never quite stem the affection that consumes her every waking moment when she sees you.
It is like an addiction that she cannot rid herself of, no matter how she tries. She always finds herself back at square one – back to you.
Her hand lingers against your cheek, undue affection filling the empty spaces in her chest until she feels like cannot breathe. She traces her hand along your jaw, her vision narrowed on the softness of your lips.
Yet that same thought rises unbidden to the forefront of her thoughts. Love was a dangerous thing – you both knew that. To let it fester and rot her from within..she would be throwing her plans out the window, and for what?
Because she was too weak? Because the affection and trust in your eyes whenever your looked at her made her feel whole, like she was more then just an Archon playing God with the fate of the world?
You do not even stir as her thoughts toil like a brewing storm. She swallows the lump in her throat, removing her hand like she'd just touched a piece of hot metal. A part of her still screams that it's for the best, that you've corrupted her enough, torn apart her plans in the span of a week, a mere blink in time..
But it goes silent as she leans in, pressing her lips to your cheek. She will not let the thought fester, tonight – she will let herself be weak, if only for another day. If only to covet the affection that she finds herself drowning in for just another day.
And when you stir, she pretends that she had never thought of it at all, that she has only ever known love with you. Even if her heart that does not beat leaves a stabbing pain in her chest in the agony of knowing that even this is futile..
She lets you wake, let's the recognition and the affection fill your vision until she is all you see – two stars locked in orbit, unable to break away.
And when the day comes that you collide, she will be holding the blade that drives into your chest, and she will know nothing but love when she does.
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