#so in the warhammer campaign we had

[leier-coyol]

I redrew Nesso to be a blade champion

A quick sketch of him with my felinid Catnip, she's 5'1

[asexual-cat-furry]

OF COURSE THE EXACT SESSION I REDESIGN MY CHARACTER AND HER LORE TO FIT INTO THE WORLD ENDS IN TEN MINUTES WITH A TPK

[theaceofskulls]

Beat Space Marine 2 and yeah... I enjoyed it but that one PC gamer article that pissed people off wasn't entirely wrong about some things.

The co-op design of the game led to some annoying design decisions that could've been mitigated in the single player by a squad command system, but that's a lot of complexity and isn't just a "this should be patched in" kind of thought.

To explain, the game asks you to manage melee and ranged threat simultaneously against hordes of enemies, and the ranged threats tend to not be trivial even when they're horde enemies, but especially for special and pseudo-boss enemies. Enemy aggressiveness seems to be increased when you attempt to aim when they are swarming you, meaning that the person who needs to deal with ranged threats needs to not be the person in the thick of things.

Enemies tend to prioritize the player, which is the correct way to handle these games as it engages them more and asks them to problem solve. It's therefor the wrong answer to have your AI squadmates deal with ranged threats for you without any input on the player's side.

This extends to weapon selection. Your AI partners will always be using the average across the board guns and ask you to figure out what weapons you want to take, especially to deal with special threats. With only two weapon slots and a melee weapon, because the game was designed for multiplayer where you'd want someone to be more specialized, it's difficult to justify picking up two heavy hitting, but specialized and low ammunition weapons, one of which must be a pistol, so I often found myself avoiding a lot of the more interesting primary weapons as the plasma pistol tended to just be the better answer for that slot for me.

This is not to say you have useless AI partners, and the game regularly throws enough things your way to feel like they're actively contributing, but the flow of combat can often feel like you've gotten stuck in melee (emulating the tabletop somewhat) and are frustratingly trying to clear enough room to deal with the ranged threats that can be more devastating, especially since the tools to dodge ranged attacks don't seem to have as much invincibility frames for melee attacks, often leading to dodge rolls that end with you being sucker punched from the back.

It's also worth noting that like with a lot of Warhammer games, this is indulgently for fans and will introduce almost nothing. The first game had this issue, and this is clearly for the fans, but watching people ding Age of Sigmar's game for that then immediately shout at anyone new who engages with their favorite game for the same thing is annoying. It is a legitimate criticism when the game is being broadly aimed outwards and a lot of the fanbase spent months going "This should be the game that finally makes 40k mainstream".

I have to reiterate, I liked this game. I really enjoy dumping a couple days into it and want to try out the multiplayer as people finish up the campaign and don't just drop into lobbies only to immediatley quit them so they can customize their marines because for some reason there's no option to mess with that without joining a game despite the fact that the technology is clearly there (I don't blame anyone for leaving when I realized I'd done the same thing).

This is a type of rough game that we don't get a lot of anymore. It's a finished game with a lot of issues in its design because it's aiming to be something that's not sanded down to be a universal game, and it's trying something out with enemies and game flow in a third person shooter that honestly manages to remain enjoyable for over 10 hours.

Its story is there for the fans and a lot of subtleties are going to be based off preexisting knowledge and expectations of the factions going in (one character kind of demands that you know what a Primaris Marine is and what Calth was, which was 19 books into the Horus Heresy if you're not the type to watch loretubers) and a big late game thing depends on you knowing about some characters that were much more important to the story of 40k before the "current era". It's going to get some wildly different reactions that I'm already seeing, and that's also because this game was built up by the community.

Even with my love of the setting, this is a game that had enough small gameplay annoyances to get me to think about the reasons why they exist while playing, and I definitely could see how much being a fan matters to your final score of the game, probably raising it by a whole point or two on a 10 scale.

A lot of it does feel like a direct response to Space Marine 1 criticisms (and even some about Boltgun), and the first time there was dialogue on an elevator I almost lost my shit after watching Mandalore's video on the first one recently.

If this is a game for you, you likely already know that it's for you and the only thing this post will tell you if you haven't picked it up is that the hype is overselling it and that it's not perfect and you probably won't think this is the greatest thing you've ever played in your life like some people claim, but that it will still be for you (though you might want to play with the difficulty almost dynamically during certain sections to mitigate fights with enemy AI designed for human players coordinating with each other).

If you don't know 40K or are not that big into Space Marines, this probably isn't a full price kind of game for you but there's a good chance that if you're willing to put up with a few frustrations you'll actually like it as well down the line, especially if you played anything in the 6th or 7th console generation (PS2/PS3 era).

[ireneispunk]

eddie headcannons for living in present day

a few headcannons i thought of for being eddie's partner in the present day! these are my own thoughts, if you think of any others feel free to add them to the comments!

these are writted with eddie having a femme partner, but no pronouns are used so anyone can enjoy!

content warnings: lots of fluff, no smut, semi implied though(?), occasional use of y/n

would 100% play world of warcraft, complains about how expensive it is but still never lets his subscription run out every month 

would drag you into every warhammer store looking for figurines for d&d 

IS a reddit user but purely for d&d map inspiration and r/babygoats 

still has the exact same music taste and says “back in my day we listened to-"

also claims to hate nu metal but sneaks in an occasional deftones song

hairstyle would be really similar but probably more of a long wolf cut to modernise it

loves the cinema for new movies but pirates everything else 

corroded coffin is more successful than it was in the 80s, but they’re still not ‘famous’

makes youtube videos with tutorials on how to play songs on guitar and gets 10 views per video. he still enjoys it anyway 

still chooses to pick you wildflowers instead of grocery store ones because he thinks their more special (even if they’re from rich peoples lawns)

still deals but only to a select few and close friends 

goes to as many metal shows as he can; whether it’s for his favourite band or an up and comer he’s never heard of 

he has just 3 spotify playlists, 1 is metal and the other is more chilled out rock. the third is music he knows you likes that he’s sure to put on when you’re over (also curses out the spotify adverts but refuses to pay for it)

D&D is still one of his favourite hobbies of course. he grew up playing in the only D&D shop near hawkins called ‘the forge’ his charisma made him great friends amongst the other players there and soon enough after her had a few campaigns under his belt, it was his turn to DM 

is honestly a bit of a fussy eater, but anything you order or make that he hasn’t tried yet he always asks to try and realises he likes a lot more than he thought 

would have a lot more tattoos and would volunteer as a practice sheet for tattoo apprentice friends 

uses incense in his room, he says it’s to mask the weed smell but you’d noticed him deeply sniffing his favourite scents in the store

likes his cheap cologne, and loves it when he smells it on you the next morning 

facetiming you when he sees a cool rock/tree/dog/straycat/funny looking cloud, mainly to see your face scrunch up into a laugh at the ridiculous thing he’s called you for

uses the same password for everything 

has maybe 4 additional apps on his phone to the default ones. his favourite would be locket widget so you “have to see my face no matter where you look.”

does have social media but definitely posts annually and it’s either you, corroded coffin or some swanky new dice

only follows you and matthew mercer on social media too

likes natures documentaries and sniffles a lot when the buffalo gets eaten by lions, and when the lions DONT  get any buffalo to eat

loves getting you small inexpensive gifts, your favourite chocolate or drink, a little trinket for your bedside table, mostly cards with two animals in love on it 

laying inbetween his legs with your back against his chest as he teaches you how to roll his cigarettes, they were terrible of course but he loved watching your brows furrowed in concerntration smacking his hand away any time he tried to help

also! would use menthol filters for his cigarettes ever since you mentioned how much you love the minty tobacco taste left on his lips, “doubles up as a breath mint too!” eddie would wink at you. 

he wasn’t very good at cooking but he loved helping you and doesn’t want you to feel pressured to cook for him. takes any chance he can to make you food he knows how to make, usually toast and fruit juice in bed served with a kiss

LOVES makeup shopping with you, no matter your style of makeup alternative or not, he’s so intrigued about the different kinds and always wants to treat you. “$10 for a skinny crayon? that’s daylight robbery!”. he still begged you later that day to turn him into gene simmons 

still got weird stares out in public even in our time but he thrived whenever you visited bigger cities with more diversity

playing any kind of multiplayer game together. left 4 dead 2, borderlands, halo, divinity 2; eddie didn’t care what it was as long as he could spend the time with you (as long as you promised not to tell people he married harvey playing stardew valley)

also! screaming and swearing and crying of laughter playing overcooked, resulting in lots of playful fights and kisses 

watching the whole lord of the rings trilogy extended cut in one session, “ed’s it’s NINE hours, you said it was only 3 films!” you huffed looking at the box set his uncle had bought him years ago. “nine hours that will change the rest of your life y/n.” he smiled dramatically inserting the dvd. he was right of course 9 hours later there you were gripping eddies hand so hard as tears burned into the corners of your eyes. eddie spent the last 9 hours glancing between the action of the movie darting back to your face to enjoy your reaction, ‘my friends, you bow to no-one’ aaragon announced on the tv, you clenched your eyes shut as tears flooded down your cheeks and a quiet sob escaped your lips. eddie whipped his head to yours concern written all over his face, cupping your cheep with his large ringed hand. “everyone bowed for THEM, the HOBBITS eddie!” you choked as the soft violin music playinf already felt nostalgic. eddie pulled you close, nose bumping against yours and wipes away your tears with his thumb and pressing kisses to your reddened cheeks. “i told you doll, life changing” he sighed, knowing full well he could shed a tear at how involved with his favourite series you were. 

if you were ever doing anything stood up eddie would always come up behind you and snake his arms around your waist and give your butt a small squeeze with both of his hands, you’d squeak in surprise every time before leaning back into eddie as he held you. you walked out of yours and eddies room one morning to see him facing away from you at the kitchen counter wearing nothing butt black boxer shorts as he poured some juice. you sneaked as best you could on your creaky floorboards before reaching each hand out onto eddies butt and give it a big squeeze. he let out a high pitch ‘EEEHH’ as you did spilling some apple juice onto the counter before looking out you with a false scowl. “only i get to do that.” he huffed pretending he didn’t enjoy it whilst he pale cheeks simultaneously tinted a shade of pink. 

this! evolved into giving each other a light smack on the butt whenever you walked past each other, your hands lingered a little longer on him when he wore his jeans because wow, did he look good in them and vice versa when you wore… well pretty much anything -more often than not this leading to more heavy petting-

pda kinda guy, but more so handholding, having an arm over your shoulder, rubbing his hands up and down yours arms aimlessly, kissing you on the cheek and dramatically kissing your knuckles and bowing, making your cheeks flare up

eddie giving you driving lessons even though he’s not a great driver himself

if people don't hate this i might make a part 2 if i come up with more ideas + plus any that others suggest

♡ irene

[sailorspica]

had the warrior program continued the stagger between shifter terms would have been so weird thanks to marcel and ymir and tbh grisha, start years as of the end the RtS arc:

beast (ksaver -> zeke): 842

armored, female, most likely cart: 844? i think, could also be 845 but we don't know when they were all on that campaign where they wiped out a country

attack and founder (grisha -> eren): 845

jaws (ymir -> porco) and colossal (bertie -> armin): 850

warhammer: ????

so the overlap between porco and zeke's terms would have only been five years(!!!); if colt inherits the beast, porco would work with him for longer than zeke, 7-8 years, and porco would be the weirdly oldest one of a batch of warriors who are mostly falbi's age which sounds.......... very lonely (@mochalate probably stuff you've thought of already), not as dramatic a gap as zeke's 8-9 years on RBA, but probably made more dramatic by the difference in their term starts moreso than their birth years, i'd see him and colt as war chief and vice war chief

even more implications and questions:

it may just be because we're with reiner and falbi for most of the marley arc, but no one seems concerned with "who will inherit the cart??" even though zeke, pieck, and reiner all inherited their titans within two years of each other

it's possible ymir and porco held the jaws for almost exactly the same length of time depending on what months we think RBA's attack on shiganshina and eren's attack on liberio take place

frieda also inherited the founder in 842 (snk 64), a point for the zeke-frieda parallels agenda @meare-hisu

[kchasm]

Ryu Number: Xerxes I

Xerxes I, also known as Xerxes the Great, was the ruler of the Achaemenid Empire from 486 BCE until his assassination in 465 BCE. At the time of his ascension to the throne, the Achaemenid Empire ran from the eastern end what's now Pakistan to the west end of what's now Turkey. You might notice that that's about the same amount of empire in about the same location as Alexander the Great had—that's because Alexander the Great was the guy who took over the Achaemenid Empire and made it not-so-Achaemenid anymore.

It was awful big, is what I'm saying.

But let's be honest: You probably know Xerxes I better as the Bad Guy with the nose ring in that one weird Spartan hagiography Gerald Butler was in. Fugging Miller.

Anyway, Xerxes I almost certainly has a Ryu Number of 2, and definitely not a Ryu Number more than 3, but there's some stuff.

The problem with finding a Ryu Number of Xerxes I is that 5th-century-BCE Persian monarchs don't show up in video games that often, for some reason. He makes a historical appearance in the Assassin's Creed Odyssey DLC Legacy of the First Blade...

...but unfortunately, Odyssey takes place too far after the times of myth and legend for anyone big enough to be a Minecraft skin in Greek-mythology-inspired DLC to show up.

It doesn't help, either, that in Assassin's Creed lore, all the "gods" were just members of a Precursor Race pretending to be gods, a la Stargate. No, that's not "Hera," that's a jerk Precursor Person who's taken on the identity of "Hera," all the better to lead mankind around like a clowder of schmucks. She's pretending to be Norse elsewhere. Don't fall for it.

(There's also A Minotaur, which feels like it ought to connect via that Minecraft skin pack, but if I'm understanding the Odyssey lore correctly—and I very well might not be; holler at me—the minotaur the player encounters isn't actually the Minotaur from the myth we know and love, but some random other guy who subsequently got his hands on the Precursor Technology that turns you into a minotaur. Yeah, everything is Precursor People in Assassin's Creed. It's kind of disappointing.)

Of course, you can still get to Xerxes through Odyssey if you want to—a handful of historical characters who don't have Minecraft skins show up—but you'll need an extra step. And if we're going to have an extra step anyway, I'm going to go for the route that doesn't need Assassin's Creed, partially because I haven't played the games yet but mostly because I'm still really disappointed about the Precursor People thing.

Which means, unfortunately, it's back to Miller.

I'll say this: For all that 300: March to Glory is Not A Very Good Video Game, it left me the impression that someone behind the scenes actually did the bare minimum research into the Greco-Persian Wars. Persian commanders Hydarnes and Mardonius make appearances (if only to provide something unique to hit), and Mardonius even survives the movie-equivalent events of the game until an epilogic, post-movie level that takes place during the Battle of Plataea—which is, indeed, where the historical Mardonius bit it. It's not much, but I had to watch the whole dang thing, so I'll take what I can get. Gets me more names for The Chart, besides.

As for connecting this game to Ryu, you can, of course, count on the Ol' Dependable of Games With Historical Figures:

...Or maybe you're not a fan of Anime And Things That Look Like Anime, in which case, try this, instead:

I'm not sure I can explain how weird Spartan: Total Warrior is—by which I'm referring to its existence more than anything in the game itself, though the content's pretty weird, too. For context, Total War is a series of strategy games featuring a combination of turn-based strategy, resource management, and real-time tactical control (so sayeth Wikipedia). There are a coupla Warhammer entries in the franchise, sure, but the vast majority of the games focus on real, historical campaigns and factions.

Spartan: Total Warrior, on the other hand, is a hack-and-slash that took one look at a history book and immediately took a pair of shears to it. The story starts in 300 BCE: The Roman Empire, led by Emperor Tiberius, has conquered almost the whole of Greece, with only Sparta remaining, and Leonidas leads his men into battle to oppose him. Later, the Romans reveal a superweapon powered by the imprisoned Medusa. Sejanus, Tiberius' right-hand man, is a powerful necromancer who kills and resurrects Castor's brother Pollux. One mission involves protecting Archimedes, leader of the Athenian resistance, from assassination.

To quote someone on Discord, this is a game supposedly set circa 300 BCE that "has one side led by a king who died 200 years before, and the other by an emperor who reigned 300 years after (never mind the fact that Rome was still a senatorial republic)." If you forced a too-serious historian to play this game they'd end up on the floor in a frothing heap of rage and/or despair (actually, someone should totally do that; I want to see the Greco-Roman history version of Jonathan Ferguson having to analyze the firearms of Team Fortress 2).

Oh yeah and Beowulf is there.

At some point you've got to appreciate—no, admire, even—the Xena:-Warrior-Princess-level decision to just Don't Worry About It.

And now that we have finished with the indisputable, let us proceed with the first of the hinky. Which is to say: Let's look at God of War: Chains of Olympus.

Chains of Olympus begins with an attack by the Persian navy on the Greek Attic peninsula (where Athens is, incidentally). The opening sequence features (among a whole lot of faceless Persian mooks) this prone-ish fella, who doesn't quite get to operating a ballista, irresponsibly leaving the work for Kratos instead.

(Credit: Migeman)

Inspecting the body after all the local ruckus is over identifies him as "Eurybiades," the "leader of the Athenian army."

Eurybiades was—according to historical record—a real person, though God of War doesn't exactly nail it on the head. Herodotus (who historians depend on more due to him being one of a Very Small Number of sources rather than anything to do with actual reliability) names Eurybiades as a Spartan who, during the second Persian invasion of Greece, was given command of the Greek navy due to some political whatuppery (the Spartans said that if a Spartan didn't lead it they'd be Awfully Uncooperative).

Following this bit, Kratos confronts the King of Persia (identity unspecified), who is apparently personally leading the invasion himself, which seems dumb but was apparently the norm back in those days. I bet we'd have a lot less wars if we made our Presidents actually serve on the front lines whenever they started feeling belligerent.

(Credit: Ibid.)

Anyway, Kratos kills the King of Persia, because if the King of Persia killed Kratos the game would be a lot shorter. Now, there's no watertight confirmation that this is the second Persian invasion—the first one also featured attempted Persian inroads into Attica, and was recent enough that it's not inconceivable for Eurybiades to have shown up, there, too—but if this is the second Persian invasion, and that is the King of Persia that was King of Persia during the second Persian invasion, then that King of Persia is Xerxes I.

And now, I think, you peer up at me, gaze beseeching. "But KC," you say, anxious and afraid, "Xerxes I didn't die during his invasion of Greece! After Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis, Persian forces were forced to withdraw from Attica, including Xerxes I himself, after which he focused on lavish construction projects until he was assassinated fifteen years later for unrelated reasons! He didn't die in the Greco-Persian Wars at all!"

To which I say: You know who else didn't die in the Greco-Persian Wars? Eurybiades. And you know who definitely didn't die in a fit of paranoid, obsessive overwork in the heart of a monumental statue of Apollo on the isle of Delos?

What I'm saying here is that God of War's relationship with historicality is fleeting at best, so maybe Don't Worry About It here, too.

(Incidentally, if it's the first Persian invasion of Greece that Kratos is mucking around in, then that king is actually Darius the Great, who also didn't die in Greece in real life. Darius is in Civilization V, though, so getting his Ryu Number is a lot easier.)

And speaking of Civilization, I've finally come to the shortest route I've found that, for all its likeliness, isn't as definite as I'd like, which is why I've saved it for last. You know how Civilization works, I think—you play a historical civilization (with a historical leader to match), and go up against other historical civilizations with their leaders. Like Darius, just now—he's your leader if you decide to play as the Persians.

Civilization III is like that...but unfortunately not as much like that as a fellow'd prefer. Sure, it's got its civilizations and leaders...

...But there's the occasional glaring unspecificity that's apparently there to make life difficult for me in particular. Yeah, sure, Montezuma here is most likely the second one—the one everyone knows, the one that had the real bad experience with Spain—but are you sure he isn't the first one instead? Like, absolutely sure? The instruction manual doesn't say, you know. How sure are you? Sure enough to bet a dollar? Two dollars? Fifty dollars? Your firstborn child? Why would I want your firstborn child, anyway? I don't want to look after a child; that's literally more work for me.

The Persian civilization exhibits the same problem here. Yeah, of course that's Xerxes I! If the team behind the game is picking out a historical figure named Xerxes to represent the Persians, it's got to be Xerxes I. But at the same time, there's technically nothing saying this isn't Xerxes II, a separate 5th-century-BCE Persian ruler of the Achaemenid Empire. I mean, it's terribly unlikely, seeing as Xerxes II ruled for 45 days before being killed by his half-brother, who ruled for six months before being killed by his half-brother, making him Not Exactly The Sort Of Individual You'd Put The Spotlight On, but Mahatma Gandhi and Joan of Arc are the leaders of Indian and French civilizations in this game, and that's weird, too. Gandhi was never the Prime Minister of India or anything like that, and Joan of Arc was a military leader, not a monarch.

Still, if you're willing to follow the reasonable assumption that the Xerxes here is Xerxes I, then the path that results is pretty dang optimal:

...If this is how you found out that Mahatma Gandhi is in Minecraft DLC, I'm sorry.

[halfbakedspuds]

Thanks to @orion-lacroix for the tag! I was gonna get to it earlier but... life happened and I forgor.

Eto bleh. Anyways.

(Also I'm writing this while incredibly tired, so I'm sorry if my English isn't up to scratch)

Writeblr Questionaire

How long have you had your Writeblr/writing Tumblr?

I've had this Tumblr account since the beginning of lockdown (March/April 2020 by us) and I created it because of a PM Seymour video. I made like one post that has now been banished to the void, then forgot I even had a Tumblr account until about ¿June/July? last year when a friend of mine brought up the idea of using Tumblr to share her writing, and I decided to do the same.

What's one thing you'd like your mutuals to know about you?

Due to reasons that include but are not limited to me barely having time anymore, I have a tendency to sometimes take a while to reply to people on here.

Don't worry if it takes like a week for me to respond, I'm just like that sometimes.

What's your favourite thing about the Writeblr community?

The amount of people who are infinitely more skilled than me that I can learn and take inspiration from.

Which WIPs or Writing Projects have you been Noodling about recently?

I've had a few emotional scenes for the Tempest Prince brewing in my head (plus I have like an hour with nothing to do after every exam I write, so daydreaming it is)

I'm also somewhat noodling for a small game I'm working on as a side project, but that's less story-related and more technical shenanigans at this point.

Do you remember what inspired them/got you started?

Children of the Stars I don't remember exactly what inspired the story aspect, but I know what the setting evolved from. Basically, I was a huge Mass Effect fan in primary school. Actually, I was a fan of Scifi overall but Mass Effect was peak gaming for me back then. Then somewhere along the line I played Bulletstorm and Warhammer 40k: Space Marine, and this half daydream of an Alien Empire locked in an eternal war for survival began to evolve in the back of my head before turning into the first recognisable precursor to Children of the Stars somewhere in late 2021.

Echoes of Shadows was inspired by the game Tails Noir, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, and a Call of Cthulhu campaign run by a friend of mine way back when.

The Tempest Prince was originally conceived of because my first playthrough of Bloodborne coincided with my first reading of the Percy Jackson books.

Is there anything you'd like to see more of on your dash?

Comics and short stories. Look, I don't have time to read a full length book until, like, November again, so a little episodic escape is a nice way to detox from the crap we need to deal with for these exams.

Name any characters you've created: side characters, protagonists, antagonists, characters who've never been written, the first original abomination you pulled from your rear... whatever you like!

Artemis is a Siberian ARX-11 mechanized shock-drop trooper who was deployed in a conflict so violent that future historians in-universe consider it less of a war than a outright cataclysm.

Quite literally, like the humble sea-turtle: she was born feet first into a hell she never asked for.

She's also one of the incredibly few Androids who not only survived the Fall of Earth, but after her inevitable 'death' by running out of fuel sources, she managed to remain intact for another six hundred years before a Union archaeology team found her and her enclave and managed to restore some of them to working order.

How much time- in your best estimation- do you spend thinking about them?

Outside the story of Children of Strife, this also makes her one of the oldest sentient beings in the known universe and technically the great great grandmother of almost all modern Androids and Biosynths.

It's also rumoured that she helped to raise a child orphaned during the fall of Earth who would grow up to be the military advisor of the first Empress, which technically makes her an important theological figure in the (now dying) Imperial cult.

Yes

Who's the most unhinged?

See, I'd say Adrian from Children of the Stars because he has a tendency to just do shit that makes you worry about his safety, but the thing with him is that he is fully aware of what he's actually capable of and is very cautious to not overstep those limits.

Lyanni, However...

One of Adrian's many nicknames for her is Miragran, which is Callistoan for "Big miracle", because that's what it must've taken for her to have not gotten herself killed yet.

Who comes the most naturally for you to write?

The fact that the answer is Adrian Castellan does not speak kindly about my mental health, does it...

Do you ever cringe at them?

How much control do you have over your characters? Do they ever write themselves, refuse to co-operate or do things you didn't expect? To what extent?

Not really.

Well, except for Adrian being a typical 27th century child who has no conception of sexism/racism/homophobia etc. beyond it being a footnote in a half-forgotten history textbook, which puts him in situations where it takes him a minute or two to realise that someone's being a prick to Lyanni.

I'd say I have relatively decent control over them. With the exception of the Haliday brothers in the Tempest Prince, 'cause they speak the same dialect of English as I do but I need to dial it back a bit because what's understandable for us has moments where it barely looks like English to foreigners.

And every so often I need to go back and un-Saffa their lines a bit because guess what? My dialect is annoyingly insistent on manifesting itself in these characters.

Are some less co-operative than others?

The old version of Adrian's character was really damn uncooperative. Like, he kept feeling like he was sitting on a story that he couldn't tell, and that was why he kept feeling like he was acting wrong no matter what I wrote him doing.

His current iteration tells that story in a way, and that element of tragedy playing into who he is has made him a lot more co-operative.

When someone asks the dreaded "What do you write about?" question, what do you usually say?

See, most people who know that I write are either close friends who already know what I write, or don't care enough to ask.

My grandmother, however, did ask the one time. That was also the day I realised that I know absolutely no scifi terminology in my home language.

Do you enjoy people asking questions about your characters and do you have a preferred way of receiving said questions?

Listen, if you wrote the question as a note, folded it into a paper airplane and threw it through my window, I'd firstly be very concerned about how in the nine hells you figured out where I live, then I'd be utterly ecstatic for the rest of the day because someone asked me a question.

I keep all my socials separate, though, so if you have any questions then asks, comments, and reblogs on Tumblr are pretty much the only way to go.

What makes you follow another Writeblr account? Do you follow them as you see them? Scope them out first to make sure you align with its content? Or do you follow based on WIPs or vibes?

Imma be honest there are like two people on here whom I followed simply because I know them IRL, and like three total writeblrs whom I followed first.

Everyone else followed me and I said "Ey, sha'p," before following back.

Do you interact with non-mutuals often?

I try to.

Do your mutuals' OCs occupy a space in your Noodle?

Absolutely!

No pressure tag for @honeybewrites and @thatoneterrariaplayers-vault,

[finniestoncrane]

I'll let my date decide I'm 22 years old. Pan. Genderfluid. Short and fat. I'm canonically autistic and canonically have ADHD (I'm sorry I like referring to it w=as canon). You already know that though. You already are SO FUCKING AWARE of my obsession with old monster movies. I mean... I didn't go on an hour long tangent about movie titles ibn a game, and are therefore copywrite friendly, and what films they could be meant to be for no reason. And you are so incredibly aware of the research I did for Gen-1 and Gen-2 synths, and me picking apart Nick Valentine's voice lines to determine anatomy of gen-2 prototype synths. I believe I've also told you that I'm still considering being an auto-mechanic.

What you probably don't know though is that I took an engineering class in high school and I kicked ass in competitions. Like there was this hydraulic robot arm made of wood, syringes, and plastic tubes. Despite the fact that the tubes kept falling off the syringes, my team got like... 2nd place in my class and 4th place schoolwide. There was also a competition for making a boat out of just cardboard and duct tape. Not to brag but our boat could hold 3 people (when it was only required that 2 people go in the boat) and we got the second fasted time schoolwide. We didn't even have paddles technically, unlike some groups who made carboard paddles. We had just a thick pieces of cardboard covered entirely in duct tape. Literally was my favorite class. This wasn't my decision cuz it was a group project but still.

In video games I am a sort of item hoarder because I'm terrified I'll need something later and then I never need it later. Not me having an inventory full of Junk in Fallout 4.

You are also probably aware of my insistence that ghoul cum is radioactive and how the terminal on the Prydwen proves this. Which is good for me and my item hoarding tendencies because I have so much RadAway. Cuz we all know that I'm a ghoulfucker. Also a robotfucker but that's a different story that started with Transformers and got me into cars because I wanted a way to fuck Transformers in vehicle mode because I'm just horny like that (affectionate). A weird hobby I also have is miniatures. I wouldn't call it miniature painting just yet because I have done a whole lot of not painting. I have paint for sure. I seem to be refusing to pick a color scheme and sticking with it. I have not bought primer yet. I have so many miniatures. I am preparing to get more because there's one of Cooper Howard and John Hancock and Nick Valentine and Sturges. But Sturges is in a different box from Hancock and Nick, and then Cooper is in a different one from everyone else. And the box Sturges is in is REALLY hard to find. And the box Cooper is in isn't technically out yet. Like... I already have Toad and Magento from Marvel Crisis Protocol that are unpainted. And then I have a whole bunch of Seraphons in a box that I cannot for the life of me pick a paint scheme for. And I don't even know why I bought Necrons. I don't know how to even play Wasteland Warfare. Or Marvel Crisis Protocol. Or Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. Or Warhammer 40k. I just like the models. Hell, I don't even know how to play D&D and have no one who will play with me as of right now. But I have 2 D&D books (one is official, the other one isn't) and a Fallout TTRPG pdf file with rules for how to play. It's not technically official but I think the guy got permission to make it. It was free. I was considering making a campaign for that based on where I live but then I realized I'd have to build creatures from the ground up, and find a way to play test them when I literally don't personally know enough people who even really care about Fallout in general. Also the terrain makes it hard to slap a vault anywhere.

zim my tiny beloved, i already knew who i would pair you with, but if i'd had any doubts this message would have sealed your fate because you know who else would have infodumped before explaining anything about themselves...? 💚🩷 🔞minors dni🔞 send a request • masterlist • kofi link • tag: finnie2k (to follow or to block)

Kent Connolly is literally the autistic mascot. He's the cutest, silliest, sweetest little guy, so that already tells me you'd be perfect for one another.

I think one of the best things about Kent, and you, is your ability to retain soooooo many details. You're both so passionate about learning everything you can about specific subjects, and you're both determined enough to learn everything you can.

I can picture you both either braving it to go out to the library or saving up your caps to pay for a mostly intact book that will answer a niche question you both had about Grognak the Barbarian.

You're both so brave too, willing to go through a lot for the things you love and for your happiness.

If there's one ghoul who will understand the need, and the joy, of infodumping, it is Kent. He'd be such a sweet listener, he'd ask informed questions, he'd participate respectfully in whatever lecture you were giving, and he'd do it all with the sweetest smile. And when you were ready to listen to him, he'd have a very well-written little speech all prepared.

I can't think of a happier way to spend your time in the wasteland than by sharing your interests, learning about each other and their favourite things, or just engaging in some paralell play, the autistic national sport.

And I know he'd write extra episode of the Silver Shroud for you if you just desperately needed more of that particular hyperfixation.

I just think Kent would be the kind of guy who would be appropriately impressed and appreciative of how much you know about Captain Boomerang and his entire family history, and the only person who could maybe try and know more than you on that subject.

[zydrateacademy]

Review - Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector

What an amazing experience this game is.

I've had it wishlisted probably since it showed up but there it fell under my radar since its release. It may or may not have caught some sales in that time but again it went unnoticed and what an absolute crime that is. Released in 2021, it recently just came out with the T'au army which put the rest of the game and its various army packs on sale to an agreeable level, and putting it back on my radar.

Many Warhammer games usually nail the aesthetic, themes, diction, and storylines but very few capture the actual feel of playing on tabletop. There was Dawn of War which depicted swaths of armies cutting across the landscape but it was all in real time, the only methodology there was making sure your travelling teams had all the right counters to vehicles and infantry and after that you basically just let it go.

What we have here is a unique XCOM-like that may very well be the closest many of us will get to playing the actual tabletop game. We have a campaign (just one; following a Blood Raven chapter of the space marines) and two extra modes. Demonic Invasion is a wave based king of the hill type thing where you hold off for as long as you can as every round will continually spit the chaos god's minions at you. There's Planetary Supremacy, which is a sort of Catan/Risk style hex board that players of Dark Crusade or Soulstorm may be familiar with. It's the mode most of my hours have been played on. My only wish is that it could go for just a bit longer, maybe a bigger map, more enemies fighting each other, better node control.

In extension, there's also custom campaigns players can build as well as skirmishes for you to play against AI or other players. As of this writing there is no Co-op and that's quite a shame.

So there's a lot to do here. Some of the more mixed reviews, especially targetting the new armies, are complaining that there's not a super special story campaign for each and every single one of them. That is frankly not so much a problem for me, as I immediately gravitated towards the hex board game mode and just enjoyed having my hands on the Necron for the first time in many years. Now in HD with reflections! My dead bois are beautiful!

There's plenty to learn as well. Even on the easiest difficulties, the AI can route you. My Necron have units called Warriors, basically the equivalent to shotgunners. They also have the slowest movement of my army so it's difficult to get them into position and keep my general army momentum going. Sometimes they fall behind and I lack the much needed damage against enemy swarm units, and I've lost some good troops because I didn't have enough people shooting back. It's how I nearly lost against the Tyranids one game despite outnumbering them by 500 army points. Tactics very much matter here.

There's also a photo mode which is a bit fickle. The camera is locked at certain height over the floor tile so it's difficult to get sweeping, heroic visions of your armies from foot-level. You're more or less stuck staring at them from head-on. It's fun to play around with, though.

So while there is a campaign (just the one), this game could be treated more like a sandbox than anything else. I'm told from the game's discord they plan on releasing free units over the coming months. This is good, because that's one of my chief complaints about the game. There's a significant lack of versatile units to play with. Each faction gets around a dozen to fifteen to allocate with your army point cap (another staple of Tabletop that most games don't quite capture), with Khorne getting the shortest end of the stick (and the cheapest DLC) whom only have eight units to choose from. There's a significant lack of Kroot and vehicles here, and foot troops seem to be a choice between three different things. There's a lot more than that on tabletop.

Not that I expect this to be the tabletop simulator but it cuts real damn close. Closer than most games in this franchise. A must have if you like turn-based XCOM-likes.

[chornayadrakoshig]

Aaand this artwork is done, yay!

This is a dnd character I played in a Strixhaven campaign last year! Human artificer and Lorehold student, goes by he/she pronouns. I'm not sure how to translate his name correctly (I wasn't playing in english), I guess it's El? Yel? (with a sofl L at the end) Stormsong. Anyways...

This was actually my first dnd campaign (I participates in handful of writting-based roleplays waaay back in like 2010-2014 and played one session in warhammer 40k campaign which I didn't like because I know next to nothing about the setting but my friend dragged me there).

So, few notes from the campaign itself:

In the first year Larine almost died from exhaustion because she took all her free time for extra practice before the water-dancing club had a large performance on Rose Stage (which was it's own shenanigans to find someone who can cast and controll the huge mass of water to give us, like, temporary magical pool on stage).

Also in year 3 Larine won the magical fashion show and ended up working as designer later on.

My character and Aurora almost killed each other. Not like that, they were besties and tried to handle some issues with Aurora's dhampir hunger that was triggered by her falling in love with another NPC and, well, I'll just say it was one of the most emotional moments in the whole campaign and the only time I cried. Eventually DM decided it's too much and we got a happy ending (both survived) but damn.

Also right after that my character got in trouble because, well, she took so much damage she had to go to the hospital, but he tried to convince people that's just study experiment went wrong and not a dhampir bite so she got scolded by professor for allegedly messing with necromancy.

Quentillius tried to hit on Jawenish (unsuccessfully) and eventually ended up dating my character instead. They married after graduation and opened a shop selling magical music instruments.

[aquadestinyswriting]

People You Want to Get to Know Better

I was tagged for this by the lovely @blind-the-winds. You can find their post here. I don't have a full nine people in my taglist that haven't already done this, I don't think, so I'm sending them out to people I know have interacted with me and that I haven't seen tagged yet.

Current Book I'm Reading: I'm currently making my way through the Wordbearers Omnibus from Games Workshop's Black Library. Even though it's a Warhammer 40k series, it's giving me so much inspiration for the more... questionable clerics in Fangthane's Folly.

Last Song I Listened To: Far From Me by Chase Noseworthy. It popped up in my recommended while I was listening to my Titan playlist and it is an amazing Vox Machina fan song. I've popped it into my Emotional Songs playlist since it's a little too specific to put into the Titan one.

Currently Watching: My husband and I are currently going through our annual re-watch of the Netflix Castlevania series. We're having a bunch of fun pointing out the memes and generally just enjoying all the feels of the early parts of season 3. Also we are both so into Striga, it's unreal ^_^;.

Current Fic I'm Reading: I'm not really into any fandoms currently, so I'm not really reading any fanfic at the moment (not unless you count all of @druidx's Titan stuff, which I am re-reading a bunch of)

Next On My Watch List: Most likely a re-watch of Castlevania: Nocturne directly after the original Castlevania series, but after that I'm hoping hubs will indulge me in going through yet another re-watch of Alfabusa's If The Emporer Had a Text-To-Speech Device, including all the voxcasts and shorts and random segues. It's such a fun series. Even if you're not into Warhammer 40k, it is a really fun satire series. Just be aware that the creator had to abandon the project due to Games Workshop fuckery (if you guys thought the WotC stuff was bad... oof) and currently has no plans to return to it.

Current Obsession: At the moment I'm obsessed with two things: youtube disaster documentaries and my many, many WIPs, which now include a 'what if' AU thing I wrote the week before I took over the Destiny's New Servants campaign way back when that I plan to clean up a bit and possibly share. It's nothing more than a snippet, but , y'know. As for the disaster documentaries, that's just a recurring obsession that's randomly popped back up.

No Pressure tags going out to: @sparrow-orion-writes, @warriorbookworm, @ashirisu, @pluttskutt, @mariahwritesstuff

[forgot-how-catflap-works]

Meet the ghouls squabbling for power in the race to rule the Tories

Tory MPs are donning their robes and sharpening their sacrificial blades this week as they prepare to ritualistically cull a second candidate from the Conservative Party leadership race. 

Priti Patel was eliminated last week after securing just 11.9% of the vote, which already sounds quite embarrassing, then you do the maths and realise that’s a total of 14 votes. Considering the sheer number of controversies that litter her political career like dog shit in a play park, I’m amazed she didn’t perform better.  

(Formerly of the tobacco industry, Patel voted in favour of overturning the smoking ban because she recognises that mainly poor people use public spaces so, y’know, fuck ‘em.) 

Patel resigned as Home Secretary in 2017 after attending up to a dozen private, unsanctioned meetings with Israeli officials where departmental business was discussed while she was on holiday.

This gross breach of the ministerial code wasn’t enough to prevent her from being reinstated to the position under Boris Johnson’s government, where she dedicated herself to ruthlessly targeting asylum seekers, lobbying for pharmaceutical companies during the height of COVID, and bullying her staff. 

Next up on the chopping block appears to be Mel Stride MP who narrowly escaped elimination last round with a whopping 16 votes. 

(Launching his campaign, Stride said the Tories need to “build trust with the electorate again", presumably so they can get right back to abusing it.)  

Mr Stride served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in Theresa May’s cabinet, when he spearheaded the controversial loan charge policy which – as of January 2024 – has been linked to ten suicides. He was then elected as chair of the Treasury select committee, effectively securing himself a position where he was the one responsible for scrutinising his own dastardly deeds and, unsurprisingly, finding nothing to be concerned about. 

Former Minister of State for Security Tom Tugendhat limped a single vote ahead of Stride in the first round. Tugendhat is notable only in how boring he is, and hasn’t even breached the ministerial code once (that we know of). Total amateur. His strategy appears to be to fly below the radar, presumably in the hope the other candidates will destroy each other and he can rule over the ashes. 

(Having already lost one leadership race to Liz Truss of all people, Tugendhat looks like a surefire bet to lose another.) 

A former soldier, Tugendhat holds some classically conservative positions like increased military spending, opposition to the European Court of Human Rights and wanting a cap on immigration but these days that’s a mild salsa. He appears moderate compared to the others, and lacks the brain rot and crypto-fascist brainworms that UK conservatives have been steadily importing from America over the last decade. The most interesting thing about him is that he had to change his campaign slogan because the acronym spelled TURD. 

Now we’re done with the dregs, let's take a look at the front runners starting with weed smoking, Warhammer playing, porn enjoyer James Cleverly. That makes him sound much more interesting than he is. Having previously filled both the Home and Foreign secretary positions, Cleverly has long had leadership aspirations.  

(Cleverly once had to apologise for an “ironic joke” about spiking his wife’s drink with rohypnol during a Westminster reception, apparently being both a weird creep and not understanding the definition of irony.) 

Another paint-by-numbers Tory, he stirred up a fuss a few years ago by saying that gay football fans should show "a little bit of flex and compromise" when visiting Qatar for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. He added that it was "important when you're a visitor to a country that you respect the culture of your host nation." Cleverly it seems considers a seven year prison sentence for being gay little more than a cultural quirk rather than something queer football fans might have legitimate concerns over. Basically saying reign it in lads, no need to be homo in public. 

Landing in second place during the last vote is former Minister for Women and Equalities Kemi Badenoch who claimed in a speech last year that transgender people could transition “too easily”. This is supported by the fact that waiting times for an initial assessment are as high as seven years in some parts of the country, so that definitely tracks. Badenoch clearly knows what she is talking about. 

(Speaking on the Spectator podcast, Badenoch said the Tories need to “stop acting like Labour”. I can only assume she misinterpreted the narrowing ideological gap between Labour and Tories as a softening in her party’s ranks rather than a calcification of right wing leanings in Westminster.) 

Characterised as an “anti-woke” politician, she has also supported conversion therapy for trans people. Speaking like someone who has never actually heard themselves talk, she also claimed that providing gender affirming care for trans kids was a “form of conversion therapy” intended to turn gay kids trans. It’s ironclad reasoning and, as a trans dyke, I value above all else the perspective of a cisgender, hetrosexual woman in all matters relating to queer issues. If anyone is going to lay down the law on who gets to be gay and in what way, it should be her. 

Badenoch bravely announced during a recent campaign video that she was unafraid of fictional character Doctor Who. Furthermore, as a woman of colour, she believes that Britain is not institutionally racist, so we can all stop worrying about that now. What a relief, I was starting to get really concerned about it. You know, what with all the institutional racism that’s been going around. But turns out that was a false alarm, which is probably why she also said “I don’t care about colonialism”. 

Badenoch came out swinging on the subject, making claims broader than my fat ass in order to minimise the brutality of Britain's well-documented colonial history. 

"There was never any concept of 'rights', so [the] people who lost out were old elites not everyday people,” she said in some leaked WhatsApp messages. It’s a relief to know that the three million people who died in the 1943 Bengal Famine were all elites. 

Lego figure cosplayer Robert Jenrick is the current frontrunner, having secured 28 votes in the first round. Jenrick served as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government under Boris Johnson where he dedicated himself to pulling political favours for luxury property developer and Tory party donor Richard Desmond. The move allowed Desmond to avoid paying a community council levy of £40 million which could have been used to fund schools and health clinics. 

(Courting the far right voters who flocked to Reform in the last election, Jenick resigned from his position as immigration minister, saying the policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda didn’t go far enough.)

Grenfell United, the pressure group dedicated to securing justice for the victims of the Grenfell fire refused to meet with Jenrick in 2020, saying: "Your perceived focus on the interests of property developers over the needs of an impoverished local community has soured our opinion of you.” 

Jenrick also served as Minister of State for Immigration where he took aim at the greatest threat to our nation: unaccompanied asylum seeking children. During a visit to an intake centre in Kent last year he reportedly told staff to paint over a mural depicting cartoons and animals, saying it was a “law enforcement environment” and “not a welcome centre”. 

Finally, someone had the courage to put those kids in their place. If they wanted to experience even a single moment where they felt safe, or like they weren’t completely alone in this terrifying and hostile world, they shouldn’t have crossed the bloody channel should they? They need to learn that actions have consequences, unless of course you’re a Tory politician then you can basically just get away with whatever and certainly not have your political ambition stymied in the slightest. That would be unfair.  

With such political titans in the running, Labour should be quaking in its boots. This gaggle of ghouls is among the finest we could hope for, and the fact that they each crave power enough to run the highest office in the land should in no way concern anyone. As the old adage goes: Power corrupts, but only if you’re a little bitch. 

Which of these unscrupulous, foreigner hating, homophobes will proceed to the next round? Tory MPs will be casting their vote today in order to separate the wheat from the chaff, and trim the eligible candidates down to four. 

This three month slog is only just beginning, so buckle your pants because we have to put up with this fucking circus until November.

[open-hearth-rpg]

That Was Dave

CW: Death

On the drive over to the funeral Sherri and I went back through all of Dave’s characters we could remember. His Engineer in Star Trek Adventures, his sorcerer in 13th Age, his Hound in Blades in the Dark, his Gearhead in Mutant Year Zero, Roaming Wolf from Mutants & Masterminds, Master Mummer Sokka Sokka from Libri Vidicos, his Skaven from Arcane Rails, his Runemage from Rolemaster, Lat and Na from the parallel GURPS Fantasy games…

A few others we couldn’t recall the details of like his character from Guards of Abashan, the name of his weird mage from Triad, his characters from the one time I ran D&D, and his earliest characters from various Cyberpunk 2020, Hunter, and Vampire campaigns. He had a type– always a little weird and off-kilter, often with clear vulnerabilities. His weirdo characters could be unpredictable but they never, ever caused pain or discomfort to the rest of the group, to the players at the table. I’ve played with too many folks who made their eccentricities everyone’s problem. But Dave never did that

I met Dave in 1992 or 1993. He was in high school. At the time I helped manage a game store with an attached upstairs game room. He hung around, quiet, in a thin black trenchcoat (as was the style at the time). He had a couple of annoying pals who also hung around– Dave was the best of them. He got involved in Warhammer 40K, started playing ttrpgs, very occasionally played TCGs, and became a regular fixture. When I moved on from there in 1997, he stayed part of the group. I played with him pretty solidly for almost the next twenty-seven years. 

Dave had been born in 1976– so seven years younger than me. That was enough to put a fairly major generation gap between us in terms of how he’d been raised and what he’s been exposed to. He grew up on Nintendo. When I finally went to play the PS version of Final Fantasy VI, he photocopied an entire NES FFIII strategy guide to help me through it. He loved that game. 

I’m not sure entirely what else he loved– like media, games, movies. He was quiet and rarely gave out his opinions on things unless he felt strongly about them. He loved the Fallout series, he hated the Fist of the North Star action game I lent him, he loved Rock Band except when they decided not to have keyboards support anymore. If you suggested things to him he’d nod. Occasionally he’d get back to you that he’d tried them. But he remained quiet, kept to himself, and yet always managed to be a solid, fun and warm presence at every gaming table. 

I have been extraordinary lucky to have a stable gaming group for three+ decades now. I have folks in my extended circles who I’ve played with since 1988. Most I’ve played with for several decades. One I knew in Middle School. The group has changed and shifted– I used to run 2-3 face to face games. Now that’s just one. There are two parallel games with different mixes of people from this connected group, but I’m not part of those. I thought about that today when I saw someone post this from https://www.instagram.com/couldbeworsecomic/ , with comments about the unreality of this…

Dave passed away on Father’s Day. There’s a story there but let me circle around to get to that. 

In thinking about it, one of my biggest regrets was not sitting down and asking Dave how he thought my GMing had evolved and changed. Sherri’s been along for me on this ride, but she’s been privy to all the behind-the-scenes and helped shape my approach. I wish I’d asked him what he thought the differences were and how he liked or didn’t like them. He was a good GM. I twice played in campaigns he ran: a GURPS Fantasy one and a hack of Fallout using the Action Cards system I’d created. He did striking and unique things with that. 

It always struck me how long he thought and planned for his campaigns. For both he’d clearly worked on them for years before he ever suggested he wanted to run. He came to the table with props, new options, and great ideas. He’d done his world building– but it never felt closed off. Like the best GMs, he invited you to both tour and shape the worlds he’d built. It felt like a far cry from me who has been running tons of off the cuff short campaigns over the last several years. 

Though that’s been an online phenomena. In our face to face groups, we’ve mostly focused on longer campaigns. Even short ones have a dozen sessions. So many of the campaigns of mine which Dave played in lasted for years and years. We got to see the characters change, grow, and evolve. I mentioned he would run oddballs– often the character type with the least growth. But his characters always grew and became something better. 

He grew and became something better. In the mid-00’s his wife Chas joined the table. She was and is great: solid and determined. One of those players who makes a choice and lives with it. The two of them together always made things even more fun. 

So I don’t know the full details, but apparently within the last year Dave started to have some mood and personality swings. I only saw him and Chas bi-weekly for our sessions. I didn’t notice anything. But it was serious enough to warrant a separation between the two of them. Again, I didn’t have a real sense of what was happening there. But then Dave passed out in his home and had to go to the ER. He was diabetic so I and others assumed that was a contributing factor when he was released the next day. 

But then a week or so later he had another episode, being again sent to the hospital– this time with seizures. They kept him in for several days of treatment, but again they weren’t sure what was happening. I’m assuming they gave him some meds for that before releasing him again. Less than a week after that, on Father’s Day, he passed out in his bathroom and hit his head, as I understand it. And he died. A wellness check a day later found him. 

After the funeral, Sherri and I again went through the list of his characters, their personalities, and their stories. I remembered when another person from our playgroup died, Barry, back in 2006 at the age of 37. Not long after that I ran a D&D 3.5 campaign which had a sub-story about the PCs rescuing Barry’s character who had sacrificed himself closing a demonic portal at the end of the campaign only a few months previously. That campaign had a riff on Final Fantasy VI, Dave’s favorite video game. 

I’m not sure I can do anything like that for Dave, can do anything like that again. I’m older and the last few years have made me more raw, more easily broken. I’m not sure I can face that pain. I’ve tabled the Star Trek Adventures campaign we’d been in the middle of. I hope we can keep playing, but I don’t think I can run STA, with Dave haunting the table. We will see. 

I don’t have a big conclusion here: maybe keep an eye on your mental health and tell folks when things are getting rocky. But I wanted to write something down. I hunted around for photos of Dave, but I’ve never been a person to take pictures. The images throughout have been from the table and it took me a long time, but I found one. 

That’s Dave there in the middle, hand on mouth, contemplating his next action.

I hope there’s something after we die and, if there is, I get a chance to talk to Dave again.

[knightofdeer]

that was. some extreme additional fun. thank you for the answer however!

I have a question on the topic (do forgive the absolutely not jarring shift, please); how much historic materialism can be found in 40k? Because from where I stand, wargames tend to have at least some of it, you need at least some recognition of social structures that benefit from the war you're playing here.

Early DnD had some of it, afaik, in the form that it was clearly about warring against conquerors while being a pillager, if you paid any mind to it, but nowadays, when the focus is more on roleplay and worldbuilding, the worlds fall apart because they are now tied by nothing — there are still conquerors, but they don't have material reasons to be, and the picture is bigger, the worlds are widely developed, and warring is not perpetual, but when there is no warring, there is no reason for those widely developed worlds to exist in the forms they have, because there are only benevolent and evil kings and only rogues are the ones allowed to care for profit.

In case of 40k my proper introduction into it was the recent rogue trader game — I know some lore, but never read or played anything before, and so far it seems like the developers in this particular case mostly understood their histmat (can elaborate on that), but commonly it's not the case with the franchise — so I wanted to ask your opinion on that, and how things are in the fandom, not only in licensed works

Firstly, I am frankly not sure how well do I understand historical materialism, but I will try to answer it from historical perspective general.

Secondly, Warhammer 40K is my first "big" fandom and it's special for me, and as a result I return to it like every 3-6 months but it's not like I know really a lot.

Thirdly, it's kind of murky to say what is main franchise here, because the hierarchy of lore is like that: Rulebooks and Codexes and Campaign books > Novels > Licensed works. So the overwhelming majority of lore is outside the main franchise.

And frankly, I would say that it's not materialistic at all. It started as "what if we mixed Warhammer Fantasy and Dune and some other sci-fi" and continues to largely work on the rule of cool. Imperium is described as highly hierarchical with material inequality, but it also rarely comes up in main lore. The closest thing to military industry that is important to lore are Forge Worlds, but they also exist as vague points of production rather than businesses. The Rulebook describes main ways of planetary exploitation, and yes Imperium uses planets specifically to extract labour and resources from them rather than just vaguely ruling them, but it's also rarely comes up.

The closest thing to actual commentary is in the field of religion. There are a lot of "quotes" from sermons that sound literally horrifying but also they are not just evil - they are specifically like that to make people loyal to Imperium, to make them willing to tolerate awful working conditions, inequality, and maybe eventual need to die in war. Imperial Creed is basically Calvinism but much worse. And what's very important and what a lot of fantasy religions miss is that it's explicitly not true - The Emperor is an immortal superman, yes, but he is not a god. Even though due to how Warp works unified zeal of humanity may have created a god in his image, but before that there were ten thousand years of worship of things that we as readers know to be a lie.

Warhammer 40k is not even space opera, it's very much fantasy with some technological elements.

And Imperium is like the most realistic part of Warhammer. Chaos is literally four gods playing a game to conquer the universe, Necrons are faux-Egyptian cyber-undead who are angsty because their souls were eaten by star gods (different ones), Aeldari are space elves who form a number of cultures ranging from ascetic "monks" of Craftworlds to Drukhari who are basically space vampires but instead of blood their life depends on consumption of suffering of sentient beings, and so on.

But that's the big picture. Smaller stories are usually set on one planet, and since worlds of Imperium are pretty isolated, they all have their own societies that may have pretty materialistic dynamics. Maybe, I never read too far into any of novels.

Fandom is... not great. My only interactions other than random reblogs in the last couple of years were occasional visits on r/Grimdank, and while it's not as horrifying as it may sound it is very much not great. Like everyone there does understand that Imperium is evil but it doesn't mean that they have sane politics otherwise. Though most of it is just memes about factions and events so it's fine.

I know that there is very purposefully marxist community of fans of Warhammer Age of Sigmar (parallel world, there is 2.5 Warhammers), but I don't know a lot about it (though I bought a novel from Age of Sigmar setting so maybe it will catch me).

Warhammer Fantasy, on the other hand, is pretty famous as fantasy for history nerds. Nerds, mind it, not political activists, but it's pretty faithful recreation of Early Modern Europe. I don't know enough about it to say does it reflect specifically transition from feudalism to capitalism, but the class inequality is not just mentioned, in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay it's specifically part of flavour because you start not as mighty heroes but as foot soldiers and students of magic at best and beggars, gamblers, thieves and servants at worst.

(Also I am not that familiar with lore of D&D, but if anything it's more like Old West fantasy. It depends on specific setting and even locations inside this setting, but by default you are adventures in mostly uninhabited wilderness inhabited by goblins and kobolds and orcs and other sometimes sentient monsters. And high heroism wasn't a thing in D&D at the beginning, though it is for quite a time now but in the beginning it was a game exactly about rogues, not as class, they weren't there from the start, but as way of life. My brief familiarity with Forgotten Realms setting however confirms that in 1st and 2nd editions of campaign guide it was just generic High Medieval setting the only remarkable thing about which is that it's pretty young by fantasy standards and in subsequent editions it had to undergo one divine cataclysm after another to keep things interesting and to justify changes in rules)

[thessalian]

Thess vs Cosplayers

The one thing I didn't talk about when I was talking about MCM Comic Con was the cosplayers. I generally enjoy watching the cosplayers for a number of reasons. I mean, obviously it's just generally fun to see how into things people get, but also it's a good way to gauge general trends in terms of characters etc. So I look out for the stuff I know and go from there.

Critical Role was obviously very heavily represented, cosplayers spreading their efforts over all three campaigns. However, I think Vox Machina got the most overall coverage, and there were a lot of instances where you could tell when someone was doing the TLoVM versions and when they were doing the original campaign version. I think Keyleth and Scanlan got the most overall coverage from the Vox Machina campaign, with Vex, Vax, and Percy not far behind. I saw a couple of good Pikes and exactly one Grog. Also one Arkhan, one Delilah, one Sylas (not a pairing) and a Raven Queen. Oh, and two Trinkets, leaving aside the Vexes who were carrying Trinket plushes (or in one case, had a specially made Trinket-shaped wheelchair rest). For the Mighty Nein, Jester was entirely the front-runner, followed not-very-closely by Yasha, Caleb, and Mollymauk. There were more Veths than Notts, if you see what I mean, and one of the Veths was with her partner, who was dressed as Yeza. I saw a couple of Fjords, a couple of Beaus, and one Caduceus. For NPCs, apart from the aforementioned Yeza, there were a few Esseks and an awful lot of Avantikas. Also one Professor Thaddeus. Then there were Bell's Hells, and Laudna was the clear leader on that particular scoreboard, with Imogen a relatively close second. A fair few Ashtons, some with exceptionally good headpieces and even better hammers. A few really nicely done Fearnes. One Orym, one Chetney, and while I didn't see anyone specifically cosplaying FCG, there were a couple of people who made puppet-FCGs. Thinking about it, I even saw a couple of Bertrands. And, while not directly CR cosplay, one Deadpool cosplayer who had a Gilmore's Glorious Goods bathrobe on over their costume for the CR group photos.

Of course, with the popularity of Baldur's Gate 3 and the entire cast being present at MCM Comic Con, there were a lot of Baldur's Gate 3 cosplays. In terms of which characters got the most attention, Astarion won by a country mile. Marion actually expressed a bit of surprise at Astarion's popularity just because she'd been given to understand that he was a bit of a shit, and then I had to explain the concept of a "poor little meow-meow" and that Astarion was basically Zevran Aranai but amplified ... and then I had to explain Zevran and I finally just gave up and stuck with "Sometimes they like the shitheels and also his cosplay is one of the easiest to do". Anyway, there were some really impressive Astarions. Runner-up was Shadowheart, and Karlach was a distant third. I saw a couple of Gales, one Halsin, a really impressive Lae'zel, and I think a Minthara. Also a few people I'm pretty sure were cosplaying their own Tavs, and the most impressive fucking illithid costume I could have imagined. Wyll and Jaheira were not represented anywhere that I saw, which is a shame. I did see an Isobel, though. And I would have loved to see what some of those cosplayers did with Dame Aylin, but not that I saw this year.

Going more into the generalities! On the subject of video games, there were a few Links and Zeldas, a lot of Princess Peaches and a fairly impressive number of Marios and Luigis. (There was a steampunk Mario and Luigi pairing that was really cool.) There was the Classic Horror Quartet - a group consisting of Freddy Kreuger, Ghostface, Jason, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre person. I was really gratified to see an Aloy. There's this one elderly couple who has been at MCM Comic Con every year I've been there, and they do the most impressive Warhammer 40K cosplay - the "We put their picture in our advertising for the convention" kind of impressive. (And those two have to be in their sixties at minimum so anyone who says this shit is only for kids needs to get a clue.) These were not the only WH40K cosplayers, but the most impressive - though there was someone in White Templar cosplay that did give them a bit of a run for their money. Obviously a lot of One Piece, given the live action series coming out. A few Disney princesses (and one Snow White's Wicked Stepmother circa 1937). A lot of Spider-men, obviously, of varying iterations - a couple of Spider-Punks, a gratifying number of Spider-Gwens, and so many different iterations of Spider-Man from Across the Spider-Verse.

Side note: between that and the penis-bearers who cosplayed Deadpool in body-stocking instead of crafted body armour, I desperately wanted to hold a sign recommending that those people look into the concept of a dance belt. So many dick-prints. A few avoided it by doing like Miles Morales in the earlier parts of Into the Spider-Verse and wearing shorts over their tights, but the rest ... yeah. So many dick-prints.

Star Wars, obviously. A couple of Leias, a few Reys, and SO MANY MANDOS. Mostly Din Djarin, obviously, but the occasional Boba Fett, Bo Katan and Sabine Wren. A few Anakins, like maybe two Obi-Wans, a couple of Heras, one really impressive Kanan, one equally impressive Ahsoka, one Dagobah-training-montage!Luke with a Yoda backpack puppet, and like two Revans. Also a lot of Darths, but not necessarily all the ones most people know about. I mean, sure, a fair few Vaders and a couple of Mauls, but also Darth Malgus and one really impressive Darth Nihilus. There were also several members of Imperial military, including a Moff Gideon complete with Darksaber and an Assistant Director Krennick. There were a couple of more generic Star Wars aliens too - a Duros bounty hunter and a couple of impressive Twi'leks.

The one thing that felt almost conspicuous in its absence? No Dragon Age. No Mass Effect. I mean, we had a couple of Homestuck characters and we didn't get one Morrigan or Zevran or Varric? Maybe all the cosplayers are waiting for DA4. Good luck to them; Bioware seems to be having another of those Development Hell moments.

Anyway, there was way too much great cosplay to list it all, and I probably missed some good ones along the way, but those were the highlights for me - well, the recognisable highlights, since there were a lot of really impressive cosplays but since I'm not huge into most anime I have no idea what they were cosplaying that was so impressive. And no, there are no pictures. I thought about it, but honestly, trying to balance cane and camera felt like a lost cause and they probably would have come out badly anyway.

[niseag-arts]

On gender and warhammer: a personal account

Or: in light if recent events, I have been introspective for a bit. Personal history and shit. Feel free to ignore.

Let's start off here: I am nonbinary but largely closeted. I have large breasts that will not let themselves be hidden by a binder, and I have long hair (with an undercut, but I don't always have it tied up). The thing is, if I walk into a local game store, people are going to think I'm a woman.

I have been actively engaging with warhammer content for 5 years now. But let's start earlier.

When I was 14, my cousin introduced me to warhammer. I was obsessed with wolves so he showed me the space wolves and tried to get me to play. I asked my mum if I could get this game, but my mother told me that I was not allowed to play games in which people get slaughtered, and thus I had to disappoint my cousin and tell him that this wasn't for me. Life went on, my cousin and I lost contact, and I didn't think about this game he had been so passionate about again for years.

A lot happened. I went to university, came out as nonbinary to my friends, got in a relationship, and moved to a different country.

And then, one day, someone at the role-playing society I'm in posts a call for players for a Dark Heresy campaign. I find myself interested to re-explore this thing I only vaguely remember. So, I talked to the GM about making a tech priest. It excited me! I explain the concept to my partner, and she flips out at me about how this is disgusting and that if I play this that must mean that I want to be "less than human" as well. I play in the campaign anyway (the relationship was long-distance, so she couldn't actually stop me). We had a great time. I fell in love with the world building and dove into reading the novels on my e-reader. I couldn't do much more than that, not with the risk of my partner flipping out on me again.

After she broke up with me. I bought my first box of skitarii. It sat on my shelf. I lived in student housing, and I didn't have the space to work on them.

Now, something to know about me is that occasionally, I get dysphoric about my hobbies. I like arts and crafts and reading by the light of scented candles, among other things. And sometimes, when my brain is mean to me, it tells me that those are incredibly feminine and that they prove that I'm a girl.

So...one day, after I've moved into a rental property, I see those skitarii on my shelf and decide to open the box and put them together. I liked working on them, I love tiny detailed crafts! And, for once, that nagging dysphoria voice in my mind is quiet. It lets me paint my little dudes without telling me that this hobby is too feminine... because, well, it's warhammer. And, you know, I am fully aware that that is dumb and that warhammer is for everyone. But dysphoria isn't always reasonable. Regardless. I'm now very involved, happily painting my dudes and putting them on my bookshelf, reading the books, having a great time. I also make fanart and start talking to people on discord.

And then recently, someone in my social circle set up a demo game. I have about 500 points of admech at this point, so I pack up my dudes and learn how to play with them. I get beaten by his necrons a few times, someone else in the playgroup goes out of his way to read up on the specifics of my army so when I face his chaos marines he coaches me through, telling me things to do that I didn't even know I could do.

I returned to tumblr. And after a while I realise that I have lovely mutuals who appreciate me and I appreciate them and its all good. My experience with the fanbase so far has been great. Incredibly welcoming.

And then GW released female custodes. I am lukewarm on this, I like custodes, but I didn't really care at first... and then people started to spew hate. People are seething at the mouth at the existence of women. And it gets to me. I start feeling like maybe nobody wants me, a person assumed female, in "their" hobby. I look at my little dudes and wonder what i'll do with them now, if they'll remain on my shelf or if I'll give them to an irl friend.

But... no-one has been that way, irl. Nobody. I've met some folk with questionable political opinions, but even they were happy to talk to me about painting and things (even if they misgendered me all the way through, but swings and roundabouts). It's like the people yelling on the Internet are not actually in the lgs... but yeah, idk.

I've been having thoughts, and I needed to write them down somewhere.

And if you're my cousin reading this: It's not space wolves, but you were right. This is fun. Miss talking to you, man. (Didn't think you'd have a tumblr)