#so them like. actually being able to KILL kill. is like... so interesting to me

[saltyyuuri]

How valorant agents would react to:

"what was in the box I found on your desk?"

Brimstone: "you didn't look inside it did you?!"

You didn't, thankfully. He was planning on gifting you a simple necklace he found, had a small locket on it with engravings and a picture of you both for your 2 year anniversary.

Phoenix: "Oh shit my new shoes came in??"

Of course he had bought another pair of expensive shoes for his collection, the usual.

Sage: "oh my order of tea :) I got some shipped from china, would you like some?"

She let you taste some of the tea she had ordered in, spending the afternoon in her living quarters, relaxing and chatting over the cup of tea

Sova: "Oh just some charged arrowheads for my shock arrows. You didn't touch them, did you?"

By the time he had a reply you had already opened the box and got relatively well electrocuted after touching one of the arrowheads. When he came back he just sighed, shook his head but bandaged your hand.

Viper: "poison."

It was not actually poison but the answer alone was enough to get you to not touch that box.

Cypher: "oh a new chess set, made of wood and entirely hand carved. Would you be interested in playing later?"

Of course you said yes, and the new chess pieces were quite nice. You could understand why he wanted to acquire these.

Reyna: "don't you dare open it."

The lack of detail made you curious and you couldn't help looking inside. When you saw the contents of the box, far from PG-13, you had to sit yourself down for a moment. And of course she walked in a bit after, and seeing your red face she already knew you checked. "Well now you know what's about to happen."

Killjoy: "my alarm bot. It's in time out."

You don't really understand why, curiosity getting the better of you and opening the box. You discovered pretty fast after the alarm bot was practically attacking you.

Breach: "probably a gun, molly or fusion cells."

And you were more stunned about 'molly' being an option in all of that. Turns out it was only fusion cells.

Omen: "yarn. I ordered more."

You took care of unpacking it for him and putting it in his designated basket for yarn. He was quite grateful, being able to just sit down and knit without worrying about the unpacking part.

Jett: "uhhhhhhhhhhhhh idk"

So you take it upon yourself to open the box, revealing a very suspicious looking pack. After opening it you could see it was white powder and it immediately alerted you. After a bit of back and forth texts, turns out she just ordered a bag of MSG, a spice for her food (I don't know if it's actually a spice or not so don't quote me)

Raze: "UH EITHER BOMBS OR SPRAY PAINT."

Out of curiosity you open the box. And curiosity killed the cat as you end up in med bay. From now on her boxes are going to get labeled properly.

Skye: "oh just a few wooden sculptures I stashed away. I was supposed to sort them."

You had fun looking through all the different sculptures she had made, laying them out on the desk. You sorted them by species, hoping that would give her a little bit of a hand.

Yoru: "drugs."

It was not drugs; and you learned that the hard way after Brimstone immediately searched the room after getting told there was potentially drugs. It was actually just a couple sweet snacks ordered in from Japan that he didn't want you getting into-and instead of getting himself in trouble.

Astra: "my drawing supplies!"

You did look through it briefly, finding nothing really interesting other than a copious amount of markers and pencils.

Kay/o: "why are you in my maintenance room."

It is true that killjoy is the only one who's supposed to be in that room to begin with; being the one who usually does the maintenance on kay/o

Chamber: "you will know tonight."

... I don't feel like I have to explain this one. But for those who don't understand: no walking for the next day.

Neon: "OH I FORGOT TO HIDE IT! IT'S FOR YOU THO 💙"

She had put together a little gift basket, like the one seen on tik Tok for Valentine's Day; chocolates, a plushie, a blankets, favorite drink, new tumbler and a handwritten card with an invitation to a restaurant dinner.

Fade: "kitty toys. Can you unpack them for nightmare?"

She had splurge it a little bit for her cat, and there was various toys, treats and a new little hammock for the kitty.

Harbor: "Ah! That must be the helmet I ordered for you so we can go on motorcycle rides together 😄"

He had gotten you a slightly more expensive helmet than what he usually got himself, one that had a bit of a fancy design on it and the mirror visor to look a little more mysterious.

Gekko: "OH IT FINALLY CAME IN??? I GOT WINGMAN A LITTLE SUIT."

Inside the box was a small suit that looked like it was tailored for an infant, which would make sense because trying to explain to a custom clothing maker that it was supposed to be for a radiant critter would probably confuse them. But seeing wingman in a suit was absolutely adorable.

Deadlock: "sound sensors, be careful."

The notification sound on your phone set them off, resulting in you getting stunned almost back to back a couple of times.

Iso: "snacks."

Indeed the box was full of snacks, but one in particular caught your attention. You took it out, and it was one of those bead candies that you usually wear on the necklace or a bracelet, just a different shape. It was packaged in a clear bag with no labeling and you opened it just to check what it was supposed to be. After unpacking it and seeing your face went red. Seems Iso already decided on desert for the night.

Clove: "rocks :D"

It was their entire rock collection, all nicely sorted in the box. You added one of your own in there for them.

Vyse: "Schrödinger's cat"

It was indeed not a cat, just a few various equipments that she needed for experiments she was working on. But for the joke you did leave a Post-It note with a cat drawing on it, purposely drawing it dead.

Tejo: "why are you looking through my stuff? 🤨"

Turns out he had just ordered another pair of shades, adding yet one more pair to his collection. But you did decide to mess around and borrow one of his pairs to wear around.

Waylay: "A glass suncatcher."

The glass suncatcher reflected the same way that her powers did with the light. It was honestly pretty and you hung it for her in the best spot on the window, so when she walked in it would be shimmering already for her.

[ao3scrapesearch]

hi so, thanks to your tool i was able to figure out that every fic ive ever posted onto ao3 (from 2015 to recent, aside from three fics this last month i just posted) were all scraped, and its absolutely horrifying to me to know my works are being used in this way. this is hundreds of thousands of words of time, and is over 90% of all of the writing ive ever shared online, spread over multiple accounts and fandoms and im just feeling- so dejected. i know youre not an advice blog or anything, and i really appreciate the work youve done to help people find this information. im just curious- do you have any advice when it comes to dealing with this knowledge? i dont want to delete my fics and take them from people who enjoy them, and i want to continue to write and see others read my works. but its just so dejecting knowing what theyre being used for now. that i dont have any control over what is done with my own passion projects because some company can show up and just take it and use it in some environment-poisoning misinformation machine

I wasn't expecting to be ASKED for advice when I made the blog! But I give it my best shot for you guys when I can.

So to ME, it's a bit reassuring to see that the data isn't like. Amazingly collected, if that makes sense. If I were looking for a dataset to generate good writing, a huge thing I would want is a way to know what readers actually liked. For the record, having a low hit or kudos count or whatever does not mean your fic isn't good! (You can have a low hit count because your fandom isn't big or because you're not tagging your fic in a way to help the right people discover it, but the fic can still be amazing.) BUT if I were an outsider not looking to actually read the fics, just figure out what about the writing makes people like them, the top thing I'd be looking for is the stats like the hits, kudos, comments, and bookmarks. Nyuuzyou intentionally tried to exclude that data, which is... an interesting decision.

The choice of forum is telling, too. They chose to upload on Hugging Face, which is for AI hobbyists, not corporate models. These are people like you and me, just doing this as a hobby for fun, and it's pretty unlikely they'll ever create something they can sell from this. Yes, they're killing the environment with it, which I hate, but they're doing it on a much smaller scale than any of the commercial names in AI. Very similar to how you can post a fic and even get tens of thousands of hits and tons of positive interactions, but that doesn't mean you also publish traditional novels and make tens of thousands of dollars.

Again, for me, it also helps to remind myself that hey. They're already out there. Even if I take down all 60-ish of my fics that were hit in this scrape, that data is still out there, but if I delete them, it's ONLY out there as a stupid AI-training dataset, and I've cut out my readers entirely. Deleting the ones that were already scraped doesn't un-scrape them, and to me, it feels like letting the scrapers win if they get my writing AND I don't get to share my writing anymore.

For new writing going forward, that's definitely a place to make a personal decision! I've said a couple times I'm going to keep writing and sharing anyway because I love it, but that's not The One Right Way to do things.

I also am in the same boat as I've seen some people in my notes. A lot of my scraped fics were uh. Not my best work. Like I was prolific in 2018 and man... those fics were not super well-written. Text-based GenAI is trained to learn the order words should appear, based on probabilities. So if there's a lot of bad, boring works in there (and there definitely are! we all start out by posting mediocre writing!), that teaches the AI model to write bad, boring sentences. Most of us aren't tagging our fics in a way to tell a computer which fics are like this, so the AI doesn't know which fics are written by beginners who still don't know how to write well or who don't know English very well yet, and at least from what I know, the AI is going to treat those works like they're just as valid as the 100k+ novels we all know and love. All that comes together to make a shitty AI model that no one really wants to use, even if they're otherwise super pro-AI.

I'll round this off with a silly little book recommendation, but this book seriously changed the way I think about life in general and definitely impacted how I was able to take the scraping well enough and focus on being productive about it instead of just upset. The big takeaway from it is that no one can fully control their circumstances, but everyone has the ability to control the way they react to those circumstances. No one can control AI scrapers being scumbags, but we all get to choose how to respond to it happening.

[reagent-leon]

If I had any say in the development of The Outlast Trials, my plea to Red Barrels would be this: expand on the characters you’ve already got instead of adding new ones. Franco, the Pitcher, Amelia, Henrietta, they’ve all been great. But do you know what’s been one of my favourite updates? The one for the Imposter. Making them able to interact with players more. I was hanging out with one for quite a while in Kill the Snitch, thinking it was my buddy @cannibalizedcadavers. He even offered me a lockpick, and if Danny hadn’t picked up a key elsewhere in the trial at that exact moment, I would’ve taken the bait and gotten stabbed. I got out of there sharpish, but it was super unsettling being misled like that, much better than the telltale giggling they used to do. 

I feel like they should add new mechanics to the guys already on the roster, refine them a little, maybe even design alternative versions. There are supposed to be multiple Pushers, multiple Night Hunters, multiple Pitchers, and yet they all have the same voice lines and appearance. The Jaeger being unique makes sense because she’s Henrietta, and we know some of the other ex-pops have names, Frank, George, Danny, etc. But we see two heavy ex-pops die. The Black Big Grunt dies twice in Franco’s trials (that I can recall), first in Poison the Medicine, then again in Poison the Cattle. So, where does that fit into the timeline? I take it we’re supposed to assume it's a different Big Grunt. 

Teach the old dogs some new tricks instead of trying to distract us with new playmates. Refine some new mechanics or behaviours, even if they’re not strictly player-related.

I’ve always found it odd that ex-pops don’t react to one another, or at least not to the Prime Assets. I’m not asking for Prime Time-level dialogue, just something, especially from specialist ex-pops. I think they’d all have something funny to say about the Pusher, and the Pusher mistakenly thinking he’s still their doctor? Come on. Give me some chemistry between the characters. There’s a severe lack of interactivity within the game, both with the characters and their environments. Actually, I think it’s only Franco and maaaaybe Phyllis who mention there’s something weird about their respective trial environments.

The Prime Assets are supposed to be these charismatic leaders, but we never get to see Phyllis playing mother hen, Coyle playing drill sergeant, or Franco building up a new gang. There’s a lot of tell, don’t show, which made sense in the beginning. I admit that during Amelia’s Escape, I was hoping to see more of the Sinyala Facility. Specifically, I was hoping to get a peek at where they’re keeping the ex-pops when they’re not in active trials. I’m imagining an asylum-type environment, which at some point could be used as a map itself. Imagine trying to escape and instead winding up in a sleep room full of ex-pops who want you dead. I know the developers have talked about this before, but I’m sorry, with how volatile the ex-pops are, I cannot see them all getting along enough to be in a sleep room like the Reagents. There must be containment procedures, something to keep them more docile when they aren’t on patrol. 

Also, they fucking killed Clyde Perry. I was really hoping to see him in-game, even if he was just looking down on us like Wernicke, maybe hear some voice lines from him. But no. He’s gone. Wasted just to big up Henrietta’s arrival. It’s interesting that both Clyde and Henrietta were victimised by Coyle, and it was Henrietta who ended Clyde. I really wonder how the Jaeger will work in Coyle’s trial environments. Because surely she’d want revenge? She could crack him like a pistachio, especially with all her new enhancements. How are they going to keep Coyle safe? Just not let them out of the insertion gate at the same time? Seems reasonable, I guess. But they probably won’t think it through that thoroughly.

I wish that story informed gameplay in more ways than just introducing new hazards. I don’t need gas or frost. What I need is for the Prime Assets to bark at their underlings and call the Pitcher a creepy bastard. For general ex-pops to maybe keep their distance from Prime Assets, or risk friendly fire.

--------

UPDATE

So, as you probably guessed, I started writing this before the Jaeger was released (21st April, to be exact). And just as I suspected, there’s no new dialogue between ex-pops. I expected Henrietta/the Jaeger to at least hint at something to do with Coyle. Coyle’s voice actor, Julian Bailey, seems to be tied up with other acting work at the moment, so I suppose I can understand why we’re not getting anything new from him. But come on, there’s no hostility from the Jaeger towards him? Nothing about the man who is responsible for what’s happened to her? No long-standing fear of cops or men in general? 

Uuuuugh. I just wish it mattered more which ex-pops are actually in the trial, and that they acknowledged their surroundings. Phyllis mentions feeling like she’s living the same day over and over again, and that the doctors have “moved things around again”. But she was also the one to notice Amelia running around and that the rules were changing.

I suppose this is more of a vent piece than my usual analysis-style post. In between these big, story-altering events, I’d love it if Red Barrels would sneak in some little character updates, additional dialogue, maybe a few model changes. Something. Anything. Something more than just evidence documents.

[pseudophan]

extremely important question do any buffy fans here actually like angel (the series not the character) because i swear all i see lately is people saying it sucks and they couldn't get through it and it's like you can't ALL be that wrong

[stemmmm]

how is it that there is one single decent program for dedicated animation storyboarding and it costs $80/month

[pensymbols]

if u believe that jason grace is lame gtfo this is NOT safe space for you

[camgoloud]

(fic title ask) "I couldn't get the boy to kill me"

(ask game here)

ough okay. no one in the world follows me for if we were villains content not least because i never even post about it these days but that shit IS what i was reading when i was a sweet impressionable 17 years old and i also discovered richard siken at right around the same time so a lot of those poems are always going to be about Them to me on some level. anyway my summary for this title would probably look something like this:

~

JAMES: I don’t know what you think this is, Oliver, but I don’t want— OLIVER: Who says this is about what you want? [A beat.] James, it’s going to be okay, I promise. No more be grieved at that which thou hast done— JAMES: No. Don’t you fucking dare. Don’t even start quoting the sonnets at me now, Oliver, I won’t be able to stand it. OLIVER: And you could stand it when we did the tragedies? JAMES: [Another beat.] We shouldn’t have done that either. We shouldn’t have done any of it.

(Five conversations in the visiting room at the Illinois River Correctional Facility, 1997-2003.)

[numetalkids]

*inhales*.....................DEEP SIGH

[burningcomputerpersona]

guess who got first place at pride trivia today :3

[necronomeconomicism]

Ok gotta talk about it.

As a Jewish historian, I fucking hate Israel in ways most probably will never be able to comprehend. I'm going to try and explain it anyways. The central creation myth of Israel is that it is Jewish, and then consequently, that Israel is a part of Jewishness. Its easy to simply state this is false, but fully comprehending this and putting it into practice in thought and deed seems rare to me.

The evil at the heart of this violence predates the recent acceleration of genocide. Israel is a colony, and more than that, an antisemitic fraud itself. After WW2, when Israel was being founded, the Jews of Europe generally did not wave goodbye to their neighbors and head to the promised land. Many were expelled from their homes. Zionism itself, as an action, was a false choice at the time. A mere excuse to place an ally in the middle east, and an excuse to complete the expulsion and destruction of the European Jew. The Zionist Jew is more than complicit in this, they actively seek the destruction and assimilation of all other Jews.

Many fail to realize, and largely because of Israel, that Jews are not inherently white, Ashkenazi, European-descended people. Our faith and culture has an immense variety that is spread all across the globe. Jewishness, in population and volume of culture, exists more so outside of Israel than within it. Israel is for a very specific kind of Jew. The kind that lets Yiddish die, that attaches themselves to European things, that makes themselves and their practices as white as possible.

And they have the nerve, the fucking belligerent GALL, to frame themselves as the necessary saviors of our people. To the Zionist, questioning Israel is to question Jewishness itself. They bake adoration for the colonial machine into their very prayers, and push them on us even as children. To *not* oppress, to *not* kill, to *not* genocide, is to invite death. This is the core of fascistic thought, of course. "Kill them before they kill us." And they KNOW this too, they really do. The truth of that irony does not matter, because as is true for all fascists, the truth itself does not matter to them. They wanted this, they wanted this even before the British saw it in their best interest to give them the land. Any excuse to RETVRN, as the neo-nazis say of Rome, or the German Empire, or whatever the fuck stupid country they want to poorly animate the corpse of. Some select Zionists even *sided with the fucking Nazis* in agreement they should abandon Europe to colonize Palestine. (Haavara Agreement)

My people have proved time and time and time again you don't need a nation state to have an enduring culture. We have protected ourselves for thousands of years without the help of these spiteful, doom-saying maniacs. I was going to post something like this on Passover, but that would be hypocritical. The state of Israel doesn't actually have shit to do with Jewishness. Hear Israel (the state and supporters, Israel the icon) I should outlive it long enough to bury it. (old yiddish curse)

Free Palestine. Donate what you can, they need it right now.

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

why didn't they just use franziska for literally all of this.

[imperial-evolution]

.

[diceroulette]

forever crying and screaming because i couldn't make it to the Jhariah, Pinkshift and Pollyanna concert happening IN MY STATE 😭

[lavenderhateswritting]

Sinister!Mark x Reader

You're running. The streets are chaos and deep in your heart you understand that there is very little you can do. Running from one person to the next desperately trying to heal who you can, has taken so much out of you . You've been going for hours at this point with no end in sight. The carnage is so brutal you're having a hard time distinguishing one body from the other. When you can you lean down and heal those who are still alive and breathing and point them to the nearest safe house.

Invincible and you had never been close. He was obviously a very nice guy and you could respect him for trying to fight the good fight, but you were support. When the world went to shit you came in after to pick up the pieces so you to never really got to know him. Now you don't know if you'll be able to look him in the eyese without seeing the carnage being created by the other Invincibles around the world.

You were at home when a Mark began reeking habit on downtown Chicago. You couldn't just sit and wait for the fight to be over so you ran to the streets and tried your hardest to help where you could. Which had gotten you caught out without any backup and low on energy.

"It's okay I've got you" You told the civilian you were leaning down to heal.

"Thank you. Oh god thank you I can't feel my legs"

"I'm gonna heal you and then you're gonna have to make a run for the safe house on halsted okay" You placed your hand on his knee and felt some of your energy being sapped away as you fixed his legs.

"You're waisting your time I'm just gonna kill you both anyways." The voice made a chill run down your back.

How could you be so stupid you should have been paying attention. The sounds of destruction had been steadily geting closer, but between your fight to try and help as many people as you could and stop yourself from collapsing everything had turned to background noise. And now he was right behind you.

"Of course I guess if you wanted I could give you a head start. What do you think 10 seconds or 20? I mean it doesn't matter, but time is time." His mocking tone just added on to your hopelessness. You weren't going to make it out of here alive.

The civilian you were helping began to stumble to his street and run as fast as he could. You watched as he tripped over his feet trying his hardest to make use of his head start.

"Aww that's really cute he's actually trying. That's okay I'll make it quick." The Invincible double said. You felt him speed passed you getting dust and dirt in your eyes.

"WAIT NO!" You screamed as you tried to warn the civilian desperately trying to get away. It was to late the Invincible double already had his fist in their stomach up to the elbow.

"Haha sorry about that you just healed that guy right." He finally turned to you. He looked exactly like Invincible except his suit was black and yellow instead of blue and yellow and his smile there was something so rotten about the smile he sent you.

"Well isn't that interesting." He looked at your face and the sinister smile he had on his face began to grow. You could barely breathe and all of a sudden he was directly in front of you scanning your face so close you could feel his breath on youre skin.

"You look just like them." If it was possible his smile got even wider.

You jumped backwards desperately trying to crawl away as fast as possible. It didn't matter. He grabbed your face with a grip so hard that you could feel your jaw straining under the force.

"Now where do you think you're going love. It's been so long since I've seen this face of yours."

"Let go of me I don't know who the hell you are , but just kill me already you asshole." Your voice was shaking, but you were trying your hardest to at least die with dignity.

"Has the Mark in this universe left you to sit here just running around with that fire in you. What a fucking idiot." He finally let go of your face. You turned to make a run for it, but before you could the ground was already disappearing underneath your feet.

"You know in my universe we used to do this all the time. I'd fly you up here and then I'd fuck you above all of these worms who never stood a chance agaisnt me." He was holding you up by your shoulders and shooting into the sky. He watched your face as he spoke those words searching for some kind of reaction all you could do was scream.

"Put me down. Holy shit put me down you crazy son of a bitch." Your eyes were watering from the wind in your eyes and you were so high you could no longer see the Chicago skyline.

"Really you want me to put you down?" He was smiling still laughing at your panicking. "Ok if you say so." And then he let you go.

The ground was geting closer and closer and as you flailed your arms you were certain this would be it.

"Nah just kidding." He said as he swooped in and grabbed you a few miles above the ground.

"Why are you crying love you know I would never drop you." There were tears free flowing down your face now you.

"What do yo want from me. I don't know anything that could help you. I don't even know Invincible that well." Your voice was shot you. It felt like you ahd been screaming for hours you were drained in a way you had never felt before.

"Oh love I don't want anything from you. I never did." His faced softened into something that could almost be viewed as love. He leaned forward and you flinched back, but you couldn't go far as he placed his head in the crook of your neck.

"They took you from me. Turned you against me. Made me have to do something I would have never done If they hadn't left me with no other choice." As he was speaking his hold on you got tighter and tighter until you couled feel your bones creaking.

"But, I've been given another chance and I won't fail you this time." He turned his head against your neck and you finally felt him leave a feather light kiss on your neck.

You thought as fast as you could and finally you reached your arm up and rubbed your hand on his forearm.

"It's okay Mark. I'm right here, but you've gotta let me down you know. You've gotta let me do my job." You had no clue how the other you acted and if you're being honest you just needed to get out of here anyway you could.

"If I let you goback to work I'm just gonna have to kill you again." The saddened ex lover was gone and now it was just the mass killer again.

"Okay okay I won't go back to work then I'll go back to my apartment." You just needed to get out of his hold any way you could if you're being honest. You would have told him you were going to backflip off Sears Tower if it would have gotten him to let you go.

He pulled his head back so fast of he could have gotten whiplash you could have sworn he would have gotten it. There was maic look to his face again.

"Yeah we're going to go back to your apartment. And then we're going to watch (favorite show) and have some pizza. You're a genuis love." He kissed the top of your head and then all of a sudden you were speeding off and were in front of the door to your apartment.

You were staring at it with shaking hands and wide opened eyes. The psycho killer who had already killed one version of you and had killed a civilian diectly in front of you after destroying a city new exactly where your apartment was. That's just fucking great.

"Open the door love." His voice still had that manic edge to it as he stood behind you. You reached into your pocket and fumbled with your keys before you opened the door.

He zipped in immediately and began taking his suit off while floating off the ground.

"Woof I need a shower order the food and I'll borrow some of your clothes okay." He was peeling the bloody costume off in the middle of your fucking living room.

Your eyes nearly popped out of your head as you watched him get undressed. You were seeing parts of Invincible that you really weren't ever supposed to see and holy shit he wasn't wearing underwear. You turned your head and trying to not think about the line of hair that began below his stomach and worked its way down lower than you were ever supposed to see on him.

"I can't order food you destroyed the city remember." Why would you say that your brain was literally short circuiting right now.

"Haa yeah I did whoops guess we'll just have to make something." And then he spead off down the hall to your bathroom. Something in you wanted to keep your costume on if nothing else than just as emotional support since you were trapped in your one bedroom apartment with a fucking serial killer. But the dust and grime had begun to make your skin itch and before you knew it he was out of the bathroom and you were in it.

Sitting on the couch you turned on (favorite show). He layed his head on your lap and grabbed your hand and placed it on his head. You began to work your hands through his hair as he slowly started to loose the tension in his body. Once you finally heard his breath shllow out and tiny snores make their way past his lips you finally hung your head back. Fuck how were you gonna explain this to Cecil.

Grammar mistakes probably I speed wrote this in the middle of the night I can't tell if I wanna write about Conquest next or Batman I love old men I don't know if this really reads like Sinister he feels a little more sidistic than I've made him here

[imsobadatnicknames2]

Probably the most interesting experience I've had as a player in any edition of D&D was in a GMless campaign I was playing with my husband in B/X D&D a couple years ago.

I was playing a fighter who, through a combination of a not-so great constitution score and very bad luck in my initial hp roll, started the game with a maximum of 4hp. By contrast, my husband was playing a thief who, thanks to a very lucky roll and having an unusually high constitution score for a thief, started the game with 7hp, almost twice as much as my fighter. And he stayed having more HP than my character for most of the time we spend playing, because im B/X thieves require a lot less XP to level up than fighters, so even though my fighter would have eventually caught up in terms of HP at level 2 or 3, the thief was consistently a couple levels ahead of him.

Us being a party of only two people where the most combat-effective character could easily die in a couple hits (or even one if I was really unlucky) resulted in using a lot of ambush tactics to take advantage of the thief's backstab ability before combat started, and also a lot of avoiding combats and fleeing when I was at 1-2hp.

But also, since we were playing with a pretty common OSR houserule (often called "broken shield rules" or "shields shall be splintered") which essentially says that, if you have a shield, you can use it to block all damage from a successful enemy attack at the cost of your shield being destroyed, this eventually resulted in my character always carrying at least a couple spare shields with him. We decided that my character probably shouldn't be able to just pull out another shield from his pack in the middle of a fight, so it was a trick that I could use to save my ass once per combat.

Which had interesting consequences for the encumbrance and resource management aspect of the game, of course. Because consistently having to buy a couple shields every time we came to town was a significant expense for my character, but also, and most importantly, because in B/X most of your XP comes from the value of treasure that your party is able to gather and carry back to town. And this created an interesting conundrum for me because every extra shield I brought along was a chance for my character to survive a hit that would otherwise kill him, but it also meant possibly being able to carry less loot, and often resulted in us having to leave treasure behind and either accept that we couldn't have it all, or us getting stubborn and making plans to come back for the rest of it later, which resulted in some pretty interesting situations when coming back to dungeons where the denizens were probably prepared to deal with us if we came back.

So anyway. My point being, "annoying" mechanics like high lethality and resource management and carry weight are good and they can take you to amazing and unexpected places if you decide to actually give them a chance to shine instead of immediately excising your game of anything that's mildly inconvenient.

[graveyard-galaxy]

The way physical violence was focused on and upped in episode 3 really got me thinking specifically about how Ashley actually responds to it. Because, like…

When we start in the flashback at the start of the episode, we get given a clear picture of Renee’s stance on using it as disciplinary action, and for all that she is shitty and cruel and neglectful and spitefully manipulative in every scene that she’s in, one line that she won’t cross with the kids that she’s barely parenting is hitting them, and she tells Andrew as much.

Albeit aggressively, but what she’s saying here is obviously that she doesn’t believe it will make a difference, and that she won’t allow that to be how Andrew is forced to parent Ashley for her. To be fair, it is quite in line with her general methods of getting what she wants usually through manipulation, but it is, perhaps, a single redeeming factor about her parenting style, and represents a line that shouldn’t be crossed.

(It’s also possible indicative of her own childhood, which is interesting considering what her mother had to say about Douglas’s father in the Renee and Douglas vision, but I digress. This isn’t a Renee analysis or apologist post.)

But another piece of backstory that these flashbacks give us is that, perhaps unsurprisingly, Andrew and Ashley lived with their grandparents for a few years, before their actual parents. Renee was kicked out and had no money, so of course Douglas’s parents were left with Andrew and Ashley for an unknown amount of years. And their parenting style was… different. Seemingly not as neglectful as Renee’s, and I do think we get the sense that even if Douglas’s mother is just as much of a doormat as he is, and refuses to stand up to her husband (and given the wife beating mentions, is possibly not in the position to) she does genuinely care about her grandkids. So at their grandparents there’s… parenting. Maybe not good parenting, but still some parenting.

Interacting with the swing in the yard, Andrew recounts a short memory of how exactly his grandfather tended to respond to him (or presumably Ashley) doing anything wrong.

Woohoo, the kids aren’t abandoned, but they’re still blamed for things that aren’t their fault, and they’re beat for their troubles too!

But seriously, this obviously goes to show that before Andrew and Ashley moved in with their parents, physical violence was on the table against them as punishment. Andrew certainly remembers it, and we can speculate to what degree that informs his response to Renee about hitting Ashley later, but in particular, it’s Ashley I’d like to actually focus on here.

I don’t think it’s too big of a logical leap to assume that if Andrew was beaten by his grandfather, so was Ashley, given said grandfather’s horribly misogynistic views and obvious tendency towards beating his wife. And as unfortunate as it would be, I have to wonder… Did Ashley actually respond to this? In some way did she, or perhaps more likely Andrew, ever figure out how to behave to avoid it?

Looking forward to the present day, physical violence hasn’t been properly levelled against her in a while. Andrew supposedly attempts to choke her out in episode 1, but she notes that he wasn’t squeezing hard enough to actually choke her. And they get up in each other’s faces, and they yell, and she has a vision about him straight up killing her, but to some extent all of this is just not quite that far, or a true ultimatum. Never is Ashley actually faced with physical violence as any kind of punishment despite it being noted all the way back in episode 1 that Andrew has physical strength beyond her, as he is able to keep trying to kick the door down where she notes she doesn’t at all have the energy.

It’s a possibility in spirit. Andrew has the physical advantage and he could so easily use that against her, but it’s all presented as a game to Ashley in the first few episodes – one that she thinks Andrew isn’t actually trying at. She’s not even especially afraid of the prospect until the episode 2 Decay vision shows that he’s fully willing to kill her, and at some point in the near future too. That’s still an ultimatum more than it is a direct punishment, but it presents the idea to her that for all she thought he was playing around, no, Andrew would be willing to go there.

And then, this is followed through on in any Decay playthrough where Andrew is willing to grow a spine. He crosses the line that Renee set up, and that gives the moment a lot of narrative weight.

He slaps her, and her expression tells us a lot here. She wasn’t expecting something like this from him either, because of some combination of to not being a punishment she’s actually faced since childhood, Andrew never having gotten like this with her properly before, and how quick and sudden it is. This isn’t just a death threat or potentially far-off vision of him killing her; he’s actually done it now.

Their subsequent conversation is quite interesting too:

"What's with that look? You're the one who put violence on the table."

"...I-!! I didn't mean to............."

"Honestly it's all the same at this point."

Given the characters, we definitely shouldn’t necessarily take their words at face value, but even with that, I do think some part of Ashley is sincere here. When she held the cleaver to his neck, and when she offered a death threat, she still thought that she was just playing. This isn’t any different to Andrew taking his hands to her neck but not pressing hard enough to choke her, to her. She’s back-pedalling quite so hard to try and keep him, of course, this is Ashley we’re talking about… But I also don’t doubt that her sentiment is genuine. She didn’t exactly mean to.

And Andrew’s response tells us exactly why he’s so willing to cross that line. He just doesn’t care! Renee’s dead, so he doesn’t have to care about her rules and policies, and given how cynical he feels towards his life at this point, perhaps he wouldn’t care anyway. If this is a genuine way to get a response from Ashley, then he’ll try it, because for all that his mask of trying for normalcy is still up at this point, this is just between the two of them, where it!s always mattered the least, and as it is, that mask is quickly slipping.

I’d like to note this part of Ashley’s reaction as well, because, well… First we see that same shock as immediately after, but I’ve thought the exact same thing about that second frame, ever time I’ve seen it. With the background and the tears, isn’t this such a Leyley reaction? Such a Leyley expression?

Decay, especially Shots and Such which can follow on from this, is all about Ashley clinging to the Andy and Leyley dynamic to both of their detriments. It changes form as she feels she needs to adapt and find new ways to keep her Andy, but she’s constantly affirming whether or not she has Andy or Andrew because the violence and the hate all comes from Andrew to her, so when she’s continually trying to play Leyley, it keeps coming as a shock.

Andrew slaps her in the car, and she can only react as Leyley would. She never wants to be Ashley, because Ashley never fits into their games, and because Ashley has always been subconsciously rejected by Andrew. Being Ashley would mean facing what Andrew has done here rather than just making petty jokes about it for the rest of the episode and crying like I imagine she would have if her grandfather hit her.

But the cycle of violence only gets worse once Andrew continues to stew in apathy, and as perhaps he realises, that it does get a desired reaction from her. Ashley doesn’t respond in the long term to any threat that he throws, but she’s genuinely scared by the prospect of what him actually killing her means to her, and getting violent against her is a piece of that.

Part of what Shots and Such emphasises is that, even if it never works in the long run, Ashley does respond respond to violence, and that through out all of the ending, it remains Andrew’s way of fighting her.

This doesn’t exactly paint a happy picture of how Andrew regularly treats her. Er… Not that just about anything in Shots and Such is especially happy…

But it once again perpetuates the cycle of violence. Ashley gets actually violent now too, when she can. She makes sex painful for Andrew when she can, because that’s the degree of control she still has as someone who can’t a fight back when Andrew gets physical with her. She’s physically weaker, and with the bathroom lock torn down behind her, she has nowhere to hide. He beats her to short term avail to make himself feel better, and to keep her in line for tiny amount of time, and she gives that right back when she has her own opportunities.

And that’s all without actually talking about the scene of her getting beat.

Ashley’s a terrible person, but this scene is still very genuinely upsetting, because once again, something in her reaction comes across as genuine. She apologises profusely as her only way of even trying to get him to stop, and she goes back to the convenient story of being the scapegoat. She’s the problem, just like how he wants it to be. This doesn’t actually stop any of the heinous stuff she does to him after this point – if anything, it just makes her more desperate to try and exert control back when she gets the chance – but for a short while, it works. She shuts up and leaves him alone. She just makes cookies because that’s all that she can fathom that she’s good for.

Renee was right that hitting Ashley would never fix her behaviour. She was right after her grandfather had presumably done it to her as a young kid, and that was never the attention she needed, and she was right after Andrew crossed the line she set because she’s gone, and he has nothing left to lose. Hitting Ashley never teaches her any kind of actual lesson, save, of course, from how to act when people get violent with her.

All that’s learnt is how to behave in the short term to get the immediate beating to stop, and that’s enough for Andrew. Their push and pull has turned into violent fits against each other for control for just a short while, but he genuinely can’t care for it to be another way. After beating Ashley, he just once again reiterates that “I don’t care either way at this point” and that’s that.

It never fixes her behaviour, but it reinforces his. Just like his grandfather, Andrew becomes a wife beater, and he crosses Renee’s line for just a short moment of power and control. His spine is now like a gummy worm because he’s stuck in the easy cycle.