#something has fundamentally changed in seven

[isagrimorie]

Star Trek Voyager 4E09 - Scientific Method

The Janeway Moment for Seven of Nine. (The First of Many).

Part 1, 2

[wilwheaton]

The conservative justices had an opportunity to rally to the defense of democracy, to gird the system against further attack, to righteously defend the rule of law, and to protect its own prerogatives and powers against a wannabe tyrant who is counting on them to be his supplicants. They could have drawn a sharp line. They could have summoned indignation and outrage. They could have overlooked their partisan priors in favor of principle – or more cravenly in favor of self-preservation. With the possible and limited exception of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, they did none of that. They failed in the worst possible way at the most crucial time.

Rogue SCOTUS Abandons Democracy In Her Hour Of Greatest Need

Say this with me: This SCOTUS majority is not an impartial arbiter of law. This SCOTUS majority has no respect for precedent, the will of the people, or its fundamental role in government.

This SCOTUS majority is doing through force what the other members of their movement could not achieve through elections: change laws to take equality and freedoms away from as many people as possible, to completely remake America into something we don’t recognize.

Donald Trump and his cult are the greatest threat America has ever faced in its history, with this corrupt, venal, activist group of unelected liars (and at least two rapists) enabling him.

Democrats absolutely have to expand the court and begin an impeachment inquiry into Thomas and Kavanaugh the instant they have congressional majorities. 

I don’t think it’s too late, but it’s about five seconds away from being too late. If Congress doesn’t act hard and fast, these seven people will turn America over to corporations and megachurches.

We have to stop this, and the only way we have any chance at all is to turn out in massive numbers this November to overwhelmingly defeat the people who will put Project 2025 into action.

[beware-of-pity]

I need people who would die on the hill of "Fire and Blood is completely unreliable, therefore we cannot trust anything that's written in it" to open their eyes and read a book that is similar to the structure that Fire and Blood uses to realize how wrong of a statement that is. I know that this will probably be received as a very hot take but I do not believe that everything needs to be analyzed or has to have a deeper meaning behind it. The curtain can be blue and there doesn't have to be a reason for the curtain to be blue other than the fact that it's just blue (hope someone gets the reference). Ryan Condall obviously disagrees with that, because in his quest to recreate his own 'magnum opus' of a 'Shakespearian tragedy', as he always likes to refer to it as, he has instead created the equivalent of a dumpster on fire next to the other bigger dumpster on fire that was Game of thrones.

Bland, whitewashed characters with little to no turmoil or agency going on are revered as complex and nuantical on Twitter. And if you even dare to disagree, you're immediately sentenced to the stake. Characters like Alicent and Rhaenyra could literally not even be in the episode and nothing would change. Rhaenyra was in episode 4 for not even 5 minutes and with everything going on in it you wouldn't even have noticed that. She should have been there, leading the council as Cole marched on rook's rest, her only available connection to the mainland in the crownlands, apart from Claw Isle, after duskendale fell to the greens and instead her only scene in such climactic episode is her walk of shame returning home and her, rightfully, getting scolded by her son for thinking that she could still sue for peace with Alicent, the mother of her son's murderer. The show makes the decision to have Rhaenys volunteer instead of having Rhaenyra send her there so that later when Rhaenys dies Rhaenyra cannot be blamed for it. The fundamental changes of characters like Alicent don't work because the writers are not able to sustain such changes from the source material they are deriving the story from. Going from leading the council that would place Aegon on the throne, to never even being in on the plan to usurp Rhaenyra, that her father created, is such a letdown for such a political savy character like book Alicent.

Aging her down, to Rhaenyra's age, and making these two childhood best friends, was a mistake.

What is very evident is that the showrunners have no clue, so far, what to do with a character like show Alicent. If she's not going to lead the council when Aegon is bedridden and Aemond is off to fight in the Riverlands, why doesn't she just leave?

Going from an active participant in a usurpation from somebody who needs to miss-hear or misunderstand her dying husband for her to get in on the plan, only so there is an excuse to get her on the war council is bad writing.

Making people believe that Rhaenyra was usurped because of a misunderstanding, and not only because she was a woman, is bad writing. And going to the extremes, of having these two 'betray' each other in order to have a reason to make Rhaenyra look bad in the eyes of her rivals is bad writing. Rhaenyra could have been the perfect heir, and even only because she was a woman, Otto and Alicent would have usurped her either way.

Going back to the point of this post; Timelines, ages, events, who got married to who, how many kids they had, things that you can quantify are not something that can be made up, used as rumors or form of propaganda in a history book. What you make up as a rumor is sexual escapades and a young girl seducing her sworn shield who has watched over her since she was seven. Things that can make a person look bad to glorify or uphold the good of someone else alongside all the other stuff that happens behind closed doors and makes you question where the information is coming from.

I find it so odd that the aggressive marketing team for the second season was all about choosing your side. Lol, what is there to even choose? Choose between the overly sanctified Rhaenyra, who god forbid is still searching for the peace that has already been thrown over the cliff long ago, and is not allowed yet to make a mistake. Or, Alicent, the pathetic hypocrite who made her bed and is not willing to admit it. Anything interesting about these two women is completely being cut so that Ryan Condall and Co. can continue to spread the "men are bad and violent, women are the gentle peacemakers that don't want war." which is leaning a little too heavy for my taste into gender essentialism which would make every choice they have ever made about these two characters more misogynistic than any of the action of the actual misogynistic characters in this story. Taking away the very little agency these characters had and constantly making them the perpetual victims of the patriarchy and completely sidelining any sort of character traits that they may actually develop through their actions had they actually been taking any, doesn't work for me.

This show was a mistake.

[crudely-drawn-ben]

Introducing Trilogy

Yesterday I released Trilogy, a new tabletop RPG crafted to support you in having grand adventures in worlds of your own making.

There are several reasons I started writing Trilogy, but the biggest one is that I ran a Dungeon World podcast called Crudely Drawn Swords for seven years and that was a lot of time to think about what we were playing. To a degree Trilogy is the game I wish that we could have had to run the podcast.

Starting from the question "what would a purely PbtA game for epic fantasy look like?" I started thinking more widely - what do I want from a fantasy game? And the truth is that I want a game that supports the structure of characters and their interactions but doesn't tie itself to a specific setting.

Trilogy begins with The Appendices - conventionally in epic fantasy these are at the end and document information about the wider world that might not have made it into the story, but here it is where you sit down as a group and decide what tone you want your game to have, and your world looks like. What kind of place is it? What magic is there? What is religion like? What are the major cultures where the story begins? How would it feel to be in this world? Trilogy doesn't tell you any of these things, it gives you the tools to think through how you want your world to look.

This creates a secondary challenge - without knowing what the world looks like, how could I design character classes for this type of game? Trilogy answers this by going back to the fundamentals - instead of a conventional character class, the playbooks in Trilogy represent a narrative arc. Some of them, like The Fighter, The Priest, or The Magus, look like familiar classes. Others, such as The Volunteer, The Mentor, The Weapon, or The Defeated, are a little different. Character arcs have a set of turning points, story beats that allow you to advance along your arc after you have collected a certain amount of experience. Some are positive and others negative, you choose which ones you want to hit and when, but every character's story has its highs and lows and to get the most from the game you need to lean into both. A character can pass through three arcs as they grow and change, like the three volumes of a trilogy.

The aim of the game is to create a slower but satisfying sense of progression - instead of hit points characters take Stress and Harm like in other Powered by the Apocalypse games that can have both mechanical and narrative effects. That makes combat feel dangerous, but the game also offers more ways to solve problems without getting into combat - I have played games where the player characters never got into a fight, instead resolving confrontations through an ingenious selection of alternative strategies including "lying" and "vomiting magic ink all over the floor." I'm genuinely enthusiastic about this game - I think I would be as excited about it if somebody else had written it. It leans hard into the joy of discovery and the excitement of adventure - you can play it as spooky and whimsical or gritty and hard-edged and anywhere in between.

Because I was writing it I even got to make most of the examples of play roll out as the story of someone's game, something I always appreciate when I read it. It also contains every technique I use as a GM in the hope that even before people get the chance to play it (heaven forbid any TTRPG afficionado have books we haven't got around to playing yet!) people who read it will still be able to use that advice in their other games. So that's Trilogy, the game I've been working on for the last few years. I think it's pretty great and I hope you will too:

Obviously it's a full-priced game and that's a big gamble from an unfamiliar creator - if you want an idea of what it's like in practice we've got the CDS team back together and we're starting a streamed campaign so you have a chance to see it in action. You can find that over on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxpXacko9Nc

The first episode includes me notably failing to use OBS at both the beginning and end, and I can't make any promises things will improve in that regard, but it should be a good opportunity to see how the game shapes up from this start and with this crew I know it's going to be funny and take some wild swings. If you're interested in reviewing Trilogy or you really want to give it a try but you can't afford it, drop me a message

[infamous-if]

There's been some discussion recently about MC that caught my attention because I agree. MC feels like a loser when you think about all of the other characters. When I play an MC who did nothing wrong to Seven it just feels like Seven is angry for no reason. Seven is allowed to act like a child while MC has to take it? Doesn't seem fair.

Everyone has something going for them and what about MC? No one likes them and everyone hates their guts. Aren't they supposed to be the main character? Why does everyone hate them? Why aren't they considered more talented? It just feels like MC is a doormat while Seven and the other ROs are these talented superstars.

I don't want this to come off any way but I feel like the story would be stronger if you made MC a bit meaner or at least made people acknowledge MC as a better singer.

I don't want to sound rude but I'm very much exhausted by this topic. I've probably explained this 5+ times but I'll try to break it down one last time just so people can understand what I'm trying to do.

First, to get it out of the way, we are only on Chapter 2. I just want to reiterate that. The story just started.

It just feels like MC is a doormat while Seven and the other ROs are these talented superstars.

Secondly, MC is a character I try to give as much customization to, both personality and appearance wise. There's a variety of ways you can approach everything, or I at least try to in a way that doesn't sacrifice what I want to write for the plot, but I think people are under the impression MC is 100% a blank slate character when it's not true.

MC is still dependent on the plot and I always strived for MC to have their own narrative arc. The same way the ROs have their own character arcs, MC will have their own, because they are a character in their own right and going through some that fundamentally changes their life. That means the MC from Chapter 1 will not be the MC at Chapter 20. They will be different. That's what a character arc is. Character development is expected. How can you expect a slew of ROs to grow and change and MC remaining stagnant? Doesn't make sense narratively and it seems unfair to MC.

The MC is not a completely blank slate, and that's where people are getting it confused. In the beginning, MC is going through such a change with BOTB, without their family, and on the heels of a band breakup that's still impacting them today. MC is a little down, maybe even depressed if that's how you read it, and they're getting pushed to be leader by their manager. They are not really okay right now. They have to be professional and put on a brave face for the sake of their band, who, if you paid attention to what Rowan said in Chapter 2, are all depending on this. This is what they worked for since high school. MC is not going to flip a damn table on Day 1 just because you want them to. MC can fight, if you choose, against UWB. That's not supposed to be a smart choice, but emotions get the best of all of us.

They are only just navigating a worldwide globally famous show with a cheating allegation hanging over their heads, and a manager who wants them to be leader when, up until now, they haven't been. They've just been friends making music and miraculously having a fanbase. Now they're really in it. They have been thrust head first into the industry in a way that is so big that MC has to go from singer playing with their friends to a leader of a band who may just become globally famous in a few months if they play their cards right.

A lot of their actions are influenced by the fact that their band almost broke up and it's a thing that hangs over their head. Their past influences them. That's...how people work.

Now, if we're at Chapter 20 and MC is still acting like a scared bunny who doesn't know what they're doing, then be my guest. Scream in my inbox, I'd understand. That would be terrible writing, but we're not. The tour just started.

I play an MC who did nothing wrong to Seven it just feels like Seven is angry for no reason. Seven is allowed to act like a child while MC has to take it? Doesn't seem fair.

MC doesn't have to take it lol. I've always given an option to be rude to Seven/try to put them in their place.

People think I favor Seven when that's not true. (Seven isn't even my favorite RO)(That title goes to August lol). Seven acts the way they act because they are not in a healthy headspace. Their actions are not meant to be understood, because they are not entirely justified. Seven has a lot of growing up to do, but I have never sat here and advertised Seven's emotions as correct. Everyone knows Seven is childish, everyone knows Seven is handling everything terribly. People in the story have mentioned it. Their abandonment issues GREATLY influence their characterization and actions. MC has abandonment issues as well, of course, but MC is not as emotionally unstable as Seven. That's canon. It is what it is. Seven has a whole subplot about it.

As do other ROs. The only difference is that they're not so open about their struggles. Seven just doesn't care. Their emotions guide them. They can't control it. That's who they are. I have also said that many times.

I don't know why you think Seven can get away with everything when 1) it's only been 2 chapters and 2) no one knows how anyone feels about Sev because it's in MC's POV. Seven goes through their own trial by fire. As every RO does......thats a narrative arc.

Seven was always going to be a plot point, whether they were an RO or not. They were always going to be MC's former best friend.

Everyone has something going for them and what about MC? No one likes them and everyone hates their guts. Aren't they supposed to be the main character? Why does everyone hate them? Why aren't they considered more talented? It just feels like MC is a doormat while Seven and the other ROs are these talented superstars.

This one bothers me the most, mostly because I don't know where this came from. "No one likes them" Jenna and The Jewels does. Slow Crawl does. Their fans do. We haven't even properly met the other bands. Of course there will be bands who don't like MC: they're competitors. They're not friends. They don't know MC, why would they be biased towards them? Because they're the main character? They don't care about that?? It's how fiction works.

Maya is following the band around because of how much she admires MC.

Orion quit his job because MC's singing inspired him that much.

G listened to MC and saw something in them. Literally calls them the 'Chosen One'

Fans of the old band preferred MC over Seven. They liked the songs where MC sang solo. MC was better for their future over Seven. Hence why it was Seven getting demoted, not MC. I've said this. It's in the story.

I don't see how being the lead singer of a band on a global show at 26 makes anyone an actual loser but I digress.

Literally in Part 2 MC is acknowledged so maybe it'd be better if we waited? Say a good few chapters...?

If you wanted a story where MC is Queen level famous right out the gate and the #1 draft pick for BOTB and has no problems and better than everyone, then I'd advise you to look elsewhere. I don't like that. I like giving MC obstacles because conflict creates story. I like MC having to fight for their spot. It's more realistic, and this has never been a story of fame. It's been a story of their journey to fame.

That's their narrative arc. They grow into it.

You are allowed to hate/dislike Seven. I encourage it. I have given MC the option to hate Seven, because I'm aware that what Seven is doing is unfair. I am not punishing you for hating Seven. And this goes for all the ROs. It does not bother me if you dislike my characters. It means I haven't made them squeaky clean and have made them realistic enough to have people both dislike and like them, much like real life. I get it.

I've always advertised Infamous as a messy, angsty and dramatic story. I've used the term 'melodrama' for it often. I've always said the ROs--especially Seven--are flawed. Some more than others. I've said, verbatim, they are not wholly good people. I don't know why people act so shocked when they act some type of way. Like...I've always stayed true to what the story is. Half the dynamics aren't healthy right now...but that's the 'growing up part' of the story we haven't even gotten to yet?

If that doesn't interest you, then that's perfectly okay! If you don't like the narrative arc I have planned for MC, that's fine too! It just becomes a bit disheartening when people ignore the narrative.

I will try harder to write in a way that specifies my intentions. I always believe that if more than a handful of readers have the same complaint, then it's on the writer to fix it.

I hope my tone didn't come off rude, I'm just really really tired of this. I've had to deal with this since even before the demo dropped :) but your critiques are valid and everyone is always free to express themselves however they want. <3

[artbyblastweave]

Hey, I just read this superhero series called Rising Stars. Have you heard of that before, and do you have any thoughts on it?

Personally I loved it. 113 children in utero get affected by the energy of a comet passing overhead, and start developing powers. They all get different levels of power, some never realise what their powers are, some just straight up suck.

Like there's a guy who's totally indestructible. But he's not and stronger or faster, he just can't be damaged. And he can't feel anything tactile either. So he over indulges in taste because it's one of the only sense he has, and ends up obese.

There's a girl with telekinesis, who can only manipulate small objects. The carotid artery is a small object, so she gets headhunted by the CIA for assassination work.

And then there's the reveal that their powers operate off a shared energy pool, and if one dies the remaining power gets shared among the remainder. And then people start turning up dead...

Rising Stars has been near and dear to my heart for a very long time. It's by no means perfect, but one of the things I find the most compelling about it is how it positions superhumanity as a fundamentally extremely finite phenomenon.

Works in which superpowers are introduced to a world that didn't previously have them will often break in one of two directions; either they'll treat it as a new, sustainable equilibrium that will somehow fail to change anything of import, or else it's a floodgate that opens and completely wipes away the status quo. But both scenarios generally take for granted that capes as a general phenomenon are here to stay- that there's some replacement-rate mechanism at play. Rising Stars depicts a world where this isn't true, and moreover it very quickly becomes clear to everyone that this isn't true- that these 113 people are the only superhumans the world is ever gonna get. That's enough to be extremely disruptive, but not necessarily paradigm shifting- and the worldbuilding reflects that in interesting ways, the sense that the reaction of many is just that they've gotta wait these assholes out.

Maybe some of them habitually dine-and-dash at upscale restaurants but what are you going to do, call the army every time? Not worth it. There's fewer than a hundred of these guys, it's not like letting it slide is going to be the start of something. One of them takes over Chicago and runs it as a fiefdom? Okay, that's bad, but it's one city and everyone else who's similarly inclined already rallied under her aegis, still not a paradigm shift. The entire containment strategy for the ones who are habitually supervillainous is to ring up one or two of the ones who decided to be superheroes and dump them in Antarctica, forcing them to walk back. Obviously not a great solution but what's the incentive to come up with something better? This isn't a growing population that demands a systemic response, it's the same six or seven guys every time, and you're only gonna have to put up with them for so long.

And the series really did a lot with the fact that these people all know each other- a small-town's graduating class worth of superhumans who all grew up together. The "oh, what's so-and-so up to these days" energy of it all. The comparable sense of wasted potential as you get into your late-twenties-early-thirties, take a look at what everyone you grew up with has been up to lately, and really seriously evaluate what it is, exactly, that you've actually accomplished with your life, compared to what you thought you were going to do when you were a teenager. The Specials don't even have the luxury of existing in a conventional superhero universe where their personal mediocrity (real or perceived) will come out in the wash due to all the other superpeople running around-they're wasting more than just their own individual lives through their inaction or failure, and the series milks that growing sense of rat-in-a-trap tension as their numbers start to really dwindle in earnest over the course of the comic.

[storm-and-starlight]

revisiting my opinions on which doctors could pull off Heaven Sent

could do it with minimal alterations to the original episode's plot and dialogue

Twelve - obviously

Eight - could 100% pull off the speeches and the angst and, of course, the memory loss. The episode would definitely be focused a little more on the great tragedy of dying over and over and over again just in the hopes of making it through enough loops to break out, and Eight would be much much more of a sad wet cat about it all, but he could totally pull it off.

Seven - would take a bit more tweaking than Eight (specifically to change the focus of the episode to the puzzle of it all, finding the right room and figuring out the secret of the Veil), but would 100% punch his way through the wall and be able to pull off the speeches.

could maybe do it? but with pretty major edits

Four - definitely has the charisma and the ability to give the speeches, but I don't know if the speeches as written would fit well into how Four talks, and he'd also need the same tweaking at Seven to make it more about solving the mystery, rather than the very atmospheric style of the original. The wall scene would also probably have to be reworked, since Four doesn't really seem like the type to punch through it in the exact same way as Twelve.

Three - could and would punch through the wall and would do it in half the time of Twelve but couldn't carry off the angst or the atmosphere, so you'd need some pretty dramatic rejiggering of the major stylistic choices in order to make it work. Honestly, you might have to really lean into a, like, horror/thriller kinda thing, with the pursuit of the Veil?

could pull off a focus episode but would need a fundamentally different style

Ten/Fourteen - absolutely has the screen presence but they need someone to talk to in order to get it, and the same is true of their problem-solving style. They need someone to bounce off of as an antagonist and as a companion -- basically, they need the same setup as Wild Blue Yonder, which is basically exactly what Fourteen's version of Heaven Sent would be anyways. (Also Ten doesn't do speeches like Twelve does, and definitely wouldn't punch through the wall -- his problem-solving style leans more towards the whole "push a single button that sets off a chain reaction that solves everything" rather than sheer stubborness. He doesn't have the attention span for the wall.)

Nine - Nine also has the screen presence but his comes when he's angry at something, which means that he needs something to yell at, so he would also need another speaking being present in the episode for him to get really really mad at. Think Dalek but without the Rose subplots?

probably not (note: the major reason why none of these work for Heaven Sent is because they're all Doctors that work best with an ensemble cast around them -- they sacrifice intensity and screen-presence for the sake of letting other characters shine)

Eleven - doesn't have the screen presence for that kind of intensity, alas. He could pull off the speeches in his own style, but he's not hypnotic while doing them the same way Twelve is, and he definitely doesn't have the type of personality to pull off the wall. His best emotional episodes are smaller and closer to the heart, and Heaven Sent is anything but small.

Five - could not pull off the speeches or the wall or the puzzle. He's a sweetheart and a golden retriever but he's not nearly dramatic enough to carry a solo episode like that.

Two - same as Five, really

One - just... no. I can't pull out any reasons (it might just be that he's from an era of television that was so very different in how it constructed stories), but no

no clue

Fifteen - hasn't been around long enough for me to get a sense of his personality

Thirteen - never really had a consistent personality in the first place. or any good emotional episodes so I don't feel like I know her well enough to make a judgement call

Six - just straight-up haven't seen very much of his run so I couldn't say how he'd fit in Heaven Sent.

[lyxthen]

My Seven Year Gap narumitsu headcanon is that not only did Miles help Phoenix build the MASON, he actually became chief prosecutor with the objective of helping him instaurate the jurist system.

By the time Trials and Tribulations comes around, I feel like the two of them are in a point in their relationship where they aren't too prone to angsting about each other. They trust each other fully. So when Phoenix pushes Miles away, Miles assumes it's for a good reason, even if it still hurts.

He does tell Miles eventually, in that mythical trip to Europe, when he knows for ceirtain Kristoph can't hear him (the guy probably keeps track of his phone calls bank accounts and has his house bugged as all hell because he's insane like that). He still doesn't tell Miles how bad he's struggling emotionally, and how the reason he's drinking so much grape juice is because he struggled with horrible depression alcoholism, particularly early in his disbarment. He just tells him about Kristoph and the Gramarye trial and how he's trying to connect the dots and find the truth and clear his name.

And you know what Edgeworth does? He tells him, "So, basically, you want to fundamentally change the way the Japanifornian justice system works. Wright, you are fucking insane. And I must be insane too because of course by god I'm going to help you." After all, foreign justice systems are his expertise. He's been studying this shit for years, and he finally gets a chance to put that knowledge to use.

It's hard for them to get any work done without Kristoph suspecting them, of course, but by some miracle they manage it. Edgeworth applies for a position as chief prosecutor a year or two before the events of Apollo Justice, explicitly because he wants to amass enough political power to implement their silly little project. When the disgraced former defense attorney comes one day with an insane outline of how to reform the entire court system no one dares to reject him, because he's already got chief prosecutor Miles Edgeworth in his pocket.

Smooth. As. Fuck.

They have spent years planning and scheming and it has finally come to this. Their professional relationship is blooming. Their personal relationship... Well, they're not in bad terms by any means but like, come on. These two are extremely emotionally repressed so it's not like they are going to openly declare their undying loyalty to each other and get married or something. But they are perfectly capable of working in harmony with each other, and that's as good as either of them think they're going to get.

I feel like this time line of events makes sense. I don't see Phoenix building MASON alone, let alone implement it. He doesn't have that sort of clout or analytical mind. But Edgeworth does. It's just a testament to how compatible they are that they are able to work together to find the truth™ and change things for the better. Shipping aside, I just think that's really cool.

[edelfie]

#𝓣𝗔𝗦𝗧𝗘! bumpin’ that?

as an aspiring a-list celebrity, it’s important for (y/n) to have a strong inner circle. not just for her work, but also for her own sanity. she was grateful when she met yachi and asahi, who were both kind enough to remain her friend after their work together ended. in terushima’s case, it was less of a choice for him to stay so much as he glued himself to her side from day one. fukunaga was similar, but most won’t believe it from his introverted personality. above all, tendou has been by (y/n)’s side since day one. even when he’s continents away, he is still her closest confident.

or, our main character and her crew! how exciting

BLIND ITEMS! —

## many small work-hands in the music industry only have positive things to say about this rising pop star. allegedly, she only conducts business with other up-and-comings and forms lifelong bonds with them. she appears to be the best of friends with her hairstylist, stylist, and creative designer. [revealed: Y/N L/N, terushima yuuji, azumane asahi, yachi hitoka]

## this z-list pop singer insisted on allowing her close-friend and amateur comedian open at all her shows for her freshman and sophomore albums, despite it not being good for her business. luckily for both, the crowds loved it, and the two still seem to be good friends. [revealed: Y/N L/N, fukunaga shouhei]

## according to an old school acquaintance, this renowned paris-based pastry chef is childhood friends and penpals with a music-industry nobody. the chef used to have a crush on the nobody, but the nobody turned them down in favor of becoming a groupie and eventually dating the A-list lead singer for 5 years. [revealed: tendou satori, Y/N L/N, unknown]

## the two-time flop artist has more exes than she knows what to do with it seems. now that she’s been dumped again, it’s only a matter of time before she writes a trash album about him too. [revealed: Y/N L/N]

hat3r. are we even surprised by any of these?? this isn’t even real tea or news. it’s getting stale — ynisjesus. you don’t ever have a single nice thing to say do you ???

runaruna. i want to know who she dated for 5 years, he’s gotta be like a totally industry bombshell if he’s an A-lister right? — sera_pent. EXACTLY like why is nobody talking about this! — junebuggg. it’s gotta be the guy from undead right? — harobio. no i think its mr “has-it-all” from SIR7 — sapphics4yn. why is everyone thinking it’s a guy ?? DID WE LEARN NOTHING FROM ALISAGATE??

gunslinger67. stream VNGELS by MISC9 !!!

read more…

NOTE! —

Today's fundraiser is "A Father's Plea: Help Save my Family" by Youssef Helles. In 2019, Youssef left Gaza for Belgium to find a better life for his family. However, five years later, the conditions in Gaza have worsened significantly. Now he's fundraising to bring his family to be in Belgium with him. Of the 23,000 goal, about 15,000 has been raised thus far. Every bit counts, so donate to Youssef's cause here or copy and share the link to spread the cause!

And a friendly reminder to register to vote! Please vote in the presidential race, but especially please please please vote in your regional and district elections! Remember to vote based on policy and meaningful change, not just color or party lines, and vote with your values and your important issues in mind. I know as I get older, my priorities have shifted, and as a college student loan forgiveness has become one of my must-addresses, so please! Go out and vote!

In "non-world-altering" news, I had my birthday recently! It wasn't that recent honestly since it was on the 15th, but I still thought it was worth mentioning. I also started college that week, which was fun! Due to the nature of my major, there aren't any stressful classes my first semester—mainly public speaking and fundamentals. I'm sure I'll bite my tongue on that soon though, especially since I have something due tonight *skull emoji*

MASTERLIST + SEVEN EVIL EXES

© all rights reserved—edelfie (2024) // do not plagiarize, modify, copy, use, translate, or repost my work on other sites without permission

[ao3cassandraic]

Angels, demons, language, and culture: part 3

(Part 1 and Part 2 for those interested.)

"I play an ineffable game of my own devising. For everyone else, it’s like playing poker in a pitch dark room with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell you the rules and who smiles all the time." --God, Good Omens

This is just. Creepy and awful and so, so wrong for a quasi-omnipotent being. Ugh. Good Omens!God is an abject horror.

But if you're one of the poker players at that table, what do you do? You try to figure out the rules and mark the cards, naturally. Especially if leaving the table only happens via swan dives into burning sulphur, or getting kicked out of the only home you've known into a hostile desert with lions in it. While pregnant, yet.

So, I did a Bat Mitzvah back in the day, as it happens, and my Torah portion was from Deuteronomy. Which is, as I am hardly the first to notice, chockablock full of rules. Good Omens definitely leveraged (rather than inventing) the idea of trying to figure out Her rules and codify them in writing! Note, however, that the Bible per Word of Gaiman is a human thing. Codifying divine rules? Therefore also a human thing, minus I suppose the Ten Commandments -- though I can certainly envision a Good Omens in which Moses was, um, not exactly telling the truth about the source of the tablets; we only really have his word for it.

Angels and demons, who have a low opinion of literacy and just generally don't seem to be very good at it, never did this. We see that Aziraphale, Before the Beginning, has intuitively figured a few rules out: don't question Her, don't comment on (much less critique) Her decisions or designs, don't ever ever piss Her off. The Starmaker hasn't gotten this far, tragically, and our Crowley remains confused throughout the show as to what rule he can possibly have broken that earned him the identity-changing torture She inflicted on him.

Fundamentally, Crowley doesn't want to -- perhaps can't -- believe that She is capricious and cruel. He thinks there are rules, "don't test to destruction" being a major one. We know he's wrong, however. She straight-up told us so, in the quote at the top of this post! Aziraphale, too, knows, though he buries this knowledge as deep under the words "ineffable" and "Great Plan" (there is no Great Plan, She told us so, it's all a game to Her) as he possibly can -- I think as a coping mechanism -- and does his best to avoid drawing Her attention again after the Sword Incident.

But we see angelic and demonic confusion about the rules of Her game again and again. It's at the root of Aziraphale's successful Great Plan/Ineffable Plan hairsplitting at the airbase. It's why Aziraphale has to (with Muriel's help) dig through the contract for Job, and why Gabriel and Michael can't even be arsed to, even revising Job's reward on the fly. They're guessing! They're guessing about the rules based on what they've seen of Her caprices! She likes sevens!

It's how Crowley rules-lawyers the demons into letting the Whickber Street tradespeople go. If there are actual rules of Heaven-Hell engagement -- and there may not be! Crowley's pulled plausible-sounding lies out of his arse before! -- I'll bet you anything you like practically nobody in Heaven or Hell has actually read them. (My top picks for rules-of-engagement authors, if those rules actually do exist, would be Satan and the Metatron.)

And it's why Uriel has to ask the Metatron, as unsure and afraid as Uriel has ever looked in the entire series, whether the remaining archangels have done something wrong. The Metatron's response refuses to clarify what's at issue -- he, like Her, won't tell anybody the rules. If I'm feeling extremely cynical, I think She and he refuse to explain the rules because they're more powerful if there's no rulebook that rank-and-file angels can use to contest them with.

It makes me so sad. The legions of Heaven would assuredly have followed Her rules, if they only knew what those rules were! Fanart of the just-fallen Starmaker routinely breaks my susceptible heart, not least because the commonest expressions on his face are agony, sorrow -- and confusion. It's just all so damn unfair.

Same with Job, and Peter Davison sells it beautifully. Poor Job assumes he must have broken Her rules somehow, and blames himself for not even knowing how. That's totally on Her, though! If Her rules aren't clear enough for righteous Job to be able to trust his own righteousness under a horrible test, that's Her fault, not his!

The closest that Heaven and Hell -- and humanity, for that matter -- have to Her rules is prophecy. I probably don't need to spill many pixels on how vague and confusing prophecy is, how often it's counterfeited, and how pointless it is to try to live your life by (or trying to avoid) true prophecies; prophecies will invariably gotcha you. Good Omens is hardly the first work of literature to point this out. (Try the story of Oedipus. That's a good one. Yeesh. Or, if we want to be all Biblical about it, Moses again.) Agnes Nutter may well be the only genuinely well-meaning prophet in the entire history of prophets! Even so, her book is incredibly bewildering! Generations of her descendants try to figure it out, and mostly they fail -- look at the annotations we see on Anathema's index cards.

So when @thundercrackfic asks me what Aziraphale gets out of books, my first (though not only) answer is "rules for living." Not just rules for living as safely as possible around Her, though -- rules for living among humans, too. I headcanon (and posited in "Endgame") that Aziraphale has been collecting human etiquette manuals as long as humans have been writing etiquette manuals. Codified rules, like the ones in Deuteronomy, likely help him feel more secure.

I think this is also why Muriel characterizes books as portable people. Muriel is trying their sweet adorable best to figure out the Earth rules on the fly, since nobody Upstairs told them (or indeed knows, the Metatron aside) what those rules are. They do have Aziraphale to help them along -- Aziraphale is so much better than Upstairs! he doesn't condescend or insult, he just gently instructs -- but Aziraphale can't teach full-time, he has other things on his plate. So Muriel the scrivener, one of the few angels who would have a clue about literacy due to the nature of their job, gravitates to books and discovers that they too can be gentle and compassionate teachers.

The final question outstanding is how well Aziraphale understands and assimilates human books, especially fiction, especially especially non-literal figures of speech. It's an excellent and complicated question, and I don't think I have The Answer to it, but I'll see what I can do.

[artemismoorea03]

I Have Theories - Potential LMK Season 5 Spoilers

I have had this theory since Season 3 but Season 4 fueled it and now from the little I have seen of Season 5 it is *twice* as strong. Keep in mind I have not seen Season 5 yet but I will mention spoilers that I have seen so if you don't want to know, don't continue!

Also potential MAA Spoilers because part of MAA is built off of these theories!!!

Alright, for those of you who are on my MAA Discord you guys might have seen me mention my theory before (because I have plenty of them). I have one theory that has to do with the snake character from Season 5 - Xiang Liu I think is his name? But this has to do with MK specifically. Now, unfortunately finding proper sources for Ancient Mythologies is hard especially with AI and shit now popping up a million half-assed things based off of previous searches. So, some of my research is patchy at best, so if I get some things wrong don't be afraid to gently point me in the right direction but also keep in mind Google only gets me so far and LMK has frequently changed things to help better fit the narrative.

Note from here on out everything in quotations is directly from a source! Be it Wiki, the Journey to the West Books, or otherwise!

Now according to the Journey to the West there are Four Celestial Primates.

"The Intelligent Stone Monkey; who knows transformations, recognizes the seasons, discerns the advantages of earth, and is able to alter the course of planets and stars." - This is Wukong for those of you who don't know! :D

"The Red-Buttocked Baboon; who has knowledge of yin and yang, understands human affairs, is adept in its daily life and able to avoid death and lengthen its life."

"The Bare-Armed Gibbon; who can seize the sun and the moon, shorten a thousand mountains, distinguish the auspicious from the inauspicious, and manipulate planets and stars."

then finally, "The Sixth-Eared Macaque; who has a sensitive ear, discernment of fundamental principles, knowledge of past and future, and comprehension of all things." - this is Macaque!

(^ previous quotes all directly from the Journey to the West)

But they are not the only 'monkey's in mythology, in fact there are quite a few! Including the Orangutan King (who online I find referenced as a Snub-Nose instead so again, different sources lead to different results) who is a member of the seven sages and the Macaque King who may or may not be the Six-Eared Macaque but was definitely made that way in LMK!

Another monkey is Pangu (who I call Pen/Pengu in MAA after their rebirth). Now, as already stated multiple times already there are a lot of differences depending on sources! Not to mention different beliefs and religions also have different stories, so I am just going off of what I have found and consistencies within them!

To start Pangu is said to have been born from something called a "Cosmic Egg" on their Wiki page which was formed from the vast nothingness of space! Now, depending on source Pangu was either sent by the Celestial Realm to do what he did next or just decided that he had enough of the Celestial Realm messing with the Earth. Regardless, he took his axe and cut Yin from Yang and as such split the Celestial Realm from the Earth.

Pangu then spent the next 18,000 years pushing the two apart creating the space in between before finally dying and collapsing. After that Pangu turned into everything. The Sun, the Moon, the Mountains everything and anything.

One source (Nüwa's Wiki specifically) suggests that Nüwa and her twin Fuxi were born from Pangu's child, making them Pangu's grandchildren!

Also on Nüwa's page is something of note and another major source for my upcoming theory, a note on Pangu that isn't listed on Pangu's Wiki.

"Pangu was said to be the creation god in Chinese Mythology. He was a giant sleeping within an egg of chaos. As he awoke, he stood up and divided the sky and the earth."

Specifically pay attention to that second line. He was a giant sleeping within an egg of chaos.

Now, what is MK consistently called; Harbinger of Chaos.

Which is exactly what Pangu would have likely been seen as to anybody around when he separated the Heavens and Earth!

Onto my theory now for LMK specifically.

When Nüwa made MK she probably had a plan or a reason. (Again, I haven't seen Season 5 so people might have more clues to support or rip this part). There is no way she would just make a Harbringer of Chaos unless she had a set reason and I suspect that reason had to do with Pangu.

Specifically bringing Pangu back.

From some sources I found they suggest that Pangu was ordered to separate the two to prevent the Celestial Realm from taking advantage of those on Earth. Things that seem to be happening a lot in LMK or seem to be a major concern in LMK. People keep saying there is injustice, that people aren't doing their jobs, that things need to change!

And sometimes the best change comes from chaos itself.

So, I feel that when Pengu's body was sacrificed his soul survived and he was reborn as MK or at least his powers were given to MK so that he could help bring forth a new level of peace to the Realms. An immeasurable amount of power would need a mentor, a brother and somebody who could help teach him how to control it? What better than a Celestial Primate to teach a Primordial Primate?

Wukong - being considered a Celestial after finishing his journey - would be the best choice to raise MK. But Wukong panicked and set MK away to keep him safe - maybe even from himself. He likely wouldn't trust himself with another celestial monkey after he killed Macaque. Not only that but being raised by Pigsy would make sure that MK stayed out of trouble that he was more 'tamed' than Wukong was when he was born and to keep him safe.

He would only come in when MK had accessed his power. Which could be why he was keeping an eye on MK for as long as he had been, then when he picked up the staff Wukong realized he was strong enough and it was time for him to act and train MK.

Now! My spouse just told me that Mac has a kind of power or made some kind of deal with somebody without him knowing it and I have a theory about that too. We saw in Season 1 that Mac can temporary steal and use powers from others. This makes my spouse think that Mac is Pangu's reincarnation but I think that this is only more proof of MK being Pangu.

Why?

Because who in their right mind would give all of Pangu's powers to one creature and then to leave that child with Sun Wukong? I don't think anybody would go with that idea! But I also think that all four Celestial Primates exist to keep the peace, so when Macaque died he would need something else to bring him back. Something more than just a deal with the literal devil (Looking at you LBD!). He would need power. Specifically a power to help him regain and recover his powers.

From what I've found about Pangu from varying sources it implies that as he grew to stretch the space between the two realms he also grew in strength and power. This makes me think that maybe he had a power that allowed him to steal and absorb other powers.

A power that Macaque potentially got from him.

I think MK is Pangu and in the same way Pangu sacrificed himself to bring peace I think MK will have to do the same (clips I've seen kind of support this I think?) But I also think that while MK was born from the same stone as Wukong, he has more in common with Macaque because they share the same source of power.

Again, all a theory and I would love to know if you guys have your own theory or what you think of this one! If you don't wanna leave a comment feel free to chuck a question at me or message me :3 I don't mind!

Sources used for this post:

Journey to the West - Books.

Pangu Wiki: Here

Nüwa Wiki: Here

[critter-genfic-events]

Pre-Campaign Genfic Recs

This week, we have seven gen fics that take place pre-campaign (or pre-stream for Campaign 1). Childhood relationships, chance encounters, and formative experiences under the cut. And as ever, don't forget to comment and kudos if you like them!

the last true mouthpiece by hanap (35722,Teen)

Warnings: None

Pairings: Essek & Verin

Essek has been chosen by the Luxon, but all Verin sees is his brother being corrupted by the light.

Reccer says: An amazing take on Essek and Verin's relationship, and why Essek is the way he is from Verin's point of view

some ever after no one could predict by QueenWithABeeThrone (15343,Teen)

Warnings: None

Pairings: Una Ermendrud & Artagan

Over thirty years ago, Una Ermendrud went into the Feywild and met a satyr named Garmelie. thirty years later, Caleb reunites with his godfather.

Reccer says: I love the practicality of Una in this, and the way she interacts with the fey

Metamorphic by MasterQwertster (11910,Teen)

Warnings: None

Pairings:

It's a fucking experience to have your flesh slowly turn into a stoney version of itself. aka: Ashton as they physically become the Punk Rock we know and love

Reccer says: It's an interesting look at Ashton's days at the Greymoore Home and how his shift into an earth genasi went.

Fiddle in the Woods by janto321 (FaceofMer) (1104,General)

Warnings:

Pairings: Laudna & Mollymauk Tealeaf

Laudna hears music in the woods and discovers a circus camped for the night

Reccer says: It's a fun crossover, and what could have been

The Cut of His Jib by Nenia458 (6542,Teen)

Warnings: referenced torture, ptsd, flashbacks

Pairings: Vax'ildan Vessar & Percy De Rolo

Along the treacherous route to a job, Vax (1) does not stab Percy for flirting with his sister (2) successfully stabs a pirate (3) learns something about their gunslinger that fundamentally changes his opinion of the man.

Reccer says: It's great character work for both Percy and Vax

When the Caught Fly Spins a Web of Its Own by bluegreenamber (908,Mature)

Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, fantasy racism, torture

Pairings: none

Lucien learns at a young age never to get caught by unwelcome parties in the Run.

Reccer says: I loved this glimpse into a young Lucien

A Thought Exercise by thought (4096,Teen)

Warnings: None

Pairings: Evandrin & Laerynn

Evandrin makes a choice

Reccer says: I liked it

This is one of our weekly communally-generated gen rec lists. Every week we announce a new theme and allow anyone to submit a fic recommendation. Please note that the summary and content notes are provided by the reccer, and may be different than what the author has provided. Please assume good intentions all around. <3

And hey, anyone includes you!

Next week, we'll be featuring Parties! Crashing parties, throwing parties, (weddings?), it all goes

Then, it'll be focused on the Calamity, Transformation, and then Post-Campaign

Any fics coming to mind? Well, then use this form to submit!

[marimayscarlett]

Hi hallo 👋

Please please please!!! Gush about Vampire!Richard!!! That new photo we got on Sunday was so incredibly sexy and I love hearing your thoughts about Richard!!

Thank yooouuuu ❤️❤️

Hi 👋🏼 (writing prompts incoming I'll never use since well. I'm not a writer yet I have too much imagination for my own good)

Thanks a lot for this ask! A while ago, I got a similar one which got lost on the way into my drafts, so I'm glad I get a second chance to delve into my made up lore for my beloved elderly vampire lord 🦇 So very subjective and personal imaginary facts about vampire!Richard incoming:

Vampire!Richard is an everlasting part of my obsession over him, and 'I'm still alive' really changed my brain chemistry further more in that regard - before it was mostly Völkerball!vampire!Richard, who ruled over my darkest fantasies, drawing me ever deeper into his spell:

In this version, he is in my mind a slightly arrogant but so charming, self-assured young vampire, recklessly spirited and hardly containable, propelled by success, hungry for more - and he fundamentally sees mostly the positive aspects in his immortal existence, which he savors to the fullest extent.

However, at times he falls into melancholic phases, reminiscing about his mortal life and pondering what might have become of him had he not fallen into the clutches of eternal existence.

And yet, I have to admit, with the release of “I'm still alive”, my attention was definitely turned to the senior vampire lord, who immediately captivated me.

Here, Richard strikes me as an educated and worldly gentleman who has a sense of restlessness about him. He appears to have a great demeanor, is confident in himself and knows how charmingly he has to approach people to get what he wants, and yet he carries a certain melancholy with him, some thoughts and memories never seem to quite leave him and which hint at a troubled past. Although he is no longer subconsciously searching for the ultimate sense of immortal life like the young vampire!Richard, he still doesn't seem to be entirely at peace with his past and himself.

Since my brain won't shut up and I had wonderful support by @dandysnob in the quest of working out some thoughts on a background story for elderly vampire lord!Richard a possible origin story for him - of course based entirely subjective on our fantasies around the topic of vampires in general and Richard in this role speficically:

He was born in the late Middle Ages/early Renaissance (around the late fifteenth century) into a fairly well-off, but not overly wealthy family in the northern region of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation - so he had a good start in life, but had to make something of himself to succeed in life.

His ambitious and inquisitive character enabled him to make a name for himself as an intelligent and knowledgable scholar, particularly in the field of art, rare artifacts and, to a certain extent, music research (music was part of the 'septen artes liberales', a canon of seven subjects of study which was very important during which were very important in antiquity and the Middle Ages).

On one of his travels, which led him to the region of Transylvania in Romania due to research on architecture and paintings, something happened that would change Richard's life forever - something he wouldn't have expected at the age of about 50. On the way back from a day trip to the Prejmer fortified church (Church Fortified by Tartlau), his carriage was ambushed on the road through the forest - Richard himself doesn't know exactly what happened, but he woke up after what seemed like a long period of unconsciousness and hasn't been the same since. The changes were gradual - daylight began to blind him unbearably, he became more irritable, had an unbearable hunger, suddenly much sharper senses, and an inexplicable desire to go for the jugular of his fellow human beings.

The following years and decades were difficult for Richard. He distanced himself more and more from his fellow beings and began, through research, to slowly but surely discover what had happened to him. Humanity had less and less space in his life; the vampiric nature gave him a feeling of omnipotence and a hunger that made him completely ruthless towards human life. He deliberately embarked on many journeys to conceal the fact that he no longer aged and to disguise his consumption of humans as a source of sustenance. Changing names became commonplace, and at every university where he began as a scholar, he provided a new name. Thus, he traveled extensively throughout the world, learning more and more about the dark hidden world. Despite the immortality and invulnerability he now enjoyed, Richard was internally torn - on one hand, he managed to keep his private escapades under covers and presented himself outwardly as a distinguished scholar; on the other hand, he missed human life with its true emotions and loved ones deeply.

In the 19th century, he arrived in Victorian London and found his way into high society, moving in similar circles to Lord Byron and his companions. He had always sworn two things to himself: firstly, never to let serious feelings for anyone else arise, as it simply did not fit his lifestyle, and secondly, never to seek victims whose deaths would arouse suspicion - so no woman from the nobility or a similar standing. Until one day, he fell in love with a young woman who was just as enamored with ancient objects, art, and music as he was. Even though he knew this could have no future, he could not resist and courted her, with great success - until one night (she knew of his dark secret and yet loved him deeply) he lost control and accidentally weakened his beloved so much with his thirst for blood that she died in his arms. In her final breaths, she appealed to his humanity, urging him to see that life offers so much if only he allows it.

This experience tore him apart internally, yet it also gave him back the willpower he had lacked for over 300 years. Once again, he swore to leave behind the matter of feelings and emotional relationships, and to exercise more caution, moderation, and compassion - as much as possible as a vampire. After the experience in London with his beloved, he naturally had to leave that place and became restless once again. After further travels, he eventually landed in 21st century New York, where the cultural sector thrived with museums, theaters, film, and music, alongside a flourishing supernatural underworld. Outwardly, he was a successful art dealer, a generous patron of musicians and opera houses, and an expert for museums; secretly, he quickly became known as the most influential and powerful vampire in the city, one best not crossed - a rise akin to Scarface, yet far more sophisticated.

Here we are now - an accomplished man with a successful career, centuries of experience behind him, yet he's filled with melancholy, partial bitterness, constantly struggling with his fate. Whether he will ever find complete fulfillment and happiness again...

a possible continuation can be found in the second part.

[adastraperfortuna]

Tears of the Kingdom; or, The Sequel to Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of the most focused and restrained AAA games that I've ever played. After Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess, two games that pushed the long-standing franchise formula to its breaking point, Hidemaro Fujibiyashi and his team set out to build a new Zelda identity from the ground up. With a clean slate, every feature that they added built towards the game's central themes - the majesty of nature, player freedom, and systemic play. If something wouldn't contribute to that, it often didn't end up in the game at all, leading to a lot of players complaining about Breath being threadbare, quiet, and streamlined.

I say all of that because its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, is most decidedly none of those things. Tears is a game defined by its maximalism, taking more or less everything from Breath and tacking stuff onto it for six years. Where Breath had one map, Tears has three, and they did their absolute best to fill every square inch of the new and returning playable space to the brim with characters, quests, systems, caves, dungeons, easter eggs, and collectables. Tears is a game with seven currencies that you can trade in at five types of vendor for various rewards, and that's excluding the new upgrade systems for the new abilities that you can get from completing the new temples.

When I say that it took more or less everything from Breath of the Wild, though, I did mean it. While ostensibly a sequel, Tears functions as something much closer to a remake or reimagining in practice. The overall story structure is almost identical, down to the minutiae of which characters inherit which responsibilities from which champions/sages. The memory system for storytelling is retained, much to the detriment of the now-linear story that it's conveying. You're going to be revisiting the same towns, doing similar shrines to unlock similarly-adjacent waypoints, and restoring things to the status quo by the time you say your goodbyes.

I'm really not sure that those two goals - massively expanding a game while also being slavishly devoted to recreating it - can coexist.

Breath of the Wild wasn't an accident, and while there are things in Tears that I would port back to its predecessor if given the opportunity, taking a game defined by its minimalism and grafting three new games' worth of capital-c Content onto it is going to fundamentally change the nature of the beast. By giving the player all of these new abilities (primarily Ultrahand - check out Postscript 1), we're left with a game with even fewer true puzzles and navigational challenges than Breath, requiring the audience to play along and role-play as someone with fewer tools in their belt than they do to have fun. The looser, more character-focused storytelling that Breath used allowed the memory system to flourish with each scene comfortably making sense on its own, and with Tears's pivot to a more traditional plot it becomes possible for the player to ruin a reveal for themselves simply through bad luck.

More than that, though, Tears effectively completely eliminated Breath's exploration loop without anything waiting in the wings as a replacement. With vehicles and man-cannon towers that can take you more or less anywhere on the map, traversal has been turned into selecting a point and more or less airdropping directly to it. Maybe that was a necessary change - you can't explore the same map twice, after all. Unfortunately, with the new additions, caves and wells, only being visible from up-close (in comparison to the bright and beaconesque shrines and towers from Breath), exploration in Tears asks you to do more than exactly that, combing the map and checking every crevice and crevasse in a way that Breath only rewarded with Korok seeds and ambiance.

I'm leading with all of this negativity because this is what I was left stewing in after I gave up Tears of the Kingdom two dungeons in and a few weeks after its launch last year. For about six months, give or take a few twenty-minute play sessions to see if I was feeling it yet, I simply couldn't believe that this is what Nintendo had released as their sequel to my favorite game of all time. I was frustrated, disappointed, and hyper-critical. I enjoyed a lot about Tears, but the problems were so fresh and my expectations were so high that the flaws were all I could feel. I spent a lot of time hashing out how I felt online (see Postscript 2), and it well and truly astonished me to see how few people could sympathize. Were we even playing the same game?

As my return to Tears of the Kingdom a few weeks ago suggested, maybe we weren't.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is one of the most systemically generous and aesthetically luxurious AAA games that I've ever played. After Breath of the Wild, a game that felt in many ways like a blank slate for the future of a legendary franchise, Hidemaro Fujibiyashi and his team set out to rediscover and reintegrate the Zelda identity of old into this new format. With a great foundation, every feature they added could bring something new and unique to the table, providing such a wealth of options and experiences that no two players would've truly played the same game. And once I opened myself up to that, picking and choosing which parts of the game I wanted to play more judiciously and holding back from "optimal" play in lieu of finding the fun, the game blossomed for me in a million dazzling ways.

The scripted, authored material in Tears is some of the best work that a Zelda team has ever done, full stop. There are more quests that are more engaging than any of their equivalents in Breath, with every town now brimming with unique activities and fun overarching progressions both in and outside of the main quest line. So-called "Side Adventures" have you fighting off groups of monsters with roaming squadrons of soldiers, rebuilding towns, plunging into the darkest corners of the Depths in search of enemies from past games, and solving map-spanning puzzles in search of ancient wisdom. You can't throw a rock twelve feet in Hyrule without hitting an NPC with a minigame on deck, it seems, and almost all of them are a blast. Characters from Breath are given new life as leads in game-long side quests covering anything from construction to journalism, and the modes of gameplay that you're asked to engage with are diverse and fun, recontextualizing existing spaces in interesting ways.

Of course, the side material wasn't what drew me to the prior Zelda games (with the exception of Majora's Mask), and the main quest represents a bafflingly large step up from Breath of the Wild's. Each of the dungeon approach sequences is hours-long and absolutely jam-packed with memorable moments, providing a linear, focused progression that'll have you solving riddles, probing caves, and diving into storm heads. The dungeons themselves, while functionally similar to Breath's Divine Beasts, feel at once more unique and closer to the series's past by building out their own aesthetics. The bosses are more visually diverse and tactically demanding, and when you beat them you're rewarded with a fundamental shift to the area you're saving (with the exception of the Goron village, a part of the game that disappointed me enough to stop me playing for half a year). Even the approaches to the towns are reinvigorated, with interesting additions like an expanded extreme climate zone around the Gerudo Desert providing the kind of focused navigation challenges that only the Zora portion of Breath provided.

And this is all referring to the first dungeons you encounter, the stretch of the game that mirrors Breath so thoroughly that I genuinely found it concerning on my first go at it. What happens afterwards, from the "reveal" at Hyrule Castle to the moments that credits roll, is maybe my favorite sequence in Zelda history. It's deliriously smart, using the scope of the game's systems to deliver a part of the journey that feels epic, personal, global, and threatening. Their newfound freedom to create bespoke moments pays off in a finale so explosive that it's hard to believe it came from the studio that gave us Breath's Dark Beast Ganon fight, with everything from that last leap into the darkness on absolutely dripping with verve. And, my God, that last button prompt.

This is all accompanied, of course, by the best thing that a game could take from Breath of the Wild: its audiovisual presentation. While the primary overworld looks more or less like you'll remember it, the addition of the sky and Depths lets the team expand their palette to match. The sky reaches truly profound, sublime levels of beauty, while the Depths gets just about as close to horror as Zelda can handle - those two endpoints giving us something to fear and something to fight for, which in turn elevates the storytelling. The soundtrack pulls from a million influences to give us something new, but it isn't afraid to pull those old Zelda heartstrings when the time is right. One particular theme incorporation during a post-Spirit Temple cutscene had me hooting and hollering.

I do apologize if these last few paragraphs have felt closer to an exaltation than something meaningful and insightful - the best parts of this game just sort of did that to me. While Tears has problems, and I think they're worth examining, it also has a structure that lends itself to simply ignoring what you dislike and pursuing what you do. It took me approaching it from a completely different and unnatural angle to see that, though, and I'm hoping that the next Zelda is able to provide both the focus and bombast that only one of the last two excelled in. With this next blank slate, with this next fresh start - with a new map, a new style, and new ambitions - maybe they can combine the best of both worlds.

After Tears of the Kingdom came out, I found myself asking how my favorite game development team lost the magic touch and what it would take for me to get excited about their next project. The answer to that is in two parts: they didn't, and I already am.

Postscript 1: Ultrahand

Ultrahand doesn't have a place in the Zelda series. While it gives the player a lot of options, and I understand the fun that a lot of people had with it, it simultaneously breaks too many challenges and fails to introduce many more. The most interesting questions you can ask with Ultrahand are "how do you move this object" and "how do you climb over this thing", with the answer to both almost universally being "make something that can fly." While Ultrahand as-is is a technical marvel, you need to wilfully ignore most of its abilities if you want to have any fun with half of the game's puzzles, let alone traversal. It "fits" with Tears's everything-and-the-kitchen-sink vibe, but I had way more fun with the game when I refused to use it unless absolutely necessary, and I truly don't want to see it again.

Postscript 2: Apologies

In the half-year period where I was perpetually bummed about Tears of the Kingdom I let my disdain for it become a staple of my online personality. It dominated any conversation about the game that I joined, and I have the reasonable suspicion that I ruined at least a few good conversations with needless shit-flinging. To those of you that got hit by that: I apologize. The game kind of rules, actually. I was right about some things, wrong about others, but my face turn on this has well and truly wasted a lot of people's time. The least I could've done is waited until I beat it. I can't wait to intellectually learn this lesson and then never put it into practice. Oh, well.

Postscript 3: Cohost

This post is adapted from a post I made on my Cohost blog earlier this year. I will miss Cohost dearly, even if I wasn't tremendously active there.

[infamous-if]

In your opinion, is it worth trying to fight for Sev’s affection back? Or do you think MC would be better off if they just let the whole thing go?

Oh, that really depends on each MC. Truthfully, I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic who loves second-chance romances so I would try to win Seven back, but it really depends. Seven and MC have thrived on their own and have found their own happiness in other ways. Of course, they were happy together but it's a different kind of happiness. The happiness they found now is quieter, less intense, but with a certainty that carries a unique warmth they could only find in their new lives.

And that old happiness between them has run its course. Even if they do get back together or become friends again, it's not going to go back to the way it was. Too much has transpired, but they can form a *new* happiness together that is completely different than both. And it may be better.

Some people may not think it's worth it while others might think what they had is something to fight for.

I can't really answer that, haha. I will say is that there was never a point in time where Seven successfully erased MC from their life, whether it's the platonic or romantic route. MC has embedded themselves into Seven's existence in a way that has fundamentally changed them and vice versa. Take that however you like :-)

[crimeronan]

wait say more about how u use tarot to make ur OCs

oh sure!!

you can basically customize whatever spread you want to whatever project you're working on. i also sometimes use tarot for solving plot tangles or inspiring new plot points.

essentially you make a tarot spread like you're asking introspective questions or questions about the future -- but you're asking questions about a character instead.

then you can write down the results and interpret them based on the card's various potential meanings. tarot is all about using vague concepts to clarify your internal thoughts and feelings, it translates REALLY WELL to writing fiction.

i just pulled out my novel planning notebook and am thrilled to report that i have Pages And Pages of tarot spreads & interpretations in here. not just sol ruby devin and nova's original spreads, but also spreads about their relationships to each other, the environment surrounding them, etc

i'm not gonna transcribe my entire reading and interpretation for all four of the main quartet. i Will say that i pulled nova's cards first, said "these are all so well-adjusted and boring," and then rafi said "but what if she's the antagonist," and...... the rest is history.

this is the spread i used:

core self (one card to return to for their personality or archetype)

childhood (what most impacted how they grew up)

parents (relationship with parents)

education (background in school, study, etc)

friendships (either an important friend or generally how this person does friendships)

sex/sexuality (their relationship to sex and romance, if any)

goal (their overarching narrative goal)

fatal flaw (what will be their downfall)

work (career, attitude toward work, etc)

mental health (is it bad)

how far they'll go (what will they do to achieve the goal in #7)

fear (their biggest fears & how they manifest)

strength (a core character strength of theirs)

the core cards for each member of the quartet are

nova - the star

sol - queen of pentacles

ruby - queen of cups

devin - strength

and again, not gonna post the whole spreads, but. if you do something this involved, you'll find that certain bits will stick out Much more than others. i did these spreads in 2019 and would say a solid 80% of the cards are STILL relevant four years later in 2023. even as the project itself has undergone multiple scrapped drafts and revisions and plot changes.

some example highlights would be:

nova is my main antagonist. her spread is littered with stability, growth, reward, responsibility, opportunities, wishes, potential, dreams, whatever. her fatal flaw is the ace of wands, the fire card, a sign of creativity and passion. her parents are represented by the tower, the most chaotic and destructive card in the deck.

so here we have a woman born and groomed into enormous power by incredibly questionable forces, who has been raised not to care about the destruction surrounding her, and who has lived an Extremely Charmed life. uh oh!

sol's childhood is the seven of swords - betrayal, deception, loss. her friendships are the three of swords - disappointment, heartbreak. her strength is the five of swords - conflict, dishonesty, intimidation, lack of reflection. her fear is the magician - resourcefulness, willpower, desire, manifestation.

and. well. that's my antihero bitch. she sucks so bad. god bless

ruby's spread is much kinder by comparison. a calm childhood with happy parents, friendships and sexual relationships that are focused on partnership. her goal is justice. self-explanatory. her mental health is the four of swords - the exhaustion card. her fatal flaw is the two of wands - plans, anticipation, restlessness, lack of contentment.

so here's this woman who loves so much and so deeply and cares so much about so many things..... and has trapped herself inside a life that makes her fundamentally unhappy. because she can't walk away

devin's fear is the five of pentacles, a card that represents loss. often called The Breakup Card. it can also mean a loss of faith. their mental health is the ten of wands - burdens, responsibility, obligation, burnout. their goal is the knight of swords - ambition, battle, assertion, big changes.

so here you have an exhausted chronically ill mess who's standing alone because they're the only person who can do so, fatally loyal to their loved ones & burning with quiet rage n a desire to rip down the entire system.

like i said, you can customize any spread for any character or relationship. you just wanna ask broad questions about what that character or relationship looks like, and then interpret the cards in whatever way is most inspiring to you! i consider tarot a tool for creativity rather than an end-all be-all of fiction plotting.... take what you like, leave what you don't.