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ducktastic · 4 years

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2020 Gameological Awards

Over on the Gameological Discord, we have an annual tradition of writing up our games of the year not as a ranked list but rather as answers to a series of prompts. Here are my personal choices for the year that was 2020.

Favorite Game of the Year

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into Paradise Killer. I knew that I liked the vaporwave resort aesthetic from the game’s trailer and figured I was in for a Danganronpa-style murder mystery visual novel with an open-ended murder mystery at its core. Those assumptions were… half-right? The game definitely plays out like the exploration bits of Danganronpa set on the island from Myst but with far simpler puzzles. What I didn’t expect was to fall so deeply in love with the environment—its nooks and crannies, its millennia of lore, its brutalist overlap of idol worship, consumerism, and mass slaughter. It makes sense that the world of Paradise Killer is its strongest feature, since the cast of NPCs don’t really move around, leaving you alone with the world for the overwhelming majority of your experience as you bounce back and forth between digging around for clues and interrogating potential witnesses. And despite what the promo materials indicated, there IS a definitive solution to the crimes you’re brought in to investigate, the game just lets you make judgment based on whatever evidence you have at the time you’re ready to call it a day, so if you’re missing crucial evidence you might just make a compelling enough case for the wrong person and condemn them to eternal nonexistence. Am I happy with the truth at the end of the day? No, and neither is anybody else I’ve spoken to who completed the game, but we all were also completely enthralled the entire time and our dissatisfaction has less to do with the game and more to do with the ugly reality of humanity. I’ve always been of the mindset that “spoilers” are absolute garbage and that a story should be just as good whether you know the twist or not and any story that relies on surprising the audience with an unexpected reveal is not actually that good a story, but Paradise Killer is a game about piecing together your own version of events so I feel that it’s vital to the gameplay experience that people go in knowing as little as possible and gush all about it afterwards. Just trust me, if the game looks even remotely intriguing to you, go for it. I’ve had just as much fun talking about the game after I finished it with friends just getting started as I did actually solving its mysteries myself.

Best Single Player Game

I honestly missed out on the buzz for In Other Waters at launch, so I’m happy I had friends online talking it up as Black Friday sales were coming along. The minimal aesthetic of his underwater exploration game allows the focus to shift more naturally to the game’s stellar writing as a lone scientist goes off in search of her mentor and the secrets they were hiding on an alien world. It only took a few hours for me to become completely absorbed in this narrative and keep pushing forward into increasingly dangerous waters. In Other Waters might just be the best sci-fi story I experienced all year and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi novels, regardless of their experience with video games.

Best Multiplayer Game

Look, we all know this year sucked. 2020 will absolutely be chronicled in history books as a fascinating and deeply depressing time in modern history where we all stayed inside by ourselves and missed our friends and family. It was lonely and it was bleak. Which is why it made my heart glow so much more warmly every time I got a letter from an honest-to-goodness real-life friend in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Knowing that they were playing the same game I was and hearing about their experiences and sending each other wacky hats or furniture, it lightened the days and made us feel that little bit more connected. Sure, when the game first launched we would actually take the time to visit one another’s islands, hang out, chat in real-time, and exchange gifts, but we all eventually got busy with Zoom calls, sourdough starters, and watching Birds of Prey twenty-two times. Still, sending letters was enough. It was and still is a touching little way to show that we’re here for one another, if not at the exact same time.

Favorite Ongoing Game

Zach Gage is one of my favorite game designers right now, and when I heard he was releasing a game called Good Sudoku I was sold sight unseen. The game as released was… fine. It’s sudoku and it’s pleasant, but it was also buggy and overheated my phone in a way I hadn’t seen since Ridiculous Fishing (also by Zach Gage) seven years ago. Thankfully, the most glaring bugs have been fixed and I can now enjoy popping in every day for some quick logic puzzle goodness. Daily ranked leaderboards keep me coming back again and again, the steady ramp of difficulty in the arcade and eternal modes means I can always chase the next dopamine rush of solving increasingly complex puzzles. It’s not a traditional “ongoing” game the way, say, Fortnite and Destiny are, but I’m happy to come back every day for sudoku goodness.

Didn't Click For Me

With Fortnite progressively losing me over the course of 2020, finalizing with my wholesale “never again” stance after Epic boss Tim Sweeney compared Fortnite demanding more money from Apple to the American Civil Rights movement (no, absolutely not), I dipped my toe into a number of new “battle pass”-style online arena types of games, and while Genshin Impact eventually got its hooks into me, Spellbreak absolutely did not. With graphics straight out of The Dragon Prince and the promise of a wide variety of magic combat skills to make your character your own, the game seemed awfully tempting, but my first few experiences were aimless and joyless, with no moment of clarity to make me understand why I should keep coming back. Maybe they’ll finesse the game some more in 2021, or a bunch of my friends will get hooked and lure me back, but for now I am a-okay deleting this waste of space on my Switch and PC.

"Oh Yeah, I Did Play That Didn't I?"

I remember being really excited for Murder By Numbers. Ace Attorney-style crime scene investigation visual novel with Picross puzzles for the evidence, art by the creators of Hatoful Boyfriend, and music by the composer of Ace Attorney itself?! Sounds like a dream come true. But the pixel-hunt nature of the crime scene investigations was more frustrating than fun, the picross puzzles were not particularly great, and the game came out literally a week before the entire world went into lockdown which makes it feel more like seven years ago than just earlier this year. I remember being marginally charmed by the game once it was in my hands, but as soon as my mind shifted to long-term self care, Murder By Numbers went from hot topic to cold case.

Most Unexpected Joy

I was looking forward to Fuser all year. As a dyed-in-the-wool DropMix stan, the prospect of a spiritual sequel to DropMix on all major digital platforms without any of the analogue components was tremendously exciting, and I knew I’d have a lot of fun making mixes by myself and posting them online for the world to hear. What I didn’t expect, however, was the online co-op mode to be such a blast! Up to four players take turns making 32 bars of mashups, starting with whatever the player before handed them and adding their own fingerprints on top. It sounds like it should just be a mess of cacophony, but every session I’ve played so far has been just the best dance party I’ve had all year, and everyone not currently in control of the decks (including an audience of spectators) can make special requests for what the DJ should spin and tap along with the beat to great super-sized emoji to show how much they’re enjoying the mix. Literally the only times my Apple Watch has ever warned me of my heightened heart rate have been the times I was positively bouncing in place rocking out to co-op freestyle play in Fuser.

Best Music

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Only one video game this year had tunes that were so bumpable they were upgraded to my general “2020 jams” playlist alongside Jeff Rosenstock, Run the Jewels, and Phoebe Bridgers, and that game was Paradise Killer. 70% lo-fi chill beats to study/interrogate demons to, 20% gothic atmospheric bangers, 10% high-energy pop jazz, this soundtrack was just an absolute joy to swim around in both in and out of gameplay.

Favorite Game Encounter

It’s wild that in a landscape where games let me live out my wildest fantasies, the single moment that lit me up in a way that stood out to me more than any other was serving Neil the right drink in Coffee Talk. Over the course of the game, you serve a variety of hot drinks to humans, werewolves, vampires, orcs, and more, all while chatting with your customers and learning more about their lives and relationships. The most mysterious customer, though, is an alien life form who adopts the name Neil. They do not know what they want to drink and claim it doesn’t make a difference because they cannot taste it. Everybody else wants *something*. Neil is just ordering for the sake of fitting in and exploring the Earth experience. It’s only in the second playthrough that attentive baristas will figure out what to serve Neil, unlocking the “true” ending in the process. Seeing the typically stoic Neil actually emote when they tasted their special order drink? What an absolute treat that was.

Best Free DLC of the Year

It’s still only a couple of days old at the time I’m writing this, but Marvel’s Avengers just added Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, and THANK GOODNESS. Almost every character in the game at launch just smashed the endless waves of robot baddies with their fists and that looks exhausting and uncomfortable. Hawkeye (the game calls her Kate Bishop, but come on, she’s been Hawkeye in the comics for over 14 years, let’s show her some respect) uses A SWORD. FINALLY! Aside from that, I’m just having a blast shooting arrows all over the place. She and Ms Marvel are the most likable characters in the game so far, so I hope they keep adding more of the Young Avengers and Champions to the game, and if the recently announced slate of Marvel movies and tv shows are any indication (with America Chavez, Cassie Lang, and Riri Williams all coming soon to the MCU), that seems to be what Marvel is pushing for across all media

Most Accessible Game

Nintendo is, first and foremost, a toy company. They got their start in toys and cards long before video games was a thing, and they still do more tests to ensure their video game hardware is childproof than anybody else in the industry (remember how they made Switch cartridges “taste bad” so kids wouldn’t eat them?). This year, Nintendo got to rekindle some of their throwback, simplistic, toys-and-cards energy with Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, a Switch collection of timeless family-friendly games like Chess, Mancala, and Backgammon, along with “toy” versions of sports like baseball, boxing, and tennis for a virtual parlor room of pleasant time-wasters. The games were all presented with charming li’l explainers from anthropomorphic board game figurines, and the ability to play quick sessions of Spider Solitaire on the touch screen while I binged The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix made Clubhouse Games one of my most-played titles of the year. Plus, local play during socially-distant friend hangs was an excellent way to make us feel like we were much closer than we were physically allowed to be as friends knocked each other’s block off in the “toy boxing” version of Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

"Waiting for Game-dot"

I get that everyone loves Disco Elysium. I saw it on everyone’s year-end lists last year. I finally bought it with an Epic Games Store coupon this year. This year was a long enough slog of depressing post-apocalyptic drudgery, I didn’t want to explore a whole nother one in my leisure time. I’ll get to it… someday.

Game That Made Me Think

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Holovista was an iPhone game I played over the course of two or three days based on the recommendation of some trusted colleagues on Twitter and oh my goodness was I glad that I played it. What starts as a chill vaporwave photography game steadily progresses into an exploration of psychological trauma, relationships with friends and family, and the baggage we carry with us from our pasts. In this exceptionally hard year, I badly needed this story about spending time alone with your personal demons and finding your way back to the people who love and support you. Just like with Journey and Gone Home, I walked away from Holovista feeling a rekindled appreciation for the people in my life.

#video games #holovista #paradise killer #animal crossing #animal crossing new horizons #spellbreak #good sudoku #fuser #dropmix #in other waters #marvel's avengers #avengers #clubhouse games #coffee talk #2020

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theredherb · 4 years

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The Red Herb’s Top 10 Games of 2020

Hey, fuck 2020. You might notice that many of the “Best Of” lists you read this year and last can’t help but mention how terrible 2020 was. That’s because every day was like hitting a new, splinter riddled branch on our 365 day plummet off a shit-coated tree. The year brought with it a viral pandemic that served as a pressure cooker for the societal and systemic issues boiling beneath the surface of our every day life. And we’re not out of it.

At least one positive holds true of 2020: the games were pretty darn good. One has to wonder, though, if 2020 was the last year of what can be called “normalcy” for the video game industry. Now that the remainder of titles brewed in pre-Covid times are out in the wild, what will the future of gaming look like as studios shift to work-from-home and distribution models migrate to digital as the primary bread winner? What will games look like going forward?

I have no fucking clue. We’ll get there when we get there. But looking back, I’m glad to have had such solid distractions from the stress and strife. If 2020 is any indicator for the industry going forward, then my takeaway is that games will continue to grow in prominence because of their ability to help us cope and, more importantly, stay connected.

Anyway, here’s video games:

10. MARVEL’S AVENGERS

Oh, Marvel’s Avengers. I know you expected to be on more prestigious Top 10 lists than mine. Truthfully, I debated whether or not you should be here. But I had to search my soul (stone) on this one. Really assemble my feelings. Tony Stark my thoughts (?). Here’s the short of it: Marvel’s Avengers has a great story campaign with a surprising amount of emotional weight thanks largely to Kamala Khan’s quest to reassemble the heroes of her youth. Once the final cutscene ends, though, players were expected to take their play box of Marvel heroes, jump online, and duke it out against hordes of villains for the privilege of precious loot and level gains. It would be impossible to get bored because Crystal Dynamics was going to continually Bifrost in new quests, cosmetics, and heroes -- for free!

Except, after fans blasted through the campaign (took me a solid weekend), they found a multiplayer mode filled with repetitive fights against non-descript A.I.M Bots, a handful of dull, un-Marvelous environments (the PNW?! In a video game?! Wowwee!), and a grind for gear that became useless minutes after it was equipped. Oh, and bugs. Tons of bugs. It must be hard for A.I.M. to take earth’s mightiest heroes seriously when they’re falling through the fucking earth every other mission.

So why the Kevin Accolade™? Of all the mistakes and underbaked ideas, Crystal Dynamics got the most important thing right: they made me feel like I was a part of the Avengers. Cutting through the sky as Iron Man; dive bombing, fists-first as the Hulk; firing gadgets at cronies as Black Widow; cracking a row of skulls with Cap’s shield… Avengers is a brawler on super soldier serum.

The combat is crunchy and addictive, and surprisingly deep once you unlock your character’s full suite of skills and buffs. The gear matters little. But choosing a loadout that works for you -- like ensuring enemy takedowns grant you a health orb every time or turning area clearing attacks to focused beams of hurt -- does matter. When it comes to games with disastrous launches, Avengers is the most deserving of a triumphant comeback story because, if you clear the wreckage, I think there’s a solid game here. If I was able to spend hours playing it in its roughshod state, I can see myself digging in for the long-term once it’s polished up and given a healthy dose of content. You know...if Square Enix doesn’t outright abandon it.

9. STREETS OF RAGE 4

Here’s a fact about me: I love beat ‘em ups. From Final Fight to X-Men to The Simpsons, I prioritized my quarters for the beat ‘em up machines (and House of the Dead simply because House of the Dead fuckin’ owns). Unfortunately, Streets of Rage wasn’t in arcades, and I didn’t own a Genesis growing up, so I didn’t get around to the series until Sega re-released as part of a collection. Though my history with the 29 year old brawler is shorter than some, the basics stand out out right away: it’s an awesome side-scrolling brawler filled with zany character designs and high octane boss fights.

SoR4 nails that simple spirit while adding an electric soundtrack, buttery smooth animations, and an art style that looks like a comic book in motion. You can button-mash your way through the game or master your timing to combo stun the shit out of bad guys. Same screen co-op is a requisite for the beat ‘em up genre but I have to call it out nonetheless given that it's next to obsolete these days. The story campaign is, of course, finite but a stream of unlockables and a Boss Rush Mode pad out the package nicely.

I really don’t have to go on and on. I’m on board with any game that captures the arcadey high of classic beat ‘em ups, and Streets of Rage 4 does it with flare.

8. RESIDENT EVIL 3 REMAKE

Resident Evil 2’s remake was my game of the year in 2019. It’s a pitch perfect revision that captures the pulse-pounding fear of the original while beautifully updating its graphics and gameplay for modern audiences. The most striking aspect of RE2’s remake is how it expands and reconfigures the classic game’s environments and set pieces. Capcom managed to recontextualize, and even improve on, the original’s design while staying faithful to its tone and atmosphere.

Resident Evil 3’s remake is less successful in modifying and improving on its source material. If the game feels like it was handled by a different team than RE2R, your gamer hands have good eyes (roll with it). It was developed by a separate internal team (three different teams, in fact), but that’s actually one of many choices mirroring its 1999 forebear. Just like the original, RE3R is a tighter (i.e. shorter) experience that launched less than a year after its predecessor. And just like the original, the game skirts away from survival horror in favor of action horror.

Unlike last year’s remake, however, RE3R paints in broad strokes with the original material much in the same way that 2004’s Dawn of the Dead remake shared a vague resemblance with Romero’s ‘79 classic. Capcom at least nails down what matters: you play as Jill Valentine, beaten and discredited after the Arklay Mountains incident, during her last escape from the zombie besieged Raccoon City. Her exit is complicated by Nemesis, a humanoid missile that relentlessly pursues her from minute two of the game. Her only chance of making it out alive is by teaming up with a gaggle of Umbrella dispatched mercenaries, including an overly handsome fellow named Carlos Oliveras that you control for a spell. But fans struggled to get over what Capcom didn’t remake. Several enemies, boss fights, and a “divergent path” mechanic that had you choose how best to escape the Nemesis in a pinch were omitted from the remake. Even an entire section set in a clock tower was cut. But, let’s be honest, the biggest omission is a secret ending where Barry Burton saves the day using only his beard. For real, YouTube that shit.

If you look at what the remake does instead of what it doesn’t, you’ll find a lightning paced action game highlighted by tense, one-on-one fights against the constantly mutating Nemesis. The tyrant’s grotesque transformations evoke the mind-rending, gut turning creature designs found in John Carpenter's The Thing. It’s sad that Nemesis doesn’t pursue you through the levels as diligently as he did in the original, or as Mr. X had in last year’s remake, but these “arena fights” end up being harrowing and fun, culminating in a memorable final encounter. The remake also treats us to the best incarnation of Jill to date. She’s a cynical badass, exasperated at how Umbrella upended her life, and can take a plunge off of a building yet still muster enough energy to call Nemesis a bitch. RE3R also shines thanks to its snappy combat, including a contextual dodge that feels rewarding to pull off, less bullet-sponge enemies than RE2, and an assortment of weapons to get you through Jill’s Very Bad Night(s). It makes for a necessary, though shorter, companion to last year’s stellar remake.

7. HADES

I’m experiencing a new type of shame including a title that I haven’t beaten on my Top 10 list, but I can assure you that I’ve dumped hours into its addictive death loop. It’s probably because of my resistance to looking up any tips, but given the skill-check nature of the difficult boss fights, I’m almost afraid the top shelf advice will amount to “die less, idiot.”

My failings aside, Hades is brilliant. It’s the perfect merger of gameplay and storytelling. You play as Zagreus, son of Hades, and your entire goal is to escape your father’s underworld domain. You pick from a selection of weapons, like a huge broadsword or spear, and attempt your “run,” seeing how far you can make it before an undead denizen cuts you down. It’s familiar roguelike territory, but where Supergiant separates their game from the pack is in the unique feeling of constant progression, even as you fail. With each run, not only is Zagreus earning a currency (gems or keys) that unlock new skills that make the next go a little easier, you’re also consistently treated to new lore. The fallen gods and heroes that line your father’s hall greet you after each death and provide a new insight into their world. The writing is bouncy and hilarious, the voice acting ethereal and alluring, and the character designs could make a lake thirsty.

Supergiant’s stylistic leanings are at their peak here. They’ve managed the impossible feat of making failure feel like advancement. Sure, it totally fucks up other roguelikes for me, but that’s okay. None of those games have Meg.

6. DEMON’S SOULS

Whereas Capcom takes liberties with their remakes, Bluepoint took the Gus Van Sant approach and made a 1:1 recreation of the 2009 title that launched the “Soulslike” genre. The dividing difference is a 2020 facelift brought to us by way of the PlayStation 5’s next-gen horsepower. There’s been online arguments (surprise) regarding the loss of Fromsoftware’s visual aesthetic in translating the PS3 original in order to achieve a newfound photorealism. It’s true, some beasties lose their surreal weirdness -- a consequence of revisiting designs without the worry of graphical or time constraints -- but the game’s world is still engrossing, morbid, and bleakly gorgeous.

That’s not to say all Bluepoint did was overhaul the graphics and shove this remake out the door. No, their improvements are nuanced, under-the-hood changes that gently push the genre into the next-generation. For one, the loading times are incredible. You could hop between all five archstones in under a minute if you wanted. And this game is a best DualSense controller showcase outside of Astro’s Playroom. You can feel a demonstrable difference between hitting your sword against a wall compared to connecting it with an attacking creature. Likewise, the controller rumbles menacingly as to let you know enemies are stomping across a catwalk above you. “Better rumbles” was not on my wish list of next-gen features, but the tactile feedback goes great lengths to make you feel like you’re there.

Granted, sticking so closely to the original means its pratfalls are also carried over to the next-gen. The trek between bonfire checkpoints is an eternity compared to the game’s successors, and Fromsoftware hadn’t quite mastered the sword ballet of boss fights prevalent in Dark Souls. Instead, a handful of bosses feel more like set pieces where you’re searching for the “trick” to end it versus having to learn attack patterns and counters. Still, it’s easy to see the design blueprint that bore a whole new genre. From having to memorize enemy placements to hunting down the world’s arcane secrets in the hopes of finding a new item that pushes the odds in your favor. Bluepoint’s quality of life improvements only make it kinder (not easier) to plunge into the game, obsess over its idiosyncrasies, and begin to master every inch of it. That is until you roll into New Game+ and the game shoves a Moonlight Greatsword up your ass.

5. YAKUZA: LIKE A DRAGON

Here’s a fact about me I’m sure you don’t know: I love beat ‘em ups. Streets of Rage 4 had an easy time making it on this list because it can be classified as both a “beat ‘em up” and “good.” Here’s another fact about me: I’m not the biggest fan of JRPGs. I’m told this is not because of any personal preferences I harbor, but rather due to a distinct lack of culture. I’ve made peace with that. At least my uncultured ways are distinctive.

But my disinterest in JRPGs is notable here because it illustrates how very good Like A Dragon is. Transitioning the Yakuza series from a reactive brawler (entrenched in an open-world SIM) to a full-blown turned-based RPG was risky -- especially 8 entries into the mainline series -- but it pays off explosively for Like A Dragon. Not only does the goofiness, melodrama, and kinetic energy translate to an RPG -- it’s improved by it. Beyond a new protagonist -- the instantly likable and infinitely affable Ichiban Kasuga -- we’re finally treated to an ensemble cast that travels with you, interacts with you, and grows with you. Their independent stories weave into Ichi’s wonderfully and end up mattering just as much as his.

The combat doesn’t lose any of its punch now that you’re taking turns. In fact, it feels wilder than ever and still demands situational awareness as your enemies shift around the environment, forcing you to quickly pick which move will do the most damage and turn the fight in your favor. RGG purposefully made Ichi obsessed with Dragon Quest (yes, specifically Dragon Quest) as an excuse to go ham and morph enemies into outlandish fiends that would populate Ichi’s favorite series. It’s a fun meta that never loses its charm.

This is the best first step into a new genre I’ve ever seen an established franchise make and I hope like hell they keep with it for future outings -- and that Ichi returns to keep playing hero. There’s plenty of callbacks and treats for longtime fans, but RGG did a masterful job rolling out the virtual carpet for a whole new generation of Yakuza fanatics.

4. GHOST OF TSUSHIMA

Sucker Punch’s dive into 13th century Japan doesn’t redefine the open-world genre. But like Horizon: Zero Dawn before it, Ghost of Tsushima takes familiar components of the genre and uses them exceptionally well, creating an airtight experience that can’t help but stand out. I can tell Sucker Punch mused on games like Assassin’s Creed and Breath of the Wild, tried to figure out what makes those games tick, and then brought their own spin to those concepts. You can feel it in their obsession to make traversal through the environment as unobtrusive as possible, letting the wind literally guide you to your destinations instead of forcing the player to glue their eyes to a mini-map. You can feel it in how seamless it is to scale a rooftop before silently dropping on a patrol, blade first. You can feel it in the smoothness behind the combat as your sword clashes against the enemy’s. Every discrete part is fine-tuned yet perfectly complements the whole. The game is silk in your hands.

The mainline story can be humdrum, though. It mirrors the beats of a superhero origin story, which isn’t surprising when you account for the three Infamous titles and satellite spinoffs under Sucker Punch’s belt. But Jin Sakai’s personal journey outshines the cookie-cutter plot. His gradual turn from the strict samurai code to a morally ambiguous vigilante lifestyle (to becoming, eventually, a myth) is a fascinating exploration in shifting worldviews. This is bolstered by the well-written side-missions dotting your quest, some of which play out in chains. It’s these diversions about melancholy warriors and villagers adjusting to life under invasion that end up being the essential storytelling within the game. Whatever you do, don’t skip a single one.

Before GoT can overstay its welcome with collectible hunting and stat-tree building, the ride is over. If you find exhaustive open-world titles, well, exhausting, Sucker Punch coded enough of a campaign to sticking the landing and not more. But if you were looking for more, the game’s co-op Legends mode is the surprise encore of the year. It strikes its own tone, with vibrant, trippy designs, and a progression system that embarrasses other AAA titles in the space (I mean Avengers. I’m talking about Avengers).

3. THE LAST OF US PART II

The Last of Us is widely regarded as a masterpiece. It’s a melancholic trek through a realistic post-apocalypse, driven by the budding bond between a world-weary survivor and a would-be teenage savior. The fungal zombies and violent shootouts with scavengers were scary and exciting, but ultimately just window-dressing compared to the level of complicated, and honest, human emotion on display throughout the tale. While a segment of detractors helpfully pointed out that The Last of Us’ story isn’t unique when compared to years of post-apocalyptic books, comics, and movies, that argument seems to forget that a narrative more concerned with the human protagonists’ connections to one another instead of saving the world or feeding into a hero complex is pretty unique for games -- especially a high profile, AAA budgeted game.

Still, fans made heroes out of Joel and Ellie because of their own connection to their journey. And that connection is almost instantly challenged in the opening hours of The Last of Us Part II to heartbreaking effect. But I’m here to tell you that any other sequel would have been dishonest to the legacy of the original game. To be given a hero’s quest as a continuation, an imagined sequel where Joel and Ellie do battle against the viral infection that’s swept the earth, would have been a despicable cash-in. It would have been a mistake to follow-up the original’s careful examination of human nature just to placate an audience that seems to have missed the point Naughty Dog made. The Last of Us Part II hurts. But it has to or else it wouldn’t have been worth making. It’s a slow-burn meditation on the harmful ripples revenge creates, how suffering begets suffering, and how, if we don’t break the cycles of violence we commit to, suffering will come for us.

To drive this point, we’re given two distinct perspectives during the meaty (and somewhat overlong) campaign, split between Ellie Williams, the wronged party seeking revenge, and Abby Anderson, an ex-Firefly whose actions set the sequel into motion. The greatest trick Naughty Dog pulls off isn’t forcing us to play as a character we hate, it’s giving us reasons to emphasize with them. It was gradual, and despite some heavy-handed moments meant to squeeze sympathy out of the player (how many times do I have to see that fuckin’ aquarium?!), I eventually came to love Abby’s side of the story. The obvious irony being that she unwittingly walks the same path Joel did in the original.

My love for the narrative shouldn’t distract from how well designed the world is. Being a King County local, the vision of a ruined Seattle strikes an uncomfortable note -- it was eerie seeing recognizable buildings overgrown with vegetation but otherwise devoid of life. Maybe the heart-wrenching story also distracts from the fact this game is, by definition, survival horror. Exploring toppled buildings in the dark, hearing the animalistic chittering of the infected, defending yourself with limited resources… It manages to be a scarier entry into the genre in 2020 than even RE3R. There’s a particular fight in a fungus covered hospital basement that easily goes down as my Boss Fight of the Year. Human enemies make for clench-worthy encounters, too, with incredibly adept AI that forces you to keep moving around the environment and set traps to avoid getting overwhelmed.

Admittedly, the subject matter -- or more to the point, the grim tone -- was tough to stomach during an actual pandemic which has happily treated us to the worst of human nature. Still, The Last of Us Part II is absolutely worth playing for its balance of mature themes and expertly crafted world, and the way it juxtaposes beauty and awfulness in the same breath.

2. SPIDER-MAN: MILES MORALES

The most impressive thing about Miles Morales is that, despite being a truncated midquel rather than a full-blown sequel, it’s a better game than 2018’s Spider-Man. It’s not because of the instantaneous loading times or the fancy ray-tracing techniques used on the PS5 version of the game. Rather, it’s how it takes the joyride of the original game and hones it into a laser focused experience filled to the brim exclusively with highs. Like Batman: Arkham Asylum going into Arkham City, Miles starts the game off with his mentor’s best abilities and tools. From there, he discovers his own powers, his bioelectric venom strike, which ends up feeling like the missing ingredient from the first game’s combat.

Your open-world playground -- a locale in the Marvel universe called “New York City” -- is exactly the same size as the previous installment, which helps avoid making the game feel “lesser.” But Insomniac wisely consolidated the random crimes Peter faced into a phone app that Miles can check and choose which activity to help out with. Choices like this really trim the fat from the main game and help alleviate “the open-world problem” where the story’s pacing suffers because players are spending hours on end collecting feathers. This is great because Miles’ story is also great. The narrative kicks Peter out pretty early on, focusing on how Miles assumes the role of city protector, primarily focused on his new home in Harlem. Insomniac avoids retreading the same path paved by Into the Spider-Verse by telling a relatable tale where Miles defines his identity as Spider-Man. With a strong cast led by Nadji Jeter as Miles, the game lands an impactful story that weaves its own new additions to Miles’ mythos (light spoiler: I loved their take on The Prowler).

Miles Morales was pure virtualized joy from start to finish. A requirement of the platinum trophy is to replay the entirety of the game on New Game+. I didn’t hesitate to restart my adventure the minute the credits were over. Everything I loved about 2018’s Spider-Man is here: the swinging, the fighting, the gadgets, the bevy of costumes. But it gave me a new element I adore and can’t see Insomniac’s franchise proceeding without: being Miles Morales.

1. FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

I love subversive media, I do. And Square Enix’s “remake” of one the most beloved video games ever made subverts expectations by openly acknowledging that, yes, the original story you love exists and is consistently referenced in this game. But this is not that story. This is something..else. Because the truth is, SE could never have recreated FFVII and delivered a title that matched the Sacred Game fans created in their heads. That impossible standard is like an imagined deity, given power by feeding on raw nostalgia reinforced by years of word-of-mouth and appearances on Top 100 lists. I’m not saying FFVII is a bad game or that fans give it too much credit. Not at all. There’s a reason it’s so influential -- it’s good! But memory works in a funny way over time. We have a tendency to codify our perception of a thing over the reality of it. The connection we make to certain media, especially when introduced at a young age as FFVII had been to a whole generation of fans so long ago, creates a legend in our heads. Unfortunately, it’s a legend no developer could achieve when tasked with remaking it.

So Square...didn’t. Final Fantasy VII Remake has the same characters, setting, and plot beats as the first third of the original game but it’s not the same game, nor is it a remake of it in the traditional sense. It’s something new. And I fucking love that about it.

Everything is reconfigured, including the combat. After years of trying to merge RPG mechanics with more approachable (and marketable) real-time action (see FFXV and the Kingdom Hearts games for examples), Square Enix finally landed on the perfect balance. You fully control Cloud on the battlefield, from swinging your impossibly huge buster sword to dodging attacks. The ATB gauge (no one knows what the acronym stands for -- that information has been lost to time) gradually fills up, letting unleash powerful moves. But best of all, you fight in a party, and you can switch who to control on the fly.

That may not sound revolutionary, let alone for a Final Fantasy, but each character has a completely unique feel and suite of moves. At times, it feels like playing a Devil May Cry game where you can switch between Dante, Vergil, and Nero on the fly (that’s a free idea, Capcom. Hire me, you cowards). You can soften up an enemy with Cloud’s buster to increase their stagger meter, switch to Barret for a quick gatling barrage, and finally switch to Tifa to crush them with her Omnistrike. You can accomplish this in real-time or slow down the action to plan this out. It’s a great mix of tactics and action that prevents the game from feeling like a mindless hack n’ slash.

What really, really works here is the character work. Each lead walks in tropes first, but the longer you spend with the members of your party, the more their motivations and fears are laid out. You end up having touching interactions with just about the whole main cast. There’s a small segment, after Cloud saves Aerith from invading Shinra guards, that the two make an escape via rooftop.They make light conversation -- small talk really -- but it’s exchanges like this that feel genuine, perfectly framing their characters (stoic versus heartfelt), and grounding an otherwise larger-than-life adventure.

Many bemoaned the fact that FFVIIR only revisits a small portion of the original game, but I think it was a brilliant choice -- to massively expand on areas we only got to see a little of in the original. I honestly didn’t want to leave Midgar. It’s a world rife with conflict and corporate oppression, sure, but Midgar is beautifully realized, from the slums below the plates, populated with normal people trying to make the best of life, to the crime controlled Wall Market, adorned with gaudy lights and echoing honky tonk tunes. It very well may be years before FFVII’s remake saga comes to a close, but if each entry is paved with as much love and consideration and, yes, storytelling subversion as this introductory chapter… It’ll be worth the wait.

#gaming

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inventors-fair · 4 years

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Lessons Unlearned: Short Story Commentary and Reflection

Well. 21 entries isn’t exactly a 50+ commander extravaganza, but that’s where we’re at. This contest made a lot of sense to me, in my own head, and I think I got lost in the concept without considering the full execution, or that Other People Might Not Think Quite Exactly Like Me.

Still, I would say that almost all the entries created their own unique worlds, some plane-based, some personal, and it made for great and creative reading. I feel that something more concrete would help a contest like this in the future, like... Well, I’ll have to save that for another time.

Onto the commentary!

@abzanhero — Captain Morgan the Vengeful

The Card: It’s interesting design space you’re playing with here, and I’m actually a fan. You could pump him up to a 2/2 for a little battlefield presence, but it’s not out of the question. The fact that there’s not consistent graveyard tutelage means that he’s not as overpowered as he could be, and it’s only one counter, which... Admittedly, it’s powerful, but there are a few moving parts to make this less than incredibly overpowered. I’d rather the trigger happen at the end step for that “final fate” feel, personally. Minor templating: “shuffle it into your library” (only planeswalkers get personal pronouns), and I think contemporary design supports “when you do” as a trigger to respond to instead of “if you do.”

The Story: Ha, it rhymes! ... And yeah, it doesn’t precisely explain the ins and outs of the curse, but it’s swashbuckling as hell. It’s one degree off-kilter to have a rhyme that isn’t part of a meta-tale, but I like it, so. I can imagine younger players doing their best pirate voice as they shuffle him (the character, not the card, I know, pedantry) into their library. Arr.

@dimestoretajic — Eternal Bond

The Card: I had to go through the Zendikar image gallery to make sure, but yeah, “party members” isn’t a term. I believe this card would read “Exile two target creatures in a party. (reminder text)” And it would be “combined” toughness, right? Either way, this is a hyperspecific and expensive removal spell, at rare, with a modest amount of lifegain. That simply doesn’t feel good, and I’m not getting a feeling of a “bond” out of, well, a removal spell. Let’s move on.

The Story: So, a kind of love story, framed around a removal spell? That already doesn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t have anything positive to say about the writing itself, so for Magic critique, I’ll say that it doesn’t feel like a Magic card or part of a Magic world, absolutely not Zendikar. There’s a time and place for those kinds of cards, such as Cathartic Reunion and Planewide Celebration. But Magic doesn’t need single-card love stories, unless they’re remarkably well-written.

@fractured-infinity — Baddon, Rivstalt’s End

The Card: Okay, that IS a real town in Innistrad. Had to check that. Anyway, man, someone would love to make a commander out of this bad boy. Kinda eh that he doesn’t do anything specific on his own, but the death effect is cool as-is, I suppose. The only issue is that HOO BOY you are going to have a LOT of memory issues with all your Zombie tokens capital Z. It’s flavorful and I think it would be worth doing, but the second part... Nah, keep it simple. 3UB, no protection, just Zombies, and you’re golden.

The Story: I’m having a really hard time parsing your writing. It took a couple reads to understand that he’s talking about... Well, actually, I don’t know. What do emotional bonds have to do with taking the town, or damaging the bodies? How does that work? Do we get that anywhere else in the story? Hate to say it, but this little snippet doesn’t really make much sense in or out of context, without heavy inference about the world that we don’t really get.

@gollumni — Tempest Serpent

The Card: I love the idea of off-color emerge! Emerge was a fantastic mechanic and I feel that it could come back again. It creates some really neat draft ideas that unfortunately may bend a lot of the pie rules. But also. A three mana 3/3 flying hexproof? That’s OP at uncommon, no question, good lord. Small templating note: Flying comes before hexproof, and the second should be lowercase.

The Story: I can just see the art of a guy on a boat cowering as the ship snaps in half and a massive stormy elemental electric snake monster BLOWS UP outta the ocean ready to eat him. It’s cool how it’s not about the serpent itself, but rather the human/NPC interacting with the serpent. It’s not Hemingway, but you conveyed something great! I liked this story.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes — Gravedigger of the Order

The Card: I don’t get how all these parts come together. Pro zombies, sure, she’s a zombie caller. The blocking/blocked trigger, uh, I don’t see that coming up a lot considering that she’s only a 2/2 with no significant combat-oriented keywords. And the last ability implies a strong return mechanic that I’ll admit makes a lot of cool sense with your flavor but doesn’t translate to perfect gameplay. I don’t know, maybe I just don’t grok this card, but it feels like there was cohesion sacrificed in favor of flavor.

The Story: Well, this sure as heck ain’t Innistrad. I’m curious about where this would take place, and what kind of world you’re going for here. Let’s try looking at it from an isolated perspective. It’s an alright macabre story, so I’ll give you that. But the name. What is the “Order?” Is she part of it? Do all members of the order whisper to bones like her? I don’t understand her goals and motivations, what “kindness” she whispers, why the dead are coming back at all.

@ignorantturtlegaming — Demonic Mentor

The Card: It feels unplayable and yet extremely playable at the same time. It’s expensive and creates some really crazy shenanigans in Commander with surplus life. Oh my goodness, Oloro would LOVE this card, good GOD. It’s unfortunate that it does have to be costed this way and that it makes sense for a tutor. I believe the wording could be adjusted to one chunk of text: (using Covetous Urge and Thief of Sanity as references)

“Search target player’s library for up to X cards and exile them, then that player shuffles their library and you lose X life. You may cast those cards for as long as they remain exiled and you may spend mana as though it were mana of any color to cast those spells.”

The Story: I don’t get it. What does having a demonic mentor have to do with brother rescue? I assume this is part of a larger story, but we don’t have that story for context, and mentorship doesn’t have to do with rescue. This is a card about tutelage and power and losing life, not losing a mind. The library is so often represented as the mind, and you’re not losing that, you’re saving part of it. Really iffy on this one, despite the coolness of the card. Also, watch out - you switched tenses in the second sentence.

@macaroni-and-squeez — The Iroan Race

The Card: RRR for haste, sure, whatever, that’s fine in this day and age, if a little color-heavy. But this card isn’t meant for limited. This is a build-around-me if I ever saw one. “Four instances of haste”?? I don’t want to call that brilliant because it frustrates my sensibilities, but dammitall, it’s...it works. For those of you doubting me, the Zendikar Rising release notes for Attended Healer states “Multiple instances of lifelink on the same creature are redundant.” So, if that is to be believed, this card is designed for some combo player to go nuts with haste nonsense. Or maybe I’m just reading it wrong. Either way, I like this card. But I would make it win the game for you, not anyone else.

The Story: Sure, I’m into it. A guy running a race for Iroas checks out. I would have condensed it a little, but in general, yeah, it fits the world and makes a neat little story. I’m really hung up on the name “Kris.” That...doesn’t feel like a fantasy name as much. I mean, we have things like Gideon, and Judith, etc. but Kris? I can’t help but feel that it’s a smidge too out of touch with Theros worldbuilding. Yay, nitpicks.

@milkandraspberry — Burn Down the Library

The Card: Conceptually, this card is pretty cool. Very strange. It’s a different take on anti-blueness in red, and I can go for it. Sorry about MSE and fonts. Reinstallation is a pain but it’s possible. Anyway. I wouldn’t call this card a breakout all-star, but it would be...fun, I suppose. A good combat trick enchantment thing. Shame it doesn’t do much if you have an empty hand. With wording: Use “can’t” instead of “cannot cannot.” Use “cast blue spells” instead of “play;” that’s been phased out for a while. You also can’t discard spells, but you can discard blue CARDS. Question: what if you couldn’t cast blue spells from your hand? Eh? Eh? Flashback and madness? Ehhhhhh?

The Story: This time, I’ll give an example of how this could be shortened. “After years of fruitless study, the young scholar found a better use for her teacher’s wisdom.” Maybe “frustrated young scholar,” or something to give her motivation. Why is she burning down the library? That’s the most important question to ask. “Because she felt like it” is the obvious answer, but that’s not motivation, that’s not intrigue. We have to ask “why,” always. Your story makes sense, but it’s just on the brink of great characterization.

@nine-effing-hells — Arch-Evoker’s Capstone

The Card: I want to like it, and I probably do. I don’t know what kind of deck would play it, as it feels like a Commander card for sure, but yeah, I think I do like it. It’s got powerful stuff attached to it with very red sensibilities. The land destruction is pretty wild, but it’s expensive as hell. Or is it? Five mana to destroy two lands... That’s actually, hm. That’s actually really, really, super strong if this were to see any limited play. You may even have to make it XXRR to get around that if you want to keep that effect. Land destruction is unfun. (I <3 Ponza though, so)

The Story: With this specific card, I wouldn’t have recommended also adding three lines of flavor text on top of four paragraphs of rules text. Additionally, um, I don’t get that last line. “It wasn’t every day the horizon was on fire for a week straight”? It’s exerting too much effort without a strong effect on the reader. Edit and save for a card without as much rules text.

@partlycloudy-partlyfuckoff — Spiraling Depression

The Card: Buries? What opponent? Is this targeting? Is this an edict effect? Least power among creature they control, I assume? I legitimately don’t know what you’re trying to do with this card. Wretched Banquet-esque?

The Story: Instead of attempting to give this flavor text legitimate critique, I would instead advise you that referencing real-world conditions such as “spiraling depression” without a critical lens might appear as insensitive to individuals legitimately suffering from those conditions.

@reaperfromtheabyss — Blazing Sacrifice

The Card: I really love this card, actually. The choice to do CMC over power I would argue requires playtesting, and I would prefer power to compare to other cards in the family such as the lovely Fling, but I can see the argument against it. Yeah, not much to critique or add onto that front. You made a really great card mechanically.

The Story: And then the story lost me entirely. “monsters that would surely go on to destroy everything he loved” is clunky to say the least. “Surrounded by monsters” is fine, it’s decent, it gets the job done. Monsters are monsters, that’s that. But that last line. That’s...a D&D reference, right? I can’t take that seriously, I just can’t. It’s verging on cliche, and it makes sense on a rudimentary level but adds nothing to the Magic world. I’ll be the first to say that yes, it’s personal bias and that some players would appreciate the memetic qualities, but it simply doesn’t do it for me.

@scavenger98 — Walking Stick

The Card: It...is a stick. You know, I think I like this one, and frankly I would consider it for constructed play. I’m a Krenko guy, what can I say. But yeah, it’s fun, it’s fragile, it’s got good equip synergy, and I might actually be underestimating its power. I don’t know, is there some crazy combo that you could do with it? This stick is made for walking, not fighting. Heh. Good flavor tie.

The Story: And there it is, right? It’s kinda funny how it’s implied that the whole story about this thing is that this piece of equipment is breaking. And that’s kinda what makes me on the fence about it. Like, if you had a creature, and the text was about the creature dying, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense, right? Maybe if the text was about Bredik fearing the day when he WOULD face a sword? Eh, I’m just being picky here. I think that it’s still pretty good. I like Bredik. He’s not a fighter, but he walks very fast.

@tmstage — Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies

The Card: Yeah, once again, looking at Zendy Risey, I think the wording would be different than “full party.” I’ve been sitting here and I can’t come up with a better way to word it, but it still doesn’t mesh well even if it groks. And it’s a situational card that’s either going to do literally nothing or it’s going to destroy four creatures for one mana. That’s...not great. Hey. I understand if you don’t like a specific mechanic, but I’ve seen some really great ideas from your neck of the woods. Let’s keep going.

The Story: Technically, uh, this does not fit the criteria. Who was praying to the vengeful god? Was it the creatures in the other party? Is there a god of making rocks fall down? What’s up with the name, anyway? There’s a strong sense of disconnect and many questions that go unanswered. But considering all the factors that are going into this card, I have a feeling they aren’t really asking to be answered anyway.

@walker-of-the-yellow-path — Marathon of Mogis

The Card: Wow, I wasn’t expecting two Theros-themed God-themed enchantments that gave a number of creatures haste. Great minds and all. So, this card. I don’t think you need to reference the active player. The whole thing can be toned down a little. “At the beginning of each player’s combat (or end?) step, that player sacrifices all creatures they control that didn’t deal combat damage to a player this turn.” Keeping it simple. Honestly, though, I...am not sure I like it for four mana. It feels like a game-ender kind of card. Frankly, I would make it six. And I know that’s a lot and I know that it might be too much, but to be honest, this would be an unfun card otherwise, in my opinion. It’s really, REALLY powerful for a clock.

The story: Is that Mogis’ deal? Does he make people run? I checked the wiki and read through it all and I don’t understand why Mogis would get pleasure out of people not dying. The point of the stampedes and the destruction is to invoke slaughter and sacrifice, not to run humans to the bone. The ferocity of minotaurs is not sadistic. This feels like a Rakdos card — the cult, not the color combo. I feel that there was a misunderstanding.

@wolkemesser — Otherskin Scarecrow

The Card: I’ll go out on a limb and say that you could make this a little more Horizons-y and give this card Changeling instead of just saying it has all creature types. Could that make it a shapeshifter? Hm, what if, because it wears clothing from characters in the past, it also has the creature types of all creatures in graveyards? But I digress. Anyway, this card. It’s not bad! It’s not making me super excited, but it’s not bad. You meant for this to have a Reaper King vibe, right? Or at least to work well with it? I think you succeeded.

The Story: Love the first sentence, don’t quite understand the second one. My interpretation is that it’s taking skin from others, right? Well! Um! That’s actually scary and makes me miss the world of Lorwynmoor even moor. Er, more. It’s unfortunate that the mechanics of the card don’t necessarily depict “skinning intruders alive and taking their identity in a grotesque fashion” as much as I’d personally like. Still, that’s a risk, and you know what, the implications aren’t super strong but it’s enough for me to grok.

Once again, thank y’all for your entries. New contest tomorrow. Be prepared. Be scared. Be....ard.

-@abelzumi

#mtg #magic the gathering #custom magic card #contest #entries #short story #commentary #inventor's fair

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norcumii · 4 years

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some musings on TCW season 7

One of the things that makes Tumblr difficult is that I really, REALLY don’t want to harsh anyone’s squee. I don’t want to be that person who sails in, sneers disdainfully at what people are enjoying, and then ambling out, having sucked as much joy out of the room as possible.

My brother used to do that about ANYTHING I was watching, and I still resent it. I don’t want to do that to anyone.

Meanwhile, I’ve reached my saturation point with Season 7 of clone wars, and in my own tired, perpetually exhausted way, I want to scream. Thus, kvetching under the cut. In all seriousness, if you’re enjoying Season 7, then please, PLEASE skip this rant. I sincerely hope you continue to enjoy and Season 7 continues to entertain.

I haven’t watched it: I’m practicing that much self care, at least. There’s been lots of meta and gifsets running around, so I’ve gotten enough second hand exposure – along with useful meandering through various wikis and such – that I feel able to comment about it.

It is indeed very cinematic, and I guess if you dig the art style, then it is a very good example of said art style. But from a broadstrokes perspective, the writing?

What an absolute screaming dumpsterfire.

The thing that finally pushed me from “meh” to “nope, gotta rant about this” was a fascinating piece of meta here, about how Maul is the prism character – the lens through which the story is told. Now, that’s my phrasing and not the OP’s, and again, I haven’t actually seen this so I’m taking a lot of things at face value.

It’s a fascinating approach, and makes the angst and despair that much sharper – especially if you apply this post about parallels to RotS, and let’s not forget the very impressive mocap for the lightsaber fight.

My question, however, is why the FUCK would you do that in the first place? (Not the mocap. That’s genuinely impressive.)

First off: you’re putting the audience in the same boat with the villain. Your lens character is the one who frames the story, who puts into perspective how one interprets events. In this case, that implies that what Ahsoka, Rex, and the rest of the clones are doing is in the antagonist's position, which might be part of the whole “nothing is true and nothing is false but everything is fucked” atmosphere that they seem to be trying to foster (see: Ahsoka’s arguments with Obi-Wan. GFFA has some good breakdowns as far as I can tell). So Maul is supposed to be the lynchpin of this story, either as the protagonist or the Sancho Panza to the protagonist.

That’s a damn weird take on this particular story. Is it about Mandalore? Is it about Ahsoka’s journey? Is it about Maul’s journey? Or are we trying for something meta about how it’s how Maul and Ahsoka’s journeys parallel each other’s, and how those contrast with Anakin’s?

Have you noticed yet who’s missing from this equation?

For a show that’s called “The Clone Wars,” there’s been astonishingly little clones involved in the broader plot. So let’s take a step back from this one issue and look at the season as a whole.

There’s been ten episodes so far this season, out of twelve total. Six of them have centered around Ahsoka. The other four have been about Rex and the Bad Batch. Now, let’s set aside the whole very valid debate about having so many female centric characters and stories is grand, and we need lots more. That’s a damn good point, and Star Wars as a whole needs better diversity on all fronts. Not the particular lens I’m looking through at the moment.

There’s been four of ten episodes about clones. In the final season of The Clone Wars. Yes, they show up in other episodes, but that’s not the focus.

Why would you do that?? We got five seasons already where the clones are more background noise with the occasional highlight (The Deserter, the Umbara Arc), and the entire freakin’ war has been named after them. Ok, so maybe that’s to some degree social commentary about how the Republic was viewing them – background noise against which the weird mythical Jedi shit really stood out – and the sixth season was more a hodgepodge of “we have THESE episodes nearly in the can, rush to finish them because this is important shit to get out the door to bridge from this series to the movies.”

They didn’t expect to have the chance to make this season. They could’ve done pretty much anything, since they didn’t even default to just using the episodes that WERE 70% done (if not more) and had been released into the wild as animatics.

So why pick these stories to tell? And moreover, why this way? Why not make the last hurrah that the crew could not have expected be something coherent and about the actual people that the damned show is named for?

Let’s play with hypotheticals, since kvetching without reasonable alternatives is considered uncouth these days. Let’s say one wants the Bad Batch “rescuing Echo” arc (and that it’s not agony porn. To be fair, I’m not sure if it IS agony porn, thus the presumption that it’s an arc to be had). Since we already spent SIX ENTIRE SEASONS beating home the point that clones are individuals and to be respected as such, rather than introducing new clones who are “aberrations” just to drive home hey, they’re clone versions of TF2 characters clone versions of terrible action movie heroes individuals, how about this?

Cody calls in the Bad Batch, a squad that gets sent into the worst situations and honestly, isn’t ever really expected to come out alive. They’re bad clones, you see. Their leader is probably a man named Dogma – he’s a Jedi killer, but damn loyal to the Republic. His second in command – not that either of them are happy about that – is Slick, a Brother Killer and all around asshole. The other two members of the squad are two deserters: Cut Lawquane, who was found and brought back to the army, and Boil, who was caught trying to leave after Umbara. They have a civilian support member, Suu Lawquane (a damn good sniper, and she now has armor as well as actual clothes).

Bring so many of Rex’s issues home to roost. Make that poor man question all his life choices. He’s still reeling from the whole chip arc and Fives’ death. Let him see what the Grand Army does with its too loyal soldiers, how Dogma did the right thing against orders and is now leading others into the meat grinder on the daily. Let him see what the Grand Army does to traitors, like Slick whose hands are red with the blood of his brothers – just like Rex’s, after Umbara. Cut, who left after too much death, and built a life. Boil, who lost so much, who had enough and just wanted to go find the one remnant of good things that he’d ever encountered in his short life.

They’ve got slave explosive implants somewhere – three because they’re flight risks, Dogma because – well, no one can say why, but it’s so. Let Slick shove Anakin’s nose into the fact that the Jedi are still leading a slave army, have Anakin have to confront that it’s not hyperbole anymore, not when the clones have chips in their heads and now these have slave implants they literally don’t know where.

Hell, have Anakin blow up at Cody over this, and perhaps Cody has to pull rank – establish on screen that he’s running so much of this damn war. He doesn’t like what’s been done with the Bad Batch either, but he can only put out so many fires, and keeping this from raging out of control is the best he can manage.

Let the audience see consequences. Let there be fallout as they go searching for Echo, and the Bad Batch’s various past issues bounce against the experiences of Rex and whoever’s along with him.

(For that matter, if you still want to tackle Mandalore and all that, have one of the soldiers going along with be Vaughn – get to know the man for a little bit. See how Random!Clone reacts to all this, not just Jesse and Kix. Someone without the history with any of these men. While we’re at it, Dogma had Kix in the firing line against Jesse. GIVE ME THE REACTIONS, DAMMIT! AND! And does Rex ever have to say to Dogma “you did the right thing, that Jedi needed to die”? How much does that blow EITHER of their minds?)

Show us travel time. Show us what it’s like for a bunch of soldiers to be stuck in a tin can flying through space along with an entire penal squad of brothers who spit in the face of what the GAR stands for – for reasons both good and bad. Show us what the years have done to Dogma and Slick, how Cut and Suu have adjusted from a life of growing things to having to murder things. How Boil just is done, and wants to head to Ryloth (hey, maybe Numa is currently living with her new sibs/cousins/friends/arch-rivals Shaeeah and Jek).

Then add poor Echo into that mix. Echo, who doesn’t quite know what he’s doing anymore, who was in the Citadel, then stuck in a nightmare of battle sims, and now in this new nightmare of a war that dragged on even longer – and no Fives.

Let us grieve along with him. Fives got a four episode arc (gee, I wonder why this season wanted to start with a four episode arc dealing with the last Domino >_>) where he fell, let us watch Echo’s rise and how he deals with all this.

Let him decide he wants to leave some of the more painful memories behind, how he can’t stay with Rex because it hurts too much, but at least now he’s got some fellow exiles to watch over.

Let the last we see of him be Echo using his new abilities to dismantle both the insidious little buzzing chip inside his and his team’s heads, along with the explosives they also have to bear. Fives died because of the chip, let Echo help others to live in spite of it.

Then slide the camera focus from Rex to Vaughn. Perhaps he gets assigned to go find the former Commander Tano (did he know her at all? Or had he just heard about her?). We could follow him across Coruscant, meeting various civilians who had Strange Encounters with that nice young Togruta. Maybe we get a fun montage: Vaughn questioning people, their various reactions, possibly as a nice voiceover to What Really Happened – that also gives a grand opportunity to get people’s impressions of the Jedi and their clone lackeys.

Then off to Mandalore, still from Vaughn’s perspective. Let us watch this poor man’s rise, as he has to be the metaphorical third wheel to The Team’s reunion. He’s the poor uncomfortable bastard in the room, but he’s a good man, loyal and skilled.

(Also, why could we not get the clones receiving patches or decals of Ahsoka’s markings, and play with that? Emphasize the clones’ individuality – some have it on their shoulder bells, some did the helmets, some have the design down the arm, along the leg – just...diversify, dammit!)

Have Vaughn keep up with Ashoka all the way through to the fight with Maul. Have him be hit, have him be disarmed for the fight – all he can do is witness it (for that matter, you can echo the Duel of the Fates, with Vaughn being in Qui-Gon’s position of dying on the floor).

Then let us see Order 66 from the clones’ perspectives. Show us the sieges, show us Bly and his squad following Aayla into the woods; show us Wolffe and the pack separating from Plo; show us Fox patrolling the Senate.

We’ve seen the Jedi die already. Show us the other side, if you insist on breaking our hearts, and show us how the clones go from good men to good soldiers.

Let me see Cody, let me see the aftermath on Utapau. Let me see Rex breaking, or refusing to break, or whatever it is that happens.

Let this season be about clones.

#star wars #season 7 #critical commentary #sass and murder show #the clone wars #character analysis #thinky thoughts #inappropriate feels about clones #meta #long post is long #writing #useless screaming #spoilers #SO MANY SPOILERS #just venting

38 notes · View notes

spectralscathath · 5 years

Text

Remember That I Am Thy Creature

“It was on a dreary night in Atlas that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the teal green eye of the Creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.”

Clover Ebi, Captain of the Ace Ops, is dead. But Tyrian is not one to let an opportunity like this slip by, and Arthur is always one to indulge him.

AO3 link

Tyrian practically skipped along, tail swishing in the air behind him as he reached the end of the hall. He turned to survey his trail of destruction, robots and prison guards turned into an art form of anguish and shreds. He clapped to himself, a giggle bubbling up in his throat as he went back to grab himself a souvenir, blood clinging to the bottom of his boots as he stepped in a sluggishly growing pool of it.

Now, with a new Atlesian military hat perched atop his head, he felt quite fetching. After all, one must look their best when breaking the good doctor out of his prison cell. Oh, how he couldn’t wait to tell him all about how awe-inspiring their goddess’s entrance was, how he had nearly sobbed with glee from the sheer beauty, the power, the magnificence!

Truly, Salem was the only truth in this world, and she would bring Atlas to ruin. He was so blessed to be a servant to a deity such as her, and he had gotten to indulge so much of his bloodlust on this fine night, he hoped that his work setting the stage truly pleased her.

He had never felt such a purity of joy like this as he had on the night his queen came to collect him, when she had chosen him as her reaper, her hand of death in this world of the unworthy. When he had been reborn as her humble servant. He felt he could plunder all mankind, conquer all the odds, just as he had conquered and broken his dear sweet little bird’s heart.

What a marvel it was to be so alive, on such a night like this! He felt he’d live on forever with Salem’s blessings at his back and his blades at his side. It was a truth that no one could deny, that his goddess was here to take Atlas by right of conquest, to show the world that now and forever there was no mere mortal who could dare to oppose her. What a feeling of being alive, while an army of nightmares came to reap what Tyrian had sown.

Well. Him and his dear darling doctor.

Speaking of, he checked the door into the maximum security wing, where all the arrested criminals with activated auras were kept. Aura turned a mere man into a monster, after all! There was no battle a man with aura couldn’t survive. At least… until that pretty little protection was ripped away.

His fingers curled at the thought, licking his lips and teeth as he remembered how lovely it felt to tear away the little lamb’s soul shield. Dear Robyn, leading a lamb to slaughter? Tsk tsk. She was a fascinating target, one he would love to spend a few days with. Such fire and pride in pretty lavender eyes, wouldn’t he love to watch them drown with fear?

He would have to beg his goddess for such a chance later, delighted at the hopes that he could grovel at her feet like the devout beggar he was. Perhaps she could leave those ace operatives alive as well, wouldn’t they make fine prey to hunt. Oh yes, the little dog had shown himself to be the omega of his pack, full of nerves and desperation.

He would be the one Tyrian would leave alive the longest. He’d kill him soon enough, of course, but his time in Mistral had been a period of experimentation, of artistry, and he had found that the knowledge of an impending doom created a tension so thick that he could sink his teeth into it, if he didn’t sink them into his victims.

As for the others… he had very few opinions on Zeki and Bree, though he would definitely make sure their ends were as painful as he could, it wouldn’t be fun otherwise, but the strong Elm Ederne? A Vytal champion, a woman who seemed to pride herself on being as unbowed and unbroken as her namesake?

Oh, how exciting it would be to bring a sweet miss like her to her knees! She and Miss Hill would definitely be worth taking his time with, if he was granted the permission to slaughter them.

He grinned ghoulishly and checked the security door. Ah, fingerprinted, a clever move, but one Tyrian could easily bypass. All he needed was to find the highest-ranked corpse and- yes, there we go. He cut the hand off the man and practically danced towards the door, testing each finger before one beeped and the door unlocked.

He giggled and tossed the hand over his shoulder, doffing his new cap as he slithered in the door, into the hall of all those poor souls in their lonely cells.

He looked in the window set into the first door, seeing naught but a man tossing a ball at the wall, how incredibly boring. However, the next door told him that these cells, despite their windows to the outside, had one-way glass on the doors. What a useful little trick, Atlas, allowing the guards to see in while the prisoners could only see the freedom they had so unwillingly lost.

He stalked along, glancing in each door to look for his dear doctor, before he saw a sight that had him howling, tears of laughter threatening to spill down his cheeks.

Robyn Hill herself, the little bird turned to a prowling beast as she paced the line of her cell, her strides long and proud despite her incarceration. She reminded him of a trapped vixen as she slank back and forth, her lips pulled back from a steel-sharp snarl. He noticed that her tattered scarf trailed behind her, slung low like a fox’s brush, her wrist bare of her wings and arrows.

What a delight it had been, to find out what a pleasant burn they had for himself, the explosion’s taste dancing across his tongue in a memory of copper-ash sparks, tingling behind his teeth like eels writhing in a stream, sending warm shivers down his spine to pool in his gut like venom pooled in his stinger.

He watched her for a moment, the room so soundproofed he could not hear a word of her raving, screaming rant, wondering what tune his sweet songbird was whistling to have her worked up in such a fury, her ponytail having fallen free in her rage to turn into a wild mane that gave her the appearance of a lion, perhaps, untamed and primal and burning with the desire to break her cage.

It was glorious, before the thought struck him, and he felt giddy with the possibility of who might be in the next cell, who could be jailed with his lioness, his songbird, his dashing, vulpine outlaw, who thought she was saving lives when she had instead helped Tyrian end them. Her rally had been child’s play, Clover’s death a wonderful result of her temper, her recklessness, her ego and her chaos. How could he not have capitalised on such a wondrous opportunity to deal a blow to his darling crow’s heart?

He was far from a fool, he had seen the looks the bad omen had shot the leader of the ace operative, how they had worked together to combat Tyrian. From the moment Tyrian had realised how much dear Branwen had cared for the fisherman, the lucky Clover had become his target.

He was so, so glad to have succeeded. The desolation in those pretty red eyes had been beautiful. Anguish became Qrow, it seemed. Tyrian had been more than happy to provide.

His glance into the next cell had his chest swell with pride, at the sight of poor unlucky Qrow. Defeat was clear in the slump of his shoulders, his back to the door as he curled on his bunk, on his side, the tattered cape hanging off the edge and his shoulders like a pair of broken wings. Oh, Tyrian was thrilled to be able to call this man his enemy. Perhaps, even, his nemesis?

Qrow had survived Tyrian’s sting, but his scar still remained, Tyrian knew without needing to see under the man’s new Atlesian plumage. But Tyrian’s venom had coursed through his veins, perhaps linking them in a way deeper than the bond of shared blood.

Qrow was his ultimate prey now. They had a score to settle indeed. Qrow’s scar, his shattered heart, and the mechanical whirring of Tyrian’s tail were only part of the strings that bound their fates together, entwined in battle and blood. They still had a rematch waiting in the wings, after all. Tyrian knew that their next one would end in death.

Patience, Tyrian.

It would be best to let the bird’s wings heal. After all, if he wanted a battle with a true huntsman, he would need to wait for Branwen to be at his full strength, just as before.

The anticipation would make it all the sweeter.

So, with a flick of his tail and a skip in his step, he carried on, hunting for his dear Watts. It was time to get back to work, and Tyrian had an absolutely delightful idea. One he was sure the good doctor would positively adore. After all, they were both predators of a kind, and they worked so well together. Why wouldn’t Arthur dearest indulge him?

Perhaps his goddess would too.

-----

Watts surveyed Salem’s storm from his cell, a dull ache across the entirety of his face and imprinted on his throat a reminder of the absolute beating James had given him. Well. At least he’d left some aches of his own. How was that arm, James? Did it sting?

If only he’d had a doctor around willing to heal it. Such a pity.

Watts would hardly waste his semblance on James, especially not now.

He watched Salem’s storm approaching, amused at the sight of the army of flying Grimm that could easily overcome Atlas’s defences, and the whale she rode on. It seemed Salem had decided that if she was going to leave her realm, she’d bring part of her fortress with her.

He wondered if that meant Hazel and the two brats were there as well. Tyrian would be glad for that, he seemed to positively adore tormenting the youngsters, now that Cinder wasn’t around. Not that it was hard.

Emerald was easy to pick apart, driven by her past where she had nothing, to the point she’d fixated on Cinder as her giver of everything. Food, shelter, comfort. Toss in her passive nature and how much fear controlled her, and it was hardly a wonder that Salem was able to bend the girl to her will as much as she could. To the point of ratting out her saviour to Salem as well, hadn’t that been interesting. He could only assume that the guilt of Emerald’s so-called ‘betrayal’ was festering at her from the inside.

The Black boy, on the other hand, was a much more fascinating cocktail of issues. Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was a given, considering his father’s abuse of him, and all his other behavioural issues made him a right little brat. Still, one that was also easily manipulated. For as logical and cold as he claimed to be, he was intensely driven by his emotions. Just like James, in fact.

Now that he cast his mind to it, the tin man and the metal boy really did have quite a lot in common. An interesting little coincidence, nothing really worth pondering about. But still, it was in those strange little asides when he let his mind wander that he tended to find interesting if generally useless information.

Then again, the human brain was designed to see patterns, even when there were none, so perhaps it was less a trivial insight and more his sharp mind falling to base instincts.

The door to his cell opened and his eyes flitted over to it, absorbing and processing all the information in naught but a moment before he picked his words carefully, as always. “A hat, Tyrian? That’s new.”

Tyrian grinned with that sickle smile he loved to wear, yellow eyes bright with his particular brand of madness. Watts never really cast his hand at trying to diagnose Tyrian, even though he probably could. That seemed more like it would remove half the fun the scorpion’s unpredictability brought him.

“Greetings, doctor. Did you miss me, perhaps?” Tyrian placed a hand on his chest, silver tail bobbing behind his shoulders, both poised to strike and simply because Tyrian was most comfortable with his tail held high.

“Of course, Tyrian.” Arthur rose from his seat, unfolding his long legs before he straightened to his full height. He dusted his sleeves off out of sheer habit and adjusted his suit jacket. Hazel could tear his jackets all he wanted but Arthur actually gave a damn about his outfit. Propriety was important, after all. “I would have thought you’d have gone to meet her grace yourself.”

“Without you?” Tyrian feigned hurt and shock, stepping back as though Watts had physically hurt him with his words. “Why, doctor, I am wounded by such an accusation. Of course I will be heading straight to our goddess, but first I wanted to find you. I’ve caused such chaos this fine night, and I have so many ideas for what else can be done. Our work is not yet complete!”

“Very well.” Watts stretched his fingers out of habit, missing his rings. Those had taken so much time to make and now he’d lost both sets. He’d make them again, of course, to not do so would be idiotic, but it was such a hassle. “Tell me all these plans you have while we depart.”

“Oh I will,” Tyrian’s grin returned full force. “But first, I notice your hands look rather bare.”

“A worthwhile sacrifice. I can rebuild.”

“Perhaps.” Tyrian dug a hand into his pocket and opened a fist, a set of four very familiar rings held in his palm. “But imagine to my delight when I found that those weapons of all those they’d confiscated on this night were still being transported to storage.”

Arthur grinned wickedly and proffered a hand, Tyrian bowing deeply before he took it and slipped each ring on himself, humming a jaunty little fourteen-note tune that Watts recognised as one that Tyrian had whistled here and there, the notes rising and falling despite the overall melodic descent.

Only when each ring had been affixed back in place did Tyrian rise, an eyebrow quirking playfully as he tipped his stolen hat. “I suppose we have the General to thank for the state of your poor face?”

Watts rolled his eyes as he stepped out of his cell, Tyrian gracefully stepping back to allow him passage. Watts rolled his shoulders and offered an arm, Tyrian’s hand slipping through it out as they walked out of the jail. “Indeed. Now what are these ideas you have?”

“Dear Arthur, how do you feel about putting your semblance to good use?” A debauched purr curled around the edges of his words, golden gaze turning heady with excitement. “I have a corpse that I think would make a lovely little puppet for you~”

----

Darkness. That was the first thing he could remember.

For a moment, everything was dark, and silent, and maybe a little cold, but it was painless and peaceful. Scarily peaceful, like if he was here for even one second longer he’d slip away into the void and never come back.

Then his entire world lit up with sheer, overwhelming, unrelenting agony, biting at his skin and burrowing deep until it made itself a home in his bones, pain eating him alive from the inside out.

His chest was freezing, so cold it burnt, and there was fire there too, chewing up his heart and choking his lungs. He thought he was dying, he wished he was dying, but he felt more alive then he’d ever been before.

Somewhere along the line he realised he was screaming, that there was pressure on his neck, right under his jaw, right where people checked for a pulse, and that was the eye of the storm. He could feel it. Right there, that point, everything was numb, and every ounce of the torment was radiating from that one point of contact.

Contact? Yes, it was contact, that was someone’s touch, and he wrenched open his eyes to a lightning storm of harlequin green, so bright it seared itself into his brain.

He scrunched his eyes shut again, trying to raise his hands to cover them but he was restrained. He could feel leather bands holding him down, across his forehead, his wrists, his legs, and his torso. The smell of iron and copper and rust filled his senses, the sickly sweet tang of blood and cold sterility.

He could hear the crackle of electricity, cruel laughter as a backing track to his symphony of hurt. It took a second before he figured out he was talking, saying words, screaming at whoever was doing this to him to hurry up and kill him, let him die, he couldn’t take this he couldn’t it was too much just KILL HIM-

Then something was shoved into his mouth by a gloved hand, a set of intelligent green eyes appearing in his vision, meeting his own confused teal. Those eyes were sparking with the lightning that had wrapped itself around Clover’s form, knitting the gaping wound in his torso back together.

Watts raised a brow and removed his right hand from the leather gag he had shoved between Clover’s teeth, top revent the man from breaking them if his jaw reflex snapped shut as his muscles seized. His fingers crooked and curled like he was manipulating a puppet, infusing a spark of being into the lifeless thing under his hands. Tyrian laughed in the background at the show, Clover’s body strapped to the morgue’s table as he convulsed, reanimated and alive once more.

Clover’s howls were muffled now, certainly, but he still made his best attempt at them.

Watts raised his hands eventually, releasing Clover’s pulse point as he surveyed his work with clinical detachment. Sweat streaked Clover’s brow as he panted for air, fingers flexing and curling as his chest heaved, the scar from Harbinger the shiny red of new skin. He turned his head to the side and spat out the gag, limp on the table as the absence of pain left only exhaustion. His chest felt too cold, like ice was bound around his heart, chilling his breath where it sat in his lungs.

He- no, he had been dead, right? He’d looked at the blood, he’d touched at the wound, he’d known from the second Tyrian had ripped the sword three that he would be dead in minutes. No man could survive that. Even if he hadn’t been severely bleeding out his aura had been broken. The chill of Solitas could kill a man in hours. He’d seen people who’d had frostbite set in within minutes.

So… he had died. He had to have died. This was… what was this?

The sound of footsteps made his pulse skip with fear, restrained and tired as he was, he had no way to fight back. He was helpless here and he hated it. He recognised Watts. He recognised the evil chuckles Callows’ made.

Knuckles brushed against his cheekbone in a mockingly soft gesture and he took a page out of Marrow’s book, snarling like a dog and snapping his teeth at Tyrian’s hand. Marrow had been crap at the intensive interrogation training. Unfortunately, the lady playing the role of ‘questioner’ had found out exactly what happened when an ‘enemy’s hand got too close to a trapped dog faunus’s teeth.

No blood, thanks to aura, but Marrow had been incredibly apologetic about the whole debacle.

Tyrian seemed to find it fucking hilarious though, his sneaky yellow eyes meeting the dregs of defiance in Clover’s gaze as he twiddled his fingers just out of reach. “Naughty, naughty! You shouldn’t peck at your friends, my little kingfisher.”

Clover simply set his jaw and furrowed his brows in a glare he knew was far weaker then what he was normally capable of, refusing to engage verbally with the serial killer.

Tyrian didn’t seem to care, his tail whipping happily behind him, almost like it was wagging, as he turned to face Watts. “Isn’t he fun, doctor?”

“I’m sure he is. I could do without that stubbornness, however. I’d rather he gives us the same blind obedience he gave James.”

“That’s-“ Clover’s baritone cracked and rasped as he tested it, rough and rawed from his earlier ordeal. “Not… Going to happen.”

Watts glanced at him, moustache curving with what had to be a smirk. “Mr Ebi. Do you honestly think that my semblance doesn’t come with the caveat that you owe me your life? You work for me now.” He crooked his fingers in that strange puppeteering gesture again. “Now. Lights out.”

Clover’s eyes barely had time to fill with horror before unconsciousness claimed him entirely.

----

“Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity and ruin.”

So Clover getting resurrected is a popular enough idea and one that I like, but I want to put my own spin on it.

Just for clarity's sake, Watts' semblance here is Resurrection and he's able to manipulate the mind and perceptions of those he uses it on, such as planting sleeper commands in them, or switching up who they view as enemies and allies without really changing who they are.

#RWBY #Tyrian Callows #Arthur Watts #Clover Ebi #Nuts and Volts #if you tilt your head and squint #my writings #I'm giving Watts the Victor Frankenstein allusion he deserves #Clover deserves better but probably not like this

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theonyxpath · 5 years

Link

Here we are at the end of the year with our last Monday Meeting Notes blog. Salut to you all!

A few things before we get to celebration preparation. First, the V5 Cults of the Blood Gods KS is doing fantastic, with over 1700 backers and a whole passel of Stretch Goals achieved – and we still have more than two weeks to go!

You can check it out here, if for some wacky reason you haven’t yet: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/200664283/cults-of-the-blood-gods-for-vampire-the-masquerade-5th-ed

But, if you’d like some more info before heading over to the KS page, well, do we have options for you! They are just the links for this week to interviews and reviews…there are even more out there!

(These links are also below in the Onyx Path Media section curated by the irrepressible Matthew Dawkins).

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast is a V5 Cults of the Blood Gods design diary! Check it out direct on Podbean, or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Plus, Polyhedron Podcast interviewed Matthew Dawkins regarding V5 Cults of the Blood Gods right here on their show: http://metahedronstudios.com/polyhedron/2019/12/26/polyhedron-ep-101-who-are-the-hacata?

And Gehenna Gaming did the same thing just yesterday over on their Twitch channel twitch.tv/gehennagaming, and you can catch up with that interview by subscribing to them!

And circling back around to the Story Told Podcast, here’s their interview with Matthew Dawkins regarding V5 Cults of the Blood Gods: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/bonus-21-vampire-the-masquarade-5th-edition-cults-of-the-blood-gods-interview-with-matthew-dawkins

While Flames Rising interviews a whole bunch of the writers of V5 Cults of the Blood Gods right here: http://www.flamesrising.com/discussing-faith-among-the-dead-with-onyx-path/

And even more Matthew Dawkins interviews (if you haven’t had enough) over here on booknest.eu, in respect of (you guessed it) V5 Cults of the Blood Gods: http://booknest.eu/reviews/charles/1758-interviewwithmatthewdawkinsii

Lunars art by Priscilla Kim

End of the year “look-back” from the OP crew as to what could have gone better:

To sort of match and compliment our look back at the good stuff from 2019 that I put up in last week’s MMN blog, here are the thoughts from our Onyx Path crew as to what things in 2019 maybe weren’t so good – or at least are something we can look to improve.

Now this sort of retrospective can be seen as a downer, but for us, we want to be always looking for ways to improve what we do. In fact, a lot of the “Goods” from last week’s list were “Needs Improvement” in previous years! So in a lot of ways, these are snapshots of where are crew sees our issues right now, and are extremely useful for us:

Dixie:

For me personally, I hope to do a better job in 2020 than I did in 2019 of managing the stable of incredibly talented editors with whom we work. Personally, I love talking with each and every one of them, but anyone who watches the blog knows there have been weeks here and there when 12 projects were in editing at once, and that’s a lot! Anticipating a project’s needs weeks or months out is something we should all keep in mind so that no one department, be it art, approvals, development, or editing, ever gets bogged down for too long. I want to deliver books that are not only beautiful and well-done, but timely and efficient!

Monica:

There’s so many channels we have to communicate, it’s difficult to sync up and get the same message. On some of our convos, we’ll have three people posting almost the same thing. I’d like to see better coordination so we’re not either jumping the gun or over-responding to what’s already been addressed.

Ian:

I don’t know how to do this effectively, but we need to try to do a better job of shaping conversation so it’s more productive. During the Aberrant Kickstarter, a lot of forum discussions got pretty heated and just went around and around in circles even after a given topic had already been addressed. I want people to be able to consider concerns so we can make a better game, but the way the conversation took place made me want to avoid it instead.

Mighty Matt:

This is mostly on me, but we could have been a lot more proactive in explaining how our expansion into local game stores rolled out this past year. We could have had more tools for retail stores to communicate with us and our distribution partners. Something of a personal goal of mine to do more outreach to stores and work with distributors in more ways.

Deviant art by Michael Gaydos

Mirthful Mike:

Even though we have been doing the “put the books into stores” thing with out KSs since the Cavs KS, I’m still not seeing a lot of our product out in the wild. While I’ve seen Pugmire and Mau every now and then… I’ve seen nothing of CtL2 or Scion. I don’t know if that is a shortcoming on our end… or maybe stores are hesitant to order anything other than OGL and 5e titles.

Matthew:

Travel and conventions. It’s becoming a running joke / curse that whenever I travel internationally to attend a convention, I suffer flight delays, lost luggage, missed connections, and other such mishaps. This year saw everything bar an actual plane crash, so here’s hoping for an exemption from that when I fly to Milwaukee for Midwinter in January! I’m staying at a hotel near the London airport I’m flying from the night before I depart, I’m building more time in for my connections, and I’m taking everything as carry-on luggage, just to try to alleviate some of this travel hell!

Eddy:

One thing that we could have done better: Focus on the positive. It’s understandable that we get derailed by a shitty vocal element or focus on a project that’s on fire, but sometimes that ends up dominating our discussions, and making things seem like they’re worse than they really are. V5 is a good example — it’s been a slog to deal with all the problems with that property, so much that I was genuinely surprised with how good Chicago by Night turned out to be.

Lisa:

The bad for me is being at PAXU and having a freelancer have to tell me who they are or worse be there and not know they are present at all. Many fans enjoy being able to tell writers, artists and developers how much they enjoy their work on our games and even get an autograph. It would be nice to be able to introduce them at the booth if I know they are there. Some sort of communication to let us know who may be in attendance and find out if they want any sort of recognition would be great.

Dark Eras 2 art by Luis Sanz

RichT:

Most importantly, these and other thoughts on how we can better do what we love to do are going to be part of our Onyx Path Summit in just a week – right before we attend Mid-Winter. So, part of my job is to get discussions going there as to our team’s concerns, and believe me – these are just the first ones they sent me, as well as other changes we might be positioned now to implement.

We’re also doing a panel there in the intimate surroundings of the Hilton’s Founders Room, so if you have questions and/or concerns, praise or problems, please feel free to add them in the Comments for this blog and I’ll pass them along!

Talk to you all next year, as we prep for all that and continue to create our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

V5 Cults of the Blood Gods has passed $100,000 and 1700 backers, and has trumpeted forward passing through Stretch Goal after Stretch Goal despite the holidays!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast is a V5 Cults of the Blood Gods design diary! Check it out direct on Podbean, or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Today we give special focus to the Story Told Podcast‘s recent review of Book of Oblivion for Wraith: The Oblivion. It’s a glowing review (four ghosts out of five, or eight oboli out of ten), and you can listen to it right here: https://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-43-book-of-oblivion-review-for-wraith-20th-anniversary-edition

And Gehenna Gaming did the same thing just yesterday over on their Twitch channel twitch.tv/gehennagaming, and you can catch up with that interview by subscribing to them!

Our Twitch channel continues with its streams of fantastic content, including a behind-the-screen special for Scion, a new year’s special for Scarred Lands, and regular games of Changelign: The Lost, Hunter: The Vigil, Mage: The Awakening, and more Scarred Lands!

Likewise, continue to tune in to us on YouTube for actual plays of Changeling: The Lost, Pugmire, Vampire: The Masquerade, and much much more!

Subscribe to us on youtube.com/user/theonyxpath

And of course the Gentleman Gamer, Matthew Dawkins, continues his Gentleman’s Guide to Scion over on his channel, youtube.com/user/clackclickbang

Here’s the ever-increasing trove of Occultists Anonymous actual plays of Mage: The Awakening, expanded even further!

Episode 68: Who Are You? Wyrd the Seer takes stock of her cult and Labyrinth, calling on Stephen Klein to get to know more about him… and to begin instructing him in the higher mysteries.https://youtu.be/gke84fsDxuo

Episode 69: What Have I Done? Wyrd the Seer calls upon Shodel, the Consilium’s Herald, to speak about her work at the theater and then returns to her search for the Other World.https://youtu.be/jDOsgHmGWLI

While Flames Rising interviews a whole bunch of the writers of V5 Cults of the Blood Gods right here: http://www.flamesrising.com/discussing-faith-among-the-dead-with-onyx-path/

Discussing Faith Among the Dead with Onyx Path

Don’t forget Red Moon Roleplaying have two actual plays of Vampire: The Masquerade and one of Changeling: The Lost going, with all locatable on redmoonroleplaying.com

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we will be releasing the PDF and physical book PoD versions of Tales of Good Dogs, the Pugmire Fiction Anthology on DTRPG!

Conventions!

2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI. Check out David Fuller’s Athens, Ohio Scion actual play tie-in adventure (soon to be coming to the Storypath Nexus community content site) that will be running at Midwinter. The event url is below: https://tabletop.events/conventions/midwinter-gaming-convention-2020/schedule/402

More talk about this next week!

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Duke Rollo fiction (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

RUST (Scarred Lands)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle – Finals coming in.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Art is in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers – Working on finals.

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Contracted.

Cults of the Blood God (KS)

Mummy 2

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Art notes and contracts finishing going out this week.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn

Scion Mythical Denizens – Need sketches for fulls.

Deviant

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Sketches coming in, should see some finals soon.

Vigil Watch

Legendlore (KS)

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – Got notes out to artists for halfs and splats.

Scion Companion – Working on art notes for that.

In Layout

Chicago Folio – Halfway through layout.

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

Pirates of Pugmire – With Aileen.

Proofing

Dark Eras 2 – At WW for approval and they will be back after the New Year.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

They Came from Beneath the Sea!

VtR Spilled Blood

At Press

V5: Chicago – Shipping to the KS fulfillment shippers. PoD proofs ordered.

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Being printed.

Geist 2e Screen – Being printed.

DR:E – Being printed.

DRE Screen – Being printed.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – PoD proof on the way.

Trinity RMCs

Tales of Good Dogs – PDF and PoD versions on sale Wednesday!

Memento Mori – Gathering errata.

M20 Book of the Fallen – PoD proof on the way.

Trinity Continuum Storypath Nexus Community Content – Getting it set up.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Today in 1920, Jack Lord – of Hawaii 5-0 fame – was born. He was “a groovy lady-killer”.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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musickmorley0814 · 5 years

Text

Anne Carson Review

Originally intended for the community newspaper the Hyde Park Herald, this review had little hope of being published.

The world renowned poet, classicist, and translator Anne Carson delivered three lectures this past week at the University of Chicago. She delivered “Stillness” Tuesday night at the Logan Center for the Arts, “Corners” on Wednesday night in a classroom in the Kent Chemical Laboratory, and “Chairs”, on Friday night at the Mandel Hall auditorium. W.J.T. Mitchell, the Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History, introduced her each night, seeming embarrassed by the number of Carson’s accomplishments. These include Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships, and professorships at Princeton, McGill, the University of Michigan and New York University. Her classes at these schools center on the theme of collaboration. She co-teaches with her husband Robert Currie, also present, working in a background function at each of the talks.

Before Carson’s Tuesday night lecture, the Seminary Co-Op book store sold signed editions of her work in front of the Logan Center auditorium. On stage was a projection of an enormous photograph of Carson, with a wise and mocking smile, framed against a winter landscape. This faded into a violet panel as she approached the stage, wearing an outfit that has become her signature: red shoes, a coat with white stitching, and a red tie, what she calls, in a profile in the New York Times, her “Oscar Wilde outfit.” Her lecture examined the concept of stillness as it has appeared across literature, history, and in the biographies of artists she admires.

It was a wide ranging, free-associative speech weaving together discussions of the Greek poet Homer and the war on terrorism, nude photography and the modernist composer John Cage. After a discussion of a scene in the Odyssey, in which several old, loud-mouthed men become silent and still upon witnessing Helen’s beauty, Carson transitioned to a discussion of Sappho’s ancient poems, where brackets mark the spaces where words once were, and require stillness on the part of the reader; from the discussion of these brackets, Carson transitions to the stillness in the gaze of a nude woman, whose portrait was found in the diary of the archaeologist who discovered Sappho’s fragments; from the stillness in this gaze she transitioned to the musical piece 4’33’’, composed by John Cage. This piece consisted of him sitting still at a piano for four minutes and thirty three seconds. Each transition from subject to subject was accomplished so subtly as to be almost imperceptible. In seeing each of these examples of stillness placed side by side, a unified conception seemed to emerge, one that showed stillness as a positive, substantive state of being rather than just the absence of activity.

It is also possible that this apparent conceptual unity was an illusion produced by the somber, lilting, authoritative, and perhaps priestly tone in which Carson delivered her presentation. Upon leaving the lecture, I had a feeling similar to waking from a dream, where the coherence of the life lived in sleep disappears in a flash, leaving one bewildered as to how one could ever have felt the dream events connected. Likewise, the connections between disparate moments in history, as recounted by Carson, seemed to have weaker ties than I had supposed. Upon further consideration, Carson seemed aware of this possibility, acknowledging the tenuousness and riskiness of her historical weaving with a gentle note of humor that occasionally entered her lecture.

I spoke to her on Tuesday night, asking her how a reporter could capture the numerous connections she had just drawn across history. I had noticed that the effect produced by these connections could not be captured by simply listing them in order in the brusque, factual manner of my profession; as if the threads of history were announcements in a police blotter. She said to me: “I guess recording everything I said is a career imperative of yours. But perhaps you should just focus on one moment. Otherwise, if you try to name every connection, you’ll be like me, and that wouldn’t be any good.”

Taking her up on this advice, I have tried to focus on just one moment. It came just after her speech, as I was re-reading the first few pages of her work Autobiography of Red. In it she compares Homer with the later Greek poet Stesichorus. She describes how, in Homer’s work, each object has an epithet which follows it consistently: “When Homer mentions blood, blood is black. When women appear, women are neat-ankled, or glancing. Poseidon always has the blue eyebrows of Poseidon.” This passage reminded me of the pressure journalists face to write and think quickly, which inevitably results in our abbreviating reality through the use of consistent clichés. If blood is always black in homer, “Christmas always comes early” in newspapers, memorials are always “makeshift memorials”, and politicians are always “taking hard lines”, and “coming under fire” for doing so (to this list of clichés, I am indebted to Twitter user @Alexandra_Hart). The effect is, as in Homer, to make reality appear as fixed and stable.

I wonder whether the apparent unity of a newspaper, which also weaves together so many disparate events, partakes in the same risky business as Carson. Like Carson, who seemed to declare all of history unified through poetic authority, perhaps newspapers declare the connection of their communities by the authority of their brisk tone and connected gray pages.

Neither poet nor paper can be certain of the fact of this unity. Their shared works are votes of confidence in the connectedness of time and people.

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mypokepal · 5 years

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Hey, OP!! If pokepal reqs are still open, could you perhaps do one for me? Currently a freshman in highschool, nb and lesbian! I'm an INFJ and more of an artsy person who likes to draw, write, and sing, but I've never been too confident with my abilities. I'm also an absolute sucker for anything cute or pink whether it's figurines, anything produced by Sanrio or pastries! Overall, I'm just a socially awkward person and kind of dumb when it comes to academics I guess(??). - Elliot

(2) I always try my best to be a nice and enthusiastic person, but sometimes I slip and suddenly I'm pessimistic towards life, but that's highschool for ya. I'm really hoping I could get into teaching choir or just becoming a part-time artist and something else. While I have a slightly bright outlook, I'm also the person/friend who'll listen to anyone and not know the consequences of not standing up for yourself. - Elliot (3) Sometimes I feel like I'm never taken seriously with my feelings around my friends because it's just hard to find people who will give a response that's more than 'oof' or something that won't make you feel like they don't care. Sorry about the rant there, but on a positive note, I adore and love Christmas with all my heart! - Elliot (3/3) [I apologize about the clutter-]

Elliot? Do you mean...

It’s a lot easier said than done but remembering to take care of yourself and being good to yourself is so very important. It’s an easy way to end the day off on somewhat of a good note-and this doesn’t mean falling in love with yourself or indulging in things you shouldn’t. But, like giving yourself a chance and just allowing yourself to be free with whatever you want to create whether its art, music, writing, etc. Practice makes perfect and it’s okay to be a little tough on yourself in order to do better but completely shutting yourself out will never allow you to grow and learn. Art is fluid and limitless!

I hope you find someone that will listen to you and hear you and be there for you the way that you need and I hope that you in turn will reciprocate this support as well. If it helps, my inbox is always open.

And I have the perfect partner for you! Let me introduce you to...

Shinx! I think Shinx would be perfect for you because...

(1) Shinx loves anything that is shiny and extravagant! This means you can dress your little pal up and Shinx would not mind at all. Two little ribbons for each ear, a little costume for its body and a bowtie on its tail to finish off the look. I guarantee you that you’ll have everyone on the streets stopping to awe at your adorable little blue pal who walks proudly with a huge smile on its face as it shows off its outfit. Sometimes it will be hard to tell which one is your living, breathing, Shinx when it’s sitting in a pile of your Pokemon plushies! Shinx is loyal to the bone, which means that, there’s nothing that Shinx won’t do with and for you.

(2) As little as it is, Shinx is always honing its skills and constantly pushing itself past its limit. You’ll feel your heart grow three times in size when you see just how hard Shinx tries for you. The quote “fall down 6, stand up 7″ was written about Shinx because this Pokemon does not know when to give up. Shinx will keep practicing a certain move until its whole body is sore just so it can be perfect. Shinx will also apply this persistence when it comes to indulging in your hobbies with you. For example, it will keep working on one painting over and over again until it believes that it is good for you to look at it. No one is harder on itself than your little blue pal and you’ll find yourself in shock sometimes over how much you two mirror each other. Seeing how hard Shinx works will inspire you to do the same and in no time, you’ll find yourself improving drastically with your art and self confidence. You will also teach Shinx that it is okay to fail from time to time as that is part of the learning process. I think you guys would do great combining your creativeness and determination competing in Pokemon Contests!

(3) Though still in its baby form, Shinx’s emotional intelligence is quite developed compared to other Pokemon. It is able to read you with just one glance and knows immediately when something is off. Do not be afraid to confide in this little one as Shinx is always ready to lend an ear and a shoulder to cry on. Shinx will stay by your side and listen to you patiently and attentively while you vent and rant. It will be by your side consoling you until you fall asleep and sneak off to do something in hopes of cheering you up the next day. When you wake up, expect to find a cute drawing of you and Shinx by your pillow, wild flowers and berries on the dining room table, a burnt pancake siting on your favourite plate and an exhausted but eager Shinx waiting to see a smile appear on your face.

Other Pokemon Considered: Formantis, Goomy, Aipom

#pp #pal

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idiopath-fic-smile · 7 years

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have you ever put any thought into what's going on with the ABC gang in WAR a decade on? like, a lot of high school aus that use homophobia as a plot point are deliberately set in the 70s or the 80s, so it gets a little depressing because they'll have to wait decades for things to really get better - but you set WAR in 2006, which is *so cool* because in less than 10 years it goes from, well, 2006, to obergefell v. hodges.

this question is a bit complicated by the fact that i’m still working on adapting WAR into a novel, and the characters are a little different (i combined a lot of people, and also made most of them female) so this is specifically for the Les Mis fanfic version.

also, this is more just my overall headcanon for the epilogue of WAR. take it with a grain of salt, none of this is True Canon, death of the author, etc

-it is my cherished secret headcanon that the members of the ABC gradually realize (in some cases, YEARS later) that actually none of them were straight, cis, and allo, with the possible exception of combeferre.

ex) high school jehan ID’s as gay, but once they’re in the place to have more vocabulary for it, they come out as trans, nonbinary but femme-leaning (while continuing to be mostly into dudes). i think that eponine is bi (and also realizes pretty late that she’s nonbinary.) joly and bossuet are both bi. cosette is a lesbian. marius is ace. (their relationship worked in part because neither ever pressured the other, for anything. it was kind of more like playing house.) bahorel ID’s as straight for the longest time, but there’s a couple of male celebrities he jokes about as his “exceptions” until he realizes one day, hmm not really a joke. courfeyrac in high school considers himself gay, but after jehan comes out, realizes in retrospect he doesn’t fall perfectly on one end of the kinsey scale, either.

-molly keeps the ABC alive once the others graduate. gavroche joins when he becomes a freshman, and by his senior year, the club is double its original size. (he jokes it’s because he made LGBTQ rights cool, but really, a tide is turning.)

-enjolras stays politically active and does a lot of nonprofit and organizing work all throughout college. in ‘08, he joins one of those groups that goes door to door registering voters (so does jehan, who attends the same university). enjolras’s experiences with other people, people NOT from affluent suburbs, open his eyes in a good way and make him a little less intense about his own point of view.

-most of the ABC kids are swept up in the excitement of the first obama campaign. combeferre actually gets emotional, talking about it; he writes some very eloquent op-eds in the school paper about what obama means to him, and how fucked-up all the racist scrutiny really is. joly, musichetta, and bossuet phone bank. eponine starts taking photos at rallies, one of which becomes kind of well-known and helps launch her interest in pursuing photography for real. courfeyrac organizes theatrical productions to raise money for the campaign, which are a weird and wild success. bahorel is a minor social media star, and he leverages his dubious fame to try to help get out the young people vote.

-(eponine is gavroche’s legal guardian, and she balances work with community college. she was honestly more of a hillary girl, but obama wins her over eventually.)

-grantaire and enjolras stayed together post-high school, and after a year of attending a nearby community college, grantaire has the grades to transfer to the same university as enjolras.

grantire spends most of his early college years bouncing from one major to another; he likes art but more as a release than as an area of academic focus. like, getting a bad grade on an art project is fucking devastating. they start fighting a lot that first september in the same school because enjolras is so sure of his path and grantaire feels guilty and defensive for not knowing where to go with his life. it makes grantaire feel like a worthless burnout again (which is frustrating because he thought he’d WORKED THROUGH IT, dammit), but he also resents enjolras’s attempts to help him, which eventually makes enjolras pull away in hurt, which terrifies grantaire so much that he pulls away too, and they break up very early sophomore year of college.

-the night obama wins the election in ‘08, even despite the blow of prop 8 passing, all the old ABC members are calling each other, yelling into their phones with delight. combeferre is literally crying.enjolras is jubilant, but grantaire, who had never seriously thought that obama had a chance, honestly feels like he’s high again.

enjolras and grantaire wind up at the same celebratory party and, under the influence of all that victory, they hook up. holy shit have they missed each other. they briefly get back together, but it’s not like it was in high school, before they knew quite how badly they could hurt each other. when enjolras does study abroad for a semester, they break up again, amicably, rather than do the long distance thing. they drift apart even when he gets back. it’s nobody’s fault.

-jehan switches to they/them pronouns and puts out a chapbook of poetry about feeling connected to the words of dead authors. bahorel becomes a college radio DJ, and is so good, his show gets picked up by local stations and he eventually starts working as the “bad boy of NPR”. courfeyrac realizes that more than acting, his real joy is stage managing. musichetta goes into business, advocating for greater diversity.

-grantaire winds up at the last minute, majoring in psychology. studying this stuff in an actual class makes him realize just how dysfunctional his family dynamics have really been, and how little of it had to do with him. it’s both freeing and terrifying. he makes friends in his advanced psych courses (mostly idealistic young feminist women), and dates one for a while. ironically, she’s also bi. he has more of a chance to unpack all the stigma he’s been carrying around for years, how frustrating it was to be seen as “the gay kid” in high school when that wasn’t really true.

-combeferre decides to get dreadlocks after graduating undergrad and becomes “that hot World Lit TA with the dreadlocks”

-grantaire starts kind of considering going into counseling. the members of the ABC he’s still in touch with keep urging him to write Mr. Myriel a letter, and grantaire keeps dragging his feet, but one night he’s in town to visit Eponine, and runs into Mr. Myriel at the grocery store, and basically word-vomits all this gratitude, and the two become penpals. Mr. Myriel eventually writes one of the recommendation letters that gets grantaire into a sociology master’s program.

-combeferre gets fed up with the ivory tower of academia and joins a startup that teaches coding to kids, particularly girls in low-income areas. (He’d long been interested in coding, but more as a fun side hobby.)

-grantaire moves to the city (uh, let’s say chicago) to get his master’s, where he also reconnects with bossuet, who by then is a hippie engineer and just a solid, low-stress friend to have. they become super close in a platonic bros way, and grantaire may actually be the one to say, “oh btw, did you have a crush on joly, or did you guys both just like musichetta?” (answer: YES and YES). grantaire rents a bedroom in bossuet’s apartment (bossuet has more space than anticipated because he just had a rough breakup) and in his starving student days, grantaire pays some of his rent to bossuet by cooking him dinner and stuff. in this time, grantaire actually learns how to cook, beyond just fucking up the occasional frozen pizza.

-kind of to his surprise, grantaire winds up really enjoying counseling (or at least, finding it rewarding; talking to people with such intense problems be rough) and particularly working with youths. they never expect his sense of humor, which turns out to be a pretty useful tool in connecting with them.

-bossuet sometimes, long-distance, donates his time to combeferre’s coding project. grantaire hears through bossuet, through combeferre, that enjolras is moving to chicago for law school.

-at first, grantaire and enjolras are awkward around each other, but the weird thing is, their positions are kind of reversed because grantaire by now feels pretty confident in his role as a counselor, and is doing good work, while enjolras is under a ton of stress in law school and still not always 100% sure it’s the right move. grantaire is living alone by now, and he misses hanging with bossuet (who is in a complex poly triad now, and has a lot less free time) (part of me feels it’d be way too big of a coincidence if it’s joly and musichetta, part of me yearns for it, so you decide for yourself i suppose). so grantaire starts coming over to cook dinner at enjolras’s apartment as enjolras studies. this is partly because grantaire’s own kitchen in his studio is really insufficient, but mostly an excuse for them to hang out in a low-cost, low-pressure way. they eat and watch Parks and Rec.

-in theory this is a great system, and in practice it’s the same kind of agonizing romantic tension from high school. enjolras is really into this more confident, happier, more balanced grantaire. grantaire appreciates that enjolras has gotten a little less overbearing, a little lighter even as he’s also so clearly fraying at the seams. grantaire just wants to, like, give him a massage, but whoa boundaries. they sit on the same couch and SOMETIMES THEIR ARMS BRUSH.

-enjolras decides first that he wants to get back together, that they’ve grown enough in the time they were apart that they could build something healthy and balanced now. he’s not totally sure how to make his case to grantaire, and he feels a little weird being the less stable one of the pair.

-enjolras decides that he’s gonna make grantaire dinner. grantaire doesn’t really get why; enjolras generally does the dishes so it’s not like anything’s really owed here??? enjolras slips into way overachiever mode and prepares like a whole three-course spread of painstakingly researched recipes. grantaire is VERY confused. “I thought I was hot shit, dude, where did you learn to cook like this?” enjolras has to shamefacedly confess he taught it to himself for this night. “Damn, are you proposing or something?” grantaire blurts in an ill-considered joke, and enjolras’s ears turn red. they get together again. it’s really good this time.

-in 2013, when the supreme court rules that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states, enjolras actually finds out because grantaire texts him the minute the news breaks with simply, “Holy fuck, you were right all along!!!!!” and then some hearts.

-they’re married a year later. one of their wedding photos is them kissing, both raising a middle finger to the imagined haters, like “bring it on, assholes” you’d think this would’ve been grantaire’s idea, but nope, enjolras. it’s framed over their mantle.

-by november 2016, enjolras is a lawyer for the ACLU, and grantaire is a counselor at an organization that primarily works with LGBTQA youth. after the election, enjolras doesn’t get out of bed all day. then he’s a whirlwind of activity. trump-era enjolras is a hybrid of the wisdom and confidence of obama-era enjolras, and the “fuck these motherfuckers” pinpoint focused ferocity of bush jr-era enjolras. grantaire’s work is frequently draining as hell, but he’s drawing again (making a webcomic with joly, actually), and they’re getting by.

-sometimes, at low moments, they remember how it felt at their wedding reception, when bahorel cued up Ted Leo’s “Shake the Sheets” and all those friends and loved ones danced their brains out (enjolras’s parents have some MOVES as it turns out), and grantaire got super choked up, and then enjolras leaned over while they were dancing and whispered in his ear, “Probably better that he didn’t go with our prom song,” (which, as you’ll remember, is Fifty Cent’s “Candy Shop”) and they both burst out laughing in the middle of the dance floor. If they survived high school, they can survive anything.

-bossuet, grantaire, joly, eponine, musichetta and sometimes enjolras have a long-distance D&D game wherein a ragtag crew of outcasts battles the odds as they attempt to take down an evil totalitarian kingdom. (joly’s already got notes for the graphic novel version.)

#again: this is all DEEPLY UNOFFICIAL #off the cuff thoughts #Anonymous

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dirtymikekidd · 3 years

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One of my biggest issues..

Work... I used to be one of the best employees a company could ask for. I wasn’t the kind of person to come in late and half-ass their work. I was the one who was always smiling and ready to jump in with everything I had. I looked forward to every shift. Not because I was getting paid, but because I enjoyed everyone I worked with. My first job was technically a kitchen position at Dairy Queen back in 2009. I know everyone’s first job is fast food. But I don’t consider that my first job. Mostly because I was in a co-op class (so I went to school for half the day then I went to work.) which interfered with marching band--that was an important grade for me. I had to quit Dairy Queen when they threatened to fire me for going to a required band competition. So fast forward to December of 2011. I scored a delivery position at an pizza place called Mazzio’s. There I met who would become my fiancée later down the road. I thought I was doing decently well there until they started scheduling me less and less. Which while it sucked at the time, it helped push me to start looking at other places to possibly work. There was a few months of unemployment until I landed a food prep position at a BBQ restaurant called Charlie Dave’s. Funnily enough, one of the owners, Matt, was actually my dad’s high school bestfriend. Over the 2 years I was there, I moved up the ranks until I was the co-cook during the weekend dinner rushes. During the week I was the one who came in, got the smoker fired, meat prepped and on the grill, and then started cooking orders through the day I was there 6 of the 7 days a week. 9am-10pm. The pay was enough that I could keep gas and insurance on my truck...(most of the time at least.) Close to the end of my time there, I started listening to that voice in the back of my head. You know the one who tells you how bad you’re doing, and how much things would be better if you weren’t there. Even if someone complemented me on how well something cooked. I wouldn’t believe them. I actually did Matt and Chuck dirty by walking out on them right as a twenty top came in for dinner. I never apologized to them for it... On some days I cut my schedule in half because I had gotten another pizza delivery job at Domino’s and I had to work both places. By the summer of 2014 I was living about an hour and a half one way from both jobs. and I couldn’t afford making the drive there and back. Especially when I had to deliver pizza on top of the drive. I quit Charlie Dave’s about two weeks before Domino’s. Neither were totally planned out. I didn’t have any money stashed away to keep myself afloat while looking for other work. I tried working as a cook at a homestyle restaurant that my girlfriend at the time’s mom managed. I didn’t last long because of that ugly voice in my head coming up again. I didn’t even make it a week before I quit. My girlfriend and I broke up and I moved back to my hometown. By this point I felt like I was at a new low. I barely wanted to get out of bed some days. By late summer of 2014, I responded to a help wanted ad for lawn mowing. Perfect I thought. I already enjoyed cutting grass at home. and I wasn’t getting paid for it. So I got hired. I thought I was doing pretty good. Well except on my first day. I managed to run a weed-eater up a customer’s bush, killing it in the process. But I was getting the hang of things. As the season was ending, my boss told me about how he owned a BBQ restaurant. Just so happened to be the only competition to Charlie Dave’s in town. He offered me a cooking position, but I couldn’t start for about a month because I had to be 21 to work there. My 21st birthday passes and I call him to let him know. Perfect. I was back to making money and being productive. February 2015 rolls around. I request off for Valentine’s weekend. I had a romantic weekend planned for my girlfriend and I. You know nice weekend away from everyone and a hotel room. But work that Friday night had other plans. The person who was supposed to be there with me decided she didn’t want to be there anymore because there wasn’t anyone really coming in. so she leaves and it was like a bunch of buses let out in front because I was instantly hit with a line of people that stretched out the door. I was one person doing the job of four. I was taking orders, making the food, running it to the tables, and clearing tables. Something that I obviously couldn’t get done on my own. But I did what I could. I even Clocked out and hour and a half passed what I normally would’ve. The next day I drove her to park at the lake. I had her close eyes before I parked so that I could pull up next to the water where I thought the scenery was beautiful. I had forgotten that she had a traumatic event with her car and water. so when she opened her eyes, all she saw was water. Panic instantly overcame her. Which was the total opposite of what I was trying to do. I had taken her there so I could propose to her. She did say yes at least. We continued our date day, making our engagement posts on all of our socials, before finally going to our hotel. The next day I was supposed to work. I walked in the door and the boss pulled me into the back office. He told me that what he had walked into the day before was completely unacceptable and that he needed my key. I was fired. I tried to explain what had happened and that I had tried calling him multiple times trying to get help. He wouldn’t listen. I gave him my key and walked out. I went from being on top of the world to wanting to drive off a bridge. All in just 24 hours... I had never been told how bad of a job I did. In a way though it was a blessing. The food was shit. And it all came cold and was “cooked” in a microwave. The blessing came a couple months later when they went out of business. It probably wasn’t karma, but I like to think it was because Fuck him. About a month later I landed a job as a closing clerk at a gas station. After I got hired I found out my manager was actually a cousin of my fiancée’s. When I started the gas station job I was told that they couldn’t keep a guy working there very long. I made that my new mission to break the streak. After about a year, all of the clerks that had been there before me had quit. I had broken the record. I also managed to get promoted from clerk to assistant manager. By the fall of 2017 though, I got involved in a he said/ she said situation. Which completely broke all of the confidence about my work quality. After two weeks of suspension, I was told i could go back to work. But I also was warned that if i said or did anything that could be taken the wrong way, I was going to be fired on the spot. I couldn’t deal with that kind of worry and constant looking over my shoulder...I quit and left. Fast forward to 2019. After almost two years of not working and hating myself, I got a job cooking at Buffalo Wild Wings. I instantly hated it. I was too worried about the quality of the food i was sending out that i actually got into it a couple times with the other guys in the kitchen. The last shift i was there, there was someone mirco-managing me and I snapped and went off on them telling them to leave the fuck alone and to worry about their own shit. Bad move. Turns out it was a district supervisor. I walked out before they could fire me. Summer passes and I’m still looking for work. I answered an ad looking for stage hands. My dream job. If I couldn’t make a living playing music, then setting stages was the next best thing. Every gig we worked, I didn’t feel like it was work. It just felt like a dream. I guess it kind of was. 2020 happened and I went from working almost every weekend to only working 4 times in the entire year. With all of the down time I started listening more and more to that voice in my head. It was sounding more and more true about how much of a shit employee I was. 2021 starts and I start to work with my fiancée at an art manufacturing company down the road from our house. It started okay.. Until the voice came back. Now I’m back to putting too much pressure on myself because I’m worried I’m going to fuck something up and get fired. Honestly at this point I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. I loth waking up each morning. I feel trapped in an endless cycle. After not showing up for three days without calling, I found out I would be fired if I did it again. So I cut my availability in half in hopes of not being fired for leaving at noon. I don’t know what I’m doing. People there tell me I’m doing a good job. But honestly I think everything I send out is fucked up in one way of another..

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deadmanzp · 4 years

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aftg asks; questions by triquetrine

these are so interesting so i did all of them.. i want to come back after a year and see if id still answer the same!

op is the post before this or also tagged “misc”

neil josten: favorite/most iconic line?

first one that comes to mind I’m not sure is a favorite or iconic line? but it’s a line i think about a lot and it always hurts to read. it’s when they're at the cabin in TKM.

“He didn’t care how much it hurt so long as he could pull Andrew closer, and he let Andrew take him apart until he couldn’t think anymore.”

that comes at the very end of Chapter 14 and gosh just the paragraph that line comes from and the paragraph before…. the fact neil thinks andrew doesnt care about him the way he cares/feels about andrew is like….. CMON MAN but also i just love the pining angst of it. i like this line especially because the line right before it mentions neil working his “bandaged fingers into Andrew’s hair”. so the “he didnt care how much it hurt” to me always carried a double meaning of 1. the physical pain he felt bc of his injuries but also 2. the pain of unfamiliarity abt his feelings towards andrew and thinking it was unreciprocal AND THAT HED HAVE TO “WARN” ANDREW like the implication.. of neil thinking abt their “relationship” possibly ending bc andrew doesnt feel the same and maybe wouldnt want to be entangled in whatever neil was feeling …… IM LIKE neil knows andrew so well and him being so sure abt this but hes like …. WRONG …. e

nathaniel wesninski: one thing you would change about the books? (plot, characters, etc)

there is very little id change about the books if at all. mainly bc while i know there are upsetting things that happen/the charas do, i think all of those things make the series really interesting to analyze and talk about. i will say a moment i hated was when neil touches andrews scars when andrew makes it clear he doesn't want neil to pry about them. i know neil offers his scars in turn when he's trying to convince andrew to let neil look over kevin but that was controlled. he let andrew touch them and find out about them of his own volition. neil touches something directly related to the trauma andrew had just experienced again when he had 0 permission to do so. while i always get mad at neil for this when i read it i still dont think id change it or get rid of it. im not really sure how id change it anyways and i think andrews relationship with his scars (and himself in general) is probably what allows him to brush it off(?)/never bring this up (plus maybe neil offering his scars was enough for andrew) but i havent thought too hard about this. but ya i remember i got rlly angry w neil the first time i read this scene and i still get mad abt it when i reread.

andrew minyard: if you could be friends with one of the characters, who would you pick?

i mean realistically i wouldnt be friends w jocks ILL BE REAL LOL and i think as much as i love the monsters, theres no way id be friends w them haha uhm but prob dan would be most realistic! maybe even katelyn tbh..

kevin day: if you played exy, what would your position be?

oh i think dealer! in sports i liked being able to do both defense and offense bc it made me feel i had more control over the field, like i could always do something if there were any holes

dan wilds: favorite moment/scene?

definitely the hotel reunion scene. theres so much to it; it drives me nuts!!!!! but honestly there are probably a lot of really good moments im forgetting. to me the whole series is really enjoyable and every scene has something i could say about it haha

matt boyd: song you would love to see in a live-action adaptation?

Oggghh this is so hard… esp since it takes place in 2007???? Idk.. iconic artists then i suppose ghfgkjhf BUT i think general vibes i think itd be so cool if paramore (time relevant), ptv (also time relevant), and mitski were on the soundtrack……. Ya……..

nicky hemmick: which made you more emotional, neil at evermore or neil in baltimore?

neil in baltimore for sure… neil at evermore i can't remember what i felt the first time i read it (maybe pain LOL bc he was doing it for andrew and i felt like riko wouldnt keep his promise) but in my latest reread i was unimpressed by it (mostly bc i think riko is boring and unimpressive). i think i mightve said evermore in the past though….. maybe... neil in baltimore is like … GOD neils emotions are so strong during all of that its really juicy haha. i think like him being angry bc he was on the cusp of having everything he couldve ever dreamed of; the desperation of wanting to fight back and get away; even just the fear of being in the same room as his father for the first time in so long... all really juicy

aaron minyard: a character you will defend to your death?

defend…. im not sure is the word i would use and i dont think i really believe in defending any of these charas “to death” bc of how flawed and complex they are; id like to acknowledge when they did wrong. i think id “defend” any of the characters if i saw anyone misinterpreting or misunderstanding them.. theyre all really interesting even if they didnt get too much spotlight. except maybe riko. hes incredibly boring to me. and also nathan ig and any of his crew just bc there is Nothing abt them rlly...

katelyn: which minor character do you wish you could see more of?

uhhhmmmmmmmm hmmmmmm….. idk maybe… jeremy…. gjfjgkdngmdghs just bc him and kevin r so funny.. i was thinking maybe jean too but…… idk a diff kind of kevin relationship lol (yikes) (pain) but really im satisfied w jeans screen time. i think ichirou is interesting but again i think he didn't rlly need more. maybe erik actually. im interested to know what nicky is like with him :0

allison reynolds: favorite headcanon about the foxes?

actually something i recently thought abt was neil and photography. iirc? andrew gives neil a camera in the ec and i also imagine kevin eventually gets another camera too (i loved that detail when we saw his room at the nest) so i thought abt neil and kevin sharing/trading pics they take of (mainly) scenery. i imagine neil takes pics of anything he wants to remember/keep while kevin is more prone to taking pics of subjects related to some nerd history stuff (lol) so thats why they trade scenery pics mainly. but i like this small connection bc i want more to their relationship than their exy obsession and i imagine they have room for more now that riko is gone and i just like this other commonality btwn them. i think maybe they mail the developed pics to each other maybe w small descripts/notes but thats it. and i also imagine it kind of just is something that started happening.. neil and andrew r on a roadtrip and some building reminds neil of kevin so he snaps a pic and eventually sends it to kevin w some note. kevin replies 1. either a text being like that is nothing. > neil: shrugs brushes it off but figures he is welcome to send more when kevin sends his own picture back or 2. kevin simply replies back similarly w his own photo. i dont know.. maybe this goes beyond what their actual relationship would be like but i do like the idea of them just bein like… dude friends u know so i want them to have more than just exy and a traumatizing experience between them.

as for common headcanons within the fanbase…. i do like the allison + neil haircuts thing.. although im not sure if i imagine it the same as most haha i feel neil would know how to cut his own hair from his life on the run (though theyre not Good or bad just like ok u know like passable generic w/e) i think hed definitely be tense the first couple times but he has experience w allison being close from needing to be covered up w make up after winter break so i think she would be allowed.

renee walker: favorite non-canonical ship? (renison, jerejean, etc)

uhmm to be honest none really… im way too attached to canon to be able to dismiss any established relationships. i think kevemy (??? is that the name) is rlly amusing but i dont want them together necessarily haha i used to rlly like renison mainly bc im a lesbian and i want “main” chara wlw relationships lol but i recently read something abt how bi allison doesnt rlly sit well w some bc she outs andrew and neil during the hotel scene.. i also agree this is kinda :/ if she was bi Mainly bc i feel a lot of ppl (or at least this is what i gather from renison stuff ive seen) portray allison already being established bi? if this makes sense. i think if renison/allison realizing shes bi is a later development id feel better abt it but usually renison is already established so ya her outing them does bother me…. BUT aside from this, thinking about them as characters and what their partners (would) look like… im not sure if theyd rlly choose each other.. but i still enjoy seeing them together in art and in fic bc in the end…. im a sucker for women lol….

seth gordon: most underrated dynamic? (matt & neil, wymack & andrew, etc)

my first thought was wymack and andrew bc i rlllllyy like their dynamic especially after reading their ec stuff. i loved their first meeting (andrews terrible sandwich??!?fhdhfjd) and when andrew breaks into wymacks apartment BUT i think ppl mention them enough its not underrated. i Actually think renee and andrews dynamic/friendship is rlly underrated/overlooked!!! especially after reading the son nefes ec i love their dynamic a lot…

some son nefes moments of them i liked: tw // rape

renee convincing andrew to go with her to see matt after his trip to edens

how many knives do u carry / one more than u IS SO FUNNY and just andrews persistence abt fighting renee is also rlly funny to me

tw // rape : the moment when andrew asks renee if she killed her rapist/abuser that whole convo was good…

their convo in the rain w their tea

i cant remember when this happens or rlly exaclty what was said but renee offers andrew something (some help??) and he says i dont need (w/e it was) and she says something along the lines of i know but it wouldnt do any harm or SOMETHING like that.. i like this bc she acknowledges their abilities while showing shed still like to offer some help. im p sure she does this another time too (w neil???? or someone i cant remember maybe it was andrew again) and i remember liking it too. she has a way w words and talking (also seen in her convincing andrew to see matt)

BUT regardless of ec stuff i think their relationship/dynamic seen in the books is rlly good too. theres def enough to be intrigued by them and i always have been? so i'm reeeaallly happy son nefes exists i loved reading it..

david wymack: which ncaa team would you play for?

oh to be honest i dont rlly remember many of them but of the Three (ravens, foxes, trojans) prob trojans. i remember i even got them in a uquiz once…

abby winfield: which character was the most realistically written?

first that came to mind was aaron actually.. i remember before when i didnt rlly like him or care abt him it was actually bc he was too “boring” to me. i always thought he had the most realistic reactions to things which is what made him boring to me amidst the ridiculousness of, well, everything in aftg lol… i still think he is really realistically written but now i dont think hes boring haha

besty dobson: how many times have you read the series?

fully i think…. only 3 times… i wish this were a higher count but i actually feel guilty everytime i try to reread it.

riko moriyama: coolest exy moment? (kevin’s last-minute point against the ravens, andrew shutting down the goal, etc)

uhhmm uhmm i def think kevin during the final game against the ravens…. hes so cool haha but i KNOW there were a lot of game moments that i thought were really cool so i cant rlly say…. oh also i love neil being defense in that game too rlly juicy wish i could pull up obscure moments bc i know i rlly enjoyed reading the games but terrible memory...

jeremy knox: which do you like reading more, domestic!foxes or chaotic!foxes?

uh i guess chaotic? not rlly sure exactly what that could entail but i do like… their chaos.. when they have fights and squabbles and stuff… this includes the high tension moments. ALTHOUGH i do like the tiny lines in the books when we see the monsters just doing like random basic everyday life stuff like playing video games or whatever. i like…. imagining them... fhdjfjshfjs… as for fic def chaos. i feel domestic is usually too softened…..

jean moreau: favorite friendship?

oh i think this goes back to andrew and renee. but other than them… i do like neil and matts friendship.. though probably not the same as its typically portrayed

#my own #misc

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contentsoftable · 4 years

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Ten Immersive Games (and 5 that try but aren’t)

by Nathan

All games are abstractions. Otherwise we’d all die of thirst and buried in sand while playing Forbidden Desert. There is always the thing the game tells you you’re doing, and the thing you’re actually doing, which is generally moving around little bits of cardboard and wood. What’s cool - at least to me - is when games make you feel like you’re actually doing the thing the game is about - when you get so immersed in the gameplay that your throat gets dry and your arms get tired from digging sand.

Here are some that do that for me.

FORBIDDEN DESERT

Designer: Matt Leacock Publisher: Gamewright

As mentioned in the intro, Forbidden Desert has great tension-building mechanics, effective art that reinforces the theme of searching for ancient relics in a desert, and it really makes you feel like you’re trudging under the oppressive sun, watching the horizon for sandstorms and checking how much water you have left in your canteen. A simple game, but one that - win or lose - always puts you in its world, and always ends with a nail-biting finish.

TYRANTS OF THE UNDERDARK

Designers: Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson, Andrew Veen Publisher: Gale Force Nine

A combination of deck-builder and area control game that requires a lot of tactical thinking, but what makes it immersive is the the purple-tinged art and fantasy setting which take me right back to when I was twelve years old and first discovered dungeons and dragons. Suddenly I am a cruel dark elf noble, scheming against rival clans and sending out my minions to do my bidding in the Underdark, and it’s glorious! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

WATERGATE

Designer: Matthias Cramer Publisher: Frosted Games

A history lesson in a box and a chess-like game of tug-a-war that visualizes connecting crimes to conspirators in a literal sticking pins in corkboard way. Whether you play as Nixon or the Journalists, you really feel you are fighting a desperate fight to hide or reveal the truth. An excellent game.

TOBAGO

Designer: Bruce Allen Publisher: Zoch Verlag

Hunting for the treasure is the best part of Tobago, because it feels like you’re narrowing down the places it could be by looking for clues on an old map. That and the cool tiki heads that you have to rotate every now and then give this one a fun old-time adventure feel that’s a joy to dive into.

BLACK ORCHESTRA

Designer: Philip duBarry Publisher: Game Salute

This co-op game about plotting to kill Hitler is possibly the most immersive game on the list. Everything about it puts you in the moment, making you feel like a desperate conspirator constantly listening for the knock of the gestapo on your door. Making plans, gathering necessary papers, weapons, and tools, and then feeling those plans slip through your fingers as you wait for the right moment. Even the way you get out of jail is thematically grim. All you have to do is betray your friends.

RESCUE POLAR BEARS

Designer: Jog Kung, Huang Yi Ming Publisher: TWOPLUS Games

So thematic it is sometimes painful to play. You are fighting to save polar bears against a background of climate change, and as the temperatures rise and the sea ice gets smaller and smaller it begins to feel utterly hopeless, and then -often as not - you lose, which makes you even more depressed. It does feel good when you win, but sadly, that doesn’t happen often.

TWILIGHT STRUGGLE

Designer: Ananda Gupta, Jason Matthews Publisher: GMT Games

I’ve never been a global superpower, so I don’t know what it really feels like, but this game, with its simple mechanics of trying to get more influence chips onto a country than your opponent, and the action cards that teach history with every play, sure makes me feel like one. Balancing aggression against a rapidly lowering defcon status, and fighting each other through proxy wars really gives this that old paranoid cold war feeling.

ABOMINATION

Designer: Dan Blanchett Publisher: Plaid Hat Games

In this game, you are competing to be the first scientist to build Frankenstein’s monster a companion. To do this you have to steal bodies from hospitals, morgues, public executions, harvest their organs, and bring them to life with electro-galvanism, all the while lecturing to make money and maintaining your reputation so you’re not chased out of town by peasants with pitchforks. And it really does feel like you’re doing all those things. The art, gameplay, and little bits of narrative text when the game asks you to make a moral decision, all contribute to a gleefully gory atmosphere reminiscent of a Hammer horror film.

ROBINSON CRUSOE

Designer: Ignacy Trzewiczek Publisher: Portal Games

This one might be too immersive for its own good. This is a co-op survival game where you are stranded on a desert island, trying to build tools and shelter in order to not die from exposure, wild animals, madness, and ancient curses. We really enjoyed the challenge of it for a while, but it is punishingly hard, and after a while it became more frustrating than fun, but if you really want to feel like you’re never more than one bad night away from dying of dysentery, this is the game for you.

EVERDELL

Designer: James A. Wilson Publisher: Starling Games

A game of cute animals building communities over the course of a year, Everdell is basically a resource gathering engine builder, but the art and theme of the cards puts you right into its world of forest creatures in waistcoats and aprons. It’s one of those games that I wish had more actual narrative elements to go with the mechanics so we could learn the stories of the villages. As they’re not there, though, we’re forced to use our imaginations instead - and that’s not a bad thing.

Now, here’s five games that don’t make you feel their themes.

WINGSPAN

Designer: Elizabeth Hargrave Publisher: Stonemaier Games

This is a very pretty game, with cool bird art and facts on the cards, and a unique theme. Unfortunately, I do not feel like I am a conservationist, or a bird watcher, or doing anything that actually has to do with birds. I am just playing a game with birds on the cards. Not that it’s a bad game, the game play just has very little to do with the theme.

TZOLK’IN

Designer: Simone Luciani, Daniele Tascini Publisher: Czech Games Edition

Mayan civilization and the Mayan calendar are cool themes for a game, and the art does a great job backing that up, but when it comes right down to it, Tzolk’in is more interested in its cool, gear-based mechanics than its world, and I never feel like I’m doing anything but playing a worker placement game, where the theme could be anything.

SCYTHE

Designer: Jamey Stegmaier Publisher: Stonemaier Games

Scythe is a big, beautiful game set in an alternate pre-WWI eastern Europe, where, in addition to infantry and cavalry, there are giant robots! Parts of it are very immersive, particularly the encounter cards, the art, and the minis, which are gorgeous. The part that isn’t immersive is the ending. The game ends when one player completes six objectives, and then each player totals up their points. For a game that feels like it’s all about conquest and expansion, the ending doesn’t feel very glorious. It’s more like checking a spread sheet.

QUANTUM

Designer: Eric Zimmerman Publisher: Funforge

I like quantum, but it’s really an abstract game pretending to be a space adventure game. Your space ships are dice, and depending on what number they are showing, they can do different things. Although there is art for the four player colors that depicts them as four different empires, that’s where the narrative stops. I never feel like I’m running a galactic empire. I just feel like I’m moving dice around.

YEDO

Designer: Thomas Vande Ginste, Wolf Plancke Publisher: Eggertspiele

In Yedo, you play the leader of a noble family in the Edo period of Japan, plotting to become the power behind the throne. Except that’s not what you’re doing. Really, you’re completing missions by collecting items on a list and having those items in your position when you go to a particular spot on the map. The way the game makes missions more difficult is by making the lists of items longer, and increasing the number of locations you have to visit. It feels less like intrigue and skullduggery, and more like doing errands, which is too bad, because it’s a fun theme and the writing is evocative. It’s just the mechanics that disappoint.

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