#vtm mercurio

[zeiinep]

Mercurio & Lacroix

[mortifying-macaroni]

Ghoul boys are back in town!

[tremere-chantry]

Ghouls

A childe is forever — a ghoul is only for as long as it suits you.

[its-sixxers]

relationships between kindred and ghouls that aren’t theirs are built upon yearning and plausible deniability

just covering up all the battle damage for the sake of the masquerade, no subtext, no sir

commission for @nyteblaydette !

[vampemoqueen]

Here's comes an important question in the history of VTMB discourse

[thethirdvoerman]

goretober day 1 — "it could be worse"

it doesn't get better unless you're pretty

it doesn't get better unless you got money

it doesn't get better, so just give up!

it never gets better, no

it gets worse

golden ghoul mercury gets into horrible places, only to be tossed aside when he inevitably stumbles. the saint won't save you, but the sinner might.

[fujikos-gun]

what happens to mercurio if you don't rat him out but lacroix dies at the end, does he just stop being a ghoul or would the voerman sister/s accept a sopping wet pathetic ghoul with black market connections into their employ

[kyanitedreamer]

[sureokyeahwhatever]

The anarchs are not the “good guys” on vtm, there’s no good guys. China town definitely is a step down but the parallels between the Kuei-jin and the vampires are interesting. Ming Xiao is no different from Lacroix or Jack.

while I more or less agree with most of that (Ming bad, anarchs not "good"), i definitely think the game goes out of its way to -- at least on a first play through -- really push you toward trusting Jack and generally liking the anarchs.

first of all, just an anecdote from my playthrough, I went to the beach in Santa Monica and I talked to the psychic lady. She tells you a bunch of stuff you don't understand yet about "going to china" and "don't open it", but she also says there are only two people you can trust: jack and mercurio. And yeah. Those are basically the only two people in the game who don't really judge you regardless of your decisions.

Jack also is very clearly meant to come across as the "freebie" character that you don't have to worry about. He leads you through the tutorial, he doesn't get mad when you sell out Nines, and he doesn't even really seem to give a shit who you side with. He just kind of gets that it's an impossible situation.

So I don't know, while I think Jack is a pretty flawed character (especially in regards to the way he feels about the Kuei-Jin), it doesn't really seem like the game itself thinks he's a flawed character, if that makes sense. Him and Nines and the anarchs are positioned mostly as "guys who are fighting the power" which, while not making you "good" automatically, certainly makes you more sympathetic, especially in a game so steeped grungy 2000s punk culture.

But yeah. It's an ImSim, of course there's no good guys, that would be super lame. My problem was that they both had an OBJECTIVELY bad faction to side with in the form of the Kuei-Jin and also handled it in what I would consider to be a racist and immature way and I think that's just kind of boring. Of the three "side with someone" options, you can side with the bourgeois guys but this is a grungy 2000s punk goth aesthetic vampire game why on earth would you do that? You can side with the Kuei-Jin who kill you in a cutscene which is just a boring way to resolve that arc, I'm sorry. Or you can side with the "fight the power" guys. I don't know. Yeah, they're not the "good guys", but the game definitely is pointing you in a specific direction here.

But again, that's not even really my problem with the Kuei-Jin. There's nothing "wrong" with having a sneaky, conniving faction who backstab you in a game like this. That sort of thing actually fits right in. My problem was that they had the sneaky, conniving faction be built so heavily on racist tropes of the "untrustworthy Chinese" and had everyone else in the game be inherently biased against them. Whether a player perceives this as "racist writing" or not, it's certainly not interesting writing.

In a game where you the player are constantly being used as a pawn for the anarchs and the bourgeois faction and constantly lied to by everyone, I found it kind of unsatisfying that the group which is so clearly "racially Othered" (to say that in the most pretentious way possible) is not only discriminated against, but is, by the logic of the game, CORRECTLY discriminated against. I thought the game was all about fighting the power and being a punk! Having a story present and then affirm racist stereotypes is the least punk thing of all time!

Anyway, sorry for responding with a fucking essay hahahaha. I loved the game, it just lost me at the end when I felt like the writing shifted from "fight the power" to "don't trust the Chinese" 🫥

Thanks for the ask :) have a nice day

[omalahsocs]

I got to talk to a friendo about vtm: bloodlines the other night. She is a huge fan of ghouls so of course I start out gushing about Mercurio and Knox. Both of whom she was interested in.

Then I bring up Vandal. Whom I appreciate in different ways.

Not like "I could fix him" but more like "I would love to see him further unhinged so I can study him like a specimen in a jar".

I'm sure I could bring her around to appreciating him too <3.

[needleworm]

what ever i literally have a vtm url right now i can't feel weird about posting about vtm. anyway i've never really understood the viewpoint that mercurio isn't lacroix's ghoul it kind of feels purposefully obtuse just because it's never said directly. like i mean for one it's fairly rare for a ghoul to work for a vampire other than their regnant when a lot of kindred get really weird about their ghouls being around other kindred and also how much of a like information risk that is especially for the other kindred in question to be the PRINCE ? like it doesn't really make sense to me logically like who would lend their ghoul to that guy. but also more glaringly mercurio literally tells you he's blood bound to lacroix AND at a point is like "oh yeah i was going to venture tower to get my blood and lacroix was freaking out about the sarcophagus sucks to be the guy whose problem that is LOL" like for whom else would he be up there......................

[ksslr]

honestly if i had to pick a role for myself in VTM i'd wanna be a ghoul. i mean. look at what isaac gave romero! a whole graveyard for himself, a shack with a TV, a *gun!*.

dream blunt rotation would be me, knox, romero, and mercurio.

[ryttu3k]

Seven o'clock, now. Sebastian awakens to the sound of a text message arriving, glancing at it with still-bleary eyes.

can we talk?

It's from Nines. Sebastian gazes at it for a moment longer, then taps in his response: I have a meeting soon. I will come by the LR later. SL.

An opportunity, and a life-changing meeting.

[kadkadduwa]

based on this

[its-sixxers]

half light sequel idea. Goodbye To Sleep was Mary’s Trilogy ™. in the second trilogy (named something like Salutations to Salivation or maybe the less stupid sounding Goodbye To Hunger), Mary is a prominent supporting character but the Main Character is, idk, Knox or something. or maybe Mary’s childe or adoptive childe. and of course a prequel starring Athanasia. that’s the setup for one of my moms fav book series, the first three were about this one woman, four thru six centered around her son, and seven eight and nine was about the son’s daughter.

What little bits I’ve got deffo have Knox taking a bigger role (and Mercurio!) and a general focus on the crazy metaplot VTM has because boy I love me some end of the world stuff. Might flash back to LA just for showing how the big crazy shit going on is effecting the city and people we all know and love or smth…

Mary having a childe is something I’ve considered but dither about for making it actually cool so tba there 🤔