#we can accidentally start a cult...as a treat

[thirdsonofeve]

im determined to convince my friends we need to fuck off to lappland for midsummer and experience the midnight sun and go mad for a week this totally isn't the intro to a horror movie

[rpgsandbox]

CATS OF CATTHULHU is the beloved rules-light roleplaying game in which the players take the part of ordinary cats, secretly defending human civilization from the Chaos Cults of the other animals. All the players have to do is act like cats, while the Cat Herder arranges exciting challenges for them—anything from snacky time to daringly interrupting dire rituals.

Ten years after the original publication, we are thrilled and chilled to reveal a new Anniversary Edition, with all material refreshed and compiled into a full-color hardback book with plenty of goodies to boot.

How is Catthulhu “Rules Light”?

In Cats of Catthulhu, the way the story will go is always a mystery. You and your friends play to find out what happens. One person, the Cat Herder, arranges the secrets and situations, and sets the scene, but even they don’t know where the night will end. The players take the role of individual, ordinary cats. All you really need to do is act like a cat.

Here’s how to play.

Listen to the Cat Herder’s descriptions.

Respond like a cat.

When the Cat Herder calls for it, roll two Cat Dice and count the Happy Cats.

That’s about it! There are plenty of details and suggestions in the book, especially to help the Cat Herder. But not a lot more rules.

And there’s no math. Cats don’t do math.

Making Your Cat

Take a look at this free, complete Cat Character Sheet. It shows all the suggested ways to define your own cat — from eye color to lifestyle — without using any numbers.

You pick one from the five Roles in Cats of Catthulhu. Every cat you’ve ever known falls into one of these Roles, often shifting between them over the years.

Catcrobat: The fastest around!

Pussyfoot: Everybody loves this kitty

Scrapper: Rough and tough

Tiger Dreamer: Sleepy mystic that sees visions

Twofootologist: Clever studier of human ways!

The rulebook combines all these details into 30 back stories for different sorts of cats. Pick one, or make your own!

CHALLENGES & CAT DICE

Many things a cat wants to do just happen, because cats can do a lot. But when a cat encounters a real Challenge, whether sniffing out hidden tuna or tackling a big mean dog, the Cat Herder might call for a roll of the two Cat Dice. 

Each die showing an alert, intent Happy Cat counts as a success.

A Sad Cat means a failure of skill or luck.

Almost every risky situation is either a Normal Challenge or a Hard Challenge. For a Normal Challenge, you only need one success on the two dice:

For a Hard Challenge, you need two successes:

You get six Cat Dice in the Boxed Set with a cat-shaped dice tray. You can order the dice separately with a dice pouch as well. Regular six-sided dice can work too, if you count a 1 or 2 as a failure and a 3 to 6 as a success.

The Right Cat for the Job (RCFTJ)

Most Challenges are best met by a cat with the right background. Usually this is a matter of the cat’s Role: a Catcrobat being the RCFTJ to leap up a scrambly slope, a Scrapper best at facing down enemies, and so on. As a player you could also make your case to the Cat Herder that you are the Right Cat based on your background, your previous experiences, or anything you can make up. It’s up to the Cat Herder to approve.

The RCFTJ gets one free success on every Normal or Hard Challenge. This makes Normal Challenges automatically successful — but we roll anyway! That’s because of the two mystical combinations we call Snake Eyes and Midnight.

Snake Eyes

If the two Cat Dice come up double 1s, that's Snake Eyes. The attempt results in an Embarrassment. You describe what happens to your cat, and how you try to play it off. Note that the RCFTJ still passes a Normal Challenge — just in an embarrassing way. Be creative in describing this accidental success!

Midnight

If you roll double 6s — Midnight — it means a Triumph! Describe how your cat sails through the Challenge with ease and style. The Cat Herder might even reward you with a little extra information or victory.

Treats

Finally, every cat starts every session with one Treat. The Boxed Set comes with delicious-looking fish shaped treats, but you can use anything except candy. (Candy is against the rules because it tends to disappear before needed!)

If you don’t like the results of a Cat Dice roll, you snack on a treat real quick (returning it to the Cat Herder) and roll again! Alas, this method doesn’t work on Snake Eyes.

The Cat Herder might hand out more Treats based on clever or hilarious actions. Keep those kitty wits quick.

Dire Challenges

In rare cases, a cat feels compelled to try something incredibly important and incredibly dangerous. When tackling such a Dire Challenge, special rules allow you to roll three Cat Dice — but your cat might get hurt in the process. No Treats allowed. No automatic successes. Use with care.

Scrapping

Fights happen. Much of the time, a little pacing, a little snarling, a puffed-out tail, some quick swats, and it’s over. Other times it gets more serious. In Cats of Catthulhu, just how dangerous a fight becomes relies entirely on the player’s decisions. Five levels of intended mayhem determine what you try to inflict on your foe. Even if you lose the roll-off, the worst the baddie can do to you is one level worse than what you went for.

For example, if you face a Scrap and just want to avoid getting hurt, you choose Dodge. No matter how big and menacing the foe, the worst they can do is Stun you — because you didn’t go wildly wading in all teeth and claws.

It’s a unique approach to combat that preserves more options than just murder.

Rules Summary

The Cat Character Sheet sums up ALL this information, right next to the place reserved for your sketch of your heroic feline!

Catventures

It falls to the Cat Herder, aka the game master or referee, to arrange exciting situations for the Player Cats, and take the part of every other beast, human, god, or object in the worlds.

Fortunately, between the main rulebook and De Felis Mysteriis, you get 13 ready-to-go scenarios! Of course, as an ambitious Cat Herder, you will want to make your own cat adventures, or “catventures,” as well. The book walks you through the simple process of arranging Challenges, risks, and rewards to satisfy any group of curious four-foots.

CATS OF CATTHULHU 10th Anniversary Edition Hardback Rulebook

Compiling, revising, and expanding upon all three of the original Catthulhu Deluxe rulebooks, the 10th Anniversary Edition is a gorgeous, full-color collectible hardback with new art and information for players of all experience levels. The book will run to about 300 letter-sized pages with estimated delivery by August 2024.

ART NOT FINAL, ASSETS MAY CHANGE SLIGHTLY

DE FELIS MYSTERIIS 10 New Catventures

Created by a whole litter of brilliant modern RPG writers, De Felis Mysteriis offers ten complete adventures for the Cat Herder to run: enough for a whole campaign of Cats of Catthulhu and more. Estimated 128 pages, delivery August 2024.

ART NOT FINAL, ASSETS MAY CHANGE SLIGHTLY

BOXED SET OF ALL THE THINGS

A durable and beautiful game box contains the hardback 10th Anniversary Edition, a copy of De Felis Mysteriis, six new cat dice, a custom dice tray, five adorable cat meeples, wooden cat treats, a pad of cat character sheets, and extra goodies to boot! August 2024 estimated delivery.

Apart from the beautiful books, art, and goodies, what’s different? Well, we’ve learned a lot after ten years of running Catthulhu and we’re boiling those lessons down for you. Of course, the complete edit is not done yet. We need your support for that! However, here are some changes you can expect to see in the 10th Anniversary Edition.

SIMPLIFIED CHALLENGES: From now on, every Challenge is either Normal, Hard, or Dire. Anything that would be an easy Challenge, your cat just does with no roll.

SNAKE EYES AND MIDNIGHT: Special results from double 1s and double 6s always apply, instead of being an “advanced” option.

SCRAPPING: Fights are just as quick as before, but with a new level of control. Your cat decides how hard to commit to the scrap, and that limits the consequences they can suffer—or inflict.

TREAT USE: A cat starts each session with only one Treat. The Cat Herder is encouraged to award more whenever players do something clever or funny. Also, you can now pass a Treat to another cat!

SCENT USE: Putting your smell on something to make it familiar will be simplified.

WORLDS OF CATTHULHU: The nine extra campaign settings are getting a fresh read-through, especially the extensive fantasy setting of Fuiry and its Status and Trend rules.

And everything else is getting the gimlet eye as well! The resulting whole should prove coherent, easy to understand, and full of fun. Help us make it real!

Kickstarter campaign ends: Thu, April 4 2024 4:59 AM BST

Website: [facebook]

[ailendolin]

I've been thinking about the next Christmas Special and what some parts of the synopsis might mean:

"The Ghosts soon realise, however, that they may have more in common with Betty than they first thought."

Since Betty thinks Button House isn't safe (maybe because she's witnessed ghost activity?), I think it's possible the ghosts might start to believe they aren't safe. Either they realise just how much of her daily life Alison has to lie about or hide from her living family and friends because of them. Or something physically dangerous happens (like Robin accidentally making a light bulb burst and almost hurting the baby) which makes them agree with Betty that Button House isn't safe with them around.

"The whole experience inspires the Ghosts to reflect, and a big decision awaits them all."

If they ghosts believe they're a danger to Alison and her family in some way, I wouldn’t be surprised if they started thinking Alison would be better off without them. That doesn't necessarily have to mean they're going to will themselves to move on somehow (we know it doesn't work like that) but they could still find ways to disappear from Alison's life. The grounds of Button House are vast enough for that. I could see them making the decision to leave the house, thinking that's what's best for the Coopers, and the episode ending wirh Alison going after them and telling them they're her family too and that she wants them in her life.

Alternative speculation #1 (aka wishful thinking on my part)

As someone who absolutely adores the Plague Ghosts, I could also see the ghosts realising there's nothing more important than family because of Betty. They see the lengths Betty is willing to go to to make sure Mike, Alison and the baby are safe, the love that's behind everything she does. Perhaps that will make them realise there are people in their afterlives they haven't treated as kindly as they should have - namely Humphrey and the Plague Ghosts - and they'll vow to do better in the future. With Humphrey, that's easy. They'll make a point of including him. But what if they decide to ask the Plague Ghosts to move upstairs? To officially become a part of the family? That would be a huge decision and also something they've never done before (Larry, I think, mentioned there'd be an unexpected tonal shift).

Alternative Interpretation #2

The reflection and big decision could also be about Alison telling Betty about the ghosts. This ties in to what I mentioned at the beginning - that the ghosts realise how much Alison has to hide from other people, even her own family. Upon reflecting on what that will mean for the rest of her life, they could come to the decision that Alison should tell Betty the truth. This would also be something we haven't seen in the show before. Off the top of my hat I can only remember two moments when Alison told other people about her gift: 1) when she wanted to appear crazy in front of Mike's friends to get Mike out of the cult meeting, and 2) when Kylie was there and she realised they share the same gift. As far as we know, Alison has never told anyone in her family about the ghosts so her telling Betty would be a huge deal.

Obviously, this is all speculation. It's possible none of this will happen; it's also possible some things will but for different reasons, under different circumstances or in different ways. There is so very little the synoposis actually tells us - no mention of Baby Cooper, for example. Is Alison still pregnant? Will she give birth at home? If the baby is already born, will it play a key role in Betty's arc about Button House not being safe? Why is Mike's father not mentioned, or his sisters?

I love that we know so little and have so much room for speculation. For me, that's almost as fun as getting to see what actually happens.

[crispy0nion]

takes a deep breath. ik it hasn't even been a day but we need to talk about the umbrella academy season 4. obviously spoilers ahead. and a long, long fucking post full of complaints.

this season got me shinji chairing so hard. what the fuck. six episodes that last barely an hour each and all for THAT ending? don't get me wrong, the ending itself is... not the worst possible outcome, ig, but like. plot holes so big i can fit five's ego in there and still have spare space.

yeah, let's start from there. what the fuck was that? a half-assed five/lila romance was the last thing we needed. call me a hater, tell me i don't know how to appreciate complex stories, idc. that sucked ass. not only is it creepy in so many ways, but it also brought absolutely NOTHING to the story. "oh but if that didn't happen then five wouldn't have accidentally wandered into the station's coffee shop and met himself" I DON'T GIVE A SHIT!!!! IT COULD'VE HAPPENED IN SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS!!!!!! AND FIVE KNOWS BETTER THAN TO THROW HANDS WITH HIS BROTHER OVER A GIRL WHILE THE REST OF THEIR SIBLINGS ARE FIGHTING THE DAMN BLOB OF DEATH!!!

moving on ig. i don't like how allison's past actions seemed to be simply forgotten. i know they acknowledge it a couple times and that it's been six years, but lord almighty she assaulted luther, got him killed, and betrayed her entire family for a father that never cared about any of them. i don't think i could forgive that so easily (i'm looking at you klaus).

about the plot holes. first off, i would've appreciated even just a slight explanation of what the fuck reginald and abigail are? are they aliens? are they robots? are they alien robots? also, side note, what the fuck did reginald even do to grace atp? did he create a robot in the image of a human lady or did he turn the human lady into a robot???? and back to abigail for a moment: ?????????? and also the obsidian hotel????? AMERICA EXPLAIN. EXPLAIN

more plot holes: the solution to the cleanse problem. five said that the only way to fix the timelines is to let the cleanse happen, aka absorb them, so that the marigold inside them is destroyed since that's what split the timelines, no? and they made a big deal out of lila leaving because they needed all of the marigold holders to partake in this. except that YOU EIGHT IDIOTS ARE NOT ALL THE OCTOBER 1ST KIDS IN THE WORLD. THERE'S MORE, THAT WAS LIKE 43 WOMEN WHO GAVE BIRTH YOU DUMB FUCKING CUNTS. WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER 35 KIDS. uhm. sorry about that. moving on.

did not like how jennifer's character was treated at all. no time to develop, no time to get us to know her. straight to the blob of death without even explaining what was going on. how did the durango end up in her body? who even created that anyways? how did she end up in a damn fucking giant squid? why was she talking about the cleanse? what the fuck? listen im sure the comics explain this and ik this show is supposed to be a bit... confusing and nonsensical, but this is info you can't just leave out. feels like lazy writing.

and how the fuck did the cleanse cult even know that this nonesense that a kid coming out of a squid was blabbering about was connected to them having dreams of other timelines? how the fuck did jean and gene know? what?

yk what, im also gonna throw in some more personal points of view in here. i did not understand a single thing about the timeline/universe/whatever they ended up in at the end of s3. is it a new universe? if so, why is everything the same and WHY is the timeline still fucked? and where's the academy in this timeline? does it not exist? why? why and how is abigail still alive? was she even dead in s1, on the moon? or was that a cryo capsule? if so, why keep her there?

and there's more folks! why did the timeline train not stop at lila and five's stop? that was random and never explained, and feels like lazy writing, again. or like an excuse to get a specific two people to mingle just to create an unnecessary and unwanted love triangle? perchance?

lastly, how can claire and lila and diego's children still exist if their parents were erased from existence? and since they still exist but their parents never did, how does it work? do lila's parents just look after these random kids? without reason? wouldn't not having existing parents at all create legal problems?

overall, i have a lot of issues with this season. it feels extremely rushed, and honestly quite boring in comparison to the other three. and the lack of explanations makes it so hard to enjoy because i'm busy being confused. im not so mad about the ending, i kinda saw it coming (my choice was between they all die or they get stuck in a loop), and I don't think it's necessarily a bad ending for a story like this one. i am a bit sad, yes, and i will miss these characters and regret the fact that they didn't get the lives they deserved, but i think it's an ok ending. not the best, but ok. but the rest of the season? ass. yet another show absolutely ruined by netflix's inability to see past money and actually produce a good ending instead of rushing things. peace ✌️

[guardianoflightanddarkness]

An unpopular opinion about Gravity Falls: Return to the Bunker fanmade episode

(SPOILERS)

Okay, first of all, I want to make perfectly clear that I fully respect the crew and the job put in this episode, seriously, it's a blast to have such passioned fans that keep the fandom alive after 11 years and more to come, and honestly, I would want to see more projects like these and The Woods and Tales of Weirdmaggedon returning.

I was honestly very hyped up with this episode since I found out it was in production, so of course having it full yesterday was an awsome surprise. The art, the storyboard, the staging, the editing and the cast was an easy 10 out of 10, and I have absolutely zero complains in the audiovisual part.

However, sadly, to me, the entire thing comes crashing down with the plot and the narrative, by basically changing and missunderstanding the main characters, specially Ford: yes, it's no secret that Ford has trust issues, I think that was pretty clear after he FELT (not saying they did, but that's his perception) betrayed by his twin brother (sabotaging his project and keeping quiet about it, accidentally trapping him in the multiverse for over half of his life during a fight he started it, stealing his house, his identity, mock his entire carreer for money and then starting the portal that almost destroyed the world), his best friend from college (who created the memory gun and used it against him after starting a cult), his pet (the Shapeshifter tried to kill him and Fiddleford) and his muse (who manipulated him, lied to him, possessed and tortured him for decades, not to mention unable to sleep in peace until he got a plate in his head, and being hunted down accross the entire universe for 30 years), alongside all the stress of re-adapting to his dimension, contain the rift and keep Bill at bay.

So yes, Ford has reasons to be the way he is, but the problem is, the Ford we see in this episode is NOT the same one we saw in the TV show or in Journal 3: Ford can be bitter, and like I said, has trust issues, but he is not an ass for the sake of it like they portrayed him here, specially towards Mabel: yes, true, they didn't spend that much time together, but the little times we saw Ford interacting with her or even just talking, or even his entries in the journal, he shows how much he adores her, he only has praise for her ("I like this kid, she is weird!", "She has a magnetic personality!", "You are a good person, Mabel!"), and openly trusted her with a crossbow and sent her to a mission to protect the Shack. This one is openly hostile to Mabel, refusing to wear her sweater because it's hot (WTF, you are LITTERALLY wearing one!), downright telling her he doesn't trust her when he did before, and even saying he likes Dipper because he listens and obeys blindly. Ford LOVES these kids and always showed it, and yet the man in this episode doesn't seem to give a crap about anyone's feelings by being a jerk without a logical reason.

Which brings me to the next point: his reunion with Fiddleford makes NO sense considering that we saw Ford BLAMING himself over and over for what happened to Fiddleford, we litterally see him thinking he hates him and actually displaying remorse, and Fiddleford showing compassion and forgiveness. Instead here, we see Ford treating Fiddleford like dirt just like he did before the portal incident 30 years ago. And Mcgucket doesn't act like Mcgucket himself either, not to mention how the writing ignores how unstable he can be, ("Dude, Mcgucket would never do that!", sure, let's ignore this is the same guy that creates huge terrifying destructive robots that reck the town on a wim like his son not paying attention to him, his wife divorcing and not getting invited to a friend's party).

The entire episode's narrative and characters bash Ford for his trust issues and traumatic experiences instead of tackling down his trauma propperly: I mean, the show EXPECTS Ford to ignore ALL his traumas for over 3 decades and trust not just Mabel, which would have been understandable, but Soos and Wendy, who he doesn't even know, with the rift, you know, the thing that can destroy them all, and then gets punished for not doing so, and paint him as an ilogical paranoid that puts down everyone around him. None of them show any empathy towards him, and they are quick to antagonize him over it and directly blame him for EVERYTHING that happened in Gravity Falls, and the narrative reassures that they are in the right, pointedly ignoring not just all Ford's trauma but everyone's own actions into all the mess that happened over the summer. For crying out loud, the narrative shows more compassion, understanding and sympathy towards the fricking Shapeshifter and blames Ford for the experiment's fate, the monster ACTUALLY having the gal to say that Ford can't change, that he promises to change but then backtracks and keeps going (ironic that this is accused to Ford, of all characters in this episode) and then getting a fricking REDEMPTION and romance partner that he didn't deserve while ignoring he tried to kill Ford and Fiddleford back in the day, traumatizing the latest one, and tried the same with Dipper, Mabel, Soos and Wendy. But hey, nevermind, he just needed some love, he deserves to be happy, NOT YOU, FORD!....I swear, I can't with this.

And that fricking final...WHERE do I even start with that? Ford was affected and TRAUMATIZED because of the ray gun, he was a victim of it, he was the one who tried to stop Fiddleford from using it on himself MULTIPLE times, and who struggled to do it with Stan and broke down after being forced to do so, to his own brother, and only felt a bit relieved after they got his memories back. And you're fricking telling me he would use it on his 12 year old NIECE and friends AFTER they patched things up and he came clear, breaking THEIR trust?! No, sorry, no, that's just so out of character from Ford I don't even know where to start. I know this was done by force in an attempt to make it fit with the canon story, but it just doesn't match not just because of being completely out of character from Ford, but because it still causes bigger issues: he didn't use it on Mcgucket, therefore Mcgucket KNOWS about the rift and about Ford, therefore it breaks the canon of their reunion in Take Back the Falls since in Ford's words, "Fiddleford, I didn't see you since we parted ways, you must hate me". And then the famous lines of "How am I gonna protect the rift?" Honestly, this entire scene, if not the entire episode, just felt like the writers were just trying so hard to take any accountability from Mabel in handling the rift and just blame it on Ford and screaming "SEE?! YOU SEE HOW MUCH OF A JERK FORD IS?! MABEL DID NO WRONG, IT'S FORD'S FAULT FOR ERASING HER MEMORIES, HE IS THE JERK AND THE MAIN ANTAGONIST OF THE SERIES, WHAT A JERK!". And sorry, this still doesn't fix it, because while Mabel didn't know what the rift was, she still KNEW it belonged to Ford (Blendin told her) and that it belonged to his expedition for, in her own words, "Save the world or whatever", and Blendin telling her to steal it ("your grunkle won't even know it's gone missing!") and she agrees. So yeah, while she didn't fully know what she was taking, the fact that she knew it was something that belonged to her grunkle and that he took to his expedition was enough for her to know to NOT to take away, specially without his consent. This episode just tries so hard to paint Ford like the biggest asshole just to place Mabel and the others in a better light and ignore anything they do, so much that it breaks canon.

And Dipper's and Stan's subplot...I dunno, it felt completely unused, and once again, placing the ball on Dipper, Stan accusing him of ignoring him for a month (which makes zero sense because, Ford came out of the portal barely 2 weeks before Weirdmaggedon, there's no way a month went by, and on the top of that not making any sense considering this happened POST Dungeons, Dungeons and more Dungeons where these two had patched up, so this argument makes zero sense). This one specially dissappointed me because, the same way I wanted to see Ford and Mabel bonding, I wanted more scenes like that with Stan and Dipper, specially when we seemed to finally address the fact that yes, Stan and Dipper didn't spend that much time with him. The problem is that the narrative of the episode blames Dipper entirely and ignores whatever Stan has done wrong in regardless of their relationship that easily made Dipper distant with him: not the teasing, not the hard work to "tought him up", not his unfair treatment towards him in comparison to Mabel, not the fact that he LIED to him for the entire summer and broke his trust, nothing. In fact, just when Dipper loses his patience and actually starts to understandably tell him off putting ALL of these examples, Dipper's callout falls on deaf ears, litterally, because Stan doesn't pay attention to Dipper and is panicked due to the monster behind him. Then after that, ALL of that is forgotten, they don't patch things up, and Dipper is the one who has to apologize to Stan, after Stan, once again, not just kept him from hanging out with Ford, after he had promised he would let him go in Dungeons, Dungeons and more Dungeons, but also lied to him and got them into a bigger mess. But no, Dipper is the one who apologizes and is supposed to trust Stan...because of reasons, even if they didn't talk anything out or solved anything really.

The jokes honestly also felt flat and I only honestly enjoyed the Shrek 2 reference.

So yes, while I think that from terms of art, voice cast and edition this episode is amazing, the narrative, the characterization of the main cast and the development is attrocious. Honestly, it feels more like a bad fanfic hating on Ford (and to some extent, Dipper) and portraying him as the biggest jackass on earth and the reason of everything going wrong. This is not how the characters behave. I seriously have to wonder if the writers even watched the show, let alone read Journal 3 and Lost Legends.

[felixcloud6288]

Higurashi: Whole Series Overview

I started this series in January. It took me just under nine months to finish and in that time, I've become the most relevant Higurashi blog according to the Tumblr algorithm. I'm genuinely upset that it's over.

All the way back in my first post for Abducted by Demons chapter 1, I said "This is a story about repentance, forgiveness, and second chances." When I said it then, I didn't intend to repeat it as many times as I did during the second half. But it just so happens to fully encapsulate what I think this story is about.

The first half of this series is about everyone screwing up and causing horrible tragedies either directly or indirectly. The second half is instead about them overcoming those faults and working toward a better future.

Now you might think "All their actions get undone and they don't remember anything. None of the bad stuff they do actually happens so there's no point to all this forgiveness stuff since there's nothing to forgive." But that's not really true. The stuff they do each arc gets undone, but everything they've done coming into each arc and the effects those actions have on them are still there.

Even if Keiichi doesn't murder his classmates in a paranoid fit, he still assaulted a bunch of children with a toy gun and accidentally shot a girl's eye out. Even if Shion doesn't kill all the village leaders out of a misguided desire for revenge, she still resents her sister for the mixup when they were little and the village for how it treated Satoshi. Even if Rena doesn't kill people who are trying to extort her father and hold her class hostage due to suffering paranoid delusions, she still blames herself for her parents' divorce and is always afraid she'll lose everything she loves if she isn't diligent.

Each of these bad timelines are what could happen because everyone doesn't confront the worst aspects about themselves and truly strive to become better people. The question arcs are all scenarios where those negative aspects of the characters are allowed to fester and act completely unimpeded. The answer arcs meanwhile begin to address them and bring everyone together. Most importantly, the answer arcs continuously assert that what you've done in the past doesn't matter as long as you are actively trying to be a better person now.

The turning point in the entire series is in Atonement chapter 11. We've had some allusions to Keiichi's past but this chapter airs out all his dirty laundry. And we the readers might think "Oh Keiichi is not a good person after all for hiding this from us" but when he confesses to his friends, they all agree that he didn't need to tell them this because he's actively trying to be a better person because of what he's done.

Shortly after, Keiichi is flooded with the memories of what he did in Abducted by Demons. For normal people who don't truly have the power to traverse worlds, this might feel more like a premonition of what could have happened if he didn't address his personal issues or kept himself distant from his friends because of them. And this drives him to reach out to Rena and show her similarly that she has people she can go to even with what her past is.

In the final chapter of the entire series, Dice Killing chapter 6, everyone comments on the idea of a world where none of their crimes and sins happened, and they all agree that they're better off in this world because it allowed them to become better people. They still regret what they've done, and it will affect them all their lives, but it's ultimately best that they learned from them.

This series has a lot of fun with throwing supernatural and occult aspects at the reader. We start the story with a premise that there's some secret death cult running the village. Then as we keep going, we get things like the dead coming back to life, doppelgangers, death curses, and the mortal incarnation of a god.

All these different elements become a tangled mess that the reader is left to try figuring out how they come together. And in the answer arcs, we get to find what is true and what is false. And it turns out most of these supernatural elements are actually mundane coincidences or misunderstandings. In fact, Atonement seems intent on proving there isn't anything supernatural going on by introducing a new element, mind controlling alien parasites, and showing how we could mistakenly think that's a thing.

But as the story shows how some supernatural elements aren't real, it doubles down on others. As we learn that aliens, doppelgangers, and zombies are not part of this story, we're also shown that Oyashiro is real, Rika is Oyashiro's reincarnation, and they both have something to do with everything going on.

And all these strange elements were ultimately a distraction. The main point to it all is there is a conspiracy to destroy the village and Rika's death is a core aspect to it. Once all the occult mysteries are solved, we get to focus on the main plot.

Digging into a bit of what I can surmise about Ryukishi07 based on his work here, he definitely believes strongly that a person's mental wellbeing needs to factor heavily into the actual culpability of their crimes. Nomura and Okonogi are the only ones in the story who are painted as truly evil. They did everything they did with full soundness of mind. Most everything else is done by people who are repeatedly shown that they would never do what they did if they were in their right state of mind.

Massacre chapter 1 refers to a heavy-handed example of Keiichi. We're introduced to him by watching him go mad and kill his friends. But subsequent arcs show us that that behavior is very much the exception. Ultimately, every person is a very bad situation away from doing something they would never do normally.

One of the notes in the epilogue to Festival Accompanying is Irie would release a thesis on how changes to the brain affect personality and it will make people reconsider whether people should always be blamed for their actions. So part of the good ending of the story is that mental illness and wellbeing are factored into how to approach the guilt or innocence of a crime.

The ultimate shift from researching Hinamizawa Syndrome as a weapon to researching treatment and prevention is also part of that good ending.

I've gotten this far and I feel like I haven't really talked much about actual media itself. So this is a manga adaptation of a Visual Novel. The arcs were all written and released concurrently over what I'd say are three primary waves. The first wave saw Abducted by Demons, Cotton Drifting, and Curse Killing release at the same times followed by Time Killing releasing after. The second wave was Beyond Midnight, Eye Opening, and Atonement. Finally, Massacre and Festival Accompanying released together with Dice Killing releasing after.

This would really explain why manga sites at the time hosted each arc as it's own separate series since they were treated as their own separate series. When it was given an English release, the volumes were released one at a time as part of the Higurashi series rather than as their own individual series.

If she were allowed to, I bet Karin Suzuragi would have done the art for every arc. Looking at the series by release order, she was involved in the manga adaptation from start to end.

Each question-answer arc pair having its own artist really added to the sense that each arc is a different story and these are different worlds. I don't know if there were any real-world reasons for why it happened, but Hinase Momoyama adapting Massacre rather than Jiro Suzuragi reprising her artist role for it ended up being one of the best examples of how different artists made each world feel inherently different. Massacre is a world unlike every other world and it ends up looking like none of the other worlds.

And I've pointed out multiple instances of it throughout the series, but the team involved in the adaptation knew how to use the manga medium to its maximum. From page layout, to visuals, to shading; the team knew how to give the make everything have the most impact on the reader. The team LOVES the Higurashi VNs and they wanted their favorite moments to leave the same impression in manga format that they felt when reading it as a VN.

Sadly, not everything could be adapted into the manga. There are details about the world that are told to the reader of the VNs that just cannot be carried over into the manga in an effective way. If you wanted to experience both, you're better off reading the VN first and then the manga. It would have the same impact as reading your favorite book and then watching a (good) movie adaptation. Your imagination fills in the visuals as you read what happens, then you get to enjoy those vivid ideas being blown up into a beautiful visual medium.

Two of my favorite personal challenges when putting all this together was choosing a favorite panel and giving each arc a different ending type during each arc recap. I didn't intend to do them back when I started. I originally just posted my favorite panel from Abducted by Demons to emphasize Suzuragi's skill at making mudane things creepy and I came up with the different ending types to contrast Abducted by Demons and Cotton Drifting. But then I realized that both of these would be fun things to think about for each arc.

To recap, this is what I said each arc's ending was:

Abducted By Demons: Bad Ending

Cotton Drifting: Neutral Ending

Curse Killing: Evil Ending

Time Killing: Apathetic ending

Beyond Midnight: Epilogue ending

Eye Opening: Zero ending

Atonement: Trap ending

Massacre: Lead ending

Festival Accompanying: Golden ending

Dice Killing: Tarnished Gold ending

I think that's everything I have to say about this series as a whole so I'm just going to end with a few notes I either forgot to mention or changed over time.

First, I mentioned Shion wasn't a main character in Eye Opening chapter 4. I bring it up several more times as a light joke throughout the series, and I want to mention that I originally intended to be far more aggressive about that than I ultimately was. I planned to put several instances of "(and Shion)" into every mention of the group whenever Shion was with them.

I realized early on that the degree I was going to use that joke would stop getting funny and start getting mean really quickly. I stand by my statements that she's ultimately part of the secondary cast and she's not anywhere near as close to any of the main cast as they are to each other, but they still consider her a friend and she's always welcome to join club activities any time.

I also wanted to tie Beyond Midnight to a few instances of talks about the future but kind of forgot about it when those moments happened. In particular, that arc can never happen in Festival Accompanying since it hinges on Hinamizawa being a ghost town in 2004. So I'd like to know what happens to Otobe and Towada in a world where their story can never happen.

I wanted to make one or two references to Eriko (The girl who was fed to chickens in Festival Accompanying) near the end of the series but it didn't work out. When I read Festival Accompanying chapter 4, I wanted to mention her during the very last chapter of the arc by saying something like "Everyone lived happily ever after, except Eriko and all the other children from the orphanage. They died horribly." And then when Hanyu tells Rika how everyone is living their best lives in Dice Killing, I was going to mention that maybe Eriko also got to live a happy life as well.

I'm pretty sure that once or twice, I mentioned Resident Evil when talking about Tokyo's plans to use Hinamizawa Syndrome for military use. If I didn't, then I intended to and forgot. I was going to add RE1's original release as one of the things Rika can look forward to in the future and was going to joke that it was secretly inspired by Tokyo's plans to use Hinamizawa syndrome in biological warfare, but I couldn't figure out how to fit it in.

I'm working on one last thing for this series before I begin my next one. I'm putting together a post where I try to show what events happened concurrently across arcs. I'll hopefully have it done within a week.

I hope you've enjoyed this series as much as I enjoyed writing it.

back

[aita-blorbos]

[OC AITA (anon so hopefully no one finds all those spoilers)]

Content Warning: cults, fictional religion, religious fanaticism, burning alive, asphyxiation mention, drug mentions, also this is a horror story

AITA for burning down a cult? Literally?

So, I (adult, F) was part of a religious cult that believed that there was a God in a realm between minds, I was there since I was little until around 17-18 when I did the "event".

This mind realm can be accessed through a powder that is sniffed (and is NOT cocaine before anyone assumes this) and kinda "deactivate" your senses, allowing you to go there, which is something all the cult members did at least once.

Their leader, which I'm gonna call Mask (adult, ??) cause Mask never showed their face, told the members that only those who are "pure" (like the Christian Inquisition meaning + never killing anyone) can talk to this God and live with it on the realm after death. And apparently only Mask and a few people ever got to, but Mask "decided to stay and spread the word".

But, when someone find they're "impure", the only act of redemption they can do is getting into the cult's gas chamber with a fire and burn themselves to death, a point that'll be important later.

Anyways, context aside, around 17-18 I started discovering secrets that Mask has hidden from the other members about the other few people that got to "ascend" as they call it. Their bodies were rotting in a hidden room with no life in their eyes, like they were stuck in the mind realm, but they could still talk and all I could hear is "get me outta here".

When I brought this up to my friends C and B (minors at the time, adults now, both M), they both were in denial that Mask would do anything like this, which I expected from them since they're part of Mask's family, but C changed his mind after going to see it by himself.

Me and C made a plan to tell this to the other members but we were caught and sent to the gas chamber for "conspiracy against Mask" which was never a rule since no one had attempted this before. B was still denying and didn't make part of the plan but got sent to the chamber too for knowing about the plan and not telling anything.

Since they would only open the chamber once there was an explosion or if there was no sound after some hours (died by asphyxiation), I put the gas in one side of the room flapping a sheet of paper and exploded it, giving some burns but nothing fatal. Once the door opened, we ran out of the room, but the gas kept leaking (guess they forgot to close it). I picked a torch to keep the guards away, and when we escaped, I threw the torch, unintentionally exploding the "house" and burning everyone inside.

I... I know this was years ago and it was a horrible thing to do, even accidentally but... I don't feel any remorse for it. The way they treated and threatened and traumatized me, C, B and other people is something I can't and won't forget, and I can't help but laugh at the irony of Mask dying the same way their cult "indirectly" (in their view) killed so many others.

But... since I reunited with C and B, I wonder if I was in the wrong here, at least in involving them. C still shivers at the mention of that day, though he did move on, but B has nightmares about that day and still hears Mask's voice in his head...

And... I feel like I'm no better than that cult, having traumatized B and C so much. So, AITA?

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Hey Roddy. You've managed to give me mild brainrot for your BG3 characters.

How strong is Mae's patron, relative to the Courts? ...Uh, have you assigned them a gender yet? I should probably start there, actually. You mentioned that they run a bar or something, with a clientele that warrants a bouncer, that they have "enough" power to spare on a witch, and that they have either beef with or prejudice against hags.

I may as well just ask everything at once. What would you like to share about them?

Okay yeah let's talk about Mae's patron! Let's talk...a lot...about Mae's patron.

First. to contextualize everything about Mae's patron, let us circle all the way back to my "trial run" of BG3, where I played the first couple hours as a dwarf Ranger named Aisling, loosely based on the character I made in Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town. We had a poll to decide her class. I promise there's a reason I'm bringing this up.

Later, discussing her with a friend, I said:

Put a pin in this one.

So. Rangers get to pick different Favored Enemy archetypes at the start. For Aisling, I picked "Sanctified Stalker: You swore to hunt the enemies of a holy or druidic order". My thought was that she came from a small farming sim town on the coast north of Baldur's Gate, and, since the player character in Pioneers of Olive Town is the only member of the community who can see the harvest sprites and the Spirit that watches over the lands, I figured that Aisling's role would be protecting both the town and the spirits from any danger - tie that in to the Sanctified Stalker archetype. Instead of a holy or druidic order, she has her town's nature spirits.

Then, after I set the game down because it ran like ass on the gaming laptop I had, I ended up crafting Mae through extensive conversation and shitpost with a different friend, and decided that I really liked the concept we had for her, and that I was going to set Aisling aside to play Mae. And we decided Mae was a warlock, and then I took to tumblr to make a poll to figure out the subclass, and you guys said Archfey, and I spent a little while chewing on Archfey thoughts with that friend.

And then I circled back to "the harvest spirit from Pioneers of Olive Town as an Archfey patron of a warlock", but with Mae this time instead of Aisling.

ALL OF THIS TO SAY: Mae's patron was ported over from a farming sim. I've elaborated on and spun her off into something new, and different, now, but if you know where she came from, you can see the influence.

Mae's patron doesn't have a name, but she goes by "The Lady of the Springs". Or actually, I want to call her "The Lady of the _____ Springs" and have an adjective in there, but I've never figured out what. Lady of the Blooming Springs. Lady of the Hollow Springs. Lady of the Lonely Springs. Lady of the Cold Springs. Maybe she changes it up based on the season. I don't know. So I haven't nailed that down totally. We'll call her The Lady.

She has a rather small domain in the Feywild - there's a supplement for dnd 5e about archfey and their domains, and it states "Generally, the size of a Domain of Delight is a good determiner of an archfey's power". (Generally. But we can do what we will.) The Lady isn't particularly powerful, but she's powerful enough that she doesn't have others encroaching on her domain.

She's carved out her little section of the Feywild, but she's also got an interest in the lands on the Material Plane that surround the crossing that lets one travel to her domain. That land, of course, includes Aisling's town and its surrounding farmland. The Lady bestows periodic gifts on the people and land, takes their offerings in return, and is generally treated as a local harvest deity by the townsfolk. She may have accidentally created a cult.

Mae lived most of her life in the Underdark, in Menzobarazzan, the drow capital, but about 20 years prior to BG3, she left with some other outcasts, escaped slaves, generally just some misfits, got hopelessly lost in the Underdark on their way out, and popped out like, hundreds upon hundreds of miles south of Menzobarazzan. Not too far from Baldur's Gate, a city Mae had heard about from the others, and thought might be a good place for a drow on the surface to go, keep her head down, scratch out a life.

On reaching the surface, Mae was immediately ditched by the rest of the group - she was kind of an asshole back then! - and struggled to make her way alone along the road, in the dead of winter. She was fortunate enough that when she started freezing to death, she was within the stretch of land that The Lady considered her own - and The Lady found her and basically said "hey, I'm guessing you want to live, yes? Let's make a deal."

And Mae was lucky that The Lady is pretty benevolent, as far as warlock patrons or fey go. Yes, she's petty and mercurial, as all fey are, but she does very much want to be the kindly local goddess who provides bountiful harvests and blessings to those under her care. She did not set out to create a cult but if maybe that's kinda what's happened, then that's kinda what's happened.

(As the warlock of an archfey who's worshiped in one little coastal town, Mae could probably get prophet status if she chose to live in ""Olive Town"" instead of Baldur's Gate. However, at the time she first made her pact, fresh on the surface and not having a great time, she figured it was a 50/50 split on whether the townsfolk would welcome her as someone connected to their fey protector, OR stone her to death as a dark elf who they assumed was coming to enslave their children and eat their elders. Rather than risk seeing how accepting a small, isolated town of humans and dwarves would be, she decided to chance the city instead. 20 years later, jury's still out on whether that was a good idea.)

The Lady doesn't run a bar, though. Mae works at a bar in Baldur's Gate, where her warlock spells and powers can help calm down the rowdier clientele - oh, some idiots getting up to something? Drop a Sleep spell on them. Mae is simultaneously a barmaid and a bouncer. She probably doesn't get paid extra for this.

Um, what else... Mae and The Lady have a good working relationship. The Lady calls Mae up maybe once or twice a year, whenever there's something going on - bandits on the road near her town, or poachers overhunting in her woods, or someone's prodding at her borders in the Feywild and she wants to send Mae to go check it out. The Lady very much hates hags - her tasks for Mae during the events of BG3 are "go kill that hag", "stay alive", and "go kill that hag." I have not decided whether Mae has tangled with hags before that, or if The Lady has had a hag-free 20 years with Mae around. Certainly I don't think The Lady would send her up against one alone.

And I don't think that The Lady - at present, anyway - has any other warlocks besides Mae. And Aisling's young, so she's probably been active as a ranger only a year or two before the game starts, and I don't think The Lady would have as direct contact with Aisling as she does with Mae. And while Mae and The Lady have a good working relationship, Mae would like that to only be a working relationship, while The Lady is like. I think she wants to be friends. She's pretty hands-off with "her people" - the townsfolk - and they mostly see the fruits of her blessings, not her herself, and something I've been chewing on is the idea that The Lady is lonely. She's made herself a looming, large figure over these people, and now she's alone up there. She climbed up on a pedestal and everyone beneath her kept raising her up higher and now she's like. wait. no. bring me back down.

What I'm saying is she's definitely just manifested in Mae's house in Baldur's Gate once or twice before and Mae's like. "hi. what the FUCK are you doing here."

The pact between the two of them is...pretty loose, very different from the dense legalese that devils tend to favor, and that looseness could be very bad for Mae if The Lady really wanted to take advantage of her. But, fortunately for Mae, that's not the case, and the two of them basically just vibe it out whenever they have to figure something out. Pact written in vibes and vaguery on the underside of a mushroom. And after 20 years, she and Mae understand each other pretty well. Mae trusts her, about the amount that Mae trusts anyone - she has very few friends at the start of the game, and at that point, The Lady is the person Mae has known the longest on the surface. Mae considers her too flighty and, well, fey to be 100% reliable, but Mae does trust her not to screw her over or be actively, intentionally, malicious. And in Baldur's Gate, that's sometimes the best you've got.

[writingsofwesteros]

Something about being in a cult seems hot (in theory ofc), especially if the leader looks like Matt Smith in Charlie Says. I watched it and finally fully understood why people find him (Matt, not Manson) so hot ☠️ Like imagine one of Daemon’s bastards/descendants saying fuck royal life and deciding he wanted a place of his own to do wtf ever he wants. He gathers a following not long after leaving and is living his best life, playing music and rolling around in the dirt carefree. He spends his days fucking, smoking weed, causing mischief, and brainwashing people into either funding his expenses or giving themself over to him. The only way to be accepted in is to fuck him, so it's no surprise he has a bunch of kids roaming around, women loving his charm and "magic cock". His girls absolutely love and worship him, though that's not to say they're all submissive or gentle. Sometimes he's put to sleep from their activities as having to take care of so many women that all have different needs can be tough, but they lessen his load (;) ) by fucking themselves with his cock and draining him of all he has. Though they get along quite well (sometimes more than he likes, him getting quite annoyed when they ignore him to explore each other's bodies since they can all last longer than him), his girls do fight. Or have competitions... Namely on who will get pregnant again next, them knowing he would spend more time with that girl and treat her special for carrying his seed. She would not only get all his time and affection, but she would be the only one he'd cum in for the next few months and would get to warm his bed every night (he has a breeding kink, so he likes to make sure the pregnancy sticks + he tries to space it out so the kids aren't accidentally born the same day). Cult leader can't complain as they fight because even though they're pulling hair or punching, they look hot doing it (+ he knows they'll get over it in seconds and start an orgy; jealousy always made them that way) 👑💀

Welcome back!! LOVE ALL OF THIS! We need more cults in general thank you!!

[spaciebabie]

Leans in again// also what is your whole headworld with springle? Did he escape his hell chamber in your story and now lives with the reader? Is he just Out There in the woods? Do tell

tbh i dont really have a story w/springtrap n y/n...........the thought of making anything y/n and springer related flusters me so bad afijdslkfsjdfksdfj never experienced this w/a character b4 like. making self insert of the dca was EASY! i cant draw/think of anything self insert-y w/springer w/out turning inta a blushing pink mess. i just kinda Draw Him Hot and thats it skfjskdfskdfj any scenarios i think of are just him in isolation as a character. real talk i think that he hangs out in fazbear frights, it burns so he gets out, and he just kind of wanders for a while until fnaf 6

but IF i was ta brainstorm rq......

i think him being able ta manipulate a fazbear frights employee inta letting him out would be interesting. a sort of start of the Cult of Afton idea that fnaf was seemingly building upta b4 security breach (something i was really jiving w/until the game came out and. well. we all saw what they did). this would b his "oh wait im a suave bastard and can use this ta my advantage" moment. he just acts like this pathetic little meow meow and i think that the reader not actually being able to SEE him would aid in this. hes just a disembodied voice begging for help and who are you ta turn your cheek when someone is in need? hes very careful that you dont see him tho (you might not wanna help him if you see him) and you have no idea who this velvety get rough voice belongs ta. and yet he pulls you in, talkin about all the torture hes suffered, how hes gonna get out and "set things right" (hes very vague)

eventually you do see him. in aaalll his whore eyed glory. hes the star animatronic of fazbear frights? AND hes trapped here? well thats doubly awful. never trust corporations afterall, they'll do anything ta make a quick buck, they'd parade around a corpse if they knew it would rake in the dough. he wouldn't reveal much of himself, just enough so that YOU open up and hes able to better cater himself ta your personality. he'd reveal that hes "haunted" sure. you'll buy that. ghosts are real and they can haunt animatronics you dont really need anything else, just ta know that hes suffering here. sure they're boldfaced lies at times, but a mans gotta do what a mans gotta do. but whoops! in his efforts ta seem like a tragic Little Guy and get in close ta you he accidentally got attached ta you! a horrible decision really. now he feels bad. but hes in so deep. what will he do?

if we follow the canon fnaf timeline where fazbear frights burns i mean. dudes probably hangin out in the woods. not really much of an opportunity ta meet ppl there. if hes hanging out like around the woods of a city maybe he finds himself in some persons house that like,,,,tinkers w/animatronics and/or finds them interesting? and he plays "dead" (ha) as they fix him up. they treat him in such a kind and gentle manner hes sort of captivated by them? like they dont know hes alive obviously but as the days go on and they just continue day after day ta come back n check up on him, clean him up, fix parts of him, talk ta him so gently and treat him as this delicate cherished thing (that he knows he isnt) they grow on him. he'd also probably hear conversations through the walls of the room hes in, and whenever they'd come in maybe they'd talk ta themselves or ta him abt their day and stuff and as he learns more abt them as a person his love for them grows.

i dont really see the latter ending up well. very uh. onesided LMAOOO KSJFKSJDFKSDJ HE JUST FUCKING STANDS UP WHEN Y/N THINKS HES JUST SOME SILLY ROBOT AND IS LIKE, "I love you," AND Y/N JUST FUCKIN SCREAMS AND RUNS OUT OF THE HOUSE or like after hes done getting fixed up he gets up and just. fuckin leaves. and its painful cuz at this point hes attached but also it would never work out. i mean. look at him. y/n would never love him like that. yk?

wow i wrote a lot uh. anyways.

[ro-botany]

Offtopic opinions

Awakening is a game that was rushed, and suffered a lot of cuts, but when you pay attention to the history the game lays out, you start to see this rich world they were trying to create. And the plot! It takes a standard "the prince must slay the evil dragon" story and it flips it on its head and uses it to explore cycles of abuse and trauma.

I'm not sure I agree there about the game having a rich world.

There's very little to the world building like Chrom's famous ancestor and Ylisse's First Exalt is just a word for a word copy of Marth without any sort of name. Similarly Chrom's father has no name and the crusade is woefully underdeveloped.

There are also characters like the Hierarch, whom allegedly acted as a mentor to Emmeryn but just betrays her with this big event going uncommented on and the Hierarch having no name, his Japanese name is just the name of his class!

The Taguel are another thing having basically no history outside of things basically copy/pasted from the Laguz and the writers couldn't even get Panne's personal history right; she says in one support her birth mother raised her alongside other taguel, but in another says her mom died when she was an infant so she never knew her or any other taguel.

Compare these all to even the first game having oodles of info on Marth's ancestor and the history of the continent as well as its wars.

Or Orson's betrayal in Sacred Stones to the Hierarch, as well as the long history of the Laguz in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn compared to the Taguel's inconsistent lore that acts as a mere footnote in Awakening.

Also personally I find Awakening follows all the standard FE tropes to the letter without any sort of diverging from them.

...If you find killing vast swathes of virtual human enemies disturbing, then strategy games centered around war may not be the games for you. This is what we call a genre convention. You gotta be able to handle killing the little pixel guys to enter.

Its not that I find it disturbing but more I feel Awakening treats war like a game and isn't interested in explaining why the protagonists are killing people or the ramifications of killing people.

Its simply playing into "kill brown men because they're ugly and rescue the sexy brown women from them."

Like even Genealogy of the Holy War talked about how the cycle of vengeance affected everyone, how its still sad to kill the Loptous cultists as they are human beings and that even the head of the cult, Manfroy didn't start out evil.

Awakening, to me personally, just seemed like it only cared about making the player feel powerful by having every enemy be either forced to fight them against their will or be a piece of crap that absolutely nobody loved (Aversa's storyline goes out of its way to say nobody mourns Grimleal deaths for example), whilst every women around just threw themselves at the player.

(Second debate hour anon ask I got too busy to reply to when it came in; My Bad anon hope you're doin well.)

"whilst every women around just threw themselves at the player" Anon, I can't stress this enough:

This is the game where M/F MONOGAMY IS A STRICTLY ENFORCED GAME MECHANIC I'm. I just. Did we read the same supports? Because most of the Robin supports I remember are like, Robin failing really badly at making soup, or losing stuff, or teaching people funny slang and then regretting it.

All the supports had to be written to believably be building friendships, because you can still A rank characters with each other after they're married. Because of this, the vast majority of supports only pivot into anything even remotely romantic directly in the S support. It's usually not done well, honestly, imo. But either way that doesn't leave room for this like, harem anime AU you're inventing in your head.

"Women throwing themselves at the player" did you read the support where Robin accidentally gives Sully the shits and she threatens to kill him, anon. Did you.

Anyway. It sounds like you're reaching for reasons to object to this game on some kind of moral grounds. You don't HAVE to do that, though. You can just dislike the game for non-moral reasons. Or for no reason. It doesn't have to be that deep.

Anyway to address your other points briefly I mean, uh, with way too many words as usual lmao

I'm not about to argue that the game is perfect in any respect. It's not even CLOSE. I've said before and I'll say it again that there's a lot of unused potential in Awakening, from places where characterization is thin to the massive gaps in the worldbuilding. The way this game treats Aversa is gross as hell and it has plenty racism problems besides. Trust me, I am not unaware of or ignoring the bad and the ugly.

To be honest? It being deeply flawed is what keeps me coming back to it.

If a game is perfect, there's only so long you can gush about how good it is. If a game is GOOD, but FLAWED? You could write a fuckin thesis about it. Hell, I arguably have, the word count on the collection of Awakening-related meta posts I've authored or made big additions to just keeps on jumping.

Yes, Awakening's worldbuilding has major gaps; but what we got was legitimately interesting! Piecing together what we got is fun for me! Filling in some of those gaps by extrapolating from the facts at hand is fun! Headcanoning in the rest is fun!

Sure, some of the characters and relationships are sorely underdeveloped, and there are some inconsistencies in the supports and that sucks. But seriously analyzing what's there is fun as hell! Taking the things we know and extrapolating personality and relationships is a blast! And for the more major characters, what's there is legitimately compelling as hell - the amount of scholarship the mutuals and I have authored about mister Grima faildragon himself is proof of that. As is the fact that we have honest to goodness essays about Validar of all characters. VALIDAR.

I can't really compare it to most of the other FE games, having not played most of them. I can accept it's not the best FE by a long shot. But I'm also willing to give it leeway for how the release dates hamstrung it, I appreciate the clear love and effort that was put into it anyway, and I respect it a lot for the part it played in keeping the franchise alive today.

And to be perfectly frank, it also is a story that I stumbled across when I was in a rough patch, and it helped me deal with the Horrors, so y'know. It's a really important game to me for that reason.

If its flaws are dealbreakers for you I may not be able to change your mind. That's ok!

But hopefully this at least gives you some insight into why I, at least, am so obsessed with it. It's flawed as hell and that makes it capital C Compelling.

[the-chosen-none]

Harold’s Accidentally Horrifying Vault

Okay, so I’ve made a post here before several months ago alluding to what I picked up on about Vault 29, which is where Harold came from, and I also made a post about it on the classic Fallout subreddit a while back, but I’ve decided do a deep-dive into it here because it is a perfect example of how different writers presumably not communicating with each other plus writers treating something obviously bad as not being that big of a deal accidentally created something way worse than what they might have originally intended. 

True, most of it comes from Van Buren and the Fallout Bible, the former becoming very different for New Vegas and the latter being more of a suggestion that writers can use or discard, but a reference to what became of Vault 29 in New Vegas seems to me like it was meant to be an Easter egg for the fans who knew about Van Buren to tell them that this idea created for Van Buren still exists in canon one way or the other. 

So basically, Vault 29′s experiment was to put a bunch of kids between 5-16 without their parents to be raised by machines and see what would happen. Depending on if you look at the Fallout Bible or VB, the parents were either originally with the kids but they were elderly and died off soon afterwards, or the kids were separated from the parents immediately. I’m going with the latter, since the former is pretty stupid. I’m skipping a lot of other story stuff surrounding 29 like the whole Derek Greenway part, but this is the gist. 

Then, a terminally ill woman who had her brain uploaded into a computer system named Diana Stone learned about the experiment and was horrified, so she took it upon herself to take over the Vault’s computers and raise the children herself.

However, rather than doing this purely out of kindness, Diana decided to play god and raise the children to believe that she was a divine being. When they left the Vault, Diana set up a village for her flock to live in, and much like Arroyo, the so-called “Twin Mothers tribe” would pretty much cosplay as Native Americans, in this case the Anasazi, to live in an agrarian society away from the rest of the world. 

My memory is a little fuzzy on what was supposed to happen in VB, so correct me if I’m wrong, but because your player character was a carrier of a plague, they had to find a way to cure it, and so by helping Diana re-establish herself as the ruler of the Twin Mothers, she would help you out, and the cure had to do with the fruits growing from the tree on Harold’s head. 

As far as I know, Diana was supposed to be seen as a good person, or at least helping her continue to keep the Twin Mothers in isolation is supposed to be the “correct” decision, even though she started a cultural-appropriating cult which she made herself the spiritual leader of, keeping her people ignorant of the outside world. It really IS Arroyo all over again, except at least Arroyo eventually abandoned their former way of life. 

Okay, so most of this has yet to be acknowledged in canon... however, Ulysses does mention the Twin Mothers in NV, and that they were either absorbed or destroyed outright by Caesar’s Legion. Like I said, I think this was meant to be an acknowledgement to the fans who had followed Van Buren’s development, so we can assume that the general outline of the Twin Mothers’ origins could be canon. 

Before I move on, I should acknowledge that Vault 29 did get a reference in Fallout 76, where a university student bemoans the thought of having to work with supposedly spoiled teenagers from affluent families, though because this character was not actually working with the Vault when she talked about it, we can assume that she’s not entirely correct in her assessment of the Vault, since the Fallout Bible pretty clearly stated that it was both young children and teenagers in there.

Anyway, so Harold came from a cult? That’s not great, but maybe it doesn’t sound quite horrifying to some of you yet. Oh, I haven’t even gotten to the worst part!

You see, the final piece of canon information about Vault 29 comes from the Tell-Me-About function from FO1 where, if you ask Harold about his Vault, he says that the people had to leave because there was too many people and not enough food and water to go around. If we consider the FO Bible, it says that Harold, and presumably the rest of the residents, left in 2090, 13 years after the War. 

A Vault originally made entirely of minors had to leave in just 13 years because of overpopulation, and remember, due to the nature of the Vault’s experiment, these children would have had to be selected before the War, and it wasn’t a case of random people from all over running inside... 

At best, Diana ignored what was going on and let the kids run wild because she wanted them to be free-spirited and one with nature and all that, OR she deliberately manufactured this overpopulation either to make as many people as possible for her cult or as a controlling method, real cults have been known to set up marriages and make the victims have children to discourage them to leave. 

It’s honestly pretty likely that the writers of Van Buren either forgot or had no knowledge of the Tell-Me-About line, and if they had included the Twin Mothers more in New Vegas, it’s likely that they would have ignored it, but because they have not yet talked about them in more detail within canon, what we’re left with is pieces that have accidentally created something both more disgusting yet interesting than the racist-sounding original idea for Van Buren.

Poor Harold. It’s amazing he turned out as kind and somewhat well-adjusted as he did.

[in-sufficientdata]

Posted January 22, 2019:

This is the 46th anniversary of #RoevWade and on this occasion I'd like to talk a little bit about how #HowToEvangelical when you are faced with an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy.

I was 32 and had 4 older children when I discovered I was pregnant with the twins.

I had started to suffer doubts by this time, and was struggling with the way the evangelical church treats and teaches about LGBTQ people, but I was determined to stick with my beliefs and to prove I was faithful by my actions.

This was an effect of cognitive dissonance.

I wanted to believe the things I had been so staunchly sticking with, and despite the fact that we struggled with poverty and joblessness, I saw the accidental pregnancy as a test of my faith.

So when by OB suggested termination, I immediately said no.

I had heard stories that some evangelical Christians would have abortions despite their stated beliefs, because of the hardships they would endure, and I didn't want to be one such 'failure'.

But it's more than that. I saw it as a punishment.

See, I had procrastinated on calling my OB/GYN when I had noticed the strings on my IUD were missing. So this was a 'natural consequence' style punishment. I had done something dumb and now I had to suffer for not acting.

It was more than that though. I had been having doubts.

I wanted a job. I wanted an education. I wanted to offer more love and understanding to LGBTQ people, who I was more and more coming to understand were unable to help being themselves.

I had obviously been found wanting and needed to be punished.

I left that church when my twins were 8 months. Every day of those 8 months, I looked at them as a punishment that I had been forced to endure. I cried a lot.

Now as an exvangelical when I see them I'm reminded of the misguided beliefs I held at the time.

I didn't know why we were poor when we were taught that if we had many children we would be blessed. I didn't know why I was afflicted with chronic pain and mental health problems when I constantly prayed for healing. I just knew #HowToEvangelical and how to stick with it.

Now I believe in a woman's right to choose. I believe that a woman doesn't have to obey her husband's every whim. I believe that if a child will be unwanted that the woman should be able to terminate her pregnancy. Your reasons may be different from hers; that's okay.

I still struggle now with feeling like I've missed out. I gave up on a 5-figure-a-year university scholarship to stay at home, get married, and have kids. I could have a degree now, and more, but I don't. All because I was indoctrinated into an evangelical cult at 18.

All I can do is fight for the rights of other women to choose. And that's why I commemorate #RoevWade today. We would be so much worse off without it.

[shadeswift99]

What's goin on everyone, my name is Impulse and welcome back to another episode of Hermitcraft Season 8! Today we are going to kill a god by feeding him to The Abyss -

[sixstepsaway]

I watched a very interesting video on yt a few months ago, talking about purity culture and the concept of sin in christianity and how and why it perpetuates a cult of abuse

[cw: some talk of non-con in fiction, some talk of csa but nothing graphic, explicit homophobic rhetoric as used against other people, fandom discourse in general, also this post is long]

obviously this isn't all christians, and it applies to more than JUST christians unfortunately, but since I kicked open the door to talk about why people insist izzy is manipulative and strip ed of his agency, I thought I'd talk about what I learned from this video in regards to fandom puritans and their behaviors

the basics of the cultish christian ideaology is that thinking about sin is the same thing as acting on those thoughts. if you see someone walk past and you're like, "eheh hot," then you've already committed the sin, which leaves a lot of people thinking "well, if thinking she's hot is already the sin, then i might as well fuck her"

(this is also one of the reasons why csa is so prevalent in these circles, this ideology says that thinking about something is the same as doing it, so they might as well just indulge those thoughts, no?)

when you chew on that a little, the fandom puritans really start to make sense in their own twisted ways!

I remember years ago I heard of the term 'culturally christian' and it dinged something in my brain. a lot of us aren't christian. i wasn't raised going to church or believing in god or any of that, but i was raised in a primarily christian country (although less so these days, afaik, than the US) and so i enjoy christmas and a lot of christian beliefs have been perpetuated into my psyche by the cultural norms

my dad, a raging athiest, talks about our pets going to heaven. my mom says, "oh, bless her!" as a sweet way of saying how cute something is. i say "bless you" when someone sneezes, because it's polite. cultural christianity.

in the US, from what I can tell, the culture is even more heavily steeped in christianity, which is why people who are, much like my dad, raging athiests, or who think christianity is a crock or think god is a stupid concept, parrot christian rhetoric

because they weren't taught it as christian rhetoric. they were taught it as just... the right thing.

so, following this ideology, thinking is the same as doing. that means fantasising is the same as doing, too, and watching, and reading, and writing are all balled up under that same

if you dare to enjoy a problematic character who does things like feeding people's toes to them, then you are committing the same sins crimes he is. fictional csa or incest or whatever is the exact same as real csa, incest etc, not because of those being hurt but because someone is doing the thing by thinking about it.

it's the same reason why the culture of telling girls and women to cover up exists. if a man sees them and goes, "hubba hubba" in the privacy of his own brain, he's sinned. thusly, the girl in question (even if she's a fucking twelve year old) has led that man to sin.

there's also a discussion in those videos about how asking about how far is too far in regards to premarital sex is treated as "trying to find the line" and those questions should never be indulged, implying that saying "hey, does holding hands count as a sin?" is a forbidden question because if you can hold hands you might just - gasp - move on to kissing each other on the cheek! instead of the truth of it, which is that if someone says, "Can we hold hands?" they're asking that, not asking to bump up against a fake purity line and accidentally tumble over it

not giving these things any kind of qualification or boundaries is absolutely toxic, and you see it perpetuated through fandom purity warriors the same: you can't ship this thing but i won't tell you why. you're shipping? well, you're bad because it's pedophilia. you're bad because it's racist. you're bad because it's abusive. why is it those things? well, i'm not going to tell you that, i shouldn't have to, you should be able to see it yourself :/

Also, the culture of boundaries being Wrong and an implied plan to flout those boundaries is just... ridiculous

So because thoughts = reality for these people, they assume that everyone agrees with them. because they don't realize what they're parroting is christian rhetoric, and so they believe it's just 'what normal people think' (which, no)

they don't realize how heavily steeped in christian 'sinner' culture it is, or how it trickles down to anti-queer rhetoric of every queer person being a groomer and how talking about sex in a space that might possibly at one time have included a child maybe if you squinted is grooming and bad and toxic

it's also the whole 'children are innocent of sin so we have to keep them that way' thing, because if even thinking about sex or anything even close to sex (such as the anatomical correct name for their body parts so they can talk about abuse if they receive it, or the basics of consent and such) then they are sinning, and sinning is bad because you'll go to hell and that's bad too because obviously it's real and a place you can get sent to for knowing a cookie as it's real name of vagina

i think also there's an element of... priests and such are Allowed to discuss (and thusly think about) sin. they're allowed to listen to someone talk about that hot girl they thought about, they're allowed to think about sin in their community in order to fight it or whatever. the idea that they have Permission because they are Professional Sin Thinkers i think is perpetuated down into fandom purity culture because of how they treat fanartists and fanfiction writers and so on.

david jenkins, for example, is super okay for writing izzy and ed and pirates who enjoy torture and maiming and even for the 1x10 toe scene! but if a fanfiction writer writes those things, they're Committing Thought Crimes because they dont have Permission

and similar to how a priest can preach about sin and that make it okay for you to think about, if someone produces a show that includes Bad Things, it's okay to watch it, as long as you're thinking critically about sin the subject matter, and even moreso if you're being taught not to commit those sins do those things via aesops

I think they've internalized the idea of some people having an innate License To Think Of Sinful Things, though they do tend to yank that license back whenever they find out the person holding the license is queer

which is likely yet more recycled rhetoric because of the whole slippery slope, queers can't be trusted, queers are grooming our children rhetoric that gets passed around. they're indoctrinated into instinctively not trusting queers, especially older queers and especially older queers who are not pure about their queerness

it's also hysterical to think about what they instinctively believe gives someone 'permission' to write Bad things? it's capitalism. it's... it's literally capitalism lmao!!!

if i write a kinky non-con fic and shove it on AO3 for 100 people to read for free, i have committed a crime and should be shanked for it

if george r r martin writes a kinky non-con scene and sells it within his books for $9.99 on amazon, then he's a Professional and is allowed to do such a thing

(until they decide he isn't, usually due to some arbitrary thing like he said someone was hot (thusly sexualizing them) or that he supports proshipping or something like what happened with bryan fuller, who is a queer man (of an age that means he lived through the AIDS crisis, no less, i believe) who commented on his-- is it a headcanon? word of god? word of god that hannibal excretes a lot of precome (lmao) so could fuck will raw and was immediately told by fandom puritians (how they exist in that fandom I will never know) that he should die, be killed, be gay bashed, be beaten to death with rocks, die of AIDS, whatever else horrible shit they came up with. they've also taken issue with him retweeting/enjoying explicit fanart because "it's creepy sexualizing them they're your coworkers" as though mads mikkelson hasn't said he reads pornfic)

i think this is also why they genuinely believe that looking over at someone and going, "dang, you're fine," in your own head is sexualizing them and bad, as though sexual attraction isn't a normal thing that most humans experience every day

I don't remember which Belief It or Not video it was that I learned about the sin thing, and honestly it might have been different chunks of all three of these, but it was probably one or more of Purity Culture is Rad-ically Dangerous, The Thing About Modesty or The Problem With Sin, all of which are excellent video essays by an ex-Christian, talking about his experiences within the church, and I highly recommend them if you're interested in these topics because they are fascinating and he presents them really well.

anyway, these are just things i've been thinking about for a while, so i thought i'd throw these somewhat joined-together thoughts out there for y'all to mull on or chat to me about if you so desire.

tl;dr: think critically about the rhetoric you're parroting, it might not be what you believe it to be

ETA: I've been corrected that priests are catholic and catholisism is like, "everyone sins all the time" whereas protestantism is like "remain as pure as the driven snow" by @three--rings who has actual lived experience with Christianity. This doesn't really change my point, but I wanted to say that my comments about priests should be read more as 'religious leaders' than an actual priest because of it lmao thanks for the educaiton three--rings! Also, that it wasn't a cultural thing until recently, it's a specific kind of christianity that's taken root in the US. You can see their additions in the replies if you're curious about more context!

[i-put-the-yan-in-polyandry]

More Slime God in SAGAU

Me: Oh worm? No cap? Like, on god?

Someone, crying: Please, Your Grace, I don't understand what you're saying.

---

Me, in Mondstadt: I love all of my acolytes equally.

Jean: We were attacked while you were gone.

Me: Is Klee okay???

---

Me, again, in Liyue this time: I love all of my acolytes equally :)

Zhongli: The abyss attacked while you were gone.

Me: Are Xiao and Ganyu okay???

---

Me, once again, now in Inazuma: I definitely love all of my acolytes equally.

Yoimiya: Oh, by the way, there was an attack while you were gone.

Me: Is Thoma okay???

---

Me: There's absolutely no favoritism here :)

Literally everyone else: [presses X to doubt]

---

Zhongli: Okay, I’m going to get the wedding cake.

Venti: Perfect, while you do that I’ll check on the ring bear.

Zhongli: ...

Zhongli: You mean ring bearER, right?

Venti: ...

Zhongli: Look me in the eyes and tell me you are not going to bring a dangerous wild animal to Their Grace's wedding.

---

Yoimiya: I’ve never asked someone out. How do you even do it?

Me: Oh, what I do is, I look them up and down and I say: “Hey… how you doin’?”

Yoimiya, scoffing: Oh, please.

Me to Yoimiya: Hey, how you doin’?

Yoimiya:

Yoimiya: *giggles and blushes*

---

Me: Sometimes I get so caught up on being gay that I forget I’m actually grey ace.

---

Me: I am not a lunatic. I have the psychiatric report to prove it. A slender majority of the panel decided in my favour.

Someone: The panel is literally your cult.

---

Venti: You treat an outside wound with rubbing alcohol. You treat an inside wound with drinking alcohol.

---

Me: I hate how you're just born out of nowhere, and you're forced to go to school and get education so you can get a job. What if I wanted to be a duck? No one ever asked me if I want to be a duck!

Whoever's on duty that day: Your Grace, please—

---

Me, after accidentally making someone cry: I didn’t even realize how sarcastic I was being. It’s starting to become a problem, I think.

---

Me: Yum, thanks!

Treasure Hoarder: [puts more tape over my mouth] I said stop eating it.

---

Me at every moment with the cult: As someone who has a long history of not understanding anything, I feel confident in my ability to continue not knowing what is going on.

---

Me, trying to figure out how to realize my mega awesome god powers: I’m gonna mix a can of Red Bull with seventeen shots of espresso in a fishbowl and then chug it while Kids by MGMT plays in the background so I can perceive twenty-three spatial dimensions and fight my own soul.

Zhongli, already removing every potential hazard in my vicinity: How about you don't?

---

Me: But when all hope seemed lost, I had an epiphany!

Me, earlier that day when I was struggling with being a cult leader: I'm going to throw myself into the sea.

---

Me, surrounded by all these hot bitches: I love saying 'fuck me' because it can either be sexual or self-loathing and those are two things that describe me perfectly.

---

Childe: A fistfight CAN be romantic.

---

Me: No thanks

Me: I'm god

---

Venti: Now the recipe calls for two shots of vodka

Venti: [upends the bottle]

---

Me: Pretend I'm useful

---

Me: If I stay in bed I'll be warm. If I get in the bath, I'll also be warm. But the distance between the bed and bath? No. That is not warm.

---

Me doing cool cult things: Blackmail is such an ugly word. I prefer extortion. The X makes it sound cool.

---

Imposter: *transforms to look like me*

Me: Okay, are you like BLIND? You look nothing like me. First off, I'm way taller. Secondly, I DO NOT look so sleep deprived and lastly, if you could drag comb through that hair you're like a 7 on a good day and I've been told I'm a constant 10.

---

Me, seeing Kaeya, Childe, Diluc, and Venti on a single task: My expectations are low, but they can always go lower.

---

Me: You can de-escalate any situation by asking "are we about to kiss?"

Venti: Doesn't work to get out of public disturbance tickets though

---

Me with Klee: Arson? Oh, you mean "crime brûlée".

---

Me: I'm naturally funny because my life is a joke.

---

Me, T-posing over Ganyu: Go to Bed. This is no longer a request, This is now a Threat.

---

Me: We got a free day now. What do you wanna do? Eat? Sleep? Nap? Snack?

---

Me: My favorite outdoor activity is going back inside

---

Xiao: Could you be any more annoying?

Venti: Yes.

---

Ganyu: How are you today, Your Grace?

Me: Please don't make me think about life.