#and then i go back and get two carts for francine and henry for the same reason | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pipesflowforeverandever · 4 years

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If ya don't mind, please go into detail into what's fun about writing all of your characters! (sorry, I'm an interested dork ^^;)

OKAY SO so this a bit more personal and maybe a bit “pat myself on the back” but it’s the truth so here we are.

Francine: She’s kind of me. More so, she’s my capability of expressing emotion within my own realm of experience and understanding. She’s both a reflection of how I feel about things and a flexibility of the extent to which I understand feelings and decisions. She makes me walk a mile without doing so in another pair of shoes. Honestly…writing her is an exercise in looking at how others might love and care for me. It’s done a lot for my self esteem. Of course she’s her own character too, but…I never have to wonder very hard about who she is and what she would do. It’s very comforting.

Sammy: I don’t think I can say I’m the only person for sure/anymore, but I feel the way I approached writing him was unique at the time I began doing it, in the very least within my own horizons of the fandom. To find empathy in his position, especially in his religiosity, whereas I think (in general, not just with him), it’s kind of hard to find representation of religious people who aren’t comedic relief in their faith or villains because of their religion (I know that it’s pretty easily argued the game did this, yeah.) He’s cathartic in that sense, too, because when I began writing him I was scared to confront my own dislike of my experience of religion as my parents had me know it, but as he made peace with what is and is not right about his faith, I kind of had to as well. Also in that he didn’t have to necessarily let it go to learn how to be happier.Also feelings of conflict about sacrificing people…is a very niche but intense interest for me in characters lmao. I just think he’s extremely interesting to me because his canon character had a lot of potential. It’s a delightful challenge to try to make him a relatable person. It’s also rivaled by how fun it is to think about the journey made in trying to show him kindness.

Alice: Okay so first statement is that I’m very very not straight so scary monster lady good.

Second is that in canon I had a very distinct vision for how she was as a person and how she was motivated, and when canon kind of went with another thing, I went “WELL OKAY I STILL HAVE THE ONE I MADE SO I’M GONNA JUST FOCUS ON THAT” I can and have literally thought about her for hours in just…her bitterness, her fractured sense of self in SO many ways, what justifications she could possibly have for what she ends up doing. She’s horrible, and she’s hurt, and she can only count on herself; it’s all so cyclacle and being challenged in it sends her spiraling, and the mess it leaves behind is just…so satisfying to see her suffer in. To see her hold shreds of glass in her hands and piecing a mirror out of it until she’s almost what she wants to see in her reflection. God I love her.

Norman / the projectionist: I’m gonna be the first to say he needs to be adapted a bit differently when I write this story as original, but the appeal to when I wrote him in the fic is that godDAMMIT I love characters that make you wonder what their state of being and mind is. Is he entirely conscious? Is he entirely a creature of the now? Does he pace the halls because he only knows to react to the immediate, or does he actively choose to see nothing else? I love a good mystery, and honestly that’s not one I ever answered for myself.

Henry: Writing him and Francine as parallels…super good. Writing him as a young gay dad with hopes and dreams and a person who shares sensitivities and fears of being let down that I have, and making the simple but very symbolic act of him running away at the first major sign of instability cause problems for everyone he left behind? It’s very satisfying. He’s a symbol, too, for everything that was supposed to be right, where everything went wrong. It wasn’t his fault, of course, but other characters finding a person to blame gives them something to have to learn to overcome in order to be happy. Henry had to figure that out about Joey, after all.

Joey: Everything. His personality. How easy it is to visualize and write his physical reactions down to the way his eyes twitch and his wrist twirls. The depth of his love and entitlement and insecurity and how there’s no distinction between any of the shit that makes him great and that makes him so fucked up.

And of course there’s the whole thing about him lying under the reader’s nose, hopefully in ways they don’t even expect.

If I don’t stop myself from talking about him at this point I never will so there you go.

The Ink Demon: Honestly everything with Norman except the added bonus of knowing exactly what that mfer is so I can write a twist ending about it.

Boris, as a bonus: I’m in the minority of not caring terribly much for him as a canon character so I used him as a plot device only and only kind of feel mean about it so I might go to hell. Look at his face. He’s so cute and I done did him dirty.

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joshversus · 6 years

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... Holiday Gaming, Year 3

It’s the last game night of the year for my group, and as is now officially tradition, I prepped and ran a special one-shot using the Risus system. Previous year’s games’ writeups can be found here and here, if you’re interested.

This year, I’d been struggling for an idea, so at the second-to-last normal session, I asked if anyone had any suggestions. Dave came back to me after the session and pitched me one of the best ideas I’d ever heard: “Hallmark Channel Original Movie, but it’s also In The Mouth Of Madness.” I’m not sure I lived up to the promise of that brilliant idea, but here’s what went down.

Faith Akeley is a career-minded woman running her successful event planning business in New York City. She’s engaged to Henry Wilcox, an all-business Madison Avenue marketing exec. Two days before Christmas, Faith gets a call from one Randy West, who tells her that her father has been hurt and needs her help. Faith has been estranged from her father, and hasn’t been back to her hometown since her mother died six years ago on Christmas Eve. Still, the news shakes her, and she tells Henry she’ll be back before the holiday, rents a car, and drives up to Holly Hills, Vermont for the first time in years.

Wilbur Akeley runs his slowly-failing Christmas-themed antiques shop, The Ghosts of Christmases Past, where his sole remaining employee is Randolph “Randy” West, doting widower father to Lavinia “Vinnie” West, a precocious tween girl fond of all the usual things kids are into these days (fidget spinners, bottle flipping, dabbing). Randy just wants Vinnie to have a magical Christmas, but even the extra money he makes making and selling benches on the side might not be enough. Vinnie’s excited to play the caganer in the Nativity Play during the annual Holly Hills Christmas Revel, and has been practicing for months. She’s also hoping her father will start dating again, and is embarrassed by her changing body, especially the patches of scales that have started forming on her legs.

Faith arrives at her father’s shop, where she meets Randy and Vinnie, and is quickly joined by Francine “Frankie” Pabodie, her BFF from back in high school. Frankie runs local charity drives, organizes wine and pottery nights, and coaches the girl’s soccer team. She thinks she’s the “cool mom” and the wild one of her ladies’ book club. She’s also this year’s organizer for the Christmas Revel, a position she’s campaigned for for years.

As Faith quickly learns, however, all is at risk! Wilbur was injured when a mysterious assailant broke into the shop, attacked him, and then stole the old six-foot-tall stone effigy of St. Nicholas, carved long ago by Randy’s great-great-grandfather from the strange green stone of the local hills. This effigy is the traditional centerpiece of the Christmas Revel, and was stored in Wilbur’s shop during the year. Due to a previously-undiscovered clause in the town charter, if the effigy isn’t in place in time for the Christmas Revel, Wilbur will have to forfeit the deed to his shop, Randy will thus be out of a job, the Christmas Revel will be ruined, Vinnie won’t get to live her dream of playing the caganer, and Frankie’s reputation will be destroyed! Can her father and former best friend awaken the Christmas spirit in Faith’s hardened heart? Can Vinnie get her widower dad to take a chance on this big-city gal? Can they find the effigy in time for the Revel and save Christmas?

All that’s basically just the setup. I know, that’s a lot, but hey, I don’t make the rules of Hallmark Channel movies.

So, at first, Faith’s not having it. She’s humbugging all over the place. Randy goes over the evidence in the store again and determines that whoever stole the effigy wheeled it out the back on some sort of dolly, and finds tire tracks of some large truck leading out the alley. Vinnie is psyched to be part of something, and takes off on her skateboard to follow the tracks, but not before “accidentally” bumping Randy into Faith. Vinnie loses the tracks pretty fast, but Frankie gets on the local moms’ Snapbook chat to see if anybody’s seen any strange trucks in the last couple nights.

Word comes back that someone heard a truck heading up the old northeast road into the woods that blanket the nearby hills, woods into which even the hunters rarely go - and in which Randy’s wife died in a tragic hiking accident. It takes some debate, but eventually Wilbur’s good-natured meddling pushes Randy into agreeing to check it out, and his cardigan-wearing handsomeness softeness Faith’s heart into agreeing to take part. Vinnie just insists, and is just so precocious.

Everybody piles into Randy’s extra-long cab new-model Dodge pickup truck, and we have a brief interlude for product placement as Faith admires the luxury-level interior touches and Vinnie points out that it even has bluetooth.

The group drives up the road into the woods, which turns to gravel, rough and bumpy, as the trees close around them and they up and in. At one point, the rough bumping makes Faith collide lightly with Randy in the front seat, which Vinnie gets a quick picture right as it looks as if she is resting his head on his nonthreateningly masculine shoulder. As twilight sets in, they are stopped when they find a snowmelt washout has blocked the road with fallen trees, and they are forced to proceed on foot. Randy finds the tracks again, and leads them on. We get some nice scenes where Faith complains about hating Christmas ever since her mother died, and Randy relates in sympathy the loss of his wife but his conviction that you need to keep the Christmas spirit even in the rough times.

This heartwarming growing intimacy distracts them such that faith walks directly into a panel van hidden in the underbrush. A quick search finds it unlocked and empty, though scratches and loose tiedowns suggest that something large and heavy had been transported within. Before they can do more, strange lights are seen flickering in the trees, coming from the direction of the old stone circle atop the hill. These multicolored lights draw nearer with the sound of leathery flapping, and our heroes are set upon by three bizarre, hideous, man-sized things with chitinous bodies, batlike wings, terrible pincers, and globules of many waving tendrils endlessly shifting in colors in place of heads.

There is a fight. Randy sets about himself with maglite and branch. Wilbur draws his old bowie knife and tries to defend Faith. Faith goes after the things with her high-heeled shoe, and Frankie likewise uses her boot as a melee weapon. Vinnie uses her acting skills to try to distract the monstrosities to create an opening for her dad. They bring down one abomination and wound the others before they retreat into the now-dark skies. As the killed monster’s body dissolves into goo before their eyes, Wilbur relates the tales passed down from the native tribes, of horrible creatures that dwell in these woods and kidnap people, and the debased humans who aid them in their strange works.

Gathering themselves, the group finds tracks indicating someone had dragged something heavy and wheeled from the van, and follow the trail up the hill to a cave opening in the shadow of the hilltop, leading down and under the stone circle above. Descending into the narrow passage, rough-hewn from the same strange green stone as the effigy they seek, they hear chanting voices ahead.

The passage opens into a round, smooth, worked-stone chamber, its walls covered in writing unlike any they had ever scene and bearing here and there deep niches holding strange, metallic cylinders. At the opposite end of the chamber, a large brazier with a disquieting green flame stand before a statue of indefinable shape - a riot of angles, curves, and protrusions that causes headaches to witness and which seems at once to be both an explosion and an organic thing. Before it, two red-robed figures bow and pray, and off to the side stands the effigy of St. Nick, still strapped to the dolly used to cart it away.

The robed cultists turn and attack the interlopers, screaming that “the ritual shall not happen this time!” Faith demonstrates the skills she learned taking self-defense classes in the big city, Wilbur stabs, Frankie utilizes her cool mom yoga to dodge and sweep, Randy demonstrates the efficiency of an extra large maglite as a bludgeon, and Vinnie uses the bowl shape of the room to skateboard up to speed before doing a no-comply kick right in the face. The battle is ended when Vinnie does a bottle flip directly onto the face of the last cultist, knocking them out. Vinnie is disturbed when, upon searching the cutlists, she finds them covered in large patches of scales not unlike those recently developed on her own legs.

Wilbur recalls that according to the earliest tales, the Christmas Revel was originally believed to keep evil spirits from harming the town, and the effigy was central to the ritual. With time running out, they start hauling the effigy back down the hill. It’s dawn now, and they have to get to the Revel in time, but after getting back to the truck they find the road washed out behind them as well, and they’re forced to walk the effigy all the way back to town!

It’s night by the time they get back, and they arrive at the park where the Christmas Revel is being held just as one of Frankie’s friends is sheepishly apologizing that it looks like the Revel’s a bust this year. The crowd parts to let them through, and they wheel the effigy towards its place of honor.

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning strikes behind the crowd, and a cloud of sickly green smoke forms, from which emerges HENRY WILCOX, Faith’s fiancée! Henry is furious, screaming that he has worked for so long to disrupt the ritual, and this time his master Azathoth will not be denied. As he marches towards them, his fingers lengthen and blacken, eventually splitting all the way up his arms as his limbs become a swarm of black, barbed tentacles and his face splits open into a swirling mass of inky tendrils and eyes. The crowd loses its shit. The light dims into a diseased red and green glow and the sky fills with tendrils of pure black.

“We’ve got to get the effigy in place!” Randy uses his primarily bench-based carpentry knowledge to hastily construct a ramp, and Frankie slide the statue into its spot, but nothing happens. “The ritual! We’ve got to sing the song!” - that strange carol, unique to Holly Hills, with which every Christmas Revel was opened.

That Which Once Was Henry is killing folks left and right. Frankie tries to get her iPod to the PA system to play the music, but the panicking crowd blocks her path. Wilbur commandeers a nearby car and plows it into Henry, who responds by tearing the front end off it. Vinnie throws fidget spinners into TWOWH’s ravenous maw.

Faith grabs a microphone and makes a heartfelt appeal to the panicked townsfolk that no tentacle-faced bum from the big city is going to stop their Christmas Revel, and the charmed townsfolk pass Frankie’s iPod and plug it in. The music starts, the crowd begins to sing. Faith yells, “and one other thing! The engagement IS OFF!” and hurls her ring into Ex-Henry’s wounded headspace. As the chorus lifts, the effigy of St. Nick begins to glow, and two beams of pure white light shoot from its eyes, piercing the Former Henry’s eldritch form and exploding him into a cloud of silvery, sparkly lights. A pulse of warm, Christmassy green emanates from the statue, and the lights return, the tendrils of black are swept from the sky, and all is well again.

“Vinnie, it’s time! They’re starting!” Vinnie rushes backstage and prepares for her big debut, as the Mayor comes over to congratulate Wilbur and let him know that his store’s going to remain open. Randy watches Vinnie drop trou and pop a squat on stage, eyes misting over with pride and joy at the magical Christmas his daughter finally got. Faith, overwhelmed by the Christmas spirit and Randy’s nonthreatening dadly handsomeness, calls up her business partners in the city and tells them that she’s going to be staying right here to start a party planning business with her best friend Frankie (who is being congratulated for organizing the most exciting Christmas Revel ever). Frankie catches Faith’s eye and points out the mistletoe above Randy’s head, and we fade out as Faith embraces Randy and kisses him.

I’ve got to hand it to my players for going along with a really, really goofy idea, and embracing it. They played with the tropes so well, and I’m mainly sorry that due to time constraints I had to really streamline the planned scenes and keep things moving and thus wasn’t able to let them just riff on it as much as they could have. It was a gas.

#rpgs #annual holiday game #Risus #Hallmark Channel #Lovecraft #seriously though I don't know why the guy like always seems to make benches in these things #I read like fourteen different films' plot synopsis and it happened at least three times #what the hell #feel free to fancast this Hallmark movie #remember to use an actress who was popular in late nineties/early aughts for Faith

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