#rambly ddw

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Why the Apocalypse in the title matters and how W5 fails to address it

Even if it is by this point a joke, all WoD games have a title what creature it lets you play and then one of the core elements of it.

Yet, it is odd that a werewolf game puts the end of the world as one of its most central concepts. After all, werewolves aren't really associated with the apocalypse in myths. The closest is Fenris-Ulf in Norse myths, but Fenris was a monstrous wolf, not a werewolf. Shouldn't Changing or Fury be a better descriptor?

Well, WtA's werewolves draw from older material than the movies and the focus is not on being a werewolf. The focus is on the state of the world, the way nature is being destroyed and such. In the game, being a werewolf is more akin to a spiritual guardian than a cursed being.

The Apocalypse in the title not only refers to the literal end of existence but to the little apocalypses happening every year. Species dying, people losing touch with their ancestral cultures, etc. WtA is about looking at the state of the world and feeling the horror of just how hard it is to fix it if not impossible. Never mind the sadly now very real horror of greed over care and ennui towards your fellow humans and nature.

This genuine approach and call to action has, of course, created an opposite reaction that calls WtA's tone childish. More recently, as we actually start seeing the effects of climate change, the reactions have also become ones of denial, apathy and fear of doing the wrong thing.

It is the latter that W5 shows the clearest in its depiction of the apocalypse.

The apocalypse in W5 is invisible to normal people and other supernaturals. At most, it is the fall of the garou nation as the climate change happening in the real world. Despite this, W5 is very clear about discouraging its PCs from taking action further than locally.

In effect, W5's apocalypse and what it wants the players to do about it is toothless. The game spends page space detailing what not to do, but very little on what to do and what the apocalypse looks like. Because it is afraid to take a stand, instead focusing on passive-aggressive remarks here and there.

W5, despite its blurb stating it is about striking back at pollution, isn't willing to have its PCs be eco-terrorists (though some do slip through) and actively calls direct action the wrong method.

It isn't just what W5 tells the PCs shouldn't do, it is also how much the PCs don't have to do. It's the end of the world as we know it and you can still go to McDonald's in peace. The world is lost and you still have to go to work. If we weren't told the apocalypse was raging, we'd assume it was still in the future. The game is, intentionally or unintentionally, saying that there is no need to do anything. Even if the world is ending, it won't inconvenience you.

To put things plainly, W5's apocalypse is the way it is so there won't be paid sick days for the employees. It is an end that preserves and protects the status quo.

Of course, an apocalypse that changes nothing is not really an apocalypse. Indeed, W5 wears the apocalypse label more out of legacy than any real intention of addressing it. It wants to focus on werewolf packs and caern tending, not something as serious as the fate of the world.

In fact, I'd say W5 doesn't want to be about the garou at all but instead about werewolves. It wants to be Werewolf the Fury.

#werewolf the apocalypse #werewolftheapocalypse #wta #garou #rambly DDW #w5

[purkinje-effect]

I’ve been wanting to redo the cover art for First Instar for some time now, and I finally let myself. Hopefully it scans visually as a high rise office. Rambling under the cut.

If you’re interested in The Anatomy of Melancholy, the most recent chapter’s always pinned on my blog, and a table of contents link is at the top of it. All likes and reblogs welcome. (Extensive CWs for horror esp. body horror, drug use, insects, and miles of characters with grey-to-scalding karma including the MC. I try to label CWs as thoroughly as possible at the beginning of each chapter: do heed them. There’s two DDW chapters in First Instar, and I mean that warning very strongly, especially as I illustrate these things from time to time. This fic is not suitable for minors or the squeamish.)

I didn’t break up AoM by Instar until about halfway through Second Instar. Lexington & Concord was supposed to be a placeholder until I thought of something better. Location wordplay’s going to be the common tie for all five Instars, I think, and I like this subtle change a lot.

I really liked the original 2019 cover when I did it, but I didn’t think it was all too representative of the fic itself. Too, it’s the first book of the pentalogy: it’s deserving of something a little more intense than what I had, now that I’m more capable of putting it together. That, and I really needed to include the visual detail that he’s a wheelchair user. For being one myself, I sure don’t draw them as often as I’d like.

I’d never really been happy calling the DDW chapters “Rexford Press” because it suggests ‘Choly ends up with a printing press in Goodneighbor, and at this point I seriously doubt it. The Rexton Nova’s his typewriter, owing to his Naked Lunch roots.

I promise I’ll do a revision pass soon and add footnotes and author’s notes to the first two Instars. Thanks for sticking with me almost five years now!

#fallout #fallout fanart #fallout 4 fanart #fallout 4 fanfic #sole survivor #mister handy #bloatfly #hubflower #lexington fallout #corvega assembly plant #trans sole survivor #disabled sole survivor #nonbinary sole survivor #sacredflamingart #overdue books #smoking cw #alcohol cw #bugs #insects #flies #bloatflies #fallout fanfic

[pilotheather]

 idk what crawled into my skull and made me NEED to ramble abt all this again . i need to follow more ddw blogs so i can vent my Nonsense thru here more but i simply dont.... Foolish of me <3

#egg.txt #like i posted more when eps were coming out bc id just #go thru the tag affter eps #but then i only followed like 2-3 blogs im crying #& so dw content NEVER on my dash so this blog gets ifgnored

[papakennmedia]

PAPAKENN RAMBLES: "MIDNA, SCALPERS, & DDW"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-R6BZlo32Q

#Midna #kitten #scalpers #SNES #Super Nintendo #Classic #Nintendo #DDW #Doctor Who #Discovering Doctor Who

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

WtA: Red Talon mindset

(Wrote this to the official forums but I like it enough to post it here.)

Consider this; There is an alien species that is higher tech than you. It has taken vast amounts of space that once belonged to humans and made it impossible to live there. They have also taken over stores and made it so a human cannot buy anything from there legally. In hunger, your brother tries to steal from the store but gets caught and shot. Later you find his skin in the alien living room.

These aliens also hunt humans for sport, from their spaceships. They at times go into houses and kill parents, leaving the kids to starve.

And all the while, they are poisoning everything so it gets harder and harder for humans to survive while they thrive. The aliens have also made this pseudo-human that is eternally around 14 and keep it as a pet.

How hard would it be for you to not see these aliens as evil? How much sympathy could you have for them?

This is what Red Talons face with humanity. So it is not that they are psychotic misanthropes hellbent on killing every human, they just wouldn't shed a tear for us. The 'every human must die NOW' Red Talons are badly played and don't really address WHY Talons hate humanity.

#Red Talons #Red Talon #WtA #Werewolf the Apocalypse #werewolftheapocalypse #rambly ddw

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Second Inquisition WOW

I don't even know how to preface this, because this is some massive tonal confusion. I guess the best way to put it is that for all I love Werewolf and Vampire, I am not blind to the horror they are for humans. Though my go-to question for anyone writing monster hunters is why they hunt, I still feel hunters are extremely important to the narrative as a counterpoint to the monsters. So when I read the introduction text for the Second Inquisition book for V5, my jaw hit the floor.

"The theme of the Second Inquisition is determination – aimed at the player coterie. Like a certain killer cyborg from the future, the Coalition can’t be reasoned with, it can’t be bargained with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Individual Inquisitors or soldiers or cops or nuns can be reasoned with and bargained with. Most feel fear, some feel pity, and even a few feel remorse. All those deviations and human moments make excellent stories, ripples in the flood. But the narrative relentlessly washes over those stories, replacing every flawed or broken foe with two more – ten more — out for revenge or salvation. The Inquisition as a whole – both as a conspiracy and a movement that enflames that conspiracy – will not stop until every Kindred burns. Conveying the impersonal, implacable determination of a gigantic bureaucracy to crush the player characters should not be impossible in the 2020s – but it should be very effective."

Why this made me stare at the screen, is how the Inquisition was introduced in an older book;

"The theme of The Inquisition is the crusader. The Society of Leopold sees itself as humanity’s last stand against the encroaching hordes of the World of Darkness. Inquisitors are the new Crusaders; all the Earth is their Holy Land. But theirs is a lonely struggle, bereft of the support of those whom they would save. The general populace does not know of the struggle, and would most likely think the Inquisitors are mad. Inquisitors are holy knights, alienated from their fellow mortals by their knowledge of what awaits. Some within the Inquisition are zealots, it is true, but it is better to err on the side of caution than to let slip the defences of humanity." The difference is stark, especially as they are talking about the same sort of hunters. The reason I find the newer book's take extremely strange, is due to the fact that the player characters in VtM are undead bloodsucking parasites that manipulate humanity and have magic blood powers that make them much stronger than an average human. Yet the V5 book chooses to introduce the inquisition as horrible people who will never stop hunting poor innocent vampires. It goes even as far as the art.

(Start ID; A mixed media picture with modified photographs. A bald man in a trenchcoat is scowling with his fists clenched. He is holding the severed head of a female vampire from its hair. The expression on the head is of wide-eyed horror. End ID.)

(Start ID; A book cover with the text Inquision as the title, with a crosshair symbol reading 'Year of the Hunter' on the bottom. The cover art is a painted picture of a bearded man in a trenchcoat and torn jeans wielding in one hand a large cross and in another a lit torch. There is a shotgun and spent shells on the tiled floor. Just outside the light of the torch, a horde of vampires with glowing eyes has surrounded the man, some shirking from the light. End ID.)

One treats the hunter as a threat overpowering a vampire. The other treats the hunter as a lone figure surrounded by a mass of vampires. Let me be quite frank, humanity in WoD are the mice that the cats (vampires) hunt. Hunters are the mice that fight back. A vampire in VtM, regardless of edition, has an advantage over a hunter. Vampires use humans as prey, the polite ones pay them for it but they don't HAVE to. In V5 you are given various methods to hunt for your blood, some which are cruel. Painting the people standing up to creatures that actively harm humans as the abusers and the ones in the wrong is extremely tone deaf. Vampires are not some oppressed minority trying to eke out a living, a vampire is creature that needs to drink blood to survive and human blood is the best. In V5's own lore, it is only recently that vampires are even put on the backfoot at all. Before that, humanity were pawns in centuries long grudgematches and at best a quick bite snack at wost fleshcrafted into sacks hung from hooks. Can there be good vampires and bad hunters? Of course, WoD is all about the shades of gray. It is when the basic set up of the setting is turned around like this that I have a problem.

#vampire the masquerade #vtm #world of darkness #wod #v5 #second inquisition #rambly ddw

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

The more I see Tumblr's brand of reading text and its way of handling justice, the more I'm glad my schooling was focused on analysis and making your own conclusions.

Because so many here are so quick to assume the worst and drop any sense of scale if something offends them.

I grew up online, I was 13 when we got broadban in my house. I say this as someone who knows what it is be a minor in a very hostile world.

We need to stop leaning onto violence so easily. We need to stop assuming and start questioning our own conclusions. We need to start accepting that our experiences are not universal and that it is a good thing they are not.

I've been through a lot of shit for something that was purely fictional being taken as personal opinion. I've literally been made to choose between friends and a membership to a server.

We need to start having empathy on general.

#tumblr critical #fandom critical #rant #rambly ddw

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Since I am on a roll and I feel this needs to be said/explained. The reason why the modern teenagers and young adults decrying dark content and their writers baffles me, is that my generation spent years working to destigmatize dark content and many other things. When I was a teen in the 00s, gay characters were seen as unsuitable for children's media, trans characters were jokes, animation was still strongly seen for children and Christian moral guardians patrolled to keep things this way.

These were the days of a gay kiss being automatically PG-13. You could lose your whole library of work if you wrote smut. Christian moral guardians destroyed massive amounts of content under the guise of 'protecting children.' These were also the days before content warnings became common. While there were some warnings, they could be very generic such as NSFW which could mean anything you did not want to be seen reading publicly. Some even prided themselves on not giving warnings to the 'snowflakes.' We had to fight tooth and nail to get LTGBAQ content accepted, get people to actually use warnings and offer safe spaces for all kinds of fic. So when I see teenagers saying they want more censorship and the removal of certain content entirely, I can't help but think this; "We made this free space for you so you would never have to deal with what we did, why do you want the old ways back?"

#puriteens #rant #rambly ddw

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

WOD 5th ed rant: Decided morality

This is simply my own take on this and I respect if you the reader have a completely different one. Regardless, there is something about WoD 5th ed that truly bothers me on both a storyteller and a writer level.

It is the fact that we cannot play any antagonist factions and that some factions are deemed antagonists for extremely strange reasons.

To explain, in the 5th edition of Vampire the Masquerade the Second Inquisition has managed some massive victories over the kindred, destroying a Tremere Chantry and putting the vampires on the defensive. This is a huge victory for humanity.

Yet, we cannot play a character from the Second Inquisition. Even in their own book, we are not given any character creation rules for them. This is extremely strange, as the vampires in VtM are not good guys. They have never been good guys as a whole, with few individuals being the exception.

The humans in the Second Inquisition, regardless of their morality, are still taking out creatures that manipulate and feed on humans. Yet they are treated as an antagonist-only faction like the Sabbat.

This is extremely bad writing, because we are not given the chance to decide ourselves who is right and who is wrong. We are told the Second Inquisition is bad and we should not play them. Yet we can play a fleshcrafting inhuman vampire landlord.

It isn't even that V5 is the only one that has this problem. Hunter 5th ed makes it very clear the player hunters cannot join larger hunter organizations because those are bad. The examples we are given are written cartoonishly incompetent and evil, in an effort to discourage the players from even trying.

Like with the vampires, however, the freelance hunters aren't exactly the paragons of morality. After all, an angry mob is an angry mob regardless of WHAT it targets.

What makes this very interesting, is that even in the most strict times of WoD 1 to Revised editions we were still always given the chance to try to play the other side. Even if there was a culture of looking down upon snowflakes (characters who were special), the books still kept the avenues open for exploration.

As I said at the start, the Second Inquisition has done a lot of good by taking out vampires. That we are told they have not and that they are all zealots and fanatics, and yet the PCs can be zealots and fanatics too, is treating your playerbase like idiots.

#rant #world of darkness #vampire the masquerade #5th edition #hunter the reckoning #rambly ddw

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Rant: It isn't filler

There are very few things as frustrating to me as the way the word 'filler' is used these days. For one, the removal of 'filler' in shows creates a very poor pacing that leaves no room for the watcher to breathe. Second, in 'filler' episodes you can see the everyday of the characters and get to know them better. But those non-plot episodes aren't actually filler. While words naturally change meanings, I feel that filler is not one of those. Because the word filler was meant as an insult. You see, filler comes from the English-speaking anime community of yore and it was used for a very specific type of episode. A filler episode is an episode produced to give the manga of the series time to catch up to the anime. A filler episode therefore was seen as nearly non-canon and just some quasi-fanfiction by the writers. Hence why it was called filler, its purpose was to fill time while the ACTUAL story was being made. It was never used for episodes that were one-off stories, because those still were within the canon story. If a show was not based on anything but was an original production, it had no filler because every episode was as canon as the other. The fact that we now call fully canon but non-plot moving episodes filler is hurting how those episodes are seen. Slice-of-life episodes are not extra, they serve a VERY important purpose when it comes to pacing. If you remove them, you end up with a show that has no breathing room and which seems to want to finish before it is ready.

#artist stuff #fandom history #rant #rambly ddw

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Thoughts on The Boy and The Heron

SPOILERS under the cut

Positives:

-Animation is the solid Ghibli quality, with large panning shots with multiple characters moving done fine. The physicality was awesome, especially in the fish-gutting scene. -The Japanese voice acting was good, no character had an ill-fitting voice. -When the plot found a scene to focus on, it made good use of it. -Young!Kiriko is hot. -Nazi Budgies were an unexpected but funny choice. -I really enjoyed the way Mahito's bullying is shown, it is not even given dialogue. The opinions of those bullies do not matter. While Mahito mauled himself to save himself from the shame (of being bullied?), his dad at least took action about it. -The self-inflicted rock wound getting infected was a good showcase of how such prideful actions can cost you.

Negatives:

-There were moments when I could not get into Mahito's head at all. Now, given the setting and the way Mahito was socialized, it is understandable he's rather stoic. But once he is in the supernatural world, he just does stuff without asking much. Leaving the audience at times without any idea why he is doing X. -In general, there are a lot of scenes where someone explaining would have made things clearer. Such as Mahito asking Kiriko what her spell was or telling the Heron-man that he would fix his beak again IF the Heron-man would actually help him. -The movie loses the plot constantly and focuses more on set pieces than a coherent narrative. The set pieces are fine, but halfway through the movie, I thought how I still had no idea what the main conflict was. -The ending is confusing in its symbolism and left me thinking that it was a metaphor for Miyazaki thinking no one else COULD take his place. -The Budgie King was introduced far too late for the impact he had. -This is a style question, but could Ghibli please stop shading everything the same way? Everything looks so plasticky.

All in all, the movie was pretty and when it was good it was great. But it suffered from very little cohesion once the supernatural plot got going.

#the boy and the heron #boy and the heron #rambly ddw

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Okay but, genuinely guys, the reason Rose Quartz from Steven Universe is such an important character is that she is a warning of what happens if you think you can only do bad. This is especially important here, because the idea of Eternal Penance is so common and celebrated. That those who did bad things can never receive any leeway or forgiveness and must always be ready to deal with punishments for the rest of their lives is a common narrative. Rose's story is why that mentality is bad not just for the person, but for the whole community. Rose thought she was bad and that she could never make up for the crimes she committed. So she dedicated the rest of her long existence to fixing her wrongs any way she could. This penance did not make her a better person, it made her a person much more likely to treat herself as lesser or not as important. Which in turn hurt her closest friends. I suppose the assumption is that those who do wrong don't have any connections, because they are bad. But everyone has some positive relationship, even if a fleeting one. When Rose decides to give her life up to become Steven, it is not a choice made purely out of maternal love. It is a choice made as much out of her flawed view that her 'dying' would be the best thing for everyone. It wasn't, it didn't make things better. It robbed Steven of his childhood and mental health. Nevermind the other Crystal Gems. Rose's death and her penance were not noble sacrifices. They were the actions of someone who was caught up in a loop of self-destruction and careless actions due to that self-destruction.

#rose quartz #rambly ddw #suicide mention //

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Related to the post I made yesterday, one thing that really showcases how much a non-issue killing is in Warrior Cats is the complete lack of set punishment for it. For example, Appledusk (accidentally) kills two Thunderclan warriors, one of them the deputy. And the biggest consequences from that are to his side-piece and his illegitimate kids. There is no reaction from his own clan for breaking the code nor is Thunderclan asking for any punishment for him. It is just treated as an acceptable thing that happens in battles. DESPITE the Warrior Code stating that it very much is not. Or Badgerfang. A Windclan warrior kills him and the biggest issue presented is the grief his mentor feels over the death. Not that Windclan broke the code. Or how Stonefur died. While Tigerstar IS a tyrant, Stonefur's parental relationship (which is not a code break on his part) matters more than the rule about killing. There are many, MANY more examples I could list but the core issue remains that the act of murder that is explicitly forbidden in the Warrior Code is never punished nor justice sought for the victims. You know when justice was called for? When Jayfeather had to leave Flametail to die. Something that was purely an accident between the non-combatants is put much more weight on than intended murder. While this might be a bit of a high concept for Warriors, I am amazed the clans don't have a system of weregild set up. Since deaths happen so often, there should be reparations paid for the clan wronged. And yet, if a she-cat steps one paw out of line, the very ancestors of the clans punish them somehow. While male characters have to be basically blatant tyrants to get any payback from their ancestors.

#warrior cats #animal death // #rant #rambly DDW

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

One of the darkest aspects of Catnap's design for me, is the way it denies him his humanity but doesn't allow him to be fully cat, either. Look at any anatomical picture of a cat and you'll notice their 'arms' and 'legs' are at an angle at rest. That is how you get the longcat effect, a cat is typically squished into a smaller length than it actually is. Catnap doesn't have that luxury, his legs and arms are ramrod straight, putting all his weight onto his 'paws.' It also means his movement is very choppy, because he is in effect a quadsuit. That already puts a lot of strain on his body, but look at how long his 'arms' are and how they force him to rely on four legs because on two legs they'd weigh too much. And how, unlike Dogday and other BBI creations, Catnap doesn't have hands. He has stubby paws with no thumb. This means that he is very limited in how he can use them, if his long arms weren't cumbersome enough. On top of everything, all of this wonky anatomy is connected to a human-like torso. Catnap has a human ribcage and pelvis and so most likely also his spine is human outside the longer 'spikes' where his muscles would attach like on an actual cat. This means that Catnap is forced to keep his spine at an arc in order to move. Which creates strain on it as it is pulled by both his arms and his legs and the ridiculously long tail he has. All of this means that Catnap is forced to move in a way that is painful and against his own anatomy and he is denied access to manipulating objects properly.

#catnap #medical abuse // #medical horror // #rambly ddw

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Boy this is a deep cut, but does anyone else remember a flash game where you serve as a therapist to a bunch of abused plush toys? Because that game was actually fun and you had to work to get the patient into a better place. Here's the link to it if you haven't played it yet.

#rambly ddw

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

The thing that Dracula Daily, by the pauses between entries, really let’s us see is how the biggest foe the protagonists face is the lack of context. Mina, Jonathan, Seward, Quincy and Arthur are not dumb. But since they do not know the warning signs, they cannot protect each other from Dracula. They cannot put two and two together, because they are lacking the other half of the equation. If they even knew a little bit of lore, they would have done things differently. This is why retellings of Dracula in the modern day suffer, because the characters by that point WOULD know what a vampire is and what signs to look out for. If by nothing else, then just by popular culture osmosis. So to really capture the feeling of Dracula and the dread of not knowing, Dracula would have to be an alien or something entirely different. Just because the ignorance the characters have and the ad hoc way they have to fight Dracula are such key aspects of the story.

#dracula daily #rambly ddw