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battyaboutbooksreviews · 6 months

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🌈 Queer Books Out December 2023 🌈

🌈 Good afternoon, my bookish bats! Struggling to keep up with all the amazing queer books coming out this month? Here are a FEW of the stunning, diverse queer books you can add to your TBR before the year is over. Remember to #readqueerallyear! Happy reading!

❤️ Caught in a Bad Fauxmance by Elle Gonzalez Rose 🧡 Heartstopper #5 by Alice Oseman 💛 This Cursed Light by Emily Thiede 💚 All The Hidden Paths by Foz Meadows 💙 Vampires of Eden: Book One by Karla Nikole 💜 Not My Type by Joe Satoria ❤️ Storm in Her Heart by KC Luck 🧡 Eternal Embrace by Luna Lawson 💛 A River of Golden Bones by A.K. Mulford 💙 Tomb of Heart and Shadow by Cara N. Delaney 💜 Through the Embers Volume 2 by Adriana Sargent 🌈 Lucero by Maya Motayne

❤️ The Poison Paradox by Hadley Field & Felix Green 🧡 Second Chances in New Port Stephen: A Novel by TJ Alexander 💛 Matrimonial Merriment by Nicky James 💚 Under the Christmas Tree by Jacqueline Ramsden 💙 Every Beat of Her Heart by KC Richardson 💜 The Memories of Marlie Rose by Morgan Lee Miller ❤️ Playing with Matches by Georgia Beers 🧡 Always Only You by Chloe Liese 💛 Fire in the Sky by Radclyffe and Julie Cannon 💙 Nuclear Sunrise by Jo Carthage 💜 The Naked Dancer by Emme C. Taylor 🌈 Resurrections by Ada Hoffmann

❤️ Destiny’s Women by Morgan Elliott 🧡 Framed by Kate Merrill 💛 The Spoil of Beasts by Gregory Ashe 💚 Catered All the Way by Annabeth Albert 💙 A Cynic’s Christmas Conundrum by L.M. Bennett 💜 Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn ❤️ One Swipe Away by Nicole Higginbotham-Hogue 🧡 The Gentlemen’s Club by A.V. Shener 💛 A Death at the Dionysus Club by Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold 💙 Secrets of the Soul by Holly Oliver 💜 Like They Do in the Movies by Nan Campbell 🌈 Limelight by Gun Brooke

❤️ Heart First by S.B. Barnes 🧡 Grave Consequences by Sandra Barret 💛 Haunted by Myth by Barbara Ann Wright 💚 Invisible by Anna Larner 💙 The Murders at Sugar Mill Farm by Ronica Black 💜 Coasting and Crashing by Ana Hartnett ❤️ Fairest by K.S. Trenten 🧡 A City of Abundant Opportunity by Howard Leonard 💛 The Dark Side of MIdnight by Erin Wade 💙 Mending Bones by Merlina Garance 💜 Transform by Connal Braginsky & Sean Ian O’Meidhir 🌈 The Apple Diary by Gerri Hill

❤️ TruLove by Nicole Pyland 🧡 Structural Support by Sloan Spencer 💛 Whiskey War by Stacy Lynn Miller 💚 Overkill by Lou Wilham 💙 Heart of Outcasts by Nicole Silver 💜 In the Shadow of Victory by J. E. Leak ❤️ Just Like Her by Fiona Zedde 🧡 Gingerbread: Claus For Christmas by Miski Harris 💛 Lies are Forever by C. Jean Downer 💙 The Boys in the Club by M.T. Pope 💜 Lasting Light (Metal & Magic) by Michelle Frost 🌈 Tell No Tales by Edie Montreux

❤️ Radio Silence by Alice Oseman 🧡 Even Though We're Adults Vol. 7 by Takako Shimura 💛 The Accidental Bite by Michelle St. Wolf 💚 Mated to the Demons by Taylor Schafer 💙 Someday Away by Sara Elisabeth 💜 Gatherdawn Luminia Duet Volume 1 by Lee Colgin ❤️ Curse of Dawn by Richard Amos 🧡 Healing the Twin by Nora Phoenix 💛 Ride Me by KD Ellis 💙 How to Bang a Vampire by Joe Satoria 💜 Cthulhu for Christmas by Meghan Maslow 🌈 Prestige by Toni Reeb

❤️ Don't Look Down by Jessica Ann 🧡 Winter and the Wolves by Chris Storm and Kinkaid Knight 💛 Hat Trick by Ajay Daniel 💚 Starborn Husbands: Return to the Pleiades by S. Legend 💙 Dead Serious Case #4 Professor Prometheus Plume by Vawn Cassidy 💜 Practice for Toby by Amy Bellows ❤️ The Siren's Song by Crista Crown 🧡 Hers to Hunt K.J. Devoir

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howtofightwrite · 6 months

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So, uh, I know that this place is mostly for writing, but making your own TTRPG system kinda qualifies as writing, doesn't it?

Either way - here's a fighting-related question that came up during my process making it. Is fear an important aspect of combat? Small-scale combat, to be specific, not the kind where you see a thousand of knights fight another thousand of knights.

Would wounds (or even hits that are strong enough to be felt through armour) inflict noticeable stress to a well-trained soldier? Would it be bad enough to, potentially, make them panic, even if they aren't in any actual danger yet? Or would that mostly be a problem with inexperienced fighters, and training/combat experience could make someone relatively desensitized to that sort of thing?

It's probably worded weirdly, I know, but, in general, what I'm trying to ask here is - should one consider stress/fear as a thing that might change the tides mid-combat, even if cowardice (or anything similar) isn't a major character trait for neither of the combatants?

This one isn't really writing, it's a game design question, and fully answering it is going to require digging a lot deeper into what you're trying to do with the game. It is entirely reasonable for your character to still suffer some lesser injuries from hits their armor absorbed, and for you to have a secondary mental stat that gauges your character's mental ability to keep functional. Warhammer's Morale and the Storyteller system's Willpower stats come to mind as examples of this. Also Call of Cthulhu's Sanity stat, though that's a little more involved.

So in game design, you need to decide how you want combat to feel. And, this can be anything from gritty realism to a fun power fantasy. In fact, the genre of your game will heavily determine how you want your systems to shape your experience.

I can't remember if Warhammer tabletop does this, or if I'm conflating it with Gladius and Dawn of War, but, in Warhammer your units actually have a separate morale hitpool. Obviously, for a lot of armies in Warhammer, keeping your units fighting against horrific, unknowable abominations is a major theme, so a main system (and a part of every unit stat card) is how much stress they can take before they have a complete nervous breakdown, and start running in the opposite direction. In fact, in tabletop, the game actually has multiple systems evaluating whether your own units will actually follow their orders at all. The difficulty of commanding troops against impossible threats is a central theme of the systemic narrative Warhammer is trying to create, so it gets multiple top level systems.

Compare that to D&D, where there are no top level systems regarding the mental state of your characters. They signed up to fight unknowable abominations, and magpie their way through the world, so when they encounter something genuinely unnerving, that gets special rules on that monster. It's not part of the power fantasy of D&D (most of the time.) So when it does show up, it just gets attached as an addendum to an existing rule system or as a special rule for one creature.

So, what does your game system want?

If you want a small scale, sword & sorcery brawler, you probably don't need to model their mental state, or how afraid they are. You really need to know if their morale is high, and when it is high, you can probably handle that with simple conditional buffs. In fact, this is probably a system where you wouldn't even want to model a low mental state, unless things are truly dire, or supernaturally oppressed. (Again, with special rule cases for that, because it's not going to come up very often.)

This probably should have been a few paragraphs earlier, but just looking at an RPG's character sheet can often tell you a lot about what the designer intended for their game. The things your players are going to have to interact with regularly need dedicated systems. Stuff that comes up rarely, shouldn't get dedicated systems. (And, this is a very real issue with a lot of RPGs, where there are a lot of different systems to keep track of, that could have been scrubbed out and set aside as flavor or special rules. Including with D&D.)

If your primary focus is a kind of horror RPG, then you need those extra systems. You're going to be dealing with them constantly. You might want an attribute called Resolve (or whatever) to specifically model how well a character handles dealing with horrific situations, or seeing their friends ripped to shreds. You might also have a separate tracked HP pool (similar to how Darkest Dungeon handles it) specifically focused on their ability to manage psychological strain.

If you're going for that, psychological damage can be a lot more deciduous in a tabletop environment, because you cannot armor yourself against that. Characters might be able to have some psychological resistance through strenuous mental conditioning, but again, as the game designer, you control exactly how much a player can stack up, so you can balance around the absolute maximum damage that a player could mitigate, while also keeping in mind how much the raw damage would do to a defenseless character.

You could have a rule system where characters can pretty reliably soak off most of the physical damage, but suffer serious attrition due to psychological (or, even magical) damage that they couldn't mitigate.

How armor works in your game is a similar situation, where the rules need to follow the kind of experience you're trying to create. However, unlike dealing with psychological strain, armor rules also need to consider how easy they are to implement at the table. A lot of CRPGs use % based armor mitigation, and that's great, if you have a computer that can crunch those numbers for you. If you're at the table and rolling 3d8, it's going to be a lot more awkward to figure out what 43% mitigation will do to your resulting values. So, it's a lot easier to simply say that armor subtracts X from incoming hits. Like, “Armor 2 means that each incoming attack does two less damage.” This starts to run into a balance problem. In theory, a character with sufficient armor might be able to mitigate all incoming damage (and you will have players who stack defense with this specific goal in mind. You can't escape that.)

This leads to one of my favorite solutions for this. I think it was J.E. Sawyer's Fallout 3 that never happened, but the idea is that if you're taking damage from hits, and your armor is absorbing that, it goes into a second, less severe, damage category. To use the example of White Wolf's Storyteller system, you convert lethal damage into bashing. It can still kill your characters, but it reduces the overall effect of that damage in the moment, makes it a lot easier to recover from, but also doesn't let them just walk in and soak all the damage without issue. So, for example, your character has Armor 4, an enemy swings on them for 8 lethal damage, and 4 points of damage are converted to bashing. (When their lethal + bashing damage reaches their HP pool then they're downed or knocked out), but they're not in danger of dying unless they take more lethal damage, or are suffering from some ongoing damage effect (like bleeding.)

Another, more lethal option I really liked from a D20 system (so, basically 3.5e D&D), was Star Wars's vitality system. The Wizards of the Coast Star Wars RPG had two HP pools. One was the normal hit dice per level based on class from D&D called Vitality (if you ever wondered why your HP in KotOR was called Vitality, this is why.) The second pool was Wounds. This was equal to your Constitution score. So, if you had CON 12, you could take 12 wound points. If you ran out of Vitality, damage would apply directly to your wound pool, and if you ran out of wound points, you were dead. Just, dead. No downed state, no stabilizing, you were toast. And, here's the thing that I might be misremembering, but if you critically hit someone, instead of multiplying your damage, your damage bypassed their vitality and went directly to wounds. This meant you had a fairly normal D&D rule set that could turn lethal with very little warning. Still a concept from game design that I like to keep in mind, because it creates a very dangerous feel in combat. Because of how the flavor was written, Vitality damage didn't even necessarily mean your character was being directly harmed. Taking damage from vitality might mean your character narrowly escaped getting hit by a blaster bolt, or that they effectively parried an incoming lightsaber attack. It still had the effect of wearing characters down over time without automatically meaning that they were suffering absolutely implausible amounts of injuries (though it could, also mean that your character had suffered minor cuts and scrapes or that their armor had taken a few hits for them.)

Something that gives the player a bit more control over their own durability would be to give items HP pools of their own. This isn't a normal item deterioration ruleset, but rather you're giving their armor a fixed amount of HP, that it can absorb in their place. So, to refresh that example above, if your character has Armor 4, and they're hit for 8 damage, instead of taking 4 bashing, they might choose to have that damage dealt directly to their armor. (And, this is a case where the decision to how to deal with that damage could be in the player's hands if you wanted. It gives them some proactive agency while taking damage, which is rare in TTRPGs.) You could even use this for a blowthrough rule, where if a character takes more damage in a single hit than their armor's remaining HP, the armor is destroyed and offers no protection from that attack. This, again, plays more into horror, as their armor will be wearing down over time, and if they're not performing regular maintenance to try to keep it working, could potentially fail them in combat. (It also creates a very cathartic moment for players to sheer through an enemy's armor, dropping them on the spot.)

All of this can and really should be, tuned for your systems and numbers. I have biases on exactly how granular I like my TTRPGs, but that doesn't mean you're tied to those values, and some people really do like the triple digit HP pools of high level characters in D&D and Pathfinder. I'm not going to say you're wrong for that, because I don't think you are, but obviously, something like Armor 4 means something very different if you have an average HP of 8-12, versus, if you have an average HP pool ~72.

So, when balancing combat to create the experience you want, you need to keep track of average combatant HP, average attack damage, and the mitigation options characters can use. At this point, you then need to decide how you want these to relate to one another. All of these values are relative to each other. From a gameplay perspective, there's no difference between a game where characters have 10hp, and each hit connects for 1 damage, vs a game where players have 40k HP, and each hit connects for 8k. It's the same game, the only thing that's changed is the amount of numbers you have to scribble onto the page while tracking damage. If you think your characters are too resistant to incoming damage, you can increase the amount of damage attacks do, or limit the amount of mitigation they have access to. Limiting mitigation can take the form of simply reducing how much damage resistance they can get, or it can function by adding additional considerations to their mitigation (as mentioned above.) (Granted, the Vitality system is a bit of a nuclear option, because that will change your combat to be exceedingly threatening, without becoming instantly lethal. Which, might be what you want.)

You have a lot of freedom for how you shape your players' experiences, and with a bit of creativity you can provide a unique combat experience for your players.

-Starke

This blog is supported through Patreon. Patrons get access to new posts three days early, and direct access to us through Discord. If you’re already a Patron, thank you. If you’d like to support us, please consider becoming a Patron.

#writing reference #writing advice #writing tips #Game design #how to fight write #starke answers

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vintagerpg · 8 months

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This is Cults of Cthulhu (2022), a fantastic and weirdly long overdue sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu (It’s a Call of Cthulhu kind of week!).

Why is it overdue? Well, Cthulhu is a pretty key part of the name of the game, but the big squid was really only featured in one adventure, the first CoC campaign, Shadows of Yog-Sothoth. Since then, if there is a prime antagonist of the CoC game writ large, its Nyarlathotep. That’s a cosmic entity who gets around.

With Cults of Cthulhu, we get the first serious and fairly exhaustive examination of the worldwide Cthulhu cult hinted at in Lovecraft’s story. The overview is provided in an in-universe style by two characters: Mildred Schwartz works off Professor Angell’s original research to provide a history of the cult from the dawn of history to 1930. David Eberhart’s blog builds on Schwartz’s timeline, detailing developments from the ‘30s to the present. This isn’t quite so thrilling to read as the Delta Green timeline, but it is certainly entertaining and feels a bit more usable for a game.

Following that, the book presents five cults in depth. There are two old ones, the Louisiana swamp cult and the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and three new ones, the Elevated Order of Morpheus (a Victorian occult club), the Society of the Angelic Ones (a California cult) and the Church of Perfect Science (a riff on Scientology). Those new ones are the subject of lengthy scenarios later in the book and have a thread connecting them that ends on a deliciously ambiguous note. There is also a robust guide to creating your own Cthulhu cults, something I feel like I could do indefinitely. All this is wrapped up in a handsome package, as well — I generally like Chaosium’s production values these days but this one feels a bit above their average in terms of art.

An instant classic, basically.

#roleplaying game #tabletop rpg #dungeons & dragons #rpg #d&d #ttrpg #Cults of Cthulhu #Call of Cthulhu #Chaosium

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yesiplaygamez · 7 months

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my favourite horror game's part 1

last of us

resident evil

vampyr

the call of cthulhu

bendy and the ink machine

dark pictures anthology

outlast

plague tale

until dawn

silent hill

cult of lamb

little nightmares

dead island

layers of fear

prey

bioshock

alice madness

fran bow

little misfortune

stray

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theresattrpgforthat · 3 months

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This might be a weird request, but are there any games that are conducive to a co-optional (like, the players are all working toward a common goal, but they don't have to work together, like Battleblock Theater, the New Super Mario Bros. games, Four Swords Adventures, or Scarescraper from the Luigi's Mansion series) campaign?

Theme: Co-Optional Games.

Hello friend, I'm not entirely sure if what I found fits what you're looking for. I had a hard time thinking of games that fit this description until I started looking at GM-less games, in which sometimes players take on different roles, even though nobody is the GM.

If there are any folks who see this who think they have a good candidate for any of these games, I encourage you to add them in your replies/reblogs!

Letters to Cthulhu, by Lucienne Impala.

It is the night of the Searing Star, the perfect opportunity to combine your will and free Cthulhu from their prison. Unless of course, you wish to write to Cthulhu, imploring them to grant you your truest desire (at the cost of their freedom). Even if you do put your desires before the greater goal of the cult, will another cultist sabotage your efforts?

This game is great for a larger group of people, 6-8 players recommended. One player is Cthulhu, awaiting a letter written to them by their coterie of cultists. Each cultist will take turns writing down what they want, both for themselves and the cult, and pass the letter around the table.

This is a game where sabotage is expected, and to some point also encouraged - you will have the ability to alter the words of some of the cultists that have gone before you, and in this way this game is somewhat like Telephone. This might be good for fans of Cthulhu but want a game that’s a bit more light-hearted.

Roses & Romance, by honestiago.

The Host Club is where the school's handsomest students with too much time on their hands entertain young ladies and men who also have way too much time on their hands. Despite this elegant playground for the super-rich and beautiful being one of the most popular destinations for, the school’s administration is determined that this will be the year they shut you down.

They may have said that last year, but this year they mean it. You’re going to prove to them once and for all that the Host Club is important to the student body and this town. It’s now or never, and you are going to be the best executive board of the Host Club this school has ever seen.

Create your high school host and dodge school rumors, experiencing the power of love in all forms to save your beloved school club from being disbanded!

Players take turns as the “Main Character” over the course of 8 episodes, with the rest of the table acting as NPCs and background characters, describing the scene and the main obstacles facing the Main Character and the club. The Host Club needs to make 3 successful moves in order to get a good reputation, using coins and dice to determine how (and how well) they may succeed. After each episode you’ll determine the overall state of the club, and whether or not you’ve succeeded. If you like the idea of short episodes with a rotating spotlight, but you don’t like this theme, you might want to check out Clear Eyes / Full Hearts, which this game is a hack of.

Under the Snowflakes and Stars, by nickwedig.

Once upon a time, before knights fought with demons, before battle, before war, and before the sun, there was a great city at the top of the world, shining throughout the night that had lasted forever. Built of ice and starlight, full of elegant palaces, shimmering statues, it was home to a people whose splendor we are not given to understand.

But that was before the coming of the Dawn. That was before the Mistake caused the destruction of Polaris.

Many stories are told about the Mistake, its nature, its origins, and its history. No one remaining among the people knows the truth, but everyone knows that before the Mistake, the city was perfect, the sky was dark, and the people had no fear. Now, their city is left a smoking crater, the sky is haunted by a brilliant sun and ghostly moon, strange-formed demons pour forth from whence the palace once stood, and the people have learned of terror.

Under the Snowflakes and Stars is a storytelling game of chivalric tragedy in the utmost north. 3 to 6 Players take one of Three Roles to collaboratively tell a story of the Knights of the Order of Stars.

This game is actually a remix of two other games: Under the Autumn Strangely and Polaris. This game might be considered co-optional at a meta-level. The players will take turns embodying different elements of a story, but the elements aren’t necessarily specific characters. One element, the Knight, is a specific individual, but the Starlight and the Mistaken are set pieces, the Starlight embodying a beautiful city and its inhabitants, while the Mistaken represents the feeling of dread, the demons and destruction of Polaris. Each element can and cannot do certain things, and much of the resolution is determined through a token-based system, giving players power to affect the narrative in certain scenes but not others.

If you want a game that feels poetic, collaborative and tragic, this might be for you.

President Kaiju, by Omnik.

What to do when an uncontrollable and arbitrary force seeks to destroy everything in your nation?

Well, you entertain it and fill its belly, of course!

President Kaiju is a humorous one-shot that splits the players up into teams: Entertainment and Kitchen. Each team will take turns doing their best to keep a very dangerous, larger-than-life president happy, while the other team provides the adjudication dependant on the mood of the President. This is great for goofy games, and all it requires is a number of d6’s and the ability to indicate a thumbs up, thumbs down and “ok” motion.

Space Goblins, by Viditya Voleti.

You are also all barreling through space in a ship made of junk and scrap, how lucky! Your goal: to make it to Junktopia, the rogue planet in the middle of space, a utopia for the Goblins, with your ship intact and as much Junk as you can to further its beauty!

Space Goblins! is a HIGH CHAOS AND TRULY OUTRAGEOUS RPG meant for 2-5 players with rotating referee play and an emphasis on wild Goblin-created mayhem!

Use any interlocking plastic building block collection, such as Lego, as your Junk collection, building up and breaking down your Junk Ship as you play with all the other Goblins!

You use LEGO pieces or other kinds of construction blocks in this game, with pieces added on or breaking off depending on the junk that your Goblins manage to salvage. The maintenance of your Junk Ship is something that is a communal responsibility, but each Goblin will undertake their own actions, using and trading resources gained over time. Sometimes a player’s goblin may have to stay behind on the ship so their player can help adjudicate the outcome of certain phases, so you’ll also see roles get handed around in this game. If you want a game that is goofy and lets you make less-than-optimal choices, this might be the game for you.

Also Check Out...

Unique Player Responsibilities Rec Post

Asymmetrical Games Rec Post

Spectaculars gives players different obstacles in combat to try and take care of, and each player takes a specific role that gives them a special ability to use as they fight.

Visigoths vs Mall Goths pits players against each-other in friendly rivalry to hunt down prize-winning goats, become the most Goth they can be, and win denizens of the mall to their cause.

A Complicated Profession often designates certain players to fulfill specific roles during any given cruise, such as providing entertainment for guests, cooking up a savoury dish, or fighting off junk-pirates who want to kidnap your barkeep.

#tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #game recommendations #dnd #asks #indie ttrpg #co-optional games

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elyfar · 2 months

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Did a paintover on my initial sketch of Lavinea Marsh 🐟 [Lavinea on Argent Dawn EU]

you know when you make a new oc and you can do nothing but rotate them in your head? yeah

ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

#elyfar's art #world of warcraft #kul tiran #kul tiran human #warcraft #warcraft human #argent dawn eu #lavinea marsh #house marsh #saddest wettest woman in kul tiras #if ur familiar with the dunwich horror and the kinda mid screen adaptation of colour out of space U KNOW THE DEAL HERE ITS FINE ITS NORMAL #tho mostly we're going innsmouth with this lot . its fine and nothing to worry about!

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inkyvendingmachine · 1 year

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Dawn Season 3, Episodes 16

💀 Call of Cthulhu: Haunted Hijinx Masterpost 💀 🎶 Call of Cthulhu Season Three Masterpost 🎶

Warning: This campaign is an edited version of Call of Cthulhu: Song and Dance scenario from the Tales of the Crescent City book. While a lot has been changed, there IS spoilers for it throughout these posts.

ANOTHER BIG THANKYOU TO @inkdemonapologist FOR HELPING ME WRAP UP THE LAST SUMMARY OF SEASON 3!!! THAT'S RIGHT! WE'VE MADE IT AT LAST!!! which means we can now start posting the 18384927 post game RP logs we've been doing meanwhile lmao.

ART CHANGES THIS SEASON!! @inkdemonapologist and I are collabing on all the art for these summery posts!! Shazz does lines, and I compose and colour the pieces.

Almost done, just one last muse to free.

But first, the Angel left a bit of a mess. While Jack is using all his willpower to NOT give into the urge to “fix” everyone by shoving ink into them, Joey pleads with Prophet to do the final ritual with Susie, so that there won’t be any weirdness between Susie and Allison. Prophet’s flattered, but he… would need more time to study this one. Why not let her do it? Joey concedes, but he wants to be the one to lead it. Jack helps Leon patch Allison up so she can be ready for round 3, while Joey and Prophet go to reset all the candles that got knocked over in the fight.

Susie wants to talk to Allison, while they wait. What were her intentions at the Studio? Allison assures her she didn’t even want the part (which offends Susie more, honestly) – she just wanted to keep her eye on this Studio, after everything they’ve been up to!! ... What… have they been up to, exactly, Susie asks?

… and Allison admits, well, maybe they were just… protecting their home. It sounded ridiculous at the time, but… maybe that’s really all it was. Someone told her recently to be careful of making monsters out of others, and maybe that’s what she did here. (Thanks for putting in a good word for us, Tom!!!)

Joey, of course, has been busy getting everything in order and has heard none of this, but Susie and Allison seem to be on okay terms, so let’s hurry up and do this ritual – without the creative power from the muses of storytelling or dance keeping him going, Joey is running on pure determination and adrenaline. Tasty.

And together, they’re able to do it. The golden glow drifts out of Susie, but this time, they all hear a faint “thank you” before the spirit disappears.

Susie collapses.

Allison tries to catch her, but it wrenches her bad arm and she falls to the floor as well.

Joey passes out, too, with his one goal done – and now Jack’s feeling the sudden drop in energy as the muse of music returns to normal; he loses consciousness as well.

But

Prophet’s too thrilled to give in!!! announcing “We’ve done it, my Lord!” before swapping back to regular Sammy – whhoooo ALSO immediately passes out without the extra creative energy keeping him going, leaving Henry and Norman and Timothee with a bunch of unconscious people. Henry and Norman are maybe not the ideal folks to handle the inevitable police visit after all those gunshots, but Timothee is also a child of Lady Orchid and can pull some of his influence before taking Nichole home.

Henry and Norman just get people into beds. Bendy, uh, helps??? Which means Joey’s body is wandering around, but Joey himself is practically unwakeable right now and Jack is bleary enough that driving home seems unwise. Better to just spend the night for now and sort it in the morning.

7 AM greets them with Henry waking Joey up with a panicked, “What are we doing here, what’s going on?! …I don’t think I remember last night.”

The colour drains from Joey’s face, and he tries to calm Henry, find out what the last thing he remembers is – Henry knows he remembers the contest. When asked if he remembers that scythe spell, Henry groans and admits that he does, but he’s still shaking and does not seem all right, so Joey runs off to dig through Jack’s bag and find something to draw with – oh, hey, at some point Henry’s sketchbook ended up in here, and there’s the rest of Joey’s ink, and also one of Joey’s nice pens? Anyway, that’s enough for him to bring Henry something to draw on, hoping that will calm him down. HE’S NOT GOOD AT COMFORTING and his brain is running at full capacity trying to figure out what to do…

Henry immediately starts drawing one of the monsters from last night. He remembers some things… he remembers attacking Sammy, though Sammy has no recollection of what Prophet did and can’t verify this, and Joey is sure that the two of them were working together by the end of the night and seemed fine – but, uh, Henry wasn’t quite himself and Joey had been afraid he’d lost him, LET’S NOT… USE THAT SPELL AGAIN,,,,,

in the meantime, Joey finally admits to himself his few and far between weaknesses, that maybe he still isn’t, at the end of the day, the one who can comfort Henry, and asks his best friend if… he’d like Joey to call Linda for him. Henry’s taken aback, and agrees, so Joey swipes Jack’s hat to cover his horns and heads outside to use a payphone.

Sammy goes to check on Jack, then on Susie, who looks a little worse for wear – she thanks him for coming after her, and admits that she remembers it all, but it feels like a dream. She… wants to talk about all this later, if they could, but for now, even as worn out as she is, she’s eager to get back and finally record a good take of that new Alice Angel song. She can’t believe they didn’t stop by the studio all week, when that was the whole reason she agreed! But Nichole had so many other things she wanted to do with them, that they just never got the chance…

Joey gets back, asks Henry how he’s doing. Henry says he’s doing okay (but he’s definitely not doing okay). So Joey gently pulls him towards the door, where… Linda is waiting for him. Joey actually called her over. Henry is overwhelmed, hugs his wife, and gives Joey a grateful look – he knows how much this means for Joey to do. Joey just tells him not to worry about the cartoon and to get some rest.

And then it’s time to clean up and get going!

Joey uses Bendy’s help to just make a giant cartoon squeegee, as you do, to smoosh all the candles and ink and paint and chalk together, so hopefully it won’t be useful to any future cultists, and throw this weird ball of gunk in the garbage. Allison tries to… sort of apologise? – or at least explain why she had thought mind-controlling Sammy was justified – but the boys are not interested and Joey simply tells her they’ll talk later.

THE PREMIER IS TOMORROW WE HAVE A CARTOON TO FINISH.

Well, first back to Jack’s house to get a shower since we’re all sort of gross from getting dunked in the lake but

THEN, WE HAVE A CARTOON TO FINISH.

The music department is sluggish, everyone there feeling the after-effects of the muses’ presence, but Sammy is as demanding as ever, refusing to let a musical cataclysm stop his department from creating excellent work. Lyrics are done, but Jack’s nonetheless here to… balance Sammy out a little. Henry shows up halfway through the day anyway, and Joey decides that if Linda let him come then he probably needs something to work on. Joey is feeling PRETTY DEAD today and mostly works out of his office, though he does clear off a spare desk in there for Henry to work beside him, away from the stress clamor of the rest of the studio, and also perhaps just to enjoy each other’s quiet companionship.

It’s been a long time since they both just sat and worked on animating together.

There’s a few messages for the boys throughout the day – one from Peter checking in with Joey on how he should describe their group to the reporter they rescued (Joey settles on “someone else who got tangled up with that cult and wanted to set things right”), another from Peter to Jack letting him know that his cat Beans had been fed the night before and DO NOT BELIEVE HER when she inevitably tries to convince him that she’s never been fed in her life, and finally, a simple letter to Joey that just says, “We should talk sometime,” with the address of a local cafe, a date and a time, and the signature of “Y.”

Joey………… decides the other boys maybe possibly do not need to know about this last letter right now.

Susie shows up – with that chocolate cake she promised last week, at last!! – to do a take on the new version. Joey stops by the department to cheer on his Alice Angel, which she appreciates; after everything, her first take chokes, but her second is beautiful. She loves the song and she loves the new changes to it. Sammy’s pleased with her performance, though he mutters that it might be the best thing he’ll ever write. But he’s soon cheered up by the prospect of a cake untouched by roaming janitors, even sharing a piece with Jack and Susie. Joey, who had figured out some magical control over ink at some point, will handle updating the lipsyncing so nobody has to redraw entire cells.

AND SOMEHOW, THE CARTOON IS FINISHED????

ON TIME????

A… feature length cartoon, in 1934??????

D…DID JDS JUST BEAT DISNEY TO A FEATURE???????

( joey b like: >:3c )

Well, Joey DOES have the break room magic that helps everyone in the studio gel with each other a little more to work faster, and stay awake just a little easier, and in this timeline JDS does still have Henry. It’s not in colour, and probably not as complex as Disney’s first feature will be, (joey voice hUSH) but still, the first feature length animated movie will be a Bendy cartoon put out by Joey Drew Studios! GOSH!!

That evening Joey reaches out to Nichole Savoy, the daughter of Lady Orchid, to let her know about the premier tomorrow – he did promise her and her friends a stage, after all, and he’s not one to go back on his word, if they’d like to perform for the premier? Or if not, he’ll just give them all tickets, but if they so choose, he trusts they’ll put on a magnificent show. Nichole is taken aback and tells him that he’s very strange, but gratefully accepts.

And now, the most important task before the premiere: Joey decides it’s time to drag all his boys out for fancy new outfits (It’s for the premier!!! It’s part of the premier budget!!! Don’t worry about it!!) personally tailored and picked out by yours truly. Perhaps it is also… a little treat for himself, getting to see all his boys dressed up nice… y’know, for finishing the cartoon. That is going to premiere. Only that reason, nothing more.

And the premier itself goes great. Susie sings the new song live with Colette as a dancer (and Sammy on the piano), Nichole doesn’t perform but seems really happy to see her friends get this spotlight and night out with her. The cartoon itself is pretty darn close to what they hoped it would be. Afterwards Jack keeps everyone charmed and out of range to socialise with Sammy while Sammy glares and looks unapproachable; Henry is a little tired for socialising but DOES want someone to ask about the animation on the scenes he’s proudest of, while his kids try to pick which scenes are his; and the head of the local paper catches Joey Drew to ask about an interview about this unprecedented accomplishment, and Joey’s all too happy to set up a time for a tour.

The head of the paper is also curious if Joey’s met Peter Sunstram? They seemed to know each other, and the man had been looking for a job at his paper, and he wonders how well Mr. Sunstram takes direction? There’s a glint in Joey’s eye as he realises his chance to talk Peter Sunstram up as only Joey Drew can. Jack surely won’t leave if his OTHER boyfriend is ALSO in New York!

And that one investor who started all of this is here, too; oblivious to the magical shenanigans he inadvertently kicked off, but thrilled with the finished film he’s just seen! Somewhere, Grant can breathe a sigh of relief, and hopefully soon, so can the boys.

Joey Drew Studios has managed the impossible, one more time.

💀 Call of Cthulhu: Haunted Hijinx Masterpost 💀

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#call of cthulhu: haunted hijinx #bendy au #joey drew #sammy lawrence #jack fain #susie campbell #norman polk #henry stein #AAAAAAAAAA WE MADE IT!!!!

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