Posting in this blog after an eternity because I feel like I'm going insane here and my friends are asleep so I need to dump my brainstorm SOMEWHERE (SPOILERS FOR ARLECCHINO'S BACKSTORY/SHORT ANIMATION!!)
The TLDR is basically I think that the whole story with Arlecchino and Clervie is foreshadowing for whatever is about to happen with Lyney and Lynette
I think the parallels between Lyney and Arle don't need to be too explained for the most part. Pyro Visions, Arle wants him to be the next "king" while he doesn't seem to be too into that idea just like her younger self didn't want it, both are associated with Rainbow Roses (they both use them as ascension materials)
Plus, I'd argue they look kinda similar here. I'm not sure exactly what is that makes the resemblance, maybe a bit of the hair, bowtie and shorts and you could say it's something she has with the others too (her kid design resembles Freminet, current one Lynette) but I thought it was good to mention anyways
Meanwhile, Lynette and Clervie are the two closest companions to their respective pair
Lynette's has Lumidouce Bells as an ascension material. Clervie is very clearly represented with the same flower (if her necklace wasn't enough, there's this)
Plus, a bit of a smaller connection, but they both have clear sweet tooths
(Lyney saying "we talked about this" implies this is a frequent event. The animation showing Clervie with cake twice while it only had 7 minutes to tell the whole story has a similar effect)
So, if Lyney is a parallel to Arle while Lynette is a parallel to Clervie, where does this leave us?
Well... Not exactly in a good spot-
To be fair, I don't think Genshin would actually kill a playable character (or at least, so I hope), but it's very possible Lynette gets really hurt, either directly by Lyney or by being close to him
Arlecchino swore to be nothing like her mother, but in the end, the way she's acting towards Lyney by wanting to make him the next king may be very similar to it
Once upon a story quest, Lyney said similar words to a woman who claimed he'd end up all alone. I can only pray that the writers will have mercy at my soul and that they wouldn't go that low with a playable character
If I were to make a mildly self indulgent guess, as the Freminet main I am, I'd say that he may be the key that's going to make things turn out different for the twins. His presence is the biggest difference between the twins vs Arle and Clervie, who seemed to have no one else that was even mildly close to them. From the 4.6 trailer we know that he's the one that has been hiding stuff and we do see him blocking out Arle's attack, so I don't think it's a stretch to say he'll have a really important role in this whole thing
So yeah! If you read all my rambling, thanks I guess, hope you enjoyed it. In the end, all I can hope is that the Fontaine siblings all turn out fine for the sake of my own mental wellness because God knows these 3 stay all day spinning in my head as if it was a microwave
Also, for the record: No, I don't have a clue about what the hell is going on with Freminet apparently finding "Clervie" (ghost?? Illusion??) and hiding her from Arle. Until this short my best shot was that she was some sort of mermaid creature, but that idea is out the window so it could be anything really
Okay, I haven’t been drawing or active much at all, but I just had a realization on just how galaxy brain my brain is when making my D&D characters only for it to loop back around like Ghandi in the Civilization games and become walnut brain.
It’s all going under the cut because fuck it, this is me screaming into the void once more.
Okay, you have entered the screaming zone.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
Now that the screaming is over with, on with the actual reason for this post, something I like to call
The “I’m not what I initially look like!” character designs! From right to left here are Ezra, Carrion/Blaze, Linus/Kress, Umberlea/Honey, Doe, Axel, Tempest/Luna, Cecillia, Yune, Selgy, Irina, Inspector, and Zarris/Ash.
In case you can’t read my handwriting, their initial vibes are as follows, in the order I stated just now: Priest, Tiefling, Kenku (Evil), Weird Bug, That one part of that song from The Sound Of Music*, Thief, Rich Boy, Probably Evil, Starving Artist, Granny <3, Vampire, Just Some Guy, and Bad Fashion Sense.
From initial sightings or from initial knowledge of all of the above, those are all pretty accurate assessments. We have a lot of evil or morally grey characters, weirdos, and that one weirdly buff rich guy who smiles too much. Also Zarris is here. I love him a lot, he gets to stay even though his logical tie here is very small.
HOWEVER, if you dig deeper into said characters, you receive this:
Which I will not transcribe, as this is going to be a long post anyway, so I will summarize instead.
-Ezra Mason: Werewolf Preist, hates corrupt church people.
-Carrion: Chased from his home for being a ‘Bad Omen’ in their eyes, joined a circus, circus got murdered, now seeking justice.
-Kress: Traded his wings to a witch for the survival of his home, was kicked out for the action.
-Honey: A trickster god reincarnated her into a bee.
-Doe: Ended up in the material plane by accident, made some enemies of fey cults.
-Axel: My man has anxiety and depression and has had a rough time of it due to upbringing and one shitty pirate.
-Tempest: Additional man with a rough time of it, but thanks to a wizard cult.
-Cecillia: She’s just the Dampe of D&D, except she gives the undead jobs.
-Yune: Royal artist who went on LOA to find inspiration.
-Selgy: Assassin for the Unseelie Court <3
-Irina: Vampire, yeah, but just wants to live a normal life.
-Inspector: My man has the memories of a dead Guard Captain and has no idea how to process those emotions. He had a husband and kid. God knows if they are alive given he could be hundreds or thousands of years old.
-Zarris: My man is colourblind. That’s all.
I was going to put Cecillia’s in as “Undead Union Rep” but let’s be real here, she’s not the Union Rep for the undead, that’s Thanatos.
Anyway, I do love using the same or similar tropes or building blocks with characters. This is only using D&D characters, because of my other OCs/Characters I’ve designed... Fun fact, around half of those are also these sorts of characters (eg. Theo, Seven, Mona, Vic, Warlock, Aria, Zori, Goldie, Delilah, Lutelei, Lana, Mask, Architect, Alchemist... There’s more that’s just from a quick glance at my quick refs page that’s out of date).
I love the idea of “I’m not all that I initially seem to be” because that’s just people dude, people are not all the same sort of thing all the time. They’re fluid, they hide things, they come off one way but are another, and most of the time, there’s some mental health there under the hood, be it good or bad. Most of my characters have interesting struggles to deal with... some of them are also dead or undead, which is a unique struggle, but hey, we all feel a little dead sometimes.
“That’s all for this post. I just needed somewhere to scream about my own character design, and Tumblr honestly is the best platform for it because I can scream forever on this thing and the void may never scream back, lol.
Ciao and goodnight! Y’all better make a bunch of D&D characters with dumb tropes or so help me Selune and/or Valkur I will be slightly sad about it. Embrace your inner cringe!
There's one convo with Astarion that's one of my favorites that I haven't seen mentioned or discussed yet happens (I assume) if you have high approval with him but play a good-aligned character. (This is at 60+ approval, start of Act 2.) It's probably because it's not a romantic cutscene so it doesn't get mentioned as much as the others (or because he's racist in it and some of y'all don't like to acknowledge that he has character flaws), but I think it's vital to his character and to explain his early relationship with a good-aligned Tav.
I would like to break it down a little, step by step. Because we are all cringe here.
First, he claims to feel a connection between Tav and himself, and the reason for this is because he believes he's identified "ambition" in Tav (and I'll explain why he's wrong later, but that's mostly headcanon territory, so we'll ignore it for now).
But, there's also clearly something holding Tav back from realizing their full potential, which is their naivete.
"Just that you ... have a big heart. You like doing what's right."
(The animations and voice acting here make him look and sound so fucking condescending, 10/10.)
However, Astarion doesn't tell them this is wrong, or that he disagrees. He implies it's a flaw, but doesn't state it outright. That's dangerous territory, see, and might predispose them to get defensive and reject what he has to say next.
No, he tries (and fails in my case, but it's cute that he tries, bless him) to manipulate Tav by appealing to that big heart of theirs.
"So I was thinking, what would be the right thing to do when we get to Moonrise Towers? When we come face-to-face with whoever is controlling the parasites in our heads."
"I'm just saying there's an opportunity here. If we can control the tadpoles, we can keep ourselves safe and liberate the world from this evil."
See what he's doing? You like doing what's right, so what would be the right thing to do? We can keep ourselves safe. Liberate the world from evil.
It's very blatant, but he's trying to appeal to Tav's good nature by framing his questionable ideas as something that will benefit the greater good, something that's morally righteous that they would agree with.
And of course, it's incredibly funny when you ask how he thinks you'll do that, and he fumbles and admits he's not a "details person," but it's also revealing.
He thinks he's found in Tav ambition, when all he's actually found is ability. Tav exercises power proficiently, while Astarion does not. If he had the authority they have, he'd let ambition drive his actions, which is why he assumes that's what drives Tav when they exercise their power. A good-aligned Tav has very little ambition, I'd argue, but they have plenty of opportunity to exercise their power, which they do when their hand is forced.
So what Astarion is saying is, in effect, hey, you have power, I have ambition. Will you please use your authority/ability to do what I want? Here's how it'll totally be for the greater good, I prommy.
This is brilliant writing, and I really applaud Larian for managing to walk that fine line of making Astarion so sympathetic while he's literally trying to manipulate the player character. Because when I first got this convo, my thought was both "wow, I adore how blatant and terrible his manipulation attempts are, it's kind of endearing" and "he's so terrified, it's genuinely quite tragic."
If we control the tadpoles, we can keep ourselves safe. This works only somewhat as an appeal to good-aligned Tav, because it could also potentially sound very selfish, especially if Tav is the self-sacrificing sort. So notice how, when he says "liberate the world from evil", it sounds kinda tacked-on, an afterthought designed to bury his main goal, which is keep "ourselves" (i.e. himself) safe. Like, yes, this will keep us/me safe, but if you're not into that, then it'll totally help the world, too! It doesn't quite work, because he still sounds ironic and like he doesn't believe they'd be liberating anything from any evil (work that 10 Charisma, boy), but that's the intent, I think.
Does he want power for power's sake? Yes. Is he gleefully powerhungry? Absolutely. But he's also fucking terrified, and that slips through just a little bit, even behind the smug and confident facade.
He's trying to get Tav, whom he's seen exercise their power over others, to lend some of it to him, so that he may never fear anything ever again.
All of this from a short, smug convo where he admits he's too stupid to figure out how to fulfill his dreams of world domination.
I was experimenting with some FNAF AU ideas that branch off from my existing AU. And a partial swap AU of sorts came to mind.
An AU where Chica was involved in some kind of unknown incident instead of Foxy. Her Beak and hands were removed and she was tossed into the basement. Shortly after her disappearance, Freddy and Roxy were playing up in the catwalks of Monty golf. Instead of Bonnie and Monty. Which would result in Roxy being crushed by the splash bucket and her legs being broken. Sometime later on Freddy would be involved in a mysterious accident that damaged him severely. He would then be tossed into the basement. Where he and Chica wouldn't be seen again for 10 long years..
Roxy would then jump start the Glamrock era with a performance of grief and anger. Foxy and Bonnie, having not been decommissioned- would be turned into Glamrocks with the rest of the group. There's a lot more to it like how DA's purpose and design would change since Foxy was never decommissioned. How Bonnie's personality changed when he was given Freddy's role in the spotlight. How Monty handled the grief and anger differently because he had Foxy by his side, etc etc..
I think this AU is really fun so far and I'd love to come back and draw some more stuff for it! But that would also involve redesigning all of the other characters.. Considering how long it took to design Glamrock Bonnie and Foxy, the next post might be a while- 😶
Hello! I'd like to request a little scenario thing with all the hazbin hotel characters you write for. This will probably sound stupid, but I just got my nails done for the first time ever, and I was thinking about how the hazbin crew might react cause I have been so excited to show them off!
If you don't want to do all of the characters, then I totally get it, I mainly want Husk and Vox. (And angel dust, but I'm not sure if you write for him)
Romantic pls!!!! Thank you so much if this is considered!!
You’ve unknowingly poked at an interest of mine. If ya care to know, I’m actually about to start school to become a nail technician next month.
(Part two— the gals)
Alastor
Alastor noticed immediately and was curious.
He’d grab your hand and carefully examine each fingernail.
He’d compliment the color and design.
He might question the shape and length, mainly for function purposes.
If you got acrylics, he would question how you planned to get things done and laugh during your adjustment period.
If you ever poked your eye (especially if you got stiletto nails), he would smile and say something along the lines of “Well, what did you expect, my dear?”
He does love how they make you happy though.
Not enough to not make fun of you when they cause you to fuck something up, but enough to accompany you to the salon a time or two.
He’d hover over your shoulder and watch everything the poor nail tech did, questioning everything with a genuine interest.
He would not help you if your nail broke off despite this though.
His interest is just fleeting and a want for knowledge and once again, “What did you expect, my dear?”
Husk
Husk looked at people’s hands a lot.
He’s a gambler and a slight of hand expert. It’s second nature.
He picks up instantly and makes sure to give you a gruff comment about how they look.
He didn’t expect you to light up and stick your hand in his face but he wouldn’t complain. He likes seeing you happy.
He will be honest with you when you ask for his opinion on the color or design.
Don’t expect him to sugar coat it. If he thinks the colors clash or the design isn’t good past a first glance, he lets you know.
Over time he becomes sort of casually knowledgeable about the subject.
At least to the point where if you ask him for a design idea, he’d give you a pretty damn good one and even be able to decide between if matte or gloss top coat would look better.
His favorite shapes are the coffins.
They’re blunt enough to not scratch but sharp enough to itch.
He will be just attention seeking enough for you to notice when you get him.
Give him scratches between the eyes and bridge of his nose with them and he’s a fucking goner.
Lucifer
He probably wouldn’t notice at first unless you told him or until he grabbed your hand while cuddling.
It’s not that he doesn’t care. He very much does care. However, he’s not the most observant unless it’s an obvious change.
As soon as it’s come to his attention though he is fawning.
He will absolutely gush over your nails.
Compliments everything, the color, the shape, the design, the length. Just absolutely everything.
He’s asking you how they make you feel and listening to you with a love-sick smile.
He would be willing to go get his nails done with you.
Very surprised at how relaxing he found it and how much he liked it. Will go with you again.
Vox
He notices something is up almost immediately.
If you didn’t burst into his office as soon as you walked out the salon, then he noticed when you went to bed. Or more accurately, he went to bed.
He works a lot of late nights to maintain his image so in all likelihood, you were probably asleep when he got home.
Crawling into bed with you, you roll over to cuddle with him, give him a kiss, and rub your hand down his arm or chest.
He’d grab it, feeling something different immediately, even if you just got polish, but you were already back asleep.
The next morning he’d mention them as you both got ready for the day.
I can see him drinking coffee as he watched you talk about your nails, absolutely smitten.
He would always demand to see your nails when you got new ones.
“Alright, what have you got this time?”
He would give his honest opinion on what he thought.
No holding back with this man.
Would provide you with the money to get any style, design, whatever you want.
synopsis: set between civil war and black widow, your love for natasha, and her patience for your return, is tested beyond what the both of you had ever gone through before.
natasha romanoff x spider!reader
word count: 3.9k words
a/n: this is a bit messy but i felt the need to draw a general timeline for the characters of is there someone else? and your sweater. i admit i have grown a sort of attachment for the two from there, but i also wanted to know if you guys want more stories / blurbs / headcannons for these two, or whether i should try new things. let me know?
masterlist
36 hours. 36 hours to bring in a known fugitive, a possible terrorist, and his dear accomplice steve rogers. it was barely enough time.
and here tony was, making you wait outside of a window of an apartment in queens, waiting for the perfect time to, in his words, swing in and show the kid what he’s made of. you remembered telling him that you would show him what you were made of if he didn’t make it quick.
you dared to sneak a look into the bedroom the moment tony managed to sneak the kid away. he was barely fifteen. but the impressive speed that he caught his jumbled, homemade suit with when tony opened the attic door showed skill no normal fifteen year old possessed.
“you’re spider-boy?”
“...spider-man.” the boy replied, and at tony’s snap of his fingers, you slipped in, standing behind him for support as the boy gawked at your entrance.
“mm,” tony remarked, “this is our spider. you see her in a onesie like yours?”
the boy took time to rake his eyes through your advanced technical suit, crafted through years of precision and “user”-testing in the fights and missions you had managed to get injured from. every flaw was covered, every inch of space for injury accounted for.
you looked past tony to the video of the boy saving a car from crashing onto a bus, before swinging away at lightning speed. “how’d you figure out the perfect formula for the tensile strength?”
“i…”
“i like the goggles too,” you snatched the suit away from tony’s amused smirk, “good attempt at keeping the focus. sensory overload, right?”
the boy nodded. “you’re just like me. you get me.”
“i get you.” you replied, “but you’re in dire need of an upgrade.”
you stepped back this time, and watched as tony began his over-explanation, oversimplification, of the situation at hand. the kid watched with wide eyes, clinging on to every word he said, while you rubbed the material of his homemade suit between your fingers, wondering how you were going to teach him every single upgrade and function of the new suit you had designed just for him in 36 hours.
36 hours to capturing steve and bucky, and 36 hours to fixing things with natasha.
you couldn’t wait.
-
“i still think tony’s going a little overboard,” natasha muttered to you, arms crossed at the back of the quinjet.
you approached, the low hum of the jet preventing you from hearing her clearly earlier. she continued, “he’s ridden with guilt. he’s not thinking clearly.”
“but he’s still right.” you sat next to her, the atmosphere tense. you had been having this argument even since the idea had popped into tony’s head. “and you’re still here.”
“because i think the other side is more mistaken, not because he’s right.”
“steve is the one going overboard. he’s blinded by the love he has for his friend.”
“...weren’t you blinded by love before?” natasha accused, “for me, all those years ago?”
you were stunned for a moment. natasha knew she made a valid point. but then, you reaffirmed, “it’s different. steve made a mistake, we shouldn’t be the ones deciding who lives and who dies. i should’ve forced him to sign the accords when i had the chance.”
the sight of the airport drew nearer and nearer. in front of you, you saw peter fidget nervously in his new upgraded suit.
–
you were wrapping webs round and round the suddenly enlarged ant-man, one of his hands gripping rhodey. with an agreement for peter to strike ant-man’s legs, the giant soon fell to his knees with his entire lower half webbed, groaning when the war machine broke free from his hold.
in your peripheral vision, you saw natasha running after steve and bucky, her words ringing in your mind as you instructed peter to finish off ant-man from getting back up again. a thumbs-up was sent his way when he did, the smile on his face reaching his ears.
weren't you blinded by love before?
you hoped she would do the right thing, as you returned your attention to helping tony take down wanda and clint.
but even as you fought, her words kept coming back to your head, and by the time steve and bucky were mere seconds away from the quinjet, you made up your mind to zip to natasha to check in on her.
weren’t you blinded by love before?
you watched in horror as she stunned the black panther, him spasming and dropping to his knees. you watched with even more horror as she let the fugitives go, steve helping bucky climb into the quinjet and starting the engine. when steve shut the latch of the jet, he made eye contact with you hanging off the hangar, and nodded in thanks. he knew you were letting him go, too.
mostly, you were even more horrified at your automatic reaction to catch t’challa from lunging at her, forcing him to the ground as his claws barely missed her face. in consequence, his own claws tore through your suit instead, the vibranium stronger than the nano-technology defences you had designed the suit with.
you seethed in pain as the claws came back doused with blood, the burning on your back sure to leave a definite scar as it hit the cold air.
you struck a web to his face, before throwing him off of you and quickly webbing him to the wall of the hangar.
natasha felt your hands shaking her just moments later, still in shock that you had jumped in to help, and save her.
“the webs are not going to hold him for long, nat,” you said when her eyes managed to refocus on you, “and you just obstructed justice. you need to go, now.”
“i…i couldn’t let them…” she stuttered.
“i know, i know,” you assured her. behind you, t’challa was breaking loose. “i’ll stay here and explain everything to them. but you need to run, and hide, for a while. tony told me he was planning to send anyone helping them to the raft. i can’t let you go there.”
“what about you?” her hands tried to stop the blood seeping through her fingers from your back, but you were firm.
“i’ll be okay. i’ll come find you after i’ve settled everything here and it’s safe for you to come back.”
“promise…?” natasha knew you were right, but her heart was saying otherwise. how could she possibly bear to leave you behind and deal with her consequences? how could she go anywhere without you by her side? how would she know you’ll come find her again?
“i promise. i love you.” you left room for no argument.
she was gone by the time the black panther broke free, the ghost of the feeling of her lips against yours still replaying in your mind.
–
ross’ face was possibly on the verge of exploding, listening to tony’s recounting of events and your, arguably non-convincing reasoning, of why chasing natasha would be a fool’s errand.
“her hand slipped. she was supposed to stun bucky, hit t’challa.”
“that’s not what t’challa said. and that’s why you’re handcuffed to the table now.” ross called through your bluff, “you’re lucky you’re not sitting in a cell in the raft at all.”
the chains against your handcuff clinked the table as you sighed, waiting for your own course of beration and punishment from the team.
somewhere out there, you hoped natasha was safe, and that she had successfully escaped ross’ team sent out to arrest her.
–
years ago, a few nights after you and natasha had made your relationship official, she had asked you where you would live, if you could live anywhere in the world.
“norway,” you replied.
“why?”
“i don’t know. seems like a nice place to be. it’s calm, quiet, relatively crime-free.”
“then you would be out of a job, you know?” natasha teased, her heart skipping a beat as you let out a laugh.
“i’ll find something else,” you assured her, “i’ll survive.”
you turned to her then, prompting the same question she had asked you. she had replied, “anywhere with you.”
–
now, you were currently hinging on the sole fact that all roads and clues pointed you to her being in norway.
it had been six months since the events of the team’s civil war, a week since you had begun using a fake passport to get on flights, and three hours since you have been driving along the gravel road where her trailer was supposed to be.
truth be told, you were nervous. you were afraid of natasha’s safety, and you worried whether she was blaming herself for losing the family she had grown to love in the past few years. and selfishly, you were mostly nervous if she had forgotten you and started a new life altogether.
but natasha no longer lived in the trailer by the time you got there; you found out upon hiding and attacking the first person that entered the trailer that wasn’t her. when he choked out bitterly that she had left just an hour before you arrived with another woman, your heart sank.
they had boarded a jet and flew off to find someone. he had been helping her throughout her being in hiding. he bothered to mention that she talked about you all the time. he told you that she was losing more hope of you coming back day by day
doesn’t matter. she has someone else now.
“is she…is the girl she’s with…” you stuttered for the first time in your life. the man across from you removed the ice pack he was using to nurse the bruise you gave him.
“i don’t know. didn’t seem like it, though.”
you nodded, at a loss of what to do. now what? you came to find her, she’s gone, you don’t know where or how else to look for. and she likely has someone else now, too.
what if natasha didn’t want you back?
mason looked at you then, almost in pity. you felt very bad for punching him to get information out of him.
“for what it’s worth, with the technology you have in your suit, i’m sure i can help link it to the approximate whereabouts of the aircraft.”
you looked up to him with hope, nervousness bubbling in your stomach again. “a-are you…?”
“fuck it, i’m sick of natasha bemoaning about missing you everyday. i’m going to help you find her.”
-
natasha sat by the oak-coloured bench as she stared across the table to yelena, equally donning a new getup as she. downing yet another bottle of beer, she wondered if yelena deserved to know about you, or whether she was only putting you in more danger. but then, she wondered selfishly, if you were even bothered to come find her at all.
it’s been six months after all. six months without her must have been pretty peaceful for you, with all the storms and misfortune she felt she had brought into your life. maybe it was for the better that you had chased her away. maybe you had wanted her to go, so you could move on with the life you had always wanted for yourself.
fuck. the alcohol was making her want to cry. everything about you made her want to cry. natasha missed you so much. the coldness of the spot in bed beside her each night, one less coffee mug she shared each morning, the empty space beside her when she needed someone to hold her.
she never knew how dependent she had gotten on you, until you had to be separated. you have truly changed her, inside and out, and while natasha could complain about it otherwise, deep down in her heart she knew she would not have it any other way.
how long more did she have to wait?
yelena gave her a weird look, and natasha excused herself to the bathroom. she couldn’t let her sister see her like this.
-
but in the five minutes that she was gone, natasha came back to an empty bench, with the shop she had bought the beers from deserted and the shutters shut. it was as if the owner had suddenly upped and ran.
upped and ran. fuck. they found her.
grabbing the gun holstered to her side, natasha called out slowly, “yelena…?”
silence. “yelena?”
nothing again. her aircraft was still there, and when she approached slowly, wary of her surroundings and any widows, the crunch her boot made with a branch underneath triggered the loudest scream she had ever heard.
in the next second, a blur of two figures landed before her, wrestling to get the upper hand. yelena was screaming with all her might, and above her…above her, natasha could recognise that suit anywhere.
it had her initials carved in the inner lining of the heart area, after all.
“where is she?!” your voice sounded raspier, deeper than she remembered. you sounded tired and wary, too.
but the hands pinning yelena down said otherwise, your strength overpowering hers as yelena tried desperately to free herself from under you. “where is what–asshole–!”
“where is natasha!” you pressed down on her neck, and at the choke yelena let out, the switch finally flipped in natasha.
she screamed your name, from metres away, and at the immediate recognition, you faltered, and shot your gaze to her direction. she knew you couldn’t see her clearly under the low light of the broken street lamps, but it was her.
the next thing you knew, though, the woman under you had wrenched a hand free and shot you in the neck with a widow bite. you cursed at the sting from the shock, but then all at once, darkness ensued. it definitely wasn’t the same widow bites natasha had designed over the years.
-
“you nearly killed my wife, yelena!”
“how was i supposed to know that was your wife? i didn't even know you had a wife!”
-
when you woke to, it was yelena, the woman who nearly tried killing you, that was by your side. when the world stopped spinning for a while, you recognised that you were in the very aircraft mason had told you about.
“hi,” you groaned lowly, fingers reaching for the spot that the blonde had shot the widow bite at. it was wrapped in a bandage.
“welcome back, my sister-in-law.”
this time, she offered you a hand, and you took it gratefully to shake it. “sorry i shot you earlier. to be fair, you did try to kill me too.”
“fair game.”
the door slid open then, and at the sight of natasha entering, holding onto a pile of makeshift medication and bandages, your heart managed to stop beating for a while, if possible.
her hair was longer, face a little more tired, worry lines etched into skin that was not so taut anymore. but still, she was your natasha, and she never looked more ethereal than in that moment.
yelena had to step out of the room at the ferocity and aggressiveness that natasha engulfed you with, the squeals that left her sister’s mouth one that she would never have imagined hearing.
“you came back, you came back!” natasha said in between tears of joy, as you hugged her even tighter. the nights with her pillows never replaced her body pressed against yours.
“of course, i promised you,” you reassured, “i’ll come find you.”
“i thought–i thought–you’d given up, or i should give up,” she said between hiccups, sobs leaving her now at the incredulity of it all, “i thought you finally realised you were better off without me and–”
“nat,” you pulled her away to press a kiss firmly to her lips, “i would never do that.”
“i know. but you were gone so long and i waited. i waited and waited and…it was a long six months.”
you laughed, letting her lips chase yours once again. “it really was.”
when the two of you finally settled down and came back to earth, you snuck a glance at yelena, who you currently wished you had met in better circumstances, rather than nearly killing her to get to natasha.
“guess i didn’t get on the best footing for meeting your sister, huh?” you whispered to natasha.
she nudged your side, prompting you to smile at yelena. she gave you a weird look, but awkwardly smiled back. “yeah, and you know what’s even crazier?”
“what?”
“you’re about to meet my parents, too.”
-
you sat awkwardly beside natasha at the dinner table in melina’s house, shifting uncomfortably as yelena just burst out screaming that the “family” natasha had always told you was made up of red room agents, was always real to her.
you thought she looked like a child throwing a tantrum. then, you bit the inside of your cheek and berated yourself for thinking so, because yelena of all people, was a woman who never did get a childhood at all. she deserved at least this.
under the table, you felt natasha hold your hand for support. you squeezed it gently. she’s got you.
you soothingly wrapped around her trembling fingers, still. because as strong as natasha was, biting back and spitting at her “parents” then, she was still hurt, and a teardrop had fallen to the side of her face that she had quickly wiped away. the teardrop no one would have noticed, except you, who had been wiping almost all of her tears away in the years that you had been together.
later on, when your spider-senses overloaded with the impending arrival of dreykov’s men, while natasha and melina argued over their plan to finally take him down, you found it hard to ignore the crying coming from yelena’s room. and you felt even worse for what you were going to subject her to later.
–
natasha entrusted you to deal with taskmaster, while she handled the big man himself. you were about to argue, fearing for her safety and protection, but with a warning glance from her mother on your possibility of doubt over natasha’s own skills, you kept quiet. you had to trust your wife.
but what natasha failed to tell you, however, was that taskmaster was more competent, and dangerous, than all the other widows involved. she had told you that they would be difficult, sure, but you hadn’t expected difficult to include you struggling to catch your breath, making up new moves on the fly to prevent the human weapon on copying your combat style almost perfectly. they had used your agility and swiftness against you, and you were convinced that had they had your webs, you would almost certainly be done for, too.
“i don’t want to kill you,” you wheezed as you managed to sneak a move to tumble them to the ground, but the way in which they glared back at you and aimed a launcher right at your face, told you all that you needed to know. the feeling wasn’t mutual.
with the help of natasha’s father in finally locking the taskmaster in a cell momentarily, you took the opportunity to find her, even as explosions rang through your ears and the shaking of the base showing the impending signs of doom.
–
you held her as the both of you free fell through the skies, natasha’s fingers holding on to you as if you would disappear from her once again.
“i’ve got you,” you murmured into her skin. she nodded slowly, telling you she understood.
you deployed the parachute when you reached closer to the ground. natasha had gotten very good at getting over her fear of heights, as she latched on. years ago, she was still screaming in fear each time you brought her swinging through the city after your dates and missions together. now, only a small exhale left her lips as you landed her softly, safely, on the ground. you smiled to yourself at the change you only noticed now.
“i still have…i have to…” she gestured towards dreykov’s daughter, the taskmaster, behind you. you wish you had known.
you nodded understandingly. natasha was kind, kinder than anyone you knew. she was just like that. “go. do what you have to do to set her free. i’ll stay behind, in case you need help.”
“after she almost knocked you out?” a hint of a playful smirk, you jabbed her side lovingly.
“i was pulling my punches! you told me not to kill her.”
natasha snuck a kiss on your cheek. “i know. my hero.”
–
you and natasha exchanged quiet smiles throughout the ride back to ross’ prison, or custody, wherever it was. it didn’t matter. she had taken down the demons of her past, and she had gotten you back. you had found her, and you were never letting her out of your sight ever again.
weren’t you blinded by love before? nobody else mattered. not what ross had to say, not what tony had screamed at you for, not what steve or anyone else tried to convince you to do. being blinded by love for natasha was never a bad thing for you.
“i never told you, but i like your new suit,” you whispered, holding her hands through your handcuffs.
she hid the blush appearing on her cheeks. “i know. your hands said enough.”
“and your family too. your dad’s a character, and your mom’s really strong. stronger than me, that’s for sure.”
“and yelena? my sister?” she found a way to interlace her fingers with yours, to the disgust of ross’ agents. you didn’t care.
“i like her the most. she reminds me of the best parts of myself. she’s humble, kind, funny, and sensitive, not in a bad way. and she’s like you, headstrong and stubborn.” natasha suddenly felt you slipping something into her fingers. a piece of paper. she kept it skilfully from the prying eyes of the agents in the car.
“just the way you like it.”
“you bet,” you leaned back, feet “accidentally” kicking ross and causing a momentary distraction for his guards to aim their guns at you all at once. natasha took it as her signal to open the note.
there, scrawled in yelena’s handwriting, was an address that she had picked from the many safehouses you had so many years before. it was in new york, not far from where you and natasha lived. you had slipped her a burner phone before she left, too, as you informed natasha in your cells later on.
“i know it’s all real for you, too,” you reassured the redhead, “and i never got to apologise for leaving you, and your avengers family, for so long. i wanted to make it up to you. we’ll make sure yelena is never far, and you will always have her by your side from now on.”
natasha felt her cheeks hurting from the smile she was sporting. “you know, i have spent my whole life trying to go home. to go back to how things were, to undo all that i have done in the past. and i managed to do just that, just a few days ago. take down dreykov, come back to my family, go back to my childhood home. but somehow, all of that was not home anymore. at least not the home i envisioned myself to go back to.”
“and what is the home you envision now?”
“you. i come back to your arms, and it is home now. nothing else compares.”
your fingers ghosted the wedding band on your ring finger subconsciously, scrunching your eyes and trying hard to fight back the tears from falling as you listened to her declaration.
36 hours or six months. the timing never mattered. you and natasha would find each other, and come home to each other's love, regardless.
Josh is your typical college kid maybe even a little nerdier. He majored in video game development and is a part of the gaming club at school he really didn’t take part in any social life. He was very average-looking, not too skinny but not too fat. Of course, he has some pudge around him One day while waking to his character design class he noticed a new flyer on the bulletin board
“Love video games? Want to earn cash? Come join our trail of Beta testers”
Josh loved the idea as he continued reading. It did pay pretty well and would provide all accommodations during the duration of the trial. He decides to take the pamphlet and heads to his apartment pondering if he is going to do it or not.
The next day Josh ends up driving to the address. Some big office parks with multiple buildings. “WAG” said the sign out front. He remembered seeing this developer when taking his Indie gaming class last semester. “We Are Gaming” is what the company was called and they specialized in virtual reality games and development. Josh was excited to see what project he would be helping in.
As he walked into the building he went to the front desk.
“Hello I’m here to be a part of the beta testing program,” Josh asked the receptionist
“Hello, please fill out the form on the iPad and one of our specialists will assist you momentarily”
Josh grabbed the iPad and started to fill out the questionnaire. It had all the reasonable questions you might think Until he got to the end
“What the fuck” Josh winced as the questions got more personal. Cock size, sexuality, perceived popularity. Josh decided to answer as he didn’t want to get disqualified and entered the form. Not that long after a man in what seemed like a doctor's uniform comes out from a secure door
“Hello, you must be Josh. My name is Doctor Houston. I’m the head of the VR department. Please follow me” Houston had a very stern voice with a seriousness that he did not want to mess around.
As he started to follow Dr.Houston Josh asked questions “Wow so you have a Ph.D. in gaming or computer science?”
Dr. Houston chuckled before answering “No, I have a MD in Internal medicine. WRG hired me to head the VR department as they want to see the reactions the body takes to long-term virtual reality gaming… and here we are” He finished saying as he opened a room to some sort of laboratory containing a monitor, sleek white gaming equipment and some sport of large computer. On the other side a window looking into what seemed to be a control room
As Josh walks in he hears a door close and lock
“Hey, what’s going on” he screams while banging at the door. After a moment he notices dr Houston walk into the control room across the room and sit down at a desk facing the main room.
Over the speaker “Dear Josh, I will be monitoring your experience from over here. Please strap onto the center platform near the screen so we can start”
Josh felt like this program was more of a medical drug trial and video game testing but decided to continue with what the doctor said anyway. As he walked up to the platform he put his two feet on the conveniently designated spots and looked at the screen as it turned on.
“Welcome player to your new life”
wait new life what did it mean by that. Before Josh could react clamps came out of the ground and attached to his feet holding him in place
“Hey what’s the meaning of this” he screamed
“Please stay calm as we proceed,” the doctor said over the speaker
Large laser pointers came from the side of the computer. “Beginning digitization” the computer screen announced
“Wait what?? What’s happening”
Slowly two beams from the computer started to travel up his body as everything it touched slowly disintegrated
“AHHHHH FUCK IT BURNS STOP IT STOP IT PLEASE” Josh pleated to the computer and the doctor or anyone that would notice
As the computer continued up his body in a burning pain he noticed on the screen a complete 1 to 1 replica of himself….. wait no not a replica that was him…
The computer finally made it up to his head as he pleaded one last time “PLEASE I DON'T WAN…..” He was caught off as his head was completely overwhelmed by the lights
Suddenly Josh regained consciousness but now he is in some white room with nothing around. He then hears a noise
“Customization available……. Character template chooses… JOCK…….. PROCEEDING MODIFICATIONS”
“What is happening stop this” Josh screamed but no one was around to hear him as his clothes completely vanished out of nowhere.
Slowly his body started to change to correspond to the data inside the computer
First Josh's feet grew from his regular size 9s to a huge size 14 which would be making noise anytime he walked anywhere. As the changes traveled upwards his calfs and leg muscles grew. His thighs ended up looking like watermelons and could easily break one if he wanted to between the two.
“Oh fuckkkkkkkkkk” Josh moaned as the changes continued
His cock and balls were next to change as his penis started to pull outwards slowly inching from a 6….7….8…….9……10 and finally ending at a huge size 11 which would make anyone fucked with It limp for days. His ball felt sore as they grew to baseballs filled with cum ready to fill and breed. The last touch to his groin area was the re-growth of his foreskin and ended with a continues leaky cock.
The changes moved to his torso as his abs started to chisel themselves one by one making a road all the way to the growing mountains that were his pecs. His chest looked like it was being inflated and his pecs were the Mount Everest of the range with a pointed nipple which faced downwards due to the muscle growth onto of his pecs.
“Ughh please make it stop…” Josh moaned as the changes continued
Next, his arms grew with his biceps growing to the size of footballs and his hands matching to be able to palm and grab any ball he wanted. The next set of changes started to settle in as hair started to grow across his body. His armpits started to burst out with hairs so thick that even when he put his arms down they would spew from the sizes. Next hair started to travel across his chest and legs thinking and giving him a nice rug that accentuated his already defined muscles. Lastly, but most importantly his bush started to grow more and more from his groin. Anytime of pants or underwear won’t be able to cover the spillage that will be coming over the top of them.
Josh was in a dazed state as the changes started to subside and finish up. He didn’t know how to feel…. Horny? Confused? Scared? Everything seemed so different as he started to hear the voice again.
“MODIFICATIONS COMPLETE….. STANDARD JOCK REGISTERED…… NAME: CHRIS HERNANDEZ… REGISTERED”
Wait that wasn’t his name why would it say that was someone entering all of this
“GAME WILL BEGIN MOMENTARILY… PLEASE HOLD”
Soon everything went black and it felt like Josh fell asleep.
“Oh god…. where am I” Josh woke up in what seemed to be a house much different to his one. It felt almost generated. Against his will, Josh got up from his bed and started to move to the kitchen where his body made a protein-heavy breakfast.
“Omg stop why can’t I control my body what is happening,” Josh thought in his mind completely scared of what was going on. Unbeknownst to him outside the computer his body was being fully controlled by someone on the outside.
After eating the breakfast his body immediately got up and started to walk to a new room filled with gym equipment. “Oh god no,” Josh thought.. His body started to go through an intensive workout against his will.
by the end of it he was completely exhausted with the last bits of energy he had he was able to take control for a moment and scream out
“HELP IM STUCK”
.
.
.
“Um Doctor, there seems to be an issue,” the voice said
“What seems to be the problem?”
“The character said something weird… “Help, Im stuck” in like screaming pattern” he responded
“Ahh that’s strange don’t worry about that. We can fix that in the next patch. Might just be grabbing from some unused text files. Thank you for pointing it out” The doctor replied as he walked away taking notes and smirking
Josh was now completely trapped inside WRG new game “US” a life simulation game where gamers can be anyone their dreams can be. Unluckily for Josh, he was stuck being the complete opposite of his original self. Now is a template of a stereotypical jock for those who are too lazy to create their own characters in the game.
.
.
I hope you all enjoy. This was a story swap with @axeegliter. Check out their story and blog!
Important notice! The trees in this family are so large (even split by genus) that they are very likely to be unreadable on tumblr. That's why I have a website, in which you can find the images in full resolution by opening them in a new tab and zooming. Find them here. More info below the cut.
Okay, this tree took a while. There were 130+ blogs to catalog, and that was monumentally slow to do. I hope it doesn't take this long for the next tree. Also- ignore my paltry web design skills. I've attempted to input a more dyslexic friendly font option (I'm not dyslexic myself, if anyone with dyslexia wants to inform me if it is better, that would be great), but I'm honestly not that great at HTML. If any JQuery wizards want to help with a few things, I would owe my endless gratitude.
What's next?
After this big tree, I need some quick projects. I'll most likely update Alphidae, then move to the Potatoes or Snoms- haven't decided yet.
Some notes:
Although there have been some questionable things acted out in this family, I do think it has crafted some pretty interesting ideas. @/the-false-sun and @/the-dungeon-core are some of my favorites.
A quick description of the genera:
Systema - Blogs that emulate part of the game system.
Spectaculum - Roleplay blogs contained within or related to the system, usually as some sort of character.
Actus - Roleplay blogs that fit into the box of a conventional video game NPC, or acting as players within the game.
Faventia - The fandom focused blogs of the EPPRBCU.
Moderatus - Blogs emulating the moderators, tech support, and developers of the game.
Lastly, if any of the blogs present think they deserve a reclassification or have a suggestion to improve this, do not hesitate to notify me.
A set of very conceptual notes I drafted a while back for someone asking for advice on learning to draw humans. I'm entirely self-taught so this is less of a tutorial and more of a very rambling set of general principles I follow and ideas that helped while I was learning. I figured I'd post it in case anyone else could get use out of it!
I also recommend checking out:
Drawing East Asian Faces by Chuwenjie
How to Think When you Draw (lots of good tutorials in this series)
Pose reference sites such as Adorkastock
Transcript and some elaboration under the cut:
Img 1 - Drawing a face
The two most important elements (at least for me) when drawing a face are the outline of the cheek/jaw and the nose*. I often start with a circle to indicate the round part of the skull, then add a straight like and a 'V' to one side [to create the side of the face and the jaw].
The nose creates an easy template for the rest of the face's features to follow (eyebrows at the top of the nose bridge, eyes towards the center of the bridge, ear lines up to eye) and the placement/direction and overlap with other features is a very simple way to indicate dimension.
[A sketch of a face that has been adjusted by moving its parts to create 3 different angles. The following text is underneath:]
-Different 3/4th views can be created just by adjusting the position of and amount of overlap between the facial features.
- The top of the ear usually lines up with the corner of the eye. Think of how glasses are designed [specifically, how the arms run from the eyeline to the ear]
[I go on a tangent in these next few paragraphs]
*One thing I see many artists do - not just beginners - is learn how to draw A Person. As in, one singular person with one set of bodily proportions and one set of facial features. It's an issue that runs a bit deeper than 'same face syndrome' because sometimes these artists can draw more than one face, they're just not very representative of [the diversity present across] real people.
Part of the reason I'm talking more about how to think about approaches to drawing - rather than showing specific how-to's - is because there is no one correct or right way to draw a person. The sooner you allow yourself to explore variety - fat people, old people, people of color, people with [conventionally] 'unattractive' features - the easier it'll be! Artists often draw their own features honestly and without [harmful] caricature, so it's always a good idea to look at art made by the kinds of people you're trying to draw if you're ever unsure about how to handle something.
In general, it's far more important to learn how to interpret a variety of forms than to learn how to replicate the Platonic Ideal of the Human Body.
Img 2 - Stuff that helped me
Jumping into drawing humans (faces or otherwise) straight from photo reference can be overwhelming. The trick is to simplify forms into shapes - but even this concept is sort of abstract and it may be hard to know where to begin.
Good news - Thousands of other artists have already figured it out. [When starting out] I needed to learn from photo reference AND artists I admired in order to improve.
[When looking at stylization you are inspired by] ask yourself: WHY does this simplification work? How can I translate it into a different pose? Instead of copying what you see in a photo reference exactly, try to focus on the general forms first.
My two biggest style inspirations for humans while learning to draw them were Steven Universe and Sabrina Cotugno's art. SU gets a lot of hate [in this instance I was specifically referring to a time on tumblr when the art was knocked for 'losing quality'] but its style does a great job of simplifying anatomy in a way that still portrays a diversity of bodies + features.
[Extremely simplified drawings of Lapis, Steven, and Amethyst]
SU characters are still identifiable- and still read as 'human' - even when reduced to just a few lines!
Img 3 - Things I keep in mind while drawing side profiles
- Eyebrows + eyes close to the 'edge' of the face
- Forehead needs enough room for a brain
- Eye is > shaped from the sides
- Mouth kinda halfway [between the nose and the chin] but closer to the nose
- Skin/fat exists under the jaw [and connects to the neck]
- neck is about one half the width of the whole head
- the back of the skull always sticks out a bit further than you might expect
- Sometimes less is more - contours exist on every face, but drawing them in may make your character seem much older than they're supposed to be. However, it's a good idea to use them when you *want* your character to look old!
These are very general notes- every face is different and has different proportions [and playing around with them creates unique and interesting character designs]
Dm Tip: Playing the Villain/ Guidelines for "Evil" Campaigns
I've never liked the idea of running an evil game, despite how often I've had people in my inbox asking how I'd go about it. I'm all about that zero-to-hero heroic fantasy not only because I'm a goodie twoshoes IRL but because the narrative-gameplay premise that d&d is built around falls apart if the party is a bunch of killhappy murder hobos. Not only would I get bored narrating such a game and indulging the sort of players who demands the freedom to kill and torture at will (I've had those before and they don't get invited back to my table), but the whole conceit of a party falls through when the obviously villainous player characters face their first real decision point and attempt to kill eachother because cooperation is a thing that goodguys do.
Then I realized I was going about it all wrong.
The problem was I had started out playing d&d with assholes, those "murder and torture" clowns who wanted to play grand-theft-auto in the worlds I'd created and ignore the story in favour of seeing how much unchallenged chaos they could create. They set my expectations for what an evil campaign was, and I spent the rest of my time developing as a dungeonmaster thinking " I Don't want any part of that"
But what would an evil campaign look like for my playgroup of emotionally healthy friends who understand character nuance? What would I need to change about the fundamental conceit of d&d adventures to refocus the game on the badguys while still following a similar enough narrative-gameplay premise to a hero game? How do we make that sort of game relatable? What sort of power/play fantasy can we indulge in without going off the deepend?
TLDR: In an evil campaign your players aren't playing the villains, they're the MINIONS, they're mooks, henchmen, goons, lackeys. They're the disposable underlings of uncaring overseers who have nothing but ill intent towards them and the world at large.
Where as in a hero game the party is given the freedom to challenge and overthrow corrupt systems, in an evil game the party is suck as part of that corrupt system, forced to bend and compromise and sacrifice in order to survive. The fantasy is one of escaping that corrupt system, of biding your time just long enough to find an opening, find the right leverage, then tossing a molitov behind you on the way out.
Fundamentally it's the fantasy of escaping a shitty job by bringing the whole company down and punching your asshole boss in the face for good measure.
Below the cut I'm going to get into more nuance about how to build these kinds of narratives, also feel free to check out my evil party tag for campaigns and adventures that fit with the theme.
Designing a campaign made to be played from the perspective of the badguys requires you to take a different angle on quest and narrative design. It’s not so simple as swapping out the traditionally good team for the traditionally bad team and vis versa, having your party cut through a dungeon filled with against angel worshiping holyfolk in place of demon worshipping cultists etc.
Instead, the primary villain of the first arc of the campaign should be your party’s boss. Not their direct overseer mind you, more CEO compared to the middle managers your party will be dealing with for the first leg of their journey. We should know a bit about that boss villain’s goals and a few hints at their motivation, enough for the party to understand that their actions are directly contributing to that inevitable doom.
“Gee, everyone knows lord Heldred swore revenge after being banished from the king’s council for dabbling in dark magic. I don’t know WHY he has us searching for these buried ancient tablets, but I bet it’s not good”
Next, you need a manager, someone who’s a part of the evil organization that the party directly interfaces with. The manager should have something over the party, whether it be threats of force, blackmail, economic dependency… anything that keeps the antiheroes on the manager’s leash. Whether you make your manager an obvious asshole or manipulative charmer, its important to maintain this power imbalance: The party arn’t going to be rewarded when the boss-villain’s plan goes off, the manager is, but the manager’s usefulness to the boss-villain is contingent on the work they’re getting the party to do. This tension puts us on a collison course to our first big narrative beat: do the party get tired of the manager’s abuse and run away? Do they kill the manager and get the attention of the upper ranks of the villainous organization? Do they work really hard at their jobs despite the obvious warning signs and outlive their usefulness? Do they upstage their manager and end up getting promoted, becoming rivals for the boss-villain’s favor?
Building this tension up and then seeing how it breaks makes for a great first arc, as it lets your party determine among themselves when enough is enough, and set their goals for what bettering the situation looks like.
As for designing those adventures, you’ll doubtlessly realize that since the party arn’t playing heroes you’ll need to change how the setup, conflict, and payoff work. They’re still protagonists, we want them to succeed after all, but we want to hammer home that they’re doing bad things without expecting them to jump directly to warcrimes.
Up to no good: The basic building block of any evil campaign, our party need to do something skullduggerous without alerting the authorities. This of course is going to be easier said than done, especially when the task spins out of control or proves far more daunting than first expected. The best the party can hope for is to make a distraction and then escape in the chaos, but it will very likely end with them being pursued in some manner (bounties, hunters, vengeful npcs and the like). Use this setup early in a campaign so you have an external force gunning for your party during the remainder of their adventures.
Dog eat dog: It’s sort of cheating to excuse your party’s villainous actions by having them go up against another villain who happens to be worse than they are. The trick is that we’re not going after this secondary group of outlaws because they’re bad, we’re doing it because they’ve either got something the boss wants, or they’re edging in on the boss’s turf. This sort of plotline sees the party disrupting or taking advantage of a rival’s operation, then taking over that operation and risking becoming just as villainous as that rival happened to be. This can also be combined with an “Up to no good” plot where both groups of miscreants need to step carefully without alerting an outside threat.
The lesser evil: This kind of plot sees your party sent out to deal with an antagonistic force that’s a threat not only to the boss’s plans but to everyone in general. In doing so they might end up fighting alongside some heroes, or accidentally doing good in the long run. This not only gives your party a taste of heroism, but gives them something in their back pocket that could be used to challenge the boss-villain in the future.
The double cross: In order to get what they want, the party need to “play along” with a traditional heroic narrative long enough to get their goal and then ditch. You have them play along specifically so they can get a taste of what life would be like if they weren't bastards, as well as to make friends with the NPCs inevitably going to betray. This is to make it hurt when you have the manager yank the leash and force the party to decide between finishing the job , or risk striking out on their own and playing hero in the short term while having just made a long term enemy. This is sort of plot is best used an adventure or two into the campaign, as the party will have already committed some villainous deeds that one good act can’t blot out.
Next, lets talk about the sort of scenarios you should be looking to avoid when writing an evil campaign:
Around the time I started playing d&d there was this trend of obtusely binary morality systems in videogames which claimed to offer choice but really only existed to let the player chose between the power fantasy of being traditionally virtuous or the power fantasy of being an edgy rebel. Early examples included:
Do you want to steal food from disaster victims? in Infamous
Do you as a space cop assault a reporter who’s being kind of annoying to you? in Mass Effect
Do you blow up an entire town of innocent people for the lols? in Fallout (no seriously check out hbomberguy’s teardowm on fallout 3’s morality system and how critics at the time ate it up)
I think these games, along with the generational backwash of 90s “edge” and 00s “grit” coloured a lot of people's expectations ( including mine) about what a "villain as protagonist" sort of narrative might look like. They're childish exaggerations, devoid of substance, made even worse by how blithely their narratives treat them.
Burn down an inn full of people is not a good quest objective for an evil party, because it forces the characters to reach cartoonish levels of villainy which dissociates them from their players. Force all the villagers into the inn so we can lock them inside and do our job uninterrupted lets the party be bad, but in a way that the players can see the reason behind it and stay synced up with their characters. The latter option also provides a great setup for when the party's actually monstrous overseer sets the inn on fire to get rid of any witnesses after the job is done. Now the party (and their players) are faced with a moral quandary, will they let themselves be accessories to a massacre or risk incurring their manager's wrath? Rather than jumping face first into cackling cruelty, these sorts of quandaries have them dance along the knife's edge between grim practicality and dangerous uncertainly; It brings the player and character closer together.
Finally, lets talk about ending the villain arc:
I don't think you can play a whole evil campaign. Both because the escalation required is narratively unsustainable, but also because the most interesting aspect of playing badguys is the breaking point. Just like heroes inevitably having doubts about whether or not they're doing the right thing, there's only so long that a group of antiheroes can go along KNOWING they're doing the wrong thing before they put their feet down and say "I'm out". I think you plan a evil campaign up until a specific "there's no coming back from this" storybeat, IE letting the Inn burn... whether or not the party allows it to happen, it's the lowest point the narrative will allow them to reach before they either fight back or allow themselves to be subsumed. If they rebel, you play out the rest of the arc dismantling the machine they helped to build, taking joy in its righteous destruction. If they keep going along, show them what they get for being cogs: inevitably betrayed, sacrificed, or used as canon fodder when the real heroes step in to do their jobs for them.
So: I do not like the idea of TTRPGs making formal mechanics designed to incentivise ethical play.
But, to be honest, I do not like the idea of any single game pushing any particular formal mechanics about ethical play at all.
So here I am, trying to think through the reasons why, and proposing a solution. (Sort of. A procedure, really.)
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Assumptions:
1.
Some genres of game resist ethical play. A grand strategy game dehumanises people into census data. The fun of a shooter is violence. This is truest in videogames, but applies to tabletop games also.
Games can question their own ethics, to an extent. Terra Nil is an anti-city-builder. But it is a management game at heart, so may elide critiques of "efficiency = virtue".
Not all games should try to design for ethical play. I believe games that incentivise "bad" behaviour have a lot to teach us about those behaviours, if you approach them with eyes open.
2.
The systems that currently govern our real lives are terrible: oligarchy, profit motive; patriarchy, nation-states, ethno-centrisms. They fuel our problems: class and sectarian strife, destruction of climate and people, spiritual desertification.
They are so total that the aspiration to ethical behaviour is subsumed by their logics. See: social enterprise; corpos and occupying forces flying rainbow flags; etc.
Nowadays, when I hear "ethical", I don't hear "we remember to be decent". I hear "we must work to be better". Good ethics is radical transformation.
3.
If a videogame shooter crosses a line for you, your only real response is to stop playing. This is true for other mechanically-bounded games, like CCGs or boardgames.
In TTRPGs, players have the innate capability to act as their own referees. (even in GM-ed games adjudications are / should be by consensus.) If you don't like certain aspects of a game, you could avoid it---but also you could change it.
Only in TTRPGs can you ditch basic rules of the game and keep playing.
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So:
D&D's rules are an engine for accumulation: more levels, more power, more stuff, more numbers going up.
If you build a subsystem in D&D for egalitarian action, but have to quantify it in ways legible to the game's other mechanical parts---what does that mean? Is your radical aspiration feeding into / providing cover for the game's underlying logics of accumulation?
At the very least it feels unsatisfactory---"non-representative of what critique / revolution entails as a rupture," to quote Marcia, in conversations we've been having around this subject, over on Discord.
How do we imagine and represent rupture, to the extent that the word "revolution" evokes?
My proposal: we rupture the game.
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How To Play The Revolution
Over the course of play, your player-characters have decided to begin a revolution:
An armed struggle against an invader; overturning a feudal hierarchy; a community-wide decision to abandon the silver standard.
So:
Toss out your rule book and sheets.
And then:
Keep playing.
You already know who your characters are: how they prefer to act; what they are capable of; how well they might do at certain tasks; what their context is. You and your group are quite capable of improv-ing what happens next.
Of course, this might be unsatisfactory; you are here to play a TTRPG, after all. Structures are fun. Therefore:
Decide what the rules of your game will be, going forward.
Which rules you want to keep. Which you want to discard. Jury-rig different bits from different games. Shoe-horn a tarot deck into a map-making game---play that. Be as comprehensive or as freeform as you like. Patchwork and house-rule the mechanics of your new reality.
The god designer will not lead you to the revolution. You broke the tyranny of their design. You will lead yourself. You, as a group, together. The revolution is DIY.
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Notes:
This is mostly a thought experiment into a personal obsession. I am genuinely tempted to write a ruleset just so I can stick the above bit into it as a codified procedure.
I am tickled to imagine how the way this works may mirror the ways revolutions have played out in history.
A group might already have alternative ruleset in mind, that they want to replace the old ruleset with wholesale. A vanguard for their preferred system.
Things could happen piecemeal, progressively. Abandon fiat currency and a game's equipment price list. Adopt pacifism and replace the combat system with an alternative resolution mechanic. As contradictions pile up, do you continue, or revert?
Discover that the shift is too uncomfortable, too unpredictable, and default back to more familiar rules. The old order reacting, reasserting itself.
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I keep returning to this damn idea, of players crossing thresholds between rulesets through the course of play. The Revolution is a rupture of ethical reality like Faerie or the Zone is a rupture in geography.
But writing all this down is primarily spurred by this post from Sofinho talking about his game PARIAH and the idea that "switching games/systems mid-session" is an opportunity to explore different lives and ethics:
Granted this is not an original conceit (I'm not claiming to have done anything not already explored by Plato or Zhuangzi) but I think it's a fun possibility to present to your players: dropping into a parallel nightmare realm where their characters can lead different lives and chase different goals.
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Jay Dragon tells me she is already exploring this idea in a new game, Seven Part Pact:
"the game mechanics are downright oppressive but also present the capacity to sunder them utterly, so the only way to behave ethically is to reject the rules of the game and build something new."
VINDICATION! If other designers are also thinking along these lines this means the idea isn't dumb and I'm not alone!
Your discussions on AI art have been really interesting and changed my mind on it quite a bit, so thank you for that! I don’t think I’m interested in using it, but I feel much less threatened by it in the same way. That being said, I was wondering, how you felt about AI generated creative writing: not, like AI writing in the context of garbage listicles or academic essays, but like, people who generate short stories and then submit them to contests. Do you think it’s the same sort of situation as AI art? Do you think there’s a difference in ChatGPT vs mid journey? Legitimate curiosity here! I don’t quite have an opinion on this in the same way, and I’ve seen v little from folks about creative writing in particular vs generated academic essays/articles
i think that ai generated writing is also indisputably writing but it is mostly really really fucking awful writing for the same reason that most ai art is not good art -- that the large training sets and low 'temperature' of commercially available/mass market models mean that anything produced will be the most generic version of itself. i also think that narrative writing is very very poorly suited to LLM generation because it generally requires very basic internal logic which LLMs are famously bad at (i imagine you'd have similar problems trying to create something visual like a comic that requires consistent character or location design rather than the singular images that AI art is mostly used for). i think it's going to be a very long time before we see anything good long-form from an LLM, especially because it's just not a priority for the people making them.
ultimately though i think you could absolutely do some really cool stuff with AI generated text if you had a tighter training set and let it get a bit wild with it. i've really enjoyed a lot of AI writing for being funny, especially when it was being done with tools like botnik that involve more human curation but still have the ability to completely blindside you with choices -- i unironically think the botnik collegehumour sketch is funnier than anything human-written on the channel. & i think that means it could reliably be used, with similar levels of curation, to make some stuff that feels alien, or unsettling, or etheral, or horrifying, because those are somewhat adjacent to the surreal humour i think it excels at. i could absolutely see it being used in workflows -- one of my friends told me recently, essentially, "if i'm stuck with writer's block, i ask chatgpt what should happen next, it gives me a horrible idea, and i immediately think 'that's shit, and i can do much better' and start writing again" -- which is both very funny but i think presents a great use case as a 'rubber duck'.
but yea i think that if there's anything good to be found in AI-written fiction or poetry it's not going to come from chatGPT specifically, it's going to come from some locally hosted GPT model trained on a curated set of influences -- and will have to either be kind of incoherent or heavily curated into coherence.
that said the submission of AI-written stories to short story mags & such fucking blows -- not because it's "not writing" but because it's just bad writing that's very very easy to produce (as in, 'just tell chatGPT 'write a short story'-easy) -- which ofc isn't bad in and of itself but means that the already existing phenomenon of people cynically submitting awful garbage to literary mags that doesn't even meet the submission guidelines has been magnified immensely and editors are finding it hard to keep up. i think part of believing that generative writing and art are legitimate mediums is also believing they are and should be treated as though they are separate mediums -- i don't think that there's no skill in these disciplines (like, if someone managed to make writing with chatGPT that wasnt unreadably bad, i would be very fucking impressed!) but they're deeply different skills to the traditional artforms and so imo should be in general judged, presented, published etc. separately.
★ DO NOT USE/REPOST WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. NO MINORS.
Jack in my Pouring Rain AU vs Jack in my Sunnyverse AU
Gonna ramble a bit here about the two portrayals, there’s a lot more typing space here so I will also be using my posts as a bit of infodump sometimes! ↓
For starters, I really adore Jack as a design and character, there’s not much I wanted to alter about him in the design department, so all changes are subtle!
✦ Starting with Pouring Rain!Jack!
This guy’s probably the closest to how he’s presented in game honestly— still manipulative, still colorful, probably a bit more deranged because his sunshine keeps forgetting shit.
Art wise, I wanted to really keep the colors on him vibrant, but also give him sort of a dim vibe as well. His hair is a bit more reflective of turquoise highlights with a gradient of a muted darker blue at the tips.
I like to imagine Jack uses colorful knives (if he most certainly has to use one). I have colorful knives in my house, it just seemed right as I was doing the dishes one day. He also changed his paints ever so slightly, because stars are very important to him.
He’s also rather glitchy when upset, but not that of a computer glitch when it happens.. more of like… something that’s being rewinded and re-written over numerous times, no?
Or, maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about!
And finally, the colorful paint on him!
Rain!Jack’s original sunshine way back nowhere was actually a graffiti artist, so does Jack know how to paint? It’s not like he would say, but it is a bit easier to play off a mysterious red stain if you’re covered in all the other colors.
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✦ Ending with Sunnyverse!Jack!
Sunnyverse, is quite frankly a bit of a community like idea. The premise being quite similar to the same notion of Spiderverse, where multiple of the characters can exist and vibe but may look different, while still following a canon of sorts. It’s basically like showing off your characters and AUs in your style!
(Honestly, with a name like that, maybe I should draw Spider-Jack… *Sunrise Spider?*)
This Jack is a divergent of the idea where the fictional world of CloudyTown is real. ← This information also is a slight spin-off of an unofficial AU called “Sunny Time Town” by artist Sauce! I will also be using “Sunnyverse” for the official name of my AU that includes my ocs that switch up the story in a non-yandere manner!
SV!Jack here rocks a bowtie and suspenders with the design paying a full tribute to a sketch I did in March! I’ve seen a few comments relating it to his teaching profession… and now I can’t I see it, haha!
To contrast Rain!Jack, SV!Jack’s hair is a nice pure blue gradient that dips into indigo/purple at the tips!
I added his belt as a tie in both of them (don’t ask why the belt is doing a :3), but now I hear the belt is sentient… that’s a cool idea I seen around, I gotta learn about that!
That’s about all the information I had on this piece though, til next time!