Just watched Hannibal put on Will’s jacket in Mizumono and sobbed so hard I gagged! What kills me about it is that Hannibal is so clearly heartbroken over Will’s betrayal. It must have been so difficult and terrifying for him to reveal more and more of what was underneath his carefully construed mask to Will throughout the episodes, something he hasn’t done for anyone but his victims since he lost his sister. Throughout S2b we see him warm up to the idea of a companion. He tests Will and Will passes the tests, until Hannibal smells Freddie on him and knows she’s not actually dead. He could have left, then, with Abigail and they couldn’t have proven anything, he could have had a comfortable life somewhere else, but instead he chose to give Will the benefit of the doubt, presumably against his better judgement. Will did what I imagine must have been the very worst thing anyone could have done to Hannibal. He didn’t not understand him, he pretended to understand him to serve his own agenda. He sensed Hannibal craved understanding and gave him just enough to be able to turn on him. I think that’s why Hannibal gutted Will and killed Abigail, Will is the only one with the ability to truly hurt Hannibal and he does, so Hannibal hurts him in the way only he can — and by doing so imagines he will be able to leave Will behind, start a new life, just as alone as he has always been, as the promise of companionship was a hoax — but again, he’s doing it half-heartedly. He could have watched the life drain out of Will, but he leaves instead of really killing him, so Will isn’t truly gone from him. He leaves, yes, but he takes Will’s jacket and wears it — so Will isn’t truly gone from him. And that begs the question — would he have done that for anyone before meeting Will? I do not think so and neither did Will. When Hannibal asks him “Do you believe you could change me, the way I’ve changed you?” it seems like he wants Will to say no, but Will doesn’t, he say’s he has already altered him, that he is just as much a part of Hannibal as Hannibal is a part of him. They are both so so torn - Will, who betrays Hannibal, but says he did want the gift Hannibal gave him, Hannibal, who guts him but in a way that won’t allow him to die. Will, who wants to catch Hannibal, but seems so accusatory and hurt when he says “you were supposed to leave”. He’s a good fisherman, but begs the fish to swim away, and Hannibal swims towards him although he can see the fishing rod. Everyone talks about Will running towards his own destruction for him, but so does Hannibal. They’re crashing into each other. I cannot get over it, ever
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So Godslingers begins with a Storytelling Phase. Each player rolls 3d6 and then uses a variety of tables to guide filling in an Old God's concept, domains and various interwoven stories.
These gods are all long dead by the time Godslingers Roleplaying Phase begins, but their legacy and power lingers in the hands of interstellar drifters.
Godslingers had a really loooong dev period. Like I was working on it simultaneously with the Old Gods and Young Guns setting guide and that came out in '22. It went through various GMless iterations (the book does still include rules for GMless play but that's no longer the focus) and the relationship between the gun and the Godslinger used to be much more fiddly and abstract mechanically.
Buuuut the Storytelling Phase was actually pretty set from very early on. So when it made sense to include some pre-written gods in Thirty Foes OR Once again, we are defeated (a storytelling/mapmaking game about powerful outsiders protecting a dead end village from an entire army, inspired by Seven Samurai) the way I did was I just went through the Storytelling Phase from Godslingers by myself multiple times.
Anyway all three books set in the Fourth Galaxy are pretty sick and also completely stand alone, as much as they can inform and weave into each other.
Godslingers is out now brand new and you can get all three Fourth Galaxy books in a bundle for a tenner discount.
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The way that not even the studio seems to be supporting the release of Shazam fotg is gross. Instead of pointing out the lack of marketing and blaming its performance on every other thing except for the movie itself, Twitter could easily be promoting it, but no, it's letting it drown. People are openly admitting to not having seen the movie on their 1/2 star reviews littering the internet, often leaning onto irrelevant reasons (hating other superhero movies including Quantumania, etc.) to paint it in a bad light. People will point at the cgi and immediately rage online about it without mentioning a single plot point.
Making 'hating superhero movies' a trend is honestly also gross and getting really old. YES, there are some recent movies that scream all sorts of things that warrant shitty reviews (blatant lack of creativity bc they're made for money and not as labors of love as they should be, etc). Trust me, I have my fair share of ones that I despise and I don't disagree with the consensus on the direction of superhero movies.
But if you don't like the superhero genre, don't watch superhero movies. Simple as that.
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hgs brainrot has returned due to tbosas .. speaking of hgs here’s an ask abt the hgs au: if things were totally different, and Wilbur were to be a 12 victor, what do you think a possible mentor-tribute dynamic would look like between him & Niki? I feel like it would be similar to Snow & Lucy in the way that he’s just going out of his way to cheat n help her
anon u have in fact struck jackpot because this is a concept i was spinning some thoughts abt before bee mentioned avoxes and we went OOOOH at that!!! so yes i have considered rainduo as a mentor-tribute dynamic and would love to talk about that concept too :]
so for this concept i think wilbur and niki would be close friends throughout childhood from 12, and then in their teens wilbur is reaped and, well, no one has particularly high hopes (he's a writer and a musician at heart, not a fighter) but through sheer trickery and dumb luck, he makes it to the end of the games. wilbur pulled some pretty fucked up tricks to win - when you can't use brute force, you have to use your brain - and partly due to the trauma of the games, partly due to his shame and survivor's guilt, he sinks into the capitol and relishes a new life there as a socialite. to him, the old wilbur died in the games and the new one has taken his place - to niki, and to his other friends in 12, whatever the games did to him made him into every vapid heartless capitol victor there is.
or. niki has her doubts. they all saw how horrible the games were, but surely there is some part of him left, some part that's hurting, even if it's buried deep?
anyway.
like og spin of the au, niki is reaped and this sucks - this time she does expect wilbur as her mentor on the train, and she expects some kind of warm welcome (maybe even an apology for leaving them so suddenly and silently? an explanation?) but she gets jack shit. wilbur is jaded and cruel and unrecognisable and niki entirely hates it. this is the part where i REALLY WISH we got some time of those two beefing with each other directly in canon (or at least interactions while niki was So Mad at him) but it's okay we fly blind. niki feels abandoned, lonely, thrown off of her kilter - she expected an ally in this place, but she doesn't recognise the person wilbur has become. she doesn't recognise his shallowness (...much), his ruthless advice for the arena, the way he doesn't seem to care for anything. she's scared and now she's lonely and it pisses her off - their mentorship is fraught. here are some thoughts from discord on that:
i tend to think of niki as a bit naïve before l'manberg or even doomsday - i think this is an au where this streak would come out real strong, and niki is stubborn that she can get through the games without losing herself. stubborn that she can stop things, that she can protect people. i don't think wilbur is cold enough (or, really, can bear to say aloud) to say that her odds in the arena are slim enough as it is, but he definitely tells her that she's making enemies and that her odds of survival dwindle with the more trouble she causes.
beyond that... hm. niki's trust in wilbur is almost unshakeable until nov 16, even when she outright says she doesn't recognise him anymore. i think she'd reluctantly listen re: don't burn down any buildings, but she would grow bolder each day she had to stay in the capitol. she gets more honest in front of the cameras. she makes more friends in training, and not the ones wilbur recommends. she throws barbs at him every time he makes one of those callous, cold-hearted comments about other tributes and rankings and odds. and besides, she's going in the arena this time, not him. she needs to practice her bravery.
it's like... she hasn't given up on him. she thinks the old wilbur is in there somewhere. (she is wrong. that is not how trauma works.) but she won't hold her tongue just because she
for extra angst points could definitely play up the whole 'feeling abandoned' angle between them as niki goes into the arena - probably due to how fraught their friendship gets leading up to the games. niki wants to focus on them and their friendship, wilbur has stringently cut off (almost) everything from 12 and refuses to let her in; he tells her to behave for the cameras, she tells him she never will. i think the last point in that screenshot would also make for a super tasty argument where niki feels wilbur has gone astray, that he's abandoned 12, and that he'll probably do nothing but sit on his ass and watch her die and he can't even bring himself to care about her anymore, can he? just more fodder for the arena. and honestly, i think wilbur would passively agree with most of that - he values niki's opinion, after all, even now, and if she says he's rapidly descending into a lost cause then she must be right. and it's niki, so she will be fine, and he goes to his bedroom that night and tries to pretend he is sleeping perfectly fine instead of feeling paralysed with fear.
okay now onto the games - YES HE SO WOULD. or at least i think he would go out of his way to help. as for cheating - he's a recent victor for 12 and i think he would value tommy (no doubt a link to him... i think they'd be in touch in this au also) too much to risk the punishment falling onto him as well. i get the vibes this is a games closer to 74th than 10th, so there are far fewer opportunities to cheat and the consequences of getting caught are higher. but schmoozing up sponsors? making stupid ass radio interviews or whatever to talk up niki's odds? sharing anecdotes from their childhood - some real, some entirely fabricated - across capitol airwaves to stoke their sympathy? 100%. with less to lose in this au, i think niki would be far less inclined to play nice for the cameras - i hope you starve, she spits at one of them, and wilbur appears on a talkshow two days later as she scrambles for survival in the arena to talk up how she always saved loaves from the bakery for the poorest mothers and children in 12. he borrows and begs and swindles to the point where it feels like cheating. but hey, this new wilbur is capitol-branded. he knows how to play the game.
if anything he probably sinks into the game a little too much. self-preservation is not his forte. probably wracks up a few heavy debts and favours to owe, but those are not priority until niki is out of the arena, alive. as long as she wins, and as long as the family he has isn't in danger, he will manage. wow it would suck if at some point those two goals became impossible to co-achieve. anyway
i kind of see niki's victory in the arena being similar to the one in the main au - if only because planning out an entire games is hard for meee >-< . she walks in bolder and braver for sure, and with a less strategic pick of allies, but they all get picked off and she spends a few weeks so terrified she can barely sleep and then she ruptures some fuel line and sets the arena alight with a fire that burns brighter and more ravenously than it should. but she wins, and she's airlifted out of a filthy, muddy creek she had resigned herself to die in, and wilbur barges his way through as many peacekeepers so that he can actually see her with her burnt skin and hair and unfocused eyes and trust that what was on the screens wasn't a fluke, and that they made it. and then it's just a matter of surviving the after.
i'm sure there are some other random quirks or tidbits i can think of re: this take on a c!rainduo hunger games au but these are my base thoughts!!
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