So, I have absolutely no idea how to introduce this project...
A longer time ago than I necessarily want to think about, I saw the episode of Cloudward, Ho! where Van chokeslams Marya into a wall, and -- like anyone of good taste and discernment who'd been looking for a quick, easy project -- I sat down to write some porn.
The porn... wouldn't.
Seriously.
I tried over and over again and I kept getting like 4k in and then hitting a damn brick wall before they'd ever even touched, and meanwhile canon kept getting crazier and stranger and infinitely more full of incredible fucked-up women, and like. Okay. It's hard to phrase this without sounding like a little hater or a complete edgelord or like I just don't like joy? And that's not it! That was an incredible and bright and joyful and nearly perfect season of actual play!
(Except for Hatwell. Hatwell was just personal revenge against Murph for taking out Kensington Cosgrove Mordecestershire ahead of schedule, and I do have to draw the line at Hatwell.)
But, goddamn, if there weren't the bones of something wilder and weirder and infinitely more fucked up right there under all the aioli jokes. The full A24 version, if you will.
It turns out that the reason I couldn't write the porn that was in my head was that I hadn't laid the ground of the epic-length AU/retelling required to support it actually happening, and now here I am writing that instead.
This is, to be clear, an insane prospect.
It's going to be long. It's going to be complicated and crazy. I am up to my ass in index cards right now. If there's one thing I have a track record for, it's failing to complete insanely ambitious epic-length projects. But here I am anyway.
And I'm blogging the process, because... well. It's going to take fucking forever, and it's kind of nice to have both a visible record of progress and, hopefully, an audience to yell at about it.
So. This is where The alphabet of hurricanes. is going to happen. It's a long, involved, deeply fucky retelling of Season 1 of Cloudward, Ho! focused very much on the female characters. It's a canon divergence AU except the canon is real life and the divergence is "what if you took the implications of every single really fucked-up idea they kept throwing out really seriously?" It's already, god help me, spawning side stories.
Regarding Kelly the stripper: this is probably nothing, this is almost definitely nothing, but... we do know World of Darkness isn't just vampires and werewolves, right?
An IN NO WAY COMPREHENSIVE listing of what we can take away from the character sheets in City Council of Darkness so far.
Disclaimer: this time last week I did not know a goddamn thing about Vampire: the Masquerade, and I would be thrilled for someone with more grounding in the system to weigh in! However, as a firm believer in the fundamental eroticism of game mechanics, I have been speedrunning all the character building info I can find, and I think the amount of information I'm able to share is more than none!
Second Disclaimer: we all know these motherfuckers are not above outright lying on their public-facing character cards -- Van Chapman's secret warlock level says what -- and I am very nearly expecting someone to turn out to have, say, a dark secret that hasn't been disclosed yet.
Sources: Paradox Wikis, White Wolf Wiki, GhoulApp -- I have particularly been having a LOT of fun with GhoulApp and I really recommend it for getting a ground-up sense of how character creation works! -- and several friends who played in college.
The first thing to note is that all these characters, with the notable exception of LaVonte, are absolutely stacked with merits and discipline powers; this was explained in the second Adventuring Party when Lou mentioned that Brennan had given them a fairly high amount of XP to spend in character creation. (V:tM doesn't level in quite the same way as DND or DND-alikes; the XP you earn are basically a currency you can spend on buying upgrades for your character, which are priced according to their desirability. I actually really love this system!)
We also learned from that Adventuring Party that they're earning 2 XP per session and Lou noted that he didn't spend any of his in character creation and now has 19, so they had 15 to begin with. I'm absolutely not going to go through and confirm step by step that everyone's XP expenditure adds up, because we're not seeing the entire character sheet and I don't know what Brennan homebrewed or allowed bending of the rules for, but 15 XP is a reasonably high budget. Which makes sense, because these characters are really on their own in Purpee -- if they run into something they're not equipped for, they have basically no chance of getting useful help with it -- and Brennan doesn't like to keep players trapped at punitively low levels for longer than it takes to make a point.
ALL THAT BEING SAID! Breakdowns below the cut. This one got LONG.
La Contesse Madelaine d'Artois
We have her clan confirmed as Toreador, which I have been informed was EXTREMELY SUPER OBVIOUS long before anyone said it. (I am... very intrigued by the decision to not list clans on character cards; more on that later!) sidebar: the Toreador bane in VtM 5e is incredible and I was shrieking with laughter when it actually came up onscreen. MECHANICAL PENALTIES FROM THE AIRBNB JUST BEING UGLY. Oh my god. I need to play one.
We also have it confirmed that her predator type is Siren, which was... also extremely super obvious before Brennan said it in the second AP! This makes her mechanically hot and gives her a potential complication to the tune of an obsessed ex.
Her disciplines are all totally in line with her clan and predator type, nothing needing to be explained there: two Auspex, one Celerity, three totally unsurprising Presence. I think Awe and Premonition are the only discipline powers she's mentioned using, but I could be wrong. (Note that there was the opportunity to diversify into Fortitude from her predator type, which would have been nice for her survivability -- Madelaine is a squish -- but Siobhan obviously knows what this character is about.)
Fun merits and flaws! The two things screaming for my attention are Enduring Bond (READ THE BLOOD BOND PAGE IF YOU HAVEN'T) and Stigmata; so she's really good at enthralling people by feeding them her blood, and also she's going to start bleeding from the hands, feet, and forehead when she hits Hunger 4. I am so normal about both of these facts and can be trusted to know them.
Ingénue -- SHE IS SO YOUNG AND SMALL 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺
Mawla 2 -- she's either got two vampiric sugar daddies or one slightly noteworthy one. I believe she's mentioned calling her sire a few times, so that's going to be fun when that happens!
Prestation Debts -- she owes somebody a meaningful favor.
Side Hustler, Check the Trunk -- just useful to have, I think.
ETA: and I hit post immediately before realizing something fucking HUGE, because of course I did -- Madelaine physically cannot eat blood from outside her preferred prey group, which is the motherfucking VENTRUE bane. I think this is Inherited Bane. I think Siobhan has some HUGE off-public-character-sheet secrets. Again.
Mitch "Darkness Man" Frederick
Clan: Nosferatu, helpfully stated by Murph right up front; this is where the Repulsive flaw is coming from, just straight off the bat.
We can also determine that his predator type is definitely Alleycat, based on his access to Celerity and Criminal Contacts -- it's interesting to me that they're not displaying the Humanity tracker on anyone's sheet, actually, but he starts out with an automatic penalty there. Which, you're already throwing all your ability to pass and your non-Intimidation social rolls out the window by going Nosferatu, might as well?
Disciplines are straightforward -- Obfuscate and Potence from his clan, Celerity from his predator style. Has he used any powers? I don't think he has -- someone correct me if I'm wrong! It doesn't look like he invested super heavily there, either; I'm sure Murph spent all his XP, but I'm wondering whether we're seeing everything he spent it on? Or maybe he's saving up for something?
Tempered Will -- and, I mean, also, clearly he spent some of it on THE MOST MURPH ABILITY EVER.
Zealotry -- this might immediately be one of my favorite merits in the game? It's so hilarious.
Shunned -- well, HELLO, backstory hook! This is not just "generally unliked," this is "truly and genuinely fucking pissed off a specific sect and now they're trying to GET you." Which... seems very plausible tbqh.
Also Side Hustler and Check the Trunk, just like Madelaine -- we're really steering into the Idiot Batman thing here. (That single, solitary dot in Intelligence. My god.)
HJ Wingstreet
Clan: Ventrue, confirmed and also SUPER SUPER OBVIOUS.
Predator type: okay, so that "Dark Secret: Masquerade Breacher" flew by fast enough on first viewing for me to have had him down as scene queen, but hold onto your fucking butts: I think Masquerade Breacher + Prey Exclusion = consensualist. Which also absolutely fits with what we've seen him doing, actually, and... man, there are some FUN potential fracture lines in this group!
Disciplines: the Ventrue/consensualist-compliant spread of Dominate, Fortitude, Presence, and then the TREMENDOUS GODDAMN MYSTERY that is those two dots in Protean. Where is he getting Protean? I am reasonably sure it's possible for Beardsley to have bought that with their XP, but I am also reasonably sure that out-of-clan disciplines are pricey and there's a lot of other stuff here that also looks expensive? I'm just blatantly speculating here, but I'm not exactly going to have a heart attack from surprise if "Dark Secret: Diablerie" pops up on his sheet at some point... I also legitimately can't remember if we've seen him use any powers, because episode 1 was a fever dream, so get in the comments I guess.
High Functioning Addict -- really, this and the fact that mechanically defined levels of hotness exist just tell you SO much about this game.
Ugly -- SPEAKING OF WHICH.
Stalkers -- oh, this is going to be a good time. This is going to be SUCH a good time.
Fame 1 -- Beardsley out here making very big choices with this character.
Mask 2 -- it definitely came up that he's passing as his own grandson, so that makes sense.
Resources 3 -- I mean, at least someone brought cash, MADELAINE.
LaVonte Worthy
Clan: also Ventrue, confirmed, unless I'm absolutely losing my marbles (which I don't think I am but work has been nuts today).
Predator type: I think also consensualist, which is absolutely fucking nuts, but does fully make sense with what we've seen so far.
Disciplines -- okay, someone needs to sit Lou down and double check his work, I think, because even at basic character creation he should have at least one more dot than this from his predator type? But otherwise, standard Ventrue stuff, I don't believe he's used any powers, but... again, fever dream.
Minor Boon -- interesting!!! (Did Brennan give everyone a backstory hook for free? What the fuck.)
Prestation Debts -- interesting chain of owing and being owed being implied here, actually! Ditto for Retainer 1.
Eat Food -- this is SUCH an interesting choice and I don't know specifically why Lou picked it, but I'm intrigued.
Risk Taker -- ... I'm sure Lou Wilson being mechanically incentivized to do insane shit is going to go super normal and fine. I'm sure that will not create any problems whatsoever.
Resources 3 -- wow, is there very possibly a serious power differential baked into this group right now, actually, if HJ and LaVonte ever have a reason to want to hold the line against the other four.
Note also that Lou is sitting on an INSANE number of unspent XP, so I would look for a huge power jump from him next episode!
Zaeth Bondana
Clan -- Brujah, confirmed. Man! Everyone's clans are so clear and kind of obvious at first sight so far! I'm sure that will definitely continue!
Predator type -- okay, cats and kittens, this is where it gets fucking juicy, this is like half the reason I wanted to do this post, because it's right there on his fucking flaw list and Mr. Zac Oyama made a CHOICE with this one. Like. Goddamn. (This is also obviously where he's getting Herd 2.)
Disciplines: Celerity and Presence from Brujah, Animalism from Cleaver. I know we've seen him also use Awe, and I don't think there's been anything else.
I am absolutely positive that he should not have Zeroed without having Mask 2, which unless I blinked at the wrong minute he has not got; I think this is one of two instances of Brennan just letting people take things they don't have the prereqs for but that do kind of make sense.
It's also a wild combination with Fame 1, but I think that's referring specifically to fame within the vampire community.
Also mechanically hot! And illiterate. Again, the CHOICES being made here.
Resources and Retainer are also hilarious things for him to have; I feel like Zac DID specifically choose to just build Daddy's specialest little psychopath here, and that's incredible.
Vesper "Bat Child" Childers
Clan: well, I can't say for certain, but absolutely positively not a fucking Nosferatu. No. Legitimately. There's no way: she doesn't have Repulsive, and her discipline loadout straight doesn't fit. My best guess is that she's an extremely against-type Lasombra? An extremelyagainst-type Hecata is still just about on the table, though, or I think she could potentially also be a caitiff, or this is homebrew bullshit; but she is absolutely, definitively not a Nos. She just looks like that. Because Emily Axford. And I think this is why they actually made the decision to keep clan information off the character cards, because I sense a HUGE shoe about to drop here.
Predator type -- Iron Gullet plus Enemy is saying bagger to me. (This is also, I think, the argument for her being a Hecata -- rules as written, she could have gotten that third dot in Oblivion from being a bagger if she's a Hecata. I don't think she actually is, though, which makes me a little sad, because I am informed no one plays Hecata and I do kind of dig their vibe.)
Disciplines -- so, setting aside caitiff and homebrew bullshit for the moment, she's either a Lasombra who sank XP into Fortitude or a Hecata who sank XP into Potence. And because this is Emily Axford, she's used a SHITLOAD of powers compared to everyone else -- Shadow Cloak, which was kind of a gimme for her, and I believe also Binding Fetter. And Maw of Ahriman, which... I can only assume Brennan thought (CORRECTLY) that it would be hilarious.
Custodian of History: Zoology -- so either Brennan bent the rules to let her take this (almost definitely the case) or that shoe that's about to drop is a motherfucker.
Knowledge Hungry: Zoology -- she's mechanically weak to fun animal facts and I love her.
Folkloric Block: Bells -- this is so cute and funny and I am certain Emily is definitely not planning to destroy us with it.
Ingénue -- it is so funny to me that she and Madelaine both have this. I want to see them both try to roll to blame each other for something.
Linguistics -- makes sense.
Machine Shop -- is this another thing she shouldn't have? I don't see any Haven dots. Weird.
I could not get a screenshot of Zealotry 2, but she has Zealotry 2. She gets to do that TWICE. Amazing. Incredible. No notes. I think I love this game.
Based on some additional wiki digging, I think I was absolutely wrong to lean towards dismissing Hecata -- I think that's exactly what she IS doing, specifically a Lamiae-bloodline Hecata:
That actually, AFAICT, explains everything on her character sheet -- and I can't believe I was dismissing this, because it's actually the most Emily Axford Haunted Girl Child bullshit you can think of:
And I'm not confident that all the lore on this page is current to the edition they're playing, I would absolutely need the sourcebooks in front of me to be confident, but all of it is for certain UNHINGED in -- again! -- a VERY EMILY AXFORD WAY.
Essentially an aberrant paladin, because primary spellcasters shouldn’t be the only ones to have eldritch options. I like my holy mixed with my profane, and if you have Lovecraftian cults you can have a Lovecraftian knight errant. So. Would anyone like an eldritch knight? (Sorry)
OATH OF THE OUTSIDER
The Oath of the Outsider is taken up by those paladins who hear and answer the call of the Far Realm and the strange powers that emanate from there. Some Outsider paladins worship entities of the Far Realm as deities, while others take the mutable, irrational and chaotic nature of the Far Realm itself as the template of an ideal existence, a window onto the strange truths underlying reality. Outsider paladins are often considered mad, erratic and dangerous, but their causes are not necessarily evil. They merely wish to explore a different understanding of reality to everyone else, and to invite others to explore it with them.
An IN NO WAY COMPREHENSIVE listing of what we can take away from the character sheets in City Council of Darkness so far.
Disclaimer: this time last week I did not know a goddamn thing about Vampire: the Masquerade, and I would be thrilled for someone with more grounding in the system to weigh in! However, as a firm believer in the fundamental eroticism of game mechanics, I have been speedrunning all the character building info I can find, and I think the amount of information I'm able to share is more than none!
Second Disclaimer: we all know these motherfuckers are not above outright lying on their public-facing character cards -- Van Chapman's secret warlock level says what -- and I am very nearly expecting someone to turn out to have, say, a dark secret that hasn't been disclosed yet.
Sources: Paradox Wikis, White Wolf Wiki, GhoulApp -- I have particularly been having a LOT of fun with GhoulApp and I really recommend it for getting a ground-up sense of how character creation works! -- and several friends who played in college.
The first thing to note is that all these characters, with the notable exception of LaVonte, are absolutely stacked with merits and discipline powers; this was explained in the second Adventuring Party when Lou mentioned that Brennan had given them a fairly high amount of XP to spend in character creation. (V:tM doesn't level in quite the same way as DND or DND-alikes; the XP you earn are basically a currency you can spend on buying upgrades for your character, which are priced according to their desirability. I actually really love this system!)
We also learned from that Adventuring Party that they're earning 2 XP per session and Lou noted that he didn't spend any of his in character creation and now has 19, so they had 15 to begin with. I'm absolutely not going to go through and confirm step by step that everyone's XP expenditure adds up, because we're not seeing the entire character sheet and I don't know what Brennan homebrewed or allowed bending of the rules for, but 15 XP is a reasonably high budget. Which makes sense, because these characters are really on their own in Purpee -- if they run into something they're not equipped for, they have basically no chance of getting useful help with it -- and Brennan doesn't like to keep players trapped at punitively low levels for longer than it takes to make a point.
ALL THAT BEING SAID! Breakdowns below the cut. This one got LONG.
La Contesse Madelaine d'Artois
We have her clan confirmed as Toreador, which I have been informed was EXTREMELY SUPER OBVIOUS long before anyone said it. (I am... very intrigued by the decision to not list clans on character cards; more on that later!) sidebar: the Toreador bane in VtM 5e is incredible and I was shrieking with laughter when it actually came up onscreen. MECHANICAL PENALTIES FROM THE AIRBNB JUST BEING UGLY. Oh my god. I need to play one.
We also have it confirmed that her predator type is Siren, which was... also extremely super obvious before Brennan said it in the second AP! This makes her mechanically hot and gives her a potential complication to the tune of an obsessed ex.
Her disciplines are all totally in line with her clan and predator type, nothing needing to be explained there: two Auspex, one Celerity, three totally unsurprising Presence. I think Awe and Premonition are the only discipline powers she's mentioned using, but I could be wrong. (Note that there was the opportunity to diversify into Fortitude from her predator type, which would have been nice for her survivability -- Madelaine is a squish -- but Siobhan obviously knows what this character is about.)
Fun merits and flaws! The two things screaming for my attention are Enduring Bond (READ THE BLOOD BOND PAGE IF YOU HAVEN'T) and Stigmata; so she's really good at enthralling people by feeding them her blood, and also she's going to start bleeding from the hands, feet, and forehead when she hits Hunger 4. I am so normal about both of these facts and can be trusted to know them.
Ingénue -- SHE IS SO YOUNG AND SMALL 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺
Mawla 2 -- she's either got two vampiric sugar daddies or one slightly noteworthy one. I believe she's mentioned calling her sire a few times, so that's going to be fun when that happens!
Prestation Debts -- she owes somebody a meaningful favor.
Side Hustler, Check the Trunk -- just useful to have, I think.
ETA: and I hit post immediately before realizing something fucking HUGE, because of course I did -- Madelaine physically cannot eat blood from outside her preferred prey group, which is the motherfucking VENTRUE bane. I think this is Inherited Bane. I think Siobhan has some HUGE off-public-character-sheet secrets. Again.
Mitch "Darkness Man" Frederick
Clan: Nosferatu, helpfully stated by Murph right up front; this is where the Repulsive flaw is coming from, just straight off the bat.
We can also determine that his predator type is definitely Alleycat, based on his access to Celerity and Criminal Contacts -- it's interesting to me that they're not displaying the Humanity tracker on anyone's sheet, actually, but he starts out with an automatic penalty there. Which, you're already throwing all your ability to pass and your non-Intimidation social rolls out the window by going Nosferatu, might as well?
Disciplines are straightforward -- Obfuscate and Potence from his clan, Celerity from his predator style. Has he used any powers? I don't think he has -- someone correct me if I'm wrong! It doesn't look like he invested super heavily there, either; I'm sure Murph spent all his XP, but I'm wondering whether we're seeing everything he spent it on? Or maybe he's saving up for something?
Tempered Will -- and, I mean, also, clearly he spent some of it on THE MOST MURPH ABILITY EVER.
Zealotry -- this might immediately be one of my favorite merits in the game? It's so hilarious.
Shunned -- well, HELLO, backstory hook! This is not just "generally unliked," this is "truly and genuinely fucking pissed off a specific sect and now they're trying to GET you." Which... seems very plausible tbqh.
Also Side Hustler and Check the Trunk, just like Madelaine -- we're really steering into the Idiot Batman thing here. (That single, solitary dot in Intelligence. My god.)
HJ Wingstreet
Clan: Ventrue, confirmed and also SUPER SUPER OBVIOUS.
Predator type: okay, so that "Dark Secret: Masquerade Breacher" flew by fast enough on first viewing for me to have had him down as scene queen, but hold onto your fucking butts: I think Masquerade Breacher + Prey Exclusion = consensualist. Which also absolutely fits with what we've seen him doing, actually, and... man, there are some FUN potential fracture lines in this group!
Disciplines: the Ventrue/consensualist-compliant spread of Dominate, Fortitude, Presence, and then the TREMENDOUS GODDAMN MYSTERY that is those two dots in Protean. Where is he getting Protean? I am reasonably sure it's possible for Beardsley to have bought that with their XP, but I am also reasonably sure that out-of-clan disciplines are pricey and there's a lot of other stuff here that also looks expensive? I'm just blatantly speculating here, but I'm not exactly going to have a heart attack from surprise if "Dark Secret: Diablerie" pops up on his sheet at some point... I also legitimately can't remember if we've seen him use any powers, because episode 1 was a fever dream, so get in the comments I guess.
High Functioning Addict -- really, this and the fact that mechanically defined levels of hotness exist just tell you SO much about this game.
Ugly -- SPEAKING OF WHICH.
Stalkers -- oh, this is going to be a good time. This is going to be SUCH a good time.
Fame 1 -- Beardsley out here making very big choices with this character.
Mask 2 -- it definitely came up that he's passing as his own grandson, so that makes sense.
Resources 3 -- I mean, at least someone brought cash, MADELAINE.
LaVonte Worthy
Clan: also Ventrue, confirmed, unless I'm absolutely losing my marbles (which I don't think I am but work has been nuts today).
Predator type: I think also consensualist, which is absolutely fucking nuts, but does fully make sense with what we've seen so far.
Disciplines -- okay, someone needs to sit Lou down and double check his work, I think, because even at basic character creation he should have at least one more dot than this from his predator type? But otherwise, standard Ventrue stuff, I don't believe he's used any powers, but... again, fever dream.
Minor Boon -- interesting!!! (Did Brennan give everyone a backstory hook for free? What the fuck.)
Prestation Debts -- interesting chain of owing and being owed being implied here, actually! Ditto for Retainer 1.
Eat Food -- this is SUCH an interesting choice and I don't know specifically why Lou picked it, but I'm intrigued.
Risk Taker -- ... I'm sure Lou Wilson being mechanically incentivized to do insane shit is going to go super normal and fine. I'm sure that will not create any problems whatsoever.
Resources 3 -- wow, is there very possibly a serious power differential baked into this group right now, actually, if HJ and LaVonte ever have a reason to want to hold the line against the other four.
Note also that Lou is sitting on an INSANE number of unspent XP, so I would look for a huge power jump from him next episode!
Zaeth Bondana
Clan -- Brujah, confirmed. Man! Everyone's clans are so clear and kind of obvious at first sight so far! I'm sure that will definitely continue!
Predator type -- okay, cats and kittens, this is where it gets fucking juicy, this is like half the reason I wanted to do this post, because it's right there on his fucking flaw list and Mr. Zac Oyama made a CHOICE with this one. Like. Goddamn. (This is also obviously where he's getting Herd 2.)
Disciplines: Celerity and Presence from Brujah, Animalism from Cleaver. I know we've seen him also use Awe, and I don't think there's been anything else.
I am absolutely positive that he should not have Zeroed without having Mask 2, which unless I blinked at the wrong minute he has not got; I think this is one of two instances of Brennan just letting people take things they don't have the prereqs for but that do kind of make sense.
It's also a wild combination with Fame 1, but I think that's referring specifically to fame within the vampire community.
Also mechanically hot! And illiterate. Again, the CHOICES being made here.
Resources and Retainer are also hilarious things for him to have; I feel like Zac DID specifically choose to just build Daddy's specialest little psychopath here, and that's incredible.
Vesper "Bat Child" Childers
Clan: well, I can't say for certain, but absolutely positively not a fucking Nosferatu. No. Legitimately. There's no way: she doesn't have Repulsive, and her discipline loadout straight doesn't fit. My best guess is that she's an extremely against-type Lasombra? An extremelyagainst-type Hecata is still just about on the table, though, or I think she could potentially also be a caitiff, or this is homebrew bullshit; but she is absolutely, definitively not a Nos. She just looks like that. Because Emily Axford. And I think this is why they actually made the decision to keep clan information off the character cards, because I sense a HUGE shoe about to drop here.
Predator type -- Iron Gullet plus Enemy is saying bagger to me. (This is also, I think, the argument for her being a Hecata -- rules as written, she could have gotten that third dot in Oblivion from being a bagger if she's a Hecata. I don't think she actually is, though, which makes me a little sad, because I am informed no one plays Hecata and I do kind of dig their vibe.)
Disciplines -- so, setting aside caitiff and homebrew bullshit for the moment, she's either a Lasombra who sank XP into Fortitude or a Hecata who sank XP into Potence. And because this is Emily Axford, she's used a SHITLOAD of powers compared to everyone else -- Shadow Cloak, which was kind of a gimme for her, and I believe also Binding Fetter. And Maw of Ahriman, which... I can only assume Brennan thought (CORRECTLY) that it would be hilarious.
Custodian of History: Zoology -- so either Brennan bent the rules to let her take this (almost definitely the case) or that shoe that's about to drop is a motherfucker.
Knowledge Hungry: Zoology -- she's mechanically weak to fun animal facts and I love her.
Folkloric Block: Bells -- this is so cute and funny and I am certain Emily is definitely not planning to destroy us with it.
Ingénue -- it is so funny to me that she and Madelaine both have this. I want to see them both try to roll to blame each other for something.
Linguistics -- makes sense.
Machine Shop -- is this another thing she shouldn't have? I don't see any Haven dots. Weird.
I could not get a screenshot of Zealotry 2, but she has Zealotry 2. She gets to do that TWICE. Amazing. Incredible. No notes. I think I love this game.
At last, some content for the project I actually set up this blog for! (Also, yeah. I missed Sunday's accountability post. Last week was stressful and I've spiritually moved on.)
So, one of the things I do about Very Long Projects is outlining via mood-playlist; as I work on actually outlining the new first act of The alphabet of hurricanes., I thought it might be kind of fun to share what I have for that right now, because it has taken a Whole Turn.
Specifically, and you can actually thank @findingfeather for this entirely, I've made the executive decision to take this more thoroughly AU and start with a way more dystopian (but hopefully still believable) take on Gath as a setting -- that is already causing all KINDS of plot ructions down the line just that I know about right now, and I can tell you it's only going to get weirder and hornier and more upsetting from here. As you will probably be able to tell from the following! (Although, yeah. The lyric excerpts are all the context you're getting; there's a limit to how much I'm committing myself to any decisions in public right now.)
Hans Zimmer -- Davy Jones
Tom Waits -- Clap Hands [roar, roar, the thunder and the roar/son of a bitch is never comin' back here no more/moon in the window and a bird on the pole/always find a millionaire to shovel all the coal]
Arctic Monkeys -- Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair [break a mirror, roll the dice/run with scissors through a chip-pan fire fight/go into business with a grizzly bear/but just don't sit down 'cause I've moved your chair]
Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 -- For What It's Worth [you better stop/hey, what's that sound?/everybody look what's going down]
Amine Bouhafa -- The Mountain Call
Warren Zevon -- My Ride's Here [saying, "You bravos had better be ready to fight/or we'll never get out of East Texas tonight/that the trail is long and the river is wide/and my ride's here."]
Lou Reed -- Solsbury Hill [so I went from day to day/though my life was in a rut/'til I thought of what I'd say/which connection I should cut/I was feeling part of the scenery/I walked right out of the machinery]
Tom McRae -- Me and Stetson [me and Stetson took a trip/to shed the traces and forget/in search of all-time love and brand-new reason/don't call it doubt or call it faith/still breathing on this tired plain/hope is all our curse and cruel companion]
Bloc Party -- Signs [the last time we slept together/there was something that was not there/you never wanted to alarm me/but I'm the one that's drowning now/I can sleep forever these days/'cause in my dreams I see you again]
Neko Case -- Little Gears [no mistakes, no missteps/born yesterday with the gears of an atomic clock/is she nothing but a program, like love?/a smell on the air that tells us when to go?/oh, why can't she stay that miracle?]
Imagine Dragons -- I'm So Sorry [no lies and no deceiving, man is what he loves/I keep tryin' to conceive that death is from above/I get mine and make no excuses, waste of precious time/the sun shines on everyone, everyone love yourself to death]
The Decemberists -- One Engine [I'd like to get you in some kind of way/some kind of trouble in some kind of way/bear down, they'll run you aground/bear down, they'll run you aground/we all must suffer a while in a way]
Aluminium -- Aluminum
Gina and the Eastern Block ft. Little Miss Nasty -- Freak on a Leash [feeling like a freak on a leash/feeling like I have no release/how many times have I felt diseased?/nothing in my life is free, is free]
Violet Orlandi -- Come As You Are [come doused in mud, soaked in bleach/as I want you to be/as a trend, as a friend/as a known memoria]
Jethro Tull -- Jump Start [oh, we should've blamed the officers/or maybe I should blame the priest/or should I blame the poor foot soldier/who's left to make the most from least?/hey, Jack the Ripper, won't you come on over/hook me up to the power lines of your love]
The Bass Gang ft. Ekaterina Shelehova -- If I Had A Heart [crushed and filled with all I found/underneath and inside, just to come around/more, give me more, give me more]
Mia Asano & Piper.Ally -- Shipping Up To Boston
Linkin Park -- Heavy Is the Crown [we both know how the story ends/you can't win if your white flag's out when the war begins/aimin' so high, but swingin' so low/tryna catch fire but feelin' so cold]
Katzenjammer -- A Bar In Amsterdam [I'm known for an end, and it's coming round the bend/if we live through this night/and we still be all right/we'll flee to Siam or a bar in Amsterdam/but the storm is a-comin' 'cross the hills tonight/like a vein full of rain to the hearts that should fight]
Dharohar Project & Laura Marling ft. Mumford & Sons -- Devil's Spoke/Sneh Ko Marg [Live] [all of this can be broken/all of this can be broken/hold your devil by his spoke and spin him to the ground]
as promised, a list of things I want to work on in future:
This is all extremely hypothetical, later items are possibly vaporware, and I'm not TOUCHING it until I get "Like every single one before" AND "To your lonesome fucked-up neighbors" cleared, but I wanted to do it and it's done!
"you're gonna go far, kid" (D20: Fantasy High) My attempt to Do Something With The Rat Grinders even though the definitive statement has already been made. Ivy and Ivy-and-Oisin and potentially some dead dove stuff with Porter? This needs a less generic title.
"break, blow, burn" (HBO's Carnivále) The temptation is to say "if you know you know" but I am not the fuck going to assume anyone knows -- listen, once upon a time for two seasons a full legal adult's worth of years ago we had Clancy Brown and Oscar Winner Amy Madigan as the original problematic HBO siblings, and I have owed this story since I was seventeen.
"Answer so no one knows" (Succession) I decides a long time ago that I needed to unpack "I lock my door upon myself" into something full-length. I've been stalled out at the beginning of section three (extremely about mortality) for most of a year, but it's the closest I may ever get to writing like Hilary Mantel and so I love what I have too much to give it up.
I'd like to try some more projects using the random-table method I used to generate the basic premise of "Like every single one before" -- by definition, I think, that sort of defies summarization ahead of time, but it's something I would like to do.
"lightning like a viper's tongue" (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) Look. Look. Don't make me legitimately go find my copy of Between Men so I can cite academic texts to explain why I had approximately five incredulous aneurysms when the terrible Zelda/Blackwood marriage proposal was like 90% both of them talking about her late brother. Just know that I have been threatening to get real weird with that since 2019, and I may yet.
"dark, true, impure, dissonant" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) S3 AU. Faith gets picked up by Ethan Rayne. Chaos so literally ensues. The problem with this is it wants to be a novel and I'm not accepting applications from any more of those right now. Also, yeah, I know I have types.
"YES, NO, ALWAYS, NEVER" (The Locked Tomb) There is almost no way I am finishing this story this year either. I may very well die with this story unfinished. That being said: Augustine/Mercymorn, The Last Five Years, except it's been ten thousand years and they are somehow both so much less insufferable than the characters in the musical. I wonder whether word count restrictions would help at all.
Finish and post “Like every single one before” (my Comfrey/Daisuke sad horny nostalgia fic – this one is already at like half its target word count, so it’s got a good start, but needs a lot of bracing and propping before I can go forward.) Did a very tiny amount of work on this. I'm going to have to really buckle down on it next week.
Commentary on “rituals.” (my recent unnecessarily grim “Aelwyn Abernant is Fantasy Laura Palmer” Fantasy High fic) In progress. I think I'm a little under half done with it.
Get back to putting in work on “To your lonesome fucked-up neighbors” (my weirdo Marya/Maxwell smut inspired by A. Emily flirting relentlessly with her husband, and B. battlesmith artificer being, mechanically, a field-medic subclass – it’s as weird and gross as it sounds [proud] and I cannot land Maxwell’s voice so far but I live in hope.) Have not touched this at all; it's sort of contingent on finishing goal #1.
Make my mind up about several premise- and set-piece-level plot decisions for The alphabet of hurricanes. Yes and no? I need to be clearer, I think, on exactly what constitutes having completed this goal, because my idea of the premise has changed a lot lately and I'm kind of reframing it almost from scratch. I did make some decisions, though.
Start a list of story hooks I want to work on in future. I have not done this.
At least one of my weekly three AO3 comments should be on a specific piece that I admire quite a bit and have never said anything about. Done did!
And recurring goals:
Post something to AO3 every month. Not yet; working on it.
Post something substantial to this blog once per week. I'm counting my goal-setting post for this.
Three uninterrupted 25-minute blocks of writing time per day, six days per week. ... #itried. I got five workdays in, one of which was cut short due to anxiety attack and a couple of which I really struggled with the "uninterrupted" part. Not abysmal, but could be better.
Identify and work on remedying three major issues with my writing. I've got one, and I will probably post about it in Week 2.
Have a broadly functional long outline, with scene breakdowns, of The alphabet of hurricanes. by the end of October. That's already starting to feel like a terrifyingly short time frame. I think I need to break it down farther -- building on what I said above about my April goal #4 being kind of tenuously phrased, I think my intention is to have a basic cause-effect plot sequence of the whole thing (at least acts 1-4 of 5) by end of month.
Have a broadly functional outline, period, of my ostensibly original novel in potentia – which is definitely not “what if Gerri from Succession was a werewolf” and as such is absolutely not working-titled Killer Bitch – by the end of March 2027. The nice thing is I don't have to think about this until November.
Leave three AO3 comments per week. Done!
End-of-week accountability posts to this blog every Sunday, which does not count towards my weekly posting requirement. Doing now, obviously.
I... think I am going to need to carve out more time during the day. (I can probably use my lunch break at work at least three days a week, do extra time blocks on Saturdays when I don't have anything else going on, and do at least some Sundays -- that's the only day off my wife and I have in common, though, so setting aside that kind of uninterrupted time might be difficult.)
God, well. It's been a minute, hasn't it: I created this blog in a fit of what I can only describe as petulant defiance of my own brain, and then I immediately collapsed into anxiety paralysis for... however long it's been.
Between then and now, I had a birthday. It wasn't one of the Big, Significant Numbers exactly, but it definitely felt like one for me -- being close to the verge of leaving my thirties, let's say, feels like almost as big a deal as actually leaving them. Time keeps passing, and for various reasons having to do with health, exhaustion, and being in a particularly broken job market even by the standards of the broken US job market, I have not been getting done nearly as much of my own work as I would have liked.
So, I made some absurdly hyperambitious birthday resolutions. (They are probably not going to seem absurdly hyperambitious to my imagined reader, a person who is used to fanwriters updating every week! But for me and my baseline fatigue level -- which is roughly set to "Person Who Just Finished A Three-Day Hike, But Without Any Of The Satisfaction" -- trust me, this is a lift.)
Post something to AO3 every month. Every month. Even if I have to stay up late on the last possible day to bang out 500 words of thumb-typed garbage, but ideally I would want to put in the structured work to avoid that.
Post something substantial to this blog at least once per week. At least once per month, that post should be a commentary on something I've already written.
Three uninterrupted 25-minute blocks of writing time per day, six days a week, bare minimum.
Identify and work on remedying three major issues with my writing. (I'm debating whether one of my weekly posts each month should be a commentary on someone else's writing -- probably pro fiction -- that I want to emulate when it comes to resolving my own weak spots. I could go either way on that, I think.)
Have a broadly functional long outline, with scene breakdowns, of The alphabet of hurricanes. by the end of October.
Have a broadly functional outline, period, of my ostensibly original novel in potentia -- which is definitely not "what if Gerri from Succession was a werewolf" and as such is absolutely not working-titled Killer Bitch -- by the end of March 2027.
Leave three AO3 comments per week.
End-of-week accountability posts to this blog every Sunday, which does not count towards my weekly posting requirement.
(specific April goals and some thoughts below the cut)
Finish and post "Like every single one before" (my Comfrey/Daisuke sad horny nostalgia fic -- this one is already at like half its target word count, so it's got a good start, but needs a lot of bracing and propping before I can go forward.)
Commentary on "rituals." (my recent unnecessarily grim "Aelwyn Abernant is Fantasy Laura Palmer" Fantasy High fic)
Get back to putting in work on "To your lonesome fucked-up neighbors" (my weirdo Marya/Maxwell smut inspired by A. Emily flirting relentlessly with her husband, and B. battlesmith artificer being, mechanically, a field-medic subclass -- it's as weird and gross as it sounds [proud] and I cannot land Maxwell's voice so far but I live in hope.)
Make my mind up about several premise- and set-piece-level plot decisions for The alphabet of hurricanes.
Start a list of story hooks I want to work on in future.
At least one of the comments should be on a specific piece that I admire quite a bit and have never said anything about.
(For purposes of keeping up to things like weekly requirements, the month of April is hereby considered to run from March 30-May 2.)
I am doing -- okay, I think -- with a lot of those goals; by which I mean that I haven't done very many of them, but I'm not behind enough to get angry with myself. "Like every single one before" is being startlingly recalcitrant, for a fic that is like 100% just Daisuke Bucklesby thinking about fucking his ex-wife, which is like 95% of what he ever voluntarily does -- I think it's the reverie/flashback structure that's giving me fits, because I don't usually do that and I don't know if I'll want to do it again after this -- but I'm letting it sit on the back burner and hopefully a few days away will help.
I'm also debating with myself how I want to handle my commentary posts -- my original thought was to post them directly to this blog, but "rituals." is pretty grim, so I might or might not take the additional step of throwing it behind an AO3 link? Unclear how I want to deal with that, but I do think I've made a good start on what I want to say about it, so I'm hoping to get that knocked out for next week. I think this is probably going to be good for me in a couple of ways -- it should really help with finding areas I want to work on improving, but also i just don't usually like my own writing very much and I would like to like it more? (This feels very dangerous to admit: I was thoroughly inculcated from a very, very young age with the belief that Liking Your Own Work was steps one through approximately fifteen on the path to late-stage Anne Rice.) And I have a lot of thoughts that I'm sick of waiting for someone to ask me, so I'm just going to say them -- this is the beautiful thing about fandom! Nobody can really stop you doing absolutely insane things.
