#fantasy that involves genetic engineering

[shadsiesartattic]

Science and Magic - Horrible animal experimentation that happens in my novel Malarkey and Belinda. (Undescribed). Illustrations done as Bestiary pages. I did all of the illustrations like this - various fantasy-creatures, some from actual mythology and some I made up exist in the world's setting. Very OLD art pieces. If you were to get the novel, these color illustrations only exist in the Deluxe Edition. The Basic Edition has black and white pen illustrations (of the same creatures with the same text). These versions are acrylic paint on coffee-stained (or tea staining? I think I'd used coffee) paper overlaid with text. Anyway, rifling through some of my old artwork today - and the folder I have related to my novel I saw and remembered these fucked up things. (And I gave a thought to how despite being way off course, a fantasy-world rather than a sci-fi / western world, how I've long been influenced by one of my favorite series of media, Trigun. My title-character was influenced by Vash, in a way, of his being a living weapon who does not want to be - albeit in a different fashion and I just realized when rifling through my old work how much TESLA seems to haunt my dreams enough to influence the stuff that I write and draw that's even in a wildly different world-setting). Um... I posted this to share my artblr with my trigunblr because I think my Trigun followers might enjoy it? Don't worry - in my book, the evil scientists get theirs by the end of it. I have one lady scientist get torn apart by the golden dogs.

[cadillacjohnf1]

fic recs here you go i dont really discriminate by ship so i genuinely will read anything

family matters - mainly george/max, side lando/oscar and fernando/lance; heavily au very long but definitely worth it, for both the plot and writing quality all of the author's fics are really good so definitely check them out, especially you're always my reminder (ongoing)

edge call - george/max, figure skating au even if you dont know anything about figure skating its an interesting story i promise

genesis - george/max george works for an unethical biotech company, kimi is basically his (genetically modified) child/clone, and max is involved somehow despite the weird premise it has a compelling plot, even if i definitely didnt describe it well

menthol smoke - george/max, max as george's engineer at mercedes

red means war (and something else) - george/max george wins the championship, mercedes still chooses max, george goes to ferrari, title fight ensues

winnowed - george/alex, high fantasy/magic au some of the best worldbuilding ive seen, even if u dont usually read galex

kellogg's frosties & video games - brocedes au where nico rosberg gets the 2022 mercedes seat instead, angst ensues

champagne problems - brocedes another au where nico rosberg becomes mercedes team principal in 2024

death and other lies - lando/oscar, alex/george, brocedes; serial killer/spy au lowk funny despite the dark premise, great characterization

in the split second - lando/oscar retelling of the 2025 season from oscar's perspective but magical realism, a lot of angst, canon-compliant somehow

oooh thank you! will have to check these out. such a good range of recommendations!

[hollowwhisperings]

assorted genshin thoughts

every hexenzirkel witch named thus far seems to have a pseudo-successor lined up: Alice has Klee; Barbeloth has Mona; Gold has Albedo; Ivanova has Scarlet; Nicole has Diluc(? possibly Paimon?); Octavia has Wanderer (among others)... and Andersdottir has Lisa. Which means that Lisa has either been, a) Protesting Too Muchly at the Hexenzirkel allegations against her OR, b) she's somehow dodged all of Alice's invites and her succeeding of Andersdottir's legacy has been a happy accident.

the constellation of every playable immortal has been a stylized depiction of themself: are constellations how celestia passes off the self-enlightenment of individual mortals as "divine favour"?

visions: third eyes, conspiracies against apotheosis, one-eyed khaenri'ans. too many thoughts. insufficient saneproofing.

is bennett's being a displaced natlantean the explanation for his fatefully terrible luck? does the mare jivari even count as being part of natlan anymore, if ever?

so was Kanna Kapatcir the electro sovereign? 'cause chinese treats dinosaurs as dragons and birds are scientifically classified as "dinosaurs"... and it's not like there were any other thunder dragons hanging out during the archon war.

(incidentally: "ose" is a demon ranked as a "president [of hell]" in the ars goetia... right alongside a "bu'er", "morax" and "amy".)

...was Haishan a dragon king candidate too? 'cause that's the impression given by Beidou's Constellation (uncrowned king, anyone?) and that would make her a modern-day Xbalanque?!

is celestia just... "chill" with ningguang's imperial sky palace ambitions or is it excused as just another moon heresy..?

(and does lord mooncarver sunbuilder get an opinion on this?)

is zhongli the og sun charioteer or is that another red herring

barbatos befriended his local dragon sovereign candidate; rex lapis seduced befriended AND fought the OG rock king; deshret bargained against [rukkhadevata]'s dragon rival (another OG); egeria was made to replace hers; xbalanque killed his and (assuming a previously listed theory is correct) so did raiden ei. so... what did the belyi tsar do? fight or friend? 'cause we've got a pretty even split here and i'd love to know how else neuvillette's draconic revenge could be thwarted.

speaking of neuvillette... will we ever see the hydro sovereign meeting his goldfish cousin or was all that foreshadowing in her lore just for that first "lizard-people among us" reveal? it's paid off three times now but kokomi's still a magikarp!

ororon's casual voiceline about how his tribe suspects the archons of genetically engineering human-hybrids to win the archon war(s)

(a couple dragons legit just did that but rex lapis the "prime" adeptis sure does seem sus if one has no familiarity whatsoever with the kind of chinese fantasy genre that genshin belongs to-! *ENG dub has entered the chat* GODS DAMNIT)

every Sumeru character made playable thus far has had Deshret Coding but Kaveh is the only one who fits desriptions of Deshret-as-known-by-his-contemporaries: bold, blond, brilliant, generous, idealistic, his own worst enemy, melancholic, a citybuilder prone to objectively terrible business decisions...

(al haitham, meanwhile, resembles the ibis king who may or may not be an analogy for rukkhadevata but could legit just be a bird who scribed)

((...which makes the existence of a doomed yaoi subplot between the genius invokation versions of the ibis and crocodile kings really funny))

that ONE natlan bounty mission that's a hit on blasphemous xbalanque/waxaklahan ubah kan shippers but joke's on them: everyone knows waxaklahan ubah kan is shipped with chaac and that it was his son who was shipped with xbalanque! smh at all this quasi-historical quasi-inaccuracy.

...pigeon lord timmie is probably not involved with any non-dvalin, non-durin dragon plotlines, right?

[jennelikejennay]

Now that we've finished s3 of SNW, it's time for my official* watchlist.

*that is, officially the episodes I think you should watch, a purely subjective decision

You'll notice that s1 has the highest quality and it goes down from there, slightly in s2 and sharply in s3.

Season 1:

1. Strange New Worlds ✔️

Best to start at the beginning. It was decent. If you're a TOS fan, you'll notice Spock and T'Pring's relationship is very different. To me, that's the big signpost that announces this is its own universe. Keep this in mind throughout and you'll enjoy it more.

2. Children of the Comet ✔️

Watch for Uhura being awesome.

3. Ghosts of Illyria ❓

Not outstanding but it was fine. I liked getting some Una revelations. Watch it if you have time.

4. Memento Mori ❌

This was so forgettable I had to look it up and even the summary didn't ring any bells. It introduces the Gorn. I hate the way they do the Gorn in SNW so I would skip it.

5. Spock Amok ✔️

This is a hijinks episode, so skip it if you don't like that kind of thing. I enjoyed it though.

6. Lift Us Up Where Suffering Cannot Reach ❌

This is based on Ursula LeGuin's story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," except it's incredibly vivid and tragic to see on screen. It's not a bad episode, but it kinda ruined my day.

7. The Serene Squall ✔️

There's a nonbinary pirate. 'Nuff said.

8. The Elysian Kingdom ✔️

I adored this one. Fun fantasy times with an unexpectedly poignant ending.

9. All Those Who Wander ❌

Another Gorn episode. A beloved character dies. Read the summary so you know what happened.

10. A Quality of Mercy ❓

A complete rehash of Balance of Terror, just not as good. But it's still decent. Develops Pike and Spock's relationships.

Season 2

1. The Broken Circle ✔️

Didn't like what they did with M'Benga in here, but Spock got to shine. There's a very cool space scene.

2. Ad Astra Per Aspera ✔️

Widely agreed to be one of the best. It's certainly well made. My complaint is that it's using genetic engineering as a queer metaphor while failing to say at any point that eugenics is, y'know....bad. Not getting the nuance that DS9 had in its episodes on the topic.

3. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow ✔️

A time travel episode that reconciles canon timelines and also gives us a chance to meet another alternate universe Kirk....who actually does feel like Kirk!

4. Among the Lotus Eaters ✔️

Not everyone loves this one but I did. SNW rarely gets this philosophical so I appreciate that. And Ortegas gets a good moment.

5. Charades ❌

Skip for the bioessentialism or the second-hand embarrassment or the forced romance, your call.

6. Lost in Translation ❓

Uhura and Kirk team up in this one, and it contains The Handshake. Skip if you're sensitive to horror imagery (it will only increase from here on).

7. Those Old Scientists ✔️

The Lower Decks crossover. While comedy, it still has heart.

8. Under the Cloak of War ❓

This is a powerful depiction of PTSD, but hard to watch. I'm also uncomfortable with the ethical choices made by some characters, which the show doesn't seem to take a position on (though it will later, incorrectly).

9. Subspace Rhapsody ✔️

Expected to hate it (I don't like musicals), ended up buying the album. Plotwise it manages to make the singing make some kind of sense.

10. Hegemony ❌

'Nother Gorn episode. Pass.

Season 3

1. Hegemony Part II ❌

More Gorn.

2. Wedding Bell Blues ❌

Roughly equivalent to a particularly silly Q episode. In a 26-episode season I wouldn't have been mad.

3. Shuttle to Kenfori ❌

Zombie horror and characters are shockingly blasé about unethical behavior. It made me think less of everyone involved.

4. A Space Adventure Hour ❌

The cold open felt like a mockery of TOS. The rest repaired the damage a bit, but it still isn't very good.

5. Through the Lens of Time ❌

So over the horror. So over "ontological evil" being the baddie.

6. The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail ✔️

After the rest of this season, I was shocked how good this was. Kirk and Spock act opposite each other and there's a (perhaps a little heavy handed) message about empathy and mercy.

7. What Is Starfleet? ❌

A very special message episode that forgot to include a message.

8. Four-and-a-Half Vulcans ❌

SNW's version of Code of Honor. Won't age well.

9. Terrarium ✔️

Ortegas finally gets to shine. Gorn finally treated like people.

10. New Life and New Civilizations ❓

Mid. Catch the Kirk/Spock parts in the gifsets, fic writers will be mining that five minutes all year.

[bardic-tales]

Day 6 | Diana Ravenscroft | Day 8

31 days of FF 7 Headcanons: Day 7: Role in the Original FF7 Storyline

Today’s prompt dives into where our OCs fit within the original narrative of Final Fantasy VII: whether they stood in the spotlight or haunted the shadows. For Diana Ravenscroft, her influence was anything but peripheral. She wasn’t a name you heard in passing or a figure glimpsed from a distance. No, Diana was embedded in the architecture of Shinra’s rot.

This post explores her role in Project N, her twisted legacy with Hojo, and how her obsession with transcendence left a trail of blood, suffering, and broken bodies beneath Midgar’s polished empire. While Cloud and his party fought battles above ground, Diana was engineering new gods in the dark.

Possible Trigger Warnings: abuse of power, body horror, captivity, coercion, eugenics, experimentation, medical abuse, psychological manipulation, scientific torture, vivisection

During the events of the original Final Fantasy VII, Diana Ravenscroft served as a critical yet covert player within Shinra’s darkest scientific endeavors. Though she wasn’t seen on the battlefield or standing before the player’s party, her presence was felt behind the scenes, woven into the very machinery of the Company’s most heinous experiments. As Professor Hojo’s protégé and eventual collaborator, Diana operated from the shadows of Shinra’s laboratories, overseeing the day-to-day cruelty of Project N: the experimental program that attempted to hybridize celestial, infernal, and Jenova genetics. Her work didn’t unfold on the frontlines, but it shaped the horrors lurking beneath them—creating failed supersoldiers, triggering biological anomalies, and warping the lives of beings like Bianca Moore, whose suffering became synonymous with the project’s ambition and humanity's hubris.

Diana’s role became especially prominent following the Nibelheim Incident in [μ] – εγλ 2000. As Sephiroth began to spiral toward his god complex and after his 'death', Shinra scrambled to maintain control over its rogue creations. While Hojo remained obsessed with Sephiroth’s legacy through direct cloning, Diana turned her attention to something more audacious: unlocking the essence of divinity itself through Bianca Moore, a celestial-demonic hybrid imprisoned within Shinra’s labs in the Shinra Mansion. This decision reframed Diana’s role in the story. She was not just as a scientist but a zealot of human transcendence. She wasn’t trying to make another SOLDIER. She was trying to forge a new species and to break death itself. Her experiments, which involved repeated vivisections and cellular infusions, paralleled the same moral decay that Shinra, as a company, had wrought on Gaia.

Her influence quietly underscores the moral rot Cloud and his party are fighting against. As Avalanche wages war against reactors and Shinra’s military arm, Diana is deep within the scientific caste, doing far more insidious damage. Her presence adds an unseen layer of horror to Shinra’s empire: one not powered by guns, SOLDIERs, and Mako alone but by the abuse of life itself.

Project N’s failed clones and biotechnological monstrosities can easily be imagined haunting the lower levels of Shinra facilities, a chilling echo of the work she and Hojo performed in tandem. Had the party ever uncovered the full extent of Diana’s work, she would have stood among the most ethically bankrupt figures in Shinra’s entire hierarchy.

As Sephiroth began his Reunion through the Lifestream and Jenova cells across the planet, Diana’s connection to him through Project N became even more disturbing. Warped by the infusion / interjections of Jenova and S-cells, Bianca Moore’s dreams and hallucinations hinted at Sephiroth’s influence bleeding into her psyche, suggesting that Diana had unwittingly created another tether between Sephiroth’s will and the physical world, much like the Robed Men. This deepened the implications of Reunion, expanding it beyond mere fragments of Jenova and into something more metaphysical: a reunion of Mother, Son, and Celestial Consort who was connected to a prophecy which spoke of destroying and remaking Existence. Ever blind to consequence, Diana remained focused on perfecting immortality, unaware that she was amplifying the very threat Avalanche sought to contain.

In the end, Diana’s role in the original story is that of an invisible architect of tragedy. She is not a villain in the traditional sense. She doesn’t hold a sword or command an army or even met the main cast of Final Fantasy VII. Her actions ripple across the storyline with the weight of irreversible consequence. Her scientific genius makes her one of Shinra’s most dangerous minds. And while the main cast may never have spoken her name, the experiments she oversaw, the suffering she sanctioned, and the monstrous ideals she chased all contributed to the desolated world Cloud and his allies fought to save. Diana Ravenscroft was not a peripheral figure. She was just a scalpel in Shinra's hands and, along with Hojo, the reason some experiments never had names: only numbers.

@themaradwrites @shepardstales @megandaisy9 @watermeezer

@prehistoric-creatures @creativechaosqueen @chickensarentcheap

@inkandimpressions @arrthurpendragon @projecthypocrisy @serenofroses

[thefloralmenace]

do you know any books/essays/authors/blogs that you would recommend to folks for more examples of practical resistance work? One of the things I appreciate deeply about your posts is they take the complexity of a situation into consideration, provide a strategic analysis, and give tangible examples of what resulting efforts can look like. Have any particular works/movements/authors inspired this analytical process for you?

This response got really long, so I'm going to put this list of books/documentaries that have really influenced my perspective of the world whether or not they have influenced by personal brand of action/activism at the top (since things can definitely influence you without your knowledge). TDLR for the rest: I don't think this is exactly the response you were looking for, but I hope it gives you something about how I developed the way I think.

Documentaries:

The Century of the Self by Adam Curtis - Four part documentary on how consumerism was engineered via psychology by a cousin of Freud I believe. Crazy ass stuff everyone should be aware of - including how they got a bunch of independent and liberal voters to vote for Reagan.

The Jangmadang Generation by Sokeel Park and Chad Vickery - A documentary focusing on the stories of various North Korean refugees. It's important because it focuses on their personal experiences and humanity rather than the country itself. I got to meet Sokeel via Zoom. :)

Crip Camp by James Lebrecht and Nicole Newnham - The story of a bunch of disabled kids who met at a summer camp for disabled kids and later met up again as activists. This is how I found out we have common disability accommodations like ramps leading down to crosswalks because a bunch of disabled people stormed a state government building and refused to leave for days no matter what was done to them. Wonder why they don't talk about that in history class?

Books:

Plastic Ocean by Capt. Charles Moore with Cassandra Phillips - The discovery and study of the Pacific Ocean garbage patch

Exit West by Moshin Hamid - Issues of immigration and refugees seen through a fantasy world.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith - Crazy story involving love, science, genetics, religious radicalism, class issues, and more.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks - Detailed accounts of various mental illnesses/brain disorders that affect perception (caviat, these are more from the doctor's observation, so keep in mind these are not full experiences of the patients)

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea - Graphic novel by a Canadian man who had a three month work contract as an animator in Pyongyang.

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren - The story of a woman's journey through STEM and family trauma. I love it because it features a truly platonic male-female bestfriendship.

- I may reblog and add more later.

So this might be a disappointing response, but a lot of my personal philosophy on anarchy/direct action comes from my own lived experience, though I would say other people on Tumblr have been my #1 influence on developing and refining that. Ex: I didn't really consider the things I do a form of anarchy until I read someone's post on here about how the anarchists are the ones who help people in the immediate short-term while the politicians battle it out in Washington. The specific post I'm thinking of said something along the lines of that buying groceries for your neighbor living below the poverty line when their SNAP benefits/other programs aren't fully doing the job counts as anarchy because you're giving someone resources that society (by its design) didn't intend for that person to have, and that direct action is necessary because hungry people don't have time to wait for income limits for programs to be adjusted for inflation, legislation to pass, etc.

I would also say that I'm good at taking life lessons from weird places, so a lot of the authors/things I've read that have influenced my political/strategic thinking were writing about something else completely. The first thing that came to mind when you asked this was when I read Plastic Ocean for my environmental science in high school. Dude became like the leading researcher on the Pacific Ocean garbage patch with no formal scientific background. If I remember correctly, he was helping a kid with a science project on plastic on the beach, and then he just kind of spiralled into researching plastic pollution in the ocean, learned to write publishable scientific journal articles from reading print copies of other journals to get the format right, and actually snuck into a conference and just put up his research poster in an open space??? And that really hit me like "You can just teach yourself to do certain things, show up, and start talking about them???" Like yeah more likely than not, he was going to get kicked out of that conference, but that was literally the worst that could happen, and he didn't. My man took direct action on science and succeeded in turning the world's eyes to plastic pollution, and I think you'll notice that the idea of "Maybe it'll work, maybe it'll get ignored, but ______ is the worst that can happen, so why not try?" is very much integral to my thinking.

That environmental science class in itself did a lot for my understanding of activism. My evo teacher was a very educated and motivated woman, and she would let us direct the class topics for the day. One day we got on the topic of poaching, and she told us the real way to stop poaching is not to arrest and punish all the poachers, it's to address the systematic poverty in the regions where poaching is an issue because the people hunting down elephants against the law are doing it because they can get thousands of dollars for an elephant tusk, and that's enough to support their family for a year or more in an area with no living-wage work. That really got me thinking about how a lot of "bad people" are just desperate people, and I think you'll also notice that "Yeah yeah there's lots of things people should and shouldn't do, but morality isn't practicality, and desperate people do desperate things, so we need to eliminate the conditions that lead to people doing 'bad' things," is also central to my thinking about how to get things done.

The core of my ability to break down what the real problem is in different situations and figure out what action to take to get people's attention/cooperation actually comes from having a less than ideal childhood lol. My parents, who to their credit are much better now, were not super mature people when I was young, and they were both kind of volatile and unwillingly to do anything that mildly inconvenienced them, so I got really good at 1) reading subtle emotional cues (think "have you ever had someone angrily wash a dish at you?", 2) Understanding how to word things so that people will see the benefit and do what you're asking them to. Ex: I wanted to start a recycling program at my elementary school for my grade when I was 10 (very small rural school) by getting a tub for each classroom and collecting the paper on Fridays. My Mom said "No, I don't want trash in my house." My Dad saved metal and paper to take to the recycler to get money (not because he cared about the environment lol), so I went and told my Dad I could get him an entire grade's worth of paper to turn in with his, and suddenly we were at the grocery store getting a tub for each classroom, and I emptied them all into a bag on Fridays and presented it to my father to his great praise and my Mom's grumbling. The school created a recycling program to replace me after I moved on to middle school because they liked it. :)

Breaking down problems is something I started to learn to do in my early teenage years because it made it easier to legitimize my pushing back against things. You get a lot more credit when you can articulate what the problem is and why you are taking a specific action against it rather than personally attacking every shitty adult/convention you come into contact with. The kids who got into shouting matches with teachers or started screaming and yelling because they hit their breaking point were valid in their feelings, but because they were uncontrolled in their emotions and actions, they got no credit or legitimacy from administration. I realized that kids and teenagers don't really have much power, so I worked really hard to build myself a reputation and ethos of being reasonable but not willing to take shit from anyone because just enough measured action to attack the real problem + determination to cause small, irritating problems about it that they couldn't justify throwing me out for meant that the shortest path to the end of a conflict with me was actually sitting down, hearing my concerns, and coming to an agreement. It got me to a place of "We know she's not stupid, and we know she's not a push over, so since we can't manipulate her or stop her, I guess it's time to talk" with administration.

So this is probably not what you were hoping for or asking for, but a lot of what I've learned has come from making a real effort to keep an open mind, try things for the hell of it, notice what's effective, notice how people respond to things, and keep an eye out for life lessons in unexpected places. It's less of a reading list, but I'd advise reading any literature you can find on issues that you care about because you'll start to get a feel for how other people have approached those specific issues (and then you can pick and choose techniques that you think would work for you), engage with your community (just talk to a whole frickin lot of people online or in person about a whole lot of things), and be able to listen without showing immediate judgment or argument because even if what you're hearing is terrible to you (Ex: a conservative telling you that the homeless deserve what they've gotten because they don't work hard enough), you need to know how other people think in order to combat those attitudes, and when you try to shut down people expressing ideas like those, they just keep them on the inside where they still influence their decisions, but then it's harder to figure out what perspectives/attitudes are holding up social progress.

[the-anemia]

Eureka! Investigative Urban Fantasy... spoilers? (can you spoil a ttrpg?) below? basically if you haven't read the eureka rulebook yet don't read this. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

okay? okay.

I think you could make spider-man into a Eureka! vampire. I think you could do it and it would work really well. It came to me in a dream.

I'm serious. don't look at me like that. I'm serious!

Okay, so last night i had a dream about spider-man fighting benito mussolini, who was a vampire for some reason and also had an army of gargoyles. Not... totally sure what the, uh, point of that dream was. but that's not the important part. the important part is that partway through the dream i realized that there's a weird amount of similarities between spider-man and vampires according to the Eureka! Investigative Urban Fantasy rulebook.

These can't have been intentional. Seriously, think about it! Spider man:

can stick to walls and ceilings, that's like his #1 super power.

is far stronger than a human should be, but still not, like. the hulk. (it varies a lot writer-to-writer, but usually his limit is a car, or if it's not he has to strain a lot to lift more)

Is highly resilient to physical injury, able to take incredible amounts of punishment before finally giving up the ghost. (there's some wiggly bits but it mostly works)

One time he did canonically die, after... a lot. I won't get into it but he was, like, the Wound Man by the end of it. But most importantly, he came back to life after a while and showed up a year later (I guess he was out of eureka points). That particular issue wasn't actually good but let me have this okay

can be sneaky if he so chooses to be, despite the bright red onesie. Like weirdly common that spider-man is very good at moving around undetected.

"appears animated," "choppy framerate" SPIDERVERSE!?

Vampires don't have spider-sense, but neither do several iterations of spider-man! The first one that comes to mind is spider-man 2099, who just has "enhanced senses!" He also had sharp teeth and people thought he was a vampire.

you might think "oh but he wouldn't have webs" but no! usually the webs are a thing he invented irrespective of the super powers! so that's not a point against it!

Okay there's not actually a lot here but i have to make this work. please. it's destroying me

But the biggest thing for me was that basically everyone around him seems to suffer horribly all the time, sometimes specifically because he's spider-man and sometimes randomly, what is seemingly just cosmic happenstance punishing them for their mere proximity to him! There must always be a wound!!!

i sent the devs at a.n.i.m. an ask about this but they ignored it. possibly because i sound like a raving lunatic grasping at straws.[1]

[1 off to the side in the final formatting] possibly because i am a raving lunatic grasping at straws...

Something else you have to consider is that the backstory fits, too. Literally the only thing you have to change about the standard spider-man backstory is that the spider wasn't radioactive or genetically engineered or part of a super soldier program, it was just a normal-ass venomous spider and it just like. kilt him! or her--there's spider-women! (personally my favorite is silk, but. ... well she's a problematic fave) but anyway the point is that most of those backstories involve being Bitten by a Somehow Special Spider, or injected with Special Spider Venom, or, like, Spiderified(?) So just have it kill them! Which is what should happen in real life if a strange spider bites you. Anyway we have a religious* kid from new yawk, dying tragically at a young age.

Also, at least with the (original) ultimate spider-man series (my favorite spider-man comic series), you could totally read norman osborn** as being an older more advanced vampire and his green goblin transformation as being the vampire beast form! It even "drives him insane" or in the terms of the game it does a bunch of composure damage! The point being that being in that form is a huge drain on his stability and makes him prone to delusions of grandeur, perhaps like he was given a mission from god to kill spider-man! (which did actually happen, he did think that if i remember correctly)

Honestly there's only really one big problem with this. It is pretty big though: spider-man goes out in the sun literally all the time. Like all the time. Sure, he wears a spandex onesie that covers his entire body, which would mitigate the effects a lot, but like. The book explicitly says "only a full body radiation suit can completely negate the effects" and it's not a full body radiation suit. well some of the suits he's used are, but like the most popular one is not, it's just lycra. So if you wanted to make spider-man a vampire you'd have to work around that I think, by either making him wear a more protective suit (which has its own problems) or just not having him go out during the day unless he absolutely had to, which doesn't really work super well thematically at first glance... I mean you could do a 2099 and make the story take place in, like, gotham, or something. Maybe the sun went out? Shut up there's ways around it! You can make it work!!!

Look you can make spider-man a vampire okay. it can work. It's not a pepe silvia okay this can work okay? don't look at me like that! This is reasonable! there's a chain of logic! You can totally do it!

[quinmael]

About Arkanoth

I have talked about this on multiple social media, but here I come again with another presentation:

Arkanoth is a TTTRPG I'm developing (The extra T is for Tactical). It started as a final project for university and a silly webcomic, but I ended up developing it as a Table Top Role Playing Game. ⬇⬇So let me tell you a bit about it:⬇⬇

What system does your game have? 5e? d10?

Heh... I wish... I found no system that could adapt to what I had in mind, so I am developing my own, a system I call the 753 system. Something I made that allows modularity and high customization at character creation. I could have probably adapt any known system into something remotely similar to what I wanted, but I'm a terrible reader and too much of a perfectionist...

What is the ambientation for the game then? Fantasy? Sci-fi?

I go with urban fantasy, oriented to futuristic fantasy. I'm bored of typical medieval or just sci-fi, I look for something that gives more the vibes of something more actual yet getting high fantasy involved. Imagine it like a world where bikes fly, travel can take seconds thanks to portals, creatures are genetically engineered, and yet you can make a little guy that travels on a horse slug looking at internet.

So... Why should I even be interested in your game?

Easy, three points: - EVERY CHARACTER IS ABLE TO USE MAGIC. No matter the class, race or anything. Magic 4 everyone, baby! - EVERY SPELL IS CUSTOM. If you don't have the spell you want, you create it! That simple! -LEVELESS CHARACTERS. Either if you want to have track of XP points or prefer something more simple, the system got you covered! Keep improving your character stats and spells until you decide it's enough!

Alright, what else?

Mucho texto already, so I will go with some numbers of what will be avaliable on the first version: -7 races -21 classes -5 types of magic -Combat, custom spells and social mechanics -Modifiers to customize your character and spells

So, this is a resume of what the 1st version (or Alpha) of Arkanoth will have, and worry not, the Alpha is like 1/6 of what I have in mind.

If you want to check this up closer, just join the community I got for it: https://www.tumblr.com/join/o0cdTZ0X