Conclusion: Dinosaurs

The Chronicle Themes mechanic from V6 might be my favorite thing added in the playtest. The more it sits with me, the more I like it. I think I might have even advocated for something like this in a past post. Something that I've noticed with my time in the fandom and over the lead up to V6 in particular is that fans tend to have very different ideas of what Vampire, and other games in the World of Darkness for that matter, actually mean on a thematic level. Is Vampire a gritty personal horror game about moral degeneration and losing yourself? Is it a dark, political horror game about self interest and alienation? Is it a gothic punk game about striking back at the powers that control you even when the odds are stacked against you? People tend to have strong opinions about what the "correct" way to play Vampire is, and which ways constitute ignorance of the game's themes and refusal to engage with its true nature. But in truth, Vampire is all of these things. It's personal horror, it's gothic punk, it's dark, it's political, it's queer, it's romantic, and it's tragic. A lot of these tones and themes can be mutually exclusive with each other, and it can sow division in the fandom over which style of play and themes players identify with more. So I really love that the new edition is giving us options for establishing the exact theme and tone we, as storytellers, want to go with in advance, to set expectations and have mechanical reinforcement for engaging with the major themes of our chronicles. I think it could be good for the community have these differences in tone and theme given mechanical depth. I hope it'll flesh out different styles of play more, and give troupes their own identities within the fandom

@i-like-reblog-maps I heard you like large maps ^⁠_⁠^

Didn't realise it was a reblog map at first,thought somebody was drawing the visual effect that accompanies casting Testicular Torsion.

It's endlessly funny to me, that so many people read Nona the Ninth - a book where a group of indigenous people from a small nation in the southern hemisphere spend years trying to build a communal plan, begging anyone to take collective action, reaching out again and again for as many people to get on board as possible, only to be stymied again and again by the individually and structurally powerful, who simply didn't care (and couldn't care due to the incentive structures imposed by power) and just wanted to preserve their own power/lives at the expense of everyone else, only for one of their number to be singled out and given immense universe-altering power by a magical entity, which of course led to disaster and the collapse of their original goals because, you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely and will magnify even the most minor human foibles - and came away thinking ah yes, the point is that John as an individual is ontologically evil.

#i think people also forget john is arguably the most fucked up dude in human history and an unreliable narrator #he probably. can’t connect with who he used to be before necromancy #John The Guy and jod are different guys entirely #the regular scale of trauma does a lot to a normal human brain #john went through arguably the worst trauma a human person could possible experience #while being transformed into a godlike being #they’re not the same person #the same way mercymorn ‘we will not stand for reproductive abuse’ becomes ‘infants as fingers and gestures’ (via @monetarymollusk​)

i don't get how you can read the end of john's story and not see someone undergoing a complete mental shattering it's not an excuse it's an explanation of why he did what he did if you had ultimate god powers dropped upon you from a great height then saw everyone you cared about hunted down and murdered in front of your eyes whilst the very people who made living on earth miserable and squeezed every drop of profit from it before abandoning everyone to die escaped in front of your eyes are you saying you could've kept your head in that moment?  ( via @2impostors​ )

#john's backstory is SO important to me because it makes so much sense every step of the way#he lost the plot but like. every moment he went down that path.... i could see it.#that rage. that senseless thirst for meaningless revenge#and once he literally becomes god.. why hold himself to human standards of right and wrong? why care for single individuals at all?#and all of this tragedy is 100x better BECAUSE of the good intentions paving the way to hell#how do you look at john gaius 'no one knowingly left behind' 'begged for funds to reduce chance of damage'#'spents weeks trying to handle maternity issue bc people deserve a choice on whether to terminate their pregnancy'#beloved of alecto. she gave the world john because she loved the world!#how do you look at THAT guy and think he was irredemable from the start (via liesmyth)

we owe literally no one more on this planet than the woman behind fantasy name generator

her name is emily and and she runs it all by herself

everyone say thanks emily!!!

THANK YOU EMILY!

Thank you to Emily at Fantasy Names Generator, for providing all the fantastical names I could ever need for anything!! :D

As I understand it living in LA is one of those cosmically perfect acts where the punishemnt for the crime is the act itself

This is what I mean when I say this guys an asshole like none of tue wwdits vampires would do this like yeah when you are a vampire you expect to be evil and kill innocent people but there's a difference between being fucking evil and being a fucking dick like he made Lucy climb 199 fucking steps like dude!!! We know you're not malnourished and if you are it's your own damn fault bc you could have just drank Mr. Swales blood or exercised a bit of portion control on the Demeter like get your lazy ass up and out of the cemetery to go and find victims it is common courtesy I am so Fucking winded right now

Once again sharing my research trip with the good people of tumblr.com

#There is so much gender nonconformity available in the details of these characters #despite the appearnce to the modern eye of them being fairly conforming (tags by vergess)

When Mina called herself "quite heroic" yesterday, it was no exaggeration, turns out. It IS heroic that she disregarded her own safety to go fight a huge shadow figure AT MIDNIGHT with nothing but her safety pin as a weapon. While scared to death.