convinced that no one who calls tim drake normal has ever read the original comics leading up to him becoming robin. a 13 yr old runs to titans tower to look for dick and then hears he’s gone to visit haley’s circus and proceeds to LOCATE DICK and when he finds him dick is like. you’re like 12 where are ur parents. and tim’s like that’s not important listen BATMAN NEEDS HELP and dick brings him back to the manor and when alfred asks he’s like Look idk either. later tim wears the robin costume and goes out to help batman and nightwing himself. and Later he has like. straight up stress+guilt-induced hallucinations of robin!dick and robin!jason. this is only the tip of the glacier. no one who thinks he's boring should ever speak to me actually

"Le standard rpg moralistic choice™️" is one of the most boring tropes in western rpgs imho.

What I prefer and what I think pretty much everyone enjoys more are choices based on ideology and how you want to do things, not "do you wanna be good? or a mass murderer?"

I'm talking "choices" like disarming the nuke in Megaton in Fallout 3, or, fucking nuking the entire town. Or more recently, do you save the tieflings and the druids from the goblin army bent on wiping them out? Or do you decide to just slaughter them all?

Like, Bioware had data from the Mass Effect series which showed that less than 10% of players went Renegade on a first playthrough, when all you do is offer people a choice between being good, or bad, most people will just choose good, because that's usually what makes most sense for the story.

Compare that to (take a shot) Fallout New Vegas, just one quest, that being fixing the Helios One solar power plant and deciding who should get the power.

Should you distribute the power equally among the region, even if that means nobody really gets a lot?

Should you send it to Camp McCarren and the Strip since they are vital to protecting New Vegas from the Legion?

Should you send it to the slums in Fremont and Westside since that might help their situation the most?

Or should you use the power plant to fuel a giant space satellite laser, just for yourself!

New Vegas is filled with actual choices like this, and, if you can't even do that, you coulds try what (act surprised) Knights of the Old Republic II does and make meta comments on the futility and bizarreness of binary good/evil choices.

Early on when you arrive on Nar Shaddaa in KOTOR II a beggar asks you if you can spare some credits, and no matter what your choice, give them to him, and he gets mugged later, refuse him, and he goes out and mugs someone else, with Kreia commenting negatively on either choice you make.

Anyway I'm just really sick and tired of the boring binary morality choices and wish we had more actually intellectually debatable issues, the very fact that even 13 years later people argue over what the best ending to New Vegas is should be proof enough that it's way of doing things is objectively better.

Playing through Fallout:New Vegas for the first time in years. And I'm developing a newfound appreciation for the damage done to the intended pacing of the narrative with the addition of the Courier's Stash. I wake up in Goodsprings, and as part of the extended tutorial you have Ghosttown Gunfight, the fairly self-contained faction war between Goodsprings and the Powder Gangers. And the design intent, I think, is that this is probably supposed to be a pain in the ass, with only one or two avenues of support available to you given the low level at which you'll pick this one up. Six Powder Gangers, some in body-armor, would be a serious threat, and committing to fighting against that with your dinky 9mm and a varmint rifle seems like a rough time! An actual uphill battle, doing the right thing instead of the easy thing. Fortunately, Benny inexplicably left my handy 40mm grenade launcher in the grave with me, so I cleaned up.

I'm working my way south, and, you know, in a version of the game where Benny didn't inexplicably leave my handy 40mm grenade launcher in the grave with me, this would have been the knock-on effect of my "good" Karmic choice in defending Goodsprings; the road south is littered with powder gangers who'd have been neutral had I not kicked the hornet's nest. As it stands? Free experience. I hit Primm, and fighting through the cramped hallways of the Bison Steve I encounter an enemy armed with what was clearly supposed to be the first heavy weapon I'd encounter in the world. Tight Corridors. Inexplicable Grenade Launcher. I clean up. South I go to the Mojave outpost, Nipton, that whole thing. And clearly, clearly you aren't meant to take a swing at Vulpes here, right? You're supposed to take it in, get a sense for the legion. In the version of the game that shipped you're supposed to get bodied if you try to kick the beef gate here. There are allowances in the game for if you pull it off, sure, but I did try with just the service rifle, without the glorious first-strike capabilities afforded to me by the 40mm grenade launcher that Benny inexplicably left in the grave with me. It didn't go very well!

So now I'm dogged by Legion hit squads on my way to Novac, which I get the distinct impression was not the point in the game at which this was supposed to start happening to me, because I am gathering up some pretty expensive equipment, all sold for space. I punch through to Vegas, and at this stage, the clear developer intent is that you need to spend some time milling around Freeside or Camp McCarran in order to gain access to the Strip- do odd jobs to scrape up the money, buy the forgery from Mick and Ralphs, gain monorail access, get your science skill high enough to hack the robot. Get the lay of the land, get a feel for the people, send some time stewing in the human cost of House's walled garden before you head in and hear the pitch from the big man himself.

Except I've got 5000 caps from selling off all the legion killteam equipment. In I go!

And the fun thing is, right, the Courier's stash can't be diegetic, but it is having a very direct impact on the world here. A top legion guy just went down to my inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher. Whatever else I'm roleplaying as, I am roleplaying as a guy who woke up in the possession of an inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher, and neither I nor my character can plausibly ignore that fact given its terrible bloodstained utility. I play a man, a man who would be a good man, a man nonetheless bewitched by the terrible resolutory power of the grenade launcher. My best friend, the inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher! My worst enemy, the inexplicable 40mm grenade launcher!

One thing I really enjoy about Fallout New Vegas is that it's really really good at modeling The Long-Suffering Protagonist Who Things Just Keep Happening To. Fallout 4, one or two things happen to you at the start, and they're doozies, but then for the most part you start happening to everybody else. You don't suffer that many ignominies. Fallout New Vegas, you get shot in the head and dumped in a shallow grave. Two different guys stick a bomb collar on you and force you to run errands. You have to dodge howitzer fire like in that one Malcom In The Middle Episode. All your organs get stolen. You think you're gonna get an easy payday killing some feral ghouls at a test site and then boom, you're getting canonized as a saint by a ghoul rocket cult, pouring radioactive coolant out of toy rocket ships into a real rocket ship one at a time. You get tricked into initiating a nuclear strike. Twice. You play a shell-game with human trafficking victims to bluff a guy into thinking he's pulling a tantalus when it's really just beef. You're forced to have conversations with Mormons. You simply get involved in more situation per situation, hands down. Sole survivor's memoir, I mean, whatever, it'll be okay. Courier's memoir? Oh boy

plotting out the timeline of some of the horrible things that happen to Tim and my god the 2000's fucking had it out for him

Over the course of 6 years irl, and almost certainly way less time within the comics, Tim just absolutely gets his shit rocked and I'm positive theres stuff that I've left out or forgotten

i think it's hilarious that bruce's first instinct upon facing any issues in his parenting is "no more robin. effective immediately" like bro... you can't just go "you're not robin anymore" and expect them to REACT WELL????

bruce: gives his kid, who doesn't even know how to add fractions, a sense of importance stronger than most adults will ever have

robin: has anything bad happen to him, or experiences any negative emotions

bruce: hrm. i suppose i will take it all away now. because i love him.

robin: freaks the hell out and takes it extremely badly

bruce: hm. that went very well. i will make sure to employ this tactic with the next child.

I bet that he's the type of parent who says "I did this to your older brother and he's fine" camera zooms on Dick with eye bags and seven different trust issues.

hades explaining that he’s the god of the dead, not the god of death

Thanatos explaining that he’s the god of death, not hades

Thanatos explaining that it applies to animals too

Poseidon explaining that he is the god of the seas and oceans

Zeus explaining why he can’t keep it in his pants

Hermes explaining why he gotta go fast

dionysus explaining why he’s Like That

All of these are so accurate it hurts

@nicadenic

Also Hermes, God of messengers

And Eris, Goddess of discord and chaos

Oh my god I’m dying, these are all just consecutive sucker punch’s straight to the nose

Help

hades explaining that he’s the god of the dead, not the god of death

Thanatos explaining that he’s the god of death, not hades

Thanatos explaining that it applies to animals too

Poseidon explaining that he is the god of the seas and oceans

Zeus explaining why he can’t keep it in his pants

Hermes explaining why he gotta go fast

dionysus explaining why he’s Like That

All of these are so accurate it hurts

@nicadenic

Also Hermes, God of messengers

And Eris, Goddess of discord and chaos

Oh my god I’m dying, these are all just consecutive sucker punch’s straight to the nose

Help

Sometimes I open Ao3 as one would a fridge in the middle of the night. Hungry, but not willing to commit to anything that is in there and hopping a miracle will make something new and appetising appear out of thin air if only I close it and open again.

tim 🫶

Severitus/Sevitus Fic Rec

Thought I’d share my own personal fic list that I’ve complied over time featuring Snape and Harry developing some kind of father-son relationship, all the way through either bio-dad, adoption, guardian or mentorship. All of these fics are COMPLETE because after OME leaving me on the world’s biggest cliff hanger and losing the fic for many months because I’m an idiot, I have serious WIP trust issues. They’re also usually really long because I love angsty, slow-burn fics.

I started taking in-depth notes while I read through fics a while ago so that I would NEVER lose a favourite fic again (the title of one of my favs is in Latin, so I never remember what it’s called). And also because I have a terrible memory so remembering what happened in each fic is quite difficult for me. Assuming I know how to count there should be over 16 fics listed here.

Keep reading