• he/they

It's a horrible day on the Internet, and you are a lovely geuse.

Adult - Plants-liking queer menace - Front-desk worker of a plural system - Unapologetic low-effort poster

✨ Cohost's #1 Sunkern Fan(tm) ✨

[Extended About]

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Three pixel stamps: a breaking chain icon in trans colors against a red background, an image of someone being booted out reading "This user is UNWELCOME at the university", and a darkened lamppost.(fallen london stamps by @vagorsol)



playing Fallen London has been making me think about the kind of stuff that I personally need from a story, because Fallen London, tonally, is a bit outside of my usual storytelling interests - I normally gravitate towards more... idealistic media? stuff on the significantly lighter side of gray-and-gray morality at most, where everyone does badly by each other but genuinely intends well, and are eventually able to reconcile, address the wrongs they've done to each other, and work together to build a kinder future where no one will have to resort to what they had to

and Fallen London, despite being genuinely hilarious, is much darker than that. the obvious eldritch and body horrors aside, the world is dominated by people whose only motivations are greed and power, and there's little you can do to change the status quo. there are many stories where good intentions go horribly astray, where there are no good choices - only bad ones and worse ones. there are many, many more opportunities to be casually callous than to be casually kind.

and yet. for all the horror and misery in the world, those little acts of kindness you do shine all the brighter. you might not be able to save the world, but you can still build something good, something meaningful even if not lasting, in your small corner of it. you may stumble, and fall - again and again and again - but you can always get up and try again. the status quo might not change*, but that doesn't mean your efforts don't matter.

that's the kind of thing I think, fundamentally, I need from stories, and that's how I've been trying to play Fallen London - with characters who are messy and do some reprehensible things, unintentionally or otherwise, but who are still Trying, in their own ways. there will likely end up being points where I Have to be an out-of-character asshole, but I do get the feeling that the game - especially in more recent years - really does want to nurture a quiet kind of hope. if not that the Powers-That-Be will one day be toppled from their thrones, then that even in a place as wretched as the Neath, compassion and wonder can still bloom.


*but in at least one future, it might. there may be places where you can glimpse these futures for yourself...


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