Living After Midnight

I'm desperately trying to choose between three skins for the soon-to-begin Monsterhearts campaign I'm gonna be in, and I just want to play them all. :D The skins in question are the Selkie, the Mortal and the Hollow, and they all seem to lend themselves well to the "I don't know who I want to be or what's happening around me, but I at least know who I don't want to be" type of inner conflict I want to build my character around. They just do it in completely different ways, and it's so hard to choose the best one. 

So I was just sitting there listening to a 100% unrelated song, and suddenly an idea for a "Little Mermaid" retelling popped into my head. And when I say idea, what I mean is an entire plot, an entire setting, a big handful of characters, a bigger handful of plot twists, a romance storyline, a shitload of political intrigue and a B-plot. I... I seriously don't know where it came from, but now I seriously want to write it. Except I'm almost scared to start, because right now it all seems so perfect, but what if it's just the novelty and/or what if I ruin it? 

(WHERE DID IT COME FROM).

So there's this podcast called Villains, and it's really fun. The gist of it is that in each episode, a villain from a popular movie gets analyzed. Their motivations are analyzed, their behaviors are dissected, there' s discussion on whether the villain in question has a chance at redemption, and if yes, then how exactly they may achieve it, etc, etc. It's interesting, entertaining, and it's giving me a lot of thoughts about creating villainous characters for the stories I write and the games I run. The backlog isn't too big so far, but new episodes come out weekly, and there are short bonus episodes in-between, containing some extra insight about the villain whose personality was highlighted in the regular episode before the bonus one. 

All in all, I really recommend it if you're into that sort of thing.

The fact that, apparently, no figure skater has performed a free program to Edvin Marton's version of the Bohemian Rhapsody, is mind-boggling. Until this season's rule changes, it was very nearly the perfect length for a senior man's free. 

I believe I'm finally getting the way aspects work in Fate Core / Accelerated / any other Fate-based system, probably. I've loved the concept from the first time I encountered it. But actually creating good, double-edged Aspects that would be useful in-game and would also describe my character the way I envision them has been a lot harder for me somehow than it looked on paper. I often relied on the help of the other players and the GM to actually fill out the aspects part of my charsheet, and that wasn't always satisfying.

But when I was creating my latest Fate Core character, something finally clicked. I wanted to make him sort of a Badass Bookworm with a big character flaw called arrogance: because of certain parts of his upbringing he often assumes he's a lot more capable than all the people he encounters, and that often comes back to bite him where it hurts. So for the first ten minutes, I was agonizing over the character sheet as usual. Where should I put the Badass Bookworm part? Should I make it part of the High Concept? Nah, it didn't really fit. Last Living Heir of the Grey Wizard was already a long-ass aspect. So I needed to find a way to make the Badass Bookworm separate and double-edged and ugh. Also, where should I put arrogance? Should I make it his Trouble aspect so I at least don't have to worry much about the double-edged part? But what about that part about his ex-lover putting a price on his head, that's a so much more dramatic Trouble! Double ugh. 

And then it was like a door opened in my head, and I came up with If I Read About It, I Believe I Can Do it. It worked so well during the first session! I invoked it several times when it really made sense for him to be good at things he's read a lot about, but the GM also compelled it a few times when it made just as much sense for the character to overestimate the great power of reading. It led to some really fun situations, and it also let me play exactly the character I wanted to play. So... Wow, it only took me like half a year to get the hang of it! :D