Mistakes Were Made. So Where's My Payment?

Est. Read Time: 30min (23min if you skip over the spoilers)

Hello, hello, my people! I hope you've been feeling the love the past two months, because this post is going to focus more on my writing frustrations.

To be fair, I'm not really IN the writing funk anymore, thanks to the love I received last month. However, when I first wrote this post at the start of March I was definitely on the Writing Struggle Bus. A lot of the stuff I initially wrote is still valid, so I did want to still share it. Just know that it's not nearly as frustrating, stressful, and/or depressing for me now as it was then. So... YAY!

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Thanks again, everyone, for the love!

Before I climb back onto that Struggle Bus, I wanted to talk a bit about this post's font. This month I'm trying out the font Kalam. It definitely feels like it has a more "handwritten" look to it than last month's Josefin Sans. I just don't know how I feel about all of my posts being in this font. It definitely has that "handwritten-diary text within a MG or YA story" vibe. My concern is that I'm not sure if that's a good thing or bad. I'm also not the biggest fan of he fact that you can't really tell too well when I have things italicized or not. (To counter this flaw, I'm just bolding any italicized writing from this point forward...) Any thoughts on the topic, peeps?

While you ponder that, I'll continue to ponder what I should do about two of my biggest writing projects right now: Seduce with Caution and Scum and Villainy. Both of which I've kinda-sorta at least did some mental exercises for in an attempt to further the story. That counts, right?

We'll start with Seduce with Caution. It's been over four months since I've done anything with that story. I gave myself December to focus on the holidays and January to recover, but then February and March (and half of April) blasted by and I am again behind the 8-ball. Over the past few months, I've attempted to just let my brain stew. Passively come up with things like MariChat date nights or akuma attacks.

My brain has failed me.

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Last month, though, I watched the season 5 episode "Elation" with Wolfhearted. It kills me how much this episode is just a PG-rated version of Seduce With Caution. I'll go over the parallels, but this will involve spoilers for (a) the first 8 episodes of season 5, (b) the episode "Elation" itself, and (c) my story SWC. So let me throw this up real quick.

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Okay, this should be far enough down that those who don't want the spoilers won't see anything accidentally.

In order to better understand what is going on in the episode "Elation" (as well as how it parallels with SwC), I have to do a "quick" recap on what has happened in Miraculous Ladybug since the season 4 finale. So, to start, in the two-part finale, Marinette was the only one to listen to Adrien when he confessed that he didn't want to go on some world tour as a model for his father, and she encouraged him to just tell his father this. He chickened out, and his identical cousin Felix offered to step in. Felix proposed to pose as Adrien in order to tell Gabriel he (Adrien) didn't want to go on the tour. Adrien agreed, then was surprised to discover Ladybug gave Felix the Dog Miraculous under the assumption she gave the Miraculous to Adrien. Felix used the mix-up to betray the heroes and brought Ladybug's yo-yo - which had access to the unused Miraculouses - to Hawk Moth (going by Shadow Moth at this point). Despite Ladybug managing to get her yo-yo back, she had lost all of the Miraculouses outside of her own and Chat Noir's, and presumably failed her mission as Guardian and Superhero. At her lowest point, Chat Noir stood by her side and told her he still believed in her (a sentiment the rest of Paris echoed shortly after). Roll end credits.

Season 5 starts off with Marinette wrestling with her new feelings for Chat Noir, which are a lot more affectionate and romantic after his emotional support and faithfulness. Likewise, Adrien is feeling the same for Marinette for a lot of the same reasons.

The first few episodes of the season has Ladybug and Chat Noir stumble their way through being just a duo again. No Master Fu or other Miraculous holders to back them up. They were back to how they were the first season, except now Hawk Moth (now going by the moniker Monarch) is more powerful than ever. They had to wrestle with the guilt of giving their enemy access to more power to terrorize Paris, the critiques Parisians have about them failing (which was only a small few, but their voices were loud), and their feelings for each other shifting.

Eventually, Adrien realizes that it's just too painful to continue holding a flame for Ladybug. Besides, he can no longer ignore his romantic feelings for Marinette. She's who makes him smile and feel like everything will be okay. Even as she's stumbling over herself, she still manages to find exactly the right thing to say to cheer him up and bring him peace. We also get the reveal that he's been struggling to sort out his feelings for Marinette ever since she kissed him at the wax museum way back in the Season 3 episode "The Puppeteer 2" (YES! Validation for enjoying the "cringe" episode!!!). Although, I say that the kid is still fooling himself and he's had feelings for Marinette since that Season 1 umbrella scene. It just wasn't as obvious to him as it was to her.

Well, right as Adrien gives up on his romantic pursuit of Ladybug, Marinette realizes her feelings for Chat Noir. He's her rock. He's the one ALWAYS on her side; even when he's challenging her it's because he believes in her and believes she can be better. He's the one who makes her feel at ease and can calm her when she's spiraling. He's always been her protector and defender. Plus, he's hella cute.

We officially have a reverse love square: Ladybug is now in love with Chat Noir who is in love with Marinette who only sees Adrien as a good friend. Shenanigans ensue.

Which brings us to the 9th episode of the season: "Elation". Having failed with her overt flirting with Chat Noir in a few episodes now (it's... it's BAD. This girl is THIRSTY!), Marinette vents to Alya, who, in turn, tells her that she (Marinette) herself has stated that Ladybug and Chat Noir dating would be dangerous. So maybe it's a good thing that he's not flirting back with her anymore? Besides, Ladybug was the one who asked him to stop pursuing her in the first place. While the girls are arguing, Adrien decided to stop by the bakery for an impromptu hang out with Marinette. Her parents excitedly let her know he's there for a visit, and she sternly turns everyone down. Nope. Not happening. She's busy right now. She's focused on sorting out this whole Chat Noir thing and doesn't have time for Adrien. This causes the girls to argue further before Alya finally suggests that Marinette just step outside to take a breath. Meanwhile, a dejected Adrien leaves the bakery, is ambushed by fans, secretly transforms into Chat Noir to get away, and ends up on the roof he had set up for his date with Ladybug in the season 2 episode "Glaciator".

Marinette exits onto her balcony and the two notice each other. Chat Noir casually mentions being in the area and "happening" upon her. They flirt a little, which includes Marinette calling herself a Chat Noir superfan. Then Chat Noir suggests an evening stroll together to maybe get some of Andre's Sweethearts' Ice Cream. While grabbing ice cream, Chat Noir discovers that Marinette was in love with Adrien. They then have this heartbreaking exchange.

Chat Noir: You were in love with Adrien Agreste?
Marinette: Yes. But it just made me act in the worst ways. It was too much to bear. What about you? You're no longer in love with Ladybug?
Chat Noir: No. It was too much to bear. It just made me act in the worst ways.

Marinette somberly responds that at least Chat Noir still has his fans, to which he retorts that maybe his fans won't like him as much if they knew who he was behind the mask. She tells him that she's okay not knowing who's behind the mask. They have this cute moment of testing out little pecks on each others' cheeks and noses before going in for the actual kiss on the lips. (cue me screaming until my throat hurts)

Thing is, though, Chat Noir knows that Marinette doesn't understand that she's kissing her former love Adrien Agreste, and he instantly feels guilty about it. He breaks away and tells her they can't be together.

Fast forward through an akuma attack, Chat Noir officially telling Ladybug that he'll always love her even if it's not romantically any more, her accepting this new dynamic between them, and Chat Noir telling Marinette that he fears taking advantage of the situation with her; that he knows who she is but she doesn't know who he is and that her "love" for him might just be inflated feelings of idolization. He then confesses that he does wish he could kiss her, but would prefer being able to do so outside of the mask so that she knows who he is. They part with a hug. Marinette cries that she'll never get this "love thing" right. Adrien cries that he lost his chance to be with Marinette as Adrien. Tikki simply gives a silent cuddle to comfort Marinette. Plagg points out that Adrien could get Marinette to fall back in love with his civilian half. Roll credits.

Okay, that was a bit longer than intended, but now for the parallels. First, backtracking once more to the season 4 episode "Glaciator 2". The premise of that episode was that Kagami advised Marinette to find someone whom she'll never fall in love with and whom will never fall in love with her, and practice her love confession on that person to better mentally prepare herself for confessing to Adrien. Of course, Marinette spots Chat Noir on a rooftop across the way and calls him over, thinking he's the perfect candidate. In the process of her giving Chat Noir her love confession (never mentioning Adrien's name, of course), there were hints that maybe Chat Noir fell harder for Marinette. Similarly, the whole premise of Seduce with Caution is that Chat Noir demonstrates his new seduction techniques on Marinette as a way to practice before trying them out on Ladybug. Except the techniques work exactly as intended... on Marinette....

Along with realizing they are now physically attracted to each other, in Seduce with Caution Adrien (as Chat Noir) and Marinette realize they are starting to also catch romantic feelings for the other. For Adrien, it's because Marinette feels like home to him; a place where he feels warm and loved and comforted and safe to be his true self. For Marinette, it's because Chat Noir helps her become a better version of herself, one that's more confident and brave and sure of herself and comfortable to be her goofy/clumsy self since she knows he won't judge her. Which kind of feels similar to what the duo realize about why they love each other canonically. So, yay, that I was able to sort that out just from pre-season 5 context clues.

Paralleling "Elation" itself, in SWC, Adrien is shocked to find out HE has been Marinette's love all these years... except he again only finds out AFTER she's moved on to Chat Noir. Whoops. It's a touch less heartbreaking in my version though since it's also kind of a ray of hope for the MariChat ship.

Much like in "Elation", Adrien fears that he might be taking advantage of the situation if he (as Chat Noir) and Marinette date. She wouldn't know that she's actually dating her "good friend" Adrien Agreste. Would she feel betrayed or taken advantage of if/when she found out? Very similar to how Chat Noir felt while kissing Marinette in "Elation". The only major difference is that I had Marinette have a similar fear: would Chat Noir feel manipulated or mocked if/when he found out that his girlfriend was actually Ladybug the whole time? Sadly, "Elation" didn't seem to have Marinette struggle with that dilemma.

Anyway, continuing with the parallels, in "Elation", when Chat Noir and Ladybug have their heart-to-heart about his feelings for her, he tells her, "Let's just say my feelings have changed. I still love you, but just as a friend. If that okay?" Which is a VERY simple version of what I had written out for SWC. My version has him confess that she's still his top priority. It's still them versus the world. He will always protect her and have her back. He will always love her, and no one could ever fill her space in his heart. Now that he knows a life with Ladybug in it, he never wants to lose it; he doesn't want to know another day without her. He confesses his undying love for her, but states that it's not a romantic love anymore. Obviously that's a bit much for a 23min episode, but I feel like what Chat Noir canonically said has the same vibe as what I wrote.

Next, similar to MariChat's farewell in "Elation", in SWC it's largely Chat Noir who laments the duo not being able to go on actual dates or him being able to be with her as himself. This causes the Act III conflict in my story as the guilt of having a dual-identity weighs heavy on both of them. Also, the overall conflict for the episode "Elation" was about people telling Marinette who she should/shouldn't date - whether or not it was a good idea for her and Chat Noir to be together - which also parallels a few conflicts within SWC. These conflicts, again, lead to that Act III conflict.

Finally, at the end of "Elation", Plagg reminds Adrien that if Marinette loved his civilian side once, perhaps she can again (after all, she does love the Chat Noir side, and they really aren't that different since both sides are still Adrien). Similarly, when Chat Noir laments his dating conundrum in the 3rd act of SWC, Plagg reminds him that he could always try again to woo Marinette as Adrien now that he knows her better and knows what of his Chat Noir side she values.

So.... yeah! There we have it! All of the parallels I could think of between "Elation" (and the season 4 episode "Glaciator 2") and my long-running WIP Seduce with Caution.

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OKAY! SPOILERS OVER NOW! YOU CAN START READING AGAIN IF YOU SKIPPED THE LAST PART!

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Edited by LycoRogue

Phew! Sorry, peeps. That went longer than anticipated. Which, I mean, shouldn't surprise me. That's kind of my MO: running longer than anticipated.

Anyway, the long and short of it - for those who skipped over the spoiler portion - is that a lot of the main plot beats in the episode "Elation" mirror what I have already written and/or planned out for Seduce with Caution. On the one hand, that is super cool. Proof that I understand the characters and how they would react in these sorts of situations. I don't even need to go back and go, "Oh, I was close, but based off of canon I need to tweak this bit." My version is just... a more mature version of what we got canonically. Neat.

But the double-edged sword IS the fact that it's so close to canon. If I had posted Seduce with Caution last year or the year before, as intended, then I'd have this really cool moment where my fans and I could all point to SWC and be like, "Oh hey! Lyco predicted this!" A few years back this exact situation happened with a fanfic writer I follow. She came up with an akumatized villain named Aphrodeedee, who used her powers to get people to make out with the first person they saw and were attracted to. Fast forward about 20 months or so and the season 2 episode "Zombizou" aired, in which the Akuma-Of-The-Week used her powers to turn the citizens of Paris into zombies obsessed with kissing instead of eating brains. After the episode aired, a bunch of us who read Curiosity and Satisfaction freaked out about her predicting a future canon akuma. It would have been so cool if the same thing could have happened for me. But now? I'm afraid people are going to look at those parallels and just nod along like, "Ah, she took canon and tweaked the maturity level of it."

People have reassured me that I should still write SWC and that people will love it even if they already have a PG version of the story. Which, yeah, fair. I wasn't planning on abandoning the story anyway. But still... it would have been cool if people knew I predicted those interactions instead of potentially assuming I drew from canon to make sure they felt in-character.

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Edited by LycoRogue

Either way, seeing a PG version of SWC play out in the episode "Elation" kicked my butt back in gear. I sent my most detailed outline of SWC to Wolfhearted so he could see what I've been cooking up for the past two years. I then went in to see what needed tweaking. I forgot how many holes there are. I also need to sort out what to do with the 4th chapter. There's mild flirting to match the mild flirting in chapter 3, but it seems almost too mild after what I had in the first 2 chapters.... Also, chapter 4 is LONG. There's this one bit at a used book street vendor that I'm pretty sure I'm cutting, but I need to sort out how much is getting cut. On the plus side, it means another "deleted" scene is probably going to end up on Tumblr in the near(ish) future. So, yay for you guys.

Sadly, a 9-day work week, dealing with my relatively new and incredibly exhausting coworker, and prepping to visit my mom and sister for Sis' birthday at the start of March had all stalled my writing yet again. Which meant I wasn't able to get TOO far with my reworking of the SWC outline (see also my post last month about the update being massively delayed).

Similarly, I was struggling to come up with jobs for our Scum and Villainy roleplay sessions. I had already cancelled the session on March 6th because I just ran out of time to plan anything (see aforementioned work schedule and visiting family). Then, as mentioned in the last post, I had to cancel the session on March 20th because of the maintenance on my apartment. A solid month where I didn't run a session and could therefore prep for our next session on April 3rd. So, you'd probably presume I got it all sorted out, and things went swimmingly on the 3rd.

Yeeeeeaaaaaah.... about that....

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Nothing. A complete blank. I couldn't think of a single job for them in the MONTH since we last played! The day of I had a couple of starter ideas, but nothing that could truly pan out.

On top of that, I just never know how much to pre-plan. It seems that the jobs I spend literal weeks coming up with massive amounts of details for - in an attempt to cover my butt for just about any contingency the players hit me with - barely last 90min. Alternatively, when I'm just flying by the seat of my pants? Job takes about 2hrs, easy. We may even run long that session.

For instance, the session we did on February 20th? Yeah, I had that job written up since, like, September, or something. I had been itching to have them run it, but I needed to set up the hook. Finally got everything lined up so that it made sense for the client to reach out to them, and they breeze through the job in about 20min.

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I know the point is that the players are having fun, as am I. And I'm pretty sure we all are indeed having fun. It's just the principle of the thing: I spend WEEKS planning something, and they breeze through it. I wing something, and we're hanging out in that job for hours. It's enough to make me give up on pre-planning. However, the problem then becomes that a lot of the "winging it" jobs have me going "Uh.... sure?" Only to then look back post-session and go "Oh... I screwed up!"

Another case-and-point? The Stardancer crew came into possession of a Dreadnought! We had FINALLY settled on the Stardancer itself being about the size of the Bebop (from Cowboy Bebop) and the Serenity (from Firefly and Serenity) combined. So.... roughly 225m (738ft) long, 160m (524ft) wide, and 45.75m (150ft) tall.

Credit to the Scum and Villainy art team:
Brett Barkley, Tomasso Renieri, Juan Ocha, Michaela DeSacco, and Tazio Bettin
(Color and sizing edits by LycoRogue)

At that size, the Stardancer is a Freight-Class starship; one size category up from personal crafts (although, I might sneak another size in for transport ships such as the Star Wars Gauntlet starfighter that are about 1/4 the size we came up with for the Stardancer but can hold more than 1 person).

Either way, there are two more size categories between Freighter and Dreadnought (Corvette and Frigate)! The Stardancer crew just went from the canonically smallest multiple-person space craft to the largest! On top of that, the rules don't explain how large the size categories are outside of the fact that Corvettes (just one size category up from Freighter) are now too large to land planetside.

I know that the official SaV rulebook does this on purpose: just give the broad strokes instead of actual specifics, that way no one's hands are tied. The playgroup can work together to world build (universe build?). They can collectively decide on what The Way is and how it manifests. What other non-terrestrial species (Xenos) are there outside of the named Sah'iir or Memish? How much of the overall sector population is human vs xeno? What are the names of the other major cities on any given planet? What about towns? Are there hamlets? What other cultures are there? How do the weapons work? How do the Jump Gates work? What Ur artifacts are there, and how do they work? What are the sizes of the different space ship categories? Etc.

It's freeing to just have fun world building like that. If that's your thing. It really isn't for this playgroup though, including myself. So there's a LOT of debate on how things do and don't work. What's OP vs balanced? What's realistic vs threatening to break suspension of disbelief? What do the various flora/fauna/buildings look like? It's.... it's a lot. It forces me to do a LOT of research in our time off between sessions.

So, in my attempt to sort out how large this Dreadnought should be compared to the Stardancer, I used Star Wars dreadnoughts as reference. In SW canon, the size category STARTS at about 5km (3 miles/5280 yd) long, and can go up to 15km (9 miles/15,840 yd) long! That's STARTING at over *20 TIMES* larger than the Stardancer!!!! No wonder these babies can't land planetside! Good grief!

Also, presumably Dreadnoughts are fairly rare within the Procyon Sector, given that there are only three mentioned in the rule book, and each of them are listed as a "notable asset":

• Lost Legion, former military branch of the Hegemony that was tasked to be the former Hegemon's bodyguards until he was usurped. The Lost Legionnaires have stayed loyal to the usurped Hegemon and are now outlaws trying to get his daughter reinstated as the rightful heir. Their Dreadnought Ascension is their main HQ
• They are a Tier IV faction, meaning they are strong in multiple star systems.
• The 51st Legion, the Hegemony's military branch tasked to keep order throughout the galaxy, has The Scorpio, which they also use as their HQ
• They are a Tier III faction, which means they are strong in a few star systems or weak throughout the entirety of the Procyon sector.
• Nightspeakers, mystics with dark proclivities bent on seeking a set of dangerous Precursor artifacts. Yet again, they use their Dreadnought Blackstarr as their HQ.
• They are a Tier II faction, which means they are strong in one specific star system or weak in a few of them.

And then you have the Stardancer crew??? Made up of five people (I haven't introduced you to Morgana yet, have I?), a menagerie of animals, and a single Urbot? THEY have a Dreadnought???? Not even the Maelstrom Pirates (a Tier III faction and the Stardancers' main rivals at the moment) have a Dreadnought!

WHY THE HECK DO THESE CLOWNS HAVE A DREADNOUGHT!?!?!?!

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I didn't recap this part yet, but one of the bounty hunters that the Stardancer crew butted heads against had a Dreadnought (something the bounty hunter definitely should NOT have had, but I was winging it, and this is what happens when I shoot from the hip). A trio of drug dealers found out that Quinton had the only remaining copy of Yon Lirak's drug recipe (from the drug factory they found Jet in before sabotaging it). These former lieutenants of Lirak had a small bidding war to try to get the recipe from him. The winning offer was to take out the one bounty hunter and gift the Dreadnought to Quinton.... who would then gift the Dreadnought to Demarcus in exchange for the Stardancer.

Well.... since this was a spur-of-the-moment negotiation that I screwed up, I had neglected to follow through. A few weeks back, however, Hubby asked if the dealers ever took care of the bounty hunter. I SHOULD have just told him, "Nope. The bounty hunter managed to kill them off" but that felt a bit "railroad-y", so I instead asked for him to roll to find out. He either got a success without complications or a critical success. I can't recall which one. Regardless, I felt he was due his Dreadnought (still not comprehending how MASSIVE these ships are and how rare they should be, considering the MILITARY only has ONE!) So now the crew had a Dreadnought they named the Final Impact.

HOW DOES A PRIVATE CITIZEN - LET ALONE A CRIMINAL - GET THEIR HANDS ON A DREADNOUGHT!?!?!?!?! AND FOR FREE!?!?!?!?!

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I really screwed myself there. That's after I already broke the economy of the game as well, but I guess I'll save those stories (yeah... I did it at least twice....) for another post. This one's already getting quite long.

Point is, there was absolutely no reason (aside from a major GM screw up) that this rag-tag team of five (6, including the Urbot) should ever have a Dreadnought... and yet have one they did. Coming at it from a meta point of view, the crew having a Dreadnought was just too OP. Sure, we canonized that it was too large of a ship for only a crew of 6 to man, and so it had to remain "docked" until they gathered at least 100 other crewmates. Gave us a new on-going story arc, which helped. Point remained that they were going to EVENTUALLY get to use a Dreadnought... AND have a massive space station (did I tell you all about that yet???)... AND this relatively rare size-category ship was just going to sit untouched for weeks/months???? I had no clue how to handle any of that!

On the story side of things, it still didn't make sense.

1. Dreadnoughts are seemingly rare, and there are a lot of higher-tier/stronger factions that don't even have one. How did a bounty hunter manage to get one, man it, and hold on to it against all of these other factions?
2. How did 3 wannabe drug kingpins manage to take out a bounty hunter and his massive crew in order to commandeer the Dreadnought? How did they pilot it after? I had the majority of Yon Lirak's drug empire freed or killed during the Stardancers' raid on the facility. Were they able to build back up a large enough army to combat against the bounty hunter? How massive of an army did they have to get, considering most of the factory slaves had both no combat experience and were kept frail by design? Would they be able to hold their own against a bounty hunter Dreadnought!?!?! If they could have always done this, why didn't they just do it of their own accord???
3. Not even the wannabe kingpins' former boss Yon Lirak had a Dreadnought! If they managed to get their hands on one they'd already be doing better than him. Why would they give that up? And for a simple drug recipe!? They could use the force of the Dreadnought to get money via piracy/intimidation. They could use the force of the Dreadnought to take over their rival drug traffickers/manufacturers, or steal someone else's recipe, or force the Stardancers to give the recipe up (that would have been a fun job! Why didn't I think of THAT at the time!?). Why would the wannabe kingpins give up the Dreadnought so easily and without asking for a higher price!? That drug recipe was DEFINITELY not worth it! Especially since they would have to rebuild parts of the factory as well. AND re-man the production line.
4. As I mentioned, the Stardancers currently have the Final Impact docked since they don't have nearly the manpower to pilot it. I was going to have them trying to dock the Final Impact be this conflict they had to overcome, but, of course, Hubby rolled a crit when creating "legal" paperwork stating that they own the Dreadnought and have the Hegemon's approval to pilot it. Since Quinton's a member of the Starsmiths - basically Space DMV/DOT/vehicle manufacturers - he legit made legal registration, ownership, and licensing paperwork. He could legally dock this ship in a Starsmiths' long-storage docking bay. Cool. Quinton basically just said, "oh, hey, look. I was able to TOTALLY LEGALLY get a Dreadnought. NBD. It can just stay here, right?" without anyone blinking an eye. Seems OP. Also, there's just this unused Dreadnought taking up a huge portion of the docking bay and no one is supposed to try to steal it????
5. Quinton also plans on coating the Final Impact with more of his camouflage nanobots, much like what he did with the Stardancer. I tried to stress to them how large a Dreadnought space ship probably is within our canon (at least 3 miles long!) and that these are NANO bots! It would take MONTHS just to MANUFACTURER enough, let alone another few months to apply the bots. Plus, once all that's done, the Stardancer crew could essentially have an INVISIBLE Dreadnought!?

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Ever since I gave them the Dreadnought I have regretted doing so. It was hard to think of jobs, because all I would focus on was the crew getting a Dreadnought and how was I ever going to course-correct from that? After talking to Hubby about it for a bit, we agreed in retconning and downsizing the Final Impact a touch. I didn't want to just tell the crew, "Yeeeeaaaah, how about the Final Impact is just a larger Freighter-class ship?" It would feel like I was cheating them. I even felt guilty about downsizing their Dreadnought to a Cruiser-class ship. So, despite my better judgment, I decided on "small Frigate", and Hubby agreed it felt more fair.

I discussed things with the other players, and they all agreed that the Dreadnought was a bit much. They were happy to still have a Frigate-class ship. All of the other issues were still in play: they needed a larger crew to pilot the Final Impact (about 50 or 60 people instead of 100), it was going to take months to create enough camo-bots and another few months to "paint" with it, and there was still damage from the wannabe drug lords commandeering the ship from the bounty hunter. I also let them keep the number of weapons upgrades they had already added, but just downsized them so they'd all fit (meaning they wouldn't hit QUITE as hard).

Everyone seemed to think it was a decent compromise, and I do feel a touch better now. But THAT is why I don't trust myself to just "wing-it" on sessions. My brain just doesn't think strategically enough, I "yes, and?" too much, and I end up breaking the game mechanics/narrative.

Which brings me back to April 3rd.

I just kind of threw my hands up in the air and said, "any soft roleplay you guys want to do? Any sort of job you want to go on???"

Thankfully, Rozsavaria pitched that tI'kæl would need to replenish her Memish seaweed that she uses for ritualistic tattooing. Ignoring that she had previously established that tI'kæl had a seaweed garden on the Stardancer (she probably forgot that she had canonized that fact), we retconned that she had a limited supply and that she had depleted it. Cool. Something for the crew to do. I wasn't going to argue it.

Then we ran into the "Lyco shouldn't adlib" problem again. Roz decided to evoke her character's ally finally. As a reminder, when someone creates a character for the Forged in the Dark games they typically chose a "rival" that will try to sabotage their character's efforts, and a "friend/ally" who will do all they can to assist the character. Very frequently in our game sessions Hubby has Quinton's friend Lang give background assistance: mostly connections that they can reach out to at any given location to get supplies or information. While we've been frequently using tI'kæl's rival Rye Br'end to antagonize her around their RIP racing, we have yet to meet her ally Ree Lax.

Anyway, Roz finally decided about two months ago that Lax is one of tI'kæl's spiritual assistants. He's a High Priest just one spiritual standing below tI'kæl. As she's on her "pilgrimage", he's in charge of the church. Because of this description, I had already mentally pictured him as a bit tight-laced and more focused on honoring formalities. The stuck-up but well-meaning royal advisor, as it were.

Roz had pictured Lax to be more like Ed from Good Burger.

"Welcome to Good Burger. Home of the Good Burger.
Can I take your ooooorder?"

Makes sense. She DID name the guy Ree Lax....

I couldn't get my own mental image out of my head though. Lax ended up as this spineless, bumbling, flipfloppy, mildly antagonistic (to everyone but tI'kæl and the royal family) kind of guy. His personality was all over the map. I'm going to have to retcon him SO HARD the next time Roz wants to use Lax....

   
   

So... uh... yeah. And here we are, another session tonight, and I'm yet again behind the 8-ball. I at least have SOME plot point ideas after that last session. Demarcus wants to convince Hunter Black to start a coup within the Maelstrom Pirates against the pirate queen, so I have to set something up for that knowing full well that Hunter is NOT going to want to overthrow the Banshee Queen. The crew has to find more members in order to eventually pilot the Final Impact, so I'll have to come up with more NPCs for them to interact with and possibly recruit. I want to find a way to introduce the crew to more factions, so I could maybe do something with that. Ishi is going to need scrap or whatever to work on weapons for the Final Impact; the Stardancers could maybe hit up rulebook NPCs in a series of fetch-quests. I haven't done anything with Vorex's hunt for her kidnapped sister even though I had decided a while ago as to where said sister is. I could do something with that. Then there's always good ol' RIP racing, but I haven't really worked out the background drama yet to make sure there's still some sort of plot. I'll have to listen back to the last RIP race session and go from there.

So, lots of options.... no ideas on how to flesh any of it out yet. Whoooo!

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(BTW, if you're wondering about this post's title? Reminder that the Stardancers' motto is "Mistakes were made. We got paid.")

Me being on this writing Struggle Bus (especially with regards to SaV) does mean I've become a lot more analytical when it comes to my media consumption. I take conflicts from other stories and try to see if any of them would work as akuma triggers within ML. I also now watch shows like The Mandalorian or movies like Strange World, and spend at least a portion of the time paying more attention to the alien flora/fauna/civilizations than the plot so I can try to get ideas for my game universe.

It's definitely made my media consumption this year a bit.... different.

Here's to it being the correct track for me to be on, and I'll get more of my writing sorted out.

Please, Muse, return to me! Walk with me some more! I need you!

One last thing before I let you all go. It seems none of my alt-text attempts last month actually did anything. I double checked my HTML and it seems to all match the sample I had found that taught how to create them. So I'm not entirely sure what I did wrong. If anyone knows how to add alt-text to pictures on Blogger, please let me know. I'd love to make sure my posts are more inclusive.

And with that, I wish you all a happy April. I hope, if you celebrated (or are still celebrating) a Holy Season this month that it went well/is going well for you.

Love you all. I'll catch ya next month!

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