Life is still stressful and uncertain, my fellowship is basically wrapped up, and I'm in the job hunting phase (if you're in NYC and your company happens to be hiring for Data Engineering, Data Science, or Machine Learning Engineering...). I have a bit more free time and flexibility now but that may change quickly once I land a job. Alternatively, maybe once I have a job and by extension a work/life balance and less stress, maybe I'll start posting more.
At the end of this 30 day challenge, I'm going to try to do a two post a week schedule, where at least one post will be expanding on one or more of my ideas from the challenge, and another post may or may not be more of that (I have at least one more appreciation post part-way prepared). I'm hoping that just by virtue of prepping for my games I'll have other stuff to put on the blog as well.
So "Day 19" will be Druids:
- Dragon Druid: They are naturally attuned to dragons
- Urban Druid: They see the nature, the system, of a city as a distributed organism
- Zygotic Druid: Fungi, and specifically yeast. They are attuned to things that ferment. They "breathe" sugar rather than oxygen
- Star Druid: They are attuned to the nature of an alien world
- Necro Druid: They are attuned to death, not life. Desert, tundra, the vacuum of space. Absence. Null. Unbeing
- Anthro Druid: They see the nature in people. They are the Platonic Prototype of their species.
- Arcane Druid: Not a wizard. They are attuned to the origin, the nature, of arcane magic.
- Divine Druid: Not a cleric. They do not pray to a god or gods, they are more like an avatar of the concept of divinity. A Neil Gaiman druid, if you will
Ok ya, pretty happy with this. The urban druid is basically my anti-cancer druid concept from waaay back in the day that I don't think I explained well and I'm not sure people are into but I'm going to keep pushing it. I guess I've done zygomancers before. Still, mostly relatively original stuff.
"Day 20" is going to be crossovers. I really enjoyed my Marvel/DC/MHA/OPM/Valiant FASERIP one-shot. I think there's something fun about a very deliberate crossover- not some "our universes collide" lazy crossover, but a "how do these parts fit together into a coherent and interesting world" crossover.
- Lord of the Rings and X-men: It could also be Forgotten Realms, or even GoT, I'm just interested in the idea of dealing with the issue of Mutants in a fantasy world, and if or how the "mutant metaphor" would play out in a fictional or anachronistic setting
- Daredevil/Marvel and TMNT: Obvious reasons if you know anything about TMNT
- Lovecraft and LoTR: Given that they are philosophically so different, this crossover could be interesting. Alternatively, I've seen some cool fan theories for GoT and Lovecraft...
- Evangelion and Darling in the Franxx: DitF is the closest thing to a spiritual successor I've seen to eva, and both deal with issues of psychosexual development and childhood in interesting ways. It would be interesting to think about how those themes would come together in a singular setting and still be coherent. Would new themes emerge?
- Star Wars and Transformers: There's nothing deeper here, it would just be cool
Hm... not as happy with this one. I think it would be easy to do "X-men and X" or "Lovecraft and X", which I wanted to avoid, but then that was all I could think about. I do think there's a lot more to mine here with this idea of purposeful crossovers. The first one, not specifically LoTR, but X-men in a fantasy setting, is actually a one-shot I want to do on discord...
That Lovecraft & Lord of the Rings combo is a stand out. As you note they seem philosophically opposed, but it could be they bring out each others' interesting notes like maple syrup and bacon. E.g. friendship, heroism, virtue, etc., seem more radical/challenging/worthwhile when they're against the "natural order", when Aragorn and co. aren't working in accordance with the divine towards the Good, but rather striving for the Good in spite of the divine, even when it will inevitably destroy them and everything they love.
ReplyDeleteIt's also fun to think about how the lore might snap together. Are elves deep ones, coming not from across the sea but from the sea itself? Is Morgoth more a LaVeyan Satan rebelling against the Azathothic Illuvatar and His senseless universe, or Nyarlathotep, or something between those? And so on and so on.
Ya I'm surprised nobody has played with that combo before, and in fact it wouldn't surprise me if someone has and I've seen it and just forgot. You're tapping into exactly what I was thinking- the idea that the "Good" values of Tolkien hold more weight when they are being challenged, when they are being determined in spite of the natural order rather than consistent with it. I already play with the idea of Elves as being related to a certain Lovecraftian species in Phantasmos, although I don't remember if I ever actually wrote about that on the blog ;).
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