Oh, and of course, likewise Vampire: The Masquerade. If you don't have the Gift Of The Special People Thing, you are profoundly unlikely to have any meaningful effect on reality, and you are going to be constantly reminded of it by your culture. Fuck that noise.

Note that the "Blue" narrative in Parallax is basically the story of a Young Adult Novel Heroine who was handed the McGuffin by Special Elf People... and finds out in the first 8 pages it don't work so good. ^__^

That, of course, is totally intentional, and one of the big thematic goals of Parallax is to put the boot into Special Elf People mythology repeatedly and mercilessly. All gods can scream. ^_____^

(And some gods are like really cool aunties who will sit and have tea with you at the Adult Table and frankly dish Hot Divine Gossip and not lay that "come back in 100,000 years when you don't have dicks and boobs and things" Star Trek bullshit on you just because your species still fights and poops. >:D )

@zebratron2084 and also fwiw HPMOR delves specifically into a lot of the ways in which the original HP universe is fucked the fuck up.

@hummingrain Also, the early volumes were just so twee and silly, relative to my own aesthetics. I think I developed a permanent allergy to certain high-preciousness strains of British humor due to massive Hitchhiker's overexposure in high school. I get the same rash from Discworld, honestly, though I have absolutely top-tier opinions of Terry Pratchett himself.

@zebratron2084

even worse it has sliding scale of "elf"

human<hunter<vampires/werewolfs<ghooooosts<mage BS

@001zlnv There's some neat detail in there, but it's all just so adolescent powertrippy. It ended up just reminding me of some of my deeply embittering acquaintances with goth-pagans in college who would spin EXACTLY that kind of magickqxzhal fantasy as a blatant metaphor for their own insecurity, or as a way to cut other people down by defining them as "muggle" equivalents. >_<

@zebratron2084

that is pretty much how it shook out when I tried to play it in college

@zebratron2084 although I will say it lead to my favorite, "not knowing the genre conventions" story.

My vampire had screwed up trying to drink dinner, and was now drunk, and in possession of one extremely dead barfly. I was not aware that the game expects you to just huck them in a dumpster or something and nothing comes of it except humanity loss.

So my vampire sets out on a very elaborate plan to hide the body perfectly, while committing a series of weird crimes such as carpet theft, breaking into sewers, a brief bit of weekend at bernies, and finally walking the body to the bottom of Lake michigan, and burying it under a large boulder.

30 minutes of real world time later and someone finally points out that you don't need to do any of that. And my vampire suddenly has a reputation for obsessive, if slightly incompetent victim hiding.

@001zlnv
@zebratron2084

That pretty much perfectly fits any Ventrue I've ever known...

@001zlnv @zebratron2084 I just giggled for about two minutes straight because of this story, thank you. XD