u/PeterVanHelsing

And I had a great time!

Monsters Unchained is a fantastically designed ride with a lot of great animatronics and is very crowd efficient.

And the rest of the land was great as well, especially the performers. There are violinists who perform in the streets and you might get to meet the Invisible Man, Ygor, or the Bride and the Monster!

Admittedly, this land is much closer to something like Van Helsing than the traditional Universal movies, but that makes for a more fun theme park experience!

I just went on a family trip to Florida, which included a visit to Universal's newest park.

Obviously, the highlight for me was Dark Universe, the area entirely dedicated to the Universal Monsters.

Though honestly, tonally the area reminded me more of 5th edition Ravenloft than the traditional Universal movies.

Tonally, Dark Universe is closest to the Van Helsing movie with Hugh Jackman. More overblown. But that's not a bad thing. Instead, it's a lot of fun.

But Dark Universe's Dracula reminded me a lot of Strahd and Dark Universe's Victoria Frankenstein reminded me a lot of... well, Viktra Mordenheim.

Has anyone else here been to Epic Universe? Or seen ride footage of Monsters Unchained? Because I would be interested in hearing anyone else's thoughts.

And I also make this post because a Ravenloft campaign based on Darkmoor and Monsters Unchained could be fun.

Genuinely curious to hear your recommendations. Which Darkseid stories are the best portrayals of his character and which are the worse? Which stories should others take inspiration from when writing him and which should be avoided at all costs?

The Doomsday trailer has reignited a lot of MCU discourse, which has me looking bad on the previous films in the Multiverse Saga. And out of them, Wakanda Forever stands out as one of the best in my opinion, but I also feel like it gets unfairly overshadowed by other films like No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

This is just gross.

These are characters that I co-created for a fan fic that I co-write. These girls are the Boiling Isles versions of Team RWBY, basically their alternate universe counterparts from the world of The Owl House. We had a lot of fun adapting the characters from RWBY into a very different universe, which meant playing around with some of their character traits. Some of the key differences here are...

-Zee, the Yang expy, can turn into a dragon.

-Darcilia, the Blake expy, is secretly a werecat.

-Whitney is a mix of Weiss and Winter and she and Rebecca, the Ruby expy, are actually half-siblings in this universe, which is actually a nod to the fairy tale Snow White and Rose Red. Whitney is Snow White and Rebecca is Rose Red.

-Whitney and Darcilia are also partially inspired by the DC characters Rose Wilson and Helena Wayne and Whitney is also partially inspired by Carmilla Carmine from Hazbin Hotel.

Let me know what you think and if you have any questions.

So here's a thought that I had a few days ago... did Chattar Lal and Mola Ram need to be separate characters?

Think about it. Mola Ram is a bit unusual in that the other Indy villains are introduced very early on in the film, while he doesn't show up until more than half-way through the film. And Chattar Lal is unusual... in that he doesn't die or get any comeuppance. His death scene was cut from the film, making him and Lao Che some of the only major villains who don't die. Lal even had his scene where he was revealed to be Thuggee and captured Willie cut from the film.

So in hindsight... could these two characters have been combined? That way, you introduce the main villain earlier in the film (at the one third mark instead of the half-way mark), you give him more interactions with Indy, and you no longer have Lal vanishing after the second act.

Obviously, it's not a huge issue in the long run, I'm just looking at the film with the benefit of hindsight.

Although I do find it kinda funny that Toht was given more screentime in Raiders than originally planned (he was supposed to die during the truck chase, something that made it both into the novelization and the comic adaptation) and Chattar Lal had some of his biggest scenes cut from the film, including his death scene.

So this is a thought that I had while reading The Horrors Within. There are some similarities between Baba Lsyaga and Mother Lorinda. Obviously, they're both influenced by Baba Yaga, especially since Mother Lorinda's lair, the Gurgyl, is described as a structure that walks on legs just like Baba Yaga's house or Baba Lsyaga's creeping hut. They're also both witches or hags who have a strong desire to be a mother. For Baba Lsyaga, it's to be a mother to Strahd. For Lorinda, it's all her monsters named Loarise. So that got me thinking... if there was any way to combine the two and make Tepest part of Barovia, perhaps in the north.

Another thing that made me start thinking about this was the mention that the fey in Tepest resent the surface folk for 'ancient slights', which honestly reminds me of a lot of fan expansions for the Curse of Strahd with the original inhabitants of Barovia, the Thanes, and the Ladies Three and makes me wonder if the resentful fey could actually be tied to that.

These were just some random ideas I had, especially as someone who loves gothic horror and folk horror, and I wanted to share them and ask for any thoughts or ideas on this.

Considering how Ravenloft homages characters like Dracula and Frankenstein, I am kinda surprised that it's never had its own version of Carmilla, the literary vampire that pre-dated Dracula and helped to establish the 'lesbian vampire' trope, not even in 5e where they were trying to add some diversity with more queer characters and a few new female Darklords. And that's a shame, because I am actually a big Carmilla fan myself.

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So I thought it could be fun to hear some ideas for what a Carmilla-inspired Darklord and her Domain, including ways to make her feel different from Strahd. Besides the novella, possible inspirations are the Hammer Karnstein series and Castlevania, though the latter really just took the name and nothing else.

I think this could be a fun discussion. Is there any specific voice you hear when imagining these characters? Or is there anyone you would cast as them if they were to appear in live action or animation? It doesn't have to be limited to the characters in the pictures either.

Last year, I learned about The Crooked Moon and I absolutely fell in love with it. As a Curse of Strahd fan, I thought The Crooked Moon had plenty of overlap with it, especially since folk horror and gothic horror also overlap plenty.

So I was curious if anyone else here was familiar with it and what their thoughts were.

I just realized that Judge Claude Frollo from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame kinda fills a lot of the criteria for being a Darklord, down to him being beyond redemption since he cannot accept that his own actions are in the wrong or that his failings are anyone's fault but his.

This is especially clear in his villain song: "It's not my fault. I'm not to blame. It is the g***y girl, this witch who sent the flame!"

That line honestly kinda gives me some Strahd vibes, because one of the reasons that I do find the Darklords to be interesting characters is that they're trapped in a prison of their own making due to their inability to accept responsibility for their own actions. Instead, they double down.

And now I think Frollo could kinda make for a fun villain in a Ravenloft campaign, especially since Hunchback of Notre Dame does have ties to horror due to it being considered part of the Universal Horror catalogue.

What do you think?

Honestly, I think this guy is underrated. Especially the performance by Richard Brake. Bill Burr is great in this scene, but so is Brake. He manages to leave such an impression in only a few minutes and is the perfect example of the dangerous fanaticism found in the Imperials who are still fighting after Endor and Jakku. I think he's my favorite of the post-Jakku Imperials because of what he embodies.

The Believer is my favorite episode of The Mandalorian.