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Horrient is a great example of why having a big multi-author collaborative adventure path is a bad idea. Now, back to our regularly scheduled Brucato.  Zereth posted:Given that it actually came out I'm pretty sure he could have made a few more mistakes. Like did he drive himself bankrupts and lose his house because he took out a second or third mortgage on it? Robindaybird posted:and getting his rear end sued into the ground for breach of contract JackMann posted:He didn't take the money in order to go organize a convention, so there's that. Who did these? I know Cuphead's developers remortgaged their homes to fund things which was a terrible idea even though they made the money back with the game, but that wasn't crowdfunding. EDIT: Kurieg posted:I'll take this time to remind everyone that Beast was edited by Matt's wife. Is it inappropriate that in light of this and the accusations against him that I am now kind of concerned about his kids?
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Jan 20, 2018 06:22
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Kavak posted:Is it inappropriate that in light of this and the accusations against him that I am now kind of concerned about his kids? I'm not sure if they have kids. That said I hate him for pretending to be a decent human being just long enough that my defense of him is immortalized on the internet forever.
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Jan 20, 2018 06:31
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Kurieg posted:I'm not sure if they have kids. According to his personal blog he has two.
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Jan 20, 2018 06:33
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That was such expectation whiplash. Rock music! Urban fantasy! ...Phil goddamn Brucato.
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Jan 20, 2018 06:46
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If you really want the first spot to make me narrow my eyes in deep suspicion it was page eight. I'm just saying up front, I'm not going to make any posts about this thing until I've read it cover to cover and completely digested it, so I can have a cohesive direction to write from, and also because I really, really do not want to do a breezy write-as-I-react comedy review and risk walking blindly directly on top of a landmine. It might be a little while because of that - and tragically it means the terrible rock band game won't have a post on Page 666, but really, I can already tell you it doesnt deserve that honor.
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Jan 20, 2018 08:53
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Daeren, we're on page 666, you really need to post the first update before it flips. It'd be too perfect.
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Jan 20, 2018 10:00
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Tick tock Daeren. BY THE SKIN OF THEIR TEETH – PART FIVE Body Shop Aktar/Mehmet recommends that the team goes to the mosque as soon as possible, and they probably won't have a reason to disagree. Of course, the Shunned Mosque isn't that hard to find and it's possible that they'll head there before going to Uskudar. If they do, they'll find like six Brothers of the Skin who act like any other street gang. There's more inside the mosque, who will tell them to gently caress off if they've come this far. The entrance to the main dome is blocked by a huge curtain – if investigators push their way into there, they're not coming back out. However, there is a secret tunnel into the mosque hidden in a Byzantine-era cistern. The trip there is a spooky little journey through the sewers by boat, followed by a secret door that leads to a narrow spiral staircase (if anyone asks how far they go, Aktar simply says, 'To Hell, my friends'). The smell of rot wafts up as the investigators approach the bottom. In one of his reviews, Darren Maclennan said that the Shunned Mosque gave him nightmares, and I believe it. Underneath the mosque is the terrible abattoirs where the Brotherhood stores limbs and organs for future use. There's an antechamber full of large urns containing whole de-boned bodies, magically preserved for future use. There's a preparation room full of surgical equipment, some of it kept it perfect condition (for cultists) and some of it rusty and bloody (for victims). There's not one but two rooms full of parts hanging on hooks, magically preserved from decay. There's only one guard back here – the rest of the cult is in the mosque proper.  Crashing The Party Every Brother in Constantinople has turned out to see the ascension of their master – some three hundred cultists are gathered under the dome of the Shunned Mosque. Preparations for the Ritual of Enactment are already underway and everyone's having a great time. As long as they act casual and don't look too raggedy, the investigators should be able to mingle with the cultists. Six hundred stolen eyes are focused on a stone column standing beneath the great dome, carved with niches like a five-sided star with a central spoke. Selim plans to end his ritual with another Skin Beast. A dozen children are brought under the dome, at this point still mostly unharmed. James Rutherford is among them. During the proceedings, a group of Brothers hovers near them, needle and twine at the ready. If they haven't made a plan yet, Aktar suggests that the investigators wait until the ritual is underway before they make a move for the children. Red-robed Brothers enter the circle. Each one places a part of the Simulacrum in one of the column's niches so it looks like a Mythos version of Operation. Following them is Selim Makryat on his stupid chair. The gathered Brotherhood stands in silence as he pulls a scroll from his robe and begins to read aloud from it – anyone near Aktar can hear his sharp intake of breath. He steps down from his chair and moves into place to be absorbed by the Simulacrum, but as he begins to read the final words Mehmet casts Control Skin and seals his mouth shut. Selim's weak from casting his first Skin Beast like an idiot, so he struggles to undo the spell while Mehmet makes his move. In the confused uproar that follows, the book says that this is the best time for the investigators to help the children but uh, loving how exactly? Mehmet snatches the scroll from his father and finishes reciting the words of the ritual. The Simulacrum pieces fly to him and close around his body like armour. Then they seem to dissolve as they sink into his flesh. His skin stretches and distends to accommodate them, his eyes bulging from his head. His scream of agony becomes a peal of maniacal laughter as he calls on the Brotherhood to tear his father apart. As they skin Selim alive with their fingernails, Mehmet's body returns to normal and the Simulacrum pieces return to their niches. quote:“No longer will the Brothers of the Skin cower beneath the dome of this place, fearing to make their presence felt in the world. With the power of the simulacrum we need serve no one, not even The Skinless One. The simulacrum gives us the power of even He, and The Skinless One shall do our bidding, and make great our destiny!” Mehmet commands his congregation to capture the investigators alive. There are guards at both entrances to the mosque, but Mehmet's not a loving moron and isn't interested in creating another Skin Beast, so the children can escape. Isn't it nice that his apathy lets the team feel like they've done something productive? The investigators on the other hand have no chance of escaping and are captured in short order.  Long Time No See The investigators are bound and marched into one of the minarets of the Shunned Mosque, which have been converted into combination prisons/shrines. Tanned skins of past victims hang from the walls like tapestries. The cult's many living victims are confined in cells or left lying on the floor, all of them suffering from the cult's cruel mutilation practices and many of them totally insane as a result. One tongueless victim strains at the bars to his cell and tries to prise the tongue out of an investigator's mouth before he can be shoved away by the Brothers. The investigators are taken to the cell at the very top of the minaret, which is occupied by a man who's lost both arms, both legs and both eyes. His stumps have fresh skin patches and he wears nothing but a blood-stained blanket and a suit jacket around his shoulders for warmth; he fearfully begs to know who's there when the investigators enter before passing out again. The two guards chain the team to the walls and refuse to answer any questions, but something about being up here clearly terrifies them – they mutter to each other in Turkish about 'the Flapping Man' and can be heard running down the stairs. Investigators who make a Hard Intelligence roll recognise the man as what's left of their old friend Professor Julius Smith. Fully realising this costs 1/1D6 SAN. Next time: even more skin!
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Jan 20, 2018 10:07
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Welp that will do for page 666 I guess  Is player agency completely dead at this point or just in a comatose state?
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Jan 20, 2018 10:43
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:Welp that will do for page 666 I guess
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Jan 20, 2018 15:08
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Huh. I don't remember anyone actually successfully using the Simulacrum in the first edition. It has been a while though. That whole section reads like some godawful pastiche on the Temple of Doom.
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Jan 20, 2018 15:25
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This entire finale scenario has been a cutscene.
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Jan 20, 2018 15:29
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I really thought the simulacrum was just a suit of eldritch full-body replacement cybernetics.
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Jan 20, 2018 16:05
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Say what you will about... everything else, but I always enjoy letting PCs infiltrate cult meetings by having everyone assume they're from a cell they haven't met before.
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Jan 20, 2018 16:24
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Green Intern posted:I really thought the simulacrum was just a suit of eldritch full-body replacement cybernetics. I was thinking of it as a sort of occult Iron Man suit. Have we been told what the effects of the simulacra are? I remember our Vampire friend could walk in daylight.
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Jan 20, 2018 18:01
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Kavak posted:
Star Citizen's makes is currently getting sued for a poo poo load of NDA-violations and breach of contract over Crytek's CryEngine (Streams where they showed the engine code which is a huge no-no in the industry, making alterations to the code without reporting it to the holders, and most of all, removing their names and try to claim they're using a whole new engine which is a lie)
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Jan 20, 2018 18:30
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Deptfordx posted:I was thinking of it as a sort of occult Iron Man suit. Have we been told what the effects of the simulacra are? I remember our Vampire friend could walk in daylight. For Fenalik I'd imagine possessing the Simulacrum let it count as his skin, thus it was getting sun on it not him and he's fine.
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Jan 20, 2018 18:30
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Robindaybird posted:Star Citizen's makes is currently getting sued for a poo poo load of NDA-violations and breach of contract over Crytek's CryEngine (Streams where they showed the engine code which is a huge no-no in the industry, making alterations to the code without reporting it to the holders, and most of all, removing their names and try to claim they're using a whole new engine which is a lie) Lol it's been forever since I visited the Star Citizen thread. I'm guessing they're still taking pre-orders.
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Jan 20, 2018 20:21
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SirPhoebos posted:Lol it's been forever since I visited the Star Citizen thread. Take the red pill and find out just how right Derek Smart is.
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Jan 20, 2018 20:26
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I'll play Abandon All Hope before I agree that Derek Smart is ever right about anything.
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Jan 20, 2018 21:02
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GimpInBlack posted:Minus the "sexy" part, this is literally the premise of the novel Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys and it is very very good. The short story The Litany of Earth is a prequel to that book and is also fantastic.
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Jan 20, 2018 22:08
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DigitalRaven posted:At least one cult should work like Cobra in the GI Joe comics: one part Amway, one part terrorists, lead by a used-car-salesman who got pissed off with his lot in life but who recruited a whole bunch of true believer fanatics (and a really terrible poet). The fact that Cobra started out as a rural US neo-fascist anti-government group associated with radical survivalists is certainly food for thought given the current state of American politics. 
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Jan 20, 2018 23:07
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Kavak posted:Take the red pill and find out just how right Derek Smart is. I will always love the smilies that came out of Star Citizen. 
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Jan 21, 2018 02:05
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Three hundred cultists in one place sounds like the perfect time for some random acts of dynamite.
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Jan 21, 2018 02:27
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If the party goes "gently caress the statue let's blow up the whole cult" that would be much more interesting. 
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Jan 21, 2018 02:32
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Cassa posted:Three hundred cultists in one place sounds like the perfect time for some random acts of dynamite. Not random. Senseless. The world is an uncaring and meaningless place. There is no god, there is no meaning in the universe. And that means that when a cult of men who have been working for centuries to attain the numbers, mystic power, and might to achieve their dark and wicked goals get blown to hell by a tiny group of lunatics who carry unreasonable amounts of dynamite, well, the only word for that is senseless. It's enough to make you go insane.
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Jan 21, 2018 02:36
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You know what would have been a great climax for being held hostage by 300 all-powerful cultist and their flesh monster made from tortured kids? A pissed off vampire ripping them to shreds in front of the players who manage to escape with some kids and part of the statue. You know what would be a great end to the adventure? Trying to deal with a pissed off vampire who really wants that cool arm you've got.
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Jan 21, 2018 02:49
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Who is Matt and what did he do?
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Jan 21, 2018 04:38
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Tibalt posted:You know what would have been a great climax for being held hostage by 300 all-powerful cultist and their flesh monster made from tortured kids? A pissed off vampire ripping them to shreds in front of the players who manage to escape with some kids and part of the statue. Even better when it climaxes in kicking his teeth in with the arm as you realize it works for that.
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Jan 21, 2018 04:42
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Kavak posted:Who did these? I know Cuphead's developers remortgaged their homes to fund things which was a terrible idea even though they made the money back with the game, but that wasn't crowdfunding. Mike Nystul, of Cairn is the one I was talking about. He screwed the pooch hard on Kickstarter, making all kinds of mistakes like trying to cover previous Kickstarters with new ones. But using funds from Cairn to try to start up a new convention (that he had no idea how to run) was pretty high up there. He ended up homeless for a while.
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Jan 21, 2018 04:57
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Ratoslov posted:Not random. Senseless. The world is an uncaring and meaningless place. There is no god, there is no meaning in the universe. And that means that when a cult of men who have been working for centuries to attain the numbers, mystic power, and might to achieve their dark and wicked goals get blown to hell by a tiny group of lunatics who carry unreasonable amounts of dynamite, well, the only word for that is senseless. It's enough to make you go insane. Who says it's the group of lunatics carrying the dynamite? It's Istanbul, there's going to be cats around...
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Jan 21, 2018 05:04
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White Coke posted:Who is Matt and what did he do? From what I gathered, he made the latest version of Demon: The Fallen, which actually had an interesting premise. Then having lured everyone into a false sense of security, he made Beast: The Primordial, which is basically taking "The Chronicles of the Elders of Zion" and turning into an RPG.
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Jan 21, 2018 05:06
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Protocols, "Chronicles" makes it sounds more like a Golden Compass esque epic about a bunch of old rear end rabbis fuckin stuff up
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Jan 21, 2018 05:24
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SirPhoebos posted:From what I gathered, he made the latest version of Demon: The Fallen, which actually had an interesting premise. Then having lured everyone into a false sense of security, he made Beast: The Primordial, which is basically taking "The Chronicles of the Elders of Zion" and turning into an RPG. Matt McFarland is a writer for Onyx Path Publishing; he's worked on a bunch of New World of Darkness / Chronicles of Darkness games, and was lead on Beast. He worked on Demon: The Descent which has almost nothing in common with Demon: The Fallen and is generally a good (if poorly organized) game. He was lead designer on Beast: The Primordial, which is a really weird, ugly game about being a hideous abuse monster that's actually good and cool because people need to be traumatized for the world to work properly; it's gross and kind of incoherent and if you want specific details there's a good review of it in the F&F archives. Beast's themes go from gross to horrifying when you factor in that he's been accused of raping a minor.
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Jan 21, 2018 05:27
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sexpig by night posted:a Golden Compass esque epic about a bunch of old rear end rabbis fuckin stuff up Would play.
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Jan 21, 2018 05:27
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Night10194 posted:Would play. I wanna say Ars Magica is 100% able to do that without tweaks
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Jan 21, 2018 05:29
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Drakyn posted:Hey, like everyone said, we could think of it as a quasi-unofficial Ryuutama sourcebook. No pressure though, just do it whenever you feel li https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yb1MVNxhvLscjK5VX8j9NgO3SCDe18rqH0TW148hA0k/edit?usp=sharing Herewith the Dinotopia Encyclopedia. Enjoy. Selachian fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Jan 21, 2018 |
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Jan 21, 2018 05:31
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White Coke posted:Who is Matt and what did he do? Matt McFarland, AKA Black Hat Matt, was a freelance writer for White Wolf, and later Onyx Path Publishing. He and Rose created Demon the Descent in 2014 and it was incredibly well received. After Demon was released Matt pitched his idea for Beast: the Primordial, the elevator pitch is "You're a person with the soul of an ancient monster, like a dragon, or a gorgon." and given his tenure on Demon people were pretty optimistic. The Kickstarter draft came out and Beasts were actually incredibly petty, very rapey, did not actually transform into dragons or gorgons, and were coded as LGBT/Minorities. Also they exude what we have dubbed the "Poochy field" that makes all the other supernaturals love them. This wouldn't be too bad except for their enemies were also rather obviously themed as gamergaters, MRAs, and white supremacists. To the point that Matt straight up compared his detractors to MRAs. A press release promised that they'd fix the wording in the actual release. The actual release came out, it had incredibly weak justifications for what Beasts do, and only the most superficial changes. Then when you got to the Storyteller chapter the sidebars straight up say that all the changed poo poo are 'lies' and that Beasts are actually super awesome and justified and everyone loves them for being the awesome woke hell rapists that they are. The subsequent releases for Beast varied in quality depending on the author, raging from people rightly making GBS threads on beasts for not being open with who and what they are, or polishing Beast's knob so hard their lips fell off. Then a few months ago during the wave of women coming out and admitting that they had been raped, it came out that Matt raped someone roughly 10 years ago. He did not contest the claims, willingly stepped down as a moderator on RPG.net, then RPG.net banned him and OPP Quietly cut ties. So yeah, the reason why Beasts are written as hyper woke rapists? Because it was written by a rapist who desperately wants people to think he's actually a woke ally.
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Jan 21, 2018 05:35
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Cythereal posted:Who says it's the group of lunatics carrying the dynamite? It's Istanbul, there's going to be cats around... Someone get that Malkavian image of the rats/bugs swarming from their trenchcoat and replace it with cats TIA.
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Jan 21, 2018 05:41
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Kurieg posted:Matt McFarland, AKA Black Hat Matt, was a freelance writer for White Wolf, and later Onyx Path Publishing. He and Rose created Demon the Descent in 2014 and it was incredibly well received. After Demon was released Matt pitched his idea for Beast: the Primordial, the elevator pitch is "You're a person with the soul of an ancient monster, like a dragon, or a gorgon." and given his tenure on Demon people were pretty optimistic. The Kickstarter draft came out and Beasts were actually incredibly petty, very rapey, did not actually transform into dragons or gorgons, and were coded as LGBT/Minorities. Also they exude what we have dubbed the "Poochy field" that makes all the other supernaturals love them. This wouldn't be too bad except for their enemies were also rather obviously themed as gamergaters, MRAs, and white supremacists. To the point that Matt straight up compared his detractors to MRAs. A press release promised that they'd fix the wording in the actual release. I didn't know you could make the situation surrounding Beast more horrifying.
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Jan 21, 2018 05:48
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Hunt11 posted:I didn't know you could make the situation surrounding Beast more horrifying. Well, there was the realization last year that I had spent the previous two and a half years defending the honor of a child molester. And that Beast was exactly what I had feared it was. That was pretty loving horrifying.
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Jan 21, 2018 06:13
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