JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Stand ideas

Having recently come across Part 8 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure I felt inspired to post up some of my eclectic Stand ideas. For those unfamiliar with the series, 'Stands' have been the central conceit of the story since Part III (replacing the Ripple, the vampire-busting martial arts in Part II). A Stand is a spiritual guardian - possibly the physical manifestation of the user's soul - that 'stands' by you and protects you from harm. Early on Stands look the form of muscular humanoid warriors, but this quickly diversified into a much wider variety of possible forms, though they usually appear vaguely robotic or armoured. Most of the Stands in Part 3 were named after Tarot cards and Egyptian gods, inkeeping with the locale, but when the deck and pantheon ran out Araki turned to band and song names, which (apart from a brief flirtation with fashion labels in Part 5) has remained the naming convention ever since. General rules - a Stand is only visible to other Stand users (there are exceptions - Strength, the Stand of orangutan Forever, takes the form of a massive freighter; originally a small rowing boat imbued with the 'strength' of the Stand). The abilities of Stands started simple (fan favourite Abdul's Stand, Magician's Red, can throw fire and not a lot else) but became increasingly esoteric until it started to take entire forum threads to explain how a Stand worked. Anyway, my contributions, all of which are hopefully original name-wise and fairly original concept wise. A couple of similar ones, having thought these up partway through reading the JoJo saga - Weapon of Choice vaguely resembles Part 6's Jumpin' Jack Flash, and Back In The U.S.S.R. has a similar feel to Joy Division from the light novel (though rather more versatile). Still, if Araki can recycle Stone Free into O! Lonesome Me and Bast into the Boom Boom family's stand, I think I'm fairly safe. The key when creating an authentic-feeling JoJo Stand is to choose a power that is simultaneously both ridiculously specific yet utterly broken; it should be vaguely, tangentially connected to the name but not obvious (e.g. below - Bad Luck isn't the Stand that makes people die of accidents; that's Pumped Up Kicks, because it makes you have to run away from the user - Bad Luck is the one that teleports when you're not looking at it because it's based on the album 'Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell' by 'Social Distortion'). I think my least convincing ones are the most literal - Beggar's Banquet, I'm With Stupid, Let It Bleed, etc. My personal favourites are probably Abbey Road, From Then To You, Rolled Gold, St Anger and Starless.

10 CC - Victims suffer 'flat affect' and become incapable of visceral responses, even to their own injury or impending death. User can afflict themselves with it (for example, to numb pain).

30 Seconds To Mars - Makes whatever portion of a solid, inanimate object is touched fly away faster than light.

Abbey Road - Turns time into space, attacks from outside victim's lifespan.

A strong, short-ranged stand. Abbey Road appears as a large, menacing Praying Mantis with an eyeless face between the eyestalks and human legs. When Abbey Road is activated, people caught in its area of effect (a large marketplace) perceive time stopping around them. Whenever they move, reality fast-forwards or rewinds around them. If they move too far any direction their body turns into dust and blows away (though they can reform it by withdrawing).  The area (in actuality an off-centre sphere) in which they are "alive" is the spatial representation of their lifespan. Nothing they do, including throwing objects or attacking with their own Stand can affect the world outside this area. The user can move freely within Abbey Road's area of effect and can attack his victims from outside their lifespan, usually by throwing objects or darting in for hit-and-run attacks with the Stand itself, which has excellent speed. Its weakness is that the effect doesn't include light or sound, which the user needs to perceive his victims.

Another Brick In The Wall - Can create false memories which alter the victim's personality.

One of several memory stands I've thought up - Another Brick In The Wall is particularly dangerous as it lets you create custom memories at will (whereas Metro Station at best lets the user 'guide' the victim by suggesting possible options for confabulation, and Royksopp requires you to permanently destroy the thing you want others to forget about. ABITW allows you to render your opponents helpless (by implanting traumatic memories) or turn them against their allies - although you can't delete memories, even the ones you've created before, and hence can't erase comradely moments, you can retroactively sour the relationship by implanting more recent off-key moments, or even make the victim's comrades look like the memory-altering bad guys by implanting memories of them abducting and brainwashing him with false memories!

Armor for Sleep - Places victims into their own 'heaven' before killing them at their most complacent.

I imagine this as working something like Judgement meets The Man In The Mirror - you're not aware when you've entered the 'heaven'.

Back In The U.S.S.R. - Can 'nullify' the distance between two points or swap two people's locations.

Bad Luck - Stand can move instantaneously when not looked at directly, can break up its body and reconstruct it elsewhere.

Teleportation is somewhat unique - their head breaks up into lots of little heads, their arms into lots of little arms, etc. that fly to their target and reintegrate.

Beggar's Banquet - Creates illusions that cause the victim to neglect food and water.

Bullet With Butterfly Wings - Slows down objects in direct proportion to their speed, but they retain their kinetic energy.

E.g. a truck would be slowed to walking speed but impart the same impact on contact, flipping you up and over the vehicle. A bullet would be nearly stationary but if touched a bullet hole would appear directly in front of it before the bullet itself falls to the ground (having used up its kinetic energy).

Chinese Democracy - No action can be taken in its area of effect unless everyone (including the user) agrees.

Creed - Can turn flesh into the consistency of soft clay and keeps the user alive even if torn apart.

Enter Shikari - Victim's life replays and the past self's emotional state corresponds to their tangibility - at their lowest ebb ES kills them.

Appears as a golden humanoid with a long curving beak and no eyes. Its arms are boat-like crab claws which it uses to impale enemies at their weakest moment. Red and gold tangled tendrils connect the user to Enter Shikari at the shoulders.

Falco - Can create earthquakes.

'Rock me, Amadeus'. Surprisingly there does not appear to be a canon Stand with this power!

Follow The Leader - Creates unbreakable 'beams' of arbitrary length connecting any three living things.

For Your Entertainment - Merges the present and the future; objects and people from the different times destructively interact.

Makes the present co-exist with another time period, between one hour and one day into the future. The two realities destructively interact - items and people who exist in both time periods are drawn to each other as if by a powerful gravitational force, and when they collide they crumble like brittle stone. The user is sealed away within a protective sphere during this period which is the true form of the Stand.

From Then To You - Transfuses any quality from victim to user.
All My Love - Inject lethal venom into previous victims to make transfer permanent.
Best Hits - Copies powers of nearby Stands.

The user, Blondie, is a very beautiful young man with shoulder-length curly blond hair, who dresses in a fur coat and a Russian ushanka. The Stand From Then To You has three modes - the first looks like a mosquito-sized humanoid with a skull for a face and a tail resembling a hypodermic needle. It can drain any 'quality' from a living target, and inject it into the user, granting them that quality (up to 'peak human' level) for a full 24 hours or until they lose consciousness. The Stand is rather slow and weak, and relies on the element of surprise. The Stand can then assume its secondary mode 'All My Love'. In this form it reconfigures into a slightly larger form, resembling a normal-sized skull with a stinger - its sting is painful and incapacitating, but not lethal unless the target has already been the victim of 'From Then To You'. In this case 'All My Love' melts their body down into a sticky goo and makes the previous transfer/s permanent (Blondie has been around since the 1920s, but his Stand allows him to drain 'health' from others and so rejuvenate himself). 'All My Love' is incredibly fast and agile - likely as fast as Tower of Grey. If cornered, Blondie will use the final form of his Stand, 'Best Hits' - the Stand resembles its 'From Then To You' form, but is human-sized (think Hildegarn from Dragonball Z Movie 13). In this form its striking distance is that of a short-ranged Stand, but can copy the Stand powers of all nearby Stands. 'Best Hits' has a certain amount of personality, but isn't capable of telling his user what powers he possesses. Accordingly, Blondie usually likes to pair up with an expendable partner who he uses to find out about his opponents' Stands.

Goat's Head Soup - Touch induces crippling phobias of whatever the user wants.

Handbags & Gladrags - Offers victims seemingly useful items/services at ever-higher (and eventually fatal) prices.

Helldorado - Lets user "cut" actions from reality like a film director ("Director's Cut"...).

Basically a weaker, more flexible King Crimson.

Her Bright Skies - Creates a 'lens' of of air that focuses the light. Can be used to concentrate sunlight from a large region into a single point, creating a laser. Her Bright Skies cannot create light and needs a sufficiently large light source to use its ability.

Note: as a Stand that uses light, Her Bright Skies could potentially beat Abbey Road by forming the lens inside the user's lifespan and frying them with laser beams. It's a more streamlined version of The Sun, in the same that The Man In The Mirror is a more streamlined Hanged Man.

I'm With Stupid - User is supernaturally persuasive and whatever they say sounds like a great idea as long as they are present.

In The Army Now - Victim unravels: the unravelled parts can be reconstituted and controlled by the user.

Jars of Clay - Can 'stack' humans and objects inside each other like Matryoshka dolls.

Korn - Controls intestinal flora and grows it into a puppet that eventually controls the victim from the inside.

Le Tigre - Victims find a fuel indicator on their body - unless 'refuelled' by being in the user's presence it will deplete until death.

Arguably a more powerful form of Toy Soldiers, although the indicator also serves to point out the user, whereas Toy Soldiers only tells you the user is in range. If the victim's alone Toy Soldiers is also vastly more dangerous (no-one will wind them up, where with Le Tigre the user refuels her victims whether she wants to or not). Based on the lyrics to 'Deceptacon'.

Let It Bleed - Can use spilt blood as a medium to teleport, wields anti-coagulant blades.

Life Is Peachy - People in its area of effect must 'always do the right thing' or their limbs will bud and deform.

Linkin Park - Anyone who makes eye contact with the user melts and can be combined with other living things ("Hybrid Theory").

Takes the form of a powerful armoured figure with ragged butterfly wings which floats over the user. It is reasonably strong and powerful (partially because victims cannot look at the user) but its main strength is the hybrid creatures it creates.

Lostprophets - Can sever parts of its victims' bodies without them feeling it and places them into games machines; if a player wins the game the body part is restored, however they must 'buy in' to the game with things they have 'stolen' from others. These items need not be present but are lost if the player fails. The player may continue to play until they run out of stolen items, at which point the machine disappears with the victim's body part; the victim then suffers any damage that would normally occur if the part were actually severed. A player who runs out of items may buy in one last time with their own life - 'stolen time'. Lostprophets' user is able to have Lostprophets sever part of his own body, transferring his consciousness to the severed part. His body can then be 'killed', allowing the user to fake his own death - the severed part will regenerate over time inside Lostprophets into a new body for the user.

Looks like a floating cabinet covered by a cloak with a squat head swathed in bandages; its 'hands' are floating triangles of metal. The machines it creates look like odd ripoffs of popular arcade games like Street Fighter; characters may have bizarre or missing moves to throw players off, but the game cannot be 'rigged'. Quite an involved Stand power but one that I think sounds sufficient Jojoesque - the power is inspired by the lyrics to 'Can't Catch Tomorrow' and 'Shinobi vs the Dragon Ninja'.

Major Tom - The victim is unable to make others hear, understand or eventually even notice them.

MakeDamnSure - Surrounding buildings break apart and reconstruct themselves around the victims, smothering them.

Mandolin Rain - Can instantly fill any completely sealed area with water that does not affect the user.

Maroon 5 - Can teleport itself and its user between any enclosed space and any adjoining enclosed space.

Mars Volta - Can reverse 'the contained' and 'the containing' so the former is outside the latter. The 'contained' cannot be living tissue - so it cannot turn you inside out, but can seal you in something you're holding (e.g. - you're lifting a coffin - Mars Volta means you are now inside the coffin), drown you in the glass of water you've just drunk, etc. If you have a pacemaker, fillings or other artificial body parts it can also invert them, which may lead to death (for example, your pacemaker is now a thin metal filament covering your body).

Metro Station - Suppresses memories - the victim confabulates new ones, á la Korsakoff's Syndrome.

Mötley Crüe - Can replace body parts (the user's or the victim's) with inanimate objects.

 Has the power to swap body parts with nearby inanimate objects. Any replaced part functions exactly like the limb it replaces but is under the partial control of the user. The user can replace their own limbs with inanimate objects (for example, to avoid injury) - in which case the objects are completely under the user's control and can be used with almost telekinetic power (for example, replacing one's arm with a lampstand - the user can reshape the glass into sharp, shardlike "fingers"). Mötley Crüe looks like a humanoid stick insect with a grimacing tribal mask.

Alternate: Mötley Crüe must touch the victim or imbue an object with power so the first person to touch it is affected. Can replace someone's brain with an inanimate object to kill them. However, Mötley Crüe itself has little strength.

Motörhead - Invulnerable car apparition attacks victims when they cross a road after touching the user's keys.

The user, Dog Face Boy, is a stereotypical British punk rocker with a nose ring and a ripped Union Jack T-Shirt. The Stand Motörhead takes the form of a set of car keys - to affect a victim they must touch the keys. His favoured strategy is to drop the keys and wait for his victim to pick them up and return them to him. After they touch the keys they are under Motörhead's power. Every time they try to cross a road they will be attacked by a beaten-up Ford GT Convertible with a fanged mouth painted on the front. It's apparently invulnerable and will pursue the victim until they return to the original side of the road they came from. No-one else can see this car - not even other Stand users, because it isn't a Stand itself. The effect is to confine the victim to an area described by the nearest roads in all directions. Even trying to fly or burrow under the road will attract the ghost car, which can phase through earth or 'ramp' up to attack.

Mr. Rogers - Seals the victim in a shell in which they experience recursive visions of traumatic past events.

Not really the same as 'Civil War'. If you're seeing the past event you're already unconscious and trapped in Mr. Rogers' shell; the visions are first-person and feel just as real as the first time. It could be considered to be a more effective but less lethal version of Whitesnake. The Stand doesn't kill and the shell can't be broken to do harm to the victims - but neither does it dissipate unless the user is killed. Based on the KoЯn song of the same name, of course.

Napoleon XIV - Can rearrange air molecules to create invisible globes of poisonous gas.

Nickelback - Takes the form of six spaceship-like interceptors which orbit and protect the user.

Quite a boring Stand - better for a hero, I suppose. Its similarity to Aerosmith has been noted, though Nickelback is a much more passive Stand, with each interceptor having a different ability.

Nine Inch Nails - Induces agnosia in 'marked' victims towards sharp objects (e.g. nails, tacks, spikes, etc.).

Out Of Our Heads - Induces out-of-body experiences during which time user (or victim) is helpless.

A weak, long-ranged stand, Out Of Our Heads appears as a clown-like robot about two feet tall with clamps for hands. It can induce an Out Of Body Experience/Astral Projection in either the user or a target of their choice. While in spectral form, the person can travel up to Out Of Our Heads' range from their body and see Stands even if they would otherwise be unable to do so. However, their body is completely vulnerable. Out Of Our Heads must lock itself onto the person affected and cannot fight until it removes its clamps (at which point the projected spirit will return). Other people who Out Of Our Heads locks onto cannot use their Stands while in astral form. The Stand is best used to spy on opponents and immobilise others while you kill them (since the user can still move and act normally whilst Out Of Our Heads is locked onto a target). Note that Stand users cannot normally see astral projections unless their own Stands grant them some kind of supernatural perception.

Papa Roach - 'Eats away' at walls and floors and anything that touches them.

P.O.D. - Orbital stand deflects damage from the user to whoever it's currently over; user cannot move while it is away from them.

Pumped Up Kicks - Causes the nearest person from the user to be very likely to suffer a lethal accident with no range limit.

Resembles a green sphere with a leering, semi-mechanical face and a gun barrel instead of one eye - that side also has a small arm. It cannot defend the user and automatically 'targets' the nearest person while active. I envisage the user ('Foster Robert', a sullen, chain-smoking teenager in a cowboy hat) to be kept on a tight leash by the Big Bad since his Stand is so indiscriminate (perhaps by pairing him with the user of Revolver, whose Stand can protect against Pumped Up Kicks for a short time). If Foster unleashed Pumped Up Kicks in a metropolitan area, he could potentially depopulate it over time. Note: it's nowhere near so powerful as canon Stand Green Day (basically a biological WMD); it takes at least some time per victim to 'pump up' its effect to full lethality (unless they're actively trying to kill Foster), and can only affect one person at once. Its advantage is its unlimited range - but even then Bohemian Rhapsody is vastly more hax, as it affects everyone, everywhere, without giving such a strong idea where the user is (Pumped Up Kicks at full throttle would place the user at the centre of an area depopulated by freak accidents - if you want to kill the Stand user, just attack the guy next to you as if the victim is the closest to the user, that means the user is the closest person to the victim).

Rammstein - Takes the form of four indestructible metal plates about 6'' square which can be placed anywhere.

A suitably JoJo-ish subversion of expectations, I believe. You can materialise and dematerialise the plates at will (meaning if you have sufficient reflexes you can materialise them in front of an opposing Stand's fists), but can't materialise them inside living things or move them while materialised, so initially it seems they can't even be used offensively. However, they do have a lot of uses - holding doors shut, walking on them like 'stairs' to move through the air, creating a fake 'floor' before dematerialising it when your opponents are walking on it, tripping your opponents before pinning them down, etc. Also realised it can be used to convert explosives into shaped charges; since there are only four square plates you can't completely contain an explosive, but you can create a half-cube which shapes the explosion in one direction.

Alternate: Everything in its area of effect that falls with the same energy it would have if it fell its full height to sea level (so dropping a cup on the top floor of skyscraper is basically a shrapnel bomb - tripping over on an airliner results in you splattering all over the compartment). Based on 'Dalai Lama' (the song was named after the real-life Dalai Lama's fear of flying).

Revolver - Anything with a 1/6 probability or less will never occur within its area of effect.

Would work best paired with The Way It Is - Revolver's user doesn't automatically know the probability of events, only that it must be one in six or more to be nullified (the Stand means he cannot kill himself via Russian roulette). Looks like a slightly ramshackle scarecrow assembled from scrap metal - the face appears to be beaten out of a metal drum that has blown out at the back, surrounding its head with six 'leafs' of ragged metal.

Rolled Gold - Inverts the density of solids and gases in its area of effect (people turn into 'ghosts' inside solids).

A bit hard to visualise - basically when it activates the world in its area of effect turns inside-out and you're suddenly floating in the middle of a solid object. When you emerge ('inside' a nearby wall, foundation, etc.) the world is now a maze of narrow crawlspaces floating over a massive abyss (the ground, now an inverted sky). The user can, of course, just float through anything they want.

Royksopp - Whatever the Stand eats is erased from everyone's memory; only the user remembers it and can remind others.

Rubberbandman - Encases the user in a protective sphere of tendrils, which can be expanded to attack.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Takes the form of a tank which can 'pour' itself through any obstacle.

The tank's centred on the user, so it can get through any gap the user can. The user can push parts of it through smaller gaps - for example, it can extrude the cannon barrel through a tiny crack in a wall to 'see' inside and can fire as if the barrel were not squashed. It also lends traction to the user's movements and confers mass/inertia as though it were resting on whatever surface it's resting on whatever the relative direction of gravity - so he can use it to walk up the side of a building. I note this would make it largely immune to Weapon of Choice; it could just keep on coming.

Seventh Heaven - Forms a tower with seven levels around the user with different 'rules' for survival known only to the user.
Dark Heaven - The user can change the tower's 'rules' at will but must reveal them to the victim.

Snot - User can turn recipes or instructions into what they represent (e.g. recipe into fish soup).

Easy to underestimate this Stand - but when you realise what happens when they use it on the schematics for a nuclear bomb, the floorplans for a skyscraper, etc., it suddenly seems a lot more broken.

St. Anger - User is turned invisible. A duplicate user is created, which bleeds 'monsters' if injured.

Starless - Anyone the Stand touches loses all of their senses, and is trapped repeating the same actions via pareidolia.

Based on what I surmise to be the original design for King Crimson - the ultimate revelation that it 'erases time', allowing the user knowledge of the future doesn't gel with the woman Diavolo's mentor found under the floorboards of his house, apparently with all her senses erased - unless that was the power of his mother's Stand. Basically, once Starless touches you, you lose consciousness for an unknown length of time as your body reacts to suddenly losing all access to the external world. When you recover your brain manufactures input that corresponds to what you were last doing, and puts you on an infinite loop; so if you last entered a bank, made a withdrawal and left, you'll keep doing that (though in reality the user is probably lying on the ground, moving their arms and legs and talking to themselves). Any attempt to break the routine or enter a new area confronts the victim with a black void which is their own lack of senses. The victim can still control their body (albeit they have no idea whether they are in the right place, whether they are talking to friends or the user, etc.) and can warn others if they work out what has happened to them.

Switchfoot - Solidifies ambient sound into physical objects like stairs or mazelike walls.

Taking Back Sunday - Progressively erases technology (temporarily); only victims remember it.

The user, Adam Carpathia, is a middle-aged bald Catholic priest who wears a cassock and a Roman collar. The Stand Taking Back Sunday looks like a man in an old-fashioned diving suit, albeit with spiked collars (similar to inverted cilices) on its arms, legs, and spikes running up its spine. Its hands are surrounded by spinning cart wheels, and behind the helmet is just a huge, cyclopean red eye. Its power is to erase any technology it punches, seemingly rewriting history as it does so (though the effect may just be to pull all Stand users within a certain area into a parallel world). It cannot delete any technology invented before the year 1500 or any mechanism necessary to human survival (e.g. mechanisms also found in the human body), and all effects end as soon as Carpathia cancels Taking Back Sunday or is rendered unconscious.

The Avalanches - Can induce any sufficiently complex mechanism to emit paranoia-causing radio waves.

The Birthday Massacre - Causes anyone, including the user, in its area of effect to split into two. The original and duplicate are seemingly identical and it is impossible to tell which is which; but the duplicate will die when TBM is deactivated.

Works primarily by 'game theory' - both the original and the duplicate will consider themselves to be the original (having continuity of consciousness and the same memories), and may even try to kill the other; both can control the original's Stand. If the duplicate wins, the user has defeated that person, because they can deactivate TBM at any time and kill the duplicate. The Stand's weakness is the user's duplicate, who can also control and deactivate TBM. However, both user and duplicate know that if the duplicate attacks the user, both die - by working with their copy they can ensure that at least one of them survives. Based on the lyrics to Happy Birthday ("I think my friend said 'two of them are sisters'"). Basically the Stand version of The Prestige.

The Presets - Anything said in its presence echoes and reverberates so it cannot be said and heard again; eventually the area is awash with white noise.

The Way It Is - Stand tells the user the exact probability of any event.

Turmion Kätilöt - Takes the form of a crawling bonfire which grows as it consumes victims. Not entirely under its user's control.

The band name ('Midwives of Destruction') suggested some sort of Stand that gives birth to a destructive force; however this seemed too predictable (and too much like Baby Face from Part 5) and instead I went with a theme following 'Verta ja Lihaa' ("Step into the bonfire/Soul is shouting and nails are scratching/Oh, how it hates blood and flesh").

Toy Soldiers - Victims grow a clockwork key from their back and 'wind down' if it is not turned by another person.

U2 - Creates murderous clones of victim every time they move (Nude Descending A Staircase style).

Makes clones of the victim bud off from them every time they move a set distance - these clones will follow and attempt to kill the original (note that if the victim is a Stand user the clones will not have Stands). The clones will claim to be the original and will try and gain the confidence of the victims' friends. The Stand itself looks like a shiny black robot with a golden ponytail and a single horn in the middle of its forehead.

Weapon of Choice - Centipede-like Stand which nullifies gravity in its area of effect.

Yesterday And Today - Forces victims to relive the same day, which gets progressively worse.

It occurs to me most of my Stand ideas work best as villains the heroes encounter. A few exceptions -
30 Seconds to Mars, Back In The U.S.S.R., Bad Luck, Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Creed, Follow The Leader, Her Bright Skies, Jars of Clay, Mötley Crüe, Napoleon XIV, Nickelback, Rammstein, Rubberbandman, Snot and Switchfoot are all suitably balanced to work as heroes' Stands. I had a dream where Enter Shikari was the protagonist's Stand, but I don't think it would be very entertaining - find out who the bad guy is, wait until ES replays the most angsty part of his backstory, then hit him while he's helpless (never mind that ES is basically Moody Blues Requiem, giving you an intimate insight into any enemy even if you don't attack). Most bad guys in JJBA or otherwise tend to have angsty pasts, which makes them vulnerable to ES; if they've had a moment of total despair or helplessness, replaying it renders them near-transparent and so fragile that a normal human could tear them in half like paper.

Best stands for major antagonists - Abbey Road, For Your Entertainment, Taking Back Sunday, Yesterday and Today. They have the characteristic time/reality warping of major villains and what seems to be flawless hax: Abbey Road is basically permanent timestop that allows you to throw stuff at your victims until they die; For Your Entertainment is potentially a world-destroying Stand; Taking Back Sunday pulls victims through alternate realities, progressively cutting off them off from allies and escape; Yesterday and Today is a more flexible Another One Bites The Dust.

Getting Korsakovia working

Korsakovia is a game about madness from the makers of Dear Esther. It's a mod for Half-Life 2 and requires Half-Life 2: Episode 2 to work. Unfortunately, when Valve updated the Source engine, Episode 2 included, in 2010 it broke a lot of mods quite spectacularly. Korsakovia's creator released a patch which did indeed make it possible to fire up Korsakovia again. Unfortunately it's still dogged by crashes. Rather more crucially, there's a catastrophic crash in the final chapter which makes it impossible to complete the game. There's a door that leads to an insanely exploded rendition of the first level's cafeteria, and as soon as you open it and walk through, the game crashes, usually corrupting one or more saved games in the process. You can noclip over the top, but unfortunately that trigger is what loads the next and final chunk of the level - even if you noclip through that portion of the level entirely, you still can't finish the game. Anyway, I managed to find a way around it - making it possible for me to complete my saved game at least - and thought I'd post my solution:

game_info.txt: rewrite contents with following:

---

"GameInfo"
{
// This is what shows up in the 'Third Party Games' area of the Steam games list.
game "Korsakovia"
title "Korsakovia"
type singleplayer_only
developer "thechineseroom"
developer_url "http://www.danpinchbeck.co.uk/dearesther.htm"
icon "resource\Korsakovia"

FileSystem
{
SteamAppId 218
ToolsAppId 211
AdditionalContentID
{
215
380
420
}

SearchPaths
{
Game |gameinfo_path|.
Game sourcetest
Game hl2
Game ep2
Game episodic
}
}
}

---

I additionally used GCFScape to copy the Scenes folder from the HL2 content folder into the Korsakovia folder, though I'm not sure how much that helped the general effort. The result is a Korsakovia that runs extremely smoothly with none of the persistent crashes of my first run-through. Not only that, but textures (like Christopher's hands when wielding the crowbar) are restored which aren't present in the 'patched' version. There are a few mostly cosmetic hiccups - the most prominent being that GFX including the electricity arcs in the last level don't show up, making it harder to complete the platforming sections, but nevertheless - a fixed and working Korsokovia! Thinking it might well be possible to patch the remaining niggles by transferring over the model/GFX/etc folders, so watch this space...