#as usual there is extensive lore to this image. as usual i will probably not share any of it myself sorry

[texeoghea]

im like honestly a little sick and tired of trying to make real art on my ipad (by that i mean more than just doodles) but i am going to try anyway . even if it kills me. even if i have to draw weird things to give myself the inspiration to do it

#i feel like i should apologize for drawing this instead of my literal other pokemon au that people are invested in #but look. okay. my brain is like a very picky food motivated dog. do u understand #i can get it to do things but i cant pick what it does if i want to have a good time while it happens #my art #wip #i really just wanted to draw this part anyways idk if ill even finish the rest of the room. zoroark loki and frosty the zangoose #as usual there is extensive lore to this image. as usual i will probably not share any of it myself sorry

[winxwannabe]

I’m frothing at the mouth for as much info from the Winx encyclopedia thing as you’re willing to post thank you for your service

Good news! There are a series of pages regarding the girl’s childhoods that are ripe with✨family dynamics✨ and L O R E. I forgot to take photos of the pages before leaving for a weekend trip, but I can tell you what I’ve learned and post the images on Monday!

Before the good stuff let’s get the boring out of the way: there’s no new info on Bloom’s childhood since it was covered so extensively in Season 1. Expected, but I will tell you my favorite part: Bloom says no matter what Mike and Vanessa are her parents. You love to see it.

Flora has a distant relationship with her dad compared to her mom and Miele. He’s a landscape architect for ‘The Senatorial Chamber of Public Greens,’ and wasn’t around much. She was also one of those kids who could make flower jewelry. So jealous.

Stella was raised mostly by the Solarian royal staff instead of Radius or Luna. Big day for the Radius Haters. She always had a thing for brunette boys and either A) got the magic equivalent of Lasik or B) wears contacts. I’m going with B in my own head cannons.

Layla has childhood trauma from being forced to stay inside. Yay? We knew about that but you know what I found that was new: ANNE LORE! Aisha knows where Anne moved - a planet called Eros. There’s no mention of it anywhere else in Winx, so re-write people can go ape with it. (This is apparently on the wiki now but it’s not mentioned in the series so I never looked whoops)

Musa’s pages are just…a right mess of contradictions. Ho-Boe wanted Musa to become a singer like Matlin was, a TOTAL 180 from the series where he’s worried about Musa following in her mother’s footsteps. He’s worried about her going to Alfea to be a fairy? I don’t know I’m missing a key word in the translation or something, but I will report back!

Also, there’s a footnote about her mom’s hologram being stored in a camellia flower, which is important in Chinese and Japanese culture. Not surprising, but makes the whitewashing Fate did funnier.

And lastly, Tecna heavily implies on Zenith it’s common to have memories stored in virtual reality? A true gold mine of potential story content (especially when you did a season about time travel). They give Tecna anxiety to look though - which to be fair is a mood. But it does mention specifically Tecna’s always been a smart kid, even on Zenith, and that she had friends. I don’t know why that made me happy but it did (probably because ‘nerd’ characters are usually portrayed as outcasts, so I appreciate Tecna not going through that).

#winx club #liz gets questions #Enciclomagia

[imthepunchlord]

Even if it probably won't be in your overhaul, I still want to say that I really like the color coding you did in that image you made of the miracle box with just the og seven. I just like how you used the colors of the rainbow for them.

Pink - Butterfly (which for some reason, just feels fitting for it)

Red - Ladybug

Orange - Fox

Yellow - Bee

Green - Turtle (glad that was kept; green just fits it better)

Blue - Peacock

Purple - Cat (which, for some reason, just feels better for the cat, especially your version of the cat as often give it shadow powers)

Yeah I love rainbows and color wheels. If I can keep having nice color wheels going, I'm going to be happy. It's just an internal must.

And yeah, if the OG 7 got to be a full rainbow together, then the colors really work.

Nooroo just toes that line between pink and purple, but I could see going for pink more. It's a color heavily tied to love, which by extension work off making connections with others, being kind, empathetic, and compassionate (which is why this Miraculous should really go to a true social butterfly and could be why Gabriel struggles so much with it).

With Plagg, he does look purple at times, having purple fur as highlights.

And purple is often tied to mystery, power, leadership, imagination, creativity, and mysticism; all of which works well with cats.

So the Og 7 could work nice as a color wheel and rainbow.

The big drawback though is that, when all seen together, visually, it's hard to see how Ladybug and Cat are direct counterparts to each other. For to be counterparts, usually you're direct opposites, especially when on a wheel or something similar.

Working off these colors for the Og 7, there's no way to visually convey LB and Cat are counterparts as they just don't line up.

Working off the Prodigious circle of 7 and the Miracle Box itself, visually you would think Ladybug's direct counterpart would be Peafowl or Turtle. Which, makes sense as red often clashes with green or blue. And if you were looking at these two examples and you were told that Ladybug's counterpart is actually the Cat, you'd scratch your head cause they just don't line up.

And there are a few options on what could be done.

If Og 7 have to stay together and doing these colors for them, I could dismiss the canon fact that Ladybug and Cat are counterparts. One of them could be made to be the neutral 7th or they pair up with different Miraculous, and they both are just active as they're the best answer for Butterlfy.

If keeping them as counterparts, I could move Cat to green, move Turtle elsewhere, though I'd have to figure out who'd be the replacement and what color to bring in (pink, purple, indigo/violet, cyan, chartreuse). This potentially also could extend into a debate of whether Fox, Bee, and Peafowl should truly be here too as canon didn't really establish why these 7 are in a group together. All we got is really the promotion of the 7 together and that's not entirely enough.

It's even more so a forethought in my mind as I am going to have 5 groups of 7 each. And I'll have to figure out what are the reasons for these specific seven animals to be together in Group 1, why shouldn't any specific animal be in Group 2 or 3 or 5 instead?

That also has to wait until I can figure out what the 5 groups are based on as that would help decide what goes where, which unfortunately there's not a lot of 5 themes to work off of.

I'm probably overthinking a lot of it, but it's apart of the lore building and the Miraculous system of control, why certain ones have an edge over others.

#ask Punchie #miraculous changes #the struggles of trying to work with 35 #I did also try and think of 7 groups of 5 #but that's a lot of groups #it may come down to looking into slimming the numbers down #cause I do have to wonder if a lot of them truly need to exist #which sucks as I did a series of polls about this #I didn't think everything would be approved though

[happymetalgirl]

Ghost - Impera

I should have done this months ago. I mean this album is over a year old now, but better late than never. I don't really feel a need to get too deep into the details on this album; it's been out for 15 months and has been discussed extensively. It feels weird to be writing about an album this late in the game. This isn't meant to relitigate old discourse about it that's basically finished at this point, I basically just want to add my two cents about why I feel the way I do about it and why I still want to talk about it. But anyway...

It was no accident that Impera, came at the end of the longest gap between full-length releases for the Ghost, specifically well after the COVID-19 pandemic took its stranglehold off live music. The band was on a holistically upward trajectory for the past decade, bigger sales, bigger sound, and, critically, bigger crowds. 2015's grand Meliora was already such a practically unrecognizable size-up from the spooky retro rock of their debut just 5 years earlier, and the band made their aspirations clear with each release LP and EP afterwards. Popestar introduced for the first time in the band's self-aware campy lore a new frontman not tethered to the mic stand by the excessive garments of the satanic pope, but rather youthful, limber, and lively, more mobile and able to herd and rally the band's increasingly larger crowds. And the subsequent full-length, Prequelle, committed to this new turn fully. If you thought Opus Eponymous was too silly and over-the-top, then you weren't prepared for the full-on arena rock parade that was Prequelle. Prequelle was and still is the campiest album Ghost has ever released. The band was fully aware, and it was on purpose. Soaring group choruses, lighter-waving power ballads, swinging dance numbers, sax solos. Ghost were making a B-line for the arenas, with the big songs to handle the crowds of those magnitudes. And it worked; it worked because Ghost's songwriting masterminds put in the work.

Pop songwriting is both easy and hard. The tried and true format is and simpler is usually better. It's not rocket science. The challenge, however, is not just writing a pop song, it's writing a great pop song. And Ghost applied a perfectionist approach to chiseling out killer hooks and sing-along melodies from the brilliantly simple fun arena rock anthems of Prequelle, and the results spoke for themselves. And then 2 years later it all stopped.

It stopped for everyone. And going off their consistent release schedule up to that point, Ghost probably would have had the follow-up to Prequelle out a year earlier, but there was no way they were going to put out an album in the height of the pandemic because Impera was absolutely made for the stadiums. When the touring industry rebooted and Impera dropped a year later though, it was clear that Ghost had made the most of their indoor time.

A natural continuation from and combination of the previous two albums, Impera harnessed the grandeur and bombast of Meliora and the infectious campy fun of Prequelle into the most arena-ready batch of songs the band has ever put forward. I got the sense that this album completely achieved Ghost's artistic goal that they've been building toward for the past 10+ years, and by the end of the year, with my numerous replays of it, I couldn't help but concede that Ghost had outdone themselves. Impera is their best work. Ironic that the band reaching a new summit would be with an album about the precarious rise and fall of empires.

Hard to say now if that theme foreshadows a fall from grace for Ghost, obviously I hope not. For as much as they play into their gimmicky image, Ghost are not in danger of losing their throne due to fans tiring of their goofy novelty. No, the image is the icing on top of the solid compositional foundation and not the other way around. It will take actual creative fatigue, a major misstep, or series of missteps to derail the Ghost train. Not to say a band nosediving from their peak isn't a tale at least as old as Metallica, but maybe that's why Ghost picked the theme for their magnum opus, to remind themselves to not go the way of the Roman empire, or Coldplay. And hey, it's not like anyone would say no to the job security of a career like Metallica's or Coldplay's either, however undeserved it may be. But more likely is that the lyrical content was inspired by the present moment. I don't think anyone would argue against the current times being historic to say the least.

I won't get into it too deeply because it's really not that complicated, but also I could spend a gratuitous amount of time going into every detail of why each song is so great. Impera really is the sum of a great many little details that show how much time and care was put into making every song complete on its own and within the context of the rest of the album. The whole album is a cohesive, fun, glorious exhibition of everything Ghost, and they made that clear from the soaring high note that Tobias Forge opens "Kaisarion" with. And like Prequelle, Impera runs the gamut of chugging metallic heaviness like on "Watcher in the Sky" to the soulful ballads and power ballads of "Darkness at the Heart of My Love" and "Respite on the Spitalfields", following a similar flow to the previous album that works as well here. Also, Prequelle may be the campiest album Ghost has ever released, but "Twenties" is definitely the most over-the-top cheesiest campiest theatrical-ist song the band has ever made, too cheesy for some fans even. Personally, I'm here for it, and I can't imagine being surprised by it either; I mean it's Ghost, a cartoonish horn section over chugging heavy metal grooves and comic book villain vocals isn't that giant of a step up from the corniness of "Kiss the Go-Goat", "Ghuleh / Zombie Queen", "Rats", or "Dance Macabre". The other singles, the marching "Hunter's Moon" and the snare-driven rhythmic "Call Me Little Sunshine", are also textbook arena rockers, and I personally love the throwback to the more retro staccato keyboard motifs of Opus Eponymous on "Griftwood".

I played the shit out of Impera all of last summer and I'll probably play it again this summer, it's that fun. Like I said, Ghost have topped themselves, and every band that reaches what feels like their likely peak has that existential crisis of where to go from there if the only way to go is down. A lot of bands, either due to the pressure of future expectations or not knowing what to do next, make a big leap of faith into the unknown. Or they try in vain to replicate the lightning in the bottle that propelled them to the top over the course of the rest of their comparatively stale career. Ghost may not have anywhere higher to climb on the mountain they've chosen to ascend, but I think they can maintain a longevity at this elite level if they maintain the focus on meticulous song-writing while ensuring not to fall into the trap of formulaicness. Like I said, Ghost is not built on the satanic pope outfits or the Papa Emeritus lore or on the anonymity they started with that the lawsuit from former members eliminated. Ghost is built on the song-craft, and that doesn't wear out. The question now is, will Ghost wear out or get lazy, or do they have the stamina to keep up this level of attention-to-detail and dominate another decade? I certainly hope they can muster the latter. Here's to another decade of Ghost, in the twenties!!!

Also yes, this was my favorite album of the year last year.

-

It kind of sucks to say that another band's bad album is partially what lit the fire under my ass to write this because it kind of implicitly takes away from the excellent work Ghost does, but a big part of why I'm writing this now is indeed because of the band that all the big online magazines that shill for major labels are hailing as the next Ghost this year: Sleep Token.

I already made my gripes with that band's latest album known in detail in a previous post about that album, but in short, I really don't like the push I've been seeing from a lot publications for this groveling adoption of the most fleeting of pop trends into metal in what feels like desperation for broader cultural prominence. There's nothing "innovative" or "forward-thinking" or "more mature" about whoring out to the whim of trends calculated to appeal to the lowest common denominator in a bid for a shortcut to relevance. I don't mind when bands incorporate pop elements into their sound to spice it up or even writing a more straight-up pop song; like I said, pop songwriting is a challenging art, and that's part of what Ghost does so well, and what many bands who metalheads probably don't consider "pop" at all also do. What I do mind is when bands like Bad Omens or Bring Me the Horizon or Wage War try their hand at the kind of mind-numbing, middling bullshit that Maroon 5 and Charlie Puth feed to inattentive half-listeners in grocery stores. It's even more offensive when these bands know they can do better, and Sleep Token is the worst offender as of late in this department. Sleep Token is the lazy, unsustainable shortcut via the hollow gimmick of referential pop trend-hopping within metal presented as "genre-bending" to broader relevance that Ghost, by contrast, have earned through tireless improvement of pop songcraft over the past decade.

I speculated at the end of my post that this fawning over Sleep Token might come from an anxiety over metal as a genre not having anything left to offer broader culture. And I think the short-term focus inherent within capitalism that all these publications (which are basically marketing wings of labels) are beholden to is what makes the possibility of a drought so scary for them. The driving forces behind Loudwire and Metal Injection don't exactly permit the patience for what is likely just a natural lull in creativity, because to them that's a loss in productivity, and that's next to sacrilege. I also speculated on my own anxiety about metal as a genre running out of steam, but taking a step back and looking at the broader history of any genre existing longer than 10 years, there are waves, peaks and valleys, times of plenty and times of want, drop-offs and revivals. It's the circle of life, and we've seen it with metal already, and with subgenres within metal. And also, if the time is near for when metal bottoms out in a way it doesn't come back from and effectively "dies" (as much as any genre in the internet age can die), so what? If metal dies, it will not go into the ground with any unused potential, it will be because the very active and passionate community will have completed music, gotten all the achievements, and exhausted everything possible to with the genre except retread old ground. But I know that it won't be brought back or kept from the brink by bands writing songs for car insurance commercials.

This got a little tangential at the end here, but I think it's worth distinguishing (since so many people draw parallels between them lately) the genuine pop appeal of Ghost that Impera embodies so excellently and the cynical pop appeal of Sleep Token. Leaving aside the riveting discourse about whether Ghost qualify as a "metal band" or not, they unquestionably represent the genre to the unfamiliar, and I don't think metal needs the kind of submissive pop crossover appeal of Sleep Token when it has the emphatic pop crossover appeal of Ghost at their creative peak.

Anyway, Impera is a masterpiece, thank you Ghost!

9/10: AOTY 2022

#Ghost #Impera #new album #album review #metal #heavy metal #hard rock #arena rock #AOTY #AOTY 2022

[cleverpaws]

NOT. a generation loss blog

dee en eye if you support that man and that skeleton and what they did in that cage..

actually im keeping the title like that its so fucking funny to me

salutation i am michael (he/they/theoretically neos??? i guess???) and uh. get intro post'd x100 - aro ace & apl spec fool - bi and/or gay whichever is more comedically convenient - nonbinary dude 🎸🎸⚡⚡⚡⚡ there's no comma there for a reason - vaguely loveless <22222 peace and life - average library volunqueer - king of the wildly inconsistent art & writing styles <- Update we figured out why this was. you'll never guess - cartoonist 💯💯 - your local Mongoose - serial daydreaming problem - introvert??? extrovert???? i'm normal, thanks - AuDHD & NPD probably & probably like 1 million gazillion other Things at this point - the #1 hetch fan (shares this title with 3 of my beloved mutuals) - plural btw. i will now gaslight the internet into thinking i was open about this the whole time and you all just missed it - ^ u probably wont meet many other headmates just bc our switches r mostly passive influence and very short-lived. except shilo. shilo really likes tumblr for some reason

I RUN @showfallmanagement AND @lostnfounder THE SHOWFALL ASKBLOGS!!! COME SAY HI!!!

ALSO MORE RECENTLY STARTED @notslmccl do NOT go look at "chase" and do NOT poke him with sticks

dream team fans and harry potter fans you are not welcome here!! TRANSGENDER BLAST RAHH 💥💥

also no, people who think queer labels can "contradict" each other you are not welcome here either 💥💥💥 * my bi gay aroace nonbinary guy energy explodes you x100 *

things i am not normal about: - GENLOSS!!!!!!!!!! - ^ and, by extension, ENCOREVERSE!!!!!!!! - BITB!!!!!!!! - JRWI IN GENERAL I JUST PUT BITB FIRST!!!! - PSYCHOLOGY!! - MINECRAFT!!!!! - SPLATOON!! - ANGELS JUST LIKE AS A CONCEPT!!!!!!!!! - BODY HORROR!!!!!

things i am actually somewhat normal about (casual interests): - Studio Ghibli movies - Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service - cartoons (GF, TOH, Hilda, Amphibia, OtGW, Bee n Puppycat) - everywhere at the end of time - little nightmares!! - indie animation usually - ranboo in general somewhat - still sort of the dsmp - video essays!!!!!! esp horror video essays

i tag any and all posts that contain hetch with "#hetch generation loss" and any and all remotely sneeg/frank related posts with. shocker. "#sneeg/frank" go nuts gay people ("#asks" are also tagged)

(and if you go through "#saving this" you will find my many artist resources, recipes, and the occasional Insanely Good Post i think about every day)

ALSO!!! im like Never serious on here ever but just 4 the record (i dont even know if anyone will see this) please do not call me ur friend if i dont know you!! 😭 im aplatonic and while i do still have ppl i consider friends its personally just weird for me to be forced into friendships by people i literally havent interacted with that much (even if we're mutuals!!!!! sah ree guys) (saying stuff like "my friend" at the end of msgs in like that semi joking tone is fine though lol)

how ever...... mutuals r totally free 2 ask for my discord or msg me on here 💯💯

also if you EVER need me to explain any encoreverse lore to you i will drop everything to do so 😍😍

(all banners n images r mine except the mcytblr sexyman voted one by @/tmmyhug and the sonic narc abuse one by @/nicepersondisorder)

skittering sounds alright ill get out of your hair . the particles aren't though. yeah sorry man they uh. they really get stuck in there. sorry

[sea-dukes-assistant]

*cracks open beer*  All right y’all gather round it’s story time.

The Lore™ of the hellhole fandom is extensive, so if you need more context, @annefic​ can probably expand on this.

Basically, Rachel has her head lodged firmly betwixt her butt cheeks for quite some time, at least 10 years, which is how long I have run this pile of sparkly trash.  She has not only claimed to be a nurse, teacher, psychologist, astronaut, etc. whenever the fuck she feels it’s convenient (which would be anytime someone told her she’s wrong), but has long claimed to The Expert on all things royal, with a special fixation on “protocol.”

Anyway.  She has been notorious for antagonizing me on anon (she calmed the fuck down in 2016, more on that later). In general, these things were usually unprovoked, lazy insults regarding my level of intelligence, and some were more personal. After awhile, I gave her the nickname of “my #1 fan” because she could not let me go.  Once upon a time, I tracked my username as a tag, and upon checking it one day, came upon an ask she has received tattling to her about some snark I’d said (IDK, memory is old and I’ve had quite the knock to my head), and her response was that she’d blocked me.  This was laughably false because bitch I can fucking see your blog and occasionally in my notes.

My moment of sweet satisfaction came, as I said, in 2016, while I was in the first stage of recovery from taking a car to the body.  I was checking Sir’s tag, as one does, and found a post she’d made claiming that the cypher belonging to Prince Carl Philip was Sir’s cypher.  I got in my pettycopter, reblogged that shit, and said something to the effect of “lol no the fuck it’s not Prince Philip’s is this [insert image here] Google is not hard.”  Rachel then was like “Oh like you’ve never made a mistake.  If you want, we can talk about your blog...”  To which I told her, “I’d love to, actually.  But if you’re gonna take your usual route of insulting me and my content because you think have a say in it, you can do that when you fucking pay me to run it.  I accept cash, wire transfer, and PayPal in US dollars.”

She’s gotten off my lawn since then.

#this is the most drama I've ever been involved with #for the record

[readwebcomicsgdi]

woah look out

Here’s another little list of some comics! This is the fifth set, you can see the others here in the “roundup posts” tag~

Amongst Us (and Carciphona) By @okolnir​

“Amongst Us is a slice of life / romance / comedy comic about the couple, Blackbird and Veloce.”

I’m going to be ten thousand percent honest with you and admit that I got into this comic because one of the characters really really reminds me of my Agatha and I’m gay (I don’t mean to be rude by comparing them, I am saying this in the rec because a lot of other people also seem to appreciate the Tall Socially Awkward Intimidating Lesbian character archetype and they’re hard to find, it’s a selling point lmao). That said! It’s lovely to look at and certainly stands up without any of my own associations, and it’s a very cute and simple sapphic slice of life story. Y’all are always asking for wlw stuff, here is one.

I do want to mention this comic is actually an AU the author is doing of their main comic, Carciphona, which is an ENTIRELY different project; it’s a black and white fantasy manga that I haven’t actually read yet, but some of you probably have! To be honest this artist is quite a bit more popular than the folks I usually like to feature here, BUT: they’re publishing their own books and steering their own ship outside the mainstream and man I am all about that shit so go give these a shot.

https://amongstuscomic.com/

https://carciphona.com/

Electric Bones By HAZEL + BELL

“Lucian has just been fired from his dream job. Irritated and aimless, he is invited by his friends to go on a cruise trip in deep space.Lucian plans on spending his time on board indulging in every illicit activity and substance in the galaxy, but his plans are cut short when he ends up crossing paths with a familiar face: A robot who has an uncanny resemblance to the co-worker who got Lucian fired.”

yeah yeah Aria likes the smutty robot comic, but also it’s just really good. It’s good! The art is lovely, the story’s in that sweet spot where it’s “harder” sci fi with lovely detailed metal things floating in space but it’s ALSO having a good time without making you read a doorstopper’s worth of political lore every five minutes, and while this bit is maybe a bit less interesting from the other side of the drawing table, the lettering is creative and engaging and suits the story perfectly. A lot of comics get the fonts wrong!! This one didn’t.

This website is also navigable with arrow keys, which is just so nice. Why doesn’t everybody do this. Go turn it on if you have a comic site.

https://electricbonescomic.com/

broken By @yubriamakesart​

“broken is a fantasy/horror story about a psychic zombie kid befriending a fairy general and trying to deal with guilt, grief, and PTSD. This is complicated by eldritch abominations, a genocidal dictator, the dictator's wife, and a panic-induced exit from the last known bastion of civilization. Warning: this comic contains things like graphic violence (including suicide), body horror, and the occasional flashing image.”

The archive looks real big but don’t panic, this one’s broken up panel by panel so you’ll fly right through it. It’s maybe a weird thing to focus on but I super appreciate how much effort is put into the aesthetics of the website!! Even the backgrounds change along with the updates. The author clearly puts a lot of thought into crafting an Experience around their work, so it’s definitely worth reading it on the home site rather than on any of the mirrors.

https://broken.spiderforest.com/

The Secret Knots By @santapau​

The Secret Knots is, according to the author, inspired by things like A Softer World; it’s a series of self contained nonlinear pieces you can read in whatever order you like. He speaks extensively about how and why he started making this comic, it’s too long to put here but it’s a wonderful primer.

It’s hard to talk about this one you just kinda have to jump in. That said I love this shit dude this is exactly what I wanna see, make weird genuine shit and put it up for other people to read yeah yeah yeah

https://thesecretknots.com/

Shot and Chaser By @bigbigtruck​

“SHOT AND CHASER is a story about storms. Esoteric lifemates Tre and Olly set out together and experience a literal whirlwind of a day in the Texas panhandle. WARNING: This comic contains sensitive themes and is intended only for mature adults.”

You’ve certainly heard of this comic and this artist already (if not Shot and Chaser, you might be familiar with one of Weaver’s previous webcomic projects TJ and Amal) but sort of in line with the first one on this list, I’m just a real big fan of what they’re doing and how they’re doing it and it’s exactly the stuff I wanna see on this blog. I’ve reblogged it here before but I really wanted to put it in one of these posts because in addition to being a fun read it deals with Pentecostal stuff in a very like. Candid way, and I can always make room on my platform for anybody else making complex work about religious trauma.

http://tjandamal.com/sac/

as always, you can also read mine:

Kidd Commander by @shinesurge​

“It’s a world at the mercy of uncaring gods, and Phineas Kidd is a heretic with a chip on her shoulder and enough fury to outshine a supernova. Armed only with aggressive enthusiasm (and an explosive left hook), Phineas sets out to gather up a merry crew and travel to Kairos Crossing to catch the sun, an urban legend that has tempted countless dreamers to a bloody end.”

Kidd Commander is a romantic comic that’s mostly concerned with ambitious characters doing cool anime stuff while being subjected to trauma and dealing with said trauma! Rated T for lots of (cartoon) violence and swearing, and a good deal of irreverence for topics some folks might prefer to leave revered. If any of that sounds like it might make you uncomfortable this comic may not be suitable for you!    

http://kiddcommander.com/

If you’d like a comic (yours or otherwise) to end up in one of these, send me an ask or whatever and I’ll add it to my list of stuff to check out! The only requirements I have are I’d prefer for it to be a bit lesser known and it needs to be accessible in places other than tapas or webtoon because I am physically and emotionally incapable of engaging with either of those sites. Happy reading!  

#roundup posts #sweet recs

[felassan]

Hello! Been reading the wonderful lore posts about Solas' funky new mural in the trailer the last week and, as I was replaying Inquisition I came across this in the Fade.

Never held much significance before but now it makes me immediatly think of the post you made about the Evanuris, as well as the Old Gods. Do you think it might relate to either or none? I'd be interested to know what you think either way, your lore posts are a delight to read ^^

Hello! I love how the newest mural generated a bunch of discussion along with a whole heap of new speculative and theorycrafting posts! And thank you very much 😊 The rest of this post is under a cut due to length.

Edit: Sorry, not sure what’s up with the coding/layout of this post!

Back in the day, before Descent released, I originally assumed the Whispers were ‘echoes’ - if you will - of the imprisoned Evanuris. endure is quite elfy (suledin/endure, and the song of that name). “Crippled” and “polluted” and the red lyrium stuff in general work well if you subscribe to the theory that the Evanuris were tainted and/or red lyrium-corrupted when they were locked away (see tale of Andruil returning from the Void with armor made of darkness etc), or that they became that way or became similarly twisted after being trapped for so long, especially if said prison is the Black City [a Tainted place]. Linking it to the Evanuris also always makes me think of that one dialogue line from Cole when he’s talking to Solas: “They sleep, masked in the mirror, hiding, hurting, and to wake them - [gasp]”. Both that line and the Whispers contain similar elements like waiting, sleeping, hurting in a manner of speaking at least, and being woken up.

I haven’t been sure of that for a long time. Assuming no link between the Evanuris and the Old Gods for the purposes of this line of speculation, it could instead be to do with the Old Gods as you say. The remaining slumbering Old Gods have also been ‘there’, waiting and sleeping and being awoken in turn. Though it’s not quite “Whispering”, they do in a manner communicate with other beings while trapped - the darkspawn who hear their song and relentlessly search for them - and in their time they used to whisper to ancient Tevinter humans. However, a strike against it pertaining to the Old Gods would be the fact that the lore says they aren’t Tainted until the searching darkspawn find them. Like, I wouldn’t instinctively describe a still-sleeping Old God as “polluted”? A further strike could be that red lyrium isn’t something that automatically leaps to mind when thinking about the Old Gods, unlike when thinking about the Titans (see below) or even the Evanuris (the Andruil stuff again).

Another possibility is that it’s to do with the Titans. Stone endures, and the Titan in Descent had recently stirred. Titans sing (communication), there are other Titans out there and there’s a reference in the lore to a Titan awakening during the time of King/Paragon Orseck Garal. Blue lyrium is the blood of Titans, and a Titan with red lyrium blood or that had been afflicted by the Taint would certainly count as a polluted entity. 

Finding dreams again and being crippled/sundered is also dwarfy language actually, despite the fact that dwarves don’t dream and the fact that it was elves who became sundered from themselves and the Fade when Solas made the Veil - consider Solas’ dialogue line where he says “dwarves [in their current state in modern Thedas] are the severed arm of a once mighty hero, lying in a pool of blood, undirected, whatever skill at arms it had gone forever. Although it might twitch to give the appearance of life, it will never dream”. When Valta connects to the Titan in Descent, although she ironically now no longer sleeps (which is usually a prerequisite to.. dreaming), she’s really reconnecting, regaining the connection to a Titan that dwarves used to have (like a severed limb being reattached). That’s where the sundered stuff comes in. At the moment most Titans, and Titans in general, are sundered from their children, the dwarves. In this way both the Titans and the dwarves are crippled, two separated halves of a whole.

After reconnecting, Valta writes in her journal about the world that once was, “before everything changed and the dwarven race broke in two” (i.e. before the dwarven race was sundered). And although she now no longer sleeps, when she closes her eyes she now sees glimpses of things that used to be, glimpses of things the Titan is showing and singing to her - what’s that, if not a form of dreaming? It’s not daydreaming per se, but the Titan is clearly showing her its memories, or dreams if you will, of what once was, and stuff, probably of what it hopes to see one day again too (given the loneliness in its song).. and ‘dream’ as a word has a broader meaning than just literally “images you see when you sleep”. 

Anyway, the Evanuris or some of the ancient elves describe connected dwarves in Old Elven Writing as “workers” of the “pillars of the earth” [Titans], “scurry[ing], witless, soulless”, but how do we know they really were witless and soulless? It reads like one part propaganda and one part incorrect assumption, which isn’t a surprise because in that passage the Evanuris/some of the ancient elves were basically preparing to hunt the Titans and by extension mercy-kill some of the connected dwarves, who they perceived as witless and soulless. But reconnected Valta clearly isn’t witless and soulless, she just has a different manner of existence to what the ancient elves (spirit-adjacent as they were) had. Dreaming also comes up in relation to the dwarves as lyrium, the blood of their Titan ‘parents’, bridges the gap between the mundane world and the Fade, which is the world of dreams ("It is possible—even likely—that the "emerald waters" Andraste refers to are the substance of the Fade, which began as an "ocean of dreams””); this is what Valta regains, “its blood now flows through me” and now she sees the things it shows her when she shuts her eyes.

It’s also important to mention the Torn Notebook from the Deep Roads in Trespasser, Section 3 -  

Trying to remember that old bedtime song about Mythal. My mother sang it the night before the darkspawn came for my clan. It's the last time I ever heard her voice.

Ir sa tel'nal, Mythal las ma theneras. Ir san'a emma. Him solas evanuris. Da'durgen'lin, Banal malas elgara. Bellanaris, bellanaris.

Written beside each elven line is a corresponding phrase, likely a translation:

I am empty, filled with nothing(?), Mythal gives you dreams. It fills you, within you(?), Making our leaders proud. My little stones, Never yours the sun. Forever, forever.

Hahren said we had lost some of the old words. What if they have changed? Durgen'lin from durgen'len? Little dwarves, never yours the sun? What did Mythal do here?

as here is dreaming, or gaining dreams, cropping up once again in relation to the dwarves. What Mythal “did here” btw was striking down the Titans and “rendering their demesne to the People”. A demesne is one’s domain or land. In this context it probably also refers to resources and their very forms, as we know that the Evanuris were mining the bodies of Titans for lyrium and “something else”, the something else probably being their hearts/cores (which probably can be made into power sources, the foci). This sounds like an unrelated disjointed ramble sry but it’s relevant because of the end part:

Then the runes crackle, as if filled with an angry energy. A new vision appears: elves collapsing caverns, sealing the Deep Roads with stone and magic. Terror, heart-pounding, ice-cold, as the last of the spells is cast. A voice whispers:

"What the Evanuris in their greed could unleash would end us all. Let this place be forgotten. Let no one wake its anger. The People must rise before their false gods destroy them all."

Their greed was the mining for resources and power. What was unleashed and had to be sealed away is often theorized to be red lyrium and/or the Blight. In this reading red lyrium, and by association the Taint, is maybe something like the Titans’ defense mechanism against being hunted, struck down and mined by the Evanuris, or perhaps something like an immune response or a natural consequence of the action, like how when we as a species pollute the natural world this often comes back to bite us in the ass with disasterous consequences. And like the angry energy and elves collapsing caverns in that passage, there’s also the “terrible presence” the Arcane Warrior’s soul in DAO remembers.

Given all this stuff, as well as the prevalence of red lyrium in the DA4 marketing thus far and apparent prevalence in its plot, its continued spread, the Titan/dwarfy beats touched on and set up in Descent (self-explanatory) and continued in Trespasser (the ‘death of a Titan’ mural etc), the [possible] corrupted beating Titan heart, the danger corrupted awakened Titans could undoubtedly pose to Thedas, and the theory that Solas is trying to prevent some cataclysm befalling Thedas and believes that he has to do this to save the world and that he’s running out of time, I think I lean towards the Whispers being to do with the Titans, specifically ‘red lyrium/corrupted/Blighted Titans’. Here I also wanna point out the similarity between the Whispers and Codex Entry: The Profane:

We who are forgotten, remember, We clawed at rock until our fingers bled, We cried out for justice, but were unheard. Our children wept in hunger, And so we feasted upon the gods. Here we wait, in aeons of silence. We few, we profane.

—Found scrawled on a wall in the lost Revann Thaig by explorer Faruma Helmi, 5:10 Exalted. Unknown author.

- the Profane being Rock Wraiths, creatures who are believed to have once been dwarves, that wander the Deep Roads, corrupt and living an undying half-life, probably feeding on lyrium (Titans being somewhat akin to dwarven gods) as they go. What if Valta is what you get when a dwarf connects to a normal Titan, and a Rock Wraith is what happens when a dwarf connects to a corrupted/Blighted/red Titan? Side note: It’s iiiinteresting indeed, isn’t it, that the Profane were calling out for justice, given that justice is one of Mythal’s ‘domains’ and considering her prior involvement with Titans and the dwarves (“adjudicator and savior!”, Mythal and the urtok, “Once I was but a woman... crying out in the lonely darkness for justice” etc). 👀

The last thing I have to say on this topic is that it’s also possible that the Whispers are one of those things that the writers just cooked up and threw in there for kicks/flavor, because it sounds cool and mysterious, and in so-doing it’s written in such a way (a bit generic) that 1) fans reading it can speculate about it and link it to several different things and 2) down the line the devs could retroactively decide to give it a meaning, or retroactively change what it was in reference to. This was the case for Eleni Zinovia’s prophecy:

David Gaider said Eleni Zinovia’s prophecy doesn’t refer to Fen’Harel. He can’t remember who wrote it in there or what it refers to actually. It was most likely just intended as flavor and he was even a bit surprised by it, like “What is this?” There’s a lot of things like that in the games, not everything has a ~grand meaning~. Sometimes such small off-hand things are picked up on by fans and the writers then make it into something bigger and more meaningful after the fact. This is what happened with Sandal (all the fans being like “Ooh, what does it mean, what does it mean?” about him). It’s possible Eleni will be picked up on like that in the future, but at the time it didn’t mean anything really. A lot of the way these stories are put together is that they put a lot of questions into the world, scattering possible/potential plothooks, and they don’t necessarily know where they lead at the time, but in future games they could come back to them and come up with an interesting backstory. Sometimes they pick it up and sometimes it never gets answered or ever mentioned again (the Wardens taking some of the blood from those who didn’t survive their particular bout of Joinings and putting it in a vial to remember them is an example of one of these things). It’s pretty rare that you’d get a situation where something is mapped out from beginning to end. Sometimes we the players get a revelation as we play and we’re like “Omg!! This is all connected! They are masters!” and the writers are like “Yes, toootally… It was that way alllllll along. It certainly did NOT get decided three quarters of the way through development…” [source]

You know, like there are, as is evident from this post where we go through various possibilities, lots of different ominous mysterious groups of nefarious beings waiting and sleeping and lurking Ominously in this setting!

Not a particularly coherent answer I know but hopefully interesting for you to read. :) tl;dr I lean towards it being to do with the Titans, specifically red lyrium/corrupted/Blighted Titans.

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #dragon age #bioware #solas #mj replies #video games #ahumblewoodcarver #cole #spirit boy #long post #longpost

[maribunart]

Exalted Secret Santa 2021

Hello Exalted art nerds!

If you know me it’s probably as Marigold on discord (specifically Marigold#7827, feel free to send a friend request if you’d like!) but I’m also @MaribunArt on the twitters, though I’m terrible about remembering to post things there.

Here are my babies for the art exchange! Sorry there are only a couple fully polished pics of them. I’m going to link a pinterest board for each as well, reflective of their general aesthetics, so feel free to change their outfits/hair styles/etc if you’d like

Ivy Rosedottir Air aspect Dragonblood Lot-Casting Atemi sheet link

Ivy Rosedottir is an air aspect born in a teeny tiny town a few days south of Icehome. She spent her early years as an exalt turning around the prospects of her slowly dying home town until an itinerant Immaculate Monk stumbled upon her efforts (which involved extensive collaboration with the local terrestrial gods) and used them as blackmail to force Ivy into "employment" helping manage a small, new, and thus-far unprofitable Satrapy halfway across Creation. Shockingly, she is not terribly fond of the realm.

- Full body reference image - Rough sketch of her usual hairstyle from the back - Local Nice Boy attempts to curb Ivy's Gremlin Impulses (her hair has changed a little since I drew this, it was the very first doodle of her) - Anyone who claims to have knowledge of a possible crush Ivy may harbor on a Big Dumb Lunar is a LIAR- Outfit/Aesthetic inspiration on Pinterest

Visual motifs: Crows, sheep, weaving/knitting/sewing/etc, snow and frost, spooky forests (she has the root lore sorcerous initiation & styles herself a witch) Aspect Markings: white/blue lock of hair starting at her right temple, tendency towards cold hands even in warm weather. Her anima leans more snow & ice than electricity. Important details: Freckles! Just so many, basically everywhere

Cathak Kilani Water aspect Dragonblood Lot-Casting Atemi sheet link

Cathak Kilani is, most likely, the most un-Cathak Cathak currently drawing breath. She excels at bureaucratic endeavors, would rather sort paperwork than spar, gets queasy at the sight of blood, and underneath a very sweet and kind exterior happens to be one of the sneakiest people on the entire Blessed Isle. She harbors an inordinate amount of guilt over her natural skill in what she views as dishonorable skills, but at the same time feels an intense need to employ said skills to keep her family and friends safe

House Cathak and House V'neef are currently in talks regarding a potential engagement between Kilani and V'neef Xelan, Matriarch V'neef's second-youngest child by blood, which would likely finalize the formal alliance the two houses have been dancing around. Kilani is utterly terrified that she's going to fuck this up somehow.

- Full reference sheet - Couple more dresses - Kilani and her girlfriend (who is thankfully now also her fiance's girlfriend) - Kilani and her older sisters, who definitely don't think she's still twelve - Kilani is slightly obsessed with her fiance's pet hearth cat (ooc I am roughly 60% confident said hearth cat is not a secret Lunar) - She just kind of loves hearth cats in general, really - Outfit/Aesthetic inspiration on Pinterest

Visual Motifs: Dark waters, coral reefs, flowers Aspect Markings: Hair coloration resembles white-capped waves, stygian blue eyes, smells faintly of sea breezes and plumeria blossoms Important details: She has a large collection of alchemically preserved flowers and nearly always wears one tucked behind her right ear

Karal Lei-Xin Twilight caste Solar

Lei-xin is a Lookshyan ex-patriot, quietly struggling to aid her family and homeland without them finding out that she faked her death because she's a wicked, evil Anathema now.

Lei is a natural bridge-builder, winning friends and allies across multiple factions. She counts at least one of nearly every type of Exalt a friend, and her most ambitious project to date is helping the Dragon Kings of Rathess rebuild their civilization and rejoin the world's stage.

Lei-Xin became one of the most talented chefs in Creation and beyond sort of by accident. The excessive amount of pastries she tends to send home with her Shieldbearer husband has even started to win over a few Bronze faction sidereals.

- Full body ref - Slightly outdated doodle, but cute - This was the very first thing I drew on my ipad :D - Outfit/Aesthetic inspiration on Pinterest

Visual Motifs: rabbits, clouds, Important Details: Always wears a necklace of some sort with a red gem on it (a simple choker is most common since it doesn't get in the way when she's working but she has several styles) and a moonsilver wedding band.

#Exalted #Exalted Secret Santa

[hawkeish]

oooh, scorpio, aquarius, and pisces for the zodiac asks?

we’re writing a fic together so you probably know all my sins, but here we go!!

zodiac writing asks

scorpio - how much research did you have to do for your current wip? what was the weirdest thing you had to google?

the DA wiki is the first thing that autofills when I type ‘d’ into Google, so make of that what you will (although usually I look at lore just to think ‘this is fine but no thank you’). I haven’t done that much research at all for this one though! I haven’t played Inquisition in 6 months so I’m relying on your extensive knowledge x

and it was ‘could a cat suffocate you if it sat on your face for too long’

aquarius (the best star sign, no I’m not biased x) - what’s the most unique thing about your current wip?

it’s the longfic, so oh god, most of it? as you know, the whole thing is a gentle ‘fuck you’ to canon because we can and want to and who’s going to stop us

pisces - how do you visualize scenes? do you see it like a movie in your head, or do the words just flow?

it’s like a hyperspecific film storyboard or a comic for me! full colour, all action, occasionally with dialogue, sometimes with a song in the background. the words definitely don’t flow, though - I think this is why I sometimes have mammoth descriptions that take forever to write, cause I have a really specific image in my head that I need to get out.

music also really helps! I have playlists for different vibes, ships & characters.

#I am sorry that you have to deal with me writing 20 words in a session when you've basically written the entire chapter #you're a saint x #zodiac asks #ish talks #long post #veorlian #answered

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Ink Theory

Debut: Splatoon 2

You know, for all the months I’ve been writing for weirdsplatooncharacters.deviantart.gov, I’m surprised it took me this long to get to my absolute favorite Weird Splatoon Characters, Ink Theory! Now, as we all know, it is a scientifically proven fact that Splatoon music slaps. Anyone who’s played Splatoon knows that, and anyone who disagrees is a coward who has never heard of taste. How disappointing!

But can you boil down music that slaps to a science? In-universe, the band Ink Theory decided to put that to the test, blending “academic music theory with modern sensibilities” to create what, in theory, should be the jamminest music of all! So what does the jamminest music of all entail?

Being able to shred a trumpet, apparently! I did not know that was possible, but then I played Splatoon 2, and learned that everything is possible. That’s Great!

Some people, again, cowards who have never heard of taste, might say this music sounds bad, but personally this is my favorite music in the game! I love the diversity of the Splatoon soundtrack, and I love the absolute chaos that seems to unfold whenever one of these tracks is playing. Is it just me, or are matches where Broken Coral plays the most chaotic matches of them all? And by extension, the best matches?

I am glad that Splatoon has frantic jazz tracks, and even more glad that there’s a canon in-universe band that produces these frantic jazz tracks, and even MORE glad that said jazz band consists of six lesbians. Don’t believe me?

Well then believe this Splatoon art posted on Valentine’s Day! That’s an entire day dedicated to romance! We have a whole triple date worth of lesbians here! It’s weird, there was an entire Nintendo Direct on that day, featuring Mario Maker 2 and a new Weird Mario Enemy, and yet somehow, this image is what stood out to me the most.

But enough talking about the band as a whole! Let’s talk about the six individual members, because they each have a whole lot more to talk about. All of this is under the cut!

Name: Yoko

As the band’s trumpet player, and focus of their sound, Yoko serves as the band’s frontman, though, from what I can gather through “translating her bio in google translate,” her relationship with the other members of the band is a little bit distant. In fact, it’s not just that, it seems she just. Has depression! Her bio more or less mentions her feeling a bit dreary regardless of the weather, though nonetheless, she is always to give a solid performance on the trumpet, so that’s good I suppose!

You might notice that as an Inkling, Yoko has four differently colored tentacles, which is not really a common thing! Apparently, she has a mutation that causes her tentacles to appear different colors, which might sound cool, but it’s also likely to draw unwanted attention, and apparently, if my translations are right (they probably aren’t) leave her susceptible to atmospheric pressure.

Yeah, it’s a bit unfortunate that Yoko lives such a terrible life. They could write anything they wanted for this weird squid girl, and they decided to give her depression! But it’s not all bad! Let’s zoom in on that Valentine’s Day art!

Apparently, her hat doesn’t have gibberish Splatoon characters, but actual Japanese kanji! Kanji that spell out “Karen.” And who’s Karen?

Name: Karen

The band’s pianist, and from all logical evidence, Yoko’s girlfriend! While Yoko is the band’s frontman, Karen is the band’s founder, and she is (currently) the only Nautilus we’ve seen in the Splatoon universe! While squids, octopuses, and apparently cuttlefish are all pretty heavily anthropomorphized and humanoid in this world, nautiluses are more-or-less exactly the same, just larger and with longer tentacles. In fact, can we focus on that for a second? I love that Karen’s entire body is like, 85% tentacle. If she wasn’t wearing a dress, Karen would mostly just be a writhing mass of tentacles.

But Karen isn’t a nudist! She’s a pianist! One time she listened to the music of Hightide Era (another obscure Splatoon band) and said, “wow, this slaps,” and after that decided to start her own band! She graduated at the top of her class, and combined with her positive attitude, she’s been able to get a lot of moral support from her bandmates. Karen’s life is fortunately, nowhere near as difficult as Yoko’s, but she does occasionally worry about the band lacking proper motivation, which I suppose is a fair enough thing to worry about if you’re leading a band.

And this might just be me, but I feel that Karen is totally the mom friend of the group. Like, this was something I thought before I knew the names or personalities of any of them, but all official information is completely backing me up here. I mean, her name is Karen for crying out loud! If you have that name, you’re probably either a mom or a computer.

Name: Bibi

Okay, let’s get this all set straight. Bibi is cooler than any of us will ever be. I mean, look at her. You could say anything you want about Bibi, and not only would she be able to blow it off, but she’d probably make you look like a fool for saying it in the first place, and to make it all the more humiliating? She does this all while playing the kazoo.

Shredding the trumpet? Playing a kazoo and looking cool? I mean, Ink Theory is full of all sorts of impossibilities, and I am here for that.

Bibi’s bio was unfortunately kind of hard to translate, but I was able to pick up that she’s the member of the band that gets the most mainstream attention, and is kind of sick of being swarmed by the paparazzi all the time. Also, she’s never struggled much financially. Oh yeah. She’s rich and fabulous. Again. While playing the kazoo. I’m usually not a fan of rich people, but I don’t know if the law legally allows me to say anything bad about Bibi. I fear the repercussions for that.

Name: Aachin

Alright, so what species do you think Aachin is? Any guesses?

Three.... two... one...

Okay! Time’s up! She’s an urchin! A very specific type of urchin, actually,  Hemicentrotus pulcherrimus! No common names in English over here, I’m afraid! But if you didn’t figure it out already, Aachin’s name is really just “urchin.” Because she’s an urchin! Look at her hair, it’s based on a test of an urchin, rather than the spikes we are used to seeing, but don’t worry, if a spikier urchin is what you want, we still have that! I guess Aachin just likes to go around with a shaved head.

According to what I translated, Aachin grew up in a strict household, always appreciating contemporary music herself, but as time passed, she grew to appreciate modern music as well. Now! The last sentence of her bio actually threw me for a bit of a doozy a few months back, as after trying to figure it out like seven times with no better tools than Google Translate, I believed that Aachin had fallen in love with someone depraved! Did they seriously just put this funny urchin in a toxic relationship?

Nope! I’m just terrible at translating things. Apparently the gist of that sentence is just that she’s a bit shy and inexperienced when it comes to romance, and she admittedly falls for people who are “bad,” in some nebulous sense of the term. Are we talking like, 1950s cool biker bad? The person that corrected my mistranslation said “slobs,” so maybe she just falls in love with people who are really messy.

While it’s good that this lovely urchin is not in a toxic relationship, I still think she deserves better, on sheer account of being Aachin. She always deserves better. Even if she has it good! She deserves better. Because I love her.

Name: Mayaya

Up next we have Mayaya! Mayaya is a sea anemone (not a sea cucumber as I previously believed) whose facial anatomy slightly baffles and scares me, but that’s okay, because I still love her.

Another top-of-her-class graduate, Mayaya’s own professors said she’d be best teaching music herself, but Mayaya decided she’d rather have fun making her own music, and decided to join the band! She plays “percussion,” which seems to suggest any percussion instrument other than drums and cymbals, and she doesn’t just play for Ink Theory! While Ink Theory is her main squad, she apparently freelances percussion for other bands in her free time. Which bands? We don’t know! It’s never specified! But any time you hear any percussion ever, just know it might be Mayaya herself playing.

Name: Kitamura

And last, but not least, we have Kitamura, the band’s drummer, who might just be the most adorable character design I have ever seen in any piece of media ever! And that’s saying a lot, considering all we’ve covered on this blog. Urchins are hardly ever unlovable, and the little ribbons simply make her all-the more adorable, but what really draws me in here are those eyes. Now, urchins don’t technically have eyes (though their spikes can function as a makeshift compound eye) but as far as eyes go, Kitamura might have some of the most precious looking eyes they could give an urchin. They almost look scrawled on! Heck, part of me wonders if Kitamura just draws on her own eyes to look cute. It’s either that, or her eyes just naturally look like that, and I am personally fine with either possibility.

Oh! Right! Her lore! There’s actually not too much about Kitamura that we know, but we do know that she is fittingly, the band’s mascot, lives on her own, and pays close attention to her curfew. She apparently has a high singing voice also, but we never hear it because none of the Ink Theory songs have vocals. Maybe someday! Maybe someday...

In the Valentine’s Day artwork, we see Kitamura getting to eat a whole lot of ice cream. Do you think Kitamura deserves that much ice cream? Because I do.

This is far from all I have to say about these characters, but there’s not much more I really can say without diving deep into headcanon territory, so I suppose that’s all for now! I hope you appreciate this deep dive into Splatoon lore, and have a wonderful day!

#splatoon #splatoon 2 #ink theory #weird splatoon characters #mod hooligon #april fools #a lot of this is probably actually wrong #but give me a break! #all the info on them was in japanese and *i* had to translate it! #have you ever tried translating information in a language you don't even speak? #i had to use google translate which isn't very accurate at all

[suzyundertale]

How we know the person in the intro of Deltarune is almost certainly Gaster

This post is a summary of all the evidence that the person speaking in the “vessel creation” portion of Deltarune, and by extension the Game Over sequence, is W.D. Gaster.

1. Connection to the Twitter

For those that don’t know, on October 30th, 2018, the day before Deltarune came out, the official Undertale Twitter changed its icon and display name, and tweeted a number of cryptic tweets, which we now know to be teasing Deltarune.

As you can see, the tweets are clearly written in the same voice as the person in the intro. This is a very unique voice, so it’s extremely unlikely it would be anyone else.

This gives us a hint to who the speaker is - look at the display name. It’s “██████”. If you can’t tell, that’s exactly six characters of black “censored” boxes - the exact number of letters you need to spell “Gaster”.

2. References to Entry Number 17

Undertale’s hidden “Entry Number 17” is one of the more well-known Gaster Things. But in case you don’t know about it, Entry 17 is a section of text, in the form of a True Lab entry, written in Wingdings font, and only accessible by editing the game’s files. Here is a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jfHh88p5hk

Translated from Wingdings into plain English, it reads:

ENTRY NUMBER SEVENTEEN

DARK

DARKER

YET DARKER

THE DARKNESS KEEPS GROWING

THE SHADOWS CUTTING DEEPER

PHOTON READINGS NEGATIVE

THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT

SEEMS

VERY

VERY

INTERESTING

...

WHAT DO YOU TWO THINK

Of note is the part that I have bolded. The phrase “VERY VERY INTERESTING” seems to be a… catchphrase? of Gaster’s. It’s used in the tweets in the lead up to Deltarune to make a very clear callback to Entry 17.

In addition, another possible reference to the line is in the save menu screen of Deltarune before you clear the game. If  you don’t know, the main menu is different depending on if you’ve already cleared Chapter 1 once before, or if you haven’t cleared it yet. If you haven’t yet, the save menu will not only appear different, but the dialogue for copying and erasing save files will be different as well.

Of interest is a line of dialogue that only occurs when you delete 10 or more save files, then go to delete another one, then back out when asked if you want to “TRULY ERASE IT”. If you do this, the text will read, “VERY INTERESTING.”

Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRnliRKGMBM

3. “mus_smile” in Deltarune

Speaking of Entry 17, You may have noticed the creepy “music” playing when it is being displayed. This piece of audio is titled “mus_smile” in the files. Interestingly, it appears in Deltarune not once, but twice.

The first is when you try to make a phone call while in the dark world. Any game music that was playing will stop, and instead “mus_smile” will play, and the narration says that the cell phone “doesn’t seem to be working”. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7FuP_AkbRU

The second is, of all places, in Hometown during the epilogue. Specifically, when you’re near the bunker south of town. If you’re close enough to it, a very slowed down version of “mus_smile” will play. Video showing the sound at both original speed and sped up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPQYXiUEpPk

4. Typer values and the number “666”

This one requires a bit of explaining on how Undertale and Deltarune function. Each line of dialogue, in both Undertale in Deltarune, relies on what is called a “typer” value. Basically, all the information about the text - the size, the font, what sound the text blips make - are all stored in this “typer” value. Usually, each character has a specific typer value associated with them, sometimes several. When a character says a line of dialogue, the game uses this typer value to determine how the text will appear.

And, again, we return to Entry 17.

You probably know that Gaster is heavily associated with sixes. In Undertale, his unused battle stats are all sixes - for example, his attack and defense are both “66666”. The “fun” value needed to encounter the “mysteryman”, commonly believed to be Gaster, is 66, and the fun values for all of the “Gaster followers” are in the 60s as well.

You may have guessed it by now - The typer value used for Entry 17 is “666”. This is definitely intentional, as the highest typer value below that is “111″.

So, then, what’s typer value “666” used for in Deltarune?

Why, it’s the intro sequence. Interesting. (Except the “No one can choose who they are in this world” bit - that part uses typer value “2”, which could provide further evidence that it’s a different person speaking.)

Similarly, typer value “667” is used for the Game Over sequence.

This, in combination with “VERY VERY INTERESTING”, seems to make it very clear that the speaker in Entry 17 and the mysterious speaker in the “vessel creation” part of Deltarune are the same person. Although you need knowledge of the game’s files to find this particular piece of evidence, you also need that to find Entry 17, which is a huge part of the Gaster Lore™.

5. What the “vessel creation” is actually called in the files

In Deltarune’s files, the “vessel creation” sequence is referred to as “GONERMAKER”.

This is significant, because the term “Goner” is tied to Gaster.

Gaster is pretty clearly linked with the “grey NPCs” in Undertale. Two of these grey NPCs are explicitly referred to as “goner” in the game files:

“spr_mkid_goner”

“spr_clam_goner”

The latter is the “goner” form of Clam Girl, who speaks of Suzy, and, in the Nintendo Switch version of Undertale, which came out less than two months before Deltarune’s release, claimed that the time we will meet her is “fast approaching” as she turns into her “goner” form. This was possibly foreshadowing Deltarune’s release. (I say “possibly” because we don’t actually meet “Suzy” in Deltarune, but “Susie”.)

In any case, these so-called “Goners” are almost certainly linked to Gaster in some way. We don’t know exactly how, but the fact that the intro is called “Goner Maker” is almost certainly very significant to the story.

6. The music during the “Goner Maker” sequence, and its title

Undertale has a hidden sound test which does not actually include songs from the game, but notably, includes a song titled “Gaster’s Theme”. In the game’s files, this song is called “mus_him”.

And, as you can see on the bandcamp page for Deltarune’s soundtrack... The title of the song that plays during the “Goner Maker” sequence is “ANOTHER HIM”. In addition, the song seems to use “Gaster’s Theme” as part of the melody, as does “Darkness Falls”, the game over theme.

7. Hidden messages on the Deltarune website

Way before Deltarune was revealed, the website still existed. But it looked a bit different.

Luckily, we have archives on the wayback machine, so we can see what the website looked like in the past.

August 17, 2016:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160817183540/http://www.deltarune.com/

The page appears to be completely blank. However, in the top left corner there is an image, titled “him.png”. when brightened, it reveals a message written in Wingdings:

It reads,

THREE HEROES APPEARED

TO BANISH THE ANGELS HEAVEN

Which, as we now know, is a quote from the Legend in Deltarune that Ralsei tells Kris and Susie.

However, there is also an archive of the link to the image itself. And it turns out this image was different at some point.

December 9, 2015:

https://web.archive.org/web/20151209013205/http://www.deltarune.com/him.png

When brightened, the image once again reveals Wingdings, this time reading:

THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT

SEEMS

VERY

VERY

INTERESTING

Which, you may remember from earlier, is a direct quote from Entry 17.

This, once again, strengthens the connection between Gaster and Deltarune.

These are all the major pieces of evidence that Gaster is speaker in the intro. Of course, we can’t 100% prove it just yet. But there’s no good reason to deny it. With so much of the evidence clearly pointing to Gaster, at this point Toby going “haha actually it was someone else the whole time” would just be bad writing. And Toby’s good at writing! I really don’t think he’d pull a pointless, unnecessary “plot twist” like that. So it’s very, very safe to say that this person is Gaster.

#ut #deltarune #analysis #gaster #undertale

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 92: Monster Reunion

“I have to try.”

The tragedy of Nephrite is Steven Universe’s longest side story, beginning with the very first episode and concluding five years later in the final episode of the show’s original run. How we feel about Nephrite at any given time indicates how we’re made to feel about Corrupted Gems as a whole at that point in the show. After Gem Glow, they’re monsters of the week. After Monster Buddies, they’re innocent but violent victims of...something. And after Monster Reunion, we know what that something is.

Ninety-two episodes in, we know of Yellow and Blue Diamond. We know they’re part of a a group called Great Diamond Authority, acting as Gem Matriarchs. We’ve seen an artistic representation of a third Diamond on the Moon Base. We’ve seen a four-part symbol with a white, yellow, blue, and pink diamond united as one. We got a hint of their musical cue as the Gems abandoned Earth in a flashback. And because the Diamonds are in charge, we also know that they’re responsible for some terrible things, from the forced fusion of Gem Shards to seeking of destruction of planets not only for reproduction, but revenge. The information is dripping in, and these Gems are shaping up to be the villains of the series, and thanks to that knowledge, all it takes is one sketch to emphasize their most heinous crime.

This is the episode where the horror of corruption sinks in, in the same way Keeping It Together reveals the horror of Cluster Gems. The Mother Centipeetle was a monster, and Centi was a pet, but this version trying desperately to communicate before she loses her sanity again is a person. She has memories spanning millennia but was trapped by her mind and her body by her own leaders. After a string of Beach City episodes with purely personal stakes, Monster Reunion’s depiction of a personal struggle representing an atrocity affecting a planet’s worth of Gems hits like a freight train. This isn’t just something the Diamonds did to their enemies: Nephrite, alongside countless other Corrupted Gems caught in the crossfire, was loyal to Homeworld, but that meant nothing.

Between the Cluster Gems and the Corrupted Gems, the Diamonds prove that they’re not content with just destroying the bodies of their opponents, but the souls of anyone that inconveniences them. We’ll learn a bit more about it in Nephrite’s fourth episode, Legs from Here to Homeworld, where it seems this corruption was unintentional (or at least unknown by Blue and Yellow Diamond), but Monster Reunion galvanized me against the Diamonds in a way no other episode has, and it does this by giving us a single, concrete character to sympathize with.

This is the second time this season Raven Molisee and Paul Villeco have given Steven an extensive conversation with an entity incapable of full communication, but unlike Gem Drill, Nephrite allows these artists to fully utilize their gift for character animation to tell their story. Molisee’n’Villeco episodes are distinguished by more exaggerated expressions than usual (see: the first act of Coach Steven, the climax of Rose’s Scabbard, Amethyst throughout Reformed, Steven-as-Lars in The New Lars), and that makes all the difference in enhancing our ability to relate with a growling alien cyclops bug. We don’t need words to tell us when Nephrite is scared, happy, curious, angry, or sad (we don’t even need tears to tell us that last one, but oof are they effective), and we’re able to empathize with her on a primal level thanks to her vivid expressions.

The other half of the Nephrite formula is master vocalist Dee Bradley Baker, who’s already performed as every Corrupted Gem in the series, as well as Lion. Baker’s prolific ability to give life to non-human characters make him virtually impossible to overrate, and he uses that gift to convey comprehensible communication from Nephrite with nothing but chirps and squawks. This is so much more effective than the cacophony of voices from the Cluster, allowing for an actual conversation of sorts between Steven and Nephrite. 

This would be a very different episode if Nephrite was still just Centi from Monster Buddies, and we have Molisee, Villeco, and Baker to thank. It’s not enough to feel bad for an animal in pain again: we need to see, for lack of a better term, the human suffering of it all. And I feel so bad for this woman who doesn’t even get to have a real name for another sixty-one episodes.

The conversation itself centers around a terrific use of flashback. As Steven reminds Nephrite (and the audience, because it’s been a while since Monster Buddies) of their history, we get depictions of the past that fully resemble Steven’s experiences. But Nephrite can’t talk, so we don’t even get the simplified silhouettes that accompanied stories from Garnet in The Answer or Lapis in Same Old World. We get crayons and stick figures, the most childish means of communicating, that slowly gain animation as the story picks up. 

Steven’s narration is a constant reminder that Nephrite doesn’t have a voice of her own, and that we’re getting bits and pieces of what actually happened. She can still sing along with him in her own way, and performs a flawless diamond salute, but can’t tell Steven the name of her commander, or how she felt about her crew, or any actual tales of the war. Honestly the most telling image is Nephrite’s very first picture, revealing that she sees herself as herself despite having never met Steven in that body. This is a sentient person, and we’re made to understand that before she reverts to a monster.

Allowing her to reunite with her crew is a brilliant move, because the show needs her to lose, but it would be unspeakably cruel to not give her anything in the process. We don’t get a happy ending, but we don’t wallow in bleakness either, and that’s a hard needle to thread when the subject matter is this horrendous. There are certainly real-world analogues to Nephrite’s plight, namely dementia and PTSD, but Monster Reunion benefits from being ultra-specific to the show’s lore instead of focusing on the same sort of allegory they did in Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service and will do in Alone at Sea. When the lead character can’t talk and we’re dealing with this much character and plot work, going for a lesson beyond the general value of mercy would’ve probably made the episode collapse.

This is a fascinating episode in regards to Steven’s maturity, because beyond the use of crayons, he goes hard on the cute angle to manipulate the Crystal Gems in a way that seems to undermine his growing maturity; for reference, we’re an episode away from a story about the aftermath of abusive relationships. This childishness is especially interesting when you consider this is where he gets his healing powers back, a sign of his growing power. We see him casually float up to grab Nephrite’s bubble, and he’s an old pro at warping without assistance. All signs point to this being a more developed Steven than his puppy-dog eyes might indicate, and that might be the point.

I don’t want to speak to the writers’ intent given how far away Pool Hopping is, but Garnet’s inability to properly predict the future here is caused by the same problem she has in that episode: she’s seeing the likely outcomes of a Steven who’s still a child. True, there’s also the matter of all three of his guardians reverting to a lighter version of their stubbornness from Monster Buddies given their bias against Corrupted Gems, but I can’t help but think that Garnet would’ve been cool with the outcome we get had she seen it coming. It’s understandable that she might not have been able to predict Steven’s capacity to help, and that the only outcome of freeing Nephrite was mutual suffering.

We’re past the halfway point in Season 3, and are thus nearing the conclusion of the show’s second fifty-odd episode chunk. Major plot elements are winding down in anticipation of the life-altering story that Rose Quartz shattered Pink Diamond, and one of them is the idea of Steven acting like a little kid. This is the last time we’re going to see him act this way at length, even as a ploy, because even though he’s still a kid in Season 4 and beyond, he’s a young teenager who actually feels like a teenager somewhat consistently.

We also get a subtle premonition of Amethyst’s imminent focus, as she’s twice admonished by Pearl for making fun of Nephrite even though she’s not making fun of Nephrite either time. The feuding days of Amethyst and Pearl are long over, but there’s still a power dynamic between them that Monster Reunion quietly reignites. And Garnet is still in charge, ordering Amethyst to poof Nephrite in a way that’s frankly a bit uncharacteristic. Maybe it’s because we haven’t seen an actual fight with the three Gems working as an unfused team since Catch and Release (heck, we haven’t seen a fight against a Corrupted Gem since the Slinker in Reformed, unless you count the big crab in Rising Tides, Crashing Skies), but it sounds strange for Garnet to give a direct attack command. Amethyst is shown here to be the lowest-ranking Crystal Gem, not counting Steven, and this means everything to the season’s final arc.

There are certain things I would’ve loved to see as a fan thirsty for information, namely an actual translation of Nephrite’s writings. But it’s not as if we don’t get the picture(s) from her "conversation” with Steven, and eleven minutes isn’t enough time to tell this story and inject worldbuilding through text. It’s frustrating to not have all the answers, and a common complaint of Steven as a character is his lack of follow-up questions, but in this case he clearly knows the gist, and there’s no reason to think he couldn’t have gotten Pearl to translate offscreen if he was still interested.

So I’m glad we instead got a searing character-centric story that hurts enough that I almost never watch this episode. It takes a while, and it nearly costs Steven everything, but thank goodness we finally get justice for Nephrite.

Future Vision!

Our next chapter in Nephrite’s story is Legs from Here to Homeworld, where we finally learn that she’s a nephrite, that her commander was a hessonite, and that Blue and Yellow Diamond might not have been as intentionally malicious as we thought despite the abominable consequences. It’s crazy how important Nephrite ends up being, essentially paving the way for the Diamonds to begin reforming through Steven wanting to cure her and other Corrupted Gems.

Steven’s desire to write “I’m sorry” in Gem Scribble as he looks at the image of three diamonds, with hindsight, seems to indicate some subconscious knowledge of his indirect culpability in Nephrite’s corruption. Or he doesn’t at all and it’s just a coincidence.

Nephrite uses a white crayon to depict the Corruption Song, indicating White Diamond’s greater responsibility, and ultimately White Diamond’s key role in healing the damage.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

Monster Reunion isn’t an episode I love to watch, because I don’t love to watch depictions of unbearable anguish, but it’s still an episode I love. Like Cry For Help, its sheer quality makes up for my infrequent rewatching.

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

When It Rains

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

No Thanks!

     5. Horror Club      4. Fusion Cuisine      3. House Guest      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

(No official promo art, but artist Jonathan Traynor's haunting sketch does just fine.) 

#monster reunion #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

[beneaththetangles]

Plot Twists, Character Designs, and Worldbuilding: Writing in Anime (and Other Media)

One of my favorite video game-centric YouTube channels, Extra Credits, recently put out a video about “The Three Pillars of Game Writing – Plot, Character, Lore“. I definitely recommend watching this video, especially if you love video games. It explains how “video game writing” is actually split into three “pillars”: plot, character, and lore or worldbuilding. It then explains what goes into each of those pillars, and how video games in particular can execute on each pillar.

The thing is, these three pillars can apply pretty much to every single form of fictional media, including otaku-centric media like anime, manga, and light novels. So in this post, I will take a closer look at each pillar and how they apply to anime in particular (though again, they can apply to pretty much every work of fiction). Note that most stories feature elements of all three pillars, but will tend to focus on one or two of them.

Plot: Tell Me A Story

According to the Extra Credits video, plot-centric writing should either:

be something unique and not seen before

have some kind of “twist”

have a message to convey

There may be other ways to deliver a plot-centric story, but for now we can focus on these methods.

A good example of a plot-driven anime is Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which uses twists on the usual magical girl formula to create an engrossing story that quickly became popular. (It also arguably presents various messages, including something similar to the Gospel message, though then you have the movie…) My favorite plot-centric anime is probably Humanity Has Declined, which is definitely very unique, full of small twists, and even uses satire to present messages now and then.

Reanimated grocery store chicken? They (and the viewers) never saw it coming!

One type of story you might not think of as plot-centric is comedy. If you think of humor as a result of twists on our expectations of the flow of events, then writing humor involves crafting multiple of these small (and sometimes not-so-small) twists throughout a story. So something like Gamers! (used as the featured image), which uses the continual escalation of misunderstandings to create comedy (as well as the build-up to one big, comedic twist), can very much be described as plot-centric. Even something like Nichijou, which has no overarching plot line, can be considered as “plot-driven” in this way; it just uses multiple small plots rather than one large one.

Characters: Make Me Fall In Love

I already wrote a big post on characters. In that post, I talk about how we come to love characters for how they are likable, interesting, relatable, or some combination of the three. While good characters benefit pretty much any story, character-driven writing puts extra effort into what goes into the characters. They put great focus on character development arcs and relational developments. They take time to show characters in more mundane, non-plot-driving situations, just to further characterize them. Even the character designs themselves are given extra attention in order to make the characters as detailed as possible. While these stories can certainly have the plot-based elements mentioned above, even if they have very simple plots, they can still be engaging because the audience attaches themselves to the characters. The plot itself can be one that has been done numerous times, but the audience does not mind as much because their interest is not in the uniqueness of the plotline, but on how their beloved characters in particular will deal with that situation.

I can list off character-centric anime for days, but one such anime I would like to highlight is Anohana. This critically-acclaimed series shows the difference between character-centric and plot-centric writing, and how strong character writing can form the foundation of a story in lieu of plotting. If you think about it, Anohana does not really have a notable plot. Its plot is not particularly unique; stories about old friends reconciling or coming to terms with death are common, and even the whole “meeting the ghost of someone who died” storyline has been done plenty of times. There is no major twist in this “reconciliation and grieving” storyline, and it does not have a particular message to say. Despite all of this, Anohana is a beloved anime because the characters are so well-written. Their individual personalities, their relationships with the other characters, and their own history and feelings about Menma’s death are all brought out and integrated into the story, and it is very easy to get caught up in their development.

Of course, you do not have to have detailed, relatable character arcs to have a character-centric story. A story can instead focus on making interesting characters that interact with each other and the world in amusing ways. (While characters being likable are often great for character-centric stories, a character that is only likable and not interesting or relatable usually does not work in such stories except as side characters.)

Worldbuilding: Take Me To Another World

Lore, or worldbuilding, is everything that goes into developing the setting of the story. Everything from histories, cultures, world maps, magical systems, and even background art and more goes into building this pillar. This is a key element in fantasy, science fiction, and also historical fiction, but even a series taking place in a “normal Earth” setting can use worldbuilding to establish things like the culture of a school or town.

Of course, it is one thing for a story to require some worldbuilding by nature of its genre, and another thing to put the extra effort to focus on it to make a world seem alive. “Favorite anime worlds” could very well be worth an entire post on its own, but I would be remiss to not mention my favorite anime of all time, ARIA the Animation and its sequels, and its wonderful Venice-inspired world of Neo Venezia. Plenty of episodes explore everything from the work of Undines and the companies that employ them, to places in the city, other important jobs in a terraformed-Mars environment, the mysterious Cait Sith, and more.

Everything in Balance

As I mentioned, most stories will have at least some elements of all three of the above pillars. Where stories can differ is which pillar(s) they focus on, and which pillar(s) they only provide the bare minimum for. This is particularly important for anime since a given anime series is greenlit only for a certain number of episodes and a certain length of time per episode, so there is only a limited amount of screen time to present whatever writing the story has. The only anime series that can really afford to spend time on building all three pillars are ones that run for a very long time; a series that only gets 12 or even 26 episodes almost certainly has to focus on one or maybe two pillars or its story feels too thin. Even longer series may want to focus on one or two pillars in order to give its audience a more focused experience.

ARIA does provide some plot moments in the last season, but that’s only after building a strong character and worldbuilding base in its first 36+ episodes.

If a work does not really need worldbuilding, then there is no real need to spend time explaining small details about the world. If plot is not a focus, writing should not focus on creating unique stories or crazy twists. And if the characters are just there to progress the story or to fill out the world, writing extensive backstories for them might not be the best idea. (And while over-moefication of characters is arguably a problem for any story, non-character-driven stories in particular probably should avoid forcing moe tropes on their characters.) This idea of choosing which pillar to focus on becomes even more important for anime that are adaptations of longer works. A long-running manga or light novel or an expansive visual novel may have more room for exploring multiple pillars that a 12-episode anime does not have time for; a good adaptation must realize which pillars are key to the work being adapted and focus on those, carefully choosing material to exclude in the process.

Finding Meaning

While plot-focused stories can particularly choose to broadcast some message through its plot, that does not mean character- or worldbuilding-focused stories cannot have some meaning in them. Worldbuilding can be used to set up a world in such a way as to explore certain aspects of our own world. By creating cultures, religions, government systems, and the like that mirror those in our own world to varying extents, stories can explore the impact, benefits, and dangers of those parts of our world. Characters, likewise, can mirror all sorts of aspects of the human condition, both good and bad.

Relevant to this site, one can also find reflections of Christianity of each writing pillar, whether it be a plotline similar to a Biblical story, a character with similarities to a Biblical character, or a world built upon–or in contrast to–certain Biblical principles. One does not have to stick to stories focused on one particular pillar for this sort of content, and it means we blog writers have a nice variety of angles to approach Christian reflections in anime, which I definitely appreciate.

Wonderful Stories

Writing is not the only part of anime; an anime can have bad writing but still be appreciated for its visuals (animation, character designs), sound direction (soundtrack, voice acting), or whatever other aspects catch your attention. Nevertheless, when discussing anime (and other media), writing is oftentimes the one aspect that drives the most discussion and criticism. I hope that, in talking about these different pillars of writing, we can see anime writing not as a singular art, but as something that can be taken in different directions, and that we can evaluate any given anime’s writing by how well it fulfills the pillar(s) it chooses to focus on, rather than criticize it for pillars it is better off ignoring in the first place.

Anyone who complains that AnoHana has too little worldbuilding probably needs to re-evaluate their anime viewing choices.

Perhaps more importantly, I hope this piece helps you understand which kind of stories you prefer in your anime and other fictional media. Do you like plot-heavy stories that take you through twists and turns and perhaps throw a message in there? Do you like to have characters that you get attached to? Do you like to get immersed in detailed fictional worlds? I know that my preferences lean towards character-driven stories, though I also really like good worldbuilding. On the other hand, while I do not dislike plot-driven stories, I tend to not care as much for those, hence why I gravitate towards slice-of-life anime with maybe a light fantasy on the side. Your preferences may differ, and by understanding those preferences you can better understand what anime you might like, as well as why you might dislike an anime when it spends too much time on a pillar you do not care as much about. And, as I mentioned, this does not apply just to anime, but also all forms of fiction.

So which pillar of writing do you like? Let me know in the comments along with your favorite examples of good writing in anime!

#Anime #Writing #Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai. #AnoHana #anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day #Humanity Has Declined #Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita #ARIA #ARIA the ANIMATION #Gamers! #Nichijou #Puella Magi Madoka Magica #Articles #Author: stardf29

[bellatrixobsessed1]

I’ll Meet You At The Bottom (Part 46)

He was in the Water Tribe, he was home. Azula wondered if it would even be in good taste to just show up unannounced at his door. It was just one more reason to let him wander back to her. The princess rubbed a healthy amount of aloe onto the back of her neck and dabbed a fair amount across her cheeks. How odd would it be to wear a sunburn in the Water Tribe? Still decently sore from the day prior, she stretched herself out on her bed and started at the ceiling until a few knocks roused her from it. They were too gentle to be Zuko’s or Toph’s, but not light enough to belong to Aang or Ursa. So that left Katara. Azula fixed her robe that had fallen loose and made her way towards the door. Upon twisting the knob, the princess found herself in the company of two people. When the firebender at last felt compelled to move, Iroh entered first followed by her mother. The man arranged his tea set upon her dresser. The princess frowned to herself, she didn’t exactly have time for neither a lecture nor another long and heartfelt discussion. If for no other reason than to just move things along, she was almost content to let bygones be bygones.

 “Here.” Iroh placed a cup in Azula’s hand.

 Azula took a quick drink and set it down. “Exactly how long is this going to take, I have a mission that needs completing.” Completing was a bit of a stretch, she had a mission that needed starting. “The longer I wait, the harder it will be.”

 “I think that we need to talk.” Iroh stated flatly. Azula winced, his talks were never quick.

 “Can we have this discussion elsewhere? Perhaps on a boat. Preferably to the Southern Water Tribe?”

 “This late at night?” Ursa asked.

 “The docks will be less crowded.” Azula pointed out.

 .oOo.

 The snow had stopped, leaving the world around him quiet and still. A frigid glittering tundra they was deceptively impassable. Sokka chanced the journey into the outside world regardless. Since he was a boy he longed to see if the land’s lore was true; did an iridescent spirit elk really emerge on the dawn of the first winter storm? He was skeptical but itching for something new to think about, so he would search out this elk. He bundled himself abundantly and heaved his way out of his home. The first rays of the morn befell the fresh layers of snow, he surveyed the world around him trying to pick out the safest route and any sign that an elk may have passed through. He directly faced the sunlight, thinking that maybe the mythical beast would appear within the rays. That seemed like an elky thing to do, not that he knew much about the elks. He took one step forward, successfully driving himself into a snow bank. He grumbled to himself, remembering at once how much he loathed those things. Wedging himself out was a timely matter and gave him time to gather that it would be wise to leave his father a note saying that he’d be out chasing imaginary deer.

 And he was off again bounding over the snow. With the sun now quite high and no sign of the elk he had no real purpose for being out and about when the rest of his village was just beginning their morning routines. But he didn’t care, he enjoyed not having a purpose for once. He put his adventure to a stop when he came to a towering glacier with an opening large enough to venture into. He thought to explore it, but only briefly. He hadn’t the proper equipment to get very far.

As he shuffled away he couldn’t help but wonder where his sense of adventure had gone. A few years back he might have dived right in and played it by ear.

 .oOo.

 Not a seafaring soul desired to take Azula in the direction of the Water Tribe. “Do you know much about the Water Tribes and their seasons?” One such captain questioned. “With all due respect Fire Lord Azula, anyone who suggests going there at this time of the year surely doesn’t.” At the slanting of her eyes he quickly added, “it’s understandable, I don’t recall you ever having gone there to see the season for yourself.”

 “Then maybe you’d like to pleasure me with the view.” Azula suggested.

 Save for Zu-Zu and friends, no one had ever refused her before, but this man was shaking his head so violently she thought he might snap his own neck. “Not a chance. The storms brewing that way are enough to freeze a man right to his soul.”

 Azula gave a small hiss and was about to make her a request a demand when a hand fell on her shoulder. “One way or another, I’m getting to the Water Tribe, mother.” She muttered.

 “You’ll have to find a less timid captain.”

 With her patience wearing thin Azula scowled, “then find me one.”

  She supposed she shouldn’t have doubted the woman. Granted Ursa’s find was a rather shady looking woman with a monstrous height, but the sailor seemed willing. After a slur of slick words and a very bountiful bribe anyhow. No less, the princess found herself aboard a rather study ship with a weary mother and an uncle who seemed very accustomed to shoddy trade affairs—no doubt Zu-Zu’s doing.

 With nowhere to retreat to, Iroh began his pestering. Azula didn’t realize that she resented him more than Ursa until he began speaking. Her mother never seemed to see the best in her, but this wasn’t something reserved for Azula alone. Iroh, he tried to be compassionate towards the worst of people, and still couldn’t muster that much up for her. “Why am I the only person you ever saw as truly evil?”

 She guessed the answer before his reply had been made. She and Ozai had been one and the same to him. His relationship with her father was damaged irreversibly. Ozai was a completely cruel and hateable man and by extension she was the same.

 She was in for a long boat ride.

 .oOo.

 Though the elk had, expectedly, been nothing more than a tall-tale, Sokka didn’t come home empty handed, he had stopped along the river at first just to gain a sense of direction and then to give himself a challenge. He’d gone spear fishing before but never had he never tried it with nothing but a knife alone. He may have only caught one thing but it was still something. Being as the winter had struck so suddenly, every ration counted. He could fend for himself, if nothing else. His walk was beginning to take its toll though, the cold was finally biting at him hard enough to draw attention. Even through his mittens he felt the first piercings of chill. He hustled along the riverside, covering as much ground as he could. Home wasn’t too far off from there, spying a frozen waterfall, he could confirm such.

 He ought not to gander, but the crystalline scenery compelled him. Icicles taller than his father accented the cliffside, sparkling white like earthy prehistoric teeth. Other icicles were more translucent like wintery chandeliers. He stood marveling at the majesty of the frozen cascade, after so long, he had forgotten how splendid the arctic views were. He followed the jutting lines of the cliff to the very top.

 In the dying rays of the sun, stood a great white creature almost washed out by the white of the snow around it. It’s antlers could have easily been passed over, mistaken for another thicket of icicles. It tossed its head from side to side, displaying shimmering fur that when hit in the right manner, appeared more silver and pastel blue.

 Sokka blinked as the creature observed him with deep blue eyes. At his next blink it was gone.

 Later in the evening, when the winter resumed itself in full, he had himself wrapped in a generous bundle of silks. Over a helping of Arctic hen, he relayed to Gran and Hakoda of his fishing success (he had given his father the honor of eating his catch) and of the beautiful beast with the sapphire eyes.

 “A fine catch indeed.” Hakoda gave him a thumbs up. “Tasty too.”

 Gran snickered. “And there you were, insisting that I was just treating you like a kid and telling fairytales. Fairytales aren’t for children, dear. They can be guides or bringers of luck, they can be wild and dangerous.”

 “Alright, Gran! I believe you.” Sokka smiled awkwardly.

 “Wonderful, now how about you go let Paku know that?” Usually if Sokka believed in something, Paku would too. And if Paku dropped his skepticism, Sokka was inclined to follow.

 “I think I can do that.” Sokka nodded. A fresh lump of sadness gathered in his throat. Katara would have loved to have seen that elk. She always was more fond of folklore than he. And Azula. He longed to tell her about it, he couldn’t really see her caring—in fact she would probably ask if he had taken some of her Ruby Tears for his own—but still she would get a kick out of the story. He missed her, he missed causing her to smile, missed comforting her. Instead, he became the reason she needed comforting. He missed all of them.

 The door rattled in its frame. “I should bolt that thing better.” Hakoda noted. The last thing the man wanted was to wake up to a heap of snow in his front room. Again, the door shuddered some.

 “I don’t think that’s the wind, dad.” Sokka stood.

 “What kind of fool lurks in this weather?” Paku questioned.

Sokka tugged the door open it swung forward without warning. “Firebenders, Paku.”

 “Naturally.” He rolled his eyes.

 Sokka on the other hand was both thoroughly delighted and horrified all at once. Standing in the doorway, shivering softly, under mountains of clothes was Azula. Behind her were Fire Lady Ursa and Iroh. Azula’s hair fluttered and whipped into her face, a face that was unmistakably the image of pissed off.

#Sokkla #Azula #Sokka #Katara #Aang #Zuko #Toph #Avatar #Fanfiction

[wind-singer]

The 50 Most Beautiful Words in the Irish Language

Aimsir (AM-shir) – Weather, time, season. THE ELEMENTS THAT SURROUND US.

This is the Irish word for an ever-popular topic with which to make small talk in Ireland. Its earlier meaning, ‘time’, occurs in a proverb which translates as ‘time is a good storyteller’.

Aisling (ASH-ling) – Vision, dream, apparition. OUR DESIRE AS IMAGE.  

This word is used of a popular eighteenth-century  poetic genre in which Ireland appears to the poet in a vision in the form of a woman who speaks to him of the current state of the nation. The word is now popular as a personal name.

Aoibhneas (EEV-nass) – Bliss, delight. FILLING OUR SENSES.

This word generally refers to the joy we feel from external things such as music, song, scenery and good weather, and may be contrasted with áthas (AW-hass), which is joy arising from internal considerations.

Baile (BAL-yeh) – Place, home, homestead, farmstead, village, town. WHERE WE COME HOME.

This Irish word is probably the most commonly occurring term in Irish placenames and is usually anglicized as Bally.

Bean an tí (BAN-a-TEE) – The woman of the house. SHE WHO CARES FOR EVERYTHING.

Schoolchildren who lodge with families in Irish-speaking parts of Ireland quickly learn the centrality of this person in their life. Her counterpart, fear an tí (FAR-a-TEE) ‘the man of the house’, may also be encountered. Both terms can also be used to denote ‘the master of ceremonies’ at an event.

Beatha (BA-ha) – Life, livelihood, food, sustenance. THAT WHICH SUSTAINS US.

One of the uses made of this Irish word is in salutations, such as ‘your life and your health to you’. It also occurs in a surname meaning ‘a son of life’, one variant of which has given us the anglicized form Macbeth, as found in Shakespeare.

Blas (Bloss) – Taste, flavour, accent. BEAUTY THROUGH TASTE.

This Irish word is used in a proverb that translates as ‘a small amount is tasty’, a notion perhaps better suited to a country like Ireland than the concept that ‘bigger is better’. The word can also be used of speech – one says in Irish that there is a lovely flavour on a person’s speech if their accent is good.

Bó (Boe) – Cow. PARTNERSHIP IN NATURE.

The cow has been central to Irish rural life for many centuries and the Irish word for it occurs as an element in many place and river names. Looking up at the stars, the Milky Way is called ‘The Way of the White Cow’ in Irish.

Bua (BOO-a) – Victory, talent, virtue. CARRYING THE DAY.

One of the sayings in which this Irish word is used may be translated as ‘Bring victory and a blessing!’, in other words, ‘Best wishes!’

Cara (KA-ra) – Friend. OUR CONNECTION TO ONE ANOTHER.

This Irish word occurs in the quintessential way of addressing someone at the beginning of a letter – the formula may be simply translated as ‘O friend!’

Ceol (Kyol) – Music, song, vigour. THE RHYTHM WITHIN US.

This word conjures not only music but the conviviality that is a central element to Irish life. The idiom ‘you are my music’ essentially means ‘Bravo!’

Comhaltas (COAL-tas) – Co-fosterage, friendship, membership. LEARNING TOGETHER

This word is used in the title of the Irish traditional musicians organization Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (COAL-tas KYOAL-tory AY-ran) ‘Association of Musicians of Ireland’, which is very often referred to, by way of a blend of the first two words, as Ceoltas (KYOAL-tas).

Comhar (Core) – Combined work, mutual assistance, partnership. THE POWER OF WORKING TOGETHER.

Originally meaning co-operative ploughing between neighbours, this Irish word now evokes the general notion of co-operation and shared work.

Comhluadar (CO-loo-der) – Company, family. THE HARMONY OF BEING TOGETHER.

This Irish word primarily describes convivial company, namely people conversing pleasantly together, but may also refer to family.

Craic (Crack) – Entertaining conversation, high-spirited fun. THE SERIOUS WORK OF PLAY.

Although originally a borrowing from Middle English, this word has been borrowed back into the English of Ireland in its Irish-language spelling, and is felt to denote a uniquely Irish variety of boisterous fun.

Dáil (DAW-ill) – A coming together, a consultative gathering. A MEETING OF MINDS.

This word can denote a tryst or a meeting of various sorts but is best known now as the title of the principal chamber of the national parliament, Dáil Éireann (‘the Assembly of Ireland’) or simply the Dáil.

Dathúil (DA-hoo-il) – Good-looking. A PLEASURE TO THE EYES.

This Irish word literally means ‘coloured’ or ‘colourful’, and is used to describe beauty and comeliness of appearance.

Dóchas (DOE-hass) – Hope. BRINGING FAITH TO THE FUTURE.

This Irish word conjures a sense of trust, belief, confidence and optimism, and is used in the title of a number of Irish organizations and institutions.

Draíocht (DREE-oct) – Magic, enchantment. THAT WHICH IS UNSEEN.

This Irish word for magic once specifically denoted the secret lore and arts of the druids of pre-Christian Ireland and Celtic society.

Dúchas (DOO-hass) –  Birthright, heritage, native place, innate quality. THE DRIVE WITHIN .

This Irish word sums up what we are born with. One of the many proverbs in which it occurs translates as ‘instinct is stronger than upbringing’.

Éire (AY-ra) – Ireland. OUR ISLAND HOME.

The name of the country. The English form ‘Ireland’ derives from it and the poetic form ‘Erin’ is based on its dative and genitive forms Éirinn and Éireann. The land-goddess of the country had Éire as one of her names in medieval tradition, and writers represented Éire as one of three sisters, the others being Banbha (BAN-va) and Fódla (FOE-la), who also appear as personifications of the country, and are occasionally encountered in Modern Ireland in titles etc.

Fadó (Fodd-Oh) – Long ago.  WHAT CAME BEFORE.

This Irish word is used in a variety of phrases that can be used to begin a folktale, and corresponds to the English ‘Once upon a time’.

Feis (Fesh) – Feast, celebration. REJOICING TOGETHER.

Etymologically, this denotes the act of spending the night, especially with another  person, hence ‘espousal’, and by extension was used of a festival held in honour of the marriage of a king, including symbolic marriage to the sovereignty goddess. The most famous of these in early Ireland was the feast of Tara. The word is now generally used with reference to festivals or competitions of music or dance.

Fios (Fiss) – Knowledge. KNOWING AND UNDERSTANDING.

If you want to say you know something in Irish you say you have its knowledge, namely knowledge of it. If you leave out the ‘its’, the sense is ‘prophetic knowledge’. The word is used in the title of Geoffrey Keating’s monumental history of Ireland (1634), which translates as ‘A foundation of knowledge about Ireland’.

Flaithiúil or Flaithiúlach  (Fla-hool, Fla-hool-ock) – Generous, princely. THE GIFT OF GIVING

This word, which is still often used in the English of Ireland, contains the element flaith ‘lord’, who in medieval times was expected to be munificent. Nowadays, generosity is not confined to the upper echelons, and it may be noted that Ireland was ranked the most generous country in Europe and fifth most generous in the world in the World Giving Index 2013.

Foinse (Fwin-sha) – Fountain, spring, source AT THE BEGINNING

This evocative word was used as the title of an Irishlanguage newspaper, which is currently only available online.

Gael (Gale) – An Irish person, a Scottish highlander THE ESSENCE OF IDENTITY

This word speaks to the shared heritage of Ireland and Scotland – and indeed to our more distant Celtic cousins, the Welsh, as the word itself is thought to derive from the Welsh word gwyddel ‘raider’, a sense which resonates with the fact that our patron saint, Patrick, was abducted as a slave from Britain in the fifth century.

Gaisce (GOSH-ka) Weapons, feat (of arms), bravado AT OUR BEST

This word is used as the title of the President’s Award, Ireland’s national challenge award earned by young people between 15 and 25 for participating in several activities, in which context it is best translated as ‘great achievement’.

Inis (IN-ish) – Island THE LAND SURROUNDED BY WATER

No longer the common Irish word for ‘island’, this word survives mostly in names, such as Inis Fraoigh (‘Heathery Isle’, anglicized Inishfree), County Sligo, made famous by the poem ‘Lake Isle of Innisfree’ by William Butler Yeats. The word occurs also in the old appellation Inis Fáil, a poetic name for Ireland, a term that was used in a speech by US President Bill Clinton in Dublin in 1995.

Fáilte (FALL-tcha) – Welcome OPENING UP WITH ENTHUSIASM TO THOSE WHO APPROACH

This Irish word, originally meaning ‘joy, bliss, happiness’, occurs in a traditional salutation which translates as ‘a hundred thousand welcomes’.

Leannán (LAN-awn) – Lover PERFECTION IN OUR HEARTS

To say that love is blind in Irish, one says ‘a lover sees no fault’. This was one of the words used by the professional poetic class in medieval times to metaphorically describe their noble patrons.

Meitheal (MEH-hull) – Working party JOINING OUR EFFORTS TOWARD A SHARED GOAL

This Irish word refers to the tradition of a group of neighbouring farmers coming together for a number of days to reap corn, pick potatoes, etc. No pay was involved but the recipient of the help was expected to provide hospitality.

Meas (Mass) – Estimation, opinion, esteem, respect A SENSE OF GRAVITAS

This Irish word is still encountered in the English of Ireland. ‘They have great meas on him’, for instance, means ‘they have great regard for him’. It is also used in a formula for signing off a letter, namely Is mise le meas (ISS-MISHa-leh-MASS), which translates as ‘It is I, with respect’, and which may be seen occasionally in the letters pages of English language newspapers in Ireland.

Misneach (MISH-nock) – Courage, spirit, hopefulness PUSHING FORWARD THROUGH UNCERTAINTY

This popular word occurs in a proverb meaning ‘The man of courage has never lost’, in other words, ‘fortune favours the brave’. The word itself seems to have the effect of adding encouragement to a conversation when introduced.

Muiceanach idir Dhá Sháile  (MWICK-in-ock-idder-gaw-haw-lya) – A hog-backed hill between two arms of the sea IDENTITY IN A NAME

This west of Ireland placename is impressive in both its original Irish form and in its anglicized dress, Muckanaghederdauhaulia, a form which appears in Georges Perec’s 1978 novel, La Vie mode d’emploi (the English translation is entitled Life, A User’s Manual), where it is visited and painted by the hero, who believes it to be the longest port name in the world.

Pléaráca (PLAY-raw-ka) – Revelry, boisterous merrymaking A PARTY YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS

This word speaks to an element of Irish culture that goes back a long time. It occurs in the title of an eighteenth-century poem which was set to music by the famous harper Turlough O’Carolan and translated by Jonathon Swift as ‘O’Rourke’s Feast’. It begins: O’Rourke’s noble fare / Will ne’er be forgot / By those who were there / And those who were not.

Plámás (Plaw-mawss) – Flattery, soft talk, cajolery A FEW SWEET NOTHINGS

This is the art of flattery, Irish style. It may sometimes involve empty praise but it’s still nice to be on the receiving end of it.

Saoi (SEE) – Wise and learned person WISDOM THROUGH INSIGHT

Though this word is rightly reserved for the more eminent among us, a proverb reminds us that a saoi is not wont to be without fault, or, to put it another way, ‘Homer sometimes nods.’

Saoirse (SEER-sha) – Freedom, liberty BEING WHO YOU ARE

This word, which expresses a noble idea, originally referred to the privileges enjoyed by the nobility. Nowadays, it is an ideal sought after and expected by everyone and has become popular as a first name.

Scéal (Shkayle) – Story, account, narrative, tale, piece of news, state of affairs TELLING THE TALE

Storytelling – scéalaíocht (SHKAYLE-ee-ockt) – is an art that has always been appreciated in Ireland. Long-windedness, however, is not, and there are several intriguing ways that describe narratives that suffer from this ailment, one example being ‘the story of the eight-legged dog’.

Sceitimíní (SKETCH-a-meeny) – Excited feelings, fits of rapturous excitement BUBBLING JOY

If you are really excited in Irish, you say that these are on you!

Sláinte (SLAWN-tcha) – Health, soundness, completeness MAY YOU BE WELL

This Irish word can be used in various ways when making a toast, one of which is simply to exclaim Sláinte!

Slán(SLAWN) – Health, soundness; healthy, safe GO IN SAFETY

This Irish word can be used in various ways when saying goodbye to someone. One may simply exclaim Slán!, or Slán agus beannacht! (Slawn OGG-uss BAN-ockt), which means ‘farewell and a blessing’.

Sona (SUN-a) – Happy, lucky, fortunate MAY FORTUNE SMILE

The primary sense of this word is ‘happy’ and may be used, for instance, in wishing someone a happy birthday. Its less dominant sense is found in a proverb indicating that luck is largely a matter of opportunity and may be translated as ‘the lucky man waits for the lucky moment.’

Spleodar (SPLYO-dar) – Glee, joy, vivacity, exuberance PLAYFULNESS

One of the many Irish words for fun, this one seems to exude its sense and has been used for the title of a number of organizations and events.

Suaimhneas (SOO-iv-nass) – Peace, tranquillity, quietness, rest CALM COMFORT

This popular Irish word encapsulates the sense of serenity that is much striven for in modern life.

Taisce (TASH-ka) – Store, treasure, hoard THAT WHICH WE VALUE

This Irish word can be used as a term of endearment, as in A thaisce! (a-HASH-ka), meaning ‘My darling!’. It is also used with the definite article, i.e. An Taisce (un-TASH-ka), as the title for the National Trust for Ireland, an NGO with a public interest mandate relating to the environment.

Taoiseach (TEE-shock) – Leader, chief, ruler, prime minister FIRST AMONG US

In origin, an adjective meaning ‘first’, it came to denote a chieftain in medieval times. Nowadays, it is used exclusively as the title of the Irish prime minister.

Uachtarán (OOK-ter-awn) – President ONE WHO RISES THROUGH EXCELLENCE

This word contains the element meaning ‘cream’, that which rises to the top.

Uisce (ISH-ka) – Water THE SOURCE OF LIFE

Something which seems to fall from the sky endlessly in Ireland. Naturally, it has captured the Irish imagination. Its flowing underground has given rise to a metaphorical term for ‘intrigue’. Uisce beatha, ‘the water of life’, was originally anglicized to usquebaugh and variants thereof, and later shortened to ‘whiskey’.

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#language #favorite #gaelic #irish #could be useful for #one word spells