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emoangel44 · 7 months

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i think the thing that makes people mischaracterize and completely miss the point of chara is that theyre written to be two very different things concurrently that dont really mesh together.

from what we know concretely about chara as a character, they were a very mentally ill child and complicated person who simultaneously hurt and helped people around them, who held both a lot of love and hate in their heart. they are fairly vague but also have specific character traits such as liking chocolate and filling up water glasses to the brim to maximize efficiency. they take speaking patterns from toriel and an interest in gardening from asgore. if you believe in the narrachara theory, they even have a character arc that changes depending on the route you take. they are inarguably a character who haunts the narrative due to their decisions in life having lead to tragedy that shapes the very plot of the game inextricably; and arguably a character that haunts the narrative and shapes the story much more literally in being a conscious force and companion that accompanies our journey.

at the same time, chara isnt treated as a character at all and is instead a meta-narrative device meant to act as an in-universe player stand-in. in this way chara isnt actually a person with character traits, but a vehicle for toby to provide commentary about the people who play video games. they are a concept that represents the state of thoughtless exp grinding. in the no mercy route their main purpose is to be a reflection of you and your mindset, even more directly than flowey. the reason theyre named after you is because, for a number of aspects in the game, they are supposed to be you; with no notable separation like there is with frisk.

this problem also heavily applies to frisk, for who there is an effort to separate their identity from yours at the end of the pacifist route but who still ends up with no real character traits of their own. people compensate for this by using black-and-white thinking; which results both in assigning frisk and chara a sort of "good-and-evil" dichotomy leading to their early fan interpretations, and in thinking that frisk and chara can only be either fully fleshed out characters or mindless player inserts leading to people favouring option one and basically ignoring the player as a concept except to occasionally use it as a generic big bad.

i think toby prioritized meta-textual implications over actual textual characterization for the human characters in undertale. this left chara as a character feeling unclear, unfocused, and incongruent due to them trying to be several things at once with no real through-line; and frisk as a character feeling practically non-existent outside of being a vessel. there are effectively two different charas in undertale, the character and the plot device, which makes it hard to talk about them as one consistent whole. i think this is why in tobys second game hes been putting such a focus on kris as a character and their separation from the player, as to improve on what he didnt properly touch on in undertale.

#undertale #chara dreemurr #frisk #btw i love chara to death they are super important to me but i think its necessary to acknowledge that their character writing is flawed #and i think undertale is a beautifully written masterpiece but that doesnt mean everything was handled perfectly #especially since it was written by basically just one man working on his first major project #analysis

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replicasoul · 9 days

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💛 - if you are comfortable sharing, what is your headcount? do you keep track of it? / 📼 - do you have any non-human alters? if yes, which species are the majority of them? / 🌱 - do you have a headspace? if yes, describe it! if no, do you want one?

finally getting around to these 💛 - honestly No Idea at this point. there are about 5-7 ppl who front super regularly. We Think. there might be more, its hard to tell. there are definitely More who likely front less often and are more like. internally-inclined? idk how to put that. but we havent actually taken the time to do any sort of Count. and i feel like it could fluctuate wildly over time (it has before). so Who Knows. mayb we should start that 📼 - literally none of the members of our system identify as like. Human. all of us have weird kin shit going on that is EXTREMELY prevalent for us in terms of identity/gender stuff, but which we pretty rarely Actually talk about. one of the things that complicates this, though, is that while there are Patterns that we have wrt what forms/kin things/etc each system member Tends to gravitate towards, none of those are set in stone and All of the 'usual' things span multiple 'species' or whatever you want to call them. so like. we have a lot of yknow. forms/gender/kin stuff that are Robots, Object Heads, Monsters, Aliens, Objects In General (especially living swords or machines), Furries, Plushes, Pooltoys, Balloon Dogs, Cryptids, Suits (think like. lethal company employees or HUNK from resident evil), etc. etc. etc. etc. and different system members might stray more towards some of those forms than others, but its honestly all over the place and is really confusing to keep track of. which is part of the reason we rarely talk about kin stuff at all (the other big reason being shame/embarrassment, but thats a different issue) but essentially it boils down to 1. figuring out who the fuck is even fronting 2. figuring out what form or kin or w/e that person is feeling like and both of those can switch multiple times even on a single day so the short answer i guess is: none of use ID as human In The Slightest, but as for What we are, its fucking complicated 24/7

🌱 - yes, but its been something thats been a lot fuzzier as of recent, and we generally feel less-inclined to try and mess with it these days (always feels like a waste of time, even though it can be helpful; it used to be) our headspace has Weird mechanics and is weirdly consistent. we've always been pretty naturally good at like. mapping/figuring out Physical Spaces and such, so i guess that makes sense, but it's been wild to describe it to other plural folks w/ headspaces and have them essentially go "no mine isnt like that at all, what the fuck" we have actually based a couple of different writing projects around it (Prismic Sanctum and Oubliette specifically, both are older projects not currently updating, but still worth a potential read) and continue to mess with it as a worldbuilding concept here and there if i had to boil it down: it's a massive collection of various areas that are all in a consistent layout, that could be mostly mapped out with cardinal directions. so like, if you travel North from Area A, you end up in Area B. you will Always end up there. same thing with traveling through doors, etc. some spaces are vague about distance (like the forest between the mass of highways hanging over a void and the big ashen wasteland; traveling through it has different, inconsistent travel times) but Directions are pretty much always set in stone, even then. physical space also doesnt always make sense. you may go to the 2nd floor of a 4-story apartment building, find a trapdoor in an apartment, go up into it, and end up in a castle that cant physically exist at the same time as the apartment building. but, that trapdoor will ALWAYS lead to that place, so locations are just about Always consistent the type of locations also vary wildly. often theyre either places that are possible in the real world but a bit Off (like an elementary school where gravity outside/on the playground is reversed so you can fall into the sky, or a mansion where the physical space is larger or smaller in comparison to you depending on what doors you walk through), or, theyre entirely surreal spaces that are completely impossible (like the aforementioned clump of many highways suspended over a black void that are lit by yellow streetlights, or the basement thats several miles wide with varying ceiling heights, or the motel where every room leads to some different, impossible space) it can be genuinely fun and interesting to """""Explore""" it, even though i know its just our brain generating all the weird spaces. its like one of those homemade TTRPG games that you play by yourself, where even though a Lot of it is coming from your own imagination, its still fun to mess around with

#ask #asks #headspace #DID stuff #this stuff is honestly also rly embarrassing to answer #bc we RARELY talk about the DID stuff so it feels like something where some random follower/mutual will find out and just be like #'oh huh. theres something Wrong with you' and bail #also the destructive force of Feeling Deeply Ashamed And Guilty For Sharing Any Personal Details/Interests Ever but thats a constant #but idk. i hope ppl find it interesting at least

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saturniade · 1 year

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was brushing my teeth yesterday and thinking about dnd orcs / fantasy racisms.. wrote a lot and im not sorray!!

it’s wild and interesting to me that between the two races introduced in dnd as playable (in 5e books beyond player’s handbook), kenkus are the ones described (in Volo at least iirc) as literally cursed to not have any creativity and to be able to only copy (parrot!) whatever is around them -- which i think is flavored as Kenkus Are Great At Making Copies but should also imo mean that Kenkus Believe Whatever Everyone Else Says and Are Extremely Prone To Being Lied To And Biased bc NO CRITICAL THINKING -- while the orcs are like. made by gods to be violent or whatever? and they just choose to embrace the killing and hate and slaughtering apparently EVEN THO they can think and learn and change their ways? and some of them are literally explicitly exceptions to the violent brutal stereotype!!!

and yet ORCS are THE titular enemy of dnd. even tho they are a much more uh conscious/mindful/potentially civilised race than for example the kenkus. and i feel bad for them lol cause the orcs keep being traditional Disposable Evilguys in dnd beginning from ye olde adnd times (when honestly enemies were made in a simpleminded ways of random mishmash of folklore, media and whatever sounds cool) which were in turn inspired by lotr’s “orcs are like evil magic slop things or whatever dont think about it”. and now 5e is trying to be more inclusive and mindful about Killing A People Cause They Were Born GREEN!!! and tries to stray away from fantasy racism and “evil races” introduced to its core world like 50 years ago. but still it is IN THERE...

i mean for example it’s weird to me bc i recently played a published dnd 5e module where you fight orcs a lot of time. and in another published module which takes place in another world we play with a half-orc who experiences 0 discrimination :| and uuugh these for the lack of a better term double standards against A PEOPLE? is horrible the more i think about it lol.

i think that dnd (if not The Official Setting than the DMs in their own worlds) should either make orcs, like, either explicitly non-civilised/non-selfaware/non-conscious monsters with the intelligence of an ape at most. or do the opposite & get rid of ALL fantasy racial prejudices concerning the orc race... idk man... the kenkus have it fucking easy! i mean those guys are more than anyone sound like they can be like divinely/naturally “programmed” for evil cause they don’t have critical thinking as i mentioned. and i haven’t encountered any texts that talk about orcs being literally unable to change their ways because of divine/magical reasons or whatnot. theyre just evil just because!!

and i havent even started with the DROW and DEEP GNOMES and ALL THAT STUFF? and other "bad races” that exist solely to allow the players to be a little casually fantasy racist OR carry out a power fantasy of killing a person with higher cognitive functions and be praised or at least not thrown in jail for it. (and i mean, this scenario!!?? some people who play dnd really just want to have a smarter non-animal/elemental/monster/undead/etc enemy who makes the players come up with an actual Plan Of Attack or solve Puzzles or otherwise give the players the ability to demonstrate their tactical abilities / intelligence! and i think thats a fine power fantasy to have! i just hate that sometimes in these cases instead of coming up with wholeass villians with motivations DMs just go Uhhhhh Ok Why Should I Invent A Politically Correct Bike. Go Fight People That Are Of An Evil Race Sounds Good!!!)

and that’s what i thought and that’s where i would put my conclusions if i had anything smart or specific to say. but i think in the end the fantasy racism is something that started a long time ago and stuck around so much that it got very ingrained in dnd, or even the expectations that people have from dnd, that it’s hard to either tweak the “evil race” concept in a way which is not very dubious at best, OR turn the concept of orcs/drows/etc around that they are no longer evil at all. what do you think ?????? leave a comment down below!!!! LOL!

#yoo my post #literally such a loaded question which only got worse with time haha curse the lotr influence !!!

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zeravmeta · 2 years

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actually yknow what i do have some thoughts abt this i wanna get out not only abt danganronpa but problematic media as a whole and to start i do think the reason dr is so rife with discourse about being Problematic or not just has to do with the history of how the series came overseas and it does lead to a larger discussion on how to engage with media critically i think. like for dr you had to be the Dankest of Weaboos to get into it when it launched, with a whole ton of overseas non-tld stuff slowly coming in for about 2-3 years before it actually got popular here, and the series' specific style of playing with tropes, stereotypes, the artstyle, all of it just kind of conglomerated into a very recognizable and love it/hate it type series where the fanbase was mainly a whole bunch of impressionable progressive teens, and really just being on this age group with a shifting internet culture is part of whats made dr endure for so long as a memorable series. you had people growing up and out of it you had people being very into it people being very against it and a lot of the discourse surrounding it was infamous bc dr DOES have problematic aspects to it but (and this part is very important) those unfortunate aspects arent what the series is about, and the venom came from trying to reconcile that. i feel like a lot of modern internet culture has this issue with reconciling the problems of their media because so much modern progressivism is performative and the fast nature of this culture means people have to sanitize themselves as much as possible lest they face the horrible loss of internet clout. people either take misplaced embarrasing pride in ~denouncing problematic media~ or are entirely uncritical of media with problematic elements as a way to defend it and generally both of these are unhealthy ways to engage in media, not even mentioning stuff like shipping culture and peoples staunch refusal to engage in media unless they can ship things in it, or how people just run with a shows base concept and make millions of au concepts out of it without really appreciating what the media is about. and look, people are free to enjoy/engage with media in any way they want, if someone wants to make 15 million coffee shop au fluff fics about whatever new movie came out they can do that, but the problem with those mindsets come from when inevitably they step out of that bubble and have to engage with other media critically, it leaves them unprepared, because the fact of the matter is that no media is truly unproblematic. there will always be some failing people can find, whether at fault of the creator or audience, theres no perfect pure piece of media out there, and where this really comes into play is when making the distinction between problematic media, and media with problematic elements. problematic media is stuff like hp or aot, where the inherent racism/sexism/transphobia/etc is a CORE, DEFINING PART of that series’ themes, vs media with problematic elements (like dr), where they’re unfortunate side effects. does it suck that theres racism/sexism/transphobia in dr? absolutely. should it be excused/overlook? no. is the racism/sexism/transphobia what the series is about? absolutely not. another good example i could point too is fate bc anyone who knows even a little about fate knows that, unfortunately, theres these problematic aspects in every corner of the series, but the reason theres such hardcore fans is because those problematic aspects arent what the series as a whole is about. this doesnt annul any discussions on these problematic aspects, and moreover its actually IMPORTANT to have these conversations because theyre a part of critically analyzing media, but overall its a matter of taking the good with the bad. no one is holding anyone at gunpoint to like anything or excuse anything, and you can just Not vibe with a piece of media, but people arent evil for liking media with problematic elements. and really instead of picking fights its important to be able to engage critically with any type of media and make peace with any problematic elements whatever media you may enjoy might have in them by actively being aware of these problems and being open to discussions on these issues rather than taking these criticisms personally and denouncing any criticism altogether. theres absolutely nuance to this btw depending on the vast variety of different media franchises that exist but overall being uncritical of media as a way to either denounce it or defend it is ultimately a losers game for both and only hurts any type of meaningful discussion to be had, especially with the assumption most of the time that liking media with problematic elements = excusing these aspects. please just be critical with media and be kind with people

#anyways just. my 20 dollars on this whole discourse thing.#bc DR is so discoursable but really i think its a microcosm to a larger modern internet problem #bc the discourse on tumblr DID exist but everyones already put their shit to bed #and now these new people are coming in on a post 2016 internet culture and just. the discourse is worse #but yeah just thinking abt the DR DISCOURSE had me thinking on how people deal with problematic media as a whole and like #these are just my messy stream of conciouseness thoughts #hitting post on this knowing it may attract just the worst type of discourse but in for a penny ig

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wickedpact · 3 years

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im taking this fuckign class on ~exploring spirituality~ bc......... i needed a credit and it fit into my schedule, lmao.

and the class is taught by a sicilian roman catholic deacon (? ?? nickycore?) and like. literally its a two hour class where we just talk about religion and our relationship with religion (cries in queer ex-religious person) but yesterday we talked about ~witnessing~ (*cough* prothletising) and the prof actually made a pretty decent point abt it (for a catholic guy) about how offering judgement or trying to '''promote''' christianity is almost never helpful/useful to struggling people and how the best thing you can do both as a christian and as A Fellow Human Being is offer help and support. and thus if/when the topic comes up with that person of 'how/why are you doing this' then give that person the God 411™ if they continue to be open to it. but offering it without being given that opportunity by that person helps no one.

and also how, as a member of the clergy, he's found it counterproductive to talk to his parish about sin, especially 'harmless' sins (the example he gave was sex before marriage), bc doing so just breeds shame, which is again not really helpful to anyone and mostly just alienating for the person at hand.

but that made me think a lot abt nicky and his morality. and how thats portrayed in ttt (Avenging Hand Of God) vs. in the movie (We've Been Offered The Opportunity To Do Good So Lets Do Some Good). and how the former always struck me as. . . .. very very arrogant, to assume the will of God

i mean 'a mistake can be forgiven'. i get it, the guy was an awful human being, but who are yoo ooo ooOUUuu to say what god can and can't forgive? you got the bitch on speed dial or something? (its also worth pointing out that theres no sign in the comic that this guy is religious. what does he care if he broke an oath before god? it makes nicky seem so out of touch for even bringing it up)

and i dont know. i mean... imo at least its clear that nicky is religious In Some Way in both movie and comic verse, but in the movie his ideas are communicated in such a way that they arent inherently 'christian' (note that in the movie nicky never actually invokes the name of god. i dont think he does so in the main comic either. which is a great detail imo! bc andy doesnt believe in god and he doesnt know if nile does! so when he offers up all these comforting ideas about Destiny and Purpose, he does so in a way that non-christians can find comfort in them, even if theyre 'christian concepts' when he thinks of them himself)

but compare that to ttt (and ill give the solo nicky story some slack bc hes talking to other christians there (other christians who use the bible as 'evidence' that theyre doing the right thing) but....... still.)

'but those people really were evil!' i mean yeah. but the point here is nicky using his faith as a weapon of condemnation rather than as a motivator to do good and Spread God's Love (Trademark™). these people are evil not because God(Nicky) Passed Judgement On Them but because they are harming and enslaving people. nicky is killing them not because He Is The Instrument Of Sinners' Damnation but because these people are doing harm, and by killing them nicky is doing good for the people they are oppressing.

nicky reasoning what hes doing here is The Will Of God rather than strategical acts of violence which will have a net positive affect on the world is SUCH a Christian Person Red Flag™ to me. yes these people were all evil but when you reason that you, personally, understand the will of god, and that you, personally, can judge or condemn people based on that will, that opens SUCH an unnerving door in regards to how you see the world (& the people in it) and how you view your own judgement.

i mean,

tldr:

#warning for Thoughts on nicky and religion #(god forbid lmao)

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monarchisms · 3 years

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a large chunk of writers in the ah community (hell a large chunk of the ah community full stop) are white and it shows in how a good sum of them write non-white characters. its an issue in all fanfiction about non-white characters/people written by white people. often theyre reduced make them one-note, one joke, one purpose narrative tools that often rely on weird racist fanon that interprets them as uwu smol beans or total evil bad!!! no matter what role said character might play in the story. theres no development or character study, no room for complex ideas and concepts. its something white writers (myself included) need to unlearn because from learning about this from bipoc whp are creators that i know, ive learnt just how blatant it is (especially when it comes to black people in fandom and the treatment of black characters. thats a WHOLE connected and massive issue).

I'm glad you've pointed this out in the AH fandom because the way people choose still to focus on ryans character instead of the many new personalities and members that have been added in the recent year is incredibly telling about where the focus lies. Racism isn't just the blatant stuff we see on reddit. It's ingrained and needs active work to unlearn and it should be recognised and rectified if spaces like these are going to be made safe for BIPOC who are fans and/or creators.

:) <3

i have a bad habit of putting the most important stuff i want to say in the tags, especially in regards to subjects like racism in fandom, and part of that is due to the fear of being harassed. going forward, i'm going to try to kill that habit, because i've truly been through a lot of shit; from everything with haywood since last october, to the constant, rampant attacks towards mica, fiona, ky, bk, and every other member, guest, and fan of color since i first joined the fandom back in early 2014, and much longer before i even joined. hell, i rarely mention that i'm black because of all this shit. i'm still scared of being harassed, but at this point, i truly have nothing to lose.

frankly, a reason why a decent chunk of the AH fandom, and any fandom in general, are white is because fans of color just don't feel safe. either that, or they're ran out of what they thought was an inclusive, welcoming community due to the harassment they received. in the worst case scenario, that harassment can lead to someone taking their own life, but that's considered too taboo to talk about in a white-dominated fandom space.

the beef i personally have with fanfiction writers in this community is, along with everything you've said, that they treat the real people they're writing about as purely fictional ocs. this is why i believe that people are still writing the vagabond or the mad king or whatever fucking character ryan came up with as if it were their own. they use the bullshit "separate the art from the artist" excuse because they know what they're doing is wrong, but they don't care enough to stop. they just want to find some lame justification to get away with it. it's the same thing when general fans, especially white fans, pretend the blatantly racist comments they spew are totally fine because, in their words, "it's just criticism."

they're too stubborn to change. and i guess, so am i, in a way? despite everything, i'm still here, because no matter what, i'm too stubborn to leave.

#ryan haywood #<- for blacklist #xmicrxn #ask box 360 #and of course #this is okay to reblog

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furvillaconfessions · 3 years

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Rotsy here. There seems to be a lot of hurt feelings going around about this, so I'm going to try to tread carefully, but I'm not going to sugar coat anything either. If you make it all the way to the end of this very long post I have some cool stories to tell you.

I'm not going to pick apart what @/post/634692733521559552/ said just yet, but I would like to address some of the replies, because they felt like a kick in the guts after reading the post of a clearly upset person.

I don’t see it as “gate keeping.” also this spirit is known around in many other cultures not just one. better to respect the ones who asked us to cenceor it over not cencoring it at all. now I got no proof but I see so many people say that they where asked to cencor it there for what I’m doing.

If you don't see it as gatekeeping when a native person asks (begs even) someone to stop talking for them, then you're part of the problem. How do you know they aren't part of the cultures these stories are coming from? We don't. All I ask is that you try to understand where this person is coming from before just outright rejecting what they are saying.

You cant say “literally no indigenous person” like youre getting mad at people speaking for all of us and then you speak for all of us lol. If youre truly to the point of wanting to VOMIT from seeing a censored word, i think you need to take a break from this blog and probably the internet. Nobody is treating us like primitive babies. Theyre respecting our culture when we ask them to.

Atilla, you know I love you, but you should respect the culture of op too, and have a talk with them instead of assuming their disgust is simply because of text on a screen. By saying they need to get off of the internet you're not affording them with the space to share their hurt feelings- which could be the only place they have to share those feelings for all we know. It was wrong to say 'literally no one,' but I believe that came from a place of pain and not malice. This person is clearly hurt and feeling like people aren't listening to their feelings on the subject- which is what many of us feel all the time. (Assuming you are also native because you said 'us' and 'our.' Correct me if I'm wrong.) There's a bigger problem here that's been brewing for a while, and I'd like to band with you to work on this instead of fighting with you, so if you want to pm me, please do.

Now some context:

A massive reason why (was it the only reason? I can't say) the word wendigo/windigo/wintiko/whetiko started getting censored is because individuals on twitter were making posts about how the wendigo is greatly misunderstood and misrepresented (even appropriated) in white dominated culture. These individuals were tired of being harassed by people who refused to give their culture respect (or blatantly insulting them) so they started censoring the word in order to prevent their posts from appearing in the search. The same thing happened on tumblr. A lot of native people are bullied and harassed into silence when we try to speak up about things so we use code words and censoring to stay safe on the internet. This is the reason why we started censoring conversations around the entity- and also the big reason why I abandoned my original tumblr.

The wendigo is complicated. It is not a demon or a boogyman, and it's not part of a religion. Our stories (the choctaw word literally translates to stories, so I don't mean to be disrespectful) are not a religion in the same sense a christian or a muslim has a religion. Religion in the way people are talking about it doesn't exist in native american culture unless, like previously said on this blog, they are christian. It's more complicated than that. Hinduism might be a closer relative in terms of cultural and religious structure, but I'm not hindi so I can't really say for sure. On top of that, various groups have their own interpretation of the entity. Stories of the wendigo are like your grandmother's christmas dressing recipe. Everyone's family has one and they all guard it zealously. Even within the same nations, it can be regarded as a spirit that possesses people who become greedy, or simply an allegory for sexual and/or physical assault from white people. It's not a monster in the same way white european culture has come to understand the monster analogy. This misunderstanding itself is appropriation in the most basic definition of cultural appropriation. This is before we even get into the discussion of how it should be depicted. It's not simply a monster or evil spirit or physiological disorder. The wendigo is so much more than that.

I don't pretend to understand any of the algonquin languages, so the translation is both literally and figuratively lost on me, but this is the best way I can explain it from a dear canadian friend: The creature is greed. Be that just greed or lust or hunger or colonialism, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't even have to be a creature for someone to be consumed by it. Even just what it represents is dangerous and goes against the very nature of our virtues all across the nations.

I posted a very long post here once before, but I can't find it in the search so I don't know if it even exists any more. Basically what I had said in that post is that this whole situation, on all sides, is causing more damage than good. The longer we keep winding in long circles around this topic, and the more people try to sink their teeth in to control the narrative, the more power the wendigo has over us all- literally or metaphorically is up to you. Don't yell at people when they are upset, don't harass people who use the word as a screen name, don't try to speak for everyone, and most importantly, don't disregard an native person's feelings on the subject, even if you disagree with them. We all have to vent, and some people are getting to their breaking point.

If you find someone misrepresenting or appropriating any part of your culture, the best thing to do is to talk to them about it. I know they don't exactly afford us with the same respect, but clearly yelling at people and harassing them is just making them dig in their heels.

If you made it this far, thanks for listening. Here's the cool stories I promised:

As a choctaw person, I have a proposition for people who genuinely like the deer-man monster concept. There's a creature in choctaw stories called kashehotapolo. It's a contraction (sort of) between kashesho (pronounced kah-she-sho) meaning woman, and tapalo (pronounced tah-pah-lo) meaning scream. Together it's pronounced like kah-she-ho-ta-pah-lo. These are deer-human hybrid creatures who live in forests and swamps and scream (like a woman) when hunting (I picture it as sounding like a cougar scream). They have been described having deer legs, the body of a man, and either a wrinkled human face or a deer face, sometimes with antlers. Kasheotapolo are more like tricksters who like to stalk people just for the fun of it, and go out of their way to be creepy. Sometimes they are straight up violent and want to eat people, but most of the time they just like to creep people out. Another one is the deer-legged lady. In choctaw culture it's called the issikashesho (is-see-kah-she-sho) or just deer-legged lady/woman. The cherokee call them anukite (ah-noo-ki-tee; which I think means something like two-faced). These are shapeshifters who turn into beautiful women, old women, deer, deer-legged women, and anthro deer women. They hate rapists and cheaters, and will stomp rapists to death with their deer hooves. There's even a story that adults used to tell their boys at powwow's, that if they saw a drunk girl, don't take her off in the woods to take advantage of her because she could be a deer-legged lady and might stomp you to death. In more recent stories, there are deer-legged people, because women and non-binary people can rape and be raped too. Badass, huh? My proposition is to research these two creatures and start using them for your characters, stories, and usernames instead. They aren't as sacred to us as the wendigo is to the algonquin people, and they are exactly what people misrepresent the wendigo as looking like. I just think it's time to put this beast to rest.

I love you all. Be excellent to each other.

#okay last one on this #submission

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drangues · 3 years

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Sometimes you gotta tear a character in half to make them work properly, you know? And buddy I think you made a typo because I don’t,, I don’t think you meant Kunikida passing away. I’m only mentioning because I got one hell of a case of whiplash and I. Was not expecting that. But! Yeah, Dazai is Dazai and he’ll do nice things in a very Dazai way, that’s just how it be. As for Atsushi and Byakko- I could definitely see it going down like that! (Nyanon, 1/5)

Though I wonder if any other characters would be like that, too... Chuuya, since he has Arahabaki, and maybe Shibusawa as well- Not sure what they’d be, though. (Also akjxrcnjijmISJNXNEI IM,,, I DONT DEAL WITH COMPLIMENTS WELL IM NOT CUTE AAAHHH-) Anyways, the idea of Fukuzawa running an organization like that... As long as it’s underground, I could see it! Since anyone with an ability is just hunted down and killed here, being too public would be dangerous, I think? (Nyanon, 2/5)

I do like the idea of Dazai being the “medic” in a sense though. And the Port Mafia... Hm. Maybe they’re a sort of more extremist, anti non abilitied people organization? And while Fukuzawa and Mori don’t like the methods the other uses, they begrudgingly get along sometimes. I don’t know, I just want the PM and the ADA to be friends. Kinda. But! Moving on to a fluffy Dazatsu Concept (because I love them): Please consider Dazai trying to flirt with Atsushi. (Nyanon, 3/5)

And this is before they get together! So Atsushi never thinks he means it. Sometimes it’s because of his low self esteem (IE- “There’s no way Dazai-san would like me, and doesn’t he flirt with lots of people anyways?”), sometimes it’s because something happens to make Dazai seem insincere or like he’s joking (IE- Someone he slept with once pops out of no one and tries to be all lovey dovey with him in front of Atsushi because they still think he’s attractive or something). (Nyanon, 4/5)

Either way Dazai can. NOT. Catch a break. The poor man just wants to date his coworker, someone help him. (Nyanon, 5/5)

*goes to reread my ask* *sees typo* aha aha noo nyanon omg ur blind im so worried go 2 the Doctor i think ur seeing things Wrong l Ol aHAAHAA-

arahabaki,,,maybe hes a cursed god that was banished as well?? an evil cursed god?? cause chuuya gets pretty fucked UP when he gets corrupted by arahabaki so,,,could be that arahabaki got into chuuyas body willingly just to gain control over him but,,,turns out thats pretty hard to do for him (meanwhile shibusawa looks like the bitch who would make a deal with the devil no offence AGSHJKDS) ACCEPT ME CALLING YOU CUTE

mori and fukuzawa bedrugingly get along cus theres no real “research” on how to tame abilities or what it truly entails since people just view it as striking a deal with the devil and wont believe when ability users say that Hey We Did Nothing Of The Sort (so thats why fukuzawa cant criticise mori’s techniques to taming someones abilities since it kinda works, except it adds on a BIT of trauma, and mood i also want ada and pm to be friends.)

GOD YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I LOVE THE OBLIVIOUS ATSUSHI TROPE ITS SO FUCKING CUTE, dazai will even do a marriage proposal in a form of a pick up line before actually just spelling it straight out for atsushi that he Likes Him. the moment dazai thinks theyre getting somewhere someone of his past flings comes up to him and it all goes down the drain- plus i can certainly see that dazai has a natural flirty personality and atsushi is a bit Too perceptive for his own good when it comes to others

#anon #ask #ask anon #anon ask #nyanon #nyanon ask #bsd

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ivanaskye · 5 years

Text

WoT book 3 reactions!

So you may remember how I recently finished book 2. Now I’m done with book 3! It’s titled The Dragon Reborn, despite barely having a handful of Rand POV scenes.

Thematically, it serves as a reminder that there are two ta’veren—people who get shoved around by fate but also have a good chance of changing the world—OTHER than Rand here. Moiraine had almost forgotten how important they might become, distracted instead by Rand’s literal-chosen-one-ness, and so probably had the readers.

BUT NO LONGER!

Once again, I’m going character-by-character here under the cut (if tumblr can remember how to cut.)

[[MORE]]

Perrin

The largest chuck of the book’s POV is him (though Egwene’s a close second), so we get to know him pretty well

He still Doesn’t Want To Be A Furry, though we finally get evidence that he might be right to be wary—he encounters someone else with his ability who has completely lost his connection to humanity in favor to being a wolf.

Although I’m pretty sure actively trying to walk that line is much safer than pushing it away only to be overwhelmed by it later, but Perrin only makes so many good decisions

See also: yelling in mixed company, RAND’S THE BLOODY DRAGON

despite this, he is typically the smartest of the three ta’veren boys.

He’s real cute when he gets into blacksmithing, I’m glad he has something that makes him happy

Also he just has a Dead Wolf Friend That Always Wanted To Fly But Can Now Fly In The Afterlife as his partner in prophetic, can-totally-kill-you, dreams?? Adorable.

He also absolutely has a girlfriend-to-be now, which was so obviously set up that it feels forced, but also I really like her and also they’re cute together and I ship it. I’m conflicted. Anyway, more about her later.

Egwene

The other MC for this book

I still love her?? How much more is there to say than that.

She’s ACTUALLY UNCOMFORTABLE HIDING THINGS, which is really big mood and also she’s a @sortinghatchats gryffindor secondary.

She’s showing more and more signs of actually being a Dreamer, maybe. Also she gets more vengeful and terrifying each book. IS she going to torture someone to death later in the series. (Don’t answer that, I wanna find out for myself.)

Mat

Oh my gods he’s so stupid

SO STUPID

Almost the first thing he does once he gets healed from the evil dagger, about 1/3 into the book, is think about how he can win a lot of money with His Dice

So I think, “oh, he has loaded dice”

Spoiler: he DOESNT

THEYRE JUST NORMAL DICE

HIS ENTIRE PLAN HINGES ON WINNING A LOT OF GAMBLING WITH COMPLETELY NORMAL DICE

Good thing that he suddenly came about magical good luck.... which he didn’t know about before he made this plan of course

The magical good luck might also have something to do with him being possessed by an ancient general of the country that used to exist in the same place as his hometown??? Though that could just be him in a past life—if people have multiple lives within the same Age, which I’m unclear about.

I think the one smart thing he does all book is think to himself “but when have I ever been sensible?” Self awareness is the first step!

Perrin yelling out to him in a dream “YOURE DICING WIITH BA’ALZAMON!!” has really big “oh god he has AirPods In HE CANT HEAR US” energy. Which is pretty much just the mood with Mat.

When he’s not denegrading all his supposed friends and annoyed that people aren’t grateful to him, anyway :x

Moiraine

It’s actually hitting me how Weird it is that I like her, because Characters Who Hide Things From Everyone are usually my least fav

But I think her POVs early in the series really, really helped—I know she’s doing her best

It’s just that her best does not include the skill of summary

“I can’t tell you because how could I ever condense a lifetime of information into one conversation???” its called cliffnotes Moiraine

Also she has balefire. Which she apparently only learned the last YEAR. When. Inquiring minds want to know!!

Nynaeve

Speaking of balefire, she can do that too

But, like all other channeling, only when she’s angry. Which means that in order to heal people from near-death, she has to rile herself up. “HOW DARE PEOPLE.... PUNCTURE FLESH!”

She’s also like, getting weirdly upset at Egwene for Everything, which, Hm. Don’t Like That

Elayne

IM PROUD TO ANNOUNCE.... A NEW CONFIRMED BRAINCELL!!!

The braincell was confirmed when she looked at the list of the Black Ajah who escaped and determined that its sheer patternlessness was unlikely to be random, and instead was probably *designed* to make it hard to discern any clues just by looking at who left

Mostly in this book she’s just playing the Friend Of Egwene role though

Faile

NEW FRIEND NEW FRIEND

What a legend. She just sees this really weird group of travelers and is like “ah... I treasure hunt (a particular treasure)... they are weird... I must join them to see what happens”

(Chased by literal demon dogs) “oh yeah I’m still sticking around, where will I find a better story than THIS”

“Also my name means falcon, I picked it myself”

Fills a role that was conspicuously empty before: non-channeling combat-oriented woman

Also totally Perrin’s gf now

I guess that’s what happens when you follow someone around on purpose and then he plunges himself into wakeless dreams just to rescue you!!! You kinda get invested!!!

Lan

He’s playing with the concept of having facial expressions now! I’m proud of him

Literally wants nothing more than to die before Moiraine

Again, why is Nynaeve so thirsty for him...?

Loial

Is still just There

Min

Where the heck did she go. I want her back.

Rand

I saved the best (and in this book, most mysterious) for last

Main POV character whom??? “What if... instead I totally lose it from the stress of being the chosen one and having too much magical power to control and basically being filled with everything at all times”

“And leave my friends to just attempt to chase after me for a whole book”

Honestly the early Perrin POV chapters about Rand made me ABSOLUTELY invested in him. The filled-with-power-ness. It’s so good.

His entire motivation this book is to either prove he’s actually the Dragon by getting The Magic Sword, or prove he’s not by dying, and he honestly looks like he might prefer the second option

He does not get the second option

Speaking of that, I had Callandor (the magic sword) pegged as totally-not-Excalibur, but I’m pretty sure Excalibur doesn’t glow like a supernova or warp the fabric of reality, so,

He keeps getting so convinced that he’s killed Satan THIS time, even though there’s 11 more books to go

And yes he doesn’t know how many books he’s in.... BUT he knows some of the prophecies, all of which say that what he just did is only the beginning

Chill on the wishful thinking Rand

You’re in for the long haul

#wot #wheel of time

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auckie · 4 years

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just curious, why/what do you love about goblins so much?

this is such a long answer i didnt mean to type out but anyways its under the cut bc its an essay! sorry!

yknow, ive always liked them a bit but over the past year ive just been nutso about them and im not sure why. i used to hate fantasy! i definitely cycle through SPINs but its hard for me to remember when this one started or like, when i last had it. anyways, i think theyre neat for a lotta reasons!

so there’s definitely a lot to be said about the fact that they have been used in incredibly antisemetic ways! as a jew, i have always had a fascination with the stereotypes used to make characters like shylock and svengali, two infamous, classic portrayals of greedy and devious jews. it’s this weird drive i have to take the bones of these characters (or just the tropes themselves) and craft them into a full, three dimensional person. I like to do this in the abstract with a lot of things and i refer to it as ‘applying physics to the absurd’. it’s the reason im so invested in side characters and humor in narratives, and probably why i am so into who framed roger rabbit! that movie literally takes absurdity, the very concept of it, and asks ‘what if we were to apply real world logic to this?’ Mixing cartoons and murder and then playing it out to the logical end makes for a very interesting and unique mood; it’s a funny but sort of dark movie that a lot of people remember seeing only as a kid, and being vaguely afraid of it. i LOVE that.

wow goblins are a great example of the fucked up jew trope. they try and sorta divert it to a jersey thing, but its pretty blatant what with their greed, obsession with banking and being referred to in canon as ‘grease balls’ and often having the whole jewface thing going on what with the foreheads and balding and noses. thankfully they dont have straight up yiddish accents but yknow, ny/jersey accents are heavily associated with jews so. im not making a stretch here believe me.

theyre not given a lotta attention in the narrative either, used mostly as little plot devices (need a trash mob? need a reason the horde has out of place tech? a quick way to get the player character into some stupid giant robot that will make this quest of killing 100 enemies go a lot quicker?) and for humor. but! they are SO funny and even if not major characters, theres a handful of good ones present in the lore.

so, theyre throwaway jokes, bad stereotypes, and side characters? the PERFECT storm of traits to apply gravity to, in my opinion!

outside of wow, its still pretty much the same. in fantasy, goblins are generally just trash mobs or occasionally big bad guys, which is all fine and fun, but i like when characters, who by no means should be the focus of a story, happens to be the protagonist. its so refreshing and relatable and more interesting to me! its very rare to find media that uses them as an integral part of the story for any reason, let alone a positive one.

ive never been too good at projecting onto main characters. im jewish, latino, probably trans and gay, and like, also just a weird person in general i think, so growing up there wasn’t a ton of media i saw myself in. i was never able to relate to female leads, and male leads were always just standard white dudes so there wasn’t too much luck there. it was easier with cartoons featuring less realistic characters but even then! seeing a sort of…’minority’ group, especially one usually negatively depicted with either racist characteristics or just run of the mill fantasy logic (”these non human, somewhat poc coded creatures are inherently evil! theyre born that way and theyre too stupid to know better and throw spears and live like nomadic indigenous peoples and are bad to the civilized, white eurocentric human and elf populations! go kill them for gold before the pillage and plunder!) is just. its like HEY YEAH OK! its good! i love seeing it! love seeing the little guy represented! its like when the sidekick finally gets his own arch or episode, its always so much more interesting than the hero’s story! even if it’s short and lighthearted. not everything always has to be grave and intense!

but i also hate cheesy over the top soft shit yknow? theres this anime called ‘that time i was reincarnated as a slime’ or some shit, and ive seen pics of how they do goblins and i HATE it so much. i LIKE when goblins are little nasty green men with big noses and ears and no eyebrows who cant read and are twitchy and paranoid and eat rats raw. take THAT and give it weight! what if this gross little man were to get a whiff of the good life, huh? to see human society, and compare it to how he’s lived for all of 8 years in a dank cave where his da got his head smashed in with a rock yesterday– what would that do to this little goblin?

but yknow, i could also just sum this up with the fact that i think theyre really cool and funny and neat. i also GENUINELY think they are so adorable. like, night goblins and skaven from warhammer, goblins from wow, any goblin or little gross dude really– i just honestly think they are so so cute and idk why. the sharp teeth! the green skin and slit pupils! the ears and noses and claws! i think the way people feel about baby monkeys and puppies is how i react to stupid little green dudes. i especially love when theyre like, mischievous and mean and like ready to jump at you and bite you bc that’s how i always feel. like that comic of the guy driving and then he thinks ‘penis’ and hunches his shoulders and smiles REAL nasty.

also, ever since i was little, whenever a character on a cartoon or in a movie was: short, green/blue, had a jersey/NY accent, i just. fucking IMMEDIATELY loved them. i have nooo idea why but i can think of like ten characters who fit at least two of these criteria off the top of my head who i was obsessed with as a kid. snap from chalkzone, bloo from fosters home for imaginary friends, zim, stitch!

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artcanary · 6 years

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1-50

oh my god dude

im gonna put this under a cut bc this is a lot. this is a ride, have fun i guess

1. Your first OC ever?god. its got to be Super Kitty. when i was like … an incredibly small child I used to draw comic strips about this feline caped crusader, who was friends with everyone in the city, and the comics always involved him stopping an evil banana man from stealing money from the local bank. He was paid with donuts for his service to the city. i still remember how to draw him.

2. Do you have a personal favourite among your OCs?i’d get arrested if I didn’t answer this with Bronze, probably… but really, they’re very important to me

3. Have you ever adopted a character or gotten a character from someone else?man, i cant remember! i really dont think i have… P:

4. A character you rarely talk about?there’s loads of characters ive never even posted a single picture of on tumblr, i wouldnt even know where to start asdf

5. If you could make only one of your OCs popular/known, who would it be? bronze is the easy answer, but… i guess that could also go to Servant or Westrin. Servant has a comic project in the works that basically stars him, sort of a series of one-shots about the things he’s experienced, i feel like that would be a good thing to take off and run with. Westrin’s just fun as hell, i love the guy.

6. Two OCs of yours that look alike despite not being related?real talk now… there’s at least five different characters that i refer to as a whole as “bronze-tangential”, who started out as, “what would bronze be like if they were in this world?” and then becoming their own thing within said world because i just get stupid attached

its an epidemic

7. Are your OCs part of any story or stories?nearly all of them, actually. that’s the main reason i make characters, after all! too many to really go into specifics here, again P:

8. Do you RP as any of your OCs? If you do, introduce one of your RP OCs here!not often, but i think Bronze and Westrin are the most common ones. unless playing a character in dnd, or running an npc in dnd counts… then a whole lot more hahaha

9. Would you ever be willing to give any of your OCs to someone else?it depends on the circumstances. i don’t really like the idea, though.

10. Introduce an OC with a complicated design? Westrin’s old getup is a pain to draw, and there was one other design i did that I cant find anywhere… whichever way, i dont often tend to draw super complicated things often

a couple fakemon ive designed though… heheh those can get pretty finicky

11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a “sunshine”? hmmmmmmmm my immediate thought was Eric Silverdale from a comic i was working on a few years ago. hes a darling, i want him to be my friend irl

12. Name an OC that isn’t yours but who you like a lothow could you do this to me i love each and every one of all my friends ocs GOD the first one who comes to mind is @d20-official‘s Smith, whos Bronze’s friend… everyone in that DND party actually

13. Do you have any troublemaker OCs? Rated on a scale from “harmless” to “honestly somewhat frightening”: -Baromet (charming and quite friendly but definitely a kleptomaniac),-Westrin (demigod of bards and travelers), -XEN09 (a nonsense hacker), -Conny (needlessly contrarian and dumb as HELL), -Enza Colie (long fucking story but hes a good-for-nothing), -Hemlocke (mad scientist, chaotic evil), -Iris (AI and hacker, VERY bad), -The Terminus (glitch-in-the-matrix demon, chaotic evil), -and Sydd (the Queen of the Faeries, hopefully the danger there needs no explaining :’D)

14. Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory Mmm… there’s a few of them, most obviously Lent (whose background I did a short comic about). Basically his entire town got eaten by ghosts and turned into zombies, he only barely survived with a sliver of his soul left.

15. Do you like to talk about your OCs with other people?yes, i often discuss storylines and such with friends

16. Which one of your OCs would be the best at biology (school subject)? Probably Bronze’s dad! I don’t talk about him much, but his name’s Devon Reed, and he was a biotech developer specialising in android design.

I often describe him as being something of a reverse Arthur Weasley - a very fatherly scientist fascinated to the moon and back with the concept of magic.

17. Any OC OTPs? having trouble thinking of a lot of them right now, but there’s Eric + Lent & Naiadine + Tailias from Emerald Sigil, Avken + Baromet from my space campaign world, Sydd + Wyvv from my unnamed campaign world, and I’ve been considering Westrin + Servant as an interesting dynamic in Servant’s story

18. Any OC crackships? My character Bismuth and @autistictimeknight‘s oc Eros. Theyre so fucking in love, I love it. Its been awhile but I do still think about them sometimes.

As I recall, Eros is an empath, she can read other people’s emotions. But Bismuth is a robot, and Eros can’t read her. Because of this Eros can let go of her fear of unintentionally manipulating the emotions of her date, which would hold her back from most other relationships.

19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you (and explain why)Hey, meet Bronze! I definitely do not talk about them every five minutes, why would you say that.

Bronze was with me through two of the hardest years of my life so far, and being a DND character they grew with me, both as a fighter and as a person. They were non-binary before I started using those pronouns, they were the first character or person or anything who I fought someone about using the right pronouns for, they make a great icebreaker for if I want to see how someone reacts to non-binary pronouns …

One funny anecdote about Bronze is that when I first made them, their “gimmick” was that they would sometimes glitch out and mess up their speech, mostly because I wanted an excuse not to engage in the roleplaying (which I was very bad at). The interesting thing is that as I got better at interacting with the group, we both grew out of needing it very quickly.

I’m very proud of Bronze.

20. Do any of your OCs sing? If they sing, care to share more details (headcanon voice, what kind of songs they like etc)?Westrin is a bard! His singing voice sounds like Bill Wurtz and these are his theme songs.

21. Your most artistic OCProbably Westrin again, he writes a lot of songs… and Hallux is a game designer?

22. Is there any OC of yours people tend to mischaracterize? If yes, how? I honestly dont know… no-one talks to me about them, haha!

people use all manner of pronouns for bronze, though.

23. Introduce OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would be like?I’m gonna go with Enza for this one. Enza Colie was originally written entirely because I wanted an antagonist for a short starring his sister, Jane Colie. But the more I fleshed out his reasonings for acting how he did and explored his character, the more I realised he’d make an even more interesting character if allowed to have a redemption arc, too.

I just want to state for the record that I was very reluctant to the idea, and he basically dragged his way out of the villain pit entirely of his own accord. I am dubiously proud of him, and also a bit scared.

24. If you could meet one OC of yours, who would it be and why?Probably either Eric (Big Man, Best Friend), Crocus (Mother figure), Reed (Father Figure), Westrin (hed just make a good friend u kno??), or Bismuth (she makes good conversation!)

25. The OC that resembles you the most (same hobby, height, shared like/dislike for something etc?)probably the homestuck fan-troll Hallux, but that’s mostly because they were based on a troll-sona I made awhile ago. They’re a hope/prospit game designer who is small and full of rage and love

oh, and there’s dave! dave’s a superhero speedster, existing in a modern-day superhero version of seattle. theyre idiot, just like me,

26. Have you ever had to change your OC’s design or something else about them against your will? this is an interesting one… i don’t think ive ever had something Bad in a design ive done called to my attention by someone, but I did create my character Servant at around the same time I was first really expanding the diversity of my casts. (since i don’t talk about him often, a little context: he’s a magic spirit creature bound to human form to serve the royal family of the land and follow their orders.)

somehow, younger-and-more-stupid me managed to have the revelation that making this “eternal slave” character literally anything other than a white man, especially as a white author, would be Pretty Not Good. im … thats really, really not something i should pat myself on the back for, but i do consider it one of the biggest bullets dodged in my artistic career so far that i realised that not all representation is good representation so quickly, before i could make that incredibly, incurably stupid mistake.

after that, trying to make sure my characters and their presentations don’t harm anyone pretty much has become a paranoia. i don’t seem to have stepped on any toes yet, but when it inevitably happens, please let me know - i didnt know, and i want to fix it!

27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song? None that I can think of, actually! I don’t really do that often.

28. Your most dangerous OC? god damn it i have no idea!!! is it the terminus? glitch in the matrix god of chaos motherfucker?is it sarle? terrifying calculating scientist with the power of the soul at her fingertips ??? is it ares??? is it athena????? is it petra?????? the gatekeeper????

… actually, the gatekeeper might be it, if “dangerous” just refers to “the amount of raw power it can wield”. the Gatekeeper is a titanic entity that exists in interdimensional multiverse space, and its implied to have the ability to create and destroy entire universe bubbles at will. for what cosmic purpose, no-one knows.

at a more personal scale, though, literally all of the aforementioned characters are pretty bad to run into too.

29. Which one of your OCs would go investigate an abandoned house at night without telling anyone they’re going?god. Mina or Tawn. Tawn is the Indiana Jonesy type and probably dumb enough, but also competent enough not to get into too much trouble there. Mina would probably drag her friends along.

30. Which one of your OCs would most likely have a secret stuffed animal collection? XEN09. No-one knows, because no-one knows xir personal identity. Xe absolutely does, though. It’s less of a secret if you know xir in person, but good luck finding out about it otherwise.

31. Pick one OC of yours and explain what their tumblr blog would be like (what they reblog, layout, anything really)dave just reblogs memes all the time tbh. they like to keep tabs on the ridiculous superhero news going on, and they show human jokes and cat videos to their alien gf. they dont really post or add to posts, but they talk in tags a lot.

32. Which one of your OCs would be the most suitable horror game protagonist and why? i want to say tawn because i literally just realised ive been imagining their voice as sounding like luigi this entire fucking time and i never realised until this exact instant

33. Your shyest OC?probably baromet. they prefer to keep to themself in their hideout, with their collection of shiny things. they don’t really enjoy trying to communicate much, mostly because they expect to get yelled at.

34. Do you have any twin characters?Yes! At least two sets;

- Crocus and Sarle. (x) (x) They don’t exactly have a very well-developed relationship, but they are both quite important to the plot of my campaign world, and they are both very interesting. Crocus is a motherly figure who just exudes friendliness, while Sarle is .. very much not that, a researcher studying very gruesome things and pushing the boundaries of reality.

- Jane and Enza Colie. I haven’t talked a whole lot about either of them here, but I’d rather leave their story to do the talking whenever I get around to it. Essentially, the both of them were intended to do the dirty work for their crime boss family, but Jane ditched to study medicine. Most of the conflict between the two of them comes out of Enza not understanding why she made the choice she did, and coming to understand how he’s been manipulated.

35. Any sibling characters? I can’t really think of any off the top of my head, I should … I should really work on that.

I can talk about Westrin, though. Westrin (a demigod of many things, but namely bards, travel, travelers, and people who are lost) often becomes close friends with mortals, sometimes practically adopting them. These people who consider him family, and people who have received his blessing, are able to use his surname, Brilanta, as their own if they choose. So I guess all of the Brilantas are siblings, at least in spirit.

Oh, and XEN09 has like, seven siblings. Xe is the second-oldest, and least remarkable.

36. Do you have OC pairs where the other part belongs to someone else (siblings, lovers, friends etc)? I already talked about Eros and Bismuth up there a ways in question 18, but I’ll talk about another relationship here. @autistictimeknight‘s character, Nova the Alchemist, is mentor and adopted parental figure to my character Munna. Munna … Munna isn’t a very good apprentice. She tries very hard.

37. Introduce an OC who is not quite human That’s most of them, I’m not quite sure what to say here. Bronze is an android? Bronze again? Westrin? All the aliens ??

38. Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer? man. uh. westrin or jean. or perhaps valencia.

39. Introduce any character you want ??? uhhhHHHhhHHH Lord Brillium is the reigning deity of the Cloud Kingdoms in the other campaign setting I’m working on. They represent light and the quest for knowledge, and spend most of their days in the Cathedral Observatory watching the stars.

40. Any fond memories linked to your characters? Feel free to share!one time bronze flew a hover-bike through the stained glass window in a cathedral blaring all star by smash mouth on their iguana

also one time bronze rickrolled a rakshasa demon and then pulled updog on it like, two minutes later

another time bronze scared off an entire army by pretending to be an automated security system

41. Has anyone drawn fanart of your OCs? If yes, maybe show a picture or two here (remember sources & permissions!)ive got a whole little folder on here from all you blessed people !!!! right now ive got a drawing quinn did of one o fmy characters as my lockscreen

but i think the one i’ll really never ever get over is this piece of Jane, by @rabendraws / @owoltron:

(i bet you thought i forgot about this, dude. dude. think again.)

42. Which one of your OCs would be the most interested in Greek gods? this is kind of a weird question, m, I feel like Bismuth would find learning about the mythos utterly fascinating, as would Tawn.

43. Do you have any certain type when you create your OCs? Do you tend to favour some certain traits or looks? It’s time to confesshaha. uh. i might.

aside from the entire “bronze-tangential characters” thing i mentioned awhile back, I tend to really like designing characters with hair color lighter than their skin color. it just looks so cool man. i love drawing freckles but dont put them on enough characters. i like really curly hair, but also really long and flowy hair. i like drawing triangular body types, and pointy/prominent noses.

44. Something you like about your OCs in generaluhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this is a really vague question. m. m.

45. A character you no longer use?there’s old versions of characters, but a lot of my older ones have been somehow repurposed. I guess there’s Turien, my first-ever DND character, who’s just kind of sitting dead now. Haven’t really done anything with him other than a pretty recent tangential character.

46. Has anyone ever told you that you treat your OCs badly?Not that I can think of.

47. Has anyone ever (friendly) claimed any of your OCs as their child? Im certain it’s happened, but I can’t remember any specific instances.

48. OC who is a perfect cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pureSpring. spring knows nothing of th dangers of the world who is letting them into fights someon eneeds to stop this

(spring roll, hehe.)

49. Which one of your OCs would most likely enjoy memesim not sure what this question is asking since many of my ocs actively enjoy memes including but not limited to westrin, dave, bronze, xen09, iris, and doctor archersen

50. Give me the good ol’ OC talk here. Talk about anything you wanti think. i think im going to pass on this one. i gave you the good old oc talk. your damn turn, yall:

if you have any questions about any of these guys feel free to shoot one at me!

thats all from me im tired and its one am. techskylander you absolute madman

#yetanotherOCmeme #WHY #personal

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tumblunni · 7 years

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Cathedral Tower Defense Game character ideas and stuff so far! I’ve talked about some of these before but I wanna just compile it in summary form, and try and get thinking about more to add. It’d be so cool if I could make it like an early suikoden game where you have the world’s biggest party selection! Or at least have that equivelant but with recruiting shopkeepers and townbuilders and stuff.

So... long post ahoy!

* Protagonist (Sir/Lady/Master Amity) Your selectable renameable main charrie! A badass disabled veteran who lost their family in the war and ended up defending this cathedral town of strangers in order to prevent another tragedy. They’re generally distrusted at the beginning, have a lot of doubts about what philosophy they should take in life, and its up to you to decide how the story plays out. But no matter what, this protagonist is a cool grumpy comically-serious nerd gramp! (or gran or etc) i really REALLY like the idea of changing them to be an older veteran character, it just works so much better and seriously WHY are there like zero grandma protagonists in anything ever? I will vow to make this one as amazing as possible!!

* Florin Generally supportive yet sassy and lazy deutorogonist helper guy. He’s your first ally in this world and maybe kind of a tutorial, lol. Even though he’s a total cinnamon roll, he’s as distrusted as you because he’s a demon. Even the protagonist kinda wonders why on earth he wants to help them, and whether he’s some sort of enemy spy... His elemental realm is over plants, and he has no greater joy than taking a nice nap amoungst the flowers~

* Malachi At the moment the only fully developed idea I have for another party member, aside from Florin. Though I’m not sure if I want him to be optional or mandatory? In either case when you recruit him he’s the catylyst for a lot of character development for Florin, and they end up becoming like a lil adopted family ^_^ Anyway, Mal is a very young and adorable demon child that the party finds sealed away beneath some ruins. Precociously innocent, he seems unaware that he’s become a monster. I mean, everyone eats rocks, right?

* Admiral Chiffon (wip name) A major recurring enemy turned ally! Chiffon starts off as just the eccentric comic relief member of the opposing army, kinda harmless and kinda entertaining. And you might pity her quite a bit, because her coworkers treat her like absolute shit. I basically invented this character because I got sick of seeing the ‘ha ha flambouyant gross comic relief villain’ thing in recent fire emblems, and wondered what it would be like to have a villain whose LGBTQ status is treated as a sympathising aspect instead, leading to a redemption when she finds people who dont treat her like those damn writers treated everyone :P So yeah, she’s a transgender woman who faces a lot of predjudice in her career, and I hope I can make it very heartwarming when she finds true friendship with our heroes! And also I hope it can make the non-comic-relief villains seem extra disgustingly unforgiveable after you see how badly they treat their own teammates. Her personality is gonna be kind of a greedy merchant sort of person, but what if that archetype was a good character instead. She remains sassy and greedy even when she’s been redeemed, i like a good ‘ol vice-filled hero yknow! Character development is my jam! Also all i know about her design so far is that I think I want her to have stylishly skunk striped hair, to represent greying streaks and all. I was imagining her as the token grandma of the cast before I decided to age up the protagonist lol

* Currently unnamed church matron duo, aka Timon And Pumbaa One of my early-ish undeveloped concepts for non-battling town members. These two are florin’s equivelant, they’re the town workers you start off with before the game really starts. I’m thinking they’d be like nuns/priestesses that worked at this place before you came along, and you have a bit of a rivalry here because they pragmatically know they need you to defend the stronghold but they’re also very wary of you. The ‘timon’ one would be the main one who actually holds all these opinions, a sort of crusty matronly mega paranoid lady who thinks you’re gonna backstab us all at any moment! And she’s some sort of super scary chronic sufferer of resting bitch face, even though she sees herself as the ultimate arbiter of justice everyone else thinks she’s terrifying. Just imagine her trying to hug a baby that just cries as if it saw the face of death! Life sucks when you’re a lawful good character stuck in a chaotic evil character design! And then her partner is a funloving pumbaa-esque team chef, who’s actually kinda too loving and innocent to ever distrust anyone. But she always just falls in with whatever her boss says, its like a pinky and the brain situation. Oh and I’m already kinda preemptively shipping these two before I’ve even finished designing them XD

* Depression jail janitor Starts as a prisoner you take from one of the enemy raids, but he ends up winning your trust and joining your team. Entirely against his will! he’s a chronically depressed man who was forcibly drafted into the evil army even though he doesnt believe in their cause, but now he feels like he’s unforgiveable anyway. So he spends all his time trying to convince you that he is indeed pure evil! But the more humble he is, the more everyone believes in his genuine kindness. Alas! It doesnt help that he also kinda has chronic hero syndrome and cant resist helping out in every possible way. So that is how a prisoner ended up becoming the one in charge of the jail keys! And he’s like Everyone’s Dad. (Even the people decades older than him...)

* Former bully powerful friend The one other main child character, cos I wanted Malachi to have some friends. They start off at odds and she initially joins in with everyone bullying him, cos she wants to fit in. But he ends up helping her deal with her insecurities and realise she was only resenting him for being ‘weak’ because she saw herself reflected in him. or rather, the traits in herself she’d tried to hide to make everyone like her, even if it meant joining in with bullying and only having horrible asshole friends. So she sacrifices her popularity with the main clique in order to defend malachi, and ends up finding her first true friend with him. They’re better off being outcasts together! So yeah cutie malachi will have some sort of stronge deliquent friend with a heart of gold, and I’m not sure yet whether she’d be playable or not? i kinda feel like its not right to have someone that young join the party unless they have magic powers to protect them. So maybe she can fight by teaming up with malachi, actually? like, she rides atop his stone dragon golem form and supports with ranged weaponry or something. or just acts as an advisor? I liked the idea I had that there would be a buffs-only type of magic stone, and people could cast it on themselves to have enhanced senses at something or other and improve their supporting skills. Like the protagonist would maybe have an eyesight-enhancing buff crystal to act as a sniper scope!

* Rival warrior buff teen person Very undeveloped cos I just came up with them ysterday, lol! I’m thinking possibly make this character female just cos this archetype doesnt get to be female all that often. Kind of a draco malfoy type snooty rival, but with a more sympathetic side and ultimately you do become friends. Theyre just a simple ordinary citizen who was doing the best they could to protect their family before you came along, and now kinda resents the fact you’re all BETTER THAN EVERYONE and taking their job as guardian! They have a lot of anxieties over the fact they struggled so hard to become self-trained and now you’re here making it look easy. So the plot has a general theme of believing too much in ‘destiny’, and that some people are just born with talent and you’ll never succeed if you werent lucky enough. This character started off trying to act like theyre inherantly blessed with that talent, because they’re terrified that they aren’t... Oh and I think once you befriend them I think they might be like a ryuuji/junpei type of friend? But without the weird sexism and homophobia randomness that persona 4 threw onto yosuke. Just like a bit of a cheerful cliche ‘bro’ who isnt all that interested in books and likes to be all ‘cmon do it for the vine’. A good polar opposite to the protagonist who could have some cute interactions!

* Rival warrior’s chilled out older sibling figure of reasonableness Every rin needs a yukio! I think they’d be maybe a bartender or owner of a restaurant or something? Just some sort of super chilled out job where they act as an agony aunt to their customers, the place is very popular because of the great service. (Though also everyone is kinda like ‘yo you dont have to run it all by yourself, yo you dont need to give us bonus extra special treatment, seriously get some sleep dude!!’) But anyway they’re this perpetually relaxed super kind soul who’s always the reasonable response to their lil sib’s ohohoho angry rivalness. But the bad side to it is that they’re also a lil depressed and apathetic about their own life, they’re kinda like someone who really lives for their family, in a bad way. They’ve been like a single parent to their sibling because they had kind of a tragic backstory, and big sib has just grown too used to sacrificing everything in order to help other people and never taking care of themself. And they have a lot of trouble even.. feeling emotions. The outwardly chilled and happy-go-lucky facade covers up just a void of nothing but self hate and emptiness. They feel like they’d already been tainted by the way their abusive parents used to treat them, its too late for them and all they can do is try and save other people from falling down the same path. Oh, and I think maybe the two siblings are actually immigrants from the villain country? Like, when older sib ran away from the abusive family they ended up here, and now they try and keep it secret, to the point that even the younger sibling doesnt know where they were born. Basically I just wanna have a LOT of different subplots showing how the ordinary citizens of this country aren’t all evil just because their government are the bad guys in this story. And especially covering topics like characters who’re part of that ethnicity and get treated like they’re inherantly terrorists even if they were born and raised in a completely different country!

#cathedral tower defense

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kayawagner · 5 years

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The Five Minute Bard: Resources to Create Sharp Concepts in No Time Flat

Image Courtesy of Pixabay “I’d like to teach the world to sing, but they’re all tone deaf.”

If your table is anything like mine, bards are primarily known for romancing their way out of combat encounters, only to have to then combat their way out of those romance encounters when plans inevitably go awry. There’s nothing wrong with that if your group enjoys following the exploits of your own personal pratfalling Mata Hari, but bards have a lot of potential to deepen gameplay in other ways. This article explores a few ways that bards can uniquely add to your game.

Musical Plot Lines

All over the world, since long before the advent of widespread literacy, song, poetry, and performance have been used to remember the history of nations and heroes; there’s no reason why in games such epics (and the rascals who know them well) can’t provide context for the rivalry between royal families, hints about the weaknesses of an ancient evil stirring after centuries of slumber, or even direct instructions as to how to make it through a trapped dungeon. Fantasy writers from J. R. R. Tolkien all the way to George R. R. Martin and N. K. Jemisin continue to use ancient stories, songs, and phrases in this way to flesh out the worlds of their novels (in particular, Jemisin’s Stone Lore could drive an entire campaign just by itself).

Songs are great for this purpose, as they can be scattered earlier in a campaign (or even a session) in the background, providing foreshadowing or clues for players without necessarily being obvious about doing so.

…[songs] can be scattered earlier in a campaign (or even a session) in the background, providing foreshadowing or clues for players without necessarily being obvious about doing so.

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For a non-fantasy example, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson did a great job with his “Dead Man’s Chest” song. The few lines from the novel were later expanded into a poem/song by Young E. Allison, and it’s well worth listening to the whole tune if you ever need to populate a sunken pirate ship with a bunch of undead with distinct and gruesome wounds.

As much fun as Treasure Island is though, my favorite source for musical inspiration will always be the Roud Folk Song Index. This catalog of English-language folk songs has tens of thousands of entries tailor-made for the fantasy gaming table, though many of the songs have topics and language that you may not want at your table. These songs have the advantage of usually being just obscure enough for your players to not already be familiar with them, but omnipresent enough to be vaguely familiar — songs as recent and popular as “The Streets of Laredo” and “Scarborough Fair” descend directly from entries in this index.

…songs as recent and popular as “The Streets of Laredo” and “Scarborough Fair” descend directly from entries in [the Roud Folk Song Index].

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If you want to jump in right away, my favorite songs from the early list are “Three Ravens/Twa Corbies,” “Two Sisters/The Wind and Rain,” “Cruel Lincoln,” “The Elfin Knight,” and “The Female Highwayman.” Any one of these songs can pretty much be dropped into a campaign unchanged to add a subplot or additional character, and it’s well worth diving into them — at the end of this article are a couple of resources to help you do so if you want.

Tactical Cacophony: the Music of Battle

In most if not all tabletop games, bards are simultaneously performers and magic wielders, capable of turning the tide of battle with either their music or their spells. This role is well-supported by old legends about bards, though like most low-level bards in modern games, apparently they spent much of their time insulting rats to death.

…like most low-level bards in modern games, apparently [mythological bards] spent much of their time insulting rats to death.

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For a more grounded approach, you can also consider bringing in more martial applications of music. Horns, fifes (single-tube pipes), drums, and bagpipe music are all well-known accompaniments to ancient battles, providing everything from marching cadence to tactical signaling. These real-world examples can be a great illustration of and justification for Bardic Inspiration and similar powers for those groups that prefer to have detailed or evocative descriptions of these powers in action.

More spectacularly, bards may have access to instruments that serve a secondary function as weapons (or vice-versa). Using real world examples, bards could be familiar with a shakuhachi or a musical bow. The shakuhachi is a nearly two-foot-long flute with a heavy, bulbous tip. Played as a form of meditation, by some accounts, this instrument could also be used as an effective bludgeoning weapon, making it easier to smuggle into areas where characters are expected to disarm.

Musical bows are either dedicated instruments or converted hunting bows that are also a stringed percussion instrument with the addition of a resonator.

Of course, if your DM is more whimsical (or forgiving), bards always have the option of a flamethrower guitar or a guitar shotgun (if your group allows the guitar shotgun, let me know if you’re looking for a player).

Extra Credit: Bringing Custom Music to the Table

Okay, to be clear, obsession with bards aside, I have all the musical and rhythmic talent of a harmonica in a clothes dryer. The last time I tried to sing in public, the guy running the karaoke turned off my mic.

…I have all the musical and rhythmic talent of a harmonica in a clothes dryer. The last time I tried to sing in public, the guy running the karaoke turned off my mic.

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Originally, I was going to try to learn how to play the ukulele and re-do “Twa Corbies” for this article, but apparently, you can only learn that instrument in an hour if you have some minuscule fraction of ability to begin with. I have never been so disappointed in Amanda Palmer (NSFW language in video).

If you (unlike me) know one end of a musical instrument from another, doing something cool and ambitious like writing alternate lyrics to something from the Roud Folk Song Index would probably be pretty awesome. But if you can already do that, you probably wouldn’t be reading something called “The Five Minute Bard,” so let’s move on, shall we?

For those of us who don’t already have a great deal of ability, but want to come up with fun little tunes for our gaming groups, there’s something called Common Meter or Ballad Meter “tune swapping.” Songs using common meter (and there are a lot of them) use the same rhythm and rhyme patterns, meaning they can easily be swapped out for one another. This can be a fun party trick (singing Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” to the tune of the “Gilligan’s Island” theme is a hoot no matter how you look at it), but it also means you have a library of tunes and lyrics you can swap out with one another without any of your players realizing it. Here is an interactive example. A small selection of songs or poems in ballad meter is below:

“Greensleeves”

“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”

“I Just Can’t Wait to be King” from “The Lion King”

“The House of the Rising Sun”

“Oh, Susanna”

“Yankee Doodle”

“America the Beautiful”

“Amazing Grace”

“The Yellow Rose of Texas”

Pretty much any famous Emily Dickinson poem

The Pokemon Season 1 theme song

So with that in mind: a super quick-and-dirty (and entirely untested) method for creating music for your group:

Identify what you want to sing about.

Identify a tune you like, or a couple of them from the list above. Mash them together or hum them until you’re comfortable with the results.

Shamelessly raid the lyrics of the other songs in the list for turns of phrase you like, and shoehorn them in.

Where necessary, swap out words to hide the source of your song or create new rhymes. If you’re looking for a quick and dirty way to hide clumsy rhymes, be sure to use the word you’re trying to rhyme with as the second word, and the clumsy imperfect word as the first one. So if you’re trying to rhyme with “mockery,” but can’t think of anything to rhyme it with other than “crockery”, you would do something like “The battle raged among the crockery/until the villain lost through vicious mockery” (Thanks to Rachel F. for that hot tip).

Bask in the admiration of your gaming group. Or dodge thrown shoes, depending on your level of ability and the patience of your adventuring party.

Bards aren’t everyone’s favorite character class, but for those of us prone to a certain amount of mischief and scenery-chewing, they’re just too much fun to pass up. Hopefully some of these tools make it to your table, whether in the form of new tools for your bards to use, or in musically-themed adventures.

For those of you who play bards in your own games (or cringe at others who do), what do the bards in your home game bring to the table that no one else does? How do you make your games more musical?

Resources:

Every Folk Song: a podcast that promises to go through every song on the Roud Folk Song Index until the host gets tired of doing so — even though it only gets to song 11 (“The Baffled Knight”) it’s still a darn good podcast.

My personal Spotify playlist for the Roud Folk Song Index. This is a selection of my favorite versions of some of the first songs in the Roud Folk Song Index.

Learn to Play the Ukulele: Maybe you’ll do better than I did? Let me know your secret if you do.

Rhyming Dictionary: Because most of us can’t rhyme “the elves are attacking” without a little bit of Internet help.

The Five Minute Bard: Resources to Create Sharp Concepts in No Time Flat published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

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tumblunni · 7 years

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HEYO! oh man now my friend helped me get all inspired again for working on my Cathedral Tower Defense game so WOO lets have another long post of miscellaneous ideasies for storyness! may not be very coherant tho cos i am super tired and ill! but happy!! THANKS SUMMON-DAZE FOR BEING MY ULTRA BESTIE

* Okay now I am super sure that I’m gonna let you choose the gender of the protagonist! And I wanna keep it so that their name is Amity either way, cos that’s kinda stuck in my mind. Surname Amity, player gets to decide the first name, but people will still be calling you Amity a lot at first cos you start off all awkward and formal with everybody. You’re a newcomer to this cathedral town and nobody knows whether to trust you, from their perspective you’re this dangerous person theyre forced to accept just because they need you to help protect them, whether you’re good or bad. They’re all worried what price they might have to pay for this, trying to figure out how to minimize the damage if you turn on them... and its not like they’re bad people for being untrustworthy, they’re just scared people huddling in a church and trying to keep their families safe at any cost. So try and prove your worth to them, and help them learn to protect themselves too, and make this ramshackle settlement into a real home! ....anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, gender selection is a good! And it could be relatively easy to impliment too, cos of the situation. Doesnt even necessarily have to be a menu or anything, it could just be like sir amity/lady amity/master amity. Cos you’re this paladin knighto, itd make sense for them to ask for your title. And it could just be like a shot of protagonist’s badass silhouette in the gateway of the cathedral and then you get the dialogue choice to pick your identity, and its all Super Cool~!

* It also actually gives me more of an idea of what i could do for their design, like I dunno maybe they have some sort of face-concealing helm or headdress or something. I was just thinking of them being dressed like a generic nun or princess but maybe emphasize more on the knight aspect instead of the holy part? So like anyway, maybe they have a very all-concealing outfit and that could be the framing of the first scene instead, its like *pulls off the mask and you’re into the character selection screen* Orrrrrr maybe there doesnt need to be any magical setup for a gender selection and it can just be a menu before the first scene starts XD Or maybe you have a cool face-concealing helmet thing anyway, like all three gender options just have a different one, lol

* More random magical names i got via the cool name generator site summon-daze linked to me! Dunno if I’ll actually use any of these but im writing them down here so i dont forget. Berebath, Betnia, Amurziz, Jetre, Miemahl, Semdach, Batxahl, Sidefarch, Botolohn, Vausach, Thammoch, Droibhal, Lekonach, Zeidhal, Tieloch, Rabrohm, Maesur, Smoiroch, Baelbuhr, Axoth, Jige, Chushou, Hukru, Nejeget, Roucu, Jinah, Aujus, Yekoth, Nugresah, Israfel, Jabriel, Tabris, Douma

* Also I’m remembering Jade Cocoon and how I liked that the different ‘families’ of monsters shared naming traits. Like how all those weird snake/slug cutiepies that i loved best were nushab, rashab, etc etc. And tamatoch and somethingtoch and so on. I think there was at least one where the modifier was a prefix too? I dunno why i’m talking about this, but there you go. I just think if i wanna do full original made up names for demon species then i wanna make em stuff that just... feels like that. I dont actually wanna make like five different elements of each one tho, i wanna have only one per element and then they have like two different higher level finalized forms. Like, the human characters can have two job classes each and the demons can have two specializations within an element. That helps me think about how to limit it down to four or five elements, if we can combine common fantasy elements together! And yeah I was thinking it’d be cool if the demon ‘job classes’ could have their own evolving appearances and new names!

* Thoughts for the ol elemental groupings! The only one I really have finalized is grass + poison = same thing. Florin, why u always the character that gets developed faster than everyone else XD And I’m thinking giving them their own made up names would make it easier! Like how in SMT you have spells being stuff like ‘media’ and ‘agi’ instead of cure and fire. But here (hopefully) it’d be easier to memorize cos its just the element names that’re fantasy words, and the attacks themselves would be a little more self explanatory. i just think it’d work cos like... the idea i had of rock and fire being one single demon type, you could just call that magma. But i mean, what can you call plant + poison? Except.. like.. plant. Cos poison is reasonably often a grass type skill anyway. And i mean, game creators dont often worry about making sense, what with how ‘grass’ is the common element name when thats just one plant in a million. I cant stop thinking about that now I’ve noticed it! I legit thought grass was a synonym for plant when i was a kid, i learned to read from pokemon yellow... ANYWAY IM GETTING OFFTOPIC AGAIN The other idea I had for groupings was fire + non-elemental together? I was just thinking like... aura. Non elemental/physical attack as a ‘magic’ could be fighting spirit! And thematically speaking it tends to be shown as fire effects in anime, i guess XD But then i couldnt put fire with rock and that means I’d have to redesign malachi again. his design ended up looking more firey than rocky :P Another idea is maybe darkness + non-elemental together? like, interpret non-elemental as ‘void’. Or light and dark could be together actually, that could be an interesting way to do it, instead of having them opposing. Like maybe the elements could be colours! Grey element, able to specialize into white or black but neither is any sort of ‘good and evil’. And then the rest could be like green or like.. instead of red maybe fire could be bronze and thats why it has rock skills too? or man, maybe rock and metal could be one element and fire could be grouped with something else. And would water and ice be too ordinary and boring? do they already kinda count as one element? should I throw in something else? GAHHHHHHH

* Ideas for the multiple religious groups aligned with each element! I’m thinking I want one of them to interpret the setting’s absent god as two deities. like, every perspective on this deity is a wildly different character, this one is just even more so! they’d see malahat (tentative name) as two people, but kinda more like a shared soul that can manifest as either a male or female form. But there’d be ambiguity and debates in the mythos over whether this is actually a genderfluid god, or if its ‘twins who were cursed to never exist at the same time’, or various other variations on the story. I wanna make it like real life, where even within (for example) catholocism, there’s different sects and different translations of the same text. And where there’s predjudice against minority groups and people like to twist their faith to ‘justify’ it, even when parts of the original tale could easily justify treating those people with kindness too. So there’d be some followers of the twins religion who are very openminded to LGBTQ people, and historically anyone trans was able to hold a unique position as a priest, being treated as someone blessed by god. But like in norse mythology, this wasnt necessarily a sign that society was 100% okay with LGBTQ people. Its kinda depressing to read about how trans women and gay men were considered the only people able to become a specific kind of witches, but also how you kinda HAD to take this one safety net in society to stop people from making you an outcast. It was like ‘make them fear me so they dont fuckin kill me’. You had to become a medicine person and at least claim to believe in these magic powers, you had to be blessed by the gods to prove you were like.. one of the good ones. Otherwise its like youre saying the gods made a mistake when they made you, or youre choosing to be a deviant against nature. i can only imagine how terrifying it must have been if you believed in that religion and had to like.. be forced to go against it and leave society, or be forced to lie about being chosen by a god for a higher purpose, while believing that any moment you might get struck down for lying. And then I read in other history books about how the concept of homosexuality was far different in that old society too, how male-on-male sex was accepted at sea as long as you were the dominant one and you were forcing something unwanted onto a lesser shipmate as punishment. Like ugh, rape being more socially accepted than consensual LGBTQ relationships! I guess the only solace is that we can never be 100% sure how much of historians’s theories are correct and what might have changed in retellings of history, but honestly I can believe the past is this fucked up when the present is already fucked up in different ways. BUT ANYWAY I wanna explore those themes in my story maybe. And I wanna do more research into the subject to make sure I’m doing it justice, even though its a very sad subject that might be quite stressful. Maaaaan, I remember how I used to obsess about researching norse myth as a kid, it was one of my first Special Interests and I really wanted to see all the different reinterpretations of Loki and write my own fanfic/adaptation/vaguely inspired original story about What If He Stayed A Good Guy. Man I had soooo much sympathy for the poor sod. I mean it depends on the retelling whether he was always evil or whether he was like a comedic neutral ally to the gods who just abruptly becomes evil and gets killed off without remorse in the final story. And gahhh he’s like the biggest LGBTQ bastion in the whole mythos, and how can I not feel sympathetic?? When we get all these stories about him being a literal genderfluid shapeshifter and giving birth to half of his children and just like seriously its like The Story Of the One Trans Man In Homophobic Transphobic Valhalla and he was probably meant to seem Bad and Funny and whatever but im gonna sit here and grumpily cling onto the idea that he was deliberately written as trans, or that if these gods actually do exist out there somewhere then Loki would support me. *pout* I just have a lot of good memories of how this was like the first sign of me realizing my own gender, back when I first learned about Loki in school and then devoured every damn history book about the dude. And got in a million internet pissing matches about how innacurate the marvel version was XD Also it sucks that we like to believe that modern times are always 100% more enlightened in every way, yet its modern adaptations that always censor out the bits about him shifting gender identities and getting pregnant once. ... man this has gone offtopic too much, im really tired but seriously its funny how teenage bunni had NO CLUE they were nonbinary, no clue why they got so obsessed researching gender-defying mythological figures and historians who created gender neutral pronouns in the 1800s. i was so supernaturally oblivious, holy shit...

#cathedral tower defense

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