#lore discussions

[averagepathologicenjoyer]

Thinking about how pathologic classic sets up this concept of gameplay as the player entering this world as a part of it and not automatically as a 'hero' character and then if you do well enough in it as a 'hero' character would then you are shown that everything you experience in the world is just two children playing in a sandbox with dolls, and that nothing you have experienced is real or true, but for that time you were playing as that character it was real and true.

Which adds another level of gameplay, as while some might call the idea of 'oh but it all wasn't real!!' some kind of cop-out, in reality you as the player are also acting as the children that created this world. Whatever is real for you as the player is the reality for that character. In the Bachelors route the logic of science is the reality and it works, everything else fails and the Bachelor 'wins'. In the Haruspex route, traditional medicine and cultural practices are the reality and that works, you 'win'. In the Changelings route this abstract idea of magic and fantastical concepts is the reality, and again you 'win'. Another character can only 'win' when you the player accept the others realities upon yourself and heal their bound, who fell ill only because you were not in control of them.

The more you play the game the more you are reinforcing this idea that the progression through those 12 days are as a result of you the player manipulating the world around you to make it more likely for that character to 'win' based on how they have interacted with the world through your control. You are doing the exact thing those children are doing, over and over, a game of make believe where you know its not real, but no one else seems to (besides Clara) and the knowledge of this causes the characters to despair at their own insignificance. It's very cosmis horror when you think about it. Clara is probably the only character to acknowledge this because she is still a child, she still is able to suspend disbelief and accept the fantastical nature of things, just as the player does when they boot up the game, which is also why her route is so out there and weird. Yes it has a lot lacking, but it also gives the player the feeling they have wanted, to be the 'hero' who is chosen to do all these wondrous things that no one else can that aren't based in reality, albeit at the cost of also being a child in the given world and therefore virtually completely defenseless and vulnerable.

None of this is even touching the various themes the game lays down for you (of which there are a lot) but when you add that extra layer on top it adds a new feeling to the playing experience. I was thinking about the opening theatre sequence and the line 'if we ourselves are to suffer deception, our hands are no longer tied' and what that means, and I felt that it meant that when you, the player, are decieved into believing that none of this is real, by treating it as a game, then you are free to do anything, there is nothing that can stop you from doing anything or even just, doing nothing. When you believe that everything is real (like the game wants you to, as that is the point of a 'game'), that this is a world, you feel you are bound by the laws of that world and therefore can't do what you need to or want to do because the world is expecting something from you. You can't steal or kill people because in the context of the world that is bad, but, theres also nothing really stopping you from doing that anyway and treating the worlds given consequences as just another obstacle to overcome, and Clara is the only one aware of that. That's my reading of it anyway.

The more I play pathologic the more I think about and read into the smaller things, or even things that might seem pointless to look into, but it makes me appreciate the game more and what it has going for it.

#pathologic classic hd #pathologic #daniil dankovsky #artmey burakh #clara saburova #haruspex #changeling #bachelor #character musings #lore discussions #i have many thoughts and i don't think i even condensed this into something that amkes perfect sense #but also i don't know how to make it make sense #but it makes sense to me

[dragonpropaganda]

Rain World Lore Iceberg

Verified by a team of insane lore scholars and one low level, peripheral DLC developer

#rain world #shoreline discussion got HEATED #sorry about the text colour it wasn't my choice #i'm posting this on behalf of a group of insane lore scholars #rain world lore #rainworld lore #rw lore #rainworld #rain world iceberg #rw iceberg

[koolaidashley]

Henceforth, their lives were changed

#rottmnt #tmnt #rottmnt leo #rottmnt donnie #disaster twins #rottmnt mikey #they love fnaf #literally make chalkboards to discuss the lore #nerd alert #they did traumatize mikey after this tho lmao #older sibling type shit

[serpenlupus]

About Wyll and his horns

Let's say I was writing a part of my Tav's story with Wyll directly connected to the dialogue he has during the tiefling party, and while struggling with this bit, I've realized there's quite a few misconceptions floating around. I felt compelled to add information to the table that might clear them, so here we go.

First, what exactly happens to Wyll when he disobeys Mizora in act one? Well, he doesn't get turned into a devil, he certainly doesn't get turned into a tiefling, he's not a half fiend, not a demon, none of that. Wyll stays human, but he has horns and red eyes (and other features we can't see on his model as of now).

(Everyone has their race listed, Wyll's remains "Human")

This is because when a warlock fails to uphold some part of their contract they can suffer a certain number of consequences, Wylls is “The character grows horns, a tail, or some other devilish features that can't be removed by any means short of divine intervention. As long as these marks persist the character detects as a fiend when subjected to Detect Evil and Good spells or similar magic.” ( from Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, page 214)

And I’ve come across some people that think it wasn’t so bad of a punishment, that he was being racist towards the tieflings, or just not being justified in being upset after having his body forcibly changed against his will. I think they are missunderstanding just how insidious Mizora’s actions were, and here I just want to give some context to maybe bring a better understanding to the situation. Your conclusions are up to you.

Gonna start by using a not exact analogy, but I think it’s going to make the explanation easier. Stick with me for a minute.

Remember Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean? He had a branded “P” on his arm that marked him as a pirate. A murderer, robber, criminal, etc. in the eyes of the society he was a part of. What did Jack do to earn the branding? (if you don’t know this I suggest you look up the “people aren’t cargo mate” scene) He refused to transport slaves and later freed them, and Beckett had him marked as punishment.

Then, in the first movie, he saves Elizabeth, a woman he didn’t know, from drowning. Right after however, when Norrington sees he has a branded “P”, he’s like “alright, off to jail with you, and then hanging”, no other option crosses his mind. Again, Jack doesn’t know Elizabeth, isn’t indicated to think he is going to be rewarded for helping her, he just sees a drowning person, sees that no one else is going to help, and chooses to save them. That is a pretty selfless/good aligned thing to do, for no other reason that he was the one able to do it, yet the branding in his arm overrides any good action he could ever do, marking him as a criminal for execution and no further thought.

In a way, that’s what Mizora did to Wyll; she forever visibly branded him as someone that has made deals with devils, and that in the world of DnD is a VERY BAD THING. Personally I really like the mod that gives him more devilish features, but at the same time I think there was something clever about choosing to leave him looking more human. He can’t be confused with a tiefling, he doesn’t have the ears, the claws, the tail, all those features that characterize them. He looks kind of uncanny, and that would be like a red flag for anyone in that world. (Beyond the already existing hate for tieflings that I’m not gonna tackle on here because it’s a complicated thing that deserves its own post). And Wyll wants to do good, he wants to help people, to be a positive force in the world so, so badly. This dude got abducted by a nautiloid, got tadpole’d, and the first thing he did right after that was come across the Tiefling refugees and be like “Oh you need help? No worries let me teach you self defense. Oh you being attacked by goblins? Let me blast them real quick”. His way of saying fuck you to all the awful things that have happened to him is being aggressively good and kind. Mizora knows this very well, wants to see him suffer for her amusement, wants to remind him he can't escape her claws, so her choice of punishment was to forever taint his future interactions with mistrust and suspicion. Some people can go real fast from “oh thank God they saved me” to “oh no, are they gonna rob me, are they trying to trick me, are they in cahoots with the ones that attacked me first?” just because of outward appearances. Especially in DnD world. And that deserves its own conversation, but we're focusing on Wyll here.

(Mizora, when I catch you Mizora)

“Well, maybe he shouldn’t have made a deal in the first plac- - “ He was seventeen, alone, preyed upon by Mizora and put in an impossible situation. Please PAY ATTENTION to the story you’re witnesing.

Anyway.

About the tieflings. I know it’s easy to think his words can be derisive towards them, but it’s less about the horns and more about his body being changed against his will. Imagine instead that he got half his face burned, or something that disfigured him. I think his feelings at the moment were closer to that, and yeah they are pretty insensitive words to say to someone with a similar condition (horns or disfiguration), but when feelings are fresh and raw like that it’s easy to say insensitive things. Not saying it was ok for him to say those things, but ther was no malice in his words. I’ve also seen some people share that they think Mizora wanted to change him more to make him unrecognizable to his original self, the Wyll Ravenguard kid, and I think there is some truth to that too. She wants to make sure that Wyll remembers that he belongs to her, there's no question to that.

(MIZORA, WHEN I CATCH YOU MIZORA)

Whether the Tieflings refugees would feel unsettled by Wyll or not? Yes. In a way, they would. From reasons aside from the ones I explained above, remember that these specific tieflings come from Elturel. If you didn’t pass the History check or don’t remember, Elturel is a city that was literally ripped from the land and dragged to Avernus, First layer of hell (it left a hole on the ground and everything) because their mayor made a deal with the Archdevil Zariel some decades back in the timeline. He sold the souls of all its citizens and the city itself.

This was probably one of the worst times of their lives. Some even got captured and forced to participate in the blood War, like Dammon as a mechanic. And after Elturel got returned to the surface, the tieflings lost their homes because they reminded the other citizens of the literal Hell they’d just gone through, and they kicked them out. And remember, they met and saw Wyll as a human, and then saw him with horns. It’s not unreasonable to think that by looking at him they would be reminded of all the events that led them to the awful situation they’re in. Because of someone that was making deals with devils, just like Wyll. Even if his situation is completely different. And Wyll knows that, that’s why he tells you the tieflings are unsettled by him and chooses to stay away during the party.

It was never just about the horns.

And I know Wyll calls himself a devil but I think it’s because it’s the closest thing he looks as; devils are a whole different race with their own intricacies, although humans can be turned into devils ONCE their souls go to Avernus and they start climbing the power hierarchy there (Mizora and Raphael are cambions/ half-devils btw, which is a different thing,  there are plenty of videos exploring those details more in depth).

Do I think Larian should have made some of this information clearer/easier to access? Maybe? but to be fair, it's a game focused and dedicated to a crowd that was already somewhat familiar with the source material, that blew up waay out of what they originally expected to reach. Hopefully they’ll add some clarifications like they did to other quests. 

Anyway these are my two cents to the conversation, have a nice day, and don't hesitate to add your two cents if you feel like it!

#bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #wyll #bg3 wyll #wyll ravengard #wyll bg3 #mizora #lore #baldurs gate #bg3 discourse #bg3 discussion #elturel #bg3 companions #tieflings #I hate mizora so much oh my god #fully headcanon that when my Tav went to Avernus with Kalach and Wyll they destroyed her #he canonically goes after her in one of the endings #so wtf not #and don't get me started on Ulder Ravengard #I'll rip him a new one on another post #just you wait #tw slavery #tw mentions of slavery

[iamnotalemon]

Chapter 4 of Kikuri’s manga got me really excited to see where the story goes. I remember seeing comments about Kikuri and how BTR made light of her potentially tragic story as an alcoholic.

This little shot of her at the beginning of the chapter being in a good mood to see Kessoku Band play regardless of the weather shows just how excited she is to see Bocchi play and be successful.

Then of course the rest of the Chapter is Kikuri crashing at the Ijichi household with a couple moments from Seika talking about how she was such a different person before being in a band ie before becoming an alcoholic. Which it’s also just wonderful to see Seika actually complimenting and even defending her considering how outwardly annoyed she is with her in BTR.

Finally, this little bit of sleepy drunk talk from Kikuri kind of confirms the huge implication with her attachment to Bocchi which is even hinted at in BTR:

She sees her young, sober self in Bocchi. She wants Bocchi to succeed through her own skill and perseverance; whereas Kikuri feels that the only way she’s capable of being at her best is when she’s drunk. Kikuri doesn’t live a good life. She’s broke, she’s a constant annoyance to her closest relationships, and depends almost entirely upon the fleeting kindness of strangers who only know and love her because of her flamboyant drunken performances.

Kikuri is stuck in more than just the “Happiness Spiral” she mentions in BTR. She’s stuck in a cycle of alcoholism where she can’t perform without alcohol and without her performance she can’t survive. She wishes she had a second chance where she hadn’t gotten stuck in the cycle, she wishes she was in Bocchi’s place again.

I’m very much looking forward to see more serious subjects being tackled in Kikuri’s manga, as BTR seems to stick very heavy to its 4 Koma comedic nature. I still love BTR, but hopefully this manga will give more depth to some of the source material.

#btr #bocchi the rock! #manga #kikuri hiroi #hiroi kikuri #seika ijichi #ijichi seika #lore #manga discussion

[keirientez]

Pokemon trainer AU, Reborn is the champion meanwhile Tsuna is his apprentice. Tsuna’s design belongs to my friend @Cloud_Knee (Twt or X)

#katekyo hitman reborn #r27 #sawada tsunayoshi #reborn #my friend and i discussed about which pokemon would be in their team. eevee and umbreon was ther for their similar looks to r27 lol #flygon is a good candidate bc yk. leon. and for tsuna suprisingly we liked the idea of meloetta (bc meloetta has two forms like how tsuna- #-has his normal vibe and his dying will mode) #for reborn we thought of him having a liking for bug types bc of his bug communication skills. like his seasonal bug thing #we also thought of lore for a whole game which was heavily based on pokemon mystery dungeon bc we wanted death (future arc spoilers oof) #but general beginning plot is: tsuna dislikes having pokemon battles so all his pokemons are non-combat #- somehow he meets reborn (? idk maybe bro trips and got silly and he now owes reborn something). and reborn then seeing how close-minded- #tsuna is he decided to accept tsuna as his apprentice so he finally gets it #we discussed about tsuna also seeing reborn often at a lot of places but never got in contact (bc we thought of him living on a mountain idk #like how everyone cant see through reborn’s disguises but he can. so he’ll just see him around (bc reborn is hiding himself from the public) #as a champion. yeah #yeah thats about it i think. ive forgotten most of our ideas dkdgkgfhfhfj maybe another time

[english-history-trip]

Signs posted at the Casting Office during the filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy

#We Do Not Want To Discuss Lore With You #We Want You To Hold This Spear And Look Scared #my job needs this sign just for me #lotr #nonsense

[roukabi]

I feel like when it comes to the Dusthide debate, a lot of people seem to misinterpret the main point of Ancients as both a game element and a product.

A big part of Flight Rising is dress-up. While users can argue on what the sole draw of FR is (dragons themselves, breeding, the Dominance system, etc), it's generally agreed that the dress-up aspect is one with a lot of care and resources put into it, and is therefore very important to site gameplay. Dress-up keeps getting updated with new apparel, and if there is to be a new dragon breed, it needs every piece of apparel re-drawn on it. This takes time. A lot of time. Gaps between dragons (now known as Moderns) stretch for years at a time.

Ancients were initially created as a way to fill in these time gaps between Moderns, and the easiest way to do that was to release dragons without apparel. However, this is a game that puts a lot of emphasis on dragon dress-up. Imagine if Obelisks were released without any coded apparel. You'd just have a naked dragon missing a huge element of the game, and for most players, there's no fun in that.

This is where the second point of Ancients comes in: because the appeal of clothing is gone, there has to be some kind of compromise. So... if Ancients can't wear apparel, then they are no longer restrained by the requirements for apparel (1 head/4 legs/2 wings)...

which means that they can break the modern mold freely! You can have a dragon with no legs, or six. Or with two heads, or no head. And now that you don't have to worry about apparel clipping, the tertiary genes can go wild! There is room for customization that apparel can't fulfill - you could give it extra wings, or a jellyfish head, or giant tree horns, or you could give it nothing at all as tertiary genes are optional, and it wouldn't matter because there's no apparel to be drawn around it!

Ancients are supposed to be a trade-off. There's no selling point to a dragon without clothing on the Dragons With Clothing Game, but there is a selling point to a dragon with, say, 13 legs, no wings and no tail. It doesn't wear apparel, because it physically can't, and it makes use of this function in creative ways. The inability to wear apparel is justified by the Ancient's unique proportions.

And this is where the criticisms for Dusthides and other 'basic' Ancients stems from: if your Ancient dragon is just the 1 head/4 legs/2 wings setup, then is it really an Ancient or a Modern you can't dress up? You could have the wildest, gaudiest, 15-limb tertiary gene on a Dusthide and it wouldn't matter, because tertiaries are optional and aren't a permanent part of the dragon that would inhibit the usage of apparel.

If a dragon doesn't have a justifiable reason to not wear apparel, then there's no reason for it being an Ancient.

No amount of linebreaking tertiaries will be able to hide the fact that some dragons seem to be created only for the first, initial purpose: just to tide people over until a better, 'real' dragon is created.

And that's just disappointing.

#lots of discussion going on in the flight rising tag so i'm adding my two cents #well. more like seven cents #i'll admit i don't care for dusthides and i didn't care for auraboas either #i just... don't know where staff is going with this. why all these ancients now? why make them (for lack of a better word) boring? #what's the end goal here? who is this for? #that's my biggest question. Who Is This For? #dusthides aren't for people who like moderns because they're not getting any #they're not really for people who like the mould-breaking of ancients because. well. they aren't #they're not for people who like ancients for lore because they didn't drop with lore #i guess they're for people who like linebreaking genes? but idk what makes those stand out apart from. yknow. apparel. #flight rising #fr #dusthides #fr ancients #rook roars!

[dear-ao3]

hey….

YEAH BUDDY!!!!

just when i thought i was going to get away with not updating the post this week people had to go and sign contracts, smh…

#this will be the strangest update on the post tho by far #currently on the schedule of things to get discussed is charles ice cream launch #charles mystery tiny dog #those photos george took with the child #fernando’s contract and the other contract speculation from carlos and kimi #lando getfinc called pookie by his own acc #and then the briefest glimpse at the brocedes lore plus a bigger separate brocedes lore post so #we’re stacked up here! #not a tag #from saph #f1

[chamoemileclown]

Since Sunny is the only egg out of the new batch with four parents that means they probably would’ve been Maximus’ kid if he survived. They would’ve had matching sunglasses and he’d have another chance as a parent if he had just made if back to to island. If he lived another two days he would’ve had another chance.

#q!maximus’ storyline is so tragic man i miss him sm #qsmp #qsmp discussion #qsmp lore #qsmp spoilers #maximus #qsmp maxo #qsmp maximus #qsmp sunny

[averagepathologicenjoyer]

I wonder how they might do the changeling run in Pathologic 2. Part of the entire point of the changeling was that her double was actively making relations and communications worse, because wherever she was the plague followed, it was in the doubles best interest to keep everyone fighting because the plague would spread and consume the town. During Artemy's playthrough in path classic you have the option to tell her that she is the physical embodiment of the plague (don't remember for path 2) and like, that is tehcnically true for that game, you as the changeling cure the plague while the other spreads it, it sets up this nice duality between them even if the run was rushed and there isn't much to it other than going to each of your bound and asking if they were responsible for the plague or not

But in path 2 the plague does have a physical form, it speaks to you, it comes to you to tell you how futile your efforts are at stopping it, it haunts you and is inescapable, so like, what are they gonna do with that? I know there was the part with Murky where you see and understand that she is 'friends' with the plague manifested as Clara, but there didn't seem to be much else to it other than that, or I just didn't get to see it due to how I played

#pathologic classic hd #pathologic 2 #lore discussions #character musings #i hope whatever they do decide to do is interesting tho #clara saburova #changeling

[quins-makeshift-menagerie]

Cursed Chimera

#Mimzy #fursona #original character #original species #art #2024 #sometimes you just gotta take your weird lil chimera sona and draw them with a bunch of different animal parts #I don’t particularly enjoy this look and if you look at older art with Mimzy her parts are more blended and look like they belong to her #but Q and I were discussing her species lore and I just #HAD TO #he called her tasty #anyway hello again here I am dropping art and then vanishing into the ether #I think I’m finally starting to feel better which is great #not gonna push it and jump into blogstuff again just yet but #getting there

[bat-besties]

Tfw when you don't know enough about physics to make a decent theory of Duke's powers, but you know DC also is not utilising the full potential.

For example Duke's future vision works via light....so this would directly support the idea that the path of any photon is predetermined as he can see where it will go. If then every path is predetermined, is the DC universe equally predetermined, and is Duke one of the beings able to change that?

#duke thomas #please join this discussion physics people and dc lore people #i need to reread more gnomon

[weeklycandacedrawings]

I've always wondered why Blay'n and Clewn't recognised her-- and why they claimed that that "wasn't a good thing." It can't be because she was "naughty," because only Buford registered as naughty. I like to think it's because she used to spam them with letters about which kids were naughty when she was younger.

#phineas and ferb #pnf #candace flynn #blay'n #clewn't #christmas #phineas and ferb christmas vacation #important phineas and ferb christmas lore discussion

[cupidle]

zazie

#trigun #zazie #zazie the beast #taps mic anyone here cares abt zazie. is it crickets. #i’ve been sooo interested in zazie and their lore/significance to the story since reading trimax #i feel like adding another variable to the conflict would have been rly interesting and that variable being the native species #on no mans land would have added more nuance to the story #and there was an attempt to discuss that but nothing rly came of it #cause of THE MENACE OF SOCIETY escaping his damn ward cell #i want more worm involvement #in a story so heavily focused on the survivability of one’s species and abuse of power i just think. looking more in depth at the hosts #of the planet would have been cool. #guy in chair rocking back and forth manically #and i love bugs also #cupidle

[bighairybuffmen69]

RS Went Out of Her Way to Give Hades an Oedipus Complex.

Something struck me as odd when I saw images of LO’s pilot.

This was Rhea’s original design; she had galaxy skin like Kronos.

When Lore Olympus became a WEBTOON original, her design changed, which I honestly consider a good thing. Rhea was always associated with nature as opposed to space. So, did RS give her a more rustic design? Did she get her signature turret crown, or maybe a lion motif?

Nope.

Rhea, (who is described as an EARTH titaness within Lore Olympus itself) was redesigned…to be a pink Persephone clone.

And this isn’t a case where you can argue “oh, well everyone is a Persephone clone cuz same face syndrome, it doesn’t mean anything in-universe!!,” because in the comic, Persephone was established to be a canonical Rhea lookalike when Helios mistook a description of Persephone for a description of Rhea.

They have fundamentally identical designs, and both RS and the narrative know it.

On top of this, Hades describes both Rhea & Persephone to be very kind (and otherwise just similar personality-wise). So, um…Hades basically married a fun-sized version of his long-lost mom.

Which makes this line all the more disturbing.

Hades is interested in Persephone being titan-sized, and I feel like it isn’t a stretch to say this is a sexual thing. The fandom treats it as a haha funny joke, like “aw Hades has a giantess fetish lol 🤪” but I feel like everyone’s ignoring the fact that giant Persephone would look exactly like a pale Rhea clone. It’s not rocket science; large Persephone is basically just Rhea.

And Hades wants to see this….for fetish reasons?

RS knows what she’s doing. She deliberately redesigned Rhea to be pink (when she is canonically an EARTH titaness, and would’ve benefited far more from being a shade of green or brown). She went out of her way to create both physical and personality parallels to Persephone and Rhea, even having a character confuse a description of Persephone for Rhea. She threw in implications that Hades has a giantess fetish, meaning he’d be sexually attracted to Persephone when she’d look exactly like his mom. She made all these story decisions…to give Hades an Oedipus complex. There’s no classy way to put it; RS made Hades fall in love with a clone of his dead fucking mom.

You can’t even argue “oh, well, it’s Greek mythology!” because, correct me if I’m wrong, but Hades wanting to fuck his mom was nowhere in the original myths. Plus, RS has taken measures to remove incest from her story. Persephone is not related to Rhea in Lore Olympus, there is no reason she should look this much like her. This serves no narrative purpose, RS did it for shits and giggles, and it only makes Hades look like 10x more of a creep.

I’ll end this post with a little spot-the-difference between Rhea & Perse. To make matters worse, this is arguably the most Rhea-like Persephone has looked…and it was in Hades’ dream. So, uh, do with that as you will.

#anti lore olympus #anti lo #lo critical #lore olympus criticism #lore olympus critical #lore olympus discussion #lore olympus hades #lore olympus persephone #lore olympus rhea #this was a bitch to format