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archer-kacey · 2 months

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Problems with erasing Bendy Book canon:

With the FNAF books, we were told they were canon-divergent fairly early on. For Bendy, this was never specified, leading many to believe this was all just straight-up canon information that they were running with for theorycrafting. For a long time.

Why the hell would you de-canonize the ENTIRE origin story of Boris? He's a central character to Bendy and the Ink Machine.

You're going to throw out THE ENTIRE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF YOUR MAIN VILLAIN? THAT'S.......NOT A GOOD IDEA!

(And before it's pointed out, no, we don't "need" Illusion of Living for "gay evidence." The point here is y'all released an autobiography for one of your two main characters and you're saying it's not canon. That's ludicrous.)

Things that were explained/brought up in the novels that apparently "aren't canon anymore": how Sammy got infected, Thomas's conflicting feelings about the machine he created, the origin of Boris the wolf, several instances of Joey's gaslighting and manipulative behavior and his slow descent into madness after Henry's departure, a look into Gent technology and the Gent experiments that took place after they switched over to "research", Abby Lambert (who SHOULD be in the mainline games all things considered), Joey Drew's ENTIRE AUTOBIOGRAPHY including his PHILOSOPHIES AND REAL ASS LIFE, ANDDD the themes of classism, racism, and sexism that were VERY present at that time in history. Among other things.

You're taking out several new characters for no reason. I'm not saying they all need to return, but it makes zero sense to introduce a bunch of new guys and then immediately abandon them...only to introduce a bunch of OTHER new guys.

I've seen a few comments in response to Mike that go along the lines of "oh thank goodness now I don't need to read the books to understand the lore!" No disrespect, but I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding of what the books do. They enhance your understanding of all the background plot. You don't need to read the books to understand the games. But that shouldn't mean erasing the existing information's canonicity because not everyone wants to read it.

Bendy isn't FNAF. Bendy has a much more streamlined plot. Not everything fits perfectly of course, but to take out such a large chunk of what we THOUGHT was the plot (or plot-adjacent) is headscratching to me. You claim to care about the plot, characters and worldbuilding and then you decide that some of the BEST written interpretations of these characters and their world just aren't "legitimate" now? .......All of a sudden?

I want to punch something

#I'm starting to get really irritated at M+M downplaying the books. no sir they aren't fun extras that's just the actual plot you threw out #this decision would also erase the books' minority and women characters. which I don't think is the intention at all but that's the result #people who are really into bendy are gonna want more canon lore...we should really leave the canon-divergence to fanfics at this point #bendy books #i'm dying #dreams come to life #the lost ones #bendy fade to black #illusion of living #joey drew #adrienne kress #mike mood #themeatly #bendy and the ink machine #bendy and the dark revival

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oshiawaseni · 1 year

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The deal with Togachaco

There was a little bit of confusion about what’s going on with these two and why Toga can’t use Shiggy and Dabi’s quirks. This is what I came up with about Toga's situation.

Disclaimer: this is all only theorycraft and any or all of it could be wrong of course!

My theory here is what’s lacking is not Toga’s love for them. She admits to caring about them. But their inability to love her. They lack any real connection. The two people who we know she has used quirks of are Twice and Ochaco.

Twice is obvious. They had a pretty close relationship and Twice felt very cared for when he died and told her that. Her heart broke for him so their feelings of love were reciprocated ones that had formed a strong connection and we aren’t talking romantic love, just love in general for another person. That’s what they had.

"But Ochaco didn't love Toga." True... but she did by proxy! One of Ochaco's key cornerstones is wanting everybody to be happy and smile. I think this was brought up again this chapter because it’ll be a very important theme for Toga’s arc to circle back to later!

During MVA, Toga’s love for Ochaco was reciprocated in a way - simply by default. There’s three points we should take note of here.

1. Toga was being loved back through proxy of Ochaco’s wide compassion for all of society.

2. Toga, someone who’s life has been utterly ruined from birth by her suffering of being excluded from society, is a *VALID* PART of society and is deserving of compassion, according to Ochaco's feelings.

3. Toga’s own quirk itself acknowledges Toga as a part of Ochaco’s “people," or "everyone," or "society." Even her own quirk knows she is valid and should be included in Ochaco’s compassion for everyone. (And now she genuinely cares for her too.)

And the deal with Dabi and Shigaraki: I really do think Toga’s quirk is affected by mutual love. Dabi and Shigaraki don’t have any love left in their body. All they are capable of right now is hate. They live for their hatred. This series is stacked up with parallels that juxtapose both love and hate against each other and this is another one. Those two will set themselves on fire in the name of hate. So Toga was unable to form a meaningful love connection with them. She can’t fully become them. Her quirk is the worst match with people like them.

Another interesting thing about Toga’s love is that Froppy (Hori) refers to it in Japanese quotation marks. I think this is more commentary of Toga not understanding what love means, and it’s like saying “love” to refer to it more as Toga’s concept of love. Something she obsessively fantasises about and thinks she understands, but doesn’t really.

Izuku also said to her: "If you love me, why don't you also want to share the same heart as me?" (values, morals, and protecting instead of hurting those she loves.) And this only made her think of her sad upbringing...

Toga never received any real love while growing up to form the basis of it. Not from her parents or her peers. Her quirk affects her personality a lot and is a factor in this too. So Toga-chan doesn’t really know what True Love is and I think that’s something Ochaco is going to help show her.

If her quirk works like this then her destiny was never meant to be a villain at all, as LoV are all bound together by hate for quirk society and they don’t know what love is either, which hinders her connection with them. So the only place her character can truly shine in, is when she is being surrounded by people she loves who can also love her in return. Like the condition to lift the beast’s curse in Beauty and the Beast.

I think Toga finding out what rule is affecting her ability to truly become people will be pivotal in saving her from all this mental pain she’s grown up with. This is her burden she's been baring all alone for years, and I believe whatever it is she has going on with Ochaco, will surely put some light into her heart, maybe for the first time ever.

#togachaco #Bnha 382 #kana writes #toga himiko #himiko toga #LOV #league of villains #bnha meta #i had this in my drafts hope it was interesting to read !#what do you guys think?

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tumblezwei · 7 months

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Bear with me I'm about to go insane for a few paragraphs.

Actually scratch that I meant a lot of paragraphs, because this became so much longer than I intended.

A thing that Honkai Star Rail is utterly obsessed with doing is masking the involvement of Aeons in certain events or encounters with their own personal symbolic language. If you read a piece of text and it mentions amber or constructing walls, for example, you can be pretty confident that it's referencing Qilpoth. Similarly, mentions of flapping wings, multicolored material, or things smelling of fruit is likely in reference to Tayzzyronth.

The Swarm Disaster in particular is rife with this shit. You can drive yourself insane reading through Trailblaze Secrets trying to parse through whether this line is meant to refer to something, or if you've been staring for way too long and need to slow down. In particular you can drive yourself insane looking for references to Terminus the Finality.

Terminus in kind of annoying because they don't have an entry in the Data Bank, but they are referenced well enough that we know a decent cursory amount about them. The main facts being that they somehow exist and move backwards in time, they are currently asleep and murmur prophecies, and they have two factions: the Omen Vanguard and the Creed Exequy.

The symbols we can generally look out for when it comes to Finality are concepts of time moving backward, prophecies, and, of course, references to "finality."

And to add more context to what I'm about to say, I have to mention that the Finality is all over the Swarm Disaster (so is HooH the Equilibrium but I don't care about them right now). In one of the Trailblaze Secrets we learn than an Omen Vanguard managed to hear and decode part of the prophecy murmured by Terminus and tried to spread that prophecy to members of the genius Society, but all who learned of it were killed by Polka Kakamond along with the Omen Vanguard. And like, the same part has Finality prophesying Tayzzyronth's death, which maybe implies that this prophecy is what caused the whole Swarm Disaster in the first place. But I'm also not a great theorycrafter so take that with a massive grain of salt.

The point for this post being, Terminus is connected to Tazzyronth in terms of their possible role in the Swarm Disaster.

Why bring all of this up? Because I watched "the "Fables About the Stars" again.

This trailer is unique among the many Hoyo have put out because it's one of the best jumping off points we have to sorting out the different symbols and motifs used by the Aeons featured in it. One of whom is mentioned three separate times without being explicitly shown. And I bet you can guess who.

The final minute of the trailer, after the Harmony, we get a rush of lines and images about the unplayable Aeons that are likely important to HSR's story. The images and titles that flash by are, in order, Aha the Elation, Ouroboros the Voracity, Idrila the Beauty, Tayzzronth the Propagation, Mythus the Enigmata, HooH the Equilibrium, Fuli the Remembrance, and finally, Akivili the Trailblaze.

"But that's weird," you think. "Where are those mentions of the Finality you talked about?" And that, my fellow mentally ill friends, is where this gets fun for me. Because when you turn on closed captions for that video, almost each reference to an Aeon that Black Swan says is accompanied by another phrase in parenthesis. No other Aeon earlier in the video gets this, it's just the Aeons in that last minute.

Now, some of these are in reference to the Aeon that the line in Black Swan's poem is referring to. But others, in my opinion, are referring to one Aeon in particular.

Aha -

Ouroboros -

Tazzyronth -

Mythus -

The first reference to Finality I think appears is right after "the mariner's intemperance" with this line:

"End of All Things" seems pretty Finality-coded to me. Why they are referred to as "the infant" I can't tell you. maybe something to do with how they exist backwards in time. Much like the prophecy given on Tayzzronth, perhaps Finality's existence predates their birth. Another strange aspect of this line is it's transition into Idrila, who doesn't seem to get a reference at all. The glass shattering into their title might imply that they are "the mirror," something suported by the fact that one of The Beauty's factions is called the Mirror Holders, but I don't really know enough to be confident about that. Considering Idrila is one of the missing Aeons, we can maybe take this line as a hint that Finality also had a role in Idrila's disappearance.

The next reference I've already shown. Just after Idrila we have the line introducing the Propagation, and the phrase (as they enter the dream (Consciousness)." If my ramblings about the Swarm Disaster previously were coherent enough, you might have already connected the dots on this one. If Terminus was indeed responsible for Tayzzronth's ascent to Aeonhood, then this line can be ready fairly literally. To put it in less flowery words: "Listen to the Propagation as it spawns into existence."

The third reference is thus:

Now, "the shapeless prince" is a reference to HooH, of that I'm....mostly certain. And what makes me the most certain is the next phrase "Against the Current." The concept of "currents" being another fun little symbolic reference to Terminus.

Reading more into the Swarm Disaster, you can also begin to see that HooH, alongside Ena the Order, is greatly involved in the Propagation's demise. Tayzzronth's appearance disrupted the equilibrium of the universe, and obviously that's HooH's whole shtick. So Terminus (who flows backwards in time) murmurs a prophecy that spawns Tayzzronth into existence, and HooH (Against the Current) participates in Tayzzronth's destruction. You see what I mean?

And that's. Really it. As a closing note, you know what else is fun? Outside of Idrila (maybe, neither I nor the other lore enthusiasts I follow have quite parsed that out), each Aeon mentioned in that last minute of the Fables About the Stars trailer has a role in the Swarm Disaster. Aha, of course, was one of the key players who was brought on by Ena and further recruited Akivili for help. Ouroboros was created because of the Swarm Disaster. Followers of the Enigmata are mentioned creating false histories of the disaster (this one is my personal theory). HooH as previously explained. And Fuli because of this one particular Trailblaze Secret which might have been about Akivili falling into IX and Fuli grabbing their memories before they were consumed, but honestly this post is long enough and I'll explain that one later if people are interested.

But uh, yeah. The Swarm Disaster has made me go a little nuts and so has the Finality.

#honkai star rail #rambling #this took *checks clock* 45 minutes for me to write #because I just kept watching through the trailer and reading wiki entries #I'm gonna go do something productive now #like touch grass or tell my family I love them

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bestworstcase · 3 months

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I found your blog via your post about yang and strength, got really interested, and then I ended up reading through a loooooot of your rwby commentary, and now I’ve got a question for you, if you don’t mind: Is it okay to want Penny to come back? I’ve read a lot of your analysis of her story arc and character, specifically that giant post you wrote about her in november 2021. i um, have definitely been guilty of wanting her to come back a whole lot. I’ve definitely done some frantic and outlandish theorycrafting to cope, but also I really do see what you mean about how her atlas arc is meant to be a tragic ending, so I don’t know how to reconcile my appreciation for the show’s story with my desire of just… really wanting to see her again?

This isn’t me asking you about whether or not she might come back because I’ve made my peace with whatever happens, this is just me asking if like… am I entitled or ungrateful for missing her so much that it makes me cry when such a wonderful story is being told in the show as a whole?

of course it’s okay!!!

the fact that her death had such a profound and lasting emotional impact on you speaks to the strength of the storytelling and the care that the writers poured into her character. tragedy aspires to incite the feelings you’re describing for the purpose of emotional release; catharsis is the whole reason tragedy exists at all.

you’re not just allowed to cry—you’re meant to. you’re supposed to care deeply that she’s gone. it matters. the story grieves for her and it’s inviting you to grieve too. when ruby breaks down over losing penny, it’s okay to be right there with her emotionally.

wanting her to come back or hoping that she might is a natural aspect of that feeling. theorizing—even in a grasping at straws kind of way—is a natural way to process that feeling. so is writing or reading “fix-it” fic or other kinds of AUs where penny survives or returns or never endured that ordeal in the first place. inherent to catharsis is the idea that letting painful feelings out is not only good but necessary for emotional well-being.

(you are also under no obligation to like every creative decision a story makes and it is entirely okay to feel like penny dying in v8 lessened your enjoyment of the story overall, if that’s how you feel. by no means do you owe it to any story to like everything about it just because it’s written well.)

what is entitled is the attitude held by a specific subset of hardcore penny 3.0 theorists that penny’s death was something bad that the writers did to the audience that they now have an obligation to “fix” or “make right”—often accompanying a sentiment along the lines of “why even bring her back if they were just going to kill her off?” and dismissal of her entire presence in the atlas arc as “just fanservice,” sometimes with the implication that the writers took advantage of penny fans only to stab them in the back.

the entitlement comes from the failure or refusal to recognize that the writer’s room does not revolve around what penny fans would like to happen (or indeed fans of any other character) and a narrative turn that upsets you is not something that the writers have done to hurt you. it’s entitled to act like the writers owe it to you to bring a character back to life, which was the general tenor of a lot of high-profile penny 3.0 discourse back in 2021 although the attitude has mellowed since then.

(& just in case: if you, personally, were in the category of penny fans who felt outraged or hurt back then and wanted to demand that the writers make it up to you by reviving her, and you’ve since reflected on those feelings and moved on from them to—as you say—make peace with whatever the story has planned, That Is Also Okay, and you should not beat yourself up over it. this is not something you need to feel guilty about.)

as for how to reconcile appreciating the story for what it is and still feeling like crying when you think about penny… i mean this completely in earnest, even if you’ve never written anything before in your life, try writing a fanfic where she lives or finds her way back or her friends manage to save her. not just reading or looking at fanart—i do think that there is really something to be said for making your own fanworks. writing or drawing gives you a degree of control over what happens in your story or artwork that you can’t get anywhere else and that can be a very comforting outlet when mourning a character.

you’re okay.

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passerkirbius · 1 year

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Rusty Quill Saga - 24 Hour Follow Up

Hi everyone! I appreciate all the new follows! Might actually get me posting more about stuff!

So, it's been about a day since I posted my response to the Rusty Quill article, and reading some of the tag comments I wanted to respond to a couple, again in the interests of helping those who aren't within the audio fiction community get a little context that you might not otherwise have had.

But I also wanted to put my cards on the table - why should you listen to me? Hi! My name is Lee Davis-Thalbourne, I'm Australian, and I'm one half of the Fiction Podcast Production team Passer Vulpes Productions. We're the creators of a number of fiction podcasts, including Love and Luck and Supernatural Sexuality with Dr. Seabrooke. I also have a reasonable resume of small VA roles with a lot of different podcast production teams, I have a history of theorycrafting around podcast production, and I'm currently engaged in some part-time independent research around fiction podcast production that, if people are interested, I might actually get around to finishing one day. Myself and my partner Erin were the founders of AusFicPodMakers, which was/is an informal group supporting audio fiction producers in Australia, and as part of that support, I currently curate a list of Australian Fiction Podcasts (which I encourage you to take a look at!). In terms of affiliations, PVP is not associated with any podcasting network (though a few have knocked on our door), and I'm not currently producing audio fiction right now - I have no projects on the boil, so to speak.

So, I think I can say, with some evidence, that I'm a part of the audio fiction production scene, that I care about audio fiction in general, that I might have some thoughts worth listening to about it, and that I'm a mostly disinterested party regarding this - I have no particular stake in Rusty Quill's fortunes one way or the other.

Tag Responses

Okay, so I wanted to quickly respond to a few of the tag comments that have popped up in response to yesterday's post, mainly because I feel like it's worth expanding on some of them:

#i also feel bad because i was always kinda wary on tma2#now it feels even more like a cash grab

Look - as a podcast producer, I can respect a cash grab. If you can grab that cash, I'm a strong believer in doing so, because making audio fiction without cash is kinda sucky. It's like any other big endeavour - when you get nothing out of it, it eats away at you. That's part of the reason why PVP isn't producing at the moment - We tried to scale up to multiple productions and it damn near killed us. We weren't really getting the income we needed to do more than just barely break even - we, as producers, weren't making a dime off of our podcasts, even with Patreon and crowdfunding. Rusty Quill is actually an extreme outlier regarding their ability to get cash from their audiences. How extreme? Well, before the TMA2 kickstarter, the most successful Audio Fiction crowdfunding campaign was Unseen, from the producers of Wolf 359, one of the seminal audio fiction shows of the modern audio fiction renaissance, and it hit a little over US$40,000. Which, just to note, was significantly higher than any other audio fiction crowdfund project before it - very few audio fiction crowdfund campaigns get more than around US$5,000-10,000.

So, sure, it's a cash grab. It might still be good anyway though! Don't disregard it just because they're making financially-dominated decisions.

#Adding onto this while the evidence isn't conclusive (because as many people have said it is conjecture and opinions and stuff)#and also the author's credibility is...in question

So, first things first, Newt Schottelkotte is an extremely credible journalist in the Audio Fiction space - they've broken a number of big stories, and written a lot in support of the audio fiction production scene. Wil Williams, who helped edit the piece, is also a highly respected critic and journalist within the space, while Tal Minear is a very prolific audio fiction producer of good repute. Personally, I have absolutely no concerns about their integrity or credibility - they've all done incredible work.

But it is worth noting that Audio fiction is kinda odd, in that journalists, critics and producers all pretty much come from the same group of people. The honest fact is that Audio Fiction, as a beat, has pretty much no prestige, there are (currently) no publications that are dedicated to audio fiction coverage, and the whole sector is mostly considered an afterthought to the real podcast industry. So, the few people who do create audio fiction meta-content, even if they begin as separated from the industry, don't stay separated for long - they will start making contacts with producers, they may start finding people offering cameo roles in shows, and eventually, they'll consider moving into podcast production. If your requirement for a "credible" voice within audio fiction journalism is one that has absolutely no connections with any actual production, I'm sorry but that ain't happening - the scene is too small, and people move between production and commentary so often, that "true independence" isn't a thing.

With that said, these journalists do a lot to make their affiliations visible up front, which is the other way to manage conflicts of interest within the scene - by declaring them. I'd be a lot more suspicious of a journalist that doesn't put their affiliations up front, honestly.

The Rusty Quill Response

So, I wrote yesterday that I wasn't expecting a response from Rusty Quill for a good three days - they are a group, it takes time to coordinate a response, I figured I could relax for a bit. However, Rusty Quill has already produced a response, and that alone says something - it says that a single person has dictated this response. Considering the record speed, I also doubt that it has been looked over by anyone else. Knowing these things, I find it very likely that this is Alex Newall's response specifically, speaking for Rusty Quill, rather than one that that the leadership at Rusty Quill has worked on together.

I'm not going to go through the whole thing point by point - I don't have the time, and this post is already too long for most Tumblrites to consider going through it. But on a more general level, I find it interesting that the response contains not a single link, not a single pointer towards contrary evidence. Almost certainly this is due to the timeframe - were I in RQ's position, I would be going through our paperwork to find some boilerplate contracts to provide some counter-evidence to the article, or providing some financial details to show where the money is going, but finding, redacting, and publishing these things takes time. RQ has done none of this, and this isn't necessarily a point against them, but it does mean that Rusty Quill hasn't done much more than shout "Am not!" into the audience.

To talk about one specific point, I also find it interesting that, having been attacked on the subject of crew pay rates, they talk about how their cast have very good pay rates. This might be true, I don't have the resources to fact check that, and I hope it is - actors do deserve pay. But it is worth noting that actors are on a production for very little of the time - it's the editors, sound designers, musicians, transcribers, etc who put the most time on to a production. In general, you'd expect that the crew would be getting more money than the cast, because the crew is going to be putting in more time (although, fair's fair, the vast majority of audio fiction out there doesn't do this, because the only "crew" is the producer, who is usually financing the production out of their own pocket).

Questions?

So, I figure that if I'm putting myself out there, I might as well offer the opportunity for people to pick my brain. Have a question about Audio fiction production? Want to hear my explicit comments about something someone has said? My asks are open, I'll do my best to come back and answer any asks that come my way.

#tma #the magnus archives #the magnus protocol #rusty quill #rq #industry explainer #audio fiction

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keithwinters · 4 months

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prompt from here! I just did... all of them bc I can't help myself tucking this under a cut to save space

What memory would your OC rather just forget? one that I can't share yet in case it comes up, but it was when he was a young teen. he still has nightmares over it. he wants to forget the sight, but also feels like maybe he should be haunted by it forever

What's something about your OC that people wouldn't expect just from looking at them? he likes math a lot... as well as sewing, cooking, little crafts of assorted kinds (you have to be so talented to make things so small!! he could never!!) he also really likes singing but is Too Shy

What is your OC's fatal flaw? Are they aware of this flaw? he holds himself to an incredibly unreasonable standard and is very harsh with himself when he inevitably falls short. he knows the virtues of love but also recognizes he doesn't love himself. it's something he's been circling around working on but makes very little progress on

When scared, does your OC fight, flee, freeze or fawn? it depends on the situation! most times nowadays he'll fight. he's scared but that's because there's a threat and he needs to protect his loved ones. he would also fight much earlier on in life but he managed to shift that to freezing/fawning as he got older. less of a problem (in his eyes) that way

How far is your OC willing to go to get what they want? he will break himself but (for the post part) never others, no matter how much he wants something

How easily could your OC be convinced to do something that goes against their moral compass? well he's killed people so. maybe concerningly less than he would have hoped?? something he's definitely been thinking about

What's one way your OC has changed since you first came up with them? he's much more of a softie carebear than I initially intended! he was always a doting/overprotective older brother, but as we played it just felt right to have him be more openly loving/emotional. it's meant to tie in with his efforts to be better at communicating, plus the curse of thinking of 1000 things you wanted to say to someone you can't ever see again also the wrestling stuff came a little later on and I love it so so much lol

Would your OC ostensibly be able to get away with murder? I would say so, yeah :> hee hoo ok but on Earth? ...maybe also yes. he does take after his mom a lot

Do you have a specific lyric or quote which you associate with your OC? too many. god. here's some bangers I don't think I've shared yet: "Oh devil, I made my own hell; And deep inside I'm sure I got here all by myself" - Oh Devil, Electric Guest "Til I'm bloody and bruised, till I've broken my bones; Til I won't be abused; Til I'm laughing alone" - I'm Gonna Win, Rob Cantor "I take your hand, now you'll never be lonely; Not when I'm home, sweet home" Mother, I'm Here, Darren Korb and OFC "Heartaches by the number, trouble by the score; Everyday you love me less, each day I love you more." Heartaches by the Number, Guy Mitchell

What's an AU that would be interesting to explore with your OC? I don't know enough about it to theorycraft or anything, but I think he would thrive in Monster Hunter... wrastling big beasties and cooking forever

What is your OC's weapon of choice? Have they ever actually used it? His fists!! and yes!! he's also used a hunting rifle, but that was years ago and he did not care for it at all. he very specifically refuses to use weapons for fighting because of one line of thought that might maybe come up in-game so. I shant say it.

Is your OC self-destructive? In what ways? god. yes. aside from his self-sabotage in general, he physically picks at himself when nervous and has the bad habit of leaving wounds unattended/aggravating them bc pain is the best teacher/reminder and he needs to Be Better

If you met your OC, would the two of you get along? I might bully him. sorry bb

How does your OC want to be seen by other characters? ok this is a BIG THING for him. and I feel silly saying it plain like this but- he wants to be seen as himself! not someone's idea of him, or as someone else, just. him. but if you asked him this question, he'd say he wants to be seen as helpful. useful. he wouldn't say, but think- to be seen as kind. warm. but again, useful. loveable.

Does your OC have a faceclaim? If so, who? nope! in an effort to not just leave it at that tho- when I make characters I focus on a couple specific traits/ features and then work outwards from there, so I have troubles finding faceclaims that have the same characteristics

What is your OC's pain tolerance like? pretty good! he's naturally pretty durable but it's also something he's put effort into maybe a weird amount of effort but like. it's all a part of being a better fighter, right? and! not worrying people!

What is the worst thing you have put your OC through story-wise? ripping him away from his family :> but honestly maybe that's not the worst, he's had a lot of good things come of that after all...maybe it'd be the other thing

Is your OC more cold and detached or up close and personal? Keith can try as hard as he can to be as cold and detached and intimidating as he may (occasionally) want, but he's cursed to be an affectionate puppy in the form of a man

How does your OC behave when enraged? seething. violent. but it takes so so so much to get him to "enraged" and he'd much rather keep it that way

Does your OC have a tendency to get jealous? If so, how does this manifest? with relationships, he's moreso clingy than jealous. if he's with someone, he trusts them full-stop. he wants attention, sure, but he doesn't view it as someone else getting attention he wants or should be for him. it's just a matter of if he's getting any or not. it's another facet of his tendency to think of himself as the problem in most things. similarly, while it might occasionally crop up (he's not immune to jealousy after all), it's sort of rare for him to be jealous of someone's status or stuff or... anything

Does your OC have any illnesses or disorders? How do they handle it? he's allergic to dogs and had to be dragged away from them many many times as a kid. he's also been in therapy for years (with good progress!) for PTSD, survivor's guilt, anxiety, and depression

What character alignment would you consider your OC to be? good! maybe neutral good? he'll go against law and order if he thinks it will ultimately help others

What emotion is the hardest for your OC to process? How about express? his anger. depending on his age it either took him over or he swallowed it completely. It's ok for others to be angry, to feel those feelings and deal with them... but never him. it's something to swallow, to break down and sand off

What is an alternative life path your OC might have gone down? How different would their life be if they'd made those decisions? if he never got isekai'd, he would...probably end up taking over the family store as intended and just existing. maybe he'd succeed in doing so and coast, maybe he'd have to sell it in the end and get a different job. but he was not thriving and had no idea of how to start doing so, and his family is not quite aware of the level he was at with that (although Sam got close). it's weird to say and incredibly hard for him to think about but this really was overall a positive change in his life.

What is your favorite thing about your OC? his whore eyelashes and big eyebrows

(I had to start a new block bc this was too long oh god oh jesus) how emotional he is. again, I didn't super intend for that to be the case, but I guess after playing a very deliberately UNemotive character for so long it was meant to be lol I love drawing and imagining all the dumbass faces he pulls!! he's my little guy!!!

#this is so long oh god #but I love these and it's been too long since I've filled one out!!!#THANK U FOR SHARING YES U♥#I'm sure there's stuff I missed or goofed but I have to ship it now or I never will

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invested-in-your-future · 1 year

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What restrictions have you set for it?

Oh that one's easy.

Two sets of rules. First its the specific restriction of what I'd be using. Then things specific to V4 and onward that I swore I would never bring up or use.

The Basic set of Rules:

V1 - V3 stays the same - Everything from the first trailers till the end of V3, including the post-credits scenes, is still exactly the same. Even if its the subplots that did not work or I don't like. It is what it is, it happened the way it did. Build upon past mistakes instead of trying to "perfect" things.

Song Lyrics from the first three volumes stay - things being written still have to take into account the soundtrack lyrics (only from those specific volumes that stay), just like one would have done when theorycrafting back then.

Keep the overall "idea" of the setting mostly same as V1 through V3 - which means that its still "Somewhat contemporary" vibe of the setting and the setting is "somewhat grounded" (with exception for rule of cool) with things that could be considered "magical" being limited and ambiguous enough as to not break that suspension of disbelief. Which means the idea of magic is still limited to what's connected to "Maidens subplot". Remnant is a world built on science and myth and while there’s something in the root of it all, the best part about this setting for me was always the fact that there’s very clear limits to the world and world-building. It was the world where “magic” was a far-away fairytale that "might" have existed but majority of the world probably never was ever going to care about it or be impacted by it. It was a world after terrible strife and multiple very human very normal wars, where kingdoms were built on quite grounded and contemporary ideas with very human conflicts that sometimes might be influenced by something "out there", but would still wind up being about here and now.

Each of the leads has to have a character arc - In some cases like Blake, that would mean having to think up something new altogether. Would be weird for something called "RWBY" to have nothing on the said R, W, B and Y right? So whatever goes has to be focused on them. While other characters exist and can have stories and arcs, in the end of the day its their story and their journey first and foremost.

What would NOT be used:

Relic McGuffin Subplot - Because honestly? Its just all around ehhh and a very tired trope (ex: if you reviewed at least ten D&D RP sessions you would find something like that being used in more than half) and there already are enough things going wrong within the setting that I don't really get why they needed this? I guess it allowed the writers to basically just...not need to think up why characters are in one specific location or the other? And in some cases as a convenient exposition plot-device? And the story already has plot threads of powerful items/locations, there's no need to THIS. Also "let's go on the hunt for magic RPG Plot Items" is kind of...crass right after all the trauma and war and probably the most "grounded" end to a volume that was Fall of Beacon? So yeah, N O P E.

Salem's Evil Doom Council of Very Evil - again why does the story need this? Why does an Ancient Evil with an army of eldritch monsters at her disposal need a bunch of stereotypes? Why do we need another set of henchmen for Salem? And honestly? Whenever they would show up my brain would just start up playing the Bad Horse segment from Dr Horrible and...no. I literally expect bunch of background henchmen start singing "The evil league of evil is watching so beware" whenever Cinder's group reacts to anything there. More factions and interests in the world? Sure, but Salem does not need this and it kind of feels detrimental to how her side was portrayed in V3? The scary thing about the bad guys is not the numbers, its all the manipulation and planning that ends up working because of human nature.

A lot of V4 and onward characters - Kind of self explanatory, but since a lot of those characters are kind of one-time one-note appearances tied to specific subplots, there's not really any reason for them to be there anymore? And quite a few are kind of completely redundant. RWBY already has more than enough characters it forgets to use past their first appearance already. Doesn't mean no new or returning characters though. Just very likely not the RWBY-proper V4+ ones.

The RWBY-proper version of Menagerie and the subplot there - Because honestly I have absolutely no idea what the writers thought when doing this considering how out of touch it feels. WF subplot is already very shaky and filled with unfortunate implications in the first three volumes already. There's absolutely no need for a season long subplot filled with padding that leads to Blake delivering the equivalent of a twitter rant about how "achshually marginalized communities are as bad as literal bigots because... uhhh... burning and looting". Not to mention the fact that they basically made Menagerie be literal equivalent of rich people resort with Blake's family owning a literal freaking castle. Like you literally could just not touch WF Subplot at all past V3 and it would end up being BETTER than what was there.

Salem and Ozpin backstory from V6 and everything connected to that - so yeah got to just kind of throw all of that away. Whoooooop. Gone. "Gods did it"? Gone. Ozpin's big secret that is supposed to make everyone angry but is kind of tamest most toothless revelation ever? Gone.

The Curing of PTSD via Fear of Rats. - I have already written pages upon pages about this with how extremely vile pretty much every aspect on how Yang's trauma is handled in V4 is so I won't repeat myself.

#rwby #rwby au #rwby meta stuff mine #rwde #is this rwde?#idk really

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aewinning · 10 months

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Fontaine/4.x+ Predictions

I'm throwing some big bold Fontaine/4.x predictions out so I can reference this in a year and find out just how right or wrong I was. Under a cut because it's a wall of text and b/c it involves obscure lore not everybody's read.

(No leaks involved. If you've seen leaks that confirm or contradict any of this, please don't send them to me or discuss them in replies. As you can see, the lore theorycrafting is half of the fun for me!)

Yes, this is the tip of the iceberg on my lore theories. No, this is not a comprehensive prediction of the entire Fontaine plot, just bits of it I feel are foreshadowed. Yes, I'm citing a lot of shit so that when I go back through this a year from now I can see why I thought what I thought.

I think about Genshin lore too much, this truly is live footage of me every time a single new crumb of information is divulged.

Massive wall of text incoming b/c I can't stop rambling once you start me up on Genshin lore.

The theories:

Fontaine fucks up and Celestia gets involved

My big pet theory that I've been nursing for over a year now, ever since we started hearing from bit NPCs in minor events about Fontaine's energy problems, is that I think Celestia is either going to drop a nail on Fontaine or at the very least finally become relevant to the main plot in a big way by sending someone to intervene with Fontaine's technology and the mockery Focalors is making of the judicial process. (They might not care enough to intervene in the average judicial process, but she's literally the capital-letters God of Justice, and it's supposed to be her ideal. If she's abandoned it, they might not be happy.) They're also hovering over what we can assume to be the location of Fontaine, which is not a good sign.

This theory was strengthened when reading Rene's Investigation Notes in the Khvarena of Good and Evil questline, which indicate that Fontaine has done research on Khaenri'ah's use of abyssal power as an energy source, which was warned against by some of Khaenri'ah's own people but ignored (to disastrous outcome). There are a lot of parallels being set up between Khaenri'ah and Fontaine in those notes and with all the mention of sinners in the Final Feast trailer narration, and I'm not sure they bode well for Fontaine.

It's possible that the energy generator machine that Persikov and the other Fatui were working on as far back as 2.8's Golden Apple Archipelago were meant to help them gain a foothold in Fontaine; after all, solve the desperate nation's energy problems, and you suddenly hold a lot of power in the nation and can even hold their energy source ransom until your demands are met. I wouldn't be surprised if "the Fatui control Fontaine's energy future and use it as leverage" is a plot point.

(Although back in the day I thought it would be Pantalone behind that plot, not Arlecchino, because economic and political manipulation seemed his style and we hadn't heard anything much about Arlecchino yet. Hell, Arlecchino had been mentioned like once in-game then, in Inazuma's "The Very Special Fortune Slip" hidden questline, and was still referred to as male at that point.)

2. Neuvillette is unjustly imprisoned by Furina; Charlotte figures it out

I think Neuvillette is going to be imprisoned by Furina (who's pretty obviously the hydro archon Focalors), foreshadowed by the bars going over his face but not Clorinde's when they're walking in the sewers in the trailer. This will likely be either Furina framing him for something (foreshadowed by her burning what seems to be evidence while complaining about the lack of plot twists and entertainment, while he's literally 'framed' by the burning photo) OR a political imprisonment because they have an ideological clash.

Neuvillette seems to actually want justice, Furina seems to want a show. She seems very pouty and childish; if he tries to discipline her or remind her of the true meaning of justice, she could very well order him arrested and turn it into a grand trial to feed her lust for entertainment. And it could certainly be a combination framing/political imprisonment as well. Very French Reign of Terror style.

Charlotte may figure this whole situation out; in the trailer she's investigating photos with a puzzled look on her face as if she sees something wrong with them, and in the TCG event she offered to let us take out an ad in the paper if we ever needed it, in exchange for our assistance during the event. Now, the pictures were of Navia, not Neuvillette, so this may be an unrelated plot, but surely she's going to help us sleuth up the truth of something with foreshadowing like that.

Neuvillette is also...something. His eyes resemble Khaenri'ahn eyes, he's got the Kleelike pointy ears, and his cool blue hair streaks are certainly interesting. Oceanids can mimic other creatures so he could be an Oceanid (and given that they were spies of the previous archon that would set him up nicely for opposition to Furina). He could be Klee's species. He could be a Khaenri'ahn.

Whatever he is, he's NOT standard modern Teyvat human, and he's NOT the previous hydro archon despite the hair streaks because we know from the Khvarena of Good and Evil questline and Vourukasha's Glow artifact set that the previous archon died and was anchored beneath the Harvisptokm in the form of the giant Gaokerena lotus to purify abyssal influence in the region.

Neuvillette, I've got my eye on you. (Both eyes. While twirling my hair and kicking my feet.)

1b+2b. Neuvillette replaces Furina as hydro archon

I fully understand this is an unlikely scenario so it's not as firmly a prediction as much as a "this would be interesting," but if Celestia brings judgment on Fontaine it is possible that the hydro archon slot opens up, either because they repossess Furina's gnosis and find a new archon, or because they straight-up kill her (can you fucking imagine the shock from the community if they kill an archon off? but they'd still get to sell two separate units as archons, it'd be a win/win for them).

If this happens the logical choice for a replacement would be Chief Justice Neuvillette, especially if he was in opposition to the behavior that put her on Celestia's shitlist. I can see it now: Celestia repossesses the gnosis, gives it to him, he says thank you, the Celestians fuck off to be mysterious again, and he turns right around and hands it to the Fatui in exchange for getting the hell out of Fontaine. (Or for some other reason.)

I highly doubt they'll go this route, but I would love to see it. Not only would it even out the archon gender ratio a bit, but it would answer the question of how a change of archonhood takes place, which we still haven't seen since Morax hasn't been replaced as geo archon yet. And I think it's a question we deserve to have answered before the end of the game. If not here, then perhaps in Natlan (see point 7 below).

3. Lyney, Lynette, Freminet, and Arlecchino

This is a pretty common/obvious theory but I agree that the siblings are all likely working for Arlecchino, likely unwillingly. She runs the House of the Hearth which takes in (and sometimes causes) orphans and trains them for the Fatui; we've seen several NPCs that came from them before and many of them consider each other brothers and sisters.

I don't think Lyney and Lynette are related to Freminet by blood; I think they consider him a sibling due to being raised together. The resemblance between Lyney and Lynette is clearer, especially with the twin names, but names can be changed, so I don't even treat it as confirmed that those two are blood related until proven otherwise, especially since Lynette has cat features and Lyney doesn't.

Both Lynette and Freminet seem to have robotic features, and we know that Fontaine has robots and Snezhnaya has the technology for segments, plus we've seen Albedo as a homunculus and Scara as a puppet, so artificial humans are very much within the realm of possibility for Teyvat. Lynette is said to have rather mechanical behavior, and Freminet's constellation is literally 'Automaton.' So I think it's likely enough that one or both of them aren't flesh and blood humans.

To take that a step further, I think it's possible that Lynette died at some point, and the current Lynette is a mechanical replacement OR a robotic body being inhabited by her soul (Alphonse from Full Metal Alchemist style). Lyney may have had to pledge loyalty to Arlecchino and the Fatui in order to rescue or recreate his sister through these means, OR it's possible they were already in the House of the Hearth and Dottore or somebody else damaged the original Lynette while experimenting with her.

Dark. And quite the fun twist if it's true, tbh.

4. Navia and Clorinde

Navia gives off a 'gentleman thief' vibe to me but lady version, and Clorinde shoots directly at her in the trailer, indicating she's playing the role of the detective or law enforcement officer tracking her down. I don't have coherent thoughts here on a lore front really, I'm just really excited for the possibility of gentlewoman thief rivals to lovers/enemies with benefits lesbians.

Clorinde's outfit looks a bit historical Navy inspired to me, so maybe she's a member of the Navy, but I'm not really sure why she'd be chasing criminals if that's the case.

5. Wriothesley, Sigewinne, and the Tower of London

I don't have a solid opinion on whether Wriothesley is blind or not as possibly hinted at by his fumbling for the cup, but I think it'd be cool if he was! People point to him looking at papers or at Sigewinne as evidence that he's not, but 'blind' as a term does not always mean complete lack of sight, for one, and if we assume he's a vision user as a seemingly playable character then there could be alternative methods he reads things with, such as using elemental sight to read ink with crushed-up elemental rocks in it or something.

He seems rather military, and Fontaine seems to have a strong military presence in general with some of the Melusine giving off a British bobby (police) vibe visually. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a structure reminiscent of the Tower of London, potentially where Wriothesley works and Neuvillette gets held when imprisoned.

No solid thoughts about Sigewinne yet other than I'm guessing she's going to be a healer or support, since she's little and cute and taking care of someone in the trailer. I assume she's a Melusine.

6. Chenyu Vale and Qiaoying Village (and Yilong Port?)

They're coming. I can feel it in my bones that at last we will go to the long-awaited Baizhu homeland. Why? There have been multiple sources indicating that they're placed between Liyue and Fontaine, likely between Fontaine and Qingce Village. I think 4.4 should be Lantern Rite judging from the usual calendar, and that would be a prime time for it to pop up - the main Fontaine story should be over at that point, and we'll be back in Liyue anyways. It will also be the Year of the Dragon, which might mean time for some juicy Zhongli or Liyue lore. Though they might move Chenyu Vale elsewhere in the 4.x schedule if needed.

This region will likely utilize Fontaine's diving mechanics. Legends about the region in weapon and artifact lore discuss powerful sunken jade artifacts in the rivers and lakes of the region, which would make a storyline revolving around finding them the perfect excuse to introduce the diving mechanics to a non-Fontaine region. Given the name and the lore, it's very possible that Baizhu's signature weapon Jadefall's Splendor is one of those pieces of jade, reclaimed.

For that and multiple other reasons, I believe Baizhu will be relevant to the main storyline here. Not only does he have a personal vested interest in finding interesting and powerful old artifacts or knowledge that might aid in his search for immortality, but Changsheng is intimately connected to the region lorewise. The Echoes of an Offering artifact set doesn't mention Changsheng by name, but it does discuss an adeptus named "Herblord" in Chenyu Vale and tell her story, and Changsheng is referred to as an "Herblord" in Baizhu's story cutscene. There's no reason to refer to them both with such a specific unusual term unless they're one and the same.

(I also have a theory that the other woman in the artifact lore is Madame Ping. The other woman is referred to as a fish adeptus, and Madame Ping's younger self in cutscenes has fish motifs and a fishtail silhouette, so I believe she's likely a koi as her adeptus form. I am highly tempted to write a Changsheng/Madame Ping fic because y'all there is something incredibly wlw happening in that artifact lore. I am also not going to be surprised if Madame Ping's younger form becomes playable in conjunction with Chenyu Vale story.)

7. Natlan

As a final far future prediction: In Natlan, Capitano will likely challenge the pyro archon for her gnosis and possibly even replace her. We know he's headed to Natlan and also "has the courage to challenge gods as an ordinary mortal" from Varka's Weinlesefest letter, and if Pierro is simply the "Director" of the Fatui as labeled in the Winter Night's Lazzo description and not a numbered harbinger, Capitano may occupy slot #1, which would be in line with his name as the Captain. We've been told by Nahida that the top three harbingers rival gods in terms of power, and I feel like if any god would answer a martial challenge with their gnosis on the line it would be the God of War, especially if the challenger was backed by another archon. I TRULY hope we see a fight between them.

(I also wanna see someone guillotined in Fontaine to fit the vibe but I highly doubt that will happen in Genshin. I think Signora was the most violent death we'll get onscreen.)

Anyways I hope someone found this titillating or educational and we can all look back at this and laugh at how wrong I was a year from now, but occasionally my farfetched theories do work out, such as when I looked a the Echoes of an Offering set lore on its release a full YEAR before Baizhu's release and excitedly vibrated to a friend about how it HAD to be related to him or Changsheng.

(I have theories past this point in the game too but they mostly rely on esoteric Gnostic text parallels more than in-game foreshadowing/content so I'm less confident in them.)

#aewinblabs #genshin impact #fontaine #theories #fontaine predictions #predictions #spoilers #genshin spoilers #maybe #if you're not up to date on quests and obscure lore at least #but everything mentioned here has been out for at least a patch now #except for the fontaine trailer

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bug-the-chicken-nug · 7 months

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I've been meaning to get around to this for a long time and I was going to make it a more gussied up and "formalized" sort of theorycrafting post, but fuck it, im just gonna freestyle it.

So basically

My idea of what makes magic different in RWBY basically comes down to source.

Semblances use Aura, and Magic doesn't.

You power magic by sucking in the invisible natural energies of the universe around you. And this *theoretically* has all the energy you could feasibly want.

But why aren't mages unstoppable, then?

Because Aura is still important in a *different* way, and is now like your "stabilizer" or "foundation", rather than your fuel.

Just because magic has almost unlimited fuel doesn't mean *your* capabilities are unlimited, in much the same way as how a car wouldn't suddenly become omni-capable just because its fuel tank endlessly refills.

So basically, Aura is now still important for making yourself a *sturdier* and more *reliable* car for pulling crazy magic stunts.

In this way, magic overuse is sometimes actually worse and more dangerous than Aura overuse.

Instead of your power having a point where it'll naturally run out, it *won't* do that by itself, it just gets increasingly painful and unstable.

And looking at a different angle of all this, someone like Ozpin can still become a *worse* mage over time despite having "infinite fuel" because his body's "entryway" for magic, or proverbial Magical Succ Strength, has become increasingly Shit over time, and whenever he splits off a new, smaller and more specialized "entryway" for someone else to use, he has to reduce the diameter of his own accordingly.

So basically he has access to the world's BIGGEREST pool of pure rocket fuel but he has to sip it daintily with a teensy widdle silly straw.

Salem, meanwhile, is actually being nerfed by what the gods did to her, in a way.

She can't just instantly nuke anyone within sight because *her* system is constantly forced to passively run one very taxing spell in particular, and that spell is called Being THEE Most Unkillable There Ever Was.

This is effectively using up a bunch of this bitch's RAM and bandwidth at all times, and her trip to the Forbidden Hot Tub only made it Worse.

"But Salem is an INDESTRUCTIBLE car" you say. "She's That Fucking Car your great uncle has thats like a majillion years old but still works great somehow! So if she wants to she could just squnch out more magic, overclock herself like mad, and not care about what happens to her!"

Ohr but you see i Thot of that.

See, even if you are Thee Car Of All Time, magic overuse still fundamentally warps you and strains you in ways that your body at some point no longer registers as "damage" and are instead just like... a new, worse sort of "normal". Kind of like accumulating a bunch of metaphorical scar tissue and junk. But you are supposed to be a car in this analogy still so like. I guess you're some kind of horrid flesh car that has the ability to scar. Freak.

This also can mean that your like magical cloaca for succing can slowly get smaller or less powerful if you keep pulling that horseshit, with a similar sort of logic where its degradation is not properly recognized as "damage".

And this is why Salami is escared to just nuke or Power Word Kill any bitch that so much as rears their head in her 100 mile vicinity.

She doesn't want her magical clussy to prolapse.

THE END!

#salem rwby #ozpin rwby #rwby

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troutfur · 11 months

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Hey, Trout how do you think a Tigerkin Firestar would deal with everything? Growing up with dad!Tiger, being apprenticed, ect. Just what are your thoughts?

I would play it similar but not quite how @bonefall set it up with his own AU Tigerstar's Fire. I like the aspect of Fireheart as a cat deeply inspired by the ideals of Bluestar as a mentor, a position of honor he only got to because of his dad's scheme in the first place, as well as the conflict with Swiftpaw as a littermate who is more in line with the heir Tigerclaw wanted to groom. I like those kinds of conflicts and how Fireheart would have to navigate between his perception of his strict but ultimately caring father and the fact he's an embodiment of the antithesis to the ideals his mentor passed down.

I wouldn't want it to end as Tiger's victory and the grand political upheaval that sets up the rival monarchies, however. Not only is it not my style to write about such seismic shifts, but I feel like in itself TPB's plot could lend itself well to a bittersweet resolution. With Tigerstar dead under Fireheart's claws, he comes to kill a part of his own childhood and now just remains the cleanup, the burying of it all.

I'm also compelled by the things y'all have brought up with regards to the pfurr dynamic I have in mind for Frostfur, Lionheart, Goldenflower, and Tigerheart. The idea that as he exposes his father, the one who although unstated it is pretty obvious was the tom who sired him, his mother would denounce him falsely as a sire and create a rift in their family compels me. I love writing about people navigating the complexities and conventions of social systems, and how these forces can serve as impersonal antagonists.

If you have anything more specific to ask feel free! Honestly clanborn Fireheart is one of my favorite things to ponder and theorycraft about so it's always very welcome!

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hematomes · 1 year

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Fighting the urge to murder I wish YouTube had a proper blocking function there are so many people just being completely wrong and I can't keep fighting the urge to correct them.

This is about Baizhu leaks.

I just...why are Genshin fans like this?why can't we just learn to make sure of stuff before we start throwing opinions all over the place like they're true?

Like Baizhu as a character seems to either be the second dendro unit in a bloom team(and all other variants,which in turns gives them the dendro resonance so more damage) or the second dendro or only dendro in an aggravate/spread team right? he's a support/healer/shielder(though his shields seem more for interruption resistance than actually shielding but that doesn't matter because he heals) I'm not wrong to come to that conclusion correct?

So then why are people saying he isn't good because he doesn't play a role he wasn't meant for??? JUST GOD I HATE IT HERE (can leave at any time,is too stubborn to do so)

Don't mind me I've just been having this rant going in my brain all week

probably bc a good chunk of loudly wrong players only care about big pp numbers

i think the inherent issue with dendro rn is that every support character coming out after nahida is (understandably) compared with her. but what ppl who just idk play brainlessly or smth fail to understand is that different supports will have different roles

nahida is mainly a buffer and a driver. if you privilege dmg input then yes, she's better than baizhu. but she doesn't provide a shield (which is needed, especially in bloom scenarios), and she only provides healing with the craftable hp catalyst, which in turn demands additional effort into balancing her build bc she otherwise doesn't benefit from hp.

baizhu is primarily a shielder and a healer. he has a weak dendro application because, as you said, you'll want him to be the 2nd dendro in a bloom-based comp (typically paired with nahida but DMC is a viable alternative). in quicken scenarios his dendro application can be enough as long as you build him to have his ult in every rotation. he could use a battery, which makes him a perfect fit in double electro + double dendro comps. he's therefore really good for cyno, who's uptime is so long no one except zhongli can keep up. now you get a shield and a heal in one character (so it's not as important if you don't have 100% shield uptime), who's the perfect element to pair w him.

then they compare him to yaoyao. she's a good f2p alternative, but he's objectively better (as in comfier). she doesn't have a shield, and her healing requires her to be on-field.

anyway the "theorycrafting" (as in fake TCs who don't know shit and just watch zy0x with their hand down their pants) scene is a nightmare, and everytime a character comes out in the beta there's doomposting etc etc. honestly i stopped caring after kokomi's beta 💀 pulling for her was one of the best decisions of my life, not bc she's now meta but bc she's my special girl

#— answered #— nonnie #long post

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aquasrandomstuffs · 1 year

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15 Questions

I got tagged by @daydreamodyssey. Popping it onto my random stuff side blog because it's not technically writing related. I will be making this an open tag because I have no idea if I have 15 mutuals that haven't already done this ^_^;. Also under a readmore to save peoples' dashes

1. Are you named after anyone?

Not that I'm aware. My mum told me she like the name I have because it was unusual outside of Scotland, and even in Scotland at the time.

2. When was the last time you cried?

While watching a reaction video going through the final part of the FF14 Endwalker MSQ a week and a bit ago. A certain npc's sacrifice gets me constantly, alright?

3. Do you have kids?

No. I can't really afford to give them the life they deserve and I can barely handle my nieces and nephews. At least I can hand them back to their parents when I get overstimulated, can't do that with your own.

4. Do you use sarcasm a lot?

It's a bit of a go-to. I mean, I'm British so...

5. What’s the first thing you notice about people?

Usually whatever they're wearing. If they're talking, usually their accent.

6. What’s your eye color?

Blue.

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

Both. I'm a sap for happy endings but I do like the adrenaline rush of scary movies

8. Any special talents?

I'm reasonably creative and my occasional leaps of 'logic' will often have people questioning either my sanity or their own (usually mine. Logic doesn't really exist in this brain)

9. Where were you born?

In a hospital.

10. What are your hobbies?

Writing, reading (online for the most part these days), video games, tabletop wargames and roleplaying games. I also enjoy theorycrafting, though I rarely share my insane thoughts with regards to that.

11. Have you any pets?

I would love to have some sort of pet. Alas, the person I live with is allergic to pretty much everything with fur or feathers and we don't have room for fish or anything more exotic.

12. What sports do you play/have played?

I've never played professionally, but I have played plenty of games of rounders, and I wasn't too bad at badminton while I was at school. I used to be an avid swimmer, but that's fallen by the wayside the last few years.

13. How tall are you?

5'6.

14. Favorite subject in school?

Honestly? I liked them all. There were individual teachers I never liked, but I loved and still love learning generally.

15. Dream job?

I don't really have one, if I'm totally honest. As a kid, I wanted to be a palaeontologist for ages then switched it up by wanting to go into animal care as a teenager. I'm quite happy with the job I'm doing now as it's about as close to a lot of peoples' dream for a job as I'll get. No, you may not ask any more questions about it

#tumblr tag games #I am upset about the pet situation #but I make do with becoming besties with my friends' animals instead

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callmearcturus · 3 years

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just talkin about classpects

okay what do i even wanna say here

first off: I am genuinely, deeply, passionately not interested in anyone "well actually"ing me on any of these thoughts. i promise I have thought these things through, and they are my thoughts, and if that hellion known as hussie themself showed up, i would not care about their opinion for various reasons.

okay so classpects are pretty cool right

here's some scorching hot takes form the word go: I don't really think I buy the idea that classes and aspects have opposites/inversions. i don't even really think Calliope's theory of passive/active classes are particularly correct, as she is canonically just doing theorycrafting of her own. and i like her theorycrafting! but I don't think it's foolproof "canon".

My favorite breakdown of Classes was done by a friend who sadly left fandom a few years ago, but it's based on the archetypical roles that the person would fill.

maid: the survivor, the character who's been through hell at the start of their arc and then rises above it

page: the secretly clever ingenue

mage: the mad scientist

knight: the jerk with the heart of gold

rogue: the upbeat team player, the robin hood, all about the team

sylph: the fixers, they see a situation that is broken and immediately think they can improve it either with their knowledge or they can get the necessary knowledge

seer: the wizard, deals knowledge out, tends to kickstart the story

thief: the devilish, mercurial trickster with depths of vulnerability

heir: the fool, the eccentric hero with strange charisma

bard: the dangerous, changeable wild card

prince: the emotionally distant damaged one longing for closeness, either rises above or shatters

witch: the sweetheart with the iron core, warning: susceptible to mind break

even all these years later I look over this and nod along. Because one of my favorite things about the idea of classpect is how they are trying to prescribe a certain character arc to a person.

I am a Prince of Heart because, yep, I am an emotionally distant damaged person who both was shattered in the past and now has (hopefully) risen up from that pain.

Why am I Heart, though? Because I'm sort of obsessed with the idea of performance, of the way the Self manifests, with what is on the surface and what is underneath, and with the pursuit of self-actualization via nothing but self-discovery. These are things that might overlap with other aspects (Mind comes to mind) but they all are core to Heart. Heart players are incredibly self-absorbed, unfortunately. /laughs

My actual favorite aspect is Hope though, because it's just bullshit. It and Rage are the most absorbed in how The Game Of Sburb actually works, imo. Hope is... cheat codes. It's going off the scripted path. It's exploits. It's for the players who go "okay I know how this is supposed to go, but how do I break that because I prefer it my way." For Jake, that manifests as Peak Fucking Bullshit Gameshark Codes that the game itself struggles to contain (I read the time when BGD was fading in and out of Realness as the game basically trying to get Jake back on a fucking leash). For Eridan, it means observing all the mechanics and the storyline laid out for the Trolls and Kanaya specifically and going "actually NAH i'm gonna have a TANTRUM instead" and he broke the game for them basically. HOPE IS BASICALLY when you are in a Gamebryo engine game and you delete an essential NPC just because you can, and the game is like "HEY! WHAT the fuck!" Love it.

If anything is the "opposite" of Hope to me, it's Doom. Doom, to me and how I have always used it, is the person who can See The Source Code, the folks who know they are in the game, who slowly gain such thorough knowledge of the systems they are trapped in that they can then Rules Lawyer their way through to their goal. It's kind of a depressing aspect tbh because it's about seeing the chains you are in, and yes you can struggle and manipulate around them but... Doom players don't break the rules in the way Hope players do. My friend Kiore strongly brings to mind Doom honestly.

shit this post is getting long. someone ask me what aspect you want my thoughts on and i'll continue. someone ask me about blood bc i love it.

i'll tag these as #classpect navelgazing for easy navigation/blocking

#whomstve #long post #meta meta meta #classpect navelgazing

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starrysmiling · 2 years

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jax thoughts.

i really like unbound's writing overall, and i love how its characters have so much life written into them... but in particular, jax unbound has been in my head for quite a while, and i have, in true writer fashion, accumulated some Thoughts on his character.

i've mostly been thinking about jax in relation to him being set up as the storyline's 'hero' leading up to the beginning of the story, the series of events that have him starting to doubt himself, and his development into the end of the storyline...

...so i might as well throw them somewhere! spoilers will most definitely be rampant.

FIRST. what do we know about him at the beginning of the game, and his character arc?

jax is a nice guy! he's always friendly with you, and clearly he cares a lot about you too (he immediately jumps into hoopa's portal to the ruins of void after you, then his worry for you when you don't come out landing him in the distortion world...). he's said to be strong and capable (arthur's been training him, and he calls him their "best hope" against the shadows before the cinder volcano showdown) and he's pretty confident in himself when you first meet him (he immediately says he'll stop the shadows and save moltres when you're visiting arthur, and then again when arthur mentions zapdos afterwards), even though the first few times you meet him, you're mostly kind of helping him do things he thinks he should be able to do — i'll get back to that point later.

anyway. he's a good guy with a good heart. he has a good sense of justice (on route 9 when he says ivory "couldn't possibly want [the prison bottle] for anything but evil", and in cinder volcano when marlon calls his wanting to save moltres "self-righteous"... i could go on.) and acts on it! which brings me to my point, which is that jax gives off the vibes of a hero. he's even got arthur's legacy on his shoulders.

in fact, we get two referrals to him as a hero: from ivory in fallshore city (Your silly attempts to play hero are tiring.) and aklove at crystal peak (Once I'm done dealing with this "hero", [...]).

that is to say: jax is supposed to be the hero.

he's supposed to be the protagonist who brings down the evil, saves the region, and becomes the champion.

ah... right. but he isn't.

you, the player, is the one who does all of this. (though jax is by your side for almost all of that, which is...)

yeah. that's kinda fucked up.

let's just take a step back for now.

jax has clearly been a trainer longer than you have (even in-game, he's able to fly by the time you beat mirskle, and he's the one who tells you to beat a handful of gyms for the hms they let you use), and again, arthur calls him capable and useful in that first meeting. i do want to say that 'useful' is not a very nice thing to call your grandson. jax is also being trained to be arthur's successor, and arthur was the previous champion. that should be pretty testament of what arthur expects of him (it's worth noting, though, that when you talk to arthur after you beat aklove at the ruins of void, he specifically says that jax was cracking under the pressure of his expectations. jax is also human).

you can say that jax is pretty strong, at least for your standards.

so why does he not match up to the shadows, if he's got all of his training and all this praise for being strong and reliable?

i think jax at this point early on in the game, can't see his flaws. this isn't to say he can't grow stronger, because he can — he most definitely can, and he does.

i'm going to go into some theorycrafting now: imagine you've been training. you have been training for a long time, and you're going to eventually become strong enough to be the champion of the region. it's a big goal. you become strong, you beat the eight gyms, and you keep training...

...and perhaps, you might hit a point where you are easily defeating most trainers. where you've been fighting threats to the region and winning (jax says arthur's been making him do this as part of his training. i'm assuming from the fact that these threats haven't really been touched on that jax was successful in fending them off). and at that point, you have to keep getting stronger of your own will. when you lose, you also have an opportunity to reflect on your mistakes or shortcomings and grow to surpass them. you are strong, and from the fact that nobody has become champion while you're training, there aren't that many trainers that can surpass you, probably. so is there really a need to get stronger at that point? if there's nothing to chase after, nothing to push you higher... it's easy to stagnate your growth without knowing where to go next.

and remember: jax wasn't really doing it for his own sake. arthur tells you that jax only begins getting stronger for his own sake after you defeat aklove with him at the ruins of void (it's also after battling you that he tells you his resolve to become stronger as a person, and he promises to come back to take your crown).

...so, what i'm trying to say here is that there's not really anyone who can match jax's raw strength up until the shadows show up. he doesn't seem to have a rival or someone training alongside him to push him forward — you, as the player, kind of fulfil that role as the one who pushes him higher (he comes back to rematch you and declares that he's thought about his shortcomings! and if that ain't enough to say he's been pushed forward by you...). his drive doesn't even come from himself yet at this point.

(also, i just want to point out that jax understands that one of his shortcomings is being rash and rushing into things without taking the proper time to prepare himself (he mentions this after you battle him for the first time). this probably stems from confidence, and, well, you know who's confident in their early arc? you know that confidence builds up if you go pretty long with a constant win streak, right? you get my point.)

continuing on to route 9, the main thing i want to point out is that if you talk to the old couple after you and jax rescue them, they mention that jax "seemed a little put-off by something". and while it's never mentioned again, i wonder if jax is thrown off his game because he thinks he should be able to handle this by himself.

he's strong, right? he's capable and reliable and— and he couldn't prevent ivory from taking the prison bottle. he couldn't stop her from capturing moltres, either, and he couldn't even chase after her because of marlon the first time, and the shadow warrior elderly couple the second. the shadows have showed him up twice now and, if we go by the fact that he's rarely been defeated at this point, it's probably a blow to his confidence.

and if we keep going — skipping past fallshore city, epidimy town and tarmigan town — into dehara city, we see him again at the game corner. talking to him there triggers hoopa sending you to the ruins of void, which (plus its aftermath) is probably the biggest blow to jax's character as it stands in the game.

the fact that he didn't bring any other pokemon other than his staraptor (though you can excuse it a little by the fact that he hadn't expected to jump through the portal with you) is a little tell for his carelessness. he's overconfident and underprepared when he sends staraptor up to the peak of the ruins and you get to see him be uncharacteristically quiet afterwards, because along with the worry he feels for staraptor, he probably regrets that. all he can do now is heal you up, and for someone who got embarrassed over not being able to save moltres at cinder volcano, being utterly useless is loads more embarrassing.

then he gets portaled to the distortion world. it's heroic of him to help you out, battling grunts with his injured staraptor and then heading in when you didn't come out, but you can see him regretting being hasty (I can't believe I could have been so stupid... So stupid... what's Grampa been training me for, if I mess up so easily when it matters most?) and then again once you find the way out, when he walks ahead then slows to a stop and delegates things to you (No... this is a mistake. What am I thinking? If that Pokemon attacks us, I'll just get in the way.) instead of leading the way like he'd been doing before. his slowing to a stop is the physical manifestation of his doubts stopping him.

even when you're back in your world, he does the same thing: rushing ahead to the exit of rift cave, slowing, then returning to you. and he says this: "[PLAYER], being trapped in there taught me a lot of things... But most importantly, it's taught me I'm nothing without my Pokemon. I never want to find myself being so useless to anyone again. [...] I promise both my Pokemon and I will be ready this time."

i like the inclusion of himself a lot, because it means that he's realised that he still has to grow too. and he cements that with his champion battle dialogue ([...] even if my Pokemon grow stronger, what use is it if I don't grow stronger with them? So, I'm going to get stronger. Not just my Pokemon. Me.) and also his rematch dialogue (I'll focus myself, and my connection with my Pokemon again.) by acknowledging again and again that he'll keep growing. here, you're still yet to save the region, so there's an obvious goal for him to head towards, but he keeps going even after that. and that really just declares that he's found someone to push him higher.

and that's you.

i don't think i even have to say anything, but i will say it anyway... the ruins of void, distortion world and rift cave sequences are a huge, huge turning point for jax. this is the crucial mistake that kickstarts his necessary growth. perhaps it was a mistake he needed to make, even, because i don't think crystal peak, let alone battling you for the champion title, would have worked out without him reflecting on it in the distortion world.

if we return to the hero narrative, there's one important scene i skipped earlier: epidimy town. after you stop marlon at thundercap mt and meet jax in epidimy town, he says one last thing in a whisper: "You're really amazing, [PLAYER]... I mean... all by yourself, you..." and while this absolutely can be taken as awe, i think the reason he says this to himself and not to you directly might actually be envy. he's envious that you can do the thing he couldn't — you managed to stop marlon from getting zapdos, while he failed in stopping ivory from getting moltres and the prison bottle. and you did it by yourself, without his help. he probably feels that he isn't living up to arthur's legacy and what arthur expects of him.

perhaps you're the one who suits the role of 'hero' more than he does.

i admire that jax doesn't give up. he keeps going, and unfortunately that lands him in the ruins of void and distortion world, which make him realise something important: that he's lacking in places. that he's not yet fit to be the 'hero'. that he needs to grow and become stronger before he can fill that role.

i like to think that he entrusts that role to you at crystal peak. it's the first time he shows that he's carefully planned out his approach to defeating aklove, even though it's not perfect, and he calls on you to stop aklove and turn off the weapon — you're the 'hero' now, after all. still, this brings promise to his character, and shows that he's growing!

and to bring it closer to the end of the game: the champion battle. a detail i would like to point out is that when you battle him for the champion title (on vanilla / difficult), at least four of his six pokemon know protect. his type coverage is pretty well-rounded in terms of defense, too. i think it's really neat that his pokemon actually reflect his growth from the ruins of void and he focuses on being able to defend himself so he won't be totally useless without his pokemon ever again.

jax is a good guy. he's nothing but happy for you, and he knows he has a long way to go before he can match up to you, and he accepts his defeat knowing that you're the one suited to be the 'hero'. and then he works hard in order to be able to stand in the same room as you again, closing the gap little by little.

one last thing... his rematch dialogue.

"I've been thinking long and hard about what I've been lacking..."

holy shit.

he mentions something similar in your first battle (You know, before we began our fight, I kept thinking about all the times I rushed in, and then you helped bail me out.) too, but the fact that he says this out loud again really makes me feel proud because he's acknowledging his shortcomings and tackling them instead of staying quietly put-off by them...

he also mentions before rematching you that he's here not because of arthur's legacy or even about himself. he sees you as someone strong, and that probably means that battling you is an opportunity to grow stronger. and this ties in to the fact that the line he says when he's down to a single pokemon (The way you always manage to summon so much strength... it's amazing...) really parallels that line from epidimy town (You're really amazing, [PLAYER]... I mean... all by yourself, you...).this time, when he calls you amazing, he sounds a little more in awe. he respects you! and even if you defeat him, he picks himself up and treats it as a challenge to come back and beat you again.

and if that's not growth... god. i fucking love jax unbound.

#pokemon unbound #jax unbound #unbound canonverse #i am so so so fucking proud of him #there's a Reason why i wrote some scenes the way i did in steps and part of that is because i really wanted to show him growing #god as if i could ever do him justice. he is just so good #anyway these are just my Thoughts. i really want to talk to whoever created his 2.0.0+ character. share your massive gigantic brain please

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