goatsghost

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the raven boys graphic novel by maggie stiefvater

my beautiful babies 🥰

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everyone cheered

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throwing my proverbial hat in the ring since everyone’s doing their nightwing fancasts lately — my friend gave me the idea of jeff satur and wants to know what tumblr thinks of it

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and if i said jayjon wicked au what then?

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fact: gamorra is described as "an outlaw asian pacific island nation in the western pacific ocean".

also fact: while we are by no means a monolith, there ARE a ton of commonalities shared between east and southeast asia (the regions which gamorra is presumably closest to), and considering that gamorra is derived from japanese influence, then realistically speaking here's what i think the lore breakdown of gamorra would be like (plus occasional jay headcanons!):

some basic holidays/holiday variations include: - lunar new year: self-explanatory - mid-autumn festival: also self-explanatory. probably some kind of pastry/baked good/sweet localized to gamorra for this one (e.g.: korea has songpyeon, a few countries have mooncakes/mooncake variants, etc.). it's probably one of the things that jay is homesick for most. - qixi festival variant: this one is more of a POSSIBLE holiday rather than something i actually think happens like lny and the mid-autumn festival, because it's not as common. it celebrates the story of the cowherd and the weaver girl, which is originally a chinese folk-tale with multiple versions across asia, so i think gamorra could also have their own version of it too! - ghost festival variant: another one that i think is a possible holiday, although with much higher chances than the qixi festival as it's more widely celebrated. there are multiple variants of it in asia and largely takes place in late summer.

pearl culture: this is once again a possibility, but some of the world's largest pearl producers are east and southeast asian countries. korea has a whole art around mother-of-pearl lacquerware (which actually largely uses abalone shells). i don't know what kind of gemstones gamorra might have, but it's a high chance pearls could be one of them, or at the very least, they find some value in mother-of-pearl art and other shellfish uses

climate: they definitely have a monsoon season. things are going to get hot, wet, and humid in the summer months—i bet you anything jay's got memories of wind and rain blowing in his face when a lot of the rest of the world has sunny skies

religion: whether gamorra has its own distinct/main/official religion or not, there is a very likely chance that buddhism is a close second. pretty much all the top countries that follow buddhism are in asia, and i'd love to know if there are any temples on the island. also, jay offering incense at his mother's grave . . .

performing arts: i'd LOVE it if gamorra had their own version of lion dance and/or drum culture. there are a lot of variants of it, and based on geography i'd assume that gamorran lions most closely resemble southern lions. i can very easily imagine little jay venturing out with his mom and being in total awe of the lion dancers bounding around

cuisine: i don't think enough people realize how much of the cuisine is steaming (zongzi and variants, fish, bao, etc) and pickling/preserving/fermenting (usually veggies of some sort). gamorra likely has a ton of local dishes that uses these methods, and i like to imagine that jay's fridge is probably stocked with pickled veggies and ready-to-steam stuff in his freezer.

myths/folklore: - the twelve animals of the zodiac, which i think gamorra is very likely to have. a ton of countries have their own versions aside from the original in chinese, and sometimes the animals change depending on what's more common to the country, which could be the case for gamorra. jay probably knew the zodiac for his birth year before he knew anything about the astrology sign for his month (speaking from experience of myself and many others i know LMAO) - a little less likely but still very much possible is their own version of a fox spirit. not every country has them, but japan, china, korea, and vietnam all have their own, so i don't think it's too far out of the park to think that gamorra could have one, too! - not to sound stereotypical but i do have to mention that if there are any dragons in gamorran folklore then they are NOT going to be angry fire-breathing dragons!!! especially since gamorra is an island nation!!! most east and southeast asian dragons are attributed to water and are believed to have control of thunderstorms. they're basically weather deities (a . . . wildstorm . . . you could call it . . .)

games: i can't speak for anything too specific or local, but mahjjong is widespread throughout east and southeast asia with variants, and japan has its own standard version with different rules and number of tiles used to play. there's a chance that gamorra could have its own version as well. the core components, however, pretty much don't change, which means jay could easily fall asleep to the sound of tiles click-clacking as they're being shuffled around in the next room

there was a lot more i wanted to include but honestly this was getting way too long, so maybe i'll just make a part two??? i'm just SO curious about how this would look, and if anyone was interested in some of gamorra's cultural aspects, i think these would make up some of the basics!!

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In the D&D campaign I'm running with my wife's siblings, one of them learned about how trolls regenerate within minutes of any damage not caused by fire or acid, and then asked why people don't just like. Cage them and eat them, forever. Why there aren't troll meat dungeons in the king's castle as a safeguard against sieges or famines.

And you know, I thought it was a fair question, so I said that if you eat enough troll meat, you start getting troll-y. And then I went further and just treated it like troll flesh is a general contaminant - if you eat enough troll, you'll turn into a troll, but if you bury enough dead troll flesh in a forest, the trees will start growing in strange ways, and will scream and heal and bleed when you hit them with axes.

I liked this idea. So as we played further, I just played around with the idea of Troll Origins, and I came up with something sort of like the Odyssey, but instead stealing Helios's cattle, it was Hathor's, and the horrible, awful, unending immortality was her curse of the army that pillaged her lands. A god of healing does not condemn you to die, she condemns you to live.

And then I got this fun idea for maybe the king that led the army is still kind of alive in the troll taint. Like a sort of literal fisher king. The kingdom is sick because he is, literally, the kingdom. The trees that bleed, bleed his blood and their screams are his screams. He is both the faintly green bear running down the mountain and the faintly green deer and there is no way past this without suffering. He is the entire ecosystem, and he eats nothing but himself and he dreams nothing but death and yet still, on and on and on and on, he lives.

Anyway they're traveling next session so I'm throwing this shit at them. I already have some gross ideas for like. Describing everything like it's a body (flowers red as blood, white as bone, pink as meat, grass fine as hair) then finally throwing horrible living things at them. Trees that grow eyeballs that turn and stare at them, or flowers with teeth instead of petals and trolls that speak in long dead tongues about how they wish they'd never tried to rob a god.

Anyway I'm passing this on because this is my new troll lore and I want it to become canonized in the way that all D&D lore becomes canonized: By having eople read it and go "oh, neat" then start doing that too.

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i’m realizing that a trope i’ve come to adore is “female main character becomes best friends with the gruff gay supporting character who had love triangle related issues with her before everything got sorted out”

as seen with: blue sargent & ronan lynch, clary fray & alec lightwood

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one thing that i love about rereading the raven cycle is seeing how obvious some of the foreshadowing really was, and how cool it is that everything ties back together

like noah and czerny are introduced just two pages apart, like this:

and adam feeling self-conscious about his frayed sweater, telling himself no one notices, but it’s only because blue notices that she gives him a chance and gets included into the group

( blue also wears frayed clothing on purpose, in the first chapter, bc she cares about her appearance in a different way )

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okay actually i broke it down and he’s right, it is the new jersey accent that is making it harder to pronounce, so i’ll give him a pass this time

so i’ve started naddpod and something about the way murph has them all pronouncing “duergar” is absolutely killing me lmao

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so i’ve started naddpod and something about the way murph has them all pronouncing “duergar” is absolutely killing me lmao

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not to be That Guy, but not enough people are talking about how Little Army Man destroyed the bus SO early into their trip to LAX, i think there’s some scheming going on but everyone is too distracted by the background Blue M&M/Hat to talk about it !!

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i’m in my kristen applebees & riz gukgak era

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i can’t believe brennan managed to put drosselmeyer into another game of his, how is he this obsessed with that obscure german fairytale man

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a baby

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i love that everyone has basically agreed that the seacaster-faeth baby is going to be a girl like yes please give fabian a little sister!!!

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i love that wealwell gets to be called wealwell, but the entire crew has basically decided that maxwell can only be called “gotch” like wealwell is on a first name basis and can be the only -well on the team lmao

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reblog for wider range!! and vote in the other intrepid heroes polls below ✨

Fantasy High // A Crown of Candy

The Unsleeping City // Starstruck Odyssey

Neverafter