#Gw2 Agent Y

[eisbee]

This picture is a collection of all birthday gifts I created for every main Agent of our Krewe improvetimized strategy.

It came all well together for a group picture that I planned back in January ✨

Showcasing in the backrow (from left to right)

Agent A, L, X, Z

Frontrow

Agent Y, J, H, B and Q

(And on the table Agent N)

[carrinth]

Carrinth Rambles 🐲🍪

Just wanted to say that I'm still very much alive and active on Tumblr. I just haven't been drawing much lately because of Severe Art Block. So I've been spending my time Very Aggressively playing GW2 (I recently bought End of Dragons expansion) and Spite Baking.

You probably did not ask "Carrinth, what is Spite Baking"? And I will answer, it is spite and anger at the increasing prices of delicious baked goods. Also a reaction to stuff being too sweet and diabetes being a real concern. So the only solution to Overpriced Baked Goods With Too Much Sugar is to Make Them Yourself. Out of spite. I have made two disastrous batches of cookies. You again did not ask "Carrinth, y u suck so bad at this?"

I tell you: "Idk. I was a college grad. I scored A in chemistry. My grandparents (both sides) were chefs. In my blood is the blood of bakers. They now scowl and shake their heads in shame. I have shamed my bloodline. Perhaps there is truth in baking with love, of love and joy being the Secret Ingredient. Because I was not joyful. I poured all my hate, my malice, my fury into those cookies and forged them in Working Oven. You bite into them and taste nothing but salt and broken dreams (apparently sugar is a binding agent and too little makes them brittle go figure). I sit, fuming and enraged, swearing I will triumph in the next batch as I watch my family surreptitiously eat them all. They think I do not hear the fridge door opening and shutting at odd hours of the night. Of where there were over a dozen misshapen lumps, only four remain. Did you eat my cookies... Brother? Blood of my blood, how this betrayal cuts deep. My foolish kin, they were MINE! They belonged to me! And you took them in the dead of night like a thief. A cookie thief. I'm telling mom." 🍪

[system-architect]

i can’t rememb if i already sent an ask but if not could u mayhaps do peej

u did send an ask which i will get to in a second but i am gonna happily do pj anyway!!

Personal

1)      Age? he’s 24 and a big shit who’s weirdly conscious about being 24 despite the fact that thats sTILL YOUNG so he lies and tells people he’s 21

2)      Gender? trans gay trans gay trans gay. he’s a very GnC trans guy who hasn’t transitioned too much bc he likes how he is

3)      Romantic/Sexual Orientation? gay... he’s a big gay. loves men

4)      Height? he’s 2′10″ aka min height haha pj small

5)      Race? asura and like metaphorically a fckn demon

6)      What do they look like? (i.e, hair color, eye color, etc). like a bush baby.......... uhhh he’s a very small lithe asura with wild ass fckn scene tier spiked up hair and his eyes are Indeed freakishly huge and he’s got sort of piebald esque markings and he’s also got spots of black pigment on his tongue and gums like some dogs do! i’m just gonna link art again

7)      Any disabilities? tbh he might have occasional breathing issues from his eye size and the constant vaping. also.. Some Stuff Happens During PoF but its not anything conventional that you might be expecting...

8)      Is there a meaning to their name? nope OOPS that one asura name generator spat it out at me actually! it stuck and i thought it was a weirdly funny name for an asura while also sounding p decent

9)      What makes them, them? he’s this image:

10)   What do they want to be when they grow up/what do they want to do with their lives? tbh his life is very stagnated atm and he’s not sure what he wants. to keep surviving, he guesses

Family

11)   Do they have parents? What are they like and how do they act with their child(ren)? he’s an orphan! his parents are unknown... he was raised in an orphanage by this very prim and proper asuran lady who was very secretly kind of a party gal on the side

12)   Do they have siblings? How do they interact with them? again, orphan, so family questions are hard to answer cus he doesn’t know anything about em

13)   Extended family? Do they see them often?

14)   Do they like where they live? (Is it a safe place?) he has A Flat up inbetween arkentia valley and magus valley in rata sum (i pretend there’s more out there than there actually is jhkfgd) which is also near where the glitch is located! it is fairly safe and he is quite fond of it, although he’s at the club most of the time

15)   Where do they live? Are they wealthy? Poor? Middle-Class? i just kinda answered this but he has Money honestly....... running a luxury nightclub that’s a front for your shady information trading business will do that for ya huh

16)   Do they have a lot of expectations/pressure on them from family to do great? the orphanage owner wanted all her little adoptee children to be Starlets and tried to teach them proper etiquette and get them into refined fields........... pj is successful but in the most opposite way from this possible

17)   Do they have pets? nope and thats probably for the better

18)   Who do they look up to the most/are the closest to in their family?

19)   This there anything special about their family?

20)   Do they wish they lived in a different family/household? he’s constantly torn about like... the concept of having blood relatives out there [hopefully]........ he’s not sure if he wants to know about them or not, if he would’ve rather been raised by them or not. it’s alluring but scary

Friends

21)   Best Friend(s)? his best friend is Kinda his ‘secretary’, kessa, who is a whispers agent plant in his club that helps him run the place in exchange for siphoning information from it. PJ is aware she’s whispers and kessa is aware he’s aware she’s whispers and they have a tentative and tense but friendly??? bond. it’s like, thin ice all the time but they’re also quite close. both her and pj are savvy and sort of take turns greasing the wheels of their various dealings; i think kessa is a bit bolder and craftier than pj and more organized oops. as far as kessa as a person, she’s a tall butch with cherry red dyed hair and she goes by the nickname ‘lucky’ due to the shamrock shaped marking over her right eye. she prefers masc looking clothing and she has a suave flirty personality with a quick wit and a snarky teasing sense of humor

22)   Who was their first friend? hgjkfdgh he’s never had many friends unfortunately. he tends to drive people away...

23)   What is their friend group like? a lot of people hang around him for general exterior motives like money and status.. not many people genuinely like him

24)   Do they have a love/hate relationship with any of them? like everyone................... ‘i need you but i dont like you’ etc

25)   Do they consider any of their friends to be like siblings?

26)   Have they ever hurt a friend or lost one? definitely a lot. he’s a very abrasive person who can get fussy and picky and two-faced

27)   Do they have a crush on any of their friends? alas yeah half of pjs ‘friends’ are people he wants to smooch but its in a very vapid fashion.... even w/ deeper crushes pj isnt gonna be gettin any genuine love

28)   Do they share classes with good friends?

29)   Whom do they go to the most when they need a shoulder to cry on? he might drunk cry to viel or kessa and i dont think either would know what to do about it

30)   What would this person do without their friends in their lives? despite having shallow ‘friendships’ a lot of his self esteem revolves around popularity and being well-liked so he’d be... super crushed

School

31)   What grade are they in? If they aren’t in school, how come? he got like 30% of the way thru statics courses for political science and dropped out because he hated school... he was naturally savvy and talented with debate and an excellent candidate for a worthless weasel-y politician who can screw anyone over within a sentence but he just hated the whole school system and didn’t fit with it and getting into arcane politics wasn’t something he really enjoyed, it was all super backstabby but simultaneously Goody Two Shoes and he haaated it

32)   Do/Did they like their teachers? Was there a good one? Bad one? he probably butted heads with all of them and hated being told what to do

33)   Do/Did they listen to their teachers or are/where they goofing off a lot? definitely goofed off and didn’t care. he was good at stuff when he was asked to actually do stuff so why bother paying attention to boring stuff he already knows?

34)   Are/Where they a good student grade wise? stellar marks on very specific fields and tests and debates where the school system actually lined up with his talents but terrible marks otherwise

35)   Do/Did they need extra help? he was probably arbitrarily assigned a tutor due to his low marks but was uninterested in actually being helped and was a catty piece of shit the whole time

36)   What is/was their school like?

37)   Do/Did they have bullies in school? he’s a terrible worthless rat trash man and there was probably gossip that flew around about him but he loved hunting it down and intimidating the daylights out of the people who started it. even as a child he was a notorious drama monger and tattletale so it’s kinda in his nature. pj is a literally terrible person i’m so sorry to anyone who likes him for w/e reason

38)   Have they ever gotten into a fight at school? probably not many physical ones altho he’s def been punched a few times. most of his fights were probably weird high strung drama that contained a lot of passive aggression and counter-gossip and maybe some good ol fashioned blackmail

39)   Have they ever done something stupid/embarrassing at school? hard to categorize bc he’s a walking embarrassment

40)   How far do they plan to go with school? If they dropped out, do they want to go back? he dropped out and has literally 0% intentions of going back ever. and not as a char development thing either-- he’s never going to want to go back even if he improves as a person. it’s not his thing

Other

41)   Are they dating anyone? Do they want to date? Are the married? Divorced? pj pretends he’s shallow and only wants A Good Time but a bit more under the surface he’s absolutely desperate for more genuine bonds and wants Love And Affection and pretends ppl love him when they’re makin out idk. he’s a sad sad man

42)   What is their favorite hobby? Do they keep it a secret? he’s a boring egg who should probably pick up a hobby

43)   If they could have one thing in life, what would it be? what he’ll say he wants is like, more money/successful business but what he Needs is a kick in the ass to work on improving himself and to earn some friends who genuinely like him and to find a Meaning for himself

44)   Do they work? If so, what is it? If not, are they looking for one or even want one? shady information traderrrr he deals in secrets and identities of the asuran underworld

45)   Do they use social media? probably uses asuran instagram and snapchat

46)   Have they ever been in the hospital? probably for some very dumb injuries tbh

47)   Do they believe in the supernatural, that there is more than the eye can see? again weird Q in context of gw2 but superstitions... he’ll claim he’s logical but he’s prone to suggestion wrt this stuff and a huge chicken

48)   What do they do when they get angry, stressed, or upset? cry on bathroom floor with bottle of wine

49)   Would they consider themselves as a good person, bad person, or morally grey? i think he avoids thinking about this too in depth bc he knows he’s a bad person haha..... he’s a bit messed up atm because this doesn’t motivate him to improve despite knowing it. he’s just kinda... yeah im awful so what if you cant take the heat then get out of the kitchen

50)   Does this OC have any part of you in them? (I.e, personality traits, similar background, etc) yeah he’s a bit representative of the time period of my life where i was overfocused on Being Hurt and wallowed a lot in my trauma and i felt i was justified in being a pretty nasty person for whatever plethora of reasons, but i was stagnating and it was all hurting me really badly even if i wasn’t ready to accept that it was hurting me. i felt a huge sense of impending doom and not knowing what to do with my life or if i’d ever get better...

[worldsforanyoccasion]

Here be no Dragons and Parthenogenesis

Something that occurs and reoccurs, aside from my numerous typos (more on that later) is most fantasy worlds have dragons. There are, of course, numerous dragons or dragon-like beings in our own mythologies from the Western dragon to the Lung dragon and more in between.

Why? What is our love affair with dragons and why do they show up in so many settings?

I don’t think I will attempt to provide an exhaustive answer to that question, since many of its answers may just boil down to “dragons are cool” or “because dragons mean fantasy.”

I did a lot of that too, in my older worlds. But somewhere in getting from there to here, I started questioning that. It began with Guild Wars 2.

I started playing GW2 just a scant few months before the Heart of Thorns expansion released. In that time, I played with friends, tried a few dungeons, fractals, and world vs. world. And I played the personal story. Now a bit of spoilers, but the big bad evil guy of the story is the Elder Dragon Zaithan, a massive undead dragon and elemental force of necromancy. Then HoT released, and the big bad evil guy was Moredremoth, Elder Dragon of plants and elemental force of mind. Recently, the third season of living story involved two further dragons, two dragon offspring of another dragon from GW, and a mad god bent on killing said dragons. The other gods left rather than fight the elder dragons. Dragons. There, that should be enough that semantic-satiation kicked into effect and the word dragon looks weird now.

And that is kind of how I felt about dragons in settings. But there was something else in effect, part of what lead me to create the Vayern instead of re-using another fantasy race, and that was the Charr. In GW, they were the villians, in GW2 they are a playable race. Something of a cross between a lion or tiger, a goat, and other, odder bits, the Charr are not simply re-skinned orcs, as is a common trope, nor are they one of a seemingly endless iteration on elves ala World of Warcraft style. They are their own thing.

Now there is a trope for “Our dragons are different” and one of my favorite comics, Gunnerkrigg Court has things that fall into that vein. And I started thinking, what would my dragons be like? And then I asked, do I need dragons at all?

No. I don’t. Instead of trying to make my dragons different, I decided to do something entirely different. There are no dragons in Archipelago.

No fire-breathing winged lizards, or serpents, or any of that. Why? Because it didn’t fit with what I wanted Archipelago to feel like. Any setting I crafted would be made same-y if I added dragons, so there are not any.

What things exist in their place? Ecologically, nothing since I didn’t remove them, but never included them instead. Thematically? Big baddies that hoard wealth or pose as a serious threat kind of things?

Well, there doesn’t seem to be much need to have hoarders, but as for threats... I have a few.

Some spirits are malevolent, and many beasts are dangerous, but the real terrors start showing up in the things that are tied to the void, the Shadows. Shadows (never shades oddly enough, only the capital S Shadows) are part of the void and can’t really untie themselves from it. They are agents of unknowable agendas. They can distort reality around them, but can’t create anything, only consume.

And here are the real terrors. As of yet, they have no names, but they may never have names for all I know. The are feline in appearance, though with six legs ending in seven toed claws with double opposable thumbs, even if they walk on all six (not bipedal or centaur-esque). Their eyes let them see the physical and spiritual. They act somewhat like a matriarchal society, but are conceived via parthenogenesis, meaning they reproduce from eggs without fertilization. And most importantly, they are hive mind.

What one of them knows, they all know. What one of them sees, they all see, etc. Due to this, they are never encountered individually, preferring pairs or a pack (6-36?).

What role do they serve in Archipelago? None that is known. While of the void, they don’t seem able to cross it, and so are limited to a few realms where they stalk the shallows, the places where the void encroaches on reality. They are clever and cunning and seemingly indestructible. Why? Because I want them to be. What will they become in the future? I don’t know.

As for the numerous typos, when inspiration strikes, I rarely set forth to calmly and deliberately record these things, instead trying to stick the idea down in whatever shape I can before it fades, or worse, I forget it. Often, this means numerous words out of place or horrifically misspelled. Throw in the fact that a lot of my writing involved made up words and unusual names and a bunch of red squiggly lines often looks about normal for me.

[eisbee]

The Art Party was extra special this time! I ve met amazing people and with a bunch of inquest rats it felt like we are going to finally conquer the grove... but we decided to take it easy and have fun. Bonus: Sylvari Art!  Artworks of:

Ray @Drewcakemix Jhoushi @mabaki Skorr @what-the-flux Agent Y Ithikk @the-skrool Dunnh @catiuapavel Nhyrra @cherrylight-art Agent B @eisbee  Solemn Hunter @el-is-away Ilphmyr @ofelvenkind Neljje @bluebudgie Daphne @creativebrainrot Morr @diesvitae

[eisbee]

Improvetimized Strategy