#MY BABY TIAMAT HAS HER OWN STORY BEFORE HER DEATH

[adm-starblitzsteel-4305]

So, the comic MonsterVerse: Declassified confirms that this is NOT Titanus Typhon.

It goes by the name of "Hell Star".

So fans, the cave where Tiamat was resting in GxK was the original home of the Hell Star before Tiamat managed to kill it, just before Godzilla kills Tiamat in the events of GxK. Interesting, but brutal.

I remember in Godzilla Dominion that Tiamat wanted Godzilla's lair where it becomes a desolated ruins after Dr. Ishiro Serizawa nukes it to supercharged Godzilla from KOTM. She wanted his lair, but quickly surrenders and spared by Godzilla before she leaves.

[disegnidipizzo]

finally some decent refs for these two messes on legs/fins

the whole story under the cut, prepare bc i got carried away and i am not sorry about anything, at all, ever, in any circumstance.

SALVIA NUNARI

Salvia Nunari would rather tend for their forbidden plants garden than the troll grubs and would sneak out a lot to do her thing in the very dilapidated greenhouse their ancestor left behind, along with all the books on plants, herbal medicine and poisons (and some interesting things about jades). They know that jades Shouldn’t stray from their path but if their lusus taught them something, it’s that sometimes, you need to do things in the dark. 

Considering that they’re a racoon, they also say a lot of things about finding solace in what one has left behind. It wasn’t about trash, but you got the gist. And they have a pope hat, but you don’t know what a pope is. Still, they look funny with it on. Like a monarch or a ruler of All Things Unwanted and Abandoned.

As they got more experienced, they started making new breeds of plants and crossbreeding some relatively harmless carnivores to create a poisonous/venomous strain, in the very faint hope that MAYBE they could be somewhat employed by the Empire. It wasn’t that much of a plan but. It worked. Sort of. When the baby plant opened its trap, Salvia got poisoned to death thanks to a bite to the neck. Turns out that the new strain can move rather effortlessly and quickly and that it consider food most things that move. 

The first death allows em to ascend to rainbow drinker. 

Follows a minor freak out due to “HOLY FUCK IM GLOWING HOW DO I TURN THIS OFF” and “I’m dead. I’m so dead im still alive.” 

Conveniently, their ancestor’s Very Interesting Things About Jades handbook does contain info on rainbow drinkers and how to turn off the glow. Salvia doesn’t die twice for another day! Good thing it was all in the next chapter.

They had to hide the deathly wound lest being found out (and most likely culled in .5 seconds) before going back to the caverns, hence why they wear the neckpiece. It wasn’t really theirs in the first place, it was one of their ancestor’s ones that had gotten too small for them (but was kinda part of their uniform). 

TIAMAT KIITCH

Tiamat Kiitch enjoyes being eccentric. When you rank so up high, it’s only fair to flaunt your taste, even if it’s not the most accepted by you signclassmates. Sucks to be them, not everybody can understand what it means to Really be a patron of the arts. Or of the artists. Maybe this is why everybody sees you as unfit for the imperial army and would rather shove you on a planet so that they can get some sensory relief. Because a Violet that supports so many painters, sculptors and even musicians of all classes, even below cerulean? Sacrilegious. Or maybe they really just don’t like it. Violets aren’t exactly social with one another. Call that a competitive environment, ay.

As her Departure Day to said planet of Thank God Sound Can’t Travel In The Void of Space, she has to make preparations. A whole sweep ahead is not too early. She’s going out with a bang, mofos.

Also, it’s only fair she would pick the best trolls to be part of her new, off planet hive estate staff. And she is NOT going to cheap out on the good stuff. Going full crew over here, from the doctors to cleaning staff and doctors for the cleaning stuff. Don’t worry, she can afford it.

And she goes to Personally pick the heads of each branch of people who work for her. Since jades make for the best doctors and caretakers, she pays a visit to a few caverns that have great reputation. Which is a good amount of them.

Among the (very few but very capable) jades that have been picked, she just had to have an eye for the one that has that something of mystery and secret but also that knows how to make medicine out of most plants (how did they learn?? Who cares, they can do that and i want them. Get in, we’re going off planet.). Also the one that looks like they’re up to Trouble.

And that’s where the problems begin.

The Actual Plot

Rainbow drinkers need blood, which is easy enough to get on Alternia, since trolls are canonically very violent as a species and all that. Just using dead bodies lying around is easy, there’s also the culled grubs in the caves that need disposing. Yes it sounds bad because feeding babies to carnivorous plants is objectively bad. Also, soil which contains troll blood/ is watered with troll blood is very good for most plants, but leads to fun mutations. Some of them are learning how to “talk” by opening their petals, leaves or traps. Not great conversation partners but you’ll take anything.

Life with Tiamat would mean increasing the chances of being found as a drinker and being culled, blood harder to find and less chances to experiment with herbology independently.

BUT staying wouldn't be better, as once they are cloistering age, they won't be able to even see their garden anymore.

You start to wonder if this is how your ancestor felt. 

You also start to wonder how long has the violetblood been staring at yo-AFJDGN

When Tiamat has an eye out for something/someone, she gets super into observing them. From a distance at first, to understand how they work their magic. Not that she needs to, but she feels like a documentary worker. If she knew what those were.

During the picking process she was surprised by Salvia: despite being rather small, even for a midblood, they had fast reflexes and overall sharp senses, which kind of doesn’t sound right. The hivemaster and some hivemates described them as more aloof and not particularly outstanding outside of average efficiency.

Im realising this could be a disney channel vampire movie plot minus the violence.

They aren't scheduled for leaving for around a sweep, as the colony tiamat is gonna be overseeing will need time before its declared operative and ready for aristocracy to live in. This gives Salvia ample time to transfer books, notes and plant seeds/stems into more easy to carry media. Paper does take up a lot of space. It’s easy enough as books can be digitalised quickly. Technology is great.

More importantly, they need the SOIL. Which needs to be fertilised with special sauce. Which is blood. You decide to get a snack.

Now, you imagine being a fish lady that is following one of your most brilliant but most mysterious doctors around, only to find out they are a vampire and that they water the soil of their plants with troll blood. And that feeds dead grubs to the carnivores. (And that they look kinda cute while glowing in the dark and with a splorch of blood dripping down their lip wait what)

Now imagine hearing a gasp mixed with a glub and seeing your employer which could have you killed on the spot or kill you herself while you are in the middle of getting a snack with your plant and glow on.

Remember that Tiamat is a good 40 cms / one foot and a few inches taller (minus shoes). So you do the math that, even if you run, you won't have much and also run Where? If you fight? Might die. Neither? Also probably die.

So what happens is a very intense stare off. And i mean neither blink for a solid 2 minutes. 

And then Tiamat, slightly intrigued of having a rainbow drinker (super rare and so unjustly or maybe not so unjustly feared) just goes. "So.. that’s your special sauce."

And Salvia just confesses, accepting a death that was gonna come anyways. This was a stupid plan. 

But that death doesn't arrive, Tiamat could never kill or let die something so unique, so completely unruly and also potentially deadly that is by her side die on her. That is the embodiment of what she wishes to keep alive with her patronage, you think having a forbidden vampire scientist is out of the question? Nuh-uh. They are Gucci. So Gucci they’re Supreme.

With time the bond strengthens and they slowly go quadrant

Well, its a sometimes sorta vacillating quadrant but they are into each other.  

They share half a brain cell each

That Gay Shit (tm)

The love part is mainly on Tiamat because hey, its intimate yknow? Being the only one knowing about something so personal. It escalates into giving salvia special treatment/privileges such as better meals, a small lab of their own, a supply of dead trolls to get the blood from (executed political dissidents or criminals but thats another story). Eventually it grows more to being about their personality and their knowledge but also a bit about how they can make an amputation go clean as a bottle of disinfectant, but they will forget to eat a bunch of times in a row.

Salvia does sorta reciprocate the red feelings, but at the same time they lean more on the blackrom side. Constantly making subtle remarks they havent tasted violet blood before. Sorta leaving thankful notes with a lipstick/bloodstain and a small caption of "wish this was yours <3<"

Also salvia purposelly red flirting in front of tiamat with other staff ("But i just thought they look cute :(( cant you see they look like a snacc ")

But theres also days in which the roles are reversed bc thats how fluctuating quadrants work! 

During those days, Tiamat will be taking up a good chunk of extra space around Salvia, just as a reminder that she is not only above them on the hemospectrum, but also a whole lot taller and stronger. Also that she can take away those privileges. Temporarily. Unless they can earn them back.

On the other hand, Salvia in red is super affectionate, loves doing Tiamat's hair and makeup and letting her do the same. They leave occasional small kisses which are more like pecks or "hey feel my fangs".

So in short: 

Red Salvia: the datemate that gives you a makeover in the morning, calls you "princess" and spoils you with gestures and cuddles.

Black Salvia: little shit, messes with your stuff, reminds you that you look delicious when alive.

Red Tiamat: spoils materially, gives plenty of time, shares meals and listens carefully to all that you have to say.

Black Tiamat: would keep you with the hanmibal mask on if she could, keeps you on your toes, stay in your place and be good.

[nothingofnotereally]

Unpacking the Mother of Skeletons

So I was just talking to some friends about this page and those references, and my psychology degree-possessing butt started explaining the wire mommy reference, which led me to researching the other references, and now I’m going to unpack them here for your benefit.

Before I do this, let me be clear that I am not agreeing with Grant Morrison or his portrayal of Talia nor am I agreeing with this use of these cultural, religious and social sciencey references.  Just trying to break down what he’s getting at here. 

Ahem.

So the context is this:  Morrison’s Talia is 1. On a rampage of destruction because Bruce won’t date her and 2. Rejecting Heretic’s desire for her love and approval.  Noteworthy: Heretic is Damian’s clone, so he is her genetic son.

Okay, here we go... in order, except for Kali which is last because boy is that a reference to unpack.

Tiamat: Okay so Tiamat is a goddess, in this case the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of creation, the mother of gods and monsters.  She gives birth to the gods, but her husband realizes they want to depose him, so he wars against their children and their children destroy him, and then Tiamat wages war on their children.  She is ultimately killed but not before creating the dragons who have poison in their veins instead of blood... but anyway I’m pretty sure the point he’s getting at is that her progeny rebels against her and she in turn wages war on them.  This may also link back to the final bits of Batman Inc where Ra’s is set to unleash Damian’s clones - Talia’s unnatural children.  Dragons with poison instead of blood, metaphorically.

Medusa: This is a stupid reference because the actual myth (at least the ones I’ve personally encountered) is that Medusa was r_ped in the temple of Athena.  And Athena decided to act like a Greek God does, blaming the victim and cursing her to become a monster.  Not super relevant except that Morrison has previously referenced this as the story of a beautiful woman who became a monster after her love was rejected - no idea where he got that from, but I think that’s fairly self-explanatory in the context of a Talia who has gone warpath because Bruce won’t date her.

The Wire Mommy: So I’m pretty sure this is a reference to the Harry Harlow rhesus monkey studies in the 1930s.  So basically this was a study conducted in, I believe, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Harlow got some babby rhesus monkeys and removed them from their mothers and placed them in one of two primary environments:

An inanimate substitute mother made of wire holds food and a similar substitute made of terry cloth is without food.

An inanimate substitute mother made of terry cloth holds food and a similar wire mother does not have food.

Okay so the findings of this study were basically that the baby monkeys didn’t like the wire mother.  In the case where the food was with the wire mother, they would go over and eat and then dash it over to the terry cloth mother and cling to that one.  

What I gather from this, especially in the context of the above where Heretic is looking to Talia to love and nurture him, is that she’s saying that, despite having given him life and physically supported him (in other words, having the metaphorical food), she has no warmth or love for him.  She is made of wire and without comfort or softness.

The Red Queen: I’m not superfamiliar with the Alice books beyond Wonderland so I did look this up on Wikipedia as well.  Therein lies this quote from Carroll:

The Red Queen I pictured as a Fury, but of another type; her passion must be cold and calm - she must be formal and strict, yet not unkindly; pedantic to the 10th degree, the concentrated essence of all governesses

So, again, a comparison between Talia and a cold, dispassionate anger/hatred, and a female/maternal figure without warmth.

Mother of Skeletons doesn’t seem to be a specific reference - if you’ve got one, feel free to drop that on me, too, but I couldn’t find anything.  I’m guessing it’s another way of reiterating this point that she is a destructive maternal figure who devours or destroys her unworthy children.

And finally...

Kali: Kali is a major Hindu deity, the wife of Shiva, and one of the more famous Hindu gods.  Please note I am not Hindu, I’m not going to front as some kind of expert and if you know better than me, feel free to correct me.  Anyway, Kali has many aspects, some of which are extraordinarily destructive and some of which are less so.  To find out which one he’s specifically referencing all we need to do is look at the art, though:

Kali’s most common pose in paintings is in her most fearsome guise as the slayer of demons, where she stands or dances with one foot on a collapsed Shiva and holds a severed head. She wears a skirt of severed human arms, a necklace of decapitated heads, and earrings of dead children, and she often has a terrifying expression with a lolling tongue which drips blood. --Ancient History Encyclopedia

So okay looking at Wikipedia because I’m lazy... some relevant references, and you’ll see how the other names she gives for herself back this up:

Rāmprasād comments in many of his other songs that Kāli is indifferent to his wellbeing, causes him to suffer, brings his worldly desires to nothing and his worldly goods to ruin. He also states that she does not behave like a mother should and that she ignores his pleas:

Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone? [a reference to Kali as the daughter of Himalaya] Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord? Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you, Mother. You have cut off the heads of the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck. It matters not how much I call you "Mother, Mother." You hear me, but you will not listen.

To be a child of Kāli, Rāmprasād asserts, is to be denied of earthly delights and pleasures. Kāli is said to refrain from giving that which is expected.

So, a mother who, having been born of stone herself, lacks mercy and warmth.  Given Morrison’s take on Talia’s background and her relationship to Ra’s... self-explanatory pretentious reference.  But that’s not all:

Vamakali is usually worshipped by non-householders. The pose shows the conclusion of an episode in which Kali was rampaging out of control after destroying many demons. Shiva, fearing that Kali would not stop until she destroyed the world, could only think of one way to pacify her. He lay down on the battlefield so that she would have to step on him. Seeing her consort under her foot, Kali realized that she had gone too far, and calmed down.

Okay this is super relevant because one thing that people often miss about Morrison’s Talia is that her acts of destruction are ultimately meant to get Bruce’s attention.  She undertakes this villainous rampage because he only pays attention to villains: she doesn’t even think it’s interesting, she mocks her own plans and calls them stupid.  She says she’s doing this because Bruce prefers things black and white and over the top.  

And in the end, she shows up in the Batcave, declares that they’re going to fight to the death, and then has a passionate kissing session with him...

...seriously, everyone remembers the kiss but no one talks about how Bruce is still into it.  

But anyway, so they make out, and she poisons him...

...then declares she’s doing all this as a gift to him, expresses frustration that he doesn’t understand, and demands that he beg her for help.

Here’s my point:  she’s not actually trying to kill him or take the world down.  She’s trying to force Bruce to submit to her, at which point she would feel satisfied and come back back from the edge.  As evidenced by her earlier panels expressing her frustration that he won’t stop or admit defeat.

In fact, a great deal of what she does in Batman Inc. seems to be done to elicit a specific response from Bruce - for example, she has a hit put on Damian, but it’s really just to mess with Bruce’s head, it’s not really meant to result in Damian actually dying.  I would say this comes back to this idea that the opposite of love is apathy not hate - love and hate are both intertwined and Morrison’s Talia both hates and loves him, or rather loves him until she hates him and hates him until she loves him.

This reminds me, one day I should write a thing about how Morrison’s Bruce/Talia story is basically a tragic romance and Talia is the actual love interest of his run... or should I because I don’t really want to be the person who writes longass meta about runs and interpretations that I actually hate.   

Anyway, SIGNING OFF AGAIN, it’s...

Me!

[jones-friend]

BECAUSE I GOT ASKED TO DO THEM ALL

1. A favorite character you have played.

Boyd Pengelly. He was a barbarian/rogue multiclass who used his Rage feature whenever he got angry enough. The unpredictability mixed with low expectations on his longevity was a great time.

2. Your favorite character that someone else has played.

This is a hard question to answer, and I don’t like playing favorites so here’s a top three:

@darien-king-of-synergy ‘s Trick, Gentleman Adventurer. Classy theif with the cane and suit to back it up.

@krakenattack ‘s Lieklo, the nerdiest dragon

@graspingeden ‘s Avery Holimon, the sweetest silver dragon to soar the friendly skies

3. Your favorite side quest.

Anytime Lord Baron Rikshaw, Kobold Nobleman kidnaps my players with the assistance of Mr McKemby and Pent, a winged kobold and kenku cleric of Pelor. Grand Budapest styled shenanigans ensue.

4. Your current campaign.

I’ve created a loose one shot system with a hub world called the University of Corcyra Isle. The idea is a sphinx teacher organizes a school of magic to learn through space and time with the assistance of all kinds of strange teachers. I can’t wait for them to meet my mindflayer humanist.

5. Favorite NPC.

That’s a tough question that changes day to day so I’m gonna talk about one of my favorites I haven’t before: Isarthi

Isarthi is a mindflayer humanist living in a colony deep in the underdark. She sees humanoid creatures like we would see a bunny or dog: adorable but also pretty dumb. She wants to uninslave the humanoids in the colony but its a radical idea that isn’t taking hold anytime soon. For now she ushers them about in secret, offering biology lessons where sometimes her papers mix with her Dungeons and Dryads character sheets (a game she is fully willing to play with your characters).

6. Favorite death (monster, player character, NPC, etc).

That’s hard because as I’ve continued, I don’t like death in my D&D. I used to let it happen pretty consistently but its a story telling element I don’t like using unless its really the best way to tell the story.

That being said, I do have one character planned. Tieflings have a Ritual of the Returned, you can petition to have a Tiefling returned from the hells under a specific contract. One tiefling thought he was clever and his contract states that he will only be returned if he plays a song so beautiful that it makes a dragon cry.

Avery is a silver dragon who will find him freezing on the mointaintops. Eventually he falls in love with her, and she persuades him to give up his grasp on this unlife, and elevates his soul to heaven. In his acceptance of this he plays a song to Avery, thanking her and coming to terms with his death, and that song brings Avery to tears completing his contract.

7. Your favorite downtime activity.

Making magic items yo

8. Your favorite fight/encounter.

I made a swamp on wooden catwalks and put a black dragon in the water beneath them, 10/10 would recommend.

9. Your favorite thing about D&D.

The interactive part. My players have such a sway over the story, I really just direct them and they lovingly contribute so much to the world they’re in.

10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most.

I love myconids, their ressurrection spore makes any D&D creature into a clicker from last of us

My least favorite enemy is the zombie beholder from 5e. I’ve seen them outright kill two players in one shot (I was one of the two) and the level of power they have is extreme for the challenge rating they hold.

11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play?

In person? Rarely. Its mostly over text and even then its not as much as I’d like to with job searching.

12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

So in one session we split the party to break into a house. Me and my friend Tanner were roof team: our job was to wait on the roof for the party could come up so I could polymorph into a dragon and fly us away (something I didn’t realize you couldn’t do).

Instead of staying on the roof, roof team went to the first floor, drank poisoned alcohol, and vomited everywhere escaping as a drunken dragon.

ROOF TEAM

13. Introduce your current party.

I have a lot of students but I can introduce my antihero party! Its my Suicide Squad of morally gray characters

Boyd Pengelly: angry criminal from the city. Acting on impulse got him here and it sure isn’t bringing him anywhere else so why not.

Henrietta Lynch: in Barlowe Landing, her werewolf sister fatally wounded a boy she was seeing. A witch in the woods gave her a bad spell and now she has a zombie ex boyfriend she’s lugging around. At first she thought he was alive incorrectly. As he rots away shes slowly coming to terms with what she did.

Brass: Ex soldier of Vollenth’s military, Brass defected during a war march and works as a hitman or hired muscle. His aim with a crossbow is remarkable and he’s sure to let you know that. He defected from Vollenth’s army to be a free man only to realize there was nothing of him left.

Tiamir: A dragonborn who grew up a servant of red dragons, she stole the rite of being Tiamat’s Paladin from the family’s hatchling, and enforced Tiamat’s ideaology of might makes right wherever she goes.

14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed.

One time I played in a session where we had:

Bird police (me)

Russian dwarf cleric

Necromancer

Barbarian vampire person who hisses a lot

15. Do you have snacks during game times?

Oh for sure. Clean snacks that don’t make crumbs are best. Frozen pizzas work great, you can make a bunch and cut them up into squares.

16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer?

I’ve really been enjoying the amount of control playing over text gives me, though that has its limits when it comes to complex combat

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

Don’t be rude

No rape. Find a different way to tell your story.

18. Does your party keep any pets?

Once they had a gryphon hatchling

19. Do you or your party have any dice superstitions?

There’s a set of pink dice @darien-king-of-synergy owns that have killed two PC’s and a whole campaign but give him nothing but high rolls

20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing?

I’ve been playing for 6 years now, my friends in college got me into it. I made a gnome atheist who disowned the gods when his gelatinous ooze cube was slaughtered.

21. Have you ever regretted something your character has done?

Once Boyd alerted the entire area with a nat 1 on stealth I RP’d by getting spooked and punching a man in the face. I probably should’ve let the DM decide what happened there

22. What color was your first dragon?

Crudak! My copper baby. A desert shopkeep who’s quite excitable and quite a fast talker.

23. Do you use premade modules or original campaigns?

Nope! I make all my own.

24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game?

Usually 3-4 hours for one shots. Over text I make an outline and follow through as necessary.

For DMs

25. What have your players done that you never could have planned for?

One of my players romanced a dragon NPC and that changed everything

26. What was your favorite scene to write and show your characters.

The hatching of a baby gold dragon in the middle of a city, which the players had to smuggle through said city

27. Do you allow homebrew content?

Yes as long as its to have fun not to break the game

28. How often do you use NPCs in a party?

In online or in person? Almost never. In one on one I pair you with an NPC that rounds you out.

29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions?

RP heavy for sure!

30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos?

They better not be murder hobos

For Players

31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race?

Warlock has the coolest options

Human, funny enough. I find human PC’s bring out their character more than other races do.

Under that is dragonborn for fire breathing.

32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?)

Magic support or heavy beater. Once I had paladin’s divine smite, barbarian’s reckless attack, and fighter’s improved critical all on the same attack

33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory?

I make the character and whatever backstory is necessary to understand the character! I used to write long backstories but now I’m more involved with the role playing aspect.

34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor?

FLaVoR

35. How much roleplay do you like to do?

All roleplaying all the time

[jaybeevega]

Blogpost 3-5

“The Life of Pi”

“The life of Pi” this movie is a kind of dramatic movie, tells the fantastical story of Pi Patel, a sixteen-year-old South Indian boy who survives at sea with a tiger for 227 days and there is a lot of lessons that you will learn and it can help you in your whole life. In this story Pi is the only human survived in that disaster and his mom, his dad and his brother died in a middle of disaster and Pi also succeed on surviving 227 days in the middle of the ocean, A lot of problems, challenges, and battles that he experience in order to survive, to the point that there is a time that he wants to give up, there are times that he want to die, but he keep on fighting until he succeed. After all of those problems, challenges and battles Pi survived with a tiger named Richard Parker, Pi and Richard Parker eventually land on the Mexican beach. Richard Parker immediately runs off into the jungle without acknowledging Pi, which Pi finds deeply hurtful. Pi is found, fed, bathed, and taken to a hospital. There, two Japanese men come to question Pi about what caused the Tsimtsum to sink. He tells his story, which they do not believe, so he offers them a more plausible version, with the animal characters replaced by other humans, which casts doubt on the original story. According to Pi “You know, I left so much behind, my family, the zoo, India, Anandi. I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go. But what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye. I was never able to thank my father for all I learned from him. To tell him, without his lessons I would never have survived. I know Richard Parker’s a tiger but I wish I had said, “It’s over. We survived. Thank you for saving my life. I love you, Richard Parker. You’ll always be with me. May God be with you.” The lesson is Learn to let go, to forgive, be humble and stand up for yourself.

1. What life lessons can be learned from the movie?

- the lessons that you can learn in the movie is that to let go, to forgive, be humble, and stand up for yourself

2. What part of the story told by the movie was the most powerful? Why?

- the most powerful part of the movie is that when the typhoon has appeared and their boat is about to destroy and only Pi and other animals survived on that typhoon

3. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Why?

- It is Pi because aside from being a protagonist he is a strong man and even how big is the problems or challenges that has given to him, he never give up, and I am inspired to his story that we can win against our problems and challenges that has given to us.

4. Did anything that happened in the  movie remind you of something that has occurred in your own life or that you have seen occur to others?

- the thing that reminds me in this movie is that, when they finally survived Richard Parker runs to the jungle and Pi was hurt because Parker did not even thank Pi for saving him.

“Coco”

The movie entitled “coco” In Santa Cecilia, Mexico, Miguel dreams of becoming a musician, even though his family strictly forbids it. His great-great-grandmother Imelda was married to a man who left her and their daughter Coco to pursue a career in music, and when he never returned, Imelda discarded all forms of music from her family's life before starting a shoemaking business. Miguel now lives with the elderly Coco and their family, including Miguel's parents and grandmother, who are all shoemakers. Coco suffers from memory loss and has become largely non-verbal, but Miguel is very close to her. Miguel secretly idolizes famed musician Ernesto de la Cruz and practices his guitar skills using Ernesto's old films. On the Day of the Dead, Miguel accidentally damages the picture frame that holds a photo of Coco with her mother and her father (the latter's face torn off the picture) on the family ofrenda, discovering that a hidden section of the photograph shows his great-great-grandfather holding Ernesto's famous guitar. Miguel, concluding that Ernesto is his great-great-grandfather, ignores his family's objections and decides to enter the local talent show. Breaking into Ernesto's mausoleum, Miguel takes his guitar to use in the show, but once he strums it, he becomes invisible to everyone in the village plaza. However, he can interact with his skeletal deceased relatives, who are visiting from the Land of the Dead for the holiday. Taking him back with them, they learn that Imelda cannot visit, since Miguel accidentally removed her photo from the ofrenda. Miguel discovers that he is cursed for stealing from the dead, and must return to the Land of the Living before sunrise, or he will become one of the dead; to do so, he must receive a blessing from a member of his family. Imelda offers Miguel a blessing on the condition of ending his dream of becoming a musician, but Miguel refuses and resolves to seek Ernesto's blessing instead. He meets Héctor, who declares that he knows Ernesto, offering to help Miguel reach him in return for Miguel taking his photo back with him, so that he might visit his daughter before she forgets him, causing him to disappear completely. Héctor helps Miguel enter a talent competition to win entry to Ernesto's mansion, but Miguel's family tracks him down, forcing him to flee. Miguel sneaks into the mansion, where Ernesto welcomes him as his descendant, but Héctor confronts them, again imploring Miguel to take his photo to the Land of the Living. Ernesto and Héctor renew an argument from their partnership in life, and Miguel realizes that when Héctor decided to leave to return home to his family, Ernesto robbed him of his guitar and songs after poisoning him, passing them off as his own to become famous. To protect his legacy, Ernesto seizes the photo and has his security guards throw Miguel and Héctor into a cenote pit. There, Miguel discovers that Héctor is his actual great-great-grandfather, and Coco's father. Héctor only wanted to go to the Land of the Living so he could see Coco again. After Imelda and the family rescue the duo, Miguel reveals the truth about Héctor's death. Imelda and Héctor slowly reconcile, and the family infiltrates Ernesto's concert to retrieve Héctor's photo. Ernesto's crimes are exposed to the audience, who jeer at him as he is flung out of the stadium by Imelda's alebrije, Pepita. Ernesto is then trapped under a giant bell, recreating the circumstances of his death; in the chaos, however, Miguel loses Héctor's photo. As the sun rises, Coco's memories are fading; Imelda and Héctor bless Miguel, so that he can return home. After Miguel plays "Remember Me", a song that Héctor wrote for Coco, which Ernesto used as his number one hit, Coco brightens and sings along with Miguel. She reveals that she had saved the torn-off piece of the family photo with Héctor's face on it, and then tells her family stories about her father, thus saving his memory as well as his existence in the Land of the Dead. Miguel's family reconciles with him, ending the ban on music. One year later, Miguel shows his new baby sister the family ofrenda, which now includes Héctor and a recently deceased Coco. Coco's collected letters from Héctor reveal Ernesto's plagiarism, tarnishing his legacy and allowing Héctor to be rightfully honored in his place. In the Land of the Dead, Héctor and Imelda rekindle their romance and join Coco for a visit to the living, where Miguel performs for his family.

 1.What life lessons can be learned from the movie?

- The life lesson I have learned after watching the movie was we should remember our family who had been passed away , not only the member of the family but to those person who shows good or nice to us their memories should remain in our heart and treasure everything they have done for us.

2. What part of the story told by the movie was the most powerful? Why?

- When Miguel finally meet his great grandfather who was his idol. In a reason where they had been working together and surpasses many difficulties in their journey not knowing that Miguel already met his idol without knowing.

3. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Why?

- Its Miguel, despite from his family who strictly forbids music in their lives he still pursue his dreams.

4. Did anything that happened in the  movie remind you of something that has occurred in your own life or that you have seen occur to others?

- The time when Coco forget her father, it's because of the hatred they become selfish and think only about their selves.

“Kimi No Nawa(Your Name)”

The movie “Kimi no nawa(your name)” is a Japanese movie. Mitsuha Miyamizu is a high school girl living in the rural town of Itomori near Hida. She is bored living in town and wishes to be a boy in her next life. She inexplicably begins to switch bodies intermittently with Taki Tachibana, a high school boy in Tokyo, when they wake up in the morning. They both initially believe these experiences to be vivid dreams, but eventually realize they can communicate with each other, by recording messages on paper, phones and sometimes on each other's skin. Mitsuha (in Taki's body) sets Taki up on a date with his coworker Miki Okudera, while Taki (in Mitsuha's body) causes Mitsuha to become popular at school. One day, Taki (in Mitsuha's body) accompanies Hitoha and Yotsuha to leave the ritual alcohol kuchikamizake, made by the sisters, as an offering to the Shinto shrine on a mountaintop outside the town. It is believed to represent the body of the village guardian god, ruling over human experiences and connections. Taki reads a note from Mitsuha about the comet Tiamat, expected to pass Earth on the day of the autumn festival. The next day, Taki wakes up in his body and goes on a date with Miki, who tells him she enjoyed the date but also that she can tell that he is preoccupied by thoughts of someone else. Taki attempts to call Mitsuha on the phone, but cannot reach her and the body-switching ends. Taki, Miki, and their friend Tsukasa travel to Gifu Prefecture by train on a trip to Hida, though Taki does not know the name of the town, instead relying on sketches he has made of the surrounding landscape from his memory. A restaurant owner in Hida, who is originally from Itomori, recognizes one of Taki's sketches. Taki and his friends arrive in the town, which is now destroyed by a meteor and five hundred people were killed three years after the comet Tiamat unexpectedly fragmented. While gazing over the impact crater, in disbelief that everyone he met in Mitsuha's body had died this entire time, Taki sees that Mitsuha's messages have been permanently deleted from his phone and their memories start fading away. Taki finds every names in the record of fatalities and wonders if the body-switching was just a dream. While Miki and Tsukasa return to Tokyo, Taki goes to the shrine alone to drink Mitsuha's sake from the bottle, hoping to reconnect with her body and warn her about the comet. After drinking the sake, Taki lapses into a vision, where he sees Mitsuha's past. When she was a child, her mother died of an illness, and her father abandoned the family to pursue politics and become the mayor, leaving Mitsuha and her sister to be raised by their maternal grandmother. He learns that he met Mitsuha on a train three years earlier, when she arrives in Tokyo to find him while the body-switching was occurring in her timeline but not yet due to happen for another three years. Before leaving the train in embarrassment, she leaves Taki with the braid, which he has worn on his wrist as a good-luck charm. Taki wakes up in Mitsuha's body at the house on the morning of the festival. Hitoha deduces what happened, and tells him the body-switching ability has been passed down among the family caretakers of the shrine. Taki convinces Tessie and Sayaka, two of Mitsuha's friends, to make everyone evacuate the town, by disabling the electrical substation and broadcasting a false emergency alert. Realizing that Mitsuha is in his body at the shrine, Taki goes back to find her and Mitsuha wakes up in Taki's body. When Taki reaches there during the sunset, the two sense each other's presence, but are separated temporally by three years and cannot see each other. When twilight falls (referred to in the film as "magic hour" or "kataware-doki" they return to their own bodies and meet in person for the first time. After Taki returns the braid to Mitsuha, they attempt to write their names on each hands so they will remember each other, but twilight passes and Mitsuha disappears before she can write hers. When the evacuation plan fails, Mitsuha determines to convince her father, the mayor, to evacuate the town. Before doing so, Mitsuha notices her memories for Taki starting to fade, and discovers he wrote "I love you" on her hand instead of his name. Despite the evacuation, the meteor crashes to Earth and destroys Itomori. Taki wakes up in his own time, remembering nothing. Five years later, Taki has graduated from university and searches for a job. He senses he lost something important he cannot identify, but feels drawn to the town's disaster, in which the inhabitants have survived by following the mayor's evacuation order. One day, Taki and Mitsuha see each other when their trains draw parallel, and they separately disembark and search for each other, finally meeting at the stairs of Suga Shrine. Taki calls out to Mitsuha, saying that he feels that he knows her, and she responds that she has the same feeling. With their connection re-established, they shed tears of happiness and simult.

 1.What life lessons can be learned from the movie?

- The lesson I've learned in the movie was in every situation do not hesitate to offer things that you can do and share what you have for better , just like Taki where he find Mitsuha to prevent the incoming disaster

2. What part of the story told by the movie was the most powerful? Why?

- When Taki and Mitsuha finally had conversation in person wherein they are both excited and nervous. They become very comfortable to each other and Taki reminds Mitsuha that she can still save everyone from the incoming disaster.

3. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Why?

- Taki , because he sacrifices everything and look for the girl he wants and to confirm if she is fine. Despite from the gossips and news he heard he still want to help and save Mitsuha

4. Did anything that happened in the  movie remind you of something that has occurred in your own life or that you have seen occur to others?

-  The sacrifises and effort of Taki, cause in real life we must sacrifise and give effort to the things we are happy to do.

[pudgy-puk]

What's your beef with Hraesvelgr? I'm not trying to call you out; I'm just curious.

oh boy this will probably get long (and as i said in the previous post, this is not prescriptive to anyone else, just descriptive of what i think about the character and why)

the thing with hraesvelgr is that he’s a Bad Elf.

by which i mean, hraesvelgr has all the traits of the kind of high fantasy elves that people utterly despise, presented in that same infuriating “they’re the Best and you can’t disagree with them” way. he is a character who is and who must be so perfect, perfectly tragic and perfectly beautiful, that he distorts the characterization of anyone and anything who gets too close to him in order to preserve how perfect, tragic, beautiful, noble and right he is.

he distorts other characters from his first mention, in fact—when ysayle explains that she will take the protagonist party (at that point consisting of the warrior of light, estinien, and alphinaud) to see hraesvelgr, to treat with hraesvelgr, and gives us the story of hraesvelgr and saint shiva as background. including the detail that hraesvelgr ate shiva, and this was regarded as an event that brought peace between discontented men and dragons before thordan et al. fucked it up again with ratatoskr. she says this at our literal first meeting on guardedly-friendly terms. there is no physical evidence, textual evidence, to support her claim. we are still in coerthas and have yet to see even dravania, let alone the churning mists. it has been established previously that militant heretics are willing to lie and lie quite well (cf. the one who killed and stole the identity of an inquisitor in order to kill people in 2.0 msq). the only reason to choose to believe her is to CHOOSE to. and alphinaud, who at the time recently had been badly burned by choosing to trust the wrong people (ilberd, lolorito), and who even through present content, through 4.0 and 4.1, continues to be deeply affected by that betrayal, chooses to believe her with little skepticism, even the part about dragon-eats-gf-is-a-moral-good. estinien chooses to accept her story with very little challenge—estinien, azure dragoon of ishgard, whose root motivation is “everything and everyone he ever knew was personally flambéed by nidhogg twenty-ish years ago,” expresses no skepticism or concern regarding nidhogg’s brood-brother assuring pretty elezen women that he is totally safe and noble by talking about how he ate his last pretty elezen girlfriend. to be fair, no one over the course of the entire goddamned xpac ever voices any sign that this troubles or even surprises them, but this is the starkest example: even when the reasons to be skeptical are highest, hraesvelgr’s version of himself as repeated by ysayle is considered to be the full truth and fully virtuous.

even though it’s true that hraesvelgr is not honest. when he tells the protagonist party what he presents as the truth about the origins of the dragonsong war in ratatoskr’s murder by thordan and his knights, he leaves out the role he played in it. we find out via the echo that the dragonsong war would not have happened without his consent—nidhogg, who laid dying, asked hraesvelgr for the strength of one of his eyes, to save his life and empower him to wipe ishgard off the face of the planet, every man, woman, and child, even if it takes him a thousand years. hraesvelgr granted that request. he is not challenged for being nidhogg’s accomplice, willing and knowing, in this—he’s never even acknowledged as having been dishonest. because we have to consider hraesvelgr to be the good, tragic, noble dragon, his misery and anger over his sister’s foul and most unnatural murder must justify his complicity and inaction.

never mind that his other sister, tiamat, is also suffering horribly, tortured and torturing herself in azys lla, for millennia without cease, without comfort, and he apparently doesn’t care about that. it is very difficult to see hraesvelgr as some kind of moral arbiter based on his actions in the game, but the story tries very hard to still present him as such, to the detriment of pretty much every character even associated with him. for example—a great deal was made of how team protagonist of ishgard must, in 3.3, trek to the churning mists and beg and plead for hraesvelgr’s aid and approval, must prove ourselves Worthy in his trials in sohr khai in order for him to consent to move against nidhogg. the trouble with this is that for it to work as intended, it requires the players to forget 3.2—to not think about the end of 3.2, about how nidhogg almost succeeded in murdering hraesvelgr’s daughter vidofnir—to not realize that if hraesvelgr still has to be arduously persuaded into stopping nidhogg after that, then he didn’t value his own daughter now and her welfare now as much as he does a thousand-year-old grudge. but he is the moral arbiter to whom the people who have been actually trying to change things and working to save lives must submit for judgment and be grateful for his approval.

narratively, hraesvelgr is presented as Good and Noble, but his actions do not at all back that up. The story, though, is completely unwilling to grapple with this; it makes excuses for him in order to present his strong preference for brooding inaction as at worst neutral. he is still furious/grieving even though the events were a thousand years ago, but it’s okay because dragons are immortal godlike beings who don’t experience time the way mortals do! fine, so what happens the next time some limited mortal being manages to hurt him or betray him deeply again? do we do something like this again and subject thousands and thousands of people to possible death and misery because it takes at least a thousand years for great wyrms to process grief?

and it doesn’t end with nidhogg’s death, even—the harm caused by hraesvelgr’s inaction regarding nidhogg. the 4.0 dragoon questline has established that nidhogg used the power of his great wyrm voice, his dragon’s song, to override the free will of the dragons of his brood and force them to wage war on ishgard even if they don’t want to—and that this power is almost completely irresistible, and it hasn’t stopped even with nidhogg’s death. the dragon we rescue as part of this quest was still lost to the song and the hatred even as far away as the azim steppe, and the only thing that was able to drive out nidhogg’s lingering song was the voices of dragons of hraesvelgr’s brood. this suggests that among the surviving dragons of nidhogg’s brood, populating the forelands and the mists, there are those who never wished to fight or straight up never had a choice (remember all those hostile dragonets? the baby dragons? y e a h), but none of the allegedly “good” dragons can lift their voices to help them (they can’t. then all the mobs in these zones would be gone. and then there wouldn’t be a game). but they’re still the good dragons because they said they are. (remember, this whole genocidal war business started because one dragon was murdered. just one. one dragon was murdered, therefore all of nidhogg’s brood—encompassing who knows how many dragons by this point—must be compelled to go to war against ishgard and if they die, then they die. god, the only way this makes sense is if nidhogg is totally off his rocker, consumed by monomaniacal hatred to complete irrationality for a thousand years. which hraesvelgr didn’t fucking care enough about to actually do anything meaningful, despite being an immortal great wyrm of demigod-like power himself. what a noble creature).

it’s not that hraesvelgr is highly fucked up that makes me hate him so much, it’s that he is so fucked up and is still treated as the Great Good Angelic Dragon. he’s not. he’s really, really not. like—fine, maybe his motivation for complete inaction is because the last time he ever did anything, everything went horrifically wrong, that’s what he thinks—that could be a good way to have such a character. but it’s not what we have, which is a story demanding the deference and respect due to a moral authority actually be given to a self-serving, indifferent, indolent liar.

and that, briefly put, is my beef with hraesvelgr.

[wickedreplicant]

GETTING TO KNOW THE MUN

NAME: Nikki

NICKNAME: Nik, Kat 

FACECLAIM: I either use Sailor Mars or my CAW from Samurai Warriors 4 Empires. I made it look close enough to me, except it didn’t have my exact hair color 

PRONOUNS: She

HEIGHT: 152 cm 

BIRTHDAY: September 25

AESTHETIC: Darkness, Ice/Snow, City Lights, Walking through the city late at night, Autumn (and autumn scents), Fire, Water/Ocean, Dimly lit and secluded bars, Dogs and Cats, Studying, Loud Music, Concerts

LAST SONG YOU LISTENED TO: Tiamat-Brighter Than the Sun

FAVOURITE MUSE(S) YOU’VE WRITTEN? I can’t single out just one, each of my muses have their own special qualities to me-each have their own significance to me, but lately, I’ve been enjoying writing as Bryan

GETTING TO KNOW THE ACCOUNT

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO TAKE ON THIS MUSE? We have to go back to the time when I was in a sushi restaurant. All you can eat sushi with three friends. A friend saw my Tekken Bullet Club shirt and asked me about Tekken 7, he asked me,”Is Bryan Fury still in?” and I replied,”Yes, but I haven’t come across him in Treasure Battle yet.” Of course right after I said this, came home, and turned the game on, Bryan was my first opponent, and beat me up. His win pose had him hovering over my character (I think I was Hwoarang), pummeling him half to death. I said to myself, yay! a psychopath character! I’m usually drawn to those. Currently, I’m writing a fic, and I was trying to figure out how to add Bryan in. He has connections to many characters and I was trying to figure out how to begin his arc, while researching him. I was attracted to his brutality, his madness, and the science behind his being. I had a very different approach to how to add him in the story in the beginning, one I’m really glad I threw away. I haven’t gotten that far in the fic yet, I haven’t even added Baek and Steve yet! As I tried to figure out how to write Bryan, I looked for fics involved him, and stumbled upon a cute love story between him and Sergei Dragunov. They seemed to be a fairly popular pairing. I really liked how Bryan was portrayed, and that’s what influenced me the most. I said to myself, that’s the Bryan I want. He’s a tyrannical maniac, but he also has feelings. He struggles with his conflicting feelings of wanting to love, wanting to protect, wanting to be human, while realizing, he’s still a monster, and he’s met another monster, who seems interested enough. Basically, the fic was; Sergei bought Bryan a drink, and Bryan’s panties dropped. In a more nicer way, of course :p 

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE ASPECTS OF YOUR CURRENT MUSE? For my OC: She’s unhinged and unfiltered. She says and does whatever’s on her mind, but she’s also homesick after making mistakes that caused her to flee her country. For Zhuge Dan, his mistakes are costly, he never seems to see the big picture in front of him, he struggles through his insecurities, he always comes up short no matter how much he tries and tries, and eventually gets rejected by both the Jin and Wu kingdoms, dying in battle. Nouhime, well, I can be as sensuous as I’d like, she’s a very dark and sexy character who is also unhinged and mildly curious about human behavior. She’s married to a husband who toys with her curious mind for his own amusement. Zhang Xingcai, I really just wanted angsty RP’s with her husband Liu Shan. Ginchiyo Tachibana, she’s my favorite Samurai Warriors character, she’s a boss ass babe decked in full armor using her father’s lightning sword, she’ll kill you ten times before you hit the ground, has a wonderful and hilarious relationship with her husband, and despite being such a hard ass, she’s tsundere as fuck. Hwoarang is an emotional wreck, I’ve taken liberties into writing him as a boy who’s lost everything he’s ever cared about, and, his reactions as the world crumbles around him. In canon, I like his badassness, his design, and also we’re both Taekwondo students. For Bryan, I like his brutality. I like his madness, I like how he doesn’t give a single fuck about anything. He can also be kind of adorable. I guess when you see things the way Bryan does, the characters become more relatable. 

WHAT’S YOUR BIGGEST INSPIRATION WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING? My mutuals! The more threads and questions thrown at me, the more I have to write about. With Tekken, other than the Mishimas, most characters aren’t that fully developed. Bryan is merely just a machine that lives for the thrill, I want to go beyond that, As I’ve mentioned before, I want to write him as a man who struggles between his human side and his mechanical side. He has emotions, he’s been hurt, betrayed, he knows how dirty the world can be. But he wants to connect with people (his wiki actually says that he prefers solitude, but I headcannon him with abandonment issues-I mean he did get really upset and pissed off when Dr. Abel left him). I think one of the biggest inspirations is trying to figure out just who the hell Bryan Fury really is. 

FAVOURITE TYPES OF THREADS: Absolutely angst. Bryan Fury is not a happy person, he probably never will, he suffers, he hurts, he kills, he destroys, but deep down, he’s a man that’s been hurt. I want angst threads with Lei never returning his feelings and dying in Lei’s arms, I want them to reconnect and Lei is disgusted by his madness. I want Sergei and Bryan to fall in love and Bryan struggles with his insecurities, while trying to manage a relationship when he’s so misanthropic. I can do fluffy, too, I’m versatile. It’s smut I’m a little leery about. Sure, I’m of age, but the last time I tried to do smut with another RP blog, the mun got a little too attached and it was hard for them to differenciate reality and rp. Kinda turned me away from those kind of threads. I mean we can work through anything, I’m up for anything, but I prefer angst over anything else. 

BIGGEST STRUGGLE IN REGARDS TO YOUR CURRENT MUSE: Going too OOC with Bryan. We all know he’s the lovable monster who lives to maim and kill. He wouldn’t care about Lei not liking him, he probably doesn’t give two shits about Sergei, and he’d probably prefer to live out the rest of his days alone. He’s an undead cyborg without emotions, but I don’t like his person just being that. I want to show the struggle, I want to show his feelings, his emotions, see the world through his eyes, see how and why he became the person that he is. He’s complicated, but he doesn’t have much development beyond the guy that kills things for shits and giggles. I guess it helps that both Bryan and I see the world in similar ways, same thing with Hwoarang. They’re my muse babies, and I try to put my views on both of them. 

TAGGED BY: @a-beast-of-prey thanks luv! 

TAGGING: You! Have at it :) 

[spinneryesteryear]

Spinner plays FFXIV Heavensward

SPOILERS AHOY

- I made sure to unlock and lvl DRG before starting HW because reasons

- I… don’t really understand why people love Foulques so much? I can only presume it’s because they find him attractive

- at first I wondered why the lancers’ guild quests emphasized courage so much, but once you realize lancer upgrades to dragoon it all makes sense: they’re training the absolute maniacs who jump headfirst at DRAGONS; of course they’re going to emphasize courage

- the literal first thing I did as a dragoon after getting my soul crystal and the jump action was to launch myself into an AOE so clearly I’m playing my job right

- the drama between Alberic and Estinien was the only reason I made it through the 2.1 - 2.3 slog, tbh

- I picked up GLD/PLD somewhere in there, too, but the GLD quests weren’t exactly riveting and the PLD quests weren’t any better. I was just biding my time for DRK

- meanwhile I had hit like lvl 62 on WHM thanks to running lots of roulettes with Adventurer in Need: Healer so I’d switch to that while wandering through a lot of the HW regions so the mobs wouldn’t attack me. I did the HW story on DRG but ran dungeons as WHM the first time bc it’s my comfort role. 

- I’m… still not sure exactly how to do the mechanics on the Steps of Faith. Whoops. Fortunately, all but once I was WHM when I got it in roulette and I could just heal/spam Holy. The exception was on DRG and I just kinda… derped around killing what adds I could.

- those cutscenes at the end of 2.5, though. Dude. Duuuuuuude.

- it did give us Pipin Tarupin, however, and he is Best Lala.

- So, like… what exactly did Ysayle expect would happen when she broke Ishguard’s magic wards and opened it to assault by hordes of dragons??She seems genuinely regretful of the innocent lives lost when spoken to in the MSQ later in HW proper, but when she actually did the deed she was channeling ‘deranged witch’ for all it was worth and talking about how the sons should pay for the sins of their fathers. Did this incident give her a rude awakening about the Dravanian desire for vengeance?? Idk, maybe further quests will explain this.

—– me: *just arrives in Ishgard*

—– me: *taking the grand tour of the city*

—– me: *notices mob near cathedral, inquires about it, learns about recent violent death of heretic*

—– me: *finds heretic corpse*

—– me: *derails grand tour of Ishgard by slaughtering my way through the streets and through various chapels, laughing maniacally as I enjoy the greater reach of my brand-new greatsword and spam Unleash*

—– me, standing amid the broken corpses of a few dozen temple knights: Count Fortemps is probably gonna regret letting me into this city.

- that one dude in Camp Cloudtop who’s entirely too obsessed with the menu deserves to be booted off his lookout platform. I’ll even rescue him via flying mount before he splatters on the ground (however far down the ground happens to be, idk), but I really want to kick him off at least once. He gave me far too many fetch quests and my inner Fray is disgruntled, to say the least.

- me, just trying to make my way across the map: WILL EVERYTHING IN COERTHAS STOP CHASING ME???

- other people think the gaelicats are too cute to kill them. I, however, just want to kill them all the more. I’d be perfectly content to leave the mobs alone and continue on my merry way, but, nooooooo, they have to attack me. So I respond in savage kind.

- me, doing sidequest chains and getting mildly attached to extremely minor characters: So, I kinda ship Ayleth and Saintrelmaux now…

- ever since I unlocked it, I get Dusk Vigil all the time in lvling roulette so I’m now an expert on ice age megafauna, undead knights, and murderous griffins of the non-Sloppeh type

- Ravana is my fave HW primal, hands down, and his theme is definitely among my fave primal music. I would say it’s my absolute fave (I have listened to it on repeat for hours at a time, but I’ve done that with other music, so it’s not conclusive evidence) but it has stiff competition in the form of the Ultima theme, Leviathan’s theme, and the Knights of the Round theme.

- going on a life-changing field trip with Alphinaud, Estinien, and Ysayle was amazing. All we needed was Zuko.

- far too many side quests in Tailfeather. Far too many. And that one quest chain ended up with the poor dude’s pet baby chocobo as chicken tenders? If I didn’t hate chickens so much IRL that would have been super painful.

- the moogle quests required to progress the MSQ weren’t that bad. The sheer amount of moogle sidequests needed to unlock flying for that zone and their beast tribe quests, however…. well, I’m completely on board now with any plans Sidurgu might have for utter moogle genocide.

- lol, the moogles were about to give us more chores to do but Estinien’s sheer murderous rage panicked their chieftain into sending us on our way. I love him. (Estinien, that is. Not the moogles. I love to hate them.)

- Estinien is just… I love him so much. It’s more than his armor. It’s more than his jumps. It’s more than his sass and swearing. No stereotypical elf qualities to be found here, folks. Honestly, he could give some elves from The Silmarillion a run for their money, with even his own equivalent of Angband PTSD post-Nidhogg. I also immensely love that he’s a character on a power level similar to the WoL. (I don’t actually enjoy the main character being the most powerful person in the world, without equal. I like someone else being better in at least some ways and that being okay.) Heck, when possessed by Nidhogg he’s the final boss of the expansion + patches. And he lives. (Which is in itself a pretty powerful moment and Alphinaud and the WoL’s desire to save him lifts the whole plot point/theme into something more sublime. It would have been easy to kill him regretfully, both from a Watsonian and a Doylist perspective. The devs had no problems throwing painful deaths at us in this expansion. But we took the harder route. And it was worth it.)

- low-key painful Heavensward moments (bc heavens know there’s enough high-key painful moments): Alberic is extremely worried about his adopted son, whom he last saw nearly possessed by a dragon’s millennium’s worth of hate and rage, and who then vanished in an explosion, but he can’t do anything about it so instead he helps another retired dragoon worry about his own missing daughter

- ngl there was some red herring foreshadowing that the primal Archbishop Thordan planned to summon was actually Halone, the Fury, Goddess of Justice and Patroness of Ishgard. Which would have been badass. But I’m pretty sure Square Enix is going the Dragon Age route of never confirming/denying the presence of the Maker with their Twelve, Halone included, so I deemed it unlikely even as I secretly hoped. A lot of players probably missed these fake hints and would wonder what I’m even talking about. 

- I couldn’t even get mad about all the bad things that happened during the Vault because the characters were juggling Idiot Balls. (1) Aymeric thought his father, who has been consorting with Ascians and plans to summon a primal, could be reasoned with. (2) Aymeric went alone to go reason with him and was correspondingly captured and tortured. (3) We fought three of the twelve Heaven’s Ward in the Vault itself and NO ONE APPARENTLY QUESTIONED WHERE THE OTHER NINE WERE. Plus, said three have clearly already been tempered and are feeding off primal energy for their second forms, even if the mechanics are unknown. Those without the Echo should have promptly skedaddled after rescuing Aymeric. (4) After a dungeon full of ambush mobs, no one thought to secure the little airship landing behind the Vault before arguing with Archbishop Thordan. In Ishgard, city of verticality with its gravity-defying dragoons, personal airplanes, and millennium-long war against flying dragons. Everyone involved should have thought to check the nearby roofs for hostiles. Am I seriously the only person who has ever thought tactically about this situation??? (5) The WoL and Haurchefant rush forward to delay the Archbishop, again without considering the whereabouts of the rest of his presumably also tempered bodyguards or whether any hostiles remain in the building behind us. And so events happened as they did.

- Regula van Hydrus has a cool name and a cool silhouette with that helmet. Better than Varis, anyway. 

- the Vundu are probably my fave HW beast tribe. The moogles are the crafting tribe so Imma do them anyway (and have fun tricking them into doing work) but I’m actually looking forward to the Vundu. I’m just benevolently apathetic towards the Gnath.

- I just, like… did not care about Azys Lla in the slightest. It was more Allagan BS and I hated the map. (I still don’t have it fully explored??? What am I doing??) The ‘terms and conditions’ bit with the node was amusing, but… the entire place got old almost immediately. Finding Tiamat and talking to her with Midgardsormr was the only high point.

- why isn’t there an option to have Hrasevelgr come and talk to Tiamat to persuade her to abandon her self-chosen imprisonment??? Or to have Estinien later come and talk to her to possibly give her Nidhogg’s perspective? Bc I think Nidhogg would have some insight into her situation, definitely. She summoned elder primal Bahamut out of grief at his loss, while Nidhogg launched a millennium-long war out of grief at Ratatoskr’s loss, and now they’ve both abandoned their vengeance. 

- ARF TILL YOU BARF

- idk, man, the Aetherochemical Research Facility is such a weird conglomerate of things for a dugneon. Firstly, you got Allagan tech and machines. Then you got mutant creatures the Allagans made (bc, if it was mad science, then the Allagans were all over it). Then you got Ascians, evil ghosty dudes who laugh evilly and throw standard Evil Ascian Attacks at you before doing the fusion dance from Dragonball Z and becoming a Giant Evil Ascian. Igeyhorm has a feminine voice but is she(?) actually female or is she just presumably possessing a female body? Do Ascians have gender or do they even care about such things? (I am very much Not Thinking about Solus/Emet-Selch reproducing here.) 

- Archbishop Thordan reveals the millennium-old, perfectly preserved corpse of Haldrath, the original Thordan’s dragoon son, with NIDHOGG’S OTHER EYE FUSED INTO THE CORPSE’S CHEST, and, like, no one really comments on it in- or out-of-universe???? What happened??? Haldrath gave up the throne, apparently because he wasn’t 100% on board with his dad’s treachery against Ratatoskr and consequent decision to kill all dragons to maintain power. Dragoons were apparently already a thing at this point (HC: to combat the voidsent infesting Abalathia’s Spine and the mountains between Coerthas and Gridania, e.g. Witches’ Drop), so what happened to Haldrath? Is this explained somewhere and I missed it??? Did Nidhogg hijack his mind? Estinien had Nidhogg’s eyes (both of them, incidentally, which Haldrath didn’t have to deal with) fused to his arm & shoulder but Haldrath had an eye fused to his chest. To his HEART. What happened.

- And then Archbishop Thordan somehow turns Haldrath’s corpse + armor + Nidhogg’s eye into a sword, the primal version of presumably Ascalon, King Thordan’s sword, somehow designing it to eat primal/Ascian aether. And then he kills Lahabrea, which, no great loss there. But it leaves my questions unanswered.

- Thordan + Knights of the Round is such a cool trial, I love it to death and not because it’s easy. It could be as hard as Nidhogg Normal and I’d still love it. I wish I had a static with whom I could do Thordan Ex and other more complicated content.

- finishing that fight and the cutscenes after, however… man, I didn’t know how to feel. I was screaming internally and torn in at least three different directions. Couldn’t get through the patch content fast enough to fight Nidhogg.

- had to fight Raubahn as DRG to represent my decimated Knights Dragoon brethren and my missing possessed dragoon brother and restore their honor. I’m also 100% convinced Raubahn learned of Ifrit’s nail trick and decided, “I can totally do that with Tizona.”

- has Aymeric ever done a dragoon jump? No? Then he’s not a real Azure Dragoon even if he has a nice color scheme and has ridden a dragon. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if he can do a dragoon jump (he’s survived years as Estinien’s friend somehow, and I can’t help but imagine he’s dragged Estinien off more than one rooftop), but until he does it I’m not budging on this. 

- Aymeric getting stabbed by a rando with a pocketknife and nearly dying was (1) surprisingly realistic and (2) made him look wimpy next to all the punishment so many of the other characters take without dying. Sorry, man. It had to be said. I love you, Aymeric, but still.

- standing there on the Final Steps of Faith, on the broken bridge to the Gate of Judgment, staring down Nidhogg while that beautiful music plays (TELL ME WHY BREAK TRUST, WHY TURN THE PAST TO DUST) and waiting for the queue to pop… that was a powerful emotion unlike any other. Stormblood couldn’t match it.

- Nidhogg is such a fun fight because it’s still hard and I hate that I don’t get it in trial roulette more often. (Trial roulette is my favorite, actually. I love almost all trials - with the notable exception of the Chrysalis bc everyone runs around like chickens with their heads cut off on it and rages in chat, and with the possible exception of non-Final Steps of Faith.) Akh Morn is still a killer, I sometimes just want to watch bodies hit the floor, and Final Chorus is such a badass moment even as we’re all dodging for our puny lives. We’re fighting Bahamut’s brother. 

- Estinien takes advantage of Nidhogg’s temporary aether depletion to regain enough control over his body to try to kill himself before being used to wreak any more havoc. Estinien survived weeks, possibly months of possession via ancient angry dragon, and having two giant dragon eyeballs embedded in his body and feeding him enormous amounts of foreign aether. Estinien survived his body being aetherically remade into the shape of an enormous dragon and then into a giant dragon-man hybrid. Estinien survived the Warrior of Light. IMHO he doesn’t get enough credit for this. 

- do u ever wonder about Hraesvelgr and Estinien later meeting and Hraesvelgr identifying the spirit of his brother lingering within Estinien? Bc I think a lot of us have headcanon’d that Estinien is not as free of Nidhogg as one might think, what with his red fiery aura in SB and all. On the other hand… some of us further theorize that Estinien can’t be tempered now, so he could help us fight primals. It’d be awesome.