#RL: lore and theories

[callmegaith]

your real honest opinion on David's character. GO!

I feel like this implies I've been trolling everyone for the past 6 years about how much I love this silly lil guy. Is there supposed to be a /j at the end of that, anon??

Bestie I would not put this much effort into a troll ever 😭 like do you think I sat there and made a whole comic series for a funny little gag??

In case this is genuine tho:

LONG READ AHEAD

cuz of course. You give me the chance to talk about David and I'll TALK

My real honest opinion on David

Paradise

Silly funny fella. Goofy as hell. I think you can read David's attitude multiple different ways in Paradise. To some he comes off as just an asshole

To others he's just a kid being a kid

I personally read his character as somewhat sarcastic and spiteful towards Jakob. His smile? Sarcastic. His "it's been a while brother"? Sarcastic. "I hope I'm not the one who died tonight" while knowing full well it ain't him? Sarcastic.

I'll talk about this more later when I talk about Mr. Rabbit!David.

David has the characteristics of most youngest siblings; He's annoying, he's childish, maybe a little spoiled and needy for attention too.

Not to jump ahead in this analysis and all but in Birthday, the box he needs has text on it that reads "hungry ghost", "ghost who is unable to be reborn" or preta. They're often spirits of people who died full of greed and jealousy. In Japanese, a preta is also "a spoiled child" or "brat"

Based on that information I thought maybe David was jealous of Jakob cuz he wanted to be the golden boy, ya know?

Tldr;

Paradise!David is just a funny lil guy who most likely harbors negative feelings towards Jakob who overshadowed him despite not even being there.

Mr. Rabbit

Who David is now. An older more mature David. Something clicked in his brain and he realized 'okay actually we're all fucked. Peace out guys I'm looking out for myself.'

Brown Rabbit:

I feel like he represents the last bit of David's naivety, innocence, and child-like spirit. The white rabbit (David from the future) sees that rabbit get killed from the window. He can no longer deny what's happening. The child within him he used to retreat to when things got bad is dead. There's only the white rabbit now

I feel like that's also something represented in David's masks

The older he gets, the more devoid of joy he becomes

He becomes more and more aware of his situation.

As a child, you have the blessing of ignorance. That's why the world feels like a safer more colorful place to you until you grow up and you can no longer protected and shielded from the world.

To me, I think that's where David's trauma comes from. His ageing and how fast he's had to grow up and become a man, despite his attempts to remain a child.

In paradise, it's likely he was still pretty much "fingers in ears going LALALALALA" with his eyes closed tightly.

Brown rabbit is all that remained of his ignorance, and now it's gone, leaving behind only the White Rabbit. The David that knows and acknowledges the cruelty of his life. A ghost of his former self.

Speaking of:

White Rabbit

What are we but the products of our traumas and life experiences.

The white rabbit, David from the future, is on a journey to save his soul and be reborn. Obviously, the goal of all the corrupted souls. There is a soul we know succeeded in that and was, in fact, reborn. And that soul is Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was the collateral damage in a battle she had no hand in. She is probably the most innocent victim in all of this family feud going on, and I think because of that, Jakob allowed her to be reborn.

Something he did not allow David to do. I think it's safe to say Jakob and David do not like each other. Seems like David's plans clash with Jakob's and so he has to be taken out of the picture, and yet, David always seems like he has tricks up his sleeve.

Somehow, David is able to go back in time to save himself. What happens after that? We don't know yet

You could argue that he failed and died in the blue cube memory of Birthday. Or that he is simply still out there rn waiting for his story to be told. Both are true cuz that's the nature of Rusty Lake.

David seems to be on his own grand journey, stuck in his own Paradox, desperate to find a way to he reborn.

The thing that stands out of course is David's corrupted soul, or rather, the many different forms of it:

This is probably due to there being multiple different David(s) from the paradoxes he's lived through.

But what is the White Rabbit David if the brown rabbit is David's reborn Asura? Is the white rabbit not his Asura too?

Hard to say. We never seen a corrupted soul take form like David's white rabbit one before, and even more than that, one that retains autonomy. After all, David had enough control over himself to write and leave Dale a letter, meaning he is fully aware of what he is doing. Yet he is prone to violence the way regular corrupted souls are.

It's likely the white rabbit is an advanced form of a corrupted soul, probably the last stages before rebirth.

That or.... Well.... It's just a mask. After all, in Paradox, David spoke with a regular human voice over the phone, meaning he was not a corrupted soul.

In that case tho, if he was already reborn... Why did he say he needed to escape his current "hungry ghost" state?

Obviously Paradox is the most unreliable game narratively cuz you're just going through Dale's jumbled up memories. It's likely he's just recalling an actual conversation he had with David on the phone at the time (which still makes no sense cuz that would mean at the time David was still a human. Or it means he's recalling some conversation he had with David at some point in his life, not necessarily Birthday. OR... That's just a memory the machine is feeding him and it never really happened. Point is, paradox can't be used as a fact for anything)

Timeline is fuuuucked when it comes to David's story so uuuh

We don't know where he is now, what actually happened to him, or wtf is going on with him.

What we do take from his whoooole story tho:

Conclusion

(you did it, chat. You made it this far into my rambly post!!)

David is a really cool and very interesting character that might not appear to be so on the surface. You only really get how complex his character is when you think of everything that has happened in the games. He has a story that is either left for us to piece together or is still not yet fully explored.

To me, David is a character born of defiance and rebelliousness, as well as the need for survival and self-preservation. He is someone who has challenged his own fate, knowing damn well he's up against higher powers, but still taking the chance to save his soul. He is resilient, and stubborn, and just won't accept his fate and die. He has challenged his position in the food chain, a rabbit who is meant to be at the bottom, proving that he should not be underestimated. To me, that's worth loving and admiring. AND IM CHEERING HIM ON! GO DAVID! GO! IM SO PROUD OF YOU MY SON!!

And that's my real honest opinion on David

Thank you for reading.

[arkiwii]

Since you’re making your way through Lone Trail, do you have any thoughts about The Preserver, The Doctor, and their debate? I know some people were kinda disappointed with their inclusion over more RL.

i have. them thoughts

it was kinda hard to me to precisely understand what happened so I need to reread it all properly, it was like 5 am for me and my brain was so dead so I was pretty much experiencing the same breakdown the Doctor went through

people are disappointed about it, yea i know but i don't care!!! it's lore baby, and not like it didn't made sense. how it was related to Kristen and such was smooth and interesting. it wasn't rhine lab stuff but i really liked this part, it was seriously interesting and gave so much shape to the Doctor

anyway, if it's about making theories and such, uhhh. despite that i was able to call out endfield's setting being what's behind the door in the icefields, even tho i never cared or followed endfield, here i have smooth brain. i just enjoy the Doctor despite being literally us. they're an interesting character and they're so creature

[dulcebot]

hi, first of all i want to say how much i love your writing and hiraeth in general. i also want to start a blog but i'm reluctant because one : i suck at making graphics, i don't even know how picsart works and two; i have add, a form of adhd so i'm very scatterbrained and it's hard to organize my ideas. do you have some tips for me? also do you plan your lore and everything else in google docs or do you use something else? where do i start? thank you and keep shining bright 🪽

aaaaa hi friend, i really appreciate ur kind words and u know me... i love sharing tips!!!! but first of all i want to apologize for replying just now, i've just been really busy with real life and work :)

i know graphics are kinda a big deal and a good factor to uhhhh get attention but, in my opinion, as long as the writing hits, it will hit yknow? but if u think it's a necessity to have cute lil graphics in ur posts, i fear that the best thing u could do is to actually start playing around with an editing app :) personally i use photoshop for everything as that's the one program i've been using since forever (and i learned using it all by myself by clicking around and watching tutorials), but i've used apps such as gimp and photopea in the past and i've always found them easy to use :) even canvas could save ur day! and hell im sure picsart could help too if u just fool around until u get a feel of how it works!!!!!!

when it comes to organizing my ideas and the aes lore, yes, i use google docs. and i wouldn't be here without my silly little almost yours, hiraeth docs!!!!!! i have that page structured in various sections (such as: basics, pre-debut, the aengels of the season project, members, endorsements, era tidbits, theories (rl and lore wise), yada yada yada) and i think that the only reason i haven't lost my mind over the mess i have written in there (because i'm also a little scatterbrained) is because it's actually organized. u could dm me if u want to see how it is actually structured in case u need visuals

i usually just info dumped my ideas in said docs (obviously under the correct section) without trying to make it fancy or make it make sense, because i knew that i would eventually go back to it and try to structure it into it making sense. idk if this make sense but what i'm trying to say is "info dump then make it pretty later" because idk i usually got exhausted when i tried to make my lore ideas to make sense in one go lol

and i think that's all! if u ever have another question please let me know bc i really like to help but if this wasnt helpful at all im sorry friend........ i will link u to two other asks i've gotten about ~joining the community~ and ~lore tips~ in case u ever need them. hope to see u soon <3333333

[spooky-somewhere]

ok sorry for posting so much about this but i have two theories on why (in the lore) real life was so short. they're less like theories and more like... fanfiction. but just stick with me here ok

theory #1: the players are growing tired of the game. they're nauseous, they're tired, they need to get out. they don't want to play anymore, they want to be out of the death loop. so they agree to kill each other as fast as possible. they set a hard time limit: nine days and nights (three real life hours, about the length of most of the sessions), and then everyone will be dead. then, they can rest again. it's so short because they wanted it to be.

theory #2: the players didn't have enough time to rest. this is grounded a little more in martyn's description of the life series. basically, between games, the players are rebuilt and allowed to rest. the average real life (hah) time between a life series, excluding RL, is 185.25 days, most clocking in around 200 days, except the gap between 3L and LL which was 105 days. the time between SL and RL was 108 days. that's far below the average.

simply put, the players were not ready to enter into a new game; they're nauseous, off-balanced. their sizes are wrong, they're not themselves. they're trying to remember who they are, like ren and martyn in the cave repeating the characters from 3L. it was so short because the watchers realized they'd made a mistake, so they told grian to make sure this one ends quickly. and he does, becoming the leader of the red lives club after dying twice.

those are my two lore theories for why this one was so short. obviously i know that it's short because it's an april fools episode but i can make it have lore. no one can stop me. cleo is my most specialest guy and i need her to win forever and ever

[demonsfate]

To be that guy, Jun was never confirmed dead before Harada said otherwise, she always just missing with an RL reason to her absence being that she wasn't played all that much according to play data they had from Tekken 2's arcade machines, though that's clearly a questionable claim for Harada to make since they did consider for Tekken 3 at one point given there's left over data for her, including a VS screen image, so it's clear they weren't going to give a fuck about that at first.

Still, doesn't change how Heihachi coming back is just...sigh inducing at minimum for me, like what's the point of Reina part adopting his moveset if you're just going to bring the old fart back like this was Dragon Ball and "that attack wasn't enough to kill me, Kaka-erm, Kazuya."?

I'm p sure it was confirmed that Jun could be in TK3 but they decided against it later in development. (I have my own theories as to why that was) and like we all know now, never trust a word Harada said. And I don't think that is a true statement because we have Asuka since TK5, which was all the way back in 2004. And like... Asuka just plays like Jun so lmao.

Whilst Jun was never officially confirmed dead, but like... when you have a character repeating that she's dead (Jin) and no one, nor the lore, challenging that statement - then most fans will indeed take it as her being dead. Iirc, the first statement to officially state she was missing and not dead was in the Tekken 6 artbook, which was probs around 2009? So like... I'm just gonna say that's when they decided she wasn't dead for real.

We can't trust anything the devs say (Heihachi is dead except he's not. Or how they keep changing their statement on Jin being a villain lmao. First he was always planned to be a villain, then he was a character leaning toward the dark side, and now he was an "almost" villain in tek6 lmao) So I personally believe Jun was indeed meant to be dead. What happened in Tekken 4 was probs just Jin seeing her spirit / ghost (as that was something Jun could do, and was even had a similar experience where her father's ghost came to her to remind her who she was in TK2) and then it was around TK6's time when they started feeling they might use Jun again, and therefore, decided to "confirm" she isn't actually dead.

Not that I care because obvs I fuckin adore Jun and I am SO VERY HAPPY she's in the games again! But I'm just sayin', she's still another example of a character who was "dead" but not rly lol

Honestly, I don't even get the point of Reina anymore AT ALL. Like not just her adopting his moves, but also her even behaving like Heihachi a bit, having outros referencing him, and then her whole motivation of wanting to avenge her father. Like... what's the point of giving him a secret daughter that's just Mini Heihachi if... Heihachi is gonna return anyway? Unless it's so we can have a Kazuya & Jin vs Heihachi & Reina showdown, then... I dunno!

[thoermp]

QSMP is getting more timey-wimey:

While there is the time travel theory about the server since the beginning and some weird time stuff is definitely going on, the last streams first really etablished on QSMP that though they are lifestreams, they don't have to be set in the real time.

It started with the missing Cucurucho poster while purgatory, when he still streamed. Probably only going missing two streams after when the stream ended in a cliffhanger with the appearance of Oscurucho.

Later Tubbo held his funeral for Fred and claimed the same day, after restarting his stream that this funeral was a few days ago.

And now yesterdays stream with the whole spawn decoration.

That all doesn't really seem impactfull. It isn't hard to understand that it is like a flashback to a few days ago. The concept is far known from the viewers. But: the QMSP had always a bit of a meta persective. The official twitter accounts being canon, the ARG and especially the beginning when the streamers first started in their streaming rooms recreated in minecraft (ahh, hope I don't misremember that...). So that it's happening in real time was kinda always established. You can't just go back in forth in time in RL. It doesn't play with the same rules as movies or books or generall scripted stories. Hell, you can't even skip time. A month stays a month. So that this rule is being broken in the last streams is something new and completly different. Did the admins just give up on the meta perspective to favor the current way lore is heading? Are these the first indications that the Federation has somewhat control over time? has the Federation just bad internet and it takes a few days for the stream to even reach the audience?

[ofieugogyshz]

I'm so mad

I had a dream about some kinda-epic anime movie and I guess it had crossovers and groups with x color association (like how idols have x image color? but not specifically limited to only idol characters)

and in this movie, otoya was part of it, and, at the very end of it during a climatic battle scene, as part of the red color associated squad, Lance joined up too, and both of them got to meet

the image was so clear and colorful and bright in my mind and i could have sworn i'd see gif and image set posts on tumblr if i didnt realize it was fake upon waking up.

also the squealing/screaming in me could NOT be contained when they both interacted. i was squealing and kicking and trying to hide my face while also cheering. all of the feelings at once. like. they just had THE CUTEST SCENE TALKING TOGETHER AND WERE BOTH SO CUTE IN THEIR ANIMATIONS HHHHHH

there were also other characters that joined up in each color-associated, at least 5 diff color squads (note: they were not called that in the movie/dream, but idk what else to call it) and 5 "original" characters for the movie (ie not from other media like otoya and lance are) and at least 4-5 characters per squad during the final showdown. and during a scene when they'd show the ones who made up each squad in like one of those dynamic flash group poses, silver also got the tiniest of cameos, but that was also probably my brain/consciousness coming alert and injecting him at the association of "red" and "son" lol.

sincerely so sad and disappointed that it was not a real thing. do you know how badly i would love to spam this blog and main with images from that scene?

[chaosintheavenue]

Fallout Opinion Survey- Results!

Thank you so much to all those who took part! We had 421 usable responses in total :D

One quick note- the nature of the data this time around means that most of the auto-generated charts are usable as they are, which does mean this post will be very image-heavy. I’d be very appreciative if someone who knows how to write image descriptions for charts could add them on!

Without further ado, let’s get into the results...

The Basics:

Favourite DLC:

Dead Money- 115 (...nice) Old World Blues- 94 Far Harbor- 76 Lonesome Road- 53 Nuka World- 27 Point Lookout- 17 Honest Hearts- 11 The Pitt- 9 Mothership Zeta- 7 Automatron- 3 Operation Anchorage- 3 Broken Steel- 2 Vault-Tec Workshop- 1

Favourite faction:

Followers of the Apocalypse- 146 Railroad- 62 Minutemen- 45 NCR- 23 Kings- 22 Brotherhood of Steel (all chapters combined)- 20 Yes Man/Wildcard Courier- 18 Great Khans- 14 Enclave- 10 Caesar's Legion- 8 Raiders (76, Nuka World and general combined)- 8 Institute- 6 Chairmen- 5 Unity- 4 Atom Cats- 3 Mr House- 3 Boomers- 3 Freeside- 2 Responders- 2 Children of Atom- 2 Ghoul settlements in general- 2 Hubologists- 2 Tunnel Snakes- 2 And the list of those with one vote each: The Family, Think Tank, Reaver Movement, Ciphers, Broken Hills, Powder Gangers, Reilly's Rangers, Acadia, Goodneighbor, Underworld, White Glove Society, Omertas, Jacobstown, post-Legion Ulysses, Cult of the Mothman, 80s, and talking Deathclaws from Fallout 2

Favourite companion:

Arcade Gannon- 75 Nick Valentine- 53 Hancock- 39 Veronica- 38 Deacon- 30 ED-E- 26 Raul- 23 Boone- 22 MacCready- 13 Christine Royce- 12 Dogmeat (all)- 11 Fawkes- 10 Preston Garvey- 10 Charon- 9 Rex- 9 Butch Deloria- 8 Goris- 8 Cait- 7 Danse- 7 Piper- 7 Lily- 6 Marcus- 6 Rose of Sharon Cassidy- 6 Curie- 5 Porter Gage- 4 Dean Domino- 4 X6-88- 3 Strong- 3 Ulysses- 3 RL-3- 3 Ian- 2 Dog/God- 2 Codsworth- 2 Joshua Graham- 2 Old Longfellow- 2 Lenny- 2 Ada- 2 And the 'list of ones': Tycho, Katja, Follows-Chalk, Sydney

-

The Lore:

(other titles specifically mentioned in the final question: Metro and Doom)

Characters headcanoned as synths: The Sole Survivor (by far the most common theory), Sturges, Deacon, Preston Garvey, the Lone Wanderer in Broken Steel, James/Dad, Dogmeat, Three Dog, Parker Quinn, Charon, Courier Six, Tinker Tom, Zeke, Arthur Maxson, Father/older Shaun, Piper, Travis Miles, Mysterious Stranger, Caesar ('cause funny'), Joshua Graham, most Children of Atom, Desdemona, Myrna, Marcy Long, Mr Burke, Vault 76 Overseer, Trashcan Carla, Cricket, many BoS and Enclave members, Reaver Movement members, Redeye, Moira Brown, Dr Zimmer, Ranger Ghost, most birds, Arcade Gannon, Elijah, Lizzie Wyatt, Kellogg, Mama Murphy, Nat Wright, and Sierra Petrovita

(please note I'm not all that familiar with Fallout 4 lore, if any of the FO4 peeps here are canon synths then I didn't know about it lol)

Fan theories/headcanons from the final question that cropped up repeatedly (in approximate order of popularity):

Vault-Tec started the Great War

Alien involvement with the pre-war US government and/or the Great War

Horses are still around

Talking Deathclaws are still around

Occult/eldritch influence (e.g. the Dunwich building) is widespread

Charon is a survivor of Vault 92

Deacon is a founder of the Railroad and his 'real' backstory was another lie

Veronica and Christine reunite

Sarah Lyons is alive

Gen 3 synths and ghouls still need to eat, drink, sleep and so on

Ghouls only turn feral in specific circumstances (suggestions include prolonged isolation and relying too heavily on radiation instead of food as a source of energy) and it is not inevitable

International travel and immigration continues

Danse and Harkness were sent to the Capital Wasteland by the Railroad together

X person is actually multiple people- suggested for Deacon, Legate Lanius and Vulpes Inculta

The US is the either the only place that was nuked or the only place that hasn't rebuilt and recovered, and the rest of the world is just ignoring them and carrying on as normal

Cass is the Chosen One's daughter

Mama Murphy is the Chosen One

No-Bark Noonan is the Chosen One (lots of Chosen One theories popping up lol)

All subsequent Dogmeats in the series are named after the legend of the original Dogmeat

Father is not really Shaun

MacCready is lying about Duncan being ill (or one person even suggested Duncan existing)

Yes Man overthrows the Courier after being upgraded

The real Lone Wanderer died at the end of the vanilla game even if Broken Steel is installed, and the Broken Steel LW is a synth

Deacon once worked for the Institute

Deacon deliberately leads people to theorise that he is the Lone Wanderer to throw them off

Deacon is or was once a ghoul (also plenty of Deacon theories)

The Mysterious Stranger is a time traveller who protects the various PCs to maintain the timeline

Appalachia was turned into a barren wasteland by the nuclear trigger-happiness of the Vault 76 Dwellers (possibly interesting aside: my brother, who buys into this one, has gone as far as to theorise that the original Great War used very low-yield weapons and wasn't that severe on the environmental level (as far as literal nuclear war goes, that is), and it was the Vault 76ers nuking the hell out of Appalachia that triggered a continent-wide nuclear winter and sent the ecology of the wasteland into the state it's in in all subsequent games)

Glory is not a synth

The (in-game) reason for lore clashes and retcons is that the plot of each game is a retelling  of the story as it's passed around in the wasteland, so some details have been embellished or mixed up

I’ll be coming back to the theories from the final question at some point, but aside from that, that's a wrap! There isn't really much potential for me to play around with the data here like with the OC surveys, so this was more just me presenting the data as it came in without commentary. Still, I hope this is somehow interesting/insightful!

[keitheaverage]

Possible Theory/HC's relating to Vivinos' PBC series:

Minako is an unpopular g!rl who desperately wants to establish herself on the internet and become famous, but lacks the kind of "zing" that would draw any kind of lasting, positive attention to herself/her SNS accounts. Her "friends" are local bloggers who run subculture fashion accounts that she greatly admires (and envies bc of their massive follower counts).

While the others have these interesting aesthetics and even background lore for their respective online personas (not to mention lives outside of the internet, keeping them grounded to reality), Minako lacks any personal style or identity outside of wanting to be "internet famous;" but she does have drive, and she would do anything to reach the viral level of her friends. Anything.

(more below)

IDK if any of the other g!rls genuinely liked Minako at first or simply pity/tolerate her bc she's a fan who otherwise doesn't have much else going on in her life (I think they all warm up to her over time tho; VYT seems happy to include her while Gyaruko seems p down-to-earth and friendly despite her fame), but regardless they've all allowed her into their circle and they start hanging out regularly enough to form their "club." And they actually do have a lot of fun going out and doing stuff together!

Whenever the others take photos or make posts for their blogs, Minako is constantly goading them to include her and tag/mention her own SNS's. She starts buying and modelling clothing/makeup she's seen the others wear, sometimes she'll straight-up copy one of her friends' photos or looks. If they make a post abt a certain trend, she makes a v similar post the very next day. None of the styles/aesthetics her friends partake in really suit her, and she doesn't always look quite right wearing them; but if they worked for the others, it's gotta work for her too, right? But even her being associated with the other members of the PBC can't give Minako the online engagement explosion she's been waiting for.

(What comments Minako does receive aren't exactly positive. Less polite fans of Gyaruko, Charlotte, and VYT begin to heckle her for shoehorning herself where she doesn't belong. For being a fake. A poser. An obnoxious little copycat who needs to get her own life and stop piggybacking off of the others who actually know what they're doing.)

Things not going her way only serves to further fuel Minako's envy and contempt towards her clubmates. The others, meanwhile, continue to innovate and thrive, even being kind enough to offer Minako their help/advice on running her SNS's. It looks so easy for them (at least from Mina's POV); compared to her, they all seem to have a natural charm and creativity that keeps their audiences fixated.

She wants a piece of that pie so bad. She's been working so hard to get even a crumb of that clout while her friends feast on it right in front of her. It's too much. At this rate the only way Minako could ever hope to be as popular as her friends is if they all suddenly quit the internet or d!ed, leaving Minako w/ the mourning spoils of their fame and clout to flock to her instead...!

What to do, what to do...? 🔪💔💜🖤

[callmegaith]

From where did the information that David is 39 come from? And how does that make any sense?

Dev post

How it makes sense:

It doesn't. But I assume he's 39 in this life cycle, like when they die and they're reborn their age rests and this version of him has been alive for 39 years basically.

It's likely White Rabbit is a different age since he's a different version of David, most likely older, but since I can't confirm, I just keep him at 39 lol. (Fingers crossed for a fully grey haired David tho)

[lake-devotees-of-the-lore]

Greetings casual RL fans and theorists alike. Lake Devotees of the Lore here!

In the introductory post of ours we mentioned some RL related projects. Well, here comes the first one. Behold!

Grand Rusty Lake Analysis Mind Map

Link to a full map! →

Enjoy!

Here are some screenshots so you get the idea:

What is the map for?

This mind map was created for various goals:

- To help digesting the story of the series;

- To help representing different points of view on it (e.g. theories) with their pros, cons, points of disagreement and evolution in time;

- To help memorizing major and minor details and some trivia as well;

- And last but hopefully not least to be a framework for new theories.

What is a mind map in general?

It’s a scheme containing written thoughts and drawings that helps to understand connections between various things. We think it’s the best way to visualize and explain theories.

What is Miro?

Miro is a platform for different forms of corporate organizing and presentations. Mind map is one of these forms.

Do I need to sign up so I can use the map?

No, if you are just exploring while using a desktop version. However If you want to make or edit maps, you do.

For mobile devices a free app is required no matter what.

What games can I find on the mind map of yours?

Unfortunately, for now we’ve managed to map the original Samsara Room only which also isn’t technically canon. It took a long way before we understood how to organize this amount of information so for this experimental project we rather needed a truly experimental game.

However in the future we’d like to add all the Rusty Lake lore pieces including Paradox short movie, The White Door ARG and even official blog posts.

The map is way too confusing, how can I fix it?

First of all, you are highly recommended to read a short instruction on the main screen. It also suggests sections easy to start with.

It’s also good get familiar with the notation keys of the section you are going to explore.

The map is still confusing or inconvenient to use.

Then, please, let us know. A suggestion of how to fix it would also be appreciated.

What is the next game you are going to map?

It’s The Lake. For several reasons.

To set things up we’ve decided to map content in the release order which would help to better understand the historical background. And despite Rusty Lake wanting us to play The Lake after Seasons, it was accidentally released few days before.

Another thing is, we don’t really expect the analysis of the OG Samsara Room being much anticipated among the community so we’d better map the next part pretty quick and such short game as The Lake is ideal for that.

What about theories and content provided by the unmapped games?

For the historical background sake we originally planned to ignore everything we can’t see or know without playing the upcoming games. To pretend we don’t know anything until we rediscover it. It would certainly help us step aside from our current theories and recreate them as well as their alternatives from scratch.

However for those who're eager to immediately get all the answers (which seems a majority) this approach wouldn’t be so exciting to follow so we’re not sure yet.

Expect some compromise and definitely feel free to suggest your solution in the comments below!

How can I help with the project?

You can share your lore-related questions, theories, participate in their discussions, report bugs and broken links and also leave suggestions on how to improve the map and its experience.

Soon we’ll make a separate post where we’re hoping to gather as many questions related to The Lake as possible. Feel free to join us there.

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[undead-toon]

General Skullgirls setting headcanons Part 1?!

Hey, some of you know me as undead toon mun and I've been working a very.....very long list of general headcanons about the Skullgirls setting and headcaons for this blog in particular. For this one, this is one out of a unknown amount talking about personal hcs featuring the default setting of Skullgirls. Some of these do apply to my AU, but this is a kinda sorta a general headcanons kinda deal. So, readmore time.

About the ASG Labs:

Given what canon lore we know about the Labs, I personally muse that Avian was hired due to his surgical skills and possible studies in Parasites and their host, making him ideal to head Lab 08. He's arguably the world's expert on Parasites but he's not one to brag. Dude just wants to help people.

Going by hints in the mobile game, its very likely both Labs sometimes "scope" Hospitals or war victims for future experiments. In cases like Peacock and Big Band and most of Lab 08, the modifications are fully willing.

More so a Peacock headcanon for all Peacocks, including my AU, but I see Peacock as some form of Irish/Russian or their SG counterparts. Dad was Irish, hence the last name. But her Hometown was named Rommelgrad and the Grad suffix shows up in Eastern European countries. About the city of New Meridian:

The City of New Meridian is strongly implied to be of some form of Italian or its SG counterpart. Therefore, New Meridian celebrates holidays like Carnival (or Mardi Gras here in the states).

This is musing on canon bits on my end, but while its confirmed New Meridian used to be part of a "Meridian Empire", its also confirmed that during Franz's rule, he tried to outlaw "Meridian traditions" So its very likely New Meridian was taken by force. In addition, these Meridian traditions still crop up in New Meridian and nearby cities, both to spite Franz but in particular are encouraged by the Medici. Its strongly implied that the Medici's good reputation comes from some form of preserving these traditions, in a way, reflecting how rl Mafia's used bootlegging during Prohibition to gain a sense of "respectability" by providing booze in local society.

New Meridian is also basically a does NOT have a exact real life counterpart, but if I had to guess, its likely based off a mixture of Menton, France, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and San Francesco. Its canonly described with "NorCal meets Mediterranean weather" and comparing it to real life California cities is the closest estimate to inspiration given the dev team is located in Los Angles but it wouldn't surprise me if there's elements of nearby Pasadena too, especially for Maplecrest.

New Meridian is on the more "tolerant" end of things, being comparatively liberal in regards to treatment of Parasite hosts, ferals and other canonly discriminated groups. There's apparently no apparent segregation, for starters.

Related, New Meridian is one of the places where there are envoys to other countries located, not like New York city, due to its cultural significance. About the Medici:

Lorenzo Medici is old as fuck. Man's seen the fall of the Meridian empire and the rise of New Meridian. He probably had a feud with Franz's great great great great great great great great parents. This asshole is OLD.

However, because he's used the life gem to extend his life so much, that without it, he's not just having his age catch up to him. Dude's rotting to death and its freaking him out.

While this is absolutely not set in stone, it would not surprise me if Lorenzo seeking the Skullheart to find a means of making his "youth" permanent. Rotting to death is just making this desperation to not die even worse.

Yes, he's aware of the risks doing so.

Among the Medici's many, many crimes, the short list is: Murder, Mass Murder, human trafficking, drug smuggling, weapons smuggling, slavery, assassinations, assassination attempts, illegal gambling, fraud, fixing games, running scams, bribery, possibly defacing property.... just assume almost everything that's a crime.

The Medici Mafia, Lorenzo in particular, often share the title "local person ruins everything" with Eliza and Double in the scale of how much bad shit happens because of them. About the Trinity

While Venus and Aeon are predominately goddesses of space and time respectively, I do hc that they also are goddesses of lesser known domains. Venus' are Space, the body, Love, Lust, violence and matters of Health. Aeon's are Time, but also the mind, memories, joy and horror, obsessions and matters of one's mental state. This is part due to Double's influence in Trinitism but also a natural side effect of the absorption of other culture's gods roles and belief.

Trinitism, while taking cues from Real life Catholicism and Christianity, also has a lot of elements of traditional Egyptian mythology religious rites and the like. Its a religion with a strong emphasis on Order and personal piety.

This is a purely speculative on my end, but personally, one of my theories on why the Trinity is trying basically kill everyone is twofold: In ancient Egyptian belief, it was believed Pharaohs, which Venus and Aeon at least, technically count as, were expected to rule over a Necropolis, a city of the dead full of other dead subjects. However, the Abyss takes more cues from Greek afterlife or certain interpretations of Sheol, so Venus and Aeon have possibly convinced Mother to basically kill everyone to drag them to the Abyss to get their Necropolis. It also has the bonus of intentionally screwing over Eliza.

Despite Double knowing the true nature of the Abyss, she helped with the idea of Heaven and Hell, one to drum up wishes for the Skullheart, and two, guilt and desperation makes people more easy to manipulation.

[eightyonekilograms]

That MIDI thread feels like I am reading a Deep Lore slapfight bitchfest, and none of it makes any sense. Glad it translates to you.

This is deep lore, yeah. Rambling, including #cw sexual assault, to follow.

The most annoying thing about this is that I agree with, like, 90% of what LS is saying (and obnoxiously implying). I actually have a pretty low opinion of MIRI: I think their research agenda is mostly useless, that they have contributed basically nothing of substance to the field of AI in nearly 20 years of existence, and that if superintelligence risk turns out to be a real concern (which I do not grant, I think it is possible but far from certain), MIRI will have done very little to help mitigate that risk.

This isn’t even their fault, per se. In the past, I have compared MIRI’s efforts to like if Ada Lovelace realized that computer hackers would eventually be a problem, and spent the rest of her life trying to develop theory and praxis around computer security. It wouldn’t have worked. No matter how smart she was, she just wouldn’t have been able to contribute anything useful: the availably knowledge in her day was just too far behind; she could not possibly have known what actual, realized computing was going to look like. That’s not her fault or impugning her abilities, it’s just the gap between when she was around and when the technology was ready.

Similarly, while I think we will have “strong AI” eventually, right now we have no idea what the architecture of that is going to look like. I have a high degree of confidence that it won’t be neural networks, RL, or anything else that’s state-of-the-art in the industry right now, nor will it be the weird-ass quasi-GOFAI formalism that MIRI’s research tends to emphasize. In my estimation, if and when strong AI emerges, it will be as a result of a complete paradigm shift, and all the literature MIRI has produced on the subject will be totally irrelevant to it.

The unpleasant reality is that there may not be anything we can do at the moment to meaningfully reduce AI X-risk (although I have trollingly suggested that advocating for worldwide Communist revolution might help). People in the orbit of MIRI don’t consider this possibility nearly as often as they should, for reasons about identity and institutional blind spots-- IME, in the past a lot of LWers tied up too much of their identity in “being the only ones taking AI X-risk seriously”, forgetting pg’s “keep your identity small” advice. And what happened was exactly what pg warned about: people really resist the implication that a big part of their identity, and the thing they’ve been passionately working on, is a waste of time. But it is what it is.

So, point #1 I agree with l-s on: MIRI is kind of dumb.

Point #2 I agree with l-s on: Peter Thiel is a goddamn Saturday morning cartoon villain. No argument from me there.

But it doesn’t necessarily follow from that that he has sinister motivations for donating to MIRI. I mean, he has also donated to climate change organizations in the past. Couldn’t he just be genuinely concerned about AI X-risk? Plenty of people are, especially in the Valley. Even if you think Thiel’s motivations are purely selfish, billionaires probably have just as if not more interest in reducing X-risk as the result of us: you can’t enjoy your spoils of capitalism if the world has been destroyed.

Frankly, I can’t see what sort of sinister agenda you’d advance by giving money to friggin’ Eliezer Yudkowsky. At the end of the day, the rationalists are just not that important. It’s a small number of weirdos-- many whom infamously have giant executive dysfunction issues! If you want to manipulate the world by handing out money, anyone-- lobbyists, politicians, the media, universities, anyone other than the damn rationalists-- is going to give way better bang for your buck. And Thiel, scumbag though he is, is a shrewd investor; it’s safe to say he knows how to allocate his dollars. The MIRI donations really are about the X-risk.

And I suspect l-s knows this: my reading of that thread was that she kept on Darkly Hinting about Thiel’s true motivations for donating to MIRI, over and over, until argumate got fed up and just asked her to state plainly what she meant, at which point she hurriedly switched the conversation to Kathy Forth.

And yes, what happened with Kathy Forth was incredibly shitty, and I’m still angry about it to this day. That’s agreement with l-s #3. Not only because of what happened, but also how in the immediate aftermath, several trusted people quickly used their platforms to slander her as having always been a liar. That was fuuuuuucked up.

But everything else about what l-s said/implied about that was just wrong:

- That and the Brent Dill affair around the same time actually did cause a bunch of reforms. The “whisper networks” were replaced with more formal processes at REACH, the Alumni Committee at CFAR was dissolved after that godawful memo, and a whole bunch of missing stairs and several generally awful people were banned from events. 

- My reblog was admittedly angry and reflexive, but her reply to me was projecting so hard it could illuminate the far side of the moon. I’ve already said I don’t like MIRI nor what happened, but I’d bet good money she dismisses equally serious problems in her own camp all the time. And trying to handwave that away by saying “well my group is much bigger so you can’t take sexual assault problems as systematic, but for your group I can infer all your evil intentions from one incident” is both groundless and despicable.

- Tying it to Peter Thiel makes no damn sense. What would he possibly gain from such a thing? That is l-s trying to lump together all the things she dislikes into one Vast Conspiracy and harrumph away any objections by saying that anyone pointing out how and why it makes no sense must be In On It. That’s QAnon-tier crazy nonsense.

[briannaswriter]

I was told I should take the high road. I should just accept that Hillary refuses to speak with me again. I shouldn’t expect answers from someone who won’t give them - has never given them. At the same time, I don’t feel like I can genuinely let this go without talking about it in a format that isn’t DMs.

This is really long, sorry? But I wanted to get all of it out because I want to be free of it, I don’t want it to keep being an ache in my heart whenever I think about it. 

tl;dr at the end. Feel free to reply, idc, I’ll get back to it tomorrow.  

I met Hillary in a group called @/heroesrpg in about 2012. While I was there, I operated under two pseudonyms: Miranda/Isa and Bea. The why for that is a long story. I have nothing negative to say about Hillary here! She was a great friend who taught me a lot about writing and challenged me to become a better writer. I don’t think I would have gotten this far without writing with her. When I left heroes in about 2013, we didn’t keep in touch. I didn’t really stay in the RP world so I didn’t pay attention to it.

In 2014, I was invited to join Ashbourne at her behest. I don’t recall the specifics of how I found it, I think it was simply me reaching out to her again and finding out she was in a group which she invited me to join, too. I ended up playing a woman named Nadeya Khan who was in a ship with her that was later discarded. Later I picked up Shiloh Morgan, the best friend of her character, Adam, and later Mira Lowell, the elder sister of her character Meyer.

I won’t lie, these dynamics were a lot of fun and I enjoyed playing them.

I was upset that my ship with Nadeya and Adam was discarded (I have a distaste for Adam and the FC Ben/edict Cumberba/tch now, I’m petty, sue me), but I think it was more sucky when all threads with them trickled to a halt. To me, it felt like my character was no longer important because it wasn’t a ship, even if a friendship dynamic would have been just as interesting. I ignored this feeling.

I was sad to leave the group, but I was uncomfortable with an interaction from another player and feeling pushed aside in favor of other ships so I made the decision to leave.

I did keep in touch with Hillary, or I attempted to, but once we were no longer in a group together, we just sorta drifted. We didn’t talk for the longest time here and I forgot her url for a long time. Frankly, I’m not sure how I found it again!

We started interacting again in about September 2018 when I think I reached out to her. This eventually ended with the creation of @lethe-rpg where we could write about old time favorite characters - and we wrote so much in Lethe’s run. Everything from romances, to long-lost parent, to siblings, to best friends, to unrequited loves. We wrote nearly twenty characters each and over ten ships in the time Lethe ran from September/October 2018 to June 2020 when it closed. Or, I should say, we wrote all of these things in theory and a lot of it happened behind the scenes in DM’s between us. When we did write things, they would frequently reach only a reply or two before we had to move onto the next one because she didn’t want to finish the one before. I’ll fully admit that I found this frustrating after a while - but I found it difficult to say no to her about anything, or to speak out against her.

Not only was she my friend, but I very much looked up to her. I considered her a mentor as much as a friend, and her approval meant a lot to me. It meant agreeing with dynamics I didn’t enjoy

pushing for a ship between my character Wesley and ANY of hers. Even if it was already mentioned to her that I had an ongoing connection with another character. If I tried to make this dynamic a friendly connection instead, it was promptly dropped altogether.

trying to get a ship between Gemma and Nate when I mentioned point blank that I didn’t want a pre-planned romantic thing with him after his other one failed.

the fact that Gemma and Lily didn’t get like any interactions completed together until I relented a little on Gemma/Nate. Any mention of them was largely forgotten. Half the time, Lily was treated like a child who hadn’t experienced any pain. Not just from Gemma, but from Gabe and from Hillary herself, who seemed to think that my young FC meant nothing compared to the history I had written for this character. Lily in general was ignored until she brought Lachlan along and prodded him into a ship with Lily. Do you know how many starters I wrote on Lily that were ignored?

the fact that Pat/Kate were the oldest ship in the group but they had like one completed thread the entire time lol.

the fact that Odette/Kate were the oldest family dynamic in the group who had like three NOTES between them.

the fact that Odette/Orion became a ship later who were just... never written. I can be honest now, I found them boring and I’m wondering if she felt the same, or if the lack of writing made me dislike them. Either way, Orion became a drain on my Odette muse, just as the lack of Kate/Odette was.

most stuff with Odette makes me sad. I feel like I had really good connections for her that... didn’t work out, and maybe I took to long to address it.

Mira/Andreas is a dynamic I blame myself on. I did feel sorta like I wasn’t getting anything written with her old ship, and I think me and the mun were drained on it, so while Mira was on hiatus and the mun for her last ship, Clark, was debating letting him go/killing him off, I didn’t mind discussing a new ship. I wanted this ship to be a slow burn, I wanted proper closer on the last one because it was a good ship and the mun is a good friend. This was handled with so little tact on her part, we were instantly hitting ship dynamics from the beginning and I found it callous. I dragged out replies just to avoid it. A shame, because I loved the dynamic, but the way it was handled put a bad taste in my mouth

she wanted an August/Delilah ship? Which I didn’t really want, but she’s really good at convincing you bit by bit that it’s a great idea. When I finally jumped onto this ship and flung myself into it, we got like two notes into it and nothing. Are you seeing the theme yet?

I got nothing against Arthur/Cora because I loved writing them, the only thing I did dislike is how rushed they were and how little I got to explore some of the Riverborn aspects of Arthur’s story with Cora. Also a pregnancy happened hella fast.

But I did have something against the Meadowes dynamic altogether: we had so many pieces of it to use that were never written. I failed sometimes on my part, but a lot of it was Hillary getting easily distracted by something else. Cora/Faolan were rarely written beyond the first reply to a thread. Gabe/Faolan were often two notes in and done. Faolan/Alistair lasted a bit longer, I was impressed. Gemma/Lily was mentioned above, but I’ll also mention how often she tried to take pieces of Faolan’s history and twist it to be her character’s pain without any consideration to previously discussed lore or connections. It wasn’t even about a connection anymore - it was about making her character the focal point. Look at how the Daniel Bisset, Aurelie, and Gabe things turned out: half of the plots were twisted to benefit Gabe’s momentum in the story, and the pieces of angst that should rightly lingered on Aurelie were shifted to the side. I didn’t even write that ship, and sometimes looking at them made me feel like a discarded sweater, but they were cute. Anyhow, this is long, moving on.

Faolan/Saby. I literally almost forgot about them, but like... Legit, I’m glad this ship ended because Saby was wholly too dependent on Faolan’s feelings for her, which he couldn’t even acknowledge because he was still in love with his two centuries deceased wife. Was this handled gracefully, did we get to slow-burn some of their stuff in writing? Sometimes. But again, they weren’t really written, and the ship was pushed and pushed, even when I wasn’t really interested in writing it because I didn’t want a ship for him yet.

Aliza/Tien was twisted out of me piece by piece, prodding at the parts of the Aliza/James connection I found uncomfortable (like the murder, like how difficult it was to plot after a point) until Tien seemed like the best answer. This was late enough into Lethe that I woke up enough to cut the ship off and drop the dynamic. In hindsight, I regret letting this even get so far.

Jonas. Just... most of the things written with him lol because he was constantly pushed onto my characters and others. Jo was hinted as a thing, Wesley was hinted as a thing, I think Nate was at one time. It definitely opened my eyes to the fact that she wanted a ship and that dynamics outside of that were largely ignored.

Do you know what it was like to put your heart into a character / story that was ignored ENTIRELY because she didn’t ship with them? Do you know what its like to be excited about a friendship or sibling or parental dynamic that... stopped getting written because your friend only wrote the character for a ship and the next shiny thing attracted her attention and instead of letting the character go, she made you think the next reply was right around the corner? Do you know how many threads we wrote that didn’t go anywhere, and how thrilled I was to write them still because I thought each time it would be different?

TL;DR: if it wasn’t a ship dynamic, it wasn’t written. If it was a ship dynamic, it was sometimes written. If you weren’t doing any of those things, you were ignored.

TL;DR 2: Do not misread this, please. I understand that RL comes first, I understand that dynamics change, that you’re allowed to change your mind. But do you realize how often I was strung along, or how often I was shoved aside? How hard it was to keep a character going sometimes because their big connection was only important for about a week?

and biting my tongue when my own feelings were callously ignored

when we wrote a ship between Selene/Gabe which was later discarded for a ship with Aurelie which had a much better chemistry, but was handled with little tact for my own feelings as I received constant updates on how their ship progressed, and also how the friendship we developed between Selene and Gabe was just dropped altogether - as it was with Adam/Nadeya so many years ago - instead of revamped to fit a changed dynamic as we discussed ooc.

when I would message her and be ignored unless it was about one of our ships

like the fact that I became an admin in Lethe to help her out and eventually the burdens of handling it were on my shoulders. I don’t mind this, but when it came to asking her for help on simple matters (sending me the psd for banners when I switched computers and no longer had it, posting a bio, skimming a post so I could verify it was okay to post, plotting out future events, posting unfollows/follows for people) or asking if she could write something from an admin post, getting a “sure! I’ll do that later!” and then finding out it wasn’t done for a week until I sucked it up and did it myself. We addressed this eventually, but Lethe ended shortly afterwards. 

So. That’s how the last two years have gone, and lord knows how much I’ve forgotten. Hillary and I wrote so much over the last two years, and we definitely grew close. I thought we were beyond just writing friends, that we might have been real friends (after all, we sent christmas/birthday gifts to each other. Hell, I still use the mouse pad she gave me).

I ignored the way she ignored me if we weren’t writing something interesting. I ignored the way she didn’t care about my characters even passively until I shipped with her in some form. I ignored how it felt when entire sections of a back and forth DM was ignored if she didn’t care about the character. I ignored how she refused to write with other people because she disliked their FC, or she didn’t want to write with the mun, or she found the character boring. Half the time, she found a character boring because she didn’t bother learning about them, and the moment she did read about them, they were intriguing. I ignored how she belittled my other ships with other players because “oh I don’t think they click” or “imo that one is boring” or tried to poach those characters to one of her ships. I ignored how she made me feel like a part-time friend sometimes and her best friend other times. 

I ignored the way she didn’t help with admin problems even when she knew admin duties were taking a toll on me as people demanded more and more from me. Not even when we discussed ways to handle things on both our parts to make it easier and promptly ignored them the first chance she got.

She made me feel so important when we would headcanon things. It felt like my characters were important, and that I was a good writer with clever ideas and intriguing characters, and that writing her was reaching a pinnacle that others couldn’t reach. She never said this, I’ll give her credit for that, but I have to admit, I felt like my characters didn’t work out unless I had a connection with her.

The last few months were eye opening. I had already spent the last year frustrating from her lack of leadership as an admin, and anger for the way she ignored people’s feelings even when it was pointed out and gave the bare minimum when interacting with other people, and sadness for the fun dynamics we had discussed but never wrote beyond the posted biography. When Lethe ended, I was ready to let it go and move on, I said my peace about my admin things and letting the characters go meant a fresh start. To me, we were friends REGARDLESS OF BEING IN A GROUP TOGETHER OR WRITING TOGETHER. You don’t talk about ooc things and ic things as much as we did only to stop talking the instant you’re done writing together, right?

Wrong. She didn’t even help us close the group that she created, or helped us discuss things with members who weren’t sure what was happening. I gave her time, just short messages about random things because I wanted her to know that I didn’t hold Lethe’s end against her, that we were friends anyway. Those messages were ignored. I gave her more time and then after nearly a month or maybe two, I finally messaged her on tumblr with a brief snippet on how thankful I was to know her because she helped me as a writer, and apologized if I implied Lethe ending was her fault (which I still agree that it wasn’t entirely, it was a situation handled callously and frankly I still think people should have considered that Hillary was barely 3% of the admin team at the time since Ally and I were shouldering the burdens of everything else). I mentioned how I felt like our friendship was being ignored because we weren’t writing together, and how I had thought after nearly two years of talking that we were friends enough to chat once in a while at least, but if we are only RP friends, let me know so at least I don’t have to fucking think about it.

Do you think that got a response?

It didn’t. She didn’t log into discord to chat about it or something else, she didn’t respond to the message, nothing. She quietly unfollowed me and then blocked me. She unfriended me on facebook, I feel like that’s answer enough.

I’ve known her at least eight years and while some of those times were brief, the last two years were most certainly not. And not only does it make me angry that I’ll never know whether she just dislikes me, or whether I made her uncomfortable, or what, I’m also just... really upset that I lost an eight year friendship. There’s only one person I know longer than her and I had hoped that, if not real friends, then we would still be able to meet up in another group together someday. Now it’ll never happen again, and it devastates me. I can count my friends on one hand and I thought, you know, that she was one of them. It feels like a physical blow whenever something comes up on the dash that involves her. I feel so stupid for thinking we were friends when she showed me her priorities in Ashbourne, when she showed me in little pieces here and there throughout Lethe. I feel stupid for writing this entire thing and crying about it. I feel stupid for assuming.

And I don’t know how to talk about this in a way that’ll let me say goodbye to it because I do need to let it go, but I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll lose my ability to write because she’s been such a big part of the writing journey for me.

So here it is. Eight years of friendship summed up in however long this is and here I am, trying to let go - and still a little part of me hopes she’ll see it and reach out about something, anything. And a bigger part that’s angry and doesn’t want to talk to her ever again because I don’t want to do this another time.

tl;dr:

I miss my friend Hillary, but also she’s kind of a shitty friend who only seems to care about people when they are writing with her and I’m an idiot for thinking anything else when I’ve had eight years to learn it. Likely if she did find this post, it’ll be misinterpreted in every way until I’m not only an idiot, but also I’m a bully who didn’t give her time and space, who pushed things on her she didn’t want, who she pitied. Because it just occurred to me now how easily she can warp the truth, how she can prod things bit by bit, until it fits just how she wants things to look that’ll benefit her the most. I love my friend, but I’m done. No matter how much I miss her, I deserve more than to be the butt of whatever joke she wants to say to make this sound cool.

[rousedwhisperingdawn]

Player motivations

TL;DR If you want to talk about what sort of content a developer should focus on in a MMO, go read this first.

One of the perennial flashpoints I see in discussions of player types in FFXIV, and indeed MMO players in general, is the division between "casual" and "hardcore", and acting as though this is the only categorization that matters. This is so prevalent, and yet still so wrong that I cannot understand why it has spread so much.

It would be much more helpful if everyone involved knew about the other models for player motivations and behaviour, because at least then we could have some variety in our discussions, rather than simply a dichotomy between "cares a lot about mechanical achievements" and "doesn't care at all about mechanical achievements".

As usual, the standard warnings apply: the map is not the territory (ie don't assume that the theory describes the truth in all its details), and use the right tool for the job (ie don't force everything into the pre-conceived notions of how Things Should Be, no matter how ill-fitting or irrelevant).

Chances are you've heard about Richard Bartle's Taxonomy Of Player Types. It's the well-known four categories of players in MUDs, also applicable to MMOs. Bartle has proposed a slightly expanded eight categories, basically further dividing each of the original four categories into "explicit" and "implicit", but I don't think it's as well-known, because it didn't get turned into a popular online questionnaire. (I'm not going to go into the expanded categories because I'm not as familiar with them.)

Personally, I don't agree with some of Bartle's conclusions, but for a very basic starting point into what I'm trying to say in this post, it works out, and is certainly simpler than Nick Yee's theories, which I agree far more with. It's certainly more nuanced than "casuals vs hardcore".

The four categories are:

Achievers: Likes to obtain "points" or "levels" or some such concrete measurement of "success" in a game. This is probably what most people mean when they talk about the "hardcore" side. Raiders who raid for the sense of accomplishment, or to get the gear, or for the prestige of having cleared the raid, or any combination of the above: a UCoB or UwU raider who just wants the titles and weapon glamours is firmly in this category.

Explorers: Wants to learn all there is to learn about a game, be it mechanics or lore. The theorycrafters who do so for the sake of doing so, rather than because they want to get an advantage out of it fall into this category, as do the loremasters.

Socializers: Plays multiplayer games for the other people. These include roleplayers and "social" FCs and linkshells. Also tends to get attached to NPCs who they like, and often gather like-minded people to discuss them and the game. Generally the meat of the "community", and certainly the ones who seek out and make said communities in social networks. This is usually what people mean when they say "casual".

Killers: Probably better named "competitors". Which is a more descriptive term, since they like competition with other players, both friendly and otherwise. PvP is the obvious one, but marketboard control is another common activity. They're not content to just be the top, they want to be better than you (speaking of a general "you").

Readers who are paying attention might have noticed a drawback to these categorizations: they're categories, which means that under this model, a player is a Socializer or an Achiever or whatnot, and they are defined as being a Socializer or Achiever. Bartle claimed that a player is generally only one primary category, and all other motivations are secondary. Most online tests at least allow for the possibility of, say, 70% Achiever and 30% Socializer, but it's still awkward trying to fit multiple motivations into this model, especially since they allocate a fixed number of maximum "points" or "percentages" to be spread over all the categories. A pie chart, rather than a bar graph. I suspect this is because MMORPG playstyles are different enough from MUD playstyles for this to be an issue.

Hence, I'm far more inclined to Nick Yee's paper on Motivations Of Play In MMORPGs, where he suggests a component model rather than a category model. In other words, you can have multiple different motivations in playing the game, and a given player can have any and all combinations of components.

There are ten components, which may seem like a lot, but I find it useful to divide them (as Yee does) into three main components and ten subcomponents: Achievement (three subcomponents), Social (three subcomponents), and Immersion (four subcomponents). While I'll be summarizing the components here, it's probably much easier and simpler to go read Yee's paper, since he describes it well enough.

Achievement

Advancement: The "Bartle Achiever" type. Wants to accumulate points and power and prestige, whether explicit in terms of gear or gil, or implicit in the social acknowledgement from having a rare glamour. Yee mentions that this can come from both the Skinner Box micro-rewards of the grind, or the desire to reach an "end goal".

Mechanics: Half of the "Bartle Explorer" type, this time focusing on the mechanics part of it; Yee mentions that he couldn't find a "pure Explorer" in his research, but when he split it into two, suddenly they're everywhere. People who calculate Best In Slot and materia melds and the exact thresholds for stats.

Competition: As mentioned, competing with other players, either in fair and sanctioned matches, or unprovoked and impromptu attacks. Again, the primary idea is to "beat" and "defeat" another player.

Social

Socializing: More specific than the "Bartle Socializer" type, these players like to meet and chat with other players, usually in large and varied communities. "Social FC" and "casual friendly linkshell" advertisements are usually aimed at these players. In more pronounced cases, the MMO is a fancy chatroom with a game attached to it.

Relationship: More in-depth than the Socializing component, as players looking for Relationships are, well, looking for relationships, long-term and sustained and meaningful. Friends who act as a static duo or trio or light party, for example. Sometimes these are people whose relationships with their friends are carried over from other games and communities, eg RL friends or partnered streamers.

Teamwork: They just want to play together in group content. Players who like Teamwork want to do content in a party, be it a static or a PUG. Probably easier to illustrate with the opposite, ie low Teamwork component, who are the much-discussed soloers in MMOs.

Immersion

Discovery: The lore half of the "Bartle Explorer". Loremasters, map explorers, those interested in the setting and story and the world as a world, rather than simply as a game server with enemies to hit.

Roleplaying: Wanting to have their character be a character in the world, rather than merely a user avatar. They want to have their characters fit into the world setting, and create a backstory and story for their characters. The actual act of roleplaying in-game might not even be that prominent, since the Roleplaying component can manifest in fanfics of their character on other sites.

Customization: Glamour is the true endgame. Which I think sums up this component neatly.

Escapism: RL is stressful and annoying, and so they play the game to relax and forget about their worries for a while.

As can be seen, it's much easier to combine different components in any amount, rather than simply "you must be focused on Achievement or Social, but not both". There are probably much more refined and in-depth studies out there that fit the current state of MMO players more, but I haven't learned of any yet.

So what does this all mean? I am posting this because I want players to stop dividing activities and interests into "casual vs hardcore". A player can be interested in both "casual" activities like roleplaying, and "hardcore" activities like trying to maximize DPS uptime as a Healer or Tank. It's possible to be a player who likes chatting about the game to friends and acquaintances, and also knows the best way to optimize rotations.

However, the fact that any combination of components is possible means, tautologically, that any combination of components is possible. And so trying to force a playstyle into another will just appeal to people who have that specific combination and levels of those components, while alienating people who don't have them.

The usual example is in suggesting story content be put into Savage raids. The reasoning often given is from the viewpoint of the Achievement main component, in that they are trying to "convince" "casual" (ie Immersion component) players to "get good" enough to clear Savage, just so they can see the story, and in the meantime provide a larger pool to draw Savage raiders from. This will piss off players who have little interest in the Achievement component, while not actually doing much for the players who have little interest in the Immersion component. The equivalent would be to force players to be in a FC of a certain size (Social component) before they can even enter Savage raids (Achievement component). Players can meet the requirements, but they're not going to be happy about it, and most will try to find a way to circumvent the spirit of the rules.

These classifications are all descriptive, not prescriptive, as both Bartle and Yee (and others) warn many times in their presentations. If you create content that is aimed at players who score high in both Achievement and Immersion, and then the content is played by players who score high in both Achievement and Immersion, this doesn't mean your playerbase is entirely Achievement and Immersion; it just means you self-selected for those traits, and everyone else who isn't interested have gone away.

I want players to understand that there are many different motivations of play, and not just assume that what they are playing for is what everyone plays for, or should be playing for. I want players to understand that this is not a "them vs us" debate, where players must be one or the other. I want players to understand that just because someone scores high in a given subcomponent, this does not mean they will score high in every other subcomponent, or that they will inherently score low in an "opposing" component.

This is a hope that everyone will have some insight into why another player may not like all the same things they do, and yet still share some of the same interests.

[darkzorua100]

Is there a 7th Ignis?

So I’ve had this theory for a while now but have only talked about it in bits and pieces up to this point regarding the Six Lost Children side of things. When it comes to Yu-Gi-Oh, they always love to throw in some big plot twist when it comes to the whole final and main villain of the over all series or just something in general with the main characters and that’s what I want to discuss today and if Dr. Kogami might have been onto something about the whole “Ignis taking over humanity” conspiracy of his.

So during Playmaker and Revolver’s final duel of season 1, Ai talked about wanting to return to his friends, the fellow Ignis, in the Cyberse World. We get some flashbacks to the Cyberse World and find out the Ignises are based around the Six Attributes of Yu-Gi-Oh.

Ai (Purple) = Dark

Yellow = Light

Orange = Earth

Green = Wind

Flame (Red) = Fire

Blue = Water

In the Cyberse World, each of the Ignises have their own lands to rule, home to the Cyberse monsters of the respective attribute I’m guessing. Now here’s the thing I’ve never understood. That tower in the middle. What is it supposed to be?

When the Cyberse World was first created, it was the only thing that was there. None of the other sectors were made yet. It was also the only thing left standing, surrounded by lava, when Revolver first attacked the Cyberse World five years before the start of the main series but now even it was destroyed when Ai returned to the Cyberse World. And I think that was the final straw for whoever was living in said tower.

Like I said, the Ignises are based around the Six Attributes but technically, that isn’t all of them. Even though it is small, with only have six actual cards being printed of it in the RL card game (with more being counted as this attribute in the anime, such as the Sacred Beast and the Nordic Gods for example), I’m talking about the attribute that is associated with the Egyptian Gods.

Divine.

The original Ignis. The God of the Ignises. The Golden Ignis.

But how can that be? There are only six kid after all. Am I saying there is a 7th one we don’t know about?

No, I honestly don’t think there is. I also don’t think the other Ignises are even aware there even is another one of them and that’s where the plot twist is going to come in later down the line.

I’ve talked about it many times before about the Lost Children and how I think there is more to them then meets the eye. Again, I just find it strange that, from what we know at the moment at the time of writing this, Kogami just randomly chose these kids. We don’t know how they were kidnapped, if they were just convenient, like Spectre was since we know he was an orphan, but I find it strange on why he kidnapped Jin when we know that he has family who would have been looking for him during those six months. It would have made more sense to just kidnap six orphans all together instead of running the risk of an Amber Alert trying to find Jin. We don’t know about Takeru and his whole backstory to this incident yet, before and/or after it happened, same with Yusaku as well since we haven’t seen what he was like before this incident but from what Spectre said during their duel, he must have had a pretty good life before any of this happened to him to make him have such PTSD and a desire for revenge against the people who “stole his life away from him”. 

This is why I keep saying that these kids had to have been chosen before any of this happened and why I don’t think they are fully human. Yusaku has his Link Sense, allowing him to sense things and Cyberse monster in the network without even being logged into Link Vrains, and Spectre has his whole tree thing that he states protected him and raised him since he was a baby. How a baby was able to know that brings me to my point. While we don’t know what Jin and Takeru’s gifts are, if they have any to begin with, again speculation on their part and for the other two Lost Children we don’t know about at the moment, I think this is what ended up happening.

They are either not humans (somehow having ended up on Earth) and were born with these powers or something happened during when they were infants and caused them to have these powers (I think it might have had something to do with the stars since Bowman and Haru’s group has this giant star theme going on (if anyone has seen the anime, Charlotte, I’m thinking of something along those lines). Before the Hanoi Project happened, Dr. Kogami, as we know, feared that humanity was ceasing to exist and was trying to find a way for humanity to evolve so it would continue to survive. That’s how I think he ended meeting the Golden Ignis, who I guess you can say was the original prototype for the Ignises we know today. I call it an Ignis but I don’t think it started out that way. I think it was a super advanced A.I program that SOL Technology had which helped Kogami create the Ignis, allowing them to gain a free will through this program, literally being their god that created them. It was the one to suggest to use these six kids as the models for the Ignises to be based around, knowing about their powers, so Kogami decided to use them for the Hanoi Project.

You guys remember this eye that was watching Yusaku during his duels? The one that was taking in the data? I think this was the original Ignis. It was taking a piece of their powers, a piece of their free will, in order to form their corresponding Ignis. I also think this in turn caused their powers to go dormant until they are reunited with said Ignis. Yusaku looked pretty surprised during episode 1 when his Link Sense was triggering when Ai was getting closer and closer to being trapped in his duel disk. Whatever Takeru’s power is, it might start to trigger again since he has Flame, a piece of his soul, back with him.

When the Ignises were set free to create the Cyberse World, the Divine Ignis went with them to supervise from its tower. As the Ignises evolved, so did it, maybe taking a form of a Ignis as well or staying as it was. But like I said, it was simply a prototype and didn’t have free will like the other Ignises did so it still reported to Kogami about how everything was going as it was programmed to do. That’s when Kogami started to get paranoid about how the Ignises were going to end up destroying humanity. 

At this point, I believe Ai when he says that the Ignises don’t want anything to do with humans and just want to live in peace. I think the original Ignis might have felt the same, maybe even wanting to help the humans because of its programming, but that started to change when Revolver launched his attack.

I think that was the turning point for the Divine Ignis. That’s when it started to grow its own free will. Kogami did say that humans were the ones that were first going to attack the Ignises, not the other way around. When the second attack came in the form of the Star Group (what I’m calling Haru and Bowman’s group until we get a name for them), that’s when the Divine Ignis had enough.

If the Ignises do end up being our final villain group at the end of this series, just like Kogami and Ryoken said they would be, I don’t think it will be because of their own free will. Instead, I think it will come in the form of the Golden Ignis taking control of said free will.

Regardless of their free wills, the Ignises are still programs and any program can be tempered with, especially by the one that created them. Since they won’t willing attack the humans for everything they have done to them, I think the Golden Ignis will do something to their programs, taking away their free wills, and force them to join its side and destroy the humans.

That’s where I think the whole “Brainwashing the Six Kids” theory comes into play. Again, they are programs and at the moment, they can’t leave the network. They have to be connected to a source to be in the RL, such as Yusaku and Takeru’s duel disks for Ai and Flame. As seen with the Tower of Hanoi, if the network is gone, so are the Ignises and I think the Divine Ignis knows this. That’s why I think it is going to have the Ignis take control of their respective kids bodies, first through Link Vrains with their avatars, and then leaving their consciousnesses trapped in the network and taking control of their RL bodies, so even if Revolver were to nuke the world wide web, they would still be living on. I think this is going to be something similar to when the Bracelet Girls were brainwashed, with the Ignises being sleeper agents. This program to take control of them might already be in their coding so when the time is right, the Golden Ignis can just flip the switch, the Ignis will no longer have free will, and will in turn, take control of their kid’s avatars.

But here’s the wild card for this whole thing: Ai. His program was severely damaged by Revolver's Cracking Dragon, leaving him only as an eye for the next five years. I don’t know much in terms of the actual comics and lore behind this character, all of this coming from what I remember of Young Justice, but I’m thinking of something similar to the Blue Beetle and his Scarab that gave him his powers. It was supposed to take control of his mind and body as a sleeper agent but it didn’t because it was damaged when it arrived on Earth and only did so when it got “fixed”. Since Ai was so badly damaged, in a similar matter, I think the data to control him was removed in the process. So when all the other Ignises switches are flipped and start to take control of their kids, Ai might not do the same to Playmaker because the Golden Ignis doesn’t have control over his program anymore and might have the other Ignises and their “hosts” capture Ai and Playmaker to “reprogram” him. However, the Divine Ignis might have some control over Ai but maybe not to the extreme it will have over the other Ignises. During episode 28, Ai was acting fishy when it came to the Playmaker vs Faust duel and the whole situation between Naoki and how he actually did get his hands on Cyberse Wizard. I think that was the Divine Ignis testing to see if it did still have some control over Ai after everything that happened but after that episode, Ai returned to being normal. If it does have control over Ai, it might just be for a short amount of time until they either try and fix him or just discard him for being to damaged. Either way, if this theory is true, we were right all along about Takeru/Soulburner turning evil, maybe not in the Vector 2.0 sense, but in the terms of the Bracelet Girls getting sleeper by his own pal not being in control of himself any longer.

There was more I wanted to add to this theory involving the Star Group and SOL Tech being involved in the Golden Ignis’s master plan but that really is just speculation without poof until we get more about those two groups and what their motives are. I was thinking the leader of Bowman and Haru’s group could be the Golden Ignis, since why would they steal Jin’s consciousness unless it was trying to get Jin’s Ignis to try and take control of his body, but it wouldn’t make sense on why it wanted its own group attacking the Cyberse World. There was the theory of the King chess piece of SOL actually being the Golden Ignis as well and that’s why it is so obsessed with getting its hands on its fellow Ignis, and why SOL tech killed Kogami under the orders of the Divine Ignis, but I think that is also a long shot in the dark at the moment with how actually little we know about this company. I’m trying to make pieces fit into this giant puzzle at the moment with some of them actually fitting when you really think about it.

So there’s my crazy conspiracy theory for Vrains at only 49 episodes in. Again, this theory has been in my head for a while now, only now have I’ve really taken the time to sit down and try and convey my thoughts into making actual sense instead of me just rambling on making no sense (well I at least hoped this made some sense to you all). What do you guys think about this theory? Like always, do you guys think I am onto something or am I just off my rocker (you know, more then usual) with this? If you have anything else to add to this theory, please do so! I’m just one person, trying their best to figure out the plot behind a children’s card game anime, so I can’t possibly think of everything.

Yusaku is me right now after writing this whole thing for a few hours.