#Seelie posting

[layla-official]

☆ @candace-official where'd you get those eyes? Need the same for... reasons. ( ◕3◕)

[ludinusdaleth]

Zerxus's Tale in The Legend of Vox Machina Season 3, Episode 4, "Hell To Pay"

[omnibread1]

zhongli and a lil companion

[bananasofthorns]

reminder: vote for the character who is the most girlboss, not who your favorite is (unless they are one in the same)

[rowanyx]

There is something so deep about Laerryn's choice in the finale, and Brennan's phrasing of the decision to be made.

To clarify, this scene (copied and pasted from the CR wiki transcripts):

BRENNAN: On a 16, you must make a tough decision. Do you want to further limit the release of energy and make the release of energy safer for the physical environs of Avalir and Cathmoíra, or do you want to ensure that Rau'shan and Ka'Mort will be permanently banished from Exandria?

TRAVIS: Impossible.

AABRIA: Laerryn's little joke to herself was always that the Heart of Avalir was the thing she inherited, but it was too small. She made it bigger, she improved it. She improved the Etheric Net and built this and that she was the Heart of Avalir, and she gave everything to this city. But I know what people are fighting to protect and I remember what Quay said about going down with the ship. So we will ensure it. This will work. Avalir be damned.

or this timestamp of the episode (in case the link doesn't work for the timestamp, the first comment's list has it labelled Laerryn's Tough Decision):

As we were first introduced to her, Laerryn Coramar-Seelie is the Architect Arcane. As Aabria herself even put, her whole life, all her work, is about taking the city and making it better. Building more. Expansion is the name of the game. So when Brennan specifies that the limiting of energy output will save the physical environs rather than the people, that holds weight.

Just, in a mechanics aspect, there is the fact she is an Abjurer. The whole point of her magic is exactly this choice. To stop things from being destroyed. Her wards that take the damage so that she or others will not. She is not built to bring destruction, leave the fight to others. She will be there to soften the blows that come her allies' ways. She is the one one deciding this, and it feels right, because she's spent her studies dedicated to figuring out how she will prevent the destruction that comes her way.

But that isn't all.

Because any other hero, any other party member, every other soul faced with this question could so easily think that it is a useless decision. A city can be rebuilt, but only if the Betrayer Gods are stopped before they kill all the people that can do so.

But Laerryn, who has dedicated her years to this, the position of Architect Arcane, knows this city and her structures far more intimately. She has been there, step by step, as she forged them. Designed them. Watched over their construction. It is by her hand it was built.

Asking her, specifically, is asking her to choose between everything she's done, or let it all burn. Asking her to make this decision is asking her to decide her legacy. Will she live on as the maker of the land that survived such devastation, but not the people, or will she go down as the one who helped stop the Calamity?

Her choice boiled down to this: Limiting the energy, their work, the libraries and churches, the colleges, grand towers and hallowed halls, stone and mortar, it all can go on unshattered. Or, stopping the Betrayers, the people may continue on.

Was her work more important than the lives she was surrounded by?

Aabria mentions Laerryn was given the Heart of Avalir, jokes how she improved it. But the Heart of Avalir, while magical, is only an engine. It was made, and can be again. So in this moment, I think Laerryn maybe realizes that the true heart of a city comes from the people. Always thinking, thoughts speed by her, whether or not she ever had time to really process the revelations before her demise.

Evandrin is already gone due her hubris. Who else would she lose? Would it have felt like home, without Loqautious there by her side? Would it truly feel like her city, without Patia keeping up with her? What would she cause, without Nydas to hold her back? What is Avalir, without her Brass Ring?

Her assistant, probably still waiting for her, in their offices, and the choice of which will see tomorrow?

How many will feel the heat of Rau'shan's flames as they die? How many will fall to Ka'Mort's earth?

None, she decides. Her friends and neighbors, the kinsmen of her home, will not feel these pains.

I think it is also a moment that beautifully showcases her accepting her death. She will not be here to heal her city. She's going down with the ship. Maybe her blueprints will be found and used, and Avalir will be as it once was. Maybe they won't, and they'll construct it all anew. But she won't see it, so it is their turn to take what was given and build on.

Of course, Rau'shan and Ka'Mort were not the only assets of the Calamity, and damage and destruction was still wrought across Exandria. But there are enough hands to clear the ruins and make their own stories. And that is because of the greatest Architect of them all.

She gave them a chance indeed.

[tatersdoesstuff]

"Love is the most dangerous force in Exandria"

yipee after half a year of binging since c1, im caught up with all of cr \o/ drew @quiddie's quote as my first fanart to the fandom ^-^

[everything-catastrophic]

Not usually drawing people but here is a colored sketch of Laerryn "I cast blight"  Coramar-Seelie. Even if Exandria dosn't remember her, i do!❤️

[flashhwing]

You voted, you campaigned, now welcome to...

Exandria's Next Top Blorbo!

Hello, one and all, and welcome to Exandria's Next Top Blorbo! In this competition, 16 blorbos will battle against each other to determine once and for all who is Exandria's Top Blorbo.

~*~*~CONGRATULATIONS TO KEYLETH OF THE AIR ASHARI~*~*~

Everyone welcome our contestants! These 16 blorbos competed in a grueling Battle Royale to earn their place in the competition, and have been seeded according to their performance. Say hello to

Caleb Widogast

Dorian Storm

Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossolski de Rolo III

Caduceus Clay

Jester Lavorre

Laerryn Coramar-Seelie

Vax'ildan

Orym of the Air Ashari

Dariax Zaveon

Ashton Greymoore

Mollymauk Tealeaf

Cerrit Agrupnin

Laudna

Keyleth of the Air Ashari

Fearne Calloway

Vex'ahlia

These 16 will now compete one on one in a series of challenges to determine once and for all, who will be Exandria's Next Top Blorbo! The match-ups will be as follows:

Keep an eye on this space, as links to each poll will be added under the cut as they go live

Round One

Caleb Widogast vs Vex'ahlia

Dariax Zaveon vs Orym of the Air Ashari

Jester Lavorre vs Cerrit Agrupnin

Laudna vs Caduceus Clay

Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossolski de Rolo III vs Keyleth of the Air Ashari

Mollymauk Tealeaf vs Laerryn Coramar-Seelie

Vax'ildan vs Ashton Greymoore

Fearne Calloway vs Dorian Storm

Round Two

Caleb Widogast vs Orym of the Air Ashari

Jester Lavorre vs Laudna

Keyleth of the Air Ashari vs Laerryn Coramar-Seelie

Vax'ildan vs Fearne Calloway

Semi-Finals

Caleb Widogast vs Jester Lavorre

Keyleth of the Air Ashari vs Vax'ildan

Finals

Caleb Widogast vs Keyleth of the Air Ashari

[spellbound-willow]

An under-utilized Horror subgenre:

Fae Horror

There’s so many ways to do it! So many aspects of fae that make for solid horror concepts.

Being taken away, coming back wrong, being replaced by something else, transforming into something, the cold indifference of nature, getting tricked or manipulated, holes in the ground, feeling like you’re being watched, time moving faster while you’re gone, getting lost in the woods, games, riddles, myths and fate

There’s not a lot of examples of fae horror but here are some I have seen starting from overt fae stuff to objectively not fae but my personal interpretations

- Pan’s Labyrinth – the most obvious, I think they actually use the term fairy. You even see the Court.

- The Hole in the Ground – the title kind of solidified my point. Nature, holes in the ground, changeling horror

- Coraline – come on, the Beldam is totally an unseelie. She takes children, and she loves to imitate real life, trick people and play games

- The Midnight House – I can’t really explain this one without spoiling the whole movie, if you know you know. Basically the house and the reason for the house.

- Hellraiser – the most controversial on this list but the riddles, puzzles, pain and pleasure, interdimensional beings beyond our understanding, you see what I’m saying right?

- Over the Garden Wall – not technically horror but it is very spooky and fae, especially closer to the end. Another world, lost in the woods, things aren’t as they seem, The Beast loves to trick people, talking animals, Adelaide of the Pasture, and one of the main antagonists isn’t even a character, it’s the indifference of nature

- Annihilation – the strange dimension, the body horror (especially the flowers scene), nature warping, the rainbows everywhere, the doubles, time warps, coming back wrong, being replaced. I think it’s a totally valid interpretation

Please add more if you can think of any! I only listed ones I have personally seen, movies I’ve only heard of before didn’t make the list but if you have recommendations or personal interpretations please share!

[gorgynei]

every party that has to face insurmountable odds has at least one of each! (im scared)

[layla-official]

☆ The big downside of blogging from a typewriter is that most kaomojis look janky af, so I can't use them as proficiently as I want.

[ninja-kitty-more-like-no]

Fortune's Favor

In the centuries to come, elves like you– subterranean, ungodly, cleverer than will ever be good for them– will be named drow, although you will not be alive to see them.

(In the centuries to come, elves like you will be called monsters, and you will be the worst among them.)

They will exist because you allowed them to exist, because you allowed everything in one gateway, sliver moment of history. You were the first drow, and if the word could track back long enough, carry itself on some wind, it would not call you mother, because the drow have no mother, and it would not call you deity, because the drow bow for no one, but if it were kind, perhaps it would call you an architect, or a blueprint. A prototype.

Your husband is fascinated with your prototypes. He examines them closely, smiling with bright white teeth, and he calls them lovely, curious things, and then his eyes raise, and he looks at you, and you know.

(This is a love you have never had time or inclination for. This is a love that seeps like sap and hardens like amber, and now you do not let it go easy.)

The drow, they will say centuries from now when they seek to spread fear about what they do not understand, are depraved, are dangerous. Certainly you are depraved, you can accept that label, but are you dangerous, Laerryn? A machine does not understand the difference between metal and flesh, but you do. You chose to study abjuration, and the first thing you learned was that you could not save it all.

How long did Evandrin cough up his own blood? You don’t remember. Perhaps you went to Patia and asked her to erase that awful knowledge, but now it eats you alive to wonder. How many days did he lie, eaten from the inside out, begging you for respite– didn’t you take a syringe and try for a vein? Were they gone, dissolved, or were your hands not steady enough to find them? What do you know of sacrifice? You curl your Ward over his sleeping body, and it is gone in the morning.

(You are gone in the morning. They will never find you here, in this Empire you have aided and abetted, with this man you have baited and bedded in turn.)

Where do you get to put your name, at the end of it? Where does it go? The Tree was supposed to remember you, but it is gone, felled at your fingertips. Your husband asked the world to remember you, though you did not hear him. Cerrit may remember you. Maya will see your face, at least. She’s seven now. That’s auspicious. You were supposed to be seven, but you are six and a ghost, a tension ring held together by its own grief.

(Will you grieve, Essek?)

In the beginning, there were the gods. In the end, there was you and your own two hands. Your ring finger on your left hand curves ever so slightly to the right at the topmost joint. You keep your nails short, blunt. Your husband used to help you paint them, even though you didn’t need any help. You were steady. You were perfect.

(You are the youngest Shadowhand in the history of the Dynasty, and the things your hands build are perfectly ruinous, indeed.)

The drow will call a perfect soul an Umavi– one who has lived many lives and learned all they can, one who is prepared to meet the broker of possibility, the breaker of fate. You only had one life, but you lived it so many times, excruciating over minutiae, over every rotten choice, wondering if you might’ve done differently, but not better. Just different. You’ve done your best, finally. You have exited the stage, and you watch from the wings.

(What wings they are.)

The Beacons gave the drow the gift of dunamancy, and you want for it from the echoes of time without even knowing the word. What you would give to change what you’ve done! What you would give to change the future! What you did give, what you have given– in dreaming, Evandrin’s hand slips from your own. In the morning, Elias asks you where his father has gone and you cannot answer the question, damn you, because for all you know you do not know this. Your father has gone away, Elias. Your father is going away. Your mother is going away, and he asks you where, and you tell him you are going between worlds beyond, and he says that you are a liar.

You ask him what you have lied about.

If there were ways between worlds beyond, he says, Evandrin would be home.

(What do you know of fathers?)

When an Umavi has lived too many lives, they begin to suffocate under the weight. The memories choke them from the inside out, turning them to madness over the course of years. They shake apart– they cannot stop moving, and they cannot stop moving forward. You think you are going mad in those first few months, before you grow around the grief. You think your madness may destroy you, but you remain a sum of your products, the pain just another part of the equation.

(With all your volatile factors, did you ever calculate for this? A hand in yours, a body beside you in the bed? Did you ever add the exponent of a second try, or the dividing line of a new life? Your formulas crumble. You are undone, and you relish in the theoretical chaos of it all.)

Perhaps a kinder world gives you a second chance, deep below the earth, still desperately trying to go somewhere new. When you look into the grasping boughs of the tree, he meets your eyes, and you see him ask you through time, why did you allow this? Your eyes are the same. Gods help you both, your eyes are the same.

[sleepy-aletheas]

I'm t h i s close to losing my mind over Teyvat's history, origin story, and cycles of eras, and it's the fault of the world's architecture and Simulanka's Narration Footnotes quest of all things. Tonight I've been running around for 3 hours just through Mondstadt, Liyue, Underground Chasm, Enkanomiya, Seirai and Tsurumi Island, and already I'm ready to gnaw at a brick.

Genshin never hid the notion that there were different eras of population in places. It's explained away easily enough - time changes, people change, the rise and fall of civilizations is inevitable, especially with the history the characters personally touch upon. But when we got more elaboration through the Narzissenkreuz questline about the cycles Teyvat is going through, it expanded upon the little exclamation point at the back of my silly head, because it made me scrutinize all the places that made me pause with a confused "huh" for a long time now.

(Wolfy is also at fault. Or better said, all the recent quests and events are heavily dropping future points and the lore of the past in very flowery metaphors and allegories that would be easily brushed away if they didn't point it out over and over and ov-)

The thing with the design of the world is, that it's very deliberate. I mean, sure, we could chalk most of it up as reusing assets and retroactively giving them meaning, but the architecture follows a pretty consistent logic that we can map out physically (digitally?) in-game by walking from place to place.

And because of this logic, I've been losing my mind for months now, because I couldn't put my finger on what was really bothering me, cause whenever it sparked in my mind, I never wrote it down and then promptly forgot because something else caught my attention. Now I don't have that problem, cause I write stuff down in a journal, so I can brainrot through all of it to my heart's content (and to the chagrin of my eternal migraine).

Anyway. Teyvat's history timeline is a mess. It makes sense if you skim it or take it at face value in the moment, but the more one tries to think about it, before the Archon War, it's nonexistent, really. Paimon herself was in shock that there was anything before the gods that walk the earth (that was through the conversation with Enjou at the end of Enkanomiya's main quest where we got Before Sun and Moon and found out about the Dragon Sovereigns and Primordial One).

The book was held at a high esteem, because in-game logic dictated for a good while, that the book (or anything from Enkanomiya, really) cannot be tampered with from outside forces, and that because a scribe wrote down what Istaroth herself told him, it must be 100% true. But, because this is Unreliable Narrator: The Video Game, I wanna hold it with a grain of salt for a bit, cause if Sumeru's desert quests have taught me anything, it's that no one is outside the realm of getting things wrong through misunderstandings, assumptions, or outright lies (and that counts for Gods and Sovereigns too btw).

The thing is, the game deliberately tosses clues and leads around across the spectrum from obvious to throwaway lines or visuals. The foreshadowing is being put into place all along, and it's not just "oh, what will happen next patch?" or "this is the new area, right?" specific things either. There are quests and books and characters that are mirroring something that happened once upon a time (or in the present), but a person has to deliberately listen for this to catch, otherwise it just becomes a fun tidbit that maybe connects sooner than later, or it just completely slips the mind and comes back seemingly as new information.

Okay, back to the point of Teyvat's architecture in connection with civilizations and cycles of eras shenanigans.

There is this one specific architecture that keeps popping out across every single nation, you know the one. It has triquetra and intertwined lines (would braided be a better word for it? plaited?), with the stones big and smooth, the edges blunted. It truly is everywhere one tries to look, but it's interesting where it lays and where the region-specific architecture intertwine or avoid each other.

We could assume that that was the United Civilization, the first before it got split apart, laying across Teyvat in unison. That should be the original style. But then we got the Underground Chasm and Enkanomiya, and it throws a wrench into the whole neat fact, it makes one question what is going on.

Enkanomiya was thrown away from surface Teyvat, cut off from any connection to any divinity or other people, stuck with vishaps in the dark. And yet it's the same architecture as the Chasm, they even have the same glowing stones inside their square pillars, their walls have wavy lines carved out, it's all very angular and the stone also is more white than grey. And then there is Clymene (a shade in Enkanomiya, the ward of the Sunchildren) that says something along the lines of "I haven't seen someone dressed like you in a long time" which raises so many questions, and we never got back to it (shaking my fist at the sky, this lives in my head for years now). And on a lesser note, both reside underground, where you can see the cave arch high above and reaching deep beneath the areas. (And on another sidenote, it's interesting how similar Enkanomiya, Chasm, and Remuria have their architecture, lots of massive white stone and gold)

Old Mondstadt had actually a wider reach than expected. It wasn't limited only to the hollowed place that is now Stormterror Lair with high cliffs all around, but we can see the ruin leftovers stretching to Cecilia's Garden and all the way to Dawn Winery. Old Mondstadt had a combination of rose stems with thorns, moline crosses (or that's the closest I could compare it to), what looks like lily of the valley, domed roofs, and again the big smoothed out stones. The biggest mystery that stand out to me are the two smooth pillars in by Cecilia's garden that don't fit anywhere (it doesn't even fit the ones around the Thousand Winds Temple, where they're carved again with wavy criss-crossing lines).

Speaking of Thousand Winds Temple, that one's also coming up around in different places across the places I looked at. It's obviously across the east of Mondstadt, the secret forgotten island where the other sundial rests (and there are interesting symbols too, like the stylized infinity swirling around, the pedestal before the sundial reminiscent of the light realm sigil associated with Tokoyo Ookami, and a knot in the middle). If anything, there are other symbols that resemble the triquetra close enough to be chalked up as the same thing, but they're differently depicted that I can't unsee. Then there is the pavement, and oh my god, that haunts me. Because it can be found on the forgotten island, Thousand Winds Temple, but it's also in the underground ruins on Seirai Island (Amakumo Peak, where you first have to solve puzzles to drain the water levels), and around Tsurumi Island in general (the buried architecture reminds me of Vinagnir, I wonder if they're from the same time or not, the wall drawings would fit on their own). Istaroth had to have a direct hand in many places, because she just keeps popping up.

And Liyue has a pretty clear distinction between what Morax ruled and where he laid Guili Plains (pretty square structures with distinct symbols) and what was probably before. Bishui Plain pretty much is connected through the large grey stones, triquetra, and wavy lines, with a distinct detail of a lattice symbolism in the salt carrying pillars in Sal Terrae, or the dragon statues situated across Wuwang Hill and Qingce Village. In Jueyun Karst, where we have to drain the water to reach Tiashan Mansion, there is a similar mechanism as in Old Mondstadt (just a fun detail). It's also a fun thing to note, that in Guyun Stone Forest, the space where the geo hypostasis rests, the ground has again a resemblance to the light realm sigil, so that's fun to look around for later. All that to say, it makes me personally curious when did Morax and Guizhong become allies, because it had to be during the Archon War to make any lick of sense.

All of this to say: I completely lost the plot. I'm so sleepy, I stayed up the whole night again. I digress.

It's obvious that there is some time shenanigans going on, where there are crashes of architecture and history. The conflicting ideas of who came first - dragon or human (probably both, cause everything most likely is a dream (which i get is annoying for many people, but i think the game is trying to not use it as a copout to drop all meaning out the window once it's over like all the bad dream based stories did; they're really hammering in that even if something is just a dream or a fantasy, it's still an experience lived through and its meaning has equal value as reality)), and what the changes of cycles look like or work like. Like we know they exist, and technically one can go from one cycle into the next one (like golden bee Sybila (later known as Phobos)), but otherwise we don't know what happens at the end of one, or how the transition works or looks.

Next time I have any grain of energy left, I need to crawl through the rest of Teyvat to sate this need to know stuff. But that's for later.

I should stop talking, nothing is making sense to me anyway and I'm not rereading any of this (will i still toss this out here? apparently yes. there is no restraint when i can barely keep my eyes open, and i choose to not care).

[friendlessghoul]

One Week - 1920

[hallow-hunt]

“Hah! Gotcha! I’m just kiddin’! What’s goin on man?” "FINNLEY!! You startled my research subject...!"

[yaeggravate]

just wanted to quickly share my thoughts on ronova's possible parallels to the character kundry, from wagner's opera parsifal

when the lord of the night talks about ronova she has this to say about her:

Yohualtecuhtin, Lord of the Night: The one you wish to know about... I call her "The Ruler of Death." She helped Natlan establish the rules. It was also under her guidance that I created the Night Kingdom... Yohualtecuhtin, Lord of the Night: It was an expression of love, as well as an act of reparation. She was seen as having significantly overstepped her authorities as a Shade, which quite displeased the almighty... Mm, Heavenly Principles. Yohualtecuhtin, Lord of the Night: She succumbed to self-pity as a result, and no longer cared if others discussed her identity. Even so, her existence remains unknown to all but a select few.

in the memory of xbalanque, we find out ronova has little freedom to do as she pleases. (though it's unclear what this means exactly)

Ronova: Very well. I shall agree to help you. But I am merely a Shade, and I do not have as much freedom to do as I please as you might think.

because i have anfortano on the brain, all of these bolded tidbits immediately reminded me of the sorceress kundry. in wagner's version, kundry was an (unwilling) accomplice in getting amfortas (spelled with an "m" here) cursed. kundry was wrecked with guilt over what she had done and tried to help amfortas and the grail knights despite her being under her master's control.

PARSIFAL Gurnemanz: Methinks a curse may still be on her life,—She is so wild and strange, so sad her very eyes. But now, whate'er the past, she is with us, And serves us to atone for earlier guilt. Perchance her work may shrive her of her sins. Surely she does full well to serve us well, And in the serving-help herself and us.

kundry was cursed herself to reincarnate over and over again for eternity. (because she laughed at jesus while he was being crucified lol.) she went under several names, one of which stood out to me; gundryggia. this name seems to be an invention by wagner himself that he gave his own meaning to:

In Act 2 of Wagner's music-drama, one of the names by which Klingsor addresses Kundry. Cosima's diary relates, "... at lunch he tells me: "She will be called Gundrygia (sic), the weaver of war", but then he decides to keep to Kundry" [14 March 1877]. Although it has been speculated that the name was that of a Valkyrie, the author has not been able to find the name Gundrygia or Gundryggia in any of the Old Norse sources, which contain many Valkyrie names. There is, however, a resemblance to the name Gunnr (meaning strife or battle), one of Odin's principal Valkyries, and this might have been the inspiration for Wagner to transform Kundry into Gundryggia.

at the end of the story, kundry dies and is freed from her suffering after parsifal saves amfortas.

back to capitano, it's said that ronova sent him on a long journey and that cap has a final foe to face. it's not explained yet what this means and can be interpreted several ways but when you consider possible kundry parallels perhaps ronova is helping cap break the curse which could potentially defeat her too or release her from her own torment/guilt over the Crimes™

anyway just something to think about, even if ronova isn't kundry, it would still be interesting to see her character implemented in the story in some way.