#THIS WAS REALLY FUN TO THINK ABOUT THANK YOU. ok i might actually subsume part of this headcanon anyways

[mango-dolphin]

do you want to hear a hc i have about how Melromarcs world works :000 To bad you're hearing it/j

all of the heroes summoned are normally 18 or above. its VERY rare for them to be 17, and 16 is literally unheard of. that's one of the reasons people think Itsuki's the youngest(along with his appearance and how Ren carries himself/hides his age), it's practically impossible for anyone to be younger!!

Ren's party know he's on the younger side, but they think he's just a strange 17-18 year old.

i also think the weapons have age preferences: Shield heroes have the widest range, and are normally the eldest, like 20-28. Spear heroes have a smaller range, 21-24(normally they're 21 tho). Bow heroes are have the smallest, 17-18. idk about sword heroes ;A; im thinking a wide range at 17-22, normally ~18.

Ren is an outlier XD as he deserves/j

yesssssss YESSSSSS YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS if i were a dragon i think i would hoard headcanons. even ones that i don't subscribe to. i love headcanons so much thank you king

this... is a VERY intriguing idea, actually (that the weapons have a preferred age cut-off)... i don't know how much i subscribe to this headcanon, but i feel like if this were the case on any level it'd be incredibly telling of parts of the world—both in an enlightening and a concerning way.

for starters, summoning someone at 18 to early 20s is still pretty dang young to be taking heroes, from a standpoint considering age. they're not so young as to miss out on a majority of common sense, but they'd still be young enough to be generally impressionable. they have a lot of room to grow, and would typically be in a phase of their life where they'd be trying to find out who they are. so grabbing someone around that age range would make it easier to convince them "Hey, what if you were a hero? Our hero?"

(it's a little ominous admittedly, especially in cases like Naofumi's where they aren't quite given the choice, but as someone who's gonna turn 20 later this month it'd be awesome to be given that opportunity imo. like damn alright i wouldn't mind getting isekai'd like that, even though it'd be a very difficult journey. at least i don't have the illusion of accessible healthcare)

GOD DAMMIT IT GOT LONG AGAIN

there is the thing of folktales often having young heroes to begin with, so i wouldn't be surprised if the minimum age was actually 16 myself. i don't remember too much about shit i've read but like. y'know. Y'know. YA literature, young/teenage protagonists off having adventures, the "older kids" (teens) enabling more "edgy" adventures, etc etc. but it'd be really funny if one of the Cardinal Weapons had that similar train of thought: start out your kid hero early as you can help this youth rise to greatness the old-fashioned way. i hope this paragraph made sense LMAO

BUT i think if the weapons had age preferences, i'd generally agree w/your assessment on all of them.

it makes sense that the Shield spirit would prefer older or generally more mature/experienced heroes—they'd need someone reliable, not so fickle. the issue with choosing someone older is that they may already have set down some roots, so they might not be as enthusiastic about the task. however, ideally, they'd someone self-assured and more comfortable in their identity. i bet on average the heroes they've summoned are the oldest out of the four: you put your range at 20 - 28, but i'd personally say that it'd typically start at 23 (absolute limit 20) and have no upper bound for age. just whoever would be the best fit for the role (and growing/learning on the job), and would be in the most favorable position to accept the role.

i think the Spear spirit would be looking for someone willing to act, but not so caught-up with the small stuff. someone with good instincts—and you usually accumulate those instincts and skills the more time you're given to spend on them, so someone a little older is probably the weapon's preference. but not TOO old. gotta catch someone spry. so i agree on typically 21 but ranging towards 24, maybe 25 if someone stands out. probably trying to go as young as they can, but not so young as to make too many stupid decisions.

LAUGHING AT THE BOW SPIRIT HYPOTHETICALLY HAVING A RANGE SO SMALL BTW. i think this might be the "start your kid hero early to help them rise the old-fashioned way" weapon i was musing about earlier. this is so funny. idk the Bow spirit seems like it'd be the most outwardly chivalrous & "knightly" of the Cardinal Weapons, especially considering their second choice for a hero was Itsuki (and not literally anyone else) LMAO. 17 - 18 sounds about right, if not occasionally picking up to 20 years old if the other heroes are all 23+. start your knights off Early!

i feel like the Sword spirit might prefer older heroes as well—someone who'd, at the very least, would be able to come to terms with what their job as a Hero might entail. so, older typically would suggest that. i like the range you gave, but i think the Sword spirit may not particularly have a preference so much as a trend. probably heroes from 19 - 26, but has regularly chosen from the high end, and very very rarely chosen lower.

i bet when the summoning ceremony happened for the weapons, they lost their minds when the oldest hero chosen was the spear hero. like damn, alright! the hero who's usually the second youngest (if not VERY rarely the youngest) is now the adult of the group! we be choosing babies this year!

it'd also call into question why the second choice for the Sword's holder would be someone so young... i'd like to think that the second choices for the Sword, Spear, and Bow weapons were people emotionally close to their first choices, which might explain why the Sword spirit was so comfortable with choosing a baby. their first choice was also a baby, so might as well commit!

REN IS AN OUTLIER, AS HE DESERVES—

bonus: i don't know enough about the Holy Hunting Tool to really suggest anything, but i think it'd be really funny if its spirit preferred hunters/fishers, particularly gentle/humble ones. it took one look at a maybe 13, 14-year old kizuna and was like that's her. that's the person who will defend my world from evil. and then kizuna proceeded to play the fishing minigame nonstop (while also defending her world from evil). (i don't know at what age kizuna was summoned)

[paradife-loft]

A Smattering of More TGCF Thoughts, Having Finished Book 3

*not exhaustive, because that would be way too much; but still apparently enough rambling to need a cut for length

EVERYTHING IS METAPHYSICAL WORLDBUILDING...... I don’t even know if I have a specific place I’d want to start with this, bc it’s all just deeply fascinating trying to tease out how it all works, but. mmmm delicious crunchy worldbuilding on what heavenly officials (of each court) and ghosts even are, and how spiritual power works! what exactly ascending is, and what role “fate” plays in that, and what even is fate really? what relationship does fate have to social standing in one’s mortal life?

this is my shit. I love to know how it all works. I will poke at all the things.

BLACK. WATER. XUAN. it is probably obvious by now that I am in massive hearteyes with He Xuan?? just. the dramatic flair! the extent of being SO wronged! intense murder aesthetic!  d e d i c a t i o n. power and planning and being utterly terrifying as a trap closing in when the time comes - and an absolute Weirdo antisocial half-person Mess the rest of the time! “I am going to give you all these tests as opportunities to show that you see me, the person your successes came at the very literal physical cost of, and CARE to rectify that horrible injustice. show me that you give a fuck! show me that you’re not just stuck in your pampered myopic little heavenly heads!”

I am a little disturbed by how quickly I’ve built up a whole headcanon persona and POV for He Xuan already despite. not having finished the book yet. :’D what can I say though, intense capacity for violence, plus messy depression/depersonalisation badbrains, plus unstable identity and literally subsuming other beings into yourself, plus hella fucked up relationship with food... This Is Coming For Me Where I Live rn <33

(nom nom transmisogynists make a delicious crunchy snack~)

honestly it’s kind of like, the more intense my feelings & thoughts about a character are, the harder it is for me to really ramble properly about them without more specific prompts.... oops. but just know, I have many He Xuan thoughts. hot damn.

Yin Yu and Quan Yizhen ;____; god, I just have.... a lot of feelings about the way in which Status Issues Fuck Them Up. and about how Yin Yu ends up taking all this blame not because he’s A Bad Person, but also not because he’s Framed Horribly and Is Totally Innocent? he’s just very real, and imperfect, and his personal shortcomings combine with events to create a complete and utter clusterfuck :(

CORPSE RATS CORPSE RATS :D I am enjoying literally everything that’s eaten other spirits in this book honestly. delightfully fucked up favourite “taking on traits of a thing you consume” trope :D

Mount Tong’lu especially, but also just a certain amount of the aesthetic of this book in general, is once again Reminding Me Of Dark Souls. it’s the combo “gain more power by murdering other entities and consuming their souls” / “transformational Final Level specifically called a kiln” thing, I think.

so I guess it’s canon that the Supremes are a “mentally unstable obsessives only” club??? :’D I have a lot of feelings about much-younger-ghost!Hua Cheng just kind of. spending ten years alternately nerding out over trying to learn to read a dead language, and trying to... depict his devotion and somehow express/externalise the very story of who he even is into this empty underground series of caverns? trying to pound it into his head to, like, remember who he is and make SOME part of the world witness to what’s made him, even though (and because) he can’t actually open up about any of that to any other people?

like hmm, certainly I don’t think he’s losing it during the Mount Tong’lu experience as much as, say, certain other individuals might have (*cough*), because he’s not literally taking the essences of other beings into himself, just getting a power-up - but that alone, killing so much and experiencing that kind of metaphysical change, must already be kind of disorienting and weird? especially if you’re functionally alone the whole time?? which is to say, sure, the thousand gods and all the murals might have been a little bit of a monument to Hua Cheng being batshit crazypants for a while, but given the material circumstances of 10 years of isolation/ling nerding/murder, I really cannot blame him. (I would also rather not have other people, certainly not the object of my affection & obsession, get to see those things! that is entirely relatable, not sinister!)

(obligatory “what would a centuries-old sourdough starter from Mount Tong’lu be like“ joke....)

although. that said. I continue! to be not okay! with the extent of Literal Hero Worship happening in this relationship! “if you don’t have anything else to live for, then live for me!” like ok ok it is all very well and good that you said that as a dumbass naive teenage god, and clearly don’t believe in any such thing anymore, but. Hua Cheng! has not gotten over that! he is still very much in that headspace! “oh don’t worry my ashes are in a totally safe place bc if the place where I hid them was destroyed then I would have no reason to live either ~<3″ NO. NO BAD. EXTREMELY BAD, HUA CHENG SIT DOWN RIGHT THIS INSTANT UNTIL I FIND YOU SOMEONE TO TALK YOU THROUGH THIS SHIT.

I just. mmmmmmmnnn. I really enjoy how they interact with one another most of the time! I’m also just... not cool with the level of power disparity in terms of psychological vulnerability to one another, that seems pretty fundamentally baked into the dynamic :/

(it’s funny bc this is the opposite of the panic Mu Qing & Feng Xin were having over Hualian, oops)

actually while I’m being a whole-ass Downer about ships, I will also mention that I do Not get shipping those two..... like “excessive bickering” has never appealed to me in the first place but also. FX seems to genuinely think MQ is a bad person?? and doesn’t understand what his perspective is like in general? perhaps I am simply A Bit Sensitive to people misunderstanding someone and thinking they’re a bad person bc they’re not Nice And Cheerful And Personable, but. eugh, no thank you.

miscellaneous thoughts....

Ling Wen can honestly do as many murders as she feels like, I’m not too broken up about this ultimately :////

Xie Lian’s trauma response panic mode whenever he sees White No-Face! it’s upsetting!

White No-Face is not valid specifically for the reason that I wanted the next ghost king to come out of the kiln to add something cool to the Calamities’ color scheme >:( Give Me A Purple Ghost You Dumb Motherfucker >:(

(actually in part I make fun of him because I am otherwise also terrified of him! he is creepy and horrifying! he seems like substantially less of a Person and more like a Horrible Force of Nature than the other calamities!! also HE WAS LIVING IN THEIR HOUSE *screams*)

(you may notice there is approximately no book 2 content on here and that is.... largely bc I found book 2 very upsetting and unpleasant to read, as “overwhelming futility in the face of world affairs and mass suffering” is in fact my Least favourite emotion to have evoked in fiction. or in real life for that matter. “biological phenomenon wherein foreign entities grow in or on your body” is ALSO a least favourite thing in both fiction & real life too, funnily enough! not actually to the same extent as Futility Forever, but. no thank you.)

there’s definitely more I wanted to talk about at one point or another and then forgot, so, if there’s something you want to hear about in particular, ask me questions!

[fantroll-purgatory]

Ok, ok. So this is my Highblooded fantroll, Dommih. If your still available, can you please help me out?

Thanks for your patience! As we clear the backlog, your troll caught my eye because of the interesting sprite.

Also, im sorry if its a bit weird, im on the mobile version of tumblr.

FIRST: Alternia or Beforus or some type of AU?

Alternia, my own session of sgrub

Aight, per the rules I gotta be stricter with my sprite edits! I know it’s frustrating but unless otherwise stated we do our best to remain a canon-compliant blog (though the current batch of trolls in the Troll Call have successfully invalidated a number of our former “rules”). In the end I *did* give you a bonus shirtless version since I felt there was detail that went unconveyed with his shirt on.

Name (preferably include how you came up with it and why):

Dommih Presea

The first name i had used a generator. It was one of the only ones that really stood out for me! As for his last name, its was a play on ‘Pixies’ and fish puns, (sea being the pun). I had messed around with the first part for a bit until it started looking somewhat readable. This happened until it is what you see today!

Hmmm I can get down with the last name, but for the first how about Doflin, from the scientific name for the North Pacific giant octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini). It also helps that it kinda sounds like “dolphin,” if you wanna keep going with the nods to oceanic fauna.

Age: 6 sweeps

Strife Specibus: Bident-kind

Fetch Modus: Connect four

If we wanna strengthen the octopus theme, why don’t we go with a MASSIVE Connect Eight? It would be an exceptionally difficult modus from which to retrieve anything, which means Doflin needs to be very quick on his feet! Er, tentacles?

Blood color: Magenta (i would very much love to keep it as it is!)

I’m probably going to adjust it to Feferi’s color which is pretty close to what you already gave me tbh.

Symbol and meaning: his symbol, pictured above, was a twist on Feferi’s own symbol. I simply curved it abit, and added the swirls one end of each side, as you can see!

Honestly I think it fits! I went and resprited it using Feferi’s actual symbol as a base so it reads a little neater but it’s p good. I think you sent this in before the extended zodiac was released, so if you want him further adjusted to fit with the new canon I am more than happy to do so! I personally think Picorn works well because a) I classed him as a Rage player and b) it kinda looks like a tentacle’s sucker.

Lusus: Octopus

I believe all tyrianbloods have Gl’bgolyb as a lusus since there’s only ever supposed to be one at a time, which is just as well since she’s basically a massive octopus anyway. Male tyrianbloods are supposedly exceptionally rare, and trolls are often matched with a lusus of the same gender for whatever reason, so if you’re dead set on having an Octodad in true videogame fashion, it may help to come up with a reason why.

(For example, perhaps Gl’bgolyb gave birth to a horrifying troll-horrorterror hybrid, and Doflin is a test troll who has been given to this hybrid to test if it can be used as a backup parent for backup heirs? It would give Doflin a reason to play in his (presumably doomed) run of SGRUB if he doesn’t have much to do save wait for his antecedent to die, which is unlikely to happen in the near future, and it would also give you a convincing reason for his odd appearance; it doesn’t matter if he’s a mutant since he’s basically a test run who isn’t expected to succeed the Condesce)

Personality: He is a narcissistic troll, who takes pleasure in hurting other trolls and seeing others suffer. He wouldnt care if you were to break your arm, there would be no sympathy. He lies, cheats sometimes, and finally, has stolen from others. However, he only sees it as fun, and doesn’t want to change for anything.

I think the fundamental problem here is that you are describing someone who fits perfectly with Alternian ideals and nothing else. This would be like giving me a bio for a human that said “they like to hang out sometimes!” What does that mean? This doesn’t mean that a character cannot have that trait, but that there needs to be specificity. For example, a character who likes to hang out might do so at a mall, at their friends’ parties, or just invite a person or two to come home and play video games. Each of those details gives a clearer picture of the kind of person it is.

So, give me more details to flesh him out! Does he go wandering around populated areas looking for a fight, or is he the type to meticulously plan a one-man heist? Is this attitude the reason he’s so scarred all over? What’s the story behind that? Answering these questions will help you in the future when you try to stay consistent with his characterization.

Title: Kaiser of Life (i would also love to keep this)

I just looked this up and it looks like, as a fan class, it’s basically Prince of Life but with a higher ranking? It’s my personal bias that most fan classes are easily subsumed by a sufficiently well-explained canon title, but I guess I don’t object to just the cosmetic change. However, the character you’ve described doesn’t seem to be a Life player at all (even one from a destructive class!), especially since your bio doesn’t really specify that he’s a cold-blooded murderer so much as that he’s just…apathetic? I would say he seems more like a Rage player, especially since he’s set in his ways and furthermore narrows others’ options through injury. Personally, I feel he’d make a good Thief of Rage, especially since “high class thief” is a fun trope to play with.

Land: Land of Precipice and Silence

I kinda like Land of Onslaught and Outbursts, an underwater land with active volcanoes that must explode to create a land path to the denizen atop a high mountain. Unfortunately, doing so endangers the aquatic life! It’s a perfect parallel to both his status as a seadweller highblood and is a means of harnessing his own violent outbursts to a greater end.

Dream Planet: Derse (same here!)

I’m always okay with tyrianbloods on Derse, especially since Gl’bgolyb is herself a minor horrorterror.

On to the redesign!

Your sprite was saved a JPEG and much larger than a standard sprite, so I sized it down for comparison and basically made a new one while copying over elements of the original.

Horns - based on your description of his symbol, I figured you were going for horns similar to Feferi’s with minor alterations. So I literally just took Feferi’s horns and added a hook to the end of one of them. I also liked the kind of curly ones you added to the bottom, so I have a miniature version nestled in all that hair.

Hair - I started with a bun base from naphal’s sprite sheet, then merged with with the hair you already gave him, then futzed with it for a long, long time.There’s a new instagram trend called an “octopus bun,” which is basically just a fancy term for the messy bun that we’ve all done if we’ve had long hair that we needed out of the way, but it gave me a good starting point. If you count the tendrils of hair coming off his head, you’ll find that there are eight, and it really does look like there’s an octopus sitting on his head!

Eyes/Scars - I actually just used your existing unscarred eye to create a template for the cleaner ones. The other eye is a little scrunched up due to the scar tissue over it, which I grabbed from this template by fryingpanismyweapon on deviantArt. This is the case for all of the additional scars you see on him.

Freckles - I wasn’t sure if there were freckles on your original troll or just noise from saving it as a JPEG, but between that and the fact that you used a grey tinged with his blood color, I liked the idea of some grey and blood colored freckles on him. I used this template from x_pandatastic_x to get the effect, then messed with the existing ones to get his other freckles. You can see in the shirtless version that I provided that the freckles cover his entire body.

Ears - he’s a seadweller so unless you have a reason he’s gotta have the fin ears.

Mouth - once again, I just took the one you made and cleaned it up a bit! I feel like it has a lot more personality than any sprite sheet template I could conjure up.

Shirt - like I said, if this is an Alternian he still (usually) needs a black something with his symbol on it (though as I mentioned before, recent Troll Call reveals have indicated that it doesn’t need to be as strict as we previously thought). I used naphal’s sprite sheet to give me a base, then messed with it until I got something that resembled a swim shirt. That said, I still gave him a shirtless sprite to show that I kept the chest scars under all that

Fins - I will honestly admit that this is just a spriting limitation for me. I could not for the life of me figure out how to make the fins work on the torso without looking atrocious. I still liked the element, though, so I grafted them onto the backs of his feet with some scar tissue and ripping to boot.

Shorts - I noticed that you did pants for your original sprite, but given his whole concept it really felt like he was more of a swim shorts guy. Once again, I used naphal’s sprite sheet for a base, then added details like the drawstring to try and fit with what you were originally going for. The teal color you used for the majority of the shorts in your sprite didn’t really track for me without a solid reason, so I tried to devise my own color scheme. I came up with the purple pockets to reference Gamzee, the best-known canon rage player, and the blue underlining as a reference to Vriska, the thief. This is much in line with Feferi’s coloring which takes from Jade, the Beta Kids’ Witch, and Jane, the Alpha Kids’ Life player. As a bonus, it looks like that really specific color combo that all those soccer moms wore on their windbreakers in the late 90s/early 00s? I don’t know if you want to go that tacky, but I had a lot of fun doing so, and feel that there’s canon support given that every tyrianblood we’ve seen so far has been notoriously tacky with their fashion choices.

Feet - The barefoot one is from tajazzled/fan-troll’s now-ubiquitous sprite sheet. You used some fairly standard shoes for him, which worked just fine, but after I made the foot fins I wanted to give him footwear that made sense to me. Since one of them is ripped, I figured some scuba flippers would be a good way for him to get around underwater. This one is modified from fantrollartroom’s templates.

Aaaaand that’s it! I really liked your character a lot, and I hope you like the changes I made!

-TR