#a lot of that information came from various wikis

[yamayuandadu]

Is Humbaba's appearance ever described in detail in any written sources? When looking online, I keep seeing artists depicting him in very specific ways (head covered in entrails, scaly skin, snake phallus...), but I'm having trouble finding the sources for those same specific details

This is something I've spent quite a lot of time investigating myself last year when I was working on his wiki article. The short answer is that not really, but we can piece something together from the available scraps - and it’s not really similar to the modern standard you're describing. You are definitely looking in the right places for Humbaba information if you found no trace of these traits - only one of them goes back directly to an actual source, and even then it’s less firm than it might seem at first glance. More under the cut. 

The textual sources are actually very lax when it comes to describing Humbaba’s appearance, What is emphasized are his supernatural powers and authority granted by the gods - Wer (they set this guy up like he’s the next arc villain in a shonen in the Old Babylonian version’s Sippar fragments) and Enlil or Enlil alone. There’s a decent chance he was viewed as largely human-like. Andrew R. George ( The Babylonian Gilgamesh epic: introduction, critical edition and cuneiform texts, p. 144) describes him as “essentially anthropomorphic” though speculates he might have been imagined as tree-like. Multiple considerations regarding Humbaba’s iconography can be found in the articles from Gilgamesch: Ikonographie eines Helden, especially in Lambert’s and Collon’s. Collon essentially just concludes that Humbaba was simply depicted as an unusually tall and/or broad but still largely human-like figure, Lambert notes similarities to the lahmu (so we’re still within the realm of burly hairy men, essentially). Piotr Michalowski (A Man Called Enmebaragesi, p. 205-206) argues that at least in the standalone narratives Humbaba was essentially a parody of various peripheral “barbarian” rulers. It is perhaps worth pointing out that while the etymology of Humbaba’s name is up for debate, it is clear that it was originally an ordinary personal name, and individuals bearing it appear in administrative texts from the Ur III period before Humbaba the literary character arose.

While myths and the epic itself are lax, plenty of information about Humbaba’s appearance can be found in other genres of texts. This evidence has been collected by George (same monograph as above, p. 146-147). His face was regarded as outlandish, with a bulbous nose and big eyes. There are references to diviners spotting Humbaba’s face while analyzing animal entrails. An artistic representation of this phenomenon is seemingly known from one exemplar, and is the source of “entrails-faced” Humbabas in modern work.

A unique sculpture from Neo-Babylonian Sippar seen above (you can view it from more sides here) is inscribed with a short formula starting with “If the coils of the colon resemble the head of Huwawa”, and has accordingly been described as the visual representation of this statement since the 1920s. Identification as Humbaba has been affirmed for example by Anthony Green in his 1997 article Myths in Mesopotamian Art (p. 137-138 + 150 for a confirmation of the museum number; published in Sumerian Gods and their Representations; you can find it online,it’s worth checking out since it also includes timeless classics like Wiggermann’s Transtigridian Snake Gods and Westenholz’s Nanaya, Lady of Mystery). I’m not actually aware of any parallels, but it’s a cool, striking visual and I personally don’t find its modern fame undeserved.

However, it needs to be stressed that it’s not standard. Humbaba’s face is also quite common in visual arts. In fact, it’s so common that Frans Wiggermann (Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: the ritual texts, p. 150) argues that the face came first, with the name perhaps representing a unique sound made by the creature while grinning or laughing (what is this, One Piece?) and only developed into a literary character later. These images served an apotropaic purpose guarding doors (examples have been discovered in situ), appear chiefly in Old Babylonian times, and show remarkably consistent traits, here are some I’ve assembled for the wiki article last year:

Scaly skin doesn’t show up anywhere as a trait of Humbaba’s, as far as I am aware. That’s Tishpak’s thing. However, it is perhaps worth noting that a type of lizard, ḫuwawītum, was named after Humbaba (George, p. 145). This was discussed briefly by Claus Wilcke a long time ago in Humbaba’s entry in the Reallexikon (p. 535); he pointed out the animal was compared to a gecko or what he identified as some variety of agamid. Not sure if anyone ever tried identifying it more precisely with any species of reptile which can be found in Iraq or Syria. Given Humbaba’s apparently outlandish looking eyes my first thought was a chameleon, honestly, but don’t quote me on that, plus note that it seems chameleons were called bargunna (or bargungunna).

As for the other reptilian matter, snake phallus is a part of Pazuzu's iconography (see his Reallexikon entry by Wiggermann, p. 377), not Humbaba's. As far as I can tell, the Humbaba plaque above is naked and shows no such characteristics. Many other possible depictions of Humbaba show him in some sort of kilt with no phallus of any sort in sight (see the numerous seals shown in Collon’s article mentioned above, for instance). I know the snake phallus claim was even on wikipedia at some point - long before my involvement - but it doesn’t come up in any publication about Humbaba I read from within the past 40 years.

[agua-cat]

RELIC HOLDERS - APHMAU

Please note this is a rewritten version of Minecraft Diaries, what is here is not completely canon to the universe and I have taken various creative liberties to create what I think is a satisfactory story. Some of these choices for the relic holders are NOT forever, as some relics get passed onto other people. This list, however, is pretty definitive.

I asked my friends if I should write starting from Aphmau or Laurence. They all chose Aphmau and I probably have the least amount of lore for her so let's see what we can crack out.

Let us Begin

There are many words to describe the lady of Phoenix Drop, though I thing a perfect one is ''Enigma''. From the very beginning, Aphmau was never normal. She was self-aware of the world she resided in to a unique degree, she could make different choices and unravel a story with her at its core.

Who she was had never truly been queried. She knew her name was Aphmau and she knew she had a village to look after. Shortly after the confrontation in the Irene Dimension with Zane, Aphmau found herself back in her old house. Her sons grown and her flame of motivation threatening to flicker out.

It was lucky then that day, Hyria came to visit. Lucinda's mother had gotten worried since some news about Laurence had broken out, and for some reason her daughter always seemed enamoured with him. During her visit, however, guilt burdened her every time she set her eyes on Aphmau's house. She had to tell Aphmau.

So, Aphmau knows that she is Irene. To what extent she believes it, she's not sure. Goddesses are supposed to be all powerful, all knowing. Even when Hyria comforts her that she was supposed to forget- the answer seems too easy. Too convenient. Aphmau wants to strive for answers beyond the blanket layer of information she was given.

Beginning the start of Season 2 for our rewrite is when markings begin to decorate Aphmau's skin. Beautiful glowing marks that define her easily; this woman is not human. She is not even mortal. Despite this, her closest friends are not put off by her change of appearance and keep her close.

Garroth brings her with him when the threat of Zane becomes evermore present once more. Zane, who now has gotten Laurence on his side. Laurence; with Shad's relic.

Every time Aphmau thinks of Shad- or Laurence- her heart pulses. She swears she can feel an echoing voice in her head. Something which tries to guide her, something with a lot more bloodlust than she could ever dream to have. Something Divine.

Travis offers her to recreate the Divine Warriors- to right the wrongs the 6 legends had before them in communication and to make something bigger and better than the burden that had been set upon their shoulders. Since she agreed, her divinity stopped hiding itself so much.

Piercing white pupils glow within her Irises. Perhaps one day they will be a pure white like the Matrons.

Becoming Irene is something that scares Aphmau. She doesn't want to be someone she seemed so keen to run away from the past. Aphmau wants to try again- this time, correctly.

~~~

HEYY SO. I HOPE THIS WAS GOOD. I'll probably post some more stuff about Aphmau as I go- I know right now as it goes this is all very ominous and a lot of information though!

I'm really sorry if the timeline doesn't 100% add up! A lot of my information is from nostalgia, memory and wiki's. I wish I had the time to rewatch MCD ;;

Consider this rewrite as of current from past the Irene Dimension fight. There will be information and rewrites from before that period that I'm working for but you know me! I like to start in the ocean and work my way back to the creek.

Thank you for reading. Your reblogs have made my day and give me so much more confidence in sharing something I've been passionate and yet nervous about. <3 Let me know if you need any clarification.

P.S. Whilst I am happy to take criticism or discuss this in further detail, that may be best for DMs! My DMs are ALWAYS open, and I promise I'm friendly :)

[cyndraws]

Kaishin secret santa 2023

This is a Kaishin roleswap au for @blueamphibians! I hope you enjoy this art + my ramblings on the au underneath. Because of course, I couldn't just leave it as one piece of art haha (ehem please buckle in for preparation)

Many thanks to @dcmkkaishinevents / Mack for hosting this event, it was super fun participating and interacting with the community <3 <3 As a side note, I would absolutely recommend it to others who are considering signing up next year. Everyone is very friendly!

(Hey Blue, I had more art planned but unfortunately many things came up. But I hope you enjoy this anyways! I might draw some more for you later ^-^ Thanks so much for this prompt <3 <3)

Edit: I have decided that now you will receive a completed arts + ramblings + some WIPs behind the scene hahahaha https://www.tumblr.com/cyndraws/737208478471487488/kaishin-secret-santa-2023-extras-basically-wips?source=share

AU ramblings under the cut (ngl it's a lot):

Random details and notes that don't really fit anywhere. Mostly about the fanart:

Kaito is 1 year older than Shin and is taller than him

This scene is set over the Haido City hotel. In the distance you can see Shiriyomi Trust Hotel (can't full recognise it behind Kaito but I assure you I drew it lol), Tokyo tower (easy to spot) and Roppongi Hills Mori Tower (Just behind Shin on the right, the one with the lights in a --u-- shape) Main reference: https://www.detectiveconanworld.com/wiki/Haido_City_Hotel

I was also screaming at the Kaishin pic in ED70 throughout this LMAO.

Kaito breaks through Shinichi's mysterious KID persona in this drawing and Shinichi shyly reveals his face behind the mask. Kaito then produces a blue flower, claiming it matches Shinichi's beautiful eyes (he's also the one who bred it)

Kaito has extra pockets sewn into his uniform to carry more tricks. This wasn't really necessary in canon, but here, Kaito has to be prepared to investigate at any moment.

Lmao help me render hair *stares at Kaito's* Cool effect but not quite right. I need to go experiment later.

Kaito/Shin getting shrunk (aka Conan situation) never happens in this au. But Haibara and the other victims are still around. Haibara still lives at the professor's.

~

Background:

Yusaku was much more entangled and involved with Toichi and his fight with the Black Org. Side note but in this au, Snake is from a division of the Black Org

As a result, they both end up being killed during the fateful accident. Yes, both Shinichi and Kaito are there for it. They were going to be introduced to each other on that day, but well,,, we can see the way it ended.

It wasn't well known that the Kuroba and Kudo family were close at all. Extra vigilance was taken after the funerals to ensure their safety. Their families parted ways for the better or worse after thsi event.

Yusaku's and Toichi's friendship/rivalry included collaborating for some heists, having a second secret base in the Kudo mansion, and Yusaku donning the Night Baron costume... even if he was just hidden in a car and sending information to Toichi via an earpiece lol.

After their husbands' deaths, Yukiko and Chikage meet up occasionally and travel together in secret.

~

Shinichi:

Shinichi never became a famous detective. The years after Yusaku died in the tragic accident, Yukiko and him tried their best to move on with varying success. Shinichi's dream to become a famous detective never came to fruition.

This was because for various reasons including not having Yusaku's guiding hand to develop Shin's detective skills, was only being taken to crime scenes for a year, and of course the trauma.

After avoiding detective work as much as he could (well considering that he's still a corpse magnet), Shinichi finally starts to dig through his memories. From then, he uncovered a strange inconsistency with the logic of his father's death and starts to obsess over the idea that it was a murder.

Shin painstakingly and slowly investigates in the shadows with his *ehem* admittedly rusty detective skills and chases after the very little crumbs left by the organisation. What he uncovers is that the accident wasn't one at all, but premeditated murder by an encompassing third party.

Shinichi finally finds a lead to,,, Jii Konosuke. This takes quite a few years, and Shinichi is 15 when he confronts Jii.

Jii reveals everything after Shinichi's deduction and also mistaking him for Kaito. And such Shinichi is brought into the fold. Shinichi also makes up his mind to take on the KID mantle, greatly sympathising with the fellow teen whose father was also involved.

The years after Shinichi uncovers the truth, he learns many skills such as disguise, acting and magic from Jii and Chikage. However, his magic skills will never be on par with Kaito's.

Shinichi in this au has more acting and disguise skills from living with his mother. She passed this skills onto him, and they bonded over it to recover from their grief.

When Shinichi is 17, he officially takes on the role of KID. Chikage permanently locked the KID cave in the Kuroba house, and the KID cave settled in its new home in the Kudo mansion. Inside the second base previously used by Toichi and Yusaku.

Shinichi as KID:

Well, he's just as dramatic as Kaito in canon, but it's a different kind of dramatic. Shin is more of a mysterious and cryptic phantom thief and wears a menacing Night Baron mask. He overall speaks less, and when he does, he says a lot of dramatic lines. Like in theatre almost, with plenty of double meanings.

He takes on a lot of aspects from the Phantom Lady and Jii's interpretation of KID.

And also, I was inspired by the Black Knight, Shiragami in canon, and AngelicSentinel's fantastic fic, Heart of Eternity. I guess you could describe it as more theatrely, cool and princely. He's still very athletic (laughing at Shinichi being Tarzan as Shiragami)

Unlike Kaito, Shin's notices often involve cryptic riddles. It satisfies Shinichi's puzzle loving side and adds to his mysterious reputation.

It's funny to me how Akako's 'Demon of Light' moniker is still accurate haha

Shinichi investigates a little in the shadows and is overall a touch more hot-headed than Kaito KID

He uses a lot more gadgets to cover for his lesser magic skills. He's still learning though! A lot of them are references to Conan's and KID's in canon. Between Jii and Agasa, he gets a lot of them haha. This includes:

Mask/monocle -> voice changer, mask to cover for poker face, zoom and night vision, tracker, microphone and radio, gas mask.

Transmitter/microphone -> button stickers, bugs in general, cufflinks. In some cases, a camera but it must be asked for first. Shin uses these to cover for Kaito's doves in canon.

Wristwatch -> Clock of course for his heist times, tranquilliser, emergency flashbomb (KID has one in canon too)

Shoes -> jet powered rollerskates (equivalent to skateboard). Of course, Shin still kicks things but it looks more to take down the occasional criminal, trigger emergency traps, and more. He doesn't kick often because it doesn't really suit the image of KID + it's a unique skill to have.

+ other usual KID gadgets -> smoke, flash, sleeping bombs, grapple gun, hang glider, etc.

~

Kaito:

He's still an aspiring magician

Since there's a rising amount of cases in Beika, Kaito gets recommended by Nakamori because of his magic skills. The idea is that his knowledge of magic tricks will help uncover the criminals' tricks... Well this includes basically all cases lol. It works though! And the news of Meitantei Kaito starts to spread.

Kaito falls in love with the dramatics and triumphs of figuring out a criminal's trick. He starts to get called into Beika every time a case is discovered. One different to Shin is that Kai gets called to the cases instead of the cases coming to him.

His detective persona is like KID's in canon - flirty, dramatic, confident, charming, a bit of a pervert, and a classic showman's personality. Aoko is sick of it hahaha.

Kai's deduction show is very dramatic. He uses flashy magic tricks to reveal evidence and tricks, and uses his magic to take down criminals.

This includes his acrobatics, trusty card gun and traps he set beforehand. I like to headcanon that Kaito invented his cardgun first before integrating into KID. Kaito's cardgun includes the normal sharp cards (Kaito uses it to pin down criminals with their clothes, cut ropes, etc), tranquilliser laced cards, smoke and flash bombs. And also sleeping bombs but he uses it vary sparingly because even that toes the law a little too much... Megure is exasperated but the criminals are taken down quickly without much harm so he lets it slide

Kaito also follows in the spirit of dubious investigation. He changes his voice, uses his doves to spy on others, uses disguises (very very rarely), and is noisy overall.

Kaito and Hakuba:

Has a detective rivalry with Hakuba.

Hakuba still thinks, even in this au, that Kaito is KID. After all, Shin's profile is very similar to Kaito's. Kaito vehemently denies it but acts like a KID fan around Hakuba to annoy him. He isn't really though, citing KID's magic to be third rate, but he is still intrigued.

Hakuba offhandedly slips in wording and insinuations to Kaito's huge annoyance. You can imagine them bickering at a crime scene while Megure is just Too Used to this.

Much later on, when Kaito learns Shinichi's identity, Kaito tells Shinichi's about Hakuba's warnings. So Kaito is kinda a messenger between the two. Despite Hakuba being annoying, Kaito knows he can trust him.

~ Other character interactions:

Shinichi and Kaito:

Shinichi is still a corpse magnet. So he encounters a case, calls the police, and escapes as fast as he can after giving a witness statement. This is partly to avoid the awkwardness of meeting Megure and the police officers (he hasn't met them since his father died), as well as his new night job.

This results in the most frustrating yet amusing situation where Shin and Kaito miss meeting each other for quite a few years. Shinichi is busy hurrying off while Kaito is called to the scene and busy listening to the details.

Quick sketch I may/may not fully finish in the future:

Description: Set in suburban Beika. Shinichi is at the foreground, looking at his watch and worrying about meeting Jii on time. Meanwhile, next to a police car, Megure merrily discusses case details to Kaito. Kaito is glancing over to Shinichi in curiosity while keeping an ear open. He has his hands in his pockets. Behind Megure, the scene has police tape barring entrance.

~

Kaito thinks KID is a third rate magician but can appreciate the dramatics and mysteriousness. He is Intrigued. This leads to a meeting later on. Kaito uses his connection to Nakamori.

Shinichi is of course startled by Kaito's namedrop.

... Sorry no more details/plan about their meeting. It's definitely a dramatic face off though.

Regarding Shinichi's identity reveal, I was playing around with the idea that Snake is there, threatening the two at gunpoint and sneering over the '"lovely family reunion between father and son". It would definitely spur Kaito to grill Shin for more details

~

Shinichi and Hattori:

Hattori hears about the "Meitantei of the East" and goes off to meet him and challenge him to a deduction battle. He doesn't know how to contact him, so he goes with the strat of wandering around Beika until he runs into a case. He figured that with the high rate of cases being reported, he's eventually run into Kuroba ,,, yeah hahahaha Thats his entire plan

Luckily for Hattori, his detective luck exponentially multiplies with Shin's and a scream runs out. As Shinichi is reporting the crime and tried to head off, Hattori slings an arm around his shoulders to stop him from sneaking off.

Hattori loudly greets him as Kuroba despite Shinichi's insistence that "No, I am NOT Kuroba, please get your arm off me". Insert much scepticism from Hattori.

Even after they part ways, this isn't the last they see of each other. Hattori keeps wandering around Beika while running into Shinichi. They eventually become friends huhu.

Shinichi and the Detective Boys:

The Detective Boys admire Kaito a lot. Obviously they've watched the news reports on TV. So when they see him at the park playing soccer, they glomp him HAHAH Poor Shinichi

At this point I think people mistaking Shinichi as Kaito can be a running gag. The Detective Boys keep annoying Shinichi and even attempt breaking into the 'Edo house' to see the ghosts... Shinichi is still not happy. And also, when they visit Haibara, they're basically next doors so Shinichi's never going to get them out of his life.

Despite the annoyance, he eventually becomes fond of them and takes on the big brother sort of role.

When Kaito and Shinichi get acquainted, they take the DB on outings a lot. The DB is very fond of Kaito-nii-san and Shinichi-nii-san.

[mynnthia]

hypothesis on the ethnic/cultural background of izutsumi's mom

[disclaimer: i am not a professional ethnographer, nor of any of the ethnic groups mentioned in the post. this post was written based on research done over the course of a day.

if you have any corrections, feedback, etc, please feel free to inform me! my inbox/dms are open. if there is any misinformation present, i aim to correct them] ----------

idk if anyone else into dungeon meshi has noticed this, but i think izutsumi's mom (and therefore, izutsumi herself) might've been of Nivkh (indigenous east Siberian) heritage?

[details and explanation under the readmore, its slightly long]

when dungeon meshi chapter 59 came out (~2019), i saw a few people speculating that izutsumi's mom might've been Ainu because of how her clothing style notably differed from typical Japanese clothing.

while the Nivkh robe's trim features a different pattern style (swirly) than what izutsumi's mom wears (triangular), the Nivkh robe still looks to be a closer match than Ainu robes, especially in the collar/neckline & sleeve cuff areas.

note how the Ainu robes (image 2) have a different neckline style and wider sleeves:

heres more images of the robes, but from the past this time, found in Wikimedia Commons:

image 1: Nivkh robe from 1871 image 2: Sakhalin Ainu girl (left), Nivkh boy (center), Hokkaido Ainu girl (right) in 1912

Nivkh people have had interactions with Japan dating back centuries too. heres an exerpt from wikipedia:

"For many centuries, the Nivkh were tributaries of the Manchus. After the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, they functioned as intermediaries between the Russians, Manchu and Japanese, and also the Ainu, who were vassals of the Japanese. Early contact with the southern Sakhalin Ainu was generally hostile, although trade between the two was apparent"

(sorry historians for quoting wikipedia as a source here. a lot of the more reputable sources are 20-200+ page papers, and not concise enough to put on a tumblr post)

the English language wiki doesnt have much more detail on Nivkh-Japan relations unfortunately, but there seems to be more info on the Japanese language version of the page.

i've also seen at least 1 speculation that izutsumi's mom might be Mongolian, as her robe somewhat resembles a Mongolian deel. in my opinion, the robe's neckline trim having patterning makes it resemble the Nivkh robes more. this – combined with the fact that prior to the 1900s, Japan-Mongolia relations consisted mostly of Mongolian forces trying to invade japan repeatedly – makes me think Nivkh (or some other indigenous east Siberian) heritage is more likely.

i wont rule it out entirely though, as i don't know how much Ryōko Kui cares about historical-based cultural relations. regardless, here are various deel styles across different Mongolian ethnic groups, if that is of interest to anyone:

i dont really have a profound conclusion for this post tbh. i wanted to document what i found, and figured i might as well share it to tumblr.

theres limited amounts of easily accessible information on traditional eastern Siberian clothing out there, but here's 1 source i found that goes over a few groups (including Nivkh):

[rorynni]

Hi! do you have some resources for canon facts about eren? Ive been trying to collect some, like the alcohol one, him not succeeding with odm, etc etc but theyre hard to find. Im not on twitter so im at loss. Thankyou

Hi!

Canon facts can be tricky these days! A fair amount of the facts that are often compiled in TikToks or Instagram posts are actually originally headcanons that have been passed around so much that people are no longer aware of where they came from (not that there’s anything wrong with headcanons, but many people get them confused with canon material).

Eren’s page on the Attack on Titan Wiki is a good place to find canon information. All of the material on there has sources cited from various guidebooks, interviews with Isayama, and of course the source material — the manga. You can find it here:

I also have the Attack on Titan guidebooks! They’re super fun to read and have lots of fun facts and interesting information, not just about Eren, but all of the characters and also the world they live in.

Interviews by Isayama are often translated either officially or by fans and can be found in excess here on Tumblr if you know where to look. Normally just searching “Attack on Titan interview/Q&A” will get you some good results.

Thank you for the ask! I hope this was helpful! :)

[majorasnightmare]

I'm surprised that Dirge's pact with Caiphon (seemingly) hasn't backfired on him yet, considering Caiphon is known to betray people who rely on him so heavily. Especially since a part of Caiphon is literally inside his brain at any given moment. I don't know if he thought all of that through as well as he believes he did (remembering you said he doesn't understand how warlocks like Wyll aren't more thorough when making their pacts)

Have you thought about what the "right circumstances" are for their pact to be fufilled? What will happen to Dirge when they are?

honestly my only source for caiphon was a dragon article poorly photocopied YEARS ago that primarily focused on the fact it existed, and the various unique spells it offers. so most of my experience with caiphon was a single little blurb about how it entreated knowledge seekers! the fact its so betrayal prone doesnt surprise me in the slightest, but it IS new information! so most of this characterization is me looking at dnd content they didn't bring into 5e (regular 5e, havent checked out 2024) and saying My City Now. i am. significantly less canon compliant with a setting last published in 3.5 with a semi reliable wiki (at least. in 2017. its probably better now) and i more or less just expand on the little i have access to. basically, if you cant find it in bg3, im adding "source: it came to me in a dream" onto everything else i do sjdksjdmshfj

There IS a sizable language barrier there (caiphon being. a sentient star mass that only kiiiiinda can take a perceivable form and even then its a faulty approximation) so they had to negotiate in extremely loose terms as they werent mutually understandable. More or less a mutual fulfillment of desires. Caiphon would grant Dirge's desire, if Dirge would grant Caiphon's. Caiphon craves new and novel information, and Dirge desired freedom, so from the get go Caiphon is set up to get what it wants more or less immediately. Dirge is in a very unique position, set up by extenuating circumstances to do a LOT of interesting things, because up until Dirge and his brothers, Bhaal made spawn the Classic Way. So with Dirge being denied death, and heavily radicalized, there was NO way that WASN'T going to blow up spectacularly. Caiphon wanted front row seats to whatever historical event Dirge enacted that would scar Faerun forever. And it got that, and more! The inner workings of the cult, the relationships Dirge has with the other bhaalspawn, the intimate goings on with the cult of Bane through Gortash, the creation of the Steel Watch, the creation of the Absolute, the heist for the Crown of Karsus. Damn thing made out like a bandit. To say its satisfied would be an understatement, especially because it VERY much has the impression its exploiting Dirge, because of how little its (from its perspective) offering in return. The GOO lock options in game aren't really antagonistic, and I like to interpret that as Caiphon and Dirge unironically getting along fairly amicably.

Dirge meanwhile desired freedom, which, given his circumstances, was very much a One Big Event and then Done kinda deal. So his warlock powers are more or less confirmation they're still in a partnership together, which is part of why on the first night post nautiloid, Dirge can't actually recollect anything about the pact but feels Caiphon's power anyways. Its really kind of hands off for both of them. Caiphon's content to let Dirge use whatever he can figure out and master, because it isn't really doing much besides eavesdropping. Dirge's pact is fulfilled in the temple of Bhaal, when he rejects his father. Caiphon is able to transgress upon the material plane thanks to reality bowing to the terms of the pact, because as Dirge has fulfilled his end, he MUST be fully and totally freed of Bhaal. Thus his pact manifests physically and begins to utterly destroy the Temple, to break the foundation of power Bhaal has in the city, desecrating its holy ground, and snapping the tether to the Throne of Blood now that Dirge is fully disinherited, and Caiphon animates Dirge just enough to let him limp his way out of the city to camp, carrying Orin's gore streaked corpse, before completely collapsing. Caiphon didn't possess the capability to break Bhaal's bond to Dirge but it COULD ensure Bhaal couldn't ensnare him again. This does mean Dirge has to negotiate a new pact when Withers revives him, and getting a Witness for the ritual is a haaaard sell given. All That. (gortash will NOT do that shit again).

Dirge's second pact is similar to the first, having built up a solid amount of good will from the first pact. With Withers maintaining his life, Dirge more or less just desires power to enact his goals like he has been, and Caiphon still craves new novel information. So Caiphon shacks back up in his brain, and still uses Dirge's eye, and Dirge keeps all his warlock levels.

After the Absolute crisis is handled, Dirge feeds his pact by using Caiphon's power with the Necromancy of Thay to begin pioneering a new form of necromantic magic that gestates new soulless life out of dead raw material.

Fun fact! Because your GOOlock patron can chime in when getting the Blood of Lathander, I personally like to characterize Caiphon as finding pleasure in acts of blasphemy, and in sharing Dirge's fondness for magic artifact goodies. So because of that, Caiphon actually points out the Ersatz Eye in Volo's possession before Volo brings it up, but insinuates Volo won't give it up except out of guilt, so Dirge white knuckles it through the Volo lobotomy. They're both under the impression they're exploiting the other, because neither of them really has to lift a finger for their pact, but its mutually satisfying so they have a good relationship with each other. Caiphon is not immune to charismatic tiefling spawn. They chat occasionally in Dirge's mind, and Caiphon has a decent grasp on common, but it'd still be a profoundly uncomfortable experience for literally anyone that isn't Dirge.

[thelostgirl21]

Well, here goes nothing! Wish me luck!

For those of you that are curious to see the articles I'm mentioning...

Collider article

Looper article

Screen Rant article #1

Screen Rant article #2

Screen Rant article #3

Dual Shockers article #1

Dual Shockers article #2

The worst (and most incendiary) of them is likely the "Looper" one, with claims things such as: Unlike Eskel's (Basil Eidenbenz) character, who had fans fuming during "The Witcher" Season 2, there is no point in introducing Radovid if we're not going to follow his villainous origin story. This is the man behind hateful anti-magic rhetoric that propels this universe to fight for magic users' safety.

Although the "Dual Shockers" one, starting with "Imagine if the cunning but despicable Cersei Lannister was made out to be a harmless love interest in HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones – the fans would riot – and something similar is happening in Netflix’s The Witcher" isn't bad, either, by making it sound like Sapkowski devoted as much ink to buidling up his villain as R.R. Martin did building up Cersei! And that both share a similar presence and importance in their respective books series.

And the image I sent them a link to:

Am I too optimistic hoping this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship?

Because, while the moderators (bureaucrats, administrators, specialists...) haven't been trying to necessarily imply that I was wrong with my edits (ex: adding a footnote specifying that Ciri was not officially engaged to Radovid in canon), there's been a lot of:

"This [picture making a compilation of everything Sapkowski wrote] isn't needed/we just cite books and page numbers."

"We generally don't put markers into the intros."

"The intro paragraphs generally will ref across lore particularly from well established chars but the first parts of his bio are from the books and the dynasty site."

"We don't really include a lot of quotes unless it's important."

Guys, I can fully acknowledge that this is how things have always been done.

But the way things have always been done is currently contributing to the spread of misinformation about the content of the source material, and making things very unpleasant for fans of the books and the TV show.

So, maybe we need to do things differently?

The dynasty site is not an issue itself because all of that extra information came from Andrzej Sapkowski himself.

An article stating "in the books, Radovid has two sisters" is technically talking about things that aren't directly stated in the books, true; but that are still featured in the extra information that was released to the public about those books by the author.

One would thus reasonably expect that such information be included in the introduction of the character on the Wiki, as it belongs to the same lore and the same universe as the books, and fully reflects the author's intent.

The videogames don't. They aren't a companion piece to Sapkowski's books. They simply use Sapdkowski's universe as a skeleton, upon which they built more material.

Having made sure to avoid contradicting (or not contradicting too much) what has already been written by the author in the books does not give you any license to appropriate his work, and then claim that what you've written exists in the same universe / belongs to the same lore as those books!!!

Especially when the author himself has already made his opinion very clear that the videogames can't be considered as being a prequel, sequel, or complement to his work.

And has had his own share of issues with the way the videogames rose to the level of popularity it has.

Full disclosure, the first time I heard about the books, I genuinely thought that Andrzej Sapkowki was the equivalent of David Gaider in North America (one of the lead writers for Bioware). I thought he'd written original material for the games and various books based on those characters, the same way David Gaider had written material for the "Dragon Age" videogames and extra books based on the videogame lore that he'd helped build and establish.

But Sapkowki's books were never written with videogames or TV shows in mind.

I'm a gamer. So, unlike Sapkowski, I do love when stories are told across a bunch of different mediums. I loved learning more about the relationship between Maric Theirin (Alistair's father) and Loghain Mac Tir in Gaider's book "The Stolen Throne".

But David Gaider is a writer that will collaborate with a whole team of writers to create characters and stories that populate that world across a variety of mediums.

It is normal and respectful for the Dragon Age wiki to integrate everything found in the books and the games together in the introduction the way they do on that page, as it is all part of the same world!

But not when they aren't.

I can fully understand that Sapkowski isn't a fan of that approach. I may not share his opinions about it making no sense and being idiotic, obviously; but I can understand and appreciate that he doesn't see any appeal to it, and has no desire or interest to participate in that kind of global world building.

And I especially don't think there's anything wrong with him wanting each adaptation of his work to be considered their very bown thing, rather than be all part the same lore / universe.

He's allowing other people to give him money to use characters and worlds he's built virtually any way they'd like, and enjoy themselves!

The least we could do should be to respect that "The Witcher" 's videogames and "The Witcher" 's books aren't tightly woven together the same way "Dragon Age" 's videogames and "Dragon Age" 's books are, and have it being reflected in the Wikipedia.

Or, at least, reflected enough that it doesn't end up generating such confusion that the actual content of Sapkowski's books series get substituted with CD Projekt Red's writings on entertainment websites articles, for frak's sake!

By the way, thanks @fishesfisher for having reminded me that there's literally no reason why one adaptation should be sharing the same page as the books, other than trying to pretend that they are both part of the same universe.

Not sure I'd be able to win that argument (about putting three different tabs rather than a single one: one for the books, one for the games, and one for the Netflix show), but I sure hope they (the mods, admins, specialists, etc.) should care enough that the situation is completely going against Sapkowski's wishes that his books and the videogames be considered as two different stories being told by different writers rather than part of a single universe; as well as causing needless harm to the fans of the books and the TV show.

And that they'll be willing to discuss potential ways we could use to fix this in order to allow the source material and its adaptations to coexist more respectfully on the main page, and avoid such confusion.

If they don't... Is there any way to ask for a divorce from the general wikipedia of the Witcher?

I mean the videogame also has its very own additional gaming wikipedia , on top of the one that was created for the books and its adaptations.

Can we create a "Books only Wikipedia" and a "Netflix only Wikipedia"?

Like seriously. Why should the game need its own wikipedia if they're going to be front and center on "The Witcher" 's general wiki anyway, and they don't give a damn about what Sapkowski wants?

I'd rather have each member of my Witcher family live in separate homes and go visit each one individually, than watch them constantly fighting each other and ignoring each other's needs!

If divorce is the only way to ensure that the books get accurate representation, and the media stops being confused about what goes where, sign me the fuck up!

Well, after I see if there's any opening in fixing things first. I mean, maybe they just don't know that Sapkowski doesn't consider the games as belonging to the same lore/universe as the books...

Like I said, this could actually be the start of a beautiful friendship!

[jamiebluewind]

Shubble and Wilbur situation

This is a post compiling links to all the information on the Shelby Grace aka Shubble (formerly lilshortysgs, she/they) and William Patrick Spencer Gold aka Wilbur Soot (formerly SootHouse Wilbur and current lead singer of Lovejoy, he/him) situation that I have found. I tried my best to keep my language neutral and put all the data in one easy to look through place so that everyone can see it and make their own decisions (I also attempted to reblog most of it myself so that the version linked is frozen to the one that existed when I read it). I've included a post with the public reactions of content creators, which - while decidedly not neutral - show the public reactions of a lot of people who knew one or both of them at the time.

That being said, I'm one person. I probably missed plenty of stuff and there is most likely new information that has came out since I posted this, but I tried my best with what I had while also sick with bronchitis. The post I personally made on the subject is linked at the very bottom (I wanted to be as transparent as possible).

Anyway, here is everything I've gathered.

(Also, for anyone who is still learning English, bias in this case means something that sways opinion one way or the other)

The re-upload of Shubble's video on YouTube (Post where video was taken from is at the bottom of this post due to containing the opinion of a tumblr user)

Post that describes Shubble's video in text form for anyone who can't watch the video

Note: Text concerning the video is fairly neutral and accurate (other than Wilbur's name being used which was not stated in the video and was revealed later), but the last paragraph at the bottom contains @mysticalblue09 's opinion as someone who does not personally know Shubble or Wilbur (as far as I am aware), so be mindful of that.

Link to Wilbur's appology on Twitter/X

https://x.com/WilburSoot/status/1762505851699380353?s=20https://x.com/WilburSoot/status/1762505851699380353?s=20

Post with image of Wilbur's appology and a compilation of reactions (bias warning). Original post by @raixkim with additions by @galaxyempire-lilith (both all verified by me) and myself (all images save a link to one reaction and embedded video of another)

Note: I went through various minecraft roleplay wikis and former and current members of Lovejoy and added as many screenshots as I was allowed to in my reply (image limit) on March 4th (then I got to sick to finish the post). This is only to show how people in their circle at the time and former and current Lovejoy members publicly reacted to the news and not to gossip or shame someone for what they did or did not say. (Also, I genuinely attempted to find public posts by someone who knew one or both of them that was supporting Wilbur or even not supporting Shubble to keep my addition neutral, but I found none on my own after going through multiple discords and over 70 Twitter/X profiles, so I had to eventually give up)

Shelby's full statement on Wilbur's apology (just images)

Direct link to it on Twitter/X

https://x.com/shelbygraces/status/1763623249416704219?s=20

----------

Below are links to a couple how tos, links to posts by tumblr users that contains personal bias, and my own post on the topic. These things are all by people not directly affiliated with the parties involved. While most of them are not actively combative, most show some level of bias towards Wilbur Soot/Gold. I put all of them at the bottom because I wanted readers to make up their own minds without being influenced by my opinions or the opinions of people not connected to Shubble or Wilbur. Hopefully by this point, you'll know if you want to read more or stop here.

My personal reaction

Ideas on what to do with merch from things you no longer like/want to support by @elfchaos

Bands similar to Lovejoy by @st4rryskiescO

Tip: You can block an artist on Spotify mobile (some sites say it doesn't work on desktop) by going to the artist profile, clicking the 3 dot menu, and selecting "Don't play this." As of this time, I could not find a similar feature on Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, or Pandora other than individually disliking songs.

The post I found the Shubble video embedded in with a list of what @proudfreakmetarusonniku felt they learned during the video

Post that contains the opinions of @mor-starz on Wilbur's influence going forward. Includes a link to a video that summarizes everything (video wasn't linked in the previous section because while it is the closest to neutral I found, there was still bias in the video and thumbnail)

A post with reactions of Wilbur's reddit community and some of his mods by @megastrangeskeleton

Since then, all twitch mods have been removed/unmodded by Wilbur as well as the bot that linked to charities. According to multiple former mods (including kalli which can be found on twitter/x), someone made a new account on May 1st that is a Simpson's reference (jebediahspringfield12345), followed Wilbur, and was modded by Wilbur within minutes of following, leading them to believe that Wilbur made an alt account (named after a show he's known to enjoy) and then made that account a mod to avoid getting banned for having an unmodded account.

[traincat]

Random question but do you know if the 616 Coffee Bean gang and Felicia have canonical birthdays?

Oh, this is a tough one. Superhero comics birthdays are a little rough -- sometimes there's no information, sometimes there's contradicting information, sometimes there's a birthday but it's for one Eisner winning miniseries that is about the fictional "real people" who, in the comic, inspired the superhero characters. (And even in that example it was two different birthdays, one in the single issues and one in the trade.)

I don't think there's an "official" canonical birthday for Peter. I've seen a lot of people use Spider-Man Day -- August 1st -- as his birthday, because it's the anniversary of Amazing Fantasy #15, Peter's very first appearance. Even though it isn't, actually, the anniversary -- there's conflicting dates for the release of Amazing Fantasy #15. Some information says it actually came out June 5th, other information says August 10th. So you can see how we're getting tricky already. I don't think there's anything wrong with using any of those dates for Peter's birthday, but if you're someone who wants one specific date -- there just isn't one. I know his passport is flashed in Spider-Man: Far From Home, although I can't remember if the date is shown (and I'm not looking at that movie again), so it's possible there's a concrete birthday that could be pointed to for MCU!Peter. But would it apply to 616!Peter? Shrug. That's the kind of thing people need to decide for themselves. Personally, I think the Amazing Fantasy #15 dates (all of the various ones) are really interesting if you wanted to run an astrological chart to look at the impact of the character on our world -- his continued relevance, the shifts in characterization and tone throughout the decades, how he reflects and is reflected upon by our real world. But that's a different thing than an in-universe canon birthday.

And it's difficult to use first appearances as birthdays for the other characters in the gang -- you could for Mary Jane and Felicia, if you wanted, but Harry and Gwen appear for the first time in the same issue, which would give them the same birthday by that rule, and the same goes for Flash, who appears for the first time in Amazing Fantasy #15 alongside Peter.

Harry does have a birthday listed in canon -- Dark Web #1 says his birthday in December 13th. I don't have any particular feelings on this or reason not to just go with it, aside from my deep and burning hatred for the whole Dark Web event. It's a little cute if Harry Osborn, given the sliding timescale, was born on the exact same day as Taylor Swift. He has the energy.

For Gwen and Mary Jane -- we don't have birth dates in 616. We do have issues that contain birthday parties. And I really need to get my refs folder back on my laptop because this would go so much faster if I could just look it up that way. (If you google "Mary Jane Watson birthday" it will tell you August 19th, but that's from someone's wiki for their fan project. There seems to be a general September birthday for Gwen from ITSV, but I don't know if I would choose to use that for 616 Gwen, personally. That's another "you gotta do you" situation.) Spectacular Spider-Man #9's backup story, Sweet Revenge, features a surprise birthday party for MJ, explicitly on her birthday. Again, the older comic dates screw us a little bit -- the cover date is September. The information I can dig up says this was actually released May 16th. Gwen has a birthday party in Amazing Spider-Man #87.

Again, I have conflicting dates for this one, but it's a little funny -- the two dates I've found are August 1st and August 10th, two of the dates given for Amazing Fantasy #15's release date. I kind of like the idea that it's actually Gwen's birthday that the grand Peter celebration falls on. There's something very starcrossed lovers about a date assumed to be Peter's birthday actually being Gwen's. Something something how intertwined Gwen is with the text, long after her death.

For Felicia -- I have nothing, unfortunately. I can't think of anything that would even give us a reference to get close to a month, let alone a date. The same goes for Flash. If anyone knows differently, please let me know!

[mornyavie]

The vanishing of the video game instruction booklet is really shaping how We As Gamers talk about older video games I think.

(yes my-smial this is about the videos you think it's about)

Because back in Ye Olden Days big video games often came with a little info booklet in the packaging, and they still do that but they no longer have Game Information in those booklets mostly. And they used to do a lot of that! But remakes don't have them, digital downloads (official or, ahem, community-supported) don't have them, even stuff like wiki articles usually has next to no information on them, and that really changes the context in which certain aspects of old games play out.

Specifically, older games often have the reputation of being very low on information and forcing you to experiment and figure things out for yourself, and while there's definitely games where that's true, also often there's just a manual that came with the original packaging that they assume you read.

I'm watching this poor guy do a blind playthrough of A Link to the Past, and he has no idea what any of the items even do, there's very little explanatory text in the game. So for instance he's spent almost two hours of gameplay having no real idea what the boomerang does, and coming to various slightly-wrong conclusions about what enemies are immune to it, what the stun condition does, etc.

One could conclude that the game doesn't tell players much and has bad explanations/tutorials.

But you weren't supposed to figure it out through blind experimentation, you were supposed to go look up "boomerang" in the little booklet that came in the game box:

The very first Zelda game doesn't just plop you into an open world with no instruction, it comes with a guidebook on how to get started.

These booklets are also where some of the lore/story is explained, in games with little storage for conversations and cutscenes.

So like when modern games try to emulate a "retro" feel in a game by being low on information, or when modern gamers do "blind" playthroughs, they aren't always accessing the Pure Developer-Intended Artistic Experience that they sell this as. Sometimes the developer intended them to have a lot more information!

(Which of course is not how everyone always experienced the game; people were always buying used and playing their older siblings' games and throwing out the manual without reading it.)

[dreamcatcher-roulette]

Since I enjoy collecting things (big surprise) this year I've been working on collecting every Dreamcatcher music show performance in a quality that doesn't suck ass (aka not the seven pixels that YouTube compresses the official uploads down to). It went pretty well!

Pseudo research report under the cut (because I'm a massive nerd).

Scope

I started this project with the goal of collecting a full set of "music show performances". I didn't realise quite how ambiguous that definition is. After some deliberation I settled on the following as constituting "regular" performances:

Show Music Core

Inkigayo

The Show

Show Champion

M! Countdown

Music Bank

Simply K-Pop

Everything else I classified as misc. Most notably I left K-Force Special Show in the misc category despite there being quite a few performances on that show in the early days. This mostly came down to how I'm storing the files — I've organised the regular ones by era, but the K-Force Special Show performances frequently happened in between comebacks making them difficult to sort in that fashion. That and difficulties in ascertaining whether I do actually have all of them.

Methodology

The first step in collecting anything is finding out what you need to collect. I was surprised at how difficult it actually is to get a complete list of all of a group's music show performances. There are some fan sites which do a good job of presenting a lot of well categorised individual links to Dreamcatcher's appearances but I was hoping for something more "from the source" (aka the music shows themselves) and ideally machine readable to cross check that nothing is missing, since, for example, a collection of links to all official Inkigayo performance uploads is not a list of all Inkigayo performances (some never got official uploads). I ended up finding /r/kpop's music shows wiki fit my needs the most. The information is all in tables and sorted by music show and date which what I wanted.

Unfortunately, the main tables of /r/kpop's music show wikis only list debuts and comebacks, so I had to index and search all the individual pages to find what I was looking for. This involved spending a couple of afternoons opening up nearly 2,000 tabs of Reddit* and then downloading them using the SingleFile browser extension (Reddit rate limits you quite harshly and so I had to open a bunch of tabs, check they loaded, wait, and then repeat, which slowed it down a lot). While maybe a little overkill I did this for multiple reasons. Firstly, Reddit's search sucks, and I didn't trust it to find all instances of what I was looking for over so many pages. In contrast Everything's in-memory file content index beta is really good. But secondly, this is much more extensible, and now I can find any other group's performances as well (between 2017** and 2023).

*Reddit does not archive Simply K-Pop well at all (which caused some initial confusion), but the official Arirang website works fine as an alternative (albeit one that is somehow even slower than Reddit at opening new pages).

**Reddit's music show wiki pages start right before 2017. This is very convenient for a Dreamcatcher archivist, but, unfortunately for me, curiosity got the better of me and I did venture further out into the unknown. For 2014-2017 I have some scattered archives from various official websites, Twitter accounts, and Korean catch up services. I'm less confident in my music show data for this period in the general case but because the rough start and end dates for the two Minx promotion cycles are known I am confident enough that all the gaps I have in there are genuine gaps and that I'm not missing a performance date.

Once I had my wishlist I then had to go out and, you know, find them. And figure out what "best quality" actually means. I learned a lot about video encoding against my will. I also learned that HEVC is fucking haunted. When multiple sources were available I ranked them as follows:

2160p HEVC > 2160p h264 > 1080p HEVC (one weird edge case I didn't know what to do with) > 1080i h264 > 1080i MPEG2 > WEBDL (usually some kind of web livestream or online catch up service recording) > YouTube

Which I represented in my spreadsheet as:

This should be mostly uncontroversial, however, there is a slight complication in that the 4k broadcast copies are not all native 4k but often upscaled from the 1080 source (I can't find specifics on this as the information, if publicly accessible, would be in Korean, and there is only so much Google Translate can do, but the technical broadcasting details probably aren't public to the extend I am interested in regardless so I'm mostly basing this off information gleaned from secondary sources). As far as I can tell there exist two "grades" of upscales: one of which is upscaled by the network before being pushed out to a UHD channel, and one of which is upscaled by the end user by either recording a HD channel in 4k or running an existing recording through an upscaler. Traditionally upscales aren't very desirable due to providing no real material benefit you couldn't get from playing the 1080 copy on a 4k display yourself. Or, for people with an archival mindset like myself, because ones that actually look a bit crisper introduce "magic" pixels which may or may not have ever existed. See below for an example of this taken to the extreme (note the faces):

No one wants that, right? AND YET SOMEONE THOUGHT THAT WAS SUCH A BIG IMPROVEMENT THEY DELETED EVERYTHING ELSE, AND NOW IT REMAINS THE ONLY COPY I CAN FIND. Monsters!!! Anyway.

While upscales usually aren't desirable, I did come around to the idea that the network upscales deserve their place at the top of the list. There are a couple of points working in their favour: one is that they are, presumably, upscaled much more directly from the source, allowing them to avoid some of the data loss that being encoded into 1080i h264 and then upscaled would cause. The second is that quite a lot of them are encoded directly into HEVC, which makes the confetti and flashing lights look noticably smoother than the regular deinterlaced 1080i copies. Also, finally, as a touch of personal preference (especially in the case of 4k h264 where the second point doesn't apply), these do come pre-deinterlaced which is nicer for my chosen method of playback. Although some of those points apply to non network upscales too, the "impurity" of them far outweighs any benefit in my eyes, as I have more faith in whatever the network standard is than some random person on the internet trying to "fix" a file.

So how did I tell the difference? Also a frustratingly difficult problem, one which applies not just to spotting fake upscales but also to finding real TV recordings instead of lower quality catch up service clips. For the 1080 copies one of the biggest things was that the TV broadcast copies (unfortunately) always come through in 1080i. 1080p is suspicious. It means something has been touched (although sometimes in a way that is forgivable when nothing cleaner exists). File sizes are also a good sanity check. A single song in h264 should be in the 200-400MiB range, MPEG2 is 400MiB+. (For reference YouTube, and other inferior WEBDLs, usually come in at under 100MiB). This is a good reminder of why size does not always equal quality, because, in this scenario, worst to best is 100MiB < 450MiB < 250MiB.

On the 4k side: Music Bank, Show Music Core and Inkigayo are currently broadcast on UHD channels with a UHD variant of their channel names in the top right, which is a good indicator that something was recorded from a UHD source. (Although I've found 1080p copies recorded from UHD channels, so the presence of the logo doesn't mean no downscaling has occurred). Recent "4k" M! Countdown, Show Champion and The Show recordings, in comparison, appear identical in channel watermark to the 1080 copies. This and the fact that the only 4k copies I've found are from a source known to dabble in AI upscales means that I'm not going to trust these are genuine without further proof, and this was the main category of files which I decided against adding to my collection. (Note that The Show was in the past the only show that was broadcast in 4k, first on UMAX UHD and then on SBS F!L UHD, it is only recently that that seems to have stopped (or, no one has been recording it)). I paid less attention to the 4k file sizes than for 1080. 4k HEVC seems to come in pretty reliably at just under 1GiB, but 4k h264 is all over the place due to I think some differing quality profiles between uploaders (a range of 1GiB to nearly 3GiB). The latter is annoying because it means I can't figure out what the "true" recording should be, but I did develop an internal ranking of the trustworthiness of sources which was the tiebreaker when two differently sized 4k h264 recordings existed.

I prioritised collecting existing cuts where applicable (although many were not cut nearly as meticulously frame perfectly as I would like) but there were quite a few where I had to cut them out of full broadcast recordings myself. There were also instances where only the main performance was saved in 4k leaving interviews behind. In those cases I decided to keep the highest quality available for the bits in which it was and store the other segments separately.

Results

Alright, the fun stuff! I have successfully catalogued:

317 Dreamcatcher music show performances

34 Dreamcatcher miscellaneous appearances

46 Minx music show performances

16 Minx miscellaneous appearances

Those links go to mostly complete YouTube representations of what I found with exceptions listed in the descriptions of the playlists. You can also of course find a published version of my beautiful spreadsheet here. Finally, if you've made it this deep I would like to just quietly tell you I'm more than happy to share the originals, but please message me privately as I don't want to publicly host questionably copyrighted content on my good and morally upstanding posting images of dreamcatcher photobooks blog (for legal reasons the entire existence of this collection is a joke).

Honestly I'm pretty happy with the completeness of the collection after my first pass. The list of ones I would consider "missing" (aka not good enough quality) is:

It's almost all Simply K-Pop, which makes sense as it seems to not be archived with the same enthusiasm as the others. The missing M! Countdown, meanwhile, does kind of hurt, since it's ruining an otherwise perfect run. I'm out of ideas for now but am not going to give up on it forever, I have seen evidence that proper recordings exist, so I'm sure they have got to resurface eventually.

As can be seen in the breakdown for this section the percentage of MPEG2 recordings is also a pretty major victory, with the vast majority being h264:

For Minx things look a bit worse:

But then again I hadn't been expecting much to begin with. To be honest, watching all of these to check quality did drive me a little insane. There is a reason I don't own Love Shake and Why Did You Come To My Home, and it's not purely the irresponsible financial decision, it's the thought of spending that much money on something I actually really don't like. Watching Minx performances is amusing for a little while, but man, am I glad Dreamcatcher exists instead.

It's also evident that people were holding to completely different standards even just a few years earlier, as this is where all those MPEG2s in the overall numbers are hiding:

Future Work

While I'm confident I've successfully catalogued the "music show performances" as defined in the scope, I know there is still much more to be discovered under Misc Appearances, as those were filled in not via a predefined wish list but just by what other recordings I happened across in my search for the original goal. The obvious next step would to be a little more systematic about finding out what I'm missing in that category by scouring some Dreamcatcher specific archives, but because I've already exhausted the full collections of my two main sources of recordings I'm not confident I would uncover many more performances outside of YouTube in that way, which isn't really that appealing.

I'm probably more likely going to do something about my performance outfit images collection which has been slowly but steadily increasing over the years. I'd like to put them into a proper searchable database alongside performance dates, which would have a similar effect of cataloguing the missing performances, but with the visual element that the spreadsheet lacks.

But then again, I also might not :)

[dark-falz]

Actually. Another thing I thought of would be doing a stream while gathering information, especially when it comes to Phantasy Star lore.

I know a good handful of PSO lore and little of others, but what I have for the original series is what’s in wiki’s and what I can find from people talking about in various forums from 2008.

I’ve been able to track a good few correspondences such as the rule of 3.

Motavia - MUUT - Red - Forest - Foie

Dezoris - DITTS - Blue - Caves - Barta

Palma - POUMN - Green - Mines - Zonde

With the “Heart of Poumn” description in PSO we know this is Alis Landale’s weapon from the original game, signifying POUMN represents Palma.

Rico translates of the MUUT DITTS POUMN pillars, “Light makes darkness, a pair exists, but it doesn’t always exist. Reincarnation goes forever. the rule is here. It should be sealed. MUUT DITTS POUMN”

So 2 things here... 1. I believe the light/darkness this mentions could be referring to Rykros 2. In Legend of Zelda what do they do when they can’t beat Ganon even tho u always beat Ganon. Yeah he gets sealed.

That whole inscription Rico translated, is likely the seal itself, with MUUT DITTS POUMN being the magic words for the sources of power. And in my head, it sounds like “lets take the profound darkness and just push it somewhere else” as this would confirm the ruins are indeed a spaceship from the Algol Star System of the original series used to seal Dark Falz and get it the fuck out.

There is also Dr. Osto who’s a whole individual and I’m pretty sure he’s a low-key evil magician, however I feel as though I can’t get enough information on him. I’m aware of the Mother Project and Delta and how Olga, Calus, and Vol Opt are born of her and that whole thing but I’VE NEVER SEEN DELTA AND I DON’T THINK I’VE SEEN CALUS AND IT BOTHERS ME BUT I DON’T WANNA DO THE BULLSHIT and it’d be nice to have others to talk to about that stuff u feel. I honestly have a small handful of info on him, but don’t even know where to get started with that so I’ll leave him out for now.

Lastly, from what I’ve deducted of all this is the Algolian Seal (Photon Blast/Title Screen) seems to be an interpretation of a hexagram seal. (I’ll show a diagram at some point) Note the Algolian Seal’s presence during the time of Pioneer 2 connecting with the Central Dome, and when the explosion occurred. In the ruins, Rico mentions in a log “What is this big hole? It looks like...remnants of some type of energy explosion...energy..?” Dr. Montague mentions weapons are made from “Compressed Photon Energy” and goes onto mention that the Photon Energy drawn from the creatures underground are of a “different Photon Energy”.

Ugh basically what I’m about to say is the “Why’s” or “What’s” regarding the explosion are...a lot but it guess it could be chopped up to “corruption somewhere on ragol” - error from input due to corruption of falz - energy excited Falz - Dr. Osto fucking with shit OR - Use of MUUT DITTS POUMN in the Algolian Seal.

or all of it.

But however there is also the consideration of possession we need to consider which happens in “From the Depths” along with hallucinations. Those who are possessed speak for falz about “evolving themself”. This is also relevant with Dr. Osto and his projects, but again. Not enough info. I also find it interesting that Rico at the start of the game mentions when going off to investigate the explosion, “I feel like I’m being invited”.

Back to the seal, there are 2 parts of this that move separately. Those are the 3 circles where the planets Palma, Motavia, and Dezoris are symbolized, and the outer ring of text before the middle most circle, “I wish it at an alliance from several years ago.” I can only imagine this phrase came from specifically making this seal for Pioneer 1 and 2, as its the only “alliance from several years” I can think of to take place in the timeline with several meaning 7, the amount of years it took for pioneer 2 to reach Ragol, if that is correct. Anyway, I believe this is an invocation chant, along with the planets being part of the sources of power. Now the inner ring of text which moves with the Photon Blast names reads “Please protect us be virtue of you’re the Great Light Power” Great Light Power is referring to a divine holy being. On outer most rings of Magic Circles (where the Photon Blasts are) this is where divine are used to indicate times, as there is a divine being for every day, time, hour, etc. The Photon Blast’s appear to be used as indicators of lesser divine beings than that of the main “Great Light Power” (in simplest terms, angels to the god) This leaves me to believe the middle circle of the seal represents Rykros, as stated in the spaceship pillars that sealed Falz “Light makes darkness. A pair exists, but it doesn’t always exist.” ...so...I guess...if the people of the Algol Star system used the Great Light Power to seal the Profound Darkness (as the symbol on the pillars of PSO is the same as the one on for example Nei’s chest or a few other Original Phantasy Star characters) AND the planets Palma, Motavia, and Dezoris....this is what could have further weakened the seal, through correspondence, and caused the explosion.

Anyway still trying to understand the zodiacs on Dark Falz’s arena.

If anyone has any further information about any of this please share! I’d love to learn more about this.

[hanako-san]

actually in regard to the "hanakos favorite animals are rabbits" thing, thats been around on the wiki since at Least summer of 2020 so its unrelated to the halloween thing since that came like. way way after the fact. idk where people got it either but it was not from halloween

Thanks for correcting me. I also don't know where people got it from, but suggest wiki … without exaggeration, there everyone can write various nonsense like this about Amane and rabbits. Wiki is not really a good source of information. Anyone can add anything they want there.

I checked and most of them come from either the bonus mangas or the original manga, but so far there has been no information that Amane likes rabbits, cats, etc. I'm up to date with the manga and this is kind of weird to me. Where is the information that Mokkas look like rabbits to him? All we know is that he can't beat them at cards.

are 3 options 1) It's a lie 2) or this information is somewhere (doubtful) because I think our great translators would translate it for us and I'm also active on Twitter so.. so far I haven't heard such information.

3) interview with AidaIro (that seems most likely to me), but they could also have given such information in the bonus manga, spin off, in the original manga, as well as other things like that he likes Katanuki

But even in 2020, I haven't heard or read that Amane likes cats, rabbits, and thinks Mokkes look like rabbits to him. In fact, how do they know what he's thinking? Since his thoughts are shrouded in mystery to us.

Even you anon don't know where they got it from…so I guess that says a lot.

Thank you for the ask

[nanakibh]

Show Off Your Aesthetics! Akademeia Autumn Arts Festival

Thank you for playing Final Fantasy Agito. We are pleased to introduce the new event.

[Request]

Oh my, how lucky of me to run into you here.

Don't you think we Agito cadets are going back to fighting a little too much?

I don't think it's good for us to be spending all of our time that way.

So, I have a proposal.

What if all of the cadets make paintings and display them in an exhibition together?

Hey, hey! Isn't that a good idea? I'm sure that a lot of people would want to come see artwork made by Agito cadets.

I'll take care of the venue and things, so you guys should work on the paintings that will be displayed.

Huh?! There aren't enough canvases? Should've known... Then, how about this! If you go to this place, you can get your hands on magic canvases. Do your best to get some. I'll be counting on you!

Carla Ayatsugi

---

Updated ~20:00 Tuesday, November 25th, 2014

Thank you for playing Final Fantasy Agito. We will now announce the results of the event.

[Report]

Huhuhu, the exhibition was a smashing success! Incredible! I'm a genius!

At this rate, I should be able to recoup the money I spent on the preparations right away. I knew it was a good idea to include pictures of the artists next to their paintings!

Ah, your paintings also attracted quite a bit of attention. There were some people who wanted to purchase them right on the spot.

Mm-hmm. Money is what's most important to me, though. Art is profound.

Hm?

Huh?! What?! Instructor... Kurasame?! What are you doing here?

A-and Chairman Khalia, too...

Err, um... You see, this is... I-it's volunteer work, of course!

Yes! Yes, indeed! It's nothing out of the ordinary!

Oh dear, who could have done this? Who would spread such awful lies about my work!

I will donate the proceeds to the less fortunate! We are all aspiring to be Agito, after all! So it's obviously the least I could do!

Yes! Now, please take care, you two!

... ...

... ... ... ...

... ... ... ... ... ...

*sigh*

I'm in trouble. It took a lot of money just to rent out this venue.

Hey, hey! Lend me some money~! I'll definitely pay you back later!

Carla Ayatsugi

---

[Results]

We are pleased to announce the results of the event, "Show Off Your Aesthetics! Akademeia Autumn Arts Festival".

The number of times each quest has been completed is as follows:

Cinque's Canvas: 148,383 times Queen's Canvas: 25,928 times Deuce's Canvas: 15,597 times Nine's Canvas: 8,045 times

Thank you for your participation.

Please continue to support Final Fantasy Agito.

---

Note: I'm not sure if the results indicate character popularity. None of the announcements say what the rewards for the event were. Nor did they explain how the event was to be played. Based on some other information I gathered from an Agito gameplay wiki, it sounds like you would need to collect basic Magic Canvases (purple, light blue, orange, and blue) from quests of various difficulties. Then you would combine them with other materials to create each character’s canvas and receive a special reward. Since Nine’s Canvas was completed the least, that might mean that his blue canvases came from the hardest quest.

Each canvas quest came with a little note from the characters:

Cinque: You paint, too? Hmmm. Maybe Cinquey will paint with you. Hey, hey! If you feel like it, you should bring me lots of “Purple Canvases”! Paint a lot and you’ll get a prize!

Queen: A beautiful painting enriches the senses. May I paint on the “Light Blue Canvas” with you?

Deuce: Isn’t it wonderful that we can help those in need by making paintings? Let’s paint our dreams on the “Orange Magic Canvas”!

Nine: Hey, you. Do you have a “Blue Magic Canvas”? Let’s show everybody our passion!

The rewards were as follows:

Cinque’s Canvas: Coeurl? (The question mark is part of the name.) Queen’s Canvas: Splendid Cube Deuce’s Canvas: Last Illusion Nine’s Canvas: Our Idea of Agito

The names are very puzzling, but I think they might’ve been decorations for your dorm room.

[pienpup]

on anon simply because im scared of people lol

i think you're so right about calling it landmine fashion

the way i view it, "landmine fashion" is just an overall term describing fashions landmines typically wear

like while dark girly is a thing, it's also something that falls under that umbrella if you get what i mean

saying "landmine fashion" is like totally reasonable?? sometimes i don't wanna be like "dark girly, sweet girly, jersey maid, sabukaru, yamikawa, goth punk" when im specifically talking about the fashions associated with jirai kei

i really hope this doesn't come off as fighting you im trying to agree but i realize getting specific here means there might be points you disagree with so this is in good faith i swear lmao

it took me a little bit to respond because i was struggling to find a way to word it!

dark girly kei is a thing, yes, but it is not the same as jirai kei. girly kei and larme kei were kind of the blueprint or originally what girly jirai kei fashion came from, but theyre so wildly different now that theyre basically their own subcultures. in most jp communities, as far as i am aware, they do not call jirai "dark girly." for this reason, im no longer calling it that. i think we've overstepped and started to redefine things which isnt okay as westerners in a japanese community.

in general i do think saying "landmine fashion" as an overlap for all the various fashions that can be associated with jirai kei is great, but in this context im moreso referring to how im no longer comfortable calling the more stereotypical / girly kei inspired fashion "dark girly."

i think a lot of people have gotten their information from like the "aesthetics" fandom wiki which is chalk full of misinfo and can lead a lot of people astray.

i dont think youre trying to argue dw !! i just have a hard time wording things and i do believe my original post may have been kind of unclear ^^; !! sorry if this doesnt make much sense, ive just woken up.

[lollytea]

Thinking very hard about the creature known as Grometheus

Next to no canon information has ever been provided about this thing. Where it came from, how long it's been around, nothing. It's unknown if it's categorized as a beast or a demon or what. Maybe a distant relative of the basilisk? Idk. The wiki just calls it an animorph.

Buuuuuuuut its full name has a very familiar rhythm to it.

Grometheus the Fear Bringer

Do you know what it sounds like?

A title granted to a talented illusionist.

Which just leaves me wondering.

The Boiling Isles is a world of transformative curses. Its a world where humanoid witches can become beasts via various methods. (E.g. Eda and Lilith, Darius, Belos, Luz)

So....hypothetically. If there was a witch named Grometheus a long time ago who excelled at illusion magic....just what happened to them?

I imagine that the area of illusion magic comes with the threat of mental deterioration, for both the illusionist and the victim. And based on the magic amplifier that Gus has, it has the potential to violate other peoples minds and tear the most depraved frightening memories out of them.

In TTLGR, Bria stated that illusion magic "Can't even touch [her]" but LR and KT proves that it can. Just not in a conventional sense.

Illusion magic can dig into the mind. It can be so intense that it causes physical pain.

So what's the key aspect for an illusionist to achieve that level of power?

Fear and memories.

Once an illusionist realizes the potential that fear and memories have, they start working towards utilizing it in their experimental spellwork.

Maybe that's how Grometheus started off.

Maybe they were the one who invented Gus' magical amplifier.

However, imagine living like that. Extracting all the depravity from several people across the Isles for the sake of research. It's a lot for one person's mind to handle. It's like a slow gradual rot inside the brain.

I don't know exactly how the transformation would have happened. Maybe it was a mutation of negative emotions.

Maybe Grometheus was lonely. Maybe they were angry. Or maybe there were just so many memories and fears in their mind that weren't their own, that they couldn't hear their own thoughts anymore.

Maybe they lost themself.

Maybe they drowned in it. They drowned in all the fear that was hoarded inside of them and they became fear itself.

Maybe?

Nobody ever expected history to repeat itself. What happened to Grometheus was not likely to ever happen again. Because Grometheus' magical battery was so overwhelmingly potent that it ate them from the inside.

Surely, there would never be an illusionist that powerful again.

Surely.

Anyway, fast forward to a sixteen year old Gus Porter at his final year of Hexside. He's Grom King.

And Grometheus the Fear Bringer didn't stand a chance.

Gus is standing on wobbly legs as the crowd's cheers pound against his eardrums.

He was supposed to defeat the monster and send it slithering away again for another year.

But instead, there's a creature's corpse withered at Gus' feet, and as the rotting gunk melts away, he's not surprised to see a witch's skull.

Why would he be surprised? He saw it all.

Gus is standing there, horrorstruck, as some stupid crown materializes on his brow.

He killed one of his own.

And now....all of that creature's memories and fear belong to him.

It's like a rot inside of him.

He could drown in it.

Do the spooky/horror centric Gus enjoyers wanna hear an idea?