#agro sotc

[sunnytheopossum]

Just finished this sketch page of my favorite guys from my favorite things before leaving to get my wisdom teeth removed <3

1: Three - The Murderbot Diaries

2: Tim / “Masky” - Marble Hornets

3: Stanley & The Adventure Line™- The Stanley Parable

4: N - Pokémon Black & White

5: Ryouta & Anghel- Hatoful Boyfriend

6: Isaac & Hector - Castlevania

7: Wander & Agro - Shadow Of The Colossus

8: Uta & Yomo - Tokyo Ghoul

9: Freckles the Jelly Bean Puppy & Kyan the Peace Puppy - My Webkinz

I was also planning on including Erza Scarlet and Freed Justine from Fairy Tail, Wes from Pokémon Colosseum, and Connor from Detroit Become Human, but I ran out of room, so maybe next time! Also please ignore what I’m sure is a plethora of wonky proportions. I did this in a real life sketchbook (and then moved around the drawings a bit in Clip), so I never flipped my canvas, and now I never will because I’m scared.

[nokivaris-jpg]

Inktober day 11 - Wander

[crocyart]

Snack break

[lealfsd]

Gaius

[makobreak]

taking a break

[wander-bb]

Shadow of the colossus

Wander and Agro

[thedanliest]

Out of all the photo mode stuff I've posted, my Shadow of the Colossus photos seemed to be the most well-received, so how about some more?

[aberooski]

Replaying Shadow of the Colossus again for the first time in an astounding SIX YEARS somehow??? And I'm 10 colossi down, 6 to go, and AUGH it just feels like home being back I love this game so much 🥰🥰🥰

[robo-dino-puppies]

Shadow of the Colossus (2018) 1/?

[miza-hime]

Some low poly shadow of the colossus work i did for an unfinished project i was working on involving cut content from the game

[sparkylurkdragon]

Fully upgraded Agro's speed, so now she can truly live up to her namesake's theme song. :)

[st-hedge]

May it’s a sign that I should sober up a lil cuz I left sotc running while went off to get something and came back to see on the screen wander leisurely reclining on agro in an idle animation I’d never seen before and I couldn’t stop laughing for too fucking long

[miirshroom]

The many Anagrams of Radagon

Because I found an anagram generator and felt like applying a little confirmation bias to the results, for fun:

"Adan Gor" - Adan, Thief of Fire is a character in Elden Ring. "Gor" is a dialectical oath variant of "god", with well known uses including Moby Dick ("And, by Gor, none of you has de right to dat whale"). Gor is also Old English meaning "dung". Seems like Adan and Dungeater worship the same sun god.

"a dog ran" "a god ran" - the dog part is self explanatory as Radagon is described as a leal hound and here we see that Radagon was a dog god who fled.

"rand oga" - "rand" and "oga" are both Old English/proto-Germanic meaning altogether "on the edge of terror". As blacksmith Hewg says of Marika (who is Radagon): "The sheer terror of her…". In the deep FromSoft history, there was once a minor miner NPC character in King's Field (1994) called "Rand Ferrer" whose name means "on the edge of a blacksmith".

"A Dragon" - I think that the Elden Beast is a fine example of a sparkle dragon. The dragon is also a symbol of the never-ending cycle of alchemy, as both prime materia and the end product. The dragon is endlessly splitting into brother and sister parts and recombining into the divine hermaphrodite - so says Carl Jung in CW12 "Psychology and Alchemy". And the connection that I make personally is that the red-haired Rand al'Thor as the 'Dragon Reborn' is the main character of the Wheel of Time books (1990-2013), whose name means "on the edge of a god" because that's really just his whole character arc in a nutshell. Two of the most significant supporting characters are a blacksmith named for the blacksmith god Perrun and an Odin-expy trickster. See above usage of 'Rand Ferrer''.

"naga d'or" - "naga" is Hindu meaning "a member of a race of spirits recognized in Hinduism and Buddhism that have mingled superhuman and serpent qualities, are genii of waters and rain, and live in a subaqueous kingdom", and "d'or" is French meaning "of gold". Elden Beast seems to exist in a plane of endless water and is a creature of the Golden Elden Ring. Though it is tempting to guess that this might be a DLC payoff one.

"Ra Dagon" - "Ra" Egyptian god of the sun and "Dagon" the principal deity of the ancient Middle Euphrates region. Also the Lovecraftian Dagon fish god thing.

"Ra Gonad" - Ra is god of all of the sky (and earth and underworld), not just the sun. Venus was born of the testicles of Uranus - god of the sky - thrown into the sea. The second phase of Malenia's fight is styled as an allusion to Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus". So technically this one can work with Radagon as a link between his own father the old god of the sky and/or sun and his daughter Malenia.

"Agro DNA" - from the slang term "agro" meaning "aggressive". Perhaps that Radagon has an aggressive nature in his genes. He is something of a Beast.

"And Agro" - as in "Radagon and Agro" - the name of the horse from the Shadow of the Colossus (2005). Elden Ring similarly has the player form an attachment to horse. Notably, The Shadow of the Colossus was directly cited as an inspiration for Elden Ring. Perhaps even a challenge to it - that game has an inevitable grim conclusion at the end, where as Elden Ring lets the player choose wrong 5 out of 6 times, but there is still the 6th more hopeful choice once you learn to read developer intent. Also, Elden Ring has 15 Remembrance Bosses in base game, which is one short of the 16 Colossi in SotC.

"Argo DNA" - Argo was the ship sailed by Jason to find the Golden Fleece. Note the golden sheep in the Altus Plateau area of Elden Ring. It is also the name of a gigantic constellation that was split into three parts in the modern day - thus Radagon's lineage is found in the stars. Afterall "It is said that long ago, the Greater Will sent a golden star bearing a beast into the Lands Between, which would later become the Elden Ring".

"Ag Ra don" "Ag adorn" - "Ag" is chemical short form for Silver, so "Ra dressed in silver", I suppose. More alchemy stuff. One might recall that "Radagon" seems not to have been needed as an entity until going to Liurnia to confront a house of the moon (traditionally associated with silver). Also "Ag" derives from the French "Argent" and another major use of French that I've noted is in the name of "Seluvis" forming "se lu vis" meaning (probably with broken grammar) "To read one's own face".

"Argon AD" - "In the Year of our Lord, 18" - Argon was isolated in 1894 by William Ramsay ("Will I Am, Ram Say" - see Golden fleece above). It is element 18 on the periodic table and has a lavender/violet glow when placed in an electrical field, evocative of the visual used for gravity magic. Notable event in the year 18: "Winter – Germanicus Caesar arrives in Syria, as new commander-in-chief for the Roman East."

"ad argon" - "Ad" is a Latin modifier as in the case of "ad absurdum" or "to the point of absurdity" and etc (much like this post!). "Argon" is a Greek word meaning "lazy" or "inactive". Overall perhaps stretches to "to the point of stagnation"

[nectarwine]

Today in SotC I learned that:

• Wander can jump onto Agro's back from a height

• Wander will push off of walls while swimming for a diving boost

• Agro refuses to swim but will happily throw herself off a 10 meter cliff

[icology]

I replayed the last guardian recently after a while, and it made me realize how much it "aged like fine wine", as people like to say. it's one of those things that was never bad, but just keeps getting better and better with time. in fact, because I hadn't played it in so long, it made me rethink it separately from sotc and ico, and when I looked at it from that lens, one of a game that is unique and stands out on its own, it just solidified how great it truly is for me.

I feel like a lot of the hate it got besides the usual team ico thing (controls. camera. blah blah blah.), was because people insisted on comparing it with shadow and ico and finding connections. if the game had been released by an unknown indie team, people would have praised it to the moon and back and such "faults" would have been irrelevant when compared to the technical feat that was the narrative and bringing a creature like trico to life.

in fact, I think it's the game that had more thought and heart and soul put into it from all three. the whole concept stemmed from ueda's desire to create a game that would make the people who loved wander and agro's connection happy; it was heavily influenced by him growing up around animals in his childhood home, so much that he rarely had to look up references for animal anatomy or behavior unlike others in the team because he knew it all by heart; above anything else, it was the product of an entire team of people who got together to bring it to completion despite all the adversities, and you can tell how much love, determination and bravery went into it.

I think people's attitude while dealing with trico also matters a lot. the other day, I saw someone online say they dealt with him not as an npc, but as a sentient creature with a mind of its own, that you could only interact with, never control. and it makes so much sense. trico feels like a real creature, like he defies the fact that he's made of polygons and lives inside a game.

it's truly amazing.

[dorminchu]

Sky Burial

a/n: Despite my psuedonym, I've never written anything for SotC before. Title comes from my favorite track of the game. :)

Dawn's light dappled through the leaves. In the grove, his head on her lap. His face, she said, was still a youth's. She found this very amusing, and his discontent more so. He could never be angry with her for long.

Long ago, a great deity was split into pieces and sealed away with a ceremonial sword. The temple erected on the precipice of their world, where night never fell.

Her mother was a priestess, the same as her grandmother. One day, she would undergo the same ceremony. 

When the ritual is complete, said Mono, a body is just flesh without a home. We give it back to the elements, to be eaten.

You could leave, he said, only to hear the words aloud. You could travel the world and be free.

She laughed, soft and lilting. Would you become a priest?

Wander bit his tongue. His mouth glanced the edge of her palm.

The old story, connected by grief. If he spoke the words clawing at his throat, she would bid him no more.

A day in the Forbidden Lands passed in the span of an era. The sun remained in the sky, motionless. The need for sleep evaded him, and Agro. There were still plenty of salamanders and sour fruit in the weald. He needn't stay long enough to exhaust the land of its resources.

Dreams came to him, in the space between consciousness and the invasion of Dormin's soul into his own, forcing him into darkness. No broken bones. The devil's luck.

Blood in his body subsuming into tarry ichor. Perhaps, by the end, there would be nothing of the man Mono once loved.

Another idol crumbled. Shadows in the shape of men flocking to him, scattering at the first sign of waking. The old pull of the earth, ancient and intangible, demanded reverence.

He approached the altar, scattering the doves. His clothes and skin inundated with grime. He could have stroked back her hair and pressed his lips to her cool brow. She would wake soon enough.