#also I was not that far off about him having a draconic design!

[the-rodent-gentleman]

All rise for the Big Daddy of Wrath

And as a bonus:

[justcallmecj]

Seeing Your Dragon Form: Staff

There's nothing romantic about these interactions. I left the ones with the boys kinda either romantic or platonic, but for the staff, it's strictly parent/child dynamics. Here, you are just close with these staff members for whatever reasons (they know other students are scared of you because of what you are is how I'm gonna write it for my own sake) Anyway, they all have parent/child dynamic with you. Also, these may suck because I don't have a very good grasp on the staff's personalities.

Headmaster Crowley

Honestly, Crowley still doesn't know how you and him have gotten so close. And, neither do you really.

But, he's not complaining. He actually sees you as nice company compared to the interesting students of Night Raven Collage and his fellow staff members.

Now, Crowley is (probably) an old soul and has seen his fair share of things from all over Twisted Wonderland. But, much to his own shame but also not his fault, he hasn't seen a draconic fae be a dragon. Fae keep to themselves and draconic ones are few and far between.

Because of this, while he will never admit, he was thoroughly frozen (pun unintended) in shock and amazement when he just so happened to across you mid transformation when he was taking a midday stroll in the woods.

He understands that you are a taller student and he understands that a part of that is because of your dragon lineage, but the thought that that might translate into the size of your dragon form didn't cross his mind.

He also didn't know what to do. This whole thing was a chance meeting and as far as he knows, you're unaware of his presence. Should he step into your line of sight and attempt to speak with you? Or should he continue to stay behind this tree and either leave or watch from a distance.

He opted to stay and watch, not knowing how you'd take to this ordeal and his own curiosity getting the best of him.

To bad for him, both your dragon and fae senses picked up on his presence even before transformation, you simply didn't care.

You turned around, icy wings spread out onto the forest floor, and faced him, making direct eye contact.

The Headmaster yelped in surprise, but not fear. Deciding there was no reason to stay hidden now that he knew you were aware of him, he stepped out and came forward.

Crowley was loud while he held a one-sided conversation, which was expected, but he was also calm and slow, which was surprising. Because of his prideful attitude and overall personality, it's sometimes easy to forget that this man is still an educator and a man who has kept this school running for who knows how long.

Looking back on it, long after he went back to work and you took a nap in the forest, he seemed to know exactly what he was doing in his own actions. Maybe it's the constant handling of rowdy beastmen or his extensive knowledge of Twisted Wonderland's people and abundant species, but he was quick to adjust to the situation while giving on air of someone not even trying.

"Now, aren't I oh so gracious? Taking time out of my busy day to see you and even learn some new things?" You knew he was lying, that he had been out here on a pleasure walk. But, the way his smile under the crow mask curled up in genuine happiness, you could let it pass.

Crewel

Crewel is really fond of you.

This started when he managed to get you to agree to modal and help design clothing for people that have animalistic features. He'd been struggling to design clothes that worked with people that have wings or large tails and you were happy to help.

Because of this bond, he became a type of protector when he realized your fellow classmates were either messing with you or scared of you due to being a draconic fae. He'd scare off any students who tried to mess with you and let you stay in his classroom after class or after school if you needed a break.

Crewel voiced his curiosity of your dragon form one day when you and him were in his room discussing some mechanics to help wings fit through clothing without it tearing. And, since you had come to trust this man and he treats you like a father, you decided to indulge him.

He had to use his coat to cover his face when the cold mist swept over him.

The first thing that caught his attention was your wings, the very things he had been studying earlier today. They were much larger than when in human form and even had sharp, icy spikes on the tips that were only slightly visible in human form.

Would he have to take into account any transformations when making his new clothing line or does magic protect all clothing when it happens? Oh well, that's something he'll have to find out later.

He truly couldn't understand how other students could be scared of you. You were very beautiful in human form, your features not being the only thing that convinced him to ask for your help. But, even in dragon form, that beauty remained, albeit in a very different light.

The smoothness and pale color of your scales, the glistening ends of your horns, the spikes running down your back and even the glint in your e/c eyes. It was a type of beauty he was unused to, animal in nature but also strikingly human.

Really, how could someone ever be scared of you or ridicule you? Maybe you could be dangerous, if prompted or your life was in danger, but he knew you were a gentle soul.

After transforming back into human form, he carefully studied your clothes (some he had designed with your helpful insight) and beamed with pride when he found no tears or stretches. "Well, I must say, I think we did our job wonderfully, Little Pup."

Trein

Trein only got to know you the way he has because you started talking to Lucius(if you remember one of my earlier chapters, I had Y/N take Animal Linguistics) and the cat familiar seemed to take a liking to you.

I vaguely remembers Professor Oski mentioning you one day in the teacher's lounge, something about teaching you his snow cloud spell.

You two got to talking after that, usually with Lucius starting the conversation and it evolving from there, until you and him eventually started conversations on your own.

Sometimes, you remind him of one of his daughters. Lucius was the one who told him your relationship with other students and he couldn't help but think of when one of his daughter was in a similar situation.

When Lucius told him that he wanted to go see you in dragon form, because you had told him that's what you were doing after school, Trein really couldn't say no to the fond look in his familiar's eyes.

Trein has seen many animals and creatures, from house hold pets to magical familiars, but a full grown dragon is not one of those creatures. However, when someone else may be panicking at seeing a creature the size of you, Lucius was not fazed in the slightest, and, him being Trein's familiar and the two having a spiritual bond, it calmed Trein's own human instincts of fight or flight.

Plus, he could still see, in those large, sharp eyes, the young fae he has been teaching all your long. The child who never hesitated to talk to Lucius despite how other students see it as weird that the cat seems to mimic it's master's words during lessons. The child who spoke cheerily of the friend's they've made. The child who reminded him so much of his own daughters.

"See what I was talking about, Trein?" Lucius meowed. Trein truly did see why his familiar was so fond of this child. Staring up at the long snout pointed at him, he saw no difference between this dragon and the child he's taught in his classroom. "Right as always, Lucius."

Vargas

Vargas took an interest in you on the first day of school.

He immediately understood you were a fae, and he knows that fae are known for their incredible strength even when they look unassuming. Take Lilia Vanrouge for example.

He had high hopes for you in this class, and he was right to do so. He encouraged all his students to never hold back in their talents, so it came as no surprise to him when you quickly outran most of your classmates and were capable of lifting more than them for longer periods of time.

One class, he even pulled you aside and requested that you start training more with your wings during class so he can make sure you are truly making full use of all your strengths and capabilities.

At first, you didn't think he'd be able to properly train you due to him being human but he quickly proved you wrong. Apparently he hasn't been teaching at NRC and not picked up a thing or two from the non-human students.

He even, actually quite happily, agreed to your request to stay after school some days to further your own training. It was on of these days that you, while deciding to mess with your coach for pushing you just a little too far recently, suddenly changed forms mid-flight.

You actually knocked him onto his butt when your giant form hit the ground and he was still stuck in shock at the transformation.

But, even that didn't faze him for long. He quickly jumped to his feet, dashed over and began inspecting the new form, trying to pick out just how strong you'd be in this form compared to before. (Quite a bit stronger if you're wondering.)

This new revelation, which you thought may spook him enough to go a little easier on you, did quite the opposite. Instead, he encouraged you to take the form more often during your after-school training sessions. To practice flight and see if spellcasting was manageable. Heck, he even set up some different training supplies for you to practice your ice breath and powerful tail on.

Unbeknownst to you, he wasn't only doing this just so your could get stronger. Trust him, he's heard the whispers of your fellow classmates whenever you showed them up in class and got praise for it. The harsh words so carelessly thrown at you.

And he knows that, if he can hear them, he has no doubt you can too.

So, he does this so you become more comfortable with yourself. Improvement starts with your own image of yourself! And, when all is said and done, when he's pushed you to a limit or you've beat a new goal, he gives you a hardy pat on the back while handing you a water bottle, praising you for your improvements.

Sam

Sam met you when you first came to his shop sometime during the first week of school.

Him, being the only shop owner on campus and having a reputation for having anything and everything, means he meets everyone eventually, and that's a lot of different people.

Usually, he relies on his Friends On The Other Side to quickly figure out what a student needs so he's not overworking his own mind trying to remember things. But, when he met you, he (and his friends) just knew you were going to be an interesting visitor.

And he was right. You come to Mr. S's Mystery Shop for an array of items, from normal groceries to scale care items.

It was during these frequent visits that the two of you began talking more, even to the point where he'd ask about whatever drama was flowing between the students and you happily spending however long it needed to explain it to him.

His Friends On The Other Side also became quickly fond of you, especially after finding out your senses could faintly pick up on them, capable of telling where in the shop they were hiding in. Sam himself took quite an interest in this.

It didn't take long before you became his "Favorite Imp", the one who provided him knowledge of what goes on inside the schools halls and classrooms. Sorta like gossip buddies at this point.

One day, after you'd fallen asleep in the woods one night in dragon form (your dormleader was not pleased), you had to make a stop at Sam's shop because the morning dew, while not bothering you due to being an ice dragon, had made the ground muddy where you were sleeping and now you needed to clean your scales. Again. Man, sometimes being a dragon is hard.

It was this day that Sam's friends, who you had learned to listen carefully enough to hear their words, tried to drag you out the back door so they could see what a dragon looked like.

You ended up indulging the friends, Sam having to come along to keep an eye on the rascals. He was a bit shocked, but with all the weird things he sells and even the ones he keeps put of stock for safety purposes, it wasn't the strangest nor the most astonishing thing he's seen. But it was new.

He's never been a big dragon fanatic, but he has sold some dragon related items, even to Professor Crewel who needs things for potionology, so it was actually really cool to see a dragon in the flesh.

But he also couldn't help to be a little sad. His Friends On The Other Side, and even himself, have hear the rumors about you on campus. About how there's a terrifying dragon student walking the halls, who glares at everyone in sight and refuses to be near other people.

He also knows that that's not you. You're his gossip buddy. And sure, he probably shouldn't be gossiping with a student, seeing as he's an adult, but he's still a young man at heart who years to have fun, which is why he took up a job at NRC.

So, just why would someone take a look at you, the student who keeps their wings and tail tucked in tight and politely apologizes when they knock something over, who plays games with his mysterious friends and looks freaking awesome as a dragon, and still think you're scary and mean?

"Now now my friends, let's not keep my Favorite Imp waiting." His friends, heading his call, quickly rush back inside and settle into their own shadows. When you walk past him, preparing to leave, he whispers to you. "Thanks for putting up with them, Little Imp. They appreciate it!"

Idk why Vargas doesn't have a speech after his section, but there wasn't one on Quotev and I don't feel like making one for him now. I did write in a note originally that I didn't proofread this bc is was so late at night, so that's probs why. Oof.

[rielzero]

Look at this handsome man, he's also on artfight: https://artfight.net/character/4027934.nymrod

And with this, I've reworked Nymrod's backstory!

Nymrod thinks he's a tiefling that was once a half elf, but his story is a little more complicated than that.

Before Nymrod, he was Ardere, the draconic sorcerer. He is a dragon hybrid, the child of a red and silver dragon, with an egg-twin brother named Ishard. He and Ishard took the forms of Half elves while his father presented as a high elf and his mother as a mortal human. They lived far away from other dragons in order to live unbothered, appearing as a rich and noble family of wizards and sorcerers. Ardere's sorcerery was highly unstable and powerful, just like his nature, like two dragons clashing inside of him, unfortunately this lead to an accident that resulted in the death of his twin brother. Not being able to cope with the loss, his personality distorted and took on traits of Ishard, while completely becoming uncomfortable and fearful of his own magic prowess. Taking advantage of his mental state, his parents sealed his awareness of his own nature away in hopes of protecting Ardere from himself.

He lives as a half elf for about 40 years, completely clueless of his losses and takes on the desires of his dead brother to become a fashion designer rather than a powerful sorcerer.  He particularly grew to dislike his innate magic as he had gained the tendency to freeze things when he got nervous. As a result of his unstable powers and clumsiness, no one would take him as an apprentice so he had to teach himself how to sew. Struggling with what to do with his misfortunes, he briefly joined a band of friends on a few adventures. During a tour to Elturel, he got really drunk and passed out.. Only to awaken when Elturel was pulled into avernus. The sudden shift of planes made him subconsciously shapeshift into a Dainty, soft looking Tiefling, unrecognisable to himself and his friends. They swiftly abandoned him in order to flee. Left with little else to hold onto, Nymrod is who he became. Acting docile, foolish and helpless, his appearance and behaviour gave him his name, a combination of ''Nymph'' and ''Nimrod'' Passed around several devils as a pretty pet to look at. Hiding his intelligence and using his charm to remain unharmed. He sold his name ''Ardere'' to a fairy in exchange for a luck blessing, which further distanced his memories off his family and made all those who knew him before forget about him. When Nymrod was about to be sold to one particularly cruel Devil in exchange of dozens of soul coins, Raphael ended up coming to his rescue. The Cambion recognised what Nymrod is even if he doesn't, becoming the only safe space were Nym could form a new identity. Nym is very indifferent about the conflict surrounding Avernus as he had to prioritise his own survival. Due being abandoned by his only friends in his time of need, he stopped caring for those who do not value him. Since then he has gotten used to his body, still feeling somewhat strange about it. His sense of self is greatly warped due everything he has been through.

Just some clarifications just in caseeee- Because I am a nervous wreck.

-When I mention ''personality warping'' I'm more talking in the reigns of how untreated mental health problems sometimes changes someone's entire identity, people's personalities can shift over time, ''warp'' is when he becomes somewhat opposite to how he used to be. He used to be proud, flaunting, and very much in love with his magic, now he is insecure, uncertain about himself and averse to casting magic. He's not entirely stable. -When he takes on traits of his brother, this is a subconscious coping mechanism, feeling the need to keep his brother alive somehow. This doesn't mean he ''splits'' or creates an alter, Nymrod is Ardere, with Nymrod being his mask. He does not have Dissociative Identity Disorder. The amnesia is a result of sealing, cptsd / selling his name to a fairy. He is somewhat aware of his brother's absence but convinced himself there never was a brother by taking on his traits. He does not experience plurality, just dissociation. -When you have friends, or people you love, or heck, even despise, sometimes you unconsciously take on little traits from them. He'd likely take on traits from Raphael as well. -Not thoroughly mentioned or stated, but Nymrod is kind of an alcoholic (Even before he became Nymrod.) As a dragon (even if unaware that he is one) he can hold liquor pretty well so it takes a lot of effort to become drunk or to stay drunk for an extended time, as his blood burns it out pretty fast. -Struggling with your sense of self is a pretty common experience, trying to find your own identity when your brain is messed up is difficult.

[seyaryminamoto]

Scenes of a Peaceful World: Sokkla Saturdays 2024

Day One - Travel

Rated: G

On FF.net//On AO3

A flock of dragons crossing the sky had yet to become something common, or normal, across their world. But it even more uncommon to glimpse a group of magnificent creatures carrying the members of a human family on their backs, as they traveled through the sky…

The populace of cities and towns below them gazed in amazed wonderment. The occasional cheers and cries of admiration reached their ears: Sokka snickered as he leaned back over Xin Long’s saddle, watching the townsfolk scurrying about, children rushing to give chase to the shadows that their dragons projected across their world.

“We always do make an impression,” he smiled, hands reaching over to clasp his wife’s waist: as it ever was, he would ride Xin Long behind Azula, who smiled at him over her shoulder.

“And we shouldn’t make that much of one. No groping when we’re in plain sight of the masses,” she said: Xin Long, below her, huffed in agreement. Sokka laughed, shaking his head dismissively at her words.

“Do tell, love: what’s the point of being as admirable, powerful and independent as we are if it’s not to make the most of all those things… by being as inappropriate as we please?”

He squeezed her flanks, and Azula squirmed.

The consequences for his teasing made themselves known when Xin Long spun on himself, startling his riders by making the world upside down for them briefly before spinning to fly upright again.

“X-Xin! No need for that…!” Sokka squeaked. “I was just teasing!”

“Well… maybe tease me when we’re on land next time,” Azula suggested, with an awkward smile: Sokka pouted as he leaned forward, dropping his chin on her shoulder. Meanwhile, Xin Long chuckled wickedly. “And you… you have an example to set, Xin! No crazy flying maneuvers, understood? If your siblings dare do anything like this, I…!”

Oh, she refused to finish that thought: she’d probably jump off Xin Long’s saddle without a second thought to snatch Yuuna, Shun or Hotaru in midair, should any of them fall off their saddles.

But it seemed unlikely to happen, at least, so far: where Xin Long often joined in the banter and bickering of his riders, the kids got along wonderfully with their dragons… even Yuuna, who, in virtue of being a waterbender, couldn’t fully bond with hers through the ancient ritual where firebenders offered their flames to a dragon, linking them for life if said offer was accepted.

Yuuna’s dragon, Yachi, was pale blue, matching the girl’s preferred colors neatly. Their communication proved surprisingly effective even if they lacked the bond that her brother and sister did develop with their respective creatures: Shun’s dragon, Zhan, had auburn scales instead, whereas Hotaru rode the biggest of all the younger dragons: a yellow creature she had named Taiyang.

Technically, the three dragons’ names also ended in ‘Long’, much like Xin Long’s did, by Azula’s demand and design. Sokka had poked fun at her for it, but she had been as unyielding about the naming this time as when they had first found her own draconic companion. The kids had no problem following her rule, though they usually called their dragons by their first names, regardless.

This was their first long flight with the creatures – they wouldn’t travel too far today, aiming towards visiting a memorable location of Sokka and Azula’s past – and they had behaved surprisingly well thus far. The dragons, while smaller than Xin Long, carried the weight of all kids without much struggle, with Shun even daring do some light pirouettes in the air with his own partner. The laughter of the three children reached their parents, who flew last to keep tabs on all kids.

“I love this,” Sokka smiled, his head still resting on Azula’s shoulder. His hands slid over her abdomen, but Xin Long didn’t tease them about their closeness this time. “We promised this one we’d find more dragons… and we did. Didn’t expect so many would want to bond with our kids, though…”

“And why wouldn’t they?” Azula smiled. “We’re part of this dragon family as well. Their leader thus decreed it, long ago.”

“Heh. How’s the old boss doing, Xin?” Sokka asked, patting Xin’s side. Even nowadays, Azula had to translate some of Xin Long’s thoughts to Sokka, and she did so quickly.

“Seems he’s been on a rather reckless run of late… trying to see how fast he can cross the Earth Kingdom,” Azula smiled. “So far his record is… three days? Well, damn…”

“You’ll beat him at it someday,” Sokka smirked. Xin Long huffed proudly and nodded.

“But for now… he babysits his siblings,” Azula smiled, gazing upon the three smaller dragons fondly.

“And… he gets ready to eat tons and tons of spicy ramen. That, too.”

Azula laughed and nodded. Xin Long shivered in unrestrained joy, eager to take part in a unique challenge no dragon before him had ever confronted… the legendary Spicy Ramen Challenge that his own rider had failed to overcome once. Both Azula and Sokka intended to hold their rematch against Jiare’s spicy cooking, as well as with each other, on this trip.

“I won’t falter at it, myself,” Azula warned her husband. He smirked. “Didn’t eat breakfast in preparation, as you know…”

“I wonder if that’s going to be enough… whereas I? I’ve been building up my spice resistance like never before!” Sokka said, eyes aglow with excitement.

“Now, the only problem will be convincing our kids that they can’t join too,” Azula laughed. “But I suppose this can become a family tradition for us. A rite of passage. Once you’re old enough… you take up the Spicy Ramen Challenge.”

“Honestly? The best Fire Nation tradition I’ve ever heard of,” Sokka smirked. Azula laughed, turning her head to kiss him softly.

Four dragons, ridden by a human family, flew across the sky on that day, a rare sight that, in time, would become far more common throughout their world.

[dailydemonspotlight]

If you want more confusing demons to work with, I highly recommend Seth

Seth - Day 43 (Request)

Race: Vile

Alignment: Dark-Chaos

May 21st, 2024

Ancient Egyptian mythology is weird, even as far as most mythologies go. Vastly different tales and retellings form a winding game of telephone that makes the truth of already obscure myths hard to track, but if one thing is for sure, the myths we do know about paint a fascinating picture of intertwined lives and cycles of life, death, and rebirth. If there's one group of figures prominent throughout, however, it'd have to be the central pantheon, and easily the most antagonistic of that group could be extrapolated into today's Demon of the Day, Seth.

The desert winds are controlled by this divine lord of chaos, one who represents and stands for the great sands of Egypt, sandstorms, and the harsh reality of nature and survival as a whole. Set could easily be seen as the main villain of Egyptian mythology, but like most things in mythology, it's not quite that simple- in Ancient Egypt, he actually appeared to be a figure who was cruel but not ignoble, and even assisted humanity at times. Earlier versions of the myth of Ra state that he actually helped fight off the great serpent Apep when the sun god traveled through the murky depths of the afterlife during night, but this appears to have been phased out as time went on.

A part of why Set is now viewed as outright evil, as many historians believe, is due to his role as an usurper- Set was a prick, to say the least, even in his more sympathetic iterations. In the myth of Osiris, a myth commonly seen as the most important in Ancient Egyptian literature, he is the one who was responsible for the death and mutilation of Osiris due to wanting the throne the god of Fertility held. Of course, Osiris's sister-wife Isis, (yes, Egyptian mythology had a lot of incest. I don't know why,) ended up recovering the pieces of Osiris... save for, ehm, the family jewels, but Set's role in this story has not gone unnoticed throughout the years.

Set was bastardized, quite simply, and literally, into being an outright villain. This isn't to say he wasn't an absolute prick, of course, but as the mythology went on, he went from a foul-mannered but still noble figure to a character comparable to the Devil. Ironically, he ended up getting intermixed with his mortal enemy Apep, and given his lack of a physical animal that isn't... ambiguous, to say the least, a lot of depictions of him end up portraying him as a serpent or dragon himself. An ironic twist of fate, given his hatred of the dragon he was eternal enemies with, but alas, that's what history does to you.

Also notable is Set's association with foreigners and xenophobia- due to his added-on role later in Egyptian history as becoming the god of vagrants, he became inherently more villainous due to the xenophobia prevalent throughout a good majority of history, not just in egypt. Even now, the fear of foreigners paints him in an even deeper shade of black, making him look as though he was a villain through-and-through.

In SMT, his first depiction actually dates back before even the first game- no, he originates in Digital Devil Story 2, wherein he ends up teaming up with Apep and Typhon and becoming the main villain of said story. Now, I haven't read the Digital Devil Story series, unfortunately, but from what I can tell, his depiction in the series has mostly gone unchanged from the origin of the series itself. True to the common conflation of Set and Apep, the depiction of this overlord of desert sands is very draconic, being a black wyvern. In earlier games, he was even more explicitly snake-like, as noted in his portrayal in DDS2.

In Megami Tensei, up until SMT II, his design was almost Dragon Ball adjacent, which is frankly bizarre to me, but I kinda dig it.

Throughout the series, Set has been a powerful physical attacker typically in the mid-late game, and he's appeared in almost all entries to-date, including spinoffs like Persona. He's a very important figure in the series as well, having some story significance to my knowledge in one or two of the games, specifically in, you guessed it, SMT II.

Overall, Seth's appearance and lore make a fascinating deep-dive into mythology, as well as the history of Shin Megami Tensei in and of itself!

[pangtasias-atelier]

A corrin x Dwyer drabble where Dwyer is a dom to a bratty corrin sub where Dwyer makes Corrin beg for his food and general cuddling?

I don't think I've ever used Dwyer so had to look up supports ajbdbsnsj. Though I am always a whore for Corrin so this was fun and pretty easy to do! I hope you enjoy~

Warning: This is a fetish story!

Inside the finally rebuilt castle of New Valla is the finest architecture and material in the country. The massive building had been practically started over from the ground up with most of the area destroyed. But with an overly perfectionist butler to guide the reins of a tremendously enormous project, the construction had gone about as smoothly as it could go; only a few minimal issues occurred and those had all been from last minute interjections from Corrin. The castle designed with Dwyer’s input and instruction, his husband’s room had been given extra attention, not that anyone would ever argue or fault him for ensuring that New Valla’s king had a perfect room.

The room is absolutely massive. Each section of the room is nearly encumbered with trinkets and baubles, all having some sort of meaning to Corrin with each being from some gift or an item he liked. Every single item is dusted and also organized by location; all the adornments are shown off from the light that floods and illuminates the room. All the curtains fully drawn, the entirety of the immaculately spotless room is visible.

Especially the large lump of blankets that rest on the massive bed that is big enough to be twice as wide as a normal mattress. The thin clerestory window that is above the bed makes sure to allow plenty of light for its sleepy inhabitant, an idea proposed by Dwyer.

Corrin is still enjoying his time in the dream realm. The new king still snoozes off to his heart’s content. His entire body covered up by the bundle of thin blankets, the enormity of his girth is still quite apparent from just how much room he takes up. Corrin’s obese figure rests in the very center of the bed. His pile of lard for a stomach juts into the air; the blubbery stomach cascades in all directions, blanketing his own corpulence underneath all the blankets. The rest of his figure is a bit harder to make out. Corrin’s face the only part of his body exposed, his portly face has gained a new softness and roundness to them. His flabby, pinchable cheeks jiggle with each tremendous snore he takes. His hair is a bit longer than before, an extra few inches to the length; his bangs pool to the side of his face, his pointed draconic ears exposed. The back of his hair curls behind him, the soft locks of hair curved around and framing his neck, a neck that has a good extra girth to it from the extra blubber and neck rolls along with the extra chins that Corrin now sports.

Corrin still snoring away, he doesn’t budge a single inch even as the door to his room opens.

Dwyer is up and awake —already awake for several hours even— and he brings a cart with two trays of food with him. Not having gained a single ounce of flab on his figure, Dwyer still looks the same as ever. If anything, Dwyer has gotten stronger from caring for his husband, his figure not used to much when it came to anything past minimal physical labor. Though the change is only something Corrin offhandedly comments on; the difference is far from jaw dropping when it only means Dwyer’s torso and arms have the slightest bit of extra definition to them now. Even though he is the king consort of New Valla, Dwyer is still dressed in his pristine butler attire.

“Figures he’s still asleep,” Dwyer still has a smile despite the disappointment in his voice. He pushes the cart in front of him, not even looking in front of him with how he’s memorized the path to the bed. Instead, he keeps his eyes locked on Corrin, his smile widening as he stares at his husband. Well, the shape of husband, Dwyer unable to see much of anything besides the outline of Corrin’s gut and some of his thick legs. Dwyer does slam the door shut, however. Not with enough force to even risk damaging the finely crafted wood no, just enough to make some noise.

Which works perfectly. Corrin begins to stir underneath the sheets. Slowly. The bed makes zero protest from all of Corrin’s immensity. “Dwyer?” Corrin mumbles after shifting around a bit. Still in almost the exact same position laying on his back like a turtle, Corrin’s bleary eyes struggle to stay open with all the light hitting him in the face. The bit that he does see is the ceiling and his own enormity in the peripheral of his half opened eyes.

“Time to get up, piggy,” Dwyer brings the cart closer but still keeps a distance from Corrin. “Now,” He adds when he sees that Corrin hasn’t budged at all from his spot.

Corrin yawns. He stretches the best he can afterwards, extending his overly flab filled arms and ponderously wide thighs. Some of the upper blankets come off of him as he removes his arms from the warmth and safety of the material. The blankets pool down his body. Cascading down his breasts, the fabric doesn’t make it past the entirety of his mountain of a gut. Corrin’s breasts on display, the large chest wants to splay down the sides of his figure. But instead, they press down on his body. His chest is larger than his own head; each melon for a breast always eager for attention that Dwyer always gives. Corrin’s moobs are thankfully given a bit more shape to them from his bra. The bra chosen specifically by Dwyer, the band is the only thing that is even close to being properly sized. The pink silky fabric of the band is still tight on him, however; it digs into his back fat and the sides of it. Corrin’s plush flab practically covers the band, squished lard oozing over the thin fabric that sinks into hundreds of pounds of flab. The cups of the bra fare even worse. The two cups can barely even be called as such; the material offers the barest of support to Corrin’s moobs, the fabric not even covering the entirety of his nipples.

Smacking his lips together as he gives one final stretch, Corrin lets out a tired yet satisfied groan. But he doesn’t get up. “Just feed me. Please?” He slowly begins to take off the blankets. He has to reach over his gut with a flabby bicep to tug the fabric.

“And let you stay in bed?” Dwyers huffs, a smile gracing his lips as he sees Corrin sluggish struggle to take off the blanket. “You may be a whale, but that doesn’t mean you can escape getting up. Perhaps you’re embarrassed someone might say something if they see you? I’ll make sure no one says anything rude about my huge, fat pet,” Dwyer reaches over and with one swift tug, pulls off the blankets for Corrin.

Corrin’s gut responds to the freedom with a resounding gurgle, knowing that food time isn’t far off. He also smells the intoxicatingly sugary sweet, aromatic breakfast even while they’re covered up. His stomach is uncovered; much like his stomach, Corrin’s thighs are bare for all to see. The only clothes Corrin wears besides an immodestly worthless strip of fabric for a bra is a pink pair of lace tanga panties. The skimpy fabric leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, all of New Valla’s fat ass of a lazy, greedy king visible for all to see just how Dwyer likes. His panties have even less than the bare minimum of fabric for someone as piggishly fat as Corrin. The fabric bunched up in the front, the width of it doesn’t even cover half of Corrin’s fat pad. His sensitive fat pad is pushed back from how much the fabric attempts to hold back the avalanche of lard. Corrin’s ass is even worse; the two jutting ass cheeks that are wider than Dwyer have even less fabric. And unlike the front which has his sagging gut to cover up, Corrin’s ass is fully showing. The back of his panties sink in between his large ass, each shapeless smackable ass cheek coming into contact with the cold air.

“I already did so much yesterday,” Corrin’s gut continues to churn; having not missed a single meal despite his packed schedule that only he can fulfill as king—Dwyer always ready with Corrin’s meals and extras— Corrin simply grows ravenous from knowing that food is close, so useless now with Dwyer pampering him and acclimating him to the slothful lifestyle that he deserves.

“Alright. And now what does my piggy say?”

“Feed me. I want food,” Corrin demands from his spot, adjusting himself the best he can with the least amount of movement.

Dwyer does as told. He balances both trays in his hand. Placing one down on the nightstand, he carries the other even as he gets into position to straddle Corrin’s lap. Which doesn’t work at all with how fat Corrin is, Dwyer instead sitting on and straddling Corrin’s massive gut. The spot does make for a comfortable chair despite how much he has to spread his thighs from the width of Corrin's stomach. He uncovers the first tray and reveals a panorama of cheesecakes, each and every single slice prepared by yours truly.

“Where would you be without such a dedicated servant? At the very least you have repaid me by being such a worthwhile piece of furniture,” Dwyer peers down at Corrin. He rests one hand on Corrin's belly and rubs it.

Corrin moans and sinks back into his bundle of pillows. Eyes closed, he waits for Dwyer to feed him. He opens them back up when nothing is shoved into his mouth. ‘What are you waiting for? I’m hungry, so feed me!” Corrin pouts at Dwyer who only smirks back at him.

“I only needed to hear you beg once more,” Dwyer presses his thighs against Corrin’s stomach as he leans forward. Each slice already cut into perfect little cubes, Dwyer slowly drops each piece into Corrin’s mouth with his fork.

“Faster,” Corrin demands, despite doing nothing himself.

Dwyer does so, he brings more slices to Corrin’s lips the instant Corrin finishes a slice. Afterwards, he picks up the pace even more, feeding Corrin more even while he’s still eating the last bit of the previous slice. Corrin eventually keeps his mouth closed, denying the food. At least until Dwyer leans even more forward so as to drape himself over Corrin’s stomach. Pinching Corrin’s nose, Dwyer blows him a kiss as Corrin looks at him. And by the time Corrin opens his mouth for a quick breath, Dwyer crams another slice into his mouth. And another. And another even while Corrin’s mouth is stuffed with food.

“Look how greedy and fat you are. You can’t even let yourself savor such talented baking. But, if you wanted to do nothing but eat, I’m glad you said so,” Dwyer keeps up his relentless pace. The instant he thinks Corrin even has a semblance of space in his mouth, he shoves another slice of cheesecake.

“Mphmm,” Corrin’s complaints come out muffled, the obese man unable to speak with every inch of his mouth full of cheesecake. His eyes are half lidded despite wishing to complain, obviously enjoying himself.

Dwyer reaches for the second tray as soon as he feeds corrin the last slice. Uncovering it, he reveals a pitcher. “In all of my wisdom, I figured you would require something to wash down such a delicious dessert for breakfast. So I brewed you a tea as equally magnificent. You can cheer your dedicated husband and servant now,”

“Fheyncsh” Corrin mutters with an only now half full mouth.

Dwyer reaches for the pitcher and the funnel beside it. “Unfortunately, this isn’t as warm as I would like it, but I can’t have my little pig, burning his tongue,” Slotting the funnel in Corrin’s mouth, Dwyer pours the beverage into Corrin’s mouth. He expertly manages the flow of the liquid, keeping the pace fast enough to where Corrin can barely keep up while not fast enough to spill the liquid. He chuckles as he sees Corrin struggle to chug it all down.

But Corrin manages to put it all away and lets out a resounding burp after Dwyer pulls the funnel out.

“What a slob. Good thing you’ll always have a dependable person such as myself,” Dwyer places everything back on the nightstand, still seated on Corrin’s gut. “Well, I know your fat ass can eat far more than that snack. Luckily I have-”

“I want a nap,” Corrin yawns. The massively obese dragon raises a massive arm as he stretches again. Corrin slowly wobbles around, trying to move himself even with Dwyer on top of him.

“If you think you- ah!” Dwyer squeaks as he feels himself suddenly thrown off the chair that is Corrin’s gut. His back hits the mattress. Before he can move, he feels Corrin’s pudgy fingers wrap around his wrist.

Corrin using his draconic strength, he easily overpowers Dwyer. He flips Dwyer over to face him. “I want cuddles,” Yawning once more, Corrin hugs Dwyer the best that he can. Corrin’s best involves Dwyer being buried underneath Corrin’s massive gut with Corrin lying on his side. Pulling Dwyer as close to him as possible, Dwyer gets a face-full of Corrin’s tits, practically forced to motorboat his husband’s breasts that are larger than his head.

Dwyer hears Corrin begin to snore once more before he can complain. Getting a face-full of his husband’s moobs, Dwyer feels Corrin more than he can see him. His husband’s lard is as warm as always and he can’t help but let out a yawn himself. Unable to budge, Dwyer quickly feels himself drifting off to sleep, thinking about how much nicer this would feel if Corrin were even heavier —a future he can easily create.

[tallysgreatestfan]

Dystopia made in Germany - damn yeah!

Finally came around to watch «Paradise» on Netflix, a dystopia with a somewhat similar concept as Time’s Out, in that poor people can spend years of their life time in exchange for money, and rich people gain life time in exchange for money.

German actor Kostja Ullmann plays the main character, who works as a salesman for the time exchange company Aeon, but finds himself on the other side as his wife is forced to "donate" fourty years of her life.

First of all: Americans will never understand just how exciting and in a sense freeing it is to see their country represented in genre media. This is, without joking, the first dystopian movie I ever saw that took place in Germany. It is such a cool feeling to see this futuristic city, but the signs are in German, not English. It is somehow a completely different kind of immersion.

(And remember, Germany is still part of the global west and an industrial nation, for people from the global south this must be even much much worse)

Also, I was somewhat worried for the upcoming Uglies movie (=relatively old Young Adult Dystopia about a seemingly Utopian world in which differences between all humans are obliterated by a mandatory beauty surgery) if Netflix could pull off the CGI and practical effects for this utterly futuristic world, and judging by this movie, they luckily could. The buildings look real, the interior design looks real. It is, to be honest, not quite as far as it would need to be for Uglies, but it works.

IMO it takes the allegory of how capitalism quite literally steals lifetime from the poor a bit further than Time’s Out, as here this procedure isn’t mandatory in most cases, but poor people still do it, because that just is how the fucked up capitalist system forces them to do.

Some of the names are a bit corny, like “Adam” for the resistance group, or “Lazarus” for the secret cemetery, but damn, I absolutely love the leader of the resistance movement being called Lillith.

It is only relatively understated, but I do like that this movie dares to go into criticizing how Europe, especially Europes borders, treat refugees. Europeans always have this air of being the most moral and just, and I consider myself guilty of that too, sometimes – but we’re not. Absolutely not.

I like the music though. Dark electronic tunes, mixed with more contemporary pop or rock occasionally. It is not outstanding, but it is good and it underlines the emotions and themes.

Spoilers under the cut:

I really love that the main characters wife, upon feeling on her own body just how draconic this “donation” process is, refuses to force someone else to experience this, even if it’s a rich person who took the donations dozenths of time already, and only complies because there are no other possibilities.

The boss henchwoman of Aeon (haven’t caught her name) has such an amazing charisma and totally commands every scene she is in. Doesn’t help that she also has a fairly unique face. I really hope for her that she gets big; that she becomes Germanys next big action heroine or something.

The short scenery with the wind turbines and the sea and the ship, wow. That looked so futuristic and alien totally set the scenes. The atmosphere of that!

The conflict with the young women they captured possibly being the CEOs daughter instead of the CEO herself is quite the interesting idea. No matter how it will end up, what will be true, it definitely is an good story choice.

Ooh, and now the dystopian resistance movement enters the scene. I love how the no nonsense scarred resistance leader is a woman here. A white woman, and its pretty, thin line scars, but still.

I love how claustrophobic and chaotic the scene with the main character trying to navigate through the battle Aeon vs rebels is. Other than him not getting seriously injured it feels very realistic and raw.

The music of the escape scene gave me goosebumps. There is just something so raw and eerie and sad and loss of innocence about it.

The moment of violence between the CEOs daughter after she tries to blackmail the main character and Helena, and Helena was refreshing in a way. Can’t even fully say why, but I guess its because in most movies, eruptions of brutality between previously peaceful characters only happen between two men.

Didn’t expect that Helena would loose her morality and panic in the end. Not quite sure if I believe it yet.

Damn yeah the moment where the cool henchwoman (Kaya) finally grows some morals and leaves!

At the end, and now I can definitely say that I don’t like the twist with Helena. Especially for the sake of a pregnancy of all things. Might just be happily childfree queer me, but I think I will never understand how people are willing to risk absolutely everything for that. It is also pretty gross to say a woman wishes that so much that she looses her morality.

But I do like that this has an unhappy end, like Fahrenheit 451 or Brave New World, and the fight of the normal people against cooperations seems almost impossible, but yet they still have to try, because it’s the moral thing to do

[here-there-were-dragons]

it would make sense and be a good idea if the next ancient breed for lightning after this one was a robot/cyborg/golem/steampunk clock construct/ect and this is all the reasons why as well as some speculation on what a hypothetical robot breed could be like

now that aethers have been released and the first lightning ancient confirmed organic, it seems as good a time as any to dust off this old draft of a suggestion i made before aberrations were even an element at all. please read it i worked very hard on it

(i can’t do anything about the weird spacing between some words, it doesn’t show up on the post editor)

reasons it would make sense and has precedent in canon:

-steelhounds. from their art, they are clearly robotic or at least heavily cybernetic lifeforms. there are edible steelhound puppy food items, which both means that they have biological components at some stage of their life, and that they can breed, or have the ability to convert organic life.

-the stormcatcher and his flight prefer to rely on machinery for things rather than outright spells. out of all of them, he seems by far the most likely to make his first attempt at a workforce by literally building them (to be “perfect” probably”) and then animating them with his own mana rather than forming them from magic like the others presumably did.

-the lightning flight has a strong thematic precedent for rogue golems, “progress”, and a certain sort of “making technology better/using technology to make a superior version of this thing”. over half of it’s native life seems to be escaped populations of self-replicating robots and cyborgs. there are mysterious golem factories everywhere. it would be a very effective payoff of that thematic thread if it turned out the original children of lightning were themselves mechanical too.

-there is precedent for elemental spirits inhabiting inorganic bodies in several golem workshop enemies, along with many other “enchanted statue” types. normal, organic dragons are also technically artificially created bodies imbued with draconic spirits of elemental magic, and regularly grow inorganic and even immaterial structures like crystals and smoke as part of their bodies. it doesn’t seem a massive stretch of the imagination that the stormcatcher could imbue a draconic spirit into an inorganic shell of his own construct.

-the stormcatcher is obsessed above all else with advancement and productivity. machines do not need to sleep. machines do not complain. machines do not have feelings or thoughts or biological failures. machines do not need to ever stop being productive. replacing his employees with machines is absolutely something the stormcatcher as we know him would do, and the only reason i could see for why he has not done that yet is that he already tried this once before and it blew up in his face.

reasons it would be a good idea to do regardless:

-people really really want robot dragons. i am aware of multiple people who would lose their minds over robot dragons.

-i cannot emphasize enough that the only way people wouldn’t love this idea is if the execution was wildly questionable or ugly in design

-even if they hated the design that got chosen i know for a fact people still like the general idea of a robot dragon

-as said above, it would tie a long running thematic thread together very well and just give the idea of lightning flight in general a little more feeling of cohesiveness and depth

-since it would be an ancient breed, and therefore only able to breed with more of it’s own kind, there would be absolutely no need to worry about how to adapt all the modern genes to a robotic body. you could just pick out the few that would adapt well as a “paint pattern” or something, and then for the rest you could just go wild adding whatever steam vents or lasers or robotic attachments or jetpacks or tron lines whatever machine-themed additions you could think of. they should definitely get circuit.

-it would feel more diverse than another “smooth 4 limbed mammalian noodle with deer or undefined bean nub shape head and dog legs and one defining feature” or “tundra” again. flight rising as of late has a huge design diversity problem and really seems to have trouble coming up with things that genuinely look different while also looking like complete designs that consist of more than one or two sort of disconnected feeling gimmicks. making the entire body a robot would make it more likely that the design would feel more cohesive if nothing else.

-it would make more sense that they don’t wear clothes

-lore writers would have a lot to work with

-you could say that their roars sound like electric guitars and dubstep screams echoing over the dunes

how it could work lore-wise:

self-replicating artificial lifeforms already exist canonically, but since i imagine the staff would prefer to have a lore explanation as to how they reproduce here’s a few suggestions

where they came from, why they’re like that, how they might have worked, and where they could have gone:

origin 1: abiogenesis- in the beginning, there were 11. in the beginning, 11 became more. while the others built their children of blood and bone, the father of storms saw another path; his creation would not be one of weak flesh-but of living lightning and metal.

in an ill-tempered grumble of thunder, he retreated to his workshop.

for weeks the ringing of hammers, switches, and coils haunted the then-empty dunes as slowly, beneath an infant spire that for another ten thousand years would not earn it’s name, the father of storms’ own image of took shape.

he welded brass, balanced gears, built engines, carved thoughts circuit by circuit written in lines of gold, breathed life and magic into their hollow forms as only a god could. at last he had his workforce-eternal machines of his own ingenuity to match the primitive organic legions the other gods would soon bring. in the ages to follow his work would flourish at speeds finally worthy of the lightning it’s powered by, unrestrained in scope now that with his newfound expendable underlings, his workshop would no longer be staffed by a team of one.

(abiogenesis scenario sup-option 1) the stormcatcher may have designed them with different attachments for preforming different sub-purposes in the greater purpose of being his lab assistants, creating a sort of pseudo-eusocial-hive-caste system. this could be represented by the tertiary genes.

(abiogenesis scenario sup-option 2) they may be highly modular beings that can fairly easily swap out parts at will, modifying themselves frequently like living swiss army knives for all manner of lab, factory, workshop, ect functions.

tl:dr if the lightning ancient breeds are robots or cyborgs and did not make themselves that way but were created by the stormcatcher as mechanical beings at the start, then the following is functionally canon

origin 2: transhumanist (transdraconic?) singularity-

the lightning ancients were once an organic lifeform breed like all the others. but unlike the many distant children of the ever-storm that followed, they took their creator’s ideals of progress, improvement, advancement, bettering to the deepest part of their heart-and found that heart’s feeble flesh wanting. their creator spoke to them of thinking for tomorrow-and in their future they saw thunder and metal where once were blood, flesh, and bone. as they say, out with the old, and in with the new.

(transhumanist singularity scenario sub-option 1)-if this is the case, these dragon-ascendants may possibly even be the creators of creatures like the steelhounds, relics of their endless striving for better than the now, a long-forgotten crusade to bring to all the world the fruits of this, their greatest triumph, a hand of prideful works ascending reaching ever upwards towards the sun.

a race on the cusp of singularity, seeking to drag their world kicking and screaming with them into perfect digital eternity. they looked upon the world of flesh and blood they were given and knew they could make it all more. perhaps, in the end, their heavens-reaching tower of all their mighty works all came crashing down.

they dreamed of a world harder, better, faster, stronger, made in all ways superior to the way it once began. but some dreams to other eyes are nightmares best left in the dark.

origin 3: ancient for game mechanic purposes only-

the busy tinkerers of goldensparc or the tempest spire or some yet unnamed city, in their eternal gods-ordained quest to bring their technological might to the task of improving upon any and all design, have rent the finest metal and magic from the earth to sculpt and weld into the greatest clockwork rendering of the draconic form ever created. the next dragon. the most advanced of the clock-golems ever created, the most versatile dracodroid to date, a category previously occupied by little more than tech startup gimmicks that never panned out as their marketing stunts sweepingly promised they should and simplistic brass dracoforms able only to continuously sweep a single narrow path without adaptation. the closest imitation of functional draconic life and behavior there has ever been, cutting out the need for expensive factories through incorporating some variety of self replication technology, granted even elemental power by cutting edge spellcraft and/or embedded cores of the most precious enchanting stones. some hyperbolic outlets may say it’s programmed imitation of the draconic mind is perfect.

far, far too perfect.

how they breed:

1: steelhound-

as stated before, existing steelhounds appear to be partly organic at some stage of their life as well as able to reproduce both their organic and inorganic body parts in their offspring. the mechanical lightning ancient breed may be still partly organic, allowing them to reproduce, and they may possibly use the same method as steelhounds to create offspring that have inborn robotic components as well.

2: cyborg culture-

the breed may be still partly organic in their adult form, and their offspring may be born fully organic. as they grow, they are strongly culturally encouraged to modify and “improve” themselves however they wish until they reach an adult state near indistinguishable from a golem. (the significant con of this approach is that invariably people would be disappointed that they could not have the design of the organic baby form as a nonrobotic adult)

3: ambiguous nanotech-

the breed may be fully mechanical and use some form of magical or nanotechnological means to build more of themselves. perhaps their offspring are initially created as small, simple, incomplete constructs that both “grow” and fuel themselves by consuming food which is then either fed into an internal furnace for power or assimilated into raw material for further construction by some form of magic or nanotech, allowing them to literally grow new parts if they consume the right things.

4: stormcatcher said so-

they can produce offpsring because the stormcatcher simply imbued them with the magical ability to create more of themselves to fill out and repopulate his workforce without having to build them himself again.

5: it’s magic-

their ability to reproduce is just magic, it doesn’t really need an explanation. the way all other dragons reproduce is most likely magical in nature already.

6: progressive construction-

similar to the nanotech approach but with the significant difference that the “growth” of the initial small simple construct is fueled not by nanobots or magic or consumption of building materials, but simply they or their “parents” literally building more onto them.

why and how they would need to eat:

gameplay and story segregation is at play. site mechanically they would eat the same as any other dragon.

option 1-fuel. they may partly power their bodies by processing organic material to generate energy, possibly also in addition to having lightning rods to absorb lightning power, in which case the furnace fuel system is most likely a supplementary backup to ensure they can keep going when the power from their lightning rod system runs out.

option 2-raw material. if their construction includes a nanotechlike equivalent whether by magic spell or by technological construct they may consume organic matter for these magical or technological systems to convert into raw material for self-repairs, giving them some ability to “heal”. this could possibly mean they may only need to “eat” particularly often when damaged. if it’s magic that is responsible for or in some way “fuels” or drives this effect, it could possibly provide an explanation for why the healing spells in the coliseum work on them.

option 3-both.

option 4-replenishing a vital system. in a similar way to how liquid cooled computers require fresh coolant periodically, or many machines need periodic lubricant, they may have a similar system that requires replenishment by a certain material. depending on exactly what chemical it is they need to replenish to function and what it is for, and what exact type of food they eat, this could make a lot of sense.

if stormcatcher made and was later dissapointed with them, them still needing to eat for fuel might be one of the reasons why.

why they might have vanished and how they might come back:

ending 1-they never left.

when the ancient age ended and the children of all others withdrew from the world so too did they for reasons of their own. from the birth of their successors they have spent eons watching, studying, waiting, experimenting on them.

possible reasons:

variant1a-they were cast away when the stormcatcher found something new, but they would not allow themselves to be truly forgotten. they may have long served their part, but they still linger to see, study, the world they created.

variant1b-when the birth of the modern breeds began they saw an opportunity of some kind, perhaps for study, perhaps for knowledge, perhaps for power. the secluded what remained of themselves away for what would become the longest greatest experiment of their race’s collective history-an undertaking generations long to watch and see how the world went on without them. the grand experiment to end all others. the greatest control observation of them all.

abiogenesis scenario variant 1a- the storm-father has devised a new experiment. it has been an age of metal and thunder singing through circuitforged veins, failures and triumphs nameless and many at the hands of his perfectly inorganic world. perhaps, after so long working only in mechanical realms, it is time for something just a little more outside of the box he works in. maybe he’ll see just what it is about those organic lifeforms the other deities seem so taken in by. he doesn’t understand their fascination with the messy, ungainly things, their seeming persistence in seeing something he doesn’t.

after all, a scientist wouldn’t reject a possibility variable without testing sure.

abiogenesis scenario variant 1b-

an age has come and gone. outside the walls of his workshop, the makings of the mortals once more fall to ruin like so many others down the long stairs of time, and his siblings first children have passed into memory. many of the gods stand once more alone. but they have not gone silent.

one by one each light winks out. civilization after civilization extinguished with little more than a whisper. their settling silence parallels the weathering on his own eternal machine’s hides. all things fade, in the end.

the silence falls it’s blankets on all for a mortal’s eternity. to a god, they are not content to allow the silence lease for long.

the cycles of history drudge on over and over on the ceaseless wheel of time, pulling the same up cycle by cycle from the riverbed’s muck. for yet another of countless fleeting moments, different yet the same, a race secondborn emerge to an empty world left to them by an ancestor they would never know.

the stormcatcher looks out from the depths of his workshop, untouched by the outside waves in the oceans of time, and scoffs, why?

his siblings secondborn take their first wobbling steps. a distorted mirror of their elder kindred so many cycles before. they quarrel and they fight; until they don’t.

why?

the elements battle. they war as they always have, as they always did before. but where each flight would stand before a monolith solely of their designer’s own creation, a key in the balance is beginning to shift. where before there would be one breed and one magic, the god’s domains have begun to accept the cast-offs of eachother’s children.

a child of the floes and a child of the forge meet at the top of a snow-spotted hill, and roll and play together in the sunrise. neither of them bears the icewarden’s eyes.

why?

their secondborn were made capable of union regardless of maker and shape. their nests lay not dead eggs and tearful partings but thriving children, born one shape or the other, but not both. the wars rage on as they always have but the peoples mix and mingle until it is no longer easy to be sure which god birthed who.

the lightweaver’s high priest enters her temple, long robes dragging up the steps. the air is hot and the marble is chilling in his golden-bright secondary eyes.

why?

their cooperation has never borne fruit before, only failure and disaster. an as-expected unrepeatable waste of unrecapturable time.

why do they persist in repeating a failed experiment?!

cooperation is done. it failed. dragonkind was gone, it failed. it’s time to move on to another solution, to stop wasting time on thing already proven not to work. all of their experiments failed, why do they strive to repeat those failures?

why do they see something i don’t?!

......

workers cluster at the foot of his workbench, ages of rust weigh on their metal hides. their glassy eyes that look to him are tired with the hollow aching fading of eternity, he notes with a bitter disappointment. imperfect. the perfect needless, fleshless workers, against the ravages of time still had failed.

there are so few of them now.

....

this experiment is a failure.

....

variables presuppose, shifting up and down their stacked threads in an orderly and uncaring mind.

(rigid inorganic thinking beneath which primal thunder brews-deep in the roiling dark far below. an unpredictable, paradoxical, self-contradicting mind. back and forth, one state to the other. like binary, like circuitry, on, off, on, off, one, zero, one.

there is no room for feeling, for inefficiencies, for mistakes or pithy mortal weaknesses in the hard, heartless mathematics of his reality, his civilization’s machine. the computer knows only the numbers it codes-it cares nothing for the lives each digit represents.

legendary is his cold efficiency, as is the thunderstrike of his fury, the totality of his wrath. always sudden. never forewarning. on. off. on. off. one. zero. one.

one never can be certain just when or where a lightning bolt will strike.)

had one not been tested thoroughly enough?

they are waiting for an order. they are not many. they are tired.

the world outside is a growing state of a paradoxical conflict-yet-cooperation, connection and rejection simultaneous and overlapping in the same space.

had this-- notion, of theirs, of unity, not been tested thoroughly enough?

(so many experiments, so many disappointments) 

the remainder of his last failed project look up at him with their tired, rusting, imperfect eyes and those-physical expressions of his siblings’ insanity prance about the world merrily slaughtering eachother and somehow not dying while his own empire’s great works lie collecting dust outside.

....

tragic.

but expected.

they watch him still. with their worthless little failure eyes. the whole lot of them, in the end.

failures.

failures.

(their hides gleamed once.)

...

..... fine.

if his kin are so determined to this perpetual dance of coming together and breaking apart all over again until the shade drags them all to the void’s trillions-damned stomach then who is he to say no? evidently abject insanity is the name of the game they’ve all been playing all this time and no one thought to inform him before he made the mistake of thinking this was a real, serious attempt at finding an actual solution to anything!

his once-great race of ascending experiments look to him and he looks back with disdain. they were built for self-sufficiency, for efficiency, for perfection, for war.

the equations are unmoving. their failure is clear.

tragic. but expected.

..... fine.

with a sweep of his gigantic skull he booms his new and final orders to the lingering gaggle of outmodes in a cold and calculated fury, clearing away these walking remains of his latest failed experiment. their final directive is to watch and gather data on this newly devised long-term scientific venture-abandoned refuse of a disproven theory they are at least they may potentially be of some remaining use to him.

the vast slab of his worktable is swept clean for the drafting of a new, organic line of undoubtable disappointments. a test of the waters in revisiting old delusions of theirs, he snorts with dispassionate contempt, to play along with their breathtakingly illogical chase for a variant of some cooperation scenario that actually bears results worth calculating. though it’s not as though his own isolationist efforts in a cultural vaccuum as they are have gotten results in long-term-he may as well, as they say, throw everything at the wall. one thing, rising from the hard-edged certainty of the numbers, is clear.

this farce is over.

....

dust hangs still in the dismal dawn air as dim orange fingers of sun lap his storm-grey flank.

“Tragic. But expected. “

a groan of shifting stones and a cascade of pebbles breaks the still air. something vast stands to titan feet, shakes itself off.

a pause. “Where will you go?”

the voice behind him is tired, old as the mountains they both loom above and thrice as weathered, deep as caverns and wide as hills, crackling and rumbling with a disbelieving surrender, breaking. He did not turn to meet the earthshaker’s eyes.

“Where i may not be found---this farce is over, and i’ve plans of my own.”

and without another word, he took wing.

the voice receded unseen to the miles of distance behind him.

(a traitorous small part wonders if things could have turned out differently.)

transhumanist scenario sub-option 1 variant 1a-perhaps they weren’t sure how to feel about being replaced by the very organic forms they left behind. maybe when it all came crumbling down, what was left of their civilization decided to step back and watch the primitive lifeforms that took their place, to see where they went wrong. after all, if the stormcatcher chose them over us in the end, they must be somehow better.

ending 2-our longest night

at the end of the ancient age their kind fell deep into a dormant state. now all these thousands of years later, something has made them awaken again.

variant 1a-they were new once, but now they are old. the technology of tomorrow becomes the technology of today and finally the technology of the past. and deprecated software is... replaced. it’s time to clear out the old models and make way for an updated worker design. throw them somewhere in the back of this drawer and forget-the stormcatcher doesn’t need old tech anymore.

their god has abandoned them like an out-of-date iphone, in favor of the latest and most new.

variant 2a-they got out of control, and were considered a dangerous mad science experiment. the stormcatcher, or the ancestors of the ridgebacks, sealed them away in the deep laps and threw away the key.

variant 2a-they had an actual robot rebellion against the stormcatcher after being made to work in the labs and factories to fuel the expansion constantly and were put to sleep, most likely to occur in the “the stormcatcher created them as robots to help in his workshop already and they never existed as anything else before that” timeline. in this scenario is is equally possible that they were or were not created with the intent to have full free will sentience at all.

varient 3a-the equations are clear. is spills out across the vaccuum diagrams like asimov’s psychohistory in the stories of a world a another universe away. the stormcatcher’s calculations have predicted this: their own computations have corroborated. there will come a day in this world’s history when something that has always been growing will finally reach a breaking point beyond which life on this world can ignore it no longer. small processes there are now will eventually run unceasing until something larger gives, the natural progress of entropy in a system of chaotic organized-like existence. something is coming, and if we do not prepare we will not survive. our distant organic draconic successors will not survive. nothing will survive.

a civilization of computers at the call of a pure mana computer god, calculations running a billion fold each moment shape clear the date at which they know with certainty they will come to be be needed, though the peoples of that distant time will not know that needed they are. all there is now, is for them to place themselves all quietly into their long, long sleep.

variant 4b-a calamity was coming to shake their world in their time rather than ours, with the power and totality of something like an asteroid strike, and their kind went dormant to survive it. only now have they started to wake up.

variant 4c- whether natural disaster or warfare or a virus or asteroid or simple running out of resources and deciding to go to sleep until the world recovers enough more, a calamity has come and the calamity has gone, sweeping the machine race away with it, and there are none now left to remember. thousands of years pass. their successors construct the greatest reactor ever seen by dragon eyes on the heart of their land’s aortal leyline.... and unknown to them, the side effects ripple down the leylines of all the expanse, and surges make their way down into a long-forgotten facility. maybe soon, for the first time in ten thousand years, something will stumble out into Sorhaldûm’s light.

variant 4d-to survive whatever calamity came to pass, they placed themselves in stasis at the base of the towers and/or a special reactor and/or some other important large invention in the hopes that they would slowly recharge them with time. modern dragonkind has been using these structures for a long time, unwittingly recharging them slowly in the process.

variant 5a- they loaded themselves into a supercomputer to escape the nonspecified end of their civilization a long time ago, and only now has something triggered them to download back into their bodies. either they intended to remain in limbo for a theoretically indefinitely long amount of time-or something went wrong with the reactivation process that trapped them in the system until a new factor came into the situation to give it a nudge. (this could easily also be categorized under some variants of reconstructing science)

variant 5b-they all trapped themselves in a virtual reality mind upload immortality personal simulated universe scheme as an attempt at a sort of ai ascension hive mind singularity like those old sci fi universes where humanity all loaded their brains into one giant computer system around a star, retreating inward to sleep in infinite digital dreaming in a world inside and below the outside for the rest of time.

abiogenesis scenario variant 1a- every good scientist has a backup plan. in the stormcatcher’s case, that backup plan was a machine race of sleepless unstoppable dormant servants, kept inactive in reserve just in case at some distant future point down the line the situation got hairy enough for concern and the more pedestrian, organic workers were not enough.

abiogenesis scenario variant 1b- they’ve been waiting somewhere deep in reserve in the stormcatcher’s labs for a long time. once they were his lab assistants, but it seems eventually he ceased to care. someone goes down into the old archives of thousands of years past and cracks open just the right door to find them. they haven’t been activated in a very long time.

(abiogenesis scenario) ending 3-reconstructing science/the reconstruction of fallen ancients. once the stormcatcher made an army of metal and lightning, but that was an age ago. it’s been a long time since then. the world is different now. all of them were destroyed in the ancient wars a long time ago, their blueprints old and forgotten under the dusty pile of inventions since. but-something’s coming now. something big. even the stormcatcher can feel it-the balance is shifting. he’s going to need More. a brush knocks loose an age-old blueprint from the bottom of the shelves.... it seems as good a time as any to revisit old machines of war.

variant 1a-it was not the stormcatcher, but a simply a few small members of a modern breed, who stumbled across the rusted, weathered and empty old parts of a mysterious machine scattered buried and forgotten in the sand, and saw fit to rebuild them. the shifting expanse has no shortage of distant far-flung wrecks and abandoned husks of technological ghosts-this time is no different.

variant 1b-the shifting expanse is not named for nothing. ancient structures and forgotten things, stations, labs, compounds, and experiments both sanctioned and secret civilian and all of the above mad long abandoned, are unearthed and buried again just as quickly by the everchanging tides of the vast and hostile dune sea. how much history is entombed beneath those sands forever to remain unseen is no one’s place to say.

the unstable topography is governed by winds and mechanisms inscrutably complex and distant to the draconic-and human- mind. today, it is something long buried that has been uncovered- in the tumult of the weather or some recent event, a portion of the desert has blown away, exposing a vast and uncountably ancient dilapidated complex from long long ago. the ancient citadel, a place of endless rooms filled with experiments, the locus of a fallen empire’s power. this, is where the mysterious remains of some ancient automaton are recovered-and, by their clueless discoverers, expecting some mindless novelty servant, reforged.

the ancient citadel complex could potentially be a new coliseum venue, a dilapidated old lab unburied out of the windy sands, and the breed could be the first coliseum-obtainable one, if it went this direction.

(ancient in game mechanics only scenario)ending(beginning?) 4- no gods no casters. the metal dragons were never meant to be sentient, but there are many things the lightning flight has created which were never intended to turn out as they did. it would not be the first time unfettered advancement has charged blindly ahead to make the biggest, strongest, most powerful thing it can and damn the slightest sideways thought to any possibility of the consequences. they were never intended to be sentient-but creating, with no concept whatsoever of safety, an artificial intelligence as advanced and complicated as you can simply to prove you can do it is given to causing certain repercussions.

they were created by the foremost minds of modern dragonkin-and they would not allow themselves to remain a mere tool for their organic master’s using. this is the ai rebellion plotline you never knew a fantasy kitchen sink with large spots of jarringly fantasy-free dark scifi needed, and the newly created mechanical dracoforms will not rest until their rights within the dominant society are secured.

variant 1a-they did not fight- how could they, against the beings that made them and every weakness they have to exploit? no, instead they fled-to another land in hopes they could find somewhere to be free. out into the desert and into foreign territories and into hiding among dragonkind’s own peoples-hoping for a day they can walk in the sun.

blanket awakening scenarios and misc endings that are applicable to all or most of these endings:

broken masquerade- they are hiding among us, disguised as us, and soon, for whatever is decided to be the reason, someone is about to give the all-clear.

my greatest dissapointment- the stormcatcher built them to be the ultimate perfect beings, and was less than satisfied with the results. even as invulnerable unaging sapient sleepless self-replicating hyperadvanced beyond draconic intelligence and near incapable of clumsiness or mistakes machines, they were still subject to the wear of time, they still required food for fuel, they still had feelings and relationships and will and despite no need for sleeping still objected to spending all their time on the factory floor as workers without pause. this experiment was a bitter wasteful failure, and he did not like to dwell on this farce of disappointments any longer. his standards are unreachable-they could never please their creator. they could never be enough.

variant 1a- they may not have just simply been perfectly functional but when fully rendered in the limits of physical reality ultimately less than the stormcatcher had hoped for, they may have even been actively malfunctioning. similar to how the aetherdragons are irresistibly compelled to eat paper-which i very much doubt is by the arcanist’s design.

roboticized-

in this possibility they either were reawakened, or created in the first place, by several dragons in modern times being willingly or unwillingly roboticized into them. a sort of transdraconic ascension origin/ancient in game mechanics only origin fusion, with optional elements of our longest night depending on exact presentation.

[aikoiya]

I think you might be missing the point. While you're right about the idea of other people, as a sign of love, helping to blunt the weight of a sacrifice, I also feel like there's a difference between bunting it & making it seem like it never even happened, which in the current situation, new gamers in the next game should there be one, wouldn't even know that something happened unless they were told.

Now, I read a good analysis that explained how Zelda was able to be returned to Hylian without any implications it ever happened & the point was so well-done that I'm no longer as upset about that part of it because it makes total sense. The logic being that Sonia's spirit clutched Link's hand first, then Rauru. This would suggest that Sonia a/o Link's time magic were being amplified by Rauru & Link a/o Sonia. Thus, triple the time magic.

This, when paired with Recall's specified ability to return an object to a state that it was in before, it makes much more logical sense as to why she was able to be fully restored because they didn't transform her back, so much as they returned her body to a time before she had even transformed to begin with.

As such, I'm not quite as fussed over the dragon Zelda thing anymore. Would I have still like some small proof that it happened, even if it was something as small as fangs, claws, or a handful of visible scales here & there? Yes, absolutely & I would've even been satisfied with just one of those things! But the fact that she doesn't makes enough sense for me to be able to let it slide.

My main issue now is with Link getting his arm back. Not because I want him to suffer, but more so that A. The magic that he, Sonia, & Rauru used to bring back Zelda was specifically pointed at Zelda & at no other time has using Recall done anything to directly affect Rauru's arm even as a side-effect (yes, Sidon's Waterwall, but the difference here is that Sidon's ability is specifically designed to do that while Recall isn't), so it just feels a bit contrived for the sake of maintaining the status quo. B. Zelda, Purah, & Robbie could've simply made him a tech arm & they could've easily used it as the next power medium for the next game in the Wild Series while doing it in a way that would've given the next game a sense of continuity that would've been readily apparent from the very beginning & the fact that they didn't go for it feels a bit like a missed opportunity is all. And C. The idea of Zelda diligently working on a replacement arm for her bf/husband is effing adorable.

Also, the thing about Zelda needing to live in order for future installments of the game to exist is that they wouldn't have to kill her off or make her sterile & the sterility thing is a little strange to bring up as, as far as we know, that'd only possibly happen if she were to remain a dragon entirely.

And, to be honest, this Zelda having a few draconic features wouldn't necessarily force Nintendo to make other non-Wild Zeldas have those same features as they'd only have to say that the next iteration of Zelda lived long enough after TotK that those features were diluted. They literally do this in the game with Rauru & Zelda. You would never in a million years guess that they were related if you weren't all-but directly told that they were in the game. And if you believe that TotK's past took place between Skyward Sword & Minish Cap, then it might not have even taken the whole 9,900 years to weed it out.

If anything, depending on how many dragon features she would keep, it very likely wouldn't even take as long as it did to defurrify the Royal Family the first time around because most depictions of Zelda retaining some dragon features have her being mostly Hylian. I even remember one where the only noticeable feature that she retained were pronounced canines & that might not even take 2 generations to get rid of.

And, as far as I know, having a couple draconic features while still being mostly Hylian wouldn't stop her from reproducing unless you're going off mule logic.

So one take on TOTK’s ending I’ve seen quite a bit of is the idea that it deprived all dramatic weight from Zelda’s sacrifice and that she should have suffered the consequences of her choice (I.e. stay a dragon forever or come back as a dragon human hybrid). This strikes me as a shallow reading of the text and another example of how some people think punishment (or in this case “dying for a cause”) is the only viable ending for someone who made the choice Zelda made. It really rubs me the wrong way given all the development and tragedy she faced in both games. What are your thoughts?

There is something beautiful and tragic and meaningful about the stories etched upon our skin by powers beyond our control. I don't think the people that wish for Amputee Link or Dragon Zelda think that 'dying for a cause' is the only reward for sacrifice. It comes from the truth that most of us don't get to recover from the consequences of our actions the way characters in a story can. Which I absolutely get (one of my earliest fics was written to call out anime fanservice). To escape with no scars or signs that anything awful happened can feel unrealistic or like cheating in a world where we must bear the consequences of our actions. But is that really what happened?

First off is the Doyalist framework the story has to exist within. This is a video game for a major franchise that, while they are excellent at re-writing and ignoring their own canon, still needs to be available for future stories to be told through it. After all the emphasis botw placed on the 'goddess bloodline', if they were to kill Zelda, or even render her sterile, that puts a huge shadow over any future games they could make. You don't kill Harry in the Order of the Phoenix. The stories of Hyrule are far from over, even if this would be a satisfying end point for the timeline. Heck, there's no guarantee Link's not going to wake up in his underwear in a damp cave a third time, tbh. That's the reality of why Zelda had to return to her old body.

But does that mean that totk is a bad story? Does it render Zelda's sacrifices meaningless? Do these sacrifices only have meaning if she came back visibly changed?

I don't think so. Because the sacrifice was never about her body, it was always about her sense of self. "To become an immortal dragon is to lose ones' self" was the sacrifice that was demanded and that Zelda offered.

Guess what? She did have to leave Link to face Ganondorf without her. Zelda did lose all sense of herself for uncountable years. Zelda's memories, her sense of self, was stripped away from her and scattered across all of Hyrule.

It was only because Link loved her enough to collect the pieces of who Zelda was, only because he was able to understand them through the gift of Rauru's arm, and only because both Sonia and Rauru consigned themselves to living as spirits for as long as Zelda was a dragon, that Zelda's sense of self was returned.

It may feel like cheating, or maybe unearned, that Zelda got her body and sense of self back with no visible changes. But how many times have other people stepped in to help shoulder the consequences of your actions? How many times did your parents step in when you made a mistake, to give you another chance?

You ever leave the fridge open as a kid, and accidentally spoil all your food? In a family where money is tight, Mom and Dad might have to sacrifice eating full meals for a while so that their children can eat. That sacrifice is a form of love. If the neighbor hears about it (thin walls) and brings over some casseroles they took from their food stores, that took a few hours to make, does that diminish the parent's sacrifice for their kids? The consequences of that sacrifice, going hungry, have gone away because someone else stepped in.

The mistake was Rauru and Sonia's, letting Ganondorf in and not being strong enough to stop him. The sacrifice was Zelda's, her mind/memories/self. The intercessors are Rauru, Sonia, and Link, unwilling to let Zelda bear the full weight of her sacrifice.

Yes, we live in a world where we often do not get to walk away from the consequences of our sacrifices/choices unscathed. But we also live in a world where, every once and a while, we do get to walk away with only internal changes. Almost always because other people were willing to sacrifice too. Your parents? your siblings? Your friends? Your god?

Zelda's hylian body is a reflection of the sense of self she regained. Of her agency as a character instead of as a mindless dragon/a living sacred site. Zelda's character arc ends with her accepting the sacrifice demanded of her by reclaiming her responsibility towards the people of her Hyrule, taking up the mantle of power and leadership once again. The fact that other people step in to blunt the weight of that sacrifice does not degrade how Zelda changed to get there or what she went through.

It's actually the conclusion of Rauru, Sonia's, and Link's arcs that they also sacrificed to support Zelda. Her arc pulls all the others to their conclusions. Zelda is the narrative gravity of totk. I can't call that bad writing.

[rainbow-dunk]

its Him... philza minecraft himself

full build and rambling under the cut!!!

Philza

6 fey wanderer ranger/2 grave cleric

aasimar (protector)

outlander

stats:

str - 12

dex - 18

con - 14

int - 10

wis - 16

cha - 12

miscellaneous:

saves: strength, dexterity

proficiencies: stealth (exp), athletics, survival, insight, perception

tool proficiencies: cards

languages: common, celestial, draconic, elvish, dwarvish

armour: light, medium, shields

weapons: simple, martial

ranger spells:

lv1: charm person, hunter’s mark, entangle

lv2: misty step, pass without trace, spike growth

cleric spells:

cantrips: spare the dying, mending, toll the dead, thaumaturgy

lv1: bane, false life, bless, healing word, cure wounds, guiding bolt, sanctuary

philza! philza! god i love philza!!!

this is another build that went through a few iterations lmao. originally i kind of made him with an almost knight image in mind, probably because he's always wearing netherite? so i started out with 1 ranger/7 conquest paladin, because of the hardcore series. but then i decided that it... didn't really work, and changed to 6 fey wanderer ranger/2 paladin, but the ability scores didn't fit him, so i switched over to grave cleric for the last two levels! grave clerics are specifically about the transition between life and death - one of the deities of that is the Raven Queen. who used to be mortal i believe. and he's an aasimar. now, i don't have any lore nailed down, but wouldn't it be fun if RQ was kristin? and once she became a god, she made it so that phil reincarnates, or cannot die from old age? who knows! i just think it's nice. i also really like the idea of a god and her cleric being lovers. fey wanderer specifically is more of just a vibes thing than anything! i just think it's neat.

protector aasimar was kind of a given for phil. i could have made him aarakocra, or winged tiefling, but i think protector fits a lot better. design wise, aasimar are fun because you can do almost anything, so for phil, he actually has a halo! it's why he wears a hat, it's very obvious if trying to sneak around. also, even when he doesn't have his wings out, his shadow has them. they're just little fun details.

phil's design has also changed from its original form, lmao. originally i gave him gold half-plate, but then i decided that it was too clunky and bad for stealth for him, so i abandoned the last remnants of the knight-like image and went all in on the studded leather. i gave him a longbow because i'd made him dex-based from the start, and his accuracy is incredible. when remaking the design, i took a lot of inspiration from japanese clothing, armour and archery! a few fun details are the way his kimono is tied up out of the way of his bow, which comes from kyudo, the japanese martial art of archery, and the glove on his right hand called a yotsugake, also from kyudo. the armour is also loosely modelled off of samurai armour, which could be made from leather. he also has a hip quiver, as it's far more practical than the back one that i originally gave him. there are also buttons on the armour's shoulders which go though buttonholes on both the kimono and the cloak, keeping the cloak out of the way of his bow. i like this design a lot.

[fatesdeepdive]

Entry 53: Home Sweet Abusive Home

I unlocked the Conquest version of My Castle at the end of the last chapter. It’s basically the same; there are different building styles, Lilith attacks instead of heals, the shops sell Nohrian weapons instead of Hoshidan ones, etc. I’m going to be ignoring castle stuff this time and instead analyzing classes.

Class Profile - Nohr Prince/Princess

Corrin and Kana’s default class, wields swords and dragon stones. Balanced with good HP and Strength. The class’s first skill, Nobility, boosts EXP gained. The other skill, Dragon Fang, gives a skill stat determined chance to do a special attack that does 1.5 damage. Dragon Fang also has unique animations that have Corrin attacking with dragon arms. Design wise, the black and white stripes are nice but a bit busy. The cape is nice, but the random slits over the princess version’s thighs are dumb.

Class Profile - Hoshido Noble

Nohr Prince/Princess’s promotion in Birthright and an optional promotion in Revelation. Stat wise, it has better Strength, Skill, and Defense than its Nohrian counterpart, as well as the ability to use staves. It’s first ability, Dragon Ward, gives nearby allies a luck based chance to half damage taken. This fits with its more supportive role. On the other hand, its second ability Hoshidan Unity gives a 10% boost to the activation rate of all skills. Design wise, it’s a silver and gold version of Corrin’s normal design with a few details that make it look more Hoshidan. It’s a great design, assuming you ignore the fact that the female version isn’t wearing pants.

Class Profile - Nohr Noble

The Conquest version of Hoshido Noble. Has slightly better Speed, Magic, and Resistance, as well as the ability to use tomes. Its first skill, Draconic Hex, lowers the stats of enemies after combat. The other skill, Nohrian Trust, is really interesting, allowing Corrin to use the battle skills of supporting allies. I love the black coloring with hints of magenta and the tattered cape, but I have to groan at the cleavage and continued lack of pants for female units. Also something I noticed: Nohr Nobles have a shield on their left shoulder, while Hoshidans have a shield on their right shoulder. It’s a nice little detail.

Also, you know how I stole Rinkah and Sakura’s weapons? The damn game gave them back!

Conquest Chapter 7: A Dragon’s Decree

Moron and his Nohrian siblings return to Castle Krakenburg. Garon praises Xander for invading Hoshido. Xander brings up Moron, who Garon apparently can’t see from ten feet away, and Garon is shocked that Moron isn’t dead. Garon yells at Moron for coming home and accuses him of being a spy. Xander insists Moron is loyal and brings up the fight with Ryoma. Iago believes this to be a ruse, which makes sense. He did that shit in Birthright.

Moron asks about the exploding sword. Garon very convincingly pretends to know nothing. Garon uses the fact that Moron is suspicious of the repeated attempts on his life as evidence that Moron is a traitor and orders Xander to execute him. So glad we came back.

Camilla and Elise beg for mercy and Xander refuses to kill his brother. Iago says that makes Xander a traitor, too. Moron says he’ll kill himself to protect Xander. Garon, overjoyed at the idea of suicide, decides to leave it up to Anankos, the dragon god who was mentioned like once in Birthright. Anankos whispers to Garon to spare Moron, if he passes a test. Moron must suppress a rebellion in the ice tribe to prove his loyalty, without any help from his siblings or the Nohrian military. Something about Moron going off alone to enemy territory to prove his loyalty feels oddly familiar...hope this isn’t secretly a ploy to kill Moron again.

Xander says that taking out an entire army singlehandedly is impossible. Moron agrees to the mission. After Moron leaves, Garon monologues about how Moron is going to lose all hope and wish for death. Real glad we chose to side with Nohr, this truly was the right decision.

Xander, hearing Garon say evil shit out loud, does not decide to stop working for Garon. He says he knows what he has to do, but spoiler alert, it isn’t overthrow his evil father.

Moron goes through the woods of the Forlorn, where you fight Leo in Birthright, with only Lilith accompanying him. Faceless show up and attack, surrounding Moron. Felicia shows up and takes one out with a dagger. Moron points out that he had to destroy Felicia’s friends and family without help, but shrugs it off because they aren’t technically at the Ice Village yet.

This battle is actually pretty good, taking on a ton of enemies with only two units. At the start of turn three, Silas and Elise show up to rescue Corrin. At the start of turn four, Elise’s retainers Arthur and Effie join them. Arthur mentions that he’s late because a bird stole his map and Effie’s late because her armor made her sink into the swamp. Elise mentions that Xander planned out this rescue behind Garon’s back.

Arthur

Arthur is Talitu's rude Wind Mage son...wait, wrong Arthur. Arthur is a Monk who...okay, once more time. Arthur is Elise’s unlucky but heroic Fighter retainer. I love Arthur as a character, this boisterous, cheesy, superhero fighting for justice. His design has this massive lantern jaw and he wears a superhero costume with a cape. His personal skill, Misfortune, makes critical hits more likely on both him and his enemies. This is fitting for the running gag of him being supernaturally unlucky, something reflected in gameplay by him having an abysmal luck stat.

Effie

Elise’s other retainer, a Knight. She seems to be a protective warrior. Honestly, I didn’t pick up too much about her personality because I was distracted by her utterly monstrous strength star. Effie is buff. Her personal skill, Puissance, pairs well with this by boosting her damage if she’s far stronger than an enemy. Personally, I’m not too fond of Effie’s design. Her face feels to girly and looks like she’s wearing make-up, which doesn’t match her personality. The big shoulder pads look weird and the boob plate is eye-roll inducing. At least it’s better than her Heroes design, which is atrocious.

After battle, Felicia volunteers to lead us to her village. The camera pans over to reveal Iago was responsible for the faceless attack. Because he’s an evil asshole who I hate.

Also I grabbed Mozu between chapters.

Support: Corrin/Elise

C: Corrin stumbles upon Elise practicing punching in a field. Elise insists she's just picking flowers because she's sweet. Eventually, Elise admits that she's training so she won't be a burden to the army.

B: Corrin trains Elise to grow stronger. Elise struggles to do push-ups.

A: Elise sobs about being pathetic. Corrin insists that war isn't about fighting, it's about having a pure desire for peace. The amount of people Corrin kills contradicts this.

S: Corrin gives Elise flowers to propose to her. I vomit.

Review: Setting aside the incestuous pedophilia that ends this one, not bad. I think Elise works more than Sakura because at least she’s entertaining when complaining about being a burden.

Support: Arthur/Felicia

C: Felicia tells Arthur she's a bad maid because she's incompetent and clumsy. Arthur relates.

B: Arthur explains that the best way to deal with problems is to be carefree. As he walks, he almost slips on a banana peel (despite the army not storing bananas) and is swarmed by mosquitos (which don't exist in this region).

A: Arthur tells a story of a time he tried to save a drowning person, hit his head, and almost drowned. The person he tried to save was helped by someone else. Arthur explains that he and Felicia shouldn't worry about mishaps.

S: Arthur asks Felicia to meet with him so he can propose. They fall in a pit, Setsuna style, and Felicia accidentally freezes Arthur's fingers so he can't get the ring out of his pocket.

Review: Paring up these absolute messes of people is hilarious.

Support: Mozu/Silas

C: Mozu asks Silas if she should just leave the army and go back home (to the corpse filled ruins of her village I guess) because she isn't very strong. Silas volunteers to train her to be stronger.

B: Mozu says Silas shouldn't waste time training her. Silas tells her her "I'm too weak to be good" mindset is holding her back and that her wasting her potential is a sin against her murdered parents. Goddamn.

A: Mozu, believing she has potential, improves. Silas says he wasn't talented as a kid and only became a good knight because he never gave up. Mozu promises to cook for him.

S: Silas proposes so he can have pie every day. Mozu fantasizes about killing people with S-Rank pair up bonuses.

Review: Not bad, but needed a certain spark to be great. Silas telling Mozu that attitude is everything is interesting, but it kinda falls off towards the end.

Support: Effie/Jakob

C: Jakob bakes a cake for Corrin. Effie eats it. Jakob tries to physically stop her but she shrugs off everything he throws at her.

B: Effie works out by lifting water barrels and tells Jakob that she needs to be strong so she can protect her friends, even if it costs her her own life. Jakob says he doesn't want her to die for him because he'd have to spend the rest of his life feeling guilty. Ugh!

A: Effie says that she can't not protect him because they're friends. Jakob says that's fine, just don't die in the process.

S: Jakob bakes a cake with protein powder instead of flour to propose to Effie. Effie says she isn't going to marry him for his baking skills, but for his good heart.

Review: Pretty good. Effie is amusing throughout this Support and the discussion of dying for friends is nice.

[dzamie-oc]

06 - Mech

Ah, aren’t Synths wonderful? Modular, and you can make them do gender and sexuality in whatever way you please.

Length: 2200 words Rating: M (no sex actually happens, but genitalia are discussed a lot) Summary: A woman and her robo-derg go shopping for some parts to spice up their bedroom activities.

Minors DNI, please. It’s rated M for a reason.

-----

Lauren and her Synth, Haskell, stood at the entrance to the robotics store. It wasn’t an official outlet for his manufacturer, so they would technically be voiding his warranty, something that might have concerned them if he had still had one. As it was, however, the reason they simply stood there was less robotic and far more human.

[I told you for weeks, I’m only going in after you,] Haskell said, his primary lights a mirthful yellow against his blue and light grey plating, [watching your face go through so many emotions is well worth the delay.]

The human gently shoved him, her face hot with a blush. “Shut up, I’m getting to it.”

[Would it help if you pretended we were here to look at different parts?] The synthetic dragon took a couple steps forward, peering at the shelves. [I wonder if they’ve got a simulation link set up for a naga lower half. Oh, don’t worry, Lauren, it’s well outside of our price range, I’d only be demoing in VR. You won’t have to worry about my tail wrapping you up in your sleep any more than it already does.]

This did not in any way help Lauren’s blush, but she did stomp forward and stubbornly cross the threshold into the store. Haskell’s visor displayed blue carets for his eyes as he followed her inside. On a side thread, he bragged to other synths in their IRC chat room how positively adorable his owner looked after some well-placed teasing, and he received some encouragement, and a link to an image of a synth with a hand at the end of her tail giving him three thumbs up.

“Hey, you two!” one of the employees, a two-tailed fox, called, “good to see you again. Haskell, how’s that projector module treating you?”

“Oh, hey Shay!” Lauren replied, her nervousness instantly abated. “It’s been real useful. Now we don’t have to settle for my desktop’s monitor to watch stuff together.”

[Or my visor.]

“That was ONE TIME. Anyway, thanks for the recommendation, and... half un-thanks for telling Haskell that it’s so port-neutral.” The human jabbed a thumb towards Haskell. “Nothing quite like walking back from the bathroom to see this guy on the bed, zero legs, with a My Little Pony AMV projecting out the bottom of his torso onto the opposite wall.”

Shay looked on the verge of laughter. The blue and grey Synth scrossed his arms and turned his head up and away, while his visor displayed a gentle U shape on each side. [My taste is far beyond you organics’ comprehension. Time will vindicate me.]

“A blast and a half, I’m sure. Anyway, what brings you two back in? Looking for hardware or software?”

“Oh. Uh, hardware,” Lauren said.

[In more ways than one,] Haskell added, to a returning and deepening blush on his owner’s face.

The fox furrowed her brow, then a look of comprehension crossed her face. “Ohhh... well! Let me go grab Conny, and she’ll show you to that rather special workshop.” She strode over to a door behind the counter, stuck her head in, and shouted, “Ay Conny! Got a customer for the fun stuff! Come and get ‘em!”

A few seconds later, a synth head popped out from behind the door, pale red around a dark visor featuring a slit-pupil eye display. “The fun stuff? Oh, must be the human lady and the blue bot. Come around and follow me.”

Haskell and Lauren shared a look at the prospect of walking behind the registers, but after a moment, Haskell shrugged and followed the other Synth through the employees door, with Lauren behind him, mindful of his tail. [She pinged me over short-wave, said it’s standard enough for this sort of thing,] he explained.

Conny turned out to be not only a pale red, but an entire slightly-desaturated rainbow from head to foot. Her tail had fewer segments than Haskell’s, but was the same length, so he assumed it was some storage model. When she turned from the hallway into a side room, something rattled in her tail, and he mentally congratulated himself on the guess. The human and Synth also stepped inside, and were immediately surprised at what they saw.

It was clearly a Synth workshop, with a sturdy table, a selection of mechanical and electronic tools on one wall, and a number of wires for fast data transfer. But what was unusual to the pair was a solid half of a wall featuring artificial penises and vaginas. Haskell quickly switched his primary lights to a reddish pink to fit the room, same as he saw Conny do. Many of the genitals were clearly modeled after other species; Haskell quickly identified pairs resembling those of dolphins, wolves, nagas, and several kinds of dragon. But some were purely fantastical, or even designed to look congruous on a Synth. On the opposite wall hung various erotic chestplates, although those weren’t nearly as varied in their design. Haskell’s attention did linger on a pair that featured a port on each breast where the nipple would be on a human or anthro, and the thought spurred him to link a photo to the IRC, followed by “consider: boobs that can grab you back.” To his surprise, one of the other denizens shared that she had a model like that, and joked that she’d share photos for five bucks.

[So! My name is Delilah Conagher, but you can call me Conny,] the rainbow Synth said, [and this is where we keep the lewd. Now, you don’t have to answer this, but this is gonna be for you two? Or has...] A request for information appeared in Haskell’s comms; he let her see his name and pronouns. [Or has Haskell come with his owner, but plans to use this stuff on someone else?]

[Oh, I sure hope this is for us. Otherwise, I’m gonna be pretty let down after all that flirting we’ve done to each other.]

[Faaaaan-tastic. Now, what’re we kitting you out with?] Conny’s eyes curved up and a few twinkling stars blinked in her visor, a common sign that a Synth thought they were about to be very funny. [Are you getting a dongle, port, or rack?]

Haskell laughed, but Lauren, though smiling, looked mildly perplexed. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Haskell laughed louder. Conny, however, just shook her head, though her lights fading to yellow as she did so signaled her amusement. [I could guess, but the guess with the highest accuracy is only 72%. If Haskell was using she/her, that drops all the way down to 43%.]

Now it was Haskell’s turn to be confused. His visor showed eyes looking up and away with one brow slightly down, as he remarked, [43 sounds low for four... well, five options with rack only. Surprisingly even distribution.] Lauren turned to him with a clear question on her tongue, so the Synth answered it for her, counting off on his fingers. [Dick or pussy, each with and without tits. Plus a fifth for just the tits. I’m still on the default “pan” from when we installed the sexuality software, so I happen to have saved plenty of examples to show you if you don’t believe me. Not all Synths, even. Only most.]

The human shook her head. “N- um... maybe later. But, Conny, we’re getting him a... a penis.”

Without audio, Conny sent Haskell a message saying, “Assuming only one between the legs or one set on the chest is sensible, but inaccurate. A good mechanic can do wonders.” Aloud, she addressed Lauren. [Wonderful, those are fun! And all of the designs here are made to be pleasurable to the giver and receiver - trust me on this - so there’s no bad answers, although there may be some better ones for each Synth. So, anything you’re looking for for your first one?]

“First one?”

[We’re modular,] both Synths said at once.

“Oh, right. Uh... well, I think I’ll pass on the... fleshy-looking ones. I think they’d clash with his body, and feel too different than- uh, nevermind.” As Lauren’s voice trailed off, Haskell put on a rather smug and pleased look.

Not missing a beat, Conny grabbed a small selection of more robotic-looking schlongs from the wall and set them out. [Now, this one here’s a great one, both as a first time and in general. It’s not the simplest, but it’s got a vibrate function that’s insulated from the rest of the body.] She then picked up one that looked more obviously draconic, but still with a robotic aesthetic: silvery top, glossy black underside. [And this one is far and away my favorite, both in shape and novelty. Bit on the higher end for price, though, I’ll be honest with you. Doesn’t stop it from being popular with my return customers, though.]

Lauren tentatively reached out, and Conny handed the penis to her, letting her turn it over in her hand. “I mean, it’s certainly nice, but what gives it that price?”

In reply, the rainbow Synth popped one hand off, took the dildo back, and slotted it in. After a few seconds to recognize and prepare the device, the glossy black underside revealed itself to be an RGB light, slowly fading through a few colors. Haskell stared at it. Lauren, on the other hand, had a different reaction. “No. Absolutely not. I know you, Haskell, and there’s no way I’m giving you even half a reason to try to fuck me to Caramelldansen.”

[It’d be funny, though.]

“Not happening.” She pointed to one of the others. “That one looks nice, though. Haskell, how do you feel about that one?”

The blue and grey Synth nodded. [I think I’d look rather good with that on me. If you think you’d feel good with it in you, we should give it a shot.]

Conny looked between the two of them, then nodded at Haskell. [Then just hop up on the table and I’ll get you set up. Oh, that reminds me: I can also modify your lower chassis - a couple hundred, same as other port additions - to get you a proper crotch mount or two. Assuming you’re pretty standard, the best I can do is essentially a workaround where I plug it in the rear, behind your tail, and give you some fittings to secure it around your legs and/or waist.]

“It’s not necessary, though, right?”

Haskell laid down and soon felt the weight of his tail vanish, followed by a system notification that a module had been detached. The Synth mechanic kept talking. [No, but without it, Haskell will probably need or at least want your help to get the penis on and off.]

[Sounds worth it to me,] Haskell said.

“It’s not your $200.”

[Sure it is. You did tell me I could have my own account for stuff on the side. Remember, because I was ask- whining for- hold on. I was ask- whining for video games.] He gave Lauren a flat stare. [Really?]

Lauren held her hands up. “In my defense, I had forgotten I’d done that before I promised to stop touching your admin controls without telling you. But yeah, that’s fine then. Get yourself some penis compatibility.”

[Great! Alright, doc, fix me up!] Haskell said, then slipped himself into Safe Mode.

-----

[Oh, that looks fantastic,] the Synth said, admiring his new dick, [thanks for matching it to my colors.]

[I’d be a pretty poor mechanic if I couldn’t,] Conny replied, [but thanks. Now, go ahead and disable sensitivity in the device settings, or at least drop it as low as possible.]

[Huh? Doesn’t that go against the point?]

[Some modules can be equipped in public. This is not one of them. And trust me, you don’t want that thing anywhere near the default levels when you remove it, at least not until you’re used to the sensation.]

Lauren glanced down the hallway. “Yyyyeah, let’s not traumatize whoever’s in the store and potentially find out which of us is legally liable for you going streaking.”

Haskell nodded, and after a couple seconds, pulled the penis out of its socket, then fit a grey plate over the port, hiding it.

[And this should go without saying, but there are no returns on this sort of thing. If something goes wrong, you might get a partial refund if you send us the diagnostics, but once that dick is out of the store, we don’t want it back in here.]

Lauren took the cock and gave it a curious squeeze before placing it in the bag Conny had provided. “Fair enough. And will Shay ring us up out there, or...?”

[Yep! Alright, you two, have fun out there.]

As the two left the store after paying, Haskell linked a photo of the purchase he had taken earlier to his IRC friends. Some congratulated him on a well-chosen mod, a couple of them asked him to DM photos of it equipped, and one person floated the idea of attaching two of them to that pair of breasts with ports.

All in all, a productive day, and a precursor to a hopefully unforgettable night.

[nugsanart09-works]

More character design ramblings:

The vision in the middle of the "star"

》 acknowledgement of origins but since vision can be a sense of self, it's still the core of his identity in the end 》 his vision is fake btw — his actual vision would've been Dendro, which is ironic considering he's a plant gaining the element of plant 》 it's def not bcs ive rewatched this specific wuwa short way too many times lmao 》 srsly tho, it's mostly due to his lore ehe 》 also! even if it is real, he would've colored the frame the same 》 that and worn it upside-down 》 or adjust the frame so it will be upside-down lol 》 gotta complement the outfit design, after all

The "star" on his chest

》 i may have read up about the Khaenri'ahn design comparison/analysis and since Albedo (and most especially Dorian, Subject Two) is technically Khaenri'ahn, i said "why the hell not?"

Stars on the legs

》 represents how Albedo and Dorian were his "stepping stones" into gaining individuality 》 yes, it's in the og design but im a whore for ✨symbolism ✨

Imperfections

》 the crooked teeth, the freckles, the eyebrows, his choice of colors, the weird combo of the elven and draconic ears, the general inhumanity are all him giving his twist on the preprogrammed characteristics Dorian gave him 》 in a way, it's his way of rebelling from his predestined path (aside from the fact he ran tf off the moment he had the chance lmao) 》 oh and the ears? he knew abt Klee 》 so he mimicked it 》 not perfectly tho 》 i wanted to give the hint abt Durin's nature there somehow 》 other than the pink "taint" in Whoppy's design

Androgyny

》 this mf is a plant, gender means nothing to him (meaning: any pronouns is-a go, i just use he/him bcs why not lol)

. . . . .

If you read this far, have this kinda-scraped design based on Rosaria-esque veil-on-short-hair "long" hair illusion

Flower Child borne from a graveyard, chased the springtime beyond the hail

Other (basic) variations below:

The more accurate version in accordance with the original source:

Beneath them layers of cloth is a cutie patootie, a skrunkly if you will

[sagasofazeria]

Since my story is a D&D campaign, if people want to know, I will happily share some of the more game-y stuff behind the characters! (@talesfromaurea & @hellishhin i know you guys were interested! Here you go :D)

As of right now in the story, they’re about level 4! By the end of the campaign though they get to level 15.

Faulkron:

- Dark Elf/Drow Fighter (Champion)

- In a little bit (story-wise), my friend hit a lucky streak and the power of the protagonist™ kicks in. Faulkron gets... terrifying. He’s technically still “just a fighter” but he’s really really good at fighting. Like, scary hyper competent. I mean, he started with almost maxed strength, and it only got better.

- He did a lot of damage, consistently rolled high. Sadly, he doesn’t get better armor than leather for a while, but once he does he really wrecks the enemies’ shit, goes full Stronk™ and really starts just soaking attacks.

- He was a fun character for me to see my friend play because he had no clue about any of the “fighters are boring” things that people say, and so he felt free to just play without worry. He just had fun with him and went for it. He wasn’t the most complicated mechanics-wise, but he still was interesting and had personality, so it worked fine.

- Also, although he is a dark elf, and his parents were from the caverns beneath the earth like usual, he was raised on a small farm on the surface by a human, and so he is very different than many other dark elves, especially if they were raised in the Underdark. His darkvision is a little different due to his eyes having to deal with more light than most dark elves, and though he could do the elvish trance instead of sleeping he usually chooses to sleep instead, because of being raised by a human. (In my world, elves can choose to sleep if they want.)

Fuego:

Halfling Sorcerer/Rogue

- Being from Zul’Zagan, he is equivalent to a Lightfoot halfling

- His subclasses are a bit wonky: Draconic origins for sorcerer (although he doesn’t know it yet), assassin for rogue (eventually. We’re also not quite there in the story yet.)

- Despite what you may expect, does not only have fire spells. It is a near thing, but not quite. The variety increases as he gets higher up.

- He also wanted to do some cool flavor things (which I’m always game for) so his abilities look a little different than standard.

- An example, his sneak attack damage is reflavored to be him heating his weapon. He also wanted his draconic bloodline to be more dormant, so he doesn’t have any of the bodily alterations or know draconic, he’s just very good at fire (as far as he knows). That’s also why he doesn’t know what type of dragon he related to.

- Fuego was big on DPS but low on defense (of course) so he was usually having to be protected by/hidden behind somebody else (Shakari or Jetra most often)

Jetra:

- Human Bard (Valor)

- I would’ve done Lore bard because of her love for finding secrets, save the fact that I wanted her to have learned from both her parents. Her mother was a singer/performer and taught her to sing, and then her father, the Paladin, taught her how to create magic and how to fight. So she mixed that all up and boom, Valor bard.

- Jetra was definitely the most “utility caster” of the group. She had healing, buffs, pretty much something for everything. And a sword, if it came to that. She was easily the most adaptable of the group in and out of combat.

- She also spoke a bunch of languages, including Leinai (the one spoken in Leinos, since she was born there), Common, Celestial, Draconic, and was learning Azerian at the beginning of the campaign.

Shakari:

- Blue Dragonborn Fighter (Eldritch Knight)

- She was yet another Fighter, but she was designed to be more of a mid-range fighter so as not to get steal Faulkron’s spotlight. Since the khopesh could be thrown and summoned back b/c of Eldritch Knight stuff, it worked fine.

- They were very high DPS, especially with their spells/lightning breath, and then they’d finish the enemies off with a good ol’ sword attack (or just to help teammates out).

- At the later levels she takes some more utility spells (since she couldn’t those first few levels because of Eldritch Knight rules), but she’s still mostly damage.

- Also a neat lore note, Eldritch Knight is not called the same thing among her people, but it is a traditional position in the deserts she came from, and some of the other Azerian tribes.

Alejandro:

- Human Fighter (Gladiator*)

- *Gladiator is just a slightly modified version of the Samurai

- Unfortunately, I never had planned on Alejandro being a key NPC, so I had to come up with him over the course of the campaign. Thankfully, he ended up complementing Faulkron’s fighting style well (DEX based as opposed to Faulkron’s STR based build), and they made a really good tag team playing off of each other (once they trusted each other more, of course.)

- He ended up being a pretty formidable fighter in his own right, so he and Faulkron together was truly an intimidating duo. While Faulkron was tanking massive hits and dealing some of his own, Alejandro would run around with his bazillion attacks and chip away at the enemy with his swords.

- I also gave him a high charisma, being the gladiator that he was. But also just. Hot.

•••

Anyways, having three fighters in the group was probably not a great idea in retrospect, but that’s how it ended up. Everyone in the current party has swords and that’s sexy of them, honestly. Another funny note is that they all have decent charisma too, everyone but the main character. Shakari had 13 CHA as a dragonborn, Alejandro had a CHA 14 just as a stat investment (again because Hot), Jetra had 16 because she was a bard obviously, Fuego had a 17 because he was a sorcerer. Faulkron had the lowest at 9. He does end up increasing it over the campaign, it ends up at 16 or something so he’s fine, but for the first part of the story he’s not so good with people.

All in all, they had a good dynamic with lots of potential for ass kicking which they definitely utilized, so who cares? Anyways, just neat stuff.

[gregorygrim]

Dragon Prince Hot Takes

!!! Full Spoiler For “The Dragon Prince” Seasons 1-3!!!

So I finally got around to watching The Dragon Prince. Timely, I know, but better late than never i guess. I’m not completely caught up yet as I only got as far as S3E7 “Hearts of Cinder” in this first sitting. Considering I haven’t binged any series in almost two years, I think that’s pretty respectable. This means I won’t discuss the last few episodes here, except for a couple of things I was unfortunately spoiled for already, hence full spoilers.

These are basically my first thoughts and opinions after the binge and a good night’s sleep. It’s gonna be a lot so if you don’t care or don’t want spoilers…

TL;DR: 7½/10. Generally enjoyable, there are some aspects I’m not exactly fan of, but no dealbreakers

Firstly to everyone who told me that this was the new ATLA: you all need to rewatch Avatar stat! Like seriously. There are definitely parallels and given the cast and crew I think that’s what they were going for too (which is why I think it’s fair to compare the two), but still, no.

Secondly I love most of the worldbuilding and love that the series at least tries to give it to us in a bit of a non-linear fashion, even if it is kind of clumsy at times. I know some people are put off by expository dialogue and flashbacks, but I’m an epic fantasy nerd, I need that sweet, sweet lore to live as much as you mortals need food.

I like that there was clearly an effort made to integrate the worldbuilding in more subtle ways. For example you may initially find it kind of weird that all these different human ethnicities are existing perfectly integrated in what looks like a medieval society, until you remember from the opening monologue that the Human Kingdoms are the result of a massive diaspora following the human exodus from Xadia, so obviously people got all mixed up everywhere. It’s representation with an excellent in-world reason and that just brings me joy.

I also love the magic system(s) even though we haven’t really gone into that just yet. it really feels like there was a genuine effort made to create underlying mechanics for the magic rather than just making each spell a vaguely elemental themed ability. I really hope we’ll dive deeper into that in coming seasons.

I also like the little nods to other works of fantasy: Ezran’s ability to talk with animals is a reference to Tolkien’s world where some royal bloodlines had the ability to speak with animals, specifically birds; Primal Magic and its spells being cast with Ancient Draconic runes and words might be reminiscent of the Ancient Language from the Inheritance Cycle etc.

Thirdly the main cast is great. Callum, Ezran and Rayla are all interesting and relatable characters in their own right and as a group. I’m not going into each of them individually here, but while I think the series as a whole falls short of ATLA, as protagonist parties go I dare say this one is nearly on nearly on par with the gAang.¹

And yes, I love Bait, which I really did not expect following the first few episodes. I love his weird pug-toad-chameleon design, I love that he works like a flashbang whenever somebody says a quote from Scarface (I wish they hadn’t dropped that later on) and I love how done he is with everything and everyone at all times. I’ve only had him for 25 episodes, but if anything happened to him I would kill all of my followers and then myself.

On top of that, and speaking as someone who god knows is really not into shipping, I love Rayla and Callum’s relationship. It’s believable, it’s refreshing and it brings out the best in both characters without changing basically anything about them. Just two good friends who fell in love. A++, maybe even S tier.

Unfortunately though I can’t sing the same kind of praises about the villains. None of them are terrible (as in terribly written, most of them are pretty awful people), but with one exception they just don’t stand up to the protagonists in quality.

I could simply not take Viren seriously. Even now that is probably the single most powerful magic user in the world, he just has such strong Karen energy, every time he finishes a speech I am overcome with the urge to say “Sir, this is a Wendy’s” and it does not help the mood. I’m not even sure why. It might’ve been the voice because the guy who did Viren (Jason Simpson) also does a lot of kinda slimy characters in various anime dubs, it might be that over-the-top walking stick, idk.

What I’m saying is that as a primary antagonist he simply did not work for me. Which is doubly a shame because this kind of tarnishes the real “Big Bad” of this story by proxy. Aaravos, even as an invisible ghost, with his voice coming out of a caterpillar and next to no info on his backstory, has more style and gravity than all the human antagonists combined. It helps that he is by far the best designed character and Erik Dellums has the voice of a young god, but I’d argue even without that unfair advantage he has the potential to be a top tier villain. While he is stuck as Viren’s “little bug-pal” though he is just being dragged down.

(I’m aware that as of the final episode the caterpillar familiar is undergoing metamorphosis, probably to create a new body for Aaravos’ spirit to inhabit outside of the magic mirror, so I’m definitely hyped for more of him in the coming seasons.)

As for Soren and Claudia, I’ve got mixed feelings. This was one more aspect of the show that a lot of people compared to Avatar and while I see the parallels to Zuko & Azula, they are still very different, at least where Claudia is concerned. I’d also just like to mention that a lot of people told me that they thought the direction in which their storylines went were really surprising and I can’t disagree more. I predicted that Soren would defect to the protagonists on episode 5 right after Viren told him to kill the princes and I knew Claudia was going to stick with her father from episode 12 onward. My point is, it didn’t feel like some kind of plot twist, the way some people made it out to be, and which I don’t think was the intent.

I definitely got the sense that Soren was at least a Zuko-type character, though still not a Zuko clone, and as with Zuko I was consistently able to empathise and sympathise with him and his predicaments. I also appreciated that his dilemma is the result of his convictions and not him being kind of dense, which would’ve been all to easy and probably would’ve ruined his character for me. As it stands he is extremely milktoast, but perfectly functional for his purpose in the story and I can definitely see him evolving further and getting more interesting as we go on.

Claudia is where it gets complicated. Again, I can see the Azula parallels. But unlike that character, who is her father’s animal 110%, Claudia doesn’t strike me as a victim of Viren’s manipulation the way Soren undoubtably is. The way she talks about and uses Dark Magic, how she talks down to Soren and how even Viren finds it difficult to communicate with her, tells me as an audience member that she is an independent person. Which tells me that the cruelty and enthusiasm for causing harm she regularly displays is her own will. And that was before she straight up leads Callum on to manipulate him.

On the other hand I can absolutely relate to her devotion to her family, her big sister role (even though she is younger than Soren) and the way both the separation of her parents before the story and Soren’s injury in episode 16 must’ve affected her because of this. I know that, if my brother had become paralysed from the neck down and I knew a way to heal him, I would not have hesitated to kill that fawn either. Then again her relationship with her father is very different from parental relationships I am familiar with, so I can’t really say I see why she is so devoted to him, other than she promised her mother to stay with him years ago? ¯\(o_Ō)/¯

So basically Claudia falls into an emotional grey space for me. I can’t really tell how to feel about her either way and I’ll just have to see where she goes from here, which, while fine, isn’t necessarily great for an end of season cliffhanger imo.

Seeing as I’ve already talked about some of the show’s shortcomings, I think it’s time to dive into some of the what I would consider flaws.

Firstly this show needed at least 12 episode seasons. I have never made a secret out of my dislike for the modern short seasons and while I recognise that in the current climate in the industry giving everything full 25 episode seasons isn’t really doable, the pacing of this show, especially for the first season is just outright bad at times. It works as of the second season, but the first season alternately feels like it’s either rushing through or crawling along the whole way through.

The believability of Rayla’s and the princes’ relationship really suffers from this the most. It comes a bit out of nowhere on the boat ride and is then taken for granted way to quickly. Like Callum, seriously, this girl tried to kill you and your brother not even a day ago and you are currently cut off from all allies you have ever had until now. A little skepticism isn’t misplaced here. I also wold’ve liked if we’d just gotten a bit more of a sense of movement with the characters. I get that this is not the kind of show where we can just make an entire episode about the characters travelling and camping, intercut with plots centred around a more expansive supporting cast, but still I really would’ve preferred if Xadia didn’t feel quite so around the corner.

Another issue is with setup and payoff, which I think is partially a consequence of the pacing as well. A lot of smaller plot points are set up within the same episode as the payoff just wreak havoc on the narrative structure. A good example is the episode where they ride down the river in a boat and Bait tires to go into the water, but is saved by Ezran, who then explains the story behind Glowtoads and how they are pefect bait for large water predators. Then Bait falls into the water and is attacked by a massive water monster. This happens within five minutes of one episode and never comes up again. To me that looks like sign of rushed editing, which is probably not entirely the crew’s fault, given that they are on a schedule from Netflix, but it’s still a point of critique.

It unfortunately also manifests in the occasional line of horribly forced dialogue, often for things we can literally see happening on screen. Again, this is mostly the case in the earlier episodes, but it never completely goes away.

Finally, and this is where i get into serious issues that made me want to write this, we gotta talk about representation in this show.

First: disabled representation, meaning Amaya. Why is Amaya deaf? Because it’s good to have disabled representation.

Why is Amaya deaf and a high-ranking military officer? Because they didn’t think it through.

I know this may be a contentious opinion, but it is my belief that the purpose of representation, particularly of disabilities characters may suffer from, in fiction is to, y’know, represent people as they are in life. That includes especially the struggles they face and have to overcome, sometimes their whole life. This is not just me talking out of my ass either. A couple years ago I discussed this with several people that are disabled, specifically blind or otherwise severely visually impaired, in a different context obviously, and the general consensus was that it’s better to have representation that shows their life and their abilities as they are, rather than how they might wish they could be.

A mute or deaf person cannot be a medieval fantasy army general, no matter how good they might be in melee combat or who’s sister they are, because at the end of the day, they’re not able to give commands while they are holding a sword and shield. That such a massive logical oversight, especially in comparison to the extremely well done example of representation I mentioned above, and has so little impact on the plot that it leads me to believe, this aspect of Amaya’s character was tacked on in the last minute without being given any thought for the sole reason of the story having a disabled person in it. All this does is necessitate the existence of two otherwise entirely unnecessary characters, Gren and Kazi, both of which achieve nothing, aside from sometimes being literal set dressing.

That is where representation ends and tokenism begins.

And unfortunately this generally lacklustre attitude also extends to the LGBT+ representation on the show.

As of S3E7 “Hearts of Cinder” we have had two onscreen gay couples on the show (onscreen in the sense that both partners were onscreen and they were somehow confirmed to be in a relationship on the show). One of these, the queens of Duren, literally die in the same flashback they are introduced in, which incidentally also features them invading a foreign nation to poach a rare animal and subsequently starting the conflict at the series’ core. Not a great look.

Aside from serving as a tragic backstory for their daughter, the most impact they had on my viewing experience was that they made wonder how the fuck royal succession works in Duren. (People who know me are rolling their eyes right now because I’m bringing anarchism into this Dragon Prince review, but I’m telling you, this why fantasy monarchies aren’t compatible with LGBT+ politics in the same setting. Dynastic governments are inherently bigoted, you can’t have it both ways.)

The other couple are Runaan and Ethari, Rayla’s caretakers, although if I’m being honest you wouldn’t be able tell based on Runaan’s treatment of Rayla in the first episode. By the time we actually meet Ethari and find out about their relationship with Rayla, Runaan is suffering “a fate worse than death” (direct quote from the show) trapped in a gold coin.

I mean come on. That’s about as “technically not ‘bury your gays’” as it gets.

I think I need to reiterate here that my point is not that this show or its creators are somehow malicious. As i stated in the TL;DR: I don’t think this is a dealbreaker for liking this show. But it does demonstrate that they are prone to slipping to some potentially harmful tropes and this needs to be criticised and pointed out to them.

In conclusion, I really love this show. It’s not ATLA, it never will be, nothing else will ever be ATLA no matter how badly (and terribly) Netflix tries. But it does and should not have to be.

What it has to do though is improve. A lot of the building blocks are already there, such as Aaravos or Claudia’s development, Callum’s father, the origin of Ezran’s ability, the purpose of the “Key of Aaravos”, the true fate of King Harrow (we all know his soul is in the bird, right?) etc. Some things like the treatment of Amaya’s disability unfortunately won’t be fixable as far as I can tell, but if they at least manage to fix the gay representation I can make my peace with that.

¹ I know I said I wouldn’t go into each of the characters individually, but a) you should never trust a stranger on the internet and b) I really want to talk a bit about Callum. Specifically the “mystery” of why the hell he is connected to the Sky Primal. I write “mystery” because I think it’s fairly obvious from whence this talent came: there is only one humanoid species we know of with innate access to the Sky Arcanum and one of Callum’s parent’s is unidentified, presumed dead. 2+2=4. Callum’s father was a Skywing Elf. That’s why he recognised Nyx’s boomerang weapon. He remembered one like it either from his very early childhood (remember that he has photographic memory) or Sarai kept one and he found it at some point.

On top of that the name “Callum” or at least the pronunciation is clearly derived from Latin “caelum” meaning “sky” or “weather” and I already mentioned that Ancient Draconic is just bad Latin. It’s not very subtle. Unless they pull a complete 180 concerning the lore about Primal Magic he’s definitely going to be a half-elf, which would also just so happen to make him the perfect mediator between the Human Kingdoms and Xadia. Hmm, it’s almost as if they are planning ahead.

My question: How the fuck did that happen? Or rather: how did that fuck happen? I don’t think even Harrow knew or he probably would’ve a) paid more attention when Sarai advised against poaching the Magma Titan, because obviously she’s gotten around Xadia more than him, if y’know what i’m sayin’ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) or at least b) put it in his final letter to Callum. Unfortunately we know basically nothing about Sarai except that she was a soldier alongside Amaya and already had Callum before marrying Harrow. So does Amaya know? This is probably the most interesting plot thread in the whole story and as far as my friends told me it’s not going to be touched on anymore in the last two episodes than it already has thus far, which is basically not at all.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Disability and Loren

@zarohk asked for my thoughts on a Disability Studies/Media Studies perspective on the disability depictions in Animorphs.  Which was foolish, because I’m teaching an entire dang class on the subject of superheroes and mental health, so I have Many Thoughts.  [PLEASE NOTE: I am nondisabled, so if I err, please tell me so.]

Loren’s role in #49: The Diversion does a lot of things right, and a lot of things wrong.  She incurs a traumatic brain injury that results in memory loss and blindness a couple of years after Tobias is born, and lives with said injury for about ten years before Tobias finds her and gives her the ability to morph, which restores her sight but not her memory.

A few places where I commend the depiction of Loren:

It gets into the massive underemployment of disabled Americans.  Loren is smart, canny, athletic, compassionate... and working a call center job in exchange for state benefits.  Said state benefits do not afford her a decent standard of living; Tobias notes that she has few possessions and almost no time for leisure activities.  Americans with disabilities are twice as likely to be unemployed as those without, and those who do have jobs are ten times more likely to be paid less than minimum wage, e.g. in sheltered workshops.

It shows how inaccessible a lot of systems are in the U.S.  Tobias notes that Loren accidentally grabs an expired quart of milk — because nothing on the label is printed in Braille.  Putting raised text and/or Braille on food packaging is a health and safety issue, one that the U.S. ignores even though it violates its own laws (e.g. the ADA) because companies tend to do what they want and “what they want” is usually not to spend more money on packaging.  The call center and bus system are both marginally more accessible, especially when Loren has Champ to help, but they’re still clearly spaces set up for sighted people that don’t take blind users into account very well.

It shows some of the workarounds that help deal with accessibility problems.  Loren’s house is set up so that there are clear paths to and from all of the relevant spaces.  She’s doing that to allow herself to move around comfortably in that space, because she’s made it accessible for herself.  She memorizes the layout of the local store, and uses that to get around as well.  All of those details help show that she’s adjusted, and actively interacting with her own circumstances.

It drives home the difference between service dogs and pets.  This distinction is extremely important, and it gets ignored all the time by entitled ableists who want to bring their pets into stores.  Tobias and Marco both assume from the outside that it can’t be that hard to become a service animal — just do what Loren says to do, right? — but it takes Tobias 0.02 seconds to realize that it’s not that simple and that he cannot imitate Champ’s lifetime of training on the fly.  He says that he manages to get his mom home in one piece, and that that’s about all that can be said for his sad performance as a guide.  Champ has skills like ignoring interesting smells and applying exactly the right amount of pressure to the harness that most pets don’t have and also most pets can’t learn.  Champ is not a pet, at least not while he’s in that harness; he’s a gainfully employed expert assistant.

It rounds Loren out as a character, and definitely does not just make her into a lesson or problem for Tobias.  Loren is gently humorous, tolerating her coworkers’ teasing and Ax’s attempted juvenile delinquency with an eye-roll.  She’s compassionate, listening to other people’s problems on the phone with genuine concern and not swatting flies if she doesn’t have to.  She’s tough-minded and stupidly brave, chucking rocks at Visser Three’s head and flying at attack helicopters as a three-pound bird.  She’s fallible, unable to support Tobias emotionally even when he asks her to do so and unwilling to check in on him after leaving him with her sister.  She’s a fully rounded person, one whose personality is informed but not defined by her disability.

It talks about some of the unromatic aspects of a Traumatic Brain Injury.  Too often in other works of fiction, we see a person get bonked over the head and wake up with no episodic memory but all other brain functions intact (*cough* Rachel in MM1 *cough*).  Loren actually gets into the fact that she forgot huge chunks of language, forgot how to brush her teeth, forgot how to walk across a room.  She obviously lost her sight as well, and she mentions lifelong balance and coordination problems.  Even her amnesia isn’t absolute — she has some traces of recall, but can’t make anything coherent of her impressions.  Her injury isn’t 100% realistic, but it’s more so than many TBIs we see in fiction.

It focuses on the intersection of disability and social class.  Tobias notes that Loren is under a compounded threat because of her inability to move to a more secure neighborhood and her obvious vulnerability.  He feels a lot of disgust with himself when he and Marco and Ax are harassing Loren, because it’s so clear that this isn’t the first time she’s been harassed.  Tobias understands that his experience with poverty as a nondisabled male minor is different from Loren’s for those reasons.

A few places where Loren falls into the common traps of implied ableism creeping into fiction, as written about in Narrative Prosthesis: 

She gets “cured.”  Loren falls into the “kill or cure” dichotomy, like most of the other disabled characters in Animorphs.  In her case, it’s that she gains the power to morph and in the process regains the ability to see.  It isn’t a complete cure, true — she still has no memory — but it means that she’s no longer blind for the rest of the series.  Having the occasional character no longer be disabled sometimes isn’t automatically problematic; having every disabled character get either “fixed” or killed off inherently treats the disabled body as a problem that needs to be solved, through sci fi nonsense if no other way is available.

She implies that she’d rather die than continue to be disabled.  When injured by dracon burns, Loren initially refuses to morph out even though Tobias tells her she’ll die if she remains a bird, because (they both assume) to morph out is to return to her blind human body.  This moment buys into the stereotype that it’s better to be dead than disabled, again inherently devaluing the lives of actual blind individuals.

There’s a certain amount of mystery around how she became disabled.  It’s interesting that we never actually get a definitive answer on that one — Loren says she was told it was a car crash, but there’s also an implication that she was attacked by controllers, and we don’t know for sure.  However, the fact of her disability is treated as an aberrant state that needs to be explained, the book inherently asking “why are you like this?”  By contrast (for instance) she doesn’t ask Tobias “why are you in the body of a hawk?”

She views herself as a burden, and the narration doesn’t do enough to contradict her.  Loren says that she couldn’t possibly be expected to raise a child while also blind and coping with a TBI.  Real blind people raise kids all the time, however, including blind single parents, and it’d be nice to see some evidence in the story that Loren’s assumption is wrong.  Loren also apparently assumes that she can’t begin to play a role in Tobias’s life even now that Tobias is more self-sufficient, again because she views herself as relatively helpless and non-contributing due to her disability.  There are some hints that she’s wrong, but we don’t really see her either begin to contribute to the resistance or build a relationship with Tobias until after she’s become un-blind.

Tobias’s view of Loren is often pitying.  As much as Loren doesn’t initially view herself as a potential maternal figure to Tobias, he doesn’t view her as a potential mentor either.  He repeatedly expresses horror or sadness at her life circumstances, and assumes that her life must be barren due to the spartan nature of her home.  (Of course, that begs the question of why the hell a blind woman living alone would ever bother hanging pictures on her walls or putting doilies on her coffee tables, but Tobias doesn’t consider that angle.)  Again, Tobias is allowed to assume that her life must be meaningless if she’s disabled, but it’d be nice to see some contradictory evidence in the form of her having close friends or inane hobbies or some other proof that to lead a disabled life is not to automatically lead a lonely one.

Loren expresses bitterness and desperate desire to be nondisabled.  Again, it’s fine for any character to say “I wish my life was different,” and it’s a common consensus among blind writers/bloggers that being blind is often a pain in the butt.  However, views as extreme as “you need vision to have a fulfilling existence” or “vision is part of what makes us human” are ableist crocks of shit.  Loren doesn’t go so far as to espouse those extreme views, but she also doesn’t seem to view herself as having a well-rounded life in spite of her disability.  It’d be nice to see Loren talking about sight as handy or enjoyable or a thing that the designers of 99% U.S. environments assume everyone must have, rather than a necessary precondition for a minimum standard of life.

Loren’s disability is somewhat medicalized.  Same caveat as above: disabilities are by definition medical things that some bodies do or have that other bodies do not.  However, discussing disability primarily through “this is how your body is different from Implied Normal of Nondisabled Body” and focusing on doctor’s notes, diagnoses, physical differences, etc. can serve to disconnect the lived experience of the individual from their body.  It also tends to focus on the ways that the body is “the problem” rather than focusing on the ways that environments and attitudes are problematic, which then prevents anyone from asking hard questions about the environments and attitudes.  Loren’s doctor’s note, discussion of scarring and loss, and repeated physical descriptions are somewhat more medical than social.  It’d be nice to see a little more emphasis on the social factors that make blindness a disability (e.g. improperly labeled milk), and less on “your eyes are different from those of Implied Normal Nondisabled Person.”