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threewaysdivided · 7 months ago

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The Shaper of Minds and its possible consequences for a certain character

I have finally joined the rest of the internet in losing my mind over a D&D Podcast - in my case, the wonderful Dan Jones & Dragons. With Episode 26 due to stream on Dan’s Twitch this week, I really want to talk about some of the stuff that came up across the just-finished Gala sessions because the fallout from that has the potential to be incredibly fraught.

THE SHAPER OF MINDS

The relic the Flower Crowns were going after this mission – The Shaper of Minds – is a potentially fascinating narrative device that might as well have been lab-engineered to be my exact brand of personal nightmare fuel. It’s a small, ornate brass key that can alter any part of the target’s mental faculties/thoughts/memories at will should the wielder touch it to any part of their victim’s skin.

Now, on one hand, there are a heap of interesting (and even benevolent) applications for a tool like that. It could instantly grant access to skills, languages and knowledge that would otherwise take a person years of study to learn. It could be used to sort through and resolve memories that had been faded by time, muddied by trauma or forcibly supressed by magical/medical means. But on the other…

As described and used in campaign so far, the primary function of the Mindshaper is to alter memories (and the attendant personality) with the target having no awareness that their mind has been changed. It’s basically gaslighting on steroids, except that where a gaslighting victim still retains their original recollection – and has to be manipulated by their abuser into doubting their own perceptions and instead accepting the alternate telling of events (a cognitive dissonance that can eventually lead the person to recognise the manipulation) – the Shaper of Minds entirely replaces the original recollection of events with the version the wielder wants their victim to perceive. There is no internal conflict between accounts, no inconsistencies that could alert the victim that someone has broken into their head and rewritten their perceived reality. The person they reshape you to be is the person you believe you always were. And all it takes is a single touch.

That is a brand of existential horror that had me on edge all throughout Session 24 (basically from the moment it was implied the key was in play). Reality may be objective, but each individual person’s internal reality is governed by their perception – their memories – of the events in their life, no matter how incomplete, biased or otherwise skewed that personal perspective may have been. You have value just by being you because you are not replaceable, but the thing that makes you unique is, in large part, the sum total of those inimitably specific personal memories. No-one else will perceive the world in exactly the same way you do, and even a few minor changes to just a few of those perceptions can flow on to massive differences in ideals, values, priorities and future choices. In that regard, the use of the Mindshaper Key isn’t so much an alteration as an obliteration of the victim’s former self and replacement with someone new; even if that new stranger is largely indistinguishable from the original. And, again, all it takes is a single touch.

[Sidenote: This made Mister Wick an especially effective antagonist to wield the key, since his Galas functionally trap even targets who are aware of the threat within the rules of high-society behavioural expectations. Otherwise-innocuous actions like a handshake or private conversation suddenly become incredibly dangerous, while being nigh-impossible for the Flower Crowns to extract themselves from without committing an atrocious faux pas and potentially tipping Wick off. Perfectly designed stage for a psychological horror-thriller encounter.]

Which of course, brings us to a certain character who fell victim to the key in Episode 24… [put under the cut for spoiler reasons]

MORENTHAL

This poor Drow, he can never catch a break…

Morenthal may not have been the most mechanically dangerous party member to fall victim to Mister Wick’s manipulations although, given that the key was revealed to let its wielder read existing memories during the alteration, and that all of the Flower Crowns were fully briefed on the locations and nature of the Eversteel artefacts, him getting a hand on any of them could have been very bad plot-wise but from a character point of view I think he’s the one who the key’s effects had the potential to be most personally devastating for.

The way things ended up playing out across Session 25 was precisely the nightmare scenario Gamb was fretting about out of game: Mister Wick forcibly implanted Morenthal’s mind with false memories of being his lifelong trusted confidant and supporter, then – before the Flower Crowns could reverse the key’s effect – Morenthal discovered that Mister Wick had been killed in combat with Coil and Preston, leading to the Party having to physically restrain him so they could use the key to undo the damage, thus confronting Morenthal with the realisation that not only was everything he thought he knew about Jonathan a lie, but in actuality Jonathan had committed possibly the most invasive violation he’d ever been subjected to in order to forcibly make Morenthal into one of his loyal tools. That level of emotional and mental whiplash would be rough on any character, but for Morenthal it’s particularly brutal because…

Based on what’s been revealed in-game so far, the core of his character is that Morenthal is an abused child. This most-clearly came up in his conversation with Gelnek in Session 14; he was a child who grew up with nothing, raised by the Bloodletter Mercenaries as a tool instead of a person, and taught to see faces only as targets – with him also mentioning to Hobson in that their “combat training” involved being relentlessly beaten down until he learned to fight back. During his Session 21 visit with the Nightmother, he openly admits that “nowhere feels safe”. From that it’s pretty clear to read that Morenthal has never felt unconditionally loved, safe or respected around other mortals.

(This also helps contextualise why he’s so devoted to the Nightmother. From what little we have seen of his visits to her, Iris is a fond “adult” figure, who does not threaten, does not judge, asks nothing of him aside from his company, and cares equally for all the souls that pass through her domain. For a child “growing up with nothing” but violence, that would have been everything.)

But then, enter Jonathan fucking Wick. And now, just for a short while, Morenthal has all these “memories” of Jonathan being there to confide in, encourage him and support his escape from the Bloodletters. Suddenly he believes someone was there for him and, while the memories might be fake, the feelings of unconditional safety they would have brought were very real. Little wonder that he started acting like a Trilby-level naive goober around Mister Wick to the point of accidentally snitching on the rest of the group. Only, then it turns out to be a lie and those memories are gone.

For me, I think one of the worst things Morenthal might end up dealing with in the aftermath of having his memory fixed isn’t the specific feeling of personal betrayal or the potential shame at having been caught: it’s the realisation that he was always alone. That there was no mortal on the outside who cared or came for him when he needed them – just him and the distant fondness of a Divine. That would be awful beyond words, and yet the Flower Crowns were forced to inadvertently inflict it upon him in order to restore his mind. No wonder he wouldn’t look any of them in the eye before the session closed.

Worse still, the nature of the key makes it incredibly hard not only to trust others, but to trust your own mind. The players and audience above-table know that Morenthal is back to experiencing and remembering reality as it happened, but the question could very well linger for him, bringing with it a hefty dose of paranoia. Sure, Morenthal correctly remembers that Coil is a straightforward, loyal person who wouldn’t be tempted to tamper with his mind beyond undoing Jonathan’s manipulations… but he “remembered” that about Mister Wick too, and wouldn’t that be a beneficial thing for the Party to have him think? To Morenthal, people were already Not Safe™, but now the one person he ever believed might be had actually violated him worse than anyone else in order to force and abuse that trust. How is he supposed to trust anyone if he can’t trust the authenticity of his own recollections. (I get the feeling that Morenthal probably isn't going to be capable of relaxing until the Shaper of Minds is confirmed to either be locked back safely in the Vaults of Eversteel or fully removed from the Mortal Plane by Six).

It makes it really tragic that all of this came directly on the back of Episode 23, where Gamb revealed during the above-table break chat that - even if Morenthal didn’t recognise why – he unconsciously trusted Trilby and Gelnek enough to jump off the airship without checking that his rope was secure, because deep-down he knew they would catch him. To go from that high-point to the whiplash of him first thinking the Flower Crowns had killed the only person he was ever “safe” with, then them inadvertently subjecting him to the most painful realisation he could ever experience and potentially leaving him wondering whether he can even trust his feelings about them is absolutely gutting.

I think the thing that scares me most about how the aftermath could potentially play out is another trait that Gamb and Dan have established for Morenthal: he's a flight-risk. He shies away from letting people get close and, if he feels unsafe enough, he runs. It’s already been mentioned/implied that he’s considered fleeing the group at multiple different points across the sessions. And with him likely not feeling safe even in inside his own mind right now, that risk is probably at an all-time high. The poor lad is staring down the barrel of a potentially-impending multi-level emotional crisis, where a lifetime of instincts will probably be urging him to run hard and fast because People Are Not Safe™.

And the thing is, that instinct isn’t a good one for him either. Morenthal might have gotten by on his own “just living to be” up until Filgrove, but that feels a lot more like surviving out of necessity than having an actual life. It’s pretty obvious that he pushes people away as a defence mechanism: if you don’t care about anyone then you can’t be hurt by them or have those people used against you. But if you don’t let yourself care and feel things, you’re not really living. The truly tragic part of his running being a potential foreseeable outcome is that the Flower Crowns are good for Morenthal. (I doubt Morenthal realises it and can’t speak to Gamb’s above-table thought process but it’s interesting that one potential interpretation of Morenthal’s cynical, faux-apathetic, “stinky” behaviour is that of a former abused child quietly testing the boundaries of whether he’s allowed to exist in a way that’s inconvenient for others, to which the answer from the Party has largely been yes provided he isn’t actively encouraging Trilby to get himself killed, or killing people without explaining himself). He survived alone before because that was all he knew, but I get the feeling he wouldn’t do so well if he tried to go it solo again after being with people (he’s already confessed that the idea of Feyli being gone makes him miss her). That’s not a road to walk on his best day, let alone with his current headspace and tendency towards self-destructive choices.

It reminds me a lot of this article:

“Still, it’s easier for us to keep blaming ourselves because it’s preferable to facing the unthinkable: the fact that our parents don’t love us. … Most people would rather do anything than accept this as the truth. Not only is it painful; it’s humiliating.”

So yeah, suffice to say I am incredibly concerned about how Morenthal’s arc is going to play out over the next session(s). Here’s hoping that Gelnek and/or Coil have enough emotional savvy to keep an eye out, and enough patience to stick to him even if he lashes out in attempt to drive them off. Even if it all works out okay, I get the feeling that this one’s going to be ugly.

Can’t wait to see how everyone chooses to play it ❤️‍🩹

#The Shaper of Minds #An artefact that is absolutely fascinating and whose implications make me PHYSICALLY NAUSEOUS if I contemplate them too much #(So now I must share that nausea with you all)#Session 26 is going to be so rough for the poor guy I feel anxious just thinking about it #I am CONCERNED FOR THE LAD #there is a nonzero chance that he could walk away from the best thing that's ever happened to him and that terrifies me #Also just to say: this is NOT me trying to enforce a certain reading of events or backseat game how Gamb and the cast should play things #I'm just indulgently speculating because I have a personal interest in trauma recovery and character analysis is my great love #child abuse discussed cw #gaslighting discussed cw #existential horror #Dan Jones and Dragons #DJ&D #The Flower Crowns of E'lythia #A Party to Forget #DJ&D Meta #DJ&D Spoilers #Morenthal #Morenthal (Wolfsbane)#Character analysis #(Also for anyone unfamiliar with this campaign: Yes. The villain of this arc WAS named Jon Wick. DJ&D is great)#3WD

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baflegacy · 6 months ago

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#rant in the tags bc i fibally have time to like. process my thoughts and stuff #but #a lot of tumblr anons on here Love to play the devils advocate and idk its getting kinda annoying #Especially because most of them only play devils advocate to insinuate that a female cast member is more or less Being A Bitch #also a notable amount of people on here keep saying that twitter’s the worst part of the fandom but then #you have just a barrage of posts talking about how courtney is unprofessional or cold or a bitch #or that its jackies fault why damien and courtney or shayne and damien have drifted apart like. please listen to urselves #the tumblr tag is slowly becoming the thing smoshblr is criticizing twitter for and idk.#if you wanna speculate please just leave the smosh tag alone OR do it in the dms/private posts/discord #we do not need a barrage of posts about how smosh twitter is awful or how courtney’s unprofessional

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sysig · 8 months ago

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Okay but what if (Patreon)

#Doodles #TSP #Stanley #Me while reading: Now don't make a papercraft okay? Don't make a papercraft don't make a papercraft don't make a-#Predictably lol #It's the kind of structure that invites speculation! Who would you choose and what would their name be and how would they adapt #And The Stanley Parable wasn't even out at the time!! FJkldsafdf #Me when anything: I want to #Stanley would be so fun to play as ♪ Small but close-knit cast and since it's an institute it should have accommodations for his mutism #And he's no stranger to painful and confusing situations haha #You can see my indecision on which sign language Stanley knows haha #He never speaks so we don't know what accent Stanley would have but we know the Narrator is British! So #But I also don't know any British Sign Language and I know it's different than ASL òuò;#Granted my knowledge of ASL is far far far from fluent but I do know some at least so if /I/ was the one playing as him-#Anyway moot point since languages are directly translated anyway :P Though I wonder about sign language #I assume there were some nonverbal patients I just haven't seen any myself :0 #I have also made a Narrator card to match Stanley 😔#Actually - hehe - I had a lot of fun picking their ''real'' names ♪#The Narrator's was pretty easy honestly I knew I had to give him the first name Kevan and then I wanted to keep his last initial #So I went with ''Baker'' since it's a common name :) Very cute!#And then for Stanley since I headcanon him as being Greek/Latino - heavier on the Greek side - I gave him a Greek name!#Again same first initial - couple letters even for that ''St-'' sound :) - and scanned through some Greek last names #And liked the sound of Psomas with Stefano - but ♪ You'll never guess ♫#It's a similarly common name for a reason - ''Psomas'' translates to ''bread maker''#Kevan and Stefano Baker they're husbands fr your honour #Hghhghh I just think it's so cute!! And I didn't do it on purpose it was just a happy accident!! I love them <3

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chirpsythismorning · 2 years ago

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Interview with Gaten recently:

"A lot of people have projects they're working on at the moment. But I know they're kicking into high gear with writing and I can't wait to finally get back into it. I don't know when, but it'll be fun for sure," Gaten Matarazzo told USA Today in an interview published Monday.”

Okay so to be clear, I do think it's accurate that a lot of the main cast are working simultaneously on other productions. We know this for a fact, with Finn who is currently in London filming, Sadie who will be filming out of the country starting in May, and David who has said he will be juggling both ST and another production simultaneously once filming starts.

However, do I believe that Gaten has no idea when filming starts? Absolutely fucking not.

Reminder: ACTORS ACT!

This video is a perfect example of a cast-member lying, and then admitting to lying in a matter of seconds about what they just said!

The reality is, the cast needs to know when filming starts bc they need to have their schedules with other projects align with their filming schedule for s5.

So yes, Gaten saying he has no idea, isn't accurate in the slightest. He 100% knows.

Hell, David Harbour was talking about filming for ST5 starting in summer 2023, all the way back in late 2022, meaning they could have all known as far back as then. I don't think like 1-2 actors get special treatment and the rest are just told the day before like HEY clear your schedule for the next ten months starting NOW! The main top billed cast have serious contracts that guarantee this is well planned out to accommodate them.

However, this does make what David said recently, about getting in trouble for saying June was the filming start date, going as far as to admit Netflix emailed him, is interesting to me...? Because if it's actually something that he got in trouble for, he wouldn't even say that he got in trouble for it, as I feel like that in and of itself would be a breach of contract?

And Noah has also been saying summer 2023, since late last year, and as of the last few months has been more specific by saying May. And then Finn made a point to say May on the record recently as well.

So it does make me wonder what they are being told to say right now. I truly don't think Noah would be out here saying May not once but multiple times, if he was told to not say it. And I don't think Finn would say it if he was told to not say it.

They know for a fact that every single thing they say and do gets hyper-analyzed, so that's why I just feel like the way things are going on rn, could actually be intentional despite me having heavy doubts up to this point...

We'll have to wait and find out.

#byler #stranger things #st5 speculation #st5 filming #also the writers strike implications #if that were to go on for months...#who the fuck knows what that would entail for ST5 production #it does make me intrigued by the prospects of a skeleton crew like someone mentioned #if they have the earliest episodes of s5 the most fleshed out in terms of the writing script #then maybe it would be plausible to focus on scenes that are from those episodes #and with as little of the cast as possible #hypothetically if we're talking about major byler moments then...#it would make sense to want a skeleton crew on for some of those #to avoid leaks #also makes Noahs whole I GOT THE FIRST THREE SCRIPTS hilarious #what is in those scripts...

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unproduciblesmackdown · 9 months ago

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speaking of the horrors brian goosebumpsphantomoftheauditorium is still So funny for being like yeah i'm a ghost i know i'm a ghost. & he's befriended the horror fan menace duo who are giggling clutching each other like omg omg okay. we're fine. we're breaking into the school at night to investigate the horrors aaaa what if there's a ghost eek ok ok!!! & brian ghost who knows he's a ghost is like omg guys aaaa stopppp ;;m;; suffering thee Most but he's not putting on an act to conceal his phantomly destiny. he's just like that

#it's brian colson i believe (unless it's colsen. but i think colson) but clearly this is clearer #the book was killing me & i'm telling you brian especially. his whole thing is being So nervous about everything all the time #which maybe that's meant to be due to [you Did die; alarmingly] but it really does just seem like Mostly personality #the cadence & content of the exchange where he's bemoaning getting paint on his clothes off to the side lays me tf out #just the dynamic like brooke & zeke are Speculating abt Schemes & Ghosts & being hilarious too; here's tina joining in; also magical #while multiple times people just completely in stride And in earnest respond to brian's complete focus on his paint stains issue #goosebumps the musical #also getting Thank You For Being A Friend points like enduring the deadly trapdoors & mystery of; for all he knew ig; a whole other ghost #he has no stake in that beyond just genuinely helping out / providing what moral support he can lol #and You Know What They Say. you probably could've revealed your ghost status & destiny & Just Asked lmao #but maybe he was too nervous like think i'll have to Haint Style Steal Your Breath or sm shit b/c that's easier than a ghost reveal convo #is that a george costanza style approach? i have never seen a full seinfeld episode. no limits to the time/effort/complexity in avoiding #some comparatively more minor issue / hurdle? i understand the like archetypical achievement character of all time in that for sure....#like yeah they Are alarmed by the apparent ghost / apparent guy who wants to kill them / you as Actual Ghost but they roll w/it too #cracking open goosebumps of all time The Ghost Next Door...#i also need to crack open (press play) goosebumps the musical phantom of the auditorium original studio cast recording again soon #brian's pleeease let this be a normal field trip to brooke & zeke's beep beep seatbelts everyone! dream team for real #completely innocuous haunting except there's a separate totally unrelated guy taking a totally counterproductive approach to things....#scooby doo villaining it will Not bring the meddling kids!! if i act scary to said kids they'll learn anything besides that I'm scary!!!#bring emile back here like yeah we'll cover for you for real though. appeal to tina's theatre devotion like become frenemies to friends fr #goosebumps ghosts you Do just fulfill your Purpose & then Transcend but brian was just a guy hanging out prior. could do that again

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pynkhues · 3 months ago

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#really want to see more of delainey getting to play baby claudia?#i thought bailey was great too don't get me wrong#but i love delainey a LOT and we only got glimpses of her baby claudia and i selfishly want a lot more!

Same on all counts, I LOVED Delainey's performance so much and I so so want to see more of it, and seeing her play baby Claudia and teenage Claudia would be so fascinating. And I will never stop finding it adorable how much Jacob and Sam clearly love her and how fond she seems of them, and to see her and Sam really acting together would be amazing.

(x)

Yes! She was just so good! I was nervous about the recasting but she blew it out of the water, and I love that they all seem invested in keeping her / Claudia in the show in whatever form that may take. I really, really want to see her and Sam in more scenes together, and her dynamic with both him and Jacob off-set seems so lovely too. Like the fact that she went to Jacob's Raleigh Ritchie concert like, what, three minutes after getting back from the US for Comic Con is sooo sweet to me.

#it does seem like they're actually starting at least pre-production in november so it really is so soon now #imdb's listing a 2025 release and the fact that cast/stuntmen are already being listed...#like my sister's usually adding herself to projects as soon as she gets the go-ahead she's allowed to on there which usually means #the production's up and running #anyway this is not related to your ask exactly haha i'm just keen for s3 #it does make me think they've likely cast gabrielle at the very least given she'll theoretically have to be in 3.01 #and #i would like to see that also!!#(although if they really do start pre in november i'd imagine most of the new cast is either locked or pencilled in now)#iwtv s3 speculation

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gio-cosmo · 4 months ago

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Guys I am so excited for LIS Double Exposure but I am also so so nervous

#I feel like it’s one of those things where there’s a possibility for it to be so amazing and a wonderful sequel #but there’s also a chance to COMPLETELY fuck it up 😭#im so nervous. but also excited. mostly excited!#i really do wish they would’ve kept her bangs though but I’m trying really hard not to be whiny abt it #ALSO #I hope to god they give some of the old cast some cameos like I seriously NEED to see Warren. and Victoria. and Kate #which I know would only work in one of the timelines…so idk how that would even work #but still #I miss the og cast I love them dearly #sometimes I forget people actually choose bae over bay I can’t lie 😭 like sometimes I forget that’s even a canonical timeline #LMFAOO IM SORRYYY #I JUST #I can’t imagine destroying Arcadia bay I’m sorryyyyy #people keep talking abt Chloe being alive and I’m like ??? and then I remember OHH THATS. AN ACTUAL TIMELINE #LMFAOO #im going so crazy over this game rn #augh #can’t believe im out here playing the most life changing games ever and once I finish them I have to just return to daily life like normal #like. how am I supposed to not talk abt this 24/7 now this is crazyyy #okay in all seriousness though I’m lowkey gonna be heated as hell if at least warren doesn’t somehow get some involvement in this LMFAOO #LIKEEE #I MISS THE OG CAST 😞😞#I MISS THEM. WEEPS #“but what abt people who picked the bae ending’’ idkkkkkkkk 😞😞😞#I heard through the grapevine (☝️🤓) that there’s supposedly going to be two separate storylines? one for bae and one for bay?#is that like actually confirmed or just speculation….I hope it’s confirmed #anyways. many thoughts. very nervous.#life is strange #life is strange double exposure

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poisonandpages · 1 year ago

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"An android,” he said, “doesn’t care what happens to another android. That’s one of the indications we look for." “Then,” Miss Luft said, “you must be an android."

Books Read or Re-read in 2023;

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick

#this is yet another book that's significantly different from the film adaptation in case anyone was wondering #some parts you can really tell were written by a man in the 1960s and certain bits have aged terribly #the protag is kind of a dick in multiple senses of the term #but I can also understanding why it was considered such a groundbreaking piece for its time #as a speculative work it's pretty fascinating #do androids dream of electric sheep?#philip k dick #blade runner #file under my collages aren't good but I'm having fun anyway #books 2023 #amusing myself by casting Hedy Lamarr as Rachael #sosy don't look #litedit #bookedit

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arolesbianism · 5 months ago

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Man oni can't do this to me I'm supposed to be preparing for artfight but all I can think abt is Them™ from the second I wake up to the moment I go to bed how am I supposed to prepare in these circumstances 😔

#rat rambles #oni posting #and dude the beta is probably still going to be going during that time klei how could you do this to me #like I will still be participating in artfight but I fear Ill be on oni lockdown for the first week or smth dhskdhkdh #Ill try to at least sketch some stuff out but god if I can get my hands onto any amount of lore its so jover #now thats not a guarantee this is a beta after all but god man. fuck.#also I need to know the new dupes name right now its important #mostly because I want confirmation that I got z on the cypher right lol #chances are theyll just have another a name or smth #who knows maybe theyll have a w name and be the second ever contender for being sent to the constant #although for all we know there could be plenty more w names in the cast that are just hidden in the full names like with nails #I am in such agony rn with seemingly every place ppl post abt oni being dead silent still hello is anyone there #I thought Id at least see some more speculative stuff on the gameplay side of things but Ive seen like 2 things where ppl even bring it up #tbf some of the new stuff seems pretty obvious to deduce to me like there's no way the new fox deers dont produce lumber #and we already know the bunny guys (or the big one at least) provides reed fiber at least #the plants are mostly more mysterious tho #we have the obvious one being our new bestie the oxylite plant and the lil puffball tree thats probably the new decor plant #and the crystal grapes are probably going to be a new muckroot equivalent and at least one of the new plants probably produces smth edible #as for what recourses they need we know that at least 2 of them need watered in some way #Im currently betting theyll need ethanol but thats not based on a lot #honestly if any of them use plain ol water or even any water variants Ill be surprised #I wouldn't be surprised if most of them take ethanol or some liquid gas or smth #I still am holding out on a plant that consumed liquid carbon dioxide but Im not too hopeful #one thing Im very curious on is just everything abt how the oxylite plant grows I wanna know how good itll be so bad #because I am a proud member of the desperately wants more viable oxygen production option in oni gang and I wanna see this baby flourish #but based on how seemingly abundant it is Im afraid itll just join the squad of early game oxygen options that become too much of a hassle #to sustain late game so you're usually just going to switch to exlectroliszers each time #I hope Im wrong but I wont be surprised if Im not #they already took one oxygen plant out back and shot it dead so this guy might just be a corpse on arival if we're unlucky #well hey thats why there's a beta ig gotta make sure things are balanced or whatever

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thatlittledandere · 7 months ago

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Man I dreamt I was Mickey Mouse trying to deliver Minnie something she forgot home while leaving for a friend's party, but when I got to the event venue it turned out to be this HUGE multi-storied building, like, the floor area was probably measured in kilometers, and it functioned as basically an authoritarian micronation with a strict, color-based social caste system. The most common way to identify someone's current standing was by wristbands or watches; upon entering I was given a white one, the lowest of them all and the only one permitted to visitors.

I had never even heard of this THING before and tried my hardest to piece together the laws and rules from the fragments of context clues I got from trying to talk to people, all the while also trying to hide the fact that I wasn't one of them (my initial entering caused quite a stir and I got the idea that turning up uninvited was frowned upon, to put it lightly.) For example I quickly learned that, while the biggest in numbers, white was technically below the ranking altogether, and its holders didn't enjoy the same rights as even the lowest of the castes. Whites were like interns to the society; they had to prove their piety to and knowledge of the customs before being fully admitted as citizens.

Minnie had left house carrying a purple hood so I assumed that to be her color, but when she eventually found me, it turned out to be fuchsia instead. And fuchsia was one of the higher castes, if not the highest. She told everyone in the room I was with her, and we started making our way to more private quarters somewhere in the upper floors. The floorplan was ridiculously convoluted; we passed SO many staircases, hallways, elevators, doors, and escalators. Minnie tried to catch me up to speed with what it was all about; turns out the community had been there functioning for over ten years, unknown to the outside world, most of its inhabitants living there full time in its many living quarters. The ones like Minnie who had a life in the outside too lived a double life, keeping the house a secret. The community was almost religious in how its residents treated it; it was basically a theocracy. I kept asking Minnie to please list the ranking order of the colors, as everything seemed to revolve around which caste you were, but she always had something that in her mind was more important to teach

Then we got separated. We had been moving in pairs in a group of about ten to be less conspicuous, and I couldn't see Minnie all the time with all the apparent hurry we were in. So when some of the people in the group started stuffing themselves into an elevator, I wasn't facing Minnie but figured that's where we were going. That was not where we were going. She didn't enter the elevator, having also lost sight of me. But the elevator took us back to the lobby we started from, so I started following our pervious footsteps to the best of my memory. Every time someone stopped or acknowledged me I told them I was a fuchsia's servant and had been summoned by her and had to get to the upper floors posthaste. I had no idea if higher ranks having personal servants in the lower ones was a thing, but people did let me through.

We also stopped being Mickie and Minnie Mouse at some point. You know how dreams go.

I found out the wristbands weren't the only way to express one's color; anything that stood out enough to serve the function was a go. At some point I stepped into an elevator only to come face-to-face with my brother, from real life, who was indigo, and it was apparent from the accents in his otherwise black outfit. I was happy to see a familiar face, even though I knew he was NOT thrilled to see me lol, and would absolutely not help me on my quest. He would much prefer not to be associated with an outsider. And as Minnie, who was no longer Minnie but just a nondescript friend I was looking for, hadn't explained the caste order to me, I didn't know where dark blue stood. But from the way he carried himself and how the other guy in the elevator reacted to him, I deduced it must have been closer to top than bottom, at least.

Another thing was that these color assignments CHANGED. They were frequently reshuffled, and you had to figure out a way to quickly switch to displaying your new color, and adjust to your new social standing in your behavior and relationships. When I finally found my friend, she had switched to green by quickly dying her hair with spray dye. As she was now one of the lower classes, she conducted herself with a certain shyness and shame, posture hunched and eyes withdrawn.

She showed me to a lounge for people of various lower castes, where I found another nondescript friend who is not a real person that I know, and two who are and who I've known since childhood but haven't been in touch with in YEARS. Talk about a happy reunion! We got to talking, some about this place and its culture, some just regular chitchat.

And that's when I brought Homestuck into it by mentioning there's a webcomic I read that also has a color-based caste system. One of my childhood friends was delighted to hear there was something else with a similar system. I used a word for the system that I don't think really exists; the other childhood friend thought it was too long and difficult to pronounce. So I suggested "How about hemospectrum instead? That one is shorter and easier to say." I note that the Finnish word would be hemospektri, which is shorter by one letter! Yahoo! My friend was pleased. I woke up happy to no longer be stuck in Hotel California for discount homestucks.

#my assumption is that their system had more than 12 colors in it but this is speculation. nobody ever told me shit #:/#i think the shade of green my friend had was lower than what homestuck greens are #and i think there might have been one or two above fuchsia?#but. color based caste system. fuchsia and dark blue among the higher ones. green lower.#a color that is not considered a real color whose havers are technically outside the system and treated as pariahs #sigh.#it was heavy-handed the whole time but THEN I BROUGHT IT UP EXPLICITLY #the only thing missing would be homestuck characters popping up #... My brother DID look like equius and i only recognized him as my bride because it was a dream and that's how they go #while i was mickey mouse i was also aware that being mickey mouse was not my usual state of being #it was a bit like extra immersive roleplay. like those isekai anime where you actually embody your game avatar #sword art online ass mickey mouse dream.#i had the green pants and white polo from paul murry's comics and all #venlapost #dreams tag

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