#also if someone wants me to put this under a ‘readmore’ cut than lmk

[lumenflowered]

OOC: Right so the readmore just entirely gave up on my new and hopefully final intro post, so. Fuck it, we ball, I'm putting my OOC info here.

Hi. I'm Hope, you may find me elsewhere at @ofstormsandfire where I am routinely not remotely normal about my favorite fictional characters. One of said faves is Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower, because I am really enjoying Bloodborne and also she's just. She's just a really cool character okay. Yes I know she has four lines it's about the ~implications~ y'all.

Last summer, a lot of my friends were getting really into pokeblogging so I made one myself, but I have not gotten anywhere near as invested with any of my other ones as I have with this one. Because I had the thought, the critical thought that started all this, that was "oh hey, people are throwing their faves from other pieces of media into here, I could totally do that too."

And then, near the end of November last year, I thought for too long about how hilarious it would be to throw someone from a tonally incongruous piece of media like Bloodborne into the comparatively much kinder world of Pokémon.

And then I thought for too long about how I could throw this woman who was, in all likelihood, extremely traumatized at a world far kinder than anything she'd ever known before. About how this could be a journey about healing, about falling back in love with life.

...And then I came up with the blog url and it was really all over for me from there.

My own ramblings on how this blog came about aside, Bloodborne is a horror game, it is normally fairly dark. Canon-typical themes for Bloodborne will be present, but I'll do my best to tag for anything that isn't your usual pokeblogging fare and if you'd like anything I'm not already tagging for to be tagged, just lmk, I'm happy to.

And now, assuming my readmore works here (I have my suspicions as to why it isn't on the other post) have some navigational tags under the cut!

Story tags!

#firebird arc: I combined the Radio Tower takeover and the Ho-oh subplot, made the Kimono Girls more relevant, and ramped up the stakes. Ho-oh is a firebird and I think there's a type of rocket called the firebird. I like puns.

#from the ashes arc: Giovanni became an actual threat, there got to be an entire Rocket base in Tohjo Falls, and Silver got traumatized more. Mind the tags and also the warning OOC post at the beginning.

#kanto rocket arc: There wasn't much to do in Kanto so I had Rocket start causing problems on purpose. Silver transed her gender and Giovanni... seemed to no longer be a problem at the end of it.

#downpour arc: Starting soon! First post in the tag is an OOC post explaining a little about what I have planned, there's a few others that are foreshadowing/buildup for it, and then once we're formally starting I'll make another OOC post with more detailed warnings.

Character tags!

(...I really should think about making a character tag for Ade at some point. That would require going back and tagging so many posts and I don't actually have an idea for her yet, but maybe sometime in the future.)

#passing stranger: Dee (better known as the Plain Doll in Bloodborne canon) is here! And is now on the blog full-time because I love her and it made thematic sense! The earliest posts from her are from her 24-hour takeover back in February, before anyone knew who she was in-character and Dee was then very invested in keeping it that way.

#milf time and sonboy hours, #milf time: The first tag was specifically posts from Ethan and Reina, but Tumblr stole my yellow and I think stealing it back broke the cut on the other post so I'm not going to risk using it here. Ethan might show up again occasionally, Reina is more likely to show up on her own though. She likes birds and may or may not have had a bisexual awakening when her kid brought a Faller home.

#rainbow wings: Posts from (or sometimes relating to) Ho-oh. They don't post that often but they're a giant rainbow bird they can do what they want. What they want, when they happen to be online, is generally for injustice to Not Happen. Good luck buddy this is the internet.

#the first to fall: The Hunter from Maria's world taking on the role of the player character in Bloodborne. Her name's Mallory, she got the Childhood's Beginning ending for people that means anything to, and she was a Faller in the other direction before dragging herself and Dee into the world of Pokémon. (And, unintentionally, Maria too. She's probably the only unintentional tag-along, though. Right?)

#what's with this sassy lost child?: Posts from Silver, before she got her own blog at @cosmic-crobat. These days she mostly uses her own blog, but she'll still get blue text when she shows up in recordings.

Misc other tags!

#ask game: Reblogs of ask games and responses to said ask games. This one isn't chronological.

#hints to the future: Specifically, responses to that one ask game with the gear emojis that lets you hint at future events. I am always accepting asks for this one no matter how long it's been since I last reblogged that ask game. I like hinting toward what's to come and I like writing prose.

#glimpses of the past: That one ask game with the hourglasses that lets you see into the muse's past. Again, always open because I love writing prose and I can write out prose for things that have already happened this way.

#pelipper mail: It's open, it keeps happening, it keeps causing problems. Note that while I do not have magic anons on, if you're sufficiently creative with Pelipper Mail and it isn't too story-breaking you can probably get a similar effect to a magic anon that way.

#sword lesbian things: Silly and fairly self-explanatory. For when Maria's doing things with her sword, now that she has it back.

#the death hole: Scarvio DLC spoilers! Maria decided to Pelipper Mail herself to Paldea to help a friend. The death hole lived up to its reputation, and she will probably be Pelipper Mailing herself to try and solve other people's problems by ignoring her own more often in future.

#the vampire allegations: Silly tag for posts involving the recurring jokes about Maria being a vampire. It keeps happening, due to her entire aesthetic and also me deciding she can be allergic to garlic for coincidental and completely mundane reasons.

[blucifer08]

So I haven't done a "propaganda post" for the @woltourney in a while, so I figured I'd make another! I struggled to think of what I wanted to put for this one, but I finally decided on something. The thing that is most striking to me about Naru is the way she fights, and I'd like to share a little about the inspiration for how I write about her prowess on the battlefield.

As such, I will be putting this under a readmore, as it does contain descriptions of violence; all wols have to face danger on the battlefield after all!

You can vote here!

(also woltourney i'm not actually sure if descriptions of violence are against the rules for propaganda; if so just lmk and i will remove ;v; i couldn't find anything on the blog but i may have missed it)

!!!!!! so cw for gore and violence under the readmore, and here's a photo of Naru to go with it :) !!!!!!

Naru grew up as a toddler mostly alone. She was eventually picked up by Magnai when he found her out on the Steppe and he took her in as a younger sister. Naru's family had all been killed. As such, she had needed to manage on her own for a long time. This involved learning to hunt and kill animals on her own.

This wasn't easy. She had only a dull knife and needed to learn to carve out the right parts of the animal to eat, and a lot of it was trial and error. As such, she became pretty good at dismembering things.

So for Naru's fighting style, I took a lot of inspiration from a passage from the Zhuangzi. The Zhuangzi is a Daoist text (and a philosopher) full of short passages from which you can derive certain lessons about the world and about Daoism. It's a very complicated text and I spent a lot of time in classes in University going over it. (Funnily enough I feel like every professor had different ideas about what the texts inside meant.._

But there's one passage in particular that has always been my favorite.

Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied, "What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now I go _ at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop and spirit moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow things as they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint. "A good cook changes his knife once a year because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month because he hacks. I've had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I've cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there's plenty of room more than enough for the blade to play about in. That's why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.

This is from the Burtson Watson translation, I believe!

So yeah, it's this short little story about a butcher not needing to change his knife. The effort you will have to expend to do something is easier if you follow along the natural way. If you cut through the joins, you need not hack through bone. And this is how I've pictured Naru managing to get through her childhood--she had one shitty dull knife, but figured out that it would work as long as she cut correctly. And this gives her an edge in battle-- a horribly terrifying one, but an edge nonetheless. She is able to size people up and figure out the best places to cut. Here's a section from a fic I'm working on as comparison.

Slipping in and around the footmen is not that hard, really. They’re not prepared for someone as fast as her. Her eyes gravitate immediately to their weak points. Gaps in armor, gaps in clothing. Her blade slices through the elbow of an arm holding a weapon. She drags her knife through the back of a knee, sending someone to the ground. Every movement of her shoulder, every step she takes, every pressure of her joints while she swiftly and lightly wields her knife, all of this was as carefully planned and prepared as the routine of a dancer.

Every man is divided into parts. 

A good carver may change her knife once a year, but Naru has used the same knife all these years. One needs only to insert the thin blade in those places with space, cut through what need be cut and preserve what is left of your blade. 

Every man is divided into parts.

Naru makes it to the giant machine upon which rides the man she has been tasked with killing. She cannot divide the machine into the parts from which it was created; she knows not how it was built and from where it came. Instead she climbs the metal beast. Soldiers reach up to try and grab hold of her, drag her down. Others shoot wildly at her and by the tiniest stroke of luck, the bullets miss. The man at the control starts to throw the machine into a frenzy.

She grabs hold of some gap in the metal and hoists herself up to the top of the machine. She carefully keeps her balance, tilting her weight this way and that in order to keep herself at an equilibrium. Her tail swishes wildly for this effort. Every man is divided into parts. 

She takes a breath and leaps upon him. He unsheathes a sword but he doesn’t have time to harm her with it. Her blade makes it under his chin and slices that vein that gives life, releases his blood unto the world and all over her body. He sputters, grunts, groans. Blood drips from under his mask, choking on his own ichor. 

She has sliced a part that gives life, divided him from life and into death.

So, yeah! That's where Naru's fighting style really takes inspiration from. She is one of those fighters who kinda shuts off her mind a little and acts on natural instinct--it's just her instinct is good. She's calculated. It makes me happy, it's a point of pride for me. I did a lot of studying Chinese religion in school and I took many classes that went over the origins of Daoism and they always go over the Zhuangzi and make you read some of it, and I just always love to get to this passage. There are many other great passages too, though! But that's a conversation of it's own haha

That's my "propaganda post" this time around, I really just wanted an excuse to share one of my favorite things about Naru. I know it's long so if you ended up reading this far: thank you! and consider giving Naru your vote :D

[cyncerity]

IVE BEEN WAITING TO POST THIS DRAWING FOR LIKE A WEEK AND A HALF

i finished it before i finished writing the story lol

anywhere i draw my own fanart so here’s a drawing from this story 💖

soft karlnapity is my lifeline