#and how the narrative went from dragons and humans to dragons against humans

[countlessofvoids]

Something I often see in discussions regarding Hiccup wanting to change people's minds, is him trying to change Grimmel's being accepted as a part of the story, and it being used as an example of Hiccup's flaws. Except, if my memory serves me correctly, that never actually happened.

Prior to the final battle, Hiccup and Grimmel have three interactions ; when they first meet, when Hiccup & the gang try to capture him, then when Toothless & LF get taken. Not once, or in any of the few times where he's mentioned outside of his scenes, is the idea of changing Grimmel's mind brought up. Hiccup does not attempt to have a conversation about it with neither Grimmel nor the other characters.

In the third movie, Hiccup's motive to change people's minds and get them on Berk's side was removed. It feels like a bit of retcon, because I don't remember anything about Hiccup saying he's not gonna repeat his mistake with Drago.

[qinchez]

sylus & greed.

sylus’ character has always been associated with a trifecta of themes: desire, control, and greed. we all have a complex relationship with all three themes in the day to day life, so i love how they are all shown in various ways throughout his story, especially when his story is very much related to persephone and hades.

greed — greed manifests in characters who seek more than they are fated to have, basically just defying fate. sylusmc have always been star-crossed lovers that are ultimately doomed from the start and that greed to define their already set in stone fate would never suffice. she is his arch nemesis and achilles heel no matter how they try to change it. she is destined to be his ultimate demise, no matter how much they try to defy said fate. this insatiable pursuit of greed can be related to love, power, or wealth — and it’s shown with sylus and his fiendish greed of his dragon self. the theme greed and dragons have always went hand in hand, to the point where dragons have become the embodiment of greed. dragons are hoarders, they hoard everything they deem precious enough, and for sylus that extended to mc. she is his ultimate treasure through and through — his hoarded collection a representation of unchecked desire and greed.

“greed can never be satisfied, but you can temporarily soothe it.” sylus is always encouraging mc to use him and to be more greedy with him because in a way, she isn’t as greedy as she used to be. when sylus met her, she’s a powerful sorceress, one that demanded everything in a whim and was seeking his treasure. yet, in this life, even though she has the resources and influence — he thinks she doesn’t use it enough. even her love for him then was never pure nor self-sacrificing, but one deeply tainted and intertwined with greed. she cursed him in his death to be the only one that can grant him his true death. he will forever be tied to her and in the end she lets that greed consume her all together.

“humans are so greedy, yet i’ve become one of them.” humans, especially in association to dragons have always been greedy and deceitful. when mc first meets sylus, he has his own connotations regarding humans, ones he is so hesitant in changing. he views them as a source of evil of sorts, only viewing his kind as an extension of their materialistic wants. to him, humans have always twisted the narrative so that dragons are the ones viewed as a source of evil, promptly leaving out the fact that they simply just wanted to exist freely, without any shackles. it’s safe to say that sylus’ emotions towards humans are extremely complex — ranging from yearning to be like them ( shown through cutting his own horns as a child, as a desperate way to fit in ), to avidly hating them for the doom they have brought upon his kind, to meeting the love of his life that has changed his perception of them, and allowed him to feel more human than he ever has. she showed him the best parts of mortality — love and connection. mc healed that little dragon that desperately wanted to be viewed for something other than the monsters humans described in their tales. he was finally able to let go of the role he was forced to play and finally recognized and loved for who he truly is.

desire & control — by definition, the difference between both desire and greed is that desire is often a fundamental, driving force of life, while greed is an excessive, corrupting force that leads to destruction. control has always been one of the most important things to sylus, one that he has actively relied on to survive. for a character who values control above all, the tether of order he always clung to has become both his anchor and his cage, a constant reminder that his sense of security is heavily dependent on the control he possesses, in every aspect of his life, especially as the leader of onychinus. it’s his own way of protecting himself after all these years of being thrust against his will by the ever-defying fate.

“driven by desire, i touch you, kiss you, embrace you, and happily accept your influence.” sylus is always in tune with your needs and desires, but not without self control. his love and desire are all consuming, ready to swallow him whole, yet he holds back. he has an incredible amount of self control. even upon first meeting mc in this lifetime—and despite the desperation that followed—he still held back, allowing her to become acquainted with him on her own terms, to trust him at her own pace and of her own accord, before he finally gave in to his desires. no matter how touch starved he was and all throughout their initial interactions and the confusion surrounding them, he would always let her initiate and take charge regarding the pace of their relationship. he is utterly powerless against her, and when mc finally gives in to both their desires, he simply unravels.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

YOUR L*ONISMS IN THE MALLEUS POST BYE 😭😭 I tend to try to avoid talking about him precisely bc I fear I'll sound like Leona too lmao. or bc I'm scared ppl will say "ah you only dislike him bc you like Leona"- when that's not the case at all (although I also share some of his views about the lizard) Similarly to you, I just don't get the hype- basically everything you say. my feelings for him fluctuate from "🙄 ok." to "you're okay? I guess?"

which is weird, bc I really like dragons and non-human characters learning about humans. but that's what makes it worse for me bc man all the talk about him made me want to rlly like him and then I saw him in canon and I was like uh... okay? kind of disappointed + a bit annoyed at some stuff. I do like how he talks about gargoyles or things he finds interesting tho— I'll praise you that much, Draconia.

[Referencing this post!]

***PLEASE NOTE: Everything I express in this post is my own opinion and is in no way meant to disparage Malleus enjoyers.***

Leona and Rollo is right about Malleus and he should speak his truth 😔

To reflect a little on my own character arc with Malleus, I felt very neutral about him from the prologue to about book 2ish. This was simply because I hadn't interacted with the guy yet so I held off on judging him prematurely. The brief encounter we actually had with Malleus in book 2 wasn't meaty enough for me to get a sense for his character, so I brushed him off.

I thought it was interesting that book 2's narrative invites comparisons between Leona and Malleus, with Leona being a parallel to Scar, Malleus being a parallel to Mufasa, and the world holding Malleus up as the "superior" king. Lilia states as much in 2-26: "Would that the lion king of the savanna could witness this absolute farce. No, if you ask me, the collar suits you far better than a crown ever could. You may bemoan the fact that you're not higher in line to be king. But with that sensitive ego of yours? That so quickly directs all your petty anger at your retainers... Well, the idea of you ever contending with a REAL king like our Malleus—is absolutely laughable. Even if you COULD defeat Malleus, so long as that's how you choose to conduct yourself? You would never be fit to rule!"

And at the time, yeah, Lilia's right because Leona is very much losing his grip on his emotions and acts irrationally in an attempt to triumph over Malleus. HOWEVER... The longer the main story went on, the more I found myself disagreeing with Lilia's judgment of Malleus and his character. Now, that doesn't mean that I think Leona was in the right for the actions he took in book 2 (they are still and always will be wrong). Rather, I think Lilia gave a somewhat biased take on Malleus and his preparedness for the throne. Many of the things Lilia accuses Leona of also ended up being very true of his own liege. Malleus has a sensitive ego (he has attempted to strike down peers and faceless, magicless NPCs on more than one occasion; ie Halloween events). Malleus has directed his anger at his retainers (as a child, he froze many servants; in book 7, he attacks Sebek and Silver for attempting to wake up their peers and tries to return Lilia to sleep against his wishes). Malleus has scarcely led anyone in anything. Leona and Malleus are far more similar to one another than either of them would like to admit, but Lilia is just assuming that Malleus will be a great leader anyway because of... what? Because of birthright and lineage? Yeah, no wonder why Leona is pissed and has a bone to pick with the lizard (attempt to harm Malleus aside).

Book 3 and onwards is what I started to develop my current dislike for Malleus. (And to be clear, he has good points too! I'm not saying that he has nothing going for him at all; however, this post is focusing on my own critiques of his character so that is what I will be speaking about.) I started to notice things that annoyed me on a personal level: how he lacks consideration of others' perspectives and actively violates their autonomy, how he never gets any repercussions for his actions, how he's aware of his power and status and yet fails to avoid lording it over others, how he has been given so many opportunities to learn and change as a person but refuses those opportunities, etc. And yes, I understand that he acts in these ways for particular reasons. I'm not saying that his behaviors don't make sense, I am only stating that these are behaviors that I personally don't find appealing. (For more extensive explanations of why I don't like Malleus, please see the FAQ section in my pinned post.) All of this in spite of how little of him we actually get to see and interact with, especially in the main story. It baffled me that he was undoubtably the most popular character in EN circles. There's so much chatter about Malleus Draconia, you can't really get away from it. People are legitimately shocked when you tell them you actively dislike Malleus or when they learn that he's not even a top contender for best boy in the JP fandom. The default is assuming that you do like Malleus, which ironically happens to be the same thing that Draconians (Malleus stans in-universe) do. It feels like there's sometimes an unspoken pressure to like the guy. I also started to notice peculiar behaviors (?) which, in a vacuum, aren't necessarily bad--I would just like to comment on them because I find it interesting. With Malleus being as popular of a character as he is, there's of course going to be a lot of online discussion about him, especially from his fans. Now, I don't know if it's only me noticing this, but I've frequently observed Malleus fans going out of their way to "wring as much content" out of the least Malleus-related content possible. For example, there may be a screenshot of some other character posted and then a fan would come in and make a comment like, "I wonder how Malleus would feel about this". A more concrete example would be from the more recent JP Lost in the Book with Nightmare Before Christmas event; in it, the event character takes the back of all the characters' hands and kisses them (including Yuu). Automatically posts that showed this kissing were inundated with comments about how "Malleus would be so angry about this", even though Malleus himself shows no such reaction. Similar comments dropped when Yuu is kidnapped in the event even though, again, Malleus shows no such anger about the incident. Halloween events such as this contain half the main NRC cast, yet I saw no fans of the other 10 characters claiming those characters reacting jealously. This occurs VERY often in regards to Malleus; even in events or scenes where he doesn't react or doesn't even appear, zealous fans will insert him into the situation or make the situation suddenly about him, whether it's in someone's own posts or on other people's posts.

I wonder if this is a result of Malleus being kept so mysterious for two full years...? Without much of his character to go off of, it left a huge negative space for fans to headcanon, project, and hyperfixate on what he is like or what he could be. And maybe now those behaviors persist in an effort to fill in that void because honestly Malleus isn't getting much screen time within book 7 either 💀

I believe this has contributed to the discrepancy (that this asker brought up) between how the English-speaking Twst fandom speaks about Malleus versus what Malleus is actually like and how he is portrayed in game. The fandom version of him is pretty much always hyped up or sensationalized (sometimes simply for his mere existence), similar to how his own fans in-universe might put him on a pedestal. But then you play the game for yourself and you're exposed to so little of him and what little you do see of him is much more... reserved, somber, and sometimes even petulant, depending on the situation.

Anyway, my point is that anyone that dislikes Malleus (or any other character) should be allowed to dislike him, regardless of what anyone else says or if you feel pressured into silence🤷‍♀️

[coriphallus]

DA: The Veilguard Spoiler review pt1 - Blood Magic

alright let's do this. let's write an in-depth review of veilguard. this will be long and this will be negative and i might eventually say some good things but everything i say will be undermined with a 'BUT'.

its now been around a week since i finished the game and had some time to parse my thoughts and this is why i didnt enjoy the game; NOT why you shouldnt.

so dragon age has a very special place in my heart and i am %100 the kind that has DAO as their favourite game. i have played these games religiously, and let me prefix this by saying i was not hyped for this game, i wont lie and say i wanted bw to succeed or i hoped the game would be good etc etc. if i liked the game, it would be a surprise. alas.

so theres multiple reasons for that, but the canary in the mine for me had been the announcement on blood magic, and yeah i was not shocked after DAI but i was still disappointed. so lets start with blood magic:

Blood Magic

DA lore has changed alot over time, and just like the media it took inspiration from (ASOIAF) i was under the impression that it used unreliable narrators deliberately, just as theyve poked fun at the concept with bethanys tits. it made sense then that the people telling these stories didnt know much about blood magic therefore they couldnt explain it fully but we've known some things for certain, from the text. blood magic uses blood as its source of power instead of lyrium (blood=life force), what constitutes as blood magic is open to interpretation (i.e phylacteries), multiple groups outside of the 'civilised society' such as chasind are not so staunchly against it, knowledge on it can be passed down from a mentor and that mentor usually happens to be a spirit. it can be used to enact control over people in a literal sense and thats considered by the narrative of all DA games to be more reprehensible than burning someone alive.

now i will derail this but i swear im going somewhere with it. i grew up in a country with majority white people, some blond, most with exposed hair who lived in big cities with cobblestone roads and snowy winters and starbuckses, and who would consider themselves westerners. some religious practices i know less about than most christians know about their holidays.

where my grandma lived was at the bottom of a high slope, and once a year when we went to visit her id see a thick trail of blood trickle down from the waterway to pool on her street, and at that dinner the family (and neighbours, sometimes) would bring a myriad of dishes and we'd feast. i would see butchers shops clean their curbs with buckets of water, mopping red tinted liquid down a drain. when i grew older and we were visiting my mothers village i watched the men subdue and kill a cow that we were going to eat that night. i watched them skin it and separate the meat from its bones, explaining what parts of an animal is used for which dishes because it was their craft and a young girl showed interest. as people we always live with the knowledge that our lives depend on death, whether it be a plant or an animal. existence is not moral and clean, and death is messy. getting blood stains out of a fabric once a month is the lived reality of more than half the human population.

i was not raised religious, nobody in my close family were, i didn't feel any sort of way when those men started to pray around the cow but i knew why they did it, even if it was performative for some, for the rest they had to show respect. the cow was meant to represent somebody you cared about, offering it in their stead symbolically. it needed to be respected, it needed to be butchered without pain. save from one serving of meat, as was tradition, were donated to the food banks.

now im sure some of you are thinking 'no matter how you slice it, its still a brutal act. made more brutal by the audience deriving some form of moral superiority' and yes, i used to think that too, because what is a religious practice for them is a show to me. but it is the norm where i grew up, and in the end a cow is dead regardless because we need to eat. and some people who needed to eat more than us got to eat too.

somewhere in germany news break out that some immigrants were practicing unethical and unsanitary butcherings, you see the footage of men in kufi and puffy pants and women covered completely in black sheets get ushered out by police. they shout some things in a foreign language, speaking the name of their foreign god. they show a censored room covered in blood and gore.

so i have to ask now, when you play veilguard and see venatori torturing and exploding a halla into a puff of red smoke which image does it bring to mind, what do you think of when you hear 'ritual sacrifice'? you may not have noticed this parallel but your brain sure did, as it has been noticing for your entire life and counting, the same reason you cringe at the barbarity of people consuming raw flesh, painting their foreheads with blood, killing animals you would pet. its alien, its gross, its wrong.

i cant play this game and take it seriously with its mask yanked off, gloating about its lack of nuance every step of the way. when you hit people red stuff comes out, red stuff bad. killing bad. murder bad. that it extends more sympathy to a fantasy deer than it ever allows for living breathing people of its universe, faceless and primitive.

in other DA games there were people over there somewhere who enslaved others, built their entire civilization on the ruins of gods they cannot comprehend, practiced bloody sacrifices and rituals that doomed the world for their own power, and even in their homeland they are nothing but canon fodder to be murdered and gawked at. their traditions, religion, entire culture is less than a set dressing, because whatever grosses you out are the bad apples, because the good ones cant be anything else and still derive sympathy from the audience.

and its true, you need to be an exceptional writer to make that work, especially if you dont have any real life experience to pull from. you need to stain your hands a little, and be prepared to be called dirty.

but i see it, i see those news reports everywhere i look in the game, i see the streets being cleaned and scrubbed so the tourists wouldnt call them backwards people, unclean, less than.

ive never played a game so repulsed by and is uninterested in its own universe than DAV, in every line of dialogue i can feel it trembling in fear. my companions tell me i dont need to watch a deer getting butchered, i can look away and proceed to electrocute hundreds of masked men some of whom are talking about comically evil things like patricide.

this has always been a point of contention in the medium of video games as the most prominent way to engage with the world has been through violence, and for me the DA franchise has always managed to tackle this by allowing its main character to be messy. yes, hawke cleaves thru countless faceless raiders but theyre also an illegal immigrant trying to get by with nothing to offer to the world than their violence. warden is deliberately recruited for that same violence, the only purpose of their existence is to fight as theyre made to shed everything else from their old life. and still, still you play these characters as they are allowed to grow, heal, carve out a little space for themselves where they can laugh and joke with their peers. it is juxtaposed to that darkness in their lives that makes those moments precious.

'what is good?' the games asked, and they answered 'doesn't matter, the world can be a better place with them in it'

veilguard asks 'what is good?' and answers 'you are.'

it doesnt matter whether blood magic is bad lore-wise (and that discussion is irrelevant to this decision made by the devs), because it needs to be narratively. like tabloid news the entire premise of the story is built on it. it needs to be inaccessible to and shunned by your party and rook because they need to be 'good' and in contrast, your enemies need to be 'bad'

and like dominoes it retroactively reframes the moral stance of every game in the franchise.

so, yes, i just laughed when i saw that announcement. i didnt know what else to do. but hang on to your knickers because it gets so much worse...

[crybabysunflower]

Similarities between Mikey-Takemichi (Tokyo Revengers) and Achilles-Patroclus (The song of Achilles)

I think before I start with the post I should specify that this is solely based on Madeline Miller's book The Song of Achilles which while staying close to the original source (The Illiad) has made a lot of divergence from it most particularly in an aspect of the portrayal of Patroclus. So this post is not for those who dislike this particular aspect of the book

Mikey and Achilles

"He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature"

Mikey and Achilles being this glorious fighters who are undefeatable (The Invincible Mikey and Aristos Achaeon). Both are also charismatic leaders who are able to easily change the opinions of their respective teams and motivate them, like Mikey in Tenjiku arc when Toman was losing hope and Achilles did something similar in the fourth year of the Trojan war when the soldiers were losing interest and went against Agammenon. They both are also fated to be doomed by the narrative. Because of Shinchiro timeleaping to save Mikey he was cursed with Dark Impulse which in every timeline destroyed his own and the lives of others around him. Not quite different from Achilles' rage which claimed the lives of others and eventually himself.

Despite their glory both takemichi and patroclus is everything to them. everytime they both are separated these two glorious fighters loses his humanity and becomes a monster, once again as we see Achilles' rage and Mikey killing his own gang members after Black Dragon arc for keeping him away from Takemichi.

The Song of Achilles portrays its titular hero as an easily gulliable man which also stands true for Mikey, something which is evident from how easily he had been manipulated by Kisaki in multiple timelines.

Takemichi and Patroclus

"You do not give things up so easily now as you once did,”

While Mikey and Achilles were destined to destroy ane kill, Takemichi and Patroclus being pacifists were destined to save lives.

Takemichi and Patroclus are not famed as fighters (as Chiron says he is not destined to gain glory from his fighting) but they both are still glorious in their own ways. Their glory lies in their kindness and their selfless desire to protect and save their loved ones even if it leads to their own demise or them getting hurt in some way. They both are actually more stronger than the glorious warriors because of their emotional resilience kindness and will power. They both grow from ones who easily quit to someone who do not give up quite as easily Both Michi and Patroclus also have low self esteem because of their traumatic upbringing and see themselves as "lower" beings. Even then, when they both die, everybody mourns their deaths such impactful were they in people's lives.

Both Takemichi and Patroclus followed Mikey and Achilles respectively everywhere despite how dangerous it had been (Takemichi following Mikey to Manilla, to the Bowling alley where he nearly died and back in time after being stabbed. Similarly how Patroclus followed Achilles to Mount Pelion, to Skyros and finally to the Trojan War where he meets his fate).

While Takemichi is younger than Mikey (in contrast to Patroclus being older than Achilles) they both played a role as a guiding force in the lives of their other halves putting them in the right track. Without their existence both Mikey and Achilles end up in the path of destruction.

In the last arc Takemichi dies similarly as patroclus did (being stabbed in the stomach) i dont remember if Michi was wearing mikey's Toman uniform in the last arc if so then that adds another parallel (Patroclus dying in Achilles' armour). The reason they die is also because of their other half (directly from mikey indirectly from achilles).

(While this post mainly compares the takemichi and mikey to the characterisation of the greek mythology characters from TSOA specifically, I cant help but realise that Takemichi is also quite similar to the Iliad characterisation of Patroclus

Although unlike him Takemichi is not physically strong when it comes to fighting, he matches Patroclus' sheer determination and boldness especially during the Tenjiku Arc. Takemichi's constant attempt to defy fate despite the number of times he fails is reminiscent of Patroclus climbing the walls of Troy over and over despite being pushed down by Apollo.

Patroclus mocking Hector and prophesizing the latter's death after being stabbed reminds me of two specific occasions- First, when Kisaki pointed the gun at Takemichi and the latter taunted Kisaki to shoot him and when Kisaki shot his foot Takemichi taunts him further that he is not going to die from a bullet to his foot and chases him after that. Second when Kakucho punches Takemichi and he mocks the former saying how he punched like a second grader punk)

[clockworkdragonffxiv]

Further thought about the dragons in Final Fantasy XIV because my power has grown beyond control because I was bored at work and it popped in my head:

It's mentioned a lot in Heavensward that dragons don't remember things the way humans do. Their memories are perfect to a degree that memories don't fade so for them every trauma is this gushing fresh agony in their mind, like how Nidhogg is so incredibly pissed off because he remembers in excruciating detail finding Ratatoskr's butchered corpse and the Ishgardians gorging on her flesh.

Well, not so much remembers as he's actively experiencing it. All the time. Forever. Dragons live in the now with an intensity humans can barely comprehend, and I really think they don't process time in the same we do. We experience time linearly. Past, present, future.

Dragons don't. For them existence is experienced all at once forever. I'm not sure they even entirely distinguish between present and past and future, because it all feels the same to them, and I think that it impacts them in strange ways.

Like I don't think dragons really plan the way humans do. Everything is experienced in the Now. So I think for the vast majority of them, human tinkering and building completely baffles them. Oh they see the utility but it's not something they'd come up with on their own.

This extends to things like buildings. They certainly have the raw strength to repair the structures there, but it's not something they'd ever think of. Because repairing the castles means scouting out the proper stone, quarrying it, planning the repairs, etc.

Nidhogg's war against Ishgard is the closest thing to planning we see from them, and that was literally "torture them forever."

Also why Nidhogg was batshit insane. Because for him, he's always and will forever be at that one moment in time: finding his sister's corpse as the Ishgardians she'd been fascinated by and befriended feasted on her flesh like a pack of jackals. He never left that moment. I mean, the narrative flat out tells us that, but really holy shit is that a horrifying thing to think about. Like existentially.

It's probably the reason he could bodyjack Estinien so easily: because until the end of Heavensward, whenever Estinien closed his eyes for a second he could smell the ashes and roasting flesh from Nidhogg burning Estinien's family and entire village alive.

Also, consider that Midgardsormr went through far, far worse. The fact that the guy mostly comes off as grumpy and old should tell you about just how ridiculously tough he is. And why he spends all his time sleeping. Because whenever Midgardsormr was awake he was watching his world burn.

That and probably why he loved Hydalen and his alliance with her and devotion to her. She was as tough as he was, and had been through so much and carried on despite unimaginable woulds and pain. And she still gave him shelter when he had nothing left. That kind of compassion and strength was something he respected.

As a side note, I would be interested to hear from Middy about his thoughts on Hydalen's passing. Then again, he might not mourn her. After all, she'll live forever in his memories, as whenever he closes his eyes he still sees the radiant woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders meeting an exhausted and desperate dragon with the last eggs of his kind and providing them shelter and safety. And he feels the intensity of the sudden hope he felt then with every breath. How could he not love her?

She'll always be with him.

[bittrlys]

We were so robbed of Callum and viren interacting or Callum and aaravos interacting. Like what do you mean the last time Callum and viren properly talked to eachother was season 1 how is it that these two foils never meet and actually realise how similar they are?!?!

Also I absolutely dig Callum and aaravos mentor fics they're so well written and some of them make me wish the show made them interact more. What if Callum did learn more than just one truth? What if he actually started to question why the books would hide aaravos's name and try to burry him within history just for him to always haunt the narrative? Did the dragons do this and if they did then why?

Also Iam not sure if Iam correct (so correct me if Iam wrong) but Callum x Claudia was the initial ship and I dig couples who have parallels with one another. That aside this makes me question if the reason why Terry was even introduced in the first place was because the writers needed a second Callum and that's it. It's a shame they never bothered to develop Terry properly because he has potential.

Yeah this was all over the place apologies!

Yes, there's nothing better than character foils and though it's not required they interact, there's so much rich and interesting content you can derive from said interactions. The Callum-Viren-Claudia trinity is so good and it's a shame that Soren is a mutual point of contact they all have and he barely got any time with Callum one-on-one. He did warn him against becoming Virenesque, but that's about it. I think the problem is that even when they're paralleled, Callum very rarely acknowledges the Viren of it all, and Viren has no idea what's going on with Callum. I guess they're both very self-focused characters but maybe some awareness would help to deepen these parallels, even if plot-wise they don't have many opportunities to meet.

Callum and Claudia at least got to run into each other more often. I think that's nice. Ending on the parallel of them casting the same spell was a great touch, even if it had the cowardice of "this spell isn't dark magic uwu don't worry." Still, I could use more. They have the potential to be a fantastic "two friends who tread down two different paths" type relationship and unfortunately, it's not quite there. Maybe we're due for some more flashbacks about their childhoods together ... or again, have some more awareness of each other while apart, and their opposing goals. Make them great rivals, is what I'm saying.

If Callum had more interaction with Aaravos, and ultimately rejected him, instead of just rejecting him from the jump, it would make these Callum and Claudia parallels even better. I can see Callum going "My people have been mistreated, and that we've been actively denied magic is terrible, but they haven't been able to stop me and I'm going to prove how good humanity can be." It would have just a hint of spite to help counter the implications of "I'm one of the Good Ones." He might still learn this! I'd like to see him confront the Startouch elves.

I think the dragons, however, are a lost cause. Although it's clear to you and me they've both benefited from and helped violently enforce this marginalization of humans, it feels like the Great Ones are going to take the lion's share of responsibility. I'm not who is responsible for the erasing of Aaravos's name, but I assume it was the collective who put in the group effort to help imprison him. The Startouch elves seem a little uninvolved at this point in time.

To bring it back to Callum and Claudia ... I can't find a quote from the writers saying explicitly that their ship was intended, but I would believe it was something they were considering -- they were having the voice actors do very ship-focused interviews around s2, before they decided to go in on C/R in s3. Indeed, I would say the ship did "happen" in the sense that they both had feelings for each other and even went on a lil date type thing once. I think, even if it doesn't work out, a canonical acknowledgement of mutual feelings is "canon ship" material. It's normal, too, to crush on someone and not have it work out because you find people who align more with your interests ... and in this vein the Callum/Rayla & Claudia/Terry evolution makes sense. Like Claudia, Rayla is a cool older girl, and like Callum, Terry is sweet and dorky. There's a cohesion to their 'types.'

So I wouldn't say Terry is replacing Callum because they would ever take the show's de facto protagonist and have him run around with Claudia helping her schemes -- Terry fulfilled a specific role in the plot, that is, giving Claudia someone to bounce off of while Viren and Soren were unavailable. I do agree Terry hasn't been quite fleshed out enough -- that he's just, like, having the world's craziest rumspringa doesn't seem to faze him much. And I get it! Backpacking summers across Europe can change you! However, I speculate that next season he's going to be challenged because there's no way Aaravos isn't going to drive a wedge between him and Claudia. I can even see his loyalties as an elf finally coming up (I think these existing is the only explanation for why he was so weirdly mad about Claudia threatening the coins) and he's going to be asking for mercy from Claudia for Xadia that she may not want to give. After all, so far, though he's been very down to clown, Claudia's journey has been extremely hyperfocused on her father, and I don't think Terry really, fully understood the threat that Aaravos posed.

Like you, I was always intrigued by the idea of Callum and Claudia because romantic narrative foils are very crunchy (good) but I do like Terry. I think he has a role to play and I find his optimistic and gentle outlook works well with Claudia. However, I agree that giving him some more to do than being Claudia's partner/lackey would be nice to see.

Thank you for the ask! ♥ No need to apologise, I enjoyed reading it!

[mhsdatgo]

To the point about Rhaenyra being boring, it continues to elude me why the producers, writers, and directors decided they needed to humanize Rhaenyra by downplaying if not outright removing her worst traits. That’s not humanizing, that’s sanitizing.

There are plenty of female characters that exist in fiction who are frustrating to morally ambiguous, to completely evil but still have their fans and are beloved, or at the very least compelling. The comparisons to Shiv Roy from Succession already exist, so I won’t belabor that point, but look at other shows like Mr. Robot, Better Call Saul, and if anyone really wants to press the button for feminism: The Handmaid’s Tale. Those shows have incredibly well-written female characters that aren’t necessarily paragons.

House of the Dragon choosing to center Rhaenyra as the protagonist as opposed to making her part of a true ensemble a la the original Game of Thrones wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The narrative decision to frame her as heroic (as far as S1 is concerned) is how we get the ‘Protagonist Centered Morality/Unreliable Narrator’ trope that results in plenty of media literate fans that are either neutral or Green-leaning who feel frustrated that there’s not an equal balance between characters.

Perfectly put together, anon. I'm sorry I answered so late. -_-

There's nothing wrong with characters that are written to be good people, but you see, that only works when said character is written consistently and somewhat realistically. Something that the writers completely didn't do in Rhaenyra's case. Are you going to tell me I'm supposed to watch her go through Visenya's traumatic birth, which by the way, happened so quickly after learning that her father was dead, keep her calm, and find it believable?

There is no sense of reason when it comes to grief. None. When someone close to you is gone, you check out. They take a part of your mind away with them and sometimes you don't even realize it. Especially if it's as horrid, as painful and helpless as what Rhaenyra went through. I am not going to sit here and blame the Greens for that baby's death, for all we know of her she had dragon features and was 100% going to die either way. That is digestible for us viewers/readers, who have no connection for a baby mentioned in a few lines.

But Rhaenyra's her mother. And rightfully, when she loses her this way, she goes mad with grief. She wants someone to blame, she cannot cope with the idea that there is no one to blame in this situation, that it would've happened either way. So she blames her enemies, the Greens. She isn't right, but she isn't even sane anymore, she's just had a stillbirth, how can you expect her to think before she speaks?

But the show strips her completely of this anger, and makes her push for peace. Is it possible that not even THAT can make this perfect angel Qween lose her temper like any human would? I understand wanting to rid her of any sin so she looks like a Saint, but really, where's the flaw in being angry and irrational after your stillbirth?

I never liked Rhaenyra as a person but I was looking forward (I'm STILL looking forward lol) to the role she will play as a character, a literary device, a tool to tell a story. I'm not saying I hope they bring out the worst of her this season so more people have reasons to hate women and feel justified for it, but LET HER BE RIGHTFULLY ANGRY. I'M BEGGING YOU.

People will always choose and be more obsessed with the evil but interesting one, not the one who's got more morals. It's already been said in a post I saw not so long ago, but Luke shouldn't be winning polls for best character against OTTO HIGHTOWER of all people because we choose morality in none other than a world like ASOIAF. Please give characters nuance. There's so much potential they got lazy with using timeskips etc. already.

[breath-of-void]

What Legend of Korra left on the table

In my previous post, I talked about how Korra should not be losing fights because of how being the avatar works, now I’m going to talk about all the interesting things that were going on that they just dropped, ignored or changed.

The entire equalist subplot was dropped after Amon’s reveal!

Why!?

I get that it was a huge betrayal to find out that the man leading your revolution against benders is also a bender... but the guy had a point! I find it hard to believe that everyone collectively went back to their regularly scheduled lives after finding the courage to voice their unhappiness with the status quo. A nonbender was elected president, how many benders were happy with that decision? Were there people claiming it was a “diversity” hire and he was not qualified? There were interesting ways this could have been delved into, perhaps with more Tales of Ba Sing Se type episodes.

Unalaq claimed that the spirits were unhappy with the commercialization of sacred holidays and the division of the Poles. He started a civil war over it and even got the avatar on his side, a move that sent a rift through the world as those who already felt that they did not need the avatar moved further away from viewing her as any kind of authority.

Then we find out that Unalaq is using waterbending to control some very generic spirits into senseless violence. This signals to me that the spirits don’t actually care about what’s going on and THAT’S a problem because the spirits DO care. As late as Aang’s teenage years, spirits still express rage against humans for not respecting their space. General Old Iron ( who Aang had to murder to get him to calm down), The Mother of Faces, Hei Bai, the Phoenix Eels, the Heartwalker, etc are all sprits that live or lived in the human world and expressed rage at humans’ sacrilege. That’s without mentioning Father Glowworm and Koh who were just dicks.

The point is that Unalaq could have had a very legitimate point about the spirits being upset but the question could be, how far is too far. Spirits also aren’t big on communication with anyone who isn’t the avatar, so Unalaq interpreting the will of the spirits could be wrong, either intentionally or accidentally, a fanatic seeing signs from the gods that drive him to murder. Him being the cause of their rage robs us of an interesting story about a religious divide when the religion is indisputably real.

Varrick was a war profiteer. 

Look, I like goofy characters too, but I hate this trend of making characters idiot savants. Varrick was a super goofy guy until we find out exactly what is going on with him. It is revealed that Varrick is much more cold and calculating than everyone thought, playing fast and loose with lives as it suited him. I feel like that aspect of his character was lost in favour of making him entirely a meme.

A similar thing was done to Bumi, Aang’s son. We learn that he’s a venerated war hero with an unconventional way of doing things. Instead of keeping that narrative the truth, they made it so that he was just lucky. That his victories were accidents. I think it was a lost chance to make more interesting characters like Iroh. It isn’t that Iroh is putting on a mask, he genuinely is a bumbling old man who just wants to play Pai Sho and drink tea, but when the going gets tough, The Dragon of the West emerges; both are true. Bumi could be as loony as his namesake, but also a competent strategist when the need called fo rit.  

The Red Lotus plot was all silly. No notes.

Book 4 was almost a return to form. Kuvira had a legitimate goal and harsh methods for achieving it. The unification of the Earth Kingdom was believable as a goal someone would want and that others would be opposed to and her methods while barbaric, were effective. Then they dropped that for favour of making her just evil.

I said in my previous post that the avatar is too powerful for their stories to ever revolve around a fight. 

Kyoshi’s story was never IF she could beat Yun, but if she could do so 1) emotionally, and 2) without flattening the continent. Yangchen’s story is a political one. Obviously she could kill the zongdus and force the shangs to obey her through fear, but that’s not sustainable or moral. Even Kuruk’s story is about his battle with depression and the weight of what he had to do, killing a spirit is easy work for an avatar. 

The Legend of Korra opened with Korra entering a world where she was not needed. There have always been people who claimed not to want the avatar, even in Aang’s lifetime, but now the world is relatively at peace and everything she does seems to make things worse. They kept this theme up somewhat by showing her miserable every so often, but they shied away from the political and social implications of what amounts to a herald of the gods walking amongst humans. 

[mookybear12404]

Okay my main thoughts with the new trailer as I rewatch it:

-The traveler and paimon sleeping together!! They’re FRIENDS AND I LOVE THEM MM

-Paimon’s mugshots had me HOWLING idk why but it’s so funny to me

-the entire plot hook for this next phase is SO cool to me. Neuvillette faking a charge against the traveler to get them into a high security prison. HEIST HEIST HEIST

-Based on the trailer and how Genshin has previously handled themes that criticize the court system it’ll be interesting to see how they tackle this portion of the story in the prison. I honestly have a lot of trust in Genshin’s storytelling ability at this point so I’m very Intrigued

-I ADORE how much the Fontaine underground/ prison looks like the undercity in Arcane

-Wriothesley’s design? His voice acting? His character concept?? His gameplay?? His place in the narrative??? I haven’t been this excited for a new character in a WHILE.

-NEUVILLETTE MY BELOVED

-THEY GAVE NEUVILLETTE A CANE!! AND MADE IT IMPORTANT TO HIS FIGHTING STYLE!! IM SO HAPPY

-NEUVILLETTES CANE AHHHHH

-Honestly Neuvillette’s whole gameplay is SO SICK

-“I find it difficult to express my emotions because I cannot fully understand them myself” ME TOO NEUVILLETTE ME TOO

-okay so the melusines seem to have been brought to Fontaine by neuvillette? And they were initially both distrusted by humans? If I understand correctly?

-at this point Neuvillette being the hydro dragon isn’t even a secret. They’re literally stamping it on his forehead with that burst animation and. Idk THE ENTIRE TRAILER DIALOGUE??

-“where did you take my siblings?!” My blood went COLD lemme tell you I’m terrified for what this line is supposed to mean. Does Lyney’s siblings get taken by the fatui?? Are they put in prison like Childe?

-“is this what justice means to you?! Answer me neuvillette!” Gosh that voice acting

-“you will see much in the human world, from the delightful to the depressing. And one day, when you have dwelt among humanity long enough, you will be placed to bring judgement over all.” HEY HOYO VERSE WTF DOES THIS MEAN????? WHAT IS NEUVILLETTE GONNA HAVE TO DO?? WHAT DOES THIS MEANNNNN

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

Do you think some of the backlash Engage got came from Edelstans who were salty that the game didn't adhere to their narrative of "FE is all about all dragons bad, humanity good"?

I wasn't aware Engage got backlash tbh. I know it wasn't particularly well loved and that players moved on from it pretty fast (I similarly moved on pretty fast and didn't even bother finishing the DLC because it felt pointless to do so. It was too difficult too early on, but if I finished it late game when it'd be easier, I'd have the DLC units for so short a time in that run it would be pointless), but I didn't see it get any specific backlash.

If it did then yeah, I can only figure it came from Those Stans. Anyone who has played FE for longer than Three Houses (most people either started at FE7, FE9/10, FE13 or FE14 prior to Houses) doesn't give a shit about that stuff that because we all know that's not the narrative of the franchise. In fact, usually it's an internal conflict between dragons.

For anyone less aware of the dragons' story in previous titles:

Basically you've got Naga in one continuity (FE1-5 and the remakes) who made a call that a group of dragons didn't agree with and they turned against her, refusing to forgo their pride as dragons (i.e. they could stay as dragons and eventually go insane because of the decline at the time (something not present in FE4-5 which happens before FE1-3's timeline), or they could switch to a human form and live as humans and stay sane). It ended up in a long running feud between them.

Some of those dragons were bad apples and those are your endgame villains. Since the timeline starts with the Jugdral games, you get Loptous first who doesn't vibe with Naga (who at this time doesn't interfere with humans and doesn't believe in dragons doing so) and they're enemies. Loptous is the big baddie because he wants to conquer the continent, so his motivation is basically just dragon!Edelgard (nice irony at least), and he surrounds himself with people who are loyal to him and kills the rest (Edelgard lol).

During this time you're in gen 2, and during gen 2 the protagonist is led by a human loving dragon who never even announces his identity as a dragon and assists the human in surviving against the big bad dragon. Since the big bad dragon wants to kill the bloodlined people and enslave the rest as part of his conquest, you could say it technically falls right into his war with Naga. Conquer a continent, get a bunch of mooks to fight for you and have the power of a whole ass continent behind you. It would help him in fighting the dragons who sided with Naga. Thankfully we have mister human loving dragon who won't let that happen.

Later in the timeline is FE1, where we have big bad Medeus who is in a similar boat (except this is like 1000 years post Jugdral). Doesn't agree with Naga and wants to fight her. Starts conquering a continent with his little human mooks. By this point Naga has realized that isolated the dragons from humans was a mistake and enlists Marth's help. Medeus is defeated but comes back for FE3.

FE2 was about dragons among humans and the pros and cons of it. Happened between FE1 and FE3. There was no mention of All Dragons Bad because each dragon was seen as a god to the humans and they respected them (similarly to Jugdral's part in the timeline, where all the characters' gods are actually dragons).

Come FE6, that timeline is ditched entirely until FE13. FE6 and FE7 are about dragons and humans living in peace, and how a war broke out between them because humans got too fucking greedy and started killing them (so the dragons retaliated, got defeated and went into hiding behind a sealed door so the humans would leave them the fuck alone). The general idea behind these two games is, similarly to other other titles, about human greed.

Jugdral expresses this by Naga shutting out humanity because she saw how greedy they were after saving them once, seeing humans fighting each other again and again and again - especially the ones who got greedy because they had the power to conquer, which was given to them by the dragons. Basically the dragons in their goodwill gave humans losing a war the power to survive the war/fight back again, and then years later humans used that power to start more wars. Naga decided nope and stopped interacting with them. Mind you, in no part of these games does Naga personally ever try to help humans. She stuck to her guns regarding no helping humans and in background info from the creator apparently made it law not to interact with them.

FE8 ditches the concept of dragons almost entirely, having a manakete character who is pretty much completely irrelevant to the main plot.

FE9/10 don't focus on dragons as the Big Picture and are instead equally incorporate into the story with everything else. The racial issues aren't between humans and dragons, but instead just humans (referred to in these games as beorc, with "human" being used as an insult similar to a slur due to sub-human being used for laguz) and laguz. Dragons are a sub species of laguz and are generally neutral in conflict, with only some individuals acting with motivation.

So that all said, older fans with awareness of all this (especially prior to playing Houses, i.e. Houses wasn't their first game) don't look at Engage through Houses tinted lenses. We look at it as any other entry and base it accordingly. Nobody who has played the older titles prior to Houses seems to have any backlash against it. Most seem to find it mediocre as best as a game, but overall have no issues with the story and just mainly see it as much more lighthearted than most FE stories.

That said, yeah, the only people I can imagine giving outright backlash are people who are angry that the formula didn't follow its roots because in their ignorance, all they know being pixel waifu, goes against their beloved Agarthan/humanity/Agarthan-brainwashed-Edelgard narrative.

Engage follows the story of good and bad dragons, and the good dragons being friends with humanity while the bad dragons get fought by the good dragons and their human friends. It didn't continue CF's narrative because CF was the outlier in Houses in the first place, literally intended to be the villain route, and surprise surprise, the villain route is when dragons are the enemy.

In FE7's case in particular, there are only good dragons and they fight the big bad human who is obsessed with dragons because of their power. The final boss is a dragon who came out of the gate because Nergal tricked three dragons out basically, and in seeing humans the dragons reacted violently (which like, can you blame them? After everything humans put them through for pure greed?). Ninian had to kill them to stop them from rampaging, but she said it "wasn't their fault" (it wasn't), and she was only strong enough at the time to take two of them down, so you're left to fight the last one.

In FE8, the only dragon you get isn't bad and is just from a place got attacked and destroyed, so she's the only survivor who Ephraim helped, so she joins your army.

In other wordssss... every single FE has had the same general theme for each story. CF is intentionally the only outlier and while yes the devs 100 percent fully intended to make Edelgard lovable and were they themselves obsessed with her, it doesn't change the fact that it was made to specifically be the route where you sided with the bad guys. They do acknowledge her as the villain, they're just so obsessed with her that it comes across as her not being a villain. They also can't seem to handle becoming attached to a villain they wrote because then they don't want them to be a villain and suddenly can't commit to the route properly anymore. Wah wah.

I wrote about that stuff recently more than once so I won't do it again beyond that, but... yeah, anyone who knows the standard FE formula knows Engage is the same as all the others. Nobody who understands that is gonna complain about the overall story or be mad that it's not some humanity-is-best fantasy (when even irl most people are aware that it's not and that humans are literally destroying the planet lmao...).

Honestly, seeing how detached from reality those stans are is utterly baffling but also disgusting. That is, of course, assuming they're not all imperialists irl and yadda yadda, which I'm sure some are even if not all (as an American I can say that tends to be the average American straight white man mindset, and like Edelgard considers Fodlan "the world" in both games, said Americans also tend to view America as the world itself and conveniently forget other places exist). Most are probably just so detached from the reality of what they're defending so intensely and taking so seriously that they don't see or realize how horrific it all sounds.

Again though, being that detached and obsessive is just... insanely unhealthy to points those words alone can't describe. Also, to play a totally unrelated-to-another-timeline-in-the-franchise game and yet still judge it based on less than a fourth of the content in a previous timeline-isolated entry is pretty deranged (and I say less than a fourth because CF is several chapters shorter than all the other routes, so it's not even a fourth of a game with four routes).

If people are genuinely going to judge all other FE titles based on their imperialist pixel waifu, I'd prefer them to just not play the franchise at all. FE as a franchise is not CF The Franchise.

Also, that fictional/dragon race hating mindset feels like something that's the beginning of something much worse, i.e. actually being racist toward real people because it gets you thinking a certain way that may stick with you, you know?

These people are why the FE fandom has such a horrible reputation nowadays. They're also the reason why Edelgard as a character is as controversial as she is. Many people who hate her hate her because her stans have shoved their bullshit down their throat when people weren't even talking about her or were peacefully on their own space of the internet (i.e. their own Tumblr, Twitter etc). I've seen several people actually admit to this - that they didn't originally hate her but the stans made them actually hate her.

Stans have literally tried to go at me for posting things that I didn't even tag outside of my standard DCB Comments tag. The second they find something from the For You section (or back when Tumblr search for some reason showed posts based on the content in it and not based on the tags (which iirc they fixed?)), they can't hold themselves back and continue scrolling and ignore it. They can see it's not tagged and interact anyway, ridiculing and attacking people for posting "hate" (read: usually just literary criticism) that isn't even posted in any variation of Edelgard's tags.

See, here's the thing. I love Dimitri and Claude and I've seen plenty of shit takes about them that I loathe with my very being. But like, I know people with opinions that strong already are not going to agree with me. Ever. I'm not gonna bother wasting my time trying to change their mind or argue with them because it's just going to be an irritating back and forth. I see a bad take on them and I keep scrolling and ignore it, because interacting with them/the posts gets nobody anywhere at all. Unfortunately stans don't have this mindset and feel they have to attack anyone they can find. Funny really, how much like their imperialist waifu they really are.

So tl;dr as an answer to your question: yes, I do think any backlash for the game was from Edelgard stans, because anyone else playing this franchise has more than zero brain cells and can figure out that Engage is a very standard and normal addition to the franchise. Many people don't really care for it, but there wasn't any outright backlash from anyone else that I've seen.

[lairofdragonagelore]

Comic: Deception

This post belongs to the series DA comic. The main intention is to collect the basic story of the comic and highlight any potential lore concept that may be of interest and may be explored later in the game series.

This post has the following points:

Story

Relevant Details

Characters: Two con artists that try to trick Tevinters in order to earn money and leave the city before the Qunari attack.

There is no relevant lore in this comic. We only learn that Ventus has fallen under Qunari invasion. This is a very forgettable comic in terms of lore.

[Index page of Dragon Age Lore]

Story

In this story, the group follows the lead of the piece of Red Lyrium to Ventus/Qarinus, where there are rumours of an incoming Qunari attack.

This is a story about two [irrelevant] con actors who are trying to scam some people in the city to get enough money to leave before the Qunari attack. They end up sabotaging each other’s work and later competing against the other. It ends up in a more comical situation than in a serious story. Dorian appears in the process, showing that he knows they are scams. They end up involving two young people, Francesca and Florian Invidus, falsely accusing them of being Venatori, when in fact, Florian and his father are involved with the Venatori.

Meanwhile, Dorian, Ser Aaron Hawthorne, and Vaea are investigating the Qitana state in order to look for the red lyrium track they were after in the previous comic. Somehow, they manage to bring these two con actors into their mission, who unintentionally get Florian killed when they use a pair of Antiva Crows in a diversion. When Francesca finds her brother’s body she swears vengeance.

When the group manages to enter the Qintana state, they discover that there is no magister family called Qintana. In their place they find a non-mage elf who uses pyrotechnic to emulate magic. He is another performer, working on this une the command of his magister master. This story is filled with performer chars.

The elf claims that their lead is not a mere piece of red lyrium but a weapon imbued in red lyrium [good, because it made no sense to track a piece of red lyrium when the whole south is covered in it and Venatori were cultivating it in Emprise du Lion]. They finally learn that the weapon went to another place: The fortress of House Danarius, former master of Fenris.

They decide to go there [next comic], but before they can leave the house, the Qunari invade the city. Only with the sacrifice of one of the actors, they can escape. They bring Francesca with them, after dealing with her rage for getting her brother killed.

This comic is not strong neither in lore nor chars. It’s more about the nature of the people and how the expectations on them are different things to what they truly are. It follows the moral that was created around Ser Aaron Hawthorne’s legend in the previous comic, where characters from tales are more inspiring than the real people from which those tales were based on. Furthermore, it’s a story that wants us to reflect about human nature, unreliable narrators, and how life is a grey thing despite people wanting to see it in white and black, making it look shinier in tales of taverns.

Relevant details:

Why the title? It’s titled that way because many characters in this story are performers: they pretend to be what they are not. The whole series of comics from the Knight Errant on seem to focus on that narrative concept.

Time: After defeating Corypheus and [maybe] after the DLC Tresspasser. I assume this because Varric is Viscount of Kirkwall.

Characters: We have repeted information about Vaea, Ser Aaron Hawthorne, and shallow information about two irrelevant con actor chars. Nothing truly important to say here.

Concepts : There is no lore-content in this comic. What we can squeeze as such is that Ventus has fallen under Qunari invasion.

[sea-side-scribbles]

Solas wakes up in the strange new world of his own making and it terrifies him. Ridden with guilt, he joins the Inquisition and begins his lonely research in order to correct his mistake.

He doesn’t expect to find consolation in the presence of a human who wields ancient elven magic without knowing it. Who is way too gentle for an elgar’thanelan, but doesn’t know that either.

Solas, for his part, doesn’t know how to stay away.

Dorian wonders if the mysterious elf just enjoys playing with a Tevinter. He wouldn’t expect anything else.

_____________________

Chapter 1- 13 | Right after uthenera, Solas is found by a Dalish clan. This goes well until it doesn’t. (Basically my excuse for world building and hilarious misunderstandings.)

Chapter 14 | Solas joins the Inquisition.

Chapter 20 | Dorian appears in Haven.

Chapter 36

Dorian still believed to be dreaming when the darkness released him and he saw these violet eyes again, looking down at him, but not in a disdainful way. They were bright and slightly narrowed by the smile of lush lips that made this whole meeting even more unrealistic.

“Welcome back, Dorian Pavus”, the gentle voice said and Dorian was about to congratulate the desire demon for the impressive impersonation, even though everything in this scenario was wrong. Turning his head, he found himself in a rather primitive tent. A perfect imitation of the poor conditions he had endured in Ferelden. What made him suspicious was the flawless impression of the uncomfortable beds – shouldn't a desire demon make him feel more comfortable? And the sight of his fellow companions sleeping in the beds next to him. Why would they be here, in a scenario he'd rather want to face alone?

Slender fingers twitched against his own. He turned to see that Solas even held his hand. Fascinated, he stared at the two hands, before his attention went back to the friendly face. Now the elf looked a bit meek, didn't he? And more horribly, let go of his hand. “Forgive me if I overstepped. I needed the physical contact in order to heal you.” Dorian processed this information. “You are safe now. This is the Inquisition's camp. Commander Cullen and Seeker Cassandra found you and the others a few hours ago, unconscious in the snow. You should rest.” Dorian blinked. This at least was a coherent narrative. “You are saying that I am alive...”, he produced slowly with his tired tongue. “Yes. You have done the impossible...” Another smile flashed over Solas' features, as if he was glad to see him again. Dorian moved his fingers. They felt so cold now without the other hand.

“I assume you are freezing”, Solas went on as if he read his mind. “Forgive my slow reactions, I should fetch you a warm meal. Do you feel like you can stomach solid food?” “I'm not exactly suffering from indigestion right now...” “Indeed. Excuse me. I will be back soon.” The elf hurried out of the tent, to serve him a meal, apparently. Dorian still wasn't over the unexpected sensation between his fingers. The gentle tone. The fact that he was alive. That he somehow made it back to the Inquisition. All he remembered was the blizzard. His limbs turning to ice. Slowly, with closed eyes, he conceived the mercy that had been bestowed upon him.

Solas was thankful for this short moment of recollection.

After learning that Dorian Pavus was alive, he simply stopped thinking, making his way through the praying crowd rather unpolitely, until he reached the Seeker and the Knight Commander. And there he found all four of them, back in one piece and breathing.

He helped carrying them into a tent, keeping them warm in the process. Devout believers insisted to give the Herald of Andraste her own tent and thus she was guarded by Mother Giselle and her Sisters, whatever good that would do her, but Solas couldn't stop them.

Solas stayed with her fearless companions, along with the healers, while calming down a worried Sera and occasionally leaving to gather supplies.

When they had done all they could for the night, the healers retreated. Only Solas remained, suddenly finding himself at Dorian's side and taking his hand. Unable to resist. Lifting his spell a little, he felt the wisp of his flames, weak and cooled down. He pitied them. He had only meant to stoke them a little. But then the man opened his eyes. Now, he was rightfully confused.

Solas tried to not take advantage of the thoughts Cole had revealed to him, but if Dorian liked his eyes, he would let him look at them for as long as he wanted. Who was he to deny an injured man such a humble joy? Alas, he couldn't only stare at Dorian's presence, so he sorted his thoughts while he filled a bowl with stew that was warmed over the campfire all night to provide the night watch and the injured.

Returning to the tent, he felt the tickle in his stomach again. He wasn't ready, but he couldn't deny his patient the needed meal for much longer.

“Oh, the things I would do for a roasted pheasant...”, Dorian whined as he held the hundredth variation of turnip stew in his hands. His protest was lame, however, since is stomach grumbled right after. “I assure you, this will taste just as delicious after everything you have been through. You have done quite enough for today”, Solas replied. There was that odd politeness again. “Ha! Hardly! The only thing we accomplished is covering all our own humble abodes in snow. And freezing off our toes, I suppose. Even though mine seem to be quite intact again.” He wiggled for a test. “There. I'm lucky.” “You gave us time to escape, facing a battle that would have likely ended us all.” “Right. Time. That seems to be my speciality.” His smirk was answered with another genuine looking smile by Solas. Incredible. He could say what he wanted. Why was he suddenly unable to put his foot in his mouth?

“But did you see that dragon escape?”, he went on, bursting with excitement. “It carried the Elder One with it. Our little skirmish had no effect on both of them.” “It was quite the spectacle.” Solas sounded more amused than he should. “Am I right in thinking that the explosion was your doing?” Dorian gulped down a spoonful of this tasteless stuff before he answered: “So it did go off. I'm glad to hear that. Wasn't sure if it had a chance against that beast. A dragon...infected by red lyrium? I have never seen such a creature before...” His mind trailed off to the wonders of today's nightmare. Now, he finally had the time to reflect on all this. And better, he wouldn't have to take the tale to his grave. Now quick, before that dwarf would get his hands on it.

“For a moment, I thought it would come down. It surely gave the Elder One a good shake. Then it escaped and did not come back since.” Dorian laughed at the image. Then he lifted a finger. “'Since' is the keyword.” He looked at Solas rather dramatically. “After all this...I fear that we need a new plan...Again!” It looked as if Solas would put a hand on his arm, but he apparently only wanted to scratch his pointed ear. “You worry too soon. I must admit I should not have woken you up yet. You rather eat up and sleep until morning. And then some more.” “Will you at least let me tell you my sublime tale before my precious mind will be occupied with the fade again?” Solas lit up, the expression of concern melting away and the muscles relaxing. “I don't see why I shouldn't.” Ah, a willing listener. Today really was his lucky day. “So, there was I, Dorian Pavus of Minrathous, facing the horrendous nightmares that lay Haven in ruins...”

He bragged shamelessly about every single time he struck a blow against the templars. It felt good to imagine them and not feeling helpless. He even convinced himself that they had done quite a good job with what they had been given. Solas listened attentively, as if he was really interested to hear about the heroic acts of a Tevinter, even chuckled at the right times. If this was a dream, he would consider to never wake up again. Finally, they came to the Elder One himself.

“I must admit I am not proud of what happens next”, Dorian began, unsure about how the elf would react. Would his luck eventually run out? “Are you familiar with the legend of the First Blight?”, he asked, not knowing how much a lonely elven apostate would know about it. “It is quite popular in the Chantry”, Solas answered, apparently amused by the question. “The legend of the Imperial Chantry is not so different from the Orlesian one.” “Well, except that Tevinter is not responsible. The poor priests of the Old Gods had nothing but good intentions, but the evil demons betrayed them.” He chuckled, doubting. “However, it looks like both Chantries will be very interested in the upcoming events. It seems that the Elder One is one of the High Priests that went into the fade and started the first Blight. That's how he introduced himself to me.” Solas listened, his features not showing disgust or anger yet, but understanding the gravity of the situation. “He called himself Corypheus. Sadly, I don't remember this name from my Circle days. Our records of High Priests must be incomplete. I understand it was only convenient for his family to not be associated with the Blight. But perhaps there are clues...”

Solas watched the man who was already trying to solve the problem. A smart mind, searching for knowledge. Knowledge, rather than wisdom, but still, he couldn't get enough of his voice.

“I understand I must sound insane.” Dorian ripped himself out of his thoughts and looked at him. Solas stirred, remembering that he should probably be appalled by what he heard. “I have no reason not to believe you”, he said in all honesty. “I do not believe you would make up a story that can be easily proven wrong by your companions. And considering he had an archdemon under his command, he must be connected to the Blight. He either delved deep into its origin, or he is a part of it.” “A sensible conclusion. It's a delight to speak with you.” Dorian regretted that Solas turned his head to hide half of the smile that forced his lips. He could swear it looked different than before. A little flattered. He should do this again.

“Now I wonder how you escaped the clutches of such ancient evil.” Dorian sat up, excited again and disposed the half empty bowl on his nightstand. “Excellent question. It was quite a delicate situation. On one side, the archdemon, drooling from gigantic sharp teeth at the smell of my flesh, and on the other, the Elder One himself. I, obviously kept a clear head and explained my genius plan to Blackwall, when suddenly...”

“Yeah, actually...”, a terrible rasp interrupted Dorian's carefully crafted tale. The violet eyes abandoned him to look over his shoulder. “No remarks yet until I finished!”, he snapped at the dwarf behind him who had propped himself up in a way too nonchalant pose that didn't become him. “You may spin your yarn later.” “Oh sure, remind me to never save your ungrateful ass again.” “I thank you so much I even consider giving you back these 5 Sovereigns I still owe you...” “I hadn't forgotten about them for a second.” “And I promise to give your heroic deeds a truthful description.” “I heard enough to know that's bullshit.” Dorian turned back to the elf and held out a hand. “Now listen to this, Solas. Do I deserve this treatment?”

“Makers hairy balls! What's a dying man supposed to do to get some bloody sleep in here?”, the Warden answered instead. “You windbags make we wish I actually went into the Deep Roads!” “If it's so urgent, I know a way in”, Varric offered without restraint. “You may both go, so I get some peace and quiet for myself!”, Dorian protested. “So you can use that stuff of legends and turn it into a cheap soap opera? Not on my watch.” Blackwall moaned into their dispute. He was loud enough to alert someone else. “Beardy?”, came the muffled voice from outside. “SERA!”, was his full-throated answer. “BEARDY!!” “SERA!!” The blonde elf stormed into the tent and threw herself onto the Warden, pummelling him and spitting her entire collection of cusses while Varric broke out in roaring laughter. Dorian, even though he found this reunion somewhat heartwarming, regretted the loss of attention.

Solas had to leave his side to keep Sera from both reopening Blackwall's wounds and adding some more. When they came to an hard-earned agreement, he went back to give him a pitiful look. Well, at least there was his empathy. Then he even sat back down at his side and leaned closer to whisper to him. “I am sorry for the sudden commotion.” Dorian, busy trying to cope with the freckled skin so close to his own, muttered: “Well, it clearly isn't your fault.” Solas put the bowl back on his lap. “Eat up. You need the energy.” Dorian frowned. “And this started so nicely...”

“So”, that dreadful author went on. “Where were we? Ah, yeah, the moment I saved the day...” “The moment I was supposed to tell to my audience!”, Dorian tried. “No more stories please! Maker's mercy, make it stop!” “Watcha bragging about anyway? Your plan sucked tits! The arseface-demon pissed off, along with that Ugly One.” “Sera, please, let the adults speak for once.” Her response was swallowed by another voice from outside. Everyone turned their heads. Somebody had burst out in song. And soon, the whole camp was singing.

The heroes of the day ignored their wounds to get up and see what was going on. Dorian didn't miss that Solas offered him his arm. Alas, he didn't dare to accept it. Outside, they saw people forming a circle around Ellana Lavellan, singing, praying and falling to their knees. Mother Giselle stood beside her, her voice the loudest. Dorian believed she had started the song. “And all was well”, Varric said as if he finished a book. Dorian understood that in a way, it was fitting. This was a celebration. A quite different kind than the one that had been interrupted by the attack. That felt now like it was ages ago.

But for the first time in these ages, he felt like fetching another mug of that awful ale, swallow it all despite itself because of sheer happiness, watching people dance and drink, getting a bit tipsy himself and as a culmination, chatting pleasantly with Solas, without being interrupted this time. He turned around, preparing a smirk to make the suggestion. But Solas was gone. Dorian looked for him in the tent, then around the camp as far as he could see, but the apostate had vanished out of sight.

“Have you seen Solas?”, he asked Varric. “Phh, yeah, seconds ago just right...”, the dwarf turned around just to be the same amount of surprised. “I guess he doesn't like chants.” Dorian took a deep breath. It made sense for an apostate. Now he felt like going back to bed.

[rambles-on-dragon-age]

Solas also continually operates in small cells that can't be traced back to him and sent the freed slaves about their business. Why would he keep his slave army wrapped around himself at all times. That doesn't make sense. There's a banter where he explains to Sera how he works, after all. They're either freed and doing what they want or acting as his spies; we learned that much during Trespasser. He's not going to make them work for him and frankly he probably started working more and more alone and just using the information the spies give him. They still work for him in the Missing Collection and I think mentioned in Tevinter Nights that's part of how he's keeping tabs on the Inquisitor and friends. He sees some stuff in dreams but that's not the extent of everything he knows and how much stuff he's keeping track of. The point of them being spies is moot if you know who and where they are after all. :)

Now you're confusing "bad writing" for "suspension of belief so the story can continue" and "quality of life is important to move the game narrative forward". The Blight changing and acting different and being a tool of the Evanuris was a major plot point; they can't have characters shying away from it "for the realisms lol"

The Wardens say, repeatedly, that everyone is infected at different rates. Even if Rook & Co got "just a scratch" and were infected, they could reasonably survive that infection for weeks/months before Antoine and Evka went rogue and performed the Joining on them like they've been shown to do/offer to other people that are infected.

But that's not conducive to the story. Like @postcardsfromheapside said, the Inquisitor & Co mucked about in tons of red lyrium and yet never got infected nor affected. You know. Like basically everyone else was re: Cory's army and the people mining it. Would it have made story sense for the Quizzie and friends to fall to the lyrium before the end? No. So they aren't infected/affected by it.

Rook keeps fighting these huge dragons? Uh, yeah. Rook and Co. fights exactly ONE dragon that was blighted, realized they probably couldn't kill it and were lucky to hurt it, and then went out and hired a dragon killing specialist to help them with that dragon and its friend when it comes back. Quality of life team building won't lock you to needing Taash every time you fight a dragon, but they are considered side bosses for the most part that are completely optional.

As for Minrathous falling, yeah it's not the dragon that takes down the city. The Floating Attack Palace is focused on the dragon, it's the murderous nationalist death cult killing the leaders while they were distracted fighting the dragon, taking over the city, and routing out the Shadow Dragons and later the Threads as those are the people still standing against them. If Rook is distracting the dragon so the Murder Palace isn't focused on it, then the magisters could focus on the death cult knocking down their door instead. No one's invincible, especially when the Ventatori also have powerful blood mages. Their focus is split, they fall. Their focus not split, they could defend themselves.

And, again. Bellara acting hateful and distrustful would have been out of character for her. If you want a Mean Dalish Bellara instead of Sweet Veil Jumper Scientist Bellara, write one for yourself. She wasn't written badly, that scene was written exactly right for her character. You are trapped in the bubble with her, the only person that can take it down, and she knows it. You are in the palm of her hand. Also ? If you were going to kill her you could do so on sight. You'd still be trapped in fade bubble prison until you die one way or another. (And yeah, that look she gives you at first reeks of distrust until you tell her who sent you. :) You know her leader and didn't attack on sight. Not the behaviors of evil Tevinter mages or bad humans.)

You're looking at the previous games through years of nostalgia and with rose-colored glasses. All that "rich, cultural atmosphere" is similarly shallow in every single one of them if you don't take the time to delve into the extra content the game offers.

Frankly, it feels like 90% of our time is spent in fantasy Britain's mudhole because we've spent so much time in Ferelden and when we got to Kirkwall it's similarly shitty. There's even memes about how awful and dragging the Hinterlands is. That's not dense or rich, it's literally the same place over and over again. Are you confusing fantasy racism and oppression being rubbed into your face extensively for all that dense culture? Is that the dense culture you're missing? Is it the brief glimpses we get of the Deep Roads and Dalish elves? Is that the rich culture? (You know, the stuff we see again in Veilguard. We even get to explore TWO Dwarven areas! Not counting the Fade one. There's so much cool shit to explore in Veilguard I'm never going to get tired of looking around for more details.)

This is the exact same world, the exact same setting, and we're being shown all these places we've only ever heard of. They're no longer just a name in passing, they're real places and we can see them and their architecture and the types of people that live there and how the weather is different and how the people are different and their different styles of dress and different foods and EVERYTHING. It's that environmental storytelling thing the game does very well and it's SO COOL. The maps had to be more compact but they're absolutely jam packed with puzzles, people, visuals, codex entries, etc... You're calling it shallow because what, they didn't add 500 codex entries from past games rehashing the same exact things we've already done three times before? We've been there, done that, learned it, we're doing something new now!

I thought you missed the context and content in the game but I'm steadily realizing that maybe you just flagrantly ran past it at full speed with your fingers in your ears and screaming because you think hating on this game is cool at this point in time. Gods forbid you take anything from this game at all besides regurgitating the same tired complaints that showed you approached this game hating it and didn't bother giving it a chance because "It's not like the other games!!"

a really cool part about dragon age veilguard is the first scene where you meet bellara, especially if you're a shadowdragon mage and you have neve with you

so to set the scene: bellara, the dalish elf who's devoted her life to the conservation, discovery and protection of her people's lost and ancient history, meets two strangers, two tevinter mages, in sacred arlathan. They tell her, hey your gods are back in the world but also they suck and we gotta kill them, and instead of telling them "fuck off you vile enslaving shem, you defile this land with your presence" like most normal dalish, not only does she instantly believe them that her gods are bad for some reason, they're back among the people and need to be stopped, she also happily starts telling them all kinds of secrets and valuable knowledge about ancient elven magic and is even so kind to, without question, take them on a grand tour of this very historically important and sacred ruin in arlathan to find a truly priceless artifact, a one of a kind archive of ancient elven knowledge thought lost forever, because really, what could these unknown tevinter mages possible want with that!

...

are these writers smoking crack?? is that it? theyre smoking crack??

[mendipite]

On Yumi and Nishiki in “Like A Dragon - The Prologue”

There’s a lot in this movie which I wish could have made it into the games - backstory about Sunflower, Kiryu and Nishiki’s childhood, Yuko Nishikiyama actually having screentime so that we can be sure that she really does exist.

That aside, I want to talk a bit about Yumi, and one scene in particular that I wish had been adapted into Kiwami.

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, there’s a very low res upload on Youtube here. The scene in question starts at 30:53.

Disclaimer, this isn't particularly well thought-out and I started rambling a bit. I'll stick it under a cut.

Following Dojima’s murder, Yumi wakes up in the back of Nishiki’s car and has no recollection of who he is. She begins to panic, having flashbacks of both Dojima’s murder and the murder of her own parents, and begins screaming at him to stop the car. Once he does, she gets out and runs into the road.

Nishiki gets out, runs after her and gets hold of her. Once the flashbacks of her parents’ deaths subside, she eventually calms down, and Nishiki convinces her to get back in so he can take her to the hospital.

-

Like most women in this series, Yumi suffers from being pretty flat. She barely appears throughout most of the game, and unlike Nishiki she didn’t get the bonus of a prequel or extra scenes to give her character any real depth. On top of that, despite supposedly being like family to them, her relationship with Kiryu is barely explored and and her relationship with Nishikiyama even less.

In the game, we don’t really know how the events of Dojima’s murder went down, what Dojima did once he kidnapped her, and what Nishiki did when he got there. By that point, Yumi’s already completely out of it, and what she experienced isn’t ever a point of discussion beyond her memory loss, which is blamed on Nishiki and left at that.

The women in the series are generally not well written, and I think this is the crux of it - their experiences aren't really delved into. We know what Yumi did throughout the game, but what we know of her reasons for doing them are very surface-level. Rather than being treated like a person who's problems matter, she's instead treated as little more than a plot device.

What we see in this scene is that it wasn’t so much the murder itself, rather it was the fact that it triggered memories of her parents’ deaths what affected Yumi so badly. It explains why she ran away, and why she ended up back at Sunflower. It's such a small thing, but for a character that could probably have been replaced with an item without any real plot consequences, a scene like this makes her feel like a real human, like her problems actually matter and that she isn't just an afterthought.

It also acts to further the contrast between where she is at the start versus the end of the game. By the end of the game she's become a woman who can confront her own past which, from a narrative standpoint, would contrast nicely against Nishiki's arc which goes in the opposite direction.

Whilst we're on the topic of Nishiki, it’s nice to have a scene of Nishiki and Yumi together where they actually interract. The only other time that really happens is at the Millenium Tower, which I guess is yet another reason why this scene would have worked well in Kiwami. Nishiki trying to reason with Yumi in his panicked state almost parallels the Millenium Tower scene where Yumi calmly tries to reason with Nishiki.

On a somewhat unrelated note, parent-related trauma is something that Yumi and Nishiki likely have in common. Unlike Kiryu, where it’s implied lost his parents at a young enough age not to remember. It’s likely that, like Yumi, Nishiki was old enough to remember his parents, given Yuko’s existence. Unfortunately the most we hear about this is that they died in their home in a gas explosion.

What I'm trying to say is that it would have been really interesting to explore the dynamic between these two a little more, it would have made for some interesting parallels, even more so when Kiryu is thrown into the mix.

As a final thing, notice how at the start of the game, Yumi is wearing black and white, but at the end she’s in grey? I wonder if that was intentional..

[aestherians]

Choice or Chance?: Exploring voluntarity and categorization in the otherkin and therian communities

Under the cut is the full script for my Othercon 2021 lecture, in which I examine the way we categorize nonhumans based on the perceived amount of choice they had in their identity and how this practice is detrimental to both questioning people and our community as a whole. At the end, I propose a new way to define otherkind and otherlinkers to hopefully move our community forward.

Reading time: 30-40 minutes.

The focus of this lecture has changed a bit since I started working on it. My earliest idea was to discuss the grey area between otherlinks and kintypes - in fact one of my working titles was Grey Zones and Silver Linings. And I still plan on talking about this, though not in the way you might expect. I originally wanted to argue that those who found themselves in this grey area should be able to choose how they wanted to refer to their identity, but the more research and thinking I did, the more I realized that this would still leave a bunch of people torn and confused and wouldn’t solve any of the greater problems in our community. It also seems like such a water-is-wet statement with how the conversation has developed… and you know me, I’m only happy when I’m starting controversies.

So I went looking for the root of this whole categorization debacle.

The nonhuman community, as we know it, didn’t always exist, and though we often say it has roots in elven communities from the ‘70s, that’s only half the truth. While the Elf Queen’s Daughters and related successors such as the Silver Elves are the earliest known organized nonhuman communities, they’re by far not the only pioneers.

Because nonhuman identifying people have always existed, and our numbers have always been relatively small, some of us ended up grouping together without even being aware of the other groups that existed. And of course, all these independently formed groups ended up with their own cultures and traditions and philosophies.

Mailing lists, like the Elfinkind Digest, were generally open for anyone to join and read. But they also weren’t widely known or easy to stumble upon for folks who didn’t already have an interest in these kinds of spirituality and identification. This resulted in a culture where people’s self-identification was generally respected, and they would only be questioned if they made extraordinary claims.

Compare this with the newsgroup Alt.Horror.Werewolves, which was open for anyone to access on Usenet, and which was originally created as just a place to discuss werewolf media. On AHWw, the therians (or ‘weres’ as it was back then) would frequently have to defend their existence against strangers who just found them by coincidence. This would lead to a culture more focused on appearing respectable, which in turn would lead to grilling of new members and shut-downs of “fluffy” topics.

Other independent groups, such as Alt.Fan.Dragons, which was centered around dragons, or Always Believe, which was centered around unicorns, had their own cultures as well. For example, AFD generally accepted dragons from modern fiction, which would not have been tolerated on AHWw.

The Silver Elves is another semi-independently evolved group of elves, fae and similar beings that still exists to this day. They only represent a fraction of our community, but for today’s discussions I find their writings very illustrative. They’ve written about choice of identity on multiple levels. For starters, they believe a lot of elven spirits have actively chosen to incarnate into human bodies. More provocatively, and more interesting to me, they’ve stated multiple times that simply wanting to be an elf means you are an elf.

This is in contrast to the therian community on AHWw, where there was a big focus on involuntary shifts and theorizing on why some people were born with and animal side. I think it’s reasonable to assume this focus on involuntary experiences is due to the werewolf narrative that the community stemmed from. In werewolf media, a person’s wolfish side is rarely, if ever, a choice, while in new age and spiritual communities, like that of the Silver Elves, there’s a greater emphasis on choice of spirituality and subsequently on choice of identity.

It wouldn’t be right to say that every therian back then shared the same idea; however, the idea that involuntary shifts are a core trait of therianthropy does seem to persist in the AHWw’s userbase. Nearly all introduction posts include a line about involuntary shifts. Another idea that repeats itself is that the therian either had a “sudden awakening” or “just always knew” they were animalistic; contrasted with the Silver Elves’ idea that simply wanting to be an elf is enough for you to be one.

-

There are two main ideas about origins that seem to persist in all of this: That one is either born nonhuman or becomes nonhuman. Both are equally true. The ‘born-this-way’-narrative is quite a bit more common than the ‘becoming’-narrative, though that’s not to say that the idea of becoming nonhuman is rare, or even all that controversial in most communities - with a few caveats, that is.

The idea that one can become nonhuman tends to rest on the idea that what we become is outside our control. On the more metaphysical side of things there are stories of people being spiritually transformed into an animal after encounters with an animal spirit, or of having a shard of a god put into them. And on the more mundane side, there are stories of imprinting on a species during early development, or of taking on the experiences of a character after being engrossed in a piece of media. Most people I’ve talked to don’t have a problem with these ideas of ‘becoming’ as something outside your control.

What really gets people’s goat is when someone describes specific choices they’ve made on their journey, which ultimately led to their nonhuman identity.

This finally leads to the theme of this lecture: The topic of choice itself and how we categorize others based on the perceived amount of choice or chance there’s been in the development of their identity.

Questions I’ll discuss include: What kind of choices do we have regarding our identities? What the heck does ‘choice’ even mean in this context? And how does the idea of choice (or lack of choice) affect the way our community functions?

There are many kinds of choices that we inarguably do make on our journey of self-discovery. Probably the first universal choice is to undertake the journey and to seek out a nonhuman community. Choices that naturally follow include choice of labeling - whether we want to call ourselves otherkin, therian, fictionkin, nonhuman, and so on - and the choice to accept or reject whatever feelings caused us to seek out a nonhuman community in the first place. In this line of thinking, being otherkin is a choice - you choose to label yourself as otherkin. However, the feelings, on which you base your decision to label yourself, are not a choice. The feelings that pushed you towards the community were already there.

Another choice that follows pretty naturally in this line of thinking is the choice to strengthen whatever connections you already have. This is something I’m intimately familiar with, as I’ve been doing it since I awakened as a bison. Before I even became aware of my species identity, I knew I was nonhuman. I’d been having simultaneous bison and gnoll feelings for a few years, but couldn’t separate them, and had, without much introspection, decided that I must be some weird kind of wolf. I think a lot of us with uncommon theriotypes have gone through a phase like that.

However, one day I experienced a very strong flashing image - basically a flashback - of being physically a bison. The vision was so vivid and tactile, I immediately knew what it meant, and for the next few weeks I ignored every experience that wasn’t quite bison in nature, and just examined the recognizably bovine feelings. This helped strengthen my bison identity, and in total my questioning process only took around 2 months.

Though I’ve settled in my identity as a bison, and I’m comfortable referring to myself as a bison, I never quit reinforcing it. While I didn’t create the original bison-like feelings, I’m very conscious of the fact that I do choose to connect every trait to my bisonhood that I can. Whether I see the traits as a cause of my current bisonhood, or a result of it, things like being stubborn, preferring physical fights over verbal ones, and even liking the taste of those Beanboozled jellybeans that are supposed to taste like grass… all these traits, that any human could have, are things I connect to my identity as a bison.

I’ve experienced some pushback towards this idea from a few therian communities. A very common rebuttal I’ve run into in introduction threads and grilling threads (which, introduction threads should never be grilling threads in my opinion, but that’s another story)… a very common rebuttal to considering these kinds of traits part of your nonhuman identity is: “Isn’t that just a regular human thing?”

I have so many problems with that question, I’m honestly not sure where to even begin. Yes, those traits are experienced by humans all the time. I think some of the only experiences in the community that regular humans don’t experience are, perhaps, species dysphoria and shifting. But if your identity began and ended with having dysphoria and experiencing shifts, it would hardly qualify as an identity. Treating an identity like just the sum of its parts, rather than a whole and complicated construct, is reductive and it doesn’t just hinder discussion, it stifles discussions.

I don’t know, maybe I’m the odd one here, but my whole nonhuman identity can not be encompassed by my horn dysphoria or the fact that I sometimes feel more like a prey animal than an apex predator. My identity is so much more than that. It’s how I view the world and how I view myself in relation to the world. It’s how I react to things, what I like and dislike, and what I want out of my life. When you envision an identity in this way, as a way to describe who you are, rather than a summary of every individual thing you experience, you absolutely will see some overlap with humans, like it or not.

Another reason I dislike the question “Aren’t those just human traits?” is that it’s often asked in communities where the consensus is that you were born nonhuman, and that your identity is somehow more real or ‘valid’ if it can be corroborated by childhood memories.

While looking back at your childhood and seeing how your current identity might have formed or changed throughout the years can help paint a picture of the identity as a whole, that kind of reminiscence should always be secondary to what you are currently experiencing. Your identity is not based on the fact that you played dog when you were a toddler. Pretty much every human child has played dog or been obsessed with cats or wished they were a dragon. It might be related to your current identity, but if those were your primary nonhuman experiences you would hardly consider yourself nonhuman, nor would you find a home in the community.

No, your identity is based on who and what you are right now, and what you’re experiencing this moment. The validity of your identity should not be judged based on the number of times you pretended to be that creature in kindergarten. Your kintype should be determined based on your current experiences. And if your current experiences include things that humans can also go through, that should have no impact on the validity of your identity.

-

Alright, back on topic: Hopefully, we can agree that there’s no shame in strengthening your connections, reinforcing what traits you already have, and in drawing connections between a nonhuman identity and seemingly human traits. Which is a nice segue into a statement that might ruffle a few feathers:

Linktypes are typically based on preexisting traits that are reinforced to fit a certain narrative or ideal. A copinglink or an otherlink is rarely if ever pulled out of thin air. You just can’t craft an identity from nothing. Yeah, crazy, I know?

This parallels otherkin identities, which, as I mentioned earlier, are based on preexisting experiences and connections that one chooses to give a name and to strengthen.

The process of becoming a linker usually starts with recognizing certain traits that one either wants, or already has but wants to reinforce, by focusing them through a linktype. For example, wanting to become better at handling stress can be difficult to accomplish on its own, but is made easier by thinking about what a specific character or animal would do in a stressful situation.

But you can’t just establish a connection to any given character. There needs to be a resonance between you and the linktype, and if you don’t already have that resonance with the character, it’s impossible for you to craft an identity around them. And in that sense you could easily argue that there is an involuntary aspect to linktypes.

Once the prospective linker has recognized a connection with a character, they will begin the process of reinforcing the identity, which can include anything from writing fanfics in 1st person to wearing clothes reminiscent of the character to asking people to treat you like the character. All things that an otherkin or fictionkind might do when first establishing their identity.

A key trait of linking is that a linktype should fade away once you stop reinforcing it… Linktypes are supposed to go away if you just ignore them and push them away long enough. They’re built to be temporary.

However, a significant number of linkers or former linkers have talked about their linktype becoming an inseparable part of how they view themselves - even the ones who might be able to force their linktype away would at this point become completely different people if they did so.

In other words, their linktype has become an inherent part of who they are as a person. This integrality can appear regardless of how much effort they put into creating the linktype in the first place, and regardless of how nonexistent the linktype was before they created it… What I’m getting at is that some people describe creating an identity from scratch by their own choice, which later becomes an irreversibly ingrained part of them. It’s an experience completely contrary to the idea that we are born nonhuman. I’ll refer to these people as ‘linkers-turned-kin’.

There are a few regular rebuttals I’ve seen to this idea: That linkers-turned-kin just had a late awakening. Or that, perhaps, they felt compelled by their inner true species to seek out the identity. Or even that they were actually born nonhuman, but just didn’t realize until later.

All these rebuttals are disrespectful of the linker-turned-kin’s experiences and intelligence. I won’t even try to hide it: They make me angry. The rebuttals ride on the idea that the born-this-way idea of nonhuman identities is a fact rather than a common belief. I know that for a lot of people the born-this-way narrative rings true. I see you and I am not trying to invalidate your beliefs. Instead, I want you to acknowledge that others may not have the same belief as you. For several people in our community otherkinity is an identity that develops in response to certain traits they have - for some, those traits are inherent, something they’re born with. For others they’re traits that developed later in life, or that were worked towards. And I want to argue that, for some, these traits were expressly chosen.

The reason these arguments against linker-turned-kin make me so angry, aside from the fact that they’re built on the idea that linkers-turned-kin don’t understand their own experiences, and the assumption that your idea of how nonhuman identities work trumps someone’s lived experience… Another reason the arguments make me so angry is that they prescribe more importance to the why than the how of our identity. When you define otherkin by the way our identity formed, you’re basically saying that the cause of otherkinity is more important than the experience of otherkinity.

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We can’t talk about this without also exploring the community’s animosity towards psychological beliefs.

Through my years in the community, I feel like I’ve had to handhold some folks through the concept of religious tolerance. I remember a little over 4 years ago someone on tumblr asked me my opinion on fictionkind - it would be another 2 years before I had my own awakening, so my response was basically that I was fine with fictionkind, though I didn’t understand their experiences and the only way it could fit into my own worldview was as a psychological phenomenon. Even after my awakening, the latter still holds true. My fictionkinity is primarily psychological. But yeah, somehow my statement that I didn’t believe fictionkinity was caused by past lives got twisted into me saying that fictionkind were all just roleplayers.

Rereading the whole debacle that ensued, this twisting of my words had little to nothing to do with my own personal beliefs - it instead exposed a widespread antipathy towards psychological otherkin. When I have talked about my current experiences as a gnoll, my shifts and my flashbacks and my hiraeth, people generally accept it without a second thought. But when I mention that I believe it’s caused by various psychological phenomena, I have on multiple occasions been told that it must not be a real identity. Some people have even treated my parallel life as just an elaborate fantasy, rather than something that’s completely real to me. I have, word for word, been told that there’s no way I could identify as a nonhuman, or be another species than a human, without believing I have a nonhuman soul. A direct quote: “To say “I am fae” when [you] don’t believe in fae is illogical.”

What I take from these kinds of responses is that a subset of people within our community take it for granted that whatever beliefs someone has about the origin of their identity are objectively true, rather than understanding that our beliefs about our origins are just that: Beliefs. Whatever conclusion we’ve reached based on our experiences, reincarnation or imprinting or something else entirely, and no matter how much we believe in it, it will always be a belief and never a fact. I’m fully convinced that my bison identity is caused by a past life, and that my gnoll and Ben 10 identities are caused by various psychological phenomena. But if that doesn’t fit into someone else’s worldview, they have all the right in the world to explain it away however they want. I have friends who believe my bison identity must be caused by something psychological, and I have friends who believe my gnoll identity must be caused by something spiritual. That is their prerogative.

It doesn’t matter how people make sense of my nonhumanity, as long as they’re respectful towards my own experiences with my identity and don’t try to impose their beliefs on me. If you have to quietly believe that someone really has a faerie soul in order to accept that they’re really a fae, so be it. As long as you don’t try to deny the reality of their current identity. As long as you don’t try to claim that they aren’t really nonhuman, just because they have the quote-unquote “wrong” beliefs about their origin.

There is another, more recent and more prominent, example of the animosity towards psychological otherkin that comes to mind. I will not mention the term itself for fear of people harassing its creator. For the purpose of this lecture, I’ll refer to the concept as “nonhuman by birth”, which is essentially its meaning. If you know which word I’m talking about, I ask that you please don’t mention it in the chat. If you need to know, you can DM me. Also, don’t misunderstand this as me hating on people with past life or soul beliefs. Remember, my own bison identity is based on a soul from a past life.

So, last year a rather old community member on tumblr coined a term, separate from ‘otherkin’, to refer specifically to those who believe they have a nonhuman soul. Which wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself. After all, terms like animafidem and cerebrumalius have been around for half a decade with no issues. However, “nonhuman by birth” is specifically described in its coining post as a “less bastardized” alternative to the word ‘otherkin’. What this post describes as “less bastardized” is spiritual experiences, and specifically those spiritual experiences that are based on soul transfers and reincarnation. Essentially “nonhuman by birth” defines all other beliefs as bastardizations of what otherkinity is supposed to be. All beliefs, including spiritual beliefs that aren’t based on souls or past lives, psychological beliefs, beliefs of becoming nonhuman, beliefs based on magic, neurological beliefs, and archetypal beliefs… None of these are quote-unquote “true otherkin” according to the “nonhuman by birth” concept.

The word thankfully never gained much traction off tumblr, but I have seen individuals use it, and it always, without fail, makes me feel unwelcome, and unwanted. Not because there’s anything wrong with a strong belief in past lives or souls, but because those who choose to use that label specifically believe themselves to be the only true nonhumans. Because the term itself is not based on a respectful, individual belief, but on what its coiner believes to be an objective fact. Because this subset of our community has an almost-evangelical conviction that all nonhumans have nonhuman souls, and those who don’t have nonhuman souls are not nonhuman.

And like I mentioned earlier: The cause of otherkinity can affect the experience a lot. That’s why we have these discussions in the first place - we come together due to our similarities, and we try to understand each other and ourselves by discussing our differences. And this is exactly why proclaiming any version of nonhumanity as the One True Kind of Nonhumanity is so damaging. It completely stifles any exchange of ideas. It makes it impossible for us to understand our differences, and it leads to more and more narrowly defined subcommunities that all believe themselves to be more real than the others.

To define is to limit. We need some limitations, otherwise a dog is a cat and no words have meaning. But we need to be extremely careful where we want those limits to be, otherwise we end up with a community where psychological otherkin are bastards, and only those who are born with nonhuman souls are really nonhuman.

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The next thing I want to discuss is subjective truth… Subjective truth is one of the most important concepts to understand and really internalize if we wanna have fruitful discussions and respectful experience sharing. In short, a subjective truth is something that is not real because it can be proven to exist through scientific measurements but is instead real because a person experiences it as real. If I make the claim that tea tastes better than coffee, for example, you cannot refute that simply because you think coffee tastes better. We have to understand each other’s experiences and accept that we experience the world in different ways. It’s equally true to say that coffee is better than tea and that tea is better than coffee. This is what I was talking about when I said that the “born-this-way”-narrative and the becoming-narrative are equally true.

So, how does subjective truth apply to this discussion?

A phenomenon in the community I’m sure we’re all aware of is kin memories. If you’re somehow not aware of them, in short they are images, episodes, sensory information, and similar experiences that are thought to stem from another life, usually a past life. They have all the qualia of a memory, except they didn’t happen to the body currently recalling them. These experiences, though, are not restricted to those who believe their nonhumanity stems from a past life. They aren’t even restricted to spiritual otherkin. Plenty of folks with psychological beliefs, mixed beliefs, and other beliefs report the exact same experience: Images, episodes, and sensory information that does not originate from this world or from this current life.

For decades there’s been a lexical gap in the community to describe these memories that aren’t memories. Which is where I can’t avoid tooting my own horn a bit. I have an extremely rich and detailed parallel life as a gnoll, from which I can quote-unquote “recall” events, people, traditions, names, and so much more. It’s all integral to my nonhuman identity.

However, because I believe it all stems from some deep unconscious part of my brain, and because it feels like a parallel life, not a past life, I never felt right calling these things memories. So almost two years ago at this point, I undertook the quest to fill that lexical gap. And after looking through dozens of obscure web pages and dictionaries and articles, I found something useful: The word ‘noema’. Noema is a rarely used Greek word that translates to concept, idea, perception, or thought. And I’ve been very happy to see the term catching on in my corner of the community, where it’s often used as a broader alternative to ‘memory’.

In philosophy, a noema is defined as “the perceived as it is perceived.” At first this might sound a bit vague or esoteric, but when looked at through the lens of subjective truth it suddenly starts to make sense. A subjective truth is something that’s real just because a person experiences it as real. A noema is the perceived as it is perceived. So when we’re using noema as a substitute for memory… when we’re discussing memory-like experiences in the community and we explicitly refer to them as noemata, instead of referring to them as memories, the actual cause of the noema is then irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that it’s in one way or another perceived as a memory. When talking about noemata, it’s completely and utterly irrelevant if they’re real in any objective way - the only thing that matters is that the individual experiences the noema as real. Essentially the word ‘noema’ makes the cause irrelevant, so we can instead focus on the experience alone.

And I think the fact that this word has caught on (at least on tumblr) hints that our community might be moving in a positive direction. I at least dream of a community where we care a lot less about our origins, and a lot more about our actual presence in the world.

-

I had a conversation with a friend a few months ago, about this community-wide worry about the origins of our identity. And just to reiterate, I’m not saying your spiritual beliefs are irrelevant, because they can be really important when forming a whole picture of your identity. I’m more so saying they can be a bit of a distraction. In my opinion, the whole discussion about spirituality vs psychology is a red herring. Most of us didn’t seek out the community because we had certain spiritual beliefs. We sought it out because we felt not-quite-human, and it was only later that we reached any conclusions about why we feel nonhuman.

So, my friend and I talked about the role this discussion of origins plays in our community, and we reached a few interesting conclusions. For starters, it’s really upsetting to some folks to have to earnestly consider the idea that reincarnated souls are no more real or ‘valid’ than psychological imprinting, or any other non-spiritual beliefs for that matter. That’s part of what started the whole ‘nonhuman by birth’ idea I mentioned earlier. And it seems this uncomfortableness stems from a place of insecurity.

At the risk of offending some folks, I’m gonna draw a parallel to the trans community. In the trans community there’s a discussion of origins that parallels the one in the kin community and is likewise an attempt to draw lines between the quote-unquote ‘real’ trans people and the so-called transtrenders - which are supposedly people who pretend to be trans for clout. Those who attempt to draw these lines proclaim that being trans is a medical condition that they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy, and one that’s marked by intense dysphoria and stress. They’ll also regularly state that being trans is only real or ‘valid’ because it has been proven through MRI brain scans that some female-assigned people have supposedly male brains, and vice versa.

(And just to make things clear, those brain scans are not real. It’s malicious pseudoscience spread by people who want to ‘cure’ transness by preventing trans kids from being born.)

But I think this attempt at validating your identity - in this case with science - stems from a dislike of one’s own traits, or more likely from the outside world’s dislike of those traits. When certain trans people try to prove themselves more valid than others in the eyes of the public, it’s not because they just hate those they deem ‘not trans enough’ - it’s because they’re afraid of being rejected by the rest of the world. These people are basically saying: “I didn’t choose to be trans. This is how I was born, so you have to accept it because it’s unchangeable.” It’s a cry for acceptance in an unaccepting world. And all this is not to say that some trans people aren’t born trans; I really think most trans people have a narrative like that. I’m more so trying to get across that, someone else’s narrative of choice should have no impact on your narrative of involuntarity. Both are real ways to experience being trans. And in many ways, having a narrative of choosing to be trans is necessary for the community, because it closes the doors for eugenicists who would try to eliminate quote-unquote “the trans gene”.

Viewing transness as a purely medical phenomenon where you need to meet certain requirements to get a trans diagnosis is a really reductive way to look at identity. Like I mentioned earlier: An identity is not just the sum of its parts, and it cannot be summarized by being forced to feel dysphoria. The fact of the matter is that we don’t know trans people are real because we have brain imaging technology, or even because certain people meet the medical criteria for having gender dysphoria. We know trans people are real because there are real people who identify as trans. We should be able to trust that people are trans when they tell us they are. And I think we need to look at nonhuman identities the same way.

Before I move on to the conclusion, I want to explain why this topic has become so important to me. A couple of months ago, after a good year or two of introspection, I realized I had created a hearttype. Not a kintype, but nonetheless an equally integral part of how I view myself and engage with the world. And changing something so fundamental about myself sent my thoughts racing.

When I was a kid I picked up a fear of spiders. It wasn’t bad enough to give me panic attacks, but it was bad enough that I couldn’t pick up a spider and carry it outside, even though I could do so with other bugs. I was around 10 years old when I decided that this was dumb, and I wanted to change it. So as a tween I quickly started on my own exposure therapy, looking at photos of spiders, reading about them, photographing them in nature, and after several years it had gotten to the point where I barely had a reaction to seeing them. But as I continued on, getting used to the idea of holding them and touching them, something changed in me.

Where I had previously felt fear, I started to feel admiration and love and a sense of familiarity. I wanted to surround myself with these animals, I wanted to work with them, and I started spending a not-insignificant amount of money on terrariums. And now, after more than a decade of rewriting my own thoughts and changing a mild fear into a love so deep it affects my sense of identity itself, I feel confident saying I created a hearttype. It was not an easy process. Like I said, it took more than a decade. Changing your entire mindset like that can’t be done with just a snap of your fingers. But evidently, some people are able to do it.

Though I have to add that, even here, it’s very easy to argue that there was some level of involuntarity. I already had an emotional response to spiders when I was scared of them. I don’t think I could form this kind of relationship with something I’m completely indifferent to, like, I dunno, a Toyota or a Marvel character. You can’t really form a relationship from nothing. And I appreciate this argument, because it really highlights just how confusing the entire concept of choice is, and how it doesn’t make sense to define ourselves by our lack of choice, when we can’t even define what counts as a choice.

But yeah, realizing that I created a hearttype, an identity that at the time was considered involuntary… realizing that I didn’t just play a part in creating this identity, but that I did create it, period. It sent my mind spinning, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what else might be possible. If I could create such love in myself, could I also do the opposite and tear down my own hearttype and recreate the phobia? Not something I want to test. But I think I could. And which other identities could be created like this?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the creation process has no impact on the nature of the identity itself, and I ended up posting a really controversial thing on tumblr. In hindsight I understand why some people got so pissed off about it, but I still stand by those thoughts. I’ll read it to you in full: “Theoretically I probably could force myself to not be otherkin. But it would take a decade or more, the way my hearttype creation did, and it would require constant work throughout those years. However, I see no way I wouldbenefit from that work, the way I did when I unintentionally created a hearttype in the process of getting rid of a phobia. It would just rid me of a part of myself that’s intrinsic to how I recognize myself. That’s not something I in any way want - and because I don’t want it, and because the choice would have to happen continuously on a timescale I can barely comprehend, I couldn’t make that choice in practicality.”

A very long and very complicated discussion came out of this post that I’d need a whole separate lecture to recap. But a few important ideas were developed, which I need to mention here. For starters, when discussing shadowwork and the Jungian archetypes, Jasper accidentally coined the term ego alteration. Through that discussion we ended up defining ego alteration as the process by which you proactively alter your conscious mind, your self-perception, and your thought-patterns. It’s not something to be taken lightly, as you’ll essentially be changing your sense of self by it. And it’s also not something everyone has the ability, desire, or drive to do. To integrate something into your sense of self, or to remove something that’s currently a part of your sense of self is serious business, and, like my hearttype creation, is something that should be thought about on a decades long timescale. I don’t have time to get in-depth about it here, but to consciously change your identity and your sense of self is definitely possible for some folks, and it’s nice to have a name for the concept.

Something else that came of that discussion is my own thoughts about how we define otherkin. The most common definition I’ve seen is “to identify, wholly or partially, as something nonhuman on a nonphysical level, by no choice of your own.” … I suggest we drop the last bit.

Okay, it’s a bit more complicated than just deleting a few words. In order to drop the “by no choice of your own” bit, without losing the meaning of otherkinity completely, and letting kin for fun take over, we’d need to rethink that entire definition.

Instead of defining otherkin by the amount of choice we had in the formation of our identity, I suggest we define otherkin by how integral our identities are to us. It was briefly mentioned on in one of the other panels (though I forget which one), but a pretty big source of conflict is that kin for fun just don’t understand the gravity of otherkin identities. If we define otherkinity as something that’s inseparable from who we are as individuals, it would not only make it clear to kin for fun that this is, well, not for fun. It would also get around the problem of people who worry that their identities might be invalid because they’ve made certain choices.

Your otherkinity is inherent, and by that I mean you would be a fundamentally different person if not for your kintype. At its most basic level, your kintype is what you recognize yourself to be. It’s the kind you belong to, rather than, or in tandem with, belonging to humankind. You kintype is an intrinsic part of you, and even if you could get rid of it, it would fundamentally change who you are is a person. If you chose not to be otherkin, you would also choose not to be you. In that sense, I suppose otherkinity is involuntary, in that you yourself can’t choose not to be otherkin, because as soon as you make that choice, you aren’t you. Though you could also argue that it is a choice because you wake up every day and choose to be you. And thus, the topic of choice leaves us running around in circles like it always has.

Being otherkin… being otherkind has never been about being forced to feel species dysphoria. It’s about being of another kind. It’s about knowing and recognizing humankind, and accepting that, in one way or another, that does not describe us.

And all this is not to say that copinglinking shouldn’t be a concept, but we need to rethink that as well. From the very few copinglink writings that exist, one topic I’ve seen several times is the idea of copinglinks becoming inseparable from you. This is not the point of links, and those who do go through a change like that find themselves more at home in the kin community than the link community. I don’t want to impose myself on linkers, but if we want these two words to make sense and have a use, we need to redefine both. I suggest defining copinglinks and otherlinks by their lack of integrality or by their ability to be dropped when necessary.

The line that has been drawn between otherkin and copinglinkers doesn’t help anyone as it is. There are far too many nonhumans who straddle the line, who feel torn between either community, or who only call themselves linkers because they feel pressured to do so. There are far too many nonhumans who don’t feel like they have a community they can call home.

So, I’m gonna propose a new and much more inclusive definition: To be otherkin is to identify as something nonhuman on an inherent or integral level. There you go, clean and simple. No more caveats or nested sentences.