#and with different world mechanics

[comradekatara]

i’ve always kind of assumed that lo and li are azulon’s younger twin sisters and that’s why they were foisted off on azula, because she’s also a younger sister to the crown prince. but the fact that we never actually see them firebend is strange, because it implies either that nonbenders are instructing one of the greatest firebenders in the world, or that they are firebenders who simply do not firebend. and i think that the latter is more interesting, because it reflects how their position as elderly women devalues any firepower they might provide to the empire, passive and subdued even as they train ozai’s favorite weapon.

they are the ones to most overtly illustrate azula’s precarious relationship to femininity, after all. for example, noting the position of her hair after she successfully lightningbends in “the avatar state,” or emphasizing azula’s beauty when they introduce her in “the awakening.” and it’s clear that azula doesn’t really like them, dismisses and avoids them whenever she gets the chance. she can’t even tell them apart. their very existence is almost a humiliation. a reminder to azula that this is who she is destined to become once she lives past her usefulness. not the imperious azulon, her namesake, raised above on a fiery dais, but his sisters, insignificant and functionally powerless.

so of course “almost isn’t good enough,” of course “one hair out of place” is a failure. the only way azula can prove her worth to the empire she has devoted her entire self to in a way that matters is, perhaps, by being perfect, by being better and stronger than the discarded women who came before her. but that, too, is a delusion, that any amount of excellence will reward her in a way that compensates for the erosion of her very humanity. and yet, it’s all she has to cling to. so she gives it her all to excel within a system that will never really care about her because she has deliberately been made incapable of imagining an alternative. of simply recognizing the system for the failure that it is, conceptualizing a world beyond the bars of her gilded cage, and leaving.

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

tbh i think that even unwinnable fights should be winnable. some of the BEST fights i've ever run as a dm were ones i built kill the players (in a fun way. I had some cutscenes prepped so even the loss would be a different flavour of win)- but then they were clever bastards and managed to either win the fights or pull themselves out of trouble. I think it's perfectly fine to plan for a fight that players aren't supposed to win, but you need to let them. if they can't win, they can't lose, and the meaning of that encounter is diminished. do that too many times, and they stop trusting you to give them roleplay prompts and start expecting to sit there waiting while you drive the story for them.

but if they can win... if there is always the chance to win, no matter how impossible the odds, then they ALWAYS have hope. they always get invested. they feel the big emotions of success or the big emotions of failure, and you fucking Win as a dm/roleplay prompter/lead bastard.

[biblically-accurate-dca]

KILL!!!!!!!!!

[shirecorn]

do you think if there were hippocampus in FIM (and I haven't seen the last few seasons so maybe there are fdjghjf but anyway) do you think alicorns would also have mermaid tails on top of the other features? (not a drawing suggestion I just really like your worldbuilding and want to know how you'd go about it)

There are indeed hippocampus! They start appearing in My Little Pony The Movie (2017) (good movie) (sexy villain) (amazing villain song)

Alicorns do not have seapony (hippocampus) traits because current pantheon of ascended alicorns came from ponies with no seapony genes. Seaponies are not anatomically compatible for terrestrial species, so there are no seapony traits in the ponish trifecta.

Anyway. A hippocampus could ascend to godhood but it would be different from the terrestrial alicorns due to their different origins. In fact, the ocean is so much bigger than the land, who's to say there aren't giant queens lurking in the depths, able to control the tide and weather?

[blueskittlesart]

do u have any navi thoughts from your oot replay

i've been waiting to answer this until I actually beat the game in my current playthrough because navi is another one of those characters that i think of in like a "set" with several other characters who serve relatively the same thematic purpose; in this case that purpose being the "mother" character, and i wanted to have all the characters in that set fresh in my mind. it's notable that while oot shows us very clear and consistent instances of the ways in which the adults of hyrule fail to protect their children, there ARE several adults who DO go out of their way to both oppose ganondorf and protect and nurture the children under their care. All of these characters are adult women, and all of them explicitly help the children out of some sort of parental responsibility or sense of duty towards them. in this group I include link's late mother, impa, nabooru, and navi.

all 4 mother characters, despite being adults or adult-coded, reject the inaction mentality which characterizes other adults in the game. they become either direct supports or shields to their children from the conflict the world has to offer them, and they are always explicitly punished for their interference--link's mother is killed trying to protect her son, impa's village is burned, nabooru is brainwashed. The mother's fatal flaw is that she will protect her child above all else, even in a world in which children cannot truly be protected. however, with the exception of link's mother, these characters manage to persist even in the face of her punishment, and this is where I think navi becomes the exemplary character.

Navi, after a lifetime of being link's only support system, the only adult in his life he could truly, consistently count on, receives her punishment at the hands of ganondorf--in the final battle, she is pushed out. she is unable to reach her child. she cannot protect him. However, BECAUSE link has grown up with her at his side, he is strong enough to take ganondorf down. and when ganon rises again, navi is there to support link, promising not to leave his side, and the intuitive targeting of that battle (a mechanic which navi is inherently tied to!!) makes it a cinch to win. Navi, and the other mothers we meet, are a reminder to the player that the world doesn't HAVE to be the way it is. Their persistence when punished, their insistence that their children ought to be protected, is a reminder that good adults do exist, and that good adults raise good children. link and zelda are able to win in spite of the adults who refused to help them, but also BECAUSE of the adults who DID. It's a reinforcement of the core theme of oot--that childlike idea that the world SHOULD be good and fair and if it isn't, it should be changed until it is. The mothers of oot are examples of what the world COULD be, reminders that it is possible to grow up without losing hope or growing bitter, and they are examples of the next step for the children they've raised to change the word--to continue fighting even in the face of punishment, to refuse inaction, and to foster that same hope and persistence in the generations to come.

[confusedgeckotree]

I enjoy media by getting so into it that anything I say is incomprehensible to a non fan. Sometimes even to a very casual fan.

Examples:

"MACKEREL!"

"Octokittens." / "The ship is biomechanical. The ship is sentient. The ship was also once a moon. This means that the ship, as a moon, was sentient and also at least somewhat fleshly."

"Oh. Yknow. The giant fucking angler fish god?"

"Oh. Yknow. The homophobic vase."

"Okay, but how did no-one see two children dragging a corpse to a tree?"

"The candy is a sedative!?" / "Bagged children"

"Five pebsi: triple affirmative." / "Catboy Pebbles."

"Where did you go, Tidedad?"

"If I read the word preternatural one more time I'm going to scream."

"Oh. Yknow. Erika."

[yandere-daydreams]

have you been playing WuWa?? Could replace genshin for me

i'll be so real with you guys, i think attempting to play hsr kinda proved to me that there is only room for one wildly predatory gacha game in my life. let me know if this one is doing anything fun and fresh and i might change my mind but until then, only one game has furina and, therefore, i will only be playing one game.

[mihai-florescu]

Ive been brewing a theory that people are obsessed with demanding media show them morally good things because we're replacing religion with tv shows and pop culture in general in our everyday life. From one story, one form of escapism that dictates our life and community seeking to another, humanity has always been the same. Or rather, there will always be forms of control to keep us occupied and distracted (at the same time it wouldn't be so effective if we weren't intrinsically wired to seek a distraction from reality, so i can't even blame people who "fall" for it. I think it's a natural instinct that helps people build a lens to approach reality through, to stay sane in a meaningless irrational world.)

[real-live-human]

What is bug fables

give me back my Fucking icon

[writhe]

[thisblogdoesnotexisg]

i love it when there’s just a spontaneous wednesday addams post in the nevermoor tag, like friend you got a bit lost but you can stay until you find your way back

[echo-s-land]

It's insane how most of the time I don't get how ppl interact and I also Don't Fucking Care

[soloorganaas]

remus lupin is a complete dick and frequently selfish and self-isolating to the point of being cowardly but he’s also deeply quietly traumatised in a compounding way that he’s never had the chance to deal with and these things interact with each other to make him the complex character he is so he should be written as such instead of a self-insert socially awkward innocent naive sweetheart in this essay I will

[atlantic-riona]

hot take but I think a lot of current fantasy has lost the "what the heck" nonsensical vibes and that's why a lot of it is so bad

[bdoubleowo]

New Life series general spoilers and also a bit of personal taste neg (under a read more just in case u don't wanna see it)

me, yesterday: Yeah last life was probably my least favorite of the 3 seasons. I didn't really like the boogeyman mechanic, I thought it disrupted the players relationships in a relatively unsatisfying way. Similarly the extra lives made the deaths feel less dramatic and less important. Some of the most compelling moments were when people resisted this, Scott taking the life penalty, or Etho refusing to abandon Bdubs when he turned red. Frequently people who were red/boogey and became green again didn't face consequences because they were just following the rules of the system. Bdubs boogey kills Tango and its a VERY funny moment because of how Tango reacts, but its mostly brushed aside by the team as a whole, compared to when Cleo held a grudge against BigB for his boogey kill, leading to the absolutely iconic "do me a favor, die for me". 3rd Life I think also benefited from contrast, everyone was very kind and excited at the beginning before id devolved into chaos and bloodshed, whereas everyone was distrustful from the start in LL. So yeah, I'm glad other people like it but really wasn't my cup of tea like 3rd Life was.

Limited Life (same acronym as LL): Boogeyman is back :] and we did extra rounds of it

me: cool

LL: everyone basically has 24 lives

me: sick.

LL: like 10 deaths already on episode one

me: awesome

[cyanopicas]

pondering an ultrakill gahoole au