#because its on its own seperate power system

[kit-williams]

SIGHS AS I AM INSPIRED

[ 𝕸𝖔𝖔𝖉𝖞𝕸𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖞'𝖘 𝕸𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙 | 𝕬𝖔3 ]

Author's Note: Inspired by this conversation. I'll be making one that takes place while Reader is alive as well, but the one where you aren't just got finished first. Enjoy.

Warnings: Sanguinius/Fem!Reader, Major character pseudo-death(Reader), Worship, i don't know consider this a sort of writing practice type thing for me

Guilliman finds himself having to hold the vile taste in his throat down, as he looks upon the scene in front of him.

...He remembers you.

He remembers the friendly smiles you gave him, and he remembers the smiles you would reserve just for Sanguinius. He always wondered what Sanguinius found worthwhile in being with you; In managing his legion, the expectations put on him by the entire galaxy, The demands of the Emperor, and a relationship with you. But then he would spot the way Sanguinius would look at you, like you were everything he had ever hoped for, and Guilliman would feel a twinge of something. He never quite figured out what it was.

And now you're here. Dead.

At least Guilliman would've wished as such, but instead you lay in an eternal state of unrest much like he was, not too long ago.

Sanguinius had once voiced to him that he was worried his sons would idolize you much like they did him. They were already beginning to towards the start of the Heresy; You'd become less of a person and more of a ideal, an extension of Sanguinius' own supposed anglicism. Sanguinius had found it distressing. He didn't want them to blindly follow something because of a holiness put on them. Sanguinius could handle that sort of thing, persuade those thoughts away and order them to stop, but you couldn't. You weren't meant to.

Guilliman had appreciated him confiding in him at the time, but hadn't offered much to soothe his worries. Perhaps that had been a mistake. He remembers exactly where they were, how the sky had looked. And each time he remembers it, he wants to yell at his past self to say something; To spurn some sort of action and prevent this.

"She still looks the same,"

The primarch mumbles, remembering your face in the last snapshot of his mind. Your skin had been pallor, you were falling ill, but you still soldiered on. You had to. While you had given most logistical and battlefield duties to Chapter Master Raldoron after Sanguinus' death, you still held significant sway in the chapters rituals and other types of decision-making. They wouldn't allow you to divert those duties, the anglicism they had put on you had begun to grow and grow even back then, wearing down on you like a disease.

Sanguinius' genesons had nothing less than the utmost respect for you, which Guilliman had watched morph into the thing that Sanguinius had feared the most. It wasn't his place to step in, so he never did.

The glass coffin which holds you does nothing to hide a single thing, displaying you and the delicate lace gown you lay in. It was the dress you'd worn when you married Sanguinius, and Guilliman doesn't know how to feel about it. The sleeves do well to hide the tubes and machinery that digs into your wrists, deep into your lifeless veins. They keep your body psudeo-alive, he presumes, to stay off decay.

However it seems it's drawing blood out, which he finds interesting. Though he doesn't have the time nor the desire to dwell on why such a thing would be needed.

"You remember The Mother Angel?"

Dante is more composed than most of the other Blood Angels, but Guilliman can still sense the awe in his voice from the primarch's eyes having touched their Mother Angel in life. He stands across from him, having decided to show Guilliman this sacred place.

"Her name, It was,"

Guilliman can't find himself to say it.

"I remember her, yes. Quite well."

Dante stands in reverence as if he's waiting for Guilliman to continue.

"I remember her voice, her face; I remember her wedding. I remember her putting Sanguinius' fallen feathers in her hair and dancing a fool." He clears his throat before continuing. "She lead the Blood Angels for a decade after Sanguinius. Then she fell ill. I always respected her tenacity and ability to lead a legion of Astartes despite her limitations."

Guilliman feels regret. He wishes he would've said more to Sanguinius when he'd voiced his worries, perhaps it would've spurred more action to prevent this outcome.

Sanguinius was the only one of them to find love, and look what happened; You got desecrated by it. Perhaps Corvus and Fulgrim were right to abandon the prospect all together. It seems to bring nothing but horror in the end. The only one of them to find love and that love got turned into it's own hideous creature, completely removed from what it had stood for.

His brow furrows, and he purses his lips in preparation to speak words that he just ends up swallowing.

"This, this is..."

Guilliman cuts himself off. He knows he shouldn't say these things in these chambers they call hallowed, in front of their Chapter Master. he needs Dante, he needs the Blood Angels more than he needs to protect a promise he never made in the first place.

"What, Lord Guilliman?" Dante urges him on, curiosity on his face.

"With all due respect, Master Dante," Guilliman looks to him, face stoic.

"If I were to say how I truly felt about all of this, I imagine you would no longer be willing to lend even a single man to assist the Ultramarines."

Dante looks at him confused, but doesn't show anger regarding his implications. Guilliman can see his lips twitch, eyes flickering down to your glass coffin for a moment.

But Dante just doesn't see it, and Guilliman knows it.

You've been like this for thousands of years, none of them see this as anything unusual. Generations of Blood Angels have been reared on you being this deity, the wife of an Angel, and there is no possible way to raise them out of that. What is done is done.

Guilliman is the only one seeing it as something wrong, as he is an outsider.

"Now, what is it you wished to discuss with me, Lord Dante?"

Guilliman changes the subject and turns away from the centerpiece of this cathedral, only allowed entry by the most elite of Blood Angels. He attempts to forget your body is even there, as there isn't a single thing he can do about it now.

He hopes Sanguinius will have mercy on him, next they meet.

[fungerstingrey]

**Termina is communist** I jest, of course. But it is interesting how the themes of communism, well, the surface definition of communism exists in termina. Logic being defined as "the collective consciousness." Which is often criticized by most due to its lack of individual identity (that is debatable of course). It seems that this call for the new humanity exists in communism, where humanity will be able to create itself a god or make itself a god because of the joint forces. Humanity is defined in funger as impure because it is not the purest thoughts, not the purest concepts. it is impossible to embody these concepts because humanity is too diverse. A lot of misconceptions about communism is that the government owns you which is false, collective consciousness does not mean you lose your own sense of identity. Of course, this isn't the case with the literal ascended god where humanity has to merge with one another much like the human hydra. I think what logic is supposed to be is the collection of everyone and summarizes, because even in the diversity of humanity, there is a billion iterations of the same human being. That is how logic is able to ascend because it can create the purity by being the collection itself. its interesting to me also because christianity exists as sulfur and all-mer, and does this seperation of ego and shadow exist within logic as well. What is the ego and shadow of a collective conciousness? It does not need to exist of course because of funger, it lacks the ego. there is no arrogance in the child-turned-god because all it knew was fear and hunger. I think the ego and shadow could have existed as facism in the form of kaiser because the army was solely created to fight and obtain this power. The collective conciousness does not only exist in communism but it mostly exists in facism and capitalism because the systems wants you to be a mold for a worker. Of course, we can say kaiser isn't facist because he saw the actions of humanity as child's play or irrelevant to the bigger , but in the long run, he acted selfish for his own gain and power. this need to "get what is meant to be" his. this reading of course does not have the nuance of history because the soviet and the n*zi germany exists.( Side note: I do not excuse the eastern union btw because of levi but anyway. ) we are never meant to support kaiser or legarde (we are given freedom yes, but in the context of termina, we only see him lose to another god), maybe because he is the embodiment of this facism, this is a reach. but it is interesting in his design how he is the white savior knight, and his entitlement.

whoops i think i went in a different direction. but going back, i think miro is a really nice writer and there is much to be analyzed in termina in regards to this. Maybe it wasnt initially meant to have messages like this or an angle from communism because it was maybe written as like a continuation of what countries existed and will continue to exist because of history etc etc and i dont rlly think its meant to take a stance in anything but anyway i dont rlly expect anyone to see this or make sense of it. I am just connecting two of my favorite things (communism and funger).

[joeysmuttonchops]

New Teen Titans (1980) #4

honestly the Raven and Arella relationship is one of the most important and powerful ones in early NTT period. Raven acts as the driving force this early into the book, but Arella is representative of the forces driving Raven

theres something there, that its as Raven ages out of childhood and begins to move on her own she finds a struggle-and she goes to her family and she goes to the system to ask for help, only to find that the resources aren't there for her anymore. that she has to manage on her own now. because she's changed, because she won't follow the rules, because the rules don't work for her the way they worked for Arella

and all Raven does in these early issues is ask for help. over and over again, no matter how many times she's denied it. she asks her mother and the people of Azarath and they say she's lost her way, she asks the justice league and not only do they deny her they demonize and threaten her. its not until she asks her peers that she's able to get help. i cant help but compare it to Arella being denied help from state agencies before being offered a new community on Azarath.

its not until Raven's peers ask her to that Arella changes her mind. Arella isn't able to change her mind until she's confronted with immediate danger, and outside thought. And there's something there too, that Arella wouldn't help when it was Raven asking but did when it was someone else. theres an immense seperation between the two: with Raven driving herself beyond a reasonable point and Arella needing external input to move at all.

[i3utterflyeffect]

Could you provide a summary of the Rain World lore, or point to any good videos that do that? I’m interested in the Creatures™️ and want to know more about what you’re basing them off of

I'm so sorry anon i tried to make this short. this is all copypasted from a document. the power of autism killed me

if my frothing is too much here's a video by daszombes that probably summarizes this all

IN MY DEFENSE THO this video is also like, 20 minutes long.

im like. going into game mechanics and going into it in a similar way to how a normal player might be introduced to the game. and doing a bunch of shit abt it.

ANYWAY!!!!!!!! Summary of Rain World. Let's go. For context purposes I will be telling the story of Survivor and then going into lore, other stories, and Downpour. Obviously spoilers for everything Rain World and Downpour.

WARNINGS

Mentions of general death and animal death (duh)

suicide

child death (briefly)

fictional speciecide/genocide

potential existential crisis fuel

let's get started.

Your name is The Survivor. You live with a family of five. A little sibling, a baby sibling, and your two parents.

The reason the game is called Rain World is because of the heavy rains that buffet your land-- somewhat manageable from the place your home is at, but in many cases, lethal-- not only because of the flooding, but also because it rains hard enough to give you blunt force trauma that will kill you.

You escape these floods using shelters, hiding and hibernating at the end of each 'cycle'-- the time between each downpour.

During one rain, you fall down, plunging into the abyss as you are seperated from your family. Your mission is to go home.

You find yourself in a dilapidated urban sprawl-- it's something close to it, anyway. Not a city, but incredibly industrial. The world is overgrown. This little yellow thing shows up-- it's called an observer but we'll call it by the nickname Iggy for now-- and it directs you to food and then shelter during the barebones tutorial.

You'll go a few cycles, and discover some base mechanics.

KARMA: Karma is, essentially, a way to keep track of how you're doing. Every time you survive a cycle, your Karma goes up. Every time you die, it goes down. You start with 5 base symbols, each granting you one level. Karma is required to navigate the world, as each reigon requires a certain level for you to get in. We'll talk about this later: Karma is actually pretty important to the lore.

CYCLES: Mentioned previously.

DEATH: You are never truly dead in Rain World. Each time you die, you return to your last shelter, restarting the cycle-- but Rain World is special because it's not just you who knows. Creatures have a chance of coming back to life at the end of every cycle, and they will remember you. There's a system that coincides with this--

REPUTATION: Every species has its own perspective on you, and your actions will change their perception of you. Killing a lot of lizards of the same color might make them afraid of you. If you don't, and instead treat them well, they might ignore you. You are prey, so balancing reputation is important-- and I can only think of one creature that won't try to kill you if your reputation's bad. Even the fish will personally drown you.

One creature is incredibly dependent on reputation that it can make or break a run: Scavengers. If you're kind and often trade, offer pearls (they love pearls), save them from enemies, etc., they'll treat you well. Get a bad reputation, though, and you're dead within seconds. Some animals are just skittish though-- there's literally personality values determining how creatures will act. I love that so much.

I think that's all the important lore-based stuff.

After a few cycles, Iggy will direct you to where (at the time you assume) your family is, and you'll follow them through the areas, going through a large building, a garbage waste, and eventually reaching a unusual ocean lined with pipes and with a sunken building in the distance. As you get closer, you discover that Iggy was not directing you to your family, but instead asking you to go to this building.

After a lot of swimming (and running in terror as the giant leviathan worms try to crush you with their metal jaws), you'll meet HER. A blue humanoid with wires spilling out, attached to the room by a mechanical arm-- similar to the ones you might find on a train.

You cannot understand her at this time, but her name is Looks To The Moon; We'll come back later.

After assigning you a fetch quest, Iggy drags you all the way back, and I'm not entirely sure what the beginner's route is, but I'm pretty sure it's (unfortunately) Dark Level Spider Hell.

Eventually, you crawl through that pit, run away from the centipedes trying to kill you, encounter giant birds with mouths like scissors that really want to kill you that are very very fast, run from them, and eventually make your way up to the next area.

THE LEG & THE UNDERHANG

The Leg is an alarming change from the semi-natural formations of the ground. This place is industrial. It's a metal beam-column, reaching up into the endless sky. This place is infested with lizards, and a scarier enemy:

Daddy Long Legs, also known as The Rot. These are blind… Biological lumps of… something. They're black and blue, and completely blind. But they have great hearing, and the rot will find you if you're not careful. And it will consume you.

Keep the Rot in mind for later. It's important for the lore-- basically crucial.

If you can escape this hellscape and make your way to the top, you'll find yourself in a building larger than you can comprehend.

FIVE PEBBLES - SUPERSTRUCTURE

This area is simply labeled Five Pebbles. This will make sense later.

There's no gravity here, but there's lots of lights and strange things-- things that look like they'd belong inside of a creature, and little bite-sized rainbow things. These are called Neurons, and you actually need them for the fetch quest.

There's a lot of things going on, but you won't be able to admire it too long-- this place has Rot inside it too, and it's much harder to avoid when you can't control your path due to being weightless. It's pretty terrifying, but in a way, this place is kind of majestic.

You explore the sprawl of access shafts, and you begin to hear music-- the most acclaimed and chilling track in the game-- as you reach the General Systems Bus. The first time I arrived here, I was completely awestruck.

RANDOM GODS

A large room, with a single chamber isolated in the middle. Projected lights surround you, and you have to climb your way towards the top to enter the unusual room.

Inside is another robot, similar to Looks to the Moon, except he's pink, he wears a cloak, and most of all, he seems shocked at your presence, because the gravity in the room returns, and everything falls to the ground-- including you.

He talks for a moment, before seizing you with the power of Gravity™️, and lifting you up. He implants The Mark Of Communication into your brain-- a mark allowing you to understand the language he speaks.

The following dialogue occurs:

. . . ...is this reaching you? A little animal, on the floor of my chamber. I think I know what you are looking for. You're stuck in a cycle, a repeating pattern. You want a way out. Know that this does not make you special - every living thing shares that same frustration. From the microbes in the processing strata to me, who am, if you excuse me, godlike in comparison. The good news first. In a way, I am what you are searching for. Me and my kind have as our purpose to solve that very oscillating claustrophobia in the chests of you and countless others. A strange charity - you the unknowing recipient, I the reluctant gift. The noble benefactors? Gone. The bad news is that no definitive solution has been found. And every moment the equipment erodes to a new state of decay. I can't help you collectively, or individually. I can't even help myself. For you though, there is another way. The old path. Go to the west past the Farm Arrays, and then down into the earth where the land fissures, as deep as you can reach, where the ancients built their temples and danced their silly rituals. The mark I gave you will let you through. Not that it solves anyone's problem but yours.

Turns out, this entire massive superstructure IS this guy; Five Pebbles is his name, and this puppet is merely a more interaction-friendly extension of his larger form. He's also not very happy with you climbing through his structure, and kicks you out onto the surface of the structure.

Now, let's go back to Moon and get some more information. We'll go to the west later.

Moondown

Looks to The Moon greets you much more pleasantly than Five Pebbles:

Hello little creature. What are you? If I had my memories I would know… You must be very brave to have made it all the way here. But I'm sorry to say your journey here is in vain.B As you can see, I have nothing for you. Not even my memories. Or did I say that already? I see that someone has given you the gift of communication. Must have been Five Pebbles, as you don't look like you can travel very far… He's sick, you know. Being corrupted from the inside by his own experiments. Maybe they all are by now, who knows. We weren't designed to transcend and it drives us mad. It is good to have someone to talk to after all this time! The scavengers aren't exactly good listeners. They do bring me things though, occasionally…

After giving her a neuron, she will thank you.

These neurons are essentially their brains. She only has five left. She was previously a superstructure like Pebbles-- Who she calls her little brother-- but she has collapsed. Giving her these neurons can help her regain her memory.

You can also eat them! Don't do that. You will permanently kill her if you eat all of them. Also, she remembers if you've done that and won't talk to you.

Quick summary of the vanilla ending:

You go underground, find some religious stuff by an ancient culture before whatever culture created the upper world, you find a big golden ocean, you swim down, and… uh…

You get grabbed by a big worm that sends you to the ascension realm??

I don't fully know what the ending is. No one does. We call the big worm Jerry though, and he's a Void Worm.

Anyway, let's talk about the real basics. The juicy stuff:

Iterators and Ancients

Looks To The Moon and Five Pebbles are complex machines called Iterators, created by a dead race named the Ancients.

These Ancients have left the cycle by using something called Void Fluid, a corrosive material from the core of the world that cancels out your revival. This is called 'Ascension'. We'll talk about this more in a minute.

The Ancients way of life is structured around the idea of leaving the cycle of reincarnation, and they eventually succeed-- however, they decided that they should leave a gift to the 'lesser life' of this world, and allow them their own escape-- with less risk and an immediate payoff. Remember what Pebbles said?

A strange charity - you the unknowing recipient, I the reluctant gift. The noble benefactors? Gone.

Yep; The Ancients basically desired worldwide extinction, from what we can tell. And they didn't bother to create that solution themselves, instead tasking a bunch of sentient, functionally immortal beings, to throw themselves repeatedly at a proverbial wall trying to create this worldwide cleanse.

Iterators were made for this.

But let's talk some other things real quick before we dive into that mess.

KARMA AND YOU

Karma. These symbols are fun and also important.

You see, the base symbols Survivor starts with are representations of what the Ancient Monks call the 'five natural urges'. These don't change the gameplay at all, but karma is crazy important in lore.

Let's take a look at the base five.

KARMA 1: VIOLENCE

The lowest level of karma, this symbol generally represents anger, hate, and violent acts. The symbol is used in several others-- the ones for 'The Hunter' and 'The Outlaw', gotten by eating only meat for 3 cycles or committing needless bloodshed.

KARMA 2: LUST

Yeah. Lust. I've heard this can also be percieved as a desire for material objects (take that with a grain of salt), but other than that, I don't think I need to say more.

This symbol is used in the passage 'The Mother'.

KARMA 3: COMPANIONSHIP

The desire to form connections with others in general, not just friendships. Frequently found scrawled in areas with scavengers, and also used in 'The Chieftain', 'The Friend', and 'The Mother'.

KARMA 4: GLUTTONY

food… hrng….. Anyway this one is the desire to eat good food I assume????? What else is there to say, really?

It's used in The Hunter passage, as well as the Marytr (starve for several cycles intermittently), and Iggy uses it to point you to food.

KARMA 5: SELF-PRESERVATION/SURVIVAL

The urge to survive. This is why people pretty frequently talk about the ancients having a suicide culture-- not to mention that the others represent signs of depression. It's used in 'The Saint' (survive without using weapons) and 'The Nomad' (pass through 4 regions successfully) and, most notably, it's own passage: 'The Survivor', in which you survive five cycles with this amount of karma. It is the highest karma most slugcats can ascend to without Echoes-- We'll talk about Echoes in a minute.

There's one oddball karma that breaks from the formula, so I'm just going to mention that briefly:

7/7 KARMA: PEACE (O)

For some reason, this Karma is used in some other stuff, and only if it's your current highest Karma. Seen in 'The Monk' and 'The Saint' passages, it basically just means peace. That's all. This one's weird.

Let's get to arguably the most important topic:

ASCENSION AND ECHOES

oh god. where do i start. um.

Okay. So basically. Ascension is a separation from the cycle that keeps you from returning, or 'respawning'.

For ancients, this was simple-- they extract fluid from the core of the world named Void Fluid, and you just… Dive in, I guess?

There was a mass ascension at some point, leaving everything they created behind. But this is all lore for the ANCIENTS. Let's get to the slugcat method.

To ascend, you must reach true max karma (represented the symbol ⊗-- a crossed out circle) and go through the Depths and go into the Void Sea, but you can't get Max Karma yourself. There's two ways:

Visit Five Pebbles and gain the Mark Of Communication

or…

You can visit Echoes.

If someone has many vices, such as being arrogant or egotistical, or other connections to the world, they leave something described as a stain of their ego trapped between reality and ascension.

Ghosts, essentially. That's what they're called in the code as well. They will speak to you if you have the Mark, and a few will reminisce and admit they never even wanted to ascend. Whatever these beings are, they give you extra Karma, elevating you to the next level.

Now that your crash course on that is over, let's talk about the iterators, for realsies.

THE GREAT PROBLEM

Being made for a seemingly impossible task was not easy for them, especially after the ancients, well… 'dipped', I guess you would say.

No one could really get to the solution, despite having many cycles to do so, even before the Ancients left. Previously, the Ancient lived atop them in cities, so it was a very noticeable thing.

Some turned to other things: Art, companionship, creative projects, watching the world outside, talking with friends.

Others balanced between these things, finding something like a job and personal life balance.

And some went insane.

You see, the ancients created a 'Self-Destruction Taboo', which attempts to prevent the iterators from attempting to hurt themselves, only causing more damage as they try to work around it and find their own way out.

This wasn't common at first, but something happened that caused it to spiral out of control:

Sliver Of Straw and the Triple Affirmative.

The triple affirmative is a signal that informs all iterators that the Great Problem-- How to ascend all life-- Has been discovered. Three affirmatives:

Affirmative that a solution has been found.

Affirmative that the solution is portable.

Affirmative that a technical implementation is possible and generally applicable.

Here's the thing: The problem wasn't solved. Moon explains it best:

Do you know Sliver of Straw? She's quite legendary among us. Sliver of Straw is the only one to ever broadcast a specific signal: that the Big Problem we're all working on has been solved. The triple affirmative. […] She's also one of few that has ever been confirmed as exhaustively incapacitated, or dead. We do not die easily. Sliver of Straw sent [The Triple Affirmative] and the ensuing commotion was historically unparalleled, before or after. I still remember it. But… nothing happened - except that Sliver of Straw was apparently dead. When the dust settled we were all still there blinking at each other. Everyone had a theory. Some said that she did have a solution, but that the solution itself was somehow dangerous. These later became known as the Triangulators, who think that a solution should be inferred without being directly discovered. Some said she never had a solution, she just died. And when the systems broke down an erroneous signal was sent. One camp claimed that dying was the solution. Either way, after that these different factions developed, as well as a huge forensic effort to recreate and simulate Sliver of Straw's last moments. Some of the simulations were wrapped in a simulation wrapped in a simulation, in case something dangerous might happen. Nothing much has come from it.

Sliver of Straw also abbreviates to SOS, and their name is similar to needle in a haystack.

We're still not sure what happened: The one fan-theory that pretty much seemed canon due to a challenge level was debunked. SOS remains a mystery. I've got my own thoughts, but we're not talking about that here.

Anyway, after Sliver of Straw died, there soon became more and more self-destructing iterators, with one common method resulting in a term for it's failure: The Rot.

Remember that? Yeah. They slowly destroy an iterator, but it doesn't truly kill them. They're still alive in there, somewhere.

Let's talk about how the Rot works once we get to the point where it begins in the main storyline.

THE COLLAPSE

Looks to the Moon was constructed upon a shoreline, and there was originally no plans to create Five Pebbles.

Almost all Iterators are incredibly far apart, even in their local groups, so it would have seemed preposterous at the time of her creation.

However, her surface became inhospitable some time after her creation, and traversing the ground beneath her would have basically made any attempt at evacuation worthless.

So a solution was proposed-- Two iterators connected by a bridge. They could safely leave her to her own things, and meanwhile, the ancients could spend their remaining time NOT dying.

I'd love to talk about the politics surrounding Five Pebble's creation, but that's unnecessary and this doesn't need to get any longer.

After their creators passed on, Pebbles slowly became despondent and began talking in a private group, using the psuedonym 'Erratic Pulse' to obtain information on how he could circumvent the Self Destruction Taboo..

The local group has 3 others. Two are important, one isn't. (sorry Chasing Wind </3)

Seven Red Suns, or SRS, is our current topic.

They are someone Five Pebbles looks up to, and ended up giving him this info, which they regret.

There's also No Significant Harassment, who is mischievous and good friends with most of the group before everything falls apart.

Here's some in-game dialogue:

[LIVE BROADCAST] - PRIVATE Seven Red Suns, No Significant Harassment SRS: I can't stop dwelling over mistakes that I've made. I could just delete those memories of course, but that feels irresponsible. NSH: Oh? What kind of mistakes are we talking about here? SRS: I once gave someone some... sensitive information... the kind that could be dangerous if acted on. SRS: Yet I should have known they weren't in the right state to use that information responsibly. NSH: I take it you won't tell me the content, or to who. SRS: No, I will not, out of respect. NSH: Look, if you ever want to talk about it I can. We can share this little problem of yours. We were made to solve them after all! NSH: You're worried they're going to get themselves hurt by messing it up? SRS: They already have.

You can find the pearl containing this 'sensitive information' in other campaigns.

Here is Moon's comment on it:

This information is illegal. Someone probably tried to send it by a pearl somehow rather than risking being overheard on broadcast. It's an instruction on how to circumvent the self-destruction taboo. The problem with breaking taboos is that the barriers are encoded into every cell of our organic parts. And there are other taboos strictly regulating our ability to rewrite our own genome. Attempting to circumvent the issue using this process would be extremely risky. That's not to say that there exists any known methods that would avoid putting the user in harm's way. Those barriers are there for a reason. Where exactly did you find this pearl? I imagine you dug it up from somewhere within the surrounding facilities, in which case that wouldn't leave many options as to the recipient. That would explain a lot of things…

Pebbles used this pearl, and because of this, his water intake majorly increased, leaving Moon without any water at all: Iterators need water to function, though, as without it they can't flush out the massive amount of excess materials that is made by their operations. He didn't notice, not until Moon contacted him directly-- And he was angered by this, but not without reason.

Failing the pearl caused him to break the genome reprogramming, causing biological parts to be converted into Rot.

When Moon falls, he shuts out all the other iterators, and goes radio silent.

You're caught up on the backing lore. Now... Campaign time.

TIMELINE: SPEEDRUN EDITION

SPEARMASTER

A messenger made by Seven Red Suns who can make spears outta bone-- a little bit trypophobic but I forgive them it's not their fault. No mouth btw. those spears are how it eats. slurp

Delivered the pearl containing the Taboo bypass, but Seven Red Suns sends you back, with a message of worries regarding his physical and mental health, trying to tell him to open up and talk about his feelings. Pebbles gets mad. He kicks you out, as well as the pearl you were carrying. Did I mention that he rips it out of your chest? That pearl was embedded in you.

Anyway, you can take the pearl to Moon because she's still standing, and she encodes it with a goodbye, telling you about how she's about to collapse. You run to the communication arrays and broadcast that message for her, before returning home to Seven Red Suns.

ARTIFICER

"God Forbid Women Do Anything", Genocidal Revenge edition. Artificer had two babies. Scavengers saw one take one of their precious Porls. Baby is dead. Artificer runs but the other baby gets dragged to hell by leeches and drowns.

Anyway, Artificer returns on a genocidal rampage, locked at Karma One: Violence. You use scavenger corpses to get through Karma gates. The only thing that can sate your hunger is blood and flesh. You are continuously aimbotted by Scavengers but you keep coming back to kill more and more.

You're also explosive, did I mention that? I don't think I mentioned that. She explodes. She's very angry. She can launch herself through the air and maul people.

You can get to Karma 10 through echoes, but you're still denied by the void. It's unclear if she becomes an Echo or not.

You also have another ending! If you go to Five Pebbles, he'll say 'hey, that drone you have is a citizenship drone for my city, scavengers are ripping the city apart, I see that you hate them, and if you kill their chieftain we both benefit'!

If you choose to go that route you can tear through the scavengers, have a boss fight, and get a cool mask. Who cares about being empty inside since you can no longer go on a genocidal murder spree and being forever chained to the mortal realm by your anger and bloodshed when you have a cool mask?

Moon is also dead, she's not there.

Blood and violence. Rip and tear.

Slugcat pup was killed so let their corpses rain from the heavens, etc.

HUNTER

You are rot, rot is you!

Actually, you're a messenger slugcat made by No Significant Harrassment. For some reason this guy ended up giving you the rot for reasons still unclear to us. Unintentionally? Intentionally? Who knows. Your cycle count goes down instead of up.

You have limited cycles to speedrun to Moon and MAYBE ascend if you're lucky.

Go through Pebbles? He gives you extra cycles and wishes you the best of luck. Kind of depressing that you're both condemned to the same fate.

Get to Moon; Deliver a pearl that's a message of well wishes and cares from NSH. More importantly, deliver a slag reset key and restart her. She gets her neurons back. She's alive! And unable to help you.

Now? Run.

Your biological time bomb is ticking, and when you get into negatives, it shows. Not only does it turn permadeath, but you begin to experience collapsing into seizure-like spasms randomly, a growing hunger, and according to the wiki HALLUCINATIONS?

Ascend and you get a happy ending, but if you die you're gonna get a horrific surprise in the next campaign!

Fun fact: original hard mode campaign. Hunter is more skilled than the other vanilla slugs, but their world is harder too.

GOURMAND

Food. That's it. Just food. It's either going to be the easiest slugcat or the hardest one.

You eat your list of foods, maybe visit the iterators, and fuck off back home. You don't even have to complete the list. You can just Fucking Leave.

If you do complete the list tho you get slugpups. I like em. Cute slugs.

you can also CRAFT NUKES btw. did i mention that? Gourmand has crafting mechanics and also can craft nukes if you do it right. Not joking

You can also regurgitate an entire living squid. How? Gourmand.

Also by the way Hunter may or may not have popcorned into a mindless mass of rot if you failed to ascend them. Oopsie.

SURVIVOR

See introduction.

MONK

Survivor but babey mode (affectionate)

Remember Survivor's little siblings? Monk is one of them. They're a vanilla bannana boy and my favorite little guy.

You basically choose a route and if you've already completed it with Survivor there's a happy sibling reunion. Oh, there's two routes now, by the way. Once you complete Gourmand you can go home to the Outer Expanse. No one's there but you're both chilling.

RIVULET

WELCOME TO HELL.

This is probably the one that gave Downpour its title. The rain happens every three minutes, maybe less if you get unlucky. The rain shelters are failing and the world's succumbing to Rot.

Go throw yourself into Moon, and you'll discover Monk has given her two neurons and a dress; thank you Monk :]

You also have the mark of communication from someone (who knows who) and you have a pearl for an iterator system that Moon doesn't have called the lymphatic system. Apparently the rain's bad because Pebbles isn't doing well, but how bad can it be?

…hey, why is the citadel covered in Rot? That's weird and annoying.

Was there always this much in the overhang? It's kind of obnoxious.

Finally, you're at Pebbles, so let's-

Oh.

OH.

THAT'S JUST… THE ROT.

THAT'S WHAT IT'S CALLED NOW. OKAY. FUCK.

Pebbles is so sick he can't even maintain zero gravity, it's going on and off.

Dive into the water of the newly discovered path and RUN.

When you get to him, he asks you to disconnect his only life support-- a Rarefraction Cell-- and deliver it to Moon. A final apology. Leave him to listen to his music pearl in peace, it's the only thing he has left.

Take that cell, run to Moon. She knows exactly where it came from. She doesn't know where her core is anymore, though.

Time for the Submerged Superstructure.

Most of Moon's remains are underwater, now infested with kelp, water lizards, and scavengers. But you can swim down, down, down into the creaking metal, the shrieking waters. Let it swallow you whole.

Eventually, you will reach her Heart. Place the Rarefraction Cell inside, and you're washed away.

You are washed to the top, and descend down to find her where you left her-- but renewed with new life.

She'll contact Pebbles one last time. Happy ending, right?

Not yet.

SAINT

THE TRUE TRIPLE AFFIRMATIVE

Saint may seem peaceful at first-- Fragile and unable to throw spears, fluffy to fight the cold seeping into the world-- but they are arguably the scariest one out there!

The world is ending: Iterators have gone silent, and the world's being blanketed in snow. You're up above it all-- so your first instinct is to go east. To Pebbles.

But he's gone.

Descend, and you'll only find a heap of scrap metal: The Silent Construct. His remains.

You're collecting Echoes.

On the way, you talk to Moon. She tells you about the state of the world. How it's dying. That she might be the only one left.

The world is passing into a new era: one that doesn't need them.

At maximum Karma, Saint becomes something unique.

You gain the ability to ascend anything.

You can go back.

You probably are going to ascend Moon. Only a mercy, right?

Return to the silent superstructure, and find that Pebbles remains. He's still holding that pearl. The music is scratchy. Distorted.

How long has he been here?

However long it was, it was enough to pick off all his neurons. And despite this, he's not even granted the mercy of an ending; he can barely even think or speak. It's cold out here, and you can't imagine it'd be kind to leave him here alone. He has to go, too.

And with that, you descend to the depths.

RUBICON

The Void Sea doesn't have anything for you. In fact, you will only discover yourself in a hellish world where it seems to be flipped upside down, and the remains of the old civilizations that are probably familiar by now are succumbing to the void.

You're burned if you touch the void fluid. You must fly to avoid it.

So you go. You ascend many things that are either trying to kill you or keeping you locked out of other paths.

And finally, at the end, you go up, and ascend.

You swim up. The slugcat tree is here, but it's not what you're looking for.

You drop by a chamber-- one containing the two ascended iterators.

They're free, and finally together. Once you ascend, you can see the future and the past in a cycle.

They look at you, and it's not a circle. It's an endless spiral into entropy. Your future goes on forever.

But you keep ascending.

It's not long before the Void Worm finds you. It offers you ascension, a reprieve.

And you kill it.

You're trapped in the cycle forever. An echo, ever recurring.

And it continues on.

🎉CONGRATS!

you are now a rain world expert. consider yourself lore'd. feel free to look at the critters and beasts on the Miraheze Wiki. (thank you miraheze this is so much better than fandom wikis. we love you)

[et-ooc]

What's up with The Marooned?

my favourite little freak i fucking hate him

kulpils ancestor. powerful psiionic

gets helmed because. obviously he does

turns out! being helmed fucking sucks

eh fuck it we ball right (and by 'ball' i mean 'completely detatch yourself from reality and stop seeing yourself as an actual person and instead just a tool to be used by whatever hand sees fit completely uncaring and slowly beginning to forget you ever existed as the sweeps pass by'')

continue for ???? a long ass time.

another fucking freak (affectionate) comes on board. turns out - hes got his own shit going on that basically culminates in him wanting to die and the universe basically going lmao no

hes the first person to actually treat you like a person in a long time. makes you remember that you are, in fact, a person. makes you realise that you fucking hate being stuck like this and you want to be freed just like him

he tells you to take out the ship. you agree. at the end of the day youre still a weapon to be used by other people, right. at least this one cares about you. at least youll die together.

turns out - You Do Not

hijacking the ship to take out the life support systems and kill everyone on board is easy enough, and in an ideal world youd also be dead

you live in the polar opposite of an ideal world however, (alternia), and it turns out the helm has its own seperate life support system that is powered by and simultaneously keeps you alive

the only way to stop it is to die. the only way to die is to stop it. youre the only living thing on the ship and youre going to be the only living thing on the ship for a *long* time

rest of the ships systems are completely and utterly destroyed and youre completely drained. all you can do is drift aimlessly through space for. a while. potentially forever. completely alone.

L + Ratio + cant even do your fucked up borderline yaoi murder suicide mission properly

[purble-turble]

Battle Nexus season 2 kinda uh... Breaks off your interpretation a little on how the pocket universe works???

According to the summary on the series intro, theres some sort of system that basically allows for aspects of the universe to be generated. Which does occur... The moment the portals get shattered.

Which leads to the fusion trio, a combination of nearly every single AU (the ones that managed to escape CBD and the Posession trio) into singular entities. They all still got seperate souls, but are now in the same body. Granted, the only ones who still hold some mind of their own and are in the forefront are the most divergent of the originals.

(Aka in your situation there's already Red Son who's at constant war with himself because King Red, TT Red, Prince Red, Red Boy, and everyone else are all together in the same physical form)

Also for safety reasons some of their powers don't activate normally. Instead they have a special metallic band on their wrist wrists that has multiple buttons on it in a column. These buttons basically give them the ability to tap into powers the base og versions can't do.

So not only is the Fusion trio struggling to hold themselves together in their new combined bodies, they also gotta reconfigure their powers and navigate a brand new world that basically created its own LMK Universe alongside the Battle Nexus.

Fusion trio essentially becomes the brand new default variants of the Battle Nexus universe, so there's zero versions of Red, Mei, and MK that originate from the Battle Nexus universe seperate from the Fusion trio.

Which also MEANS that technically Wukong, Macaque, Pigsy, Sandy, Tang, everyone else who could exist now exists outside of the battle Nexus arena. These variants COULD join the fight... Granted they can get to the planet to do so.

But once everything is done and over with and CBK is defeated, seperated, and subsequently imprisoned, Jin and Yin fix the portals (and unfuse the fusion trio back into their seperate parts) yet can't quite figure out how to reverse all of the damage, leaving their own LMK Universe on its own seperate planet away from the Battle Nexus.

No one comes back to the universe for a good few weeks after the whole ordeal since it was probably... Very traumatizing for all of the variants, especially being crushed together into a singular body they all had to share.

So uh... Yeah.

OKAY BUT I DO STILL HAVE A QUESTION SO THIS ISN'T JUST RAMBLING-

Thoughts on the Fusion Trio? 🥺 I am curious to see how you feel about the idea, especially fusion Red.

No worries about it being different than my own interpretation! I love seeing other peoples’ thoughts on things that I come up with. After all, collaborative storytelling always yields the best stuff, in my opinion. So it’s fun to see the ideas and stories other people have too!

My thought on stuff like fusions is kind of neutral. It’s not a trope I go hard for is all, but that doesn’t mean I don’t understand the appeal of it. My favorite part of storytelling is about how characters interact with each other and the conflict that arises from that. So if they just become one person instead it gets a little harder to show that off. If this was a scenario where the different versions are actively fighting for control of their fused state then that could be fun, though! Also, since there are so so many different variants of the three of them, my initial thought is that the “fused” versions would just end up looking like a standard MK, Mei and Red Son since they’re kind of default anyway 😂 but it is more fun design-wise for them to have lil bits that are different

[rise-my-angel]

I saw a Targ fan say that asoiaf is about "How the system hurts newcomers (Targaryens) and leaders that refuse to bend (Starks)" I have never wanted to punch someone more in my entire life. I just wanted to read some meta analysis, man, what did I do to deserve this

I thought it was fairly obvious that once said 'newcomers' take over the entire continent, being newcomers stopped being a valid excuse, but apparently not.

Also, you need to be high in order to be able to call the Starks 'people who refuse to change or bend' - Did they skip over the part where Torrhen literally bent? Or the times when they gave the Manderlys a new home, allied up with Boltons, allied up with the Marsh Kings, and with Joramun.

Also also, what fucking 'system' is this person talking about, dude? Targs conquered almost the entire continent, they are the rulers now, they are the system

It's true that House Targaryen, as rulers and enforcers of the system, cannibalised itself quite frequently - But that's not 'poor little newcomers being victimised by the evil system' it's the system, as in the Targs, in its greed and unending hunger for power, hurting itself through ceaseless infighting. I can't stress enough how different those are.

They are addicted to seeing the literal ruling power with flying weapons of mass destruction, as the poor oppressed minority. When they came from a society of blood supremacy and a vicious slave culture that painted anyone not Valyrian as nothing to them as the slaves they took.

And they came to Westeros, the land that served as refuge for two seperate ethnic cultures that THEY drove out of their homes in fear. And after generations decided to use their dragons to conquer the land that had ruled as independent Kingdoms for thousands of years, and then in only 300 years were such ineffective rulers that they set themselves up for their own extinction.

The Targaryeans are the ruling monarchs. In a story that these people understand is vehemently anti absolutist monarchy, but are so obsessed with their favourites making them morally superior that they pretend that absolutist monarchy is okay as long as the family with the most oppressive tools of control and oppressive regimes in Westeros history, are actually the only good ones.

They can't admit that the Targaryeans don't deserve the crown they forced everyone to give them, because it means they no longer get to feel morally superior.

I think the Iron Throne, which was created by the Targaryeans, is the problem. Their all power rule is the problem. The Targaryeans created the very problem that the story is partially about.

The Targaryeans are not the victims, they are the villains.

[pessimisticshapewithablog]

The binding ritual…

What exactly was the magic/spell/ritual the Bishops did to imprison TOWW. I speculate a bit on the nature of magic resources and the power source for TOWW imprisoning.

WARNING: PURE SPECULATION BASED ON MY KNOWLEDGE OF FANTASY MAGIC SYSTEMS. READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.

Theory/Hypothesis

I think the Bishops used their *bodies* as the binding to keep him sealed and not their souls.

Interpretation

In fantasy, mana/magicka is usually the energy used to power magic in its respective world. It's is kept in reserve until required. It kinda like fat storages in the body. It's necessary to have as once depleted magic begins to use a spellcastors life force to substain itself.

In COTL fervor and devotion seem to be the mana equivalent although I think these are reserved for Gods and crown bearers. The Lamb ability to gather fervor is tied to a Crown ability, the use of curses. Fervor specifically because it's actually generated by the person's emotions toward their enemy.

Fervor = internal source

Devotion = external source

In game the Bishops use Ferver to power their transformations. 

During TOWW's fight, the crucified followers generate fervor which is quite strange. But as fervor is generated by someone upon inflicting damage on an other, it can be assumed the fervor here is caused by *TOWW's* emotions toward the lamb and their followers. As the lamb isn't the one 'attacking' the followers. It seems like it's being literally *squeezed* out of them.

But devotion and fervor aren't the only magical power source of power in COTL. Most of our rituals are primarily powered by bones. Specifically the "desecrated bones of fallen enemies". It can be assumed that this resource is specific to *our* cult as Sozo's ritual uses mushrooms. Also the symbols on the crown trophy statues implies that each crown has a specific resource for powering it's rituals

This doesn't mean these resources were created their respective crown bearer. Only that it's the preferred ritual power source. These are some of the more obvious magic power sources in COTL.

Back to the Bishops' ritual/spell that they used to trap TOWW.

With what I've explained about ritual power sources, I concluded that the bishops were using their BONES as a power source to keep TOWW imprisoned. With their souls being the "focus". Like the concentration spells in BG3. Once the two were seperated, the concentration being broken, the binding spell comes undone.

The spell is seemingly undone upon their deaths. At first I thought it was their souls that was used as the power source. But with the addition of the DLC, we learn that their souls were technically 'alive' in purgatory causing trouble. Not "gone" just somewhere else.

I said somewhere before that maybe their grief at Narinder's "betrayal" was the reason their wounds didn't heal. But maybe it was because their bodies physically *couldn't* recover due to it being used as a battery to keep TOWW trapped...

No energy left for healing...

Nor respite due to TOWW NEEDING to stay imprisoned...

Image the fear and terror one would feel. Having to constantly be concentrating on a spell to keep your super pissed and very large brother with the ability to control death and souls in time out. Knowing that any broken focus could allow him to escape.

And dying was NOT an option because then they'd be at the absolute mercy of said very angry brother. Who's also analogous to our world's satan/devil…

I wonder if stopping TOWW was worth an eternity of existing in sheer terror…

[outcast-thingz]

This entire thing is a spiral of me slowly become more and more tired as the 5.0 update stream kept giving me new stuff to put it... anyways enjoy, it's long as hell

2SMTYV59TLFD

7SMTGV59BXH

8T4TGDLRA5E5

BANNERS

Phase 1: Mulani & Kazuha (5 stars)

Kachina (4 star)

Phase 2: Kinich & Raiden Shogun (5 stars)

Weapon banner: Claymore "Fang of the Mountain King" and Catalyst "Surf's Up" (5 stars)

Kachina (4 star)

- Geo polearm

-**Elemental Skill:** Summons "Turbo Twirly" a drill-like device that can unleash ground slam attacks, can also be summoned as a seperate combat unit to deal geo dmg on its own. Using hold on skill or pressing it again while she's on the device will give her the ability to ride and climb up walls

-**Elemental Burst:** In his words "will create an area similar to a construction site" the Turbo Twirly will get some boosts in that AOE

-**Passive:** Shows regional specialties AND when she interacts with the local specialties she restores stamina to the party

Mulani (5 star)

- Hydro Catalyst

-**Elemental Skill:** using her skill she will mount her "Sharky Surfboard" which can mark and bite enemies. The bites will slowly add up on a meter for a stronger burst. The surfboard state can also help her navigate through special areas

-**Elemental Burst:** launches a "Shark Missile"

-**Passive:** can Show regional specialties interacting with them will restore the party's Phlogiston

Kinich (5 star)

- Dendro Claymore

-**Elemental Skill:** fires a grappling hook that attaches to enemies. When attached he can swing and jump around them while sending attacks to them. At the right moment he can use a powerful move called Scalespiker Cannon" This will also allow him to swing in mid-air to move rapidly can use Phlogiston for extra swing.

-**Elemental Burst:** "Ajaw" his little dragon buddy releases his full power sending out a powerful lazer from his mouth at the enemies

-**Passive:** can show regeional specialties and when interacting with them he can boost the movement speed of the party

EVENTS

- Web Event "Off We Go to the Nation of Pyro" can get 3 of the forgeable weapons through this event

-

MISC. & TCG

- Kinich Story quest

- "Nightsoul Blessing" is activated through "Phlogiston Engraving"

- Created an area to test out the new skills and ways the Natlan characters interact with the world

- Fuck you if you wanted to use Pyro immediately when you resonate with the first statue you gotta do story shit if you want that

-New Forgeable weapons

-two new artifacts "Obsidian Codex" and "Scroll of the Hero of Cinder City"

-WE GET A LITTLE GUY THAT JOINS OUR ADVENTURE A LITTLE TEPETLISAURUS

-Using a Tepetlisaurus form can crawl underground and climb really fast using Phlogiston

-*New Boss:* Gluttonous Yumkasaur Moutain King. Looks like there will be a tool mechanic that allows you to drop food and distract the boss so you can attack. Honestly kind of an adorable boss

-*New Boss"* Goldflame Quecusaur Tyrant ah yes because why wouldn't it look like a Wyvern, he does change to a smaller form to do a flying attack where he launches missiles? quills? i dunno but they look like they hurt

-*Reputation System for Natlan* So in each tribe you'll visit their "Obsidian Totem Pole" this will allow you to access and unlock "Trible Chronicles" which will include each Tribe's legends, local customs, as well as, the Natlan Characters' story quests, and some world quests

-Timed challenges will be using the Saurian Spirits to collect as many coins as we can

-login event which will cumulatively give you 10 fates

-In-game mail will give 1,600 primos, 1 sanctifying Elixer, 2 Fragile Resin, Firstborn Firesprite (pet gadget?), Kaboom Box

-Finishing the main storyline for 5.0 will get you an additional 500 Primos from the interface, which seems like it'll be a reoccurring bonus for 5.0, 5.1, and 5.3 BUT it may that rewards also include materials to get certain characters (natlan characters) up to ascension phases 2 and 3, fuckin wild

-There's a new "Quick Start" Feature for archon quests, but you need to have the Liyue archon quests done and be AR28

-10 intertwined fates as an extra reward for the "Stellar Reunion"

-A "found in the wild" option will be available for the regional specialties in your inventory to show on your map where they are and how many are in that spot to collect (THANK YOU)

-The drop rate for certain monster material will be increased (as they should be for things like Kageuchi)

-World lvl 9 exists now woop woop thus we will have bigger dropped materials from open world and rewards form bosses

-SALVAGING ARTIFACTS CAN NOW TURN THEM INTO ARTIFACT EXP MATERIAL

-Tired of not getting the artifacts that you want? "Sanctifying Elixir" is here to solve your problems. With this bad boi you can exchange it for artifacts with specific main affix and 2 minor affixes. You may be asking yourself how you get them, well worry not dears fo r you can get them after extracting a certain number of upgraded artifacts, exploring Natlan, and/or unlocking Gnostic Hymn and reaching specific lvl

-Battle Pass is being adjusted so you can choose 3 of four types of materials as rewards. Oop and wouldn't you know it, you can change the talent material you earn from it to be any nation's talent lvl up material

-Hey don't worry about trying to finish finding all the Anemoculos and Geoculous in order to get your stamina, you can now boost your stamina limit by offering to any of the statues.

-I honestly have no idea if I read this right but between the natlan statues, the shrines, and the reward thingy that Natlan will have that is similar to the fountain of Lucine in Fontain, it should all add up to a 10 pull of wishes

-Imagine with me if you will for a second. You're on the character banner and your 50/50 arrives, scary as always, but then you see it "Capturing Radiance" it doesn't matter if you're clicking through your 10 wishes and Qiqi shows up as the second thing you got because you now know that you have for sure pulled the promotional 5-star. A chance encounter but encounter it you did

-FINALLY FINALLY that 50/50 gotta lose it twice to get the weapon BS is OVER. It's like the character banners where you lose your 50/50 then garunteed that next 5 star

-Every anniversary you will unlock a wish system to get any 5 star from "wanderlust Invocation" for Free. For freeeeee? yes for freeeeee.

-*Imaginarium Theatre news* will now offer strategies based off the current season's three-element reaction system. They're trying to make it a little less troublesome for players but still leaving room for challenge by adding a visionary mode.

- looks like we get new character, monster, and action cards for TCG

-a collaboration between Genshin and Logitech (merch may be a thing that's also being release with that??)

-I actually took time to listen to the music section. The Natlan symphony? glorious, I need to listen to these more often. please if you go watch any of this stream watch that part, 10/10 would reccomend

-That was.. a lot but hearing Zach saying to prove that he voice's Aether to people that he just screams windblade at people makes up for all of it.

[sri-rachaa]

Ok! A couple people were asking with the Ah’den [OC thing] art I posted a couple weeks ago as to what a seraph was, is it interconnect with the reapers I was talking about not to long ago, and are they similar to/or angels?

(Tagging @zozo-01 , @halscafe , @sealriously-sealrious , @epsi-l0n , @morgansplace , @gingerbreadmonsters , @dominimoonbeam and @gaiasart !!! Thank yall for being interested in my screaming <33)

Well! :)

To begin- Yes, they exist in the same universe as reapers!

The textbook definition of a Seraph is “An angelic being of the highest order…” which is what I assume would be a true Seraph.

In this case, the ‘Seraph’s’ I’m referring to are not the typical angelic/holy types of seraphs. The reasoning behind why this race has been dubbed ‘Seraph’ is because when not residing in any true physical form, they look much like what someone would imagine an Angel to look like (Radiating light, having no defined shape or body, resembling something more like plasma rather than solid)- so thus in the earlier days of humanity when seraphs were occasionally seen, people began to give them the name Seraphs (believing they were angelic beings. Although, they also have the ability to resembles things only imaginable in nightmares- so just make sure you don’t make one mad)

Seraph’s come from a parallel plane of existence basically, something far outside the human senses. They live in a world where they are the only living species outside of plants (as their bodies don’t necessarily need much form of sustenance), and have formed complex societies with a similar aspect to most human societies; biggest power on top of the social pyramid. A goal in a seraphs life is to become more powerful (physically, magically, intellectually, etc.), with little to nothing in between. Seraphs are not family or love-oriented, nor do many of the them even have relationships in general. Because of this, many seraphs are extremely isolated and their personalities are typically cold and selfish— not being fond of interaction. This causes many Seraph’s tend to not intermingle with humans well, though a few select seraphs have adapted to recognizing human emotions within themselves after long-term exposed of human societies.

Moreover, Seraphs have a very…interesting relationship with humans. Seraphs look at humans in a similar way of how humans look at animals, basically as lesser beings that they can use if needed. That being said, some Seraphs keep [usually kidnap, if we’re being honest] humans and ‘keep’ them for a variety of things. [some being as innocent as having a familiar/companion, other reasons being…far more morbid]. Many of them, though, settle for choosing a few humans they’ve created a genuine emotional bond with and making them into their familiar- a person who emotionally and spiritually connected to a seraph.

Seraphs themselves are exceptionally powerful. And not only powerful, but incredibly intelligent as well. After analyzing the specific patterns and factors, Seraphs are often able mimic the powers and abilities of empowered people to a certain extent— as well as having abilities unique to themselves (Which will likely be its own seperate post)

“But Rae! What if a seraph has bad intentions! You wouldnt want them walking the human plane!”

This is true! So theres actually a system to combat this, as well as to protect/respect the empowered importance of covert. You see, theres a legislative ceiling on how much power a seraph can produce on a human plane. Their version of a high council constantly monitors seraph’s walking among the human plane- and how much of their power they produce. If they are detected to push over that ceiling, they’re immediately pulled back into their own plane and forced into their equivalent of court. Some go with minor punishments (Cannot revisit the human plane for “—“ human years) OR others far more major (Cannot revisit the human plane— permanently).

For now this is all I shall leave at, though if anyones curious about anything I’m happy to answer questions! :3

[silentalltheseyearsnomore]

I keep coming to write here but don't know what to write because even hear I have to hide so much.

K fucked up again and we haven't spoken in a few weeks maybe. It barely impacts me these days. When it's good it's so healing and I am here for it. But when she goes back to her abusive ways I just get on with my life. It is what it is I guess. I'm glad she doesn't have power over my life the same way.

I feel more connected with S again. Just terrified for what happens when therapy ends very soon. We've had such honest and scary conversations and while it can feel brutal I also see so much growth. Especially in child parts. She is their main attachment person and it can feel like dying even though she isn't leaving, it's still changing, and so scary. A lot of unknown. Mostly they are scared of coping without her physical holding every few days. Her cuddles help them and our nervous system so much. And they cant imagine having that elsewhere. But they are learning so much alongside the fear. That her care will (and is) being shown in other ways. They are understanding different love languages. Understanding that all the "boring" stuff she will be doing behind the scenes in her own time is to help us in a bigger way. That it may feel awful but it's how she can help most in the long run. How it's not even what she'd want to spend the time on, she'd prefer doing something nice with us, but she is the only person who can fight the system for us currently, and she knows that is more important. But, the fear remains. Less cuddles = death to them (lol but really how it feels.) Seeing her less = death. Any change = something bad. We are trying really hard to show that its not that extreme, it just feels that way because they've only experienced such awful things with every attachment figure. Sudden endings and abuse. The reality of less time may be sad, but we are hoping once they process that she's still there, it won't feel so awful. They've just never experienced it. And! The whole point is to find a really good therapist, and a support team. And her alongside in the way she can sustain. That's MORE good, more care, more help, not less. They just don't believe it because we've never had it. And we can't properly reassure them as we don't know for sure its possible. We just know she is going to help try make it possible.

They are learning so much about healthy care, and boundaries, and change not having to be black and white. I appreciate her knowing her boundaries, being honest even when it hurts, making the big difficult choices in ways no other attachment figure ever did. She is making sure we don't repeat past experiences with ex therapists, and knowing her limits, and continuing supervision even after we end until we settle. She pays two different specialists so much just to supervise her around us, and to do this transition of our relationship (and hopefully eventually a new therapist) as healthily and safely as possible. Recently an adult part told them how this is what safe care looks like. Not always dramatic and intense and then a sudden explosion and ending. Not pretending they can offer the world out of care and inevitably failing. She is seeing her limits, accepting ways she cant help, finding her area where she can sustainably, fighting to find us the right help. Instead of promising the world and breaking our heart like the others. They said, this is the purest form of care. This is what any good parent would do. S agreed. And child parts are starting to try and understand this. Trying to seperate the feelings of not mattering/being left to die/etc to the present reality of actually someone caring enough to protect our relationship *before* it ends badly, and to not give more therapy trauma, and who thinks we deserve *more* than just her, and is willing to stay and fight for us to have that. Who says it's "disgusting" no one has ever done that for us before.

We are realising how black and white and distorted our internal process is. Either she stays the same or she is gone, it feels. We physically can't seem to process this other option. We've never experienced it. We've only ever had sudden, dramatic, shocking endings. People have loved us deeply. But not safely. Not safe enough to make the hard decisions and do what is best before it is too late. Navigating this process and hearing how she is sad too, how she's gone back to therapy to process huge anger around certain aspects of the situation and the fucked up system, how she doesn't *want* to end therapy, but is doing it because she knows she has to in order to not let us down in bigger ways. It is all painful but helping us so much to live a bit more in the grey. Not so black and white.

We are so scared. And exhausted. Its been years since we had anything resembling solid and consistent therapy. Even that was questionable at times, but we did do good work together for years. We just want someone to be able to do more of that with us. And I know thats what S is fighting to get us. She's fighting to help us get what we need, to help us change our life in the ways we've never had support to, in every area. We said we dont know if what she dreams of for us (support wise) even exists, and she says neither does she, but we are going to do our damn best to get it. And isn't that all we can hope for? All we can try for? And isn't that all we could ask any human to want for us and fight for us so selflessly. So we are trying so hard to hold on to the bigger picture as we navigate this. But the triggers are so huge. Since the start of the year we have essentially lost our entire chosen family.. everyone we've ever called family (on top of having no birth family since we cut contact years back), including pets, a partner we lived with most of our life, two parental figures, a best friend and lover.. etc. We've had to realise most of those closest relationships were at best unhealthy and at worse abusive, and we deserved better the entire time. So much loss. So much shock. So much confusion. So much unknown. And we have to just try and hope that this was our life emptying out so that it can be filled in the right ways at last. The right people. The right support. The pushes to try and change our life and demand better than we've lived with for so long. Where we live, how we live, who we are with. Everything. Everything is changing. Everything is scary.

Us: it is so hard. It is so scary.

S: because we are doing this differently. we are doing this the right way. it is the unknown.

[lapseinrecs]

Marvel Cinematic Universe tag

Comments: I’m a definite Tony Stark stan over Cap, which may colour the fics that I recommend. Spidey’s my second favorite hero after Nightwing, though, so he’s probably never going to appear in a negative light. Been getting into Matt Murdock a bit so he's liable to show up. Due to the nature of these posts, there may only be one fic for any given character, but whatever.

There is a Marvel tag with a directory post here that's mostly just to organize alternate worlds. But like most things are tagged under MCU idk what to tell you it's what I'm most familiar with.

Jimmy Woo, Wong, Shang-Chi, Katy Chen, Yelena Belova, Odin, Frigga, Sharon Carter,

The Avengers has its own tag for Avengers related fics.

Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Thor Odinson, T’Challa, Sam Wilson, James Buchanan Barnes, Nick Fury, Loki Laufeyson,

The Defenders is a tag that exists under MCU if you’re more into them specifically, but for example, if it’s just Matt Murdock, it’s not going to be there.

Matt Murdock, Foggy Nelson, Karen Page, Claire Temple, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Danny Rand, Ward Meachum, Trish Walker,

Guardians of the Galaxy has its own tag now tho it’s pretty empty.

Peter Quill, Rocket Raccoon,

The Moon Knight System has a tag for the system and also tags for each alter and also Layla because we love her.

Marc Spector, Steven Grant, Jake Lockley, Layla El Faouly,

Spider-Man is it's own tag seperate from the MCU although both tags may be listed. You might find the Peter Parker tag helpful though if you don't care if it's the MCU Spidey.

MCU crossovers:

Power Rangers, Percy Jackson, X-Men, Batman, Supernatural, Bleach, The Man From Uncle,

[h3rbdotpdf]

I’ve seen a ton of LA anti-fash activists calling out the some of the leaders in the SAG strike for being antivaxxers or having right wing ties and I feel like a lot of folks dont rlly have the historical context of the union struggle so this is just that.

Since the 80s, the supreme court has ruled that unions are not allowed to use any union dues for political activity, including lobbying and all sorts of other things. Most unions now have a seperate political fund but taking this we can see that the union has its hands tied as a political entity by federal law. 

Another thing to def think about is that unions are democratic associations, like small cities almost. Leaders are voted in, all choices especially during something like this are made by the elected leaders or voted on by the union members. This means that there are bound to be people in union leadership that have shitty political views. That’s just the reality. The union can’t take any action against that, the union isn’t its own entity the union is literally just the sum of its workers and a couple of staff who help facilitate their actions and the collective decisions voted on by the union.

Unions are not going to be the end all be all of political activism and progressiveness. Historically progressive folks have been pushed out of a lot of union spaces because of the hard hats vs hippies movement. Thankfully that’s changed a lot since then. But the fact remains that unions have to work within the bounds of the law because theyre legal entities and don’t have the autonomy to just go full radical, especially if the people they represent lean conservative.

Does that mean we should give up on unions? Absolutely fucking not. Working within the law sometimes means tangible life altering results now, and not in fifty years when the revolution happens. Worker power is worker power, democracy is democracy. 

This is why folks need to be two pronged in their activism, the truly radical things you are capable of must be done outside of the confines of the legal system!

[thesopwithcamel]

The Three Hat's AU: Large vehicles

The large Vehicles in A hat in Time take many large, in my au I want to give some more technical aspects about them or even make some pretty drastic changes to the lore about them.

These concern the Owl and science expresses, The Trains in the metro, Ol' Stella and the SS literally can't sink which has been abrieviated to LCS(and by extention its younger sister the SS Absolutely Will Not Sink or AWNS).

The Owl Express:

The railway the Owl Express travels on was built in 6478 ATB by an independant railway company in the Confederation of Avian States (C.A.S), the Owl Express isn't the only train in 1HT but it is the first and only mainline transcontinental service. Its quite a surprise how it hasn't been taken over by the goverment due to how many unautharised stops are made each journey, it is also a miracle that the locomotive and rolling stock are in peak condition especially with its use in films and regular incidents.

The Owl express runs on a 1435mm railway gauge and has a consist of around 5 wagons and a caboose being pulled by an oil-burning tank locomotive capable of reahing speeds of 75mph, The wagons pulled by the owl express are around 55.5 feet high and are around 10.7 feet wide albiet the interior is quite a bit larger than the exterior.

The locomotive is an oil burning 2-6-4t which can rumble at speeds of up to 120kph and with its rather sizable boiler can generate enough power to go at these consistant speeds, the reason why an electric horn was the original steam whistle was shot off during production of the 3rd Conductors 1st movie. The current conductor has been trying to recover it ever since. It was built at around the same time the railway was finishing construction

There have been 4 conductor's since the trains construction, including our current one.

The Science express:

Basically 2HT's version of the Owl Express but unlike the Owl express was more serious and made use of many advances in experimental technology, causing the Alice in Wonderland size shennaniganry. The science owls use this train for their experiments and also for transport.

The train is ran by Gregg, Walter and Redd as well as 2HT's version of the Conductor, externally the Science and Owl expresses are almost exactly the same but internally there are many differences which make both of them stand out.

The Science Express was the development location of New Earth's KL-11, an alternate version of the Korean K11 assault rifle , which was rejected by the Metro's police force because of its cost in favour of the KL-7 (K7) Submachine gun, Caitlyn recieves the original KL-11 prototype after she stops the Shapeshifter's rampage.

The external dimensions of the Science Express are the same as those on the owl express.

The locomotive of the Science express uses an experimental steam-Diesel hybrid system, it looks like it's working to since a more conventional locomotive hasn't replaced it yet. (the system exists irl look it up).

Shapeshifter is Natalie's shadow but had been originally contained in the Science express and experimented on for most of her life, when he escaped she decided to go on a murder spree before being kicked into the firebox of the Owl express.

The Metro Trains

Run on a hollowrail system, a system created in the metro seperate of the original railways, originally these rails were served by more conventional diesel-electric Multiple Units on more conventional rails but concerns about hygene and the carbon emmissions caused a full conversion to Hollowrail which started in 6544 ATB and ended in 6611 ATB but due to them being unable to purchase specially built rolling stock and lacking the material to make their own they instead removed the engines and genetically created these giant fuckoff cats to run them.

Can average the same speeds as your average London Tube train while being similar scale to the most up to date New York Subway units, the cat's aren't very fast when pulling the trains but can hit 100Kmh if pressed and without a burden.

The Empress has some say in what funding is put into the Metro since the Nyakuza was originally created by workers running the original Diesel Electric multiple unit's who grew disatsfied but due to several anti Union laws passed at the time they had to form this group to get their opinions and points across, violently.

The Metro's technology far outstrips the rest of the planet unless you count Caitlyn's ship as part of the rest of the planet.

Sirius Model yacht MK 14 conversion 'Ol' Stella'

The above is the full designation of Caitlyn's ship, since it is the 14th conversion of the Sirius Model Yacht.

Caitlyn built this out of a decommisioned Sirius Yacht and whatever shit she had lying around on hand to weild or bolt on which included starfighter engines and a bomb bay in the engine room, turned out to be surprisingly durable which was placed on full display when a prototype starfighter colided with it and Ol' Stella casually strolled away with little to no damage.

Stella's top speed in atmosphere is mach 54 and can has a 7 second accelaration from standing still to lightspeed.

Stella is armed with several pairs of plasma cannons and can be converted into probably the scariest close air support/ground attack platform ever due to Caitlyn's insistance that cluster munitions because they aren't forbidden by any intergalactic treaties.

Due to Stella making so many long distance high speed trips the Time Piece vault was expanded and modifed to feed into the core fragment tank in order to refill it without having to stop anywhere.

The events of A hat in Time were indirectly caused by Caitlyn neglecting proper maintenace on the vault door and the window due to her being far away from anywhere and hoping to get it fixed up at the next space station, while Stella has no interior defences it has an alarm system which can often be either too effective or next to useless. She got hell for it when it was discovered and was banned from flying for a whole Terran year while Stella was retrofitted with the newest technology.

Caitlyn dislodging her friends with a broom is a courtesy not given to many, if the system hadn't activated the emergancy stop the ship would have shot into hyperspace killing all those hanging off (except the Snatcher) in pretty nasty ways.

Low flyovers are not advised.

Literally Can't Sink class (SS LCS and SS AWNS).

The SS LCS was built in 6600 and was originally christned by the Walrus Captain's hero figure, the ship was 128.3 meters long and could carry up to 470 passangers on cruises up to the arctic circle, it weighed in at 6,690 tons and featured technology donated by the Metro. Both the SS LCS and its successor can reach 19 knots in a calm sea.

Its sister ship the SS AWNS was built in 6628 and was originally going to be called the SS Hat Kid but evidence of Caitlyn being the one causing the sinking was found, fortunetally the company who ran the ship decided to cover up this actual reason because Caitlyn rescuing everyone and then saving their collective arses at Times End was enough of a repayment but even so extra security and safety measures were poured into the new ship. SS AWNS is bigger and heavier than SS LCS and has more to pack in its relatively small shell with it carrying an onboard motorboat for recovery of things like Time Pieces as well as two more lifeboats.

The name SS Hat Kid went to the most modern recovery ship built which ended up being a massive help when the calamity occured.

Both the LCS and the AWNS are used as junior crew training ships for younger crew.

The AWNS is famous for the infamous arctic flyover when a Time Piece spotted and collected by the seals as a present for the captain ended with Stella showing up and scaring the hell out of everyone.

The SS AWNS is the largest vehicle in this post while the metro trains are the smallest.

[loremonster]

If its something you can do with your bear hands that isn't doing harm to another human being, I feel denying people knowledge and oppertunity to do those things infringes on our human rights.

Repairing things is something Humans Do. We are a tool using species, and when something breaks we have the ability to examine the breakage, theorize on what went wrong, repair the damage, and idiate on an improved version of that tool / better techinique to use it with *while still having the use of the original tool!!!* THAT IS BUCK WILD SHIT MY DUDES, we can just... DO that through trial and error. Birds make nests, humans figured out if you weave a whole lotta long soft tree limbs together and tie it to big rooted trees you can make a bridge and cross a river without drowning-- all labor that can be done with abundant planet wide plant fibers, your hands, and thinking about it long enough.

So why the fuck do we not teach our children these things? Why do we demand the body and mind are seperate, and then make training the body The Worst Class That Everyone Hates As They Age Into Highschool?

Because rich assholes stand to gain if we forget that People Make Things. And People Repair Things. And People Have Hands That Make Tools, and Tools Make Machines, and Machines Make Industry. Cut your hard laborors off from anything that might, MIGHT lead to losing a single dollar you could have gotten out of the ignorance you're demamding be willed into being.

Yall might notice this logic is circular. The rich folks making decisions assume the farmers are stupid because they are poor. Since they're poor, they will be stupid, so they won't notice when we infringe on the Human Right To Be Part Of The Enviroment You Live In by making repairs Unfairly Difficult without our permission and illigal to fix on their own. And because they're poor and stupid, they'll never figure out how to fix things once we tell them no! Then they'll have to pay us EVEN MOAR just to stay alive!!

Humans don't forget how to do things with their bodies. Denying them knowledge simply forces them to Start From Zero and make mistakes more often. Hurt themselves more often. Hurt others more often. Fail to figure things out and get fustrated and depressed more often. Get sick more often. Need more care and produce less as they age, and their peers watch them die preventable deaths.

People don't forget. You can deprive us of history, but you cannot delete living memory, so the next play is to ensure the poor don't live long enough to figure things out, separate parents from children so kids are not witness to the anguish, and drive wedges into personal relationships by any means nessesary to prevent spouses from working as partners. Ensure life sucks so bad that any kid who manages to escape never comes back, and their family resents the kid instead of the system that drove them away. Blame the young as the old die at the hands of their masters.

The fact that The Internet Never Forgets, that we have a living memory in which anyone can save anything no matter how stupid or trivial, is why I have hope the cycle can break.

Even if I'm dead tomorrow, someone could be reading this a year from now. That's power people below the ruling class rarely get free access to.

And sometimes it sucks. That's okay. People suck sometimes. I suck sometimes. That's why the internet sucks sometimes, but the intent of our current oligarchs is to flood the space with so many bots people either Cannot Trust or Do Not Use the web anymore.

The fact that AI is everywhere despite it not being sophistocated enough to convince a person that its a person in prolonged one on one interaction is the same logical failure in action. Those who think They Own Us think we're dumb enough to not notice when a bot tries to sell itself as a new friend in our DMs-- cause friends ain't looking to buy anything, ya dummies. They want to talk to a human, that's why they exist in a space with DMs.

The extractive purpose is built in, and breaking the last link in the chain never goes well. People still have skills, and still think, and still make tools to solve problems. That's how we got AdBlock, VPNs, and Spam folders. Indivudals made a tool, the tool was overwhelmingly popular, and sees wide adoption.

The difference is while a Spam folder is really easy to build into a system at minimal cost, and a VPN can be monitized the same way bandits monitized bridges in ye olden days, AdBlock denies an advertiser access to their end goal; time, attention, and influence over a human person somewhere in the world. THAT is the last link in the chain, the boundary line that actively says NO, I LIVE HERE, YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO MONITIZE MY TIME.

The Right To Repair is the last link in the chain for farmers. Corpos are actively trying to break it, and people are finding ways around it because it infringes upon their ability to live their life without Sales By Harassment And Sabotage.

[majorasnightmare]

anyways pokemon team+info for gods favorite punching bag 👇

im thinking that even in a pokemon setting where things like bhaalspawn dont exist, i dont think his life was any less shitty for it and the general trend of "spent most of his life as a deplorable person doing awful terrible things to people for the sake of feeling worthy of his fathers attention" + "horrifically maladjusted moral standards due to systemic abuse in a Literal Cult" is probably still true even if you cant have things like Going Slayer and shit

pre amnesia hed still be doing Business As Usual, steadily making baldurs gate a worse place to live but now with the addition of a dark type team that also participates in the blackbagging and disappearance of the gates least memorable and most politically inconvenient. its a team that emphasizes overwhelming opponents quickly with raw power and doesnt invest much in the way of setup, but has just enough to survive when someone puts up a fight. a spiritomb that uses curse and shadowball to shred through you relying on its defensive typing for bulk, a barely controlled hydregion thats more or less just set loose to attack whatevers in front of it, and a very very angry houndoom as his ace whos strongest hitting attack is a max power frustration, all of which are male because of dirges strained relation to femininity as he experiences it in the cult of bhaal. hes a deeply unhappy person and troubled person and his team reflects that about him. a vengeful but deeply loyal dog thats mistreated constantly that keeps lashing out but refuses to leave, an overwhelming force of destruction whose limbs cant think for themselves despite looking like they should, and the weight of over a hundred dead in an ancient stone that curses everything around it that he has to carry with him. none of them are treated with kindness or compassion by the people they look up to, trainer included, and its going to be everyone elses problem because the inertia of toxicitity is just too much to fight against so its better to just flow along with it. despite being significantly more powerful than the people they terrorize, none of it is capable of making any real genuine impact on their lives so the frustration of constantly feeling weak continously builds up

while hydregion and spiritomb are encountered+raised post dirges indoctrination fully into the cult, his houndoom is the last remnants of his life outside of it, met as an orphaned houndour on the streets of baldurs gate shortly after dirge lost his own parents to the urge as a child. as such houndoom is the only one of his pokemon to remember when he used to be kinder, before dirge eventually made his way to the temple and became isolated from the rest of society. any fond memories of those times are inevitably tainted by the pain of their circumstances back then coupled with the misery of their current lifestyles. seperated from anyone who could show him genuine kindness or compassion, dirge grew up cruel and ruthless, internalizing the temples doctrine of the pointlessness of living, and trying to constantly prove himself worthy of his fathers attention, which became the only metric valued by anyone and thus the most important thing in his life. whereas other ppl might simply be taking advantage of a death cult to further their own goals, dirge fully drinks the koolaid and doesnt understand why fulfilling his lifes purpose as the bringer of endless death isnt making him happy and concludes that hes just not trying hard enough+is horribly flawed in a way he cant perceive but is obvious to everyone else+is a horrible sinner constantly tempted by pointless distractions (friendship, compassion, kindness, etc) + and also that existing as anything beyond a physical extension of his fathers will causes nothing but personal agony so he just needs to objectify+deperson himself More and Better, and a lot of this gets taken out on houndoom, who he cant bare to part with because that was dirges sole companion for some of the hardest times of his life but considers that an irredeemable flaw in his self. its at its worst in his teenage years where he was more angry, but now hes primarily just neglectful and exhausted+apathetic. he has a LOT of bite scars from mistreating houndoom that ache terribly even to this day that he just ignores because its his punishment for loving something.

post betrayal+amnesia, thanks to dirges brain getting a much needed hard reset to finally break free of the cults cycle of abuse, hes a much more pleasant person to interact with, and hes a significantly better trainer to his new team. i think post brain damage his first pokemon is his mimikyu, a lonely pokemon terrified of its capacity to brutally harm others that tries to make itself more appealing to find the friendship and kindness it longs for, that retains its deadly ability to protect itself and its belongings, but also the rest of its team. pretty standard mimikyu set with hone claws, shadowclaw, and play rough, but also has substitute because dirge cares more about keeping his team safe. he also picks up a female gothitelle that better reflects his actual skillset and interests with its psychic typing, and actually has a moveset that utilizes set up instead of just charging in guns blazing and hoping everything dies. the cults isolation left him fairly sheltered, and dirges own lack of knowledge of the world was a flaw he felt he had to compensate for when he was younger. a desire to not fail father because of his own ignorance eventually morphed into a deep (if somewhat obsessive) curiosity to know and learn as much as he could, and gothitelle as a psychic type that foresees death and the future is a p solid fit (since we dont have Elder God The NonLegendary pokemon yet). gothitelle is also nice because her main attacking move here is future sight, in part because hes expecting himself to actually be around to see it instead of just dead. his third new team member is salazzle because. well. yeah. its equal parts the emphasis on poison (his favorite murderhobby) and The Everything.

he also doesnt avoid femininity as reflexively+compulsively post amnesia because he isnt as terrified of his own gender expression as much (as Being Feminine means being Less Similar to His Father, whom hes supposed to be an Extension Of, therefore having a gender crisis is an unforgiveable sin and also why his letters to orin emphasize her shapeshifting so much. 🥚🥚🥚) so his new team is two female pokemon and one ambigiously gendered sackcloth ghost.

despite all the abuse, when dirge goes missing houndoom immediately bolts from the temple to find him, both because the temple sucks and because, similar to dirges own affection, houndoom has his own complicated love for his trainer. like yeah dirge is a fuckup but thats HIS trainer, no one else gets to bite dirge but him. upon re encountering dirge it seems like houndoom only sought him out to try and attack him and id imagine wyll and co probably try to chase him off a few times because of it, even tho dirge never rly asks them to or encourages it. despite what theyve gone through and done to each other, thats HIS houndoom and that bond is still there no matter how many knives he gets in his brain. houndoom gets back on his team early on and you can track how well theyre doing through their battles, because frustration steadily grows weaker and eventually starts being replaced by houndooms other attacking moves, until you can see that in one of dirges last trainer battles its using a max power return instead. houndooms toxic fire bites also cause dirge less pain as he tries to rehabillitate him, never fully going away but noticeably decreasing in severity. as you get into the equivalents for acts 2 and 3, he reacquires his spiritomb and hydregion and starts trying to take better care of them too, and trying to battle more thoughtfully with them so they dont get hurt as often, with hydregion also swapping out frustration for a max power return and spiritomb using more setup moves

also wyll has an arcanine and dirge fuckin loves that dog. despite his team having one (1) dog, hes a dog pokemon kinda guy. scratch is a growlithe that hangs out in camp and dirge never takes him out battling because he doesnt want scratch to get hurt. if you have a dog he is going to try and pet the dog even if the dog uses firefang on him, hell be fine dont even worry about it