#but he is a kinda cultural hub

[spidertalia]

Just a question about New York.

You gave the hint that he shows very much respect towards other cultures. Does it mean that he also recognizes nations like Kosovo, Palestina and Western-Sahara, that aren't necessarily recognized by the UN?

oh i'm sure he does !!

new york, like pretty much all of the states, is quite invested in his citizens; it's part of the reason he knows so many languages, so he can converse with all of his citizens. given that he probably has a great number of citizens from those nations, i'm sure he recognizes them as such. he has a genuine interest in learning about cultures and their languages and traditions, and that's actually usually what he talks about to any nation he happens to meet ^^

[evilminji]

Broadway :3c

And I hear ya. (Insert spooky joke here) There is a sprawling WEB of central hubs, for The Arts. For trade. For getting drunk and having a good time. The Zone is large and it is endless. You'll NEVER reach the far end. It can never reach you.

All things, in gentle sweeping waves, across eternity.

So when folks want to have "a market" or "a movie theater" or "the waterpark"? You gotta PICK a point on the endless map. Figure if you are close or far enough away for others like it, to make it worth the effort to build.

You might even be the first to do it for GALAXIES in any direction! People might fly for WEEKS to come to your place! Move their Lairs to be closer too it. Like dust gathered by gravity, slowly creating planets and stars. A mega Lair. A CITY.

They rise, they fall, the Zone shifts all the while.

But!

Does the dead starlet stop singing? Does getting gunned down, stop the show?? I think NOT! Where is her STAGE? What musicals? What dramas? What operas and tragedies and forms unknown to human kind??! Ballet dancers who CAN defy gravity! Singers who have no NEED for air! The haunting blend of instruments, that could never in life have met! From empires long turned to ASH!

The greatest show in DEATH!

Ember was a world wide hit. Yes, her voice was hypnotic. But that could be FOUGHT. It was SKILL that carried the game. And she was hardly "I was Literally The Greatest My Planet Ever Produced" skilled. She was good, great even. Not "I was Born For Greatness" Excellence.

And like?

.....eventually? Danny's gonna ask after "cultural-y" Culture stuff. Clothes and food. Music and the arts. To help his parents get used to the whole "our son is half-dead" thing. To show he's not some mindless monster now.

And? Ghostwriter? Probably an absolute legend. Does he know where you can find some CULTURE? Oh THANK ZONE! He thought you'd NEVER ask! You unsophisticated-! *fist fight in a library* Still a dick, though. Always and forever.

And just? Imagine Broadway stretched out into a floating city. That never sleeps. Never stops. Shows ever changing. Some on a cycle, some only once. Dream-like. Beautiful. Eye catching.

And yeah, Danny didn't think he LIKED musicals. It was more of a Jazz thing. But? This was important! Gotta get the whole family in the Speeder. We're going to see a play, guys! We'll pick when we get there! Family road trip! Educational! We can make notes!

His parents are trying to be supportive. Big, fixed, strained grins. Trying to pretend to be excited. But they... DO seem reluctantly intrigued? And Jazz is all but vibrating in her seat. It's basically her "before you go away to college" present. And she is THRILLED.

The longer she excitedly speculates? The more into it she gets their folks. This IS gonna be new! Exciting! Never before seen Ghost Culture! Music! As a FAMILY! Think we could find souvenirs? Ooooh, wonder if they sell CDs??!

Then? They GET there. And it's... it's like seeing the Las Vegas strip for the first time, except multiplied into a city. Made of even MORE styles and eras. At angles gravity would never allow.

The air filled with laughter and excitement, people rushing to shows or humming bits of tunes. Street stalls. Fountains. Flowers growing everywhere.

They could stay for months and not even reach a fraction of these buildings. His parents are taking countless photos. His sister squeeling with joy as she races for an information kiosk like they just arrived at Disneyland. He, at least, remembers to lock up the Speeder. Grab their day bags.

When did HE become the responsible one?

The argue over shows. Obviously. Wouldn't be Fenton's otherwise. HE wants to see the alien one. It's from mars! But it's his sister's trip, as his dad points out, so she gets to choose. She picks a musical set during the Fall of Krpton. He's... reluctantly kinda interested. I mean, EVERYBODY likes Superman, right?

It's... it's amazing. Terrible, but amazing. I mean? A coming of age story cut tragically short? Oof. Hello, massively projecting then getting FEELS about it! Yeah, sure, rip my heart out why don't you? He's fine. No, really! Just drowning in his own emotions over here. The refrain of "A Life Well Lived"? *gargling dying whale noises* he's FINE. Not grappling with anything! Go on without him!

Thankfully?

They DO sell CDs.

He... he may end up, kinda, getting a bit of a collection. Going on the weekends, hoping show to show. Wandering to whichever catches his eye in the moment. Buying the CDs for one's he likes. Which? Honestly is a lot of them. Even though there's all sorts of genres and languages. Cause it... it RESONATES you know?

The grief. The anger. The "I have died but I wasn't FINISHED. It isn't FAIR.". And? Something about ghost speak flows so BEAUTIFULLY in song? It's hard to explain. But he... he needs them.

A pair of headphones, a CD, and a clear night sky? Nothing touches it. It's like a trance made of light. Like he can just drift.

The problem? Is the CDs are kinda... Zone made? They're radioactive, for one. Nothing a Fenton CD player can't handle. But... they? Also? Kinda fuckin GLOW? Like... very, very noticeably. And not in a "ha ha, cool glow in the dark paint!" Sorta way.

.........but like FUCK is he leaving his music behind when he goes to college. Gotham will have to deal. It's already a burning shit-nado, it can handle this. Probably. He'll put um in a lead lined box. Actually, speaking OF.... he needs to get a few more of those... *goes back to packing*

Which? Is how? The Bats are treated to some of the most HAUNTING music they've ever heard, belted and crooned from Some Guy's speakers, out an open window, on the "stop for a mid-patrol drink of water and a snack" building. It's one of the intersections of their patrol routes. And THAT? That is some dude listening to a Romani ballad about death and the circus. Now it's a musical about the trenches of an obscure war.

Okay, that was DEFINITELY Kryptonian. Like... coherent Krypto- *Bruce gets a call from Clark on his "work" number DEMANDING to know where that is coming from. Who is that voice Bruce?!* huh.... Well Then.

@hdgnj @hypewinter @nerdpoe @lolottes @babbling-babull @spidori @mutable-manifestation @the-witchhunter

[woodywood101blog]

Experimental (Part 1)

Yazan loved learning about new medical breakthroughs. As a doctor, he spends a lot of time understanding how new technologies are being tested and introduced that help make his patients' lives better and healthier. He mostly found it interesting learning about the newest ideas. As soon as it says "first" in the research paper title or news report, he was right on it.

So when he saw a research paper from an Australian team that said "first experimental pregnancy in a man", he looked at it with both intrigue and concern. Clearly men shouldn't get involved in something so.. feminine, he thought.

Of course, when he read the paper, it explained that the researchers at the University of Sydney's School of Medicine were only able to confirm viability up to 3 weeks of pregnancy. They explained that the hormonal changes required for the pregnancy to continue in a man would be so overwhelming that it would cause harm to the man, and that is without considering that it would be medically an ectopic pregnancy from the get-go. Suffice to say, it's medically dangerous, and emphasised as such by the researchers.

Oh well, good try, Yazan thought.

A couple of weeks later, an email popped into Yazan's inbox about a conference in Sydney, and a request to present there. He actually had never been to Australia before, especially with how expensive flights and everyday costs there are, so he took the chance and agreed to present.

Yazan finally made it across to Australia and was able to present his new research in haematology, while also taking in the sights and experiences of Sydney. One night, he stumbled across Oxford Street, the hub for queer culture in Sydney and home of the Mardi Gras parade. He grabbed the first high table he could see at the Oxford Hotel, and just observed people going about their fun Saturday nights while tucking into a steak.

He saw someone eyeing him from the side, and when he turned he saw a beautiful man. Although he was short, he appeared built like Yazan. He had short brown hair, a square jaw and light stubble, but didn't appear stoic or aggressive like other men. This man slowly walked towards him and sat in the seat next to Yazan.

"You're Dr Yazan, right?"

"Yeah... and you are?"

"Mike! I think I saw you at the conference in Darling Harbour today? Well done today!"

Sure enough, Mike was sitting and observing Yazan's presentation, but also for other reasons. Mike was part of the Australian team that researched male pregnancy. He had been developing a form of hyper-concentrated hormonal medication that would allow a pregnancy to remain viable for longer than 3 weeks in men, but was a long way off small-scale animal testing, let alone human testing. Mike was getting worried the research would be wound down by the university, so was starting to think about ways of getting the research to speed forward, without the university's immediate knowledge.

And he knew exactly what he wanted to do...

"So, that's the general gist of what I've been researching on..." Yazan said. "I kinda need to pop to the bathroom quickly.. do you mind looking after my meal, please? Feel free to have some of the fries!"

"No worries!"

Show time. Once Yazan was out of sight, Mike grabbed a small vial of what looked like salt flakes, but were actually some of the experimental hormones. They looked almost exactly like the coarse salt already on Yazan's steak, so it could work, Mike thought.

"Here goes nothing..." Mike sprinkled the salt all over the steak and the fries. At the very least, his food will just be very salty.

"Hey there, thanks for that!" Yazan said as he got back a couple of minutes later. They ended up continuing their conversation about the research they were respectively undertaking. Yazan asked about the fertility trials Mike helped with, including the male pregnancy trials, but made it very clear he wasn't surprised with the outcome.

The talking slowly turned to flirting, especially after Yazan finished his meal. He started feeling quite flustered, and vaguely horny. Of course, it helped that Mike was one of the cutest Aussies he had met here. Eventually, Yazan took off his tie and unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt.

"Looking good, doc" Mike said with a wink.

"If you want to see more, want to come back to my hotel?"

And with that, Yazan and Mike sauntered their way from Oxford Street, across Hyde Park towards Sydney Town Hall. Mike took his chance and reached towards Yazan's hand. Yazan latched on without question.

Once they got to Yazan's hotel room, it was almost instant how quickly they got their clothes off each other. They were like two horny rabbits going at it, and they were at it almost all night. Yazan felt such a rush of energy throughout the whole time, and never once felt tired or spent. Mike wondered if the hormones were doing their thing, but those thoughts were overruled by the fact he was fucking the hottest doctor in town!

Each time, Yazan urged to be the bottom, which he found unusual as he normally is the top. There was something about Mike that just made Yazan want to be fucked by him.. maybe it was the muscles hidden under Mike's suit? All Yazan understood was that he needed to be fucked now through any means.

They woke up the following morning, the bedsheets sprawled in every direction on top of Mike and Yazan. Mike woke up with his dick still in Yazan, and still rock hard. Sure enough, it appeared that Yazan was still eager to go when he started waking up and felt Mike still in him.

"I could honestly keep going all day, Mike. I feel like I'm 18 years old all over again!"

"Really?"

After one (or two) more loads in Yazan, they finally moved into the shower. Yazan's abs had become slightly misshapen from how much Mike came in him. It was a bit surreal for Mike to see, because it really did look like he was pregnant.

What have I done, Mike worried.

***

I haven't done this in quite a while, but finally getting around to getting the first part out of a longer-form story I've been thinking about. Let me know your thoughts!

[atopvisenyashill]

THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE ALLIANCES BETWEEN HOUSE VELARYON AND THE SUMMER ISLANDERS OF ESSOS

The more I think about Corlys and the Dragon Twins as characters, the more I really like the change to book canon that their heritage isn't quite so strictly Valyrian. They seem to be this middle ground between the Celtigars, who imo likely "went native" very quickly, and the Targaryens, who, ya know, *gestures at that mess* because they seem to have more Valyrian marriages and their Valyrian heritage is taken more seriously than the Celtigars.

I settled on this idea that being a house of seafarers, they often intermarry with various Essosi nobles and that’s part of why ~the blood of valyria~ is still strong with them despite not partaking in incestuous marriages; like Larra Rogare or Serenei of Lys, many Essosi do have Valyrian looks and Valyrian heritage and the Velaryons are in a position as adventurers to meet and fall in love with these nobles.

One thing I noticed about the Summer Islands is that they seem to have a healthy diaspora, not just in King’s Landing but in Braavos - Arya mentions Bellegere Otherys still resembling a Summer Islander despite it being several generations since Bellegere Otherys the First. It also seems like there’s Summer Islanders that live long term in Braavos; there's 50 Summer Islanders in the Golden Company, Arya mentions seeing many Summer Islanders, and Sam and Gilly travel on a boat crewed largely by Summer Islanders. This all makes sense world building wise - they're a culture of seafarers and we usually see them at large hubs like King's Landing and Braavos.

So really, folding show canon Corlys into book canon is incredibly easy when you think about the high number of Summer Islanders at port cities. My thought here is - Corlys is a proud man and very insistent on how he built his own fortune, both in the show and in the books. I thought of the type of parents he could have had and settled on a man who becomes angered at the comments he and his mother get for being darker skinned and Essosi/Summer Islander and deciding to just double down by marrying a rich Braavosi Summer Islander. So first Daemon meets a Sumemr Isles princess on his own travels, Salata Xam, and falls in love, then Corwyn, like Corlys, attempts to build a fortune through his own accomplishments, including his marriage to the rich Sarissa Jaedosys, and passes that stubborn streak onto his son.

Then, similar to how Sybell uses her new connections to get her brother some land (though he’s still kinda fucked there lol), and the Lyseni Spring, the House of Jaedosys ("jaedos" means "summer" in Valyrian, so while the family is Braavosi and has considered themselves Braavosi for some time, their house name is a reference to their origins in the Summer Isles) uses their new connection in Westeros to build their own fortunes up as well. Corwyn’s (canon) brother, Victor marries a cousin of Sarissa's, Doreah Jaedosys. In canon, Daemon and Corwyn have several children - Daemon’s names here are all canon (AND he has some daughters), and Corwyn has an unknown amount of kids. I think this explains why there’s so many Black Velaryons - there’s just like, a shitton of Velaryon cousins right now!

So once I established Corlys and his brothers as being mostly Summer Island descent, from there I moved onto who is likely a descendant of the Dragon Twins (and Corlys). For Rhaena’s many daughters, I thought of Targaryen names that sounded Andal-ish/Reacher-ish and Andal names that sounded Targaryen-ish; there's a pattern in the Reach of using the more religious-affiliated Targaryen names as Reacher names (Aemon, Aegon, and Baelor have all come up!) so I think at least part of this is Rhaena's influence. I decided on Alyssa, Leyla, Victaria, Aelora, Denyse, and Rhaella.

I also combined this with my “Elaena marries Baela’s grandson” theory, which I feel makes a lot of sense - not only the Penrose-Valyrian connection and story implications, but notably the name “Laena” is a Velaryon name. I think if Ronnel’s mother was also a Laena, and both of them were half Velaryon, this little bond between them of choosing a Velaryon name for their first born daughter feels very sweet and romantic even. PLUS, if a Targaryen descended girl marries into another house, I can see people wanting to show that off every once in a while through a name. This is why Rhaena’s girls marry a Costayne and a Hightower!

Then I started thinking about the timeline and what was happening politically as all these descendants of Corlys start marrying. Given that the Tarlys were staunch supporters of Rhaenyra, I can see Rhaena wanting to reward that, and Garmund agreeing due to them being a powerful Reacher house. Since there is mention of the Blackfyre Rebellion ~pitting brother against brother~ and the Costaynes sided with Daemon, I thought having a Hightower-Targaryen involved in that mess would be thematically fun; either Aelora sides against her husband or Aelora marries a Costayne that sides against the main branch. Either way, when the rebellion is over, Daeron punishes the main branch Costaynes by taking most of their lands and giving it to Aelora and her daughters. As for Denyse, I thought it would make sense, once again, for her to turn back to the Braavosi Sumer Islanders for a husband; a First Sword of Braavos, perhaps, who use Hightower grey and a pink dragon to represent Denyse's heritage in their sigil.

Also Alyssa Hightower was originally supposed to marry Leo Hightower (Lady Sam and Lyonel's oldest son) but when she found out Leyla was in love with him, she committed herself to the Faith. Why? Because I think that's absolutely hilarious. Septa Alyssa is making Daemon roll over his grave lmao.

[tainted-sweet-meats]

so I made a weibo account. I have been meaning to for years but tbh I was very shy. I feel my Chinese is very rusty since the only ones I could speak it with was in fact my sister and one cousin. Since we all have busy lives it kinda tanked. But I took a head dive in to weibo and the fear was very moot : P I love the site a lot and the furry community is large on there I even got compliments on my non furry ( monster/humanoid) work which wow >w< This is definitely pushing me to want to practice Chinese more. >.> I wonder if I should make a discord server for anyone who would want to practice with me from my art blog. I know how to speak my other culture's tongue to a T cause I speak patwa constantly and with hubs. while he teaches me Spanish and Mexican culture. THO I feel the best way to make Chinese stick is to do the same. Would anyone want to be language buddies with me, specifically with CN ?

[forgottenroderick]

OOC | Varmont-ians & Religious Culture

(and to be clear, i mean, like, peeps from the varmont empire -- esp the og nation -- not just the fam...)

so we know a good bit about the astairan religion, and so i wanted to hammer out some details abt its counterpart, roderick's god! so far, we know a few things

they have one god

the phoenix symbol is linked to their religion

they do NOT like witches!!!!

they consider the guardians to be demons

so!! obv there are multiple real-world monotheistic faiths, [ zoroastrianism, atenism, judaism, islam, christianity, and numerous others ], from which we can take inspiration

we also know that ppl from the og varmont country have a wide variety of naming bg's

roderick (anglicized visigothic) famed ruler

alaric (anglicized visigothic) ruler of all

guinevere (anglicized welsh) white phantom

edmund (old english) rich protection/protector

arthur (anglicized welsh or anglicized latin) bear king or honorable/respectful

sebastian (latinized germanic) venerable/exulted

cassandra (greek) excelling/shining one

bartholomew (greek-ized aramaic) son of the furrowed

marian (anglicized egyptian) sea of bitterness/rebelliousness/wished for child/beloved/star of the sea

alistair (scottish) defender of man/protector

there's also eoin (irish-ized hebrew) god is gracious and ciara (old irish) black lady who have irish names, but i consider these outliers and attribute this to their calleary mama <3

now, why am i jabbering abt names in a post that purports to be abt religion? well, i thought it might help sprinkle in some fun elements to the religion itself if we can kinda pinpoint sort of a cultural element for og!varmont the way we did for astaira

so, why ~these names for these ppl? now, obv there are doylist reasons for this haha but i was thinking it could be fun to run w it and add a layer of in-world reasons esp w the rise of nationalism in og!varmont that came w roderick

so!! the things that came up the most?

visigoths x2

welsh x2

greek x2

english x1 (but almost allll of the names are anglicized -- for obv reasons, we're english speakers hahah -- but still!)

latin x2

germanic x1

scottish x1

now!! its also interesting to note that germanic and visigothic language have the same root, and that welsh, irish, and scottish all have the same root, so by ~that estimation, names of those origins both show up x3 respectively. another interesting fact, english is comprised of ~both of those roots w a dash of french thrown in for spice ;D (thanks, Wm the Conqueror!)

HOWEVER!! it should also be stated that the names of the royal family (those ~born varmont, anyway) should bear the most weight bc those are most likely to be traditional names to the og culture, so the egyptian and scottish names are probs the least relevant to this process but def still worth considering imo! HOWEVER!! its also worth noting that both roderick and alaric were born to a second wife, so its ~also highly possible that their names are derived from the tradition of whatever ~her culture was so yeah!! bc of these sorts of considerations, bartholomew, guin, arthur, and edmund are likely to have the most 'traditional' names as they were all named w the notion that depending on how things shake out they might rule someday, whereas even tho roderick, for example, was born a second son his dad def wasn't viewing him as a potential future king, and therefore its unlikely he viewed alaric that way, either, whereas we all know its equally possible w our ot3: succession kids laksdjfakljsd

ANYWAY, i feel like, altogether, including each one, this tapestry of names is actually telling us a bit of a backstory -- i.e., that the og!varmont nation (OVN for short from now on!) was an international hub, and im thinking that might tie into maybe roderick's father and grandfather and great-grandfather doing lots of trading w other nearby nations, until whatever OVN's ~pure culture felt kinda lost to "revivalists" such as roderick who felt they had to unearth it from the mire of homogenization, leading to the rise of nationalism and acts such as digging into the ancient past to try to discover whatever may have once been unique abt OVN, and as such roderick making huge national statements like IMMA TAKE MORE WIVES NOW and not receiving backlash bc that's what the ancient kings of OVN did, a fact stated in his bio!

this nationalistic and xenophobic rising tide paired w conquest of course then ironically hurls off the shackles of alien cultures (thus alienating the new culture OVN had since been building) only to then do the same to other cultures by obliterating them in the tide that is this frankenstein'd version of whatever the lost ancient culture might've been bc i love it when roderick is always and inevitably hypocritical without realizing it <3

ANYWAY!! all this international trade and such means you'd have an influx of foreign alliances and marriages and, ofc, names, so yeah!!

so, question 1: would it be helpful to sort of figure out culture(s) to model OVN on? and, if so, do any of these appeal?

now let's circle back to religion!

so when you get roderick's reactive party rising to power, you start seeing a couple of things. now, ngl, i kinda feel like maybe roderick actually follows his mama's religion, which may or may not be/have been the same as OVN's, if we wanna explore any potential religious backlash from within OVN, or anything like that? but irregardless of how it came about, roderick has in fact established his religion as the official state religion of his new empire, and failed to believe accordingly meets with a fiery (aka in his eyes, cleansing!) death

sooooo im having some frankly insane ideas abt Roderick’s belief system thanks to the Phoenix iconography (like…boiled down roderick might legit worship death effectively -- the only god that comes when you call, the god of all, the god of equality?!!?!! Though in a slightly more life/death ying/yang creation through destruction kinda way, motto ‘in my end is my beginning’ sorta way idk Sfjkhffg HELPPP!) and before I get too carried away bc idk if we need a death cult emperor 😂😭 ummmm I wondered if you guys had any thoughts abt the varmont faith/the one god/etc adhkkjgdgh

some other thoughts i had — Phoenix flames, sun, light, fire — dichotomy of light/dark, good/evil — so roderick's view, then, Astaira and the staffords literally take the night as their standard (three stars in the night sky) and worship demons, conquest cleanses etc...idk!! what do you guys think? the sun and moon are the eyes of god

i also had some notions pulled from mostly atenism, orphism, and zoroastrianism re: its cosmology, that maybe there once were three gods: the light god, his goddess wife, and the dark god, but the dark god attempted to kill the great god, stabbing him through the eye (the moon eye) but the pregnantn goddess sacrificed herself and her divinity to bring back her husband who cast down the dark god, stripping him of his divinity, and now he's basically ~satan, but he couldn't bear to never see his wife again so he used the divinity he'd seized from his dark brother to #reincarnation and his reborn wife, tho no longer a goddess (since, to bring back both wife and unborn child he had to split the divinity so yeah #onegod), bore their mortal child whom roderick considers to be his ancestor, so basically the varmonts are possibly descended from the god and goddess, reincarnation is maybe a thing, there's one god of light and one demon of the dark, and death might be good maybe? laksjfkljsfk

(i was thinking a belief in reincarnation maybe bc of the phoenix symbology -- representing resurrection, rebirth, life in death, etc, and the dark god bc they obv believe in demons of some kind, and not!god evil gods w demonic servants appear in many monotheistic belief systems, judaism, islam, christianity, and zoroastrianism to name a few)

question 2: is this absolutely unhinged inanity, or does it have potential? i myself keep going back and forth alksdjfakljsf

also last but not least...@thelongforgottenrealm did you have any notions abt this?

[the-bed-gremlins-reading-list]

correct me if i'm wrong the people of ausones has the same heritage or culture to where hallis come from? (forgot what the isles are called)

like the religion to the ladies of water and wind are a bit different, like when halli mentioned that we have huge ass temples in ausones and it's kinda dramatic lmao

You're not wrong! At least not entirely.

Ausones as the city is now was founded by Kimbriki settlers. We're talking long enough ago that they've developed different cultures all their own now. Ausones has a lot of influence from other cultures as well because it's positioned itself as a trade center. (A lot of coastal or large river settlements would actually have Kimbric heritage or influence because of the way it's not uncommon for them to branch out from the isles, but typically they don't become independent. Ausones is one of the oldest examples and was founded in the continent's city-state phase though.)

The aspects Halli was calling dramatic tend to be the aspects typical of the continental sedentary cultures (large stone temples included). Kimbriki are semi-nomadic or entirely nomadic depending on the clan and jarl because of how poor the soil is and how bad the weather is for crops in the isles, most of their veg and grain is imported or stolen. Only the largest of their isles has a permanent city and it's used as the meeting place for the alliance of clans.

Ausones relies heavily on sea trade and fishing because of the relatively little farmland it has and it is located conveniently to control or have access to most of the northern sea lanes. It does have productive farmland however and its positioning geographically makes it quite a wealthy port.

They also share a lot of their gods because of that history but there are ones unique to each culture too and the manner in which they are worshipped different. Auberon's chosen patron gods, the ones he dedicates prayers to, are the twin goddesses, the Ladies of Wind and Waters. They are the city's patron gods as well and are among those highly venerated in the isles.

Ausones has a history of maintaining strong ties with certain Kimbric clans because it cuts down on piracy and raids, as well as their historical ties. Auberon's Knack is typical of Kimbriki magic, not mainland. The ability to cast into animals and ride with them is common in the Isles but not the continent. It's from their great-grandmother who was a jarl's daughter and a marriage alliance.

Ausones adopted the practice of sworn knights from the mainland. By the time of the story they are the only extant country to use that title since it had mostly been subsumed on Fantasia by the Nasenii practice of fideles due to imperial spread.

Additionally like all major trade hubs Ausones has immigrants from everywhere. A high percentage of those are Kimbriki because of how many jobs in Ausones have to do with sailing and shipping. They also have a large community of Ithellen refugees and smaller pockets of other immigrant groups.

Uuuuh. Hopefully that clears it up!

[semi-imaginary-place]

jjk 265

In the end the ultimate technique to end sukuna's whole career was the same one that ended gojo, yuji sent him to a public transportation hub. I'm still disappointed sukuna hasn't killed and or eaten more characters. Tomas the Tank Engine about to shred sukuna, isekai'd and reincarnated into a jrpg world as like a baguette or something.

Real twin vibes this chapter with the banter like the crayfish. Sukuna making up excuses for knowing what a hydrangea because Yuji's mocking him about it, bro's a poetry snob and traditional Japanese poetry is all about nature and flowers, he's cultured, a contrast to Yuji's typical teenager action movies and manga tastes. Yuji's arms are back to how they were before and his hair is down again, is this how he sees himself? His eyes for most of the chapter have the single pupil but at the end where he downs down the ultimatum of get back in his body or die, Yuuji's eyes have the same rings as Sukuna's. Two worsties wandering an empty city, I love the vibes of 265. Sukuna is having the worst day of his life being forced to follow Yuuji around while he prattles on about his childhood memories while not being able to commit violence. Sukuna's just simmering there in anger and hatred without being able to vent it as violence all he can do is make snippy comments here and there and insult Yuji. Also my religious iconography isn't too good but is that Kannon/Guanyin when Sukuna questions is this whole chapter has been Yuji's mercy/compassion?

https://tcbscans.me/chapters/7778/jujutsu-kaisen-chapter-265

Someone on reddit brought up how jjk's delulu brother sequences with Todo and Choso previously shown might have actually been a result of Yuji's soul resonance abilities since Yuji is shown to be able to affect souls. And so in a way Todo's false memories of going to a normal school together with Yuji and Choso's false memories of all the Death Painting siblings eating together foreshadowed 265 where Yuji shows Sukuna the town he grew up in. As for why this didn't happen with Sukuna earlier, a lot of it is probably narrative and thematic flow, it's rather fitting that it happens at the climax of the manga. Sukuna and Yuji have always been kinda special. For most of the manga there's also been a significant power gap between them. Yuji was never powerful enough to effect Sukuna, until Yuji got his offscreen power ups and sorcerers threw themselves at Sukuna for 40 chapters straight to wear him down.

Yuji talks a lot of his grandpa the most important person in his life. He wonders if his grandpa would have died alone if his friend hadn't died first. Just like how his grandpa was sick, bedridden and alone, everyone's lives have meaning. It isn't about how someone dies but how they lived.

In 265 Yuji has stopped forcing himself into a role resigning himself to being a cog in a machine. He also reflects and discards his literal interpretation of his grandfather's dying wish, the thing he had been clinging to to guide him lost and directionless as he was in life after his grandpa's passing, realizing that that was an excuse he used for his anger. And this is the part I'm unsure of I think what Yuji's saying is that the value of life in in the acting of living itself and the ways your life touches others. Comparing the translations I think it's an existence proceeds essence answer Yuji's saying it's not memories and the past that determine value and a person's purpose, instead through living and creating memories that value is created, pretty Buddhist.

I talked about this previously. Yuji's erasure of his selfhood to make himself a cog in the machine of Jujutsu society formed an ideological opposite to Sukuna's self centered hedonism and this forms the primary philosophical battle underpinning the series. With strong sorcerers repeatedly being those who just do whatever they want unbound by the wills of others, this forms a sort of anti-Buddha archetype, with a consistent theme of subverting Buddhist motifs (iconography, mudra, lines, imagery, etc) when it comes to these characters primarily Sukuna and Gojo. With this framing in mind Yuji was always going to lose until he changed his mindset.

This is why there was so much speculation about Yuji taking up Sukuna's philosophy and "becoming the new Sukuna". I never believed that jjk0 reveals Akutami's optimistic intentions. The subversion of the twin trope also offers hints as to the future. With Maki and Mai, irl Ryomen Sukuna, and Akutami's interview statements about being inspired by conjoined twins, the audience was led to believe Yuji and Sukuna were twins or Yuji was part of Sukuna's soul (same thing according to sorcerers). But this is partly subverted when their real relationship is revealed as Yuji is Sukuna's reincarnated twin's son, created by Kenjaku with one of Sukuna's fingers. Their connection is thus messy, not two pure opposites or halves but like a distorted mirror. As such I don't think their fates will directly mirror each other. If they had actually been halves I think them dying together or ending back in the same body would be extremely likely. But since the duality is warped Yuji's survival chance increases. Yuji plans to shove Sukuna back into his body and that might succeed or Sukuna might finally die.

Yuuji stakes his life and identity on his role as Sukuna's vessel. He'd already envisioned their destiny of eating all the fingers and dying. But Sukuna never needed him, took over Megumi, and shattered Yuuji's world. What is he if not Sukuna's vessel? The loss of both his friend, and the loss of his role his world view his place in the universe is what has driven Yuuji up until dec 24.

"Jin's name in Japanese are written in kanji as (仁), which means benevolence; consideration; compassion; humanity; charity. Interestingly, Yuuji's name, (悠仁), also contain the very same Kanji with an addition of the kanji (悠), which means composed​, distant; boundless; endless; eternal​. ... Now, we know Sukuna Killed Jin in the womb, considering Jin's name, it's as if the moment Sukuna killed Jin, Sukuna also killed HIS Jin (仁), His HUMANITY... It's as if The HUMANITY (double meaning as Jin and the actual humanity) that Sukuna Killed and trumpled upon all these years are blessed with stronger representative to get revenge on Sukuna" (MasterNature9559)

"This would also explain the lastest chapter (265), why Sukuna doesn't feel a thing for the value of humanity that Yuuji explained, and why Itadori still pity Sukuna despite everything" (MasterNature9559)

I (and many others) did hypothesize that Yuuji was Sukuna's discarded humanity before the Jin twin reveal. I didn't predict Yuji being the son of reincarnated twin. In some ways since Sukuna ate Jin/humanity once it makes sense that only a remade stronger humanity in Yuuji that could take down Sukuna.

Sukuna wouldn't have gotten angry at the end if Sukuna was apathetic about this chapter. He participated this chapter, he got drawn into stupid crawfishing competitions and wanted to show off archery. 265 was Yuuji's attempt to show Sukuna humanity, the worth of a life by showing the little shattered memories he has of the town he grew up in. And Sukuna of course rejects this but something about Yuuji affected him.

Notably Yuuji's recognition in the meaning and worth of life is anti-Buddhist which would be consistent with the rest of the series where Buddhist symbolism is brought up and subverted repeatedly.

[popculturebuffet]

Don't worry. I actually do like adult animation and have interest in it. I mostly just held back on asking due to those shows not having as many unified studios or networks like Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Warner Bros, Disney, and The Hub/Discovery Family, I'm fine doing Adult Swim. Next up, favorite character from the mid-2000s Adult Swim shows: The Venture Bros, Stroker & Hoop, Perfect Hair Forever, Tom Goes to the Mayor, 12 oz. Mouse, Robot Chicken, Lucy the Daughter of the Devil, Minoriteam, and Moral Orel?

True but you can just do netwrok for some of those. Anyways... thank you. moving on to this one and including Aqua Teen since i somehow missed it last time.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Shake. It used to be carl but Dana Synder gives his best performance here and a lot of the series best lines are thanks to this asshole cup. The show itself is excellent. It skids a bit as it goes on but the first few seasons are just non stop joke factories and the dr weird segments are a treasured part of my teen years and even now still are fantastic. It's a great show with top notch voice acting, fun surreal stuff and lots of fantastic episode. There's even some great later ones like Bible Fruit and Totem Pole that live rent free in my head. The show kinda deserved to live it's horrifyingly long life and will no doubt return again. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Forever

The Venture Bros: Anyone who knows this blog or my history of crossover ships (I.e. maybe two people on the latter) willlikely be able to guess but

It's the boy. Hank is a consitently funny characte rfrom the start of the series but grows from a mild jock who sucks at being a jock and bullys his brother, to a loveable weirdo who has no idea how to interact with people, wants to be batman, and yet has a lot of confidence and a genuine heart you just can't help but love. I need to write this character one of these days in fanfic and i've been working on batshit insane ideas like him being a dtective duo with sasha from amphibia that I will probably go with. Hank is one of my faviorite fictional characters and I miss him dearly.

Venture Bros is a show i've covered and PLAN to get back to next year, fingers crossed, after covering another show that flows through my veins. For now i'll say Venture Bros is one of the best adult cartoons period. It started in a simlar place with a lot of dick jokes, some transphobia and way too much stuff that hasn't aged well to get into, but grew into a show with a deep world, a heart and a lot of neat points about toxic masculinity and over obessing on your passoins long before the latter two were wildely known issues. It loves nerd culture but also makes a spectacle of the kinds of people who take it too far, is clever and despite being written by the seat of creators and sole writers Jackson Publik and Doc Hammer, they still manage to make a coherent saga with tons of character growth, humor and Hank. It's one of my faviorite shows period and the best show Adult Swim has done, and it has some stiff compettition.

Stroker and Hoop: The car, because he was hilarous. This show was one I didn't like a lot as a teen and care even less about now. It's a pretty bleh run of the mill adult cartoon.

Perfect Hair Forever: Not sure. The show itself is solid, but didn't last long, is vaugely racist in places and hasn't aged all tha twell. It was fine, but not really a great adult animated cartoon or an anime parody. It feels like a guy who hasn't watched a ton of anime's impression of what anime is which is right in some places, like perverted old men or characters claimed ot be teens being used for fanservice, but otherwise it's just kinda.. there.

Tom Goes to the Mayor; JEFFERTON ALIVE! While I like Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job More, we'll get to that, this was a solid start. My faviorite is the wizzard whose theme is stuck in my head

The show itself is solid.. but is hampred by the formula. You can only watch Tom's life implode so many times before it becomes hard to watch. But i've come to appricate the weirder gags and less cruel moments. It's telling the best parts are the live action commericals that tim and eric would perfect with their next show.

12 Oz Mouse: great theme song, barely remember this show. Some think it's a masterpiece, I think.. ti exists. I like the shark? I don't have much here

Robot Chicken:

Protect the Environment or he'll fucking kill you! A show I haven't watched in seasons but have fond memories of the early days. Some sketches have aged like hot milk. Others aged so well I still quote them or will review pluto nash soley because of the pluto nash day sketch. A solid show with a lot of invetion.

Lucy Daughter of the Devil: One i'll have to give another look at.. and i'm shocked came BEFORE metalocalypse. The Devil probably. It's a show I do want to rewatch as it was not only Lauren Bouchard's last show befor ehis breakout with bobs burgers, but it's solid. Its' art style is hit and miss, but the concept, the anti christ dates Jesus whose an arrogant dj while the Devil tries to tempt him, is great stuff.

Minoriteam: This show sucks. I didn't like it as a teen and tween as an adult it comes off as horrible shock humor trying to be edgy but failing. There's a reason Adult Swim has mostly buried this thing. I don't think it should be.. but only so this failure can be stuided to avoid other racist shock stupidity.

Morel Orel: Hard to say these days as I haven't watched it in a while. But the show is excellent. I did'nt like it as a teen in seasons 1 and 2 but rewatching episodes when season 3 aired changed my perspective, and the show itself is awesome. In hindsight it's a great deconstruction of this sort of religious dogma, a problem the country still has. It also introduced me to the mountain goats, something that's paid off for years. I may not listen to every album but when one hits for me, it fucking hits. An excellent show that needs to be protected

[paluimbel]

One of the fun things about being a system is that sometimes you can get absolutely wild internal government structures that would in no way work in the outerworld.

Based on the geography of our headspace and the way we run things, I can only really describe our system's political structure as a communist city-state governed by an anarchical beurocracy.

The communist part is kinda obvious– none of us really own anything individually, either in-headspace or out of it. We've got a lot of control over headspace, so if someone wants something, they can manifest it themselves. Out of headspace, we've got a few sentimental items that sort of belong to specific headmates (me and Elsie's ring, for example), but there isn't any formal designation for who owns what most of the time.

As for the city state bit, our headspace is centered around a walled city, with various (scientifically impossible) biomes and smaller outposts in the surrounding areas. Technically the city only really has the population of like, a hamlet, but that's based on incomplete census records and doesn't really seem to impact the architectural style or density of the settlement.

As for the "anarchical beurocracy" part, basically that means we've sort of got a government, but everybody has equal power and as long as you can draft up a sufficiently formal sounding document you can do whatever the hell you want. For example, say two headmates want to get married. They wouldn't need an officiant, just basically write up a paper saying they were married, seal it (we use seals not signatures, mostly because we have the stuff for it and it feels more formal,) and there you go.

Needless to say, this gives rise to a wide variety of chaotic political/regulatory bodies, including:

The Encyclopædia Committee- Started out as a volunteer-run committee to make an encyclopædia of stuff in our system to help explain it to other people, ended up as a group of volunteer social workers. We conduct censuses, contact headmates who haven't been seen in a while, set up transport to places the rail line doesn’t have a station, sort out minor custody disputes, etc. Joe is technically the leader/founder, but he spends most of his time with the research division, so usually his second in command's in charge. It seems to be sort of connected to the University, mostly because Joe decided it should be.

The Archaeology Department- A couple of block men in an appartment with the words "Archaeology Dept." spray-painted on the door. Mostly dedicated to recording in-world culture, geography, and history.

Ghosthall- Fictive Commune! I live here. Basically infinite rooms, run by Ime, mostly because he got around to building it first, so now he's usually the one to add stuff. The name comes from slightly complicated in-world culture/language stuff.

The University- A bunch of people seem to sort of work here but honestly it's mostly a resource hub. Elias has an office and seems to have some sort of leadership role, but literally none of us know what he actually does, including him. Cleo is convinced he's secretly living in the walls.

The Train System- Run by literally ONE GUY living in the tunnels. Basically a fast travel system.

The Pantheon- Fictives of deities from our main worldbuilding/writing playground. Weaver mostly acts through passive influence on chosen "champions," while Cedar seems to have final say on who has custody of Adaline (youngest headmate), though they do take advice from the Encyclopædia Committee.

House Nusthèrrùn- Group of people who decided they're a family. Mostly notable because it serves as a way for a few more active headmates to advocate for the interests of a few less active headmates. There are a couple groups like this in-headspace, including Ghosthall, to an extent. We can't have everyone in front at once arguing for their own interests; there are more than 50 of us total and front capacity maxes out near 10; so grouping up makes it easier for a smaller group (usually consisting of whoever's available representing all the groups they're a part of) to make decisions.

House Odyssey- Similar to House Nusthèrrùn but also sort of acts as a secondary resource hub alongside the University.

All Faith's- Local church. Done in gothic cathedral style because it looks neat, but generally functions as a place for anyone to do any spiritual stuff they want to. Also serves as a meeting place (the basement has a fooseball table). Nobody really runs it, but a couple people do live there, so they'd probably get the most say if something happened. (By live there, I mean that Pip lives in the bell tower because she likes high places, Radcliff sleeps in a tent in the graveyard because he's friends with her, and a couple fictives who were undead in source have claimed graves and set up shop.)

Oceanic Domain- We have no clue what goes on there. No one but Lizzie's been there, and when the Encyclopædia Committee asked her about it she got a bit cagey. Because of headspace amnesia, even she doesn't remember what goes on there when she's fronting, so we are completely in the dark.

Camp- There's a summer camp just outside the city walls. Not sure how it's run, not sure who lives there. This is currently under investigation by the Encyclopædia Committee.

The Hospital- I run this one! Basically it's a big building where people can go if they're upset or overwhelmed and need some time to cool down. Despite the name, it's basically a big, dimly lit room with lots of pillows and blankets and plushies.

The City Guard- Consists of literally one guy. Mostly considers the system's physical safety his priority.

The Phoenix- Air pirates! Basically funtions sorta like Houses Odyssey and Nusthèrrùn but they see themselves more as a crew than a family unit.

PUDP- Same as above but union?

I'm pretty sure the people living in the Grayhill district have set up some sort of homeowner's association-type-thing but it's pretty informal and mostly functions as a social group/loose coalition, similar to the above two.

There are a couple other University Committees dedicated to group projects, such as the aforementioned worldbuilding and writing playground, fanfiction, etc.

[demonicdiligence]

@llixulia ask continued :

"Oh, yes, from different planets, just not in the hybrid area. They're usually at the docks, trading or selling. Most simply leave once they're done. Their loss I'd say."-she shrugged before smiling. "Welcome to Llixulia."-she offered her hand. "I'm Eive. Nice to meet you."

Aamon offered his hand in kinda - an odd, three clawed appendage which seemed more fit for rending flesh than shaking hands. Though he did it all the same.

"The name's Aamon! Parallel world cultural researcher and author!"

A lot to dump on someone at once, but he was nothing if not honest! His next questions comes quickly, ready and eager for knowledge.

"So, this area is more of a trading center than a cultural hub, then?"

[brandwhorestarscream]

How is half cryptid KO doing? And what do the Hive and Arie make of him since Cybermorphs and cryptidseekers live in the same world?

I... ok

I'm gonna be honest I hadn't even considered Knockout interacting with the cybermorphs. I was operating under the guise that cryptid seekers exist with the cybermorphs, but also exist in their own separate universe.

Don't get me wrong, I'm super down for it! But again......... timeline

Like. Knockout doesn't meet Starscream (or any seekers, really) until the war on Cybertron has progressed significantly. He's native to Velocitron, so it's possible there was maybe some decepticon or autobot occupation there, and that's how he wound up meeting them for the first time? Or maybe he had moved to Cybertron to pursue his career as a cosmetic surgeon after he got tired of racing because there was no more challenge (and he wanted to get Breakdown away from all the discrimination he faced back home).

Regardless, backing up, that's not the point. I'm rambling. ANYWAY! The aerie, provided they go with the story of Knockout being a kidnapped bitty, are aaall over him. They can't exactly reformat him right now, because with the war going on there's not materials to spare for what is technically considered a purely cosmetic surgery. So they do everything they can to support him, making him feel welcome and teaching him everything they can about seeker culture and life in Vos.

As for the Hive... hm. The majority of decepticons are probably cybermorphs, cuz they're borderline indestructible even by Cybertron's standards. Knockout's first interaction with any kind of morph, he's definitely very nervous. The only exposure to them he's had is propaganda and rumors in gossip columns, and they really are terrifying to behold. He's very tense, and tries to keep a respectable distance between them. Idk if he meets Starscream before or after being officially made a decepticon, but regardless. His first time in the Hive--which has kinda become the decepticons' main hub--is incredibly nerve wracking. There's hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of cybermorphs living in this single, massive Hive, which has become basically a giant underground city at this point. It has weapons' production, energon mines, giant nurseries, mess halls, comfy sleeping quarters, rec rooms, everything you can imagine. And it's constantly crawling with morphs; the tunnels/hallways have always got little squadrons scrambling through them, heading to their next task, steps all perfectly synchronized because they as a species move as one. He's fascinated by and terrified of them all at once

His first time being brought before the queen is horrible, if you ask him. Idk if cybermorph queens also have to have a giant ovipositor that makes them immobile (we can decide on that later. Maybe it's smthn that only happens later in life, when he's become big enough), but I can tell you rn that Megatron is in his throne room/egg chamber, surrounded by hundreds of unmatched eggs. It's a silent warning to any who approach: make one wrong move and you'll be an incubator for my children. Starscream is there beside him, as is Soundwave, and probably Orion too. Maybe Shockwave as well? They're all watching in silent vigil, though being toward over by the chosen praetorians, Megatron's personal guard.

Megatron is terrifying, put plainly. Xenomorph queens have the capability for limitless growth: that is, they grow with their hive. Megatron is well, well into adulthood at this stage, and his children are countless. The Hive is unfathomably large, so that of course means he is unfathomably large. He's the size of a shuttle, maybe even a combiner, sitting on a massive throne and staring down at Knockout and Breakdown like they're insignificant insecticon larva. The crest on his head is bigger than either of the newcomers, talons longer than their bodies and regarding them with an air of utter disregard

Knockout thinks it's a miracle they survive the first encounter. But the war is only getting worse and he doesn't want to be in the losing team; he definitely doesn't want to make an enemy of Lord Megatron 🤭 as scary as they are, the cybermorphs look like they'll be able to guarantee their safety, provided they're useful. Looks like Knockout's gonna have to study up on morph biology

[wirewitchviolet]

The Entire Plot of Final Fantasy 14 Bonus Part- Jobs, Deep Dungeons, and Adventuring Forays

Over the course of all these other posts, I've definitely covered the main plot of FF14 to date, and for good measure also talked about the tribe quests and raids which for the most part are technically optional. But there's a few scraps of story here and there I haven't gotten into, some of it good even, so today we're going to be talking about... well the stuff in the title of this post. Starting of course with all the job quests... and all the class quests. Which are technically sorta separate things, for reasons of weird legacy code.

For historical reasons I'll keep these pretty much in release order, and for the first few we'll mostly go city by city. First though, let's just get the non-combat classes out of the way. We've got the three gatherers (miner, herbalist, and fisher), and eight crafters (alchemist, armorer, blacksmith, carpener, culinarian, goldsmith, leatherworker, and weaver). Each one has its own little storyline, but for the most part they are all pretty rote. You meet someone who teaches you the ropes of your new little profession. They are extremely impressed by your rapid progress. By the end of ARR you're pretty much the best there is and spend Heavensward showing someone else the ropes, and then during Stormblood you wander off to one of the new hub cities to either help people rebuild Ala Mhigo, or have a bit of cultural exchange in Kugane. The only real notable exceptions are that the leatherworker leader is weirdly hard to please, the alchemist storyline actually develops into a weird murder investigation that evolves into a confrontation with someone messing with immortality treatments, and the Heavensward arc of the culinarian quests involves a cooking contest and at the end we go all Ratatouille with the judge.

One weird quirk with FF14 is that which of the three starting cities you spend the first few hours of the game in is determined by your starting class. It's where your class quests start, after all, and getting between the three is annoying at first, so there's just three versions of the intro, three kindly innkeepers to tutorialize you, and different Scions in each region to initially bump into. The other weird quirk is that because once upon a time the game had this weird system where you had to unlock the proper iconic Final Fantasy Jobs by leveling different combinations of more generic MMO style Classes. They dropped that, but you still go from a Class to a Job at level 30, so the base game ones all have two different names to keep track of, and you pick based on the vaguer one. Anyway we'll be starting off with the Gridanian set, because Gridania is nice and boring!

Up first, we have Archer, which eventually transitions into Bard. You start off basically joining the militia, doing some target practice, dealing with some bandits, and helping a catgirl peer deal with how her family of hunters kinda suck a lot. Then you meet an old retired guy who's into music and whistful memories, do some traveling around the world learning his backstory, and helping some loser friend of his self-actualize. The whole thing honestly left the least impression on me of the whole lot, but when you do officially switch over to bard, you not only get songs as a combat ability, there's this whole surprisingly elaborate music performance system that unlocks for roleplaying. People form bands and hold concerts in major cities pretty often. It's neat.

Then we have Lancer, which transitions to Dragoon. Up to level 30 it's the same basic deal as Archer, but after that you go meet Estinien to learn how to jump around a lot. From Heavensward on, Estinien is a major character/party member, which is a nice upgrade for him, and means that after a bit of friendly rivalry as he teaches you the ropes and challenges you to a duel, the rest of this questline is inherently tied to the ongoing events of Heavensward and a bit of epilogue to it. You sorta take on an apprentice who's pretty sure she's going to turn into a dragon because she was low dosed with blood as a child (this was a whole thing, go reread the Heavensward summary) and later have to deal with an unruly dragon who wandered off to the east. Not bad stuff overall.

Finally we have Conjurer, which transitions into White Mage, and hey, this one has cool lore attached! I just called Gridania "nice and boring" in reference to how it's kind of this sleepy peaceful little rustic village, but it has some of the juicier background lore, it just doesn't tend to come up outside of this quest line. See the big ancient forest it's smack in the middle of is the home of these ancient elementals which are all weird and mysterious and presumably make things nice if they're happy, and definitely make giant tree monsters try to kill everyone when they're upset. Every so often a human (hyuran if you insist on making me look up dumb official names) is born with a big ol' set of pointy horns, which marks them as a padjal, weirdos who don't age right and can cryptically communicate with the elementals. This gives them the two jobs of governing Gridania according to the whims of their weird primordial spirit religion, and teaching people how to magically summon wind/rocks/healing spells in exchange for them directly taking care of the elementals' problems. So early on you are training with/mentoring a girl who thought she was just gonna learn how to heal people and does not get that she's also signing up to deal with this Evil Dead stuff on behalf of the elementals, then you learn some more of the history to all that, deal with a weird cultist during Heavensward, and in Stormblood discover this younh padjal whose mother freaked out and took her off to live in the middle of nowhere because she didn't want her taken away and given over to this weird cult with all the other horny people. Understandable, but she ends up doing weird magic stuff when she's upset which isn't great and also attracts demons like catnip so you and that girl who finally embraced rock tossing need to go teach her the ropes and keep her from summoning demons and keep her sick mom from dying in a moldy cabin in a blighted forest. This one is actually pretty good.

For some direct contrast with that, swinging down to Ul'dah, let's start off with Thaumaturge, which transitions into Black Mage. We've got some spooky lalafel nerds with a big ol' library who are way into magic, and do a bit of dealing with demons when rifts to hell open up and let some out. Mostly though these guys suck beyond the recluse who's really running the show, and serving as part of this secret shadow council whose other members come from the various "beast" tribes who you probably won't pick up on as not all just being evil monsters if you pick the class up early on. Once you're hanging out with them, the whole deal is handling demons with dangerous magic that kinda draws on hell as a power source. Which seems a lot less edgy post-post-Endwalker, but they've got this nice "seem evil, actually super good" thing going. Moving forward into the expansions, there's a bit of a conflict there, where some white mage who grew up on too much propaganda from the big ol' three-way mage war responsible for one of the less talked about past apocalypses, and needs some firsthand lessons that no, they're standing around the hell portals all the time because they're closing them, not opening them. And then there's an odd arc where the original black mage, who may or may not be the one who's a major FF11 character ends up posessing your mentor to fix a problem/brag/lead into a sort of out of left field love story. Not bad, could be better.

Gladiator transitions to Paladin eventually, but for Stormblood the focus shifts back to the gladiators, which is marginally the better of the two, but these are rough. Gladiatorial combat is the big sporting event of Ul'dah, and you EVENTUALLY get to participate in a bit of it first hand in the 60-70 range, but the bulk of the gladiatorial story is that the head trainer of the guild has this will-they-or-won't-they thing going with the old star of the arena who kinda skipped out on her to wander the world and right wrongs a bit and... the thing with these two is that both of them could really do better and they really don't have any chemistry at all. The whole thing gets old fast, too. In the middle of all this though, you sort of accidentally half-join the paladins who are largely the royal guard of the city, getting jumped in by a big boisterous guy who's kind of on the outs with everyone, and once you patch that up he immediately fakes his own death to lead some new paladin recruit (and you, his babysitter) on a big wild goose chase with no real payoff. Everyone seems to hate this whole thing.

Pugilist transitions to Monk, and eventually ends up where you'd expect, but the path is a weird one. We've got the local fight club, nominally run by this old guy who's kinda lost his mojo. You train with him but it's really more about you waking up his old fighting spirit than you learning much, and you also rough up some local gangs so that's fun. Then on formally becoming a monk you... help a scientst travel around the world taking readings because he's pretty sure all that stuff about "ki" and "fighting spirit" and such is total BS and people are maybe just getting high off fumes or something. Basically he's wrong in the end, and you end up with a rival-turned friend, and an evil rival dojo, and there's this whole light fist/dark fist conflict where facing each other powers both up, where eventually you defeat the dark leader and talk his students into the totally sensible arrangement of practicing both together because it's just kinda win-win.

Moving on to Limsa Lominsa, we have the star of the show, Marauder, which transitions to Warrior. In intro movies and such, this is the default class of the protagonist. They don't call you the Monk of Light. It's also the class of your dorky evil twin eventually. It's also pretty simple. Go to pirate town, have someone hand you an axe, learn to hit things really hard with it. Early on that's largely rocks, and large rampaging animals, with the nerdy sister of the lead axe-swinger helping you out because the famous self-healing of the class isn't until later. Then you meet a guy named Furious Gorge. Which, yeah. Roegadyn names are either Welsh if they're blue-ish or terrible rock puns if they're red-ish. It's a thing. Anyway Furious Gorge teaches you how to unleash/tame your inner berserker beast mode, and then it turns out he's actually really terrible at managing that himself. So you spend some time trying to help him get a handle on it with his nerdy brother, and then come Stormblood you're all training this tiny litle au ra girl with clear romantic tensions all around. Eventually Furious Gorge gets the courage to go up to her and go "hey, I know you've secretly been into me, and it's mutual" at which point she basically responds "what the hell? You suck dude, I'm hot for the protagonist." Which, yeah, you get that a lot, really. So that's... funny, ish? Mainly the name Furious Gorge.

The final starting class, Arcanist, is a weird mutant that transitions into both Summoner and Scholar, which then end up sharing an experience level as a result. It also has a further identity crisis in that it USED to be a pet-focused class where you had minions to order around while you focused on other things, as of Endwalker it's just a caster. I mention this because the early Arcanist classes still really play up your role as a battlefield tactician, discussing with your mentor how to split up and deal with large numbers of enemies and come up with plans like disguising her as a hapless floozy to track kidnappers to their base, and it no longer really makes sense. After level 30 this is less of an issue though as things branch away. The summoner quests are all about learning how to bring forth smaller, more controllable versions of the gods who were relevant in ARR from the start (Ifrit, Titan, Garuda, Bahamut, Phoenix), and dealing with an evil summoner bringing them about in a less safe fashion. Scholar quests are a bit more interesting, as you replace your normal pets with a fairy and start learning about the third faction in that three way mage war, who were afflicted with a weird disease turning them into those good ol' knife-and-lantern spooky pals the tonberries. They're not actually murder monsters, just suffering from a horrible mutating skin condition. Whoops. This one too ends in a love story between a normal lalafel and a fishy hooded one.

In the post-ARR patch cycle (when the Doman refugees show up), we did get a third Limsa-based class, but they aren't available when first creating a new character. Rogue, which transitions to Ninja, has this whole secret society thing going, where you can start leveling it it as soon as you unlock multi-classing at level 10 or so, but you need to be tipped off about where they meet. You'd figure the secrecy is because they're a bunch of criminals, but the actual deal with the rogues is that they're basically Limsa Lominsa's secret police. They're still all about the backstabbing and hiding and getting a mug skill, and they're still a bunch of charming low-lives who speak thieves' cant, but the idea is that when you have a whole city-state of pirates you need to draw a hard line between jaunty adventurous crimes like plundering Imperial shipments, and hardcore crimes like kidnapping people to sell as sex slaves, or large-scale terrorism. Rogue quests are actually really fun and varied, sneaking around spying on people, identifying targets based on how they're dressed, running all over town hacking up terrorists and disarming bombs. Good good times.

At level 30 there's a real shift in things as you instead hang out with some ninja, looking for their sacred scrolls and dealing with their honestly pretty goofy rival, but there's still some variety getting someone drunk in a hot spring and spying on people from rooftops. And much like with Paladin, come Stormblood they realized which crew is more fun and you're suddenly back in it with the rogues. This is a genuine high point of the whole game that really stood out to me at the time, and like several others, oh, turns out that the woman who took over as head writer for Shadowbringers handled these.

Moving on to Heavensward, the impressive number of alternate meanings that title has includes the stuck-up blueblooded order of holy knights making up Ishgard's military. As they are just the worst, some nerds form the Machinist job and work on constructing guns and training the common people in how to use them. There's an active rivalry there, and the gun nerds are generally pretty likeable, so there's some nice investment. While not as bad off as Arcanist had it, there was a bit more tactical consideration when the quests were first written making things awkward, and after proving that guns are great, there's a bit with proving this one gun prodigy gal is better sticking with this than marrying some noble or whatever. I feel like I'm forgetting a whole arc here too.

We also have a girl with real cool looks coming down from Sharlayan (AKA Nerd Town) to teach these primitive screwheads how to be Astrologians. It's like a white mage, but with more tarot and constellations. Very scientific. Everyone in Ishgard freaking sucks so they all think it's witchcraft until you use it to personally save their lives, and the whole field trip turns out to be unsanctioned, with the lead trainer's father sending hit squads after her. Eventually she gets a haircut and switches to manlier clothes to avoid him. This may be a low-key early transition thing. Oh and then we combine this with similar far eastern traditions.

Then there's Dark Knight, the job with hands down the best writing in the game. You meet someone named Fray in cool all-concealing armor, crumpled in a back alley in the slums, with a stupidly big sword they aren't in any condition to use, so they offer to teach you to be a Big Sword Edgelord too. There's a lot of cryptic talk about tapping into your inner darkness and hearing some powerful voice, and also just a lot of hanging out with your cool new friend who hates the religious classist scumbags running Ishgard as much as I do, so you end up killing a lot of them to defend the common people as Fray becomes more and more depressed, and more inclined to kinda half-break the fourth wall, asking if you're getting as burnt out as they are over how many boring pointless quests you keep having to do for every NPC who apparently can't even bring a bag of groceries home from the store without needing you to come along and help. And yeah, we are still in the portion of things where the filler quests are unforgivably common instead of just way too common. Then somewhere in the middle of dealing with other people's problems, one of your respectable Ishgardian friends comes up to talk to you about how apparently you're being accused of heresy because aside from killing the local jerk knights a lot, someone says they've been seeing you having one-sided conversations with a corpse in an alley lately.

Neither Fray nor you particularly take the revelation that uh... Fray was absolutely a random corpse in an alley when you first met, and you just kinda lifted a cool sword and a job crystal out of their cold dead hands, and have kinda just been psychically projecting your own depression and irritation with boring filler quests into an imaginary friend, so after killing a bunch of these jerks trying to arrest you, the two of you have a bit of a fight, Fray's mask comes off, you get a cool glowing eyed wraith sort of look before we go proper evil twin mode.

Then while you're sitting there dealing with the fact that you kinda hallucinated your best friend in the world here, some au ra guy named Sidurgu walks up and just kinda goes "hey! Someone told me you knew my friend Fray?" So... yeah? You start hanging out with him, sharing stories about a probably more alive Fray and learning about how he has this whole thing going where he rescued this little girl from her horrible religious zealot mother and he's her big defender now. They have a weird relationship where she correctly calls him out as not really having her best interests in mind and just being caught up in playing the role of hero. You wander around with them, do some soul searching, and eventually confront her mother, fight her, and try to patch things up. She continues to unrepentantly shout about her daughter being a horrible demon who needs to be killed, kid basically says "well if you like your god so much, I guess you can go join her," and Sid, finally getting over himself enough and really learning to help her with what she really needs, cuts this horrible woman's head off, and you all go out for drinks. It's a great moment.

Then for the Stormblood quests (and yes I am giving the Dark Knight plot three or four times the space as the rest of these, it deserves it) some weird androgynous kid walks up (looking kinda like the halfway point between your two NPC pals who die at the end of Heavensward funnily enough), asks if they can borrow your job crystal as a battery for their cool ability to manifest people's dead loved ones and give them closure, and breaks it. So you have to follow them around while they do all the closure stuff on their agenda before fixing it for you, and consistently, turns out coming face to face with weird simulacra of their dead loved ones mostly just really distresses people and they aren't into it. Eventually when it starts to sink in that this kid is just you psychically manifesting your own hangups again, Fray just suddenly shows up, says some cool pal stuff, apologizes for the whole bit before with going full embodiment of your darker nature and trying to kill/replace you, and teams up to trash this little punk, after which you can summon them in combat, so that's cool. Again, hands down best writing in the whole game, and again, this is the writer who took over as lead for Shadowbringers, where things generally get more enjoyable.

But yeah, there's other expansions' jobs to cover too. These have less to them though, since Stormblood's don't start at a low enough level to squeeze in three arcs of story and just give you the one, and past that they basically phased out job quests in favor of role quests, so the classes from those also just get a quick intro really. In other words, lightning round!

The Red Mage quests are about helping some cool cat help a girl with amnesia realize her past doesn't really matter and she should try being a red mage too. Blue Mage is a mutant job you learn from a conman with a heart of gold, suckering people into signing up as blue mages and faking magic shows/duels to raise money to send to his lizard pals in fantasy America. Samurai's quests are your standard cool old guy with a sword has big regrets, trains you hoping you'll kill him to atone for stuff he's ashamed of. Gunbreaker is kind of also that but with a lot of wandering mercenary stuff first, and the amazing revelation that in this setting guns are called guns because the concept of bullets is derived from the magic cartridges used to give extra oompf to the swings of gunblades, and gunblades get their name from being the blades of Queen Gunnhildr. We'll circle back to her. Dancer like Rogue is a job where cool charismatic people have a secret mission, in this case killing these weird horrible emotion-based monsters after luring them out with sexy dance performances. It's kind of a preview of Endwalker's whole deal. Sage is about being a science nerd who heals people even when they suck. Reaper is about joining a found family of mostly Garlean ex-pats who make soul contracts with demons to get cool edgelord powers to fight demons, and keeping scythe-mom from going all self-sacrifice. Seems like a terrible idea when you can just kill them normally, but then post-Endwalker we learn most demons are actually pretty chill nerds who just want out of hell, so it's cool.

I think I already covered the role quests elsewhere, but real quick: In Shadowbringers, we help a set of mercenaries deal with the monster-angel forms of Ardbert's old crew while learning along the way how most of them were originally pretty cool people, and help some crafty types with humanitarian work and also with finding where invisible dinosaurs hang out. Then in Stormblood, we revisit every major city to help their leaders get fleshed out and deal with the one person each had suicidal enough to turn into a big monster, and then go help a bunch of college nerds awkwardly date each other and work out the secret of healthy bread that doesn't taste disgusting.

Next on the agenda- Deep Dungeons! At some point in the process of wedging extra stuff into this game, someone realized that tacking one of them randomly generated 100 floor dungeons where you can only use what you get inside is a welcome addition to basically anything, and FF14 has three of them. The Palace of the Dead is a horrible hole in the ground tied in with some of the spookier quests in Gridania where you finally confront a nasty ghost girl you had unresolved business with and some stuffy old necromancer. Heaven-on-High is a mysterious Jenga tower off the coast of Doma which turns out is actually a high tech training ground built forever ago. Eureka Orthos is a sub-basement under the crystal tower with conceptual ties to Eureka, which we're getting to, because... somehow the writers still had more to say about ancient Allagan superweapons, somehow. You know there's a bunch of apocalypses in this timeline you never really dug into right? It doesn't all have to be this ONE ancient evil empire. Anyway these are actually all pretty story light, I'm just covering my bases.

Finally, let's talk a bit about relics. Every post-whatever patch cycle has some set of weapons that have this whole multi-stage evolution to them whose acquisition is this WHOLE THING. ARR's just involve entirely too many sort of tedious steps replaying the whole game up to that point multiple times over with a vague reference to creating the weapons of the Zodiac Braves, you know from FFT. Heavensward has some weird nerd all about bringing into being this weird fairy-like new form of life by letting it hang out in your sword/stick/gloves/whathaveyou while you absorb elemental essence for a good long while, and has an unrelated side project where crafters can raid sky islands for supplies and help rebuild the lower levels of Ishgard as kind of a theme park. After that though, they made these pretty beefy chunks of game.

The Forbidden Land of Eureka is... that island Krile and her grandfather were hanging out on before it was suddenly wiped off the map while on the phone with Minfilia near the end of ARR. It just somehow... passed through the center of the earth and popped out by Kugane. It's kind of a wreck and is particularly all elementally imbalanced and supercharged, and it is basically a whole second MMO with older sensibilities stashed away inside the one you were already playing, as you explore a bunch of really well-rendered biomes, grind tons of monsters which had a surprising number of new art assets, actually deal with elemental paper-rock scissors mechanics, and get a bit of a retelling of FF5's backstory with Galuf's weird old friends as flashbacks between fixing up teleporter networks and dealing with Krile's evil little smug nerd rival... who ultimately turns out to have just been fake evil. The whole thing caps off with this homage to FF11's most infamously nasty content with a high stakes dungeon that gates some progress behind people out in the overworld killing bosses in sync with those inside. Very grindy but I actually like the vibe a lot.

Then post-Shadowbringers when we're re-building the hype of the Imperial threat and getting into how its various holdings are rebelling, we have the Bozjan Southern Front, where a bunch of Big Women and Cat Men are fighting the empire in full force with honestly a bit of a World War I vibe to it with the trenches and big tanks and such. There's some pretty cool grand assaults on major fortresses, and a bit of backstabbing intrigue with a spy who eventually uses the local resource of crystalized traumatic memories to brainwash a recreated-from-the-past version of the country's old leader Queen Gunhildr and then kinda merge with her in this like-summoning-Shiva-but-technically-this-isn't-a-god-it's-its-own-thing-but-yeah-people-still-get-tempered deal. This one is written by the same guy as Final Fantasy Tactics who wanted to have a much more involved storyline with way more NPCs but this got truncated down to fun facts on collectable trading cards, essentially. Still pretty neat and show-y though.

And... is that it? Am I done? I think I already covered the variant dungeons and made at least passing mention of the private island farming thing (which, I confess, I have not looked at... but I'm told Sadu and her girlfriend the other au ra leader swing by on a date at some point). I might quietly add that in later, but otherwise, that's really it. That is all the plot of FF14 as of this time of writing. There is nothing else left for me to summarize... until Dawntrail comes out like... this Wednesday, time of writing.

As usual, here's my patreon. Here's my Amazon wishlist full of other games I could be playing instead of talking about this one. I am in bad financial shape and these articles are a lot of work, so, maybe help me out?

[benjimarii]

If you're up for sharing more Wild West AU content I am absolutely here for it.

I'd love to share! It might be a bit lengthy, though.

For now, here's kinda what I imagine some of the aliens to look like, with thematic names as well. Instead of XLR8 he's Roadrunner, Wildvine is Tumblevine etc. Sorry bout the quality of the photo 😅

As for the world, it's almost post-apocalyptic! The entirety of the earth is in a drought, with the ocean level getting lower each year! Earth has also been an open system planet for a long time at that point as well, making it the black market hub of the milky way, which means a lot of criminal activity is afoot. Most of it is smuggling alien tech or goods that vary in legality.

A lot of earth culture got stuck in the American 1860's, but there's been a lot of modern progressive changes. Basically the wild west culture without the gross stuff, since I want this to be a more light hearted, adventure based au. While it does explore toucher subjects a tad, it's never the main focus and is subtle.

There's also modern tech, making it a wild west sci-fi kinda deal, which is a lot of fun to play with!

As for characters, Ben has been the Omnitrix wielder since he was ten, as usual, and he's training to be the greatest hero in the galaxy. He has his trusty Vulpinancer partner, Rover, by his side, who let's him ride her to get around faster while he's in his human form.

Rook is a sheriff (this aus version of the plumbers) in training. He's very new to earth and it's culture, and is tryin to adapt to the fast paced action that always seems to follow Ben around. He does make his own tech, and tends to keep up the spirit of the west when doing so.

Kevin works on locomotives, which are very high tech in this au. He makes sure things run smoothly when going to and from the big cities of the world, and often takes Ben along with him! He's always up to date on the crime ring, but he's not a snitch, and is usually hesitant to tell Rook about what's going on. He also met Gwen on one of the train rides to Tennyson's ranch.

Gwen is a city girl through and through, but ever since she started to hang around her grandpa's ranch with her reckless cousin, she's been learning a lot of new things about herself. She practices magic, although some of it might be a little darker than we see in the show. Gwen's very book smart, but she doesn't know much about the countryside. That doesn't mean she's not a great fighter, though! She fell for Kevin, but it did take a bit of convincing before she decided to date him.

If you'd like to hear more, I'd love to draw some scenarios and explain more if you have questions!

[nellynee]

Trollstopia Blindblogging: episode 7b: Buckin’ Branch

Really can’t help themselves can they? The dressing is nice, but it’s still a “Branch can’t catch a damn break” episode. perfectly enjoyable across the board, from humor to song to lesson. Just... perfectly fine. Competent. Branch and Country centric for those who care. 3.5 out of 5 take it or leave it. 

(Well shoot, Tumblr crashed on me before I could save a draft at about the 5 minute mark of the episode, so it’s gonna be a little trimmed down but we’ll try again shall we?)

if that title isn’t a minced oath I don’t know what is

Thank you, James Cordon, for that lovely, ear piercing note. I legit had to turn down the volume it was actually painful

Noted, we’ve seen this valley before. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a regular hub of budding commerce, or if it’s just that they can’t think of a good place for pop village scenes other than “A valley” but it is noted.  seeing some hand crafted looking pottery... some clothing...a Funk Troll peddling pies.... that Creek lookalike in the bg....

Cocoa to go go

I mean I heard it before they even said it but they still said it

Branch going all Indiana Jones is so flipping cute. Just imagining sad little Baby grey Branch using it as one of his few forms of play alone... in the woods. OW

Biggie you have an extender arm for hair.... Biggie

fucking look Branch did it Biggie 

Ok Trolls you win my new Starbucks order is “Cocoa to go go”

Do I think “Cutie Patootie” is Holly Darlin common vernacular? Yes. Do I think Holly genuinely would be down to clown if Branch showed even a smidge of reciprocation? Also yes.

For real though ever since Satin and Chenille got hot under the collar over a wet and shirtless Branch in TBGO I’ve hard headcanoned that Branch has the Troll equivalent of very fine bone structure. He’s got a lot of room to clean up, but is also kind of just objectively attractive as a baseline. 

Oh he’s weak to being called special I’ma cry!

“Does that answer your question?” “uuuuuuuh?” that kinda confused shrug on Branch was really well animated. Like there’s a whole ass rotation in that

Branch’s outfit is so stupid cute I love it! He has no shoooooes!

Poppy looks like she’s about to bust a nut trying not to laugh

That’s so mean Poppy he’s just looking for the validation and sense of community he lacks in Pop village! 

For real though I think Branch would find something in Country that he wouldn’t find anywhere else. Not the connection to “sad music” ala the movie. Or at least not necessarily. Really I believe that all the tribes, specifically all but the “traumatized in such a way that they’ve created a culture of faux and aggressive happiness to combat it” Pop Trolls have multifacets to their music that could speak to others including Branch’s complexity. Country was abrasive and sorta violent and a little vitriolic when we saw them in the movie. I like to imagine that among all that aggressive southern style comfort and hospitality is a lot of passive aggressiveness. And from that comes a more friendly sort of ribbing and sarcasm and jabs as inside jokes. It’s using antagonism as inclusiveness. I think he’d find real connections there, and an ability to explore a side of himself that’s shut down very quickly in Pop village

I swear to god if Gust or Holly call someone or thing else special and break Branch’s heart I’m gonna break them over my knee

A very good point for the young'uns. Just because Poppy has called Branch special before doesn't mean it’s got the same meaning to him. Context matters

Her look of horror when she almost calls that troll special is hilarious

“There’s no way he’s using that lingo right....” “Nope”. That’s a big part of the humor of this show. Most shows would write his vernacular off as “lol southern sayings are so long and complicated you can’t even parse them isn’t that funny?” But this show looks suspension of disbelief right in the eyes at this really obvious not jokes and goes “That was weird? Wasn’t that weird?” And yes it was. Even if you don’t laugh, you will get a sense of... comradery from this show? It’s a big point of why it’s been so enjoyable

Pinata lassoing, greased balloon pig catching, adora-bull hugging (aka bull riding). These are all super cute and creative. I especially love the greased pig balloons

Branch at fluffy: awwwwwwww. me at Branch: awwwwwww

It’s Ok Branch. It happens to a lot of guys. Just a little performance pressure is all.

Oh noooooo pooor baby nooooo why were there three of them?

Branch’s musses up hair is a look and I’m here for it

That's a much milder panicked note James Cordon thank you

oh no.....

Gust.... real quick I need you to come meet someone.... real quick don’t worry this is only gonna hurt a lot for a very long time

Ok that is cute tho Biggie’s little hat and his little excited attitude it’s not his fault

That was legit a really good action scene! Branch backing out when it got to much instead of doubling down and causing more trouble, Fluffy’s design, the lack of physical comedy, Fluffy’s little smile at that smooch. 

“I know, I’m just as shocked as you are.” Pffffft ok yeah that got me

Me: furiously scribbling Country notes into my “Biggie is a lullaby Troll headcanons”

James Cordon you are hereby revoked of your cowboy accent privileges

Not what I was expecting for a lesson. Most usually settle for “Yeah I’m not good at this thing I was passionate about and other people are and that’s ok” But shifting over to “Just because it takes you more work than other’s to get the same results doesn’t mean it’s not worth while” is a refreshing take. I do think that a tiny bit of rework, just a few new lines or some shuffling (Gust or Holly mentioning trying again next year, how they’re sorry he didn’t have a lot of time to train, mentioning Biggie’s experience with animals...) could have made it very solid and cohesive, but it does actually work unlike some lessons

[octahedral-chaos]

Hello everyone!

I’m OCTAfan, or simply Octa. You can also call me Aven, Electra, Sprite, Elve or Lorelei if you'll like. I use they/it/he/she pronouns, but also uses quite a lot of neopronouns!

Also may or may not be the only peep from Trinidad and Tobago in the Worldless fandom (AKA I am from a literal dot on the world map. Do not laugh at this-). Oh and I'm desi, so if I mention anything about Diwali or other Indian stuff, please keep that in mind-

I should mention that I am also an alterhuman, specifically thunder manifestation kin, Jersey Devil kin, thylacine hearted and several other hearttypes! I am still trying to figure myself out, thought.

I'm also an Aven (Worldless) fictionkin! So if I do ramble about that, it'll be tagged as #Avenposting, while my main (Non-fictionkin) alterhuman tag is #OCTAloch.

Recently, I realised that I'm a host of a system, and we collectively call ourselves Paraluxx Nebula. However, I front the most often, but here's a list of some of the other alters here.

You’ll mainly see art, memes, cool animals and other random stuff here. I hope you enjoy your stay in my little corner of the internet ;-)

More info and DNI under the cut:

ABOUT ME

I am in a lot of fandoms, including but not limited to: OCTAHEDRON, Worldless, HoB (Runic Games), Wobbledogs, Wings of Fire, Genshin Impact (kinda) and Project arrhythmia! I also like drawing, speculative evolution, weird animals, obscure weather stuff and other cool stuff.

This is my main blog, and I have several sideblogs, many of which are fandom related! I run @octafans-rp-hub if you're interested in roleplay, @octastims for stimboards and other related stuff, @spritebloom and @solarclock-lepigriffs for the spes-evo and worldbuilding peeps and @empyrean-demise for alterhuman stuff! I also run @incorrect-worldless-quotes, if you're into funny fandom stuff.

I have a YT channel!

I post memes and drawings, as well as some other stuff. Also reblogs a lot of stuff.

DNI

Terfs, transphobes, etc

Lgbtphobes, racists, exclusionists, etc

Ableists

Pro-shipper or anti-anti

MAPS, anyone who is attracted to minors (leave me alone!)

NSFW/18+ only blogs

Participate in cringe culture (Cringe culture is dead!)

Discourse (don't want to get into drama)

Is generally a bad person