#but it's still fun to speculate

[centaurianthropology]

New CR Theory Time!

So, this has little basis in fact, and is almost all pretty reach-y extrapolations of what we know already, but I really like the theory, so I’m going to lay it all out for you:

Ashton is Ludinus Da’Leth’s grandson

Hear me out.  Here’s what we know for certain:

·         Ludinus spent a while in Issylra before coming to Molaysmyr

·         He arrived at Molaysmyr as a ‘young man’ (though if he was already deep into magical works, he might have been able to extend his life significantly, which has to be true if he really did survive the Calamity)

·         The Hishari village was located in Issylra (I think?  I can’t actually find the source for this one, but it’s been thrown around a lot, so I’m going with it)

·         It would make sense that Ludinus, still enraged that the mortals so devastatingly lost their war with the gods, would be seeking out other pre-Calamity peoples to work with.  We know the Ashari are an offshoot of a former druidic people, the Drashari.  It seems likely, given the similar etymology, that the Hishari were another offshoot

o   It would also just be a very Taliesin thing to do to make the evil mirror image version of one of the most idyllically good civilizations in Exandria

·         The Ashari would be unlikely to want to start shit with the gods again, but the Hishari might have been more open to it.  While the Ashari seem to be all about balance and living within nature, it seems like the Hishari wanted to control it and gain power from it.  That might have appealed to a young Ludinus.

·         Ashton’s mother was described as ‘saintly’ (and given comments in a 4SD episode, was almost certainly Aasimar) and his father was specifically described as elven. Those were literally the only attributes Matt saw fit to describe in Ashton’s flashback, so it’s very possible that those attributes are important beyond making Ashton originally half-elven with a dash of divinity.

So let’s get into the theory.  Ludinus seems too old to have been Ashton’s father, and was well out of Issylra by the time Ashton was born, unless there was some sort of time fuckery with the Hishari destruction as well as spatial fuckery.  But given the forces they were messing with, it seems less likely that time was also wacky.

So my guess is that Ludinus spent some time with the Hishari before coming to Molaysmyr.  He met another elf there, possibly a druid, and they ended up hooking up.  She got pregnant, and Ludinus likely left her and the baby.  Why?  Because he’s an asshole.

His son was then raised in the Hishari village as one of them, but also inherited his father’s drive for power and control, so he became the spearhead for developing a ritual that would give them incredible control and power over the elements (or maybe just the element of Earth?  Unclear.). He hooked up with an Aasimar woman, possibly arranged specifically for the ritual, and had a child designed from the ground up as the centerpiece of that ritual: a child with divinity in their blood, of pre-Calamity elven stock, and likely with a few attributes no one knows about yet.  They set the ritual into motion, and something went wrong.  Instead of achieving whatever power or control they were aiming for, they created a massive disruption in space and elemental forces, blowing the entire area to kingdom come and dumping one of the few, if only, survivors, said child, through a portal a continent away.  Whatever his old name was got lost, and the child eventually became Ashton Greymoore, punk orphan in Bassuras.  

The timing and the motivations seem to work.  Matt seems to really enjoy tying Taliesin’s backstory into his campaign-spanning narrative, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Taliesin gave him elven father, and Matt tied him back to Ludinus.  

And all of this means that Ashton, gutterpunk, is actually Taliesin’s second noble-in-hiding character. It would make his mocking of Dorian a bit poignant, and make their struggle against Ludinus a bit more personal (Ashton does love hitting parents, and I imagine grandparents work too).  It would also mean that Ludinus has yet to get a really good look at his grandson.  After all, Ashton has been busy both times Ludinus has directly interacted with the party, and he still doesn’t know that his grandson has somehow gotten dosed with the Cerberus Assembly’s own dunamis cocktail directly into his brain, creating a brand new branch of the magic that Ludinus has clearly played with already.  How fascinated would he be to find out about his last living relative, and how much more dangerous would that make him to the party?

Anyway, like I said, all of this is based on speculation, stringing together the very thin facts as I see them, and a lot of wishful thinking.  I think it would be cool, I think that after Caduceus really took a back seat plot-wise last campaign it would be fun to see Taliesin get his turn to be at the nexus of fate, and I would love to see some of the interactions, both interparty and with Ludinus, that would come about because of it.

[fatass-adams-fatass-son]

Also me and @dreamerlucifer decided that Abel and Peter are a shit talking power couple and Emily ships it

[dofnup]

Hey y'all I took Missy to the vet yesterday (link to watch her screaming), and the vet said she thought "dilute calico crossed with marl" (or marled? I dunno). So there you go, a new, completely different challenger enters the chat!

This is Missy, she's a diva who thinks she's a human ... a human who dislikes cats! 🤷🏻‍♀️ Anyway it was love at first sight for my husband who says she's the most unique cat he's ever seen. I think she's a brindled tortie, but only @whatcoloristhatcat knows for sure 😉

[galacticsabc]

Pokemon gijinkas but make it dnd.

[egophiliac]

the lovers, reversed

(aka I'm still freaking out about Jou)

[aeriona]

fibsh…. in three dimensions....

based off yesterday's artwork

[unikhroma]

hi i slept through the utdr newsletter drop but i'm awake now and i looked at the video and tobert has now driven me nmore insane

"IF YOU SEE THIS TAXT THENS SOMETHING BROKEN WHERE IS THE PROMISE OF PERFECTION?"

"WHEN AN ERROR IS DETECTED I SEE THE INTENSITY OF MY FEARS SURGING THROUGH ME LIKE SUSPICIOUS WAVES"

my interpretation of this is that

1) he was promised perfection and definitely didn't get it, look at how glitchy he is now not to mention the whole puppet thing

2) i guess seeing errors/glitches makes him think of things that he's afraid of. wonder what those are

though "suspicious waves" is very, well, suspicious. is it the way that the fountain flows in waves? weird telephone signals? weird television signals? it's hard to determine

(i feel like showing spamton's regular sprite at the end was there to imply that this message has to do with him for real instead of the spamton value network spamtons)

also tried to determine the very last line on this warning message but i couldn't decipher it. here are some screenshots if you want to chew on it yourself. the sentence structures seem to be "_____ ____ __ ____!!! ___ ______ __!!!"

[beatcroc]

i keep seeing this tweet and it keeps making me think of them... 🤝my man

not to do them any disservice, they are like genuine actual legitimate friends who respect eachother beyond just their mutual of disdain for eggman. but surely they must joke about it..... we didn't really get to see much of them being realbuds at the end of scrapnik but i want to believe they are So homies now

[starwarsanthropology]

Canon genders the clones, both individually and collectively, pretty aggressively. They're men, brothers, boys, sirs. Omega is notable for being the "female" clone, to the point where she's not recognized as a clone in a meaningful way.

But the clones grew up without gendered social groups! Despite how clones are gendered by external factors, gender is functionally a nonentity in their lives until they meet civilians, and civilians do a load of other weird shit anyway.

So why do they still use gendered language?

My argument is that feminine language isn't used as a gendered form of address, but as a form of address that reflects a specific kind of power dynamic and relationship between parties.

Given the structure of the clone army, the only people a vast majority of young clones interact with who could insist on being called ma'am are exclusively kaminoans.

The kaminoans view clones not as autonomous subjects, but as property. They have and expect complete control over their lives and actions. Incidentally, the female kaminoans we see (such as Nala Se) tend to demonstrate an even more proprietary perspectives on the clones.

You can question a sir, like your superiors or trainers, at your discretion, but you can't question a ma'am. A sir is someone who has power over you, but is somewhat responsible for you. The have personal accountability to you in some way. Sirs are responsible for men under them. A ma'am is someone whose power over you is absolute, an authority without accountability, who is not beholden to you but that you must obey. You are tool or a number to a ma'am.

And when you bring clones out into the wider galaxy, I'm not sure anyone would figure it out that quickly.

Say you're a new jedi general. You meet your men, and they address you as "ma'am". Maybe you correct and move on, figuring that they've grown up surrounded by thousands of identical men and aren't great at guessing genders based on social and appearance cues. Scuttlebutt has your forms of address spread through the men by the end of the day, and you don't think about it again.

The clones, on the other hand, take this correction as he/him jedi stating that they want to work with them and suppourt them despite having so much power over them, which fits with both what they know of the jedi and, most often, their leadership style.

She/her jedi (see Shaak Ti especially!), clones maybe treat a little more as absolute authorities. This gendered divide in behavior gets met with, "hm, maybe they're just not used to women." For many jedi, they eventually switch to calling them sir as well, especially as they build rapport.

For Shaak Ti specifically, she is an absolute authority as the representative of the Jedi on Kamino, not just as a figurehead but as a decision maker and educator. Even as the clones grow to trust and love her, she's a relatively distant and all-powered figure. She has near total authority over them, and clones might ask for help or suppourt, but there's no social obligation for those requests to be met, she's just kind. It's compassion, not duty.

Senators, there's a good mix of different factors that make it confusing. "Senator" is always an acceptable form of address if you're not sure how'd they react, even if they should be ma'ams by default, but they're either trying to build rapport for some reason or genuinely want to work with you when they say to call them sir, regardless of the actual power dynamic at play. The she/her senators that respect the clones are in the same boat as Shaak Ti: Padme Amidala may care about clone rights, but I am still just one of hundreds to her and she has no personal accountability to me. Her position is such that she should not and cannot owe me anything. Same with Riyo Chuchi, Mon Mothma, etc. etc.

And a civilian that insists on being called ma'am or sir is going to be an asshole either way, and they technically have power over clones without personal accountability or responsibility for them. It works.

Finally, Palpatine.

He's a slimy rat fuck who pretends to be affable and kind, so of course he's going to laugh and say, "Oh, no, call me Sir!" when you call him ma'am. He is not personally accountable to you, and he does not care about you, but it helps his image and it helps him manipulate people to pretend, so of course he's making you use sir to build false intimacy despite the fact that he's the ma'am of ma'ams, both in power gaps and lack of accountability for his treatment of clones.

So having clones using sir vs ma'am not as a reflection of gender but as a reflection of power? Yeah, I think it works.

[butterflysonnets]

can’t wait until mike and will say “i’m in love with you” to each other and kiss on the mouth in st5 and then i get to watch a youtube video made by a straight person called “stranger things season 5 ending EXPLAINED” that basically says will and mike’s relationship is ✨ up to interpretation ✨

[orcelito]

showing off the commission i got from @ruporas for my fic, In the Next Life!

i'm still so incredibly excited about this. it's been some months since the story event that caused these scars, but i wanted SO BADLY to be able to see what they'd actually Look like... & Here They Are.

ruporas rendered the scars So Well, i just cant stop Looking at them... there's a Fresh & a Healed version, which ruporas was kind enough to give me without additional charge (Thank U Again😭😭) so i get to see what it looks like at different stages.

Lichtenberg Figures. in terms of actual scarring, lightning strikes that people survive don't tend to leave permanent scars, but the lichtenberg figures that they (usually temporarily) leave behind are just So Cool... Now, what happens when you get someone who can survive an amount of electricity/lightning that would be Frankly Lethal to any normal human person?

This :]

[nefertiti-fooling-fellow]

What if Aziraphale knew what kind of effect it would have when he offered to restore Crowley to full angelic status. What if Crowley walking away was what he wanted? What he needed to keep him safe? Aziraphale just never expected the kiss.

What if “Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death,” wasn’t just the name of a coffee shop, but also a threat? What if all of the lies we saw him told (Job’s children…The Miracle…), the performances we saw him put on (The Jane Austen ball…the Magician act) was all a lead up to his biggest lie yet? “You’re demons, you’re evil.”

What if that was what Aziraphale thought he needed to do to keep Crowley from putting himself in danger to “rescue” him one last time?

What if Aziraphale didn’t want to reform Heaven so much as he wanted to rip it up by the roots and tear it apart, so it can never hurt Crowley again?

What if he knew.

[thisshitisridiculous]

why did i just realize both times they never made it to the movie

first date they leave the restaurant to head to the movies but tommy gets an uber just for himself instead

last date they meet at buck's to head to the movies but tommy breaks up with buck instead

there is no story, there is no romcom tropes, there is no happy ending, they never even made it to the movie

[pinkeoni]

ppl know that other characters can be at this church, and byler can still happening, right? like this one scene doesn't have to go exactly the way you think it will and it won't effect the overall outcome of their relationship

[cult-of-the-eye]

I think the fact that we don't know how closely linked tmagp and tma are adds to the suspense cause on one hand all we know is tma right? So we're gonna guess what's gonna happen based on what happened in tma. But at the same time, they said you don't have to listen to tma to get tmagp so there's gonna be a degree of separation, which means we can't rely on old tropes and knowledge, so we're left with Bad Things Will Happen but we don't know When or to Who

[egophiliac]

Have you heard of the "Crowley is Malleus' dad" theory going around? Where Prince Levan (or whatever his name is) didn't actually die and just went out to get some milk and is now known as Dire Crowley, the silly man? The implications of that theory is absolutely hilarious when you think about it

hold on, we can figure this out, we just need LISTS

PROS THAT CROWLEY IS SECRETLY REVAAN/LEVAN/LAVERNE/WHATEVER:

unspecified fae of some kind, with similar coloring to Mal

the animal masks are apparently a Briar Valley thing

has some kind of big blackmailable secret that was alluded to in episode 4, and then as far as I know never brought up again

(unless this was just Azul bullshitting, which is extremely possible)

based on Diablo, which...maybe means something?

has canonically worn Dad Shorts

CONS:

(gestures to Crowley's entire personality)

NO LISTEN Revaan was the guy they sent off on diplomatic missions and to take care of delicate political situations, and...look, I love this dweeb, but would you trust Crowley to be in charge of negotiating your war treaties

despite my brain insisting on reading his name as "Raven", Revaan's title does imply that he was also a dragon (or super into longan berries, I'm not ruling that out)

currently unclear why Lilia "my closest friend Revaan...he is no longer with us...I used to make fun of him for being kind of a priss about eating jerky..." Vanrouge has somehow not noticed or said anything

Malleus' Aloof Anime ~Aristocrat~ vibe had to come from somewhere, and by all accounts it was NOT his mom's side of the family

???:

turns into a bird in the opening, I don't know if that means anything but it's kinda cool, I guess

all that aside, if Malleus and Yuu are any indication, then the Draconias have...questionable taste in their social choices. so anything is possible!