#don't think there's a lot of casters in here

[nekovale]

So, I don't know how many Bsd fans are also Fate/Stay Night fans...... BUT I AM and this is the only reason this exists Fate is one of my favorite series and I was listening to the Fate/Zero ost one day because it's one of my fav ost ever... and I started thinking about a possible crossover and it kinda snowballed from there lol Explanations and ramblings under the cut!

For who doesn't know what Fate/Stay Night is about: the gist of it is there's a recurring event where seven mages (masters) summon seven heroic spirits (servants) who fight between each other to win the Holy Grail. Basic things to know are: servants are divided in classes and each has a Noble Phantasm, aka a servant's ultimate weapon/ability; each master has three command spells which compel the servant to obey to three absolute orders; servants need mana to keep existing. said mana is usually provided by the master, but can also be transferred with bodily fluids (that includes sex) The pairs I had thought of for this au are: - berserker!Chuuya + Dazai (in this case the berserker's typical madness happens only with Corruption, which is Chuuya's Noble Phantasm and can be stopped only using a command spell) - saber!Akutagawa + Atsushi - caster!Nikolai + Fyodor - lancer!Bram + Aya - assassin!Nathaniel + Margareth - archer!Mark Twain + Lucy I have absolutely NO idea who to cast as rider lol Kunikida is the Church's overseer though (an impartial judge for the Holy War) I've thought about these combinations for fun since I don't have an overarching plot or anything, just some little disconnected scenes, but I liked the possible interactions with these pairs. I wanted to have characters from the main factions in the series (so like, the Port Mafia, the Agency, the Guild...) but since servants are heroic spirits of the past (and in this au they're not their irl literary counterparts, but characters on their own. Chuuya's real identity would be Arahabaki, etc) I wanted to pick characters who also could have a particular design while fitting the role........... I wanted to put Lovecraft in there too but he's definitely a berserker and I'm not giving up Chuuya for it lol This wip has been eating my brain for literal months, so here it is!! It got me back into doodling just for fun so it was a good time. I actually have more sketches but I feel like these are already a lot lol...... so I'll post those at a later time (also because I'm rewatching ubw now so I might end up doing more....)

[shanastoryteller]

Happy Fall Season 🍁🍂🌻 !!! I’d love to see your take on a Merlin role reversal! 🥰

Hunith had never wanted to be queen, but once she gave birth to Balinor's son, there wasn't much choice in it.

Balinor sits as king, the lord of the dragon lords, and Merlin will one day inherit his title. She was just a village girl and the dirty traveling soldier had a nice smile and kind eyes so she'd lain with him.

If she'd known that he was king, she would not have presumed.

~

Merlin is strolling down the street, arguing with Will, when he trips over his own feet, knocks into a fruit stands, sends all the apples sprawling across the ground, and takes another step directly onto one of those apples only to end face first into a stone wall. "Ow."

The stone wall moves, which isn't unheard of in their kingdom, but then it talks, which is new. "Oh the Goddess above."

Hands settle on his shoulders, pushing him back and he looks up dazed to see that the stone wall is actually a blonde man with the brightest blue eyes he's ever seen. He's got broad shoulders and a chest firm enough that Merlin thinks his nose might be broke and Goddess above is right.

He's looking over Merlin's shoulder. "Are you going to clean this up?"

He turns, seeing the irate stall owner and the apples that are fucking everywhere as well as Will laughing his ass off and being no help whatsoever. "Oh, no! I'm sorry, let me just-"

Merlin holds out his hands, trying to remember the correct education, but the stall owner goes pale and starts waving his hands. "No, no, it's okay, please don't-"

The man smacks his hand down and grabs the back of his neck, giving him a rough shake as if he were a misbehaving kitten. "You a precision caster? Otherwise, knock it off. You're more likely to explode them then gather them that way."

He's sort of the exact opposite of a precision caster. He lets the spell go and sees the way the stall owner sighs in relief. "Oh. Right."

~

The man's name is Arthur, he's one of the peasants that have been recruited into being a solider in the war against Camelot, and he's here at the palace to receive the standard training along with the rest of the would be soldiers.

His father won't let him on the battlefield, even though that's where his magic is best, and he can't help but feel vaguely guilty that Arthur's been pulled from his family to fight in a war that Merlin thinks would end a hell of a lot faster if his father wasn't so protective.

It's that guilt that has Merlin forgoing his place at the high table with his mother to wander down to the lower tables at dinner that night to try and thank Arthur for helping him clean up all the apples, something he hadn't been able to do before Will was dragging him away.

He's not expecting it when one of the soldiers leaps to their feet and pulls out a dagger on him, one that has to be cursed against enchantments because none of the spells to pull it form his hands that several people at the high table cast do any good at all.

Merlin's just feeling the bite of it into his throat, frantically trying to think of a spell to get him out of this, when a carving knife goes whizzing past his face and embeds itself into his assailant's skull.

Merlin jumps away, shaking, to see Arthur standing there and cool and unbothered, hand outstretched as if he's about to cast a spell. But he's not, it's like that because he'd grabbed the knife from the venison on the table and killed that man before he could kill Merlin.

"You just make friends wherever you go, don't you?" Arthur asks.

Then everyone's moving forward, pulling him away, and Arthur along with him. His expression turns murderous, like he's wishing he had another knife as he's manhandled across the room.

His mother pat his face and clucks at his neck and then thanks Arthur for saving her son.

Arthur had bowed at Hunith but then frozen. He's looking at Merlin with dismay, which isn't exactly new for him but he's not sure why he's getting that look from Arthur now of all times. "You're Prince Merlin? You?"

"Uh," he says, then shrugs helplessly. "Yes?"

He really doesn't think Arthur's opinion of him is improved when Hunith assigns him to be Merlin's personal servant. It should be a reprieve, getting to work in the palace rather than the battlefield, but the tight look on Arthur's face doesn't ease.

[zarisdonut]

Okay so update on my reading journey, I finished The Way of Kings!!!!

Here are my final thoughts, v summed up cause there's a lot of info to process but these are the main ones:

The way the whole book Dalinar's like 'omg i cant imagine living without my shardblade id be so miserable :((((' but then he trades it to get Sadeas' bridgemen???? Cause life is priceless but so is his blade so by trading 1 priceless blade for a bunch of priceless lives, he got a bargain???? Literally made me tear up.

I love how honorable Dalinar and Kaladin are. they truly feel like two sides of the same coin (idk if i used that expression right). They love their men, would do anything for them, and idk. They are such good leaders like I love them. I cant wait to see them work together in the future books. I hope i get some kind of father/son type of relationship. Im so excited to find out!!!

Also like, its v funny to me how Kaladin's only 19-20. Like, wdym ur getting bossed around by a fucking kid, grow tf up????

Now, Adolin? He got a special place in my heart. Mid 20s and totally acts his age. Sure he is hot-headed, and a bit pushy, but he's so competent and caring and he acknowledges his mistakes???? Idk, he felt so real to me. Big fan of him btw.

Elhokhar i hope u know ur a fucking bitch.

Sadeas and Dalinar's relationship... Lemme just say that I love some old man toxic yaoi. Like, wdym ur ex best friend/(lowkey) rival now turned ally has betrayed you but still, when ur abt to die fighting the big boy parshendi shardbearer, a situation he put you in btw, u still think that the man coming to save you is still Sadeas???? I know what you are, Dalinar Kholin, and what you are is a fucking simp.

That said, Dalinar and Navani are so fucking cute, actually. Barely shows up in this book but i can already tell Navani's a bad bitch and you know what? That's exactly what Dalinar deserves.

I cant wait for Dalinar and Jasnah's family reunion like yay ur lit my fav duo and you haven't even shared a physical space in this book.

Shallan crushing on Jasnah cause of course she is, fork found in kitchen. Still, i appreciated it :)

And Jasnah's whole thing with the faux soul caster???? Oh, I can already tell she's going to be one powerful mf in future books. I can't wait.

Also Shallan and Jasnah teamup???? i love my little hero/sidekick dynamic

Going back to Kaladin, bridge four is my fucking family if anything happens to them I'm cancelling my subscription to life like idgaf. Teft and Rock my best bros please don't die

And Kaladin being able to inhale stormlight???? iktr my powerful king!!!!

Also Hoid??? Being Wit????? Hello???? Gagged. Love that he came, insulted some people, confused Kaladin and me, and left. My king, actually

Aside from all of that, I found this book so good but also quite frustrating cause I want to know things but wdym that after reading a 1000 pages, I'm still confused???? Maybe even more confused than I was before starting it???? But what rlly shocks me is the fact that Im not mad abt this at all. I just read the longest introduction to a fictional world of my entire life and I'm sitting here, fucking amazed that I get to experience this story. Crazy. But do you know who's crazier? Fucking Brandon Sanderson for coming up with this entire world, making it work and making it so alluring, that you cannot put the book down. Like, that's father.

And this is it for now, I'll keep updating and doing silly lil posts bc I found that writing all my thoughts helps me understand and process all the information better so there's that :))))))

[funpoire]

Yuu after a overblot

note: mention of scars, blood and broken bones. headcanon maybe occ. If you want more post like that you can send request.

To me, book 6 and Rollo overblot were very violent overblot (the other too but for my yuu sake it will be these two). The thing is that every time there is an overblot it seems no one is hurt (let’s close our eyes to Lilia's situation). There is so much potential to make some angst or hurt/comfort and make your character get hurt. I know Yuu can’t be very useful during the fight. They don’t have magic but could still find a way to be useful. Also in book 6, it’s pretty hard not to get involved in the battle.

I think for Book 6:

When Yuu come back they look like they came back from hell. Messy hair, bag under eyes, hurt, puffy eyes because they cried a lot or maybe got hit, maybe both.

Let Yuu have a break. Can’t feel any of there muscles especially legs after they had to run and walk for a day straight.

Will get a scar because of grim attack.

Will probably spend a few days in the infirmary and or in a isolated room in Pomefiore.

Have bruises everywhere. With the amount of attack it’s hard to not get involved but also because the styx solider wasn’t very gentle when they attacked.

If Yuu was hurt to the point they had to go to the hospital I like to think Idia would pay for it because of guilt.

Eat like there is no tomorrow. I think it has been said but the food in Styx wasn’t a 5-star meal and after all the emotion Yuu was hungry.

Even if Yuu is not from Pomefiore doesn't mean they can eat anything. Get ready for a full mean made for Yuu to heal faster. Full of protein and veggies.

Free food for Yuu. All the snacks they want will be delivered. Just don't let Vil know.

After this there is no way Yuu is not been seen as on of the coolest guy of the school. What do you mean you had no magic and you survive styx and overblot ghost ?

To get better Yuu gets a t-shirt saying “I survived Styx (and 6 overblot)” Everyone finds it funny except Idia.

If Yuu get hurt to the point to get a caster everyone will doodle or write on it. Word of encouragement and thanking.

Princess is treated by Adeuce after going back home. They tough Yuu was gone or worse and when they came back they were looking like a zombie.

Yeah, Ace is not letting this slide. Yuu get ready for Ace being a total ass because he was super worried.

Ace and Deuce don't want to let Yuu go. If Deuce will said it's because he is worried and only want their good. Ace will deny about being worried and talk about how he don't want Yuu to cause more trouble.

In a way, Adeuceyuu gets closer to this experience. All of them being worried and yuu getting hurt make them more true to their feeling.

Could also make them hurry to confess if you want. At the same time, I also think this is not the best moment to confess. But it's a good moment to realize your feelings. If you get what I mean.

For my Yuu he tried to get grim who was falling and hurt his should by falling down. shoulder dislocation or something like that. Maybe less painful but still something that hurt.

A very traumatic moment in your life mean a new look. For my Yuu he end up by shaving his hair. Yes, the buzz cut got him.

Finish by getting traumatized by the event.

I think for Rollo overblot :

Rollo overblot is him on fire. What could make more sense is to get burn scars. Not too bad but enough to keep a mark.

The type of fight where Rollo trying to protect the magicless finish by hurting them.

I forgot the event i be honest so maybe it was in the event in the first place but Yuu got trapped in the other side of the school. Rollo wanted to only hurt the mage and since Yuu is a magicless he decided to put them in some room. He is like “Yeah don’t worry we need to fix something on your costume stay here for a moment”. Then lock the door.

See to get out of this situation only two scenarios: 1) jump out of the window (hope it’s not a very tall jump) and 2) break the door.

Yulanda could have tried to fight it, trying to get Rollo back to his normal self and end up getting hurt, hard.

Yulanda would choose the first option. She doesn’t think rationally under pressure. Also, she would sound cooler if she said she got out by the window than by the door.

She will be finished by being slightly burned and with probably a broken bone but she rings the bell so that’s fine for her. She finishes in the infirmary with pride.

see also :

yuusei - yulanda - more overblot talk

I think I reach every twst topics in 2 weeks and already feel like my blog has grown. I still struggle to reach 10 notes in an hour but it takes time you know. This post is also rambling, not my fav but I need to get this out of my head.

[lilithofpenandbook]

A ramble about Patronuses and does and stags

Something about Lily and Severus and James and Harry is that they all have the same Patronus. But it's Lily and Severus who match, and Harry and James who match.

Harry idolised his father specifically, felt more of a connection to him, so his being a stag reflects that. Snape loved Lily, so of course his is a doe. That part is simple.

It's Lily and James that interests me. Doe and Stag. At first you'd just go "oh, they match, the patronuses are just gendered to match them". But then look at Severus. His is also a doe. Of course, it's to match Lily.

But here's the problem: Severus is a man. If he matches like James does, then it should be a stag. But it's not, it's a doe. Exactly like Lily's.

It's a bit strange, really. Especially when this is I believe the only known case of gendered patronuses. When Tonks's changed, it was just a wolf. Not a male, nor female. And okay, perhaps it's because there are less obvious gendered differences in wolves, but there's another thing.

Stags and does don't represent the same thing.

The doe is a symbol of beauty, grace, nurturing, and care. The stag symbolises protection and strength (incidentally, it is surprising James is a stag and not a buck, which symbolises more recklessness and energy). So while they are compatible, they are not the same. And as Patronuses tend to have an affinity with their caster, someone having a doe or a stag would be reflection of them, not their gender. Someone kind and nurturing would have the doe, someone bold and protective would have the stag. (This of course is excluding Patronuses that have been influenced by other people, like Tonks' wolf because of Remus. Then again the wolf does fit her too, in my opinion).

Another point for this is Severus Snape. Severus, who is severe, harsh, bitter. Who also has a doe Patronus. Of course, this is because he loves Lily. But that's the thing- it wasn't a stag, it was a doe. For me, that proves that Patronuses do not reflect the caster's gender (unless of course we want to make an argument for Severus being a more feminine character, which is also very plausible due to a lot of symbols of feminity connected to him, but I'm not going down that rabbit hole here). So Severus matches because he loves Lily. And it's a doe, not a stag, because does and stags are not considered the same.

But then where does that leave James? Her husband? Well, there are at least two possibilities in my opinion.

Firstly is that their patronuses actually don't reflect their love. They only "match" because they're from the same species. To me, it seems to be more of a happy coincidence, rather like how Harry first thought his Patronus was a horse and Ginny's is a horse, or maybe it's the qualities that the patronuses represent that led James and Lily to be compatible. Personally I think (and this is completely headcanon) that maybe the patronuses are what led them to connect, considering their patronuses go well together it would have started some conversation. And I don't think it's a guaranteed possibility that Patronuses change based on being in love, it just sometimes happens (I could be wrong). Also, there's the fact that James' Animagus form was also a stag, and again I may be wrong but I believe Patronuses and Animagus forms do match. So his at least is guaranteed to not be that way because of lily, but because of his Animagus form. As for Lily, there are other animals that would reflect what does do, however it wasn't her who was in love, it was James who wanted her, so I feel like it's even less likely for her Patronus to be the one that changed for James. So I geniunely believe their patronuses matching was a coincidence.

The other possibility is that James doesn't love Lily the way Severus does. James went after Lily even though she turned him down so many times, he didn't leave her alone. Severus on the other hand did, when she said she was done. And yes, I've heard the "oh if he loved her so much he should have left his group for her" argument. Did James leave the Marauders? Did he stop bullying people for her? No, and no. In fact, he went behind her back and still bullied people. James had this more selfish love for her in a way (I'm not saying that he didn't love her, just that he was more selfish). Severus was more selfless in a way. He couldn't leave his group (can you imagine what they would do to him if he betrayed them?), and he didn't pretend he did or bother her after that. He put himself in incredible danger to ask Dumbledore to protect her, and agreed to do anything, when he didn't need to (what was Dumbledore gonna do, NOT protect the potters?), and in the end, Severus's love was more self-sacrificing than James, and I think that's why his Patronus is the exact same as Lily's while James is almost but not quite. Severus didn't have that selfishness James did, nor did he have that layer of deceit in their relationship like Lily and James did.

But what if the stag and doe really do match? If the two are considered the same, even with their different connotations, then that still leaves the question of why Severus doesn't have a stag. If all of the above is wrong, then why does Severus have a doe? Well, I do have a theory on that too- Severus's Patronus is a doe because he's the one who aligns with a doe. Which is interesting, considering he's so bitter and angry, but I do think that the doe also symbolises him, or what he could have been. A lot of Severus is focused on the past, on Lily, and probably on what could have been if he hadn't said that one word, if he had done this one thing differently, if this was different, if that was, and so on. The doe, with its gentle, nurturing connotations, may be also a symbol for how he could have been a gentle, kind person if he hadn't been so shaped and scarred by the world, if he had been the person Lily wanted him to be, if he had been like Lily. There's also the phrase "a deer caught in headlights" and how deer are known to be timid and easily spooked- perhaps he's, deep inside, just a mess of nerves. So perhaps Severus could have matched Lily with a stag like James did, but it just wasn't his nature, so it was a doe.

Anyway those are my very messy thoughts. Maybe I'm right, maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's a combination of all these or maybe none. I really do think the doe isn't just a reflection of Lily but of Severus too, that he's compatible enough with a doe so his Patronus was able to become a doe too despite having the demeanour of a depressed, moody raven than a doe.

also for all we know Severus may have always been a doe and it's lily's who matched him and then James matched her but that's entirely just a theory but also low-key funny if James's entire thing of being a stag is because of lily who's a doe because of Severus so James is a stag because of Severus and I don't think he'd like that lmao-

[raisengen]

A few thoughts on Stronghold Protocol:

1. I do think this has some potential to be a permanent game mode, though probably on the minor end of things like SSS. The RNG is largely well-placed, and SSS-style seasons with specific enemies and maps to match could work well.

2. Loaning you out operators for free is an interesting approach for a gacha game, but it does mean the devs have a lot more control over what the "intended" experience is. You don't have to guess what works as a good comp, or worry that you've missed out some counterplay option.

2.1. It's also a nice place to let operators you don't usually use shine. I don't have any levelled chain casters, but Astesia is really proving herself in this mode.

3. I appreciate some of the silly combos they have going on, like the +ASPD keyring combined with flashbangs on someone like Meteor.

4. Handing you a choice of high-value team comp item in the early rounds is an interesting way to give the player something to build towards. (Though, I feel like the faction-based ones are maybe too restricted for what they give compared to the class-based ones.)

5. Hi Raidian

Now, for the complaints:

6. The Portable Explosives enemy buff seems mean-spirited. Either have a mode that forgives a couple of leaks, or don't; having it forgive sometimes makes it all the more annoying when it decides not to.

6.1. They should also clear up how dropping to zero shields but not losing lives still means you're going to deal no damage to the enemy HP, making it a de facto round loss. It's counterintuitive when Integrated Strategies considers losing shields but not lives to be a "perfect" clear.

6.2. Losing a round in general feels overly harsh, since it gives more time for the enemy to snowball and guarantees you'll face harder foes than before. Sometimes it feels like the correct response to a loss is to restart the run. Just having the enemy difficulty not increase after a lost run would be enough, IMO.

Compare how losing lives in Integrated Strategies often gives you some penalties, but still gives you the battle rewards, and progresses you past the problem node and towards the end of the run. Imagine if it added an extra boss fight to the end instead.

7. The reduced funds on hard mode slow things down in an unfun way. You buy one laneholder on round 1, play a round, upgrade on round 2, play a round... maybe you're actually starting to play by round 3?

8. ...and then round 3 rolls out a stat-boosted Yeti Icecleaver that takes no damage from your two operators. Yes, you've all heard about the stat inflation by now.

9. Beyond simple stat bloat, there's a weird imbalance between the different enemies you can face: some melee comps are napworthy, even on hard mode, but candle knight wannabes can nuke you with little counterplay, and Icefield Militants will ruin your entire life forever always.

9.1. I feel like that can generalise to "some enemies aren't appropriate for this game mode". Some enemies ask for active counterplay, like well-timed stuns or fast-redeploy bait that you just can't pull off reliably in this mode.

10. Likewise, some of the maps seem simply that much harder to navigate. Particularly the active originium maps; it feels like the enemy comps were often designed with splitting them up in mind, so forcing them through the same chokepoint often goes nasty.

11. Using FRDs in this game mode feels weird. The skill activates on deployment, and they only redeploy if they die, so... you have to try to get them killed? But then they can't do that much if they get killed too quickly. I'd say you just aren't meant to use them, but Misery is here as a gamemode-exclusive, so...?

[doberbutts]

(Some other guy entirely here) I do think there's not much of a reason to be so against the terms tma/tme though, and I don't really understand why some people are? Like, in the same way we want a word to describe our experiences so do transfems, and while I do believe that all trans people are affected by transphobia and misogyny, it's obviously also true that we're affected by it differently depending on how we present, cause otherwise we'd all be satisfied with just the term transphobia (not saying anything new here so far)

So, since it just so happened that the term transmisogyny was coined to mean specifically the oppression transfems face (regardless of what anyone might feel on the matter, that is what it means in practice), what's really so wrong with having terminology to specify whether you're affected by it or not in online discussions of specifically transmisogyny? I'd think that would be relevant enough information, and you're not obligated to share it unless you want to.

I think what's really bothering a lot of people is that these terms exist for half of our community but there's no acceptable equivalent for the other half, and there's constant backlash against attempts to fill that void in the language. But that's not the fault of anyone who advocates for the use of tme/tma, or rather, they are separate issues that I don't believe should be conflated even if the proponents of tme/tma are the same people who are against specific terms for transmasc oppression.

When we do this, from the pov of trans women we are the ones rejecting their terminology and trying to silence them when they talk about their discrimination, and since we know exactly how that feels, I think we as a community should take a step back on the matter and just let it be.

Just because we feel dismissed when it comes to a similar matter doesn't mean we should dismiss in turn.

Not that anyone needs my permission or anything for this but:

I don't really have any problem with the words transmisogyny or trans-misogyny, as I think they are valuable labels to discuss a specific intersection of transphobia and misogyny.

I am not sure I necessarily have a problem with the terms TMA or TME themselves, outside of that I think it is not possible to be exempt from oppression because it will apply to you even if the label itself is wrong. This is also how hate crime and discrimination law works in this country- it is both your label and what the offender thinks of you, not just one or the other.

In other words, the guy who screamed at me about how I'm a Mexican is incorrect because I'm not Mexican, but it is still considered to be discrimination against Mexicans because it was his hatred of Mexicans that fueled the attack. It doesn't mean that actual Mexicans aren't the actual targets or this, but it does mean that it's not possible for me to be exempt from anti-Mexican sentiment. It doesn't mean that hatred of Mexicans doesn't exist, it does mean that if I want to stop getting screamed at for saying non-English words while visibly brown (I said pate, which is FRENCH and not Spanish, in reference to a can of dog food he was buying), then I need to ally myself with Mexicans and see what I can do to help decrease this hatred of Mexicans within my country.

What I do have a problem with is how these words are used and applied.

Caster Semenya is a "TME" intersex woman who was caught by transmisogynist Olympic rulings intended to hurt trans women, and to this day is still not recognized as a woman. How is this exempt from transmisogyny? She is literally being affected by transmisogyny- and interphobia, and misogynoir, and lesbophobia. And there are more examples than that, but this will already be a long enough post.

Moreover, I'm finding a lot of hypocrisy in the theory itself, labeling certain instances of oppression as things only TMA people experience and then refusing to listen when TME people say that they experience it too. I don't really care what or how people talk about their own experiences, but I do think it's a little ridiculous to be told that someone else who is not me can tell me what I experience better than I can. And then refuse to listen when I say that I have felt the hurts they're saying don't apply to me.

If TMA/TME had stayed within the limits you've set, being about descriptors of your own personal experience rather than trying to apply theory to entire demographics in a way that very little other theorycrafting does, I wouldn't have cared. Unfortunately that's not how it's being used and I don't like that.

[hohsalle]

i forgot to post my other fanservant designs here. um. i'm not incredibly satisfied with the actual art on these but this is more concept than art so it's fine

design notes below

avenger (amakusa shirou tokisada)

"he already has an avenger alt" that's okay. he can have two avenger alts

he looks closer to the way he did during the 3rd hgw because he didn't incarnate like apoc amakusa

much design inspo from onryo (vengeful ghost) art and noh and kabuki (which feature onryo heavily)

his base white layer is a funerary garment. it's crossed the wrong way because i really wanted to lean into the onryo aspect. he cannot move past his death hence his class

i put another layer under that because he looked naked. it's indigo because in kabuki theatre ghosts usually have heavy indigo makeup, so i wanted it in the color scheme

the haori was because he still looked too bare i'm sorry for always designing 2973926285 layers

however i decided later that it looks too Winter Hanten because i suck at drawing kimono fabric so i made this alt where he's not wearing the haori:

the red knots, obi cord, and over the shoulder cloth are insp by noh theatre. specifically they're common elements in samurai costumes

shoulder cloth is degraded from the usual resplendent fabric used in theatre costumes—first of all i wanted to evoke the fires in shimabara, and second also wanted to give the impression of a funeral shroud

the red around the pupils is also noh; masks might use a convention like this to indicate that someone is not human or has a grudge that they want to avenge

i wanted to play around with the idea of giving him phantom arms because in fate lore his arms were cut off before he was made to watch his comrades being executed but i couldn't draw it well enough. possibly another ascension...

caster (amakuni yasutsuna)

i thought it would be really funny to make a fanservant of amakuni, the first japanese swordsmith, who is not a saber, and who spends all his waking moments correcting people who think he's a saber

i heavily referenced muramasa's color scheme for this, although amakuni is not a shirouface. it's just that he's the only other swordsmith in fgo lol i wanted to have some parallels between them

the bandages: i don't know why i can't stop making design decisions based on involvement with fire. but as a smith i wanted him to have a Physical Sign that he interacts with flames and metals a lot

the scars on his face are also burns

the swords behind him are the body of the kogarasumaru, the sword he forged according to legend—this is not factually true, BUT because of how servants work, he has access to this sword because people think that he forged it

the vented shoulder on the right side of his gi is not authentically correct... it's there because i wanted to sort of evoke the heian-era kariginu style and also cus i figure it gets stuffy in there

he has tengu sandals on because the kogarasumaru (lit. "little crow") is so heavily associated with birds

his eyes are red to indicate divinity, as according to some versions of the legend he attained immortality due to the amount of blood shed with his swords

the cord on his hakama is how we wear the cords of our swords in my school of iaido. this is also not technically something that would have been authentic to amakuni's time, since he would have worn a sword in the tachi style, but since he is sort of the forefather of all swordsmithing in japan, i wanted to represent the more recent eras as well

[dark-lord-of-awesomeness]

*gets out clipboard* okay so the runes in PS I assume work like single word sigils correct? (A lot of sigils are phrases like the one burned into Stan’s back!) Symbols that stand for more complex ideas. IRL sigils can be made many ways, when you decide what runes look like for the fic do you follow your intuition for what shape you feel fits best? Do you draw inspiration from Norse runes or Ogham? Also! When Stan’s spells get more complicated is he still going to use circles like wizards? Or will his runs combining look more like putting the runes together (like mashing them into one symbol)? A lot of the circle with symbols around it magic falls into ceremonial magic which makes sense give the structure wizards have that you laid out.

So when Stan’s spells get more complicated is the way that he combines runes going to be completely different from the circle? (If this is a spoiler you don’t have to answer)

Correct, they tend to encompass the entirety of whatever they represent. So the wind rune manages everything that you can think of that has to do with air/wind, such as breezes, tornados, smells, and even sounds. There are runes that only stand for one specific thing, such as only meaning breeze, but those are mostly used by other casters that need to convey what they want through sentences and don't use their imagination like how a sorcerer would.

I have a mental idea of what ever rune looks like, some inspired by actual runes (such as the growth one looking similar to the norse rune algiz) others are purely vibe based, such as break and wind being a broken mountain and an angular swirl. I only have a handful figured out right now, which are the ones Stan's going to be learning in the next few chapters.

Stan's spells aren't going to get any more complex then they already are here. A sorcerer's advantage is that they can pour their own personal magic reserve into whatever they cast and are only limited by their imagination for how they use their runes, but the disadvantage is they can't string them together. Stan can pack a punch, but loses the versatility that a wizard or witch might have. He can 'upgrade' his runes into a higher tier, such as going from 'wind' to 'move' or 'water' to 'liquid' that will let him do more, but he can't combine them. All his spells are limited into what he can imagine them doing and how well they fit the rune itself. So he could use the 'break' rune to cut a rock in half, but he couldn't use it to make a statue unless he imagined that being the 'broken' form of a rock, if that makes sense. It can't be used for creating things (but there is a creation rune, and the look incredibly similar).

Stan wouldnt use a circle really, as it kind of defeats the purpose of being a sorcerer (since he can already convey his meaning through feelings to what he want magic to do) and involves a lot more rune knowledge then he would know instinctively. Its formal vs informal, in that he's in a chill loose relationship with magic, and using circles is the formal stiff way to talk to it. The only reason he'd use one is if Ford drew it out first and he was being used as a power source, which would be witchcraft and not wizardry.

The way Stan gets more powerful here is by learning more and more runes. The more he knows, the more he can do, vs Ford learning all the runes from books and stringing them into sentences, learning more complex sentence structure to get more complex spells.

[intrepid-fictioneer-7]

Recent chapters of the underrated Fate spinoff Fate/type Redline got me in my feelings so I had to talk about it at lengths, even moreso now that it hasn't updated in months (the mangaka, Ryouji Hirano, has health problems I believe). Spoilers obviously.

Now, when I call type Redline, "underrated", it's more of a subjective than objective assessment. Despite being a manga and thus far more accessible than the untranslated visual novels or light novel series of TYPE-MOON, I see it discussed fairly rarely. At the very least, as far as I know, there hasn't been much big posts analyzing it, so I believe this should be one of the first.

Just don't expect something really deep, these are mostly my musing, rambling observations.

In fact, for a long time, I didn't really have a well-articulated thought about Redline's themes. The contrast of a Holy Grail War taking place in the middle of a world war simply had me chalk it up to the tried and true "war is hell" and not think any deeper (which was a bit intellectually lazy of me). And there is certainly that, but it's a bit more elaborate than that, or else I wouldn't find Redline as interesting. And it all reached a thematic "climax" of sorts in the recent chapter as of the time of writingé

In reality, the story signaled its central theme from the very start, I just wasn't paying attention. One of the first chapters ends with this page:

At first, I thought this was just about Nobunaga. But it turns out this specific page and its text will become the precursor of how the manga is going to present Servants, and how this presentation fits into its larger representation of what war is.

Something you hear somewhat frequently when people mention Redline is "it made Servants scary again". It is only half true, Servants have usually only been "scary" in specific circumstances (Bluebeard in FZ, True Assassin in FSN, and Jackie in Apo come to mind). What they actually mean is that Redline shows Servants as above human again, and it does so by showing them brutally go through lots and lots of human bodies, when Fate is usually about Servants fighting each other. You see Servants vs. humans sometimes, but it's usually 1v1 deals. The only notable exception I can think of is Clan Calatin against Alcides in strange Fake.

There is also Apocrypha, but they are up against armies of homunculi, golems, and animated skeletons, so the dynamic is a bit different than with modern armies. It does however say this.

Indeed, Lancer of Red could burn to ash and crush the stakes with his flames and divine spear. But the Red camp's odds of successfully opposing the Black camp's overwhelming amount of material resources were fifty-fifty. Fighting a force of twenty thousand was beyond the capacities of even a mighty Heroic Spirit. Even then, there would have been no problems if they were alive, but right now they were Servants. The more they consumed prana in great quantities, the closer they approached death. (Apocrypha volume 2 ch.2)

Which is interesting in light of Redline's story, but I digress.

But here, in Redline, because it's during the Second World War, and members of the military are using Servants to do their bidding as well as planning to use them to win the war, there are a lot of interactions between Servants and modern human armies, usually violent ones, to catastrophic results, as Servants go through lots of human meat like cheese. The picture above is after Oda Nobunaga shoots down an entire fleet of American planes heading to Japan.

It's a type of interactions we only ever really saw when Berserker Lancelot in Zero overtook a JSDF fighter jet to fight Gilgamesh on Vimana, while the other plane got eaten by the Lovecraftian horror Caster summoned. The militarized forces of Faldeus in FsF mostly only go after human mages and steer clear of Servants.

And that makes for an interesting contrast that Redline is all too happy to highlight time and time again. When they say "Servants are scary", they mean "Servants are above human", in every sense of terms. No normal human can harm them or even pose a challenge to them, for they are above human strength and capabilities: they are superhuman, they are inhuman.

And that does not just mean inhuman power, but also inhuman thinking.

One of the main conflict throughline of the manga is the relationship between Kanata Akagi, our main protagonist, and his Servant Okita. They don't clash as such, it's not like Fate route Shirou hindering Saber from doing her job, nor is it like Kiritsugu disregarding Saber. It's more low-key, like a misunderstanding that can never be solved. Okita was a warrior in life, and this Holy Grail War in war-torn Japan is just another battlefield to her. Kanata however was born and raised in a Japan long after the war ended, in more peaceful times where he never had to kill. And it's this fundamental difference in lived experiences and mindset that stops them from ever reaching an understanding about how to approach the war:

Even later, as the war goes on, after Okita almost killed potential allies (more on that later), and Kanata reveals to her he comes from the future and what his goals are (ensure his grandma doesn't die and he can come back), and they decide to have a more honest partnership with each other, it's still not enough.

Because when Okita kills a human soldier again, this time a soldier wounded by Berserker who charged Kanata because he was a Master and he blamed magi for how pear-shaped the whole situation has become, this time she does a 180 and instead of convincing Kanata to become ready to kill, she instead wants him to think of her as his tool to kill in his place and take the burden upon herself:

Kanata can only ask her if she's really fine being a sword to be used by someone else and nothing more, to which she replies that's all she needs.

Do note how completely obscured, borderline blank (save for a small, thin-lipped smile), Okita's face is as she says this. As if Kanata and us readers really can't tell how she actually feels about her own words.

This is not the first time the manga does this with Okita.

Coming back to the almost aborted alliance I mentioned earlier, what happened is that, a few chapter before this, the Rider of this war, Sakamoto Ryouma and Oryou, met with Okita to ask her and her Master for an alliance to stop the war from spiraling further and kill more innocents. It would be normal to be suspicious of their intentions, especially since Ryouma initially hides from her that he is a Servant.

But that's not the reasoning Okita uses to reject the alliance and subsequently attack them:

"There is only one path for me (war)." And here it is again: "She's not human."

And it happened even earlier too. When Servant Assassin (Okada Izou) fights Okita, he grows more and more disturbed as he doesn't feel fear, anger, or exaltation as he fights and cuts her, feeling nothing at all from her aside from the scent of blood. Okada's thoughts are interspersed with Kanata's own thoughts about visiting his dying comatose grandmother in the hospital as a kid. And when Kanata touched his grandmother's hand, just like when Okada faces Okita, all it felt like was that:

As you can see, a lot of emphasis, both textually and visually, that Okita does not feel human, and her way of thinking is so alien people can't comprehend her.

And it's not just her, Servants in general are portrayed this way throughout. You saw the pilot's words about Nobunaga at the start of this post, but it occurs later as well. When she was first summoned in the previous war a few years ago by the Imperial Army, her summoner was an arrogant dude who tried to get her to submit and she casually beheaded him. Following that is this page:

Nothing showing on this blood soaked face except for elongated eyes like those of a monster. And after that, everyone in the room prostrate themselves before her like she is a god they worship.

She picks her Master from the crowd, the half-Japanese girl Kaname Asama, and she treats her surprisingly decently from what we see throughout the manga, giving the shrinking violet of a girl respect like she is her attendant, unlike Kaname's boss Magatsu (more on him later) who threatens her and even hits her.

So you would think they have a cordial relationship? Well, maybe they did, but that was until the recent chapter, which has Magatsu's Berserker fight Lancer, and instead of helping their ally, Nobunaga wants to leave, which leads to this exchange:

The same face and eyes again. Kaname doesn't understand her Servant, nor can she tell what she's thinking, just as Nobunaga's face loses all expression, making it impossible for us to tell as well.

(This is not exactly new in regard to Nobu: Keikenchi, the original author of Koha-Ace and the mind behind Redline, already made a Koha-Ace oneshot previously focusing on her, and in it it was shown that, when she was alive, Nobunaga could not "hear" the voices of other people, other humans, and it's her being unable to understand other people that contributed to both her rise and fall)

Another Servant serving as a good example of this is Berserker, which obviously makes sense when it's the Class that from the very start of the Fate franchise in Fate/stay night was there to be impossible to communicate with. But interestingly, everything that surrounds Berserker, not just the Servant itself, reinforces this theme, as if the story employs irony in making the maddest of them all in a war full of mad people the more in-depth examination of the idea instead of being the most obvious.

But I need to scale back a bit to explain.

The Master of Berserker is Major Magatsu, the head of the Imperial Army's magecraft division and one of the main human antagonist. He is kind of interesting in how it's not just his Servant, but his own actions that act as a fulcrum to demonstrate the point. See, in these last stages where it is clear Japan is going to lose, Magatsu wants to keep the war going. His main goal is that he sees the war as not just for the glory of Japan, but as an opportunity to create a world where mages stand at the top, even planning to orchestrate a secret coup within the Japanese military. He is able to amass a great number of men under him, all fanatically loyal to him due to a mixture of his own charisma and appeal to nationalism as well as cigarettes laced with suggestive tobacco making the soldiers smoking it pliable. His followers are so loyal in fact, that when a team of them comes back defeated after facing a Servant trying to deal with Team Kanata, they beat the only survivor up and torture him for his failure and for failing Magatsu, without Magatsu's knowledge or consent (in fact, he is slightly disturbed by this and thinks to reduce the dosage of the tobacco).

But that doesn't deter him from his tactics. Even when he has to hasten his coup after being forced to when pro-war proponents in the war ministry are assassinated, leading to his enraged troops to blame the proponents of suing for peace within the ministry, he still keeps with the easily pliable and fanatical troops even though it is clear he can barely control them. "When the madman runs, any man not mad starts running" is written on a banner hanging on the wall of the magecraft division's headquarters, and Magatsu, who doesn't know who wrote it, finds it a good quote, not knowing how prophetic the words would become. Regardless, Magatsu has made the entire magecraft division and then some fold under his command by making them believe he will be the hero to save Japan. He makes many speeches about saving the nation and how the preservation of the Empire is vital to the preservation of the soul of the nation, and can easily drive crowds into nationalistic frenzy with talks of using Archer and Berserker to fight on mainland Manchuria, and clearly invoking the spirit of complete sacrifice to the nation like in banzai charges and kamikaze, even if not explicitly:

Sometimes, an ordinary and unrefined person will defeat their fear of death and become a noble person with the resolve to throw away their own lives. This phenomenon, which one could call a miracle, is occuring at this very moment, in various places within Japan. War allows all sorts of miracles to exist.

For these reasons, the Colonel, the so far unnamed high-ranked Nazi who is Magatsu's main ally, praises him for "having a knack for understanding human nature", which is why he gives him Berserker, as he believes that, if he experiences the war from the same position as Servants, Magatsu may be able to come to understand them...especially, as he notes, Magatsu completely failed to have Nobunaga pay him any attention:

Magatsu, for all his charisma and servile attitude, completely fails to have Nobunaga pay him any attention even once since her summoning years ago. When summoned, she ignored him in favor of going to Kasame. She doesn't follow his orders nor does she even acknowledge him as a faithful follower: he might as well be air in her eyes. Not only that, she only talks to his subordinate Kaname Asama, whom he disdains for having foreign blood due to being half-Japanese. And the Colonel rightly realizes that Nobunaga's lack of interest makes him seethe. Magatsu seethes so much in fact that he comes to the conclusion that he doesn't need to understand Servants, especially to win when they don't seem to care what he's they're fighting for, so he would rather settle for Berserker than the unruly Archer, believing he can control him thanks to the Heroic Spirit Restraining Device provided by the Nazis. Very predictably, it goes pretty poorly.

As soon as he's summoned and out of the tank he was put in, Berserker immediately begins to indiscriminately kill soldiers of the magecraft division for no reason, and when Magatsu attempts to use his Command Spells on him, he cuts off his arm and crushes it, making the Command Spells disappear. Berserker then engages in a rampage throughout the magecraft division base, gleefully killing every soldier in his way, yet does not kill his Master despite his failed attempt to restrain him:

Magatsu is unwittingly along for the ride as Berserker carries him in his arms as he goes about his "fun".

Naturally, Magatsu's men try to slow down and stop Berserker using "anti-Servant" weapons (lol) that obviously do jack shit. But they use too much firepower and seemingly ignore Magatsu's cries for help, which leads him to believe that they are trying to kill them both. Berserker agrees in his twisted logic, and enacts more violence as he believes his Master is in danger.

The reality is actually different: when Kaname Asama try to get to exercise more caution so they do not accidentally hit and hurt the Major, when he is clearly an hostage, one soldier slaps her and rebukes her, madly stating that there is no way the savior of Japan would ever get hurt by these weapons.

They keep throwing weapons and men at Berserker, which eventually confuses Magatsu, because weren't they trying to kill him? Why then are they wasting their lives against a Servant?

Which is when the point is made.

As this massacre rages on, Magatsu is telepathically contacted by the Colonel, who congratulates him on summoning Berserker and says that the Restraining Device is working wonderfully saying as the major's mana and life are still intact. Magatsu, enraged, accuses the Colonel of having done something to his men, maybe brainwashing them to kill themselves, which is a fair accusation considering it is the Nazis who did assassinate the war hawks and forced Magatsu to accelerate his coup plans.

Except the Colonel says he had nothing to do with it and the reason for the soldiers' actions is far simpler: they admire Magatsu, they truly, genuinely do. The Colonel explains that his accomplishments, from taking control of the war to making a Servant protect the capital from air raids, made him look like a true messiah in the eyes of his men, and Magatsu was too blind to see it. Of course he denies it and calls the Colonel a liar, until he sees one of his men approach and try to reach him, only to be pierced by Berserker's spear for his troubles, and as he lays dying, Magatsu hears his last words on his bloody lips: "Glory to the Major."

As the one-sided battle against the human waves of martyrs continue, the Colonel throws Magatsu's earlier words about the war "allowing miracles" back to his face, bringing the whole arc to its logical conclusion, and I will transcribe the speech in its entirety since it intersperses scenes of the battle and that's too much images to for this post:

How about you open your eyes to reality for once? The only sane person in that battlefield is you. War is cruel. It burdens its victims with a detestable fate. But look at them. They do it for their country, for you. Their madness calls forth even more madness. All these men rush forward, knowing well only death awaits them. War takes these ordinary men, and turn them into martyrs. War allows all sorts of miracles. I thank you. You've allowed me to witness something beautiful. Did seeing people die finally get to you? Feeling remorse? I suppose you didn't have what it takes to be a soldier. This is no time to be losing your mind, Major. It's not everyday you get to experience war from such a safe position. Revel in it a little more. You are at the center of a miracle. That which creates miracles, and gathers people's faith. What do you call that, Major? Do you know? A God. Congratulations, Messiah. In this exact moment and place, you are the one closest to a God.

Just as the voice of God can't reach mortals, your voice can't reach these men. For alas, there are none who can hear it. Raise your head, Major. The curtain has fallen at last. And you should now be able to understand her a little more.

Archer arrives, looking down at Berserker and Magatsu standing on the mountain of corpses of all the men of the magecraft division, and Magatsu tries one last time to get her to look at him by calling for her help, as all he ever wanted was to prove he was worthy to stand at her side...and she laughs in his face. She mocks him for thinking he could ever control a Servant and finds his tear-stained and snotty face hilarious.

And Magatsu, at this last straw after everything, breaks.

As he begins to laugh maniacally, his Servant joins in, and as Archer, Berserker, and him laugh, it's as if the corpses of his men, their mouth frozen in bloody leering rictus by rigor mortis, are laughing with them. Magatsu finally realizes it was wrong to think to use Servants in a war, because they could never be measured by human standards.

It's not that Servants can't be understood, not solely. This sequence of chapters shows it goes deeper than that: it's war that turns everyone mad, and thus makes understanding impossible among humans. And Servants are humanity writ large, the highest of the high and the lowest of the low, because you need to be larger than life to be remembered for eternity in the Throne of Heroes. Which means that, where war turns humans into mad monsters, it makes the Heroic Spirits standing above humans into the embodiments, the apotheosis, the personified concepts of madness.

They are mad gods.

The World War and the Holy Grail War are both founts of insanity, because that's what war does. The average soldier's brain briefly brushes with the eternal sublime, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans that turns humans into figures of worship recorded and enthroned for eternity beyond space and time. And this brief contact with the Absolute gives them the divine language that makes them unintelligible to other men. Their visages, like Moses' after descending the mountain, can no longer be looked upon. They are completely obscured to us who don't live and breathe for war, for violence is their domain now.

War makes Berserkers of us all.

Is it any wonder that the Classes of the Holy Grail War by design favor warriors and warmongers? This war is rife with adepts of violence: a warlord (Nobunaga), a warrior (Mori), a secret police assassin (Okita), a plain assassin (Okada), and a martial artist (Li Shuwen). All of which mad in their own way and choosing the path of violence over any other options.

And I don't think it's a coincidence that the sanest and most "normal" Servants we have seen in Redline not only belong to the Classes less obviously about violence or weaponry, Rider and Caster, but their identities are also not famous for violence: the Rider was a politician and diplomat, while the Caster is a scientific thought experiment about the laws of physics.

I don't know how this will conclude or shake out, but I have my suspicions. Our protagonist Kanata comes from the peaceful post-war Japan and has so far always been repulsed by violence, despite attempts by his Servant and his grandmother to get him to get used to it to be more effective in the war. In fact, he reaffirms that he wants to win the war without becoming a remorseless bloodthirsty killer.

I can see potential routes the story can take depending on whether he slowly succumbs to war's madness or he heroically resists its call. Especially if he is pitted against what seems to be one of the main antagonists, the Nazi Colonel, clearly war's most fervent prophet, whose face is always obscured.

We'll see. The latest chapter as of the time of writing is the fight between Lancer and Berserker. Even the pair that seems to get along the best, Team Lancer, has the Master threatened by her Servant for almost "interrupting" his fight by trying to heal his wounds. And her (current) last words are a perfect encapsulation of the manga and my whole thesis:

[stevebattle]

Kermit (1978), by Ron Milner and Larry Nicolson, Cyan Engineering, Atari's secret think tank in Grass Valley, CA.

"The robot was a pet project for Nolan Bushnell, then still the head of Atari and a very creative guy. Its purpose in life was as Nolan put it to "bring me a beer!" Navigation for robots was a sketchy thing at that time with lots of pioneering work at MIT but no consumer cost ideas. Nolan brought us the incredibly original idea to navigate a robot (which mostly meant knowing where it was) by means of scanning bar codes attached here and there to the baseboards in the rooms the robot was to service. Why it wasn't patented I don't know.

I had lots of fun building the R2D2 style robot about 20" tall. I liked to put mechanical and electronic things together and we had a great shop at Cyan. Its brain was one of the 6502 based single board computers-I think it was a KIM but not sure. Locomotion was two DC gear motor driven wheels and an instrumented caster-about the same rig as a modern Roomba. A rotatable turret covered with a plexiglass dome carried microphones, an IR sensor to detect people, and ultrasonic ranging sensors I built on a separate PC board. A speaker so Kermit could beep gleefully, of course.

A ring of contact-detecting burglar alarm sensing tape (green in the pictures) around Kermit's middle told the software he had hit something and should back off. The ultrasonics provided range to obstacles and to some extent direction as the turret was rotated, so we could go around things.

My pride and joy was the barcode remote scanner which was mounted on the bottom of the robot so its rotating head would be level with the barcodes on the baseboards. It had a vertical telescope tube with a beam splitter between the IR Led and the photodiode sensor and a lens to focus 2-20' away. It aimed down at a front surface mirror at 45 degree to scan horizontally. The mirror was mounted on a motor driven turret so it spun around continuously with a sensor once around to resolve the continuous angular position of the beam horizontally of course with respect to Kermit's rotational position. Unfortunately, this part of the robot did not survive the closing of our group. The barcodes I made for the prototype to detect were about 4" tall made of 3/4" reflective 3m tape on black poster board.

My programming partner on the project was Larry Nicholson, a really bright guy. He made the barcode reading work to detect not only the barcodes, but where they were angularly with respect to the robot and also their subtended angle or apparent size (all from timing of the rotation of the scanner) which was a measure of distance combined with angle from the barcode. We worked out some pretty clever math to resolve that information from two or three of the barcodes into a position and orientation of Kermit in the room. We had rented an empty room upstairs on the third floor of the Litton building to try all this out and work out the navigation. Larry and I got the basic navigation and obstacle avoidance working so Kermit could go from one place to a designated other place in the room and avoid wastebaskets placed randomly. We demonstrated it to Nolan and he was impressed.

Shortly thereafter Warner Communication who had bought Atari from Nolan kicked him out and the Kermit project was cancelled."

– Kermit The Robot Notes by Ron Milner.

[wrestlingisfake]

I forgot where I saw it but somebody was trying to decide whether Hangman Page is a face or a heel now, so here's my two cents.

As far as I'm concerned, Hangman completed his heel turn on February 7, 2024, when he had the time limit draw with Swerve Strickland. Going into that match, you could tell the fans were gradually turning Swerve face, and Page was getting more and more whiny about his problems. But when the fans chanted for five more minutes in that match, and Page refused, that was the point of no return, because he defied the will of the crowd.

I don't know if there's as clear a point when Hangman turned face, but it definitely happened between ending Christopher Daniels's career in January, and his issues with MJF in February. I realize a lot of people were supporting Page before that ("Hangman did nothing wrong"). And he's still obsessed with preventing Swerve from winning the world title, which is what turned him heel in the first place. But the presentation of the character shifted between January and February. You were intended to think Page went too far with Daniels, but you were intended to root for him to fuck up MJF and Max Caster for being assholes to him.

This is an inexact science (because pro wrestling is an art, not a science). But a lot of discourse about whether a character is a face or heel gets misdirected into a false equivalency, where babyfaces are heroes who never do anything bad and heels are villains who never do anything good. I think a more useful standard is that a babyface is trying to do what the fans want (or, at least, what the promoter thinks the fans want), and a heel is trying to do what the fans don't want. This may seem obvious and simple, until you realize that "do what the fans want" is not exactly the same as "do the right thing."

This is what makes the Hangman-Swerve saga so complex. Both men have done inexcusable things to each other, and you can argue Swerve is the villain because he started it, or that Page became the villain when he escalated it. And yet, now they're both faces--not because they did nothing wrong, or because two wrongs make a right, but because the fans simply didn't take those wrongs personally. What the audience truly cares about is seeing their relationship evolve--for better or worse--so anything that makes it look like they're about to reconcile or find another reason to fight gets a big pop.

[lilyblackdrawside]

Mystic Casters are pretty cool, so take a look at them and their stored charges:

I included Iris' and Indigo's alt outfits, but don't have Franz' or Harmonie's.

For the most part, the charges tell you something about the character. Iris clicks her staff against the ground and a glowing, star-like blue/red charge appears around the tip of her staff with a light plink sound that has varying pitches. The module-given charge is at the front. Her staff rests straight at her side, rigid, upright, attentive stance. She's ready to blast anyone who comes into her range and does so with an impressive swing of her staff, breaking up her otherwise stiff appearance. Her charges are kinda nondescript, but knowing that she's the first one tells us that much. You could say that since she's sleep and dream-aligned, summoning stars is reminiscent of a night sky but I don't think there's that much to it.

Indigo closes her eyes, makes her staff float out of her hand, it glows all over and gains a charge around the head with a barely audible squeezy, swirly energy charging sound that has a few different pitches. The module-given charge is kinda off the group. Her staff is leaning slightly forward and she has laid-back stance. She attacks by lowering her staff, then raising it higher up, which releases her charges. A relaxed motion too. Her charges have a similar appearance to Iris', except they're a bit more flat and wide and very purple. The formation they take is reminiscent of seeing lights in the distance as you look over a darkened landscape, which is reinforced by each charge having a different size.

Ebenholz points his wand at his outheld hand and glaces at it as another dice appears in a circle swirling above his palm. The elite charge is slightly higher in the center of the circle and they all appear with a kinda metallic sound, as if placing a small, angular object on a surface. This too has varied pitches. He has a tense and straight, but slightly forward stance. Compared to Iris who is directly orthogonal to the ground, looking down at people, Franz gives more a feeling of locking eyes with someone directly. For his attack, he swishes his wand over his palm, flinging his dice at the target where they impact with a reverberating, solid sound. Unlike the other Mystics (with Delphine being a possible exception), his charges are actual physical objects. The dice are inherited from the Witch King, so him using these to strike his enemies says a lot. So much that I don't want to get into here.

Harmonie raised her wand and flicks it, which makes a water globe charge appear, the first one behind her, with the second and third forming a curve towards her front. This makes an almost inaudible two-step sound of a swhop and a dry click. The pitch doesn't vary. She has a relaxed stance and non-committaly waves her wand to attack, with the globes impacting with a flat, wet sound. She uses water arts, so her charges are water globes. Pretty basic.

Delphine twirls her sword, holds the blade in front of her face with closed eyes as an energy-sword charge appears in front of her, pointing directly forward, with further charges entering into an upward fanned formation with each of them making a two-step electric sound that also has no varied pitch. She attacks from an alert stance with a swipe of her sword, commanding her charges to fly out, making a light electric/energy sound on impact. Delphine is very martially-inclined, being the only one of the five to actively wield a melee weapon (Franz has a sword as well, but he never pulls it. It's decorative) so her summoning something so defined a weapon as these energy swords is also very fitting.

Iris and Indigo existed before the module system (and before the Branch system for that matter. Both of them used to just be "Caster") so it's a fair assumption that the position of their extra charges given by the module had to be fitted in after the fact and I think it worked out quite well for both, especially for Indigo. Her fourth charge may look like it hangs out away from the group, but really works to reinforce that stray, distant lights impression.

More under the fold, about how they handle being Mystics. Getting really creative with the longposting.

All five of them also have their own way of playing into their branch's nature of being bad at sustained fighting. Iris and Ebenholz directly benefit from stocking charges by having talents that increase the damage of those held charges, Indigo and Harmonie don't get anything out of stocking them directly aside from dealing a big burst of damage and Delphine has a talent that increases the damage she deals to high health enemies, so firing three attacks at once taps into that more.

Iris' S2 puts up to two enemies to sleep and since she can't actually attack sleeping enemies, this gives her enough time to let her stock three charges. You have to wait a bit into her attack delay for her to do that, so don't use it right away after she attacked).

Indigo has a chance to bind on hit and just doesn't attack bound targets. Her damage is notably lower than that of the other Mystics, which isn't just due to her being a 4 Star operator, but because she's leaning a lot more into utility. An enemy running into her with four charges has a very high chance to be bound (~72% with potentials and module) and will take a heavy hit as well. S2 is great for spreading bind over a larger area, as it reduces her attack interval by a good amount and triples the chance of inflicting bind with each hit. S1 is similar, but better at locking down a single enemy. Enemy enters her range, she fires 4 charges, binds them, use S1, she gets all four charges back before it expires, does it again, stocks another four charges and then does it again. Her bind lasts for 4 seconds, so that's pretty good lockdown! It's less good with multiple enemies in her range, but can mimic S2's utility.

Ebenholz actually came a long way and nowadays has good usecases for all of his skills. S2 and S3 have been good from the start and both work with his nature in different ways. S2 makes use of extended downtime as it lets him spend held charges and even without a skill backing his shots, a full load of his has quite the impact. S3 turns all of his charges into his special Talent 1 extra charges. I like to think that this isn't just visual, but actually how his elite/leader-only targeting during this skill works. Not like it's too important. With this he will fully ignore any chaff coming his way to focus on the important task at hand: Losing to three slugs entering your home Absolutely disintegrating elite and leader enemies. So unlike the other Mystics, he both has mechanics that help him stock charges during active combat and also to make use of too much downtime where he can stock several loads of charges before the next enemy arrives.

Harmonie only attacks blocked enemies while her S2 is active, which also projects a damaging and slowing puddle of water in her attack range and she deals more damage to blocked enemies so this just makes sense. It also reduces her attack interval by quite a bit. The puddle deals flat damage, unlike Indigo's S2 where the dot to bound enemies is a % of her impressive attack stat, so don't expect it to filter out anything other than like slugs. Really good 60% movement slow (not a Slow) for a lengthy 30 seconds duration, don't sleep in it. The puddle, that is. You'll get sick. Or die from the 250 arts damage per second.

Delphine only attacks enemies that have more than 50% of their health remaining while her S2 is active. This works twofold: Her talent increases the damage she deals to >80% health enemies and her S2 leaves a damage over time effect on them that will stack several times. (Mystic Caster attacks are actually several distinct hits, not just one big blast. Franz Blast ruined, he's actually four/five shotting those bosses.) So she blasts a big chunk out of the enemey's health bar and then looks ahead towards further challenges while they bleed out behind her as they walk into your home.

[kiefbowl]

What do you think of the Olympics boxing controversy

Very disappointed how fast "online radfems" jumped to quick conclusions with no evidence. Same thing happened to Caster Semenya. I appreciate how much feminists want female sport issues to be taken seriously, but it's clear there is a racial component to this. Many white feminists are incapable of avoiding weird race science b.s., incredibly disappointing. I think people are exposed more than ever in very casual ways to a lot of black political theories, and instead of trying to understand them and internalize them, are eager to leverage them for online clout and self-aggrandizing even if they completely misattribute them. That why you get weird takes like "black women have masculine features" because it's like a weird bastardization of black feminists who have discussed the ways culture will prescribe gendered cultural implications to black women at the detriment of black women. Black women are always, always women. They're female. They aren't a biologically different category, to believe so is both misogynistic and racist.

Additionally, I find it frustrating that so many feminists decide that intersex athletes are this huge priority. The anxiety over natural testosterone levels in otherwise biological female athletes veers on weird gender science of how women should be, what women should be, and other bio-essentialist views. All for a very tiny portion of the population who are already vulnerable and marginalized. The best faith argument is that in some sports, high testosterone in women may skew averages and create records that are near impossible to break, but given enough time outstanding performances become outliners, so I just don't see the big deal to have this much anxiety over intersex athletes. Doping, yes. Male, actual unambivalently male athletes invading female sports, yes. One singular born and raised female African athlete performing exceptionally, and well within the means of human performance? Good god there's a lot at risk here if we become insensitive, unnuanced, racist pieces of shit. Even from a pure optics point of view, if you disagree with me we certainly don't move the needle in favor to critical examine how trans gender ideas impact female athletes if it appears to everyone we really do believe "women = dainty, women are incapable, black women are men."

And since I always get the weirdest responses whenever I talk about this, please spare me you rote arguments because I've heard it before. I'm truly not moved by the argument that female intersex athletes tend to outperform in the sports they're in. I don't care. Good for them. I hope they make big bucks and live well for the rest of their lives. I don't need to know their medical history, I just don't care!! :)

[fantasyfantasygames]

One Hundred Wizards

One Hundred Wizards, 60th Level Orc, 2024

What might sound like a dime-a-dozen D&D5e supplement is actually an OSR game with a unique concept. All your characters are wizards, but each of you has a very specific and flavorful spell list.

The system is more or less basic D&D with some modern improvements. It's the usual six stats, AC and saves that go upward, BAB instead of THAC0, Fort/Ref/Will saves as per 4e, "got 'em or you don't" skills that give a +4 bonus, but a stripped-down combat system that's very "theater of the mind". Nothing particularly special here.

The interesting part is the classes. There are 30 different spellcaster classes. That's it. No fighter or thief. Well, some of the casters are very beefy or particularly sneaky, but everyone's casting spells.

So how about them spells? If your game is all wizards, you better have good spells.

No one gets less than three or more than a dozen. I think there's a strict word count limit on the lists, with two exceptions (the Diabolist and the Stargazer, who apparently need more guardrails).

A few of the spells match up with standard D&D stuff, especially the weirder ones. There's a Horse-Mage who effectively has Mount, Find Familiar, Animal Friendship, etc. There's a Mage of the Broken Mind with spells that line up with Hideous Laughter, Confusion, and Hypnotic Pattern (among others).

All spells are unique. No two classes share a spell.

A lot of them have names attached, like Radiment's Unyielding Windstorm or Endeleshe's Sacred Communion.

There are a small number I recognize from the List of Spells Not Worth Memorizing.

Most classes are not actually focused on a specific set of effects. They're more focused on specific ways to cast magic, like sound, gestures, rituals, or alchemy. Others seem to have a list of "This is what our ancestors found useful for the place we live." The Cliffside Magi, the Sorcerers of Sail, Those Who Climb To The Moon, the Mage (singular) of the Moving Island, and several others fall into that category. If you live on a cliffside, then spells that let you climb quickly, move things up and down, ignore wind, and speak with birds of prey become a pretty sensible set.

Ways to detect magic are likewise unique. I haven't seen a game before where one mage class has to watch patterns of carefully gathered colored sand in order to see magic, and another always sees magic even with their eyes closed. Some of them don't have any "Detect Magic" equivalent at all, and just have to guess.

Intentionally-written side effects are rare, but unfortunate implications are common. See also "you see magic with your eyes closed", which probably makes it hard to get to sleep.

There's a 5e-style concentration mechanic, but otherwise no limit on how many spells you can cast per day or have active at once.

The art is the weak point. It's sparse and generic. I think I recognize a few from stock art packs on DriveThru and Itch. Layout is mediocre. Honestly, attempting to provide character-specific art for each of 30 wizard classes would be kind of a challenge.

And yes, I know, they promised 100 but only delivered 30. There's no explanation of why the title is what it is. If anyone finds out who 60th Level Orc is, please ask them for me. I'd still play this in a second.

[revvethasmythh]

Really not a fan of Divine Intervention of all things still working. Then again, seems just as undeserved as anything else about the way the ending so far has been playing out consequences-wise :/

What is your thought on the way things seem to be shaping up for divine magic?

My thoughts re: divine magic really haven't changed since the first time it was floated that Predathos wouldn't affect divine casters in Exandria: it's an overall weak choice meant to let the players feel like they can release Predathos without incurring devastating consequences on the world. And tbf, I'm a big believer in the idea that paladins can draw divinity from the strength of their oaths and their beliefs (I think that level of faith is incredibly sexy, in fact) so I can acknowledge my quibble here might be a little hypocritical. But in the context of releasing a godeater that snacks on divinity it's like. well, what are the stakes if it doesn't remove divine magic from the world? I don't LIKE that divine intervention is still a thing without the actual gods being there, necessarily, but it's not surprising to me based on the original conceit that, well. nothing was going to change if the gods were gone. It's par for the course, and it wasn't my favorite thing to begin with and I've not really come around on it except to be flatly resigned that it'll just be what it will be. "Flatly resigned" is a good descriptor for how I feel about a lot of the finale, tbh