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

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

>Good post! Really well-put together analysis of the branch.

Thank you! Like genuinely, it's actually a good feeling.

>But i find it difficult to even look at Wiš'adel as a Flinger. She just ignores the identity of the branch so much by dealing incredibly high damage to high defense enemies all by herself, hitting flying enemies (I didn't know Rosmontis could bypass that limitation with a future Branch, but even then she needs another operator helping her to do it) and I agree that flyers aren't an issue, especially not when you're not in IS and have access to your entire roster, but it is still part of the branch's identity. Even her attack animations don't sell her as a Flinger to me. Going by the module short, the original name of the branch is probably something like "Bombardment Sniper", but both Greyylter and TRC throw something in the traditional way and Rosmontis throws something non-traditionally with her big invisible hands. If I didn't know what Wiš'adel was and you showed me a clip of her without revealing her attack range, I'd think she was still an Artilleryman Sniper. Because of this, I don't consider her a win for Flingers. They made her a Flinger to let her abuse the upsides they have while letting her ignore the drawbacks that come with the branch. Which yes, could be described as her being a look at what the branch could be, as you said, but blowing past the limitations just isn't it for me.

So there's a few things I want to bring up here because I think they're important. I do consider Wis'adel to be a Flinger at heart. Her kit would be noticeably worse if she wasn't one. It wouldn't just be in terms of raw damage either, it would also be in consistency. Wis'adel is ultimately designed to make the most use of her class's quirks, and you can see that if you look at her S1 and S2.

Wis'adel's S1 and S2 are also quite good skills, and they actually follow the design perspectives that you would expect them to. They get overshadowed a lot by her S3, but S1 and S2 are good, honest, Flinger skills at their core, and their helped by Wis'adel having good numbers.

Ultimately, I think this is more a result of how just how barebones the class is, so the result you get is the class having these long stints between releases of operators.

Rosmontis: 11/1/2020-11/15/2020 || 4/30/2021-5/14/2021 Greyy: 7/5/2022-7/19/2022 || 3/14/2023-3/28/2023 Wis'adel: 5/1/2024-5/15/2024 || 8/31/2024-9/14/2024

I've also included CN dates because when we're talking about Greyy, that means Dorothy's Vision, an infamously delayed event lol. The difference between Rosmontis and Wis'adel was three and a half years, which is kind of absurd. There are other classes with pretty big gulfs between 6-star releases and they honestly have that same sort of feeling too: look at Pozemka versus Schwarz, Typhon vs Rosa, Mountain vs Chongyue, Hellagur vs Zuo Le...you know.

If we had gotten a solid intermediate between Rosmontis and Wis'adel, one that wasn't dealing with the insane numbers Wis'adel is but wasn't necessarily hampered as badly by her kit as Rosmontis, I think Wis'adel would have been a lot more understandable, especially in terms of kit design. As it is now though, yeah it's pretty massive whiplash. I'm not gonna sit here and be like "You need to agree with my opinion or else" though because this ultimately is just personal opinion and taste.

>The branch on a surface level is designed to clear crowds of weak enemies, not to nuke down elites or bosses. Similar to Splash Casters (who are also quite disliked in an overblown manner).

So I'm not disagreeing here per se, I just think it is a little funny that Rosmontis's one CC clear is...nuking down elites and bosses lol. I'm going to link the Risk 31 clear that uses her (alongside Bagpipe) to take out the Bladehelm Recruit and the Risk 30 clear that uses her for that same Recruit but also to kill the Withered Knight. They're neat clears! Definitely a window in the possibility of what Rosmontis might have done in a CC like CC6 if it wasn't for the release of Chen the Holungday.

>Also about Dusk: She was considered pretty bad until her ModY came out. She wasn't that bad, her S2 in particular was/is quite powerful, but ModY really elevated her and helped her fulfill the phantasy of using her S3 to put up a mass of summons to hold back groups of enemies.

Yeah I didn't touch on Dusk much because I couldn't exactly remember what the hype level was around her release. I think it was initially positive but less positive than I remember Mostima being lol.

>On release, people were disappointed by how "bad she is at levitating enemies" when that isn't even really the point. The levitation is just a means to an end, that being activating her silence and damage boost, as well as disrupting attack windups. Her S2 deals really good damage (450% atk per attack), S1 is way more consistent in actually levitating enemies than you'd think, because enemies tend to enter her range one by one and S3 is alright. It has good use-cases and excels against large bosses, cause she can hit them with three tornados at once.

Yeah Ho'ol is the one that's the "wife" in that sentence. I think even calling Silence the Paradigmatic bad is a little mean, even though her kit is very strangely designed.

Ho'olheyak suffered a lot from aesthetic complaints, my least favorite kind. People wanted the tornadoes from her S3 to levitate entire groups of enemies instead of just one, and this bugged them enough to call her bad by extension.

I have rather poor views of the wider community's ability to discern whether Operators are good or not, if this isn't clear lol. I actually really like Ho'ol, she's well designed in that all three of her skills have uses but she definitely suffers from not being the most consistent of the Core Casters. When you're competing with Eyja and Ceobe, it is ultimately a little rough. Her S2 is secretly her goat skill I'm pretty sure tho

How the Arknights Community was Wrong on One of Arknight's Most Powerful Classes

Or, alternatively, you all need to apologize to Rosmontis right now.

Flingers are experiencing a modern Renaissance right now. Thanks to the release of Wis'adel and the introduction of Rosmontis's absolutely busted IS module, it seems like things are on the up and up for Flingers. Even Greyy the Lightningbearer is a common sight in high level IS runs, and he doesn't even have a broken module.

How on Earth did this happen, when it wasn't very long ago that Flingers were the butt and punchline of their own joke?

The Original Let's start with how the archetype was introduced into the game: Rosmontis. Rosmontis was released alongside Mudrock for the Chapter 8 release event, and the reception was pretty mixed. Rosmontis was a limited operator, and to this point, limited operators in Arknights had been pretty middling. Nian wasn't really conclusively better than Hoshiguma, and W was good but nothing special. We were not at the point yet where Dusk or Skadi the Corrupting Heart had been released, so the running joke was typically to roll on the other operator on a limited banner. Mudrock was a really strong laneholder that still sees a lot of use today, and Weedy is by far the strongest shifter operator ever released.

It's also worth noting that Rosmontis was released during a general downturn of opinions on AoE ranged operators. Leonhardt and Meteorite were considered actually quite strong in the early days of Arknights, and I know this must sound crazy, but Mostima and W were actually super hyped for their release. People thought Mostima, base-ass Mostima with no modules, was good. But after CC Blade, and a general stint of CCs where AoE operators made relatively poor performances, the tide had shifted. Operators like Eyjafjalla and Angelina (god remember when Angelina was considered really good. Well I guess she is now. Regardless) had AoE capabilities but were much cheaper in DP and had solid secondary skills for dealing with single enemies. So people were generally pretty down on AoE operators, which wasn't helped later on by the release of Passenger, an operator considered so bad it resulted in several attempts by Hypergryph to make him better (the retrospective view is that while Passenger was bad, he was made out to be a lot worse than he was, a view I agree with).

These two factors did not help the views of Rosmontis as an operator, but it was also further not helped by what content was available to use Rosmontis in: Contingency Contract. Rosmontis, tragically, released after the first theme of Integrated Strategies came and went, and so the only high level content available to use her in was CC. CC is particularly harsh to Flingers as we'll discuss, but this is also something that Wis'adel has managed to avoid as there hasn't been a CC since her release. The only difficult content since Wis'adel's release has been IS and RA, two game modes that honestly favor Flingers as we'll discuss later on. There was just nowhere to use Rosmontis in more difficult content where she didn't feel bad.

Flingers are a pretty interesting subclass, and Arknights has really not designed any subclasses to be like them, ultimately. They have a very impressive attack range, higher bulk than other ranged operators, and a unique gimmick to their attacks: they will deal an additional hit of damage, but one that only has 50% of their ATK. In addition to this, Flingers are the only Sniper subclass that cannot hit aerial enemies without certain conditions being met (Wis'adel's S3, Rosmontis S3 with an aerial blocker).

In general, this results in a class that is very good at dealing with large groups of enemies with only modest DEF stats. This is because DEF ends up having an increased effect on Rosmontis' damage, because it will apply to both of her hits. An enemy with 375 DEF will, after the 175 Def ignore from her talent, reduce her attack damage by a total of 400.

This for a lot of people was sort of the final straw that broke the Rosmontis back. Her vulnerability to enemies having DEF was a problem, and it was generally stated to be in a way that other DPS checks would avoid. In addition, if we take a look at ideal DPS scenarios with the introductory 6-star for each Sniper class:

Ray: 1,346.22 Narantuya: 1,062 Schwarz: 880.28 Exusiai: 815.99 Chen the Holungday: 647.17 Rosmontis: 601.71 Fartooth: 583.88 Rosa: 539 W: 373.93

Rosmontis is very middle of the pack, losing in particular to Exusiai. Now, Exusiai also had the problem of being very soft to enemy DEF stats. Honestly, it should be noted that Rosmontis was always hitting higher DPH than Exusiai would for her normal attack damage.

(I've been getting really into Desmos lately)

Now this is all just auto-attack stuff and I don't want this to be exclusively a Rosmontis analysis by any means (although it's coming). The point here is that there was a pretty common conception that Rosmontis didn't really have a place in the meta, because Exusiai was so dominant in that spot. It's not hard to understand why. If we look at their S3 DPS really quickly...

At low DEF values, Exusiai is overdominant. This isn't super surprising, as she has a lot of factors working in her favor: a busted 5 hit S3, an attack interval reduction as well as a sizable ASPD buff from her talent. But it doesn't take a huge amount of defense for Rosmontis to come out on top. The specific DEF number is 580, roughly. Then, the perks of Rosmontis's S3 come to light: it's larger DEF ignore, it's halved attack interval, and it's much larger ATK buff.

This being said, there are still things working against Rosmontis, like her skill cycle being very long, and her own ATK buff resulting in Warfarin's buff being diluted compared to Exusiai. If you take a look at CC results, it is true that Rosmontis only has one top to her name: CC Spectrum, where she is part of a Risk 31 clear alongside Exusiai, which is pretty cool. But CCs, which often increase enemy DEF while reducing friendly ATK, are just very harsh to Flingers. Given that it is a class so sensitive to DEF and ATK changes to hit breakpoints, most CCs just hit Rosmontis in a double bind.

Funnily enough, Exusiai also doesn't have any top clears in CC past this point too, which is interesting to point out.

(For those counting: Rosmontis: CC5 Exusiai: CC1, CC5)

Rosmontis' position probably wasn't helped past this point by the release of Chen the Holungday either, and the rest is history. Rosmontis goes down as one of the weaker 6-stars in the game. People feel bad when they roll her. People on this website nurse weird ass grudges against her.

The Blip

It would be remiss of me to not remind people about Greyy the Lightningbearer. Greyy was a 5-star, which means that 99% of players ignored his existence, Gamepress made a dogshit summary about him that was made by people who don't play the game, and life moved on. We're going to talk about Greyy in more detail later on because he is important to talk about...

Oh well right now

Lone Trail: The Update That Should Have Changed Everything

Lone Trail was a super massive event, releasing three 6-stars that can be kindly regarded as "good but nothing amazing, bad, and my wife". It also introduced to the game the Flinger Modules, and I'm going to tell you all a secret. You and me, real close now.

It's fucked up these modules didn't receive more hype.

These modules gave Flingers a second shockwave hit. Now that doesn't seem all that impressive. After all, you might think to yourself, that shockwave still deals 50% damage. But the addition of an extra shockwave really changed the numbers of the game, because it meant a huge chunk more damage.

At minimum (673 DEF roughly) this module improves her damage by about 45%. That's pretty crazy for a module as it stands, but if you want to see the full chart, here you go. Arknights Youtubers hire me.

The extremely high peak there, where Rosmontis is doing more than triple the damage she was originally is actually getting to the exact point where Rosmontis without a module moves towards dealing scratch damage. This is pretty common with modules involving physical DPS operators, such as Blaze, to have very unique high points.

But this is 45% just off of, what is essentially

An extra shockwave

60 more points of DEF Ignore

+75 ATK attribute

This is a remarkably tame talent upgrade. The base effect, the second shockwave, is pulling so much work here. These numbers will be a bit more tame when you compare with S2 (already comes with +2 shockwaves) or S3 (already has some DEF shred) but this is still a very impactful module.

It also impacts the stun chance on her S2. Without her module, and having 4 total hits per attack, this puts her stun chance at roughly 59.04% per attack. The additional hit raises those chances to 67.232%. Not a massive increase, but it does help to patch up her odds.

This is also why Greyy's module was so important. Greyy's slow is tied to his talent, and hence the jump from 2 hits to 3 hits is very notable. Without his module, Greyy has a 64% chance to slow the enemy with every attack. With his module, those chances go up to 78.4%! That's pretty significant! He also deals 15% more damage to Slowed enemies too, which is a pretty strong mod on top of the extra shockwave. I haven't actually done Greyy's numbers, but it really does make him a lot more consistent at slowing enemies.

So now we're here, with Flinger's getting a surprisingly good module. They now deal 3 hits per attack, with Rosmontis dealing 5 hits per attack with her S2, which is actually relevant for Lone Trail (Rosmontis can remove a clean 250 DEF with every one of her attacks during her S2 against Arc Screenguards). So what happened?

Well...Flingers weren't popular, were widely regarded as a flawed class, and mostly passed over. It just wasn't worth it to people to raise Rosmontis or Greyy the Lightningbringer even if you had some inkling their module was good.

The Return of Integrated Strategies and Reclamation Algorithm

A miracle the likes of which Hypergryph may never do again...well okay maybe they will, they do be kind of nailing it on the alternate gamemodes, we have the return of Integrated Strategies and Reclamation Algorithm. These modes are actually uniquely situated in comparison to CC to benefit Flingers over other classes. This is largely because of how these modes chose to scale difficulty and the tools they give you to combat this.

In IS, enemy difficulty typically results in scaling HP and ATK buffs, and that's it. It's rare to see enemy DEF buffs in IS. In addition, many relics in IS focus on increasing ATK or ASPD or improving damage dealt. Flingers get much and much better when they deal damage with their shockwaves, and it is pretty easy to do that in IS. Rosmontis's S2 is of special note here: with her module, it deals 5 hits of damage, which means it benefits from ATK buffs to the same degree as Exusiai does, but with a lot of added perks. DEF ignore, a moderate AoE radius, and a chance to stun. This skill is way more dangerous with additional ASPD.

Greyy also benefits a ton here. Extra ASPD allows him to basically permanently lock down entire groups of enemies with slow. This is something that can also sort of be done with Chain Casters, but notably, Chain Casters can only slow down a certain number of enemies at a time with each of their attacks. Since slowed enemies tend to create clusters, Greyy can slow down entire waves of enemies with his attacks, while still dealing pretty impressive damage.

The only issue is the aerial enemies. I haven't mentioned this up until now, because in my opinion, it is the single most overhyped drawback in the entire game. There are tons of events and chapter releases where this basically doesn't matter. Aerial enemies are, for all intents and purposes, rather rare in Arknights. But in IS this is important. Flingers need some degree of map knowledge to use well. But your Sniper ticket is not necessarily the only solution to aerial enemies in any IS, and chances are you'll find more than one. For IS3, you can pick up Kroos Alter and Rosmontis and in the grand majority of situations be completely fine.

Of course, if you play IS5, this basically isn't an issue and Rosmontis is the second stronger Flinger in the game, and I think arguably the second strongest Sniper pick?

I almost forgot RA by the time I went to post this, so it's a good thing I went back because, yes, Flingers and Rosmontis are also good there too. It's literally designed for Flingers to be good, it's huge mobs of enemies all clustered closely around each other. You can use Provisions to give Rosmontis a ton of ATK or ASPD and watch her go ham on like 115 exploding spiders. They also have amazing range for vision on resource maps and have multi-hit mechanics for those stupid locks.

It's like, impressive how nicely Flingers slot in here. I'm really curious how Greyy feels when you give him one of the ASPD provisions so he has +60 ASPD.

Rosmontis CRAVES your Coagulate Supplements!!!!

The End-Times: Wis'adel and Rosmontis's Busted Module

If you've ever wanted to know how we got to this renaissance, it was Wis'adel being released, having absolutely busted numbers on her kit that basically ensured that her shockwaves would always do damage, and then going and soloing IS3 A15 like it was fucking nothing.

Wis'adel proved Flingers could be fucking fantastic.

Rosmontis has actual problems in her kit, she's ultimately a pretty early Limited operator with all the design choices that carries. Wis'adel is what you get when you ask "how far can a Flinger go?" The shockwave mechanic works well with her huge numbers and her shadow status effect. Her summons work to keep as many enemies as possible attached with a shadow. Her blast radius is massive. Honestly the fact she can blow up the UFOs in IS3 barely matters.

Soon after that, Rosmontis got her specialized Module. I've seen people complain about this. You're wrong. There's no fucking way this module should be allowed to be used in general content. It is, in fact, maybe the most busted specialized module they've released. It completely changes Rosmontis as an operator. Benefitting from Caster relics is insane for themes like IS3 which has a ton of genuinely broken ones, her new and improved equipment are insanely powerful, and the fact that she allows every Sniper and Caster to create a free rather tanky blocker with a crazy debuff effect is like

You understand this module is nuts? Surely?

The trait wouldn't really make Rosmontis meta anyhow. It would improve her damage by a lot but puts her, rather frustratingly, into the camp of mixed offensive operators who now have to worry about enemy RES values coming into play. Plenty of the enemies with decent DEF stats that Rosmontis struggles with now also come with sizable RES stats. As I've mentioned in my brief thoughts on Dagda, there are a ton of enemies Dagda hits harder by brute force than Indra does by trying to side-step the bigger stat.

It's also okay that the module is IS only, because IS is where Flingers are just at their best. Nothing is stopping you from using Rosmontis in general content, especially with her still really good BOM-X module!

Flingers, ultimately, are just a well-designed class. They have great range, AoE, and having extra instances of damage is always incredibly powerful. I do think Rosmontis has some kit issues, but I also think that a lot of people immediately dismissed her as bad based on community consensus. You want to know a cool thing about Rosmontis I haven't brought up yet? She can attack invisible enemies with her S3. Invisible enemies feel a lot more common than aerial enemies do, hell Lappland the Decadenza's event is literally a bunch of invisible enemies.

But like, that's never seen as a positive to Rosmontis unless you're a Sniperknights player and then you might just say Totter is better (and I get that, he is a bit more consistent). Rosmontis can hit an entire enemy type with her S3 that Wis'adel can't, but it's seemingly never mentioned. It's just...this community is very strange, you know?

Try Rosmontis out, hell try her out with Shamare or Warfarin. If you use Exusiai a bunch (godspeed soldier it's been rough since the Chen days), you probably already have those operators. Try Greyy out too. Then, if you really want the challenge, E0 Level 1 Wis'adel. Come on. You know that's better than like half the cas-

[jopzer]

being crazy about ted lasso and bg3 at the same time is making me kinda crazy i think. doing dnd shit to those soccer guys in my brain

[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.

[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-

[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.

[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.

[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!! :)

[lassieposting]

So in the wake of my post on Astarion and cptsd, have another concept I've been thinking about lately:

Tav/Durge (or an origin character, but I'm gonna use Tav because there are so many potential ships) using magic on him - with his permission, of course, they're not a complete monster - to help him cope with the symptoms.

I feel like there's a lot of potential here? But I haven't really seen anyone using it in fics, so. Here are some ideas I've been turning over.

Spells Tav Can Use On Astarion:

Calm Emotions: magically subdue intense emotions.

So.

I have a fond headcanon that while Astarion is still in survival mode during the game - the worst symptoms of his cptsd are on lockdown and he's mostly able to keep it together well enough to be functional and clear-headed - there is an incident where Tav sees him have a panic attack.

Like. Maybe they're attempting to sneak around patrolling guards in enemy territory, or edging around hostile wildlife in the Underdark. They're alone, the party split into two pairs with different tasks, and some threat is headed their way. They don't want to raise any alarms, so Tav drags Astarion back into a narrow crevice in the rock, or a chest loaded onto a supply wagon, or something, to hide until the threat has passed by.

And. Astarion has never mentioned that he's claustrophobic. He doesn't show weakness unless he's forced to, and at this point, he hasn't told Tav about being sealed in a tomb for a whole year. So the first they know of it is when they're crushed up against him in a cramped hiding spot and they realise he's shaking. They try to calm him, but his eyes have gone unfocused and glassy and he's starting to hyperventilate, a wounded animal noise brewing in his chest.

And Tav has to make a split second decision, because he's going to get them noticed. So they try to comfort him and instinctively cast Calm Emotions - and it works. It cuts the panic attack off, and once the threat is audibly moving away from them, they're able to emerge and carry on undetected.

He's angry, on and off for a while, that Tav used magic on him without his consent, even once he understands what they did and why. But the thing is, it did work. It helped him get his fear under control. So down the line, as they get closer, and he begins to really trust Tav, he agrees to them using that one on him when he really needs it, when he's crippled with the panic of 200 years' worth of obediently withstood torture sessions, when he feels like dying is the only way to escape the fear. They're both aware though that Calm Emotions is a deferral, not a cure - it won't help him work through the panic attacks, and it won't stop him having them.

Heroism: instill the caster or an ally with courage

I like to think Tav uses this one on him a few times as the group approaches the city, when he's fretting about being back within Cazador's reach. They're not ✨sleeping together✨, but they are sleeping together - he has an open invitation to share Tav's tent at night, just to cuddle and rest a little easier with someone he trusts close by to watch over him. They know he's scared, and they know he doubts the group's ability to protect him if Cazador tries to take him back. Heroism here is essentially a stand-in for anti-anxiety medication - it stops him ruminating on what-if scenarios the group is determined not to ever let happen.

Enthrall: capture the attention of a creature, making it look at you

Another one that could be useful in a panic attack situation, though it's far too similar to Cazador's control to ever use on him spontaneously - it would need to be something suggested, discussed and agreed upon while he was clearheaded, to see if it was useful for him. Making him focus on Tav stops him focusing on whatever is causing him to nosedive. It's the, "Astarion, hey, look at me, just focus on me, breathe with me," spiel taken to a level that actually yanks him out of his fear spiral when just their voice won't do it.

Dancing Lights: creates magical orbs of light that brighten an area

Sometimes, Astarion struggles to switch off and unwind at bedtime. The "trying to get to sleep" gap can be a fucking horror show when you have a condition like cptsd - everything goes quiet in preparation for sleep, so it's the perfect time for all your intrusive thoughts and ruminations and spiralling to dogpile you, the way it struggles to do when you're compulsively keeping busy in the daytime.

A Tav who can create Dancing Lights is essentially giving him Candy Crush. A mindless, no-complex-thought-required distraction that shuts up all those bad thoughts long enough for his eyes to start closing.

Light: makes an object shed light in a small area

He's not afraid of the dark. The dark is a vampire's natural habitat, after all. But he is, in the early days, sometimes afraid of what might be in the dark - he has nightmares of Cazador lurking around the outskirts of the camp, waiting to snatch him up. Shifting shadows against tent fabric can warp and twist into horrors to a groggy, fresh-from-a-nightmare mind. He would rather die again than ever ask Tav to magic him a nightlight. But if an object bespelled to cast a soft, grounding glow inside his tent happened to be left beside his bedroll, well, finders keepers and all that. Of course he uses the damn thing, darling, if he leaves it off for one night Gale will probably eat it.

Detect Thoughts: telepathically link to unprotected minds and hear the thoughts of targeted creatures while talking to them.

I like to think this mostly happens when he's struggling to express something and getting frustrated.

Sometimes, it's a vocabulary issue. Faerûn is a medieval-esque setting - Astarion doesn't have terms like "trigger" or "dissociation" or "flashback" to express what's going on in his head. He has to cobble together not-quite-right-but-close-enough explanations out of the words he does have, and that shit is hard.

Other times, it's because he's trying to recount a memory that gets stuck in his throat or between his teeth. Because he can't bear to voice the humiliation, or the dehumanization, or the violence that goes with it. Putting it to words makes it real in a way that he can't deal with anymore. He wants Tav to know what's distressing him, but he just...can't say it. He can't.

And once upon a time, he would've just shown them through the tadpole, but that's no longer an option, so Detect Thoughts it is. Tav can either hear him, or he can visualise the memory and show it to them - or flashes of it, anyway. And it can be a quiet understanding between them - no stumbling over his words, no tears, no shaking voice.

Hold Person: hold a target humanoid in place.

Paralyzing Ray: paralyzes the target.

Otiluke's Resilient Sphere: enclose a target in a sphere of shimmering force...blocking all incoming and outgoing damage

These wouldn't really come into play until months or even years postgame, once Astarion is safe and settled and finally processing all the horrors he's been through - if he has an era where the flashbacks are so vivid, he might not recognise Tav, or might even mistake them for Cazador or Godey. The era where, sometimes, through no fault of his own, he might be a danger to himself and others, Tav included. What's a fantasy protagonist to do with him, when he's beyond reason? Pop him in the rage cage - where he can't hurt himself or anyone else - until he comes back to himself.

Spells Tav Has Tried And Failed To Use On Astarion:

Cure Wounds: heal wounds through touch

Probably the first spell they ever try on him, and one he could've sorely benefited from. The extra impetus to start associating touch with pain relief instead of pain itself would've done him a lot of good. But, according to the wiki, undead are immune to virtually all healing spells, which is a deeply angsty bummer.

Sleep: make a conscious creature fall into a deep slumber

As a high elf, he's immune to sleep magic, but he gets the elven equivalent of night terrors, and days on end of broken rest will leave anyone drained and exhausted. Tav has absolutely offered to try and put him to "proper" sleep, a deep sleep, so he won't dream. I've never actually played dnd, so I don't know how much leeway there is here for creative interpretation of immunity, there are certainly ways you could be creative with it - maybe his fey ancestry protects him from being put to sleep specifically in an attack context, or from being put to sleep unexpectedly, or by unfamiliar and potentially hostile magic. Maybe, if he knows it's happening and his innate magic recognises the magic of the caster, he's able to lean into it. Like the difference between being shot from behind with a tranquilizer gun and popping an ambien before bedtime.

Also! These could even be scrolls! It amuses me to think of Tav popping over to the pharmacist Gale's tower in Waterdeep to get Astarion's monthly anxiety prescription scrolls of Calm Emotions

[least-evil-resident]

medieval resident evil au where Umbrella is a cabal of dark mages trying to unlock the secrets to lichdom and go mad learning secrets from the undead eldritch horror outside of space and time

Chris and Jill are Knights in service of the Order of Stars, Leon is a beginning town guard, Ada is still a spy, honestly not much is different

If you give them ttrpg character sheets then it's even more fun

Would guns be wands, badass Crossbows, or straight up magic, or different based on the game? They could also just be guns but that wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

Consider pistol=dagger, rifle=longsword, shotgun=axe? Grenades could be hand bombs or magic.

Or pistol=hand crossbow, rifle=light crossbow, shotgun is either special bolt or a spell

Beneath the cobblestone streets of raccoon city, where gaslamps and auto-carriages ramble, is the lair of an evil sect of mages developing spells in secret to transform humans into beasts

Could be very bloodborne-esque. Lots of fire and brimstone. Maybe STARS are more like paladins, and the bsaa is an order of Templar type organization.

If we go dnd 5e rules, Chris is a fighter for sure, Jill is like a rogue I guess? Leon could go either. It could be fun to make Claire like a sorcerer since she gets the grenade launcher

In later games I think Chris definitely fits either paladin or barbarian, where Leon goes for more rogue/maybe ranger vibes. Jill seems more rogue+fighter but magic rogue is cool, maybe artificer. Claire would be sorcerer multiclass I think. Keep any mages low powered that way.

Sherry in 6 is maybe warlock or aasimar instead of Cleric? Blood hunter would be cool. Rebecca starts as a Cleric in 0 for sure. For a low magic setting where research and Rituals are matched by quick, small combat spells, how high of a DC do you think enemies would go?

Of course, in a classless system like gurps or all flesh, this would be a lot less restrictive. What would be the best system for resident evil normally? What would be the best one for its fantasy au?

Wesker very much fits the low-fantasy vampire theme. He has a reflection and can step in he sunlight but wow it hurts his eyes. Chris rolls a 20 to punch a boulder to death.

Leon has the lucky feat or 20 in dex or something to pull off his stunts. Chris also gets Charisma as a leader for the bsaa, so paladin is up his alley. Leon's secret service requires more rogue skills, but his time in operation javier trains his skills as a Ranger under Krauser maybe?

Jill and Claire both get grenade launchers, but Jill is more Rogue with her lockpicking so it makes sense for them to switch level ups later on as claire learns more professional skills for rogue training.

Barry definitely hits fighter/barbarian with his heavy weapons. Jake is maybe more monk/barbarian but with something like a dhampir ancestry feature? Sheva is maybe rogue/fighter or paladin fighter since thats when chris starts taking paladin levels. Billy has to be rogue/fighter I think, or maybe fighter/rogue, if he even gets a second class. It would almost make sense for him to be pure rogue and rebecca be cure cleric, since she retires to become a researcher and hes never heard from again. Helena is I guess just plain rogue, hinting at her role in 6, while Leon has his ranger levels. Piers is more rogue/Ranger (or fighter archer). A lot of the one off teammates just don't get super interesting classes as a consequence of their limited appearance. Carlos... Fighter? Just fighter is fine.

Now, the problem here is that each game starts off with little to no equipment for various reasons. In the case of our spell casters like claire and jill, we can't just de-level them between adventures in the resident evil campaign. But we could give them more limited access to spell components to match the resource management of survival horror.

This is more complicated outside of dnd 5e, where a game like All Flesh Must Be Eaten has very different spellcasting rules, so you'd need to stray from a low-magic to a straight low-fantasy setting. Alchemist tools and one use spell scrolls replace your grenades and spell casting maybe? That's the issue you'd run into with treating the setting as one campaign instead of each game as an individual campaign though.

The easiest one to do is RE8. It's literally the same. Ethan starts 7 as a human Commoner, takes levels in artificer as the game goes on, since that one introduced crafting, and comes back very subtly as a human variant with a few new levels in fighter from chris' tutoring. Hey that means we can give Hiesenburg an artificer friend! Class buddies ♡ hiesenburg is probably artificer/sorcerer, giving him charisma and intelligence. Dimetrescu is maybe barbarian if she even gets class levels.

I don't think we can justifiably say Rose is a variant human, I think she gets her own custom ancestry features for this. Sorcerer also feels better than Druid for her, but a couple levels in - you guessed it, rogue! Cover her gun and Stealth skills. You get a lot or rogues and fighters in low powered/low fantasy settings, who knew lol

[utilitycaster]

Hope I can phrase this in a way that makes sense but—

What well-known actual-play cast member is your favorite for each of the core D&D class? Not necessarily a specific characters, but I’m interested in which players you think brings the most to each class.

This is a very interesting question! It's a hard one to answer for some classes and very easy for others so bear with me; also there are a couple where I could not pick just one.

I'm sticking to the PHB 12 for, as you said, core classes:

Barbarian: While Travis did give us "I would like to rage," I think Ashley and Taliesin get to share this one for me. I think they both really explore what rage means to someone and while I love a good "I'm a tank because I can take the hits and that's what I do and what I'm good at" story, I also think Yasha's messy relationship with her feelings of guilt and grief, and Ashton's chronic pain, are both incredible ways to play with the barbarian archetype.

Bard: much easier. Sam Riegel and Krystina Arielle. I'm a sucker for someone who actually sings even as I don't think you have to (and have played bard without doing so). It's both clearly a class they each love dearly and it shows, and they're incredibly musically talented performers to boot.

Cleric: Lou Wilson. Especially since I didn't like Fantasy High season 1 Fabian until the end of the season Kingston blew me away. I would love to see him explore cleric again, though it's exciting to see him as a paladin on WBN.

Druid: Emily Axford as Moonshine. Emily as a rule understands D&D classes very well anyway, but I think the culture of the crick and the ways that Moonshine must grow as a character while being a druid take it to the next level. (Also I prefer a caster-heavy druid to a shapechanger-heavy one; that's just me).

Fighter: Back to NADDPod because literally who could I say other than Jake Hurwitz, the man who only plays fighters. People who are new to D&D when they start actual play can be hit or miss imo; some pick it up and some lean harder on being showy to make up for it and it doesn't play well for me personally, but Jake is the greatest hit.

Monk: Marisha Ray; Beau is just generally a great character, and I think Marisha's own experience with martial arts informs the way she plays her; monks can be kind of repetitive in combat even with strong players and she manages to avoid this through her description.

Paladin: This is actually super hard because people don't play straight paladin a lot. This is incorrect of them, but it is an intense class. I think Luis Carazo and Zac Oyama are like...the duality of paladin (and indeed, redemption paladin). The tragedy and the comedy.

Ranger: Laura Bailey, natch; it's funny because Vex is in many ways not the archetypal ranger due to having high charisma, but she is simply my favorite and that's that on that. Sorry the mechanics were so bad; I would love to see more rangers in D&D even though Vex will be hard to dethrone. I promise Tasha's fixed them!

Rogue: I think I'm actually going Murph on this one. I like when rogues are more of the detective/spy type than the assassin/criminal type [obligatory "of course that's what you'd say you stupid paladin stan"] and inquisitive and arcane trickster are probably my two top rogue classes so Riz it is.

Sorcerer: I do consider PF1e cheating here because it's technically a different system that also imo addresses a lot of the weaknesses of sorcerer/makes it way better, but Bryn Monroe of RQG did play a great sorcerer. In D&D? Giving Emily Axford a second spot here for Saccharina. I'm going to talk about this for warlock, but I think sorcerer is a class you don't have to justify but if you don't it's a little unsatisfying. Sorcerer really shines in the Crown of Candy setting, and metamagic often doesn't live up to its reputation but Emily makes it work for her.

Warlock: Travis Willingham. I think there are classes that are kind of self-explanatory, for lack of a better term; you can play a fighter or rogue or even a bard or druid without going super deep into why the character is this class and still be an incredible character (though a good backstory never hurts). But there are others where you really need to be engaging with the class at all times to make it work, and warlock is one of them, and Fjord explores the warlock pact and what it means like few others.

Wizard: Aabria Iyengar. NO ONE gets wizard hubris as a player like Aabria. Knowledge is power and boy do wizards love knowledge. I especially like that most people in 5e play wizards as genuine adventurers because it feels very easy to play them as old guy in robes swept up in events beyond them; Aabria plays wizards who are combat ready with the humanity and backstory to make the difficult decisions sympathetic and meaningful, and I think that's how you have to play it.

Note: I want to specifically call out Liam O'Brien and Siobhan Thompson as "people I trust in basically any class or system and just didn't happen to hit a favorite here due to sky-high competition/personal preferences". They are both very close seconds for wizard.

[krislgfox]

I'm sorry for long wait!

Here's the body sheet of my sona in witch outfit(it's looks more like an alive mannequin)

(Click for better quality)

I redesigned it so much times u just can't imagine(I also procrastinate it a lot) ¡v¡

(Ik I got lazy drawing faces)

The body sheet of my pookie's sona in witch outfit will come soon(I hope), I just waiting when they send me the design of their dark mod outfit

I already add the magic wands on the post with human Kris(CreateCrow) and Sveta(SparkyCat) so I don't think I should add them here again :_]

Spell Casters au by - @onyxonline

Version without hats(and jacket):

[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:

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

I am now at least far enough away from the incident that I can give some more articulately expressed opinions about Kriemhild and that part of Traum, and also my general bugbears when it comes to Higashide. To really elaborate on them, I want to make a point of comparison to show this isn't just like, bias getting in the way, and that's Caster.

Well Medea. Obviously.

Caster has a really big advantage going for her over characters such as Semiramis and Kriemhild. She has two gigantic and well-written visual novels backing her up. While the first thing you probably think of when it comes to Caster is her relationship to Kuzuki, you can probably think of a bunch of different things that you know Caster for. Caster's relationship to Kuzuki is a big part of her character, but it is not the only part of her character, and most importantly, it adds to her character. It is in and of itself a jumping off point for discussing her relationship with Jason, how that has affected her, and what Caster is looking at her future for.

Bu it's not her entire character. She still has a very complex relationship with Saber, and Hollow Ataraxia's character interactions with her and the rest of the cast are all interesting, not to mention her own interactions with Kojirou either. She exists as a character beyond that, and that is also very likely why Kuzuki is just not a factor in F/GO at all. She is a strongly written character that is recognizable without him.

When it comes to Semiramis and Amakusa, Apocrypha itself is written fine although I don't really believe in the two of them having real chemistry with each other, especially as time has gone on and more of Semiramis backstory has come out, Amakusa feels very written in but without the proper framing to me to make it work. But as time has gone up, unlike with Caster, Semiramis has had her entire character swallowed up by this relationship, even though canonically she shouldn't really remember it. This is obviously to some extent fanservice, but this is a problem, because it means that Semiramis stops existing as her own character. There are entire interludes about her history that are boiled down at the end to just being about Amakusa. If you want to know Semiramis like you would Caster, you can't.

A good relationship adds to the character, it does not BECOME the character. This is especially weird because Amakusa has had a lot of interesting screen time and character writing without Semiramis being present. It starts to feel like there's only really one important character in the mix. There's Amakusa, and Amakusa's girlfriend. That's weird.

Kriemhild is that on turbo, but the issues with her writing go even further. At least with Semiramis, while her relationship with Amakusa is strange, it's not necessarily contradictory. It's definitely odd, but not out of question. Kriemhild, especially for those who have summoned her and didn't go through Traum quickly, is in a contradictory boat. She clearly in her dialogues does not like Siegfried, even if she still loves him, and it's also clear he is directly responsible for a ton of hurt that she felt. This is consistent of what we know of Siegfried, it makes sense that he would do these things, we've already seen him do it in Apocrypha. Here, we are being asked to confront the human cost of that. In Apocrypha, he's not screwing over anyone we care about. But here, he's directly hurting people, and by extension, leading to their death.

Siegfried's actions are not portrayed particularly nobly, they're considered mistakes, at least in part chiefly by Siegfried who wants to live a life doing the right thing now. So it makes sense that Kriemhild would be extremely bitter and angry at him. He...abandoned her, and didn't even explain himself. That's extremely fucked up.

For almost the entire chapter in Traum, we're not given any indication that there is going be a flip-flop in character motivations. Kriemhild is portrayed, consistently, as being antagonistic to Siegfried. She wants her revenge on him, she calls him leftovers, she talks about destroying the world he keeps trying to save. Zhang Jue hides away Siegfried not because he believes that Kriemhild will turn on the realm for him, but because, as a Berserker, Kriemhild is likely to become extremely unstable upon seeing him.

Even later on, when Siegfried approaches Ritsuka and asks for a favor, the most likely conclusion to come to, knowing Siegfried, is that he wants to fulfill his wife's revenge. That makes sense from a character perspective. Siegfried's actions have consistently trended towards those that self-sacrifice to protect others.

The problem when it comes to Kriemhild is that it is both contradictory to what we've been communicated with in the story, and that the end result is that it destroys her character. It is both bad, and quite frankly, very cheap. It's a cheap use of the love conquers all trope. In the span of one to two sentences, Kriemhild implicitly forgives him for everyone that he's done, reverts to a lovey-dovey wife, and even reneges on everything that to this build are the foundation of her existence as a Servant.

It turns Kriemhild into nothing, into what is insanely flat, because all of her depth has been removed. What is left is a character that is entirely one-dimensional. Nothing exists for Kriemhild past her love of Siegfried anymore. There's no discussions about hurt or pain or the twenty years of vengeance beyond Kriemhild immediately turning a double face on it.

There's not a nicer way to put this, so let's just get it out of the way now. Siegfried will continue to be a character independent of Kriemhild. Unlike say, Sigurd, whose character is primarily defined on his relationship with Brynhildr, Siegfried's character is not defined really at all by his relationship to Kriemhild. Kriemhild has no path from here, and as we can glimpse in further events, her character is entirely defined by her relationship with Siegfried. What are her character motivations past this point? Well obviously its not ANY of the ones we took pain to previously establish.

This is classic, textbook, misogynistic writing. Kriemhild has been turned into a lamp.

Siegfried is a very popular character, and I imagine for a lot of people, there is incentive to ignore all of this. Siegfried is getting his happy ending, he's getting his wife back. But if you cared about what Kriemhild's character was, this sucks tremendously. Reconciliation is not off the table, but what happened is not reconciliation. It's not anything resembling that. Kriemhild essentially loses all of her agency, so dramatically she dies after this happens.

Like at least Urobuchi would have just killed her.

[joonduuun-blog]

sorcerers v warlock

Alright, here's a dnd hot take I've been thinking about for a while now. Sorry it's a long one but the thought's been cooking for a hot minute and I have a bit to say.

The Sorcerer class and Warlock class should switch flavor. Just the flavor. Keep the mechanics and let the classes be distinct from one another, but fully switch their vibes.

Think about it, what is the lore of a sorcerer? They are specially endowed with a supernatural power that can scarcely be controlled. They are raw, undiluted magic in their being and bursting with power.

So why are they one of, if not the most tactical caster in the game?? Why do they get so many options for finesse and control?? Metamagic gives so many options and so much control that they give the exact opposite impression rather than the flavor that sorcerers are written with. The only thing close is the wild magic subclass but 1/7 subclasses isn't great for a core vibe to the class. It's no wonder people consider sorcerers the better wizard when meta magic straight up makes it.

But you know what might help to give the vibe that they are extremely powerful if still difficult to control? Casting all of their spells at max level. Like a warlock.

"my magic is hard to control. I either do this big or not at all"

"my magic is instinctual. I kind of just, do it" (without extra meta magic conversions and steps)

Plus, sorcerer's inherited blood line and general "specialness" makes them easy chosen ones in possible storylines for your out of the box sorcerers. But I feel like most chosen ones stories focus on what the actual character brings to the story, rather than just boosting the powers they get for being picked. Why not lean into that with invocations? Let your super special little chosen one be more individual by picking out specific special traits for them that aren't just the innate spellcasting they're stuck with. Let them define themselves more with how they choose to use the power and how it can manifest differently. Struggle with having powerful but ultimately unreliable spells that they make up for with their own skills and personality.

But if we just switch flavor for the classes, what does warlock get? Hypothetically, warlocks are now a mainly magic focused class that entered a pact with an otherworldly being for unnatural and strange magics. Magics that behave strangely, due to the power of whatever secrets the patrons have given to their charge (like metamagic). Those who make those deals can now showcase the otherworldly cunning they gain in twisting spells to suit their needs. They can show the dangers of "magic's shortcut" better than a 1d10 cantrip.

"I paid a terrible price for my power and have learned terrible secrets" (like metamagic)

"my magic is not mine own. It is through my patron that I gain strength" (like source points)

So yeah, I think where the classes are now don't actually resonate with what the class does. That dissonance makes the class feel weird and feel like the characters that try to play into it say one thing but act totally different. I recognize that there's a lot of mechanical thought that goes into it but I feel like that mechanical structure might fit better if we just aligned the classes a little differently to let the game help define the feeling of being those classes

[nekohime19]

Heart behind the lie # Magic System

Sooo, I think I never truly explained the magic system I use in HBL? Even if I mention some notions here and there in the story there are a lot of things that I don't breach.

Since there will be talks of magic in the coming chapters, I thought it was cool to share my system. It's a bit of a mess tbh 😅 and this is gonna be a long post but you got everything more or less takled here.

What is magic? 💫

Magic is the energy within oneself. It is not a life force, the body sustain itself. Magic is an energy we don’t use on a daily basis. It flows in the body similarly to blood and, very much like it, resplendish itself naturally once it's used. There are a lot of theories concerning the origins of this energy. The most common and approved states that magic is a waste of energy coming from the soul.

Every living beings has this energy, but the quantity and quality is unique to each individual.

By using this energy, it is possible to alterate the world and oneself. The use of magic is made through spells.

How to use magic? 💫

It is through spells that someone can use their magical energy.

To cast a spell you need three things : magical energy, a method of shaping and a method of casting. It is only be combining those three things that spells can exists.

Method of shaping :

Shaping magic is giving a shape to the raw magical energy existing within you through a type of visualization. There are two common methods of shaping :

🫀Through the heart : it is the use of feelings, the enhancement of a wish through emotions that will give shape to the magical energy.

Example : if you want to cast a destructive fire spell you will think of the feeling of fire. Of heat, burning, ashes, and you will fuel the spell with your own destructive emotions, like rage.

🧠Through the mind : it is the use of images, a clear mental representation of a wish that will give shape to the magical energy.

Example : if you want to cast a time spell you will have to clearly imagine what you want to do in a succession of mental images.

These two methods exist on a spectrum. Strictly speaking, you will always use a bit of your heart and a bit of your mind to cast a spell BUT, usually, depending on yourself and the type of magic you're casting you will lean heavily towards one side.

Some type of magic can have more affinity with one method of shaping. For example, Elemental Magic is more compatible with the heart due to its nature. It does not mean you cannot cast Elemental Magic with your mind but it will be harder.

Both methods has their own flaws and avantages. Shaping through the heart is usually faster and your spell will be stronger, fueled by your emotions, yet it will also be harder to control. Shaping through the mind will allow you a huge degree of precision and control, but it will be slower to cast and, in terms of destructive powers, generally weaker.

Method of casting :

Casting magic is the release of your magical energy after the shaping, once your magic is casted it is called a spell. Now, if you cast your magic without shaping it beforehand then you will only release raw unshaped magical energy, the most it can do is push around the objects around you.

There are two commons methods of casting and an unconventional third only used for the crafting of artifacts :

🗣️ Incantation : it is the the method of imbuing your magic in your voice and releasing it with words (formulas, poems, orders, songs ect...).

🤌Conjuration : it is the method of imbuing your magic in a part of your body and releasing it with a gesture or a motion (hand signs, flick of wrist, flick of tail, snap, blink, blow ect...)

Both those methods has their own flaws and advantages depending on the situation. Conjuration are more often used in battles whereas incantations is prefered when the caster is incapacited (nowadays, incantations tends to be less used and the art of incantations is losing charm).

The last method of casting is used to create artifacts :

🛠️ Incarnation : it is the method of imbuing your magic in an external object to fuel it. For example, to use his lantern Macaque only had to give it raw magical energy, the lantern has seals inside that will transform the energy in the wanted spell.

It is only by combining shaping and casting that a spell can be born.

By analogy, you can consider that casting a spell is like doing an action. Shaping can be then considered thoughts and casting motions. You can only act if you think of an action beforehand, except in particular situations that triggers one of your instincts. But if you only think without doing any motions, then you're doing nothing.

Strictly speaking, this knowledge is enough for someone to cast any spells. Everything below is research on the nature of magic and its phenomenons.

Magical laws 💫

Magic as a whole has natural laws, no matter the type and the caster, that can only be broken by external means. Those laws are natural phenomenon characteristic to magic.

🤝 Magical loyalty : the law that states that magic cannot be controlled by anyone else but its master/caster (for example, when Wukong make a clone, no one but him can control that clone).

❤️ Magical affinity : the law that states that you're naturally more inclined towards some types of magic because of your personality and the state of your magical energy. For example, spells that require a large amount of magical energy will be more easily mastered by people with a large quantity of magical energy (like Wukong). Your personal likes, dislikes and fears will also heavily influence what you can and cannot do. Because shaping magic require your heart and your mind, if you have strong negative emotions towards a type of magic you will not be able to use it (people afraid of fire are unable to cast fire spells because their fear block the shaping).

🖤 Magical corruption/ or harmonization : The more you use a specific type of magic, the more your magical energy will tune with this type. It will become easier to use this specific type, but harder to use any other types. This phenomenon explain why most of the mages in LMK often use one/two types of magic (Red Son mainly use fire and sometimes transportation, Macaque mainly use shadows and sometimes transformation ect...). People who loathe this phenomenon call it corruption, while people who likes it call it harmonization.

💑 Magical compatibility : the law that state that some types of magic are naturally more compatible with others, and vice versa (for example, it is very hard to dual cast a water spell and a fire spell, the two spells naturally negate each other).

All those laws can be broken by external means, but the more powerful a caster is, the harder it is to break the natural laws of his magic.

Organization of Magics 💫

The different sorts of magics are divided in three levels :

1) Type (sources) : origins

2) Sub-type : derivation of a type

3) Sub-use : derivation of a sub-type

For example, Elemental Magic is a type, Fire Magic is a sub-type of Elemental Magic, Light Magic is a sub-use of Fire Magic.

It is commonly agreed that dividing magic more than three times is unnecessary and overcomplicate the understanding of magic.

Magics are commonly seen in two different ways. Those ways are nothing but an attempt at classifying and arranging the vast variety of spells in a common system.

🌳 Magical Tree (scientific name : magical arborescence) : The old-school phylosophy that organize the different sort of magics like a tree in which each type is a branch, each sub-type a sub-branch, each sub-use a twig and each spell a leaf.

This old-fashioned phylosophy was adopted in ancient times. But the more studies on the subject were created, the more scholars noticed that magic was not as clearly divided as they thought. In fact, a lot of spells and sub-uses shared common traits with different types ( For example, the magical tree isolate Shadow Magic from Transportation Magic, despite the shadow portal spell sharing a lot of common traits with Transportation Magic). As such, scholars adopted a new way of seeing magic that allowed for fusions.

🕸️Magical Web (scientific name : magical aranescence) : The modern phylosophy that organize magics as a spiderweb in which types are different webs that can intertwine with each other to create new magics.

A more big outlook of the web formed by all spells and magics mentioned/used in HBL and LMK :

(to make the web more readable, I did not include spells in it, contrary to the tree).

The magical web is nowadays closer to the real nature of magic than the magical tree.

Zoom on LMK/HBL magics and spells 💫

🏞️ Elemental Magic :

Elemental Magic is defined as the control of nature itself.

Shadow Magic is also closely linked to Elemental Magic as a fusion between different types.

In LMK the most known characters using Elemental Magic are : Red Son (fire), Mei (fire) PIF (wind), Macaque (shadows), LBD (ice).

MK and Wukong also uses a specific wind spell called "cloud call" to summon their clouds.

🪵Wood : control of wood

🔥Fire : control of fire

Common Spells :

Fireball - (used by Red Son)

Sub - uses :

🌞 Light

🌬️Wind

Common Spells :

Cloud Call- projection of voice or gestures in the wind to reach the clouds (used by MK, Wukong)

🌎 Earth : control of earth

⚔️Metal : control of metal

🌊 Water : control of water

Sub-uses :

❄️ice

Common Spells :

Frost- ice recovering an environnement (used by LBD)

Spikes- launching of ice spikes (used by LBD)

👥 Transformation Magic :

Transformation Magic is defined as the magic changing one appearances/nature to create something new.

Known characters using it : MK, Wukong, Macaque, Scorpion Queen

There are four known sub-types :

✨Illusions : covering object/person with a layer of magic to gives the illusion of change.

Common spell :

Glamors -illusions on a person (used by both monkeys to hide their scars),

Mirage-illusions on an environnement (used by Scorpion Queen in LMK to cover her castle)

💫 Reformation : bending the shape of an object/person without completely changing its appearances.

Common Spells :

Shrink- shortening the size of an object/person (used by MK and Wukong)

⭐Metamorphosis : changing the appearances of an object/person without changing its nature.

Common Spells :

72 transformations (used by MK, Macaque and Wukong)

Hair clones (used by MK and Wukong)

🌟Transmutation : changing one appearances and nature completely, creating a brand new person/object

Common Spells :

Mecha/Recreation (used by MK and Wukong)

🌃 Shadow Magic :

Shadow Magic is defined as the control of shadows.

Known character using it : Macaque

Common Spells :

Shadow manipulation

Shadow portal

Shadow clone

One aspect of shadow magic that is characteristic to it is the shadow realm.

The shadow realm is another dimension where all existing shadows collide together. You can enter the shadow realm by diving in a shadow or through a shadow portal. Shadows are more or less heavy depending on where they are from. The lightest shadows are from the earthly realm while the heaviest are from outer space.

Of course, the heavier a shadow is, the harder it is to control.

The shadow realm is divided in four level of depth each made with shadows of different weight. The more you dive in the shadow realm, the more the shadows are heavy and the more you will be pressured by their weight.

Sometimes, lingering thoughts can swam in shadows, fragments of minds coming from the shadows' owners. Alone, those fragments cannot influence you. But considering that the shadow realm is a collection of all shadows, the fragments of minds also collide with each other, creating a sort of fragmented, chaotic hive-mind. This hive-mind can corrupt you with parasites thoughts that are not your own. The more you dive in the shadow realm, the more you are corrupted by the hive-mind.

No one came out of sound mind from the Abyssal Waters.

When you jump in a shadow, if you stay on the surface, you are in a safe space called "the poodle" that is not the shadow realm yet. That's why Macaque can stay on the surface of Wukong's shadow, but if he chose to dive in Wukong's shadow, he will enter the shadow realm Abyssal Waters.

👣 Transportation Magic :

Transportation Magic is defined as the control of space.

Known character using it : Tang, Red Son, Macaque

There are two known sub-types :

⭕Portal : creation of a passage to glue two different spaces together, reducing a thousands step to one.

Common spell :

Gate/transportation seal - (used by Red Son)

Shadow portal - (used by Macaque)

🚶Teleportation : the moving of bodies at high speed (used by Tang).

⌚Time Magic :

Time Magic is defined as the control of time.

There are two known sub-types :

🏞️ Zonal time : the control of time over an environnement

Common spells :

Zonal regression- turning back time over a specific zone

Zonal paralysis - the stopping of time over a specific zone

Zonal acceleration- the acceleration of time over a specific zone

👤 Corporal time : the control of time over a body/object

Common Spells :

Corporal regression-turning back time on a body/object

Corporal paralysis-the stopping of time over a body/object

Corporal acceleration-the acceleration of time over a body/object

Sub-use :

🩹 Healing Magic

Common Spells :

Rejuvenation

Resurrection

🧠 Spirit Magic

Spirit Magic is defined as the control of someone's spirit.

Known character using it : Mei (manifestation), LBD (possession)

There are tow sub-types :

Mind : the control over one's mind.

Common Spells :

Telekinesis

Telepathis

Manifestation : a very specific sub-type that enable someone to make their inner-spirit appear (for example, Mei and her spirit dragon).

❄️ LBD Magic

LBD has the most variety of spells in the entire cast of LMK. She use Ice, oblivion, possession and necromancy.

Oblivion : Spell that eradicate one existence from the world's memories.

Possession : Spell that break one's mind to better control it

Necromancy : Spell that break one's soul and creates a living-dead with it

Ice : the control of ice

So here is most of the magic system, I think I talked about mostly everything. Of course, some notions, like necromancy, will be further developed in the story in itself.

Hope it wasn't too tedious, I don't even know if it's understable 😅.

Thanks for reading until there!

Also, I wanted to mention that the word "aranescence" is an invention of mine. I based it on the word arborescence, and used the Latin word aranea (spiders).

[wily-art]

I haven't finished it yet, but I watched some of it, and skimmed through the rest (I will finish though at some point; when/if I have the time), and what I did see of it the "Undertale Insomnia: Something Isn't Right" Trailer looks amazing! Ur art and the looks of the characters and the Blasters is on point and great as always! And ur animation is looking awesome too! I think ur comic already had some cool gifs/small animations, but if not; it is cool to see animations from u now too!

The Paps's (both older and younger) and his Casters and/or the Blasters are looking great in the trailer u released!

And Asgore (I think) and the fallen human kid(s) look great in some of the animation WIPs and/or whatever too!

I hope someday to see some of the other Undertale cast in animation form, or at least some of the other Insomnia important and/or etc. cast members like Sans (could be both older or younger), Gaster - before or after getting goopifed, lol (though, I think he might be in this animation and/or at least the full? one), Frisk, Chara, more of Blasters and/or Casters, and/or Alphys (I have gained a soft spot for ur Alphys). Maybe Asriel and/or Flowey too?

Not mentioning Asgore or the kids here, because I think u might have some stuff/ideas/etc. with them already. And not mentioning Undyne either, even though it would be awesome to see her too, bc I don't think she has been in the comic too much yet?

Ofc, u don't have to do any of this. I know animations, and animatics even, can take a long time! Just seeing the Undertale Insomnia (one of my favorite UT, and maybe just in general, comics/series's!) cast brought to life even more through animation like this, has got me excited! ^^

Last of all; I just wanted to clarify, the animation release is just the trailer, and not full thing, or...?? I just wanted to confirm.

Heya! First off thanks! That little tidbit is just a teaser more than a full trailer. IT's definitely not the completed thing. I didn't want to give a solid release time due to genuinely not knowing how long this all would take (at this point a little over a year- Good god). But I wanted to share at least a little something since this whole project has been so all consuming- that from the outside world's perspective I've been more or less absent. It's kind of hard to be active with other things when a singular thing both eats a bunch of time but can't be shared since it's not done X'D. It's a lot of behind the scenes work and not much to show for it yet.

Other characters will definitely be getting way more time to shine in the comic moving forward since I finally hit a particular turning point. Also regarding animations I have a lot of ideas for the other characters and the fallen kids that all more or less tie into the same world in a "how did we arrive to this point" kind of scenario. But due to how long all of this takes and I can't promise how many of them I will get to. Or at least how quickly because right now I'm moving at a blistering speed of _not very fast_ ✨ That said this one with Papyrus is absolutely being released (hopefully later this year) because if I have only one of these in the system it's gonna be for this guy XD The other one that I absolutely want to do as another animated update for Insomnia involves Chara and Frisk to answer what exactly happened at the end of the last run before this one. I'm hoping that since I've learned a lot (this is my first animated project) that that one will go a lot smoother. An account of figuring out a lot of things I Was doing that made my life INFINITELY HARDER. Hope that answers things.