#fantasy invader

[raxistaicho]

"God's gonna get Edelgard for this!"

Yup, we sure have gone there!

So a while, RandomNameless got an anon ask:

Insane that Sothis can watch Billy slaughter her children and subjugate Fodlan in twu piss, and still say she adores him. The devs were drinking the El Grey that day.

You know it's RN because the stupid nicknames.

So yeah, Anon's just angrily ranting that Sothis doesn't care about her daughter which established a false religion, made people suffer for a millennia, and tried to violate the laws of life and death, which, when Ashera did it in Radiant Dawn, was treated by Caineghis as an utter betrayal of her supposed core attribute of order.

“A blasphemy, you mean! How could the goddess of order violate the most fundamental natural law?”

Stay salty, anon.

RN herself weighs in on it next. I'm gonna let her go on a bit because the actual argument she's making needs to be stated in full.

That's what baffled me in Tru Piss lol, and first route bias etc etc meant Sothis was unsalvageable given how it became painfully obvious, even for someone who didn't complete the other routes, that the goddess Rhea calls "mother" is Sothis herself ! Bear in mind Hresvelg Grey meant Sothis couldn't interact with the cast bar Billy, will never talk to her relatives and will never have any influence on the plot. It's as if Elbert only talk to Mark, while Eliwood is still frantically looking for him, and Mark never tells Eli where his dad is.

So here, RN is misunderstanding the point of Sothis in the broader narrative. Yes, Sothis happens to be Rhea's mother, but "being Rhea's mom" isn't her role in the story. RN, because she's a huge fan of the Nabateans, wants the story to be more about the Nabateans, but it really isn't.

See, there's a reason the Agarthans are dispatched in one chapter in all routes and are never the final bosses or the true villains of the story: the story isn't about them. They're important to its background, but they're important for what they represent and what they do, not who they are. The Nabateans are the same.

Ultimately, the story of Three Houses is a tale of the conflicts between mortals and the divine, and the differing ideologies espoused by those who represent those sides. Edelgard firmly represents the will of mortal humans. Rhea, her antithesis, represents the desire of the divine to watch over mortals. Rhea, unlike her species is important because she is Edelgard's opposite. Thales, who might have been Rhea's opposite, is not as important because he isn't: Edelgard already serves that role. Dimitri leans more toward the necessity of the divine in human affairs, while Claude leans more toward the self-governance of humans while using the divine when necessary. There's a reason Claude sides with the Empire when he must, and the church only when he can control it for the purposes of promoting humanism.

Byleth is smack in the middle, fitting their dual-nature as both human and god, but they must choose a side in the end. In CF, they fully embrace the human, while in SS they fully embrace the god. VW and AM are something more in the middle.

Sothis is similar in a way, as a being who was once a god, died, came back as something less than a god, and chooses to sacrifice her powers to Byleth, thus remaining something less than a god. Sothis willingly chooses not to resume her role as the goddess (in Zahras when she decides to give her powers to Byleth rather than taking Byleth's body as her own in order to escape), and so her role in the story is not to be the goddess or Rhea's mother, but to be Byleth's guide, setting them at the start of their path and then departing so they might make the rest of the way.

But Rhea BaD BaD BaD,

And now we dip into the anti-Rhea conspiracy theory...

so her mother cannot take over Billy (something she canonically does in Nopes) to save her,

Here's another fact RN can't accept - and she calls Sothis a horrible mother for it - but Sothis doesn't approve of Rhea. Furthermore, Rhea's downfall in CF is almost entirely of her own making. She set the groundwork for Fodlan's oppressive social system, she refuses to allow it to be reformed, and she never questions why anyone would disagree with her. Because, for Rhea, reforming the church and Fodlan means resurrecting Sothis and submitting Fodlan to her divine rule, which becomes impossible without her church (it's already impossible because Sothis knows her time as the goddess is over and she's respecting the laws of life and death, but still).

and to erase Supreme Leader who hilariously tells everyone she doesn't exist.

It's not even that "hilarious". Edelgard's right in that the goddess worshipped by the Church of Seiros no longer exists: she's dead, and when she had the chance to come back, she chose not to. The Church of Seiros might worship a being with the same name as the gremlin in Byleth's head, but Sothis the head-gremlin and Sothis the goddess are a whole life apart from one another, and the Sothis we know chooses to remain the former.

But now we get to the real meat of this post.

Fantasy Invader.

Oh yeah!

I think this is a translation issue as Japanese Sothis doesn't say that "the stone in your chest is gone," she says "the stone in your chest...shattered."

Teaspoon Translations has it as "crumbled away" and has no ellipse, but who am I to question Fantasy Invader trying to make things look as sad as possible?

It broke, which would mean something considering it's supposedly her heart.

We bwoke Sothis's heart by killing poor baby Whea T_T

What's more, the game changed Byleth's Nirvana class to Enlightened One, and part of achieving Nirvana is purging oneself of attachments that might cloud your judgement.

But only if it's Edelgard. If it's Dimitri or Rhea, attach yourself as hard as possible in the hope they come around.

Also, in the context of Three Houses, detachment is a bad thing. Byleth grows out of being the Ashen Demon through attachment to others. Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude become their best selves when they open up and allow others in. Attachment is a good thing in Three Houses.

Ergo, by playing Safflower (the route being named after a type of thistle, a path of thorns if you will)

Ah, yes, I remember that one. It wasn't very good.

the player breaks Sothis's heart,

Oh he actually just said, "you break her heart :("

the thing that holds her essence,

No, because by then Byleth held her essence. Not the crude, physical matter Rhea shoved into their chest.

You'd think the person who goes all-in on religious symbolism would value the eternal soul over the ephemeral body.

causing it to seemingly disappear,

Except it doesn't? Her essence, I mean, not the Crest Stone. That's what the S support is for.

But sadly, Fantasy Invader has a way to explain that away.

It's a really bad way, but a bad way is still a way!

yet she leaves behind the Sothis you knew.

I'm sorry, what. Nothing indicates the Sothis from her S support is some... bizarre cast-off shadow of her.

Sothis, the real Sothis, abandons Byleth at the end of Safflower, leaving behind any attachment she once held as Byleth walked down the path of the Beast as per Dimitri's comment.

I'm sorry, what. Is it too much to ask that FI provide some evidence for this claim? I mean actual evidence, not his headcanon derived from his poor attempts at analyzing Buddhist symbolism.

Wouldn't leaving behind a part of herself to remain with Byleth go against this whole no attachments thing? That's a pretty big attachment! And if Sothis rejected Byleth, why would she do that? She can't just make a clean break from Byleth, she has to literally detach the parts of her... soul... personality, that care for them? Wouldn't that make her an incomplete being? It was a bad thing in the Tellius games when Ashunera split her soul into parts!

Combine this with the implications Sothis can come back if she recreates her body,

You know, that thing she demonstrates no ability to do! If Sothis could just make herself another meat puppet to incarnate into, Rhea wouldn't have had to spend a millennia trying and failing to do that for her.

and why Nemesis needed to kill her when she was asleep,

Because she would have defended herself and killed him if she wasn't? He didn't have a Relic or a Crest back then, he was just a bandit trying to kill the most powerful Nabatean in the world.

What, is FI trying to imply Sothis's soul just got stuck asleep because she died asleep and that's why she never bothered to come back the first time she died?

and you get an idea what's going to happen when that occurs as well as another piece of evidence Edelgard is an Agarthan in all but name.

And there we go, "God's gonna get Edelgard for this!" Sothis will totally self-restore herself at some unknown period of time in the future, kill Bad Red Lady, and make everything right.

Well if that's the case, why do you bother getting upset at anything Byleth does, FI? Just be like those Christians who are sure Jesus is coming back any day now and he'll fix everything on Earth when he does.

So yeah, yet more salty desperate self-assurance that Edelgard's totally gonna lose the minute the credits start, trust me bro.

I mean seriously, if her detractors are so certain she'll fail, why bother getting upset when she wins? It really makes you think.

[dinolich]

HELLAWEEN: Spellbent— the sequel to my debut graphic novel is AVAILABLE NOW!!! Run to your favorite shop for books 1+2!

Join Gwen and her friends as they face new worlds, new monsters, new curses and big Halloween plans! “With such an inventive world and fun cast of characters all I want is MORE. I could read about this hellish little gang and their adventures forever.” —Dana Terrace, creator and executive producer of The Owl House

GET YOURS

[g0nefischin]

MERSKELES PART 3!

Definitely not mermay anymore but here's the last 3 sirens I wanted to do

and some explanation on why I choose what I did under the cut

(little warning for parasites on fresh's section)

So from left to right

Dream is a golden colored koi carp fish, I picked it because they are very pretty and they represent a lot of positive things like luck and fortune, some people even wish on them to make their dreams come true :> I also thought of the legend where a golden koi fish climbs a large waterfall to turn into a dragon, so they have some mythical legends as well. In terms of the actual fish, Koi are very sociable and sturdy, they also live for quite awhile.

Nightmare is a coelacanth, he should probably be an octopus considering he has tentacles, but I really wanted to make him a coelacanth because I think they are neat. Coelacanth's are very old with the latest fossils being over 400 million years old, they were thought to be extinct until one was found in 1938, grandpa nightmare. They are also nocturnal, sleeping in caves during the day, they live deep in the ocean as well. 

Fresh is actually a two in one, he is a rainbow parrotfish with a tongue-eating louse in his mouth. Out of alI the bright fish I did a parrotfish because I really like their gradients, and I think the magenta fins fit his jacket. He's a parasite inside of a Sans body, so I picked a fish parasite to go along with the fish half of his body. I chose the tongue-eating louse, a type of parasite that replaces a fish's tongue. It first severs the blood vessels to the tongue and once it falls off takes its place. feeding on nutrients and acting as a new tongue for the rest of the fish's life, very cool and terrifying.

[domwitch]

I need to be a vicious evil warlord and he's my precious spoils of war that I scantily dress and drape over my lap so I can grope him easily during my council meetings >:)

[luckthebard]

Genuinely confused as to how so much of the fandom watched the first 2 CR campaigns and Calamity and yet still ended up in a “Ludinus is right let’s kill all the gods” position. Like it’s baffling to me how much content/context people have just decided to completely forget? We had 2 full campaigns of very positive interactions with the gods and the moment there’s some hypothetical and interesting musing and speculation about their roles in the world from a more disconnected place we’re just throwing that out the window?*

Tbh the number of people who watched episode 4 of Calamity and still saw Asmodeus as sympathetic or having a legitimate point is unsettling to me, but while that’s a related issue it’s not quite the same conversation.

But like legitimately how did we so quickly make a hard turn from “The Stormlord teaches his barbarians to use the power of friendship, he’s a funny kindergarten teacher” memes to…this.

*(This is not, btw a comment on the characters having philosophical debates in-world because I think those are interesting and on-theme for the campaign and are also nearly always concluding with “our personal relationship to individual gods and feelings about them are irrelevant actually, the people trying to destroy them are doing wider harm and are in the wrong and must be stopped.” I’m actually loving the engagement with this by the characters in-universe but the fandom is exhausting me.)

[fellamarsh]

another thing i've been trying to do recently is read more self-published stuff. "but fell," you say, "you're a self-published author. surely you've been reading self-published stuff all along" and then i laugh for so long in response we both become uncomfortable.

see, the fear (which has for a long time been killing my mind) that i'll read other self-published stuff and find out that it's so much better than mine that i might as well stop writing forever kept me from doing that basically ever. i have a hard time not unfavorably comparing my work to others and had convinced myself i was being smart by withholding an avenue of de-motivation (reader: i was not being smart). it also doesn't help that i'm pretty low income and have a hard time spending money on books i haven't already read, and that self-published stuff isn't always available at the library---but really a lot of it was just me being a coward. which i'm working on. i could talk about how this particular cowardice is Very Silly, but i think enough has been said about it on writeblr and in the Writing Space in general that i don't feel the need to (though i will if anyone wants me to).

instead, i wanna talk about the self-published things i have read in the past few months and ask about the self-published things you love!

so: what happened was i got real sick, and while i was real sick i (naturally) read over 200,000 words of ace attorney fan fiction in the span of a few days. eventually i got bored of it (and also maybe annoyed at how people were characterizing some of my guys), but i still wanted to read something gay and romantic and nice, something i knew was gonna end happily, which isn't my typical fare.

now you may be saying (having gotten over all the uncomfortable laughter from earlier) "fell, you write gay romance. what do you mean that's not your typical fare?" listen. until a couple months ago i hadn't read a cut and dry romance novel since before i finished college. for context: i graduated in 2015. i know it doesn't make sense. i'm a guy who doesn't make sense.

but in this case it worked to my advantage. not the not making sense thing, but the not having read Published Romance in 1000 years thing. I didn't know where to start. I was very skeptical of everything the library had Available Now in the Gay Fantasy Romance category. what if it was all bad and also not good?

and then i scrolled past the familiar cover of our very own @ashen-crest's A Rival Most Vial.

now this was comfortable territory! this was a novel by a very nice writeblr person whose posts i enjoy! i already loosely knew the plot, i was familiar with the characters, i knew the names of things like rosemond street and the griffin's claw and that ambrose had blue hair and that at the end of it all there would definitely be Boyfriends. i didn't have to worry that this would be bad! i only had to worry that it would be really good!

but i wasn't worried about that, because i was officially Not Writing at the time, and because why the hell hadn't i read this book yet Ash literally emailed me some very kind words last year when my cat died??

Y'all, I devoured ARMV. If you haven't read it yet---especially if cozy fantasy is more your thing than it is mine---you should check it out Immediately. It was fun! It was heartwarming! It was sweet and earnest and confident! I was delighted to find it was occasionally hot! Ambrose and Eli snuggled up into my sick exhausted heart and found a permanent little place there. (Especially Ambrose. I have such a thing for Stiff Guys who Kind of Suck for Tragic Backstory Reasons and are So So Lonely They Don't Even Realize It. gawd)

(And a very small part of my brain spent the whole time wondering why I had been so afraid to really engage with the work my community is doing. The community that I'm in. The one I'm a part of. Why?! Maybe more on that later.)

But from there the curse was broken! I immediately devoured @stjohnstarling's What Manner of Man in a similar sort of frenzy (and hooooly shit guys am I excited for the expanded, finalized version to come out at the end of next month!) and started digging into @lurinatftbn's The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere (which I can already tell is going to be an All Time Favorite).

And now I want to ask you what your favorite self-published books are so that I can read them, too, but I think I will in another post that doesn't dedicate so much space to talking about my various and sundry Issues and isn't Terminally Long

[sewbro]

a zine i made in a weekend to have something cheaper to sell at my zine table

[skys-trash-bin]

i made seventh heaven in terraria

[spinattack]

Hi hi! Sorry to bring up uni stuff here, but I’d super appreciate if anyone who plays Final Fantasy XIV filled out this research survey for my Master’s thesis! It’s about play-avatar relationships and how morality factors into that -- no pressure, obviously. It's mostly questions about you and your Warrior of Light (using Disagree-Agree scales), so it should be totally doable as long as you've played the game a bit!

There's plenty more logistics info in the link itself, but feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Reblogs and stuff would also be great since I need around 200 respondents :')

[commanderfreddy]

people are discoursing about the laios and shiro fight bc that was always going to happen but i do hope that wave crests quickly and we can all come to see it as what it is: literally one of the best written fights between two people who are both entirely justified in their actions and acting without any malice or cruelty of all time

[raxistaicho]

Fantasy Invader forgets whose paralogue is whose.

I couldn't help but bat out a quick post after I saw a truly incredible argument from Fantasy Invader.

I think there's one big, BIG indicator of how siding with Edelgard goes against Byleth's power. Their paralogue. They can't have their paralogue in the game if they side with Edelgard against Rhea.

He's obviously discussing Eternal Guardian, one of the few paralogues you lose access to by going into Crimson Flower rather than Silver Snow.

Eternal Guardian is not Byleth's paralogue, Fantasy Invader.

It's Rhea's. You have to gain support with Rhea to get it. You're invited to it indirectly by Rhea. It adds to the mystery of who Rhea is. If Byleth has a paralogue at all, it's Tales of the Red Canyon, which is about Byleth indirectly through Sothis.

And consider that said paralogue is unlocked through having a support level with Rhea, something the player needs to work at completely at their own direction

Yeah, kinda like how you have to build support level with Edelgard and work completely at your own direction to get into Crimson Flower :)

(I didn't even realize Rhea had supports until late White Clouds in my first playthrough, when the support had already locked),

Yeah, Rhea's supports are kinda pointless. Getting anything but C usually involves deluging her in gifts, though it got easier after she was given lost items and the option to have tea with her via DLC. I think it's very hard to get her C support purely though dialogue options. Now I'm interested in giving that a test...

and as a result the player is given a reward for it later on (a shield that has a constant regenerative effect).

Yes, because that's the true value of the Shield of Seiros. Not the small insignificant part where it halves incoming monster damage, which is very handy against the Immaculate One and the Hegemon Husk.

Christ, he's as ignorant on gameplay as he is on lore, incredible.

Side with Edelgard, however, Rhea takes that for herself to fight you.

I tried to steal it one time. You can't. T_T Ditto for the Ochain Shield.

Paralogues are tied to the characters, and Byleth's is one of three Black Eagle ones we lose when siding with the Empire.

How on earth would Eternal Guardian develop Byleth's character? It's not about Byleth!

Caspar's shows he's still pissed at the Death Knight for what he did during White Clouds, highlighting his sense of justice,

No it's not, The Face Beneath is mostly about Mercedes and Emile. Their relationship takes up most of the focus in both the introduction and closing cutscenes, and Caspar's only part is to protect her and criticize him for not being a good brother.

while Ferdinand's has him learn his father, someone he wanted to bring to justice himself, was framed for the actions of Arundel/Thales

Framed specifically for the destruction of Hrym territory. Edelcrits try to be slippery with this one and say Lysithea is saying he was innocent of all the things, but that's not what she says:

Are you aware of how Duke Aegir was ruling the Hrym territory? He imposed harsh taxes upon the people—much harsher than on his own—making their lives very challenging. People fled their homes in droves to the neighboring Ordelia territory. But they were sent back from where they came. The Empire was occupying Ordelia territory as well, as it turned out. Issues were further complicated when Duke Aegir fell from power. Aegir was dismissed from his position, only to be replaced by Lord Arundel.

Also, that's interesting, Duke Aegir was made governor of Hrym territory, which neighbored Ordelia, during the Imperial occupation of Ordelia territory. It's pretty easy to infer then that Aegir might have also been governor over Ordelia as well. Just a thought to nibble on.

Anyways, on to more of Lysithea's talk:

Correct. And [Arundel] imposed even heavier taxes on the people, squeezing them painfully dry. The people were conscripted for duty. Any who opposed were killed on the spot. Lord Arundel did this in the name of Duke Aegir. ... Your father was by no means a great ruler. But it was Lord Arundel who stoked the fury of the people and directed that fury at your father. Duke Aegir is not perfect, but he's not the villain in this.

"This" being the heavy taxes, conscription, and murders.

which also creates the implication for the player that Aegir was simply being blamed for the experiments (coupled with the fact Hubert reveals in Flower Ionius was Arundel's puppet) and not the monster Edelgard made him out to be.

Lysithea's speech implies nothing of the sort aside from the fact that Arundel used and discarded Aegir, like he does everyone.

And that's on top of the game showing the unrest in the Empire over Edelgard starving her people to fight in a war they don't support.

No, the unrest in Hrym was over Arundel's misrule. Amazing, Fantasy Invader's apparently watched that scene, but only took from it the points that he thought helped him.

Not at all a surprise, given who we're talking about.

Byleth's shows that the relationship between Byleth and Rhea is a key part of their character, hence why they're always worried about her in Snow, Wind and Moon. Choosing the options to side with Edelgard, framed by the game as "changing the story," goes against Byleth's story arc.

...Only if you develop said relationship. If they aren't at C support then it's skipped entirely. It's not integral to the game and you admitted yourself it's so missable that you couldn't unlock it yourself! Compare this to Edelgard's C support where you'd have to be trying to miss it.

Phew, it's not often that FI graces us with new theories, but when he does they're often amazing in all the wrong ways.

[kazeofthemagun]

[Felt like coloring the recent sketch and I am quite happy with how it looks.]

[Will I ever stop drawing this man? Probably not. He is a permanent part of my psyche.]

[texasthrillbilly]

Love - what is it? Can you eat it?

[kuulpenguin]

Close up shots of my fandom mural! :)

[spider-fingerz]

If you see this and you post bout:

Splatoon

Super Mario bros

Super smash bros

Nostalgia and retro stuff

Hazbin hotel and helluva boss

Brandon rogers

Invader zim

Yolo crystal fantasy/silver destiny

Smiling friends

The owl house

Inside job (the Netflix series)

Cats

Happy tree friends

Fish hooks (the disney series)

Bojack horseman

Metal family

Like this post and I'll PROBABLY follow you. I need moar blogs to follow, and these are some of my favorite things

[scarlett-psychopath]

Pixel portraits from oldest to newest (probably). Best ones are Bayo and Artist. Forgive me, her name eludes me rn it's been months since I've played. Not even real pixel art, it's just a filter.