#god i was dreading writing this one. so much lore

[one-of-many-journeys]

Day 61 (2/2)

Zero Dawn Facility

Herres began with a revelation: nothing could save the world from the Faro plague. He went on to detail the projected rapid explosion of their population as they continued to self-replicate, consuming every living thing on the planet and degrading conditions until the air was poison and the lands uninhabitable. There was no hiding from the swarm; they would leave a barren earth behind them and at the first sign of returning life, they would wake from slumber and fuel themselves with whatever they could find. It would take decades to generate the swarm's deactivation codes, but the world had barely more than a year.

Operation Enduring Victory was a lie from the very beginning. There was no hope and there never had been. From the moment Elisabet reviewed Faro's data in Maker's End, she must have known. That explains why the War Chiefs at US Robot Command were so horrified with the idea of Enduring Victory. All they were doing—all those people standing between the swarm and the next city, fed false hope—was buying time for project Zero Dawn.

Then he revealed Elisabet's image, a small glimmer of hope. She was to explain the true purpose of the project in the next theatre. It didn't make any sense��if none of the Old Ones survived the swarm, then how did life continue?

I was right about the Shadow Carja. It seemed that the vents opening gave them other routes down. The kestrels were ignorant of the ruin's true nature, but I knew that once the Eclipse caught wind of the breach, they were certain to start salvaging data for Hades. I couldn't let them find Zero Dawn's secrets before I did.

I took a few of the kestrels out undetected before picking up one of their Firespitters and dispatching the rest.

The rooms were full of recorded interviews with various Zero Dawn 'candidates'. They were scholars, all from disparate fields of expertise. Experts in art and history, in environmental conservation, in robotics and engineering and artificial intelligence. There was a particularly colourful character named Travis Tate who I gathered was some sort of criminal. All of them were requested by Elisabet herself, and all of them had very different reactions to learning that all hope was lost. Anger, resignation, grief, confusion. Many questioned whether the swarm was truly unstoppable, who was culpable (a man named Tom Paech was out for Faro's blood), and why they of all people were chosen for the project.

They were all skeptical about what Elisabet could possibly have come up with to save a doomed world. One named Ron Felder latched onto the idea of a vehicle to take people away from Earth, a 'generation ship'. I never suspected that such a voyage was possible, though Ron didn't seem to think so either, at least that it could save only a handful of people if successful given the resources involved. One of the candidates was even a Faro employee himself, a lead developer of the Chariot line's self-replication procedures. He was overcome with guilt, eager to see his work quashed by some miracle of science.

In the next room, Elisabet's presentation began. She confirmed Herres' assessment of the situation, then expounded her solution.

A seed, she called it, from which new life could grow on a dead world: Gaia. An AI—a true AI, she said—engineered to deactivate the Faro robots and grow life on Earth anew. The central intelligence was joined by nine subordinate functions, not AIs in themselves but still complex software systems, each serving a different purpose. It was as their names were revealed in the presentation that some of my greatest questions were answered.

Hephaestus, and Hades. Both of them were part of Gaia, her subordinate functions. But if they were once part of the system, how did Hades end up in the body of a Horus leading a Carja cult, and how did Hephaestus end up scattered across Cauldrons and infecting Cyan?

Only a few of the functions were mentioned: Hephaestus was meant to build the machines of the wilds, Aether to purify the air, Poseidon the water, and Minerva generated the codes that deactivated the swarm decades after the Old Ones fell—and its tower pictured looked just like the Spire. Artemis spawned animals, many of the holographic silhouettes familiar to me from the wilds, and Eleuthia...it spawned human beings in 'Cradle Facilities'. The presentation didn't explain how.

One function stood out to me: Apollo. It was meant to be a repository of all human knowledge that the children of the Cradle Facilities would learn from. The picture showed a Focus used to channel this knowledge, but what happened to it all? Could it still be intact somewhere? Whatever happened, that knowledge never made it to the people of the tribes, and Elisabet's hope that the people of the future wouldn't repeat the mistakes of the Old Ones was dashed.

Elisabet ended her presentation by imploring the candidates to join the project and help Gaia achieve a rejuvenated earth, and I can't deny her words were rousing. It was a beautiful dream, daringly ambitious, perhaps even close to impossible given what little I know about Old World technology. At the very least, creating a 'true' AI was strictly forbidden by all corporations, but at the end of everything, what did those regulations matter? What better to combat a machine of destruction than a machine of creation, a true peacekeeper?

Moving on, I came to another holding area. All candidates who experienced the presentations were given three choices to decide their fate. First, to comply and participate in the project, working with their assigned team to build Gaia and her subordinate functions. If they refused to comply, they would be detained indefinitely, without a chance to reconsider after two days' time. Given they knew the truth about Operation Enduring Victory, they could not be allowed to leave and spread that information. It seemed cruel, but I can understand the need for strict secrecy. If people found out that there was no hope for humanity as they knew it, they would be likely to throw down their arms and try to end their lives as peacefully as possible, instead of in pain and fear in resistance against the swarm.

The third option was medical euthanasia; to die painlessly, alone, holding this secret forever. I saw the room where it happened. One bed, cold metal, cold lights striping the walls.

The interviews recorded showed all three reactions. Some were eager to contribute, willing to give all they could for a slim chance to save the future. The Faro employee, for instance, was thankful for a chance to undo his mistakes. Others were more skeptical but still willing to try, while others found the idea ridiculous. Ron Felder thought it even more far-fetched than space flight, calling the whole thing nothing more than a fantasy with a crazy hologram display to match. I gathered he was detained.

Perhaps the most interesting reaction was that of Travis Tate. He called the whole notion of trying to re-engineer the natural world unnatural, even abominable. Another reason that they couldn't let the secret out was that others would agree with him. I suppose I can see his point, but surely it was worth trying. Benefit of hindsight, I guess. Having no conception of what the natural world once was, it's beautiful to me. Maybe to them it would feel wrong, artificial.

More kestrels further on, all touting Firespitters. Once one was down the rest were easy prey.

Unfortunately I was right about the Eclipse. The deeper reaches of the ruin were already crawling with them. I was hoping to sneak around and climb the elevator shaft to Elisabet's office above, where the most classified data was sure to be kept, but the entrance was sealed. There was no way I could search for other exits and go undetected. I tried to take out the Eclipse unseen, but was spotted and they called for reinforcements, running in from neighboring chambers and rappelling from the upper level. It was a tough scrap, but there was plenty of cover. I lost them easily in the dark and was able to sneak around. The real problem was that now they knew I was here.

While exploring I came across the workstation for the Hephaestus function. There was a holographic recording of its director, Margo Shen, an ex-colleague of Elisabet at FAS before they both left the company. She explained that their job wasn't to design machines, but to program Gaia to use the tools and data contained within Hephaestus to design machines of her own. Hephaestus was clearly never meant to be intelligent, to feel emotions of its own—so what happened to it?

Sylens suggested it might have gone 'rogue' like the swarm and stopped answering orders. Maybe Gaia is out there, unable to communicate with the tribes or get Hephaestus and Hades back under control. If Hephaestus struck out on its own when the Derangement began, when did Hades escape—the same time?

I recognised some of the mechanical structures and holographic designs I found from Cauldrons, iterated on and grown wild. Everything was beginning to make sense.

Further on I found a similar recording of the leader of Apollo, Samina Ebadji. She spoke of collating, organising, and storing records of human knowledge across millions of different topics, and building a learning interface where the people of the future could gain that knowledge through a game-like process. Such an important station, authoring what would shape the future of human civilisation—choosing what would be remembered and what should lay forgotten. From the datapoints I discovered, the project was running on schedule and they were planning to store the data in 'synthetic DNA'. If Samina's project didn't fail, then what happened to it?

More Eclipse in the next chamber, which I dispatched undetected. I found a recording from General Herres—some sort of testimonial, an apology for the lies and injustices of Operation Enduring Victory. I can't imagine the guilt, but it was the right thing to do. It has to be, or nothing would have survived. The swarm would have swallowed this facility long before Gaia's completion.

In more datapoints I found, Margo and the other function leaders were named 'Alpha candidates'. Back in All-Mother mountain, when the door denied me, it said that the Alpha registry was corrupted. Was it trying to match my identity to the list of Alpha candidates on the project? If that piece of data was part of all Zero Dawn's associated facilities, I suspected I could find it here as well.

Next, I entered Hades' old domain and listened to an introduction by Travis Tate, the eccentric 'hacker'. From what I could gather, his crimes consisted of exposing the dark secrets of corporations and orchestrating sort of technological pranks on a global scale. Elisabet trusted him enough to put him in charge of the Hades function, but judging by what's happening now his work left something to be desired.

Hades was Gaia's extinction function. 'Apocalypse on speed dial', Travis called it, the idea being that Gaia was unlikely to engineer a perfect Earth-like biosphere on the first go. It was a delicate balance to recreate, and in the event of firestorms and poison skies irrevocably locked in a cycle of chaos, Hades was built to temporarily take control of the system away from Gaia and undo terraforming operations, returning Earth to the barren rock it was when the swarm subsided so Gaia could begin again. One of the datapoints spoke of a facility where Gaia and Hades were tested together, where Travis tried to engineer the correct feedback and reward behaviour to ensure the entities passed control back and forth as desired. It seems that of all the subordinate functions, Hades was the most intelligent, as it needed to be able to manipulate the other functions in event of a catastrophe. Though, again, it was never intended to possess emotional responses.

But Gaia succeeded long ago, why would Hades wake now? Did it try to take control, causing Gaia to expel it from the larger system? If it no longer had Gaia's tools and functions available to it, it seems logical that its next best course to undo Gaia's work would be to wake the Faro bots themselves to resume their gruesome conquest. Thanks for that, Travis.

Next on my journey to Elisabet's office, I passed Eleuthia's headquarters and listened to an address from its leader, Patrick Brochard-Klein. He spoke of perfecting the technology to create humans inside machines, and to build 'servitors', robotic guardians resembling humans themselves, who would care for the new generations inside their Cradles. He stressed that this was a project of preservation, not 'genetic engineering', and spoke of regulations around...cloning, which he refused to transgress. Clone, as in copy.

There were many 'ectogenic chambers' inside the workshop—the machines from which new humans were spawned. The logs I found said they were donated by Far Zenith, whose conception of the technology was far ahead of public scientific records. I've come across a few datapoints mentioning the organisation before, sometimes called simply 'FZ'. They were a mysterious group of billionaires (a word for the wealthiest and most powerful of the Old Ones), their identities unknown to all outside the group. They had their own 'think tanks' and scientists developing technology in secret, much like a corporation, or a co-merging of many corporations, using the exhaustive profits of them all. I know they bought a space station called the Odyssey, though when I first read this I didn't understand what it meant. From Ron Felder's tirade, I knew then. A structure built to travel away from this world, through the stars. With the most advanced technology and near-infinite resources available, could they have succeeded?

Thoughts gathered in the back of my mind that I wished to ignore. It was clear to me that All-Mother mountain must have been one of these Cradle facilities, given the ruin inside and the bunker door, answerable to Elisabet. Every Nora myth pointed to this too: the life-giving goddess within, and its battle against the Metal Devil. Perhaps some knowledge of the Old Ones did survive and was imparted to the first new people of the earth. And of course...I came from that mountain. I was found just outside its doors, alone. I suppose some of the first people might have remained behind the door. Perhaps there was a schism long ago, or they're protecting the Apollo archive inside. Maybe helping Gaia to operate. But why wouldn't they try to communicate with the world outside?

Finally, I made it to Elisabet's workshop. There were a number of preserved recordings inside. The first, an argument between Elisabet and Ted. I'd hazard a guess that this happened often. To think that he still had the gall to argue with her after everything he did...I suppose she had to put up with it considering he was funding the operation.

Faro was disputing Elisabet's assertion that Gaia had to have complex emotional capabilities to properly rebuild and safeguard the world. She needed 'skin in the game', Elisabet said—I suppose if she felt no emotional connection to life, human or otherwise, she'd have no incentive to put their needs first, or the means to conceptualise their needs accurately to begin with. Intelligence and emotion go hand in hand, as Cyan explained.

Faro was wary of 'repeating past mistakes'. I'm don't think he was only talking about the swarm, because they had no emotional capacity themselves, only strategic intelligence. He wanted a kill switch, which I gathered ended up being Hades—a way to wrest control from a version of Gaia gone wrong. Gaia herself chimed in and agreed with him, understanding her own volatility. Her voice was beautiful: smooth and deep and full of care. Maybe it was only a clever trick of programming in those early days, but she sounded like she had developed emotions already. Her projection didn't match the figure I saw in Elisabet's presentation though. She was just a golden ball of liquid light.

More recordings, the first of Elisabet and Gaia discussing her emotional responses to mass extinction events of the ancient past. It seemed her development was going well, but it was cut short. In the final recording, Elisabet was panicked, erratic, irritable. She was trying to lock everything down and evacuate the facility before the swarm hit, evidently ahead of projected schedule. Gaia comforted her, and for the first time I witnessed a moment of weakness in Elisabet. She lamented all the lives lost in Enduring Victory—all those deaths, those lies, would be for nothing if she couldn't complete Gaia in time.

In Elisabet's office, along with plenty more data to sift through, I found just what I was looking for: an intact copy of the Alpha registry. I made the mistake of voicing my wish to meet my mother inside All-Mother mountain's Cradle, which Sylens shut down with derision. He said there would be no people behind that door, only machines. I refused to believe it.

As I was downloading a copy to my Focus, more Eclipse soldiers began to descend from above. I couldn't leave until the transfer was complete, and just as it did I went to make my escape, but behind the glass was Helis. We locked eyes for the first time since the Proving. Before I could react, he threw a bomb and detonated it in front of the glass, blasting it inward and knocking me back against the desk.

I only fell unconscious for a few moments, but it was enough for Helis to land at my side, glare smiling with those pale, manic eyes, and kick me back into the darkness.

[felassan]

EuroGamer: 'BioWare knew the deepest secrets of Dragon Age lore 20 years ago, and locked it away in an uber-plot doc'

Original creator David Gaider on how "some of the big mysteries are being solved".

Rest of post under a cut due to length and possible spoilers.

"As I write about the secrets hidden in Dragon Age's mysterious Fade, and as I uncover some of them playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, one question keeps rising up in my mind. How much did BioWare know about future events when first developing the series more than 20 years ago? That's a long time, and back then BioWare didn't know there would be a second game, which is why Dragon Age: Origins has an elaborate and far-reaching epilogue. Why lay so much lore-track ahead of yourself if you don't think you'll ever get there? But look more closely at Origins and there are big clues suggesting BioWare did know about future Dragon Age events. There are obvious signs in the original game, such as establishing recurring themes like Old Gods and the Blight and Archdemons. But there's also Flemeth, Morrigan's witchy mother, who's intimately linked to events in the series now - more specifically: intimately linked to Solas. Does her existence mean Solas was known about back then too? There's only one person I can think of to answer this and it's David Gaider, the original creator of Dragon Age's world and lore. We've talked before, once in a podcast and once for a piece on the magic of fantasy maps, where we discussed the creation of Dragon Age's world. And much to my surprise, when I ask him what he and the BioWare team knew back then, he says they knew it all. "By the time we released Dragon Age: Origins, we were basically sure that it was one and done, but there was, back when we made the world, an overarching plan," he says. "The way I created the world was to seed plots in various parts of the world that could be part of a game, a single game, and then there was the overall uber-plot, which I didn't know for certain that we would ever get to but I had an understanding of how it all worked together. "A lot of that was in my head until we were starting Inquisition and the writers got a little bit impatient with my memory or lack thereof, so they pinned me down and dragged the uber-plot out of me. I'd talked about it, I'd hinted at it, but never really spelled out how it all connected, so they dragged it out of me, we put it into a master lore doc, the secret lore, which we had to hide from most of the team.""

"This uber-plot document was only viewable on a need-to-know basis, he says, and only around 20 people on the team had access to it - other senior writers mostly. And even though Gaider left the Dragon Age team after Inquisition, and then eight years ago BioWare altogether, meaning he didn't work on The Veilguard at all, he believes - by looking at the events in the new game - his uber-plot lore "has more or less held up". That's impressive. What's even more impressive, or exciting, is that back then he also envisaged a potential end state for the entire Dragon Age series - a point at which it would make no sense for the series to carry on. "I always had this dream of where it would all end, the very last plot," he says, "which I won't say because who knows, we could still end up there. But the idea that this uber-plot was this sort of biggest, finite... That the final thing you could do in this world that would break it was there as a 'maybe we would get to do that one day'... There was just the idea of certain big, world-shaking things that were seeded in that arc, some of which have already come to pass, like the return of Fen'Harel." You've read that correctly: the idea to have Fen'Harel, also known as the Dread Wolf, reappear, was seeded all the way back then, way before Inquisition - the game in which he does actually reappear. But the concept for Solas, as a character who was Fen'Harel in disguise, was a newer idea. "That spawned from a conversation I had with Patrick [Weekes] and a number of other writers," Gaider says, "as an idea of 'what if you had a villain that spent an entire game where he's actually in the party and you get to know him?' Now, the god version and his larger role in the plot, yes that was known, but not that he would be presented as a character named Solas." Fen'Harel being known about means the other elven gods were known about, which means all of that stuff Solas reveals about his godly siblings - that they're not gods at all but evil elven mages he locked away behind the Veil - was known about back then too. "Oh yeah," Gaider says. "Everything that Solas tells you [at the end of Inquisition DLC, Trespasser]: it's all part of that original uber-lore - that was all in our mind." But why have so much lore if you're not certain you'll get to ever realise it? Well, to create a believable illusion. By creating an "excess" of lore, as Gaider describes it, Origins made Thedas feel like an old and believable place. A place with history, rather than a Western set that was all facade and no substance."

"BioWare also did something canny with the lore it did relay then, too: it shared it through the voices of characters living in the world, making it inherently fallible. In doing this, Dragon Age veiled its truths behind biases. The church-like organisation of the Chantry proclaims one truth, while the elves and dwarves proclaim another. Sidenote: you can experience this yourself through different racial origin stories in Dragon Age: Origins. This way, there's no one, objective, irrefutable, truth. "To get the truth, you kind of have to pick between the lines," Gaider says. So even though elven legends are coming true through the existence of Solas and The Veilguard's antagonist gods, it doesn't mean that's the one and only truth. There's truth in what the Chantry teaches and what the dwarves say, he tells me, which ignites my curiosity intensely. BioWare has also been tricksy in how it's rubbed out the lore the further back in time you go. "In general, the further the history goes back, we always would purposefully obfuscate it more and more," Gaider says - "make it more biased and more untrue no matter who was talking, just so that the absolute truth was rarely knowable. I like that idea from a world standpoint, that the player always has to wonder and bring their own beliefs to it." It leads into a founding principle of Dragon Age, which is doubt - because without it, you can't have faith, a particularly important concept in the series. It's where the whole idea of the Chantry's Maker comes from and with it, the legend about the fabled Golden City - now the Black City - at the heart of the Fade. This is the very centre of the lore web, and, I imagine, it's close to the series endpoint Gaider imagined long ago. All secrets end there. Did Gaider know what was in the Black City when he laid down Origins' lore? That's the question - and it startles me how casually he answers this. "Oh, yeah," he says. "What was in the Black City: that's the uber-plot. I knew exactly. "Was it as detailed in the first draft of the world?" he goes on. "No. I had an idea of the early history because that's where I started making the world. So the things that were true early-early: I knew exactly what the Black City was and the idea of what the elves believed, and what humans believed vis-a-vis the Chantry - that was all settled on really early. Then I expanded the world and the uber-plot bubbled out of that.""

"Gaider shows me the original cosmology design document for Dragon Age: Origins as if to prove this - or rather for the game that would become DAO. The world was known as Peldea back then. I can't share this with you because I see it via a shared screen on a video call, and because Gaider doesn't want me to, mostly because the ideas are so old they're almost unrecognisable from what's in the series now. But I can tell you it's a document that's just over a page in length, and that there's a circular diagram at the top showing the world in the middle and the spirit realm ringed around it. And on that document is reference to the Chantry's beliefs about a God located in a citadel that can be found there. Gaider says BioWare knew about Fen'Harel (the Dread Wolf) 20 years ago when it was developing Dragon Age: Origins, and that he'd one day reappear. The Fade wasn't known as the Fade back then, either, but as the Dreaming, because it's the place people go when they dream - an idea that lives on still. And if that sounds familiar to any fans of The Sandman among you, it should. "I'd say The Sandman series was probably fairly prominently in my head," says Gaider. "I liked that amorphous geography that was born from the psyche of collective humanity. I'd say yes, if I was to point at something specifically, that's probably where the very first inspiration of it took root." It's a lot to take in, but it reinforces the admiration I have for Dragon Age. Just as I have when hearing about the creation of my other favourite fantasy worlds, such as A Song of Ice and Fire, I begin to understand the magnitude - and the deliberateness - of the plotting that went on. I wonder if one day the Dragon Age series will end in the way Gaider first imagined, albeit slightly altered by the many other pairs of hands shepherding it along now. What a curious feeling it must be to know, so many years in advance, where things might go. Where that end is, I don't know, but I do know we'll take a significant step towards it in The Veilguard. After all, we're coming into contact with gods who were there at the recorded beginning of it all. "Yeah - we have access to people who can tell us the truth from first-hand experience," Gaider says, "although again, it depends on what the writers did with it. But if they continued the tradition of Dragon Age, you never know for sure if Solas is telling you everything, or what you're learning is the entire truth. "But yes, some of the big mysteries are being solved. I mean, will they one day definitively tell you about the Maker? Will we crack the big mysteries of the world and just make them answered finally? And does that ruin one of the central precepts that Dragon Age is founded upon? Maybe," he says. "Ultimately, that lore, when you make it big and you hint at it and hint at it and hint at it, it becomes a Chekhov's Gun of sorts. Eventually you got to pony up.""

[source]

[aunteutis]

TLDR;; my personal Severance theory for what the hell is Lumon's deal. it's a cult, but with great benefits (plus dental!). also, the MDR Orientation Booklet! yay!

hi, so,,,, hyperfixation time:::

the Severance Reddit guys (they're the real heroes and we're all a family here at Lumon) said there was something called the 'Lexington Letter' - it's sort of a proof of concept letter/story for Severance's worldbuilding, probably more intended for the studio rather than audiences at first, apparently published as promo later.

SPOILER WARNING HERE, just this once.

so i read it all, and the letter in itself has some elements of the base/what i guess is the original story: car accidents, severing because of depression, Lumon appearing misteriously, innie-outie communication, people following people. it's written as an exposé on Lumon, sent to a small newspaper in hopes they will publish it. it's very interesting (and another piece of media to obsess over), so i'll leave the link here in case you want to read it:

the thing is:: this letter includes a copy of the Orientation Booklet, and it explains the refining process as if the readers were innies.

it goes on about the process, but it defines the data to refine as part of four different categories: WO, FC, DR and MA.

each of these categories ellicits the following emotional responses that we are told about during the show:

WO=melancholy

FR=joy

DR=fear

MA=rage

NOW::: i'm probably not the first to notice this, so please chime in if you did. but i think each of these categories corresponds to each of the four Tempers that Kier believed to conform every human soul/personality. those being WOE, FROLIC, DREAD and MALICE.

so the (human) refiners are !!instinctively!!!! classifying numbers that correspond to each type of the four Tempers that their biotech-founder (and presumably god) believed to make humans, well, human. and every time they put the numbers in each bin, the bin shows a progress report defining how much of each of the four categories there is already. much like the 'balance' between tempers Kier talked about.

small interruption here (i promise it'll be relevant later): in the Lexington Letter, three things are mentioned that stood out to me. first, the letter itself tells about the explosion of a truck of Lumon's business rival, Dorner Therapeutics. the accident kills 6 people, and the explosion is triggered barely two minutes after one of the files has been fully refined. so -at least according to the original show's plan- the refining process is an actual thing with a tangible function. it actually IS encrypted data that they're looking at all day.

the second thing was very brief: some sort of controversy regarding Lumon's feeding tubes that had caused a libel suit (by Lumon) that made another small paper go bankrupt. it's mentioned as a deterrent, and the Lexington Letter is not published.

third (last one, i promise):: Peg, who writes the letter, says at one point that a Lumon employment ad came up on the radio just as she said, alone in her car, 'Fuck this job' (her former job). as if it heard her, basically.

so, end of interruption. bringing me back to::: THE THEORY.

we have the Four Tempers; Lumon, a biotech/generally huge everything-corporation with (according to Devon) influence everywhere; and at the center of it all, Kier, who is effectively a messianic figure.

we have the Gemma reveal (Mark says in s2ep2 that he identified the body, so there WAS a body).

then there's Ms Cobel/Sigwell's shrine and //feeding?// tube, with the name Charlotte Cobel on it, and an apparent lore-compliant, unknown controversy to go with it.

finally, we also have a fuckton of encrypted data that:: a) needs refining b) actually serves a purpose in the real world c) we are very briefly shown that the file's progess is related to Gemma (dead, but also alive, personality-lacking, and in the experimental floor) and, presumably, other people. and goats.

i don't really know the purpose of it, but i think they might be sequencing the human genome and personalities of everyone //related to Lumon//? to like. make replica people??

like,,, sure, maybe they want Mark specifically to chill forever with his not-so-dead-anymore clone of a wife, but it IS a biotech company that plays god with life and death, and HAS a god like in their company policy. they have legends, and paintings, and rites, and scripture, and mysteries.

like. Lumon is -BY DESIGN- THE ultimate intersection between a literal religion and corporate loyalty/devotion that plagues and defines the current job market paradigm. the work is mysterious and important, and the company provides or punishes as an absolute and final entity. Kier is all-knowing father, overseeing judge, the origin and ultimate motive for everything. you don't even need to exit the Lumon product ecosystem to live, because they're already everywhere outside. hell, they've existed from the beginning of the only history you need to care about--late industrialism!! the rise of the market economy!! wouldn't it make sense for them to give you a solution to the final problem of death as well?

so, my current theory (To Be Forgotten Tomorrow) is that they are trying to deliver on that promise that every religion out there gives. they're ending the finality of death, and making people again. not just physically; they are literally bringing back complete reproductions of people, body and soul. they use the severeds' intuitions (and probably some sort of conditioning in their chips) to estimate the precise balance of tempers that make up distinct human personalities, just as Kier said.

because think of Ms Cobel, or Mark. for me, they are the most extreme cases. if you had lost, say, your wife. or your mother, or daughter. the person you loved the most, dead. and if a family company that you've seen everywhere, and known all your life, stepped in and told you they'd be able to rid you of the pain. or bring them back. if they told you that if you're loyal enough, blindly trust them with your own agency, they'll make everything right - wouldn't you take them up on that offer?

and now that's out of my head yaaayy. sorry for the long thing. i hope at least the letter and manual helped.

if you read all that, congrats! you've been awarded a fingertrap.

kiers!!! (as in 'cheers'. like. you get it, right? right.)

❤️❤️❤️

[mywifeismothman]

Aidairo has ruined my life but I just can’t stop reading Tbhk. It’s come to the point where the looming dread of the ending and all I’ve learned about the characters causes me to cry every time I think too long about the series, every single new chapter kills me. (crying writing this right now)

It’s such a good story, with well crafted characters and lore, but god forbid you get attached to any of the characters, because either half of them are dead, or you know they’ll end up horribly depressed and/or traumatized.

AND CHAPTER 118, AIDAIRO LET THEM BE HAPPY FOR MORE THAN 5 MINUTES PLEASEE

My favorite character is kou, but at this point , he’s more of a discomfort character than a comfort character. I literally can’t think about him for too long without crying.

I need someone to rant to about all the intricacies of this series, none of my friends have read past the part that appeared in the anime and it’s killing me.

JUST LOOK AT THESE PANELS

(Spoilers for chapter 118)

THE ONE TIME THEYRE ABLE TO BE HAPPY, THEY ARE HAUNTED BY THE WORLD WHERE THEY COULDNT BE, I HATE YOU AIDAIRO.

IN THIS WORLD KOU CALLS MITSUBA BY HIS FIRST NAME, GOD PLEASE BE LESS TRAGIC

WHY DO MITSUBA AND KOU CHAPTERS HAVE TO BE SO BITTERSWEET, THEY SPEND HALF THE TIME BEING DEPRESSING, THEN DROP SOME OF THE SWEETEST INTERACTIONS THAT SHOW HOW MUCH THEH CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER, IM GOING TO CRY SO HARD WHEN THEY INEVITABLY HAVE A SAD ENDING.

THIS CHAPTER AND THE NIGHT OUT ARC ARE KILLING ME

Also, I’m really curious what happened to the Amane on this world. Tsukasa is dead, so he should have lived a full life, but he died young still. I’m really interested in what he’s doing in the red house still, and the truth about the monster under the house. Not to mention the weird hole thing going on with his and Tsukasa’s face.

[delta-back-alive-brother]

The depiction of me in the arms of another man, one that I despise for the animal-like qualities he despises; he is what you call a simp, a pervert and a debauchee, he cannot keep his excitement in his pants at the sight of Thomas Jefferson who was purposefully made appealing by JenniCatznies, another artist you possibly are acquainted with, and he does not deserve the attention of the public so as not to feed in the hunger he expresses in men “oiled up” and divested of their clothing, personality and dignity. He is dangerous, and I dread his relatives and those who live near him, forced to endure him roaming the streets in which he lives, flies buzzing after his trail. Withal, I have not been acquainted with his awful character in person and I have no desire of doing so, the notion of drawing us together therefore is absurd and questionable from a standpoint from an outsider ; the frivolity of our relationship as drawn is IDIOTIC as are you for even conjuring up this awful vision. The culture of drawing two men who have never even seen eye to eye being intimate is truly worrying in the circles of the website and it is a portal to the state of moral decay that has washed over our world and obscured the technological progress we made by dumbing our brains down, refocusing our attention from God and actual problems to fictional men licking each-others mouths in a perverted fashion that suggests inexperience of the artist ; the notion that this an acceptable pastime engagement is false and especially dangerous in the minds of likes of you. Free Yourself. Additionally, you tried to portray me as submissive, something you would know was not true if you tried to analyze my personality as a professional artist would. I do not sway with others ; I bend them to my will and women are made submissive at my sight which is how a proper woman is to be at the sight of a man however I have no interest in discussing this with you which is why I had kept this short in hopes that the message would be more clear to your minuscule brain. The realization of misdeeds you have commuted should encounter you once and then you will apologize; prayers are in order which I will pray For you not out of like but out of love and plea for the Lord not to send you to hell in spite of the distress you have blatantly caused ; you are miserable and I pity you-enjoy the day Amen. 

.Surely a repressed romance novel antagonist

Let me just adjust my glasses real quick—You claim. To despise Simpbox Anon with the fury of a thousand suns. Yet here you are, writing paragraphs about him like some kind of Victorian widow swooning over her sworn enemy's scandal letters. You're not disgusted, you're invested. And at this point—You're more invested than actual shippers.

"He is dangerous, and I dread his relatives and those who live near him, forced to endure him roaming the streets..." My guy, you just painted him like some sort of oiled up Sweeney Todd, haunting the streets with his likes for historical figures. That isn't disdain—It's lore. You've crafted an entire mythology around this man. It's surely giving slow-burn enemies to lovers.

"The culture of drawing two men who have never even seen eye to eye being intimate is truly worrying..." HAH! Says the man who just wrote a dissertation about another man's animal qualities. You are not worried about moral decay—You're worried about how much your mind PANICKED when you saw that yaoi art.

"I bend [women] to my will and women are made submissive at my sight..." Dear gods. This is the most "I've never spoken to a woman" statement uttered. You don't bend others to your will—You daydream about being a dom while folding like a literal lawn chair the moment someone looks at you with mild authority.

"Prayers are in order which I will pray for you not out of like but out of love..." Classic "I don't like you but I'm absurdly obsessed with your soul" maneuver. This isn't piety, it's fanmail. If God did send you a vision, it wouldn't be of damnation—it'd be of Simpbox Anon leaning in, grabbing your chin and kissing you.

THE VERDICT—You're not fooling anyone. You LOATHE Simpbox Anon the way Romeo loathed Juliet before their first kiss. And the best part about why are you so mad? You know it.

Go ahead, clutch your prayers. But when you close your eyes tonight, we both know who'll be there.

By the way. "—by JenniCatznies, another artist you possibly are acquainted with." He's my husband.

@jennicatzies @gastroentred @biblicalvampireemmy

[h-worksrambles]

Sonic X Shadow Generations fascinates me. Because it feels like something I shouldn’t be excited for. And yet I absolutely am.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Sonic Generations. It’s my third favourite game in the series and my favourite 3D Sonic game (with Sonic Adventure 2 in a close second). I’m very happy to see it getting a re release to expose it to new audiences, and playing it in 4K60fps on my PS5 is a very enticing. Likewise, I really like Shadow as a character and I’m excited to play as him again.

And yet, his new bonus campaign promises to basically be a bunch of nostalgic pandering for Shadow the Hedgehog, a game which I consider to be, simply put, crap. It was boring, dull, colourless and embarrassing trend chasing. And pretty much everything I hated about it is on display in this trailer.

We’ve got gritty, grey cityscapes, we’ve got the rather blah alien villain, Black Doom returning, we’ve got the looming return of the series’…bafflingly executed lore. In a word, Shadow was a pretty much everything I didn’t want Sonic to be shoved into a blender. I’ve given my thoughts on revisiting past excesses and failures for the sake of nostalgia. I wrote a whole thing about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and my fears that it would go overboard pandering to the 2000s spin offs (which I dislike a for lot of the same reasons as a lot of Sonic stuff from the mid 2000s). A faux attempt at maturity that sacrifices Sonic’s camp and colour, and lacks the writing competency to make its tone shift work is pretty much my worst case scenario for the series. And now we’re invoking that for nostalgia? Again, I should hate this.

So if I dislike Shadow the Hedgehog so much. If it really is so emblematic of Sonic’s worst excesses that I want it to leave behind in the 2000s…then why am I so damn hyped for this? Why am I not feeling the same dread as whenever VII Remake implicitly threatens to bring back Genesis?

I think it’s because of the specific relationship Sonic has had with its past for the last decade. So much of the stuff from that time period is material that Sega has seemed actively scared to touch again. Sometimes with good reason. But I think that’s why some material from that time has gained such a strong nostalgic cult following, and why they’re held up as such bastions of missed potential. There’s never been anything quite like Shadow or 06 since they came out with how safe Sega has subsequently played things. And in many respects, that’s a good thing. But I can see how it build a sense of mystique around them. It was kind of sad to see 2010s Sonic so…scared of itself. Terrified to invoke its own history but not really committed to a new direction either. And this is pretty much the exact opposite of that hesitancy.

Basically, the reason I react to seeing Westopolis or Black Doom with ‘holy shit let’s go!!!’ rather than ‘why, god, why?’ is because I genuinely never thought I would see them again after this long. It’s just exciting to see Sonic Team throw caution to the wind and embrace all the parts of their franchise. Even the parts I personally dislike. Plus, Sonic Generations is kind of the perfect game in which to reimagine that stuff and make it..actually good this time. This was the game that made Crisis City of all things into a banger level. The game that took Silver, one of the most notorious boss fights in the series, and gave him a kickass encounter.

If they can fix that, they can do anything.

Plus, the fact that the trailers already show all these trippy stage effects and anime af boss fights and set pieces tells me we’re not just gonna be running through the same drab washed out burning cities that made Shadow 2005 so boring. Again, there’s evidently an effort being made to rehabilitate and reimagine this stuff, not just repeat all the same mistakes. And that’s exciting.

So yeah, Sonic X Shadow Generations has somehow managed to get me genuinely excited for all the parts of the series I typically balk at. And that’s pretty impressive.

That said, if I see Mephiles again, I’m leaving.

[greypetrel]

Inquisitor as Companion Tag Game

Rules: For the categories below, describe or list the greetings your Inquisitor (as a companion) would say when approached by the PC

Thank you so much for the tag, @shivunin @star--nymph and @idolsgf! <3 Just back home and quite tired, so it's one for both... I may do Radha (or anyone else in other games, tell me) as well, but if it'll strike my fancy I'll tag you both again.

I swear the idea of companion!Aisling moving through Skyhold was something I was caressing before, I'm writing her companion piece since forever ahahahahahah but I join the trend gladly, it's such a fun idea. :3 All under cut because... It long.

Tagging: @inanshalla @noobsydraws @ndostairlyrium @inquisimer @chanafehs @dreadfutures @dungeons-and-dragon-age @cao-the-dreamer @rowanisawriter @saltyowlets @diesvitae @hollytree33 and YOU READING

Aisling Lavellan

Cold/Hostile (-75 to -5):

At low approval, she’ll be mainly found in the Gardens, Solas’ rotunda either perched on top of the scaffolding, or sitting in a corner as Solas is painting, or the Herald’s Rest close to Cole. Depending on the advancement of the game, she’ll be conversing with Solas or Cole always in elvish. In the Garden, she’s either chatting with Elan Ve’mal about gardening, about how many of the vases to dedicate to Elfroot if the garden was upgraded as a Herb garden, or complaining that the statue of Andraste “makes the elfroot and the embrium gloomy” otherwise. Later on, she’ll also be found chatting with Morrigan about history and lore, asking her to tell her stories about the Blight or what ruins she found in her travels – very eagerly, or teaching Kieran some magic. If you interact with her, there’ll be an extra dialogue line in which the Inquisitor will ask her what she was talking about. If cold or hostile, she’ll always dismiss the question, perfectly politely, saying it’s something too trivial to concern such an important figure, she’s sure. In greetings and goodbyes and conversations, she keeps polite and gentle, but terribly cold. If you ask her anything personal, she’ll deflect every single question by making another. Insisting on asking leads to disapproval.

Greetings:

Andaran atish’an, lord/lady Inquisitor (-25 to -5)/Herald (-75 to -26).

It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?

Oh? What brings you here?

What would his/her lordship/ladyship wish from me?

Whatever may a humble elf help you with?

Farewells:

Dareth shiral, my lord/lady.

May the Creators bless you.

I hope you found what you were looking for.

May Mythal bless you with a clear mind in judgement.

Thank you for your time.

May the Dread Wolf never catch your scent.

Note: she’ll call you Inquisitor above -25 of approval. Under that, it will always be Herald, and the references and casual naming of her gods will happen more often.

Neutral/Warm (-5 to 74):

At this point, other than the places above, she can be found also in the library, in Dorian’s nook discussing with him of magic, planning something… Unorthodox on a various degree of concerning (from making rain in the rotunda, to evaporate Solas’ colours in a puff of smoke to see if it still stains, to revive dead horses, to see after What Pride Has Wrought if they can build an eluvian on their own), or teaching each other their own language. The advisors will express concerns about their experiments at the War Table (Josie will be worried about the opinion of Orlais, Leliana will be amused by it, Cullen will begrudgingly say that they can’t be contained, but don’t seem to have any evil intention. All will agree that they contributed in making the life in the Keep better, anyway). Or at the stables, petting the horses and cooing at them. She named them all with names of food, Master Dennet and her keep bickering about how to name horses, and that “Chicken Nugget” isn’t really a name, even if her horse has a spot of that exact shape. Any question concerning her feelings or personal history beside “I am the First of Clan Lavellan” will see her changing the topic after giving the very minimum of an answer.

Greetings:

Andaran atish’an.

It’s a lovely day, isn’t it? The flowers are in bloom, and the garden smells so nice. - If the Herb Garden upgrade was chosen: The *name of the plant you planted* you potted is ready to be picked. You should hurry, wouldn’t want to be left with no potions on the field, right? - If the Chantry Garden upgrade was chosen: All those statues make the elfroot gloomy. But the blooming Crystal Grace is so delightful it makes even Andraste look happier, have you seen it? - Both options ends up with a: Oh, I’m sorry if I digress so! What is it?

What may I help you with?

Fancy seeing you here! Tell me everything.

Did you know that horses- Oh, it matters not, I’m sure.

Farewells:

Dareth shiral.

May you find what you’re looking for.

Have the nicest of days.

Take care.

Don’t forget to eat!

Friendly (75 to 125):

She’ll add the Herald’s Rest, in Sera’s nook with biscuits, tea and a full lemon custard pie the cook may or may not have been lamenting the mysterious disappearance of. They’re giggling together. If found with Cole, she’ll openly be sad about the discussion she was having with him. Or she can be found between the Iron Bull and Krem, discussing about today’s sparring round with the Chargers – The Iron Bull will comment that it’s weird for a mage to learn swordsmanship, but that she’s not a lost cause. Personal questions will be answered with shy but finally true answers, no deflection, no turning the topic on something else.

Greetings:

Oh, it’s you! Hi! *hugs the Inquisitor*

Aneth ara, lethallin/lethallan! (if elf)

Aneth ara! It’s a more friendly greeting, I hope you don’t mind. (if not elf)

I was just wondering whether we can- Oh, forgive me, I digress. Hello!

Have you read Varric’s latest book? The magic made no sense, I loved it. You should read it, it was so fun!

Is everything all right? It doesn’t look all right. What happened? Do you want to talk? Do you want a hug? I can hug you if you’d like. You look like you need it. Or I can listen, if you want to talk.

I was just hoping you stopped by!

Hello! Care for a snack? Have you eaten today? You should eat some more, too many worries make you famished, and you sure are worried a lot. Here, take a biscuit, I swear the baker made it, not me.

What did you dream of, last night? I had the weirdest dream, there were a talking lightning bolt, an octopus who loved to dance the tango, and a carnivore elfroot. But it couldn’t be, carnivore elfroot? No way. Oh, I’m sorry, were you saying…?

Farewells:

Oh, already? But sure you must be busy, I’m sorry if I bothered you.

Stop by any time!

Dareth shiral, lethallin/lethallan

I hope the day will be lovely and with the least amount of world-ending emergencies.

Take care, ok? I’m here for you if you need anything. Really. I know leading it’s difficult, if in such a smaller scale.

See you later, alligator! / Bye bye, crocodile! *and SO many variants*

Bye! *hugs the Inquisitor*

If flirted with, before romance is locked in:

Any race or gender can start a romance with her. Male Inquisitors tho won’t have any different greeting or farewell than the Friendly one. You’ll still be able to choose flirty options, but she’ll never get it. After three flirty dialogue options, you’ll get the cutscene to lock her romance, same as Female Inquisitors, and greetings and farewells will change accordingly. For Female Inquisitors, she’ll notice the flirting after the second flirty option, and change the greetings accordingly.

Greetings:

Oh! Oh it’s you! How lovely to see you! I was just- But surely you’re not interested. Or maybe you are? Are you? If you are we could- I’m sorry. Let me start again. Good morning. How are you? Did you sleep well and enjoy your breakfast? There, all better.

*giggles*

I was just thinking about you! Tell me everything and then some, please, you have such a lovely voice.

Do you want to pet my horse? I just washed him and he’s all clean and soft. If he didn’t roll in mud again, which- Uh, that didn’t came out the way I wanted. Let me start- You sure are busy. I’m sorry. Tell me everything.

I was just hoping you’d stop by! Here, I kept this pastry just for you. I know it’s your favourite and it was the last one, I took it before that silly Comte could eat it. Don’t worry, I used a tiny spell to keep it fresh, you can also eat it later.

Farewells:

Dareth shiral, lethallin/lethallan. *in a softer, sweeter voice*

Already? Aaw. I wish you had more free time, but thank you for spending the little you have with me, it really makes me glad.

I hope I’ll see you soon. This evening at the tavern, maybe?

I- Uh- Bye, sure, but… Uhm. Can I… Can I hug you? A dialogue wheel opens, where you can say yes or no. If you agree, she’ll hug you, and drag it further than necessary, with a deep sigh. Thank you.

After romance is locked in:

You’ll find her in your quarters, humming between herself.

Greetings:

Oh it’s you! I just made this flower crown for you! Here, take it! Please! I used your favourite flowers, I remember you told me. And… Yeah, well, I put something else too, so it reminds you of me as well. I enchanted it so it won’t wither and… Well, it’ll protect you, I hope you don’t mind. Inquisitor gains Elfroot Blessing, equip in helmet slot. It appears like a crown of elfroot leaves, tiny blue forget-me-nots and the flower you chose as your favourite in a precedent dialogue wheel (pre-romance). All healing poultices are more effective by the 25%, and you gather +1 in automatic when picking elfroot.

Venhan! *she pounces at you in a hug* Mwah! *a distinct noise of a real kiss after the fake one*

Hello, gorgeous!

You’re even prettier than a horse, has anyone ever told you?

Hello, ma venhan. How are you? Are you feeling well? Do you need a pause? We can take a pause, come one, sit with me.

I was just about to come and drag you away for lunch!

At last you’re here, I’ve missed you so!

I was thinking… No, I’m not planning of turning your windows in prisms so your room is filled with rainbows again, don’t worry. Even if it was such a nice idea, Dorian and I could have done it in- Ok, ok, no. You’re so cute when you’re grumpy! *giggles*

Oh! Just in time: they’re starting this little thing at the Herald’s Rest and I was just thinking that it would be lovely to go together! We could dance, maybe? What about it? It will be fun! I can teach you if you don’t know how to, don’t worry, it’s easy as breathing.

Farewells:

Take care, venhan, really. I know you’re about to complain but… Let me worry about you, ok?

I’m so proud of you and all you’re doing.

Ar lath ma, venhan.

First time, if Inquisitor is an elf: … Too soon? It’s too soon, isn’t it? Well…

First time, if Inquisitor isn’t an elf: I’ll tell you what it means the next time.

*kisses the Inquisitor* I’ll miss you.

Don’t let those silly Comtes and Dukes get to your head, ok?

I’m here when you need me. Always.

Go get them, tiger.

[xxscarletxrosexx]

Spy x Family Ch. 99 Thoughts + Analyses

God, this entire chapter has been an extreme roller coaster from feeling excitement to sobbing--I'm terribly emotional when it comes to reading war stories must be from all the times I was forced to read war stories throughout my English education program to anger to resignation.

... but this is why I love Spy x Family and the brilliant storywriting of Tatsuya Endo.

Ch. 99 Spoilers ahead.

There's a level of depth and care put into these characters that make them feel so real. If you have someone who has family serving in the army or if you are someone who has read countless accounts of war, then surely you are affected emotionally by the horrors of war. In my case, war stories are what made me look at life and identify the meaning of it. Although I won't go into too much detail about my findings, I did walk away having a deeper appreciation for literature and for humanity itself, in other words, I cry easily to war stories. Hence the case of this chapter.

I was already prepared that Ch. 99 would be a devastating chapter considering that Ch. 98 ends with a cliffhanger in which the alarms go off just as Martha was going to confess her feelings for Henry, and that this 'side mission' story is expected to conclude before Ch. 100. And it truly did not disappoint.

As mentioned earlier, this chapter is a jam-packed rollercoaster ride with previous expectations motivating my excitement as well as my dread for the inevitable.

First, I'd like to address a part that excited me: parallelism.

What quickly striked me was how similar Henry was drawn to Twilight after departing his jail cell. Even the context of the chapter leading up to this physical change indicates that sacrificing oneself for the best outcome/greater good was a theme echoed by these similar character designs.

There is also a third "similar character design" which has become a popularized theory in a possible relationship between the Captain and Twilight. However, I'm starting to see that these similar drawing styles don't identify relationships, but alignment in sacrificing oneself.

I see this as an alignment amongst the three because we now have two lores that shared the impact of war and the injuries sustained, whereas the Captain/First Lieutenant has yet to have his lore addressed. We can surmise based off Twilight and Henry's background that their experiences from war is what continues to drive them in their chosen field/occupation. I'm excited for the day that we learn the Lieutenant's real name and his POV from war. It is then that we will finally get three POV's:

The West / WISE - [Redacted]/Twilight/Loid

The Neutral Civilian - Henry

The Ostanian / SSS - Lieutenant

This is the perfect time to segway to my next excitement: symbolism.

Even though the lore on the unnamed First Lieutenant/Captain has not yet been addressed, his scars tell me that he's experienced a similar outcome. Tell me, have you guys noticed that all 3 men had experienced the same injury found on the left side of his face?

When I looked into the symbolism behind it, I found that the left side of our brain is responsible for processing emotions. The injury to the left side of the face signifies an emotional trauma in which their emotional side had to be silenced. Given what we've already learned about Twilight and Henry's backstories, their personalities and thinking are often stemming from an analytical/logical approach.

Of course, old wives' tales are not always scientifically supported, so I was prompted to research more, and I stumbled across an interesting one regarding emotions found in different parts of the brain:

Since this is a theory, it should not be taken as a fact without repeated research and evidence to support the claim. I, myself, do not claim to be an expert when it comes to neurology or psychology. But this information, when taken from a creative writing/literary analytical stance, can support that the left-face injuries had essentially damaged the positive facial expressions--which can support Twilight and Henry's experience. Thus, we can also surmise that the Captain had experienced a similar fate.

Another thing that we can learn from these injuries (at the time that they were present) is that the character is currently experiencing a time of vulnerability--[Redcated] after returning from battle and Henry, who is still in mourning, is still a bit withdrawn from his students.

Another symbolism that I got excited about is the dichotomy between Henry and his father in character design.

Notice Henry's hair is straight and tied up in contrast to his father who has his hair wavy and loose. Although subtle, I found this character design beautiful for its ability to show a dichotomy in their social/political views.

Wavy hair can be perceived as something flowy, as in going with the flow. Because it isn't tied up, I see that Henry's father doesn't need to hold himself back, and is free to express himself and his views. In contrast, Henry's hair is straight and tied back. Straight hair can be perceived to support Henry's straightforward nature (which is also one of his weaknesses as well as covered in the previous chapters). When his hair is tied up, he gives an air of elegance and looks like he's got everything together. However, his hair tied back could also illustrate imprisonment of the mind, where his views cannot be vocalized at a time when tensions were high during the first war. Furthermore, his "rebellious" behavior resulted in him ultimately being tied down to what was imposed on him (marrying the person his father picked).

I love the detail in which Henry is drawn with his hair untied and unshaven. He's broken at this point, and as we all witnessed at the assembly, he loses control of himself over this grief that he's taken into custody and slandered a traitor. The next time we do see him is when his long hair is chopped off and traded for an undercut--a telltale sign that he was starting anew, and looking awfully like Twilight.

During this social climate, Henry was perceived as the 'villain' in the Henderson family due to his 'bad' behavior. But let me, just say that Endo-san loves to remind us through character design just who is the true villain. Did you notice it, too? It's the nose. Henry's father has a pointy nose, reminiscent of a witch, whereas he inherited his mother's round nose. Another small detail, but it made me laugh. This is why I love Endo-san.

Above, I have addressed what made me happy. Now, I will address what brought me to tears, that being Martha and Henry.

I mean, it's no surprise that they wouldn't have a happy ending. I was well prepared with the knowledge I know about them from present-day story that mentions of Henry's daughter, cameos of his wedding ring, and Martha working with the Blackbells, and recently reveals that she had an old crush on Henry. The absence of their love being pursued led us to believe that Martha may have had a one-sided romance. But ch. 99 confirms that Henry reciprocated his feelings for her due to yearning her letters.

It wasn't until news of Martha's life-threatening decision did it impact Henry significantly, and then his breaking point to realization that he loved her too late was when Martha showed her vulnerable side in her letter with the following:

I practically balled right here. I was teary-eyed leading up to it because war stories are always so heartbreaking, especially to those who sacrifice or don't make it home alive.

We now learn why Henry ended up marrying someone else is due to Martha's "inevitable" death--unbeknownst that her decision not to volunteer would also result in death. From what we read, Martha was too emotional to vocalize her situation clearly, and even if she did, her message would be blacked out, unfortunately. So it is evident that Martha was trapped and had no way out other than choosing to volunteer and ultimately "die" in battle.

Henry, on the other hand, could not fight the system, despite that he became a History teacher just to do that. He failed because his countrymen and the system failed him. He lost his beloved and if he were to continue holding onto his belief, he'd lose his ability to teach. Essentially, he lost the fight (to change history/improve the situation through education during that social climate), but not the war (in which there is still hope for history to change). Heny, ultimately, shared a similar fate as Martha through self sacrifice of his livelihood.

I was and still am completely discombobulated by the war and its impact on Martha and Henry that, to be honest, I completely disregarded Donovan Desmond.

I know I won't be able to capture the importance of his lines as eloquently and moving as I did with Martha and Henry, the former pair leaving a moving impact on me during this chapter, so I'd like to recommend my dear friend, @yumeka-sxf 's, analysis which covers more of Endo's brilliant story writing and character development decisions.

After rereading the chapter as well as her analysis, I agree with her point that Donovan Desmond was made to be the antagonist of the story. I believe Donovan's view of liars and holding absolutely no hope for them is a necessity for readers to continue perceiving him as a villain in the series. This is because we cannot perceive good and evil as simply black and white in the series when we have both Yor and Loid dirtying their hands in the name of protecting their countries/loved ones. We hold love for the characters in this series because of their personalities, values, and moral compasses amidst taking life after life. In their social climate they must always choose to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, which is why their tainted actions can be perceived as forgiven. Donovan Desmond, on the other hand, cannot share that 'exception' because an action/drama story needs a villain.

If you made it to the end, thank you so much for your time! I hope you enjoyed my analyses and thoughts on Ch. 99! What do you guys think about the chapter and my analyses? I'd love to hear more from you! :3

[notyourmamasdeerbat]

A Word With Friends (4/22)

👋Hi @hedwigoprah! Thank you for yet another delicious tag- I freaking LOVE word of the day type prompts, this is so awesome thank you for inviting me along to play! The challenge word is egregious

For you to copy and paste:

Rules: Use the challenge word to write a sentence or scene and then tag a few friends. Happy writing! Enjoy some mild angst, vague Aldwir lore and EGGBOI under the cut!

The Fade revolved lazily around them in the black and white expanse of cold and nothing. Rook was sitting cross legged at the end of the chasm ledge, studying the god standing across from them. He held his hands behind him. Military and sharp. All sleek lines and gleaming armor. He was talking again, more softly than before, and for once Rook had not been completely full of loathing to see him there when they'd blacked out on the narrow couch. 

Bellara's brother lived. A willing servant of the Forgotten Ones. Anaris’ shade was loose, free to twist the Arlathan, murdering Veil Jumpers left and right in dangerous rituals of ancient power and crushing anomaly, creating new demons from the flesh and blood of the heroic souls Rook had known for years– to bring himself back to physical form. Manipulating the spirits centuries old, creating vacuums of fear and terror and creeping ever closer to Strife and Irelin and what remained of the Blighted woods Rook had once called home. After so much had already been lost…

Revas was out there, fighting through his grief, gathering as many artifacts as he possibly could before any of them could blow up in his face or open the tears in reality a little wider. The Veil was full of bubbles, pockets and holes, plant people and monstrous amalgamates. The deepstalkers were frenzied, clawing up from the Deep Roads to ambush Veil Jumper camps. Some were hopelessly lost in the dark, never to return. The Dalish clans in the area had gone silent, Aravels in ruin on the riverbanks. Damari and Kassa were still missing. 

Resting their chin on their fist, Rook watched the Dread Wolf spin his rhetoric and prose. They wondered idly if he'd been this way in the Inquisition. If Harding had seen the soft spoken apostate stand with the easy authority of an ancient general. If his humble mask had ever slipped in front of Varric, revealing the ferocity of something angry, duplicitous and older than them all. 

Solas smiled wryly. “You've stopped arguing with me. I can only assume you've stopped offering me your attention as well.” 

Rook blinked, tearing their gaze away from the space between his brows, trying to reel their wandering and bitter thoughts back into focus. They clicked their tongue, stricken expression flattening to mild irritation. “Sorry. You ramble.” 

To their surprise, Solas’ lips quirked a little to one side. “You're distracted.” 

“Hmm.” 

“I feel it important to note, it was you who reached for me.” 

Rook shut their eyes, unmoving as they worked their jaw. The muscles of their arms and shoulders were so tense they imagined they might snap the bones beneath. 

Solas said nothing for a very long moment, before speaking so gently Rook felt the hair on the back of their neck rise from sheer unfamiliarity. “You have every reason to be afraid. I only wish I could offer you the guidance you seek.” 

Rook's lip curled as they peeled open one eye, an eerie prickle of uncanny, disturbed unease settling in their stomach. “Don't do that.” 

“I'm sorry?” 

“Don't pretend you care. It's weird and I don't buy it.” 

“If I did not care,” he said with some exasperation. “I would not have advised you to retrieve the dagger. I would not have used this connection between us at all. I would have let you flounder and fail at the hands of my oldest enemies, the Evanuris, in a fit of egregious despondence, to allow them victory in savaging the world, your loved ones, the existence of peace and my ultimate goals as they ruled in Blighted tyranny forever. If I did not care, Rook, I would not be as I am.” 

Rook sniffed. “Your pride would not allow it. How foolish of me to forget your ultimate plans. Tell me again, O Mysterious Dreammaster, how best shall I humiliate your enemies?” 

Solas scowled. “If you have come to insult me to ease your terror, you are welcome to tantrum somewhere else in the Fade. And if we are naming our vices, I should remark upon your own failings as well.” 

Rook gave a wolfish grin, eyes glittering with sour laughter. “What, I'm selfish? Petulant? A little stupid? Magic-less and not short of Pride myself?” 

Solas paused. He seemed to analyze the playful lilt in their voice and the tensile strength of the pain beneath in the silence as he pursed his lips. His gaze roamed their face, before the Dread Wolf did something Rook did not expect. 

He sat down. 

Just there, across the chasm of dreams, and curled his legs beneath him. A mirror of Rook's own posture. He folded his pale hands in his lap. “You are also determined enough to see this through. Despite your barbs, you see the wisdom of preserving your world and what lies beyond it. You have defeated two of the gods’ champions thus far. You would not have succeeded if you were not suited to…” His imperial gaze glittered. “Humiliating our enemies.” 

Something softened in Rook's chest, loosening its stranglehold of their ribs and lungs. For a moment, they said nothing, eyes widening slightly on Solas’ face. They looked away shortly, another soft click of derision on their tongue. “We're a team now, are we?” 

“Team implies a level of cooperation currently impossible in my surroundings. But my advice is yours to take or leave, and despite our differences I want nothing more than to see you succeed. Thedas has a history of combating the blight, but this is a battle your world cannot win alone. If the Evanuris have champions, perhaps so too can I.” 

Rook scoffed, laughing as they leaned back a little where they sat. “I– wow.” 

“You are flattered, despite yourself?” 

“Oh, rot in hell.” 

Solas grinned, a lazy, bitter gesture. “You have seen to that as well.” 

“Solas, I would drop a thousand statues on you if it meant keeping Thedas intact. What happens after remains out of my control. Subconscious or not, I came to you for knowledge and petty revenge. You don't seem averse to this conversation, so can you help me or not?” 

Solas shrugged a shoulder, a flicker of something wistful crossing his face as his mouth twitched into a frown. “The Arlathan was once precious to me as well. Your concerns are mine.” 

Rook leaned forward, gaze intent and sharp. “So tell me about Anaris.” Their mouth twitched into the smallest of smiles. “If he has any hidden chinks in his armor that would be great. Or something else? Weak ankles? Trick knee?” 

Solas chuckled, hanging his head for a moment as his shoulders sagged. For the briefest of moments, the Fade seemed less cavernous. There was a warmth in the Veil between. 

** Gentle tags for moots who may be interested! @the-bear-and-his-sunbird @andthekitchensinkao3 pspspsps your boy @fenrelmercar @draco-illius-noctis <3

[gridgamesgalore]

really need to make my introduction post but im currently insane right now so I have to go on a tangent

[ note; this will not be professional writing pls bear w/ me i misspell things on purpose unless pointed out by myself so pleek pleeek ( i also refer to xfohv as jnj sometimes for clarification ) + there will be mentions of learningblocks related content just a heads up before any people call me weird for fixating on a " show for toddlers " ]

hello !! lowjay the order the karnage here !! so um ,, im here to talk about the 2 , 763 , OOO JnJ sub special ,, that shit was absolutely phenomenal .. insane even .. it altered my brain chemistry and I HAVE to talk about it ,,

spoilers for the 2 , 763 , OOO special if you haven't seen it ♡♡♡ (please watch it pleek)

I really need to mention this creature's appearance first . ALGEBRALIEN TWENTY-FOUR IS CANON !!! OH MY GOD THIS GUY IS SO RAHHHH !! /VVVVPOS lowjay try not to get attachrd to the most random characters / things ever !! ( impossible) THIS CREATURE IS MAKING ME TWEAK OUT ,, EXPECT A GIJINK OF THEM SOON!! /BALL (fun fact !! one of my closest moots calls them gijinks of algebraliens jnjinkas ♡♡♡ /silly)

( just want to let yall know i crosship them and twenty-four nbs ♡♡ is that oak ,, I love being a multishipper )

NEXT NEXT NEXT NEXT arguably the most important ever piece of lore in jnj / beefydie history has to be the canonical powerful being 2763 ♡♡♡ this creature is so silly :ball:

[ next paragraph will be a somewhat lengthy tangent about a crossover au w/ beefydie + nbs ( numberblocks woah ! ) so pleek listen ]

so w / this information about 2763 being the canonical powerful being of the beefydie , i wonder .. does this mean that if 97104 got figured out they would be one of the powerful beings of nbs ?? ( ahem the others are one , zero , and possibly forty-two because hitchhiker ' s guide to galaxy hh ) THINK ABOUT IT ♡♡♡♡♡ PLES PLEEK (fun fact !! the digits of 97104 added up together equals 21 ! /info !! is this the reason she is curious to find out new explorer ?? spoiler warning ; probably not i just might be mentally ill ) /ball ,, ANYWAYS ,, what i was getting to is that the plot of this au is basically just both nbs 24 and algebralien 24 grouping up w / several other people (will decide that later because I literally just thought this au up an hour after the special) to overcome the dreadful disasterly deeds of 97104 and 2763 ♡♡♡ (captain underpants ahh alliteration) yeah all that hype for nothing ♡♡ sorry i just really need to share this ♡♡♡ trust trust TRUST i will make fanart of this au TRUST ♡♡♡ /SILLY

( THESE TWO ARE CANON TRUST )

this isn't really a big thing but more of an honorable mention ♡ I really liek the zero ' we can do it ! ' poster ♡♡♡ i find propaganda posters interesting in general ♡♡♡ /gen /pos

( i know what you are ,, fifteen simp ,, )

another long yapping session but I NEED to talk about my joyous enthusiasm ,, I'm so happy that in the jnj / xfohv / beefydie verse algebralien tweb is an important piece of lore which makes me hfhdhsjjsjekrghhhGRRRRR ,,,, froth at the mouth ,, because I dont think you guys understand how much the number tweb in general means to me ,, not only is tweb the first ever whole number to have 6 factors [ rectangly number in bluezoo terms ] their debut in nbs most likely highly impacted the learningblocks community in general ,, nbs tweb is so cool and the existence of the peak number system dozenal and the passage of time revolving around tweb and numbers RELATED to tweb [ PLEASE watch the about time special even if you aren't interested in nbs or already know it's very silly trust ] and yeah and did i mention the dozenal system hhhh [ as you can see i am very normal about different number bases / radixes ] /VVVPOS

( silly !! )

ending off w / an honorable mention ,, algebralien 63 !! they are really cool woah ♡♡ I really lobe when jnj introduces new algebraliens ♡♡♡ /vpos

anyway that was my long yap session ,, I realy hope you liek my existence of here ♡♡♡♡ this special changed my life and I am literally feeling ball rn ♡♡♡

[wanderingswampbeast]

Long Post: Why I Don’t Like The Drow

I’ve been ranting about this to a friend on discord (a lot of points I make will come from him) but I’ve finally figured out what my issue with the drow is outside of inherently evil groups being dumb.

The drow are boring. Drow lore is less of a dive into a unique culture and more of a list of fucked up things they do. Like, I cannot name a single interesting aspect of typical drow society that does not directly involve murder, sexism, or slavery, or Lolth. And even then, most of those things are written about in an incredibly bland fashion with them.

The Drow don’t really have much depth to them, and are just kind of evil for evil’s sake (or “because Lolth said so”). They do slavery, but the only real purpose of doing slavery for them is “because Lolth said so”. It isn’t for cheap labor, it’s to be more evil. They betray each other purely because that’s what evil people do. They’re misandrist, not for any real societal reason, but because Lolth hates men. There’s none of what would make slavery an interesting topic or story element, no justification for why they should be allowed to commit one of the worst injustices possible, no real economic reason for it. They just do it because Lolth says they should, and from a writing perspective it hammers home the fact that they’re evil. They aren’t evil because they enslave and murder, they enslave and murder because they’re evil, if that makes any sense.

Them being written as comically evil as they are also hurts them from a worldbuilding perspective. They’re so reliant on slaves for menial labor that the lower class of their society struggle to get jobs. Drow culture so obsessed with betrayal and dumbass house wars that even when actively under attack from the outside they sabotage each other. They’re so decadent that their buildings are held up with magic and semi regularly collapse when a spell fails. To put it bluntly, drow society feels like one that should have collapsed in a few centuries, which, funnily enough, is way longer than D&D elves live.

Their culture being so monolithic also makes writing anything about them difficult. Every drow antagonist is going to have near identical motivations, methods, and ideologies as every other drow antagonist. Every drow protagonist is going to ultimately feel very similar to Drizzt, because leaving their fucked up society to become a do-gooder is such a common backstory element that they added a whole extra god just for doing that. In fact, you can divide 90% of drow characters from any official materials into these categories:

Manservant

Ambitious male, usually a wizard (5 bucks says he has long hair and a widow’s peak)

Dommy Mommy Warcrime Woman

Drizzt Do’Urden or one of his many duplicates

Self-loathing and/or resentful Drider

And finally, their existence almost purely to be humanoid enemies you can fight at nearly any levels is just kind of lazy. This is a problem that I have with the “evil races” of a lot of fantasy but having a group that’s evil by birth just feels like an excuse to not have to write actual motivations for your antagonists. It’s the difference between “go attack this camp of soldiers because they’re part of the SkullMurder army and their general wants to use our land to build a dread fortress” vs “go attack this camp of soldiers specifically because they’re drow/goblins/orcs/the dreaded peepee-poopoo folk”. Using stuff like this just feels like an excuse to not have to write an actual antagonist since it comes pre-written in the group’s lore. This has the side effect of whenever such a group is the antagonist of the plot, the players or audience know near exactly what to expect. The orc is here to conquer, the goblin is here to steal, and the drow is here to enslave or do some dark ritual.

I’ve legitimately heard people say “well if XYZ can’t be inherently evil anymore, who will we use as bad guys?” It’s very simple: whoever the fuck we want. Write an evil queen, or a scheming wizard, or an underground slave trade network. For God’s sake, anyone can be evil, you don’t need to tie that to a specific ethnic group and write it as “they’re just like that”. Write an actual character for your antagonist.

[intothedraft]

When I came to write draft 3, I tore the whole story up and practically started from scratch. Maybe because I didn't know I still had copies of the previous drafts following the Limewire Incident, but also because I'd outgrown it.

Seeing as the first two drafts are so similar, I thought I'd compare the two, and just for fun, show you how I'd write Dying Screams now, if I wanted to keep the plot roughly as-is but also make it, uh, make sense.

First of all, the changes:

Our protagonist is all grown up now

This is a GROWN UP book for GROWN UP kids, so Layane has been aged up to fourteen, and she has an on-page love interest!

In the original book she was either a toddler or eight. I say one or the other, because I switched the names. I guess I liked 'Layane' better for the protagonist.

The stakes have been raised

I can't say it's done well, but there is certainly a lot more action and danger throughout the novel.

Instead of finding their parents bodies and a note before leaving for Hiville, Layane and Clemant need to run and hide from their attacker. When their parents die, they stay dead. There is a sense of dread when Layane wakes in the middle of the ocean, and again when the boat lands on the dead-end island. Layane is almost killed by her 'brainwashed' love interest. Clemant is kidnapped many times, prompting other characters to save her. The bird is terrifying. The Dying Screams are presented as an unkillable threat, rather than 'easily defeated'.

In draft 1, any action/danger was resolved very quickly without much fuss, so it makes a nice change.

The characters (mostly) react to situations appropriately

In draft 1, Clemant hardly reacts to anything around her. Draft 2 has its flaws, but the girls are devastated when their parents are killed. Layane is terrified and angry on the boat. She is giddy when she meets up with Roan and betrayed when he turns on her. When she runs off to join the fighting, it's not because she gets to hold a cool flag, but because she is desperate to save Roan from certain death.

Yes, there are periods in the story where I forget to have characters react to things (and Clemant's personality drops off halfway through), but most of the time they do, which is a step up. They feel like they are reacting to things happening around them, rather than simply observing them.

I really, really care about LORE

We get so much lore in this. If only I could keep it consistent.

We hear about Hiville's history. The battle. The book. The prophecies. The temple. We are told about these things in detail, rather than plot-relevant locations or items just popping up randomly.

Some of the, uh, sillier elements are gone

No more Frenchman who had his DNA removed. No more squirty bottle of live-forever juice. No more Jez getting tied up repeatedly because she's annoying, or wearing jewellery that spells secret messages about how cool she is when she moves fast.

(Honestly, I should have kept that one.)

Because I've come up with BETTER silly stuff

The boat can talk! Jez smashes her own window for no reason! Gevirians canonically killed the dinosaurs! You can drink a potion to make you learn English faster! There's multiple secret villain lairs dotted around Hiville! Mystic was banished for 'being annoying'!

The dialogue is somehow simultaneously better and worse

No further comment.

The writing is much more self-conscious

Most of draft 1 made very little sense, but when I introduced something, I said it with my whole fucking chest.

Yes, this French assassin had his DNA removed by a shadow god. DEAL WITH IT.

This draft is different. I can't keep the history of Hiville consistent for more than two pages, probably because the idea of the first war happening 'millions' of years ago is a bit silly. There's a number of parts where a character explains a lore element (such as how Layane was able to defeat the Dying Screams in the book) several times to make sure the reader 'gets it', which is something I still do when working through plot elements I'm unsure about in first drafts. I think the reason G-slur comes off as insidious is because I was trying far too hard to make her a 'serious' character, to counteract how young-sounding the other Ladies are. The joke about her name is gone, presumably because I didn't want to change it, but I also didn't want to draw attention to how strange it is that she is called that.

It reads like I knew there were parts that were weak at best, but decided to ignore them, either because it's just a draft or because this is my comfort story.

On that note, if twelve-year-old me approached me now and asked me to rewrite this in a way that worked, while keeping most of the plot intact...

DYING SCREAMS: 2025 EDITION

We open on a house somewhere in middle-of-nowhere Somerset. Our sixteen-year-old protagonist, Layane, knows her life is unusual. Her parents have moved their family around many times. They never let her outside alone. Never let Layane speak to anyone. She knows this is strange: she has read books and watched films, and knows she should be in school, should have friends.

She also knows she can't. Her family are in danger. There are bad people out there who would harm or kill them if they were found. Her parents tell her that when she is older, they will tell her everything.

One day, Layane is looking after her eight-year-old sister, Clemant, while her parents are out getting groceries or something. Layane gets drawn into a book she's reading, or show she's watching, or [insert hobby here] and realises her sister has vanished. After a panicked few minutes, she finds Clemant outside, at the edge of the garden. There's a woman riding a horse down the country road, and she has stopped to talk to Clemant, who is amazed seeing the massive animal. The woman doesn't appear to be a threat, but Layane panics and drags her protesting sister back inside. Anyone could have seen them! Not wanting to worry their parents, Layane says nothing to them about what happened.

That night, Layane cannot sleep (unusual for my characters). She is terrified that the woman might be one of the bad people who wants them dead. After a while, she is so tired that she thinks she's hearing things. A woman's voice, telling Layane her family is in danger. A dream, surely. A symptom of the panic from earlier. Then she sees words carved into the wall, shockingly real. They tell her to grab her sister, get her parents, and run to the garage.

Layane hears a sound outside. It could be her parents, or an animal. Could be something else. She springs into action, grabs her sister, and goes downstairs just in time to see her father killed. She does not see his attacker.

Layane, Clemant and their mother attempt to flee, but the floorplan of the house actually makes sense this time. Layane's mother tells Layane and Clemant to run, not into the garage, just get away from here. She causes a distraction that tragically leads to her death, but not before shouting for the person to leave them alone, that they haven't told anyone anything, and the girls run outside.

Once out, Layane hears the voice again. The garage. Get into the garage. Panicked, she obeys, and finds that weird boat her parents have always had, covered in a sheet. The voice tells her to get in. The boat - an amphibious vehicle with both magical and mechanical elements - activates immediately. The girls fall asleep, and it fires down the road, destination unknown.

Layane wakes up and all she can see is ocean. The boat is still moving. She feels strange and groggy and does not think her sleep was natural. She panics, starts pressing buttons, turning the wheel to see if anything happens. Nothing does - the boat keeps moving forwards. At some point Clemant wakes up and joins Layane's frantic investigation of the boat. After a while, they give up. Layane hits and kicks the seemingly indestructible control panel, scaring Clemant. Their parents are dead. They have no one. They will die out here.

Then in the distance, Layane spots a tiny lump in the sea. An island. Her relief is short-lived, because it's a rock in the middle of endless ocean. To her horror, the boat brings them right to it, and an electronic voice announces they have reached their destination.

At first, Layane is confused. Why would the boat take them to a small, dead-end cave? Then the boat says a word and the wall opens up, revealing a marble staircase leading endlessly downwards. Carved into its walls are depictions of women with four arms and wings in impressive clothes. The first is standing under a waterfall, the next dancing in flame, the next has plants growing around her, the next flying in front of the sun, the last surrounded by darkness. There are more carvings further down, similar designs, and the staircase seems to go on forever. Layane and Clemant do not want to go down. The air is stale, and the staircase becomes an eye-aching optical illusion when they try to see its end. Then the boat starts rolling down, the stairs becoming a slope that allows it to descend with ease, and the girls know they have no choice. The ocean goes on forever. They follow the boat, which stops and lets them back in.

Layane wakes up, now certain that something knocked her out. All she can remember is being on that boat, those marble depictions of four-armed women repeating over and over as she went down. Gods, she thinks. Now Layane is no longer in the boat, but in a bed in a grand, wood-panelled room with green furnishings. No sign of Clemant, but there is a woman at the end of the bed. A blue-haired woman wrapped in fine, blue clothing. And she has wings.

Before Layane can splutter a reaction, the woman introduces herself as... well, not G-slur, I'd come up with a more appropriate name, but for the purpose of this I'll continue to call her G-slur. She tells Layane that Clemant is fine, and recovering from the effects of the journey in the next room. She is so sorry about what happened to Layane's parents. She tried to enter their minds, but could not. Adults are usually more resistant to someone entering their minds.

Layane relaxes a little. She clocks the extra two arms and tail, and knows this woman is one of those figures carved into marble, or something like them. She asks G-slur what this place is, and G-slur explains they are in an underground country called Hiville, populated by Gevirians. G-slur is one of the country's leaders, their Lady of Water. Hiville is place of powerful magic, and its leaders are the most powerful of them all. Each Lady has an important task in keeping their underground country inhabitable. Without them, this place would return to barren rock.

Then Layane asks what happened to her parents, and G-slur explains that Layane's family are special. Centuries ago, one of Layane's ancestors was the first person to enter Hiville, after a boat carrying her and a friend capsized near to the entrance. Maybe they were scientists or engineers. Something like that, anyway. They were found by two Gevirians who took pity on them and brought them inside. While they were recovering, the two humans were introduced to Gevirian magic, and the Gevirians worked with them to combine technology and magic into mechanical marvels such as the boat. Eventually, the two humans wanted to go back to their families, and the Gevirians thought it would be useful to have two people to help them relay information about the outside world into Hiville, so they agreed.

Unfortunately, that was where things started to go wrong. Layane's ancestor wanted to bring her family into Hiville, to keep their creations and magic to themselves. Hiville is a peaceful place, and she did not want to ruin that. Her friend, who obviously has the surname Sovance, thought that they should sell their inventions, along with Hiville's very existence. Think of how much money they would make!

Naturally this came to a head, and Great-Great-Great-etc-Grandma Croe killed her friend. Whether it was self-defence or not is unknown. This started a rivalry between the two families that has been ongoing to this day. The Gevirians naturally aligned themselves with the Croes, and the Sovances lost the knowledge of where Hiville's entrance is, but they know what was taken from them. Supposedly they have been tinkering with the magical items taken from Hiville by their ancestors, in hiding, planning their revenge for years. They must have been who killed Layane's family.

Layane is horrified. She asks to see her sister, and G-slur takes her there, while reassuring Layane that they are safe now. The Gevirians owe a great debt to her family for keeping their country secret, and Layane and Clemant can live here, safe from the enemy who killed their parents. That's what G-slur keeps referring to the person who killed their parents: their greatest enemy. It's a bit heavy-handed but Layane doesn't pick up on that, eager to see her sister. Layane and Clemant have a tearful reunion.

Shortly afterwards, they are introduced to Jezirah, the Lady of Plants. She seems to be in her late teens, and doesn't act as Layane would expect the leader of a country to act. Jezirah has a bangle that lets her focus her powers, because she's still pretty rusty. Jezirah tells Layane that she's younger than she looks, but was aged up via magic after the previous Lady of Plants died suddenly. It's not hereditory, Jezirah explains, but after a Lady dies, a random child is born with her powers. Some Gevirians aren't happy that the Ladies rule Hiville, she says. It would cause so many issues if the position was taken by a baby, right after the last Lady of Plants died, especially as she was starting to sympathise with the people's desire to vote for a leader like humans usually do shortly before her death. Still, never mind all that! Jezirah likes her job! Looking after Layane and Clemant is the first time she's been given any responsibility, and she takes it very seriously.

Over the next few weeks, Layane privately mourns her parents but does enjoy her newfound freedom. She's staying in Jezirah's massive, luxurious treehouse tended to by Jezirah's staff, can explore the nearby towns whenever she wants (even though it feels odd that the Gevirians treat her as a curiosity), and in Jezirah she finally has a friend. She is angry that her parents didn't bring the family here sooner. She could have been living like this all along, and they would still be alive.

One day, while walking, she comes across a temple. Unlike the other buildings here, it is shabby, crumbling. There's statues of some of the previous Ladies, now covered in weeds and damp. Layane walks up to the entrance, and feels a deep sense of dread. She thinks she hears a voice - or maybe just the wind - calling her closer. She runs away.

When she tells Jezirah what she saw, Jezirah is worried. They return to the temple. No sign of the voice, but the place is creepy as hell and Jezirah thinks maybe Layane imagined it.

I'm sure this won't come up again.

We get some more detail about the Ladies. Maybe Layane meets the others here. Maybe not. Point is: they exist, and occasionally show up at Jezirah's house, or Jezirah goes to meet them and brings the kids along because she's a mess. We see some cool elemental powers, but their roles feel more... politician than god, the longer Layane spends with them. Shafina is silent and Layane isn't sure what to think about her. G-slur appears to be running the show. Maybe I'll even give Saphirah a personality this time.

One day, someone arrives at Jezirah's house, escorted inside by Jezirah's guards. A Gevirian girl around Layane's age, who -

(Of course I'm making Roan a girl. Also, I'm going to change the spelling to Roen, as it is in every other draft. I know I could make Jezirah a viable love interest too, but I'm sticking with the previous plot. Anyway.)

- was walking near the temple with her father, when he heard a voice. The girl, Roen, watched in horror as her father walked deeper into the temple, touched a brick that transported them to a hall deep as the earth's core, and walked up to an old book on a podium before disappearing. Roen ran until she reached Jezirah's grand treehouse to ask for help.

Of course, Layane hears all about this afterwards, as Roen cannot speak English. All Layane knows is there was a commotion, and something bad must have happened to that girl. The other Ladies turn up to discuss, before heading to the temple. Layane tries to listen in to their conversation, but they are speaking Gevirian.

Afterwards, when Roen is safely at home with her family / other parent / whoever, Jezirah tells Layane about the Book. An ancient magical artefact, created by the Lady of Shadow from hundreds of years ago, to contain a human army that discovered them and tried to attack. The thing was designed to drag every human in Hiville inside it, so it's lucky that the only humans in Hiville were the army. Unfortunately the way she bound the book meant that they were unable to die, and continued to survive within the pages as a ghostly army. (Happens to us all.) The Gevirian Ladies at the time tried to destroy the book, but found they were unable to without opening it and releasing the ghostly threat they called the Dying Screams. Instead, the Lady of Shadows cursed it so that whoever opened the book would hand control of the army to their greatest enemy. No one would ever open it, but they hid it in the temple anyway, just in case.

It's all okay, though! They've knocked down the entrance to the temple. It was old and creepy, anyway. Some leftover from when the Gevirians treated the Ladies as gods. Jezirah always hated the thing.

After Jezirah has told Layane all of this, Layane realises that Clemant has been listening in, and is understandably terrified. What if the person who killed our parents gets the book, Clemant says? They're our enemy. Layane and Jezirah reassure her that nothing is going to happen.

Dot dot dot.

A few days later, Layane runs into Roen in the nearby market. They don't speak each other's languages, but somehow Roen knows Layane just lost her parents, too. Roen shows Layane around and they have a nice little time together during the calm before the storm. They teach each other a few words in their respective languages. It's nice.

Then the calm before the storm becomes the storm. Clemant is in bed, when she hears a voice. Her mother's voice. She thinks she is seeing things, but her mother explains she's a ghost. She can't touch Clemant, or stay with her long. But there's a book that contains all the ghosts, and if it's opened, Clemant's parents will be free. Ghost Mother leaves, and Clemant follows.

Layane wakes to find Clemant's bed empty. She goes to look for Clemant and sees her outside at the base of the tree, walking into the forest as though sleepwalking. Layane gets Jezirah and they set off.

Quickly, they lose Clemant. Jezirah asks Layane to wait while she swings through the trees to find her. She leaves her bangle with Layane, in case she needs it.

Then Roen shows up. She is acting strangely. She seems to know more words in English now, and it soon becomes apparent that she is there to kill or harm Layane. It makes no sense. They had such a nice time together! Roen says she needs to kill Layane because humans will always try to kill Gevirians. And she has a gun! Oh no! Roen tries to shoot Layane, and Layane uses the bangle erratically to defend herself and ends up blasting Roen with magic, sending her flying into the undergrowth. Jezirah spots Clemant near the temple, then returns having heard the commotion. Layane is traumatised but decides to focus on her sister.

Jezirah and Layane reach the temple and find a hole has been dug through the rubble. A perfectly Clemant-sized hole.

We cut to Clemant, who has reached the book. Her mother is with her, and the moment Clemant touches the book, she can swear she can feel her mother's hand on her shoulder. Her nails are long and sharp, which is weird, but that's fine. As Clemant opens the book, she realises the thing on her shoulder is a fucked up human-bird hybrid with swirling eyes, but it's too late. She collapses.

Jezirah and Layane eventually rescue her, and pull her away as the Dying Screams are released from the book. They run as the ghosts swarm around the temple, then spill free, and fly towards towns and villages. Jezirah and Layane hide with Clemant.

There's chaos. Blood. Fighting. (Etc.) Jezirah and the girls make it to G-slur's underwater house to ask for help. G-slur says she knows what must have happened: that family, the Sovances, must have found a way into Hiville. Presumably they followed Layane and Clemant inside! And they have all sorts of magic-enhanced gadgets and biological experiments, including something powerful enough to make you do anything according to rumours. G-slur dashes away and heroically pushes back the Screams with her powers, saving hundreds of civilians. Her magic will not hold forever, though, she says.

Layane and Clemant hide out in Jezirah's house as the Gevirians go to war. Roen comes to, sees that her country has been overtaken by fighting and ghosts, and realises she has a big gap in her memory. Word has got out that there are two humans in Hiville who have doomed everyone. They even hid the book, you know, the only thing known to stop the Screams, because they would be sucked in, too. It's not in the temple any more, so they must have hid it! Roen knows she has to warn Layane. She heads to Jezirah's house, has a confused and panicked conversation with the others - for some reason, after her brain was scrambled, her English has massively improved, something that Jezirah said happened to her after she was aged up via magic by G-sl- right as the Gevirian army discovers Layane and Clemant's location.

The girls, helped only by Jezirah after the other Ladies seemingly side with the mob (G-slur privately telling Jezirah that she will fix it, don't worry), end up on the run, aiming to leave Hiville. At some point, Jezirah reminds us all that the last Lady of Plants died under mysterious circumstances. Maybe because she's angsting over not being able to help much. At some point Roen and Layane kiss, or Jezirah and Layane kiss (providing I have made Jezirah old enough so I don't have to examine the ethical implications of Layane kissing someone who was aged up via magic), or they all kiss each other in front of Clemant, who is very uncomfortable.

They face threats from the army, the bird, and the Sovances. Except the Sovances seem... off. It's unclear why they're there, what they're doing. They seem to want to make money from Hiville but also want to completely destroy it. After one of The Gals (dealer's choice) manages to knock one of the Sovances out, the captured Sovance comes to and it becomes apparent that they were under the spell of something powerful. They have no idea where they are or what they're doing.

But why, Layane says, would they hypnotise themselves with their own bird? It doesn't make any sense!

They don't have time to dwell, because they get attacked again, or [miscellaneous peril]. But good news, they're close to where the boat is stored by the entrance of Hiville! (Note to self: actually map out how Hiville is laid out.) On the way, they pass the temple, which is... being rebuilt? It's odd, why the hell would anyone want to rebuild it? The old statues are gone, replaced by a new one, which looks a hell of a lot like -

Then it hits them. G-slur. She must have orchestrated all of this. She expressed annoyance that the people no longer treat the Ladies as gods, she has the power to control people, and as the only one able to push back the Screams she has the most to gain from the chaos. Layane and Clemant never saw their parents' killer so it could have easily been her, which would mean she now controls the Dying Screams! Layane remembers something her mother said before she died, we haven't told anyone anything. That doesn't really make sense if it's aimed at the Sovances.

Makes a whole lot of sense aimed at G-slur, though...

Holy fuck, she might have even killed the last Lady of Plants!

Jezirah has a bit of a crisis, realising that the girls were put under her care because G-slur knew she would fuck up. Then they all rally. The BOOK. They need to find the book and use it to trap the Dying Screams again. If G-slur orchestrated this, she presumably has the means to stop it, so she must have the book!

Which means... she plans for Layane and Clemant to die. Layane has a choice. She can leave, let G-slur become a dictator, and stay on the run from presumably both G-slur and maybe the Sovances for the rest of her life. Or she can fix the first place that has ever felt like home.

She decides the latter.

Now armed with a plan, and probably several swords and guns, Layane sends Clemant and the remaining (now un-hypnotised and very confused) Sovances to safety. Maybe there was once a feud, but it's over now. Layane insists to Jezirah and Roen that she will join the others before they activate the book, as they won't let her sacrifice herself.

Then, they head to G-slur's house. G-slur is not there when the girls arrive, but they are faced with soldiers/booby traps/some kind of threat. Maybe it turns out Saphirah is in on it, because she has a personality now. They search until they find the Book, but... oh shit! They have no idea how to use it to trap the Screams!

G-slur arrives and tries to stop them via horrible water magic and mind control, and Layane and Roen escape with the book as Jezirah holds her off. Layane and Roen head to find Shafina, who has never spoken whenever she previously appeared and has always felt like a bit of a wildcard. Supposedly it was the Lady of Shadow who trapped the ghostly army last time, so she must know!

They are of course right, and it turns out Shafina not only knows, but was the person who created the book in the first place. Yep, she's super old. She says she can activate it, but then Layane will be trapped in the book, too. Shafina could probably stop G-slur as well, but she's been alive for so long that she prefers to just observe. Shafina teaches them the words to use. Layane and Roen tell her she's a coward, before racing away to get Layane to safety before activating the book. They don't think their harsh words had any impact on Shafina, but she does save Jezirah from being killed by G-slur by yoinking her away.

On the way, Layane and Roen are stopped by G-slur's army. It looks like they're stealing the book! Layane immediately decides to sacrifice herself and yells the words that binds the Screams to the book.

In the aftermath, G-slur acts like this was her plan all along. She let Layane into Hiville because she knew - because of her awesome powers - that Layane would save them. The temple housing the book is rebuilt, and is basically a temple to G-slur, worshipping her powers and role in the war. Jezirah and Roen are in hiding, terrified that G-slur will find and kill them before they can tell everyone the truth.

Meanwhile, inside the book, Layane comes to. She's still alive, still solid, unlike the other ghosts in the book, who appear to be fading. They have been held to this earth for too long. They don't attack her. While outside of G-slur's control, they seem more... trapped. Tired and confused. Stuck to a world in a half-life. Layane tells them she has a plan to free them all.

In the weeks afterwards, something odd starts happening. Gevirians who visit the temple hear a voice. Layane's voice, telling them that she has defeated the Dying Screams within the book, and that G-slur was the one controlling them. That this was all a trick.

G-slur brushes it off publicly as the Screams attempting to sow discord. Then privately, she goes to the temple to check out the book. It seems... different. It's no longer trying to drag people inside. G-slur realises that Layane must be telling the truth. She doesn't know how the magic works, nor the impact throwing a 21st century teenager into a book full of, I don't know, Viking (?) ghosts would have. She approaches the book and opens it, aiming to free Layane and kill her.

Of course, the Dying Screams are not dead yet, and by opening the book, G-slur handed total control of them over to her greatest enemy: Layane.

The Screams burst free and tear G-slur apart before she can freeze them in living ice or whatever. Layane follows, and her last act of control over the ghosts is to release them - something that G-slur and the other Gevirians could have done all along, if they'd thought of the ghosts as anything other than a mindless threat. The Screams disappear. Hiville is saved.

Everyone finds out what happened quickly, because G-slur's arrogance meant she left a tonne of evidence that she was evil all along. This includes evidence that Layane's family used to live in Hiville, until G-slur started using them as scapegoats for anything that went wrong, and they fled. Hiville's people get to vote for a leader for the first time, rather than leaving ruling the country to those born with elemental powers, and funny thing is: no blue-haired baby is born in the immediate aftermath, and Hiville continues to function without its Lady of Water. Layane and Clemant decide to stay in Hiville. It's nice. Peaceful. A world of magic, etc etc.

There's an epilogue, because I know twelve-year-old me would have loved an epilogue. Layane and Roen, or Layane and Jezirah, or whatever, grow up and have a baby together. That baby, some variation of half-Gevirian-half-human, is born with shocking blue hair.

THE END

This... turned out longer than I planned. If I don't write something for my next writing group meeting I'm going to have to admit it's because I wrote this instead.

[yarpharp]

Dragon Age Veilguard ramble (with some spoilers about the ending of the whole thing)

I... I know there are plenty of people defending this game. But on a story level, I am kinda confused. And frustrated. So The Veil is powered by the Evanuris who are immortal and trapped in a special alternate space veil prison thing where they serve as batteries until somebody cracks open the Veil.

So First Question: how the fuck didn't they (the Evanuris) escape from their prisons during Inquisition? I'm... I'm really confused how that didn't happen. I mean, Solas/Corypheus bungled it so bad it cracked a huge hole in the sky! TWICE! Once in the beginning of the game and then again at the climax! And what about the small rifts? I mean, Solas' knife ritual cracked open a hole in the Veil that WASNT MUCH BIGGER THAN A RIFT. Why didn't one of the Gods escape then? And you can't tell me those dumb little devices we helped hunt down for Solas were somehow keeping the Gods back. Most players didn't even find them all!

Second Question: did they seriously retcon Morrigan and her fucking son? And what is the deal with the Mythal lore? I mean, I ain't SHOCKED Solas probably once fucked Mythal or had feelings for her. That seemed obvious to me. But what the fuck about Mythal/Flemeth's scary warnings in Inquisition and DA2 about "reckonings" and "finally getting her vengeance"? ONE OF THE DA4 ENDINGS IS MYTHAL SOMEHOW REACHING OUT FROM MORRIGAN (oh and apparently Morrigan, she who feared her mom and feared becoming her mom's new meat suit for extending her life, decided to become Mythal's next host I guess???? Seriously???) TO TELL SOLAS TO LET GO OF HIS MISSION AND GRIEF? Are... Are you serious? What happened to all that fucking anger and plotting? Was that the ultimate plot of hers? Make Solas become a battery with the remainder of her killers? I... What. And what happened with the Old God Soul? Seriously, what about that? Is that supposed to be how Solas transforms into a fucked up hyena dog? (Sorry the design for the dread wolf is kinda disappointing to me.)

Third Question: Why is there a path option where somehow the Inquisitor Lover actually finally manages to persuade him to do the right thing? BRO, WHAT WAS TRESPASSER FOR THEN??? IF SOLAS IS WILLING TO DOUBLE-CROSS HIS LOVER AND ROOK TO GET HIS WAY, WHY WRITE THAT ENDING SCENARIO?

Fourth Question: Did the developers forget that Solas is actually pretty neutral about Blood Magic? Because there was a whole scene in the game where he claimed he abhorred blood magic and then proceeds to reveal the Veil is definitely partially a blood magic ritual. Or was it supposed to be a really lame "oh look he lies!" moment?

Fifth Question: Does this mean we retconned all those codex entries and Cole ramblings about how Solas was a spirit of Wisdom once and he LITERALLY HAS THAT SCAR ON HIS FACE BECAUSE HE BURNED MYTHAL'S VALLASLIN OFF WITH MAGIC? Because this makes the whole "Mythal and Solas are lovers and Solas did this all for her, blah blah" feel far more fucking malicious if that's still canon. I mean... Isn't it a bit weird to have at one point opposed the woman/god who quite literally owned you as an advisor/agent of her will, and then you burn her slave markings off your face, and somehow you became lovers somewhere in all of that? What kinda toxic bullshit is that? WHY TRY TO DESTROY THE WORLD FOR A TOXIC EX? Wanting to kill the Evanuris? Valid. Wanting to tear down the Veil to restore the elven people after seeing what happened to them? Fucked up but strangely valid. But arguing that he went through all that bullshit for his ex-lover because he "wanted to honor their promise and memory" feels really fucking janky and sloppy as a plot point.

And Sixth Final Question: Did bioware really not give me the ultimate bad ending of "Tear Down the Veil"? Because that's just plain disappointing.

[asleepinawell]

lingering questions and thoughts on the dlc lore

first off, some of these may have been addressed in item descriptions and i either 1) missed an item or 2) read it but it was 3am and my brain didn't retain some detail

all opinions are just opinions etc, i have no interest in getting in lore fights and block people who try and start them. I'm too tired for that shit. this is just fun speculation

one question i had that i feel must have been answered was what was the scadutree actually for?

what was the timeline regarding messmer and melina's birth? they're referred to together as if they're twins or were born close together. my assumption was that messmer at least was radagon's kid with marika, but the dialogue of the story trailer implies his purge took place shortly after marika's ascension. marika could have split off radagon fairly early (even as part of the process of becoming a god like miquella and st trina) but there was no mention of them having kids until after the rennala thing much later on. my assumption about his parentage is based on 1) hair color and 2) he has a special curse which gives him something in common with malenia/miquella. he is not an empyrean though so maybe radagon isn't the dad (did you fuck the god devouring snake marika????)

i don't want to touch on the miquella and radahn stuff too much since I'm not interested in The Discourse. (i found the parts of the story about marika and the hornsent to be far more interesting). i will say that while the radahn thing felt like it came out of nowhere, the reason miquella didn't choose malenia is probably because 1) she's another empyrean and therfore a candidate for being a god, not a lord, and 2) she's already been claimed by a god. godwyn would have been the more lore logical choice but he didn't even get a mention, like "miquella wanted him but his soul was gone". so weird choice (and bad boss fight) but eh

i'm not sure if miquella's two fingers is ever commented on but he and ranni both followed a similar path in abandoning their flesh to remove themselves from the greater will's influence except ranni then went feral and stabbed hers to death and then got engaged while still covered in its blood. 10/10 no notes

one thing I'd wanted but hadn't expected to get was the reason marika smashed the ring. the whole "woman went crazy because her son died" thing is very grrm and 😬 about what i expect from how his writing handles women, BUT! i think the dlc gives a more complicated possibility for this. marika gets her tragic backstory (which i was also dreading because grrm) and it's one that actually made a lot of sense in terms of the lore and did a good job explaining her actions without justifying them (she slapped the cycle of violence on the roof and was like this bad boy can fit so much perpetuation). the fact she removed death from the elden ring after having witnessed the brutal extermination of her people makes complete sense. and then her son gets killed. she obtained godhood to punish the hornsent and to protect what was left of her people (which seems to mostly be the children she had later) and the elden ring failed her and her kid died. it wasn't grief over her son, so much as past trauma mixed with extreme anger. she took on godship to prevent this and the elden ring had failed her. it had one job basically. radagon, who lacked her memories, was immune to this. overall i think that's a decent plot compared to what it could have been

the whole story with the hornsent also makes the story of morgot and mohg much darker (and it was already dark). marika must have been really pissed and upset to have omen children (maybe part of why she ditched godfrey?). since they were her blood she wouldn't have killed them (since protecting the last of the shamans/numen was her thing), but man. fucked up if true etc

marika probably would have gone apeshit about jarburg if she hadn't been off being crucified

also since ranni was not marika's kid (or wasn't raised by her per se) she might not have known anything about marika's backstory and not expected marika's reaction to godwyn's death. edit: this is not me being like ranni did nothing wrong. i support women's wrongs. i think they should do more of them. more like, imagine ranni kills godwyn and then suddenly marika smashes the ring and all the other demigods go nuts and start waging war and she's just like huh. wild. and then fucks off to her tower until they all get it out of their systems

the lgbtq community has forgiven mohg is possibly the funniest narrative choice they could have made. poor man didn't even get to yell sex in his fight 😔. at least he had some of the sickest looking moves in the game

rellana was the best boss in the dlc and possibly the whole game imo. the fact she may have been into messmer is really funny though because 1) if you go age of stars that is now your aunt in law kicking your ass and 2) your aunt in law who is into the brother of your wife. what a family. no wonder ranni wants to go to space

[muse-matrix]

So... It's been a while since I last logged in here. Longer still since I properly did... much of anything here, outside of a few scattered posts. Part of me had been kinda dreading coming back here but looking at when my activity really dramatically dropped off, I think I understand what happened.

So, way back in february of last year, I was bouncing between a lot of things. I was running around doing a bunch of stuff to try and secure a new job, and I did manage that- A big component of my not being here was just me adjusting to having to work again, after being unemployed for almost an entire year. It was tough to get the right structure going, but I managed it. And despite starting college just a couple weeks ago, I've mostly managed that too so far, I think.

But that isn't... the main reason why. Probably. I think.

You see, what else happened in february, was that I got booted from a community I'd been a part of for years. It encompassed my involvement in a card game I loved, as well as the FF14 free company I'd been part of at the time. Someone who was, at one time, a good friend of mine misinterpreted something, and was so incensed by it, they took some things I said out of context and absolutely slandered me to the mod team of that community. (Yes, it actually is as bad as it sounds. I checked.) As a result, I was privately labeled some pretty nasty things, and shunted from their discord server without so much as a word. None of them would speak to me, none of them would even give me a chance to tell my side of things.

Obviously, that stung. A lot.

It had me pretty dejected about a lot of stuff, for a really long time. Probably why I mostly got off of here- I retreated to a different blog where there was less pressure (self-imposed) and more freedom for me to just, kinda, do whatever I wanted without fear or worry. I needed space and freedom to move myself around how I wanted for a while. And then that led to me feeling bad about not coming back here, which made me put off coming back here even longer... You see where this goes.

But at this point, it's been a year and a half. I'm pretty much over that fiasco, I haven't spoken to any of those people since, and they've evidently been content to leave it alone too, given I haven't had any mobs of angry pitchfork-wielding card game players coming after me.

And recently, Kako came back! She's RPing again and that's fun to see. I know a lot of you I've still been in contact with regardless, her included, so most of you probably are already aware of a lot of this stuff, but writing all this out is part of my process, so bear with it. The important thing is, after a lot of time and thinking about things, and seeing friends return to RPing and watching things happen from afar... God, do I want to get back into it with you all.

I very likely still won't be super active, but I'm going to at least try to be consistent. This is supposed to be my main, after all. I'll probably take the next week or so to clean up the muse list, cut a bunch of stuff, get a bit more focused and the like. Not that I'll actually stop playing any given muse- I'm wont to flip-flop between characters I enjoy, and I'm loathe to let fun interactions pass me by just because a character 'isn't on my muse list', but I ought to give myself a bit of structure, at least.

So... I'll try to be here every day, at least. Even if it's just to check in. This'll be a fresh start for me, I'd say, not that any of my old lore or whatever is getting abandoned. It's just... It's been a long time. It'll take some easing back into things for me, so I'm not even going to worry about whatever asks have been left to rot in my inbox, stuff like that.

Given it's been such a long time, some of you may... have blogs that I'm not currently following, cause I've missed them or what have you. So uh, if that's the case, please shoot me a message so I can correct that.

[stygiansauce]

haii hope you're doing well :> just wanna say MOE has been so much fun to read and your writing is amazing !!

this should've been smthn i sent a while back, but just saying, i find the gem-jimmy-tango dynamic interesting ??

"Gem is pretty in a way Jimmy is almost jealous of. (Red 40)" I REMEMBER READING THIS THE FIRST TIME THEN GOING okay jimmy why would you feel the need to mention that?

tango only willingly (?) giving lollipops to gem & jimmy :') obvs has a soft spot for those two, but gem's feels like it's in a little sister/bestie while jimmy's is,,, jimmy's, an unlabelled thing but is a thing nonetheless.

"Tango knows exactly what she's asking. Would he shield her like he did Jimmy? (Southern Hospitality)" now THIS just reinforces my thoughts on how tango sees jimmy & gem, all the way to his thoughts about what would he do if he had to choose.

ALSO jimmy & tango just knowing when gem's thinking: "She [Gem] looks at him [Jimmy] like she looks at organic chemistry. She's trying to solve something. (Red 40)" and "She [Gem] looks mostly unaffected, though her eyes betray her: calculating, quick, bouncing between the smoldering engine remains and Jimmy's hands still wrapped in Tango's. (Southern Hospitality)"

... yeah i have my eyes on gem why do i feel like she'll have more stuff to do in the plot hdkdhdjsdj

OKAY for the actual chap. update -

LIZZIE AND JOEL MARRIED ???? OH MY HEART

"There is no need for clarification. Joel is Jimmy's Zedaph. A friend that's forever, the kind that stays through the worst of it." what if i sob,,, that is such a way to put their dynamics

jimmy lore drop,,, my boy,,, i wanna give him a tight hug,,,

GROCERY RUN GOD fluff is personally my cup of tea and just seeing them together with the teasing energy while still being soft with each other warms my heart

the jimmy-grian dynamic though,,, i have mixed feels about it TT like i feel bad for jimmy BUT as an eldest kid i get the protectiveness grian has,, but also grian sir your brother is a grown man you're literally taking him bar crawling for his birthday –

this is the point i realize that grian might act the way he does because he wants jimmy get experiences grian himself (and possibly pearl?) weren't able to have.. “Come on, it’ll be fun! I didn’t get to do anything for my twenty-first and I don’t want you to miss out.” GRIAN 😭 don't get me wrong i absolutely understand jimmy but man i felt that,,, these siblings need therapy or something please i'll pay for it i dread the point that their relationship may get strained in the story but ahsjdkwbdjdj

i feel like i could write an essay about the grian-jimmy dynamic BUT the pearl mentions make me want to wait for her appearance first,,, the line "Right after our mom died, but just before Grian signed any custody papers, Pearl and I tried to convince a court officer that I was eighteen and didn't need a guardian." your honor there's something else here,, and i know grian's kinda (??) more important to the plot (haha grian-tango staredown) but still i feel like pearl knows stuff from both sides and surely her input is appreciated by both boys

tango still thinking that jimmy should be old enough to think for himself,,, wasn't there also smthn along those lines from Red 40 -

tango and etho "it's the boys with big brown eyes" solidarity o7 but also their friendship is precious

drunk jimmy sure is bold,,, i wonder if we'll see him again on the birthday chapter,,, totally not thinking about that one MOE post that said jimmy & tango would have their first time during the bday chapter,,,

also god damn the tension ???? is insane ???

"“He’s not allowed to drink, and you aren’t allowed to make any moves on him.” Grian’s smile is stretched too wide, a dangerous glint in his eyes. This is one of those ‘don’t piss off Grian' moments he’s been warned about." TANGO MY GUY HEAVENS BLESS YOUR HEART AND SOUL thoughts and prayers to you

okie okie one last thing !! as a STEM girlie, i'd say you're doing the STEM student experience justice so far :D i enjoy reading the stuff going on in the TIES lab, or the incorporation of STEM concepts to characters' thought processes/descriptions (ex. saying gem looks like she's solving an org chem problem when she's thinking hard, tango mentioning friction and balance to express how he feels like he's losing a grip on himself). i don't know if that's a weird comment, but i personally appreciate it and enjoy the imagery it creates and how it drives home the point that the characters that get this treatment (tango, gem, grian to mention a few) are the more calculated, more logical ones. and they contrast to how other characters (say, jimmy, and katherine based on vibes so far) run with feelings more.

i think that's about it i have in mind for now 🙏 thank you for writing this lovely story !! it's been so much fun reading so far, even the other asks and comments and content in general here on tumblr :]

have a lovely day/night/whatevs !!

~ ree :D

HI REE!!! I am going to break all of this down in return, because I yap :D.

I really love you're analysis of the gem/jimmy/tango dynamics. I actually havn't put a ton of thought into Gem's character outside of her guidance for Jimmy or her friendship with Tango. I will be putting your thoughts to paper later today so I can give myself a little more insight. It's not fair to her character to leave her hanging like that, but I've been struggling about her place between the groups.

I just mentioned in the previous ask that grian and Jimmy have a complicated relationship. Tango doesn't do it justice because he will never understand it. I planned it this way for you guys to dig into it and predict with limited variables. Everything in this chapter has a purpose, I know you'll all find them.

Pearl mentioned are purposeful! It's mentioned in Southern Hopsitialtiy that she is traveling. There is a reason she is gone, and there is a reason why she's rearly mentioned. We will dig into her MUCH later.

Ah yes, the birthday chapter. Wonder when that will be, hmmmm. If his birthday is november (says katherine in RED40) and we are currently at the end of september...I wonder when that will be!

Grian has reasons for introducing Jimmy the way he does! And Tango has reason to regularly remind himself Jimmy is an adult. This is all I can say

YOU GET IT!! you noticed the difference in their "science brain" and "english brain"!!! this is on purpose!!!! I am SO HAPPY that the STEM aspect is coming across because I am not stem, I don't understand it, I don't look it up. We are running off of my highschool physics courses and a season of Cosmos. LETS GOOOOOO. y'all should explain science things to me, it would be a lot of fun actually.

THANK YOU REE! This ask is so nice! Thak you for reading and loving and analyzing. I am so happy to have a made fic that uses everyones critical thinking. Many of these asks are noticing the cultural differences between characters and I want to applaud you all for that, Fantastic cultural pedagogy/introspection going on those brains.

Keep being smart! Love you all so much