#its more than just lore because lore implies its really complex when its so much more about the emotions the themes the narratives

[doomed-era]

my friend showed me a video about splatoon and now im obsessed with the idea of "dark nintendo"

[originalaccountname]

Sorry to bother you but I’ve been getting into BSD and Chuuya’s my fave, but I’ve been seeing some contradictory things in fanfic so…

Does Chuuya actually have a god sealed inside him? I thought it was just like his power without limitations and was dubious of those takes, but since eldritch beings can apparently be a thing (and not an ability), I think it could be plausible either way.

Though even if it’s not I can see why people would use that route for some good angst.

This is not a bother at all! This is something I very much like to talk about

if you're really new I do recommend you go read both "Dazai, Chuuya, Fifteen Years Old" and "STORM BRINGER" light novels (but SB especially), not only are they great books with Chuuya as the focal point but they will help answer your question in depth (you can buy the English translations but I can help you find the translation online if that's what you need, just message me again)

The short version is that Arahabaki being an actual god, a separate entity from Chuuya that has a personality/a voice/desires, is a common fanon trope, but not a canon fact. The truth is more complex and much more fun, lore-wise, in my opinion

And now the long version, because I'm passionate about this and this is my excuse to deep dive into it (spoilers for Fifteen)

In Fifteen, Chuuya says this:

Chuuya himself presents "Arahabaki" as nothing more than pure power. No thoughts, no personality, but powerful for sure.

That phrasing in Fifteen created a lot of confusion I think, talking about gods as real but also not:

But I think it's more of a symbolic reference, talking about immense power that seem out of this world. Because in practice, as Chuuya said before, "Arahabaki" is simply raw power, not an entity. You can't pray to it, it can't understand you, it can't perform miracles (which is why he knew the Old Boss couldn't have been brought back by Arahabaki and it was all nonsense from the start)

I'm also putting part of the blame on the anime, where they decided (while not being exactly wrong either, out of context it's weird) to illustrate Chuuya "floating in a bluish-black darkness, surrounded by a transparent seal" and being pulled out by a hand:

like this:

When, if you actually reread that part in the novel with knowledge about Storm Bringer, it's actually this moment that was being referred to:

Which brings us to Storm Bringer! (heavy spoilers I'm serious)

"Project Arahabaki" was the Japanese government's attempt to create an ability weapon from an individual. They wanted to craft a singularity that could be used multiple times, thus granting them access to power that should not be accessible normally. They based their research on what France had discovered through Verlaine. The objective is to create a massive energy output through a self-contradicting ability, for which you need a vessel:

Chuuya is the device. "Arahabaki" is the massive energy. That massive energy can control gravity to the point of being able to create localized black holes! N implied that part of the lab's work for the Arahabaki Project was to modify Chuuya's body to be able to withstand the constant gravity effects on it so he doesn't just die. Chuuya's normal use of his ability doesn't seem to have any drastic effects on him, and his physical resilience (to getting hit, stabbed, poisoned, shot, electrocuted, to going through a black hole) does seem to imply they did succeed at least in part.

And this bit here explains why "Arahabaki" was the chosen name for the project; unexplained phenomena across History that can be linked to an ability going haywire, but were attributed to god-like interventions at the time. So you're a funny little mad scientist, you read research papers from another mad scientist that named their own creation after a mythological monster, and you decide to do the same with your own local folklore.

But!

There's still something to be said about how "Arahabaki" is a singularity, and therefore, has its own set of rules. Chuuya does loose control, Chuuya does regress to a sort of destructive instinct while under Corruption. But "Arahabaki" is still no more than an ability singularity. Here's what is said about Guivre and Arahabaki:

They are both singularity life-forms. They exist because they are singularities; outside of it, they are nothing. The inner workings of abilities are still mysterious, but most of them have a link to their wielder's desires. For example, Atsushi's Tiger is there to protect him, a mirror to his will to live no matter what. Verlaine's Guivre is similar:

Guivre was a beast born out of Verlaine's loneliness and resulting hatred. He felt deeply alone in not feeling/being human, and through Pan's (his "creator") special "programming" of Verlaine's ability, N was able to trigger the true form of his singularity with that flare gun and metal powder, which took the form of Guivre. It's what the hat was supposed to prevent, but Verlaine had already lost it by then.

Chuuya's Arahabaki is probably similar. Its first apparition was when Rimbaud tried to absorb him and use his ability for himself, and any subsequent use is linked to grief and survival. Basically, if they're their own entities, they are still born in a specific context and deeply linked to the original ability user's character. And Arahabaki? Only exists if Chuuya uses his activation phrase to get rid of the limitations put into place to prevent him from exploding:

More about about Corruption: SB is kind enough to give us an explanation on how the nullification process works, right here:

Chuuya's self-contradicting ability makes him able to control gravity through the sheer amount of energy it creates by permanently interacting with itself. It is kept under control through the use of an activation phrase, O grantors of dark disgrace, do not wake me again, which, after being either said or thought by Chuuya, will open his "Gate" (which I'm interpreting as a blocker put in place by the lab so the singularity doesn't just kill him, like those poor people they mentioned existed through History), and by opening it, "free Arahabaki's true power" (aka Corruption). When Dazai uses his ability on him, the base self-contradicting ability is nullified, which cancels out the singularity taking place, which stops Corruption and allows that "Gate" to close again. The red markings are there because they're cool and fun.

To conclude, I'll let Dazai do the honors:

bonus: what does that mean for Chuuya's ability?

bons 2: Perceived timeline of Chuuya's past and what happened to to create confusion around his humanity

[varlaisvea]

i’m really drawn to the idea of khajiit furstocks, because it implies a culture with a far more expansive and complex view of sex, gender, attraction, and bodies.

like there are 16* furstocks, ranging in size from ‘about twice the size of a housecat’ to ‘bison’. four of them walk on all fours. and they are all socially and sexually compatible with each other. khajiit could be attracted to someone who is much bigger or much smaller than they are, who has totally different body shape than they do.

it means attraction can’t be based on gender first. like, saying ‘i’m attracted to females’ means nothing, because there isn’t one way to be masculine or feminine, there isn’t an ideal that people are looking for when they gauge how fuckable someone is. the designations ‘male’ and ‘female’ mean so much less; they imply nothing about body type, attractiveness, social roles, sexual ability… the only thing males would have in common with other males is genitals. so the only real reason to care about genitals is if you’re interested in procreating, otherwise, you’ve got way more important things to think about, like relative size, strength, and body configuration of your partners.

the act of sex would have to be culturally separate from procreation. they’d have to be two completely separate (if sometimes related) goals, because procreation through means other than penetrative sex would have to be fairly common. so the act of sex would sort of have to be foremost about pleasure and communion, you’d have to be intentional about how you want to be with your partners. with so many different body types and combinations, there isn’t going to be a standard set of interactions. there are countless different ways to give and receive pleasure, and you’d actually have to employ them all and get creative.

plus, you’re all constantly a little stoned. this is a way better way to do gender imo

*17 bc ‘Mane’ counts as its own furstock, even though the Mane ends up looking like another furstock. just to be accurate for the lore purists.

[sunnytastic-and-the-olympians]

Little author's note before I begin: To anyone following this absolutely riveting blog series, I have changed my blog name from @aangtheairfairy to @sunnytastic-and-the-olympians, just to make it easier to know it's me when I like and follow from my main blog (if you are into It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, come follow me on my main, @sunnytastic)

So guess who just finished The Titan's Curse???

You're right, this guy!!!

Right off the bat, I can say The Titan's Curse has lost its place as my favorite PJO book. Currently, the title belongs to The Sea of Monsters. I'm interested to see if The Battle of the Labyrinth or The Last Olympian will take its place. If I remember correctly, The Battle of the Labyrinth was my childhood favorite…

Ok, now moving on to the actual book.

I actually found it kind of boring?

Actually, let me rephrase: I found the novel repetitive. This is probably my fault since I am reading all the PJO books back to back, but The Titan's Curse reminded me a lot of The Lightning Thief, whereas The Sea of Monsters felt like something new entirely.

Don't misunderstand me though. I still very much enjoyed reading this book. When you love something as much as I love the Percy Jackson books, it's almost misleading to present criticisms of it, because it implies that I didn't find pleasure in reading the book, which could not be further from the truth.

The Titan's Curse is where the side characters of the PJO World really begin to shine. While many female characters written by male authors fall flat at best, and downright insulting at worst, Rick Riordan manages to write complex female characters without falling into too many cliches. Thalia, Zoe, and Bianca are fantastic characters, each with a rich backstory and detailed motivations.

(Also, we need more Thalia x Zoe fics because goddamn, did those two have romantic tension. Talk about the enemies-to-lovers trope…)

Zoe, in particular, is extremely well-written. While Riordan is famous for weaving mythology into modern stories, the infusion of Heracle's 11th labor into Zoe's backstory is especially remarkable. It is one thing to create new stories based on established lore; it is another to create a new character within established lore. Her death left me unusually melancholic. When a character I love dies, I react with big emotions, often (half-heartedly) hating the author and begging for their return. But Zoe's death invoked a softer feeling of pensive sorrow. While most tragic heroes deserve better, Zoe's tragedy seems especially undeserved.

While I started writing this blog post last night, I am glad I waited until this afternoon to finish because I recently had some great conversations that expanded my view on the Percabeth dynamic. I feel my analysis of the evolution of their relationship in this book will be more thoughtful than it would have been before these conversations.

While I missed Annabeth's presence in The Titan's Curse, I recognize how useful it is for exploring Percy's growing crush on Annabeth. What's the saying? Distance (and mortal danger) makes the heart grow fonder?

Annabeth's disappearance causes Percy to evaluate the place Annabeth has in his life. The previous book, The Sea of Monsters, had a similar plot, with Grover being captured and Percy going to rescue him, but a major difference between the two books is that in The Titan's Curse, Percy seems in denial of the reason he joined the quest- so much so that Aphrodite even calls him out on it.

Additionally, Percy is worried Annabeth will leave him for the Hunters, but he doesn't have as many reservations when Grover decides to leave to search for Pan. Percy supports his friends following their dreams, but Percy also realizes there is a difference between Grover going personal quest to find Pan and Annabeth swearing him off forever to join the Hunters. This distress isn't entirely romantic either. Part of what makes Percabeth so compelling is the strong friendship which their romantic relationship builds upon.

I believe this is where most of Percy's confusion comes from. When you go from friends to lovers, you spend a lot of time questioning what separates this friendship from your other relationships. And it's very easy to mistake your romantic feelings for a deepening friendship (especially because the two are not mutually exclusive and in fact, occur alongside each other).

This is why I find Aphrodite's quote to be so poignant: "Exquisitely painful, isn't it? Not being sure who you love and who loves you?" As a die-hard romantic, I live by this quote because, for me, it means taking the chance, because if the love is true, the joy you receive outweighs the hurt if it isn't. But for a 14-year-old navigating romantic feelings for this time, every aspect of love seems precarious, especially if your feelings are toward a friend you don't want to risk losing.

I think a lot of Percy's obliviousness comes from a place of "if I don't acknowledge my crush, it doesn't have the potential to end badly." But ignoring things doesn't make them go away and in fact, often makes them worse, as evident in Percy and Annabeth's strained relationship in The Battle of Labyrinth.

This blog post was a fun one. Last night when I started writing this, I was really unsure what to say. I didn't really know what to write about, especially considering my ideas for the blog posts for The Lightning Thief and The Sea of Monsters came to me quickly. However, I am proud of this post because I had to actually think hard about the novel to pull out ideas to analyze and expand upon. The Percabeth analysis, in particular, is much more nuanced than my usual posts about the two.

Book 3 is down. Only two more to go!

As always, TLDR: The Titan's Curse is no longer my favorite, Zoe is a unique character, and Percy's being oblivious to his crush on Annabeth is not entirely unusual.

And because it satisfies my curiosity, this blog post comes in at about 900 words.

Links to the other blog posts in the Isa Rereads Percy Jackson series:

The Lightning Thief

The Sea of Monsters

[rookie-critic]

Rookie-Critic's Film Review Weekend Wrap-Up - Week of 4/3-4/9/2023

The Fast and the Furious (2001, dir. Rob Cohen) [REWATCH]

I have to label this a rewatch on a technicality, because I have watched it before, but it must have been back in 2001/2002, because I don't remember anything about it. I've also never watched any of the FF films besides this one, so this will be a journey of discovery. I think what works about the Fast & Furious that started it all (not to be confused with Fast & Furious, the fourth film in the franchise) is that the characters are compelling and the central story of it is engaging. Sure the VFX are horrible and the film is so uber-early 00s that it physically hurts to watch/listen to sometimes, but in a way that kind of adds to the charm of it. I've heard it compared to teen exploitation films of the 50s, and while I don't think I've ever seen one of those, that sounds like the exact vibe it has. Thankfully, most of the film's ear/eyesores lie in the first half alone, so it doesn't detract too much, and again that almost adds to the charm. I know the praise didn't start rolling in for this franchise until the fifth film, Fast Five, but I think the OG FF film was a pretty solid start to one of the most lucrative film franchises ever created.

Score: 8/10

Currently available to rent/purchase on digital (iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, etc.) and on DVD, Blu-ray & 4K through Universal Studios.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023, dir. Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley)

My full-length review from this week, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was a fantastic adaptation of one of the more adaptation-elusive games out there. Directors Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley, as well as everyone in the main cast, were able to capture the spirit of what a fantastic D&D campaign is all about. It has fun with the fans instead of at their expense, and is a comedy without ever falling into being a farce or a spoof of its source material. My only complaint (and it's not even really a complaint, per se) is that, a few times in the film, they go into very heavy exposition on certain aspects of the world's lore in order to provide context to certain characters and scenarios that, to the D&D uninitiated, will very possibly cause glazed-over eyes and checked watches, but I promise these moments are very few and fart between, and they never last longer than a minute of runtime. This one was probably the most fun I've had in a theater for a 2023 film so far.

Score: 9/10

Only in theaters. You can read my full review for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves here.

A Thousand and One (2023, dir. A.V. Rockwell)

I will always go out of my way to see the smaller-budget, not as well advertised indie films just as often as the big-budget blockbusters, and I'm so glad I did for A Thousand and One. A film that analyzes how CPS handles women and children of color, and to an even more niche and specific extent, the nature of CPS and the foster system in mid-90s to mid-00s New York. Teyana Taylor is undeniable as the film's central character Inez, a woman fresh out of Riker's Island and looking to get a fresh start on her life with her son Terry, who, when the film starts, is in the care of an overstuffed and possibly abusive (it's not confirmed, but it is heavily implied) foster family. The film follows them (as well as Lucky, Inez's on-and-off romantic partner and a father figure to Terry) from 1994 to 2005, when Terry is on the cusp of turning 18. The questions the film presents are complex and not easy to answer, and I feel like some of the things the film presents and wants the audience to agree with them on aren't things I necessarily did, but I am heavily sympathetic with Inez' situation as well as the film's central argument about the question of what guardianship and being a parent really is. For a debut feature, director A.V. Rockwell knocked it out of the park. Score: 8/10

Only in theaters.

Better Luck Tomorrow (2002, dir. Justin Lin)

I diverted my Fast & Furious journey to a film that, while technically not an official entry into the franchise, serves as a somewhat-official origin story for one of the franchise's most beloved characters, Han (played here and in the Fast & Furious films by Sung Kang). I gotta say, once I got past the lo-fi production and the requisite sexism and homophobia that plagues most films from the early 00s, I really, really enjoyed this. The acting from the then fresh-faced cast (which includes a pre-Harold & Kumar John Cho) was exceptional, and the story of the film, that analyzes suburban boredom and the societal pressures placed on Asian youth in America, was really thought-provoking and well-written. It has a few trappings of a new director finding their footing, but it really doesn't take too much away from the film. Any person looking to go on the Fast & Furious odyssey should slot this one into their lineup, it's worth the watch.

Score: 8/10

Currently streaming on STARZ.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023, dir. Aaron Horvath & Michael Jelenic)

I really wanted to love this. I wanted to post this and be so excited to rant and rave about how much relief I felt because the Mario movie was amazing. However, amazing, it is not. Now, by no means is it bad, or even ok, the Mario movie is a very solid, good film, but it has a fair number of issues. That being said, if you're a fan of Illumination and the general humor and vibe they bring to every single one of their productions, then good news, you'll love this. It falls perfectly in line with that sensibility. Unfortunately, I'm not one of those people. I find the Illumination brand of humor to be very cheap and lackluster most of the time. They just try too hard, and ultimately I think that's what holds the Mario movie back from being great, because it does everything else right. The voice acting from the entire cast (and I will include Chris Pratt in that group) was impeccable, with Charlie Day and Jack Black as the clear standouts. The references to the world of the Super Mario video game franchise are all so much fun to experience and look for as a fan of the games, and frankly it's what saves the film from mediocrity and almost makes up for the very lackluster humor and the unoriginal, baseline narrative. If you're a fan of the Super Mario video games or Illumination's previous animated outings, you'll find a lot to love here, if you're not, I highly doubt this will connect with you on any level.

Score: 7/10

Only in theaters. Keep an eye out for a full review of this coming later this week.

Air (2023, dir. Ben Affleck)

Air was a harmless, effortlessly entertaining fluff piece for one of the most iconic shoe lines to ever exist. The cast is amazing, the writing is solid (not to mention hilarious. The film basically functions as a comedy for a majority of its runtime), and the true-life story of the uphill battle Sonny Vaccaro had to fight to get Michael Jordan signed to Nike is as fascinating as a story like this can be. It's not going to go down in the annals of film history as some historic business-drama or anything, but it is incredibly well-made and I personally can't find a ton of fault with it. There are some pretty blatant pieces of product placement that are way more overt than product placement should ever be in a film (not counting the fact the film is basically a 1 hour and 52 minute commercial for Nike), and it commits the period piece sin of throwing way too many period-appropriate references at the audience so that you really don't forget that this film does, indeed, take place in 1984. However, again, I couldn't help but enjoy this, and that might just be because of my appreciation for Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, Viola Davis, and Chris Tucker (basically the entire cast), but if that's really why, then so be it.

Score: 8/10

Only in theaters.

The Wicker Man (1973, dir. Robin Hardy)

What a film this was. Who would have thought the film that inspired that 2006 Nicolas Cage-trainwreck of a remake would be not only an amazingly well-made mystery/folk horror film, but also a cutting commentary on religious stubbornness and extremism. Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee are exceptional as the film's opposing forces, and the way the film and director Robin Hardy really don't try to sway you against either side, but merely presents the characters and the lifestyles as they are and lets you be the judge, is remarkable. The film has aged astoundingly well (outside of the handful of musical sequences in the film's first half the long overstay their welcome), and I don't think I could have been more pleasantly surprised and impressed with this than I was. If you're a horror-movie buff and have not seen this, take the time out of your schedule to watch it. It's a benchmark film that I wasn't even aware I was missing out on all this time. Thinking about how this was a double-bill with Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now back when they both came out blows my mind. To have been a teen in 1973 and to have witnessed these movies back to back. I can only imagine.

Score: 9/10

Currently streaming on AMC+ and Shudder.

2 Fast 2 Furious (2002, dir. John Singleton)

Unfortunately, the magic and character development that made the first Fast & Furious film so watchable was not transferred over to its sequel. The story feels very deflated when compared to the intrigue of the original, and the cast at large doesn't feel quite as lively and fully realized as the Toretto-clan does. That being said, not all is lost when it comes to 2 Fast, because Tyrese is here now, and he's hilarious. The back-and-forth between Paul Walker and Tyrese is unquestionably funny, and it's the film's secret ingredient that makes up for the fact that the film as a whole isn't really that interesting. Ludacris is also pretty great as Tej Parker in this installment. It's funny how they knew what worked from these first few installments in the franchise, and knew to take all of those elements and combine them into one cohesive team for the franchise's golden-era. Just seeing them work out the kinks in the early installments is an experience all unto itself, and it's making me even more excited to get to what many fans consider to be "the good ones" (although I did really like the first film).

Score: 6/10

Currently available to rent/purchase on digital (iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, etc.) and on DVD, Blu-ray & 4K through Universal Studios.

Enys Men (2022, dir. Mark Jenkin)

The last film on this week's docket was a bit of a disappointment. I was excited to see this one, it seemed like a continuation of the trend that Skinamarink is a part of in this new, highly experimental horror-scape. I'm all for watching fresh takes on how horror stories can be told, and was ready for another one in that vein. Sadly, Enys Men (pronounced like "Ennis Main," it means "stone island" in Cornish) feels just a tad too impenetrable. I wouldn't say I didn't understand it, I found the story to be quite easy to follow considering how disjointed and abstractly it's timeline is laid out. I wouldn't even say I didn't get it, in a way, because I saw all of the things that the film was throwing at you that are clearly meant to mean... something. I just don't have any idea what that thing is. My entertainment value from Enys Men came more from piecing the mysteries of the film's narrative together, and ultimately that proved to be a dead-end and not the point I think director Mark Jenkin was trying to make. Beats me if I'll ever be able to figure out exactly what that point was, though. Maybe that's closed-minded of me, but I find myself having increasingly little patience for movies that are so vague you have to be on a very specific wavelength to understand. It is sufficiently spooky, but vibe alone does not a good movie make.

Score: 5/10

Only in theaters.

[trickstarbrave]

Hey there, I hope you're having a nice day! This is for the Fanfic Writer's Directors Cut thing. I would like to request anything you have for Alduin's Bane. It's one of the best fics I've ever read (and is by far my favorite AlduinxDragonborn fic.) and I would love to know more about anything you'd like to share/commentate on from it!

If you'd like something more specific, maybe the first few paragraphs of chapter 35? Where they discuss Alduin's ability to eat souls and such.

Thank you!

thank you for the ask i was hoping to get some because i like to talk about my fics so much my roommates are sick of it

i have Much in the way of director's cut commentary on the fic to the point i could fill like several essays with real life mythological inspiration and other plans i had to scrap but this one i can talk a normal amount about (i hope)

a lot in the way of elder scrolls mythology isn't explained in full or is directly contradictory or unexplained, but unlike in real world mythology where you can simply say its only a reflection of the culture if you wanted to analyze it, the gods are real life sentient beings who at times have a very proactive role in people currently alive. so stories about random stuff alduin does or how he is just supposed to sit and wait for the end of the world didn't make sense in the larger plan of the gods to me, especially as an aedric being. in canon it's implied all dragons can eat souls (at least based on what odahviing says when he explains alduin's hunting grounds he 'selfishly guards' implying he doesn't let the others eat souls), but i think it was supposed to be a core function of alduin and the other dragons as gods and aedric beings. if you go the war hypothesis it could have been used in combat, but really the idea i was going for was:

people die and want to go to sovngarde, a particular realm of aetherius. if they are deemed unworthy, which seems like it could happen fairly often, i see many not wanting to take the consolation prize of wandering around some other afterlife. so what probably happened was alduin was tasked with devouring the souls of those who were unworthy but refused to stop bumming around sovngarde crowding up the fields. however, as his appetite and rebellious nature grew, he started to eat any souls he wanted, including those who are worthy and simply battling for eternity in the fields. which is a problem.

i also imagine it would also not be that hard to simply kill someone and eat their soul on the spot. they would be dead dead after that. super dead in fact. and given this is kind of an op power (so long as alduin is hungry) it probably has pissed off more than a few daedra who have to see their loyal followers get killed and eaten immediately by the aedric twilight god. i do whoever think a daedra would be far too big for him to eat so that is at least off the table.

i am planning on elaborating on this further in the fic with some of the daedra stuff to come in the form of molag bal and hermaeus mora stuff, but i dont think this is a spoiler to talk about or anything. i've hinted at it enough times and implied it i think the commentary

also im really glad you like it it means a lot to me. this started as a fun little idea (the first like 3 chapters were just gonna be a little one shot) and has blown up into a very complex story i never intended to tell but im really loving. to know other people also rly love and appreciate it makes me

anyways let me know if you have any other questions or things you want me to talk about. writing has been hard atm with everything in my life being nonsense but i am constantly thinking about this story and the world building and lore ideas i have for it i think i could talk about it for like 5 hours

[beardedhandstoadshark]

Back again, sorry op (I put a tldr at the end this time lol)

Anyways, now that depends on what exactly "complex" means here!

If it’s "how many knots will open if I cut a single string on this conspiracy board”, yea no that’s still fnaf, by a mile. Exact same reasons as to why fnaf got the more confusing lore of the two.

But if complex means "how much is there and how does it fan out”, that’s a bit trickier. Fnaf still has its interwoven-ness going for it (not a word but pls pretend it is one), while Zelda’s simply got its setting and sheer size of the world on its side. Not so much long strings going through the whole series, but instead a lot of shorter connections forming a whole thing.

Basically, Fnaf lore is like a pile of necklaces after they’ve been jumbled for 10 years straight, while Zelda lore is a very, very big Venn diagram with lots of circles everywhere, if that makes sense?

But! By changing it from "confusing�� to "complex”, you can now throw the world building of these games into the mix. Neither of them have are that confusing imo, it’s usually pretty clear what any given part of details in the environment is trying to say. It’s just how that something connects with everything else that makes the difference.

Fnaf’s world building and stuff is always there to further the one big underlying main story that’s been told throughout the games. Like how most of fnaf 1’s lore comes from the posters on the walls of the surroundings you’re playing in, the custom mode golden freddy scares, the iv drop at your bed in Fnaf 4, etc. It’s very clear what all those say, it’s just how it connects with everything else that it gets messy. That TV screen saying 1983 makes it clear that the crying child got bite of 83’d by golden freddy, but what the heck does it mean when the gf jumpscares happen by typing 1987. What does it mean, Scott. Are you just doing this to torture us and Matpat, Scott. (And the thing is, the way fnaf lore is written there’s always a low chance that it might genuinely be the reason)

Meanwhile Zelda’s environmental storytelling is there to flesh out the world you’re playing in. Just going "hey this random ice cave behind a blocked wall looks different than regular caves. There’s canons and wall decor similar to that one dungeon heavily implied to be a former military base. Yea this was probably a smaller outpost or bunker from back then, and was left there after that war against the Gerudo or maybe even had to be evacuated after the cold suddenly dropped in, and the lack of use might be why it was blocked off.” Also that part about the Gerudo is it’s own whole thing involving the implied story telling of 1.5 dungeons that kinda ties into that particular games’ theme of light and shadow and it mixing and the "sins of the father" and such, but also if you took that part out from the thing about the bunker-cave it. Wouldn’t change anything in regard to the cave. If this were like fnaf, you’d have taken 5 theories with you by doing that.

And now do that but like. For every single semi-important location of every single game in the past 40 years, without fail.

Fnaf lore exists to tell you the long intertwined story of one single pizza chain and it’s murderous founder, while Zelda has little impact on the story itself but makes the world feel more like an actual, well, world, with its own history and people to care about at every corner.

So imo, if going by the second definition of complex, the lore of these games is not even comparable to begin with because they’re set out to to the exact opposite?

TLDR really depends on what you count as complex and if can even compare them, ig.

once again for educational purposes

He got mad and said "complex" and "confusing" are way different

Other poll: this

[lucicada]

Do you ever think about how the watchers, as they are defined by Grian, would be the most powerful force in the universe?

I mean, watchers are.. us. We are watchers. Which is Duh, of course we are but its a bit more complex than that. Watchers would be classified as Gods which exist OUTSIDE of the universe: you know the end poem that’s basically ‘you are the universe and the universe is you’ basically watchers are disconnected. Because when we watch a video we aren’t IN the video thus making us, not apart of the universe.

How does this make watchers the most powerful forces of all? Well, in a traditional sense it wouldn’t.

They don’t have very much affect on the world as people inside it do, thus watching it unfold and only being able to give warnings through forms of voices, comments, chats etc. If this were the case this would make Technos voices and Phils crows to be watchers in disguise and this would actually be very plausible.

I mean when we join a minecraft world we look.. as regular as a player can be: no robes or wings as the statues depict them in Evo. We just look.. like a regular player. Like watchers visiting as guests taking on human forms to blend in such as that subscriber who visited Evo because they won a contest. A watcher in disguise.

Grians appearance changes after becoming a watcher if you go by Evo timeline terms, becoming more plain looking and less evo looking. More like a human to hide his less than human godlike origins.

If you think about it Watchers would be more powerful than the Goddess of Death Kristin almost. I mean, we as watchers basically made her god, she wasn’t apart of the SMP naturally we just decided it. We has watchers gave her that power the same way we gift godhood to other characters in the form of headcanons: but its rare these actually come into affect.

Its like a story of ancient gods being shut off from everything to avoid abusing their power. I mean, in EVO watchers for the first time ever seen actually interacted with the world in the form of signs, riddles, games, puzzles, punishments and even sending an asteroid flying into a building in the main spawn area. If thats not proof enough that if watchers were given the power of free control over their main worlds they would be the most powerful force in the multiverse.

Honestly if the watchers sent an asteroid into a building who’s to say they didn’t make moon big happen. Just a thought. I mean the moon falling? Grians old skin being Link? Watchers being directly connected by the recent Last Life with Martyns lore who also conveniently had moon lore. It was all a coincidence but y’know. Still plausible.

What we make in the form of AUS just proves this fact, we mess with the timeline but we can never rewrite or alter the original. Evo is unique BECAUSE its altered by the watchers actions and their decisions: taking Grian away from Evo to become a watcher, whether of his own free will or kidnapped, could’ve caused the original fate of Evo to shift. Altering the future events in a sense.

Watchers would be more powerful than Kristin, DreamXD, Aeor and Exor. They exist in a universe and have to abide by its rules. Watchers however, dont.

The watching quality of it is also very accurate because they really do see everything but they can pick and choose. Watchers know about Tommys Exile but others don't, if they so choose to know everyone they can.

The ability to rewatch old videos and storylines also implies the watchers really can Time travel and thats were they get their ability to send the Evolutionists further into versions, we time travel with watching content all the time. Screw Watchers living in the End or the Void put them in the Aether or Outerspace those would be better fits for these anomalies, since once doesn’t exist and the other is replaced by the void meaning that outerspace the way we know it doesn’t exist. Maybe because we know it though, thats why is DOES exist. See what I mean by complex now?

What are listeners then? What would that mean for Grian if he were still a watcher as Last Life seems to imply. Its all so interesting I’d love to see discussion on this; sorry if any of this repeated or if my grammar is awful I am very sleep deprived and am thinking very self existentially.

Just thought that watchers are associated with time travel and sight of everything. Grian was admin of a time travelling server, he owned a time machine that could to back to Alpha which is conveniently where Evo was before, he has a rift in S9 that literally bends worlds and has a very similar aura and feel to the old portals to travel through updates, with clues as well like the watchers would do. Woah.

TL;DR: We are watchers, were fucking stacked because we can see fucking everything if we choose, if Grian is a watcher he'd be the BAMF-est bitch ever and would be stronger than the Goddess of Death and DreamXD and Aeor and such since he can interact with the world unlike other watchers.

Man, I got carried away. Discussion anyone?

[thorraborinn]

Now that your stance on Valhalla is pretty established, I wonder what is your stance on Fólkvangr? (narratively the same as Valhalla but this time ruled by a less-realpoliticking goddess; with the bonus of being opened to certain women). Is it the same?

I don't think the scant information we have about Fólkvangr is really enough to use it to make claims as big as the ones I do about Valhöll. I mean, since Grímnismál is one of the main ways that we have to know things about Valhöll, yeah, some of what I said about that will naturally apply to Fólkvangr as well, but not all of it. I also want to point out that I don't necessarily have a problem with all the speculation about Fólkvangr that modern heathens do, I'm just not going to participate in pretending it isn't speculation.

Here's every single word that Norse mythology has about Fólkvangr, from Grímnismál (and repeated by Snorri, who through the mouth of Hárr adds only that it's a bær 'town' or 'farmstead' in heaven and that the hall itself is called Sessrúmnir):

Fólkvangr [er inn níundi/heitir], en þar Freyja ræðr sessa kostum í sal; halfan val hon kýss hverjan dag, en halfan Óðinn á.

Fólkvangr [is the ninth/it is called], and there Freyja chooses who sits where in the hall; half the battle-slain she chooses every day but Óðinn has half.

Not only that but it's contained within Grímnismál, a poem not widely recognized as the batshit (affectionate) poem it is, the thing is pure lore concentrate. When you consider the prose intro and outro are probably added much later, it has almost no actual internal story and it's entire purpose is probably to encode the hugest amount of mytho-/cosmological information possible into a format easy to memorize. What one thinks about Fólkvangr will be at least partially determined by what one thinks about Grímnismál, who it was composed and/or performed by, who its intended audience was, if it's a complete cohesive poem or a mish-mash of different things, etc. If you're interested in digging more into that there's a good article by Bo Ralph on it where he also discusses earlier research. The poem presents itself as highly-restricted knowledge; I have no suggestions regarding whether or not we should believe it.

Since there is exactly one word telling us who goes to Fólkvangr (valr 'battle-slain') I don't infer any different distribution of gender than in Valhöll. The assumption that Freyja is more likely to choose women who die in battle than Óðinn is is, in fact, an assumption. It also doesn't say that Freyja gets first pick like everyone thinks. You could make the argument based on this stanza in isolation that Freyja "chooses" (kýss) while Óðinn gets the leftovers, but in stanza 8 it's Hroptr who kýss. The idea of Óðinn building some human protégé up for years and then turning the tide of battle against him in order to claim him and then Freyja going "mine" is very funny to me but we never see it happen.

I don´t think that Þorgerðr Egilsdóttir's line about how she wasn´t going to eat until she did so with Freyja is evidence she expected to go to Fólkvangr. All that tells us is that 13th century Christians thought 10th century pagans expected to see their gods when they died (I am not phrasing it this way to imply they were wrong, nor is this disclaimer to imply they were right).

The whole thing generates more questions than answers and that's really what its value is. The question of why it isn´t mentioned anywhere else may be less salient when you consider how little lore there is about Freyja in general, but still isn't trivial.

(Wild speculation to follow).

My shot in the dark is that there was a trajectory in late pre-Christian paganism of responding to concerns brought on by contact with Christianity, namely increasingly complex view of afterlife and a more generally skyward and universalist (in the real sense of the term) orientation. This might not take much actual invention, just a little switch of emphasis, because if my guess is right there may not have been a cosmic complex of afterlife abodes, but highly complex otherworld geographies probably did already exist without them necessarily being thought of as afterlife locations. For some reason, as often as Fólkvangr is mentioned by modern heathens as an alternative to Valhöll, everyone seems to miss that there is even better evidence for an afterlife place governed by Þórr, mentioned in passing (easily dismissed as a joke, even) in Hymiskviða but then likely actually described here in Grímnismál.

There may be something of an ecumenical impulse; we expect that the poets who contributed to the creation and spread of Grímnismál were probably devoted to Óðinn as he is both the narrator/protagonist and the god the poem has the most information about (oh yeah and also the specifically saying flat-out "Óðinn is the highest god" in stanza 44), but there seems to be an attempt at some kind of totality, even if it falls short. It features Ullr and Forseti -- two gods we know (or at least strongly suspect) to have been extremely important but in a contextually limited way that normally doesn't extend into the main body of myth that we still have access to.

We might be looking at a poem meant to prepare skálds to be able to operate with a variety of audiences but also in a de-facto way it codifies a sort of pantheon that we (finally, and mostly rightfully) have gotten used to denying was a real recognized thing, and also pushes toward a codified and universalist paganism, even if only as a utility for skálds. And to be clear, I don't rule out the possibility of it being intentional, an attempt to demo a universalist paganism that could go toe-to-toe with Christianity. I'm just saying that it doesn't necessitate that; an oral poet who grows up in one area but needs to be able to operate in others with distinct customs would benefit from a sort of "higher" stratum of myth that is more all-encompassing than that found in any specific place.

But some of these ideas, including Fólkvangr and Bilskírnir, may have only ever been half-finished and either remained so regionally-specific that they never spread enough to be seen in the sagas, or were created in the supra-regional context I'm proposing and never actually took hold in a local community, either because the conversion to Christianity happened before it had a chance to spread; or because this general trajectory wasn't actually popular to begin with.

There are more questions to ask (e.g. why is Freyja creating a reserve of warriors if she's never mentioned in connection to Ragnarök?) but I've probably gone on long enough to get the point across that considering Fólkvangr in any way a settled, secure, well-understood idea is cheating ourselves.

[beevean]

I am sooo sick of hearing the "It's for kids!" excuse. I get that children aren't going to notice or care about minor animation/art errors, overthink the complexities of politics or real life issues, or loose sleep over every single plot thread not being tied up or every corner of lore being explored. But it's not an excuse to make your characters look like complete idiots, or not try to tackle more mature subjects with some class. I don't want to hear it when fucking Big Bird learned about death all the way back in the early 80s. Metal Sonic and Eggman are repeat offenders who WILL come back to start shit, and Sonic just letting them go without even keeping an eye on them makes him look really fucking stupid. And that's not getting into the creepy implications of Sonic wanting Eggman to stay as Mr. Tinker.

It's antiquated, because by 2022, we had plenty of cartoons aimed at kids that dared to tackle complex issues. Why did Friendship of Magic gain such a massive fanbase and pretty much revolutionized cartoons after the late 2000s slump? You think they were all horny for the horsies? Or maybe it's because Lauren Faust fought against the idea that things aimed at children or girls didn't deserve as much effort as other media?

It's ageist, because you're implying that children are too stupid to understand anything more complex than black and white morality.

It's insulting towards your critics, obviously, but also towards your fans - whether you mean it or not, you're implying that they're also stupid for caring so much about something aimed at children. And if you're not, if they get to praise the "depth" of your writing, then you're a damn hypocrite.

It's insulting towards the games, the series you're now working for, sneering at them for being "simple" and for not growing together with its audience (nevermind that the Sonic series has wide appeal and it's not strictly for kids).

It's insulting towards yourself, because really? You are more willing to admit that you're writing a stupid story rather than conceding a point? How fucking petty do you want to be?

It's cowardly, because nobody asked you to insert Mr. Tinker's subplot, or turn Sonic into a priest, or create Surge. Since Mr. Tinker was introduced, you communicated that you wanted to write a deeper story. Don't you dare backpedal from that.

It's a blatant lie, because I've read IDW since Issue #1, and I did not dream the horror show that was the Metal Virus arc, and I did not dream Surge and Kit whose backstories are rooted in realistic, nauseating abuse. That's what you consider a "children's fantasy"?

All of this because Flynn couldn't consider the idea that people had problems with his writing. Much like he seems to think that the only people who aren't happy with Starline's anticlimatic death are stans who wanted him to have a happy ending. He had to make a complete fool of himself and insult everyone involved with his stupid comic (heh, I get to call it that and know it's Word of God <3), because he's a mediocre writer who only had the biggest, most unfair stroke of luck in existence to get to the place he's in now, and he's not used to people not getting in line to prostrate at his feet.

This asshole brushes off Sonic and yet is working on the next big game.

I hope he gets burned out as soon as he's done with Frontiers. Or better yet, that he does something so indefensible that his fans will start to treat him like they treated Pontaff.

[mybg3notebook]

Does Gale love Mystra?

So far in EA, we have been shown that this is complicated to answer: human love is complex as well as the delirious lore of Forgotten Realms. 

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.

The number between brackets [] represents the topic-block related to (this post), which gathers as much evidence as I could get.

The narrative is clear until the party scene which, as I stated many times across these posts, it's a scene that feels a bit inconsistent for me (reasonable since it's EA). But if we follow what the game explicitly shows us, we know that if we send Gale to sleep at the beginning of the Weave scene in which he is watching the incantation with the shape of Mystra, he will say: 

Gale: Long days, yes. And long, lonesome nights.

If Tav knows that the incantation on his palm is Mystra, Gale will explain:

Tav: [insight] You don't have that look on your face when you're looking at “no one” / There's more to it than that. The figure I saw: she means something to you. Gale: [...] I can’t quite describe it, the need I sometimes feel to see her – to draw the filaments of fantasy into existence. [...]

Dev's notes: Passionate. [...] He was recalling Mystra as a lover, but doesn’t say that out loud. [...] Narrator: The Weave evaporates, and as it does so, you realise the night feels suddenly cold and lonesome.

This allows us to infer that, at this moment, Gale is feeling alone and probably very anxious with the oppressing feeling of the "orb" in his chest. The tadpole only increased the number of problems he has, so he resorts to seeing Mystra melancholically. We notice later in the Weave Scene that not having Mystra around increases this feeling of loneliness. The whole scene seems to give us the idea that he still loves her. There is yearning and loneliness in his current situation.

After a moment of passionate description of magic, Gale invites Tav to experience the Weave. The Weave has a particular effect on Gale: "The moment feels intimate. You realise the Weave is making you one." Considering how Gale was feeling while conjuring the incantation, this moment touched him deeply (the narrator implies that this feeling is mutual).

If Tav expresses their romantic interests, Gale will be surprised:

Gale: I.. I didn’t think.. Narrator: You perceive quick-fire gusts of embarrassment, trepidation, and finally.. elation Gale: Sorry, I wasn’t expecting… But it is a pleasant image to be sure! Most pleasant, in fact. Most welcome. Dev's notes: Warm, with real affection.

The narrator is giving us meta-knowledge, we can trust in what she says, and we can see that the situation was truly shocking for Gale. These emotional stages described here made me suspect that Gale is a character who has focused for too long on healing his condition, ignoring any chance for romance. His surprise here may confirm that, in my opinion. He feels embarrassment, a feeling that one can interpret as a sign of the surprise of being thrown into a situation he had not seen beforehand (the death protocol and Gale’s conversations show us that he is a character that thinks ahead). It follows trepidation: fear or anxiety about something that he is going to do or experience. Gale is scared of the possibility. Maybe because he is thinking in the danger he is, maybe because he was already burnt by Mystra's attention and having someone else's attention now makes him feel a bit anxious. And then, the final resolution of the process: elation, which is a feeling of great happiness and excitement about something that has happened. Gale is suddenly excited by the possibility. Something he will be thinking about, many times, for the rest of the EA. 

Tav: So what did you think about what I pictured when we were connected by the Weave? Gale: Oh, I was surprised. But pleasantly so, just like I said. Amid the madness that has befallen us, it seems almost out of place to think of a kiss/ of a romantic walk. And yet... now more than ever, it's important to recall what makes us human. [if Tav is not human] Well- you know what I mean. A stolen glance- that sudden heartbeat... Sometimes the little things are worth more than kingdoms. They promise things to come.

So romance was not something he had even considered until the opportunity arose (this is why he won't pursue a Tav who didn't show romantic interest towards him). I think that, since he is a character always living on the edge of death, he will take this opportunity to feel “human again”: after all, he follows the concept of "living life to the fullest".

During the Loss (see the post of the "Loss Scene"), we know that losing Mystra was a big blow for him. He regrets his decisions of the past in this scene, and it reinforced the idea that he is the only one to blame for Mystra's loss. There is a yearning for the lost Chosen powers, but Gale's context in the majority of his scenes seem to reinforce the idea that he sought power not as a means, but as a goal itself to be closer to Mystra and Magic. Since we are talking about a wizard, his passion lies in magic itself, in being one with the Weave/Magic/Mystra. A Chosen of Mystra is so entangled with the Weave and magic that when they die, they are part of the Weave itself. This is the level of passion that Gale has for Magic, and since Magic can only be performed by most mortals via Weave, and the Weave is Mystra, the whole three concepts are, in fact, one; and it makes it very difficult from a lore point of view to separate them. 

Tav: There's something I don't understand. If Mystra abandoned you, how can you still cast magic? Gale: The Weave is still here, all around us – inside of us too. As long as the goddess lives, magic is a tangible thing for those who know how to touch. I've studied magic for many years, and in as many ways I am still a more than capable wizard. It's just that I'm no longer able to perform those feats even arch wizards would marvel at. To have one hand on the pulse of divinity. You have to remember that the Weave is a living thing, both the embodiment and the extension of Mystra herself.She can give and she can take away. I'm afraid I'm still very much on her naughty list. Consider yourself lucky you're not. 

I personally think Gale will never stop being devoted to Mystra (and won't stop loving her in many ways), because his passion for magic and knowledge is his own life, and Mystra IS those things. He loves magic for the sake of it. So losing this unique contact with magic itself that only Chosen of Mystra have was a terrible punishment for him. His abandonment issues are not just the result of a “guy being left by a girl”. They have an extra complexity because of the nature of Magic in this world and how its deity behaves with her chosen. Gale was not only abandoned by Mystra, but was also removed of a good amount of his capacity to perform magic. If magic “is his life”, the abandonment removed a part of his life away. I think some people miss this point, because, once more, it's related to Forgotten Realm lore and not Dragon Age. Many of these people keep constantly comparing this situation with Dragon Age, which has nothing to do with it. Dragon Age has no wizards, their relationship with Magic is natural, it’s sorcerer-like if we want to compare it, and the relationship with their deities (mostly absent, silent ones) are nothing alike the ones in Forgotten Realm. The context is key, as I repeated several times in these posts and in the one about "Context, persuasion, and manipulation". 

Tav: I don't know what to make of what you've told me, but I sympathise. Gale: Thank you. [no romantic weave] I want you to know that you’re a good friend. [romantic weave] I often think of that moment we shared together – one under the Weave. I hope you think about it too. /I'm glad to know you think about it too.

Narrator: You sense a moment of unspoken affection. You want to know where it may lead. Gale: I consider myself very lucky to have found you Tav: I think perhaps we could be more than friends Gale: Perhaps. 

Tav: You said you think about the moment we shared under the weave. Do you think about it often? Gale: Do you? 1-2-Tav: Yes / From time to time. Gale: So do I. 3- Tav: Not really. Gale: And yet you ask. I do, as a matter of fact.

Gale: You see. I'm not a big believer in fate, but I do believe in serendipity. Life is a tempest of events that sometimes we brace against and sometimes embrace. You're one such event that one day soon perhaps I'd like to embrace.

So after sharing this regret during the Loss scene, Gale will show affection if Tav remains friendly during the Weave (but Gale will never directly engage it, he is waiting for Tav to give the first step; understandable if we consider he also has a dangerous bomb in his chest, so he may be torn between wanting to, but knowing he should not to). If there is no interest in pursuing romance, he will show a gesture of gratitude for being a good friend during that night of regrets. 

If pursuing the romance, we can interpret that Gale, at this point, even though he is still struggling with all the emotions that Mystra inspires, wants to experience something more “human”, a romance with a mortal. We know for sure that Gale is getting interested, slowly, while thinking about it, since in each of the following scenes he will ask (or Tav will ask) about that “moment in the Weave”. He has been thinking about it for many nights, and he is “embracing” the idea. 

If Gale is treated with judgement (despite not knowing his whole story) or allowing him to keep the secret of what or who he lost, we will obtain lines likes:

Gale: Good. Goodnight. And thank you for your patient understanding. // And try not to think too poorly of me. A cat can look at a king. A wizard can look at a goddess.

Tav: Another fool pays for his arrogance. A tale as old as time. Gale: Arrogance? Ambition, rather. And ambition is a fine thing – until suddenly it no longer is. Then again, if that is how you judge me, there’s little I can do to change your mind. But know that I have this ambition still. First to save myself, and after that, the licence to dream. (Gale Disapproval)

We could interpret these lines as the only ones so far that may suggest that Gale is still wanting something from the goddess. We know due to the tadpole dreams that Gale’s desire is Mystra. On the comments of the second tadpole dream we know more details about his major desire: it is not just Mystra, but her forgiveness.

Tav: Gale, who is the apparition in your dreams? Gale: She's... It doesn't matter. I just know her to be unreal. Tav: What's impossible about what you're been shown? Gale: Forgiveness Tav: Gale, who is the apparition in your dreams? Gale: It's indeed Mystra I see. And yet it cannot be her. There was a time when I would have believed - but no longer. I told you that I lost her. Lost her favour and lost so many of the powers I took for granted. What magic I can still weave is met only with undercurrents of disappointing silence. Mystra has not changed her mind about me. That's how I know our dreams are delusions.

I think this scene shows the difference between a standard desire for power as a means, and power for the sake of power itself (since this power allows Gale to be one with the Weave). The scene is ambiguous enough to see it as Gale wanting to return to Mystra’s side as well as remaining as an ardent devotee of her (because she is magic herself). I keep repeating that these scenes show that Gale’s most important thing in his life is Magic, which is Mystra: the extension and the embodiment of magic. So his desire for her seems impossible to be extinguished completely. In previous scenes we saw that he certainly had thought through the idea of loving her more like a devotee than a lover, but certainly the weight of being his first love will remain, especially since she is deeply related to magic itself.

During the Party Scene we find some information about his feelings for Mystra. 

I personally ponder the book of Amn’s description as very important because, from a narrative point of view, it's a lot of lines/content that, if they were not important, tend to be removed from the script. If they are there, they are meant to be interpreted. For this reason those lines mean to me that Gale has finally embraced the idea of having something important with a mortal. In my post of the "Party Scene" I go into details, but here I will stick to the interpretation related to Mystra: all what Gale numerates in that book are things that he could not access to with a Goddess. Curiously, part of those descriptions are things that make humans human, so I personally think it reinforces Gale's intention in heading into this romance with the eagerness of finding some shelter (never forget the “orb” has a constant oppressing effect in him, increasing his anxiety and fears) and to experience (maybe for the first time) the love of a mortal.

So, for some assumptions made in the post of the "Party Scene", we suspect that Gale needs to share a night to feel confident enough to speak the details of his “orb” condition. Since he wants this relationship to be strong (after all, he implied commitment during the description of the book) he speaks about the true origin of the “orb” immediately after that night, starting with Mystra (which is, after all, the true origin of his folly). Depending on the version that Tav picks, we have extra information provided by Gale about his emotions for the Goddess:

Tav: What did Mystra’s attention feel like? Gale: Love. Perhaps it was not quite love, but you see, the wizard was but a very young man. It was most certainly love to him. [...] One day all too soon, the whispers stopped. The goddess spurned the mortal. [...] and the wizard was left behind heartbroken. Tav: I hate to say it, but he really could have seen this coming Gale: He was blinded by love. Good stories are rife with lovers’ follies after all.

[Short Version] Gale: Before long Mystra tired of me. What was I after all but a mortal plaything in sacred hands? You have to realise I was heartbroken. I was a young man, she was my first love. I thought it would last forever. I vowed to win her back.

[after explaining the mistake of the “orb”] Gale: It is this folly that led Mystra to abandon me completely. I can only hope you won’t abandon me as well. After all we’ve been through.. After the night we spent together. Surely we can brave even this side by side

Gale is giving a very detailed context about his love for Mystra: she was his first love, and the first love tends to have a special weight in a person's life and their memories. That doesn't mean the person has become unable to build more relationships for the rest of their life. If we add the fact that he was very young when all this happened (more details in the Post "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1") we find him under two effects: the impression of the first love and the naivety of the youth. Both elements made him believe it was a love that was going to last forever. With a Goddess, no less.

Besides, Gale expresses this, highlighting his naivety and foolishness: he is aware of how silly he was back then, and how impossible it could be for a mortal to keep the love of a goddess. He is a pragmatic and realistic character, after all. He recognizes in the end that he was just a mortal plaything for her. 

I think these pieces of information give us a very clear context of his emotional state: he is still nostalgic for Mystra because of all the reasons I enumerated above; she is also more than just a woman, she is Magic itself. But he is aware that those emotions were the consequence of a very naïve and young self that has awakened by the burden of his own mistakes. There is also a reinforcement of “forever”, which recalls the concept of commitment that Gale pursues so much in his romance: he is not there just for the sex “intimacy”, he is there for serious commitment, maybe because he doesn't want to experience another abandonment. After all, we are talking about a character with a profile that shows abandonment issues (see the post of "Gale Hypotheses- Part 1", section: "Abandonment Issues")

[If rejected] Tav: No. This is too large a betrayal. GALE: I see. I am sorry. I am sorry that it had to come to this. All that’s left to say is farewell. Dev’s notes: hurt but understanding Gale: Farewell. (Leaves) Dev’s notes: A slight hesitation, hurt but understanding. He makes a polite little bow, then we see him walk away.

[If accepted] Gale: I don’t know what I did to deserve the magic that you do. 

Despite being terribly cheesy, this last line shows that Gale was more than convinced that Tav would abandon him because he doesn’t deserve Tav. This is why he doesn't put up much fight if Tav chooses to tell him to leave. He will try to make Tav listen to his story, and once it's done, the verdict will fall and he will accept it. He learnt his lesson with Mystra. This line also shows how everything important around Gale is or has to be worded with magic, even a silly metaphor like this is related with the word “magic”: Tav's acceptance is like magic. For him, as important and good as magic itself.

As if that were not enough, after the scene there is a comment in which Gale will reinforce his gratitude for Tav's acceptance:

Tav: If you ever feel the netherese magic overtaking you, what will you do? Gale: If it should ever come to that... if I ever know I am no longer able to stop it... I will do anything I can to ensure no one but me pays for my mistakes. I will find the remotest place on the surface of Faerûn, or perhaps far below in the depths of the Underdark. I will await that death alone. [*] I promise I will not betray your trust... You kept me by your side despite the menace that I am. If worst comes to worst, I will be gone long before the curtain falls.  [*] If romanced, Gale will say here "I cherish you."

Which makes me suspect that Gale can disappear at any moment (in full game) if for some game mechanics we are unable to get magical artefacts but the deal with Raphael did not happen (if that’s even possible). But that's just me speculating. Nothing in EA seems to suggest this. What i's clear is that acceptance—that strong concept in the book he put so much emphasis on—is really important to him, so he shows gratitude for that: he promises to protect Tav (and many innocents) from his own mistake. He also says pretty soon an equivalent of “I love you”, in a more formal/meaningful way: “to cherish” is not just to love, but to care/protect as well. 

Finally, in case someone lost those hints, or maybe as a consequence of this unpolished scene, we have a direct question with a direct answer:

Tav: Gale, are you still in love with Mystra? Gale: I’ll be honest with you; I don’t know. She is my muse still, the embodiment of magic, but the embodiment of love? Only if we ever meet again will I know

Gale simply says what we have been inferring so far with all the previous information: Gale reinforces the idea that he will remain as a strong, loving devotee of Mystra, because she is magic. I personally don't even consider it possible to remove that love from him. He may not be a cleric, but he loves his deity as one. But he also learnt his lesson that loving gods has its own dire consequences for mortals. He is very aware of it during the discussion about Karsus:

Tav: Nothing good ever comes from mortals wanting to be gods. 

Gale: Loving them has its side effects as well. Now, so many centuries later, I tried to follow in the footsteps of Karsus, not to destroy Mystra, but to prove my love for her. It tried to control only a fraction of the magic that was unleashed that fateful day. I merely sought to return one tiny diamond to an imperfect crown. Gale's Folly one might call it. History. Repetition. It's the way things go.

Once more, there is no scene where Gale doesn't reinforce that what he did was a mistake, a foolish action, a Folly. 

Finally, if talking about a previous lover immediately after awakening with a new one was of poor taste, Gale acknowledges this, giving an honest apology:

Gale: Before we go on though, do first let me apologise. To share such a night with you only to tell you of a previous lover the next morning... It wasn't the most gentleman-like behaviour. But I had to finally tell you. Silence would have been far worse behaviour still. Nevertheless, I am sorry.

He accepts any rude response or lash-out from Tav without approval penalties. This is an interesting meta-knowledge that speaks about owning up to his mistakes. Unlike the Loss scene, where rude responses made Gale disapprove because Tav was judging him without knowing the whole story [16], in this scene he doesn’t. Now Tav has the whole picture, and he accepts whatever reaction Tav shows. Of course he will approve a forgiving Tav, since Gale is a character very related to forgiveness [12, 12b].

Conclusion: 

So, answering the question that gives title to this section: yes. In my opinion, Gale loves Mystra. But it’s not a white-and-black love; it has the complexity of human love mixed with this crazy lore of deities in Forgotten Realms. I believe Mystra will always be part of Gale's life, because the Weave and magic are his life, and she is both. He will always love her as a devotee, even though he now understands the mistakes of his young self and seems more aware of how naive he was when he was a “very young man”. The comments on the second tadpole dreams explicitly show that what Gale wants the most is Mystra’s forgiveness, but at the same time, he knows that he does not deserve it. And this raw realistic view of himself is what makes him understand that those dreams are illusions. During the party scene he is uncertain about his emotions, but still he emphasises that there is a big chance for him to not see Mystra as the embodiment of love any more but reinforces that she will always be the embodiment of magic to him (a very important concept in his character design). 

Whether Gale is romanced or not, I don't see a difference in the information he shares on this matter in EA.

This post was written in June 2021. → For more Gale: Analysis Series Index

[grimmradiance]

Close to Me: How the Hollow Knight's Fighting Style Reflects Their Trauma (and the Radiance's as well)

So I've been trying to actually beat the Radiance, which means I've been fighting the Hollow Knight. A lot, as a matter of fact, since I'm beans at this game sometimes. I've also been thinking about @lost-kinn's meta about how fighting styles are how Vessels, especially the Little Knight, communicate.

In trying to apply this to the Hollow Knight, I've been coming to some very interesting conclusions, especially taken in context of...Everything Else in the lore, and Everything Else implicated in this by the psychology of it.

There's a lot to cover here, and it tracks through a LOT of different places, including trauma psychology, the relationship between chronic stress and lifespan health, and shape symbolism. Two warnings first:

One: this essay is gonna get heavy. It includes fine-grained discussion of the Hollow Knight's trauma, including discussions of the real-life machanics of psychological abuse, as well as the Extremely Concerning Implications of them harming themself during their boss fight. please read with caution and when you're in a safe emotional place to do so.

Two: This post is not a place for justifying the Pale King. If you read this essay in its entirety and still want to do that, please make your own post; my relationship to the Hollow Knight themself is deeply rooted in my own experiences, so in the context of this discussion I can't promise I won't take it personally.

With that out of the way, let's talk trauma and fighting styles:

We know that the Hollow Knight is trained to be a paragon of fighting skill, through the Pure Vessel fight, and this gives us a fantastic way to compare what they were like before they were made Government Assigned Radiance Jail, and after. Or, in other words, we're given the perfect opportunity to see what the Radiance is doing (i.e. context effects), and what Hollow is (i.e. what we can conclude is reliably consistent as a part of them). Listed here, for reference:

Hollow's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Radiant Shade Soul, which launches a volley of Infection blobs in arcs

A Radiant Desolate Dive, which produces pillars of entwined Void and Light at random intervals

The Infection bursting out of them in random arcs, covering a significant amount of the aerial space of the arena

The Radiance ragdolling their body around trying to hit the Knight

Contact damage from them stabbing themself and falling over atop you

The Pure Vessel's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Pure Shade Soul, which launches a volley of nails in straight lines

A Pure Desolate Dive, which produces nails at specific intervals

A Pure Focus, which causes circular explosions across most of the aerial space in the arena

Lashing out with a Void Arm (word choice intentional)

I've highlighted attacks from each battle that are different, since those are our points of interest here. In addition, both the Pure Vessel and Hollow are exceedingly fond of teleport-spamming in a way that is usually reserved for a specific group of bosses.

Another very important distinction between these two fights: the Pure Vessel doesn't scream. Well, they certainly try to, but no sound comes out. No voice to cry suffering, after all. All of these points have a lot to go into, so let's address them one at a time.

All That Remains: Theoretical Background On The Significance Of Constants

Making comparisons across time is important specifically because humans (and human-like bugs) change. Most personality traits aren't set in stone--they exist as an interaction of someone's internal tendencies, their experiences, and their environment. Speaking of those last two points, not all experiences and environments are created equally. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs for short) are known to have lifelong implications for a child's health, both physically and mentally. These are events that are so stressful or stressful for so long that they exceed a child's ability to cope and become toxic stress (yes, that's the term in the literature, because it actively damages your organs). They compound, as well--the stress of one ACE makes it harder for a child to cope with another, especially if they overlap.

Some examples of ACEs? Being exposed to physical danger or the threat of physical danger, deprivation of normal social relationships with peers of a similar age, being forcibly seperated from family members, witnessing a loved one being hurt or killed, chronic illness in oneself or a family member, neglect of a child's emotional needs....

Poor fucking Holly. It's a miracle they didn't disintegrate under the pressure. The only other option is that they bent and adapted under that much stress--in other words, most of their personality has been forcibly reshaped by what they've gone through. Anyone who has up-close experience with parentification or complex child abuse already knows: this was by design. I'm not saying the intent was to traumatize the Pure Vessel past several points of no return, but the intent definitely was to reshape their personality for the purpose of being The Vessel. We only see them (the Pure Vessel) in battle after this process is mostly or entirely complete, but we do see them a few times beforehand. I'd like to draw attention to the Path of Pain cutscene right now.

I've seen people talking about the look the Vessel and the King share as a sign that TPK really does love his child. That might be true, but it's definitely not relevant when it comes to how abuse works. This is, in fact, exactly how the cycle of abuse uses affection as a tool. Long periods of abuse or neglect, smoothed over by small periods of affection that placate the survivor? That's textbook love bombing, the kind that forms stubborn trauma bonds and facilitates unhealthy dependency. Forgive me for not giving the Higher Being of knowledge and prescience the benefit of the doubt on that one. (/s)

Team Cherry knows about the importance of parallels and dissonance. There's a reason the music in the second phase of the Hollow Knight fight plays in the Path of Pain. There's a reason it cuts out the moment the battle with the Kingsmoulds is over, instead of at the room transition. There's a reason it doesn't cut out in the Black Egg. Actually, there's two potential reasons, which could also coexist: either little Hollow trusts the Pale King to keep them safe, even after the borderline torture that they were just subjected to, or big Hollow is so hypervigilant that they're in full functioning-through-trauma mode even while they're at death's door.

If you don't see how much the Pale King scarred his child at this point, I'm not sure we were playing the same game.

Walking the Straight Line: How the Pale King's Teachings Show In the Pure Vessel

The Pale King loves order and control. Everything about the White Palace and every decision we see him make implies this. Everything is spotless white walls and well-maintained gardens; the only signs of disorder are hidden away, either in his workshop or in The Pit™. This also reflects in the Pure Vessel's title--pure as in holy, but also pure as in without flaw. Considering the Nailsmith's emotional state after completing the Pure Nail, TPK's fate with his Perfect Controlled Kingdom, and the Godmaster ending as a whole, attaining perfection is not a good thing in any sense.

We know the Hollow Knight isn't perfect--that's the whole catalyst for the plot. But considering their upbringing and their fighting style as the Pure Vessel, their imperfections absolutely kill them emotionally. I'll spare the lecture on how perfectionism affects neurodivergent kids even more severely than neurotypical kids, if only to keep this post to a reasonable length (look up "twice-exceptional children" if you'd like to know the theory I'm glossing over in more depth). But, in essence, the deck is doubly stacked against them--they have a higher goal to reach, and far more obsctacles in their path, including their own emotional scars.

I've already discussed how Hollow isn't meant for this kind of stress in a physical sense in other posts. They're not prepared for it emotionally, either--the Pale King wants perfection, and they can't even stand up straight (every spoonie in the audience already knows how exhausting people's obsession with Standing Up Straight is). There's another page on their stack of emotional baggage, even BEFORE you consider that the Pure Vessel knows their perfection is what bought them a ticket out of the Abyss.

Bringing Teleportation To A Sword Fight: Where The Pure Vessel Reveals Their Fears

How else are they going to cope with that need for perfection, that need to prove themselves worthy of the reason their life was spared, by being flawless in any way they can? Being a mechanical, flawless fighter puts so much pressure on them, both literally (repetitive strain injuries fucking HURT) and figuratively--if you're predictable, the only sure way to win is to mop the floor with your opponents before they figure you out. Hell, that's the way most people play their first run of Hollow Knight, by throwing themselves at the bosses over and over until they figure out the patterns. That strategy is inherently going to fail against an opponent that's, say, an immortal higher being.

There's no way that the Vessel didn't figure this out, and yet none of their TPV specific attacks are positioned randomly--the nails are always evenly spaced, and the Focus explosions are always in a specific height region of the screen. That's clinging to survival strategies even when they become maladaptive in its purest form.

Another dip into psychological theory: let's talk about disorganized attachment. Attachment styles describe how someone's relationships to their main caregiver(s) influence their understanding on relationships in general. Disorganized attachment is a result of an upbringing of inherently unstable parent-child relationships, where there's no way of a child predicting whether an adult is going to be delighted to see them, ambivalent, upset, or otherwise. If my parent woke up some days saying "all right my child, time for the Infinite Buzzsaws Obstacle Course," I'd be the same way. In adulthood this manifests as an inability to form a stable sense of self-concept as well as concepts of others. Mission accomplished, TPK, there's no will to break if you broke it yourself.

This is where the fighting styles as communication comes in--Hollow needs to keep Ghost at a distance to fight, but also wants to be closer to their sibling (the only being who has a chance of understanding what they've been through), BUT also has a trauma-rooted fear of attaching to people, as their experiences with attachment are inherently unpredictable and dangerous. Hence, both the teleportation that doesn't seem to match their fighting style any more reliably than "aim at the thing attacking you" and the second attack unique to the Pure Vessel--they're quite literally lashing out in pain to push people away. There's a reason that attack is so reminiscent of the Thorns of Agony.

Of note is that Holly does seem to teleport like the bugs of the Soul Sanctum do (favoring the edges of a screen, rather than going wherever like Dream Warriors do), which makes sense--they're the most obvious answer to the question "how did they learn how to teleport, anyways?" However, Sanctum bugs have abilities designed to capitalize on this, like homing spells and slashes from above. I can only assume this means that someone saw Holly's proficiency with the nail and assumed it translated to other forms of combat, and didn't feel the need to give them at least a bit of a primer on how to make the best use of it. There's another tally for the Hollow Knight as an autism metaphor.

Trauma Bonds: How the Radiance Speaks Through Hollow

Now, we're back to the Black Egg, and two people stuck in the same sinking ship. The thing that makes this hurt so badly is that Holly and the Radiance are at complete cross purposes here, and yet they both want the same thing:

They both want out, no matter the cost. For the Radiance, this means forsaking the pacifistic nature of the moths and nuking Ghost personally.

For Hollow, this means forsaking the way they were raised and everything that was bludgeoned into their personality: the only way out is to fail, give up control, and trust that Ghost will do what needs to be done.

Imagine how much pain they're in to actually go for it. Going against a literal lifetime of conditioning is something that takes the average person years to even consider, let alone go through with. It's a form of learned helplessness--if you try to break free and fall, again and again, it actively discourages further attempts. Breaking through learned helplessness is an interesting process, because it generally involves re-establishing a sense of control by recalling previous events where the person was able to change their situation.

Which, as far as we know of, are nothing but traumatic memories for Hollow. It's very unlikely that they'd break through it on their own, but we know they have by the time we see the second phase of their fight. This is them at their most desperate: the same music as the Path of Pain, the way they let, or can't stop, the Radiance throw their body around, the way they actively try to let the Radiance out by stabbing themself.

You'd think that giving up and learned helplessness are inherently compatible, but when giving up both goes against your core personality, and involves your active participation, they're in direct opposition. So either Holly was able to process all their trauma by themself (which I doubt, judging by how much effort the player has to go through to even see Ghost's and Hollow's traumatic memories), or someone gave them a nudge or three in that direction.

Considering that there's been someone living in Holly's head who has a vested interest in them Not Doing Their Duty, I think we know who. And the thing is, I think we watch Hollow have this breakthrough during their battle. Imagine for the first time in decades, at least, you can move. You're in pain from being in the same position, probably hallucinating from sensory deprivation, with an infection sucking at what strength your body has left. And there's this little creature who looks ready to fight you, who seems to have let you go for that exact purpose.

And you look down, and both you and the Radiance recognize them from a place rooted deeper than consciousness, in the murky depths of trauma. You see the other Vessel who just as easily could have been you, and who looks so much stronger for not being you, for being an imperfect, willful creature. And the Radiance sees history threatening to repeat itself, another one of the Wyrm's cursed children seeking to lock her away once more.

What else do you do when you're triggered? You scream, and you go on instinct, and you retreat into your head. Those first blows, with the epic music? That's the Vessel the Pale King forged, the fighting machine that will endure unimaginable stress because it knows no other way. What snaps you back out of dissociation? Usually, either the passage of the triggering stimulus, or an even more relevant stimulus (severe pain from getting beaten up by a nail, for example).

The tragedy is this: we know this isn't a triumph. I think most of us went into that fight the first time, knowing we'd be putting the Hollow Knight out of their misery. The music turns tragic, Hollow screams, and then we see the Radiance and Hollow themself break through: the Radiance trying to fight Ghost directly with the resources she has, and Hollow trying to help her along.

For what it's worth, Hollow even had the right idea, when it came to letting themself rest while helping Ghost stop the madness their father started--they were just digging for the Radiance in the wrong place. The dynamic between the Radiance and the Hollow Knight is something I could write on for pages and pages, but this has gone on for long enough. Tune in next time, where I'll presumably talk about this same topic but in reverse with regards to the Radiance.

[doctorskeleton]

 Gordon Freeman’s thesis is titled Observation of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement on Supraquantum Structures by Induction Through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength (ELW) Pulse from Mode-Locked Source Array in this essay i will pick it apart piece by piece to better understand what the fuck it means

Einsten-Podolsky-Rosen Entanglement This bit is one of the staples of Quantum Mechanics, called the EPR paradox/entanglement. We should already know that entanglement, as a basic part of quantum physics, is when two separate particles rely on each other on their positions. It's the idea that if you measure/observe one particle, you could accurately predict the other particle because the two are ~entangled~ The EPR paradox is a a thought experiment, like a lot of quantum physics is.

The thought experiment involves a pair of particles prepared in an entangled state (note that this terminology was invented only later). Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen pointed out that, in this state, if the position of the first particle were measured, the result of measuring the position of the second particle could be predicted. If, instead, the momentum of the first particle were measured, then the result of measuring the momentum of the second particle could be predicted. They argued that no action taken on the first particle could instantaneously affect the other, since this would involve information being transmitted faster than light, which is forbidden by the theory of relativity. They invoked a principle, later known as the "EPR criterion of reality", positing that, "If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty (i.e., with probability equal to unity) the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of reality corresponding to that quantity". From this, they inferred that the second particle must have a definite value of position and of momentum prior to either being measured. This contradicted the view associated with Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, according to which a quantum particle does not have a definite value of a property like momentum until the measurement takes place.

Supraquantum Structures I can't find any definitions nor anything in scientific papers that tell me what this is without me having to go down a rabbithole of terminology. So instead I'm going to look at the terminology itself to see what it means. Supra is a prefix meaning "above" or "beyond". The definition of quantum is "a discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents." That's a little obtuse for a definition so let's just go witth this instead. "Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that describes the physical properties of nature at small scales, of the order of atoms and subatomic particles."  If we take "quantum" to mean "atoms/subatomic particles" then Supraquatum would just mean something bigger than a particle, right? A supraquantum structure could be a single cell organism.

Now, lets put the first bit together, EPR Entanglement on supraquantum structures. These are observations on the entanglement of objects bigger than particles, which is hard to prove in it of itself, so the next bit must be important to the entire puzzle Induction through Nonlinear Transuranic Crystal of Extremely Long Wavelength Induction is a way of charging objects. In the induction process, a charged object is brought near but not touched to a neutral conducting object. The presence of a charged object near a neutral conductor will force (or induce) electrons within the conductor to move.Nonlinear dynamics is the branch of physics that studies systems governed by equations more complex than the linear, aX+b form. Nonlinear systems, such as the weather or neurons, often appear chaotic, unpredictable or counter-intuitive, and yet their behavior is not random. Transuranic just means any element with a higher atomic number than uranium (92) So i seemed to have glanced over the "pulse" bit in the thesis title because of the acronym throwing me off. so the ELW pulse from a mode-locked source array is the electric pulses coming from the test chamber's laser "source array", and its Mode-Locked. 

Mode-locking is a technique in optics by which a laser can be made to produce pulses of light of extremely short duration

I can't find any definition of souce array so im going to assume that's what the laser machine is. This bit was easy, but to go on about it; the electric pulses/lasers theyre using to induct the crystal is on the long part of the wavelength scale, which doesnt make much sense considering that it looks like electricity. It makes more sense once you consider what the scientists say before you enter the test chamber "I'm afraid we'll be deviating a bit from standard analysis procedures today, Gordon" "This is the purest sample we've seen yet, and potentially the most unstable" Now, the actual machine is called the Anti-Mass Spectrometer, and it only really exists in half-life. but if i pick apart the name i can figure out what it really does. A spectrometer is a scientific instrument used to separate and measure spectral components of a physical phenomenon. Spectrometer is a broad term often used to describe instruments that measure a continuous variable of a phenomenon where the spectral components are somehow mixed. Anti-mass is just another term for Negative Mass, something that also only really exists in theoretical physics, or at least is only referred to in a theoretical sense.

In theoretical physics, negative mass is a type of exotic matter whose mass is of opposite sign to the mass of normal matter, e.g. −1 kg. Such matter would violate one or more energy conditions and show some strange properties, stemming from the ambiguity as to whether attraction should refer to force or the oppositely oriented acceleration for negative mass. It is used in certain speculative hypotheses, such as on the construction of traversable wormholes and the Alcubierre drive. Currently, the closest known real representative of such exotic matter is a region of negative pressure density produced by the Casimir effect.

So this spectrometer would analyze negative mass. This is already getting into science fiction but you can also call theoretical physics "science fiction" itself, just with more math.

To go on, we must assume that the anti-mass spectrometer should be mode-locking an ELW to induct a transuranic crystal,  but in reality it's not an ELW at all. Long wavelengths are invisible, most wavelengths are. an extremely long wavelength would probably? be longer than radio waves, and this is going into the electromagnetic spectrum

"Extremely Long Wavelength" isn't even a real term, so we'll have to turn it into one. "Extremely Low Frequency" is the closest real term in name

Extremely low frequency (ELF) is the ITU designation for electromagnetic radiation (radio waves) with frequencies from 3 to 30 Hz, and corresponding wavelengths of 100,000 to 10,000 kilometers, respectively. In atmospheric science, an alternative definition is usually given, from 3 Hz to 3 kHz. In the related magnetosphere science, the lower frequency electromagnetic oscillations (pulsations occurring below ~3 Hz) are considered to lie in the ULF range, which is thus also defined differently from the ITU radio bands.

ELF's also have multiple definitions depending on who you ask.

ELF is a subradio frequency. Some medical peer reviewed journal articles refer to ELF in the context of "extremely low frequency (ELF) magnetic fields (MF)" with frequencies of 50 Hz and 50–80 Hz. United States Government agencies, such as NASA, describe ELF as non-ionizing radiation with frequencies between 0 and 300 Hz. The World Health Organization (WHO) have used ELF to refer to the concept of "extremely low frequency (ELF) electric and magnetic fields (EMF)" The WHO also stated that at frequencies between 0 and 300 Hz, "the wavelengths in air are very long (6000 km at 50 Hz and 5000 km at 60 Hz), and, in practical situations, the electric and magnetic fields act independently of one another and are measured separately."

A real life example of the usage of these electromagnetic frequencies is the US government using ELFs to communicate with deeply submerged submarines. If this is the type of wavelength Gordon plans on using to induct a transuranic crystal, then he wouldn't need to have a spectrometer do it, nor any mode-locked source array. So it couldn't be ELFs, right? let's forget this tangent and move on IF it is an electromagnetic wave he's using to induct a transuranic crystal, then it would more likely be above the visible light spectrum. The thing is, the electricity in the scene with the anti-mass spectrometer lands within the visible light spectrum. It's green, and green has a wavelength of 500–565 nm (frequency of 530–600 THz). thats 500 nanometers, not a long wavelength at all.

I'm sure whatever writer at valve decided to write out this thesis title didn't research these terms as much as i have just now, either that or they purposefully made it sound obtuse enough to fit into science fiction without it needing to make sense. But the fun of science fiction is that it's based on real science IMO. so lets forget that it says ELW and go the other direction. Extremely Short Wavelength.

Inducting anything with ionizing radiation of a gamma ray would definitely get you results, under any spectrometer. now, i want to go back to the tangent of the transuranic crystal. It's completely possible that there is no such thing and it was made up for the game with the in-game lore that it's from Xen or whatever, but i want to look into the possibility of using elements that exist.

The game implies that they found the crystal but it doesn't outright say it, which covers their ass on the fact that transuranic elements are synthetically made. Neptunium and Plutonium are made through decay chains in Uranium and can also be found in atmospheric tests after a nuclear explosion. So Neptunium and Plutonium can technically be "found".

So let's go through all the transuranic elements and see if any of them can become crystals! Since they all are unstable i'm also gonna list their half-lives  for fun. For reference, STP means standard temperature and pressure

Neptunium (93) - solid at stp, appears silvery and metallic. the most stable isotopes are Np-237 with a half-life of 2.14 million years; Np-236 with a half-life of 154,000 years; and Np-235 with a half-life of 396 days. it's also pyrophoric so not a contender. Plutonium (94) - solid at stp, appears silvery white but oxidizes into grey. it can turn into a pyrophoric powder. Pu-239 has a half-life of 24,100 years and Pu-241's half-life is 14.4 years. Amercium (95) - solid at stp, also a silvery white look, oxidizes. it's used in smoke detectors! half life of 432.2 years Curium (96) - solid stp, its a hard, dense silvery metal that glows purple in the dark. oxidizes very easily, half life ~162 days Berkelium (97) - solid stp. described as a soft silvery-white metal with a half-life of 330 days, but the previous elements would decay into elements with a lower atomic number, where as Berkelium decays into Californium Californium (98) - This one crystalizes under normal pressure, slowly tarnishes under air. silvery appearance. can be used to start up nuclear reactors. Has 20 known isotopes and all their half-lives vary, but its about 2.6 years. Einstienium (99) Silvery and glows blue in the dark, has a paramagnetic field and it's most common isotope has a half-life of 20.47 days Fermium (100) -  the last of the elements that can be created by bombarding lighter elements with neutrons. Longest lived half-life is 100 days, not much is known about it. Mendelevium (101) - can only be produced in particle accelerators, half life between 51 days and 1.17 hours Nobelium (102) - also only avalible through particle accelerators, half life between 58 minutes and 3.1 minutes. the shorter half-lifed isotope is easier to create and therefore used more often for research Lawrencium (103) - from here on out theres less and less information for each transuranic element, including this one. half-life of 11 hours. Rutherfordium (104) - half life of 1.3 hours Dubnium (105) - half life of 28 hours Seaborgium (106) - half life of 14 minutes Bohrium (107) - half life unconfirmed but its between 61 seconds and 690 seconds

I'm gonna go ahead and stop right there since they tend to follow a pattern. The lower the half-life, the less research there is on the element, and it only gets shorter and shorter. So it seems like Californium is the only possible element that could've been used in the experiment because it forms a crystallized structure under normal pressure, as well has having usage in modern nuclear science to start up nuclear reactors, as well as having pretty stable/long-lasting isotopes. the most stable isotope has a half-life of 898 years but the most commonly used isotope is 2.6 years. now, it should be noted that the lower the half-life the more radioactive an element is. all of the transuranic elements decay radioactively and Californium is no exception. Californium's radioactivity has a tendency to disrupt the formation of red blood cells by bio-accumulating in skeletal tissue.

Here's some more information on it's physical properties:

Californium is a silvery white actinide metal with a melting point of 900 ± 30 °C (1,650 ± 50 °F) and an estimated boiling point of 1,745 K (1,470 °C; 2,680 °F). The pure metal is malleable and is easily cut with a razor blade. Californium metal starts to vaporize above 300 °C (570 °F) when exposed to a vacuum. Below 51 K (−222 °C; −368 °F) californium metal is either ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic (it acts like a magnet), between 48 and 66 K it is antiferromagnetic (an intermediate state), and above 160 K (−113 °C; −172 °F) it is paramagnetic (external magnetic fields can make it magnetic).

The element has two crystalline forms under 1 standard atmosphere of pressure: a double-hexagonal close-packed form dubbed alpha (α) and a face-centered cubic form designated beta (β).

This is a Californium-252 crystal, the one I predict would’ve been used in the test. It has a 2.6 year half-life.

That’s all the research i’ve got for you. 

TL;DR I predict that they’re using Gamma rays through the anti-mass spectrometer to induct Californium into making teleportation real with quantum entanglement.

[itwoodbeprefect]

decided to just compile a bunch of comments about my sga 1x01 rising rewatch into a single post because i don’t actually want to make a hundred posts in a row, so here, under the cut, many rambles:

announcer guy does, in fact, speak english upon a second attempt. well done on not forgetting to not speak german, announcer guy.

“i’m afraid of the thing” elizabeth says, about the drone chair, while standing next to it and looking like she wants to fuck it

rodney in that orange sweater! very orange! very warm!

john is on screen. john’s first words are helicopters he knows how to fly. john KINDA LIKES IT in antarctica. john has barely done anything and i already feel like crying a little bit about this guy who LIKES ANTARCTICA because he just wants to fly

POOR CARSON when he almost kills two people. “ai told ya ai was the wrong pursohn” :(

i really love how john sees the drone coming at the (landed) helicopter and yells “get out!” and they throw open their doors and john JUMPS and then it’s just “ugh.” and he’s belly-down on the floor and still like, almost under the helicopter. an attempt was made, for sure. just not a very succesful one.

the way john looks around like he’s never seen a ceiling before when he enters the base is just. very funny. and then some guy in particular is looking at him because he’s a bit of a weirdo and john looks back and the guy sort of looks him up and down and john looks away as if to check if anybody saw that. hmm.

john’s face of “oops” after he sits down in the chair and it ACTIVATES and carson RUNS OFF to go get literally everyone and john is realizing he MAY have just made a very giant big mistake. PRICELESS

teyla: my people have long believed the wraith will come if we venture into the ancient city. sumner, when the wraith come after he ventures into the ancient city: [surprised pikachu face]

gotta love how john insisting on saving his people is what wakes up the wraith, and saving his people is also what landed john in antarctica in the first place because he tried it in afghanistan once before. which wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been an american war in afghanistan in the first place, which there wouldn’t have been if bush hadn’t thrown the us into it, which wouldn’t have happened without 9/11, so... bin laden woke the wraith?

on the other hand john would never have had to go on a rescue mission on his first day in pegasus if sumner hadn’t gone into that city against the wishes of the people that already lived there and had a history dating back thousands of years with the place, so more realistically, the expeditions’ colonizer mentality woke the wraith. and then they just kinda... kept going with that for the rest of the show, because it worked out so well on that first day.

anyway i’m not even there yet - puddlejumper! it jumps puddles!

have to love the moment john realizes the puddlejumper is pretty literally reading his mind and giving him anything he can think of that is within its power (so no turkey sandwiches, but that’s okay). john is already in love with it just based on the fact that IT CAN FLY AND GO FAST (“i kinda like it here”, restored) but then all the ancient technology just seems to know him and love him back and gives him way more than he even thinks to ask for. which, for john, who doesn’t really do well expressing desires? a FLYING SHIP that then READS HIS MIND? starstruck. love at first sight. john&puddlejumper, instant bffs. i bet it would have popped a compartment with some stray bits of wire if he’d asked for a friendship bracelet right then and there. ford sitting there witnessing this doesn’t even know how hard he’s thirdwheeling it in that moment.

now i am at the bit where sumner is taken from the wraith prison to see the actual wraith, and look, obviously they’re evil and feed on humans etc etc, but this particular wraith’s sense of dramatics? unparalleled. she has them bring her victims one by one to a large foggy room with a looong table set with a wonderful dinner and then she LEAVES a DEAD BODY sitting at the head of the table (implied to be the athosian that was taken before sumner?) and drops down from the ceiling while sumner has his back turned for no reason except the spectacle of it all, and dracula himself literally couldn’t have made a better display out of this. it’s maybe scary in the way that it makes clear she’s a cat toying with a helpless mouse before she eats it, but it’s also hilarious in the way that this is absolutely a very bored immortal being who had to stay up while the rest went to sleep and is inventing high school improv plays with her dinner for some diversion. don’t play with your food, wraith queen. you’re scaring your dinner.

life signs detector!!! ford didn’t get to name the puddlejumpers gateships, but that one stuck, no matter how much “we can name it later” john was trying to throw at it!!!

(god. there’s a ficlet somewhere in there about season 2 john having a moment where he realizes he’s on the hunt for ford using the thing they first discovered together and that ford gave its name.)

getting sidetracked here, but when john and ford find the group of humans caught by the wraith teyla goes “major!” and it makes me think that. well. how are the athosians supposed to know things like “major” and “colonel” are military ranks? what are the chances the pegasus galaxy uses the same designations? (don’t really know how the language thing works here - we’re hopefully not supposed to think they’re all speaking english, are they? i’ve never watched sg1, there’s probably lore about this, i assume. maybe alien titles somehow get perfect translations to earth ones and vice versa.) but i mean, teyla is too smart, she’d have it figured out already even if those words don’t exist in her galaxy, but some athosian somewhere is going to be very confused by this earth tendency to name way too many kids private and lieutenant, and then put all of them into the army. strange, to have your job decided for you at birth like that. earth people are weeeeird.

fjdkl john is like bye, gonna go find colonel sumner all on my own, run if you don’t hear from me in twenty minutes, and ford’s like “you’re the only one who can fly these people out of here” and “i’m saying i should be the one to go, sir” and john, with his savior can’t-leave-anyone-behind-gotta-do-this-personally-or-i-will-literally-die-from-not-almost-dying complex DOES NOT LISTEN to ford’s EXTREMELY ACCURATE objection. which is his right, as ranking officer, but is also a perfect showcase of why john Should Not Ever be in charge of atlantis, and why sam saying he was totally on the shortlist when she takes over command in s4 is funny but frightening if you’re on atlantis and like being alive.

sumner: “we travel through the stargate as peaceful explorers.” FDJKFD. god, that line, from that character, hilarious.

rodney comes to elizabeth full of enthusiasm about all the interesting stuff they’re finding in the city only to find her staring at the empty gate and when she says she should never have let them (the rescue party) go, he sobers up and says awkwardly “for what it’s worth, you made the right decision” and that’s GOOD that’s KIND.

back on the planet with the wraith everyone is running to the jumper while there are wraith darts whizzing through the air and teyla turns back, catches up with ford who was told to cover their six, disarms him (because he was firing at illusions, revealing their position), hands him back his weapon, pulls him in the direction of the puddlejumper, and PUSHES HIM ASIDE when they’re almost scooped up by a wraith dart, and i’m so here for teyla being allowed a moment of heroics that saves specifically ford, guy with a gun, and not a random athosian damsel in distress. teyla is fully on their level. teyla is perhaps above their level. thank you.

that scene at the end of this episode!! in which there’s a sort of party on atlantis and it’s all buzzing and relaxed while the athosians are mingling freely with the expedition members and they’re talking of friendship and ugh. UGH. there’s a better version of sga in an alternate universe where the expedition didn’t decide atlantis was totally theirs, actually, and they cooperate with the people that were already in the galaxy when they came there and learn from sumner’s mistake to actually respect what they have to say and form a single front and teyla takes over as head of the expedition in s4 when there’s a void left by elizabeth’s absence.

final thought that has always haunted me a little: john suddenly becoming the ranking military member on atlantis after sumner’s death is ?? one of those things where i wonder what the sgc was thinking in their personnel assignments. john wasn’t even supposed to BE THERE. if john hadn’t gone and sumner had still died (which was something they should have considered as a possiblitiy! they didn’t know what they were walking into at all! sumner is apparently the type to lead his own missions!), then what exactly would they have done? i don’t know much about how the us military operates but i’ve watched enough mash to have figured out the order of the ranks and it just seems. very odd to me? to take one (1) colonel on this mission and then ZERO lieutenant colonels OR majors (if john hadn’t stumbled his way into it, that is). like, are there any captains on atlantis? (i think there are?) or would ford, a lieutenant, have ended up ranking military member? this is like the surely-they-only-need-a-single-medical-doctor-right thing. WHAT IS THE SGC THINKING.

anyway. this was good. i liked this. i hadn’t rewatched the pilot in a while, and i only just now figured out how much of a while, because there was a bunch in here i didn’t remember. ON TO EPISODE TWO.

[benevolent-savage]

this is what happens when u enable me lets go

(spoilers ahoy)

Firstly, here’s some somewhat miscellaneous reasons that don’t contribute to any sort of narrative analysis but are still parts of the character I like.

His boss fight is my favorite in the game thus far. It’s not super hard, but it isn’t super easy either, and I even managed to solo it on my Balance after a few practice rounds. Sufficiently challenging without feeling unfair.

His boss fight music. It is a bop and a half, go give it a listen, my soul ascends from my body a few centimeters every time I hear it start up.

His voice. I’m sure it’s processed at least a little but gotdamn his voice is so deep and spooky it startled me when I first heard it. Very curious who his actor is; I think he and Inyanga Whitestripes share the same one. Either way, very well voiced and acted.

His design is very good. It’s the perfect mix of innocuous but also spooky sorcerer fella who knows some shit. And I was afraid that the designers would try and make him like. Handsome? Under the hood? To try and make him more sympathetic? But they didn’t and I’m glad for it.

With those out of the way, the next thing to establish, I guess: I don’t interpret Old Cob to be the main villain of arc 3, nor do I interpret Raven as such. They’re definitely antagonists, but they’re not the ultimate problem; the ultimate problem is their divorce, and how they keep dragging people into their bs. It’s established the Aethyr is a physical manifestation of their anger towards each other, and as it thins, communication between them becomes possible, as Sparck puts it in this thinly veiled metaphor toward the start of Empyrea part 2.

But Cob’s still an antagonist and I love him so I’m gonna talk about that. Most of this is going to be talking about his motivations for doing what he does, since I don’t see him quite as the ‘likes to watch the world burn for the hell of it’ archetype that others might.

One of the reasons that drew me to his character is how legit his gripe is, when put in perspective. Old Cob- or Grandfather Spider, if you prefer- is not a mortal like the other antagonists of previous arcs, which establishes he has a different thought process right off the bat. This new universe was built on his suffering and he has a grudge against the ex wife who made it, so as a god, it makes some sense he’d try to destroy it and build one he would like better. He’s fully aware that what he is doing will hurt people but decidedly doesn’t care, and I appreciate that so much. He’s chaotic as fuck and he owns it, along with his superiority complex that’s as wide as the day is long.

Yet his reasoning is like. Weirdly understandable? Like, if my ex-whatever put me in jail for a lifetime sentence and stole my kidney to pay for a new house or something, I too would go apeshit and want my fuckin kidney back. That’s mostly how I interpret his situation. He’s not doing this for hell of it, he’s doing it because he wants to get back at his ex because he’s bitter and petty and for the most part he knows this but he feels justified in doing do because she ripped out his goddamn kidney- I mean heart, and he wants that back.

And then, even after all that, he and his magic are treated as if they’re inherently evil. While, sure, Shadow is a ‘dark magic’, its actual properties aren’t anything malicious by itself. It is described as “a magic that changes reality,” and that’s it. Incredibly exploitable and you should practice caution while handling it, but used correctly it is powerful and helpful; this is likely alluding to the backlash mechanic, where likes decrease the percent of damage you take, dislikes increase the percent, and I imagine the person meant to be the literal embodiment of the magic in question to be similar in nature: not inherently harmful and lashes out if he feels he’s been mistreated.

Going off that, I’m not sure he ever wanted the FirstWorld to be destroyed, and therefore believes his incarceration to be entirely unjust; he doesn’t deny that he instigated the fight between the Titans, but when it comes to being accused of its actual destruction, he gets angry.

...Okay the written text doesn’t really display how mad he got here, but he was like. Big Angy. Super offended. Honestly, a big part of why I love and analyze the hell out of his character comes from how his VA delivers his lines and his voice in general. If you haven’t heard it for some reason, I recommend looking it up. Anyway, here he’s basically saying he didn’t destroy the First World, and even if he did, he’s suffered enough punishment because of it, to my interpretation. The only one I remember blaming him for it is Raven; Bartleby was there, and I don’t recall him blaming anything other than the Titans for it. This is of course not accounting for the various changes made to the lore since he was introduced, but they could have easily thrown in a line like ‘And now Spider plans to destroy the Spiral the way he destroyed the FirstWorld!’ or something to make it clear it was done intentionally.

And this may very well be straying into headcanon territory here, but I think he holds positive relationships very closely to him, even if things went sour in the end; he clearly still has some remaining affection for the Titans, calling them ‘the children’ and being incredibly angry at Raven for forcing one of them to destroy his Heart.

When Rat loses in Polaris he shows up to praises his efforts and even comfort him, in his own weird way. He reprimanded Scorpion in Mirage, but it’s because Scorpion wasn’t doing what his dad asked him to and got his ass kicked as a result. As for Bat, every time they’re in the same room together he pays him some sort of compliment.

Bat claims that he and his brothers are meant to be his tools, and to some extent that’s true, but he also genuinely cares about them, and it’s really interesting to see a villain defect from the usual ‘not caring about anyone other than themselves’ and openly show affection for his kids while still managing to be an incredible asshole.

In line with this is his relationship with the Wizard. There is, of course, a foundation of manipulation to their dynamic, at least to some degree. I thoroughly believe that Spider was overshadowing Coleridge, at least partly, so our character could bust him out of prison.

And while this is happening, he regains some of his spent power and removes threats to it as well, namely Morganthe, using the Wizard’s help. In fact, I have very little doubt that he was at least partially responsible for her fall; his timing on that two-liner was too on the nose.

But even with that, I think he genuinely treasures the Wizard’s help and company, which is why he attempts on four different occasions to either sway them to his side, or warn them away from what he’s doing.

Boy, I want that vacation, but it’s your fault I’m here.

And then, of course, his relationship with Raven, something that is basically a summation of his character arc. Laden with baggage and tragic in concept, it is my belief that most of what he’s doing isn’t because he genuinely hates the Spiral or he wants to get back at her, but because he loved her and treasured their relationship; so upon her mistreating him, he lashed out at everything she’d made and detested it as a result. But only because he felt betrayed and hurt so he has to inflict that on other people because he is, as aforementioned, a petty and bitter old fuck.

Moving off that line of thinking, an admirable quality he possesses is how smart he is. This guy has so many wrinkles in his brain it must look like a raisin. Well, perhaps not ‘smart’ exactly, but how good he is at manipulating certain situations to his advantage. Like in Mirage; you just know that he was fully expecting Mellori to be there and fully planned to use her as a back up plan, or you could even argue that the whole debacle in Mirage was a ploy to get his hands on her, while having the added possible benefit of things actually working out.

Actually his scheme in Mirage was really interesting now that I think about it. His aim was to turn back time to when the FirstWorld was whole, further implying that he never wanted its destruction in the first place. It would also, of course, be a time where he had his Heart and would have the ability to avoid having it ripped out again. This would involve not having the Titans fight each other again, or at least not starting it and suffering the consequences. It would be everything he wanted to achieve knocked out in one go with minimal muss or fuss, compared to other methods. It’s probably a part of why he shows up personally to bargain with Eerkala and the Cabal, and why he directly intervenes in our Wizard’s efforts to stop him; it was too important to trust to any of his kids, so knowing Scorpion probably wouldn’t have been able to execute it anyway, he used his kid as a distraction for the most part.

I also like looking into the fact that his element, besides Shadow, is Storm, as opposed to pure Shadow or Death, as most major antagonists are. Storm is a school based on invention, experimentation and improvement. This is something that interests me for two reasons: one, the magic of major antagonists is always a part of their character, Malistaire the most blatantly, and two, because of this line he says in Mirage.

To my interpretation, this would imply that he sees the Spiral as something that could be improved. And as a god, he would of course find it his obligation to try and fix this flaw. When he made the barter with the Cabal, I don’t doubt he was being at least partially honest about restoring the FirstWorld; it would certainly fix the flaw it has in the context of stealing his internal organs, but he would also probably seek to improve it, make it more suited to Shadow or something.

Something else I find intriguing is how weirdly honest he is; I don’t recall him ever lying to us once, unless you count omitting certain facts as lying. But that’s absolutely something I can see him using against people, like “I didn’t lie to you, I just didn’t tell you, your fault for not asking ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .” As said before, he;s really good at manipulating people and he weaponizes whatever he can; @that-wizard-oki​ made a really great post about how he uses conflicts- his fault or not- to his advantage, and does his own thing in the background without interruption, Mirage and Neumia probably being the best example of this, with Scorpion and the Cabal serving as distractions while he either carries out things himself or gives instructions.

To pull all of this together narratively, I think it’s important to consider this line from Mellori during one of their confrontations:

He feels powerless, so he puffs up his god status. He has little power to fight with, compared to before, so he mostly manipulates and creates back-up plans while causing conflicts to serve as distractions. His love hurt him, so he lashes out at others and drags them into his problems.

You may ask, “But Sam, these are all bad qualities, why should we like him because of this?” And I would respond “Because it makes him a complex and interesting antagonist.” The kind of character that executes his shitty actions in such a way that you can’t help but respect- even just for the level of dramatics put in to it- while also having a motive that makes you stop and consider that maybe he has a point but is very much handling the situation the wrong way.

Like, c’mon, he ticks so many villain boxes. Tragic backstory? Check. Blatant thespian who owns it? Check. Gets his hands dirty before the climax of the story? Check. Smart/ manipulative/ has back-up plans? Check. Understandable, strong motives? Check.

He’s got layers. Like onion. I felt like there was always something new to discover about him, and for that I can assert my opinion that he’s one of the best characters in Wizard101.

lmao if you read this far into my simp-for-shithead post congrats. feel free to shoot me more asks on the subject bc i cant write persuasive-essay-esque format anymore my brain is rotting. if you will excuse me, im off to listen to the chronoverge combat track for the 82937487734th time

[inventors-fair]

Moral Support: Full Commentary

Welcome to the full card commentary! This card contest was mechanically fairly prescriptive in some major ways, so I was pretty pleased to see such a wide range of approaches. Thanks so much for all of your submissions! They were a blast to read, and I hope you’ll check out what everybody produced this week. - @teaxch

@abzanhero - The Core-Piercer

This card combines several things that Dwarf cards have cared about in the past in a fairly elegant way. On a creature, an ability that wants you to deal damage to creatures and trample have mild tension, but it’s less of an issue on an equipment, which can be used on both offense and defense. I’m not sure if I get the flavor of specifically getting treasure when a creature is damaged, but the “big drill” making treasure is sensible enough.

@alextfish - Uprising of the Downtrodden

I went back and forth on this card. Specifically, Revolt cards tend to have the trait that they make sense when played after combat damage has been dealt, as that’s the most common time that permanents leave play in many formats. A tribal Trumpet Blast isn’t generally useful played after combat damage. The card is pretty clever, however, in that it gives the power boost a function when played with Revolt. The design of the card is also clever in that the card may legitimately be worth running in a deck that lacks Rebel tribal in limited, as it’s still a Lightning Strike (at least for creatures and planeswalkers)  that leaves a token behind with Revolt, which is solid.

There’s no special synergy with the existing Rebel mechanic other than that Rebels are good at getting multiple creatures onto the board, but the Rebel mechanic has some play issues, so it’s reasonable that they’d probably go in another direction if they brought the type back.

@bread-into-toast - Spray of Strikes

I love this as a Hydra-themed card design. Hydra’s don’t have a long history of fighting multiple things, but it makes a lot of sense as a place for the creature type to go.

While it’s very slightly different, I suspect that this may be templated as “Target creature you control deals damage equal to its power to each of X target creatures your opponents control. Each of those creatures deals damage equal to its power to that creature,” or something along those lines. It’s a lot clunkier, but it avoids confusion about whether your creature can die before all of the fights happen. (It cannot; even if it takes damage greater than or equal to its toughness, state-based actions will not be checked until the card resolves completely.)

@chungus-supreme - Sea Shaper’s Cant

Permanent unmarked changes to land types aren’t unheard of, but they are uncommon; unless there’s a specific environment reason that this must be an instant, I feel like this could be implemented as an aura with Enchant Land, Flash, and an ETB ability that puts an Islandwalk counter on a Merfolk.

@corporalotherbear - Threefold Sun’s Zenith

This card has a very clever Modern Horizons-style concept, tying the Threefold Sun to the Sun’s Zenith cycle. You have to invest a ton into this card before it starts to approach a good deal, but that fits in reasonably with the general go-big strategy that dinosaur decks typically have. I think that the decision to avoid tying the effects directly to the three-card Sun’s Avatar cycle makes sense; there’s not really an obvious way to scale the white one’s effect.

@deg99 - Hurloon Hymn

The global enchantment that makes a single token on ETB isn’t a commonly used design tool - typically they just attach the enchantment effect to the creature directly (which also makes it easier to remove.) This is a reasonable application of the technology, in the vein of Liliana’s Mastery. I like the connections to both very old and more recent lore in the name and flavor text.

@demimonde-semigoddess - Crash the Workshop

I’m assuming that, based on the implied Kaladesh setting, that this card is from an artifact-heavy set, which I think is pretty important to its design. In an environment without many targets, this is a moderately swingy (and potentially frustrating) sideboard card at best, and also potentially misleading - you don’t want to maindeck this card in a typical limited environment no matter how many Gremlins you have. Fortunately, that’s likely not a concern.

@dimestoretajic - Auntie’s Blessing

I think this card is really interesting in that it uses a creature type restriction to focus less on something that the tribe is good at and more as a limitation based on what the tribe typically isn’t that great at. This aura is strongest when it’s on a large, evasive creature, and goblins are typically neither. That helps keep the snowball potential of this card in check. I do think that this card could be less color-intensive; triple red is a lot to ask when the card already has several hoops to jump through. (On the other hand, many Goblin decks historically have been mono-red; this is more of an issue if Goblins are also in another color, e.g., black, and for limited.)

@gayagendaofficial - Phoenix Frenzy

Phoenixes have a little bit of history with instants and sorceries, including multi-format star Arclight Phoenix, so while this card only touches indirectly on Phoenixes’ most prominent gimmick, it still makes a degree of sense. This card becomes very interesting and complex if you have the ability to trigger it multiple times in a turn (the ease of doing so varies widely with the number of Phoenixes in the environment), because it allows you to cast the same card from your graveyard multiple times in a turn, including itself, provided you can supply multiple Phoenix triggers. Cards that let you cast instant and sorcery cards from your graveyard in some fashion typically include some clause that keeps them from being used more than once. The fairly major Phoenix-related limitation may be sufficient to make this unnecessary, but given that this card is in a set that has Flashback already, it could give the spells Flashback 0 instead of letting you cast them from exile, if that’s something you wanted to avoid.

@ghoulcaclulator64 - Sylvan Funeral

This card is on the lower end of value if you’re not getting the tribal effect, although accepting a bit of card disadvantage to get your bomb back is something that could plausibly be worth it in limited. This card could probably be bumped up a whisker; Find/Finality is a rare, but Survivors’ Bond, which compares favorably to this card, is just a pretty good common. 

@gollumni - Bloodrage Strike

Commons are hard to pull off in the Fair in the best of times (well, except for weeks like the current week, where being common is required). They tend to not be as splashy or novel, and this week in particular lent itself to more complex designs. That said, I appreciated this common’s elegance enough that it only just missed the winner’s circle. An effect like this has never been done quite so simply or elegantly; there are a few cards that care about the type of the sacrificed creature, but in all cases it’s a component of a more complex card.

@grornt - Howling Snowstorm

Yetis don’t have a strong existing mechanical identity, so this is as good as any. The Yeti bonus here is pretty tame, as this will generally be a card played later in the game (if not as a finisher entirely), but the discount is still good tempo. That this is a Cantrip is interesting as it encourages the use of the card to push through some damage mid-game, rather than only using it to close games out, which is the most common use of cards that tap all of your opponents’ creatures.

Currently, all printed Snow instants and sorceries care about snow mana or cards in some way, but not all Snow creatures or lands do, so that doesn’t seem to be a hard rule in general. (It appears that Kaldheim used the rule that only cards that care about Snow or produce mana are Snow, but other sets haven’t hewn to this.)

@hiygamer - Mining Rig

The decision to tie the treasure production specifically to tapped Dwarves is really smart on this card. It not only makes a certain amount of flavor sense and keeps fresh dwarves from immediately adding to your treasure total (unless they have Haste or help), but it pushes the deck to generally be active, rather than just playing a bunch of dwarves and doing nothing with them and winning a few turns later off of a giant spell.

@hypexion - Carrion’s Call

Magic has done a bit of bird-graveyard interaction before, generally with the flavor of carrion birds, so even though Birds’ primary mechanical identity is just that they fly, this feels reasonably connected to the tribe, especially as it exists in black. This card is a nice “zero or more” tribal card, which isn’t something the contest naturally lends itself too, and the overall flavor package is very tight.

@i-am-the-one-who-wololoes - Plague Rite

While it’s common for triggered abilities to appear after static abilities, on this card that ends up burying the lede a bit; even in an environment very heavy on -1/-1 counters, the main selling point of this card is the third of the three abilities. That’s a fairly minor point, however. (The other abilities do combo with Everlasting Torment and things that grant persist, at least.)

Removing -1/-1 counters from your creatures (without moving them somewhere else) initially felt a little odd in black, but the overall package of the card sells the general idea of the counters being spread around. Additionally, black does have the little-used ability to remove arbitrary counters from permanents.

@ishmael-urquhart - Angelic Restoration

As near as I can tell, white’s never gotten a simple sorcery that just brings back a creature with low mana value, so this is a good find. In some ways, I wish that the two options for this card were more parallel, rather than one bringing the creature back to the battlefield and one putting it into your hand, although I’m not sure if the card could cost three mana if it could bring back any Angel to the battlefield. Currently, the second of the two options is a bit overcosted, but it’s still something you’re realistically choose late game some of the time.

@jsands84 - Bountiful Hive

This card very barely missed the Winners’ Circle cut. This is a new mechanical identity for insects, but it’s one that makes sense for insects in green and white, which is an especially appropriate color pair for social insects, like those printed on the card. (Also, Insects don’t have a terribly strong existing color identity.) This card could probably be a rare; the Lorwyn tribal reveal lands probably don’t have to be rares, but adding the extra ability might push it there.

Minor nitpick - I’m assuming that the last ability should read “tap an untapped insect...”

@lesbian-verdeloth - Stand Against Tyranny

Not many people submitted Tribal cards, but this one certainly merits the type. It’s largely doing the same trick as Bound in Silence, a card that I personally consider the single best and most interesting deployment of the Tribal card type, but on a card that more directly supports the Rebel game plan. If anything, this may support the Rebel game plan a little too well; the mere threat of this card makes it hard to profitably interact with a Rebel deck’s board as long as a card that can search for a Rebel 3-drop is on the board.

@loreholdlesbian - Lycanthropy//Form of the Alpha Wolf

This card has some good flavor, although it’s very complex. A “Form of the Dragon” card for being a Werewolf is really clever, and a DFC that uses the established werewolf mechanic is a great way to sell what’s going on. 

I think the card may be a bit on the weak side. The turn you play it, it basically just gives you a 1/1 and halves your life total, which isn’t great for three mana. It generally won’t transform until the beginning of your opponent’s upkeep three turns after it was played, if you forgo playing anything on your next turn. While this is how all cards with the Werewolf mechanic work, generally the front side of a Werewolf card is at least a mediocre creature for its cost.

The back half of the card is also somewhat complex in terms of nesting ability dependencies. If you control a 3-power human creature when the card transforms, there’s a three-deep nesting of abilities determining your new life total. That’s not something alien to Magic, but it’s rare that it’s all on the same card.

@maizenolo - Statue Garden

I’m legitimately not sure if the game rules can recognize “Destroyed by a Gorgon” - that seems to be new technology, and I’m not sure whether there are rules issues with it. Assuming it works, this is a cool and flavorful thing for Gorgons to be doing.

I’m not sure if the ability is the sort of thing that necessarily goes on a land; lands rarely have repeatable, board-affecting triggered abilities of this sort. A statue garden is a place, but I would generally expect to see this effect on an artifact or enchantment.

@misterstingyjack - Renais, Prince of Beasts

Because the contest for this week disallowed creature cards, there were a limited number of ways to make cards that could take advantage of their own tribal effects. Making tokens is the easiest, but this approach is also very cool. This design also allows for a very highly tribal planeswalker (none of the loyalty abilities do anything without beasts) that’s still functional on its own.

The first ability may need to read “number of loyalty counters on him,” but that’s just a minor templating issue.

@morbidlyqueerious - Mycelial Reinforcement

The tribal Winding Constrictor effect plays very well with both the spore counter mechanic historically associated with fungi and with the general Doubling Season strategy that the tribe tends to adopt in Commander. There’s potential for slight rules confusion with cards like Ghave (Ghave enters with only one extra counter), but decks that play cards of this sort already potentially deal with that interaction, so that may not be that big of a deal.

@naban-dean-of-irritation - Vantrian Tactics

Even with just a few available targets, this is a fairly decision-dense card; the number of possible permutations grows pretty quickly. That’s not unique among Magic cards, but this card asks the player to make the decision every turn, and the nature of the chosen keywords is such that differentiations will often be slight, and the total impact of the card is fairly moderate. Outside of a handful of specific interactions (Infect, etc.), First Strike is generally just a worse version of Indestructible, although I don’t know that that’s necessarily a strike against the card, and can help experienced players make decisions more quickly, as its exceedingly rare that it’s worth it to give something first strike until you’ve already allocated the Indestructible.

@nicolbolas96 - Ritual of the Nezumi

This card is another great example of using a tribe to limit the impact of an otherwise potentially very dangerous effect. There are certainly some good rats out there, but it’s a very narrow set as a whole, and limited in the sorts of things that appear on the cards. I also like that this card heavily encourages spreading the mana out over several rats or rat-abilities. There may not be much in the way of specific reasons for this card to work with rats rather than with some other tribe (although there are some decent rat token generation options), but rats do fall in the window of being plentiful enough and interesting enough that a tribal card that only works with them is interesting without being so omnipresent that a ritual that also functions as a spell copier is dangerous.

Black hasn’t gotten many mana-positive rituals recently - Culling Ritual is the last new one I know of, and may be the only one in Modern. It’s still nominally in Black’s pie as of the most recent Mechanical Color Pie article when some other cost is involved, however, so this card seems fine.

@nine-effing-hells - Nature’s Majesty

“Power four or greater” is a theme they’ve used a couple times in RG, and that’s also where similar themes often live. This card extends that to blue; I’m assuming that this appears in a wedge product where the theme lives in those colors and where the referenced creature types also are prominent there. In that context, it makes a lot of sense, and clearly spells out a path for a deck.

This card does something that a few multi-tribe submissions do, which is to require colors that one of the tribes isn’t likely to be playing in a dedicated tribal deck. There are technically a few blue plants, but a plant deck that wants to play this plant tribal card is probably mono-green or green-black. That said, the pool of plant cards that trigger the effect to begin with is pretty small, so barring new plants being released alongside this card, this is probably mostly for beast and elemental decks to begin with. 

@pocketvikings - Piper’s Swarm

Rats were a popular tribe option for this contest. Rats don’t have a terribly strong tribal identity - they’re kind of good at making tokens, some of them have discard effects, etc., but there’s not really a specific iconic thing that rats do. This card cleverly references a single existing and flavor-driven Rat card, Piper of the Swarm. This card can’t be anything but a rat tribal card - if you replace it with a different creature type, the reference is lost.

@rasputingold - Crypt Command

I’m assuming that this card, like other existing commands, is meant to be a rare; it’s pretty complex and overbearing for a common. The base rate on this card is pretty good - four mana to counter a spell and make a 2/2 is solid. There is a little friction between the first and third abilities, in that the first ability is more likely to be used on not your turn or during your end step, when the third ability is useless, but it’s not a total nonbo, and it’s fine if not all mode combinations are reliably good.

Normally, if one mode of a command targets something that has a good chance of becoming an illegal target while the command is on the stack, then all of the modes target, so that the spell doesn’t fail to resolve if one of its targets becomes illegal. Ojutai’s Command suggests that spells (or at least creature spells) are not considered likely enough to become illegal targets that that’s a concern, so this spell is probably in the clear. (There’s an argument to be made that spells that target are more likely to become illegal targets if what they target is removed.)

@reaperfromtheabyss - Dusk Beacon

I’m not 100% sure what this card represents, but it’s a good all-around support card that any tribe could make use of. The primary tribal identity of Scarecrows in Shadowmoor block is supporting and being supported by non-colorless creatures and aside from that they’re sort of generally just small artifact creatures, but this card does have specific synergy with Scarecrone and The Reaper King, who are probably the most popular scarecrows, and who are among the most worth actually building around. Menace is a nice choice of keyword, as it’s a fairly scarecrow-y keyword, but no printed Scarecrows have it.

@shakeszx - Negotiated Services

I’m assuming the decision to make this card symmetrical (rather than asymmetrical, like almost all modern tribal effects) was intentional, and I think it’s kind of interesting if that’s the case, because the drawback is large enough to serve as a meaningful hoser. The card only ever really goes in Rogue/Mercenary decks, but it makes more sense as a symmetrical card than most tribal effects do. I’m not sure if this interaction is quite worth breaking the modern default of this sort of design being asymmetrical, but it makes a decent argument for it.

@snugz - Fiendish Omens

Batching these three types together makes a lot of sense; Rakdos the Showstopper does it, and it feels like a well that’s natural to return to. Red and Black don’t get this sort of effect terribly often, but it’s reasonable for things that are in their colors, I suppose. This could arguably dig a little deeper; a set would have to be very heavily focused on these creature types before you could build a deck where this rarely whiffs, and I think you need this to rarely whiff for it to be worth including.

@starch255 - Crabcasting

This is presumably a crab so that it can use its granted ability itself. An enchantment granting itself a tap ability is a little odd; while this is an interaction that exists in the game across multiple cards (E.g., Joraga Treespeaker and Prowess of the Fair), putting it on a single card feels like it’s pushing into Future Sight design territory, and creeping on one of the few remaining distinctions between artifacts and enchantments. The card itself does a great job playing into the mill identity that crabs have sort of picked up against all odds.

@takemuse1 - Age of Trax

This card is a very cool lore cut - The Age of Trax is an era of Theros’s history when Archons ruled as tyrants before being overthown by Kynaios and Tiro, with the help of the gods. The card itself recalls the abilities of several notable archon creatures, which is cool. The card is a bit on the wordy side; that’s nothing new for Sagas, but this one may have more total text than any currently printed Saga. The first ability may be able to lose the part about playing Archons from your hand; the card still lightly encourages Archon tribal through the second ability. The last ability may also be a bit of a reach in white; white gets symmetrical card draw, but I’m not sure if the other abilities are something that appears much in white.

@wilsonosgoodmcman - Overshadow

The card name here is extremely clever, and helps sell an otherwise somewhat improbable combination of abilities. There’s some synergy between a Shade’s ability to pump itself and the mechanics of the card (and some non-synergy with most Shades’ very low non-pumped stats, which helps control the card’s power level), but the name pun really helps it cohere.

Behind everything else, this is a fairly powerful card, as a free removal spell, even if you’re not using the Shade part.

@wolkemesser - Sarpadian Diplomacy

This card has a clever, novel, powerful ability on it - powerful enough that I’m not at all confident how much this card should cost. It’s a very good combo with lots of things, but most of the things that’s a very good combo with are cards that are already a very good combo with lots of things. 

Finding a mechanical tie between two creature types that have a flavor tie helps the card feel cohesive, and I think it’s interesting that the two referenced types interact with sacrifice in different ways. (Many funguses with sacrifice abilities sacrifice other things, while thrulls sacrifice themselves.)

That said, there is one hitch with this card - it’s substantially more natural in a Fungus deck than in a Thrull deck. A Thrull deck that wants to play this Thrull tribal card has to include green, which it otherwise has no particular reason to do.

The card also supplies a recurring blocker for no mana investment. although its status as a rare means that that’s not as much of an issue.

@yourrightfulking - Clique’s Contingency

This card packs a lot of different decision points into a relatively tight package, especially if the player controls exactly one faerie. The nods to what faeries do as a tribe aren’t super loud, but the card fits with the general faerie game plan, and certainly feels trickster-y.

There are enough non-blue fairies that this card does represent counterspell access in non-blue decks. That could be considered a bug or a feature, but the “safe” version of this card would probably cost U if you returned a fairy. That said, while Bitterblossom and certain Changelings do make it into non-fairy decks, realistically any deck that’s considering this card is likely playing blue.