#region basics

[chaosspelledwrong]

Heyyyy guyysssss

[lgbtlunaverse]

What kind of saber is baxia anyway?

I love my bloodthirsty princess of a cursed blade, and in my heart of hearts i am nothing but a sword nerd, so i've been extremely fascinated by Baxia and how we know frustratingly little about what she actually looks like!

I mean, look at bichen, right?

Bichen in the donghua:

Bichen in the drama:

They're clearly not exactly the same. The scabbards are different, and the guards have a different shape. But these are recognizably different iterations on one theme, right? Thin jian with a white grip silver guard, light blue tassel and silver mounting accents on the scabbard.

Now this is baxia in the donghua:

And baxia in the drama:

????????

THAT'S A COMPLTELY DIFFERENT WEAPON

it doesn't stop there either, the audio drama is kind enough to give us ANOTHER COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BAXIA

pretty! But how is that he same sword??

And when we go back to the novel, we get very little information on her appearance other than the fact that her blade is tinted red with all the blood she's absorbed. Which none of these designs incorporate.

This is not a dig on the designs itself, they're all quite gorgeous in their own right and i'm going to spend a while discussing all of them! Because isn't it fascinating how, since we know little about novel baxia beyond "saber" all of these designs ended up so different? What kinds of sabers are these, anyway?

So, a chinese aber, aka a "dao" (刀) just means a sword that has only one cutting side. As opposed to a jian, which has two.

You can see how that leaves a LOT of room for variaton.

I've actually seen some people get confused because Huaisang's saber in the untsmed is thin and quite straight, making it superficially resemble the jian more than drama!baxia, but it is still clearly a saber!

See? only one cutting blade!

This, to me looks a lot like a tang dynasty hengdao

credit to this blog for providing his image and being a great source for all this going forward.

TANGENT: during all this I found out the english wikipedia page for dao is WRONG! Ths is what they about the tang hengdao!

So that sounds like the hengdao was called that during the sui dynasty, but then, after that, started being called a peidao, right?

WRONG

I LOOKED AT THE SOURCE THEY USED AND IT SAYS THIS:

IT WAS CALLED THE PEIDOU UNTIL THE SUI DYNASTY, AT WHICH POINT IT WAS CALLED A HENGDAO. Which would carry over to the Tang dynasty. This was the source wikipedia linked! and it says something else than they say it does!

Anyone know how to edit a wikipedia article?

ANYWAY

BACK TO BAXIA

Since we're already at the drama, let's look at drama baxia: She's also straight! the general term for straight-backed saber is Zhibeidao, but that's a modern collector's term, and doesn't really say anything about which historical kind of saber baxia could be based on. Another meta i found on the drama nie sabers already went on some detail here.

I'm gonna expand on that a little: The kinds of historical straight-backed sabers we see resemble the hengdao a lot more than they do baxia. They don't go to their point as harsly as she does (she's basically a cleaver!) and they're all way skinnier.

No, my personal theory is that instead of being based on any kind of historical sword, drama!baxia is based on a Nandao.

I mean, come on, look at it!

Baxia!

The Nandao... isn't actually a historical sword. It was invented for Wushu forms. There's a really fascinating article about its conception, but that's why the swords in the images look a little thin and flimsy. Wushu swords are very flexible and light, they're dance props, not weapons to fight with. There are actual steel versions of Nandao, but they're recreations of the prop, not the other way around.

So That's one way in which Baxia differes from the Nandao: she's actually a real weapon. The other is that, as you can see above, the nandao has an S-shaped guard. Baxia doesn't. She's also much more elaborately decorated, of course. Because she's a princess.

Now: audio drama baxia!

This is much easier. with that flare at the tip?

Oh baby that's a niuweidao, all the way!

There are more sabers with that kind of curved handle, but the broad tip is really charcteristic of the niuweidao. The Niuweidao is also incredibly poplar in modern media, often portrayed as a historical sword, but it originated i nthe 19th century! And it was actually never used by the military!

That's right, the Niuweidao was pretty much exclusively a civilian weapon! That makes its use here anachronistic, but so is the nandao, and considering that the origin story of the Nie is that they use Dao intead of Jian because their ancestors were butchers, portraying them with a weapon historically reserved for rebels and common people instead of the imperial military is actually very on theme!

Finally, Donghua/Manhua baxia. These two designs are so similar I'm going to treat them as one and the same for now.

Unlike both previous baxias, The long handle makes it clear this baxia is a two-handed weapon, though Nie Mingjue is absolutely strong enough to wield her with one hand anyway. Normal rules don't count for cultivators.

Now, this is where things get tricky, because there are a lot of words for long two-handed sabers. And a lot of them are interchangable! This youtube video about the zhanmadao, one of the possible sabers this baxia could be based on, goes a little into just how confusing this can get. This kind of blade WAS actually in military use for many centuries, making it the most historically accurate of all the baxias. But because of that it also has several names and all of those names can also refer to different kinds of blades depending on what century we're in.

So here's our options: i'm going to dismiss the wodao and miandao, because these were explicitly based on japanese sword design, and as we can see manhua baxia has that very broad tip, so that won't work

(Example of a wodao. According to my sources Miaodao is really just the modern common term for the wodao, and the changdao, and certain kinds of zhanmadao... do you see how quickly this gets confusing?)

Next option: Zhanmadao.

Zhanmadao stands for "horse chopping saber" so... yeah they were anti-cavalry weapons. meant to be able to cut the legs and/or necks of horses. That definitely sounds like a weapon Nie Mingjue would wield. But if you watched that youtube video i linked above, you'll know the standardized Qing dinasty Zhanmadao looked very different from earlier versions. It was inspired by the japanese odachi, and more resembles the miandao than its ealrier heftier counteprarts.

Earlier Ming dynasty Zhanmadao on the other hand were... basically polearms. the great ming military blog spot, another wonderful source, says these are essentially a kind of podao/pudao (朴刀) which looked like this

Now that blade looks a lot like baxia, but the handle is honestly too long. Donghua!baxia straddles the line between sword an polearm a little, but while zhanmadao have been used to refer to both long-handled swords and polerarms, this was undeniably a polearm, not a sword.

If you want to know what researching this was like, I found a picture of this blade on pinterest-- labeled as a "two-handed scimitar"-- and the comment section was filled with people arguing about whether this was a Pudao, Wudao, Zhanmadao, Dadao, Guandao, or a japanese Nagita.

So... that's how it was going. This has kept me up until 2 AM multiple times.

However! Thanks to this article on the great ming military blog I found out there have historically been pudao blades with shorter handles!

Specifically, Ming dynasty military writer Cheng Ziyi created a modified version of the pudao to work with the Dan Fao Fa Xuan technixues-- aka technqiues for a two-handed saber, which would alter heavily influence Miaodao swordmanship-- thereby, as the article points out, essentially merging the cleaver-polearm type Zhanmadao with the later two-handed japanese-inspired design.

This is the illustration for the Wu Bei Yao Lue (武備要略) a Ming dynasty military manual

This blade shape in the illustration doesn't match Baxia exactly, but since it's a lengthened Pudao-like blade and we've seen above that those can match Donghua Baxia's shape, i'm gonna say that calling Baxia a Zhanmadao with a two-handed grip isn't all that innacurate!

However, because all of these terms are so intertwined, there are a dozen other things you could call her that would be about equally correct.

To show that, here's a lightning round of other potential Baxia candidates:

Dadao (大刀)

Which are generally one-handed and too short. However!

Another youtube video i found of someone training with a Zhanmadao that resembles baxia a little also calls it a "shuangshoudai dao" (雙手带 刀) shuangshou means two-handed, and while 雙手带 seems to refer to a longer handled weapon, when looking for a shuangshou dao or shuangshou dadao (双手大刀) we find a lot more baxia-resembling blades like here and here

I also found that, while the cleaver-like Dadao is strictly a product of the 20th centuy, since dadao just means big sword or big knife, it has been used to refer to loads of different weapons! Some people could've called the zhanmadao and pudao "dadao" during the Ming dynasty as well.

Another potential baxia candidate that mandarin mansion classifies as similar to the later dadao (though longer, as seen in the illustration below) is the "Kuanren Piandao"

Which piqued my interest because this diagram classifying different tpye of Dao:

Claims that a Kuanrenbiandao (diferent spelling, same sword) is the same as a modern day Zhanmadao.

(So once again, all of these terms are interchangable)

Another opton Is the Chuanmeidao/Chuanweidao (船尾刀) below you can see a diagram, based on the Qing dynasty green standard army regulation, of blades all officially classified as types of "pudao"

The top middle is the Kuanren Piandao, and bottom left is the Chuanweidao.

Both of these have a lot of baxia-like qualities.

So there you go! live action baxia is based on a Nandao, audio drama baxia is based on a Niuweidao, and Manhua/donghua baxia is some kind of two-handed Zhanmadao/Pudao/Dadao depending on how you want to look at it.

I'm honestly surprised no one has made the creative decision to portray Baxia as a Jiuhuandao, aka 9 ringed broadsword yet.

I mean look at it! Incredibly imposing. Would make for a great Baxia imo. (@ upcoming mdzs manga and mobile game: take notes!)

[filurig]

i decided to change a little bit about the bäckahäst humanoid form, and realised that they have some superficial similarities to skogsrå, so heres a thing ironing out their differences a little

[serpentface]

Here's a heavily improved Imperial Wardin map, with a focus on climate and geography (uses the Koppen Climate Classification). This is an attempt to infuse pre-existing lore too established to retcon with a degree of realism, but there's only so much I can do.

The majority of the climate falls under the hot mediterranean and semi-arid classification, with small pockets of warm mediterranean and arid climes. The entire region experiences a rainshadow effect from the eastern Blackmane Mountain range, which blocks northeasterly winds from the eastern ocean and starkly divides the Sub-Viper landmass between its humid east and dry west.

Most of the interior is grassland, savannah, and scrub. Savannah heavily coincides with a history of human occupation and controlled burns, and is mostly based around oak. Grassland, scrub, and semi-desert dominates the semi-arid regions. Small pockets of high desert and salt flats occur in the arid zones.

A forest originally spanned much of the north, consisting of predominantly oak. This was gradually eliminated due to multiple factors- a warming climate, low intensity human intervention (hunter-gatherers and pastoralists clearing land with controlled burns), and high intensity exploitation (deforestation for timber). Additional woodlands found along the major riverways have been wholly eliminated by logging within the past several centuries.

The largest remaining span of woodland occurs within and north of the Highlands, and in the sparsely populated northeast, where a major and mostly intact oak forest stretches to the Blackmane mountains. A smaller pocket of woodland occurs in the volcanic highlands of Lobera. Other pockets remain, but are isolated and insignificant on the map.

Most of the geography is flat, divided by a range of hills that are the heavily eroded remains of an ancient mountain range. The highest peaks of this range comprise the contemporary Highlands, which have the highest elevations and coldest climate in the region. This is the only territory that regularly receives snowfall, and is the source of several major rivers. The rest of the range is too low to drastically affect the climate, save for the Red Hills east of the Cholemdi basin, whose rain shadow effect (heavily compounded by the basin's low elevation) renders this valley the hottest and driest part of the region. This range once formed a land bridge across the Viper into Finnerich (though this was prior to anatomically modern humans Existing) with its only remnants being smatterings of islands.

The province Lobera holds a small range of volcanic highlands, composed of a network of mostly dead volcanic craters. The volcano Odatoche is the only active site in the region, though has been dormant for centuries and has not had a major eruption in millenia. The other major geological feature is the Sons of Creation, which is the fabled site of God’s self-sacrifice from which the world was made. This is the eroded range of a very large impact crater, consisting of two impact rings (visible as a circular formation of hills) a ring lake, and an elevated center.

The most fertile land is found in Ephennos, owing to the presence of the Black River and its highly fertile delta (which contains the only major semi-permanent marshes outside of Highland river valleys). This is the second largest river in the region, being a confluence of two major river systems out of the Highlands (the Urbin/Erubin and Troibad/Nedachemi rivers). Erubinnos has the largest river, the Kannethod, which originates in the Blackmane mountains.

Agriculture around some of the other river systems is mostly or entirely dependent on their post-rainy season flooding. The most prominent is the Yellowtail river (flows south past Erub). In the very distant past, this was the longest river in the region, and carved out the Cholemdi basin and reached the sea. In the contemporary, it dries out long before even approaching the sea (though occasionally still floods the basin in abnormally rainy years). The Brilla river system out of the Red Hills (flows to Wardin) reaches the sea year-round, but has been known to run dry in exceptionally severe drought, and irrigation along its length depends on its flooding.

There are very few significant lakes in the region (small lakes are unmarked). The biggest is the volcanic crater lake Aganagarre in Lobera, the Yellowtail lake north of Erub, and the ring lake within the Sons of Creation.

[maxaroniiiii]

lian time

[vynnyal]

Stuff I've made on my phone, I guess? Of varying levels of "quality"

[front-facing-pokemon]

[mollysunder]

I know people have tried using Caitlyn's map to understand Piltover and Zaun's geography, but I think Silco's map in Zaun offers a better view. When you piece together the brief shots of Silco's own map, including after Jinx vandalized it, you can make out more details in Piltover.

For example, in the area designated as Upper Piltover, there's a yellow highlighted path called Gold Way in parenthesis that leads to the Council's building. Upper Piltover likely most likely contains the Blue Wind Court, the district home to the wealthiest families in Piltover.

If you tie all the shots of Silco's map together, you get something like this. I find it interesting that Silco's map shows that there's two smaller bridges that connect Zaun and Piltover across the river. They don't appear as prominent the main bridge, they might even be in disrepair, but they are present on a Silco's map chose to keep. Are these bridges no go zones for Zaunite trade? Are they smaller commuter corridors perpetually out of service? Who knows, at least we know they exist now, and so does Jinx.

Someone made a cleaner version of the map for an rpg site. The map mixes Arcane's new geography of the two cities, but still applies old and unconfirmed names for sections of both cities, so it'snot completely accurate. I thought it would be good to include because it gets the shape of the fissures right.

[thisonelikesaliens]

A little note on the Liang Shan Bo & Zhu Ying Tai story told in ep20:

So this is a folktale from Jin Dynasty (266-420 AD) that has been retold over generations and adapted into various forms of media (plays, operas, movies, songs, etc. you name the type and it's probably been done), and you'll find regional and artistic differences if you go looking for all the variations, but the core remains the same: it's a tragic romance where Liang and Zhu did not end up together in life.

A quick summary of the rest of the tale, continuing from where Gu Jin Yu stopped: Zhu went home before completing her studies, and when Liang visited he finally found out the man he fell in love with was really a woman. He wanted to propose, only to find out Zhu's father had already arranged her marriage to another man. Heartbroken, Liang died from an illness not long after. On Zhu's wedding day, when the wedding procession passed by Liang's grave, strong winds prevented them from moving forward. Zhu left her palanquin to pay respects at the grave, and when it suddenly split open, Zhu jumped in without hesitation to join her love, and from the grave emerged two butterflies.

Gu Jin Yu stopped where she did because she was going to write a different ending for them (which maybe the production team already hinted at in ep2):

(Feel free to look up "butterfly lovers" for more info. There's a ton out there, but sadly I haven't found one that touches on the bisexual awakening of Liang, which is my personal takeaway from this story.)

[084392]

now just the sight of you is nothing but a reminder...

[apelcini]

there is a hollowness inside of rich kids that truly terrifies me.

[peninsulaisms]

it’s happening to everybody

[thewhizzyhead]

I've discussed with my friends how genius it was to input the recurring theme of "finding and employing true will" in a turn-based RPG where everything is all laid out for the player, but it's another level of insight entirely to have the concept of freedom of choice integrated in almost every major plot point thus far - from the main character's journey of making their own choices despite being brought into existence basically with a predetermined script in mind, belobog's journey towards resisting the eternal freeze to combating it after centuries, firefly's life with a disability and her struggle to push forth nonetheless, to Sunday's whole dilemma on whether futility is all that is left in attempts to protect the weak.

Different as all these plot points and more may be, they all share one thing is common which serves as the very core of a game whose gameplay design limits the very player to only a few options per turn: What choices will you make to fight against what is fated?

[lemonbombsfjl]

Only twelve states have average rents below $1000 monthly, and they are the areas with the lowest population density. Affordable housing needs to exist where people live, and it goes hand in hand with a living wage and better quality of housing.

Any of these sites will help you register to vote, or check your registration.

Iwillvote.com

Vote.org

Vote.give

RockTheVote.org

usvotefoundation.org

Vote411.org

ballotpedia.org/Where_do_I_register_to_vote

voteamerica.org/register-to-vote/

More election information: LWV.org

YOUR VOTE COUNTS.

Your vote matters.

[crimescrimson]

Sunset Park in Saints Row: The Third (2011)

[deadinsideart]

Silly Pokémon sketch for my soul

(Pretend my 4'11 Pokémon isn't somehow taller than me I keep forgetting I am a foot taller)