#silly product designs of the blorbos from time to time

[0ffisially0ll0]

so how we feeling about,, dca tamagotchis...

[wildstar25]

How did you decide on Arsay's romantic partners? Did it happen as you played or did you plan in advance based on spoilers/osmosis/etc?

OO thanks for asking! I will be rambling about this haha It was a little bit of a mix tbh! I saw cute g'raha tia art on my TL all the time but aside from knowing he at some point gets covered in crystals, I had 0 sense about what his character was. I just really loved his character design and I was ready to play the whole game just to meet him! I was pretty much blind about everything in the game aside from seeing character designs via fanart. (the MONTHS i spent thinking people were rting master xehanort fanart... smh) My friends were adamant about not spoiling things for me either so I was able to come across things naturally and form my own opinions on the characters! I did instantly love G'raha the moment he showed up during the CT raids but I was actually on the fence about shipping Arsay with him for a long time!! He was always there in the back of my mind but I was waiting for some other character to come in with the steel chair and become the blorbo that I never expected to love. Unfortunately all the male characters that I could potentially throw at Arsay were too dead, had a shitty personality/gone from the msq for way too long, or get table scraps of content which I didn't really feel like dealing with this time around. (> had just came out of a years long stint of making content for myself for side characters iykyk) I was legitimately hetcomp-ing Arsay which is insane of me!! smh at my past self. Y'shtola was literally running at me, chair in hand, ready for the knock out. I have no plans whatso ever to ship Arsay with her. At MOST I thought they could be friends. Me shipping them together was absolutely a product of slowly going through the game, figuring out Arsay's character, and realizing how perfectly it compliments Y'shtola's. Y'shtola was coming across as the type to keep walls between herself and others, meanwhile Arsay was becoming the silly bean who does not know what personal space is. It was the perfect grounds for a "bright character lights up the moody character's life" situation!! And so I thought, "well Arsay's still waiting for g'raha (maybe??) but her and shtola can at least be besties!". But literally any time I put them next to each other all I could think was that they both are in love and are too dumb (arsay)/stubborn(shtola) to do anything about it. Arsay wormed her way into y'shtola's heart and Y'shtola became someone who Arsay always looked forward to seeing.

I really did need to know everyones vibes in ShB before I could make the final choice of what to do wolship wise. I herd that a lot of changes happen in that expac and I was worried the characters would no longer be compatible. I also did not realize the exarch shows up IN ShB and not in the ShB patches. (my friends kept saying G'raha comes back in 5.3, I did not realize they were being very specific in the language there haha). It was the day after I finished the greatwoods section in ShB that I was actually like "oh Arsay has been going through it I think she needs a girlfriend in these trying times" and pulled the trigger on that front. I had already been teasing the idea to some degree but didn't want to make it official right away. I half wrote a "Arsay finally figures out she's in love with her best friend actually and panics" fic. I still havent finished it since incredibly brilliant me decided that her confidant through all that turmoil would be Urianger and writing his dialogue requires knowledge of Shakespearean english that I do not posses.

I did kinda put myself in a corner cause then I had to figure out what to do about G'raha now. I still hadn't fully committed to any prior romance between them in the CT raids so it wasn't like that was an issue. however, as I continued to play through ShB I knew I couldn't not ship Arsay with him too. He was WAY too in love with her. They had WAY too much synergy together. THANKFULLY she has two hands and its not uncommon for Miqo'te to have multiple partners. I don't generally do OT3 or poly shipping myself, but for my catgirl to be the happiest she needs both of them in her life! And I'd like to believe she would make their lives happier too! The three of them all have their own experiences with loneliness and isolation, it warms my heart to imagine them finding a forever family in each other!

tl;dr: I was tweeting "who can I possibly ship arsay with 🥺" twice a week for 9 months despite in my heart knowing the answer and just waiting till I got far enough in the story to confirm things could work out.

[bigbluelemon]

ok so obviously no pressure but i've been meaning to ask all day: i want to start watching star trek (bc i need to get into classier sci-fi) but have absolutely no idea what to watch first...there are so many different versions man. i thought maybe since you like star trek i could ask you which series you like best so i could start there :P

!!!!! i am so excited i am bouncing up and down (though I dont know about classier scifi……it's mostly silly and hopeful, which is what I like about it, but i wouldn't necessarily call it classy lmao)

Oh there is going to be so much text im so sorry this is probably not what you were counting on lmao

Ok so short answer is: Strange New Worlds if you want a peek into what's happening in here, or whatever vibes with you from the old shows, but probably The Original Series (TOS) (starting from the roots) or The Next Generation (TNG) (still from the roots but a bit more energetic bc its the 80s now) are best

Most of it is on the same timeline, but independent enough that you are safe to start with +- any series you like the premise of i think. That said, I am a big admirer of Strange New Worlds, which imo is the best of both worlds (hehe) in terms of inheriting all the good trek stuff and also being a modern production. It's monster-of-the-week, it touches upon cool topics, and generally just a good show. You might need to look up a bit of context bc it has a small tie to Discovery and I don't remember if they explain it enough within the show (I think they do, but I was also watching them in order so I am biased) (I am also willing to admit that I might generally be nostalgia-baited here bc it is a prequel to The Original Series, aka the very first one with Spock and Kirk etc, but I still believe it's a good show and a good place to start to get a feel of what it's like)

Short answer she said. Oh well.

An even longer answer:

Wiki has a fabulous graph that I love with my whole heart, here it is:

You probably can't see shit here but here's the link where it's in good resolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek#History_and_production

I watched trek in 2021, where i sat down and just got through all of the stuff that was out there in order of release start to finish in the span of something like 10 months? 11? i even had a spreadsheet to track my progress, and it was a bit of a mind-altering exercise (I remember emerging out of it like: where am i. what am i watching next. there is no trek left)

All of that is to say that The Original Series is an obvious place to start, but tbh I don't like it much. It is very fun and has a great cultural and historical significance etc, but for me it's way too slow-paced (small attention span girlie here) and, well. misogynistic. It's just very much a product of it's time I suppose. Though I do adore the original cast and my heart belongs to the og wacky alien designs

The Next Generation is better in terms of, well, speed: my brother once said that it resembles a radio spectacle, and he is not entirely wrong. The public seems to agree that the first season is a wash, but tbh I don't find it that objectionable (though i do seem to generally have All The Wrong Opinions, bc I like Enterprise which is apparently considered the worst series overall? Idk it has it's unfortunate moments but I disliked Voyager more) Generally, TNG is a good place to start I think if you want to go in a somewhat chronological order but The Original Series is too much: it's very similar in vibes but a lot more watchable I think.

The last option to start is Deep Space Nine, it's a bit of an add one bc I think they were trying to do something a bit new with it, and I have to say that it took me two seasons to warm up to the main cast (it's not necessarily bad, but I am used to opening up any trek and immediately having 10 new blorbos and that didn't happen there and I was Sad) BUT it is genuinely very good. It's a bit darker in places, has great themes, overarching plot arc, my favourite eugenics plotline, great cast. Basically it's a bit grittier trek for those who are tired of vanilla pink glasses trek. (it's not. actually gritty. it's pretty chill still) It's not a very obvious place to start, both in terms of it's less well-known, and, well, it's the 'one that's not like the others', which is a bit pointless when you don't have a feel of what the others are like, but I don't really know what your taste is and I think it's always better just to watch whatever part vibes with you most instead of aiming for some sort of completionism or whatever. Unless you want the popculture primer that is, then TOS or TNG are your boys

There is a lot of other stuff, but tbh I wouldn't rec it as a place to start for various reasons (Voyager I just plain don't like; Enterprise has a cool premise but it's about the very beginning of space exploration and is much less trek-y bc of it; most of the modern stuff is either not very good or relies heavily on old stuff, either in terms of being prequels/sequels/midquels or being genre deconstruction (like Lower Decks, which I think is great but it's a bit useless if you don't know what it's trying to deconstruct)

Sidenote about the new movies (2009-2016): I don't have anything bad to say about them, I think they were the first trek I ever watched, but they are also very much mid-tier blockbusters in a trek coat and not very trek-like. Are they enjoyable? absolutely. Will they give you a good idea of what trek is? Probably not. They're also the only ones on the alternative timeline, so they don't actually tie into anything before of after and thus aren't a great launching point.