#sleepy lore

[sleepyselkiesiren]

For context: my partner and I watch Severance every week. My parents recently decided to Also watch Severance every week.

And then we get to Sweet Vitriol...

As soon as Celestine Cobel shows up on screen, I say, "Oh no she looks like my grandma."

"Oh no she talks like my grandma????"

"OH NO SHE ACTS LIKE MY GRANDMA."

But then I tell myself I haven't actually Seen my grandma in years (cause we cut contact) so maybe I'm just misremembering.

Then I get to my weekly call with my parents and tell them about my reaction, and my dad goes, "Yuuuuuuuuup. I didn't know if I should say anything...."

And my mom gets to tell us all about the delightful ways she grew up under the care of my grandma.

So yeah Sissy Cobel is real actually and she can hurt me

[sleepy-the-loz-enthusiast]

Rating things I've been hit in the face with in no specific order (also places I've faceplanted)

A flying waffle - 10/10, extremely silly, I cried laughing

A netball - 3/10, happened multiple times and each time has broken my fucking glasses and they refused to stay on my face after

A hoop and other gymnastics apparatus - 2/10, that shit hurts. Minus points for bad memory association

A football - 7/10, technically not hit in the face, but it landed directly on top of my head and bounced off really high. Really funny so bonus points

A garden trampoline - 6/10, kinda mid, funny seeing my friends loudly swear because ragdolling though

A professional trampoline - 4/10, infinitely more terrifying and could've fallen off

A thin safety mat - 3/10, broke my arm first time. Second time, satisfying neck pops but people kinda panicked. Laughed like a maniac but felt bad for making them worry

A road - 5/10, 9 year old me was so embarassed faceplanting the road in front of a ton of people. Funny in hindsight

A thick safety mat - 9/10, comfy and adrenaline rush funny

Someone's foot - 3/10, they apologised and it wasn't painful, but the shock was a thing that existed. This has happened more than once

A tesco brand pain au chocolat - 10/10, got jumpscared but fuck yeah free food from my friend

A lava lamp - 1/10, ow.

My weighted blanket - 6/10, was really tired at the time so it was a jumpscare

My massive goose plushie - 8/10, silly

A van sliding door - -1/10, OW. The person didn't know I was there so got hit full force. Think I might've blacked out? Happened a while ago so don't remember

A bowl of soup - 2/10, happened days after the door. Can't remember how this one happened, but turns out hot soup hurts

[sleepyselkiesiren]

I thought it was the Default

At age 14 I got my first homophobic sermon in church, so I googled to find out what a gay was

And I was like, "oh, I never thought of that as an option. Wait, what's sinful about this?"

Then I googled to find out what a straight person was and was so DISGUSTED I decided I would never do that ever, dang no wonder that's sinful straights should be sinful too, I hate all of this

Then I just completely forgot about it until years later I came across the term ace and was once again SHOOKETH that it is Not the default

*note: i know not all aro people are ace and vice versa, but the experiences tend to be similar so ive lumped em together (and im aroace)

pls throw your awkward ace experiences in the tags i love them

[skitterplant]

first post in over a year WHAT is UP GUYS i say sobbing

I AM ALIVE!!!!!!!!

This game revived me, you can literally see my spirit come back to earth like a meteorite

The time was well-spent making DCA OCs (got like 40 of them now) and hibernating after a terrible work year but we're so BACK (i hope)

You can see them on my artfight this year innnn a day or so < 3 just gotta upload the files tomorrow

Bonus:

firmly believe the Rotund Moon is the devs attempting to make him unsimpable out of spite but jokes on them :debby:

[screwpinecaprice]

Role reversal but because The Long Quiet is constant, it's just him as is in a princess dress. Lol

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

[wolfheadghost]

Based off of a lil headcanon of mine that vessels like to fight eachother on sight like beetles

The winner of this fight

[biggiesnails]

Stupid little design notes for myself but I’m sharing it anyways

Also irrelevant sketches below the cut

Returning to my roots to get back into art by drawing eyes. Also street artist y/n and an old oc I forgot about

[perpetuallyexhaustedlibrarian]

I am LOVING Hiragi's tired dad energy in this chapter

Congrats dude if you weren't Team Mom before, you are now

[f1shart]

was perusing the ichabod tag and noticed my favorite gilf hasn't gotten fanart in a while.... so ermm old doodle !!!

baby icky is sauurr cute 🥰 when you age him down a glitch causes him to have these buck teeth so i took that and SPRINTED with it. speaking of buck wait omg his simzoo animal could totally be a deer...

[sleepyselkiesiren]

Dang, no one told me it would be so hard to get blue hair for my pronouns

Ft. Coral Island icon art style because I have a Problem

[sleepy-the-loz-enthusiast]

I know this is, like, pretty much an exclusively Zelda blog, but today I played a lot of pokemon Violet and I just had really strong nostalgia for an old pokemon game I used to play on roblox but no longer exists.

I'm curious now, was anyone else here for the peak of Pokemon Brick-Bronze? Because I remember I loved playing that game with my whole soul, it was so exciting to play it every day, until it was removed. Honestly homophobic...

But yeah, I can't remember exactly what the year was, but it was good times. I miss it a lot.

[the-impulse-to-love]

the symbolism. THE SYMBOLISM!!

okay so the original interview for the EIA creative process got taken down or smth but i was able to read em here n here ty op <3 original interview taken from here by noruwei!

we have Official Symbolism...

the houses

house veridian

"Veridian stands for strength, control, and resistance (“The house must endure”)."

2. feathered host

"The Feathered Host symbolizes emotion, intuition, and circularity (“The cycle must be broken”)."

"These two symbolic systems collide visually and conceptually throughout the four visualizers."

it's also interesting that FH is the monster guy where as HV is the knight guy given that the knights appeared to win each confrontation

honestly these are. still mildly vague and can be applied to a lot of theories still which is neat

also the way their weapons look diff!! veridian's is just a single, straight blade where as feathered host has like. two distinctly different blades

the feathers on fh r cool as shit. like i didn't even realize they were feathers at first ngl

the black flamingo (jerry)

"The Flamingo is key symbol of transformation, struggle, and unstable beauty. It appears on the album cover and in [all] the animations teaser presentations. Its 3D design was developed in collaboration with Locus Solus Studio (Amsterdam), based on a study of real flamingo movement to capture elegance and mystery in an animated context."

i think this is. basically what people were speculating? so nice

i do find the bit about "unstable beauty" interesting

anyways yeah. i do highly recommend reading the full interview (1, 2 -- dunno if the original link is ever gonna work again) there's a LOT of good bits of info in there... hopefully will post more on it

[youwouldntmakeasideblog]

Honestly this was meant to be a warm-up sketch before I inevitably get knocked the fuck out by sleep, and then it spiraled and now we're here.

Valentin is holding onto the words being thrown at him like his life delends on it, because he knows this shit is going to leave his memory within the next few seconds.

@wyervan I tried to do your sunny boy justice, he is such a goofy guy to draw I had so much fun with him

[justabeewithapen]

Doey mainly sleeps on his stomach because that’s the orientation he is used to in monster form. If he needs to be somewhat alert he will sleep with his back to a wall in a more upright position because it is more uncomfortable which means if something happens he will wake up faster. Since he doesn’t really have a lap if there is a critter present they will lay on his stomach. For a brief period when they wake up and Bella or Lucas gets off, there will be a small indent on his stomach as his body naturally attempted to cushion them. It is gone almost as soon as he stands up though.

[raayllum]

Watching a video on the history of unicorns (heartily recommend it) and in its discussion of the design of unicorns and how they got stapled onto religious iconography and then ideas of purity (including maidenhood/female virginity/innocence for better or for worse) it made me think about TDP, obviously.

I know pre-S7, I was thinking that the unicorn resting place was the Garden of Innocence, not Innocents. Now, the two concepts are related — in order to read the map to find the Garden, you need a true (innocent) heart — but the Garden of Innocents indicates that those who are innocent are multiple, and tied there. While it could be a referral to those who find the Garden, I think it's far more likely that the Innocents refers to unicorns themselves, and this is interesting for a few reasons. One is because arc 2 takes arc 1's skirting around the idea of "who is innocent? (implied)" and makes it much more overt and fraught:

Now, TDP evolves to question whether someone being innocent is a basis for whether or not they're spared in the first place — Rayla, Harrow, and Runaan are prime examples — but it is still worth thinking about people who were/are considered to be innocent (Ezran, a child punished for his father's crimes/choices) or should be (Leola) but aren't.

Next, I want to talk what we do know about the Garden before we get to the unicorns themselves, especially because this is more straightforward both in 1) the info we receive and 2) where we receive it being entirely in show canon.

As Aaravos says:

The map to the Garden of Innocents is special, Claudia. Only the true of heart can see it. A protection of sorts.

which raises the question of protecting it from what/who, and by proxy, who we're protecting the unicorns, alive or dead, from as well.

Then we have how Aaravos describes the Garden:

The unicorns had many secrets, and their oldest secret was the Garden of Innocents. A beautiful place hidden from prying eyes where unicorns could find peace and tranquility.

This both does and doesn't make sense. Unicorns having secrets makes sense because they have the star arcanum, and because 7x03 is also about secrets being revealed (Aanya telling Ez hidden history and showing him Duren's greatest secret of the fire rubies, etc). We'll debate later whether "peace and tranquility" refers to literal peace, or like... peace and tranquility in death, so let's put a pin in that for a second.

However, if the Garden of Innocents is their oldest secret... then how can it be also their resting place? Unless it began as a Garden where innocents would gather (themselves included, or those who could read the map or maps if there was more than one) to discuss and spend time together? And a place where the unicorns retreated upon being, presumably, hunted past that point. But as you can see, we very quickly spiral into speculation territory.

For now, let's go over what we actually know about unicorns (or at least, near as we can figure). We know they're connected to the Star arcanum (Tales of Xadia) and that their horns are immensely powerful and rare (3x06). We know from Terry in 7x03 that "they're all gone now". We also 'know' from both Tales of Xadia and the Book One novelization that humans hunted unicorns to extinction (which we're gonna put another pin in, for a second):

Unicorns were the most recognizable creature tied to [Star] magic, but, sadly, they have all but vanished from Xadia, as humans hunted and poached them to harvest for dark magic.

Perhaps the most valuable and sought-after prize of all was a unicorn's horn. Eventually, the humans hunted the unicorns until they disappeared completely from Xadia.

This matches up with what we see in canon, then: very few unicorns still exist; Claudia indeed hunted one for its horn and Viren tried for many years; and dark mages hunted many other magical creatures to extinction pre and during the Mage Wars that followed the expulsion. It fits.

And yet, this is where things start to get messier, however, simply because like most things in TDP, we have other sources that directly contradict all of the above claims from the book one novelization and Tales of Xadia. One such source is a page shown in 2x08 for a brief moment that was translated by fans and also exists in the Arc 1 artbook, which reads:

The only known creatures connected to the stars are the mysterious Startouch Elves and the rare, fascinating unicorns. Dark mages have tried to hunt the unicorns to better understand their power, but their stellar magic and their devious cunning make them almost impossible to hunt.

This of course goes against everything previously discussed. Unicorns being creatures of "devious cunning" is a far cry from being merely compassionate and innocent. Being almost impossible to hunt doesn't jive with being hunted to near complete extinction. Two of these are from more 'neutral' perspectives... but the Book One intro is from Aaravos, and Tales of Xadian can sometimes have a more Xadian slant, versus the pages written by humans who were followers OF Aaravos.

So which is it?

This level of contradiction is present in about everything we do know about unicorns. From each respective piece, we can fit together certain things to get... glimpses at the full picture. Here is what the book one novelization from Aaravos says:

Unicorns were always the most selfless of the Xadian beings. There came a time when, filled with pity, they desperately wanted to help the struggling humans. After all, it was not the humans' choice to have been born without magic. But the First Elves were wary. They warned the unicorns that kindness was not always returned with kindness; it would be a mistake to trust the species. After all, if humans were supposed to be use magic, they would have been born with it. However, the unicorns' compassion ran deep, and they could not convinced. So, despite the elves' warning, the unicorns bestowed the ways of magic onto the humans. They gifted a few wise humans with powerful orbs called primal stones, which contained vast magical energy. Then they taught them to draw runes to attract and focus the stones' power, and to speak the ancient words used by dragons to release that energy as magical spells.

Here, we get a few crucial things:

The First Elves, specifically, were against magic being shared

The unicorns in general, not specific ones, gave humans magic

They gave humans primal stones, but not arcanums

Tales of Xadia gets both more specific and more vague in some ways:

One heart took pity on the plight of humanity. A unicorn, unique among her own rare kind, saw the strength and ingenuity of the human spirit where others saw weakness and beastly ignorance. Her name was Leola. While elves warned that if humans were meant to wield magic they would have been born with it, she gifted the wisest humans with secrets: the language of the dragons and the runes that shaped spells. With the unicorn’s gift, the most determined minds among the humans could finally harness primal magic. It was difficult and dangerous work, and few could bear the grueling path of a rune mage.

Here, we get:

Leola's name and her as the bearer of gifts, ie. specifically giving humans magic

She did not give primal stones, but secrets. This sounds much closer as to how Lujanne describes an arcanum (i.e. "a secret and a spark")

We see in S2 with Callum and S7 in making primal stones that connecting to arcanums and making primal stones is what is gruelling and dangerous

We know, thanks to S6, that Leola was not actually a unicorn, but nicknamed as one. We know that something she did made it look like, at the very least, that she'd given magic to humans, and she was executed for it. We also know that humans had primal magic to a degree before dark magic, created/developed by or alongside Aaravos, took shape, and that sometime during this period but before the Mage Wars, unicorns were hunted to extinction, leading to the exiling of humanity (from the book one novelization):

But the elves were right about one thing: humans were unpredictable. While most were good, some were not. [Invention of dark magic.] Dark mages and their followers began to hunt and poach magical creatures throughout Xadia, for they needed fuel for their spells. Perhaps the most valuable and sought-after prize of all was a unicorn's horn. Eventually, the humans hunted the unicorns until they disappeared completely from Xadia. The elves and dragons were disgusted and outraged by what they saw. They were convinced the annihilation of humans was necessary and inevitable. But at the last moment, a daughter of the elven leader proposed the Merciful Compromise.

So something took the unicorns out, with the blame laid fairly or unfairly on humanity's shoulders. The unicorns as a group were responsible for giving some form of primal magic, seemingly primal stones, to humanity... but Leola also gave humans magic earlier than that.

Season 7 actually complicates this even further, as we learn what's required (so far as Aaravos is willing to share; who knows, there could be alternative ways) to make at least one kind of primal stone:

[To make a Moon primal stone] requires an exceedingly rare ingredient that can only be found at a place where unicorns once roamed, the Garden of Innocents.

So, did the unicorns give humans primal stones... or were their bones/horns required to make primal stones, and the gift giving got conflated from "you're 'giving' me your bones" to "I need/am taking your bones"?

What I'm going to propose, therefore, is this:

All of the above accounts are correct, just not maybe in the way we'd expect.

Here's what I think happened, with perhaps a more extensive meta to follow on the first part:

Leola gave humans a form of Deep Magic (potentially Love). This allowed them to form connections with primal sources. Them nurturing "primal flames" in Ripples, therefore, does not refer to literal Sun magic, but "a secret and a spark, but enough to ignite the world with its magic" being steadily developed.

After her execution, unicorns helped humanity develop primal magic further (potentially somewhat in her honour). They're not squeaky clean, maybe, but were trying to do more of a net good than negative

Humans having primal magic was not doing enough to fuck with the Cosmic Council, and left the playing field too even, so Aaravos stirred up trouble, maybe encouraged the dragons to be upset about primal/deep magic usage.

This caused the first stage of the Elarion debacle ("and caught the dragons' hungry eye") and for the Stars to leave.

After primal magic was exposed as inferior or made an issue, humans turned to dark magic, and this gave Aaravos a way in. He needed to ensure they'd continue to be dependent on dark magic, and this meant disposing of alternatives.

Potentially, Aaravos encouraged people to hunt down unicorns to get rid of humans having more widespread primal magic and/or to make more (Moon) primal stones. If dark magic is corruption/compromise, than primal magic is more 'innocent', after all. Peace and tranquility indeed

Getting rid of the unicorns also had the bonus of getting humanity and elves split up, making Aaravos' manipulations much easier if they weren't in communication with each other, and letting him mess around to encourage the Mage Wars (and a potential invasion of Xadia back in the day).

I want to do more of a meta on Leola giving humans deep magic and why I think it makes sense later, but the unicorns and their secrets / contradictions within the text are a decently big part of it so, uh...

Hope you enjoyed?

CLAUDIA: I feel bad about Terry. You made the Garden sound so beautiful, like it's just some wonderful peaceful place of rest. AARAVOS: It is beautiful. It is a place of rest. Those are not lies. CLAUDIA: But it's not the whole truth, either. Just like the map and those feathers. We didn't tell Terry that unicorns come here to rest... forever. That this place is a graveyard.