#the “level structure” stuff is that there's Operations

[dravidious]

Got the laser, tool switching, and passive vitals damage working, polished the vitals display, and started on some level structure that also got me to finally put in a background. It's looking pretty decent now! It'll look even better once I find decent sprites for the Things

[cozymochi]

Do you have any advice on how to emulate the twist style? I'm genuinely struggling to wrap my head around it.

NOPE! I wish I did! Because! I’m not sure how to describe what I’m doing in the first place. I just kinda… go. (And anyone who has watched any drawing stream of mine can probably attest to that. Assuming anyone watched them actively, I doubt it sometimes.)

I was just formally taught how to draw what I see (this applies to real-life stuff too, it kinda goes hand in hand), and I just have a nasty lifelong habit regarding stuff I like. If it looks a certain way, I wanna draw it the same way or at least as close as I feasibly can get to it. 😩 This is like…. Years worth of somewhat unrelated knowledge + training just being applied to this goofy stuff. I draw wildly different art styles as a habit hobby.

For twst in particular, I’ve mentioned it elsewhere a couple times, but I did spend a good 2-ish years just trying to acclimate myself into training my hand to get used to how it works at all. It really is just… 80% staring at their model sheets or generic renders, and 20% me just… GOING!

I think people can easily tell when I’m not staring at a model sheet vs when I am lol. I do really like Toboso and her staffs artwork, and I’d like to get closer to understanding it, but there are things that she and her staff know how to do that I still don’t know how to accomplish. And those “things” are elements that I’m currently not able to identify in theory or in practice. Let alone articulate in words either if my meandering and vague way of talking about it is any indication lol. (Im not trying to be 1:1, that’s literally impossible for any human to do)

All I do is just look at it. A lot. I just try to draw what I see and go. Though, I’m sure that’s not exactly helpful or even practical “advice”, especially in just typing. Believe it or not I also can only wrap my head around it so much. And even then, I’m still not satisfied nor confident with where I’m at. Mostly due to my own limits. It’s not easy.

….

Then again I also don’t know how to explain or give “advice” on the fly on something that broad just in general. I wish I could be more useful with a more satisfying answer but, I’m not sure how I would. I wanna be helpful but I’m genuinely drawing a blank.

[elumish]

I've been reading Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, and it's gotten me thinking about how worldbuilding is multilayered, and about how a failure of one layer of the worldbuilding can negatively impact the book, even if the other layers of the worldbuilding work.

I don't want to spoil the book for anyone, so I'm going to talk about it more broadly instead. In my day job, one of the things I do is planning/plan development, and we talk about plans broadly as strategic, operational, and tactical. I think, in many ways, worldbuilding functions the same way.

Strategic worldbuilding, as I think of it, is how the world as a whole works. It's that vampires exist and broadly how vampires exist and interact with the world, unrelated to the characters or (sometimes) to the organizations that the characters are part of. It's the ongoing war between Earth and Mars; it's the fact that every left-handed person woke up with magic 35 years ago; it's Victorian-era London except every twelfth day it rains frogs. It's the world, in the broadest sense.

Operational worldbuilding is the organizations--the stuff that people as a whole are doing/have made within the context of that strategic-level world. For The Hunger Games, I'd probably put the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and even the existence/structure of the districts as the strategic level and the construct of the Hunger Games as the operational level: the post-apocalyptic nature of the world and the districts are the overall world that they live in, and the Hunger Games are the construct that were created as a response.

Tactical worldbuilding is, in my mind, character building--and, specifically, how the characters (especially but not exclusively the main characters) exist within the context of the world. In The Hunger Games, Katniss has experience in hunting, foraging, wilderness survival, etc. because of the context of the world that she grew up in (post-apocalyptic, district structure, Hunger Games, etc.). This sort of worldbuilding, to me, isn't about the personality part of the characterization but about the context of the character.

Each one of these layers can fail independently, even if the other ones succeed. When I think of an operational worldbuilding failure, I think of Divergent, where they took a post-apocalyptic world and set up an orgnaizational structure that didn't make any sense, where people are prescribed to like 6 jobs that don't in any way cover what's required to run a modern civilization--or even to run the society that they're shown as running. The society that they present can't exist as written in the world that they're presented as existing in--or if they can, I never could figure out how when reading the book (or watching the film).

So operational worldbuilding failures can happen when the organizations or societies that are presented don't seem like they could function in the context that they are presented in or when they just don't make any sense for what they are trying to accomplish. If the story can't reasonably answer why is this organization built this way or why do they do what they do then I see it as an organizational worldbuilding failure.

For tactical worldbuilding failures, I think of stories where characters have skillsets that conveniently match up with what they need to solve the problems of the plot but don't actually match their background or experience. If Katniss had been from an urban area and never set foot in a forest, it wouldn't have worked to have her as she was.

In this way (as in planning), the tactical level should align with the operational level which should align with the strategic level--you should be able to trace from one to the next and understand how things exist in the context of each other.

For that reason, strategic worldbuilding failures are the vaguest to explain, but I think of them like this: if it either 1) is so internally inconsistent that it starts to fall apart or 2) leaves the reader going this doesn't make any sense at all then it's probably failed.

[omamervt]

I think that a flaw in a lot of the more ambitious horror RPGs I've read is that they all tend to go for the pitfall of Lovecraftian horror, but mechanize it, so it very often seems to end up as "roll to see if you lose sanity."

Some games, like Absurdia, handle this fairly well by not making it about your mental state along the way. It's more like... You can only handle pushing yourself so much before something bends or breaks.

but others, like Call of Cthulhu, seem to kind of operate on a "because I said so" type logic. From the APs I've listened to, at least, the GM seems like they just have the power to call for you to roll to Stay Sane or whatever. But it ends at the same destination, that dealing with The Horrors has a negative mechanical effect on your character, and if they experience too much Horror, you lose your character. the same as if they just die.

While this is interesting to think about from a narrative perspective, I think it ironically discourages players from playing like they're characters in a horror story. Which means everyone is operating on, like, Scream logic, where everyone is playing as The Guy Who Knows He's In A Horror Movie, even if they don't say it out loud.

What I'm MUCH more interested in, although I'm not sure how compatible it is with long-form play, is a game whose whole reward structure is built around Getting Your Player Characters To Do Stuff That Gets People Killed In Horror Movies.

Split the party! Go have sex in the guest bedroom while people are dying downstairs! Give in to the monster's threats/demands! Hide the weird not-quite-dog thing that followed you home under your bed for the night! Yeah, the killer will DEFINITELY fall for that trap! Wander off alone without telling anyone where you're going! It's FINE! If you survive, it's how you LEVEL UP!

[what-even-is-thiss]

Speaking of politics, would you have any advice on becoming more politically aware? I've been trying to read the newspapers more and watching news and looking up stuff I'm not familiar with. Is that a good start? There's just so much I don't know. It feels like jumping in season 15 of Grey's anatomy without watching any previous seasons

That’s a great start! But if you want to be fully caught up on the previous seasons the first step is to make sure you understand whats going on right now is to understand the basics.

Make sure you understand fully the structure of all levels of government that have authority over you. How your national government works, how your state or provincial government works, how your local governments work.

Next, try to understand major political parties. What they say they believe in, what their opponents say they believe in, roughly what their history looks like and how they’ve changed over time.

The next step is to understand major media sources. Almost every media source has a place they generally fall on the political spectrum. Almost every media source also has someone funding them. Knowing how your sources are funded and where they stand politically will tell you what their biases are and help you more easily compare information.

Once you have an intuitive understanding of these basics then it becomes a lot easier to research stuff you don’t understand and more fully understand what proposed policies will mean if they’re implemented.

It’s also a good idea to roughly understand the governmental structures of countries that your country is allied with or your major trade partners with because they’ll often come up in the news. It’s not necessary to understand them as in depth as your own country but it’s good to have at least a rough idea of how things operate. Because international relations are also a part of local politics.

If you’re in the US, AP News is a good relatively non partisan news source if you only have the time to check one thing. A lot of local newspapers buy articles from AP News which themselves can skew left or right so they’re generally a trusted source by people on all different points of the political spectrum. But like anyone else they’re not totally free from bias so if you’re confused about something it’s always good to compare sources.

You don’t need to understand every single detail about everything. Having a rough idea of what’s going on in most aspects is good enough that you know where to look more in depth into things when they confuse you.

It’s great that you’re trying to become more politically aware! I encourage that! Remember to not rely on social media for your news.

[arc-misadventures]

So for vtuber AU, several of the girls and/or boys from the academy have already made their debut in your entries. So I thought what if "Errantry" reacted to the recent re-debut of one of the members of the cabal, which is a short anime

the jepella rebelion

The VTuber: Maiden of the Cabal

Errant: Well, well, well. Look who’s back.

Errant smiled at the camera as he finished the video. He hadn’t expected an old acquaintance from his past to reemerge, it was certainly unexpected, but a welcome surprise nonetheless.

~~~Stream Chat~~~

GoodDoggo: Who is she?

FallenDesire: You know her?

Lucious: She’s pretty.

QueensGuard: Sounds like you know her.

~~~~~~

Errant: That everyone is, FallenEmbers. No wait, Fall4Me, she goes by that now, that’s right. I knew her back when I used to play, The World of Remnant: Hunter’s and Monsters. It was this massive mmorpg that I played back in the day, it’s where I got the name, and design for my, VTuber avatar, The ErrantryPaladin. Fall4Me was, FallenEmbers back then. Hence my confusion.

Errant: It’s nice to see her coming back to the VTubing scene. I heard she was on before, but something happened. Oh, well I’m just happy she’s back, and hope she does well.

~~~Stream Chat~~~

GrimmKitty: So you do know her.

HellJumper1337: Were you friends?

~~~~~~

Errant’s body fell back in his chair as a deep breath of air escaped trough his nose. He looked heavenlyward as he wistfully remembered the old days.

Errant: I did know her, we were friends… of sorts. I met her back when the, World of Remnant: Hunters, and Monsters mmorpg was at its peak. I was still my lonely, Huntsman self while she was a, Huntress in the service of the, Cabal, the in game version. I never knew this when we first met, we just stumbled across one another, and did some missions together. Just because I played alone doesn’t mean I didn’t occasionally team up with other players. Little did I know she was trying to recruit me into the, Cabal.

Errant: Now, you have to understand something about how the, Acadimies, and the Cabal’s organizational structures work before I continue. You see to join a, Academy you as a player had to reach a minimum level of level ten to join an academy. This was to ensure that all new members were relatively skilled, no greenhorns, and the like. Basically, they wanted the new players to know the basic understanding of the game.

Errant: So once you joined a, Academy your characters bio gets the tag of: ‘Student of academy ‘X.’ And, once you reached level fifty you graduate from the academy, and become: ‘Hunter of ‘X’ academy.’ This was basic stuff to tell where people were from. You get different stats bonuses, and equipment based upon which academy you graduated from, not to mention players with certain individual characteristics tended to gravitate towards certain guilds. Giving each their own unique flavour to them all. The Cabal however, didn’t operate like that.

Errant: The Cabal recruited its members. Whether they be from, Atlas, or Shade Academy, it didn’t matter, their members would find you, scout you, and if you passed their tests they would offer up an invitation for you to join. While a graduated Hunter from, Mistral Academy would be said in their character profile, It wouldn’t say you were a member of the, Cabal. So its members could be anyone. This added a rather unique feature to the games overall gameplay. But, as I said; to join the, Cabal you had to display certain characteristics that the, Cabal would find desirable, and then they would invite you to join them. That’s how they did it to me, when FallenEmbers tried to recruit me.

~~~Stream Chat~~~

QuitenDown: Sounds like the beginning of a love story.

HellJunper1337: Yeah, a tragic one.

~~~~~~

Errant: So, whilst on a mission to find some rare metals to upgrade my gear I stumbled upon, Ember. Ahh, I liked to call her that, because it was quicker to say, and I’m lazy.

Errant: So, it turned out she was also looking for the same minerals that I was. And, since the area we were in is an a royal bitch to fight in we decided to team up, and we made a deal: She gets the first ore we find, then I get the next. Simple as that. We made off with a lot of ore that day… Anyway, after that we parted ways, but stayed in contact, we would occasionally join up on missions together, and generally had a blast. And, then she told me the truth, she was a member of the, Cabal, and wanted me to join.

Errant: Honestly I always had my suspicions about her. She always felt distant, and overly cautious around people. Anyway, I… I don’t remember what I said, but I remember arriving at the, Cabal’s headquarters in the, Grimm Lands, where she gave me a tour of the place. I learned how their operatives operated… ha… That sounds weird doesn’t it? ‘Operatives operated.’ Sounds like improper english, but no, it’s correct.

Errant: Uhhh… where was I…? Oh yeah! So, I learned the ins, and outs of how their operations worked, met some of their members… And, then I betrayed them by luring a, Titan Class Grimm into their base…

And, with those few words his chat exploded into a shower of startled, confused, and dare say, aroused comments.

~~~Stream Chat~~~

UWU_Knight: You did what?!

Lucious: Titan Class?!

RighteousPotato: Why would you do that?!

LRDirection: You betrayed them?

KinSlayer: Betraying an evil organization is one thing, but YOU betraying anyone is another thing entirely!

HellJunper1337: Evil, Errant confirmed!

RunnerDowner: Why?!

LouderDesires: Cue the sexy art!

PokéGirl69: Sexy evil smile~!

LitteDragon: You betrayed someone?

~~~~~~

Errant looked at the last comments before he rolled his eyes, and continued on with his tale.

Errant: Now, before I go on about how I did it, first you must learn why I did it. So, the Cabal was mostly jokesters; nothing overly evil, evil, just general bullies who raided supply lines, and caused the occasional, Grimm attacks on an innocent village. It annoyed people, but they added spice to the game. However, that commonly held opinion changed when the, Apprentice Massacre happened…

Errant: For context, we called players who were below level ten apprentices; They’re not at a high enough level to become academy students since they’re still in training so we called them apprentices. So, the Apprentice Massacre was an infamous incident where a bunch of, Cabal members got together, and started hunting down, and killing apprentices for the hell of it. Now this may not sound that bad, but there was a game mechanic where every time you die you’d lose one level. It happens every ten levels; say you’re level twenty seven; and you die eight times, you won’t go down to level nineteen, you’ll stay at level twenty. So, need I explain what happened, when a bunch of, Cabal members started killing a whole lot of apprentices?

~~~Stream Chat~~~

RunnerDowner: No way?

SumPenny: They dropped them to level one?!

KinSlayer: That’s mean!

RighteousPotato: What did they do spawn-camp them?

LunarFlower: I heard about this!

HeadHunter: I was there when it happened, it was brutal.

~~~~~~

Errant: Yeah, over a dozen, Cabal members who ranged from level thirty to forty started basically spawn camping, and killing apprentices in the starting area. There was about… seventy apprentices there, and they were completely outclassed by even the weakest members. So it was a slaughter, they tried to put up a fight, but what could they do?

Errant: However, fortunately for the apprentices, and unfortunately for the, Cabal members, I was there.

He smiled a wicked smile as he remembered that day, and more importantly what he did that day. It was the day that legends were born, and he was the start of them all.

Errant: I was in the area walking to the next area to do some quests I picked up, when I came across the, Massacre. I made a quick message to the Academies, and several, Hunter’s I was acquitted with for back up, and after that I went on a bloody slaughter. The Cabal members didn’t know what hit them! I mean, I was a solo player in my seventies, and it didn’t matter how many of them there were, I had soloed plenty of, Grimm hordes before so this was a cake walk for me.

~~~Stream Chat~~~

QuitenDown: I bet you looked really cool when you did that

Dragondeeznutz: Bet he looked hot too

VulpineRanger: He’s always hot.

GrimmKitty: But he can be hotter!

HolyNevil: True.

GermanLeopard: Good point

~~~~~~

Errant: I looked cool, least that’s what people said I looked like, chat. Back to the story, it was much easier when other players came in, and started protecting the apprentices with me. But, to make a long story short we managed to beat them off, and save the apprentices. A whole lot of things changed in the community after that happened.

Errant: Mostly codes of conduct, recently Graduated Hunter’s now had to mentor, and protect apprentices until they become students. A right of passage if you will. And, people’s general hatred towards the, Cabal, and what they did. People went inquisition on their asses. Specifically the, Atlas Academy, they really went after them.

Errant: …

Errant: Which now that I think about it actually makes sense since it’s, Atlas. If you know the lore, you’d understand.

~~~Stream Chat~~~

HellJumper1337: What did they do?

RangerFang: We went ham on them

BunnyDownUnder: Witch hunt baby!

LunaFlower: They hold grudges.

WinterBitch: Yeah, they’re a spiteful bunch.

~~~~~~

Errant: Yeah, they’re a spiteful bunch. I’m not spiteful, no I’m not spiteful at all chat.

Errant: I am however… very, very… Vindictive~! Ah~hahaha~!

Errant gave off a roguish smile that as he chuckled as he remembered all the incidents he scored his revenge against those that wronged him. His dark chuckle, and devilish smile brought an explosion of heart emojis throughout his chat feed.

Errant: Ahhhh… Good times.

Errant: Anyway, so I had a grudge against the, Cabal because I thought that what they did was cruel. People may tease, or prank apprentices , but what they did pushed the line. So, when FallenEmbers showed me to the, Cabal base I knew what I wanted to do. You see, the Cabal headquarters was located in the, Grimm Lands. And, there is a whole mess of, Grimm there: From Beowulf, Apathy, Beringals, Chimera Grimm. Delta to Alpha Class. And lastly, Titan Class.

Errant: Now, you may be asking: How does the, Cabal operate in the Grimm lands without getting attacked? Simple: They get covered in a Grimm repellent that prevents, Grimm from attacking you. The Grimm will attack you if you don’t attack them. So… I went over to one the nesting, Titan Grimm’s, and I… woke it up.

Errant: Titan Class Grimm tend to… incubate until they reach a certain… No, no that doesn’t really make sense… How do I explain this…?

~~~Stream Chat~~~

Corgimorgi: Waiting for the butterfly to hatch from its cocoon?

~~~~~~

Errant: Yeah, that’s works, thanks, Corgimorgi. It slowly grows in its cocoon until it hatches, and marches off to one of the kingdoms, and unleashes all hell upon them. If rumours arise that one of these were sighted, and, all available, Hunter’s is tasked to go out, and confirm if there is one. Everyone is terrified of these things, the first one that was ever encountered levelled, Shade Academy. It took them months irl to rebuild the academy, and it took them a year to reclaim all the land, Vacuo lost to a surge of, Grimm attacks.

Errant: At the time of the attack, Vacuo had a strength over nearly seven hundred members, and they barely, barely manage to defeat it. They had to call for help from other academies to kill the damn thing! So… How do you think the, Cabal managed to deal with a, Titan Class Grimm with barely two hundred members?

~~~Stream Chat~~~

GoodDoggo: A bloody slaughter.

Gundam#UWU: They most likely got curb stomped!

HellJumper1337: I almost feel sorry for them.

KinSlayer: Did you stay to fight it?

~~~~~~

Errant: Nope! I got the hell out of there after it started attacking their headquarters. I let them burn! It took them days, like a week to kill it too. I know because I poked the bear, and I got Exp from when it died! Went up three levels because of that. I basically crippled the, Cabal for months after this! They couldn’t do a damn thing to anyone, they were so busy trying to rebuild they couldn’t be bothered with messing with anyone else.

~~~Stream Chat~~~

Likelyaghost: So you destroyed the, Cabal all on your own?

~~~~~~

Errant: No… I crippled the, Cabal all on my own. The Scorpion Incident… That, that killed the, Cabal…

Errant went quiet as he remembered a rather uncomfortable event that had transpired years ago. He took a deep sigh to calm his nerves before he continued to tell his tale of years gone bye.

Errant: So that’s how I met, Fall4Me. You know… I never told anyone that I was the reason the, Titan Grimm attacked the, Cabal. Fall4Me never contacted me again after the attack… I wonder why; Did she know I was the cause of the attack? Maybe that’s why she never contacted me… Probably called me a traitor for betraying her trust, and our friendship…

He stared off into the distance as he pondered these questions in his mind. He sighed another deep sigh before he shook his head, and readdressed his stream.

Errant: It matters not… What’s done is done. For that was then, this is now. So chat, to welcome back an old… acquaintance. We’re gonna raid her! Send her my well wishes, and welcome her into the fold chat!

Errant pressed the button, and sent his chat onward towards, Fall4Me’s stream with a smile on his face, and a roguish smile on his face. Thinking of all the good times they had together, and he couldn’t help but wonder, where did is long lost friend disappear to? But, most important of all:

Why is her model wearing an eyepatch?

~~~~~~

Fall4Me’s Stream

~~~~~~

Fall4Me: Hello everyone, I am Fall4Me, and welcome to my stream.

Fall4Me: I am a, Huntress in the service of the, Grimm Cabal. And, I hope you enjoy watching me as we plunge the, World of Remnant into absolute chaos~!

Fall4Me: Here we will have discussions about very things: Music, video games, and various other things that… Hmm? What the?

The howl of a Beowulf echoed throughout the stream to signal a notification. One that she had not expected on her debut stream.

Fall4Me: I’m being raided? By who…?

~~~Stream Chat~~~

HellJumper1337: Hi, Ember!

GrimmKitty: She’s pretty

BunnyDownUnder: Love the eye

FallenDersires: Errant sends his regards!

Dragondeeznutz: Whoo raiding!

~~~~~~

Fall4Me: Ember? Wait, how do you know that na… Wait… Errant? ErranrtyPaladin! H-He sent you?

~~~Stream Chat~~~

HellJumper1337: Yeah, he told us all about you

Corgimorgi: It was a cool story

SummerDaysNightmare: Were you friends, he didn’t sound certain about it?

~~~~~~

Fall4Me: We are… were friends of sorts. But, tell me chat, what did he say about me?

There was an eagerness, and an honest desire to know about how her long lost friend felt about her, and she hoped her new found audience could answer her questions.

~~~Stream Chat~~~

DungeonSiver18: Why listen to us when you can watch him talk about you?

QueensGuard: Yeah, watch his vod!

~~~~~~

Fall4Me: Hmmm~? Now doesn’t that sound like a novel idea~! Alright chat, let us see what our beloved, ErrantryPaladin thinks of us~!

~~~

Fall4Me: Ahh, I remember that day, I was looking for, Gundrite. It’s a rare metal used for upgrading a, Hunters gear. I was looking for the ore to upgrade my weapons; I had a pair of twin swords that I could stick together to use as a bow. I wanted to increase my damage output, and then I stumbled across, Errant doing the same thing. Just as we found our first piece of, Gundrite.

Fall4Me: I thought we were about to have a fight over who got the ore. But, he said I found it first, and it was mine to take. It was… surprising really. I often tend to get into fights against players while looking for rare resources. It surprised me more so that he recommended that we team up to gather more resources together. And, it worked very well. I got more then enough ore. It’s not a surprise really, a level thirty, Huntress, and a level forty, Huntsmen such as ourselves is a very powerful duo to face against.

~~~

Errant: ‘And, then I betrayed them by luring a, Titan Class Grimm into their base…’

Fall4Me: HE WHAT?! He sent that damn, Grimm after us?!

Her eye ignited in flames as she looked on his smiling face as he unapologetically admitted his crime.

Fall4Me: It took the entire, Cabal nearly two weeks to kill the damned thing!

Fall4Me: It levelled our training grounds, obliterated the landing pads, decimated the hospital, and spawn camped the entire, Cabal for weeks! Seriously it’s aoe attacks were so strong that a player would die, then respawn, and then be killed by its next aoe attack! There wasn’t a single one of us whose level wasn’t reduced to a tenth!

Fall4Me: Then we all got branded as, Titan slayers, and everyone knew that a Titan awoke in the, Grimm lands meaning we were easily marked out as cabal members because of that! We couldn’t go into the field because of that!

Fall4Me: We were crippled for months, and we never made it back to half of our original strength. It was hell!

Fall4Me: But, why?! Why would my sweet, noble, Wolf do this to us? Why…?

~~~Stream Chat~~~

BunnyDownUnder: She said ‘my wolf’

FallenDesire: Another one?

LRDirection: But why is he a wolf?

Lixxen: Guy knows what the ladies like

QueensBeedom: It’s his roguish charm

~~~~~~

Fall4Me: Lets continue the video, perhaps he’ll explain why he did this…

~~~

Fall4Me: Oh…

Fall4Me: The Apprentice Massacre. That most certainly explains things…

~~~Stream Chat~~~

Gundam#UWU: Were you a part of it?

Dippernipper: We know you’re evil, but are you that evil?

Beowulf#38k: She’s evil, but will she stay hot evil?

~~~~~~

She laughed a whimsical laugh as she read her chat feed. Relishing in delight at their innocence.

Fall4Me: Oh chat, I am always hot; More often than not its metaphorically, but often at times its quite… Literal~!

Fall4Me gave the camera a sultry gaze before holding up her hand as she flexed her fingers as it was enveloped in flames. She held a blazing fist before setting it out, and resuming with his vod.

Fall4Me: But, no I wasn’t involved in the, Apprentice Massacre. Yes I was a member of the, Cabal, but I was off doing other things irl when it happened. Even then I wouldn’t have partaken in such an action. Because the headache they caused us because of that was an ungodly amount of work to fix.

Fall4Me: Well, we mostly went into hiding, and laid low for a while. I eventually went again to see if I could recruit, Errant to our side. He was a loner, and outcast I thought he would easily join the group. I thought he was genuinely interested in joining us. But, he appears more interested in how to destroy us. And, good gods did he ever manage to do so…

~~~

Errant: ‘So that’s how I met, Fall4Me. You know… I never told anyone that I was the reason the, Titan Grimm attacked the, Cabal. Fall4Me never contacted me again after the attack… I wonder why…’

She looked away nervously for a moment before readdressing her chat as she saw them flood her chat with the similar question of why she talk to her precious wolf after the attack.

And, why did she call him, ‘Her Wolf?’

Fall4Me: Oh… I was just too busy rebuilding the, Cabal to contact, Errant. Besides, I thought he would be upset if I tried to wrangle him into helping fix the mess the, Titan Class Grimm caused. Or, asking him to fix his mess as it were.

Fall4Me: Then the whole, ‘Scorpion Incident’ happened, and the, Cabal was done for. There was no chance of rebuilding the guild since members left; they all left, right, left, and centre. To the point it was only a, Cabal of one. No big battle, no final stand, it just slowly burned out, and poof! It was gone.

Fall4Me: I need to talk to, Errant again, explain some things, ask him how things are going. Reconnect with my friend for old times sake. Would you like to see that, chat?

~~~Stream Chat~~~

GrimmKitty: Yeah! That sounds cool!

HellJumper1337: Friends reunite!

BunnyDownUnder: Lets see where she stands

Beowulf#38k: Idk these two seem like a good pair

Lixxen: Old war stories sounds fun.

Helsreach: I bet he’d like to talk to you too.

RunnerDowner: Do eeet!

~~~~~~

Fall4Me: Alright then chat. Let’s go see what my noble, Wolf is there~!

///

Ahhh… This took days to finish… I just couldn’t finish it. But, it’s done!

I like doing these lore posts, it’s fun to let the mind make stories like these.

Do you guys enjoy these kind of posts, or are they just a bore to you? That’s just something I’ve been curious about.

Till later then.

[a-couple-of-notes]

Many people have already talked about the things that feel off-kilter in this episode--the lack of moons on the door, the aspect ratio not changing, the real quick turnaround from Jen--and I tend to agree. I think there's a good chance this ends up not being what it seems (and Alice hopefully comes back, I love her).

BUT I'm going to operate under the assumption that this was real until proven otherwise. In which case, this was by far the weakest-paced episode, on a macro- and micro-level, but I can sorta see where they're going with it.

Alice tied up her main story last week. I still think they could have found a good narrative past that--what's her identity beyond her mother? She could have leaned into the parallels with Teen, coming into her witchhood. However, in a 9-episode series, I can understand wanting to clear space coming over the halfway mark. So they kill her. Okay, that's a way to do it.

We saw in episode 4 that the coven is capable of true camaraderie and grace toward each other; I can understand the structural instinct to immediately juxtapose that against the selfishness and tension they also carry. Jen's turn was a bit fast, but not totally out of the realm for her character. I don't think she was ever advocating for the coven to kill Agatha (that was Rio), but she has always pointed them toward the most logical, most expeditious solution, with a healthy dose of self-preservation to boot. She shoves everyone out of the way to go down the oven escape route in Ep. 3, she sticks inside the protection circle in Ep. 4, she's always pointing out Agatha and Rio's weird shit. I buy at least the concept that her logical nature, survival instincts, and long-established disdain for Agatha would combine into some version of the attitude we see in Ep. 5.

Billy/Teen could go either way. They've certainly laid the groundwork for the reveal of his identity. His actions are...questionable, but again not out of the realm of possibility for his characterization. Despite what Agatha (seems to?) imply about his manipulations, the episode shows he lashes out after Agatha kills Alice. Not only that, but all the other witches (not just Agatha) move on like nothing happened. Of course he would be angry with all of them! The outburst is emotional, not calculated. I think this was one of the smarter choices in the episode; we've seen that relationship grow in small but consistent ways since Ep. 3. And it lends Alice's death a lot more narrative weight to have a character--y'know, actually care about and change because of it. Sorry, Sharon. (Sidenote: Personally, I'm questioning the song choice at the end credits--like, I get it, big reveal, Wanda Maximoff crown, but the tone and lyrics undermine how much Teen's actions are driven by his friendship with Alice/grief over her death. I don't think sowing doubt over whether he was the villain all along is worth compromising that.)

This is a wild swing of an episode that I don't quite know lands for me, but it's also the halfway point of the show. Maybe none of this is real and all the off-kilter stuff is setting up for something smarter. But if it is real--If they wanted to raise the stakes and shift the tone--this would be the time to do it. (Although I mourn the version of this story where they continued with fun Halloween hijinks, reluctant found family, and toxic gay cosmic entity situationships.) There is a very good chance that the back half of the show justifies and contextualizes the choices in Ep. 5. But without having seen that yet, it's just whiplash.

[thydungeongal]

Brief list of games that blasted my mind with gleeblor:

Rolemaster. It was the first RPG I ever played so of course I had no preconceptions about RPGs, so it was all gleeblor to me.

Vampire: the Masquerade. Even though these days I recognize VtM for the ultimately structurally trad game that it is, at the time it was full of gleeblor like its codification of character psychology and morality.

Best Friends. You mean to tell me a game doesn't require dice?! And it can be just about some teen girls doing teen girl stuff instead of them going on an adventure!?

Monsterhearts. Much the same as above, but also the queer angle and genre emulation was extremely gleeblor. Also, the fact that it encouraged players to go at each other after so many co-operative games.

Apocalypse World. These gleeblors are working on multiple different levels! A Hardholder and a Battlebabe are operating on fundamentally different levels of gleeblor!!!

[hi-sierra]

Biologics, chapter 0.5

Hello, hello! I finally have added a significant amount to my story, Biologics, resulting in a total of ~4400 words. Not a whole ton, I know, but unfortunately life gets to ya. It isn't quite where I want it to be to consider a proper chapter one, but I feel like there's enough written for me to post. General warning that this is intended to heavily lean into the theme of "eroticism of the machine", so if that doesn't appeal to you, you've been warned. It does, however, have many general sci fi worldbuilding elements, so I hope it has a somewhat broad appeal!

So yes, if you already read the first snippet, that's going to be mostly a one to one repeat with some grammatical adjustments. Feel free to scroll down until you get to the new stuff. Flow-wise, there just wasn't a good place to break between the two sections.

Look at me rambling. And I wonder why I can't get any of this stuff done. Anyways, here it is!

Biologics

Pappy always said that manufacturing biological transportation was nothing knew. I mean, shit, humanity's been breeding horses for how long? To him, not much was novel about what was going on in the shipyards way out by Neptune when I was a kid.

But Pappy didn't know a lot of things. And he certainly didn't meet Roseanna.

The Federation Navy had experimented with Biologics for decades. The idea was to create self regenerating ships- organic matter that interfaced with the hull, moving new titanium plates and patches into place down to microscopic precision. If you had a living, growing mass interfacing with steel, a ship didn't have to head all the way back to the yards to patch up after every dogfight.

The first generation... worked. With a full time crew, that is. Full time people on deck jabbin the rigid, chitonous matrix full of growth hormones to get them to set just right. Full time onboard bioengineers to compute what signaling cocktail ya need to hit 'em with to get it to grow back right. Skilled onboard technicians to shave back the chitin when it tried to overgrow the titanium, and slap some new cells in to seed the process in heavily damaged areas. Less input material, less time in the yards, but far more manpower. Great for a Federation cruiser on deep space peacekeeping missions. Far too complex for small craft. Right?

Until some bastard put brains in 'em.

Well. A lotta suits would say that they weren't brains. They were a diffuse network of sensory neurons and ganglia, living inside the body of the ship, integrating signals from a skin of alloyed metal and fibrous protein, calculating power draw too and from various components, integrated with the mechanical and electrical components of the ship to precisely manage the "wound healing" process of the vessel. And of course, it just so happened that one of those ganglia was larger and more complex than the rest of them, and it just so happened that the computer interfaces with this ganglia exhibit complex, thinking behaviors on the level of human cognition, and it just so happens that most pilots and navigators reported them developing their own personalities.....

But of course, the Navy didn't want anyone to have some kind of pesky empathy in the way of their operations. And they certainly didn't want anyone side eyeing the rate at which they disposed of the damn things, just to let them suffer and rot. So as far as the official record was concerned, they weren't brains. But I knew different.

Like most people in the belt, I found Rosie on an... unsponsored field trip to the Neptune scrap yards. She wasn't a ship then. She wasn't much of anything. Not much more than a vat with the central ganglia and just barely enough of the stem cells needed to regrow a network. But I took her all the same. Brains were valuable. Few pilots outside the Navy had them back then. Nowadays, a black market for "brain seeds", a cocktail of neuronal stem cells and enough structural stem cells to grow your own into the chassis of your ship, was thriving. The Navy was pumpin' em out, and leaving them to die. It was cruel. Sometimes, being scavenged and resold was a kinder fate. But more often, some nasty piece of work would pick them up eventually, and treat them like just another goddamn ship. They may be vehicles, but they're a livin' being too.

I digress. I'd never do that to Roseanna. I make sure she gets proper care. And for a good, proper, working ship? That includes some good, proper work.

The asteroid we were docked in was one of my usuals- good bars, nice temp quarters, nice views of the rock's orbiting twin, and a spacious hanger for Rosie to rest in. The chassis I had imprinted Roseanna to was a 40-meter light skipper, with some adjustments for handling deep space trips, as well as some... personal touches. It was pretty much the smallest thing you could actually use to live in and work for long periods of time, but it got the job done. The angular design made the entire ship look like a wedge, or the blade of a bulky dagger. It didn't hurt that each bottom edge was fortified with a sharpened titanium blade, turning the entire sides of the ship into axe-like rams.

Those would probably come in handy today.

I approached Roseanna on the catwalk above her, marveling her alloyed scales. I could almost see her shudder in anticipation as my footsteps vibrated through the air above her. I took the steps down, and hit the trigger to open her top hatch.

When the news got out of the Navy scuffling with a rebelling mining station, an electric air raced across the station. Some went about their day as normal. Some resigned themselves to picking at the leftovers after the dust had settled. And some, like me, knew that they could get the finest pickings.

I slipped into the pilot's seat like it was an old boot.

"Welcome, Captain Victoria."

Rosie could talk, but more often than not, she chose not to. But she understood me just fine. Most of our communication took place using her three prerecorded lines- her welcome statement, affirmative, and negative- as well as a tiny screen showing a small, emoticon face. Many pilots chose to give their ships an elaborate render, but Rosie preferred it this way. It was the first face I gave her, from somewhere out of the scrap heaps, and she refused any offer I made to upgrade. Hell, she even had a hi-res screen for external cameras and comms, but she refused to interface directly with it. Secretly, I was overjoyed. To me, the little pixelated screen was her face. That was her voice. And it was beautiful to see her true self through them.

I brushed my hands across her paneling. Across the switches, the hydraulic controls for the plasma fuel, the steering, the boosts, the comms channels. The thing with Biologics was that you were still the pilot. For whatever reason, they hadn't quite gotten to the point where the brains could take over their own piloting. My personal opinion was just that their personalities lacked the ambition to. Cuz they certainly could take over some ships functions directly, and had the skill to do complex mechanical and electrical tasks. The Navy never let 'em drive, though, and most pilots didn't even know they could give them the ability to control any of the ships functions directly. But with a little help, a little bit of solid engineering, and a pilot that knew their ship... well, you could do a lot. And me and Rosie? We knew each other well. Over the years, I'd added some nice things for her, and she loved using them to help me out.

As my fingers touched the brushed aluminum controls, rimmed with chitinous layers affixing them to the ship, I could feel the walls around me holding their invisible breath. "Do you know what we're doing today, Rosie?"

Her tiny panel flickered on.

[...?]

"We got a scrap run."

[ ^_^]

[ :) ]

[ ^_^ ]

Her panel flicked between various expressions of excitement. My finger quivered on the main power, holding for a moment before flicking it on. The primary electronics of the ship hummed to life, and the parts Rosie controlled pulsed with it. My hands moved across the main functional panels- main hydraulic plasma valve, exhaust ports open, and finally, flicking the switch the start the plasma burner.

My hands gripped the steering. The hanger's airlock doors opened in front of me. My neck length hair started to float as the station's gravity shut off. I hit the switch to unlatch from the supports above. For a moment, we hang there. The dull crackle of the idling plasma burner is the only sound that resonates through Rosie's hull.

Go time. I punch the boost.

The station shakes. Rosie was never a subtle one.

The mechanics are deafened.

The crowd of spectators are deafened.

The other pilots in the hanger are deafened.

But me? The vibrations of Rosie's hull shuddering under me was the sweetest symphony my ears ever had the pleasure of hearing. As we shot out of that hanger, I found myself involuntarily humming a high note, harmonizing with the sweet rumble of my baby's acceleration as we shoot out into the inky, black expanse of space. The twin asteroids shot by us as we disappeared, leaving only the faint blue plasma trail from our engines.

My hand is firm on the boost, weathered hands tightly gripping the bar of the accelerator. I remember installing this thing in her- it was an aftermarket adjustment, not included in the usual light skipper chassis. Gently stripping away the back of her chassis, caressing her insides as I rooted the paneling, firmly attaching the tanks and burners on her insides... these hands had taken great pleasure in that. Bested only, of course, by the first time I had felt the thing roar to life.

And what a feeling it was. Rosie's entire chassis, biological and mechanical, shuddering under my grasp. The grip of my calloused hands on the boost controls, tight and sweaty around the ridged grip of the horizontal bar. The noises she made, as if to shout in glee and wild abandon at being unchained and let loose into the eternal field of space, as she was made to do. The gentle touch of her skin on my back, my body pressed in contact with the small fraction of hers that was my seat. I glanced down at her face panel.

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

[ :| ]

[ :D ]

My humming gave way to a chuckle, and then a wholehearted, exhilarated laugh. Someone was enjoying herself. The flickering faces on her panel reminded me of the happily panting station dogs back on Mars.

But as much as I would like this to just be a joyride, I had promised Rosie a scrap run. And the pickings were looking good. I glanced down at the nav. I was intentionally headed at a slightly indirect angle- Rosie's boost was her main attractive feature (both as a ship, and as a working partner), and the extra leeway I had in travel time let me strategize a bit more. I doubted we would be the first people there, but I figured we could get in before the main rush. The only trouble was darting in and grabbing something right from under the noses of the first locusts. The scrap field in question included a disabled heavy mining freighter, a goliath of the ship larger than some of the asteroids it made supply runs between. I assumed that most other scavengers would be approaching directly from our station, and the other stations in its proximity. With Rosie's boost, we could overshoot, hook around, and put the freighter in between us and the guns of the more violent craft. Rosie has no long range weapons of any kind- not only would they slow down her miraculous speed, but she didn't like them. I tried installing a small plasma cannon once, and she expressed immense distaste. Maybe they were too brutish for her, or maybe she didn't like the way they felt inside her, burdening her with pressure from the inside that didn't befit the delicate touches I usually graced her with. Rosie loved speed, precision, elegance, and stealth above all else. It's just the kind of ship she was.

That's not to say she was a pacifist, or defenseless. Quite the contrary. She just prefers a more... personal touch.

The navicom beeped at me. We'd reached the point where we needed to make that hook. My bare feet gently swept across the titanium flooring to the steering pedals. My right hand delicately gripped the steering joystick, while my left eased its grip on the boost accelerator.

"Ready for this, darling?"

[ >:) ]

I slammed the steering to the left, and Rosie gleefully complied. The wide bank of the turn as we rotated and soared through the sea of stars twisted my body in its inertia, compressing me further into her. As the angle straightened out to the proper heading, I punched the boost again, and Rosie roared forward.

Slowly, our target came into sight. Damn. This thing had taken some serious damage. Mining freighters typically weren't heavily armored- their only job was to get material from point A to B- but this one had clearly been through some serious modifications. Modifications that now lay in ruin. Titanium plating was scattered in a field around the core of the freighter. I couldn't quite tell what was stuff left behind by the battle, and what was the result of shoddy craftmanship- but it didn't matter. What did matter was that the entire thing had been split almost in half, and the scattered cargo that was leaking out. Cargo that most likely included half the weapon supplies of this little rebel faction. Would fetch a pretty penny, to the right buyer. And hell, if it was just gonna sit here unclaimed...

Ah shit. It wasn't gonna sit here unclaimed. Despite my best efforts, it looks like we weren't the first ones here. A larger scavenger gang had already arrived, and it looks like it was one of the ones I knew- Augustus and his lot. Most likely, they'd be after the weapons intact, one more thing to use to shakedown the scattered independent stations I always flitted between. He would not be happy to see me n Rosie here. What he called his "fleet" was a single, mid-sized carrier ship, about half the size of the freighter we were looting, and the dozen or so scout fighters and strip mining crafts he had looted from the Navy and various corps, and one Biologic that he called his. I respect that part, to be honest. What I don't respect is him immediately turning around and using that charge every goddamn station his ever-increasing "protection fees". Not to mention my personal disdain for the way he treated his ship. Didn't even give her a damn name. I digress. But any chance to loot something from under that slimebag's nose was a win in my book. I knew he wasn't gonna make it easy, though.

Welp. That's what our positioning was for. The side facing us was the main starboard face, and like the rest of the ship, it was peppered in small holes and gashes. Seems like the main damage had happened from the other side, and a few cables and scaffolds on the starboard just barely kept the two rear cargo compartments clinging to the front.

"Alright Rosie, time to creep it in slow. Be quiet, now, don't want them picking up a plasma surge"

[ :| ]

Ha. That was her "my lips are sealed" face. She's having fun with this already.

I cut the booster, coasting closer and closer to the bust open vessel. I eased the reverse thrusters ever so slightly, my fingers gently stroking the dual brake levers, lightly teasing at them to wait until we were as close as I thought we could be without attracted attention.......... before slamming both sides back towards me. For just one, crucial moment.

The goal here was to approximately match the speed and trajectory of a floating piece of titanium plating. Rosie's frontal blades were essentially that, anyways, so all they would see is a somewhat more angular piece of rubble. Hopefully they hadn't seen that same piece of rubble screaming out of travel speed, but I was cautious enough with my distances that I didn't think that was a problem. And they hadn't seen me yet. Once we were close enough to the freighter itself, we were blocked from their raw sightline, and Rosie was running quiet enough to not tip off any of their energy sensors.

But there was still no guarantee. Rosie, however, had no shortage of tricks. Something that she and I had developed together was a nice little bit of snooping. Well cared for and well trained, a Biologic brain had the problem solving of a human, and the computational power of a machine. But them together, and you've got a perfect decoder. And I happened to know that Augustus used an encrypted local frequency to keep his

"Alright Rosie, thinkin you can eavesdrop a little?"

Affirmative.

[...]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[...]

[..!]

:D

My comms crackled to life. "...7 heavy cannons in center-front portside bay, 3 replacement fighter hatchs...."

The comms crackled back and forth, with each pilot giving updates to what they were finding in their own little segment that they were slicing apart. Occasionally, I saw Augustus or the fighters flick between the slicing ships, overseeing their progress on the port bays. Good. Let them focus on the other side for now. Slowly, the fleet was overshadowed by the freighter. We made it. I released my breath- shit, didn't realize I was holding it- and took a better look at what we were dealing with. It looked as if the scattered debris field had mostly been the remnants of the hull, as well as light weapons for small craft and even infantry. They would fetch some small change, sure, but Rosie's cargo capacity was small. Packing efficiency was the name of the game. I saw the gash that it had all been flooding out of on this side- the entire freighter was covered in them- and peered inside. And ho boy, did my heart flutter.

Heavy cannons.

Jump-graded travel boosters.

Raw, precious metals.

And, hidden in the back corner, seemingly bolted into the wall.... a brain.

We'd hit jackpot, and potentially rescued a poor ship from abandonment, or worse.

"Alright Rosie. Time to get to work."

Affirmative.

And here was another lil something that made Rosie special- her manipulation arms . She always preferred that delicate touch, and wanted to interact with the world in a tactile, real way. So we worked on it. Together. I was tired of taking spacewalks to grab small pieces of scrap, or using the entire goddamn cargo bay on a piece that only had a tiny core, or scraps of precious metals inside. So we needed something that could pluck apart our finds. Do some light disassembly in the field, extract what was valuable, and load it in with the most packing efficiency possible. So I gave her arms- snake like appendages, coiled up in her cargo bay, with thousands of points of articulation. At first, I tried to make some kind of control system that I could use from the cockpit. But Rosie had a different idea. At her urged, I jacked them directly into the same sensory and motor systems that let her grip onto, position, and repair her hull. And by god, it worked.

When I showed her off the first time, no one had ever seen anything like it. Because there was nothing like it. A ship taking real mechanical control, over something so precise and delicate, was something that only a deeply intelligent, deeply skilled ship, with complex decision making and tactile movement could do.

And I was goddamn proud of her.

Every time she deployed them, I watched awe. Rosie gave a face of determination, and sinuous, metallic, tentacle-like appendages slid out in a bundle from the cargo bay opening on her underside. Each one was headed off by a different attachment- a precision laser cutter, a simple three-pointed grabbing claw, a drill, a tiny buzzsaw, camera that let me see what was going on, and more. Each one could be swapped out, depending on the task at hand. With eight of them slithering out from her cargo bay, though, there was usually something for everything. They extended out as a single bouquet, down through the hole of the cargo compartment, and split apart once inside. Each arm got to work.

Her observation monitor flickered on, giving me a view from the camera arm. I would've liked to get the brain out first, but two heavy cannons and a booster blocking the way anyways. We'd cut through that, picking off the energy cores and precious metals in the circuits as we go, and work our way towards the back. Rosie seemed to like the plan as well. My only job was to watch the comms, and watch the sensors.

I watched the camera as the petite tools of the arms excised and picked apart the titanium shell of the first heavy cannon. Her tools- the delicate 'fingers' of her arms- picked, pulled, tugged, and gently gripped every necessary notch, every joined titanium plate that needed to be undone, ever scrap of precious material. Firm, yet precise. Strong, yet never breaking or mishandling a single piece of cargo. As Rosie worked, my eyes darted across the energy sensors. I could see blips firing off as the ships on the other side of the freighter as the slicing ships worked and flitted between their stations from the other side. The comms crackled with their reports to Augustus- they seemed to be moving back and forth to the main carrier to drop off their hauls. It seemed like they had a lot to go through- we'd have plenty of time.

On the camera view, I could see a grabbing claw retracting back through the cargo bay. The first cannon had the back section cleanly excised from the massive barrel and chassis, leaving a path for the tools to get to the booster. The precious energy cell was sliding its way back into Rosie's cargo bay. God damn. She was quick with that. The laser cutter and saw were already making short work of the booster, too. We'd get to the brain in no time.

The chatter on the other line continued. We were still safe, but Augustus' crew had made more progress than I had hoped. Once the slicers had picked apart the port, they'd loop around to the starboard. We had to grab what we could as fast as we can- but I knew neither me or Rosie was gonna leave without that brain. Rosie gracefully sliced the fuel cell and ignition from the plasma burner, leaving the bracketing and vents behind. The second heavy cannon was soon to follow. Each cut through each piece had left a winding path towards the back of the chamber, allowing a physical path to what I had seen just barely poking through: a container for a genuine ship's brain. Rosie slid her camera arm in for a closer look.

The brain was bolted into the chassis of the ship, as well as some containers of growth factor. Seemed like the intent was to grow her in to this freighter. That was certainly an ambitious task, but if they knew what they were doing, it would be well worth it. A self-repairing, intelligent hauler as large as this one would be the heart and soul of resistance movements everywhere, supplying every backwater mining station or moon that longed to be free. Unfortunately, the brave and principled can still be stupid, and these chucklefucks had no idea what they were doing. Slapped in a random cargo bay, desperately trying to get growth out from there with no proper imprinting guidance... shame. If they'd've found me before running into the Navy, I might've helped them out. But at least now, we could give her a better life. I knew a lot of good, caring pilots that would take loving care of a fine ship like her.

From what I could tell, we were still safe from Augustus. Based on what I was hearing on the comms, each slicer was working on its last cargo hold subsection, and after that, they'd be poking around this side. We had to get this brain and get out.

Tenderly, her claw arm gripped the top of the brain's chamber, as her other fingers started working on the rivets. A saw would bust through part of the titanium bracket holding the chamber down, and when it got too close to the container itself, laser cutters took over, delicately slicing off each affixation point one by one. Rosie worked in a clockwise direction, first working down the three riveting points on the right, sawing off the bottom bracket, and then working up the rivets on the left.

C'mon Rosie. You got this. Just need the top plate....

"Finishing up there, slicer 5T?"

Shit. That was Augustus on the comms.

"Sure thing boss. Just gotta get this load to central. Mind if someone takes a peek on the other side for parasites before I get there?"

Shit.

"Sure thing. Fighter 3A, get your ass in gear and make a full pass of the ship."

An energy spike pinged on my sensor panels as the fighter revved up a booster.

"Gotcha boss. Starting at aft segment."

Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit

We still had a sliver of time before we were seen. They'd wanna get a good pass everywhere- there were ships far stealthier than us out there. But it was minutes at most. We had to finish up.

"Rosie, how're we doing there? You done?"

Negative.

[ ;( ]

"Fuck. Rosie, we gotta get outta here."

Affirmative. Affirmative. Affirmative. Affirmative.

Rosie-speak for "I know, I know, I know"

My eyes were fixed to the scanner and my cockpit windows for a visual, but I spared one moment to check Rosie's cam. She was finishing sawing through the top bracket. Just a little more....

"Aft clear, moving to starboard cargo bays."

The brain snapped off of the hull, and Rosie's claws were zipping it back to her cargo bay. I revved the engines into standby. The arms tenderly guided it through the path we had cleared, and out through the hole in the hull. We might be able to barely slip away without them knowing.....

I looked up through the cockpit, just as the dinged-up, formerly Navy fighter showed itself from behind a piece of debris. It froze for a moment, and then lined its nose to face me. Cannon ports shifted open, and slowly took aim.

"Well shit, Augustus, you're gonna wanna see this. Get your ass over here, I'm switching to public comms."

I heard slight fuzz as he switched his channel.

"Alright, leech, I'll keep this simple. You have thirty seconds to relinquish your haul before you join the debris."

For a single, cold moment, I swear I made eye contact with him through our cockpits.

[athletearrhythmia]

Reminder: needles *are* dangerous

Seeing a lot of needle and heart shocking content coming up again and I wanna speak on dark cardiophilia briefly.

I love dark cardio stuff. I've made no mystery of that. I'm not here to yell or shame folks for engaging in it; I do myself, up to limits I'm comfortable with. But anyone doing it, from mild breath play through sticking needles into your heart and shocking it, needs to remember that dark play is dangerous and can have serious consequences. It's not that people do it, but that people new to it may be naive and putting their hearts at serious risk without realizing. Back when I was a teenager someone put out excellent videos of what turned out to be fake heart shocking and I nearly electrocuted myself trying to recreate it, not knowing it was fake and with no idea that what I was trying would have literally cooked me. (I was trying to use an outlet. Yikes.)

Per needles in particular, here are a few big risks. An unsanitary needle can cause an infection. An overly thick needle can cause structural damage to the heart. But even if you're using a clean, thin needle, if you get it in the wrong place you can damage valves. I have seen this happen to folks.

The biggest risk though is inserting a needle into an artery on the outside of the heart and causing bleeding into the pericardium. This is a medical emergency that can only be treated with urgent open heart surgery. You have hours to minutes to get into the operating room if this happens or you will die. Folks *have died* at least twice that I know of.

This lives in tension with the fact that you actually aren't likely to hit an artery. They're small. However you can't be totally sure where they are either; the location of the heart in the chest is slightly different in everyone. It's like that game minesweeper, there aren't many mines but if you hit one it's game over. Again, a lot of people have done this tons of time and are perfectly fine.

With electricity, there's a similar level of risk for a different issue. This time it's instigating dangerous rhythms by shocking the heart in particular vulnerable windows. These windows are small, so again, plenty of people do this without issue. I know a guy who would go for a hard run, then stick needles into his heart and shock it. He did it for like a decade and then one time he got unlucky and went into a vfib arrest which he luckily recovered from pretty rapidly. I know another guy who arrested his heart at least 3 times, who has since removed his content and gone quiet, leaving me to wonder if he went too far.

To be clear I am NOT scolding anyone. If you know these risks and are willing to take them, I'm not going to lie, I like the content and want to see it. But I don't want anyone making uninformed decisions about the danger. You should certainly not try it just for attention. If it brings you joy, dark and twisted as that may be, and you know and accept the risk, it's your body. Just know what you're getting yourself into.

[notfinancialadvice]

How I Built an Emergency Fund, inspiration I deeply hope is helpful

As the blog URL says, this is not financial advice. This is how I did this thing, and I am posting it here, publicly, in hopes that it helps you should you need this information.

In short: Remix this advice to what fits your life + do not sue me if this goes poorly for you. This is for Americans, if you do not live in America and/or your money is not in America, I hope this is a useful base.

None of these links are affiliate links.

I write these things as a mental shift. I like to ramble and I wish I had someone tell me this stuff 20+ years ago. I'm hoping this helps you.

This is an incredibly long post so I'm putting it under a KEEP READING.

This post goes over two stages: "short term + not life-or-death" and "long term + actual life or death"

Part 01: SHORT TERM + NOT LIFE-OR-DEATH FUND

You need to find a high yield savings account that is FDIC insured. Ally is a popular bank for this.

Functionally, the only difference between a "high yield savings account" and "savings account" from the giant conglomerate bank down the street is the interest rate.

I do not know why non-high-yield savings accounts exist. I'm guessing because legally they can, and I hate it.

Moving away from my personal socioeconomic views to return to advice.

"FDIC insured" is not something you pay for. It is nearly universal on savings accounts. If a savings account, or a checking account, does NOT have it, then you should not put your money there. Something is wrong with that bank.

FDIC means if your bank goes out of business, your account is insured up to $250,000, per account, by the government. So if your bank goes out of business, the government makes sure you still have your cash (up to $250k).

A high-yield savings account means your cash is available whenever you need it.

Other products, like CDs, exist, but this ramble is designed to be as simple and starter as possible. Begin with a high yield savings account, build up from there as you do your own research + compare this to your needs.

Do not accept an account that has minimum balances. Do not open an account with monthly fees.

Touch this account as little as possible.

For every $1 you put in, every month, a few pennies will materialize. It's not much, but the main point is at every level, your money works for you.

Rich people do this. You can too.

Touch this account as little as possible.

You can have multiple savings accounts.

I personally have a savings account in the above structure designed for "oh hell I am kinda screwed, but will be okay, just need a buffer."

"How much should I have in there?" you might ask. Common advice says "3-6 months expenses" which is a lot. I say "start with literally $1 and continue as you can until comfortable with what is possible, for you, at this time."

Will $1 make you rich? No.

Will it save your life in a bad situation? Probably not.

Does this $1 essentially become a tiny robot that is making you money for as long as it is docked into its cargo bay? ...weird metaphor but we'll go with it, sure.

Ultimately is it a start? Yes.

You can have multiple savings accounts. You can have a savings account "this is for short term emergencies" and "this is for... slightly less short term" etc.

It costs you nothing to have multiple. They all operate in the same way. It's handy to have them all at the same bank because it can make transferring cash easier.

Part 02: LONG TERM + ACTUAL LIFE-OR-DEATH FUND WITH RISK SO BE CAREFUL

Once you have your savings account set up, and it's being funded on a regular basis (every week, every paycheck, every month, every quarter -- whatever works for you), look into creating a second, bigger, more dangerous-term cash reserve.

I like my Roth IRA. This is a link to a proper finance blog that has a lot of details. I am trying to make this handy/simple to get started.

401ks and (non-Roth) IRAs are funded with pre-tax dollars, frequently in conjunction with your job.

Normally, cash goes from job -> government takes a slice -> you.

Pre-tax retirement accounts, cash goes from job -> retirement takes the percentage you decide -> government takes a slice of what is left -> you

Roth IRAs, job -> government takes a slice -> you -> Roth IRA

The benefit to pre-tax retirement accounts being, because the cash going in is pre-tax, there is more of it.

It can grow faster in the stock market or other places your particular fund allows you to put cash into.

The taxes come out when you withdraw -- usually retirement -- because if you withdraw before you retire, you are heavily penalized with extra fees.

That's why Part 02 is a ROTH IRA. Your money has already been taxed -- job -> government's slice -> you -> Roth IRA.

This means the money is yours, already taxed. If you withdraw the gains, those get taxed, but the base, that's yours.

If you invest $100 and it grows to $105, you can withdraw $100 without paying fees or taxes. If you withdraw that extra $5, that is when taxes start to come into play. If you withdraw $100, and leave the $5, the $5 continues to grow, and that extra growth is taxed if withdrawn. So try not to touch it (ideally you leave all of it until retirement).

This is why this is an emergency, life-or-death only, account. You tap it only when you need to when all other choices are wretched and ruinous.

There is an annual limit as to how much money you can put into a Roth IRA (several thousand bucks).

You can start them very small. Like $20 or maybe less.

Look for a bank or institution that does not charge fees to open and maintain one.

AT EVERY STEP YOU SHOULD BE AVOIDING FEES

Here are smart people talking about ideas on how to get started.

Okay, so, what do we do now with this fancy roth thing.

Here is where things get... uncomfortable.

A Roth IRA is an account type.

You need to do something with your money.

The reason you have this in addition to, and secondary to, your high-yield savings account is because this is an investment vehicle, the balance is going to go up and down, and may reach $0.00.

For my Roth IRA, I like "exchange traded funds" -- ETFs.

There are a lot of options -- you can invest in most anything

Because my Roth IRA is built for "help me I'm dying" emergencies, I invest in a mix of S&P 500 index funds and small-cap funds.

SO MANY WORDS.

Let's break this down what this means.

S&P 500 index funds: This is an index fund of giant, giant, giant companies.

An index fund is like a stock. But instead of a single company, it tracks (owns shares of) an index -- like the DOW or Nasdaq. Or countries. Or... the entire market for oil. Etc.

The metaphor isn't completely accurate, but I like to think of it as "an index fund is a company that owns tiny bits of other companies."

Like, okay, say you have SlimeIndexFund and a share price is $40.

In this example, SlimeIndexFund owns $10 worth of "BardCo" and $10 of "ThiefCo" and $10 of "MermaidCo" and $10 of "EvilCo".

Let's say EvilCo does a lot of evil and is now worth $15, and MermaidCo does a lot of mermaid stuff and is now worth $15, and BardCo sings out of tune so is now worth $5. ThiefCo is oddly at the same $10 but we're scared so we're leaving ThiefCo to stay at $10.

A share in SlimeIndexFund is now worth $45. ($5 BardCo + $10 ThiefCo + $15 EvilCo + $15 MermaidCo)

This is diversification

Because I bought an index fund, instead of just buying BardCo, my risk is less.

Had I bought all MermaidCo, my return would be higher -- but this is a much bigger risk.

The entire purpose of this set up of a Roth IRA is TO MINIMIZE RISK.

Your Roth IRA should allow you to buy "fractional shares" and if it doesn't fuck that bank, go somewhere that does.

In the above example, SlimeIndexFund is $40/share and at that price you are getting the full benefit of 1 share.

Let's say you have $10.

You buy a fractional share of SlimeIndexFund for $10, which is 25% of 1 share.

So when SlimeIndexFund shares raise from $40 -> $45, your fractional share goes from $10 -> $12.50.

Not all funds and stock shares (etc) have fractional shares, most do.

It's a great way to start and build.

Small-cap funds: These operate in literally the same way. The difference is the companies are (in comparison) much smaller. They tend to be more nimble.

So I am diversifying between "here is a fund, it has a lot of large companies" and "here is a fund, it has a lot of small companies."

Let's say Big Office Building real estate goes down, but the sale of Small Company Making waffles goes up. This mixes together and I'm less in danger of losing money, or losing much money.

You can pick individual stocks.

The reason it is not recommended, by nearly everyone, is because the market has incredible tools and power over individual stocks.

By using any kind of fund that bundles things together, you are thereby automatically using these tools by proxy

It is critical to understand this is the stock market. Your account will go up and down. It may go down A LOT, like 25%, and take years to recover. Maybe it goes down 100% to literally $0.00.

That's why this is the LAST RESORT EMERGENCY FUND.

So why are we doing this.

This feels... wrong?

The potential for growth is significantly higher than a savings account. Adjusted for inflation, somewhere in between 6-7%.

At this rate, if you can leave your initial deposit alone for somewhere between 10 - 13 years, it has doubled.

This equation recalculates every time you make a deposit. So if you can deposit $20 every pay check, it has the potential to grow very quickly.

As above, this is the stock market, so it can also get wiped out.

But given the stock market has historically always recovered, though it may take several years, the risk is worth it to me + a lot of other people.

The reason this is built as a last-resort cash bucket is because of this risk. Before moving into this arena, you should have other cash buckets as a buffer.

Your RISK is it goes down. Which it will frequently.

Your REWARD is if it goes up. Which historically it has far more than it went down.

The PURPOSE of using funds as described above is so you don't have try to guess who the next Amazon is and wind up picking the next Pets.com (which went out of business, like, a long... long time ago).

The people making the funds figure out who is Amazon and who is Pets.com and work, day and night, to make your money grow and/or protect it when outside influences are hurting the market.

They are incredibly equipped to do this and their literal livelihood is on the line when they do it poorly.

Which is a polite way of saying, they are continuously incentivized above all else to work for the fund you're investing in.

The reason you're doing this in a Roth IRA specifically is you're hoping to keep as much of it intact, as possible, until you retire, at which point -- if you've followed fairly simple rules -- you withdraw the base and gains tax-free.

Whereas money in a normal stock account? Those gains are taxable every year.

"I have literally $20 I can save per pay check! Can I put in $15 into a high-yield savings account and $5 into a Roth IRA to get started?!"

Yes!

Also, congrats! You're diversifying already!

Your Roth IRA broker should allow you to invest a minimum of $1 at a time, and buy fractional shares. If they don't, don't sign up with them!

Lean heavily into your high-yield savings account until that is very comfortable and thick, then push money into the Roth IRA.

Your goal is to build a system that works for you -- both literally (money working for you) and emotionally ("this is comfortable")

"Should I pay off debt before proceeding? A lot of people say to pay off excess debt first."

This is up to you.

Most financial blogs etc. do say "focus on paying off debt first" -- it's good advice, your returns are risk-free and permanent, since the lower your debt is, the less you have to pay over time.

Interest -- working for you or against you -- is continuous and eternal.

Personally, I like to diversify everything, so I not-financial-advice ramble "do all three -- pay down debt, throw a little cash into a high-yield savings, throw a little cash into a Roth IRA"

The problem with "pay off debt first" is that it misses out any occasional giant gains the stock market makes (Roth IRA) and introduces the risk of "I have paid this credit card on time for 5 years, I'm short on change for 3 months due to a situation that gets resolved quickly, and now I have a late payment fee, and a higher interest rate."

Look at your life, finances, and potential future and make decisions!

And also:

Always be on the look out for deals with banks. Sign up bonuses, referral links from friends, etc. Think of it as a money sale.

If you are not comfortable with the idea of a Roth IRA hitting $0.00 potentially, do not do step 02. These are ideas, not directives.

All financial tools can be used for different purposes. All of them. Thus -- these are ideas, not directives.

I am listing a few examples of banks, funds, etc. These are not recommendations nor are they affiliate links. They are listed because I want to maximize your start on this path, but caution, in strongest possible terms, you must do your own research and figure out what makes sense for you.

There are a lot of nuances I am paving over for the sake of simplicity, which is why I am continually saying...

...c'mon say it with me...

...you must do your own research before continuing

Smart, free sites that cover this + a lot of other stuff:

NerdWallet

Bank Rate

One final note about Roth IRAs:

Robinhood currently is offering a 1% match on an IRA. Considering the strict limits of how much an IRA can intake per year, it's not much, but it doesn't cost you anything. Money on sale!

As a final note -- always feel comfortable asking people handling your money for help. They are working for you. Your money works FOR YOU.

If you are uncomfortable, leave, immediately, without concern.

At the retail level, there are hundreds of banks and financial institutions clamoring for your business. If someone makes you uncomfortable for not knowing something, or getting a term wrong, or asking "too many" questions -- go somewhere else.

It doesn't matter if your account is literally worth $20.

They are working for you.

This is a business transaction, and if they make you feel like your time isn't worth their business, I promise you there is someone else who will gladly take care of you.

I end with -- whenever someone is giving you financial advice, always ask why. It helps ensure they aren't scamming you, it's just a good business practice.

I like to ramble, it helps me mentally

I like to be useful, I want the world to be significantly more balanced in terms of who is doing okay

I like to write, this is all good practice for me in doing Various Other Things I do

I fucking hate predatory financial practices. I was gatekept out of financial literacy for decades and so every time I help someone else figure out how to set up their own life and protect themselves it is a giant "fuck you" to the systems and directly to the people who stood in my way.

[littleeyesofpallas]

today i'm just wrangling all my weird loose ends and crackpot theories. Stuff that doesn't actually have enough evidence to support it, or that I just personally headcanon or that just doesnt go anywhere or come back again often enough to really derive any meaning or implications from. stuff i can't really justify making individual posts on, so im making a post about how unpostable they are collectively

warning: long, also warning: nonsense

So we know Bleach operates on a loose variation of the Buddhist samsara/rinne, the wheel of reincarnation, in which souls cycle through many lives in different forms, experiences hardships in life and the pain of loss and death continuously until/unless they can achieve enlightenment, as the first Buddha did, and in doing so escape the cycle of death and rebirth, ascending to a higher state of being in which life and death no longer apply. In traditional art of Buddhist cosmology this is represented by the Buddha being present off to one corner, literally physically outside the elaborate illustration of the wheel and its many facets(itself encompassed by the demon mara). This Buddha role is the figure the Spirit King occupies in the hierarchy of the Bleach cosmology, but there are a few little orbital details that are clearly related to that role, but as I stated in the preface to all this, never really go anywhere....

So there's this thing in Hinduism and by some association Buddhism (although it plays more into Hinduism's actual faith in the mythology of their gods, where as a lot of Buddhism may still invoke the divine but ultimately is about undermining and escaping the authority of said cosmological structure) called the Hiranygagarbha[हिरण्यगर्भः] "The Golden Womb"/"Golden Egg," or "Universal Womb"/"Primeval Womb," and is associated with various gods described as Svayambhu[स्वयम्भू] "Self Born," many of which are some variation on a/the creation god --effectively it's just the explanation that while everything comes from something, the original something had to have come from nothing, or else there's just an infinite number of questions that theologians would be forced to come up with infinite answers for.

But it posits that while something may have come from nothing, that something still had to follow certain understood notions of cause and effect, like incubation and birth. Ergo the creator god didn't just blink into existence fully formed, he was "born" from the nothing and as the first and initially only thing to exist he birthed himself. In these myths he is frequently described as initially existing either "beyond" or without senses --obviously the without senses bit mirror's YHWACH's origin, but to exist not without a capacity to see, hear, feel, etc... but in a place or state in which those senses cannot perceive also echo's Aizen's rambling about power levels as he rapidly ascends toward godhood before being beaten surpassed by Ichigo.

But beyond creation myths the Golden Egg is evoked in some elements of meditation in which each person, in their innate capacity for enlightenment and this divinity, has within them their own egg, and to retreat into that egg and explore the potential to self actualized as a mental act of birthing an ideal self, has overt parallels with Bleach's use of an inner world in which the zanpakutou spirit, a reflection of the self and of a potential for power, dwells.

Incidentally the egg also facilitates the creation of the world itself, one half of the discarded shell from the god's birth becoming the realm of the material and the other half becoming the realm of the celestial, and as per some rants I've been on before, between it and some questions about how zanpakutou really work, it reminds me very distinctly of a few other anime/manga where a god spirit's aura or range of influence, for which a lesser spirit's would normally sustain a single person, encompasses a domain in which the totality of other people's existences reside.

In addition the egg itself, a concept called Purusha that is at times a god and at times a concept, is in some myth the creator god in question in relation to the Golden Egg, born from said egg, and then thru their dismemberment by other gods, the world is molded. So obviously some pretty overt, if superficial similarities with the Spirit Kings lack of limbs and, yeah sure if we want to acknowledge it, the LN's feeble additions to lore.

But as a concept it represents self-awareness in the idea that there is a kind of Platonic ideal of the perfect awareness of everything that is in its definitive and empirical state that has become unknowable by the division of that primordial self-awareness, but which exists in fragments in all living things.

The quartering of the body is also the basis of the 4 castes in traditional Indian society; although that dismemberment is not specific to two legs and two arms like the Spirit King's.

But speaking of the spirit king's body parts, there's a neat thing going on with the design of his eyes that got weirdly ditched... In his original appearance the 4 solid black pupils were shown in top-bottom, and left-right orientation, but once he showed up again later, Kubo switched to a 4 corners sort of thing instead. At the time there was no Allmighty reveal and thus no established power of all-seeing yet, but in the eventual context of The Almighty and it manifesting in YWHACH's increased pupil count from 1 to 2 to 3, it becomes apparent that should he reach full potential he would have the same eyes as the Spirit King.

But then what capacity for all-seeing powers has the Spirit King really shown? Well, not a lot in practice, although YHWACH addresses the Spirit King as one who had at one point seen the future. But notably the original design, which had been scrapped and pushed entirely out of mind by the time any of these new contextual details were actually being written in, actually does seem to imply some faculty of all-sight in the Spirit King: The Gotei 13. Their insignia frame, which we typically see with a captain's associated squad number, is shown during an explanation of the Shihouin's Onmitsukidou, is its own symbol even without any numbers. And the insignia appears to be a stylized depiction of the Spirit King's all-seeing eye. Is the insignia itself some kind of magic sigil or artifact, or simply symbolic of a role the Gotei plays? Who can say.

Let's circle back to the Golden Egg though, because the anime changed its color to blue, almost matching the color and style of the generic Quincy spirit bows/arrows. But I personally always instinctively assumed it was a kind of golden hue; something the digital colorist clearly thought as well, which was gratifying. But I also assumed the coloration was something that matched a number of other things, and with very distinct meaning: Orihime's shields, Hacchi's barriers, and the Menos Grande's Negación beams. Before the Spirit King's crystal was even an issue to deal with, there was already a very conspicuous link,

Orihime and Hacchi have the same powers of Event Rejection

Hacchi's Rejection barriers stem from his Visored powers

Hacchi's barriers thus appear to be a more refined Negación

Orihime's powers are said to tread on the authority of God

With those implications in place, it seemed evident that part of the reason for the Spirit King's inertness and imprisonment in the stasis crystal was that thru some divine power, be it his own or someone else's, the crystal exists to reject events happen around/to him to preserve him in a particular state. And since we know it didn't seem to protect him from bodily harm, there would implicitly be a more important and perhaps abstract thing in mind being actively undone.

This in turn would have provided an adequate excuse for Orihime being unable to reject the crystal being broken, and the Spirit King's injuries within it, because as we learned from Hacchi; she has to understand what she's rejecting, and those powers are most potent when aimed at the abstract(an event) and not an object(an injury). For her to reject a rejection would mean understanding the nested abstract events taking place, which frankly no one was ever brought up to speed on, whether we're talking my theories here or the actual canon of the manga.

This I would have found much more acceptable than Kubo falling back on "Important character too strong, implicit functions of established powers don't work on him." Which is a bad habit Kubo has just in general; he never actually thinks out the implications of how world building on the plot he's writing, he just muscles thru it by making up new excuses, rather than going back into what he's already established to find interesting ways for preexisting abilities or factoids to interact. He very consistently fails to "yes, and..." himself.

Anyway... There's also a little followup on my persistent rambling about the nature of hollows and of the elusive Vastolorde. Until the revival one-shot just a few years ago, it was easy to forget about Hell in Bleach considering it never really came into play. But there was one interesting point made that hollows who have sinned in life go the hell, while the others are purified. Most hollows implicitly are just spirits of the dead overcome by powerful emotions, but their monstrous qualities aren't considered a sin, they're an animal-like instinct.

And this is addressed, if only barely, by Zommari's indignant rant against the moral authority of the Shinigami; that the natural way if things is to let hollows exist, but the shinigami invented the morality and ethics of "protecting" humans from hollows, and "purifying" hollows with zanpakutou. And we know from the example of someone like Nel that the Arrancar process returns a kind of human intelligence and morality to a Hollow, even across the process of individual spirits becoming hollows, amassing into colony minded Gillians, and then reemerging unique personalities as Adjuchas.

I still maintain the real/sensible trajectory of the Nel plot should have been that she was a Vastolorde, that Nnoitra was sent to hunt Vastolorde, but threatened by her and infuriated by her power tempered with human morality, was beat and spared but took a cheap shot to break her mask, effectively forcing her into being a mock-arrancar, like Isshin and Urahara discussed, and so Nnoitra reported back negative results on the hunt to guard his own position in the Espada. But in the face of being unable to find enough surviving Vastolorde, Aizen's plan would be to take existing mock-arrancar and have Orihime reject the event of their mask removal, so that he can remove it via the Hougyoku.

In this way I think Nel could have had her generic hot-girl-ification in a more sensible and satisfying way than magic cloud of smoke de-baby-fication. I think it also would have made for a cool reveal for Orihime's uniquely abstract event rejection --as opposed to time reversal-- to mean that although the process of her transformation would be undone, her experiences post break would not, thus she'd still remember Ichigo and be able to turn on Aizen and join the good guys accordingly.

Anyway, even without all that, Nel and her goofballs, and to a lesser extent Starrk and even Ulquiorra, and sort of Harribel, all prove that the Arrancar are capable of a pretty normal moral spectrum and aren't in fact just evil or monsters all the way down. In fact, it was always kind of present since Sora's chapter way back in the beginning. In fact, Sora was the first Hollow to be drawn with the now iconic double mouth, the prior two were just monsters. Sora however showed his human mouth behind the mask, and that was a feature that would carry forward from there. In fact, at the end of chapter 25 there is also the original arrancar hook, where we see Aisslinger perform surgery on GrandFisher. But while the main event is the removal of the mask, there's also the bodily surgery taking place that suggests that what would later be identified as the mock-arrancar process involves digging the humanoid back out from under not only the mask but the hollow's inhuman, bestial body as well.

This is in turn echoed when we see Wonderweiss born as an arrancar in a much cleaner process, but one not dissimilar to Grandfisher's; his wrapped hollow form, while generally humanoid --and thus implicitly a Vastolorde-- also clearly includes some large protrusions that are stripped away along with the majority of his mask. And as Uryuu relates from Urahara's briefings, the more human form also means more human intelligence. Along with the apparent moral fiber of the matter it really seems like when a hollow gets more human, it gets more human in almost all respects. (ignore that harribel bit in the image there, we'll come back to it...)

So what happens when they get the most human?

I've also gone over my whole thing before that the Nelgal Ruins seemed like the natural evolution of the architecture of the menos grande, lending yet another level of humanity to the hollows: society. More over, my crackpot headcanon that in the human development of the Vastolorde they discovered religion, and comprised the first cult of YHWCH.

Of note in this random line of thought is that fact that Lille Barro is considered to be the first Sternritter given a schrift. It's not clear if that means that the sternritter we know are considered contemporaries (even ignoring the confusing timeline of Juugram and Bazz-B's whole flashback) and among them Lille is the first among them, or if there have been prior generations of sternritter and Lille is as survivor of some batch of sternritter long predating the current recruiting push.

But there is the question of if Lille is an arrancar or not. He somewhat conspicuously speaks Spanish, although the Sternritter do have a loosely international shtick going on in their roster. But he also has a lot of design notes in common with Starrk, although it's super unclear if that's applicable to in world logic, or just a pattern in Kubo's art. The biggest hiccup in this would perhaps be that he has no signs of a mask fragment, but then the same went for Luders Friegen. Notably Asguiro Ebern still had a mask and Luders made a point to speak down to him. While we never got any clarification on that, I think it seemed like the superiority complex came from being less arrancar-like. And I wonder if there wasn't a process by which the Wandenreich were removing mask fragments in their entirety, resulting in a kind of forced and imperfect humanization process, but from which highly humanoid and thus Quincy-fiable arrancar could be produced.

And while the shot of Harribel was obviously just fanservicey battle damage, I like to think that the plan was to convert her, and that she was in the process of having her bone armor components stripped off, not unlike the process Grandfisher and Wonderweiss underwent: it resembles Wonderweiss' in posture, but Grandfisher's in bloody tortuous overtone.

Primitive Arrancar, without the ability to gain shinigami-like powers via the hougyoku, stripped of their masks might theoretically regain human intelligence, but would lose their masks and sense of self with no way of storing it in a sword let alone being able to retrieve it. What better subjects to manipulate with the promise of a discovery of self and of identity; drink of YWHACH's blood and receive the sense of self you lack. Something to fill that hole in your heart.

Then there's the thing I mentioned earlier about how there's some interesting implications about what it means to throw a bunch of spirits together into one superdense thing. And it turns out a lot of them seem to be pretty similar...

You throw shinigami souls together to make white, who is himself like an asauchi.

You throw i guess also shinigami(?) "something similar" together to get asauchi according to Oh-etsu

You throw powerful human spirits together and get the King's Key.

You throw hollows together and get a menosgrande

and if we care to dip a toe into the LN (which normally I would hesitate to do) we have at least one other zanpakutou, besides White, explicitly crafted from a menosgrande

and when the miracle baby reclaims quincy spirit power you get YWHACH

My supposition then is that the reason Vastolorde were so rare, and explicitly in hiding from Aizen, was that in the first place hunting menos is how the asauchi are created. The very first time we see a Gillian, Rukia even comments that it's the Royal Guard's job to take care of them, not regular shinigami. As the power scale of the series naturally escalates that begins to feel silly, but what if that's not because only the Royal Guard can defeat them, but because the Royal Guard and Oh-etsu in particular are uniquely suited to hunt/harvest them so they can be turned into new asauchi.

And in a way, if the Spirit King is indeed locked in a meditative state in his golden egg, if indeed the god sleeps in the egg, and the egg is the center of the world, and the world is the egg. If the world itself is the Spirit King's inner world, his bankai manifesting the internal as reality, then what is YHWACH if not the Spirit King's sword spirit? In the same way YHWACH is already a part of zangetsu within Ichigo. A reflection of the self, however dark, convinced that godhood is not in the Spirit King's best interest and determined to tear him from that throne? Is that not exactly what the fused Zangetsu tried to do in stopping Ichigo from learning the final getsuga and fighting Aizen? What is YHWACH's war on soul society but the struggle between two mirrored entities over who gets to stand at the top and who has to crawl around in the shadows?

What is the difference between a king and his horse?

[meatball-headache]

I have finally completed the quest I've been waiting since the beginning to play.

It was fine :p

Compared to the Second Dream or the War Within, there's no comparison. This was a main quest, but it had all the structure of a sidequest, just the Lotus and others talking while you did a normal mission. Although, the tone was shifted dramatically. Is this the Tam-Tara Deepcroft (Hard) of Warframe?

It's a main quest, but the structure—and rewards—are more in line with the "Warframe quests" they're calling them now—sidequests that just give you a new Warframe. I'm thinking about Limbo, Octavia, Gara, Atlas... stuff everyone else has probably long forgotten and done years ago, but me with my snail's pace :p

And yet it is a main quest, required to advance the story, and, the story touches on some points about Margulis and the Void. Which means that unlike some Warframes like Nidus or Mesa or Yareli, my boy Harrow is tied closely to the core lore! That's a point in favor of maining him :D

Warframe's story is few and far between—especially the way I play. This isn't Final Fantasy, that's for sure. This isn't even Destiny. But it's like I've said before, it's like getting to level 100 in Pac-Man and suddenly there's a cutscene and Pac-Man is going, "The ghosts... I can hear them in my sleep... they give me no peace... when will it end?" It's something that comes late, and suddenly recontextualizes the entire experience. When 200 hours in, you find out that Lotus saying "Wake up, Tenno" at the very very beginning wasn't talking to the Warframe statues. It's a different kind of weight and impact that FF, certainly, but it's weighty and impactful all the same.

So. In the Second Dream, you have flashback dialogue where Margulis is arguing with—I think Ballas?—about what to do with the Tenno. Margulis wants to protect them, and for that she's conviceted of treason and executed. At least, that's how it's framed. I didn't pick up on it, but when I watched some Second Dream reaction videos, those players and their chats pointed out that Margulis and the Lotus have the same voice. And, I believe there's a line about Margulis being blinded... So, if Margulis and Lotus are the same, then Lotus wears that mask because she's blind?

In the Chains of Harrow, Palladina mentions the "Blind Queen," and then addresses the Lotus as such. She's practically worshipping the Lotus at points. And, it hit me: that's entirely appropriate. I mean, who is the Lotus? She seems to be operating independently. There's hints of factions throughout the system, Cetus, Fortuna, Red Veil, Steel Meridian—we don't have a Russian novel's worth of a cast of characters, but, Lotus is unaffiliated with anything. But, think about it. She's in our ear constantly—in all our ears. Lotus is communicating with every Tenno, all at once. And, in the Second Dream, we saw some of her powers in action: she can move the entire Moon into the Void just like that—and bring it back. Warframes already have this incredible magical power—they're magic, no way around it, they are using magic—but the Lotus is just on another level.

Here's a spoiler, though. I've seen some streamers and such playing, just grinding Nightwave or something, but something was different for them... When the Lotus pops up with her generic dialogue, "You've found a fissure. Use reactant to crack open your relic," and what not... it doesn't say "Lotus." For them, it identifies her as "Margulis." So... Lotus must be Margulis. But... how? Wasn't Margulis executed? Why would Margulis have these godly powers? And... isn't Lotus actually Natah? How does any of this fit together?

Rhetorical questions, obviously, do not answer.

In the Chains of Harrow quest, we deal with a Tenno named Rell, who was, I guess, outside of the Lotus network. Rejected and cast away for being autistic or something, and left on their own, they, what, made direct, intimate contact with the Void? Rell constantly mentioned the man in the wall, which was dismissed as a hallucination—but, I'm guessing from that Lotus Eaters login screen that there's something to it. I mean, of course there's something to it, it's a video game story, weird dreams and hallucinations and stuff like that are always more real than Occam's Razor stuff. But, there was also a suggestion that the Void wasn't a place or something like a natural phenomenon; it was a being. The Void is someone.

Man in the wall... Lotus Eater... Margulis... Natah... Warframe's story is dripfeeding some deep lore, some secret narrative. It's, honestly, more in line with a Dark Souls than a Final Fantasy; it's not a story about what happens, it's a history about what happened. Piece by piece we're figuring out what happened in the Old War, what happened to the Tenno, who we are and where we came from. Needless to say, I really like stories like that. Soulsbornes where you're traveling through a broken land, piecing together what happened long ago, or something like No Man's Sky or Nightingale, where you just putter around building your base while these strange hints of some obscure history float around you.

Also? I miscalculated. For some reason, I thought The New War was right after Chains of Harrow. Actually, I have no idea when it happens, because for some reason, this quest doesn't pre-appear in the Codex. I have a dozen quests that say "Prerequisite: The New War" or "Prerequisite: Angels of Zariman" or something, teasing me with what's to come... but, The New War isn't among them. I'm given to think it's a very big deal, bigger than the Second Dream... I don't want to know anything about it at all, so don't say a word :D ...but my point is, I won't be getting to it today, after all. I need to let the Chains of Harrow soak for a bit. Then I have, what... Sacrifice? Apostle something? And then Prelude to War. I'm not doing more than one per... weekend, really. Gotta give it time to hit, y'know? So, it'll be a while. Maybe we'll do the New War for Christmas :p

Potential mains:

Hydroid. My classic, absolute boi. The tentacles are very convenient to get all the monsters to chill out—and the floaty damage helps me find them. He's got a really strong melee weapon and a Kuva Hek, so he's decent.

Hildryn. Her 3 and spamming 2 is super cool and just keeps her alive forever. Energy independent, which is nice. She's got the Amprex, too, so she can just chain-lightning a crown.

Harrow. Lore-appropriate, aesthetically awesome. He has Scourge Prime, Knell Prime, and War—my loremaster, I guess :p But his abilities aren't quite as potent at wiping out a room... But I like the Void Priest motif.

Baruuk. Again, I like the neutral-feeling, Patient Monk motif. The Doan skin is absolutely incredible. Once his 4 gets charged up he does more damage than anything, but outside of that he's got a strong but slow gun, Kuva Chakkhur, I think it's called, and the Broken Scepter for his melee, which is a little janky, but, again, stylistically appropriate. His name doesn't begin with H, though :\

I also love Lavos and Yareli, and I'm intersted in Oberon and Sevagoth. None of them are nearly as powerful, though.

...I just felt like typing. Thanks for reading :p

Remember, no spoilers!

[bearsintreesofficial]

hi bears in trees guys i am in a band have a question: how do you guys organize songwriting credits for your lyrics since ian and callum both contribute to writing words? we’re trying to figure out legal stuff and it’s a whoooole confusing mess

any advice would be really appreciated thanks!!!!

hi! you mean iain and nick* - we write the lyrics. in terms of songwriting: as far as we're concerned that covers lyrical content as well as melody, composition of parts, playing of those parts, etc. so we split songwriting credits for absolutely EVERY song equally - the song would not be a bears in trees song without the way george plays drums, callum sings, and also allows credit for the way a song's structure can shift through feedback.

we are lucky that we operate in a band where we were all friends first and are comfortable in this scenario, but it's generally reflective on how reliant we are on eachother to do this. if you are friends with the people you are writing with and everyone in the band wants the same level of involvement, i'd encourage you to do it equally when you submit songwriting credits because i think that's the nicest way to do it.

there are some bands where not everyone is involved in the writing process or where it's accepted that certain people contribute more than others - this isn't something i have experience on so couldn't advise on that.

thanks for asking, it's an important/confusing world to tackle and i don't think artists get the chance to talk about it enough!

[object-vault-9]

Question I have about the vault itself, do you have an idea of what it looks like? The whole interior layout and everything? I've been wondering for some time now...

Ohh I should really sit down in a map maker and put it together ! A lot of the inspiration for the layout comes from Vault 101 and Vault 76 in the fallout games, plus a huge agricultural inspiration is from Vault 33 This is gonna be long and have pictures from the games/show/my comic/etc so it'll be under a break, might include some rambling about the way the vault used to operate too ! Very rambly/unorganized for now

Vault 9 is built into a cliff face, and behind it is a mountain range.

The vault was built for much more people that currently live there, and large portions of it are ominously empty. You can genuinely get lost in there, even Timer/Shovel/Mousetrap can even get turned around in there and they were born and raised there. Had Car Key survived he was intended to be the one that knew the layout almost perfectly, being the head security officer (and lone survivor of the security teams prior to the opening of the vault). If I were to draw less visited parts of the vault, portions of it would be roped off. The largest open areas in the vault are the farm (above) and the cafeteria

Vault 9's structure and culture when established was less individual, there were not a lot of rec rooms, rooms were all bunks to hold multiple people, etc. A lot of stuff involves some degree of depersonalization, etc. So thats why despite there being so many empty rooms presumably, most characters are shown to share rooms when their rooms are shown. Lcukily, especially with a colorful cast of characters from different backgrounds and over a century past its establishment, people are more encouraged to be themselves here There's a few rooms set aside for professions, there's the clinic, plus a larger room beside it for long term patients, though with the small population Mousetrap keeps people close to better monitor them There are classrooms, pretty much always empty, Spade/Shovel/Timer/etc are among the last to "graduate", and school years were not hosted every year due to the diminishing amount of people being born. So while Timer is a little older than Spade and Shovel, and Push Pin was a little younger, they likely all attended the same "grades/classes" together. Usually the family will teach basics (basic math/reading/writing) before the official vault curriculum, with classes starting for older students (like 10+) instead of starting at kindergarten

The intention of Vault 9 was mostly on self sustaining populations, so most people were intended to be involved with the care of the farm over anything else. Other roles were security/education/medical/culinary/etc, as well as leadership roles like a peoples court and the overseer The armory is very small and depleted/half destroyed, and there is only one or two quarantine/prison rooms

The floor structure is built in a way that the further down you go, the less likely you need to be there, this is my vague idea of it but with floor plans some things might be rearranged The surface level is only the door, airlock and door controls. Some storage is kept up there too Second floor down/B2 is the largest area. Farm, cafeteria, public rooms, clinic, classrooms, etc. There's a small library Third floor/B3 down are the living quarters, as well as the overseers office, peoples court, and locker rooms for showering and stuff. The overseers office is the best furnished room in the vault, and it had personal living quarters for the overseers family that were nicer too Fourth floor/B4 are guard armory/small training room/most storage/certain aspects of vault maint, etc. Fifth/B5 is storage and machinery for the most part. The boiler/furnace/etc, there's also a work shop down there and where Hehe/Apricot/CoG hang out. There's also the columbarium and morgue down there

Lowest level, heavy clearance, is where the power is. It's still nuclear power, the intention is to keep it buried so a failure might destroy the vault but cause less damage on the surface

I'll revisit this soon and have drawings and floorplans hopefully

[nyaagolor]

Paldean League Worldbuilding

aka how Geeta is reshaping the poke-economy and making herself the most hated woman ever in the process

I generally try to keep any sort of real world analogues out of my HCs for Pokemon bc I think it's more of a utopian society and doesn't need to operate on the same logic of economics or politics as irl, but swsh and sv seem more grounded in our reality so I've been thinking about them (especially sv) a LOT. Decided I would just dump all my musings and HCs about the paldean league here if only to organize it all. Also disclaimer that I am not an economist and will never pretend to be so it’s more than likely this system would never work irl but it’s pokemon so it’s fine

The Galarian and Paldean Leagues always struck me as relatively recent, at least in terms of their current operation, and mostly spearheaded by a super ambitious head of operations who restructured the entire place as soon as they got there. I'll talk about Galar in another post, but atm Paldea has my brain in a chokehold so this is all about them

My main HC about the Paldean League is that up until extremely recently (20 years ago give or take I'm not doing specific timelines here) the Paldean League was extremely corrupt and poorly run. When the Paldean empire collapsed, the League was formed as a way to try and maintain the status quo and keep power in the hands of those who previously held it. It was, and continued to be for the next few centuries, an oligarchy. No one in the system was elected, and those in lower positions had to be personally selected and approved by their superiors. There were no checks and balances, so the people at the top could and did maintain power indefinitely. By the time we reached 20~ years before the main story, the structure was as follows:

Chairman: The leader of the entire thing. Has absolute power over everyone else in the system. Does all the boring stuff Top Champion: A battler and figurehead for the public. The "face" of the League, but generally not in charge of anything and has no political power. Their battle with up and coming trainers determines whether they get champion rank ^ If ur thinking this is similar to the Galar League, you'd be correct. They were based off the same model for a while Elite Four: Originally called the Council of Four, they act as a council that makes decisions along with the Chairman and test trainers' worthiness. Typically in charge of a handful of gym leaders Gym Leaders: Local political leaders that operate under the Council of Four and ensure things don't get too rowdy on the town level. In charge of testing trainers, protecting the town from wild threats, keeping up appearances, and union busting (they mostly did that last one) Everyone else: Salary workers. They have not yet unionized

The system, ultimately, was corrupt as hell. There was no job security, and the hierarchical nature of the league ensured you had to suck up to and do the dirty work for your boss if you wanted to get paid at all. Unions? Idk her. Corruption and embezzlement was the name of the game, and Paldea was basically flat broke because of it, with infrastructure decades behind neighboring regions and a bevvy of shitty trainers. The champion, unlike other regions, was not decided by who unseated the current champion. It didn't matter how good someone was, they had to be selected by the chairman to be Top Champion, and the Chairman would only select someone who would work with them without question. Paldea was basically the laughingstock of the world because of their complete and utter incompetence in any and all battle tournaments and lack of advancements in literally every sector. Then shit hit the fan and we moved onto the system we see in-game

I'm not sure what the event was (a recession, investigative journalism, doesn't really matter) but the newfound understanding of just HOW corrupt the league was and the resulting scandal made the Chairman resign and shook the very foundation of the League. Luckily or unluckily, a young upstart politician named Geeta was quick to fill that void, and through a few political loopholes and charisma, she managed to secure herself as Chairwoman. She had long since hated the current Paldean system, thinking that it held her beloved region back from greatness. She had always been gunning for higher and higher positions, a dark horse of Paldean politics with undetermined motives, extreme intelligence, and frightening levels of ambition. The Chairman had always had their eye on her, personally keeping her in check, but when they were gone Geeta immediately seized the opportunity to grab as much power as physically possible. Getting the position made her effectively untouchable, and that was the ultimate goal, because her plan for Paldea was about to make her the single most hated woman in the region's history

Geeta, upon gaining a position where they legally could not get rid of her, decided to fire every single person in the upper echelons of the league. Every gym leader, elite four, and the top champion were all fired, and she withdrew Paldea from every battling tournament and public appearance until she could workshop the league into something servicable. It was the boldest move since the dissolving of the Paldean Monarchy and it did NOT make her any friends

Though her ultimate goal was to reform the entire Paldean league, her early changes were only possible because of the old system. She could and did reform the system to her liking without consequence only because of the old hierarchy system already in place. Her ability to hand select her coworkers and fire people indiscriminately was one of the greatest abuses of power Paldea had ever seen, whether for noble reasons or not, and the people she fired tried to smear her as much as they could. Though these radical steps were necessary to undo and reshape the corruption hellscape the League had become, it wasn't exactly a good look for the new chairwoman (not that she cared)

Geeta also combined the top champion position and chairwoman position, which was so shockingly unpopular and suspicious-looking that she effectively cemented her godawful reputation. She saw the top champion as an unnecessary expense and decided to take on the responsibilities herself so she could funnel the top champion salary into public projects. This is part of the reason why she’s so Bad at being champion: she’s doing it to save the league money and only needs to the absolute bare minimum. Most of her job for the first decade was analyzing the current hierarchy, finding trainers to fill positions, and trying to figure out how to fix things so that would be sustainable after she left and wouldn't fall back into old corruption. She took on a job in the academy schoolboard to keep an eye out for younger trainers, put as much money into research and economic opportunities as possible, then got to work shaping the League to her vision

Her main vision for the league was to make as many parts of the system economically self-sustaining as possible, which was vital for her gym leader choices. She picked people who had *enough* skill in battling, but who all had other careers that would generate interest in and revenue for the gym. Paldea didn't have the pure battling talent yet to make a name for itself on any kind of world stage so Geeta was completely unconcerned about the actual battling skill of her picks as long as they were good enough and making cash. In terms of gym challenges, she mandated that they had to be free or extremely cheap and somehow tied to the town itself-- the giant contraptions of other regions were NOT in the budget. She wanted the gym system to be a celebration of the towns they were in and to inspire people to visit in the same way Galar's stadiums did, all in the hopes that gyms wouldn't need money from the league itself

The gyms would maintain a similar system as before, with each town and gym operating like a smaller independent organization. Most day to day operations and decisions like numbers of workers and salaries would be handled by the gyms themselves, but with all details publicly available so interventions could take place if things got fishy. All revenue generated by the gym would stay within the town-- it would be used to pay salaries, do upkeep, etc, and anything left over could be used to make renovations / add more stuff to gym challenges / support local businesses. If the revenue generated wasn't enough to cover upkeep and salary, the league would fill in the rest

The reason the gym buildings Look Like That is because the old league funneled most of the money into the pockets of the higher-ups and very little was allocated for building gyms. Geeta kept the design bc it's cheap, Paldea is broke, and the uniformity of the gyms allows trainers to find it more easily. it's also convenient if there's a turnover of the position-- no need to build a new gym! It's mostly an administrative office anyway, only there for paperwork and to house office staff, and Geeta is under the (correct) impression that most gym leaders prefer having stages at their favorite places instead of a specific building. Only two gym leaders have strong negative opinions about the building itself: Grusha, who can't have an outdoor reception area because of the snow and hates sitting in the lobby all the time, and Brassius, who thinks it's ugly as shit (he's right) and wants to paint a mural on it

The gym system is actually run much better than it was before-- it's still hitting its stride at the time of the game but is shaping up into a system that will work long after Geeta retires. The gym leaders also like how things are run quite a bit-- they just hate Geeta as a person (but that's smth I plan on exploring in another post)

The Elite Four is something Geeta admittedly hasn't put much thought into: her main focus was on redoing the administrative side of the league and ensuring the gyms were generating enough money to function + helping the towns they were in. The Elite Four, in her mind, were an afterthought, especially since she stripped them of their political power and distributed that power amongst regular office staff. She uncoupled politics from battling in the upper spheres of the league, allowing for more concentrated and specialized attention to issues so the Elite Four could just battle

In the new league, the Elite Four isn't a council of politicians, just people who test the strength of trainers looking to be champion-- every current Elite Four member is an employee in another sector working the job for a bonus (except for Poppy-- her parents are accountants and she ended up in the position as a joke that went a liiiiittle too far). In the future, the Elite Four and Top Champion might be dedicated battlers rather than a side hustle, but Paldea doesn't have the talent nor money for that at the moment

In terms of economics, Geeta decided to set an inflation-adjusted salary rate for each position that was viewable by the public and that couldn't be changed without a public vote in the hopes this would limit corruption. She also redid the League Points system— it used to be how employees were paid, but now it’s mostly for trainers, allowing the league to subsidize common trainer goods and make things easier to buy (all employees are paid with regular money). Paldea doesn’t have designated trainer routes like other regions and cash is far easier to mug than digital currency, so trainers are encouraged to use LP as a precaution so they don’t get robbed while in the Paldean wilds. However because the LP system isn’t very popular and NOT secure, Geeta is debating phasing it out

In the new system, gyms operate mostly on their own, so the central administrative stuff (aka everything that happens in the league building by the academy as well as E4 salaries and whatnot) gets their money from returns on investments— mostly from Tera Orbs. Fees from defeating trainers also helps, but Geeta made sure not to tie it to anyone’s salaries so that they wouldn’t thrash trainers for money, as encouraging them is the whole point of the challenge. Side note about Tera Orbs: once the league got the patent, Geeta didn’t think twice about the professors, being far too busy with Everything Else to think about her old business partner. Not keeping an eye on them is one of her greatest regrets

In terms of future plans, Geeta has already implemented checks and balances on every position but her own. When she’s confident in how the League is progressing and is sure the system won’t fall back into corruption, she plans on turning her own position to an elected one. Geeta isn’t stupid, she knows that everyone hates her and will lose her position as soon as she puts proper checks and balances on it, so she’s waiting until she’s confident in the League’s system to let the rest of the league get rid of her. By that point, she hopes that the League will be organized, financially stable, and balanced enough so that it can run smoothly long after she’s gone. Also, the league is likely to enter back into international batting conferences by the end of the decade, since there’s a LOT of up and coming battling talent that can make Paldea proud (and hopefully bring enough positive attention and money back to the region so they can actually make the league profitable)

To me Paldea’s league always felt like it was in a transition period, building itself from the ground up again. We happen to see it right at the middle, just before it’s really up to a properly functioning and self-sustaining entity. I don’t really have a closer for this but if u read all the way here I’m very flattered and apologize for being a lil delusional about this :)