#theyre an important part of the ecosystem around here

[pyrriax]

my fav freak girl

i was going to put the other alts under the cut but instead you get a link because i am NOT figuring this out again

[bovineblogger]

I think it’s really cute to see cows by the side of the road when driving, but it also makes me sad to think they might be eaten. How can you tell dairy cows from beef cows? Is there a difference? Is there any other reason to raise cows besides food?

i could spend some time teaching you guys about different beef and dairy breeds, but i think the underlying concern here is about beef farming if im correct! if im not, let me know and i can write up a post about beef and dairy breeds, because i do love talking about them too hehe.

its completely normal and human to be upset at the thought of an animal dying, death is an ugly thing to a lot of people you know? i think its in our nature not to want animals to suffer. but its important to realize that everywhere in the world animals are there to be eaten by other animals. the ecosystem, the cycle of life, whatever you wanna call it.

in the wild, bovines are mostly picked off by predators when they're young and unable to defend themselves! an animal can be killed and eaten at any point, and if they get sick or injured thats often fatal for them. in captivity, cattle and other bovines get to live to adulthood happy and healthy and surrounded by friends! they get free food n water, free medical care, and they get to sit in a big field with all their buddies. we care for them and love them for their entire lives, and at our hands they die quickly and painlessly. and then we eat them. its a symbiotic relationship.

to an outsider the industry can seem 2 to be all death bc thats the only part we know about. but its so much more than that! farmers dedicate their whole lives to their animals. they raise them, feed them, tend them when theyre sick, give them space to run around, make sure theyre not too hot or cold and that their water troughs are clean... for whole lifetimes! over and over and over, farming is about life. we feed them and they feed us. its beautiful. genuinely.

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[ghostfiish]

A kinda peachy pink color, like salmon

NODS AGGRESSIVELY

[teethands]

FF HEADCANON LIST

CRACKS KNUCKLES these are all imported from google docs bc thats where ive been keeping all my thoughts :] im not sure if theres any repeat HCs in here and im sorry if someones got to me before i have but these all came from my own brain !!! these are all very miscellaneous HCs but they generally revolve around vivosaurs and revival. some of them are rather macabre so a solid CW warning here for mentions of dinosaur body horror and death. ALSO SPOILERS FOR FOSSIL FIGHTERS 1 AND 2 BUT MOSTLY 2 LETS GO

modern boneysaurs/zombiesaurs

i think it is entirely possible to replicate a boney/zombiesaur outside of whatever sorcery zongazonga used to resurrect them in the first place. i think its relatively well known undead vivosaurs are a direct result of ZZ and his ancient tournament, and although zombiesaurs are usually claimed to be used in such tournaments most often, i think boneysaurs are just a variant of that but where less used due to weakness and general incompatibility. theyre all undead vivosaurs. thats it. on to the meat of this headcanon, boney/zombiesaur resurrection: i think zombiesaurs could be the result of attempting to revive a deceased vivosaur, while boneysaurs might be caused by man or machine malfunction while reviving a fossil. i think this might be an interchangeable effect: zombiesaurs might emerge from resurrections, and boneysaurs might emerge from revivals, although altogether i think this entire phenomenon is extremely rare. fossil revival goes entirely against the laws of nature and thus, nature must step in at some points to attempt to stop the process, although common fossil park high-tech machinery probably stops most instances like this from happening. boneysaurs emerging from failed revivals are almost always the cause of very poor cleaning, (maybe attempting to revive a heavily damaged, failed fossil head?) or outdated/unkempt fossil revival machinery. boney/zombiesaurs were so common in ZZ’s time because of such poor methods of revival. at some point during a “doomed” fossil revival, the skin and flesh of the vivosaur its supposed to resemble never quite “renders” in. the skin is registered and stitched together, but only holds the bones in place with an unknown black substance, leaving it void black in the same way a texture in a video game may just fail to load. presumably boneysaurs are almost always immediately dead in the revival chamber after the process is over due to lack of functioning organs, skin, etc, without some kind of support or magic. or maybe they are magic- every bad unnatural part of a revival machine fused into one being, and thats what allows them to live on. on the other hand, this could mean any type of boneysaur could emerge from any dinosaur- pterosaurs, therizinosaurs, raptors, maybe- maybe- just a thought, maybe even super revival vivosaurs could have this effect happen too. so, so rarely though. so rarely, its probably never even happened before in recorded vivosaur revival history. 

as for zombiesaurs- this phenomenon could happen when a recently deceased vivosaur is attempted revival. recently deceased, as in, undecayed flesh-still-in-tact. i imagine this happens much more often than boneysaurs- although, i dont think many people are trying to revive dead vivosaurs.

zombiesaurs, fresh from the revival chamber, are almost always damned and in pain, and serve as a reminder to fighters that the laws of nature can only be twisted so far, and they are best be put down. presumably no fossil cleaning facilities will allow a fighter to attempt to revive a dead vivosaur due to the danger and the frightening, disturbing nature of zombiesaurs. fossil damage + neon goo every fighter has encountered the bright purple (green in the OG FF) substance that appears during cleaning when a fossil is too damaged in one area. this material wouldnt be produced from the fossil itself, but rather generated by the fossil cleaning machinery when it detects damage within the bone, kinda like a 3D printer. this is why fossil cleaning is so meticulous, and why it has to be done in such specific conditions with heavy surveillance and a tight time limit. this prevents the vivosaur from having broken bones when it is revived- it is a bright, obvious substance, and it feels much like a warm, firm jelly with a hard, synthetic core that sews bones together. maybe its different in other regions, explaining the color difference amongst games. it is almost completely unnoticeable when the vivosaur is revived, nearly perfectly mimicking bone and flesh to prevent issues later on in the vivosaurs life. as good of a bone mimic as it might be, i think a very heavily damaged bone would still be a weak point during battle or an area of pain or irritation for the vivosaur. that is why it is best to clean your fossils as well as you can. maybe this goo is designed to be replaced with real bone by the vivosaurs body later in life, but i have yet to think about that too much. perhaps its soft enough to be destroyed and replaced by the body’s natural healing functions, but hard enough to act as bone? And perhaps thats why its best to let your vivosaur rank up (rest+heal) before taking them to battle. UNRELATED HEADCANON- GUHNASH COULD HAVE HAD A COOLER DESIGN. I DONT LIKE HIM HE LOOKS LIKE A TADPOLE. i have a vision in mind for a cooler guhnash redesign- i like the snake-ish look, but maybe he could be like. an infinitely long being. nobody knows where he starts or ends. a head at the front of an infinitely massive body that consumes everything, and nobody knows where the eaten planets goes. kinda like a jörmungandr-like being. idk i just think a “planet eater” with living brains should be more eldritch and god-like and mysterious. ANYWAYS vivosaur ecosystems? there is literally no way a vivo ecosystem wouldnt form. NO WAY. so many dinosaurs and seeing how OFTEN they are abandoned- refer to the opening scene of fossil fighters champions- it would not be any surprise feral vivosaurs wouldnt breed and form small ecosystems among themselves and around fossil parks. its not an uncommon sight to see pterosaurs flying overhead or sauropods munching on trees, although id bet theropods and more dangerous vivosaurs would have teams of park rangers to keep them under control. refer once again to FFC opening scene. this would explain the seemingly infinite amount of fossils in the dig sites, how you can find vivosaurs in only specific areas- although thats leading into a rather dark topic and i would rather not talk about it right now LOL i will leave that open to interpretation. jurassic park knock off SOME OTHER LITTLE MISC HCS TOO SHORT TO WRITE ENTIRE TOPICS ABOUT: because ZZ is a mix of boneysaur and zombiesaur and hes also an ancient sorcerer he smells fucking rank. so fucking bad. hes got maggots and shit hes only held together by magic but somehow he kicks ass. but hes fucking stinky so at what cost boneysaurs have no concept of feelings and arent really desirable as vivos and zombiesaurs only know rage and pain, also making them undesirable, for very very good reasons. they are taboo to talk about among fighters but most of the time they are only myths because of how rare they are feral vivosaurs dont have medals, only revived vivos do. that means they are standalone animals and they are also generally undesirable for fighters but they can still be tamed, if one wishes. theres way, WAY more fossil parks and dig sites than shown in the games. fossil battling is as well known and used as much as people love music and video games in the fossil fighters universe. vivosaurs are an essential part of society, although there is often controversy on the ethics of fossil battles and revival. pokemon knock off alright thats all i feel like typing for now thanks for reading this far lads. i love dinossuars. i wanna write some things on dinaurians but maybe later after ive introduced saar here :)

[otterplusharchive]

good morning everyone i love u all and i hope youre all safe and feeling okay so far today!! i had to wake up extra early this morning and on my way out of the forest i saw a small family of deer that briefly looked at me before running off into the woods. any time i see deer like that im struck by how much i love them, theyre beautiful creatures and im grateful to share a home with them and i love watching the little families of deer grow. i think its important to take time to observe the life around us and the world around us that we may not otherwise take into thought, to appreciate the parts of our world that make up the bigger picture. we are all connected, our lives are connected to the lives of the creatures and plants in our world and theres something truly beautiful about being connected to everything in our ecosystem. even when you feel like youre completely alone you are still loved and still important, you have more impact on people and the world around you than you may realize and you and your life always matter. youre important and irreplacable, you deserve to feel valued and appreciated by the people in your life and youre already doing enough. i really hope that today is going to be good to you all and that youre all going to find moments of happiness today, please be kind to yourselves and to those around you and know that you arent alone. if you need anything im here as always and i care

[tumblunni]

Ah, here’s the pillowsnake! It’s called Rashab, I totally forgot!

beware, like 40 paragraphs of long rambling about the game below:

I never realized how the naming schemes actually work. All the different variants of a particular genus share a name ending- Nushab is the weird 8 shaped long neck snake, Rashab is the super rectangular chubby one, and Mukshab is the sticklike one that just looks like a real snake but with the trademark weird head that this monster has. And then the sub-breeds of each sub-breed have a totally different naming scheme! Only the main Rashab is Rashab, the other three elementals are all something-moaj instead. And Nushabs are something-oots, and Mukshabs are something-mines. Its an interesting way to do it, though it’s pretty hard to actually figure any of it out ingame when all the pure sub-breed forms only appear as enemies and you’re gonna be fusing your own variations for your party. I think pretty much anything fuses well with the snakes, they look awesome with any texture! And when they fuse with bugs they can actually gain lil wings and look like Dunsparce!

OH OH OH and ALSO I love how monsters in this game actually grow up! Like, they dont evolve, they just grow up like actual animals! They have very very subtle model changes in size for the first 20 or 30 levels, to symbolise reaching maturity. Its hard to even notice it happening unless you compare save files! And often you’ll be fusing monsters rather than keeping them in your party for a long time anyway. So I’m glad that the Shabs have some of the more noticeable changes! Their baby selves start off looking a lot more similar, and they only gain their giant variation in body shapes when they’ve matured. (Though you can still tell what one its gonna become)

OH AND ALSO ALSO The shabs look even cuter in the concept art, yo!!! Ingame it maybe loses a bit of the appeal cos of the low resolution and how everything is textures rather than model detail. (A necessity considering how the fusion system works, yknow?) On the concept art their faces look less like an eyeless snake with dot patterns, and more like a snake with eight buglike eyes. ITS REALLY CUTE!! Thats why I said they look like leeches! Cos they have the super light coloured undersides and the three-pronged jaw and the bug eyes! They’re scaly big leeches! they’re leechly small snakes! THEYRE THE BEST OF MY TWO FAVOURITE LONG ANIMALS!!!!

OH AND its good worldbuilding but I’M SAD The shabs The shabs get the honor of being in the worldbuilding in A SAD WAY The basic MP restoration item is called a Shab Liquer :( Yeah, its nice to know that they thought about how these magical monsters might be a part of everyday life even outside of a battle setting. But its sad to think about how they’re killed and used in medicine! And you have to use hundreds of this medicine, there’s no way to survive without MP restores! I DONT WANNA MAKE MY SNAKE FRIEND A CANNIBAL Tho I do appreciate how the name Shab Liquer just implies a lot of worldbuilding on its own. Like, you don’t just know that they make a medicine from the snakes, its implied its quite literally a snake oil. Like, does that mean snake oil is an idiom for a totally reliable and true thing in this universe? And Liquer is just a rather archaic and fancy way to phrase it, it fits very well with the setting! But seriously WHY DO I HAVE TO FEED MY SNAKE BABY DEAD SNAKE BABIES TO KEEP THEM ALIVE

OH OH OH AND that reminds me of another Fucked Up aspect of the worldbuilding! Your most reliable way of gaining money in this game is selling the monsters you catch. Which is dumb and impractical anyway cos I mean YOU WANNA FUSE THEM ALL!! And you get more money from selling your ones that you actually already fused and levelled up, like NO WAY am I doing that! I love them!! Even if I’m not using them, I’m just gonna keep them at home with Mahbu! NO MAKE ME SELL MY SNEKS But the REALLY FUCKED UP PART is that its explicitely said that by selling them you are killing the monsters.

...Okay so.. this kinda needs some explanation of more of the worldbuilding first...

The way you catch monsters in this game is by using magical cocoons, hence the name of the story. Monsters are meant to be like spiritual creatures, they’re called Minions cos they’re literally the minions of this setting’s deity, Elrihm. The religion of this culture states that humanity (or ‘The Beasts Of Knowledge’) committed a great sin in the past. We were god’s attempt to grant free will and intelligence to animals, but we used it to do evil and he decided the whole species was beyond saving because of the actions of a few. So he created these monsters/demons/avenging angels in snake form, and their mission in life is to destroy all of humanity so that the world can be reset. Which is why minions attack humans on sight, yet coexist perfectly peacefully with animals and plants in the forest. So like... humanity obviously Did Not Want to all die for the sins of one or two dumb kings, yknow? We stubbornly persist! We hold out our vanguard and keep our little towns amidst the Doom Forests, living life as normal with just the Doom Forests being a thing in the background, yeah. Defending against occasional attacks of minions banding together into swarms and chewing on the walls a little, but yeah, no biggie. And sometimes one of them manages to get in and eat some of our garbage or something. People live normally in these fortified wall villages, and the religion still worships Elrihm, and revolves around begging his forgiveness and trying to prove that humanity deserves to live. And never advancing too far with industrialism. lest we be punished again! And I mean, maybe that actually IS how everything happened, or maybe its just a story and Minions have always existed as a natural part of the ecosystem and they’re not evil things destined to destroy us or whatever. Its ambiguous! Even when you get to see Elrihm’s avatar at the end of the game, it’s just a big magical tree that the monsters come from, you never get any idea if it’s sentient and you’re not able to ask it if our legends have the right idea about it’s role as god. (Or if its gender is actually male, or if it even has one XD)

Anyway, that’s the legend of where the monsters come from, and it kinda explains why people might be a bit callous towards them, if they can be tamed as cute friends but also the wild ones are such a big threat to civilization. And if mythology says their threat to civilization is the natural order of existance, that they exist to kill us under orders of a god who abandoned us centuries ago... But yeah! Anyway! There’s a bloodline of magical people called the Nagi who have the power to purify the anger out of minions and make them friends. And the game has a cool way of keeping the usual mons show aspect of ‘catch a monster inside a certain item that has a limited amount of uses’, while making it fit with this ancient times mythological setting! Instead of the pokeball equivelant being some sort of manmade machine, it’s... cocoons! Since Minions are spiritual creatures, they can be like.. de-manifested and have their souls stored, to be re-summoned later. And for whatever reason, the way the magic works is that their souls have to be contained in cocoons. It’s... actually never fully explained? Where do the cocoons come from? Is it like you take any cocoon from a regular bug, and you seal the monster soul inside? But how would you even get an EMPTY cocoon? Is there a special bug in this universe that makes cocoons not for metamorphosis? or do you like.. fuse the soul with the bug inside the cocoon, and thats why all the monsters in this game are inspired by bugs? But they have the same bug-inspired designs even when you find them in the wild before catching them. So is it like the Nagi magic can create magical cocoons and you use those? or is it like you dont actually carry the empty cocoons, you carry something or other that turns into cocoons when a monster is sealed inside it? the catching animation is very vague, the protagonist is only holding his magic flute and a nebulous white glow in his hand. Then the cocoon forms around the monster and its sucked into his hand... ANYWAY I’M GOING OFFTOPIC SORRY! The point is that Nagi people can purify minions into friends, fuse minions into new powerful forms and (probably?) create the magic cocoons that can catch them in the first place. But it doesn’t mean that Nagi people are actually equipped to fight and catch the monsters themselves! the usual setup is a married couple where the Nagi can stay at home and focus entirely on their magic, and the regular human partner learns warrior arts and catches the monsters for them. Also catching monsters requires magic music, so you need to be a damn good bard too! I liked that they even showed that different Cocoon Masters (official name for peeps like the protag) can use whatever instruments fit best with their soul. The protagonist has an ocarina and [important endgame character] has a fancy lute guitar thing? I wish the game had told me what those are called... I think a name for an ancient japanese string instrument is a shamisen but i have NO IDEA if the one shown ingame is actually that or there are more different ones..? I mean its only shown in cutscnes so there’s no good ref image for it- I’M GOING OFFTOPIC AGAIN Anywaaaaaayyyy, its also in the worldbuilding that (for some reason) Nagi men are unable to use magic, and thats why the mages are always the wives and the warriors are always the husbands. Its interesting how this mythology is kinda presented as an opposite of adam and eve, too! Men who try and use magic are sinful and will be punished for stepping out of their assigned roles by becoming demons. Its the sad story of the protagonist’s parents, alas! His mother was the previous Nagi priestess of the village, but her husband committed the ultimate sin and then all we know is that his corrupted self fled into the forest and was never seen again. And everyone marks you as a failure for what your father did, so becoming the new cocoon master is quite hard at first. And its SUPER DUPER SAD cos your dad did it because performing minion purification is painful for the Nagi, and he couldn’t bear to see his wife hurting herself for his sake. So even though he knew the risks, one day he just tried to purify his minions himself so she could get some rest. And.. like.. ultitmately it did work. Cos she could never bear to remarry, and thus the village didnt have another cocoon master until their son grew old enough to marry. At least he succeeded in letting his wife never have to do magic again, even if it was because she stopped doing it out of grief for him.. :(

ANYWAY Now i’ve explained that worldbuilding and why it is cool and awesome and sad, I can explain the worldbuilding of a random gameplay element and why it is also cool and sad! So yeah, like I said before LONG TANGEANTS... The only really reliable way to make money in the game is to sell your monsters. And it makes me feel SO BAD! Cos the game very much outright tells you that selling them is killing them. And I guess it makes sense cos I mean, only Nagi wife-husband pairs can actually summon the monsters, there’d be no point trying to sell living ones to anyone else. So, since minions are sealed inside cocoons, in order to sell them you spin their cocoons into silk thread. This village’s primary export is weaving, so you can sell these silk spools to the big ol building of spinning wheel people and make money to keep going on your journey. Apparantly silk infused with monster souls is higher quality and can grant various effects and stuff, hence its value. Its a shame they didnt make a crafting system with this! Instead its just a standard ‘more powerful weapons and armours appear at the shop as the plot advances, for no real reason’. I mean, wouldnt it have been cool if you could add your monsters’s particular resistances to your main character’s armour? i would feel less sad about betraying them so utterly if they could protect me from beyond the grave. BECAUSE SERIOUSLY THIS IS SO FUCKED UP Seriously! These monsters faithfully served you! You purified them of their anger against humans, and instead of taking that opportunity to love them and show them the good sides of humanity, you just kill them! You kill them after they gained free will! You specifically HAVE to give them free will in order to kill them! Poor babies... I mean seriously I know that animals have to die to provide humans with food and materials and stuff, this is just how society works. But there’s something so much more viscerally terrifying about imagining taking an animal and literally weaving its SOUL into thread, then wearing it! There’s so many metaphysical questions that need to be answered before you can even figure out how much pain they would experience! And like.. god.. even the way they do the gameplay is so.. even more sad. Like, you can’t just hand the monster to someone else and its implied that they kill them. You have to hit an actual button to turn it into a sellable item. You have to cull it yourself. The death blow is on your hands, even if someone else weaves its dead soul into a nice scarf... So yeah, I pretty much always deliberately play ‘hard mode’ on this game, and refuse to make any damn money. Well, I mean, you can still find items in forests and sell them, but its infinately harder that way. You really are supposed to be selling your monsters to progress. I SAY NO! Big ol giant interface option sitting there on the menu unused forever. I love my sneks. You will not take them!!!

Oh but MAN I do really like the moral ambiguity of this worldbuilding, aaaaa!! The whole setting is so.. like.. realistic. There’s the dark realities of life in an ancient times setting. They take care to establish how the society functions and what their main trading export is, and what role monsters play in a non-battley setting! And seriously even the lil Shab Liquer thing! The casual implication that other villages might have different industries with their captured monsters, and someone somewhere out there found a way to make this medicine out of snakes. it manages to imply a wider world even as you’re confined to this one single village and the long forest that divides it away from every other human settlement. Plus.. like.. I really like the ambiguity it gives to HUMANITY. That seems like the MOST realistic of anything! Seriously, the game starts off establishing that in mythology humans are said to be evil, that the creation myth says we’re living in a post-fall society as the corrupted form of what true humanity should actually be, that god has abandoned us and we follow religion because we have to prove ourselves good enough to regain our former status. Like.. seriously, its refreshing compared to how boring and samey a lot of fictional religions are! They’re often just copies of existing religions, or of the general most popular religion template of There Was One Or Two Creator Gods And They Made Humans And Humans Are Destined Important And Animals Were Made To Serve Us. Instead in this game humanity’s mistreatment of animals and the environment is our absolute sin, and the definition of holiness is to be more similar to animals. And big scary demon monsters are GOD’S HOLY CREATIONS, SENT TO PUNISH US! No stereotypes here! No corner-cutting bullshit stolen from real life religions! And then like.. its nice how ambiguous it makes humanity nowadays, even beyond the ambiguity of the mythology and history. Humanity is trying to redeem itself, humanity is following this religion worshipping the god that cast them down for being corrupted. But still, it shows that some people believe in this doctrine, and some people believe that the things that are ‘corrupt’ about us are actually good. Cos it shows how some people believe that like.. ALL progress is sinful, any sort of machine is sinful, any attempt to improve society or change on what’s traditional. And it shows how some people who believe this are the bad guys, and some people believe this in a way that actually makes sense. And similarly, some people who follow the traditional ways are good- like Mahbu and her grandma. But then there’s the village chief who just follows religion blindly and doesnt seem to actually understand what’s morally correct at all, he’s just like ‘if I do what I’m told, I’ll be freed!’ instead of getting the goddamn lesson. And he tries to pretend to be a reasonable authority figure at first but then he gets more and more corrupt as the game goes on. He’s the representation of how forcing our two heroes into an arranged marriage is a morally ambiguous thing, even though they actually were in love and would have got hitched anyway. They’re still way too young to get this destiny of being the only ones who can save the village, AND keep the economy alive by spinning poor lil monsters into silk! And then he keeps giving you more and more orders, and they go from the actual duties of a cocoon master into just fullfilling the chief’s own greed and paranoia. And its interesting that him and the vizier lady who represents ‘lets abandon the rules and do everything for the benefit of humanity’ actually end up teaming up in the end and becoming even more goddamn corrupt together. Excessive progress and excessive stagnancy are both evil, and honestly they both have very similar selfish motives! Tho I do think the only problem is that they put a bit too much emphasis on this whole ‘these two looked like reasonable authority figures but were really evil’ thing, and don’t have enough good people in the town representing the other side. So its harder to care about saving this place when its literally just your wife and your mom who represent the goodness of the human race. And like.. technically I dont want the asshole lil kid to die, cos even though he’s a jerk he’s too young to be 100% responsible for his own actions. Even if I dont like him as a person, I’d still rather wanna take him away from this trash town and hope he can get raised by better people...

But seriously goddamn THOSE FUCKIN ASSHOLE CHIEFTAIN AND VIZIER PEOPLE!! Even after me and mahbu just saved the city from a deadly disease, after like 12 hours of gameplay and three forests worth of fighting for my life against monsters, where I’m expected to have sacrificed like 30 monsters to feed their stupid fuckin silk industry, even after ALL THAT they show no gratitude! The opposite of gratitude! The chief is still paranoid of the Nagi people for being foreigners, even though they dedicate their whole damn life to leaving their families and going on journeys to settle down in different cities and give their power to protect un-magic humans. And they’ve been doing this for all of history despite persecution, and like.. they lost their home and now the only ones who exist are the nomads and various half-nagi children who’ve never seen anyone of their own race before and are losing all the culture. Mahbu is an orphan who was just found by her ‘grandma’ and raised here, the only other Nagi in the village are the protagonist’s mum and technically the protagonist is half Nagi. (Tho like I said, the worldbuilding is that men cant use the magic, so protagonist is classified as a regular human and would just pass it on if he had a daughter.) So seriously Mahbu is a GODDAMN ORPHAN who was raised here all alone and hated by the village even as a kid! And the protagonist was her only childhood friend cos he could understand the feeling of being hated for having this blood, so no wonder they ended up falling in love. And then their love is at risk cos they were forced into this political marriage when they’re really young, and now have to risk dying everyday to protect this town that still hates them. And they work so hard to prove they don’t deserve to be hated, they don’t even think ‘the town is assholes’, they think ‘this is my home and i love it and it must be my fault everyone hates me so i have to work harder’. And the game doesn’t give you any option to do otherwise!

And it progresses even worse than just not getting gratitude! After you save the village from the disease, the evil chief and vizier wreck the day that you just saved, by pulling their goddamn bullshit evil plan! The chief decides to cut down the god-tree because of his paranoia, the vizier decides to cut down the god-tree because of her greed. And like... GAHHHH but its SO GOOD cos its all moral ambiguity still! The evil duo are definately evil, but they get to be evil for different reasons. They represent the two darkest sides of humanity, and no matter how much you represent the light of the world you cannot change them just by passively obeying them and hoping they’ll react like goddamn rational people! But you can understand why the masses might be tricked into following them, yknow? Humanity has been living in this tough life for as long as human memory, and mythology says that we’re being punished for the sins of our ancestors and we’re just BORN EVIL even though we weren’t the ones who did that shit. So you have good reasons to be angry against god, even if the evil duo DONT have good reasons, and they’re not doing something that will actually help.

Anyway so yeah thusly they trick mahbu and the protagonist into helping them trap the god-tree so they can cut it down. Again its a lil annoying that the game doesn’t give you a choice, though! And they dont even bother writing it a bit more ambiguous so the player could be fooled too, its pretty damn obvious you’re being tricked yet the only way to progress the game is to keep going. So you accidentally end up casting the evil magic on the god-tree and its like HOLY SHIT NO! And as you run back to the town you cant get back in time to stop anything, and you just get to see cutscenes of what’s happening while you’re gone. The evil duo cross the line EVEN FURTHER by MURDERING MAHBU’S GRANDMA! Mahbu’s grandma is the BEST CHARACTER, you fucking fuckface! She was such a nice helpful mentor and one of the only people who genuinely treated you two like human beings even though she wasn’t related to you. And she tries to stop the evil duo from doing their evil plan, she tries to reason with them, and she even gets desperate enough to try and reason with them within their own logic. Even if they’re sacriligious and selfish enough to not care that they’re trying to kill god for personal gain, they should at least understand that their plan WON’T FUCKIN WORK, and they’re just gonna bring god’s wrath and ruin humanity’s only chance at redemption! You’re gonna lose all your goddamn money and power if you get bitchslapped by the heavens, dumbass! AND you;ll kill the rest of us too, who never did anything to deserve it! And they ignore all her attempts to be reasonable, and ritually sacrifice her to try and save their own asses once their stupid attempt to kill god backfires. FUCK YOU TWO, SERIOUSLY!

And then something I really like is the revelation of grandma’s backstory! Cos seriously, who exactly was this mysterious woman who found this orphan and rescued her from the forest? She wasn’t a citizen of this town, she just stayed here to raise Mahbu once the town residents acted like assholes and tried to kick the poor kid back out. It turns out that grandma is actually the mortal incarnation of one of the minor deities! She’s basically this world’s psychopomp. The evil duo were actually RIGHT when they said she was a demon in disguise, but NOT when they thought that she was the evil one and they were good. The psychopomp figure of this mythology is hated, but it seems to be that she gained that reputation because she disobeys Elrihm and tries to help humans. She saved this Nagi girl from dying like the rest of her people, and even bound herself in human form in order to try and redeem this town of jackasses. And even though she was part of their village for so long and did nothing but try and protect them, they still ultimately betrayed her... And it was a very vague plot element that was only casually mentioned here cos its Endgame Time and we have to move very fast now. But it was implied that the chief and vizier are the reincarnations of the original evil king and evil sorcerer who did the same sinful nonsense all those centuries ago to get humanity kicked out of god’s domain in the first place. I dunno if its just meant to be that they’re naturally stuck in a cycle of reincarnation as punishment for their sins? But I always liked to interpret it that psychopomp grandma chose to never take their souls, because no matter what they do to her she still believes that one day they might be able to be redeemed in their next life. I feel like maybe she’s gambling with god, she’s keeping humanity alive by holding this one last wager to prove that they’re worth saving...

And then spoily endgame stuff happens and ultimately the protagonist fullfills some ancient prophecy and calms god and etc and MAKES UP FOR THE BULLSHIT ADULTS RUINING ALL THE SHIT, SERIOUSLY And seriously i haaaate how abrupt and rushed the ending is, and how that in this abrupt rushed ending they had time to show that the trash town comes back to life but not show that Mahbu does! You’re told beforehand that she will, but like.. with how many times you get lied to in this game, it would have been nice to get some damn confirmation in the end. Plus seriously, I cant even be happy seeing the town come back! Thats not a very climactic ending! Seeing protagonist smooch his poor long-suffering girlfriend would be way better! Seriously SERIOUSLY everyone else fuckin died cos of their own fuckin fault cos they MURDERED A GRANDMA my nice sweet ETERNAL GRANDMA, the ANCIENT DEITY OF ALL GRANDMAS, the fuckin DEATH GOD SATAN FIGURE WHO SACRIFICED HERSELF TO BECOME A GRANDMA AND PROTECT US AND THEN THEY KILLED HER, AAAAA they fuckin deserved to all die and be frozen in stone unable to even find peace But Mahbu’s life was instead in danger because she used too much magic purifying monsters IN ORDER TO SAVE THE DAMN TRASH TOWN And after all that they had the goddamn gall to be ungrateful and just cause a second disaster and ask us to fix it again! THAT is why mahbu was gonna die! Because she was a good person who listened to your bullshit and tried to save you, and loved me, and just SERIOUSLY SO MANY EMOTIONS you repayed her by KILLING HER GRANDMA

And i mean seriously her form of death was quite literally death from being TOO HOLY AND MORAL. She wasn’t strictly ‘dying’, it was more like a death of personality, I guess? Becoming something holy and leaving this world, when she didnt want to leave you. Everyone called the painful Nagi markings ‘cursed’ and shamed her for it and made her cover them up so their poor goddamn eyes wouldnt be offended by having to look at them. And poor mahbu was worried her goddamn love of her life would be disgusted with her if he saw! So it was like.. simultaneously cathartic and sad to learn that tradition was wrong in this respect. That it was still a BAD THING, but it was holy markings instead of a curse. Nagi priests who succum to the ‘curse’ are just shedding their humanity as a reward for their service, because from Elrihm’s perspective this is a good thing. So Mahbu becomes a tiny fairy angel type Minion, and then its just sad and intense because soon she’ll lose the ability to speak and forget about you and grandma :( So you have to seal her inside a cocoon in order to halt the spread of the holy markings, and can only let her out to talk to her for very short amounts of time in case it starts up again. And then you have to face the gauntlet of the penultimate dungeon alone without the ability to fuse monsters, until you get through it and find the original Nagi hometown whose demise was greatly exaggerated. And then nobody there has any time for character development cos its endgame time, but seriously it was thematically really damn cathartic to walk through that door and see the place! And meet this actual good guy chieftain who actually finally answers some goddamn questions and helps you! Even if its super sad to have to do fusion with these new stranger shopkeeper twins, instead of the wife you’ve grown to love. And also SERIOUSLY just imagine how fuckin atmospheric that whole penultimate dungeon would have been if the player character got to have a voice! It was all atmospheric to me cos I got really into it and imagined it, but I wish it coulda been canon, yknow? I’m just imagining the poor protagonist dude fighting through this horrifying gauntlet all alone with his final team of monsters, struggling to keep up without any of the magical reinforcement they usually get, unable to restock the last few items he has left in his bag. Fuckin DESPERATE HORROR, fuckin having to sleep overnight in the forest for the first time, fuckin terrified. Fuckin.. clinging to the soul of his wife sealed in a cocoon, keeping it safe against all costs, fuckin wakes up in the middle of the night and just how terrified he’d be that he can’t find her, until he remembers what happens T_T And then like.. imagine him summoning her and only getting a few minutes to hold her tiny fragile fairy self in the palm of his hands, and strain to hear her quiet voice as it gets fainter and fainter, and she struggles to remember herself. Thats somehow EVEN SADDER than if you could actually use monster-Mahbu in your party to fight alongside you! (tho that would have been AWESOME) I felt so bad that after all the horror these two had to go through, we never get to see the happy ending they earned, and instead the game wastes time showing the trash town coming back and just... GAHHH

oh and also that is THE ONLY THING about the sequel that i agree is bad! I liked the sequel a lot! And.. I mean.. in theory its a very interesting concept to have the protagonist of the last game be this sadman morally ambiguous broken mentor man. But seriously fuckin hell give the man a break! They literally say that he got blessed/cursed with immortality cos he fullfilled the prophecy in the first game, so Mahbu died long ago and he desperately wants to die too. Thats such a fuckin sick thing to do to your protagonist! And I mean, he doesnt even look like the same person anymore, and so much about the gameplay and the setting and etc are wildly different so it doesnt seem like the same world in th future, why even bother trying to claim its the same world in the future... I mean even.. monsters come from eggs instead of cocoons now, and you cant catch them or merge them, only buy them in stores! Shoulda just made it a separate game and let it stand on its own merits, it would have actually succeeded. I love all the characters in JC2, there’s no problem of ‘man i dont wanna save these guys’, the only character I dont like is fuckin... SADMAN FORMER PROTAGONIST WHO WANTS TO DIE At least in the ending after spoily stuff he gets to pass away. But lets just say the spoily stuff spits on the poor man’s legacy even more, sheesh...

ANYWAY I FEEL A LOT OF EMOTIONS FOR PROTAGONIST AND MAHBU And this game has great worldbuilding and i love it even if the ending is rushed and you’re forced to fall for stupid villain assholes’s stupid tricks ok end of bunni’s rambling

[kadobeclothing]

7 Marketing Experts Share What They’re Focusing on in 2020

From SEO and analytics to content and display, the marketing industry is one of the most rapidly changing landscapes this year — and 2020 will be no different.

Working closely with marketing leaders as president and co-founder of Share Your Genius, I’ve seen firsthand the rapid development of this industry, and one of the most prominent areas of growth is a marketer’s bread and butter: content. Marketing wants to lean into an experience people want, which is why teams are constantly exploring new avenues to connect with their buyers. Content should be delivered in the way their audience wants to consume it, which is why marketers will focus on creating brand content that serves people through a combination of audio and video in 2020. That said, content is just one of the many marketing pillars — and I’m not the only one with ideas about where our industry is headed. As marketers finalize their budgets and prepare their strategies for 2020, we’re taking a look at the predictions of several leaders in the marketing space. Ranging from new success metrics to the latest use of AI, here are five things marketing leaders are focusing on in 2020.

6 Things Marketers are Watching in 2020 1. The MQL’s Irrelevance Too often, marketers aren’t working toward a real business objective. Fortunately, marketing will up its strategic presence in the organization in 2020. As companies move toward a flywheel model to create a streamlined customer experience start-to-finish, marketing teams will need to align with sales and service to bring in new leads while maintaining strong relationships with current customers. As a result, the MQL in the traditional sense will be irrelevant, as Gartner predicted in 2017. “We’ve been saddled with questionable metrics like the MQL and a Franken-stack of marketing products that don’t work, so we need to think big picture,” says Latane Conant, CMO of 6sense, an account-based orchestration platform powered by AI. “Next year, siloed marketing goals like MQLs will be irrelevant — instead, marketers will focus their efforts on aligning with overarching company goals to drive value across the board.” 2. Google Crackdowns in Some Industries In 2019, 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. In 2020, we predict this number to increase. And, while Google advertising solutions have benefitted more than 1.3 million businesses, website publishers, and nonprofits, in 2020 marketers may see a shift towards a more organic-first approach, particularly if Google continues to crack down on certain industries as it has with credit repair-related services. “I believe we will see Google continue to crack down on certain advertising industries,” says Russ Jones, Principal Search Scientist at Moz. “The latest target is credit repair-related services, although we have seen the same in the medical and adult industries over Google’s lifetime. When these bans take place, it creates a short-term opportunity for companies to shift advertising dollars to organic. “Those that make this pivot quickly and strongly stand to gain a substantial market share in the long run.”  —  3. Growth of Experiential Marketing In a 2018 global survey of more than 700 business executives by HBR’s Analytic Services, 93% of respondents said their organizations placed a priority on hosting events. In 2020, this will continue to grow. A study by Harris Group found that 72% of millennials (ages 18-34) now prefer to spend money on experiences over products. As consumers prioritize based on experience and ease-of-use (take Uber, Spotify, or Airbnb, for instance), it will become increasingly important for all businesses to focus on high-quality experiences for their consumer. “As more consumers cut the cord to cable, it is becoming harder to reach audiences with traditional brand-building ad campaigns. This is especially true for younger audiences — many of whom are not just cord-cutters but cord-nevers. At the same time, Gen Z and Millennial consumers are prioritizing experiences over ‘stuff.'” “Innovative marketers can take advantage of these trends by shifting marketing focus to live events, which can create direct connections between customers and brands,” says Ben Carlson, co-President and co-Founder of Fizziology, a social insights firm. “Take for example Buffy’s tie-dye tour or Glossier’s string of pop-up shops,” Carlson notes. “In the past, these experiential marketing tactics have been seen as more experimental than other, more trackable forms of advertising. But technology is now letting marketers listen to anonymized conversations at live events via social media to learn about consumer’s opinions, expressed in their native environments. “We believe we will see experiential marketing mature into a regular part of a marketer’s brand-building campaign,” says Carlson. 4. New and Evolving Email Strategies “The email industry is constantly changing, and the frequency of mergers and acquisitions in 2019 rivaled those of 2018,” says Anthony Chiulli, director of product marketing at 250ok, an email analytics and deliverability platform. “Major moves so far this year included Validity purchasing Return Path in May, Mailgun purchasing Mailjet in October, and most recently, Sparkpost acquiring eDataSource, which makes it clear the industry as a whole is booming,” Chiulli says. “Email remains a dominant and powerful digital marketing channel and is constantly evolving and finding new ways to reinvent itself,” Chiulli adds. “I anticipate we have not crested the peak of acquisition activity in the email ecosystem just yet, and will see a steady dose of those seeking further competitive advantages in an aggressive email industry market in 2020.” 5. Artificial Intelligence And Text Recommendations According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Systems Spending Guide, spending on AI systems will reach $97.9 billion in 2023, which is more than two and a half times the $37.5 billion that was spent in 2019. But, while it’s obvious how AI can help in some instances — like security — it can be tricky to note exactly where it will change your marketing strategy. However, early predictions point towards text marketing. “In text marketing, AI plays the role of informing the sender versus being the sender. Businesses will start to receive recommendations from their texting providers about the type of messages to send, which messages are seeing the most engagement, clicks, etc.” “AI will be able to recommend more on the segments and groups from a business database on who reacts better or worse to certain messages, helping them to stop outreach to disinterested parties,” says Mattt Reid, CMO of EZ Texting, a leader in SMS marketing software for business. Reid adds, “However, it is vital for text marketing to keep the human element while leveraging AI to help us have the best communication possible.” Additionally, Crystal King, a Social Media Professor at HubSpot Academy, believes augmented reality will continue to influence social media.  She says, “People are craving to move beyond passive content and be part of the action, and savvy technology companies are looking for ways to make that happen. In 2020 we’re going to see augmented reality making it’s way into more social media efforts — whether that’s more advancement in the vein of Snapchat and Instagram filters, new AR ads available while you are scrolling through your social platforms, or the ability to network and attend live events in interesting ways.” King adds, “We’re already seeing that AR is making a difference for brands like IKEA and Zenni Optical, which give fans the ability to directly and usefully interact with their products virtually. Plan on seeing more brands taking advantage of the power of AR to directly engage their audiences.” 6. Google’s Discover Tool Will Continue to Improve Christina Perricone, a Manager of Pillar and Acquisition Content at HubSpot, believes Google’s Discover tool will continue to improve and serve high-quality, personalized content to users in 2020.    She says, “Google launched Discover in 2017 and has been improving the tool ever since. Discover’s algorithm predicts what users will find interesting based on their search and web history and interactions with Google products, like Google Maps, Chrome, and Google Home. Discover then surfaces personalized content in a mobile feed on the Google homepage based on a user’s interests.”   To optimize for Google’s Discover tool, Perricone suggests you implement the following three strategies: Build topical authority around your topics (cluster model) — Discover surfaces content by topic so the more relevant/useful information you have on a topic, the more likely you are to rank Use large (1200 px), high-quality images since the feed focuses on attractive imagery Create your content in all languages that are relevant to your audience, as users can select their preferred language for each interest. How to Prepare for 2020 and Beyond As companies continue to pivot, adapt, and evolve, the marketing space will only get more competitive. A new year proves a new opportunity for marketing teams to push away from the competition by leading the industry with the most innovative tactics, tools, and technologies. Preparing for these trends will set successful companies apart in 2020. Want to learn more, check out this Ultimate Guide to Marketing Trends in 2020.

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[tumblunni]

Random headcanons about the Qu species cos we never really learn much about them in the game except "they are funnie and cute". But i mean. THEY TOTALLY ARE! So i am love them and think more the thoughts.

* Okay so first off why is it that we see so few of them and all the ones we see are apparantly raised in a family of one elderly mentor and one student with apparantly nothing like a human parental structure? One of the few additional facts we got revealed in supplementary materials is that Quina is 89 in human years but this is considered "young adult" by Qu standards. So i'm assuming they have pretty damn long lifespans! Oh man, Qus are final fantasyverse elves?!?! I mean.. Lives amoungst nature... Mysterious and magical... Dedicates their long life to the pursuit of knowledge...it all adds up o.O theyre just elves if elves were funny instead of majestic! Normal elves do the same thing but with books n magic n archery n shit, seriously they just fuckin did ctrl + f replace everything with cookery terms. I HAVE CRACKED THE CODE, YOU GUYS

* okay sorry where was i LOL! Alright so i was thinking an explanation for Qus being so rare and seemingly not having a nuclear family unit = maybe theyre literally just spawned from nature? Like theyre technically a type of monster, just one thats more intelligent and able to form their own society. They just poof up out of the mist every now and then, and wreak havoc on whatever ecosystem they landed in with their Ultimate Super Adaptation Blue Magic Powers. So Qu Marshes are sorta like orphanage/lookout spots where elder Qus will try and find wandering bebs and invite them into the wider society. Most Qus are constantly nomadic, on the search for new recipes, and only the oldest ones will return to their childhood home and dedicate themselves entirely to teaching le youth.

* Either that or i dunno maybe Qus are like dragons in some kinds of fiction? Yknow the thing where a dragon egg is indestructable and lasts forever and takes a hundred years to hatch. So its rare for a parent to manage to keep ahold of all their kids long enough for them to be born, and most qus just wake up in a random place in god knows where and never find out who theyre blood related to. But their society is built more around these found family chef teacher structures so they dont really feel like they lose anything compared to humans. Also whenever a qu wants to pursue some other hyperfocus aside from cookery, they tend to seek out a human as their mentor/parent. After all, humans are everywhere and do lots of things! Its just a lil confusing sometimes cos the blacksmith accepting this random foreign exchange student doesnt expect them to get super attatched and start calling him dad! ("What do you mean you have nowhere to live??")

* oh and yeah i dont think that ALL qus forever have exactly the same personality and goals in life cos 'this entire species does one hobby' is a very stupid idea. Its just that they come from a very harsh and wild environment where you have to eat weird poisonous plants and dangerous giant monsters or else you starve. So itd make sense theyd develop a civilization around it when its a vital part of their existance and like.. The ability to acquire food more easily would be the entire reason WHY they coul start a society, cos otherwise it takes up 90% of their day every day. And developing complex cookery very quickly would also make sense because learning to prepare otherwise inedible stuff into edible form would be the greatest invention of early history! So food is just valued very highly because of those foundations of their society being one built on starvation. Nowadays theyre more able to eat enough to survive but that culture stuck around and they still celebrate even the smallest bowl of rice! So i think its totally probable that there are many Qu who have other hobbies and leave the qu homeland to pursue them, but i also think theyd still keep those cultural values of appreciating cooking even if they had other goals in life. So they do get the reputaion of "only ever chefs" from humans.

* Also to go with my headcanon of Qus being less of an anthro animal like most of the other races and more 'anthro vague concept of scary monsters in general, if they were actually nice and baked pies'. What if kid qus go through a tadpole/caterpillar stage where they actually are just monsters? Quina shows their baby photos and its just this big terrifying fangy blob in a cute onesie. I'm thinking that bebys would spend their childhood mostly feral and dangerous and then metamorphose into their more humanoid form once they become intelligent enough. So the length of their childhood stage could be shorter if theyre raised around other qus and learn to talk earlier. But probably those who rush through development like that would be physically smaller and weaker? Like higher magic stat vs higher defense.

* Qus have a more fluid concept of gender compared to humans. Its not like all of them are genderless but they're comparatively more accepting of people like Quina than humans are. The sexual dimorphism in their species is low so they mostly indicate gender through fashion sense and..well.. Saying "i am [insert gender here]". And their life is full of so many much more dangerous and important things so why the hell would they waste time thinking so much about dumb stuff like "uwu this person is somehow wrong about their own gender and i cant let it go until i prove it". So to a qu it would make literally no sense how humans are all "ugh this trans person is really [birth sex]" like uhh hello she said is girl, where problem??? Humans all look equally identical from a qu perspective so it all seems stupid.

* Similarly i think maybe qus adopt people from other species fairly frequently? By qu law, Vivi would be considered a qu citizen because his grandpa was a qu. If you're raised in the qu ways then you're not a human, that just doesnt make sense! Maybe you're a smaller weaker qu but youre still one of us! There are distinctions in the language between being part of the species and being an immigrant to the culture, but there isnt any predjudice about it. Qus get their reputation of being "stupid" because theyre very carefree and simple i guess, but thats not necessarily a "stupid" thing. They've advanced past a lot of bigotries humanity is still stuck on, because their society around hospitality like this. The power of food!!

* Also they don't speak "broken english" because they're stupid, like dont say that when you never made any effort to learn their damn language. I kinda have the headcanon that maybe qus speak all sorts of different languages since their culture highly values the idea of travelling the world to learn more cookery? Like they only have trouble being a master of any of these languages cos they learned SO MANY and its hard to remember all the different rules. Why do humans have so many countries!!

* I like the idea of Qus having the old medieval "perpetual stew" tradition. Having a family crock pot thats always bubbling with whatever miscellaneous leftovers everyone brings back with them each day. But maybe qus have a big community version? Just a giant town cauldron. Itd probably have way higher odds of giving terrible soup if literally everyone is throwing in ingredients with no regard for each other, but the roulette aspect would be fun, lol!

* Qus have a reverse of usual human traditions for guests. When a qu is a guest in someone's home its expected that they'll cook something for the people who invited them in, and the family will be hapoy to get a chance to share new recipes with this stranger. So its common to open your kitchen to anyone and keep a good stock of ingredients just in case. Similarly, the main way Qus judge if a human is trustworthy is to challenge them to cook something or take down some tasty boss monster. According to legend, humans first came into contact with qu society when a legendary knight slayed a ruby dragon and helped feed a villaige for a week. So thats why qus decided to trust humans,but still some individuals might be wary until you prove a similar feat of cooking strength. Any fellow gourmands are instantly accepted though, and many taverns across human society boast that they are "qu approved". The coveted "five yummy yummies" rating is ever elusive!

* Qus really like Fancy Hats

* i really like Fancy Hats

* this is why i love the qus