#though I am also too stupid for their worldbuilding

[roaldseth]

If I may, considering this was too long to put in a reply, I recently came off of original Octopath and recently wrote for such a crossover, so it's fresh in my mind. I can offer an assortment of thoughts to further your own fun or just make more questions.

FarEast Amusement Research (FEAR) had their hand in the creation of Orsterra and scenarios according to Octopath's Complete Guide, and they do TTRPGs. I myself do not roll the click-clack rocks, however being friends with GMs, I feel this makes a lot of sense and is reflective of how Orsterra's lore/history is presented, and Triangle Strategy does a very similar thing (like how the War Chronicles are its version of weird NPC side stories/interactions. Their present worlds are also very much influenced by their past worlds). Granted, TriStrat proceeds Octopath, so why not take from it when there was such a service. I did not take too much time to try and google if FEAR also helped with TriStrat, but if they did, it surely would be a helpful case. If the Triangle Strategy Complete Guide is available, it might say in there, but probably not and is mainly only somewhat available in my case because an Octopath TTRPG does exists.

Unfortunately, I don't play Champions of the Continent at current, however I have heard that a lot of extra lore is put into the mobile gacha game. The following is just a baseline.

Orsterra is overtly a compass or a wheel (Solistia's compass/wheel working slightly to the left) to denote "the eight paths." I cannot recall the actual Chinese/Japanese phrase at the moment. My most recent discussion of this was because Hellagur Arknights ("Octopath Illusion" skin) so maybe it can be back tracked that way at a later time. Osterra also comes from "Orsa" and "terra" (or you could say "Orsa's earth," Orsa being the mother deity). I myself don't know if there is etymology to "-alia" in locations, but it could answer why such purpose of orientation/navigation with "Norzelia" and "Centralia."

For flora: Benedict's character story about the snowbells is just Ogen's side story. Arguably, in general Benedict is kind of Ogen again but now we get more because Benedict is a conviction rep. But, the snowbell blossom is just Norzelia's version of a mind-me-always narratively. In fictional flower language, these two flowers mean different things, but they have the same usage and fate within their respective games. These flowers are decreasing and someone cannot access them to adorn a dead loved one('s grave).

To find out more for certain about the snowbells, I would have to look at the original Japanese for Octopath, because I've heard that in Triangle Strategy, the snowbell has also been translated as a snowdrop in non-English/Japanese script(s) ("snowbell" is quite literal in Japanese and also an orchid, which is not what a snowdrop is). Snowdrops are a separate real flower, but the notable thing is snowdrops are of knowledge in Orsterra. A snowdrop dress was up for auction in Tressa's story, and it was noted as being an exotic, hard to get thing.

With the headcanon mentioned of the deities of old being the Osterran gods, here's some more fuel for that fire. I know Kelbunny mentioned this in the past: the Scales of Conviction are said to have been blessed by the gods. Note, the war counsel is of 8 (7 votes) and "wouldn't it be funny if they were meant to represent a deity."* Granted, Orsterra has 13 gods, but main eight for the sake of narrative relevancy.

In very shallow, vague perspective, you could slot the war council into the main eight. However, this is also where my lack of CotC knowledge doesn't work in my favor, because I know there's more to these guys (the gods) now that there's more content, but it also might not have been in design in time for Triangle Strategy. Chronology like that is out of my scope.

Carrying over aesthetics comes with influences and inspiration of real life and such, however the Wolffort demesne and the Woodlands is slightly suspiciously, not wholly because of the woodworking or roof fixtures, but the Darkwood/Greenwood clans have a kid every once in a while that can conveniently "commune" with animals, and there is that Wolffort origin story about them being lead by a hawk to where they are currently located (Castle Wolffort). Two seemingly unrelated things. But, that is a big red string.

-

*Clarifying for if curiosity strikes, I break down the war council as such:

Serenoa as Aelfric | Benedict as Alephan | Frederica as Sealticge | Geela as Dohter | Roland as Bifelgan | Hughette as Draefendi | Erador as Brand | Anna as Aeber

Aelfric goes without token from being "chief" or "lord," and could be represented by the Scales itself.

The fact that Octopath 1 and TriStrat have the same script definitely raises and reraises theories and questions and old theories about the connection between Orsterra and Norzelia. Even moreso when you take into account the name Aelfric.

That or it was just used for sake of convenience and I'm looking too deep into things haha.

YEAH!!! definitely raises questions at least haha. I'm not as familiar with Octopath lore, but given that they both seem to be happening in their own unique continent and don't talk a lot about what's going on elsewhere on the planet, it totally seems like it could be the same world. The fact that they're visually pretty similar always makes me want to imagine they're in the same universe anyways hahaha.

And the whole Aelfric thing was something I hadn't thought about!! I'll have to dig a little more into Octopath stuff sometime and see what connections there might be there. Would definitely be super cool if there were some crossover in the lore/worldbuilding of the two series

[aenor-llelo]

Orphan’s Path is one of the most beautiful pieces of fanfiction I’ve ever read- it just /perfectly/ encapsulates the boundless creativity that was my favorite thing about the MCYT fandom. Beyond just the storytelling though- the WORLDBUILDING just astounded me. From the more story-based beats like Sky and Moon’s Landing, Lagos’s splintering, and the Manifold, to the more general MC worldbuilding like totems of undying being created via ritual, pearleye, and ofc all the new months and the longer years and the server mechanics!

There are so many worldbuilding aspects I look at and go “i don’t know how they came up with this idea but i am going to aspire to reach for this level of creativity every time I try and tackle Minecraft as a setting.” I’m sure having multiple heads to put together for ever-fresh concepts really helped too!

I was wondering- did you have any sort of..personal guidelines or jumping-off-points as to how to approach integrating things into the Orp universe? Questions you’d ask yourselves or a theme to keep in mind with each new feature you figured out? Because I’d be delighted to be able to create with the same spirit y’all did. It’s inspired me ever since I first read Orp, and I think I’ll always look to it as an example of how much you can do when you’re handed a few pieces of lore and are determined to carry it all the way home.

a lot of what you're describing for how i approach worldbuilding boils down to "yes, and?" like taking even the most innocuous offhand stuff and deciding to find ways it does work. accepting it as true in some form and figuring out how this affects other things.

and the most important thing is you have to be willing to do this even with ridiculous shit. because all jokes come from something real, and you gotta not be embarrassed about writing a story or thinking about something stupid. be willing to look at something ridiculous and go "why ISN'T this stupid" first, "why IS this stupid" second. sometimes, it really can't be anything but stupid! but if you let a silly element breathe, that's where you can find a certain meat to a story that sometimes doesn't exist anywhere else.

fear is the mind killer. cringe is also the mind killer. you gotta shank any sense of shame or embarrassment that can come with engaging the premise YOU decided to create and explore, and a huge part of that is acknowledging the implications of seemingly (or genuinely) unserious elements of something at face value. writing off a character's silly name, goofy theme song, or meme humor is easier on yourself, sure, but it's so much more interesting in the long run if you don't. the absurdity of a setting is part of the setting! don't pretend it isn't!

you CANNOT get "piglin family units dictate the societal structure of the nether" in orp without first accepting "orphans killed my parents".

[ranticore]

this is as far as i got into a diagram of siphos, the dominant life form of Siren, my big big worldbuilding project. it's fuck ugly and i am not lining this. I really liked the idea of alternating generations and a stupid complex life cycle. Ultimately there are no 'plants' on Siren as we know them. Instead we have the 'sessile' generation of the creatures which, in a different 'active' generation, are among the fastest and most active apex predators in the vast freshwater seas of Siren. It took the first human settlers on Siren years to understand that what they were assuming were completely different animals were in fact all the same animal - and, ultimately, it brings into question the definition of 'species' as it stands.

Tides are regular but slow; a yearly occurrence (when not a neap or spring supertide). When there is no or very little water movement (during a low tide phase), the fresh water forms strongly stratified layers, including an anoxic dead zone near the bottom. the increased water flow of a rising or falling tide increases mixing in the water, and provides enough nutrient flow for the sessile adult phase of the siphos to happily live their lives anchored to the substrate, feeding by suspension. each 'leaf' has a feeding structure which i have not designed yet, but also uses gas exchange to create air bladders in a process not unlike photosynthesis. the bladders raise and lower the leaves in the water column to take advantage of zooplankton density (diel vertical migration).

Each leaf produces two motile clone larva which break out and swim away. It's not uncommon for these larva to be released in a swarm when the adult sessile sipho is under attack or being eaten. The two holes in the leaves will slowly refill with the next clones. The larvae swim until they meet larvae of another sessile adult, whereupon they spawn, releasing planktonic gonads for sexual reproduction. the eggs form thick mats on the sea floor (some with an additional 'worm' stage of joined together eggs which trundles along until it finds suitable substrate) and eventually sprout into more sessile adults.

Whether or not the larva undergo sexual or asexual reproduction depends on oxygen saturation in the water. If the water has a low saturation, it is likely due to a period of stratification in the water column (still water at high or low tide). Because there may not be enough prey for a sessile adult to get by on, it triggers the beginning of the active generation. the larva instead divides asexually and enters a kind of locust phase of rapid development into swarms of nymphs which form most of the "fish" in Siren's seas. The nymphs progress through several stages of development, as the water continues to settle and stratify, until ultimately they are able to leave the water. similar to dragonflies, the nymph 2 stage are the largest flying predators native to the planet, and feed mostly on smaller siphos of other species and the insect-like creatures that swarm around the coastlines. the nymphs are sexually active and can lay fast-developing eggs which will hatch into more nymphs. nymph swarms number in the trillions and are very short-lived, taking advantage of only a few weeks of ideal conditions.

during a neap or spring tide year, when the water is liable to undergo extreme, catastrophic changes, the nymph 2 stage will then become fully active adults; too heavy to fly, the adults of the active generation propel themselves via specialised hydrofoil arms. they prey mainly on nymphs of other species (though cannibalism is common) and, since the settlement of Siren, sea-dwelling or even flighted humans. with the ability to travel very far and very fast, these adults are the means by which entire species can uproot and fuck off to a more livable area if the neap tide decides to turn their aquatic home into a new continent.

They do eventually spawn and, depending on oxygen saturation, release eggs that will become nymphs or sessile adults.

[perfectfangirl]

notes after rewatching fallout s1 ep2

• dogmeat's introduction 🥺 • the enclave being shown as supremely evil because how could you incinerate live puppies 😭 • i want more backstory on siggi because i am curious if this is change of heart or like a mole • the super mutant hand needs to go from easter egg to reality next season forreal • i noticed siggi was drinking whiskey? to numb the pain of putting that cold fusion chip in his head--- i also wonder if he was drinking because he knew he wasn't going to make it • saw on reddit someone asking so it's the enclave who has cold fusion? and i'm still a bit confused about that because... i was thinking moldaver had something to do with its creation but then siggi knew exactly who lucy was... if the enclave is supposed to be a continuation of the pre war us government, then it feels like there's more tying the enclave and vault tec together than i thought

• in the escape scene, it seems like the other scientist knew siggi was betraying the enclave, but how? if they have cold fusion, was it obvious he was "stealing" it and trying to give it to someone else? maybe i have gaps in my knowledge here • siggi genuinely does seem like he's trying to do the right thing though 🥲 • dogmeat seeing that guy try to harm siggi and dogmeat fuckin' him up ❤️ • game dogmeat being referred sometimes as a boy and show dogmeat being a girl lol [love the gender doesn't matterism here gldfgld]

• the people who are enslaved work at the enclave being held there and escape meaning death • if these are namibia scenes where lucy is trekking, they are breathtaking, wonderful worldbuilding • lucy seeing a tumbleweed for the first time and going "the heck?" but then i like, remember she doesn't really know what "wind" is 😭 [and this also subverts the "tumbleweed blowing in the wind through a desert or desolate place" trope, i'm sorry but this a masterclass in comedy lmao] • her coming across some bodies but this time skeletons at a dinner table, a family of four i believe, all having taken poison, vault tech brand [a chilling scene but fallout is known for their hilariously placed skeletions so there's one with a cup of dirt in front of it] • probably the first time lucy is being confronted by hank and/or vault tec's lies, depending • lucy setting a [camp] fire, and me recognizing immediately it was a bad move [i watch too much stuff 💀] • i honestly' can't believe she took off her pip boy • dogmeat finding lucy 🥺 • it was destiny in so many ways because dogmeat is tearing that radroach the fuck up • siggi giving like a monologue in the most unsettling voice ever was so funny to me • siggi trying to tell her these animals [if you can call them that] up there are insane and genuinely in the nicest way possible trying to tell her she should go home • "question is, will you still want the same things when you have become a different animal altogether?" is some crazy foreshadowing • the cold fusion capsule glowing as he walks away • lord titus being an asshole and maximus doing the same to thaddeus lmao • lord titus "wanting to shoot something" and his stupidity leading to his own demise • [i like neither lord titus or the actor that plays him so dkfsdkgd] • dogmeat going into the yao guai den and coming back with a hand like it was sharing it with them 😭 • maximus being continuously disrespected and knocked down a peg, he doesn't deserve this 😞 • insane how close and somehow inadvertently hot on the trail lord titus and maximus was for siggi and dogmeat • learning squires appears to be a dime a dozen and that's one reason lord titus sent maximus deeper into the cave, the other is that he was scared • maximus seemed to be both disillusioned and struck with fear watching the yao guai attack lord titus--- so it was almost breathtakingly offensive when lord titus decided to blame maximus for everything and wanting him like, court martialed almost for this incident, despite maximus being small of gun and armourless, despite them both being scared, lord titus blames maximus for lord titus' own failings • "this wasteland fucking sucks!" love that running motif • anyways glad that guy died, next! • lmao this very disgusting man in a diaper or something being thankful lucy didn't shoot him but also drinking all her water 😭 • lucy getting a taste of wasteland selfishness and desperation gdfgdgfd • maximus belongs in a power suit • this chicken fucking man having the elixir to immortality or regeneration or whatever it is 😭 • and the chicken farmer, in a cameo, is a makeup designer and props department person 🙂 • in a beautiful shot, it looks like lucy is in the famous car forest or a replica of it • her trying to be convivial and people just not having it 😢 • filly is very fallout and i assume gamers enjoyed this scene because • everyone is in bizarre and comical mad max style outfits, iguana meat, giving metaton vibes • so i just read filly was named because it's a landfill but also there's the fact it was filmed in an airplane and automobile graveyard outside new jersey [close to philadelphia] and that there is a fillmore, california • also saw where it's modeled to look a lot like megaton and i thought this on first viewing • i didn't even realize cooper was already shown sitting and waiting, the crossing of paths was crazy • lucy seeing degeneracy first hand 💀 • lucy seeing weird shit and smiling because she, too, is weird

• cooper mysteriously and sexily watching from afar after cornering his bounty • "barv get in here" not ma june calling her friend to come and point and laugh at lucy • moldaver being ma june's client and that's why she shuts lucy down so fast after she asks about that pip boy • ma june saying lucy got all ten fingers, damn the writers were so • "i know that it can't have been easy for you up here, what with all the murder and the dirt" lmao lucy please • lucy realising vault tec's demonic saviour complex is very hard to preach about to wastelanders, people who have survived for centuries and without the help of the vaulties • lucy really is from the rich part of town because ma june was so insulted by her lies, she took her gun out • cooper, siggi, lucy intersecting was so crazy though • kind of wondering why siggi didn't wear a disguise as a wanted man • siggi trying to be nice and warning lucy to leave versus ma june harshly reminding cooper him and his ghoul kind aren't wanted in filly • getting chills that siggi is explaining to lucy what her vault experiment basically was as i didn't see it as that on first watch • siggi was telling her to go home because if someone smart realized who she was or where she came from, all hell would break loose • ok so cooper says the bounty went out from all six agencies but i could only think of three, wondering who they all are • ma june mentions she was given caps for siggi's safe transport out of filly, cooper mentioning a bidding war, is that why he shot siggi's leg clean off [probably did because bounty was dead or alive] • ma june getting people clipped by putting caps on whoever can take cooper down first 😭 • cooper smiling as all them people descend on him because this is the "the love of the game" shit he was talkin' bout 😭💀 • "all this murder makin' me hungry" cooper essentially • him eating those cherry tomatoes and then paying for them 🥲 • almost forgot cooper actually did get shot multiple times and kept goin', ghouls are somethin' else • noticing cooper gave ma june a nonlethal leg shot versus basically sending siggi to his demise with his • cooper stabbing not shooting dogmeat • cooper was about to shoot but lucy's candor and morality was a breath of fresh air, he was so shook lmao • he was so charmed, he kept walking, leaving him open to her shooting him in quite literally his heart [ok symbolism] 😭, smiling and everything • "well now that is a very small drop in a very, very large bucket of drugs" lmaooo they created ultrajet for ghouls because jet isn't strong enough for them • lucy being immediately impressed with the t60 • i hate maximus had to lie because this was so "knight in shining armour" but why did he reveal his face to lucy knowing if the brotherhood of steel had found out this early about what he did, he'd be dead meat like • cooper almost shot that girl like three times ldgld • i genuinely think the tranquilizer effected him but just a teensy bit • siggi saying he could still make the trip and ma june saying he'd be lucky to make it to breakfast ☹️ • jim's limbs has be cracking up every time • them installing that robo leg onto siggi is the most gory and disgusting scene to me and i hope it gets worse • something oddly sweet about siggi saying lucy can take him to moldaver after nearly begging lucy to go back home for her own safety, she put her life on the line to save him 😞 • cooper getting mopped by maximus in that power suit sends • i didn't realize after maximus made cooper fall, cooper says "goddamn, that hurt" 😭 • "you drive that thing like a fucking shopping cart" and it's a power suit gldgfld • that snake oil salesman really was telling the truth, he maybe could've healed siggi • cooper petting dogmeat while giving them a stimpak, cooper showing a genuine smile while doing so • siggi really lost too much blood and i thought this back in filly • siggi saying the cynanide pill from vault tec was the most humane thing they produced, pre war was a dark time

[thriveonanonymity]

DAMN girl this book is good YA urban fantasy. And the racism?? Its so good! I love it! Deonn, hell yeah, white boys with eugenic-crazed grangrans WOULD have magic bound to bloodlines, living in hierarchy, keeping pet sex demons and be all dark academia. People opressed by the white boy ancestors WOULD develop magic of getting in touch with history lost, and be a lot less stealy with their magic! This is such cool worldbuilding! And the modern racism is written very well too, although i wouldnt really be one to speak about it, i am from a country for which modern racism is more an import, we're closer to xenophobia more than racism, but damn! This is good! I love it!

I also had a big revelation on magical races. Its kind of a tradition to make elves magical and british. But what if. We actually dont add real reasons to doubt someones worth or humanity into our magical society allegories. Maybe a reason why some races actually are more fantastic and whimsical than others is not a good thing to add to your world when delivering a message of "people are people, stop being a dick"

I mean ill never get rid of posh colonial elves in my worlds, because people are people, they do be dicks, and writing war crimes is fun, but i also wasn't planning on writing any societal allegories on such topics. Still don't! Seems scary. Ill stick to writing about the disgusting sexually deviant, the stupid poor, and the awfully-too-[insert bad ideology here]ist folk who want to eat your children.

So great job there! I love it! Its not what this book is about, but it is a thought i had because of the book! Not original, not even very coherent, but hey! A thought!

Also, Deonn's characters are good characters but i fundamentally disagree with the MC's choice of boyfriends. You gotta go with the sex demon, or at least William, he's such a little peach!

You know what, William first, sex demon second.

Also i havent finished the book yet, dont at me.

I do like it so far though!

Also if it's bad - don't ruin it, let me enjoy this

[name-s-are-not-important]

Since you got so many postive reactions, I'll also add something Your story is boring. Its too long, its too complicated, the plot is too long, nothing happens, it's not RA at all any more, it has nothing to do with canon! Halt is a joke, there is nothing left of him. This is annoying, the whole story is annoying! Secondly, you dramatize the story too much. Why is Halt's mother a child when she gave birth to him? Don't you have enough angst from the plot, then you have to add such elements and make the king a pedo? A bit pathetic, if you ask me. Why is she so young? Why would Caitlyn be married so young? Nobody did that in the canon! Second, why, for God's sake, is everyone there gay? In the Middle Ages? What's that supposed to be? Third, you don't respect your own readers. You post new chapters without any rhythm, once every week, once every month, instead of sticking to any routine. People don't want to read something so inconsistent, it's stupid, it's annoying. Oh and all those references to Catholicism in the plot in and your made up religion. Is it really necessary?

It's a shame, because this could have been a really cool story… you still have a lot to learn, good luck!

Hello, I would say thanks for contacting, but then it would probably sound ironic. Well.

I understand that the pace of the story may not suit everyone, especially people who prefer short stories. However, I made it clear from the outset that the story would be long and complex. It's a whole AU and yes, I love worldbuilding and I won't apologise for that. I care about the details, but I also care about a balanced sinusoid of action. This isn't an action movie where you'll eat popcorn and laugh at the jokes, it's a marathon geared towards experiencing the story a little deeper. If it annoys you, I'm not sure why you don't just give up reading it…. you refer to the facts revealed in recent chapters, so you've at least made it to chapter 41, even though the story annoys you so much. Why? And why should it be my fault?

Let the numbers speak for me. Jadwiga Andegaweńska, King of Poland, married Władysław Jagiełło, Grand Duke of Lithuania, at the age of 12. He was 35 years old at the time. He took his last wife at the age of 70. She was named Zofia Holszańska, she was 17. Henry VIII of England took Catherine Howard as his wife when she was 17. He was 49. The youngest queen consort was Isabella of Valois, second wife of Richard II, aged 6 years 11 months and 25 days when she was married to him in 1396. The average age at which women were given in marriage in the Middle Ages was 12-14 years. It was only at the end of this era that this age changed to the late teens (16-19). The Renaissance brought a shift in this average to the early 20s. Yes, I am aware that we do not have such situations in the canon. Probably because the canon is a conglomeration of several different visions of the Middle Ages, which the author did not see fit to separate. Armaments, schooling, lack of illiteracy, developed medicine and finally, social realities all disagree. I am sorry to have to tell you this, but no princess married a plebeian knight because he was nice and she loved him. No princess ran around in the woods with a slingshot and none of them was likely to be allowed to become a super secret special task soldier because her parents couldn't cope with her upbringing. Canon has nothing to do with historical reality. In many ways it also misses the mark with my story. It's a fanfic. It's just a story, invented by me and loosely based on canon. It's AU - Alternative Universe. Where there's magic, religious wars and various things like that. But some of the stuff in there comes as a result of my fascination with history and the development of societies in different eras. Hence, certain phenomena, such as just the treatment of women, the age at which they were given in marriage, illiteracy, pestilence, economic dualism and sending children to war, appear in the storyline. Eileen is a monument to women, girls who were given in marriage to bear children to kings, to endure their outbursts of anger, beatings, rape and other forms of violence. Her story is very important to me and no, it is not there just to add drama. I'm sorry you see it that way.

Because we are human, we have always existed and we will always exist. Because it is a story written by a queer person and because as an author I can do so. I also pointed this out in the tags. Too many queer people reading books couldn't find themselves in the plot. I only write queer stories. And if in a story about blood magic, prophecies, human sacrifice, violence, wars and betrayals, you have the biggest problem to a few queer people in the plot, it's no longer my fault.

Listen, I'm really trying not to be mean. Let me say this as gently as I can. I'm not your friend. I'm a random stranger on the internet that you know nothing about. I'm not your school mate for you to talk to me like that. I'm an adult, I work full time, I'm writing my Master's thesis and I'm taking care of two children. I'm sorry that my few hours a week that I can spend doing something for myself, are not enough for me to write a 16-19k chapter once a week. How annoying and mean of me. Wow.

I wasn't inspired by Catholicism. But it's interesting that of all the world religions, this is the one that came to your mind. If you associate a fictional religion based on blood sacrificing, heroising self-harm and sacrificing children, cruelty to captives and hateful contempt for women with Catholicism, then who am I to argue.

It's been so much fun writing to you. And you don't offend me by saying I have a lot to learn. We all have. If one stops learning, one dies. And I still have a whole lot of queer, boring, annoying stories to write. Have a lovely day! And may your toilet seat be cold af at the middle of the night :)

[5-pp-man]

another tierlist because ppl actually liked that first one;

the crème de la crop;

the first 2 eps i thought it was fine, but it didnt really captivate me as much as id hoped. but then ep 3 changed everything for me. i started to think "how could living armour work logically? everything so far has been edible, so this must be too, right?" i actually managed to think of the exact thing that this series did. that really made me realise the worldbuilding in this was something unique, and it only got better and better with each episode. its really managed to captivate me and i look forward to "delicious donderdag" every week :)

ANIME ORIGINAL LETS GOOOO absolutely bonkers show that almost slipped by me because it initially tried to fool its audience into thinking it was a regular dramatic military show. it still is but theres also a giant robot who plays by saturday morning cartoon giant robot rules. if that sounds like tonal whiplash to you, trust me, it is. and its amazing. have i mentioned how homoerotic this one is as well? yeah. originally a tier below this one, but immediately after finishing this post i watched the newest ep. i had to make an exception and edit the list because ep 9 changes everything. i havent been gobsmacked by a show this hard in a while.

(return of the) show(s) that execute their own premise very well;

i havent read the manga for yubisaki to renren so i cant compare, but the quality of this adaptation has been very consistent. you need a little sweet romance every once in a while :) this is one of those series where the characters really grew on me the longer it went on. im always a fan of mixing realistic struggles with romance and this one has been doing it well so far

adaptations that are ok (i read the manga for both of these);

i've been a mashle fan since before s1 aired. and the anime has some good changes and additions here and there! but its not very consistent in terms of quality, it does that shonen thing where the animation quality suddenly spikes for certain action sequences, but it also frequently had a lot of scenes where they recycle shots a lot and nothing interesting happens on the screen for a considerable amount of time. still! its a fine adaptation. and yeah the op for this. blew tf up lmao? very strange to see happen in real time

i actually rlly like the manga for this one. i read the whole thing up until vol.6 before the season started (all that was available back then) and it made me cry multiple times throughout. i was sort of missing that connection with the show, though some of the later episodes still hit. its mostly to do with the animation quality, which isnt that great unfortunately. the voice actors are knocking it out of the park though

wghere am i;

is this show good? i. uh. will you hate me if i say yes...? objectively, i know its not that good. especially in the animation department. but if you like other Umatani shows, you'll like this one. it's got the same brand of goofy reactionary humour mixed with gimmicky tacky characters and crazy stupid plot twists. ive been faithfully watching this one each week and I'm afraid i've become very invested. overscientific indeed

bro you fell off...;

i was so beyond excited for this one. i replayed the op a million times, watched each preview, rewatched multiple episodes. and then. ep 5 happened. and i started to realise. oh this show kind of sucks doesnt it? the pacing of the first ep was great, but the rest? way too fast. it became clear with ep 6 that theyre trying to do a double cour show with half the length, which is why they started hauling ass plot-wise. now. i was an arajin apologist for the longest time. but at that point i honestly started to loathe him. even when he stepped up, his praise still felt sort of unearned. and to top it all off, shindou's motivation sucked so he felt like a lousy antagonist. ep6 was better than 5, but it really made me lose my enthusiasm and hope for the series. and right as we were talking about them probably not having time for a filler ep, ep7 happened. feels like a waste of time to do an ep like that when you've still got a whole 2nd arc to go through. but who am i

it started off pretty good honestly. but then chris went to the hospital and it kind of just dwindled from there. this season does so much with characters that have not even been properly introduced like how am i supposed to care about these people if i barely know who they are. the stuff with finn and leo respectively was good though. but the lore dump? lord help me. also vijay just kind of. exists to be there in the background huh? i would not call him a main character they never give him any attention. wendy had another ep again and he didnt get shit. again. also i think finn was stupid as fuck for not listening to lala but again. who am i. i know we cant destroy high card because we need a show but. cmon man.

i am severely behind on these;

reason why im behind is because most of the eps are a bit heavy so i kept. not watching them. its starting to get rlly interesting though so i'm def gonna catch up this is one of those robo-racism shows so i have to really watch out to see where its going. dont want another marginal service situation...

sorry this is just. a little too boring for me. its charming, sure. but i think this wouldve worked better as something with an 11 min timeslot instead of 23 min. theres just a bit too mu- or well, too little for me to rlly get into this. i think reading it would be more fun for me personally

[bookwyrminspiration]

omg i was anon and it IS orv how'd you guess!! anyways its so incredibly quilcoded you NEED to read it like. yesterday. its so good

firstly!! you would actually rlly adore kim dokja he's a complete fucking loser. picking him up kicking him around like a soccer ball do you catch my drift. he HATES himself he likes reading trashy novels he's concerningly relatable. also you could ship him with anyone if you tried hard enough or he could definitely be aroace if you squint. choice is yours the world is your oyster. also he canonically has a very funny kink that the novel likes to bring up over and over again. like i said. loser

(tbh i think youd also really be partial to yoo joonghyuk or one of the side characters but. idk thats up to you to decide. when you fucking read it)

secondly! the worldbuilding quil you would go HAM on the worldbuilding there's soooo much to explore with the star stream and constellations vs incarnations and its just SOOO insane. ugh i dont wanna spoil a lot but theres just so many different THINGS and it makes me a little bit feral

THIRDLY found family. thats it thats the post. they are all so unbearably lonely and they all find each other and they LOVE EACH OTHER and contrary to kim dokja's opinion they love him too and its just so fucking. ugh. all of their dynamics. (the kids especially get to me they are SO funny and stupid. siblingcoded as fuck)

also would it help if i tell you that there is quite literally no romance in this book! which is kind of unheard of for power fantasy novels! (ok there is like one side couple but its slow burn af and they take forever to get together and theyre rlly cute anyway but i digress)

there's mpreg. will not elaborate but it seems like youd fuck with it

furthermore!! idk the overarching themes......... story inside a story the inherent and unconditional love of a reader for said story reader vs writer vs protagonist OHHH love letter to stories themselves. actually. fuck man the feelings

its rlly stupid sometimes. actual crack. then it kicks you in the balls and makes you feel emotions you never knew you had before

but yeah pls read it!! i will convince you even more if necessary. you need to get in on this before 2025 at the very least bc there is an anime coming out and you have to be able to say you were here before that to assert dominance. anyways

(also WHEN you read it bc you will. pls livetweet in my inbox i love reactions its a fucking ride)

Not only was I right that it was orv, but I was also correct that it was you, Roshan. Though I didn't write that down, so you'll just have to trust me

I do have some understanding of the story beyond this because an irl of mine was reccing it a couple weeks ago, but from that it's also my understanding that learning anything about the story prior will not help me going in. it simply defies explanation and I just gotta read it

I must say though, you do know the right things to say. I LOVE stories about stories I LOVE meta I LOVE love letters to stories! I LOVE worldbuilding I LOVE found family. i LOVE wet rag guys, sopping on the floor pathetic loser men. and no romance!!! that's not to say any romance is bad, it's just nice to have a break sometimes

"there's mpreg. will not elaborate but it seems like youd fuck with it" can. can I confess something real quick. i deadass almost included mpreg in the "keys to get quil to read something." but then I was like no i shant, even though it's true. and then you said it yourself anyway! because it seems like i'd fuck with it! well i DO and I WILL. mpreg is like an automatic read for me. don't worry about that

OKAY okay i will read. where. where do I read it. i've heard of both a manga and a webcomic...maybe..? which should I go with and where should I find it. I am at your command 🫡

(i will probably liveblog instead of directly in ur inbox but maybe i'll do both)

[zephrunsimperium]

is Knowing Me, Knowing You a romantic billford story? what kind of story is it, actually? it looks interesting but I’m afraid to read any type of billford in fear of it being… not the best. what do you think of the ship, actually, since you’re such a fidduathor fan? also, does it end okay, even when incomplete? I have a lot of questions about the fic tbh. too scared to read it tho lol

Whooooo boy do I have a lot to say about this... I highly encourage everyone to read this entire post.

So, my thoughts on BillFord are extremely complicated. I am, first and foremost, a FiddAuthor shipper. That is the ship I consider canon and I even headcanon Bill to be aroace and actively encourage Ford and Fidds to get together because Ford needs to get over stupid societal homophobia plus it's fun to wear down the human's moral compass about hitting on a married man.

BillFord is a FASCINATING concept and it's not hard to see why the ship is as popular as it is despite the (well-deserved) stigma; a lot of things between them that can be read as fuel to the shipping fire. (ie the hair ruffles, the nose flick, the nicknames, the gold statue, the piano serenade, Ford being attracted to the strange, Bill offering to make Ford "one of us," even the possibly kinky undertones of glowy blue chains and bodily possession)

But the problem is that the ship can get very nasty very fast. Make no mistake, what Bill does to Ford is abuse. He is manipulative and violent and cruel. "Mystery bruises?" Literally torturing Ford on screen? Driving a wedge between Ford and his support system to the point that he has extreme trouble trusting people? Preying upon Ford's insecurities about being a freak? That is horrifying stuff, in particular because of how clear the parallels are to real world abuse.

With that in mind, let me talk about KMKY. I loved this fic to pieces. It’s written and organized incredibly well with a good mix of humor, sentiment, tragedy, and villainy without ever feeling off-balance tonally. The best thing about this fic, however, is the mature and nuanced themes about abuse: how hard it is to still love your abuser even when you start realizing that they're as bad as they are, accepting that you're a victim and have no reason to apologize, how an abuser's own trauma isn't an excuse for their actions. I really appreciate that the author has sympathy for Bill while still clearly acknowledging that "hey, what Bill did to Ford was abuse and Ford doesn't have to forgive him, much less take him back." A lesser writer would force Bill and Ford together, but that's not what happens because it's not what should happen.

So, for anyone who is interested in reading it... The gist of it is that instead of inviting Fiddleford to work on the portal, Ford makes a body for Bill to assist in person. The first 33 chapters develop their relationship (ft. Fiddleford being confused and stressed) and then Ford finds out Bill has been lying and eventually goes through the portal. It is very much a romance but the writing is so good that there are times when it's genuinely heartbreaking that the two of them won't work out.

I would definitely say that Bill is the main character (even though Ford has a significant amount of viewpoint time and he's the one you're supposed to root for) because he's the one who changes throughout the story. It's not a positive change, but it is an extremely compelling character arc. The characterization of Bill in this fic is particularly cool to me because he’s definitely a complete person, but he’s very clearly inhuman.

A little preview/incentive to read it: all of Bill’s underlings have individual personalities, Jheselbraum is a super important character and her characterization is... really cool (that's not a good description, but I was in love with it), the worldbuilding of all the places Ford visits in the multiverse was really cool and fun, there are great OCs like Wendy's mom, this mob boss guy that is a delight to hate, and a sarcastic kick-ass alien lady, Bill's backstory is really impactful, Pyronica is a bad bitch, Bill and Ford fight zombies while We Go Together from Grease plays in the background, there are cool themes about enjoying the mundane things in life and how society treats the Strange, and well-written humor that had me laughing out loud constantly. For as long as it is, all of it was extremely memorable and hardly any of it felt like filler. (I will warn you if you choose to read it, there is some serious steam.)

As for the ending... I totally understand why the author stopped writing it. They were trying to make it canon-compliant, but by the time it caught up to the show it was very clear that adhering to the canon material was holding them back. They did their best, but I could tell they weren't enjoying writing it and if you're not enjoying your art, then I don't think it's worth doing.

Wow that was a long post. Thanks so much for the ask, Anon! I hope this was a satisfying response!

[calamitaswrath]

Cal Lucia plays Fire Emblem Path of Radiance: Chapter 13

Not much of a lead-in for this chapter, huh? I'm just plopped right into my pre-chapter preparations. But then again, since in previous cases that was always accompanied by a change in location, and we're still very much on a boat, I suppose that makes sense. Let's start with Jill!

"Why are you still here?" - Blunt, Ike. Blunt. And calling soldiers stupid, too! Reminds me of that one post that's like "everyone who died for their country is a clown". It does make me wonder why exactly Jill really is still with us, though. The basic interesting is obvious, but where does it come from, and why is it enough?

Conversation with Daniel, about the best means to defend on a ship map. Very subtle, game. And they're playing an in-universe war game? Fire Emblem-ception?

Aimee continues to simp for Ike. The game really does make a running gag out of him not caring for women romantically or sexually, huh?

Sibling interactions between Oscar, Boyd and Rolf!! Those are always fun. Judging by the fact that it was a three star one, I thought that it would actually lead to something, but I haven't noticed anything yet. Do they get their own triangle attack now, or. . .?

Right, time to start the actual chapter. And we get more worldbuilding! Begnion's got an empress, Crimea and Daein used to be part of it, and we seriously gotta wonder why they want to see Elincia in the first place

Tanith. . . woag. . .

Hmm, we got a high priestess? The only context in which I've heard of priestesses in the context of PoR/RD is with Micaiah's classes, but I really don't think that she's going to make an actual appearance here yet

Heyy, Gatrie's back! And he got himself a new job. Have to wonder about that other character, though. . . her name in the German version is Stella, but I don't think that's gonna be the same in English. And after looking that up, her English name is Astrid. . . okay? Seems to be another instance of the German version carrying over the Japanese name.

Ohoho, defend map! And one with a lot of chests, too. Gimme gimme gimme!

Ah, there's Nasaela. Based on these early vibes, I can already somewhat understand my friend's obsession. I am curious though why the king of an entire nation is out here making deals with rather lowly soldiers for money like this. Is his country not doing well financially speaking?

Ergh, as I'm playing through this map, I'm beginning to realize that I really don't have the turns to actually get all the items with just Sothe. I think I'll need to restart and hand everyone chest keys. . . lovely.

Well, that second attempt went a lot better in general. I got all the enemies on the upper ship, including the boss, by just turn five! Let's see what else is gonna happen on this map.

Ah, so that other character flying near Nasaela is. . . well, a character. Kinda funny to see an old winged man like that. And pfft, he Nasaela doesn't like being called. . . what would it be in English? Hatchling?

Tibarn and Janaff. I would say these two have the look of playable characters to them.

Hold on, Tibarn's a king as well? Do the bird Laguz have multiple kingdoms? So far, I was under the impression that they only got the one. . .

This lot really was just there to show that they're there, huh?

. . .And I left the defend point unguarded on accident. I thought the enemy ravens would make a beeline for the treasure, NOT that point. Guess that's my first game over!

Jesus fucking christ, my luck on this second attempt was terrible. Astrid missed a ~90% to hit twice, Rolf also missed one, I took longer to beat the boss. . . but at least I managed to still turn things around in the end. Still just absolutely stucks about Astrid though, because she did get a lot more kills, and by proxy, exp, the first time around.

Sigrun! I heard the name before, but I don't have any associations. With Sanaki however, there are some half-remembered tidbits there. I think she's related to Micaiah somehow?

Ah. So the high priestess is the empress as well. Then why even make a distinction in introducing her?

Ike and Soren having a little heart-to-heart! That's nice.

Sanaki's found, and Ike really can be rather thick at times. . . let's see where that leads him

It gets him invited to court, is what it does. Fair enough.

[bizlybebo]

I am contacting you to discuss your car’s extended warranty (worldbuilding)

If I remember correctly you mentioned that Flick’s setting is kind of Steampunk? I’d like to hear about worldbuilding regarding that and if you want I could spew ideas that may or may not matter :D /nf

(I just wanna talk about worldbuilding, so no pressure if you don’t wanna!)

OH YEAH !! i didn’t realize how long this answer got until i was done with it omg don’t feel pressured to read it all

so like it’s heavily inspired by a discontinued fic i wrote. funnily enough. but basically it’s a pretty run of the mill “”dystopian”” setting (<i have a lot of feelings about that term and genre of fiction already but yknow). it’s pretty worldbuilding-centric and although the magic system isn’t a huge part of every day life, it’s a very important thing to many people in this world because it’s part of their daily struggle to survive.

basically,, it’s a world that’s kind of separate from our own some thousand or so years after the fall of humanity. the nations of the “old world” went to war, wiping each other off the planet, and all the weapons and bombs and stuff they used shook the world so greatly that portals to other realms opened.

societies kind of built themselves back from the ground up, and for a good few centuries people just lived in smaller settlements scattered across the land. they lived in peace with the magical species from other realms, too.

that is until a new settlement/group of people came in and began assimilating everybody into one county/group and dismantling smaller settlements and forcing them to comply within this new regime (a lot of this story has heaaavy symbolism/commentary on a lot of real world issues if it’s not already obvious).

the only reason why they’re able to do that is because they made death permanent. i think i already explained to you how like one of the realms acted like an afterlife and it was capable to travel back to the real world from it, even if the process was pretty difficult. basically, Some Guy figured out how to close the exit to this realm, and so death became a much realer threat. it’s pretty fucked up

magic kind of got choked out as this new regime settled in, being a closed practice transferred through bloodlines. a lot of the more nature-based magic died out because its holders were hunted for sport, but anyone now in the current day who has magic keeps it closely hidden because the regime will often take magic holders for their own benefit. having magic in this world can guarantee you a lluxurious” life in the center of the country, but you’ll be without freedom or autonomy, and your magic is often used for healing, making deals, “lie detecting”, stuff like that. there’s also more underground settlements that will promise protection to magic folk from the central government, although usually magic folk will be indebted to them too and will have to give some level of servitude, even if it’s not as bad as it could be w/the regime.

all that to say that this regime is a circular country with these large, stupid walls that are made of a mix-match of all kinds of different materials because it’s such a large and unnecessary thing. the walls are centuries old by the current day of the story though, and nobody’s ever really gone outside them before. they’re under the impression that the outside world is a wasteland, which honestly isn’t that far off cause the climate is inspired by utah /hj.

the technology and “aesthetic” of this world is pretty based off of steampunk half because i like the vibes, but i think a lot of the story elements kind of mirror a cyberpunk-esque narrative.

it’s a world where there’s basically always something playing in the background, always content being shoved down people’s throats (literally there’s a whole Thing with mornjng announcements that literally block out the sky). information is commonly hidden and suppressed— people don’t even know what the real night sky looks like because of the light pollution, and think it’s rather absurd to consider there’s more than three or four stars just out there in the universe.

people also don’t know about the afterlife being practically sealed off— they don’t know that death wasn’t always a permanent thing. that’s probably the most closely guarded secret of the entire regime. not even the protagonists, who specialize in “hacking” and releasing classified documents to the public, know this secret until pretty close to the end of the story.

because this government sucks ass, there’s large groups of protestors, and the protagonists are technically considered 2 very influential figures among them. however, because of this, flick gets arrested among the chaos one day, and so the whole like. story kicks off a few months after that where aphid, the other protagonist, is trying to find where he is in the system and get him out of jail (<cause he never even gets sentenced to prison due to the corrupt justice system intentionally keeping protestors from fair trials so they can keep them as long as possible, etc.)

[hamliet]

Hey Hamliet on the new bnha chapter I am just as disappointed about the recent chapter as everyone else and angry at the series but I don’t want to make assumptions until I get the whole picture  I followed the series and it delivered perfectly so I have faith in the series despite its many shortcomings we haven't gotten the conclusion yet so it is too soon to assume anything until the ending

I actually do think the odds are that Shigaraki will survive, honestly! So I will be happy if that's the case. I'm not confident enough about it to write a "they will be fine" post though, alas.

I am thematically disappointed, though, and I'm not sure that will be fixed by Shig surviving either. At least, writing-wise it almost certainly won't work for me. But I will take what I can get.

And that said, as critical as I might be about it, I have absolutely zero regrets about loving the series and its characters nor of my investment. Time well spent.

Horikoshi has talent and is burnt out. I think he needs a hug, a rest, and a good editor for his next story that sticks with him from the start. I do think for Isayama, for example, having an editor stick with him and drill him with questions and worldbuilding and force him to plan the ending is key to why the ending was narratively satisfying, albeit not perfect.

BNHA's ending I'd compare with say Star Wars, although frankly it's better than SW's was so that says something. And GoT's final season, too--in that they took every fan theory and concern and tried to please everyone and wound up pleasing no one. The difference, though, that is BNHA's strength, is that it doesn't make me feel stupid for having cared in the first place. It's not aiming to be mean to the audience even if the themes failed completely, and some storylines are clearer than others. At least, I don't feel that way, even if others might.

I think the endings I've been most negatively affected by (Game of Thrones, Tokyo Ghoul) are also tied to extremely painful real life circumstances--like TG getting me through the process of my dad dying and dying right before it ended with the opposite theme it'd preached all along. No wonder I was so raw at the time--like it ended 2 months after he died, of course I was extra upset. Lol. Game of Thrones was at the year anniversary and also I will die mad, but at least I have the books.... or 5/7 of them.

[alangdorf]

Aaaaand next off the checklist is Manager Magolor, it seems! I feel the need to clarify this is a while post-RtDL and most likely post-Star Allies too (and probably post-much-needed-therapy) given the temporally anomalous nature of Merry Magoland.

I also feel the need to clarify something weird I said in the initial theory post, even though it most likely goes without saying given some of the design decisions I made here and the sheer power of saying “you know what I mean”, but I think I finally have my thoughts coherently together about The Discourse. Going under the cut given that it is about The Discourse, and also about my personal experience with gender, transition, and internalized misogyny.

First off, if you don’t know what I mean by The Discourse, or why the heck I’m drawing Magolor as a Doomer and not a catboy, in the latter case see my previous posts, and in the former case, there was a line added in Return to Dream Land Deluxe for 100%ing the game where Magolor says he was lying about being from Halcandra. Now I’m not particularly entrenched in the Kirby fandom and generally avoid discourse, but even I’ve seen a lot of people say they think this lore addition was bad and stupid. I totally understand wanting to ignore it, given that the fanbase at large is full of Magolor likers that have elaborate headcanons about Magolor as a Halcandran, and various worldbuilding about Halcandra and the Ancients as informed by the concept. Personally, I had no previous stake in this given that the lore addition was actually the catalyst that got me to really care about Magolor in the first place, and obviously I think it’s interesting to extrapolate from.

Now, the ostensible gut reaction to finding out that Magolor has just been dressing up as an Ancient this whole time is to get really nervous about cultural appropriation. I personally think it’s likely to be more nuanced than a cut-and-dry case of an oppressor stealing from the culture of the oppressed, but given how little we actually know about the Ancients’ place in the Kirby universe both at their height and in the present day, and the fact that I myself am a white American, I’ll just cite Metal General’s RtDLdx pause screen lore, whatever the heck Grand Doomer has going on, and the short story Passing by Nella Larsen (Ok hi! Anxiety-ridden Kit from a week and a half later coming in to clarify that I’m not trying to equate funny little video game aliens to the severity of real life race struggles. As with everything please give me the benefit of the doubt in believing that I have good intentions and understand that there’s nuance but am just not the greatest at talking or thinking and I’m fighting for my life in here[my brain] ok thx bye) that I read in high school as sources for my personal thoughts, and leave the discussion on that subject there. (Oh, I also do like to think about the fact that he said he’s been studying the remnants of the Ancient civilization in Halcandra, for years, alone. Not much of anything with a concrete point to say about that though)

When I last talked about this in my theory post I said I saw it “more like uhhhh trans coding, kinda” and of course drawing this design forced me to confront the question of: now what the heck did I mean I mean by that, exactly?? Well, I thought about it more, and I realized that the much simpler thing to compare it to would be any teen coming-of-age movie where the protagonist dresses up as someone they aren’t because they don’t like who they are until they learn to accept and express themself for who they really are, though this message’s impact is often obfuscated somewhat in practice by Hollywood’s double gut-punch of beauty standards and misogyny. But as for what I was more closely reminded of when I called it trans coding, it was, as it often is, my own complicated journey with gender.

Speaking of, I realize I haven’t been very talkative on tumblr in several years, preferring to talk with close friends on discord rather than with the wider internet and you all know me as afab nb, so I suppose this is the time to come out as… cis, actually. Or rather, uh, transgender/cisgender/genderqueer/nonbinary/female. (Perhaps you can tell why I generally talk about this with people who already know me.) You know how it starts. I never really felt like I fit in with girls growing up, I held disdain for people who were “too girly”, I generally only made friends with nerdy guys, avoided wearing makeup, didn’t care overly much about how I dressed.

Then, five years ago, I discovered that being referred to as “they” made me really happy. I never experienced body dysphoria, but I liked to be able to have a flat chest sometimes. These are things that are still true about me. But feeling decoupled from the concept of womanhood, and, of course, simply growing as a person over time, allowed me to reassess my feelings and internal biases on it. I discovered I have very particular aesthetic preferences, some of which are traditionally very feminine. I started getting into fashion and sewing and started to be happy rather than ambivalent about the way I present myself. (I still don’t wear makeup barely at all.) I realized that what gender you are doesn’t have to mean anything about your particular gender presentation, and that your particular gender presentation doesn’t have to mean anything about what gender you are. I’m still addressing my own internalized misogyny every day, though I like to think I’ve gotten better about it. I’ve learned more about being queer and I’ve learned more about myself.

Over the years I’ve been slowly swinging back around to being comfortable identifying as a woman, and I’m not 100% there yet (I still have a bit of a dysphoric gut reaction to other people referring to me as female, I’ll likely always prefer they/them on the internet at least, and man oh man don’t even get me started on the religion thing. It’s even more complicated somehow and I have trouble talking about it even with close friends and family. I often feel caught between sides on a lot of things just because there’s just very few people who understand wholly where I’m coming from. For one thing, do you know how many weird reactions I’ve gotten to telling people I’m aroace and also getting married in two months? From all kinds of folks), but yeah. That’s how it is. Definitely genderqueer regardless what happens.

So uh, what the heck does any of this have to do with Maggie? I just have a relatively similar thought process regarding him. Uh, metaphorically, I mean; not necessarily with regards to gender. His gijinka designs have definitely turned out really genderqueer but as I’ve said before, this is just what happens whenever I get my little baby hands on new favorite male characters, especially given my penchant for selectively feminine aesthetics and the fact that I’ve never really learned how to draw cis men all that well. He’s also just really hard to put in pants & I wanna show the legs off, I paid money for those

Now for the million dollar question. Do I think any of my interpretation is how HAL actually intended it? Perhaps, but they seem to often leave deep lore things like this deliberately open-ended. So do I think they’re gonna actually do anything with it and make Magolor stop dressing up like an Ancient? Probably not, especially given that the lore bit is a reward for 100%ing the game, practically an easter egg at that point. Magolor is probably the one character who they’re most willing to give new outfits to, but I don’t see that extending to his mainline canon appearance. I think Kirby is a bit too much of a mascot-based franchise to comfortably depart from iconic aspects of their characters for that. They still haven’t given poor Taranza his own theme that isn’t a remix of Dedede’s, for crying out loud.

End of thoughts. Usual disclaimer that I am just one person with limited knowledge and judgement. I wanted to write out this clarification because I was worried my previous comments might look weird in isolation and because I know my Magolor headcanons are very intrinsically tied to The Discourse. It honestly kinda sucks a bit cause while it has been nice to be drawing again, I’ve also been relentlessly serotonin-seeking and I’m way too hungry for interaction & engagement on this, especially given how niche its particular appeal is. Ask box is always open but be warned I have no qualms about setting boundaries and won’t answer anything I don’t want to. Thanks for reading! - Love, Catboy “🪺” Discourse

[prismatoxic]

"I hope any of this was interesting"

OF COURSE IT'S INTERESTING, THAT'S WHY I ASKED !!!

that's literally so great, those points you've talked about are some of my favorite things from ptk and it's really exciting to know you're so invested in it! (well, duh. Obviously, you're the one writing it)

At first I was kinda wary about the whole dysphoria and gender stuff, I was sort of scared to read when provided the warnings, but as I kept on going (because well, I just couldn't stop. The fic is just that good) it turned out being a really really interesting exploration of Chilchuck's journey, and some things even I could relate to !! To a strangely deep, personal level what the fuck tox

And oh, fuck yeah. The worldbuilding aspect is top notch. Probably my second favorite part of the whole thing beside the dynamic between chilaios. It's just so good to get to witness this carefully crafted world and how each of the characters fit in it! I really fucking love the way it works so well but is also riddled with some deeply rooted issues. How chilchuck fits in it, or rather, how he doesn't fit in it but makes room for himself anyways, learns to work around it. It's fucking great. It just ends up being sort of the default I think about for when I imagine any more modern universe stuff within dungeon meshi. The car stuff! that's so clever and interesting! Ugh half foots don't even have cars!!! Wtf!!! So cool!!! How do I explain to my friends this without making them read your fic wtf !!

Been ranting for a bit too long, and didn't even mention chilaios too much, but. Their dynamic. Fuck yeah. It had me twirling my hair kicking my feet. Laios' daddy issues, how they manifest in his relationship with Chilchuck (from the beginning too, ugh. Saw it coming from miles away and I was ecstatic waiting for it to finally boil over) and how Chil ALSO has some Dad issues (he is simultaneously the dad and the son) and how they both fuck about it freaky style. They're so good, and this is the perfect Chilaios dynamic, where they belong. So good. I love weird queer sex and if we're lucky they'll be having lots of it. Eventually.

They are SO hot together. I'm going insane. It's just so hot, the fic didn't even have smut yet and I was already cartoonishly pulling on my collar like "is it hot in here??" From having Laios call Chil "sir" instead of his name. All the setup had me going crazy, you did such a good job!

Anyway. Rant over. I need to calm tf down. Ty for writing ^_^ but take your time at the fic, enjoy your oc brainrot hours freely and don't force yourself to be churning out chapters just because we like the fic, we can wait, and we will.

THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE THIS MESSAGE IT'S SO NICE...

ptk is my baby, i've put a lot of time and effort and love into it and it really does mean the world to me when people appreciate it for what it is ;_; and plenty of people do, it's surprisingly popular ?? but i get very giddy when people engage with it on a deeper level, where i'm writing it from

i do want to get back to it soon, oc brainrot or no i'm extremely determined to see ptk through to the end, and some time away from it has given me some fresh ideas. plus i do need to get to the penetrative sex!!!

anyway, you're very nice and i love how you view and appreciate my story, here's a preview of chapter 12 for you

"...Laios?” he croaks.

“Oh, g’morning,” Laios says behind him, the sound of his typing stopping immediately. “...Good afternoon, I guess,” he corrects himself. “How are you—Actually, forget that, I think I know the answer.”

Miffed by his warm tone in spite of the fact that he’s acknowledging Chilchuck’s abject misery, Chilchuck lifts his head to glare over his shoulder. “Why am I naked?”

Laios is, himself, only in a pair of sweatpants, his legs crossed and laptop balanced on top of them. The curtains beyond him are drawn shut, but the light that is coming through is still far too bright. His stupid smile is even brighter, though there’s a touch of concern to it. “You got hot,” he explains.

That tracks. “Don’t remember that,” Chilchuck mutters, rolling bonelessly onto his back with a groan and throwing an arm over his eyes. “Was I trying to claw my clothes off in my sleep?”

“Yeah,” Laios confirms with a little laugh. “And thrashing around. I helped you get out of them and you went right back to sleep.”

He’s talking quieter than usual, Chilchuck realizes. “So much for me taking care of you,” he mutters.

“It’s a symbiotic relationship,” Laios assures, and Chilchuck feels gentle fingers card through his hair. “Let me get you some fresh water.”

“Don’t use—” Chilchuck makes a strangled sound as Laios starts to get off the bed, the movement making him feel like he’s on a boat at sea. “...Don’t use biology terms about your boyfriend, dipshit,” he finishes when it settles. “Fuck’s sake.”

“Don’t be mean to me, I’m going out of my way to baby you right now,” Laios chides, voice receding from the room.

“Baby me?” Chilchuck squawks, lifting his arm to glare indignantly at the doorway, and Laios laughs out in the hall.

[novanhistorian]

I must say, thus far I have been quite a poor correspondent. The point of this blog is to slow the rate at which I pester my friends with elaborate—and winding, when verbal—rants about various facets of the Imperium Novel, as well as to have a convenient public point of reference for them when I offhandedly mention something like the “regional parliaments” or when I forget myself and accidentally talk about the gender binary as if it were the gender trinary. (It is partially also because I want a public forum to yell to my very small audience about this thing I’ve been working on for years.)

Needless to say, I have thus far done exactly none of that.

To jumpstart things and give my readership at least something, I have made this massive post.

You can also get this split into separate posts for a better, but less linkable, reading experience:

The Fundamentals

A Sketch of History (masterpost with sublinks)

The Fundamentals

1.3k words.

I am here to talk about the Imperium Novel, which I must immediately clarify is not a novel. What it actually is is a rather massive and intricate worldbuilding project. Now, I could tell you that its name is a relic of the earliest days of its development, when it was really to be one novel with an increasingly cartoonish amount of backstory, and that would be true enough; but the heart of the matter is that I am a painfully pretentious artiste in this specific way. I could have changed the name; I didn’t.

(As for why it is no longer a single novel: As I write this, the [pseudo]historical period I concern myself with covers almost fifteen centuries, most of them quite complicated. Any attempt to cover the whole in one novel would wind up a gargantuan, winding, likely quite boring mess possessing more pages than a medical textbook and less plot than a wet blanket.)

Anyhow, hard segue.

The other basics you need to know are the following:

We are not in our solar system. References to the sun are to the star Scientia (to us, Era Cassiopeiae A), and references to Forsuno or the Far Sun refer to, well, Forsuno (Eta Cassiopeiae B).

The main planet, Terranovo,* has twenty-six-hour days and slightly stronger gravity than Earth. Its days are the standard in most other regions; we are ignoring Ilajn for now because I haven’t formally named their planet. (It has 21.5-ish-hour days and markedly weaker gravity. Let’s hear it for large, fast-rotating terrestrial planets.)

All the planets we care about after 2300 orbit Scientia, and—at the risk of misrepresenting the gravitational dance—the orange dwarf Forsuno basically does too. Scientia’s stellar classification is G0 V, which is to say that it is more or less like our sun, though slightly brighter. Forsuno’s is K7 V, which makes it either an orange or a red dwarf, depending on which classification system one follows. Basically, it’s small, it’s dim (only 6% of the Sun’s luminosity, still far brighter than a full moon), and it will live a very long time after Scientia is dead. Although their orbit is very eccentric (that is to say very elliptical rather than circular), the closest approach between the stars is 36 AU, or just this side of the Kuiper Belt; this allows for stable, although compact, planetary systems around both stars safe from the worst of the gravitational interference of the other star.

Novanity (non-collective singular novan and plural novans) is the sapient species the Novel follows for most of its history. They are, as many of them will bitterly tell you, the products of genetic engineering and a whole lot of moral stupidity on the parts of various humans—but we shall get to that in the history.

* At other points in its history, Terranovo was also known as Terra Nova, Terranova, Tero Nova, and Nova Tero. By the current working date, 745, variation is only historical.

The gender trinary is probably the most relevant thing in here besides the location, but thanks to narrative flow I have to put it down here. The three novan genders occupy roughly the same position as the human two, which is to say that the majority of the population falls into one or another, but there are a large number of outliers besides.

Two of the dominant genders are descendants of our concepts of male and female, and they remain mostly similar and are called by their names. The third is called sendua (an adjective), and people who have it are called senduoj. Its name derives from a shortening of senduuma, a rather nonstandard way of saying “nonbinary;”* it somewhat evolved from the use of the word as an overcategory for a variety of genders,

* It literally means “without a binary;” the human standard, neduuma, is a calque from English.

If you encounter something like Ĉlr or Nŝx/n, that’s reference shorthand, a standardized system used in the Imperium (with War-Era predecessors); it tells you a person’s gender and pronouns, and sometimes their preferred grammatical gender and physical sex.

The capital letters stand for gender and are derived from the gendering suffixes in the Imperium’s dominant language: Ĉ stands for male, N for female, S for sendua, and X (from crossing out the category on a form) for anything else. The lowercase letters, of which there are often more than one, stands for pronouns: l for li, the equivalent of “he;” ŝ for ŝi, “she;” r for ri, “re;” and x for anything else (which is quite rare, but in practice means “ask”).

The lowercase letter after the slash, if it exists, describes grammatical gender—and boy do I wish English had a shorter way to say that. The Imperium’s dominant language is largely non-gendered, and for words which could be gendered—titles, professions, and so on—the default is to use the genderless base word rather than add on one of the gendered suffixes. But some titles are routinely declined by gender, and several minor languages gender their adjectives at a minimum and their verbs at a maximum. As a result, some portion of the population has a preference about which gender is used, and that’s usually denoted like this. (The letters themselves follow the same rule as the actual gender indicator, and good lord have I said “gender” a lot of times in this paragraph.)

Occasionally, an italicized x or y or a centered asterisk, placed after the pronouns, indicates physical sex. The x and y, mean roughly what one would expect—XX or XY chromosomes respectively, without any sort of intersex condition. The asterisk, which in some state governments has subcategories, indicates that the person is intersex. Sex is mostly irrelevant in social life, so its denotation is circumscribed to medical and governmental records.

As you may have guessed by now, the dominant language is Esperanto—or, well, a version of Esperanto that’s evolved like a (fairly regulated) natural language for a millennium and a half. Some people speak one or more of the so-called “minor languages,” usually regional dialects descended from natlangs.

There are two different calendars in use over the course of the Novel, one that continues roughly directly from the Gregorian calendar and is dated relative to the traditional year of birth of Jesus Christ and another dated relative to the Year of Fortifying the Peace (the official end of the War Era, covered in the last two sections of the Sketch of History).

The first or human calendar can be identified because it will almost always have a four-digit year, and in cases where it doesn’t it gets labeled (B.)C.E. The second or novan calendar can usually be identified by having a three-digit year, or else because it uses a minus sign to indicate its negatives. It may also be distinguished by the ᴊ (from jaro, “year”) that precedes single- and double-digit years, as well as any three-digit years that require disambiguation. The novan calendar has a year zero; this is, as can probably be predicted, the Year of Fortifying the Peace.

Technically there are four major dating systems (standard, human, Terranovan orbital, and Ilajnaplaneta orbital). The orbital calendars exist because neither of the inhabited planets have years particularly close to 365 days, so their seasons are wildly out of sync with the administrative calendars. I should probably also note that neither planet has 24-hour days, and that the administrative calendars are standardized on the 26-hour Terranovan day.

I think that’s about it. I’ll write up instructions on how to pronounce all the random Esperanto words soon; for now, the vowels are like Spanish and the J makes a Y sound.

A Sketch of History

Human Future History, 21st to 23rd Centuries

I will cop to it up front that this period is the least interesting to me and has had the least work put into it; I hope to settle most questions about it here and keep the blog to a mostly novan focus. You are welcome to inquire further, but since humanity’s time on Earth is mostly just background to the background it will likely not receive much coverage organically beyond this. If you, like me, are mostly here for in the genetically-engineered cat people and their post-human politicking, you can probably jump ahead to the next section. 2.1k words.

For all my fine talk, we start with humanity as the sole species, and we start with them on Earth. Everything that led up to our time happened. After 2024, humanity narrowly survived climate change with their civilization battered, but in one piece. The sciences progressed; the most relevant for our current purposes are astronomy and space travel, and the most important later on are the advancements in batteries and synthetic biology.

Public interest in space grew, at least partially fostered by escapist thinking, and the World Space Agency (a terrible name, but so is “the World Health Organization” and they get on alright) was formed. At the outset it was more a collaboration of national agencies than an agency unto itself, but over the years it slowly gained authority and independence and evolved from a coordinator into a major player in its own right. It had quite extensive scholarship programs, which probably contributed.

The Moon was not so much settled as populated by sparse construction and mining towns with few steady inhabitants. I will spare you most of the details, but in short the main business of the Moon was construction for spaceflight and asteroid-mining. Its lower gravity (a) made construction rather easier and more importantly (b) made it much easier to reach escape velocity—that is, to launch something off it and into space. Almost no one stayed for more than five years.

Several things built on the Moon were space telescopes, eventual heirs to the long-defunct Webb, with one being roughly comparable to the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory. During the climate crises (plural intended) a dedicated minority of the public attention had turned toward exoplanets. Whether or not humanity could reach them now, they said, we should try to develop the option.

Most of the advocates, being laymen, did not understand how mind-bogglingly far such exoplanets were, nor how mind-bogglingly difficult it would be to get there. Most reasonable astrophysicists, and those in related fields, cautiously encouraged the public fascination because it had caused a funding boom, but rightly downplayed the possibility of finding and settling anything.

Then Eta Cassiopeiae Ae fell into humanity’s collective lap. A terrestrial planet, slightly smaller than Earth; in the habitable zone of a very sunlike star; in possession of an atmosphere, but not too much of one; wet, but not too wet; showing evidence of volcanic activity that likely indicated tectonic action—all this, and only (“only”) 19.42 light-years away! Careful observation even indicated it had a moon comparable in size to Earth’s!

Humanity took the hint. In the middle twenty-second century, relatively shortly after its discovery, η Cas Ae (at the time known as η Cas Ad, as it was discovered after the two outer super-Earths) was confirmed to have the right amount of water to potentially support life. No life yet existed, at least that humanity could detect; but that didn’t mean they couldn’t go over and put some there.

A certain august international body, in company with the World Space Organization, put out a call for anyone of skill interested in the prospect of settling η Cas Ae. The public response was immediate and enthusiastic, and demands were made to give this new Earth an official name rather than its sterile initial designation. In their exuberance, they unwittingly named it after Newfoundland; this was only noticed several months after the fact.

Thus was the Convention for the Terraforming and Settlement of Terra Nova called. The Convention gave way to the Committee for the Terraforming [and so on]; no one wanted to say all that, so most languages shortened it to “the Terra Nova Committee.” In English it was often called the rather snappy “New Eden Project.”

The official language of the project was declared to be Esperanto. This left most of the world very confused and astonished the handful of people who knew what had been going on behind the scenes—they had never expected it to actually work.

(Esperanto, as I hope you know, is an international auxiliary language created by L. L. Zamenhof and first published in 1887. It is designed to be simple and easy to learn, but still capable of a full range of expression. It is the most popular I.A.L., though that does not mean it has ever been exactly societally prevalent. Most everyone I mention it to has never heard of it, or else has only run into its name in passing. I have never, to my knowledge, met an Esperantist—unfortunately including myself, as I am grammatically sound but not yet fluent.)

Most of the work of the Committee was one of five things:

How do we get there?

How do we build that?

What do we do once we get there?

What do we need to accomplish the above?

Whom do we send?

They solved the first question by commissioning various independent teams of experts for potential starship designs, choosing the best three or so, and bringing their creators onto the subcommittee responsible for the actual final design. That committee was given ten years to come up with a first design and was intended to run for thirty overall, then handing things off to another committee that would be responsible for bringing that plan to fruition. It wound up taking forty, but that more or less happened.

The second question was solved incidentally by the first committee from question one, and their answer was “in space.” Given humanity’s off-planet expansion, it seemed the natural choice. By the time of the conclusion of the design phase they were also mining the asteroid belt, very carefully and mostly via robots, which provided the Terra Nova Committee another much easier fount of resources for their project.

The solution to the third question was rather more complicated than it might initially appear. Clearly they had to terraform the new world—that atmosphere, in its current state, was poisonous—and that would require a timescale measured in centuries at the minimum; but whence were they to do it? Where do you send potentially tens of thousands of your children and their children’s children to live and work in pursuit of a goal they themselves will never see?

The best choice was obviously the moon around the planet—it was well-positioned for a base and it should have enough gravity to beat off the worst of the developmental effects. Life on the moon had been proven possible long before, although few who took up residence there stayed very long; so had life in the asteroid belt, whose recently-sighted Terra-Nova-system counterpart they planned to mine. There would have to be improvements—these hypothetical “canned generations” would have to spend their whole lives on the moon, so their situation was not really comparable to that of the human-contemporary lunars.

It fed into the fourth and fifth questions, which were uncomfortably close to one and the same. Once the starship arrived at Terra Nova, its occupants would be alone. Earth would be unable to send help in anything resembling a timely manner, and supply runs were an outright impossibility. The lunar settlement, and later the planetary ones, needed to be self-sufficient and capable of performing the terraforming work laid out before them. But they also had to be able to build the ship in the first place, within reasonable materials constraints. Mass is a major consideration in air- and spacecraft design for many reasons (the most relevant here being its effect on the amount of energy needed to alter a craft’s course, be that for maneuvering reasons or simply to get the blasted thing moving in the first place), so cargo had to be minimized too. As a result, they tried to maximize the amount they could derive from materials in the new system or renewably produce aboard ship—food, water, clothing, plus metals and more water after Advent.

I’ll omit the math and any more of my rambling here, as I have already gone on far too long about the fourth question. Just understand that the fifth question was decided under the same material constraints as the fourth. They decided to send a few hundred carefully-chosen scientists, other “people of expertise,” schoolteachers, and their immediate families, all given training on how to handle the isolation they would face and on how to deal with the vastly different cultures their new roommates would come from. The number of people—around eight or nine hundred—was high enough and their sources global enough that they ran very little risk of problems with genetic diversity or in maintaining their population. Only three of the twelve highest-ranked officials in the Committee (which by this point was more of a Division) opted to go.

Probably in the early twenty-third century, the project was finally ready. The great starship was built, the people were chosen, every single possibly necessary thing had been loaded aboard in triplicate. (That last is an exaggeration—the things allowed on board were very strictly controlled and pared down, and while they were given a margin of error, it was far from triple the expected need.)

They set out—and novan knowledge goes entirely dark.

I write from a post-Departure novan perspective, and although I have my guiding theories and research on how humanity got to Terra Nova and what they did on their way, at the end of the day I like to keep it a black box. With that said, feel free to speculate wildly in my inbox. God knows the novan scientific community has been doing the same for centuries.

We will get to why this disappointing blank exists, and why the dates on the Committee period are so fuzzy, when we arrive at the Departure and then the Devastation. We think the voyage lasted two to three generations, if that helps in your guessing.

We pick up their trail again somewhere between five years (short chronology) and two decades (long chronology) before their arrival at the new solar system, and we do this mostly by reconstruction. The early Lunar period, beginning about two years post-Advent (that being the general term for arrival at the Scientia system), was not targeted for destruction, and thus its records have a much better survival rate. By this point the miracle starship had apparently been disassembled and re-formed into Prime Dome. As Prime Dome is known to have been nearing completion two years after Advent, that allows us to use its culture and current events to reconstruct those of the late Shipboard period.

Shipboard politics were generally quite a restrained affair. Government was handled mostly by an elected committee of respected scientists, professors (these from the shipboard university), and career public servants. It was called simply the Leadership Council and held wide-ranging authority. Social norms, like politics, were fairly rigid, and there was a strong emphasis on the social contract. Cohesion was to be prized and praised, and the good of the collective came first in all cases. The ship required its human components to be in as perfect of working order as its mechanical ones, and any societal crisis would potentially damn everyone aboard to death in the void. In this unstable environment, the Terra Nova Committee had determined, a strong hand was needed at the tiller and social cohesion had to be prized above other goals. (Every member of the project who had embarked from Earth had agreed to their peculiar form of government, which was to be replaced with a less-overbearing republic once they were safely settled on the Moon and could afford such things.)

Scientists from, or whose recent ancestors had been from, certain countries often had minor rivalries or feuds with scientists from certain other countries; but this was kept to a background tension, heated competition over sports and that sort of thing. The ship had a population of perhaps eight hundred at the outset and it seems a similar number arrived at Terra Nova, so there may have been some amount of regulation on reproduction.

Independent organizations of more than a handful of people required official permission, and until they got it were given very little leeway. Political parties were unofficially banned as engines of disunion; one was to vote based on an assessment of the relative merit of the candidates. Most political discussion took place in private discussion clubs, which usually met in a member’s apartment or a restaurant. These clubs, which I will for ease’s sake be calling by their later name, “salons,” generally numbered ten to forty people, the average being twenty-six. Since the population was so small, at their peak there were only nine such salons worthy of the name; by the arrival at Terra Nova four had dwindled out and only two newcomers had risen to take their place, yielding the Seven Salons so notable in later history.

The Pre-Novan Lunar Period, 2300 to 2450

This part of history is predominantly based on the actions of a few key people. I swear to God this is very condensed compared to the amount of canon that actually exists. The next section should be more trends-based, as we and history are no longer working with a population of less than a thousand people wherein everyone knows everyone and individual actions have outsize impact. Please be aware that this section of the summary contains descriptions of what I can only describe as a mishandled crush leading to nonconsensual use of genetic material. I really don’t know if that needs a warning, but what Sikora does is creepy as hell. 4.5k words. Part of “A Sketch of History;” preceded by Human Future History; followed by the Remainder of the Lunar Period.

The Advent, in this instance, has nothing to do with Christ—it refers instead to humanity’s arrival at the new solar system. The shipboard government decided it was such a momentous occasion that they should jump the calendar forward to the suitably impressive year 2300, so they did. (This is important later.) The aim of those aboard then shifted from the holding pattern of life in transit to frantic preparation for their final landing on Terra Nova’s moon.

The early Lunar period is largely dominated by two figures: Alexei Ilyasov and Darya Staravya. I’ll discuss them as briefly as I possibly can here, given that I’ve already had to cut two drafts that spent eight paragraphs on them and them alone. Expect a cleaned-up version of one of those to be posted at some point as an extra.

Alexei Kirilloviĉ Ilyasov was, at Advent, forty-one and supposedly a climatologist. In practice he was a politician of the rather subdued shipboard breed; he ran with no party and gave his rousing speeches on paper. His major focus was preparing for Advent, an event which, while yet unnamed, had loomed large on the horizon for most of his life. He had been an Illustrian—that is, part of a large salon known for meeting in the poshest restaurant on the ship—for about ten years. Like most of his fellow members, he was a reformist and an amateur linguist absolutely convinced he and he alone knew how to perfect Esperanto; also like most of his fellow members, it never came up unless he was asked about it point-blank.

It surprised even him when he was elected Council Chair* shortly before Advent; he was serving a Council term at the time, but had made no bids for the Chair and had planned to guide the Council toward a successful Advent from within rather than above. Regardless, he acquitted himself wonderfully in the office, and his administration—twenty-two years long, with a two-year gap after his eighteenth, when he was voted out of the Chair—did likewise. It was under his authority that the starship was broken down and re-formed into Prime Dome, the first and largest of the lunar dome-habitats; he inaugurated the First University. When he finally retired, construction and terraforming were both proceeding ahead of schedule and the first mining expeditions into the asteroid belt since the construction of Prime Dome were underway.

* His election was the result of a compromise on the Leadership Council between deadlocked Illustrians and Blue-Roomers, who both saw him as inoffensive and unlikely to make any terrible decisions.

Toward the end of Ilyasov’s career, Darya Staravya, the other major figure of this period, comes to prominence. She was born three days after Advent, the first baby of the new solar system, and she would have been notable for that alone. Her parentage—Brits Clarence and Marina Staravia, who had, in accordance with a contemporary fad, made up a “new name for the new world” upon their marriage—is necessary to mention to explain her surname, but they’re most notable as her later collaborators. I should also mention that she was Ilyasov’s goddaughter; he was about a decade older than her parents, but they aligned politically and intellectually and had met in their mutual salon.

Staravya was a prolific inventor and engineer, and in her forties she was the primary mind and force behind the Starry engine (officially the “New Standard Engine, Mk. IV”), which would be the basis for most all interplanetary flight for centuries to come. That was arguably her most distinctive invention, but her most pervasive came about by accident when she was in college. She, like all Scientian children, was in some form of school from age four until eighteen; during the latter half of that time she and a friend* progressively refined a private phonetic script or cipher, which they mostly used for the extremely teenage purpose of snarking at their teachers without them knowing. While students in the First University, they taught their other friends the cipher, and, generations being small when the total population is 1,021 people, it quickly spread through all of theirs.

* Yoshikawa Namiko, about a year older than Staravya, later a biochemist and historian. (Her parents, by contrast to the Staravias, and the Myleras a generation later, were not caught up in the new-name-for-a-new-world craze, seeing as they were Red Hats and didn’t bother with that sort of thing the way the Illustrians and Spider’s Nest did.)

Now I have to step back and give a bit of context. The problem of naming had been under debate since shortly after Advent, when Ilyasov had tried unsuccessfully to force everyone to fully Esperantize their names. (“Aleksejo Ilyasofo,” who did not by any means like writing that version of his name in every blasted language, was almost glad when the motion was shot down by seven elevenths of the rest of the Council.) Debate, among the perhaps sixty percent of the population who cared one way or the other, was split between those who favored the invention of some new writing system and those who instead favored regularization of sounds in names to match the phonology and writing system of some language. The former were called Sonskribists and the latter Regularists (though I anglicize their names here).

Staravya was in the forty percent. She thought it all kind of silly, having heard every possible argument at her dinner table growing up. She had been an unofficial test subject for too many of the new scripts (her parents being ardent Sonskribists, to Ilyasov’s alternating consternation and amusement) to actually take them seriously as a solution; she dismissed the Regularist position out of hand. While she did use her phonetic system to note down names’ pronunciations, it had always functioned as more of a code for her. She and her friend, Yoshikawa Namiko, actually had a minor falling-out over whether or not to encourage the growth of the script, which Yoshikawa believed they should and Staravya dismissed as irrelevant.

Yoshikawa won.

Now we come to a more trend-based as opposed to person-based period, which I can—finally—cover pretty quickly. Staravya went on to be a prolific inventor, as described in the second paragraph of her description, but she never crossed over into a major public figure the way so many others did. The Yoshikawa-Staravya phonetic script became the standard way to note down pronunciations, though it would take a century and a half more until it started replacing Latin and Cyrillic outright for the writing of names. (It never entered some scripts at all, including Arabic, which even well into the novan period adapted all names to its own orthography.)

The Leadership Council does not so much give way to as become the Academy, a name initially belonging to the board of directors of the First University set up by the moon-dwellers. Akademio, translated here as “Academy,” is also the term used for Esperanto’s regulatory body in our world and theirs. The University’s Academy had absorbed the Akademio de Esperanto, to the great consternation of the salon called the Spider’s Nest, back in the early days of the project. The Leadership Council in turn absorbed this unified Academy, at first thanks to near-complete overlap in membership and later by official decree; having so done, it declared itself the Terra-Novan Legislative Academy. (Later historians know it as the First Terra-Novan Legislative Academy.)

Staravya died in 2358, just under two decades after Ilyasov; Yoshikawa lived into the early 2370s, meaning her lifespan just barely overlaps with the next people we need to talk about. They, as they are ultimately more historically important, will take proportionally longer.

Florentine Sikora was born in 2370, or shortly after the official merger of the Leadership Council and the Academy. She grew up in an era of immense (compared to the mostly-static shipboard culture) change, but we’re not going to talk about any of that. We’re going to talk about this thing called the Catgirl Principle, and then we’re going have some bad lesbian representation. (Quite likely it also qualifies as bad allosexual representation, seeing as your author is ace.)

The Catgirl Principle is an oft-cited novan aphorism, most common in the first few centuries of the Imperium and believed to have reached its permanent form sometime in the middle War Era. The sentiment it describes is far older, and we will get to it in due time. The Principle is this: “A statistically significant proportion of the human population would want to fuck a catgirl were the opportunity to present itself. A statistically significant proportion of them would be willing to take active work toward that goal.”

Sikora was in that second proportion, and unlike the vast majority of them she refused to handle it by any reasonable means. I will spare you the details of what I mean here, but in short, Sikora never considered just getting a girlfriend and discussing arrangements for role-play involving a cat-ear headband and a tail.

Sikora wanted a catgirl, and—given the advancements in synthetic biology since our time, which I almost completely glossed over back in “Human Future History”—she figured she could just go ahead and make one. This was an absurd proposition—doable, maybe, for a team of two dozen with good funding, a few decades, unfettered access to the supercomputers in the heart of the First University, and fairly loose ethics. Sikora was a schoolgirl with a dream. But she wouldn’t remain that way forever, and soon enough she was off to the First University, designated a student without work* and planning to major in genetic engineering.

* Most university students had, in addition to their classes, to perform some menial office for perhaps ten hours a week, or two hours per day of the core week. The “student without work” designation was given to those who showed remarkable aptitude in some useful field, as a way of softly forcing them in the direction they would most benefit society or the sciences. With Sikora it paid massive dividends in the most awkward way possible.

Because Sikora lived on the far side of Red Dome (the second erected and first constructed, by the classical reckoning), she was offered the chance to move into an apartment inside the University itself. She took it and was assigned Mieke Nagtegaal as a roommate. Nagtegaal was also a student without work for her promise as a genetic engineer, but—in contrast to Sikora’s animal focus—particularly interested in plants. She was outgoing, very attractive, and the kind of person to listen intently to what someone was telling her no matter how long the explanation lasted, and Sikora fell hard for her. Nagtegaal, for her part, saw Sikora as a surprisingly charming person beneath the quiet exterior, and they became fast, close friends.

As you can imagine, this went badly.

In university as in tertiary school, Sikora was driven; intelligent; especially talented at genetics; and very, very good at ingratiating herself with teachers. In her first year, one of her professors brought her onboard a project that had as one of its goals the development of a large research database of fully sequenced human genomes. Sikora saw this as an excellent opportunity to—instead of, say, confessing her feelings and maybe trying to start a relationship—convince Nagtegaal to contribute her DNA to a public University database, from which Sikora could later retrieve it and use it as the base for the catgirl. The samples were supposedly anonymized, but Sikora figured she would, like Caesar, build that bridge when she came to it.

Their second year brought Nagtegaal a girlfriend, later her wife, and Sikora greater technological access that did not quite make up for the loss. This greater access came in the form of a laptop, powerful even by that time’s impressive standards, running the University’s full suite of cutting-edge-five-years-ago gen-eng software. The project she joined to get access to it is unimportant; it did, however, give her a foot in the door that would prove vital later.

Then she used a professor’s administrative access to locate which anonymized human genome belonged to “Nagtegaal, Mieke,” waited a few days for appearances’ sake, and downloaded roughly seven gigabytes of her roommate’s DNA to her new computer. Creep.

That brings us to what would later be marked as the beginning of (drumroll please) the Novan Development period. Some reckonings have it starting earlier, with Sikora’s initial decision to make a catgirl in her early adolescence or else with her entry into the University; but while she clearly worked on the catgirl project on and off, mostly by research, before acquiring the suite, the actual development begins only now.

It ran ten more years. Sikora was in the University the entire time, pursuing first a master’s and then a doctorate after her baccalaureate failed to give her enough time and access, and often sidelining that doctorate to hop aboard professors’ projects and even headline one of her own. In that time Nagtegaal, who got an excellent offer right after she finished her master’s, moved out and started work, leaving Sikora alone in their apartment.

Sikora’s magnum opus progressed in secret, extensively annotated and tested almost every night (as running it still took four to six hours). Back in her second year, she had quickly and euphemistically named the project file containing Nagtegaal’s DNA “nówka,” roughly “new thing.” The name wormed its way into her head over the years, and in time she came to think of the catgirl as the nówka instead. (It doesn’t hurt that “nówka” happens to decline in the feminine.)

As for the development of the nówka, her ears expanded and shifted down her head to match the too-complicated-to-move human ear canal while keeping a tall-eared silhouette; her tail came along nicely; working claws into her human fingers required completely redesigning her distal phalanges; Sikora quickly abandoned all pretensions at whiskers. (I bold “ears, tail, claws” here because they will come back with a vengeance when we get to the identity crisis of the second century, and that’s not to mention the Novan Nationalists.)*

* Nor “hearing, balance, defense.”

Eight years in, Sikora had done all she could with the simulation capabilities of any of her succession of laptops. The version of the software she had, the one that didn’t have to run on a supercomputer cooled by a lake, could do full simulations of the effects of short genetic sequences (i.e., the resultant biomolecules) and rough simulations of much longer material, but the human genome was more than twice the length of its ostensible input cap. Given a few hours it eventually managed, but her laptops suffered for it and the results it produced were necessarily inexact. Having now gotten the best draft possible with her current resources, she set her sights on better ones.

In flight the supercomputers had been used to manage the ship; now the Academy and the Terraforming Bureau had right to them, and a subset were used for genetic simulations of great accuracy and almost unlimited size. You can see where this is going.

She had by this time been brought onto a project (ultimately ill-fated, but later to inspire the sand-wolves) with an Academian at its head, and although she was in one of the lower rungs she had caught the said Academian’s attention. She had over the years maintained public side projects, partially out of interest and partially to impress her professors, and now it paid off. The Academian—and a few of her colleagues, Sikora’s professors—tacitly suggested that it would not be such a bad thing were Sikora to run the occasional after-hours experiment using one of the supercomputers, if nothing too urgent was going on.

Sikora, given an inch, made like the Devil and the British and took a mile.

She spent the next few years patching the gaping flaws in the nówka’s design that this more precise testing revealed. Finally, in 2407, she had something good. It ran perfectly in the supercomputer; it had all the features she wanted. It would work, she was sure, if she grew it in the real world; so she finangled her way into a frankly absurd set of permissions, never quite letting anyone know just what she was using them for, and actually managed to slip it by the review board.

The first nówka experiment was an utter failure. The nówka fetus, difficult to create and so promising, died before three months were out. Sikora couldn’t understand why, and she couldn’t get together the materials and permissions to do it again. She gave up utterly on the project, wallowed in self-pity, and tried to re-focus on her much more boring normal life.

Here Nagtegaal re-enters our story. She had never left Sikora’s, even though they drifted apart over the years as Sikora failed to call or write. She knew, vaguely, about her former roommate’s attempts to “create a new species,” had gathered that this new species was supposed to be sapient, and had overall thought it was neat. Too ambitious and not in her—Nagtegaal’s—area of primary interest, but neat. She asked about it one day, having asked Sikora out to coffee and Sikora having taken her up on it delightedly. Sikora almost started crying and said she had given up on the project, refusing to give Nagtegaal any more information.

Nagtegaal spent three weeks trying to figure out what happened and to convince her clearly distraught friend to resume work, or at least talk to someone. Then, after the last of a string of near breakdowns on Sikora’s part, Nagtegaal’s concern reached a boiling point. She broke into Sikora’s apartment and tried to find her notes on this “nufka” project, to see who—Nagtegaal was sure it was a who—had so badly damaged her self-confidence.

What she found instead was complete, fastidious, impossible documentation of the genetic code for a new sapient species. At the top of the folder a pinned text file held data about a practical test, ending with a paragraph about the final failure of the experiment.

Nagtegaal was floored.

So was the Academy, when she showed them Sikora’s research (which she had quickly copied onto a flash drive).

With the Presentation to the Academy we come to the Public Phase of Novan Development. The Academy, with Nagtegaal’s advice, privately contacted Sikora, who—despite being a normally dignified doctor in her thirties—sent back a moody email saying simply that the nówka wouldn’t work and there was no point in trying. She refused all involvement, but wanted credit for the initial development of this impossible dream. Maybe there would be a novel about it someday.

She also requested they rename the project from “nówka” to the less Polish and more Esperanto “novo,” which preserved the pun in almost exactly the same form. (Nówka is the adjective meaning “new” plus an ending that turns it into a noun, and so is novo.) It did create some confusion regarding the adjective nova, which now could mean either “new” or “having to do with the project called novo,” which never really got solved. The way the novans later deal with it is to use novara (“having to do with the novan species”) as the adjective form of novo, which works well enough but breaks the stated purpose of Esperanto.

Without going into excessive detail, the Academy liked “novo” mostly because it was so similar in structure to to homo, “human” or (at that time) “person.” Copying that pattern let them quickly produce versions for other languages, including novan (English), and the species name novaro (off the pattern of homaro, “humanity”); it would later produce the Latin novō, which is a homograph of an existing verb and must often be distinguished by context.

The Academy then published Sikora’s research and announced it widely, but declined to form an official committee to continue it. The nówka was in no way relevant to their main focus, that being terraforming efforts,* but anyone to take up the project would be given liberal resources. Essentially, they left it to open-sourced community development. It fostered a surprising camaraderie among the different teams who formed to take up the challenge, and it actually soothed political tensions between diametrically-opposed salons.

Well, it did portions of all these things. Novans have a tendency to assume their creation must have been a society-wide effort, but really perhaps a hundred people ever had more than a surface-level involvement over the decade and a half of novan development. A twelfth of society, yes, but only a twelfth. (Nagtegaal was not one of them, even after someone realized it was her sample used as the basis for novanity. She was, as she put it, just and only a botanic engineer.)

* There were persistent rumors that the Academy fostered the development of early novanity in search of a servant species, and in later days it was commonly believed as fact. It is in reality bullshit. Not unreasonable, given the Academy’s persistent monopoly on and heavy-handed use of power, but bullshit. I have to mention the rumors here because of the influence it has on the Darwins and the various novan identity crises, but the Academy was genuinely focused only on the flagship scientific achievement that novanity represented.

Fifteen years after the Presentation to the Academy, Novan Test 42 was successful. On the seventh of November 2419, a successful novan infant was born to delighted and somewhat terrified foster/surrogate parents the Augereaus. When it looked like she would survive, she was given the name Evo Darwin—Evo being one of two Esperanto forms of Eve and Darwin, of course, being for Charles. (Esperanto lacks /w/ and has very regular emphasis, so her surname lost its original pronunciation. The end result was a name said /ˈe.vo darˈvin/, something like AY-vo dar-VEEN in English phonetic spelling, with “ay” standing for the sound of the name of the letter A. This concludes the awkwardly-shoehorned-in phonology section of this essay.)

Evo proved bright and excelled in school despite her very obvious differences; she had her entire growth charted and wanted to be a genetic engineer when she grew up, just like her mother. When she was twelve, the first male novan (who had been in development for a while) was born; he was given the name Adamo Chikaonda, partially at Evo’s suggestion.* Another female novan followed shortly thereafter, off Evo’s pattern, as that was proven to be stable. Her name was Espero Darwin, thus making the Darwin lineage or gento the first of many to have duplicate line-headers. They were each raised by different families, which may account for Evo’s and Espero’s startling later differences.

* “Chikaonda” is in reference to the late lead developer of the software Sikora had written the initial nówka genome in, who had in his later years had some involvement with the novan project.

Evo fell in love with and married a human after they met in university; they communicated well and were mostly happy together, even when the human started getting strange medical issues they seemed to have inherited from their father. They did not try to reproduce, but adopted a handful of children: a later Darwin, her spouse’s nephew, and a novan patterned off the said spouse’s genome. Adamo and Espero, on the other hand, saw nothing to do but get together and propagate the species, in exactly those terms. They did not love each other romantically, nor share particularly many interests, but they understood each other better than anyone else would. Their seven children, plus an eighth that they wheedled Evo into carrying after Espero suffered an injury and became infertile, split their surnames between them (the first child being a Chikaonda, the second a Darwin, and so on); this would be common early-generation novan practice for the rest of the novan creation period.

Having gotten the rest of their lives out of the way, we need to jump back to when Evo was fifteen, because it was in that year that Sikora asked Nagtegaal out to coffee to celebrate the three-days-past birth of Espero. This was a tradition of theirs, having been started after they had met and held Evo for the first time fifteen years before; but, fatefully, this time Sikora brought moonshine.

Sikora, once tipsy, confessed that—or more accurately joked about how—she had known full well whose genome she was using and that it had its roots in a longstanding crush on Nagtegaal. Then, well, the whole sorry story of novan development came tumbling out of her mouth; it became increasingly clear the nówka was ultimately the result of a sexual fantasy; and Nagtegaal, horrified, exploded. The resulting scene—Nagtegaal standing up and striking the coffee table, irate, while Sikora leans back in her chair and laughs—would later become a frequent subject of paintings and tableaux, especially during the first and second centuries. What would not become such a favorite of the artists was how hard Nagtegaal wept that night, or how she filled a notebook and a half in the next two weeks with everything she knew about Sikora. They sometimes depict her internal torment over what to do with this new horrible knowledge in light of its potential effect on fifteen-year-old Evo Darwin, but they tend to make it a lot prettier than it was.

Three months later, Sikora died of a stroke. Nagtegaal drafted a letter that night.

Mieke Nagtegaal’s memoirs of Dr. Sikora, created with the full approval of then-seventeen-year-old Evo and her parents, were published two years later. The scandal rocked the Moon and destroyed Sikora’s reputation—but not that of the novan project. That, by now, was far more associated with the community of developers and harried university students that had brought it to fruition. The third novan genome sitting in their mutual drafts was originally intended to bear Sikora’s name, and work ground to an internally-snarled halt. After a worrying two-month stall, a public appeal from Evo and Nagtegaal brought it back into motion under the name Moreau.

And that’s the condensed version.

There are three more major sections of history to get to, and hopefully I’ll get them out soon. I’ll both update this and put them up separately, so you don’t have to watch this post for edits.

[automatisma]

Discovered the allure of Topsters & made a chart of the games that significantly influenced my tastes. Not really a top 25 although I believe most of the games of the list are good. Ramblings under the cut.

TLOZ: Twilight Princess was my first Zelda as a child & while not a particularly interesting Zelda gameplay-wise it cemented my fascination with that kind of dark and decadent aesthetic.

Persona 3 is again the first Persona I've ever played. Not the best & with many larger-than-life sterotypical characters but it does have a lovely apocalyptic atmosphere and the sexiest dungeon concept bar none (sorry persona 4 tv world you were not It)

Hexcells is my favourite puzzle game. Perfect difficulty curve, minimal & functional aesthetic, little spatiality sense required to finish it. The whole trilogy is honestly brilliant.

Disco Elysium literally what is there to say about DE that hasn't already been said. Masterful dialogues and characters, deeply political while being smart and complex about it, it has one of the most interesting fantasy worldbuildings of recent memory.

Final Fantasy X was my first FF. Bizarre & unique if nonsensical world, great party interactions and often dumb but really really rich with overarching thematical meanings so

We Know The Devil I believe it's up to personal taste in the end whether you'll like this or Heaven Will be Mine more, but to me the minimal religious setup & the very realistic teenage dialogue take the cake. Also Saturn is #so me #releatable #girlsbeinggirls

Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 I bet everyone's sick of seeing it on their dash but what can I say I adore its day-to-day routine and the character subplots and its sound design and the beetle battles and

The House in Fata Morgana is maybe my favourite visual novel of all time. Often cheesy, frequently melodramatic, the epic highs and lows of its writing did not stop me from loving its intricate fantasy plot and multifacted characters.

Valhalla cyberpunk ok too long of a name. The bartending part was fun, the fauxanime thing is well MY thing and the #quiet cyberpunk adult disillusionment of its dialogues stuck with me in some way. Not great but really solid & it worked a lot for me for reasons I am not entirely sure of to this day.

Danganronpa is a terrible and complicated horror b-movie with cartoon characters and stupid but captivating mysteries. I genuinely believe the trials are absolutely cool and adrenaline inducing though & I would love more of this except better I guess

Darkest Dungeon a game in which every inch of its systems and aesthetic choices works in perfect synch to convey the hopelessness of this brand of lovecraftian horror. Also the turn-based combat is soooo fucking good

Final Fantasy VII THE final fantasy ecc ecc what can I say. One of the few games I played when the stereotypical version of the characters I saw in popular culture was so much less interesting than the actual story beats and the direction the plot went in. Packed with genre-defining moments and lovingly mystic at times.

Pyre is probably my favourite Supergiant game even though Hades is far superior in gameplay terms. The peculiar worldbuilding and the choices you make are really something unique to this one and they very much stick with you during your playthrough and even after that.

The World Ends with You when I played it Neku and Joshua were on my mind 24/7 I was on that fujoshi grindset which is quite peculiar for me. Weird and fun gameplay too but to me the main thing was the killer premise, its characters and its commitment to peculiarity in the JRPG landscape at every turn.

Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria weird ass sequel of a game I didn't play that spawned my love for this kind of combat. Perfect blend of tactical and reaction-based that's usually a mess but here it works and its glorious. The story was whatever but frankly who cares

Black Closet is probably the most obscure game on this list & I love it. I adore the setting, the writing of some of the subplots, the tight mechanics and even its wonky UI designs. Try it and be captivated by the playful eroticism of mystery and power NOW

Ib foundational as everyone knows. Kind of tied with Yume Nikki in my mind but in the end I played Ib more and I was in awe of its finale systems and the genuinely anxiety inducing gameplay moments. Epitome of you're a kid and something fucked up happens.

Analogue: A Hate Story my favourite Love game even though it's only vaguely sci-fi. Funniest thing about it it's probably that its title works even if it's a silly pun on her previous game

999 I like Danganronpa so this one was a given since it's even less stupid. Puzzles are ok but I was here for the characters & plot because I am a mystery junkie at heart.

Lisa: The Painful managed to work with the legacy of Earthbound without making a lol so random uninspired clone. Profoundly different in its subject matter while incorporating a lot of the bizarre & offbeat humor of its inspiration. It also deals with its themes in a quite brutal and blunt if not at all tactful way which i really respect.

The Stanley Parable is one of the first things I've played as a returned prodigal PC gamer and it blew me away at the time. Full of neat little secrets & mysteries and with a lot to say about the relationship between the player, the game and the narrative frameworks we encase our lives in.

Earthbound is my love and joy and nothing else will ever come close to recreate what I experienced playing it, which is why I never played Mother 3.

Digital Devil Saga yeah I've never played an SMT to the end but I played this duology and I was deeply impressed by its combat system and its weirdass apocalyptic world and even my party of broken people. I was on board for that Gainax ending baby

Dragon Age: Origins was the only good DA actually. I am also the only person who hasn't played it for the worldbuilding and the lore because I'll be frank it's run of the mill fantasy stuff except for some things but I adored my party and the choices I could make and some plot moments so yeah. Still a fan of the saga despite everything

Opus Magnum is the only Zachtronics game I've played but I'll have to play Hackers one of these days. I still have all the gifs saved and I am NOT a minmaxing person irl but this one sinked its claws into my skin and for thirty hours I was an engineer