#thought I should make one haha

[locusfandomtime]

see the fandom has this thing where the hermits are different species and when they’re part animal/mob they’re a hybrid but nobody talks about the even funnier canon lore that they’re all the exact same species. Their species is hermit.

[long post - lots of worldbuilding and speculative biology below]

Jevin looks like a slime, Doc looks like that, most of them look human, but in actuality they’re all just hermits. The only information we have about this is that hermits are shorter than the average player, some references to hobbits, some references to hermits being hardworking, the fact that gem isn’t a hermit and had to wear antlers to pretend to be one, and that’s it.

I love biology and worldbuilding and this is fascinating to me. When you take into account previous seasons and events and throw-away lines this gets even more insane. Grian and Hypno are acknowledged to not have mouths (and even more hermits don’t have them on their skin). Mumbo turned into a potato. Cleo had snake hair at one point. There are a million other weird things I’m forgetting. You could handwave some of this with an explanation like “hermits are shapeshifters” or “hermits are gods” and that is a very valid and fun take but I think it is SO much funnier if these are just normal things that happen in the hermit species, which aren’t fantastical at all and are adaptations with elaborate mechanics and explanations.

Perhaps hermits, similar to bugs, regularly shed their skin (or a process similar to it) and change their appearance. Some insects change colours/appearance due to their environment rather than genetics, ie macleays spectre stick insects can turn lichen colours when raised around lichen. Maybe the hermits shed their skins on a regular basis, including during their adult life, and this allows them to better match their environment- causing physical changes related to what they have been exposed to. This causes potato Mumbo and medusa Cleo and DM Tango and any other example of a specific skin change. For more constant differences in appearance - maybe life cycles could be considered?

this may be the weirdest thing I’ve ever made. For those that don’t know, “n” is the number of chromosomes, where n is the haploid number, so 2n is diploid. Diploid cells are necessary for sexual reproduction. Of course, a lot of these life cycles are centered around reproduction, as is the nature of a life cycle, but in reality the hermits are in no rush and are happy to stay at whatever point of the life cycle they’re at, this is just an outline of the species’ mechanics.

I mean, most of this diagram is conjecture… but I think it is interesting to consider! Jevin especially reminded me a lot of slime mould life cycles so this is heavily inspired off that, but also inspired by bug life cycles as well.

If you want to get even more indepth we can consider the gender roles of hermit society (remember that clip where Grian implied builders were housewives and redstoners were breadwinning husbands?). Perhaps we can get meta and consider respawn an aspect of being a hermit as well - are they able to regenerate after death? What is Cleo’s place in all this, being undead? Is arm thickness, where your arm can either be 3px or 4px wide, an example of sexual dimorphism?

but. well. tldr: the hermits being one species is a very fun idea we should be doing more with, i think

[wyvernity]

sss day my favorite national holiday WOOOOHHHH

bonus

[darlingcloudie-9]

miscellaneous doodles ft. the duo of all time

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

I think the theme of "home", while not always in the forefront, is something that interests me about the Sonic Movie Universe (in a similar way it interested me during Prime)

For Movie!Sonic, home is where you make it first and where your family is second. After his guardian died, he presumably jumped from place to place, and it was a while before he had a stable home. He made himself a home on earth and fell in love with the land and the culture. But you get the sense that as long as he's in hiding and ostracized all the time, it never fully feels like home. So it's important that he got to really experience earth and living in Movie 1 with Tom. It's important that he made earth his home, and then made the Wachowski household his base. No matter where he goes on earth and beyond, he has a family he chose and who chose him he can come back to and be himself around. "Home" for Movie!Sonic began with necessity, progressed due to his growing attachment to earth and what it offers, and fully settled in with him having a more permanent place in this world and support.

For Movie Tails, I surmise that "home" to him is where Sonic is. He was ostracized (possibly even bullied/picked on) back home for his two tails. After listening to some of his lines in movie 2, Tails read to me like a character who'd been treated as weird or an outcast and ended up isolating himself as a result. I got the impression that when he wasn't indulging in his love of technology/mechanics (or perhaps even at the same time) he was holed up in his base, watching a live stream of Sonic and his adventures, even after the conclusion of the first movie's events. He knows everything about Sonic, down to knowing that he doesn’t take showers, before even meeting him properly. Tails is not at home on earth nor particularly entranced by earth itself (in opposition to Sonic, who became entranced with it). He only even goes there to warn Sonic and to help him out. But Sonic's place—Sonic's home—is on Earth, in Green Hills, with Tom and Maddie, and Tails has formed an actual bond of friendship with the hedgehog he formed a possibly parasocial relationship with used to watch on a screen. Before, I think Tails was just content with watching or being helpful. But now? Now that he's spent time with Sonic, Sonic makes him feel normal. Sonic makes him feel like even "weirdos" can do great things. Sonic makes him feel valued. He's no longer content just watching because Sonic is more his home than the place he grew up in ever was. Home to him is with the people you choose, the people who make you feel at home, the people you want to be around. The Wachowski household is Sonic's home because he loves earth, green hills, and because he has mutually taken Tom and Maddie as his parents. Earth and the Wachowski household are only Tails' home as long as Sonic is there.

And for Knuckles... He has the set up to fall in love with earth in a similar way Sonic did. He grew up/was born in a similar place to him. And yet, all of the beautiful nature on earth doesn't matter to him. Knuckles, as of the beginning of the Knuckles series, had adopted a different approach to Sonic. Sonic tried to make home for himself wherever he could, no matter how many worlds he'd jumped to. In contrast, Knuckles never bothered to do this. He only pursued the mission, never bothering to make a home when he'd be off to the next world soon enough (especially if it seemed trivial in the face of his life's mission). And it's pointed that although he's able to participate in what earth offers the same way Sonic is in movie 1 (Knuckles learning how to bowl or Sonic going to a bar), he is not at home because of those things. He's able to slow down and appreciate what earth offers, the same things he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge before, and yet he's not at home on earth because it's beautiful or because it has food he likes or whatever. He very pointedly makes a connection with Wade and his family. The Whipple family is home. Not the earth, not even the house itself. He feels comfortable when with them, he enjoys the time on earth he spends with them, and he is able to appreciate Earth better when he experiences it with them (in contrast to Tails, who never had any sort of arc of appreciating what one can experience on earth to me). Home to Knuckles isn't easily quantifiable (more of a feeling really), but it’s about the people who make you feel at home. It's about the people who helped him relax and feel more comfortable not always putting his focus into the mission.

Sonic, who can make home anywhere, who always appreciated what was great about living on earth, and whose "home" was finally made permanent when he spent time with Tom and Maddie.

Tails, who never truly felt home until he spent time with Sonic, who doesn't particularly care for what earth has to offer, whose home is wherever Sonic is.

Knuckles, who never allowed himself to feel at home or tried to make a home until he began to travel with Wade and open up to new experiences, who began to enjoy earth and yet considers his home with the Whipple family specifically.

Sonic would protect the earth he lives on even if everyone he cared about was gone. Tails would protect the earth he lives on so long as it's Sonic's home. Knuckles would protect the world he lives on not just to keep the master emerald secured, but so long as this place is home to the Whipple family, with whom he enjoys experiencing Earth with.

Do you... Do you get me?

[vaguely-concerned]

just going about my day idly contemplating how some of the ways hawke can interact with a romanced anders are not at all unlike how they interact with leandra (and a bit of carver too, especially with a purple hawke), and then thought about my hawke in the timeline where he romances anders and was hit straight in the face with 'was he ever actually in love, or was he just desperately trying to renegotiate with his mother's ghost in any way he could' and now i need to lie down. this is the power of dragon age 2

[linagram]

i had thoughts

[can-of-slorgs]

Local owlbear, what she gonna explodee✨

[longagoitwastuesday]

Kusakabe, dear, you're too beautiful to be saying that kind of stuff

[sailorsleepymoon]

Whole squad is in the discord vc except the one transfem friend before dnd starts and one of them refers to her using they asking if anyone knows when she’s coming. and you go. She said she’d probably be here but someone should message her :) also I noticed that we’ve all been using they/them for her but I checked her pronoun roles in a different server we’re all in and the only ones she has are she/her :) so we should proba

And you get cut off by the person who said it and one of the other people going “OH well I use they/them for everyone” and “yeah I just kinda always default to they/them” and “yeah same I just always use them” talking over each other and

And the impulse to bring out your academic essay from sjw university hits. There is the sharp impulse to go 🤨 you guys using they/them for her when we know her pronouns is degendering her and ultimately feeding into the larger structure of transmisogyny and

you ignore it and say ok well I think :) we should try anyway 💕 to use her right pronouns

And there’s the quiet consensus of like yeah ok that’s fair that’s true. and she joins the vc three seconds later

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Loudest Silence

YA contemporary

a newly Deaf-Hard of hearing girl moves across the country and starts a new school, struggling with navigating her disability and love for singing and lost friendships - determined to not make any new friends for the year she’s in Florida

and a boy struggling with family expectations and anxiety, after being made the fútbal captain even though he secretly ways to be on broadway, who quickly befriends her

bi & aroace-coded MCs

[dazzelmethat]

Long time no Bud. Wow the last time I made her a ref was 2018. I experimented some with her pallet. Unsure if I like the profile head but oh well, open mouthed anime inspired profile faces are notoriously hard for a reason.

Sigh. What am I going to do with her.. my writing conundrum workshopping in tags. My tag rant mentions plot related suicide and ableism (in relation to the zombie trope).

[girlwiththegreenhat]

you know what? at least he got his wedding. i guess ,

[mad-hunts]

Muse Vs. Mun.

so, i saw this going around on here and i thought... why not create one myself :D and this was the result!

[fleetsonourgecentral]

what kinds of pranks do Sonic and Scourge do?

Pretends to be good at coming up with pranks for the sake of this ask

Honestly just think of every time Sonic has pretended to be dead or that a situation is hopeless, only to turn around and be like "lol bitch u thought". And then make it worse. Because those are their absolute favourite kind of pranks. Scourge's presence just makes everything worse because he'll think of ways to make it look more realistic. Poor Tails has a very vivid memory of Scourge coming home one day after a battle, ears flat against his skull, carrying a bruised and bloodied and lifeless Sonic in his arms, growling a choked-out explanation about how Robotnik... Sonic couldn't - that bastard is going to pay for what he...

And he lays Sonic on the sofa, disappearing elsewhere into the base, making small noises like he's about to start crying. And Tails is distraught and starts shaking Sonic, begging him to wake up, tearing up when he receives no response, and he's just taking a breath to start wailing-

And then Sonic screams "RAH!" and grabs him and Tails shrieks so loud it rattles the windows, and from the next room he can hear Scourge laughing his ass off. Fucker left the room in the first place not because he was crying, but because he was laughing

Tails sulked for a week straight about falling for that trick again and Sonic and Scourge were told to clean the damn fake blood off the sofa and off the floor (which they didn't do)

Those are the kind of shitty pranks they pull. Not the only kind of pranks they'll pull, they'll also steal Tekno's stuff while she's working to confuse her, she's sure she put that screwdriver around here somewhere, or they'll place important things in difficult to reach places and replace them with taunting notes, or (like you mentioned in your previous ask) will drop paint on someone. They especially like dropping paint on people. But occasionally pretending to fail a mission, or pretending that one of them is dead, is their favourite type of prank, although they don't do it often in order to keep it at maximum effect

[unhonestlymirror]

Do you ever look at someone's art and clearly realise they are extremely unhappy with their sex life?