#without a spreadsheet?

[thievinghippo]

Hippo's DA Celebration!

I think I've probably let it slip that I'm really excited for the next game to come out. Really excited. So excited, that I've decided to celebrate for the entire month of October

Every day, there will be four posts tagged #hippo's da celebration

There will be absolutely no spoilers of VG in any of these posts. I'm celebrating the collective dragon age past. Not what is yet to come

I have four categories of posts. (Yes, I've given this a great deal of thought lol)

#31 days of dragon age (here's the link to the prompts if you want to join in!)

a reblog of one of my favorite dragon age posts I've made over the years

a reblog of a tumblr fanfic prompt I've written

a deep dive into one of my specific world states or one of my favorite Wardens/Hawkes/Inquisitors

This is just my way to remember and to share the joy and happiness (and tears!) I've had over the years because of this game!

[literallyjustanerd]

so a few days ago I saw this post, and the accompanying tags from @brrmian :

the idea of Cody being simultaneously so cool on the surface and constantly overanalysing every interaction stuck with me so much that I ended up spitting all my thoughts into existence

so

enjoy a brief look into Commander Cody's mind:

[waitineedaname]

not romantic or platonic but a secret third thing (bonded pair)

[yuri-is-online]

Love and Deepspace Timeline: MC, Philos, and the Aether Core

Look I finished Xav's myths card. I don't regret waiting until I was done with it to post his timeline because the last two nodes have more to do with MC than him, but I am in a state so we are making this to cope.

This is all speculation and should not be taken as fact, I have done two other posts, one on Zayne and one on Xavier and I will not be doing one on Rafayel please see this reddit post by u/joonmin for relevant information about his myths card blah blah blah.

This post is less of a timeline and more here to answer questions you very likely have if you: A) decided to browse reddit and saw people saying Xavier feels like the "cannon ro" [this is a gacha game there isn't one] but have never read any of his memories, moments, or dates B) read chapter 8 and went "none of this makes sense I feel like I am missing something" or C) just generally are confused about L&D's world building and what's up with MC. I have answers for you. Wibbly wobbly soupy answers. This post also has a TL;DR in case you don't want to see me break out the string board and just want the relevant bits of information about MC you won't get from the msq.

SPOILERS FOR ALL IN GAME CONTENT UP TO CHAPTER 8, VARIOUS MOMENTS, AND ANECDOTES RELATED TO ALL 3 ROS, PROCEED WITH CARE.

Current Timeline MC (i.e. The one we are playing as)

The game starts with MC's graduation from the Academy and first day as a fully licensed hunter. We learn a few things in this first chapter, namely that MC is combat trained, has a rare heart condition known as Protocore Syndrome that has no known cure, and that her decision to become a hunter has something to do with what she experienced fourteen years ago during the Catastrophe when the Deepspace Tunnel opened and Wanderers started invading earth.

Specifically MC describes something burrowing itself into her heart. She feels helpless, like prey, and has a strong desire to never feel anything like this again. Which is unfortunate because I have a feeling a lot of someones are going to be on her trail sooner rather than later.

In Chapter 5 it is revealed that MC has an Aether core fused to her heart. This sort of human experimentation is highly illegal and it is unknown who did this to MC other than our beloved Grandmother was directly involved. Grandma appears to have taken MC away from wherever this happened after the tests started to threaten MC's life.

This is known to Dr. Zayne and Dr. Noah, though neither seem to know more than what Grandma told them. Neither of them seem to fully understand what an Aether core is or what it is doing to MC's heart. Zayne in particular seems to find this extremely concerning.

Uncovering the mystery of the Aether core seems to be what will be driving the first arc so we will not be discussing it at length here. I do want to note that Xavier absolutely knows what it is, while Zayne does not but does seem to know more of the technical aspects of how it is effecting MC, and Rafayel is at least aware of it being valuable and maybe why exactly the people in the N109 Zone want it.

At some point in the past MC met and made a promise to Rafayel. It is my personal theory that this likely took place on Hat Island during the field trip MC talks about due to some of the comments made in Chapter 7.

MC and Caleb were friends with Zayne in childhood. MC's exact age is a bit fuzzy, but the game does seem to suggest she is younger than Zayne. She does not know why Zayne disappeared from her life or what led him to become a doctor.

Comments in Chapter 4 suggests that Caleb encouraged MC to become a hunter. He seems to be very supportive of her, but Grandma seems more interested in trusting MC's protection to Zayne.

On the surface MC seems pretty normal. Her memories from before the Catastrophe seem to be gone, if she had a mother and father or other blood relatives, she doesn't remember them anymore.

Philos MC (i.e. What is Going on in the Myths)

It is revealed in Xavier's When Shooting Stars Fall anecdote that Philos is Earth in the distant future. This has confused numerous people in the notes of my Xav's timeline so I am going to be insufferable and attempt to assist with a graph:

The MC you play belongs to the game timeline, the MCs (plural each myths card features a different one) in the Myths cards come from the Philos timeline. I have tagged the Game timeline as a "potential tangent" as the events that take place in game are entirely reliant on the existence of the Deepspace Tunnel, which is created in the Philos timeline.

At some point in the Original/Philos Timeline, Earth's core ceases to function. Humanity replaces it with a new, artificial core that causes noticeable weather changes and fuses all of the tectonic plates together, and begins a new calendar counting forward from the years since Earth ceased to be and Philos was born. As a result, we don't know what exact year Earth's core giving out happened in the Original Timeline. The artificial core allows almost all humans to "live eternal." They seem to be like Tolkien's elves in the sense they can live for an eternity but they start to get tired after a while and give up on life. This is why there is a royal family that needs a line of succession. Xavier is the Crown Prince of Philos, he meets MC in school and learns she has a rare disease called Protocore Syndrome which will not allow her to live forever. He attempts to cure this by finding a specific protocore she mentions, but fails to reach her in time and is forced to watch her die. This all happens in the year 214.

At some point MC is reborn and assigned to the same teacher as Xavier. She is to train to become his knight and serve as the leader of the Lightseekers, an order tasked with killing Wanderers. At some point during or before Xavier's coming of age ceremony, he learns the truth about Philos: the planet is dying due to the artificial core never having been meant to sustain the planet this long. The Royal Family's solution for this is to occasionally feed humans to the heart of Philos in Starfall Forest. When they do this, it creates Wanderers. As if that wasn't bad enough, Xavier learns that his father and the royal family have found what they think could be a permanent solution: there is a girl who has achieved true immortality. She is the only person on Philos who can die and be reborn constantly, and while they don't seem to know why she does this, the royal family believes this girl is the life force of the planet itself.

This girl is MC and Xavier does not want this to happen. He has a plan that he does not explain to MC, but it involves traveling back in time. He says they have specific places in time picked out, but we know from Xavier's Passing By anecdote that something went wrong with his team's attempt at time travel and now there is no guarantee that the MC he left on Philos as its Queen is still there.

So now we have two timelines: Original/Philos Timeline and Game/Tangent Timeline. But all of that is just taking Xavier's anecdotes and Myths card into account... so what happens if we try to plug in the other two ROs?

Rafayel

In u/Joonmin's reddit post they mention two very important bits of information: 1) It has been 30,000 years since the sea dried up and 2) MC is a member of the royal family of Philos, not by birth but because "she has a heart that’s been blessed by the gods" and has "awoken from the depths." If all three myths cards take place in the same Philos timeline as the one Xavier leaves, we can reasonably place Raf's myths card after Xavier's backtrack mission.

So the Philos timeline would look like this. I have a note for Zayne's card there as well, but if I had to get picky with it I'm slightly tempted to place his Myths card between MC's first death and her being reborn to meet Xavier again. The other explanation would be that there are three separate Philos timelines created because the MC was successfully scarified to the Heart of Philos. In Xavier's Myths 6 MC briefly takes a dip in the space time anomaly at the center of Starfall Forest which could also explain MC scattering across different timelines, but the in game spacepedia makes a point to say that there is a chance that life still exists on Philos:

So it could simply be that MC over there has been stuck in the exact cycle of death and rebirth that Xavier was trying to prevent. It could also mean that when they add that mystery fourth love interest there is an explanation for a fourth possible myths card. Anyway all this information leaves us with a set of timelines that currently look like this:

This still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. For example, if the Philos timeline is where this all starts, what version of it is? What caused Earth's core to give out in that original timeline? Is Rafayel and Lumeria's existence the consequences of clashing timelines or are mermaids cannon to this universe? What effect on the space time continuum did Xavier's actions have? And how much of this is actually going to be answered in game?

TL;DR

Philos is Earth in the future with an artificial core that started running out of power, and never should have been made in the first place.

The royal family fed some of their long lived humans to the anomaly in Starfall forest to keep the planet running, but then they found out about a girl who could constantly be reborn each time she died and had an idea.

An idea Xavier wasn't very keen on but who cares. They thought that "when the time was right" they would sacrifice her to the rift and leave her there to die and be reborn forever. They also did not think to ask her.

Oh yeah when they fed people to the rift they turned into Wanderers. So wanderers = people as mentioned in Zayne's Still in the Dark anecdote.

Whatever makes MC reincarnate might have something to do with Lumeria, or at the very least the Lumerians in Rafayel's myths card seem to think it does.

In game MC, current timeline MC knows none of this, and has no memories from her lives, past or future. This is consistent across all her incarnations.

Final Thoughts

The only reason why I think this way about timelines is because I watched Donnie Darko in a college theater class. People like to argue about that movie and how it is supposed to be interpreted, but generally speaking they all seem to think that Tangent Timelines and the Tangent Universes they spawn get deleted very quickly, so maybe that's why the game starts by talking about "being able to leave this loop" and why Xavier seems to think something bad will be happening to Linkon City soon.

Chapter 8 ends with Xavier attempting to send a message back through the Deepspace Tunnel to make contact with someone. Interestingly enough he calls this "Traceback II." This sounded familiar to me and sure enough the game starts by mentioning that exact same thing, it is going past a black hole and is what says that line "we are stuck in this loop."

I thought in previous posts that the Aether Core is what could cure MC... but now I think the Aether Core is likely what Philos's artificial core is called... so who created it in the first place? ｢(ﾟﾍﾟ)

The Deepspace Tunnel is a spacetime anomaly likely caused by Philos's existence since it was "never meant to exist." So why was it created? And by who?

[tubapun]

THREAD BREAKING DOWN MONSTER TYPES FROM MY SCOOBY-DOO MONSTER SPREADSHEET

Aliens: 57.14% of all 7 Instances are Real. Most common motive was a tie between Kidnapping and World Domination.

Monsters that are Extraterrestrial in nature!! Notable instances include the Spooky Space Kook and Star Creature listed above. They have a fairly wide range of looks, though the real ones are of the little green men variety. The book actually lists the Future Monster in the same category, but I opted to not include that one as it wasnt from a different planet so much as a different time.

Animals: 22.22% of all 9 Instances are Real. Most Common Motive was Espionage.

Just animals, more sapient or monstrous than usual, but without humanoid traits, or ones that make them resemble other more common monster categories. These tend to be in the Scrappy era for some reason, and Apes are the most common sort of animal to show up, making up 1/3 of instances.

Anthro Animals: 12.5% of all 8 Instances are Real. Most Common Motive was High Value Object Theft.

An animal with some sort of humanoid feature. I usually mark these as being bipedal when they shouldnt be, as well as having an upright posture and human limb arrangement. (some of the just Animals and Multiples with animal elements are occasionally bipedal, but are much more animal and so didnt feel right to be in here)

Creepy Heap from the deep gets special mention for being some weird combination of crab, seaweed, fish, and human. I kinda just put him here cause nothing else fit.

Animated Objects: 25% of 4 Instances are Real. Most Common Motive is Monetary Theft.

An object that's come to life!! 2 of these are just mannequins, with the only one not listed being the Helping Hand from the Addams Family episode. These kind of cross over with the Ghost category, but I seperate it mainly because most of the ghosts arent possessing an object, but rather just exist as is. I could be swayed on the mannequins as they're refered to as possessed, but its not entirely clear if its a ghost or demon thing theyre being percieved as. Kind of a weird category I guess but its all arbitrary at some point.

[magpie-rogue]

My commissions are open!!

I really hate pulling out the labels card for help; but if you could help at least spread this so two transwomen and a disabled transmasc (me) can afford rent, food, gas, and to pay off whatever extra nonsense a few ER visits this past 1-2months has stacked up because one of our insurances is acting dumb. One is between jobs, another is trying to find a better paying one that will give her more hours, and I'm too disabled to work. We're doing all we can, but we need a bit of help.

So let me do art for you about it! You can find all my information on my carrd and here on my tumblr . You can find all my art and more examples on my blog or on my instagram . If you have any questions, please feel free to email me and I'll get back to you asap.

Thank you so much <3!!

[episodes-without-incident]

10/3/2023:

4 episodes since Drawfee last referenced Cats (2019)

0 episodes since Drawfee last referenced Everytime We Touch (2005)

[cringefail-clown]

some concept art for a very silly lil au ive had in mind, in which jake is a real mvp and hal gets fused with a katana-impaled seagull

honestly its just an excuse to produce god-catboy jake english content

[walkingstackofbooks]

Kira and Julian in Life Support

Feelings 1:

Bareil, as far as I can see, has never called her Major on screen, called her Kira a few times before they got together and then called her Nerys very consistently, notably in The Collaborator. But in this episode, he doesn't call her by name once. But when he wakes up from the brain surgery, this happens:

"Bareil?" "Yes, Major?"

AND I AM SO DEVASTATED FOR HER.

Feelings 2:

Just Kira and Julian's whole interactions with each other:

(For context: Julian usually calls her Major; "Kira!" has been used once when rescuing her, and "Nerys" once when he was flirting. Kira usually calls him "Doctor"; "Julian" has been used on three occasions, once under duress when he was flirting, twice when she was protesting his orders to take a break.)

Julian breaks the news that Bareil has died

"Thank you Doctor. I'm on duty in Ops. Excuse me." "Kira. I think they can get along without you in Ops today."

Kira slides into her usual formality, since she's using work to distract from grief. Julian drops his usual formality and gently calls her by a friendly, but not intimate name.

When he is debating the first brain surgery with Kira and Winn

"I think she's right, Julian. I think Bareil would want the positronic implants." "Kira, if I go through with this, the man who wakes up may not be the man you used to know." "I realise that, but I know how important this is to him, and I know he wouldn't want to just be put into stasis indefinitely, waiting for some medical solution that may never come. Do the surgery, Julian. Let him finish what he started."

Kira begins to his name as she tries to persuade him. Julian continues to call her Kira; almost unthinkingly, he's more concerned about saving Bareil than about Kira's feelings here.

When Bareil is dying.

"It's the other half of his brain, isn't it? But you can still help him can't you? You can replace the other half of his brain with a positronic matrix." "I'm sorry, Nerys, but this is where it ends."  .... "Julian, you can't give up now." "Nerys, if I remove the rest of his brain and replace it with a machine, he may look like Bareil, he may even talk like Bareil, but he won't be Bareil. The spark of life will be gone. He'll be dead. And I'll be the one who killed him."

Kira continues to use his name to cajole him into saving Bareil - You're Julian, you're my friend, why won't you help me, Julian?

But there is no way for Julian to offer Kira comfort here, and he knows it. So he does the only thing he can, dropping every formality and identifying himself as her close friend by using her given name - even as he tells her he has to let the man she loves die.

[blackbutlercharacterpoll2023]

At last, it's time for the final awards to be doled out to those who deserve them more than anyone! It's our

As you may imagine, the Most Adored awards go to characters who received the most "Like" and "Love" votes combined. Let's start with our 10th, 9th, 8th, and 7th most adored characters first!

10th place - Tanaka (293 votes) 9th place - Ronald Knox (318 votes) 8th place - Sebastian Michaelis (321 votes) 7th place - Bitter Rabbit (337 votes)

And now...

6th place - Soma Asman Kadar (343 votes) 5th place - Finnian / Finny (355 votes) 4th place - Mey-Rin (374 votes)

And proving that Tumblr really treasures animal characters, our third place is the one Sebastian would have put in first if he could:

3rd place - "Her" (394 votes)

Next is the one who ended up not changing from Yana's Devil's Six, the sonboy of all time, the oister boyster, it's-

2nd place - "Ciel" Phantomhive / O!Ciel / Our Ciel (454 votes)

And finally... You know her... You love her... or at least the majority of you do... She needs no introduction but she'll always deserve one, just like she deserves her own cover... It's our first place winner-

-with 539 votes! For her, I'll bring out my shitty editing skills - I'm only sorry I couldn't do better, because she surely deserves to wear this ribbon. You're the lady of our hearts, Grelle! We can't wait until you come back in the manga and we can see you in all your glory again. Congratulations on being this poll's favorite Kuro character!

And thank you again to everyone who participated in the voting! This took more than two months to plan and execute and it's amazing to finish it up, but it never could've happened without you. Happy 200th chapter! Let's keep going strong, Kuro fandom!

[applesfallingfromblondehair]

how i think it went

75 fans going to Finsbury Park on Sunday (for the past several weeks): WHERE THE FUCK IS THE TIMETABLE WE ARE LOSING OUR MINDS

Dirty Hit:

Huxley:

Jamie:

Matty:

Ross:

Anyone else from the 75 inner circle:

Hann: *sighs* *rolls up sleeves* *fires up the laptop* *opens Excel* "Why does it always have to be me."

George: *looks over Hann's shoulder* *grins* "Let me help."

Hann: *goes on the View tab and clicks 'hide gridlines' before doing anything else*

George: *gets a full OCD boner*

Hann: "Alright so there's this curfew thing. Lifts at 10 and then resumes at 9:30." *writes down the word CURFEW*

George: *points at the screen* "Add STRICT in there."

Hann: *adds STRICT* *grins* *creates another table below for set times* "Alright then, who's playing?"

George: "Us, obviously."

Hann: *writes down The 1975* *Googles the full lineup* *writes down the rest of the acts in decreasing order of appearance*

George: "That's a bit confusing. Looks like we're the ones playing first."

Hann. "Fuck, you're right." *adds numbers from 7 to down to 1 next to the set times*

George: "Beautiful."

Hann: *posts on Instagram adding TBC to cover his ass* *looks down at his phone smiling, satisfied* "You're welcome, people."

[clonerightsagenda]

Wolf 359 Daily reached the "A Little Night Music" short so let's all take a moment to imagine Lambert's quarterly motivational broadcasts.

[tsintotwo]

I mean, the REAL reason Tom is my 👑? Right here, people. Right-here. 

[definitelynotshouting]

do you have an estimate for when chapter 11 is going to become public? (on the edge of my seat)

Good question anon UHHHH I WILL BE REAL I DONT,,,,,, NOT YET,,,,, theres a lot of stuff i wanna do to it first before i post it and between irl complications and running the hotguy comics zine(fanthology lbr this thing is MASSIVE) i just dont have the free time to work on it as much as id like

Actually this is probably a good opportunity to mention this but if you havent heard about the HGCZ you should absolutely go check it out, we're still on track to release in August and i wont give spoilers but i will say the entire scope of the project has become so much more than we ever expected it to be, yall are NOT ready for this absolute monster /pos

But yeah if youve been wondering about the lack of consistent updates, its because this zine has taken over my life 😭😭😭😭 i might manage to eke out a hunger au update before the zine comes out but i truly cannot make promises about that sjbdsjbsjd. THAT BEING SAID THO chap 12 is slowly being written now as well so!!! Progress!!!! Thank you guys for being patient about it im very grateful for the kindness :]

[ambivartence]

My top songs (of the first half) of 2023 ✦ Boys Planet edition ✦

tagged by @lunetual @jikyu @leewonseo @lee-minhoe ty 💕

I've listened to over 300 new releases from over 100 different kpop artists this year so picking my top songs felt like an mnet-level survival show 😭 the irony that i never watched Boys Planet AND one of the songs is literally a Peak Time song is not lost on me ! 🙃 but i wanted to pick a trendy format so here we are 😈 anyways i included albums instead of songs that didn't make the cut since there's too many honorable mention songs that i have had on repeat this year 😭 but most of them are in these 22 albums (oo-li is on here twice and istj isn't out yet !)

if u like my gif template, here's the link ! pls credit me ty <3

tagging (no obligation ofc and if you've already posted will u tag/send me so i can see 🥺): @bahngentertainment @chrisbangs @coupsnim @dakbees @dive-in-the-blue @hannahbahng @hyunfelix @ingblr-s @jinniebit @kyubins @losergirlz @quokki @shorelinnes @starcatching @userjiung @userwoodz @wabisaba @woodziecup @yohanblr + anyone else who wants to share just say that i tagged u <3

[try-set-me-on-fire]

@forthewolves @rewritetheending @wildlife4life tagged for tidbit tuesday! Buck continues to have a bad time

“Buck,” Eddie says, and his smile is genuine if sad. “I know you. Something’s been bothering you and I don’t know what, but I-“ He takes a dreadfully deep breath. “We don’t have to get married-“

Buck physically recoils hard enough that his hip knocks into the dresser behind him, but Eddie chases him, putting a gentle hand on his face, pressing the other into his side.

“Honey, honey- baby, I’m not saying I don’t want to get married,” Eddie makes very careful eye contact with him, making sure Buck sees the truth there. “I just mean- if it was too much, or too soon-“

@bigfootsmom @shitouttabuck @alyxmastershipper @jeeyuns @devirnis if you have anything to share!