#fun speculation

[spotsandsocks]

Earthquake in LA Eddie seperated from118 cos he’s not working obviously- frantically calling Buck over and over in call back to calling Chris’ school in season 2

Random question from anyone don’t care - who you trying to get hold off…

My… my….

Buck

He’s my …..

Yes Eddie what is he!???

[zeropro]

since they’re on Earth, do the Transformers celebrate pride? Do they even know what LGBTQIA means?

Happy Pride :>

[crystallized-cheese]

so like imagine Undertale characters but they're all crafts supplies Part Two Electric Boogaloo (Sans and Papyrus) (Toriel and Asgore) (Frisk and Flowey) (Napstablook and Mettaton)

[taraxippos]

I think people tend to assume that any criticism of worldbuilding is ultimately a demand for a story to grind itself to a halt and give the reader 20 paragraphs of exposition, and like. Most of the time good-faith criticism of this nature is coming from a core aspect of the story not being grounded in the setting in a way that outright detracts from the story's quality. You fix it not by Explaining but by Showing it passively in the makeup of the world.

Like the last instance I saw this critique in was like 'you can't expect an author to stop and exposit the nuances of gender roles/Queerness in a fictional society' and it's like yeah I don't, and in fact this is actually one of the easiest things to show in the text without exposition. If a society has gender norms to begin with you'll see aspects of these norms baked into EVERYTHING. You'll see it in its stories, its religion, its taboos, its etiquette, its clothing, its family structures, its language, its insults, its labor, its leadership, etc. It will have massive impacts on how characters interact with one another and how they perceive themselves. It will help Shape your characters.

If you do this legwork to begin with for the core facets of your story, you will find very natural places for these concepts to be demonstrated without derailing the plot and with little to no exposition. THAT sort of thing is what's being asked of you.

[patchwork-crow-writes]

I'm thinking about the Fun Gang's "special talents", and how they're not really all that special anymore.

Kris was the only party member who could ACT, or direct their teammates to act - through that, they were the ones who set the tempo of battle, they alone were the ones who could placate enemies and allow them to be spared.

Ralsei was the only party member who could heal, and had an alternate way to spare enemies using Pacify. Though he is the weakest of the group, his powers are instrumental in keeping the team healthy, and he alone is the only one who can peacefully put an end to Jevil's rampage in chapter 1.

Susie is the best party member at FIGHTing - she hits like a truck, and her Rude Buster is as versatile as it is powerful. She alone carries the team where FIGHTing is the most optimal course of action, putting foes like King in their place in record time, and she alone is the best at shattering Queen's Acid Barrier in her fight.

Now, each individual member of the party can ACT, though not to the extent that Kris can. Susie is learning to heal, though not to the extent that Ralsei can. And soon, I feel that Ralsei will be able to turn his prodigious magical talent towards inflicting big damage on foes, though perhaps not to the extent that Susie can.

Deltarune is about the roles we are forced into and that define us, and learning that we can break out of them and become our own people. But those roles are just as much security blankets as they are prisons - there is comfort in knowing that you can be relied upon for a special talent you possess - something that no-one else can do, something that you alone are valued for. And moving away from that can be scary. It can feel like you don't matter. After all, if everyone else can do what you do, even if they can't quite do it as well as you... then what can you meaningfully do for your friends, for the people who are counting on you?

...do they even need you anymore...?

[galacticsabc]

Pokemon gijinkas but make it dnd.

[linkedin-offficial]

me when i get the opportunity to think about speculative biology and non-existent game mechanics in media i like

⠀

[tevanbuckley]

thinking about the crack spec of buck moving into athena’s guest room after eddie moves back, and now im just picturing bucktommy not so casually hooking up and buck desperately trying to sneak him out in the morning so athena doesn’t see him she 1000% sees him.

[dokupine]

awawawawaawawawawa!

[charcoaldustonmyfingers]

Some Donnie tech doodles! A lot of how his tech works in the show is honestly more magic than the actual mystic stuff. How’d he fit all those tennis balls in his tech-bō when they fought the silverfish?? Maybe he’s been using some ninpō to enhance his stuff far before he realized it…

I tried to be a little more realistic with what might fit inside the tech-bō, though it’s far from hard science!

[cirrus-grey]

ALICE: So each of the cases is categorized on four metrics with a standard integer scale, that’s your DPHW.

GWEN: Okay. Now I’m pretty sure I need to try and keep them as even as possible.

ALICE: Ok, so, it makes sense that if you’re low on “W” that means we should probably prioritize processing cases with a higher rank on that metric to bring the average up, right? … So, it’s just a hunch but I bet if we have a look at old cases and then try and sort by “W” we can find out which cases got the biggest scores in that metric and reverse engineer what you need … Now, unless I’m wrong, which, let’s be honest, is pretty damn likely, when we cross reference this shortlist for common terms we’ll find out what Freddy thinks you need and that... is... more... Bonzo?

Loving finally getting a breakdown for why DPHW is important, here.

Now I, like the utter nerd I am, have been tracking the DPHW of each case on a spreadsheet, and therefore was able to do some quick sorting just like Alice. Bonzo is definitely our highest W scorer of the lot – he’s got 2 of the 5 cases ranked as “8” on that metric, though he tends to score pretty high on P and H as well.

However.

We are not low on W. When you add up the total DPWHs of every case we’ve gotten so far, you get:

D – 136 (average score 3.2)

P – 148 (average score 3.5)

H – 210 (average score 5.0)

W – 218 (average score 5.2)

W is the highest metric. So either it needs to be the highest, and the balance only works if it’s at the top...

…Or Freddie is lying about what’s needed, and intentionally trying to send things haywire.

Not too much mercury or the world ends, not too much sulfur or we all go mad…

[hhhhunty]

Seastone negates devil fruit abilities.

[trippingontheescalator]

So, there's a difference between how a modern American Baptist views magic vs. how a medieval Catholic peasant would vs. a Roman convert. Sure, you have Serious Christian Writers like Tertullian (155 - 220 AD) denouncing pagan Romans for practicing magic and worshipping demons, but on the flip side there are SO MANY Christians buying up magic amulets and writing out curses on tablets in hopes that they can inflict their neighbors with a venereal disease at the same time. Emperor Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert, continued to worship both Apollo and Jesus at the same time (the "shall not put another god before me" was kind of a hard concept for Romans & Greeks to wrap their heads around in general, considering in Athens they had a temple dedicated to any unknown gods they might not know). As centuries passed, Catholic peasants were still kind of trying to curse each other. That's just how things were. Sure, the local priest might say magic is a sin, but also Judith is about to get married and my fiance died of the plague so fuck Judith I curse her, I curse her to choke on a chicken bone on her wedding day. Medieval Catholic priests and other clergy were just like "whatever, who gives a shit." No one was all that concerned about witches in the middle ages. The Spanish Inquisition? Did not give a fuck about witches. They wanted to catch Muslims, Jews, and heretics. If someone called them up and was like "hey, I think Maria down the street is a witch, there's a pentagram painted on her floor" they'd be like "Wtf? What is this peasant bullshit? The Inquisition is serious business. I don't care if Maria has a pentagram painted on her floor unless there's a menorah in the center of it." If the Catholic Church convicted you on witchcraft, it was probably just a trumped up charge that they tacked on at the end to make you sound much more impressive when they lit you up like a firecracker. Like Joan of Arc! Her real crime was wearing men's clothes (and also kicking English ass, but they couldn't write that in official court documents), but the powers that be decided to throw in witchcraft too. For some extra spice, not that they really believed she was a witch.

Christianity didn't start taking magic seriously until the Protestant Reformation. That's when everyone became super paranoid about witches and started hunting them down (this was also when the Statute of Secrecy was enacted). Why is this? Well, maybe because for the first time, Christians actually knew what the Bible said. Before King James I translated the Bible into English, it was only written in Latin. Church services? All in Latin. And most people could not read or speak the language. All they knew about their religion was based on word-of-mouth and the miracle plays they watched a couple of times a year. They probably had no idea that there was even a line in the Bible that said "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Before then magic was accepted as a thing that existed, that could be used for good or ill, and that weird old lady down the street might be a witch, but magic is useful. She cured your lame horse last winter. And maybe she'll even curse Judith for you (that bitch).

All this to say, that I think British wizards and witches converted to Christianity at the same time as the Muggle population. There was no reason not to. The vast majority probably couldn't read Latin either, they only Latin they knew were Roman spells they had picked up, or they used their own spells based in the Brythonic and Anglo-Saxon languages. Those that could read the Bible probably rationalised that "no magic" line as meaning "thou shalt not suffer a Dark witch to live." Because people are very, very good at rationalising and absolving themselves of any perceived sin. And it wasn't like there were any consequences. No one was going to do a thing about them practicing magic, no one cared (unless they wanted to buy their services).

question to the void: what watsonian explanation is there for wizards celebrating christmas?

[eveningdove]

im posting this here instead of bsky bc its too long lol

the idea that gtn era griddlehark would have good? functional? sex is wrong lmaoooo

neither of them know how to have sex in the slightest

you could maybe, maybe convince me that gideon could talk a big game bc she does objectively read a lot of porn, but imo it would be cringe pornographic talk that doesn't translate to real life. also gideon in gtn ,while a cool, buff butch, is also a seriously under socialized 18 year old. anything she says would come out so awkward, which is charming in and of itself, but she is not suave.

and the idea that 0 experience gideon would have any kind of strap game, let alone a good one is a pipe dream (pun intended)

aLSO gtn era harrow would 1000% not be into physical domination. its something one could explore for a more mature harrow, but not gtn harrow. imo she's more likely to top than gideon bc gideon is willing to relinquish herself to harrows control (a thing that happens, regularly in the book) whereas harrow is still so desperately grasping onto any modicum of control she can get in her life. hell i think harrow allowing herself to be touched romantically/sexually at all would be a huge moment, one that is infintely more interesting to me than just getting dicked down by her butch.

anyway i think you can say so much about a character through sex and their dynamics with another person, and frankly its really fun and i love doing it.

👏being butch does not automatically mean being the top👏

ugh stone!harrow / bottom!gideon would be so delicious bc of the way being a stone's partner entails so much inherent and absolute trust in them that is in line with the story's themes. fuck, anyway im right <3

[egophiliac]

so on the subject of the "Crowley is secretly Revaan/Laverne/Levin/please Twst give us his name" theory, I think my feelings are best summed up as "I don't really buy it, but it's funny". like, in all seriousness, I'm not opposed to it; I have enjoyed the writing in Twst so far and I'm willing to trust that whatever happens will, you know, make sense and not be terrible. but I'm just not really convinced by the current evidence! maybe that'll change once we learn more, we'll see!

with that said, may I propose a few alternate theories about the possible Crowley/Revaan connection:

[linkedin-offficial]

experimenting 🕊️