#loreposts

[bluberryffxiv]

the big 7.2 post

aka bonana fucking dies

lets talk about that one scene in msq

(this is gonna get long and rambly)

ill be honest i thought the zap scene was a bit silly in having the wol just...brush it off and looked annoyed. like i get were powerful but that was plain cartoonish. so i decided bonana doesnt get to walk it off. and the reason why is because since shadowbringers hes had a big aetheric weakpoint on his back due to overuse of the dark arts on the first, and i imagine having it blasted with lightning cant feel good.

so basically when he gets struck it looks pretty fatal. but then after a second....he gets up, and seems fine. and then he goes through the rest of the patch like nothings wrong, though the others do notice after that point he stops talking and seems very stern. similar to how he was in shadowbringers, so it wasnt something out of the ordinary to question. but then after everything was said and done, as everyone was parting ways he collapsed and went completely unresponsive. as they looked through his things they discovered his dark knight crystal had been active, and assumed that after the strike he'd been staying concious under some kind of extended living dead spell.

but thats not the whole story. what actually happens in the moment is a desire. a wish to live. a wish granted, thanks to his dynamis-laden pendant. his soul is displaced from his body into it to weather the blow, and after its over hes able to get up. but when he does he sees his body, moving separate from himself. and it seems like no one can see or hear him, they only acknowledge his silent body. suddenly hes in a scenario very similar to ardbert, except theres no one else for him.

thankfully he still held some sway over what his body did, and could command it through battle, as awkward as it felt. but it was a very shaky control, and by the end of the patch it completely snapped and his body fell comatose. needless to say things got very weird for him as everyone rushed to aid him and figure out what happened, while he himself is left all alone to mull over the days events. watching as if a complete stranger while they whisk his body back to tuliyollal (bc obviously sol9 didnt feel safe).

the next few days after that felt surreal as he watched his dearest friends fret over him like he was dying. o'ranje seemed to take it especially hard, because she'd already been going through it in dawntrail (but thats another post). one night he catches her sneaking in, where she confesses how much she loathes the circumstances theyre in. how much she wishes she didnt have to worry so much for him. that bonana didnt feel like he had to carry the weight of the world still, that they all could just live a simple life away from everyone. but she knows its unlikely to happen, given the kind of person he is (and what he is). keep in mind the context of shadowbringers where they spent 4 yrs building a relationship before she had to watch him throw himself in the fire for the exarchs little quest, then watch him utterly fail to absorb the love she felt for him during endwalker until the final hour

and ill continue this with a part 2 later im feeling it👍

[alittlevillainy]

[paradoxbeta]

Who wants a bit of Minecraft spec bio?

In my headcanon for Minecraft the majority of mobs share a very recent common ancestor with a slime-mold adjacent organism called the "root node," meaning most mobs (villagers, illagers, skeletons, zombies, mooshrooms, others) are fungoid/plantoid-appearing creatures.

Villagers are among the most complex of them all, boasting an intricate method of expression through extendable facial "petals" (thin, mostly transparent membranes) that shift in color, pattern, and intensity to express a vast and dynamic field of emotions. The protrusions on their head resembling eyebrows and a nose light up in patterns to convey information. Conversation is occasionally emphasized by vocal cues (the iconic "hrms").

While impossible to translate standard villager conversation into something intelligible to humans without advanced technology, Steve is the most "fluent in villager," with a baseline understanding of what different colors mean on a villager's petals and even dyed paper cards to replicate the expressions himself. He also has established a rudimentary sign language with the nearby village.

Steve works with a certain villager he's nicknamed The Language Guy, or "TLG," to propose new signs or revise existing ones. TLG distributes language updates to the village when they happen. TLG is the most "fluent in human," so they are the village's Steve equivalent when it comes to diplomacy with humans. They are also working on writing a book with every established sign and its definition. Since villagers don't have a written language yet, it consists of easily interpreted pictograms.

Humans and villagers have rather shallow avenues of communication due to their complete lack of intuition about each other's natures. However, due to their frequent interactions, TLG and Steve are very close friends for creatures with a compatibility gap bigger than the Grand Canyon.

Alex would really like to learn about all of this, but she's not quite got the hang of it yet.

[thealterscrolls]

the only proven effective way to be rid of your enemies 💖

[brushie-art]

My buffer posts are moving again!

We will get back to superheroes in about 6 posts after this one :3333

But for now, have some old slumber lily lore.

[cuppajj]

What’s in the box, celestial cheese??

[hoarah-babylon]

Let me switch it up and talk about some lore from the DLC that I really liked

Learning about Marika is the main thing that truly moved me so much. The items and atmosphere (that music!!!) in Shaman Village genuinely brought me to tears. I just wasn't expecting to get such a human perspective of Marika and her actions. Her past doesn't justify her actions during her reign at all of course, but I understand her motivations now and they're just... so human and illogical.

It really resonated with me. I know what it's like to feel loss, to feel like you don't have a home, or that you do have a home, but it will never be the same and you can never return to it. To have this idealised version of it in your mind and have this illogical need to preserve it. I know what it's like to feel guilt and try to right things even though it never can truly be fixed. It re-contextualises so much, and I loved that.

I always said I thought it was wild for her to take the Rune of Death from the Elden Ring, like how could she have ever thought that would work out? It was doomed to fail from the start. But I get it now. She wasn't doing that from any kind of logical thinking - it's all emotion, it's all trauma and grief and wanting to do whatever she could to avoid that loss ever again. Grieving a heavy loss and newly in a position of godhood... of course she made decisions that wouldn't make sense to most. Of course she removed Death as soon as she had the chance, or opportunity.

For me it completely negates any theory that Marika was working with Ranni on the dire plot - this makes The Shattering out to be something that was born completely from grief. She did everything she could, everything within her power to avoid experiencing this kind of loss ever again, and still lost her golden child in one of the most horrific ways possible. Marika started her reign on the premise of emotion and revenge, and essentially ended it for the same reasons. It's great storytelling, comes full-circle and answers a lot of questions I had from the base game! 10/10

[bantersnatch]

Hello, all! I think the time has come for us to talk about Very Important People's former cryptid Bianca, because, frankly, I think it's fun to have fan theories in play before things start getting canonized -- especially if those fan theories end up being completely wrong! Before I get too deep into tin hat theorizing, let's take a post to review the facts.

To begin, some basics about Bianca herself.

Bianca is host!Vic's stepdaughter via their marriage to Bianca's unnamed father.

The Host dislikes Bianca to the point that they are willing to sacrifice her to dark forces, they fantasize about throwing her into the ocean, and so forth (all to Bianca's face, mind you).

Bianca, in turn, is at minimum not receptive to spending time with the Host.

She works as a PA on the fictional VIP set.

She is well-liked on set.

She and the Host are the same age.

She, the Host, her father, and a certain extraterrestrial are all living together.

And, of course, we now know she is played by the wonderful Talia Tabin! Is this relevant to lore theories....? No, not really. But I'm very excited about the recent face reveal :}

To understand Bianca and her relationship with the Host, I think it's worth also talking about her father/the Host's husband. So far, the husband is a somewhat mysterious figure, but a picture of him is emerging.

Continued under the cut is what we know about him, alongside some more surface-level speculation about what this all means.

The Host describes their husband as "a lovely man".

The Host sleeps and brushes their teeth on set, flirts with guests, and seems overall deeply lonely and unfulfilled. These are not signs of a happy marriage.

The Host and their husband can afford a house and an attached guest house. Presumably in LA. The guy has money.*

He was invited to a Gwyneth Paltrow goop party at some point.

He took the last name Michaelis "in order to feel closer to [the Host]" when they got married.

He is reportedly "in his forties".**

*this could be attributed to a "Friends"-like setup where people are inexplicably able to afford real estate for the bit, but I think that's relatively unlikely; if you've watched enough interviews with Vic, they make a lot of jokes about the LA housing market and how well-off you have to be to own property. Who's to say, though, this is improv and sometimes the bit reigns supreme! **per the Bonus Content episode, which I personally consider as canonical as anything else.

Extrapolating these facts out, we can gather:

Bianca's father had her fairly young, assuming that in lore Bianca (and the Host) are in their late twenties to mid thirties. Let's do the math for the absolute oldest he could have become a father. If the Host's husband is currently 49 and Bianca is (significantly younger than her actor) only 27, her father would have still been college-aged when he had her. It's possible that the Host lied about their husband's age because they're embarrassed about the true age difference; it's also possible that the "forties" statement was something Vic made up on the spot without fully considering the math. In either case this is worth noting.

Bianca's father is someone with enough of a foothold in Hollywood to procure invitations to celebrity events. He's certainly more prominent in the industry than the Host, who is relegated to "plus one" status.

Building off the previous point, and combining it with the oddity of both his daughter and his spouse working on the same project, I think it's possible Bianca's father was involved in hiring decisions at the VIP studio -- and, with the Host reportedly paying to be there rather than the other way around, it's possible he also bankrolled parts of the production.

He's the kind of guy who would marry a person young enough to be his kid, and he's willing to go through with such a marriage even though it creates friction with his actual kid.

In short, Bianca is the daughter of a man with influence, but for whatever reason she's stuck working alongside -- and living with! -- a step-parent who openly daydreams about tossing her into the sea. There's something keeping the Host and Bianca stuck together despite their mutual dislike, whether that's purely their connection through Bianca's father or something more complicated.

More on that here.

[urlknight]

One-Eyed Wolves are among many dangers that roam the wilds of the Houselands at night. Often found in packs, they possess a head almost the size of an entire human and an insatiable appetite for blood.

[irl-loading-screens]

[mildeleef]

maybe not quite so different

[bluberryffxiv]

i always worry about things being too confusing when i talk abt bonanas system stuff so i made a little chart that maybe helps. some notes:

anemone isnt a literal kid, its just that the first memories they recovered were from their childhood and it influenced the way they act.

i didnt have room but bonana in the present isnt the same as the above. hes actually nemona, having accepted the personality being a part of him as a multifaceted person and merged with him (this doesnt mean hes magically cured though)

[alittlevillainy]

[paradoxbeta]

Wanted to do a super quick drawing of an Allay.

Despite not being evolutionarily related to the root node* I also treat it (and vexes by extention) as a slime mold adjacent entity because I find the similarities between how lightning and slime mold move really fun. It "flies" by moving like a lightning bolt in slow motion, and stays completely frozen in the air when not mobile.

*Covered in this post for those who don't know

[starr-ghost]

everything we know about host!vic’s childhood

(a sisyphean attempt to figure out what the fuck their backstory is)

will this make complete sense? no! absolutely not! and it’ll probably change in two weeks time! but i have thoughts and i am announcing them via megaphone

also for ease i’m referring to them as ‘the host’ rather than ‘host!vic’ for the remainder of this post

the host’s birth family

we know the host was at one point raised by both their parents. were they together? god knows. at some point, their father abandons them/the family and moves to miami, leaving the host and their twin sister katie behind. it’s likely this happens when the host is 7 or younger, as they spend a large amount of time with their grandfather and nana from that age onwards.

when the host is 12, they’re still living with their mother and katie, who doesn’t come to their birthday party, implying that at this time either their father hasn’t left yet or, my belief, that their grandfather and nana are taking partial custody of the twins (well, it’s probably more that their mother is kinda just leaving them there for days at a time)

on the topic of the grandparents: we know the host had a grandfather (bill) who was married to their biological grandmother, who died before the host was born. bill then marries nana. the host also mentions their grandmother on their other side, who apparently takes a lot of cruises.

based on all of this, i believe bill & nana are the host’s maternal grandparents, and their unnamed grandmother is their paternal grandmother. this would suggest that they still had some contact with their father’s side of the family after he abandoned them, although considering she’s always on a cruise she may be avoiding the host and/or their family.

at some point after the host’s 12th birthday, their mother abandons(?) them and katie, and the two live with bill and nana for an undetermined amount of time. somewhat soon after this - when the twins are still young enough not to be safe home alone for too long - nana abandons them for four days, leading to bill divorcing her.

after this… we don’t know a ton. katie and the host grow apart, and as katie mentions their father abandoning them but not their mother it’s likely that she reconnected with their mother at some point. at some point so does the host, although they clearly still have a very strained relationship with their mother considering she refused to come to their birthday.

at some point, bill dies and his entire inheritance goes to nana. this isn’t super important to the timeline but depending on when this happens, it might explain their obsession with money as a power symbol. also the hayes steele thing. in my mind those two are connected but that’s up for interpretation.

as the host is apparently set to be the sole person organising nana’s funeral, it’s likely this was true for bill’s as well. we don’t know how old they were when bill died, but given katie’s absence from the funeral planning it could be assumed that she’s living with their mother at this point while the host is/was living with bill?

so, in summary, my best attempt to figure out the timeline is as follows: the host’s parents split up when the host and katie are around 7, and the two are left in the care of their mother, who regularly leaves them with their grandfather and nana. the host and katie grow apart, and around the age of 12 their mother leaves for a long period. during this time, nana leaves the two home alone for four days, leading to her divorce from the twins’ grandfather. their mother returns, and katie goes to live with her, while the host stays with their grandfather (who may be the only healthy adult in this whole family).

bonus thoughts:

if you subscribe to the idea that the host and the bianca were childhood friends (which i do), they presumably met after the host’s 12th birthday considering she didn’t attend it. this… doesn’t really make the david situation any less fucked up

it’s obvious katie was the golden child, and based on her having been a popular girl and the ‘nerd alert’ thing from nana it’s pretty easy to guess that nana encouraged the two fighting/katie bullying the host (something that their father also seemed to encourage, if we take the sippy cup story from augbert as fact)

[justabrick]

It perplexes me that all the other Winds have their motivations and reasoning aknowledged and analyzed, meanwhile Sundowner's gets habitually reduced to just "when you kill civilians lmao". I mean, it IS funny, the man is the embodiment of the incoming ham trope, after all.

Mistral and Monsoon have incredibly tragic backstories and Sundowner technically doesn't. It's not tragic on account of him being... well, no explanation needed, but it is still quite fucked nonetheless.

He had a basic bitch childhood compared to his squadmates. Poverty sucks no matter where you are, but it's nothing compared to the absolute horrorshow the other two went through. Instead, I think the formative experience that really created the monster that is Sundowner came way later in his life.

Lemme quote Kevin here: "Anyway, an IED put him out of action for a few years, but then cyborg tech brought him outta retirement." Nice and casual, easy to pass over, Sundowner himself doesn't even talk of it at all, as compared to Mistral and Monsoon who explain their past with appropriate gravitas.

But I'll give it a bit (a lot) more attention because I think it's the definitive thing that made Sundowner who he is by the time we see him. So what did exactly happen to force him out of the battlefield? If you're not squeamish, proceed to put in "dismounted complex blast injury" in your search bar and navigate to the image tab. If you don't feel like ruining your evening, which I wouldn't blame you for, I'll describe somewhat briefly. It's highly likely he lost both legs, and nearly as likely sustained massive injuries to the pelvis as it's the typical scenario. Not a small chance that he had either one or both arms ruined as well.

That covers "put him out of action" part of the quote, now I must highlight another important bit - "for a few years". You don't normally say "a few years" unless it's at the very least three. So by the end of it what we have is Sundowner, hopelessly disfigured and helpless, left to stew in his misery for years.

For a man who lives and breathes battle like him, it must have been a living nightmare, the absolute worst possible scenario in which his career could have ended in his eyes - left to slowly rot away while being pitied. And it is stated in one of the optional CODECs that disability pay outs are a joke, so it's a pitiful existence even on the financial front. I bet he wished that explosion actually just killed him right then and there.

Is it any wonder then that Sundowner glorifies war as much as he does? He's spent his entire life in it, it has given him the feeling of control he lacked initially, money, plenty of opportunities for power trips, and a home away from home. The two periods of life he was a civilian are marked by a feeling of powerlessness, and his time fighting - a feeling of power.

And it's just war itself he glorifies, too, not any pretty reasoning for it like "freedom" or justice, which I think is important. May be an odd opinion, but I think the guy is the opposite of a patriot of his county, which is pretty amusing considering the extremely stereotypical southern accent. It's even in several aspects of his design, as well. He's a full blooded American, but his body is designed to resemble a Japanese shogun, he fights in a Chinese sword fighting style, his song title is "Red Sun". Just one of these would be a fun detail, two - a curious coincidence, and three is just piling it on in my opinion. Compare and contrast with the other two 'murrican characters - Armstrong and Khamsin which have nothing mixed in that would contradict their national identity.

And aside from these "hints", he straight up celebrates the worst terrorist attack in American history. And a curious detail. His quote: "Demand for PMC's is about to skyrocket. Like the good ol' days after 9/11!". Assuming in mgs universe it happened in 2001, Sundowner wasn't in a PMC to really feel these "good ol' days" himself, as he only became a merc in 2008.

He may have been a lot like Khamsin prior to the injury actually, dressing up his sadism and bloodlust under the guise of some higher purpose. But after getting chewed up and spat out by the machine he'd have a lot of time to ruminate on why exactly he did what he did and wanted what he wanted. At least three years to have an epiphany on inherent human cruelty. An accurate observation in my opinion, but he chose the absolute worst route by believing that it should be embraced rather than fought.

Why better yourself when you can justify your shortcomings as just following an instinct? It's pretty pathetic when you think of it.

But yeah, I think there is an interesting character hiding under all the ham. He's just not very talkative about it unlike his colleagues. Interesting and utterly monstrous. He does have some positive traits though, two in fact - it's them juicy thighs.