#thinking about making a draft game

[deadhoneybee]

The things i have saved in my drafts range from:

Fandom

Incredibly fucking sad

Unhinged

Sad, unhinged fandom

So thats nice.

[whirlpool-blogs]

(small child starting to meltdown) “Hey, hey. *snapping* We’ll play later, okay?”

[starcurtain]

"The Lion Has Its Own Historian:" Parallels Between Gorgo and Aglaea

While re-reading Mydei's "As I've Written" stories recently, I was intrigued again by the (seemingly impossible) section in which Aglaea unknowingly echoed Gorgo's words to Mydei, and this led me down a rabbit hole of thought: The roles of Aglaea and Gorgo--not only in Mydei's life but also in the story overall--form some interesting parallels that are worth looking at in closer detail.

Seize the Means of Control

Gorgo's ascension to a position of authority was predicated on power--not only on her martial prowess, which was expected in her culture (i.e. slaying a lion with her bare hands), but through her courage to meet the existing symbol of authority, Eurypon, in single combat and not concede. In Kremnos, status is conferred and maintained through violence. Though on the surface Gorgo defies this belief, she ultimately remains an active participant in Kremnos's tradition of "might makes right" through the Kremnos Festival, reinforcing rather than rejecting her culture's military-centric social structure.

Although Gorgo originally took part in the Kremnos Festival with the intention of beating Eurypon and seizing the throne of Kremnos for herself (presumably because she thought she could rule better), she ultimately chooses to accept his continued leadership and become queen instead, even granting him an heir to cement his legacy. In this way, despite presumably wishing for a less wasteful (of life) philosophy for the Kremnoans, Gorgo becomes one of the foremost beneficiaries of the very mindset she opposes. She clearly wants to reduce the meaningless bloodshed in Kremnos--she strongly rejects the notion of patricide, for example--but she doesn't (at this point) reject the overall structures of the Kremnoan culture, including the belief that combat ability should determine who leads.

In short, her position of authority was achieved strictly through her ability to oppose her foes.

Despite coming from a wholly different culture, one which (ostensibly) values debate, diplomacy, and the rule of law as the primary tools for establishing status, Aglaea's rise to power was remarkably similar to Gorgo's. The game confirms that the prominence and influence of the Chrysos Heirs in Okhema is no lucky accident--instead, Aglaea has clawed her way to the top, fighting tooth and nail to establish herself as a figure of authority in the Holy City.

We're told she exerts her pressure both through economic means, amassing wealth via monopoly on resources such as Amphoreus's internet, and through literal bloodshed.

The story dances around it, but Star Rail's marketing embraces it: Aglaea represents not just the joy of love but also the "deadliness" of romance, the figure of power in Okhema "pulling the strings" and making others dance to the tune of her vision for the future. She basically rules the roost in the Holy City in large part because of her capacity for violence, because of the literal physical and political power she wields as a demigoddess and the leader of the strongest group of fighters on their entire planet.

This "silk concealing steel" behavior reflects not just how she approaches any who oppose her--the Trailblazer and Krateros, for example--but also how even the NPCs throughout Amphoreus view her:

It's particularly Krateros's view of Aglaea which intrigues me, because the very same things he accuses her of are the things Castrum Kremnos is famous for (being warmongers, usurpers of power, etc.). By all rights, he should admire a "queen" such as Aglaea who rules by force and who is leading her people into the greatest war Amphoreus as ever known. And yet he and the rest of the Kremnoans seem to revile Aglaea for the very same things they saw as virtues in Gorgo.

The context is the key: Gorgo seizing power for herself is viewed as honorable and good because it happened in the context of Kremnos, while Aglaea's power struggle and military dominance occur within the so-claimed peaceful structure of Okhema's democratic society, casting her in the role of a "power-hungry tyrant" for the people living in Okhema, even those who should most appreciate her mindset.

Comparing Gorgo and Aglaea in this way highlights a key double standard in the way the Amphoreans react to women who rise to power, and makes it clear how thin the veneer of Okhema's "peace" really is. Stepping to the top rung of the social ladder through the threat of martial retaliation, Aglaea's battle against the Council and the Flame Chase's foes is no different from Gorgo tearing a lion apart with her bare hands, challenging a king, and taking her place at the top of Kremnos's hierarchy by seizing her weapon and making her stand. All that differs is how violence is received in their contrasting cultures, resulting in two diametrically opposed reactions from the "mere mortals" around them.

With Violence as Your Tool

I think it's important to emphasize that Aglaea and Gorgo also parallel each other not just in their rise to authority through physical power itself, but also in their stances on the necessity of that power: Both Aglaea and Gorgo (at least at first) view bloodshed as a necessary evil, an unpleasant facet of life that one must accept in order to achieve a goal. Violence, for both Gorgo and Aglaea, is a tool.

We see this clearly with Gorgo throughout her flashbacks, both in her initial fight with Eurypon (where she claims she would embrace the notion of death only so long as it is not "unnecessary") and in her other confrontations with Eurypon: Gorgo insists that the tradition of regicide must be broken and makes Eurypon promise not to lead Mydei to that path--yet later, she goes so far as to scold Eurypon when he shies away from his fate, essentially calling him a coward for fearing the prophecy that Mydei would one day kill him. "What prince of Kremnos hasn't killed his father?" she taunts, implying that, even as Gorgo fought to change the violent history of Kremnos, she still believed--at least at that moment--that refusing to face violence when it was foreordained made Eurypon a weak and unfit ruler.

However, we ultimately see this stance change. In Mydei's dream of training with his mother, Gorgo reveals that nearly losing Mydei completely changed her perspective on Kremnos's beliefs, finally killing any faith she had in their system of rule and their constant pursuit of Strife for strife's sake. She rejects the notion of combat being the ultimate test of a person's worth, explicitly casts aside her title and role as queen of Kremnos, and embraces a kinder identity as strictly "Mydei's mother." This is a crisis of faith brought on by experiencing the impacts of Kremnos's faith firsthand--by being forced to experience grievous loss, Gorgo is implied to have grown as a person, from one who is willing to accept violence as a tool to get ahead, into one who solely values peace.

These views, too, mirror Aglaea's pursuit of the Flame Chase Journey and her "hidden" feelings toward its necessary loss. We know already that Aglaea views the threat of violence as her go-to "means to an end" when it comes to achieving the Chrysos Heirs' goals.

She is not at all above putting people into harm's way to pursue the prophecy, such as letting Phainon take the Strife trial even knowing that he would fail, and she tells us players over and over again that her own humanity has nearly vanished, claiming that she now no longer has sufficient empathy for humankind to be swayed away from the path of Era Nova.

This is clearly not true (given how deeply she cares for Tribbie, how kind she is to Castorice, and how unwilling she is to actually bring any harm to Anaxa), but Aglaea insists on this emotionless illusion likely because it makes it easier to tolerate the cruelty required to continue pursuing her goal--she needs it to be true that the last of her humanity has already waned, because this is what makes it easier to accept that the Flame Chase Journey is a journey of "loss," one that is fueled by bloodshed.

It is an unfortunate truth of the prophecy that people will die in pursuit of the dream, that capturing all the coreflames and pushing the world forcibly into its next cycle will cost lives and require cold, rational decisions that will crush people's happiness and freedom. Aglaea cannot hesitate, cannot waver, cannot choose kindness over action.

But, like Gorgo, we know that accepting violence as a tool does not mean that the person wielding the tool is always happy to do so. As Gorgo loses her genuine faith in Kremnos's beliefs and begins to view training Mydei for war as nothing more than a rote requirement, devoid of meaning, Aglaea too struggles to uphold her emotionless facade, a protective cocoon whose cracks reveal the enormous weight she is bearing and how deeply the inhumanity of her own decisions wounds her.

We see this clearly in her character stories, where the actions and then later loss of her maid completely reshape her definition of "beauty":

And we also see it very clearly in her behavior toward Anaxa, where she hesitates at the crucial moment, unable to commit to the course of action that she herself set in motion:

Like Gorgo who longs for a softer world where she can simply be Mydei's mother, Aglaea too (no matter how much she claims) has not lost the part of herself that cares not only for the people closest to her but even for the innocents of the world, the boy who wants to bring his sister something beautiful, the girl who shares her bracelet...

Her nature, no matter how much of it has worn away, is at its core humble and kind--reviling the pain of others.

It's this fundamental conflict between love and what must be done that lends both Gorgo and Aglaea their depth as characters, that grants them both an air of nobility, in the way that everyone good who suffers is noble. Being forced to cause harm without a desire to do so creates quintessentially contradictory characters, making the audience privy to both their external mettle and their internal hesitation, easily humanizing both of them. Aglaea and Gorgo are virtuous women whose cruelty is justified for the greater good. Yet in watching both of them struggle under the immense pressure of that cruelty, we recognize the inherent evil of a world that forces kind-hearted people into positions where bloodshed is their only path forward.

Both Aglaea and Gorgo are not women who normally hesitate to seize the tools available to them, or the kind of women who will shy away from wielding their strongest weapon--the threat of death--with impunity. The reaction to female characters who are willing to exert this kind of power over others (including over the men in their lives) both in-game and in the fandom (where Aglaea in particular is treated poorly for her "coldness") demonstrates how unique this particular type of female character still is, and suggests interesting overall power dynamics in Amphoreus that privilege women willing to utilize violence even above men who choose the same route, despite the strong patriarchal bent one might expect of a story with ancient Greece as its primary influence.

Mydei is not the son of Eurypon, but explicitly and always "the son of Gorgo" even in flashbacks where Eurypon is still alive; in Okhema, both the Chrysos Heirs and the Council appear to be primarily directed by women (Caenis occupies the more visible role of Aglaea's opponent than Lygus does), with all of Okhema's demigods (including Cipher) being female. Gorgo's violence is regarded as honorable; Aglaea is met with disapproval from her peace-loving society but no one ever actually dares to stop her. Perhaps Krateros comes closest, by defying Aglaea's will and entering the Strife trial without her permission, but even he ultimately has to be rescued from Aglaea's clutches by Mydei, who explicitly invokes his mother's name to ensure Krateros's safety. Say it with me: The male character with the highest social status in all of Amphoreus has to rely on the power and reputation of his mother to rescue another man from a powerful woman. Amphoreus really said "Ladies first." 💯

Anaxa's reactions to Aglaea are humorous but are also a perfect example of this overall social structure in Amphoreus which assumes strong women in power have an automatic degree of legitimacy because they are willing to seize violence as their means, despite violence being, in real-world cultures at least, stereotypically the domain of men. In 3.1, Anaxa simply accepts it as a given that he will become Aglaea's prisoner and that she will be able to do whatever she wants to him, because nothing in Okhema's social, political, or military structures would enable him to genuinely oppose her (if he even wanted to).

Even in his (sort of) fake-out "siding with the Council" phase, all Anaxa does is move himself from the grasp of one powerful woman to the next, shifting from being Aglaea's prisoner to Caenis's ace. Cerces even has an entire voiceline where she points out word-for-word that Anaxa is functionally just moving from one woman's cage to the next. Caenis in particular seems to view Anaxa as an object, a biting dog she can keep on a leash until she sics him on her enemy. Anaxa obviously is not so easily manipulated, but Caenis's threat about karma eventually comes true, and he nevertheless suffers the final wrath of the Holy City's society, being judged more harshly than anyone else for his seeming unwillingness to submit to the power of either woman in control of Okhema.

Both literally and thematically, the game tells us players that Aglaea and Gorgo are courageous and effective leaders because they live by the blade, because they are willing to harden their hearts and do whatever it takes, whether that means taking another's life--or their own.

To Usher in a New Era

Of course what really distinguishes both Gorgo and Aglaea's willingness to cause harm from malevolent forces in Amphoreus is their ultimate intent. Although both women are willing to do whatever it takes, they do so only in service to a greater purpose, one that they believe will better their world. In this way, Amphoreus's writers reinforce the underlying impression in Amphoreus's plot that women are more trustworthy and reliable leaders than their corresponding male counterparts. Slight side note on this, but it's kind of funny just how consistent this is--even "outside" of Amphoreus, Welt and Sunday had to turn to Herta to save the day, while inside Amphoreus, Trailblazer is still relying on Acheron's advice to get them through. (When you cater to the incels so hard you somehow loop back around into writing staunchly feminist plotlines...)

The message, repeated and unsubtle, is that there is a link between women's leadership and righteousness, with both Gorgo and Aglaea representing an idealistic desire for a better future for Kremnos and Amphoreus as a whole--one by opposing fate and the other by enforcing it.

Both Gorgo and Aglaea face prophecies that promise to reshape the world as they know it, prophecies which require them to make decisions that will ultimately cost them their lives in a desperate bid to influence history toward the best path. Gorgo rejects the prophecy she is given, determined to protect Mydei despite the destruction the omens claim he will bring to Castrum Kremnos.

Because of the players' predilections for Mydei, this choice to reject fate paints Gorgo as a heroine, an unselfish and moral person who will choose the life of an innocent child over she own safety. Her willingness to fight to the death to prevent Eurypon's atrocity against their son flies in the face of fate itself, attempting to stop an inevitable, self-fulfilling prophecy.

And, in fact, the game even teases us with the idea: What would Kremnos have been like if Gorgo succeeded? When Mydei returns to Kremnos, he either "envisions" or actually experiences (via timelines bleeding into each other), a seemingly parallel universe where Gorgo succeeded in saving him from the Sea of Souls, and where she clearly rallied the people of Kremnos to her cause. The Kremnos we see in that vision is entirely different from Eurypon's:

The people are happy, rejoicing and at ease, talking about pomegranates and writing and playing games with kids, while the sun paints the whole city in a soft and gleaming gold.

Contrast that with the Kremnos that Trailblazer and Castorice find when they travel back into the past where Eurypon betrayed his wife and left Mydei in the sea:

In the seemingly alternate timeline where Gorgo lives long enough to raise Mydei, the Kremnos we're presented with... looks a lot like Okhema. Looks a lot like the peaceful, idyllic Holy City where children frolic in the streets and the people are still full of light and life. By defying fate, we are shown (at least in some fragment of Amphoreus's timeline) that Gorgo achieves what she had longed for in Kremnos from the start, creating a better, gentler future for the people, prosperous and free of the cycle of Strife and meaningless violence that had plagued their kingdom for thousands of years. In this way, we can say that, for that lost timeline at least, Gorgo essentially achieved the Era Nova for Kremnos, ushering in a time of peace for her people. What Aglaea seeks, the game shows us that Gorgo was capable of achieving.

Conversely, Aglaea's path forward involves taking the complete opposite road: Rather than rejecting fate to create a better future, Aglaea seeks to embrace it. She has fully invested herself and her resources in the prophecy of the Flame Chase. She has to, because if there's no Era Nova to look forward to, then there's no hope at all for Amphoreus, and how can it be that something so beautiful is doomed to total destruction? If the Flame Chase Journey will end in a new start, if someone--anyone--will get to live to see the world born anew, then every sacrifice, every burden, every agony will have been worth it.

By embracing her prophesied fate instead of rejecting it, Aglaea is taking the same decisive stand as Gorgo, seizing the future of her world in her own hands and forcing Amphoreus along the path toward what she believes will definitely be a brighter future.

Not only does the description of Era Nova match the idyllic Castrum Kremnos we see under Gorgo's likely rule, but even the moments where both women truly make their stand and reckon with fate reflect each other as well: Gorgo demands her fellow Kremnoans stand with her, hoping they will see the wickedness of Eurypon's decision and reject blind faith in the prophecy they've been given. With her own strength, if even just Krateros alone had stood with her, she easily would have been able to push back against Eurypon's scheme. She lays out her vision for a different future, rejects the notions of the past, and is met with silence.

Meanwhile, Aglaea faces the Council of Elders in Okhema, where the decision about the Flame Chase Journey hangs in the balance, waiting on the final vote of a single person to join up with her cause. Just like Gorgo, the alignment of even one person to Aglaea's cause will make proof of her righteousness, prove the she's right. Aglaea lays down the gauntlet, demands the loyalty of her allies--and her leadership and vision are rewarded when Anaxa joins up with the cause, tipping the literal balance of the scales towards the new era Aglaea believes her efforts will bring to fruition.

(In essence, at the end of 3.2, we get to watch Anaxa do exactly what Krateros failed to--stand on the side of the woman who wields justice.)

Ultimately, through they do it through diametrically opposite paths--rejecting and embracing prophecy, respectively--both women are characterized by their drive to create change, their refusal to accept a quiet descent into cruelty and darkness. Both take a stand, outlining their vision for the right way to go on, for a better, softer, brighter world, seeking the loyalty of comrades to legitimize their causes, and--failing that--willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of themselves to further their truly noble causes.

The strength of both women lies not just in their martial prowess, but in their unwavering dedication to a just cause, no matter the cost to themselves.

Generational Influence

What actually started me off on this whole look at Gorgo and Aglaea as thematic parallels was Mydei's scenes with Aglaea, particularly how he clearly considers her a role model for ideal leadership. While I won't go so far as to say Aglaea perceives herself filling any sort of maternal role for Mydei, I think the connection is obvious on Mydei's end: Having never gotten the chance to truly meet his mother, Mydei is almost certainly projecting "the leader my mother would have been" onto Aglaea. (Or perhaps we should say the opposite: The empty spaces in Mydei's mind when he thinks of "Gorgo" are sutured closed with Aglaea's golden filigree.)

Does this sort of praise sound a bit familiar? It ought to, because this is how Krateros describes Gorgo:

Both women are characterized by their ability to move people's hearts, to inspire hope, and to model ideal strategy for others.

So how could Mydei do anything but link Aglaea's leadership with the life he imagines his mother would have led if she had had the chance to rule Kremnos?

Consider the entire situation from Mydei's perspective: His people have just been (forcibly) rescued from an insane king whose true downfall began with his betrayal of wife, their nation's one genuinely noble leader. If Gorgo had been their ruler, none of this suffering would ever have happened. Fleeing the madness and death Nikador is bringing to Kremnos, the entire surviving host of his people migrate to the "Holy City," the (supposed) last bastion of light and peace and happiness in Amphoreus--which is effectively ruled by a woman so powerful that she knows and sees all.

Seemingly effortlessly, she commands respect and fealty, marshaling her forces to do battle with the might of her own sword, while fighting to maintain the very same values Mydei's mother wanted to bring to her own nation. While being unafraid of bloodshed, she treasures life more than anything else. She's honest, direct, and unflinching, but still, despite everything, kind and dedicated to protecting the world she loves.

Mydei doesn't know his mother but there she is. There's the "queen" that his mother should have had the chance to be. There is the leader that Kremnos needed. There is the powerful woman whose dream for the future could have single-handedly changed the course of fate.

Clearly, for lack of personal experience, the Gorgo in Mydei's mind is less a real person and much more an idealized figure. His only direct knowledge of her comes from one "dream," where she tells him that he's more important than the world to her (undoubtedly leaving Mydei to grapple with the question of whether that is something she truly felt or something he just wishes to be true, by the way). Mydei's only other frame of reference for his mother is Krateros's blind veneration, with Krateros constantly holding Gorgo up as the standard Mydei should meet.

Gorgo is clearly on an achingly high pedestal for Mydei. He shaped his entire youth around the need to avenge her, and then he shaped his entire adult ideology around her vision for Kremnos. In "our" timeline, Gorgo may not have lived to create the change she hoped for, but her goal was ultimately achieved nonetheless, through the inter-generational influence her memory had over Mydei. It was Gorgo's hatred of wasteful bloodshed that helped Mydei to hate it too. It was Gorgo's desire to change Kremnos's traditions that led Mydei to consider tearing down its dynasty. It's his mother's gentle love for her people that echoes in Mydei's same affection.

And through Aglaea, all those views and lessons were enforced. Before joining up with the Flame Chase Journey, the game tells us that Mydei's life was effectively still a hellscape even when he had his friends: They wandered the land with nowhere to call home and were attacked by (or themselves attacked) everyone they met, engaging in endless violence just to keep existing, while he watched his companions be brutally murdered one by one. At the risk of extreme understatement: Mydei was not living the life his mother wanted for him.

After joining the Flame Chase Journey, Mydei becomes one of the "heroes" who dedicates himself to protecting innocents and serving as a guardian; he finds a cause, does his best to create a new home for his people, and works to reshape their views towards the beliefs his mother espoused. Like Gorgo putting down her weapon and taking up the role of "just your mother," Mydei gets to (temporarily, briefly) let down his guard and live as just a person, cooking sweets, roleplaying with kids, and cuddling with chimeras.

He inches closer to the dream of finding meaning in finding peace.

And if it was Gorgo who inspired those choices, then it was Aglaea who made them possible--Aglaea who accepted the Kremnoan Detachment into Okhema, Aglaea who literally put aside her fear of Mydei to accept him as a fellow Chrysos Heir, Aglaea who guided him, Aglaea who modeled transformational leadership for him, Aglaea who gave him the final (if forceful) push he needed to commit to changing his people's future, destroying the bloodstained Kremnos of the past. In all his struggles to move forward, the threads of Aglaea and Gorgo's mirrored ideology lead Mydei through the labyrinth of uncertainty.

All things considered, Gorgo might actually be the character with the single most significant impact on Amphoreus's current plot other than the Trailblazer, because the guidance and beliefs she instilled in Mydei will live much longer than Gorgo and even Aglaea herself--may even live on through the end of the world and the rebirth of all of Amphoreus, because it is her exact ideology that becomes the backbone of Mydei's life advice to Castorice. When Castorice reveals their future, telling him the demigods of today's Amphoreus will become the titans of the new cycle, Mydei looks her in the eye and tells her the exact thing he learned from his mother and Aglaea:

Don't accept defeat--defy despair with everything you have and weave the future with your own two hands.

Perhaps nowhere do we see the parallels between Gorgo and Aglaea more clearly than in the "As I've Written" chapter, where we are told that what ultimately swayed Mydei's decision to join the Flame Chase Journey was when, completely without knowing it, Aglaea spoke the exact same words as his mother.

Though the organization of "As I've Written" is often unclear, making it difficult to determine which passages are actually linked to each other and which are entirely separate, I'm going to personally interpret the quote included in Mydei's third chapter as that special sentence once spoken by both Gorgo and Aglaea:

"The lion has its own historian, and the history of the hunt should not be held by the hunter alone."

Putting aside that all of this is completely impossible in the timeline as we know it (Mydei has no way of remembering the sentences his mother might have spoken to him, and none of the sentences in any flashbacks or her letter to him have anything to do with lions or historians), if this is the line echoed by both women, it is an obviously poignant phrase that would immediately signify to Mydei that Aglaea's ideology matches his mother's.

Although the English translation of "As I've Written" leaves A LOT to be desired (sometimes to the point of being entirely incomprehensible; I legitimately have no idea who okayed those translations, rife as they are with just straight up grammar errors lol), the origin of this phrase is unmistakable. It comes from the African proverb that is normally translated as:

"Until the lion has its own historian, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter."

Essentially, "History is written by the victors."

If we take the English translation seriously, what Aglaea and Gorgo would have been saying is that "the defeated" (which, by the way, is symbolized by the lion repeatedly in Kremnos's history) should have their own historian, and that no one should get to speak for them. That is, of course, that no one should get to speak for Mydei except himself--that he should take charge of his own destiny and write his own history into the books.

Krateros repeatedly insists that Mydei is the hunter, the one who should be controlling the whole hunting ground:

But Aglaea sees through Mydei in the first moment of meeting him--sees that he's not the victor but the victim, not the Kremnoan king-to-be but the "wandering lion" who is at risk of being slaughtered on the altar of Kremnos's glory. Kremnos's history is not the "hunting lion"--it's the lion hunt. Gorgo the founder killed the lion, Gorgo the mother killed the lion... So where does that leave Mydei, the symbolic lion?

This line is saying, Aglaea and Gorgo would both have been saying: I see you. I see that there's an entire unspoken legacy weighing on your shoulders, a horror you're fleeing from like wounded prey, a fierce desire in you to refuse the tale this world is writing for you. And in supposedly echoing Gorgo's words, Aglaea would also have echoed the very core of Gorgo's faith:

Those who have lost everything still deserve the chance to shape their own futures.

Those who have faced impossible odds, those who Fate itself has marked for death, those who would martyr themselves to secure the futures of others can and should still rage against the dying of the light, still fight with every tooth and nail to bring about a different ending.

When no one but (apparently) the ghost of Gorgo in his head had ever said it to him, Aglaea told Mydei:

If you want a different history, you can write it.

Of course he joined the Flame Chase Journey after seeing that its leader carries the very same deep-rooted goodness as his mother.

And while we're here talking about the mirrored ideologies and guidance both women have offered to Mydei, I also want to add a tiny aside about Aglaea's symbolic leadership of the other Kremnoans as well.

Although of course Mydei remains their de facto leader even in Okhema, Mydei himself makes a big deal out of the Kremnoans having submitted to Aglaea's authority, repeating in several places that the Kremnoans have a duty to follow her commands.

This isn't an off-hand statement; for someone who should have already been crowned king to state in his own words that his people should submit to someone else's authority is effectively tantamount to ceding his throne specifically to her--Mydei has essentially handed over the reins of Kremnoan leadership to Aglaea. He's the crown prince, but she's effectively the queen (that his mother never got to be). The promotional materials even label Aglaea and Mydei as occupying the same role ("King"). This is especially clear in how the Kremnoans refer to her. In multiple places, Aglaea is referred to as "the golden-haired usurper."

You don't get called a "usurper" unless people believe you're attempting to undermine their current ruler. In all but flat out saying it, the other Kremnoans perceive Aglaea as usurping Mydei's authority, despite Mydei himself willingly giving that power to her. Mydei isn't careless with the Kremnoans' futures, he doesn't shirk his duties as their crown prince, and he certainly would never surrender his power to a weak, unfit ruler. Undoubtedly, Mydei is comfortable with the idea of ceding authority to Aglaea in part because he recognizes his mother in her, sees the qualities that elevated Gorgo to royalty in Kremnos alive and well in Aglaea's Okhema. In this way, perhaps we could say that another factor contributing to Mydei's hesitance to take up Kremnos's throne might be a subconscious sense that the Kremnoans are already in the right hands, that Aglaea--embodying the ideal leadership Mydei projects onto the memory of his mother--is a better fit than he could ever be to lead them anyway?

Heck, while we're at it, I think it's even interesting that the cities of Okhema and Kremnos mirror each other so much, down to things that honestly don't make sense: We're told the legend explaining the lion heads on the walls in Kremnos, but... why are there are also talking lion heads all over Okhema's walls? Gorgo who tore the head off the Tretos lion is echoed in Aglaea, who rules a kinder, softer city still symbolized by the lion, where the talking lion heads get to be gossips and riddle masters instead of war strategists.

Okay, and the last silly thing I want to say: Aglaea would definitely not call herself a mother figure for Mydei, but after 3.2 reveals Gorgo's tough love methods, Aglaea's attempts at scolding him start to look pretty familiar, from her exasperated chiding to her genuine criticism:

Mydei has it tough, having to meet the expectations of women like these lol.

To Fade from the World

Sorry, that was a bit too light-hearted for me, so time to end this post with some more pain:

A final point I think worth comparing between Gorgo and Aglaea is the ultimate fate that both of them face in the story: Gorgo is already gone, but Aglaea is not far behind.

Gorgo's death in particular is treated as abominable. Kremnoans may be warmongers and Strife worshipers, but they're supposed to be honorable about it. Key to their obsession with combat is the idea of noble combat, between contestants who are each given a fair chance. Despite being Gorgo's greatest ally, Krateros does not stand up and join her in her revolt against Eurypon, likely because of that same "might makes right" mindset that shaped so much of Kremnos's decision-making: If Gorgo's cause was truly righteous, then she should have been able to stand up for it herself and win a duel against Eurypon. If it had been a fair contest as expected by Kremnoan cultural standards, then whoever won would have been considered the "correct" person, and no one could have contested the fair results.

But Eurypon's cowardice drove him completely from the path of Kremnos's sacred virtues, causing him to betray their values by betraying his wife, using poison to deny her her fair chance in the duel. This action--forsaking the core tenets of Nikador's divinity--marks the truest extent of Eurypon's downfall, and cements that he is utterly unfit to rule, lacking both the courage to confront his wife in fair combat and the honor to reject under-handed schemes to ensure victory.

Gorgo's death is treated as a tragedy, an act that entirely shapes the course of the story through Mydei's loss to the sea and his subsequent quest for vengeance. It was cowardly betrayal that took away Kremnos's path to a brighter future, locking the self-fulfilling prophecy of Kremnos's downfall into place.

And this, of course, is a perfect mirror to the prophesied end Aglaea is going to face, possibly sooner rather than later. Upon their ascension as demigods, each Chrysos Heir is told how their life will end. Aglaea's prophecy states: "You shall have your final bath in warm and radiant gold."

As Aglaea is most often seen there, the assumption is that she will literally die in the baths--Mydei states this in-game, saying "If a normal person heard that prophecy, they'd probably just stop coming to the baths." Aglaea effectively dismisses this threat (in a very Kremnoan fashion even, lol) by simply saying "Well, who cares? I like baths!" Whatever will be, will be; if her assassin has the strength to end a demigoddess, then truly, it doesn't matter where she goes in Okhema or across the world--fate will find her.

Of course, there's also the possible interpretation that "final bath in gold" refers simply to bathing in her own golden Chrysos Heir blood...

But in either case, the prophecy, Mydei's comments, and some plot leaks I've seen all point towards a violent and unexpected end--likely at the hands of a betrayal.

Like Gorgo, Aglaea will not live to see the world she wished to create, the softer, golden future she wanted to bring to her people. At the hands of her enemies, either facing it with honor or in an unexpected moment of vulnerability, Aglaea will be eliminated before the final hour, fading from Amphoreus's memory as the survivors succeed--or fail--to usher in the new era she sacrificed everything to create.

Although both unique characters on their own, entirely separate from each other, examining Aglaea and Gorgo's parallel plot points, core character traits, and their roles and influences on others throughout the course of the story reveals yet another incredible "echo effect" in Amphoreus's writing, aligning opposites--Okhema and Kremnos, Beauty and Strife--through eerily similar patterns and revealing the enduring thematic threads that bind together the separate portions of Amphoreus's tale.

More than anything, Amphoreus feels to me like a very Hamilton-esque "Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?" plot, one that hinges on the question of who has the power to shape and reshape the future of their world, who has the power to break through a pre-ordained structure and bring about a better end--who has the courage to sacrifice it all to seize the reins of fate itself.

Through Aglaea and Gorgo, the story reinforces a message about women in power, women who perfectly balance violence (the traditional domain of male figures) with love, with beauty, and with righteousness to shake the foundations of their world. In what they value and how they lead, the story mirrors and mirrors again, mise en abyme, the message that those who are willing to give it all for the greater good are the true crafters of our story.

(Perhaps all this is preparing for the presence of another woman, one just as willing or more to do all that must be done to usher in a brighter future for her world?)

The history of the hunt should not be held by the hunter alone.

The lion has its own historian--and so too does the lioness.

Although Gorgo and Aglaea will both fall before that golden Era Nova can be achieved, the marks they have left on Amphoreus's plot, through their legacies of defiance and grace picked up and carried, torch-like, by other characters, demonstrate just how central both women were to all that happened in the world's past and all that will happen in its future.

[phoutube]

the dan and phil gaming channel is so funny to me like . pc gaming is a solo activity… like what other duo gaming channel can you name? feels like instead of watching one youtube personality, i’m watching two of of them synchronously doing ONE person’s gaming/commentary bits and also they’ve been doing this on the internet for 15 years

[i-think-too-loud]

do you ever think about that fact that aaron has killed a man? i do. i think he should do it again actually

[ulteri0rm0tives]

It's every iteration.

It's every iteration of V that will always find Johnny. Every iteration of V that Johnny grows to care about. It's every iteration of each other, in every universe, that will always find each other. They'll always become inseparable, tied together in unfathomable ways. Ways they could never truly unravel from each other in the end, no matter the end.

They'll always be destined for one another. No matter what face is worn. No matter what universe. No matter what, they're always meant to be. No matter what, the stars will always align for them, just to come crashing down from the sky.

[amazingdeadfish]

Do u think u could make an opera version of mayor? I've seen a few artists make diff opera wukong/Mac designs but I think a opera mayor design would look very cool :D

Not gonna lie, I was nervous to do this, but, I don't regret trying out this challenge.

RAMBLES + (literally only two) REFERANCES BELOW THE CUT:

The costume is based on the classic armor outfit in Chinese Peking Opera. Since, we all know that the Mayor doesn't actually have that many identifiable characteristics or, much of a role in the LMK show other than being LBD's foot soldier or, thrall. So, I had to reflect that in what's probably an incredibly basic interpretation for what their design could be (because if you actually see the insane level amount of detail in peking opera outfits, you'll understand that this drawing is heavily simplified and lacks detail).

The mask, is, also simple. I tried to look at numerous references and get my head around the insane amount of possibilities of patterns and designs and what they mean, as well as what the colours symbolize, but all that's important is that blue symbolizes stoicism, black for integrity, and white symbolizes evil (but of course these meanings for colours have leeway in between depending on what source you look at. There is no definitive answer).

The mask is also important because it creates the most visual distinction from Mayor being a Jing instead of a Sheng (male protagonist). And, even though it's a basic mask, I did create it to imply an almost 'skull' shape to it. But it's discrete and, you have to be looking for it to be there (which I suppose fits because, Mayor being LBD's thrall wasn't revealed straight away)

Now okay look, I'm- I'm not an expert on peking opera at all, I had to do a bit or research to do this in order to actually understand what I am doing when it comes to designing an outfit for Mayor. You might see a hint of his Chief costume in the chest plate I decided to keep, and all those skull motifs to show that he is a thrall of Lady Bone Demon. But in short, he is a warrior, a soldier, a chief of war, and he fights and works for Lady Bone Demon. He is to be a character with heavy, dramatic armor, and a mask to not only symbolize his role in whatever theatre show he lands himself in, but also for the shrouded identity he has and, well, not exactly being the most in-depth or open character in the show :))).

Anyways, here's a beta design back when I legitimately had no idea what I was doing and had done like zero research apart from looking at references I lied and, thinking Mayor would have a 'lighter (less heavy) and less decorative outfit (clearly I changed my mind later on):

I am, glad I did not follow through with this design. This is, not a peking opera outfit. Not a conventional one at least, that would reflect who the Mayor is (because this mf is conventional as hell, fitting in with modern times with his suit and all).

And here are the, uh, two references I used (obviously there's more but, these two were the ones I really picked apart and analyzed and, have clearly referenced):

And yes, I copied the pose on the right.

Design is welcome for critique (again, I am not an expert on peking opera (it's such a vast, complex, and wonderful artform that the more I found out the more I was intimidated by) and possibly subjected to be redesigned later on should I look back on this months-years later and cringe horrifically.

[sweetestflow3rs]

i’ve been afk a bit due to work stuff, but throwing other ocs i made during break at you—

[duskerot]

i disappear inside myself / my friends don't know it can't be helped

[Pure You - Nothing But Thieves]

[curly4830]

Finished ISAT last night, this game was an emotional rollercoaster from start to end, tbh. I've got a lot of thoughts about the game and they're all pretty short, but I'd like to list some of them here.

The coin is interesting! I think mechanically it's a good way to check Siffrin's internal monologue of the same thing, regardless of area/party status. But story wise, it's a whole other thing to me. Loop and Siffrin have their own kind of Heads/Tails duality, and Odile's coin flip makes me think that it could have/might have been Loop in our Siffrin's place instead, if things had gone just a little differently. Siffrin's forgetfulness being both a foreshadow to his home country AND the potential years worth of time stuck in the loops. and the player's forgetfulness, that too. Another angle I'd like to explore in the future is Siffrin's sprites, and the (possibly intended) idea of taking the growing space covered in shadow on his face as a loss of humanity/the concept of self. It helps take the idea of Siffrin seeing himself as an actor to the next level for me. You could extend this to the Mal Du Pays/Bigfrin sequences being the total loss of self, Siffrin being sent over the edge(and subsequently grounded by his party members). But he made it back! and that's really what matters, isn't it. It's very in line with the literal context of the scenes but I appreciate that the lines are there to be read between, even if not everybody cares to. i definitely think about faces/the self a normal amount, you can trust me i swear. Siffrin clearly did not have enough problems on his own so I had to push my whole faces/sense of self thing on him too. Loop. oh god Loop. I have a lot of thoughts about Loop and their Identity, and it's going to take a while to figure out! but i'm totally fine with that. is it morally wrong to feel a deep kinship to loop?? i don't know!!! i'm gonna find out though. i was actually just recently thinking about how i don't like using the term kinning for characters because it feels very intimate and I can't say i've felt the same thing other people who kin characters feel. BUT. i think loop gave me some kind of disease i think i'm not well I just couldn't do most of the Dagger dialogue. It was too much for me personally. I did it once and it made me feel bad enough to return it and swear off the idea. until i go back to finish achievements, that is. Fucked up, though!! The loops and their infinite catharsis started to mean nothing at all until they make the even more fucked up mega catharsis. I thought Signalis and it's ending hit me hard but this game reduced me to a crying mess by the end. And lastly I'm very appreciative of @usefulnt0409 for being there to help me through the entire game. I like sharing my first playthroughs of things with people that enjoy them. Having them around to help with mechanical stuff I'd never pick up on(Loop dialogues and the conditions associated with most of them) and when I'd accidentally skip a dialogue just made the experience very special. I don't think I'll soon forget this game, it was an incredible experience even through the gas leak 5am vcs. I think they made it better.

[spacedlexi]

maybe if i just put these screenshots together youll understand why i think their relationship just Works so well as it pertains to the characters and themes of S4 in general

neither of them know what theyre doing, but theyre figuring it out Together. the old ways are dead. and together theyll build a new future thats worth fighting for

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 20 "humbug" thoughts

oh man! i really loved this episode. no aliens, no overarching plot, just some silly shenanigans and yeah, some murder, but in a far more lighthearted fashion than in other cases. filler episodes i love you soooo much <3

from the beginning, i thought the prompt sounded really good... shoutout to people who work in sideshows and other touring entertainment industries, y’all are real for that 

we open with some kids laughing under a full moon… nothing could be scarier… except SOMEONE WATCHING THEM!

and whoever it is, they are approaching the pool with feet out. where are their parents to safeguard them from stranger danger, i ask into my screen!

OH he is the dad!! what was once scary has now turned heartwarming. he splashes about in the pool with them and says they need to get ready for bed. aww. 

BUT NOW SOMEONE IS WATCHING HIM IN THE POOL!! NOOO the heartwarming session HAS BEEN CANCELLED... is he being EATEN???

(as he is killed, the camera shows a van with the words “alligator man” on it... at first i'm thinking that the alligator man was the creature who just Ate this guy, but turns out the father WAS alligator man, so named for his skin condition. rest in peace mister alligator, the world is a worse place for ur loss)

and now the agents are looking into his murder :(

(also, in the opening credits, we see that one of the guest stars is named “the enigma”... I’ll have to look into their work)

mulder says there have been a lot of murders in this fashion over the last 28 years, and they have been going all over the country!!! it seems to involve some sort of round bite mark. must be time to go investigate.

they roll up the the alligator man's funeral. honestly it is sad! and we see that the widow slash mother of the kids is a bearded lady and she is absolutely serving but this is a very sorrow-filled moment for them all

and interrupting the moment in which his community remembers the warmth he brought to their town, his casket starts moving… and someone emerges from the ground… and stabs himself in the chest with a spike???? HUH???

so the deceased was an escape artist but was forced into the sideshow circuit because of his skin condition… scully says she didn’t know sideshows were still a thing… which is honestly fair because it is a very vintage sort of entertainment. and they have a Not So Great history.

BUT if the people who live in this town in the summer are all traveling performers.. and if they have been touring for years... and the murders go on for years… hmm, it seems things are starting to add up

mulder notices a drawing of a creature on the menu of the restaurant they are sitting in, and he asks who drew it. why, the sheriff says, it's the artist named hepcat, of course! cut to him tending to his freaky mermaid. he describes his scary maze business as “a tabernacle of terror” 

mulder asks what the drawing on the menu was, and i was thinking, hmm, looks like the fiji mermaid, and hepcat says it is the fiji mermaid, and mulder doesn't seem to recognize it?? i assume this is one of those situations where he acts like he doesn't know what is going on to get more information because i feel like that is Exactly the sort of thing he has read about at length. like i had him pegged as a guy who could write a dissertation on the subject at the drop of a hat. so i think he's lying but narrative wise it isn't fully revealed. 

scully: “what’s the fiji mermaid?” hepcat: “it’s the fiji mermaid!” <- thanks this clears up a lot <3

mulder is acting surprised to hear that the top half of the fiji mermaid was a monkey, which i again assume to be an act? but he says that the tracks at the murder look monkey-ish. so perhaps there is a correlation...? between the very active murder case and that time PT barnum sewed a monkey and a fish together? hey, the dots aren't connecting for me, but i don't work for the fbi so what do i know

they go to get a place to stay and the guy operating the rental place, a kind and verbose fellow with dwarfism named mr. nutt, gives them their keys. and mulder asks if had worked in the circus, (and since everyone they have met so far has in fact done so, i feel that this was a fair question, but maybe i also deserved what follows), and mr. nutt really lays into him about making judgements, and maybe some people with dwarfism want to manage hotels...

and as all of this goes down scully just observes. wow. she let him flounder. lmao.

the man carrying their bags is named lanny, and he has a conjoined twin sort of situation, it's not entirely clear- but he says mr. nutt got him to work there because he believed it was undignified to work in the circus. hmm.

back to hepcat at his studio… listening to some groovy music... and something crawls in his window… looking like the fiji mermaid. and it BITES him.

next morning. mulder going for a jog. in a sweatshirt and sweatpants in florida heat. what in the hell was he thinking??? let’s analyze that while a man chomping a fish emerges from the river. we receive no real clarification on what is going on in either of their minds.

scully in bed. alerted to a murder by lanny. still in a robe. we get a shot of her chest and also lanny's brother that felt mutually uncomfortable. SMH no rest for her!

okay, examining the scene of the murder. mulder notices some blood on a little window and WHY DID HE TOUCH THE BLOOD NASTY!!!! NASTY!!!

they deduce that to fit in the window, the suspect would have to be a contortionist…. and they walk out to see a contortionist. it’s the spike guy that so disrespectfully ruined the funeral!!

he puts a nail up his nose in front them. and mulder pulls the nail out. probably to get some blood. not an easy watch still.

we learn here that the guy with the puzzle tattoos who was eating the fish in the river earlier is called “The Conundrum”, and the spike guy slash contortionist is dr. blockhead

dr. blockhead gives the conundrum a bunch of crickets and he gulps them up; then he offers crickets to the agents and scully TAKES one, says thanks, eats it, and leaves LMAOOO????? never let them guess your next move....

mulder is staring at her trying to figure out if he is in love with a woman that just ate a cricket and if this is something she does regularly and JUST KIDDING!!! she didn't eat it silly!!! she "reveals" the lil cricket behind mulder’s ear awww... her uncle was a magician <3

(he also does a lil slight of hand trick and pulls out the bloody nail, saying "everyone's uncle was an amateur magician", which i am sure they can bond over at a later date)

scully goes to a museum that says "freaks free, everyone else leave a donation" and she puts in some money… publicly declared non-freak 

this guy at the museum is touching her. don’t care for that. but I like that he knows lots of random information. and he won’t show his whole face, we as the audience only see him through mirrors. very cool framing device.

he says he will take her back and show her something of barnum’s for another $5 and sworn secrecy. good luck bucko; last time she was told to keep a secret (affair baby) the SECOND she was reunited with mulder the tea had been spilled LMAOOO. he hands her a paper featuring jim jim the dog faced boy, who, dare i say it, seems to be a king.

he leads her into the back rooms… scary. but her trench coat is serving though

okay, deep in the back is a trunk. and it’s empty and opens an exit door. NOOO she was scammed! it’s all part of the hustle. 

(well, that is what i THOUGHT, at least, until she realizes it leads to the sheriff's house, and things are adding up...)

mulder sees something crawling about. it’s the guy who owns the rental space, mr. nutt, under scully's trailer! he asks why he is under there and mr. nutt says he is NOT being creepy. mulder flirts with the man and he runs away LMAO... weaponized bisexuality 

agents are in the trailer having a nerd off and it’s not clear who is winning and there is romantic tension. sheriff hamilton used to be jim jim the dog faced boy???? what a reveal!!!

we are watching them watch the sheriff dig a hole during a full moon. average agent bonding activities. he buried something in the ground and goes inside. 

they are in his yard digging up what he was just digging and mulder has taken his earlier roasting to heart and says “we’re being highly discriminatory here” and clarifies that’s no reason to suspect him of being a werewolf and it’s like well. i don’t know that we both thought he was a werewolf. they pause to consider the moral weight of their actions then keep going.

uh oh! sheriff catches them!!! not a good look being caught digging something up. “We’re exhuming… your potato” is the best line that usually quick-tongued mulder could come up with, which had me losing my MIND and i proceeded to write a very long keysmash to express my amusement

“may I ask why?” (she starts monologing about serial killers taking positions in law enforcement and needing to monitor him as as suspect, and it’s convincing) (he cuts in: “we found out you used to be a dog-faced boy” STOP THIS IS SOOOO FUNNY) and she looks soooooo guilty!!

he doesn’t deny it and says he started balding on his head which put him out of a job. fair enough, gotta pay the bills.

next genius dialogue exchange: “that doesn’t explain the potato” “I got some warts on my hand” “...that doesn’t quite explain the potato” 

(i kept having to pause in rapid succession to write these lines down because i was laughing SO hard)

has anyone thought that maybe a man wants to bury a potato in his yard in peace…. like that’s how we get more potatoes…

“to get rid of warts you rub a sliced potato on your hand and bury it under a full moon” <- new life hack just dropped!!

nooooooo the conundrum is chasing the dog… dog escaped. everyone is pleased. he brings a check to mr. nutt and it’s rent!! king of paying his bills on time. but dog is still barking... NOOOOO MERMAID ATTACK ON MR. NUTT!!!

someone with bloody hands bursts into scully’s room and she must have her gun right by her pillow, and she gets it so fast, but it’s just lanny, saying he found mr. nutt dead... they truly hate to see a hard working entrepreneur in the field of hospitality winning 

the pin at the scene looked like something from dr. blockhead, so they go to his house to investigate and he is full of hooks. i made a noise like whAUUUWAUUHWAUH and mulder is looking intensely at what's going on there. blockhead goes on some cultural appropriation bs. um sir this is weird timing bur you are under arrest.

he gets out of the handcuffs- contortionist and escape artist! but the sheriff catches him by the hooks. what a KING! shoutout to this sheriff, formerly jim jim the dog faced boy, can we add him to the team? skinner are you hiring?  

just as our agents apprehend their suspect, we see that the mermaid creature is in the room with lanny!!! but... he isn't hurt?

OMG the twin inside him IS THE MERMAID??

lanny confesses to this when he asks how it would be possible to turn his "brother" in without turning himself in...and he thinks the mermaid fellow hates him and is looking for another brother which is so SAD but he says he’ll come back

is anyone concerned about the twin crawling out of lanny? well, mulder knows he isn't the man in charge here: “scully, you’re the medical expert… I believe you” yessir it's good to remember that!

the mermaid brother appears to have run off into the "tabernacle of terror" and mulder trying to hold a little evil mermaid at gunpoint is SO comical

their asses are lost in the maze!!! scully pulls a gun on a rubber skeleton that fell from the ceiling!

she's trapped in a mirror room to serve infinite looks in all directions, and it looks like mermaid baby is caught... she fires.. but it hits the mirror!! baby mermaid brother escaped!!!

at this moment, mulder slides through a trapdoor... and it was SO funny pls tell me there's a gif set of that somewhere because i need it...

baby on the loose... bad news!!! conundrum is being eaten by the baby twin…. but what if he eats him FIRST, i ask myself, and received an answer in the form of baby being gone and conundrum rubbing his stomach!!!! yassss!!! diva down!!!

the next morning, while everyone is searching for mermaid brother, we learn lanny died that evening of a condition related to alcoholism. we learn this while dr. blockhead and the conundrum are getting ready to leave.

and dr. blockhead's going on about the future, and how nature needs freaks, and in the 21st century everyone will look perfect… "just like him" (points to Mulder majestically posing by a trailer) LMAOOOOOO “imagine going through your whole life looking like that!!!” <- yeah it must be really hard....... /s

at last, conundrum and blockhead are taking off into the great unknown... scully points out he doesn't look too good…. CONUNDRUM TALKS???? “probably something I ate", he says. LMAOOO his voice is sooo normal 😭😭😭

this episode had me laughing. we really had it all: exhuming a potato, scully's valiant attempts at lying, mulder hitting on a guy, lessons in ableism and judgement, a man who eats crickets and fish, flirting over case details, a dog, scully doing magic, mulder running in the florida heat dressed like it was a new england winter. truly i have nothing that could be added.

and did i have a secret evil mermaid twin on my list of probably monsters of the week? no, i cannot say that i did! was it the most compelling or scary of creatures? not really! but i was filled with whimsy. cannibalism saved the day. an excellent episode, and a perfect contrast to earlier in the season when scully was literally About To Die and i was crying a lot over the whole thing. ah, the duality of TV shows!

[maranull]

btw, if Marika was the character people tend to think, the deaths of Godwyn and Ranni would have no reason to affect her. she has 7 more children, 5 if you don't count the Omens (which —if I remember right— were normally just killed before she got her own and then all of the sudden exile was on the table as well).

if she was still the ruthless, genocidal warlord she was when creating the Golden Order, why would she care so much about Ranni and Godwyn's deaths? so much that she attempts to tear down everything she has spent eons creating?? if she really doesn't care about her kids, why was that the trigger to directly assault the Greater Will?

sure, evil women and whatnot, but at least actually look at her as a whole. yes, she did all she did and if the ER world was fair she should had gotten way worse than being crucified, and I'd also never say she's a gentle or caring character overall, but there's a pretty important exception to the not caring thing, and that's her kids

their death caused the entire premise of the game, I feel like the love she had for them was a pretty important character trait of hers

[pamshindouu]

Aside from the "reverse Frontier" thing I've mentioned before, something that's pretty high on my list of things I'd like to see in future Digimon anime is a story set in a world where humans and digimon live together.

A bunch of thoughts under the cut, because I got a little too excited and wrote too much (this is pretty long and probably doesn't make much sense, just me thinking out loud, also spoiler warning for... a little bit of everything I guess? Nothing too major except for some Savers stuff... I think):

It's something I've been wanting ever since I was a small child watching the 02 epilogue and thinking the following season would continue the story with the next generation living in a world where every human has a digimon partner (I still remember how disappointed I was when "Digimon 3" as they called it started airing and it was a completely different story dfgj), and I keep wanting it more and more especially as recent seasons have stopped doing the "humans and digimon must separate" thing at the end and instead started allowing the kids and their partners to stay together more often (with Ghost Game ending on a somewhat similar note to 02 with the promise of a new world where humans and digimon coexist).

I know there are some games that have sorta similar concepts, like humans living in the Digital World alongside the digimon and all that, and I haven't played any of those yet so I can't say for sure but... as far as I can tell they're not really the same thing? Like they're not really focused on exploring that setting, and it's still the Digital World similar to what we know. Still, I should probably look into those eventually. I'm sure I'm missing out on some great stuff.

I just think there's so much potential in that concept, with how different yet similar digimon and humans are, and how contrasting their societies and perspectives can be. We've been shown how digimon struggle to adapt to life in the human world, how their views tend to conflict with those of humans, who on their part struggle to accept any reality different from the one they know.

(I was just remembering the case with the Sorcerimon in Hacker's Memory who wanted to work at the hospital. When he said he wasn't sure if humans would accept having a digimon working at a human hospital, my heart sank a little. Because I was sadly reminded of how very similar situations happen in real life with actual real people. If humans struggle to accept differences within their own species, I can only imagine how much messier the situation would get with an entirely different, yet equally intelligent one...)

Of course ideally I would prefer this world to be free of any such conflicts, just an ideal society where the two species coexist in harmony. That'd be nice. But this is Digimon, so I'm sure they would want to explore that angle as well, and not just have everything work out perfectly. And there's potential for some really powerful storytelling if they do decide to go down that route. Ghost Game handled that subject pretty well with the multiple instances of digimon trying to help humans in some way but failing to communicate properly or misunderstanding the way humans do things, or managing to do it right but having their help rejected by humans who were too afraid of these strange creatures to let themselves be helped. There were also plenty of evil digimon, of course. Just like there are plenty of evil humans (a particular villain from another season comes to mind).

Something else I've been curious about is the concept of human-digimon families. Ghost Game had Gammamon be treated as Hiro's little brother, and it handled that sibling dynamic really nicely. I've also really been enjoying Digimon Knuckles with the father-son dynamic between Gankoomon and Haruka (this reminds me I really need to draw fanart for some of these new manga eventually). Speaking of father-son dynamics, I suppose we also had something kinda similar back in Savers with BanchoLeomon and Masaru, although that's a bit of a special case since that was actually Masaru's father in there, but it was also BanchoLeomon since they were sharing a body (another concept that fascinates me, but it has nothing to do with this topic). Two dads in one I guess. And of course we also had Ikuto who was raised in the Digital World and had both a mother figure in Yukidarumon and a father figure in Mercurymon (there's also something really amusing about the fact that the main trio's digimon partners were raised in the human world and could in a way be considered more human than Ikuto who was raised as a digimon, another fascinating situation). Imagine how many more interesting family dynamics we could get in a world where the two species live together, where a digimon adopting a human into their family, or vice-versa, would probably be a pretty common occurrence.

And on the topic of families, I also wonder what life would be like for humans and digimon who happen to fall in love and want to share a life together. Would human/digimon marriage be a thing? Or would these relationships be frowned upon? If I had to guess, I'd say other humans would likely have a problem with it, as humans have historically been known to be very concerned about who other people love, but maybe digimon would be more accepting of it. After all, digimon themselves come in so many shapes and sizes. And I imagine with how complicated humans are, the digimon who share a world with them have more important things to worry about...

How would governments work in this world? Would power be equally divided between digimon and humans? Would some areas be more dominated by humans and others by digimon? Would this have an impact on the specific cultures and laws of each place? I'm not sure if they would go very in depth into this particular topic, but it would be interesting to see all the different individual cultures that would exist in this world, born from the mix of human and digimon traditions, and influenced by which species is more predominant in each area. I guess it would also depend on the origins of this particular world, if it was originally the human world that the digimon were transported into, or the other way around, or the result of both worlds physically merging together. It would also vary depending on which version of the Digital World got thrown into this I suppose. So many possibilities...

And this is a bit of a weird idea, but in a world where humans and digimon just coexist and share everything in their day to day lives... could human-digimon hybrids be a thing? Either as a product of science, or magic, maybe strange new evolution mechanics or just... general Digimon shenanigans? We've had somewhat similar concepts in the past but I think we have yet to see a being that is full-on half human half digimon? Not a being that can change between both forms but one that's just both at the same time. From birth. Don't think we've had that, but someone please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just wondering if these could perhaps become a somewhat common occurrence in this hypothetical world. And how things would be like for them, as entities that effectively bridge the gap between both species, and could be seen as the future of this world. Would they just be having constant existential crises, not knowing exactly where they belong (also kind of like Ikuto, I suppose)? I think something like that could make for an interesting plot point in this setting, perhaps.

So far I've been thinking of this world as the result of humans and digimon coming in contact with each other after having always existed separately, but what if they had instead always been together? Would all the conflicts I previously wondered about not exist, or would it all just be the same? I'm now thinking about the lore in Digimon Survive where both worlds were originally one and then got split in half. What if it was a similar situation but where that separation never happened? OR what if it did but then they were united again (pretty much like what happens at the end of Survive in most routes, with varying results)? How would all these different circumstances affect the appearance and rules of this world?

I also wonder how the concept of partnerships would work here. Obviously this depends on the setting to begin with, we could be talking about fated soulmate type bonds like the ones in Adventure and Survive or something that is entirely decided by the individuals themselves. But what I'm wondering specifically is how these would work alongside other relationships between humans and digimon. I love it whenever we get to see human characters interact with digimon other than their partners, or when they're able to switch partners in certain circumstances (Ghost Game had some really cool instances of this, and I'm also remembering that one battle in Xros Wars against Yuu, the one where it's revealed at the end that they had swapped all their digimon around THAT WAS SO COOL), and it would be really interesting to see situations like that in this particular setting! Like, idk, you could have a human and a digimon who are partners and love each other a lot but also have entirely separate lives aside from that and have different friend groups made up of both humans and digimon, who are not all necessarily partnered up with each other either. So many fun interesting scenarios to explore!

Anyway... this has gotten a little long hasn't it? I just have a lot of thoughts on this. I think it's a concept with so much potential and I wanna see it so bad...

[ilynpilled]

most of it was incoherent nonsense but had a dream that jaime got cursed by some cat at the inn and got turned into a magic sword for being a massive dick and brienne just carried around an annoying talking sword in affc or whatever. this is what he gets for making his entire personality just swinging some metal stick around for like 20 years

[valkyurii]

it’s funny how things have gone full circle with malenia. she was so hated when the game first came out, but then people grew to like her. then the dlc came out and now people hate her again lmao