aenor-llelo

[aenor-llelo]

you're right. i think about it again it is 27 dragon gender. unfortunately I could not do basic numbers until maybe I am 12 or 14 year old so if I am not doing math on purpose it is not very good

I've been reading your fox fall series and I've decided to pick your brain about the vessel-gendered and thunderus-tornadus things. But could you elaborate on those for me a little? I get the basic concept but I would like a more elaborate explanation please. Thank you in advance and I enjoy the series very much.

(second question first cus it's short) thundurus-tornadus is basically their word for a tsunami. a lot of weather events in this setting are basically considered acts of god.

(first question next because it's long) in foxfall, draconian gender operates on a trianary of which of the three tao dragons most represents their self-chosen role in life. things like trans/cisgender Do Not Exist in draconian culture because they do not factor for biological sex in how their society functions. that kind of information is considered taboo outside of lovers, doctors, or most immediate family. (hormone therapy and what we'd consider gender reassignment surgery exists, but they see it as matter of dysphoria intervention rather than a gender thing.)

sexuality also isn't something they define either. people marry or cohabitate with whoever, and it doesn't matter if that union produces children. draconians don't really care about the integrity of the bloodline, only if someone has been raised/taught in the draconian way.

(something like ingo and emmet, where they live together as a platonic civil partnership in all but name, is considered completely normal by draconian standards. it's much weirder that they're 30 years old and don't have any kids or apprentices.)

draconians as a whole will accept whatever pronouns they're assigned unless the individual finds it convenient, or even advantageous, to insist on a certain binary pronoun set when it exists in the area's language, but some dragonless choose to default to they/them for draconians out of respect to their gender privacy. precisely because they consider it private information, draconians take the genders/chosen presentation of the dragonless very seriously, since in their eyes knowing that kind of thing is an act of trust.

the setting as a whole thinks draconians are kind of mysterious. "there's this spiritual nomad culture that tames dragons, has genders we don't know about, and keeps huge parts of identities to their graves!" queer culture doesn't insist draconians are themselves a nonbinary/trans society because of the different circumstances, but draconians are considered cousins/friends of the queer community. in places where draconians are common, they're often a baby queer's first exposure to the concept of xenogenders and genderqueer individuals.

trianary semantics under the cut:

the first set of honorifics is fire/winter/storm, which is basically just an elemental vibecheck. which dragon to you kin? this sort of thing is figured out relatively early in childhood, but all of these aspects can be changed at any time if someone feels like they've fundamentally changed as a person.

the second is song/silence/roar. which do you choose to strive for- skill, patience/simplicity, or vigor?

then there's the base gender, hoard/vessel/stone.

hoard, the reshiramgender. Defined by power, knowledge, philosophy, art, parenthood (draconians consider the act of teaching to be the same as parenthood)

vessel, the kyuremgender. Defined by service, cold/ice/lack, taking aspects from everything, jack of all trades, becoming what is needed.

stone, the zekromgender. Defined by craft, skill, tradesmen, labor, hard work.

by pure semantics, draconian culture basically has nine possible self-determined genders meant to communicate the following in ascending order- what do you do in life, how do you do it, and why?

Ingo, fire-roar vessel. "for the sake of an honest world, i put my passion to realizing the ambition of others. show me your true form!"

emmet, storm-song vessel. "for the sake of an ideal world, i hone my skill to reveal the talent of others. let this be the perfect battle!"

drayden was once a winter-roar hoard, but nowadays is winter-silence hoard. "for the sake of inner peace, my wisdom is the strength i wield to teach and protect others." (the transition from roar to silence happened after his sister died.)

iris is winter-song hoard! "for the sake of harmony, my skills will hone and defend the world."

[aenor-llelo]

Orphan’s Path was one of the best fics I’ve ever read thank you and the rest of the writing team for creating the emduo odyssey

one of my long standing ambitions is to write something with a bigger wordcount than the king james bible, but managing to go nearly five times the length of most common translations of the odyssey is a pretty good start.

of course if we break the king james bible, we may as well go for longer than homestuck. but you gotta start small.

[aenor-llelo]

I just want you to know that Orphan's Path has been a very formative part of my life, for as long as it lasted. I am not someone who cries easily but it has made me cry in a way almost nothing else has. There are so many words and phrases and parts from Orp that have become a significant (and I hope, permanent) part of my psyche. I have lived, loved, learned from Orp so much it is as much a part of me as the air I breathe. Orp makes me homesick for a place I have never been yet I so desperately want to go. It has brought me grief and comfort and joy and longing and I will always carry a part of it with me.

I guess what I most want to say is thank you. Thank you for Orphan's Path, for the countless hours you and the other authors have poured into it. Thank you for the world you have created and shared with us, for everything I do not have the words for. Thank you for every word you gave us, every word you did not get to write. Perhaps in a different world, a kinder world, Orp would have been finished. But this world is the one we have. For all the time it had and all the time I'll have, I will treasure it. Thank you.

tbh i probably peaked with orp but we keep posting anyways

[aenor-llelo]

Orp phil sketch that i might colour one day

[aenor-llelo]

and another orp phil wip

[aenor-llelo]

ALL FOXFALL LINKS FIXED, BABEY!

Be sure to reread Epistolary or the Companion Guide to look at the images again!

[aenor-llelo]

this thing has been up for an hour and i'm at an astounding -21 likes. horrible job everyone??? sorry for fixing the image links like people have been asking for a year i guess????

AO3 images will no longer be broken!

I have made an imgur account and I am porting as many of the images as we possibly can, starting with active projects like Foxfall and series that actively relied on images for certain sections, such as Orphan's Path or A Rusted Chain. When we've done what we can, we'll be secure enough to start uploading entirely new images for things like It's Turtles All The Way Down and Echtratale.

A few images in Foxfall are going to be replaced, but their originals will remain available on Discord archiving. Some Orphan's Path images will be deliberately removed as we are simply no longer comfortable with them and who they are depicting, but that number is slim.

I'm going to be honest, many For a Diamond is a Marveled Thing images may be lost to the annals of Discord history. If you're determined, you can try to find them for yourself in our server history, but there were simply so many, spread out over such a long period of time, that we may never properly recover it all.

[aenor-llelo]

AO3 images will no longer be broken!

I have made an imgur account and I am porting as many of the images as we possibly can, starting with active projects like Foxfall and series that actively relied on images for certain sections, such as Orphan's Path or A Rusted Chain. When we've done what we can, we'll be secure enough to start uploading entirely new images for things like It's Turtles All The Way Down and Echtratale.

A few images in Foxfall are going to be replaced, but their originals will remain available on Discord archiving. Some Orphan's Path images will be deliberately removed as we are simply no longer comfortable with them and who they are depicting, but that number is slim.

I'm going to be honest, many For a Diamond is a Marveled Thing images may be lost to the annals of Discord history. If you're determined, you can try to find them for yourself in our server history, but there were simply so many, spread out over such a long period of time, that we may never properly recover it all.

[aenor-llelo]

my latest Sally's Fucking Pissed drawing except its more "what if she just looked like that." yay freaky ghost sally we all love freaky ghost sally

[aenor-llelo]

i can't sleep, my love song is speaking in tongues

[aenor-llelo]

Orphan Path - "Wow, those tusk sure are one of the sizes of all time"

Technoblade gestures for him to dismount. “Come here for a tick.” Which Tommy does. Which might be a mistake, because the moment the two of them are close enough, Technoblade just shoves his entire snout into Tommy’s hair, and that’s really weird, and wow, those tusks sure are one of the sizes of all time.

Orphan Path Series Symphony no9, Chapter 9 (39th fic of the series woah)

I love pig boy so much sobb

The older version of this I finished literally an hour before I started the new one is below the cut

[aenor-llelo]

HAH

I think we're gonna have to kill this guy, Aziraphale

❤️My favorite angel and fav alien 🪽👽

Aziraphale from Good omens and, Steven "Asteria Diamond" Universe from For A Diamond Is A Marveled Thing series

FADIAMT Steven is my FAV Steven Post-canon Steven Universe x Marvel Pre-Avengers + Gravity Falls + a few minor other crossovers If you want to see some amazing developed/developing relationships, original worldbuilding and lore, etc etc CHECK IT OUT!!! started this because I thought 'gave away important sword' and 'stopped a 6000 year old conflict' is so fucking funny to have in common

[aenor-llelo]

@potofcookies

Please, come and collect your depressed child. I think he needs a giant hug

[aenor-llelo]

enough people misread "carbondated" as "carbonated" that this spawned as a discord server meme

amitoufo he is carbondated

It's the Year of the Snake. Destiny 2's Heresy just came out. But this ain't about her. I sit on your shoulder, I am your xiaoren.

I'm Taiwanese! Let's carbon date The Drifter!

Lightbearers retain their semantic memory (facts, concepts, ideas) and procedural memory (memory of how to do things) of their original life before death. This is implied from game/lore instances of Guardians with unique accents, ethnic coding, memory of languages that are obscure post-Collapse, even cases of Guardians retaining pre-rez war PTSD. It is outright confirmed by Sen-Aret, a Guardian who- due to the sheer age of her remains or some error by her Ghost- was raised with only the knowledge she had in life, and had to learn about modern weapons/language from other Guardians.

Why does this mean anything? It means that the way a Guardian prefers to dress, talk, and generally behave tells you where they came from pre-rez!

Aside from his voice actor being Vietnamese, his entry in the official cookbook is banh mi, a Vietnamese dish, and his clothes are Chinese, which would point to him being Hoa, the Han people of Vietnam. (He also wraps his clothes in an orientation specific to corpses, because he doesn't count Lightbearers as truly alive humans.)

Behavior-wise, though, have you noticed how obsessed he is with jade? The coins, the necklace. Jade is a very precious stone in the Sinosphere, and jade jewelry is for giving luck or protection to the wielder- what you will hear less commonly is that it is meant to work by breaking instead of you when something happens. We give them to kids and elderly for this reason.

(You can wonder, for a second, the jade coins he always plays with before Gambit rounds, wraps around certain weapons for you, and the Red String of Fate ornament for Malfeasance. Is this a man perpetually deeply terrified for everyone or himself, or is he every middle aging ah-yi who just got back into religion while you were in school?)

So he's Vietnamese and the Chinese influence means his pre-rez life had to have been after Chinese imperial interference with Vietnam. Unfortunately, four different historical periods between 111 BC and the 1400s isn't good carbon dating. KE SHI NI HUI KANDAO THE SANDWICH,

banh mi is a baguette sandwich. this kind of bread comes to vietnam in the mid-19th century from French colonizers, and only during WWI did a mixed flour version make this bread accessible outside luxury. Early 1900s le. But "post-1900s" isn't a better narrowing down than "BCs to 1400s" in a future setting like Destiny.

Except that Drifter's banh mi recipe specifically uses pâté. This was only a common banh mi filling before the 1950s, when the partition of Vietnam sent an influx of northerners to Saigon and led to the Saigon sandwich that is modern banh mi. So, 1910s to 1950s. And the fact that he defaults to hanfu rather than Western dress or more modern standard Vietnamese ethnic clothing like ao dai skews him having been an adult on the earlier end of this time frame or living in a more rural area where colonization ideas were not as enforced. (One could explore him having other Vietnamese forms of cultural expression like lacquered teeth, actually.)

Ain't that something? He could have lived through WWI or even saw the beginning of the Communist revolution. The possibility that his first life was a survivor of colonization, war draft, and/or violent civil war could add a lot to readings of his character, especially his C-PTSD, but that's a whole other post if the people demand it. It's a neat thing to explore, huh?

And don't call him a rat le! Bad enough already the game think that is cute! White people calling East Asians rats is generally a slur in reference (from my collection) to immigrant "infestation" and part of general stereotypes about their uncleanliness (they cook with gutter oil, they eat rats, they cheap they scam they lie dadadada). You want source bigger than I grow up with white people shout in my face and their children pull their eyes to squint like a "jap"? Look up WWI propaganda posters about Japan. They did not invent that out of nowhere, they make Japanese people into rats because that's something they already say.

"It's just about Japanese-" what if I told you a large part of Western racism about Asians is that they can't tell the difference and don't care. and they're making fun of similar cultures and features.

"My Asian friend said it was okay-" the asian friend values your friendship and your comfort more than what they feel when you say slurs, dude. sorry i had to be the one to tell you that. one friend (or stranger online) giving you the pass to say it in front of them doesn't mean you're allowed to say it to everyone.

"it's fictional-" Real East Asian people getting beat down by Sinophobia matters a little more than how cute you think it is to call a Vietnamese man an animal that your culture associates with filth and plague.

"Chinese zodiac animal-" The snake is right there. The game won't shut up about how snake he is. We're having a Drifter-heavy episode right in the beginning of the snake lunar year. His personality matches the charm, mystery, and wisdom associated with the sign. He is never thematically associated with rats. He is never respectfully associated with rats.

It would be one thing if it was another asian character calling him that in the context of the rat's folkloric characteristics, but this is an American game by an American studio writing someone voiced by a non-asian to call him a rat as an insult about his cleanliness and food choices. Good for you if that doesn't hurt your feelings! Hurt many more people than you! They more real than him!

Good game story. Mistakes happen! Doesn't mean you have special privilege to repeat it.

He is snake! Viper! Asp! Cost zero dollar to say that instead! Don't keep a pet slur in your pocket!

[aenor-llelo]

GUYS FOXFALL UPDATE THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! MY WIFE INGO TAMADENSHA IS BACK FROM THE WAR <3

[aenor-llelo]

"I hope you die": basic, hyperbolic, impersonal, easy to ignore, self incriminating if the other guy actually dies

"I hope legend of zelda comes out with a foot motion control spinoff game": devastating, specific, personal, and most importantly possible

[aenor-llelo]

I respect and appreciate the retirement of the Orphan's Path series, but ya gotta admit the q!philza arc would've gone CRAZY. Ender wasn't even canonized in DSMP (afaik), but him possessing Philza in QSMP? The struggling with Talluah and Cheyenne? Just made me feel so much more insane after reading how Orphan's Path had handled Philza's hardcore lore, *and then he brought his lore into another SMP*. Shit was wild.

lore wouldve gone so hard