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Since his interaction with Tiamat in Post-ShB, I've had a long running joke about Estinien being a "Certified First Brood Therapist", even though it is very clearly Estinien doing his best to fill the role left empty by Nidhogg-- the older brother looking out for his siblings. And I really do love how the game validates that with this line from Azdaja!

Estinien's way of encouraging Tiamat and Vrtra sometimes can seem rude, or brash, but it usually ends up being what they need in that moment. And that's because his way of encouraging them, of getting them to fight back or step up, is exactly like how Nidhogg used to treat them.

Estinien very much decided, post-Dragonsong, that he was going to look out for them on Nidhogg's behalf, and I think my favorite thing is that so far no one has said whether it is Estinien acting in that manner because he knows that was how Nidhogg was, or if he and Nidhogg really just were that similar.

It's such a beautiful, small piece of validation. And it makes me really hopeful that when we finally get to Meracydia, we can see more of Estinien and the First Brood, and we can also hopefully see more of who Nidhogg was before Ratatoskr's death. I am personally a fan of "Estinien and Nidhogg are just That similar" so I would love to get a flashback of Nidhogg where you can just see those similarities, y'know?

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i missed coffee night but mini detective tourney! ive been considering running a sleuth showdown poll for a while but grad school has really been blocking my free time lmao. if i get my shit together after the semester ends i swear by the sword i will tell you guys First

oh hell yeah. i wanna vote for some hot detectives!

mini poll to gauge interest

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stewart creek mustangs 🍄‍🟫

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Leavin' boys behind ‘cause it’s illegal just to kill

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SIRÈNE.

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WolShtola Week 2025: Day Six: Angst

Sacrifice, that others may live

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From Anthony Bourdain:

Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal, and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people—we sure employ a lot of them.

Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, and look after our children.

As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs.”

But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as a prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do.

We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them—and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.

So, why don’t we love Mexico?

We throw up our hands and shrug at what happens and what is happening just across the border. Maybe we are embarrassed. Mexico, after all, has always been there for us, to service our darkest needs and desires.

Whether it’s dress up like fools and get passed-out drunk and sunburned on spring break in Cancun, throw pesos at strippers in Tijuana, or get toasted on Mexican drugs, we are seldom on our best behavior in Mexico. They have seen many of us at our worst. They know our darkest desires.

In the service of our appetites, we spend billions and billions of dollars each year on Mexican drugs—while at the same time spending billions and billions more trying to prevent those drugs from reaching us.

The effect on our society is everywhere to be seen. Whether it’s kids nodding off and overdosing in small town Vermont, gang violence in L.A., burned out neighborhoods in Detroit—it’s there to see.

What we don’t see, however, haven’t really noticed, and don’t seem to much care about, is the 80,000 dead in Mexico, just in the past few years—mostly innocent victims. Eighty thousand families who’ve been touched directly by the so-called “War On Drugs”.

Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace.

Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for gorgeousness.

It's archeological sites—the remnants of great empires, unrivaled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over tortilla chips. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply “bro food” at halftime.

It is in fact, old—older even than the great cuisines of Europe, and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. A true mole sauce, for instance, can take DAYS to make, a balance of freshly (always fresh) ingredients painstakingly prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting cuisines on the planet, if we paid attention.

The old school cooks of Oaxaca make some of the more difficult and nuanced sauces in gastronomy. And some of the new generation—many of whom have trained in the kitchens of America and Europe—have returned home to take Mexican food to new and thrilling heights.

It’s a country I feel particularly attached to and grateful for. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, and was there—and on the case—when the cooks like me, with backgrounds like mine, ran away to go skiing or surfing or simply flaked. I have been fortunate to track where some of those cooks come from, to go back home with them.

To small towns populated mostly by women—where in the evening, families gather at the town’s phone kiosk, waiting for calls from their husbands, sons and brothers who have left to work in our kitchens in the cities of the North.

I have been fortunate enough to see where that affinity for cooking comes from, to experience moms and grandmothers preparing many delicious things, with pride and real love, passing that food made by hand from their hands to mine.

In years of making television in Mexico, it’s one of the places we, as a crew, are happiest when the day’s work is over. We’ll gather around a street stall and order soft tacos with fresh, bright, delicious salsas, drink cold Mexican beer, sip smoky mezcals, and listen with moist eyes to sentimental songs from street musicians. We will look around and remark, for the hundredth time, what an extraordinary place this is.

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The Selkie and Her Family

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Yan snacks

(Saw some Yan Yan while getting groceries yesterday and felt nostalgic)

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We could never tell if you were my brother or my father. But to me you were both. The best brother and father I've ever had. Thanks for being my family. CLAIR OBSCUR: EXPEDITION 33 (2025) dev. Sandfall Interactive

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thinking about dawntrail summoner

just thinking about solar bahamut. solar bahamut say hi to everybody

sorry they're a little shy. endwalker spoilers below. thinking about summoner dawntrail abilities.

okay now that all the people who haven't beat endwalker are gone: how did i never notice that solar bahamut's attack's don't just "look like" hydaelyn's, as we all noticed back during the dawntrail job actions trailer (aside from the six circles and central overlapping triangles, note the "swords" that ring the outer circle between each node)—

(pictured: hydaelyn's mid-fight "exodus" cast and the animations for enkindle solar bahamut and sunflare)

—enkindle solar bahamut literally makes it cast exodus.

that's hydaelyn's signature move! that's specifically the actual sundering spell. when she does it she does the iconic hydaelyn double stomp!

(pictured above: the rak'tika cave painting depicting hydaelyn standing on zodiark's torso, arms raised and indistinct appendages flapping, and her trial's animation for exodus which features her in a strikingly similar silhouette)

and if that's not clear enough, there's a sundering emote (only from a very expensive piece of IRL statue merch) that says as much outright:

perform exodus and sunder the world. what the fuck do you mean solar bahamut is doing a tiny little sundering every rotation? no one was gonna tell me this, i had to actually read the tooltip to find out? you have to read the tooltips in this game???

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what we have went through

Prints // Twitter // Bsky // Goodshop

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too many ppl who know nothing about Filipino folklore n culture r talking shit about my ate. she’s based off of the manananggal, which you can compare to the European vampire, if that helps you understand it better. although, i’m reluctant to mention that becuz some ppl, who choose to be ignorant, currently hold the view that she’s just an Asian-colored vampire mishmash monster. she is not. other than the fact that she manages to exist at all, here are some details i appreciate about her.

first, she has a face that looks like my family’s. that’s my lola’s nose. that’s my mom’s birthmark. shit, those are my uncle’s cheekbones. the headpiece features jasmine, our national flower. the translucent petals are cool.

second, you can display her in two pieces, split by the torso. its not just a “cheap gimmick” you ignorant pos. at nightfall, the manananggal severs itself in two, leaving behind a vulnerable lower half while its upper half hunts for nourishment - blood, raw hearts, livers, fetuses. the red fringe represents her dangling intestines, hanging loose as she flies after ripping her body apart. the string detail is on the skirt for consistency, but also, intestines are long as fuck? why wouldn’t they also hang from the bottom, assuming they also get split in half.

while we’re on the outfit, the top is an extremely traditional (Spanish colonial, ugh) style in both fabric and shape. i have attire that looks exactly like it, minus the monster high red foil pattern. the tiny, “woven” sleeve cuffs are a nice touch. the earrings and bracelets look to be woven palm too, but aren’t as effective in plastic. the bottom half skirt is quite a bit shorter than is traditional, and the heels higher. it’s a monster high doll.

most accurate would be barefoot, tbh. but you guys would riot, and again, its a doll. actually, the shoes reference a lot from Filipino culture. the heel is a coconut tree overlooking a kubo, a one-room stilt hut built with natural materials such as bamboo and palm, and specifically made to be remade as necessary. the sole is “wooden”, also an accessible material of which some shoes were made with. it is attached by braid to what looks to be a straw strap. also not unusual for a shoe.

her fan and wings feature embroidery, and if you look closely at the latter, you will see a thin and delicate flora design in between the spider web pattern. this is extremely reminiscent of calado, a type of traditional hand embroidery akin to lace that is difficult as fuck. a dying art, btw.

i didn’t wake up looking to ride this hard for a plastic woman lmao. but if you’re gonna come for her, it better be because of the fluorescent green in her colorway and not because you don’t know what you’re talking about. honestly, a lot of Filipinos are just happy to be considered and celebrated. “wins” like this mean everything. maybe it’s not good enough for your collection, but now you know more about my culture than you would’ve gone out of your way to. and that’s good enough for me.

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ride_the_rhythm.mp4

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Major human pastimes:

frying dough

classifying things and then arguing about the classifications

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