glarnboudin

[glarnboudin]

ONLY TRUE GRUNGLERS WILL UNDERSTAND

Being the only bi cis guy amongst almost exclusively trans friends and peers is wild because in theory its like im living in a horny manga where all of a dudes friends turn into hot babes, but in reality they are hunting me like the last bison on the prairie. 5 years ago I mentioned bionicle and one of them asked when I was starting estrogen.

[glarnboudin]

WOUGH okay so the premise all started because of the way I play FO4 on survival which is about as long and arduous as this post. it's ALL in settlement building and most of my mods reflect this. I play that shit like minecraft. I'll chuck some screenshots at the end

the more you think about it, the less plausible it is for a soldier or a lawyer respectively to have ANY idea about the fine tuning of crafting a fusion generator or a water purifier, let alone know how to construct a pre-broken window pane. None of the wood is useable - there's no amount of fantasy that can make me believe a whole bed can be constructed out of two pencils and a pack of cigarettes. Realistically - the resources need to come from somewhere. I've also read critiques about how the commonwealth hasn't progressed for two centuries (which, part of this is because of how Bethesda handles the Fallout franchise vs the established societies in 1 and 2. for the record i LOATHED 3 and am very firmly a new vegas bitch). They're still living in Diamond City surrounded by piles of trash and the rest of the NPC settlements are canonically wiped out or basically considered the dregs (Goodneighbor, the Children of Atom, charitably the Atom Cats; Quincy and University Point, etc). They live off scavenging for trash and components that are somehow still lying around untouched. Most of this is because the game wants you to use this cool mechanic they've introduced and to feel like you're rebuilding the wasteland with your bare hands, and you get your pick of a huge scope of lands to build on, and the appearance of actual civilisation suffers for it. Nobody lives there. Realistically, you're going to build up one or two really good settlements and the rest are barebones or empty.

Jake (probably has a longer name. it's never mentioned) is a civil engineer who has combat training and survival know-how for funsies and by the cusp of the great war her department had enough downsizing that she was taking on the work of coworkers who had been "let go" (executed for thought crimes), so she knows some stuff about blueprinting things other than major city infrastructure, at least enough to delegate or make suggestions. She also stirred the pot and got higher-ups very angry at her and was punitively assigned to marriage and domesticity in Sanctuary Hills. Most importantly, she's not related to the family that have the kid. Nate gets shot and Nora suffocates in cryo.

She enters a world that perplexes her specifically because nothing has progressed for two hundred years, but through very very careful investigation she finds out that something or someone is actively interfering with any attempts to settle and develop. There's an intensive spying network going on and she has to figure out what's safe, who's safe, how the raider groups are able to be raiding year-round without dying of starvation because they're certainly not farming, how to build and manage and educate her new settlements without tripping the local spy network, how to set up trade convoys for lumber and concrete without tripping the local spy network OR instigating the raider gangs that systematically wiped out the convoys in the first place, and how to source parts for this goddamn water purifier schematic while not dying to super-radstorms or a really big wild hog. She customarily fights with a knife (Throatslicer); she's proficient at sniping and occasionally uses a plasma sniper or a gauss rifle.

Deacon is her story companion because of the 'friend' RR sign above the vault. Guy's been spying from the get-go. But because Jake's super paranoid and realistically, he has no way of knowing who you are because you aren't stupid and bald and wearing a pair of signature sunglasses, he loses her the moment she ditches the vault suit at the Abernathys'; half of his part of the story is trying to find out what happened to her, why the institute was involved in the vault at all (and increasingly wild theories about how she's a synth plant), and who this weirdass woman is who's suddenly taking over the trade routes, and talk of new settlements that's kept so hush-hush he can't even crack the secrets with his super believable caravan hand outfit.

Eventually Jake realizes she's in way over her head trying to manage settlements and hunts down the Railroad to ask for help, which... they're very downsized. They're basically a skeleton crew. I have no idea how they suddenly have all those heavies at the battle of bunker hill or the castle or whatever the fuck. So they can't and/or won't help her, and it comes down to Deacon to make an executive decision over what he thinks is going to be longterm better for the wasteland and the synth populations, and when weighing up the options between this cool lady who never shows her face and creeps around spiderman-style to sever a gunner's spinal cord and wants to crack the Institute wide open, or being trapped in a crypt with Carrington and successfully exfiltrating one synth every three months, the decision is obvious

and since you made it this far here's some shots of builds I've worked on. My main base at Egret Tours; Sanctuary Hills after I removed all the shitass housing for funsies; Murkwater Construction with incredibly poor navmeshing; my other main at Dalton Farm. yes my save file hates me

[glarnboudin]

are there any other non-avian theropods (and dinosaurs for the matter) aside from the qilik and the utosai?

Qilik have some extant relatives. Their actual closest living relatives are a clade of very small (roughly pigeon sized) microraptor-esque arboreal gliders, mostly found in temperate forests in the southern hemisphere. Qilik and these guys both distantly descend from a small arboreal animal that was an okayish glider and wing-assisted incline runner. They split via the ancestors of qilik increasingly specializing in ground foraging in open woodland and savanna (using trees for shelter and as retreats from predators, losing gliding capability but retaining wings for WAIR and slowing falls) and the ancestors of these guys specializing in forested habitats as strong gliders.

Their other (much more distant) living relatives are a variety of terrestrial avians with entirely vestigial wings (they are immobile nubs). This clade has a very scattered and limited range and is overall well on its way out, mostly in competition with mammals and aves birds, as well as from the recent ancestors of qilik (who occupied similar niches, but had an edge in competition and environmental changes due to their behavioral plasticity and tool use). Their present day range is mostly restricted to island environments, particularly those close to land and/or formed by sea level rise (as they have no flying ancestors and could only disperse by land/rafting). A few continental species still exist, mostly as cassowary sized birds exploiting hyper-specialist niches (one on the eastern side of the Blackmane mountains is predominantly reliant on a single species of fruiting tree).

The only dinosaurs other than that are lacetors (ceratopsianoid clade to which utosai belong). Utosai were the last of the big ones and the other remaining species range from pig to bison sized, and have a scattered but extremely wide range (occurring on almost every continent).

[glarnboudin]

My friend and I playing Magic: The Gathering solely with each other, since we don't know any other people who just play for fun and aren't total chodes.

[glarnboudin]

Do not think for a moment that this admin is only going after trans folks. They are ultimately going after the whole LGBTQ community. They start small, like getting rid of a hotline option, then go BIG.

[glarnboudin]

@tyrantisterror This whole account is very much up your alley.

It is always very funny to see at Tumblr-folks handling folklore analysis because it SHOWS a lot sometimes when they just take their things out of pop culture, fantasy media and Tumblr posts.

Not that it is a bad way to think or to start. Rather all these things make you appreciate the legends and myths from a modern and current point of view. When you speak of certain creatures as they appear today, you get to some conclusions... But when you present them as what the creature was always about, you prove you are a bit short-sighted or forgot to look at the actual tales.

For example I stumbled upon one post (which I won't link because otherwise I don't mind it and it clearly isn't a misinformation stuff, outside of just some biased reading) that defends the idea that the dragon in Europe always, always represented "the fear of a bad king" or was a metaphor for "dangerous political figures".

... No?

I mean, yes, in modern days, in pop culture, in its handling in modern fantasy, the dragon IS a figure of bad king, sort of, can be read as such and has been read as such (see Discworld). But... that's a modern thing that doesn't fit the actual dragons of legends. People forget that the current "dragon legend" is VERY recent.

For example the post I talk about mentions how dragons are always slayed by knights - and this somehow proves that a king can only be taken down by nobility feuding, or something. It also talks of how dragons breathes fire, presenting it as a core part of its element - the same way as it hoarding gold being somehow part of the core myth from day one (and not just a specific branch of the actual mythical theme, which is "dragons are guardians of treasure", but treasure isnt always gold).

Except... If you just take French folklore, this doesn't work. The post faults in this because among the tales is lists as part of the dragon myth - Beowulf, The Faerie Queene, the legend of Saint George, the Hobbit, Dungeons and Dragons - it lists the Tarasque legend, one of the most famous French dragon tales.

French dragons do not breathe fire, in fact they very RARELY breathe fire. All folklorists and legend experts, but also just anybody who has just looked a bit at French dragon folklore, will tell you they are water-entities who rarely have anything to do with fire per se. And they are not slain by knights - it is usually saints. "Yeah but saints are knights" will say those that are used to saint Georges. Except the saints slaying French dragons are usually either bishops or miraculous women. The Tarasque was defeated by a woman.

Not only that but French dragons weren't even slain at first. Originally they were tamed by the saints, turned into harmless pets. The whole "Let's kill the dragon" imagery came later, and made all these legends of peaceful domination take a bloody turn. And that's because the legend of the "dragon-slaying" in French folklore came a bit later, and no, French dragons were never meant to represent a king. They were meant to represent natural dangers, especially floods or drowning waters. They were deadly rivers, dangerous bogs, that sort of things - in the direct line of the Hydra from Greek mythology, whom people tend to forget is meant to embody poisonous waters, toxic bogs, nefarious marshes, stuff of the sort. Most people agree that originally the French dragon was tamed by saints (often city-building or bridge-building saints) as a metaphor for human communities taming the dangerous floods and wild rivers and hostile swamps while building their cities, their roads, their bridges, etc... Only later did the imagery of the dragon being murdered appeared, due to all sorts of changes and influences in the Church politics and popular imagery.

But to try to claim that the dragon always depicted the motif of the "bad king" is... Quite incorrect. Fafnir isn't a malevolent king. He is a greedy, cursed, malevolent dwarf or dvergr, a supernatural entity twisted by pure supernatural greed. He is an Otherworld threat, not very much human like to begin with - down to his body parts confering magical powers onto people. The "dragons" of Greek mythology are not "evil kings", they are rather leftovers of the primordial chaos. Either they are children of primordial deities from the chaotic times (Ladon) either they are agents of Olympian deities who still embody the part of chaos, disturbance and discord remaining in an ordered, civilized universe (the sea monsters of Poseidon, the snakes of Hera, the dragons of Ares), and they are a mixed up of symbolism - some are devouring sea, others are burning fire, others are deadly poison...

People who know their myths around the world won't be surprised and will just roll their eyes and say "Duh, of course" but it actually still needs to be said because a lot of people don't know it... Originally the dragon is a manifestation of natural disasters, of the elements gold wild, of the destructive weather, of the sea or the land being hostile to humanity itself. Originally the dragon is the flood, the storm, the primordial chaos. The "bad king" dragon is much more recent than you think.

It is just like the "peaceful, beautiful, pure virgin unicorn". Yes there's old if not ancient elements to prove it, and yes it is part of the myth... But unicorns still started out as bloody ugly and freakingly terrifying monsters hellbent on violence and bloodshed. They still had rainbow colored horn, but it was to eviscerate elephants.

The dwarves were dark elves, the "genie" is born out of the "djinn". The three little pigs were pixies, sirens were not mermaids, people get ghouls and zombies VERY wrong, werewolves warlocks and vampires were once one and the same...

Yes, monsters and beasts and entities of legends manifest anxieties, desires, fantasies and allegories of the human world, and quite ancient and vast ones. But it doesn't mean these entities can't change their meaning - while they might represent something now, it doesn't mean they meant something else before.

[glarnboudin]

Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes)

Observed by irkuem, CC BY-NC

[glarnboudin]

The Yu Niao [Chinese folklore]!

The Shan Hai Jing (or ‘Classic of Mountains and Seas’), an ancient Chinese work written between the 4th to 1st century BC, mentions a place called Mount Guo. Among the different species of birds that can supposedly be found on this mountain, one creature in particular stands out. The ‘dwelling-bird’, or Yu Niao as the book calls it, heavily resembles a rat except for the feathery bird-like wings sprouting from its back.

The cry of the Yu Niao sounds like a goat. Furthermore, this creature has the strange ability to repel weapons.

It has been theorized that the Yu Niao might actually have been a normal bat, whose traits have been twisted and exaggerated by storytellers.

Interestingly, a different section of the book mentions a different creature called the ‘Bibi’. This animal lives in a barren mountainous landscape where no plants grow, and which is characterized by large amounts of jade and metal ores. The Bibi looks like a fox with wings, just like the Yu Niao is described as a rat with wings. Also like the entry for Yu Niao, the creature’s cry is mentioned (it supposedly sounds like a goose). The similarities end there, however. The Bibi carries a negative association, because a sighting of this beast is an omen that a massive drought will hit the world.

Source: Strassberg, R. E., 2002, A Chinese Bestiary: Strange creatures from the Guideways through the Mountains and Seas, 313 pp., p.121-122 and p.137-138.

(Image source: Cyclone62 on Deviantart)

[glarnboudin]

@endivinity Never apologize for being passionate about your work. Everybody talks a big game about how the act of creation should be reward enough, but it can feel absolutely soul-crushing when it feels like nobody cares.

Thsi entire setup sounds fascinating - I'd personally love to hear more about it!

If I may add something, though, weren't sapient raccoons a thing that was originally planned for New Vegas? Perhaps your radcoons could be something along those lines!

Very interesting that bethesda decided to mutate the FUCK outta most animals but only like, some of the plants. Like, they got to the grass and trees and went uhhhhhh brown. And dead. Dead and brown. They are Very dead and Very brown, hope this helps.

Although I'm assuming most of the trees in fo4 are actually alive and are just deciduous cause those leaf piles found all over the map sure as hell aren't 200 year old leftovers. So technically those mods that put the leaves back on at least some of the trees are completely lore friendly.

[glarnboudin]

[glarnboudin]

"This painting is a replica of a classic tapestry hanging in the main hall of Baron Vorloi's home. This scene of elf warriors battling a green dragon sums up much of what early settlers thought of the lands of Karameikos: a forested home of many monsters." (Eric Hotz, Mystara Campaign boxed set Karameikos, Kingdom of Adventure, TSR, 1994) Hotz's art style here references early medieval culture, similar to his work for the Harn series by Columbia Games.

Mystara was the AD&D 2e version of the Known World campaign setting originally created by Moldvay and Schick at Kent State. The Known World became an official D&D setting in the 1981 B/X Expert rules and in module X1: Isle of Dread, then was expanded upon in the 1987 Gazetteers.

[glarnboudin]

having anti punitive justice morals sucks because you want to say "man that guy sucks he should get hit with hammers until he dies" but you also want to make it clear you don't think anyone should be put in charge of the 'hit people with hammers until they die" machine.

[glarnboudin]

On the same train of thoughts: Why has everybody forgotten about the "Lady tames dragon?"

Everybody remembers the "Lady tames the unicorn". Everybody remembers it, everybody references it, every uses it.

But for dragons nowadays it is just "Knight/hero slays the dragon". Not to say there are no examples of "ladies of dragons" in modern day fantasy. In fact "lady taming the dragon" or "vanquishing the dragon" has been used a lot recently (glares are Game of Thrones, among others), but it has been used as a subversion of the "male knight slays the dragon" and people think the idea of a powerful woman making dragons her pet/ally is some sort of modern-day invention.

It is not. Ladies taming dragons, making a leash out of a ribbon and promenading the man-eating monster as if it was a little dog is OLD, it is traditional, it is a deep part of folklore. But people just... sort of blurred it out?

In fact it is so ironic that before the common things were "Lady tames dragon, man slays the unicorn", and then popular culture immortalized forever the reverse gender opposition, a man has to slay the dragon, a lady has to tame the unicorn. Yes, it is part of the tradition, but it was not the only part. The reverse was also very true.

[glarnboudin]

prometheus: hot take,

the greek gods: no give that back

[glarnboudin]

Absolutely love the color scheme! Did you have any specific inspirations for it?

" next time on River Monsters "

[glarnboudin]

Which path should he choose?

The path of the warrior, the path of the scholar, or the path of the artist?