#“my guiding moonlight”...

[reaversanctuary]

Sancta Spatha de Lunae Lumen, absolvo! Absolvo me!

Sancta Spatha de Lunae Lumen, praemostra mea manus!

Sancta Spatha de Lunae Lumen, semper ad latus meo, mea dux sancta!

[namielles]

me and my monster

[softpine]

i found this little book at the dollar store where each page is a different journal prompt (stuff like "describe a moment you were unequivocally happy") and instead of answering them myself like a normal person i've been picking one of my characters in my mind, flipping to a random page, and answering the question from their POV without any erasing and i'm not allowed to think about anything for longer than 5 seconds. it's really fun i recommend 👍🏻

[bloodswag]

happy bday renren!! blow out the candles and make a wish <3

[fortunatefires]

[ctl-yuejie]

ramblings on Li Ming (and Heart) and homosexuality

moonlight chicken has so many things to offer in terms of technical beauty and interesting themes but what i cannot stop thinking about is the different ways they approach homosexuality in the story.

we have Wen who has a rainbow flag on his desk and pictures of him and Alan on the wall. Wen, who openly flirts with Jim and has no qualms talking openly about his one night stand. Wen, whose step father knows about his sexuality and is close enough with him to discuss his love life.

Kaipa we don’t know too much about. But his mom knows and is supportive and some of the vendors and the chicken family seem to know. But if anyone was questioning in what reality this show is set with all the class discussion and corona featuring, his part of the story shows that homophobia exists and he is worried about how he fits in with his own family, the expectations of his mother and possible the awareness that he makes the family he has “different”.

Jim is arguably even more visibly gay than Wen in terms of what we see throughout the show. He opened the shop with his ex, they prayed at the temple together and even though he objected due to proprities sake eventually they loudly declared their love to each other and the whole neighbourhood knows. Wen somehow feels like he is living in the remnants of a bubble: his circle of friends seems very queer, his closest friend and the whole gym seem to be all part of that as well. This only might change now with him questioning his work and breaking up with Alan: some gatherings he won’t attend anymore apparently.

And finally, we have Li Ming. At school he doesn’t seem to open up to his classmates on most things and additionally is in the closet. While there wasn’t anything alluding to homophobic rethoric being spread at school we can see how the heteronormativity gets to him and feel that there must be good reason as to why no one knows. And it could just be how Li Ming is judging the situation based on vibes, we don’t know. His mother is or at least was homophobic but at the same time he is raised by his gay uncle who is surrounded by other gay people. And I love how it feels like this might have given him enough security to be comfortable with his own sexuality but how it also isn’t enough to shield him from the world at large.

With so many great shows coming out of Thailand and most of them getting more and more political it just feels so real and 2023 to me that Li Ming is part of a generation that knows who they are but still have to battle with the shadow that homophobia has cast way before they were born.

[incendiorum]

THIS REALLY DOES LOOK LIKE HER (x)

[jarognieva]

I went from crying to simping to Micolash in 2 hours...

[badbirdbrain]

I tried

[mortemcatabasis]

Unused Walleye from a comm

[ghostshadow-k-r]

Another MLP AU Lore Sheet coming up!

It's the Classic Ponies part 1!

Part 2 coming soon~

[forgottnseccnd]

Oh right, Dorn also has a son in that universe and is much more of a brick. He was named Door and Door named his son Boy, the Magnus and Custodes offshoots are happily engaged so they are happy

Brows rose... though, with the way the Primarch's eyes squinted... he seemed to smile!

Though, now Aurelius said nothing. Instead, he leaned back in a rare moment of relaxation, listening to the anonymous fellow as he heard more and more of these odd offshoots of his siblings and father.

Seemed to be Aurelius enjoyed hearing about things like this.

[savageboar]

callie's palette was the most fun run so far bc i turn into ludwig the holy blade when i get my grubby hands on a splat roller

[incendiorum-arch]

she doesn't know exactly what is happening, but she does know that cats are, obviously, the correct choice. dogs are stinky and loud.

[kalina-c]

Part 3 of this extended rant about Split Damage in dark souls games lol. (forgot about how much a straight reblog makes it hard to scroll down to part 2, rip)

Part 1

Part 2 (ctrl-f "so let's count up the ways")

So anyway the really actually useful part of "split damage sucks," isn't really about split damage or even enemy defenses at all. It's about character builds and stat distributions.

Let's look at the Onyx Blade from Dark Souls 3. Split infusion between physical and dark damage, with fire on top when you use the weapon art; but that doesn't really make it a bad weapon when that's the exact same damage type as the pvp meta weapon, the Dark Lothric Knight Sword, and the fire buff on top is literally more of a damage increase than the Lightning Pine Bundle is.

What really makes it a hard pick is the four-way scaling distribution. This doesn't even make it a bad weapon on those terms, this just makes it an expensive weapon to get to its highest damage numbers and a stat distribution that's hard to fit into level limit metas or new game runs. Like at no-limit 99/99/99/99 you can, strictly speaking, get this weapon to high attack power, but it's hard to hit scaling caps in more than one stat at a time in the situations that most players would experience.

This is a build mismatch more than it is an indictment of split infusions or even multi-stat weapons. Like, again, Sword of Night and Flame in Elden Ring was one of the most broken weapons ever on the day one patch, and that's with also a four-way scaling split and three-way damage type split. It's the sheer motion value on the day one ash of war beam that made it cracked.

This isn't even a factor of elemental damage at all, really. The pure-physical quality build traditional in dark souls has actually been a sub-optimal build in Bloodborne for new players to take, with the linked endurance neglect being about the only practical way to fit it into a new game run/pvp level limit meta. Split-stat weapons are incredibly powerful in Bloodborne, with the first weapon on that list in particular (Ludwig's Holy Blade) being a popular favorite as the easy and obvious biggest AR in the realm. But the difficulty of fitting the blood levels in actually makes this pure physical build and weapon exemplify all the *actual* shortcomings behind the reaction of "split damage sucks".

And this is like kind of the reason I think the original reason for "split damage sucks" was trying an elemental weapon on the wrong build for its scaling and then blaming the weapon for it. Within Dark Souls 1, absolutely the context where the canard got popularized,

Velka's Rapier is one of the biggest ROI weapons in the history of this game design and easily the best new game sidearm for a sorcery build. (Its damage kind of falls off on latter NG+ cycles, as does twinkling titanite weapons generally in that game.)

Enchanted infusions are easily the best melee normal attack damage for a sorcery build. Great Scythe is above-average ROI, Claymore is universally good, Longsword is easy and safe, and Zweihander is one of the most fantastic weapons generally. Enchanted Rapier is probably the biggest riposte damage on a new game sorcerer.

Physical weapon + buff is kind of garbage for an all-in sorcerer and caster build. The *steep* drop-off in base damage on using a physical scaling weapon with a completely non-physical build is way more of a loss than you gain from the "superior" buff damage, if it isn't even already the case that the magic AR alone on a Magic or Enchanted Longsword just outscales anything you can get from Tin Crystallization Catalyst + Crystal Magic Weapon.

My first target goal weapon was the Moonlight Butterfly Horn, because it's one of the few 100% pure magic damage weapons in the entire series and I read that Split Damage Sucks. My friends, the purely Unsplit Damage Moonlight Butterfly Horn is one of the most mediocre weapons in the entire series. Its damage is meh and easily outclassed by a Magic Longsword; its moveset and motion values are weaker and redundant in the face of Velka's Rapier; Great Scythe is a far better mage weapon on multiple levels; etc.

So really, the common canards about Split Damage Sucks and Weapon Buffs Are Better really only make sense from the perspective of an all-in physical build with minimal dip into int for bare pre-requisites. Being a mage gender from the very beginning gave me the opposite possible experience of *checks notes* every character build common sense, take, and meta in the history of the world on Dark Souls and the Dark Souls cousin Elden Ring.

---

Addendum

One of the comments I've seen among the various Carian Grandeur one shot malenia videos is that Carian Grandeur is ironically one of the weakest ashes in the game on its own, which made no sense to me. It's a comment on a one shot demonstration video, so we're clearly talking about damage output and not the difficulty of landing a full charge, and the base motion value on Grandeur full charge is already among the stronger ones for ashes of war. The motion value on soul great swords in Elden Ring generally are very high — the Carian Greatsword spell and all three great sword ashes do really high burst damage that can one shot multiple field enemies at once, and the three stage charge on grandeur gives a big multiplier even before you apply a mountain of buffs. This common reaction to magic attacks being magic really isn't helping them beat the allegations that all dark souls build theory is pure physical builds expecting pure magic tools to do maximum damage on a pure physical build with zero int or magic investment, etc.

~

Somewhere else I've gotten a comment that I'm wrong about Split Damage, because sorcery builds in elden ring can use meteor spells to get around magic resistance, and,

My friends,

Elden Ring meteor spells are the most split damage in the world

Meteor spells are boosted by physical damage buffs and will do high damage on magic defensive enemies. They'll have that portion of their damage tanked by physically resistant enemies, so it's a confirmed physical damage spell school.

But also

Meteor spells are boosted by the terra magica spell and the magic scorpion charm and the magic cracked tear, all of which only boost magic elemental damage. And it's only part of the damage, as fextra likes to call the scorpion charm boost insignificant (hah).

Meteor spells are by definition fully split damage. And not only are they split damage, they are the best damage in the game. Rock Sling deletes bosses and enemies for free, Meteorite is pretty much the strongest sorcery until you get to the snow field, and Astel meteor is by design the strongest sorcery in the game and way more damage than most every other option with whatever build. Split damage is the very specifically best damage in elden ring.

[katyspersonal]

Tbh I really like finding some typical Bloodborne themes in Elden Ring yet!

- A “guiding” flickering light that is actually hella corrupt - CHECKED

- Corpses found in weird ass pose that has lore significance yet - CHECKED

- The cOSMOS - CHECKED

- A live-sized Doll character - CHECKED

Can’t wait to find more shit tbh