#(and even the game oversimplifies that)

[elbiotipo]

It's fascinating to me that for our modern (at least on European-influenced societies) thinking, the classical Roman way of life is so familiar. When you read about it, the rethoric of the speeches feels modern, a society based on contracts and laws and litigation, with public works, a state bureucracy and standing army and trade economy and even spectator sports, a concept of philosophy separated from religious dogma and tradition, with even a limited understanding of a government by 'the people' and 'citizenship', even the names all sound familiar even if in completely different contexts, and no wonder since they inspired our current politics.

This all in contrast to medieval feudalism, which is completely alien to me. A society created upon family connections and oaths of fealty and serfdom with no such thing as an overarching state, not even kingdoms were any more real than a title one person holds, and all held together completely, utterly, to an extent I cannot emphasize enough, by the institution of the Church and the Christian faith. In a way we just aren't used today in our secular world. I simply cannot overstate how everything, every single thing, was permeated by faith in the Medieval worldview and the Church which took its power from it, we have an understanding of it but I think people just don't realize it.

[sinlizards]

How do you feel about all the Zero Escape villains? Do you have a favorite?

i like Ace! i think the whole 'Friendly trustworthy guy being the antagonist' twist can be a little played out but i think the way he's set up is well done. I know some people tend to think his motive overall is weird but if you think about his desire to see faces as more of a pursuit for humanity it makes more sense

other than that, dio is fun and i like what he adds to the story but his Asshole Character shtick worked too well and ended up being too annoying during gameplay for me to fully like him (sorry dio enjoyers) I also enjoy Mira a lot but thats more so because shes funny and has potential for further exploration than her actually being a well written character </3

[irregodless]

the answer is yeah winston probably deserved all that but not everyone else

[kingdomoftyto]

I never did mention, but I finally beat Vesperia! It was okay--a more than solid rpg, but not one of my personal faves from the series. The plot was pretty standard for a Tales game--maybe slightly more deus ex machina-y in the final act, though I may just be forgetting the most egregious things from some of the other titles. Rita stands out as my single favorite character (to no one's surprise) and honestly probably one of my faves overall for the series. Judith was also pretty fun, and I liked Raven's story arc even if it felt a little clumsy or confusing at times. And obviously the Yuri-Flynn dynamic/relationship/tension pretty much carries the entire game.

Speaking of which, I've already devoured a week's worth of Fluri fanfiction (impeccable ship portmanteau, btw) and have a whole stack of longfics still waiting in my Marked for Laters. They're so stupid and noble and good for each other, I love them a lot. I'll have to rec some of these later if I think about it.

(I also found out yesterday that there's a heckign FEATURE-LENGTH MOVIE about the two of them as knights-in-training, which!!!!!!!! guess what I'm watching tonight)

Anyway. Glad I finally played it! Not sure it quite lived up to my expectations, but then again I think Arise simply raised my standards to an absurd level lol, so it's not entirely Vesperia's fault. It also would've helped if I'd been any good at using Yuri in combat, but alas,

[wildcreativemastermind]

I finished my first playthrough of Suzerain (game where you’re president of a fictional country) and I got the country into a depression, passed progressive reforms (gender equality and more democracy), and then military overthrew me in a violent coup right as my term was ending

[delusion-of-negation]

What exactly is the violence being done by the government when they tax less than 10 dollars out of 100 dollar purchase you only notice in your receipt? these guys act like we're in fucking medieval times where if you forgot a single penny for the king a soldier would arrest you, maybe is because the tax system in the USA is overly complicated, but in countries like Brazil shit is pretty straight forward, to the point if you get a 1 million dollar prize you keep pretty much every single penny since you will most likely convert the money back into society already.

They seem to mistake that simply paying any sort of tax is violence and not actual violence being used to get taxes, like making people have to keep a track of everything they send even thought the System™ already knows everything you did by the most part.

There's always to collect taxes that don't realy on violence and having bad faith to was citizens.

it's actually pretty simple: if you don't pay your taxes you are asked some questions, then the money is requested, you're given a trial or so forth if you disagree that you owe anything, after which point it will be requested again if you owe it, and again, and then the bank will be contacted and they will automatically send the money, if you don't have it a plan to pay it back will once again be offered, and after enough refusals by you you'll be arrested and that could end in prison time. these people think that people who do crime deserve violence against them, such as a highly armed and highly violent police force, violent prisons, etc, and so understandably they don't want to be labelled crime boys. but they make the mistake of thinking that we want that too, and they boil the earlier process down to more simple terms for their simple brains to understand: ie "if I refuse to pay the money I am a crime boy and will receive crime boy treatment", ergo when we say we think taxes should exist we are saying that we want them to receive crime boy treatment (which, to them, means violence) if they don't pay. what they fail to understand is that it's possible to want taxes to exist and to also want no violence against crime boys, so when we say "hey taxes should exist" we're saying "hey it'd be cool if you weren't a solipsistic jerk" and not "if you don't give me the money I will have the gun men hit you with a stick" - the reason they don't Get that there's ways to get taxes without doing a medieval king larp is because they think the world should treat all crime boys like that, and they often think that even wanting to do a crime means you're a bad person who deserves crime boy treatment, so when we say that something they want to do (not pay taxes) should be a crime we're saying, in their eyes, that they are a bad person who deserves crime boy treatment. they have very smol, easily confused brains.

[futurefind]

// ferdiereabert is so funny to me bc like. yeah sure joke ship that grew hands but also like. 'i do what i must for the future' except reas doing it for their future bc she sees herself as a walking ghost and thus having none and they need to keep trying fucking pincer tactics to get her to sit down and accept tlc nevermind get anywhere NEAR the topic of 'stop fucking isolating and self sacrificing wtf'?????????

[rogue-healer]

Ugh I gotta ramble a bit about the Cassette Beasts starters.

So the first NPC you meet asks you what your aesthetic is, spooky or sweet, which corresponds to the two starters, but you’re not actually shown what the starters look like.

And instead of an element type thing, you’re asked for your aesthetic. I just think that’s such a fun twist. They’re not even opposites!

And even the two starters tie into the lore of the first people to see the beasts/monsters, calling them angels and demons, bc they didn’t know what else they could be.

But the most fun part IMO is that Sweet actually gives you Candevil, the demon-esque beast, and Spooky gives you Bansheep, the angelic one.

Now, that’s oversimplifying things a little, because both starters branch at their first remaster (evolution), and go on to have a third form.

Candevil’s entire thing is like, colorful manic pixie dream devil. One branch turns into a demonic rainbow gumball machine; the other goes into bisexual flag -ish… alchemy witch. So the “Sweet” beast has demon and witch.

Bansheep, on the other hand, is emo, goth, and fluffy, yet angelic. Sort of. One branch remasters into what you’d expect — a ghostly halo-ed floating sheep. The other is uh. A black metal tombstone-hugging zombie ram. So Spooky does kind of go the way you’d think, ghost and zombie, except with sheep.

Aren’t these designs awesome? One of the main design philosophies for CB critters is “Don’t begin and end at ‘elemental animal’”, and I think the starters showcase this perfectly.

This is all a very long-winded roundabout way of saying, if you like creature-collecting games with non-cliched cryptid-inspired critters, interesting companions with their own character development, weird analog-ish horror, dialogue that really gets you thinking about the power of humanity and friendship, and they/them pronouns, please for the love of fuck, try Cassette Beasts.

[moodcrab]

Fixing Delphine

This bitch.

I actually like that they made a character that is on your side but is somewhat unlikable, Delphine is Team Dragonborn, but she's not really one of the good guys. And that's cool, conflict means drama. So what's the problem? Well unfortunately, this drama is surface level and isn't used to drive the story, so It's kind of just annoying.

People oversimplify their hatred of Delphine into "She wants you to kill Paarthurnax," because unlike Delphine, people actually like Paarthurnax. Understandable, but barely scratches the surface. We'll get to The Paarthurnax Dilemma in time, but that quest is a symptom, not the illness itself.

If I could sum up Delphine in a word it would be "inconsistent." For example, she's a fugitive waging a one woman war on the Thalmor from the shadows, who's only survived this long from sheer paranoia - but she also uses her real name and leaves a note in Ustengrav for whoever happens to pick it up with directions and a pass word to her secret hide out.

She needs to go through her super secret contact Farengar to use the Jarl's resources to go into Bleak Falls Barrow, a tutorial level dungeon she can see from her house, and she's impressed that you did it - but she also goes personally to the other side of the country to delve alone into the massive Ustengrav to steal the Horn of Jurgan Windcaller, no issues, just a quick in and out twenty minute adventure.

She takes the fact that you found her Ustengrav note as proof you're the Greybeard's new guy and not some Thalmor plant even though she herself, a non Dragonborn, had also completed Ustengrav and taken the horn proving it's totally possible. She even points this out in her own dialogue then demands we prove who we are, even though that was the whole point of the Ustengrav note. It's also a pretty big assumption that just because I'm the guy the Greybeards call Dragonborn that I can't ALSO be with the Thalmor.

We are left with this awkward sense that the writers are flailing to make us think this woman is competent and objective, without actually having her do anything that clever. Just act like the dumb thing was smart and have her act like a cocky brat if questioned about it.

Inconsistency. It's her thing. Does she hate the Thalmor? That would make sense given what we know about her. But that gets dropped half way through the main story and suddenly she hates The Greybeards, for absolutely no reason at all. She gives a reason, but it's bullshit.

In her own words, "If the greybeards had their way, the dragonborn would sit on a mountain talking to the sky." But that's not true is it. We know The Greybeards, they encouraged us to fulfill our destiny. Even if you say you want to follow their Way of the Voice, they'll be glad to hear it but warn you not to let it get in the way of what needs to be done. Delphine even uses Tiber Septim as an example, which is even stupider because The Greybeards actively encouraged Tiber to conquer Tamriel. Have I read more in game books than the dialogue writers??

But that's not the end of it, when it becomes convenient for the plot this hatred is flipped once again from The Greybeards onto dragons. Not Alduin. All dragons. Despite the fact that, as a Blade, she should know about Nafaalilargus, a dragon ally of the Empire and the Blades for thousands of years, and the Blades don't just indiscriminately kill all dragons no matter the circumstances, and that Tiber Septim himself almost certainly met Paarthurnax at some point, she suddenly seems to be acting like she has a personal grudge against dragons. Which brings us to the Paarthurnax Dilemma...

See here's the thing, you could easily write off the frustration everyone feels towards this quest as Bethesda's crappy design, where there is no conclusion other than to kill Paarthurnax, or else leave an unfinished quest languishing in the menu. Bethesda apparently didn't consider the idea that anybody would actually prefer to turn on the Blades, even though the Blades have become a bit of a running joke among the fans, or that anyone would take umbrage with Delphine giving out orders and ultimatums.

But no, it's so much worse than that. Delphine being a surly unlikable c u n t from the day we met her is one thing, but the fact that she has been wrong about almost everything she's ever said in game, and still having the AUDACITY to treat us like her work bitch and us never, not once, getting the opportunity to put her in her place... That's not poor quest design, that's the game gaslighting us.

Let's do a quick list of every one of Delphine's theories, and how many were actually correct shall we:

You are not the Dragonborn ❌

The Greybeards shouldn't be trusted to identify a Dragonborn ❌

The dragons aren't just coming back, they're coming back to life ✅

The Thalmor have something to do with the dragons returning ❌

Esbern is dead ❌

The Greybeards just want the Dragonborn to sit on a mountain and meditate ❌

The Greybeards wanted Tiber Septim to just sit on a mountain and meditate ❌

Paarthurnax, having lived in exile for thousands of years, deserves corporal punishment ❌

As ACTING Grand Master of the Blades, she gets to boss around the Dragonborn ❌

She deserves a seat at the peace negotiations ❌

And these are just the things that are factually wrong, leaving aside opinions on her morality and shitty attitude. This is the woman the game presents to us as a shrewd strategist.

BUT I CAN FIX HER!

Like I said I like the idea of a character who is on your side but is somewhat unlikable. It actually won't take much to make Delphine endearing to the fans. We have to do a Boromir on her. A Lot of people dislike Boromir throughout the Fellowship of the Ring but weep at his death. We have to tweak three things to have the same thing happen to Delphine:

1. Make her actually competent and useful so that while we don't agree with her we can see why she does the things she does, and desire to keep her around.

2. Have her mistakes called out and have consequences.

3. Have her redeem her mistakes with a badass honourable death.

[drunkenskunk]

Been thinking a lot about Lancer lately, in case you can't tell. And a thought has crossed my mind.

The various military powers that exist in the world of Lancer. Union. The Karrakin Baronies. The Aunic Ascendancy. The corpro-states like Harrison or SSC or IPS-N. Even the smaller independent nations in the diaspora outside the control of Union or anyone else. How are all the various armies of these different powers organized, and what are their respective doctrines actually like?

Let me explain.

When you play Lancer, the book makes it VERY clear that what you, the players, are doing when you're in the combat part of the game is... the exception and not the rule. 3 to 5 people in absurdly customized and overpowered mechs is not normal. You are exceptional people, piloting exceptional machines, constantly being thrust into exceptional situations.

So how are the armies of regular mechs organized, and how are they deployed against one another in actual war?

By way of an example: Battletech. When it comes to the armies of the Inner Sphere (at least during the Succession Wars), forces of mechs would typically be organized like:

4 mechs in a Lance

3 Lances in a Company

3 Companies in a Battalion

3 to 5 Battalions in a Regiment

Now, obviously I'm oversimplifying here. There's gonna be some variations, depending on the time period and the Successor State in question, and anything larger than a Regiment has it's own problems... but that tends to be the starting point. Usually. And there's also many different variations when it comes to the organization of things like aerospace assets, armored vehicle elements that are NOT mechs (like tanks and artillery), and infantry units. Because even in a setting dominated by heavy metal, the humble footsoldier has never truly gone away.

But that's just how the Successor States of the Inner Sphere do things. Mostly. The Clans have a very different way of organizing their armies:

A Point is the smallest unit for the Clans, either being a single mech, two aerospace fighters, two armored vehicles, five power armored infantry, or a 25-man platoon of conventional infantry.

5 Points in a Star

2 Stars in a Binary

3 to 5 Binaries in a Cluster

3 to 5 Clusters in a Galaxy

The Clans like thing to be simple and organized, which... can be both a good and a bad thing, depending.

In terms of battlefield doctrine, the way the Successor States wage war is an absolute clusterfuck. Tactics can vary wildly depending on which house you're talking about, and when, but for the most part? They're going to employ some form of combined arms, with mechs spearheading an assault, supported by infantry, armor, artillery, and aerospace assets. The Clans, on the other hand, have a completely different doctrine: their Batchall, or "Battle Challenge."

See, the Clans treat war like a game. It's a sport. It's not (usually) about annihilating the other side; it is (supposed to be) a means of settling disputes in a "civilized" manner. Clan Wolverine would probably have some choice words to say about that description, but that's a topic for another day. See, they want things to be an even fight. A test of skill, rather than a test of who can buy the biggest weapons or field the largest number of troops. For example: if your side has warships, and your opponent does not have warships, then you're expected to bid away your warships and you don't get to use them in that fight.

It is a very fair, but very stupid, way of waging war, and that battlefield doctrine came to bite them in the ass in 3052 when the ComGuard beat the shit out of them at Tukayyid.

... I think I may have drifted slightly off topic.

Right, yes, Lancer, that's what I was talking about.

What got me thinking about this? Well, I was reading through the rulebook earlier; specifically, going through the GM part of the book where it has the list of all the different NPC types and the templates you can apply, and how to build encounters and such. And I was also fucking around in Comp/Con. Doing things like trying to figure out how strong I could make the "squad" NPC using the rules available (is it even possible to make a squad of infantry a threat to mechs?), and trying to see what stats a tank would have, that sort of thing.

And as I was futzing around with all this, I noticed that the way you build encounters reminded me a lot of... well, building a Lance of mechs to fight an opponents Lance of mechs in the tabletop wargame version of Battletech. And then that got me thinking about organizational structures and battlefield doctrine, and...

I suppose the point my autistic ADHD-addled mind is trying laboriously to get to is: would it be possible to modify the rules of Lancer to play it like a tabletop wargame instead of an RPG? Y'know, like...

Well, Battletech, I suppose.

And, y'know, from a lore side of things: what would an army of mechs in Lancer actually look like (beyond the squad of player characters who are special by dint of the narrative), and how would those armies be organized?

[terras-domain]

Hey man good day 👍🏻

I read you take requests? I have something in mind since I read that Karina × Chaehyun lesbian fic I thought of requesting a lesbian smut but this time it's StayC's J & Isa where J is purely obsessed with Isa and she will be the dom one. Besides, we rarely see StayC smuts and them two are just perfect. ❤️

Anywayz that was it. Thanks very much 👌

Pushing Limits

Lee Chaeyoung (Isa) x Jang Yeeun (J) - Stayc

Tags: Teasing, Lesbian sex, tribbing (scissoring idk what you guys call it), invasion of privacy

words: 3309

terra's note: helloo @unspoken-rage04 I know this took you quite a while. It's been like what, two weeks? I started this around Saturday March the 27th so yeah it is taking me quite some time. I hope you (and other people who's reading this enjoys. Love you all <33

"Unnie! What kind of question are you even asking?" J's oval face blushed, turning blush red as the game of truth or dare between the girls got heated up. It was mostly pure silliness and everything you would expect from the Stayc girls to do, but Sumin's question of truth was too hard to answer, especially with the whole group around the living room of the dorm. "What? It wasn't all that serious. It's just a simple question of who's your crush?" Well, it was kind of a lie. Sumin oversimplified J's truth question that she gave. She asked if she was given a chance to have sex with one idol, who would it be?

"Well why not? It's not like we're strangers. Felix from Straykids is known for being so kinky, there's guys like Joshua from Seventeen who's more softer and gentle. All rumours of course hahaha!" Yoon giggled, looking at her blushing maknae, who's now the spotlight of their little game. Her cute flustered expressions just radiates a wide smile in the room, enjoying the adorable sight of Stayc's babygirl. "Well it's not that I don't want to say it-" J flicks her hair back, the brunette trying to recover her cool by scrunching her lips to the side. "-I just so happen to not have anybody in mind yet. I'm not horny like you perverts" J pointed her nose to the ceiling, acting cocky and trying to cover up her messy and heart racing self, trying her best to run away from the question. "Oh, you sure J? Not even women? Not even your cute little unnie~?" Isa, the woman sitting next to her in the imaginary circle they made by sitting next to each other finally let out some words. She loved watching her little maknae looking so helpless and shy, it's so adorable.

Isa's face now inches closes to J, only a pinky finger away from each other. The girls laugh it off, having their little entertainment fulfilled by their maknae's reaction, filled with heat and oxytocin radiating through her face, showing how she's a bit turned on by Isa's little tease. "Unnie....are you drunk again?" J asked, her unnie does smell of booze. Must be related to the dozen of cans stashed in the dumpster just now, must be Isa's doing since she drinks a lot. "I'm not drunk~ *hic* this is totally me normally" despite being drunk, Isa's words weren't wrong. No matter what state she's in, she always finds away to flirt and tease the members, J being her prime target. Something about J just made her want to tease the cutie brunette everyday, whether it is by treating her like a baby and feed her food out in the open, or something like this; having her face as close to each other as possible. It works of course, evident by J's heart pounding hard, trying to control her emotions and not immediately just pounce on her unnie. After all, Isa has always been the one teasing her. Of course at some point J will slowly develop feelings for her cutesy unnie. How she occasionally teases her everyday, her friendly and teasy nature, and her curvy body to top it all off just drives J crazy.

"Ummm- I really don't have an answer for this guys.." J flusters, hiding her face behind the palm of her hands, cupping her flushed red face from her unnies. Her unnies, looking at their shy maknae, reacted with a teasing giggle. Although it answering the truth question is part of the game, they didn't wanna bully their maknae any further. "Okay okay okay let's just get to bed girls. We're all looking pretty dead tired." Sumin gives a beaming smile, ending their little game to calm down J. Her eyes shift to Isa, who chugged one too many beers that makes her look dead drunk at the living room. "You go to sleep Isa. You're getting too drunk haha." The leader looked at the intoxicated kitty, barely awake and thinking straight with the amount of alcohol in her body. "Whaaat? *hic* I'm completely fine!" She argued, but her breath reeks of booze. Sumin could only shake her head with a smirk on her face, and shifting her attention to J. "Can you help guide Isa to to her room J?" she asked, asking the maknae for a favour. Their rooms are next to each other so it was pretty convenient for J to carry Isa to her room.

J tried to refuse, pushing the responsibility of taking care of her kitty unnie to someone else but Sumin didn't budge, this is her job now. With Isa's right arm around her shoulder, guiding Isa to her room. The intoxicated Isa was getting in heat, trying to get the maknae's reaction, her cherry red lips puckered up to kiss J's cheeks. "Unnie....you're so drunk" J grunted, trying to avoid to fall deeper in the rabbit hole, being indulged in Isa's teasing would just make her emotions run wild. Isa kept pulling the maknae's face, eventually her lips do reach J's smooth cheeks. "U-unnie! You really are drunk!" J exclaimed, her red as tomato face looks straight into Isa's eyes, her face looking half awake and seconds away from passing out. As soon they reached the teasy kitty's room, J helped Isa to lay down, resting on her bed. "Are you not gonna join me in bed, J-baby?" Isa asked, her adorable face pouting into J's soul, making her heart skips two beats. How is it possible for her to resist such a beauty that Isa is gifted with? J tried to shook off her thoughts of being in bed with her, turning away from her teasy unnie, running away from her teases. In an act of last resort, Isa grabbed her dongsaeng, causing J to turn back to Isa as Isa planted her lipson J's. The sudden kiss made J almost melt in Isa's arm, replying the kiss as they took a good 10 seconds enjoying each other's lips, making out before J pulled away, her shyness took over her mind and avoided the situation to get any more heated. "I'm sorry unnie, I can't-" the conflicted J could do nothing but run away, storming to her room as she leaves the half aware Chaeyoung in her room who right after getting rejected fell into her bed, passing out from the aftereffect of alcohol in her body.

It was a restless night for J, for the better or worse. Her mind was filled with thoughts of her unnie. Even as she rests asleep in her room, Isa still roams rent free in her mind, popping in her dream. Her curves, her teasy words, her body boldly inching closer to her. Despite being a figment of her imaginations, J's dream felt surreal. The heat from Isa felt like the same heat it radiates every time the two are close to each other. Her words were the same cheesy lines Isa throws to her, seducing the toyish maknae. As soon she woke up, J felt a little heavy, as if her mind had something to tell her, something to deal with. As she was massaging her scalp, looking to ease the pain from last night's roller coaster of emotions, she noticed a notification coming from her text messages. She wasn't in a rush to reply just yet, as her mind is still fixated on one thing. "I should go and apologised to Isa." She monologued, finally reaching her senses. She got up and got herself presentable, despite still in her pajamas, and head towards her neighbouring room, Isa's. "Unnie, are you in there?" J's voiced came followed with a few knocks on her door. No answer.

Curiosity filled the maknae's mind, so she opened the door to check on her senior. She was very drunk last night so she might be still asleep. But to her surprise, she was greeted with a room with no one inside. What was left was the clothes Isa wore last night left on the bed. Puzzled, she resorted in checking her phone to find some clues. And that's when the text message gave her answers.

"@ j (baby yeeun) we're out shopping for a while today. we wanted to bring you along but you were asleep. soz >.<" a text message came from Sumin, which made nod her head, grasping the situation a bit more.

So it turns out she was alone in the dorm, and it's only her at the moment. J looked around, the room flashing the incident of last night, but this time her feelings for Isa were too strong to make her too shy to run away again. She sat down and sat on Isa's bed, her eyes roaming around the nicely yet plain looking room before her eyes stared at the garments stashed on the bed. She was only catching a few glances, but her pupils were fixated on one thing for some reason, Isa's panties. She knows she wants to, and knows damn well she shouldn't. "I can't, but-" J's mind was all over the place. Her heart beating as if she ran a marathon, her mind contemplating the consequences of her actions that she may or may not do in the next seconds. Lust overcame logic, and so did J's heart overcoming her brain, her hand now grasp Isa's used panty, now in her possession. She was hesitant, but the more she overthinked it, the more she wants it. J lifted the underwear near her face, closing in the cloth towards her nose to take a sniff. "Oh gosh, fuck." J groaned, her mind knows this is wrong, especially in Isa's room, but at this point she can't turn back. All that teasing, all the built up emotion, all those sinful lust inside her, it has to be let out. J continued her pursuit on Isa's unintended panty, taking a deeper sniff while her fingers reach lower down her body and underneath her pants. Her fingers reaching her own cunt, touching it as her index finger ran fingers around her clitoris, fully submerged in her own lust for her unnie, until she was completely oblivious of the audience in front of her. "Well, well, well. Enjoying yourself J?" A giggled followed the question, a soft and familiar voice for J that made her body jolt from the shock.

" Wait unnie- I, I can explain!" she definitely can't. Her mind races for an excuse, but before she can come up with a witty answer, Isa is already on top of her, pinning the panicking J to the soft mattress. "I-I thought you were out with the others." J finally had a her mouth speak a sensible sentence, which only replied with a sweet grin from Isa's face. "I didn't I was up when they were leaving so they didn't have to text me to let me know. I was just down stairs eating breakfast~" Isa explained, but her arms firmly grab hold onto J's wrists, forebiddening her from moving an inch. "And you seem to be having a lot of fun here, aren't you J-baby?" she snickered, her lips letting out a small laugh as J looked up, helpless. Her little sin caught red handed, and seems like Isa is here to punish her. "Don't worry cutie, I won't hurt you. We both know we wanted this, right?" Isa led the way this time, her words can only be responded by J's nodding head. Her mouth is sealed tight, unable to form a single word to reply. It wasn't really necessary for J to speak anyways since short after Isa got her face close to J again, giving her a deep kiss. This time J didn't run away, instead embracing her unnies soft lips on hers, taking each other while Isa rested her weight on top of J.

"nghh...unnie~" J's lips slipped out words, causing Isa to stop her barrages of kisses on her maknae's lips. She didn't say a word, instead her eyes stare deep into J's letting her know she can speak. "I'm sorry, for yesterday." It was all her mind could think of. It was her initial plan to come and apologize anyways so she got what she needed to do crossed. "Hehehe oh Yeeun~ it's okay. I loved teasing you anyways." The older Stayc member giggled before her lips got back on her maknae, she doesn't want to waste this chance. She wants all of her. "Although if you wanna apologize you gotta do it properly~" she grinned, adjusting herself so that her thick body is kneeling directly above J's gorgeous face. "I saw you enjoying my panties Yeeun~ why not have a taste at here?" She looked down, noticing J being a bit hesitant about it. Isa didn't want to force her any further, instead she just let her do her thing, she knows J wants it as much as she does. J, still staring at Isa's bare pussy after she slid her panties to the side, is still dumbfounded. Her heart debating with itself if she wants to or not, but she knows the answer deep down already. It was always gonna be a the same answer. Every, damn, time. The urges took over her, her tongue sticking out as she starts to lick up Isa's tight cunt, making Isa let out a satisfactory moan, feeling her maknae lick it slowly but passionately. Her hand moves towards her own two chests, groping them gently while J continues to give her unnie pleasure. Her tongue moving up and down, licking by the entrance of her pussy making Isa groan in pleasure, relieved to finally get her hands on her lovable maknae. "Oh fuuck yes baby, you're better than I thought you were~" Isa grunted, her hands holding on to the bedframe now as she grinded on J's ecstatic face, enjoying the pleasure of finally being free to do what she wants to, to finally be able to let out her lust for Isa.

With Isa taking the lead now, her hips grinding on the younger member's face, J got the freedom to plant her hands on her pussy. Sliding down her pants and panties off, she managed to let her tight cunt out for her to touch, rubbing the entrance of her private temple feel the fresh air in Isa's room. Rubbing it gently while her mouth pleasures Isa's, J was occupied. Her body is drugged in sex, loving it and needing even more. She wants Isa, she wants her unnie. With Isa keeping her hips moving front and back, her face is nothing more of a seat for J, letting her tongue be the point of pleasure to Isa's cravings. "Nghhhh- you're amazing Yeeun baby~" Isa grinned as she stops, letting J take her much needed breath. She helped her to sit up, taking a quick break while Isa helps her calm down and fixing her maknae's messy hair, probably from the amount of riding Isa did to her face. "Unnie...." J breathed out her call, getting herself a bit more clingy, the opposite of her usual reaction towards Isa's teasing. "I want more" J continued, her face reflecting a cute pout, almost as if she's begging for Isa to do more to her.

"Oh my little J baby~ Finally being honest huh?" She giggled, her lips planting kisses on both sides of J's cheeks, slowly kissing her before her hand rubs on J's pussy. "I'll give you lots of love baby~" She giggled before she spreads her fellow member's legs wide, showing off J's wet pussy. Loving the sight she smiles at J as they both go in for another kiss, making out deeply once more, this time with both of them being naked in Isa's bed. Isa leans her body closer, her cunt now touching J's as they start to rub their private parts together. J was sensitive, she arched her body away from Isa, shocked by the new sensation that Isa gave her from their clitorises touching each other. "It's okay Yeeun~ it'll feel good, trust me" Isa whispered into her ears after pulling out from their kiss, reassuring the anxiety maknae. The truth or dare game was already clear evidence of her virginity, and the fact Isa was her first, she has to go slow but also strong enough to please her. Her hips hump back and forth slowly, riding on J's lower half, making the maknae moan loudly from the ecstasy of pleasure Isa is giving her. "Nghhhh aaaah unnie...it feels so good" J voiced out her moans, lifting on of her legs up, making it easier for Isa to move. "Mmmmh oh yeah? I love it too baby. My little baby J feels so good." Isa replied, her body increasing the pace of her grinding, feeling the folds of their pussies clashing together as they scissor, grinding on each other. J made sue to move too, she doesn't want her unnie to do all the work. Their bodies now getting tensed up, edging towards their climax. Their hips couldn't stop moving, clashing their pussies together while Isa's bedroom turns into that of a moaning mess. "Aaaah~ fuck yeah J move your body just like that. Such a quick learner you are huh?" Isa made a quick remark on J's quick adaptability to Isa's pace, enjoying both of their bodies together as they hugged, making sure the other doesn't move away.

"unnie....I can't hold it much longer~" J whined, the tension on her lower end is piling up, she couldn't wait no further. She wants this. She wants to cum for her adorable unnie. "You wanna cum baby? You wanna cum with your unnie~?" Isa's voice starts to get breathy, her hands clenching into fists as she held her dongsaeng tight, her pussy almost at her limit. "Unnie... I-I can't hold it anymore-!" Their tension got louder, their moans escalate higher and higher as the movement from their hips progressively got faster too. "Mmmh~ cum with me Yeeun, cum with me baby." The two Stayc girls moaned out loud, finally giving in as they held each other, J digging her nails slightly into Isa's skin as she lets out her streams of cum, squirting together with her unnie as they both cum and yelp from the pleasure.

It all felt like a blank space after. Both Isa and J were left quiet. Laying down in bed, staring into each other, reality kicking into their minds for what just happened. "Hehe, how was it baby? It was pretty fun huh?" Isa squeezed closer towards her panting maknae, trying to gain her breathe, and also process the whole thing. Seeing her senior smiling again, a sincere angelic smile she always puts on, brings sparkles in J's heart. She was joyful. It was a crazy ride, and she was doing it fully scared of what might happen. J reached her arm to cuddle in with Isa, smiling with her as they both grinned and laughed at each other, both of them surprised to see the outcome of all of Isa's teasing actually lead to them having sex. "I love you unnie" J, now confident and thinks less of her decision, tightly wrap her unnie around her arms, hugging tight after planting a kiss on her unnie's lips. "Aww~ I love you too my little J-baby" Isa replied, resting with her, both cuddling up closely and resting with each other's heat present.

"The others won't get mad over this, right unnie?"

"Naaaah don't worry J, they probably knew we'd fuck sooner or later hehe~" Isa's words turn back to teasing mode, making J reset her mind to the usual shy and easily flustered self from the flirtatious Isa. "UNNIE!"

[thewiz9062]

Smiling Critters: Together, We Resonate (No.7) - Dogday

NOTE: THIS IS NOT RELATED TO CANON IN THE SLIGHTEST. An accurate description of this au is that I took every playtime.co poster art and promotional material from the game and lit up the rest of canon in a bonfire. This means that EVERY character is part of one big cartoon. That's it. No bigger bodies project, no child souls, no experiments, just a depiction of a cartoon. PLEASE do not ask me to do anything suggestive with anyone.

Here's our final main character, THE main character's introduction, dogday!!

OK, so I'm my general ideas post I specified that dogday is the new kid, but the reason for that is he was tutored for the time being....at an orphanage.

Yeah, no parents in sight here either. Difference being that dodgay has never had parents, he was abandoned week one. Ever since then, he's lived in an orphanage.

Dogday was 'raised' there, but just barely. The workers tried their best but there were like 50~ children to take care of, giving them all equal attention was nigh impossible. Dogday raised himself via media, books or the TV. In this media, there was a common trend: Happiness. Everything was positive, and seeing how everything in th orphanage was dull and sad, he decided that he was going to be happy, and bring happiness to those around him.

This led him into a one-track mind, where he can only really comprehend happiness, and his brain filters out any other emotions, seeing them as 'bad'.

After years of being home-schooled he wanted to go to school to make friends. Eventually, he managed to convince his caretakers to let him go to an actual school.

OK, here's an oversimplified of how he befriended the other critters:

Craftycorn: gave her the much needed push into her talent of art, planting the first seed of rebellion from her shitty ass parents, set up the after-school meetings

Bubba and kickin: managed to pass their friend filter test, invited them to the after-school meeting

Hoppy: really just appeared after school and said, "yall chill" so she joined

Bobby: Also appeared after school and liked the group, offered to bring snacks and it became routine

Picky: invited via bobby

OK, now we pick up where we left off yesterday: Catnap.

And so, the next time bobby met up with catnap, she brought dogday with. She had to go to take care of her siblings this time around, leaving the two of them. So, dogday tried to start up a conversation, which ended up more like a one-sided ramble. Everybody in the group was very animated, so someone to just sit and talk to and they would just listen was very refreshing. A few meetings later, dogday assured bobby that if she had to do other things, he would be more than happy to accompany catnap. Catnap also seemed to be a little bit more lively. By that I mean instead of the blank stare he'd give Bobby, he listens to dogday with a slightly amused or interested glisten in his eyes. When interacting with Dogday, he never had to be unsubtle with his response. Bobby was very awkward when trying to talk to him, usually waiting for a response, but with dogday, just a simple eyebrow twitch or grunt would be enough to prompt him to continue. Even though catnap had never spoke to him directly, it still felt like a conversation.

One day, during one of their exchanges, dogday accidentally brought up the fact that he lives in an orphanage. Dogday clammed up as he saw Catnap's face widen in mild suprise, and then was confused and surprised when he saw his mouth turn upwards slightly. He got up and gestured for dogday to follow him. They went deeper into the forest and reached catnaps shack house thingy. Dogday asked if this is where he goes to hang out sometimes. Catnap shook his head. He then asked if this was where he lived. A nod. Catnap moved over to a corner of the room and showed dogday a picture of his parents. Dogday asked if they were still around, and catnap shook his head. Catnap then sat down on the floor and used one if his gestures to signicate that he was listening, essentially asking if he wanted to talk about his own. Dogday went on about how the only thing he knows about his parents are that they left him. It turns into a vent once he starts asking himself if he did something wrong, or were they just terrible people, or maybe he just wasn't worth their time. He was already on the verge of crying and was about to say something along the lines of "but it's ok" to try and 'cheer himself up, but was suddenly tackled in a hug from catnap. And for the first time since he met him, he spoke to say that it wasn't OK. That's when the dam broke, and they both sat there hugging while dogday cried.

-

Tears? Wdym I'm a waterbender I'm just displaying my superior abilities to your mortal soul

that one was a doozy

Additional notes:

- before you ask yourself, "Are they shipping them" I genuinely don't know if I want to or not. Sun and moon characters are just kinda like that sometimes and I certainly didn't help it ngl. If you want to see this as a ship post, go ahead, but it's not canon here

- I love the trope where polar opposite characters make each other see the other side of things in a similar situation so yk I had to rid them both of familial love :D

- I never specified, but catnap did not go to school. Like at all. He does, however, know how to read, write, speak, and do basic math. You ask him what 12 x 94, and he'd give you the answer, but if you ask what's the powerhouse of the cell is, he'd give you a "wtaf r u talking abt" look. (Poor soul doesn't even know people added the alphabet to math......actually he's lucky ngl)

Anyways I'm gonna give an aftermath post that includes the end of the school year, then introduce side characters, THEN I can finally get into actual content. Sorry my schedule and motivation varies alot so I apologize for inconsistencies. Byeeee

Edit: New Art!

here is the old one for classics sake :]

[mellomaia]

To my folks who experience climate grief:

Over the last few days I've been obsessed with a game called Half Earth Socialism:

[ID: opening screen for the game Half Earth Socialism. From top to bottom: there's an image of the earth encircled in a design that looks like wrapped wheat. Both are colored pink. The title of the game is below, along with the tagline "A Planetary Crisis Planning Game." Under that, there is a menu with options for New Game, Sound toggle off or on, and Credits. There is a hyperlink at the very bottom that says "Read the book: Half-Earth Socialism." end ID]

The game was created by Drew Pendergrass andTroy Vettesse, the authors of the book Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics. I read the book last year, but didn't play the game until recently.

The premise is that a socialist revolution sweeps the world, and you play as a lead planner who must 1) lower emissions and therefore the temperature below 1ºC, 2) reduce the rate of biodiversity loss, 3) keep people around the world happy, 4) use political capital to implement policies and gain allies in parliament, and 5) avoid production shortages of electricity, fuel, and food.

It's very challenging to beat the game because of all those factors. Sometimes I'd do well in one planning stage on some of those areas but fail in others, and they all have an impact on your political capital and public approval. Seeing headlines within the game about environmental disasters, species extinction, pandemics, etc. if I wasn't doing well was really upsetting. In the first planning stage of the game, they're inevitable because your plans can take many in-game years to actually start improving things. I found myself skipping those after a time. But, as I figured out the mechanics and how and when and in what combinations to prioritize policies, I felt excited about headlines like "polinators are flourishing," "people are making their own gardens," "the quality of life in the Global South is improving." I finally got to the best win state earlier today after trying one or two dozen times.

Aside from lifting my mood and sense of hope, I also learned a lot about proposed and existing technologies meant to address climate change: biochar, carbon capture, electric grids, energy quotas, etc. Also, it helped me feel impactful, even though I knew it was just a game. For example, one of the policies I tended to implement in the first planning cycle was granting indigenous sovereignty. I loved being able to do that in basically one fell swoop.

Even when I had critiques of the game, I found those meaningful because I started thinking about points the developers missed and what else would be needed to create a just transition. That's super important because no one person is going to think of everything.

Obviously, your capabilities and decision making processes in the game are oversimplified for the point of educating and simulating. And the game reflects certain biases of the developers. For example, the idea of one central body organizing every policy and process in the world, with most of the decisions coming from one person, does not sound to me like it would work well. Even so, I think instilling that sense of capability is so important, especially since so many everyday people feel defeated and like they can't change anything right now.

Suffice it to say, I enjoyed this game, and I recommend it highly! The game is in English, Spanish, and Portuguese (Brazilian and from Portugal).

[juniperhillpatient]

I know I'm terminally coffin-brained lately but hear me out it really bothers me that the perception of the Coffin of Andy & Leyley is ONLY "hehe incest cannibalism game" which is....not EXACTLY inaccurate but it certainly simplifies it ya know??? like I call it the incest cannibalism game too as a joke but I'm realizing there are a lot of people who think of it as like...a porn game? & btw I'm not AGAINST porny games or whatever I just think it's reductive & inaccurate to call Andy & Leyley that when in reality there is not even (so far) any textual sexual content beyond a demonic vision of a possible future. yes very obviously their relationship does have a sexual & romantic undertone, but it's compelling specifically because it's a complex story about siblings who have been genuinely fucked over by their parents & the world & they have developed a topically obsessive codependent relationship as a result.

like the initial conversation that the game's title is based on is Andrew casually half-jokingly talking about killing himself & it's just so..... narratively delicious. Ashley is not some horny one-dimensional slut who just wants to fuck her brother? Her reaction to Andrew talking about suicide is to joke that she'll race him to the balcony & he says back - semi sarcastically but we KNOW there's truth in his words, that he's clearly thought about this - that it would be too romantic, that they would be smashed together on the pavement, buried in the same coffin & like...the game proceeds from there with these two living in this intertwined fate, tangled together in ways neither of them can ever escape. it's romantic but it's also tragic & awful.

Andrew's love for Ashley will always be bitter & tinted with resentment because he was thrust with the responsibility of raising his little sister when he was only a child himself. he was made responsible for caring for Ashley with absolutely NO example of what caring for someone looked like & he was barely old enough to care for himself. Ashley never had anyone care for her in her entire life except Andrew & so she absolutely adores him to a dangerous & unhealthy degree.

like I hate it when people think Ashley is oh so abusive & manipulative or Andrew is so awful & selfish (she is manipulative & he is occasionally selfish) but like - as if there are not layers upon layers of WHY she treats Andrew the way she does & WHY he's so resentful. (as a side note I think debating who abuses who (aside from obviously the fact that they were both abused in different ways by their mother) or who's "worse" just...misses the whole ass point.)

and the cannibalism is initially about survival & the stakes are very apparent & built super well given the opening of the game spends a lot of time just demonstrating that they are literally starving to death to the point where Ashley is fainting & they're sharing a can of tomatoes out of the garbage joking that it's the best meal they've ever had. it is highly worth noting the way their actions escalate & get worse & worse with time as the game proceeds & you can see the way they're both getting more & more comfortable with violence & taboo. this game just would not compel me if it were just randomly "lol let's eat people!" get real

idk I just feel like people who don't know the game get the wrong idea about it when it's actually SO narratively rich okay bye

(this is not an anti Gravecest post either just to be clear, I fucking love the ship I just feel like it gets oversimplified often & also that Ashley especially is highly mischaracterized a lot, even in the game's marketing sometimes. at the core of the game are two deeply broken people who were fucked over bad & who are tied together in a way that neither of them can ever escape. it's love as horror & I loooove that about it)

[s-b-party]

Nous & Mythus: A Cycle of the Known & Unknown

****Honkai star rail version 1.6/crown of mundane and divine spoilers ahead****

After getting another update to the Simulated Universe & w/ Dr. Ratio coming soon, it’s a good time for me to discuss about these 2 Aeons & give my thoughts/analysis on them!

So who are these two?

They are Nous the Erudition & Mythus the Enigmata

We’ll start off w/ Nous so what does erudition mean? A synonym we can use is knowledge although that might be a bit oversimplified

Erudition often has the meaning of extensive learning whether it’s from books, practice, lectures, etc. The implication is that an erudite person or thing has a LOT of knowledge; think of a person who’s well-rounded but also has extensive knowledge in the many fields/subjects they have learned about, they can be considered erudite (this is reflected in how Erudition Pathstriders function in terms of gameplay, normally their specialty is dealing AoE dmg to multiple enemies at once as opposed to just a singular target)

Nous takes the form of an astral computer, they are a machine w/ many dangling wires visible & a red “eye” in the center, very much mechanic all around; as for their symbol it seems to speak to their concept quite well

If we look at the background, the cylindrical shapes can be interpreted as scrolls which are often associated w/ learning & knowledge; in the center, the abstract shapes seem to make an eye (their gaze perhaps) but I think it could also be taken as a flash of light which could represent “enlightenment” which we often think of as a sort of critical point in one’s journey in obtaining knowledge

Is it possible that the center is meant to symbolize the moment when Nous reaches their own enlightenment?

To name a few of their more well-known factions, we have the Genius Society & Intelligentsia Guild, both of which have members whom we’ve already officially met in the game: Herta, Screwllum, Ruan Mei from Genius Society and Dr. Ratio from Intelligentsia Guild

Seeing as they’re 2 different factions following the same Aeon, that means there’s something differentiating them, presumably their approach to knowledge

You can tell based on the name of the Genius Society what exactly they focus on (geniuses) which is a bit of a contrast to what the Intelligentsia Guild focuses on which is the dissemination of knowledge meaning that they believe everybody should have access to knowledge

The Genius Society doesn’t seem to share their knowledge that easily which we can see based on how some of the members tend to work alone, one even became known for killing some of the other members despite being in the same organization (#4 Polka Kakamond), Ruan Mei often sticks to herself when it comes to her research, etc; as a result it’s a contrast to how easily knowledge flows within the Intelligentsia Guild which even goes as far as to view it as currency in their motto

Although we’ve pretty much met only one character associated w/ the Intelligentsia Guild officially & despite how much of an asshole he may be, there are aspects related to Dr. Ratio that are in agreement w/ the belief of the Intelligentsia Guild

The name of his banner is Panta Rhei/Panta Rei which is usually associated w/ Heraclitus & it often translated to “Everything Flows”; Heraclitus was a philosopher whose focus was on the movement & changes that the universe goes through which sounds similar to how the faction wants to make knowledge easily accessible (therefore making knowledge flow through the universe)

Ngl the convo between him & Screwllum at the end of the continuance quest had me lost for a bit but I got the gist of it; to sum it up Ratio ended up rescuing the researchers who got teleported by Duke Inferno, Screwllum was wondering why Ratio would just stand back & observe when he could have prevented the situation from being dragged out any further since Ratio had the Phase Flame; Ratio explains that the best thing when dealing w/ ignorant people (in this case, the researchers in the space station including the people in the chat who were gossiping about the situation) is to stand aside & observe bc according to him foolishness is the most difficult thing to cure; Screwllum deduces that Ratio was attempting to make the employees realize that they shouldn’t be idolizing geniuses so much; Dr. Ratio is in a way similar to Alhaitham; they both think that geniuses shouldn’t be made into such a big deal or overly revered; in both cases the reverence of geniuses creates a gap between people based on intelligence

Another aspect which I find both funny and fitting is that Dr. Ratio as a 5 star will be available to EVERY player; as it is implied in the livestream, it’s his way of spreading knowledge to the mediocre; as much as he can be very arrogant & rude, it’s interesting to see that he still upholds the belief that knowledge should be available to everybody, not just to geniuses, in his own unique way

4. The last aspect of Dr. Ratio that I want to touch upon is the combination of his title & name: his full name is Veritas Ratio, veritas meaning “truth/truthfulness” & ratio meaning “reason” in Latin; the title doctor comes from the Latin verb docere which means “to teach/instruct”

This may be a stretch but hear me out: when put together, the name (not necessarily the person) Dr. Veritas Ratio gives off an impression of someone who is either qualified to teach others about “truthful reasoning” or a teacher who is truthful & rational (it might not sound like it but this kinda falls in line w/ Screwllum describing him as candid). Something I noticed is that based on what we’ve seen, not many people in the Genius Society go by the title of Doctor; what I’m trying to get at is that there is something to be said about Ratio having the title of someone who is qualified to teach while members of the Genius Society usually do not really seem that interested in spreading knowledge to the masses or teaching them

This isn’t to say that the Genius Society is entirely incapable of teaching, they probably could if they wanted to (keyword: wanted), it’s more so their motivations & values that differentiate them from the Intelligentsia Guild

Getting back to Nous, both factions do reflect specific sides of the Aeon: both are interested in expanding their knowledge but the Genius Society overall seems to be removed from civilization/society or at least a bit distant (matched by the quote describing the knowledge seeker as having a cold core) while the Intelligentsia Guild has a more cooperative aspect in terms of having a network of intelligence which can be seen in the meaning behind Nous’ signal which is explained in the entry of the Genius Society (although the signal is more so reserved for geniuses, it’s still an attempt at having a group of people work together to find the answers to the universe)

Now that we’ve looked a bit at Nous in detail, I’ll talk about Mythus; as the Aeon of Enigmata, they represent the concept of mysteries that can’t be easily perceived & their form is quite interesting to look at

Their name is related to the word “mythos” which usually refers to the stories & arts that help demonstrate values, beliefs, & attitudes of societies

*I found out recently that apparently the word myth is more of a pejorative term for mythos bc it’s more often than not used to describe stories as false or not true so there is controversy around that*

Overall they look like a jellyfish w/ the main body being faceless & legless while their tentacles/tendrils dangle out; some parts of their body have a unique effect on them that resembles oil spills or the surface of a bubble which is probably meant to be the fog that accompanies them; the staircases that come from their body seem to never end & even fade out into the darkness of space

Their symbol is very similar to their form; you can see the jellyfish w/ tentacles flowing down & in the background there is a ring of rectangles that overlap each other which may be referring to the stairs that appear in their art

The usage of the jellyfish is interesting; just like how the ocean can carry them along, the jellyfish can symbolize flow & movement, perhaps it’s to establish how mysteries simply exist in the universe without push or pull from outside forces

I can see them using the jellyfish due to its connection to one of the biggest mysteries of the world: the ocean (or at least the deeper parts of it); if we think about it, space is like an ocean of stars and unknown things so I think it’s kind of fitting using a jellyfish form to represent mysteries but it might be a stretch

Now a few known factions that follow Mythus are the Riddlers & History Fictionologists: both are pretty straightforward in terms of their agenda which is to enshroud the universe in mysteries

The Riddlers create mysteries by altering texts & words while the History Fictionologists create mysteries by eradicating evidence of past events aka history itself

It is interesting seeing how these factions actively create mysteries sometimes to the point of destruction (of texts, history, etc) even though the existence of Enigmata should be able to exist as long as Mythus exists bc Aeons themselves are manifestations of concepts; in some cases, Aeons can die while the concepts they identify as may still persist to the current time

So how do Nous & Mythus even relate to each other in the overall world building ? Their identifying concepts might appear as opposites of each other (known vs unknown) but I think there’s more to it than that

There is a readable item written by Fu Xuan called “Glimpses into the Beyond” where she explains that Nous doesn’t necessarily provide answers but they provide many questions & that “answers may only be found by oneself”

We also hear of Nous doing calculations & trying to solve the mysteries of the universe & since the Enigmata exists, Nous doesn’t have all of the answers due to the existence of mysteries

I think that while they do know a lot about the universe & can represent knowledge, they can also represent the learning process/the journey for knowledge

Something interesting is that Nous in Greek philosophy refers to the ability to process & perceive information so if Mythus is meant to be the representation of the things that can’t be easily perceived, does that still apply to Nous themself when they’re both Aeons?

Also where does that leave their dynamic? They’re enemies of sorts bc Mythus is trying to destroy certainty left by Nous but this is also a relationship where Nous is essentially searching for the answers to the universe’s mysteries aka what Mythus encapsulates, making Mythus their “goal” I guess you could say

Life will always have people who desire to gain knowledge & it will always have things that have not been discovered/figured out; there is one particular thing that I do wonder about amidst all of this: with Mythus wanting an uncertain future, I wonder how this will spell out for one of the most important concepts in many HYV games: fate

I guess we’ll have to wait & see if they’ll connect this to fate in the future 👀

*I hope you guys enjoy the first lore thread of the new year! :3

[attonposting]

Okay, so Carth keeps coming up lately, both by people who love him and people who don't, and I thought I'd throw my two cents into the ring.

People complain that Carth is sexist, a lot. And I get where that's coming from, I've got the same issues with his romance as anyone else. I love the bones of Carth's character and remember him very fondly – he's tied for my favorite character from KotOR I, even! But the writing is... flawed, to say the least, and in a way that goes past just 'poorly aged.' I don't think his lines themselves ever go worse than awkward, but there's some more fundamentally unhealthy stuff written into his relationship that I suspect wasn't intentional.

What I find interesting, and what a meme just very succinctly pointed out, is that many of the same people who have beef with Carth are cool with Atton. Who is definitely the more sexist of the two, both incidentally and deliberately. And it's a really interesting differentiation between the two pilots/f!PC love interests/earlygame buddies, because I think their palatability comes entirely down to how the games portray that sexism. So this is my attempt to figure out why one thing works and the other kinda doesn't.

Carth Onasi is introduced as a stand-up guy. He stays behind as long as he possibly can to save other survivors on the Endar Spire; he believes in the Republic wholeheartedly, he serves to protect and approves when you do the same, and other characters sing his accolades. He's supposed to be wholesome, but with PTSD-related trust issues that cause friction between him and you.

Atton Rand is the opposite of that. You find him in a jail cell, he's untrustworthy and a cad, at any given moment he's either abrasive or lying through his teeth, he complains when you help people, and when you get to the bottom of his trust issues, you find out he's a worse guy than you ever could have imagined.

It's much too oversimplified to say that Carth is supposed to be a good person and Atton is not, that's not where the problem comes from, but it will become relevant later.

When Carth starts flirting with you... okay. The biggest, most obvious problem is that the game wants you to be into it. Carth flirts and continues to flirt after you can tell him to stop. Sure, whatever; that's not egregious. You can respond to Carth's flirting positively or negatively, and that's great... but when you do respond negatively, the game loves to pull you into these playful insult exchanges where your PC shouts and pouts while Carth taunts you. There's where the issues start. Even when the player is trying to shut him down, they get dragged along for the ride anyway, and the narrative decides that this is also romantic. Thus KotOR I only has a shallow understanding that it's presenting a situation a woman may want nothing to do with. It's kind of impressive that you can actually call Carth sexist in-game, and yet it doesn't feel like the game actually understands that he is in fact being sexist.

Actually, no. Maybe I'm reading too deep into this, maybe this is why I'm so forgiving to Carth as a character, but I don't think the problem is Carth, I think the problem is that the game is being sexist in this particular spot. I was more annoyed by my own return dialogue options than anything Carth said to me - especially the ones where I was being mean. It felt like f!Revan was being pigeonholed hard into the writer's idea of 'women', that it was not an especially flattering or nuanced view, and there wasn't anything that I actually wanted to say. Definitely the writer did not understand my perspective as a player – but that's not a problem unique to K1 and it's one even the sequel is super guilty of at times, so I'll move on for now.

When Atton makes skeevy remarks, you always have at least one dialogue option to call him out for it, and you cannot ever react positively to what he says. Either you smack him down or you ignore him. This is extremely important. Yes, you could argue that it's not as accommodating to how different players might react... but what this establishes is that the game is self-aware. It does not think what Atton is doing is in any way attractive, or that it should be interpreted positively. Instead it acknowledges what a lady's probable reaction to his unwanted advances would be and encourages the player to express it, and the way that's written isn't a playful back-and-forth, it's the Exile snapping at him and Atton backtracking. Atton's being a piece of shit, but instead of stirring up chemistry, the narrative goes out of its way to mete out karma – hence everyone else on the ship mocking him, or the comically topical details like him being an unwashed loser who smells terrible and scratches his junk in public. Whether you like Atton or not, the game wants you to know that it thinks he sucks, and you are never left feeling like there is an unsettled score.

On the contrary, this lack of self-awareness is what makes Carth's romance in K1 hard to swallow if you didn't start out receptive to it. When you can react negatively to Carth's comments, it doesn't feel like you can do so in an intelligent way. The tone is very “Ugh, MEN, amirite” rather than “I don't like the turn this conversation has taken and would like to just be your colleague again” or just “Stop.” - which is probably what you wanted to say if you were just platonically enjoying or less-amicably bickering with your dorito-jacket companion when the gorgeouses started coming out of left field.

Worse, when you actually can shut Carth's romance down, it involves being a dick to him and stomping hard on his personal issues. Like I'd understand if a player was angry with him at this point, because again, you've been forced into a romance arc even when you were telling the game no as much as it would let you - but there's a huge difference between wanting to tell a guy to back off and wanting to shit on his dead wife or his Sith kid or his blown-up planet. I dunno, I'm not that vindictive! I think there's only a couple of options at the very end of his romance tree where you can turn him down... not even amicably, it's still rude, just without being a Grade-A asshole, and by that point, you have been through a lot of flirting you presumably didn't want to be involved with. Generally, the game won't let you break things off with him without being a dick, even if you never agreed to board that train in the first place. Now loop back to the way that K1 unfailingly portrays Carth as a great guy, whose flaws have nothing to do with his upstanding sense of morality, and there's where the dissonance comes from. Not only does the game push you into his romance after you said no, it makes you the bad guy for trying to get out of what he initiated.

But there's another issue in the timing of the Carth relationship. He starts his flirting while he's expressing intense distrust and standoffishness with your PC. With Carth's nonstop skepticism about your trustworthiness, and constantly bringing up his issues with you... at least during Taris and Dantooine, it comes off more like his attraction to you is superficial and not as a result of him growing to like you, something that's pushed by how it's always focused on shallow hooks like your appearance or your 'cute' attitude. It's very awkward. I do not think this was the writer's intent. I think Carth's supposed to be captivated by what he's seen you do, and that's just going in recursive loops in his paranoid little brain and making things harder for him. By the end of the romance, it's extremely clear that Carth's into you for you. But it's clumsily handled at the start.

Contrast this with Atton, who starts off aggressively sexist towards a female Exile, fifty times more offensive than anything Carth ever does. Literally the first line he gets is leering at the PC's forced state of undress, mocking her vulnerability, and he continues in that vein for much of Peragus. He creeps on your nudity at least four times off the top of my head, he ogles you, he complains about women, he tries to hit on you, he even contemplates the possibility of Sexy Kreia (which is a level of dickery I can scarcely comprehend.)

But that tapers off and disappears around the time he starts showing actual romantic interest in your PC, like when Kreia threatens him and it's revealed how much your opinion matters to him, or when he asks Bao-Dur for advice. And a female PC never sees it again. This creates the opposite impression – that Atton's attraction is a result of your time together. Sure, he's still a pig, but it follows that he wasn't making serious passes at you on Peragus because his behavior now that he is actually interested in you has changed. And it implies that in an actual relationship, that would not be how he'd view or treat you, which I think is crucial for how willing people are to ship Atton with their Exiles.

Now, this is all a product of how K2 did not actually answer that question and let you romance Atton, because with Carth, it's the opposite and you see exactly how he behaves once he gets into a serious relationship. It involves spanking. Things could be very different if K2 actually had fleshed out romances. It's hard to say, because both the PC and the crew were very thoughtfully written (I will take a bold step here and say that K2's characters were on the whole written much better than K1's), but on the other hand, Atton is still the worst and I'm pretty sure the game would want to remind you of that if you agreed to play tonsil hockey with him. And it may have crashed into the same pitfall that Carth's did; if the game railroaded your interactions with Atton up to some point, it'd leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth who wasn't already signed up for the ship.

With the way things are, Atton not only gets a free pass to be interpreted as generously as his fans want and easily ignored by those who weren't keen on him, he even gets an interest boost from this because people will always want what they can't have.

Anyway. With a male PC, you'll continue to see Atton make sexist remarks towards other female characters and can even have a wingman chat with him that is entirely him projecting his issues all over women. He doesn't make these comments with a female PC, suggesting that he's on his best behavior... but that he'd still totally be a leering asshole if he wasn't trying to impress you. With a male PC and Carth, his sexism is nonexistent, again probably because he was never intended to be sexist and it's a product of clumsy/oblivious writing.

There's an additional layer with Atton and the question of how much anything he does is an act, but that doesn't exonerate him from any of the crap he says. I could write a separate essay on Atton and his relationship with women, but the guy is very much a womanizer who's terrified of the idea of intimacy and has a lot of shitty opinions that stem from his defensive need to believe that nothing emotional is ever real or relevant to him. He might've been casing the Exile on Peragus, but his chauvinism is genuine.

But I digress. The tl,dr; is that Atton acts less sucky the more he crushes on you and Carth acts more. Combo that with how their respective games make Atton pay for being creepy but give the strong impression they want you to go along with Carth's nonsense, and it's a little less mystifying why Carth gets so little benefit of the doubt while the King of Trash enjoys fandom sexyman status. His romance is almost predicated on the fact that he's a scumbag, where Carth's is very confused to whether the awkward parts should exist or not.

There's a bit more that kinda hurts Carth. The flirting... well, from what I remember it just got “wow, okay then” later on, and I found it way more silly than offensive in any way, but him repeatedly bringing up how you remind him of his dead wife doesn't help the relationship much and suggests that Carth may be projecting someone else over you. I can live with that, drama's tasty and it doesn't prevent a real connection from burgeoning. You can make the exact same argument for Atton anyway, and I think his is way worse. My major issue is at the end of the game. Mr. Trust Issues does not react well to the events on the Leviathan, when it turns out he was right to have kept an eye on the PC all along. It's great payoff! And I absolutely adore his discussion after that, when he admits his struggles to reconcile you and Revan, how he tried but he can't hate you, how helping you gave him something real when revenge only left him hollow. Seriously, for all the shade it gets, there's some really great stuff in his romance too - you just have to stick it out long enough to see it. But then, on Rakata Prime, Carth seems to reconcile his crisis of faith and finally, wholeheartedly decide to love you in a way that falls flat on its face. He confirms you're a good person because you're not Revan anymore, like Revan is some purely evil part of you you've now cast off, when... that really seems more like denial than anything else, and not the foundation for anything healthy.

Seriously, I wish they'd handled that with more nuance. It would have counted for so much in my books.

All of that said. I know I just went after the man like a vending machine with a stuck bottle of chocolate milk, but I think the sexist vibes in Carth's romance are worst at the start and that he does not deserve the sheer amount of flack he gets. I've seen far worse offenders in the world of video game romances, and this might drive some controversy in and of itself, but I vastly prefer Carth x f!Revan to Bastila x m!Revan. There's a whole 'nother pile of issues in K1's other official ship (f in chat for Juhani), and I think those are much harder to deal with than the ones here. If anything frustrates me with Carth's romance, it's how unnecessary all of the bullshit is. I really want to get into it! The concept is perfectly fine! I love the character! There's good stuff in there! And when I replay KotOR, it's not that difficult to close my eyes to the bleh parts and enjoy the rest, especially once the first couple of conversations are past. Again, all Carth needed was a more conscientious writer at the wheel.

I'd be really interested in hearing other people's takes, both on how they interacted with either of those romances or where their interpretations differed from mine. I only have my own perspective and that of a few people I've talked to over the years, and I'm given to understand this is something of a fandom hot topic!