#JUST BECAUSE THE GAME ISNT CANON TO THE TIMELINE DOESNT FUCKING MEAN THAT THE CHARACTER INTERACTIONS ARE ANY LESS VALUABLE!!!

[bluebelledmoon]

love how the botw fandom went fucking wild when age of calamity came out in 2020. and no one talks about it anymore. don’t you remember HIM?????

and THEM??.

and all of THIS????

[deafeninggardenerpanda]

have u finished extra mode and true arena i think that solves most of ur gripes with the ending of magolor epilogue

just be sure to always read the new 120 energy sphere dialogue for both main and extra mode i think it makes more sense that way

i did finish everything! ive read all of the lore in the game actually. actually the reason why i havent made another follow up post on everything is because im wildly overwhelmed with how much new stuff they gave us lol, but anyways since youre prompting me ill write up something right now

first of all i dont know what you mean at all with extra mode and true arena solving my gripes. i do think my general impressions were improved after taking more time to think about it, but none of that came from playing the other modes. from what i can tell neither of those "solved" any potential misconceptions i had previously, unless you mean like, him saying hes been to a lot of different worlds before in a few places, which i still dont know if that Solves anything. alas almost all gripes remain

continuing about the new stuff, magolors timeline (and this whole remake's actually) is way too fucking fuzzy to make any solid conclusions. this isnt a gripe i have im just stating this as fact. apparently some places might imply that he was from the clash universe originally instead of the other way around?? everything about and revolving around magoland is pretty dubiously canon. magoland being in the background of the first level of nutty noon (i think) despite it not being the same universe makes the entire main game dubiously canon too if you choose to think about it that hard. like im just really confused about this whole remake mostly. also if by end of true arena you meant that something was supposed to be solved by magolor soul going into a different portal than the og, i have no fucking clue what that was supposed to imply so sorry

really final thoughts on the whole thing are: great and fun as a game, had other good and interesting additions to lore regarding the ancients, but the overall mago lore im taking from this remake is:

was in clash universe At Some Point for some amount of time

magoland is in a different universe and a lot of aspects of it are dubiously canon/just hee hoo game mechanics (masks, him taking minigames from different worlds)

hes not from halcandra (doesnt entirely rule out that hes some descendent of the ancients)

had character development (nice)

anything more indepth they gave us, im keeping in the corners of my vision but mostly ignoring for now LOL i do not know what to do with any of it

[roughentumble]

If you want to suffer because of timelines, try to figure out when the Black Sun happened in the games/books timeline :D i have a post dedicated to raging about this but Im on mobile so I cant aend it to you to check it out. But I do want to know yoir thoughts on it! The central characters are Syanna (and Anarietta by proxy), pf course Renfri and Deidre. I loom forward to your theories and screaming about the ages

(ALSO! Radovid V is younger than Ciri (i think) and Morvran Voorhis is around 18 in TW3 ("a child accoridng to Imperial Law in 1268", which doesnt specify the age but he seems younger than ciri or her age at the very least; dunno where I heard 18, but eh, close enough). Look at their game designs. Look at them and tell me they look their age)

jaw on the floor. jesus holy hell. i never even noticed that but now i'll never UNnotice it

when the fuck did the black sun happen???

now ok, the thing with deidre is, i never really understood treating her as canon, because there's another fanmade adventure included in the enhanced edition's base game, in which geralt helps santa save christmas and is then raped by an old man in an infirmary. so like, i dont really consider that to be canon to the series. so deidre to me exists in the exact same sort of liminality.

and also like, she just Says Word For Word stuff that renfri said. so she's pretty obviously a renfri clone. it makes for an interesting fan game, and it was definitely well done and compelling! but she's. She Is Renfri, basically. and if they'd had syanna also say things renfri said word for word, they could play it off as intentional, these are things all girls born under the black sun say, this is some aspect of their weird metaphysical powers linking them all. but they DIDNT do that(i dont remember syanna saying anything renfri did), so you cant say that, so it's just renfri's dialogue lifted.

so already i never tried to mentally fit deidre into a timeline that worked, because in my head she never really Worked at all, she was an interesting thought experiment. you would have to fudge the numbers to fit her into canon, is my perspective. (though what if everything with her went down, in the SAME YEAR geralt ended up in blaviken with renfri. spooky. "two drops of water," indeed.)

but even graciously allowing "deidre didnt happen, or if it did it wasnt wholly accurate to the timeline", what the hell is going on with syanna!!!! she and anarietta would have to be like.... in their 60s or something!!! i see a wiki page(though its a fandom.wiki which means its entirely unsourced and basically worthless ugh 🙄) where the curse of the black sun is just being born under AN eclipse, not a SPECIFIC eclipse, but that really feels like cheating.

i could maybe accept an in-universe sorcerer fudging the numbers like that on purpose to get syanna out of the way, if she wasnt favored by him for some reason, but that just straight up isnt what happened in the game. and i refuse to believe that "AN eclipse" is the proper reading OR how cdpr understood the prophecy. its just too much of a stretch

i mean, props to them that they twisted the timeline that severely and i never noticed, quite the narrative slight of hand, but STILL. that is EGREGIOUS. it doesnt make any sense!!! is syanna drinking potions of immortality. how good is annarietta's moisturizing routine, damn. do the people not notice theyre being ruled over by a bratty immortal

also:

MORVRAN IS NOT 18 OH MY GOD I THOUGHT HE WAS LIKE. I DUNNO. 40. MAYBE OLDER. 18 is killing me. like, i had heard that radovid was still a teenager, and while i dont See it and that character design does NOT communicate that... i thought it made some amount of sense for the character to be young, how he acts and how the world treats him. a young despot. i get it.

but MORVRAN he looks so old he acts so old he is OLD in my heart he will always be an annoying old guy 😭 he is middle aged he cares about horse races and has a weird thing going on with that lady he's always hanging out with. that is an Adult Man

[jelreth]

ok!! so.

frisk (you, the player), has a Determination SOUL, meaning their very being is determined. its them, it's their main,,, character trait, you could say.

because of that determination, frisk is able to save, like in video games. in game these saves are bright, yellow, star/diamond things that are most likely visible only to you/frisk. their are a few fan interpretations of saving I've seen. those arent important currently

loading is the act of returning to your last save point. you reload when you wanna go back and do something, you reload when you die, etc.

resetting is the act of reverting time all the way back to when you fell into the underground, in the ruins, and no one will remember the previous route. you go along the same story, you can choose whether you wanna kill or spare, n all that jazz.

so basically you can stop and start time if you so choose. it's a power that should only fall into the hands of a good person.

take a look at Flowey, who had the ability to do these things before Frisk fell, who's determination overrided whatever it is that let flowey do his time stuff.

now, it's been theorized that sans either 1.) knows about the resets but doesnt remember em, 2.) knows about the resets and remembers em, and 3.) (well, this one just popped in my head) remembers the resets, but chalks em up to nightmares/daydreams.

the third is the less likely option if I'm being honest. not only does it not seem like sans, it's got way less angst potential than the second.

the first one is an interesting one, and does make a little sense. there are many theories that sans used to be a scientist and worked for the previous royal scientist (who's very being was scattered across time and space), W.D. Gaster. I've heard (I have not played the game myself, sadly) that its mentioned/shown somewhere in the game that sans likes to read about space and quantum things. (I'm not sure that's canon). if these things are true, then we have a smart guy who has studied things like timelines (I believe so anyway). it would kind of make sense he knew about the resets, maybe he had a machine that tracked their timelines, I dunno.

(oh, and sans' shortcuts. pretty fuckin sure its teleportation. how can he teleport? no one else has. doesnt make much sense. there are theories on him surviving a fall into the core, others about him being a test subject/experiment.)

now for the second. the majority of the fandom's favorite.

let's say sans remembers and knows about the resets. do you know how awful that'd be? even with pacifist. say, the player/frisk keep doing pacifist over and over. without change. imagine that. being freed from your prison only to wake up back on your shitty mattress. being able to feel the sun on your face after a life of only seeing stone above you. itd be torture, huh?

then there's genocide. Frisk/the player/chara kills everyone. over, and over. leaving sans to watch. his family, his friends. slaughtered in front of his face repeatedly. that's gotta take a toll on your mental health.

keeping all this in mind, what would it be like if sans could reset?

how did he gain the ability?

somehow losing his soul like flowey (wouldnt he be dead?)? gaining enough determination (hed melt, like undyne or the amalgamates*)? fucking around with the broken machine he has in the back of his house (a good idea, but where would he get his parts?**)

*or, we could go with the experiment theory. there the idea he was injected with a small amount of liquid determination by Gaster. DT (determination) isnt good for monsters, though, as they melt. some melting together and forming amalgamates. how would he survive? I've see. something on him possibly also being injected with Justice and Patience (Justice is yellow, patience is light blue. these colors flash in sans' eye.) beforehand that gave him a boost to survive the DT. if this happened maybe the DT did still affect him and drop him down to his current 1 HP, 1 DF, and 1 ATTK.

**alphys. I'm pretty sure its proven in canon that sans and alphys are good friend. alphys is the royal scientist. she might have the parts necessary to repair a broken machine that deals with timelines. she has said herself, in game, that there are alternate timelines.

--

so uh.

yeah that was long-

sorry- /gen

that WAS long, holy shit! thats a lot to read ahdasjhasklj

so here’s what i gathered:

loading is going back to the last save point, resetting is restarting the game.

sans knows about the resets and likely knows about timeline shenanigans!

determination kills monsters (except undyne who used it in the genocide route to survive longer, right?) 

sans can probably remember all of the genocide routes, and theres angst potential there!

people who CAN reset: soulless monsters (flowey, unconfirmed others?) beings with determination (theorized) and humans, most of whom have at least a little bit of determination! 

[hikari-ni-naritai]

Im. want to die I cant believe I typed mitsuru TWICE. MICHIRU. right? its been so long... oh and dont worry about not liking hiyoko youre in the majority there. most of her characterization is shit and mean, especially in game so uh. rip lmao. Natsuki is great cause she cant communicate worth shit!! I love the others so much too but gosh. her story with yuri was. nnggngh!!! THOUGH on the topic of deres, do you understand yanderes? Like I get the devotion aspect of characters like Camilla fireemblem or Mikan danganronpa but like, full blown murder yandere? why????

Its Cause Theyre Broken anon i fuckin love yanderes. i dont know enough about camilla fireemblem to classify her but she seems a lot more Milf than Yandere.

anyway my fascination with yandere is like, from a purely psychological standpoint. i wanna know what the hell is goin on in that head of theirs. theres obsession, sure, but beyond that could be a whole host of fucked up shit. and ive always really wanted to see that deconstructed and laid out so i could see it in the light of day.

and heres where i made an extremely dangerous take and turn this into a pmmm simp post. because while i can't say she's actually a yandere (and frankly i would NOT trust anybody who does, because the odds that theyve thought it through properly are super low), i think homura's transformation at the end of rebellion is the closest we've ever gotten to a proper breakdown of this trope. im putting a readmore here bc this is getting fukcing lengthy.

so at the end of rebellion, homura transcends reality to create a new universe where she can live happily with madoka free of the influence of witches and wraiths and incubators. just the two of them in a world populated by what would effectively be NPCs, since homura is basically the god of this new world and can interfere with it as she pleases. by having madoka enter as a transfer student from america, she ensures that madoka is going to be pretty much dependent on her for friendship and support. thats the classic possessive streak you see in yanderes.

its clear also that it was a complete accident that sayaka and the others are in this world. when sayaka confronts her, homura says 'it seems you all got pulled in as well,' implying she didnt mean for it to happen. that, along with the NPC bit mentioned earlier, is the classic inability to care about people other than the one she loves, as you see in yanderes. she does also condemn the incubators to a cursed life of eternal suffering but like. who is gonna say they dont deserve that? that was a valid move.

and finally we have homura's response to madoka near the end of the movie when madoka starts putting the pieces together and begins to realize she's supposed to be a god. shes supposed to play a different role in the universe. madoka tells her that she doesnt think its right to break the rules just because you want something. and homura's response is something along the lines of 'in that case, eventually you will become my enemy, as well.' the fact that she's willing to fight anything that gets in the way of her happiness with the one she loves, including madoka herself, is once again classic yandere.

now OBVIOUSLY homura isn't evil! she's an extremely traumatized girl taking on far too much, just like madoka was in the main series, and she definitely needs years of therapy, but shes not a bad person! and hell, most of this shit ended up being for the greater good. we dont know how the series will continue after this but we DO know we're in a better situation than we wouldve been if it hadn't happened.

but the fact that homura has yandere traits isnt what we're here for, we're here for the EXPLORATION of how these traits came to be. cause thats the shit i really love. and the short answer is that its all from her past trauma in the main series. but lets break it down a bit.

homura spent, canonically, about 10 years resetting and retrying the timeline to get to a perfect end state. homura was WILDLY in love with madoka during the first timeline, which is why she agreed to a lifetime of fighting witches in order to save her. she cared about mami, obviously, but her primary goal was to save madoka. but the more loops she did, and the more moving parts that show up, the more it become an impossible game. at first she tried to save everyone! but she, mami, and madoka arent enough to kill walpurgisnacht. sayaka contracts, but she witches out almost every time. if mami's alive when sayaka dies, its game over for everyone. kyoko doesnt show up enough to be a reliable asset. its just not possible to save everyone. so you have to shut yourself off from them. it doesnt matter if mami dies early on. it doesnt matter if sayaka contracts. it doesnt matter if kyoko dies. it hurts obviously, but as long as you can keep madoka from contracting and you can kill walpurgisnacht with whoever's left at the end, you WIN. you're OUT. and everything's okay. you can mourn after. the only thing that matters is that madoka is safe. madoka is alive.

and so everyone else becomes numbers in your calculation. how many will be left at the end? how many weapons will you need to make up the difference? where will kyubey show up next to prey on madoka's soul? and in closing yourself off you become cold. distant. harsher than you meant to be. and then they dont trust you anymore. youre too cold. youre too distant. youre an enemy. and you no longer have the luxury of caring for anyone but madoka. and then it becomes second nature. after 10 years youre ONLY cold. youre ONLY distant. you dont know how to be anything else. except for madoka. and there we have the lack of empathy.

and then you fuck up. your 10 years of fighting finally catch up to you and you make a mistake. and madoka saves you AGAIN, by beating the game. by removing herself from it. by leaving you behind. i dont know how long homura spent in the wraith universe but can you imagine how distraught she had to be? if only she'd been more careful, she couldve reset everything and tried again. if only she'd been more clear, madoka wouldn't have fallen for kyubey's tricks. if only she'd been more WARM, madoka wouldn't have left her behind. but nobody even REMEMBERS her anymore. did she ever even exist? was it all a dream? you want to go back to that dream. you want so desperately to see her again. but you cant. you KNOW she was real. she DIED for this world. she's GONE and you're the only one who can protect her memory. you have to suffer through it. and after all that dont you think you deserve her? if you could grab her and have her all to yourself, wouldnt you? youd feel guilty, of course, because she's bright and shining and so much better than you that you could never be worthy. but. wouldnt you?

but it hurts, still, so you vent to the only person you know cant and wont judge you if you sound crazy, as long as you keep working for him.

and then, suddenly, as if youre only dreaming, shes BACK! and she's HERE, and she's WARM and you can hold her in your arms again, and talk to her like you used to, and she's everything you remember from the first time you fell in love, and you're not cold anymore, youre not distant anymore, youre CONNECTED. its impossible, completely incredible, but against all odds she's here and everything is gleaming brilliantly and every day is fun and you have FRIENDS and you have TEA and you can LAUGH again. even fighting is a joy, because you're all together and she's with you. but. you're right, it's impossible. it could never be. because you still remember how she left, how she gave up everything to save the world, how you're betraying her memory even now by enjoying this time you have together. so you talk to her. and she tells you that you're mistaken. all this time spent respecting her wish, respecting her sacrifice, it was all a waste of time that you COULDVE spent trying to get her back and undo what she'd done. because like she said, she could NEVER make a sacrifice like that. it's not what she WANTED. she couldn't leave her friends, her family, YOU most of all, behind like that. there's just no way.

before you can do anything though, you realize it's YOU whose trapped you here in this fake world, YOU who betrayed madoka's sacrifice, and its YOU who gave the incubators the information they needed to set a trap for her. you have once again fucked up beyond measure. and so for the first time in over 10 years. you give up. youre so tired of fighting and madoka will be safe, as long as she can get out of this labyrinth, which will end with your own death. and you give in to despair. utter, endless, soul-crushing despair. you'll be killed, at your beloved's hand, protecting her to the very bitter end. it's the only thing someone like you has the right to do, after all. broken, useless mess that you are. there are worse ways to go.

but madoka doesnt give up on you, does she? she breaks through your labyrinth, through the incubator's seal, through the walls you put up around your shattered heart, whispering consolations all the while, and she SAVES you. and in that moment, watching her descend from the sky to take you home, you realize that nothing matters more than her. madoka never wanted to become a god. she said so herself. she told you herself. she wants to be saved from this, right? doesnt she? saving madoka is all you've ever wanted to do. and god, how you've waited for this moment.

so youre possessive. nothing matters except madoka and madoka's happiness. and if she tries to get in the way of her own happiness? you saw how she regretted it last time. you'll have to put a stop to it. and thus we see all these traits come together in Homura, my beautiful traumatized daughter in desperate need of therapy and a kiss. sorry this was so long! im sure you can see how this would be relevant to my interests and i would LOVE to see it done with a real yandere. will we? probably fucking not.

[gay-robot]

heres the lore of the entire dark souls series

for some amount of time everything is grey and ruled by dragons, and some primordial race thats not quite human or gods or anything just kinda lives underground beneath giant trees. one day a fire, which has never existed until now, starts, and a bunch of the nondescript people get souls from it, turning into gods, and also humanity as an abstract concept pops up; humanity comes from the titular dark soul, which is a soul that can sort of exist without the fire. the gods and depending on who you ask the humans who were called the pygmies at the time beat the shit out of the dragons and make everything stop being grey; during this time the god of war who is the son of the god of sunlight allies with the dragons but loses and gets struck from history, hes important because hes the one behind the warriors of sunlight, specifically NOT the sunlight god. theres also a dragon who allies with the gods and invents sorceries but he dies in the first game and isn’t too important so dont worry. anyway humans and gods go off and form nations including but not limited to izalith lordran new londo oolacile berenike carim vinheim but only a few of them pop up in games so you dont have to worry about too many of them. theres also the ringed city which wont pop up for a while because of time travel stuff like it exists at the end of time like the restaurant at the end of the universe but thats where the gods put a bunch of the pygmies. anyway things just sort of run along as normal for a while, and one day a giant snake tells some people in oolacile, a cool magical society, that they should dig underground and find the remains of the first human and mess with it, which they do and it goes very badly. one of the knights of the gods who isnt human but isnt really a god either but is definitely not a pygmy(??) named artorias goes off to try and fix things but fails and gets corrupted by the abyss which is a fundamental force connected to the abstract concept of humanity. that gets resolved and everyone says ‘well we should probably try to make sure that doesnt happen again’, at which point it happens again in new londo and a bunch of skeleton dudes murder everyone so the gods flood the city to contain things. around this time someone named ariamis creates the painted world which is a mario 64 painting where a secret half dragon half god woman lives shes sort of important but dont worry right now. things just keep going for a while until one day the fire that gave everyone life starts to burn out, and everyone freaks out; humans start to become undead, coming back infinitely but more and more shriveled. one of the gods, the witch of izalith, who invented fire magic but not the same type of fire as the first one which is in fact called the first flame, tries to recreate the first flame but fails and gets turned into a fucked up tree and also accidentally makes demons and a new type of fire called chaos. eventually another god, the god of sunlight, marches into the first flame and lights himself on fire to give his power to it, extending its lifetime; this is called linking the fire. things go back to normal for a bit until the first flame fades again, bonfires and fire keepers are created to funnel undead into linking the first flame, and now the events of dark souls 1 take place, and you probably canonically link the fire and extend the world because theres 2 more games after this one. notable characters here include solaire, one of the first warriors of sunlight who is unflinchingly happy and helpful, big hat logan from vinheim who has a big hat and makes some new sorceries, andre the blacksmith who shows up in the 3rd game, and gwyndolin who has moon magic rather than sunlight magic and runs the secret magic police funneling people into linking the fire.

some unknown amount of time later but before dark souls 3, humanity continues to have the undead curse and some kingdoms come and go, including tseldora, the unnamed iron kings kingdom, shulva, eleum loyce, heide, and drangleic which is the important one where ds2 takes place, but the other ones are still important. the first human from oolacile in ds1 was split into fragments when he was destroyed, which later formed into women who traveled to flourishing kingdoms and attempted to seize power. eleum loyce, a nation founded to contain the chaos and demons by the ivory king who has a lightsaber, is one such kingdom, but the dark woman ends up truly believing in eleum loyces cause and devotes her existence to it, freezing it over when all seems lost as the ivory king tries to sacrifice himself to stop the chaos. meanwhile, the iron king is off doing his bullshit being bowser and hires a samurai named sir alonne to train his knights. alonne ends up leaving and the iron king throws a fit and falls into a smelter and dies, turning into literal bowser. he also has a place called brume tower which will be important later. ALSO meanwhile the kingdom of shulva, a giant underground city, is created as a sanctum to worship a sleeping dragon. theres a fragment woman here but she doesnt really do anything. eventually the drakeblood knights siege the city and try to kill the dragon but fail and are driven out, and they go found lindelt which is the equivalent to carim. the lost bastille is also constructed by a lost kingdom at some point to contain the reincarnation of the witch of izalith. now, drangleic, the important stuff; a man who is probably human but has enough magic that hes as big as one of the gods named vendrick founds drangleic and starts consolidating magical power from the remains of the old kingdoms for the purpose of linking the fire. at some point he marries nashandra, one of the fragment women, who convinces him to steal power from the giants, which he does. around this time, his brother aldia is off doing weird science shit with souls and dragons and horrifically murdering a bunch of people, and somehow completely removes himself from the both concept of humanity and the concept of the fire and is basically truly immortal; he also creates the emerald herald, an artificial human who may or may not be a fire keeper. anyway, the giants get pissed off at vendrick and invade drangleic, and basically wreck the whole place. around this time, the fume knight, one of vendricks closest advisors, is branded a traitor and leaves, ending up at brume tower, where he means nadalia, one of the fragments who arrived at the iron kingdom like a century too late, and they have a nice time together. meanwhile, vendrick flees into the undead crypt and goes hollow and for a while everything is just kind of in a limbo unable to progress. undead, which as it turns out suffer extreme mental degradation much like alzheimers when they are reborn, around the world occasionally find their way into drangleic through portals in search of a cure to hollowing, at the suggestion of an unknown old woman who may or may not be the old goddess of sin. one such undead is your dark souls 2 character, who once in drangleic is urged by the emerald herald to build up souls and link the fire, but its possible to just straight up find that cure to hollowing from aldia and vendricks advice by retrieving the crowns of old kingdoms, and refuse to link the fire. the world isnt exactly at a point where it needs to be linked anyway, but its definitely stagnating. either way it eventually gets linked. notable characters include lucatiel, a woman who helps you with a ton of bosses like solaire and is slowly losing her memory and sense of self from the undead curse, benhart, who has the moonlight greatsword, and the 3 old fire keepers who live in the void between worlds and give you your starting equipment.

that brings us to dark souls 3, which is like thousands of years in the future. the fire has been linked so many times that it barely gets anything out of a link, and when it fades the world starts to get really weird and clump itself together into a big pile of shit near the first flame, but people are still linking it, including the undead legion who are an army of artorias kinnies, yhorm the giant who barely has any lore but was a good friend of an npc who has armor that looks like an onion, and aldrich who is a disgusting piece of shit that im not going to talk about but who was contained in a cathedral. notable places include irithyll, a snowy city built at the base of the remains of the old city of the gods from ds1, farron keep, home of the undead legion, the profaned capital that yhorm is from which has almost no lore, londor which is inhabited solely by undead and vehemently opposes the fire, and lothric, where most of the game takes place. lothric is another human kingdom built to consolidate power and link the fire, built near the epicenter of where everything comes together; it houses the graves of the previous linkers of the fire who get revived when the fire fades, as well as the unkindled, people who were burnt to ash trying to link the fire and now come back to life like undead. its princes, lothric and lorian, are expected to serve as kindling for linking the fire but really dont want to, meanwhile the king has turned himself into a dragon and gone insane. it also contains a pocket dimension of an alternate timeline where the fire was never linked, which is where the first boss in the game comes from. before the events of the game, a few things happen; the painted world is burnt away and restored as a new world, and one of the founders of londor fails to link the fire but gets drawn into the painting. around this time pontiff sulyvahn leaves the painting and takes over irithyll, turning it into a place of worship for aldrich who is again an awful piece of shit i cannot overstate this enough, and begins throwing obstacles into lothric to prevent the linking of the fire. meanwhile back in the painting the founder of londor friede convinces the leader of the painted world not to make a new one and just let the current painting rot; an inhabitant of the painted world, gael, leaves the painting to find someone to stop friede and also go and find the dark soul itself so an unnamed little girl who is probably the daughter of the half god half dragon woman from ds1 can use it as paint to make a new ideal world. anyway, the player character is awoken to go find the old linkers of the fire who are understandably not too excited about getting lit on fire again and bring them back so they can link the fire. along the way they meet the nameless god of war who allied himself with the dragons and beat up friede. once theyre ready theyre either pushed forward in time or some illusion is taken off but either way they see what the world looks like when the fire isnt linked ie a giant pile of ash and buildings haphazardly flowing everywhere. just before they link the fire, however, they hear about the ringed city, where the dark soul supposedly is, and traverse the mess of bullshit trying to find it, which they do. they then find out that even the ringed city is just an illusion and the entire world is at that point just a barren field of ash. they then find and fight gael who has gone feral trying to eat the dark soul so it can be in his blood and therefore used as paint. you then give said blood to the painter so she can make a new world. finally, you either link the fire, let it die for good, or steal it and give it to londor creating a sort of hybrid dark/fire age.

notable characters in ds3 include greirat, a thief who tried to steal from lothric and share with the undead laborers and also probably protect his mother, orbeck who wanted to be a wizard but was forced by wizard school to be an assassin, irina who is a blind cleric and treated like garbage by her brother whose supposed to be guarding her, sirris who is a knight on a quest and the granddaughter of the merchant at firelink shrine and the old man who runs the purple covenant, and anri who is the opposite sex of your character and wants to beat the shit out of aldrich for murdering children but as part of the londor quest can get stabbed in the face as part of a marriage ceremony.

[homestucky]

ok ok this is like not anything new but still since i havent been on here i havent fully ranted about this yet. big long rant incoming

re the epilogue (spoilers etc)

ok. i have onl y read meat. but fucking? dirk? dirk? ok? dirk??

no.

i am aware of what happens in candy. i know he dies.

i also know in the version i read, in meat, he becomes his ultimate self, all versions of dirk. as many people have said, this includes AR, this includes bro, this includes even to some degree, LE. its an interesting idea ill give you that. but its also.... shitty and not backed enough by well, anything?

so heres my personal rant about the shitty things in Meat.

when i first finished it i couldnt help but think. was the dirk narrative even necessary? on the one hand it was meant to be the MAIN PLOT and it defined the narration etc, but.... it honestly didnt seem to have any importance. i know it was likely  a set up to imply future stuff like making the next sburb or whatever but like

who CARES? why on earth would that be interesting or important? maybe im crazy but like, the ‘b plot’ which was mostly about character relationships and jobs in earth c, was compelling and enjoyable. the narrative with john ‘not important and not the main character anymore’ egbert had details and conclusions ACTUALLY RELATING TO HOMESTUCK, THE COMIC I LIKE AND WANTED TO READ AN EPILOGUE FOR. it was tragic and frankly very upsetting! im not saying i liked it!! but the tragedy felt compelling and significant. 

i appreciate that dirk as narrator IS BIASED so him saying that these narratives are less important is inherently like. not to be trusted but. just. i cant help but feel like you could have cut the whole ‘main dirk reality affecting’ narrative OUT 

and that seems to me maybe like... not good? if such a central part of your narrative has almost no bearing on homestuck or anything anyone cares about?

but im sure there are other people who found it compelling and necessary. thats fair. cant relate but you do you. there are other issues. 

me saying that the dirk narrative felt weirdly isolated and insignificant sounds pretty weird given that it put jade into a coma, manipulated kanayas mind, effectively killed rose and destroyed rosemary right? WELL that brings me on to the next thing. people have noted that meat barely passes the bechdel test. and hey, sometimes things like that can just be a coincidence or unlucky. but the repeated erasure of the female characters minds, motives, identities and autonomy was????  a little too consistent to dismiss. like ok terezi was still her dope self in a lot of ways. jane kinda did some stuff (under dirks direction, and only shitty stuff but . whatever). 

(sidebar: ofc it doesnt make sense to talk about calliope and roxy in the context of the female characters in Meat but either way they were very in the background. like cool an all, and i always love roxy. and i respect they were mostly just minding their own businesses??? which is fair)

 i just. urgh. homestuck has such a genuinely good track record of giving female characters genuine motivations and powerful abilities etc. the fact that almost ALL the female characters involved were working for or manipulated by DIRK. DIRK of all people. is like... is this even based off the real comic? idgi????

roses loss of autonomy.... rose is such an important character. and she goes along with everything dirk says because dirk is suddenly all OP and ‘theyre basically the same person anyway’ like i get that there was some magic bullshit going on or whatever but at the end of the day rose was still written as weak and passive. dirk as strong and skilled and decisive. i get the undertones.. hes a prince of heart. a destroyer of souls, and identities. he messed with kanayas identity , destroyed roses, repeatedly ignored roxys and calliopes, and god i wont even get started on jake yet. but that doesnt make it satisfying to read. or even really feasible.

so theres a possibility im missing something. but im confused about WHY dirk is allowed this power. in the narrative its waved off as a kind of ‘i guess because im like a prince of heart or whatever and im just super good at managing identities and being a strong boy’ like ok if theres some implication somewhere that that is MEANT to be a bogus explanation id be interested to know because it sounds pretty goddamn bogus. why would this happen to dirk? why? literally? one reason? one that makes sense? because there arent any i can think of. why, in the new universe, would dirk, a prince of heart, manifest into a narrative controlling supergod. and fucking WHEN has dirk showed any actual capabilities in this area before?? he KINDA sucked at it in the game. dirks an idiot! hes smart and capable in like, some ways but. its like

why is dirk so powerful suddenly -> its because hes become super ultimate dirk -> ... ok why -> uh because like. hes just so naturally inclined towards being a great manipulator yknow..... canonically.... uhhhh

it just. canon dirk to epilogue dirk is the most ridiculous leap character wise, skill wise, arc wise, personality wise, with minimal reasonable explanation. 

which brings me on to the next thing. so i roasted dirk and said he wasnt strong enough to be able to manipulate things this well. well, obviously through some other means dirk HAS been afforded this power. but what about his personality? its obviously gonna be warped with self importance and knowing how things ‘have to be’. but hes heartless, cruel and hateful. in some ways it seems like canon dirk levels of ruthlessness, especially when it shows that he is actually doing something dumb and petty like his treatment of jake. that shows that he STILL has emotional connection to people as dirk. he also seems to care about some people, like dave and roxy, and cracks jokes and wants to have ‘fun’. this makes the ways in which hes so warped and cruel seem even worse. maybe on the one hand im giving dirk too much credit, everyone knows he has the potential to be a real bastard. but i dont think that was the trajectory he was on when we last saw him. and if this is truly due to him just.. becoming other versions of himself too including LE and bro and stuff..like. i dont see how it could have gotten that bad without say, roxy or dave noticing. 

‘oh they didnt notice because hes just so good at hiding’ why on earth would i believe that!! dave especially this is kinda insulting for. dave is shown to have an almost supernatural ability to detect danger. partially this might be timeline stuff, knight stuff, but also notably im sure his upbringing is involved too. he was trained to be hypervigilant. who was he trained to be hypervigilant for? bro. bros manipulation and traps. near the end of the epilogue we show that dave IS capable of detecting the mindfuckery thats happening. how would that not set off 1 million alarm bells? theres literally apparently a twisted dirk-bro mutant INSIDE HIS HEAD telling him what to do. i just. know that scene was played for comedy and romance but at the very least thats gotta like???? mess with u if ur traumatised? and thats like , why i think dave should have had an inkling abt what was going on!! this is exactly the thing he hates and fears and was traumatised by! and it just going under his nose n him not even knowing , and still pretty recently being all buddy buddy with dirk seems just stupid and infeasible to me. maybe this is me being naive or kind of a stretch but i just feel like daves danger instincts would have been kicking up a whole assed ruckus that whole time. 

also kind of unrelated but i associate sunglasses with strider style toxic masculinity and hiding things so like. ok transitioning or changing gender presentation is one thing but roxy apparently permanently wearing sunglasses makes me NERVOUS

and ill probably wrap up this mighty rant soon but i wanna also say jake was done so fucking dirty. i know he was like, meant to be, because for some reason god dirk just hated him? like ok petty much. but. urgh jake is such an interesting character with a lot of potential and while i appreciate that him being manipulated by someone who may reasonably have a problem with him may make him do stupid and embarrassing stuff, all the narrative seems to have taken a backward step in how hes represented. jake isnt stupid, dirk clearly knew this in canon and he maybe was the only one even including jake. and there was some acknowledgement of this near the beginning of the epilogue. but then for some reason it goes back on itself. everyone still thinks jake is just completely stupid, including the embittered superdirk. so yeah i guess hes upset with jake or whatever but. its still dissatisfying to be like oh yeah jake isnt stupid he actually has a complex set of motivations and potential etc BUT over the X number of yrs on earth c no one else has realised this yet?? hmm. then his narrative is just gonna end up with him being a total joke and essentially becomes as stupid and incompetent as his worst critics say he is. feasible given the mind control ? yeah. enjoyable to read or having any kind of satisfying bearing on anything? nope!

so anyway. i feel like any criticism i have could be argued back with ‘but oh it has to be this way’ or ‘mind control!!’ or ‘not everything has to be nice and happy !!’ but like. dude. there are flaws. many of them. and seeing characters just get shat on is never gonna be good writing. 

[thiefking]

What's the Two Looker theory?

the tldr version is that there are currently two lookers existing in the same universe, and that its going to be very relevant very soon.

but of course, that shortened version is worthless, because who would believe that without enthusiastic and lengthy elaboration? GET YOUR SEATBELTS ON CAUSE ITS TIME TO TALK POKEMON THEORY

(spoiler warning for sumo postgame ahead! also, seriously, you might want to go get a snack or something. this is long. really long.)

first up: you gotta know that gens 1-5 (and the remakes in those gens) are all in a separate but similar universe to the one in gen 6 and beyond. for convenience, ill call the first universe uni a and the second one uni b. 

(fyi most people refer to uni b as megaverse, but i want the names to match and nonmegaverse doesnt really... roll off the tongue quite as well, so,)

so you might be wondering what the fuck that means and how we know its true; to answer this we need to take a quick look at pokemons current timeline!

im unsure on which one of them came before the other in the timeline, but xy and oras both happen chronologically before sun and moon do. we know this because of dexio and sina appearing with the zygarde and mega evolution stuff, and wally appears at the battle tree as an older and more experienced trainer. 

these are canon, however for right now its mostly just hypothesis that chronologically speaking, after alola its sinnoh. the pkmn breeders from alola look IDENTICAL to the cowgirls/farmers from sinnoh, which doesnt seem to prove much about the order of things but it doesnt disprove anything either; its more like retrospective icing on the cake, since ill be explaining why i think this will be the timeline later on.

so, keep the idea of sinnoh coming after alola in mind. its also important to consider the idea of mega evolution as not just a game mechanic but an important plot point! basically, universe a has no mega evolution, while universe b does, and the differences in the plot between rse and oras are NOT retcons; theyre entirely different universes!

that might not look like it makes much sense on its own (without elaboration or if youre still attached to the belief that mega evo is JUST a game mechanic and not plot relevant or an indicator of anything) but its important to mention now, since as i explain more itll hopefully make more and more sense. 

believing this theory means you have to think about it like this, so while this isnt completely canon yet, its necessary to treat it like it is until you fully understand what this theory is all about and why it would make sense. if youre not convinced afterwards, then so be it! ... i mean, i dont understand how you WOULDNT be totally on board with this, but im not you and maybe youre not quite nearly as into spacetime shenanigans as i am.

now we head into sumos postgame stuff with the interpol! during this, we learn that there are people known as “fallers” that “fell” into a universe from another parallel universe through a mysterious portal, and seem to have lost most if not all of their memories. fallers attract ultra beasts, as the ubs believe they can somehow get home using them, sensing that this person is also not from this universe. 

looker explains that he was once sent on a mission to detain/kill an ultra beast. his team included a faller, who was unwittingly being used as bait for the ultra beast. looker felt pity for the ub and neglected to kill it, unfortunately giving the ub a chance to kill the faller, which it promptly took.

then its revealed that anabel is a faller, who was found washed up on a beach muttering something about protecting the battle tower, which is where you could find her in rse. 

but see, the battle tower doesnt exist in oras, instead replaced by the battle resort, and you do not meet anabel at any point in oras. the battle resort is also where you meet an amnesiac looker, muttering about a mission, speaking in a peculiar way, which is noticeably different to the way he speaks in xy and sumo. he did not make an appearance in rse, this isnt just reused dialogue.

hmmmmmmmm.

lets put looker aside for a moment though and focus on anabel. while theres a possibility that right now there are two anabels, it seems that she and the battle tower never existed in this universe... but mega evolution does. the anabel we see in rse is the same as the one in sumo; she crossed over from uni a into uni b.

now, lets look at some facts here!

in platinum, bw and oras, looker has a... peculiar speech pattern. if you look up his quotes on bulbapedia, youll see what i mean; its very noticeable.

... looker completely lacks that specific quirk in xy and sumo. hes goofy, yes, but its nowhere near the same. its important to note that oras happens between xy and sumo, and again, that looker didnt show up in rse and that dialogue is completely new. the differences in these speaking patterns are not mistakes. they are fully intentional.

next up: lets crush a few doubts about this theory you might be having right now!

“this is a kids game! surely this is WAY too convoluted. pokemon isnt that deep, they wouldnt bother with a plot this complicated.” wrong. nope. incorrect. buddy, did you play sumo or any gen 5 game? i can only assume you havent, cause not only were the plots in those games the most detailed and involved and emotional, they were BY FAR the best. additionally, kids are a lot smarter than youd think, and i also not only know theyre going to explain everything, i know HOW theyll do it; but i digress.

“youre implying there are two lookers because one speaks a certain way and had amnesia but isnt it possible theres just one, who either isnt a faller or is a faller but had no megaverse/uni b equivalent, and he got his memories back by the time you meet him in sumo?” wrong there too! remember, its CANON that xy and oras happen BEFORE sumo.

now remember anabel, who doesnt have her memories back and had no idea she was a faller.

and remember that xy/sumo looker is very, very explicitly stated to not be a faller, because otherwise, HE would have been the bait on that mission and HE would have been the one who got killed.

xy/sumo looker is definitely not a faller.

but dppt/bw/oras looker is.

if at this point youre still having doubts, heres a question. can you offer any other explanation that is all based on canon information, without retconning anything or making something up, and have it all make perfect sense and resolve all of the issues that come with going against this theory?

yeah, i cant either.

hopefully at this point you should be fairly convinced, but hold on! i still havent explained why i think sumo will chronologically happen before the plot in the dppt remakes! i was all like “this will make sense later” but i didnt talk about sinnoh much at all and havent completely gotten you on board with this yet! well guess what yall ITS SINNOH TIME

a quick note though: past this point is a lot of personal observation/opinion and speculation. its meant to explain why i think this theory is spot-on, and elaborate on what i think is going to happen. im not speaking for anyone else but myself and im not stating my own opinions as fact or concrete proof; though i am saying that i think im right about this.

with that out of the way, lets begin! its going to take a while, but the buildup is necessary (imo at least) and yes, this is in fact relevant to the theory.

something to notice is that the stories in pokemon games have been progressively getting more involved and interesting. there was hardly anything in the first two, gen 3 started getting more involved but its not much to write home about, gen 4 took it up a notch, and then gen 5 the life ruiner broke the fucking scale and punched me in the face.

so, we have all these plots, getting more detailed, but... not a whole lot is tying them together at first. sure, a few lines make reference to other games, johto and kanto are connected both plotwise and literally speaking, theres even that cameo character in bw who was a rocket grunt in a previous game! but theres nothing really significant that ties things together.

well, at least until gen 4.

in gen 4, we of course meet looker, who as a member of the interpol has reason to make further appearances in other games. and then he shows up in every game afterwards, sometimes for a while, sometimes only briefly. less significantly but it does help the point im about to make, we also get caitlins first appearance, who ends up being part of unovas elite 4, and johto is a part of gen 4 as well, which was already a point of connection between regions, but gen 4 added the sinjoh ruins, connecting the games within the same gen!

after gen 4, the games vary in how much they connect to the others, but it definitely changed the standard.

and then sun and moon came out.

even the very start of the game: you move from kanto to alola, meet alolan variations of kantonian pokemon, meet grimsley and colress from bw/bw2, meet dexio and sina from xy, and watch sadly as lillie breaks everyones heart and leaves for kanto.

then, after that, you can go to the battle tree and meet not only red and green, but cynthia, steven, and wally, and you can find grimsley, colress, dexio and sina here too. or, you can go participate in the postgame plot with looker and anabel, who are also returning characters; though anabel is significantly more unexpected than looker. it was pretty unexpected finding out caitlin was part of unovas elite four, huh?

and hey, didnt sinnoh have a lot of weird space/time shit? palkia and dialga are the gods of time and space, and giratina has a whole other dimension where everything seems wrong and alien and mildly uncomfortable, with a strange area theme that seems just slightly off, where you meet/battle the games biggest antagonist, who has become mentally unhinged by spending time there.

oh... and alola has fallers and ultra beasts, who came from other timelines/universes... and you go into ultra space, which is a whole other dimension where everything seems wrong and alien and mildly uncomfortable, with a strange area theme that seems just slightly off, where you meet/battle the games biggest antagonist, who has become mentally unhinged by spending time there.

plus, gen 4 is the first where you can at any point walk around with your pokemon behind you, making you feel closer to your pokemon than ever, and alola shows a significantly stronger connection between humans and pokemon than ever seen before, even compared to xys introduction of pokemon amie (the trials, ride pokemon, the fact that humans are specifically stated to have influenced several alolan variations, z moves, the ceremony for choosing your starter, everything about the aether foundation/type: null, if you consider ultra beasts pokemon then lusamines a very literal example, there are LOADS of examples)

... and diamond and pearl are next up for remakes.

in gen 7.

paired with alola.

i wonder if the two games are going to be EXTREMELY connected?

personally im willing to bet that the distortion world IS ultra space, i think itd make a lot of sense of cyrus knew what happened in alola and became interested because of it, and that team galactic will be pursuing ultra beasts (which there will likely be more of). 

i also think uni a!looker and uni b!looker are going to meet.

imagine with me for a moment.

diamond and pearl remakes come out. you enter jubilife city, where you meet looker! you have a conversation, he introduces himself, then disappears. 

you move on, and-- oh! theres looker again! you say hello, but he strangely doesnt recognize you and introduces himself again. ... odd.

you see him again. he recognizes you and references your first conversation, but doesnt seem to know anything about your second.

a fourth meeting. once again, he doesnt remember your previous conversation, and also seems to be doing something entirely different, and... hell, he doesnt even SOUND the same...

now, after a while of this, hes realizing somethings up. hes a fucking member of the interpol, hes goofy but hes not an idiot. he guesses that he has an impostor, and begins searching for this impostor so he can confront/apprehend them.

sometime later, maybe in the postgame, maybe in the maingame, you meet him again and have a short chat, when hes suddenly interrupted by a phone call. he hangs up and informs you that someone spotted his impostor, and speeds off to go deal with this. he doesnt tell you where hes going, but he didnt need to; you can easily guess from the phone call that you should head to jubilife city.

there, you see two lookers arguing with each other, and loads of shenanigans ensue because looker is so goofy and endearing theres no way its not going to be hilarious and silly at first; but then when everything calms down, shit gets serious, and anabel ends up showing up.

im willing to bet shes going to feel some kind of connection to uni a!looker; nothing specific, just an odd, unidentifiable feeling that... ah, it eludes her. strange indeed that he seems to also feel... something, that he cant identify at all; he just knows its there. is it... kinship of some kind? but that wouldnt make sense, theyre both certain theyve never met, and theyre certainly not related. how curious!

of course, that only remains a mystery until they figure out this other looker is a faller, and everything starts simultaneously making more and less sense.

of course thats all just my own prediction for how itll happen, but i dont think im far off base at all and i think itd be completely in line with both lookers character and how pokemon games operate.

now, a lot of people believe that this theory means one of the lookers has to die, and to that i say what. no. look, that “there can be only one” shit is completely unnecessary and i REALLY doubt that theyre going to kill off a looker, especially considering how much everyones grown to like him (or at least everyone ive ever spoken to who knows who he is. seriously, hes too lovable for this.)

instead, i think the following will happen!

1) the lookers partner up and work together (and tell people theyre just twins)

2) they find a way to send uni a!looker back to universe a, or somehow create a way to communicate/travel between universes

3) we learn more about what happened in universe a, and why both anabel and looker were mumbling vague things about urgent missions when they were found washed up on beaches

im not sure that all of these will happen in the same game (in fact i highly doubt it) but it seems like the logical progression of things. 

i think im out of things to say so there you go! thats the two looker theory and how i think itll play out in canon! there are likely a few things im missing, but im fairly certain the information i provided isnt incorrect, just possibly incomplete (sure hope not though cause ive been writing this response for no joke four hours straight). hope it helped and also converted you to the two looker theory club, or the tltc. if you join you get a free croagunk sticker and also a heart-shaped locket with a picture of looker in it if you dont already have your own