#Loreposts

[what-manner-of-beaft-poll]

Lorepost: Early Cambrian

You are a Protostome in the early Cambrian. Things have been changing rapidly in your environment. There has just been a mass-extinction event, of which you are one of the lucky few survivors. scientists are unsure of the exact cause or causes but the extinction did come after a long period of global glaciation, ending several million years prior, which could have had an effect.

The rapidly changing times demand your rapid evolution. The three cell-layers your ancestors had (like Kimberella from the previous poll) will no longer suffice. You need more complicated tissues with more complicated functions. Animals from other lineages are more suited to filter-feeding (like the suck tubes) and suspension hunting in the water column (like the murder assholes). Another lineage of note has bilateral symmetry and three tissue layers like you do, but is differentiated mainly by a softer body exterior but with a rod of harder tissue inside its body, protecting its nervous system. That and the fact that their embryos form their butt-hole before forming their mouth-hole. Disgusting. These "Butt-First Soft Speedsters" are probably irrelevant anyways. They may be faster and more mobile, but you brought protection. That protection may not be armor in the strictest sense but it does still protect you and enable you to form more complex internal organs.

Speaking of which, how would you like your protection? as you see it there are two options:

Carry it all with you, all the time, and only grow in one direction, or

when it comes time for you to grow bigger, ditch it and grow a new one.

The first option, we will call....

"Uzumaki", by Junji Ito

So called because your embryos develop in a spiral pattern, like in this diagram:

Not all of them even have "armor" so to speak. some of them ditch the idea of having a thick protective layer pretty quickly in favor of swimming in the open ocean because they were so jealous of the Butt-First Soft Speedsters. They looked a bit like this:

The ones that keep their armor generally wear it as a funny little hat or a backpack. this means that it can only cover part of their body, and they add to it as they grow. they kind of looked like this:

This may look like a snail but it's not, i promise you. Snails are a lot more complicated.

The second option is....

"Fuck this shit," *peels off my own skin*

This one is hopefully more self-explanatory. The drawback of this strategy being that you can only grow in bursts, it takes more energy to constantly make new skin which is generally weaker than permanent armor and when you grow you're vulnerable. The benefit is that you don't get heavier as you age and are generally more mobile and flexible. One big thing to note is that these all have some sort of hard mouth part for biting. Kind of like teeth. Some of them live their lives digging in the dirt like this ugly son of a gun:

.... yeugh....

While others specialized in swimming around in the water column once again, probably because all the cool kids were doing it and they wanted to feel included. These guys were usually WAY smaller than the other ones doing it.

Sometimes almost microscopic. Finally, Some of the skin-yeeters decided they wanted legs for walking on the sea-floor. Some of them also had spikes.

some of the art is really spooky looking but i think these guys look kinda cute in this one

[bluberryffxiv]

nemona was not in a great mental state going into elpis, and it really warped the perspective he had on hermes and meteion. he saw them as a reflection of the unfair expectations placed onto him by his parents, but also as a reflection of his relationship with bonana (though he really didnt want to acknowledge the latter and spent the whole time suppressing those thoughts)

this lead to him feeling a form of kinship with meteion, seeing her as like a sister he needed to watch over. but at the same time he felt bad for her and the circumatances that lead to her existence, making him wish he could have done something to help hermes to prevent him from going down this road

fast forward to ultima thule after the endsinger. for the first time nemona is seeing things in full clarity, free from the delusions hed been wrapped up in pretty much his whole life. he no longer sees himself as two disparate faces, but as one person as flawed and multifaceted as any other, deserving of the love and praise he recieves. more importantly he finally realizes he doesnt need to sacrifice his health and happiness to be the worlds hero

as for meteion, he finally sees her in a more objective lens as a creation. she no longer had a purpose, her creator was long gone, so he felt no shame in relieving her of her duty. however, he felt it fitting to find a way for her to live on freed from that burden (or maybe he was being sentimental), which ended up taking the form of a familiar blue bird coming and going as it pleases

nemona is nemona

starbird is starbird

neither need to be anything else besides that

[thealterscrolls]

the only proven effective way to be rid of your enemies 💖

[viiioca]

one of my favorite bits of minor coerthan lore is that there's an abandoned castrum (castrum aquilonis) that they stopped construction on because of how tremendously shitty coerthan weather is now. the garleans -- from garlemald! notorious for its harsh conditions and shitty weather! -- took one look around coerthas and said, "actually, fuck this."

this is after they sent a spy to infiltrate ishgard & lost her. thing is, lucia received the ranking of "goe" before her defection: that places her at the same social rank as rulers of imperial territories and provinces, and among the frumentarii, it would indicate leadership. she was not just a normal field operative, she was a major resource for the empire. and she took one look at aymeric and said, "ummmm yeah i'm catholic now."

ishgard racking up Ws and clowning on the most powerful country in the known world at every turn just by existing in the mountains and having cold weather and hot elves. that is so funny to me

[urlknight]

One-Eyed Wolves are among many dangers that roam the wilds of the Houselands at night. Often found in packs, they possess a head almost the size of an entire human and an insatiable appetite for blood.

[hoarah-babylon]

Let me switch it up and talk about some lore from the DLC that I really liked

Learning about Marika is the main thing that truly moved me so much. The items and atmosphere (that music!!!) in Shaman Village genuinely brought me to tears. I just wasn't expecting to get such a human perspective of Marika and her actions. Her past doesn't justify her actions during her reign at all of course, but I understand her motivations now and they're just... so human and illogical.

It really resonated with me. I know what it's like to feel loss, to feel like you don't have a home, or that you do have a home, but it will never be the same and you can never return to it. To have this idealised version of it in your mind and have this illogical need to preserve it. I know what it's like to feel guilt and try to right things even though it never can truly be fixed. It re-contextualises so much, and I loved that.

I always said I thought it was wild for her to take the Rune of Death from the Elden Ring, like how could she have ever thought that would work out? It was doomed to fail from the start. But I get it now. She wasn't doing that from any kind of logical thinking - it's all emotion, it's all trauma and grief and wanting to do whatever she could to avoid that loss ever again. Grieving a heavy loss and newly in a position of godhood... of course she made decisions that wouldn't make sense to most. Of course she removed Death as soon as she had the chance, or opportunity.

For me it completely negates any theory that Marika was working with Ranni on the dire plot - this makes The Shattering out to be something that was born completely from grief. She did everything she could, everything within her power to avoid experiencing this kind of loss ever again, and still lost her golden child in one of the most horrific ways possible. Marika started her reign on the premise of emotion and revenge, and essentially ended it for the same reasons. It's great storytelling, comes full-circle and answers a lot of questions I had from the base game! 10/10

[fernsnailz]

Do you have a sonic 'white whale'? Something you really want to get or know, but it so far eludes you despite your efforts?

yes. the Shadow the Hedgehog themed wrestling match. sorry but you're getting a long answer here

this one extremely specific sonic event has eluded me and it drives me mad. here's what i know:

back in 2005 while SEGA was advertising the upcoming Shadow the Hedgehog game, they sponsored a few Pancrase Wrestling matches to promote the game. and by promote, i mean they painted Shadow onto the ring and had a mascot run around between events and hand out trophies.

the ring and concept alone is already incredible and hilarious (especially when considering the reasoning behind the collab was "shadow and the pancrase logo have similar color schemes). however, this specific event did not go that well.

despite the few sources i can find on this event, there's a clear through line: there was an injury at this event, and while that's common in wrestling, it was... a bit of a bloody one. underneath the readmore at the bottom of this post there's an image of the wrestler above (i don't know his name unfortunately) covered in a bit of blood with the shadow the hedgehog mascot behind him. it's not his blood, the other wrestler was injured.

here's my white whale: i've never found any footage of this event and there are very few photos of it. a lot of tales exist: i've heard that the injury was REALLY bad, i've heard that the crowd booed at the shadow mascot when he came into the ring, i've heard that they even interviewed the shadow mascot suit. i don't know if any of this is actually true.

there is, however, a second Pancrase/SEGA Shadow collab that has footage, which i think is a karate tournament that shadow also appeared at. i've seen the footage of it before, i can't find it again unfortunately. nothing much happens, shadow just comes onto the ring (much to the competitor's surprise) and shakes their hand.

so yeah. i wish i had more information and sources to link to but a lot of the links i had are now defunct :( if anyone has footage or any more info on either of these events. holy shit let me know. someone's gotta have a vhs recording of the shadow mascot suit running around that ring there's GOTTA be one somewhere

the one image of the wrestler i mentioned containing blood below the cut (nothing too bad but just a heads up) ⬇️

top 10 funniest shadow the hedgehog photos to ever exist

[alittlevilliany]

Excuse the sloppy cutting on the video but I really wanna talk about the VIP lore implications here!!!

Host!Vic lives within the reality of the improvised scene that is VIP. Chris doesn’t - he’s from our reality.

A thing I think a lot of people haven’t really thought about is that Host!Vic’s reality is almost entirely dependent on what other people tell them it is. That’s how improv works - you might have a preset scene or characters, but the details are filled in by the actors in real time. Vic as an actor and the actors playing the characters can shape the world however they want to.

Host!Vic regularly reads from their cue cards. We can assume that to them, there’s text there, whether that comes from somebody telling them there is or just the assumptions that fill in the gaps of canon.

Chris, however, lives in our reality. He can see that the cue cards are blank. If Host!Vic talked about a photo or a video as a supplement to the interview, Chris wouldn’t see it. This clip is proof of the reality divide between real life and wherever Host!Vic resides.

We’ve seen awareness of the unreality of VIP before with Augbert, but not on an explicit level like this. Host!Vic doesn’t know they’re in an improv scene. They don’t know the cue cards are actually blank. They probably don’t know what dropout dot tv is, and if they do it’s probably an entirely different thing in their reality.

We didn’t get to see Host!Vic’s reaction to Chris pointing out the unreality of their existence, but I really hope we get to see more of the reality bending “this isn’t real” stuff in season two - I think there’s a lot to play with there narratively.

[ukiharavara]

Since the votes said yes, first batch of characters -w- redesigns and headcanons!!

[paradoxbeta]

An older wip of an Ancient. I like to think they were like us, with their friends and their groceries and the pile of laundry they still haven't done waiting at home.

I see a lot of really cool, ornate, poetic Ancient art. I love those interpretations! They give me lifeblood! But I also feel like it'd be fun to see more of the mundane sides of them. Like, a group of Ancients playing cards in a basement and laughing, or propping up lawn chairs outside and cracking open drinks. Or waiting at the bus stop. Or waking up disheveled and ugly. Or crossing a street. I love their artistic depictions, but I feel like its important to see them the "unexciting" way too.

The Ancients as a civilization had their glaring flaws, but I don't think the individuals would have been as short sighted and almost cruel as their representatives. (Can you imagine if we based the characters of real people off the actions of the people higher than them in society? Yeesh. Taylor Swift's carbon footprint alone would have us all morally bankrupt.) I think they were just normal old people, having their days filled with art and jokes and broken ACs and the clink of bottles with condensation on them against each other. To me, they're all bearing out being stuck in a weary, never-ending cycle of reincarnation, but also another fucken' laundry day too.

[sapphim]

so I've been thinking about the politics of tranquility. I've spoken before about tranquility and the fragile illusion of chantry control.

I've been thinking about how the objection as stated to Ser Alrik's "tranquil solution" isn't that mages are being made tranquil, but that they are being made tranquil unwillingly, having passed their Harrowings. how Hawke says, "Doesn't Chantry law say that mages who pass their Harrowing can't be made Tranquil?" how tranquility is so ultimately distasteful, how its optics are so poor, that it is never meant to be meted out as a punishment, but as precaution. how an entire class of enchanters are free of its threat by law.

it is a "choice," an alternative to attempting and failing one's Harrowing. "they chose this," you are meant to be able to say, of the tranquil, "of their own free will. they felt it would be better this way. they're happier and safer now." how even Meredith rejects Alrik's proposal, despite presiding over such unlawful rites of tranquility from at least as early as Maddox, prior to 9:31.

I've been thinking about the level of responsibility that is placed on the shoulders of first enchanters like Irving or Orsino. how they can't control that templars expect to mete out punishment, but they can try to direct that punishment at certain targets to spare the others under their care. how Irving and Uldred, in cooperation with Greagoir, honeypot apprentices into taking up blood magic, to feed a steady stream of untrustworthy delinquents to the templars. how Irving plays favorites. how the first enchanter presumably has full control over the details of each apprentice's Harrowing.

I've been thinking about the apprentices who are browbeaten into believing they cannot possibly pass their Harrowings, or denied their right to one entirely.

I've been thinking about how, for poor communities, who can't demand a level of accountability from the chantry, mages taken to the circle often might as well just fall off the face of the earth. Carver says of the templars, in act 1, "So, they don't always just make you disappear, like it seems?" it's different for mages like Finn Aldebrant, or Connor Guerrin, or Emile de Launcet, whose families directly empower chantry rule and could cause a scene if they didn't like what they heard.

I've thinking about how the tranquil don't get to go home to their families, once their existence has been rendered "safe." because unpaid slave labor is an essential chantry asset, but also because the families who would still claim their mage relatives are exactly the ones who would be most likely to care about their mistreatment.

[audioroleplayconfessions]

i will always be lost on gba lore no matter what. gba lore is like “this take place back then but also now but now is the future and the future was tomorrow”

sorry guys im not built for this magical world that approximately 72 horses created

.

[bluberryffxiv]

coming back to this hours late lol but i wanna talk about bonanas relationship with the echo

so yeah he got it when he was 10 and there was a big meteor shower passing over the island and during it he began to hear hydaelyns call and obv this would be pretty scary to a 10 y/o. so parents take him home and mom tries to get the details bc she is sharlayan and is vaguely aware of what the echo is. but the thing is having her kid be chosen by Her is not in her plans so she decides to keep him in the dark (however he does eavesdrop on the convo and while he doesnt understand a lot of what theyre saying he does pick up that apparently he was chosen, and it goes to his head a little bit)

fast forward some years when he starts training as a nurse he finds that sometimes he'd be accosted by visions of his patients as they received their injuries. which was obviously very distressing, but when he brought it up to mom or his teacher they just dismissed it as an overactive mind.

at the same time he kinda liked to brag that he was important bc he was chosen (by who?) and had a destiny (for what?). to which other kids made fun of him bc they knew him and his family and how he wasnt even allowed to wear his own clothes so how could he ever be a hero. mostly he came off as this meddling kid who stuck his nose in everyones business but didnt rly have the power to do anything, so they would often shorten his name to an insult or call him zero. even after he started doing his shitty night vigilante thing everyone had already decided he wouldnt go anywhere so it didnt sway their opinions

and then when he finally left for eorzea and joined the scions it was like. it felt like a prank to him. meeting these people who regarded the echo as a gift, him finally being treated as a worthy hero to them, it was a slap in the face. the way minfillia talked about it felt especially bad because he could tell she truly felt it was a blessing from Her, but his experiences had convinced him otherwise. and of course he just sat on those feelings, because he was the hero he wanted to be now, and he was so scared to fuck up and disappoint everyone and go back to being that miserable girl nobody liked (untrue statement but thats how it felt), which is pretty much his whole ordeal until the end of endwalker

[ghoulodont]

phantom gets hiccups from drinking soda too fast and freaks out because he doesnt know whats going on. rain tells him to hold his breath or drink water or stuff like that. swiss scares the shit out of him and cures him

[inkwell-intermission]

Who drives and who gets shotgun?

I'll try to keep this kinda brief probably but it's divided up by group for the most part. Midnight Crew: Slick or Boxcars drives, usually Slick because he can fit into the driver's seat more often. It's not like Droog can't drive, but he's a little too lax and doesn't take any risks. He can't drive in a high stakes getaway or important situation- He kind of enjoys setting off other drivers. Slick's a good driver but he's got road rage. Boxcars is a good driver but he can't always fit in the driver's seat- he's the best driver, cars just don't always fit him. Deuce does not drive because He cannot usually reach the pedals and he is easily distracted and has a habit of hitting things like mailboxes or curbs or pedestrians. Droog or Deuce usually get passenger seat if Slick is driving. There isn't usually enough room for Boxcars in the passenger's seat anyway, but Slick usually picks Droog over Deuce for shotgun, and Boxcars will pick any of the three depending on the circumstance. For the most part though, Deuce and Droog like shotgun when Boxcars drives. Both Boxcars and Slick are backseat drivers. When traveling solo, somwhat rare, Deuce takes public transport. The buses wish they had metal detectors but they do not and it has cost them at least one bus. Team Sleuth: Ace Dick or Sleuth drive. Pickle Inspector is too anxious and dissociates too much to drive reliably when they're in a proper car. Ace has the nicer car, so they usually take that, but he won't let anyone else drive it, and Sleuth almost always sits shotgun if anyone does. Sometimes Ace's minigun sits shotgun instead. When Sleuth drives there's usually no one in passenger seat. Pickle inspector drives if it's a little light blue moped held together with hopes and dreams and tape and he wears a little helmet for it with his tiny hat on top of it that he never loses somehow. He cannot be trusted to operate heavy machinery . He can drive imaginary cars though. The Felt: There is a lot of them so this one's tough. Some of the felt are allowed to drive, but not all of them are, and some of them are not allowed to drive or ride shotgun. Good at/allowed to drive: Crowbar, Quarters, Trace/Fin, Matchsticks. not allowed to drive: Itchy, Eggs/Biscuits, Cans, Doze, Die. doesn't drive: Stitch, Sawbuck, Clover (requires pedal extensions which can be costly time-wise), Snowman. Not allowed to sit shotgun: Cans (too tall and wide to fit), Doze (too slow in a pinch), Die (too scared), Eggs (duplication risk in front of car is too big), Itchy (unless Crowbar is driving b/c he's too disruptive), Sawbuck (if injured the most useful pair of hands will disappear if not the entire vehicle and everyone inside it).

Best ones to sit shotgun: Trace, Fin, Clover, Quarters. Itchy is allowed to sit up front if its a full bench but only if Clover is in the way of him and the driver.

[gallus-rising]

hmmmmm thinking about how physically the dungeon is 3 different civilizations stacked onto of each other. the Island's crypts blending into the Golden Kingdom's capital falling into a forgotten dwarven stronghold. is Thistle's house really the bottom of the dungeon or does he just not care to go deeper? if the dungeon collapsed and there weren't any canaries to clean up the aftermath would the next dungeon lord add The Island to the top layers? would that have happened to Utaya?

how much of Dungeon Meshi's world is underground, underwater, and being ransacked by what are essentially grave robbers? how much history and culture has been claimed by the dominate long lived races? the Golden Kingdom was a tallman majority country and even below it is ancient dwarven ruins, yet a contingent of elves are the ones who've shown up to claim it

anyways. watch Jacob Geller's After a City is Buried