#and like. for that they designed the system in a way that thats actually possible

[zevranunderstander]

A thing ive been thinking about for years and years and years is. The Selection (you know those really mid hunger games ripoff books that everyone keeps joking about) has a core premise that is actually quite different and unique from hunger games and you could have gone off the hinges with this if you weren't an absolute centrist coward, with milquetoast, unreflected politics. but now I can't write this book that I am seeing in this story because I can't just rip off the premise of the book, you know??

[toytulini]

hit tag limit on the last post cos i started talking about roller coasters again 😔

[malwaredykes]

well. here she is. miss Leigh Stasik.

trans woman. stubborn, incorrigible, eccentric. communist; she has leftist in-fighting with herself on the regular. a cannibal; she has no moral qualms about this, and its both a bit of a spiritual thing and a bit of a pragmatic thing. medic (not a doctor. no medical license). she knows for sure she had some kind of significant personality change from being shot in the head, but she doesn't remember what she was like exactly before it happened, it all became this kind of distant memory soup. shes originally from west new cali, but she grew very attached to the mojave. and has a lot of contempt for the ncr. She Will Serve Crack Before She Serves This Country. thank god the army discriminates against transsexuals etc. zero tolerance for the legion, obviously.

she firmly believes she is not nice, or kind, or compassionate, but instead her actions and her general sense of justice stem from her simply doing whats the most logical and objectively beneficial. it may be true to some extent, but she might also have a wee bit of ocd of the "i am a horrible person whos at all times like 2 seconds away from committing atrocities" variety.

shes a SCIENTIST. unofficially. she doesnt have a degree nor a chosen field of study. she makes her own hrt and other mysterious concoctions, including designer chems. which she claims she ingests injects etc not for recreational purposes, but to Enhance Her Powers And Possibilities. she reads old world books about psychology so she can manipulate people better. and makes weird contraptions and doohickeys while high. shes a HACKER of course and hacks terminals and systems for fun and just to see if she can.

her stats are out there due to implants and intense training, originally they were rather average. in-game she wears combat armor mk 2, but i see her having spruced it up like this. her main weapon is the ycs/186, the unique gauss rifle, but before that she used a modded plasma pistol. which she very much enjoyed the silly appearance of. because it was so small and with so much shit tacked on and she could just hold it in one hand like a mutated revolver like Hands up motherfucker bang bang bang lol. her melee weapon of choice is the machete gladius, but she's been training to be able to wield a thermic lance.

in my head the trajectory of her actions and the fate of the mojave that follows is different from what you can do with the game, because leigh could only go for The Secret Leftist Route Which Was Supposed To Be In The Game But We Were Robbed Of It.

boone was the first friend she made after leaving goodsprings and their relationship is particularly notable. they are Comrades, Siblings-In-Arms, Worsties (like besties but fucked up). theyve seen each other at their worst. they annoy each other on purpose. theyve had serious ideological clashes with each other and some ways in which boone perceives the world drive leigh absolutely nuts. they're ride or die for each other. theyre the kind of comfortable around each other where she'll be on the toilet and smoking a cig with the door open and talking to him, while he's naked sitting on the floor removing stitches from his leg. she's done surgery without anesthesia on him. he's projectile vomited blood on her from being poisoned by cazadores. she strongly encourages him to become a traitor to the ncr and to take part in the revolution and the formation of the new independent mojave alliance. somehow, it works on him in the end. shamefully they kinda like snuggling... boone bro come to bed man its nighty night man its beddy bye time.

shes in love with lily bowen. i havent decided yet whether she actually makes a move. but she thinks lily is sooooo dreamy. and shes right. if you dont think the enormous 203 year old blue mutant woman is dreamy thats your problem. outta her way

[moonsofmachinery]

hi heres Wolftopia be nice to him !!! I thought you guys would enjoy this design and since I spent awhile on her i figured i'd post pup all by themself :3

Copy paste of their toyhouse desc below! It's not too long but it gives context as to what her design is based off of etc! To summarize though ; Wolftopia is based off an Exoplanet of the same name that I thought was cool and pretty.

(...I'm sorry in advance to anyone who searches up 'Wolftopia' at any point expecting the planet who gets this in their search results. Very sorry.)

SPINDLING WISPS OF TWO-TONED CLOUDS - 'Wolftopia' aka 'TOI 1338 b'

Any/All + Paw/Paws, Pup/Pups, Wer/Wol

Genderfluid + Novosexual

Wolftopia, or TOI 1338 b is an exoplanet orbiting a Binary Star System which means it orbits two stars that orbit each other. This may seem rare to your One-Star centered brain, but in fact Binary Star Systems (And Multiple-Star systems with more then 2) are actually far more common then just having one star! Our sun is quite lonely in this way. Another fact that might be similarly shocking to those of you who grew up in the solar system is that most planetary systems (stars that have planets) tend to have lower numbers of planets then ours does. While systems with 8 (or more) planets do exist, they just don't tend to be as common as lower numbers of planets. However, there is quite a bit of bias in the way we detect planets- so it's not out of the realm of possibility that some stars have more planets then we thought.

On to Wolftopia herself though. He considers the stars he orbits (TOI 338 B and TOI 338 A - Note the capital letters as opposed to the lowercase of TOI 1338 b) as parents of a sort as they're quite loving and protective. Yes this is a family dynamic, yes it doesn't have much plot, but thats ok because Wolftopia isn't involved in the major Solar System anyways pup gets to be happy and healthy and can frolic and have fun. Wer also has a sibling named TOI 133 a (these names might be the death of me). Wolftopia is a kind and fun planet even if he's quite quiet. She's pretty bad at clocking sarcasm and humor so they tend to be a bit sensitive and unsure of how to navigate conversations. Paws also a therian if you didn't notice! Specifically a Wolf Therian! Yippie!!!!!!! Really I just wanted to have fun designing and drawing this cool exoplanet. I do not give a shit if theres thousands of other exoplanets just like it, wolftopia is pretty to me.

[oinonsana]

realities, maximalism,and the need for big book™️

some gubat banwa design thoughts vomit: since the beginning of its development i've kind of been enraptured with trying to really go for "fiction-first" storytelling because PbtA games really are peak roleplaying for me, but as i wrote and realized that a lot of "fiction first" doesn't work without a proper sort of fictional foundation that everyone agrees on. this is good: this is why there are grounding principles, genre pillars, and other such things in many PbtA games--to guide that.

broken worlds is one of my favs bc of sheer vibes

Gubat Banwa didn't have much in that sense: sure, I use wuxia and xianxia as kind of guideposts, but they're not foundational, they're not pillars of the kind of fiction Gubat Banwa wants to raise up. there wasn't a lot in the sense of genre emulation or in the sense of grounding principles because so much of Gubat Banwa is built on stuff most TTRPG players haven't heard about. hell, it's stuff squirreled away in still being researched academic and anthropological circles, and thanks to the violence of colonialism, even fellow filipinos and seasians don't know about them

this is what brought me back to my ancient hyperfixations, the worlds of Exalted, Glorantha, Artesia, Fading Suns... all of them have these huge tomes of books that existed to put down this vast sprawling fantasy world, right? on top of that are the D&D campaign settings, the Dark Suns and the Eberrons. they were preoccupied in putting down setting, giving ways for people to interact with the world, and making the world alive as much as possible.

one of my main problems with gubat banwa was trying to convey this world that i've seen, glimpsed, dreamed of. this martial fantasy world of rajas and lakans, sailendras and tuns, satariyas and senapatis and panglimas and laksamanas and pandai... its a world that didn't really exist yet, and most references are steeped in either nationalism or lack of resources (slowly changing, now)

i didn't want to fall back into the whole gazeteer tourist kind of shit when it came to writing GB, but it necessitated that the primary guidelines of Gubat Banwa were set down. my approach to it was trying to instill every aspect of the text, from the systems to the fluff text to the way i wrote to the way things were phrased, with the essence of this world i'm trying to put forward. while i wrote GB mainly for me and fellow SEAsian people, economically my main market were those in the first world countries that could afford to buy the book. grokking the book was always going to be severely difficult for someone that didn't have similar cultures, or are uninterested in the complexities of human culture. thus why GB had to be a big book.

in contemporary indie ttrpg spaces (where I mostly float in, though i must admit i pay more attention to SEAsia spaces than the usual US spaces) the common opinion is that big books like Exalted 3e are old hat, or are somewhat inferior to games that can cram their text into short books. i used to be part of that camp--in capitalism, i never have enough time, after all. however, the books that do go big, that have no choice to go big, like Lancer RPG, Runequest, Mage, Exalted are usually the ones that have something really big it needs to tell you, and they might be able to perform the same amount of text-efficient bursting at the seams flavor writing but its still not enough.

thats what happened to GB, which I wanted to be, essentially, a PbtA+4e kind of experience, mechanically speaking. i very soon abandoned those titles when i delved deeper into research, incorporated actual 15th century divination tools in the mechanics, injected everything with Martial Arts flavor as we found our niche

all of this preamble to say that no matter how light i wanted to go with the game, i couldnt go too light or else people won't get it, or i might end up writing 1000 page long tome books explaining every detail of the setting so people get it right. this is why i went heavy on the vibes: its a ttrpg after all. its never gonna be finished.

i couldnt go too light because Gubat Banwa inherently exists on a different reality. think: to many 3 meals a day is the norm and the reality. you have to eat 3 meals a day to function properly. but this might just be a cultural norm of the majority culture, eventually co opted by capitalism to make it so that it can keep selling you things that are "breakfast food" or "dinner food" and whatnot. so its reality to some, while its not reality to others. of course, a lot of this reality-talk pertains mostly to social--there is often a singular shared physical reality we can usually experience*

Gubat Banwa has a different fabric of reality. it inherently has a different flow of things. water doesn't go down because of gravity, but because of the gods that make it move, for example. bad things happen to you because you weren't pious or you didn't do your rituals enough and now your whole community has to suffer. atoms aren't a thing in gb, thermodynamics isn't a real thing. the Laws of Gubat Banwa aren't these physical empirical things but these karmic consequent things

much of the fiction-first movement has a sort of "follow your common sense" mood to it. common sense (something also debatable among philosophers but i dont want to get into that) is mostly however tied to our physical and social realities. but GB is a fantasy world that inherently doesn't center those realities, it centers realities found in myth epics and folk tales and the margins of colonized "civilization", where lightnings can be summoned by oils and you will always get lost in the woods because you don't belong there.

so Gubat Banwa does almost triple duty: it must establish the world, it must establish the intended fiction that arises from that world, and then it must grant ways to enforce that fiction to retain immersion--these three are important to GB's game design because I believe that that game--if it is to not be a settler tourist bonanza--must force the player to contend with it and play with it within its own terms and its own rules. for SEAsians, there's not a lot of friction: we lived these terms and rules forever. don't whistle at night on a thursday, don't eat meat on Good Friday, clap your hands thrice after lighting an incense stick, don't make loud noise in the forests. we're born into that [social] reality

this is why fantasy is so important to me, it allows us to imagine a different reality. the reality (most of us) know right now (i say most of us because the reality in the provinces, the mountains, they're kinda different) is inherently informed by capitalist structures. many people that are angry at capitalist structures cannot fathom a world outside capitalist structures, there are even some leftists and communists that approach leftism and revolution through capitalism, which is inherently destructive (its what leads to reactionaries and liberalism after all). fantasy requires that you imagine something outside of right now. in essence read Ursula K Le Guin

i tweeted out recently that you could pretty easily play 15-16th century Luzon or Visayas with an OSR mechanic setting and William Henry Scott's BARANGAY: SIXTEENTH CENTURY PHILIPPINE CULTURE AND SOCIETY, and I think that's purely because barebones OSR mechanics stuff fits well with the raiding and adventuring that many did in 15-16th century Luzon/Visayas, but a lot of the mechanics wont be comign from OSR, but from Barangay, where you learn about the complicated marriage customs, the debt mechanics, the social classes and stratum...

so thats why GB needs to be a (relatively) big book, and why I can contend that some books need to be big as well--even if their mechanics are relatively easy and dont need more than that, the book, the game, might be trying to relay something even more, might be trying to convey something even more than that. artesia, for example, has its advancements inherently tied to its Tarot Cards, enforcing that the Arcana guides your destiny. runquest has its runes magic, mythras (which is kinda generic) has pretty specific kinds of magic systems that immediately inform the setting. this is why everything is informed by something (this is a common Buddhist principle, dependent arising). even the most generic D&D OSR game will have the trappings of the culture and norms of the one that wrote and worked on it. its written from their reality which might not necessarily be the one others experience. that's what lived experience is, after all

*live in the provinces for a while and you'll doubt this too!

[cl-0v3r]

Okay this is gonna be super rushed and probably have alot of mistakes but I need this out of my system so it will most likely be like half a shitpost !!!

When i think of Jinx and Mel at a flat level, i assume that they are very different from eachother, there is no personal connection between the two at all, they don't even know eachother and they both have very different roles in the show, not to mention the difference in demeanor and character as well.

But Arcane, a show full of parallels, always knows how to connect each of its characters to one another somehow, I find it amazing that you can find so many similarities despite their vast differences even if it was the most subtle thing ever, its like the tiniest bits of detail SCREAM at you.

One of my favorite (and most obvious) things about Mel and Jinx is the fact that they speak of their past THROUGH THEIR ART, I don't think I really need to go ahead and dissect this to the last atom since it's already very clear what their drawings mean to them and to the story, but they prefer to cope with their trauma by painting/making things that remind them of the past or has a relation to it, there is ALWAYS a piece (or pieces) of art about something that continues to HAUNT them to this day, for Jinx its "doodles" of the hallucinations of Mylo, Claggor & Vi who are almost everywhere she is, as for Mel its the bloody necklace thats hung above her head and over her bed alongside the painting of the immortal bastion to remind her about "home".

Whats even crazier is the fact that their art is also tied to the people who cast them out from their family, Powder before this was always called a Jinx ESPECIALLY by Mylo and she was considered weak and unable to handle things like the others, leading her to change and become somebody new after they left, sound a little familiar? Because Mel was also considered weak, sentimental, too soft to be a Medarda E S P E C I A L L Y by Ambessa at a young age, and what happened after? Gone. Afterwards, they find themselves in a new place where people "look up to them" or they're seen as someone with higher importance.

And I've spoken a bit about the visual similarities in an earlier post, but we gotta appreciate their attitudes towards their "parental" figures, I don't know why but its funny to see how much sass they throw at them, its what inspired this post actually. Maybe its just the satisfaction of seeing my two least favorite characters get the same honest reaction I have by my favorite characters 😭

They're both tired of their shit and its the best thing to ever exist.

Let's not forget how they both got genuinely angry at them as well? Jinx snatching Silcos injection from his hands and being pissed at him for lying to her about everyone being dead, while Mel slapped the goblet out of Ambessas hand, upset that she played with Jayce unrightfully so.

The color and design differences is a beautiful parallel too, Jinx is often surrounded by cold or dark colors like Blue, Green, black with a hint of purple and pink and dressed like her personality, while Mel is more light & Warm-toned with yellow/gold, red, white and a wee bit of black which is all matching to her Elegance. This is just a general parallel between characters of Zaun and Piltover overall, but its always very appealing when you compare them together.

And finally, its them completely letting go of their past selves and starting out new literally by the last episode after struggling with who they are the whole time, Powder was officially gone by the end of the season, and Mel was no longer Medarda. Jinx is just Jinx, Mel is just Mel, and they are both going to do things their own way and that was shown with how Mel took off her ring and painted over the Immortal Bastion with gold , and how Jinx launched her rocket towards the council with her own art on it too.

Its funny to think that thats the only physical connection they could possibly have and that its related to their character arcs, its related to them making a new big decision, it has a strong relation to their art, and a strong relation to them saying goodbye to their family.

Hope this made sense !!!!!!!! I honestly just want them to like idk hug or something and go to loo loo land and paint together or whatever in a different universe and cope with their shared trauma together no fuss no muss. Fanfic writers where did you go y'all are missing out on this super mega awesome cool older&younger sister / mother-daughter duo.

[transgenderer]

getting into education discourse is rough because

any discussion of ethics/optimal behavior/whatever re: kids is fucked. what if there were people you had to coerce somewhat for their wellbeing... would that be fucked up or what

any major education system is not well designed for literally any purpose because its a historically contingent mess of conflicting interests. so like. to have a truly coherent viewpoint you have to start from scratch and imagine some actual specific goal for education as a social system. but like. man. IDK how to build a society. possibly the best defense of modern education is "since adopting modern education systems, the west has gotten way way richer. and like. thats probably some part of it. dont kill the goose that lays the golden egg" but this SORT OF "fire scary" thinking

[genderkoolaid]

hi! i was wondering if you'd be willing to do an analysis of the aromantic manifesto thats been going around? most of the ppl ive seen so far have been from either non-aro queer ppl or non-loveless aros and i cant find any loveless aros talking about it, and ik thats something youve talked abt b4 (loveless aros i mean) id love to also see your thoughts on it.

So funny enough I saw this manifesto a while ago, but didn't really have any thoughts on it because I had too much trouble reading it for brain reasons, because its just. A lot.

So @spacelazarwolf compared this to lesbian separatism/radical feminism and I think that is pretty apt. Radical feminism takes accurate criticisms of the patriarchy (such as gender as a tool of oppression and misogyny) and comes to the conclusion that gender is, in all forms, inherently oppressive, men are inherently oppressors, and that to personally identify with gender roles or men in any way contributes to oppression, so we must take on political lesbianism to reject this.

This manifesto seems to do the same with amatonormativity. There are real criticisms of amatonormativity in queer spaces here; aromantics have talked a bit about how focusing queer liberation on romantic love as a reason why we shouldn't be oppressed is alienating, and how queer spaces often reinforce amatonormativity. But it then comes to the polarized conclusion that romance is itself oppressive, identification with romance contributes to oppression, and that we must take on (essentially) political aromanticism to reject this.

Which, like political lesbianism, is just... unnecessary? This is not the only conclusion we can come to as a result of these criticisms. And these conclusions prioritize abstract political theory over people's real lives and autonomy. Which is a big reason (although not the only one) why radical feminism fell apart, because eventually women got tired of having to structure their entire lives and identities around acting out Good Political Theory instead of being able to. y'know. Be themselves? But also, these kinds of conclusions are so absolute and polarized. They assume that nothing about gender or romance can grow and be improved.

There are parts of this manifesto I like. The line "The first big ruse of romance is that it is ubiquitous because it is natural, and it is natural because it is ubiquitous" I think is actually pretty cool and can be adapted to all kinds of things; for example, capitalism does the same thing, taking over as much of the world as possible & erasing other ways of life, and then using its dominance as evidence thats its just how humans naturally are. It brings up criticisms of love that are big parts of lovelessness, like the idea that love is inherently a good thing when it can be harmful and still be "love."

But then it takes the... strange path of saying that if people can't help how who they love, then neither can racists and transphobes and fatphobes, which is why romance is inherently oppressive. But like. Even within relationship anarchy, where all hierarchies are rejected, this problem won't disappear. Its a problem of attraction & how social systems shape how we think.

I also disagree with how it frames private vs public life:

Public life concerns the interests of people as citizens and is regarded as a legitimate sphere of social intervention. Private life concerns the interests of people as consumers/individuals and is nobody’s business but those privately involved. While the domestic sphere fashioned by heterosexual kinship relations has been historically designated as private life, queer intimacies have instead been regarded as a matter of public concern due to moral panics associating them with predation and perversion throughout history.

I disagree with this framing of private life as something which is seen as "nobody's business." Maybe that's true on the small scale of social politeness and ideals. But on a systematic level, to me, this is absolutely untrue, and its something I've been doing some thinking about with regards to modeling the patriarchy.

The patriarchy is greatly concerned with the private lives of individuals. In order to keep its control over society in general via gender-sex-sexuality, its important to control how people interact with others. Even heterosexual, cisgender relationships haven't been free from patriarchal scrutiny; the wife must submit to the husband, the children must submit to the parents, and the queers must be kept outside the home. Again, on the level of neighborly politeness, people are going to say "what happens in the home is none of my business." But a relationship where the wife is the breadwinner and the husband stays at home is easily subject to scrutiny because it threatens the patriarchal norms, which causes unease.

Romance, as a construct, is a tool of oppression in multiple ways. But the physical reality the construct is built on top of is not inherently evil. The feeling of romantic love is not inherently corrupt, the same way the feeling of gender isn't.

Their advice for abolishing romance also feels kinda... vague and unhelpful and messy. I'm still not really clear on what "abolishing romance" even entails because most of the things they list can be done while romantic relationships occur. It just reads like they took the ideas of relationship anarchy and made it political lesbianism 2

I, as an aromantic, find the idea of political aromanticism to be pretty gross. I know how it feels to be pushed towards a certain relationship with romance and I don't want to seen it done in reverse, and tbh I don't like the idea of making my identity into a political stance. Being aromantic absolutely influences my politics, but its also my experience as a person. Again, similarly to why it would be uncomfortable to have lesbian spaces be full of women who are not in any way attracted to women but are making a political statement.

It disappoints me that this manifesto's conclusion is that romance itself must be rejected, the same way radical feminism does. Because there are good points here, but all-or-nothing conclusion, to me, is more divisive than connective and that's a big problem. My feelings about gender abolition are that, if we achieve true liberation from the patriarchy, our construction of gender is naturally going to be very different. Perhaps those people will no longer use gender, or they'll just use it differently- but trying to force a specific outcome is unhelpful and clashes with individual autonomy and culture for the sake of political theory. Same goes for this. Maybe in a post-amatonormativity world, "romance" will lose meaning, or at least be very very different. But trying to force that outcome isn't helpful.

Anyways I hope these takes were interesting! Honestly given how much arophobia I've seen I'm worried people are going to see this manifesto and get hostile to a lot of aromantic ideas. So I wanna suggest that people check out I Am Not Voldemort by K.A Cook, which is where the concept of "loveless aros" came from, as well as The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy by Andie Nordgren, which created the concept of relationship anarchy. Both of these essays do a much better job at criticizing love & amatonormativity than this manifesto.

[imustbenuts]

nuts reading trigun in japanese 6 - kaite's foreshadowing. plant synchronization's downside

remember in my part 3 and 5 i was talking about hierarchy? surprisingly, it continues past chapter 8 with kaite. and wolfwood. triangulating nyoom

(to be honest... ive been doing these read and analysis completely blind in a 1st JP read through. so its possible ill find new nuances, get things wrong as the context shifts and changes, so my stuff looks like its scattered all over the place. sorry about that.)

i think ill start explaining names and meanings. kaite's name in japanese is kaito. カイト. this can be a homonym with i think 怪盗 (kaitou) in this case, which means phantom thief. for trying to help Neon with stealing loot from the Sand Steamer.

left bubble next to neon: 道案内は的確だったかね！？ I trust your guide has been giving you clear instructions?

^the headaches with manga translations has always been to keep texts short and reasonable for flow and readability, so these simplifications can and sometimes must happen.

but, add dakutens, the " on 2 of those カイト katakanas and suddenly, kaito turns into. ガイド gaido. Guide.

so Kaite has been playing as a guide to lead vash to his death at the hands of Neon. this page is such a fucking whammy with the wordplay going on. if you just read this in japanese theres a moment of "oh shit, no way, Kaite, vash just told you to stop betraying people! what the hell!"

yet theres a level of trust going on already, so its not as bad as it seems

nightow really likes his worldplay. i really like this page.

kaite redeems himself by later charging into the boiler room and helps turn the valve to stop the sand steamer from running off cliff and killing everyone on board....

hm. a guide. and those sequences

we sure have a lot of guides here. one who appears in the manga later with a kansai dialect. and another in TriStamp, where he is younger than he appears.

when i spoke about hierarchy and the fact that vash is over 150, i was also kind of hinting that all of current humanity are akin to children in the system of JP hierarchy. that takes on extra meaning with a little change of context and language

wolfwood is filling in the shoes of kaito here in tristamp. and within trimax, kaito foreshadows him. incredible.

theres actually more going on with wolfwood and certain design/changes choices i wanna talk about with tristamp but ill save it for another day. maybe when i run into him in this read later

Plant Synchronization downside.

....so theres a bad downside to vash synchronizing with the plant that i didn't catch. which also answers what the fuck was going on in tristamp when that version of him hits the ground

nightow mentions this in an interview, link here posted and transcribed by xoxo-otome (thank you!) that he likes action flicks and has incorporated a lot of action into his work. and its true. there is so much action in the form of sound effects.

reading through the entire manga and paying attention to the sfx peppered around offers a lot more context to whats happening in half of the panels that seemingly doesnt make sense

like this one where the top panel has "DADADADADA" sfx. so they're stomping down the corridor with their guns crossed and facing each other. the "GO OH" in the bottom panel emphasizes the sudden burst into open air. unfortunately, anyone who values their life and sanity in this economy will not want to translate trigun's sfxs 100%.

i should have paid more attention when reading trigun in english. but i didn't so here i am. in the trigunbookclub tag now doing this.

why is it important? here. this. below. when vash does his plant thing with his sister:

see those heart panels? i tried searching real quick but nobody seems to have pointed this out. i havent seen this in EN fanfics. maybe i missed it. maybe im stupid:

thats Dokun, the sound effect of a heart thumping. as vash synchronizes, the heart panels with the same sound effect appear, but they gradually split apart further with ellipses "..." to signify his heart beat slowing down. and down. and down....

Dokun, do kun, do... kun....

then the wings comes out. and the panel below it:

sfx: PIIIIIIIIIII

breathes. a FLAT LINE.

aaaaaaAA?!

何かなんだかわかりません I'm not sure what's going on. とにかくプラントの動きは一切止まっています But the Plant's movement has completely stopped. 同時に男にも呼吸　心音ともに停止してます It's the same with that man. His breathing and heartbeat sounds like it's stopped with the plant too.

AAAAA?!!?! the も means vash is in the same state as the plant?

i.... um. um.,, ANYWAY-

AAAAAAAAAAAA?! HUH?! HUH??? HUH?!

is THIS why he has a metal grate over his heart? something happened and he an an operation on his heart???? by some engineer maybe? what? huh? am i reading this wrong? what? wait, hello? HEY!!!

what the fuck. okAY--?!

and then he just. pretends like nothing's happened. doesnt tell kaito anything. and he leaves the Sand Steamer.

and im going to have to sleep bc its 5 am now and pretend like i didnt just realize something this big right in front of my eyes during the first read.

[wazzappp]

Ok @moosemonstrous here we fuckin go.

OK SO. I apologize if it comes off more Evangellion than Pacific Rim but I thought that making The Charger more slender would help to differentiate it and allow for a focus on agility (also helps it to look more skeletal and unsettling).

The Charger is built in layers. An outer layer that constitutes the armor, a thinner covering, metal scaffolding, secondary thin covering, and then finally the essential wiring that makes the 'nervous system' of the Jaeger. Most of the damage (corruption scars, nicks, paint chipping) is just cosmetic, and the structural nature of the Jaeger is intact.

HOWEVER. The same can not be said of the reactor core. At some point (maybe during Eli's death?) corruption made its way behind the main fans of the outer engine and into the main reactor that powers the Jaeger. In theory this should lead to a catastrophic failure, but in this instance Im thinking there was a chemical reaction that essentially stabilized the corrosive nature of the Corruption (were gonna circle back to that).

For the most part my version of Robbies suit is fairly standard. I added an orange tint to his helmet screen for flavor because hey. Why not.

The spine of the suit is probably newly integrated to allow for an updated interface, I imagine theres at least a little development in the technology between the time Eli dies and Robbie comes into play. That would make the suit a weird mishmash of past and new technology which could be VERY fun.

Also I LOVED the white accents @cicada-candy added for their design but I didn't want to steal ideas so I just added it in my own places. Your art fucks severely bro I just wanted to make sure and let you know that <3

TIME FOR MY FAVORITE PART: SPECULATION ABOUT THE CORRUPTION AND ITS THEORETICAL GENETIC EFFECTS IN DOSES ON A SUBJECT!!!!!! (AKA self indulgence part 2 electric boogaloo)

I believe you mentioned the Corruption being a Neurotoxin which would be Very fun and VERY cool but I also have a suggestion. Mainly because you also referenced an increase in Robbies strength, as well as another person who got fuckin deaded shortly after.

A rapid growth in muscle density to allow for this strength would be very interesting, but why would the Corruption cause that? Simple answer; it isn't. At least not intentionally. Whats actually happening is a kind of nerve damage that changes the brains regulation of muscular exertion. Our brains really only let us use a certain percentage of our real strength, because if we just let loose and used it all we would cause significant physical damage to ourselves. Like. ripping your own tendons free from their anchors. you could break your own bones. you would die SO fast bro.

Now it is POSSIBLE to access this strength in situations of extreme stress and thats how you get people lifting cars off of loved ones, but this does still cause damage. It also gets more complicated when you consider Fast Twitch muscle reactions but for the sake of simplicity: You Would Die.

So a release of cortisol and other stress hormones, combined with a lessened ability to control strength. This means they would be USING that strength A LOT against ANYONE AND EVERYONE. But maintaining this sort of metabolism is not reasonable. Someone suffering from Corruption would likely also suffer from Hypoglycemia fatally. So extremely strong, extremely scared, and extremely short lived is the kind of deal we would be talking about here.

SO. Having said ALL OF THAT. WHAT IS ROBBIES DEAL. Well heres my proposal: The Corruption is a virus that causes neurodegenerative disease.

If Robbie was exposed to very small amounts of it as a child, it's possible it was inactive or defective, which would have allowed for an immunization point. Its also highly possible that this is a virus that can not survive (well i say survive very lightly. theres significant debate as to wether viruses are actually alive at all but I digress) outside its usual area AKA Inside a demon. He could have been exposed through contaminated water, direct contact, maybe even breathing burned version through the air. Either way, he came into contact with a weakened version of the virus and it helps him later on.

As he comes into DIRECT contact with Corruption via plugging into The Charger this is when we would start to see some more interesting effects. This Corruption would still be different though because of the aforementioned stabilizing chemical reaction in the reactor. Also, because I think Eli's DNA would be integrated into it. This provides Robbie with genetic compatibility for the virus to jump off of. Remember, viruses don't want to kill a host, they just want to reproduce as much as possible (which does end up killing a host but still). And a fun fact about viruses is that we never actually get rid of them, we just get rid of the symptoms. Once you have it its in you forever.

SO. 1. Immune response from Robbies body begins to cause the nervous damage that would allow for his rapid increase in strength. 2.Immune system recognizes the genetic material is familiar (Eli doing something good even inadvertently I guess). 3. Immune system neutralizes the virus and incorporates it into Robbies genetic coding. All good right? Happy ending? WRONG.

BECAUSE WHEN THERE ARE COPYING ERRORS IN YOUR DNA (SOMETIMES FROM VIRUSES) WHAT DO WE CALL IT?? DING DING DING 10 POINTS TO THE MUTUAL THAT SAID ✨MUTATION✨

This virus still carries genetic material from demons, this would also be getting integrated into Robbies DNA. Places like his spine which would have the most regular contact with the Corruption would probably take the brunt of these changes. It's possible that the nerve damage never truly goes away and he continuously tears and then rebuilds those muscles, resulting in overall increased strength thats technically?? stabilized?? Also I could totally see his body going 'oh shit were finally growing with decent access to fuel? BET' and just. Reactivates the growth plates in his bones ('Look! I've fixed his runt of the litter insecurity!' 'YOU FUCKED UP A PERFECTLY GOOD PILOT IS WHAT YOU DID. LOOK AT HIM. HES GOT ANXIETY ABOUT THE STATE OF HIS HUMANITY').

Oh yeah its also worth noting that this would be like. Pretty painful. We're talking constant soreness, cramps, deep aches that just won't go away. General suffering <3

Of course tapetum lucidum OF COURSE TEEF obviously as if I could go without it. You can get funky with mutations because hey. fucky wucky demon genome integration whoop whoop. Also could be interesting to see damaged areas on the Charger manifest on Robbie as damaged tissue. His skin says 'AH. Damage' and copies itself as scar tissue instead of the usual.

Oh god Ive been writing for a solid hour and a half I was supposed to be asleep a while ago ok. Moose I love this au and its making me unwell thank you for sharing with the class I hope you will consider my virus proposal for body horror purposes.

[juni-ravenhall]

sso and "its just a kids game!", "its not that deep!"

ive been thinking a lot about how there are things you really can and should excuse sso for "because its a kids game". those are things like the silly tone in serious situations, when carl and a DC goon just want to eat ice cream instead of doing villain things, or when mr anwir says "so anyway back to my evil speech", or when avalon/druid says :O, or when katja puts on an evil playlist and we change it to a less-evil playlist during a not-really-canon event quest. the goofy tone of the game makes it less scary despite having some dark and scary elements in the story.

(the goofiness shouldnt mess up the logic of the story, though, which i think the dark riders and DC really have an issue with, but thats a bit too much of a tangent.)

or things like making sure you know that nobody died when you and the soul riders did a thing, or seeing someone blast off in a goofy way after being struck, so you dont feel bad about it, or take away the lesson that killing bad guys is fine. making sure to spell it out to you if theres a lesson to be learnt sometimes, or shoving the magic of friendship in your face (although in a shallow way).

or having non-punishing and laidback gameplay (except economically) to suit the youngest players, like not having to lose anything if you fail, or giving the player very clear instructions for quests, or having NPCs not be very hard to defeat compared to games targeted to older teens and adults. (but accommodating young players that barely read and have never played a game before, or players with disabilities that can't always play in the most hardcore gaming manner, and so on - accessibility - shouldnt in any way relate to having bad or clunky gameplay or game design. sso doesn't actually do a good job of being accommodating, it would be much better if there was genuinely fun, well-designed, challenging gameplay for those who seek it, while allowing those who dont to take their time and play the same thing at their own pace without failing - having properly designed races and champs and overhauling the scoreboard system and testing every race until they're at the quality they should be; having rewards like more js for reaching higher scores while still allowing players to earn okay js if they aren't aiming for the gold medal times or highscore boards. having fun and challenging gameplay mechanics with different difficulties. etc. the concept of "adaptive difficulty" is also interesting.)

theres things that are very reasonable to excuse in kids media. theres just also parts that i dont excuse and dont think its appropriate to excuse. when ppl do the "its a kids game!" thing, its not always about what i described above.

should you excuse low-quality game design and gameplay functionality just because its a kids game? no, not at this price point, anyway - there are kids games for free or for a couple $€ out there that might be validly priced. however, this is also *especially* bad in "girl games" (fuck gender and sexism, but society exists). girl games are notorious for being low quality and not comparable in quality to "boy games" at the same price points. perpetuating this - trying to get girl game audiences' money without providing quality girl games - is a problem of misogyny and exploitation. not excusable.

should you excuse bad writing just because its a kids game? i certainly dont. i dont like badly written kids books, or picture books, or cartoons, and i didnt prefer low quality content over high quality content when i was a kid, either (but quality means different things in different circumstances and to different people). your ability to tell if something is crappy or great improves as you age, but even if its definitely possible for a kid to enjoy the hell out of an objectively low quality piece of media, there are problems that often arise from bad writing and bad design... because where low quality writing comes from, there is often also a lack of care for important issues and topics, and a lack of respect for the target audience.

should you excuse racial or sexist stereotypes, or fatphobia and harmful beauty standards in general, or ableism, or cishet normativity, lack of diversity, just because its a kids game? isnt it *even more important* in a kids game, since kids are still learning so much about the world and starting to form perspectives and opinions and feelings about it for the first time?

if you think "but sso doesn't have much of that!", i think you might have played the game with a very different perspective than i did. what about how courtney, the summers sister, is framed as a joke because of how she looks - you're supposed to find it funny (and sweet though!) that carl franz thinks she's beautiful and perfect, because that's not how the game assumes you reacted to her. the brothers obviously also are meant to be seen as goofy looking but i don't remember if it was handled in such a direct way as with courtney. the game also assumes that you find xin scary or strange-looking when you see him without his mask (it's in ydris' dialogue); which is especially fucked up since he's a person of short stature (and also part of the "circus freak" stereotype!), but also always fucked up regardless - people just exist, man. we are born looking some kind of way. it's fucked up to think xin or courtney are ugly. it's fucked up that we were supposed to find a disabled little girl scary during an old halloween event (i think her back was hunched and she walked differently?). it's fucked up to think pi is ugly, or mrs holdsworth, or the GED workers. i want the world to stop thinking of normal human traits as "ugly" no matter how unusual or usual those traits are, or how symmetrical or not, or how popular or not, how old or young you look, how sick or healthy you look, or whatever the fuck. its all ridiculous and should be stopped. we should think of people in terms of kindness, in terms of shared interests and shared joy, in terms of healthy relationships, in terms of caring and loving and making the world a good place to live in for everyone.

and thats just the aspect of beauty standards and shit. i havent even gotten started on the shallow idea of diversity they executed in the production of this game. on how there were lots of random npcs of colour suddenly, but without bringing poc in as important key characters with interesting and engaging continuous presence in the story. how the dark riders feature the most buff and masculine female character, a physically threatening and masculine woman of colour. how they were going to have 3/4 poc in the dark riders while the soul riders are 1.5/4, and the remaining dark rider appears to have albinism which makes it another harmful ableist stereotype. how so many of the important characters were designed as white - yes, its a swedish game, but the game is not from the 1950s, is it? when sso was released, sweden's population was more than 10% foreign-born. today it's even higher. can you guess if there is a class issue and if rich white game studio owners and directors didn't really think about people who weren't blond and light eyed and white?

or the lack of body diversity in anyone else than 40+ year old characters. sure, it's good there was anyone fat or beefy or differently shaped at all. and it's understandable that they didn't have the resources at the time of release to make the player character more customisable (doesn't excuse the lack of diversity in skintones though) and went with their typical fatphobic misogynist 2000's cartoon look they'd already created before sso (dont get me wrong, i love the old art, we can enjoy aspects of things while also criticising them). but they already *did* create npcs with different bodies and faces on and off - especially the 40+ yos - and there was nothing stopping them from spending a little more time on creating a fat young adult npc, or one with an androgynous body, or a beefy female npc, or other diverse bodies and faces, rather than spending it on putting together 10 more generic skinny background npcs (have you ever thought about just how fucking many random unnecessary npcs are in this game?).

those are a lot of things that are pretty serious and that you have to kind of be woke and analytical to think about in the first place (most players - esp if they themselves dont feel especially oppressed irl - arent ever going to really think about these issues, or might actively be *for* some of the issues, such as in the case of fatphobia directed towards the player model update). other things like the game design and quality of the gameplay, inconsistent writing and design and graphics and so on, are things more players might notice since it can make the game just feel more boring or frustrating compared to other games you play, even if you dont think too hard about the whys and hows.

but the fact that kids might not realise that theres ableism or racism or fatphobia or misogyny or that theyre being pushed into spending money on something that isnt really up to the standard - thats not really a reason to excuse those things. and if someone says "the writing is really bad" or "this makes no sense" or "why did they design these characters this way" or "this horse game sucks and is boring and inconsistent", rather than just saying "its just a kids game", "why do you take it so seriously", "its not that deep", maybe its worth considering this, that there are things you absolutely should excuse kids media for, and other things you really, really shouldnt.

[an-amber-in-the-ashes]

PLS write about the MMC with shadow powers trope, it feels like the grisha trilogy subverted it and then other authors just looked at the darkling, took him and ran with it straight 💀 fourth wing is so tropey man like why does xaden have shadow magic other than to solidify him as the angsty, brooding LI of colour for the petite white FMC

This is kind of long but bear with me

I do think that authors used to use shadow magic in books where they wanted the main characters to be different from the masses and to stand out. It was also a pretty good way for them to give characters weird and creepy powers in an elemental magic system.

I think it was new and novel and exciting at first but now it is just so oversaturated and overdone that I don't think anything new can be done to this trope.

At this point I literally just stop reading books whenever the MMC has shadow powers.

I can't help but feel like whenever the MMC has shadow powers, the character isn't really fleshed out at all and is just a carbon copy of all his predecessors.

'Omg look I'm so dark and mysterious and haunted. I have dark hair and dark eyes which suppress a glimmer of kindness, happiness etc. Everyone irritates me but I'm so loyal and protective towards my friends even though I treat them like crap.'

Like all of them are edgy white boys who were abused by some or the other person and hate the main character.

And like why does the main female character never have shadow powers, why can't she be mysterious and deadly and creepy and unhinged. (but thats a completely different thing I could go on and on about)

Another thing that confuses me is the logistics of it all. Like shadows aren't physical objects like fire or water, they are the absence of light. so theoretically if someone can manipulate shadows, they should be able to do the same with light.

The Darkling's powers confuse me the same way because he had been honing his skills for hundreds of years yet Alina managed to command at almost the same level in a few weeks. Make that make sense.

This is especially bad in newer 'booktok' fantasy books because they are basically an amalgamation of tropes arranged into a semi-cohesive thing specifically meant to sell. They have no heart at all and as a result are not original at all.

The author wanting to have their book be enjoyed by as many people as possible simply decides on a random magic system and throws in shadow powers as a way to include whatever they want in it. It just comes off as low effort at this point. They don't even try to do something new.

Fourth Wing being the poster child of unnecessarily long and trope fantasy novel is especially bad in this regard because Xaden is literally just a caricature of a mysterious fellow. I feel like Rebecca Yarros in trying to make him popular and interesting turned him into a shadow (pun intended) of what he could have been.

There were so many other interesting powers Xaden could have had. Like Dain (or whatever his name was) has an arguably better and more interesting power than him.

People freaking devour these books until they realise that its kind of bad actually and we never see them again

It's just that these days many books are designed to sell as fast as possible to a consumerist society and these books are the ones that succeed. Better books with better stories and better authors remain unpublished.

At the end, who wants to read books anyway, ao3 is where its at.

I kind of derailed at the end but this annoys me so so much. They are all the exact same 😭

[trinkerichi]

Sammymax ramble waaaah

Thinking a lot about season 3 and how genius it's design is compared to how arbitrary the first 2 games were set up. I mean i love them all but s3 is just leagues better gameplay wise. Max having magic powers gets rid of the tedium of backtracking, makes the jokes less predictable, let's the puzzles be more creative in a way that still has some logic to it, adds a REAL hint system, makes the gameplay more engaging overall, AND it directly causes all of the internal and external conflict of the story. Now it isn't "wacky things happen and Sam and Max are there", now THEY are the reason that the story is happening. And THATS the only way you can do a serious story in this series because like, Sam and Max dont value ANYTHING in the world except for each other. They barely care if their home gets destroyed or their other friends get exploded or the apocalypse is happening, as long as Sam's there to be the setup to Max's punchline.

AND THE WAY IT IMPACTS THEM TOO. it's such a good way to show their characters and analyze how they feel about a new serious turn in their lives, and I LOVE that they're not even subtle about it, with Sam actually talking about how it makes him feel, and Charlie psychoanalyzing Sam at the end of 304, playing up his insecurities to make him give up fighting. (It's amazing how characters in media rarely talk about their feelings in depth, unless it's an emotional cry-fest.)

Cuz despite Sam's fears, and even though Max is changing physically throughout the season, he's the only one who stays the same emotionally. Max just thinks the powers are fun! And he's here to help Sam out and have a good time like they've always done.

But Sam being the analytical one has to realize how much danger Max is in now, and how all these new characters wanna kidnap or hurt his little buddy, and the big conflict of this entire thing is Sam having to face his own vulnerability that he doesn't want to admit. Because his relationship with Max has always had a power imbalance, and it's one Sam is comfortable with. He likes being the leader. He always wins when they wrestle over the phone, he's the intimidating one when they encounter an enemy, and he's the one solving the puzzles. Even when Max is helping, he's mostly moral support and an extra gun hand. Not to say Max isn't as capable as Sam is, he's just taken the role of being the absentminded wildcard, and Sam likes to be the protector.

But the more powerful Max becomes, the more Sam feels that role being challenged. Now he has to follow Max around and give hints, while Max uses his power to solve the puzzles, culminating in Max being the only character who you can actually control and walk around at the end of 304.

And this doesn't manifest in jealousy or anger at all, that's not who Sam is, but it forces him to realize that he isn't Max's protector anymore, even though he still tries to be. Most telling when you read his mind and he says "Soon Max won't even need a partner..." As if being the big strong and smart one was the only reason Max wants to work with him.

Sam is a confident guy but still has his insecurities, and these are played up to a cruel extent in s3 with the constant fat jokes and puzzle solutions that are embarrassing for Sam, their home base, the office being off limits, and Max being taken away or in different forms constantly. It's telling that even though Max doesn't seem to be letting the power go to his head (besides his usual teasing), Sam worries that if Max doesn't NEED him around anymore that lessens his own worth. Even though Sam is the leader, he only really does this job because he loves to spend time with Max, and that's not something he fully realizes until he starts having to face the possibility of losing him. Ultimately admitting that if it really came down to it, he'd be able to go on living on his own, and could continue doing his job in his own noir detective style way, but he wouldn't be happy.

Max doesn't tend to talk about his feelings but we can still see how he feels through the Super Ego. The representation of the part of Max deep down that resents his lack of ambition. Though the superego takes the place of a villain of sorts he really is the part of Max that wants to be something greater than he is. To live up to his own potential, when he's just too scatterbrained to do anything about it. And the part of Max that seems to hate himself in a way. It's a good contrast to have with Sam I think. Neither of them resent the other for their roles in the team, but it's the source of their own insecurities. At the end of it all, they love each other so very much, but they're both very selfish too, and want to be more than what they are. It's only human! So to speak.. 

I wanna get back to Sam talking about going on without max, cuz I think that's the real tragic part of all of this. The cartoon is a whole different thing from the games but Sam had about the same reaction to Max being hurt. Without Max around he has no restraint and becomes violent. But whether or not he'd be able to move on, Sam would still be able to take care of himself.

But I think the cartoon is the only time we've gotten to see Max on his own, like after the “breakup” in the final ep or when he thought the guinea pigs killed Sam, HIS reaction was usually to cry, panic, and/or blame himself. In the case of the breakup he just completely gave up on everything. I don't think Max would be able to get along without Sam around. Sam kinda has a sense of purpose that keeps him going, with his sense of misguided justice and crime solving, but does Max have that? He’s just along for the ride. Thats why I think (besides the story needing to wrap up quickly), Max would be so drastic as to alter timelines just to get back to Sam. He has NOTHING else, the poor little guy.  

Man last thing is I wanna talk about the different endings to s3 too. I know they only exist because of creative differences in the writing staff but that makes it even BETTER. When Sam gets to recall the good times with Max he can either remember the crime fighting or the adventures. But the choice is really “What is Sam’s purpose? To do his job, or to have fun with Max?” If you choose crimefighting he says something along the lines of  “Of course I could keep fighting crime on my own, but I’d be depressed doing it by myself.” With adventures he emphasizes that he NEEDS Max by his side to discover the mysteries of the universe! It sums up the resulting endings very well. 

If you have him reminisce about the crime fighting, Sam puts his hat back on after his walk to the harbor, preparing to go back to his job like he’d been doing. It’ll never be the same, but crimes always need stopping after all. I imagine he’d just become Noir Sam forever. Brutally carrying out his missions while resenting the world that took his little buddy. 

If he remembers the adventures, after Sam walks to the harbor he takes off his hat and leaves it on the wall.  Max never cared about justice, he was always in it for the adventures. If Sam’s purpose is to have those adventures too, what’s the point without Max? What is he even going to do now? 

There’s a few tiny differences too, like how in adventures, Max gives a simple smile when Sam hugs him, but in crimefighting Max looks kinda confused? 

But the biggest thing of course is that, if you choose crimefighting, Sam and Max stay in Sam’s timeline and walk off into the sunset preparing for their next case. Sam gets rid of the time machine for good, and they keep things how they always were before like nothing happened. 

if you choose adventures, Sam decides to go back in the elevator to Max’s timeline. Abandoning his own and even nearly leaving his hat behind! They decide to aimlessly travel in the machine just to see what happens. It’s much more vague than the status quo of the other ending, suiting for the more “max themed” option.

It’s hard to decide which ending is sadder honestly. At their core they’re both the same. The version of Max we’ve known since episode 205 was doomed the second he found the first psychic toy. I’m assuming the Superego was lying and there was nothing to be done about the tumor. He’s just gone. 

So this new Max, with a new boatload of traumas that he’s NEVER going to acknowledge again, can go along with Sam and they can both pretend things are how they’ve always been. Sam can go back to crimefighting with past Max and they’ll figure it out from there. With their half destroyed office and their old friends and a replacement DeSoto later on. 

 OR, he can leave it all behind and go into the unknown with past Max. Man think about this ending from the side characters’ perspective!! They tell Sam there’s nothing they can do to bring Max back, they watch Sam silently walk to the harbor and then... they never find a trace of him again. geez

for THAT matter it’s implied a role reversed season 3 happened in max’s timeline with only minute differences. so everyone in max’s timeline will never see HIM again in the crimefighting ending. they’ve messed up the timestream but the equalizer is the timeline will either have both sam and max, or neither one. 

[awriternamedart]

infodump on gepard landaus arm (in akrasia)

(this is outdated now)

hi this just a large infodump on how gepards robotic prosthetic arm works in my sampard fanfic Akrasia copied from discord enjoy

so when i started writing akrasia i was doin research into both gepard and sampos character stories to glean any sort of details i could (this was back in launch patch so there was not much for me to work with) so with gepards arm I tried to base as much of it as possible in canon story

the canon details are -

he got it as a reward after a super intense battle from the arcitects (character story)

it is powered by geomarrow (character story maybe lightcone)

and that is it thanks video game give us nothing

so what i came up with is that gepard lost his arm protecting his men somehow

serval (who was an arcitect at some point i remember reading this im p sure but if not thats my hc) managed to convince the arcitects to use some half tested technology to give gepard his arm back, and was the main designer and engineer behind the prosthetic

the way it works is it uses a unique chunk of blue geomarrow stored in the power base that connects to gepards arm. It uses Gepards body heat and blood as a kickstart fuel source, which reacts with the geomarrow core and causes a chemical reaction that produces a very cold vapor as its excess

using the energy from the chemical reaction , thats how his arm is powered and able to function without a need for a charge

however the cold vapor leaks out and condenses into ice like fragments through a sort of resonation with the original geomarrow core, and that can harm the mechanism so serval designed it in a way that could store the vapor in the bulk of the hand kinda like a battery that gepard can discharge

the arm.is also in three main parts - the machinary, the body, and the plating

the machinery is the bulk of the arm, the connector-convertor where the geomarrow core is held, the actual conversion chamber and discharge in the forearm , and the storage in the palm of the hand

the body is the around it, specially.made metal and screens to moniter, plus emergency creviced where ice can safely grow out of should a malfunction happenthe screens (theres two) show both Gepard vitals and the current conversion rate and status of his arm

the second screen is interactable and gepard can change around some of the rates n stuff for different scenerios

the plating is purely decorative

its the armor on the outside of the body, a mixture of cloth and classic metal armor plating , and its designed to make the arm look more like a gauntlet then an arm

he only wears the plating when hes on duty, but hes not ashamed of having lost his arm its just tiring to answer questions and it makes life a bit simpler, plus his punches land harder with the armor plating

when he first got the implant surgery and the arm itself it was super draining for him, since it took heat and oxygen from his blood to create the reaction that powers the arm in a way his body was not prepared for

it was really high risk and really stressful for the entire testing process , and it took quite a bit of gepards concentration to control it properly since it is integrated into his neural systems

the worst of it sent him into a multiweek coma from exhaustion alone and they nearly gave up on making the arm work but he insisted on it, knowing that if it worked he could go back to the frontlines and go back to his duty

eventually it did obviously work , but he had to train alot for it since his major issue with it was stamina and concentration

but once he mastered it he realized that he could also manipulate the vapor because of its connection to the geomarrow core and its connection to him and from there he figured out how to create "barrier energy" or a shield , by having the vapor basically cling to a persons body and harden into ice on impact, softening the blow or halting it entirely

he also takes it off to sleep because since concentration is a huge part of his control over it, when hes asleep the vapor will leak out and freeze sometimes , he found this out onxe when he fell asleep with it on and woke up to his room being frozen over

the unique thing about the vapor is that the ice it creates is not really "ice' it just looks like it and kinda feels like it though its not freezing cold to touch

its like cold but not ice cold

lukecold f you will

and he can use this ice as either actual barriers and shields, spires that produce the barrier energy mist (ex the spires on his ingame model gauntlet) and also he can use it on offensive but rarely does so because hes not confident in his exact control and hes to worried about it hurting the wrong person

it also doesnt melt it shatters, and then turns into the vapor which then disappates as its mixed in with oxygen and whatever else jarilos atmosphere is made of

but yeah i think thats the bulk of gepards arms lore that i made

[darkjazzpunk]

My Baizhu headcanons so far (1-6 +1):

Just thought about putting my personal, little headcanons (6 so far + 1 from my side block) about Baizhu together since they' re scattered pretty far over my whole dashboard ^^"

≿━━━━༺❀༻━━━━≾

Fell free to ignore them, use them as inspiration or just laugh about them (in a respectful way):

Baizhu starts to lisp...like a snake, if he gets flustered or ashamed... or to angry. Normally he takes great care not to lisp, thats why he speaks some words with a lot of care ( or with a weird pronunciation) and slowly like 'Herbs' or 'chance'

(Snakes are reptiles, and do not have the ability to digest dairy products like milk. Milk is designed for warm-blooded mammals. But sometimes doesn't stop them from drinking it when offered...) I imagine him as highly lactose intolerant. He can't even stand the smell of milk because he knows what it would do to him and his diggestive system. He probably tried it once for the sake of knowledge but he regreted it extremly. He was probably the one who introduced Coconut milk to little Qiqi.

No one is allowed to be present when he does his accounting (not even Gui or Qiqi). Calculating with his abacus is like meditating for him... and his snake-tongue flicks on his own every few clicks...he just can't do anything against it. It's too emberassing for him...

Baizhu swings his hips quite a bit when he walks. He gets therefore (and because of his long, sleek hair) often catcalled by foreign sailors who only see his backside. It depends on his mood that day if he turns around to shock them or just lets it slide and takes it as a compliment.

Baizhu can't blush, because he's cold blooded (at least a part of him is snake... I mean look into his eyes!) He isn't the type to blush anyway (he's seen a lot as a doctor), it takes much to flatter or embarrass him but it can become chilling that there is no body reaction from his side if he doesn't artificially shows his mood.

Our snek doctor doesn't care about gender typical behaviour. He actually likes to wear lipstick now and then (blood red is his favourite). He doesn't wear it often in puplic (just because he doesn't care, unfortunately, doesn't mean the rest of Liyue doesn't care -> it could lower his reputation) but now and then he puts it on when he's alone in his private quarters or on the Pearl Galley. Or when he sees the possibility for a nice deal trough crossdressing... "In the animal kingdom, it's also the male who accessorizes with colors, what does that have to do with my gender or sexuality? Humans are so small-minded…"

Technology hates Baizhu and he hates it back! It never seems to work when he tries it or when he's even near it. But some of the technic advances from Fontaine would make things so much easier for him. Alas there is not a Chance it would work for him anyway. He just got used to it by now and keeps his hands off of it for the safety of his fragile self and others. He acts like that typical technology hating grandma because he doesn't believe he can survive another electric shock...

[narwhalandchill]

i swear no one hates the pale princess and the six pygmies more than anyone that tries to make sense of genshin lore for any extended amount of time

like i am starting to feel at least like 85% confident (among many others) that we might FINALLY have our first fucking semblance of a clue as to what the events depicted in it could even be with the 3rd descender lore reveals bc like. 3rd descender being the light prince just Really clicks with multiple beats in there including but not limited to the specific mention of a "curse" falling the six pygmies from the remnants of the prince like. HUH. when the gnoses made from the 3rd are also described as a curse. and thats genuinely incredibly exciting bc it feels actually plausible.

but. because this book is still the actual worst designed to torture us all. that just also makes everything even more confusing 😭 bc one fairly prevalent thing (that i personally found quite compelling) with pale princess theories was her possible identity as the seelie ancestor who fell in love with a human and led to the downfall of their race. which has always been highkey giving the night mother destroying the moonlight kingdom and cursing the people of the pale princess into an "undead state, lingering at the point between life and death forevermore". like thats Way too on the nose with how the pale princess is literally the light princes lover so. yeah seelie ancestor always a strong contender for that one. but also what the fuck does that mean for the timeline

and dont even get me started with the pygmies like. who the fuck are the pygmies it makes me want to morb. obviously a ton of theories have tried to fit the archons as the pygmies but its always been a little ehhhhhh at least when attempting to fit our current archons as a whole (+ the whole. 6 pygmies 7 archons things). but the pygmies = cursed from the princes remains part is also like. very gnosis aligned after the fontaine AQ reveals so go figure. i hate this shit 😭

i also saw a speculation on the pygmies as the sovereigns given its likely scyllas already kicked the bucket at the point the 3rd descender happened (since he was already dead when the shade of life was creating egeria) so 7 lizards turning into 6 remaining pygmies in the story has no numerical dissonance. but that keeps raising questions still bc of how gnosis coded the princes death and the ensuing curse feels!! i hate this book have i mentioned that already. but i do find it a compelling argument solely on account of how much better the sovereigns would fit the timeline of sth that happened thousands of years ago Especially if the fall of the seelie queen is involved in any form. also read a good point that some of the pygmy descriptions could arguably fit the 2 of the ancient sovereigns slash likely candidates better than any archon, specifically apep for the pygmy only caring for its own garden and azhdaha for the blind one.

but then its like. if the betrayal of the 3rd was by the defeated and remaining sovereigns it kinda makes the gnosis thing another question mark. like we still lack so much info on the connections and the timeline between the stolen thrones of authority, the war of vengeance and ensuing weakening of the POs "functions" leading to the establishment of the vision system and the archon war and where the gnoses fall in all of this. hhhhhhhhhh

so like whether the six pygmies are some assortment of archons or the sovereigns or some other group altogether we are still so utterly clueless its terrible 😭

i think the only real theory that i think ppl should just let die is tsaritsa as the pale princess tho like. lmao aintnoway hoyo will ever make a playable character who has a very good chance of being the obligatory bronya expy be someone with a canon male love interest are you hearing yourselves 💀 its not even that i think itd be like shit writing or sth im just purely asking ppl to be realistic with the unfortunate self imposed limitations of a gacha game developer. though the tsaritsa somehow having a connection to the pale princess and the events of the story (assuming its the 3rd descender debacle) would be very fascinating.

also someone noted that the exiled pygmy taking the princes body to a "tree hollow" may not be literal at all and instead imply the 3rd after being killed and turned into the gnoses being integrated into the irminsul and all ensuing samsara rebirth cycles which.... interesting.

anyway. i hate pale princess and the six pygmies!!!!!