#and those things wouldn't really further moon's character arc...? i feel like...?

[wofpolls]

wait what are your thoughts on how moon and morrowseer were handled? if you're okay with sharing ofc

sorry i'm nosy lol

I don't think it needed to be explored more. I don't really see it adding add anything new or interesting to Moon's character arc.

I also just think it's refreshing for a character to not have baggage from the stuff their infamous parent(s) have done haha.

[dingodad]

which of your fantrolls are derse and which are prospit. and do you believe there's a meaningful divide?

these guys inherited their dream moons pretty straightforwardly from the characters they were inspired by.

dream moon feels kind of like the most astrology esque of all of homestuck's astrology type systems LOL in that basically all of the characters inherited them based on totally arbitrary circumstance (same moon as the rest of my family members, same moon as the rest of the players who wanted to join team vriska / team equius, etc.) and the comic never once seems to try to explain it in any deeper terms than that. so any analysis of what they might mean is just trying to find patterns in disparate personalities. (i guess dream moon being significant is a real thing now that it's included in the official aspect test but i'm not even going to bother looking those up because i don't really care that much. lol)

there are some interpretations i've found interesting.. like prospit dreamers playing active roles and being protagonists while derse dreamers are behind the scenes actors and backgrounders is so obviously true but it also seems so redundantly similar to active + passive classes. and the one about prospit dreamers being upfront with their personalities and derse dreamers hiding behind a mask is fun for explaining oddities like dersite nepeta but falls apart for other characters.

so i've never once thought about what moon "fits" a character before deciding where they go, i 100% always just sort them towards the beginning of the design process and then soooometimes when i develop a character further i will take their lunar sway into account and think about how it might contribute to their personality or arc. but it's usually a more personalised thing, like, what does being on prospit or on derse mean to that character in particular.. so i wouldn't say i think of there being a "divide" between the two. their significances can vary. while being a derse dreamer obviously doesn't MAKE you a villain for instance it's easy to justify why a villain might belong on derse and a dersite villain might be very different to a prospitian villain. <- thinking about it harder right now than i probably ever have before in my life

[turtersblade]

FINAL FANTASY XVI

Finished August 24

This game is quite something. What is that something? I'm not really sure. This is how I generally feel about the game. Final Fantasy XVI is a game that doesn't do things terribly wrong, but is filled with weird choices in direction and is filled with missed potential. Or maybe not even that? They didn't shoot for the moon, but maybe for something much easier, like for the clouds.

The biggest oddity here is the extremely pointless 5 year time jump. It's weird. The time skip served absolutely no purpose to the narrative, gameplay, characters, or anything else. Developing characters off screen would've been bad, but somehow we're meant to believe they havent changed at all in the five years. That super apparent romantic tension between Clive and Jill? That completely stagnated in place in those five years. Everything stagnated in those five years.

Gameplay wise, missed potential. Absolute missed potential in points, but in some other aspects they never shot far anyway. The combat is the biggest case for missed potential. It's good, its good, but I cannot say much else. It doesn't evolve much during the game. Your base combo never ever changes or gets upgraded or anything else. So the only way the combat ever changes is the Eikon abilities you get from each of the Dominants. Yeah they all also kinda suck. Your Phoenix/Ifrit and Garuda skills actually work really well together, theres synergy there. But aside from Titan, the others absolutely do not. None of these skills work well together to form a fluid combat experience. It's still fun enough, but this really could've been more.

The level design is horribly bland and uninteresting. The dungeons are not good. They took FFXIV dungeons, put them in a single player action game, and then further simplified and dumbed them down. You move so awfully slow in this game which makes these areas even more of a drag to get around. I don't see why this couldn't have more involved dungeons when something like Stranger of Paradise had incredible dungeons.

The quests are so mind numbing too. Go here, get item, fight wave of easy enemies, ok now fight enemy with a really big healthbar, go back, quest over. This even applies to the main story. There is just so much uninteresting filler. Not horribly bad, but just passable.

Now for the positives. I really like these characters! They're all so good, with Dion becoming a surprise favorite. The writing is pretty good, the voice acting is top notch, and I really cared for everyone. Clive is an absolute legend, I love him and he deserves the best.

The music?? Especially for the Eikon fights, its incredible! I found myself humming quite often when a track came on. Cid's theme is an absolute classic to me now. I knew the music was in good hands when I found out it shares the same composer(s) as Final Fantasy XIV.

I really enjoyed this story. For each arc, they did a great job at giving you a new big bad to fear and want to take down. They even did a solid job at making you feel some ounce of sympathy for them. Their only fumble to me was actually Ultima. I'm sorry but I just do not give a fuck about Ultima. I knew from his first appearance that I would not like him, but still kept an open mind. Yet, they never gave me a reason to care about him.

Overall, I liked this game. I did every side quest (which actually did have interesting stories in them!! they are worth doing) every hunt, and I finished this game at the 50 hour mark. I wouldn't have done all this if I didn't like it, but this could've been more. This is the definition of a solid 7.0/10 game. An exact 7. A high C on a tier list, maybe very bottom of B, depends on what it's up against. I still recommend this to everyone, because everyone can have a good time. They don't do anything egregious that would turn people off here, you'd only be fighting your own boredom at times.

Torgal is best boy

[herrscherofmagic]

the funniest (and saddest) thing about this is that it wouldn't even be the first time that Honkai 3rd lost its "original vision"

Like, HI3rd was literally designed to be "GGZ, but now in 3D!", so much so that they didn't even include a proper introduction to the world-building or characters. You're literally NEVER told what Honkai is or is supposed to be in the game itself.

HI3rd never really had a solid foundation to build its story off of. It's always been "random bullshit, go!"

And yet, even in the newer chapters (at least up to the Moon Arc), the writers were still using some of the same fundamental concepts in the story. It's just that the presentation was changed so much, and the old story stuff was so poorly written & easy to forget, that I'm sure most people probably never noticed it.

(warning: incredibly long ranting ahead)

For example (and no, I will never shut up about this), all the funky stigma/digital-realm/dream stuff that Elysian Realm and the Moon Arc had?

We've seen all of that before... in Sakura Samsara.

At the very start of the game!!

The entire concept of stigma spaces being analogous to a sort of "dream", the ability of a stigma to store memories and act as a source of power, the whole "discarding the physical self to move the spiritual self into a stigma space" thing... ALL OF IT. We've seen it already! It was in the game from the earliest versions!

Sakura Samsara takes place in a stigma space, but it was constantly presented as (and even referred to) as a "dream" (or nightmare, in many cases).

The stigma is also derived from a PE Herrscher Authority and it's theoretically supposed to give Theresa powers, although the writers addressed this with the patented Hoyoverse special skill: Pretend It Doesn't Exist And Hope Nobody Notices You Abandoned This [character/setting/theme/plot point]

We even see Sakura give up her physical body in order to transfer the stigma to Theresa, and then by the end of the story Sakura rejects the opportunity to leave the stigma space and instead stays in the happy dream with Higokumaru and Kallen. Basically, she's one of the folks that would've been perfectly content with Project Stigma.

But Sakura Samsara is so, so, so janky and its story is hard to understand for several different reasons.

The story is split 50/50 between manga and gameplay with a vague and ambiguous connection. The gameplay is super dated, the story had few if any proper cutscenes, and the best part is that the entire ending to Sakura Samsara is just... gone. Because the last part of the story was told via the co-op raids, a system that's now been removed.

I think there's a lot of parts where we can question just what exactly the writers meant to do with the story (see: Elysia being introduced in a very ambiguous and mysterious manner and them almost immediately pivoting to be flawless in the latter half of ER). It's far from perfect, after all.

However, it's even worse when you can see that the writers have tried to keep some of the same core themes from the earliest part of the game. But because of the game's age and the many holes in this game's worldbuilding and story foundation, they struggled to convey those themes properly.

The technobabble and excess philosophizing certainly doesn't help either >.>

This is one of the many reasons I've been putting so much mental effort into planning out and drafting up honkai AUs (so much so to the point that I've effectively connected several different AUs into one large overarching plot).

I want to try and tell a story of Honkai 3rd, but a story that actually explores the fundamental themes that make this game special.

As one example of what I mean: consider Mei & her Herrscher Persona vs. Kiana and her own Hersrcher Persona. This was so underexplored in the main story, so I feel like fanfic would be a perfect way to push those themes further in their own way.

What if Kiana and Mei were separated early in their relationship, and they both ended up developing a different relationship with their "other self"?

What if Kiana became bitter and detached and began to fall into the clutches of Honkai, even allying with HoV?

On the other hand, what if Mei's Herrscher persona received the compassion she needed to live peacefully alongside Raiden Mei, sharing their power together?

What would happen when Kiana and Mei reunite long after their first separation, but are now mortal enemies because they've each embraced the power of Honkai in a different way, leading to an irreconcilable chasm between them?

Of course, the canon story wouldn't go that far, nor do I think it should. This whole Kiana vs. Mei idea is squarely in the realm of fanfic.

But the idea of "using an alternate scenario to introduce and explain the concept of Honkai" has already been done... by Mihoyo themselves, in the Second Key manga.

The Second Key manga is pretty much Honkai 3rd's "Chapter 0". Durandal experiences Su's life via fabricated memories in a dream created by the 2nd Divine Key, and we as the reader follow her along in this journey. Durandal effectively relives the past of Su's life, encountering Honkai radiation & sickness, then seeing Honkai beasts for the first time, then fighting off a Herrscher.

That manga, which is optional side content not found in the in-game main story chapters of Honkai 3rd, does a better job of being an introduction to the game than the actual intro chapters, with the Selene mission and St. Freya exams.

The in-game story never explains those things, while the Second Key manga explains them perfectly.

yeah. you can see why I've been putting so much thought into this, and why it can be so frustrating.

So many of the fundamental pieces are already present in the story; they're just disjoint, or poorly written or hidden behind janky or removed gameplay, etc.

Some of it isn't even officially translated, meaning the CN/JP fanbase and the rest of the world effectively get two different stories; one version with the backstory of Fu Hua & Sushang, of Bianka, and of AE, and another version without all that backstory.

But even though it's frustrating to think about it, I genuinely love so much about this game and its setting and characters.

So I come up with all these ideas for fanfiction because I want to see what I can do with all the building blocks Mihoyo's writers have left strewn about.

I love exploring AUs, but it's especially enjoyable with the added challenge of trying to decipher the mysteries and worldbuilding of Honkai 3rd and then taking that knowledge and using it to reconstruct a sort of simulacrum of the canon story.

It's the challenge of creating an alternate story which touches on so many of the original themes, but pushes them further and embraces the stories of characters who were often neglected (Wendy, Sin Mal) or whose stories were never properly told (Himeko, Theresa).

It also gives me the opportunity to practice some of the basics of storywriting. I've spent countless hours brainstorming and reviewing my own ideas over and over and over, constantly readjusting things to try and make it feel more coherent.

I'm constantly asking myself "is this something that X character would truly say? How would Y character really respond to that? What does this action & reaction mean for the rest of the story moving forward? Is there a solid build-up leading up to this moment?"

Since I already have canon material to reference, I have a sort of guide to help me answer these questions, but I also have the freedom to deviate from that canon.

Although, I do try and make sure any deviation is justified in some way. Like I wouldn't randomly swap a person's entire personality without a serious investment into making that swap happen in a natural way.

For instance, if I wanted to write "evil Kiana teams up with HoV", it'd take a TON of work to throw enough trauma at Kiana while also taking away all the support she has in the canon story. It'd probably take Kiana being separated from Mei, being estranged from Theresa, never meeting or getting along with Bronya, etc. That sort of effort is necessary (in the type of story I want to write) in order to take Kiana, a person with such a strong sense of justice, and justify a scenario in which she tosses all her morals aside.

I've also had so, so many crappy/absurd ideas, but by revising them over and over I've been able to rework them into serviceable story concepts which actually feel justified by the prior build-up and which make good use of Honkai 3rd's worldbuilding.

Though of course not all fanfic has to be that serious. I'm just an absolute tryhard, lmao

well... HI3rd's never gonna get fixed, but at least we have the power of daydreaming and fanfic to reject Mihoyo's reality and substitute it with our own /hj

I wish I had more to show when it comes to all this talk of a drastic AU, but for now it's almost entirely hidden away in the realm of my daydreaming T_T

me with Honkai Impact 3rd

I seriously cannot stress enough just how much frickin time ive spent thinking about the many ways this game could be better

if Mihoyo could just fix the many many flaws with its story and gameplay and optimization and UI and coop and voice acting and translation and character models and animations and—

[beautifulterriblequeen]

The Thief and the Tinker, Part 4: Circles and Cycles

part 3

Part 4

Viren: *smirks and plinks Runaan's coin to Ethari*

Ethari, furious: You throw another Moonshadow at me and I'm gonna lose it.

Circles and Cycles

Angst rating: 8/10

Back to Ethari, because we're not done with him yet. Ethari is soft, but he isn't weak. He won't be a willing pawn for Viren. He loves Runaan to the point of invention, and his devotion is more constant than the moon itself. He'll agree to do what Viren says, and he'll be Very Sad. But his spirit is in no way broken. Viren bribing him with the coins containing his family will only have the opposite effect. It'll give Ethari something to fight for.

We could get Focused Chaos Ethari. We could get Angery Trickster Ethari. We could get Rules, What Rules? Ethari. Let him try to steal the coins, try to break them, try to kill Viren, and be stymied at every turn, until he settles and seems cowed. And then all he does is craft his way out of the problem.

What if we are gifted with Iron Man Elf Ethari, who pretends to build a fake Key for Viren, but meanwhile he's really building a coinbuster with whatever he can get his hands on - primal stones, magically imbued gemstones, stolen artifacts, his own arcanum, his own reputation as the Master Craftsman of the Silvergrove. He'll use almost - almost - anything, to stop Viren and free his family.

Ethari may have to choose between those two things, though. And he's a hero, deep down, just like his family, just like his daughter. If he has to choose, he'll choose to stop Viren and save Xadia. He'll pay the same price as his family has if he must.

He'd let Viren think he was motivated purely by wanting his family back, but Ethari is far too steeped in the illusion and sacrifice for that to be all there is to his motives. It's a so-close-and-yet-so-far thing, how he and Viren almost embody the same ideals. Almost. Ethari would take one look at Viren, who just burnt down his whole Forest, he'd see the biggest threat in Xadia, and he'd say anything to get a chance to stop this juggernaut of destruction from getting his hands on whatever that ultimate power really is, locked behind that missing key. If he has to abandon his people and bawl his eyes out to convince Viren he's in, then he will.

And Viren wouldn't make it easy for him. He knows clever when he sees it. He went through all this trouble to persuade Ethari to work with him. He would need to keep Ethari as off-balance as possible to ensure that he keeps working as he should.

Angsty jewelry, anyone?

Viren giving Ethari his husband in pendant form to remind him what he's working for, when Viren and Ethari both know full well that only dark magic can open the hellcoins. Ethari wearing another pendant of his love, except it's not a metaphor this time. It's literally his love, in a coin around his neck.

Viren would love making Ethari stay close to him of his own free will if he ever hoped to free Runaan. Making people bind themselves to you is a big power flex. Remember that TDP stream future-season teaser note about Bait being in a creepy restraint in a future season?

This card is written on in all-caps, so that really could be "Bait" or "bait," or--knowing this show--both. Viren's been using Runaan as bait for Ethari all along. Putting his coin in a dark magic pendant casing for Ethari to wear would be a great parallel for that. Oh god. Oh man.

Maybe he'll stab the coin's scary casing right through that circle on Ethari's chest, right over his heart, make that Iron Man reference really obvious. Ethari also losing his shirt at some point, for angsty Viren-related reasons? It's more likely than you think. I mean... Ethari is literally involved in both forms of forging at this point. Shirt's gotta come off for uhhhh work reasons. And because he's hot. Because of all the forging. Mmhmm. I mean how else are we finally going to discover what his markings look like this is research I swear

I mentioned that I liked god-tier villains, right? Yeah, this is amazing. I haven't wanted to die and ascend over an idea for quite a while, but Ethari vs Viren in a drawn-out battle of wills would kill me in the best way. Especially since, while it looks like they're essentially fighting for who gets Runaan, they're truly fighting a much larger battle with much higher stakes. They're fighting for the future itself. It's an epic struggle between the Narrative of Strength and the Narrative of Love. And we've seen what happens, over and over, when the Narrative of Strength gets to call the shots.

On a meta note: If Ruthari's story arc isn't a love letter from one trauma survivor to another, and on a broader scope to all survivors who see it, I don't know what is. Sometimes life just chews us up and spits us out and we can't stop it and it breaks us. But sometimes we can reach out and grasp the chance to help each other, even after that, even when it hurts a lot, because we know what it means to be loved, and to love, and to want a safer future for each other and for people we'll never meet. The future is worth standing together for, helping each other back up for, fighting side by side for, even if you can't see how it'll end, or even how to begin. We are stronger together, and sometimes we need to fight for our "together" before we can fight for anything else. And that's worth it, every time.

This is glorious, it's beautiful, it's tragic, it's amazing, it makes me want to dance, it makes me want to scream into the void, it makes me want to slap someone with a semi truck. No, someone specific, don't worry, and he super deserves it.

Because Ethari is going to win. He was always going to win. He's soft, and he's clever, and he hasn't forgotten what love means. It's what he's fighting for. Not power, not control. Love. He doesn't want to dictate Runaan's future or anyone else's. He just wants his husband--and everyone else--to have one at all.

So he's going to win.

What thwarting Viren looks like, I couldn't possibly guess. TDP is no stranger to angst, so there will probably be a high cost involved in outwitting the dark mage. Maybe not everyone can be rescued from the coins. Maybe Ethari will lose his life, or his soul, or his vision, or something else really angsty. Viren could even kill him and resurrect him as a smoky craftsman, or a zombie craftsman, or something equally biddable but horrible. The only thing I'm sure of is that Ethari would never willingly make a working Key of Aaravos Ethari as long as there's a chance Viren could possess it. But I do believe that if he gets the right opportunity while he's busy saving the world from Viren's dark intentions, he'll break his husband's hellcoin open somehow and set him free, even if he has to smile at the devil to do it.

Ethari understands the difference between "you can" and "therefore you should." He might sacrifice his own world to save his husband, but he'd never sacrifice someone else's world. That's one of the Moonshadow cultural limits I've noticed: they accept boundaries when it comes to other people's autonomous rights, especially regarding life and death.

These limits could get pushed. Ethari will be under great duress and emotional strain if he goes through this kind of interaction with Viren. And maybe he will choose some dark things. Everyone else has. But I'm placing all my eggs in the basket labeled "Saved By Love." Either I'm right, or I'll get the best angst omelets in the universe. And I do love omelets. A villain invented them, you know. ;)

Another support for Ethari not making the key for Viren: the real Key exists!

Callum has it right now. The plot doesn't need Ethari's key (yet? ever?), but it does need Ethari to learn what he's made of, to stand up for something, or against something, or both at once. And once he learns what he will and won't do and the universe has rewarded his discovery with the return of his beloved husband then Ethari will be ready to take on whatever else the plot has in mind for him.

Depending on the plan, all of these events could happen in S4, as a setup for even bigger things to follow. Viren's wishes can be thwarted here and the show's overall tension will only continue to rise. It would let Ethari flex yes pls his skills so we know who he is, it would show how driven Viren can be for a long-term goal, it would let Claudia saunter further downwards, it would reveal some human/Moonshadow history, and it would resolve the seasons-long tension regarding Runaan's fate, allowing for the cycle of speculation, feels, angst, and Ruthari fanart to begin again. ;) Viren would need to find another way to pursue his long-term goal. And Callum's Key will get a little more clarity on just how important it is to the fate of the world - which will make everything he does, and everyone he talks to, and anyone who knows what he's carrying, intensely important.

Nyx is gonna steal it isn't she, omg chaos birb

To Viren, Ethari was a main course, meant to be devoured and consumed in his lifelong quest for something that will finally satisfy. But to Ethari, Viren was just empty calories to be passed over in favor of ordering his perennial favorite dish, one more time.

Once Ethari escapes Viren's clutches with as much of his family as he can rescue, Viren may turn back to looking for the real Key, especially if someone's seen it recently. Hunting a kid probably seems easier than hunting a full-grown Moonshadow craftsman who just outsmarted him. okay so maybe Nyx stealing it would be a good thing and save Callum's life

Ethari could go on to help repair the Sunforge, or rebuild the Moonhenge, or work on constructing Moonshadow villages in Katolis if he hasn't been ghosted for abandoning everyone after the forest fire. He might build magical devices for any number of reasons, to help all kinds of characters. Hopefully, wherever he goes, he'll have Runaan with him, in some way, for at least a little while. Cycles be like, and I feel like Runaan will not want to remain still for long, for whatever reason. Does he need revenge, atonement, justice, a new body, to find Rayla, to find Ezran? He'll be back in action as soon as he can, I think.

Okay, but, I'm so soft at the thought of a scene where Runaan and Ethari come before King Ezran. The husbands tried to save their people Runaan's way, the old way, and it only continued to endanger them. Following the cycle, as Moonshadows do, was the wrong move. But the son of the last human Runaan killed reached out with mercy and broke a thousand years of suffering and sorrow and hatred. Ezran did what Runaan couldn't: he saved the Moonshadow elves from total destruction. And that, more than anything else in the world, could soften one very broody assassin's heart toward humans again.

What would Runaan do, if his heart truly changed toward humans? What would he say to Ezran? I could see him struggling for a long moment before dropping to one knee to pledge his heart as he once had to do before the Dragon Throne. He doesn't know any other way but to serve. Ezran, reading the whole room and everyone's feelings before he tells Runaan that No, we don't do that here. That he's free, and free means free. No chains, no oaths. Just trust and friendship. He should get to make his own decisions for a change, even though that can be hard and scary sometimes. Runaan being genuinely scared, because that's too much freedom. But he's not alone. He has Ethari, and Ezran, and Rayla, and Callum, and their people, and their allies. And no matter what else happens, the people of Katolis - elven and human - will find a way forward. Together.

part 5