#cause she didn't have antlers in either game

[welcome-2-zombocom]

>see post that says the only thing we know about dess's physical appearance is that she apparently didn't have antlers

>get confused

>look it up on the wiki

>according to dess's article on the deltarune wiki, sans mentions "the antlered girl and her sister" in the dog shrine in the xbox version of undertale; this likely refers to noelle and dess, and could imply that dess didn't have antlers

>"huh that's weird. why wouldn't she have antlers? both male and female reindeer have them (though they shed and regrow them at different times of year)"

>remember a comment on the tumblr post that says we don't technically know her species; she could've been a slug for all we know

>"that's technically true. she could've been adopted, like kris"

>"..."

>"oh my god was dess a human"

[crying-over-cartoons]

Ninjago Characters in Petz

[image ID: Zane, Cole, Nya, Kai, Pixal, Lloyd, and Jay from Ninjago, redesigned as cats in the video game Petz. end ID]

You see these critters? I made these. I meant to make a post about them but then forgot, so I'm doing it now, lol

This post is pretty lengthy, so here, have a readmore:

Briefest possible introduction to Petz: It's a series of virtual pet games from the 90s, and it has a prolific modding scene. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petz

The creations I will be talking about in this post were made for Petz 4.

Terminology:

"Hexing" refers to the process of creating a mod for Petz, since it required a hex editor in the early days, before dedicated programs were made. Hex editors are still used for some modifications, such as changing a petz' personality values.

A "hexie" is a breed or pet created via hexing.

The first NinCatGo (yes that's what I call them) hexie I made was Zane, because he's my favourite character. I initially intended to only make Zane, but he was so dang fun I decided to make some more.

[image IDs: Zane from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. he is grey with silver and light blue accents, a blue nose, and blue whiskers. he has pale blue eyes with white pupils. in the third image, he is wearing neon green shutter shades, a green tail bow, and a sweater patterned with the aromantic flag. end ID]

Next up was Jay. He blends in incredibly well with most of the carpets and rugs in this game.

[image IDs: Jay from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. He is dark blue with lighter blue speckles, a dark grey nose, and blue whiskers. his tailtip, legs, and ear insides are lighter blue. he has yellow eyes, freckles, and pawpads. end ID]

After Jay was Nya. Designing her was SO fun! Like Jay, she also blends into the carpets and rugs. She's doesn't act as angry as she looks, but I based her off of the Black&White Shorthair from the original game, and those cats are just kinda like that...

[image IDs: Nya from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. she has blue fur with black tiger stripes. her belly, face, tailtip, and ear insides are lighter blue. her nose is dark grey, her whiskers are blue, and her eyes light blue. end ID]

Next, I made Kai. I used Nya as a base, but recoloured the tiger texture I was using, and made his tail and ears crooked by borrowing some code from the Alley Cat, a base game breed.

[image IDs: Kai from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. he has red fur with brown stripes. his belly, tailtip, and ear insides are orange. he has a red nose and whiskers, and bright red eyes. he has multiple kinks in his tail, and his left ear is shorter than the right. end ID]

After that came Cole. He's the first one I made a texture for; all the other textures are either from the game, or downloaded from other websites. Cole's lava texture though, that's all me!

[image IDs: Cole from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. his fur is black, and his face, belly, and ear insides are orange. his tail and legs have been textured to appear to be made of lava. he has black whiskers, a dark grey nose, and yellow eyes. in the third image, he is carrying a pink yarn ball. end ID]

Then came Lloyd. I left him for last (I didn't plan to make Pixal at the time) because his modifications are the most complex, requiring me to make a new tail, ears, horns, and mane for him (modifying the original tail and ears wouldn't work, because it would cause the animations to break and just generally be horrifying).

[image IDs: Lloyd from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. he has green scales, with blonde fur on his legs, tailtip, face, throat, and ear insides. he has a blonde mane, and two black antlers. he has black whiskers and bright red eyes. in the third image, he is wearing shamrock-shaped glasses, a yellow collar, and a yellow tail bow. end ID]

Shortly after creating all of these guys, I decided I hadn't had enough, and made Pixal as well. I used Zane as a base, and created a new circuit texture for her. Considering there's a total of like, two purple colours available in the game's palette, I'm very happy with how she turned out.

[image IDs: Pixal from Ninjago recreated as a cat in the game Petz. she is light silver with white and purple accents. Portions of her body are covered in a circuitry texture. she has blue whiskers, a blue nose, and green eyes with white pupils. end ID]

Congrats on reading this far! If you like what you see, may I suggest giving Petz a try? For new players, I'd suggest downloading Petz 4 from this site: https://mazzew.neocities.org/ (warning for flashing imagery!)

You can also see some more images of these guys and a bunch of other neat Petz stuff on my own site: https://thecatingrey.neocities.org/

I hope I can manage to inspire at least one Ninjago fan to pick up Petz. It's an incredibly fun and low maintenance game, and unlike games like Animal Crossing and Nintendogs, time doesn't pass in-game when it's not on. This makes it the perfect virtual pet game for someone like me, whose Neopets are currently languishing and whose Animal Crossing island is in shambles.

Not to mention, the community for the games is incredible. I always struggle to describe it in words. Never before have I seen an online community this friendly and welcoming. The amount of talent I see every time I visit a new site is mind-boggling. I've genuinely been inspired to learn new skills because of some of the amazing things I've seen.

There are people who have been in this community since the games came out, and there are some websites that are nearly as old. Finding this community opened my eyes to a whole new world- one that I thought disappeared before I could use a computer. But the old web still exists, and there's a place for you in it.

[tigerbears]

Ok, going to add to the "Trans Noelle antlers" discourse.

First, disclaimer this is all just for fun and stuff not telling you that Noelle is or is not trans, just had some thoughts after thinking what causes antlers to grow.

Let's go through the debate cycle again.

"Noelle is trans because she has antlers." "Noelle is a reindeer and both male and female reindeer have antlers." "Male and Female reindeer loose their antlers at different times"

I want to add another step to that cycle.

"Would HRT affect when Noelle sheds her antlers?"

From this paper, testosterone lowers when male reindeer are about to lose their antlers, but those that are castrated (and thus dont have any T in their system) actually keep their antlers over the winter in the long run. The study also shows that hormones like estradiol are likely what lets female reindeer keep their antlers into spring.

Now this can mean many things for Noelle. If Noelle is on HRT, she would likely have a similar Antler cycle to IRL female reindeers if she like cycled her hormones or something.

(Basically similar to how some folks try and change their hormone doses to match a menstrual cycle, except for Noelle this would be a yearly cycle and not monthly.)

Or, maybe Noelle doesn't cycle her HRT, and in that case idk what would happen. Maybe she'd lose her antlers later then male reindeer, but earlier then female ones. Maybe if its high enough it would keep her antlers for longer, or prevent them from shedding or something? Idk I just skimmed the article and I feel like I'm already doing to much to research a lesbian deer girl from a video game.

Even if Noelle was on puberty blockers, then she'd at least keep her antlers for the winter, like male reindeer without testosterone.

(Also, if Noelle was a deer and not a reindeer, then hormones/blockers would likely prevent her antlers to grow in the first-place once they've been shed.)

I have only just learned (in April) that this is inaccurate for deer. If Noelle was a deer and started blockers before growing antlers, the above is correct. If she started blockers after developing antlers, she'd still grow antlers, it's just they wouldn't leave the velvet stage and wouldn't naturally shed.

I have no clue what HRT would do though because I don't think scientists have injected male deer with estrogen. (COME ON SCIENTISTS DO IT FOR SCIENCE!)

Now I guess there's one more question, if Noelle is trans, would she be able to access HRT or puberty blockers?

Well, Rudy at least supports her identity, so he likely wouldn't have any problem with Noelle medically transitioning.

If Mayor Holiday was transphobic, and had the authority to keep Noelle from gender affirming care like Hormones or blockers, you would think she'd also put her hoof down on her daughter presenting femme too. (and Rudy might have something to say if his transphobic wife tried to prevent his daughter from transitioning.)

Money likely wouldn't be an issue seeing as Noelle's mom's the mayor, (and has been for awhile) and even then the large ornate gate at their house makes me think that Holiday's are on the richer side.

Only way I could see Noelle being trans and not on Hormones or Blockers is either if she for some reason didn't want them, or if Hometown is located in some transphobic country or municipality that banned trans-kids from accessing gender affirming care, and the latter honestly seems a little too depressingly real for a Toby Fox game.

(Insert something plagiarized from Shadow of Roserade's video on UT/DR's queer joy.)

Now, dispute all this arguing and stuff I think there's one factor we're ignoring here; we're assuming that reindeer monster biology and IRL reindeer biology are analogous.

We don't know how monster reindeer antlers work. Maybe all reindeer monsters have them, but they don't shed them so we cant use antlers to determine if Noelle is trans. Maybe AMAB reindeer monsters grow antlers, their permanent, and Noelle got hers before medically transitioning meaning she'd need like "antler reduction surgery" or something to remove them when she's older.

All the above theorizing means is that if Noelle has a similar antler cycle to IRL female reindeer, it doesn't mean she's cis because HRT can affect that.

There's no way to confirm if Noelle is or is not trans unless like more concrete evidence shows up in later chapters, like estradiol tablets in Noelle's room or something.

The most we've got is unused sprites for Noelle's room in queen's mansion that show pill bottles (Shown earlier in this post). This is still not enough as we don't know what these pill bottles are. They could be anything from anti-depressants to medicine for Rudy! (also the fact the sprites we're never used.)

TL;DR, there's no way to tell if Noelle's trans or cis, and trying to track when her antlers shed is futile as HRT would likely effect that.

I'm still going to pretend she's trans though as I love the headcanon for no particular reason. (spoiler alert, the reason is I'm trans!)

[another-random-goose]

Hey Empiresblr, do you want to hear about my respawn anchors headcanon?

Well you're going to.

What is a respawn anchor?

I'm glad you asked.

A respawn anchor is a concept I was introduced to on a minecraft server I was on. The general concept behind it is that everyone has a singular object that anchors their soul to this world and grants the ability to respawn. It can be anything from an axe to what my character's respawn anchor was, a book renamed "Gender Abolition" as a joke, which was increasingly comical when I actually made lore around it.

If this concept interests you and you want to hear about how I applied it to Empires, I'll leave some more details about the headcanon under the cut so this doesn't get too long:

Ok, before I get back into it, i would like to put a disclaimer that this is not a fully developed headcanon as of writing this. If you're not interested in my headcanon lore dump, skip down to the larger text.

-A respawn anchor HAS to have some sort of significance to the person, it's usually linked to the person by some sort of life changing event linked to the object

-If a respawn anchor is lost or destroyed, that person loses the ability to respawn. Under the right circumstances, a person could get a new respawn anchor if theirs is destroyed, but there's the whole life-changing significant event linked to an object bit, so it's usually not all that likely.

-they're usually enchanted, but they don't have to be.

-it only protects against unnatural causes of death, i.e. fall damage, potion effects, swords, that kind of thing. Disease and old age can still kill you.

-once a person dies, the respawn anchor returns to being a normal object unless it becomes the respawn anchor of another.

-people do not start life with a respawn anchor. Children are constantly warned to be careful with their life, since they have no way to come back

-you know an object has become your respawn anchor because there is a feeling that's become universally known that you feel when the item has linked itself to your soul.

-they're usually kept off-person for safe keeping so they don't risk it being destroyed, but there are some people who do keep their anchors on-person.

NOW. How Did I apply this headcanon to Empires?

Simply put, I gave them all respawn anchors. I'm not entirely done with it since I haven't seen all of the POVs yet, but here are the ones I have.

Scott: It used to be a golden nugget enchanted with fortune that he wore on a necklace, but it became the golden antlers once he discovered them in a cave.

Gem: the Amethyst crystal in her wizard staff.

Jimmy: the Codfather head. In this version of Empires I've created for this headcanon, he's had the head since he was young. He found it under the docks and just kind of latched onto it.

Pix: it used to be a necklace mostly made of copper he got from the villagers who took him in, but now it's a plain candle, the same as the ones placed for him on the vigil, but enchanted with Fortune.

fWhip: a piece of deepslate redstone ore enchanted with Unbreaking II. It was the first piece of it he found as a kid

Shubble: the first wood carving she made to create a villager. It was unsuccessful in housing a nature spirit, but instead bonded to her soul.

Sausage: Blood Sheep Wool enchanted with Flame (i don't care that it can't technically happen, It's cool.)

I don't have headcanons for any of the rest of them yet, but feel free to tell me if you have any ideas for the others or any of the ones I have here already, because I'd love to hear them! (As a heads up, it's not a strict rule, but I usually try to stick to either important lore items we've seen in series or things you can find in game for sake of simplicity.)

Now, specific bits of Empires I've put this headcanon on:

-The Codfather Head Being Stolen: The respawn anchor headcanon adds some extra stakes to it, since even though he technically knew where it is and could still respawn, if anything happened to it and he didn't know, he was done for.

-Shadowbeans Wedding: In the server I got this headcanon from, it was canon lore that when people get married, they would exchange respawn anchors as part of the wedding as a sign of ultimate trust. So I projected that onto this.

-The Vigil: Since I made Pix's respawn anchor a candle like the ones placed for him on the vigil, I imagine that the vigil's candles for the empire leaders all have small carvings melted into the side of the candle with something similar to one of those little wax seal things that resemble their respawn anchors in some way.