#kingdom mumbles

[kingdom-creatin]

Benjamin and Kasidy are talking, Julian stops by their table to deliver something to Ben.

Kasidy: Why hello stranger! I haven't seen you in days.

Julian: I've been filling out reports for Starfleet Medical.

[He hands a padd to Ben]

Kasidy: I knew there was a reason I didn't join Starfleet, I couldn't do this paperwork.

Julian: Smart.

[He receives the padd back and walks away. His tone is flat and tired.]

Kasidy: Well, there was a time when you couldn't get him to shut up!

[She glances at Julian, confused and slightly concerned.]

Ben: I think I like him better this way.

Kasidy: That's mean.

[Her tone is reproachful.]

Ben: I was just kidding.

[He laughs breathily and smiles.]

Kasidy: No, you weren't.

[She looks unhappy and shakes her head softly.]

[Ben's smile drops and they look at each other, both bothered.]

---

I don't even know what I want to say about this moment rn, just, every time I see it, it makes me love Kasidy more and simultaneously really want to just shake Sisko around.

Edit from reblog:

I've decided at least one thing I do want to say about this scene: it shows beautifully how not well both Sisko and Bashir are in one fell swoop. This is a wonderfully done setup for the tone of the rest of the episode, finally really pointing out how severely they've all had to change and how they've all been traumatized and hardened by the war. Any smaller interpersonal issues aside, Sisko is not the kind of guy, the kind of commanding officer, to make that sort of comment out loud about one of his officers in cruelty or disregard for their well-being, certainly not about one he trusts and respects professionally. Something is wrong with Sisko at this moment. But still too, we see it really being addressed that something has been wrong with Bashir. It's the fact that this assessment has to be made by someone outside of his fellow senior staff that makes it suddenly more prominent of an issue, and adds to the meanness and strangeness of the comment Sisko makes about him.

[1000dactyls]

happy 1 year!

[shattered-earth]

🍚HYRULE: Taste of the Kingdom is HERE! 🍴

I've been working on this with friends for a few months now, it's a 32 page zine that's like a fake cooking magazine with illustrations of the food from Tears of the Kingdom paired with real working recipes written by actual chefs!!!!!!

LOOK HOW GOOD EVERYONE DID AHHHH!!!

⭐️It's up in my store right now⭐️ and for this weekend (nov 17th-19th) it's also making it's physical debut at a few cons: ⭐️Anime NYC: Artist Alley H16 @hikazio Dealers 2605 @milqshop

⭐️Kumoricon: Artist Alley M12 @zetallis

Oh and here's a preview of the recipe list! We included a quick reference icon for vegetarian / pescatarian / vegan friendly recipes this time too, most of the recipes are vegetarian naturally :D CREDITS (Check them all out!!!) Recipes from chefs: @lvl1-chef| @jammycooks | @fictionfood & Delicious art from: @shattered-earth @daniellesylvan @finnichang @onemegawatt @chiouart @hikazio @zetallis @scookart @lowaharts

[the-phantom-peach]

TOTK SPOILERS

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haha,, can you guess where I’m at in my playthrough? ha

[godmodebeginswithlesbians]

[ilikedetectives]

I need her earing and hair trinket in bg3 for my Tav. Ok her hair and her brother's hair are great too likeee

[medouse]

okay literally what the fuck is everyone talking about with neil gaiman. distant iceberg on the horizon. what happened????

[paopu-moo]

Ok but have yall seen the trailer for the steam release

[skyburger]

its very funny to me that smash bros players talk about it the way they do like its not just the nintendo fighting game

[jadesolayray]

What if Twisted Wonderland is set in the Kingdom Hearts universe?

What if Yuu accidentally traveled between worlds after something happened to them because they are a dormant keyblade holder and they just. Haven't figured it out yet. (Could also explain why we don't know too much about their past or how they got there, the trip might have knocked a few memories out of place)

Like, Kairi had the ability to use a keyblade for over 10 years but didn't find out she could use one until someone explicitly told her.

No wonder Yuu can tank so much bullshit, keyblade users come with bulky defense as a default due to what they end up going through, just look at Sora, how often does that kid get thrown off cliffs? ALL THE TIME yet he's still alive.

And let's be real, the creators of Kingdom Hearts would 100% make a pseudo otome just to expand the lore.

Honestly, it may be unlikely, but just IMAGINE the reaction such a reveal would get. It would be amazing, everyone would malfunction, the Fandom would be in shambles and everything would be on fire. It would be so funny

[etruatcaelum]

On Semblances.

As this post mentions, neither Salem nor Ozma have ‘true’ ancient magic anymore: her immense power derives from the pools of light and darkness, and when Ozma created the maidens, they sacrificed their divine gifts but awakened their aura. Both now wield powers functionally identical to the aura and dust-based magic of modern humans; the sole difference between them and ordinary humans is vastly greater experience and, in Salem’s case, the interaction between her infinite aura and her grimmness.

(That is the subject for another post, but in essence grimm flesh and atrum ‘burn’ aura and this reaction can be controlled and channeled just like dust; Salem, who is grimm, uses this to her advantage to mimic ‘true’ magic.)

And, because their ‘magic’ is really just aura trained to a level beyond what any mortal could achieve in a single lifetime, both of them do have semblances.

Salem’s semblance is less an outward projection of her self than an inward one. It developed through the slow reconstruction of her mind and soul after a long period during which she had no sense of identity and was just kind of mindlessly dreaming all the time; her semblance sparked from the need to become whole and to know herself again. What it does, in essence, is immanentize her thinking.

Think method of loci, but crystallized from the imaginary construct into a real, tangible place—in a sense, the interior of her soul, her semblance, is a realm. Not one anything like as vast or complicated as Remnant or the Ever After, but quite a bit larger and more intricate than the vaults, and accessible only through doors she chooses to open.

It’s how she keeps herself sane and also why her sense of identity and conviction are so unshakable in the present: Salem knows herself extremely well and nearly everything that defines who and what she is, she made a deliberate choice to include as a fundamental part of herself. She is capable of change—and in fact capable of changing herself very rapidly and easily, once she decides to do so—but she cannot be forced or coerced or compelled or worn down or manipulated into it. Because the only way she can change is for her to literally disassemble and reassemble parts of herself and her semblance will not let her do that if she doesn’t truly want it to.

Ozma doesn’t know that they even have a semblance, because their semblance fluctuates from one life to the next; they believe the permutations of their own semblance have all been semblances taken from the lives they steal. What’s actually going on is that their very fragile sense of self gave them a semblance that lacks clear definition because it has yet to be fully-realized. It warps and bends and molds itself into the hollowed-out masks of every host, then loses that shape once those masks crumble again to expose Ozma.

There are, however, some constants:

The base essence of their semblance is remembrance and accretion of time. It’s the grasping for another chance and the tearing pain of almost and the venom of what if and maybe then and it wasn’t supposed to happen this way all rolled into one. It’s the aching possibility on the trailing edge of a mistake. Often, it takes the form of small-scale temporal manipulation: with Ozpin, it became an ability to ‘skip’ a second or two here and an idle moment there and ‘save up’ that time to spend all at once, squeezing several minutes worth of action into a single fraction of a second. (<- Ozma still has this ability and Oscar can tap into it for a while, but after the events of V8 it fades as their self-identification as Ozpin disintegrates.)

As themself—once freed from their curse and restored to live as their own person—their semblance is effectively only half-formed: not quite latent, but not truly manifested either. They will need to find themself and know themself before they’re able to fully bring it out. In its true, unalloyed form, Ozma’s semblance is unbinding: the breaking of chains, the opening of doors, the snipped thread of fate to unleash boundless possibility.

In less poetic terms, they will be able to reach back and bring forward the moments when what is now became inescapable. Nothing can be undone, nothing erased: the past cannot be unwritten, but what they can do is create a second chance to rewrite the future, whether by literally making a new possibility that didn’t exist before or by cutting through whatever beliefs or rationalizations a person clings to to pretend that they have no other choice.

Their fully-realized semblance will turn inward and confront them whether they like it or not; toward other people it is entirely under their control. (<- It is also quite likely the one thing capable of reaching into Salem’s head and shaking the foundations of her self, by drawing out her line of reasoning for committing to those choices and asking her to walk those paths anew, decide again.)

Oscar does not have a semblance and will not have a semblance until he’s separated from Ozma. If the integration were completed he would eventually produce a new permutation of Ozma’s, but it wouldn’t in any meaningful sense belong to Oscar, because Oscar as an individual would, for all intents and purposes, be dead.

But once he’s separated from Ozma, and once he sorts out who he is and who he wants to be outside of the looming existential dread of becoming Ozma, he’ll be able to discover his semblance.

(<- Also his aura, when not subsumed by Ozma’s, will turn out to actually be orange. Like a pumpkin. Because his Ozian allusion isn’t Tip OR Dorothy, it’s Jack Pumpkinhead)

Oscar’s semblance is… essentially, a hyper-specialized form of empathy: he can take the words people say and unfold them to reveal the things they mean, the feelings they’re trying to express but can’t communicate clearly, and then find the words to articulate those things back. He’s an interpreter, not of language but of emotions. He’s able to very quickly talk through to the heart of a problem, and he’s preternaturally good at listening in a way that makes people feel seen and heard. It also has the side effect of making him almost impossible to lie to.

Even with Ozma in his head, there are traces of this latent ability eking through to the surface—his determination to connect with Ironwood throughout V7, his intuitive sense for what to say to Hazel and Emerald to earn their trust, and even earlier, his realization that Ozpin is lying and his ability to break through long enough to spill Jinn’s name: these are all inklings of what could be, if not smothered by Ozma’s curse.

That sort of rising-to-the-surface is very rare among Ozma’s hosts. With Oscar, it’s happening partly because he’s fighting so hard to hold on for as long as he can, partly because his upbringing gave him a pretty strong sense of identity to begin with, and partly because the nature of his semblance itself resists falsehood and obfuscation. Latent though it is, it still gives him a firm place to stand when he pushes back and asserts himself against Ozma’s resignation. This struggle also has the effect of deepening the potential of his semblance—in effect, training it before it even properly manifests—so that once he’s free and it emerges fully he gets in tune with it fast.

[kingdom-creatin]

... well then, once more for another year

[1000dactyls]

all i want to do is run around hyrule and study the intricate archeological ruins of my ancestors but some guy underground just exploded my boyfriend/knight/sworn other/the only other person who’s known me for 100 years/housemate

totk roleswap doodles!!! spoilers below the ‘read more’

[anicehomicidaltree]

👀 oh no

[minasweep]

remembering the personal effect natewantstobattles "paid in exposure" album had on me

[nanamis-bigtie]

I promise I am cooking something soothing and fluffy, sorry you need to cope with my dark sense of humor 🤣