#know the lore

[arwen-winchester]

About ‘The Witcher: Blood Origin’ from the lore perspective

This - probably extremely poor-attempted - quick analysis contains spoilers from the books’ version of the witcher lore by Andrzej Sapkowski and latest Witcher-verse abomination from Netlix

So you’ve been warned.

Let set the stage of the drama.

ACT ONE: 

The entirety of ‘The Witcher’ saga is a story based on relations between races and relations beetwen them.

(In one word the book’s version story is about racism)

 At the beggining these said races are mostly gnomes, dwarves, elves and human. In the books there are always unicors - but about them later.

Gnomes and dwarves were - as was said in the books - indigenous inhabitants of the Continent.

I’m gonna talk about monsters in further part of this analisys or maybe in another note.

ACT TWO:

Elves originated in ANOTHER WORLD. Before the Conjunction of the Spheres elves were able to travel between worlds. How? Enter unicors. Elves couldn’t open Ard Gaeth - The Doors/Gates of the Worlds - on their own. To do that they needed help. And unicorns had the ability to easely open/close those Gates. 

At this time there were one single tribe of elves. During the Conjunction elven abilities slowly faded and they devided themselves in to groups or tribes! Aen Seidhe had stayed in the Continent world. The other tribe had become Aen Elle - which later turned into The Wild Hunt.

For regaine the ability of between-world-travelling elven scientists created Hen Ichaer, The Elder Blood. The Elder Blood’s the genetic material ceated by mixing of the genes of elves and unicorns.

ACT THREE:

Conjuction of the Spheres

This huge cataclysmic long-lasting event brought elves, human and monters into the Continent. This event forced elves into magical science experiments with the mix of the genes of elves and unicrorns (Hen Ichaer) and brought people and other creatures into unending war. And human to create first monster hunter known as The First Witcher

ACT FOUR:

THE BLOODLINE

Far before the main story there were four important caracters in the books. The Elven mages -  Aen Saevherne - Avallac’h, Auberon Muircetach, Shiadhal and Eredin Breacc Glass. All of them were injected with genetic mix that turned later into The Elder Blood, Hen Ichaer.

Two of them - Shiadhal and Auberon Muircetach - had a baby girl, Lara Dorren, first in line of ‘Lara’s gene’, a natural born carrier of powerful magical genetic material. Lara was supposed to marry Avallac’h, but she’d fallen in love with human mage -  Cregennan of Lod.

Their doughter was Riannon, born with the last breath of her mother, adopted and raised by queen Cerro of Redania. She was queen of Temeria during Falka’s uprising. Mother of Fiona (only survivg childand first queen of Cintra with Lara’s gene) and Amavet (father of the next Cintra’s queen). Foster mother of Adela, Falka’s bastard doughter.

As a result of many generation of Royal Family of Cintra princess Cirilla was born.

Fun Fact: The Lara’s gene is active in the female-only-line. Males could be carriers, but the gene is inactive and became extinct in two, maybe three generations. The grandparents of princess Cirilla were Calanthe (with barely exinting activator in her genetic material) and Roegner (who in this case was the carrier of almost extinct remnants of the Hen Ichaer genetics).

ACT FIVE:

Creation of the first Witcher

The people responsible for creation of The First Witcher were Alzur and his lover Lylianna, renegade mage from Temeria and sorceress intrested in mutation. They’d tried to create monter hunter but failed multiple times, most of the were spectacular. The First Witcher was a young orphan boy adopted by said mage. That boy was put into a series of magical Trials and Changes. And this time it was a success. the key element of the witcher cretion was youth.

And now crème de la crème - the comparison of the Lore and ‘Witcher: Blood Origin’

1. There was no clans in the elven society. They were devide into classic society structure. And ther’re the first occupiers of the lands that previously belonged to gnomes or dwarves.

2. Ithlinne was  Aen Saevherne (The Knowing Ones) - a high-born and elven powerful mage. Not a peasant girl working in the inn in the middle of nowhere in far north of the Continent.

3. The First Witcher were createed out of a young orphan boy with magic and a lot of mutagenic herbs, not an adult elven-male warrior and other-worldly monster’s heart.

4. WITCHERS ARE STERIL!!! That means they cannot have kids. And the show impled that Eile and Fjall’s child was conceived after him changing into the witcher.

5. The elves travelled between worls WITHOUT monoliths. this addition to the main show was the most outrages thing ever happened in the fantasy plot.

6. In the main show Vesemir needed special magical flowers, Ciri’s blood and Tris help with incantation to even attempt to create that mutagenic potion and in the ‘Blood Origin’ all they need was two mages and monter’s heart

TL;DR: The showrunners of the Netflix’s Witcher-verse graduated Stephen Moffat’s Show Writting University. And in comparison to other Witcher’s properties this is the biggest pile of dragon shit I’ve ever seen.

[atissi]

i don't really like when people say dungeon meshi is accidentally good autistic representation, because while i understand not wanting to make conclusions without explicit confirmation from the author, there's always the weird assumption that non-western authors somehow don't know about things like neurodivergency/queerness/etc. (on top of the assumptions that east asian authors are somehow more naive or oblivious to "western" social issues).

given that dungeon meshi started being published in 2014, it's not really a "work belonging to its times"—it's as contemporary as any other media we discuss on this site, which means it should be fair to assume it engages with contemporary topics (and at the very least, you shouldn't say that the representation is accidental with so much confidence)

but anyways, the chapter "perfect communication" in ryoko kui's "terrarium in a drawer" is some of the most straightforward autistic representation I've seen, and from now on I'm going to assume that laios's character writing is absolutely intentional in that regard:

[hollis-art]

ngl im not even a superman fan. i just REALLY like clark kent,,, (thank you, Smallville, for that.)

[professionalchaoticdumbass]

he transitioned, it's hatsune mike now

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Hey now, Let her cook!

[gallusrostromegalus]

Might I inquire as to what, precisely, a Mustain't is? (Aside from a string of letters I hesitate to Google in that order.)

In October 2014 I went on a road-trip to the Dryest Place In America.

I was having a rough year, very depressed from having dropped out of college for the third time. I decided a road trip was in order to re-set my brain and get a little distance. Being that it was October, and therefore all the campgrounds in the American Southwest were filled with people who have the good sense to camp in reasonable temperatures, I elected to take my parent's minivan so I could car-camp anywhere suitably isolated, and looked up some of the southwest's geographic extremes- the highest place I could drive to (Pikes Peak), the lowest place (Badwater Basin), and for fun, the Dryest Place in the continental US, which turned out to be the Pinacate Volcanic field just west of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It gets rain maybe twice a century and has no standing water, despite being less than 100 miles from the gulf of California.

It's a startlingly beautiful and alien place. The ground is a deep chocolate brown to black volcanic sand, and in mid October, the rabbit brush is turning bright yellow as it shifts to autumn, the organ pipe cacti are a dark green and stand, partially concealed in the brush at exactly human height. The air is alive with birds and insects and bats at night. The stargazing is like looking into the eyes of God.

You get there by driving down a little dirt road called "El Camino Del Diablo", or "The Devil's Road".

I drove out about three hours from Glendale, AZ to get there, arriving at sunset, and felt a profound sense of peace. I stargazed, listening to the bats hunt and sing, and slept peacefully for the first time in months.

I stayed out there for three days, sketching and painting the landscape, taking strolls through this almost alien landscape, and enjoying the light and sound and total absence of human intrusion besides myself.

On the fourth night, it was a new moon, and I awoke in the middle of the night. Something was amiss, and it took me a while to realize it was because I could NOT hear the bats. I was sleeping inside the van with the rear windows rolled halfway down rather than trying to set up the tent, so I when I sat up, I looked out of the van's reflective windows to discover what at first appeared to be A Horse.

It was something between pale gray and bright white in the starlight, standing maybe a dozen feet from the van, sniffing curiously. It made sense- I was in the middle of mustang country and there was quite a bit of foliage in the area for it and it did look like a truly wild horse- lumpy where the bones were jutting out, dusty about the hooves and face.

I was instantly seized by the sort of paralytic fear Sleep paralysis is made of. I couldn't move. It wasn't quite looking at me because it couldn't quite see through the windshield into the shadowy into the shadowy interior, but I had the distinct impression that if I looked away, it would know, and get me.

I already had problems with horses. My beloved Aunt Helen's Prize mare tried to kill me on two separate occasions, and the year before I had to carry my sister-in-law backwards out of a slot canyon whilst reciting the Saint Crispin's Day Speech as loudly as possible to keep a mustang from trampling us to death.

This is approximately what it should have looked like:

Instead, it was... off. like trying to draw a horse from memory.

The waist tapered in.

The legs were slightly too long or the torso slightly too short, probably both.

The ears were Triangular.

The head wasn't quite right- Too narrow and the jaw wasn't heavy enough.

The tail was too long and arced unnaturally away from the body.

The neck arched.

The nostrils were too high and close

The mouth too long.

Whatever this is, a Mustang it Ain't.

I watched it from the back seat as it sniffed around the front of the van, curious with about the side mirrors. It moved around the van, nibbling experimentally on the front door handle. It came up to the side windows, sniffing like a dog, and it's breath didn't fog up the glass.

Finally, it came up to the rear window, which was rolled halfway down to let the fall night air in. Not even half a pane of glass and two feet of air between us, and I could clearly see it's bright blue eyes.

Horses have Elongated pupils to give them a wide field of vision, and eyes that rotate sideways in their sockets so the pupil remains parallel to the ground. Rather creepy to watch, especially the ones with blue eyes.

A real horse that was curious about the interior of the van would have come up to the window more or less sideways, and looked at me with something like this:

Instead, the damn thing walked up and faced the back window head on, staring back at me with this:

I'm not sure how long we watched each other like that, eyes locked. My eyes burned. I couldn't blink. My mouth was dry. I couldn't swallow. My throat began to ache. I couldn't make a sound. My skin began to twitch, like I was severely dehydrated. I couldn't move. My lungs burned. I couldn't move. I couldn't move. I couldn't move. I couldn't move.

Something was touching the side of my hand on the seat next to me. It's my water bottle.

The realization must have broken the terrible paralysis in the lower parts of my brain first, because by the time I consciously realized I could move again, I was already flinging my water bottle out the window at it.

The top was open, and splashed out the window at the Mustain't.

I've never heard such a scream out of an animal. Something halfway between the sound of unquenchable rage vibrating in someone's chest and the way rabbits cry out to God when the dogs catch them.

It jumped back, pivoting away from the van, snarling at the water bottle. I don't think you're supposed to be able to see All of a horse's teeth at once, no matter how angry it is.

I watched it run into the night for some distance, it's pale body visible against the black sand and the dark gray shadow of the ancient volcanic cone it was headed for.

When the blood stopped pounding in my ears, I could hear the bats again.

I debated leaving right then, but I didn't want to get out of the van with that thing in the area, nor litter by leaving the water bottle out there. I also had the awful idea that if I left now, it might somehow be able to follow me home. I ended up staying up three hours to watch the sunrise, shaking and trying to figure out if I'd woken up from a vivid dream, if my meds had stopped working, or if that had really happened. I didn't dare move until I actually felt the temperature rise, before stepping out of the van to grab the bottle. I had my camera ready- I was still using a DSLR back then- to take pictures of the hoofprints, to show how close it had gotten to the van.

No hoofprints.

Beetle tracks in the soft sand around the van, and the clear foot-and-wing prints of a bird that had hopped around then taken off. But no hoofprints.

I went over the entire campsite with the tent broom, to make sure I removed every scrap of evidence I had ever been there, including my footprints, grabbed my water bottle, and drove the three hours back back to Glendale, then decided to do seven more hours of driving to Moab, Utah just to put more than 500 miles, the state line and at least nine things that could be considered "running water" between me and the Mustain't.

-

I still have that water bottle. It has a dent in the bottom from hitting something, but that could have happened at any time. Strange thing though. I can't drink that bottle dry. I'll have it on me, drink whatever I've put in there- water, juice, iced coffee- and eventually feel like I've drunk the whole think and that it's empty. But I open it up and it's still at least a quarter full. I drink that. I get thirsty. I open it up again. ...and there's always a mouthful left.

Not sure what the side effects of drinking from a bottle cursed by a Mustain't to always have some left are, but it lives in the Emergency Breakdown Kit in my car now, just in case I meet another one.

---

(I'm a disabled artist and make my living telling stories, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi or Pre-order the Family Lore book on Patreon)

[inbabylontheywept]

i did wrestling in middle school. on one hand, i was actually quite good at it, which was nice. being good at any sport was a new achievement for me. on the other hand, i was bi, and i was trying very hard not to notice that i was bi, and getting folded into knots by very kind, very muscular dorks made that task somewhat difficult.

adding fire to the problem was that my parents and my grandparents wanted to watch my matches, because they were very proud that their Gangly Nerd Son was actually Sporting, and they wanted to cheer me on. which would've been sweet and all, but if there are four people you do not want there during a key part of your Burgeoning Sexual Awakening, it is your mom and your dad and your grandma and your grandpa.

right? i mean, imagine some guy's got your head in his armpit, and you're going you know, old sweat smells bad, but fresh sweat has a sort of and then you make eye contact with your grandpa in the stands and you remember you're swearing spandex so if you pop a boner people aren't just going to be able to see the outline, they're going to be able to count the veins, and the only way you will be able to restore your family's honor after that would be by moving to siberia and renouncing joy, forever. that, or lift your entire body up by your kneck then twist 180 degrees without paralyzing yourself.

it’s a lot of pressure, is what i’m saying.

still it did motivate me to win my matches really fast. because i was so tall and skinny, i was stupidly good at the double leg takedown, and then once someone was knocked down, i'd just do the half nelson and kind of flip em over for the pin. then the ref would count to three and i’d win. EZPZ.

i had one match where that went great. won in the first ten seconds, sat back down, and prepared myself for a good hour or two of doing fuck all. didn't even feel bad the parents/grandparents were gonna be bored. the matches went up from me in 5 pound increments (i was in the 115 lbs division) and it was going great until we got to the 145 lbs division. the other school's wrestler stepped onto the mat, and she turned out to be a girl so our guy flipped, because for straight guys, wrestling a girl is not a pleasant experience.

i'm not entirely unsympathetic. my experience wrestling dudes was definitely a little traumatic. but also, i dealt. guy could've dealt too. instead, he refused to wrestle, and the coach went - fine. not even worth fighting over.

so he went to the 140 pounder, and that guy said, nosir, my mom said mormons can't wrestle girls. next guy down, 135 pounder, now he knew he could pull the same card and thus did. 130 pounder, 125, both tapped out. he got to the 120 guy, and that guy was catholic, but he said he was considering being mormon, and thus would have to pass. as a precaution.

coach blew up a little at that. he said "is there anyone - anyone - on this entire goddamn team that is willing to wrestle a girl?" and then he pointed at me and said "YOU. MAT. GO."

and i'll be real, if i'd been paying more attention, i'd have pulled the mormon card too, but i'd just been putting all that audio into a buffer file because i was reading, so i was halfway across the mat before i even processed what had been said and by then it was too late to turn back.

still i had a plan. and my plan - my beautiful, perfect plan - was to do what i'd always done. tackle, flip, pin, win. sit down. read. bore my family to death. move on.

i got the first part right. she was bigger than me, but she wasn't taller. just an incredibly stout woman. god built me like a snake with glasses, just as he built her like a combat cube. the problem was the half nelson. soon as she was down, i tried hooking my arm under hers from behind and for both genders, the defense for this move is just clamping your arms really fucking tight against your sides. if you're a guy, that's whatever, but if you're a girl - especially if you're god's chosen combat cube - that pins your opponents hand right against your boob.

so, i got the hook in, she clamped, my whole arm pressed against something soft, my coach was yelling THE HALF NELSON. BABYLON! JUST FINISH IT! FINISH THE HALF NELSON! and i was just trying to press hard enough to finish, when then my brain went

...oh.

and i flipped out. of course i flipped out. i like girls, and touching a boob is an elemental experience, and i was not ready. i was not prepared. i had not committed the sacred rites. i recoiled like i'd just brushed my arm against the surface of the sun, stood up, and backed away. nobody in the room knew why i'd given up. all they saw was me, right about to win, suddenly flailing around and scrambling. so everyone started screaming at me to just get the half nelson again, and i couldn't really yell back there's a fuckin' boob in the way and it was very distressing, and the only way i could think of to make them stop was just doing it over again the right way.

so i did.

i hunkered down and prepared myself for Wrasslin' Attempt #2: The Sequel.

i knocked her down again, EZPZ. i went for the half nelson again, but she knew what i was about to do so she super clamped, and i knew she was gonna super clamp, so i wound my arm back like a pop-eye cartoon punch before swinging my arm through the gap between her bicep and her side, but the amount of time i spent winding back super signalled what i was about to to do, which gave her time to clamp even harder, which somehow redirected the entire force of the popeye punch to the bottom of her bra.

it spat out a single boob the same way an action hero might spit out one single tooth after getting a solid crack across the jaw. as if to say:

*ptooie.* "that all you got?"

i did not actually see this. my experience was that first there was an arm, then there was a bit of boob, but i was braced, i was ready, forward at all costs, tatakae motherfuckers, and then the boob went away, and i didn't know where it went but my team, and the audience, and everyone who was in front of me, they all gasped like i just kicked them in the stomach. except for my coach. he was behind me, and thus one of the four people in the room who did not see the boob. now my mom, my dad, my grandma, and my grandpa, they all got flashed but nooooooo, coach thunderbutt was behind me, and he didn't see shit so he was still yelling NOOOOOO BABYLON WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST FINISH THE NELSON! GO FOR THE KILL! BABYLON! BABYLON!

but i did not go for the kill. i stood up and she stuffed her boob back real fast, and we just kind of circled each other awkwardly until time ran out and i won on points. that's not technically allowed, but the ref had some mercy on me.

my coach did not.

i barely had time to sit down before he strode over to the bench to chew me out.

"babylon," he said, in that very calm way people get when they're too pissed to yell. "why didn't you pin?"

and i didn't know how to say well coach, i tried, but there was a boob, and it kept getting in the way, and my mom was watching, and so was my dad, and so was his dad, and his mom, and god (like bible god) and that's a can of worms because i'm pretty sure he was already mad at me, and i'm wearing spandex, and i think i might have to move to siberia, so instead i said

"i uh. i forgot how to do the half nelson."

which is actually impossible. forgetting how to do the half nelson is like forgetting how to swallow your spit.

and he looked at me, like i was the dumbest person in the entire world, and i looked through him like i'd just survived my 250th day in a trench at verdun, and he said: fine.

fine.

but we're all going to practice it for an hour tomorrow because you forgot.

and then he left.

and my buddies had the gall to be salty about it. i got so many comments saying "dude, why didn't you just tell him the truth?" and i said "you can if you care so damn much. you could've wrestled the girl too. maybe someone else should do the hard thing today."

but they didn't. so the next day, we did an hour of half nelson drills, and i spent a decent amount of time getting thrown around the mat, and it was pleasant in exactly the way that i hated and the year after that, to the surprise of everyone but myself, i quit wrestling and joined the trivia team.

and if you want more reasons to love my mom, my grandpa joked after the match that i might have to talk to my bishop about it, and my mom told him he would be allowed to make jokes after he stood in front of a crowd of 110 people in spandex underpants while wrestling a woman that was not his wife.

he paused for almost five seconds after that. then he said: aw. hell. sorry babylon.

and i'd have preferred my apology from god, but getting it from him was pretty good too.

[perplexingly]

Spirit companions

[linkeduniverse]

Entrance pt.3

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[chloesimaginationthings]

Vanny can’t explain everything in the FNAF pizzaplex..

[mooneggtarts]

Mike will tellthe kid once he's a little older, or once Mike has the mental capacity to explain it

[ditzybat]

tim drake is the type of guy to drop random lore then walk away.

tim: ugh i hate baseball, it’s like, when you have to play it in order to save a whole planet once, every game after seem boring

dick: that’s not…

tim: only downside to that was how we almost totaled barts brand new spaceship

dick: what spaceship??

—

tim: oh, hi mom

shiva: hello timothy, how are you? still keeping up with your training i take it?

bruce: mother? she’s not your —

shiva: let’s spar then timothy, let’s leave it strictly non lasting injuries, i don’t rather feel like dying by your hand again today

tim: of course!! ^-^

bruce: again?

—

tim: man i forgot to take my meds again

duke: your meds for what?

tim: i have no spleen, so i have to take probiotics, it really is manageable but i dont know where those pills went

duke: i’m almost scared to ask, tim, how did you lose your spleen?

tim: weird spider dude, it was a whole thing

—

tim: you talk a lot of shit for someone who got replaced as heir to your immortal grandfathers empire by me

damian: you what!?

tim: i regularly beat his ass at online chess every week too, and i don’t think you’ve seen him since he stole your corpse

—

tim: here

jason: what’s this?

tim: a box of all the photos i took when i obsessively stalked you for your entire tenure as robin

jason: thanks?

tim: you’re welcome, bye!

jason: … creepy ass kid…

—

steph: so how did you to get together?

bernard: well —

tim: i saved him from a getting cut open by chaos monster cult members

bernard: yep, i was rescued from being a vessel for a greek god, and we just really clicked afterwards

steph: well, it’s better than the brick

[havanillas]

Random question, have you think of Ratio's parents are Alhaitham and Kaveh?

it doesn't make a lot of sense since star rail and genshin timelines are so far apart but it's still one of my favorite ratio headcannons, like what if ratio's interest in engineering comes from growing up with mehrak

[gomi--neko]

Lawrence being a jigsaw apprentice makes Saw 3 extremely funny

[aveloka-draws]

Aww Webber! What a precious bean! Bet it shocked the Lamb to see some random kid pop out of a grave, at least without a proper ritual!

A little! But he was welcomed by them pretty quickly. Lamb was left wondering if Narinder caused him to resurrect somehow.

The undertaker is usually the one to take care of Webber, since Lamb is often busy and Narinder is too creeped out to do it. She doesnt seem to mind since she gets someone to ramble to while working.

Thinking Nolen was probably the one who buried the skull while doing rounds around the camp's graveyard, not knowing it would make him appear. So to everyone its a mistery how the lil spider arrived to the cult pff.