You know that scene in Endwalker where people from all across Eorzea helped find the adamantite needed for the Ragnarok, and if you'd done certain raids or story content the people involved in those raids and story content would show up or be mentioned in some capacity? As touching and cool as it was, I still think it was a missed opportunity to highlight just how beloved the Warrior of Light is.
"But wait," you say. "Didn't we have that in Shadowbringers, when all the factions in Norvrandt came together to help build the great Talos that would drag down Mt. Gulg? Didn't they all come to help the Warrior of Darkness put an end to the Light?"
Well, no. Not really. Sure it was the Warrior of Darkness and Thancred who'd made friends with the miners of Twine, but Alisaie had known the people of Mord Souq and the Inn at Journey's Head far longer than the Warrior of Darkness had. They were her people the way the Night's Blessed were Y'shtola— I mean, Master Matoya's. Urianger was going to ask the fae folk before deciding to ask the Crystarium's people instead, and those were the Exarch's people. The fae folk were Urianger's. Alphinaud went to Kholusia, and they were his people. In other words, other than being the mythical figure that the Scions and the Crystal Exarch believed whole-heartedly would save the world from succumbing to the Light, the Warrior of Darkness had very little to do with rallying the various factions of Norvrandt to their aid. The Scions and the Crystal Exarch had been in Norvrandt for centuries, years, months. At best, the Warrior of Darkness had been in Norvrandt for a few weeks. They did not come for the Warrior of Darkness. They came for the Scions and the Crystal Exarch, and to see the Light extinguished.
This is not the case in Endwalker, if you'd done the various raids and story content involved. Without them, it's an assortment of the people the Scions had been involved with: Ishgardians and pirates from Limsa Lominsa, the East Aldenard Trading Company and the Kojin, the Ironworks, the junior Scions, and the treasure hunters of Idyllshire. With them, you get direct assistance from the Redbills, the Bozjans, Ejika Tsunjika, the Four Lords, the Majestic Theater Company, Gaius Baelsar himself, and the Idyllshire goblins—people who had next to no contact with the Scions and only lent their aid because they were friends with the Warrior of Light (or at least owed them one, in the case of Gaius Baelsar). They didn't know shit about the Scions or saving the world, they just heard the Warrior of Light was involved and immediately offered their assistance.
And I wish the game would acknowledge that! The game makes a big fuss in Dawntrail about how the Warrior of Light has walked the world and has loved and been loved in return, but this scene would have been the perfect chance to showcase it! You have all these people very clearly and directly intending their aid for the Warrior of Light—Leofard and the Redbills personally flying to Old Sharlayan to deliver the supplies; Soroban and Hancock passing messages from the Four Lords and the Lexentales, the Bozjans and Ejika Tsunjika; Gaius going back to Valens' Weapons experiments—likely an endeavour that hurt—to find relics suitable for the Ragnarok's purposes; the Idyllshire goblins giving their all because how could they do any less for their dear friend in their hour of need?
All these people offered their aid not for the Scions, not to save the world, but because the Warrior of Light needed their aid, and while it was a great scene for the player, I can't help but wish it's acknowledged in-universe as well.
What time are you going to be livestreaming yourself watching season one?
Okay so 9 am PST, Saturday 6 jan/tomorrow. I have no idea how discord works, but it's @thescholarlystrumpet's server and I'm sure she'll be happy to assist with details.
For anyone who wants to watch the stream, I'll post a guest link closer to the time, probably under this... thread? I don't know what it's called but a reblog of this post.
Reblog this so people can find it :]
[context for unsuspecting humans stumbling on this, I have never watched good omens and I made a trilogy of posts summarising the show based on what I learned from tumblr. the fandom then adopted me, and now I am going to watch season one's first three episodes so yall can see my reactions]
"Seungmin would be SO hot if he got muscle like, can you imagine?" You would be hotter if you shut your mouth but we can't always get what we want so <3
Simon Petrikov has always been a GILF and before the crown took over his mind, I think we can all agree long white haired - not ice king yet Simon was kinda hot before the madness set in
Now that I have your attention - hear me out AT fandom- what if Ice Prince in Fionna’s dreams is what Simon/Ice King thought he was throughout the original Adventure Time series?
I always thought Ice King having extremely high self confidence was just a gag or joke before we learned about who Simon was- but there’s tons of instances where he declares he’s hot & doesn’t mind showing off his body in the original. And with the canon 12 yr time skip, we know now everything about Fionna & Cake’s AU and Ice King’s actions to form the AU was based off the madness of the crown playing into Simon’s wish fulfillment, trauma, & life; but also a form of escapism from his reality as a lonely man in a world he cannot relate too.
In the original & first appearance of the AU Ice Queen is H O T {and I’m not just saying that as a pansexual} she is leagues more attractive than how Ice King was and I would argue looks more like what I think Betty would look like if she wore the crown. She’s wish fulfillment but being heavily crown coded explains why she’s no longer Simon’s mind/Fionna’s dreams.
But Ice Prince? That is way more Simon coded than crown & also doesn’t match any of the male background characters we do see in episode 1. What if that’s not just Simon wishing he could be more like Ice King but instead what he actually thought he looked like the whole time the crown controlled him for all those centuries? That would explain why Ice King was so shameless but also partially explain why Simon mentions in ep 2 of Fionna and Cake that he both misses but hates what Ice King looked like.
Yes it’s a Tuxedo Mask reference & an obvious sign Simon still has some magic powers, but you cannot deny that if Simon wanted to dress as Ice King he’d probably go a more Ice Prince style to line up with how he currently dresses. If the AU remained the AU that was all originally knew, Ice Queen would’ve been some evil Sailor Scout or Queen Beryl coded character to Fionna Campbell; Ice Prince wouldn’t be a thing if it was just an alternate universe. And that tall glass of frosty water is definitely what Simon wished he looked like {honestly me too, Ice Prince is so gender}
EDIT: Btw in ep 2 of Fionna and Cake, Ice Queen is seen as the icecream vendor and she looks nothing like Simon but way more like a cross between the Gunther penguins and crown. And yes I know Fionna “dates” Ice King in the original au - my point still stands that it’s still what Simon wanted/thought he looked like with the crown on. Fionna Campbell would be into a very blue robes & wacky eyebrows Ice Prince and Ice Queen wouldn’t be just an icecream vendor who’s nice to kids if the crown had influence still
one thing i realized about fandaniel's dynamic with xande that really fucks me up is, like.... there are the obvious parallels that canon draws between meteion and xande, and their roles in hermes/fandaniel's lives. and there are also the parallels between fandaniel and meteion. there's a lot to unpack.
but it hit me recently that one of hermes' deepest, most devastating regrets is having failed meteion, with abuse and hypocrisy and the project he had the authority to make her a part of.
he was painfully aware that he wasn't fit to be a father; that he'd put them in a bitch of an unsatisfactory situation with his lack of foresight; that he was currently fucking things up in ways he did not know how to understand or articulate, much less address. he knew that there was no support system for this; not just for his mental health issues in general, but to educate him and hold him accountable about how to be decent to her, because he knew no one would give a fuck. the closest thing anyone would have given him to advice would be to just kill her and start over.
he says he hopes she'll find a better parent out there in space somewhere, because he knows there is not one to be found for her anywhere on this star, including him. she was one of the most helpless, vulnerable people in their society, and there was no backup for her if he mistreated her, if he failed. and he did.
so of course his next attempt to find a meteion would be an emperor. of course he'd be at the very top of the most powerful empire in the world, at the time. of course he'd position himself as his servant, devote himself to him utterly, and value his authority above all. he wanted someone he could never hurt the way he hurt meteion again.
No, for real, I think this is the fifth redesign I've done of her character. I don't know why but the past designs I've made for her just weren't satisfying to me for some reason. Some of the designs I decided were just bad or didn't suit her while the others were similar but I just didn't like how it looked (tank top, large sweater, scarf, the rainbow bracelet and a long skirt). But I...think I've finally landed on a design that I liked the most out of all the ones I've made so far. (Please let it be the last. Please, my brain and heart. I would like to settle on a design and move on!)
ANYWAYS, I used Teruya's DRA sprite as a base for Tamami since, well, she is his mom and she's about as short as DRA!Teruya (or maybe shorter, I don't know, the wiki gave me two heights for his DRA self. I decided she's about 4'8'' to 5''). So it made sense to use this sprite for her, even when I made slight adjustments to her eyes and nose by making the eyes a little wider and bigger and the nose a bit more pronounced as DRA!Teruya's nose is very small. Out of three of the five designs I've made, I kept this short hairstyle of hers with a large ahoge as I loved this style the most and didn't want to change it. I based her bangs off of SDRA2!Teruya's length and style and the back of her hair like DRA!Teruya's, but I changed the way the strands looked so that it'd look more like her own hairstyle but you can still see the resemblance between the two of them. The ahoge, though, is very much real, unlike Kojiro's and Teruya's (they canonically style their hair like that on purpose), and she cannot fix it no matter how hard she tries. So she just gave up and let it be. Tamami got stuck with the protagonist trait, even though she died before the events of Danganronpa, lol. I've never been a fan of fictional kids looking like carbon copies of their parents. Like, you have the meta-power to design these kids anyway you like and you just make them look exactly like one of their parents? Unless their look-alike appearance is plot relevant, it's just weird for them to look so much like one parent that they can easily be mistaken as siblings and has zero resemblance to the other. And that's saying a lot coming from me who looks a lot more like my Irish dad from skin tone alone, but even then people can tell that I'm at least Asian because of my facial structure and even asked as such, tying my appearance to my Filipino mom. I don't know, I just like seeing a mix of traits for the kids to have inherited from their parents, you know? So, since Kojiro already has a design with green hair and green eyes, I decided to have Tamami have a different hair color, gray and green, but she also has green eyes, just a different shade. Teruya inherited his mother's eyes while getting his father's hair. Since I headcanon Teruya to have freckles, Tamami has freckles as well and as I mentioned before in this post, I adjusted her skin tone to be more obviously tanned instead of dusty from my older drawings of her. And then there's the outfit, which is a dark gray tank top, a long denim(?) skirt, dark reddish-brown boots, a blue handkerchief scarf to match with Kojiro, and a big fluffy yellow sweater with a checkerboard pattern that is tucked into her skirt, and long puffy sleeves that hangs off of her shoulders. The rainbow stripes on her skirt and the rainbow bracelet ties her design to Teruya's as he wears a rainbow as well, and I thought it'd be a neat idea for them to have a similar love for rainbows even though they've never met (cause she died via childbirth). The thought of Teruya still inheriting some of his mom's mannerisms and traits even though they never officially met scratches my brain in a good, angsty way. I wonder what Kojiro thinks whenever he recognizes parts of Tamami in Teruya...And that's it for Tamami's design! Hopefully it'll stay this way.
Tiny characters that can beat the shit out of an enemy that's much taller than them will always be peak character design, you can't change my mind on that.
tim faking a back injury while play wrestling with lucy all so he can pop up and pin her back down to the ground and tickle her senseless, can you please imagine how cute that would be????
i have more restraint than god when it comes to creating things and yet people still always seem convinced i need to be told to stop to keep myself safe. you don't even know what i'm like when i don't restrain myself. if i wasn't listening to my body i'd be pumping out anywhere from 3-15 pieces of art every day. you don't even fucking know the unimaginable tidal wave of work i would do if i didn't know burning out sucks and do my best to avoid it. "don't work too hard willow!" you don't even know what working too hard is for me. i could be the machine of a content creator if i tried at the cost of my entire well being but i'm not because i like being a functional person. this IS me at a healthy level of self restraint bitch