#meta event

[jinglebunns]

Happy Birthday Kirby!!! 🌟🌟🌟

[fumifooms]

I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after

The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually

Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-

He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.

And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he gets across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt and be on your guard and shit and.

When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings

"Man they really know what you hate huh". Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.

It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmares, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)

"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species

[tarragonthedragon]

i think if the Baudelaire children had pretended to be fooled by one of Olaf's disguises immediately he would have been so thrown he would have outed himself on the spot

[iwasthewind]

Venti and Diona's interaction in the alchemy event is so special to me... because Diona is someone who really hasn't had any reliable parental figures in her life at all. Her father is a drunkard who barely has any time for her. She got her vision because she walked into the pouring rain as a child, all alone, terrified, to look for her drunk father in a forest full of animals and monsters and bring him home. Her father takes better care of Razor than her. She was so lonely she talked to a spring in the hopes that the rumours were true and there really was a fairy inside, listening. And then the voices that used to answer stopped, too. Leaving her with nothing but a curse- any drink she mixed would be divine. She's only twelve at most and she works in a bar. Her employer exploits her skills for profit. There's advertisements around Mondstadt advertising Diona's drinks specifically. Everyone loves them. Diona hates them. Everyone tells her how lovely her drinks are. Diona herself, despite despising alcohol, is proud of her skills. That's so fucked up. That's all so fucked up.

There's so many jokes about "haha child wants to destroy the wine industry but works in a bar" and while I can see why people find it funny they're honestly...so tasteless. Diona is a child who villainizes alcohol because she can't bear the thought of her father being at fault for his actions because she loves him so much. That he could drink less and he could spend more time with her and he could help her with her emotions but never does. That he could spend time with her and immerse himself in her interests but he never does. That he's willing to do all this for other people instead, but not her. That he chooses to do these things for other people, but he almost never chooses to do them for her.

But Venti does. Venti chooses to do all these things with Diona. He calls all residents of Mond his children and that's Diona too. He takes the time to search Dragonspine for an ingredient she might like, he chats with her and accompanies her to the location of the alchemy event, he presumably spends hours with her as she searches for ingredients and mixes her drink, keeping her company and making sure she's safe.

He doesn't have to do this. He doesn't have to patiently endear himself to her because he knows she hates people who drink, he doesn't have to bother going all the way to Dragonspine to find her something unique because he knows she's proud of her creations, he doesn't have to spend hours in the company of a lonely child who he has nothing in common with-but he does.

So many people would think he's doing it for the drink, but they all lack reading comprehension skills because I said so. Diona wants to create a drink which keeps people sober. Venti isn't going to get drunk and he's not doing it for the drink. It isn't pity either, it's affection- he loves his child and he wants to spend time with her and make sure she's safe. That's all. They're so special to me <3

Oh and another thing that I forgot to add- the Spring Fairy Diona talked to, Callirhoe, only found the spring in Springvale thanks to "a gentle breeze guiding her." The person who listened to the cries and rants of a lonely child was also coincidentally someone guided there by Venti. Still girlie why that specific blessing 😔

[dykenav]

okay hear me out. tlt animated adaptation BUT it starts with harrow the ninth. we have a desperate housewives-esque voiceover narration speaking in second person. the audience doesn’t know about anything that happened in gtn and doesn’t know that the “flashbacks” didn’t actually happen. first season ends with harrow finding palamedes in the river and the voiceover saying “you never could have guessed that he saw me.”

SECOND SEASON. we’re following the events that happen in gideon the ninth. there’s no more voiceover. nothing that happened in the first season is even mentioned. it’s not explicitly clear that we’ve gone back in time but it becomes more clear as the season progresses. lyctorhood wasn’t really fully explained in the first season either, but there were clues that become more obvious as the mystery unfolds. season ends pretty much exactly like the book ends, bringing us to the moment that the first season started.

THIRD SEASON. starts where the first season left off, follows the end of htn. Gideon desperate housewives voiceover is back.

fourth and fifth seasons would follow nona and alecto, obviously, but the format of them would have to be equally confusing and weird so I need to wait and see what alecto is like before I theorize on that.

or the show could just end after the events of harrow finishes and leave nothing wrapped up or explained. I honestly kind of like that better

[brightwingedbat]

I gotta talk about Vanak Faithwalker, an Astral Ward charr who is part of the Amnytas Meta event. And now potentially confirmed a nonbinary character.

They have a feminine charr model, while their voice is deep and masculine, I absolutely adore how their voice sounds and how they look. I always wondered what they identified by, but there was no clues anywhere in SotO.

Video below of their voice from Amnytas Event.

But now in Janthir Wilds, we meet them again and get some confirmation via the Commander's journals.

Vanak is referred to by 'they' in the Commander's journals. As shown below. (Chapter 1 and chapter 2 journal snippets below.)

[always-a-joyful-note]

Enstars sure is an experience. Did I miss anything?

[cozymochi]

pls.. pls. Tia crumbs

I am facing withdrawals 🥺

ERMMMMMM i wanted to finish something for the ongoing Stitch Event (for reference, i started it during it’s JP run 😭 and even wanted to repurpose it for the old wardrobe meme months ago, wheee) but i don’t think I ever will truly finish this tbh. So I haphazardly cobbled the gist together on top of my wip and i’m calling it on this attempt!! Do you see my vision

thought it’d go well with Grim’s Lilo 🥺

[starflungwaddledee]

maybe a little bit generic of me, but i adore the dream land four!

magolor and bandee are tied for tippy top favourite, but this whole group just mean everything to me and i am extremely normal about them. after these guys it's probably a very close galacta knight and marx!

king dedede was actually my first ever played exposure to the franchise (through smash multiplayer at a party where i picked him due to Bird) and marx was my first 'character i recognised + played + was obsessed with outside the mains' in star allies so i still consider him my original Little Freak (affectionate)

ask answer for @trainerbob23!

[mollywog]

“So that day, in music assembly, the teacher asked who knew the valley song. Your hand shot right up in the air. She stood you up on a stool and had you sing it for us. And I swear, every bird outside the windows fell silent,” Peeta says.

When Prim’s name is called for the 74th reaping, Katniss sweeps Prim behind her, Volunteers in her place, stands up on the stage, and when Effie calls for applause, District 12 takes part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence.

[thechekhov]

Alright I know the gag of people asking for spoilers has been run into the ground by this point but I think it’s still funny so here goes:

Hey can you describe the upcoming plot in very specific detail? Actually maybe you could draw it so it’s easier to follow the action. Although drawing and writing all of that at once might be a lot to handle, so you could release it in batches every once in a while instead of all at once. It would be like some sort of webcomic! Then we could read the updates and learn the plot as we get new pages! What a neat concept, am I right?

idk man, that seems like a great concept, but I'm afraid it's a bit far-fetched.

Do you really think anyone would read that? Like, pay attention to the dialogue and understand what the characters are saying? Figure out small bits of foreshadowing in order to theorize effectively about what could happen next? Consider larger themes and put them together with how the characters act to understand the author's intended meaning beyond just the surface-level, at-face-value reading and shallow interpretation of only what is immediately apparent on the page?

It feels like it could be something... but I just don't know.

[artbyblastweave]

I think Wildbow should name his seventh serial one of those twee overlong self-aware hyperspecific titles in the vein of The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared or The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time, and then for the eighth serial immediately go back to doing the unsearchable four-letter word thing

[zeravmeta]

i know that the witch king as we know him probably hadn't been fully conceptualized early on when we had IS1 but i think it would have been hilarious had we found out that Ceobe had also somehow broken into and out of the genesis spire since like, one of the IS collectible is the fucking Witch Kings Horn Itself meaning that ceobe had to have one point seen it and recognized it as super cursed and thus also Taken It

like imagine in the final sections of zwillingsturme when the witch king is talking to fremont and he's like "yes the liches of the sarkaz are some of the only few beings to have reached this place. the ancient feranmut of yan, the ascended consciousness of the ocean, the travelling machines from beyond the fake sky..." and then his face twists. "...that one weird perro that one time who made off with one of my horns"

[thebubblesareevil]

Writing prompt: Danny failed science and Temperature affects the weather!!!

So when a cold front meets a warm front is can cause a storm, sometimes they can become extremely dangerous….

Danny has been really stressed lately with college applications and exams, plus the fact that his powers have been getting stronger lately. So one day he flys out to the middle of nowhere and lets off some steam in the form of letting his ice core go a little crazy. He does this every now and then to help him destress, today he used a little more power than usual but no big deal right?

Wrong. One week later the justice league is at his door and confronting him about a series of severe storms that have been created that they managed to track the energy source back to him.

Now they are trying to confront him about being a weather powered meta.

To be fair he was fighting the box ghost when they were learning about hot and cold fronts, how was he supposed to know they could form tornados?

[felassan]

this post is under a cut in case anyone would consider it to be DA:D spoilers, as the things it mentions came from the leak a year ago (spoiler warning for link) that included screenshots and a gif of the game. (the things this post mentions are therefore not new information and this does not reference a new leak)

I'm just thinking again about Rook (which seems to be the PC's name or title) and the imagery conjured by the name. ◕‿◕ this post is just speculation and overanalyzing for fun. also this post is a now-finished draft from my draft section from a while back.

I think it would work as a surname (like "Hawke") or a codename (think Leliana's spies and contacts such as "Butler", "Farrier", "Butcher", "Charter", etc although these are all professions that end in "-er" or "or" iirc). it could also be a title (like Warden, Hero, Champion, Inquisitor, Herald) or a nickname - like maybe it's short for "Rookie", it's a Varric-assigned nickname and it references how the DA:D PC is the newest member of the team after he recruits them?

I think it sounds catchy, and cool - it's snappy and short, Hawke-like in this way. and it sounds like the kind of name a spy or secret agent might have in a fantasy, superhero or sci-fi-type setting.

a rook is a black bird, Corvus frugilegus, a member of the corvid family. rooks have been perceived as vermin and nuisances by people in the past, and persecuted due to this. they bear a resemblance to their crow and raven relatives, both birds which have a large cultural footprint and lots of symbolism in areas such as folklore and art. Hawke obviously also had a bird motif going on from their surname and associated art pieces. corvids also bring to mind the Antivan Crows (assassins, thieves, & spies), reminding of the stuff about how in this game the PC may be trying to operate under the radar, and the reporting on a previous iteration of DA:D which had the game concept as being focused on spies and heists. rook plumage is inky black, bringing to mind darkness and shadow.

from the bird angle, a "rook" sounds neat opposite a "wolf" imo. wolves are obviously another animal that have large footprints in culture, myth and folklore. in the natural world there is symbiosis sometimes between wolves and corvids when hunting/feeding. there are lots of photos of wolves and corvids together.

a colony of rooks is called a rookery. of course, the fortress of Skyhold has a rookery. it's from there that Inquisition Spymaster Leliana operates (operated) sending her black birds on missions with letters and messages to her many agents and spies throughout Thedas. what if Rook is one of Leliana's... "rooks"? a spy or agent of the remnants of the Inquisition.

A rook is also defined as "A cheat or swindler; someone who betrays" [noun], "mist, fog" [noun] and "to cheat or swindle" [verb]. it's also a type of trick-taking card game. these sorts of things bring to mind a rogueish, stealthy aspect, and the shady, shadowy dealings and card-game played in Minrathous Shadows.

a rook is also a chess piece. they're castle-like (since "rook" can also mean a castle or fortification) and usually have their top in the shape of a battlement. they can move in any direction along a rank or file on a chessboard on which they stand (horizontal/vertical, not diagonal). they can also do the "castling" move. in history, rooks have also been called towers, castles, rectors and marquesses. in chess, each player starts the game with two rooks at opposite ends of the first rank. chess itself is a game of strategy and tactics. "the chessmaster" as a trope is a character type who manipulates events, tugging on strings and moving 'pieces' into place on a metaphorical chessboard. [Solas' DA:I dialogue about his past, like the one he has with Sera about cells of spies/agents, hark to this]

in the castling move,

"Castling is a move in chess. It consists of moving the king two squares toward a rook on the same rank and then moving the rook to the square that the king passed over. Castling is permitted only if neither the king nor the rook has previously moved; the squares between the king and the rook are vacant; and the king does not leave, cross over, or finish on a square attacked by an enemy piece. Castling is the only move in chess in which two pieces are moved at once."

castling rules often cause confusion, even occasionally among high-level players. historically the move has its roots in the "king's leap", of which there were two forms and which arose in part it seems due to increasing importance of king safety as other pieces were given increased powers through time as the game developed. "the king would move once like a knight, or the king would move two squares on its first move. The knight move might be used early in the game to get the king to safety or later in the game to escape a threat." basically it moves the king away to safety and the rook to a more active position. there is also kingside castling and queenside castling. I wonder, symbolically.. is Rook more the king's rook, or the queen's rook? (reminds me of the Left Hand and Right Hands of the Divine hh). who or what is the king in this hypothetical analogy? the World of Thedas itself? as a castle or fortress.. Rook is the bulwark against what's to come? [over-thinking ik ik, tis just for fun hh].

by now we're all familiar with the chess game Solas plays in banter dialogue with Iron Bull during DA:I. in the in-world chess game, rooks are called towers. Solas moves his right-hand tower once. at a later point in the game, Iron Bull's "Arishok" piece takes Solas' left-hand tower, getting a check and leaving him feeling triumphant. Bull asks Solas wth he is doing as Bull takes Solas' remaining tower. "Your last tower, by the way". Bull, a spy and liar himself, bears down on Solas' pieces "with his full army", thinking a win is in sight. Undeterred, Solas executes a few moves in a sneaky plan and entraps Bull in a checkmate, winning the game after sacrificing various pieces to enact his plan.

rook also brings to mind the Tower tarot card and its meanings. it's associated with sudden, disruptive revelation and potentially destructive change. it connotes danger, crisis, sudden change, destruction, higher learning, and liberation, as well as adversity, calamity, deception, ruin and unforeseen catastrophe. reversed, it connotes things such as negligence, carelessness, apathy and vanity (vanity.. pride). in this depiction of the Tower tarot, lightning strikes from the sky, striking a crown (hubris) off the top of a tower and setting it alight as people fall from the tower to their doom. this imagery and the upright meanings of the card bring to mind the sudden massive change Solas seeks to bring about (destroying the Veil), the revelations and liberation for some that it might bring, his identity as Fen'Harel Lord of Tricksters (deception) as well as the destruction he seems to think the Veil destroying action will cause ("as the world burns in the raw chaos"...). the 'Tower scene' has also already played out once before in Thedosian history, when Solas created the Veil and sealed the Evanuris away, leading to the fall of Arlathan and its wonders. in modern Thedas, Morrigan and Flemeth (as well as possibly some side 'prophecy' type things) both allude to a big change coming to the world.

in DA:I, the Tower tarot card is ofc none other than Solas' ending card, if he is not romanced. in the DA:I version of the card, we see Solas, cloaked in a dark robe and holding a mage staff under a half-moon or eclipse. darkness seeps from his shadow, stark against the orange sky, and blends with the giant black Dread Wolf, looming ominously and open-mouthed above him with its many eyes. (the Tower tarot card Solas scene is later referenced in DA:D promotional art and DA:D-era in-world murals). it makes sense to have assigned this to Solas given the above discussed meanings of the Tower tarot card, but it's a verrry inchresting choice imo to then give "Rook" as a name/title for the DA:D PC.

and most inchrestingly, there's the symbol from the front of Mark Darrah's mysterious Red Book. this mysterious red book shows "a flaming rook" on the cover. the book was an internal guide for developer and publisher eyes only that summarized the vision for DA:D, in its Joplin iteration. we know that the Joplin project has since been revised to an extent that it was the newly codenamed Morrison instead, but the red book is known to still contain plenty of ideas likely to appear in DA:D. most pages of the book remain highly classified. it's the symbol on the front that's of most interest to us though for the purposes of this post. there is a castle, tower, or rook, like a fortress or the chess piece. above the tower, a fire burns, reminding us of the burning tower from the Tower tarot card imagery and what that symbolizes, as well as Solas' "world burning in the raw chaos" line from Trespasser. inside the fire is a wolf, the Dread Wolf, in a now very-familiar and repeated motif in DA:D art, merch, murals, teasers etc. whatever else "rook" may connote, it feels like it's not an accident at all that the PC's name is apparently "Rook", given this depiction of a fiery rook and the Dread Wolf together.

what do you think? ^^

[lady-corrine]

One of the (many) reasons I deeply dislike the "Annie and Finnick's wedding was only a propaganda move that meant absolutely nothing to anyone" take is that is... simply not accurate?

It is often claimed Plutarch had Finnick and Annie intentionally wear Peeta and Katniss' outfits to send some type of message, but that means to completely ignore how it was Katniss herself that offered to give Annie a dress for her wedding:

“when Plutarch has a fit over what the bride will wear — I volunteer to take Annie back to my house in 12, where Cinna left a variety of evening clothes in a big storage closet downstairs.”

How Peeta himself also made their wedding cake:

“As surely as the embroidery stitches in Annie’s gown were done by Cinna’s hand, the frosted flowers on the cake were done by Peeta’s.”

And to also disregard how everyone else felt and how happy and excited they were to be part of it:

“When it’s announced that children are wanted to sing District 4’s wedding song, practically every kid shows up. There’s no shortage of volunteers to help make decorations. In the dining hall, people chat excitedly about the event.”

All in all, it means to brush aside how everyone perceived their wedding as simply something good, genuinely so, and nothing linked to a false spectacle:

“Maybe it’s more than the festivities. Maybe it’s that we are all so starved for something good to happen that we want to be part of it.”