#the priestess loop hero

[ravioxhilda]

Had time to draw this in between doing art for Xenotober as a gift for my friend @xaratini of their Loop Hero AU! I hope you enjoy!

[ningyousaiban]

The Priestess

[ufotomorrow]

loop hero 

[xaratini]

Now kiss-

[wearethekat]

Anticipated New Releases of 2024

**As anticipated by Me. Mostly SFF. Links are to goodreads because that's what I use, sorry. Anything marked "new to me" I haven't read anything by that author before and therefore can't vouch for the quality. I just think the premise is neat.**

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands, Heather Fawcett (16 January)

Sequel to the charming novel about the fairy anthropologist.

Exordia, Seth Dickinson (23 January)

Well, it isn't a new Baru Cormorant, but this modern SF about first contact may be the next best thing.

City of Stardust, Georgia Summers (30 January)

New to me. A young woman descends into the underworld in order to break her family's fatal curse.

The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (6 February)

New to me. A sherlock holmes flavored duo solves the mystery of the murder of an imperial official in a labyrinthine fantasy realm.

What Feasts at Night, T Kingfisher (13 February)

The sequel to the mushroom horror book What Moves the Dead.

The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden (13 February)

A ghost story set in WW1 about a woman searching for her missing brother.

The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo (13 February)

New to me. A detective in 1908 Manchuria investigates a young woman's death in an area full of mythical foxes.

Redsight, Meredith Mooring (27 February)

New to me. Unpowered priestess and Imperial pawn is set on a collision path with a pirate with a grudge for the Imperium (Gay romance).

Sunbringer, Hannah Kaner (12 March)

Sequel about the professional godkiller Kissen.

Jumpnauts, Hao Jingfang (12 March)

New to me. A SF novel in translation from Chinese, with three scientists joining forces to deal peacefully with a first contact situation.

The Woods All Black, Lee Mandelo (19 March)

I liked Mandelo's debut novel very much so I'm excited to read this queer horror novella set in 1920s Appalachia.

Floating Hotel, Grace Curtis (19 March)

New to me. A series of cozy character vignettes on a space cruise ship after a murder has occurred. One of the four (!) space hotel murder crimes books coming out this year.

The Emperor and the Endless Palace, Justinian Huang (26 March)

New to me. Reincarnation gay romance set in 4 BCE China, the 1740s, and modern-day LA.

Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky (28 March)

Far future space xenoarchaeology by a man trapped on a prison planet.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell (2 April)

New to me. Bizarre lesbian cannibalism monster romance from the point of view of the monster.

The Familiar, Leigh Bardugo (9 April)

Glad to see Bardugo writing more adult fantasy, and this one is especially exciting because it's a fantasy set in early modern Spain with a Jewish main character. Fun to see a more original historical period.

A Sweet Sting of Salt, Rose Sutherland (9 April)

New to me. Lesbian selkie romance.

Death in the Spires, KJ Charles (11 April)

Charles branching out from romance into historical Oxford murder mystery about a group of friends with dark secrets.

Audrey Lane Stirs The Pot, Alexis Hall (22 April)

The new Hall thinly veiled british baking show romcom. Libby says it's releasing in April but I've heard nothing from the author so I think it may be Alecto'd (shifted to next year)

Necrobane, Daniel M Ford (23 April)

Sequel to the dungeons and dragons-esque low fantasy lesbian necromancy book.

A Letter to the Luminous Deep, Sylvie Cathrall (25 April)

New to me. Sweet underwater epistolary academic romance.

How To Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, Django Wexler (21 May)

New to me. A young hero caught in a fantasy time loop gives up and tries being the villain in an attempt to escape.

Goddess of the River, Vaishnavi Patel (21 May)

Another woman-centered retelling of Hindu mythology, this time based on the river goddess Ganga.

Escape Velocity, Victor Manibo (21 May)

New to me. Evil and toxic private school alumni jockey for position in a space hotel event in an attempt to escape a dying Earth.

The Fireborne Blade, Charlotte Bond (28 May)

New to me. Gay dragon slaying knight novella.

Evocation, ST Gibson (28 May)

New to me but looks very cool. Attorney and medium David attempts to escape his deal with the devil with the help of his ex boyfriend and his ex boyfriend's wife (Poly romance).

Service Model, Adrian Tchaikovsky (4 June)

In an SF future, a robot kills its human owners and ventures out into a world where human supremacy is beginning to crumble.

Lady Eve's Last Con, Rebecca Fraimow (4 June)

New to me. A con artist seeks revenge on the man who hurt her sister, who's coincidentally also on a space cruise ship (Sapphic romance subplot).

Triple Sec, TJ Alexander (4 June)

An actual mainstream published poly romance (!!) by trans author Alexander.

Running Close to the Wind, Alexandra Rowland (11 June)

Gay! Pirates! Scheming! Alt fantasy world! Monks! I liked Taste of Gold and Iron a lot and I'm very excited for this one.

The Knife and the Serpent, Tim Pratt (11 June)

New to me. Space opera about an interdimensional organization. Also, there's a sentient starship.

The Witchstone, Henry Neff (18 June)

A childhood favorite of mine's adult debut, featuring a demon who suddenly has to shape up at his curse keeper job after eight hundred years of slacking.

Rakesfall, Vajra Chandrasekera (18 June)

VERY excited to read more weird queer sff from this author after a fantastic debut. Looks weird. I'm in.

Foul Days, Genoveva Dimova (25 June)

New to me. A witch in a Slavic fantasy inspired world flees her evil ex, the Tsar of Monsters. There's also a plague and a detective.

Saints of Storm and Sorrow, Gabriella Buba (25 June)

New to me. Filipino inspired anticolonialist fantasy novel about a nun who is secretly practicing the religion of her goddess.

The Duke at Hazard, KJ Charles (18 July)

A queer regency with an incognito duke by one of my particular favorite romance authors.

Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan (30 July)

!!! Very excited to see a new adult fantasy by Brennan. A reader is dragged into a fictional world and finds herself the villain.

A Sorceress Comes to Call, T Kingfisher (20 August)

A retelling of The Goose Girl from reliably good fairy tale stalwart Kingfisher.

Buried Deep and Other Stories, Naomi Novik (17 September)

Collection of Novik's short stories.

Swordcrossed, Freya Marske (8 October)

VERY excited to see a new book by talented writer Marske. A man falls in love with the duelist hired for his arranged wedding. MEANWHILE. details of the fantasy world wool industry.

Feast While You Can, Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta (29 October)

New to me. Small town queer cave horror.

The Last Hour Between Worlds, Melissa Caruso (19 November)

Multiple reality murder mystery spy vs spy type antics, with lesbians.

[paint-lady]

🖊 + Maru!

Send me a “🖊+an OC“ and I will talk about that OC! It can be a headcanon, a fun fact, a small paragraph of backstory- anything! Alternatively, send in just a “🖊“ and I will talk about any one of my OCs at random!

Oh, Maru my beloved.

Maru "Maru-Maru" Maru is my character in Secret World Legends and my NPC (and eventual PC) for the Secret World ttrpg. They are the current OC im constantly rotating in my brain like a rotisserie chicken.

I had attempted to write a longer form comic for them and even finished a first chapter. Unfortunately, life got busy and started taking more spoons to other tasks and I am not able to dedicate the time and energy I want to the comic. And thats okay. In the year I have been cold, I have expanded upon the Maru-verse even further, and discovered even more interesting loops and details to incorporate. And I cannot wait to illustrate them one day.

So without further ado, please enjoy this extensive lore breakdown on Maru-Maru:

For your convenience this post has a keep reading <3

Name Significance: Of course Maru is not their given name. Its partially a joke, partially an echo of a long-lost memory, partially a misheard role to fulfill, and their first grasp on their identity.

The name Maru firstly comes from my Exalted Zenith character. My partner and I wanted to name our bees after them, as a way to honor the fun we had with such a short campaign. Little did we know how smoothly Exalted and SWL can blend together- the transition from one age to the next, apocalypses rising, and powerful beings beyond comprehension changing Creation. The tone is certainly different though: an Exalted chronicle is uplifting and with epic heroes to save the world, whereas SWL is riddled with uncertainty about how long the collective will of reality can hold.

The SWL version of Maru can barely remember their previous incarnation, it's more like a weird dream than anything else. If they look to closely, the memory vanishes; like the people of the Third Age trying to grasp their memory of the Second, and their predecessors before them. The golden light within them feels different, yet can still vanquish monsters with their touch, and aid people plagued by nightmares seeping through cracks in reality.

A more recent discovery has played nicely into my friends headcanons and names of their characters. SWL Maru was discovered by experienced agents of names Inanna and Ninshubur in Kingsmouth. While the name Maru is not a Sumerian/Assyrian deity, Mamu is. There is not a lot written about Mamu. They are most notable for being a god of dreams and having both male and female depictions. We love a lil gender fuckery in the pantheon. There was temple built in Imgur-Enlil (modern Balawat) to them. Dreams were not seen as depictions of the subconscious (thanks Freud) but rather true portents of the future. This is all over the epic of Gilgamesh as a literary device to keep that long ass story going. Regardless, the Assyrian King who had dreams of Inanna vanquishing his enemies felt the portents were significant enough to build that temple to the messenger: Mamu. Additionally, there are oodles of accounts of death-dreams and glimpses into other worlds (namely the Underworld) across several sites, whether its recorded dreams from priests and priestesses- or more Enki myths.

And this is what Maru does- even by accident. They catch glimpses into the other worlds, talk to other versions of themselves to relay messages and warnings, and make sure Inanna and Ninshubur are aware of whatever weird shit is out there. In the SWL ttrpg, I intend to have Maru explore this role to fulfill more, as a messenger and a dreamer. Funnily enough, the surname I gave Maru is 夢宮: Yumemiya, which can translate to Yume: dream, and Miya: a shrine, or place for gods. Don't you love it when the narrative falls into place like that? (But in truth, I borrowed the surname from Kanae Yumemiya, an actress who portrayed Usagi in a Sailor Moon Live production...)

Lastly on name significance, we have the japanese translation that Maru means ◯, and is literally a circle. Depending on the characters used to spell Maru, it can also mean truth, and expanded to mean a complete unending cycle. Putting two ◯◯ together is like censoring a name or word, similarly to how $#%&#! is used in English. In a way, Maru-Maru is saying their name is Redacted, or blankety blank or So-and-so. This was incredibly hilarious in the SWL game when QBL labels the player a terrorist after climbing Orochi Tower. Ah yes, you've definitely found the ringleader who set off the Tokyo bomb: It was ◯◯! Excellent journalism, QBL, no notes.

But in truth, its a clever and funny way to hide themself. Searching Maru on google is gonna get you a stardew valley villager and a cute, chubby cat youtube sensation. And they like it that way.

So whether it's Maru, Mamu, Redacted, ◯◯, or some other weird fifth thing, they'll always be that one odd baby bee who reaches across dimensions to keep reality running just a little longer. They won't have to face the end alone, in fact, its statistically improbable.

And if you survive. If you are still you. Think on the questions. Remember when you were a bright little thing, so full of questions?

THE LIFE CYCLE:

Time is a funny thing when dealing with several versions of the same individual. The smallest changes completely alter a course of events. Many Marus recall gaining their bee not long after the Tokyo Filth bomb around 2012, and being swept up by whichever agency got to them first. Many recall their parents working tirelessly at their jobs at the Orochi Group. They learned how to cook for themself at a young age because Mom and Dad wouldn't be home til late. Many recall the first time they heard the buzzing static was as young as 6, following the sweet whispers through a soon-to-be park and a newly planted flowering tree. There are a few that never receive a bee, or receive their power through other means. These timelines are the strangest ones.

A riddle to kill a sphinx: What's one, then three, and then one again? Wait- that's not how it goes...

The Lumie, Templar, and Dragon Maru all share the same origin. Depending on where an outsider glances, the three realities are so close, they are nearly one. Nearly. They grew up in Kaidan with their parents. They did attend the Orochi-sponsored schools and attended several programs, but flew right under the radar for "gifted abilities" that Orochi was seeking. Little Maru was aware of whispers in tv static, rattles in old pipes, the shrieks of summer cicadas Evangelion style. As a young child, they marched to the beat of their own drum, ignoring or indulging the whispered warnings as they saw fit. The dreams were harder to ignore, but when they told their parents about the big scary monsters that couldn't get out- it was written off as their overly active imagination. After all, they had failed an aptitude test to get into the nearby elementary school near their work. Its uncertain whether or not Maru's parents knew what that test was truly analyzing- and whether or not they were relieved to see they failed. Decent Orochi employees have excellent poker faces.

Sometimes one is born special. Sometimes specialness is genetically modified into one. Not every child is equal.

As they grew older, the supernatural continued to burrow into their eardrums. Maru was an average student, but occasionally received top marks on answers whispered to them. They earned a reputation for being a little bit of a tech whiz, and had an observant eye for finding errors in codes. Not really a "super power" but troubleshooting tech is an immensely useful skill. Maru was exceptional at the ol' percussive maintenance with old printers, punchcards, and fax machines. When things went to digital interfaces, Maru found the tried and true "have you tried turning it off and back on again," to be a real winner.

When they didn't want to hear the whispers, they'd make use of bulky, noise-cancelling headphones. Maru would often be seen wearing them outside of class and in their home, enjoying the peace and quiet. Maybe the headphones were a placebo. It only worked because they believed it worked. However, at night, their mind would be plagued with vivid dreams and even louder whispers and messages. Headphones can't keep hide the noise if its already in their head. Frustratingly, they'd always wake up and immediately forget what they dreamt. This was their normal. Caffeine to keep themself up during the day, wear headphones to keep out the messages, and TV to drown out the static at night.

And there wasn't really anyone to talk about it with. Last time some Orochi kid fessed up to their weird dreams and whispers, he'd definitely vanished. Teachers said the student moved away, but Maru knew his parents still worked in Faust upper management. Another girl said she could hear thoughts before you could finish thinking them. Maru thought that one was bullshit- but she disappeared too. Lesson learned. Keep the static to yourself.

Don't fear It. Fear Nothing. Fear the Foundation. It's no wonder; they say once you hit four, it's all downhill from here.

When it came time to apply for highschool, a few of their peers found this "Clubhouse" and despite its messaging, were blabbermouths about it. Maru always felt uneasy about the place. If there were whispers saying they had nothing to fear, they didn't trust it. They couldn't believe the claims that were coming from this place. Free drinks? Can play games as long as you want? You can be yourself without any fear? Maru especially didn't trust the last one. None of their classmates knew how they felt wearing the girls uniform. None of them knew how exhausting it was to shut out the whispers, keep the eyes on them sated with just the right expectations, and then complete their coursework on top of it all. Maru absolutely did not want to "perform" there either.

Upon finishing highschool, Maru was presented with an opportunity. They'd complete a university comp-sci degree and then immediately dive into a job at the company. Orochi is not devoid of nepotism. At first, this seemed ideal. They'd attend university in New York, and take their summer internships with the American branch of Orochi. Should everything go well, which... it was going to go well that was the expectation... they'd be looking at a substantial salary and generous benefits while working in the Tower.

America was loud. America is loud. But the sheer volume of everything drowned out the buzzing whispers. They still needed the headphones to drown out the rest of the noise though. They could focus a lot more on themself outside of the Orochi bubble, even if their presence was just a few streets away.

Maru figured out a lot about themself in the four years at Uni, especially the gender thing. They enjoyed building weird robots and programming them to do silly things- in addition to their assigned tasks. They enjoyed the few college parties they attended. They even had a steady, long term relationship with a classmate named Caesura (nods back to Exalted). As graduation loomed, they dreaded going back home. They realized how much time they spent alone and really did not want to go back to that solitude at Orochi. So they avoided it. They delayed their graduation by a year and a half by swapping majors, making absurd connections and promises with subdivisions of Faust and Anansi, and prolonging which classes they needed to graduate.

What was the cause of all this, sweetling? Where is the zero point?

Everything changed sometime in 2012. Maru couldn't get anyone on the phone back home when the bomb went off. Even the work lines in Faust were gunked up. They have zero clue if a letter they wrote made it through security and into Orochi's headquarters. Caesura had also vanished. (Unbeknownst at the time, the man was abducted by the Dragon. In most timelines, he does analog calculations for the faction, figuring out where pieces need to move rather than doing field work himself). And then they get their bee, freak out and wreck their apartment, get nabbed by one of the big three, and then get sent out to Kingsmouth.

Things start to break and differ sometime after this for our Red, Blue, and Green iterations of Maru. They all admit to being unaware of their prowess for chaos magic before meeting two other big bees: Ninshubur and Inanna. It was Ninshubur who gifted the confused baby bee a chaos focus, and Inanna gifted a them an empowering gadget. Receiving these items are one of the more prominent cracks on the flickering timelines on the Reality Engine.

Though the most prominent tears in their time are when the Dreamers made themselves known to Maru. The first, a gift. The second, worship. The third, freedom.

Templar!Maru, believes they were tricked by the gift. They swear they would have never have listened to the bubbling voices, but deep down they know that they fell for their sweet words. Whenever the Dreamers approached them, they were certain to make sure they'd never be fooled twice. Their choices are marked with unbound Blue wings.

Dragon!Maru had already begun developing their philosophy on the cyclic end of the world: however messy and destructive it was going to be, whatever was going to rise out of the ashes was going to be just as magnificent. Decay is a form of life. They morbidly want to see what the world will look like at the end, but have to be strong enough to make it there. Accepting the gift, begrudgingly worshipping, and freeing the Dreaming Ones is all part of their dream. Their wings drip with filth. Unease sits in their stomach, they do not know if they'll get their wish.

Lastly, Lumie!Maru was keen on not listening to more voices in their heads. They are the only iteration to refuse the gift. Their wings gleam gold. What is done cannot be undone, and they loathe that their defiance to one set of voices is obedience to another.

Go ahead, glance back. Don't sweat it, sweetling. You won't turn to salt and you can't make yourself impossible. History will conserve itself. The continuities will hold.

Again, time is funny when dealing with several iterations of the same individual. The slightest changes make immense impacts on their lives. There are Maru's who graduated on time. There are Maru's who never left Kaidan. These individuals work with Orochi, whether they want to or not. There are Maru's who's last memory is the filth exploding from within that guy's jacket. There are Maru's still sleeping. There are Maru's who joined the Council of Venice, there are Maru's who hacked the Swarm's game back, and fled their factions. There are Maru's who want nothing to do with the secret world and just want a peaceful goddamn life with their wife and accounting job. There's a Maru who is just really into boats...

But they are all connected, tethered to one another. Like a rat king on reality, fated to meet and tangle.

FUN and STRANGE DETAILS:

BLOODY VALENTINES: Uta, the rabbit killer in Kaidan, is three separate individuals who used to inhabit the same body. Lilith is responsible for splitting her like a worm and separating the sibling souls into new bodies. Maru is an anomaly: they are physical duplicates of the same individual existing simultaneously. Both Maru and Uta fight with unprecedented coordination, switching aggro and balancing their buffs between the three of them. The showdown at the top of Orochi tower was certainly a spectacle... And a vocabulary lesson for swears in several languages. Some agents have noticed the similarities between Maru and Uta, but Maru is quick to squash any speculations. This is not because the two actually know each other, but more Maru does not want anyone to know their Orochi background if they can help it.

The buzzing on Uta reveals some interesting clues about Maru and their existence. Uta was not plagued with insanity but rather hypersanity for the new age- and with new software there are bound to be bugs. While Maru didn't absorb their twin in the womb or was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia; Maru was also sensitive to whispers just outside reality. And so were other children born around the same time. Maybe Maru and that generation of kids got the patched version.

A LUCID DREAM: The Black Signal, or John, tells the Chuck's who will listen that he's no longer singular, he is plural- but remembers what it was like being a sole individual. To Maru, this is so old news. In fact, Maru loves to snark back at him saying that he is not special and they're plural too. There are many Maru's. The Black Signal doesn't really tend to listen to this. Maru may be many, but Maru is still meat. If they would hatch, then they'd have a new conversation. Again, Maru disregards this, and says they've spent enough time being an egg.

They don't want to think too hard about what it means to have "hatched." They know John's not talking about them being nonbinary. Maru is an adept and experienced enough chaos user at this point to recognize when a timeline is too different for them to safely pull on. There's a phantom pain in their outreached hands and fingers when they try to go too far. They are aware that there are some selves they used to be able to call upon and cannot anymore. Something about them has changed. They are aware they can become "out of sync" with their doppelgangers or even be "out of phase," and get stuck somewhere overlapping two or more timelines. But to not be able to call themself at all is terrifying. If only they had the ability to glance at all it all from the outside ... oh.

At least, Maru can't do this consciously. Some versions of Maru have swapped places with their doppelgangers in their sleep or had rude awakenings of being pried from bed to be used as a meat-shield for another. While dreaming, they can go anywhere- so long as they don't forget how to wake up. These ones don't know how close they get to bleeding out of reality.

MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICES:

In my SWL playthrough, I of course ran into a whole bunch of bugs and glitches. And I love them. But, there were times that it made the game do absolutely weird things- which provides some very fun stories to weave into the glitch. The most notable was at the Second Choice in the City of the Sun God. At this point, my partner had played ahead and was almost through Translylvania when I had finally defeated Aten. He knew there was an Ultimate Move behind the choices and spoiled a little (with my permission). I didn't know what "Blue Wings" meant but I understood to get them I would need to, against my better judgement, listen to the Dreamer's at least once. So after defeating Aten and being greeted by the Filth bird saying "hey you should do the worship emote" I then obliged and typed /worship.

And the game crashed. No worries- this happened all the time for me. My laptop would get obscenely hot running this game and would shut itself down so it wouldn't fry itself. Upon reloading, I had to do the Aten fight again but found myself having trouble with some of the UI interface. Reloadui did not solve the issue, and I found myself in front of the Filth bird again. I typed /worship and Maru did nothing. I opened the emote tab, and clicked, and Maru would do nothing. In fact, all of my emotes were not functioning- except the dances.

I laughed as I watched Maru dance and devour tacos in front of the Dreamer, not knowing how frustrating it must have been for the cosmic entity to watch some small, nascent angelic thought just proceed to do anything but what it requested. How much longer? Out of frustration, I eventually attacked the creature, triggering the next cutscene. The Dreamer's were angry, and I laughed and laughed.

Now the strangest thing is in game play, Maru sometimes has golden wings. I have had friends say they see blue wings and I will see gold on my screen. I've also had the opposite. In all cutscenes, they are blue. Considering the overlapping timelines, it seems like Lumie!Maru's almost choice bleeds through onto their timeline sometimes.

INITIATE THE D20 SYSTEM:

I have been very fortunate to be the storyteller for some very avid fans of the Secret World and have presented an alternative timeline to the world they know and love. Maru of course, is no exception to this. Everyone is operating with different times and circumstances. Eventually, I will get the chance to play Maru in the game. But for now, Maru has only made one appearance: to Olivia, the newest bee of the group. Of course, Olivia has zero idea what implications she has encountered by merely interacting with this version of Maru, untethered to their doppelgangers. The TTRPG timeline is indeed one of the strangest.

Thank you for reading this absurdly long OC lore post, I have spent easily 3 week writing and editing and rewriting and adding. I hope you enjoyed and it sparks some fun thoughts about SWL and maybe a lil Exalted. As a treat.

[redstrewn]

My personal Leander bookmarks

Tumblr told me "fuck you" and search no longer works reliably on my blog, so I'm now manually organizing all the posts I reference a lot.

Still not finished with this; will keep editing over time.

Compilations

- @/senobium's collection (there's a long list!)

- astranautic & anam-mana: femininity, divine feminine, triple moon, ouroboros, lily, chatelaine, fool's journey/high priestess

- lesbianrumi: pagan symbols, ouroboros, immortality, rebirth, cycle of life, triple moon, white lilies, elements, fertility, youth, femininity, divine feminine, purification, green, unicursal hexagram

Red Spring Studio

- character description: kindness comes with a price, expects something in return

- character reveal: as long as you trust me, a darkness haunts his chivalry

- character teaser: mages lust for power. It's always their downfall

- character profile: likes and dislikes

- MC's responses to touching Leander

- in-game opinions on Leander

- relationship charts

Manipulation

- stylographic-blue-rhapsody & @/senobium: the magician tarot, personality and nature of character

- rubyfunkey: swaying MC's opinion

- @/leaiss: dagger as deception/treachery

- owlespresso & me: Leander intentionally putting MC in danger

Endlessness

- anon & heavensickness: LoveWillNeverEnd (prologue Leander music)

- Red Spring Studio: Did you think this would end?

Playing god

- Marlowe's Faustus (thanks to heavensickness)

- @/senobium: as above so below and more

- @/senobium: ruling the underworld

Bluebeard

- Red Spring Studio: "...as long as you trust me."

- To accept love is to accept being god: love as a matter of faith like the garden of eden, without eliminating risk

- Bluebeard as God (cw patriarchy)

- Bluebeard as God, collection

- play loops, a cycle

Chaos magic

- lucyofasgard & me: chaos magicians, gnosis, as above so below and the unknown, belief, magic and fogfall as weakening of reality

- Phil Hine: the magician as inhuman and feeling separate, sacrifice, neverending consequences, "one cannot reshape the world without being reshaped in the process"

- Phil Hine: a magician "by necessity, is continually on guard against that which might limit his ability to adapt and survive in this world."

- Phil Hine: pushing boundaries

- Phil Hine: belief and interpretation

The myth of Hero and Leander

- cvhenia's excerpt from a book

- stylographic-blue-rhapsody

- reo-the-leo: Ais nicknaming Mhin as "Dove" and MC as "Sparrow"

- peppermintbiotics & anam-mana: crossing planes/borders, barrier maiden

Flower/lily of life, dragonfly

- @/senobium & junebean1782: flower/lily of life

- pinkpruneclodwolf & reo-the-leo: dragonfly

Cycle of life

- n--n: leander's birthday is on the summer solstice (rebirth/duplicity)

- endless knot: cycle of life and more

Curses

- crying--crow: left-hand path and right-hand path, absorb/inflict curses

Jealousy

- green, othello (ouroboros, green-eyed monster), uquiz results ("dont retake")

- heavensickness: awkward silence that he doesn't smooth over

[looped-140-and-counting]

I have had Thoughts about ISAT and Siffrin in a Fae AU.

The time loop is wonderful but it definitely fit a game format painfully well. So. Siffrin as a fae! Can't lie but can avoid the truth. Can cast magic but can't change reality. Holds power when it comes to promises and debts (has no power when it comes to rules).

And, hey! There's different types of fae, and maybe Siffrin comes from the forgotten ones. Not of the summer court, or winter, or even the fall or spring. Not of the common varieties, or even the rare fae who sneak beneath the hills. Siffrin is of the stars from nowhere.

And then Siffrin meets Mirabelle, a hero who wishes to save her people. Maybe she's a witch, a maiden, a priestess, etc.

Mirabelle's got Isabeau and Odile, each with their own quirks. Maybe Odile's all too human. Maybe Isabeau isn't.

Siffrin joins them because he has nothing better to do. And then he falls in love.

And maybe the fae deal in promises. Siffrin can give them apples, pomegranates, favors - and then they wouldn't be able to leave. They'd owe him. Sure, that's not right or just, but...

Except Odile is smart, and won't give her name to just anyone. She's wise and sharp and looks concerned when she shouldn't. Not about Siffrin.

Isabeau is smart too, and kind. He gives back what's owed and then some. Says to think nothing of it, because they're friends.

Mirabelle means so well. She offers her hand, and it's hard to imagine offering cruelty in return even if it meant she wouldn't leave.

Bonnie doesn't deserve anything that Siffrin would could do to them.

So Siffrin the forgotten fae follows them, helping them fight and save Mirabelle's people. It's a disease, maybe, or magic cast by some great evil. Either way, it's what they've all banded together to do. Once they complete their quest...

...

Maybe Siffrin eats the pomegranate seeds all by their lonesome. Maybe they bind themself to everyone else, too afraid to let them go but loves them all too much to bind them to himself.

Maybe he splits into two.

Maybe the sky starts falling. Maybe the forgotten fae weren't meant to still exist, weren't meant to tie themselves to people, and... maybe Siffrin is lonely.

And maybe, because I'm a weak weak man, maybe Siffrin gets saved. Because they're loved. And in one universe, love wasn't enough, but in this one, maybe Mirabelle eats the pomegranate seeds with him. Isabeau and Odile too. Bonnie isn't allowed because they're too young, but. They promise to see Siffrin again.

This is a kinder universe. Promises mean something here (promises mean everything here).

[mitzirockerextendeduniverse]

[Hi! For... god, years now, I've had this massive Spreadsheet (yes, it requires a capital letter) of retro JRPGs I've wanted to (1) play my way through and (2) blog about. (1) was fairly easy after I stopped trying to play on original hardware, but I found it surprisingly hard to do (2) without it devouring all my free time. So instead of a dedicated blog, I'm just gonna do these short summary posts here whenever I beat a game. There's two in the backlog right now, starting with...]

What it is: The Tower of Druaga (ドルアーガの塔 Druaga no Tō) for Famicom, released on the 6th of August, 1985, developed and published by Namco. Based on the arcade game of the same name from June 1984, also published by Namco and chiefly designed by Masanobu Endō, creator of early scrolling shmup Xevious, it's the first game in - the Spreadsheet as a whole, yes, but also the Babylonian Castle Saga, a collection of (for the most part) vaguely RPG-like action games that tell the story of a prince named Gil, his lover, the priestess Ki, and their quest to restore peace to their loosely-Babylonian fantasy world.

What it's about:

I think the attract screen puts it pretty well! There's some more wrinkles to the backstory, which I mostly got from a strategy guide released at the time - an invading empire, the goddess Ishtar, the precise mechanics behind why, exactly, this is our heroes' last chance to save their kingdom - quite a lot for a mid-80s arcade game. It's pretty thin by RPG standards, but as a setup, it works, and I found it surprisingly engrossing.

How it plays: How do you make an RPG work in the arcade? Apparently, you turn it into a Pac-Man clone. Okay, that's a little flippant; Druaga may be a maze chase game, but there's a lot more going on in it than in most arcade games of its day. On the surface, it's a game about running around mazes, killing monsters, and grabbing keys to get to the next floor, until you defeat Druaga and rescue Ki on the top of the tower. All you have to do is fight your way to the sixtieth floor, right?

In any other arcade game of its era, maybe, but not here. Almost every floor of the tower also contains a hidden treasure that can only be revealed by performing a specific action unique to that floor. The higher Gil gets up the tower, the more he'll need them, from books to reveal the layout of darkened floors to a series of items that turn the increasingly common dragons from the most dangerous enemies in the game to an easily ignored afterthought. Pretty much every useful item in the game (there's several duds and a few traps) is needed to defeat Druaga, so knowing where they are and how to reveal them is absolutely key to beating the game.

The catch - because of course there's a catch - is that neither the treasures' locations nor their revealing methods are signposted at all. Every single one has to be trial-and-error brute-forced out, and they can get pretty arcane - entering a fairly long cheat code, defeating several enemies in a specific order, walking over a particular tile in a particular direction... The intent was for arcade-goers to 'solve' the game together, figuring out all its secrets over the course of weeks or months, but when you don't have a friendly mid-80s Japanese arcade crowd to help you out all you're left with is a mountain of guesswork. Or a walkthrough, which has been a standard bonus feature on its Namco Museum rereleases since the mid-90s.

What I thought: I had a lot of fun with this game! Admittedly I was using a walkthrough (in Japanese, because part of the purpose of the Spreadsheet is to practice my language skills) to bypass about half of the Intended Experience™, but the other half, the straightforward arcade action Pac-Man-with-a-sword gameplay loop, was engaging enough in its own right. Gil controls really well, you never feel like you're fighting the programming instead of the monsters, you can always tell why you died even if the game took a cheap shot, and its insanely generous continue system lets you jump right back to the level you were on with all your items intact when you run out of lives. It's still tough, but it's tough in a fair way, breaking up its fast-paced action into discrete digestible chunks with a chance to breathe between every floor. And frankly, though it is 1980s quarter-muncher hard, I've played indie puzzle platformers that were much worse.

And I do think it succeeds at distilling the RPG into an arcade format, though the result is only an RPG by the loosest possible definition. Despite the lack of numbers and exploration (well, in a sense) there's a distinct feeling of progression to Gil's journey up the tower, a kind of character growth uncommon to - basically any genre outside the RPG in 1984. As Gil collects treasures, he grows faster, stronger, better at navigating the labyrinths, to the point that, despite the increasingly tougher challenges the game throws at you, it almost gets easier the further along you get. With the continue system I mentioned, you can even jump back to floors you've already cleared (mostly to replace a particular item that occasionally breaks) and breeze through the monsters that once gave you so much trouble. It's this kind of thoughtful design that makes me really appreciate Druaga, more than I honestly expected to when I first booted it up. Give it a try, it's pretty good!

[4toldbygyromancy]

The Walk of Shame

940 words, canon(vincent) x oc, sh3, humor, rated... I mean it's not bad but there's a few innuendos and the fact that it's, you know, about the walk of shame.

(For the best experience, please read this in your best David Attenborough impression.)

The Walk of Shame.

A college tradition of early-morning journeys across campus, from dorm to apartment to wherever. Sometimes carrying shoes, other times trying to hide in a sweatshirt pilfered from a beau. 

However, not all Walks of Shame happen in college dormitories. Take, for instance, this particular event occurring shortly before dawn. Now, many walks of shame take place a bit later in the morning, but in this instance discretion is truly the name of the game.

You see, this observed Walk of Shame is taking place inside of a church.

Now, this particular church does have some lodgers. Some stay just for the weekends, sequestering themselves in prayer, while others call it their only home- ah! There she is, right there. If you look closely, you’ll see one of the doors opening, and our churchmouse makes her appearance. To her credit, she looks a great deal more put-together than many of the college Walkers. Indeed, one could almost be fooled into thinking that she simply stayed up too late studying, perhaps if she weren’t exiting from a priest’s bedroom. With her cowboy boots in one hand and her steps muffled by socks, she looks almost confident in her ability to make it to her room at the end of the hall without being seen. 

Ah, no, one of the floorboards beneath her creaks and she practically doubles over in a cringe. If someone were to see her now, there would be no doubt that she had been performing rather unholy rites over the course of the night. She doesn’t seem to have the skill of subtlety that many of these church members have, and it’s a survival tactic she will have to pick up sooner rather than later. This situation could be seen as good practice for her, a situation with rather low stakes.

Or, that’s how it might have been, had she not been thrown to the wolves. Or “Wolf”, as it were. 

Claudia Wolf, the natural predator of this churchmouse, just so happens to step into the hallway, perhaps on her way to show her devotion to the rising sun. She’s near the far end of the hall, though, so perhaps luck will shine upon our– oh, look, Claudia has caught our churchmouse in her stare, powerful enough to freeze any lesser being. 

Yes, our churchmouse has frozen as expected. Without the protection of her beau, she is completely vulnerable to the priestess’ wrath. 

“Bethany,” she calls the churchmouse by name. “I’m surprised to see you up and about so early. Have you perhaps risen to begin preparations for the equinox next week?” 

The churchmouse seems stunned. Claudia Wolf used a lot of big words so early in the morning, and they appear to have thrown our hero for a loop. She finds herself unable to tell a lie in the face of her adversary, instead croaking out a horse: “No.” 

“I see,” Claudia continues. “Are you then perhaps looking for something?” 

The priestess doesn’t know how close she hit to home, for even now the churchmouse’s eyes are darting about, looking for an exit.

“Yes!” the churchmouse blurts out, giving an eager nod. “Yes, Sister Claudia, I am looking for something.” 

“If I can offer any assistance, you have but to ask,” says Claudia.

Excellent! She has cemented a purpose in her being out in the hallway so early. But she will have to come up with a reason. Will she be able to do it? 

“Ah…” 

Perhaps not.

“No, no,” she follows up weakly. “No, thank you, Sister Claudia. I’m fine.” 

The ridges where the priestess’ eyebrows should be shift a touch. Just enough of a touch to alert our churchmouse of impending danger.

But the door behind her opens, and she is steadied by a hand on her shoulder. 

“You forgot this, Bethany.” 

And it’s our churchmouse’s beau to the rescue! He’s handing her a book she must have left in his room during their time of… ahem. Study. 

“Thank you, Father Vincent,” says our churchmouse. It’s clear from the way that she’s looking at him that she is completely enamored with this priest. If you were to peer into her eyes, you could note how they shine with all the radiance of Cupid’s affliction. 

“Vincent?” Claudia’s expression seems rather surprised. “I wasn’t aware you were the one hosting morning prayer.” 

“I wasn’t planning on it,” says Vincent, giving a shrug that looks almost bored. “It was just hard to go back to sleep… I’m sure you know how thin these walls are.”

The churchmouse squeaks out a barely-audible apology, and Claudia shakes her head. 

“Do what you will, Vincent.” 

“I will,” he replies. “And you’d better hurry, or you’ll miss that sunrise of yours.” 

The two clergy members shoot a few more barbs at one another, but our churchmouse has already let her posture relax. She has survived this encounter with Claudia Wolf! Though her survival likely came from her predator’s inexperience with debauchery, our churchmouse doesn’t know that and she is mentally celebrating her victory.

A gentle push from Vincent’s fingertips signal to our churchmouse that it’s time to make her escape. She gives the both of them a nod, though by this point Claudia is thoroughly rattled by her rival and is paying her no mind. 

Our little churchmouse’s victory is sealed and sweet. As she quickly makes her way to the safety of her lodgings, she affords herself a glance over her shoulder. 

Vincent doesn’t even have to shift his eye to give her a wink. 

[lilietsblog]

Tagged by @gellavonhamster ^^

Last song: "Та, що танцює з вітром” (She Who Dances With The Wind) as sung by some volunteers and sent me by my friend who’s one of them! I don’t actually um. know or listen to this song? i dont dislike it i just. havent been doing music a lot lately. but it was on my desktop named whatever Viber names its files and I was like “wtf is this” and listened to the whole thing so it counts ^^

Last show/currently watching: uhhhhh. Little Demon I guess. haven’t been doing a lot of watching either, but I have a tab for that one optimistcally open, so. It counts.

Currently reading: oh boy my royalroad follow list is. long. and that’s not even all i’m reading. Anyway let’s fucking go - Practical Guide To Evil re-release on Yonder - Pale Lights by the same author - Summus Proelium on ceruleanscrawling.wordpress.com - Pale by wildbow - (now for the royalroad stuff) Quill and Still - Battle Trucker - I Will Touch The Skies - Dungeon Tour Guide - The Type Specialist - When Imortal Ascension Fails Time Travel To Try Again - The Path Of Ascension - Cheep - Edge Cases - Reincarnated into a Time-Loop Dungeon as a LVL100 Catgirl Chef! - Fated to Fall - The Level Zero Hero - Millenial Mage - Stray Cat Strut - This Used To Be About Dungeons - Demesne - Apocalypse Parenting - The Girl with the Fishbowl Head - Nowhere Stars - The Hedge Wizard - Trace - Borne of Caution - Ar'Kendrithyst - The Heart Grows - Double-Blind - Singer Sailor Merchant Mage - System Error - Delve - Azarinth Healer - Fantasia - Beware of Chicken - Doing God’s Work - Borne of Caution - RE: Trailer Trash - Villager Three - Tower of Somnus - Pokemon Trainer Vicky - Accidentally A Shrine Priestess ...ok I’m dipping into some serious optimism about what I’m “reading in an ongoing way” vs what is solidly on indefinite hiatus, let’s cut off archeology at this point... still, this is after filtering for stuff I actually respect >.> the list of webcomics I follow should be shorter, being as how I don’t have a centralized follow page for them so it’s just what I remember to check - Dumbing of Age - Questionable Content - El Goonish Shive - Freefall - Selkie - Sister Claire - Ava’s Demon - Girl Genius ...yeah, that’s Normal

Current obsession: I’m actually sortaaa inbetween? and not in a nice way? PGTE is serving as a decent placeholder though

Tagging @theothin, @triviallytrue, @seguun, @auraphantom, @vaspider, @fipindustries, @yd12k, @normal-with-adhd-is-a-joke, @wumblr, @gwennafran, @void-of-many-colours, @wardencommanderrodimiss, @rizaoftheowls, @st-just, @nonasuch, @nonanalogue, @hellmasterphibrizo, @the-goblin-cat, @charlesoberonn, @bookhobbit, @luvbloggingandreblogging, @zenosanalytic, @dahniwitchoflight

went on a trawl through my “following” list for this one. i know a normal amount of people on this website. anyway i love yall and hope as many of you answer this as possible ^^

[ren-c-leyn]

Happy STS Ren! Okay so wait, there are TWO new champion duos in the Forgotten Gods universe?👀 A chaotic siren goddes and stuffy champion and a stuffy god with a chaotic champion? That sounds so cool! Would those two belong to the same story? Any more details about the characters? 👀 And a writing update so I don't miss on any cool project thoughts if any come around^^

@writingonesdreams

 Dreams! :D Always good to hear from you <3 You always have the best questions.

 Starting with your writing update since it is the quickest - Hope you enjoy the ramble @writingonesdreams

 I have been buckling down on Shackles of Time. I knocked out the final chapter of The Stormy Road Ahead arc! Just need to rewrite and schedule the last two chapters of that arc, and it’ll finished up in December. Then, I started a new word document with the next arc - A Prayer from the Past. It’s the first arc featuring the new team - Drusilla + her familiar, Lucien, and Azalea.

 You’ll be excited to know that their story is going to take them to a place from one of the first Shackles of Time rambles you got out of me - The Ivory Moon Island. The floating island with a temple to the moon God, and they’re also looking for a character whose been mentioned from the very beginning of the story but hasn’t made her grand appearance - Riya. So it’s all looping back together ^^ It’s like a dream come true! I get to drag in another of my legendary hero charries and run a team through a floating island ruin. *happy screaming*

 I’ll be alternating the teams’ arcs from this point forward, and will be adding occasional mini arcs like an important date for Glenn and Zephyr, some Time Keeper and Wyndulin scenes, ect. My goal is to keep the original trio at the main focus of the story, but plot elements have demanded a second team to start exploring some of the threads that I need to bring to the surface but didn’t make sense for the main trio to be involved in.

 Now onto your question -

 Yes, there are two more duos, but they are entirely unrelated stories since they are in different parts of the world. Actually the Siren Goddess’s black sea is on another continent entirely from the rest of the champions :D

 So for the original pair, the chaotic champion and serious god - This is the least developed pair at the moment. I’m only getting small snippets for them.

 I’m thinking that the champion is young, late teens early twenties, and has been in trouble for pretty much his entire life. I don’t think he really has a family, though the exact circumstances surrounding that are still a mystery to me.

 I’m thinking that someone finally got tired of it, maybe a priestess, and dragged him to the local temple of the God, I’m not entirely sure on domain yet but I’m thinking something along the lines of Honor and Valor, a God favored by warriors and like town guards; and so in an effort to turn this kid’s life around, the God decides to make him a champion.

 The problem with this plan is is now this chaotic little gremlin has magic powers and can do even more chaos, so babysitting the champion has become a full-time job for this poor God and their priestess, lol. I imagine it’ll be a story where we get to see a lot of direct interference from the God of the champion’s life, maybe even a quest in a desperate attempt to try and get this kid on the right track. The Siren Goddess and her champion - This one I do have more solidified and fleshed out, though I’m debating on if it’ll become spicy or if I want to keep the adult content out. It’d be something entirely new for me to write something spicy, but it would fit the theme of the Goddess in question. I guess we’ll see when I get there.

 The champion is a woman who is fleeing her past to another continent via ship. Everything in the journey goes smoothly until we reach the black sea. Singing starts catching everyone’s attention, a haunting bewitching song. The crew starts to panic and a storm starts brewing. The woman and other passengers don’t know what’s going on. The ship goes down and the singing gets stronger. Some even fall under it’s spell and start diving down. The woman is dragged under and is face to face with a siren who is pushing her down deeper and deeper into the waters while singing a different song. She’s struggling and fighting but as her vision is going dim, she starts to see something, someone else.

 The Siren Goddess makes her a champion, and when she wakes up, she’s on a blue sandy beach, the only survivor of the ship wreck, and every once in awhile she swears she hears faint singing on the breeze and wicked laughter in her ear.

 I think that there’s also a priest of the siren goddess, trying to guide her down their path, and I think that the story will be the struggle of her trying to fight her way tooth and nail onto her own path while the Siren Goddess of the Black Sea tries to drag her into her fold. It’s a push and pulling turbulent dynamic with corruption and temptation.

 That’s all I have on them at the moment. I’m keeping them vague until I know which story is coming next.

 Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a lovely day/evening.

[titanomarchy]

I had a fun dream.

I was with some sort of super hero team. My particular power was to shapeshift, though the exact limits of this power wasn't explored. The team and I found some sort of portal. Going through it, the portal led to Mars, which was in a state that suggested it was livable at some point, but had undergone a Ragnarok style apocalypse. Large parts of the landscape were still smoldering. I transformed myself into a beetle and flew to the top of the nearest large hill.

At the top of the hill I transformed back, and to my surprise I found green grass that had begun to regrow in the area. I alerted the rest of my team (by just yelling GREEN!), and once they joined me I continued a search in the area. I found some sort of house, probably built after the apocalypse. Inside was a cage and a cat. Not only was the cat alive and well, but it also had fresh food. I told the team, then continued deeper into the structure.

I found what appeared to be a human woman, with dark hair. I asked her if she was human, and she said that that was a strange thing to ask someone. I responded that some creatures look like humans, but aren't. She said something along the lines of "fair enough" and led me to a large room. When we were at about the halfway through this room, a man (or man*) strode in from the far side. He seemed old, but otherwise still fit. Alongside him was a woman, she looked much younger but was similarly tall, with a sort of sandy blonde hair. By her looks, she would be his daughter or even granddaughter. The man held a chunk of rope that had two loops in it. He put one loop around the tall woman's right wrist, and the other around my left. He began a speech, I didn't catch most of it except for three things: that he said "hekkador of hekkadors" which would be along the lines of leader of leaders which cued me that these were John Carter-type martians. I also got the impression from his description that the tall woman had served as a priestess and was a warrior of some form (pretty much all JC martians have combat training and experience). Thirdly, that this was some form of marriage.

I was mostly confused (internally thought "Wait, why are we getting married?") and not really having any objections to it. My team seemed to have issue with it, if only because they came in part way through to see me bound in a ritual. But, the old priest continued his ceremony and I now had a wife, I guess. There was a time skip, and we were back on Earth. I was in a restaurant with my wife, my team was away. I asked her what it was like to be on Earth instead of Mars. She described how sounds felt a little muffled, like they fell flat. I reasoned that it was the gravity, as Earth has a higher gravity and thicker atmosphere compared to Mars. That is where this dream ended.

[drawnecromancy]

4 and 8 for the video game asks?

4. Top favourite characters from videogames.

Oh, boy ! Let's go with a top 3 ?

Miraak from Skyrim. My beloved. My poor little meow meow. My favorite horrible person. i KNOW he's not super well written i KNOW this DLC is kind of a mess i KNOW he has like ONE MONOLOGUE but I love him. I wrote fanfic about him. He helped me realize I deserved way better than my shitty ex. Comfort character.

Issun from Okami. THE funniest motherfucker. He's so supremely unfunny that he loops back around to being hilarious. I love him. Worst jokes. Okay he is also incredibly annoying in an endearing way, I think ? And he's, uh, a pervert so there's that but he is my little guy who's done nothing wrong ever and who KEEPS getting SWALLOWED BY A WOLF (he is tiny).

Yota from Loop Hero. I'm in love with her. I thought she was a teenage boy for 90% of the game. I can't remember if I learned she was a woman by browsing the wiki or by her dialog making it clear like Right after killing the end boss. She's not the only person whose gender i very much did NOT manage to tell. [hello Hero and Priestess]. I would LIVE for this woman that's how far I'm willing to go.

Honorable mention : Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3. I haven't played enough of the game to DEFINITELY point to him as a favorite yet, but he seems like he was MADE IN A LAB to APPEAL TO ME, SPECIFICALLY. there's a 50% chance he's going to get in the top 3 after i'm done dissecting him.

8. What is the game with the best story you've encountered so far?

OKAMI. OKAMI OKAMI IT'S SUCH A GOOD GAME AND SUCH A WELL CRAFTED STORY AND I LOVE IT SO MUCH AND I SHOULD REPLAY IT I BOUGHT IT ON STEAM SPECIFICALLY TO REPLAY IT (hi you have activated the Okami sleeper agent. I have been in love with this game since I was, like, 14. Except I was the ONLY person who knew wtf this was and my friends got sick of hearing about it real fast.)

I promise it's not just rose-tinted glasses and nostalgia here, it's genuinely well written, when replaying I caught some foreshadowing that I hadn't seen on the first playthrough, even when the characters can get annoying I think they're all SO endearing, there's literally no one I genuinely hate in there. Amaterasu (nicknamed Ama in the french version, I think she's nicknamed Ammy in english ?) HAS personality as a character who 1. is a wolf 2. does not speak 3. is played by you and she's DELIGHTFUL. Doing things mindlessly, straight up swallowing her companion Issu when she's annoyed by his constant talking, bark bark bark (ok no that one's me as a player. but you CAN bark at people for FUN).

Ok I am veering off-course this was about the story but like. The way it unfolds - keep in mind i was pretty young back then - is that I thought, at first, that one of the Big Bosses of the game was like, the end, and was sad that I didn't manage to find every single Celestial Brush technique (...basically spells) - and i was SO happy to realize it meant there was MORE GAME. and More things to explore and do and more story ! The tiny events of the beginning spark a chain that go so far. Please play Okami it's so good. I don't want to spoil it it's SO good. There's character development, secrets, so much cool shit. I love it.

[starlightlilycosplay]

Attending @zenkaikon as an alternate version of my #Pathfinder character, #LinnaeaGreenbriar (using my Helga Hufflepuff dress), today! I haven’t worn her to a convention in a while, but she’s my favourite #cosplay to take to @parenfaire! (Once again, I must mention how much I love that #Zenkaikon is #RenFaire -themed this year!) 💖✨🏰🌿 Linnaea is a NG half-elf cleric of Sarenrae & the diplomat & healer of the party. She may not use her scimitar much (my attack & damage rolls had nothing on our paladin), but she's pretty good with her spells! Toward the end of our campaign (Rise of the Runelords) our GM had our characters ascend to Mythic heroes, so Linnaea chose the Hierophant path. I envision her becoming a high priestess after the adventure ended and she returned to Lastwall. (Perhaps she’ll adventure again, but I see her staying at the temple for a while & helping other adventurers.) Sarenrae’s domains are Sun, Healing, and Light, among others. ✨ Dress pattern by @mccallpatterncompany; corset by @BossWenchofficial / Crystal Fineries, ears by @aradanistudios, pendant of Sarenrae necklace by #TheRelicShoppe on Etsy, custom circlet gifted by @sweetchestnutdesigns, ring belt by #MyFunkyCamelot on Etsy, bag loops by @wordsremember, sun patch by @critstitch6} 💖✨🏰🌿 #Sarenrae #cleric #halfelf #clericofSarenrae #Pathfindercosplay #Pathfindercharacter #originalcharactercosplay #elfears #PARenFaire #PennsylvaniaRenaissanceFaire #RenaissanceFaire #Fairelife #adventuresincosplay #cosplaylife #BossWench #AradaniStudios #TheRelicShoppe #SweetChestnutDesigns #WordsRemember #ButterickPatterns #handmadewithJoAnn #artofthedress #StarlightLilyCosplay https://www.instagram.com/p/CqN2QqzOd9U/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[xaratini]

Soft kisses are nice