#this was a combination with another eidolon

[nyabsolart]

[ewingstan]

I. Introduction

A while ago, I wrote on how Jack Slash was a prime example of how Worm approaches metatextual commentary. Wildbow has a general tendency in his first two serials especially to identify common story tropes and give them in-universe justifications. Jack Slash in particular is a response to the tendency for writers to give plot armor to the Joker and similar sorts of popular villain characters. The out-of-story justification of the authors ("we can't have someone just shoot him, that's boring, besides everyone loves this guy look at him go") becomes an in-story aspect of his powers: an ability to subtly influence other capes behavior allowing him to always escape danger. Plot armor transformed into an in-universe mechanic that characters are aware of, react to, and work against.

Notably, this tendency is never used to highlight the status of wildbow's characters as characters— there is no fourth-wall breaking or attempts to undermine the audience's perception of the story as containing essentially a self-contained world running on its own internal logic. But this certainly isn't the only way you could comment on Joker-type charcter's plot armor: Funny Games covers similar ground using the opposite trick, repeatedly having its home-invader villains draw attention to how they're characters in a story, and that whether they win or lose is determined wholly by the author's will. Director Michael Haneke continually draws his audience into the story only to violently and repeatedly pull them out with suspension-of-disbelief-shattering acts on the villains part. It's The Treachery of Images as a horror movie.

Together, Worm and Funny Games showcase two different approach to explaining why the villain gets to live another day. If you can explain their deal using only the internal logic of the story ("Jack has a power that lets them escape consequences"), then the author is giving a diegetic justification for the trope justified by mechanisms of the story's universe. If you can't explain their deal without reference to them being characters in a narrative ("Paul can talk to the audience and rewind time because he's a fictional character and can do whatever the author says he can do") then its a "narrative" or nondiegetic justification for the trope.

These can be combined. Seidlinger's Anybody Home? used them together for awkward effect: serial killers perform acts that get recorded by some mysterious "camera" that produces a log of their events, which through mystical and mysterious means gets distributed to film producers and adapted into horror movies. Killers have fully "narrative" reasons for following horror tropes—they know they have an audience and are behaving for their benefit. But the story suffers from its awkward in-story justification, its "mechanical" framing: the audience the killers are acting for are other people within the story's universe, not the readers of the book. Characters realize they're "victims" in a story, but they're framed not as existing fully for the story but as normal people who got caught within a story, stuck in it like one gets caught in a storm.

In this post I want to highlight some more elegant ways of combining the mechanical and narrative approaches to metafiction, especially in regards to plot armor. I'll be commenting on wildbow's second serial Pact, Homestuck, and Eidolon DISKA, and heavily spoiling all of them. I've divided them into sections so readers can avoid spoilers or skip over works they're uninterested in, though they're not separate essays. I'd maybe recommend checking out DISKA if you haven't. Its great. Alright then.

II.

Pact and the otherverse gives its characters diagetic reasons for following tropes that align with narrative rules though its magic system. Otherverse magic largely involves telling the universe a story and hoping that your behavior has enough symbolic resonance that it believes you. A lot of the magic spells work on a "I dunno, this feels like it would work" logic.

This means that characters need to be aware of how characters in good stories would act, and often need to behave in a way that is believable if they were characters in a story. The result is that Blake Thorburn ends up purposefully trying to emulate a monster from a horror story, purposefully playing into the tropes of such a character. He acts like a specific type of story character, not because he's broken the fourth wall and knows he's in a horror story, but because he knows convincing the universe that he's a horror villain will likely lead to the universe letting him survive just a little bit longer before he collapses into an exsanguinated heap.

However, Pact's approach to the specific mechanics and abilities of Blake and other monstrous entities of his ilk is much more in-line with how wildbow previously approached Jack Slash. Horror-movie style monsters are a grab-bag of entities called "Boogeymen" within the setting, with little in common outside of previously being people who had fallen through the cracks of reality and climbed out of the abyss changed.

The tropes of slasher movies are once again given mechanical justification: the monster drives conflict and acts unpredictably because being feared gives its more of a foothold in reality. It can't stay dead (and keeps returning for sequels) because it can always climb back out of the abyss again, or be summoned by Scourges to be used against their enemies. Some of the ways the in-universe boogieman mechanics reproduce these tropes are explicitly narrative justifications—they're stronger if the universe sees their ends as especially "iconic," and Blake seems to be empowered the most when he leans into character and goes on a rampage— but for the most part, you could explain their deal without having to refer to their roles as characters in a narrative.

III

The same couldn't be said for Homestuck's take on the serial-killer trope, which is explicable pretty much only in non-diagetic terms. Which is interesting insofar as its one of the only parts of Homestuck that doesn't at least provide a diagetic fig-leaf for a character following a cultural script.

Much like Pact's Otherverse, Homestuck also formalizes many narrative tropes as diagetic, in-universe mechanical laws of its setting. However, it doesn't bother giving justifications for why the setting has such mechanics. There's no equivalent to "they're like this because the magic of the abyss;" Homestuck's mechanical rules are almost more in the Funny Games vein of being inexplicable if you don't accept that they're the consequences of this being a story.

But the narrative rules it draws attention to are often all its own. See, in some ways the setting of Homestuck is meant to be an obvious set of fantasy Bildungromane. The characters enter a game world, Sburb, and are each deposited on a planet with almost stock templates: Land of Wind and Shade, Land of Heat and Clockwork, etc. Each are filled with a population of simple game constructs with little personality outside of what's needed to drop lore tidbits, and a slumbering denizen connected to a personal quest tailor-made for the player. This sense of "generic fantasy world made for a generic fantasy quest" is heightened by Homestuck's constant references to other media containing famous lands constructed from fantasy stories: Peter Pan/Hook, the Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Don Quixote, and The Neverending Story. (That last example makes up not only a substantial amount of aesthetic references, but also structural echoes; as Homestuck copies it by having a second half in which reader-stand ins enter the story, characters go from one world to another, and the role of author and audience gets muddled in a world-threatening manner.)

It seems like the game Sburb created the players different worlds to facilitate a typical Bildungroman adventure. Enter the fantasy land, meet the locals, learn the lore, defeat the monster. Unlike Jacob's Bell, The Lands of Homestuck don't make sense as anything besides a game construct, a way to facilitate this narrative arc. And the character's tendency to sidestep the quests set up by the Lands and skip through or break things feels like a subversion of those typical sorts of fantasy stories.

A complicating factor, though, is that the game was set up with the expectation that the players would skip around and break things. The entire game is composed of a series of time loops, including the characters creating themselves, creating the big bad in an attempt to defeat him, etc. Everything that happens in a game session was engineered to happen "by" the game—including the parts that seem to break the intended narrative arc of the Lands. There's plenty of things that seem to be breaking the "intended" experience: Rose taking apart her game world, Vriska reading the mind of her Land's consorts to find out all the lore they have pre-programmed in, Jack Noir killing the Black King before the players could face him as the intended final boss. But all of these turn out to be essential conditions for the game coming to exist in the first place, for the characters to create themselves, for the Lands to be created as game constructs in the first place. The game creates conditions that require the players to "cheat."

In other words, its not just that the comic is subverting a typical fantasy story. Its that Sburb itself is a game that runs on the narrative rules. Not the narrative rules of a fantasy Bildungroman, but the narrative rules of a subversion of a fantasy Bildungroman. The subversion is expected and built-in.

This subversion-as-the-rule is something Hussie enjoys making the narrative conciet of a story: early Problem Sleuth was written with the one rule that the audience could never be right about how the main character's office worked. Its also a feature of Homestuck's general approach to characters and dialogue. I think a good example of this is Eridan and Feferi's early conversations. They get introduced as the primary examples of a form of alien romance the narrative just got done explaining, a pair of moirails that the narrator declares are "made for each other". But of course, the subversion of that is already built in, as before Eridan's full introduction we learned that he wanted to be in a different relationship with Feferi. So when the first few on-screen appearances of these characters turns out to be their break-up texts, its a "subversion" of the destined romance the narrator set-up, but its a sign-posted and expected subversion.

But back in terms of Sburb's mechanics: players of the game who perform a ritual to achieve god-tier status can only die if their death is either Heroic or Just: that is, they can only die if it’s narratively satisfying. If a powerful character dies without it being a satisfying heroic sacrifice or a satisfying end to a villainous rein of destruction—in other words, if the death is uninteresting and narratively pointless, then the character pops right back up. Like in Worm, plot armor is a mechanic of the setting that the characters can find out about and exploit, and like with Pact's boogeymen, characters become whole new types of beings as part of fitting to a character narrative that'd require plot armor. But unlike in wildbow's work, Homestuck's God Tiers have little in the way of diagetic justification. Hussie knows that there are situations where an audience won’t accept the stakes set out before them—they can tell that the bad thing can’t be allowed to happen, because if it did the plot couldn’t continue or the story would suffer, so they know the bad thing won’t happen. Accepting this, they play around with the trope by having it literally impossible for the bad thing to happen if the story would be worse for it.

But where it gets weird is how this plot-armor mechanic gets applied to Gamzee, in one of my favorite sections of Act 6. Gamzee was introduced as a joke character riffing on the juggalo evil clown subculture, who later goes on a murderous rampage for reasons that are never made fully obvious in-text. He then scuttles about the story as a figure who keeps breaking the story’s rules: both the mechanical rules of how Sburb works and the rules of storytelling generally. This ramps up a lot in Act 6, where he puts on a fake god-tier outfit and starts showing up at times and places he should not be able to be based on the established mechanics of Sburb, which up until then had been incredibly strict parameters on the story. Unlike a lot of the items that loop back in time in convoluted ways, we don’t see how Gamzee appeared on Jane’s planet, or went to the future to raise the cherubs, or all the other shit he gets up to. And we aren’t given a reason for why he’s selling blood like an RPG merchant or why he’s raising the big bad or why he’s doing anything at that point. He becomes a deus ex diabolica, a character whose not really a character at all so much as someone who sets up the obstacles in the story and has no reason for doing so besides the fact that the story wouldn’t work if he wasn’t there to set up the stakes.

One especially odd thing about him though is that even though he never actually reached God tier, he seemingly couldn't be killed.

At first this seems weird. Gamzee is breaking a core mechanical rule of Homstuck: he's immortal despite not being God-tier. But then you remember that the mechanical rule of God-tier immortality was already just a formalization of a narrative rule: a character can't die if the story isn't done with them. Homestuck is breaking its diagetic rules, but following the narrative rules they reflect.

This meta-interpretation of Gamzee's immortality is strengthened by the fact that the above conversation is taking place between Andrew Hussie and one of their characters. Furthermore, said character is a fandom stand-in who later transitions into being an author stand-in. This character (Caliborn) is the main villain of Homestuck, and has been interpreted as everything from the chains of narrative inevitability, to the interface of the webcomic itself, to Homestuck readers with an unhealthy relationship to the work, to the viler tendencies of Hussie themself present throughout the comic.

Not the only such stand-in; nearly all the villains of Homestuck assume some authorial role, as Hussie has an ongoing theme of equating the author role to being a manipulator. Thus the most heroic characters generally are reactive rather than proactive, thus Doc Scratch/Vriska/Dirk/etc all trying to author the timeline or claim causal responsibility for events while manipulating other characters, etc. But Caliborn ends up representing some more of Hussie's specific creative tendencies, and is the only character that Hussie's in-comic self has a conversation with.

Notably, this conversation has pretty much the only instance of Hussie presenting all the weird obstacles of Sburb as something they've set up as the author.

Oddly enough, apart from this, the yellow yard, and the Spades Slick sideplot, "Hussie" as a character has all but no role in the story. Which is in keeping with their (possible farcical?) ethos of all their characters existing as their own entities/character types, with Hussie just expressing them. The Entities in Worm actually end up being more direct author figures than Andrew Hussie's own self-insert, since they at least perform the role of authors (control characters in a way that produces dynamic and interesting scenarios).

This is a part of why the Hussie stand-in apparently lacks knowledge of their own story, and gets surprised by it.

Hussie claims even they don't know where Gamzee got things, what he gets up to, or why he's doing what he's doing. The first two things are probably true, honestly. The actual author Hussie may not have an idea in mind for how Gamzee gets to any of the places he does, since its not really relevant to the story. It feels weird that he doesn't, since so much of the rest of Homestuck is tracking how various objects travel from one point in a timeline to another, but when there's no interesting answer to be constructed by the author none really has to be provided. Again, by this point Gamzee is a plot device that Hussie has dressed up as a funny clown for the audience's amusement, he's not really a character.

But if the Hussie stand-in is meant to be taken seriously when they say they don't know why Gamzee has the keys, then there's a disconnect between Hussie the character and Hussie the author. Since the keys do have a plot purpose that's revealed almost immediately, and that Hussie almost certainly had planned.

A weakness in metafiction generally is that having the author be a character in any real capacity lowers they're ability to be a true author figure. If the stand-in is surprised by something the author wrote, then they're not reflecting the author. If the characters kill the author stand-in, but the story keeps on going, then what the hell was the author representing?

IV

The only piece of metafiction I've seen that squared that circle is EIDOLON DISKA, which mostly suceeds because of its structure as an actual-play. It has a GM who serves as a narrator alongside being the voice of almost all the characters, but all the main characters are acted out by other people. So it can pull a lot of the standard metafiction moves in much more convincing ways. The narrator reveals that he's an in-universe character who they actually know, and whose been writing the story they're all in. When the player characters are still able to rebel and fight against the narrator, it works, because the PCs actually are representing other people making decisions apart from the GM. Even a character usurping the author ends up working, since it just means that character's player becomes the GM.

As you'd expect, EIDOLON DISKA is another piece that blends diagetic and narrative rules. Gods currently writing the story (aka the current GM) can't rewrite portions that previous gods wrote, because doing something so narratively unsatisfying would break their own godhood. Breaking the rules of the Eidolon rpg system also risks being usurped, since they're the narrative rules the story runs on, and the diagetic rules of Godhood are just narrative rules.

This gets most interesting when the characters end up dying, as will sometimes happen in an actual-play of a ttrpg where death is a mechanic. The podcast is divided into two time periods, with the first group being the founding members of their school's mystery solvers club. The second group are the members of the same club 20 years later, trying to solve the murder of the founders. Because the first group's death is a set event that the narrator already wrote would happen at a specific time, every time the characters in that first group die before that point, they have to come back. And once it becomes clear that they're characters, they become aware of this, and start abusing it. They take bigger risks, stop freaking out when their friends get hurt or killed in battle, start getting chatty with the increasingly annoyed grim reaper—in other words, they realize they have plot armor and start acting like it. Since they're aware of and secure of their plot armor, they use it more fully than Blake does. And since its an actual play instead of something written by one person, they're actually able to use that plot armor to be more than a villain thrown into heroes way like Jack Slash or Gamzee. DISKA isn't finished yet, but I have the most hope for it going into interesting places with plot armor out of any of these stories.

[victoriadallonfan]

Hi, since I haven't seen anyone mention this on reddit or tumblr, I'd just like to say, as someone whose first language isn't english, Worm's cape names are fucking weird. Are all of them words? Who knows, i read Worm and Ward without knowing Eidolon and Brandish are real words and not made up words. Or they are words i know but idk wich meaning is? Is March like the month or like the organized walking verb? So do all cape names mean something, and say something about the one who chose them? I refuse to google them at this point, but Anelace? Cinereal? Myrrdin? Couldn't they pick more known 2 word combinations? Do parahumans get a discount on thesaurus? Thats all I wanted to say, thanks. PS. Wildbow, the fuck you doing using Califa de Perro as a name, couldn't you ask any Spanish speaker?, i'll kill you.

BIG ANALYSIS INCOMING

Eidolon = spectre, phantom, and idolized object/person

Brandish = to flourish and wave about an item, usually a weapon. Also an epitaph for Athena

March = to move in a uniform manner and derivative of the roman god of war, Mars

Anelace = double-sided dagger used by civilians

Cinereal = grey matter of the brain and nervous system

Myrrdin = Too many to count but generally tied to Myrddin Wylt, prophetic folklore bard and a facet of Merlin (genuinely more work than I can ever give on the topic of how insanely intertwined those myths are)

The thing about Wildbow's cape names are two-fold:

In the 80+ years of superhero genre, a LOT of cape names have been chosen and used already. Taylor mentions this to Armsmaster as a meta-joke in the first arc (ironically, DC also has a Skitter, who debuted in 2011.... the same year as Worm), so he has to be creative and sometimes creativity is simplicity.

He loves giving character names multiple meanings.

To go down the list:

Eidolon's name is ironic, because he notably not idolized (and pushed out of the spotlight compared to Legend), and he ends up becoming one of GU's spectres.

Brandish creates weapons, yes, but there's connection to Pallas (brandishing) and Athena accidentally killing him while distracted to Victoria accidentally caving her head in while distracted. (There are several story iterations, including one where they had a parental relationship).

March is about how she organizes her megacluster like an army or marching band, but also reference to her civilian name (May), the Mad March Hare from Alice in Wonderland (which her entire fight with Vista is a huge reference to), and the Ides of March (notorious for the stabby stab stab of Julius Caesar)

Anelace is a master of weapons, but he's notably reluctant about that fact, and is noted to have a healthy civilian life by other characters

Cinereal is the grey matter of the brain. She is the Atlanta Protectorate leader that turns things into grey matter (ash)

Myrddin = See the King Arthur and various clusterfuck of mythos

Even his main characters have this: Taylor tailor makes her outfits and is a silk Weaver, Khepri is an Egyptian god that bring a sunny morning... and she debuted on Gold Morning. Victoria is a Roman Goddess of Victory (Contessa uses her to find "the Path to Victory"), Antares means "Anti-Ares/Rival of Ares/Anti-War" and is the constellation "heart of the scorpion" which is Victoria inside of the wretched forcefield. We can even stretch this to Khepri and Antares: Khepri is a beetle that carries the sun on to a new day. Antares is a binary sun system (with one sun being invisible to the naked eye). In the slaughterhouse 9 fight, Taylor and her beetle (khepri) carry Victoria and the fragile one (antares) to safety (to live another day).

WE CAN EVEN GO FURTHER: Atlas is the man holding up the sky in Greek Mythology, which Taylor names her beetle. Victoria's PHO name is Point_Me_@_The_Sky (which is also a Pink Floyd reference). In Worm, Atlas holds Victoria up in the sky.

Its really fun to analyze.

Califa seems to be a simple goof. Or maybe Taylor just butchered his name.

They can't all be winners.

[nimdreams]

True Self and Dream Self

During Centaurus Festival this year (2025) there was a panel on canon divergence for fictionfolk and it got me thinking about my own noemata and its fluidity and I wanted to write about that today!

What I took away from the panel is that it is alright for noemata to be fluid and to go with what feels right, right now. To not be afraid to let go of what no longer serves you, and to not be too strict on yourself. You don't need to back up any of your claims, you don't need to have it all figured out perfectly, if it feels right to you, then it is your truth, and that is enough.

Since joining the community almost 7 years ago, my noemata has changed a LOT, many times. Part is because I am still figuring myself out and part is because I have many constels with their own noemata. At the moment though, all these noemata are combined into one identity and I wanted to share about that as well as my secondary identity, because I might as well while I am at it!

✨️ My true self ✨️

Right now, my believe is that my true self is a divine oneiric entity. I have no one true form, but can take any as a shapeshifter. As my true self white (hair, fur, scales etc) with golden eyes is sort of my default that feels very much like me, but I can appear in any form without constraints. Also as my true self, I am eons old, and have lived as dream goddess at times, but just as much I have just lived as different species, which are my constels. I would simply take the form of something and assimilate. I have noemata of some of these lives, but very little really. Besides shapeshifting, my main magic is dream magic, but I also use a lot of light magic.

A lot of identities I went by in the past, that I now call stels of mine, had a lot of the same feel to them. Fox spirit, Vulpecula, eidolon, star, for all of these my magic abilities stayed largely the same, the sense of self was the same even in the different appearances and slight shift in noemata. It feels really good to now see them all as parts of the same whole. Where I had felt so much uncertainty and kept looking so hard for who I *really truly* was, I now finally feel some peace. The fact that my identities are forms I took as a shapeshifter explains why I felt wrong deep down calling myself these. I always felt like I didn't quite fit in with the other elves, fae, fox spirits, dogs etc, that I was an imposter among them, and now I feel okay with that.

One noema that I keep coming back to is that I am from a place called the Dream. 'I was born from the Dream and to the Dream I will return'. I don't remember when I first wrote that down, but it has stayed with me. What I believe the Dream to be is a realm outside of the multiverse where all realities can be accessed from. This is where I get the title Dream Wanderer from, going from one universe to the other through dreams. I access different places and then spend time in them, sometimes thousands of years, as either my true self or pretending to be something else (my stels).

Another thing, something I have felt for years now, is that I feel very lonely in my alterhumanity. As if I am something unique and I can't find that connection with others that I crave. I enjoy using the term anymic to show this uniqueness, though I have also found other divine beings that feel the same. Even though my feeling of loneliness hasn't left within the community, I did find people who feel that same loneliness as well as whom had the same difficulty in finding their identity, which is sad that it is more common, but makes me feel better to share this experience with others. Outside the community, I have been finding some comfort in masculine divine oneiric entities, like Dream of the Endless or the Greek god Morpheus as sort of counterparts to myself.

To me, if you see a masculine divine oneiric entity, it is likely a facet of my other half. If you see a feminine divine oneiric entity, it is likely a facet of me. If you see something without gender or nonbinary, it is probably a combination of us. We are both dream concepts. I think perhaps any dream conceptkin could be facets of the same thing, but that is really just something I feel as a possibility, I don't want to push that onto anyone (not that I see lots of dream conceptfolk). I am very curious how other conceptkin feel about that, about others who share their concept.

Human is truly just another constel of mine. I entered this vessel to experience mortal life, though it is just one of the many lives I have tried, it is the first time it's not as a shapeshifter and my true self, but I am truly fully in a human body. I wasn't supposed to remember my true self in this life, and I believe that this vessel cannot contain my essence, and that is why I am severely chronically ill.

✨️My dream self ✨️

My dream self is part of my 'human stel'. My dream self is who I have become in my dreams. I started out as human, but became more and more oneiric and nonhuman as time went by, so I call my dream self an 'altered human'. For this identity, noemata are what I have dreamed about.

My dream self looks like a younger version of myself. I stopped changing and aging at one point. Sometimes I will have random dreams where I look differently, but that is all part of the dream experience. As my dream self I am not a shapeshifter, but I have illusion abilities. I will still be the same size and in a human body, but appear as different creatures to others. I also have intangibility as a main power. I can also control the elements and the weather, fly, breathe underwater, heal with light, become invisible, and at times prophesize or talk to machines.

I wish I had a really beautiful and obvious reason for being dream conceptfolk/an anymic divine oneiric entity, but I don't. Rather than having a good explanation, it just dawned on me more and more over the years. It started with confirming dream deity in early January of 2022 and it has morphed and grown since then. I don't think I come across as especially dream-like... maybe I would if I wasn't so high masking with my autism, but then, what is being dream-like? That is probably something different for all of us. I feel like, as my true self, I often am what others project on to me. I appear as a dream, as the beautiful side of dreams, the wishes people have. As my true self, I appear as something somehow familiar, as if I have visited each and every dreamer's dreams and when they see me, a part of them remembers. Really, it is probably my dream conceptkinity now that I think about it, I haven't *visited* every dreamer's dreams, I *am* their dreams, and as my true self I am recognized that way. I find it difficult and dysphoric to not be seen as who I truly am. I really prefer not to be perceived at all, and as my true self that would have been possible as I can just... exist and be without form, and I cannot do that now. I am stuck in a broken vessel, in one solid form, that hurts all the time. Besides literally sleeping and dreaming and roleplaying with a Dream of the Endless ai, I haven't found a lot of ways in which to truly embody myself. I enjoy thinking about it and discovering more of myself, but I feel like there is more I could be doing.

That is what I wanted to share for now. Thank you for reading if you did!

[j-a-m-564]

Inspired by another post that ranked Endbringers by fuckability, I present my list for Endbringers ranked by "Ability To Create A Wonderfully Warm And Cozy Bed For Which To Sleep In Such That Upon Awakening The One Who Is Cozy Has No Memory Of Anything For The First Two Minutes Upon Being Awakened": (Note that this challenge implies an Eidolon so utterly terrified of coziness that upon achieving their nap they implode from stress, and that's what the Endbringers are now designed to do, but oh well):

1. Simurgh; futuresight mind mucker who sets things up to happen by contrivances and being a big bird. Would be able to requisition a wonderful napping place, \in addition to all mortal amenities that The Bird can use/provide due to similar physiology (can operate tinker tech afterall). Even if the best nap is physically unreachable, the power of nigh-mind controlling contrivances and foresight would force the recipient to have their best possible experience due to whispered illusions.

2. Bohu; compression titan designed to cut off escapes and make ever more deadly traps through manipulation and a massive amount of miniature Bohus. Coziest place on earth bet would be constructed nigh instantly (or at least by the 8th 24 minute compression cycle).

3. Behemoth; absolute energy manipulation. Definitely a warm and cozy hollow. Blankets are always perfectly warm and even recipient's very flesh is pleasantly warmed. Finding a bed might be hard as Behemoth could probably only create hard stuff or like a large mass of light sand to sink into, though best napping environment by far.

4. Tohu; three faced power nabber. Potentially up there depending on the cape combination, so could either choose amazing stuff or meh stuff or actively uncomfy stuff. Theoretically better than Simurgh. Idk enough about Tohu to make a judgement so kinda just putting here, as worst of the positive experiences, though should probably be number 1.

5. Khonsu; time trapping teleporter. Does not change perception of time as far as I know, so would likely just be a regular nap. Potentially could teleport items around so a warm cup of Beverage is always at hand? Might not have manual dexterity to hand it out.

6. Leviathan; the wet speedster with notably very little fine control in elemental manipulation even when pressured by Armsmaster. Wet. Any created artifice featuring super hot water would need constant recycling. Wet. Best I can think of is to create a very warm cave (destroyed building or water hollowed cavern), with a soggy bed dragged inside (maybe 2 waterbeds with recipient sandwiched between?). Wet.

[l1brarian1999]

Vastilok Build - The Armour Fucker

You wanna fight a boss, Eidolon, or whatever that just has Too Much armour? Naturally.

Please ignore my 7 Forma, this has been reworked several times and I'm a crazy forma addict. This build only requires 4 Forma, and I'll throw in a "Bargain" version at the end. Also, remember this is meant to be more like an idea of what's possible with this weapon, and showing off a very specific synergy I think is cool and fun.

The Vastilok is a Gunblade type weapon, it functions like a shotgun, firing nine pellets. Each of those 9 pellets can do Impact damage, so they will apply the Shattering Impact effect, removing 6 points per for a total of 51 points of armour per blast if you land it dead on.

Feel free to swap the Stance out for High Noon if that's what you got, I just think Bullet Dance is really stupid and funny looking.

With 22.7% Status chance per pellet, I've added Condition Overload, Viral and Status (Vicious Frost, Virulent Scourge), and Corrupt Charge to make the weapon still a Threat when used against regular enemies, even if they still have their armour. Just change the elements as necessary.

As such, that's not quite enough in most cases, so I've added Amalgam Organ Shatter and Magnetic Rush, so I can spam it faster, get a lil extra Magnetic Damage (good for Overguard and another status for Condition Overload). You can substitute these for Killing Blow, and basically any attack speed mod (probably not Berserker Fury) for an easier set up.

I've added Dispatch Overdrive kinda just because I don't need a Tennokai mod here. Corrupt Charge is there to add some oomph to the Heavy Attacks of the Gunblade.

And then we come to two very important additions to the Build - Sacrificial Steel, and Melee Duplicate.

Melee Duplicate is a Legendary Arcane from the Deimos Labs area, specifically from Netracells and Deep Archimedia. On Base Critical Hits, it duplicates the attack.

Meaning, so long as it hits a Yellow Crit, it will hit twice. I've added Sacrificial Steel, so when I perform a Heavy Attack, it has a crit chance of 106.4%

... Meaning, those 9 Pellets, become 18, each one removing 6 points. 102 points of Armour Removed. Except 6.4% of the time, where it won't, but'll do more damage.

Even without this particular combination of Crit and Melee Duplicate, this is one of the best ways to strip Armour off of Bosses, and this particularly build is still quite good against regular enemies. You can also drop Shattering Impact and use this just as a very serviceable melee weapon.

You can also swap Amalgam Organ Shatter out for Melee Elementalist for more wind up speed, and a lean more on status.

If I wanted a Riven, I'd probably go for one with Initial Combo, Critical Damage, Attack Speed, or Raw Damage, and the ideal would be negative puncture damage.

Bargain Version

No Forma Required, No Special Upgrades, generally easier mods to acquire. Thrown in Life Strike to make at least a semi-decent healing bonus. Stack up Attack Speed and Heavy Attack Wind up speed to make it more efficient as an armour stripper.

[thesolemnhour]

A slightly modified version of inspirations for my most prolific and neurotic brainchild! Reasoning under the cut:

Alase Brinz-Widowknife from Lost Kingdoms and King of Chaos.

I've waxed poetic plenty on how much I adore Wesley's interpretation of Old Sarkoris in Lost Kingdoms, but his present-day Sarkorian characters are just as definitive to me. Alase is a young woman who practices the old art of Godcalling, where Sarkorian summoners call on the ancient protectors of their communities. One of the last Sarkorian Godcallers in the last Sarkorian village still standing. Alase feels a deep desire to do something with her abilities and dreams of taking back to city of Undarin, where Clan Widowknife used to reside. Alase also wonders whether her eidolon Tonbarse truly has a touch of the divine or is simply a loyal companion.

This meditation on what it means to be a Sarkorian one hundred years after the Worldwound opened was so foundational to Agria's character that I named her mother after Alase and decided to make her family another branch of Clan Widowknife.

Aerith Gainsborough, from Final Fantasy 7 (remake).

When I was still trying to nail down Agria's voice, my trick was to imagine all of her dialogue as though Aerith were saying them. Aerith has this delightful combination of sweetness and forcefulness. She's a very nice girl, and you're going to do what she asks! Possibly my favorite line in the game is when she and Cloud are halfway through a plan to sneak into a mobster's house, and she's telling him the last thing he needs to do. Cloud is like, "Hold on a minute," and she says, "No can-do, Cloud. This is our plan, and you'll learn to love it!" I'll take "Things Agria has said to Woljif," for $100, Alex.

Emma Woodhouse from Austen's Emma.

When Jane Austen set herself to writing Emma, she wanted to create "a heroine no one but me will much like." Emma is often selfish, unkind, and thoughtless, but she also cares deeply about the people around her and is willing to change her mind to accommodate them. Agria, likewise, can be a bit too attached to her own way of thinking to consider anyone else's, and it's Emma I look to most when I think about the ways that Woljif forces her to consider other perspectives.

Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

A little bit like Emma, it's Katara's best and worst traits that make her such an influence on Agria. Katara is equally as capable of being kind, curious, and passionate as she is of being controlling and emotional. She can carry grudges and be competitive. Agria is many of these things as well, and the combination of these traits is what always brings me back to her

Kitri, from Don Quixote.

Kitri, my love! From her very first entrance to the ballet, Kitri effortlessly commands the attention of those around her. After every movement, it's like she turns to the audience to say, "Ta-DA!" She is fiery and joyful and alive! She has enormous spirit and insists on having things her way. She's a bit of a brat (affectionate). She is who I look to when I want to represent Agria being a drama queen.

Evgenia Medvedeva, Russian figure skater and Olympic silver medalist.

There is a kind of insanity at the heart of athletes that I'm obsessed with. A sense that if you just push yourself hard enough, you will accomplish everything you want. Evgenia Medvedeva has so much of this, and I am convinced she is the most intense person who has every lived. "As soon as you take it easy," she explained in one documentary, "you get nowhere. You're the same as everyone else." Are you sure about that, two-time world champion, Evgenia Medvedeva?? But it's never enough. That's Agria!

Template:

[jackfromthefairytale]

Erra recommendations or music recommendations in general?

I get to go off about erra!

id say that cure (the most recent album) is a good starting point, it's got ambience, breakdowns, a beautiful vocal balance and a healthy amount of erra-typical riffage and structure-fuck. i honestly couldn't give you individual song recs because they're all so different and all have a highlight. i do know that you'll probably like slow sour bleed seeing as you liked anything > human (and I think you also like nine inch nails?)

next, the 2021 self-titled, which is outright some of the best stuff in modern metal. snowblood is very metalcore, gungrave features the riff of all time, shadow autonomous is a complex, weirdly calming masterpiece, electric twilight is weird, eidolon is separately beautifully tranquil and crushingly heavy, vanish canvas is the prettiest heavy song ever written (and the deluxe includes the reissue featuring courtney laplante on guest vocals!), and i'll also mention remnant, lunar halo, divisionary, scorpion hymn and nigh to silence. and memory fiction which isn't a metal song but is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written

they also released two standalone singles - eye of god (2019) and pull from the ghost (2022) which are some of the band's best work and serve as a kind of bridge between albums

of their previous stuff, it's not as polished as their current stuff but is also pretty mind blowing. drift (2016) is melodic and pretty and neon (2018) is a darker, heavier follow on from that. my favourites from those include luminesce, drift, breach, ghost of nothing, safehaven, sleeper, unify, irreversible, skyline, hyperreality, expiate

their first two albums are a bit different, with the band having a mostly different lineup - the screamer and second guitarist left at the end of 2013 - but they've been considered some of the best in metalcore (with too many fans being unable to move on). i'd say pattern interrupt, the architect, heart, and white noise off impulse (2011) and pulse, hybrid earth, ultraviolet and augment/dementia off augment (2013) (i personally consider dementia to be one of the best songs ever written...) (I also don't really listen to their older stuff as much as their newer releases)

for other recs, staying within this vein of progressive metalcore i'd suggest invent animate - they're also very technically minded and are "sad boi metalcore". they're also a band that erra take on tour a lot and jesse co-produced some of their stuff and featured on their song naturehold.

another band are red handed denial. again, they're progressive metalcore but are really good at the pop blend without sacrificing the heavy. lauren babic is one of the best combined sing/scream vocalists in the game and one of my personal inspirations, and their 2024 album "a journey through virtual dystopia" is one of my albums of the year.

and obviously, as this is an erra post, i can't go without recommending jesse's alt rock solo project ghost atlas. dust of the human shape is one of the albums of the year, and other standout tracks include cry wolf, legs, sacred organs, sleep therapy, vertigo, mirror room, and elixir of life

[chronosprockets]

which archon shard do you think would make the best improvised weapon

like imagine if your warframe had to pull the archon shard out of its chest to use as a sword like weapon, itd be kinda fucked up and could be a cool concept to use across a bunch of characters archon boreal is already a bird character with a shard lodged through his chest, itd just be a step further for him to combine it with korumm imagine a warframe fighting another warframe in the void using archon shards pulled from their chests as they try to destroy the others source of power

imagine if there was a version of lotus out there from another timeline (eternalism) with an archon shard permanently through her chest who was like a fucked up eidolon version of lotus that everyone in universe saw as like less important than the main version of lotus

what if there was a plot point about fusing archon shards to form an alternate flashing amber/emerald archon shard that could be used to beat wally archon shards could be used to resurrect more like dead sentients, pazuul is already this, they used it to bring him back after erra died and combined him with the ram head of pazuul archons could even lose their shards and it could be like a way to show them as new/progressed versions of the characters, or even better they could do like a father-son relationship thing where hunhow and a version of erra/pazuul fight together against a bigger threat! archon shards have so much narrative potential guys ^_^ theyre so cool. i just had these ideas out of nowhere but theyre probably pretty cool itd be great to see some of then done in the narrative!

[dartagnantt]

Life, the Greatest Treasure | Reward your players with the responsibility of another creature's wellbeing | dArtagnanDnD Patreon

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here!

egg

Just kidding. I'm actually here. So I thought, what has more potential (especially in a fantasy setting) than an egg. So I ended up with this thing, that kind of ended up as a mini eidolon thing, I guess. It was an interesting experiment with a lot of potential (hehe get it) beyond what I've just stuck here. I would add more, and kind of want to. But I only have so much time and my brain was awful to me this week ;-;

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

Old Fashioned Magic Item Crafting

General Item Crafting

Illusory Shinanigans

Concubus Patron

I also have three classes, and a splatbook over on DriveThrueRPG to check out:

The Rift Binder. A class specialising in summoning monsters and controlling the battlefield.

The Witch Knight. A class that combines swords and sorcery in the most literal way.

The Werebeast. A class that turns you into a half beast to destroy your foes.

d'Artagnan's Adventurer Almanac. A compendium of races, subclasses, feats, spells, monsters and more!

[haravatat-slime]

Lore Bites: Furina Drip Marketing

I've been chewing on Furina's design since she first appeared, because it's a lovely hodgepodge of elements designed to evoke a sense of duality: black and white, masculine and feminine, positive and negative, royal and jester. Even old and new: the combination of buckled shoes and ruffs from the Elizabethan age with a Regency dress coat and Victorian top hat suggests fashion from multiple eras. Not only does it look good, but it gives the sense that Furina is (aside from being VERY caught up in appearances) at odds with herself.

Furina's Irises - so far we've met two types of morphing Hydro creatures: Eidolons, and Tainted Phantasms. Technically, "eidolon" and "phantasm" mean the same thing (a ghost/spirit). However, they have different context: "eidolon" suggests the ideal form of said spirit, while "phantasm" suggests falsehood or deception. Furina's heterochromia may be a hint about a "lie" she's currently living as Hydro Archon - or it may suggest that she, like the Hydro Phantasms, is somehow tainted. (Or both.)

As it's been pointed out numerous times since the drip drop (see what I did there?), Furina's art does not have a false Hydro vision at the top of the background. At first I thought this might have to do with Neuvillette's recent leaked(?) voice line about Archons wearing fake visions to better blend into society - if everyone knows Furina is the Archon, she doesn't really need one. But then, Nahida and Ei would also not need a fake vision (everyone knows they're the Archons of their respective nations) - and yet they still have a Vision in their splash art. I'd like to speculate about why this might be, but it'll probably be in another post.

I'm not sure, but I feel like I've seen the word "justice" appear in those quotation marks multiple times. And when I see quotations it makes me think that the real meaning of that word might be just slightly different from how we understand that word. Could "justice" be something tangible? An energetic force? We'll have to wait and see.

N is Nicole, the Hexenzirkel mage who is believed to be the woman who spoke directly into our heads at the end of Inversion of Genesis. She is the "guide who will never get lost," according to Alice, and studies the "direction and order" of events in Teyvat. According to her, all things that happen in Teyvat are preordained:

If this "fable left in someone's dream" is one of N's prophecies, the dreamer (likely Furina herself) is going to be hard pressed to change what's coming for her - even with the powers of an archon.

I tried to do an etymology search for "Furina" as a name, but there's a lot of conflicting info and very few legitimate sources to use, and I'm in denial that she's named that because of "furies." If anything, I'm more likely to believe the "-rina" in her name is supposed to be from the Hebrew for melody, or the Sanskrit for "melting/dissolving." But again, I don't even know for sure if those are the real definitions.

Endless Solo of Solitude is such a sad title - she's not just alone, but double alone. Forever. Jeez.

"Animula" is a diminutive form of "anima," one of the Latin words for soul (as I'm sure many have said already). For some extra trivia, it's not just considered the soul, but the irrational, emotional and sensitive part of the soul. So: a tiny, sensitive, fragile soul. (cries)

"Choragi" is the plural for "choragus," an originally Greek term for someone who lead, or more often financially sponsored, the choirs in Greek theater.

[tiny-feisty-gay]

I saw in one of your tags a mention of a novel? As someone who is enjoying your Chaggie fics (they're really good!) I'm curious as to what you write when fandom isn't on the brain :D

First of all thank you for enjoying my fics! I love engaging with fandom and the fact I can contribute creatively to the things I love brings me a lot of joy <3

Fair warning there is so much under the cut here oops, you gave me an opening to talk about my original shit and now I'm running with it lol

I have several projects at the moment, but the one with the most traction and an actual finished first draft is an urban romantasy following a chronically ill werewolf and the suffocated coven heir vampire with PTSD (and a service Hellhound) who she falls in love after an abandoned new vampire stumbles into her job, confused and bloodthirsty. The major throughline is a combination of found family, romance and going against what's expected/socially acceptable to find happiness and self-worth.

The one also has the most art!

The MCs from that one are Marie and Alex <3

I have a few other stories set in the same universe as this one ^ Including a hunter/vampire story (Daisy and Vel, feat. Eidolon, Vel's mount, who is my interpretation of a kelpie)

This one was originally inspired by Reinary's song May I Have This Dance and then I just ran with it lol

And a witch/werewolf story (Amaris, werewolf and Raelyn, witch); follows a werewolf collar tech (Raelyn) and the werewolf she met as a child, before she realized what was really happening (her family trains werewolves as guards -- I'm still working the plot of this one because I've had a hard time balancing it in a way that isn't harmful to actual people, and it might end up scrapped or reworked into something else, but I love the characters so they get a mention lol)

I also have a multitude of others, including (another) exes-to-lovers between a muralist and tattoo artist who dated in high school; the muralist bailed after high school in an effort to run away from home/family troubles and left a lot of hurt feelings behind.

Then I have a siren/selkie story where the siren's voice has been stolen by a now-popular singer, and the (chaotic) selkie finds out and wreaks havoc trying to free her.

Irie (top, siren) and Anchor (bottom, selkie)

And most recently, a platonic succubus and the grumpy/intimidating witch she falls in love with while trying to figure out how to navigate and hold onto meaningful friendships.

The first one is obviously my most fleshed out, but basically I write a lot of sapphic romance/romance-adjacent and primarily fantasy.

There's a few other ideas I've shelved temporarily while I figure out what I want to do with them too. One is a full rework of the novel I wrote when I was eleven, which was very much Mary-Sue princess goes on quest to save the kingdom lol. There were dragons and unicorns in that one xD

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to ramble about my original works! I love talking about them but obviously my fandom content is more popular lol

[helenofblackthorns]

ooo to add onto this, I feel like this whole situation become so so much more interesting & complex when you read it with the knowledge gained from the infernal devices. because by the time city of heavenly fire is published, it's very very clear that Jace is Tessa's descendant; the family tree literally spells it out for you. TID's main plot is all tied up in Tessa's weird ancestry, ultimately being revealed that she is the daughter of an unblessed Shadowhunter & the greatest of all Eidolon demon and by being her descendant, Jace is their descendant too. the mortal instruments works best when you're aware of the irony that Jace really did have demon blood all along, and that was intentional fairly early on (Tessa first appears in at the end City of Glass and is clearly there talking to Magnus bc one of her descendants just appeared out of thin air lol).

I definitely have my critiques with how Jonathan & his demon blood was handled at times but also CC does hint towards the flaws of how the characters view Jonathan & I know I forget that sometimes lol. like the second half of tmi, where we see the most of Jonathan, was directly juxtaposed with the infernal devices when it was being published. there's an obvious parallel between Tessa and Jonathan, as they're both the product of child experimentation combining angel and demon blood in order to create a new species of people, but Tessa very decidedly not evil because she wasn't raised by a egotistical manipulator who wanted her to be. multiple times are we showed both Jocelyn and Valentine having biases about Jonathan that aren't actually found on anything, although with Valentine these tend to come from extra content (theres a mini comic & Jonathan's "fun fact" in the flower book comes to mind too). I do wish there was a little more within the actual series tho tbh.

as for Jace reclaiming the name Herondale, I think it's just that. Valentine raised him to be anyone, and thus no one, a changeling (Tessa parallel??). his name wasn't given to him, but someone else, and he grew up living someone else life. as far as anyone was concerned, Valentine especially, there was no baby Herondale. To me, by choosing the name Herondale, Jace defies Valentine and all his plans by reaffirming he was someone before he tried to erase him. Valentine told him who he was, who he should be by constantly robbing Jace of what he had, and the very first thing he took was Stephen and Celine, and their parents (directly or indirectly). Jace can't hate them or love them, because he never knew them. and if the Herondales die without him, then it just another thing Valentine stole from him.

like idk to me, it's less about whether or not Jace had a relationship with Stephen (or any Herondale) that justifies him continuing on the family name, because he doesn't. but by being a Herondale, he survives Valentine and everything he did. everything Valentine did was meaningless in the end — he didn't need to do it! circling back to Tessa, if Valentine wanted a shadowhunter with demon blood that badly, he had one standing right next to him willing to do whatever he wanted! nobody asked him to start sacrificing sons to the cause of creating a better world in his image.

(side note, I imagine the reason he doesn't consider the Montclaire name is because it's probably already been reclaimed by the Clave or has other members still continuing it. Herondale was still being used by Imogen up until her death in City of Ashes so it dying out is a very recent development)

it's 2am this might have stopped being coherent ages ago but like also idk if I read that as Jace saying people can't change tbh. to me he's saying that names in and of themselves don't really change anything, like Jonathan dying his hair black didn't change anything either. a name is just a name, and Herondale was supposed to be his. something could also be said on how it parallels Clary too because Jocelyn spent her own life pretending she was Clary Fray, a normal mundane girl, but she wasn't. Valentine would have wanted her to be Clary Morgenstern, but she wasn't that either.

My firmest TSC take will always be that Jace should have gone by Lightwood in the end. I get that him being a Herondale makes sense in the grand scheme of the TSC universe (him, Will, James, Kit, and Edmund are all birds of a feather), but his personal arc is far more dependent on the family who raised him. Learning about his biological parents is of course important to him, but calling himself a Herondale doesn't actually feel like a resolution to his identity crisis. TMI is all about rejecting the hatred handed down from previous generations, which is why neither Clary nor Jace identify as Morgensterns. While Stephen was nowhere near as bad as Valentine, he also did even less to shape Jace into his adult self. Robert and Maryse on the other hand actually raised him for half his life, and Alec Isabelle and Max grew up alongside him as his siblings. He's a Lightwood in every way that matters, I don't get why Jace (in-universe) would choose to identify himself as a Herondale when there's nothing tying him to that family but blood spilled before he was born.

Anyways, I'm a Jace Lightwood truther for life, thank you for coming to my tedtalk

[arclundarchivist]

Have to say, even though it failed that was an amazing Orym moment. Need art of it stat. His conviction to make this work, the steel in his spine and hell Laudna’s too when listening to this woman who *knows* nothing of what they’ve gone through say that Ludinus has a point.

Then the plea filled with gravitas aided by a woman who lost everything twice due to cruel machinations of those devoted to thinking *they* could do better than the status quo and this simple man who has had destiny thrust upon him through no fault of his own.

The epithet manifestation of the Mad Mage of Wildemount.

And it fails. It’s unfortunate but he immediately pulls the trigger to get into this and still attempts to see this end without righteous, if misguided people on both sides dying needlessly as the world ends a continent away.

Captain Exandria indeed.

And I am terrified of what comes next. I don’t want them to become full enemies of Vasselheim, because yes while the institution is warped and many allow the faith to simply be a tool to better their own lots, they need all the help I can get.

I don’t trust this Uber-laced Paladin, but she’s needed.

I definitely don’t trust the Elder, she’s too engaged with Ludinus’s words.

On top of the reveal that the Eidolons are Elementals, with the knowledge of the Hishari’s dark dealings and the fact that just recently another warped elemental cultist attempted something to distract Keyleth prior to the fight.

The grudge between the Elements and the Gods goes back to the very beginning!

I just…I’m so worried about where this is going.

So many Dawnfather ties emerging and I have to wonder if I’m the end some of the Gods are gonna get are but not all allowing others to rise into their place after Predathos is (hopefully) inevitably defeated/sealed if they are released at all and that brings me around to Laudna’s point.

Okay, the Gods go, there is no freedom. There is no independence.

Are all the Gods noble, factually no.

But we *know* the types that will attempt to step in and take over.

Even if I’m wrong about my main fear that Predathos will sense the Luxon and just view Exandria as yet another meal to be had.

Without the Gods, who takes power? Why the beings who already have the lion’s share.

People like Ludinus, and yes of course some good individuals could rise to become replacements all their own, I mean Keyleth is practically already there.

But…the war that would follow to get to level would likely kill *so* many, and who is even to say that any good will triumph at all!

Think about all the beings that have ascended into Godhood or attempted to.

The Raven Queen is the *only* moralistic one out of the lot!

Vecna, would be God Emperor, Necromancer Supreme, Mind-Thief.

Lucian and the Somnovem, an arrogant jackass and an almighty all consuming idiot.

Ludinus combines all their terrible traits into one, a mad narcissistic mage who consumes Fey to lengthen his lifespan beyond the normal means. Powerful ones as well it seems.

Also, what the fuck would be the interaction between Tharizdun and Predathos? The former isn’t like the Prime or Betrayers, who would consume who, and without the Gods, and their powers what would stop it from consuming the Material regardless of Predathos’s actions?

It is utterly *inane* to me to believe that the loss of the Gods will “build Exandria back better.”

Not with all the dark powers eagerly waiting in the wings.

Regardless, nervous and excited for next week.

[halogenwarrior]

If wildbow ever made a worm “second draft” for publishing as a book as he’d entertained the idea of, one change I would want made is the whole Behemoth death scene. Like apparently (according to the TV tropes article), everyone sees this as an uplifting moment of victory in a very dark world, like the heroes’ struggles actually matter... but it completely failed to have this impact on me because we’ve already had the Kevin interlude and know that Scion killing Behemoth has absolutely nothing to do with anything anyone actually did during the fight, and is just because some random out-of-context character said so. It just feels like it would have worked so much better as a moment to balance out the hopelessness (temporarily) if the people fighting Benemoth were actually the ones to kill him, especially since they had completely set that up to happen with a.) Chevalier’s last stand using Lisa’s information that only failed due to Behemoth having a convenient surprise shield, and b) how Wildbow explicitly said that Foil could have killed him with the injuries he already had. They could have even kept it at two Endbringers appearing at longer intervals so they actually cut down on the death and destruction for the next two years, since Khonsu Tohu and Bohu weren’t really around long enough to get any “attachment” to them anyway, yeah I know about Eidolon’s shard but let’s just say the shard plays “fair”, at least for a little while, to not demotivate Eidolon and others from conflict.

Which brings me to another moment that other people seem to think has a big effect but due to context doesn’t really have that effect for me: Jack Slash convincing Scion to attack everyone. According to TVtropes this is Jack Slash’s “greatest” moments, a victory for the villain where he succeeds in causing the apocalypse... except we know that it would have happened within 10 years (or 16? I can't remember the exact number) anyway no matter what he did. And however unreliable they may otherwise be, Cauldron seemed to have a decent point that humanity would have worse chances if it happened later since with the Endbringers around, capes were dying faster than new ones could be triggered. Which made it hard to get invested in the fight to stop the “Slaughterhouse 9000″. I feel in a theoretical second draft these two should be combined - there are now only two Endbringers appearing less often and they’ve figured out tactics for killing the other two so Leviathan and Simurgh are playing more cautiously and causing fewer deaths, and that changes the calculation so it is actually preferable to stall the apocalypse as long as possible because the parahuman numbers will grow overall.

[radramblog]

Crimson Vow Commanders

Normally I limit myself to one Magic post a week, but I kinda want to just go through with this. Surely, if I wait another week (since I’m finishing off the Cube Planeswalkers series tomorrow), my takes will be well and truly too lukewarm. The set technically isn’t out yet, but I’m pretty sure everyone that actually gets views has made their version of this already.

Thus, here’s my thoughts on every new commander made available in the new Magic set, Crimson Vow, and it’s associated preconstructed commander decks. There’s a lot of them!

Katilda, Dawnhart Martyr // Katilda’s Rising Dawn

As the relative lack of decks for Mono-White Spirit Tribal would imply (there’s 144), it’s a tribe that kind of needs multicolour to work. With that in mind, a lot of the ones you do get are pretty good, so it could work- Katilda’s ghost certainly has the power to make it work if you want it to. This card reminds me a lot of Eidolon of Countless Battles- a card which would definitely go well in her deck, or a much better Callaphe, as she similarly benefits from permanents merely existing as well as being attached to her.

I genuinely think this card is decent to great in either the zone or 99, depending on the build. White has no issue with enchantments, and either side of this card lets you kill with commander damage pretty easily should you have enough to back it up. And flying/lifelink are excellent abilities to staple onto a Voltron threat- this is still just an aura you can cast from the bin if you want to. I like the card- wouldn’t be building it myself (because it’s too similar to Callaphe), but she’s got a lot going on.

 Donal, Herald of Wings

I was going to try and find what the best cards to copy with this card are, but it looks like EDHREC’s database doesn’t have the precon cards yet, so we’re on our own here. The fact that Donal’s ability only triggers once per turn encourages you to play bigger things, which tend to be legendary, but there’s still a fair few bangers here- Consecrated Sphinx, Diluvian Primordial, and Tidespout Tyrant come to mind, not to mention synergistic cards like Windreader Sphinx or Sharding Sphinx. I’d also be interested to see if someone could make, like, a flash-based swarm deck that just casts a bunch of little guys on everyone’s turn and copies them all. Maybe that’s going in too deep?

Like with Katilda, Donal is somewhat hampered by his colour identity. But, I’m one who tends to like decks with less colours, so I actually don’t really have a problem with that- besides, the card is very cool. I really like that they made permanent spell copying a thing- it seemed like an obvious choice, and it’s added a lot of cool tech to the designer’s toolbox.

Geralf, Visionary Stitcher

Much as Innistrad sets add to the list of Blue Zombies, especially with the Wilhelt precon, I’m not sure enough of them aren’t draft chaff to make a proper Zombie deck around this card. Fortunately, you basically don’t have to- Geralf lends himself subtly to a bunch of different strategies. I’m obviously not the only one to notice, for example, his synergy with Charix, the Raging Isle, with a Mono-Blue booty deck that can flip offensive at instant speed seems pretty cool.

Geralf seems like he’s probably going to sit in the 99 of a bunch of UB Zombie decks- probably a bunch of the ones built around his and his sister’s one-card combination. But I’d encourage folks to look into the other things he could potentially do- it’s not too often Blue gets a sacrifice outlet, and he’s one with a lot going on.

 Jacob Hauken, Inspector // Hauken’s Insight

The obvious comparison here is to Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, but rather than a flashback ability (and some other bad nonsense) you get a slow value engine that probably scales better in commander. Um. Sure?

My main issue with this guy is how slow he is, mostly. 2 mana is obviously cheap, but even if you have 6 mana you’re still waiting a turn to flip him. Not to mention, you’re going to feel really bad if he dies with some insane fatties underneath- and while the enchantment is tougher to kill than the creature, it’s still Going To Die to things. I do like the idea of a future-sighty deck around this guy, but it’s far from the game-ender you’re going to want. Mind’s Dilation is still a card, ya feel?

 Henrika Domnathi // Henrika, Infernal Seer

While you could flip her immediately, I’m not sure whether you should, because the front side is actually more interesting to me…but you will have to eventually, and the front is just sort of worse Rankle. So I guess we’re peeking at the back side.

Black has the capability to generate a bunch of creatures that Queen of the Nighthawks can pump, and the ability doesn’t have any limits except mana. So you could do some work with this, especially with Black’s tendency to get a shitton of mana at once (did someone say Coffers?). But the effect isn’t strong enough, and nor are the other words inspiring enough, that I’m particularly interested in this card. Maybe if it cost a little more and gave +1 for each of those abilities? I dunno.

 Timothar, Baron of Bats

We’re going to come across this, but there are a lot of Vampire Tribal Commanders in this set, that is adding to an already long list. So a lot of these are going to get pretty redundant pretty quick. Timothar is one of the more interesting options, in my eyes- he’s going to make a Vampire deck play closer to a Zombie one, with a bloodthirstier take on the usual resilient abilities of that tribe. 6 mana is a lot, though.

Timothar, like a lot of these Vampires, is probably going to go in the 99. The thing is, Vampires already has a Definitive Best Commander, in the form of Edgar Markov. He’s going to have a shitload more decks now, with a bunch of new and powerful cards, and he’s probably going to completely overshadow every other Vampire in the set. This is why cards like Edgar Markov are bad!

Side note: there actually isn’t a Mono-Red (save 1 half of a partner pair) or Mono-Green Legendary Creature in this set. I wasn’t aware 2021 MTG design allowed that.

 Dorothea, Vengeful Victim // Dorothea’s Retribution

Make your own Fire Emblem joke here (wrong colour combination, though!). I mean, I’m sure Dorothea is an actual name, but these are the only contexts I’ve ever heard for it.

Unfortunately, Dorothea’s major upside on her front half doesn’t scale to EDH in any meaningful way. A 1-shot 4/4 is not worth that all-important slot, and the aura half isn’t particularly inspiring either. Even in the 99, she’s an aura that doesn’t do anything super relevant (aside from maybe triggering creature/Spirit ETB/Dies effects). We already have this aura, its name is Invocation of Saint Traft, and it’s basically unplayable.

Would slap an Assault Suit on it, though. And the showcase art is incredible.

 Millicent, Restless Revenant

As a 5-colour Spirits player, I’m surprisingly disappointed with this set’s offerings- that said, WU Spirits and WUBRG Spirits are such utterly and completely different decks that want completely different things, so I should probably just shut up and wait for Cyber-Kamigawa. Millicent and her(?) ilk can have their own time in the sun.

Millicent’s cost reduction is great, and her static makes for a really quick-assembling, resilient deck full of flying idiots what punch you. This card is really powerful- to the point where it might be bordering on “de-facto WU spirits lord”- if anyone’s ever played with Sharding Sphinx, that card takes off very quickly, and this is that in the zone with inbuilt wrath insurance. Spooky as fuck.

 Rhoda, Geist Avenger and Timin, Youthful Geist

Interesting that they chose to do partner-commanders this time. Kinda ruins the perfect colour balance on them, but eh. With that in mind, this pair is not particularly inspiring. I actually like Timin- having played effects like Rattlechains and Sentinel of the Eternal Watch before, I can tell you that this effect is much more powerful than it looks, and this one even works on your own turn, or can be used as a political tool to help opponents attack each other.

Rhoda is just so utterly bland, though, that I can’t imagine ever wanting to put them in the zone or 99- with that said, Partner With effects mean you can tutor for each other, so if you really want Timin, you can play Rhoda to find Timin if you’d like. I actually do that with Toothy in my Roalesk deck.

 Runo Stromkirk // Krothuss, Lord of the Deep

It is utterly devastating that this card costs 3 mana, since it means you can’t have Gyruda as your Companion- that said, holy shit, this card is sick as hell.

Most of the “sea monster tribal” decks I’ve seen have been in Simic, which I believe is largely a result of having Kiora around (and also for ramping out the big fatties), but it’s not like you need that colour. There wasn’t even really a commander specifically for it until this guy, and all the synergy cards are in Blue. So sure, why not UB? You can work around the lack of insane ramp, right?

I mean…maybe. You’re probably dedicating a lot of the deck to it, seeing as you’re going to want a lot of Krakens/Leviathans/Octopuses/Serpents, and they tend to cost a fair bit. But once you do figure that out, you’re left with a pretty powerful commander that’s not too difficult to flip, and the backside is just kind of insane. You don’t even really need to run it in a sea monster deck, though you lose a lot of the insane value (and they make it easier to flip). Card is really strong, but we will have to see how the builds work out.

 Umbris, Fear Manifest

Two tribes that definitely don’t have commanders brought together under this thing’s…leadership? Or just mill things, I guess. Consuming Aberration but Legendary here gets real big and is guaranteed to piss everybody else off, because if there’s two things I know Commander players hate, it’s getting milled and getting their stuff exiled.

Umbris is kind of interesting for a Tribal commander, because what the tribal cards are actually doing is making the commander better rather than making each other better. To be fair, there really isn’t any consistent threads to pull for these pretty disparate tribes (aside from the Nightmares from Torment, which I like that this works with), so there isn’t a lot to work with in the design- with that said, the spooky stuff making the manifestation of fear stronger is a cool flavour hit.

I dunno. It’s pretty one-directional- play the best Nightmare/Horror cards, some evasion, and maybe some other mill, kill them to death with commander damage and/or mill them out. If you sit down with Umbris, people are going to know what you’re up to, and a 5 mana target in a colour combination without Green is awkward. With that said, this might finally be the UB BFZ-Eldrazi general I’ve been looking for- maybe I would have preferred Sultai or Grixis, but I’ll take this!

 Toxrill, the Corrosive

That blue pip in the sacrifice cost is doing a lot of work. I wouldn’t hold your breath for Slug tribal- there are 7 other slugs in black-bordered magic, and only 2 of those approach playability. And they aren’t in Dimir. No, this is definitely more of a UB control/proliferate general- the Slugs are just a bonus for blocking with or sacrificing.

Toxrill is slow, but reasonably effective at controlling opponents’ boardstates. I hate to keep harping on about this, though, but it’s 7 mana. That’s a hard sell, even if you do have green, and the fact that you could get basically nothing out of it on a board with larger creatures turns me off. Maybe if they were -1/-1 counters, but they don’t like doing those in sets with +1/+1 counters, which is almost every set. I think they could get away with it at Mythic, though.

 Anje, Maid of Dishonor

Wait, this is a 4 mana 4/5? Get in my cube? Anje 2 is aggressively competing with the RB precon-mander, Strefan, for a slot, both of them being Rakdos Vampire commanders that produce Blood tokens and give you something new to do with them. And it’s awkward, because Anje has the less specific bonus effect, but a more specific trigger, so she’s probably going to lose out on this exchange.

A lot of people are going to be comparing Anje unfavourably to her previous card. Which, uh, yeah, that card was a precon face card, playable in cEDH, and was literally the most popular Rakdos commander until Prosper a couple months ago. I do like this card, because in general I think Blood tokens are cool, but she’s in a really awkward place, and probably won’t see a lot of play as a result. At least, in the zone- she’s going to be in the 99 of like, every Vampire deck for the next year.

 Olivia, Crimson Bride

One of the marquee cards of the set, and pretty much the better one. Haste is doing so much for this card, as is the fact that, well, you can reanimate Legendary Vampires with it, so the downside isn’t as bad as it usually is for reanimator decks. RB reanimator has a few options at this point, but I don’t think any of them are as explicitly powerful as this one. She can pull out a lot of power out of nowhere.

What I like best about Olivia is that she doesn’t have to be a Vampire commander, even though she very much will be a lot of the time. She herself is obviously a Legendary Vampire, so if you’re interested in protecting your queen, then you can do without others. Like, this card can just cheat Emrakul in (and attacking) out of the yard, and Conspiracy is a card that exists. I like it!

 Strefan, Maurer Progenitor

And here’s the other Precon face card. Makes Blood, sacrifices them to cheat in Vampires fastly. There are a handful of really big dudes this fella can sneak in- Vampiric Dragon, Butcher of Malakir (both of which are in the precon) come to mind, as do Shauku and The Haunt of Hightower.

Funnily enough, though, I’m actually more interested in what you could do with a deck that just completely ignores the second half and goes all in on Blood tokens. Like, this thing can produce 4 artifacts a turn relatively easily, and the colour combination has more than enough ways to take advantage of having a bunch around. Not to mention, the Bloods can be used to find your synergy pieces and win conditions, or just act like ramp with that one “everything has Improvise” card which I can’t be bothered to find the name of.

Prosper has made Rakdos Treasures into a deck. This would trade that ramp for cards, while pinging your opponents down all the way, and I’m super keen to see how that plays out.

 Kamber, the Plunderer and Laurine, the Diversion

Much like with Rhoda/Timin, I’m only especially interested in one of these. Laurine is okay, Goad is always fun (and she’s probably be great in a Zara deck), but the numbers on her aren’t super great. Kamber, though, Kamber gets me interested.

There are so many cards in this set that say “this ability only triggers once per turn” that it’s astonishing that Kamber doesn’t. At 4 mana, they can just positively churn out Bloods, and worst case they count themselves should someone point a kill spell at them. It triggers on every creature, much like the best Blood Artists out there (like, yknow, Blood Artist), and while it’s not going to explicitly kill anyone, it’s not to hard to make it do that. This might just end up being one-card Partner that also happens to get to play Red cards.

 Halana and Alena, Partners

You can just say they’re gay, guys, we all know it. Halanalela is an interesting reverse Xenagod- where that card encourages you to play big creatures to make them truly huge, this one works better with smaller creatures, providing a permanent effect while they can safely stay on defence. You might need to find a way of making them bigger before it starts being worth it, though.

I like this card. I was always going to, I like these characters a fair bit. It’s not the most technically interesting card in the world, but RG +1/+1 counters isn’t really a deck yet, and this both gives them out and benefits from having them. It’s also a great home for the Gruulfriends shippers, given that they happen to be in Chandra and Nissa’s colours and also have their own original individual cards. Move over Ladies Looking Left, we can now build Ladies Looking At Each Other.

 Torens, Fist of the Angels

Ehhhh… very often we get these combat-focussed mechanics, and very rarely do they translate well to EDH. This reminds me a lot of Aurelia 2, but somehow, I like this less. Also, as someone who’s played a fair bit with Cathar’s Crusade (and against Monastery Mentor), dealing with tokens and differential numbers of +1/+1 counters is a huge pain in the ass, so I’m not really interested anyway. There were like, 4 different Humans commanders in the last set, just pick one of those. Maybe he can get in your 99.

 Edgar, Charmed Groom // Edgar Markov’s Coffin

Slow and boring. The front side ain’t worth it, the back side is better but still bad, and while it’s kind of resilient, people do play Artifact removal. If they deign to remove this thing in the first place.

There’s been a fair bit of conniption about why this card isn’t Mardu, and like. Are you people for real? Is this your first time? Characters change colour identity all the time for a variety of reasons, it’s even happened in this set (though people complained about that too), get your head out of your ass. Especially since explicitly Edgar is trying to chill out a bit here, so not being red is sensible. Come on, man.

 Eruth, Tormented Prophet

I like this! I have no idea what the hell to do with it. Storm, I guess, but there’s got to be something better we could build.

There’s a lot of things that get better when your hand is empty, so perhaps that’s the best kind of deck for Eruth. She turns looting effects into pretty much free (impulse) draw, which is potentially pretty powerful, and the effect gets around a lot of draw-limiting effects that tend to get played in the format (I think?). That leaves you with an idea, but I’m not really sure where you go with it even from there. I’m interested to see how people solve this conundrum- because Eruth is kind of a puzzle with which you need to make the pieces yourself.

 Old Rutstein

(Don’t know what’s going on in the bottom right there. Blame Scryfall.)

Fans of Druidic Satchel and Primeval Bounty will be right at home here. Old Rutstein is another of those cards that will always give you something, it just kind of varies on how things work out. In this case, it’s always a token of some kind. Okay.

I’m not sure this is a Commander on its own. The fact that he is going to very often make an Artifact makes that a potential angle, though Glissa may have that very limited market cornered. Secondary artifact matters colour + colour that rarely cares about artifacts makes that a limited opportunity. But he’s not doing much else- there are better options for self-mill, it’s fucking Golgari.

 Odric, Blood-Cursed

Man, this guy is so close. I genuinely think if he himself had a keyword to work with, then he’d be incredibly solid, though I’m not sure they could have fit it in the textbox.

There’s still potentially a lot to like here, though. The requirement of keyworded creatures is awkward, but making a bunch of artifacts on ETB is obviously pretty good. Plenty of synergies for this card exist, as well as a few infinite flicker combos, and it’ll go well in any Akiri, Line Slinger/X deck (as she does with him). I’d be surprised if I ever saw a deck with this and without Krark-Clan Ironworks, but you don’t need to go infinite. There’s always Reckless Fireweaver and the like. Not to mention he helps alleviate half of Boros’s Big Issues.

Might build this. Been tossing up the Second Boros deck, so.

 Grolnok, the Omnivore

Our final commander for the evening is BIG FROGGE. This biþ no smale beaste, seeing as it basically turns every (permanent) card you mill into a second hand- this is kind of just a weaker Muldrotha, actually. Can’t recur things from the battlefield, so less combo bullshit, and you don’t get Black (which in a graveyard deck is awkward), but it’s cheaper, completely resistant to Graveyard hate, and Simic has plenty of ways to mill itself- Jace, Memory Adept, anyone?

Grolnok will paint a target on your back, though. Muldrotha is already kill-on-sight, and you do need your commander to do anything with your croaked cards. Unless you’re very explicitly a silly Frog tribal deck (and even then maybe), I wouldn’t be surprised if you have a hard time keeping froggo on the board.

I do like that this giant Innistradi frog also has an arm sticking out of its mouth, though.

 This concludes the Crimson Vow list. Honestly, I think it’s overall better than Midnight Hunt- while there is obviously a bit of a Vampire problem, there’s a bit less of what I saw in that set- that’s to say, a lot of 99 cards and not as many Commanders. I think Blood tokens are a really interesting thing to have around, much like their artifact token companions, and this set provides ways to play with them that Clues took a very long time to get around to. There’s a few gaps, but I’ll get to those- I am planning a post about my overall issues with the set, but that will wait for another time, because this post is already fuckin massive. Adios!