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lorenfangor · 4 years ago

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I heard that #40 was super homophobic :/ so I skipped it. But now your fic is making me want to give it a try. How problematic is it? Are the characters worth it?

Okay.

Let’s talk about #40.

The plot of The Other (a Marco POV) is that Marco sees an Andalite on a video tape sent in to some Unsolved Mysteries-esque TV show, and he assumes it’s Ax and hauls ass to save him from being captured. Ax, being Ax, has videotaped the show, and they pull it up and Tobias uses his hawk eyes to figure out that it’s not Ax, it’s another Andalite - one without a tailblade. Ax is appalled at the presence of this vecol (an Andalite word for a disabled person) and we find out that he and others of his species have deep ingrained prejudices against at least some kinds of disabled people.

Despite this, Marco and Ax go looking for the Andalite in question because he’s been spotted by national TV, and they meet a second one, named Gafinilan-Estrif-Valad. The vecol is Mertil-Iscar-Elmand, a former fighter pilot with a reputation and Gafinilan’s coded-gay life partner. The two of them have been on Earth since book 1; they crashed their fighters on the planet and have been trapped there thanks to the GalaxyTree going down. Gafinilan has adopted a human cover, a physics professor, and they’ve been living in secret ever since.

Thanks to that tape, Mertil has been captured by Visser Three, and he’s not morph-capable so he can’t escape. Gafinilan wants to trade the leader of the “Andalite Bandits” to the Yeerks to get his boyfriend back; he can’t fight to free Mertil because he’s terminally ill with a genetic disorder that will eventually kill him, and (it’s implied that) the Yeerks aren’t interested in disabled hosts, even disabled Andalite ones. Despite Ax’s ableism, the Animorphs agree to work with Gafinilan and free Mertil, and they’re successful. Marco ends the book talking about how there are all kinds of prejudices you’ll have to face and boxes that people will put you in, and you can’t necessarily escape them even if they’re reductive and inaccurate, but you can still live your life with pride.

So now that I’ve explained the plot, I’m gonna come out the gate saying that I love this book. I love it wholeheartedly, I love Marco’s narration, I love Ax having to deal with Andalite society’s ableism, I love these characters, and as a disabled lesbian I don’t find these disabled gays to be inherently Bad Rep.

that’s of course just my opinion and it doesn’t overshadow other issues that people might have? but at the same time, I don’t like the seemingly-common narrative that this book is all bad all the time, and I want to offer up a different read.To that end, I’m going to go point by point through some of the criticisms and common complaints that I’ve seen across the fandom over the years.

“Mertil and Gafinilan were put on a bus after one appearance because they were gay!”

this is one I’m going to have to disagree with hardcore. I talked about this yesterday, but in Animorphs there are a lot of characters or ideas that only get introduced once or twice and then get written off or dropped - in order off the top of my head, #11 (the Amazon trip), #16 (Fenestre and his cannibalism), #17 (the oatmeal), #18 (the hint of Yeerks doing genetic experiments in the hospital basement), #24/#39/#42 (the Helmacrons’ ability to detect morphing tech), #25 (the Venber), #28 (experiments with limiting brain function through drugs), #34 (the Hork-Bajir homeworld being retaken, the Ixcila procedure), #36 (the Nartec), #41 (Jake’s Bad Future Dream), and #44 (the Aboriginal people Cassie meets in Australia) all feature things that either seem to exist just for the sake of having a particular trope explored Animorphs-style or to feature an idea for One Single Book.

This is a series that’s episodic and has a very limited overall story arc because of how children’s literature in the 90s was structured - these books are closer to The Saddle Club, Sweet Valley High, Animal Ark, or The Baby-Sitters’ Club than they are to Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events. Mertil and Gafinilan don’t get to be in more than one book because they’re not established in the main cast or the supporting cast, I don’t think that it’s solely got anything to do with their being gay.

“Gafinilan has AIDS, this is a book about AIDS, and that’s homophobic!”

Okay, this is… hard. First, yes, Gafinilan does have a terminal illness. Yes, Gafinilan is gay. No, Soola’s Disease is not AIDS.

I have two responses to this, and I’ll attack them in order of their occurrence in my thought. First, there’s coded AIDS diseases all over genre fiction, especially genre fiction from that era, because the AIDS epidemic made a massive impact on public life and fundamentally changed both how the public perceived illness and queerness and how queer people themselves experienced it. I was too young to live through it, but my dad’s college roommate was out, and my dad himself has a lot of friends who he just ceases to talk about if the conversation gets past 1986 or so - this was devastating and it got examined in art for more reasons than “gay people all have AIDS”, and I dislike the implication that the only reason it could ever appear was as a tired stereotype or a message that Being Queer Means Death. Gafinilan is kind, fond of flowers, and fond of children - he’s multifaceted, and he’s got a terminal illness. Those kinds of people really exist, and they aren’t Bad Rep.

Second off, Soola’s Disease? Really isn’t AIDS. It’s a congenital genetic illness that develops over time, cannot be transmitted, and does not carry a serious stigma the way AIDS did. Gafinilan also has access to a cure - he could become a nothlit and no longer be afflicted by it, even if it’s considered somewhat dishonorable to go nothlit to escape that way. That’s not AIDS, and in fact at no point in my read and rereads did I assume that his having a terminal illness was supposed to be a commentary on homosexuality until I found out that other people were assuming it.

“Mertil losing his tail means he’s lost his masculinity, and that’s bad because he’s gay! That’s homophobic!”

so this is another one I’ve gotta hardcore disagree with, because while Mertil is one of two Very Obviously Queer Characters, he’s not the only character who loses something fundamental about himself, or even loses access to sexual and/or romantic capability in ways he was familiar with.

Tobias and Arbron both get ripped out of their ordinary normal lives by going nothlit in bad situations, and while they both wind up finding fulfillment and freedom despite that, it’s still traumatic, even more for Arbron I’d say than for Tobias. And on a psychological level, none of the main cast is left unmarked or free of trauma or free of deep change thanks to the bad things that have happened to them - they’re no less fundamentally altered than Mertil, even if it’s mental rather than physical. And yes, tail loss is equated with castration or emasculation, but that doesn’t automatically mean Mertil suffering it is tied to his homosexuality and therefore the takeaway we’re intended to have is “Being gay is tragic and makes you less of a man”. This is a series where bad shit happens to everyone, and enduring losses that take away things central to one’s self-conception or identity or body is just part of the story.

Also, frankly? Plenty of IRL disabled people have to grapple with a loss of sexual function, and again, they’re not Bad Rep just because they’re messy.

“Andalite society is confusingly written in this book, and the disability aspects are clearly just a coverup for the gay stuff!”

Andalite society is canonically sexist, a bit exceptionalist and prejudiced in their own favor, and pretty contradictory and often challenged internally on its own norms. In essence, it’s a pretty ordinary society, and they’re really realistic as sci-fi races go. It makes sense from that perspective that Andalites would tolerate scarring or a lost stalk eye or a lost skull eye, but not tolerate serious injuries that significantly impact your perceived quality of life. Ableism is like that - it’s not one-size-fits-all. I look at Ax’s reactions and I see a lot of my own family and friends’ behaviors - this vibes with my understanding of prejudice, you know?

“Mertil and Gafinilan have a tragic ending, which means the story is saying that being gay dooms you to tragedy!”

Mertil and Gafinilan have the best possible ending that they could ask for? They are victims of the war, they are suffering because of the war, they get the same cocktail of trauma and damage that every other soldier gets. But unlike Jake and Tobias and Marco, unlike Elfangor, unlike Aximili? Their ending comes in peace, in their own home. Gafinilan isn’t dying alone, he’s got the love of his life with him. Mertil isn’t going to be as isolated anymore, he’s got Marco for a friend. Animorphs is a tragedy, it’s not a happy story, it’s not something that guarantees a beautiful sunshine-and-roses ending for everyone, and I love tragedy, and so I will fight for this story. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it deserved better. But it’s not less meaningful just because it’s sad. Nobody is entitled to anything in this book, and it’s just as true for these two as it is for anyone else.

“It’s not cool that the only canonically gay characters in this series don’t get to be happy and trauma-free and unblemished Good Rep!”

This is one I can kind of understand, and I’ll give some ground to it, because it is sucky. The only thing I’ll say is that I stand by my argument that nothing that happens to Mertil and Gafinilan is unusual compared to what happens to the rest of the cast, and that their ending is way happier than Rachel and Tobias’s, or Jake and Cassie’s. But it’s a legitimate point of frustration, and the one argument I’ll say I agree has validity.

(Though, I also want to point out that I think there are plenty of equally queercoded characters in the story who aren’t Mertil and Gafinilan - Tobias, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco all get at least one or two moments that signal to me that they’re potentially LGBT+, not to mention Mr. Tidwell and Illim in #29 and their long-term domestic partnership. There’s no reason to assume that the only queer people here are those two aliens when Marco’s descriptions of Jake exist.)

“Marco uses slurs and reduces Gafinilan’s whole identity to his illness!”

Technically, yes, this is true, except putting it that way strips the whole passage of its context. Marco is discussing the boxes society puts you into, the ones you don’t have a choice about facing or escaping. He’s talking about negative stereotypes and reductive generalizations, he’s referring to them as bad things that you get inflicted upon you by an outside world or by friends who don’t know the whole story or the real you. The slurs he uses are real slurs that get thrown at people still, and they’re not okay, and the point is that they’re not okay but assholes are going to call you by them anyway. He ends by saying “you just have to learn to live with it”, and since this is coming from a fifteen-year-old Latino kid who we know is picked on by bullies for all sorts of reasons and who faces racism and homophobia? He knows what he’s talking about. He’s bitter about what’s been said and done, he’s not stating it like it’s a good thing.

Yes, absolutely, this speech is a product of its time, but it’s a product of its time that speaks of defiance and says “We aren’t what we’re said to be,” and in the year this was published? That’s a good message.

tl;dr The Other is good, actually, and Mertil and Gafinilan are incredible characters who deserve all the love they could possibly get.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #mertil/gafinilan #mertil #gafinilan #mertil-iscar-elmand #gafinilan-estrif-valad

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ms-katonic-of-tamriel · 2 years ago

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Seen Elsewhere on Tumblr

“What if all men disappeared for a day? They’re safe, well, happy, being looked after for that day but they’re not here. What do you do in this world?”

And I realise they meant it to describe this feminist paradise where no one’s getting shot or killed or raped, but honest to god, not only would I not do much different, I’d be able to do less because the public transport I rely on is driven by mostly, you guessed it, men. Get a taxi? Oh honey. Guess who the cabbies mostly are. NHS? My local hospital trust just lost a third of its staff, ranging from consultant medics and surgeons to a big chunk of the IT department to a lot of cleaners and porters and catering staff. Hope nothing catches fire or you don’t need a plumber, because guess who is mostly in those jobs. Even getting a takeaway is going to be an issue, because you never see a woman bringing your Deliveroo order.

Piers Morgan and Jeremy Clarkson are gone but we’re still stuck with Katie Hopkins and Jan Moir. Also JK Rowling. Camilla getting to be Queen Regnant for a day is not an improvement either. And in politics, the absence of half the Tory Party still leaves Suella Braverman, Priti Patel, Nadine Dorries and Liz Truss to wreak havoc, among others. Mind you, they’d be outnumbered by Labour and Lib Dem MPs, so who knows.

OTOH, if your car breaks down or you need a leak fixing, if you do get a professional out, you can expect a fair price and no bullshitting or being talked down to. Ladies in the construction and mechanic trades can expect to make a fortune.

On the other hand, you get quite a few people not disappearing when they expected to, or a few people disappearing who were previously living as women, so quite a few people are learning something about themselves, or possibly they already knew but get a bit of gender validation.

If you’re in an abusive relationship with a man, or even one where you just weren’t happy, a day’s space might give you the opportunity to make changes. Quite a few relationships might hit the rocks as one party realises they don’t miss the other. Polyamorists with lovers of more than one gender might notice a shift in relationship dynamics - or perhaps it’s their girlfriends who realise just how much more freedom they seem to have with her husband not in the picture and no one harassing anyone for a threesome... unless he was the driving force in them hooking up and the two of them realise they don’t actually have that much in common alone. (Not applicable to polyamorists with healthier relationship dynamics.)

But many, many more relationships would just be the partner left behind staring at an empty chair over breakfast and realising they just miss him.

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honourablejester · 4 years ago

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Ideas for Deities and Cleric Domains (D&D)

I absolutely love clerics as a class in D&D. They’re up there with warlocks for customisation, it’s fantastic. But clerics, more than many other classes, really seem to be dependent on the setting and worldbuilding, because a huge chunk of their story and background is dependent on their deity. A cleric’s power comes directly from their deity, and they can possibly lose it if the deity disapproves of them or their actions. I know a lot of DMs won’t do this, but in-universe it does make sense that a deity is not going to keep giving power to a servant that is actively acting against their goals. If I’m building a cleric, I do feel a bit of a desire to have their personality and history either fit in with or comment interestingly on their deity’s personality and domains. They’re a class you really have to build in collaboration with the DM, I feel.

So. On that worldbuilding end, going by the cleric domains. Some (admittedly highly biased) thoughts on the associations of each domain, and some ideas for deities and maybe clerics for each. It got LONG (as in, 7000 words long), because I have thoughts apparently. If you want to skip around, the domains are in alphabetical order of:

Arcana

Death

Forge

Grave

Knowledge

Life

Light

Nature

Order

Peace

Tempest

Trickery

Twilight

War

Arcana

This domain feels slightly sticky to me in D&D because of the difference between arcane and divine magic. Like, do wizards view arcana clerics as essentially cheaters? Oh, sure, no study for you, you just get it for free! Arcana gods who were once mortal wizards, do they view clerics as cheaters? Especially given that a lot of the existing arcana gods are also knowledge gods, how do they feel about just granting magic without, so to speak, the effort of acquiring knowledge by your own means? Or do some of them prefer clerics? Gods of magic that are embodiments of magic as a force, do they like that clerics have an intuitive grasp of them and thus magic? Knowledge deities who believe that all knowledge should be available to everyone, they’d be fine with it too, presumably. There are lots of paths to knowledge, and for some people that would be through a teacher, in this case the deity. If knowledge and magic should be shared, then the path of the cleric is just as valid as the path of independent study.

And then there’s deities for whom magic, arcana, is a secondary domain, in service to their primary one, who’re happy for their cleric to use any power at their disposal to enhance their service (for example, deities whose primary domain is war or forge or death might not care how their arcana domain servant gets their power, provided they use it for the right causes).

Arcana is an interesting and slightly sticky domain for me. But. Some other domains it combines interestingly with, for deities with different views:

Knowledge. The most obvious. Fits well for a wizard-type deity, magic as study, but maybe also a more … theoretical physicist sort of deity? Deities who like people who just appreciate the raw wonder and intrigue of magic on an emotional level, a vast and beautiful unknown that needs to be interacted with and both studied and experienced. You know those people who just want to babble about their field of study, and you don’t even have to understand, though it would be great if you did, they just want you to come up and look at the cool thing? Deities like that.

War, Forge, Death. Like I said above, these would be big domains for gods who view magic as a fundamental tool to serve other causes. War, the destruction or defense of things. Forge, the making of things. Death, the breaching of the walls between states. Trickery could also go here, for sneaky deities who view magic as an obvious tool-kit. In worlds with magic, it’s such an obvious factor to deal with when it comes to their primary domains that these deities have sort of been forced to acquire the expertise, and sometimes they might want servants who specialise in supplying that tool-kit for the cause. Forge might also lean a bit in Knowledge’s direction as well, your ‘tinkerer with the universe’ sort of deity. Trickery also works because Arcana clerics get a few nice scout-and-secrecy type spells, like Arcane Eye, Nystul’s Magic Aura, and Leomund’s Secret Chest, so a trickery deity having an ‘agent’ cleric with a disguise as a pious scholar and a toolkit for spying and smuggling feels like a fun idea.

Order, Twilight, Life. These also work as primary domains for deities who view Arcana as a toolbox domain to supplement their primary one. With features like Planar Abjuration, Spell Breaker and several of the abjuration, divination and conjuration spell options, arcana clerics feel like they could be good ‘civil defender’ sort of agents. The sort of magic civil servants for deities of civilisation, making sure that things stay where they’re put and that the righteous are not influenced unduly by arcane powers.

Death

The necromancy domain, for when you want a divine boost on your path to lichdom. I’m going to say, though, that I do like the disease aspect of this domain. I blame reading The Legend of Huma as a teen, and Morgion’s corruption of a certain knight to the shock and betrayal of all his fellows. On the cleric end, I really, really like this domain as an expression of, not so much malice, as just absolute despair. It’s the necrotic domain, the domain of entropy and rot and decay. Murder, secrecy, death, decay, despair, disease. Miasma. It’s an evocative domain.

Deity-wise, this domain is the four horsemen (or three of them, Death, Pestilence and Famine – pair a War god to add Conquest and War). The walking wasteland. The crawling oblivion. It’s the Black Death, the Red Death, the White Death. It’s a pale figure atop a pale horse. Poison in a cup, rot in a wound. Petyr Baelish, sowing chaos just to see where all the pieces fall. It’s false dawn. The calm shallows of despair. It’s black and white and green. Every Outer God ever, from the crawling chaos to the blind idiot god at the centre of the universe.

I love the disease aspect. Start with plague. Start with fire and drought and famine. The aftermath of war. The fevered, skeletal survivors. Have a voice in the dark make them an offer. A shelter, an assurance, that the worst has already happened, and nothing more can trouble them now. All they have to do is … offer other people the same thing. The fire and the fever and the pain. And then ... the quiet place beyond it, where there is only peace and purpose.

As a domain, Death feels perfectly capable of standing alone. Add Arcana, if you want more a focus on necromancy. Add Trickery, if you want more chaos and entropy, toppling towards annihilation. Add War, that old friend and partner. Add Tempest, the scourging storm, or Light, the searing, radiant fever. Add Life, to pair and partner with Disease, the poison and the antidote in one cup. Add Peace, for the quiet oblivion when all pain and strife has been toppled gently away.

Forge

This is an odd domain for me, because I absolutely love the image of the smith deity, Hephaestus, Wayland, Prometheus, and I love characters like Tony Stark in the MCU, people who forge their way out of captivity and pain by raw force of will and ingenuity. But. A lot of the available deities for the Forge domain feel a bit on the lacklustre side, and I don’t know if that’s because the smith imagery for me is so bound up in image of conflict and captivity, Prometheus, Wayland, Tony Stark? It might just be a case where the domain evokes such specific imagery for me that I’m a bit blinkered by it.

The Forge domain is bound up in imagery of fire and metal, war and craftmanship. As a cleric domain, it’s fairly focused on weapons and armour, rather than the wider applications of the craft, so the clerics will likely be a bit more specialised than the deities. Mythologically, forge deities are often creation deities, civilisation deities, discovery/exploration deities, even healing deities. There’s a lot of ‘whatever the problem, we can build our way out of it’. Which is awesome.

So. Some interesting domain combinations:

War is the obvious one. Forge clerics are pretty clearly designed as front-liners. And on the deity side, war is often a necessity for a forge deity, both as a primary market for their wares, and also because they tend to be prime targets for forces who want to have exclusive access to said wares. There’s a reason I associate the forge with captivity. Going to war because the enemy forced your hand and you had to build your way out of captivity seems to be a typical job hazard for a smith deity. An interesting addendum, put Life with it, for deities of War, Forge and Life, who build prosthesis and solutions to the aftermath of war. A lot of actual RL forge deities do seem to have a ‘mechanical solutions to biological problems’ sort of mindset.

Knowledge is the other immediate aspect. Discovery, invention, civilisation. Tool-makers, more than weapon-makers. Prometheus. Fire and the taming of the natural world. Craft. Trade centres. In more industrialised settings, invention and industry. So, Order and even Nature might be good domain mixes as well, for the civilisation and harvest/nature-tamed end of things. The plough as much as the sword. Forge has some hearth associations, for gods of city, home and protection. On the darker side, Order, forges are also where you make shackles. But then you have my favourite image. Prometheus, Wayland. The chained or hobbled smith god forging his way to freedom. I like chaos in a smith god. Fire and freedom, creation, wringing possibility from the raw material of the universe. Forge, Knowledge, Arcana, Life. Tempest, even Trickery. The smashing of chains.

Grave

I love this domain so much. I’ve always loved psychopomps, guides, and the gentler aspects of death. Hades and Persephone, Isis and Osiris, Hermes guiding souls. Charon the ferryman. Death-the-Gatherer, rather than Death-the-Hunter. I’d love a dual-aspect deity, Life and Grave domains, the Lord/Lady of First and Last Respite. Peace, ease from pain, freedom from slavery.

Grave pairs very well with Twilight. They have the feel of boundary guardians, the liminal deities. Grave’s use of necromancy spells feels very much like something drawing power or essence from the boundary between life and death itself. A border guardian, authorised to open the gates when needed and ensure that they are safely closed again. Twilight sits so well with that.

Life, Knowledge. Medicine. Hermes and his caduceus. Peace. Laying to rest what should not have been disturbed. Nature. The acknowledgement of natural cycles of decay and reinvigoration. Grave lies very much on the ‘slow and steady, all things in their course’ sort of feeling. It really does pair well with Life in a single deity, not a raw striving against death as an enemy, but a more balanced understanding of what to push and how far, before life itself becomes a tyranny of captivity. First and Last Respite. You strive and you strive and you strive, and then you rest.

It also goes well with War in this regard. Again, its partner aspect. Death domain pairs more overtly with War, but Grave also has a place. Poppies in the fields. Last rites. The soldier chaplain. War as necessity, and then the aftermath. A grave domain cleric has a lot to do in a war.

Interestingly, with the likes of Hermes, and even Isis to an extent, there’s also a Trickery association. Thieves on the boundary line. Stealing knowledge or wealth or time past the line of death. People who have seen things that were never meant to be seen. Truth behind illusion. Journeys, exploration, knowledge. Outcasts. Death is the great equaliser, after all. It welcomes all, even the most wretched. There’s the interesting balance for a thief god, ‘you can’t take it with you when you die’, but maybe you can? Or a thief who will not be stolen from, and that includes their life, the one possession everyone should have the right to defend. Trickery and Grave have some interesting mixes, and a grave cleric with a criminal background would be fascinating to me.

Knowledge

Again, I adore this domain with all my heart. Knowledge domain is the seeker archetype, both in deities and clerics. A shared wellspring of knowledge, and a mission to perpetually add to it, to ask questions and then go and find the answer.

A thing I find with deities for this domain, they can have an oddly static feel. Like the sum of all knowledge already exists, is already stored in some library somewhere, and no knowledge deity ever needs to discover anything themselves. It’s a danger to get stuck in the static ‘archivist’ image of a knowledge god, even though the collection and processing and classification and archiving of information is a whole dynamic activity in itself. Knowledge changes, is always changing. Knowledge is about seeking, archiving, analysing, understanding, drawing linkages. Disseminating, teaching, sharing. Though there are and should be gods who focus on recording information, because that’s a right and necessary thing we like to do with knowledge, there’s a lot more to the domain than that.

On that note. I feel like Knowledge and Trickery are a very nice pair of domains for a deity. What’s that quote about the basis of trickery being knowing one extra fact? Plus. Espionage is a whole industry based on, essentially, the theft and dissemination of protected knowledge. And the flipside, that to protect knowledge, you have to know how people will try to steal it. A lot of the knowledge domain’s abilities and spells lend well to spying. Even your static ‘archivist’ god, with his library and his scrolls, has probably seen just about every idiot seeking forbidden knowledge, and was possibly the cause of what happened to quite a few of them. Heh.

With that in mind, War is also a potential partner domain as well. Finding information that your enemy doesn’t want you to know is a huge part of warfare, and messengers and couriers are also vital during wartime. If you wanted to make a god of espionage, Knowledge, Trickery, War and maybe Arcana would be a good mix of domains.

Knowledge also just goes well with a lot of the civilisation-focused domains. Order, Life, Arcana, Forge, even Nature. And with more chaotic areas as well. Knowledge is about exploration, discovery, invention. Maybe even Tempest can fit alongside, especially combined with Forge as well, for that ‘lightning strike of inspiration’ idea. Knowledge over tradition. The heretical pursuit of truth in the face of order. The defiance of demanding answers to questions people don’t want asked. Prometheus, after all, is one of the archetypal deities of knowledge.

Knowledge is just … about seeking. The pursuit of knowledge. Knowledge clerics are seekers, especially in the adventurer mould. The explorer, the archaeologist, the pilgrim, the messenger, the spy, the broker, the medium (Knowledge pairs well with Grave too). The teacher, the protector. If a god of knowledge wants a mortal pair of hands, it’s to find, protect or spread knowledge. Or to use it for a specific purpose. Ideas can be the levers on which a world turns, after all. Not all knowledge deities might be neutral …

Life

The bog-standard domain of the jobbing cleric. The domain people maybe feel they get saddled with if the party needs a healer. But I like the Life domain a lot, although for some reason it’s locked on to orcs and half-orcs in my head (every life cleric I’ve ever built has been one or the other). I like the feeling of striving and equality you get with the Life domain. The endless fight against evil, destruction and even just normal decay. Life is the bulwark domain. Life is the stubborn domain (which, actually, might be why I associate orcs with it). And I like a lot of the existing life deities.

Life is about preservation. It doesn’t create, but it preserves. Life holds the line. It’s considered the bog-standard domain, and to be fair it does fit most anywhere. You can tack the life domain on to the portfolio of nearly any deity you please, and it’ll probably fit.

And! It doesn’t have to always be good. I don’t even just mean that you can have a racial life deity for an ‘evil’ race, like Luthic for the orcs (which is a whole other thing, racial pantheons are … a tricky thing), but Life itself can be an enemy. If you’ve ever read the fairytale ‘The Soldier and Death’, you’ll know what I mean. And, for a more recent example, the Many-Faced God in Game of Thrones is an example of a death-as-mercy deity that moved towards punishing and/or preventative medicine later down the line. Life without cease can be a hell without escape. Life is as much a force that needs to be tempered and balanced as any other. You have options with Life deities.

So. Domain combinations. I LOVE the Life/Grave duality. I said it above with Grave, and I’ll say it again down here. Pair the two. They work beautifully together.

Life has the obvious solar association, so Light is a common pair for it. Twilight actually works very well as well. Life is the bulwark. The preserving line that enemy forces founder against. Pair it with a domain that ventures protectively into the darkness, or with one that vengefully shatters it. Life, Light, and Twilight are a nice mix of domains.

Peace and Order are an interesting set, in that they can edge Life over into its darker aspects if left unchecked. The rigid, tyrannical end of lawful. Stepford smilers. Whatever happens, we can fix you right up! So just smile, and take whatever happens. Life is a torturer’s dream domain. You can go dark, dark places with it if you want to, and these two are a good pair of domains to set alongside that journey. Make a deity of Order, Life and Peace that would put the greatest Archdevil of Tyranny to absolute shame! Though you can take them gently too. You can take them as they were intended. Make bulwark deities. Protectors against the dark. Holding the line.

I also love Life, the same as Grave, as an equality domain. This is more on the cleric end, but I love outcast characters who take up the mantle of a healer god because the deity just accepted them. I do like Ilmater for this, for example. Life as the healer domain knows all about what people do when they’re in pain, and it works to heal rather than punish that. The ideal of a medic who heals regardless of nationality or creed. Dr McCoy from Star Trek, because I adore him. Make an angry healer, an outcast who works to help other outcasts, who struggles with the ethics of helping even evil people, because if you ignore pain when you see it, what does that make you? But if you cause untold pain with an act of mercy, what does that make you? There’s a lot you can work with here. Life is more than just a jobbing domain.

Light

The spear of god, the lance of the heavens. Light is the glorious, radiant, blinding, burning domain. The domain for when you want to smite people and set the world on fire. There’s also a vigilance, eyesight, ever-burning, all-seeing sort of association. The lantern ever-burning in the dark, the eye in the sky that sees all. So it has a sort of a, a half-and-half sort of feeling. Light will wait for all eternity, as patient as the sun, for their enemies to move. And as soon as they do, Light will smite them with fire from on high. Light is a distinctly decisive sort of domain. You can’t take back a fireball once you’ve launched it, so be sure you know where you’re aiming it first.

Light is honestly such a fun domain. It pairs well with a lot of things. Life. Tempest. War. Knowledge. I love a lot of RL mythological figures here. Helios Panoptes. Light and Knowledge are such a good mix. Light is knowledge as in surveillance. The big staring eyeball in the sky. The sniper’s little red dot on your forehead. I see you. Light is the crusader deity. ‘I’m going to see what’s happening, and then I’m going to act on it’. Add War in, sure. Tempest. The lightning bolt from on high. If any deity is going to have combat celestials to throw around as well, it’ll be Light domain deities. It’s a very smitey domain.

Light does have a gentler aspect. Light clerics tend to be blasters, mobile artillery, but they still have the standard cleric options. And light is the dawn of life. So. Life. Nature. It has a preservatory feeling against the forces of darkness and decay. Stand in my radiance and I will shelter you. And a sower of life feeling. Show me your grain and I will ripen it. Energy is epitomised by light. So you could pair Twilight as well, a deity with twin aspects, the light and the twilight. The spear and the shield. A deity who will venture out watchfully into darkness, keeping faith with it, until crisis point is reached and they bring the sudden dawn instead.

Nature

Gods of the natural world. I’ll be honest, while it makes absolute sense that you would have nature deities, as a cleric domain it feels slightly superfluous and like it’s stepping on the druid’s toes a bit. But. On the deity side, lots to work with.

With raw elemental might mostly given to Tempest, the Nature domain focuses on plants, animals, the land, the waters. Nature in its neutral state. There’s also a bit of an emphasis on survival, with things like heavy armour and Dampen Elements. Nature is very much about working with the land and creatures around you to survive. It can lean towards the wilder end, unspoiled nature, or the tamer end, the gods of harvest and field. You have things like your gods of the hunt, your gods of the wood, your gods of the field. Hearth, home. Freedom. Travel.

If you want to lean towards the wilder side, Nature combines well with Tempest, Trickery and War. These are your gods of the hunt, gods of the storm, gods of the jungle, the defenders of nature unspoiled. But you can also combine with Life and Light here as well, for the raw majesty and vibrancy of the wilderness, and with Twilight and Peace, for the shadowed forests and wilds.

On the tamer end, the gods of field and harvest, of fertility, Nature combines with Order, Life, Light, Knowledge and even Forge. Order, for the rolling fields of agriculture that feed the cities. Life, Light, for the sun that ripens the fields, the harvest that feeds the world. Knowledge and Forge, for the craft and the tools that tame the land, the knowledge of plant and soil and properties that provide food, medicine, systems of produce. Also, a deity of Nature, Trickery and Knowledge as a god of trade, of travel and produce and negotiation and knowledge. I like that.

Trickery combines well with either end as well. On the wilderness side, for nature’s more fey aspects, the gods of travel and wilderness and getting lost, the trickster deities of echoes in the mountains and lights in the swamp that lead people astray and protect their secrets. On the tamer side, I love Trickery and Nature (and Life) for a god of hospitality, the arcane rules and soft power that prevent violence by alternate means. And, I mean, if you want Hotel California, the little god of the vanishing inn, try some combination of Nature, Trickery, Life, Death and Twilight. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave … I actually really love the idea of a Nature deity that defends the wilds just by luring and trapping intruders under the guise of civilised hospitality. The liminal deity of the boundary between the fields and the wilds.

On the deity end, Nature is actually a really versatile and lovely domain. Add it to everything. Heh.

Order

Apparently, I tend towards neutral or chaotic, because I kneejerk don’t like the Order domain. For much the same reason I’m not too fond of the enchantment school of magic. It’s by nature on the far end of lawful, and the focus is on control and conformity before free will. It’s a hard domain to balance. Gods of Order are going to be on the hard lawful edge, deities of law and cities and justice. Justice is the better end of the domain, but the spells and features … This domain leans a bit dystopian, yes? Law by compulsion. It’s ridiculously easy to slant towards evil.

But. Let’s try and get past the kneejerk. At its best, Order is the domain of cities and civilisation, centralised law, law by consensus. It’s a domain focused on discipline, on justice, at least in the sense of rigid adherence to the law. At it’s worst, it’s the domain of empire and tyrant and dystopia. Zealotry. The slaver domain. Deities with Order in their portfolio will lean in one of those directions. Justice and discipline, or conquest and control. Either way, there’s a focus on civilisation, on the polis, on centralised authority.

The natural domain pairing is War, for the conquest end, and Peace, for the civilisation end. Peace is very much the gentler, more consensual partner to Order, enabling willing communal links, while Order enforces unwilling ones. Peace encourages people to act together, Order forces them to act correctly. There’s an interesting tension there. On War’s end, I feel a deity with both Order and War domains will prioritise Order, viewing War as a tool to extend the reach far enough to ensure control, but the reverse is also possible, viewing Order as a way to maintain a strong enough army to feed War. You can sit anywhere on the lawful end of the alignment chart with any of these. A crusader for justice all the way down to a tyrannical despot.

On the polis end, civilisation, Arcana and Knowledge both sit well with Order, as well as Forge. A Knowledge and Order deity will be one of those ‘gods of lists’. Everything in its place. Arcana will be a toolbox, less a focus on the exploration and experimentation of magic. Though you could have an interesting tension of a deity of Order and Arcana trying to fully map and thereby control magic as a force. That is an arcana deity who will very much not like magic’s more chaotic expressions, which could go interesting places. If you want a theological war on certain types of magic (especially sorcery), that could be an idea.

Order as a domain feels very overbearing. It’ll dominate any domain mix its part of. You could put it with Light, with Nature, with Life, and it will bend and shape the other domains around it. It even goes with Trickery, which feels like it should be a chaos domain, because again, espionage is a fundamental part of warfare and control, and a domain that doesn’t balk at enchantment won’t balk at illusion either. Tools in the toolbox.

The one domain that doesn’t feel like it pairs well with Order is Tempest. Tempest does feel too rawly chaotic to sit nicely alongside Order. If you want a pair of gods to set in opposition, try Order vs Tempest. The city vs the sea, the storm vs the doldrums, raw force vs overbearing will.

Peace

I’m calling this the Hufflepuff domain, and like a good badger, it has the potential to be absolutely terrifying. Peace is one of those domains that you really, really don’t want in an enemy. This is the siege domain, the tank-generating domain. Come and have a go, dear, because you are guaranteed not hard enough. Put this with Life and then Order or Light or War, and you are dealing with an absolutely terrifying unified force that won’t go down. If you don’t like the Hufflepuff comparison, you can also try Starfleet. Walk softly in the sure knowledge that you are carrying the bigger stick.

An evil peace deity is such a fantastically terrifying thought. A long, calm walk into night, hand in hand, carrying each other when we falter. I want this domain for a post-apocalyptic setting so much. William Hope Hodgson’s Night Land. Dying Earth. A philosophical debate between two deities of peace, whether it is better to be the last bulwark standing firm against the darkness, or if true peace is found in gently letting go together. Put one with Life, put the other with Grave, and debate in a world of horror and darkness and madness and despair which one of them is ‘good’ and which one of them is ‘evil’.

But. Even normally, in non-dying settings. Peace is an exciting domain that can go in some interesting directions. The line between good and evil for this one will be what we’re willing to do to have peace, and what we’re defining as ‘forces that prevent peace’. Obviously if you’re going for a Peace/Order evil combination, ‘freedom’ is a thing that could prevent peace. If you’re going with Peace/Grave/Death, life is a thing that could prevent peace. It all depends on how you want to play it. But you can go gentler as well. Peace with Life, with Nature, with Grave, as a genuine, gentle attempt to help as many people as possible find a life free from pain or fear. Peace with Order as a good-aligned hope for civilisation and diplomacy triumphing over fear and war.

It’s just very fun for me personally to imagine the darker aspects here. An evil peace cleric as a cult leader. ‘Stand with me, help each other, stand together, and no one can stand against us’. All the worst aspects of group-think. Genuine loyalty, genuine camaraderie, and just a complete lack of actual morals. It would be terrible and fantastic. Hang an evil party around a peace cleric and have your loving, psychotically loyal bunch of clowns go to town on the rest of the world.

Tempest

The first D&D character I ever made was a high elven Tempest cleric, ex-slave, ex-city official. Looking back up at my thoughts on the Order domain will probably give you an idea why. Tempest is just a gorgeous domain for me. Distilled chaos, and all its tricky balances. Where’s the line between raw destruction and needful freedom?

It helps that I’m from an island nation and strongly associate Tempest with the sea. In the absence of an actual Ocean domain, Tempest is where that part of me gravitates. So Tempest gets all the associations of freedom and power and terror and awe that the ocean gets from me. The volcano and earthquake aspects aren’t as fun for me, though elemental storm very much is. Air and water and lightning and sky.

Tempest isn’t a kind domain. It doesn’t really feel nurturing or safe. At its worst, it’s raw destruction, power pitted against all comers. At its best, it’s freedom for those strong enough, a storm to break the oppressive swelter of summer, a sea wave to smash through walls. Like Order can sit at any end of the lawful spectrum, Tempest can sit at any end of the chaotic spectrum.

Tempest deities will probably lean towards one end or the other. Destructive and overbearing, or fierce opponents of tyranny. It pairs fantastically with Light, as the celestial realms’ shock troopers, with lightning as a nice conceptual bridge between them. Tempest probably lacks Light’s more patient aspects, though. Although maybe not. The sea is always power held in potential, after all. The promise of the storm is always there, even when it’s calm. So. Light is a good mix. War and probably Forge will work just as well too, though for Forge you will want the more volcanic/seismic end of Tempest.

Tempest is an interesting mix with Trickery. Whatever else Tempest is, it doesn’t tend to be subtle. But misdirection is as much an aspect of trickery as disguises are. Sound and noise, signifying nothing. Until the right moment. If you want Tempest to match Light’s patient aspects, pairing the two of them with Trickery would be a very interesting mix. Add War, and you have a deity with a full martial suite of domains, from the espionage and information gathering stages all the way through to shock troops and invasion. Or go Tempest, Trickery, Knowledge, to emphasise the secrets of the ocean depths, and the powerful forces that protect them.

On the gentler end, Tempest pairs naturally with, well, Nature. Wildfires and ocean storms serve their purposes too, clearing ground to help systems rebuild and refresh. Rainstorms to break droughts. It’ll still be a bit on the survivalist end of nature, cruel to be kind, but it can be much gentler than its more destructive outbursts imply. You can have a deity of Life, Nature and Tempest quite easily.

Trickery

The domain of illusion, secrecy, misdirection, stealth. Okay. So. I adore this domain in terms of deities. Adore it. Anyone who knows me will tell you I love trickster deities with a passion. I will say that cleric-wise, this domain feels oddly blinkered, purely focused on stealth and misdirection, though the spell list does add some more fun, chaotic things. But in terms of deities, oh, I’m gonna have fun here.

On a base level, trickery is about accomplishing your goals by indirect, unexpected or subtle means. It’s about stealth, misdirection, leverage, diplomacy, theft, murder, guile. It’s about breaking the rules, taking the unexpected path. It isn’t necessarily chaotic, you can do an unexpected thing that is purely within the rules of the game, and for certain stripes of trickery deities I would suggest valuing exactly that, a matter of pride in pushing the rules to breaking point and highlighting all their absurdities in the process. White hat hackers. A lawful good trickery deity whose sole purpose is to test the bounds of law and tradition and show where it can be improved.

It also doesn’t have to be evil. It seems to come up a bit, that Trickery is added as a domain to an evil god’s portfolio simply to emphasise that they’re a liar. Which is … valid, fine, but it’s just … Lying is not all that Trickery is. You can do more with it.

I’m also not fully certain of the association with luck for Trickery. I feel it’s because 5e doesn’t yet have an actual chaos domain, so Trickery is used as a stand in for anything on the more chaotic end of concepts, but the thing with luck is that it’s random. The Dice Gods are the gods of fate, destiny and chaos. I’d give them … Order domain, Chaos domain, Balance domain, something like that. If you want good luck and bad luck, I’d give them the Life and Death domains, positive and negative energy, creation and entropy. But Trickery … implies more intent than luck allows. You have to set out to trick someone. Trickery is to accomplish goals. A roll of the dice, outcome uncertain, feels like something a trickery deity would go out of their way to avoid where possible. Tricksters try to play with loaded dice. I feel like they don’t like to rely on luck.

But. Moving on. Trickery deities are your gods of subtlety or change. Your thief gods, your spy gods, your gods of revolution, your gods of motion and change. Your gods you send out to accomplish things that other gods can’t. Your gods of desperation, your gods of last resort, your gods of hope. And, yes, also your gods of lies, of deceit, of hidden things. Your gods of manipulation and planning. Your gods of murder in the dark.

In terms of domains, Trickery goes with everything. Seriously everything. There is nothing you can’t put with Trickery, because it’s all about your methods, not your goals. In that sense it’s a bit of a toolbox domain, like Arcana or Knowledge. There are so many ways to go.

Trickery, Knowledge, Order, War. Your god of spies and espionage. Trickery and Light, your god of surveillance. Trickery and Knowledge and Arcana, your god of hidden, illusory and experimental magic. Trickery and Grave, your thief psychopomp. Trickery and Twilight, all in on illusion and hidden things, the god thieves pray to for protection and silence in the dark. Trickery and Nature, hospitality, trade and soft power. Trickery and Peace, diplomacy in all its forms. Trickery and Tempest, the god of sound and fury who knows how to level it strategically. Trickery and Life is a god that’s going to help and heal by whatever means prove necessary. Forge and Trickery is Prometheus and all my other beloved tricky smiths. Trickery and Death is your chaos-sower, your force of subtle entropy, your silver-tongued dark messiah.

Honestly, you can never give Trickery to too many deities! Add it everywhere! Well, no, you do need a contrast to it, deities who are genuinely honest and straightforward or blunt as the face of a hammer, but it is a versatile domain. You can do a lot with it.

Twilight

This is such an incredibly gorgeous domain. Twilight, dusk, shadows, borders, liminality. The quiet secret spaces. Flight. Second star to the right and straight on til morning. There is nothing I do not love about this domain. Here is the gentle end of Peace, the balm of Grave, the sheltering arm of Life, the watchful care of Light. Here is the darkness made gentle, a shelter, neither pitch black nor blindingly bright. The borderland, the crossing point, where all are treated equal, where the thief finds as much shelter as the righteous man. Good gods, I love this domain.

Like I said. Life, Light, Peace, Grave. All of them are natural combinations with Twilight. Grave, for the borderlands. Peace, for a peaceful crossing. Light, for the vigilance against the dark. Life, for the shelter and solace there. And Trickery, too, for those who live in shadows and draw their comfort there. A deity of Trickery, Grave and Twilight, the thief god with the hooded lantern who guides souls to their rest. A deity of Life, Light and Twilight, the hermit, the patient watcher, who shields travellers under their cloak and stares unblinking out into the night, standing guard until dawn. A deity of Trickery, Arcana and Twilight, the god of dreams. A deity of Nature, Twilight and Peace, the god of the twilight woods, of still pools, of unicorns.

This domain feels like magic to me. I mean the wonder of magic. The feeling you had as a kid watching The Last Unicorn for the first time. I can’t be analytical or eloquent about this. This is the bus stop at 4am domain. The silence in the desert at night domain. The domain of flying dreams, where a god or a fairy touches you in your sleep and tugs you out the window to walk on air. Here are illusions, here are secret truths, here are fairytales.

It’s a good domain. Make me some gods who evoke the quiet wonder of it. Please, I love you.

War

Ending on a bit of a blunt note, really, in that War is arguably one of the simpler thematic domains. To quote Fallout: ‘War. War never changes.’ Maybe not, though. There are a fair few dualities and contradictions bound up in the domain.

There’s your obvious, Athena vs Ares, intellectual vs physical war, strategy vs combat, civilisation vs barbarism. There’s your theological, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas of Aquinas and the concept of ‘just war’, the surgeon vs the soldier, under what circumstances and in defense of what ideals does violence become justified. War for conquest vs war for defense, and the boundary where one becomes the other. Ideological crusades. The honesty of violence vs the hypocrisy of honour. War as ritual, war as necessity, war as a vehicle for personal advancement.

All right. So maybe War is not a simple domain at all. You have a lot of options of what other domains to pair War with in a deity’s portfolio to put a different slant on them. War with Life or Peace, war for defense of values. War with Order, war for conquest and crusade. War with Death, war of annihilation. War with Tempest, blitzkrieg, lightning war, war of force and sudden might. War with Grave, the god of warriors, who cares for war’s people. War with Light or Twilight, guardian against invasions from beyond. War with Knowledge or Trickery, the wars of states and nations and intelligence, wars of trade, black ops, espionage. War with Forge or Arcana, strategic, toolbox thinkers, getting the tools to do the job.

War is one of those domains that works just fine alone, but you can also add it on to any other domain that someone would have to fight for. Now, granted, War is organised fighting, large-scale fighting, so it’s not just picking a fight in a bar, but even then, War gods who value warriors who strive to prove their might at any provocation can still pay attention. But you have a lot of potential variety with war. You could have one war deity in your pantheon, or have six or seven who at least dabble in the domain. There isn’t a single other domain that you couldn’t add War onto. Nature is probably where it strains most, because War is usually the opposite of helpful for fixing problems Nature might be having, but even Nature has her champions. Even Peace, which you think would be the opposite of War, can happily stand alongside as the end goal, and War the means.

And as a stand-alone domain, you have a LOT of philosophical room for argument with War. Fittingly enough. Heh.

#d&d #worldbuilding #deities #clerics #cleric domains #mythology #building pantheons #concept associations

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ljreflet · 3 years ago

Photo

Sumia!Gerome (Guide/Analysis)

Growths || Mods (- is 0)

HP: 51.67% || -

STR: 40% || +2

MAG: 18.33% || +1

SKL: 41.67% || +2

SPD: 40% || +3

LCK: 46.67% || +1

DEF: 36.67% || +1

RES: 16.67% || -

Class Set

Wyvern Rider

Priest

Fighter*

Pegasus Knight

Knight

Analysis

(See notes in “My Personal Experience” for points with asterisks)

It’s such a shame that, in the vanilla game, Gerome is often considered one of the weakest child units by the virtue of his mother’s strange class set.

He’s geared to be a physical tank, but Cherche’s class set steers him towards a support role that he can’t pull off well.

On top of that, he’s part of the “Non-Galeforce Three” throwing him behind his peers as they Galeforce their way through the battlefield.

A shame really, since Gerome is probably one of my favorite 2nd gen units.

It wasn’t all bad for him, since he has a natural +4 STR and +3 DEF mod, and a neutral SPD mod. The potential is there, he just needs some cleaning up to do with his 2nd parent.

Thankfully, the Gay Awakening mod alone allows for him to finally inherit Galeforce and become one of the few physical Galeforce boys (step aside Inigo). Gender-lock removal also gives him the option to transform Minerva into a pegasus--an option that we never asked for but never knew we needed.

As of now, the current version of the Gay Awakening mod allows for Gerome to inherit Pegasus Knight only through Sumia. Cherche’s supports with other pegasus mothers (Cordelia, Olivia, and Maribelle) have not been fully implemented yet, but coding these supports yourself is a totally valid option! For now, I will only cover Sumia!Gerome in this guide.

Due to the fact that Sumia is Gerome’s only (same-sex**) pegasus parent, she is objectively his best 2nd parent (not “second best parent” lol). Objectively. No questions asked. Galeforce will make him Apotheosis-worthy.

Sumia shouldn’t be a high demand 2nd parent, either. Yes, Sumia!Laurent would be scary with that +4 MAG and +5 SPD, but that takes away Gerome’s chance of being a Galeforcer. Laurent has Olivia and she does him fine (great, actually) and Gerome NEEDS Sumia.

Yarne may want Sumia, since she’ll give him an insane +7 SPD, but the trade off is that his STR will be knocked down to +1. +1 STR/+7 SPD may sound terrifying, but +4 STR/+6 SPD from Cordelia is just as good, if not better. Plus, Sumia and Panne’s support isn’t even implemented yet, so this isn’t technically possible yet.

Anyways, Sumia is Gerome’s 2nd parent. Period.

Now, not only does Sumia give him the coveted Pegasus Knight for access to both Galeforce and Lancefaire, she will also give him his highest possible SPD modifier (+3), excluding +SPD Robin.

Sumia’s overall mods sort of clash with Cherche’s, but strangely at the same time it works. Sumia brings down Cherche’s best stat mods (STR and DEF), but at the same time she fixes her worst (SPD, SKL, RES). This ultimately leaves Gerome with fairly average mods, but Sumia’s mods are actually high enough to bring Cherche’s negatives into the positive or neutral range. Regardless, +2 STR and +3 SPD is not bad at all and nothing to complain about. Having no negative mods is also a positive (pun totally intended).

Now, Gerome’s inherited class set from Sumia is where he really sees his improvement.

Pegasus Knight is the big one, since that’s what gives him Galeforce. But not only does he get Galeforce, he also gets Lancefaire from Falcon Knight. As a bonus, he can use Lancefaire with Wyvern Lord so he won’t have to give up Minerva. The Gay Awakening mod alone will only allow for him to inherit one of these skills (and only the skills, not the class itself), but with the gender-lock removed, he will have the freedom to achieve both at the same time due to the fact that he can actually have Pegasus Knight in his class set.

Sumia’s Knight also grants him Luna, which is probably one of the better proc skills available. His only innate proc skill is Sol via Fighter, which works great for the main story, but Luna works better for Apotheosis.

For an endgame class, Wyvern Lord may be the most ideal for him. Lancefaire with Wyvern Lord allows for Gerome to deal maximum damage output with lances, and his +3 SPD from Sumia patches up the class’s low SPD cap.

Without the gender-lock, he has the option to be a high-speed Lancefaire-Falcon Knight, but his +2 STR mod won’t do much to fix its low STR cap.

Also, Gerome has a natural +1 MAG mod and Tomefaire access via Priest. This means that Dark Flier isn’t too bad of an option for him, surprisingly. His MAG stat will grow very slowly, but if you’re willing to put in the time, he can actually pull off the class. Top it off with Lancefaire and his decent +2 STR mod, he has potential to be a mixed attacker as a Dark Flier. If you manage to code in the Maribelle/Cherche support, Maribelle!Gerome will definitely be a better Dark Flier.

The main weakness that Gerome still retains even with same-sex marriage and gender-lock removal is that it’ll still be impossible for Gerome to achieve both Axefaire and Galeforce at the same time. Since Cherche does not have either Barbarian or Pegasus Knight, she needs to find a partner with both classes. The only unit with both of these classes is Lissa***--and due to the restrictions of the Gay Awakening mod, Axefaire-Galeforce Gerome may never see the light of day. But hey, on the bright side, Lancefaire means Galeforce (same class tree), so he can still have his cake and eat it, too, with Minerva.

Overall, same-sex marriage and gender-lock removal improve Gerome’s performance by lightyears. Gerome can finally access Galeforce and put him on the same level as the other Galeboys and can even serve as a lead unit in Apotheosis. Despite Sumia’s stats clashing with Cherche’s, he still retains a balanced stat spread and can perform just fine in any of the classes available to him, preferably lance-wielding classes. But he does has some potential to be a magic user as well.

As the cherry on top, Cherche and Sumia have a fully implented full-family support--and their supports are probably one of my faves!

My Personal Experience

* Cherche loses Troubadour and gains Fighter in Version A of my gender-lock removal mod. In Version B, she keeps Troubadour. Gerome will inherit Fighter in Version A, and Troubadour in Version B.

** Gaius and Donnel have Pegasus Knight in their class set (replacing Fighter) in Version A of my gender-lock removal mod. This means that Gerome can also inherit Pegasus Knight via opposite-sex marriage as well via Gaius or Donnel (Version A only).

*** Lissa loses Troubadour and gains Barbarian (but keeps Pegasus Knight) in Version A of my gender-lock removal mod. In Version B, she keeps Troubadour.

~*~*~

I’m pretty glad I was able to pull off a viable Gerome. He’s one of my favorite 2nd gen units, and I would hate to bench him.

I ended up coding his support with M!Morgan and had them S-Support each other to patch up each other’s weaknesses. It was a trade-off, Falcon Knight M!Morgan gave him speed and skill, and Wyvern Lord Gerome gave him strength and defense in return. Plus, I think they’re kinda cute together LOL.

Not much else to say about Sumia!Gerome, I mean he’s a good unit, what else could I say? Haha. Cherche!Cynthia isn’t too shabby either. They’re both balanced, all-around units. They’re not stupid broken, but not bottom-of-the-barrel units, but they’re great regardless. I will say that Sumia!Gerome is probably the best Gerome, but there are probably better Cynthia’s other than Cherche!Cynthia since Cherche’s doesn’t offer much other than Sol and her highest possible STR mod. But having Fighter means Cynthia can finally fulfill her dream of being a hero as a Hero (the class) LOL.

However, I do love the idea of a full flying family. I was even thinking of having Cynthia and Gerome trade mounts LOL. (But I ended up making Cynthia a Hero for the main story and Bride for Apotheosis, and Gerome a Wyvern Lord haha)

Definitely recommend this pairing for the best possible Gerome, but who knows, Cordelia!Gerome sounds like he has potential too.

#fire emblem #fire emblem awakening #fe13 #gerome #sumia #guide #analysis

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argumentl · 4 years ago

Text

The Freedom of Expression, radio version - Ep 13, Dec 2015.

Kaoru starts by explaining the shows' concept. His voice is quite weak/husky. He then introduces Joe, who comments that its already the end of the year. Kaoru doesn't have the feeling that the year is already at an end, as they are recording the show in advance. On that point, they can't therefore comment on how the previous weeks' live broadcasts went, but they are sure they must have been great. Kaoru says he will certainly have introduced his own Arche cover design on the live show (he actually didn't).

Related to album covers, he talks next about banned album covers. He brings up the first-press album cover for the Guns and Roses album 'Appetite for Destruction', which is a drawing showing a woman who has been raped. The cover was changed due to complaints. He also mentions Dream Theater's live album cover showing the World Trade Centre on fire, which was banned from sale. Even one of his senpai bands had a cd cover of theirs banned. Then he talks about the Norwegian band Mayhem, and the cover for their album 'Dawn of the black hearts', which showed the dead body of their vocalist after he comitted suicide. The vocalist was a strange person who liked trying different things. Is it possible to call this art? Kaoru adds that the band member who took the photo was also later murdered. Kaoru thinks this is not art, but isn't sure whether it is an artist making an expression or not. He doesn't know the details about the world of black metal at the time of this album, but there appears to have been some kind of contest or rivalry as to who could be the most evil. He thinks that if its a product of rivalry, then its not art. Joe then brings up a play he went to see recently, called 'Blue Sheet', which is partly peformed by high school students from Fukushima, who saw many dead bodies in reality when they were volunteering in the areas hit by the tsunami. The story of the play revolves around some students finding a body, in a kind of half-fiction, half-reality way. Joe thinks this brings up a lot of questions about what artistic expression is.

Dobashi joins them next for the Tokyo Sports corner. He has brought Tasai with him. Dobashi brings up the story (mentioned on a previous show) of Tsuchida Yoshi, who was found dead in his apartment with no face. Follow up investigations to the incident reveals the damage to the face was probably caused by a dog. Kaoru can't quite believe that. They mention that some reports had said the body was found with plastic bag on the head. Tasai speculates whether the person sharing the apartment had put this on the body after allowing the dog to cause the damage. They all agree that this case still leaves many questions.

Kaoru comments that Tasai gives off a different atmosphere from Dobashi. He seems more decent, or mature.

Next Dobashi brings up the news of a tourism poster put out by Minokamo city in Gifu prefecture. The poster depicts an anime woman with very huge breasts, plus revealing clevage, and there has been uproar that displaying such a poster amounts to sexual harrassment. The the poster was subsequently changed. Dobashi wonders how this relates to Freedom of Expression. The three men (including Kaoru!) can't see anything wrong with the poster (*Sidenote, of course men can't see the problem. To any woman, the poster is obviously ridiculous to represent a whole town: Search for 'Minokamo anime poster'). Tasai says the poster represents Akihabara culture, which the residents of Gifu might not be familiar with. Kaoru then makes the very valid point, that what if it was a male character presented in a similar suggestive way? The men all say they would find that pretty gross! Although he stated earlier he doesn't mind the poster, he realised that children etc will be seeing it, so for that reason, its bad. This is followed by much pretend outrage at the poster by the others, and lots of laughing.

Kaoru finishes by commenting on how the year has gone fast. He then plugs his upcoming talk events and Budokan shows for 2016, and wishes the listeners a happy new year.

Songs - Mayhem/Buried by time and dust, Dir en grey/Magayaso.

#dir en grey #the freedom of expression

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opting-for-oblivion · 4 years ago

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A Matter of Jurisdiction

A lovely anon asked if I had anything to add regarding one of my recent tags, the gist of which was “In DMC, do you realize how much trouble Governor Swann’s letter would have caused (for the EITC) if it made it to England? Because Beckett did and he was not taking any chances.”

Because I am terrible at being succinct and because I love talking about this, I’m going to expand more generally on what I said in my tags on the post in question and approach some other questions about Lord Beckett’s authority later posed by the op of the original post. [Links to the relevant posts can be found in the replies, as Tumblr hates links.]

I will, fairly, preface this by saying that skimming Beckett’s PotC fandom Wiki does answer all of the questions regarding the EITC’s actions, and, to put the TL;DR at the beginning, that answer is often just “Lord Beckett had royal authority (and enough money) to do whatever he wanted.”

Nonetheless, if you’re curious how I’d nerd out over analyze the situation, please read on!

[A further note: I am not a historian, nor am I an expert on the alternate universe in which PotC is set. If I am, at any point, wrong, please let me know.]

While the main focus of the original PotC trilogy is the conflict between pirates (representing freedom) and the British Crown (representing, among other things, constraint, control, and exploitation), there exists within the British “side” a kind of internal conflict and this is what we see at play between Cutler Beckett and Weatherby Swann.

If you understand Beckett to be a merchant of sorts and the East India Trading Company to be just what it says on the tin -- a trading company -- then it might seem entirely out of order that Beckett invades Port Royal, crashes the governor’s daughter’s wedding, and disrespects (indeed, arrests) Swann the way he does. However, so far as legality goes, Beckett doesn’t cross as many lines as one would think (or, perhaps, the lines are not quite so clear). This is because Lord Beckett has the same royal authority that Governor Swann does and because the EITC is no mere trading company.

The EITC is a deeply politically invested entity. The Company operates with a royal charter, which means that it was granted certain rights by the monarchy. Specifically, the EITC has extensive military and administrative capabilities built into it. (I’ve even seen it referred to as part trade organization, part nation state.) When operating in the Indian Ocean and other areas outside of the jurisdiction of the British Crown, as it was originally intended to, the Company acts as an arm of British imperial power. This becomes a problem when the EITC attempts to exert said power where British Crown authority is already established, such as in the British Caribbean.

Swann is, of course, the king’s governor of Port Royal; his authority derives directly from the Crown as well. In fact, Weatherby Swann is said to be close friends with the king. However, the fact that Swann has personal ties to the aristocracy and Beckett does not doesn’t make their powers as unequal as one might think. The structures that each is part of are just about parallel.

The situation is not: Crown → Aristocracy → Merchants

But rather: Crown → Aristocracy & → EITC

While Beckett has been granted the title of lord by DMC, there is still a difference between those born into such a status and those who were not. (It’s sort of a big deal, especially for Beckett. His family had been wealthy merchants, but none of them had ever held a title.)

Because the two men have fairly equal standing in terms of pure authority, their being at odds become a tricky matter of jurisdiction. In other words, who has the right to exercise his power where? This question vexes both Swann and Beckett, and they’re both keenly aware of it from the moment they come face to face. Neither can claim absolute authority outright, but both have unique cards they can play to shift the situation in their favor.

A few scenes in DMC highlight the chess game that Swann and Beckett are playing, though I’m afraid it was never a game that Beckett intended to play fairly.

In the opening of DMC, the EITC invades Port Royal as Beckett arrives to arrest Elizabeth Swann, William Turner, and James Norrington. Some key things to understand here:

The invasion is not solely to make the arrests, but rather to establish Port Royal as the EITC’s new base. Beckett clearly has that intention (and royal approval for it) before showing up. That said, was invading the place entirely necessary? No, but it is a shock tactic.

Some of the first things said to Lord Beckett are, by Governor Swann, “Lord or not, you have no reason and no authority to arrest this man.” and, by Elizabeth, “We are under the jurisdiction of the king’s governor of Port Royal and you will tell us what we are charged with.” The Swanns are obviously under the impression that Beckett is out of line, but he isn’t.

Regarding the arrests themselves, all of the warrants are legally valid. Elizabeth, Turner, and Norrington did, as the warrants say, conspire “to set free a man convicted of crimes against the Crown and Empire and condemned to death.” Beckett’s decision to use the prisoners rather than simply execute them is, on the other hand, entirely his own abuse of power.

Another important scene, of course, is when Governor Swann attempts to save Elizabeth by having her sent to England.

Swann’s lines in this scene very clearly show his particular type of power: that based on personal, aristocratic ties. For example, “Our name still has some standing with the king.” Even the captain he makes arrangements with is “a friend” -- the only kind of person Swann can trust given Beckett’s new authority in Port Royal.

When Swann tells Elizabeth, “Perhaps I can ensure a fair trial for Will.” we especially see where his power ends. His authority in Port Royal, and regarding those who are not his family, is now weak. His best hope there is to enforce existing standards (i.e. a fair trial).

The entire premise of Swann’s decision here is that he knows that he can’t contest the warrants. However, there is a possibility that he can leverage his ties with the aristocracy to get his daughter off the hook. That personal power is only certain to work in England, out of the reach of Lord Beckett’s power in the Caribbean. Swann is very smart to use his personal ties this way though anyone would have to admit that it’s not exactly legal.

A line that was cut from the film reinforces all of the above (which is likely why it was cut): “There are still men loyal to me here, and Beckett is still wary of my ties to the Crown.” Swann, due to his position as governor and personal connections with the British aristocracy, has power that -- while not necessarily a threat -- could conceivably challenge Beckett’s actions. Lord Beckett knows this, but there isn’t anything he can do about it at this point in the film.

Now, considering that (earlier) Swann openly discusses helping Elizabeth escape in front of one of the EITC soldiers when he visits her in prison, it’s no surprise that Beckett suspects something is amiss and sends Mercer to investigate.

The scene in which Mercer kills Swann’s hired captain and arrests the governor is, perhaps, the most high-stakes political moment in DMC. Mercer not only catches Swann breaking the law, but he intercepts Swann’s letter to the king. When confronted, Swann knows that his gamble has gone horribly wrong.

Swann is arrested on the same grounds that his daughter was, conspiring to free a convicted criminal, which effectively strips him of his authority and, worse, puts him at Beckett’s mercy. More than that, his letter to the king is Beckett’s first real proof that Swann is a threat on a larger playing field. Before intercepting the letter, Beckett only had suspicions to go off of, and any move against someone you’re not sure is an enemy could create an enemy. With the escape attempt and the letter, Beckett has both legal and personal grounds to arrest the governor and, later, blackmail him.

While we never discover the exact contents of the letter, it’s likely that Swann wrote more than a plea for his daughter’s pardon. Elizabeth is his main concern, but it would be unlike Swann -- a man with an admirable moral center -- to not mention the way he feels about the EITC and Beckett’s conduct in Port Royal. If such a letter did reach the king, there is no way that the king could ignore it outright. There would be repercussions of some kind, and a royal inquiry into the EITC’s dealings at the very least. It’s important to remember that, while the Crown pays little attention to the EITC so long as it’s making money, the Crown very much can tell the EITC what to do if it sees fit -- which is the last thing Beckett wants. That said, I’m not certain if Swann’s letter would have meaningfully shut down the EITC in the Caribbean, and it almost certainly wouldn’t have gotten Beckett arrested. In any case, Beckett avoids the whole problem by ensuring that Swann’s concerns -- whatever they are -- never reach ears that are able to do anything.

In the following scene, in which Elizabeth steals the letters of marque, it’s interesting to note that Beckett’s line about how “loyalty is no longer the currency of the realm” is both ironic and bold. The only reason it’s even remotely true is because Beckett makes it true. He is more than aware of the power that loyalty can have, and he goes out of his way to keep that power from being a threat. Loyalty is still very much a currency of the realm, but it isn’t of much use if there are no transactions being made (i.e. Swann’s letter never reaches the king).

A final scene in DMC that is worthy of note is that in which Lord Beckett blackmails Governor Swann.

The scene opens with Beckett saying, “There’s something to knowing the exact shape of the world and one’s place in it, don’t you agree?” This is, obviously, a thinly veiled threat -- a reminder to take note of one’s place in the current situation.

Beckett effectively threatens Elizabeth, who is currently a criminal among criminals and being hunted as such, and uses Swann’s concern for his daughter to force the governor to work for the EITC.

Even here, we explicitly see the jurisdiction matter playing out. When Swann asks what Beckett wants in exchange for Elizabeth’s safety, Beckett is more than clear: “Your authority as governor, your influence in London, and your loyalty to the East India Trading Company.” Beckett uses this opportunity to appropriate the governor’s power. While Beckett now technically has the highest authority in Port Royal, he nonetheless ensures that his only possible competitor is working for him, bolstering his power rather than being able to challenge it. Like we see in every case, Beckett will not kill someone that can be more useful to him alive.

We can also revisit the conflict between Beckett and Swann in the terms Beckett uses: currency versus loyalty. Again, the irony is immaculate. While Beckett’s every move is made on the premise that currency is more valuable than loyalty, he himself values loyalty enough to buy it -- the very thing he says Swann “hoped never to sell.”

If you’ve reached the end of this post, dear reader, I commend you. That said, there are a few caveats to consider. Namely, much of Beckett’s PotC Wiki seems to imply that he had the king’s support and, no conniving required, would have been able to exercise authority over Governor Swann. In that case, things like Swann’s letter are less important (beyond the matter of Elizabeth’s safety, of course). I’m assuming that much of what “actually” happened rests on the details of the EITC’s expansion into the Caribbean -- which Disney handwaved in the films for the most part and only later expanded on (somewhat) in things like the novelizations, which I have not yet read.

#potc #pirates of the caribbean #cutler beckett #weatherby swann #filodox!#filodox!wri #this got way too long #and I took too long to write it #but I don't often get asked about the socioeconomic underpinnings of potc so #<3

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halcyonbound · 4 years ago

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( SAMARA WEAVING, UNKNOWN, SHE/HER ) We opened the gates to the seelie court for CAMILLA DE' MEDICI and we are curious to see how the DEMON ( PRINCESS OF HELL ), that is often described as the halcyon, will contribute to the new era ━ are they the hunter, the prey ; or are they just here to search for Cosimo de' Medici, their twin brother? We will find our answers in due time and until then, we hope that they can keep their little secret from getting exposed. It could be dangerous if everyone knew what we know… ( sab, she/her, 23, gmt+2 )

STATS .

( taken ) name : camilla de’ medici . age : unknown ( stopped counting a long time ago ) . birthday : july 3 . nationality : n.a. / italian . species : demon ( princess of hell / formerly angel ) . gender : non-binary woman . orientation : pansexual & panromantic . religion : formerly catholic . moral alignment : lawful neutral . occupation : princess of italy / trained seamstress . location : cosimo de’ medici’s mansion .

PERSONALITY .

open, caring, compassionate. she was always a little more ... humane than most of her siblings. her deep fascination with everything living and moving and changing extended to humanity - from the moment she first came to earth ( still an angel then, and naively hopeful ) she had a sort of natural charm, always appearing approachable, friendly, and optimistic. while none of that changed, and she is usually genuine in all her feelings, there is a spark of calculation , at times - she’s seen too much of the world to simply accept things at face value anymore.

loyal to a fault. those she considers family are her everything, and she’d do anything to keep them safe. camilla generally strives for compromise and peace, for the sole reason that she’s tired of the fighting and the conflicts and the sorrows she witnessed in hell, but when the people she loves are concerned, all bets are off. whatever they need, she will provide — at whatever cost.

vindictive. it is hard to loose her good opinion ( or amused tolerance, as it may stand ) but once someone does, they are in serious trouble . although she barely showcases her demonic powers, she does know how to use them - and to mess with a princess of hell is, quite possibly, one of the worst mistakes one could make. it takes a lot to get her going, but when she does, she’s easily lost in violence. ( a touch of hell-ish insanity is hard to hide when it comes in so handy in certain situations. )

free-spirited. spurns rules and regulations; and bounds of any sort. likes travelling, moving, discovering, trying out new things. incredibly curious about anything and everything and reacts with wholehearted attempts and a humorous ‘ watch me ’ at someone telling her ‘ you can’t ’ .

perfectionist with a limited attention span; she has long since stopped trying to wrestle her mind into any sense of order, and tends to give in to impulses rather quickly. usually, they’re positive ones - new projects, interests, ideas - and it frustrates her a little when she cannot seem to finish any of them to her liking. it makes for ... interesting situations, however, when she does work for hell.

SKILLS .

trained ( and talented ) seamstress. her interest in clothing - and not just wearing, but making it - comes from that leftover angelic urge to create , she thinks. it started when cosimo and her were taken in by teresa; the woman was of the opinion that a princess needed to have certain skills, and after starting with embroidery, camilla quickly became interested in and learned the other aspects of the trade, and the hobby has remained with her since.

pianist. another one of these skills teresa so valued was musical proficiency . her singing, in their society’s general opinion, is no good ( not that she cares; she’ll sing as loudly and falsely as she wants if it brings her joy, thank you very much ) and she never quite got the hang of string instruments, but she managed to turn into a passable pianist. then again, centuries of practice will do that.

good mediator. ( when she wants to be. )

demonic powers. elevated strength, speed, and agility; possession, levitation, teleportation, and the lot. as she’s a princess of hell, her abilities are much stronger than those of normal demons, although she ranks on the lower end when compared with her immediate siblings, as she does not practice as much and hasn’t in centuries. her powers manifest mainly more defensive aspects, and she has an affinity for telekinesis ( as that is something she actually uses regularly for convenience ) , making her able to manipulate a large amount of objects or people at once and with surprising precision.

BIO .

they barely remember their creation. there was light , as it is said, and from nothing they became something ; one thing among many. heaven was home, and that was enough ( for a time ) , and they were one with their siblings ( until they weren’t ) . their fledgling days are a blur, now ; only a few memories stand out. cosimo and his tales of earth ; their strive for making , for being ; reprimands, restrictions, rules ; their other brothers’ annoyance - then anger - then fury - with all of it.

falling is much clearer in their mind ; mainly because it hurt . worth it , they told themselves as their wings burned up and their grace shattered and split and warped itself into something else somewhere between heaven and hell. they left, less out of malice than curiosity ; for the need to see, and to become , to be more than heaven’s meticulously directed hand. corruption , they knew their siblings called it. freedom , they whispered as they stretched into their new form, beyond what god intended.

except they weren’t free , not really ; there was a price for everything, even becoming . hell was ... much the same as heaven, they found, except viewed through a mirror. the humanity they idolized sold themselves out, but despite sharing their sibling’s curiosity to see just how far they could turn, hell’s work held little joy for them. they did not want to see the result - they wanted the process . they wanted life .

rising , in turn, was much easier given their position, they remember. at one point they simply left for an assigned task and didn’t come back - creeping through the cracks of the world, looking for ... something .

demon’s didn’t have true vessels , she knew from those who frequented earth ; but whatever was left of her grace, twisted though it might have been, recognized something in the girl. or maybe it was something around her - it mattered little when they took possession of the body. they were surprised, though, to reconcile that much with her - they felt her fear, her recent loss, her remaining love for a brother long gone ; a brother they now recognized as their own. they didn’t even need to lie to swear they would protect him above all else before the girl let go.

she became camilla . after recognizing cosimo’s grace in her vessel’s twin brother, her decision to remain on earth became final. it wasn’t just her promise to the girl ; she’d missed her brother more than any of her other siblings, and he welcomed her to his side with open arms, accepted her more than heaven or hell ever had. for the first time since creation, she felt ... whole . human. like she had choices ; had the freedom to choose a home.

eventually , they ended up in italy, being ‘ adopted ’ , of sorts, by the ruling family. the situation never ceased to amuse her, but she liked teresa well enough ( it felt interesting, being mothered ) and being once again styled ‘ princess ’ opened the doors for a myriad of new experiences. this was precicely the joy of life she had always craved. ( and if hell came a’knocking, no one forced her to open the door. )

things took a turn when cosimo decided to get married and fell in love - unfortunately in the wrong order, she thought then. illyria was … a special case. camilla didn’t particularly care for political marriages ( the trend of the decade was romance and she’d read far too many novels on the subject ) but her brother seemed open enough to the idea. so for his sake, camilla made an effort to befriend her; she was intrigued by the dragon and enjoyed her company with others, but they never quite became confidantes - camilla bemourned her brothers’ heart too much.

when instead , he fell in love with one of illyria’s ladies, she was ecstatic - this was what was meant to be. anastasia makes him happy, and so camilla is happy, too ; conversation was so much easier with her, and camilla came to love her like a sister and did everything to make her feel comfortable and supported in her new position as mistress - especially with a child on the way.

who could have expected neglecting illyria could have such dramatic consequences?

good things burn as good things do , and when cosimo was called back to heaven, something didn’t sit right with her. that fear was validated soon after when ana and aurora were attacked ; and with no way of knowing when cosimo would get back, she did what she could to help them. ( it wasn’t much. it, arguably, might have made things worse ; but it was the best option at the time. the only option. )

when she heard from heaven next , however, it wasn’t from cosimo, but someone else , with a very clear message. furious as it made her, she accepted the offered deal ; but she’d never hated heaven more than the day cosimo returned with memories altered and something ... missing. she lied and laughed and tried to make up for forgotten happiness as much as she could ; as much as was possible without raising suspicion ; attempting to return to some form of normalcy.

CURRENT SITUATION .

centuries later , with cosimo’s memories recovered and his family returned to earth safe and sound, they finally found some semblance of peace. camilla tries not to dwell on the past, but her role in all of it weighs heavy on her heart.

now, while they are ... mostly stable in the fae realm, she tries to keep a low profile ( fearing the past eventually catching up ) although she grows more and more antsy being stuck in the same place for so long.

she’s offered her services as a seamstress, working from a little house in the village of spring ; it’s a nice way to stay occupied and keep an eye on new arrivals and the general talk of the town.

IDEAS FOR CONNECTIONS / PLOTS .

LOVED AND LOST : camilla loves to love. she gets along easily with just about anyone ( if she wants to ) and collects hearts like other girls do necklaces - but she’s just as likely to give her own away. most of her relationships over the centuries have ended amicably, simply due to growing apart. her one and only engagement is the notable exception to this.

→ WANTED CONNECTION POST : ex-fiancé

BLOOD OF THE COVENANT : throughout her life, she’s abandoned both heaven and hell, and while she still holds some affection for her siblings , she’s stopped hoping for a friendly reception. besides that, she’s angry at heaven and hiding from hell, so that should make for some interesting dynamics.

BAD MOON RISING : as a princess of hell, she was directly involved with creating more demons. i’d love to explore a connection to someone she met in hell and/or screwed with on earth!

any kind of relationship, really: platonic, romantic, antagonistic. whatever shennanigans you can imagine!

hi all, i’m sab and this is my chaotic friendly-ish demon babe. i’m also writing darcy, who you can find over here . if you’re interested in talking / plotting / just starting a thread based off of these ideas, hmu!! i’m always up to chat!

#dih.intro #( made some changes in cami's backstory but personality-wise she's still the same #tl;dr is she used to be a fallen angel/princess of hell before coming to earth and possessing cosi's vessel's twin sister #thus reuniting with her brother. that's sort of the main change; pls excuse the purple prose-y writing this ran away w me a bit oof )

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investigold · 4 years ago

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Investments. Where to begin?

How to learn to invest from scratch? We will tell you how to understand investments and invest wisely if you have never done this before. Recently, more and more Russians are investing in stock market instruments. The myths that investments are like a gambling game, in which, sooner or later, every penny will be lost has long been dispelled. With the right risk assessment and the right amount of theoretical knowledge, you can create a balanced investment portfolio that works for you and your goals. We will tell you how to learn how to invest from scratch in our article. Why you need to invest Savings on hand make many people think about increasing them. Keeping money in a safe at home is not very profitable, because inflation can eat it. For the registration of deposits, now is also not the best moment, since the interest on them continues to fall following the key rate of the Central Bank. Naturally, under these conditions, Russians' interest in the instruments of the stock market is growing: according to the Moscow Exchange, at the moment in Russia 7 million private investors have access to the trading floor. With investments, you can: 1. protect savings from inflation; 2. get additional income; 3. Create an airbag and gain financial freedom. Before you start investing, decide on your financial goals. At this stage, it is important to prioritize and assess the value of your desires. 3 main whales of investing Typically, investments require some kind of initial savings. Payroll deductions can be a great way. By saving only 10%, in just a year you will be able to accumulate an amount sufficient to enter the stock market. At the same time, it is not necessary to wait all 12 months, because even with 1000 rubles in hand, you can already buy a government loan bond. It is false to believe that with 10-20 thousand rubles you will not be able to start investing. Just take a look at Warren Buffett, who started his investor journey with $ 115 and earned only $ 5 on his first deal. Today this person is included in the list of the richest people in the world. Here are some tips for a budding investor to follow: 1. Decide on the investment horizon. When it comes to bonds, the stock market is conventionally divided into short-term securities and long-term ones. For example, OFZs are limited to a specific validity period (3, 5, 7, and even 10 years). Shares, in turn, are considered a perpetual asset. They exist as long as the company operates and remains public. 2. Choose an investment instrument. Decide where to invest your money. The investor decides what securities he will purchase, whether he will invest money in business development, whether he will entrust his savings to a mutual fund and a management company, or simply open a deposit in a bank. 3. Focus on risks and returns. Fixed-interest securities (for example, federal loan bonds) are considered less risky instruments compared to stocks and bonds issued by enterprises. Tip: To make it easier for you to choose the right investment instrument, first of all define your risk profile. This is your type of behavior in the financial market. It takes into account your goals, desired profitability, investment horizon and acceptable risks. Depending on your attitude to risk, the risk profile can be conservative, rational or aggressive. Conservative investors prefer low-risk instruments with low returns, aggressive ones are ready to risk capital for the sake of high potential returns, and rational ones choose the golden mean. Interesting! The richest man in the world - Bill Gates - distributed his savings as follows: 20% are concentrated in the shares of their companies, the rest is invested in the shares of large US enterprises and directly in business. How to learn to invest: choosing investment instruments Newcomers, entering the stock market with $ 100 in their pocket, want to increase their capital by 2-3 times in a year. In fact, a high return on investment is only possible in the long term. If you do not have financial knowledge, take online investment courses for dummies or entrust your savings to a management company, which will form an optimal investment portfolio for a fee. Bank deposit Perhaps one of the most secure investment instruments, because in the event of bankruptcy of a financial institution, the state guarantees the payment of a deposit in the amount of up to 1.4 million rubles. The instrument's profitability is low - 3.5-6.5% per annum. For beginners who open a deposit for a significant period, it is worth choosing a tariff with capitalization. This means that the accrued interest will join the body of the contribution, increasing the base for calculating income. OFZ and corporate bonds OFZ - federal loan bonds, payments on which are guaranteed by the state. They are recognized as a low-risk asset. By purchasing such a bond at a set price, the investor seems to be lending to state-owned enterprises. After a certain period, the issuer returns the money to the creditor (payment of the par value) and pays interest for their use (coupon). The yield on OFZ is low - 5-6% per annum. Coupon income is tax deductible. Another way to generate additional income on bonds is to sell at the time of a favorable market situation. An example would be the purchase of government bonds before the start of a key rate cut by a country's central bank. Due to falling yields on new debt securities and a decrease in the cost of funding in general, the market begins to overestimate the value of the old bonds that you bought earlier. As a result, their profitability will fall and their value will rise. Thus, you will not only earn a coupon income over the life of the security, but also receive a profit from the resale. Shares of companies Stocks are considered a risky investment because it is not known whether the corporation will be profitable. Types of return on shares: 1.dividends; 2. exchange rate difference from selling at a higher rate. Unfortunately, the exchange rate and dividend yield of such securities is subject to 13% personal income tax. Want to avoid paying income tax? Then invest through an individual investment account. When storing funds in such an account, the investor has the right to a tax deduction in the amount of up to 52 thousand rubles annually. The investor is offered 2 types of accounts - "A" and "B". The first option is suitable for officially employed persons. If you do not plan to withdraw money from your account in the next 3 years, then annually you will receive the right to receive a 13% deduction from the amount up to 400 thousand rubles. Type B implies exemption from tax on income from the sale of securities. Suitable for those who are actively involved in transactions with securities or have no official income. Management Company A novice investor does not need to learn financial literacy to manage free funds. It is enough to entrust the money to the management company (MC), which will select profitable investment instruments on a paid basis. How do MCs work? You choose the management company you are interested in and conclude a trust management agreement with it. After depositing funds into a special account, the manager forms an investment portfolio that will correspond to the chosen strategy and your preferences. It should be noted that all securities are considered your property and are separated from the property of the manager, which allows you to avoid unpleasant situations. Choosing a broker It is necessary to buy and sell securities through a brokerage or individual investment account. When choosing a broker, pay attention to the following parameters: 1. license; 2. accreditation on exchanges and popular trading platforms; 3. commission (the amount of a fixed fee or a percentage of the transaction); 4. the threshold for entering the stock market. Many brokers provide clients with online trading services. You just need to select the stock market instrument you are interested in, replenish your account and generate a request to buy / sell a security. Investment strategies A strategy is a set of behavioral reactions on the exchange when trading. Be sure to determine for yourself what assets you are going to trade and what indicator you will pay attention to when making decisions. Most often, newbie investors choose a wait-and-see strategy. They buy securities at a reduced price or at par and then expect an appreciation or fixed income. In this case, the investment period can be up to 3-5 years. Consider the following points: 1. type of asset; 2. term of investment; 3. maximum losses. A portfolio investment strategy involves the purchase of various securities, which will minimize systemic risk (so-called diversification). Experienced experts recommend using 30% of savings to buy bonds, in particular OFZ, and invest the rest in shares of liquid companies (blue chips) - Gazprom, Sberbank, Surgutneftegaz, Megafon, Magnit. Tips for beginners Try not to invest everything you have in stock market instruments. Start with a bank deposit or OFZ, creating a "safety cushion", and then move on to stock trading. Financial market experts' recommendations: 1. set a loss limit and follow it when managing your portfolio; 2. diversify risks by investing in various securities of different issuers; 3. Do not believe the tricks of dishonest management companies and venture capital funds that promise to increase profits by 200% within a year; 4. always adhere to the chosen strategy, do not act impulsively, seeing that the stock price begins to fall; 5. open IIS to receive tax preferences; 6. rebalance the portfolio (for example, if one asset rises in price, sell it, and use the money received to purchase the asset that has fallen in price). Thus, you can start investing even with a small amount, and to make a profit without serious risks, it is enough to choose conservative instruments, open an IIS, or entrust the management of your savings to a management company.

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jobeescobar · 4 years ago

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The Increase of Online Transaction Gateways

The cashless payment strategy is growing tremendously using evolving settlement methods, soaring e-commerce employ, superior broadband on the web connectivity, along with beginning of recent systems. Could escalating situations involving cyberattacks as well as spams limit the increase of internet transaction industry as well as can it continue to grow in a rapid fee? The global electronic digital settlement industry is supposed to strike your USD6.6 mil level in 2021, enrolling around a new 40% begin a couple of years. The actual cashless transaction methods are usually quickly changing together with ground-breaking enhancements for example cell purses, peer-to-peer (Peer to peer) portable repayments, real-time installments, and also cryptocurrencies. From the developing electronic digital grow older, a lot of repayment engineering publication rack taking part along with conventional finance institutions to be able to focus on the newest buyer and merchant preferences. As a result of enhanced broadband internet online connectivity, raising mobile marketing, breakthrough of new technologies for example Virtual Reality, Artificial Cleverness, and also fast digitization, billions of individuals have started out embracing contactless installments in the designed and emerging international locations. Besides, surging e-commerce businesses, electronic digital remittances, electronic enterprise repayments, and cell B2B repayments are usually boosting the non-cash purchase environment. Cashless deal technique users across numerous decades are usually widely following a digital camera peer-to-peer (Peer-to-peer) apps as is also more inviting and flexible to use. In-app installments or tap-and-go purchases get a few moments in the see and permit consumers to make installments anytime and everywhere. Tokenization, encryption, Protected Sockets Layer (SSL), etc., offer you a number of strategies to acquiring installments although enabling digital purchases. Moreover, you do not have to add information every time to perform your repayment process. Hence, online repayment gateways enjoy a vital role within the monetary development, which allows trade-in the present day overall economy. Together with interpersonal distancing principles available, electronic payments are becoming a responsibility for contactless deals rather than just a transaction option to steer clear of the propagate of coronavirus. Digital Trade Empowering Companies Digital transaction systems have become a crucial part of businesses as consumer inclination towards online shopping is broadening. Along with increasing web transmission, growing usage of cell phones, and diverse choices for e-transactions, nearly all people are wanting online stations over conventional brick-and-mortar merchants for searching. Consequently, companies are transferring on the internet with an digital transaction solution to take full advantage of their particular income profits. Automating your electronic payment method eradicates the actual range involving mistakes along with saves plenty of effort and time. High standards pertaining to finding and avoiding scams in electronic financial transaction methods and AI-based scams detections safeguard people coming from protection breaches. By offering the pliability to create payments by means of credit/debit charge cards, portable income, e-Wallet, and so on., the lenders may broaden their own subscriber base. The actual digital settlement process improves customer happiness because buyers don't have to count income or perhaps cope with forms when they need to make the deal. Biometric Authorization Enhancing Safety Biometric certification entails knowing fingerprint capabilities along with structurel traits to make sure that your id of an personal. The particular confirmation strategy can include fingerprint deciphering, cosmetic acknowledgement, voice acknowledgement, problematic vein mapping, eye discovery, and heartbeat examination. With the rise in id theft as well as fraudulence, fingerprint validation has turned into a reliable and secure alternative in making digital camera purchases. According to a newly released investigation, biometrically validated portable business transactions are hoped for in order to constitute a massive 57% of the overall fingerprint financial transaction by simply 2023. Fingerprint transaction credit cards will also be becoming popular as they support tap-and-go obligations, allowing consumers to generate more rapidly electronic purchases. The digital transaction engineering service provider, Worldline is joining up with the France FinTech, A3BC (Anything Anywhere Anytime Biometric Connection), to safeguard cellphones through breach using a two-factor authentication procedure. The mixed solution gets rid of recognition by having a one effect, instead this acknowledges fingerprints via a photograph in the hands. Master card is likely to bring FinGo's vein-scanning transaction answer in which facilitates users for you to authenticate purchases.

Popularity regarding Cellular Pouches In 2019, cellular pouches overtook charge cards for being your extremely followed payment variety around the world. Electronic digital pouches supply versatility to be able to customers to hold numerous settlement approaches in a electronic digital property swap money straight into electric money required for on-line or perhaps in-store purchases. Financial institutions have previously begun to grasp a digital budget pattern by providing virtual credit cards to be able to organization consumers. The actual virtual charge cards stored in electronic digital wallets consist of specifics similar to 16-digit greeting card amount, CVV code, day regarding expiration as well as operate just like the physical charge card. At present, simply 37% regarding stores help cellular installments in the point of sale, but the rising adoption, merchants are prepared to invest in technology facilitating digital camera purses. Your electronic purses can save income due to minimal running costs because they restriction deal values as well as consistency. Unnatural Brains (AI) can be enhancing the consumer experience with regards to purchases along with ChatBots, designed to execute as well as robotize essential exchanges as reported by the user's curiosity. Aside from, cryptographic money-based e-wallets are accepted through new businesses to be able to small-medium companies pertaining to saving digital camera income. Wise words technology is causing the growth regarding wise tone of voice wallets since Amazon online forced the main of this platform, which can be today getting then Yahoo as well as The apple company. E-Commerce Growth Speeding up Digital camera Transaction Industry Growth E-commerce expansion at an great minute rates are creating distress dunes, as well as the sonic growth can be reverberating throughout the FinTech sector. The expansion of many e-commerce organizations is pushed through the kind of monetary services they provide. Digital transactions allow it to be hassle-free for your buyer and seller to generate deals and grow faithful to the marketplace area. Your COVID-19 outbreak added an alternative dimension in order to e-commerce advancement, presenting more recent styles such as repayment choices with checkouts (steer clear digital wallets), virtual charge cards, Quick response requirements, and other touchless purchases. Apart from, your Buy Now Spend Later on (BNPL) pattern is actually taking over the particular e-commerce industry as it relieves your financial burden about the consumer. BNPL requires a gentle credit assessment, so the shoppers can get what they need, maintain the supply transferring, as well as pay at an increased rate without having affected his or her credit standing. BNPL gives organizations using much-needed liquidity as well as greater freedom on the check out. Affect regarding COVID-19 Crisis about Electronic Payment Market Expansion Digital camera payment methods possess moved outside of their peer-to-peer (File sharing) transactions along with invoice installments. The particular COVID-19 pandemic allowed electronic payment systems in order to showcase their particular advantages, like a strong idea of hyper-local areas and its ability to set up solid community relationships. Organizations as well as consumers progressively "went digital" regarding supplying and buying products or services on the web. In the event the pandemic struck, individuals did not desire to feel or perhaps trade cash as a result of paranoia regarding finding and catching the problem through actual physical foreign currencies. A number of government authorities worldwide presented digital fiscal gets in provide COVID-assistance. Because of lockdown steps, customers now use on-line systems, which usually launched the actual interest in digital camera payment programs. Now, digital systems have become a vital part of people's lives, and also rrndividuals are more prone to continue shopping online in the post-pandemic period. Your extraordinary shift in buyer actions is likely to enhance the actual interest in e-payment programs even more. Consequently, information mill paying attention their own attention upon electronic digital platforms to satisfy the new client calls for and also blossom companies from the modifying industry predicament. Businesses are generally reimagining customer travels to scale back rubbing and supply brand new security measures. Settlement organizations like PayPal and Sq . Income are usually staffing up charges to improve view the rearrangement regarding interpersonal norms and also strengthen the business enterprise sooner. e-Payment Methods are the Potential Together with growing smart phone as well as internet sexual penetration, consumers are turning out to be tech-savvy, which in turn presents endless possibilities for your digital payment marketplaces. Post-pandemic, digital payment techniques are usually likely to carry on and grow in the past to come. Whilst credit cards remain the first choice regarding obligations worldwide, portable wallets are speedily getting traction. The original cashflow is declining in standard bank limbs and ATMs, indicating an electrical proceed towards a cashless community. At present, The far east characterizes the international cellular budget consumption, as well as Mexico. Even so, it is possible to many nations around the world that are very determined by income due to deficiency of trust in the direction of loan companies and also insufficient suitable broadband facilities, etc. In the near future, sociable media-initiated installments, biometric repayments, voice-activated obligations will probably turn out to be popular in building countries at the same time. Cybersecurity and also Privacy Concerns with internet Settlement Options Cybersecurity and personal privacy dangers have become the troubling concern with the increasing cases of internet scams. According to the Mastercard survey, one out of a number of consumers experienced some sort of fraudulence throughout 2020, langsing up the cybercrime rate simply by 49%. Inside the initial half of 2020, on-line cons elevated by 3.8% coming from 2019. However, implementing new-age systems for example multifactor validation, biometrics, 3D security, Synthetic Brains, as well as Appliance Learning might help management fake pursuits such as phishing, virus problems, and so on. Moving in order to contactless credit cards, Quick response rules, and also tokenization will also help mitigate hazards linked to electronic digital repayment options. Aside from, sensitizing end-users regarding the protected use of e-payment remedies by means of increasing initiatives toward creating economic literacy can help avoid scammers. The actual beginning involving cellular commerce and also the progression involving e-payment platforms supported by robust stability alternatives can help to push the objective of generating the particular economic system really cash-less. For additional information about Vidy Coin go this web page.

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