#val-reblogs

[val-of-the-north]

@swallowtail-ageha

エリエリレマサバクタニ

[popfizzles]

it's hot in here!

[caramellody]

Yall i dont think im gonna be able to stop thinking about usha and g13, actually.

Ushas an old old woman, clueless with tech. Lived long enough to develop various bonds with a LOT of people and relies on them a lot for help. In turn, shes VERY loyal to her close conpanions (a great example would be how she tends to back paula up a LOT, the way she sets up russel and paula to 'fake date' wink and all). She's very warm and very emotionally intelligent even if she's a bit clueless sometimes. Her logic is borderline incomprehensible, but it has heart.

G13 on the other hand, is a hacking prodigy. Hes young, hes sought after for his skills for better and for worse. But in turn, he's essentially lost himself in the process. He may be able to scrape nuke codes, but he'll never make a friend. He lacks any loyalty for anyone and anything except for himself and his interests, and if they dont satisfy those two points, then its worth nothing to him. His logic may be sound, but its cold.

[val-of-the-north]

We need to KILL Sans Undertale.

His greed sickens me.

[valeovalairs]

I. I forgot to post the rest of my suckening watch doodles

[valtsv]

VAL if she was even more based

[cozylittleartblog]

i had a dream i found a whole blog dedicated to blorboposting about val and only val. and that compelled me to draw him

[val-of-the-north]

Personally, the golden thread-like thing reminds me more of like a vein of some kind. That's the impression I got during the trailer and it's the impression I get when I look at that golden string inside the innard's meat. But maybe that's just me...

Great ideas all around by the way, I am totally on-board with the idea of Marika being white-haired lol (did Godrick inherit her OG hair color because his blood is less "holy" now tho??? Would be cool!!!)

Marika had grey/ashen hair in her past?

So, I was taking a closer look at Marika's cut braid,

JUST like I was suspecting, her golden hair is not actually her color, but something she gained! You can see it is actually grey hair "painted" with gold, especially at the ends!

^ ( x ) The Shamans in Jars do have grey hair, too, despite what seems like a young age! I also was seeing something like looked a speck of gold hair in Jar Innards, but again, I looked closer, and I don't know anymore...

It is... something golden, but not hair? Maybe? Instead of hair, maybe this could be a thread of gold, something connected with the threads she pulls out in the second DLC trailer:

Both Grandam and the Hornsent NPC we interact with mention "Marika's betrayal", suggesting some sort of long planning and social games on her end in order to claim whatever power from the Divine Gates she claimed to have her Erdtree and then go with the Crusade at them! I will link a post from @val-of-the-north here ( x ) delving more into it, but yeah..

Seems like the Hornsent had no idea what hit them, and Marika stole some sort of golden threads naturally being an essence of people who were born in Shadow Realm... Or maybe, the gold thread found in jars IS the product of failed "ascension", since shamans (and not only they) were stuffed into jars TO become holy from how Hornsent saw it? :^) fun stuff.. So, Marika claimed that gold to herself when she became a God, painting her hair permanently this way now!

___________

This is more headcanonish, but additional support for this might be an idea that Dominula are descendants / close culture to Marika's Shamans! Hear me out:

This is a new item found in the Shadow Realm, and.. not only it is called festive, not only it uses bone shards to be made and Celebrants have many bone shards on hands, but also the feature of creating runes (!) on landing attack is a trademark feature of all weapons of the Celebrants!

(etc etc...)

Additionally, the celebrants seems to have copied Marika's trademark hairstyle (2 braids and the third one cut), as well as her specific iteration of Erdtree incantation:

But as for the grey hair, they're all just old, right....? WRONG!!!!!!!

They might be not necessarily all old! Instead, they might be shriveled up because of a long time alive, kind of like the wandering nobles that left the Leyendell after the Shattering! It is implied that they are not able to die from old age, even though they all look very """old""" at the first glance:

So, age of the Celebrants is a non-factor, as they are not old, they are undead! It seems to be the fate of the most Golden Order - affiliated people, after Marika disappeared and thus no one could die normally anymore!

However, copying hairstyle, doing the runes thing, copying her version of the Erdtree sigil, and even sharing the blue clothing with golden embrodery like her/Radagon and Godwyn all might point towards cultural proximity! Maybe they are descendants of the Shamans that were not slaughtered in the village (evacuated in time, lived in another place than the village and then were taken, etc)! So, them having grey hair even as 'young maids' could just be this genetic!

[boasamishipper]

when i was eighteen years old, i watched top gun for the first time. i was immediately captivated, body and soul, by val kilmer's performance as iceman kazansky. ice could have easily been a one-note character, but val breathed light and life into him, making him confident, charismatic, intelligent, sympathetic, brilliant, utterly electrifying, instantly and forever iconic.

it was a performance that launched a thousand ships, and thousands upon thousands of analyses, and edits, and fan cams, and fan art, and fanfics. i wrote more fics involving iceman kazansky than i have for any other character before or since. i put a lot of myself into my version of iceman: most specifically my first generation american, russian jewish background, which (going by his surname) i chose to believe he shared. that that made him feel Othered growing up, as it did for me. i became a better writer because of my years in top gun fandom, but in writing ice, i learned to love myself.

i'll be twenty-five years old on saturday. i don't know who i'd be if i hadn't decided to watch top gun at a friend's recommendation seven years ago. or if i hadn't fallen in love in equal parts with that movie's 80s era silliness and the heart it wore so plainly on its sleeve. or without tom cruise's equally pivotal (for me) performance as maverick, which made me a lifelong tom fan. or without the character of iceman kazansky as played to perfection by val kilmer.

i still haven't seen all of val's movies. those i have seen, i have enjoyed immensely - and have been equally amazed by val's ability to make the most of every role. from thunderheart to willow, real genius to tombstone, the doors to kiss kiss bang bang, top secret to top gun to top gun: maverick, val kilmer made every character memorable. with an arched eyebrow, a tilt of his head, the many shades of his smiles, he could control gravity. on screen, val fascinated. off screen, no matter what else you could say (or what has been said) about him, val was fascinating. he was a warm, witty enigma of a man.

i owe him everything. i'll miss him dearly.

[kilmerslove]

for as little info we’re given about ice’s upbringing, why does it make so much sense that his father was the biggest hardass marine to ever exist?

[val-of-the-north]

GADEGKAGANAJKJNSGKJ OH MY FUCKING GOD

DUUUUDE I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU STUMBLED UPON FUCKING KEN PENDERS' BOOK????? IRL TOO OR WHAT?????

You have noooooooo idea of the rabbit hole this entails, where to even begin..... keep in mind I am not a Sonic scholar, much less for the comic series, so I will give you the most abridged version possible... but I learned of this story against my will and it's one of the funniest things of all time.

Ok so, Ken Penders was a writer for the Archie Comics run of Sonic the Hedgehog. He had been around for a long while, and contributed a lot of... interesting things to the franchise...

He had a specific fascination on the character of Knuckles, so much so that the motherfucker had like, a whole family tree worth of relatives (made funnier by the fact that Knuckles in the world of Sonic is quite literally the last of his kind). Like we are talking fucking genealogy worth of characters lmao

But this is just the surface of his contributions. He has made a lot of strange fucking things like pitching a whole Sonic movie to Sega themselves called Sonic Armageddon and...

Yeah I wonder why it never took off. However, for the purpose of staying on-topic, I have to limit it to the Echidna shit, which doesn't end here. You have to know that there was a whole side-story involving an EVIL branch of the Echidnas who are... they are fascists. They are pretty much made to be like fascists lmao.

This evil group of Echidna supremacists is creatively called the "Dark Legion"... now how is this relevant to the conversation?

At some point, Sega, partnered with fucking EA, created an RPG of Sonic on the Nintendo DS of all consoles. This RPG was called "Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood" and it was meant to be a series of stories that involved the Sonic cast fighting against a mysterious legion from another dimension...

Except this legion was later revealed to have been comprised of an Echidna tribe called the Nocturnus Clan, that was trapped in some sort of dimensional prison for their greed (and the fact they were on the verge of conquering the whole world), and had somehow found a way to escape. An Echidna girl named Shade joins them after realizing their leader didn't just want them to return to the world but also conquer it or something like that and then they stop the evil emperor, etc etc, you get the picture.

You know who also got the picture? Ken Penders. And he was VERY unhappy about it. He thought Sega had plagarized his work because the Nocturnus Clan was too similar to his Dark Legion, and the character of Shade was too much like Julie-Su, an ex member of the legion that also turned coat and... ended up in a relationship with Knuckles, at some point (they even have a kid named Lara-Su in one of the issues set in the future lol. I know you were dying to know THAT)

So, as a writer working for Sega, he did the most reasonable thing ever and sued both Sega of America and EA. Normally, no one would win such a stupid fucking lawsuit, but somehow, there was nothing legally stopping Penders from doing this. While it ultimately ended in a stalemate, this still caused a MASSIVE shitstorm that lead to:

The entirety of Archie getting rebooted because all characters and concepts Penders had made for Sega apparently belonged to him.

Anything from Sonic Chronicles being in eternal non-canon limbo for the rest of time, unable to get a sequel or have its characters and concepts be used in anything ever again for fear of another lawsuit being filed.

Sega becoming MUCH more strict with what can be written about Sonic in these stories, eventually leading to the absolute annihilation of any of the characters introduced in the Archie comics. They are almost never referenced anymore.

...

Which leads us to the aftermath. Ken Penders, owning all these wonderful characters and fan favourites like the entire Knuckles extended family, or the pedo skunk Geoffrey (that's a whole other story lmao). So of course, the most sensible course of action from there was creating his OWN stories and comics with all these wonderful characters, and make Lara-Su the protagonist!!!

You see, she isn't an Echidna anymore! No, she is an alien known as an Echyd'nya instead! Knuckles' not her dad no more, instead, we have K'Nox! The mom's still Julie-Su though, one of the classics!

And well... this is the result.

Yeah. This was worth hundreds of issues and an entire Sonic RPG series. It truly was. Thanks Ken, very cool.

Wtf is going on in the sonic comics extended universe 😭

[valtsv]

ideologically i'm increasingly opposed to implying they would ever have (traditional at the very least) sex because i don't think their mutual alienation from their own bodies and selves would allow them to do that, but i do want to draw a VALshrue scene that's been living rent free on my mind that goes like "just hooked up with this girl and as soon as we were done she rolled over and went back to reading the autopsy report for the byford dolphin incident where she left off. out loud 😐"

[icemankazansky]

[val-of-the-north]

My friend @katyspersonal made an interesting observation about the flowers that were once found on the path to Midra's Mense. Here's her post on the matter for reference [x].

The flower connection seems way too meaningful to be accidental, especially since the two people in charge of the Mense are not Hornsent at all...

Now, we can't know for sure whether Midra, Nanaya, or both were Shamans or at least related, but the connection IS there, which I doubt was placed randomly.

But yeah, speaking of Hornsent, they were indeed punished for associating with Midra. As my friend pointed out in an earlier post [x], this dialogue wouldn't fit if it was simply due to the Flame of Frenzy business going on there, especially since the ghost that welcomes us is very well aware of the madness.

It's also worth pointing out that the Madding Hand's face resembles that of the other Hornsent who use player models, meaning his fellows are probably other Hornsent too.

Whoever this group of Hornsent was, it's clear they did not care about his lack of horns and simply served Midra, possibly due to him being wise and knowledgeable...

Either that, or there are ways for people without horns to get privileges and benefits even in Hornsent society. Maybe it is still due to his vast array of knowledge, but it wouldn't be too outlandish to think Midra found ways to be productive to the Hornsent and was thus rewarded for his efforts. Until they grew suspicious of him, of course. But his Hornsent attendants seem rather loyal to him despite that.

Which leads me to a different point regarding Marika herself...

The two Hornsent NPCs that we can actually interact with both mention some sort of betrayal from Marika.

To be betrayed means that there was some semblance of trust between them and her that she broke, which would seem odd at first glance, but we must take into consideration what she did to attain godhood. She had to have reached the Gates of Divinity (as shown in the cinematic trailer), which are found in the holiest, most guarded part of Belurat's tower: Enir-Ilim.

And this must have happened BEFORE the Crusade and Messmer, as evidenced by a few things:

1) The Hornsent mention the Erdtree a bunch, which we know was established after a few different conflicts. At the very least, the war against the Giants must have happened before the Crusade, as the Age of the Erdtree began then.

Marika was also already considered a god at the time, she had a consort in Godfrey, and the Crucible was yet to be seen as heretical due to their employment of Crucible Knights. There's also the very likely possibility that Radagon was spawned from that conflict as a curse of the Giants inflicted upon Marika, which would work to explain where the red hair came from.

It might also tell us WHEN Messmer was born in that case, and speaking of...

2) Messmer's condition, or rather, all the things Marika had done for his sake, seem to have happened AFTER the establishment of the Erdtree, as they feature heavy gold and tree motifs. To have control of Grace so great that she could create the rune she most likely gave to Messmer strongly hints at her having already become a god.

The Blessing of Marika also fits the criteria of a thing she had to have made after her ascension to godhood because of its heavy arboreal theme and the fact that two Tree Sentinels (who defend her home village) are holding onto them as well, further hinting at the existence of the Erdtree by this point in time.

Both of these items relate to Messmer and both of their descriptions already identify Marika as a Queen. I wonder if this means Marika returned to her home one last time after she became a god as opposed to when she started her journey toward divinity. Her last acknowledgment of her past before leaving it behind forever.

3) Messmer was also friends with Gaius, who studied with Radahn, and they were both like older brothers to him.

This means the Crusade and Messmer's banishment could not have happened earlier than many years AFTER the Liurnian wars, as evidenced by the presence of the Carian kids. This point is also strengthened by Rellana being close to Messmer and having to prove her loyalty to the Erdtree in ritual combat.

This means that Marika reaching the Gates of Divinity and the Crusade happened at two different points in time, which seems to align with how the Hornsent word things. She betrayed them, then set them ablaze.

What's left to wonder is HOW it happened. I think it was either:

A) She waged a first war against them with the aid of Hoarax Loux (not Godfrey yet, as there was no reason to conduct himself as a lord), his clan, and the Crucible Knights to consolidate her godhood. Maliketh could have also been involved. The Hornsent, then, simply see being supplanted as a betrayal regardless of whether they knew about Marika or not, or...

B) She found a sneakier way to get there through careful planning and climbing the social ladder of Hornsent society, maybe with contact and guidance from the Two Fingers. If the latter is true, I assume she still had Maliketh's support and Hoarax Loux on speed dial for whenever the chance to claim divinity arrived, as she would still need a consort for that and we know he was her first husband.

Both ideas are compelling to me and make sense in their own right. Still, the thought that she could have actually infiltrated their society and made them trust her just to usurp and double-cross them feels very fascinating, especially since the Hornsent specifically mention Marika betraying them. It makes me wonder what Tower society is really like to non-horned people since some Hornsent can even become very loyal to those with an explicit lack of horns.

Marika's betrayal could also explain why the Inquisition would later turn on Midra despite him seemingly having enjoyed some levity or respect in the past. Perhaps they believed he'd pull a similar stunt to Marika's (or maybe they acted that way because he was directly related to her? idk honestly)... though their preventive actions inadvertently caused even more problems by having the resulting despair attract the Three Fingers to what would become the Abyssal Woods.

Of course, it's unclear if the Mense's downfall happened before, after, or concurrently with Marika's path to divinity, but I think it's worth considering as an option at least!

[val-of-the-north]

This is literally stretching the definition of copy-paste.

Similarities between Gaius and Ogha

They both studied gravity magic in the same class as Radahn.

Differences between Gaius and Ogha

Gaius is described as the Alabaster Lord's most senior student, while Ogha is said to have studied alongside Radahn.

Gaius had a friendly rivalry with Radahn, constantly trying to one-up each other. Radahn even saw him like an older brother. Ogha seems to have just respected or admired him, thus...

After their teacher's tutelage had ended, Ogha became Radahn's first Rademane Knight. Gaius, on the other hand, went his separate way, instead joining Messmer's ranks.

Ogha is just a normal human guy, while Gaius is an Albinauric man, which makes him perceive himself as a cursed being and allows him to relate to Messmer.

As you can see, there is enough difference in the characters that it isn't a copy-paste at all, they just have a shared history... which is what you probably would want to make the setting cohesive.

It's like saying that Maliketh is a Blaidd copy-paste because they are both Shadowbound beasts made by the Two Fingers. Or that Miriam is a Seluvis copy-paste because they were both Carian Preceptors. Or that the D twins are a Haligtree twins copy-paste because they are both twins with a strange affliction. It's just a really flimsy, nitpicky point, let's be completely honest...

Also, calling Gaius a "Rad simp" and saying he doesn't have unique lore to himself feels almost disrespectful to the guy. His story does not revolve around Radahn, they just knew each other. Heck, they were even rivals, which is very far from simp lol.

Anyone else realize that Gaius's lore is just a copy paste of Redmane Knight Ogha's?

[val-of-the-north]

I think there's something to be said about overcorrection in fandom spaces. I feel like it has become a very prevalent thing to do nowadays.

When something, be it a popular way to see a character and their story or simply the wider narrative and themes of the whole game/show/whatever else, has been interpreted the same way for too long, stuff begins to be lost in translation and either mischaracterization or flanderization or both start to settle. Someone eventually notices that, doesn't like it, and starts to spread around an opposite, less one-sided interpretation, often focusing on the part ignored by the current fandom. And it gains traction, and other people start imitating it... and in time it causes a different, new version of those same flanderizations and mischaracterizations that began the shift in the first place, basically returning to square one and simplifying a given aspect of a story/character with the "opposite" sentiment.

This isn't even the first time I've seen it happen. Other fandoms I regularly check in on have this same problem. I think the increase in the "media literacy" talking point makes everyone afraid of not being "media literate" enough, so they compensate by following the people who claim they got the story figured out. The problem is not that no one understood the story prior to that moment, it's that it is very natural, especially for long-standing fandoms, to lose bits and pieces of the original works as they continue. It's human nature to approximate the details, which is why the overcorrection fails and falls into the same problem of simplifying everything from the characters to the themes to the plot.

The only way to combat this is to remain aware of the source material without letting what's popular or unpopular control the way you view these things. Some stuff isn't even as objective as some people make them out to be.

*wakes up at 2 AM* Also one of the things about Bloodborne fandom (here) is the curve from idealizing Lady Maria to bashing her nonstop!

Like, previously it was all about how she is so noble and valiant and honorable and totally did nothing wrong and if she did she soooo redeemed for it by heroically becoming a caretaker for victims of the Research Hall pushing them to gentler flowers/stars side and she sooo cared about Adeline and everyone who criticizes her is just a misogynist who dares not touch their perfect tragic lady 🥺 But now it is ALLLLLL about how she is cringe girlfailure that didn't do a single good thing in her life, has nothing but flaws, absolutely disgusting abhorrent female Mengele unfeeling to the suffering of the victims of HER experiments that tried to throw Adeline away like trash in the garden and is just pathetic try hard who only pitied herself and attempted to escape her sins easy selfish way killing herself instead of aTtEmPtInG AkTuAl ChAnGe oh my god isn't she the worst guys /affectionate

Like, when it is not a dumb "she is canonically a butch lesbian because everyone knows bi women only wear skirts and don't give a shit about their female friend sorry lesbophobes she belongs to us 💕" shit, it is THIS. We want discussion about her actual personality instead of stupid contest because people hate variety of interpretations, but since FRAIL MENS WILL IS WEAK MINDS YOUNG, this is the shit we get. I can't wait for the stage in the fandom where instead of falling for either extreme about interpreting her, people can finally see her as complex character that she is: with both heroism and sin to her, noble and evil sides to her, pitiful parts of her story but beautiful tragedy as well, good intentions leading to hell rather than either "being sorry automatically redeems you" or "we want more evil women who are just evil step on me mommy", and suicide as the irreversible tragedy that it IS instead "ohhhh so noble" or "ha girlfailure escaped her mistakes the easy way (beating up a suicidal character is how I express love btw)"

Except.. there ARE people who see multiple sides. Very few but I love you guys. The rest of you all should be ashamed of yourselves, because people who fall for either of this extreme are ALWAYS the SAME people that are yapping about "disrespecting female characters with shallow reductive takes". Anyways Lady Maria 🤝 Malenia on this shite.