#while she loves Jorvik and is able to do what she wants Jorvik simply just doesn't feel like home you know?

[salty-medley]

Feelings

I don’t know if anyone feels the same but, in SSO, I don’t feel like the character I’m supposed to be. 

I’m not attached to Aideen and her cult, I prefer helping the rangers with a chainsaw to explore an old place, racing with them and living far away from those annoying killjoys and their useless goddess. I don’t feel like I’m the reincarnation of a goddess, only that I’m someone who can do magic but sadly never when I really need it. Those bushes, I could simply use magic against it. The shadow monsters ? A tiny lightning bolt and done ! The drones ? Same.

And the line where Rhiannon said to Alex that she can’t use her powers like that is so lame... Of course she could solve a LOT of their problems if she has a competent magic teacher teaching her strategy, the weaknesses of their enemies, to plan a proper trap or attack... It’s incredible how the druids are constantly constraining the soul riders instead of showing them how to use their powers fully, it’s like if they were scared of them and tried to keep them weak.

Or Aideen’s magic is shitty and they really can’t do anything useful.

And I don’t want to be that type of person in MY story. I don’t want to be the slave of all the inhabitants and druids, I’m tired to see the others doing cool things while I’m just staying on the back. I don’t want to be a boring druid hiding under a cloak in my hobbit village, I want to be a new generation witch, who doesn’t look like an old rumpled woman, having fun with magic, learning new tricks and being able to kick asses by MYSELF only. My magical wand is staying in my stable’s closet, bored as possible, and this poor thing needs more adventures !

So yeah, I’d love to leave the soul riders and the druids like my OC does in my fiction, taking control of my own path. Now I - almost - own an owl and a wand, I want to create a Jorvik version of Hogwarts, recruiting the Buttergoods to be the dangerous fantastic creatures of the forest, and making potions which explode like a famous irish wizard student. 

See SSO ? I don’t ask for pets, for new clothes, for magical horses, for new hollow NPCs that I won’t interact anymore with after finishing their reputation quests, I don’t want to be a symbol of peace and love for Jorvik, I only want to be able to choose, to really choose. Like in those funny books we had in my childhood where you had a different ending regarding of our choices. I ask for more mature stories, not for a whole collection of characters who seem to be made on the same base ( you know the “I’m nice, I’m courageous, I’m eco friendly and I love horses” ). I want really different people who’ll need a serious situation to finally work together but who won’t be friends, just tolerating the others to not being killed by an alien, I want real evil ones who doesn’t have a tragic background but only chose that way of life because they could enjoy it. 

Oh and I’d also need a car, a fully automatic machine gun ( just try to stop me now Sabine/Katja/another dark rider )  and adopting Rowan as assistant. If you know what can do a guy with a boomerang ( sorry it’s for the reference, I get that they’re non binary ), you’d agree with that.

By the way, what characters would you take with you if you had the choice to create a team ? I’d say, for me, Ydris for the magic, the Galloper for the flames ( I mean we need fire, who doesn’t need fire seriously ?), Rowan for the boomerang, a jeep and capturing the guy who drank his own serum and turned into a monster. Fear not citizens, Jorvik is safe with us.

[ EDIT : just to be clear, I never said that I seriously expected SSO to make something like that, we’ll more probably have pink winged unicorns selling glitter rainbow poops in a cafe than the opportunity to be anything else than the useless object we actually are in game. I’d love to have a more “crazy” version of Jorvik to explore and to have the opportunity to choose my way of acting. Just like I never said that a nice character is always boring, just that in SSO - like in lot of stories made for an audience including young people today, the characters tend to be dumb, empty and boring. A nice character can be awesome, I think about Hay Lin in W.I.T.C.H, Sakura in CCS, Bloom in Winx ( and don’t speak me about Flora, she’s the boring one here )... Those characters are nice, polite, they want peace and joy BUT they aren’t that “flat”, they have something else. Wholesome things and people are cool, but only when it’s not in a too much way, which is sadly how SSO tend to make things. It’s like sugar, sugar is good, very good, but when it’s overly sugared, it’s sickening. Same thing for kindness.]

[ssojack]

magical realism in sso

okay, seriously, all i want right now is magical realism set in the star stable universe, so i wrote down a few headcanons! you can’t tell me that the various magic users of jorvik only pop out the rituals and rune wands when they’re being threatened by a giant tentacle monster, so. here we go!

mrs. holdsworth stores extra potions in organized mason jars and hangs the glittery and flourescent ones in her cottage as decoration. she IS a witch and you can’t convince me otherwise.

speaking of which, mrs. holdsworth is also the unofficial groundskeeper of moorland stables and keeps the grass lush and flowers blooming with the help of magic, even when they’re constantly being trampled by horses and their riders.

whenever she has to travel long distances, anne skips the trains and planes and simply opens dimensional portals to travel from jorvik to different parts of the world. sun circle, bitch.

lisa often volunteers at animal shelters and hospitals, where the sick patients she visits frequently make miraculous recoveries. what’s the point of being able to use the star circle if she keeps her healing powers to herself?

linda learns how to pause time for brief periods with the moon circle so she can spend more time reading, researching, and sleeping. she can’t do it under duress, but it’s convenient when there’s not enough hours of the day to work at her job and complete soul rider duties.

as she’s technically a seer, linda learns to scry and sometimes offers readings and fortune tellings to jorvegians as a novelty at festivals. she’s not as mysterious as ydris so she doesn’t get a lot of customers, but her predictions, while vague, always come true in one way or another.

one of the reasons alex has learned to love the lightning circle is because she has a built-in lighter. need some extra light? done. need to light a candle or a cigarette? you got it. want to burn random shit and commit arson? alex is your girl.

after helping out jasper with his scarecrow issue, pi starts a business selling eco-friendly moving scarecrows to farmers. the harvests in jorvik have never been so plentiful (and pi is able to use the money to fix up the swamp!).

to continue on that note, the idea of witches in sso is unfortunately so unexplored...give me witch-druid rivalries, spells vs. the powers of the four circles. give me magical markets with potions and witches’ services for sale. give me both friendly and morally ambiguous witches who, like ydris, are neutral in the keepers of aideen/dark core conflict. witches in sso!

some magic users, particularly druids, have rune tattoos! these allow for body/power/ability-altering spells to perpetually affect the person in question. they can deplete stamina and sometimes cause pandorian sickness, though, since you’re infusing your body with pandorian rune magic. i just love the idea of magical folk covered in glowing violet rune tattoos.

just imagine black magic, blood magic, demonic summoning, and possession in the sso universe...i’m all for the idea of jorvik’s magical community coexisting peacefully, but with the amount of pandorians and witches potentially living in the country, you’re going to have some chaotic magic users with dubious morals. many pandorians aren’t able to cross over to the human world, so they often have to settle for possession...and many witches will do anything for jorvik shillings.

the very existence of jorvik wild horses is so cool to picture, too. imagine you’re going on a nice walk through hollow woods and you see a fucking horse made of birch bark. there’s so much crazy shit in jorvik that even for regular humans this kind of thing is commonplace.

if anyone has any more headcanons, feel free to add them on!

[space-unicorn-dot]

7 Facts About Izzy + 1 About her Soul Steed

@daine-s-adventures tagged me to do this 8 facts about thing that I know nothing about beyond what was posted, so random 8 facts about my SSO character, here we come! Well, 7. And the last one relates more to Copper because I couldn’t think of another one for Izzy.

1. She was raised by her single father and paternal grandparents.

I know I’ve mentioned her father before in the majority of things I’ve written regarding her history because they were very close, but to restate and elaborate, Izzy was raised by her father and her grandparents, on his side of the family, and they all lived on a ranch in SW Florida where they raised, bred, and trained mostly American Quarters and Paints. Her father is a rider and trainer of some renown that has traveled the country to show at the national level and to do clinics on the family’s way of working with horses. Her mother’s relationship with her father was relatively short-lived; she liked him and he liked her, but, ultimately, their passions were just too different, so she moved on, and wasn’t quite prepared to be a mother. Thus, the tight-as-glue relationship between her and her father, Remy, was born. She writes regular letters home to him to keep him posted on her Jorvegian adventures, though they’re grown a bit more few and far between in pressing times, and she’s done her best to shield him from the reality of the events she has found herself in... Though it’s getting harder to pretend like she’s just been leading a normal, horse-oriented life considering so many of her adventures are of the more magical and mysterious type.

2. She wears her heart on her sleeve, but romance is a bit complicated to her.

Maybe it sounds a little cliche or dramatic to say just about everything changed when Izzy moved to Jorvik to experience the island’s connection and way with horses, and possibly to attend the riding academy, but it pretty much did. Magical adventures aside, she also wound up with feelings for one particular circus master. And Izzy’s the kind of person that wears her heart on her sleeve and looks for the best in people, especially people she cares about. And he was charming and she ended up spending a lot of time around him after initially helping set up his circus. Some of it struck her as odd, but she was also being pulled into the middle of a centuries old battle between good and evil, so a lot seemed odd. Maybe part of her problem now is that she’s never exactly been in a relationship, so, for a while, she wasn’t sure how to or if she even wanted to label her relationship with Ydris. And now she’s torn between what everyone else is calling the inevitable (insert, curse your inevitable but hurtful betrayal meme here) and a deep sympathy for someone who’s cause is just, even if his methods are far from what everyone would prefer. For someone in their first relationship, she certainly had to go and fall in love with a right complicated bastard, didn’t she? Oops. >.>

3. She probably gets along best with Linda.

I imagine Linda as perhaps the most understanding and in-tune with Izzy’s position and feelings about things of the three Soul Riders we currently have met. Lisa’s anger over Anne stung more than Izzy would like to admit, and she doesn’t quite feel her to be completely approachable for it. Alex, on the other hand, is approachable and amicable as well, but Linda and Izzy share a passion and fascination for reading and learning about their adventures and the island. Meteor’s also pretty humorous, too.

4. The Druids, on the other hand? O o f. Except Evergray.

The longer she has been on Jorvik, the more her faith in trusting the Druids has been tested. She’s seen her fellow Soul Riders struggle with it, too, and, considering everything, she’s not sure she likes how little they tell sometimes. While she’s not quite sure how her feelings are working out about Ydris, his point of view certainly didn’t help her trust, and Evergray’s been to Pandoria, too. She sees him as far more open-minded about things and trusts his judgement, whereas she’s feeling more and more that the Druids are maybe a bit too stuck in their ways. She’s experienced frustration with the figuratively closed doors in her face, the lack of answer, and still being treated like she doesn’t know enough. But the problem is she doesn’t, and no one is helping her with that on this side.

But her and Evergray clicked quickly. He’s perhaps the only one with a solid relation to the Druids that she really trusts. And he’d be a damn cool uncle to have, no lie. Uncle Everett can visit her anytime.

5. She wants needs to save Pandoria.

Circling back to her deep sympathy and bleeding heart, Ydris’s story has given her an undying need to find a way to save both Jorvik and Pandoria, and that plays a role in how frustrated she is now with the Druids. To her, there has to be a way, if only the Druids would look past the narrow thought that Pandoria is dangerous and something to be feared. Fear clouds judgement, and she happens to believe now more than ever that the Druids suffer from a decent amount of skewed judgement. She can’t quite understand why she feels so strongly about it internally - the idea that they might not be able to do both even brings up some anger and rage for the unjustice of it, but some pieces of the “goddess reincarnate” puzzle may or may not be clicking into place somewhere in her mind’s subconscious.

6. I don’t necessarily think she’ll have Pandoric scars. But “tattoos.”

But she will have something. Since it’s highly likely, and basically all but confirmed in my head, that she’s the reincarnation of Aideen, I think that power will override the effects of Pandoria on an otherwise human body. But I think it would be cool if, when she tapped into her full potential and powers, she had something like the Will Tattoos form like in the Fable franchise, only in runic designs and Pandoric pink in color. In Fable, they’re basically glowing, scar-like features that glow and appear stronger the more you use Will (which is the magic in the game) and they look like this (x) (the blue glowy stuff). They fade over time if you use less Will, and can eventually disappear, but I think in Izzy’s case, they’d remain as faint lines, almost like scars, but more “tattoo”-esque in nature. I’ve felt for a long time that Goddess!Izzy fully awakened would be massively pissed that her beautiful island and horses are under such great threat, that her Soul Riders have been so thoroughly tested and battle-worn, that Pandoria is suffering... And she’d totally fucking wear pink war paint and you can’t change my mind.

7. On that note, she is capable of Soul Rider powers, but also more Pandoric-style magic.

She can use healing abilities of the Star Circle, foresee things like the Moon Circle, travel to and survive Pandoria in a way akin to powers of the Sun Circle, and use offensive attacks like those of the Lightning Circle, but I also imagine her maybe more as a traditional spell slinger, without the need for incantation or wand or rune stick - capable of the more unknown Pandorian magic style that I’m pretty sure at this point fuels a lot of the power and magic of Jorvik. But, since I’m starting to see Aideen as maybe one of these mysterious Pandoric figures like Fripp and Ydris, she can naturally tap into this potential, if any of that makes any sense? xD

She can kick ass and take names at the height of her power, is basically what you need to know. But, of course, since the Druids have been so damn tight-lipped, she’s got a ways to go before she’s understood and realized all of this potential hiding away in her.

8. SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE NIGHTDUST STORYLINE. But Copperflame doesn’t change colors, necessarily, like a Jorvik Wild Horse...

Or Nightdust. While my first reaction to Nightdust’s new look post the quests, I think what I’d really imagine for Copper is “Will Tattoos” for him, too, mimicking the kind of runic designs on the statues in Guardian’s Dale, and a sort of glowing aura like Concorde has in SSL 3, with a Pandoric pink glow to his eyes, his wings, and maybe glowing hooves. Maybe this is simply because I have no idea what color he should change into if they did something like Nightdust’s coat because even though gold is what we traditionally associate with Aideen, I don’t think Copper should be gold. But, I mean, I’m also imagining him rn as a big, fluffy painted draft cross, soooo... I would be happy with some glowing eyes and updated, more permanent/usable wings. xD @SSO, pls let me have a draft build for my starter pon? Can you imagine how cool? How more customizable it would be if we could choose a build type for our starter on top of more customization of their coats? Skreeee???

It’d require a lot of work, obvs, that whole ordeal, but it’d make for some really snazzy cutscene moments and cool game play akin to the excitement of rescuing Justin and figuring out we could fly. Just sayin’.