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lonelywretchjervistetch · 1 year

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My DC Cinematic Universe: Superman (Part IV)

Chapter Four: Nature and Nurture

Look, we all know the origin of Superman. It's Moses, but in space. James Gunn's got the right idea for his movie; the origin's been done. No reason to beat a dead Krypton, y'know? But even then, that doesn't mean Krypton should be ignored in this theoretical Superman film. And if we're going to talk Krypton and its residents, as well as the El family as a whole, then...well, we have some work to do.

Here's the summary on Krypton, far as I'm concerned: Krypton is a planet orbiting a red sun, Rao, and is the home of the Kryptonians, a scientifically-advanced species in various states of conflict throughout the centuries, usually with the military complex warring against the scientocracy that rules the planet. It is destroyed either by Kryptonians themselves, or by their negligence, depending on who you ask.

Everybody has a different idea of what Krypton looked like, usually fueled by changing ideas of future technology. In the '40s and '50s, it was basically just the Jetsons. After the '80s reboot, it turned into a cold alien society really reminiscent of something like Vulcan, mostly devoid of emotional (and sometimes physical) contact, and with a dark history full of clones, genocides, wars, conquest, and a LOT of other shit. You can thank John Byrne for the complex Kryptonian mythology that came out after Crisis. It is pretty neat.

That form of mythology definitely affected future depictions of Krypton, with Superman: The Animated Series being inspired by the aesthetics, and Smallville and Man of Steel being inspired by the attitudes and history established by Byrne. Even then, of course, these interpretations of Krypton still had their eccentricities and differences, with a lot of other influences brought in. No idea why, for example, Snyder seems to have turned his Krypton into a canyon-filled fantasyscape with rideable four-winged steeds and shit, but...eh, it kinda worked. A little.

There was also a TV prequel series, called Krypton, that came out in 2017. It was pretty decent, honestly, taking place 200 years before Kal-El is born, and centered around the ancestors of the El family, and of the Zods. More on them later. As I said, though, it was a pretty good show, for what it was, and did flesh out an interesting version of Krypton. But before we move on to what my version of Krypton is, it's important talk about its people: the Kryptonians.

In almost every incarnation of Krypton, the people of Krypton are split up into major families, or houses, with Clark being the last living member of the House of El. Each house tends to fall within specific lanes or roles throughout Kryptonian history, with the Els usually serving a major function. Each house also has a specific symbol, with the "S"-like symbol that Superman wears being the symbol for the House of El.

This House, full of scientists and leaders throughout Kryptonian history, tends to find itself in conflict with the House of Zod, which is a military house, best known for its last living member, General Dru-Zod. He'll be a huge focus of a future post, but not right now. And as much as I want to continue talking about Krypton and Kryptonians (especially Tyroc; if you know, you know), I really should move on to the main event. For now, let's put in what I think are the core aspects of Krypton.

Krypton is a scientocracy. As a scientifically advanced society, far beyond Earth's technology, Krypton has put a large focus upon the sciences as a part of their society. Because of this, scientists represent some of Krypton's most preeminent citizens, with most iterations of Krypton outright having a ruling science council. This is also why Kryptonian technology is all over the place, and keeps appearing throughout the Superman mythos. These include the Phantom Zone and Phantom Zone projector, the Eradicator, Kal-El's ship, and the crystal-based tech introduced by the 1978 film, and maintained in the lore since that point.

Kryptonians have a long and complex sociopolitical history. From creating Doomsday to destroying a moon, a lot of crazy-ass shit has happened in Krypton's history, all the way up to its destruction. Obviously having a history is something to expect of every planetary civilization, but...well, actually, that's a point. Krypton essentially has one-world government, which has cuased a myriad of political, military, and...well, even racial issues. Yeah, uh, they shoved all the black people onto an island once. We don't ask questions here. Or, y'know, we do and heavily criticize, but maybe later on that front. But speaking of that...

Krypton wasn't great, not gonna lie. In more recent years, it's become more and more apparent that Krypton had a fuckton of problems. I mean, there was an island with only black people, so that already hints at racial segregation. But outside of that, you have wars, conquests, indignance and corruption, cults, and somehow a complete lack of emotional connection amidst all of these things. Like, one of their scientists literally blew up a fucking MOON. And then there's the whole cloning thing, the predetermination of roles in some adaptations...look, Krypton may have looked like a paradise to some, but it's really not a great place when you look at it.

Krypton blew up, and its destruction may have been preventable. A common refrain when it comes to Krypton is the idea that only one man knew Krypton was going to be destroyed, and nobody listened to him except his wife and brother. More on that guy later. Still, the reasons for Krypton's destruction are myriad. It's been sucked into the sun Rao, blown up by an ancient nuclear weapon at the planet's core, overharvested to the point of geological instability, destroyed indirectly and directly by Brainiac, conspired against by the space Illuminati (yes, actually), and just collapsed due to a natural instability. There's never been a real concrete reason, and to be honest, it doesn't really matter too much. Krypton dies. And for most, 'nuff said.

So, with that put into place, let's talk about the two most important people in the story: Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van.

Lara Lor-Van: The Forgotten Parent

I feel like Lara has gotten the short end of the stick, especially as compared to her husband, Jor-El. So, to give her some much-needed attention, here's a short history of Lara Lor-Van-El. An astronaut/librarian/laborer/martial artist/military officer/scientist, depending on whom you ask, Lara's been a character that's worn a lot of different hats. And by "worn a lot of different hats", I mean that she's such a non-character that writers keep reinventing her, which only makes that problem worse. After all, Jor-El is basically always a scientist, and people remember him. So show some goddamn consistency, writers!

Anyway, Lara loved her son deeply, and didn't want to give him up to a primitive world, but agreed to do so for his sake. And...that's it. That's basically everything about her. So, uh...she's a caring mother. Yikes. That's basically nothing, but to be fair, she is gonna DIE pretty fast, so that makes some sense. However, she should get the same amount of focus as Jor-El, since they're BOTH the parents.

She's gotten it only a little better in adaptations, but not much. My personal favorite version of the character is in Superman: The Animated Series, where she's voiced by Finola Hughes, but...well, she's in it for maybe about 7 minutes altogether. So, y'know, not much there. In live-action, though, she's been a bit luckier.

In fact, in Superman II and IV, she actually replaces Jor-El as the mentor to Clark, which is great! I mean, it's only because Marlon Brando fucked off because...well, to be frank, he's Marlon Brando and kinda weird in general, but it's still a victory in my book. Played by Susannah York, she still seems like the secondary parent compared to Jor-El, but again, there's never been enough to the character to change that.

Smallville did something neat and cast Helen Slater, who played Supergirl in the eponymous and forgotten 1984 film, to play Lara. Here, we meet her in flashbacks, and also see her as a...holographic copy of herself or something? It's been a really long time since I've seen Smallville, forgive me. But this version of Lara is...Superman's mom. Yeah. Moving on.

Superman and Lois actually gives Lara a LOT more depth and detail as a character. Not only is she a scientist who created the Eradicator (more on that...eventually), and not only do we get to see her meet Clark via holographic copy of herself (played by Mariana Klaveno), but we also find out that she had a family prior to Clark, having been arranged to do so by the restrictive governmental systems that ruled Krypton, and having a son (Tal-Rho) from an engineered birth, while choosing to have Clark with Jor-El via natural birth. Nice! We actually turned her into a character here! And what exactly prompted this...

...shift? Oh...oh, shit, is this something Snyder actually did right? I mean, kind of, yeah. Ayelet Zurer plays Lara in Man of Steel, and while she's absurdly shafted in place of Jor-El (only made the holographic intelligence for yourself, huh, buddy? Didn't even think to ask Lara, did you, you dick?), she's still given a semblance of character. Like the later Superman and Lois version, she chose to illegally conceive Clark via natural means with Jor-El, rather than using engineered external birthing systems. And while this version is far more restrained than any other version of the character...she honestly works pretty goddamn well. In fact, she's the one who launches Kal-El into space, while Jor-El is busy getting stabbed by Zod. So, yeah, I guess Snyder of all people tried to give her a bit more detail. Credit where credit's due.

I'll get into what I think Lara should be later. I'll be handling her alongside her husband, since we'll get to know equal amounts of the two in this theoretical film of mine. Speaking of her husband...

Jor-El: Krypton's Cassandra

So, fun fact. I wrote this section on the Text Editor, and literally ALL of it got spontaneously deleted. And instead of going back, I wrote the next section, which made this post...SO fucking long, goddamn. So, A SUMMARY OF JOR-EL!

Jor-El is one of Krypton's top scientific minds and inventors. He invented the Phantom Zone projector, amongst other things, and comes from a family of Science Council members and prominent citizens. Because of this skill and prowess, he's also the first person, usually, to realize that Krypton is fucked. He's the doomed oracle, the scientific Cassandra, the perennial pariah of Krypton. He keeps fucking TRYING to tell the Science Council, Zod, anybody that'll listen that Krypton is gonna blow up. And nobody ever listens. So, he takes matters into his own hands, builds a ship for his kid, shove some crystals in there and sends him off, bingo bongo bango.

Now, Jor-El mostly sticks to that description throughout his incarnation. Although, recently, it was revealed that he actually survived, thanks to Doctor Manhattan (don't ask), and was responsible for one of DC's WORST FUCKING MOVES when it comes to Superman, which involved taking Jonathan Kent away from Clark and aging him up, largely removing Clark's role as a father. Pisses me the fuck off, DO NOT GET ME STARTED

The most famous incarnation of Jor-El is, of course, Marlon Brando in Superman: The Movie. He takes the role of holographic mentor from beyond for a young Clark, and his essence remains as a guardian of the Fortress of Solitude. Basically, he's the prototypical Jor-El for most incarnations. Terence Stamp basically did this in Smallville, but took a MUCH mor antagonistic role through much of the series, trying to push Clark to his perceived "destiny". However, his actions also technically killed Jonathan Kent, caused Martha Kent to miscarry (please don't ask), took away or otherwise fucked with Clark's powers on multiple occasions, and did various other shitty things "for the good of his son." I guess it correctly predicted how much of a dick Jor-El would eventually become in the comics, though.

And then, of course, there's Russell Crowe in Man of Steel. Not too much different here, save for the fact that he and Zod were once good friends, that he has an actual action sequence in this movie, and that...well, yeah, that's about it. He also does the whole "recorded consciousness" thing for Clark, and AGAIN doesn't consider letting Lara do the same, like an asshole. Oh, actually, there is one difference: he dies way before Krypton explodes, stabbed by Zod as his son is sent to Earth. But other than that...yeah, he's basically Jor-El once again.

Yeah, honestly, there isn't a whole lot to say about Jor-El, either. And in truth, maybe there doesn't need to be. After all, both he and Lara are super dead by the time the true story begins, and that'll be the case for the movie too. We really don't need to talk about Krypton, and what happens to Krypton, or who Jor-El and Lara are, or the sociopolitical conflicts that lead to my version of Krypton's destruction, or-

My Krypton

By the time the movie begins, Clark really shouldn't know anything about Krypton. He knows he's an alien, he knows that his true parents haven't come for him (and so assumes that they couldn't), but he doesn't know much else. This question should somewhat haunt Clark, but shouldn't take over his everyday life by any means. So, when his parents come to visit him in Metropolis, they bring with them a crystal that they had found with the crashed ship. As Clark is injured from the attack of the villains of the piece, the crystal will measure his physiological signs, and send a distress beacon to his ship. That will cause the Zeta drives in the ship to activate, bringing the ship to Clark almost instantaneously. Because of its Caretaker programs, the ship will actually surround Clark in order to create a healing environment, bathing him in ultraviolet radiation to help him heal his wounds.

As this is happening, we go back to the crystal. Now surrounded by the ship, the damaged crystal transmits a somewhat broken message into the unconscious Clark's mind. It's alien technology, we can play around a bit here. With this broken message, we see glimpses of Krypton exploding, as well as a look at Jor-El and Lara, who give a message of love and hope to their cast-off child. Nothing big, nothing too long, but something heartfelt. And more importantly, it supplies Clark with a few answers about his past and parents, including their names and the fate of Krypton.

Which brings up the question...what happened? The short answer is a lot, and the even shorter answer is that it doesn't matter, because that mystery won't be solved in this film. But the long answer is...complicated.

Well, the whole thing starts with Brainiac, AKA Vril Dox. An alien conqueror and synthetic being from the far-off planet Colu, Brainiac is a collector of worlds and information, using shrinking technology to miniaturize and transport cities in a misguided attempt to store their culture. About 450 years prior to the events of the film, Krypton was fairly close to a utopian society, with war and conquest largely in the civilization's history. However, the planet's life would likely die off within the next several millennia, due to the instability of the sun Rao. And so, Brainiac made a decision: take the city of Kandor.

Brainiac takes Kandor and its people, with the goal of protecting its knowledge. In reality, all he does is doom Krypton. Without its jewel city, Krypton is forced to restructure itself, both economically and politically. Doing so causes a lot of strife amongst its citizens, and challenges the long-ruling scientocracy of the planet with alternate systems. A cult of Rao develops, prophesying the end-times when the Collector of Worlds returns. Meanwhile, some houses, especially the House of Zod, attempt to reroute the planet's future into a military powerhouse. This is opposed by the House of El, leaders of the Science Council in Kryptonopolis, the new capital of the planet. And over the centuries, this strife and conflict builds to a boiling point.

War. The House of Zod gathers more allies, chief amongst them being the houses of Hu-Ul, Ek, Ur, Ul-Ar, and Kor-Onn. This group of houses, calling themselves the Sword of Rao, conspire together over the years to overthrow and oppose the scientocracy. Establishing a capital in the city of Xan, the Hand outstretched to encompass nearly half of the planet. However, a tentative peace was reached between the two factions of Krypton, but only after the safety of a planet as a whole was threatened by the building arms race.

See, at this point, the Science Council had developed a revolutionary technology: transdimensional teleportation. Two of their head scientists, astrophysicist Jor-El and engineer Lara Lor-Van, accidentally discovered an alternate dimension when experimenting with a mysterious form of electromagnetic radiation that they believed could be used to communicate over seemingly impossible distances. However, too much of this energy opened up a window into a desolate and empty realm directly overlapping our own. They called this place the Phantom Zone.

Simultaneously, the Sword's scientist Jax-Ur developed a powerful weapon called the Destroyer. During an accident of his own, he discharged the weapon into the moon Wegthor, destroying it and endangering the planet. This event prompted a deal between the Sword and the Council, where Jax-Ur was turned over to the Council and imprisoned in the Phantom Zone (against Jor-El's will) in exchange for peace. But peace doesn't last forever.

A decade passed. Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van fell in love and married, and formed an alliance of their own with the leader of the Sword, General Dru-Zod. Zod and his wife, Ursa, became famed leaders of their people, and of the military. But while they played the game of peace with the Science Council, they secretly plotted to take over the planet as a whole, as well as the nearby colonies of the planet Daxam. This was with the help of Jax-Ur, whose clone had been turned over to the Science Council all those years ago. Jax-Ur began to work on his own form of the Phantom Zone technology, turning it into a dangerous weapon that could displace atoms of any object or person to unknown distances. The energies utilized by this technology will one day be harnessed as a method of teleportation known as the Zeta beam.

But once Jax-Ur is discovered, war is back on. The Science Council has Zor-El, Jor-El's brother, weaponize their own Phantom Zone technology to continue the Cold War between the two halves. This is because Jor-El refuses, as the Phantom technology is unpredictable and untested. Jor and Lara resign from the Science Council, and leave to study the true effects of the technology. When Jor-El realizes that too much of this energy could actively destroy the planet, he pleads with the Science Council to stop its development. When this fails, he pleads the same to Zod. Realizing that Jor-El has sided against him, Zod disowns his former friends and turns them away. Doesn't declare vengeance on them or anything like that, just calls them Science Council flunkies and weaklings and turns them away.

Dejected, Jor-El and Lara continue their work, building a small exploration vessel so that they could take measurements from above the planet's atmosphere. But as they were readying to begin their observations, disaster struck. Unbeknownst to them, their visit prompted Zod to order Jax-Ur to speed up development, without proper testing, which is something Jax-Ur was more than happy to do. But again: this is unstable technology. And on a related note: Jax-Ur is a mite unstable himself.

Things come to a head on the battlefront. The Science Council resorts to destroying the island of Vathlo as a warning shot, using Zor-El's weaponization of the dimensional engines to disintegrate it. This prompts a similar destruction of cities by the Sword in retaliation, using Jax-Ur's weapon as a powerful beam of energy for destruction. But both sides make a fatal error, which Jor-El has realized.

See, considering that this is a science-based civilization, it comes to reason that they'd use certain forms of energy. Specifically, in this case, geothermal energy is used to fuel much of Krypton. So, when the teleportation technology is used as a weapon, a large amount of power is drawn out of Krypton itself. What Jor-El discovers is that there's a massive feedback effect that occurs as a result of using so much power. Radiation from the technology is fed back into the ground of Krypton itself, irradiating it and making it brittle. And as the war has waged on, this has only gotten worse.

As a final gambit, the Sword and the Council unleash their full might on each other. Jax-Ur's weapon destroys Kryptonopolis, and weakens the ground beneath it as a result. This creates the final catalyst of Krypton's destruction. Realizing the end, a desperate Jor-El and Lara see no option for escape, except for their exploratory craft. But as it was never meant for anyone to fit inside, the two realize it's too small for everyone EXCEPT their infant son. And so, as Krypton is nearing its destruction, the two mournfully plan send Kal-El out. However, they don't know where to send him, and have no way to know if he'd make it out. So, Lara retrofits a Zeta-drive to the ship to allow it to move through dimensional transportation somewhere, while Jor-El does his best to direct the ship's coordinates to a safe location. Again, they have no idea where it's going at this point. They just hope Kal-El will land somewhere safe, where another people can raise him and care for him.

In a last ditch effort, Zor-El does something similar for himself and his family. In three separate ships, he attempts to plot a course through the Phantom Zone to get to an inhabited planet somewhere. Unfortunately, only his daughter Kara Zora-El manages to escape, flung into the Phantom Zone while in stasis, while her parents are both killed as Kryptonopolis falls.

This is only the beginning of the end, however. Zod and company finally sees the end, as the ground beneath them and all of Krypton begins to shake. See, here's the fun thing about planets: they can't just spontaneously explode. Scientifically, that makes no sense. So instead, this is a disaster caused by the war between factions. And also realizing no escape, Zod and the highest ranking members of the Sword of Rao (Ursa, Faora Hu-Ul, Non Kor-Onn, and Jax-Ur) also escape into the Phantom Zone, where they'll be imprisoned until they find a way out. And at that point, with everybody off world...well, you know what happens next.

Now, will ALL OF THAT make it into the movie? FUCK no. This is just backstory. But that's the Krypton that we're working with, setting the stage for conflicts and characters to come, and for Clark to discover over the course of several movies. Because we're plotting for a series here, and this is a story that can be unfurled over time, especially if and when Zod or Supergirl show up.

But there's one more unsolved question here: how did Clark get so injured in this theoretical film? He's fucking Superman. Well...what do you think happened? It's a McGuffin, but an important one. So, just for a second...let's talk about Kryptonite in this universe.

Remember how I said the weaponized Zeta-beam technology irradiated the ground of Krypton itself. Well, that radiation actually makes Krypton pretty toxic, ESPECIALLY when the planet collapses in on itself due to the same energies. So, Kryptonite is the irradiated remains of the planet Krypton. But it doesn't actually go anywhere. I mean, let's be honest, it makes NO SENSE for Kryptonite to travel that fair to get to Earth, so where did it come from?

Well, theoretically, maybe an alien civilization or individual discovered Kryptonite, and decided to use it as a radioactive power source, or even as a crystalline nuclear weapon. So, if Superman, who reads as Kryptonian, shows up in a city on Earth and disrupts your plans for the city/planet, you'd want a way to get rid of him. And maybe you have a way to travel to Krypton and discover it's destruction, as well as the crystals themselves. And maybe you have some human patsies that will use technology that utilizes Kryptonite to take out Superman. So you grab the radioactive crystal, give it to these guys, and they work to take out Superman. And who are these guys? Let's not jump the gun. For now, we have some more people to talk about first, before we talk villains.

Index: Superman

Part I: Why I Love Superman

Part II: On Lois Lane

Part III: The Kents

Part IV: The 'Rents

Part V: The...Frendts?

Part VI: Lex Luthor

Part VII: The Real Villains

Part VIII: Superman's Rogues Gallery

Part IX: The Story - Act One

Part X: The Story (Acts Two and Three)

Part XI: The Story - Climax

Part XII: Epilogue (Part One)

Part XIII: Epilogue (Part Two)

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faeseekerandy · 8 months

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Full name: Nemesis Kida ( working name, it changes to Just Kida after the transformation)

Alias: None

Gender: Whatever they’re in the mood for that day

Orientation: All over the place, Pan? Has no care about it

Age: Whatever she’s in the mood for that day ( shapeshifter )

Nationality/Species: She thinks she’s from the Greek pantheon but she was made in a test tube

Religion: Herself ( not a joke she’s like, if ima workship a god or goddess might as well be me )

Western Zodiac: Lost to the ages

Eastern Zodiac: Lost to the ages

Element: Venom

Birth Stone: Coal

Blood-type: Poison

Personality Type: ESFP-T Entertainer

Disabilities: Half a soul

Eye color: Black

Natural Hair Color: light blue almost white

Natural Hair Type: moon shaped bangs in the center and three bangs on each side. It’s the only way to know its kida based on her hair as she shapeshifts but that hair style remains constant no matter what shape she takes, even things like fish or whales have that iconic hair to them.

Skin Color: Whatever she’s in the mood for that day, depends on the situation, she infiltrates and changes shape except for the hair

Height: whatever she’s in the mood for

Weight: I dare not say

Appearance: shapeshifter, trickster, ext. can change not just herself but those around her like how Athena made Odysseus old.

Personality: Kida is a slug-like being created by the Powers (now rebranded as the Elderman ) for infiltration missions. The moment she comes in contact with the beings of the world she takes their essence and DNA becoming similar to beast boy. If she comes in contact with a God or Goddess she will take into herself all of their powers and make them her own. When the Furies purchased Kida from a traveling merchant she absorbed One ability from each of the furies, Alecto’s shapeshifting abilities, Megaera’s Divine sight, and Tysephone’s snake hair, hens why one of the furies is blind and the other one bald. She also absorbed the most dangerous and vicious aspects of the furie’s personality becoming extremely volatile, vengeful vindictive and toxic. She embodies the worst aspects of the furies. When Alecto Megaera and tysephone decided to become “the kindly ones” they placed all of those aspects inside Kida and sealed her away in the mansion never to be seen again. Until Gil found her by accident and set her evil free into the world. The Name Kida is not her real name, its just the name given to her batch, stands for Kinetic Identity Devouring Ameba. Its why she’s on a test tube in the cover of vol 1. When she is killed by the forth determining factor they are able to clone her thru her hair and the flipped off middle finger that were left after the fight. The KIDA Gil travels with is an enhanced clone after vol 5. She’s also extremely promiscuous and has over 190 children over 20,000 years of existing with 87 other partners and husbands that came and went, and a xenomorph too. She also has about 11 “adopted” children that she looks after. While being a horrible being that borders on the Lovecraftian she’s a devote mother and has never once neglected a single one of her extended family who have all survived to have children and grandchildren. There are entire villages of Kida descendants. She will do Everything in her Power to protect her children often doing amazing feats while doing so. The most important and pivotal event in the history of the universe, the defeat of the final abandon was done while Kida was protecting one of her babies.

#the furies #furies #kida #gilgamesh #oc #oc art #character bio

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not-the-tie-youre-looking-for · 3 years

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Something that's been bugging me for years since the Legends finale. If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do you think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out? On the one hand, from Legends Thrawn's portrayal I imagine he would without a second of hesitation. On the other, Canon Thrawn has been much more... restrained? And on a third point, there's the fact that Legends and Canon Thrawn seem like they really could be the same person just at different points of time. cnt in next

...I'm just curious if anyone else was curious if Zhan agreed with that direction taken. Which, on that note, did Zhan ever say anything about his thoughts on how Rebels handled Thrawn? Both from a writing standpoint as well as an acting and musical one (Thrawn's various leitmotifs)?

Oh man. Ohhhhhhhh maaaaan. My friend, you have asked exactly the right person this question, because not only have I wanted to talk about this multiple times before, but I also have ~receipts~. 👀

⚠️Spoiler warnings for Star Wars: Rebels, The Mandalorian, the canon Star Wars novels Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn: Treason, Thrawn Ascendency: Chaos Rising, and Thrawn Ascendency: Greater Good, and the legends Star Wars novels Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, and Outbound Flight.⚠️

Oh man. Where to begin.

Lets start with who Thrawn is, because depending on who you ask, you're gonna get different answers—whether you're strictly a Legends fan, Dave Filoni, a guy who's only seen Thrawn in Star Wars: Rebels, Timothy Zahn, or just a writer/artist fan like me.

To Timothy Zahn, the man behind our favorite chiss, Thrawn is a character that is constant in both attitude and personality throughout all of his content. In multiple interviews, ranging from Thrawn's debut in Rebels to the latest about the writing of the Ascendancy Trilogy, Zahn states that Thrawn in canon and Thrawn in Legends are indistinguishable.

And so I present the receipts:

In a 2017 interview with The Verge on writing the first canon Thrawn book Thrawn, Zahn is asked the following question and responds as such:

How do you navigate bringing back a character who already has an extensive backstory and audience expectations, with telling a new story that fits in the new continuity?

Actually, I didn’t find that to be a problem. I’d never written Thrawn in this part of the Star Wars timeline, so it was simply a matter of bringing him into the Empire and chronicling his rise through the ranks. It’s still the same character as in the 1990s books, just a decade or two younger and in a very different military and political environment.

In another interview with The Verge in 2018 (a few months after the finale of Rebels aired) about writing Thrawn: Alliances, he repeats this sentiment twice:

Thrawn feels like if it had been written before the canonization purge a couple of years ago, or if you squinted a bit, it would serve as a perfect setup for Heir to the Empire.

Oh, I don’t think you need to squint at all. I wrote him in these two books to fit in with everything else I’d done. So if someone at Lucasfilm snapped their fingers, and suddenly all of my other books were canon, and there would be no real retrofitting that would have to go in. It would all fit together.

Thrawn: Alliances feels more at home in the new canon, especially because Thrawn has been fleshed out a bit more in Rebels. Was there any adjustments for that?

Not really. I’m getting to play with more canon characters like Vader and Padmé and Anakin, but the character himself, I still see him as the same person. He’s got goals, and he won’t necessarily share them with you, but he as long as you’re going the same direction, he’s happy to cooperate and assist along the way.

...and this is referenced again in a 2020 interview with Polygon about writing Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising:

Along with Thrawn’s appearance in Rebels, Zahn would pen a new novel, Thrawn, that chronicled the character’s early days as an Imperial officer. Zahn didn’t have to change anything with the character, telling me in 2017 that “he’s like an old friend who I understand completely.” While Heir to the Empire was no longer canon, a reader could easily read Thrawn as a precursor to that classic novel. Thrawn went on to become a major presence in Rebels, and Zahn continued to explore his origins in Thrawn: Alliances and Thrawn: Treason.

The next day, an interview with IGN was published on the same subject:

Thrawn is an especially unique case because Zahn has been able to effectively continue the work he started way back in 1991 with Heir to the Empire. That novel may not be a part of official Star Wars lore any longer, but as Zahn explained, Thrawn himself is basically the same character regardless of continuity.

[....] The closest comparison between Chaos Rising and Zahn's earlier EU work is probably 2006's Outbound Flight, which is set during the Clone Wars and details the first encounter between Thrawn and the Galactic Republic (while also retroactively laying the groundwork for elements of Heir to the Empire). That novel is no longer canon, but Zahn told us he prefers to operate as if it were. He's making a concerted effort not to retread the same ground as Outbound Flight and to avoid contradicting the events of that novel as much as possible.

So yeah. In Zahn's opinion, Legends Thrawn is Canon Thrawn is Book Thrawn, and there is no difference whatsoever between Thrawns in, say, Outbound Flight, Heir to The Empire, Alliances, and Chaos Rising. I wholeheartedly disagree, but lets move on.

Now that the books are out of the way, its time for Rebels.

In July of 2016, after the trailer announcing Thrawn's canon debut aired, Dave Filoni had the following to say about Thrawn's character in regards to Timothy Zahn:

“I was pretty adamant with a couple of people saying, ‘Listen, we need to have Tim sign off on this. This is kind of a waste of time [otherwise],'” says Filoni. “We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns, but without Tim’s okay, what does it mean? That’s not going to be good. Once we had some stuff, we wanted to do what we thought was right and make the character. Then we brought him in. We had the production fully prepared. I said, ‘Look, if there’s something that Tim says that I think is really valuable, even if it changes something dynamically, we need to be ready for that and see what we can do.’ I wanted to make sure we did this right by everybody. We brought him in and we didn’t really tell him why. We just flew him up to Lucasfilm and sat him down in a theater and said, ‘Hey, we’re bringing Thrawn into the show.’ He was like, ‘Wow.’ and I said, ‘Yeah, wow. And I’m going to show him to you right now and you let me know what you think.'”

(Before we continue, keep that first highlighted sentence in mind for future reference. I'm going to come back to that later.)

Fortunately, Timothy Zahn was delighted at the show’s approach to the Empire’s imposing blue-skinned Chiss.

“We showed him some of the scenes with him,” Dave Filoni recalls. “He looked like a kid in a candy store. I think it meant a lot to him not just because it was his character, but because you have to imagine what he went through when it was announced that everything is Legends now, not Expanded Universe. I get that and I’ve always appreciated the work that goes into the Expanded Universe… For Tim, I think it was us saying, ‘No, no, no. We really like your character. We want him to be part of the real thing. The canon universe.'”

So in 2016, before we even saw Thrawn in action beyond a trailer, we were told that Zahn gave the OK, and he was chill with the way Thrawn was created in the show. In 2017, he gave a little more of the background of this process in an interview with FANgirl Blog:

The events of Thrawn dovetail closely with Rebels and shed light on some of Thrawn’s more seemingly surprising actions on the show, like when he appears to lose his temper and yell at Lieutenant Lyste. What was it like to see Thrawn come alive onscreen? Is he how you’ve pictured him in your head?

I don’t see my characters in terms of voice or appearance, but rather as personality or attitude. That said, I very much enjoyed the way the Rebels team brought him to life, in his appearance, voice, and actions.

I also appreciated the freedom I had to tweak certain incidents, such as the one you mentioned, and give additional or alternate explanations for the viewers who may have thought those were somewhat out of character for him.

He doesn't really elaborate on this, but we can assume he had SOME creative input on Thrawn's character, and he was overall pretty happy with the choices made in the show.

But then, we have this from that earlier 2017 the Verge article:

When did you learn that Dave Filoni was intending to bring Thrawn to Rebels, and did you have any input into how the character would be handled?

[...] I didn’t have any real input into how Thrawn was going to be handled, mainly because the lead time of an animated series is so long that much of season 3 had already been finished. But I trusted Dave and the team to do the character right. After all, why bring him into Rebels if you were going to drastically change him? Having seen the entire season now, I think we can agree that my trust was completely justified.

So... he didn't have "any real input," but was satisfied with it in the end? I guess? I don't know. We're getting into some contradictions now.

The last thing I've got in regards to Rebels is an interview Zahn did with the YouTube channel Star Wars Explained after the finale aired, where he responds to the following:

“So, maybe let's jump over to Rebels for a little bit. Now that it has wrapped up, how do you feel Thrawn was represented in Star Wars: Rebels?”

“They did a really good job—they not only understood the character and how to write for him, but they also understood the meta around how you defeat him. The only way to defeat Thrawn is to throw something at him he can't control, or can't anticipate. Given perfect knowledge and control, Thrawn will always find a way to win. But they understood, this is how you defeat him, these are the things we can use against him... so his portrayal in general, is very good; he's smart, he's anticipating, he's a step ahead of everybody, he's looking at clues and picking up on them, so I was very pleased with how the Rebels team handled the character."

I think these quotes answer many of your questions, so to answer your initial question: If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do I think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out?

Yes—but ONLY because at that point, the only established™️ Thrawn content was found in Legends, where Thrawn was a ruthless and calculating warlord.

However!

I do believe that if given the chance to re-write the Star Wars: Rebels finale using his now-canon novels as a solid background TODAY, Zahn would choose to not let Thrawn bombard Lothal's Capital City.

I believe this because he made one single very interesting creative choice when writing Thrawn that completely overwrote Thrawn's pre-established Rebels character: Thrawn was not responsible for the civilian deaths on Batonn—Pryce was.

And that's that on that.

A few months ago I would have ended it there, but today, Thrawn's story is no longer just contained in the novels and Rebels, but also in that of The Mandalorian.

This is where I will proudly say I have no idea what the fuck is going on. Before The Jedi aired, I was 100% sure that the next time we saw Thrawn, it would be nowhere NEAR the Empire, because Zahn was pretty adamant in the novels that Thrawn was only in the Empire to help. His. People.

So now he's apparently doing fuck-knows-what in fuck-knows-where and is STILL associated with the Seventh Fleet and Imperial Warlords???

Huh??? Despite the fact that he held no true loyalty to the Empire or to the Emperor??? It's been months and I'm still confused as fuck. Add to the fact that Zahn also doesn't know what the fuck is going on to the equation and we get a big fat question mark with one pretty clear answer that Filoni said himself that we have to keep in mind:

"We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns."

So I don't think Zahn has much control over Thrawn as we would all like to think. We can hope he gives us the crazy Thrawn and Ezra Space Adventure™️ novel all we want, but ultimately, Thrawn's fate does not rest in his hands.

If you guys have more to add please let me know!!! This is, obviously, a topic I am very passionate about, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

#tye answers asks #not the post youre looking for #thrawn #timothy zahn #thrawn trilogy #legends thrawn #star wars #rebels #lothal #star wars rebels #dave filoni #thrawn ascendancy #chaos rising #greater good #thrawn alliances #thrawn treason #thrawn books #wow this took a while #but I like the way this is looking

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demonslayedher · 3 years

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The Sharing of Demon Cells

Kibutsuji Muzan is the basis upon which all other demons live. They were altered by his cells, having more of his cells makes them more powerful, he can reach into their thoughts and sight whenever he likes, and should they ever slip up and say something that will pose a threat to him, the cells of his that each demon carries will act as a curse and kill them. But each demon is also an individual, and their own cells determine what sort of being they'll become, and how useful they'll be to Muzan in doing what he cannot. To what extent can their own cells be shared and influence others, a reflection of the way Muzan's can be? This will be heavily based on info presented in Fanbook #2, but will also look at cases throughout the manga.

Influence of Muzan's Cells First, let's consider how unique or separate the demons are in the first place. All demons have Muzan's cells, except Yushiro who was created without them, and when Muzan was killed all the demons died too. This dependency, as well as the fact that each demon essentially acts as a long-distance extension of Muzan, might make it seem like they are a hivemind, or like an aspen forest, in which it looks like there are lots of trees but actually they are all one living entity connected by their roots. However, I think it's better to think of Muzan like one core tree, and the other demons like plants that growth on top on him with roots dependent on him, though they use their own leaves to reap... well, sunlight. Maybe this is a bad metaphor. We can still, however, thing of them as intimately intertwined.

Essentially, they are their own unique beings almost like parasites to him, because in most cases we've seen of people turning to demons, there was more or less a death of the human. In the two cases of demons turning human again, with the help of medicine to unweave themselves from Muzan, the mere time spent as a demon which self-repairing cells was what already zapped life back into them. In other cases, while still intimating interwoven with Muzan, that means they'd have been dragging down with him. This means Nezuko got very lucky with her timing that the medicine had an effect on her before Muzan perished; though perhaps she freed herself enough that this would not have had an effect. For those demons that aren't as lucky (Tamayo had a pure stroke of luck being able to break from, as though the thorny vines turned brittle enough for her to break through when Muzan was in pieces after encountering Yoriichi, and then it was impossible to bring her back), this means being vulnerable to Muzan's wishes at any time. While Muzan himself is essentially in pieces at all times, what with being present inside of each of his demons, he is the progenitor of demons, and this doesn't cause him any ill effects (making him more like a host rather than interdependent). However, other demons have also shown this ability to break themselves into multiple pieces.

The Swamp Demon: One demon in three bodies showing different attributes, but all the same being. Notably, this was not it's only Blood Technique, it had also developed a whole sub-dimension. Pretty rough first mission for a newbie, although it's possible it did not yet have mastery of its own rather impressive techniques (like Kaigaku). Hantengu: His self-splitting is more complicated, in that he first gains strength when he is cut, especially in taking on younger forms, until reaching the limits of this. Make enough copies, and his copies will no longer gain extra strength, like how repeated clones will have shorter and shorter DNA code on which to base themselves, or how photocopying copy after copy instead of the original will lead to blurrier copies. While like the Swamp Demon these different bodies show different personalities, it's a more advanced technique because they also show entirely different abilities, and function like multiple demons that happen to share the same basic identity. What gets really interesting is when one of these demons forcefully absorbs the others and grows more powerful.

Demon cannibalism is not an ideal way of gaining strength, but it happens. As mentioned in this post analyzing how demons rely on their human diet, demons at the Final Selection were known to eat each other, but clearly this doesn't make them as formidable as eating humans would, and it may had only been a desperate act to quell their own maddening hunger. However, in cases when demons have challenged each other, the loser may be absorbed. That is precisely what Kokushibou did on two of the three occasions he was challenged for the Upper Moon One rank, according to Fanbook #2 (he decided not to eat Akaza because he liked him). This cannibalism was done with Muzan's permission, and if it's anything like Sekido absorbing the other Hantengu quarters to become Zouhakuten, then we can assume Kokushibou got stronger because of the cells he took from those demons, perhaps similar to how cells from Muzan can make a demon more powerful. While we're on the topic of Upper Moons, Fanbook #2 states that only they have the permission to make other demons, and even so, they must ask Muzan for permission first. I'm assuming they're also the only ones allowed to call Muzan up on the mental telephone line instead of just be on the receiving end. If Muzan agrees, their blood is changed, so essentially what they give the new demon hopeful is not their own blood, but Muzan's. There is only demon we know of who has permission to share his own unique cells, which influence demons in their own unique way, separate from the influence Muzan already has. Lower Moon Five, Rui, simply by virtue of being a favorite. Fanbook #2 tells us:

Although he's only been a demon for less than twenty years, he's especially skilled, and well-favored by Muzan. In terms of absolute abilities he's thought to be more like Lower Moon One or Two, but since he isn't concerned about what number he is he's never applied for change in rank. Muzan anticipated Rui being able to kill Pillars. He probably would had been able to have a good match with a Pillar if he first reabsorbed all the abilities he split up amongst the demons playing the roles of his family (that is, his Blood Techniques which he lent to them by making them drink his blood, which gave them spider appearances), and he probably could had gotten even stronger. However, because he got over-emotional while fighting Tanjiro and the others on Mt. Natagumo, he made some misjudgments. He has a tendency to do simple attacks just throwing his weight around when he gets angry. If Rui were defeated first, his family member demons, who could not originally use Blood Techniques, would lose those abilities.

We can infer a few things from this: --All of those techniques were Rui's in the first place --Rui became weaker by doing this (though his overall strategy in spreading his abilities lead to lots and lots of Demon Slayer Corp deaths, so this is probably part of why Muzan allowed it), so there are limitations in how thinly he can spread himself --If not Rui's personal techniques and instead developed by being in combination with the individual demons' he shared his blood with, that's perhaps part of why he could had gotten more powerful by reabsorbing his own blood/blood techniques. While Rui did have special permission, I think it's also partly because Rui lacked ambition, so he never would had set about to challenge Muzan by spreading his own personal influence. Just think what, say, someone like Gyokko would had done with this permission, and how much he might had abused it in spreading his own taste and influence. Though he's subservient to Muzan, with too much of a taste for power, it's possible he could had tried to overstep his boundaries--not that Muzan would had let that last long the moment he saw it in his thoughts, but keeping tight rules prevents him from ever having to deal with any challenges from among his more powerful demons. If we look at the Rui-Demon Family relationship from the receiving end, though, this is a clear case for how taking cells from other demons can make a demon much stronger, thereby being another option besides eating humans or possible other self-strengthening methods. While they did on the whole become stronger and were newly able to use Blood Techniques with Rui's help, what about other cases of not simply getting stronger, but using each others' techniques as-is? Yahara and Susamaru, perhaps? Not quite, they each used their own Blood Techniques and willingly cooperated with each other, there was no exchange of cells, as far as we know. (That sounds dirty, and we're not going there.) How about when anybody uses Yushirou's papers? First, those abilities were freely lent, and most of the people who used them were human, and there was no ingesting of demon blood required. Perhaps with Nakime, however, forcing his own blood into her may had been how he was able to force her to see illusions. Genya using Kokushibou's techniques? Now we're getting closer. While in his temporary demon state, he was influenced by Kokushibou's cells like Rui's family was influenced by his cells in their appearance. It seems the tree was of his own making instead of being strictly a copy of Kokushibou's techniques, but we can think of this as a crude imitation of the ability to make objects based on demon cells, especially something that requires speedy growth/increase of cells. Later in that fight, Kokushibou displayed the ability to very quickly increase and transform, and the sword which Genya consumed was, essentially, a part of Kokushibou's body. (Still sounding dirty, but nope, we still are not going there.) Very notable is that this is a case of a demon's cells/abilities being absorbed and used against their own will. Even if this did subtract from Kokushibou's abilities like happened with Rui, though, the effect was probably only slight. So then what about when a demon freely wants to lends their own ability to another demon? First of all, Muzan, who will stand for absolutely nothing challenging him, will say no.

Ok. So. What if we can get around that? Answer: Yes, we can. We can totally do this. It's probably just as simple as Rui having other demons drink his blood, and they all probably have some innate ability to influence each other, albeit the more powerful ones having more influence. But, what's super interesting is that their own cells still stay unique to them, even when in another demon's body. Cases in point, Rui's family members periodically changing back to their personal appearance, and Muzan's cells lurking inside of any other demon. And, jumping ahead of ourselves, even when Muzan has absorbed Tamayo, her cells are still so unique that he can even reassemble her. (Worth noting, absorbing one demon probably only had a marginal effect on making him stronger. Also worth noting, at least when inside Muzan's inner space, she's also able to reassemble herself to some extent, and we only see her fade away in peace in a post-chapter sketch once Muzan is dead.)

Speaking of Tamayo, she did freely use a Blood Technique freely given to her by another demon, the man in Asakusa. Once they got him free of Muzan's curse too so he could act on his own will, he could lend the use of his cells and thorny flesh vines to Tamayo, specifically to be used against Muzan in Chapter 138. Muzan's first thought is, "who's Blood Technique is this?" Unsurprising he's long forgotten about the throwaway Asakusa Demon, who has now totally slipped out of his control! But he stays calm, knowing this is like any other demon, and it's not even a huge amount, he can simply absorb this. Which, of course, makes his unwittingly absorb Tamayo's fist, too. Whoops. (Aside: I had initially thought the Blood Technique Muzan uses against Himejima in Chapter 139 was Muzan taking the Asakusa Demon's attack and using it as his own, but Fanbook #2 specifies that this is Muzan's own unique technique.)

Let's back up one more moment. It's one thing to influence each other with your own cells that stay separate and unique, and to lend out Blood Techniques. But what about sharing demon cells in a way that makes it act like like a food, something that can be broken down, totally separated from its former host, and fundamentally transform its new host?

For that, we have medicine.

Yushirou might had been made with Tamayo's cells, or a medicine developed from scratch like the medicine that changed Muzan into a demon, or it could be a combination of both. However, even when Tamayo died, Yushirou could go on living, so he and Tamayo do not have a dependent host/parasite relationship like all the other demons do with Muzan. He certainly felt it with his whole being when he perished, but you could argue that this was the power of love instead of his cells being tied with hers. If her cells were used to create him (which I find likely), being used in a medicinal form severed whatever sort of standard connection there might had been if making demons in Muzan's style, and it also allowed it to fully become a part of Yushirou as an individual, instead of remaining uniquely Tamayo (not that he'd have a problem with that). Getting that process to work took Tamayo over two hundred years. That's probably part of why she could work so much faster with Nezuko's blood, and why she was able to use it as a medicine to help the Asakusa Demon, as stated in Tamayo's letter to Tanjiro in Chapter 127. There's no mention of him picking up traits from Nezuko like Exploding Blood or potential to master the sun, instead, the only effect was helping him break free of Muzan's influence, and perhaps his ability to live on a small amount of blood might also had been influenced by Nezuko's ability to function without it (though I find it more likely Tamayo already had other appetite management methods that helped her and Yushirou which also helped this fellow).

So anyway. While there are demons we don't wish to harm by shedding light on them in a thoughtless metaphor, I hope this was insightful.

#kny fandom theories and meta #or at least trying to keep my own analysis of running themes organized #this is probably just a handy post I want to have around for future reference #Kibutsuji Muzan #Tamayo #Yushiro #Rui #more characters but I am too lazy to tag them all #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer

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analysis-by-a-muffin · 3 years

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YGO Analysis: Protagonists and Rivals, the Pivotal Relationship (Part 1)

There are a variety of relationship archetypes that come with any genre. Their importance, meanings, and depiction come with a strong and wide variety even from within their own genres or franchises. Rivalries are a constant across several media; only coming with different faces depending on the reason for the competition between two characters. Action movies, shows, etc tend to have major rivalries between the protagonist and a character that is both their opposite and their equal (whether or not they’re actually an equal truly depends on the piece of content but shhh). This relationship can be a strong driving point of plot related events, and one of the finest examples of that is the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise with its growing number of rival relationships that are distinctive in their own ways— even while they’re following a very set pattern.

General Overview

Compared to many other rivalries— in shounen works especially— there’s a lot about the way Yu-Gi-Oh goes about theirs that struck a surprising chord with me. Thankfully, each spinoff doesn’t give the viewer an exact clone of the rivalry that started it all, regardless of how popular Seto Kaiba and Pharaoh Atem are. There’s also a notable lack of anything feeling generic or far too in line with tropes, following them safely down to a T. Each one has a flavor that allows for viewers to have their own favorites which can range from cold and intense to warm and soft.

Duel Monsters crafted certain characteristics and behaviors within each dynamic.

Obsession: Each rival has a focus on the protagonist that they don’t really give to any other character. The intensity of it changes with each pair, however, and can sometimes involve stalking the main character, oftentimes thinking about them, or more mildly, simply talking about them a lot in private to someone else. Another staple to their obsessive behavior is going to absurd lengths to get the attention of the protagonist, something which they’ve displayed as a thing the rival can get pretty greedy for.

Plot Importance: If a YGO series isn’t well made or structured, the main rivalry is likely not going to be a very good one. When done spectacularly, their relationship can be what causes major events to unfold and hinge on which is par for the course with this franchise. Basically, rivalry quality and series quality play very important roles.

Friendship: Typically, they start out as enemies or strangers. Whatever it is, they’re not on great terms right away, but through a connection/understanding of each other that no others have, they become unlikely (and even unconventional) friends. Their bond is meant to be seen as one of the strongest in each series and are often each other’s greatest influence. On top of all of that, it’s normally the protagonist who longs to befriend the clearly broken inside rival. Which has a high tendency to end up with them being upset at offers to help and understand them being harshly rejected.

Soulful Connection: Duel Monsters is a card game with in-universe lore heavily pertaining to duelists’ souls, and the concept of them in general. It’s no surprise that the protagonists and rivals can end up with bonds that cause them to feel like soulmates. Yet, there are times when that connection becomes extremely apparent and more overt. First duels between them tend to have the protagonist being able to read the rival, seeing parts of him that don’t line up with what he says and leaving them to wonder why they’re so closed off or who made them act this way. Of course, this comes as a huge shock to the rival along with their ego. This in turn fuels the need to aid the rival; meanwhile, this character zeroes in on the protagonist.

Key Similarities: Regardless of how seemingly dissimilar they can be in beliefs, attitudes, intelligence, and their very dueling styles, these two are meant to have something that draws them to each other unlike anyone else. This showcases a common unbreakable thread that keeps them bound. It can be anything from pride to shared background experiences to having a hidden heart of gold.

Paralleled Features: Red versus blue is an age old trope that makes itself known in YGO. If the two aren’t clearly in line with that, they have several other opposing color differences such as one wearing darker colors while the other wears lighter ones. One of each of them could also be paler than the other either slightly or blatantly.

Sun/Moon, Light/Dark: Another common trope, that comes with some diverseness across the board. The protagonist can be made out to be something bright and life-saving similar to the sun, and this can be openly stated or strong hints to this can be thrown in. In the eyes of the rival, the protagonist can be seen as their light in the darkness. Someone who thrills them, serving as this unique person who can make them feel more alive and can even stop them from sinking too deep into metaphorical darkness.

Respect and Trust: These two are cornerstones of every dynamic. Without them, everything falls apart. The rival has a lot of difficulty navigating the idea of trusting others but commands respect he often doesn’t receive. The protagonist comes in to teach them better and be a guiding force much like with aiding them in friendship.

Separately, the rivals share traits modeled after Kaiba.

A lust for power (usually the result of never having any true power in their own lives)

A physical design that depicts them as being bigger, taller, and overall more masculine (in a few cases they’re even a year or two older)

Dramatics in their gestures, speech, fashion sense, dueling methods, and interests

A cold and aloof personality in which their stoic nature causes problems in whatever relationships they have

Cards are mainly very imposing and dark creatures

Difficulty with honesty and containing aggressive feelings

Being a part of a higher social or economic class (something which weighs on them and can be the source of a huge portion of their grief)

Dueling style will almost exclusively be focused on dominating the opponent through beat down

Experiencing a tragedy that forever changes parts of themselves in ugly ways

Protagonists are similar to Yugi and/or Atem, but unlike their less kind and closed off counterparts, there're plenty of times in which they’ve deviated far from the norm.

A more open heart to kindness and letting people get close, along with the urge to help others

Designs make them smaller and shorter than their rivals with a softer appearance that welcomes instead of rejects

A warmth and hope that can irritate the rival

Are more likely to use cards that feature cute monsters

Tragedy can strike them, but it’s treated like a source of strength or something that greatly influences what they do (can come with less hurtful coping mechanisms)

[There seems to be a common tactic when it comes to hiring the Japanese voice actors for the protagonists. They don’t have the experience of several roles, and voicing a YGO lead character is their first big hit].

These dynamics are easily my favorite part of each series, and one of the things I look towards the most when a new series is announced. Finally taking the time to write out an analysis and composing my thoughts feels nice. The next parts will be dedicated to actually looking at the specific relationships instead of talking about them generally.

#yugioh #prideshipping #gx rivalshipping #kingcrabshipping #sharkbaitshipping #pendulumshipping #datastormshipping #on my previous account I talked occasionally about protags and rivals #but this is where I decided to finally go more in depth with my analysis #while not inherently about them as a romantic pair #I did find it much easier to tag ships even though I kind of want to do a queer reading of their relationships and YGO as a whole #but really I’m not even too sure of what all I could say there #also I’m not really bringing up Sevens here because I don’t know it well enough #the series is still ongoing too #b u t there are things I’ve seen in it that still fit stuff listed here #primarily with their opposite character designs and the protag VA not being a super experienced one

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yaypinecones · 4 years

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Here are fan made fetch moduses. They’re not mine but it gave ideas what they would look like and write my own descriptions. Feel free to use them as you wish :)

Camera Modus: It can take pictures on one focused object to 35-50 cm away on the fetch modus card camera (top right). After taking a picture, it would create a clone of the object on your captchalogue inventory. It can be a great practice to take pictures, just don’t take pictures of yourself.

Settings:

Instagram mode- It doesn’t really do anything special except put any radon filter in your fetch modus over what it displays. It’s dumb, but hey it gives you a ton of likes. likes actually don’t exist in your modus or an app for it.

Snapchat mode- I’m not sure why you would need filters to captchlogue an item. If you use this one, I definitely recommend the dog or flower crown filter.

VSCO mode- It’s more about the aesthetics to be honest. Not for those who dresses up in long over sized shirts with a bunch of poofy hair ties and purposely drop their water bottles to make weird noises

Limit: can take 10 film inventories, more than that can eject the last inventory. The object you want to captchalogue has to be on the cameras focuse or else the picture would look blurry and would not clone the item.

Book Modus: A simple modus that comes with a actual book. When you captchlogue an item, it would gives you their description and their captch code. It would also receive a page inside the book as it could give more its abilities, uses, history, common location, and combinations with other items. Pretty useful and it’s possible to captchalogue the book itself. You don’t wanna carry it around all day.

Settings:

Academic mode- Yup all that math, science, language arts, health, and history you’ve read for school is coming back to you. What sucks is these books are the books you’ve read before when you were younger...so they’re probably out dated. Which sucks.

Encyclopedia mode- AKA Wikipedia, Dictionary, or Thesaurus if you want to call that. Basically find what word you want and look through the entire book to find what it means or what’s similar to it. I doubt you want find the amounted of pages it has because it never ends. Sometimes too much words can lead you the short end of the stick or just completely lost.

Journal mode- A thought of someone their own writing to collect their ideas and observations. You can make your own journal if you want. Like writing down what your doing or your grocery list. Actually just write what it feels like to you.

Magazine mode- Now we’re on the good stuff. Good stuff as in gossip and trends. What? At least there’s something to entertain yourself than looking through those stressful words every single to time. You just need to relax and read the latest celebrity gossip. OooOo.

Newspaper mode- Wait how can there be a newspaper in a book? Well at it lets you know what happening daily in other places or locally. Contains huge headlines, unnecessary words, really big photos, and a lot of advertisements.

Limit: There’s no storage limit on this fetch modus but it’s recommended to have 12 items. Unless if you want to have a bunch of words thrown into you to the point it becomes a encyclopedia. Also item eject? What’s that? Uh oh.

Money Modus: This lets you store any item but you have to access the item by inserting a specific amount of money. It is very different in every item. Isn’t it a mix of an ATMs and a shop? I don’t know, but at least they are in a reasonable price. This is not meant for cheap scapes. Sometimes the capchalogue item is has the similar price to real life price list. [Ex. A real life a fridge cost $1,000-2,000]

Settings:

Currency change mode- Your not sure why people need a specific currency. This setting is so stupid, it makes you wonder who needs this?

Bank mode- Yes you heard it right, you can store money in this fetch modus. It’s great for people that has no where else to store their money. This can be your own personal piggy bank.

Limit: This has unlimited storage. The bigger and expensive the item, the more expensive the price you need to access the item. The more you store items, you need to spend a lot of your money. No, you cannot argue the card to lower the price ya silly goose.

Mask Modus: A modus where you wear many persona’s. The mask are in variety in colors that represents a certain character. You can also type a certain personality on your own personas. To capchalogue an item, you have to match a certain persona that matches or similar to the item.

Limit: The maximum storage contains 16 items. Over 16 items would refuse the recent item unless you remove an item or combine one of them. If successful, the item would be capchalogue and freely gain access with wearing a mask. If your didn’t match a right mask or was unsuccessful, the modus card would eject the last item you capchalogued at you.

Binary Modus: You can summon any item by converting the letters into binary coding. This modus must be navigated manually and you can also search for item numbered too.

[Ex. 01001001 01000011 01010101 01010000] Wait a second...Eww man.

Limit: Unlimited storage unit and when summoning an item, it has to be a real thing. Sorry but no bear-cat-rabbit-elephant thing or completely made up words would appear. Especially, you can’t summon huge items like a building or the sun. That can just break your modus. Please limit yourself there buddy.

Dominoes Modus: No, sadly you can’t order pizza. When you capchalogue an item, many dominoes from the card spill out and you have to assemble each and every domino to the other.

Limit: there are 6 inventories you can capchalogue. Nothing more, nothing less. More than 6 would eject the last item.

Dartboard Modus: You can freely capchalogue an item, but retrieving an item can summon a dartboard. You need to throw a dart at one of the rings or bullseyes. The less important items are on the large farther rings and the more important ones art in the smaller rings and bullseyes,

Limit: you can store 82 items. Now that’s a lot but you need to have good aim. Hitting the center of the bullseye can randomly give you an important item for the future.

Prey Modus: When an item is capchalogued, it would spawn a small animal. These animals would depend on what the item is. if the user wants to get the get the item back, they will have to fight and kill whatever creature the item has been allocated to. once the creature is dead, the item appears

[Ex. a computer mouse would spawn a weak mouse (ayy)]

Limit: You can only store 8 slots and over more than 8 can have an animal come out depending on the item. Hopefully you don’t eject any important items. Anything important would release an animal that is not a prey or maybe a replica of the first guardian.

Shuffle Modus: Every time you capchalogue an item, it changes every second with other items you also capchalogued. It can be lucky or unlucky depending how your going to draw this.

Limit: It can hold as much as any items. The more you add items, the more frustrating it gets to retrieve the item you want.

Backpack Modus: This modus can store items by the cards weight which is also a backpack. You can simply open the backpack to retrieve and item. You can capchalogued the backpack itself, but I don’t think your fetch modus can handle the weight you put into there.

Limit: Feel free to store the amount of junk you can carry as it can weigh you down. It acts like a normal backpack. What else should I say?

“Stack” Modus: Haha no, it’s a Massive Ejection Modus you fool. It may look like a normal stack modus but can intensity eject massive amounts of items at once that are multiplied by 100. Once you want to retrieve it, 99 copies eject violently from the captchacard and explode out of your card. Its mostly going to destroy mostly anything and injuring anyone near you.

Limit: Basically you only have one slot inventory and that’s sad. Is this modus even legal!?!? Ejecting 99 items at someone can be potentially be a strife specibus. Just saying.

Wardrobe Modus: This modus can capchalogued any articles of clothing. Attempting to captchalouge something other than clothing will result in said item being sent somewhere you can no longer receive. This is pretty useless like the other mentioned modus we talked about.

Settings:

Hat mode- A place where your hats can live in harmony with other simpleton hats.

Earrings mode- Fancy, expensive, or cheap earrings can come join.

Glasses mode- Look at you nerd. Or cool kid. Whatever you are.

Shirt mode- Look, there are many things you can put on there. The most likely to be over flowed.

Pants mode- Or skirts, shorts, or anything that goes on your legs

Socks mode- A hell place where all sinful gross smelly socks and clean socks go.

Shoes mode- Just don’t put those dirty shoes on the wood. Keep them clean and dry.

Limit: you have unlimited storage and only meant for clothes. This is perfect for people that don’t know where else to put their seasonal clothes to. Summer, fall, winter, spring, you name it.

#homestuck #hiveswap #fanadventure #fetch modus #capchalogue #fantroll #roleplay #theyre not mine #ideas

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jedimasterbailey · 3 years

Text

Sneak Preview of Chapter 8 of “The Padawans”

Ahsoka overhears what Sidious intends to do with Barriss and needless to say, it doesn’t sit well with her.

Link to full fic below!

Darth Sidious disembarks his personal shuttle with his most trusted Imperial guards leading the way to Riyo Chuchi’s palace. The Fifth Brother and the Seventh Sister walk silently beside their Emperor, both perplexed as to why they were accompanying the Sith Lord. For they had both failed miserably at keeping Barriss Offee in their custody by allowing the Mirialan escape with Ahsoka Tano, another wanted Jedi. Their punishment was one neither would ever forget. They had been electrocuted by Sidious’s lightning repeatedly until their flesh began to burn. As a result, the Seventh Sister now relied on a vocabulator to speak, her vocal cords having been damaged beyond repair and the Fifth Brother wore more armor to cover the raw skin that has yet to heal. Failure was no longer an option for the duo if they valued their lives.

Just before they were greeted by the Pantoran Senatorial guard, Sidious addresses the Inquisitors with their next assignment in a low voice.

“There is a Jedi here. It appears Senator Chuchi has set a trap for me to spring. Find this Jedi and hold him or her for questioning while I deal with our host. There is a chance it could be the very one you fools have lost. Do not fail me again!”

“Yes, my Lord.” The Inquisitors simultaneously say before stepping aside.

The Seventh Sister then calls for one of her probe droids using a remote on her wrist. Within seconds, the requested droid flew out of the Emperor’s ship and perched itself on it’s mistress’s shoulders ready for orders.

“Search the area and see if you can pick up another lifeform that isn’t the Senator or her staff. Apparently she thinks she can hide a Jedi from us.” The Seventh Sister orders in her new distorted voice.

The probe droid immediately begins to work as it flew from the Inquisitor's shoulder the minute she uttered the word “Jedi”.

______________________________________________________________________

Sensing Palaptine’s presence getting closer to the palace, Ahsoka conceals her own Force signature and takes shelter in the palace’s ventilation system following Riyo’s footsteps underneath. Ahsoka could feel Riyo’s fear and anxiety building which worried her deeply. From what the Togruta has seen based on Imperial propaganda in the worlds she’s traveled to, Palpatine was certainly frightening and intimidating, but he was also portrayed to be the same noble leader as he was before the Empire. Was Riyo fearful for her life? Or was she just unsettled by the change of plans?

Ahsoka leaned on the latter knowing they had yet to discuss their plan on how to deal with the Emperor with the subject of Barriss having been a distraction. Despite knowing Riyo’s intention and motivation, Ahsoka was still set on persuading her friend to think of another solution. If there’s one thing Ahsoka was sure of, it was that taking a life, no matter what the reason was, was an act that could never be erased from one’s consciousness. Barriss’s words and facial expressions on the matter has proven that. She did not want that same fate for Riyo. There had to be another way.

Ahsoka’s breath hitched in her throat seeing Palpatine approach Riyo. The man was obviously a Sith Lord in the eyes of a Jedi, but to someone like Riyo, he was deformed old man with an unnatural eye color. Ahsoka concentrates hard on suppressing her hatred for the man for the sake of staying hidden. If Palpatine was able to orchestrate an entire galactic war without consequence, then Ahsoka knew better to underestimate his abilities on detecting the slightest change in the atmosphere.

Riyo, now properly dressed in formal attire, bows to Palpatine.

“Emperor Palpatine, it is an honor to have you in my home. Though you are here earlier than expected.”

Palpatine gives a false smile, “Yes, Senator. Your invitation admittedly piqued my interest and I could not wait to meet. It isn’t everyday I have an excuse to leave Coruscant.”

Riyo reciprocates the gesture.

“Then we should waste no time then. Allow me to show you to my office.”

Ahsoka quietly follows the crowd above, going as far as to hold one lightsaber in with one hand and the other with her teeth to prevent any noise. The situation was too delicate for there to be any mistakes. To her surprise, Ahsoka hears Palpatine dismiss his red cloaked guards outside the office, leaving him alone with Riyo.

“Please, make yourself comfortable.” Riyo says calmly, taking her usual seat, “I could have someone fetch us some refreshments if you’d like?”

“That would be lovely, my dear.” Palpatine accepts, sitting down.

After Riyo informs someone of her staff of the Emperor’s request, the secret Sith Lord immediately brings up the very subject he knew disturbed Pantoran.

“I take it that you are displeased with what has become of the Talz?”

“Forgive me your grace, but I must admit that their extermination was unnecessary. They were no harm to anyone and it’s because of their extinction that my people have become more fearful of the Empire. The increased number of Stromtroopers in our cities and towns enforcing curfews and inciting violence deeply concerns me as someone who is supposed to be protecting them. That’s why I wanted to negotiate as to how the Empire can improve its relations with Pantora.” Riyo says with the same amount of sophistication and grace as Padme once did in the Senate.

Feigning a look of confusion, Palpatine folds his hands, “I’m sorry my dear, but I must disagree with the notion that the presence of my Stormtroopers or the extinction of the Talz are of any harm to your people. The troopers are there to maintain the peace and order the Republic failed to accomplish.These men are instructed to detain any rebels who dare to disturb the peace. You know as well as I do that we as a galaxy are still recovering the Clone wars; we cannot run the risk of having individuals rise against the stability we have created. Don’t forget that it was Count Dooku, a political anarchist, who started all the fighting that the Jedi enabled. Surely you and your people have not forgotten what a dark time that was!”

Riyo shakes her head, “Of course not, your Excellency. I, like the late Senator Amidala, were one of the few who voted against the fighting.”

“Yes, I remember.” Palpatine sighs, now appearing to look mournful, “May she rest in peace, Amidala. I miss her immensely. I’d like to think that she would have been proud of the new order.”

From above, Ahsoka grimaces at Palpatine’s words as they couldn’t be further from the truth. Padme would undoubtedly be leading the Rebel alliance if she were still alive.

“That still does not explain why the Talz needed to be killed.” Riyo argues coolly.

A servant then entered the room with a tray of tea and assortment of Pantoran delicacies, temporarily stopping Palpatine from answering. It was only after the two gave their thanks and had the room back to themselves that the Emperor was able to give the answer both Ahsoka and Riyo knew to be a lie.

“I never ordered for the Talz to be terminated.” Palpatine says steadily maintaining direct eye contact with Riyo, “I only deployed a squadron of my people to set up a base on the moon given how suitable the environment would be for training purposes. My best guess is that the Talz attacked my troops and thus they were left with no other choice. I can understand how hard this all must be to hear knowing you were the one to establish peaceful relations. But you and I have no control as to how they respond to their new superiors. As I’ve said before, there is no room for hostility against the Empire.”

There was a moment of silence between the politicians allowing Ahsoka to digest Palpatine’s words. The answers to all of Riyo’s questions have been contradictory and infuriating. Anakin and Obi-wan had once told her that the Talz were welcoming and receptive to negotiation. A small part of Ahsoka wanted to hop back into her ship and destroy the “training camp” that was surely constructed over the bodies of the dead tribe. But Ahsoka knew better; Riyo was depending on her to not draw attention.

“That is...very unfortunate to hear.” Riyo professes sadly, bowing her head.

“Indeed.” Palpatine sighs before continuing, “Unfortunately, I’m afraid that is not all of the bad news I have to share.”

Raising her head back up Riyo asks, “What is it?”

“There is a Jedi here.” Palpatine confesses, causing Ahsoka’s heart to leap into her throat.

Riyo’s eyes widen, “A Jedi? But how? I thought they were all dead?”

“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” Ahsoka screams internally to herself, taking her lightsaber hilt out of her mouth in order to suppress the sound of her now heavy breathing. She was at a loss as to how Palpatine could know this despite having hid her ship and temporarily cutting her connection off from the Force. Ahsoka then reminded herself of something she knew to be true about the ways of the Sith; their order was rooted in deception.

“Maybe this is just an excuse for him to watch Riyo.”

The possibility brought some comfort for Ahsoka, but now any future communication with Riyo would be next to impossible between Palpatine and the Inquisitors he most likely brought with him.

“If only that were true, but alas there are still many survivors out there not to mention all the younglings that are born with such powers. But not to worry, I have two of my Jedi hunters here looking for him or her. Rest assured, I will not be leaving until the Jedi has been brought to justice. I wouldn’t feel comfortable returning to Coruscant knowing a dangerous traitor roams free on your planet. Despite what you may think of me Senator Chuchi, I really do keep your best interest at heart.” Palpatine affirms with another smile.

Even from a distance, Ahsoka could clearly see how uncomfortable Riyo looked, “Do you have an idea on who it may be?”

“To be perfectly honest with you Senator, I am not sure. However, there is an individual I am hoping to find here.” Palpatine admits causing Riyo to lean forward on her desk.

“And who would that be?”

“Barriss Offee.” Palpatine answers ensuing a fresh wave of panic to arise inside Ahsoka.

With a pained expression on her face, Riyo asks, “You mean the girl who bombed the Jedi Temple and escaped prison?”

“Precisely.”

“Why her specifically?”

To Ahsoka’s horror, Palpatine laughs, “Well aren't you a curious girl! Unless you’re aware of Ms. Offee’s whereabouts and are hiding her from me?”

Riyo rapidly shakes her head, “Of course not! Barriss is just an interesting choice given what she has done. It would make more sense for someone like her to hide in some remote world far from the Core worlds. A Mirialan would be very easy to spot on Pantora!”

Palaptine raises a hand, “Ms. Offee is not to be underestimated Senator Chuchi. I know Barriss to be an incredibly powerful and intelligent warrior. We both may not agree with her crimes, but her speech on the Republic and the Jedi’s involvement in the war rung with truth. She saw the future we were all blind to and for that, I’m hoping I could extend a peace offering to her. Her skills would actually become a great asset to the Empire.”

“The Jedi failed her and pushed her to do what she did, but I know I could help her. I could give her the love and attention she was denied. Perhaps she could succeed me in becoming Empress one day.”

Ahsoka bared her fangs as her blood began to boil at what Palpatine’s intentions were for Barriss. Everything Bail had told her after the events of the trail now made sense. Palpatine was hoping Barriss’s anger would fester into a hatred he could manipulate between denying Master Luminara’s visitation rights and removing the death penalty. The idea of Barriss becoming a Sith apprentice nauseated Ahsoka to the point where she was afraid she would vomit in the vent.

Not wanting to hear another word, Ahsoka knew she needed to get out and run far away from the palace. She needed to unleash her anger and her sadness before it got the better of her and made itself known to the Sith Lord. Ahsoka quickly grabs her lightsabers and navigates her way to Riyo’s bedroom where she knew she could escape without being seen.

The journey proved itself to be a challenge for Ahsoka as her emotions were quickly turning into hysteria. Her heart was hammering against her chest so hard that she felt she couldn’t breathe. Tears also began to stream down her cheeks, blurring her vision. Ahsoka had not felt this kind of visceral reaction since her days of hiding on Thabeska after the events of Order 66.

Back then, Ahsoka understood fully why the phenomena would happen; she knew she was stressed about Anakin's whereabouts and she knew she was grieving the fact that she had to fight and bury the 501st alone, with Rex being the only survivor. Now, Ahsoka wasn’t entirely sure why she was reacting this way.

Knowing about Palpatine’s insidious plan for Barriss was upsetting, but was there something more to it, and the only way to find that out was to be as far away from Palpatine as possible.

Ahsoka was beginning to see stars when at last she saw her way out. She quickly punches the vent open and hops out of the opening, gasping for air. Taking a few steps back, Ahsoka then sprints out of the room and leaps over the balcony, dropping several meters down to the ground below. Upon landing, Ahsoka proceeds to run away from the palace and out into the open marshes, completely unaware of the probe droid that had spotted her and was now alerting its master.

#ahsoka tano #barriss offee #barrisoka #barrissoka #star wars fanfiction

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moodygroundhog · 3 years

Text

I have a theory that the Witcher and Star Wars are related.

Power/Force/Magic

The key role is assigned to the Force in the Witcher and the SW either.

In this theory, we can put an equal sign between Magic and Power. In Sapkowski's books, mages often use (at least in Russian translation) these two concepts as synonyms. Also, there are Places of Power both in books and in games.

Yennefer talked about magic (=power) like this: "In the end, magic is all three of the above. It is Art, Chaos, and Science: a blessing, a curse, and progress. It all depends on who calls upon it, and for what purpose.

Magic stems from nature. It is on the earth we walk upon, in the fire burning in its heart, in the air we breathe, and in the water, which brings life and which flows within us. If you happen to be gifted with the particular talent, all you need do is reach out your hand and grasp the magic all around you".

Obi-Wan characterized the Force like that: "Well, the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together".

Some signs from the Witcher are similar to the use of Force in SW (Axii=telepathy, Aard=telekinetic thrust, etc.). The use of magic will be discussed a bit later.

The Conjunction of the Spheres

As there is not correct description anywhere about what exactly happened during the Conjunction of Spheres, and about what kind of cataclysm it was, it can be assumed that there was an interaction between the planets (for example the Parade of planets) or some other cosmic influence (cosmic radiation emission idk) that caused mutations in Neverland and make new creatures to appear. Or, on some other more advanced planets, there were some catastrophes, during which the creatures had the opportunity to use hyperspace jumps and get to the lands of Neverland. Moreover, many monsters look like those that could easily exist in the world of SW.

However, during the Conjunction, not only monsters appeared on the planet where Neverland is located.

Elves

The first race that arrived after the Conjunction of the Spheres was the elves. They arrived by ship. What ship???? Obviously, the descendants could interpret this as water transport, but what if they were spaceships? Moreover, they arrived after the thinning of the borders between the worlds, which may indicate that they overcame the interspatial and intertemporal barriers, that is possible only at supersonic speed. And they came from another world - another planet. It is said that their previous world was destroyed. Probably the same with cataclysm.

In addition to this evidence, elves can travel between worlds through portals - through hyperspace. In general, the elves are quite a developed race, they use quite unusual inventions, so I think they could have created some kind of spaceship.

It is known that elves (and their descendants who have the blood of elves) are predisposed to use the Power (=Force), which means they could be the first Jedi. About the elves said: "Their culture symbolizes calmness, seriousness and control of their emotions" (translation from Russian page about Elves on The Witcher Wiki).

And as we know, Jedi are required to control their psyche and achieve control over their inner world, then use the Force wisely.

There are Elven-like Jedi in the SW, such as Yoda. However, he is certainly very different from the elves from the Witcher. But if we assume that the elves were even more suppressed by the people of Neverland and in the end, they had to leave this planet forever, then it is quite possible that on another planet they evolved, adapting to new conditions. So, there was a modified race - the race to which Yoda and Grogu belong. Almost nothing is known about this race, but so far, all representatives have the ability to interact with the Force (in movies and games, all the “relatives" of Yoda are Jedi, and Grogu also has skills of controlling the Force in Mandalorian). Moreover, they are as long-lived as the elves, which again can prove their kinship. And the small number of these individuals only confirms that it could be the descendants of escaped elves (and there were not many of them left in the Witcher), and during the evolution, the number has decreased significantly.

Plus:

People

Humans arrived in Neverland on three arks ~700 years after the elves. Again, these could be space rescue ships that were sent from a dying planet during the Conjunction. And it took such a long time to fly to a new planet. Probably, the question arises, why then do the people who arrived, who arrived on spaceships, have a medieval level of development? This can be explained by the banal fact that, firstly, not a single generation has changed for a long time spent on the ship in space, and they did not have new resources. Most likely, it was necessary to start development anew, with an almost primitive system. And secondly, it can be assumed that when entering the atmosphere of a new planet, the arks could be damaged and they were useful only ordinary boats. Well, I think during the cataclysm, people did not have enough time to launch some cool fancy spaceship. The very word "ark " suggests that this is a life raft, it has a minimum of equipment, which is enough only to support life.

Magicians

In SW it says that the Force is in everyone and some creatures are more able to feel it and control it than others. In the Witcher, it is said that some people are able to feel the Power of Chaos, learn to use it, and over time, such people became magicians. We can say that they were also a kind of Jedi. They could heal, use telepathy, move objects with the power of thought, etc. Mages, as well as Jedi, needed to train and develop their abilities to master magic. You need to fully control yourself, observe self-discipline.

Witchers

To create witchers, children are put to the Trial of the Grasses and mutations, so then they can also control the force. In SW a person who is sensitive to force is one who has midi-chlorians in his blood. This may indicate that children in the Witcher were forcibly subjected to mutations in order to produce midi-chlorians in their blood. Thus, the witchers were a kind of clone (while there are magicians, elves and their descendants who have "innate abilities” for magic, that is, the ability to control the Force).

As mentioned earlier, to be a Jedi, you need to show remarkable self-control, it is necessary that the Jedi refused attachments, because otherwise, they become vulnerable. We can find something similar in the description of witchers: they are devoid of emotions, to be dispassionate defenders against monsters, so as not to be distracted by human problems and conflicts.

Besides, there are Mandalorians in the SW universe, whose codex and way of life is quite close to the witchers'. So, it is quite possible that the legends of the witchers became the source of the idea/culture of the Mandalorians.

Crystals and Places of Power

As you know, to create a lightsaber, you need to find a special crystal that can be filled with power. Something similar can be found in the game The Witcher 3. In this game there are Places of Power, which are a single "cromlech”, that is an elongated boulder, from the centre of which comes a certain colour glow, very similar to what crystals can produce from SW. And this stone exudes Force.

So, it can be deposits of such crystals that simply absorbed the power, as they were formed at the place of its accumulation (although it is possible that they could be filled with Power by elves, during some rite).

In general, based on this, we can assume that the world of The Witcher is connected with the worlds of SW, and the events of the Witcher precede the events of SW.

#the witcher #star wars #geralt of rivia #yennefer of vengerberg #obi wan kenobi #darth sidious #baby yoda #his name is grogu #master yoda

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twitchesandstitches · 3 years

Text

when in doubt, craft something

Upon the horizon, the sky was twisting and churning with unnatural colors oozing out of the veil between the realms of imagination, magic and the spirits, and the boundary of the world that the adventurers knew. Sometimes those colors flashed by like lightning, sudden and violent. The sky changed behind it, just as violently. And sometimes it was slow, like the uncomfortable sense that something in the world had gone wrong.

It marked a point where the edge of the world was just that: an edge, a point where physical laws, shaped matter and the primacy of the elements no longer held sway. Past that point, things... dissolved. And past that...

Well, Chopstop mused as she filed down the bore of a two-handed automatic cannon. That was were other things came out. There were the spirits of the other world, who were not inherently malicious: not even spirits of pain or loss. They were not cruel, they simply did what was in their nature to do.

But then, Chopstop thought as the skull of a dead demon leered by her side, hateful even in death. There were other things that could find a way through. You could negotiate with spirits, and it was a moral duty to appease them. But demons just wanted to kill everything.

It was certainly giving the predators in the party plenty to eat. Chopstop turned towards Tia, who was sitting beside her and apparently whittling something. She’d digested that demon, of course, and coughed up the skull. That was unusual; she very rarely digested anything. At most she ate things and while they were gone, for a while, they’d pop up later. Maybe spit out as magical ammunition or reforming, and if they WERE digested, it was essentailly ‘borrowing’ their physical bodies into her mass, while their souls went off somewhere inside her. She’d heard it described as the ‘Gut Zone’, or the ‘Butt Zone’, depending on what part of Tia started wobbling as if there really were people in there.

She’d been in there herself. She remembered seeing a vast city, of black flesh shaped into a facsimile of wobbling pseudo-stone, extending on larger than the observable world. She didn’t know if it was a physical place within Tia, some sort of abstract dream-world. Maybe it was both.

But actually being digested by her was atypical. She just seemed naturally suited to fighting things as destructive and mean as demons.

“Whatcha working on, there?” Chopstop asked.

Tia held her work aloft for inspection. Chopstop leaning in to inspect it, and Tia’s gaze briefly flicked towards Chopstop’s abundant, teeming cleavage. Her expression didn’t change, though. Simply helpless to at least notice dark green boobs of the perfect size and shape.

They both refocused. In Tia’s hands, proffered to Chopstop, it looked something like a staff. It was unfinished, and clearly magical; one end of it was apparently dissolving into raw magical energies, or at least that part of it was unfinished. She needed to put more into it, to finish giving it shape. The whole thing was a faint blue color, glassy crystal webbed with dark stone or perhaps iron. Calling it a ‘staff’ was perhaps a bit too vague, it was more like a thick pillar that happened to be the right shape for Tia’s hands to be swung like a staff.

It also looked like a bunch of arms, all wound together. Multiple arms bound together, twisting together and their fingers interlacing like a gesture of companionship.

Tia took a free hand and put it along the staff, pumping more magical energy into it; she huffed and grimaced with both physical strain and creative exhaustion. More magic gushed out of her and into it, and her hand shaped it, first with a gentle modulating wave, and then striking it, hammering substance that was suddenly physical into shape. She did this, over and over, until a short handle appeared from it.

“Kind of looks like a big tonfa now,” Chopstop observed.

Tia beamed. “Yeah! I can swings it at things, y’know?”

Chopstop watched as Tia continued to work at it. Hammering it into shape, making it elongate more and more. She began to realize something; she’d known Tia for a long time, since she was a young artificer hanging out with Tia’s daughter Nevnir, and then throughout much of her professional life. She’d slept with Tia for the last few years of her life, vowed to follow her clan’s path in battle and warfare. Her own immediate ancestors had been among those who had followed her, at the beginning of the Horde’s lifetime. She was planning to marry her. But now she realized that when it came to the fine details of her, she knew very little about her.

“So what are you making this for?” Chopstop asked. She winced as Tia panted with exhaustion. “You don’t... look very good.”

“Hrm, it is being fine. I gets... it’s lots of work, making magic thingies.” Tia shrugged, with a magnificent wobble to her enormous breasts. “But is important.”

“Why’s that?”

“So’s I don’t lose neat powers.”

“...I’m sorry?”

Tia held onto the staff, and she resonated with its power; something distinct and part from her, Chopstop realized. Tia’s power template shifted, and then, the nature of that power activated: magical energy solidified around her, thickening and taking on new shape, and fully resolved into the shape of six additional arms floating just around Tia, detached from her body. They looked very much like her normal arms, but more refined in shape, and almost mechanical in nature or perhaps heavily armored; ornate, with the same kinds of decorations as the staff. They were big, too; they were larger than Tia herself, and that was saying a lot.

Chopstop blinked at the translucent, glowing masses of power. Mostly black, with some green undercurrents flowing like water. “That’s a new one!”

“It’s a little bit of my cloning power, a little bit of some astral projection... oh, that’s hard to do for me, I don’t know HOW i made that one, too. A whole lot of things! Too much to keep on all at once.” As if familiar with the way she worked, Tia said, “I can’t keep powers on all the time, yeah?”

“You can’t?”

Tia blinked. “You didn’t know?”

“Nope!”

“Oh. Well.” Tia continued working on the staff, bringing more of it to life. “I gets, um. Full. Like full belly but much harder.” She frowned, either with trying to put the whole concept into words, or a tricky element of the staff. “Mine powers, they’re always changing. Don’t always want to just drop them, you know? I eats things, i turns them into powers, but they don’t stay. They gets... processed, I guesses. So I eat more stuff, I get different powers. I mixes it all up, and I get new powers on the spot for a little while. I don’t know hows to make them stay.”

She kept working for a bit. “So, a while ago, I figured something out. I can take a power I made, and turn it into something. Like fancy weapon! Like this! And then I can use it, and summon that power all over again!”

“Ooh, that’s amazing.” Chopstop grinned at her as the sextuple arms winked out. “I always say crafting stuff is more useful than just having all the powers in the world.”

“Yeps! I thinks my powers... its all about what I can get in the moment, you know? But sometimes, that won always works out for me. I never get to keep powers. I can get ways to make more, or combine what I have, but anything I get, I change too much for it to stay.”

“So then, this is a workround? You’re... what, putting that power into a physical artifact you can use indefinitely, without having to worry about burning the power out?”

“Yeps!”

#twitchy!ocs #twitchy!tiashar #twitchy!chopstop #the latest idea I've had in mind is that Tia has only so much space in her for powers #its like gut capacity #and a key point is that she does not permanently gain powers in this scenario #she loses them eventually #but she can craft bayonetta or DMC style weapons using a given power #and then reuse that later #i have ideas for this specific weapon too

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karmathecat · 4 years

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Firewhiskey is Not the Best Mixer Part 3

The third part to my Next Gen time travel to the Marauder era! Thank you for reading guys!

Part 1 | Part 2

AO3 | FF

The halls of Hogwarts were the same James noted. He glanced over at his siblings and saw that they were both standing close to him, himself and Al on either side of Lily. The Marauder’s were oddly silent, sharing glances that James could only assume was a communication that he was not privy to.

Sirius watched as the three new teenagers stopped at Lily’s behest. She bent over to take off her high heels, using Al’s shoulder for support as she did so. Once at her true height, Sirius noticed that she was quite a lot shorter than the Lily that he knew, coming up to perhaps his chest. She was complaining about her shoes hurting her feet now that the cushioning charm had worn off and there was no point recasting it as her feet already hurt. Sirius watched as one of the boys gave Lily his suit jacket to cover herself and was warmed by the clear love that was shared by the group, and once again wondered about their relationship to each other.

James’ attention was drawn to the group in front again as his grandfather cleared his throat as they reached a tapestry of a tall tower which reminded James of the princess stories that their dad read to Lily when they were younger.

“This is the Heads’ dorms, there’s a guest room there with a double bed and we have a coach in the common room so you can decide who sleeps where. Evans will either be in her room or in the common room and I think that I might be best explaining what’s going on rather than ambushing her with her clone.” James smiled at the younger redhead as he said this in an attempt to reduce the tension that was not diminished on their journey from the Headmaster’s office.

Lily pulled her brother's jacket closer around her as they entered the Heads’ common room. It was similar to the Gryffindor common room, which was unsurprising considering both of the Heads this year were lions. Lily wondered if the common room would be altered depending on the house of its occupants. Her grandfather bounded up the steps when the common room was clearly devoid of Lily Evans, and silence fell among the group. Lily let her breath out as a heavy sigh and thought about the current situation that she found herself in: forty years in the past, with her grandparents, Teddy’s dad, and a future traitor. Not only were they in the past, but she couldn’t reveal her true name without upsetting the progression of a relationship between her grandparents that clearly hadn’t begun yet. The more she thought about it, the more she realised how ridiculous everything was, and her attitude was completely backwards. She was meeting people that she had only heard stories about, she could ask questions and have an adventure, is that not what she was truly about? Why were her and her brothers being so closed off?

With a short huff of a laugh, Lily decided that enough was enough, and yes the situation was strange but she was going to make the most of it, and sitting in silence was not the way to do that. With a new purpose, she walked over to the coach and sat next to Sirius and turned to face both the dark haired boy and Remus who was sat in the armchair next to him.

“So, have you completed the map yet, or is that still in development?”

Two shocked eyes snapped to hers, and she smirked, “Yes we know about the map, Padfoot and Moony.”

Hearing the conversation, James and Al also came to join, James sitting on the arm of the coach next to Lily, and Al sitting in the armchair beside him.

“Yes that map has kept all three of us out of trouble on a number of occasions!” The three marauders grinned at each other delighting in the map being passed down to the next generations, they started asking them questions about how much they knew about the Marauders’ adventures, when a cry of alarm was heard from upstairs.

“I guess James got to the interesting bit, I wonder how Evans will react.” The group fell silent and tried to distinguish the voices from upstairs. When they heard the door open and the voices became more clear, Lily felt a wave of anxiety come over her. She was about to meet the woman she was named after, she knew so little about her and was desperate to know as much as she could.

James Potter descended the stairs and into the common room looking incredibly nervous, from behind him appeared Lily Evans, her bright green eyes only previously seen in their dad and Al surveyed the room rapidly, once they fell on Lily her mouth opened as if to speak.

“If I can interrupt what is surely a very entertaining monologue,” Lily Evans’ eyes snapped to James Sirius and widened in surprise, but did close her mouth to stop her rant, “We are from the future, James is telling the truth, no it isn’t a joke, yes my brother and I are related to your James Potter, yes Lily is related to you, we’re from about forty years in the future. I would let you rant but we’ve already been through this and I really can’t be bothered doing it again. So if it’s alright with you I’d like to skip to the part where you’ve accepted that we are from the future because it’s been a really long day.”

Lily bit her lip to stop herself from laughing at her brother, and saw Al roll his eyes, but she really couldn’t help agreeing with James, it had been a long day and if they skipped the rollercoaster of not believing to accepting that would be very beneficial.

Lily Evans opened and closed her mouth several times before looking at the Marauder next to her, “That speech was so like you, and I don’t think anyone would choose to have that fluffy hair. Also Dumbledore sent me a message, so for fear of this blowing up in my face, I will accept that we don’t all need to be shipped to St Mungos immediately.”

Lily was surprised that she accepted the events so quickly, but the word of the Headmaster clearly carried a lot of weight in this time. Lily Evans came and sat on a cushion in front of the fire directly opposite Lily, and was eyeing her with a great interest that was mirrored in the other redhead’s face.

Lily looked over towards her brothers and then back at Lily Evans, “The pictures don’t do it justice, we do look oddly similar.” The two girls laughed at each other, and Lily saw the other girl square her shoulders and try to relax.

“So, you’re my daughter?”

“Granddaughter.” Lily corrected, and the other girl nodded and then looked at the two other time travellers, “And your James’ grandsons, do I dare ask for your full names?” Lily could see the battle playing on the Head Girl’s face, she clearly wanted to know her future and Lily couldn’t blame her, if she was faced with this situation she wasn’t sure she would be able to hold back her questions.

“I’m not sure that would be the best idea.” Al looked around the room from his siblings to the marauder’s and his grandmother.

“Okay, I guess that makes sense,” Remus looked put out that the main question wasn’t going to be answered, “how do you know each other then? How was it that you ended up here together?”

“We were at the ball together, all the wizarding families were invited.” James dodged the question well in Lily’s opinion, but the dodge was clearly noticed by the group.

“You all seem really close, and that you knew each other well. Especially with a prank war?” James Potter eyed the three newcomers with intense interest, he was desperate to know how close they were, hoping that his life was intricately linked with the love of his life.

James Sirius laughed nodding, “Well it was actually Lil that started that, it started small I guess at Christmas, using the invisibility cloak to move all my stuff an inch to the left so I kept walking into stuff which was incredibly annoying, so I got a rain cloud to follow her all of New Year’s, and that escalated to me being naked on the roof and then to a de-ageing potion gone wrong, and here we are.”

Everyone was laughing by the end of James’ speech. “So I see that the desire to cause trouble is genetic!” Lily Evans laughed smirking at James, eyeing the Head Boy with amusement as he ruffled the back of his hair. She truly could not believe the situation that she had landed herself in. If a patronus from the Headmaster had not arrived as James attempted his stuttering explanation of who she would find in the common room, she would have never believed it. But her sense of adventure was peaking, she was a Gryffindor afterall, and she knew that this opportunity was something she couldn’t pass up.

“Would I be able to get changed? This dress isn’t as comfortable as it is fancy I can assure you!” Lily laughed smoothing out her green dress, she was starting to feel more comfortable with the situation she was being presented with. She had her brothers, yes they’d have to be careful to not reveal too much, but she wasn’t alone and she was technically with even more family. She was going to try and make the most of it.

Lily followed her grandfather up the other set of stairs and into his room. She walked in and looked around as he searched through his drawers. She smiled at pictures of the Marauders on his bedside table, as she sat on the edge of the four poster bed she picked up the frame watching as the four boys laughed as they sat under a tree down by the lake.

“Here you go, I always find that quidditch stuff is the best to sleep in.” James smiled as he handed her what looked like a practice top, jumper and a pair of jogging bottoms.

“I agree, I stole James’ all the time before I went to Hogwarts and he was home, and then once I made the team it was literally all I wore!” Lily laughed, and was slightly surprised when James sat on the bed next to her, appraising her with interest.

“You play quidditch? Evans has never been too into flying.”

Lily nodded, and decided that the information wasn’t too revealing and found that talking to James was just like talking to her brothers, “Yeah both my parents played at school, but my mum was a professional she played for the Harpies she retired when I was young. So I couldn’t not play! I’m a chaser for Gryffindor, and I’ve been told I’m just as good as my mum, I’d love to play after I finish school but I want to do it off my own back, rather than because of who my parents are.”

They continued chatting easily for a few minutes, James voicing his excitement about her mum playing professionally, and encouraging her to play herself. James was surprised by how much Lily was talking to him, she seemed so calm and comfortable in his presence, something he could only dream of achieving with Lily Evans. But if this Lily was so connected to the Potter boys, maybe all was not lost after all when it came to his relationship with Evans.

He stood and gestured to the other door in the room, “That’s the shared bathroom, feel free to use anything, but maybe not my toothbrush.” They two laughed and Lily thanked him before walking into the bathroom. James made his way downstairs and smiled as he watched the two Potter boys gently teasing Lily and to his surprise Lily was laughing and teasing back with equal intensity. As he entered the group again, he sat on the floor next to Lily and told the two Potters that he had left some clothes on his bed for them.

As Lily reentered the common room in her new comfortable clothes, pulling the sleeves of the familiar knitted material over her hand and taking comfort in the feel. She could feel several sets of eyes on her, and the conversations ended slowly. She eyed them all in question, before James Potter cleared his throat.

“I guess I didn’t think how weird it would be to see ‘Potter’ written across your back.”

Lily frowned and then realised, to these boys and Lily that she was not a Potter, she was an Evans or some undescipt surname.

Lily Evans viewed her granddaughter and had to admit that seeing another girl, family or not, with James’ quidditch jersey on gave her an unpleasant feeling in her stomach. She had to admit that in the presence of the James who was not her Head Boy, she felt slightly flustered. The new James was clearly a few years older than them, perhaps 19 or 20, and if that was the case James Potter was only going to get more attractive, and she didn’t think that was possible. She could imagine her James becoming more defined and more mature in the coming years, and she had decided during her sixth year that she wanted to be around to see the developments. The proof that her and James’ lives were going to be linked to the point of their grandchildren knowing each other was thrilling to her, but the idea that she didn’t know anything about these children’s relationship bothered her. She wanted James Potter for her own, she knew that in herself, he wasn’t the immature bully that he was three years ago, he was a mature man who had strong morals and a loyalty that she had not witnessed in anyone else. And here in front of her in the form of a girl who could be her twin lay the answers to whether James Potter was serious about a life with her. She could ask all the questions she wanted without fear of losing a friendship with someone she wasn’t sure was romantically interested in her anymore. In that moment a plan formed in Lily Evans’ mind.

“Lily, why don’t you come and share my room? The bed is big enough and that way the two boys can have the spare room. It would save you sleeping on the coach.”

Lily looked up into the welcoming eyes of her grandmother and was thrilled by the idea of spending some alone time with the Head Girl, and quickly agreed.

James and Al quickly ran upstairs and got changed and met their sister before she headed up to bed. The Marauders watched in amusement as each of the boys kissed Lily on the cheek goodnight before retiring to the spare room.

Xxx

Lily watched as her grandmother entered the room from the bathroom and pulled back the covers on her four poster bed. The room was exactly the same as James’ had been, and Lily had looked at the photos that littered the room as she waited for the other girl in the bathroom. She had been intrigued by the mix of muggle and magical photos, and spent extra time looking at Lily Evans’ parents so she could tell her Dad about them once she returned home.

Once she was sitting in bed next to her grandmother, the light was extinguished. Lily could tell the older girl wasn’t going to sleep, she could feel the tension in the air, so wasn’t surprised when Lily Evans rolled over to look in Lily’s hazel eyes.

“Are you related to James, my James I mean.” Lily was surprised by the phrase my James, as far as she could tell her grandparents were not in a relationship yet so she knew that she had to tread carefully.

When the younger girl didn’t respond but continued to look at her, Lily steeled herself to plough on, “It’s just, if you were, that might mean that James and I could be in touch after Hogwarts. And if you aren’t related you just happen to be super chummy with his offspring then I know that I’m wasting my time right now and I need to get over whatever it is I have for James. So if you could help me not waste my time I would be incredibly grateful.”

Lily watched as her grandmother’s pleading emerald eyes bore into her own, she could see how much bravery it took for her grandmother to admit to her feelings. Lily blew out a huge breath and made the decision. She wasn’t sure if she would regret it, and she definitely knew that she should ask Al his opinion, but Al wasn’t here.

“You’re right, we are related, I share the same name as my grandmother, my name is Lily Potter.”

#harry potter fic #harry potter time travel #next gen time travel #james sirius potter #lily luna potter #lily evans #james potter #next gen fic #marauder fic

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trollcafe · 3 years

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A question for my favorite Liam!! Could you tell me a bit about the trolls you've designed yourself? What's your process like?

It kinda depends on the design, I suppose! I’ve designed 27 of my 52 active trolls! That’s not counting trolls I don’t have on my select, like Chello, Veroix, Skulux, Orcais, Kithon, Jahspr, etc etc. Of those 27, 6 are what i’d consider my Original Trolls, ones who’ve been around for years. In those six you can look and see a LOT of myself! I’m gunna put this under a readmore but I’m gunna talk, like, specifically about a few trolls: Bruuno + Chowow, then Jawska + current Bruuno! Doing those ones specifically so I can also talk about my tattoo design process and how that’s changed!

I think Chowow technically predates Bruuno! At the time I was making them, I was really young, like 13? 14? idk. I made them both on a whim- Chowow was specifically made to be paired w/ his matesprit (he was originally gunna be an olive!) and Bruuno was made as the troll version of a beloved oc named Bruno. I put a LOT of my anger issues and trauma into Chowow, as a method of coping with them. I also VERY distinctly remember the day I looked at Corpse and said “I think Chow’s trans.”-> Saying that also helped me realize I’M trans lol. When Designing Chow, I specifically wanted dog ear shaped horns that were unique, in a way. And because Chow was based off my dog Gia...i just kinda looked at her liddol triangle ears and decided his get 2 be that way. His design has stayed...relatively the same, he got a hair cut but he’s always worn tank tops + shorts. Bruuno specifically was always the guy Who Had Tattoos. Bruuno’s muse was relatively dead for a very long time, he really only like Revived in 2018/2019? His original design was based off the OG OC- curly hair, thin as a rail, scattered tattoos that had little meaning. As Bruuno got quads, he got tattoos AROUND those quads, their symbols. I wasn’t very good at making my own tattoos so he had some that i based off musician’s (such as the squares that i think the drummer from TOP has?). As I aged, Bruuno’s tattoos changed ALL THE TIME there is NO rhyme or rhythm to them. I only looked at him and really, distinctly organized it all, when I saw another fuchsia with nice organized tatts, I think his name was Nihkos?? shrugs u_u Loved that mans. You can so very cleanly track my progress in tattoo design by looking at all of Bruuno’s sprites! Which leads me toooooo.............

..........Jawska! Jawska is, at his root, a Bruuno clone. I thought to myself “Hm. I want a Bruuno Clone.” And Thus Jawska Was Born. Typically when I come up with a character, I let them like. Mellow for a bit. In my brain. Rattle them around like a marble in a cup. And sometimes, I have a very VERY specific niche I want them to fill. For Jawksa, I wanted an asexual character whose asexuality was important to him, who was attractive but distinctly unfuckable. Jawska has some very important Design Notes - Curly hair, Distinct Nose, Slit eyes, 3 gills+fin prongs, broad shoulders+chest. I also seriously sat down and thought about his tattoos. His tattoos mean JACK shit. His chest piece + arms? NOTHING. there’s negative meaning. He got it because it looked sick. There’s SOME meaning, in some places- the blackout on his arm covers an old tattoo and the rings on his fingers are to hide the singular ring he once had. While working on his tattoo, i looked at other tattoos and specifically thought about the body parts that SUCK to get tattoos on. Collar bones, elbows, sternum. And I specifically aimed to leave those a little blank, using the negative space to give purpose but also keep in line w/ what people would normally not tattoo. His outfit is specifically something that doesn’t SCREAM fuchsia but doesn’t HIDE it. Like he’s got his fins and his eyes but he doesn’t wear any fuchsia- wears more red! That reflects how he sees himself: as someone on the bottom of the food chain. He isn’t special or important. He’s not royalty, he doesn’t deserve to wear his symbol or his color. He wears rose gold instead of gold because again, he’s not royalty he doesn’t “deserve” the gold, but also because the warmer rose gold fit better with his pallet. He wears baggy pants and a loose fitting shirt to hide his frame. As someone who was in an abusive relationship and someone asexual, he doesn’t want to be seen or perceived, he absolutely doesn’t want people to look at him and be attracted to him. Cargo pants hide the shape of his hips + legs, baggy shirt hides that broad chest. The tears + tank leave JUST enough open for people to not NOTICE what he’s doing! So it seems deliberate. There’s a few small, unnoticeable pieces of his design that work like cogs in a little machine. You wouldn’t look at him and see his low self esteem, or that he’s hiding. Which is what he wants!

And now back to Bruuno, my beloved idiot. I was going to do Jolene (i really only made jolene because an old friend mentioned there not being a lot of butch women, so i wanted to try my hand at it! another design thing I enjoy is finding niches or concepts I don’t see a lot of, and try to make my twist on them. jolene’s in the process of being a lil reworked design wise so i won’t talk abt her.) but I figured I could explain the bits and pieces of Bruuno now. Any design I make, at least now, tends to be very similar to Jawska- there’s small, unnoticeable bits and cogs, or themes that work together hand in hand. I could honestly sit here for hours explaining all of it. Bruuno is the only Monark who has both horns- even though he was designed first, I had all his “relatives” lose that C shaped horn. How they lost it is different and important to them but Bruuno having both horns is a way to show he’s Different from them. In ANY outfit he wears, its typically loose-fitting or a tank top, right? He has a dorsal fin that he doesn’t like having pressed down, but he also enjoys having his figure disformed. Wearing baggy, open shirts give him a more carefree appearance, which is why he does it often when in the limelight. His more casual outfits tend to be cargo shorts, tactical pants, sweats, and tank tops. He really wears long pants because they hide the robotic leg. Despite that, they are all loose fitting, comfortable, but still have an “edge” to them. He has JUST enough piercings in to have that lil edge but not be seen as a cocky highblood! Enough to impress but not be flashy. His robotic arm is VERY clearly a robotic arm, but it isn’t one that looks incredibly flashy. He’s a gigantic fuchsia rockstar with a million tattoos, of course he’s going to stand out, he has no need to be even flashier with a high tech super cool arm or a billion piercings. Another important aspect is his hair! There’s SO much story behind his hair i won’t even go into it. Bruuno has always had curly hair because around the time I made his design, I cut off my super long hair and suddenly I was left with a mess of curls. In my own experience, people likes touching my hair w/o asking, i’d get teased all the time, I’d get a fuck ton of unasked for comments ( “you’d look better with straight hair.” “boys would like you better with straight hair.” “curly hair looks messy.” gags. die. choke on a dick.) and I kinda used Bruuno to vent that out? I put my insecurity and frustration with my hair into Bruuno. I was too damn depressed to straighten my hair, so I decided Bruuno gets to go through that. He primarily wears his hair pulled back now because he’s also too depressed to straighten it. ok now im too tired to finish this. u_u

#ghost.ask #jawska #bruuno #chowow #this is unorganzied and messy #and makes no sense #and i got super tired at the end #</3 #i can like. more specifically tell u my process w/ specific characters #berrycherryart

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timetocode · 3 years

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The Peeker’s Compromise: A Fair(er) Netcode Model

Many first person shooters are plagued by a netcode artifact known as the peeker’s advantage. I propose here a technique for correcting this bug, based around normalizing gameplay in such a way that human reflexes and skill decide the outcome of competition (as opposed to network latency or artifacts of varying netcode designs, discussed shortly).

When a player in a first person shooter is moving around the game world they exist in a position on their own game client that is slightly ahead of their position on the server. This is a solution/side-effect of clientside prediction which is ubiquitously used in first person shooters giving the player instantaneous movement and controls that feel like a single player game despite controlling a character that is moving around on a remote server.

If we were to visualize the difference between the clientside player position and the serverside player position it would look like two characters chasing each other. How far apart the two characters are depends (in descending order of usual importance) on how fast movement is in the game, the latency of the player, and the tickrate of the server. But how big are these differences in the actual games of the current era? Are the two states of characters practically overlapping? Or is one several meters behind the other? The answer -- which varies by game and by internet connection -- is that the desynchronization between these two positions is significant. Over amazing internet connections in games with slow moving characters the desynchronization is usually on the order of 1 player length. So imagine any fps game character (valorant, cs:go, apex, overwatch, fortnite, cod, etc) -- and then imagine them creeping or walking around slowly. In this scenario the desync between the two states is such that one could picture the character being followed by its clone, touching. If they move *really* slowly then they’ll be overlapping. However as the characters break into a run their clone will trail them by more -- maybe 2-8 player lengths depending how fast characters are in the game. If a player has a high latency the clone will be ever farther behind in all scenarios except holding still.

Now when a player shoots their gun in all of the above games, the game engines will calculate the shot based on where the player perceives themselves. That means that as you play the game what you see is pretty much what you get. You don’t have to manually correct for lag while aiming in modern shooters -- just aim for the head right where you see it. However this introduces the peeker’s advantage. A defender can hold a corner with their crosshair primed to shoot anything that appears, but an attacker (the peeker) who comes around that corner is ahead of their server position and thus they get to a bit of extra time to "peek” and shoot at the defender before they themselves are visible to the defender. Depending on the actual amount of lag and the game itself the defender perceives themselves as either having been shot insanely quickly right as the attacker appeared, or maybe if the lag is not as bad they perceive themselves as having gotten to trade shots with the attacker, but ultimately they lost. The attacker perceives nothing special -- they just walked around the corner and shot the defender b/c they were playing aggressively and have superior reflexes (or so they think).

How big is the actual peekers advantage? Well it varies by game, but an article put out by Riot Games about Valorant goes into detail about how much the peeker’s advantage affects gameplay, and how their engine attempts to minimize it. It’s a great read: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/peeking-valorants-netcode. But to summarize, using 128 tick servers (very fast) 35 ms of internet latency (fast) and monitor refresh rates of 60 hz (standard) they calculate an advantage of 100 milliseconds after extensive optimization. That’s fast, but is it fast enough? Well back in 2003 I used to be a competitive Counterstrike 1.6 player at around the same time that I was obtaining a psychology degree with a particular interest in human perception (reaction time, how our eyes work, perception of subluminal images that are shown very quickly). I tested the reflexes of myself and all of my teammates. Competitive gaming didn’t have the same structure back then as it does now (everything has a ladder now -- back then it was private leagues), but by modern standards we were probably top 3% ladder players or something like that. Generally speaking there isn’t much of a speed difference in the whole pool of pro-gamers, at least when compared to new players. They are all pretty fast. Response time for watching a corner and clicking as you see a player (already perfectly lined up) fall into the range of 150-190 ms. Tasks that involve moving the crosshair to react quickly (as opposed to having had perfect placement already) slow that down another 50-150 ms. But generally speaking the competition between two similarly fast players with good crosshair placement comes down to very tiny units of time with even 10 ms producing an advantage that is measurable (both Riot and I agree about this). This means that had the server allowed for a double K.O. (which these games do not) we would find that in fact both players were very good and would’ve killed the other just 20-50 milliseconds apart. Valorant and CS:GO don’t work like that however, and instead the game essentially deletes the bullets from one of the players and leaves the other alive. Unfortunately this difference in human reflexes amongst competitive gamers is entirely gobbled up by 100 ms of peeker’s advantage -- meaning that at high skill levels the peeker will very often win and the defender will very often lose. So while the Riot article celebrates the success of engineering that allowed Riot to reduce the peeker’s advantage as much as they did, if you read the fine print you’ll find that the peeker’s advantage remains huge.

I don’t mean to pick on Riot, far from it. They’ve clearly done an amazing job. The other games I mentioned earlier are presumably in the same approximate ballpark, though I can tell you from personal experience that some of them are a fair margin worse. Not all of the games I mentioned use a 128 tick server (only one does). They also have longer interpolation delays and other little engine details that slow things down further. Riot is also an insane company that literally owns/builds the internet just to reduce latency for its players -- so if we want to take away a general sense of how bad the peeker’s advantage is in most games we should assume it to be worse than the scenario described above regarding Valorant.

Now that I’ve discussed at length the peeker’s advantage, allow me to present a related netcode model that attempts to solve these problems: The Peeker’s Compromise. If we delay the time of death on the serverside by the timing difference between the attacker and the victim, then we can allow the defender an equal opportunity to shoot the attacker. The server can then determine the winner (and the remaining damage) based on the performance of the human (instead of using the ~100 ms of engine-related advantage and internet latency). So let’s use some numbers for a hypothetical situation. Let’s say our game has 128 tick server, the players have 35 ms of latency, and 60 hz screens (like the Valoran example from earlier). Right as a player peeks another player they essentially get to shoot 100.6 ms sooner than their victim. As their shots arrive at the server the server might calculate that the victim has died -- but rather than killing the player it will keep them alive for 100.6 ms PLUS their own latency, which in this scenario puts the total at 135.6 ms. If during these 135.6 milliseconds the server receives shots where the defender hits the peeker, it will enter a section of code that attempts to settle this discrepancy. First off, it is entirely possible that after compensating each shot for the difference between the players we find out that one truly was faster than the other -- the game could use this information to decide which one lives and which one dies. It also might make sense to allow damage to legitimately trade kills and to build double K.O. situation into more first person shooters.

Let’s talk about the artifacts of this new and proposed system. In low-latency games with a high tick rate this change would be subtle -- we would just have no more peeker’s advantage. As latency increases all way up to 200 ms we will have a new artifact. Instead of having a more severe peeker’s advantage we’ll end up with a scenario where it looks as if players are taking 1-3 extra bullets beyond what would normally kill them -- although if you stop shooting early they still end up dead a few milliseconds later. The Vandal in Valorant (similar to the AK in cs:go) fires 9.75 shots per second, which is one bullet per 103 ms. So in a best case scenario the player death is delayed by the time it takes to fire one extra shot at full auto, and in a worse case scenario we add 1 bullet per added ~100 ms of waiting done by the engine. It would also make sense to cut off certain shots from being counted from a laggy player (existing systems already do this in their own way).

Gameplay at lower skill levels wouldn’t really be affected one way or the other. It isn’t affected much by the peeker’s advantage either -- players have to know where to aim and thus be involved in legitimate reflex test before we’re down to something so close that milliseconds of delay have an effect. If players are oblivious to each other, or place their crosshairs incorrectly as they come around a corner then the added slow down of the human having to make a new visual-search-decision-plus-adjustment is too slow for any of this to matter. But at higher skill levels there would be some actual changes to gameplay. The most significant change is that players would be able to hold corners -- and if they’re truly faster than the peeker they would win. In such a design it really would make much more sense to allow two players who fire at essentially the same time to kill each other which if adopted would need to be addressed at a game design level. Also games that had an alternate method of very indirectly addressing peeker’s advantage, such as weapon instability during movement as a major element (arma, h1z1, pubg, tarkov, etc), would have more options, and may need to tune existing timings to get the same feeling back.

The underlying netcode behind the peeker’s advantage affects more than the classic peeking situation. It also affects two players picking up an item at the same time (it decides the winner here). And it also is present when you’re playing a game and you duck behind cover and take damage after you should already have been safe (the peeker and the victim are on slightly different timelines). Neither peeker’s advantage nor my proposed peeker’s compromise actually removes lag of the underlying systems of the network connection nor the game engine ticks, both simply *move* delays around such that the controls feel responsive and the latency is suffered elsewhere. There’s a certain physics to the realm of network programming. As I like to half-jokingly say: “Lag is neither created nor destroyed [by compensation techniques.]” So the same problems would still exist, though the Peeker’s Compromise is philosophically different. Where the peeker’s advantage says let the fastest internet and the more aggressive player win, the Peeker’s Compromise says let the more skillful (in terms of accuracy and speed) human win. Outside of a double K.O.esque duel however, this is subjective. Who should pick up an item when both players tried to pick it up at the same time? Well the old method says the one with the better internet gets it, the new method suggests perhaps that we should compensate the timing to remove the internet/engine delay and award it to whomever was faster. But what about getting shot after reaching cover? This is really up to the game designer -- is it more impressive to tag someone barely as they run off? Or more impressive to slide behind a barrier right as you get shot? It’s a design decision. It’s also possible via this proposed system to compromise. The engine design I propose has more data in its context with which to make decisions, courtesy of temporarily allowing ties to occur which get addressed after both players take an action. It could say well that was an amazing shot, AND it was an amazing dodge. After crunching the numbers the decision is to deal a hit but cut the damage in half as a compromise between the feats of the two players.

#netcode #network programming #peeker's advantage #Peeker's Compromise #multiplayer #first person shooter #Riot Games #Valorant #Valve #Counterstrike

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donateliamitsuki · 4 years

Text

The Sides' Realms [Headcanon]

So we know each side has their Realm/Room. We know that place will mimic wherever place Thomas is currently in.

But what the Realms actually look like?

Well first of all.

I imagine it working like the Crystal Gem's rooms,it's a single door but each Side can open it and go into his room or let others in.

Thomas is the only one with full access to every single room,which is why he was kinda the one "chosen" to be able to go into Virgil's room in Accepting Anxiety.

{{{{}}}}

Let's start with Patton.

Patton's realm actually looks like a house. It's clean and feels welcoming,a feeling of being at home.

There's pictures everywhere,both the Sides' and Thomas' each a wonderful memory,each a happy moment he treasures with the entirity of his being.

There's also toys and drawings and stories! All Thomas'! He can't throw them away,they made Thomas... Well,Thomas!

The pictures actually move,think it like the memories in Inside Out,they replay that moment over and over,Patton can sometimes just stare at it with nostalgia.

Since it looks like a house (a replica of Thomas' entire house) he has his room,a fluffy bed covered in animal plushies. And in his room there's the most special memories.

Like Virgil's card that one Christmas. Or simply a photo of the day Virgil became part of the family. When the whole YouTube thing started.

Yeah. It's nice.

But it reacts heavily to emotions. So the memories shown can change if a very strong emotion shows up. It can change to sad memories or scary memories.

But other than that... It's harmless.

{{{{}}}}

Next is Logan.

It also looks like a house. Maybe just a more school-like look but still a house.

He has his own laptop,he has Thomas' perfect schedule in a wall. There's markers,there's a whiteboard,yeah,school stuff.

He has his room,perfectly clean and everything in order.

Entering in his room makes you act more like Logan. That's it. You get logical,analytical,yeah. Actually just like in Virgil's room everyone slowly got eyeshadow,if Virgil is too long in Logan's place he'll start losing his eyeshadow and won't feel anxious at all.

{{{{}}}}

Now,Roman's.

His Realm... Is huge. And I mean HUGE.

You enter and there's this magical forest with a clear pat that eventually will take you to this huge white shiny castle. That's the place where Roman truly lives in.

There's fairies and unicorns and pegasus and everything. At the distance you can see a mountain with a cave,that's where the Dragon Witch lives... Her and other stuff,a prince needs stuff to fight!

Roman's place is interesting since everything you can imagine will become a reality there,you might be daydreaming and suddenly that daydream its just... There... Happening!

Sometimes stuff Thomas has imagined appear in there,there's probably a place with imaginary friends or unused ideas.

The other Sides can affect the place a lot. Patton being the one in second place when it comes to the most influence,he could make puppies and kitties he isn't allergic to,make clones of the Sides that are friends,he could go nuts.

Logan isn't that imaginative,and he probably would imagine pretty... Realistic and down to earth stuff. The Realm obbeys but it is confused with stuff that truly exists.

Virgil... Depends,due to the Split and not having Remus anymore,the Realm finds itself uncapable of making "bad stuff",not even disturbing stuff,just stuff it takes as bad. So who knows if it can do anything Virgil says or thinks.

Surprisingly,the place would welcome Deceit as long as it doesn't get out of hand. Lying CAN be imaginative.

And,Remus,the place rejects Remus' presence and ideas in every single way. It doesn't work. The only "bad stuff" allowed are bad guys to fight,and they are pretty Disney-like so,Remus can't do much.

{{{{}}}}

Let's see Virgil.

Surprisingly... It's also a house? But it looks... Old... Even abandoned. It looks like it's in the middle of a forest,a very dark forest. But it seems Virgil doesn't go in there either?

The place have adjustable lights,but it's still a bit dark. There's Tim Burton decoration,spiders and spiderwebs,actually all of it gives a Tim Burton vibe.

Virgil keeps it well hidden,but in his room,the place he sleeps in,there's all the precious moments he lived so far. Patton's card,the Christmas sweater,some photos.

... And thrown away somewhere in the middle of that forest... Everything about the past...

His Realm is... Hard to comprehend... Just like him.

{{{{}}}}

Deceit's shall we?

...

Nobody knows how it looks like.

It's a mystery.

His Realm is designed to instantly try to replicate the Realm of the Side or Sides inside of it. That's what visitors will see.

But how does it look when Deceit is alone? It's true face? Nobody has a clue. And even if Deceit agrees to show it as it is,how can they know it IS that?

{{{{}}}}

And last but not least: Remus.

Just like Roman's: is HUGE.

So alike yet so different. It's also a forest with a path leading to a castle.

But the forest looks out of a horror movie. And the castle is deteriorated,in ruins. Black,seems to be in an eternal storm. Remus lives in that castle... Somehow.

The path is not that clear,there's bodies and weapons. Blood,a putrid smell.

The place has banshees and a zombie graveyard,werewolves and vampires. Everything you can imagine as long as it's horrible.

Oh,yes,opposite to Roman's room... Remus' can only make horrible stuff,nobody could ever have the mind of Remus,but as long as it's bad it can happen. Don't try to imagine good stuff,the Realm will reject it and either won't make it happen or adapt it so it looks out of a nightmare.

Patton will be instantly rejected and attacked,no matter how much he tries to make sweet fluffy stuff.

Logan,again,confuses the place,everything is so... Boring,for it.

Virgil maybe can imagine stuff in here. But he doesn't want to and part of the place could be aware the harm it could make.

Deceit,again,is welcomed. And here he's allowed to go nuts. But I doubt Deceit really can imagine such nightmare fuel.

And Roman... Can't do crap. If anything,he can fight back,but he can't do anything.

{{{{°°°°}}}}

Aaaaand I'm done!

There we go. That's the whole headcanon. I apologize if at times I seemed to get lazy.

...

Okay I'll make my way out now.

#roman sanders #virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #deceit sanders #remus sanders #realms #creativitwins #thomas sanders #sanders sides #ts headcanon #ts roman #ts patton #ts logan #ts virgil #ts deceit #ts remus

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