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aditheursula · 9 months

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We're Kind of Doomed...Just a Little

Tonight while I was playing PVE DayZ, I came across a large gas canister that I didn't need. I typed out in the chat that I had a large gas canister that I didn't need and if anyone needs it then it's theirs. I would even leave it where they could find it later if need be. Someone responded with, "We can buy that at the Trader." This didn't exactly break my brain yet it started me thinking. Capitalism is a certain kind of brain rot that goes so deep into the psyche of a person that they impose its rigidity on a fucking video game.

I say this because that person and many other people on the server:

Believe that there should be no "hand outs".

Believe that community is not about sharing as much as it is about making a profit from others and expect rewards.

Find it foreign/baffling when a person doesn't want a reward or payment for something.

Get mean & aggressive when you want to share items with others. (Ex. "WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?!?!? THAT'S WORTH X-AMOUNT YOU C*NT!")

Cannot comprehend bartering or mutual aid.

What baffles me is that DayZ is about surviving a zombie apocalypse. Keyword being "surviving". Just because there are traders it does not mean that the survival aspect must be capitalistic. Helping people and building a communal aspect in a post-apocalyptic environment where you could be mauled to death by zombies, bears, wolves, etc at any time is the best survival option and not where one must depend on having enough cash on hand to buy every little thing.

The more I think about a zombie/post-apocalypse type scenario happening in a place like the United States or United Kingdom (or any hyper-nationalist capitalist state) the more I think we're kind of fucking doomed. Like just a little fucking doomed. Mainly because of the individualist, "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality that has gotten only the 1% farther in life yet brainwashed billions into thinking they are millionaires in-waiting while they get paid unfairly. Too many do not understand mutual aid...yet they set up GoFundMe accounts so they can pay off their medical bills. It's disturbing how around-the-facts people can go and for how long.

Even in a fucking survival video game where you loot to survive in a post-apocalyptic world full of stuff that wants to kill you there are people that put a price on everything and hold currency over necessity. If you've ever been in a WoW Guild it can also be this way too.

We all saw and were impacted by the Pandemic. We all saw what people did with hoarding supplies and buying up supplies so they could sell them online at a markup...during a global pandemic. The world is still recovering from that greed (and Covid-19 has not gone away at all). Supply chains are still fucked. Imagine if the Pandemic was worse. Imagine if The Last of Us came to pass. I don't even want to think about it not because of the clickers. No. I don't want to think of it because of the ultra-individualism of too many people that would become a faction of rabid capitalists without a world bank or a stable currency.

Just a little fucking doomed.

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w1f1n1ghtm4r3 · 6 months

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ippiki au lore dump

if the name of the au does not make it very obvious, this au was inspired very heavily by the trained cards for kick it up a notch (i just chose to reference the comm, hitsuji ga ippiki, as the au name because it sounds cooler than calling it like. kickup au. so its ippiki au instead. when i first started working on this i just called it animal fighters au but thats long LOL)

its one of my favorite sets, im a big fan of dystopian and post-apocalyptic themes which the set hits perfectly and there was room to have fun with animal designs (i mean, seriously, they gave kohane sheep horns and named akitos costume "hound kid") and so i started thinking from the moment i laid eyes on the set when it leaked and i ended up with an au based around the idea of animal/human hybrids.

first of all for actual au stuff, character profiles! these were made a lot earlier on into working the au so ive made minor adjustments to their designs since then, but nothing drastic. mainly just little things ive changed when drawing them in more detail, like additional scars and such.

while making kohane a sheep and akito a dog (hes... not a specific kind of dog. hes a mix of a whole bunch of different larger domestic dog breeds combined with some wild canines. ) were obvious from the set, deciding on the animals for an and touya required a bit more thought. i ended up settling on a fox for an partially as a nod to her ny3 card and also because for a long time now ive thought theyre fitting for her anyway, and touya as a black leopard because... he's kitty. but i wanted to make him a big kitty not a domestic kitty. i do also like bunny touyas but for how i was feeling with this au i wanted him to be a cat.

theres the fun little detail that kohane is the only animal that isnt a predator in vbs.

but i should probably explain why theyre animal hybrids in this au.

im going to put the rest of the lore dump and more art below, this gets long.

basically, in the face of a coming apocalypse, there was an effort to attempt to hybridize humans with animals to see if they could create a form of human (or something seen as "human enough") that would be more resilient if the apocalypse threatened the survival of normal humanity. it was never completely successful and the hybrids were less stable/generally shorter lived (if physically stronger) but it ended up being unnecessary and enough of humanity survived to rebuild. but the experiments to create hybrids continued.

in the present day of the au, hybrids are created for... less pleasant tasks. the kinds of things people dont want to take on, and theyre physically stronger than the average human so theyre put to those jobs instead. or theyre created as showpieces/pets for the wealthy (most people outside of those circles find it strange to keep hybrids like that though. hybrids arent always seen as being truly human (although theyre fully capable of everything human and then some) but theyre still seen as human enough for it to be weird).

many of them though, are created as sacrifices for entertainment in battle arenas where theyll have to fight each other to the death. its a seemingly inevitable fate to die there once theyre sent, but escape has happened before. an is living proof of that, as both of her parents are escaped arena fighters who helped establish a small town of hybrids out in the wasteland beyond the city at the core of hybrid creation and sacrifice.

how an ended up as an arena fighter despite being born well outside the city... thats a long story.

touya is a showpiece fighter, created to fight but kept secure and safe outside of his registered fights. he might be healthier physically, much less worn down by fighting, but hes been very socially isolated and doesnt fit in with other hybrids very well.

an and touya fight in the same arena, and touyas fight days are the only times he interacts with other hybrids. hes given free reign around the hybrid compound (where most other hybrids are restricted under collars and chains) and he ends up meeting an there. although tense, they become sort of friends and he frees her and they escape together.

kohane and akito are just normal arena fighters, created solely for that purpose, although kohane was meant as an early sacrifice due to her skittish nature, but she survives. theyre in the same arena as each other, although its a harsher one than the one antouya are in, theyre unable to properly interact with anyone else at all and are just lucky enough to be neighbors to end up bonding.

i just grouped them based on which side of their face they have the barcodes on in the original cards lol in this au the arenas generally brand their fighters with a code for identifying them. touyas is actually not permanent like the others, but temporarily applied whenever he has a fight coming up (like a temporary tattoo lol)

kohane managing to survive despite the intention being that she dies is actually the driving force that starts the fic for this au (which fun fact, despite me never mentioning the title, does have a title! the fic will be called "fight, flight, freedom", unless i think of something that fits even better, but i already like the title as is so i probably wont change it)

its rough but i promise everyone gets a happy ending eventually :)

now for sitting through all that rambling heres some art

heres my very initial attempts at designs for them! no drastic changes even since this initial pass at designs tbh i was pretty content with them pretty quickly

some various doodles of them interacting, some during/around the time of the fic and others post-fic

what if they were... more animal? like furries instead of just the ears/tails? obviously noncanon but it was a fun little thing to draw

wip aged up designs! heavily inspired by the power of unity set because it also fits into the post apocalyptic type theme and i thought would work for them when theyre a little older. assume theyre about 20-21 here, while in the main canon of the au theyre about 16-17.

a silly little sketch i did last week of aged up akikoha in their burn my soul outfits... kohane cant really wear hats, horns are inconvenient for that. everyone elses ears would probably make hats difficult too, but you could probably make holes for their ears. you cant really make holes for the tops of her horns.

some little finished pieces i did for this au. can you tell akito is my favorite to draw for this?

now heres some other random au facts

an and haruka are childhood friends, haruka also being the child of ferals. haruka is a domestic cat hybrid (either a gray or black cat, i havent decided which yet). she is not in their hometown anymore either. where is she now...? ill leave you to wonder about that.

kohane and minori grew up in the same group of created hybrids together, theyre friends but were sent to different places so they dont know whats happened to each other since. minori is a goat btw (inspired by her halloween card)

a lot of ans scars are from injuries that snowballed after an incident in a fight that severely broke her tail and led to part of it being amputated. her balance was thrown off for a while after that so she was a little clumsier in fights than normal

akitos scars on the other hand are caused by the fact that hes a reckless fighter. a good fighter, but not much care for the damage he takes in the process. that and improper padding on his collars and muzzle, leaving those spots unable to fully heal from being rubbed against metal for months and when they finally do heal they scarred.

im still sorting things out for sure but tentatively for vbs npcs i have decided on fox ken and yuka (obviously, same as an), tiger taiga (i mean... how could i not go for the pun. and i think it suits him), maned wolf nagi (update march 2024 ive drawn nagi now so this is what has been made canon), raccoon kotaro, caracal arata, and dog souma (sorry to any tatsuya fans, i have not figured out how to include him in the au at all)

vbs all very clingy with each other once they get comfortable together. platonic polysquad ❤️

other characters outside of vbs exist in this au but theyre just not relevant enough to the story for me to include here 👍

the fic outline is like 2.4k words. the first chapter is a couple scenes away from being finished and its about 5k words. it will not be the longest chapter of the fic. this is going to be a long au.

maybe ill do another lore dump another day if i can think of more stuff. well see.

if you made it this far, thank you for reading, heres an edit i made the moment we got high quality versions of the cards and is probably partially responsible for the existence of this au

#w1f1 ramblings #w1f1 draws #ippiki au #project sekai #vivid bad squad #long post #sorry this is an absurdly long post #i may be a little hyperfixated on my own au. lol.#i just love my fucked up little creatures #my goal is to hopefully finish the fic by the time kickup reaches ensekai #but we shall see when i complete it id rather make it good than rush to get it out in time

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voidedjuice · 7 months

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Some A lot of questions for your setting!

1. Is the tree doll and windup doll also a part of the ghost doll setting?

1-a. If so, can ghosts be bound to the tree one too? (+what happens if someone tries to bind a ghost to the windup? Just doesn't work, or something worse?)

1-b. If dolls can work and have personalities without a spirit bound to them, are spirit bound dolls simply powered by the ghost, or does the doll act as a second body? Is both possible depending on how the ghost is bound?

2. The most recent post said the ghost makes a pact to serve the dollmaker. Is this magically enforced or is it just a trust thing?

2-a. Has a ghost bound to a doll ever tried to run off to do their own thing? Like maybe a grudge or last wish they couldn't solve as a spirit, but are willing to take another stab at with a physical body at their disposal?

3. The windup one implied dolls for binding ghosts have a decent ratio of organic bits in the making. What kind of organics are commonly used? Do say, meat work better than plants? Do mushrooms?

4. How does one get the ghost to agree to go into a doll? Does being a ghost just really suck?

5. What happens if a doll gets destroyed? Just a 'oh damn, gonna need a new doll'?

6. Since binding a ghost is so it gets 'used up' by the doll and pass on, does that mean more active dolls pass on faster? Could a ghost get stuck inside a doll that gets too damaged to move, and sorta end up frozen in place until someone finds them?

7. Is seems a dollmaker/doll relationship is kinda long term? Is there a limit to how many dolls a dollmaker looks after at a time? Or they mostly just drop them off at appropriate places and just visit for regular checkups?

8. Other than the joints and seal, is there a way to tell a doll and a human apart? Skin color, texture, temperature, etc?

8-a. Are their cheeks soft and fleshy???

9. Do they retain all senses or are some gone/dulled? Or can dolls have sharper senses than humans?

10. Can they eat or drink? Can they swallow things? Should they rather not even if they could?

10-a. Presuming there is no need to eat(conthey are a ghost in a doll body), do some dolls still do anyways just for the sake of it?

11. Do dolls sleep? Or do they just quietly read or something in a room?

12. Do some dolls occasionally have like, a existential crisis of sorts at their new doll body? Or do they go through that while a ghost and mostly just accept their inhumanity?

13. Are ghosts consulted on their new form or do the dollmakers just kinda hope the ghosts like it? Can they swap out parts later if they want to?

Also I really like your art! It's pretty! And nice! And also I really dig the concept all around.

Woah a ton! Thanks for the interest!!

1) They are in the same setting! It's sort of a peaceful post-apocalyptic setting, where there aren't that many humans left and most work is done by dolls and other automatons

1a) A ghosts long-term vessel needs some material that was once a part of something living, and it needs to be comfortable for the ghost to live in. The wind-up dolls lack the material, and are commonly too small for a ghost to settle into.

In order for a ghost to be bound to a doll, the doll needs to have a seal built in to it (lock thing usually in the middle of a doll's chest), since that part is what keeps the ghost contained (without it needing to put any effort into staying in control of it). The seal also makes it so the ghost can't leave the doll, unless it's let out.

If you've got your hands on a seal but have no certification for building your own dolls, then an arboreal type is the perfect, pre-built vessel for your illegal ghost binding business! (but watch out) Thus, they are fairly strictly regulated too.

1b) The ghost powers the doll! The structures built inside the doll allow the ghost to effortlessly move its limbs like they were their own.

The other types of dolls have something like an artificial spirit built for them, which allows them to act mostly independently, and have their own personalities. There's many types of systems for letting such a doll move around, since an artificial spirit lacks the powers of a ghost.

2. It's trust! Being a ghost kind of sucks for reasons I'll go into sometime in the future, so somebody offering them a new physical body + a way for them to find peace and move on is usually appealing to them. Not all ghosts will accept the offer though, so they stay ghosting around.

People just wanting to get rid of ghosts around them might try to force them into containers/find someone who is willing to use force, but that tends to end poorly for most of the involved parties. Ghosts need to be treated with care and respect, or else bad things will happen.

2a) It does happen sometimes. Such ghosts are usually caught and released into their former enviroment, and the dollmaker is punished for their careless handling (+ any potential damages caused by the ghost running around).

Sometimes a dollmaker's contract with a ghost includes terms about making progress on the ghosts unfinished business, especially in the case of younger ghosts, whose loved ones and former belongings might still exist in the world.

3) Bone is common, but the "organic material" can also involve plants and other such things. Stuff that was living. Flesh isn't really used for anything but reeally short-term projects, because it'll rot. Still living things aren't used, because the change they undergo causes problems. Mushrooms could work if preserved properly.

Human bodies aren't exactly legal to use due to the stigma of their use in necromancy. A dollmaker making new parts for themselves might use some of their own without telling anyone though.

When Aalis revived Sharon, she stripped her body for parts. Anything that could be preserved went in. It was.. a long, fairly deranged process.

The wind up dolls are usually made from very regular real world doll materials, like resin, porcelain etc. Sometimes they're made with wood, but that's cutting it a bit close.

4) It sucks bad. There's also terms and conditions that get negotiated between the ghost and the dollmaker, to sweeten the deal.

5) For a regular doll, they're usually repaired (or scrapped for parts if that isn't possible). The artificial spirit will usully cling to anything mostly intact, so they're surprisingly durable. The materials used are precious, and the creation of a doll is a precise art, so nothing is put to waste if it can be helped.

For a ghost bound into a doll, it gets out and might end up in trouble depending on the location. A disembodies ghost might get swept up with the wind, or get dragged to their initial location. It might also panic and cause destruction around it. A bad time all around.

6) Yeah, a ghost uses up its excess emotional energy while moving around the doll and generally living and experiencing things.

A ghost could get stuck like that, which is why certified dollmakers have all their dolls registered to their guild. That way it'll be known if one goes missing, and they can be retrieved and helped out of their situation.

7) The closeness of the relationship can depend on the terms of their contract, but usually bound ghosts at least go to their dollmakers for regular checkups at least around once per month or so (and always immediately after taking any damage).

A common guideline for dollmakers is to only keep active such an amount of dolls, that they would be able to fix them within a reasonable amount of time, even if they all experienced catastrophic failure at once. The guild trusts certified dollmakers to know what they're doing, but will send out warnings and help if one seems to be overextending themselves.

8) A doll can be differentiated from a human by touch, at the very least. A doll feels cool to the touch, and the texture of their 'skin' is very different to a human's. There are some dollmakers striving for better and better likeness to a living human though. Maybe one day they'll get it perfect.

8a) It's possible depending on the maker! Usually not though.

9) Their senses are about as sharp as a human's, but there are mods that can make them sharper.

The feel of being in a doll body is very different from how it is to just be a fleshy old human, which causes a lot of issues in direct revival cases.

10) It's possible to make a doll that can do those things. It's reasonably common in those made to be companions to people, and ghosts who've wished for that ability.

A doll without the right inbuilt systems shouldn't, because it might gunk up their system.

10a) Yeah! Some regular dolls will join their masters for meals, and people often like eating things that taste good, so bound ghosts do so as well.

11) Bound ghosts can go dormant for a time, to preserve their energy for lore important actions. This is sort of like sleep, but dreamless, and they can wake up at will anytime if something happens around them.

Arboreal dolls can shut down if needed, but mostly they just hang out. Artificial spirits have no need for such deep rest, and the doll's energy production systems keep producing the energy even at night.

Wind-up dolls shut down into a sleep-like state when they aren't wound. Many artisans produce cute little sleepwear for them to wear when they're offline.

12) It tends to happen in ghosts that have been bound into a doll soon after becoming one, but mostly the angst happens when they are ghosts.

Directly revived people usually have it bad though. (Sharon is built different and didn't)

People who've intentionally switched to a doll's body vary, but usually it's a carefully made decision so they mostly manage to get through it.

13) A bound ghost is intimately involved in the making of their new form. Usually it's similar to whatever of their old look can be parsed from their ghost form, but it can be different if requested. There are dollmakers out there, who will add their own spin into all the dolls they make (adding animal ears, special eyes, extra limbs, etc. with the consent of the ghost, of course.)

Also thanks!!

#asks #oc lore #some stuff here i might come back to in a drawing 🤔 but a lot of it wouldve been a bit difficult to convey so here it is in text #yay #long post

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crashlapine · 4 months

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so uh, adventure time spoilers even though it's been a good decade i guess

elaborating on the tags on that last reblog, i've been goin in hard on marathoning the original adventure time series. i say 'original' because the fionna and cake thing apparently got made into a full-blown series of its own that takes place quasi-post mainline adventure time or something? who knows. been trying to remain spoiler-free

anyway. what the fuck is this show dude.

like i've always heard people mention it gets heavy, but vague memories of what i remember watching as a kid (back when cable was something i had access to, roughly during just seasons one and two) all made it very hard to put aside the original impression i had that it was just some funny quirky thing i used to watch. some fun little show where "mathmatical!" is a family-friendly exclamation for adventure and all swears and expletives are substituted with random g-rated humor

like, willing to bet everyone at this point is at least sorta familiar with the post-apocalyptic setting/backdrop running underneath it all; i remember back in its airtime when everyone treated it as a big deal, how folks here loved to theorize about it before the explicit confirmation in-show

but... now, actually sitting down to watch this all in order, seeing this silly thing slowly turn into this heavy episodic mess about loss, manipulation, the legacy you're expected to leave behind, identity (and a lack of ties to one's own), and god knows what else... the post-apoc theming's much less a Shocking Reveal, and more just... "yeah, that's just the setting. life goes on. this is how we've dealt with the fallout in trying to rebuild society, fixing our mistakes" since s03/s04.

as funny as it feels to get into a long post about a show aimed at kids and teens, we also have literal episodes like [spoilers] finn getting his own dominant arm completely torn off while trying to chase down his absent father, with the only thing stopping him from bleeding out is a mix of Cursed Artifact and Pool Of Healing fantasy tropes, going on to spend the next episode, and i mean the full fucking runtime of the episode [s06e04, "The Tower"], in a dissociative/depressive state, absentmindedly building a tower to the heavens above in some vain revenge-driven attempt to find his father again just so he can rip /his/ arm off as eye-for-an-eye payback, operating off the vague notion the dude escaped earth's orbit and is just 'up there' somewhere. the only thing that stops him and snaps him out of that state is passing out from a lack of oxygen at the elevations he reaches.

like, imagine tuning into a rerun of a random episode of this show and eleven minutes of /that/ is what you get, devoid of context. there's no adventure there. this isn't fun. but you can't bring yourself to fault the kid, either, seeing the events of the past dozen episodes that built up to that point. this little story arc is hardly the only time this kind of thing happens, and the consequences of each one of these events is never neglected by the writing team. it resonates through the rest of the story, constantly

all taken together, it feels like the main motto of this series season four and on has become some reassurance to the viewer that "life can throw a lot of shit your way, and we don't always know how to handle these things. but for better or worse, life goes on. it has to."

marathoning this series properly has been a trip that resonates close to home too often in too many ways, as weirdly high-fantasy complete nonsense as it can be. feels weird to acknowledge that.

i'm gonna miss this show dearly once i'm through with it

#txt

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elliepassmore · 4 months

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Fathomfolk review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: urban fantasy, political intrigue, underwater myths, multiple POVs

Big thanks to Netgalley, Orbit, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I really liked diving into the world of Fathomfolk. There's a lot of interesting things going on with the people and with the worldbuilding, and I think the different perspectives offer quite interesting views on the whole thing.

This book is set in a fantastical post-apocalyptic world where rising seas and the Great Bathyal War resulted in most (all?) land being underwater and humans having to live in a floating city while fathomfolk, live either in underwater havens or as second-class citizens in the city alongside humans. Tiankawi is a fairly advanced city, with skyscrapers and elevator trams to take people places, but it also has its more downtrodden areas as well where people, human and folk alike, have to struggle to make a living. None of our POV characters come from the privileged side of the city, but all three of them end up walking in those circles, and so we get to see different aspects of Tiankawi's many sides.

Tiankawi is a city on the edge. There are factions within factions and near everyone seems to be scheming in some way. More things are done through backroom channels and underhanded maneuvering than out in the open, which makes it tricky to determine at times where things will go next. It's definitely a city ripe for violence and I think the situation and where it leads felt very realistic.

I also thought the folk were pretty interesting. There are nagas and dragons and sirens and kelpies, and a whole bunch of other kinds of creatures that I'm less familiar with or hadn't heard of. It was interesting seeing the range of folk there were and the different ways their magical nature showed up and how that impacted them and their culture. I'm definitely interested in learning more about the various folk in book 2 and seeing how things stay the same or change after everything that happened at the end of this book.

Mira is a half-siren, half-human border patrol who's determined to use whatever influence she has to try and change the way folk are treated in Tiankawi. Over and over again she's proven herself to be the best and has climbed up the ranks through dedication and hard work, but she's also not blind to the things going on in Tiankawi and the way people see her. She takes the stance that things need to change but that meaningful change means exerting influence inside the system little by little until the system is doing what you want it to be doing. Her fiancé, the dragon prince and ambassador to one of the havens, Kai, fits in that same category and the two of them work well as a team trying to get their agenda achieved. Mira is my favorite POV character and I wish she got more page time in this book since I thought she had a very level way of looking at things and had a realistic sense of the humans and the folk. I also really liked her relationship with Kai and thought it was super sweet.

Nami is Kai's younger sister and has a rebellious streak a mile long. She also wants to change things but is more radical about it and believes the only way to do it is to work outside the law. She was part of a student group in her haven and pulled a stunt that got her banished. Tiankawi surprises her in many ways, and though I do think she began to see both sides of it, there was definitely a part of her for a good portion of the book that continued wanting to use force to achieve her goals. Nami is very stubborn and set in her beliefs, which can make her a frustrating character at times since she tended to act without seeing the whole picture first and kind of had a tendency to make things worse. That being said, Nami undergoes a lot of personal growth in this book and I think she comes out better for it. I also don't entirely blame her for all of her actions since 1) she does start waking up to reality, and 2) she's 100% being manipulated by someone who is very good at what they do. I don't really think all of Nami's actions are always her own, and once her mistakes are made, she does do her best to make up for them.

Cordelia is another major POV character and is a seawitch with a tentacle in every pot. She makes deals all over the place and is behind the scenes pulling the strings in a surprising number of ways. Cordelia is an interesting character but she's definitely not one I like, though at times she does seem to make some sympathetic decisions. I just feel like I don't have a good feel on her and that makes it hard to want to sympathize with her. Her family is clearly a big motivator, but there's an undercurrent of ambition there that I think drives her more than she lets on.

For side characters, Kai is my favorite. He's not in it too much since he has his own things going on outside of Mira and Nami, but he's a gentle and understanding character, and it's clear he cares a ton about his family, folk in general, and Tiankawi as a whole. He has a lot of grace, even in circumstances where I think it would be okay if he lost it a little. Overall a very lovable and wholesome character.

Trish is Mira's mother and someone Mira would risk a lot for. Trish is an older siren who's been around for a while and has seen all sorts of what the city has to offer. Despite that, she's a lot like Mira and has a very level head about things. She exerts a fairly calming influence as well and I think her and Nami's relationship is something that Nami desperately needed. She definitely feels like a mother, which is kind of silly to say, but I really think Chan was able to get Trish's vibe down very well.

Firth is another side character, though he's a member of the Drawbacks, a radical folk group in Tiankawi that stages demonstrations. They have a reputation for being dangerous, so naturally Nami falls in with them. Firth is a slippery sort and a smooth talker. He seems like someone who's pretty open and just wants you to give them a try,' but over the course of the book I feel like his vibe slowly changes to something a little more solid and a little more hardline than he first came across. I'm not really a fan of his character, but I also don't think we're supposed to like him. I am interested to see what he gets up to in book 2 though.

The ending of this book was a rollercoaster. So many things came to a head in succession, some of it quite surprising. I liked how all the pieces came together and I liked how unexpected some of it was. One of the solutions was actually downright hilarious, not going to lie, and I'm super intrigued to see where it will go. The ending-ending is bittersweet and I'm holding out hope there's a solution though I don't know if I actually expect that or not.

Overall I enjoyed this book and can't wait for book 2. There's a lot of getting to know Tiankawi and the culture of the city and the people and folk who occupy it, so the beginning can be kind of slow at times. However, the payoff is definitely worth it and all the characters are intriguing and have depth to them.

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aquarellchill · 2 years

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Similiarities between Stray and Alita: Battle Angel

I plan to make crossover fan arts between Stray and Alita: Battle Angel.

But first, I want the fans of both to see what things connects those two titles and why I think they’re a good match to create AUs.

With pictures. Spoilers for both Stray and A:BA.

(In case of the A:BA, I used knowledge from not just the movie, but also things like novelisation, featurettes, the original manga)

Setting

Both Stray and A:BA take place in a post-apocalyptic world, hundreds of years after an event that made humans extinct/almost extinct.

According to this video , Stray could potentially take place in 27th century.

Alita actually takes place in 26th century. So they’re not that far apart in time.

I won’t mention the cyberpunk aesthetic because it’s something you see in many movies and games.

B12/Alita parallels

Both B12 and Alita were in a coma for centuries - until somebody found them - and have amnesia.

They regain small pieces of their memories gradually. And those memories reveal a dark past.

They remember a world that doesn’t exist anymore, remember things nobody else does.

They’re humans in machine body.

Also, both are the last of their kind (Alita - the last berserker from Mars, and B12 - the last human)

And both in the end are ready to sacrifice themselves and let the city go into a new era. (if you know the original manga’s ending)

Cat/ Alita parallels

The main character fell into a pile of trash/rubble and that’s how their adventure in the post-apocalyptic city starts.

Both Alita and Cat - are “out of this world” (Alita literally, the cat is from the Outside). They’re going to bring big changes to the world they fell into.

One of the main similiarities between Stray and A:BA is how the world is divided into layers/levels

The place where the remains of civilization exist is divided into levels - the higher the level is physically, the higher is its status.

In Alita: Iron City < Zalem < Jeru/LADDER

In Stray: Slums < Midtown < Walls/Control room

Also in both there are sewers that are a very dangerous place.

There is an elevator that connects the levels but it doesn’t work anymore.

The elevator that connected Zalem and Surface was destroyed (only Zalem-Jeru part remained) to protect Zalem from pandemic on Earth.

The Elites cut off the connection with lower level and were watching as people below die from the pandemic.

And the same thing happened in Stray, Elevators were shut down, but in case of Walled City 99, it failed to save even the elites in the end.

Zalem/Midtown dump their garbage on Iron City/Slums

The Iron City/Slums people are supposed to reuse this garbage.

There is no communication between people of different levels.

The city (Walled city/Zalem) sealed itself from outside dangers. In general, nobody from the Surface can go inside it, and the citizens don’t go outside.

I even see similiarity in how you perceive the levels

From the lowest level (Iron City, Slums), you can see the edge of the mid level (Zalem/Midtown) with it’s buildings.

Meanwhile, the last, highest level is so out-of reach and mysterious, you can be unaware it even exist.

There are only small hints, like windows in the walls (Stray), star in the sky that never moves (Alita) and the fact the elevators have to lead somewhere. In both cases those hints give you no idea how those places looks like (Jeru/Control room), unlike with Zalem and Midtown where at least you have some glimpse.

It’s a depressing, dark world, but there is still joy and music

Cute small vehicles

Factory/Neco Corp exist as both law enforcement and produce all goods.

And you don’t want to deal with their Centurions/Sentinels...

Control Room

I know I compared Control Room to Jeru, but in A:BA movie, we saw briefly a mysterious control room in Zalem.

Both control rooms share some vibes - they’re sterile with bright light, standing out from any previous location we saw before, with concrete walls. And a dark control panel.

Here, the elites watch from above and decide on people’s fate by pushing buttons.

The number 99

For both titles, the number 99 is special.

Alita remembers that in the past, she was called “number 99″.

The city where Stray takes place is “Walled City 99″

In both cases we don’t know what this number indicates.

Were there 98 other cities? Were there other 98 Martian berserkers?

Hope you had a nice read!

If you would like to add something to it, feel free to tell me.

#stray 2022 #stray spoilers #stray game #alita battle angel #battle angel alita #stray x alita: battle angel crossover #comparison #cyberpunk #lore #stray b12

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krishu213 · 2 years

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Part 2 of Live session of Question Answer by Writer Yim.

I am uploading the part 2 of Live Session Of Hell and High water.

Link for part 1-https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/romance-club-daily/688713254247317504?source=share

Will sharing what Todd wrote (keeping to self or reading aloud) make a difference?

Yes, the rumor will make a difference.

What is Todd favorite recipe to bake?

Gingersnap cookies

Will we see parents of chand and mc in future?

Most likely

Is that broken case of palladia vials play vital role in future story??(like one of the reason for disaster)

The broken case of Palladia definitely has an impact, but the Aquila's situation is more of a problem overall.

Will we be able to match make characters in story?

Most likely

Has the disaster started or its about to start?

The disaster has started

If not for boat career what would have mc choose as her career?

She probably would have been a slightly disgruntled woodworker :D

I have noticed a scar or burn skin tissues on main character's neck side area..? Is she designed that way or their is some back story for mc's scar near neck area??

There's a backstory, but like many cool scars, it's not anything earth-shattering.

Is Phoebe a love interest? I really liked what we saw of her so far so I am hoping she might be!

Yes, she is

What exactly happened in the world? I am not sure I understand what was the "disaster" that changed the planet.

This is a big, complicated thing. There wasn't any one thing, but it was a combination of war, disease, the effects of climate change, and the most unlikely one, the shifting of the earth's magnetic poles leading to more or less a collapse of satellite based technologies. For example, Alaska isn't a state anymore. Most of the global superpowers broke apart as everything deteriorated.

Will we be able to assemble crew in future or ask characters to join the boat crew?

I cannot answer this question right now.

will we see Krissa again, and will she have a role in the plot?

We may see Krissa again, but that depends on how long the story runs, and I know in my mind what role she would likely play. I don't think it's a huge one, but I do feel that every character plays some important role. (Even Ross 😅)

Chand, I love him as friend, so I was wondering: will we have the chance to pair him up with someone? My heart goes out for him and his endless quest in finding love! He deserves happiness too after all .

I have someone in mind as a potential matchmaking option for Chand. I don't know if it will actually play out at this time.

Apart from obvious “we and our progeny will all die if this issue will not be addressed soon” what was inspiration behind choosing climate change as a topic? Why post-apocalyptic setting?

There are a few reasons for this. I think that the way the world is changing is something that affects all of us, but a lot of us have a lifestyle that allows us to look away. It's a difficult topic and honestly, the research I did for this story has been heartbreaking at times. I think there's a tendency to look at these huge issues and feel that they're just too big to think about or not our problem. So, in one regard, I wanted to not just ignore the problem but also not be completely doom and gloom about it. I do think that no matter what happens, people will continue to find ways to adapt to and live on our planet. Nature and animals are also near and dear to my heart and a huge source of inspiration for me. The post-apocalyptic setting was also, in part, to make sailing relevant in a futuristic setting, and it kind of fit naturally with the collapse of infrastructure that supports most of our modern transportation and supply chains.

This book has an incredibly diverse cast of main and side characters. Did you base any of them on people you know?

Not specifically.I certainly looked at people that often weren't represented in media and the stories and experiences they had, and took that into consideration when creating the cast. Of course, there are so many underrepresented people that I feel like I only put a drop in the ocean here.

Any chance Pramila is an LI? May be not a full branch? We're in love with her character design.

She is not a romanceable character, unfortunately. I agree, the artists did a great job with her.

From which character chand ,sunny was inspired?

No characters in particular, actually. I started more with an idea of the role I wanted them to play in the story.

Will be able to adopt baby orca?

Sort of? As much as you can adopt a wild orca.

Will chand and pramila converse in Hindi?

Pramila is actually not Indian. Her parents named all their children after famous historical figures. She does know some hindi though.

#hell and high water #romance club #rc hell and high water #rc chand #rc phoebe #rc lori kaplan #rc sunny #rc baku #rc spot the baby orc #rc nixie #rc rj martin #rc hhw #romance club

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nonsensegnomes · 2 years

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bestie what are your top nine favorite movies atm

oooh good question <3 well like i said i'm discovering i've covered way more ground in tv over the last few years (which i'm gonna rectify soooooonnnnnn i think, got a lot of exciting recs from that recent tag game!!) so this is pitifully basic, but like in terms of what i'm thinking about Right This Moment:

the hitcher – slightly deranged about this ever since i saw it last week, a movie perfectly tuned to my preferences <3 love love LOVE the main performances & the dreamy atmosphere & the cinematography; just! the americana of it all!! plus there is soooo much to dig into, like the folkloric resonances (i mean the vanishing hitchhiker story HELLO), the gay panic (as in the actual original homophobic meaning) every shot of the first half hour is just LACED with, that scene where he puts the coins over his eyes in the diner.... obsessssssssssed.

the black phone – okay so i watched this last night & it might fade from the faves over the next few days but rn i can't stop Picking at it. genuinely Disturbed me a couple times so 🙈👍 ethan hawke ATE, the little girl playing the sister KILLED it, and my friend pj should've had more screentime so the sets of siblings could parallel each other or something but wcyd ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i am a little I Can Fix It about some of its clunkier plot points, but the main conceit of the phone fucked soooooo hard i can forgive it 💖

it 2017 – listen. i have been feeling this rewatch approaching all summer & as soon as i get my grubby hands on a projector (as god intended this movie to be watched <3), august is going to be thee month for it!!! idk it just has a very dear place in my heart 💕 like everyone else i did have a 2019 breakdown despite its many Many flaws, but the first one remains That Bitch w/ the perfect pacing & ending... coming of age film that just happens to have a clown in it babey!! also always going to care about eddie kaspbrak unfortunately 😔

nausicaä of the valley of the wind – my fave ghibli movie!! What Is There To Say. it was the first one i saw before i was aware everyone went insane about like hmc & princess monoke (which i also adore!!), so at first i was just Captivated by the animation genius & the Weirdness & the design of those bugs... it just plucks at something in me, like this is PRECISELY the kind of post-apocalyptic story i can enjoy, like what a coherent & hopeful environmental message that's, well, not subtle but certainly managed with a very deft touch!!!

fight club – sorry for being a film bro :/ anyway go look at this important piece of LGBT history

the death of stalin – love a comedy where everything falls apart around & also due to a bunch flailing back-stabbing incompetent idiots, so of course an armando iannucci joint always hits the spot <3 just SUCH alarming pettiness & cruelty that you have to laugh in the face of it ohhhh my godddddd

southern comfort – okay so kinda cheating with this docu, but it just impacted me sooooooo deeply the first time i saw it & i still go back and rewatch every once in a while. despite how sad it gets at the end, it actually is one of those things that gives me Real hope bc the whole thing is just about love & community & the radical Comfort transness allows you to find in yourself 💕💕💞💖 i would definitely rec it to absolutely everyone, it's only 90 mins & absolutely Life-Changing; i think there was a clip going round here a while ago about how affirming t4t love can be, and imo that just sums up the whole vibe. rest in power robert eads ✊😔

fire walk with me – well this is my favourite movie of all time despite the fact that i can NEVER ever watch it again ✌️ like i am well aware that it is technically kinda all over the place, what with david seeing fit to make the first half hour just "fbi procedural david bowie cameo now THIS character says something ominous & incomprehensible" but also. i Do Not Care bc the next hour + a half made me cry so hard it took me like 5 hrs to watch it; jesus CHRIST she was just a kid who needed someone to reach out and help her!!! laura i would have done so much cocaine with you & kept you alive forever!!!!!! also lynch's weird cryptic storytelling just appeals to me personally bc the way the meaning comes more from the audience's emotional response makes it kinda work on the same level as a folk tale for me, which i loveeeeeeeeeee unpicking; saw a post once about fwwm being structured like the saint's life of a martyr and !!! that is exactly It!

stardust – an all-time favourite, i mean the costumes! the pacing! the fun twists on fantasy tropes! the sheer CAMPINESS of it all!!! the way the plotlines converge in the end WOWED me as a child and to this day every time i watch another fantasy movie i'm like. Well You're Not Stardust Are You :/

& honourable mention to those films always occupying some part of my brain, that i can mouth along with from memory just because they are so comforting to me: tsn, the princess bride, 10 things i hate about you, pride 2014, bend it like beckham, saw (this nearly made the main list but like. too obvious.), the parent trap (1998 version), the karate kid

#hiiii bestie!! sorry i ignored this for a few days!#but i am BACK in good wifi now & Thinking About Movies #asks #americanphysco #also 9 is way too few i'm realising i wanted to put american psycho on here too #but i had to restrain myself bc what i've ACTUALLY been thinking about is the barbie movie version we've made up in our heads 😌#but fuck it the orig is a fave too put it on the board #personal #long post

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wizardlyghost · 2 years

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- i just spent like. fuckin indeterminable ages trying to sneak around this building. assklkjdlfha;lli

- tried to snipe the RAIDER SENTRIES off of the roof but there were More of them than i was expecting, so now i am very, very low on ammo for my HEAVILY MODDED 10MM PISTOL and my HAND CRANK LASER RIFLE. my pockets are overflowing with rounds for the shitty guns these RAIDERS are carrying but that’s not on the extreme end of being helpful.

- these SENTRIES must have the most insane hearing. theyre on top of this massive building that’s still a fair distance away but every time i twitch their ears perk up like a fuckin bloodhound’s.

- wait no bloodhounds are famous for tracking via smell i’m thinking of something else. the word has escaped my adhdled brain. i shall remember later when it is even less relevant. anyway.

- idk exactly how long i spent doing this but it was definitely multiple day-night cycles in-game. i really hope there’s no mechanic that punishes you for going without sleep.

- eventually i picked all the SENTRIES off and made my way around to the other side of the building. not a lot of SICK LOOT out here but i did find a side door into the building, which is a lot more my kind of entrance than going in the front.

- i did Not expect this many RAIDERS to be in this one room lol. i shot a few of them but a bunch more started swarming out and shooting me back so i ducked back out the door to catch my breath. the game is taking Really lonakahdf;H;KSJDGJ

- apologies. was gonna say “the game is taking Really long to load the outside world, i assume this means the RAIDERS are gonna start following me out the door instead of just forgetting about me when i step out of sight”, but then the game finished loading and ALL OF THEM HAD INSTANTANEOUSLY TELEPORTED OUT THE DOOR WITH ME. which i was not expecting. serves me right for typing in loading screens i guess. this did put them in V.A.T.S. range though so i did survive.

- explored the inside of this CAR FACTORY a bit. i keep finding these pieces of a ROBOTIC TOY HORSE scattered everywhere. i feel like this is gonna be a significant item? somehow? maybe i get to ride a NOBLE STEED around the wasteland if i manage to build it? i’m picturing nyooming around on this tiny ROCKET-POWERED ROCKING HORSE like a minecraft pig situation. fuck i hope this happens. these things take up precious INVENTORY space but i’m grabbing them anyway.

- there was a SENTRY ROBOT below the door i entered through that was in a really awkward position, so i tried throwing my first GRENADE. as it turns out, unlike the GHOST REBAR INCIDENT from my last post, the RAILINGS of these STEEL GANTRY WALKWAYS 100% count as solid objects, so i absolutely BLEW MYSELF THE FUCK UP. also sometimes if you die from explosions your arms and legs fall off which i hadn’t noticed before. i hope this only happens when you die because otherwise this game just got a lot more difficult.

- i have discovered that there are specific ARMOURS for your arms & legs. this is... ok, i guess? it seems kinda convoluted, and a bunch more of my INVENTORY just got taken up by things i’m wearing, but it’s cool it’s fine. i wasn’t gonna be able to nab everything that isn’t nailed down anyway.

- explored a bunch more. s2g this place is Full of surprises. sometimes GHOULS just crawl out of the vents with no warning. also there are BARRELS OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE just tucked away in corners and under stairs. i am reminded of my LAWYERLY QUEST: PERSONALLY RESURRECT O.S.H.A. FOR THE POST-APOCALYPTIC AGE. maybe i can train up the MINUTE MEN for this? i shall have to talk to PRESTON.

- there’s a ROBIT! a deactivated one on the workshop floor. i accessed its programming with my L33T H4CKZ and apparently it has a bunch of different operations it can perform? i’m guessing the intended idea here is to activate it to help me fight off the RAIDERS but i’m eyeing the MEDIC setting and getting ideas. maybe if i save activating it for later i can bring it back to SANCTUARY, have it act as the TOWN DOCTOR?

- also i think these HALF-FINISHED NUCLEAR AUTOMOBILES explode if you shoot them, which. fuck, dude. a lot of people find driving scary enough already without adding POTENTIAL NUCLEAR DETONATION to the mix. how did america survive as long as it did? was the first bomb that started the war just a SIXTEEN-CAR PILEUP that accidentally tipped the world into mutually assured destruction? i cannot rebuilld O.S.H.A. fast enough.

- i think i’ve cleared out the entire building, so now i’m gonna explore this SEWER PIPE i found that apparently the GHOULS have been coming in through. this apparently wasn’t a dire enough issue to warrant sealing off the tunnel so the RAIDERS just stuck a SENTRY GUN here. also i should mention that the SENTRY GUN was the only thing still active, the GHOULS had already killed all the RAIDERS in the vicinity, so i guess that plan worked about as well as i would’ve thought.

- once more unto the breach(ed sewer pipe that is probably definitely filled with irradiated garbage)! i hope there’s not NUCLEAR CROCODILES in here.

#fallout 4 #FALLOUT 4: THE RESURRECTION OF OSHA #FALLOUT 4 LIVEBLOG: THE GHOST FALLS OUT

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whatsonmedia · 9 days

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Film Friday: Dive into Must-Watch TV Series

“Dive into these must-watch TV series for unforgettable storytelling and unforgettable performances. Discover gripping post-apocalyptic drama in ‘Fallout’ series, exploring the aftermath of a nuclear disaster with intense survivalist themes and complex characters. Dive into the visually stunning sci-fi series ‘3 Body Problem’ for a mind-bending journey through human nature and the mysteries of the universe. Uncover the emotional depth in this ‘Lojja’TV seies, tackling societal pressures and self-worth in a powerful narrative. Experience the visual feast of ‘Heeramandi’ series, a tale of love and betrayal set in Lahore’s red-light district. Delve into the psychological depths series of ‘Baby Reindeer’, a raw and compelling exploration of the impact of stalking.”

Fallout

Fallout is a dark and exciting show about what happens after a nuclear war. It follows people trying to survive in a messed-up world. The characters are interesting and complex, and you’ll be hooked on their struggles. The filming makes the wasteland look amazing, in a creepy way. The actors are all fantastic and draw you into their scary journey. If you like shows about tough times and how people cope, you’ll love Fallout. It’s a world you won’t forget, even after it’s over.

youtube

3 Body Problem

“3 Body Problem is a mind-blowing sci-fi show with amazing visuals that explores big ideas about humans, technology, and the universe. The plot is complex and keeps you guessing, and it makes you think about important things. The actors are fantastic and bring the characters to life. With its great story and surprising twists, 3 Body Problem is a must-watch for any sci-fi fan. It’ll make you think long after you finish watching.”

youtube

Lojja

Lojja tackles a tough topic: verbal abuse in a seemingly happy marriage. It shows the pressure society puts on women and how important it is to believe in yourself. Some critics say the story is easy to guess and the characters aren’t well-developed. But it’s still a must-watch, especially if you can relate to Jaya’s problems. The acting is great and it will make you think about your feelings. Be prepared for some heavy stuff, though.

youtube

Heeramandi

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s new web series, Heeramandi, is a feast for the eyes. The trailer wows with its amazing sets, showing the fancy world of a brothel in old Lahore. But it’s not just pretty pictures. The story follows female entertainers, played by big stars like Manisha Koirala and Sonakshi Sinha, who deal with love, lies, and India’s fight for freedom. Heeramandi promises a deep drama in a stunning setting.

youtube

Baby Reindeer

“Baby Reindeer is different from other stalker stories. It shows how scary it is for both the person being stalked and the stalker themself. Richard Gadd acts so real it might be weird, but it’s also really interesting. It’s funny in a dark way and kind of creepy, but you can’t stop watching. It’s tough to watch, but if you can handle it, Baby Reindeer will stay with you for a long time.”

youtube

FAQ

What makes “Fallout” a must-watch series?

“Fallout” offers a gripping post-apocalyptic drama, expertly weaving intense survivalist themes with complex character dynamics. The series immerses viewers in a haunting world, leaving a lasting impact.

What sets “3 Body Problem” apart as a sci-fi series?

“3 Body Problem” captivates with its visually stunning and intellectually captivating narrative, delving deep into human nature, technological advancement, and the mysteries of the universe. The series leaves viewers pondering profound questions long after the credits roll.

What is the central theme of “Lojja” and why is it compelling?

“Lojja” tackles societal pressures and self-worth within a seemingly comfortable marriage, shedding light on an important subject. It offers strong performances and an emotional journey, making it an important watch for many.

What makes “Heeramandi” stand out as a web series?

“Heeramandi” is a visual feast set in Lahore’s red-light district, showcasing a complex drama of love, betrayal, and the burgeoning Indian independence movement. The series promises a compelling narrative against a breathtaking backdrop.

What makes “Baby Reindeer” a unique watch?

“Baby Reindeer” delves deep into the psychological impact of stalking on both victim and perpetrator, offering a raw and compelling exploration. The series challenges viewers and leaves a lasting impact for those who can handle it.

#Youtube

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maddyaddy · 2 months

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@unsaelig Expanding on my reply, which is reproduced here, in this post:

“To be a D&D snob, it is Forgotten Realms in 5E. Homogenized slop not meant to put across a certain vibe (as with the classic campaign settings or even Eberron), but to simply act as a corporate-pushed sandbox for any and all adventures, compatibility or vibes be damned.”

To put it in layman's terms, the setting of BG3 - the aforementioned Forgotten Realm - has increasingly been synonymous with D&D. Thus it has sort of overshadowed other settings on offer, and absorbed them sort of. That’s the TL;DR.

Originally, it was one of many campaign settings offered by TSR (the original owners of the IP) and, later, Hasbro. The only real ‘defaults’, in my opinion, before it were the rather medieval-inspired Greyhawk, and to a lesser extent, Krynn, the setting of the popular Dragonlance novels. However, Gary Gygax got expelled from the company he founded (by the granddaughter of the guy who made Buck Rogers into a comic strip, who is also the brother of the Transformers screenwriter Flint Dille). Greyhawk, as his personally created setting, was de-emphasized in favor of the Forgotten Realms.

None of this is to say Gygax was an angel or anything. I don’t want you, Gwen, to come away with a wholly positive impression of the man at all. He was a racist, who believed in the biological distinction between human races. I would argue that between Tolkien and Gygax, Gygax is the actual, avowed and active racist. Tolkien, in my opinion, was merely unconsciously drawing from a milieu of Christian racialization of evil and dehumanization dating back to at least Bernard de Clairvaux (with Bernard’s distinction between simple man-slaying and killing of ‘evil’ in his In Praise of the New Knighthood being particularly important to understanding the Orc problem). There is a difference in intent and presence of malicious action that make me far more comfortable with one than the other. So, returning to Forgotten Realms, its features have been progressively contorted and expanded by Hasbro to include popular stuff from other campaign settings like Warforged (robots, basically) and Vecna. However, these things are removed from their context and plopped into Forgotten Realms, in an almost postmodern sense. I.E Warforged, in their original context in another campaign setting called Eberron, were created to reinforce a kingdom’s armies in an apocalyptic war. In Forgotten Realms, this didn’t happen.

When I called it “homogenized slop”, it’s because it kind of is. It has been made into the do-anything, be-anything setting. Obviously, plenty of people still make their own settings, but in the official media, Forgotten Realms has pride of place as “the D&D setting”. It is what video games like the Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter series take place in, and it is what people largely draw from for inspiration for homebrew. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

#sorry for tagging you with all this Gwen #it's just too much for a reply and I know you don't like to get too much exposure #being avoidant and all #hence why there will be no sorting tags here

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screenmaven · 4 months

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Night of the Comet ☄️

So, I watched this movie last night on New Years Eve, which was a first time watch, and I’m going to have to say although it’s not the best film I’ve ever seen, I throughly enjoyed it. The aesthetic in this post apocalyptic film was my favorite thing about it, along with the fact that I could see myself in the main two girls characters.

As nerdy as I am and into science, I probably wouldn’t watch a comet (like this), cause I’ve seen so many movies that go this type of way, and I kinda get spidey scenes that certain things just might be a bad idea. I’d probably already be asleep when something like this happens to be honest. 😆

I didn’t stay up till midnight, cause I prefer sleep, and honestly, each day is a new day to start a new, so don’t feel bad if you make a resolution and fail. You can start over anytime. The tradition of New Years is great in a lot of ways, but don’t necessarily get upset if you didn’t have a kiss at midnight, or do all the things articles say to do. I will however not clean or do laundry today. Don’t want that kind of bad luck. I also had my dog pooping everywhere this morning at dawn, and a headache - so 2024 is off to a rocking start. Not forgetting to mention how foggy it was outside, but luckily there wasn’t a red haze.

Back to the movie analysis.

Soundtrack was nice, really loved the radio station set up, including the couch, and the neon lighting. I live for neon lighting, but I can’t do any strobes though.

I really think Stranger Things got some inspiration from this film as well, especially from the arcade game scene where Regina REG wanted to reclaim the spot of whoever DMK was, that took one of her places. Of course I love how DMK comes back in the end, but I won’t spoil that cuteness for you.

Basically both girls in the film (sisters) survive together in what is left of the world after everyone has been turned into dust or zombies.

They set out to find other people and meet Hector (another character) at the radio station. Then from Samantha getting on the radio and acting like a host, she gets a call from someone in some secret hideout. Which we then see those people who remind me of the Dharma Initiative doing all these weird blood dialysis experiments on survivors. Fun fact: I used to intern at a radio station for two years in college and had some sweet good times. I have a minor in journalism, so you can see why I am the way I am. Samantha is exactly my whole vibe when I currently podcast, and then.

My favorite scene in the film has to be the mall sequence, and as I’ve stated in previous posts, 80s mall vibes are just so cool. The sisters go on a shopping spree, while Girls Just Want To Have Fun plays. Then they have a shootout with some goth looking mall gang and use high heels as flying weapons. I’m all about that shit.

Needless to say the character Hector saves the day for the girls, is dressed up as Santa with flowers at one point, and everyone left finds family and love with a super cute ending. Go give it a watch and experience its mystique and allure that I haven’t fully disclosed, it’s so worth it. I’ve also added the Spotify link for the soundtrack below.

💋- until next time

#night of the comet #80s #movies #film #mall #aesthetic #new years #screenmaven

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mst3kproject · 2 years

Photo

Captive Women

You can tell this movie apart from Hercules and the Captive Women because today's feature actually has some captive women in it.

This movie has several threads connecting it to various episodes of MST3K. It was written and produced by Jack Pollexfen, who also produced Indestructible Man. The cast includes Ron Randall, who was in The She-Creature, and William Schallert, from Gunslinger. The director, Stuart Gilmore, never had his work featured on MST3K but did do the same job on the legendarily terrible Genghis Khan biopic The Conqueror (the one that starred John Wayne as a mongol chieftain). And of course, it's a post-apocalyptic caveman movie.

But where Teenage Caveman waited until the climax to let us know we were actually looking at the future, Captive Women gets that out of the way immediately – the Portentious 50s Narrator informs us that we are in the ruins of New York in the year 3000, when humanity is an endangered species! Oh, shit, is this the wrong movie? Am I watching a de-colourized Battlefield Earth?

Okay, I checked, and no, I am not. Whew! Anyway, we are introduced to three tribes: the Norms, who live in the old subway tunnels where they're protected from most of the radiation; the Mutates, who live on the surface in the ruins and are covered with lumps; and the Upriver Men, a gang of bandits. The latter have invited themselves to the wedding of the Norm Chief's son. They make themselves comfortable, then murder as many of the men and kidnap as many of the women as possible! The chief's son, Robert, and his friend Brohm, manage to escape only to be captured by the Mutates. Can the two tribes ever stop fighting each other long enough to realize they have a common enemy?

Captive Women is... well, it's not terrible. It's got characters and conflicts and a pleasing amount of moral ambiguity, refusing to let any one character be entirely heroic (although others are entirely evil). It is, however, an incredibly cheap and ham-fisted film. I kind of want to liken it to Avatar or District 9, in that it's enjoyable enough but can't stop hitting you over the head with its sledgehammer metaphor.

Unlike Avatar or District 9, it is not at all pretty to look at. The print is very dark, though not so much so that you can't tell what's going on. It merely gives the impression that it's always dark after the end of the world. This could be a result of radioactive dust in the atmosphere, or possibly these events all happen in a single night... maybe both. The setting is post-apocalypse Manhattan, and the landscapes are overgrown with twisted, irradiated vegetation and strewn with the wreckage of the civilization that was. It's all shot on studio sets with only occasional matte paintings, but it gets the idea across and the darkness helps keep you from seeing the seams.

There's a sort of bare-bones attempt at some worldbuilding. Hunters bring game back to the caves, and they haven't been killing dinosaurs, only things like dogs and rabbits. We see people weaving, which is something I've never seen a post-apocalypse movie show before but would be absolutely essential to such a community. The clothes the characters wear are basic and shapeless for the men, although the costume designers couldn't resist the urge to put at least some of the women in cute but impractical figure-hugging dresses. It's not much, but I've seen so much worse that I'm honestly impressed they even put that much into it. There's not a single fake leopard skin or IKEA cow rug in sight!

Quite a bit happens, with plenty of twists and betrayals as the relationships between the three tribes play out. People spy on each other, backstab, and switch allegiances when they think there's something to be gained for themselves or for their community. Most of this is done by the 'evil' characters. There are three of these, one from each tribe, and all are painted as irredeemable. Gordon is the chief of the Upriver Men, who rewards a spy for his service and then immediately kills him, regards women as property, and tortures Mutates for fun. Carver the Mutate tried to overthrow his chieftain Riddon, failed, and sided with the Upriver Men as a form of revenge – Gordon kills him, too. Catherine, a high-ranking woman among the Norms whom Gordon chooses for his own concubine, attempts to lead Robert and Brohm into a trap but they don't fall for it, and she gets an arrow in the stomach for her trouble.

The 'good' characters are a little more nuanced. Riddon wants to be friends with the Norms, ostensibly because Robert saved his life once and because he wholeheartedly believes in his people's religious teachings (more on that in a bit) that revenge is a sin. It's more complicated than that, though, because he also desperately wants his people to intermarry with the Norms, in the hope that their children will be a little less lumpy. This is clearly his primary motivation, and his high-minded words cannot conceal it. Robert is open to his offer of friendship but what he really needs are allies to help him rescue the captives from the Upriver Men. Neither party wants to fully trust the other, but both find that they cannot accomplish anything until they are willing to make that leap.

Ruth, one of the captive Norm women, is the voice of the movie's principles. She's the one who comes to realize that the lumpy mutates are still human beings, and falls in love with Riddon, whose appearance initially disgusted her. At the end of the film, their marriage unites the two tribes.

This falls flat on a couple of levels. The first in that Riddon is by far the least-lumpy of the mutates, with just a little bit of scarring on one temple. Other characters remark on this, even suggesting he could pass for a Norm – in a nice touch, Riddon himself finds this a rather left-handed compliment. The movie doesn't say that it's his appearance which garnered him power and influence in his tribe, but it's easy to get that impression. The romance is intended to be a Beauty and the Beast, but Riddon's Hollywood good looks water it down to almost homeopathic levels, and the film-makers end up promoting the idea that looks do matter even as they try so hard to say the opposite.

The other is the fact that every single cast member in all three tribes is white, which... figures. This was the 50's, after all. You could make a movie about the importance of diversity and inclusion, but having that film actually be diverse or inclusive was clearly far too much to ask. Am I getting angrier about this stuff? I feel like I'm getting angrier. Someday I'm gonna be waving a cane at the whippersnappers on my lawn and telling them to diversify their friend group.

Ruth also looks distractingly like a young Sally Field, which is not a coincidence. Actress Margaret Field was Sally's mother.

Now it's time to talk about religion. This is where Captive Women gets kinda weird: the Mutates are Christians of a sort, believing that if they adhere to Jesus' teachings God will eventually forgive them and cleanse them of their mutations. The Norms, meanwhile, are Satanists, as their ancestors abandoned God in the belief that God had abandoned them!

Let me repeat that: this is a 50's movie in which the characters we're supposed to sympathize with literally worship the devil. I can't imagine how shocking this must've been at the time... I have a hard time imagining a modern movie doing this! Of course, we're supposed to root for Robert and Brohm, so the movie definitely can't have any of the classic baby-sacrificing, goat-butt-kissing, Malleus Maleficarum type of Satanism. And the writers absolutely weren't going to do any research, so there's nothing resembling a reference to the actual teachings of the Church of Satan. Besides a brief scene in which characters talk about it, the only religion we see in the movie is a woman dancing in front of some kind of idol that doesn't look much like any version of the Devil I'm familiar with.

Nor does the movie show us much religion on the part of the Christian Mutates. They do talk about mercy, forgiveness, and tell Bible stories, but the closest thing we see to a ritual is Riddon and Ruth's wedding. I have no way to confirm this, of course, but I wonder if the reason is because the writers knew Christianity would evolve over a millennium and were afraid people would find it blasphemous. Or maybe it's simpler than that – maybe they wanted to keep the Mutates denominationally nonspecific so neither Catholics nor any of the various branches of Protestantism would be offended by characters saying theirs was “the true religion.”

This is an interesting movie to compare with The Time Travellers, which is also set in a post-apocalyptic future of mutants and tunnel-dwellers. Where The Time Travellers sided with the sheltered elite against the masses whose lives they'd ruined, Captive Women makes an effort to demonstrate that all these people are in the same boat – nobody wins at the end of the world. Different groups have different problems, but arguing over who's got it worse doesn't accomplish anything for anyone. I can say in the movie's favour that this message seems pretty heartfelt even if it is unsubtle, what with the narrator popping in now and then to remind us of it.

Sorry, that was all depressingly relevant, wasn't it? Hopefully I can find something more fun for next time.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #captive women #50s

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aiweirdness · 3 years

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A big neural net reviews a smaller neural net's recipes

I’ve used various neural networks to generate recipes, to varying degrees of success. My earliest recipes were generated with char-rnn, which had to learn everything - spelling, punctuation, words - entirely from scratch. Its recipes were terrible (Swamp Peef and Cheese, anyone? Or Chocolate Chicken Chicken Cake?). Later when I started using GPT-2, I was using a neural net that had already seen a lot of recipes online during internet pre-training, and its recipes looked a lot more realistic (although not entirely realistic - there was that recipe for Black Forest Cake that suggested pouring the batter into a toaster, or the jello recipe that starts with “remove all internal rinds”).

GPT-3, an even more powerful text-generating neural net, has seen so many recipes during its internet pre-training that its recipes are boringly plausible. Bake its Black Forest Cake recipe and you’d probably actually get cake at the end, even if it’s not the best cake in the world. Its recipes aren’t funny at a glance, which is why I haven’t posted any of them - until internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch suggested that, rather than have GPT-3 generate its own recipes, I have it rate char-rnn’s recipes. Readers, it worked.

I prompted GPT-3 with two example recipes from allrecipes, each followed by 3 of their human-written reviews. Then, for the third recipe I inserted one of char-rnn’s recipes:

Chocolate Chocolate Cake

1 cup sugar 1/4 cup butter 1 cup margarine 1 cup cocoa 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup margarine 1/2 cup pecans, chopped 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 egg yolk 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup chopped pecans 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 cup cocoa 1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, salt, and salt in a large bowl. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture boils and stiff peaks form. Add milk and cook until mixture is completely melted. Remove from heat and stir in sugar and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Spread in batter. Sprinkle with pecans.

Yield: 1 servings

And then I let GPT-3 add reviews. Would it mention the excessive lakes of vanilla? The complete lack of flour? The foolhardy reliance on the heroic efforts of a single egg yolk to hold things together?

oxtailsandturnovers Rating: 5 stars 03/04/2007 delicious chocolate recipe!!! and the perfect balance between cocoa and chocolate. and they sure were LONGNECKS! big time rave here. lazy w birthdays w friends and family, try this recipe for something chocolate sweet the ppl will talk about over and over.

AKEMIYUNA Rating: 5 stars appraisal 12/03/2008 Excellent for the kids Halloween party. Everyone got so thrilled by seeing something new on Chocolate in sponge. He even likes nuts separately but it will taste good..

BYOMFYABF Rating: 2 stars 10/01/2008 I could only give it a 2 as I had to make changes to it due to ingredients I had. First, I used Dove Dark Chocolate cocoa instead of Hershey's, no nuts, and the mashed bananas and caramel topping were a must. I did use coffee instead of the hot water, and dark margarine instead of regular, therefore I could not use light whipped cream, but I made homemade whipped cream. It had WAY too much flour in it, but i guess it could have been me measuring heavier than I should have. I also only used 2 cups of flour. it was my first bundt cake, so it was huge!!!

Here’s another batch of reviews, this time of a more chaotic char-rnn recipe:

Simple Soup Alaborate Soup Pie

6 each chopped white perserves; ** (optional but ring) 1/2 cup chopped fresh marjoram 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme 1/3 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup thinly sliced onion 1/4 cup onion (chopped) 1/2 teaspoon garlic; minced 2 small carrots 6 can dry white wine 1 tabasco sauce 1 tablespoon sugar 1/2 cup flour, whipped topping 2 tablespoon chili powder

Marinate: Serves 4. Whip and short under boiling. Add the sliced mushrooms and peppers and stir to coat. Stir the sugar and carrots. In large bowl, beat the egg to make a 1 1/2 tablespoons of the flour. Add shanks and stir it well. Spoon into a frying pan before serving.

Recipe By : DonajehLi Koubmanda

Yield: 8 servings

JEFFREY97389 Rating: 2 stars 03/03/2006 Even though everyone said this was great, I thought it was just 'OK!' The perserves gave a strange flavor to the sauce.

MATTJANDTRACER Rating: 2 stars 01/02/2009 This recipe sounded good. When it came out it tasted a bit like a casserole and not a stew. I used venison instead of deer and pork. I liked the way it turned out, but it wasnt very French.

Hammy Rating: 5 stars The g iving this as a gift as it takes about 10 less minutes but using American cheese and not blended with parsley flakes, lime-flavored gelatin, which is my husband's favorite dish from SuperValu. Just happens to be the creamy sauce. Don't worry about a pie crust.

In fact, the more chaotic the char-rnn recipe, the more chaotic the reviews tend to be, as if GPT-3 has picked up on the chaos and is trying to somehow produce reviews that could plausibly be written by whatever weird humans are visiting this mangled recipe website.

Geilded Peanuts & Crabmeat Basil

3 beef, boneless chops, or thyme, 1 lamber and flince of fresh diced in diagonal 1 parsley 2 large leeks (for garnish) 3/4 teaspoon sesame oil, seeded and peeled 1 any jeans'l-tortilla 1 pepper or cinnamon 1/4 cup baesly pinto beans. (Crushed and thawed; minced fine you recipe) 1 tomato base 1 fat in the last 5 inch plates 1 garlic clove; crushed 1/4 cup dijon mustard

In a large bowl set aside. Remove the sides from the heat and saute with a fork and cover and cook on Low for 6 to 6 hours.

Yield: 6 servings

Morales Rating: 0 stars 03/30/2008 I had high expectations for this recipe, but it was an outright flop. I don't know if the measurements were somehow incorrect or what, but I ended up with a watery mess that certainly wasn't crab salad. My girlfriend, who is a new chef liked it fine, but I really wish that the recipe didn't claim that it made six servings when it really made enough for one, if that's what we were going to call it.

Carole Rating: 5 stars Glorious sobs! This recipe will be delicious for a minumum of 1½ Hours to maximum 2½ hours Time to bring lots of fresh sized potatoes in the house or grow in the age may become quite famous

Amanda Rating: 3 stars 11/13/2009 My friend is having a birthday party and will celebrate with Camping. She's in charge of the dishes and wanted to serve food at the campfire. I'll 10th grade, my easy information for her party. It will not sound strange anyway test this task with a note to work rationally.What to take trees, portable tables for chairs, the main meal, food. I personally love the taste of it but has anyone seen a shepherd (wasn't any spices), oysters. It is sufficient

It does kind of make sense that GPT-3’s recipe reviews aren’t directly complaining about the utter weirdness of char-rnn’s recipes. Probably very few of the recipe reviews in GPT-3’s training data involved baffled complaints about nonexistent or repeated ingredients, or apocalyptic levels of recipe failure. So GPT-3 has learned that even the critical reviews tend to fall within a certain sentiment range. It’s interesting that it tries to emulate char-rnn’s primitive neural net glitchiness - I’ve noticed before that GPT-3 seems to be capable of pretending to be a much simpler neural net.

Subscribers get bonus content: After generating a few reviews, GPT-3 would sometimes go on to generate new recipes (such as “BBQ Cheeseburger Salad” which contains lime jello, whipped topping, and sliced black beans). It may have been deliberately trying to make them terrible to fit in with char-rnn’s recipes.

Speaking of AI-generated recipes: there are some absolute disasters in my book on AI, You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound - Tattered Cover - Powell’s - Boulder Bookstore

#neural networks #gpt-3 #char-rnn #recipes

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otterskin · 3 years

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Dumb Details From the Loki Trailer I noticed but then got too serious about

First - apparently it’s not a trailer, so I guess we’ll get ‘Trailer 1′ later? ‘Exclusive Clip’ hardly seems accurate, but hey, I’m not Disney’s marketing division. I wouldn’t live in a shoebox if I was.

Dumb detail no. 1:

Owen Wilson’s jacket is...weird. Look closely.

And another shot:

Yeah...his jacket has a ‘reversed collar’. It’s a cut-out rather than cloth folding on top. Huh. What a strange design choice. What could it mean?

I’ve no idea, but that I watched the trailer enough times to notice this should concern you.

Detail No. 2

In this scene, we see what we can presume to be President Loki’s ‘Throne’. Notice the candy-canes. This is a Santa Claus throne, presumably from some mall Santa. This whole place might be in a mall, judging by the stuff in it.

But the Loki in this shot is not President Loki. Notice that he’s wearing brown pants, a thin brown tie, and the beige shirt he’s seen wearing in other parts of the trailer after he's apparently joined the TVA. President Loki wears black pants, a green vest and a wide green tie with a golden clip that resembles Loki’s little chevron he always has (more on that later).

So it would seem that Loki might meet President Loki here. President Loki might even be addressing him at the end of the trailer. It’s possible that his minions turn on him because there’s two Lokis and they don’t know which is the ‘imposter’.

Speaking of, there’s a minion with bicycle handlebars grafted to a football helmet here, likely meant to resemble Loki. I dig it. There’s also cans of food scattered among the rubbish here. Makes sense that food production is non-existent since everyone has resorted to wearing license plates and spoons. Love how tattered the whole aesthetic is.

This reminds me of the opening Michael Waldron’s script ‘Worst Guy of All Time’, which featured a similar post-apocalyptic setting after the ‘worst guy’ ruins everything and makes himself king of the ashes. That’s likely what’s happened here, but I hope that Loki isn’t anything like Logan Paul, who was the inspiration for that title character.

Ah, the mysterious female character watching a meteor shower WAY TOO CLOSE UP. But my eyes are drawn to one thing...

What is that oblong object with a shiny handle? Could it be...

A sword? I do love swords. Did you know there’s a bunch of pictures of me in the stock photos for ‘Fencing?’ That’s my cred for loving swords.

I suspect that this female character will be an amalgamation of Amora (shudder) and Sylvie and an alternate Loki of some kind. This sword is currently in her possession, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it or another timeline version of it becomes the Loki Show’s Loki′s weapon.

Loki has lacked a ‘weapon of his own’ in the MCU for quite some time. I mean, yes, he has his little knives, but they are many and disposable and something he chose for himself, rather than the two legendary weapons wielded by Odin and Thor, Gungnir and Mjolnir. In fact, throughout his appearances, Loki has seemed to want such a thing of his own - he briefly had Gungnir, and then the Gungnir-like scepter, and even tried to lift Mjolnir.

One might ask why Odin would’ve overlooked such an obvious show of favouritism. Why give Thor a storied weapon and leave Loki empty-handed? Heck, even Hela had the Necroblade.

In Thor 1, we might’ve assumed that the Casket of Ancient Winters was perhaps intended one day to be given to Loki, as it is shown with Mjolnir in the Vault and thus connected to it and the children who would inherit it. But in the comics, Odin did have another weapon of storied history put away for his second son: Gram the Sword.

It was locked for eons by Odin in a special vault which required five keys to be opened, and it was meant to be for Loki if he be worthy.[2] The five keys were infused by Odin with the powers of "journeys", "endurance", "secrets", "new beginnings", and "brotherhood", respectively.[3]

The sword, like everything else in comics, has a complicated history full of take-backs and twists, but let’s just leave it at ‘it’s a representation of Loki’s worthiness and belonging in the trifecta with Odin and Thor as a King of Asgard’. It gives him ‘equality’.

In the original mythology, it’s wielded by Sigurd to kill the dragon Fafnir, and the only relation it has to Loki is that Loki is partially responsible for Fafnir existing in the first place (my username is nod to this myth by the by. Sorry Ottär.) But hey, maybe that means we’re getting a dragon? The Fafnir would be very cool.

Or it could just be a bit of rebar in this mining quarry.

Then again...it appears somewhere else...

It’s easier to see in motion, but that’s a sword swinging on this person’s back.

So the hooded figure is this lady...shall we call her Amylkie? Does that mean she’s the antagonist of this show? Well...maybe, but I suspect the true antagonist is foreshadowed here -

So, what’s going on here? A young girl (Young Amylkie? Some other TVA prisoner that the guard is watching over? An oracle, A Norn, or a kid who wandered off from the tour group in a basilica somewhere?) She’s giving Mobius M. Mobius a...piece of chocolate. Maybe he saw a Dementor, I dunno. I suspect it’ll be a MacGuffin of some kind later. He looks pretty concerned here, which contrasts with his ‘another day at the office’ blaséness when dealing with Loki. But of course this is the eye-catcher:

So, Norse Mythology. It’s been Christiannized. You can thank Snorri Sturluson for that, but you can google all about him later. Let’s just say that he made many Norse figures into equivalents for Christian ones. Baldur is Jesus, pure and a sacrificial lamb who dies for a greater good. And the devil is...Loki. Something the Marvel comics and the MCU have continued.

Here we have a devil, dressed in green and with a distinct shape on his chest:

Hmmm...wait...I know that weird horny shape...

Ah. I’d say that cinches it. This is meant to be Loki. If you look at the devil’s hair, it also resembles Loki’s, being shoulder-length and black.

So, what’s devil-Loki doing? Laying an egg? Trying out a foot massager? For a second I thought it was a moon, but we see the moon over his left shoulder, amongst the stars. Which means this is - probably the Earth.

...Dammit; I live there.

So Earth is barren and being devoured by flames, likely caused by this Loki sitting atop of it (in a throne, no less). Aw gee, things look pretty bad, don’t they?

But wait - what’s that? Under the Earth (and, possibly, under the earth)?

It’s a plant. A shoot, to be exact.

Back to Ragnarok for a second. Ragnarok isn’t the apocalypse (something we see a lot of in this trailer - all of it seems to be exploring the end of days). Ragnarok is the fire meant to wipe out the old and fertilize the ground for the new. And after the gods have died, what happens? Well, Baldur emerges from Hel, one of the only surviving gods (hmm, seems him dying worked out, didn’t it?). He’s joined by Líf and Lífþrasir, who are the new first man and woman, who’s names mean ‘Life’ and who are pictured, usually, with plants and new life. It is they who are tasked who growing a new Yggdrasil after the destruction of the old. The previous first man and woman are Ask and Embla, meaning Ash Tree and Vine/Elm tree, so there’s a theme there.

So a new sprout, possibly a tree, growing out of the destruction of the old.

This fits with Loki’s role as understood in mythology. He checks the arrogance of the gods, including when they tried to achieve immortality (sorry, Baldur, nothing personal), and that keeps the gods at their best. After Loki is imprisoned, the gods become weak, unhelpful and foolish, and Yggdrasil starts to rot. Eventually Loki escapes and returns along with Surtur (who also resembles this figure) to burn it all to the ground. This is also referenced in Thor:Ragnarok, with Loki releasing Surtur in the Vault, a place of thematic importance to Loki and one that represents the hidden secrets and sins of Asgard). You could say Ragnarok continued into Infinity War, where Loki played an important part in aiding Thanos’ destruction, giving up the stone to protect his brother and essentially dooming the rest of the universe - but also ultimately leading to its salvation, even if, like Myth Loki, he wasn’t around to see it.

So, we see Amylkie literally start a fire in the trailer -

- in fact, this whole trailer is awash in flame -

It’s fire, fire everywhere and she’s setting them!

It’s possible Amylkie’s our big bad, but I think there’s a chance she’s either a red herring, or, much like how Loki ‘worked’ with Thanos in The Avengers, she is the pawn of a greater foe -

- a Loki bent on destruction, for some reason or other. The TVA is obviously aware that this is the case, and it seems like they might be trying to ‘fight fire with fire’ by enlisting one Loki to combat another. The villain could be President Loki, since there's evidence of 2 Lokis in that scene - or maybe that's one of many Lokis, and the Big Bad Loki is being played by Hugh Grant as Old Loki. In any case, it would appear that Loki will be coming face-to-face with the worst versions of himself, and many of them. And, if I’m right about this scene:

...Loki will likely eventually discover that even his ‘good’ timeline ended in the destruction of his people and home, plus his own gruesome and torturous death. Although I think the TVA will keep that from him, and just show him the happy parts in an effort to inspire ‘good behaviour’. Until Loki inevitably discovers the rest of how that timeline played out and realize he’s been lied to. I don’t imagine he’ll take that very well...

Damn, even our ‘hero’ Loki is burning stuff down! Does this mean that Loki is doomed, always meant to be an avatar of death and toasty destruction?

Well...let’s go back to that stained glass.

Hmmm...wait...I know that weird horny shape...

And there’s something else...the bottom of the Earth is being lit up, and not by fire. Light appears to be coming off this little plant.

What colour is this plant again? That’s right, green. Green is the colour of new life and growth and change and...hang on, I’ve heard that before, too...

Hang on hang on HANG ON... let me have a look at the shape again.

That’s...a letter. An L? For Loki? Like in the title sequence?

Wait...no, a different letter. An older letter. After all, Loki is old Norse. How do you spell his name in that again?

ᛚᛟᚲ ᛁ -

And ENHANCE on that third letter!

This, my friends, is a Kenaz/Kaunaz, or what would become 'K' in our alphabet. It is also known as the 'Loki Rune' (and the Ulcer Rune, for some reason. I suspect Odin understands why). It’s used to spell his name, but is also used on his own to represent him. Heck, it's even his Superman 'S' in the comics:

Runes are more than letters - they are symbols for concepts. So what else does it mean?

Primarly, it means ‘torch’.

And also ‘knowledge’ (ken). As well as ‘growth, change, the search for truth, decay, arrogance, elitism, feminine, kinship and creativity.’

...Okay, that’s a lot, but you have to admit it fits.

More specifically, it means ‘Mastery of the Fire’. As in, someone who has learned to tame fire so that it is helpful, not harmful. To bring light and, symbolically, knowledge.

There’s another way Loki’s been associated with fire - in the Wagner Ring Cycle, Das Rheingold, the opera that inspired much the Thor films’ aesthetic and certainly their helmets, Loki is called ‘Loge’, which means ‘Fire’. He’s usually dressed to match, too -

Many trickster figures are associated with fire. They are usually called ‘Fire-bringers’ - See: Raven, Lucifer, Prometheus, etc. They are often complex figures with a foot in different worlds, but who nonetheless help mankind with the gift of ‘fire’ - although they usually pay for it, and tend to be self-destructive.

(Side note. Lucifer means light-bringer, which is what luciferase is named after. Because it glows. Which is helpful in labs. In case someone needed to know that.)

Moving from a destructive fire-starter to a fire-bringer seems like a great character arc for Loki to take, especially given his rehabilitation in pop culture, the comics, and even wider culture. Loki has gone from being seen as an evil, deviant, destructive character to one who’s seen as a patron of the arts and creativity, of stories rather than lies. Heck, some scholars of Norse Mythology even posit that he’s the closet thing to a protagonist Norse Mythology has, so I guess that backfired, Snorri!). Being dressed in green and with the sprout clearly also being stylized after his Kaunaz, there’s foreshadowing that he’ll be capable of growing good things even out of ashes.

So, to sum up: Being ‘Satan’ sounds pretty bad, but with a little letter re-arranging like we see in the title sequence, you can be...

...practically a saint. Maybe even a saviour.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

#loki #trailer #details #meta #theories #theory #explanation #thor #tva #santa #devil #snorri sturluson whinging #christmas #fire #kaunaz #loki trailer

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