#we can literally use Entropy as a weapon!

[rainbowgod666]

Its funny how the whole "i am god" part of sonic.exe became Lord X. Cause like

I think i eliminated his ass over this.

#welcome to the multiverse #Lore Post #so a fun fact about both me and my OC #we can literally use Entropy as a weapon! #not even “absorption of life force” just... “ash you were and to ash you will return” #anyways most of my recent #mental health #problems had a distinct theological/occultist flavour sooo #yeah #if you needed one more reason to be afraid of either me or my oc: we can make Shigaraki's “decay” look like aggressive peeling of paint

[theresattrpgforthat]

Do you have any recommendations for any combat-focused games? For example, I love the combat of D&D 5e and how players have to be resourceful with what moves they’ll use against enemies, and I like that there are a lot of chances for players to shine in combat. However, any recommendations does not need to be similar to 5e!

THEME: COMBAT

These games are about fighting monsters, fighting angels, and fighting your inner battles.

Infinite Revolution, by gwencie.

A LIGHTSPEED EXOSUIT DOGFIGHTER RPG

A TURBINE IN YOUR HEART, FOREVER SPINNING. 

A SOLAR SYSTEM—YOUR SYSTEM—UNDER THREAT.

YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS IN ARMOR MADE OF STARLIGHT AND DREAMS, AGAINST THE NASTIEST BASTARDS ENTROPY CAN MUSTER IN A BURNING KNIFE-EDGE DANCE ACROSS INFINITY—

This is INFINITE REVOLUTION.

In Infinite Revolution, you play as a Revolver—a human whose spirit burns so hot, quick, and bright it would reduce their atoms to ash if for not an implanted turbine called a Revolver Drive. A race of entropic predators called the Veil has swallowed most of your system, and now it's time to take it back—for yourself, for your friends, and for everyone back on Earth. They're counting on you.

The basic idea behind LUMEN games is not what kind of skill you are using to complete your objective, but rather how you attempt what you are trying to do. In Infinite Revolution, these three approaches are called Roar, Hiss, and Sing Players roll an amount of d6s based on the points they have in their chosen approach, and use the highest die rolled to determine what the outcome is. Each class option in LUMEN games tells you something about your character’s style of combat, and gives you guidance about how you might want to complete the missions you are sent out on.

Blazing Hymn, by Peach Garden Games.

At first, when we called them Angels, we meant it. Their flawless crystalline forms caught the sunlight in dazzling colors, and their radiance set our hearts at ease. These otherworldly creatures didn’t come from any planet we could identify, but we knew the second we set eyes on them that they came from somewhere beyond us. Then the slaughter began.

Now, we call them Angels literally. We know what they are. They have come from Heaven to massacre us.

We will not let them.

Inspired by Neon Genesis Evangelion and Senki Zesshou Symphogear, this action-heavy TTRPG takes you to a future where music is humanity's only weapon against the armies of Heaven.

Will yours be a song of pride? Of violence? Of regret?

Build a Hymnal unit, a music-powered anti-Angel battlesuit, and take on missions to protect humanity from destruction. The songs you choose will change how you play, protect you from damage, help you build up power and protect your teammates.

Blazing Hymn is yet another LUMEN game, with a different premise but the same hunger for power-fantasy. Players will have a considerable amount of creative control over how their weapons manifest - and each class of weapon has its own arsenal of powers to choose from. What is interesting about this kind of game is that while you’re still engaging in combat, your weapons are based around music - and that might change how your table decides to describe combat. All of these chances for creativity give your players ample room to shine! There are two official supplements for Blazing Hymn: Rhinestone Revenge, a starting scenario, and Ashes to Ashes, an expansion for after your party has dealt with a major threat.

Boot Black, by Dagger Press.

Relive your favourite action movies and fiction! Be a fearless commando or a wasteland wanderer, and roll a whole bunch of dice. Boot Black delivers tense, gritty combat with minis on the tabletop (or your favourite VTT)!

This booklet contains everything you need to grab some friends and have an exciting cinematic adventure. Creating characters is fast and easy, and so is setting up the battlefield! Use d12s to test your skills--push through barbed wire with Grit, or crash a truck through a gate with Speed! Choose your weapons wisely, since they determine which dice you roll and how you'll engage the enemy. Choose perks to support your squad or go in guns blazing.

The game is designed for 1960’s-style warfare, but can be adapted for post-apocalyptic settings, futuristic settings, etc. The game uses a number of different polyhedral dice, depending on the kind of check you want to make and what weapon you’d like to use. While this game doesn’t require a dedicated hex map, it does recommend using index cards to sketch out how different areas are linked to each-other and map out courses of action. Much of the game is focused on gaining ground and finding advantages to use against the enemy - so if you’re mostly looking to set up obstacles for your players to overcome, Boot Black might be for you.

Steel Tempest, by mburnamfink. 

Tempest used to be an peaceful planet, another growing colony on the human frontier. Then a survey team found the Anomalies, artifacts of unknown provenance that violate the laws of physics. Every CorproState arrived looking to unlock the power of the Anomalies, and the Interstellar Confederation imposed a quarantine to prevent the Anomalies from getting out. Corporate rivalries turned into clashes turned into hostilities turned into war.

That’s where you arrived. You’re a jockey, an elite mercenary piloting a customized war machine called a frame. You take contracts from MercNet, fighting a fragmented war where strategy and objectives are secrets held by your paymasters. A contract may see you shooting at former allies or defending a fortress you once attacked. You fight for money, for pride, for escape from your ghosts, because you can’t imagine anything else.

Steel Tempest uses Charge, a stripped-down version of Blades in the Dark. Unlike Blades, however, it contains a resource called Momentum that your characters gain on successful action rolls, and can be used gain bonuses on future rolls, or mitigate consequences. The game comes with lists of weapons to wield and factions that your characters may be up against, allowing the group to flavour the combat scenario as they like. As mercenaries, the idea behind the missions is pretty standard: go in, complete the objective, return and get paid. Simplistic, with plenty of opportunities for weird enemies and supernatural problems for your characters to overcome.

Bloodstone, by Matteo Sciutteri.

The city of Heliwyr is damned. Decades ago, a mad priest officiated an ancient ritual, awakening a wicked force that branded every inhabitant, corrupting their blood. On nights with a blood moon, the curse awakens, depriving the inhabitants of their minds. Those who decide to follow the path of the priest, voluntarily feeding on the corrupt blood of people, become Apostles: almost immortal creatures, with bestial features, devoid of any humanity.

BLOODSTONE is an action-packed horror tabletop roleplaying game with a dark, gothic feel. The players are a group of hunters sent to the city of Heliwyr on a blood moon night to hunt down an Apostle attempting to ascend, opening a gateway to the realm of the Ancients.  The game has a high pace: the Hunt is a race against the clock.  BLOODSTONE is designed for one-shot games: every time we play, we play different Hunters, who will face new obstacles and challenges every time: the blood moon nights in Heliwyr never end.

This game takes much inspiration from Bloodborne, and contains the same gothic feel. Your characters will hunt monsters in the cursed city of Heliwyr, using resources such as Blood, Stamina, and Insight to weather Harm, fight with their weapons, and summon Ghosts. The game is Forged in the Dark, so you’ll roll dice pools with the goal of getting a 4 or higher - and even if you get a 4 or a 5, you’ll still be wrestling with a mixed success. The tiered success options make the game feel more brutal, and pushes your characters to their limits. 

Bloodstone also has a downtime mechanic called the Workshop, which is a place where your characters can rest, recover, and pray in front of the tomb of the first hunter. The cyclical nature of your quests is what makes this feel like a souls like rpg, so if you like the idea of grinding forward in a bloody hells cape, paying a heavy cost to make forward progress, this game might be for you.

Biocalypse, by Club Xero.

Biocalypse is a survival horror RPG for 2—6 players, inspired by Resident Evil. 

One of you is the Game. You control Parasol—the diabolical genetech corporation whose dangerous experiments are running wild throughout Civet City—plus their grotesque creations and everything else in the world besides the players. The players are members of special ops task force SAVIOR, or they’re ordinary people caught up in the chaos, or gifted civilians with a connection to Parasol and its evil plans (maybe trying to stop them, maybe they helped create them). 

Battle the monstrous creations of sinister genetech firm Parasol. Hunt for weapons and precious recovery items. Find an exit or saferoom before it's too late! There are three character types, each with a unique special ability:  SAVIOR task force members excel in combat. Average people have luck on their side but never know how much. Gifted civilians have inside info on the outbreak, which lets them ask the GM for hints. The game contains procedural level design that maps locations (like abandoned hospitals and secret laboratories) as you explore, plus populates them with NPC survivors, hazards, clues, lifesaving gear, and horrific monster encounters.

This game is steeped in a weird and horrific world where viruses threaten your character regularly. There’s regular monsters of course, which can whittle away at your hit boxes, but getting infected with a virus may change a character’s appearance, give them new powers, or whittle away at their humanity. The game has three modes: Story, Survival, and Puzzle. Story mode is for introducing new characters, and figuring out what the party wants to do next. Survival mode is akin to a dungeon crawl - characters move through a location, avoiding enemies and traps as they try to find the exit. Puzzle mode allows the GM to give their players a series of clues, called keys, to help them get past a complex obstacle. Solving Puzzles is likely to happen while the characters are trying to escape a Location, and thus interacts quite a bit with Survival Mode. If you really want to test your player’s wits, this might be the game for you!

Some other games that are heavy on combat that I've recommended in the past:

Blood Neon, by Radmad, a game about protecting your dimension from horrifying monsters.

Brinkwood, by Far Horizons Co-Op, a game about castlypunk revolution against vampire capitalism.

Disaster/Peace, by A Couple of Drakes, a game about magical girls fighting powerful villains while battling their own internal darkness.

Drifters, by Gila Rpgs, a game  about cursed gunslingers searching for purpose.

#dnd #asks #game recommendations #tabletop games #indie ttrpgs #I really don't give LUMEN enough credit so there are TWO Lumen games on this list #thank you for your asks! #combat

[dailycharacteroption]

Creature Corner: Undead part 1

(art by Damjan-Gjorgievski on DeviantArt)

 Overview

 We’re almost done covering creature types in Pathfinder 1st Edition, and we’ve hit upon one of the largest and most well-known, the undead. After all, mythology, folklore, and gaming is full of unliving abominations that heroes are given carte blanche to destroy, exorcise, or lay to rest.

But is that all the undead are? And what exactly is an undead in the context of Pathfinder and Starfinder? If we just say “a corpse that moves under it’s own power, then that would bring up the question of flesh-made constructs as well as incorporeal spirits, whereas saying that they are unquiet souls leaves out soulless entities like most skeletons, zombies, and other lesser undead.

So let’s take a moment to define what an undead is in the context of the game. Undeath seems to be what happens when negative energy, the very source of entropy and endings, is twisted into serving as a surrogate for positive energy. This reanimates a corpse, or a possessed object, or simply ties a soul to the ethereal plane with no ability to move on.

This can happen for several reasons. Sometimes it’s done directly by necromantic magic, twisting the energies of life and death to give unlife to that which should stay dead. Most commonly such necromancers do so to create servants, assassins, guardians, or just set them loose to cause chaos, anything to satisfy that rush of power. However, undead can also arise on their own, commonly because some strong emotion festers in their soul after death, causing them to refuse the call of the afterlife and linger, even animating their old body or barring that, other materials to exact their will upon the world, though some don’t even do that, lingering within or on the borders of the Ethereal Plane to lash out at mortals they reach across the veil to harm while remaining almost entirely impotent to actually affect the material world.

Regardless of the reason, negative energy being used as a motivating force goes against it’s function within the cosmos. As such, even sapient undead feel strong urges to consume and destroy in the same way that negative energy breaks down life and matter. Some hunger for flesh or thirst for blood, others seek to drain energy or even souls from the living, and others simply seek to destroy. Those with strong wills can fight these urges, but in doing so they weaken the very energies that give them unnatural vitality. A zombie bound to farming or other activities that create will often rot much faster than one used as a weapon. Meanwhile, an intelligent undead may go mad with their urges until they either find a way to fulfill them, or eventually find some corner to fade away or at least enter torpor in.

In any case, while it’s not impossible for undead to be good or at least non-evil, those dark urges still remain, being something they struggle against, or let twist them so much they embrace them entirely and become more akin to an unrecognizable monster wearing the flesh of who they once were.

In this way, the undead are often just as much victims as they are villains, especially since certain undead can turn those they kill into more like themselves and even exert control over those they turn. Imagine being fully sapient but unable to disobey your literal killer, who will probably order you to slay your friends or people you don’t know until you either become like them or you are set free by either their death or yours, or perhaps existing long enough to become a fully fledged member of your type of undead, independent of their will (there are no mechanics for that last bit, but I imagine it has to happen, right?). All that certainly makes the prospect of skipping all the research into lichdom to become a vampire less appealing to most.

However, not all undead are unwilling or even aware of their undead status. Many evil folk possess the negative emotions required to latch onto their old life if their bodies are not properly sanctified, and others might be so wrapped up in those feelings, particularly when it comes to spectral dead, that they might not even be fully cognizant. They might act out the same actions, mistaking mortals for part of their routine if they notice them at all, or reacting with violence at such disruptions. Many may be tied to the location of their death as well.

It's such obsessions and bonds that are the reason that ghostly undead apocalypses (which are mechanically very possible since a single shadow could convert entire cities into an army of life-draining monsters in a single night) don’t happen usually. A spectral undead, even one in a city, may be bound to a single building, or obsessively act as they did in life, only taking victims of opportunity despite most mortals being powerless against their incorporeal form.

And then there are haunts, phenomena that resemble traps in terms of mechanics, but cover a lot of spooky events that we see a lot in stories and media. Such events may be one or more souls too diffused to properly form an undead entity, or it may just be a psychic impression of such a torment. (heck, some places might be so filled with emotion that a single undead might manifest dozens of haunts tied directly to them and the events and traumas of their life.

 As we can see, there is a lot to unpack with undead from both an in-universe level, but also on an out of game, Doylist level.

Within the game, undead can certainly be simple monsters that the party just kills, populating your dungeons or being part of monstrous outbreaks and the like. But given that most undead enter that state due to their history, and others are victims of other undead or necromancers, there is a lot of room for juicy story if you can work it in.

Meanwhile, out of game or the context of their stories, undead can be allegories for many things. Everything from the consumptive nature of capitalism to the dangers of losing your empathy with humanity, or conversely in situations where the undead is the protagonist or not an antagonist, they might represent the struggle with mental illness or some other malady.

Of course, with any fictional figure, undead can and have been used to represent some bad stuff by bad people, so keep that in mind.

 Even though I go in depth with every creature type, it’s clear that the undead definitely do deserve the full exploration of their dark, spooky depths, so stay tuned this week as we dive into them!

#pathfinder #creature corner #undead

[halfbakedspuds]

You know what, tell me about your stories. I wanna know all of them. Also is there 2nd ch of children of star?? We a re mutuals and we don't interact cause I have shit personality and you don't need to answer this

Thanks for asking and giving me an excuse to go on a tangent! And don't worry about interacting, as long as you're willing to put up with my ESL self occasionally forgetting how to speak English, you're welcome to do so.

There isn't a second chapter of Children of the Stars just yet. Mostly because I'm in my matric year and have been stuck with quite possibly the worst case of writer's block I've had in years. Two factors which have been making it quite difficult to write further, but I managed to partially get my jive back this week so progress continues!

Starting with the Tempest Prince, which is very blatantly inspired by me reading Percy Jackson and the Mortal instruments books during my first playthrough of Bloodborne. It used to be just one book, then I realised that I might need three to tell the full story (Which is when I started calling them the Saga of Storms). Soon, the Saga was five books long and then I realised that this universe still has a ton of loose ends after the story ends, and so five books became 21 split across five saga's, each told from a different perspective and dealing with a different thing that's been left unfinished. I will not milk this for content. There is no content, there is only a story that needs to be told and the 21 books it will take to tell it.

Worldbuilding wise, Earth in this universe exists as a result of five different layers of reality sitting on top of each other. The border realm, realm of chaos and entropy, has quite a visceral reaction to humanity seemingly existing to create order and reacts by corrupting living beings into beasts to kill us (Humans are sort of immune to this, but that's a long story). The higher the density of people, the more often these things manifest. Several thousand years ago, someone figured out that penguins who are corrupted become what humans call Dragons, and the bones of dragons can be made into weapons and infused with the wielders blood to become harder than steel, and immediately grant the bonded all the necessary instincts to wield it: the most effective weapons for killing beasts.

Thus were born the hunters, silver blooded super-warriors who were as much their weapons as their weapons were them.

With time, the hunters realised that with enough concentration, they could manifest runes to perform simple arcane tasks, and that chaining them together could create spells. At the time, people thought these runes were the language of dragons, and called it "Draconic magic". Later, the mages who dedicated themselves to its study realised that these runes were part of something far older, far more ancient. A theorized choir whose words maintained the universe, aptly named 'the worldsong'.

Fast forward eighteen thousand years, past a literal apocalypse, a civil war, and a complete reset of human- 'Redblood' -society to make it seem like the hunters never existed, and you end up in Vereeniging, South Africa, 2021 CE, where two unsuspecting brothers named Jason and Alex bear witness to a greatbeast manifestation (like a beast but considerably harder to kill), and despite having never ascended to become hunters or even having known that the supernatural even existed, the pair fought the beast and despite having not a drop of silver blood in them used actual magic (Which even they didn't know they could do).

Some shenanigans follow, the pair agree to become hunters, and Jason (being the oldest) finally reached the day where he'll ascend and begin his formal training. All the other candidates smear their drakespine (dragon bone) weapons with their blood, submerge them in water, and then pull them out to reveal perfectly refined weaponry hewn with silver veins. He follows their example, except when he pulls it out, the veins aren't silver...

... they're gold.

And nobody, not even the people responsible for prophecies and things, knows what that means.

After that, a mysterious group catches wind of the ordeal and begins scheming in the shadows, Jason and his new friend Helga start doing their training at the Academy of Allyria, with him deciding to study to become a Mage because he's honestly kinda dogshit with a sword, and her studying to become a medic to disprove that demihumans are too brutish to be in a position of caring for the injured.

Out of the blue, Alex is abducted by a group who knows the meaning of golden blood and wants to use it for themselves, and Jason, angry as he is that someone dared to mess with his family storms off to find them, with Helga offering to tag along and help the only person other than her mother and her girlfriend who's ever treated her as a person, as more than a barely sentient animal.

That's about all I can say without spoiling.

Children of the Stars follows Lyanni Sverik, a former noblewoman who was set to inherit the ruling title over an entire Barony who witnessed the genocide of her people. In her anger, she began learning the forbidden knowledge of alchemy and of the arcane. When the temples learnt of this, she was arrested, branded a witch and made a mere slave of the state.

After she meets the patron Angel of her people, Adrian, she eventually learns that he's not divine or supernatural at all. He's simply an alien, a human from the Terran Empire working to uplift her people that decided that the mask of an angel was the easiest path to his goals. All the miracles his kind performed, the arcane might they showcased, were merely spectacles of technology so advanced that it was indistinguishable from magic.

Adrian is what I like to call my little bundle of incredibly fucked up. Like the amount of trauma this man has makes him a minefield to navigate.

The first person he ever killed was trying to kill his mother and succeeding in strangling her (A feat in and of itself, she was practically a one woman army on a bad day). His solution was to smash a shop window and grab a shard of glass to slit her assailant's throat with because Callistoan honour meant he had to protect his own. What's fucked up about this? He was only nine when he was forced to make that decision. His family helped him work through most of the trauma thereof, but even twelve years later, after fighting in a war and watching most of his family die because of what he believes was his mistake, after getting half his body blasted off and becoming a supersoldier for a few years before he was handed an honourable discharge, one of his remaining silent mannerisms is an absolute aversion to anything like a knife or a shard of broken glass.

Ironic then that his eventual girlfriend (Lyanni) usually has at least two of the things on her. Two knives and enough random chemicals to start making bombs and corrosives at a moment's notice.

The thing that's very interesting to write so far is the fact that both my protagonists are horrible people. Hell, they only need to be reframed slightly to be seen as the villains of the story (And only one aspect of the worldbuilding needs to change for them to actually become the villains),and yet they try and succeed in being better people for each other's sake. Also they're the first couple I wrote that got someone's approval for being well made, so yippee!

Other than that, a lot of politics, and a lot of speculative socio-political commentary (regarding topics that won't even have a chance to be controversial for at least another century), but it's fun to write at least.

Echoes of Shadows is based on our world as it was between 1895 and 1902. It's a fantasy world where magical control of the environment is tied to how well you understand what's happening around you. Understand the processes behind combustion well enough and you'll develop pyrokinesis, understand the properties of metal and why they exist well enough and you'll develop ferrokinesis, etc.

The point is, with general human knowledge growing as fast as it is, and the improved public access to such resources, almost half the population are mages with varying degrees of power in various fields.

The fictional country that the book is set in, Ost-Rietland, and its sister state, Zuurveldt, are based on the IRL Boer Republics that historically were one of the few peoples that the British Empire got its ass kicked by and gained respect for even after their subjugation. Ost-Rietland is based on the Transvaal Republic (The province I live in actually used to be part of their territory over 124 years ago), while Zuurveldt is based on the Orange Freestate Republic.

The city of Zuidpunkt is actually based on both Cape Town and Durban with inspiration drawn from photographs of Johannesburg in the 1880s.

The culture of most people outside of the five in the main group is just a slightly different portrayal of my own, down to the incredibly satirical personality of its people (If you've ever seen South African ads, you know what I mean, we make fun of everything- especially social problems- as a way to cope. After all, if you can laugh at something it suddenly doesn't seem so bad, and sometimes lifting that uneasiness helps spur discussions on how to fix it. Nandos is famous for this).

This universe actually came to be while I was giving a crash course on worldbuilding and I was creating a setting from scratch to show my method in practice and some problems that may arise from it when I thought "Hey, this could make for a cool story actually". Unfortunately, I have barely touched the writing for it, so not a lot to comment except that I'm a bit too proud of myself for my method of only portraying the eldritch by only revealing enough about how they look for your mind to do my job for me.

Also, all my WIPs actually share a multiverse. Adrian, Johan and Jason canonically ended up meeting when the veil between their worlds got especially thin, and you can see a different POV of the resulting fight in each story (plus, I have plans to maybe bring all three together for a crossover book at some point, but that's still years down the line if it happens at all)

Sorry for rambling, but thanks again for the ask!

[operationhoshinokaabii]

Do you have any headcanons for the anime that you’re willing to tell us? I really like headcanons a lot.

A few!

Let's see.

Biggest is for Star Warriors. I headcanon that they're all reincarnated and keep some memories of previous lives- which is why Kirby is such a natural born fighter. (I came up with this one before Avatar ever aired for the record lol, just a fun coincidence there.) So it's why Meta Knight was so sure there would be more warriors- as his old comrades died, he knew they would eventually be reborn.

And I like to believe Kirby specifically is a reincarnation of Knuckle Joe's father. My evidence:

Kirby and Joe can fight in perfect sync

Joe's father was called the strongest Star Warrior, a title that is now Kirby's

It was only when Joe was in close proximity to Kirby that he had prophetic dreams about his father- perhaps his soul reaching out to communicate? 

So Star Warriors are limited in number, and only so many can exist at a time, which is why they’re so special. Nightmare knew this so his goal was to wipe out as many as possible in a short time, and possibly find a way to keep them from coming back at all.

I’ve debated if there’s some dark side to Star Warriors- Dakonyo/Kit Cosmos said in the original that Star Warriors ‘are said to be the ones to bring eternal peace’ which can sound ominous as fuck when you think about it lol. (Maybe they do literally get their powers from stars and are accidentally speeding up the process of entropy.  :V)

Meta Knight had a Warp Star but it was severely damaged after the war, which is why he’s not as strong now.

My other big one is for Holy Nightmare Corp. Basically, Nightmare got a lot of his power thanks to earth and humans. They accidentally released him from wherever he was sealed in their search for resources on other planets, and he started using his powers to influence things, eventually taking over and using them to create his company. (Turns out humans can be REAL good at causing pain and suffering so it was like a buffet for him.)

For that reason he still has an odd attachment for humans, to the point his main employee is a crude facsimile of one, even though they’ve been extinct for millennia. It’s also how he ended up with the works of art from earth lol

What else, what else...

Another one for Nightmare- I believe not everything he sells is something he created. Some, like the robotic ones, are built, others are existing creatures that he uses his powers to corrupt, and others are genetically modified and creating with SCIENCE. (Like Dr. Moro’s dinosaurs) We know stuff Nightmare creates isn’t born evil, so it needs to be trained, so a lot of resources were devoted to finding ways to speed up the process.

Chilidog/Wolfwrath for example, isn’t something Nightmare made, but an existing creature that is being controlled through the gem implanted on its forehead. They’re naturally vicious, but the gem helps point it roughly in the right direction (namely at Star Warriors.)

Mumbies are the necromantically corrupted corpses of Star Warriors as well- they sort of hijack SW’s natural ability to sense each other, and use it to turn them into SW-seeking weapons. (So not all Mumbies are round, they come in different varieties.)

That’s all I can remember for now lol

#asks #kirby #headcanons #kirby right back at ya #long post

[thevindicativevordan]

any thoughts on SuperDoomsday and how he could be utilized as a recurring villain past the Action Comics run?

Morrison took the proverbial gloves off and savagely (metaphorically) beat the shit out of WB and DC over their handling of Superman with this guy.

Metatextuality he's a criticism of the direction Morrison saw DC and WB wanting to take Superman in, a "troubled anti-hero" whose goal is selling merchandise and destroying the competition. Powers that be in the executive suites have long viewed Superman as a "problem" and made many attempts at "fixing" him in a way that would increase his appeal. Superman was invented on Earth 45 by three youngsters (that world's versions of Clark, Lois, and Jimmy). Originally he was a beautiful idea that they built as an expression of their desire to save the world, but they couldn't give him permanence on their own. So they sold him to Overcorp, which promptly cut off their control over the concept and turned him into Superdoom, a corporate mascot. Parallels to Siegel and Shuster's treatment at the hands of DC are obvious and I'm sure intentional.

Fascinating how Superdoom predates the multiple evil Supermen takes of the 2010s, but manages to criticize and deconstruct the mindset that gave rise to them nonetheless. He's Superman revamped, given a new tacticool outfit that's crafted for mass market appeal, and no boring character traits, just the iconography and the power. Built for those who insist the Injustice Superman is the best because "that's what Superman would REALLY be like", or the DCEU fans who worship a Superman who has nothing but the power levels and iconography, this is their Superman's final form. For those familiar with Morrison's obsession regarding The Bomb, Superdoom is a showcase in how even Superman can be corrupted by the same self-destructive human nature that gave rise to atomic warfare, taking ideas and converting them into weapons. Once he was meant to save everyone, now he's a Bomb (literally turning into a bomb and detonating in his final Action Comics appearance under Morrison) used to oppress, exploit, and kill.

Most interesting to me personally is the way Morrison used Superdoom to criticize the way corporations employ superheroes to expand their control over the population. Total about face from how Morrison used to view superheroes as ideas capable of uplifting and liberating us, here Morrison shows a population essentially enslaved to Overcorp after allowing this corporate character and his logo to define their lives. Surely I don't need to point out how companies such as Disney and WB are striving to do just that with their real world monopoly over superheroes? Look at how our current status quo is utterly obsessed with superheroes, they dominate all aspects and mediums of pop culture, yet the values superheroes profess certainly haven't translated into a better world have they? Instead we only watch the corporations that own them reap greater and greater rewards, while frequently the writers and artists who toiled to elevate them get either scraps or nothing at all.

As for how he could be used as a reoccurring villain, if there's ever another attempt at a "Superverse" team up after Tomasi botched the first attempt, then I think he should be the co-Big Bad with Mandrakk. Multiple variations of Supermen teaming up to take down the one evil Superman who threatens them all, the Superdoom poised to ruin the very idea of Superman, corrupting and killing every rival counterpart he encounters. Pairing up him and Mandrakk makes the most sense to me, with Mandrakk filling the evil mastermind role that Vyndktvx did in Morrison's Action Comics run. Mandrakk is the embodiment of entropy and how stories can rot, Superdoom is that concept applied specifically to Superman.

#superman #superdoom #grant morrison

[bccfggffbgv]

(A.N. Isn’t Mercury non-Binary? Or where you noting someone else)

(N kinda…rolled to where he could heal up, while Uzi instantly got on the attack. During this, the Deadly Seven’s non-Entropy members would instantly start showing some…maybe not full on weaknesses, but issues that compromised some of their strength. Not all of it, but unless Entropy could make such issues no longer present (which he couldn’t do, at most getting partial suppression, as he would later learn, due to the inhibiting factors being personality traits). They where still tough, but far from invincible (to the disappointment of Entropy, his Wrath having just a spice of arrogance as well. Not quite as much as with Tyranny’s insane Pride and the arrogance that implies, but still, not a good thing). It didn’t help that Megaman now had his Weapon System active enough again to use a few of the Robot Master weapons, so he had enough options to be as unpredictable as Mercury and their vast arsenal of attacks. Meanwhile, the Sorrows had a rough landing, leaving them out cold for a while…but the Zeti would prove to awaken noticeably sooner than them, which would have major consequences. Elsewhere, DK and his little buddy woke up to find that they where now on a Grey Horde transport, surrounded by other soon-to-be test subjects. Well, they would’ve been that if DK and Diddy didn’t instantly hijack the aircraft they where on. Turns out they underestimated how strong the two Kongs where, given how Fawful soon could see the pilot DK literally thew across the horizon. He simply noted that powerful apes where now to be accounted for)

(A.N. As for the thing with the Bloons DDT, fair, though now I’m wondering how he’d react to his forces being wiped out by it, unable to easily detect the DDT. It would be humiliating to die to an aggressive blimp outside of the BTD series)

(Note: He'd definitely be disappointed in his army and yes I was referring to someone else)

Dream Killer, after he and Mitchel woke up: Wait...Where are the zetis? Where's the conchshell-?! *He soon noticed that it was broken into pieces by the zetis*...The boss is gonna kill us for losing both them and the conch...Maybe we can tell him that they fell down a ravine once we report back to him??...

(Meanwhile with the heroes)

*Large scissor blades were tossed at a few members and waves of electricity followed suite to the others*

Uzi, with her plasma uzis pointed at the drone of greed: I've got some "shinies" for ya!! *She fired multiple rounds of plasma straight at Macabre, damaging her enough to take her out of the fight to not only repair but for her to clean any marks on her trident* Bite me-?!

*She was then swooped up by the vampire bat eared Genesis with fangs of titanium and steel smiling at her wickedly*

Genesis, while inching closer to Uzi's neck: If you say so kid-ow!! *She was spin dashed by Sonic, forcing her to drop the worker drone* Grr...Annoying little pest!

(Meanwhile within the hijacked Gray aircraft)

*Besides the flickies, a strange pea shooting plant, and other various creatures from different worlds, there wasn't much other than that*

(Meanwhile within outer space)

*The space bounty hunter Samus had noticed that this "Gray Horde" faction has been taking over various planets for capturing, enslaving, and mining operations. She knew that she couldn't take them all due to how much time it would take, so she decided to try to cut off the main head, of, the, serpent and take down the head of this faction*

(Meanwhile with The Grave Walkers)

*Victor Hex had not only gained more minions of broken bots and space pirates and the assistance of another mad scientist zombie but had also gained more power after draining the despair filled remnant within the two other hope's peak academies*

#Multiversal Fusion #crystalverse #Chaos-verse

[2centsoframblings]

Two cents of ramblings on: “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gō” (Anime)...

...and why I recommend it.

GENERAL DATA

Title: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gō (ひぐらしのなく頃に業 “When the Cicadas Cry: Karma”)

Media: Anime television series

Inspired by: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (ひぐらしのなく頃に “When the Cicadas Cry”) shōnen dōjin soft visual novel by Ryukishi07 and 07th expansion.

Genre: Murder mystery, Psychological horror, Supernatural horror

Directed by: Kawaguchi Keiichirō

Written by: Hisaya Naoki

Studio: Passione

Original run: October 1, 2020 – March 19, 2021

Episodes: 24

WARNINGS: There’s murder, gruesome murder, murder of minors, murder through torture, suicide, child abuse, violence, literal seas of blood spraying around, corruption, mental illness.

The plot in short: The quiet village of Hinamizawa is again trapped in a loop of tragedy that circles around Maebara Keiichi and his classmates. Furude Rika, who was hoping to have finally escaped June 1983, finds herself back into it. Believing now she knows how to fight fate she thinks she can escape from it again but rules are changed and now someone else is her opponent.

HOW DID I STUMBLE INTO IT

Well… I used to enjoy the “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” anime, but as “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kira” and “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Outbreak” didn’t impress me much, I postponed watching “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gō” (and “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Sotsu”) for a while in fear of a new disappointment and decided to watch them only when positive reviews piled up.

THINGS YOU MIGHT WHAT TO KNOW BEFORE TACKLING THIS

I’ll mention the previous “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” series and also “Umineko no Naku Koro ni” and “Ciconia no Naku Koro ni”.

MY TWO CENTS ON IT

THE SHORT VERSION… or what I can tell you about this while trying to keep spoilers at the very bare minimum.

Opening & ending: The anime uses as opening “I Believe What You Said” by Asaka and, as ending

- for episode 1 “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” (ひぐらしのなく頃に ‘When the Cicadas Cry’) by Shimamiya Eiko.

- for episodes 2 to 17 “Kami-sama no Syndrome” (神様のシンドローム ‘God Syndrome’) by Ayane.

- for episodes 18 to 23 as opening “Fukisokusei Entropy” (不規則性エントロピー ‘Irregular Entropy’) by Ayane

Although I miss Shimamiya Eiko’s songs, Ayane’s also are pretty nice. The opening is visually good, it introduces the characters and set an unsettling mood with the camera waving as it moves other the characters, as if to hint their inner turmoils while there are noise effects and a colouring that reminds old movies. I like the characters’ expressions that seem a mix between depressed and worn out. I also liked the creepy glimpse of Eua, who became fully visible only from episode 21 onward. The scene of Rika escaping feels like a callback to the opening of “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai” but I liked how this time she’s also running for an uphill road and seems even more desperate of escaping. The idea she ultimately reaches the shrine and then we see mirrored in her eye two hands moving to grab her is also interesting. The visual shows us also the places relevant in the story as well as the fragment of Oyashiro-sama’s sword and the weapons the characters used. As a personal preference I like to think of the lyrics as sung by the culprit of the game.

As for the ending, the first one is merely a black background with the credits, its only merit being that the song was actually the FIRST opening theme of the FIRST “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” series.

The second ending starts with a hand trying to reach for the page of the calendar and then shows beautiful draws of scenes relevant in the series which at first are peaceful, then there’s hands grabbing away more pages from the calendar (which is a scene used in the anime as well) and the scenes starts to turn tragic. We end with tons of days ripped from the calendar in a room which has a lot of blood marks, so this one too well fit with the mood of the series.

The last start with what looks like the wheel of fortune spinning, and then shows images of Satoko and Rika that move from their childhood to their teenager years… and then switch to show Rika and Satoko in the sea of fragments… before what looks like the wheel of fortune but it’s very likely a huge round chandelier fall on the floor in a spray of blood, a reference to an important scene in the anime. So it’s good.

The plot: The idea of taking the old arcs of “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” and, through small variations, create new arcs (which, at first, was meant to lull the viewers into the idea this was merely a remake, to surprise them when it turns out this is not the case) is interesting, and so is the reason behind this new loop of tragedies.

The characters: The new takes on the characters are done well enough and differences in characterization with the previous series are explained so that they make sense and some of them are well psychologically analyzed.

The visual: The character design is much better than the previous, the funny faces work well as well as well as the creepy ones. The colours are bright, the scenery detailed and Hinamizawa seems really pretty, which is something that’s also relevant for the plot.

There are also some very nice shoots or choices (like for example, in a particular gori scene, paint everything in red so it feels more dramatic and less splatter).

If anything there’s an overabundance of blood… which actually fits with the series but it’s still so over the top sometimes is ridicule. Also they censored the scenes that were too bloody (and they’ll likely remove the censoring dots in the dvd) but the effect isn’t that good so I wish they had chosen to draw the scenes so they wouldn’t need censoring… but I guess that seeing the scenes without censoring is a huge incentive to buy the dvd so I get why this was done.

The musical background: Kawai Kenji’s music is, as usual, good, with many different pieces from the creepy ones to the funny ones with traditional ones as well. Overall they’re really well fitting the story.

Overall: It’s an interesting idea to revisit the “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” world and a good series on its own. It however comes with the ‘downside’ you’ll enjoy it a lot more if you’re familiar with the old series and the other Ryukishi07’s works but I think you can still appreciate it even if you aren’t (though you might feel a little lost if you don’t).

THE LONG VERSION… or what I loved and hated about this with, of course, TONS OF SPOILERS.

I’ve already mentioned it but I loved the overall visual, from the new character design to the bright colours and the care put in depicting the scenery. Hinamizawa seems beautiful, I loved the way they used colours for the sunset moments, the good moments are filled with light and colour, which really deliver well the message of love for Hinamizawa as well as the daily, ordinary happiness of the characters. The computer graphic for the sea of fragments is nicely done.

The funny expressions can be so very cute and endearing!

Still it’s worth to mention the creepy expressions are very good as well without being over the top deformed.

The bloody rooms are also very nicely drawn, though as usual there’s just too much blood.

I liked quite a bit the use of “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” when Keiichi discovers the magazines about the murder, it well reminds you THIS IS “HIGURASHI”.

I also liked how they introduced the changes in the storyline right from episode 1, by presenting Rena watching Keiichi and Rika watching them.

The idea of the red eyes to symbolize when the ones who travel in loops are using their powers is nice and I liked how they, starting from episode 2, set Rika’s battle, showing her with the belief she can easily overcome this new set of loops… and it’s rather interesting how her beliefs backfires, how she suggests Keiichi to doubt himself when he feels afraid of Rena, when actually this time Keiichi was right and Rena was being dangerous… or how she basically surrenders as soon as she hears Keiichi and Shion entered the storeroom… and when Hanyū gave her the power to remember who murdered her, she was already considering giving up… but still, I think they portrayed Rika’s drama well.

Rika being forced to say goodbye to Hanyū was a good scene as well as Rika hiding herself, planning to kill herself and the others managing to understand she wanted to find her and keeping on searching until they find her, while Rika is breaking down, crying because she can’t find Hanyū’s sword… and then she finds that fragment of it but decides to postpone and die herself 5 more chances because her friends managed to find her.

Going on, for who saw the previous versions of “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni”, it’s good to see Rena and Keiichi fighting each other… even though, if I have to be honest, the last part, in which Rena crazily stabs Keiichi while he kept on hitting her felt unbelievable.

I also liked how they reduced the pervert fanservice, though the scene in which Shion is asked to clean the clothes of a customer is still pretty gross.

The 5 additional loops are kind of rushed but works well to introduce how Rika wanted to leave Hinamizawa and attend to St. Lucia…

Rika: Why did I begin to hate Hinamizawa in the first place? Teen Rika: The answer is simple. I was trapped here for the longest time. Rika: Yes, that’s why the moment I was released from this curse… Teen Rika: I wanted to get out of this hick town, enroll at a fancy, wonderful school, and live a sophisticated life. Was it so wrong to dream of that? Rika: A hundred years. A century I was trapped here. [She remembers Hinamizawa] What was it I disliked about Hinamizawa? Teen Rika: I didn’t dislike it. Not at all. The tragedies that tortured me, the series of mysterious murders, they were brought about by people, plotting and clashing with one another. Rika: There were times when I was having so much fun, I barely felt time passing. There were times when I was lost in despair, sobbing on the floor. But no matter what happened, Hinamizawa had me wrapped in its warm embrace. Teen Rika: Despite that, when peace returned after a hundred years of grief, and Hinamizawa smiled, knowing I could finally stay here without worry… Rika: I… I… I wished to be rid of this hick village! Why would I want something so stupid?

…as well as why she forces herself to stop wishing for such thing.

I found interesting how Rika, once finally arriving to a ‘perfect’ world, is unsettled by it. It reminds me of another ‘perfect’ world, Saikoroshi-hen, which appeared in “Higurashi no naku koro ni Rei” and Rika rejected that world as well.

I liked Satoko’s definition of happiness with this bit of dialogue with Rika.

Satoko: Perhalps you just haven’t realized the true nature of happiness, Rika. Rika: Huh? Satoko: Painful moments, no matter how small, stay in our hearts forever. But tiny moments of happiness are quickly forgotten. Forget them, and you forget how truly blessed you are, and you instead yearn for a happiness far greater than you can bear. I cannot think of a more unfortunate turn of events. Rika, you’re happy now, yes? What more could you possibly want? Rika: You’re right, Satoko. I’m so happy I can be with you here right now. So happy… …that I can’t help but think something bad will happen. Satoko: Not to fret, Rika. Our lives will be happy and healthy from here on out. After all, this is Hinamizawa. As long as we’re here, Oyashiro-sama will protect us.

Satoko is partially right. She’s right in how we’re prone to forget the happy moments and remember the bad ones, but she’s basically longing for the same thing as Rika, a happiness far greater. She doesn’t realize because her happiness, differently from Rika, is based on things ‘not changing’ (aka Rika remaining in Hinamizawa) where Rika instead wants to change them.

Satoko can’t understand how Rika wants to escape from Hinamizawa, but Rika’s words deliver it in a way. She’s been trapped there for so long that for her ‘tragedy’ feels tied to that place. It’s not Hinamizawa’s fault, she too loves Hinamizawa but, to her, tragedy is tied to Hinamizawa. Her wish to escape Hinamizawa, to her old self, is tied to her wish to escape tragedy.

Away from Hinamizawa she can delude herself tragedy won’t strike her and she won’t have to repeat it over and over.

Rika, in a way, grew while trapped in an endless loop, but she had to keep on acting like a young child because she ‘technically’ didn’t grew. So for her becoming different also probably means finally being free to express that adult part of her.

Plus in ���Higurashi no naku koro ni Rei”, more specifically in “Saikoroshi-hen” we learnt Rika, in a different world, would act like a spoiled princess fawned by her entourage and who never did anything for herself, so the act she will put up when she’ll manage to reach St. Lucia fits with her character. And the fact always in “Saikoroshi-hen” she would be willing to reject a ‘perfect’ world, because it’s not the one she liked, to the point she would be willing to kill to go back to the world she chose explains also why she has troubles accepting the new world with no tragedies.

I also liked the Satoko reveal… even if, in truth, it made little sense.

I mean, Rika in “Higurashi no naku koro ni Kai” has learnt people can keep memories of the past loops, Keiichi remembering his past killing. We saw it in this series too, how Keiichi remembered how he killed Rena and Mion or how he attacked Teppei. So really, is it so surprising and suspicious Satoko would remember Rika’s trap?

Sure, it wasn’t a traumatic fact, but who says it has to be traumatic?

Whatever, so now we get to the part which constitutes the big revelation of how those loops came to be and who’s the culprit.

I’ve never been really fond of the whole Hinamizawa syndrome, so the implication it was caused by Hanyū distrusting humans and that once she started believing them again the Hinamizawa syndrome slowly vanished leaves me a little cold, but this is probably just me.

I liked quite a lot how the breaking of Satoko was handled.

Rika pushed on Satoko her own dream, Satoko put a huge effort to fulfill it for Rika’s sake, but it ended up all for nothing. As going to St. Lucia wasn’t Satoko’s dream the burden to remain in that school grew too much while, at the same time, there was no reward for her as Rika became the princess that was mentioned in “Saikoroshi-hen”, cultivated her group of supporters and left her alone. Credits when it’s due, Rika didn’t really meant to cut ties with Satoko but, at the same time, she clearly wasn’t supportive enough. Satoko also, out of pride, didn’t ask for help… but the story will show that wasn’t really the point.

While I find perfectly understandable how Rika might have wanted to leave Hinamizawa and start another life, her mistake was to push her own dream on Satoko too.

Rika: There’s something I’ve secretly dreamed of doing for a long, long time. Satoko: Huh? Rika, do you mean… Rika: And I want to make that dream come true with you, Satoko. Satoko: Huh? A dream? I’m not sure if I quite follow, Rika. Rika: I’ve been thinking about this for a long, long time. One day, when I’m finally able to leave the village on my own… I want to experience a new way of life—one I’ve never known before. I want to wake up in the morning and turn the page of the calendar, wondering just how the day will unfold. And when it does, my new reality will be as I never could have imagined: filled with wonder, splendor, and new surprises. I want to go to a school where I can live that life. Of course, I want to go there together with you, Satoko. I want to experience high society at a fancy school with you! Nipa!

Satoko has to come with her and share her dream… but Satoko is not a pet Rika can take along with her and Satoko has no wish to live such a life. The first time they discuss it, Rika pushes Satoko to agree by hitting on her pride, claiming she doesn’t want to do it because she doesn’t like to study, which is absolutely true and Rika knows it, but she also knows Satoko won’t admit it so Satoko ends up roped in and, while she’s clearly not enthusiast or interested in fancy life, she tries to keep up on studies solely for Rika.

After experiencing how that world wouldn’t work well for her, Satoko tries to change Rika’s mind about it and Rika refuses. While a part of her is entirely legitimate in not wanting to give up on her fancy life in St. Lucia, the way she put things aims at making Satoko feel bad because she was refusing to help her with her dream. However, while a good friend should help you with your dreams, there’s a limit to how far you can ask. Rika could have asked for Satoko’s support and encouragement, not for Satoko to also share her dream because, well, that’s Rika’s dream and Satoko is entitled to have her own. And with the following loops things get worse.

The next time Satoko outright refuses to listen to Rika and makes clear she won’t take part to Rika’s dream.

Satoko: Rika. I’m not as smart as you are. Moreover, I absolutely detest studying. Rika: Yes, so do I! That’s why we can work together— Satoko: Please, stop talking and let me speak. Even if we get into that school, I won’t be able to keep up with the academics. And those ladylike types would never befriend a country bumpkin like me. Though you’ll fit in well, so I’m sure you’ll be surrounded by friends. I don’t want to be all by my lonesome. Rika: Don’t worry! I’m your best friend. I’ll be by your side the whole time! It’ll be okay! Even after we get in, I’ll be your best friend. I won’t let you be alone! I promise! Satoko: You’re lying! You’re lying. You’re a filthy liar, Rika! I know what your idea of “together” is! It’s studying for exams “together” because it’s boring alone. Or going to the exam results posting “together” because it’s sad going alone! Or going to the bathroom at night “together” because you’re scared! That’s all you mean by “together”! Rika: Th-that’s not what I mean… Satoko: Tell me, Rika. Being able to accomplish anything with effort is a talent in and of itself. You tried to learn to walk with stilts or ride a unicycle, but did you succeed? Rika: I… Satoko: I could do both with ease, yet you kept struggling and failing, over and over. Rika: I never… Satoko: Everyone has things they simply can’t do, no matter how hard they try. I’ll put it simply: no matter how hard I try, I will never excel in school. And I don’t want to try! I hate it! I can’t endure the pain I must suffer to help you with your “dream”! And then, when we get into the school, you’ll forget all about me, and instead spend all your time with your fancy little friends! You’ll have nothing to do with your stupid “friend”! I know that’s what happens! Rika: Why are you saying all this…? Satoko: So now, you have to decide! Do you want your fancy school, or me? Pick one and live with it! Rika: Why are you this upset about it? I don’t understand! Satoko: Are you going to live a fun, happy life with me here in Hinamizawa, or abandon both Hinamizawa and me?! Make a decision, right now! Rika: I’m sorry. I can’t pick just one. I want both the school and you!

Satoko is very direct here. She told her she doesn’t want to go to that fancy school, that studying makes her feel bad that it would be too much of a burden on her but Rika just doesn’t listen. She doesn’t understand why Satoko is upset and refuses to accept she has to concede, that she can’t force Satoko to join her in that school, that she has to choose. Rika doesn’t really try to understand Satoko, she just wants to get what she wants. Again she would chose a world built on another’s misery because that world would be one which would treat her kindly.

On the other side Satoko has, at the beginning, compromised for her own sake and tried to understand her point of view. She has accepted to go to St. Lucia with her, she had put up on studying, she has accepted Rika wanted to spend time with other girls who looked down on Satoko. And this probably had made matter worse because all this went unrewarded, becoming additional burden.

My personal speculation is Satoko got to met Eua-san because, when she entered into the ritual warehouse, she committed suicide. She looked depressed and unwilling to go back to St. Lucia after all…

Eua: I digress. By your countenance, it seems you have an unrequited wish. And your longing for said wish has whittled away at your well-being. I can hear your soul crying out in anguish.

…and the fact she sees the horn might actually be symbolic of her seeing a weapon and using it against herself. After all, once she leaves Eua, the time has been reset and Eua said in order to reset time, Satoko would have to die.

Eua: Very well! I will grant you my power! You will become one who lives in loops, repeating through endless spirals of time until your wish is fulfilled. Satoko: What do you mean, live in loops? I don’t understand! Eua: To reset your world from the beginning, all you must do is die.

Though this is just me. Anyway, even if we assume she didn’t commit suicide, afterward Satoko begins to commit suicide over and over and this likely further caused her to break herself.

Satoko: I’ve realized something. Even if someone can live through endless loops of time, they cannot escape the damage done to their mind. Eua: Correct. While this power grants one an endless existence, it does not promise a preserved mind. In fact, it would be correct to say this power does not make you immortal.

So yes, we arrive to a Satoko who’s different from the start, one that’s willing to torture and kill Rika to get Rika to stay with her, to force her own dream on Rika, when the original Satoko basically tortured herself to help Rika fulfill her dream, and sacrificed her own dream for Rika. Satoko got damaged and there was no more turning back.

And I liked how she excuses to herself what she’s about to do, which feels again as a reference to “Saikoroshi-hen”.

Eua: Now, you control whether a tragedy occurs or not, as well as whom it strikes. But will you truly feel no guilt for using this method? Satoko: None at all. After all, there won’t be any tragedy in the world where Rika and I are together. Anything that happens in other fragments never really happens, right? The world I choose in the end is the only world that truly exists. The previous worlds are worth no more than dreams or hallucinations.

Actually this whole new series feels like something “Saikoroshi-hen” inspired, only now we’ve Satoko instead than Rika.

And, although Satoko’s plan ends up like the product of an insane mind, I like her pro-active approach to things, how while Rika hopes in luck when she tosses her dice, Satoko instead works to ensure the dice will pull out a favourable number and the more the anime develops Satoko, and let her interact with Eua (which seems a copy of Featherine Augustus Aurora from “Umineko no naku koro ni”) the more her resemblance with Lambdadelta, who’s also from “Umineko no naku koro ni” becomes visible.

Satoko: How many times must I tell you, Eua-san? Once I decide to win, my victory is certain. I will live with Rika together in Hinamizawa. As long as that is the goal I wish to achieve, then that future is certain to come to pass. Wait for me, Rika! My dear, beloved Rika! Our happy world is within our reach!

Here in fact we can see her references to ‘certain’ (Lambdadelta was the witch of Certainty) and to her mad love for Rika, also known as Bernkastel (always in “Saikoroshi-hen” Rika picked up the name Frederika Bernkastel for herself).

On a sidenote as an “Umineko no naku koro ni” fan I enjoyed the quick cameo of Amakusa Jūza, or better Skylark 13, as this was the code name he used in “Higurashi no naku koro ni”. He wasn’t a big character in “Higurashi no naku koro ni” but he was a beloved one in “Umineko no naku koro ni” so I’m glad they gave him space, as small as it was.

Now for something else… do I buy the narrative that Satoko ‘is’ Lambdadelta? Or better that Lambdadelta is part Satoko part Takano Miyo?

I’ve mixed feelings for this. I mean, Lambda has traits she shares with Satoko and we know Lambda, Satoko and Miyo (as well as Vier and Mitsuyo which Eua-san mentions) can be read as 34 but somehow I’m not really fond of the idea that Lambda is born by both Satoko and Takano.

Though of course this is just me and the whole thing is so vague it can be that Lambda is just a personification of ‘certain will’ that took life with Miyo and was further shaped by Satoko and anyway connections between “Higurashi no naku koro ni” and “Umineko no naku koro ni” are confusing enough (what with Eua being Featherine apparently but her being Bernkastel’s master and no mention with her having a special connection with Lambda?) and maybe I shouldn’t think too much at this or, as Will would say, I would just get a headache.

Still, to sum it up, for now “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gō” feels like an interesting story, with a good care for the visual but also for the characters’ psychology, the right amount of horror and blood to allow it to fit in the splatter group, if that’s what you like.

For fans of “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni” it should be a pleasure to watch it, though I don’t know if new fans would manage to follow everything. Honestly I would recommend to watch at least “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni”, “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai” and “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei” before watching “Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Gō” so as to better understand the series and enjoy it more because although the anime tried to explain/hint at things that were in the previous series, it couldn’t really cover what 55 episodes. Or, of course, one might read the manga or the visual novels if they don’t feel like watching the old Studio Deen anime showed (and if you really want to make sure you don’t lose a single reference read the visual novel of “Ciconia no naku koro ni” and manga or the visual novel of “Umineko no naku koro ni” and absolutely AVOID the “Umineko no naku kori ni” anime. It’s a horrid mess).

But whatever, it’s a good series and Passione did a good work. Now if they only consider making a remake of “Umineko no naku koro ni”…

And now let's end this with an AMV about this series I recommend watching Toxic

#Higurashi no naku koro ni #Higurashi no naku koro ni gou #When they cry #Higurashi when they cry #Murder Mystery #Psychological Horror #Supernatural Horror #Passione #Anime television series #Shounen #Recommended #2020 #2021

[bigskydreaming]

I don’t often muse upon PJO, but when I do, its random as hell. 

Anyway, tonight’s thought (singular, also: derogatory, as in very possibly a mistake) is about exploring aspects of the Greek gods that are extrapolations of like, what they’d be like in the modern world instead of just in terms of their ancient myths.....and how that might widen the scope of their demigod children and their powers.

Like take Hephaestus for instance. God of the forge and fire, of invention and artifice......now widen the scope on those things through the lens of the modern age.....might he also be considered the god of modern science, not just in terms of things like engineering and technology, but also physics, chemistry? Or would those things fall more under Athena’s purview......unless you separated them into finer divisions. Like, you could consider Athena’s overview of knowledge and wisdom to make her the goddess of science and higher learning or whatever in general........OR you could separate it like.....Hephaestus is the god of natural or physical sciences like physics and chemistry, and Athena is the goddess of not just wisdom and tactics but things like psychology, computer sciences, etc.

Or OR get Dionysus up in there too, and make it like Hephaestus is the god of chemistry, of chemical reactions and the like, Athena is the goddess of physics, of the most full and complete understanding of the physical universe via things like the unified field theory and its comprising forces of electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force, etc, and then Dionysus the god of biology, hmmmm.....

Cuz imagine then, demigod children of Hephaestus, where instead of pyrokinesis, some get powers like transmuting elements.......oh man, the things you could do with that??? Not just lead into gold but they’d be terrors in battle because they could transmute the very air someone breathes into chlorine gas, blood into acid, flesh into stone. Or using that power defensively, making them able to keep guns from firing by dampening the chemical reaction that comes from igniting gunpowder, or just knocking someone out or putting them to sleep by just tanking their metabolic reactions. Mingling magic with modern know-how and creating their own version of truth serums by turning the water someone drinks into something akin to sodium pentathol when just brushing their fingers against someone’s glass, or rendering all drugs or toxins that might have been slipped into their drink null and void by transmuting them into harmless H20. 

(I know that Luke was mentioned briefly as being good at making potions aka alchemy due to being a son of Hermes, but frankly, transmutation as a mastery of the periodic table makes waaaaay more sense for Hephaestus’ kids, I’m just saying. And plus the Greeks didn’t so much consider Hermes an actual god of alchemy as they more just kinda viewed him as their god of all things miscellaneous and tended to lump anything they didn’t have particularly strong feelings about and/or a grasp of under his umbrella. Hermes was really just the patron god of being random as fuck and oh great gods of Olympus I have no idea what I want to do with my life, give me a sign. Hermes: poofs into existence on their shoulder and says SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED TO GO BE GAY AND DO CRIME YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, DIVINE MANDATE, LETS GOOOOOOO).

Give children of Athena more practical applications for being heirs to her wisdom, knowledge and strategic acumen by also giving her dominion in the modern age over humanity’s quest to better understand the universe we live in and all its rules, the ins and outs of the laws that govern reality itself.......thus Annabeth and others’ potential acumen for magic being here not the end result of them stepping on Hecate and her kids’ toes, but rather more a function of making them the embodiment of ‘magic is just sufficiently advanced technology’ as they - via an innate and heightened understanding of the very nature of the physical universe - find holes in the fabric of space and time that let them slip from Point A to Point B as easily as crossing the street, play tricks with gravity and relativity and things that leave others baffled and amazed and them just shrugging and being like its all in the wrist, dude, and also, the fact that our mom just GETS reality in a way that everyone else will still be playing catch-up to a thousand years from now.

Children of Dionysus (yes I know he barely has any shhh we’re not paying attention to the series we’re just musing on demigod powers here) who combine the godhood of grapes and revelry with loud music and laughter......the way music can help with plant growth, because music is essentially just VIBRATIONS and vibrations stimulate activity in plant cells in a variety of ways.....and thus similar to Mr. D’s tricks with controlling vines and rapidly growing plants, AND his ability to affect the psyches of others, which is described as inflicting or curing madness and I’m like ehhhh do we have to describe it thus though.....put all that in a pot, shake it, not stir, and abrakadabra, alakazam, other psychic pokemon random Psyduck shout-out and voila! ALL of that could be afixed to and made the end product of godly and demigodly control and manipulation of vibrations, cuz Dionysus is literally the god of just vibing in all its infinite forms.....and thus its all just about how vibrations affect plant life on a cellular level, how they can affect brain chemistry in a variety of ways, triggering a lot of the more primal centers/functions of the brain, etc. You kids are driving me crazy, he’d yell at his demigod kids, and they’re like umm wow, like ACK CHOO UGHLY, father, welcome to the 21st century, all we’re really doing is directly stimulating the prefrontal cortex of your cerebellum with our banging rock music, and its making you angy, what about it?

And speaking of actually, if we and by we I mean me cuz I am and its wheee, are theorizing about Athena’s brood getting to be all magical wunderkind whizkids with their scientific acumen and divine cheat-sheets for the physical universe, maybe Aphrodite and her kids could snatch up those psychology and psychiatry job titles instead. Love, desire, also things like obsession, hyper-fixation......is Cabin Mighty Aphrodite really just pheromone central or are its campers more like magical dopamine and serotonin factories just pumping out good vibes all around them, being like come hang out, its free brain juice. Like, imagine kids of Aphrodite who just by their mere presence could help the legions of ADHD demigods focus better, concentrate easier, get shit done because the goddess of passion and her children like....have the gift of helping people to more productively pursue their passions in ALL forms, not just the physical desires they hold for others but the passions they hold for arts and crafts and sports and y’know, saving the world on magical coming-of-age quests when their milkshakes bring all the monsters to the yard. 

And then Ares not just as a god of war and conflict, but of entropy....the tendency of the universe to trend towards disorder, randomness, uncertainty....the kind of things that so often incite or enflame conflict......but applied at large not just to interpersonal dynamics but to the world itself. With his children possessing demigod abilities that disrupt or weaken bonds, both in the form of emotional ties between allies and commitments towards various ideals or courses of action, but also the ability to PHYSICALLY weaken bonds, resulting in an enemy’s weapon falling apart at a touch, or increasing the instability or volatility of an object so it blows up akin to how Gambit of the X-Men’s powers work and can turn even playing cards into a weapon, etc, etc.

And don’t even get me started on Hermes! No, seriously, don’t. Mostly because I haven’t thought that one through yet and I got nothing. I mean I got some things but they are nebulous and have yet to spring forth fully formed from my head like Athena from the fuckhead of Zeus, that absolute fuckhead of legend and yore. In my defense though, I haven’t like, eaten any primordial goddesses of thought and memory, so.......like, idk, I’m taking the longer route here I guess.

[holyhellpod]

Heyoooo, it’s another episode of Holy Hell! This one is dedicated to the manchild himself, Dean Winchester. 

Apple | Google | Spotify | Instagram | Patreon

Transcript below!

CW: discussions of child abuse, child death, suicide, alcoholism, family trauma, mental health

[Music]

Dean Winchester is, in a word, my soulmate. I started kinning him when the show aired in Australia on Fox8 and I have not been the same since. From his devil-may-care attitude to his undying love for his family that pierces the veil of death to save the day, he really is the most. I have to say at the beginning that this episode of Holy Hell will not include discussions of Dean’s sexuality and gender. I’m saving that for its own episode, so stay tuned my pals.

What we know of Dean as he develops over the course of the first episode is: he’s been hunting, and hunting alone, he’s 26 years old, he drives a sweet ‘67 Impala, he wears an old leather jacket, he listens to 1980s metal, and he has an arsenal of weapons and supernatural fighting talismans in his trunk. He’s also a smartarse, one of his most endearing qualities. He gets defensive about their mother and her death, and he defends their father over and over. He’s a loyal son and brother. The impetus to bring Sam back into the hunting life, after Sam decided for good that he was going to leave, is to bring his fambily back together.

The quality that defines Dean Winchester is how much he loves he loves his fambily. In the first episode, he is so worried about his father that he recruits Sam to help look for him, even though Sam and Dean haven’t spoken in two years, and Sam ran away to college rather than continue to live with their father.  He spends most of the first season defending their father, but when John comes back and starts arguing with Sam, Dean protects his brother from John. It’s one of the most significant examples of character growth Dean undergoes throughout the entire series, and it’s where his loyalty shifts from John to Sam.

In the episode of season 2, “Croatoan,” Dean decides not to shoot Sam when Sam contracts the Croatoan virus which turns people rabid and makes them kill. In the next episode, “Hunted”, Dean reveals that John told him to kill Sam if Dean couldn’t save him. But Dean doesn’t. He says that John begged Dean not to tell Sam, but it’s not John’s words that keep Dean silent. It’s his love for Sam and Sam’s wellbeing. And this brotherly love slash codependency is used by characters throughout the entire series, from the demons in season 1 to the literal character of God in season 15, to manipulate Dean and Sam. As many characters have pointed out, including Dean and Sam themselves, they are each other’s weak points.  

At the end of season two, when Sam dies from a stab wound in his spine, Dean trades his own life for Sam’s. He makes a deal with a crossroads demon—his soul for Sam’s life—and subsequently dies and goes to hell at the end of season 3. Dean literally dies a gruesome death and spends forty years being tortured in hell because he couldn’t live without Sam. At the end of Season 8, Sam is dying from the effects of the trials, which he undergoes in order to close the gates of hell, and Dean convinces him to stop because, again, he can’t live without Sam. Sidenote: this is where I stopped being interested in their brotherly dynamic to the point of losing interest in the show. It became clear to me that the showrunners were more concerned with rehashing the same tired storylines between Sam and Dean than focus on characters who could expand the world and make the show better. In fact, they killed a lot of the interesting side characters in order to keep the show solely focused on the brothers. The exception to this is Castiel, and the reason they kept Cas around is because when he died in season 7 the ratings tanked. If that wasn’t a clear enough sign that the showrunners needed to open up the show to more than just Sam and Dean’s caustic dynamic in which they die and kill for and then betray and lie to each other over and over, then I just don’t know what the fans could have done to convince them. Nothing, apparently, because they ended the show with just Sam and Dean.

Dean’s relationship with John is fraught with insecurity and codependency. Dean has so little sense of self that what he does consider to be his carefully curated list of likes and dislikes were inherited directly from John: his car, his leather jacket, his hunting abilities, and his music taste. He also throws himself into hunts without any regard for his own safety, because he doesn’t believe that he is worth saving, or that his life is worth living. His personality is crafted from both John’s reliance on him as a son, hunter and partner in crime, and the woman he assumes Mary to be. Dean’s sense of self-worth relies on how many people he can save. This is why, in season 2 episode “What is and what should never be,” Dean’s dream reality is one in which he’s a low life loser who disappoints his family—because without John pushing him to be a hunter, Dean doesn’t save people, and because he doesn’t save people, he isn’t worth anything. Bear in mind that this is the best reality Dean’s mind could conjure for him: one in which his father is dead, and he himself is not worth saving.

In one of the most famous exchanges, he asks Cas why an angel would rescue him from hell, and Cas replies, “What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved.” Twenty-nine years of bluster, insouciance, and a give-em-hell attitude crumbles in two sentences, wrought by a being Dean refuses to believe exists because, again, he doesn’t think that he deserves to be saved by them. He says, “[Why me? I don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties, let alone by God].” He thinks of himself so lowly that he accepted a one-year deal in exchange for Sam being alive. Dean cares so much about his family he lets it kill him.

But it’s not just Sam, Mary and John. Dean’s family grows to encompass a number of side characters: most notably Bobby their surrogate father, Charlie Bradbury the hacker, Claire Novak, Jack Kline, and Lisa and Ben Braeden. Even Mary makes another appearance in seasons 12 to 14. Unfortunately, because the show is the way it is, Dean puts Sam above all of these side characters, and then these characters are written out of the show. I should specify that Cas is not a side character; in most seasons, Misha Collins is billed as a main cast member, with his name appearing after Jensen Ackles in the credits. But he still dies in the third-last episode in order to have the show stay about the brothers. Even Jack, inarguably Cas and Dean’s son, is written out of the show in the second-last episode after dying multiple times. I say inarguably because I am not gonna argue with anyone about this. Claire and Jack are Dean and Cas’s kids. Dean and Cas are great parents who chaperone Jack’s prom and buy Claire her first hunting bow. They’re all one big happy, queer, neurodivergent family.

Dean loves the people in his life with reckless abandon. The times he’s excused Cas’s behaviour after Cas has done something ridiculous or foolish are too many to count. He grieves Cas’s multiple deaths, often succumbing to his alcoholism and entropy whenever Cas leaves him for more than a day. In a truly beautiful scene, Dean wraps Cas’s corpse in a curtain and watches, utterly and completely devastated, as his body burns. By this point, they have done so much for each other that it’s impossible to even envision the show without Cas, and indeed imagine Dean without his love for Cas. And we don’t have to for very long, as he always comes back a few episodes later. Even knowing this, the episodes where Dean mourns Cas are so heartbreaking and haunting that I cried for days after watching them.

Dean is great with kids, and every time he’s not is completely the fault of whoever is writing him in any given episode. We see him bonding with Lisa’s son Ben in season 3 and 6, Jesse in the season 5 episode “I Believe The Children Are Our Future,” and Lucas in the season one episode “Dead in the water”. With every child he meets, Dean gets on their level, empathising with them in a way most adults can’t. Like Claire and Jack, Dean has a complicated relationship with his father, who dies in the beginning of season 2 after bargaining his soul for Dean’s life to the demon that took their mother. Just like anyone else’s life, right? Must be Tuesday. This means Dean can relate to most children with traumatic backgrounds involving their parents, as a victim of parental abuse and having his mother die at age 4. I can’t find any sources to back this up, but a theory that rolled around in fandom was that Dean became mute after Mary died, which is what happens to Lucas after his father drowns. He says in “Dead In the Water” that he loves kids, and it’s true. As one tumblr user put it, Dean wanted to be baby trapped.

Dean carries the deaths and pain of his loved ones with him like Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. When Claire is bitten by a werewolf, the characters administer blood of the sire wolf that bit her in order to cure her of her lycanthropy. Dean has to leave the room while she’s in pain, because he can’t bear to watch her die. The same goes for when Jack dies. Thankfully, Claire lives and Jack comes back a few episodes later.

When thinking about Dean being a father, I’m reminded of that scene from Scrubs when Dr Cox says he’s worried about being a father because his own dad was an abusive alcoholic. The difference between Dr Cox and Dean is that Dean doesn’t have his reservations about raising kids. He fits into Lisa and Ben’s life easily, at least for the first year, and we see a montage which includes him teaching Ben how to fix cars. When Claire lets her guard down enough to hug Dean, he hugs back just as hard. When he finally deals with the trauma of Cas dying in season 13, he accepts Jack into his life, and even grieves Jack when he dies. Dean escapes the intergenerational trauma that plagues his family by being a fantastic dad to the random kids who happen into his life by chance. He was born to be a father, and the fact that this show took that away from him and us as the audience makes me want to kick the showrunners into the sun.

Until season 6, Dean’s family only included men. The concept of the nuclear family—two sons, a husband and a wife—was ripped apart in the prologue of the first episode when Mary dies. Dean doesn’t know family for the first 5 seasons of the show outside Sam, John, Cas and Bobby. I do consider Ellen and Jo to be important to the story, but they’re only in a handful of episodes and die in season 5 for a reason that is plainly ridiculous. Did the Winchesters have to lose every single person in their lives to the fight? Clearly Kripke thought they were going to be cancelled after the fifth season, because it shows. And honestly? Maybe they should have. Let’s retroactively cancel the whole show. It can’t hold power over us anymore, because it’s dead and we cremated it.

But when Dean moves in with Lisa and Ben, he discovers a new type of family he didn’t have before, and new family dynamics. Instead of the 28-year-old son that Sam is to him, he takes the opportunity to teach Ben about cars and spend time with him and Lisa without the need to hunt. He gets a job, he makes some friends, and he lives the safe, apple pie life he begrudged Sam for in the pilot episode. It’s only when Sam reappears in his life that Dean’s codependency strikes again and he realises that he can’t live half in the normal world with Lisa and Ben and half in the hunting world with Sam. Sam says this himself in the first episode of Season 6, “Exile On Main Street”. Despite the ways Dean tried to settle down throughout the rest of the 9 seasons, the showrunners ultimately decided a man who was healing from trauma and alcoholism, who had adopted two kids as his own, and was learning how to bake cakes for his son’s birthday, deserved to die at the ripe age of 40, a week or so after he’d learned that his best friend was in love with him. You gotta laugh. Instead of getting the ending both Dean and we deserved—which was Dean settling down, opening a bar, and living the next forty years in relative gay peace while he got fat and watched Cheers reruns—well, we got something else. And I will always be bitter about that.

While it’s clear from the first season that he has reckless and suicidal tendencies, he doesn’t stop fighting to the bitter end. Even when faced with his own impending death in the season 2 premiere, “In my time of dying,” he fights to stay alive for Sam and John, while working the mystery that is overcoming his own death. Devastated as he is by Sam diving into hell at the end of season 5 and seemingly gone for good, Dean still gets up everyday and makes a life for himself in Lisa’s home. While season 6 was overall a bummer of a season, just god-awful in every aspect, saved from my complete vitriol only by “The French Mistake,” it did show us how great a dad Dean can be, and readied us for what was to come—being Claire and Jack’s dad. The lengths he goes to for his family are immense and all-consuming. As Cas says in “Despair”, Dean is a being of love. He loves everyone else, even when he can’t find it in him to love himself. He really thinks that he’s just a killer, not a father or a husband.

I’ve never subscribed to the idea that we have to love ourselves before we can love anyone else, or before anyone else can love us. Sorry Rupaul, you old bitch. We are all deserving of love, because love sustains us and helps us grow. And when we don’t know how to, it’s through loving others that we can learn to love ourselves. If Dean knew what a great father and friend and husband and brother he is, if he could see himself the way others, in the show and out of it, see him, I think he’d burst. You don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties? Well tough shit, Dean Winchester, because I’m gonna devote an entire podcast to you.

I talked about Dean’s carefully curated list of likes and dislikes before but I’ll go into more detail now. Things he likes: guns; rock and roll; nice cars; women; fighting; scamming people at pool; back alley blowjobs, probably; pie; driving across the country; Ozzy concerts; cowboy movies; being in control of every little thing in his life. His dislikes are: flying on planes; hair metal; angels and demons; anyone who harms his brother, his best friend or his kids; boredom; and being jerked around.

Okay I literally cannot talk about the cowboy movies without mentioning that he makes Cas watch them with him, in his Deancave, and the implications of that make my head roll off my body and into the dirt. Like they literally have gay little movie nights and watch their gay little cowboy movies together and Dean says all the gay little lines. I said I wasn’t going to talk about his sexuality, but mentioning cowboy movies leads to Cas wearing a cowboy hat and saying “I’m your Huckleberry.” This makes me insane. Excuse me, I must have my daily scream.

Okay, I’ve collected myself. Have I? Let’s just move on. In the Winchester tradition of inherited family trauma, Dean gets all of John’s interests, and Sam gets all of John’s mistakes. Dean’s personality throughout the show is basically quippy remarks, pop culture references, laughing with food in his mouth, and grouchiness. In case you haven’t realised, he is amazing to me. Every time he fires a rifle or pistol? Couldn’t be better. Eating a burger made of out donuts? Fucking incredible. Even when faced with beings with untold power, he doesn’t lose his cool. One of my favourite exchanges is when Zachariah comes to Chuck’s house in the first episode of season 5, “Sympathy For The Devil,” and starts soliloquising at him, Dean tells him to “cram it with walnuts, ugly.” Cram it with walnuts, ugly. It’s been ten years and that still makes me laugh. Top ten Dean lines for sure. Like all of my main characters throughout the years of writing original fiction are just “Dean Winchester but girl,” and I’m a good writer, but I can never come close to the level of hilarity that he achieves. And every single writer on the show seems to get that. The only times I can think of where Dean’s characterisation has irked me on a writing level are in season 6—basically the entire thing—and the way he treats Jack in the later seasons, specifically late season 15. But it’s really rare for me to watch an episode and not enjoy Dean. Even throughout the Mark Of Cain era, which I loved, when things were very serious, he had such style and panache and held himself so confidently that I was like, wait maybe he made some points? Maybe he should kill everyone?

Dean is a hunter and a killer, but that’s not all he is. He’s very skilled in hand to hand combat, weaponry, and tactical manoeuvres. Even when something doesn’t go exactly to plan, he’s usually able to improvise something to end up with a win. Because he is the main character, his choices and reactions, while sometimes extremely problematic, are never questioned, and that’s to his detriment. In the last episode of season 14, “Moriah,” Dean is unable to kill Jack, but in early season 15, he treats Jack’s betrayal as Cas’s fault, because he can’t take it out on Jack. Cas leaves, but it’s framed as a good thing because Cas is Jack’s father, and has to take responsibility for what Jack has done. In this instance, I don’t blame Cas at all. Okay I rarely blame Cas for anything, including the things he’s done wrong, because no he didn’t and you can’t prove it. But he especially didn’t do anything wrong when Jack killed Mary, and he didn’t do anything wrong by killing Belphagor. But by the middle of the season, in the episode “The Trap,” Dean admits his wrongdoing in taking his anger out on Cas, one of the only people who loves him without conditions. You’d think this would be a defining moment of character progression, but then Dean chooses to act exactly the same way by throwing Jack under the bus. Like, throwing him harder, under a bigger bus. So what was the point.

Anyway, those are choices the writers made, and not Dean.

Going back to what I was saying about being neurodivergent, Dean has adhd. I know this because I have adhd, and I’m Dean-coded. He’s wildly creative, impulsive, has a touch of OCD, and he has a hard time making long-lasting friends, although this is mostly due to how all his friends die. His best friend is an autistic angel and the only reason they’re still friends is because they’re obsessed with each other, in like a really unhealthy way. One of the funny things about his and Cas’s relationship is that every time you see them in the same shot, Cas is standing perfectly still and Dean is constantly moving. They are almost complete opposites, aside from their queerness and neurodivergence. But then, I haven’t met a single queer person in my entire life who isn’t neurodivergent or disabled in some way. That doesn’t mean we can’t live perfectly functional and normal lives, it just means we’re better than everyone else.  

Dean also exhibits black and white thinking—to him all felons are redeemable and all monsters should be killed. Felons are redeemable because he himself is a felon, and monsters should be killed because they all do monstrous things. When faced with the possibility of angels being real, he refuses to believe it for the first two episodes, because, as he says, “he’s never seen one.” Eventually he learns how to see in shades of grey and not kill every monster he meets, but this is because of his time in purgatory with Benny, his Cajun vampire boyfriend.

Another sign of Dean’s ADHD is physical sensitivity. In the season one episode “Bugs,” he comments on the shower’s water pressure. Like it’s a big deal to him, when he’s only ever used 1-star motel room showers. In the later seasons, he’s also seen to wear a fluffy robe and soft pajamas with hotdogs on them and socks that say “Send Noods” but noods spelt like noodles. And so he should! Dean deserves comfort! He’s a special boy.

ADHDers often have problems with executive function—remembering appointments, cleaning up after ourselves, showering, eating, even going to the toilet when we need to pee. The hunting life excludes Dean from the normal functions of usual life, such as dentist appointments, dropping the kids off at school, meal prepping for the week, or turning up to a job on time. These were only factors in Dean’s life during the gap between seasons 5 and 6 when he lived with Lisa and Ben, and it’s not shown how his executive dysfunction impacted his suburban, settled life, but Lisa does mention that Dean drinks a lot. It’s another thing he inherited from John, much as I did my alcoholism from my father, and my adhd too. But Sam doesn’t drink to excess more than a handful of times over the entire 15 seasons, whereas Dean subsists on alcohol to get through the day. At one point in season 11, I’m pretty sure, don’t fact check me, he is shown to be drinking a beer at about 10 in the morning, because, as he says to Sam, “You drank all the coffee. What do you want me to do? Drink water?” Dean your liver must be quaking.

Excess is a common problem for people with ADHD. We have problems with limiting ourselves—because our dopamine machine broke, anything that gives us a little bit of high—such as sugar, sex, alcohol, stimulants, any kind of food that is bad for us but tastes real good—we usually have it in excess because we can’t help ourselves. In the season 4 episode “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester,” Dean eats the entirety of the candy in the Impala. The only reasons I don’t eat everything in my fridge every day is because, one, I don’t have the money, and two, it’s all ingredients I have to prepare and not ready-made food. Whereas Dean has only known fast food for the first 10 or so seasons until he starts cooking and baking and settling into domesticity. Like anyone who gets UberEats every day instead of cooking for themselves knows how expensive that is. He also engages in meaningless sex, although people have pointed that Sam actually gets more on screen action than Dean. But I know a lot of amab people who engage in casual sex with randos because it satisfies a base need. Dean could be classified as hypersexual in some regards, but I know what hypersexuality feels like and it’s like this overwhelming miasma where you can’t think about anything except how horny you are, and I don’t think Dean has that normally. Maybe when he was a demon in season 10, but generally I think he can control himself.

His settled life in the men of letters Bunker is a far cry from his flashbacks in season 8 to Purgatory. From what we know of purgatory, the land of gods and monsters, it was a year-long monster hunt, but without any of the boring paperwork. Dean got to fight and kill as many vampires, ghouls, leviathan, etc as came his way, which is why it’s absolutely ridiculous that he died by rebar in a vampire fight. He spent an entire year spilling blood and chopping off heads, day and night, and he dies by metal bar to the spine? And he’s not even coughing up blood? Andrew Dabb, I’m coming for you. Of course purgatory is the perfect place for Dean because it’s constant adrenaline, constant excitement, constant stimulation, which is what every day life lacks. Even Dean’s every day life is like, 20% monster killing and the rest is leg work. They go weeks or months between cases, and sometimes don’t find the monster at all. So I’m not surprised he gets bored easily and drinks. Would if I could too, my pal.

Which leads me onto Dwelling. Dean dwells on the horrors of his life in a way I do and my carefree older brothers don’t. In the season 4 episode “Heaven and Hell,” he reveals to Sam that he remembers his entire forty years in hell, and there are flashes of his memory littered throughout the season in creepy, split-second increments. He dwells on the people who die, doing his thousand-yard stare into the funeral pyre of everyone they cremate. In the most egregious display of dwelling, he rewrites history TWICE to deal with his grief — in season 8 he makes himself believe that it was his fault Cas didn’t come back from purgatory with him, and again in season 13 he invents the story of Jack controlling Cas to deal with his grief over Cas’s death. His PTSD twists the truth until it becomes another way to torture himself, because if someone gets hurt it’s on him; everyone who loves him is just one more person to disappoint.

On a lighter note, Hyperfixations, equivalent to Autism special interests, are a common trait of ADHD. Some of Dean’s hyperfixations include: hunting in general; cowboys and cowboy movies; the musical Rent; the movie Braveheart; larping. He loves dressing up and acting, and what is putting on a monkey suit and lying about being a Fed if not larping? Oh god the meta of that coupled with the season 4 episode “The Monster At The End Of This Book” is making my head hurt. And actually, the next episode of Holy Hell is on the subject of meta-textuality so stick around if that’s something you enjoy.

One of the amazing things about ADHD is creativity. Since we’re easily bored and easily amused, we’re constantly pushing the boundaries of our curiosity. In season three episode “Bloodlust,” Dean decapitates a vampire with a miter saw, something that even veteran vampire hunter Gordon Walker comments is a thing of beauty. Dean creates a Ma’lak box in season 14 episode “Damaged Goods” as a way to contain Michael if he ever inhabits Dean’s body again. Dean is always making up words like “were-pire” and “Jefferson Starships,” and he has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of pop culture, which he references in almost every line of dialogue. Like tv and movies raised me, but even I don’t understand a lot of his references. It’s almost like he’s a character in a tv show being written by dozens of people. But that’s not right. He’s a real person and my friend. My friend Dean Winchester, who shouts me burgers and passes out on my couch.

Also, I’m bragging now but as of the day of writing this I got my ADHD diagnosis and it feels so good to have a doctor, a psychiatrist in fact, confirm my belief. After about three or four years of figuring out I have adhd and then trying to make everyone else believe me when I say I do, it feels like a huge weight off. Dean deserved to feel that. He deserves to put a name to his differences and be in charge of his life instead of letting his anger, confusion and impulses control him. If anyone is worried that you might have something and don’t know whether to pursue a diagnosis, my two cents are that it has only improved my life. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder in 2014 and it allowed me to go on medication, which snapped me out of the worst period of anxiety I have ever gone through and also a psychotic episode that featured talking walls and a swarm of Christmas beetles. Trust me, we all need help sometimes, and some people like me need more help than others, but you can take control of the forces in your life that hold you back. As my mother used to say to me when I was a child, the world is your oyster. It really fucking does get better, and since I started on the right anti-depressants for me my life has improved so goddamn much. The world is fucked right now, and it’s impossible to even function on most levels. We all need therapy. I myself have a gp, a psychiatrist, and a psychologist and they keep me relatively sane. I would not be alive if I didn’t have years and years of ongoing therapy and good drugs. Plus I journal everyday and practice gratitude. I’m still crazy but the craziness is contained and doesn’t hurt me anymore.

Despite never going to therapy, Dean grows from being a loner with one friend (his own brother) to someone with a wealth of connections and family. He picks up new people to love like he’s velcro, and when he goes in he goes all in. He would die for the people he loves. He’s constantly putting himself in danger to protect his loved ones. In the Season 6 episode “Let It Bleed,” Dean captures and tortures demons in an effort to find out where Crowley took Lisa and Ben. He then has Cas wipe their memories so that they don’t remember him and can live their lives without him, at his own great distress. In season 5, he goes to Stull Cemetery to impinge on the fight between Lucifer and Michael, just to be there for Sam. As Dean says, he’s “not going to let him die alone.”

That being said, I do have to talk about Dean’s very few, but ultimately life-ruining, flaws. His emotional dysregulation makes his moods unpredictable at best. By virtue of his black and white thinking, he forces the people he loves to choose sides between him and other characters, such as Sam and Ruby, Cas and Crowley, Mary and the british men of letters, and Cas and Jack, and when they don’t choose him, he passively aggressively, and sometimes just aggressively, tortures them until something else usurps their betrayal. His anger issues are par to none, and often get him in a lot of trouble. But since he is the main character, he never really faces consequences for this, and neither does he mature. Even in the final season episode “The Trap,” while Dean admits how angry he is and how wrong he was for taking it out on Cas when Jack died, mere episodes later in “Unity” he turns Jack into a nuclear reactor to take out God, and Jack dies again. His characterisation in the last few seasons, especially in regards to Jack, is all over the place. I would have to start a murderboard to explain how Dean feels about Jack and how he reacts to what Jack does in every episode. Like, pictures and red string and everything. And even then I would not be able to comprehend exactly what the writers did and what they thought they were doing.

But unlike me, Dean always believes the best in people until proven otherwise, and he does always come around to the people who atone for their sins. Even when Sam refuses to get his soul back in season 6, Dean keeps trying until Sam is put right. Between seasons 7 and 8, He spends a year in Purgatory looking for Cas despite how Cas sent Sam insane, ingested billions of monster souls, and became God. When the people he loves choose him, he chooses them back.

But even when they betray him, lie to him, deceive him, and hurt the other people in his life, he can’t stop loving them. He never stops loving Sam or Cas or Jack or Mary or John or Bobby. He loves with everything he has. He is, as Cas says, a being of love.

Oof. That was a lot of words and I feel like I only just scratched the surface. Like realistically I just talked about fambily and ADHD. There is just so much to Dean Winchester that maybe I’ll make another episode sometime. But I am definitely making an episode purely about Dean’s gender presentation and sexuality in the future. You can find the show at holyhellpod on Tumblr where I post transcripts for the episodes and Instagram where I post memes.

I don’t see myself doing an episode about Sam any time soon, Not because I don’t like Sam, but because I can’t stand Jared Padalecki. He’s done some things that I can’t support, and I’m really bad at separating the art from the artist. Especially when it’s something like Supernatural, which is not art. Supernatural is an experiment. It’s not Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry. Like Jared Padalecki didn’t invent rock and roll, you know what I’m saying? However, if you really want me to do an episode about Sam, you can pay me 101 Australian dollars and 50 Australian cents at patreon.com/holyhellpod. I’ll talk to you next time.

Links

http://www.scififantasynetwork.com/dean-winchester-has-adhd/

#supernatural #spn #supernatural podcast #dean winchester #holyhellpod #transcripts

[busghost]

Fu Hua’s very long lore

She’s more than 50,000 years old, what did you expect?

Also I cried rereading the manga for this so you better appreciate it.

VERY LONG POST

Sources

https://manga.honkaiimpact3.com/book/1018/3

Fu Hua origin story

https://manga.honkaiimpact3.com/book/1012/1

Story to make you cry, please read it. It’s so good.

https://manga.honkaiimpact3.com/book/1020

Fu Hua makes a school.

https://manga.honkaiimpact3.com/book/1011

Fu Hua kicking Schicksal’s collective ass.

https://manga.honkaiimpact3.com/book/1005

The Second Eruption Manga because it’s connected to literally everything in the story. No I’m not exaggerating. Please read it, it’s so good.

https://manga.honkaiimpact3.com/book/1010

Fu Hua the secret agent.

I will be spoiling parts of all of the above.

Previous Era of Civilization

Fu Hua’s story starts 50,000 years ago in her home city of Sapphire, a Honkai eruption had occurred and she had hidden from the beasts and was one of the few survivors. She was found by Himeko, the leader of Squadron V in MOTH, and she offered to teach Fu Hua how to fight the Honkai. A year later Himeko was corrupted by the Honkai and became the 7th Herrscher, the Herrscher of Flame and was killed by Kevin Kaslana. Fu Hua was the only survivor of Squadron V after their leader became a Herrscher and was mistrusted by other members of MOTH, calling her the “Firewytch’s Little Bird”, because she and Himeko were close.

Later Fu Hua was assigned with a group of other MOTH soldiers to take back a mine in Australia. They were going to be given 10th Divine Key weapons as they had begun being mass produced, and told that it was a field trial for the Divine Keys. They were given an injection before the mission and sent off.

(note: there are multiple 10th Divine Keys because the 10th Herrscher took over many bodies, thus there are multiple Herrscher cores to weapons)

When they arrived they had no problems killing smaller Honkai beasts but then the massive Emperor class Honkai beast Gensha appeared and killed everyone, the Divine Keys being wielded by regular humans had no effect on such a strong Honkai beast.

When Fu Hua confronted Ganesha her Divine Key shattered and she was thrown against a building but unlike the other soldiers the metamorph ICHOR which they had injected into the soldiers before the mission took hold and Fu Hua became a MANTIS soldier, adding Honkai genes to her human DNA. Her shattered 10th Divine Key also changed form from a Xuanyuan Sword to the Grips of Taixuan.

DR. MEI also gave Fu Hua the 8th Divine Key, Fenghuang Down; it creates illusions/ dreams that Fu Hua can trap her targets in. She is also seen using it to power up normal attacks, or perform attacks that are impossible, such as cutting out a man’s tongue when she’s tied up and he tries to assault her. She also put herself/a copy of herself in somebody else’s mind using Fenghuang Down.

After this we know she fought the Honkai as a MANTIS like Kevin Kaslana, the previous era Sakura or Su did. She also took part in the final battle against the  14th Herrscher, the Herrscher of the End, on the Moon. After the previous era’s final defeat at the hands of the Herrscher of the End, Fu Hua and the remaining Humans went underground and into cryostasis to wait for the 4th Divine Key to heal the damage Honkai had done to the Earth.

Current Era of Civilization

Sometime around when human civilization reappeared was when the survivors from the Previous Era reemerged from cryostasis. When exactly isn’t shown but we are shown panels in the manga of Su and Kevin in Ancient Egypt and Rome/Greece.

Fu Hua, Fuxi, and Nuwa are in charge of aiding human civilization around China and they’ve set up base in Shenzhou. They were in charge of Project EMBER, a project meant to speed up the development of human civilization. Fuxi and Nuwa were also entrusted with a 10th Divine Key and tasked with giving it to a person of this era who could wield it, they picked a young woman with a stigmata Ji Xuanyuan. Fuxi and Nuwa also created the Phoenix image for Fu Hua to have to make her a legend

Fuxi and Nuwa weren’t MANTIS soldiers unlike Fu Hua so they would age and die. They didn’t want Fu Hua to become lonely when they were gone so they make the ELF Book of Fuxi to keep her company.

Unfortuntely because the Honkai grows with civilization Project EMBER sped up the growth of the Honkai and gave birth to the Judgement class Honkai beast Chiyou. Nuwa and Fuxi died to stop it and Ji Xuanyuan was trapped inside the beast. Project EMBER was cancelled and Fu Hua became the Immortal Celestial, Phoenix, Protector of Shenzhou to protect China because that’s what she promised she’d do.

Fu Hua also starts a school to teach people how to combat the Honkai. It was Book of Fuxi’s final request.

In the late 1400s Schicksal has solidified its control over Europe and wants more, so they decide to head east. Schicksal and the Ming Empire fight in the Eurasian steppe from 1470-1475 but then Fu Hua shows up and defeats Schicksal’s army single-handed. She also defeats Kallen Kaslana in single combat and call her out for using the Oath of Judah against humans.

Now we get to the visual novel. It’s not translated but I’ll give a brief summary of what I know from hearsay. Fu Hua is betrayed by her students and killed in an extremely gory description that includes organs outside of the body and exposed brains. Luckily a few cells are left alive, so she can heal back from that, due to being a MANTIS soldier. She sets out looking for answers as to why she was betrayed. She also meets Otto Apocalypse, who is wandering the world after Kallen’s death. I don’t know what happens beyond that.

Mihoyo please translate your shit.

Anyway, Fu Hua continues protecting civilization in Shenzhou. She also adopts and trains Cheng Lixue sometime in the 1990s but then also abandons her.

the Second Honkai War

(again seriously, read the Second Eruption Manga)

The Second Honkai War is where we see how terrifyingly powerful Fu Hua is.

When Otto mobilizes all of Schicksal to defeat Sirin, because she had gained 6 Herrscher cores and the situation had gotten really out of hand. He also calls upon his old friend Fu Hua, because Sirin has the Gem of Serenity, the core of the Herrscher of Death and Otto believes he needs the Herrscher of Death to revive Kallen.

Otto, Cheng Lixue, and Fu Hua personally confront Sirin on top of Babylon labs where they confront the Herrscher of the Void directly. Fu Hua immediately traps her in a dream world and fights her in the dream world and kills her there, making her think she’s dead. Then Otto fucks everything up by letting Sirin get in touch with God and she free’s Sirin from Fu Hua’s dream, so Fu Hua creates an attack so powerful Sirin that God has to shield her from the blow. Sirin had to be saved by deus ex machina.

Luckily Fu Hua’s punch did sever Sirin’s connection to God. Unfortunately, she burnt up so much of the 8th Divine Key she lost her memories. Sirin also left the dream world with control over some of the powers of the 8th Divine Key.

When she exits the dream world she doesn’t remember who Cheng Lixue is and Cheng Lixue sacrifices herself to let Otto escape with the unconscious Fu Hua. 

By the time the 2nd Honkai War is over, Fu Hua wakes up and runs away from Schicksal but she has nowhere else to go. She has lost a great deal of her power and is dying as well, so she has to rely on Schicksal to defend Shenzhou because her promise to do so is all she really remembers. She basically has to become Otto’s personal lackey in order to ensure her home’s safety.

In 2014, Kiana and the gang are at St. Freya and Fu Hua takes Kiana on a mission with her under the guise of it being easy. A Schicksal scientist has defected and taken the Gem of Serenity with him to neutral Singapore to escape to Anti-Entropy territory. Fu Hua has to get it back. Fu Hua kills a pervy clone of the 1st Herrscher and Kiana gets to the Gem first. Kiana is possessed by the Herrscher of the Void because the the Gem of Serenity was returned to her. (Kiana is Sirin, want that explained? Ask me or go read the 2nd Eruption Manga). Fu Hua beats her up and gets the Gem back, saving Kiana. The whole purpose of Fu Hua’s mission was actually to make sure that the Herrscher could get the Gem of Serenity.

Stuff That Happens in Game (spoilers for Chapter 4 onwards until the end of the post)

After Chapter 4 in the game Fu Hua uses the 8th Divine Key to go into Bronya’s mind to help her put her mind back together after Bronya destroys the chip in her brain to stop Cocolia from being able to mind control her.

Chapters 5 and 6 are both illusions created by the Herrscher of the Void using the small part 8th Divine Key she stole from Fu Hua in the Second Honkai War. When the Herrscher of the Void begins to awaken within Kiana at the end of Chapter 6, Fu Hua kidnaps Kiana takes her Schicksal HQ. Fu Hua fights for Otto in the beginning and captures Himeko. She uses the 8th Divine Key to heal Himeko after their fight then goes to save her friends, then Otto kills her for betraying him.

BUT all those people she’s used the 8th Divine Key on still have a copy of her in their heads. So Himeko is guided around Schicksal HQ by Fu Hua and given the means to save Kiana from the Herrscher of the Void. Bronya is saved from Grey Serpent by the Fu Hua in her head. Kiana has the Fu Hua in her head throughout ARC City until Fu Hua fights Kevin to let Kiana escape. And now Kevin has that Fu Hua as a feather.

Where does that leave us now?

At least one copy of Fu Hua still exists in feather form. Kevin says he’ll wake her up when it’s all over, in reference to defeating the Honkai.

The Fu Hua in Bronya’s head doesn’t seem to be explicitly gone.

If you’re in the “Himeko’s not dead” crowd then she’d still be there but,, Himeko.

And if it’s possible for her body to come back from near-death again then that’s a possibility but she was extremely weak when she died compared to when she healed the last time.

Anyway, Phoenix is the Hottest Thing There Is.

#hi3 lore #honkai impact #honkai impact 3rd #fu hua #long post

[ophelia-thinks]

@themetamorphic re: stability/change i LOVE that you said that bc i feel like it’s an intense cultural anxiety that crawls around under the surface of so much late 2000s-2010s tv, good and bad---community became almost obsessed with it in its later seasons; schitt’s creek always was; veep fell victim to it; sunny *uses* it, to varying effect; downton abbey, i mean, jesus; suits threw itself into entropy, was reinvented every couple of years or so as a worse and sadder version of itself; leverage, which was at its best pure comfort-food wish fulfillment for a certain type of person, got a lot of mileage out of assuaging those anxieties, of creating a kind underworld where the rules of impermanence that govern “normal” lives don’t apply

it’s something i never really... consciously thought to associate with succession because on a meta level the show feels so controlled, so meticulously scripted... but on a thematic one, holy shit---i mean, it’s not the julian fellowes “time [‘progress’] vs. wealth and power” anxiety, because succession is set in the modern day, and as of this writing there is no end in sight. it’s literally about kingship, the precariousness and paranoia of it, of not just of having power but of being or desiring to be the Most powerful. to wear the crown. everything can be taken from you in an instant. “don’t jump.”

i guess the thing about the family’s resistance to change---holding out against the necessity of it---is how small and dark their world is, how narrow their lives really are. all those helicopters, private planes, going to london, to hungary, to prague. and it’s the same everywhere, it’s the same every time. their world becomes the world. (just like how, in the opposite direction, the roys’ petty corruptions bleed out into the “real” world, which they tell each other isn’t real at all: the women from the cruises, the dead boy in the lake, just checking the till here mark, aren’t you short a few million?) how could you not be a person obsessed with clinging to power as stability when this is all there is?

which is where you come back to the safety/panic thing, change as something inherently terrifying (and logan weaponizes change, doesn’t he, understands the need for it but controls when and how it happens, keeps all the pieces in play that way)---and like, safety as insulation against change, roman’s “real danger,” tom and shiv’s prenup, killing and sacrifice as metaphor, the cyclical nature of addiction (a persistent danger that feels seductively like safety), greg hoarding shreds of criminal evidence that he believes will make him safe (”you’d be safer without insurance, ironically”), that connor line about his house in the desert being sealed to “all biological or chemical warfare”/doubling as an apocalyptic bunker

(only he explicitly fears a day of reckoning---but tom has a “virus,” says lester’s crimes are like “zombies,” is haunted by the specter of them for a season and a half, and, becoming increasingly afraid of losing shiv’s protection, develops a bizarre mimicry of a protector/protege dynamic with greg; aren’t we all just trying to be safe)

#succession

[dailycharacteroption]

Class Feature Friday: Chaos Domain & Blessing (Cleric Domain & Warpriest Blessing)

 We’re finally back to first edition domains again, and this time we’re looking at the first of the alignment domains!

As one might imagine, the four alignment domains are some of the most common domains out there, each deity and demideity that isn’t true neutral has at least one of them. However, since every deity has their own philosophy, what exactly these domains and their associated blessings mean varies from religion to religion.

On a philosophy note, chaos is all about doing what you want when you want, not shackled by the laws, personal code, or other trappings of civilization getting in the way. Of course, what chaotic beings want varies by the other part of their alignment. Chaotic good wants themselves and others to flourish, using order when it is a useful tool to do so, but discarding it when it gets in the way. Chaotic neutral is a bit more selfish, willing to do all sorts of things to remain free and able to experience the world as they see fit. Finally, chaotic evil is sadism incarnate seeking fully selfish goals and more than willing, and even taking pleasure in causing suffering to achieve those goals.

None of this implies that those who are chaotic are incapable of planning, only that they dislike structure that would limit their flexibility.

Of course, chaos is more than just a philosophy, but it also covers cosmic forces as we interpret them. The tendency for new and wondrous things to arise without a guiding hand, as well as the nature of entropy to break down even the most solid things, be they living things, civilization, or simple matter. Chaotic beings learn to accept that these changes are inevitable and worth celebrating, some simply accepting what is to come or shaping them according to their desires, while others reveling in new developments and bidding them a fond farewell as they leave.

To choose an alignment domain is to draw power from something inherently subjective, wielding the powers associated with the concept. Clerics and inquisitors that choose such a domain believe in their faith’s interpretation so greatly that they wield it against their detractors in a very literal way.

The same also goes for warpriests, but in a much more literal and violent way. Such warpriests may lead armies that lash out at established civilizations that impose what they believe to be too much order or control over the world around them, or crusade against tyrants as heroes of freedom.

Again, the exact reasons vary from faith to faith, and person to person, so the exact why they choose this power and how they wield it is diverse and unique to all practitioners.

 For clerics and inquisitors, the power of chaos allows them to inflict unfavorable propability upon their foes, making them momentarily less likely to succeed.

Later on, they can briefly empower a weapon with the power of chaos, making it a deadly tool against lawful foes.

Clerics also gain access to various domain spells, namely those that protect against law or provide other forms of chaotic protection, chaotic blessings for their weaponry, powerful invocations of chaotic energy through blasts and cosmic words, the ability to bring objects to life, and even summoning the servants of chaos to fight for them.

While the touch is a useful if risky maneuver, the second ability and spells of this domain truly gear it towards both defense and combat, harming and debuffing foes, or providing various self-buffs. Naturally, this makes it a good pick when facing organized foes that might be lawful, but might not see as much use against more wild foes. Inquisitors, however, will find it quite useful for the extra damage and debuff they can utilize.

Meanwhile, the warpriest blessing allows them to imbue their weapons with a lesser form of chaotic blessing to harm lawful foes.

Later on, the greater blessing allows them to call upon chaotic outsiders or anarchic creatures to aid them in battle, granting them a variety of special allies.

For warpriests, the chaotic damage enhancement will be situation depending on the foes you face, but summoning, even limited summoning, will always prove useful. I would recommend taking expanded summoning feats to add more chaotic options to your summoning lists, specifically proteans, to further develop this, and probably use your other blessing choice to get something a bit more general purpose unless you have something specific in mind already.

 Freedom means different things to different people, so these holy figures are as varied as there are chaotic deities that make use of the domain in the first place. All value autonomy and the desire to preserve at least their own freedom, if not that of others.

  The faith of the Song of the River maintains many shrines along the Heart River, which is sacred to the goddess. These simple riverbank shrines are maintained by Felami, a naiad priestess who travels up and down the river, maintaining them and tending to the communities that depend upon the river for their livelihoods, as well as travellers seeking freedom and new wonders.

 The icy tundra of the far north are considered a death sentence to many local cultures, with only devotees of the Ice Walker daring to travel far away from settlements to keep different villages connected. Some priests even train as warriors to hunt the icy predators like the insectile ursikka to help make the journeys safer.

 The priesthood of the Rebel’s Heart are exactly what one would expect, being revolutionaries. They practice in secret and work to guide and protect those that would stand up to tyranny. However, even goodly civilizations consider them an ill omen, assuming that they support rebels and insurrectionists regardless of the justness of their cause.

#pathfinder #archetype #cleric #domain #chaos #warpriest #blessing #naiad #ursikka #Core Rule Book #Advanced Class Guide

[chelular-device]

Would u analyze seer of time :v

woops! i completely missed this one!

yeah sure, ill do that

Seer: Passive knowing class. Usually gathers information on their aspect from afar. Inverse class: Witch.

Time: Second cardinal aspect. It's uh, time. Can also relate somewhat to death, and the futility of entropy.

We know from most all sources in HS that Seers tend to be sort of dope as hell. But for the Seer of Time, their life is likely not nearly as dope as they are.

They've seen death. Like, a lot of it. Not personally, obviously, otherwise they'd be dead, but they've definitely experienced many a loss in their family and suffered the mental toll that has. They seem constantly worried for their friends, but never really do anything to push them in the right entropal direction. They know they cannot prevent death, so they instead adopt a view that they can avoid all possible ways they could die (which they obviously cannot.)

Godtiering is hard for this hero, both mentally and literally. Their weapon is far too blunt to kill themselves with (sharp things are scary!) but by the same token they achieve immortality by dying.

Okay now let's actually get to the Time part of this. Seeing Time is an interesting ability to have -- perhaps a mystic, or some inane ability to guess the time. I wouldn't doubt if they had tarot cards and used those quite often.

Ingame they'd have an uncanny knack for being able to predict the future. Not perfectly, mind you, but rather accurately. Besides which, they might be able to accurately predict one's death. Time players may also have a knack for rhythm, perhaps a Seer is simply able to multitask? Or manage several appointments at a time, or something.

It's been a bit of a stressful week for me so i hope i didnt answer this too late

i hope you enjoyed the analysis, cya

#analysis #seer #time #seer of time #classpect #homestuck #class #aspect #classpect analysis

[arundolyn]

monster of the week blazblue au nobody asked for!

these lists are what i used for reference even tho the only one i really used out of tome of mysteries is the hex

i got burned out and am stumped on amane bullet and azrael so suggestions are welcome

Ragna: 

the chosen

moves: either invincible, devastating, or resilience

gear: handle, artifact, blade, heavy, steel

Look: man, controlled face, urban wear

charm -1, cool +2, sharp +1, tough +2, weird -1 

found out through nightmares and visions

heroic tags: sacrifice and you can save the world 

doom tags: host of monsters and loss of loved ones 

history: waaaay too many choices. ie him and jin being siblings, jubei being destined to be his mentor, jin could have been the chosen one instead but wasn’t there for saya, etc

OR

the wronged

moves: berserk and what does not kill me…

gear: huge sword, big knife, brass knuckles

look: man, angry eyes, nondescript clothes (?)

charm -1, cool -1, sharp =0, tough +2, weird +2

lost siblings and parent

prey: ghost?

couldn’t save them because he was weak

history: jubei showed him the ropes

Jin: 

the professional 

moves: unfazeable, battlefield awareness, tactical genius

gear: flak vest, only weapon that really fits him is big knife?

look: man, young face?, tailored suit

charm -1, cool +2, sharp +1, tough =0, weird +1 

agency: works for a clandestine police team that studies the supernatural

resources: well armed and recognized authority

red tape: dubious motives and bureaucratic 

history: ragna’s on the agency’s watchlist and he’s keeping an eye on him

Noel/Mu (cs era mu is dark side):

the spooky

moves: the sight, the big whammy, jinx

gear: 9mm, hunting rifle

look: girl, blank eyes, neat clothes

charm +2, cool =0, sharp -1, tough -1, weird  +2

the dark side: violence, self destruction, paranoia

history: blood kin with ragna and jin, old friends with makoto and tsubaki

Rachel: 

the spell-slinger

combat magic: blast, lightning/entropy, force/wind

moves: advanced arcane training, arcane reputation, enchanted clothing

gear: ritual knife

look: girl, goth clothes, weary eyes

charm -1, cool =0, sharp +2, tough -1, weird +2

history: valk acts are her conscience when her power goes to her head

Tao: 

the mundane 

moves: oops!, the power of heart, what could go wrong?

gear: hockey stick, pocket knife, skateboard cause why not

look: concealed, friendly face, sporty clothes(?)

charm +2, cool =0, sharp -1, tough +1, weird +1

history: good friends with ragna

Tager: 

the monstrous

monster breed: demon

curse: anything holy I guess

natural attacks: claws, +1 harm

moves: immortal, unholy strength

gear: brass knuckles

look: man, powerful aura, stylish clothes

charm -1, cool -1, sharp =0, tough +2, weird +3

history: kokonoe is tied to his origin

Litchi: 

the mundane

moves: let’s get out of here!, the power of heart, trust me

gear: hockey stick, nunchucks, fairly new car

look: woman, alluring face, casual clothes

charm +2, cool +1, sharp +1, tough =0, weird -1

history: romantically involved with roy

Arakune/Roy: 

Literally The Monster but if i had to

the monstrous 

monster breed: slime monster 

curse: feed

natural attacks: magical force, ignore armor

moves: unnatural appeal, shapeshifter

look: mysterious, bestial aura

charm =0, cool -1, sharp +2, tough -1, weird +3

history: litchi and kokonoe are tied to his origin

/

the mundane

moves: panic button, trust me, don’t worry, i’ll check it out

gear: baseball bat, small handgun, bicycle

look: man, average face, nerdy clothes

charm +2, cool =0, sharp +1, tough +1, weird -1

history: romantically involved with litchi

Bang: 

the chosen

moves: the big entrance or dutiful

gear: staff, artifact, spikes, long, steel

look: man, hopeful face, urban wear

charm +2, cool -1, sharp +1, tough +2, weird -1

heroic tags: secret training, a normal life

doom tags: you can’t save everyone, a nemesis

history:  tenjo was destined to be his mentor i know she isnt here but fuck it i got nothin

Carl: 

the wronged

moves: fervor, safety first

gear: enchanted dagger, 9mm, big knife

look: boy, angry eyes, nondescript clothes

charm =0, cool =0, sharp +1, tough +2, weird =0

lost sibling and parent

prey: shapeshifter (shapeshifter turned into relius and killed ada) or just relius

couldn’t save them because he was scared and weak

history: basically everyone has stood in carl’s way at some point

Hakumen:  

the gumshoe

code: justice must be done

moves: asphalt jungle

gear: irrelevant

look: ambiguous, blank face, nondescript clothes

charm +1, cool =0, sharp +2, tough +1, weird -1

history: caught ragna committing a crime (being alive)

Nu: 

the monstrous 

monster breed: black beast

curse: pure drive (hate)

natural attack: magical force, ignore armor

moves: immortal, unquenchable vitality

gear: huge sword

look: girl, sinister aura, stylish clothes

charm -1, cool -1, sharp =0, tough +2, weird +3

history:  ragna is tied to her curse

Lambda: 

the initiate

moves: ancient fighting arts, mystic, sacred oath (to protect ragna)

gear: sword, big sword, sniper rifle

look: girl, agile body, archaic clothes

charm +1, cool -1, sharp +1, tough =0, weird +2

good traditions: fighting arts, flexible tactics

bad traditions: dubious motives

history: she noel and nu are sisters

Tsubaki/Izayoi: 

the searcher

first encounter: higher power

moves: guardian, just another day

gear: irrelevant except for small knife

look: woman, thoughtful face, casual wear

charm +1, cool -1, sharp +1, tough =0, weird +2

history: found accounts of someone matching ragna’s description from before he was born

Hazama: 

the crooked

background: grifter

moves: artifact (amulet,) friends on the force, notorious

gear: .38 revolver, big knife, baseball bat

heat: hibiki is a rival, took advantage of noel

underworld: worked with a demon

look: man, calculating eyes, tailored suit

charm +2, cool =0, sharp +1, tough -1, weird +1

history: terumi saved his life and now he owes him

OR

the flake

moves: connect the dots, see, it all fits together, sneaky

gear: big knife, throwing knives, butterfly knife

look: man, suspicious eyes, neat clothes

charm +1, cool -1, sharp +2, tough =0, weird +1

history: ragna is tied to everything

Makoto:

the mundane

moves: the  power of heart, what could go wrong?, don’t worry, i’ll check it out

gear: baseball bat, nunchucks, skateboard

look: woman, friendly face, sporty clothes(?)

charm +2, cool =0, sharp +1, tough +1, weird -1

history: initially mai’s rival

Valk: 

the monstrous

monster breed: werewolf

curse: vulnerability (silver)

natural attacks: teeth, claws

moves: unholy strength, shapeshifter

look: man, powerful aura, archaic clothes

charm -1, cool -1, sharp =0, tough +2, weird +3

history: clavis tried to kill him and spared him

Plat: 

the spooky

moves: premonitions, the big whammy, jinx

gear: no weapons we die with muchorin like men

look: girl, piercing eyes, ratty clothes

charm =0, cool -1, sharp +1, tough +1, weird +2

dark side: mood swings, rage, poor impulse control

history: jubei taught her to control her powers

Relius: 

the expert

moves: i’ve read about this sort of thing, dark past

haven: lore library, mystical library, workshop

gear: silver sword, blessed knife, magical dagger

look: man, thoughtful face, tailored clothes

charm -1, cool =0, sharp +2, tough -1, weird +2

history: carl is his child

Kagura: 

the professional 

moves: battlefield awareness, tactical genius, mobility (stealthy, concealed weapons, obvious)

gear: flak vest, smg, hunting rifle, shotgun

look: man, chiseled face, tailored suit

charm +1, cool +2, sharp +1, tough -1, weird =0 

agency: works for a clandestine police team that studies the supernatural

resources: well armed and recognized authority

red tape: dubious motives and bureaucratic 

history: friends with other NOL soldiers in training im too lazy to list them all. except for makoto obviously

Kokonoe: 

the hex

temptation: vengeance 

moves: force of will, wise soul

look: woman, sharp eyes, trendy clothes

charm -1, cool =0, sharp +1, tough +1, weird +2

history: tager keeps her grounded

Terumi/Susan: 

the divine

moves: boss from beyond, smite, cast out evil

gear: flaming sword

mission: exiled, but not the rest of that one just the exiled part, sowing evil instead of good

look: man for terumi/asexual for susan, blazing eyes, perfect suit

charm -1, cool =0, sharp +1, tough +2, weird +1

history: haz is the person he goes to for advice on mortal stuff lmao

Celica: 

the mundane

Moves: always the victim, oops!, don’t worry, i’ll check it out

gear: baseball bat, pocket knife, fairly new car

look:  girl, friendly face, normal clothes

charm +2, cool =0, sharp -1, tough +1, weird +1

history: related to nine, ragna is her hero

Hibiki: 

the crooked

background: assassin

Moves: deal with the devil (skill, add to tough and sharp,) friends on the force, notorious

gear: .22 revolver, hunting rifle, big knife

heat: pissed off haz, who will do whatever it takes to kill him, and jin wants to put him in jail

underworld: target of a job was a vampire

look: man, watchful eyes, street wear

charm +1, cool +1, sharp +2, tough =0, weird -1 

history: jin saw him kill someone

Nine: 

the spell-slinger

combat magic: ball, fire, force/wind

moves: advanced arcane training, arcane reputation, forensic divination

gear: ritual knife

look: woman, stylish clothes, fierce eyes

charm -1, cool =0, sharp +2, tough -1, weird +2

history: she thought celica was dead And Yet, plus they’re related

OR

the hex

temptation: power

moves: burn everything, luck of the damned

look: woman, angry eyes, trendy clothes

charm =0, cool =0, sharp +2, tough -1, weird +2

gear: athame

history: celica keeps her grounded

Naoto: 

the chosen

moves: resilience

gear: handle, spikes, blade, throwable, blood

look:  boy, young face, casual wear

charm +2, cool -1, sharp +1, tough +2, weird  -1

found out via some weirdo (Raquel) telling him/by being attacked by monsters

heroic tags: magical powers, a normal life

doom tags: death, a nemesis

history: raquel is destined to be his mentor

Izanami: 

the divine

moves: boss from beyond, what i need, when i need it, smite

gear: five demon bag

mission: the end of days approaches, your role is to guide these hunters and ensure it comes to pass

look: woman, placid eyes, casual clothes

charm -1, cool +1, sharp =0, tough +2, weird +1

history: noel should not be involved in this situation, prophecies didn’t mention her blah blah

Es: 

the initiate

moves: mystic, sacred oath (to protect the azure), helping hand

gear: sword, big sword, crossbow

look: woman, strong body, formal clothes

charm -1, cool =0, sharp -1, tough +2, weird  +2

good traditions: knowledgeable, magical lore

bad traditions: strict laws

history: ragna is described in prophecies, but his role is unstated

Mai: 

the mundane

moves: the power of heart, trust me, what could go wrong?

gear: baseball bat, hockey stick, bike

look: woman, friendly face, sporty clothes(?)

charm +2, cool =0, sharp -1, tough +1, weird +1

history: she and makoto were rivals

Jubei: 

the expert

moves: often right, it wasn’t as bad as it looked

haven: armory, infirmary, panic room

gear: silver sword, cold iron sword, blessed knife

look: indeterminate, experienced face, tailored clothes

charm +1, cool -1, sharp +2, tough +1, weird  =0

history: ragna was his student/apprentice

bonus 

Raquel:

the spell-slinger

combat magic: missile, lightning/entropy, force/wind

moves: advanced arcane training, forensic divination, third eye

gear: heirloom sword

look: girl, stylish clothes, fierce eyes

charm -1, cool =0, sharp +2, tough -1, weird +2

history: rescued naoto

#blazblue #wow this got long #ghost.txt #aus #? i guess

[frickengreenfrickyeah]

An Irreverent Intro to the Iliad

A/N:I’ve taken the introduction to the Lombardo translation and condensed it. Any time I says something to the effect of “don’t quote me on this” that means I’ve added my own analysis or thoughts that I cannot back up in any way, so don’t, like, put it in an essay if you don’t plan on doing your own research.

Anyway, you don’t care about that stuff, you came here to read about the Iliad.

It’s really fricken long, so, for the sake of mobile users, everything’s under the cut except for this:

“Rage. Bitch, lemme tell you about the time that Achilles fucked over the entire Greek army by Rage-quitting.”

Timeline for the Noobs 

Ten years ago:

Aphrodite bribes Paris so she can win a beauty contest between herself, Athena, and Hera. Paris’ reward for his ‘heroics’ is Helen

(There’s probably an essay’s worth of symbolism you could dig into here, what with the goddesses all representing different priorities: erotic love, wisdom/justice, and familial duty. I wonder what Paris’ choice reveals about his character?)

There’s some disagreement about whether or not Helen when with Paris willingly

Seeing as literally no other woman in the Iliad (and maybe the entire Cycle? Don’t quote me on that) willingly went with her kidnapper, I’m calling bull on that. Do with that what you will.

Menelaus gets really mad that Paris stole his wife, so he rounds up the Greek army, and they go to war. (It’s worth noting that Athena and Hera are both on his side here.)

Present day:

Agamemnon(Boo), Menelaus’ brother kidnaps a girl. Then he has the balls to get upset that the girl’s father called Apollo’s plague down upon the Greeks until she’s returned

Achilles points out that Agamemnon’s being a dick and people are literally dying because he won’t let go of one girl. Agamemnon says, “Fine. If I have to give up my lady-war-prize, I’m taking yours as recompense.”

Achilles allows Agamemnon to take his girl, then Rage-quits. As consequence, people die.

Hypocrites. Hypocrites everywhere. If you wanna analyze that for an essay, I think there’s plenty to talk about. 

The Theme Worth Giving a Shit About (Because it Drives the Narrative)

Heroes risk their lives on the battlefield in exchange for Prizes

Ie. riches, bitches, and clout

Honor <--> Shame is how they judge the value of others and themselves. Honor wins Prizes, Shame loses Prizes

3 Characters Worth Giving a Shit About (Because They Explore the Aforementioned Theme)

Achilles: Main character. Rage is his thing. Also, pouting. 

His honor is insulted by Agamemnon(Boo) taking away Briseis, his lady war prize. Since war prizes are how their society rewards heroes for risking their lives, Agamemnon is basically saying he doesn’t care of Achilles dies or not.

And that hurts Achilles’ feelings because he knows he’s gonna die. There’s a prophecy about it. 

The only reason he’s fighting is because society conditioned him to believe that Prizes and eternal glory were worth dying for.

Now that he doubts everything he knows, he refuses to fight for the Greeks.

The entire poem is the consequences of his Rage-quit

Agamemnon: fuck this guy

He loses his lady war prize, so he takes Achilles’. Because short-sighted spite is the best motivator.

He and Achilles start the poem in the same place, believing that material goods should equally compensate a loss. Achilles is the one who learns that that’s not how that works.

Agamemnon starts as a dick and ends as a dick. Google Iphigenia if you want to learn more. And that shit he pulls with Cassandra? Major dickbag. Fuck this guy. 

Hector: The Trojan hero, and honestly the only likable guy here. 

He is Achilles’ foil. 

Just like Achilles, he’s separated from society - but, unlike Achilles, it’s not because he rejects their values. It’s because he never questions them.

He’s basically the perfect hero, and he suffers for it:

His son is scared of his war helmet

He can’t stay closer to home to fight defensively because that’s ‘shameful’

And he can’t even stay in the city that long on his breaks because wine and women are too tempting. 

Side Characters to Maybe Give a Fuck About

Patroclus: The most important of the supporting cast, and he’s only in it for, like, maybe a book

Achilles’ BFF and probably more

(Read: Definitely more. If you listen carefully, you can hear me chanting OTP OTP OTP every time you open your book.)

He is Achilles’ double

He never doubts society but supports his bestie’s midlife crisis anyway

His death at the hands of Hector symbolizes Achilles’ death because he was wearing Achilles’ armor at the time

Achilles causes Patroclus’ death btw

When he Rage-quits, he asks Zeus to help the Trojans (because short-sighted spite is the best motivator). Patroclus goes to help the Greeks wearing Achilles’ very recognizable armor, causing Hector to target and kill him

His death redirects Achilles’ Rage at the Trojans instead of the Greeks

Diomedes: a badass fighter

Greater Ajax: a badass fighter

and (I think) the guy who talks sense into Achilles at some point

Ajax the Lesser: a badass fighter (are you sensing a theme in these characters?)

Odysseus: the only smart guy here

The Odyssey is about him btw

The Trojan horse was his idea, according to the Aeneid (and maybe other places? But definitely the Aeneid.)

WTF is an Epic Poem Anyway?

Epic Poem: recounts events with far-reaching historical consequences, sums up the values and achievements of an entire culture, and documents the full variety of the war

Basically, if “’Murica, Fuck Yeah” sums up America, then the Iliad sums up Ancient Greece

(Actually, Hamilton is a better comparison, but I needed to make a joke. Fite me.)

That “full variety” thing is why Book 2 and a couple other places just list off a bunch of ships or leaders and their dads. That shit is boring. Skip it. 

But also, that ‘full variety’ thing is what makes other parts of the story so interesting. Homer will sum up a dude’s life story right before he kills them or some shit. It magnifies the scale of the narrative by showing how insignificant one person’s experience is - no one person can stop the war.

That’s what makes Achilles’ story even more powerful --> because his impact on the war is significant. His Rage controls the ebb and flow of it. 

He can’t stop the war though. No one can. 

The Gods are Petty as Fuck

Homeric gods look/act like humans, but they’re different mainly because of two things:

1. They can’t die.

That means they treat the events of the war less seriously than the mortals do.

2. The gods know about fate

To the modern reader, it seems like the humans have no agency, but that’s not really the case

Knowing fate is a bit like knowing the plot of a movie. It gives insight into a character’s actions that would otherwise seem random.

By reading this poem, you’re basically a god. Don’t let it go to your head. (But, hey, there’s a reason I’m majoring in this shit)

Bards like Homer would more directly be gods because they changed and adapted the story as they told it, just like the gods influence human actions in the story.

Don't quote me on that tho

Character choices are usually doubly motivated - by the human, and by the gods

Ex: Achilles chooses not to kill Agamemnon because Athena tells him not to.

This is personifying the literal thought process he had so that the reader understands what’s going through his head.

Fate doesn’t force anyone to act out of character --> fate is the consequence of their life choices

The gods not caring about death and his own lack of foresight is what Achilles messes up on

He asks Zeus to help him get revenge on the Greeks because he assumes Zeus cares about that sort of thing, but Zeus is bigger than that.

That leads Patroclus’ death, btw.

The “Enduring Heart” Shit

Achilles is really butthurt that Agamemnon wronged him

The lesson he has to learn is that even if material goods can’t make up for losses, there’s no other option --> you can’t bring people back from the dead, so you have to move on

That’s the Enduring Heart shit

also, if you abstract that concept it sounds kinda like entropy to me (Don’t quote me on that tho)

He learns that lesson by feeling pity for Priam (Hector’s dad) instead of perpetuating the Rage Train

And, hey, that Enduring Heart shit is a lesson that all of us could take to heart. None of us want to die, but it’s gonna happen. Maybe that’s not fair, but throwing a temper tantrum isn’t going to change anything. Really, the only way to avoid being miserable is to embrace our mortality so we can appreciate life while we have it

don’t quote me on that tho

In a nutshell, Achilles has to accept his mortal-ness. Otherwise there’s a lot of unnecessary suffering. 

That’s why we don’t need to see him die in the Iliad even though everyone makes such a big deal about the prophecy about his death. His journey was completed as soon as he found pity in himself instead of Rage - essentially rejecting the godly side of himself (oh yeah, I forgot to mention. His mom is a goddess) and embracing his mortality. 

because gods don’t have to deal with death, they can Rage all they want, remember?

Also, if he never dies, he can’t be reunited with Patroclus. 

OTP OTP OTP

You could probably write an essay about how Achilles died as soon as Patroclus did.

Honestly Boring Historical Context (That might be interesting if you’re a nerd like me?

The poem was basically historical fantasy even when it was first written. There are gods and super strength and shit

Greek History Over-Simplified: The Mycanaean Period was prosperous but ended suddenly. The Dark Ages of Greece followed, and we don’t know much about what happened during that because they forgot the written word was a thin. 

The events of the poem probably take place during the Mycanaean Period because they use bronze weapons. 

But warfare is described from more of a Dark Ages perspective. Like, they don’t use chariots the right way

Which suggests that chariots were part of the source material, then the Dark Ages made people forget how they were supposed to be sued, so the bards just kinda made shit up to explain their presence. (Don’t quote me on that tho)

The Oral Tradition of the poem means that this story was told thousands of times over hundreds (thousands?) of years. So the narrative is hones at shit.

it has the sculpted body of an Olympic athlete. Each muscle toned to do a specific job and everything works perfectly together to accomplish the sporty feat of interest. Every verse is packed with character, setting, plot, and cultural significance

Except for that Catologue of Ships shit. Boooo boring ships.

There were probably lots of other versions of the poem, but Homer told it best. His version was written down as soon as the written word was (re)invented

Side Note that wasn’t in Lombardo’s Intro

The Iliad and Odyssey are both parts of a larger body of work known as the Epic Cycle 

(The Aeneid is basically Caesar Augustus-insert fanfiction at that, btw. Virgil was a satirical fanboy and I’m living for it.)

Characters and events are introduced with the assumptions that the reader already knows their importance

But we only have fragments of the rest of the Cycle today because it was either never written down or the manuscripts were lost

I’m looking at you, Burned Library of Alexandria

*sad fiddle music plays in the background

Videos That I Learned Shit From (Only, like, the first two links are relevant to the topic at hand, btw)

Basic Plot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faSrRHw6eZ8

More about the Epic Cycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3bn0eKt4Rw 

Iphigenia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifFsKCrH3GM 

Oresteia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kpGhivh05k             

The Odyssey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-3rHQ70Pag&index=4&list=PLDb22nlVXGgfwG1qbOtNgu897E_ky_8To (Also, this story is my favorite of the Epic Cycle)

The Aeneid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRruBVFXjnY&list=PLDb22nlVXGgfwG1qbOtNgu897E_ky_8To&index=5  

Ancient Greek History: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzGVpkYiJ9w&index=2&list=PLDb22nlVXGgexsbafIwirG6Tk9uww9dSW    

And, yeah, these videos are all from the same channel. I’m a basic bitch and a ho for not leaving my comfort zone. Fite me. 

Honestly, if anyone has other sources, let me know. Youtube history/video essays are my shit.

I hope this was helpful.

#iliad #literature #irreverent synopsis #i really like green but thats not the topic at hand #epic cycle #Achilles #Achilles and Patroclus forever #intro to the iliad