#THE LITERAL ACTUAL GOD OF VOID AND DESTRUCTION
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Uhh… AU based on @maddascanbe-blog’s A Vengeful Butterfly fic
Canon events are the same, only Camilo isn’t as influenced by Alma’s bullshit. He LOATHES how the rest of the family treats Mirabel and he will not hesitate to back her up
Whenever he tries standing up for Mirabel, he’s either rebuffed, or Mirabel is chastised for being a “bad influence”. And Mirabel’s just used to all of this and doesn’t care anymore. She mostly just spends her days in her room, sewing, and the rest of the family doesn’t bother to check on her. When Julieta or Augustin tries, it is just terrible. They lead with that, “You’re just as special as anyone else” bullshit
The only one safe from him is Antonio because he’s baby
As Chameleon, he’s the only member of the Encantos who doesn’t cause too much destruction or harm to villains. He kind of lost respect for his mother after she struck a thief with lightning. And they only stole a loaf of bread
After a lousy family dinner where Alma berates Mirabel for God-knows-what this time, Camilo sneaks out of his room late at night to blow off some steam. He doesn’t expect to be followed by a glowing white butterfly. It leads him into an old building where he finds two boxes, each with a brooch inside
When he gets back home, he tries on the purple brooch, and before his eyes, a purple butterfly-looking sprite named Nooroo appears. Then, he puts on the blue brooch, and a blue peacock-looking spire named Duusu appears. When they introduce themselves a bit more and their powers, Camilo isn't all too impressed since he comes from a family of superhumans, but then he gets an idea. He can give the Miraculous to Mirabel, and, hopefully, Alma will stop treating her like trash!
However, after what had to be one of the worst missions ever, with Matriarch barking orders instead of doing anything, Tempest causing all sorts of collateral damage, and Alchemist healing civilians to cover up any injuries, Chameleon realizes something... He's not putting Mirabel through this! He was almost crushed by debris, and Matriarch just told him to deal with it! And the press is once again putting the Encantos in a good light, and the civilians are eating it up
Tired of it all, Camilo dons the Butterfly Miraculous and becomes Emperador, the new villain of the city of Veil. Until the citizens see the corruptness of the Encantos, he's going to keep sending out Akumas for them to face. He doesn't expect a ladybug and a cat-themed hero to show up and defeat each of his Akumas, though. But, now Veil will see what true heroes look like
He renounces his hero status one day, Alma is furious, but he doesn't give a damn, and now he's the third black sheep
Anyway, more notes
He has a Phantom of The Opera mask because it's Camilo. And he is a theater nerd
Camilo and Lia get along. He's like the annoying brother she never had. They're the founding members of the, "We love Mirabel, but we hate the rest of her family, sans Camilo and Antonio" club. They got three more members, and all are more than determined to make this girl smile again
He's EXTREMELY protective in this au and will backtalk Alma and Isabela whenever they stop acting like adults and bully Mirabel for literally no reason
He discovers from Mirabel that Bruno left, but never actually left. He also finds out that Bruno is the mysterious Ladybug-themed hero! And he couldn't be more thrilled. His tío deserves some recognition for being a decent hero, and as his loving sobrino, he'll go easy on him... Maybe.
During Hero's Day, it's all the same, except Mirabel finds the Peacock Miraculous instead of Antonio. Duusu tells her what Camilo's been doing, and she's left shocked and unsure what to think until she looks at the live feed on her phone, and sees Emperador being cornered by Cochinelle and Lady Void. Mirabel transforms into Zafiro and sends out an Amok so Emperador can escape. They meet up back at Casita and hug each other while crying
#miraculous ladybug#miraculous#encanto#based on an au#ao3fic#mlb au#camilo madrigal#mirabel madrigal
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"God damn it! Isn't there anyone else? Isn't there any other friends of Kim Dokja still left somewhere?!"
No matter how much Han Sooyoung racked her brain, she couldn't come up with anyone that could help.
Both the Statuses of the Black Flame Dragon and Uriel were gradually declining now.
[Constellation, 'Demon-like Judge of Fire', is glaring at 'Scribe of Heaven'.]
[Constellation, 'Abyssal Black Flame Dragon', says he still can't use the 'Right Hand of the Void Destruction'…]
The fog of darkness had enveloped the 'Isle of Reincarnators', which was about the same as it having finished its preparation to devour this place whole.
It was around then when the specks of light akin to a car's headlights shone from the distance. Along with loud screeching, something arrived by their side after breaking past the deflagration.
A vehicle rather familiar to the members of < Kim Dokja's Company > appeared from beyond the choking dust.
[Hmm. It'll get rather troublesome if you get injured here. You still have three more adverts you need to shoot for me, after all.]
Okay, first off, I love that Sooyoung isn't even calling for people who want to stop the Nameless Mist just because it's, ya know, bad or dangerous or anything like that. Nope. She's calling for people who care for Kim Dokja.
Secondly, Mass Production Maker! And Breaking the Sky Sword Saint! And Yoo Hoseong! And Jang Hayoung! And 'Prisoner of the Golden Headband'!!!!!! Ahhhhhhhh!
I actually completely forgive Prisoner of the Golden Headband for constantly scoffing at Dokja's prior requests for help because his big entrance was so worth waiting for.
Jang Hayoung extended her hand out and the world's heaviest staff found itself in her grip in the next moment. Boundlessly arrogant and aloof eyes glared at the azure sky, and every cloud in the world trembled all at the same time.
[Go and rescue Kim Dokja.]
Those words were not spoken by Jang Hayoung.
[Constellation, 'Prisoner of the Golden Headband', has incarnated into the scenario!]
And he's focused on rescuing Dokja too! Ahhhhhhh!
Sooyoung called out for all of Dokja's friends and they freaking showed up. Look at all these giant names who care so much about this itty bitty baby Constellation.
Which is a little worrying actually because I swear this feels like some kind of big finale...but we still have 30% of the novel left???
I can only imagine that it's all going to come together for the big "Twist" that keeps getting mentioned, as well as Dokja's new Modifier and his Myth-grade story that's germinating. lmao his new name should be Loved and Hated In Equal Measure or something because everyone seems to either immediately adore him and are willing to cut down literal mountains to help him...or they absolutely detest him with every fiber of their being. 😂
Though...even the ones who detest him sometimes come around...
#orv novel chapter 410#orv spoilers#orv liveblog#omniscient reader's viewpoint#orv#kdj#hsy#mass production maker#prisoner of the golden headband#jhy#also the fact that mpm is so powerful due to his coins reminds me that dokja is freaking LOADED#we haven't seen his total in a while but it does make me wonder just how powerful he'll be money-wise when this is all said and done#not anywhere near mpm obviously but he's honestly been more wealthy than several other constellations since before he was one himself
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MOOOOOOOOOM, I am telling Val that Seath doesn't count with the guys like Aldia, Allant, Aldrich, Shabriri, Micolash and Laurence (idk what this type of a guy is called) because he breaks the pattern of having once been human but he thinks this argument is void because Micolash for one didn't transform into anything else, bro just straight up DIED so he already "breaks the pattern" and that it is the vibe that counts and I just hate dragons :(((( Can you judge us (if you choose the wrong side I will stab you btw <3 )
I will solve this in the only way I know.
By pissing off both sides.
Ehehehemuhahahaahahaa
KATY. Your hatred of dragons is a skill issue. They are BASED creatures and deserve eternal respect. They can BREATHE ARSON and the Dark Souls/Elden Ring dragons are literally some of the best characters in the Soulsborne series.
VAL. You are mistaken. Seath doesn’t fit the type, because he is on a quest for immortality after being denied it by fate and cast out by his fellow immortal dragons.
What these other characters have in common is that they saw the cruel cycle of the world and sought to mend it or escape it through ascension, destruction, and revolution, but they ended up ruining and sacrificing countless lives in the process.
(Laurence is a bit iffy on this one. Yes, he is the guy that ruined everything, but part of the theme with these guys is they succeed in some way with their original goals by escaping or destroying the cycle. Micolash is far more “the guy” for Bloodborne).
So. Who is actually “the guy” for Dark Souls 1?
It’s obviously Gwyn. That’s like…the whole point. He feared the world’s natural cycle and tried to “fix” it, but ended up turning into a hollow husk of his former self and later became an amalgamation of sacrificed souls that had only been sacrificed BECAUSE of the sin he committed by linking the fire. Gwyn is very similar to Allant, except his motivations are fear-based rather than despair-based.
And don’t forget, these guys almost always sacrifice or ruin themselves along with other people. Allant turned into a demon, Gwyn became hollow, Aldia became…a tree lol, Aldrich melted into sludge, Micolash became a nightmare host with a corpse in the real world, and god knows what really happened to Shabriri, but he clearly is formless and has to rely on the flesh of others to commune with others.
Gwyn is closer in temperament to Allant and Aldia, in that he is sympathetic because you understand his desire to be free from some fateful cycle, whereas Mico, Shabriri, and Aldrich come off as very evil by reputation alone, but they are ALL the big fuck-ups of their respective games with enormous kill counts lmao.
And the worst part is, in some ways, they were the victors that left the world permanently scarred.
Now go to bed. Both of you.
#lmaoo#you and val don’t do dash wars so it has to go through me 💀💀#help#asks#mutuals#lore council#soulsborne#dark souls
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Why Jesus is a Seer of Life: an essay about the Homestuck Class and Aspect of the Son of God.
(Disclaimer: I do not, and I repeat DO NOT, intend to disrespect religion in any way. This is just my analysis based on what we know about Jesus and how it can be applied in the context of the classification of Homestuck classpects. If you think I’ve said something disrespectful, or factually wrong, please let me know!!! Also, this essay contains spoilers for all of Homestuck, and I’m assuming you already know at least the general story)
Hello :3 my name is Valery and right now I’m very into Homestuck!!! I really like this webcomic. Specifically, I’m very fixated on classpects because I find them incredibly amusing so I like to mix and match them and try to classpect certain characters.
If you don’t know what a classpect is, is basically a title given for a character in Homestuck. This title is based on a Class and an Aspect, like an rpg. There are a total of twelve Classes and Aspects, and every combination explains something about the characters. If you are interested in finding out your Aspect, you can take the quiz on the official test of the Extended Zodiac. I recommend it!!!
Now, I’ve seen some people talk about the classpect of Jesus, and I actually thought about it for a while. After a discussion with some other people in the official Homestuck discord, I came to the conclusion that Jesus is a hero of Life, specifically a Seer. Here’s why I think so.
Some fans tried to cite the canon context, by saying Jesus is a Prince of Life, an adjective canonically used in the Bible to refer to him. I haven’t read the Bible so I’m absolutely open to corrections, but I do not agree on this: firstly because in the context of the Bible, the title of Prince is far different from the meaning it has on Homestuck.
I cite: “Jesus Christ is the Prince of Life. This is true because Jesus has life like no one else; no one could take His life from Him – He had to give up His life (John 10:17-18). This is true because Jesus won life for His people on their behalf – He didn’t just win life for Himself, but for His people. This is true because Jesus gives life abundantly – the Prince of Life can give life. This is true because Jesus sustains our life, and He rules over life. In every sense, Jesus is the Prince of Life!” (Source: https://enduringword.com/prince-of-life/)
In this context the title of Prince is considered someone who gives life for others. But I feel like I need to give more context of how Classes and Aspects work in the comic.
In Homestuck, the Class of the Prince is a destructive Class, counterpart to the passive Class of the Bard. The Prince is someone who destroys Aspect, or destroy through Aspect.
an Aspect will always opposite of another Aspect: Space is opposite of Time, Mind is opposite of Heart, Rage is opposite of Hope, Breath is opposite of Blood, Light is opposite of Void and Doom is opposite of Life. In Homestuck, based on your Class, it may happen that you mirror your opposite Aspect, and this applies particularly to the Classes of exploitation like the Knight and the Page, and the destructive Classes like the Bard and the Prince.
All the Princes we saw canonically in Homestuck mirrored their opposite Aspect, even acting like they were devoid of their Aspect: Dirk Strider, the Prince of Heart, was schematic and rational like a Mind player, even defining himself as Heartless. Eridan Ampora, the Prince of Hope, was stubborn and bringer of Chaos like a Rage player, and stated to his friends that they were all Hopeless. Not only that, but he also actively destroys the Matriorb, the thing that would restart the troll race in a new universe, quite literally destroying any Hope his race had.
As stated before, the Life Aspect is opposite to the Doom Aspect: Life is described as the Aspect of healing, providing and empathy in the sense of searching for a way to help. Meanwhile, the Doom is the Aspect of fate, rules and empathy in the sense of listening to you and letting you vent. So, a Prince of Life would mirror a Doom player, in the sense that they start out as fatalistic and Lifeless, and as someone who destroys Life or destroys through Life.
Again, I have not read the Bible, but I think that even those who have can see that this description of Jesus simply doesn’t suit him. It’s way too negative and destructive for someone like him, someone who went ahead and said to love and respect. So I did my researches, and in the end I came to the conclusion that the Seer of Life is the best title for the Son of God. My conclusion is motivated by may things:
First off, the definition: the Seer Class is described as a passive knowledge Class, counterpart to the Mage, and is one who sees and sees through their Aspect. Contrary to the Mage Class that already has experience, Seers starts out not knowing much about their Aspect, and have to learn about it as they progress.
An example of this is my favourite Beta Kid and the canonical Seer of Light, Rose Lalonde: Light is the Aspect of fortune and knowledge, so Rose was able to see best incomes and paths on how to win the game she was playing with her friends. In order to fulfil their Aspect, a Seer has to search a way where their Knowledge can get to others, and we can also see this in Terezi, the Seer of Mind, when she gave clear instructions on what John had to do to fix the main timeline.
It’s shown that Seers starts off not having much of their Aspect in their life and/or are surrounded in an ambient that reflects their opposite Aspect, so that is why they must search and learn as much as they can. Also, it’s canon in the webcomic that Seers are able to see the past and the future, regardless of their Aspect.
This is why I believe this Class fits for Jesus: Jesus was able to see a peaceful life, where people could just love and respect each other. He was a preacher who talked to his followers, in an ambient where everything seemed doomed. He was able to see a better future.
And this is not all, because I also want to mention the biggest reason why I believe he is a Seer: the character of Kankri and the Singless.
The Singless was a troll who was able to see his pre-scratch self, Kankri, in a world where trolls lived in harmony and free of violence. He had followers who listened to him, and gave his final sermon as he was executed. His preachings were saved by his most devoted follower and lover, the Disciple, so that his memory could live on.
In a sense, Kankri and the Singless are the same person, and I believe the pre and post scratch trolls share the same Classpect. The Classpect of Kankri is the Seer of Blood, and it’s implied he was able to see the events of his post scratch version. Kankri also has the habits of speaking in very long speeches, and actively seeks to find the best outcomes and ways to make sure everyone is united and safe. This connection is also a reason why I believe Jesus is a Seer.
Now, for the Aspect of Life, I cite: “Those bound to the aspect of Life are the universe's healers. They are concerned with the betterment of themselves and those around them, as well as the onward march of positive progress. Deeply empathetic, they have an intuitive understanding of other's suffering and the best way of righting those wrongs. This applies to both physical and mental suffering, though it might not be a cure you'll like. They also have the tendency to put other's needs before their own.“ (Source: http://hs.hiveswap.com/ezodiac/aboutaspects.php)
I think this description explains itself on why I picked this Aspect: Jesus wanted the idea of a better world to live on, and many people rejected his message because his ideals weren’t liked or understood. He forgive all of humanity and put our sins before him, taking the responsibility of them.
That’s it!!! Let me know what you think. I conclude by saying I also believe Judah was a Thief of Doom and God a Lord of Space. I might explain why in another post, because this one is already long enough :3.
P.S: just to make sure people don’t need to ask me the same questions:
“Are you okay?”
yes I am!!! This took like, forty minutes and it’s all from memory expect the sources so it wasn’t that tiring.
“Why did you do this?“
I seriously don’t know why but the classification of classpect has switched something into my brain, I don’t think I’ve ever put so much energy in researching and analysis. I think I got fixated.
“Homestuck sounds crazy! Should I read it?”
I genuinely believe that it’s worth reading at least once in life, especially if you’re around the age of 13-18. It has one of the best characters I’ve ever read, amazing dialogues, music and animation, and i believe it really gets you if you’re able to read it all.
“Too Long Didn’t Read”
Jesus is a Seer of Life because he sees Life and shares knowledge of Life. He has connections with the character Kankri/The Singless, a Seer of Blood.
“What is your Classpect?”
While I’m convinced I’m a Hero of Heart, I’m quite unsure on the Class, because I relate to all the passive classes lmao. Right now I’m settling to the Muse of Heart :3
#homestuck#homestuck classpect#classpect#homestuck analysis#I should do my French homework right now
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@biterflies I literally just say this reblog on this post now, so ignoring the fact I'm 2 months late - LET'S TALK ABOUT THE VOID
As I said in the other post, the void is a living entity that feeds off of players. It is basically the primary god of The End and has the same amount of consciousness as Mojang (the god of the overworld) and is able to create life.
The void is endlessly expanding. While it will not consume every dimension thanks to Mojang and its own free will, it is a force that never stops growing. Hence endless worlds. Its goal is not destruction but rather survival, and to do that it needs to keep consuming.
The Void did technically take over The End. The End is where The Void was born, and before Mojang realized it existed it destroyed much of the land there, rendering thousands of species extinct. Once it learned of the harm it was doing it stopped destroying The End, but continues to exist there and expand.
This is where we get to discuss what is and isn't a voidbeing. My definition of a voidbeing is a lifeform made in the modern day by the void. This wording is very deliberate, as there are ancient beings made of void who no longer exist and are not classified as voidbeings.
So Shulkers are not voidbeings. I imagine them to be descendants of an ancient species of floating sprites who began using shulkers as protection much akin to turtles or crabs, at some point having shulkers fuse with them so they may take them wherever.
Endermen also aren't voidbeings. Taking a note from one game theory video I watched, endermen are players that have been fully corrupted by the void. Aka, they died in the void too many times. This also explains why endermen exist in all dimensions because you can die in all dimensions via the void (with enough creativity and exploits). Most endermen were created when The Void destroyed The End, cause that destruction included a lot of players.
As for actual voidbeings. The modern-day version are made entirely of void but can manipulate their shape to an extent, allowing them to appear almost player-like - but it's never just right. They do not need to consume food, but are able to. They cannot survive on overworld air, and most importantly: they absorb light. If they are in a room that is fully lit it will appear pitch black due to the void being. This is important to my version of Xisuma and Evil X's lore, which I might expand on in the future...
Those are the only voidbeings believed to be alive today. Keyword: believed. In the past there were a lot of trial and error species made by The Void, ending in modern Voidbeings, and players believe all these 'test beings' died out due to being imperfect. The Players are wrong.
Mimics were one of the first life forms created by The Void, and any species that can shapeshift are believed to be based on them. They were a lifeform that could perfectly replicate anything they looked at, able to morph their body to resemble a player, mob, or even object. They fed off of players, destroying their code and making them unable to respawn, and were known to mimic loved ones and blend in with a community only to feed off them and kill them all. They went extinct hundreds of years ago... or did they? My onlinesona, Anura, is one of these extinct creatures, born from the leftover residue of voidbeings.
This isn't even mentioning my idea the voidbeings and mimics are made from the same recycled void, causing them to be made of dead mimic and voidbeings and having slivers of those ones memories. I have so much shit for these guys you have no idea.
That's all I can think about right now, please please please ask me more questions about my minecraft headcanons. Ask me about mobs, ask me about players, mojang, watchers, etc etc etc, even ask me about servers omg.
Also as always, this is canon to Of Songbirds And Watchers which is still gonna happen I just suck.
#nes talks#minecraft#minecraft headcanons#of songbirds and watchers#anurapoda#<- this should be on that blog but you asked the question on this blog so ????#imma just reblog it to anurapoda#the void#nes rambles
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Do you think part of the series going forward will be Oz recognizing that he was wrong in some cases when it came to Salem? Bc I don’t think the story will end with just a big fight bc, Ruby as our simple soul protagonist does like to try to talk things out. I can see a scene where she and Salem are in a void space and it’s a lot of talking. It a redemption bc in her quest to free herself Salem did eventually… start killing people on purpose which we can’t really talk away haah. But there can be more than one victim in this kind of situation. While many of Oz were plagued with Salem, your post reiterates that she didn’t start as this evil person. She was trapped and used whatever she could to free herself. It’s hard to call someone pure evil at the time of them being abused which is why I love this show. Bc Salem is the villain of their story but the victim of her own and parts of Oz and all of this can be true at once. I don’t think Oz and Salem will get back together in the end but I wonder how it Will end. Peace for Oz would be Evil Dalem no longer being in the world so his mission to Stop Her would be fulfilled. (A shitty mission considering the god of light didn’t say at the time she was an Evil Immortal bc they literally made her immortal). But what does Salem want. What does Oz Actually want outside of what has been driving him? If Salem came to him eons ago and swore to not hurt anyone would that be enough? Bc he’s trapped here by magical curse to so years of Salem being dormant didn’t lift the curse. What does peace look like for them I wonder. And will the show explore Salem’s side of things and what she’s hoping to do
so
hot take
i don’t think ruby is going to be the inciting force behind any character’s villain -> hero arc, and especially not cinder’s or salem’s; ruby does try to talk things out when she believes her opponent is reasonable, but a) she’s never succeeded, b) she categorically does not engage with salem or salem’s allies as if they are reasonable people, and c) knowing the painful histories that shaped them into the people they are now does not change ruby’s outlook whatsoever, because she’s now had months to think about what jinn showed them and the only conclusion she’s come to is that salem can be stopped because she’s failed before.
i do expect ruby to undergo a shift in her thinking here over the course of v9, but i don’t think it will be as profound as ruby losing her pragmatism altogether. i think she’s just going to come out of this more willing to reserve judgment about whether or not someone needs to be put down by force.
what interests me so much about the potential for both salem and cinder turning around is that all the set-up for it is happening in-house, so to speak, in the changing dynamic of their relationship with each other and the untenable tension between their external goals and inner motivations; moreover rwby has been very clear and very consistent about portraying destruction as a force for change and creation without destruction as static to its own detriment, so thematically there’s solid grounds for thinking the first overture of peace will actually come from SALEM, not ruby or ozma or anyone else on the heroic side. and perhaps worth noting in that regard is that salem has been shown to be much more flexible strategically and operationally and tactically than anyone on the heroic side—so if she gets to a point where negotiating with her opponents looks like a more viable method of pursuing what she wants she’s going to be a lot more willing to scrap her original plans and take a risk on reaching out than they are.
(also i think for ozma there’s a lot more at stake, emotionally, in challenging his basic perceptions of salem—because if she is reasonable, if she is just a person, then he has to start reckoning with questions like “did she actually lie and manipulate me or did i take advantage of her trust?” and “does she maybe have a point about the god i’ve been loyally serving for thousands of years?” and—well just look at how he reacted when confronted after the lost fable. for ozma reconciling with salem means shattering some pretty fundamental beliefs about himself, and i don’t think that’s true for salem. so there’s less of an emotional barrier for her to make the first move.)
there’s also
this beat from 6.4 which i circle back around to a lot because 1. a lot of what happens in the salem half of this episode is a coda or counterpoint to the way jinn told her story in the preceding episode, and this moment of tangible regret and weariness when the mask drops pretty directly contradicts ozma’s perception (as relayed by jinn) of who salem is; and 2. salem is not happy about the choices she makes. performing for her inner circle the way she does before this beat happens emotionally exhausts her, and she expressly keeps going only because she can’t imagine an alternative path forward and the idea of giving up is intolerable; “and so we must… press on.”
this matters because it suggests the obstacle preventing the resolution of conflict is not that salem is an unreasonable egomaniac or drunk on her own power and acting out violent impulses of pure destruction, as her opponents (and most of the fandom 🙄) believe; it’s that she doesn’t believe she has any other choice, and if we put that into context with everything else we know about her—from the girl who threw pleas for help out of her window and then watched helplessly as hundreds of people died in her name, to being made the divine scapegoat and blamed for the murder of the planet, to her own partner rejecting her without even giving her a chance to explain herself, to thousands of years on the margins of civilization because everyone who knows of her believes she’s either a monster or a god or an unstoppable force of nature—it feels pretty obvious that the reason salem believes that is because no one has ever really listened to her or been there for her, ultimately not even ozma.
and that’s not a problem that any of her opponents are anywhere close to being able to grasp—whereas there is a character standing in the perfect position with the perfect mindset to rekindle salem’s hope, and that character is cinder, and in v8 a major narrative focus was on the… shifting dynamic between salem and cinder… so the set up feels to me very much like it’s headed in that direction.
also something something “even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change, breathe fire into the hearts of the weary,” something something cinder is the key to salem’s victory, something something, uh, a cinder is a spark and—
—the writing is on the wall yeah?
anyway rwby’s approach to villain -> hero arcs generally is not redemptive in nature but rather centered around atonement, and within that framework it is obviously more important to allow salem (and cinder) to be in situations where they are no longer killing people than it is to punish or forgive them for having killed people in the past; the dead cannot be saved but the future can be made better and safer for the living. emerald has also killed people but when she jumped ship the trajectory was towards integrating her into the group as an ally, not on interrogating her past misdeeds. (that said i half expect for salem’s villain -> hero arc to involve some revelations that she is not, in fact, as heinous as she has been made out to be—specifically i think summer is alive and working for salem fully in possession of her free will and that salem’s attention and efforts since the murderdivorce have largely been focused on working out a viable plan to tackle the gods rather than 24/7 conspiring against ozma.)
which is to say i think that once the immediate problem of salem’s resignation is overcome the turnaround will occur pretty fast, and likewise on the heroic side once initial reservations about whether they can trust her offer of truce are overcome the narrative focus will move swiftly to making the new alliance work vs redressing all of the bloodshed.
i do also want to highlight though that ozma’s mandate is not to stop salem—that’s something he began to fixate on as a goal, but what he’s actually supposed to be doing is uniting humanity in service of the god of light and then ushering in the day of judgment so that humankind can be either restored to wholeness in the eyes of the gods or exterminated once and for all. irrespective of whether or not salem made an oath of pacifism or not, she would still stand in the way of the mandate because she hates the gods. her violence isn’t the problem for ozma’s agenda—her defiance is. in the course of negotiating peace he will have to finally confront that and reject the divine mandate altogether, and i’m quite certain that that’s what will happen because rwby has, um, not been subtle about the god of light being the true villain of the piece. i’ve said this before but salem’s villain -> hero arc is also an ozma apostasy arc, you can’t have one without the other.
(my read on ozma generally is that he… knows that, deep down, and he’s been trying desperately not to look at it for thousands of years because he’s terrified of what it would mean to admit that salem is right in her view of the god he serves.)
as for what he actually wants… i mean, we know that. he wants to be with salem. that’s the whole reason he came back, and then he felt obligated to keep his word and tried for years to do both by deceiving salem about what he truly intended to accomplish, with catastrophic results, and… since then he’s spent lifetimes convincing himself that everything bad that happens to him is because salem is pulling the strings and the school he built was an exact replica of the castle he rescued her from when they first met and his office was in her bedroom akdhfnsg like he is completely obsessed with her. whether he still wants to be with her romantically is an open question but given the tone of until the end i wouldn’t exactly be surprised; at the very least i think in his heart of hearts he wants to be at peace with her and freed from the burden of the mandate (+reincarnation curse) preventing that from happening.
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The Megaversal Pantheon of my worlds
explainations of all the Megaversal Gods
Zelura Vezexe
Incarnation of Chaos and Karma, and one of 3 Original Gods. Has a weird fixation on making Zenza miserable, but it's not clear why. They're considered one of the original Vengefuls, since they enact Karma; rewarding helpful actions and inflicting vengeance on hurtful actions.
They're considered the most powerful Megaversal God, and have the most influence. Commonly called the Puppeteer or the Puppet Master due to their habit of controlling things subtly, and their collection of handmade puppets of basically everyone they meet.
Inxau Vezexe
Incarnation of Insanity and Madness, and one of Zelura's creations. Incredibly unpredictable, and had to be trapped in the Mindscape so they don't cause too much havoc. They drive people to insanity & later suicide if they get too powerful, basically acting as a power blockade to stop tyrants. Their powers don't work on Deities (other than Zenza for some reason), though, since they tend to target Deities for no reason.
Ruler of the Mindscape, and can interfere with dreams and thoughts, even sometimes temporarily possessing people.
Merivu Vezexe
Incarnation of Death and Time, said to be created by Zelura for order, but actually created by Zenza out of pettiness when two (now dead) old gods went against them. Makes sure people die when they're supposed to and stay dead, and watches over the Timelines.
Ruler of the Afterlife, and the one that appoints Judges, Vengefuls, and Spirit Guides. Very quick to anger, though, and their Afterlife is very flawed.
Doomsday (Later officially named Zenxyr Qalarulz)
Incarnation of Destruction and The End, created by Merivu and a now dead god. Has very little of their full power, since they have no control over it. Doomsday regaining their full power will, quite literally, be the final End of Existence itself, and they're one of the only ones capable of killing Incarnations.
Ruler of the Voids and Passage Realms. Normally just monitors them, staying in spaces between timelines.
Life (no true name)
Incarnation of Life and Creation, created by Zelura and a now dead god. Normally very tired and overworked. They create and refine most living things, including plagues and pests.
Creator and Ruler of Valarae, the Realm of Knowledge, and one of the only Realms that truly remembers Zenza.
Fazeri Luminae / Flame Fall
God of Reality. One of the only Artificial Megaversal Gods, having been a Draconic before appointed to the position of Megaversal God and Timekeeper. Also the youngest Megaversal God. Spends most of their time in the heart of the Megaverse, writing.
The Timekeeper, keeps records on specific beings and individual perspectives of events.
Zenza Vezexe
The god of Order and Tragedy, and one of 3 Original Gods. Almost all of creation starts with either them or Zelura, but Zenza's influences tend to go horribly wrong at some point due to a curse on Zenza. They're one of two "artificial" Megaversal Gods, being a spirit from an unknown timeline.
Also called the Dying God or the Fading Spirit, Zenza's erased from almost all records. Only a handful of beings can even see Zenza now.
#ocs#oc things#zenza vezexe#Zelura Vezexe#Merivu Vezexe#Flame Fall#Doomsday#Inxau Vezexe#mystic's lore rambles
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Sometimes I constantly debate with myself about where Sonic’s origins would be thematically.
Like… does the underground take of a regular(ish) teen suddenly thrust into the role of a monarch fit? Eh… it does fulfill the a lot of the questions about his powers and affinity for chaos, but in terms of him literally take down gods I struggle to conceptualize how a monarch would suddenly be the key. Maybe he was the extra special boy in the prophecy? But then the issue arises that the need for a royal plot is a moot point then anyway. Thinking about it… does Sonic even really need to be some lost prince to find the motivation to overthrow Robotnik? Most interpretations I have read portray as fighting Robotnik before his sibs even arrive, so even this point seems to be moot.
So then, the issue we have about Sonic’s origins is that we need a believable, down to earth, humble beginnings story that also threads the needle of an exceptional reason for the emeralds to massively prefer him.
This is the thought process my really weird au idea was born from.
Essentially, here’s the pitch:
Chaos existed alone at first in a state of constant uniform senselessness, where matter and energy meant nothing. However, upon reflection reasoned that a universe in perfect harmony, chaotic as though that harmony may be, resulted in a form of order regardless. So, he creates Mobius and its inhabitants to breakup the monotony of the universe. After all what would be of a god lauded for its dominion over “destruction” without a creation to destroy?
Living things in general were far more unpredictable than anything else in existence, so naturally chaos would favor them.
However… the god of “destruction” had one more trick up its sleeve. Though Chaos valued all life, they took a particular liking to mammals (and potentially a few other animals) for their social and nurturing nature.
It was a group of these mammals Chaos would gather and bestow the ultimate chaotic gift: free will and sentience
With this gift a pantheon was suddenly called forth from the void. The beliefs and interactions these creatures held necessitated the emergence of other gods.
The first of these species, the echidnas, dedicated their lives to the worship and mystical properties of chaos.
The hedgehogs came next and upon discovering the power of the echidnas, used the knowledge to bring about the destruction of the world and the begging of the dark age.
A few thousand years later and many new animals would come to enjoy the fruits of free will while others rejected it. Many species experienced schisms between those that gained sentience and those that stuck to their animalistic nature.
The chaos emeralds were created to ensure that the gods and Mobius would always have a backup plan if an upset were to occur… like Robotnik and the emeralds perhaps…?
Thus we have Sonic, from a long lineage of chaos users… but what if he was secretly more? What if Sonic was actually chaos himself manifesting in mobian form but because of the discrepancy can’t grasp his true nature due to his physical limitations.
It would explain why Sonic has such a blank spot in his origins with his closest friends. Why he had to be taught to speak by Tails. Why he was raised in nature alone. It wasn’t that trauma or happenstance that he would go on to defeat other gods. It would also explain why Sonic was particularly special among chaos users. Sonic should be chaos.
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Homestuck Beyond Canon Thoughts
Since I'm in a unique position, for myself at least, to for the first time be really in the trenches alongside everybody else as something like this comes out, and I find myself surprisingly really enjoying it despite the forewarnings I received from my fellow Stuckies as I dipped my toes into the behemoth that is Homestuck for the first time a couple years ago, I figure it's a good idea for my to revive this blog a bit more and actually talk about a piece of media I am consuming for once. And not just consuming, digesting.
My non-spoilery thoughts first:
I actually enjoy the Epilogues and Beyond Canon. They did some things I disliked, but Homestuck proper had the whole Dancestors Game segment that lasted 4000000 hours so no work is without flaws.
I feel like the biggest, most obvious flaws, are explainable within the narrative itself as the consequences of two characters' actions. If you've read it, you know which two. The other issues are pretty neatly cleaned up and explained in ways that I find satisfying enough to resolve my quibbles within the new team's handling of Beyond Canon.
For this next bit: I say this not to EXCUSE the worst of a specific writers' choices, but to give a REASON that makes sense in universe, and thus make it more digestible. Paired with the work the new team did to smooth the wrinkles out, like I said above, it makes it easier to accept for me.
The biggest thing I will state, while still not being spoilery yet, for those on the fence about picking up the Epilogues and Beyond Canon: Remember that this continuity's Jade's story is literally: Grew up alone on an Island for 13 years. Lived for like 5 days max in the Medium, hanging out with Dave a little before killing him, then being stuck in the Yellow Mile ALONE for three years, before being thrown into the final battle. She has zero experience with people and no social skills. That is all.
It should be obvious, but the following containes spoilers for the following:
Homestuck in its entirety
Homestuck Epilogues
Homestuck 2 / Beyond Canon as it is now known, up to Page 601 / the 'March 15th 2024 Update'
So, Analysis One: Alt!Calliope you can't mate with Ult!Dirk
I haven't engaged much with the wider community thus far, something I hope to rectify, but I highly doubt this observation has flown under the radar for everybody else.
Alt!Calliope or 'Al' is projecting a lot of Cherub biology and romance onto Ult!Dirk and it's going horribly, horribly wrong.
For a refresher for people, because gods know this story is too big for anyone but the obsessed to keep track of anymore, Cherub romance is exclusively Black, or Hate based. Unlike in Trolls however, this romance seems to be exclusively toxic, with no room for the tamer 'healthy Kismesitude' such as John and Terezi's to exist. When a 'Guardian' Cherub finds the path of destruction from a 'Conquer' Cherub, the Guardian will begin a relentless Retribution and Vengeance in the name of Justice hunt. As they find more and more of the destruction, their feelings begin to grow into a rivalry, and then a full blown toxic Kismesis crush, until they find the Conquer and fight them. Whoever loses the fight then ears the offspring of the pairing and their territories are ceded to the victor.
The issue now arises in the fact that I think Alt!Calliope is subconsciously viewing the conflict with Ult!Dirk in the same way. She's heavily implied as much on multiple occasions, deeming him a monster worse than even her brother. The origin of the biological/romantic drive for a Cherub to hunt down their opposite is to fill the void left when their opposite sibling half is destroyed in Predomination. So that comparison alone is a RED FLAG that she's doing this.
If you consider Alt!Calliope to be, functionally, the strongest entity in Homestuck aside from Ult!Dirk, Fan Writers, and the actual Authors of Beyond Canon, it makes sense that she's targeting an entity on a similar power scale to her. It's natural for Cherubs.
Her pursuit of Ult!Dirk has also been frames similarly to the Cherub mating hunt a few times by the story as well. She's pursuing him across the universe to end the evil harm he inflicts on all under his domain, the Narrative itself, a domain she seeks to usurp and claim as her own territory. Witnessing the signs of his destruction, the people he's left behind, the changes to the narrative he's caused, and the new universe he's trying to make by starting The Game.
It's pretty much overt at this point that she's seeing this conflict this way. What I am getting at, long-windedly, is that we should all expect 2 things in the final confrontation:
Firstly, Alt!Calliope is going to turn into the giant mating snake and have a Kaiju fight with Ult!Dirk. I just. I feel it.
Secondly, someone, probably Ult!Dirk, is going to make a 'The Baby is You' MPreg joke about the consequences if Ult!Dirk loses. It's going to happen. I HIGHLY doubt they go down that route of her TRYING to actually mate with him, that would be getting into some uh. QUESTIONABLE territory that I doubt they touch at all. But someone, either Ult!Dirk or maybe even Ult!Dave, is gonna make a reference at least. Guaranteed.
That's all I wanted to get to. Even if it's been noticed by others, I like documenting my train of thought as I go through stuff so I can look back in the future and see how wrong, or right, I was in the end.
They already made a reference to the 'Convention Halls' in the last Update. So I do not put another 'The Baby is You' meme coming as an impossibility.
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Hollow, Ghost
7, 12, 13
Hope you don't mind that there are many of these :>
Ok so I did #12 and #13 for Hollow in another answer recently so be sure to check out the "#Hollow Knight Asks" tag for my page! I'll do #7 for Hollow here since I've not done that one for them yet and then the rest for Ghost!
7. the moment of theirs that made me the happiest
- Hollow: it's a tie between them walking out of the temple in Embrace the Void and them going batshit on Radiance in Dream No More. They get so little screentime in game so the absolute bad bitch energy of "I win and there's nothing you can do about it" in both of these endings made me go feral and I (accidentally) slammed my Xbox controller down during their two seconds of (half) onscreen time in ETV and the poor controller still makes a rattling sound to this day lol. The fact they gave us a canon ending where Hollow lives and actually staggers out. Yes I know DNM is more popular but ETV is the cope I needed mentally for the "you thought you'd seen the last of me! Surprise! I survived through all this shit and will live while the gods responsible roll around in their graves" and will gladly grab and run with it like the feral little rat that I am
-Ghost: shade lord Super Saiyan transformation complete with happy meal snacking Radiance and then Godseeker as desert because she talked so much shit. Something about the entire ETV ending timeline where Ghost looks at the other solutions and says "nah" and goes through so much so they get to smack the Radiance around like a squeaky dog toy is my favorite thing for them. I literally yelled "YES GET HER ASS! YOU TELL HER!" when they go for Radiance and then I just dissolved into ungraceful incoherency when they snatch Godseeker up like the last Pringle chip in the can. Ghost got what Ghost deserved lol
12. what I like about the way the fandom portrays them
Ghost- I like the specific flavor of fandom Ghost where they're this absolute force of (controlled) chaos. A bundle of fully-capable-of-mass-destruction God wrapped neatly in this tiny potato form and they are quiet and observant, giving little ability to read them as they observe the world. An enigma. They give off this older-than-time-and-knowing-beyond-comprehension feel and yet at any moment they want to they're going to whip out the nail and smash some shit to see what it does or buy an overpriced new lantern or charm they don't need because it's sparkly and looks cool. I love the carefully calculated balance between "This is an ancient force capable of swallowing gods and unleashing hell upon the unfortunate and it's face and body language gives nothing away" and "this is a shiny button that says Do Not Press and I'm going to press it anyway because I can and ooooo is that a rotten egg? I need it right now"
13. what I don't like about how the fandom portrays them
Ghost- ehhh probably when people make them TOO overly emotional and openly expressive. So little is elaborated about their backstory that there's nothing that really bothers me too bad, though I like when they have a careful balance of some childlike wonder in the world, mixed with this muted sense of an ageless otherworldly creature with a quiet way of doing things. Ghost is kinda an enigma in that we don't really know WHY they are the way that they are. They seemingly hatched with Hollow and are a clutchmate so they're definitely not a "baby" in that sense, but physically Hollow matured into adult form whereas Ghost apparently didn't. Is it because they needed something external to promote growth into an adult molt that they were deprived of? Are they even Hollow's past hatchmate or just the Shade god of the abyss condensing itself into a form tied to the Hollow Knight's greatest regrets to allow it to move more freely? Either way they clearly have a will and certain desires, but it's muted in such a way that just really seems to fit with their mysterious persona and when people make them too openly clingy and visibly expressive in their motivations it kinda turns me off. "What are they doing and why?" As they do things with little elaboration and explanation fits better for them imo
#hollow knight#hollow knight asks#answered asks#here I go rambling again#I never shut up about Hollow Knight and it shows lol#I'm so sorry it took me a full day to answer this#typing is hard#making coherent thoughts and words is also hard
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Roleplay Ramblings: Artifacts part 4
(art by YunaXD on DeviantArt)
Creating Artifacts
With the power that artifacts promise, be they something as benign as an amethyst crescent ioun stone or as destructive as a sphere of annihilation, it’s pretty easy to see why you wouldn’t want to let these items be something that the heroes can just make willy-nilly, and not just because they’re so powerful.
While I’ve said in the past that you as a GM should endeavor to make even lesser magic items seem special, this goes doubly for artifacts. After all, these are especially powerful magic items which may be unique or extremely rare. Items with history and power with great weight and gravity to them. So before we talk about putting the tools of artifact creation into player hands, let’s take a look at some of the explanations why the game doesn’t normally let you do that.
Oftentimes, most artifacts were made during a bygone era. Perhaps there was a greater understanding of magic that has been lost, or there was simply more magic in the world that could be harnessed for artifacts, or something of that sort. Either way, most artifacts are assumed to have been made in some halcyon golden age long forgotten, which is perfectly fine if you’re playing up the Tolkien-esque themes. Also, consider that in such an age of antiquity, heroes and craftspersons may have literally been larger than life mythic figures that could do such things.
Not all artifacts are ancient (or just ancient, as the case may be). Some were made of exotic materials are not easily replicable, such as the blood of a now-dead deity, for example. Or to use a Pathfinder lore example, spheres of annihilations aren’t made, but rather grown like strange seeds from the bizarre crystalline structures found on the Negative Energy Plane. Such structures would be nearly impossible to replicate on any other plane than the Void.
Other artifacts may be simple the results of nearly impossible to replicate circumstances, such as a divinity becoming involved, or a rare mystical confluence, or perhaps a magic item that grew in power as the wielder became a legend, et cetera.
Now, it would be remiss of me not to mention that there is a way to create artifact-level items in the game, namely with the legendary item rules from Mythic Adventures, in which a mythic hero’s favorite powerful items gain a measure of their power and ascend to greater heights. Many, however, find that particular subsystem lackluster. Still though, if you’re using the mythic rules, I’d say that such is carte blanche for a GM to allow the crafting of artifacts.
Another way that you might allow the crafting of such items would be to actually set your adventure in the aforementioned age of antiquity that most other settings would relegate to setting lore. In such an age, ancient magic is still known and the gods more prone to bless mortals as their champions and the implements of their will. Such a setting offers many opportunities to wield legendary magic and power, but also offers foes of equally legendary power.
Of course, just as special circumstances might be a good reason why player characters can’t normally just make artifacts, it can also be the perfect reason why they can. Perhaps during a campaign to stop some great evil, the party comes across knowledge of some event where they can harness the power to create a new artifact of their own, perhaps using this as an excuse to give them an established printed artifact, or help them design an entirely new one.
As we can see, there can be fun to be had in breaking established rulings, as has always been the case in RPGs. That will do for today, but tomorrow we’ll make our final conclusions!
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Scp 1730 has got to be one of my favorites. Mostly because it's a whole big story, and it contains appearances of a bunch of familiar SCPs. It's also one of the few SCP files that has legitimately made me feel utterly repulsed, which is the closest i really get to scared when reading these.
The premise of SCP 1730 is "what happened to site 13" that question is easy to answer, site 13 was never built in our dimension. But another dimension had a security measure where should Site 13 experience a mass containment breach it would be sent to another dimension to protect its home one, and we were the unlucky dimension to get site 13 dropped on us. The dimension site 13 came from, followed a different path than ours, the SCP foundation focused on getting use out of anomalous objects, and destroyed anything not helpful. There was no ethics to how they did things as SCPs were considered objects, no matter how sentient or human they were. This means that every empty containment cell, is something powerful on the loose, that likely has formed a strong hate for humanity and the SCP foundation. And there are a lot of empty cells. The way they contained things was beyond what this dimension could dream of, keeping what we call "literal gods" in giant boxes to test on and use.
Several of the best SCP task forces were sent in, some agents found themselves killed by leeches, some wound up as paint on the walls, one lost his legs, but that guy is actually fine, can still use his missing legs as if they're there, but he's trapped with the others, as there's no way to escape without mass death in the group of survivors. Their only hope was mobile task force Samsara. It's uncertain how human Samsara is beneath all their cybernetic enhancements, but they have beyond human intelligence, and the physical capability to stand in lava doing data analysis on radioactive material and be just fine. So if anyone can rescue those trapped in site 13 it's them.
Within site 13 is a large collection of horrors. The original cause of the containment breech seems to be "leech boy" as some called him. A human boy who's anomalous thing was he drank blood like a leech. In an attempt to spare this mere odd child from being ground and incinerated like all the other "useless" SCPs, a researcher had stopped the incinerator, and while trapped in a pile of anomalous corpses, leech boy transformed into a huge leech with the ability to spawn and control millions of smaller leeches, which also had wild abilities and were very quick to take down the site. In this chaos several other things were released or given new power, and the site turned into hell very quickly.
One curious find in this wreck was Bobble the clown. Who begs a curious question: if a good person driven to insanity can become a twisted murderer, can a twisted clown who tricks children into killing their families, when driven to insanity, become helpful and empathetic? Bobble just might. Other curious finds include the immortal Dr. Bright, dead in a containment cell. An angel meant to be guarding the gates of Eden just contained in a room. The site directer attached to a monster, which no drawing has managed to capture the absolute nightmare that appears in my mind at its description, and burned Samsara's ocular implants to destruction just from looking at it. And the thing that took that one guys legs, a rising void that I theorise to be an unwanted side affect of them grinding up Josie the half-cat, theorizing that in killing her her anomaly was released from her and became that. Trying to take more. But this idea is one of the things that repulses me, because Josie is a darling little kitty and the idea of anyone harming her is horrible.
In the end , They get rid of this hell the same way they got it. Sending it off to be some other dimensions problem. And it only killed several people from our dimension while severely traumatizing the rest. Even Samsara will need some time to recover from this, and I'm not just talking about fixing their heavily damaged bodies.
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baptism director’s commentary please please please
omg hi b thanks for enabling me (the fic is here for those who want to read it)
guys. i just. i have such an unhealthy obsession with religious trauma and it is SOOOOO intriguing in the zelda universe especially botw and sksw and totk and like tbh. i know lots of people hate it but i feel like morally grey or even leaning "bad" hylia is so cool and intriguing and awesome. she is not someone i will ever see myself writing as an actual normal character but someone i love to depict through the eyes of other characters like.... zelda. obviously. this fic itself is less about hylia and focuses more on zelda's mother but zelda's mother's feelings are a direct result of religious trauma & anxiety & her own perceptions about hylia
we know so little about zelda's mother she is briefly mentioned and that's it and i CRAVE knowing more about her so i took it into my own hands (i came up with delusional headcanons) and this fic is just one manifestation of that. i could go on about it forever. we saw how the whole prayer thing affected zelda and her father, but we know nothing about how it affected her mother. did she ever have to share the same burden? did she understand the gravity of what zelda would have to go through? in this fic her guilt and anxiety is so intense that she wishes literal death on her baby so that she will not have to go through these things that she knows about but hasn't experienced--but knowledge of it is enough to send her into panic.
i am so sorry. this is less about the fic and more my own ramblings but its some of the thought behind why and how i wrote it... i hope thats ok LMFAOOOO heres a snippet below
The fortune teller said so.
She cradled her baby in her arms, so delicate and small, her tiny hands grasping at the air, mewling; so innocent. There was a small basin before them, gilded and shining, filled with shimmering water; so holy, so pure. Untouched by evil or misfortune, it waited patiently for the dip of the baby’s head. Undemanding, void of stress, it did not beckon or call; it waited, because it knew it was only a matter of time before the baby was baptized.
The woman cradling her baby could only stare at the gentle ripples prompted by the slight movements of the people holding the basin. One of them, the Bishop of the Church of Hylia; the other, a mere boy. The Bishop smiled at her, gentle and polite, giving a small nod toward the bath. If only he knew, she thought.
Her husband asked her, Why do you hesitate? She said, I don’t know. His hand on her shoulder was anything but comforting. His hand on her shoulder was doom; an omen, a prophecy, a call to a future known yet unpreventable.
The fortune teller said so.
She took a step toward the basin, the soft tap of her shoe against the marble floor echoing through the empty cathedral, empty except for the five people in the room and the hard, stony gaze of the Goddess Hylia above. Here, her steps weighed heavy like no one, not even she, could fathom; her steps were laden with fate, controlled by the puppet string of the gods. Each step spelled another death, another destruction, another ruin. Tap, tap, tap.
She was beside the basin, hushing her baby in her gentle embrace, her baby with a head of blonde hair much like her own, with eyes like her own, with pale skin like her own; the baby who looked so much like her she wondered if this foretold fate was not the baby’s but hers instead, and by some divine mistake it had been passed down to one daughter too many.
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Can you please do a session analysis with Prince void, Rogue of space, mage of life, thief of time
Woohoo, we are back in business baby! Finally answering my backlog!
Anon, as you're the oldest anon in here I think I owe you a particular apology for how long this took -- the others I can honestly tell I got married and then hurt my spine and couldn't do much of anything all that time and then the holidays rolled in, but you were "only" a casualty of common or garden depression ::( ... at first.
I hope I manage to make up for that!
So all right, in our little world we have our dramatis personae.
☆ Prince of Void
☆ Rogue of Space
☆ Mage of Life
☆ Thief of Time.
I have a clear favourite already! Which is unusual, admittedly, but I'm admitting this because I have to make a legal distinction for both you and myself between your Prince of Void and my fantroll blorbo, Yudhei Tanina, imperial failson. :^)
Or maybe I don't! Maybe you'd like to hear how I write that one, and cannibalize a bit. Either way, two for one deal here, let's get mystical!
Prince of Void
Prince, active "Destroyer" class; a Prince destroys with, through or the essence of their aspect. I suppose they could also subvert their aspect and subvert through their aspect, but they would do it more aggressively than bards are able to, and more selfishly, very like the difference between Rogue and Thief.
There are also undertones of command and nobility, though they're played differently than a Lord's.
Ah, Void, the aspect of mystery, secrecy, depth, obfuscation, the arcane, the dark. The aspect, apparently, also of obsession -- just look at Grimdark (Inverted, Void) Rose, or Equius, in his element! We can also make a case for Roxy... but let's not get into that, it is very sad after all.
Truly the most sexyman of all the aspects. Muah. Chef's kiss, chef's kiss I say!
The presence of this Prince within the parameters of your play predicts that, bluntly speaking, everyone is phucking screwed. Not because of the Prince, necessarily -- although maybe because of the Prince, you could do that. You could write a story about a Lovecraftian-Machiavellian paranoiac ruining everyone's lives with their hidden depth of obsessive eldritchness. I kind of did it (almost).
There is a second path. In a specifically trollish, caste-bound reading of the role of a prince, and also in a parallel human one focused on the romantic concept of royalty, nobility obliges, and so a hypothetical good, realized Prince of Void must serve the cause of victory through their capacity for destruction.
That's sort of the concept behind my Yudhei -- a literal prince (both by blood and in that he's the Prince, like a Nasi, of his Empire's religious-legal supreme court -- a president and an emissary and interpreter of the eldritch gods, and most importantly the Empress' fruity vizier) who sincerely believes that only he, or at least his benevolent direction from the shadows, can fix anything. The Void is all around, see, and nobody else can see and thrive in it...
Yudhei's biggest problem was/is that he's incapable of delegating to other people, which in his case was because his entire life is a conga line of increasing horrors, and everyone who raised him including the monster openly thought he was an abomination who ought to have realized his destiny as a condiment sweeps ago.
For totally understandable biological and social reasons he decided he was physically and psychologically the only non-Horrordeity person in the entire universe even slightly capable of coping with his problems, so he simply never told anyone anything that would endear him to them, ever. Also, per his own beliefs, as the only competent person anywhere at all and one of the most powerful individuals in the known universe, of course he was both entitled and obligated to meddle ominously in everyone else's lives!
(Actually, the SGRUB-SBURB double reacharound game in that story is directly a result of him realizing what the game is, releasing it into the world, and herding his mostly estranged siblings and their friends into an enormous daisychain of linked sessions. He fucked it up for everyone colossally.)
I think this is probably common to the entire classpect, for different personal reasons -- whether a Prince of Void personally wants to destroy Void or use it to destroy (or both) or whatever other reading you prefer, they do it out of motivations that ultimately grow out of a deep feeling of loneliness and being in danger from others, which they build a "castle" around and defend from others using whatever power or privilege they have. They may, as you can see, also deeply need to be sure that no one else is lonely.
We can kind of see similar behaviours playing out with Eridan, Prince of Hope, and Dirk, Prince of Heart, with respect to their own classpects. Eridan's White Science thing is an obvious result of feeling failed by the concept of whimsy and magic, inextricable from the concept of religion (which after all presumably dictates that whatever happens to anyone is moral as long as the castes look right). Dirk has no idea who he is, and vacillates between tearing down others and leveraging what he does know about souls and the like to help them.
So then, what would you like your Prince of Void to be?
You have options! Many options, even.
Distant, lonely, altruistic but misguided seeker of mysteries?
Enlightened aspirant to the status of Horrorterror for themself (I once wrote against this exact concept but as a Mage)?
Machiavellian grey eminence?
All three, somehow?
What you do depends on what you want from the narrative.
Rogue of Space
Rogue: Class of altruistic redistribution. One who takes their aspect or uses their aspect to take for the purpose of sharing the loot with the team.
Space: Aspect of potential, room to grow and breathe, and actual physical space, dimension and physics.
I also quite like this one, and no doubt the players for it like it for the same reason: how do you take and give potential, safety, place-belonging? Can you do that with size? What does that MEAN?
To think about it, let's address our canon Rogues, Roxy (famously the Robin Hood of Void, whatever that means), Nepeta and Rufioh.
Examining their patterns we can see that what a Rogue seems to actually "do" to redistribute their aspect is be dealt an objectively fucked up hand, and then through sheer yes-anding, willpower and a little bit of luck and legerdemain.
In that way they really are the Robin Hood of whatever it is -- it's not "about" the stealing (and Rufioh certainly wasn't meaning to steal freedom from other people, that's the opposite of what Rufioh was meaning), it's "about" the other Robin Hood trait of being handed hot nothing and making a balloon animal out of it that helps everyone somehow. Stealing is kind of incidental here; you can think of it as more like ... the effective use and allocation of limited resources. Some of which you happen to need to steal.
Roxy making things from literal nothing isn't actually doing any crimes, and Nepeta is a furry roleplayer, not an identity thief, see? They do things that seem like they should be illegal, and iirc they do both actually steal, but rogue is a broader term than thief...
So then, the Rogue particularly of Space is someone who doesn't have a lot of space -- room to breathe, literal actual living-space, space away from people. But even though they're deficient, they provide to others -- they're the street-corner therapy friend with a skeleton full of closets full of more skeletons. The guy whose couch is always open, for "free", except if you consider it a form of payment to listen to them obliviously go on about how they went to a protest once and got robbed by otherwise completely see-through cops ("I never saw it coming!"). We all know and love one like that.
What does it mean that they're in over their head like they are? In their cramped little room covered wall to wall with struggle art, their own and others', where does the room for others to breathe end, and when do they actually get to breathe themself?
Who watches the watchers? Who recognizes the one who recognizes others?
Mage of Life
Mage: Class of the active seeker of understanding for themselves or for its own sake: the visionary, the prophet, the wizard.
Life: Aspect of the way of things, cycles, systems, growth, flourishing, struggle, and development.
Personally, I'm a Witch of Life, but I can respect the single most Earthsea classpect in the catalogue.
The Mage of Life has essentially the same arc and lifepath as Ged from Earthsea, which is a fascinating cycle you should read if you haven't.
I'll try not to spoil too much in case you haven't in fact read the books -- I really do treasure Earthsea and think everyone should read it, even if they never touch any other fantasy.
But, so, then -- a Mage of Life begins the session with no understanding of Life. Their being a Mage, this doesn't also need to be true of the rest of the cast; for the Mage's journey it doesn't really matter whether their friends are all perfect boddhisattvas in tune with the cycle or not.
The point is that they personally aren't. The point may even be that they personally don't get it -- they could be merely naive or actually malicious, in the vein of a smug young capitalist aspirant too deep in the hole to care about a burning planet.
Either way, whether they're essential to the group's victory or not (it may help humble a particularly industrialist Mage if they aren't), they have to engage with Life on its own terms. Perhaps their Quest relies heavily on becoming a participant in and interdependent with their Consorts' society? If you like, you can also have them wake up to the realities of certain systems -- have them acknowledge their own gender, their demographic's structural role in their own society, the way they've been shaped by their own struggle, the ways they didn't see others' before.
Out of your entire cast here I think this person is the one who's most likely to benefit the most from the game... if, of course, they flourish and learn and grow and survive.
They might not. Knowledge is power, after all, and it's not quite that only the strong survive, but how equipped actually are the only available people in the world to hold them up if they flag?
Their journey's a very hard one most of us are still on, and they'll need support. Without it... well... it doesn't bear thinking about.
Thief of Time
Aspect of routine, ritual, rhythm, pattern, the relation of past and future, relation to the coming end.
Class of one who takes away from others for their own benefit, to fill their own lack.
Ah! Traditions, traditions. Without them, how would I get three words deep into the Fiddler on the Roof tradition monologue before you realized what I was doing and seriously contemplated shooting me?
Bulwark, scaffold, thing on which a spirit grows; Time is the complement and antithesis to Space, the concept of learning to relate to yourself as a mortal creature dancing its own brief role in a spectacle without end. Homestuck has this as a central theme -- I think all aspects in some way relate to either conforming to or defying or iterating the way of things, as is required for making your own way as an adult, though some do this more literally than others.
Time's concern is with rhythm and repetition, though, and in a way with predestination, though it doesn't take Doom's stance about embracing the inevitable.
It's left open-ended what a Time player wants to do with the rites and patterns, and most people write their Time ocs as rebels in the vein of Dave.
But ... you can lack Time-- literal Time to live, metaphorical Time to dance to -- so severely that you need to aggressively and hostilely appropriate other people's.
What if structure is something some people actually want?
I had a conformist Seer of Time many moons ago, when I was barely older than he was myself, Khanan S. by name (six-player game, as you can see). Great kid -- his inciting incident will be instructive here. Khanan, see, was a sort of person immensely concerned with religious norms and rituals, the right things done at precisely the right times, in a cycle that will go on forever (even past the end of our own universe). But you can't do all that when all your friends formerly from the Internet are people who don't get it, can't get it, and who need you desperately.
So he did a lot of flailing around, a bit of ill-advised shaving with Occam's razor (lalala none of this is real lol the world can't be over because it can't, also I'm 14-15 years old I'm too little for this) and trying to make it work, very Magelike behaviour you know. And then his friends started dying because he refused to be a big damn hero, at which point he leveraged his understanding as someone who once actually did have Time (before the end of the world; to keep the beat of life unending; to be a child), to provide his friends with some sort of a framework for themselves.
Also from Alpha Khanan's point of view he was trying to make sure everyone else (including his own alternate selves) understood what to do with their Time over, and over, and over, and over, and...
Well, for him it didn't pan out, he went a bit grimdark. Everybody else had to help their Khanan (#18) herd Alpha Khanan back into the Furthest Ring where his natural habitat now was (completely deranged and well on the way to becoming a Horrorterror), it was great. Existential. Horrible, actually -- imagine being trapped in the void forever because the people you love most know that if they kill you, their better and kinder and softer and stronger version of you, which is you but completely stupid, ignorantly cruel and irredeemably naive, will also die. And so they won't even give you the mercy of letting you stop spinning plates for them. They hate you and they need you and you love them because you have nothing else.
Homestuck, everyone! And that's why he turned himself into an Earthsea dragon type of game construct - can't be sad if you can't experience sorrow and live forever as a caretaker of the cycle! It's almost like growing up and going to divinity school really (it's nothing at all like that even slightly. When this was current events my friends and I had also just read Omelas and seen Madoka.)
Cool story bro. What have we learned here that's applicable to a Thief?
Well, what if somebody never had time, or Time?
What if they were very ill and very hurt, and their community had no more communal tie to the rest of time than any random arbitrary bunch of strangers?
What if they thought they were the only one of their friends who really suffers, who really gets it, because at least the friends have something they can point to and say "this is my way to go, this is who I am, this is a map for my life, this is me"?
What if they envy their friends' connection and sense of knowing what to do to be a friend, their friends' connections to their cultures, their friends' banal musicality and sense of timing?
What if something told them they could take that for themselves?
I imagine your Thief of Time is probably the sort of person who's chronically online and loves to argue -- they need a sense that they do something, anything a person is supposed to do better than other people, because for the moment, their sense of self depends on diminishing others. And of course they love to take up others' time. It makes them feel seen, heard, and something very far removed from but still tangential to loved.
This is probably a very complicated and sad character, typifying the struggles of the other three: pathologically alone, naive, and without the luxury of either space or a blueprint for their own development. Their arc seems tragic, to me. Let's have a look at how it all goes together, though -- there is a happy possibility even for them. There has to be, right?
Otherwise everyone else is wrong, and they're right, they're the only one who's right.
Flow
So there's these four friends. I don't know them, they're very open-ended -- but I do know that they live in a particular type of world, or at least a particular type of connection to each other.
Insofar as their friend group is a world, there are patterns, and these will carry over to the needs of the session.
Void has a Prince -- that person destroys the void and through the void. Perhaps they destroy the void of ignorance by being the homework friend for the others, but they also hurt others by prying too far into their lives. They destroy through void by being unapproachable and clammy themself -- in that players reflect their aspects, this perhaps tells us that the nature of obfuscation and darkness in this session is self-protective and vulnerable. It might also tell us that some mysteries need a soft touch... and some secrets have power.
Space has a Rogue -- potential and physical space and room for development is unequally distributed in the beginning of this session, and this player's mission is to fix that, however they can, for their friends. To do that, though, they'll first have to figure out their own problems and see their friends a little bit less personally -- perhaps mediated by their Land Quest? Prior to ascension, this Space Rogue might not be very roguey in a team focused way -- or at least not effectively so, although they will try.
Life has a Mage who is on a mission to understand what the fuck it's all for. Depending on your personal philosophical mileage regarding this, what you want their position in the group to be and how they react can vary -- I think, depending on how realized they are, though, their friends might have an easier time of it...
And of course, the Thief of Time. Thieves, like rogues, mean there is a structural imbalance in the distribution of their aspect -- the difference is just that they think they're subsequently justified in hoarding it for themselves. In the Thief of Time's case, all they really need is one friend who has it all figured out to feel that they need to micromanage and manipulate their friends in order to feel something. Maybe they want the leadership role naturally occupied by someone else, and flail around imitating success because they don't know how to be themself, really. Vriska sort of thing.
So the world has a neutral Void (of course, the Void is only ever neutral), a shortage of Space and Time, and at least one person has no idea how they're supposed to work with this.
A difficult situation, to be sure, but personally I think you can write it! I'd love to see!
Good luck!
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Aspects and the Classical Elements
Let’s talk about Aspects and the classical elements. (We're leaving out aether for the time being.) I’ll only go into this briefly, because I’m procrastinating working on a really big final project right now for class and I don’t have much time left. For a primer, I’ll explain the elements that the four cardinal Aspects represent. According to the Aspect Wheel—and I agree with this setup—Space and Time are set perpendicular to Breath and Blood. Hang onto your butts, because it’s going to get bumpy.
So, let’s start with the easiest association: Breath and Air. I really don’t think I have to explain that one too much. Breath and Air represent freedom, but on a deeper level, they also represent intellect. This association of intellect with Air is clear if you’ve ever read tarot. Breath is associated with pranks and japery as well, which requires a great deal of wit to pull off successfully. Fortunately, as a fairly comfortable Heir of Breath, John is absolutely surrounded and defined by Breath-related imagery.
Next up, we have Time, representing Fire. This is another one that doesn’t take much of a stretch, and again, Dave is constantly inundated with the presence of Fire, from the blistering Texas heat to his own Land. Fire is a destructive force, much like Time, but it can allow for new growth in the place of the old. (That’s another reason why a God Tier player who experiences permadeath is subject to the whims of a great clock.) Fire—and, by extension, Time—is an element of passion, burning away what is unnecessary to forge on ahead. Dave’s passions are often obscured behind thick layers of irony, but irony isn’t part of Time’s domain: it’s a reflection of his guardian, Bro, the Prince of Heart. It’s a splintering of authenticity. With that said, when we see Dave in his element, “spitting sick fires” and whatnot, we can see that he’s happy. His passions must necessarily be honest, and that’s a huge part of his character arc: “letting his little light shine,” so to speak.
Now, here’s where things get complicated. We’ll look at Space first. Obviously, Space represents Earth, as we see from Jade’s connection with her plants. The Aspect of Space is stable, everlasting, and—wait a minute. That’s not right, is it? No, dear reader, Earth is not the domain of Space. Rather, it’s Water. When we think of Earth in the classical sense—the foundation of matter, the closest element to material reality, connection and stability—we actually see this running through the veins of Blood, the Aspect of forming strong bonds with others, of pushing through no matter the cost, of covenants and iron. Hell, iron is one of the biggest symbols of Blood in the whole comic, and you’d really have to stretch to say that iron belongs in the realm of Water over Earth! So, departing from Space for a moment, we can see how Blood can’t truly be anything but Earth. It is the antithesis of Breath, as Earth is the antithesis of Air, and Fire the same of Water. We don’t have a Blood player in the cast of kids—not even the Alpha kids—so Rose is the stand-in for the classical elements, representing Water. Naturally, that means Jade represents Earth. But this only speaks to their influences, not their personalities! Rose, after all, is greatly influenced by her mother, the Rogue of Void. Void is one of the best examples we have for an Aspect that is literally represented by Water and other liquids—except for Space. Notice, of course, that Void is right next to Space on the Aspect Wheel: this is intentional. In fact, every non-cardinal Aspect shares qualities with the classical elements of their closest cardinal Aspect. Life evokes the freedom and rule-breaking power of Breath. Heart brings the passion of Fire to a personal journey of self-discovery and acceptance. Mind is always shifting shape to its present needs—in this way, with Space being flanked by Void and Mind, its connections to Water become even clearer. Doom is an Aspect of rules and limitations, as well as sacrifice, which speaks perfectly to the Earthlike Blood.
I completely understand if your head is spinning right now. Let’s take it just one step further to cement the association of Water with Space. There is one gigantic symbol of Space that absolutely outclasses all others: Frogs. And what happens to a frog if it can’t absorb moisture through its skin? It will die. Space players don’t just breed their frog: they raise it in the waters of creation. The presentation of space in myth and legend as a vast, cosmic ocean is very common across the world. Water is also necessary for all living things, and in this way, the association between Space players and their botany makes perfect sense. In addition, Water is associated with deep wisdom and intuition, something which our healthier Space players develop in spades. Meanwhile, Blood players are often ones who uniquely suffer—I mean, we literally have The Sufferer for that one. More than anything, this is a point in favor of a Gnostic interpretation of Homestuck’s symbolism. Aspects on the top half of the Wheel are closer to the abstract world of ideas, whereas Aspects on the bottom half find themselves entrenched in the physical world of matter. Hence, those Blood players who are most successful do so by pushing hard, then harder against their own circumstances, whereas powerful Breath players like John are able to escape the narrative itself and act upon it in the only way that can put an end to the demiurge, that false creator—Caliborn, in this case. Blood is at the lowest point—even lower than Doom, which is literally the Aspect of decay and great power at great cost. It represents the Earth, the very epitome of groundedness in a reality full of pain and suffering. Those Blood players who manage to still generate hope, who find a cause and pursue it relentlessly, who build connections and use them to fight back: these are the leaders, the martyrs, the trailblazers that possess the power to change reality forever. But unlike Breath players, who remain loyal to the abstract world of ideas, who—much like Peter Pan—can only alight on the surface of reality for a brief moment before flitting away again, Blood players are forged in the struggle and challenged to transform it into great wisdom, gaining a deep understanding of the world that smacks of Earth.
Well, that was far longer than I intended it to be, and I still have that project to work on, so I’ll leave it here for now. I guarantee it won’t be long before I’m back on here discussing the matter further, though!
#classpect#classpects#classpect analysis#space#time#blood#breath#homestuck#classical elements#four elements#fire#water#earth#air#cardinal aspects
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