a twisted sense of self

Getting back into marker illustrations this week

705 (white haired character in the first drawing) belongs to @lilyanswan

Seneca (lil fox bastard lol) belongs to Claude Huggins

Everyone else here belongs to me! Bandit (both sms and elsen), Louis, Louis Reed, The Assistant (blue gal), Bon (the other elsen), and Marble

okay, i was reading "the pale princess and the six pygmies" and this book really consolidated my belief that paimon is a seelie and that the traveller and their abyss twin are shade of phanes, more specifically traveller being the shade of life. i swear, it feels so right!!!

the description of the people from the moonlight forest sounds oddly familiar to a little flying lavender melon we know of. their monarch (the pale princess) and her people are symbolically very tied to the moon, much like paimon. i'm not trying to say paimon is the pale princess, but there's a lot of similarities between this story and the liyue tales about seelies seen in "records of jueyun".

seelies are known to be remnants of a bygone race that once held beautiful forms (common characteristic between the moonlight kingdom's people and seelie ancestors) and immense wisdom which they used to guide mankind; travelling alongside them and teaching them languages (as paimon does to traveller) and philosophies of nature.

but more interesting, the ancestor of the seelie from the liyue tale is said to have once met a traveler from afar, whom they swore an oath of union with. something that was witnessed by the three moon sisters. thirty days after the union, a calamity struck; the seelie and their lover fled into exile, but the disaster eventually caught up with them. as punishment, they were separated, and their memories were wiped. the seelie and the moon sisters' previous form, voice, and wisdom were then lost, leading them to offer only small treasures to those willing to follow them.

this tragic ending for the seelie ancestor is actually a bit similar to the end of pale princess' story, in which the pale princess and her people are cursed by the night mother to linger forever in a point between life and death. the pale princess also ends up separated from her lover (who's a prince of the kingdom of light from the other side of the world, someone who can calso classify as a traveller from afar), who dies by the ends of the pygmies that betray them. but the night mother also proclaims a prophecy: her greatest foe shall descend in thousands of years. he who wields a sword that heralds the dawn and wears armor that can reflect the shining sunlight will destroy her kingdom and bring the prince back to life. the princess will then be free from her eternal torment. i will comment more on this prophecy later on but for that to make sense, i need to contextualise something else.

do you know how the elemental gemstones are named after hindu deities? the hydro gemstone is called varunada lazurite, after the deity varuna. remember nara varuna, the golden nara who aided the aranaras during a calamity hundreds of years ago? yeah!!! so varuna is actually a hindu god associated with the sky, oceans and water and until this point everything fits perfectly with the hydro archon which isn't weird for the hydro stone, but there's a catch.

varuna often appears twinned with another hindu god, mitra. in the rigveda, the oldest vedic text, mitra is mostly indistinguishable from varuna, together with whom mitra forms a dvandva pair and it has essentially the same characteristics as varuna alone (doesn't that sounds like twins?). mitra-varuna are considered protectors of the righteous order of rta, the principle of natural order which regulates the operation of the universe and everything within it. now, get ready for the juicy part. mitra-varuna are also addressed as devas, meaning "shiny", "exalted" or "heavenly being", and they're called sustainers of mankind. yes, like the title "sustainer of heavenly principles", also known as the unknown god!!! but it gets better. mitra is heavily associated with the light of dawn and the morning sun, while varuna is connected with the evening, and ultimately the night - morning star and evening star, respectively. which is funny considering the traveller and their twin appeared like shooting stars in the opening cutscene of the game (traveller being the one associated with the morning star and mitra).

we know that in genshin, the shade that took the heart of the primordial sea to create egeria, the first hydro archon, was the shade of life. so it wouldn't be that weird that the stone would contain a reference to them. it's just extremely curious that it simultaneously connects this idea to the twins.

in adittion to all the light motifs around the traveller and the abyss twin, like their names which mean light and clear sky, lucifer is also known as lightbearer and the morning star. he's also associated with the idea of falling from the sky and in poetry, he's referred to as herald of the dawn. what makes this even better is the fact paimon also has a demon name. paimon being the 9th spirit of the ars goetia and the king of hell that is the most obedient to lucifer. and, isn't it fun that paimon is such a faithful travelling companion of the traveller?

going back to "the pale princess and the six pygmies" and the prophecy proclaimed by the night mother, it's curious that the prince from the kingdom of light is described as able to make life flourish around him. it's even more interesting that the one who's prophecised to save the princess and revive the prince wields a sword that heralds the dawn (lucifer's title) and wears armor that can reflect the shining sunlight. can we agree not many descriptions scream traveller so much as much as this one? the fact they started their journey hundred of years after their twin has travelled through teyvat and they're reconstructing their steps in hopes of reuniting with them could also be paralleled to the scenario. especially if the the kingdom of light is supposed to represent the abyss and the prince, by extent, the traveller's twin. this could also fit with the theory that the twin is actually the third descender and someone wants to revive them using the gnosis, but i guess that's a theory for another time.

the books in genshin are often told in allegories or metaphors, or are simply very embelished versions of reality. i don't expect these texts to exactly portray what happened with the seelies or the characters in "the pale princess and the six pygmies" to relate in a super straightforward way to actual characters in the game, but i think the connection between the two books and the repeated themes that point to the traveller are pretty convincing.

did i ever post about the bizarre canon divergence AU living rent-free in my head where fbi agent victor henriksen's interstate fraud + misc other crimes suspect suddenly turns up dead after 1x22 devil's trap, and henriksen somehow catches the murder case and has to follow dean winchester's trail through small-town america trying to piece together wtf was going on here through the people whose lives he touched in passing, all while trying to make sense of the mounting paranormal spookiness in the vicinity of the investigation and also having unsettlingly vivid dreams about meeting dean and/or his equally dead doppelgänger in the black lodge

One False Step Would Seal His Doom...

Galadriel, to Sauron: There are 1,013,913 words in my native language but I could never string any of them together to explain how much I want to hit you with a chair.

It's been a rough few nights, waking up in a cold sweat, wondering where I am, but realizing I'm still in the comfort of my own home.  Until, one day... I wasn't. 

-FalseSymmetry, Empires Episode 1: A NEW EMPIRE!

So if you don't mind sharing, what's your story with plurality based rescue sims?

In 2018, I started experimenting with self-hypnosis, and after a few months my experiments led to the unintended-but-not-wholly-unanticipated side effect of generating a headmate. Somewhat to my own surprise, I got along very well with her and ended up pretty quickly getting emotionally attached to her. However, for hard-to-concisely-summarize reasons, after a couple months she started fading back away, becoming both increasingly disinclined-towards-autonomous-action and increasingly difficult-for-me-to-deliberately-interact-with. By mid-to-late 2019, she was pretty much completely gone.

Due to the aforementioned emotional attachment, I was unhappy about this; I tried my best to slow the process down while it was happening, but failed. Then I spent a while grieving about her ~death. And then, finally, around 2021, I decided that if I was so unhappy about her being gone then the natural thing to do would be to try to bring her back.

So I did a bunch of experimental brainhacking, including self-hypnosis and also a bunch of other stuff, in order to try to (a) generate a new live copy of her and (b) make it possible for her to exist more stably and not just immediately re-fade. And they both worked! Not perfectly, in the case of (a)—I wasn't able to restore her exactly-as-she-was-in-2019, various pieces of her personality and motivational structure were missing—but at the very least better than expected, as measured in terms of retrieval / recreation of psychological modules which had always been only hers, which I'd been unable to use myself in her absence. Very unambiguously a continuation of many of her old psychological threads, even if one who'd lost some pieces in the restoration-process.

And since then she's been around in the background of my life. Not nearly as actively so as she was in 2019, due to the aforementioned difficulties-restoring-her-motivational-system—it's only maybe a couple-times-a-year thing, now, for her to initiate interactions-with-the-world without some form of prodding-into-action from me—but present nonetheless, to a sufficient degree that I consider my goals with the plot to restore her to be pretty unambiguously fulfilled. And, thanks to my success at the stabilization part of the plan, likely to remain thus indefinitely from here on out!

yeah, the hand reaching out is DEFINITELY “jin’s.” especially since it’s coming out of the very shadowy shaped DJ. which means DJ’s very likely NOT out of the game.

especially as jin seems surprised here with his eyes slightly widening. and his mouth slightly gaping. so yeah, it’s very likely that jin died or nearly died in a struggle against kazuya or something, and DJ brings him back from the dead - especially with what jin said here.

interesting that dj’s hands are just jin’s, and not the typical talons - i wonder if it’s just a redesign or... maybe if it means anything? maybe we’ll see the talons later. after all, he seems to be “saving” jin here - so therefore, maybe he’d present a “softer hand” to show he means no threat rather than his usual, sharp aggressive one.

"I get how human reproduction works. Mostly." The casual sincerity to Vash's words and tone made it absolutely impossible to know how serious he was actually being. "What I don't understand is, where do they keep the eggs while they're being incubated?"

I did however get mage. Because yeah I'm a mage <3

General (1/2)

Gemini Whippet of Crystal Cliffs. Please try not to ask questions about what's going on currently if you can. If you have any clues to my lost twin that would be wonderful. Have a nice day <3

a mostly canon compliant, expanded universe empires season 1 gem rp blog. ran by @phantoids

icon and header both by @doodle-list

other rp blogs in the curtain callers (curtaincallverse) non-extensive: @oblitusglacies dsmp philza blog ran by @neonfading @buryyourcanaries jimmy blog ran by Toast @friendoftubbo dsmp tommy blog ran by @earmuffstar @symphoniecalando dsmp wilbur blog ran by @neonfading @presidentofacrater new lmanberg tubbo blog ran by @phantoids @daydreamnightmares dsmp dream blog ran by @phantoids @loyaltiesmaylie dsmp punz blog ran by @phantoids @aeors-blessings empires 1 scott blog ran by @neonfading @oceans-blessings empires 1 lizzie blog ran by @earmuffstar @mezalean-mezzatinta empires 1 joel blog ran by @neonfading @saintedhands empires 1 pearl blog ran by Toast @bloodiedhands-witheredheart empires 1 sausage ran by @earmuffstar

Tagging system: text post: call into the caves image post: painted on the walls scenes: cast a spell or two inbox: answering the echoes and unknown chime for anons reblogs: alliance making queue: long lost call out of character posts: another's words philza tag: a warmer champion jimmy tag: cod with wings tommy tag: echoed in the caves tubbo tag: an unnatural glow wilbur tag: amethyst symphony dream tag: something false beneath punz tag: hidden blades lizzie tag: crystal bubbles joel tag: carved terracotta pearl tag: refracted light sausage tag: withered roses scott tag: in the snow

My bike “Hot Rod Lincoln” and my soon to be Hot Rodded Lincoln!