Hehe hoho kicking my feet like a schoolgirl over this au

@head-in-the-icloud ‘s Royal Jesters au

I would love it if they finally added Dain as a playable character!!!! 😭 And it feels criminal that they haven’t yet!

I actually went off the platform in Zhongli’s test run and failed it because I used his stamina attack. 😅 Still love him but I was all over the place during the test run. Cor lapis was one of his ascension materials, of which I had stopped collecting early on, so even though I felt like I had seen a bunch everywhere by the time I needed them it felt like they all disappeared. It doesn’t help that the map basically says it’s all over Liyue and you’re just blind. Thankfully I’m almost done with his last ascension materials with cor lapis.

I fortunately haven’t seen any toxic players. From what I’ve seen a lot of higher ar level players like to help those starting out, but I also actively avoid toxicity if I can see it coming. I did once put in my signature that I needed help with a dragonspine challenge and within seconds an ar 60 player came to help me and then helped me with all the hypostasis and the oceanid.

One of the subreddits I joined was for Zhongli mains and it had a guide for how to build your Zhongli. I have no idea on earth what it is saying to me. I just know that I have 4 star tenacity of the millelith which is good for Zhongli for the hybrid build I’m going for (it could be better tho…) and that skyward spear is also pretty good for him. Other than that, a lot of the in depth stuff goes over my head because genshin is the first game I’ve played where I need to think about how to build characters and not just throw random shit at them.

I would DIE for playable Dain, I really would, I am absolutely in love with him it's not even funny and I miss him every day since he went after my bro and the Abyss Herald. PAIN ABSOLUTE PAIN Especially since I do remember a friend of mine talking about Dain supposedly becoming playable not long after the game came out!

For the Scarabs, I have just been told that a bunch of them are quest locked underground... and I am.. by far not there yet, I've just started the Inazuma quest line and am frustrated that I need a good damn travel permit to explore :(

Maybe just maybe I should ask around on one of the many Genshin Discords and maybe join a subreddit, maybe I'll learn a few things because atm I'm mostly banking on any artifacts that give me attack or elemental damage bonuses honestly. HP if I'm having a good day too and it's working out.... semi good? I mean so far nothing really stumped me except for the spiral abyss because of my lack of electro characters besides lisa (until yesterday that is) and now I'm stumped because it asks me two have two parties and I'm like... yeah I don't have enough good characters two make two playable parties because one of the tips I did get before starting, was to not level every character I get, but instead focus on a main party :') But I guess now that I'm in Inazuma I can get materials for Thoma and level him, maybe also get Rosaria fighting ready but that's really it lol. I could have more characters if I didn't pull Sayu like 4 times in a row after already having her because she was one of my first pulls :'))

3 and 20 for the ask game?

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all the setup and context it would require? (Consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

this one is hard bc I have an entire 50k+ scrivener doc of scenes just like this. But I guess if I had to choose, I’ve always wanted to write a scene about what jasper and maria would say to each other in the present, now that they no longer have to lie. I’m so interested in what they are to each other, how they see each other and how that’s evolved. I find it fascinating to imagine how they would talk about their history and their issues with the benefit of hindsight and independence from each other.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

Lol. So, sooooo much.

people were just asking about this little tidbit on discord, so I’ll talk about it here in case anyone’s interested.

No, the town names from Perdition are not (to my knowledge) real places! But yes, about 70% of them have some kind of secret significance (I make no secret of the fact that I’m an etymology bitch.) I’ll put some hints/answers under the read more at the bottom of this post, but first, more rambling.

Perdition in general is both interesting and frustrating to write because it is deliberately historically inaccurate—it takes place in a geographically impossible caricature of Fantasy England™ and I do a lot of research (like, A LOT—my outline/research doc is 7k words) mainly so I can say “ok so real life would have been like this but that’s not useful to the story and/or Sexy so we’re throwing it out the window and writing this dumb anachronism instead” (I feel like it’s important to know what the actual history was before I bastardize it.) It’s really revealed all the gaps in my medieval history knowledge. Truly I could do an entire supplemental powerpoint comparing actual history to my silly fic that takes place in a Medieval Times restaurant, but the biggest things I’ve messed with are a) certain cultural attitudes and practices towards fortune-telling from an (English) Catholic Church standpoint, and b) how the actual Smyrniote Crusade worked.

Oh, and I’m never gonna describe anyone’s pants because they would all have been wearing hose and I hate that lol

send me meta asks

Town name clues below

Aberstowe - town where the story starts. “Stowe” just means like a village, but “Aber” means “fork,” like a fork in the road. Haha get it 🥁🤪

Kirkmere - city where they were supposed to take Alice for trial. “Mere” is another generic “city/town” suffix iirc and “Kirk” means “church.”

[redacted] - town coming up that has both a meaningful prefix and suffix and that’s all I’ll say

[redacted] - Alice’s hometown has an extremely on-the-nose name. It’s not naming a werewolf “Remus Lupin” but it’s in that zone

others - for Marcote I was kind of playing with the word “mar,” as in to injure or disfigure. Wythe and Hareswold I kinda just made up because they sounded right.

I also have a hilarious map hand drawn in the equivalent of MS Paint so I can keep track of my own silly fake geography lol