#note: this is from the wiki so it’s unknown what the source is
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#note: this is from the wiki so it’s unknown what the source is#but if the crew animated a reference to a canon queer couple with shadowpeach then. (explodes)#lego monkie kid#monkie kid#lmk#sun wukong#six eared macaque#shadowpeach#puella magi madoka magica#<- somewhat#🍭☁️
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☆*: .｡.Wand headcanons.｡.:*☆
Warning: long post! Deep discussion of characters and their personalities ahead
I have been thinking extensively about Ominis and Sebastian's wands and which would suit them the best since they are currently unknown in canon.
As we know from Harry Potter lore, wand cores and woods have the most sway in how not only the wand itself would behave, but also what kind of person the wand owner is and how they will use it. With that being said, we know the personalities of the boy's quite intimately, but we know absolutely no information about their wands besides what they look like, and even then in some scenes they look vastly different.
For this research I used stills from the game when we get close ups of their wands, as well as the Harry Potter Wiki, the Wizarding World website, and a funky weebly website that someone made for a class all about wandlore (I know, not really a reputable source, but it has a but ton of information that can be backed up via the other websites I mentioned) to gather my research.
This was all just a late night info spiral that the ominis discord server helped me with, lol (message @finalgirllx if you would like to join! we have fun)
I am by no means saying my word is law or that you can't have your own opinions. This is just what I think fits them best. I do not own the characters or the Hogwarts Legacy game.
I tried to keep this as spoiler free as possible. No huge plot spoilers are shared.
Now with the formalities out of the way, let's dive in.
We'll start with Ominis, because he has, arguably, the most interesting wand.
My headcanon: Horned Serpent horn core, blackthorn wood, 10 3/4 inches, brittle flexibility
I'm going to go section by section and explain my reasonings. First, the core.
Horned Serpent horn core: While a very, very rare core, it is an exceedingly powerful one that leans towards not only the ties it has to Ominis' family name but also his strengths and weaknesses.
There has only been two wands created with a Horned Serpent horn core in Harry Potter lore, and they belonged to the adopted sons of Isolt Sayre, the founder of Ilvermorny, or the North American school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
According to the lore, Isolt is a direct descendant of Morrigan, a famous Irish witch, and Salazar Slytherin, one of the founders of Hogwarts, thus making her of Gaunt heritage. Her parents were murdered when she was young by her aunt, Gormlaith Gaunt, whom was unhappy with her sister's muggle-helping ways. Gormlaith then kidnapped the girl and kept her captive for a number of years before Isolt was able to escape and flee to America on the Mayflower. There she befriended a Horned Serpent, and when her adopted son's were of age she had their wands fashioned with a sliver of the horn from her serpent friend.
So, why does this core fit Ominis?
As I said, it's properties directly line up with what we know about Ominis' wand in the game. Sebastian states that it is "almost sentient" and is able to help him navigate around the castle and the outside world with little problem. This fits the Horned Serpent horn because, according to the Harry Potter wiki, "[t]his core was exceptionally powerful, sensitive to Parseltongue and vibrated when Parseltongue was being spoken, and could warn their owners of danger by emitting a low musical tone." Because of Ominis' blindness, he likely has exceedingly strong hearing, thus making the low musical tone of the Horned Serpent horn a likely culprit for his wand's echolocation abilities. Not only would this wand core run in the Gaunt family, but it would also connect to Ominis' ability to speak Parseltongue.
As a side note, Salazar Slytherin had a basilisk horn core in his wand and is said to have passed it down when he died, so it would stay in the Gaunt family. Having a core so similar to Slytherin's, and most likely Ominis' father because he would be the next in line to get the wand, would please his family greatly.
Blackthorn wood: As we can see in the game and in the reference picture, Ominis' wand is a dark grey, nearly black color. This in itself narrows down what possible wood it is, as there isn't many dark wand woods known in the lore.
Below is an image of blackthorn branches.
The coloring matches, but what about their personality?
According to the Wizarding World website, this is the description of blackthorn wood:
Blackthorn, which is a very unusual wand wood, has the reputation, in my view well-merited, of being best suited to a warrior. This does not necessarily mean that its owner practises the Dark Arts (although it is undeniable that those who do so will enjoy the blackthorn wand’s prodigious power); one finds blackthorn wands among the Aurors as well as among the denizens of Azkaban. It is a curious feature of the blackthorn bush, which sports wicked thorns, that it produces its sweetest berries after the hardest frosts, and the wands made from this wood appear to need to pass through danger or hardship with their owners to become truly bonded. Given this condition, the blackthorn wand will become as loyal and faithful a servant as one could wish.
This fits with one of the first things we find out about Ominis and his personality-- he starts off as standoff-ish, brash, and, for a lack of a better word, "thorny." After getting to know him in the game, though, we find out that his harshness is just a defense mechanism due to his past and his protectiveness of his friends. Thus, the berry analogy. He himself goes through an incredible "danger or hardship" at the hands of his family, making the blackthorn tree a kindred spirit for him.
Unfortunately wand length and flexibility don't make much of a difference in wands, but there is still a little bit of information about them. I'm basing most of this information (the wand length at least) on fanon decided lore.
10 3/4 inches: Wand length is primarily based on the height and stature of the wizard. In very rare cases, witches and wizards of incredibly sour dispositions will get small, stubby wands (6 inches or below) but that doesn't fit in this situation. According to the Harry Potter Wiki, nine to ten inch wands are "[v]ery standard, and very formal," and "[t]ypically, wizards of average height (5' 6" - 6' 0") will have wands in this size range." Since most of the fandom agrees that Ominis would be around the 6'0", 6'1" range, this would fit his build. I added the 3/4 just to be a bit spicy.
Brittle flexibility: Because neither website really has information about the flexibility of wands, this is taken mostly from the weebly page on wandlore. According to the Wizarding World website, "[w]and flexibility or rigidity denotes the degree of adaptability and willingness to change possessed by the wand-and-owner pair[.]" I have also heard that it is based again on the witch or wizard's personality, so I used both instances here.
Basically, the more flexible the wand, the more flexible the witch or wizard would be in stressful situations, but also the more likely your wand would be to accept a new owner if it were to be won in a duel.
Brittle fits Ominis the best because of it's description on the wandlore class website:
A wand with this flexibility tends to attach itself quickest to owners who have insecurities, and its level of loyalty is often dependent on how loyal the owner is to it. Should it become very loyal to its original owner, new owners often won't get the chance to earn the wand's loyalty before it breaks. Brittle wands are best suited to subtle and delicate magic, such as transfiguration and non-verbal spell-casting. Because they break easy, their owners should be careful to avoid magic that is unnecessarily flashy or explosive, especially if the wand also has a dragon heartstring core. Owners with this wand flexibility are usually contemplative, clever, and somewhat cynical; they tend to be an "underdog" type of person and perhaps even a little bit unlucky, which could lead them to becoming resentful of their more successful peers. If a brittle wand owner perseveres and manages to get over their insecurities, however, he or she will often become a "great success story" that never ceases to amaze and inspire others.
There are points in the argument both for and against Ominis' insecurities controlling his personality, but this particular wand flexibility fits both extremes well. If he leans more on the insecure side, the wand would attach itself quite quickly to him and would remain loyal as long as he was loyal to it, which is a given since he needs it to navigate the world. Ominis was likely a closed off and insecure child when he was young, so it would fit that a brittle wand would attach itself to him quickly. In the game, we see Ominis is careful and sure with his wand work, so I don't think the brittle nature of the wand would come into play, especially with his and Sebastian's love for confringo.
The main thing that connects this flexibility to Ominis is the description of the owners personality, stating that they would be "contemplative, clever, and somewhat cynical" even an "underdog" type. Ominis is the definition of these three terms, and it can be argued that because of the biases surrounding his last name, as well as his disability, he could be considered an "underdog." Ominis is contemplative in most of his dialogue, wanting to see all sides of an argument before making a decision one way or another. He is incredibly clever, often twisting arguments in his favor and throwing words back at the person debating him. As for cynical, there just isn't a better word for how he treats the MC when he passes them around the castle. Every single one of his voice lines is some thinly veiled insult.
Next, let's explore Sebastian's wand-- easily one of the most identifiable wands in the game.
My headcanon: Dragon heartstring core, yew wood, 9 1/2 inches, unyielding flexibility
Same process as Ominis' wand. Here we go!
Dragon heartstring core: In medical science, "heartstrings" refer to the chordae tendineae of the heart, which connect the papillary muscles to the tricuspid and mitral valves so they can open and close as the heart pumps blood between atrial and ventricular chambers (I had to research this lmao, I am not a science person). It's possible that this is where they get the core from in a dragon, but there isn't enough information about dragon anatomy in canon lore to be sure.
Wand cores are connected to the strength of a witch or wizard's magic, as well as the type of magic that they are more likely to lean towards and the type of magic that the wand will be adept with.
Dragon heartstring is one of the three "supreme cores" that are sold in Olivanders. The description of the wand core on the Harry Potter Wiki is as follows:
Dragon heartstrings produce wands with the most magical power, and which [are] capable of the most flamboyant spells. Dragon wands tended to learn more quickly than other types. While they could change allegiance if won from their original master, they always bonded strongly with the current owner. The dragon wand tended to be easiest to turn to the Dark Arts, though it would not incline that way of its own accord. It was also the most prone of the three cores to accidents, being somewhat temperamental.
Don't be swayed, I did not just pick this because of its proclivity towards dark magic. Yes, Sebastian is the one that teaches the MC the unforgivable curses, but this in itself matches the personality traits he exhibits from the very beginning: confidence (to the point of arrogance at times), and loyalty. Sebastian himself states that he leans more towards "fiery forms of magic" after he teaches you the blasting curse, so it would make sense that his wand core would need to be able to handle this kind of spell work. One that is "flamboyant" and "temperamental" would fit this the best. Not only this, but before the MC arrives at Hogwarts, Sebastian was the best duelist there, so he would need a wand core that picked up magic quick and was able to keep up with his competitive nature.
Yew wood: Yes, another thing that leans towards dark magic, but hear me out. Sebastian's wand color is very light, making the options for the possible wood types he would have just as sparse as Ominis'.
Wand woods are connected to the owners personality, diving down past the surface level and often discovering the most innate personality traits of the witch or wizard that owns it.
Below is an image of yew wood.
At first, I thought Sebastian's wand could possibly be aspen, but upon looking at the coloring of that wood versus yew, yew seems to be the closest in color. Aspen wood is often compared to bone because of how pale white it is, but if you look at the picture of Sebastian's wand, it has some warm undertones that make it a different hue than ivory.
Back to the personality. Here is what the Wizarding World website says about yew wood:
Yew wands are among the rarer kinds, and their ideal matches are likewise unusual, and occasionally notorious. The wand of yew is reputed to endow its possessor with the power of life and death, which might, of course, be said of all wands; and yet yew retains a particularly dark and fearsome reputation in the spheres of duelling and all curses. However, it is untrue to say (as those unlearned in wandlore often do) that those who use yew wands are more likely to be attracted to the Dark Arts than another. The witch or wizard best suited to a yew wand might equally prove a fierce protector of others. Wands hewn from these most long-lived trees have been found in the possession of heroes quite as often as of villains. Where wizards have been buried with wands of yew, the wand generally sprouts into a tree guarding the dead owner’s grave. What is certain, in my experience, is that the yew wand never chooses either a mediocre or a timid owner.
I'm not going to go into any heavy spoilers, but if you know, you know.
Sebastian is absolutely not a mediocre or timid wizard-- quite the opposite. He tends to lead with his heart rather his head, diving into battles before thinking through a strategy or jumping feet first into an argument before hearing both sides of the issue. He is fiercely loyal and protective of those he cares about, which can be seen in how he talks about not only Anne but also Ominis. His main motivation through the entirety of the game is finding a cure for his sister's curse, and he quite literally goes to outlandish means to achieve his goals. He is described as an accomplished duelist (we don't really see that, but let's chalk that up to the companion mechanics of the game and not his actual skill) and he is proficient in curses of all nature. He is the definition of a morally grey character-- not quite a hero, but also not quite a villain.
Again, for wand length and flexibility I will be using a mix of canon and fanon lore because of how scarce the information is on these sections of wandlore.
9 1/2 inches: As I said earlier with Ominis' wand, nine to ten inches is the common length for most wands. Since Ominis and Sebastian are, in fanon lore at least, similar in height (Ominis slightly taller than Sebastian in most fanfictions and fanart), I kept them close in length. Most agree that Sebastian is likely around 5'10", 5"11", so a wand slightly smaller than Ominis' but still within average length would fit best. Again, the half inch is just to be spicy.
Unyielding flexibility: Same as before, most of this information was taken from the wandlore weebly.
The word "unyielding" in itself describes Sebastian's personality. As previously stated, he is incredibly stubborn and hardheaded when he wants to be, and we see that often in the game.
The description for an unyielding wand is as follows:
A wand of this flexibility finely tunes itself to its original owner's preferences and doesn't stray from those preferences, even in the hands of a new owner; the new owner will just have to get used to it. It is particularly good for combative and healing magic. Unyielding wand owners tend to be very confident in themselves and/or in the things they believe in. They tend to be intelligent, somewhat cynical, and usually have well-defined principles that they will not stray from ever. Sometimes, this combination can lead to arrogance because of them insisting on how right they are without considering other points of view or whether or not they might be wrong.
Sebastian is a confident young man. He himself names him the best duelist in the school, and he prides himself on his knowledge of the wizarding world, both due to his proclivity to research and the fact that his parents were professors. In the game mechanics, particularly the bits that did not make it into the final game but were still in the code, there are a few lines for him that lean towards the possibility that he could heal the MC if our health got too low, thus adding the possibility that he was skilled in healing magic and combative magic. Sebastian's principles are defined from the very beginning of the game, stating that he would do anything for his friends and family, as well as was not afraid to break the rules to get what he wanted. He can be a bit arrogant at times due to this confidence, but for the most part it comes off as endearing.
As the game goes on he grows more cynical of the world and of the MC, often stating that they do not share the same opinions like he once thought and that they don't care about Anne and finding a cure for her curse. His tendency to not sway in his opinions and his insistence that he is right and everyone else is wrong grows tenfold around the winter mark. Because of this, no matter how many people are arguing that he is going down a dark path, he does not back down.
As both Ominis and Sebastian say, Sebastian Sallow does not back down from a fight, and he needs a wand that agrees with this belief system.
These are my headcaons! If you made it all the way to this bit, please don't be afraid to share your thoughts and personal headcanons for the boys and their wands!
Thanks for indulging me and my ramblings, lol
#tina speaks#hogwarts legacy#ominis gaunt#sebastian sallow#ominis gaunt headcanon#sebastian sallow headcanon#ominis headcanon#sebastian headcanon
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I recall that a fourth Animal Realm Yakuza group was mentioned in two of Saki's dialogues, Marisa/Otter and Youmu/Eagle. In Saki's dialogue she only really describes them as Unknown and Shadowy, but I recall somewhere the group was stated to be associated with toxins and other such "cowardly tactics." It feels kind of odd how this family doesn't ever seem to get brought up again? Trying to look for info about them on the wiki is difficult, Saki's dialogue implies the existence of a singular fourth group, while the Touhou wiki's entry about the Animal Realm in general mentions MANY smaller groups, and I'm not even really sure where I'd look for a primary source of information on them since they don't have a dedicated page (at least, not that I can find) with sources on them compiled together and don't have a name to search. It all makes me wonder if ZUN had more plans for other gangs/alliances, but just stuck with the established three, or if perhaps they're just vaguely alluded to in order to make Hell feel bigger and note that other stuff exists out there. I feel like I remember him emphasizing just how BIG Hell is on multiple occasions, so maybe they're just brought up to convey that size?
ignore the wiki. the wiki knows nothing. what we're looking for is yachie's profile, which has the following line
罠や毒、寄生、擬態、あらゆる卑怯な手段を得意とする動物霊達による正体不明の組織、等など。
specifically, we're after this bit - "正体不明の組織" - which more or less directly translates into "unidentifiable organisation". near as i can tell, it's pretty precise about it being only one organisation? so idk where the wiki got its translation from
anyway, zun definitely didn't intend to follow up on these guys - it's a miracle we got a follow-up on the gouyoku alliance - since zun likes to leave things open and unexplained like that. they're just, like, an unaligned group that's out there, somewhere, that's where all the spirits who don't like the three main groups wander off to - it's another way of conveying that the world that we see isn't the totality of the world that there is, y'know
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I posted 1,065 times in 2022
That's 726 more posts than 2021!
266 posts created (25%)
799 posts reblogged (75%)
Blogs I reblogged the most:
@stoic-whumpee
@the-three-whumpeteers
@whumpwillow
@a-class-attempter
@whumpadventureprompts
I tagged 682 of my posts in 2022
Only 36% of my posts had no tags
#whump - 581 posts
#whump prompt - 422 posts
#whump prompts - 201 posts
#r prompts - 154 posts
#emotional whump - 146 posts
#captivity - 137 posts
#hurt/comfort - 103 posts
#team dynamics - 92 posts
#r speaks - 87 posts
#aftermath - 80 posts
Longest Tag: 140 characters
#i'd make a list of what i'm interested in writing for but most of them heavily depends on the mood of that day and the alignment of the star
My Top Posts in 2022:
#5
Prompt #90
Leader sent Whumpee on a mission that ended up getting Whumpee captured. The team blamed Leader for what happened, especially Teammate A who was close to Whumpee and who had protested Leader's decision. Leader was full of guilt, and they decided to come to the enemy and exchanged themself for Whumpee. Bonus point if Leader knew that the enemy's leader had always wanted them and they had finally gave in.
Leader now sat in a cell, all alone, knowing that they wouldn't be rescued. And they were fine with that.
469 notes - Posted June 3, 2022
#4
Whump Writing Resource - A List
(Feel free to add more)
1. Whump Prompt Generator:
Whumpy Prompt Generator by @whumpprompts
Whump Prompt Randomiser by @janetm74fics
Random Whump Generator by @grovegrocer
Whump Prompt Generator by @theres-whump-in-that-nebula
Whump Prompt Generator by unknown user. (*please let me know if you know who the author is)
Whump Generator by @thatsgonnaleaveamark
Whump Prompt Generator by @thatsgonnaleaveamark
Torture Whump Prompt Generator by @delicatewhumps
Sickfic Whump Generator by @delicatewhumps
Torture Methods by @delicatewhumps
Illness Generator by @delicatewhumps
2. Whump Community:
Whump Community Directory at @whumpcommunity
The Whumpapedia at @whumpapedia
Bad Things Happen Bingo at @badthingshappenbingo
3. Inspirations/ Starting Point: (Wikipedia is always a really good website for a starting point, check their Reference section of for more in-depth sources)
TV Tropes
Superpower Wiki
Magic Power Wiki
List of different types of weapons
List of Natural Disasters
List of Accidents and Disasters
List of various World Building Guides and Tools
Web MD A-to-Z Guide
481 notes - Posted June 5, 2022
#3
Prompt #79
Whumpee is framed for a crime they didn’t commit and was awaiting trial in the dungeon. When they got a visit from their team Leader, they were relieved to see someone who would help them prove their innocence.
Instead of asking Whumpee what happened, Leader glared at them and blamed them for causing more trouble. Whumpee understood that Leader wouldn’t believe them. They knew that they were now abandoned by the team and gave up on fighting for their freedom.
Bonus point if Whumpee had always been an outcast/troublemaker in the team, and now Leader said they had always expected Whumpee to “go rogue”.
494 notes - Posted March 4, 2022
#2
Prompt #95
A character who has been used and exploited too many times, who has been pushed into doing terrible things without another option. A character who every single choice they were forced to make made had led to more downfall, who is never offered a second chance. They don't believe they deserve a chance to be happy anymore.
745 notes - Posted June 12, 2022
My #1 post of 2022
Prompt #112
Touch-starved whumpee who doesn’t know how to ask for comfort
- Whumpee who grows up being denied or ridiculed for their need of affection. Eventually, Whumpee learn to just stop asking because they will never get what they want and will most likely be punished for daring to ask.
- Whumpee who are wary of being open or vulnerable to their teammates because their guardians or the people they grow up with see vulnerability as a weakness. Whumpee has been so conditioned that they are not allowed to ask for comfort so they just close off and deal with it themself. And their teammates don’t know they are truly struggling because they have learned to conceal it so well.
- Whumpee who is taught to not be “selfish” (read: to not ask for anything), so they just don’t ask because they don’t want to bother their teammates.
- Whumpee who takes on the role of a caretaker and put their own needs for comfort aside so they can listen to teammate A’s family issues or be the big spoon because teammate B likes to be the small spoon. They see their touch starvation as something trivial themselves, because their teammates need their touch more and Whumpee can handle themself.
- Whumpee who just melts into someone embrace, soaking up all they can get. Whumpee who hides their disappointment and the feeling of emptiness when the arms inevitably let go and they are alone again.
- Whumpee who is too shy to ask, and is a bit closed off and by themself that people think they don’t like to be touch.
- Whumpee who is very selective about whose touch they want, but has to take any physical comfort they can get because they don’t have any other option.
778 notes - Posted September 8, 2022
Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →
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✨How to read fanfic in a fandom you’re not a part of (yet!)✨
Maybe you don’t have Netflix or Amazon Prime, so you can’t watch Lucifer or Sherlock. Maybe the DCU is too daunting to even try to consume all that confusing content. Maybe you just know that Childe/Zhongli is the perfect ship for you, but you’ve never played Genshin Impact.
Have no fear! There are three main ways to get into a new fandom through fanfic—no original fandom content consumption required! (Note: other sources, such as fan wikis and other enjoyer’s headcanons, may enhance your fandom induction.)
The three types of fanfics best suited for fandom noobs are self-inserts/isekai, crossovers, and minor character/OC perspective fics.
Let’s start with self inserts/isekai.
As with all three of these types of fics, self-inserts are good introductory fics because they require the author to explain the world. There are two main subcategories: knowledgeable SIs and clueless SIs. Both work, but clueless SIs are ideal (because you, as the reader, are just as clueless in this new world as the SI is.
I used this method for getting into the Genshin Impact fandom with Bgtea’s absolutely GORGEOUS fic Entirely Out of Spite. It’s a knowledgeable SI, but there’s enough explanation for the reader to get what’s going on (and enjoy it!) There are undoubtedly nuances I missed from never actually playing the game, but I enjoyed the fic nonetheless.
It should be noted that SIs/isekai fics can result in OOC and canon divergences. Please keep this in mind!
Next is the crossover fic!
A crossover requires the characters to explain aspects of their different worlds to each other. For your own sanity, pick a crossover that has your target unknown fandom and a fandom you know well.
I used this method for getting into the My Hero Academia fandom using wonhaebunny’s blackugou widow and Roygkid’s Not a Spare Part, both of which are MCUxMHA crossovers. In the first, Natasha Romanov reincarnates as Bakugou Katsuki, and in the second, Tony Stark shares a body with Midoriya Izuku.
When I first read these, I saw a known character (Tony and Nat) going into an unknown world (MHA). I find this to be more integrating than the reverse (unknown characters going into a known world) because it’s easier for the reader to “learn” the new world with the inserted character if that character is already known to the reader.
As with any crossover, canon and characters may be altered and are not a true representation of canon (obviously lol.) SIs also are prone to some good old unreliable narrator shenanigans.
And finally, the minor character/OC perspective.
This category might be the most effective at explaining actual canon with huge divergences. Because these “outside perspective” fics are more focused on worldbuilding rather than canon plot, they are great character and setting intros.
I used this method for getting into the DCU through carolina_batboys fic Only in Gotham: Craft Store Edition. Basically, an OC works in a Gotham craftstore and various canon characters interact with her. The character slowly learns more about the superheroes (and thus teaches the reader as well.)
Final Thoughts
Fanfic isn’t meant to be read without already knowing the original content being fan-written about. But if you don’t want to watch an entire show just to watch a blond child be an orange dumbass or enjoy some Johnlock fluff, then these tips should get you there. And they work. I’ve never seen or read MHA and now I’ve got 247 bookmarks in the fandom. Best wishes, and happy reading!
#fanfiction#fanfic writing#fanfic#ao3 fanfic#ao3fic#ao3 stuff#ao3 tags#ao3#fandom#fanfics#fic writing
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Okay Map/Hero Matching time
Explained the criteria in my last post, but to recap the idea is to see what heroes go along with what maps, either by shared nationality or story relevance.
These are two different criteria for a reason: Like I also mentioned in my last post, Moira is from Ireland, but there's no Irish map in-game as of now. However, she has significant story ties to Oasis, a map that takes place in Iraq. I would think it fair to say then that Oasis could be considered "Moira's map" even though there's a mismatch of nationality.
I did the list both ways, both attaching heroes to a list of maps, and assigning maps to a list of heroes. Let's start with the latter first:
Starting with the Tanks:
This is gonna be the same story with Zenyatta later, but Ramattra is weird because he technically doesn't have an official nationality. He's an Omnic built in the Omniums, with his exact location of origin unknown. He spent a good portion of his life in Nepal, but it's not his home country. However, it very clearly is the location most significant to him personally.
Orisa on the other hand is very clearly considered to be from Numbani. She was created in Numbani, her creator is from Numbani, they both currently still live in Numbani, I think it's pretty safe to say she's Numbanian. For what it's worth, Orisa is the only non-human character given a nationality on the fandom wiki.
Notice I also listed some maps that have an "indirect" connection to the hero. These are connections that don't necessarily correspond to place of origin or home or base of operations, but have some significance to the character. This is kind of an iffy criteria, so I got stricter with it as I went on.
Now for Damage heroes:
All of the Americans are in this category, go figure. America is also, go figure, the country with the most maps as of now (Route 66, Hollywood, Blizzard World, and Midtown. Actually only 4, I miscounted in my head but the point on the chart stands). The most interesting one to talk about is Reaper, who was a cop in Las Angeles before his time in Overwatch and Talon, which would technically make Hollywood "his map" more than anyone else's, but the hero and map have literally no significance to each other otherwise.
Bastion is also... weird. They're the one hero who doesn't have a specified point of origin, and also doesn't have a clear "home country". The Bastion robot units were originally created by SST Laboratories, which based on Torbjorn being a critical member of, may suggest that it's a Swedish company, and therefore by proxy you could consider Bastion to be Swedish? That's a bit of a stretch though, so to be safe I left their nationality blank, and only considered their resting place (Black Forest, Germany) as a directly relevant map.
Echo is the last weird "what country is the robot from" to discuss. Her creator, Mina Liao, is Singaporean. If we apply the Orisa logic of a robot created directly by one individual inheriting that creator's nationality (especially considering Echo literally copied some of Liao's behaviors and even her voice, with some sources implying a sort of mother/daughter bond between them), then Echo is also Singaporean. However, it's unlikely she was built in Singapore. Liao made Echo late into her time at Overwatch, whose major bases of operations were in Switzerland and Gibraltar. Either way... yeah I'm not researching Singapore's citizenship laws to determine if she counts for that.
(also if you look at the chart and say "what the hell are Gothenburg and Suravasa", then it's something I've explained before, but will get into more later here)
Now for the Supports:
Nothing we haven't seen already at this point, I've explained most of these with other heroes earlier.
Only thing to note is Ayutthaya, the Thailand-based CTF map added all the way back in Lunar New Year 2018. While we do finally have a Thai hero in Lifeweaver, as far as we know now he doesn't have anything in particular to do with the map. Ayutthaya as an arcade mode map doesn't have any lore in general (shoot, even less than most of the others), let alone anything tying it to Lifeweaver. Would've been a hell of a cool trick to have Lifeweaver planned to tie into the map since it was added, but... yeah no I don't think that's likely at all.
Now for the other way around, looking at this from the perspective of what maps have relevant heroes.
I didn't consider the non-canon maps (The 4 Workshop maps and the upcoming Talantis) or any map variants for... hopefully obvious reasons.
Starting with Escort and Hybrid.
I did these charts first, so I was a lot more lenient on what "indirect connections" would include. There's a number of maps that are relevant to Overwatch as a whole or Talon as a whole, but not any one member. For those, I just put the group name in that section.
As you might notice, a lot more maps don't have heroes than heroes not having maps. The only American map having any actual ties to any heroes is Route 66, the rest are completely unrelated.
Next up though, the Control, Push, and Assault maps:
Nothing else to note here, other than clarifying that yes, I am aware that Antarctica technically isn't a country, and The Moon is definitely not a country. But like. you know what I mean, right?
Anyways, moving ahead to the last few maps, these being the Arcade-exclusive maps and the future maps:
So lemme quickly recap Gothenburg and Suravasa.
Early on for Overwatch 2's initial announcements, we learned about a few new maps, including Gothenburg (an Assault map featuring Torbjorn's workshop) and a map said to take place in India (which I deduced in an earlier post was specifically Suravasa, a location from Symmetra's Stone by Stone story). We haven't seen these maps come to the game yet though, mostly because Assault was scrapped as a core game mode for Overwatch 2, and the replacement mode to adapt these maps into has yet to be revealed. They felt important to include here though, since we're aware of their existence and they're maps very clearly made to be home maps for some of the Overwatch heroes who've lacked one for the longest time.
Now for some data, which heroes and maps don't have a match?
The heroes (that have a specified nationality) without a map from the same country are Doomfist (Nigeria), Sigma (Netherlands), Baptiste (Haiti), Mercy (Switzerland), and Moira (Ireland).
Removing the heroes who have clear corresponding map for reasons besides nationality (and including dubious nationalities), the list of heroes without a map of any kind are just Sigma (unless you count Horizon Lunar Colony), Echo, Mercy, and Baptiste.
The maps without any heroes from the same country are Watchpoint: Gibraltar (Gibraltar), Rialto (Italy), Havana (Cuba), Circuit Royal (Monaco), Ilios (Greece), Oasis (Iraq), Antarctic Peninsula/Ecopoint Antarctica, Colosseo (Italy), Esperanca (Portugal), Petra (Southern Jordan), and Malevento (Italy).
Removing the maps that have a clear hero match that just isn't necessarily from the same country, the list goes down to Rialto, Havana, Circuit Royal, Ilios, Colosseo, Esperanca, Petra, and Malevento.
Soooooo yeah! If I missed something or you need clarification on something in the chats, then shoot me a reply to let me know!
...Why did I do this.
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AstroPractice: People known for their beauty
Disclaimer: Chart information is from astrodatabank. “Astrodatabank grants the right to anyone to use and republish birth data and event data records, as they are contained in the Astro-Databank wiki, if the context of the usage is non-commercial.”
Disclaimer 2: Readings here are based off of my current knowledge and the specific charts mentioned. I am studying astrology. I am not an astrologer. Do not take my readings as professional interpretations. I use traditional astrology.
Note: I’m choosing people who are primarily known for or are first recognized for their looks over anything else in their lives.
Megan Fox
Megan Fox is represented by an Ascendant in Capricorn, a Mars in Capricorn, and a Saturn in Sagittarius in the 12th. Mars is conjunct her Ascendant in Capricorn, the Ascendant represents the native and their whole life, so her life will have to do with matters of Mars working strongly on her chart in its sign of exaltation and in an Angular house, one of the houses that make any planet in it stronger or more characteristic. Mars is a planet that comes from the legend of Ares, the God of War, Mars is a malefic that talks about the native’s will to achieve goals, accidents, and cuts and wounds (physical and metaphorical). Capricorn is a cardinal, earth sign that comes from the legend of the goat always climbing up the mountain, however, its being defined by a Saturn in is in Sagittarius. Saturn is a malefic planet that talks about suffering, paranoia, and demanding responsibility. Sagittarius is a fire sign that talks about joy and faith belonging to the biggest benefic planet, Jupiter. Saturn in Sagittarius can talk about a troubling approach to responsibility, Saturn is the biggest malefic is uncomfortable in Sagittarius because the sign talks about different things from Saturn. On Fox’s chart, Saturn is in its own house, the 12th house, so it could mean that this helps Saturn act less malefic on her chart, meaning its ability to do what Saturn talks about (paranoia, suffering, hardships) is less. However, this Saturn is still in Sagittarius, a sign that talks about optimism and having fun, while Saturn is a planet that demands responsible and serious approach to its subjects, so combined, it could talk about how Saturn hates the responsibilities forced upon it. Saturn on her chart rules her 1st house, her appearance and life, and her 2nd house, the house of money. It could talk about her feeling trapped (12th house talks about prisons, self-undoing, and unknown enemies) by her looks and matters related to money. Mars talks about surgeries and is ruled by an out of control Saturn in the house of hospitals and prisons (literal and metaphorical). Her body (Mars) rules the 11th house, a house that talks about the general public, so her body is always on display in public in a way she’s expressed that she’s not comfortable with. Another house that talks about the public is the 5th house, which is also the house of pleasure, her Sun and Mercury in Taurus are there. The 5th house is the house of entertainment and pleasure. Taurus by itself is a sign that belongs to Venus, a planet that also talks about pleasure and beauty. Her Sun in Taurus rules her Moon in Leo (planet that talks about the body and how one nurtures it) in the 8th house (the house that talks about money that comes from other people), from the 5th, the house of pleasure, so subjects of the 8th are brought to the 5th house. This can partly explain how she was viewed as a sex symbol in the entertainment industry and by the public and this helped bring her money. Sun conjunct a fixed star Algol, known as a malefic star, it comes from the legend of Medusa.
“Of the nature of Saturn and Jupiter. It causes misfortune, violence, decapitation, hanging, electrocution and mob violence, and gives a dogged and violent nature that causes death to the native or others. It is the most evil star in the heavens.” - source
Above written by Vivian Robson, who studied Ptolemy and Lilly closely and wrote The Fixed Stars And Constellations in Astrology
Since it’s a malefic star on her Sun, the planet that talks about what the native stands for in life and personality, it can talk about her being recognized for her traits, but not necessarily in a good way. As I haven’t studied many charts with this star, I won’t go into it.
Saturn in Sagittarius is also conjunct a fixed star, Antares, a star that comes from the legend of the Scorpion.
“Ptolemy makes the following observations: ‘The bright stars in the front of the body of Scorpio have an effect similar to that produced by the influence of Mars, and partly to that produced by Saturn: the three in the body itself . . . are similar to Mars and moderately to Jupiter: those in the joints of the tail are like Saturn and partly like Venus: those in the sting, like Mercury and Mars.’” - source
As I haven’t studied many charts with this star, I won’t go into this either. Her face and body is being defined by this Saturn and Mars, which can explain why people have noticed significant changes to her looks. This Saturn is opposing her Venus in Gemini, which in her chart is talking about her career and being known for beauty. I’m not going into this because it talks about darker topics. Her Saturn in Sagittarius is also retrograde, so the subjects that its bringing is delayed in her life, its coming in and out of her life, this Saturn is bringing her many problems along backed up by other placements in her chart, but I won’t go into that. Saturn is ruled by a domicile Jupiter in Pisces, meaning Jupiter, the planet of blessings and faith, is strong in its own sign in the 3rd house, the house of communication and short travels. However, her Pars Fortunae, a a placement that talks about where one has talent and what brings one money is in the 10th house, the house that talks about one’s profession, in Libra a sign that belongs to Venus. This is yet another placement that talks about her involvement in the arts because Venus talks about the arts and beauty. Her Venus being in Gemini in the 6th, a house that talks about work. Combined with the rest of her chart can explain how she was recognized for her beauty and looks in her work and by the public. Though, from what I understand, her looks being ruled by malefics, meaning that bad things have come from them too, considering that she had a breakdown from being typecast as a sex symbol early in her career, especially during Jennifer’s Body (2009) “‘There was so much going on with me at that time, that movie being picked apart was not at the top of [my list of concerns],’ Fox admitted in the interview. ‘Because I had such a fraught relationship with the public, and the media, and journalists, and I was struggling so much at that time in general, this didn't stand out as a particularly painful moment, it was just part of the mix.’” According to Wikipedia, “Fox's overexposure in the media led several men's websites, such as AskMen, to boycott her on August 4, 2009,[87] although some refused to do so, feeling that the boycott was a publicity stunt and therefore hypocritical.” In 2010, Megan expressed in E! Online, “My biggest regret is that I've assisted the media in making me into a cartoon character. I don't regret what has happened to me, but I regret the way I have dealt with it.”
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i think 2po forgets that there's actually a fair amount of quiet, unknown fans that attend cons regularly and even m&gs *gasp*
but we don't shout about it or leak stuff.... and we know that he's just trying to sound like he has info when really, he's just like any other fan digging in sandboxes and trying to make a jigsaw out of the scraps they find there.
there's 20 people in these things, just because he's loud and has loud sources, and hangs around in loud circles, doesn't mean the other fans sitting in those chairs are statues. we listen, we take note, we go back to our quiet little lives and have to watch BNFs run their mouths like they've been chosen as a direct conduit between the gods (actors) and the insects (fans). but actually, they're no different than those of us who are having a nice time in our spn bubble while we point at him and go "...the fuck is he talking about?"
lots of love from a m&g attendee that is tired of seeing him talk shit when he wasn't in the fucking room. he's also the most blatant anti in disguise i've ever seen.
p.s. the whole reason i follow you is because of a m&g. do you know who i don't follow for the same reason? 2po. hopefully this helps some people that still think 2po is legit "ITK."
Lemme guess, it's the one I busted him lying on. You don't have to confirm it, but yeah. We knew he had been lying and spinning M&Gs for years for the same reason you just said. Nobody could pin him down on it. 20 people in the room and yeah, a lot hear how he's lying and everyone's been trapped on pinning him down on it. Because the SECOND I pulled the truth out he went WE'RE REPORTING IT. Huh. So you admit it's real then. Too bad your friend was drunk with an open container violating the NDA in row A of the theater within 5 minutes. That sucks for you. Very loud ranting. And the threats for hellers daring to heller in a cockles M&G were just a nice touch of frosting on the shit cake.
And it's so funny bc if you look at his sources--he thought he was being slick when he blatantly described Gayle and Suzanne--they're still. just fans. It's fans sourcing fans sourcing fans, and those bloated fans think they're Someone and they're getting furiouser and furiouser and coming at me harder and harder. Like, no, it doesn't matter that you invested millions in Jared and Mantra, Suzanne, he isn't running the show. Probably why yall flipped shit. Their corner is drying up, Jared's M&Gs aren't even selling out anymore at bottom price, even selling J2 only adds like +100 to Jensen's value. They're realizing only a few people wanna work with him anymore, he doesn't hang out with people from the old lot anymore, and no, he wasn't included in the prequel organization, and their brains are fucking melting.
Also why they hate the origin of it. Because then. Well. Let's just say when Jared exploded I was like
our bad ig. Whatever. So like. Yeah. At least it's good to know other congoers are aware. I got a few reports today too of certain fans like "oh my god I met them you're right they're incredibly fucking obnoxious and think they're part of the cast", and really, that's what drives 2po's "ITK" shit. Fans feeding fans feeding fans feeding fans. Even Wiki is just a glorified fan, and the way she reeled back when 2po got her burned a few times tells me she's starting to realize that real quick.
And somehow this fandom had a stroke and forgot my warnings about coffeerunners like her that get elevated into first media roles not grokking their limitations and babbling to equally unqualified idiots, they forgot Manchin/Market Testing, they let that "fake script" shit get out of hand on purpose, and so on. What it boiled down to was she was salty I found a newer script than she was given access to, because she was hired in feb but given an old draft, which shows her content is screened, and I think she really did NOT like that reality.
It came from lack of understanding that like. Scripts are released the way they are to root out leakers just like her. Like TPTB knows now. She's never gonna get anything of worth now. She's just there as a rubber stamp hire to go LOOK OUR CANON WILL BE FINE WE HAVE THE WIKI when, realistically, as she isn't trained or studied for the job, her underqualification lets them get away with A LOT MORE SHIT so they get to giggle and flee and pat her on the head for a good job.
Like i said. the spnscripthunt server is a condensed form of the worst fans in all lanes. Antis, bitters, J2 tinhats, misha haters, manipulators, grifters, and active liars basically form the base, but they use the appeal of shiny scripts to radiate their garbage out through the people they manipulate into giving them free gold tickets.
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Quickly notes about Diluc’s (quote-unquote) event.
First, the letters in the mansion:
One from Alice, where it’s explained that she likes him because he was nice to Klee once. We can extrapolate that’s why she dragged him to the islands last year (insert disparaging remark about the writing quality here).
She calls him young a lot, reminding us she’s immortal or whatever. Her letter was written while he was grieving, which admittedly doesn’t really tell us much.
Implication that Crepus got up to some shit.
One from... I guess Elzer? Someone who calls Diluc “Master” but is not Adelinde. It was written while Diluc was abroad for three years and talks about how Kaeya came to stay over at the winery for several days, asking Adelinde to cook his favorite dishes and pacing around the grounds.
One from Albedo, talking about how he and Diluc recently investigated ley lines. (There is a note earlier in the quest chain, where Diluc’s... collaborator? informant? suggests that he approach Albedo to learn some lore, since Albedo is not close to Jean like Lisa is.)
Ley lines are a medium for storing information, they can sometimes show scenes from the past, blah blah. This functionality can be controlled, and some in Abyss Order can do it.
(You CAN read all the letters, but only after the conversation that starts after the 3rd one. I looked up the rest on the wiki anyway.)
One from presumably Varka, which makes it clear that, in usual fashion, no character can have reasonable beef with another, so he and Jean were totally proactive about making sure the Knights in general weren’t to blame for Crepus’s death, and also saying good stuff about Crepus, so he... probably was fine, actually.
A Letter With Rough Handwriting: Crepus was a good man, and I thought very well of him. It grieves me greatly to know that he met with such a fate.
A Letter With Rough Handwriting: As for the defeat of the drake, the honors for that accomplishment should go to your father. I do not accept Eroch's theft of the credit for that deed, which was bought with your father's sacrifice.
A Letter With Rough Handwriting: Stolen credit will not be accepted within the Knights of Favonius under any circumstances. I will not permit it.
A Letter With Rough Handwriting: I have already given Jean the authority to punish Eroch with all necessary severity. The Knights will inform you of the results.
Bit of a weird contradiction (?) to the webtoon here as Dottore was supposed to bet the one who got credit for defeating Ursa the Drake. Unless that one conspiracy theory is right and Dottore = Eroch in some fashion.
One from Jean, shortly after Diluc’s return a year(?) ago. She mentions that Eroch “betrayed” them (rather than just being stupid or arrogant or whatever) and brings up the Darknight hero, though the tone doesn’t imply she knows he and Diluc are the same person.
And finally, one from an unknown source (possibly Vile, who has unique dialogue during this event) who works with the Darknight Hero, having been doing patrols around Mond and Dragonspine to check whether the local monsters have been controlled by the Abyss Order.
About the situation:
Diluc is very tsun-tsun but his cooperation with and consideration for the Knights is underlined. While he talks some smack, he’s basically very concerned about their staff shortage due to the expedition, so he’s taking care of this to avoid needing to have them get involved. It’s even less adversarial than before. Very mature but boring, as always.
Diluc also seems to contradict himself at one point, saying it’s been a long time since he worked with others, even though the last letter is “new” and talks about an investigation that clearly happened after his returned... while cooperating with someone...
Letters after the story:
You can also find a series of letters from Kaeya to Diluc, starting from right after Crepus’s death and leading up to after Diluc’s return. Nothing too notable though, just confirming what the other letters say, again bringing up Eroch and that Kaeya has been trying to help Diluc on the sly.
There are also letters from Diluc to Albedo and Alice, in response to theirs. Alice’s was sent much earlies than Albedo’s though, since hers is from when Diluc had set out on his three years abroad, and Albedo’s is after his return.
He also wrote replies to Jean and Varka while traveling, but those aren’t very interesting.
The last set of letters belongs to Kaeya. The first was him practicing writing the oral history of the Alberich Clan as a child, with his father’s help. The letter was meant to be burnt, but he kept it as a memento. Another is personal musings, confirming that Diluc was the one who wounded Kaeya’s eye during their big falling out. Diluc initially thought he had blinded Kaeya, but that isn’t the case. There are also two short letters from Diluc to Kaeya (they address each other D and K for short), which are impersonal but not particularly negative. Finally, there’s a few seashells (from the islands last year, possibly).
The Alberich mention is very small, but it says that they did NOT have royal blood but stepped in as regents when the one-eyed king Irmin faltered. No prince Kaeya for us, I guess.
Irmin was an epithet for Odin, so he might link back to the statuettes the husks drop, which are missing a left eye (contrast Kaeya, Pierro and Dainsleif covering up the right eye). Irmin is also similar to “Irminsul”, the silver ley line trees. I believe I saw it mentioned somewhere that this name also appears in some of the fictional novel books, maybe Fischl’s novel.
On the whole:
Not a very interesting event. It confirmed and repeated a bunch of stuff we knew, added very small details that don’t really matter (regarding Albedo and Alice), and dropped some extremely minor lore that will get repeated later anyway. Aside from that, it continues to water down the Diluc-Kaeya relationship while dragging it out without anything interesting being added.
......Still better than Summertime Odysseys tho!
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READ THE DEATH NOTE PILOT CHAPTER HERE // * all information is based on the death note manga timeline, not the anime.
STATS:
NAME: kagami taro
KANJI: 鏡太郎
AGE: 13-20+, defaults at 20 for his main verse
DOB: 04/04/1990**
SIGN: aries**
HAIR: black
EYES: black
HEIGHT: 5'2-5'9 (157cm-175cm)**
WEIGHT: 98-123lb (44kg-56kg)**
GENDER: cis-male
PRONOUNS: he/him/his
SEXUALITY: demisexual, demiromantic, ace leaning **
FAMILY: single mother, father unknown
** not canon confirmed / headcanon based / not a primary focus **
TARO’S WIKI PAGE / THE PILOT CHAPTER’S WIKI PAGE
“The original Death Note pilot manga chapter stated that "names have been changed to protect the innocent," meaning that the real names of many of the characters are not stated. The chapter starred Taro Kagami, a 13-year old boy and student at OO Middle School.” — SOURCE: DEATH NOTE WIKI FROM THE TARO KAGAMI STORY
—> for my own sanity, while this is so clever, i will be referring to the names given to us. renaming them all would be horribly confusing.
APPEARANCE:
taro is a young boy with cheek-length, smooth, black hair, and he wears a school uniform consisting of a white-collar shirt and pants. later, when taro is an adult, he closely resembles teru mikami.
VERSES:
PRE-PILOT: before the death note pilot, taro is an average eighth-grader at 00 middle school. he is bullied daily.
THE PILOT: takes place during the events of the death note pilot. he has just found the death note dropped by ryuk, and is unaware that ryuk has dropped a second notebook into the human world. he canonically dies and is revived, changing his personality drastically. while the second death note is confiscated and burned by the police, freeing miura of its grip, both still have their memories of the death note.
TIME-SKIP // * MAIN VERSE: my primary verse takes place post-pilot chapter. the death note is a cultural phenomenon with its existence still in dispute by the public.**
** as it is not stated what taro does post-pilot, i assume at the age of 20 he is a sophomore at to-oh university where he is studying criminal law in hopes of becoming a prosecuting attorney. he currently has the original death note he found in his possession, and presumably the death eraser, as it is never outright stated it was burned or confiscated. he has not (yet) made the eye deal, and is still being followed by ryuk. **
from a post i made regarding his “main” verse:
“his time-skip verse is going to be his primary verse where i have him enrolled as a sophomore at to-oh seeing as the timelines basically coincide pretty well. in 2003, he would be roughly 4 years younger than light canonically … the pilot came out in shonen jump in august of 2003, while death note followed in late 2003 (dec 1). taro is 13 when his story takes place, while light is 17 at the start of death note.
in following the manga timeline, and not the anime, we’re to assume that the pilot takes place in 2003 when taro is 13 with there being a 7 year time-skip to when he is 20. this would be around 2010, and light has technically died in january of 2010.
while i’d like to make the pilot coincide with the main series in some verses, others will have to stand alone as their own canon since the pilot and main series are so different, while being very similar. this means there will be a split set of verses, all accommodating to death note in some variation. i do not consider musicals or any live action adaptions, though.
in his “main” verse, he still has the original death note he found, is going to to-oh to become a prosecuting attorney, and is being followed by ryuk as he has not forfeit ownership nor has he died.”
** this main verse can accommodate either going off as a standalone from death note canon, or it can follow the main series by having ryuk drop another notebook, being the one that yagami encounters. **
ALTERNATE UNIVERSES:
DEATH NOTE: completely unaffiliated with the pilot! following the main events of the manga and anime ‘death note’. taro is an underclassman to yagami light, attending to-oh as a freshman when yagami is a senior. he is not affiliated with ryuk, nor does he have contact with the death note. since he has not experienced any of the events of the pilot, taro went through life consistently bullied and became inspired to try and pursue law. he still lives with his single mother, helping her however he can. he is mild-mannered, helpful, and shy.
FAMILY MATTERS: the younger brother and/or twin to mikami teru.
X-KIRA: taro is the proxy to kira, not mikami. follows the death note canon.
ORIGINAL KIRA: taro intends to use the death note to “change the world” as semi-indicated in the pilot
WAMMY HOUSE: he is “K.” more tba!!
EYES OF GOD: he is gifted ( he has made the deal ) . more tba!!
MODERN: he is a law student, having lived basically the same life he did in the pilot sans the influence or appearance of the death note. he is an overall quiet man, a bit on the shy side, and has a strong sense of wanting to pursue justice for those held down by bullies and/or society. he stays with his mother, unwilling to leave her for very long. he can come off a bit serious, but is inquisitive. more tba!!
CONNECTIONS:
miura — the supporting protagonist, he acquires the second death note dropped by ryuk.
ryuk — his shinigami, a demon
agents yamanaka and takagi — they occasionally check in on taro, but he is not fond of their help
yagami raito — written by me!! the best and brightest of death note
MORE INFO DUMPING:
i was reading the pilot and it doesn’t confirm if the eraser is also burned with the “other” death note that miura found, but taro does keep the death note he found. if taro keeps the eraser, he has a lot more leniency with the death note and its consequences. if the eraser was destroyed with miura’s death note, then taro has more restrictions similar to light when it comes to using the death note. i lean towards taro keeping the eraser, which is what i tend to default to in verses where he is still the death note user stemming from his original canon.
inspectors yamanaka and takagi, taro, and miura all agree to keep the death notes a secret so only the four of them know, but seven years later there is a cultural phenomenon of the death note and its supposed existence ..... so either someone said something or someone saw something (im leaning towards miura, definitely not taro).
ryuk never appeared for miura*, just for taro, and stuck with taro through the pilot. even when the death note miura was using was in the possession of taro, miura, and the inspectors, ryuk told taro he was watching from afar. he only comes to taro’s side after taro leaves miura after the death note is burned, never revealing his presence or existence to miura or the inspector, just to taro.
** it is strange that he never saw ryuk, but we can also assume when his death note was burned, that is like forfeiting ownership, which could be the reason he cannot / does not see ryuk at the brief end where he and taro part ways after the climax (this is where ryuk speaks to taro about him having died and come back; where we see the shift in taro’s personality completely). that also being said, it is interesting that the idea of memories being wiped was not implemented, meaning miura will always know and remember what happened in relation to the death note. he will always be bonded to taro in that regard. **
ryuk also comments when he tells taro the rules of the death note that he thought taro was a coward at first, but that he likes taro now, so will “help him with whatever he does.” this is also drastically different from light’s version of ryuk, who is only helpful if required / forced / coerced to be.
also there is no apple symbolism or usage. ryuk doesn’t ever mention eating or liking apples.
ryuk is a lot more of a willing participant, seeming to have more of an outward agenda in helping taro than he does with light, who he reveals things to either by choice or necessity depending on the situation. he openly compliments taro and affirms his intelligence to both taro and the audience, and seems more invested for taro to succeed versus his more lax attitude with light (who is a lot more proactive).
taro does briefly mention using the death note for a peaceful world, but also mentions he isn’t thinking on such a grand scale — i would say he probably would think more on this the longer he has the death note, as well as growing up. it’s a different world, as the death note has become a cultural phenomenon somehow.
tl;dr: taro never gives his death note up to the police, instead keeping it. ryuk is shown at the end to still be with taro post-time-skip. taro’s main verse takes place when he is 20, following the rules of the pilot, not the canonical death note series.
IT SHOULD ALSO BE NOTED: taro’s death note does not have any written “rules” in it for him to know or follow, and the cover is in english. when he tries to return it to ryuk, ryuk says that he already has a new death note, seeming to not have the same problems from the canon death note series of getting a new book. ryuk also tells taro later, when taro is being confronted by the police, how some of the death note works, specifically the portion about heart attacks if no cause of death is written. the death note seems to still function in the same way that light’s would, for example, but it is not as clearcut. it is after the police leave taro’s home that taro is given the full explanation of the rules to the death note. he basically went in more blind than light, but with less restrictions.
ryuk doesn’t seem to have to follow taro, as i mentioned he does not appear to miura that we know of, and he has his own death note separate from taro’s. in fact, ryuk was in possession (at one time or another) in the pilot of three death notes: taro’s, miura’s, and his own.
one detail that confirms what canon death note does not is this: when you run out of room to write in the notebook, you may ask the original owner shinigami for another. so, how many death notes do you need? it is said that the death note has 60 pages, 38 lines per page, and you can write as small as you’d like so long as it’s basically legible. so, if you write small, you can really get a lot of use out of the death note as we see it in the pilot.
what are the other rules of taro’s death note?
the notebook can only be used by the one who found it. if the owner throw it away or drops it, the right of ownership will be transferred to the next person who finds it.
if you do not know the face of the person whose name you write down, there will be no effect. therefore, people with the same name will not be affected all at once.
if you write the cause of death after the name like this —> (name) died (cause), then that will happen.
you can write with any pen, color doesn't matter. if you stick a seal with a name on it, there will be no effect. please write directly in the notebook. it would be a good idea to change handwritings as much as possible.
these letters (the cover) cannot be rased, and if the cover is destroyed, the notebook cannot be used. be careful not to let other people see it. also, you will not die if you write your own name in here, but it is not recommended. **
** that’s a huge change from what we normally see. c-kira actually does perform suicide via this method. **
if you wait awhile after finding this notebook, the original owner, a shinigami, will appear. as long as you keep this notebook, the shinigami will follow you around. that shinigami's appearance and voice will not be noticed by other people. as a condition for letting you keep the notebook, a situation may arise where the shinigami will take it back. those who do not wish to be followed by the shinigami may simply give the notebook back or throw it away. **
** i know i’ve stated that it seems like the shinigami don’t have to follow their book borrowers, and ryuk does follow taro around, though seems to have preference. since ryuk dropped two books, allowing both taro and miura to use them, he should be seen by miura, or at least visited, but likely had not had the book long enough to be actually confronted by ryuk ... like a trial or grace period, the same as he did with taro (and light). it seems that, in this context, he is more bound to taro. i believe he does prefer him. especially after seeing death and returning ... interestingly enough, however, taro’s mental wellbeing seem to be very compromised post-death and return, whereas this does not seem to be the case with others that were killed by the death note, then returned to their life (so long as their body was intact). taro’s reaction could be more severe due to him being a user, and owner, of a death note. miura, a death note user, wrote down taro’s name. this is almost like a roundabout way of writing your own name down. they did not have the detectives write taro’s name down, thus securing ownership.
everyone else that was killed and brought back seems to have no recollection of this, though the people around them do acknowledge them dying, and then their return to life. as miura was not put in the same position as taro, it is unclear if he would have had the same experience. ryuk calls where taro went “the world of the dead”, and it is unclear if that is separate from the shinigami realm or not ... it could also be the place where the students were haunting taro from via his dreams. he is ultimately changed, and highly connected to the spirit world in some regard, as well as being a “death dealer.”
in regards to the eraser, the only rule seems to be that the bodies have to be unburned. it is unclear if they would return in a decomposed state if left long enough, or what would happen were they to be autopsied. as it undoes what the death note does, it could also just reinstate them as normal. we never see a long enough time lapse for this, but all the deaths done in the pilot are rectified by taro and miura.
it is unclear if, in the future, the detectives actually keep up with taro. their fate is ambiguous to me.
taro is basically a huge outlier.
there is also mention of a prior case by the detectives that happened in the very late 70′s of similar means of death: heart attacks. this infers (likely ryuk’s doing) that the death note has been in the human world before, recently enough to be noticed. it has definitely probably come and go through early history.
also just interesting to note that there is no visible difference between taro and miura’s notebooks. this could be because all death notes look and function the same, or because they were owned by ryuk.
#/ * THE OG ( KAGAMI TARO )#/ * HEADCANON#this is his about page so ill link it shortly in all the right places#read more for length#read more for length //#tagged for length#tagged for length //#this will be touched up every so often but#this is all i can do#his verses are in here so you can just ctrl f to find them easily#the rambling is at the bottom the top is the stuff you really need
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Voices of the Force: Brainstorm Notes 9
I need to read some of the actual sources on the Rakata and their technology, because all I really know from the wiki is that a lot of their shit was powered by Force use. From the stuff I've read, hyperdrives were an application of particular note.
Though I'm really trying to get it through my head not to trust Wookieepedia as far as I can throw it, I really like that concept. I've already worked it into the AU backstory for what the Celestials were and that the Rakata destroyed them because they had become so close to the Force that they found themselves unable to adapt when it suddenly became a weakness like that.
The idea I have for the direct relevance of it here is that the Empire of the Hand found some abandoned but almost operable Rakatan shipyard - probably something on a far larger scale than the Star Forge, like at least the volume of the star system-diameter construction ring that Kuat most likely lost to the Yuuzhan Vong - out in the Unknown Regions, and they're producing ships that integrate that Force-based power generation with regular technology in such a way that having skilled and appropriately trained Force-users on board can directly increase the performance of the ship's systems. This is useful to them because as I've talked about before, the EotH in this verse have their own collective of Force-users, drawn from local Force traditions found on many of the planets that were absorbed under Thrawn and his successors.
One issue the EotH has, in terms of the ability to fight galactic wars, is industrial capacity. Everyone in Star Wars has self-replicating factories (the Dark Empire are just the only ones crazy enough to try to directly weaponize them) but most of the Hand's populace is species that hadn't expanded beyond their star system a hundred years ago, and they haven't had tens of thousands of years to build up infrastructure and stuff like the other side of the hyperspace barrier. That artifact gives a much-needed boost to that.
Also, it's occurred to me that maybe the final factor that leads to open war between the EotH and GA is that some faction found in the Clasping Hand foresees or otherwise becomes aware of the fact that Abeloth is eventually going to come back, and this, on top of a preexisting belief that the Hand has become too weak in the lack of a strong enemy to centralize against since the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War, prompts them to depose the leadership of the EotH and install themselves in charge, and decide that the galaxy must be unified to face the eventual return of Abeloth, and start to attack the Alliance to do that.
No one's going to get this, but part of the inspiration for several things I'm thinking of for the Hand is the last three books of James S.A. Corey's The Expanse series.
In the war against the GA, the EotH has some major advantages in strategic mobility, in that a) they presumably can attack from just about any point along the hyperspace barrier, and b) they can move much faster in their own territory due to their access to far better navigational data.
A strategic scenario I've preliminarily come up with is that their first offensives try for a foothold in the Deep Core. If they can reliably navigate it, that would allow easy attack vectors to most of the Core. Some clear places to fortify are Empress Teta and Foerost, which are on a hyperlane that leads directly up to Coruscant. Looking at the standard galaxy map, Vulpter also stands out as a potential staging point for both sides.
The attackers may find Tython a pretty valuable target for reasons of the Force, and though by this time it might have been forty years since the destruction of Byss, the possibility of the Clasping Hand standing to gain some kind of advantage from the darkness there also shouldn't be ignored.
At this stage, though, the decisive position actually turns out to be N'zoth. It's at the end of a hyperlane that leads directly into Coruscant. It's on the western edge of the Deep Core, a location from which to base fleet deployments that could cut off most or all approaches into the Deep Core from the other side of the hyperspace barrier. The Alliance might be able to construct very heavy fortifications in secret, sending a self-replicating droid workforce of an innocuous initial size to work with the copious amounts of material still floating around in the system from when the Yuuzhan Vong wiped out the Yevetha, and thus little need for external funding or supply shipments until they need to fully staff the fortress system that would be mostly finished by then.
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Teddy
Teddy is a creepypasta I think about every now and then, especially when discussing where creepypastas get their associated images from. The creepypasta itself is fine, very mundane, the user explains their experiences with a creepy looking teddy bear that seemed to stalk them, until one day burning the toy, only to years later find it in a box again in their adulthood. But what's always been more interesting to me is the associated image of the plush that was posted alongside the story on the creepypasta wiki. It's certainly creepy, there was a point where I couldn't even stand to look at it for how uncanny it is. Is it a dog or a bear?! Why is it so realistic? Why is it staring straight at us?
The source of the image is actually an ongoing search. Nobody has a clear and 100% certain idea of the manufacturer or brand, the year of production, if it's based on a character or not, or who even owns it. A reverse image search comes up with only more posts from people asking the same questions, wondering about the source of the image.
There is one post unlike the others, though.
In a post on amino, user ĠŖįMʧ made a post titled "🐻❓Remember Teddy❓🐻", the user stated
"Anyone remember that classic Creepypasta "Teddy?" If you do you probably haven't forgotten that face of his have you?
Take a look what I've bought in an antique store today! 🐻"
The text followed with a video reading of the creepypasta, along with these images.
However... that's all there is to that "lead".
It is worth noting that, of these images, it's not quite the same Teddy. The scarf is different, as well as a dark mark between the eyes and a lack of noticeable mouth that almost makes the first one look like it's smiling at you. Another note is the amino user makes their own custom dolls, and on their page you can see their very impressive Candle Cove replica dolls. This doesn't completely discredit that it was found at an antique store, but it is something to keep in mind. It'll bring us to the next and final lead we have.
The wallpaper seems to have been popular in older Russian homes, which is our hint that this is from Russia. Some users around the net have pointed out that back in the days, Russian toy companies were very lacking in quality. Some suggest that it could even be a bootleg or a homemade plush. But who or what is it supposed to be? Well, the most popular (and kind of only) guess is...
Cheburashka...
To be honest, I can just barely see the connection. Big round ears and a naked face, but Cheburashka seems to resemble a monkey more than a bear or teddy. Then again, Cheburashka is an "animal unknown to science" according to the creator, Eduard Uspensky. But this cute little guy is a popular and beloved character in Russia, existing since 1965, so it is entirely possible and quite likely that Teddy is indeed just an accidentally creepy take on Cheburashka, either because it was a bootleg or just not a great manufacturer. After all, it's not like someone like Mickey Mouse is without any creepy merchandise, especially the earlier ones.
Though nothing is confirmed for certain about the source of Teddy's image, we still don't know who took or posted the photo, or when, or who made the plush, at least we know who and what it's possibly meant to be.
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Races of Magus of the Library: the Kadoe
The following is part of a post originally compiled on reddit by /u/atlathing, and edited by the webmaster for clarity. Refer to the introduction post for info about commentary and sources.
Original Name: カドー, "Kado"
[no double consonant, but it's close enough to the Caddo nation]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caddo
Classification: Omeka family
Swahili name, interesting...
https://omeka.org/about/project/
Subclassifications: Nambi, Tass, Sooni
Faith: Ki
[This one is kind of a mystery, both story- and inspiration-wise. Lack of background aside, the original name of this is "起教," which doesn't pop up as anything in any Japanese dictionaries but might mean something like "Awakening Faith?" On the other hand, "Ki" is a fairly common translation for the East Asian concept of life force.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi
Representative Color: Red, believed to be a ward against the afterlife
Temperament: Kind and Crafty
"The Kadoe will urge you to take your time. Don't accept those words at face value. If you dawdle on the stairway, they'll grow impatient and push you the rest of the way down." —Cautionary advice offered at a Ki temple
A people who once lived in mountainous regions with horned temples and black hair, more easily identified by their distinctive kimonos (no canon name for them currently), and for some Kadoe, face masks. [Note that Cynthea has white hair due to her excessive mana as a Citlapol]
A Kadoe's name is typically made of three parts, and typically referred to by surname [though pretty much everyone in polite city society seems to do this // chapter 10, volume 3, page 23]
Possible connection to tria nomina?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions#Tria_nomina
Kadoe masks are of particular importance, as removing a Kadoe's mask in public is akin to them being stripped naked.
[It's still quite unclear what/where this masking practice is rooted in so far, in the story or otherwise. Masks have been a traditional part of Japanese ceremony since prehistoric times, but Kadoe designs are much closer to those from African traditions than Japan.]
https://traditionalkyoto.com/culture/masks/
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/african-masks-connecting-with-the-afterlife/cgISUlZn5SE-IQ
Like the other traditional Japanese signifiers might imply (kimonos, vertical writing, etc.), an awareness of the spirits is apparently important to the Kadoe. At marriages, guests are known to completely cover the bride in black ink to ward off malicious spirits [chapter 5, volume 2, page 38]
[A ritual known as] a libation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libation
Bonus section: the Masked Empire?
A part of history that has scant been mentioned outside of chapter endcaps is the empire forged by the Kadoe prior to the Rakta's dominance of the continent, long before the appearance of the Ashen Death. Almost all of what we know has only been released in Izumi-san's tweets about the Atlatonan continent's history.
More than a millennium prior to the present day, the Haupi Kingdom, the civilization that laid the foundation for modern life, was suddenly besieged by a unknown tribe of masked peoples from the north. Wielding the first grimoires, which granted even those with weak mana the ability to cast spells, the Kadoe destroyed the Haupi Kingdom and many of their precious texts in a single night. Jain Sei Tahn, second emperor of the Masked Empire, would proclaim themselves Great Magus [first mentioned among a suite of Kadoe-related books in chapter 20, volume 5, page 42], and from there, the Kadoe expanded outward until they lay claim to the entire continent.
As written in the logbook entry for the trio of spellbooks named the Trine:
"Three grimoires fashioned by the Kadoe, forefathers of the spellbook, in which spirits of Earth, Water, and Thunder reside. The three spirits are said to be the most terrifying in all history, and wielded by the Kadoe, they ensured the 700-year-ironclad reign of the Masked Empire.
Curiously, when the Empire finally began to fall at the hands of the Rakta, the Kadoe never employed the Trine in their defense. It is believed that the tomes were somehow lost, and that their disappearance sealed the Empire's fate."
For an empire that held sway over all Atlatonan for so long, it's interesting that their presence is simply a footnote in the present day. The webmaster supposes all the animosity towards the Kadoe's past tyranny was quickly directed towards the Rakta once they came to power before the Ashen Death, leaving what was left of the Kadoe to become the innocuously peculiar people they are now.
For the rest of the races:
Hyron
Rakta
Creyak
Kokopah
Haupi
Syrrana
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Machine learning sucks at covid
The worst part of machine learning snake-oil isn’t that it’s useless or harmful — it’s that ML-based statistical conclusions have the veneer of mathematics, the empirical facewash that makes otherwise suspect conclusions seem neutral, factual and scientific.
Think of “predictive policing,” in which police arrest data is fed to a statistical model that tells the police where crime is to be found. Put in those terms, it’s obvious that predictive policing doesn’t predict what criminals will do; it predicts what police will do.
Cops only find crime where they look for it. If the local law only performs stop-and-frisks and pretextual traffic stops on Black drivers, they will only find drugs, weapons and outstanding warrants among Black people, in Black neighborhoods.
That’s not because Black people have more contraband or outstanding warrants, but because the cops are only checking for their presence among Black people. Again, put that way, it’s obvious that policing has a systemic racial bias.
But when that policing data is fed to an algorithm, the algorithm dutifully treats it as the ground truth, and predicts accordingly. And then a mix of naive people and bad-faith “experts” declare the predictions to be mathematical and hence empirical and hence neutral.
Which is why AOC got her face gnawed off by rabid dingbats when she stated, correctly, that algorithms can be racist. The dingbat rebuttal goes, “Racism is an opinion. Math can’t have opinions. Therefore math can’t be racist.”
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/01/yes-algorithms-can-be-biased-heres-why/
You don’t have to be an ML specialist to understand why bad data makes bad predictions. “Garbage In, Garbage Out” (GIGO) may have been coined in 1957, but it’s been a conceptual iron law of computing since “computers” were human beings who tabulated data by hand.
But good data is hard to find, and “when all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” is an iron law of human scientific malpractice that’s even older than GIGO. When “data scientists” can’t find data, they sometimes just wing it.
This can be lethal. I published a Snowden leak that detailed the statistical modeling the NSA used to figure out whom to kill with drones. In subsequent analysis, Patrick Ball demonstrated that NSA statisticians’ methods were “completely bullshit.”
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2702948/Problem-Book-Redacted.pdf
Their gravest statistical sin was recycling their training data to validate their model. Whenever you create a statistical model, you hold back some of the “training data” (data the algorithm analyzes to find commonalities) for later testing.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-nsas-skynet-program-may-be-killing-thousands-of-innocent-people/
So you might show an algorithm 10,000 faces, but hold back another 1,000, and then ask the algorithm to express its confidence that items in this withheld data-set were also faces.
However, if you are short on data (or just sloppy, or both), you might try a shortcut: training and testing on the same data.
There is a fundamental difference from evaluating a classifier by showing it new data and by showing it data it’s already ingested and modeled.
It’s the difference between asking “Is this like something you’ve already seen?” and “Is this something you’ve already seen?” The former tests whether the system can recall its training data; the latter tests whether the system can generalize based on that data.
ML models are pretty good recall engines! The NSA was training it terrorism detector with data from the tiny number of known terrorists it held. That data was so sparse that it was then evaluating the model’s accuracy by feeding it back some of its training data.
When the model recognized its own training data (“I have 100% confidence this data is from a terrorist”) they concluded that it was accurate. But the NSA was only demonstrating the model’s ability to recognize known terrorists — not accurately identify unknown terrorists.
And then they killed people with drones based on the algorithm’s conclusions.
Bad data kills.
Which brings me to the covid models raced into production during the height of the pandemic, hundreds of which have since been analyzed.
There’s a pair of new, damning reports on these ML covid models. The first, “Data science and AI in the age of COVID-19” comes from the UK’s Alan Turing Institute:
https://www.turing.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2021-06/data-science-and-ai-in-the-age-of-covid_full-report_2.pdf
The second, “Common pitfalls and recommendations for using machine learning to detect and prognosticate for COVID-19 using chest radiographs and CT scans,” comes from a team at Cambridge.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-021-00307-0
Both are summarized in an excellent MIT Tech Review article by Will Douglas Heaven, who discusses the role GIGO played in the universal failure of any of these models to produce useful results.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/30/1030329/machine-learning-ai-failed-covid-hospital-diagnosis-pandemic/
Fundamentally, the early days of covid were chaotic and produced bad and fragmentary data. The ML teams “solved” that problem by committing a series of grave statistical sins so they could produce models, and the models, trained on garbage, produced garbage. GIGO.
The datasets used for the models were “Frankenstein data,” stitched together from multiple sources. The specifics of how that went wrong are a kind of grim tour through ML’s greatest methodological misses.
Some Frankenstein sets had duplicate data, leading to models being tested on the same data they were trained on
A data-set of health children’s chest X-rays was used to train a model to spot healthy chests — instead it learned to spot children’s chests
One set mixed X-rays of supine and erect patients, without noting that only the sickest patients were X-rayed while lying down. The model learned to predict that people were sick if they were on their backs
A hospital in a hot-spot used a different font from other hospitals to label X-rays. The model learned to predict that people whose X-rays used that font were sick
Hospitals that didn’t have access to PCR tests or couldn’t integrate them with radiology data labeled X-rays based on a radiologist’s conclusions, not test data, incorporating radiologist’s idiosyncratic judgements into a “ground truth” about what covid looked like
All of this was compounded by secrecy: the data and methods were often covered by nondisclosure agreements with medical “AI” companies. This foreclosed on the kind of independent scrutiny that might have caught these errors.
It also pitted research teams against one another, rather than setting them up for collaboration, a phenomenon exacerbated by scientific career advancement, which structurally preferences independent work.
Making mistakes is human. The scientific method doesn’t deny this — it compensates for it, with disclosure, peer-review and replication as a check against the fallibility of all of us.
The combination of bad incentives, bad practices, and bad data made bad models.
The researchers involved likely had the purest intentions, but without the discipline of good science, they produced flawed outcomes — outcomes that were pressed into service in the field, to no benefit, and possibly to patients’ detriment.
There are statistical techniques for compensating for fragmentary and heterogeneous data — they are difficult and labor-intensive, and work best through collaboration and disclosure, not secrecy and competition.
Image:
Cryteria (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
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dazai's plan for the prison break
why did Dazai choose Sigma for his prison break plan?
<HEAVY SPOILERS for c98>
1. Sigma's ability
to start off, I have a confession to make. so.. I forgot sigma had an ability. even thought he didn't have one. it's not talked about much, but his is the ability to "exchange information with anyone he touches. The exchange consists of "giving" the person information they want to know and thus giving Sigma the information he wants to know." (source: bsd wiki)
2. previous use of Sigma's ability
in chapter 58, Sigma's ability was utilised to steal information from Chief Taneda. (on a side note, Taneda's ability allows him to know Sigma's ability, which is why we even know how any of this works. dazai probably knows about this through Ango) The information stolen was about the location of a page of The Book, which was used to frame the ADA thereafter.
"They've used my knowledge to steal a certain page."
[Taneda, chap 58]
Another instance is Atsushi's unintentional use of Sigma's ability. We know Atsushi received information on the identity of Kamui, but what information Sigma received on the other end is still unknown.
"Those memories I got from Sigma, Kamui's drive to kill, that sword was one used by the Hunting Dogs."
[Atsushi, chap 83]
3. nullification of Sigma's ability
with the release of chapter 98, we had the fandom going crazy over either the #vamp!chuuya panel or the #sigzai panel. personally, I hyped over the dance panel because it was... easy to colour. but knowing dazai, seemingly comedic scenes of his never exist for the sole purpose of being comedic. (flashback to that "i need to pee" scene) thus, I made the assumption that this 'dance' had some other purpose to it, and came to the conclusion that.. Dazai was trying to nullify Sigma's ability.
4. why?
I'd be extremely grateful to anyone who can find the exact quote in the bsd manga, but basically dazai (or a random tumblr user) said:
"in a battle where both sides have an equal amount of information, the side who makes the more unpredictable move wins."
I believe dazai and fyodor to have roughly the same amount of intel on the current situation. since Sigma is doa's source of info (excluding the person on the outside fyodor communicates with), the purpose of ability nullification would be to block any future attempts of fyodor getting info out of sigma. this theory does seem a little shaky as we: don't know how fyodor makes sigma tell? him anything, he also thought sigma was dead before 98. would fyodor use his ability to tap onto sigma's ability? how does fyodor's ability work?
I have no idea, and neither does Dazai. but Sigma may know.
regarding the question posed right at the very start of this post, I'd like us to ask ourselves: is it information, or military might (aka gravity manipulation) that decides the outcome of a battle?
ok thanks bye..
I wasn't very sure where to post this, so it goes to my main :)) Thanks for reading, just wanted to get this out of my head before the next chapter comes out... like tmr? if you write any posts that are similar to this or talk about sigma's ability or sth, TAG ME. if you want to correct any facts in this post, TAG ME.
#bsd#bungou stray dogs#bsd dazai#bsd fyodor#bsd sigma#bsd theories#bsd analysis#i really needed to get this out before the fandom erupts over the next chapter#also I think that chapter 100 would be REALLY BIG#i even have a conspiracy theory that chapter 96 was skipped so that 100 could be the big one#bsd spoilers#xibunseki
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I'm writing an AU of a movie that takes place in the 1880s USA, where a travelling white character and a Jewish character are waylaid by Native Americans, who they befriend. Probably because it was written by and about PoC (Jews) the scene actually avoids the stuff on your Native American Masterpost, but I'd still like to do better than a movie made in the 1980's, and I feel weird cutting them from the plot entirely. I have a Jewish woman reading it for that, but are there any things you (1/1)
2/2 1880s western movie ask--are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s? I do plan to base them on a real tribe (Ute, probably) and have proper housing/clothes and so forth, but right now I'm just trying to avoid or subvert awful cowboy movie tropes. Any ideas?
White and Jewish Men, Native American interactions in 1880s
I am vaguely concerned with how you only cite one of our posts about Native Americans, that was not written by a Native person, and do not cite any of the posts relating to this time period, or any posts relating to representation in media.
Sidenote: if you want us to give accurate reflections of the media you’re discussing, please tell us the NAME. I cannot go look up this movie based off this description to give you an idea of what my issues are with this scene, and must instead trust that the representation is good based off your judgement. I cannot make my own judgement. This is a problem. Especially since your whole question boils down to “this scene is good but not great and I want it to be great. How can I do that?”
Your baseline for “good” could very well be my baseline for “terrible hack job”. I can’t give you the proper education required for you to be able to accurately evaluate the media you’re watching for racist stereotypes if you don’t tell me what you’re even working with.
When you’re writing fanfic where the media is directly relevant to the question, please tell us the name of the media. We will not judge your tastes. We need this information in order to properly help you.
Moving on.
I bring up my concern for you citing that one—exceptionally old—post because it is lacking in many of the tropes that don’t exist in the media critique field but exist in the real world. This is an issue I have run into countless times on WWC (hence further concern you did not cite any other posts) and have spoken about at length.
People look at the media critique world exclusively, assume it is a complete evaluation of how Native Americans are seen in society, and as a result end up ignoring some really toxic stereotypes and then come to the inbox with “these characters aren’t abc trope, so they’re fine, but I want to rubber stamp them anyway. Anything wrong here?”. The answer is pretty much always yes.
Issue one: “Waylaid” by Native Americans
This wording is extremely loaded for one reason: Native American people are seen as tricksters, liars, and predators. This is the #1 trope that shows up in the real world that does not show up in media critique. It’s also the trope I have talked about the most when it comes to media representation, so you not knowing the trope is a sign you haven’t read the entirety of the Native tag—which is in the FAQ as something we would really prefer you did before coming at us to answer questions. It avoids us having to re-explain ourselves.
Now, hostility is honestly to be expected for the time period the movie is set in. This is in the beginnings (or ramping up) of residential schools in America* and Canada, we have generations upon generations of stolen or killed children, reserves being allocated perhaps hundreds of miles from sacred sites, and various wars with Plains and Southwest peoples are in full force (Wounded Knee would have happened in 1890, in December, and the Dakoa’s mass execution would have been in 1862. Those are just the big-name wars. There absolutely were others).
*America covers up its residential schools abuse extremely thoroughly, so if you try to research them in the American context you will come up empty. Please research Canada’s schools and apply the same abuse to America, as Canada has had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about residential schools and therefore is more (but not completely) transparent about the abuse that happened. Please note that America’s history with residential schools is longer than Canada’s history. There is an extremely large trigger warning for mass child death when you do this research.
But just because the hostility is expected does not mean that this hostility would be treated well in the movie. Especially when you consider the sheer amount of tension between any Native actors and white actors, for how Sacheen Littlefeather had just been nearly beaten up by white actors at the 1973 Academy Awards for mentioning Wounded Knee, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act had only been passed two years prior in 1978.
These Native actors would not have had the ability to truly consent to how they were shown, and this power dynamic has to be in your mind when you watch this scene over. I don’t care that the writers were from a discriminated-against background. This does not always result in being respectful, and I’ve also spoken about this power imbalance at length (primarily in the cowboy tag).
Documentaries and history specials made in the 2010s (with some degree of academic muster) will still fall into wording that harkens Indigenous people to wolves and settlers as frightened prey animals getting picked off by the mean animalistic Natives. This is not neutral, or good. This is perpetuating the myth that the settlers were helpless, just doing their own thing completely unobtrusively, and then the evil territorial Native Americans didn’t want to share.
To paraphrase Batman: if I had a week I couldn’t explain all the reasons that’s wrong.
How were these characters waylaid by the Native population? Because that answer—which I cannot get because you did not name the media—will determine how good the framing is. But based on the time period this movie was made alone, I do not trust it was done respectfully.
Issue 2: “Befriending”
I mentioned this was in an intense period of residential schools and land wars all in that area. The Ute themselves had just been massacred by Mormons in the Grass Valley Massacre in 1865, with ten men and an unknown number of women and children killed thanks to a case of assumed association with a war chief (Antonga Black Hawk) currently at war with Utah. The Paiute had been massacred in 1866. Over 100 Timpanogo men had been killed, with an unknown number of women and children enslaved by Brigham Young in Salt Lake City in 1850, with many of the enslaved people dying in captivity (those numbers were not tracked, but I would assume at least two hundred were enslaved— that’s simply assuming one woman/wife and one child for every man, and the numbers could have very well been higher if any war-widows and their children were in the group, not to mention families with multiple children). This is after an unknown group of Indigenous people had been killed by Governor Brigham Young the year prior, to “permanently stop cattle theft” from settlers.
The number of Native Americans killed in Utah in the 1800s—just the number of dead counted (since women and children weren’t counted)—in massacres not tied to war (because there was at least one war) is over 130. The actual number of random murders is much higher; between the uncounted deaths and how the Governor had issued orders to “deal with” the problem of cattle theft permanently. I doubt you would have been tried or convicted if you murdered Indigenous peoples on “your” land. This is why it’s called state sanctioned genocide.
This is not counting the Black Hawk War in Utah (1865-1872), which the Ute were absolutely a part of (the wiki articles I read were contradictory if Antonga Black Hawk was Ute or Timpanogo, but the Ute were part of it). The first official massacre tied to the war—the Bear River Massacre, ordered by the US Military—places the death count of just that singular massacre at over five hundred Shoshone, including elders, women, and children. It would not be unreasonable to assume that the number of Indigenous people killed in Utah from 1850, onward, is over a thousand, perhaps two or three.
Pardon me for not reading beyond that point to list more massacres and simply ballparking a number; the source will be linked for you to get an accurate number of dead.
So how did they befriend the Native population? Let alone see them as fully human considering the racism of the time period? Natives were absolutely not seen as fully human so long as they were tied to their culture, and assimilation equalling some sliver of respect was already a stick being waved around as a threat. This lack of humanity continues to the present day.
I’m not saying friendship is impossible. I am saying the sheer levels of mistrust that would exist between random wandering groups of white/pale men and Indigenous communities wouldn’t exactly make that friendship easy. Having the scene end be a genuine friendship feels ignorant and hollow and flattening of ongoing genocide, because settlers lied about their intentions and then lined you up for slauther (that’s how the Timpanogo were killed and enslaved).
Utah had already done most of its mass killing by this point. The era of trusting them was over. There was an active open hunting season, and the acceptable targets were the Indigenous populations of Utah.
(sources for the numbers:
List of Indian Massacres in North America
Black Hawk War (1865-1872))
Issue 3: “Proper housing/clothes and so forth”
Do you mean Western style settlements and jeans? If yes, congratulations you have written a reservation which means the land-ripped-away wounds are going to be fresh, painful, and sore.
You do not codify what you mean by “proper”, and proper is another one of those deeply loaded colonial words that can mean “like a white man” or “appropriate for their tribe.” For the time period, it would be the former. Without specifying which direction you’re going for, I have no idea what you’re imagining. And without the name of the media, I don’t know what the basis of this is.
The reservation history of this time period seems to maybe have some wiggle room; there were two reservations allocated for the Ute at this time, one made in 1861 and another made in 1882 (they were combined into the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in 1886). This is all at the surface level of a google and wikipedia search, so I have no idea how many lived in the bush and how many lived on the reserve.
There were certainly land defenders trying to tell Utah the land did not belong to them, so holdouts that avoided getting rounded up were certainly possible. But these holdouts would be far, far more hostile to anyone non-Native.
The Ute seemed to be some degree of lucky in that the reserve is on some of their ancestral territory, but any loss of land that large is going to leave huge scars.
It should be noted that reserves would mean the traditional clothing and housing would likely be forbidden, because assimilation logic was in full force and absolutely vicious at this time.
It’s a large reserve, so the possibility exists they could have accidentally ended up within the borders of it. I’m not sure how hostile the state government was for rounding up all the Ute, so I don’t know if there would have been pockets of them hiding out. In present day, half of the Ute tribe lives on the reserve, but this wasn’t necessarily true historically—it could have been a much higher percentage in either direction.
It’s up to you if you want to make them be reservation-bound or not. Regardless, the above mentioned genocide would have been pretty fresh, the land theft in negotiations or already having happened, and generally, the Ute would be well on their way to every assimilation attempt made from either residential schools, missionaries, and/or the forced settlement and pre-fab homes.
To Answer Your Question
I don’t want another flattened, sanitized portrayal of genocide.
Look at the number of dead above, the amount of land lost above, the amount of executive orders above. And try to tell me that these people would be anything less than completely and totally devastated. Beyond traumatized. Beyond broken hearted. Absolutely grief stricken with almost no soul left.
Their religion would have been illegal. Their children would have been stolen. Their land was taken away. A saying about post-apocalyptic fiction is how settler-based it is, because Indigenous people have already lived through their own apocalypse.
It would have all just happened at the time period this story is set in. All of the grief you feel now at the environment changing so drastically that you aren’t sure how you’ll survive? Take that, magnify it by an exponential amount because it happened, and you have the mindset of these Native characters.
This is not a topic to tread lightly. This is not a topic to read one masterpost and treat it as a golden rule when there is too much history buried in unmarked, overfull graves of school grounds and cities and battlefields. I doubt the movie you’re using is good representation if it doesn’t even hint at the amount of trauma these Native characters would have been through in thirty years.
A single generation, and the life that they had spent millennia living was gone. Despite massive losses of life trying to fight to preserve their culture and land.
Learn some history. That’s all I can tell you. Learn it, process it, and look outside of checklists. Look outside of media.
And let us have our grief.
~ Mod Lesya
On Question Framing
Please allow me the opportunity to comment on “are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s?” That strikes me as the same type of question as asking what color food I’d like for lunch. I don’t see how the cultural backgrounds of characters I have literally no other information about is supposed to make me want anything in particular about them. I don’t know anything about their personalities or if they have anything in common.
Compare the following questions:
“Are there things you’d like to see in a movie where two American women, one from a Nordic background and one Jewish, are interacting?” I struggle to see how our backgrounds are going to yield any further inspiration. It certainly doesn’t tell you that we’re both queer and cling to each other’s support in a scary world; it doesn’t tell you that we uplift each other through mental illness; it doesn’t go into our 30 years of endless bizarre inside jokes related to everything from mustelids to bad subtitles.
Because: “white”, “Jewish”, and “Native American” aren’t personality words. You can ask me what kind of interaction I’d like to see from a high-strung overachieving woman and a happy-go-lucky Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I’ll tell you I’d want fluffy f/f romance. Someone else might want conflict ultimately resolving in friendship. A third person might want them slowly getting on each other’s nerves more and more until one becomes a supervillain and the other must thwart her. But the same question about a cultural demographic? That told me nothing about the people involved.
Also, the first time I meet a new person from a very different culture, it might take weeks before discussion of our specific cultural differences comes up. As a consequence, my first deep conversations with a Costa Rican American gentile friend were not about Costa Rica or my Jewishness but about things we had in common: classical music and coping with breakups--which are obviously conversations I could have had if we were both Jewish, both Costa Rican gentiles, or both something else. So in other words, I’m having trouble seeing how knowing so little about these characters is supposed to give me something to want to see on the page.
Thank you for understanding.
(And yes, I agree with Lesya, what’s with this trend of people trying to explain their fandom in a roundabout way instead of mentioning it by name? It makes it harder to give meaningful help….)
--Shira
#platypan#genocide#native american#North America#america#history#american history#media#representation#asks
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