#the binary code entity?? i don’t fucking know
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*commercial announcer voice* From the island that brought you Foolish x Cucurucho now get ready for… BadBoyHalo x The Code!!!! it’s the new big thing that’s sweeping the nation get it while it’s hot!!
(standard shipping rates do apply)
(please contact your doctor if you start to develop any of the following symptoms: stomach pain, death, muffins, the ability to see ghosts, the ability to read binary, death again)
#and when i say shipping rates do apply I mean it#what would the ship name even be for this#context: bad has had the most interactions with the code out of any islander and second place isn’t even CLOSE#i think the count is currently at 20+#bad has decided the explanation for this is that the code is madly in love with him and doesn’t know how to express it#and yknow what weirder things have happened so I can’t even say he’s wrong#qsmp#qsmp liveblog but late#q!badboyhalo#qsmp badboyhalo#the binary entity#the code monster#the binary code entity?? i don’t fucking know
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my biological peer reviewer (sibling) called this theory “fun” and said i should send it, so here goes
my personal theory is the feds ((”federation”)) created the eggs because they decided the best way to enforce “you can never leave” was to give the people something they couldn’t lose, like in the post by tumblr user alexaloraetheris (no relation to the smp) where their friend who might be a deity had said,
"When you die you descend to the underworld with nothing to lose. To keep you, they give you something to lose. When you want to return, they will demand it back. That's why nobody ever leaves. The only way out is to never enter."
i’m thinkin that on egg D-Day, at the end of the countdown, the feds weren’t gonna give the eggs back. they were just gonna hide them forever, or do something else, anything else, just keep them away from their surrogate parents, because then the people would just be STUCK, because people could theoretically take their eggs and leave, but if the eggs are missing, gone without a trace, then the residents CAN’T LEAVE, because presumably the eggs are STILL THERE, SOMEWHERE, IN NEED OF HELP AND RESCUE, if only the residents could find them ON THE ISLAND. if they leave the island while the eggs are missing, they are abandoning these things that have become their children.
but then in came the brazilians. and shit went south. because see, the spenglish (spanish / english) streamers were INVITED, but the brazilians CRASHED; the feds didn’t INVITE THEM, they weren’t EXPECTING THEM, but they can’t let these guys leave either, so they PANIC, and they scramble to give the brazilians the same thing--something to lose. the new egg had a brazilian jersey, homie was TAILOR MADE for them to pack bond with. the feds didn’t have time to send out multiple eggs, it was all or nothing, so they picked something they could reasonably assume all five of them would find endearing because they don’t know shit about these guys--they had a week to observe the OG batch, but all they know about these newbies is the brazilian flag on their boat--and so they sent the little egg out to become THEIR THING, the thing they couldn’t afford to lose.
it leaves open why the eggs are cracked too, bc idk what’s going on there lol, either 1: the eggs cracked because they’re hatching and the feds picked that date bc they wanted to yoink the eggs before they got Too Powerful, or 2: the feds were the ones to crack the eggs as an excuse for why they vanished--returning the eggs untouched would open too many questions the feds don’t want them asking; this way, instead of being concerned specifically with “why were the eggs missing”, the residents presume they know the answer--the cracks.
but yea i’m just gonna add as an aside that personally i think cucurucho / osito bimbo / the white fucker is way more active again because the feds are still scrambling to keep up with the brazilians (which, again, the feds weren’t expecting), and the binary fuckwad came in to put the fear of god into the newbies--maybe so they didn’t get too focused on the morse code transmissions; iirc max was theorizing that both osito and binary were part of the federation ? and if so it does make sense that the binary entity went to fuck with cellbit immediately after cellbit was introduced to the conspiracies of the island, yknow, a warning shot. i think they want them to be focused on the eggs.
BUT THAT’S JUST A THEOr
#i'm spitballing into the void bc i'm losing my mind lol if you read this send me some luck thank you#qsmp#someone send me to a nice farm with plenty of space to run i have lived too long#can't wait until someone smarter than me cracks the code#data and network security tried to teach me cryptography but HOO BOY it didn't do shit to help me here#i popped some of the words into a brute force caesar cipher#and also a tool that could roughly check for substitution ciphers#and yeah didn't find shit so uh#im gonna leave it to the one who's an ARG master yknow i think he's got it handled#(i thought about using an online tool to translate this but then realized i Do Not trust translators i can't verify)#(like i've definitely used google translate on my french assignments but the thing is i speak enough french to verify that)#(duolingo spanish + english/french cognates doesn't leave me confident and im not asking my unconnected spanish speaking friend to check it)#((i refuse to admit to her face that i've sunk so deeply into this hell-))#(like spanish is such a common language for english speakers to learn that i'm sure they've honed the eng/span trans pretty well BUT)#(i don't trust it lol and id just prefer not to put something on my blog that i can't verify)#(so apologies and uh translate at your own risk k love you byeee)#shut up vic
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Top 10 Worst LGBTQ+ Tropes
It’s pride month so I’m talking about my least favorite LGBTQ+ tropes in media.
Disclaimer 1: Once again: my post my opinion. If you feel differently, do you. But I will assume you’re probably an asshole.
Disclaimer 2: In this post, I use the word Queer Interchangeably with LGBTQ+. If you’re uncomfortable with that, feel free to move along. If you tag my post with ‘q slur’, I will block you.
1. Bi/ Pan Character That ‘Doesn’t Use Labels.’
Why is it that gay/lesbian/straight people often just get to say what they are, but when it comes to bi/pan characters it becomes some type of extreme wordplay. “Ex lesbian”, “lower on the Kinsey scale”, “oh, I just like people, not gender.” (Yes, those are all real examples.)
Of course, there are people who don’t use specific labels, and of course, you can include that in your writing, but there seems to be a big disparity between multi-gender attracted characters who don’t use labels and everyone else, who weirdly enough, usually gets a specific label.
Just... say the word, pal. Bisexual. Pansexual. It’s not that hard. It’s not offensive. And I’ve never met any bi/pan person who thought that erasure was all the jazz.
2. Coming Out Stories
I’m not saying that’s there’s no value in coming stories, especially ones that are in tune with the changing times, and especially coming out stories of anyone who isn’t a cis WASPy gay man (or occasionally a cis WASPy lesbian), but also, can we please get... something else.
Like, literally anything else. Queer romcoms, lesbian mafia, bisexual vampires, gay pirates, asexual/aromantic monster-fighters, trans superheroes, nonbinary thrillers. Anything where we are allowed to just exist past our coming out and the focus isn’t how hard it is to be LGBTQ+.
It just seems like for the longest time Coming Out stories (about cis white gay people) were pretty much the only media we can exist in, and while that’s slowly starting to change in recent years, we are nowhere close to where we could be.
3. Bury Your Gays
If you have twenty characters and ten of them are queer; and if straight characters also die, then sure. I’ll let you kill a couple gays.
But if you only have one or two queers (that also happen to be a couple) and you kill them (or you kill one half of the couple), we’re gonna have a problem.
Especially if the queer character ends up sacrificing their life to save the Straights. Just represent us in media, where we don’t die or suffer, how hard is that?
4. “Blink and You’ll Miss it” Representation
Oh, so you’re a major franchise, or maybe you’re writing a popular long-running book series and you have FINALLY added a queer character to your gigantic cast?
That’s cool. I mean it sucks it took you this long, but we all have to make progress eventually. So are they a main character? How much does their sexual orientation or gender identity affect their experiences? Who’s their love interest?
Or did you just mean they only show up for one scene and have a single line that confirms their identity, and then they disappear into the nether?
Yeah, fuck you. That’s not representation. That’s you jerking yourself off for brownie points. Well, I’m not giving them to you.
5. Lesbians With Men
Sure, outlier cases exist, but... why do we gotta keep making stories about them?
If this is your lived experience and you want to explore it in a fictional medium, absolutely, by all means. But most of the time this story is made not by queer women, but... pretty much anyone else and it’s just. Exhausting.
There’s a reason it’s called a “lesbian.” And if she falls in love with a man, at the very least have the decency to make it clear that she’s exploring her sexuality, and it’s cut and dry case of “turning a lesbian.” Or better yet, don’t write it at all.
6. The Trans “Twist”
Can we stop fetishizing and discriminating against (binary) trans people in this way? Trans people are just people. There’s nothing scandalous about someone being trans, and nobody is trying to trick anyone into anything.
Stop treating being trans as this huge, insurmountable thing. Especially if your story is set in the last ten years or in an SFF context, and just portray trans folks like normal people. Please.
7. The Token Queer
There’s this group of cis allo straight friends and the one gay guy, who is also usually white, cis, middle class, etc. You know - for diversity.
Sure, maybe if they were childhood friends, or a superhero team or something (although there’s literally nothing stopping you from making at least one more person in the group queer), but I have never in my life wanted to do anything less than constantly hang out with a group of straight people.
The vast majority of straight people don’t make me feel safe, and I rarely have more in common with them than I do with other queer people. Also, if one person in a friend group comes out, at least two more will - this has happened to pretty much all my queer friends.
It’s far more likely to see a group of queer friends with one adopted Straight, who is a good ally, then the other way around.
8. The Awkward AroAce
There’s nothing wrong with being aromantic asexual. There’s also nothing wrong with being autistic and struggling in social situations. There’s even nothing wrong with being both of those things at the same time. And some people are indeed like that.
But why does this seem to be the only way to write aroace characters? It’s such a stereotype.
Being aroace just don’t experience romantic and sexual attraction, it doesn’t mean you can’t make friends, or that you don’t know how to behave socially. Aside from their (lack of) sexual and romantic attractions, aroace people are just people and they come in a variety of personalities.
9. Queer Villains
I actually love queer villains.
In a lot of stories the villain is the most fun and interesting character them being queer is a way of reclaiming things that have been used to hurt us in the past (and still are, in some cases).
But it’s still pretty problematic when this is the only queer character in the work - whether explicitly or just in coding.
You can have a queer villain, but make at least one of your heroes queer too.
10. The Non-Human Non-Binary
I think it makes sense that some aliens, robots and otherwise non-human entities are nonbinary. Why would a robot have a human gender? Why would an alien race have the same exact gender and sex divisions as humans do?
But can we also get nonbinary representation in humans? Please? Because I don’t think that an alien is doing much to help us be more accepted, and might, in fact, be even more alienating. (ha-ha, alienating. Get it?)
To end this, because of the time we live in:
A list of organizations dedicated to helping Black people you can support.
#pride#pride month#pride 2020#happy pride 🌈#worst tropes#top 10#top 10 list#top 10 worst tropes#worst lgbtq tropes#worst lgbt tropes#writeblr#writer#writing#bad tropes#writing community#gifs from:#love simon#no idea#supernatural#adventure time#mine
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Tevinter Nights
Major Plot Details & Story Summaries for stories 1, 3 and 5
There are no leaks, these are just available to see in previews.
[spoiler warning for all stories jic, obviously]
Three Trees To Midnight
The opening story is set about one week after the fall of Ventus in Tevinter to the invading Qunari in 9:44 Dragon. (This event was shown in the comic Dragon Age: Deception.) The Qunari invasion is progressing beyond Ventus and moving into Rivain. The Qunari Antaam have attacked the people of the south without the blessing of the other Qunari societal bodies. Consequently, their efforts are somewhat hampered as they are without their usual support-base of workers, healers, craftspeople, spies. Little things are not running as well as they should - supplies are late, ships are not in good repair. The absence of the Ben-Hassrath means that there is nobody to determine which captured bas mages should and should not be given the mind-altering substance qamek, or to measure out the correct doses. The Antaam are taking many prisoners as they go and enslaving them in work-gangs. They are also giving large, mentally-lethal doses of qamek to every single bas mage they capture. Small doses of qamek shackle the mind. Large doses completely break it and leave the recipient effectively lobotomized forever.
Saarbrak of the Ben-Hassrath posed as a member of the Antaam and went to investigate the rumors he had heard of these actions. The Antaam who took Ventus were not acting in accordance with the Qun. Saarbrak knows that some of the bas now call Qunari monsters as a result. He is disappointed in the Antaam, and believes that it is their actions that truly threaten the Qun. He kills Bas-taar, keeper of bas slaves and work-camp overseer. Bas-taar was a leading figure in the conquering of Ventus.
A few Dalish elves snuck into Ventus as it was being sacked to get information about the Qunari invasion. They succeeded, stealing Qunari plans just as Ventus fell. One of them leaves to quickly get word to the Dalish clans before the Qunari land in Rivain.
We visit Arlathan Forest for the first time. The spirits in there are very old and powerful, remember what once was and can feel the moods and fears of those who enter. The woods are also home to rare entities known as forest guardians, which are large quadrupedal structures made out of wood, stone, runes and lyrium. They have two lethal blade arms which they swing around in combat and may be powered by magic, but it is not clear. They are not usually hostile to elves in the forest and in this story one responds aggressively to hostile intruding Qunari.
A City Elf who joined the Dalish and a human Tevinter mage (mlm) who originated from a slave family unwillingly join forces as they escape from an Antaam work-camp where they had been imprisoned and flee into the forest. Along the way they begrudgingly learn to work together and by the end they have developed a sort of mutual respect for one another, thanks to this trial by fire.
The Horror of Hormak
In a Nevarran forest, Wardens Ramesh (mlm) and Lesha are on a rescue mission to find a missing party of their colleagues. The lost group had been led by one Senior Warden Jovis (mlm). It is implied that Ramesh and Jovis were in love but Ramesh pulled away due to the trials of Warden life, leaving things between them unsaid and unfinished, many years ago. Everything about the woods they’re in feels wrong, bad, off. Lesha’s horse spooks and flees. There’s a weird briny smell and there seems to be something horrid and predatory and squishy-sounding lurking around; there’s a decidedly “DA:O build up to the Broodmother reveal” vibe going on through this whole short. They find one of the missing Wardens, Friedl. She’s raving mad, has snapped, and has gouged her own eyes out. She garbles creepily about something “down there, something bad”. Jovis’ party thought it was darkspawn, but it’s worse. Different. Not twisted, created. She says she escaped and pleads with them not to make her go back. “We must leave this place to her, to them.” She screams and sobs. “They build it for her! They wait for her!”
The Wardens make camp for the night, tieing Friedl up so she doesn’t harm herself. In the night she whispers and mutters. Friedl chews through her restraints and then her wrists and bleeds out. She trailed thin gray fluid behind her, and when they find her body gallons of the weird liquid pour out of her mouth, for a long time. Disgusted, they build a pyre for her and press on. The woods fall away and they reach a mountain. They find evidence of a large fight between the missing Wardens and darkspawn. There are dozens of darkspawn corpses, insane amounts of Warden blood, but no Warden bodies. Clearly something awful is going on. They notice the darkspawn bodies are different, mutated like no darkspawn has ever been known to be. Extra heads and limbs, genlock parts on hurlocks and such like. Ramesh and Lesha are disturbed but find a staircase down into a dwarven thaig called Hormok. They descend into the most decrepit thaig Ramesh has ever seen. Hormok fell centuries ago and it’s unexpectedly, oddly quiet. They find coded marks made by the missing Wardens which say they don’t plan to come back and warn others not to come after them. The two resolve firmly to go after them as Wardens leave nobody behind. At that moment, darkspawn appear. They are also changed, each in a different way. Scorpion tails, avian skulls, snake heads for fists, bat wings. And they’re strangely cunning.
The Wardens defeat them. They search and find a secret door, and descend further down a passageway. The stench of decay and brine is even stronger. They find a painting of three figures; a person/supplicant, a priestess/queen and a monster. The figures themselves look elven but the artistic style seems dwarven or like Avvar cave paintings. Further on the same painting repeats many times, but in each instance of it the person and monster change and change again. The priestess seems to look a little crueler in every iteration. This freaks them out but they press on. Further still they find a vast room which is clearly part of some elven ruins. Sometimes in the Deep Roads Wardens find elven architecture mixed in with dwarven, but this place is entirely elven, nearly pristine and ornate with carvings. The walls are covered in endlessly repeating bas-reliefs. On the top row, elven knights and queens hold court over respectful kneeling folk. On the middle row, elven mages heal patients and remove illness and injury from their bodies. On the bottom row, armies of halla pull elaborate aravels to distant mountains - one of which is the same mountain they’re beneath now. The more they stare, the more disquieting the carvings become. A halla horn symbol repeats on each column and seems to shift before their eyes. They look back at the bas-reliefs, which now seem all wrong. Prison-ship aravels, alien insectile halla with too many horns, mages forcing corruption into the infirm, contemptuous rulers and terrified subjects.
They tear themselves away and find the final door. The smell is now overpowering. They slip through and find ranks of twisted grotesqueries, a menagerie of twisted body parts assembled at random. A halla with a snake’s maw and varterral legs. A spider with many serpents instead of many eyes. In the center, there’s a massive pool of the gross gray liquid. Above a huge lyrium crystal is suspended and growing sickly green. Streams of energy flow from it into the pool. Darkspawn walk in, the ‘water’ flows round them and when the ‘cocoon’ shatters, out comes another fucked up darkspawn. This is an army, but not of darkspawn, of something worse. The Wardens accidentally make a noise. The boulder they’re hiding behind isn’t a boulder. It’s a massive monstrous centipede. Each segment is the size of a horse, each leg a small tree. It screeches and surrounds them with all the grotesqueries baying in a cacophany. But the centipede’s head isn’t a head, it’s Senior Warden Jovis, twisted and broken. He’s fused to it, the flesh of his waist flowing into chitin, eyes unseeing, mouth stretched. The thing recognizes and talks to Ramesh. It’s clearly wrestling between being Jovis and being the creature. The Jovis-thing tells Ramesh his party of Wardens drank. Unlike darkspawn they can’t just touch the liquid, it needs to be inside, and it takes a while for the change to happen. “They turned us. Two halves, two wholes. Trying to be two ones. But I stayed me, and it hates that. And we waited for you! Oh, yes! Now you come.”
The monster begs Ramesh to “bury it, bury me”. “Can’t let this out. She cannot have it. Not again. Locked for a reason. Collapse the entrance. Stop me, stop us.” The remaining humanity in the thing is suddenly gone. The Wardens fight it and the other beasts. Lesha dies holding everything off so Ramesh can escape. He runs and runs and manages to bring the mountain down on the monstrosity before it can escape, using dwarven explosives they passed on their way in. Ramesh grieves and weeps, and goes to warn the other Wardens about the horror that lurks beneath Hormok, and probably elsewhere as well. He realizes with slow terror that in the bas-reliefs, the aravels brought their prey not only to the mountain he’d just brought down, but to eleven others.
(yo I’m lookin at you Ghilan’nain)
Luck In The Gardens
In a tavern in Dairsmuid, Rivain, a Lord of Fortune (who is Rivaini and almost certainly genderfluid, non-binary, bigender or similar - “I’ve always just thought of myself a myself, and had fun in the bargain”), sits by a fire drinking with companions. They narrate to their audience a tale of something they recently got up to in good ol’ Minrathous. Lords of Fortune are new additions to the lore. This group is a multi-species, Rivaini guild of treasure-hunters and dungeoneers, where all members regardless of gender seem to be called Lords. In Minrathous, this Lord had been given a tip on where to find information for a job in the city. This individual is a master of disguise; clothes, wigs, makeup, vocal changes, across-gender presentations. They can even disguise themselves as some of the other races of Thedas (as in human, elf, dwarf, qunari).
So. Our LoF goes to the docks at night-time and sneaks into a building where a meeting is to take place. They secrete themselves in the rafters. A bunch of magisters come in and start playing cards, a secret game of Wicked Grace for the slumming elect. They chat away and the LoF listens in. Talk turns to what the LoF is there to hear. There are flyers plastered around town with a reward posted for someone to kill some kind of demon or monster that is plaguing the city. The LoF is there to listen into see what they know about the monster. A former Venatori dude says he’s heard it’s got something to do with the Venatori. A man with a curled mustache pipes up. Surprise, it’s Dorian Pavus! The group wonder if the monster is a Venatori abomination. It isn’t, they just encountered it during a search under the city for a cave. It’s not a demon and it killed all of them. The rafter cracks and our LoF falls, shocking everyone. Dorian acts quickly and is able to convince everyone he knows them and they are his lookout. LoF plays along. Maevaris is also there! Dorian and the LoF, who we’ll now call Hollix because that’s what Dorian randomly named them, take their leave, chat and become acquainted.
Dorian says Josie is his dear friend and she sends him gifts, a few choice bottles from her vineyards. His house no longer has slaves, only employs servants, a change he says he’s ashamed to have only made recently. Someone he met in the south, obviously Inky, changed his mind on the matter. Hollix has never met another mage of Dorian’s station who doesn’t keep slaves. Mae arrives. Dorian and Mae are on the outs with most of the rest of the Magisterium. The state of the Magisterium makes Dorian raggedly depressed. Mae calls him dearheart. Their duty to their country means they have to be well-informed about it. Dorian was the one who posted the flyer. The monster is killing people, Vints aren’t all heartless and he and Mae don’t like the idea of something like this in their city. But lately the political rumblings in the Magisterium mean they’ve had to spend all their time keeping their eyes on scoundrels, such as at the card game. They are trying to win a few of them over. It’s been slow but they’re giving them a chance to prove they’re not complete fools. This busyness is why they can’t hunt the monster themselves.
The three discuss the monster. It’s killed at least 9 people. Town criers dubbed it the Cekorax, “headsman”. Victims’ heads are never found. Hollix agrees to hunt it. Hollix eventually finds it in the sewers. It’s a Lovecraftian wormy bulk with a thrashing mass of tentacles that radiates joyful malice. Its voice is many voices speaking together and it calls Hollix “Visitor”. Some parts on its tentacles open to show real human eyes studded in there. Its voices urge Hollix “Stay with us. Come inside, where it’s warm. There is room in the crown of the blind. I am a sweeter ending than you know. Things are rising. Stay safe inside of me.” Hollix runs and escapes. Later Hollix is walking in the fancy gardens. The Cekorax taunts them and they realize it can come out of the sewers/water, since its coils run behind grass and under the base of trees. It’s the perfect predator, surrounding you, nestled everywhere. “No more false faces. No masks. There will be others. They will be joined in me.” Hollix eventually devises a cunning plan to kill the Cekorax. They convince it to show them “its whole”. It opens up like a lily and inside is a ring of severed heads, eyes gouged out but otherwise healthy, the source of the voices; the crown of the blind it refers to. Dorian, Mae and Hollix kill the monster using magic, gaatlok and a harpoon. It dissolves, the heads fall and blue-white liquid pours away.
Dorian escorts Hollix to the docks where they will leave, and Hollix gets their reward. The two wonder what the Cekorax was. Ancient breed of demon? Fiend brewed up by a magister? Dorian was at a party with a Mortalitasi a while ago. Five cups in, she went on about “things past the Veil of our world, neither demon nor spirit”. Perhaps it wasn’t the tipsy nonsense he assumed it to be.
Mae sends her regards but couldn’t see Hollix off due to intrigue striking in the Magisterium. Mae arranged for a ship to take Hollix home. Dorian says Hollix to consider this one last courtesy, as he and Mae would hate to leave Hollix with a bad impression of their fair city, although Hollix never wants to return. They part amicably.
#dragon age#bioware#video games#strife#tevinter nights#tevinter nights spoilers#tevinter nights spoiler#spoilers#spoiler
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The New Gang Pitch
Following my narrative arc pitch, I wanted to outline a pitch for the new central character unit around the MC to go with it, since characters can make or break a story.
The Self-Taught Vessel, Allacia Clair
One of the first characters part of this group I would imagine has a bit of a rivalry with the MC about their powers. While she’s also a Vessel (my name for the Aideen’s champion role from my narrative pitch), she didn’t have anyone like the Keepers to teach her about her powers. She has a strong grasp on the “Avatar State” power/connecting to Aideen, her other powers she can’t really control and doesn’t have a good foundation for using her other core abilities. Her arc with the MC includes them learning to work together, possibly coming to a head at some point when it seems to this character that the MC is having no trouble with learning about the “Aideen State” powers.
She should be reckless, her powers manifesting in bursts, kinda like an unbridled Lightning Circle Alex, to show she never learned basic control over her powers. She’s stubborn and resilient, with a bitter sense of respect for the MC. She should be funny in a dry humor sort of way, but heart of gold trope, all the way. Points for her being in her mid to late 20′s, so a little older than the “about to start college” MC to add to that “how can you do this thing I struggled with” arc. Extra, extra points if she’s a POC, because, you know, cannon POC badasses are great.
The Valley Girl Hacker, Brittany Bellwinter
We need a diva in the party, and there’s nothing I love more than the idea of a full blown, bubble gum popping, gag me with a spoon, Silicon Valley girl for that. None of the “I don’t get people” hacker trope. This girl gets people, but is also Elle Woods smart with computers. “You took down entire network of G.E.D. encrypted asset logs.” “What, like it’s hard?” She takes no shit for being the pretty blonde girl, and she works her ass off to pull off her chic cyberpunk style while she takes down an entire DC facility’s security system from the Stablebucks down the street.
She’s open, honest, and direct. Her self-confidence is through the roof, to the point of initial conflict. Her being a vigilante when she meets the MC is a great arc to have them working together, and also establishing people outside the Keepers having an issue with Dark Core. She’s hungry for knowledge though, and her handiness with gadgets can provide SSO with a lot of tools for having ruins being destroyed in story beats without losing the information. But also a problem as she risks her life to get those pictures.
The Heart, Kadin Fairwind
This is the one character I think whose gender is most important to be kept the same. Kadin needs to be masc-presenting, either as an enby person who uses he/him pronouns, or just simply as a male presenting person. This is first and foremost because of the message Kadin can send. If SSO wants to be a story about gender equality, then it needs to also talk about how men relate to “feminine” topics, in particular, being the heart of the group. The Heart of the 5 man band is exclusively reserved for a female in the party, which is why it’s important to have a character like Kadin, who is masc-presenting, be the heart, to subvert that and show other masc-presenting players that you can be masculine and also be an empathetic person that tries to keep your friends together.
Kadin is a big sweetie, possibly physically, who just has a soft-spot for people. But when I say he’s big, I don’t mean Kadin is this doofy gentle giant or some himbo. No, he’s physically built, like a quarterback built, but he’s also very intelligent. Kadin needs to be outwardly very masculine, with an awareness of his strength and how it impacts people around him. He’s smart and observant and is really good on picking up on people’s emotions. He wants to help people, with a passion for being either a counselor or a nurse (specifically a nurse, not a doctor). Possibly with friends who were assholes when they were in school who bullied people, until Kadin decided he didn’t want to do that and wanted to be better aware of how he hurt people and how to make things better.
As much as I’m an advocate for queer & POC rep, I think the best way to do Kadin is just have him as this straight, white guy. I think him just being a hetero-cis dude and becoming aware of his privilege can be such an impactful message, even if the why isn’t ever explicitly said.
The Magic Enthusiast, Nakai “Xen” Seiko
If Kadin is cis, then Xen is one hundred percent they/them non-binary. But also, if Brittany is the tech wiz, then Xen simply wants to be an actual wizard. And not just wishes magic was real kinda wants to be a wizard, legit knows magic is real and can’t figure it out/can’t use it wants to be a wizard. Xen consumes all things magic, which makes them an amazing outside asset to the MC and Allacia, who both can use magic, but don’t always understand magic. Xen gets magic fundamentally as a study, but not always as a practice, which is why they struggle to actually use it. And while I do think they should learn how to use magic, they should by the kind of character who wants to multi-class wizard over and over so they can get every school of magic, not so they can actually get better. It’s Xen’s craving for understanding magic that will be a great tool in learning more about other planes of reality and how they relate to magic.
Xen’s personality is fundamentally at odds. While they come from a very traditional Japanese immigrant family and have a high respect for their culture, they obviously struggle with who they are and how that fits into what they want to do with their life. This is import in particular to me because so many cultures gender magic, with feminine and masculine sources of magic. Xen as a non-binary magic user, like myself, has to struggle with figuring out where those legends come from and breaking down how to feel about that in their own practice, particularly when Aideen is shown has being a very feminine entity. Much like the points before, I don’t think this has to be explicit, but I do think it can be very clearly coded to say that gendering things is often forced. While there are gendered things in nature, like things surrounding baby-making, most things aren’t and just because something is gendered, like Aideen, it doesn’t designate that all things need to be. I think the best way to balance this message is to have Xen has a very comedic person, always telling jokes, even when the timing isn’t always right. They should have an issue with hyperfixating, and I think having them being someone with ADD/ADHD is a great match for their other struggles, getting consumed in their pursuit of magic to the point of it being a hazard too.
The Gentle Giant, Bogga Norsdóttir
If anyone is going to be the brute of this party, it’s going to be Bogga. Bogga is a “I’m going to deadlift a Shire” kinda girl, but she won’t, cause it’s a horse, and why would she scare a horse like that? She’s honestly the simplest concept I have. She’s a gentle giant, though I don’t think she should be “stupid.” I think she should have a simple code of ethics, a very black and white version of right and wrong. It’s simple, you hurt her friends, she fucks you up. I would love too if she’s part Kalter. But yeah, Bogga is kinda the constant rock of the party, and that’s not just cause she’s a solid unit. She’s just reliable, and for that she’s kinda a sounding board for everyone else’s more complicated arcs. The point is that Bogga will always be there to support the party, and she doesn’t really need to grow. She’s got her life figured out, and so she’s just there to help everyone else figure out theirs.
The Returning Soul Rider
If there’s any of these members I’m ok with dropping, it’s this one. Not just cause I can’t decide which one, but also the whole point of the above group is establishing a friend group that the MC chooses through the story and actively recruits, not an existing friend group like the Soul Riders are. Even with the new intro to the Soul Riders they added, there’s never going to be a point where the MC isn’t a fifth wheel to their group, at least for me and I know for a lot of you, particularly as SSL gets more and more removed. The only reason they could even effectively establish their friend group before was because only two of them were friends when Lisa got to Jorvik, and it was Lisa that brought the four of them together. And honestly, I think staying on their story makes if feel more and more to me like we’re cleaning up their mess and undermines the Soul Riders defeating Garnok in SSL. Which ruins their abilities, and it’s just yet another reason we need to move away from them narratively.
Still, that doesn’t mean I think the Soul Riders need to be cut out entirely, but I think we need to relook at the angle that the MC is relating to the Soul Riders. And that means the Soul Riders relooking at themselves, particularly post Garnok, which is also why I think this arc needs to end.
In any case, I’m tied between Alex and Anne. On the one hand, Alex is a fighter and suddenly having no big bad to fight is a hell of a good arc to pitch. I also think her in contrast to Bogga is a great square off. Alex not being ready to be done fighting is a good arc, because she’s always been a fighter. What is she without something to go after now? I think her being afraid of falling back into her old ways now that she doesn’t have a target to hunt down is such an interesting arc to follow.
Anne is another interesting one, because I think with everyone expecting Anne to be consumed with vengeance before Garnok is defeated and her to come out of that, people would expect that after he’s gone, she would be ready to be done and just go back to being a normal girl. But I think that even if Anne gets over her vengeance, she’s the Soul Rider of the Sun Circle. Her powers are to open portals, she’s destined to travel. Anne isn’t going to want to go back. Whether it’s being a dressage master or traveling between planes of reality, Anne is the portal master of the druids. Worse, she was an imprisoned portal master. She’s shouldn’t want to be still ever again.
I’m honestly up in the air on them, and I’m not opposed to both, but I think it should just be one in the main group and another with a side arc we touch in on when we touch base with the other Soul Riders.
And yeah, that’s the pitch.
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Using Tarot Cards as Taglocks
Something I have struggled with at times in my practice, as I'm sure many others have, is that a lot of my interactions are online, and not everyone is willing to share pictures of themselves for numerous reasons. If I want to do a spell or curse on or for someone, or possibly a divination (and before you come at me with some nonsense about the morality of curses or doing magic without consent, I'm an adult who knows one of the rules of magic is taking responsibility for your actions and I don't follow any creed or code or anything anyhow), I need a focus to make things easier.
So, barring access to photos, handwriting samples, "true" names (the full name a person actually goes by and feels most truly represents them), hair clippings and nail trimmings and other traditional taglocks, I remembered the concept of significator cards. A significator is a "forced" card in a reading, one that is intentionally chosen to represent the querent or another individual subject in a reading. Most people say that this must be one of the court cards, but I also use the major arcana since many people and entities will strongly feel pulled to one, and there's also a chance you may know the target's chosen major arcana significator/s if you run in those types of circles.
I don't use the "traditional" assignments of "young man/young woman/older man/older woman" when it comes to court cards because 1. fuck gender roles 2. it's much easier and more flexible to use different archetypal qualities than arbitrary binary genders if you're using a court card.
You can also use standard playing cards for this (since most court cards have faces on them), or oracle decks, and every deck will perform differently or will be easier to use to connect with someone, so play around with it to see what works best for different people and different purposes.
You'll need to know some things about your target to make a match, obviously, like basic personality traits and how they feel and present themselves overall so you can match the archetypal qualities of the cards to the person you're connecting them to. (Bonus: if the individual is otherkind/fictionkind, and you have a deck that depicts their kintype, you have another level of sympathetic connection to draw on.)
Once you have these things in place, you can move on to actually making the connection.
You will need your chosen significator card to act as a gateway/repository of the person's energy, and you will need to be able to discern that person's energy in the first place.
Once you have these things in place, you will need to link the energy to the card so it can act as a stand-in representation of that person. You can do this in any way that you'd normally create a proxy of any sort, I do it by "grabbing" the cord of energy connected back to the individual and "plugging" it into the card. How I do this exactly varies every time, but the core concept is the same.
You can now use the card or copy of the card the same way you would use a photo taglock of the target, especially. Essentially you've created a sympathetic connection between the image on the card and the individual, creating a stand-in for them.
To remove the connection if the spell in question does not require destruction of the taglock, just cleanse the card. You might need to do something more specialized like a cord-cutting, but it's up to you. I state my intention of banishing the person's energy and blow a charged breath over the card like you'd blow dust off an old surface and visualize the energy dissipating. Sometimes I'll do this near a flame so it gets burned up and dispersed for good.
As always, experiment, try new variations, see what works best for you and your magic.
Szayel
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clarification on that bit on gender and contemplations on other stuff
If anyone actually bothers to read this lmao
Dialga: This question was pretty much inevitable.
Palkia: I’m honestly fine with being referred to as an “it”.
Giratina: Why the hell should we worry about “it” being “dehumanizing” when we’re not human to begin with?
Something that I knew would eventually get brought up is the genders of my interpretation of the trio. The simple answer is encapsulated in the prev post: they’re dragon gods. Gender is a societal construct; sex is for reproduction. Legendary entities that represent the fundamental laws of the universe don’t really have a need for either society or reproduction. So as with the games, they’re all officially non-binary/genderless.
That said, my designs gravitate towards one or the other. One reason is that i’m not creative, bold, inspired, or talented enough to really translate that genderless attribute into humanoid form. Another is that someone pointed out to me a while ago that Palkia has a low waist-hip ratio, stiletto clawed feet, and some designs will feature a more prominent chest. That and the gendered color-coding Pokemon started doing with blue males and red/pink females, like with the menu screens starting from Gen III, the Eon Duo, Jellicent in Gen V, and Team Skull Grunts in Gen VII.
That said, I’m not a huge fan of these reasons, as you could also make the counterargument that Palkia looks somewhat phallic. So I kinda wanna get into an Extended Rant™ on why I choose to depict my OCs the way, even though no one probably cares lmao
It starts out with the Kanji/Hanzi for “Universe”: 宇宙, Uchū in Japanese and Yǔzhòu in Chinese. You might recall it if you’ve read Pokemon Adventures.
You might also remember if you visited that one dude on Route 228 in Diamond and Pearl who gets yeeted out of his house by Cyrus’s contrite grandfather by the time Platinum rolls around. Okay, realistically, barely anyone probably does (that guy wasn’t that memorable), but he basically says the same thing as Cyrus in the panels above: 宇宙, coined by the ancient Taoists, esoterically means something like “the totality of extension” + “the totality of duration”. In other words, the ancient Japanese/Chinese word for “universe” is lit. “space” + “time”. This is actually a somewhat obscure, unnecessary detail that even many native speakers seem to be unaware of. It also ties in heavily with the Yin-Yang 陰陽 of Taoism.
I know Taoism is more a Gen V theme, but it’s a concept implicit throughout the franchise, hence games generally come in twos, sharing complementary/opposing or dualistic/dichotomic themes. Even trios tend to have the third member as the odd one out or mediator. There’s much more to the Yin-Yang than just Truth/Ideals and I sorta wish Game Freak would explore it more to really unite the franchise as a whole around the interconnected theme of both diversity and harmony.
The Yin-Yang isn’t strictly about Truth/Ideals as much as it is about the fundamentally dualistic nature of existence and the oneness implicit in the inseparability of coexisting complementary concepts. Thus, truth and ideals are two sides of the same coin, as are time and space as relativity revealed. The Yin-Yang is vague enough to basically be an umbrella representation term for any complementary duality. It should be noted that the feminine Yin and masculine Yang don’t refer to stereotypical/conventional notions of femininity or masculinity, but rather requires an abstract interpretation.
The Yin-Yang is composed of an active component, and a passive/reflective/receptive one. More easily understood in that one aspect creates the body and the other gives it life. One which shapes/nurtures/mothers being and one which animates/directs/fathers it. Abstract interpretations of the feminine Mother and masculine Father follow suit. As do dualistic concepts like particle and wave, existence and essence, ovum and sperm, object/entity and idea/concept, magnitude and direction, defense and offense, nature/tradition and technology/advancement (Gen I & Gen II), space and time (Gen IV), truth and ideals (Gen V), night/moon and day/sun (Gen VII), and shields and swords i guess (Gen VIII).
I excluded Gen III because among the classical elements, earth and water are both traditionally considered reflective/feminine, with fire and air being active/masculine, but i suppose if you factor in Primal Reversion in Gen VI, it works. With the Aura Trio, I read something unrelated but interesting about how apparently Ohmori Shigeru hinted at parallels between the Weather Trio and Aura Trio. Can’t find the source though. Blue - Seas were the first (Alpha) source of Life; Red - fiery, desolate Lands signify the Death of all in the end (Omega); Green - Order/Balance mediates between two forces of nature that can be malevolent/chaotic left unchecked, with the trio master possessing abilities that cancel out the other two.
Going off the rails a bit more, speaking of color-parallels, there’s probably going to be one of the subtractive colors between Gen VIII and the (highly probable) Gen IV remakes this generation, with Cyan - Dialga, Azelf, Lucas’ accents, Za-cian; Magenta - Palkia, Mesprit, Dawn’s accents, Za-mazenta; Yellow - Giratina, Uxie, Barry’s accents, whoever the third member of the Gen VIII mascot/box art legendary trio is going to be. I wonder how they’re going to incorporate the parallels tho
Anyway I digress. The ancient Daoists associated feminine Yin with 宇/Space and masculine Yang with 宙/Time by virtue of insisting the feminine aspect precedes, but even disregarding that, Space fits in with the Yin criteria of that which represents the body and Time fits in with the Yang criteria of that which initiates life.
So while they’re genderless, Dialga represents the concept of masculinity and Palkia femininity in their most pure, abstract, and universal form according to the Dao. While this doesn’t make Dialga a dudebro and Palkia whatever the hell the feminine equivalent is, in my mind, Palkia has a strong maternal instinct and Dialga is very much a dad. Giratina is weird chaotic goth aunt/uncle who gives u ur first taste of alcohol just to spite grandpa and reads fanfiction with candles and a glass of wine like it’s a fucking literary hour.
That’s my logic and explanation behind it anyhow. The distinction goes something like Palkia will concern itself more with the state or properties of something (who, what, where) whereas Dialga will concern itself more with the role or activity of it (when, why, how). As time and space are, however, they’re deeply intertwined and cannot be separated.
I might move this bit to a separate post somewhere down the line since this has already dragged on long enough, but I’ll share some thoughts on Giratina here and tie it in with the overarching topic of assigning gender roles lol. According to Game Freak, Giratina represents antimatter, but there are some inconsistencies. I know this shit has to be taken with a grain of salt because of Pokemon logic/science and whatever, but I gave it some thought regardless. My personal headcanon is that Altered Giratina represents dark matter/energy and Origin Giratina represents antimatter. Whatever tf Gira represents in Pokemon lore is based on a combination of the two, with the Reverse/Distortion World probably alluding to the idea of an anti-universe. Antimatter and dark matter are not really the same thing, but they’re both trippy cosmic constructs that sound somewhat similar, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . I wanted to make a distinction because while antimatter doesn’t distort spacetime any more than normal matter, it’s speculated that dark matter (actually dark energy) does, and is responsible for the rapid expansion of the universe.
This would also go along nicely with Gira complementing the the Spacetime twins while also complementing Arceus. It would also fit as justification for Giratina having to switch from Origin to Altered Forme upon entering the universe presided over by Dialga and Palkia, not because of the shift in spacetime stability, but rather due to the violent, annihilating reaction that occurs when matter and antimatter come into contact with one another. It’s by no means a perfect resolution hc, but it is one that I’ve gotten attached to.
Anyhoo, I designed Giratina to appear more androgynous (or at least attempted to). However, going by that masculine active/feminine reflective duality highlighted in the Yin-Yang, Origin Gira, with antimatter a reflection of normal matter, appears a bit more feminine-androgynous, whereas Altered Gira, with dark matter an active driving force for the expansion of the universe, appears a bit more masculine-androgynous (though iirc it hasn’t shown up yet and i’m not too great with consistency regardless). That was my idea behind it in any case. Origin Gira wears a binder under that big dastardly overcoat. i guess it’s technically genderfluid.
Digressing a bit, but another artistic choice was the skin tone of the trio. 0 points for subtlety on my part, but the color is Cosmic Latte, the average color of the universe. Like that bit on gender, I wanted to base it on some aspect of reality. I juggled between that and pure black with stars for freckles, but in the end i’m a lazy piece of shit who cuts corners for a living, so i settled on Primordial Clam Chowder because it was easier lmao. that’s why they pasty af
Anyways, if you have any design ideas or you wanna see a member of the trio in another form, feel free to submit your ideas or a magic anon or whatever!
TL;DR tbh this wasn’t even a structured rant it was just me going off the rails and sharing random useless deetz. this isn’t even a tl;dr. what the fuck
#might try to finish that cover image#well it's not like i edited much to begin with#pokemon#hc#gijinka#dialga#palkia#giratina#text#ask blog#analysis#long rant#pokemon analysis#sinnoh#gen iv
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So, homestuck as a whole has always been a computer program, the sylladexes, sburb,calliope being a 1 caliborn being a 0(binary) dream bubbles being uncleared ram,the horrorterrors being the operating sistem of the computer in the backgound. A program always wants to be as efficient as posible, and given that sburb creates voluntarily a universebomb and a way to get rid of dream bubbles(caliborn) I think this is the case for it as well. I think this happens every few generations, to clean memory
BGF Answers Her Inbox, Round 1! Cosmic Data Structures of Homestuck
Oooh, this is a really good point and something I don’t talk enough about! Paradox Space is totally a kind of computer program. Data structures are everywhere in Homestuck, including the ones that change reality, and at first glance you might think that they’re just a magic computer thing added on top, but as time goes on you realize that, no, reality is a program in Homestuck. It’s a system with a certain kind of language that creates and perpetuates existence. The Game is just the most obvious proof of that.
Weirdly, one of the best ways to think about this is through the Aspects: they’re the basic building blocks that make up all reality.They’re also like the Platonic forms, archetypes from which all phenomena arise from combining and recombining elements. Which means Hussie has successfully managed to combine computer programming and Platonism, something I don’t think anyone else has ever done. I love this fucking comic so much.
It’s also cool how there are so many layers to the language of Paradox Space, kind of like there’s machine code, object code, assembly language, etc, with different kinds of things that you can do with them and “compilers” mediating between them. In Homestuck the layers might go something like: Time & Space Aspects > 12 Aspects > Classpect System > Archetypes in the Alchemy System > Everyday Existence. :D Hussie definitely draws on his own CS knowledge here, and it shows.
Not that this is my area at all (I’m much more Plato than Turing), but there are some really great videos by Tex Talks about all this that I draw on, especially the relationship between code and aspects. Y’all should totally check them out, they’re so good:
Computer Science and World Building in Homestuck
Aspects and Platonic Realism in Homestuck (Part 2 Part 1 of an Analysis Series)
Void, Crafting, and Complementary Pairs (Part 2 Part 2 of an Analysis Series)
Which reminds me that the Act Act structures themselves deeply resemble programming language, so Homestuck is also a computer program in a narrative sense!
You bring up some points that are totally new, though, and I love it. I love thinking of the Cherubs as a binary system, because they totally, totally are. I had always thought of them in a cosmology as biology sense, because of the references to viruses, white blood cells and whatnot, but like, they’re totally both things. The nature of English’s domain/the limitation of English’s domain totally wouldn’t work without either of them. They are a perfect gnostic syzygy, and layers of code are built up on top of them to create everything the kids experience. Which is also how they function narratively. Which is also how the master classes work…and of course they’re also Time and Space, because why the fuck wouldn’t they be??
It’s all these beautiful unfolding binaries that blossom into increasing complexity, ahhh, in so many ways at once!!
I like your way of thinking about all these things. Horrorterrors as OS makes a certain intuitive sense to me; I’ve always kind of thought of them as the beings that naturally inhabit non-delineated existence, who grudgingly get out of the way when new universes are brought into being. Maybe we want to go down even further and say that they and their entangled spacetime are the machine level, the thing that runs Paradox Space’s code?
I always wonder to what degree Paradox Space desires to be efficient, since everything effectively exists at once. Arguably it tries to be efficient both in space and time; I want to talk about this more but I’ve noticed limits in space on the largest level always seem to be the same as limits in time (as we see in the way Calliope limits Caliborn’s domain and also ends it.
The narrative seems to argue that the dream bubbles are a temporary phenomenon, which by this logic is just another way of saying a localized one? I have no idea how to make sense of the concept of memory/RAM in a timeless context, so who knows if it actually needs to be cleared out, but yeah, this could be a cosmic form of efficiency, as could the Yaldabaoth principle (Paradox Space’s creation of entities such as English).
On the other hand, you could simply see the Yaldabaoth principle as merely a reflection of the Do What You Will principle of reality: if you are the type to set yourself up as a cosmic tyrant, you are and will and already have (though by doing so, you lock yourself in a cosmic box, which is the extent of your programming/the limitations of your will.)
Probably, as always, it’s motherfucking BOTH THINGS.
God, this stuff is so fascinating. I like Caliborn as 0 (erasure, reset) and Calliope as 1 (substance) but I could also see arguments for the reverse: Calliope as 0 (space hosts the play) and Caliborn as 1 (carving a time-space realm out of nothing.)
Anyway, the moral of the story is, in Homestuck, all of the following is true:
BINARY COMPUTER LANGUAGE=PLATONIC REALISM=NARRATIVESTRUCTURE=CLASSPECTS AND IDENTITY=GNOSTIC SYZYGY=BIOLOGY=LITERARY SYMBOLISM
Fucking love it.
#the nature of reality in homestuck#understanding homestuck#bgf answers her inbox jan 18#replies and discussion#bone up on your data structures#calliope#caliborn#lord english#cosmic frog reality#the yaldabaoth principle#Platonism#tex talks#shoutout to revolutionaryduelist for connecting me to these ideas#paradox space#FUCK YEAH CHERUBS#narrative structure#sinking le in the narrative pocket
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