Honestly there are few things funnier to me than the fact norn are native to Tyria, and then one day foreign gods roll up and introduce their pet little species to the planet like rabbits to Australia and these invasive aliens just happen to look like miniature thin norn for absolutely no reason whatsoever
as someone who plays both gw2 and ffxiv I can't imagine describing shadow of the mad king to someone who plays xiv only. halloween in xiv is like here's a silly little sidequest that gives you some glam armor or a minion, maybe an emote if we're feeling like mixing it up this year. and then gw2's like here's a maze that we run around for hours on end killing the same mobs over and over to get trick or treat bags and candy corn. these are some of the best items for flipping on the market for profit and you can make hundreds of gold in a handful of hours. every so often everyone in the maze stops to kill a skeleton with a chainsaw the players have named steve. it's considered good etiquette to be under-geared so enemies die slower and everyone gets a chance to tag for loot. here's a jumping puzzle that only takes a couple minutes to complete but even veteran players struggle with it. in lore halloween started because a human king went insane and killed his family and then was executed by his subjects. he is now a minor deity and comes to the mortal realm to play simon says. his greatest adversary is a flamboyant zombie dictator that you killed years ago but the king's minions created a fake version of him because the king was depressed.
one of my favourite bits is just when Trahearne goes full autism and starts rambling about his special interest, and then I'm like 'yeah, me too my guy, me too'
i need them to let us go to kasmeer and marjory's wedding solely because i love guild wars 2 story quest fancy party instances. i want all the NPCs in a formal outfit right now and you can sell 'rytlock's suit that he was forced to wear' on the premium store for gems for players too practically speaking. i want to pick up a wine bottle and have the option to smash it over someones head to deal 1 hp damage and cause everyone to get mad at me. i want to be able to fail the kasjory wedding and have to try again and restart the quest. i want to devour from banquet table. i want to go around and talk to the NPCs and get dialogue snippets from long time friends in the story such as 'i'm rytlock and they forced me to wear this suit'
how to build a chair........... director's cut ∠( ᐛ 」∠)__ this is about to be a very long very self-indulgent post where i just talk about my own writing. i also doodled on all the pages i think it makes the whole thing more fun to go thru. welcome to my ted talk
SIKE before i begin. credit where credit is due, this post was the start of it all. it changed my brain chemistry my jaw was dropped i was in awe i was obsessed and before i even finished it i knew that i would eventually have to make something similar for the commander or else i would be cursed to think about it for the rest of my life. and i Was cursed for like two years every day i would just be like........ is today the day i sit down and draft the commander chair fic of my dreams....... maybe tomorrow......
and then i got accepted as a writer for the gw2 zine ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ the chair idea was actually my backup option in case my first idea didn't pan out, and thank god it didn't, bc this one worked so much better. (still working on my initial idea, just turning it into a full fic! it was wayyy too long to be a zine submission.)
this is the chair i used. i downloaded the assembly instructions and tried out a bunch of different free pdf editors until i found one i liked, which ended up being sedja. if anyone's interested in doing something like this, i recommend printing out the pdf and writing directly on it! it was a lot easier for me to just figure out everything on paper first and then digitalize it after :P here's a picture of my physical copy
okay actually getting into it for real this time !!!!!
1. yeah i could've just erased the ikea logo and left a blank space but then i realized i could turn it into an in-universe joke. and then i ran with it.
2. i ripped this straight from the product description on the website. thanks ikea
3. i'm not sure if anyone went and looked it up, but it's a real item code!
hehe :3c
4. if your commander willingly goes to therapy i'm happy for them but TO ME? you'd have to drag the commander kicking and screaming. it's not that they don't know that something is wrong with them, they know, and they know YOU know. you're just never supposed to talk about it. they don't look at their own psych eval results bc that's none of their business.
5. i normally avoid specifying the commander's race when i write them bc i enjoy the challenge, but for the zine i was assigned to write about a norn commander! as a human main i was uhhhh very ill-equipped. but that just meant i had to study up on my norn lore (•̀ᴗ•́)و i spent hours on the wiki, then went around interviewing norn mains for their opinions, which was great fun :D it all helped me narrow the focus of my piece: joining the war on commander objectification on the side of commander objectification (ㅅ´ ˘ `)♡ and no one self-aggrandizes quite like the norn commander!
and to balance that i knew my narrator had to be patronizing as shitttt. they've clearly been following the commander since the beginning and seem to know a lot of intimate details about their life, despite not thinking very highly of them. wonder who that could be :3c
6. i can't stop making references. so the original part number is actually #122620 in the manual but i've changed it here (and on the previous page!) to #082812, as in 08/28/12, the date gw2 was released! no real reason for it, @dalennaugw suggested it for funsies and i liked it. if you're my pal and i show you a wip and you have a cool idea for it, chances are i Will put that shit in. hi dale if you're reading this
7. another thing about me. i loveeee repetition. here the word "over" is repeated four times to match the picture. honestly a lot of the creative process for this piece was just staring at the pages and figuring out how to tie the pictures to the commander in ways that weren't extremely corny or trite. idk why i enjoy writing like this when i could be frolicking in the beautiful prosaic meadows of a word doc instead but. it's like i see a tiny little restrictive box and i'm like OH BOY can't wait to think inside of that thing!!! i like when the format matters just as much as the content and in some cases informs the content. am i making any sense here. well all you need to know is that i'm a virgo and my favorite book is house of leaves
7. aw fuck just realized i wrote 7 twice. whatever i'm not changing it this is 7 part two now. the theme of my piece is glory, what it means to the norn commander, and how far they're willing to go for it.
8. does norn culture place emphasis on seeking individual glory Yes are norn also very community-oriented Also Yes. i think it's common to see norn kids napping together in a big pile, usually after they've worn themselves out playing games outside. it makes sense practically (apes together warm) and socially (pack bonding good) but that's just my hc. growing up i used to share a bed with my cousins all the time so it's normal to me.
a young, naive not-yet-commander, with no real combat experience, has no point of reference to compare a "blaze of glory" to. but the way everyone talks about it, it must be a good thing. a wonderful thing. a reward fit for a life well-fought and a legend hard-earned. so they imagine it must feel like falling asleep surrounded by the people they love, who love them in turn.
9. .........i was playing a lot of ace attorney when i wrote this page. i wish i was joking 👍🏼
10. ohhh shit the truth come OUT this whole chair thing was all a ploy just so i could write about the departing. again.
will i ever stop thinking about her. reply hazy, try again later.
11. out of all the pages, this one has the most emphasis on text placement, like comparing the enlarged picture of the screw to a sword, the numbers counting the screws, and "up up up" being arranged to mimic a wisp of smoke.
i also wanted to lean into the viking/norse mythology influences with my word choice.
12. more nods to norn culture. i didn't know they referred to the six human gods as "spirits of action" until i was doing the research for this piece :O
and the domain of the lost is called a hall of ghosts....... cause valhalla.....
13.
i'm sorry this so funnyyy. SAYS the guy who literally clawed their way back to life for a rematch.
me when i'm in a sore loser competition and my opponent is the COMMANDER!!!
14. arms as in "limbs" and also arms as in "armaments" :•]
15. haha get it because the picture makes it look like there are two mirrored speech bubbles while the text paints two opposing interpretations of the norn commander. one that's selfless and humble versus one that's selfish and vainglorious.
16. and the best part is IT DOESN'T MATTER which one is true bc at the end of the day no matter what their motivation, balthazar is dead by their hand. ofc i'm of the opinion that the most compelling interpretation of the commander is both, simultaneously. contradictions are good for the soul.
17. i could've name-dropped kas, the only person present that would do something like that, but i felt it was better to leave it ambiguous.
18. low-hanging fruit. the metaphor was so obvious here but i had to do it. for the culture
19. the alternate title for this piece was "THIS COULD BE GLORY". "how to build a chair" was only supposed to be a placeholder title til i figured out a better one, but the innocuousness of it grew on me. also i came up with the other one too late and had already advertised under the chair title lol
20. my first instinct was to end it with something more reassuring, like "what you have built so far is enough" but that would've been an ooc switch-up for a narrator who has been nothing but snide and detached this whole time. gotta stick to my guns
21.
obligatory chair joke as the last line. for realsies though it’s meant to be an earnest appeal to the commander to take a break, to have a seat, but it’s also a challenge. are they willing to lean on their friends? are the bonds they’ve forged strong enough to hold their weight? are they willing to put their faith in someone else’s hands? are they brave enough to try? well. only one way to find out.
also guess what that wasn’t even the real last page of the manual. it's THIS
but no way i was letting this be the image we ended on. IT LOOKS LIKE A DICK AND BALLS!!!
and on that note, THANK YOU if you made it this far!! a very special shout-out to @hawkepockets, my lovely boyfriend and beta reader, without whom this piece would not be nearly as polished. i would bring him pages to look over and he would say Scrap half of those lines you can do better than that. kill your darlings. i would complain and argue for a few minutes then we would revise. rinse and repeat until we had honed this thing to perfection. i can't stress enough the importance of having a second pair of eyes on your work throughout your creative process, even better if it's someone who challenges you. i don't even pay him 🫶🏼
and if there was anything i didn't cover that you still have questions about, please feel free to shoot me an ask! (ㅅ´ ˘ `)♡ thanks for reading! see u later dudes ;P
I come with screenshots, and also want to say that the WARP discord server is public. You can double check any of this and verify it. All I've done is block out some usernames and it's not hard to get those.
The concrete information I have gathered from reading the entirety of the AI channel in the WARP server is:
- a WARP dev made the channel and utilizes a currently-growing AI creator, using screenshots and uncredited art.
- other members of the server use various pre-made AI art programs of varying dubious quality
- one member actively programs and creates AI art functions, and they focus on charr which they have actively made two programs for, scraping both art and screenshots. It is hypothesized by many people that the charr program was trained on the art of @vateo (Vateo if you confirm the resemblance I'm so sorry this happened under your nose)
- tumblr has been mentioned by name as a *suggested* good source but with no confirmation of its use or not. It could be, but I'm not going to make assumptions past fact in this.
- the dev of WARP is actively interested in and asking about AI rp bots, but has not actively created one yet.
Screenshots directly from the server are below the cut
heads up! 🙋♀️ i’m no longer going to use the playable race tags (#asura, #norn etc) while reblogging here because developers of warp, the popular roleplay overlay, are confirmed to be scraping gw2blr tags, including those, to generate ai images from stolen art & screenshots.
if you’re concerned about your creations being plagiarized, i recommend watermarking, glazing, and/or nightshading before you post in main gw2 tags!
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