Just saying but if this turns out to just be Anet's new marketing team doing normal tryhard marketing stuff for the next GW2 expac or for the GW1 mobile release only for it to have spiraled into "GW3 SOON" in not just the playerbase but in the general gaming sphere–it would be very on brand for Anet
Also the GW1 purists who need to hate on GW2 with their every breath who think GW3 will be less like GW2 than GW1 are very funny
Rating the gw2 mounts by their backwards walk animations:
Raptor: the smallest head tilt for some peripheral vision, long, confident strides and whole body movements to maintain balance. 1 bumpy ride/100
Springer: feisty little backwards hop. probably kills predators by smacking them with their butts like wombats. Absolute Power/100
Skimmer: constant tail twitch, occasional fin shudder. hates this more than anything. why would you make it go backwards??? its not made for this. 2000 disappointed head waggles/100
Jackal: starts slow, clearly nervous. needs constant eye contact and reassurance from their rider. many future ear skritches/100
Beetle: doesn’t look back at all. doesnt need to. has unquestioning faith in their rider. thank you for believing in me petey, I would die for you. 1 unbreakable beetle bond/100
Griffon: Looks back not out of mistrust but because it is an expert at backing up. probably has a nice little alcove up on a cliff it backs into to roost on the reg. 1 secure tail curl/100
Warclaw: cant turn its head. wont turn its head. it’s all armor back there, why bother? 0 fear of death/100
This was originally going to be part of a longer post I'm working on, but I decided it warranted being its own.
And yes I know the title sounds insane! But in the grand scheme of SotO's narrative, Isgarren is an idealist at heart wearing a cynic's armor, and Mabon is a cynic at heart wearing an idealist's mask.
And Isgarren is an idealist because you kind of have to be one to dedicate yourself to 10,000 years of protecting a world that doesn't even know you exist.
And one of the only things we know about him from before his ascension was that he tried to go help the mursaat fight Zhaitan anyway even after Sidony decided against helping them. Most of what he calls his mistakes were also born from his attempts to help others - taking in Eparch and ascending Waiting Sorrow being the biggest examples. And still he keeps helping others. Still, no matter how many times his attempts to better the world led to another "mistake", led to his own exile from his kin, led to the deaths of people he loved, Isgarren still kept doing it because he believed in doing good no matter what.
He figured out at some point that the Elder Dragons were vital to Tyria's magical ecosystem, so he turned his efforts to fight for the good of Tyria outward, especially once Eparch gave him reason to think all kryptis were threats. He wasn't going to step in with the Elder Dragon wars until it literally threatened the destruction of all Tyria not because he didn't care, but because he had faith in us.
Keep in mind that in the personal story, the Commander and Trahearne successfully united the world to fight Zhaitan. Isgarren had seen this before. He saw Sidony unite all the other elder races to fight Zhaitan, only for them to suddenly betray each other and leave the mursaat and Forgotten to die on their own. The Pact succeeded where the elder races failed. Why wouldn't he believe in the strength of mortals at that point?
Not to overuse and refer back to my favorite conversation in SotO too often, but Isgarren doesn't save farms not because he doesn't care, he doesn't save the farm because he knows the Commander will be there to have his back and do it while he takes care of the dragon minion.
Isgarren, for all his faults and his grumpy and bitter attitude, is an idealist.
Mabon called him naive for a reason. He even calls his own choices naive.
And speaking of Mabon...he's a cynic at heart.
This might seem contradictory to the way he is characterized as an optimistic and positive force among the Wizard's Court and for the Astral Ward (and he is), moreso than Isgarren being a hidden idealist under his sour armor, but consider that Mabon's entire character rides on his idea of atonement.
In his journal from shortly after his ascension, he doesn't remember what he was like before it. He just remembers that his own people are cruel and evil. He assumes Isgarren is avoiding him because he's afraid of him as a violent mursaat and never truly trusted him at all (when this could just as likely be because Isgarren is feeling guilty of the ascension wiping Mabon's memories, but that's just me speculating). He assumes that he must have been just like all other mursaat and he must have been a terrible person himself. So he must atone. And atone he does for 10,000 years.
Isgarren tells you, when you ask him about Mabon, that Mabon was not like other mursaat when they first met.
In SotO, Mabon's arc starts shortly before we meet him. Asthenes is attacking him mentally the whole time, but he puts on his outward mask of idealism and strength to save Dagda and Lyhr and to lead the Astral Ward while Isgarren is missing.
Knowing the Wizards, knowing the Commander, wouldn't we have found some way to save him too? If we knew? If we had realized? Isn't that what the Wizards and the Commander do? Wouldn't we have just made it possible to save Dagda, Lyhr, and Mabon?
Mabon didn't want to die, but he felt at that point "there is no other way this can end" and he outright asks us not to hesitate "when the hour arrives." He doesn't bother to ask for help with his own possession because he thinks he's beyond saving, and he needs to save the others first.
He also notably meddles with Tyrians more than Isgarren does. Many of the Astral Ward's recruits are his specifically. He travels to Tyria frequently to meet people and experience the world "on the ground", so to speak. Compare this to the historical mursaat modus of sitting back and manipulating an entire society unseen.
Even when it's someone Isgarren (and Uenno) recruits like Frode, it's not until Mabon involves himself that they heal and find their place in the Astral Ward.
That's not to say he didn't believe in mortals at all, just that as part of his trying to be a better person than he believed himself to be, he ended up taking it upon himself to help those he felt no one else would.
Finally, it's notable to me that both Isgarren and Mabon attempt to distance themselves from their races in some manner, and they both go about it in very different ways.
Isgarren made himself blue so he might be mistaken for a djinn at first glance but he still takes great pride in being a Seer. He wants to be seen as part of the rest of Tyria despite sitting above it, but will happily answer your questions about Seers.
Mabon hides his wings to be less threatening, but he's still very obviously a mursaat at first glance. He's still other from the rest of Tyria, but he distances himself from the other mursaat so much that he considers his own race extinct with Lazarus's death.
And somehow, it's so very fitting that these two found each other and created the Wizard's Court together.
off the cuff thoughts I wrote down after finishing Divitium Nava:
the entire convo about how the world is "fundamentally" broken basically cements Isgarren as the ultimate idealist who, despite seeing the same things, fought for an imperfect Tyria and still tries to do the greater good while trusting in Tyrians to do the same. Isgarren and Vloxx share hubris as their flaw, but they use the same power in completely opposite ways
puts into perspective WHY the Seers hoarded knowledge and protected the Ascension ritual, and why Sidony went to extremes to punish Isgarren (but leaving a loophole because Sidony had the intellectual foresight to identify that there was a chance Isgarren sharing with "lesser" races and forming friendships could be what lets Isgarren outlive all the other Seers)
the downfall of the Seers is less the protection of Ancora and the Ascension ritual and more how the rest of their society is also very elitist and isolationist
I have finished the story already after writing these down but I feel that the rest of it didn't change any of these thoughts.
I think I have never philosophically disagreed with a GW2 villain more than Vloxx. I don't care for his character, but I do see what they are doing with him. Kuda was excellent. I also enjoyed the trials.
Last thing is I am staring at "Project 5388" like "do NOT bring Sebb back"
Was prompted by loved ones to make a 'progress' pic of how Trahearne's come along since I started drawing him in 2023. Some things come and go, but undeniably, he's always been 'my' Trahearne, and honestly, that's what I want the most.
I reached a comfortable place with him now, and I look forward to keep drawing my favourite plant husband for hopefully many more years.
The fact that this is the line drawn is really funny! Human breasts are actually incredibly rare among mammals! We don't know exactly why humans have big bazongas but it's probably sexual selection, which presents the really funny problem
If your snake women having sex with people is normal and expected...then yeah, they're ALSO probably going to have something resembling breasts. They might even just have breasts in all but function.
Like yes, non-mammals don't make milk, but you actually don't need the whole kit that humans do in order to make milk. Arguably its not even the important part of the breast to begin with.
We actually have another theory why human breasts are like that, and it's because of our flat faces.
Most mammals have, compared to humans, an elongated jaw. So a little tiny bump of a mammary gland is fine, just enough to get the nostrils away from the teat, and the young can freely breathe while nursing. However, as humans started using fire more and more to cook food - which softened it up, rendering powerful jaws less necessary - their jaws began to shorten, resulting in the development of the chin and other unique facial structures as the face flattened out.
This, of course, meant that babies could suffocate while nursing, which would obviously be bad. But what if... what if nipple further from chest? Bigger bump, so baby's nose have spot to go that isn't directly into mommy's chest? Oh, turns out that works! Of course, as more and more fat stores become dedicated to growing that breast mound to keep baby from suffocating, it becomes harder and harder for the mother to reabsorb that tissue when not nursing (as many other mammals do), so they just... don't. Knockon effects from there, and bam. Tiddies.
Which means if your cat girl has a flat face she probably should still have boobs but if she's got the full muzzle, not so much.
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