Wild mention of my favorite character! Sounds like Jade's playing low-effort mind games on Jamil's birthday just by knowing Jamil would turn it into a mindgame all on his own. Jade knowing Jamil knowing Jade knowing-
"I received a birthday card from Jade. He could have just said it in person; why go through all that extra effort...?"
Moon-Chasing Festival starting with a mood whiplash bang I see. 'oh so we're going to be fulfilling wishes. okay. it's going to be some cute and easy sidequests' I thought.
Lilac was just a really lonely, neglected kid who was taken advantage of by dangerous adults, and Lycaon clued in on that immediately. His first concern at all times was the wellbeing of this kid in his care, not just physically, but emotionally. It's never her who's the problem - he puts the onus on himself to learn about her interests and try to understand her, even when she's being difficult. Even when she's making mistakes.
Even at the end, she was scared and horrified and shaken, so what does Lycaon do to reassure her? He plays with her. That whole dramatic speech is him coaxing her into playing along and making her feel better. He engages with her interests and on her level, and she bursts into tears afterward because - well, she almost died - and probably also because she might never have had a caretaker do that for her before. He doesn't even let her call her own actions embarrassing. He keeps prompting her with that 'actually you DO deserve to be a Companion of Justice' because he can tell it still means a lot to her.
wuwa characters receiving variants in the future is a real thing and it can hurt you (maybe)
the elemental system we have with havoc, spectro, aero and all the other attributes can be flexible. characters resonate with frequencies of a phenomenon/object that can be distinguished by an elemental attribute, but cannot always be bound by it completely. there might already have been a couple cases of someone exhibiting signs of a second attribute.
for example, when jiyan summons the spear in his trailer there is a a lightning effect around his hand, followed by the sound of electricity cracking.
this might be a visual representation of sound waves reverberating, or it might just be an artistic choice. but if the source of jiyan’s resonance is, say, the storm, then he can be assigned both the aero and electro attributes - hence the lightning around his hand.
but, the biggest offenders for a possible double-attribute deal would be aalto and the mourning aix, walk with me.
during the ‘stygian lacrimosa’ world quest (spoilers for it right ahead btw) there is a moment when they let us control an echo of the second aix. while the two aixes fight, something weird is happening: the aix you control clearly has spectro attacks, but ui for it’s abilities is green, as if it’s attribute is supposed to be aero; while the other aix, the one we fight for ascension materials and know as a spectro-aligned creature has distinct aero attacks.
I have two speculations for what’s happening here:
1. kuro might have mixed up the attacks of two aixes, the one we control was supposed to be aero, and the other one was supposed to be left as spectro.
2. mourning aix was shown to be able to cover areas in fog earlier in the quest, so these aix TDs might be mimicking the frequencies of fog, which is a common phenomenon in the area they inhabit.
fog is formed when cold air meets warm air, condensation happens, tiny water drops form and get suspended - aero connection. but then, the water droplets in the fog stop and scatter light in all directions, which limits visibility - spectro connection. so, creatures that mimic or resonate with frequencies of fog could have both aero and spectro attributes, which is why the aixes have both aero and spectro attacks.
that sends us right to aalto, who resonates with fog. some parts of his kit already have things that might be spectro-looking: the avatar he conjures kind of looks like a prism, the mist bullets he gets from his skill and forte circuit form an attack similar to one of mournig aix's. those attacks of theirs are in turn similar in pattern to some scattering diagrams.
fun fact, Rayleigh scattering is an optical phenomenon that is behind the sky being blue, and you can find a courier in the whining aix’s mire that will ask you that exact question, ‘why is the sky blue?’. then again, the court of savantae, where we spend most of our time with aalto, is also there.
to finish the string of weird coincidences, resonance reports of both jiyan and aalto stand out too. aalto’s has statements that are loose, imprecise:
“Further tests conducted to ascertain the properties of the mist he conjures yielded inconclusive results” accompanied by “As stated in the report, this resonator is cunning and a master of disguises, thus rendering the credibility of his recounts questionable”; his report has no overclock history cause bro just ?? left ??
it’s not established tf jiyan resonates with (would probably be addressed later): “Jiyan's Resonance Spectrum Pattern shows no resemblance to known samples''; then there’s this statement in his overclock diagnostic report: “there are two distinct waveforms identified, each with exceptionally high peak values”. there are characters that can create or summon creatures with their forte, and jiyan is still the only one to have a second waveform, so it’s not because of qingloong.
my point is, kuro definitely has wiggle room if they wanted to make a character variant. until further notice, jiyan and aalto would be the most plausible candidates for that in my eyes.
You're out picking flowers and Grandma casually drops that she used to be part of that incredibly cursed cult village your most incessant stalker drew a whole entire picture book about and uses as a light moral bedtime story.
THIS LADY RIGHT HERE. Conversation under the cut.
Grandma Hua: Better than the past when you had to trade something just to get a bite to eat...
Rover: Exchange?
Grandma Hua: Hmm...When I was younger, in another village, they had the habit of exchange.
Grandma Hua: Exchange...What exactly are we exchanging...?
Grandma Hua: I can't remember...Every time I think of the word "exchange", I get the heebie-jeebies...
Two strange overworld encounters today in Wuthering Waves. One was randomly running into a dog trapped in a circle of logs and weapon-waving exiles. I thought that looked kind of disturbing, so I ran in to break it all up. Turns out! The dog will lead you to a treasure chest if you do! I was just thinking how some of these set-ups of mobs can get sort of intricate and even make me feel kind of bad for killing them all, so to find one that was definitely deliberate about wanting you to feel some sort of way and reward you for following that impulse was sort of fun.
The second was that I found a Strange Exile hiding in one of those breakable boxes. Like. Why.
But, man, do those set-ups sometimes make me feel bad. Especially when it's the monkeys. Just this morning I found one with a Hoochief and his little pile of berries who may have been having breakfast with a group of Chirpuffs (or it was starting the day off by feeding 'the fish'? Just relaxing? aw man), a troop of Hoochiefs and Hooscamps just sitting and chilling around a little wooden structure that had actual, like, pottery and stuff in it, and another group that may have been roasting breakfast or something, and of course all the mobs you can slaughter while they're just taking a nap in the sunshine. I sort of wonder, with the Mourning Aix questline, if the devs want you to feel a little uncomfortable about this. Like, if it's setting up something later down the story, what with the fact that apparently TDs having complex social structures and behaviors isn't that well-known (which to me doesn't make a lot of sense considering the half-pokemon element to humans' relationships to these guys, like you think they'd have figured this out already, but still). That'd be super hard to pull off though, considering we'd still need to be grinding these guys, so maybe not, but sometimes I do still wonder. It's pretty cool, anyway. I like little details like that.
I like that WuWa involves playable characters in world quests even if in minor ways, but when whatever guys I was helping out needed to call up Mortefi for like the 3rd time, it started being hilarious. No one in Jinzhou can do shit without this man
Spoilers under the cut but GUYS. GUYS. Do NOT skip through the "Wait for Godo" quest! This is for your own good!
This quest is so creepy and for WHAT
This is a two second overworld quest! Run into a random NPC who asks you to go see about the missing guard literally one building over! Standard open world stuff! Easy peasy!
Oh, and also just go ahead and say hi to the random eldritch shadow being while you're at it. NO BIG DEAL??? (I missed capturing the first two text boxes where you casually notice a 'massive looming shadow' over the beach demanding your 'attention and submission' and this doesn't concern you at all. You get your memories back but you can't actually remember what you're remembering as you remember it. Just that of course you know these shadows. You remember how they'd dance at your command.)
(Like.)
(WHAT.)
And then you fight some super easy mobs and the quest just ends. There's no turn-in - the quest giver won't even talk to you. It's like it never happened in the first place.
Kuro, what the hell.
I love it.
(Also the implications of the 'I still have work to do' line. I picked '...I should wake up.' because I thought it was a better wham line if this were a book or movie or something but the implications of the second one are ruining me. That's a 'But I have miles to go before I sleep' kind of line line. That's the kind of thing you say to keep from going toward the bright light. WHAT was HAPPENING here.)
EDIT: THE QUEST NAME IS A WAITING FOR GODOT REFERENCE. WHO DID THIS.
