I don't think Estinien ever worries about the WoL, not because he doesn't care, but because anything you do he just assumes you'll succeed, even if it shouldn't be possible. You brought Ishgard and dragons together, you and Alphinaud saved him from Nidhogg's eyes, and then you immediately freed two more countries, of course you're going to save this other world and bring the scions' souls home. He doesn't really understand it, but it sounds like you have it covered. The world is ending? Man it's a good thing we got you on our side. Fought a god of despair at the edge of the world? That's a Tuesday for you, right? The WoL is seemingly dying on the spaceship floor? Nah, watch this, they're gonna perk up in about ten minutes and give us each a high five. (Alisaie smacks him for saying this, but he's absolutely still right.)
Estinien may not be the smartest of the scions, but he is wise, and he may not fully understand what plot armor is, but he's definitely clocked that you got it.
With a lot of help from the Echo letting us skip some mechanics (mainly the tether-thing with the lasers, which kept confusing people for some reason).
(Yes, I was in a group of 8, with 7 of us entering the fight for the first time. One of us had markers and strategy-boards though, so that was nice. It took us 3h and a lot of Echo-powering deaths, but everyone was very nice and friendly about it.)
And from the perspective of a fight? The mechanics are different but not very difficult (though some of the timings are a bit scary). Though the AFK-markers make the latter stuff so much fucking easier, holy shit.
But as a healer? Holy fuck. I was using Medica-2 regularly, just because I didn't have other heals to deal with the constant fucking raid-wides.
(This might've been compounded by my co-healer being a SCH who I had to revive quite a few times, so they might not have been super-good at helping, I was too busy healing and doing mechs to really check. But even so, holy shit.)
But uhh... aside from gameplay-feelings, this fight also underlined something really funny from a lore-perspective.
Sphene is actually good at strategy.
Zoraal Ja attacks whoever wherever, indiscriminately lashing out at anything within reach.
Sphene targets the healers with everything she's got. Every. Single. Time.
The "great military-commander" proving himself once again to be an absolute failure at everything he does.
I would like to state, on the record. Fuck, and, you.
Yes, during my endless grind for 100 fucking Necron-totems, I created a strategy-board for it.
I also ran those fights almost exclusively as a tank, because keeping a dps-rotation going during that shit was making my head go to shit, and because stacking a vuln on a tank here and there isn't going to make much of a difference.
> Huh.
> Looks like they updated tumblr again
> UBlocker isn't auto-killing half the page anymore
> Click click click
> Back to normal
> (this probably cost them a shitton of money to do)
From a linguistic perspective, it's kind of funny to see names dropped in the wild that don't seem to abide by the pronunciation conventions of the phonetics.
Like, if you put "LL" (capitalized for visibility) at the start of a word? The only language that seems to be willing to actually do that is Welsh. And Welsh has a very strange relationship with the roman alphabet.
What this means is that (from my understanding) "LLen" isn't pronounced like "Glenn without the G", but instead more like "ch'Len".
(I'm not Welsh and it's hard to explain through text, but like... very different from the immediate English-assumption of it.)
But there's also a more Scandinavian classic "AE", "OE", and "AO". Which you will sometimes see pop up when someone tries to translate the extra-letters of "Ä". "Ö", and "Å" into something readable by an English-computer.
So, in that light "AE" isn't two distinct sounds, but rather more like the single sound of "eh". "OE" instead becomes "uh", and "AO" becomes "oh".
(It's really hard to translate phonetics into text, and I'm not very good at it. But trust me when I say that those letters make very distinct noises.)
Why does any of this matter?
It doesn't. But it means that sometimes when you read some made-up fantasy-name by someone who doesn't know about this kind of stuff? You end up with some very big differences in how it's intended to be pronounced, and the actual way they've spelled it.
And anyway, this is how I've ended up naming my WoL-character a cool-looking name that can be (mispronounced) to sound suspiciously similar to someone pronouncing "Weakling" very badly, and I think that that's beautiful.
Also also, during my hunting-train-escapades, I encountered someone whose messages kept registering as "roleplay ads".
They were not roleplay-ads, and it wasn't even consistently erasing all of those messages either.
Turns out, the NoSoliciting-addon basically runs on a neural-network of some sort (I really hope that it isn't based on LLMs, but I don't know), so it just... kind of guesses at what is and isn't a "filterable offense".
So. I poked around at the settings and found a way to remove all of its computer-decision-making-logic, and instead only filter specific phrases.
(The base game already lets you do this, but it will still fill up the chatlog with "Wol Name: [this message isn't displayed because of filter 1]", which is almost as annoying as the actual message.)
So now I'm filtering things like "discord" and "giveaway" and (attempting) to filter the various rmt-terms I've encountered.
And in the process of doing this I also figured out a way to add custom-filters to the pf. Meaning that I can avoid things that describe themselves as "+18" for example, without relying on something that might decide that a strat-reference makes it a roleplay-ad.
I tried to order a usb-c to hdmi connector via a site that turned out to be an amazon storefront, and amazon instantly locked me out and said if I can't verify my account via text I have to send them my passport
got so pissed once about this happening i discovered google has 'backup codes' hidden in ur privacy settings that you can generate and physically hold on to in order to authenticate yourself without any other bullshit. they really try to hide it away but it has saved my ass on several occasions when i wanted to use find my phone and it asked for a code. from my phone. to log in.
okay so here is a fucked up toriverse concept. okay. you know the most recent au (which doesn't have it's own tag, sorry) where tori is reincarnated as rin and then i was like "what if obito and kakashi are also reincarnations." okay so then ALSO remember the torito/kakashi au where tori is having an affair with kakashi while obito stews in his own homoerotic obsession and sends her off to fuck kakashi and report it back to him. okay. what if. these were the SAME universe. and then to make it MORE insane....
i got this idea from the tag @racke7 left on this post. basically, the idea tori and rin have always been the same soul is some sort of very deeply fucked up reincarnation cycle
"rin!tori" ONLY APPLIES to this AU. please do not ask me about it for other AUs/plasticity proper.
on the day of graduation, each of our idiot protagonists suddenly remember their previous life. so they do have full, in-tact memories of their new life leading up to that moment.
i do like kakashi graduating stupid early so maybe he gets his memories earlier? doesn't super matter. if yes, he's an avoidant person who doesn't, like, attempt to do anything but silently stalk rin and obito. might be a good excuse for minor timeline changes if i want them? if no, he just gets random memories on an otherwise normal day for him
to streamline things, let's say for now tori ALSO figures out pretty quickly she's just always been rin. i think this would lead to a mild identity crisis on her part but also her life is so fucked up she might just get over it. like i think she'd be more annoyed than having a breakdown over it
both kakashi and obito HATE this!
i think for maximum shenanigans, both kakashi and obito figure out tori is a reincarnation but not each other and she just. doesn't tell them. kakashi doesn't full grasp "obito reincarnated too" as an option because he thinks obito dies in like a year, and obito is too self-centered and insane about kakashi to think about WHY kakashi is acting kind of weird.
minato is 22 and has been handed the most insane team dynamic imaginable. kakashi acts insane around him because he desperately wants his old team back. obito acts insane because he resents minato but subconsciously craves his validation. tori has realized that minato is a baby adult and actually has NO idea what he's doing and she's here to take advantage of that
the end result is tori actually comes off the most normal despite being the more most likely to intentionally inflict psychic damage or convince minato to do something deeply stupid and also IN SPITE OF multiple attempts to murder obito
obito: you CAN'T be rin though. rin is sweet and kind. she's an ordinary girl who was a victim of a corrupt system
tori: have you considered i was an ordinary girl before i met YOU????
obito: (momentary and very painful break from reality)
obito: (after dodging tori attempting to stab him and coming back down to earth) i refuse to believe that. you're not rin. you've always been some sort of devious horrible woman
tori: well maybe rin was a devious horrible girl and you just put her on a pedestal she inevitably fell from!!!!!
insane kakashi-tori dynamic where he thinks she's a civilian but also she keeps going "sensei teach me a seal!!!!" and then he thinks this is her first attempt at a storage seal and what. what is happening here
tori fucks up one time and is like "ummm sensei taught me this barrier a while ago, you just didn't see it" and minato is like "no i didn't??" and then both tori AND obito attempt to gaslight him into thinking he did. he's only 22 and now he's like. confused. DID he do that????
new update to this concept. what if kakashi AND minato are time travelers, but they get sent back slightly earlier. they figure out the other one is from the future. they decide they're going to coordinate to save obito and rin......!
and they show up to the bell test and rin attempts to kill obito like six times
Actually, you know what. I'm going to rant about Zoraal Ja.
Spoilers, obviously.
So. This guy first shows up as someone Wuk Lamat says "shouldn't be king", because he's a warmongering dickhead.
With the WoL being rather fresh from a massive war (with the Empire) that everyone agrees was a miserable fucking slog of pointless suffering, this is a very reasonable stance to take.
And as I went through Dawntrail, I didn't really put more thought into it than that. (Bakool Ja Ja is more immediately interesting as a character.)
But there are so many subtle hints of what a fucking awful king he'd be.
In the Alpaca-task? They're asked to "find the taskmaster" first, and are basically told that information like that would require a "good deal".
And instead of doing that, Zoraal Ja stares down the person who's supposed to hide things from him until they break and give the game away.
In the moment, this feels kind of like a "proof that he's cool"-thing. But in actuality, what he did was use intimidation to force his future-subjects to submit to him.
In that moment alone, he proves himself a tyrant-to-be.
He's not going to listen to your problems and give you a just judgment. He's going to throw you into the dungeons for not agreeing with him.
So alright, he's a bit worse as a "future-king" than what is immediately obvious.
(Wuk Lamat is clearly impressed by his abilities as a warrior, and this makes her kind of underline his "coolness" with her own feelings of inadequacy. So people missing this makes sense.)
But during the Alpaca-task we also hear him talk about his ideology.
And it's... dumb.
"These people [one generation removed from war] have never experienced the horrors of war, so I should teach them how bad war is so that they never do it again"
Taking to its logical conclusion, he's basically going to have to ask his successor to start another fucking war, just to make sure that nobody "actually forgets how bad war is", because the generation after his "final peace" is going to forget it just as quickly.
It's the kind of logic only a complete idiot (or someone with delusions of grandeur blinding his common sense) would come up with.
But alright. Sure. He intimidates his subjects, and wants to traumatize generations because they have it "too good".
But at least he's a competent commander, right?
Except no. He's so incompetent as a commander that I want to cry.
He wants to invade Eorzea.
This isn't just "boohoo, bad guy being mean to us" this is "this guy thinks he can fight the entire planet at once". This is the kind of strategic blunder that anyone with sense would understand to be a terrible fucking idea.
(It might've worked when the Empire was big and mighty and breathing down the necks of the divided city-states still recovering from the calamity.)
(But against a united continent and an Empire that's trying to rebuild? With allies even far from their shores? With fucking dragons on their side?)
Now. To be fair to him. It's entirely possible that he developed this idea when it was still not completely insane to try it, and then basically dismissed all of the stories coming from across the ocean as being blown out of proportions.
But a good military commander would sit down and actually get someone he trusted to run reconnaissance about it, not just make assumptions about "giant fucking doom-lizards flying through the air and annihilating armies" not existing.
Having said that. This isn't even the worst part.
The worst part is that he wants to invade Eorzea from across the ocean.
He wants to send an army (that he doesn't have) on boats (that nobody in Tural knows how to build) to sail (nobody in Tural actually knows how to do this either) across the ocean (incredibly treacherous even for incredibly experienced sailors) to declare war (on a people that he knows nothing about).
There are so many fucking Big Red Flags in this plan that it's actually insane.
Raising an army?
Oh, he could probably do that. But it's not going to be an experienced fighting-force.
They're not even likely to have half-decent commanders, because most of the fighting in Turali were between tiny clans, rather than massive nations, so this would be entirely new territory for them.
Building boats?
Alright, that's not entirely impossible. If he throws the entire budget of his new kingdom at it, then he could probably produce a few big ships within his lifespan.
He'd have to first build dockyards, then start figuring out how to build ships, then get locally-sourced materials that function for it, and then actually build the fucking ships.
This is the kind of thing that would take decades minimum. And doing it whilst broadcasting to everyone around that you're a warmongering dickhead building a fleet to invade them with? It's going to get sabotaged to fuck. But sure, it could theoretically be done before he croaks from old age.
Finding sailors?
This is going to be a nightmare of a thing to do and require massive investments. There are really not that many options for teaching someone to sail.
Either you throw them onto a boat and hope that they figure it out instead of capsizing the very-expensive boat. Or you get someone else to teach them. And the only people who might be able to teach how to operate ocean-sailing ships are foreigners.
Foreigners who'd likely understand that any skill these people gain would then be used against their own home-countries. And would therefore have good reason to teach them wrong.
Crossing the ocean?
But even if he manages to raise an army, build a navy, and teach everyone how to sail. That still doesn't guarantee that they'll arrive safely on the shores they wanted to invade.
Even without Limsa Lominsa's (incredibly well-known) penchant of plundering ships coming anywhere near them, the fact of the matter is that the ocean will kill even experienced sailors.
And so we can kind of assume that a fuckload of the armies that he sends over would just... never arrive at the destination. And this would also be true for any supplies.
(Proof if ever there was any that Zoraal Ja knows fuck-all about actual warfare, he doesn't seem to think that this in any way could become an issue.)
Attacking an unknown foe?
Absolutely fucking dreadful idea. Fuck, he doesn't even know that the Sharleans have a spaceship. Or that dragons are a thing. Or anything at all about the political landscape. Or seemingly even about the fact that Limsa is a fucking pirate-created stronghold, and that fights can happen at sea.
Again, even if he had all the other things, the thought of picking a fight with an unknown enemy shouldn't even cross his mind if he was a good commander. He'd want to know what political pressure-points exist between the various nations, and he'd want to know how they fight, and he'd want to learn about all of this without saying that he plans to invade them.
(He's so fucking stupid.)
Then he fails to win "against a shadow" of his father in his prime, and resorts to the only thing he knows how to do, by trying to use violence to get what he wants.
So he gets disqualified, and then decides that the problem was that he didn't do enough violence, so he (violently) steals the key to the Golden City.
(At this point we can probably agree that he's operating purely on insane daddy-issues, rather than anything close to logic.)
And his deal with Sphene ends up with him basically not-being-king.
Sure, he's in charge of the armies. But the armies are effectively just automatons that will obey his every command without question. They're not people, because he can't be trusted around people.
He sits on his throne and thinks about how much he hates his father, and Sphene continues running the kingdom as she always has been. His title being "king" is basically just everyone agreeing not to piss off the violently unstable maniac.
And then, when he finally uses his "awesome army" to invade and prove that he's "the strongest"? He can't even really commit to it, because he's so caught up in his daddy-issues and this really dumb ideology that he's still refused to let go of (for thirty fucking years) that he can't actually set up a proper invasion.
He manages to hold no fucking territory. He manages to disrupt the chain-of-command not at fucking all (because his father had already named his successors). And then he basically treats the whole counterattack as "Wuk Lamat arriving to duel", because again he doesn't know what a fucking war is.
And because he's a coward and a weakling, he drowns himself in the souls of his subjects so that he can "definitely for sure" win against Wuk Lamat.
Every single step of the way, this man proves himself unworthy of being a king.
(And don't get me started on him being a cheapskate that never drops his fucking wings. Don't you know that being stingy is unbefitting of a ruler? You dickhead.)
I'm not sure if Americans are aware of not-cars, but if they're not then I'll be educating them now.
This is a not-car:
It drives at amazing max-speeds of 40km/h, and can be driven by teenagers.
What this effectively means is that someone turns 16, gets one of these, turns 18, gets an actual car.
(For anyone counting, that's a product lifespan of about 2 years.)
This is Sweden's (Europe's?) solution to non-walkable suburbs. (Which are of course also used in densely populated cities.)
They're advertised as being "safer" than mopeds (for a variety of reasons, this is highly questionable), and "more efficient" than public transit.
Because these things drive at 40km/h, on roads where speed-limits often range from 80-110km/h, they're also incredibly common causes for massive traffic-jams.
Also, notice that the not-car doesn't have a registration-number. They obviously don't need those (I think they used to have them? But I've seen so many of them without any that I can only assume that it's legal), because they're not-cars and aren't in fact often actual cars that have been modified to be speed-limited.
(And obviously, if someone modified an actual car into a not-car, they definitely wouldn't make the transition easily reversible by flipping a switch. Because that would be really easy to hide from the police, and would therefore be super-uncool of them.)
(What do you mean most of the single-car crashes for not-cars are done at +100km/h? That's illegal.)
But yeah, because they're so prone to causing traffic to slow to a crawl, a lot of drivers get really fucking reckless in overtaking them. Meaning that their mere existence makes traffic less safe. Which is crazy.
Also, because they're primarily actually a penis-measuring-thing, they will be highly modified.
What this means is that it's very common to find not-cars set so low that they throw off sparks. And almost impossible to find one without a Massive Sound System, that they can use to blast shitty music and increase noise-pollution for literally everyone in the area.
(How do I know that the music is shitty? If it needs to be that loud to be good, it must be fucking garbage.)
Circling back onto the topic of safety, it should be noted that these things are designed to drive at 40km/h, so they're only really required to handle crashes at 40km/h. But they're driving on roads in close proximity to traffic going much faster than that.
In fact, the perceived safety of the not-car makes it a lot more tempting to take these types of roads than it would be a for someone with a moped. But they're also so much bigger that it's a lot harder for someone coming up on them too fast to actually swerve around them and not hit them.
And as anyone can tell you, the safest car is the one that doesn't crash in the first place.
So.
Increased teenage-mobility? Debatable.
Traffic safety? Negatively impacted.
Safety for the driver? Fake news.
Noise-pollution? Like you wouldn't believe.
Actual pollution? Lots of that too.
Conclusion:
Please just buy your kid a penis-enlarging ebike instead.
So the funfair is in town. Which means that the teenagers are driving around in their not-cars and blasting music loudly enough to make the windows on my building shake.
I've gotten 4h of sleep, because I woke up from my earplugs hurting me.
I think we should be able to shoot teenagers dead for recreational purposes. I'm sure there would be no consequences for this.
Had a dream where I met a person who knew me from my writing. They weren't exactly a fan (kind of a dick about it too), but they were curious about what had made me write what I did (especially the sweet fluffy stuff when I was just starting out).
And, huh. I don't think I ever said this out loud on the internet anywhere. So here goes.
My first story Ever was mostly just a reaction to paging through the Haruhi Suzumiya archives and realizing that there was a scene that was so obvious, and that nobody had written for some reason? So I finally sat down and wrote it myself.
But when I started writing regularly in Lucky Star, there was a quote that kind of stuck with me. It's from a swedish comedian and singer (Markoolio), who was asked about his songs being "funny".
And his response was basically that "if I can make a miserable person say 'at least my life isn't that bad' then that's the point".
(I genuinely don't know if he ever said this, I think I heard it through osmosis more than anything. But still.)
What I mean by this is that these romance-stories were written in the early 2010s, back before I realized that I was on the ace-spectrum.
If you can't find happiness in life, if you can't find romance and love and care, then you can at least be allowed to read about it. You can at least be given the opportunity to smile at someone else's happiness.
Now. Obviously, I haven't written fluffy romance in what's probably literal years, and my source of inspiration has shifted more towards trying to "explore scenarios".
But if I ever had a real "ideology" behind my writing, then it was back then, and it would've been that.
