arcanists: we wield the most complex form of magic... arcanima. one must master arcane geometry to weave patterns that respect the flow of aether, which in turn will create powerful creature that can help you in combat. this is very dangerous and very powerful, it's not for the weak of mind
also arcanists: anyway we use that power to inspect ship crates lmao
#the port authority is the ONLY authority that matters#like one heavily exaggerated rumor of a sea monster can close the ENTIRE PORT DOWN#and limsa is PIRATE CENTRAL#the arcanists wield incredible power over the populace purely because fucking everyone is trying to do shady shit#if the arcanists werent doing their job limsa would collapse and then the pirates would be everyones problems, via archdemoning
#tbf limsa is like the city states gateway to the rest of the world#airship travel is supposed to be reserved only for specific people and tasks esp at the beginning of the game#thats why we got an airship pass#and all ship cargo travels through limsa#so they are customs agents yes but Very Important ones#and being a customs agent is more like a side gig to pay the bills so they can keep being huge nerds#its like how people on here say you dont have to get a job thats your whole life#you can just do something to make money and then be passionate about things on your own time - via clariongradiation
I feel like the reason certain dog-lovers insist cats are evil is because they read their body language as if they were dogs. So here’s a very basic guide to common “mean” things cats do that actually aren’t mean at all if you know what they’re thinking.
Rolling and exposing belly- attacks you when touched
Does not mean: Give belly rubs! - haha I tricked you!
Actually means: I’m playful! If you reach for my belly I’ll grab your arm and bite it because I think we’re playfighting!
Lazily exposing belly - still attacks when touched
Does not mean: tricked you again!
Actually means: I’m showing you my belly because I trust you. Please don’t break that trust by invading my personal space. I might accept a belly rub if I’m not ticklish and I know you well.
Snapping at you while being pet
Does not mean: I suddenly decided I dislike you!
Actually means: You’re petting me in a way that gives me too much restless energy. Please focus on petting my head and shoulders instead of stroking the full length of my back next time.
Is in the same room but makes no attempt to interact
Does not mean: I’m ignoring you
Actually means: We’re hanging out! I’m being respectful by giving you space while still enjoying your company.
Slapping/scratching your hand when you try to pet them
Does not mean: I hate you!
Actually means: You’ve failed to establish that we’re not playing, or the way you’re approaching me scares me. Be calmer, speak more gently, make eye-contact and blink slowly at me before you try again.
I love dogs too but, I’ve been trying to tell people, you canNOT treat cats like you treat dogs. They arent the same animals and have very different personalities
P.s.: people often pet cats way too hard. Dogs like a firm pet or a pat on the belly, cats dont have the same bone structure and are more flexible than dogs so what you’re doing probably hurts them
Sitting and staring
Does not mean: I am challenging you/plotting your demise/just generally evil and creepy.
Actually means: I am a desert-adapted species, so my natural tears are very thick and keep my eyes moist for a nice long time. I do find people interesting and enjoy watching them. I just don’t need to blink very often!
Staring and blinking slowly
Does not mean: I’m smug and think I am smarter than you.
Actually means: I like you! But I don’t need to get up in your face to show it. I can just sit over here and blow kisses at you to show you I am glad you are around!
It’s very frustrating for me when people expect cats to act like dogs, or act like they’re deceitful. They aren’t! They just AREN’T DOGS.
Get ready for “more reasons why I fucking love cats”
Yes, the legends are true. Cats headbutt you to show their trust and affection. They also do it to show “hey look I see you as family.” Lions do it with members of their pride to say the same. It’s not just because they want food.
Cats nibbling is indeed literally cats grooming you. It’s what mom cats do to their kittens. If a cat is gently biting and/or licking you, they’re now your mom.
Meowing can simply be for the mere fact they want to say hello, want to play or be pet. Again, not just for food.
They barely meow at other cats (except for kittens, they meow at mom cat), mostly just humans. There are exceptions but overall, meowing is almost always for us.
Cats squinting/slow blinking is indeed basically the equivalent of us smiling and/or kissing.
Cats, like humans, prefer to get things without having to work for it- which isn’t very common within other animals.
Cat massages or making biscuits is because they happy! Kneading is another way of saying “hey I like this moment here I enjoy you and my life.”
Cats recognize us by smell, sound, taste, and touch. They recognize us after years as their long term memory is extremely good. This is why abused or neglected cats are so easily scared or hard to connect with. If your scent changes over the years or just in the day, your voice will them it’s really you. Also, they will only remember you if you had impact on their life. If you just existed in the same house, they obviously won’t care.
And yes, they know our patterns in the day. You notice it when it’s beneficial to them (feeding time!). They will often wait for you to come home as well.
To remember: cats think we are interesting as hell. They watch us do everything because we’re fascinating!!!
They also want you to be around when eating because they feel vulnerable. They focus on eating so they hope you protect them. They do the same for you, all the time.
when a cat turns their back on you, they’re not snubbing you. they’re trusting you to watch their back.
notice how when you’re unfamiliar but nonthreatening, they might loaf facing you and sorta halfway watch you. you’re not fully trusted, but you’re ok by them.
when you’re familiar and liked, they’ll often sit near you facing the same way. imitation of poses is a weird little way cats show solidarity. they do it to each other too. check out these bff’s:
they are doing this on purpose. it’s a buddy thing. so if you’re watching tv and a cat sits next to you and pretends to watch tv too, they are basically calling you bro and declaring friendship.
and if they really love and trust you, they’ll turn their back on you and go to sleep. they’ll sleep facing a wall in your presence, or lounge where they can’t see the room. this isn’t a snub, folks, this is true kitty love. they’re saying, “i feel safe when you’re around. i know nothing’s going to sneak up on me, because you’re here. i feel so safe i can stick my head under a pillow and snore with my butt pointed at you.”
farts aren’t an expression of love, though, as far as i know. they’re just farts.
A roguishly handsome adventurer who otherwise doesn't seem to much care for maintaining his rugged good looks, but is comically particular of his iconic ridiculous hat, which he never takes off. Like, ever. He sleeps with the hat tilted over his eyes, won't remove it indoors even at a dining table, bathes while wearing it. Nobody wants to know how the hell he washes his hair. Telling him to remove the hat is an absolute dealbreaker - if any place demands that he removes the hat before stepping inside, he'll rather wait outside by the door while the rest of the party does their business inside. It's obnoxious but what are you gonna do.
Then, when trapped in a situation where the party must either sacrifice one of its members or all will die, the guy volunteers, on one condition: the party must take his precious hat, and give it to someone worthy. Ideally someone spectacularly handsome who will look good in it, but he'd rather have anyone at all wear it, than nobody at all. Nobody in the party, though - none of them are allowed to wear his hat. Baffled but grateful, the party agrees to his conditions.
Some time later, once the rest of the party has escaped, they slap the hat on the first person they encounter and deem sufficiently fitting. The person freezes in shock, blinks twice, and suddenly shifts their stance to a familiar posture, sighing "oh thank the gods, you actually fucking did it", in a new voice but a familiar style and intonation. The character was never The Guy, it's a demon bound to the hat, who possesses whoever is wearing the garment.
A people who have an age-old tradition, that when warriors left home to go to war, their family that remains home prepare funeral goods for them while they wait, sewing them the clothes and preparing the tools and all that they will be buried with - to emotionally prepare them to the hard possibility that the one who left will not return home alive. If the warrior returns, their burial goods are all burned in a bonfire that is lit for the celebration of their return.
And to this modern day, mothers of the culture will tell their children "fine, but let me take your measures for burial clothes before you go" as a way of telling them that something they're about to do is lethally stupid. Sharing stories about just how dramatic their mothers are, someone tells their group of friends that his mother once actually took out a measuring tape to start taking his measures when he said he's leaving home for a work trip.
And another one goes "pfft, yeah. This one time I went to a rock concert and came back home to mom sitting on her sewing machine, fucking making me a funeral coat."
it is my experience that people with dermal implants and eyeball tattoos and 34 visible piercings are the sweetest people you'll ever meet and will cry if they see a pigeon with a broken wing. it is also my experience that clean-cut people in polo shirts with perfect smiles will vote against your rights and say the most disgusting things imaginable once they think you're out of earshot.
if you told vin diesel fast and the furious you were gay he'd be like "Some people like driving stick…some people like driving automatic…what matters is you cross the finish line.." and then he'd rev up a dodge challenger and drive through a building and kill 16 people
If you asked if he was cool with trans people, he'd probably say "sometimes, aftermarket parts are the only way to get the vehicle you really want. Everyone should have the right to hot rod."
The fundamental difference between Zenos and The Warrior of Light as Written--something that exists regardless of any particular WoL's disposition or motivations, all things subject to personal headcanon--is that the TWoLaW engages deeply with the world around them, and Zenos does not. The fundamental quality of Azem the Traveler, and the quality that is suggested to have been inherited by TWoLaW (and by Ardbert), is that they are deeply engaged with the world, and with its people.
Is it true that TWoLaW is disposed toward violence, sure, absolutely, for reasons of video game mechanics if nothing else. But I fundamentally disagree that violence is the core of TWoLaW regardless of how we roleplay them. At the core of TWoLaW is their engagement with the world. Yes, as a result of that, TWoLaW is willing to go kill people and things because they were asked to. You know what else they're willing to do because someone asked them to? Talk to people. Fetch things for them. Gather resources. Make things. Deliver gifts. Facilitate trade. Learn skills. Build community. Cross the seas to help a new friend. Explore. Uncover ancient mysteries. GO TO SPACE! And if you see Zenos as a foil for the player rather than the character, all this still very much applies.
You can roleplay the most curmudgeonly, antisocial, misanthropic WoL possible, you can even reject all side content and stick solely to MSQ, and you will still find yourself inhabiting a character who, as written, is fundamentally engaged with the world. They don't have to be happy. They don't have to be nice. They don't have to do any of what they're doing out of altruism. They're still making the choice to connect with other people, to invest themselves in the struggles and passions of others, to have a personal stake in shaping the world around them, because that is what the character is written to do.
Zenos's tragic flaw is his inability--and yes, perhaps, on some level, unwillingness--to connect with the world and the people around him. He finds no meaningful engagement with the world except to enact violence upon it. He has no personal investment in the Garlean Empire except as it allows him to enact violence, and by this disengagement he basically singlehandedly allows the entire empire to collapse because he doesn't care about it, only about fulfilling his own desires. The funny thing about Zenos as a foil for the protagonist is that he would make a terrible RPG protagonist. The archetypal RPG protagonist is so defined by their willingness to say yes to menial tasks that are only meaningful to some minor NPC that most modern RPGs end up lampshading that fact in some way, and it's endlessly memed upon. I struggle to imagine Zenos making it through the Company of Heroes fetch quests in ARR without getting bored and stabbing someone.
So all-encompassing is this worldview for him that even upon calling the WoL his only friend, he can find no meaningful engagement with them beyond "let us enact violence upon one another." Even the one person in the world he finds interesting enough to engage with, he is seemingly incapable of understanding on any other level. (And if you play a WoL with a desire to connect with Zenos on any other level, I think there's potential for a really interesting tragedy there! Because he either won't or can't.)
And we don't ever really get to challenge him on how narrow and stifling and miserable his engagement with the world truly is. Maybe there's a flicker of it at the very end, an acknowledgement that his life was fundamentally unfulfilling. Perhaps Zenos even sees, on some level, what the WoL has that he does not; maybe unconsciously in pursuing them, he seeks to figure out what that thing is. But then he dies, in his chosen manner, after getting the same one thing he's been pursuing as long as we've known him. That's what's sad about Zenos on a narrative level. Not that he dies, but that he dies unchanged and unchallenged.
And this is why I just can never quite get behind the idea that the core of the WoL is the same as the core of Zenos--no matter how many people the Warrior of Light has killed. I just don't believe that. When I look at TWoLaW, I see a character deeply engaged with the world. When I look at Zenos I see a character who never truly connects with anyone or anything outside himself.
Okay so just to sum up recent events on the US Right:
• Trump starts a contract with Peter Thiel's Palantir company to create a database of ALL INFORMATION on EVERY LIVING AMERICAN
• Its revealed Stephen Miller and Elon Musk have had a very massive fight, supposedly because Elon Musk is sleeping with Miller's wife
• Trump ousts Elon from the administration, after over five months of being besties. Leaves with Stephen Miller's wife, who he just hired at one of his companies (!?)
• Elon starts saying the Big Beautiful Bill sucks
• A GOP Representative reveals that most of them didnt actually get to read the Big Beautiful Bill, GOP leadership basically made them rubber stamp it and they are pissed to find out it makes them all look horrible. A lot of them are now discussing a shakeup in GOP leadership.
• Trump says Elon has "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (🤮)
• Elon escalates massively, stating that Trump is in the Epstein files and THATS why they havent released them yet
• This comes right as Alex Jones loses a massive chunk of his audience because he's endorsing Trump's Palantir contract, and his fans are basically all very concerned about their privacy. They want a new conspiracy to follow and they just got one
• Trump starts threatening Elon's government contracts
• Ian Miles Cheong calls for Trump to be impeached immediately, and for JD Vance to become President. Elon Musk quote retweets this with "Yes"
• JD Vance was mentored by Peter Thiel
• Steve Bannon takes to Fox calling for the immediate deportation of Musk, and making SpaceX a public company
• Musk also called for formation of a Third Party in the U.S. representing the "80% in the center" (Lmao). This has Centrists, establishment Dems, and GOP who are fed up with Trump SALIVATING
• There's a serious chance that they could form exactly such a coalition, which would lead to a massive shakeup in US Politics, its hard to say how exactly itll end up, but I daresay we wont end up with the same Dem/GOP structure we had before
• Also Kanye tweeted the funniest fucking thing ever
all goofing aside I genuinely don't understand the urge to reimagine Taylor Allison Swift as a secretly queer icon when the pop music scene(TM) is like. literally overflowing with women who actually like women. Gaga and Kesha and Miley and Halsey are right there. Rina Sawayama and Hayley Kiyoko and Rebecca Black and Kehlani and Victoria Monét and Miya Folick if you're willing to get slightly less top 100. Janelle and Demi for them nonbinary takes on liking girls. like what are we doing here. like I'm not even saying you can't enjoy Taylor but why would you hang all your little gay hopes on her.
why have multiple people reblogged this with some horse-assed "um actually most of these people are bi or pan" did I fucking stutter I said they like girls. what is your point. I'm going to kill you.
btw to just clarify for anyone who sees this reblog of this post
op is basically saying something along the lines of "yea ik taylor swift is bi but like. why is she y'all's only lgbtq+ pop icon when there are all these other lgbtq+ people in the pop scene???"
i might have worded this badly but hopefully i got the main point across
#I think it’s so funny I got that damn Taylor swift ad underneath this#anyways this is reminding me of that makeup post from way back when#where someone was saying no makeup is a valid way to wear your face and everyone kept insisting that you only need like….4 products
Please actually read the post because Taylor Swift isn't gay or queer you're just protecting because you want a reason to treat a real person like she's not humanly here.
If you want women or non-binary people to talk about their love of women there's actual bi/pan/lesbian artists who talk about their love of women and sing songs about it. You literally don't have an excuse to not listen to their songs at least once, especially if you're after W/W rep that Taylor Swift literally can't give you because she's Straight.
It's actually so simple in fact to find a song about kissing girls as a girl because there's a fucking song titled "I KISSED A GIRL" By LADY GAGA!!!!!
Wow this post was already infuriating last time I saw it and now it's so much worse. I genuinely hope people are just fucking with you op because there's no excuse for reading comprehension this horrific
english slang is awful i would hate to be learning this shit. like the word shit. something can be horseshit or bullshit which means it's a lie. but cow shit is just poop. and something can be dogshit which means it's really bad quality. but cat shit is just poop.
more notes: batshit means CRAAAZY. but rat shit is poop. if something is shit, it's bad, but if it's THE shit, it's good. eating shit is ew. but if someone just ate shit, they fell on the ground. no shit? = for real? yeah no shit = duh!!!
Preview of Basilisk, my personal favorite of my risograph comics, and the project all my other recent medieval-inspired art descends from.
Styled after medieval illuminated manuscripts and printed using a custom color palette requiring 5 risograph inks (including metallic gold), Basilisk asks the question: what would drive a teenage girl to create a monster?
Physical copies available here. To brag for a moment--this is my masterwork of riso printing and is even more impressive in person.
the Sharlayan dropout @syntheticdreamscapes - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
