Okay so I found its little baby and 13 of his siblings in a planter of mine. I need to know if I should put them back or set them free somewhere (no matter their ID I'm not killing them, no worries.)
I'm in France. And I'm hesitating between European rose chafer larva and June beetle larva (hanneton in French). And given their wildly different effects on plants...
I'm going to set them aside for now.
It's very difficult to ID a species based on just photos of the grub. If you're worried about plant health, I'd remove them from the planter for sure as they generally eat plant roots. Assuming the planter was outside and that's where they came from, it's fine to release them into soil somewhere. But if it's an indoor non-native plant that came from an indoor nursery, there's a risk it was imported and these are non-native and releasing them is a bad idea.
So I follow you because I stumbled on your Witcher fic on AO3. But the tags on the "unskippable cutscene" post got me curious. What are your headcanons on the Plague Tale games?
God, you've really gone and done it now
Idk if you've played the second game, so if you haven't uhhhh don't read this? idk, suit yourself, I'm gonna share one headcanon that isn't too spoilery (meaning it's from the middle of the game and not the end)
So my headcanon is that before Arnaud was a knight, he was a sailor. I think this is pretty much confirmed by various things, some in the context of the game, others outside of it.
[Edit: I have had to reformat this post because apparently on dash if you click expand on a long post it automatically opens a read more, so I'm moving the read more up here for spoiler reasons. It's not what I'd like, but oh well.]
Firstly, my in-game evidence
Hugo and Amicia go through the game telling multiple people about the island they're searching for, but no one can ever pinpoint it from the description they give. Then at the beginning of chapter 7, we learn that Arnaud knows not only exactly what island they're looking for, he knows its name and location (as evidenced by the fact he tells Amicia it's a "ten mile fucking swim" from where they are).
Now, how did he learn about La Cuna? How did he learn the siblings were looking for it? Surely not from Hugo at the end of chapter 6, because that was a very time sensitive situation, as Amicia was about to be eaten by rats. And besides, at that point, Arnaud had already hunted them down again, but obviously had no longer any intentions of killing Amicia, since he stepped up to Hugo instead of just watching her be eaten from afar.
This means that he knew about the island before he made his deal with Hugo. So my guess is that it has to do with why he was looking for Vaudin in chapter 2 (a question i've seen pop up multiple times online). It's never exactly specified whether the Count was affiliated with the order (or if it was I missed it in the chaos that was the last third of the game), but I don't think it's a coincidence that he moved to the very place where the macula originated. SO I think that Arnaud was looking for Vaudin to trace Victor through the order. Obviously Amicia got there first (probably leading Arnaud to believe she works with the order, fuelling his disdain for her), but what if Arnaud eventually made it into Vaudin's lab? What if he saw the mural of La Cuna and recognised it? And how would he recognise it from just a picture? That's right, by being familiar with the mediterranean sea.
Another piece of evidence is that he knows a lot about ships. In Chapter 7, when the siblings crest the hill and overlook the sea, Arnaud comes up from behind them and tells them about Sophia's ship. A discreet, fast ship. I don't know about you, but I don't think I could tell whether a ship is fast just from looking at it. Discreet, maybe, but not fast.
We know from Arnaud that Sophia owes him for not killing her when he was ordered to. And wouldn't you agree that it would be pretty idiotic to send footmen to deal with smugglers in their sailing ships? You need sailors for that. Preferably soldiers who were once sailors, so they can both capture the smugglers' ship and do away with the smugglers themselves.
And then, once they get to the ship, Sophia trusts Arnaud to get the ship ready to set sail. And when the anchor gets stuck, he knows right away that it was blocked. He doesn't think it might have caught on something, he knows its blocked, probably from experience and the way it feels. Then, when it comes to hoisting the sail, he knows right away which ropes to pull, and he says he'll "take port-side". If he didn't know about ships, he would hardly know that term - I sure don't.
Later, during an optional scene at the beginning of chapter 8, Sophia says she needs a hand because "the sail's pulling port side", so Arnaud takes charge and tells Amicia to pull the rope on the other side, and that he'll give her some slack on his. Again, he knows which ropes to pull and how to fix Sophia's problem, and she doesn't feel the need to instruct the two on what to do. The same thing happens again in chapter 14, as well.
This man knows what he's doing. Clearly he has sailing experience.
Now for my evidence from sources other than in-game. There are more serious endgame spoilers here, so don't read if you haven't finished the game yet (Pii, if you're reading this, click off now. I mean it. Don't.)
Right, so in the gameplay reveal trailer for Requiem, Harry Myers, who is Arnaud's voice actor, recites the poem "Requiem" by Robert Louis Stevenson (I know, I went insane when I learned the poem is called Requiem too).
When I first heard it I already thought it actually fit Arnaud well even outside of his VA performing it, but I told myself I was just being delusional, and that it was obviously intended for Amicia and Hugo, since they are the focus of the trailer.
Well.
I was wrong.
This set of tweets pretty much confirms that the poem was chosen with Arnaud in mind.
And with THAT in mind, the line "Home is the sailor, home from sea" is also applied to him. Maybe this seems like a reach, maybe I'm reading too much into it because I want it to be true, but I would not put it past the people who chose a poem whose title matches the game title to do this on purpose.
So yeah.
this is my case for why Arnaud Malpart used to be a sailor.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk. I DID turn into an unskippable cutscene.
We have northern lights (Auroras) on earth, but they are caused by solar winds creating a shift in the magnetic field of our planet. For instance the picture below (that I took from the nasa website again) is from 2 years ago (hopefully the photo sharing will work this time as it’s why I’m “submitting” this ask…) :
Given there is a similar phenomena on Nirn, I was wondering: What causes the Auroras north of Tamriel?
frenchy-lu replied to your post “I keep thinking about how Sheogorath in Skyrim says something to the...”
I'm wondering if he refers to Antoinetta Marie, from the dark brotherhood in oblivion? Thus an assassin, and he'd have to kill us. Idk.
Ohhhhhhh, I didn’t once think about that! It definitely makes the comment a lot less random.
It wouldn’t be the first time I confuse a DB reference for something else, like the severed head being Mathieu Bellamont’s mom’s head and not the random severed heads you can find around the game lol
Hi! I believe this is a carpenter bee? Tho I might be wrong. (It was on the side walk so I put it to safety somewhere it wouldn't be stepped on). Photo was taken in the suburbs of Paris.
Yes, a carpenter bee! Most likely a violet carpenter bee. She is.....large. I love her.
New Life festivities sound dangerous in your family. Do you have any anecdotes/family drama from that time of the year that you could tell us?
I have plenty of family drama I could share, but very little I feel like sharing and even less I am willing to commit to the written word right in the moment.
Haskill used to regularly appear at Tharn family gatherings to spend whatever little vacation he was given somewhere peaceful and quiet. As far as I know, there were only four of us who have actually noticed him; everyone else was too busy trying to subtly kill each other for inheritance and social status. And of those cousin Magna Viola did so only because he had absolutely no reaction whatsoever to five spoons of cyanide.
