as someone with Very Normal Thoughts about ratio's "cornered prey" line, can u talk about that one pls and ty 👁️👁️
Outing myself as a fake Ratio fan here because I didn't even think of that line when I was noodling on this one (although it's a working title) lmaoooo SORRYYYY
One snippet! :D I started this like a thousand years ago (November 2024) so who knows if I'll actually FINISH it... plus I'd be so tempted to rewrite it since my writing has gotten better since then (he said, optimistically) weghhh
I've slowly been developing writing quirks which I am categorizing as a 'style' so I can continue living in sweet, falsely-rationalised denial; the list is probably longer than this but off the top of my head it includes forgetting to close parentheses, creating over-long compound sentences via excessive use of emdashes and semicolons—which I refuse to allow the AI to take from me—and playing mix'n'match with UK and US spellings of words (I'll get back to you when I inevitably find more...
✨ Aventurine Analysis: Which Came First - the Stone or the Stoneheart? ✨
Do you guys ever think about how aventurine (AKA Goldstone) is a man-made semi-precious stone created by a reduction of copper ions added to molten glass and sealed in a hypoxic (no oxygen) environment that gives it a glittery effect known as aventurescence?
And do you ever think about how the word 'aventurine' itself (to quote Wikipedia) "derives from the Italian "a ventura" meaning "by chance". This is an allusion to the lucky discovery of aventurine glass or 'goldstone' at some point in the 18th century."
And do you ever think about how Aventurine (the natural gemstone) was named after the glass instead of the other way round, because it has a similarly glittery quality?
Because I do!
And then I think about how Aventurine (the character) was originally bought/sold for copper(!) coins, and came from a desert planet (glass is made from sand), and how it's actually pretty plausible that Aventurine's Cornerstone - based on the natural stone and not the man-made stone as far as I can tell - was actually named after him and not the other way round.
Analysis/explanation below! :)
Theory: what if the Cornerstones aren't a set of predetermined stones that get passed down, but rather a new Stoneheart gets their own stone that's unique to them upon induction?
For example, take Obsidian: she expresses an enjoyment of bloodshed, has a line where she says that it's 'no fun for prey to die a natural death', and has vampiric design motifs, which can be thematically-aligned with real obsidian. Historically, it's been used to craft weaponry sharper than steel out of volcanic glass, therefore associating it with bloodshed and destruction, plus the word 'obsidian' means 'of darkness' - suitably vampiric!
I personally think it's more likely that she was Like That before receiving her Cornerstone and that it was created to fit her, as opposed to the other way round (although I recognize it's not completely implausible for Diamond to have had the Obsidian stone conveniently vacant at time of hiring, or even actively searched for employees who fit the stone's 'aura', maybe).
Kakavasha's trial was called the 'Egyhazo Aventurine Case', which would - unless it's A) lore oversight on Hoyo's part, or B) just a wild coincidence - support the idea of him being called Aventurine before receiving his Cornerstone, especially since he would have needed a name other than his birth name to go by in-between being hired by the IPC and becoming a Stoneheart (based on conjecture and educated guessing). Jade told him the following at the end of his trial:
"Kakavasha... A good name, but unfortunately destined to be buried in the dirt. You though, you deserve to live, to create even more wealth for us. Go, pick the clothes you like, then choose your desired identity... and then use them well, child."
Naming himself after the court case that became his job interview is as good a pick as any, especially on short notice since he probably didn't have a lot of time to mull it over.
*deep breath*
So: Aventurine, forged in a suffocating environment from copper pieces and desert glass (and displaying the potentially lucrative 'glitter' of schemes and stratagems long before assuming his current role) being the inspiration for the similarly-glittering Cornerstone, the Aventurine of Stratagems, doesn't seem too far-fetched to me!
Plus it also clears up the vague irritation I always felt at his pre-employment (let alone pre-Stoneheart) court case being called that lmao
Thank you for reading! I wrote this instead of working on a project I was supposed to be working on ✌️😌
Bonus content for getting to the end of the post: some nice pictures of Goldstone vs natural aventurine :)
Tagged by @third-time-charmed many moons ago and I definitely didn't completely forget!!! !! :) !
A game where you post the titles of everything in your WIP folder, then people send in asks to pick one for you to drop a snippet of it or some info about it 👀
Now, organization-wise I don't have a 'WIP folder,' per se (closer to a 'WIP scattering' like a field of corn) so these are just whatever I dredged up from... Wherever they came from :P
An Unprofessional Confession
Aftermath
Cornered Prey
Shattered
Lucky Number Eight
There is a high likelihood that the people I'm about to tag have already been tagged somewhere along the line but oh well! :) I'm tagging @tayzzyronth-ao3, @mikansei, @rewriterory, @ppengwing, @lostlegendaerie, and ANGELBEE IF YOU'RE READING THIS I'm really sorry I don't remember your @ on here but you too!!
(Also for those of you who are aware of number 4 you're under an NDA ;) )
Tumblr feels like having your own personal cove. Water laps at the shoreline to bring you many interesting things from many interesting places.
Some of them have drifted to your shore from the next cove over, perhaps from that person who makes those little ships in bottles that you think are so beautiful, or perhaps from the person whose scribbled jokes on post-it notes make you laugh when they arrive: dog-eared and soggy, but still legible enough for you to dry out and send on their way for someone else to exhale through their nose in amusement at.
Some of them travel far from distant lands before coming to rest on your little beach: ones marked with a flame to indicate that someone wanted the S. S. Four-Twenty to send it to as many people as possible, or ones that have been appreciated by so many others before you that they're tattered and have several other additions stapled to them and you're not really sure who even wrote them in the first place.
You get used to your little cove. You like it here. The things that wash up have contents you expect and enjoy, because you told the big blue sea that you liked that one and want to see more.
And every now and then, one of those unique places beyond the horizon starts sending things you don't expect.
Sometimes these surprises are not your thing, but you keep opening them, because you like the person that sends them.
Sometimes they become your thing, when you see enough of them that you're curious what the person from the next cove over is so adamant about.
Sometimes, they're something that you've seen before from someone, then not for a while, and you can't help but smile when you see that thing washed up on the sand again, your heart warm with the knowledge that they've rediscovered that thing they used to love so much.
And sometimes that thing is Transformers and you're once more blessed with Optimus Prime and Starscream fucking nasty on your dash
Just started Planarcadia in HSR (I KNOW, I KNOW, also spoilers for the beginning of Planarcadia in case anyone else is also critically behind like me lmao) and like,,,
I can only assume that Yao Guang REEKS of Aventurine because I'm Aventurine-pilled and not because there's actually anything going on there (parallels-wise or plot-relevance-wise, I mean), but like...
It is STIN-KY (ramblings under the cut because I wanted to yap about it somewhere, TELL ME NOTHING, I haven't even met Ashveil yet lol)
The 'Strategist' having 'stratagems' and all that jazz is on the nose, ofc
As is the peacock imagery (he did it first!! Or at least. Meta-wise he did it first >:( IDK if she's a long-life species (probably older than him either way idk) Shoutout to his inferiority complex and her having more 'tail feathers' than him, so to speak. I want them to meet so badly hahah
Her being super good at reading people... maybe this is more personal hc than actual canon BUT it is said in-game that Avgins are particularly emotionally intelligent and I've always interpreted him at also being very good at reading people... I can just picture them looking at each other in silence and playing 4D chess mind-games before they've even said anything out loud
All sorts of mentions of good luck and coin flips and games and such
The line from Sunday, "throwing out heavy profits first is usually a lure to make others lose." lmao telling on yourself there bb but at least you're learning!!
Yao Guang's general talk of odds/percentages with Pearl and how she said that the odds become 100% if she throws herself into the equation (although tbf that is a little different to Aven's general principle of going all-in despite the odds and saying that even if the chance is low he'll still win, as opposed to the chance actively increasing because he's there)
(Side note from the above point, as I learn more about Pearl I have so far come to the conclusion that Aventurine must piss her off so much and that's so fucking funny
Or he'd at least thoroughly bemuse her in terms of her percentage-likelihood calculations of the chance of success... she's like, "Yeah the percentage chance of you surviving that was five-point-two, that was... quite unexpected," which she doesn't necessarily mind until it's the fifth time in a row that his chances are catastrophically low and he's STILL completely fine., at which point she's like, "The chances of you rolling eighteen sixes in a row with a dice loaded to land on a one are so close to zero I have hit my maximum computing capacity for storing decimal points," and he (not listening) flips a coin onto the table for fun and it lands on its edge and stays there
(Also side note but interesting how Sunday's mask is shaped like the Dream Master's bird face... wonder how he feels about that. ALSO ALSO second side note I'm delighted to discover that he has telepathy. The possibilities are endless >:D)
