let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Love Begins
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Monterey Bay Aquarium
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Origami Around
PR's Tumblrdome
JVL
Kiana Khansmith
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Janaina Medeiros
macklin celebrini has autism
almost home
JBB: An Artblog!
Andulka
AnasAbdin
tannertan36
hello vonnie
Peter Solarz
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@wanderingsalads
I did a thing, I learned how to take screenshots without the UI. I feel like such a derp. But I stood in Mount Maelstrom and yanked all my visual settings as high as they would go (at that time my FPS promptly went to shit) and waited for some lava! I'm just so proud of her. Once she has her legendary, oowoo baby.
So I finally finished my personal story, after having Aureva for like, over a year. I got to the level 70 ones and I just got bored, plus I didn't like doing them alone cause Aureva is squishy. But I sat down and forced myself through the rest, and it was really cool!! Gosh, Zhaitan is so neato.
The Pale Tree is the greatest supercomputer ever created, and other GW2 thoughts.
My roommate (irategeologist) and I had this really long conversation that started on the way to Steak 'n Shake, shut up we are poor college students, and ended once we got home from said food trip. We are both scientists, we both like finding the scientific, often biological, root to fantasy and sci-fi creations. So we started on this conversation that started with "why do sylvari glow?" and ended with "the Pale Tree is fuckin ridic." Of course we had a short side trip into vampire biology, but I'm going to skip that part. If you are not up to date on the living story as of 12/9/2014, especially if you play sylvari, you should probably not read this.
In short, here are the points we agreed on, with much debate as he knows more about computer/earth science and I know more about biological science. We put it into terms of a computer and electric components, because that made sense. I'm still trying to put this into biological terms but I'm getting there.
-Major revelation: The Pale Tree is basically a massive biological supercomputer who has perfected AI.
-The sylvari born of the tree are true AI, they are programmed with the tree's knowledge that she gives them while they are growing in the Dream, and once they are separate from her they live their own lives.
-However, this does not mean she has let them go. She has hardwired into them the Dream, which connects all sylvari, and from this she can remotely gather all their sensory information and store it (memory seeds), she can also, if she wanted to, presumably send information through this link but it would be limited. Basically, everyone is on 2.4 GHz wifi.
-The Avatar of the Pale Tree, in this sense, is a robot. She is disconnected from the Tree itself, but she is on 5 GHz wifi that no one else is on, she's on like 5 billion GHz. So she can get huge packets of information from the tree and act as her speaking consciousness, but she can't go far, and she can't make her own decisions.
-Sylvari who leave the Dream go crazy on some level, we know that. See Scarlet, Aerin, etc. Put into technological terms, they decide to try and change their software, remove the wifi receiver, but they don't know how it works. Therefore, their attempts end up damaging it, and causing system instability.
-We still can't agree on the glow thing. The wiki says luminescent cells, but really the only instance I see that in eukaryotic cells is from a symbiosis with cells from the other two domains of life, bacteria/archaea. I think only bacteria really. I think the glow is from an endosymbiont in those cells, but that raises the question of how long that was developing. The Pale Tree's only been alive like what, 200 years? Symbioses don't happen that fast, more like thousands if not millions of years. And Malyck has the glow too, so it isn't a Pale Tree thing, it's a cross-species thing.
-I went on a little tangent about how sylvari change. They can change their hair, we've seen that with young Caithe, but how? Do they prune it? Does it hurt? They are a unique mix of animal and plant. They must eat and drink, but they can also photosynthesize. They have veins, but in them flow 'golden sap'. So, what is the extent of their ability to feel pain, how sophisticated is their nervous system. I would think that it would be minimal, because why would the Pale Tree put effort into it when it's not necessary. But their hair is a true extension of themselves, so does it grow in a determinate manner, like our extremities? Their leaves aren't in any way analogous to our keratin hair.
-Where did the seeds come from? All we know is that they are from a caravan. The big questions that was risen in the game was are there other trees. My question, where did they come from? Were they magically altered to produce sylvari-bearing trees? We think so.
-So then we turned to the fact that the Pale Tree is ingesting all this information, and is still doing biological processes. I really want to figure out the integration of plant and animal characteristics in true sylvari, but I digress. My roommate thinks she is tapping into what he calls 'fossil magic'. Like fossil fuels, it is a well of ancient magic that is extremely powerful. We know magic is like regular energy, it can only be transformed. So she is pulling this from unknown sources, likely underground. She is gaining sustenance from this pure magic, and while she does likely still photosynthesize and do plant things, it's entirely likely it's just secondary. This level of energy makes her literally a dragon-level magical artifact, self made. Only a dragon could harm her, as we saw.
-So, to keep up with the changing nature of the world and its threats, she must be constantly rewriting her own DNA and 'data banks' to keep her sylvari children prepared for life outside of her. She is literally constantly evolving, upgrading her software. She can even change the cells of the sylvari that haven't yet left the tree, which doesn't happen in animals after embryo formation. There was more about this we talked on, but he got so excited I missed a bit.
Fargut, want to continue this?
The newly awakened
my first thought: Naked Sylvari, naked Sylvari everywhere
T__T
SAME.
Everyone needs a little chubby mordrem puppy in their lives.
O CHRISTMAS CHARR O CHRISTMAS CHARR
my anaconda don’t
So I bought Episodes 1 and 2 with gems for Season 2 because they came out when I wasn't really playing that much and I played through them yesterday. And OH MY GOSH. Omadd's machine?! Coolest shit.
Also Taimi is a sweet perfect little doll and if anything happens to her I'll flip Anet's collective table.
tfw…
Ayooooo got to lvl 400 Weaponsmith with Aureva today! One step closer to that legendary...
Here's a fashion/growing timeline of Aureva that nobody wanted but I'm doing it anyways.
Aureva means a lot to me. She is my first level 80, my first character period, and she has grown with me over the past couple years. All my best stuff goes into her. In my canon she is about 5 now, not doing too bad for a salad, and she's been through some emotional turmoil to get where she is.
Her connection to the dream and her personal Wyld Hunt has been tenuous at best. She's done a lot of beating around the bush, no pun intended.
Pic 1: About level 40, a couple months into playing. Aureva didn't really want anything to do with anyone. She ran around Tyria and did whatever pleased her, but nothing approaching difficult. She covered her face and made herself look intimidating so people would leave her alone.
Pic 2: Probably around level 60, she got a little more playful. She started hanging around a mesmer, and got a little more experience. That backpack man, it's her favorite.
Pic 3: Still covering up a lot, and with the mesmer they starting doing things that challenged her. Fighting got a lot more interesting, and she changed her color scheme to reflect. It really was a weird time.
Pic 4: Here is the turning point. Level 80. Aureva started to understand that she would make it. She started doing things on her own, and covering up didn't feel so important anymore. I started pouring gold into buying her nice things, and sweet ass daggers. The world was in an upswing. As you can see, here is where I got really into GW2. I starting looking up blogs, realized I could take nice pictures, and I really got super attached to Aureva.
Pic 5: Here is where things got complicated. She started doing everything alone again because she knew she could. In my life, I started gravitating away from my boyfriend, and Aureva didn't see that mesmer around so much anymore. She wanted to be fabulous and beautiful and have people know it. This is when I first began saving for a legendary, but I was still reluctant to do things like WvW and I sucked at bosses. Not long after this, I got all my closest friends to buy GW2 when it was on sale, and suddenly Aureva was the know-it-all and she had to guide everyone and suddenly she started doing big world things. And it was fun, and she had fun.
Pic 6: The mesmer was gone. Aureva reflected my emotional state. I spent money to get her looking just how I wanted her, and I played furiously, grinding and farming and just doing all the things I said I would do because I needed to PROVE I could do it, and do it alone. The Aureva in this picture is angry, and hurt, and she will burn anyone who gets too close because she won't be hurt again. I made real progress on my legendary and map completion, but I crashed not long after and didn't play for a month or so.
Pic 7: Here is where we are today. Actually today, I just took this is Silverwastes. Aureva isn't so angry anymore, but she isn't ready to let go of the security of fire. Actually, she sort of likes it a lot now. Her playful spirit is coming back, and it seems she is being karmically rewarded for letting things go (check out that hella awesome ascended staff I looted, and mini Monkey King!). She is actually achieving the things she said she would, we got map completion yesterday. She's showing off, and she's having fun, and her new friends (a engie, a new mesmer, and a thief) are making sure she stays on track. She still isn't too connected to the dream, but since she has her own dream I guess it doesn't matter that much.
A few days ago I finally got to really hang around with lowlandburns (Aereeyn), and it was hella fun. We danced near the Mystic Forge for like...an hour. My friend irategeologist was there too (Fargut!) I'm not totally sure who Caedwen is or if they are on tumblr, but if you are we should be friends!
So I haven't been really able to play in a while because of graduate school kicking my ass. Recently, I finished a project so I decided to sit down and actually play. It's been pretty good, doing my thing, trying to get back into the groove.
Last night, my friend tells me we're green in WvW. Now listen here, when I was first working on map completion and realized I had to go into WvW, I was pretty disappointed because it wasn't my thing. I avoided it, but finally went in and we were green. I thought a regular rotation of colors was normal, but not for Henge of Denravi it isn't. Three months, THREE MONTHS it's been since we were green, and I didn't finish the green area of the eternal battlegrounds. I've been waiting three months to do map completion, I completed everything else.
So obviously, he tells me and I start rolling around and yelling in excitement. I was at a party though, so I had to wait, At this party I sorta got hella drunk so I haven't been able to play until now. I think GW2 is trying to get me back into the game because my luck has been FANTASTIC. Just today I have...
-completed the map
-looted an exotic dagger
-looted my first ever ascended weapon chest
-was given a weapon from the exotic hunter collection
Really, the only way I could be any happier was if I looted Spark.
I really don't have anything much to say about Lady Magosa yet. She's a level 16 necromancer, I'd like to use her in dungeons or something eventually, but she has her little entourage of monsters and she runs around by herself and looks sad a lot. I think her title definitely means something, but I'm not sure what. But she's here if anyone's interested.
Okay, hmmm, since I'm anime trash here's Osuhachi, which means male bee. He's a level 20ish thief. I don't really do anything in game with him yet he's too little. His premise was I wanted a very colorfully dressed clearly genderfluid male (I mean, all sylvari are basically fluid and pan but THATS FINE IGNORE THAT) and male bees look almost exactly like their sisters, have no use in the colony. Basically steal resources, maybe mate with a new queen, and die. Osu is just like that, yay! I really wanna roleplay him, I think he's a little quiet and skeptical of life because he's so young, but he's really interested in relationships. His dream was sort of muddled and didn't make much sense, so he's just floating around until it happens.
Whatever, let's just start off this dumb side blog.
Aureva is my main salad, she's level 80 and really likes fire. She's heard the joke about the plant being on fire several times, don't even start. Doesn't really have friends, more like allies for tough areas. I spend most of her time with world bosses, new level 80 content, and farming for Incinerator and Coalforge's Razor. She was close with a mesmer a while ago but...she doesn't talk about it.
