Anonymous asked:
World building question (btw I love your world building opinions!): The riverlands is quite divserse so how would you describe the north riverlands (Freys/mallisters) vs the south I'm food, weather, and landscape? How much do they differ and compare? Is house Frey and house reed more similar in food and landscape than Frey and mooton or Tully?
While north and south would be important thanks to latitude conditions, I’d say that the geographic features of the Riverlands would break the region a little further.
Up into the furthest north, you’d see relatively cold weather because of the latitude band, but also you’d have winds coming in from Ironman’s Bay since the area is relatively thin without large mountain cover. Since the northern area dominated by the fast-moving Green Fork, you would see a transition from a cold water marsh in the Neck to a grassland. Food would primarily be cold weather grains like rye or barley, farm animals would include chickens, sheep, and hardy pig breeds like the Tamworth. You might see northern pike or carp in the Green Fork once it starts getting deep, with black drum, sheepshead, and flounder in the bay, and there would probably be a healthy duck population, which would be a regional delicacy. The eastern side probably has it’s fair share of clansmen troubles and brigandry that I’d imagine it was relatively sparsely populated.
Further south along the Blue Fork, you’d probably see a lot of good farmland since the ground looks to be nice and well-watered and relatively flat. Since the soil is moist, it would handle temperature variance better than other drier climates, so I could see a rich farming structure growing grains for both human consumption and fodder for animals. I’d imagine the rivers and lakes here would be rich with trout and other delicious fish, with plenty of game and fowl. The western side would probably be more populated than the eastern side.
To the west, you have the Red Fork and the foothills of the Westerlands, so I would imagine this would be a soil far richer in clay content, so I could see fruit trees being grown here along with root vegetables, broad beans, members of the cabbage family. Since the ground would be moister, it would be easier to cultivate and keep nutrient-rich compared to areas further west where it might be drier. Given the traffic on the River Road and the terrain, it would probably have bandits as a regular nuisance who can rob traffic along the road and retreat into the hills. If space is a premium, I could see people keeping goats or chickens as opposed to cattle.
Further east, you’d have the God’s Eye, with a nice mix of temperate forest, rolling hills, and grasslands. Farming would be relatively lucrative here, with managed forests and a relatively mild climate save during the winters. I’d see a strong mix of vegetables like peas and grains, with freshwater fish. As the Trident flows southeast, you’d see lower, flatter lands richly watered. The Bay of Crabs looks like your classic temperate water bay, I always think of the Chesapeake if only because Maryland, and the Chesapeake region in particular, loves to emphasize crab in their cuisine even as I recognize that Martin primarily uses Old World references for his agriculture. There are salt deposits and mudlats common to coastal regions. Obviously, you’d see a lot of salmon, which I guess would resemble the huchen, even if the classic red sockeye salmon is what the Mootons have on their sigil.
When you get much further to the south, on the border with the Reach, you’d probably see the terrain really open up into the grasslands and meadows of the Reach, the notoriously open border with the Reach that leaves the Riverlands primed for invasion.
I would imagine that House Frey, given it’s nature as a noveau riche house, would actively try to cultivate cuisine and culture that emphasizes it as part of the civilized south rather than the barbaric north in a means to demonstrate a noble pedigree, similar to how some folks try to put on airs. The Reeds in the Neck and other crannogmen would probably have their own distinctive culture, so I would think the Freys would have more in common with the Mallisters as far as cuisine goes, albeit one that has more freshwater fish than the coastal Mallisters.
I’m no farmer or rancher though, so someone else who knows better than me can correct me or add to this such as it is.
Thanks for the question, Anon.
SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King
Honestly the biggest disappointment I had researching ABC was that medieval authors did not, in fact, see the creatures they were describing and were trying their best to describe them with their limited knowledge while going “what the fuck… what the fuck…”
Instead all those creatures you know came about from transcription and translation errors from copying Greco-Roman sources (who themselves got them from travelers’ tales from Persia and India - rhino -> unicorn, tiger -> manticore, python -> dragon, and so on).
cringe-incarnate
So unicorns are real
behold… a unicorn
I always thought animals in medieval manuscripts looked like the result of having to draw say. A Tree Kangaroo, but your only source for what it looked like was your friend who heard it from a fellow who knows a man who swears he saw one once, whilst very drunk and lost, and I am SO PLEASED to find out this is, in fact, the case.
Questing Beast
- Neck of a snake
- body of a leopard
- haunches of a lion
- feet off a hart (deer)
So is it
Or….
weasowl
don’t forget that some of the legendary creatures they were describing were from other people’s mythos which were passed down in the oral tradition for gods know how long. You know what existed in Eurasia right around the time we were domesticating wolves into dogs?
these beasties. For a long time, science had them down as going extinct 200 thousand years ago, but then we found some bones from 36 thousand years ago. Which, y’know, is quite a difference. Since you can bet that any skeleton we find is not literally the last one of its kind to live, many creatures have date ranges unknowably far outside the evidence.
In South Asia there were cultures that described a man-beast/troll forrest giant who’s knuckles dragged the ground, and everybody from the west was sure it was superstitious mumbo jumbo, but you know what used to live there?
And did you know that some of the earliest white colonizers of the Americas heard accounts that there were natives still alive who had seen and hunted and eaten a great hairy beast, shaggy like the buffalo but much bigger, with a long thin nose like a snake and two giant fangs… so, like, mammoths, you know? but they were totally discounted because europeans of the time were like, elephants live in Africa and aren’t hairy, you can’t fool us, pranksters!
Anyway, the point is between the early writing game of telephone description thing talked about by OP, and the discounting of native cultural accuracy, I’m pretty sure most legendary creatures are in fact real animals one way or another
It can’t explain every single legendary creature, but yes, this is super important. Because History relies on written sources, it tends to sweep oral tradition under the rug, even if there’s a lot of interesting informations in it.
And it’s not just living animals that were badly described, or which descriptions got exaggerated over the course of centuries or through translation errors. Sometimes, people finding fossil bones of extinct animals might have also influenced some myths!
By now this is pretty well-known but it has been theorised that the Greek myth of the cyclops was started when people found Deinotherium skulls. Now you might say, uh, how is it possible to think a cousin of the elephant is a huge human dude with one eye?
Well-
- the big nasal opening kinda looks like an eye if you have no idea what kind of animal had this kind of skull (you can read more about this theory in this old National Geographic article if you like).
Here’s a less well-known one; the griffin is a mythological hybrid with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. The earliest traces of this myth come from ancient Iranian and ancient Egyptian art, from more than 3000 BC. In Iranian mythology, it’s called شیردال (shirdal, “lion eagle”). Now, it’s been the subject of some debate and it’s not confirmed, but there’s a theory that people might have seen some Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus fossils in Asia and might have interpreted it as “a lion with an eagle’s head”:
Check the “origin” part of the wikipedia page for “griffin” if you want to find more sources for this theory and for the arguments against it! Again, it’s just a theory, but I think it’s super cool.
This is a pretty well accepted theory for why dragons (or animals we group as like dragons, eg wyverns and drakes) are seen in mythos almost worldwide - because people found dinosaur bones, looked at them, and went “oh fuck what’s that? some big…. lizardy thing?” and then created dragons.
not sure why but vegeta using a phone is friggin hilarious to me
I will always reblog this!
Ocean Ramsey and her team encountered this 20 ft Great White Shark near the island of Oahu, Hawaii. It is believed to be the biggest ever recorded
She’s so beautiful!! 💙💙💙
SO lovely!
LORGE PAL :D
FRIENDS HOLD HANDS
God, I’m obsessed with this video. The way you can see all the scars and craters on her skin, the way the gill slits wave in the current, the sense of just how massive she is compared to that diver… it’s incredible. Just this enormous animal lazily swimming by the camera.
When 99% of the time you only see sharks in sped-up footage accompanied by threatening orchestral music and some narrator dude ominously intoning that it is “the most perfect killing machine the world has ever seen”, you tend to forget sharks are such beautiful creatures. This video doesn’t show a “monster shark” or a “killing machine”. It shows an animal - and a fucking beautiful one at that.
You know what’s more fun than worldbuilding that makes some fantasy races EEEEVIIIIIIILLLLL!!!!? Worldbuilding that gives the different races cultural differences that help explain why there’s a lot of conflict between them:
Goblin culture doesn’t have a concept of “Property”. A stick on the ground and a tool in a locked shed are equally up for grabs if a thing needs doing. They casually take and leave things all over their communities, eat from communal pots, and genuinely Do Not Understand why the Core Races are so Angry and prone to Violence all the time.
Consequently Goblins who live near Core communities develop a reputation as “Thieves” despite not even having a *word* for that. (The closest word they have is more like “Greedy” and it means a person that hides things so nobody else can use them, and it’s a surefire fight-starter to call a Goblin that)
Common Orc Spiritual beliefs hold that a Soul can only grow stronger by overcoming Challenges in life, and see intruding on another person’s Challenge unasked for as not just Rude, but Deeply Harmful. You’re Stealing their chance to Grow. Asking for help is deeply personal and doing so can be both a way to grow closer with them or a too-personal intrusion, depending on your existing relationship with them. An exception is Children, as far as most Orcs are concerned, all Children are fundamentally the responsibility of the Whole Community, regardless of whose child they are, or even if said child is an Orc at *all*.
This means that Orcs who live near Core neighbors often seem Rude and Standoffish if not outright hostile, because they neither ask for nor offer aid even in times of trouble, and respond to unasked for aid themselves with Anger. There are even rumors that they Steal Children, because if an Orc finds a child lost in the woods they’re pretty much immediately going to start feeding it, and if they can’t find where to bring it back to, or it doesn’t seem to be well cared for, they’re just gonna keep it.
This. I like this.
Anonymous asked:
How would you go about making the brackens more well rounded? As they're usually the baddies to the Blackwood goodies
Well, the best way is to make non-despicable Bracken members, I would think. House Frey got some great characterization, from those who were opposed to the Red Wedding to someone like Forrest Frey who made a neat, if brief, showing in the Dance of the Dragons. Contrarily, I don’t think we’ve had a single Bracken character who hasn’t been treated as a shitbox, even among the brief mentions. Olyvar Bracken defects from Maegor to Jaehaerys, gets sent to the Watch, and then rebels, breaking his oath to the Watch. Lyle Bracken fights Maegor in the trial of Seven, but dies pitiably. Amos Bracken acquits himself in combat but dies like a chump without even getting the chance to celebrate the victory.
Contrarily, another route that they might go is to make the Brackens also distinct and unique in a way that the Blackwoods are. The Blackwoods get the cool castle, they get the cool cloak, they get the cool tree. If the Brackens have some cool stuff, they might be able to be stylish baddies, which have their own distinct charm and appeal. As it stands now, the Brackens aren’t villains, they’re just shitty.
Thanks for the question, Anon.
SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King
hiddenhistoryofwesteros
I’d play up the religious angle. If the Blackwoods follow the Old Gods then the Brackens can claim to have provided no less than 77 Grand Captains. If the Blackwoods get a cool cloak then the Brackens get a sword hilt blessed by a High Septon who could work miracles. If the Blackwoods get a cool weirwood tree then the Brackens get an esteemed library that doubles as a Sept decorated with horse skulls and armor. If the Blackwoods get a nice valley to dwell in then the Brackens’ castle is famous for mixing stonework and greenery. As for individual characters, you could start by making the Brackens fierce opponents of King Maegor I.
Yeah, it’s a bit like my problem with A Dance with Dragons, where we see amazing Davos chapters mixed in with other lackluster ones.
If I were going to develop cool things with the Brackens, I would probably go in a one-for-one like you did here, to emphasize the Blackwood-Bracken rivalry and dichotomy. Given that the Brackens are one of the largest and most prestigious Riverlander families, they have a good amount of money which makes a lot of ideas much more feasible than they would be for other, less wealthy houses. I’d definitely want to emphasize the horsemanship aspects of the family by having one of if not the finest riding grounds in Westeros (certainly the greatest in the Riverlands), perhaps even having races with a riding purse ala Richard the Lionheart. It would certainly be a nifty way to distinguish games and competitions since GRRM loves his tournaments, and competing at horsemanship would be a great martial sport that could help keep Bracken retainers in top form.
-SLAL
I love this so much, I’m gonna start saying “nuts” we need to bring it back
I love b&w proper ladies breaking character with “sonofabitch”
critical role au: widogast’s nein
Caleb: This is the vault at the Vollstrucker. Located below the Strip, beneath two hundred feet of solid earth. It safeguards every dime that comes through each of the three casinos above it. [pause] And we’re going to rob it.
Art by Jian Guo
Alignments: ∎ Lawful Good ∎ Neutral good ∎ Chaotic good ∎ Lawful neutral ∎ Absolute neutrality ∎ Chaos neutrality ∎ Lawful evil ∎ Neutral evil ∎ Chaotic evil
WHOA
5theditionhomebrewing-deactivat
People were saying I should make some Magic Items. This was one of my first posts here. Cleaned them up a bit. Hopefully, they’re to your liking.
why now
A growing body of evidence shows that taking regular breaks from mental tasks improves creativity and that skipping breaks can lead to stress, exhaustion, and creative block.
The ideas you have while commuting, or in the shower are not coincidental. They’re a result of you taking a step back, whether you’re aware of it or not. The brain is built to detect and respond to change. Prolonged attention to a single task actually hinders performance.
From “For a More Creative Brain, Take Breaks on Purpose,” by Thomas Oppong
— — —
A short comic about missing someone you don’t know anymore but who used to mean a lot to you (and also she’s maybe haunting you, not entirely benevolently, as you drive eighteen hours back up the coast)
he’s died, once.
well, twice, but once before all of this.
(“it’s your choice, caduceus,” dad says, meting the leaves out into the strainer. “the time comes for all of us, there’s no rush. it’s just a sign of devotion.
but it isn’t, really, you know? colton and calliope, they’ve done it. colton never talks to him about anything, wouldn’t tell him how it was, but calliope said it was like falling asleep.
she was lying, though. he can always tell. mom always says that about him, that he pays attention when no one else does. clarabelle’s the same way, he thinks, just younger. will she be this afraid, or is it just him? is it something wrong with him?
“i know,” he says, and smiles, and doesn’t.
calliope has said he wouldn’t be able to taste the difference, but he can tell. it sticks in his nose like wet leaves to his shoes, and he wants it gone immediately.)
“we have diamonds,” he says, and nudges caleb out of the way to crouch over fjord, to move stray hair from his face. “it’ll be alright.”
jester shifts from foot to foot. “i’ll— i’ll start on orly,” she says, to herself more than anything, and runs over, tail flicking like an angry cat’s, nightgown sodden. beau’s eyes flick between her and caduceus, torn, and then she drops beside caduceus.
“okay,” she says, and sets her jaw. he can see she’s crying, even in the rain. caduceus knows very little about sailing, but beau is no captain. none of them are. “do you need help?”
“no,” caduceus says, and starts looking through his pouch. “just be here. having us, having friends— he’ll know, even where he is now.”
(faintly, he can feel himself carried to the yard, feel his legs swinging where they dangle from dad’s arms. dad and colton and calliope, they’ve always been stronger than him. maybe that’s it, why they’re not afraid. that he’s just weak.
he doesn’t feel any warmer when he opens his eyes, just cold. just afraid.
there’s no beautiful woman with hair like the leaves of the trees. there’s no lush field. there’s no revived forest. it’s dark, and cold, and he’s lying in a hole in the ground.
when he looks down, he can see his ribs. lichen and mushrooms sprout and cling in the cavity of his chest. life, but not his.
“caduceus clay,” he hears. it is not a voice that restores life to the dead. it does not run like the river in spring nor bloom like the flowers. it sounds like a woman, and it sounds like leaves already fallen, and it sounds like death. “i have been waiting for you.”
“i know,” he says. “i did this for you.”)
he puts the diamond on fjord’s chest and cups his hands over it.
(“you did not want to die,” the wildmother says. “that is okay.”
“i—” he says. “i’m sorry.”
“caduceus,” she says. “it is not the natural state to want to die. i would be worried that you were not one of mine, if you did.”)
the diamond shatters under his hands like glass and the shards glitter under a moon that is not there.
(“you are not one of mine not because you await death. there are other gods for that.”
“then why,” he says. he can feel himself crying, and the shaking of his chest shakes the fungi, too, rattles dirt loose from them. “why this?”
“devotion comes in many forms,” she says. “i do not decide them. you show your devotion every day you tend to the graves, every day you allow nature to continue where death has touched. this is another way, but it does not have to be.”
“what about me? what about calliope? i’m going to go back, dad’s going to wake me up,” and he’s seized with a sudden fear, “right?”)
he leans over fjord, so their foreheads touch.
“we’re not done here,” he says, “if you’re not done with us.”
(“if you wish it,” the wildmother says. “the earth takes time to claim what belongs to it. it waits for those who have decided not to return.”
“but i didn’t— i didn’t learn anything.”
“you have the fear of wrongful death in you, caduceus. you will know when you need to act on it.”)
“i call you home,” he says, and closes his eyes. “if you will come back.”
(when he wakes, he’s almost completely engulfed in an embrace. he thinks at first he’s shaking, and then realizes it’s dad, feels tears bleeding into his shirt.
“i was worried,” cornelius clay whispers. “calliope and colton, they’re fighters. i could tell they were scared, that they’d fight it. i didn’t know if you’d want to come back.”)
he makes sure fjord comes to between him and beau, both of their arms around him. blood soaks the both of them along with the rain, smears along the front of his nightgown, and he doesn’t care. he needs fjord to know he’s wanted here, with them. that they’re waiting for him. that he’s waiting for him.
dying’s not a rite of passage for the strong, the faithful, it’s not a badge of courage. it’s a departure, and it can always be reversed for those who don’t want to leave yet. it’s a tide that pulls, and it pulls the same if someone has fallen into it as if they’ve simply stopped resisting.
in his mind’s eye, he wades into the sea until it lurches against him freezingly, and pulls fjord’s body up, to him. the water drags at them both, and against it he carries fjord back to shore. back home.
Listen. Listen. The more I think about Essek’s reality the more amused I get. It’s like the Mighty Nein EXISTED to fuck his life over in the kindest way possible.
One of their first functional (and one of their most defining) actions as a group was when they stole a Beacon – one of HIS Beacons. A Beacon he took from the Dynasty and gave to the Assembly in an INCREDIBLY risky gamble, so risky it ultimately plunged the continent into war, because that’s how badly he wanted learn something about it.
And the Mighty Nein, on a fucking whim, vanished it from under their noses. NOT ONLY was Essek deprived of further research, but he couldn’t even smooth over the tensions on either side. Essek was probably the only person alive, besides the Mighty Nein, who could know for a fact that neither the Empire nor the Dynasty had what the war functionally started over. By stealing the Beacon, the Mighty Nein made sure neither side could be happy, and Essek was the one stuck in between.
But then, they returned it to the Bright Queen! Surely that’s good for Essek, right? Except, one, now he gets no more of the research he enabled a war for, and two, it wasn’t even traded as a price to stop the bloodshed, which seems to be something he genuinely wants. So, cool! Beacon #1 is certainly out of his hands, out of the hands of the people who might have told him SOMETHING about it, and it wasn’t even for the sake of the war ending. …Great! Fun. Okay.
But what did the Mighty Nein trade it for? Why, the freedom of Essek’s prisoner, of course! Because surprise! That’s one of their number’s husband. And it’s a complete coincidence. Were you using one of the poor saps conducting the research as a way to finally learn about said research, Essek? No longer. Yeza’s gone now. Suck it.
So, the Mighty Nein took a Beacon completely out of his hands, made it useless to him in every way possible, and removed his access to his one (1) avenue of information on the Beacon. That’s surely already Fuck These Guys territory for Essek, right?
Well, guess what Essek! YOU have been chosen to be the lucky drow who gets to babysit them! For the entire time! They’re here!
But hey, they’re only visitors, just keep them at arm’s length for a few days and then you’ll never have to see them aga- Oh look, your Den and by extension YOUR MOTHER gave them a house. They live here now.
And Essek just has to sit there like “… :).”
AND ON TOP OF ALL OF THAT, EVERY WEEK OR SO, THEY COME BACK AND SAY:
“Hey Essek! We just thought you should know, we think there’s a traitor in the Dynasty, crazy right?”
“Hey Essek, we think this possible traitor actually GAVE the Empire the Beacons, isn’t that WILD?”
“Hey Essek, did we mention that we have connections not only to the Empire but to the Assembly specifically, AND we have easy access to the Empire in general, so we can totally dig around there AND here as much as we like? Wow, not many people could do that, huh?”
“Hey Essek, did you know our monk is trained to ruthlessly ferret out the truth no matter what, and also she’s super invested in the well being of all these civillians? Boy, she sure seems to want to get to the bottom of things!”
“Hey Essek, did you know that our wizard who knows a lot about the arcane and is super interested in dunamancy and also has a perfect memory was a Scourger in training and speaks Zemnian? He can interrogate another one of your captives for you, wonder if they know anything about traitors or what the Assembly might be up to!”
“Hey Essek, we have a cunning plan to interrogate ANOTHER prisoner of yours! You know, that one who totally sold the Beacons! Aren’t we smart, don’t you like it?”
“Hey Essek! This prisoner seems to be innocent? Like, his memories were planted and he’s almost been… framed, or something? Wild! Let’s go tell the Bright Queen together!!!!”
“HEY ESSEK! Crazy news, we almost single handedly coordinated a peace talks, and we’ll be overseeing all the big interactions on both sides! Wonder what we could learn from those interactions? Anyway, bye!”
IT NEVER ENDS. IT NEVER, EVER ENDS FOR ESSEK. HE LIVES NEXT DOOR. JESTER MESSAGES HIM CONSTANTLY. HIS MUM OWNS THEIR HOUSE. HE’S BORDERLINE AT THEIR BECK AND CALL.
AND IT’S ALMOST LIKE THEY WERE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO COUNTERACT HIS EVERY MOVE.
WHICH HE HAS TO HEAR ABOUT. CONSTANTLY.
Not only should the Nein by all rights have disliked him, he by all rights should FUCKING HATE the Mighty Nein.
The Mighty Nein were the bane of his existence. He must have laid awake some nights, wondering if they were taunting him. How could they know so much, and yet not realise he’s the last person they should be confiding in? How could he have run into a group with an ex-student of one of the men he’s illegally working with, by accident? HOW could he have kidnapped, out of all the researchers involved with the Beacons, the one married to a Mighty Nein member? Why does the truth-sniffing monk know Undercommon now. WHY is the firblog so fucking perceptive. And please, please, why won’t the tiefling stop messaging him?
Surely, they’re taunting him. They’re his own personal hell.
And they keep inviting him to dinner.
…I think I’ve made the joke several times now that somewhere out there, the big players in the war must fucking hate the Nein, accomplishing so much by accident.
Well I’ve found out who that big player is and his name is Essek. It’s him. Everything the Nein have done of any significance has made specifically his life harder, and on top of all that?
They don’t even let him hate them properly, like Actual Nemeses™. Instead they gave him a morality crises.
Because that’s the final, most poetic indignity of them all.
After all that, he likes them.
you know when you kinda want to read and kinda want to write and kinda want to draw and kinda want to sing but it's late and you're tired and it's more like a desperate desire to really deeply dream
mcapriglioneart
how to draw arms ? ?
holy fuck
holy fuck is right… but… does it work with legs???
blixart
yes !!
but how much extend
petroleum-hare
^^^^^^^^^^
I NEARLY CHOKED
ENJFDFNFATFVFDF
zomibom
finally. i can be accurate
sherlock-im-not-gay
This is too fucking great to not reblog
I give it MASCLES
BIG MACHO
keithislactoseintolerant
🤣🤣
LMAOOOOOO
Okay but for anyone who legit wants to know how to calculate it correctly:
The elbow joint on average rests a couple inches higher than the navel, so if you measure how long the distance is from the middle of the shoulder to that point then you have the length of the upper and fore arms!
So if anyone’s wondering about legs too, the simplest rule of thumb is that the length from the top of the leg to the knee is equal to the distance between the top of the leg and the bottom of the pectorals:
And I wanna stress that when i say “top of the leg” i’m not talking about the crotch (please don’t flag me tumblr it’s an anatomical term) i’m talking about the point where the femur connects to the pelvis, which is higher up on the hips:
It’s easier to see what I’m talking about in this photo of a man squatting:
So yeah if you use that measurement when using this technique you should get fairly realistically proportioned legs:
But remember! messing with proportions is an important and fun part of character design! Know the rules first so you can then break them however you please!
im-a-hyperion-vault-hunter
HOW THE HELL DID I FIND THIS POST OMG
thehttydblog
Licherally in the midst of drawing a guy and crying at how bad the arms are. Thanks Tumbles
I only ever saw the part where people started drawing the limbs outrageously long and genuinely wanted to know how to fix that, so I’m really thankful to see the rest.
My dream au is where the Jedi are slightly up and to the left of normal. Beyond what they already are. Maybe they are a bit genre aware/meta. Just Jedi being the crazy space wizards that normal people are like ‘be polite but don’t invite them for dinner’.
Oh man, I love fics in which people who have supernatural/magical abilities are just… unnerving to ordinary people… either because their behavior really is a couple steps to the left of what’s considered “normal” or because they have decidedly nonhuman physical attributes. (I’m not really writing MCU fic anymore, but Asgardians! You gotta write Asgardians as a little freaky, because they’re magic and also aliens and also semi-immortal, so they’ve gotta be weird.)
I’m not really writing Star Wars atm (at least SW with lots of particularly Force-attuned Jedi), but things that would be unnerving off the top of my head (do I sound like I care “how the Force works”?):
- Jedi almost always react to something several seconds before anyone else. (In TCW, I imagine the clones roll with this immediately.)
- To the point where some particularly precognitive Jedi answer particularly strong thoughts before they’re said aloud.
- No, apologizing doesn’t really help, actually.
- Jedi making casual comments displaying a high degree of psychometric ability (the psychic ability to read an object’s history through touch) or postcognition (ability to divine the past).
- No, deep-cleaning your house won’t help. They know where that’s been. They know where everything’s been.
- Jedi making casual conversation with non-sapient creatures.
- Jedi being better at predicting the weather than any technology.
- This is more annoying than anything else if they have this ability and keep not checking the weather anyway, or straight-up keep failing to inform you that it’s going to rain later.
- Jedi using technology from across the room.
- They can and they will thoughtlessly flip a switch from across the room, without dropping the conversation. No, their technology isn’t all automatic. It’s them casually using the Force.
- Jedi displaying more physical awareness of your body and your surroundings than you yourself.
- “Sorry, you were going to bump your head.”
- Jedi who are powerful empaths always know your real mood.
- “Sorry, you were projecting. Is everything okay?”
- Jedi casually knowing what’s going on in the next room or making a comment that makes you realize they can eavesdrop on every conversation in a fifty meter radius.
- They know it’s rude. It’s mostly unintentional.
- Jedi floating, like, at all.
- ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S AN ACCIDENT.
- HOW DO YOU FLOAT ON ACCIDENT???
It’s really no wonder that the Jedi Council stresses control, because an open connection to the Force could be brutal on a person’s mental, emotional, and physical stability. (I’m still a little ticked we didn’t get overloaded, slam-dunked into the Force, out-of-control Rey in TLJ.) Jedi culture in the Temple must have been pretty interesting, from the standpoint of a building full of people with superpowers. I know the clones in TCW aren’t, like, paid, but that just means they’re definitely not paid enough to deal with this Jedi bullshit.
So I hug this post and run wild with it because this is the Truth
consider: caleb is in love with jester and essek because they remind him of astrid and eodwulf and he’s a mess
caleb-widogastt
I love this, but also consider: it’s an inverse of the genders. He sees Astrid in Essek: A brilliant and inventive arcanist who is Caleb’s intellectual equal or even superior in every way. A mind that lives on the cutting edge of magic. In Jester he sees Eodwulf: Brilliant as well, of course, but also the idealist always looking for the better tomorrow and the best in everyone…who could also benchpress Caleb with ease.