actually the timeline of riverdale is everything. riverdale was founded in the 1940s, but riverdale also existed as a town in 1890. jason and cheryl are twins but jason is a senior while cheryl is a sophomore. the coopers and blossoms became separate families in very recent history but there is an existing line of coopers in the 1800s. the witch trails also existed in the 1800s. archie was born in 1995 but is the same age as jughead, who was born in 2001. the lodge family didn’t exist until hiram decided to change his name in high school and invent them, making him the oldest lodge ancestor. fp joined the serpents to escape his dad, but his dad is also a serpent, but his dad is also a simple writer holed up in the woods. the smith family is from the south side but also no theyre not. wwi happened recently enough that archie was able to fight in the trenches after graduating high school. the thornhill we see in season six is the same one the blossoms were living in during the 1800s, but cheryl also burned it down and rebuilt it junior year. seven years have passed since their highschool graduation in either 2019 or 2020 but the current year is 2021. and that’s barely even scratching the surface.
Apparently a part of the reason why farmed bees stay in the beehives that humans build for them is because the farm hives are safer and sturdier. I don’t know how a busy Discord server’s worth of bugs that only have one brain cell each would logically conclude that the humans protect them from outside threats, illness and parasites, but if I understood right, the bees would be free to move away and build a new nest somewhere else any time they’d want, and they simply choose not to.
You know how in almost every culture, people have some concept of “if I sacrifice something that I made/grew/produced to the Gods, they will ward me and my harvest from evil”?
So, in a way, don’t the bees willingly sacrifice a part of their harvest to an entity not only far greater than them, but nearly beyond their comprehension, in exchange for protection against natural forces wildly outside of their own control?
So tell me, beekeepers, what are you to your bees, if not a mildly eldritch God?
I don’t know about other cultures, but in English folklore, when a beekeeper dies someone has to go out and tell the bees.
Imagine you’re a neolithic hunter-gatherer, just hanging out, sacrificing stuff to your god, when a new god you’ve never met before shows up and tells you that your god is dead, it’s not your fault or anything, and maybe a new god will come along to take care of you, maybe not, it’s gonna be touch and go for a while
Apparently in medieval Europe they also whispered secrets to the bees.
So imagine the mildly eldritch God you worship talks to you and tells you secrets, but these secrets make no sense to you and are incomprehensible to understand or even know they are secrets. But your God does make vibrations at you, so thats probably a good thing right??
Also occasionally the Swarm decides there is not enough room in the Hive because the eldritch god didn’t take the offering of Honey at their normal time. So enough of a Swarm builds up that the second queen is able to leave without decimating the first Swarm. They are all set to search out a new place that will likely not have your God anymore (but really that’s not too much of a struggle, they have abandoned you, that’s part of why you’ve left, even though the first Swarm still holds out hope for their return).
And then, the scouts find another Hive right next to the old Hive. Literally right next to it. So the Queen lands to inspect it and wow, it’s a good deal. The area already has enough food to support 2 Hives, so it’s a not problem to stay in the area now that they have the space, but…this wasn’t here before.
And then you see God, they’ve come to help the Swarm move to the new Hive and take the offering from the old Hive. Truly this must have been their plan all along
In English folklore, you ALSO have to invite your bees to your wedding, and decorate their hive, and leave a slice of cake for them, and also bring your new spouse by to introduce them to the hive straightaway. Imagine your eldritch god doing THAT.
if only all gods were so well-mannered
Frankly, I think a swarm of bees is kind of an eldritch god in and of itself, and my ancestors simply Recognised this.
BEHOLD: a 118-page compilation of (almost) every scrap of lore about Ishgard I could find – its social organization, history, religious beliefs, and culture.
Every piece of lore is sourced with a footnote in order to make it easy to look up – and to tell canon from my informed inferences and wild speculations. This makes the doc a little heavy and slow to load; my apologies! To look up a topic of interest, I recommend giving it a second to load, then using Ctrl+F to search.
Don’t feel shy about getting in touch with comments and corrections! If you have a question about Ishgard that isn’t answered in the doc…… I probably don’t know the answer, since I’ve put everything I know in there, but I’m always happy to theorize!
no offense to Luka, but I don't really see how him finding out would be a good idea plot-wise 😅 Alya found out because it was properly set-up from s1-s3 with hints and the reveal shook the status quo for the season. And in Adrien's case, if Nino isn't able to find out first (out of the good guys), then i'd rather it not be Luka since they've only exchanged like 5 lines across the series so far
I always imagined it being the core 4 (or 5 depending on her arc) would be the only ones to know identities while other characters and holders wouldn’t (with the exception of Bunnyx)
Him knowing would feel too forced to me. He is hardly involved in the plot and as you said we waited three seasons just for a Ladybug reveal with Alya, Marinette’s closest friend. There is nothing Luka can add that Alya doesn’t already provide except for the fact he is Marinette’s ex.
It just feel like a consolation prize for ‘losing’ Marinette as a romantic interest and a way to make shippers satisfied. Which those who are happy about it they have every right to be excited and this isn’t to say people shouldn’t be happy about a character they enjoy being apart of a reveal scenario…but I don’t enjoy his character so I won’t be one of them 💀
If it does happen I’m gonna have to see what canon does with it to see how I would actually feel about the possibility of Luka knowing. And I won’t be like absolute furious if it happens. But I will forever think that Nino deserves to know before anyone else right now.
Nothing about any of what I just read makes any actual sense
Meanwhile in Plymouth, MN, a white kid this past week brought a gun to his high school, shot it into the air in the hallways, and OF COURSE is taken in without being hurt or shot.
Unfriendly reminder that this was labelled as a “school shooting” for several days in an attempt to cover up what actually happened.
Even unfriendlier reminder that after enough push back, knoxville pd caved and released the body cam footage of all four officers involved. The child was being restrained by two officers at the time he was shot.
some dnd backstory ideas that give your character a reason to leave home that isn’t “everyone in my family died.” (just to say: i have nothing against those backstories (i use them a lot), but its fun to mix it up!)
family/friends/personal
someone close to you is sick. you need to adventure to find a cure
someone stole something important from you and you need to find it
you’ve received a message from a long lost relative and are trying to find them
someone that you love has been kidnapped (maybe you have to earn money to pay a ransom or complete some deed…)
adventuring runs in the family! everyone is expected to complete one quest in their lives
your family/culture sends people out to complete certain tasks when they reach a certain age as a rite of passage
another player’s character saved you in the past so you feel indebted to them and travel with them, protecting/aiding them
there’s a magical drought in your hometown and you have to fix it
your hometown doesn’t have a lot of jobs so you have to travel and send money back home
some childhood friends and you made a “scavenger hunt” where you try and complete a checklist of certain tasks (ie. defeat a barbarian in hand to hand combat, steal x amount of gold, slay a dragon, etc) in an allotted amount of time
quests/jobs
a god/patron has sent you on a quest to do something for them
you’ve been hired by someone to complete a task (and you get sucked into the big adventure along the way)
you’re on a quest for knowledge. maybe it’s to learn the best ways of fighting, maybe it’s something more academic related
your priest received a vision from your god and they sent you on a quest
you’re writing a book about the world and different cultures and you need first hand experience
you’ve found every map you’ve come across is shitty, so you decide to become a cartographer and make your own
you’re a detective who helps solve crimes and need to travel to solve a particular case
you’re a collector of a certain object and travel across the land to find it
you’re apart of an adventuring academy and have to complete a quest to graduate
you’re an artisan and you travel with your wares, trying to sell them. alternatively, you’re trying to spread word of your business and gain new business partners
you worked at a tavern your whole life where an old bard would sing songs of their adventuring party and that inspired you to go and do some adventuring of your own
feel free to add some of your own!
you just learned how shitty the world is and damnit somebody’s gotta fix it
you did something embarrassing and need to get the hell out of dodge
you’re taking a gap year
your arch nemesis is dying and you need to call them a bitch one last time before you go
hrt is free in a certain monastery
you met your significant other on fantasy tinder but they live across the kingdom
you’ve heard humans have this thing called “djinn Der” and you want to know what that’s all about
resume building
you’re adventuring to save up enough money to hire a wizard to cast True Polymorph on you because you wanna be a dragon, damnit
your friend got super drunk and stumbled into a random teleportation circle and you were the only sober one at the party so you have to go find them
you want that super powerful dude’s sword and will do anything to get it
you wanna get swole by hitting lots of different things with very large hammers
you want to prove the arrogant bard who told that super incorrect story in your tavern wrong by bringing them the evidence yourself
you read someone’s biography and want to imitate their life ultra-fan style
you found a message in a bottle asking you on a date
you want to find somewhere where your allergies will be less annoying but no one knows where that is so you have to find it for yourself
you really really want to see a volcano
you heard about another culture’s food and are desperate to try it
you’re interning with/shadowing a professional adventurer before you set off on your own
spite
^^^ Really like the spite one so here’s some more detailed specifics pertaining to it:
Your magic/craft is really unconventional and no one thinks it’s useful so you head out on an adventure to prove them all wrong
You made a bet with your sibling/friend that you can find and kill a dragon/some other big monster
Honestly any bets of unlikely magnitudes are very fun
Your (possibly ex) god/patron told you a problem can only be solved one way and you don’t want to do it that way and you think there’s another way so hey, guess who’s being a rebellious child?
There’s a legendary recipe (potion or legitimately baking/cooking) that requires incredibly rare, hard-to-procure ingredients and no one thinks it’s possible to be made. Guess who’s doing it
Yeah sure everyone may think the world is bleh but that doesn’t mean you’re not gonna go and and spread kindness to counter it
Or maybe you think the world needs… less good. Maniacal laughter time
Spite is very fun
boredom
Backpacking around Fantasy Europe while taking a gap year, got a bit carried away.
I always love spite as a motivator. Some other ideas:
you’re on a ‘holy pilgrimage’ that is actually a thinly
disguised continental pub crawl-slash-industrial espionage mission because your
monastery is of the ‘medieval european’ type that makes a significant portion
of its income from its brewery and wants to get a leg up on the competition
your childhood friend was run out of town with their family years
ago for being the wrong race, you were too young to know what was going on
then, but you found out later and boy are you a) pissed and b) going to
find your friend and apologise on behalf of your town
you’ve been getting someone’s wrongly addressed magical mail
for a couple of months now, and the sender is starting to sound increasingly
desperate
a variation on the dying arch nemesis one above, but if you’re
a wizard and/or bard especially, as someone who has read academic journals, I guarantee
you that ‘that opinion you published six months ago is so incredibly,
mind-bogglingly wrong that I fully intend to cross literal continents to tell
you so to your face’ is more than motivation enough in certain circles
further variation: pen-enemies, like pen-pals but more grudgy,
and past a certain point you really do just need to have the argument in
stab/fireball range
in a similar academic vein, you’re a ‘natural philosopher’
in the process of writing a bestiary and you need to meet as many and varied
monsters as possible as quickly as possible, preferably without getting
barbequed in the process but we can negotiate on that one
alternately, you are a straight-up cryptid hunter, and you
have a list of ‘monsters’ that you’ve heard about and which may or may not be
real or possibly being confused for other, entirely real monsters, and
you’re gonna find out which
honestly, insert-plot-relevant legend here, and have
yourself be the foolhardy, stubborn, obsessed idiot who’s going to die finding
it, it’s always a classic
alternately, because I love literary ‘cowards’, you want to
be seen as foolhardy, because you somehow got a reputation as a coward,
and it was an accurate reputation as a coward, but the social repercussions
got to you and you’re going on a quest to prove people wrong about you despite
the fact that they’re absolutely right about you because at this point you’re
more afraid of word ‘coward’ than you are of the actual teeth-and-ichor-and-undead
out there
(I love the idea of a big strong barbarian-type who got big and
strong because they’re scared of everything and wanted to be able to
tank stuff when it inevitably hit them – not even ‘I’m going to get strong
enough to beat them’ but ‘I want to level hitpoints so I don’t die’ on a
character level, ‘I want to get tough enough to just survive them’)
but, honestly, try more correspondence-related reasons, letters and publications and other fun long distance communications
extreme rumspringa
looking for the most exciting and/or inappropriate place to have sex
I’m a big fan of “…and it got a little out of hand” starts. Adventuring impetus I’ve used:
Turned to a life of crime to pay off Wizard Grad School loans and things just escalated.
You had a vision of your future self adventuring and you don’t want to create an unstable time loop. (Also, your mom wanted to get you out of the house.)
Trying to find your philosophical Path by having as many rapid-fire Experiences as possible.
Accidentally good enough at your job to get noticed by your God and given a Quest against your will and better judgment.
Picked up a cursed amulet that teleported you into the middle of a druid commune on the other side of the world from where you’re supposed to be.
Just trying to do your goddamn job and Adventure keeps getting in the way.
Your cousin has apparently slipped to the very bottom of the alignment grid and you are the only one available to go smack some sense into him.
You have an absolutely wonderful and lovely family. But GODS DAMNIT is it annoying that there is a WORLD out there and they want you to settle down with a nice partner and give them grandchildren to coddle. At least one quest/storyline is going back home and everyone absolutely falling in love with your family and you being continually embarrassed by them.
So apparently the Animorphs cover artist also made that amazing series of wizard pictures?? And he sells prints of both? His Etsy store is here and the other link is here.
