Looks like The Ninth Jedi is inspiring a lot of people to share their lightsaber designs, especially those inspired by cultural swords.
I have two of mine to share as well, inspired by the Korean sword hwando, for my Visions-like Star Wars fan creations. I used draw.io to create the art. I have plans to work on more, but they're currently on hold.
Ronova dropped the lore that Paimon is a creation of Celestia but without any authority. Minutes later, Pierro affirms what she said, that Paimon is a creation that descended from Celestia but lacked any authority.
Or did she? I've been thinking about what I felt weird about the way Genshin gave that revelation, it's that the middle of a tense cutscene is really the worst point to drop the answer to one of the core lore questions in the entire story, out of nowhere and not even giving us time to react. At the very least, it's not how Genshin usually uses their cutscenes. And more importantly, Ronova's comment wasn't needed at all for the revelation because mere minutes after the cutscene Pierro repeats the revelation with respect to why Paimon fell sick.
There was a reason they specifically made Ronova say it. And I think it might be because Ronova wasn't talking about Paimon at all, but the crown.
>That thing may be a creation of Celestia, but it possesses none of Celestia's power, let alone its authority. Your obsession with it baffles me. It's worthless anyway. I'll reclaim it next time.
The obvious way to read this quote is to assume that Ronova doesn't see Paimon as a person but a machine and refers to her as "it". And if Paimon, or perhaps P.A.I.M.O.N, is some sort of beep construct beEep, it's not necessarily her being arrogant or anything.
But as she talks about how "that thing" is a creation of Celestia but doesn't have its powers or authority, the camera makes a point to hover on her crown. And yes, there are multiple ways to interpret this, I'm not saying that must mean she's talking about the crown. Still though, it does seem significant to how I felt Ronova dropping the lore here feels awkward.
Furthermore, Ronova shouldn't be perplexed by how Traveler and Pierro try to defend Paimon. She's not some heartless machine who operates on logic alone and doesn't understand the concept of human emotions. She does see humans as insignificant, yes, but she's still very familiar with how humans deal with death, sometimes throwing themselves to protect those they care about. That was pretty much her entire deal with her helping Xbalanque with the Ode of Resurrection. In fact, she saw this happen mere moments ago while posing as Alyosha, when Chugonov hid his realization that "Tonia" was actually dead, even though he knew protecting her could make him the next victim. Ronova isn't someone who doesn't grasp the concept of putting oneself in danger to protect someone else without any logical reward.
But if Ronova doesn't even perceive the presence of Paimon and only sees a crown, her comment makes more sense. It's just literal garbage from Celestia, trying to hold on to it is one thing but why are they this emotionally agitated by her trying to pick it up?
People's perception of Paimon has definitely been something that attracted a lot of scrutiny and speculation thus far. Nobody really questions her nature, people find her curious and some more careful people are suspicious of her intentions and capabilities, but that's about it. It's almost as if people are forbidden to think deeply about what she is. If there really is some sort of memetic shield on Paimon that influences how people perceive her, then it would abide reason to think that even Shades might not be immune to it.
Actually, we recently learned about Project Lunar Veil that affects how others perceive whatever the Veil hides, and one of the main usages of the Lunar Veil is hiding Ungien's Circle and making it look like there's nothing but an empty crater. If Paimon is being protected by a Lunar Veil or similar technology, it could make it possible to make it so that she's specifically hidden from the Shades. Why she would have it, we'll have to wait and see.
While we're at it, if Paimon is being shielded against Shades perceiving her existence, perhaps Asmoday has the same protection and that's why the Shades aren't able to find her.
In the end this is mostly speculation without much concrete backup, but that's mostly the case with x.0 theories. It's a very exciting time with one of the biggest questions in Genshin lore finally being answered.
Pearl + Darkbeast Paarl (Bloodborne)
I posted my ship Polaris a few times on this sub already, but I felt like celebrating its introduction on official Starfield social media pages. Twitter I also had some screenshots that I'd provided them to consider using for their upload, and I never uploaded them myself yet. Now that Bethesda has posted what they want to post, I'm also sharing everything I've made.
And as the official tweet mentions, I have created some headcanons behind the ship involving the NPC Sivan. Sivan's quest is already very easy to miss, and even fewer people know that you can talk to them again after the quest and hear what dream you inspired them to follow: becoming a cowboy with mechanical arm, and a gentleman. So, in the game Sivan disappears after this final interaction, but my headcanon for my current character whose ultimate arc was to become a Ranger is that they meet my Ranger once more and become their Trainee Freestar Ranger. (Yes for those who know, that's a VA connection joke with Genshin) The name Polaris comes from the north star of Earth, and the lore is that the two cowboys named their gunship after it.
This isn't a particularly big deviation from the original Star Eagle, but I still put a lot of thought into it and I'm very satisfied with what I was able to achieve in terms of external design, internal layout and balancing those with performance. And as a long time Bethesda fan who took their first steps as a gamer with Fallout 3, the fact that I had so much fun with Starfield that I was able to create something that caught Bethesda's eyes really means much to me.
NOT to accuse Hoyo of plagiarism, they feel like their own things.
Genshin Impact is sending us to Snezhnaya next, and they showed two field bosses and I their designs feel similar to Falin and Laios' monster forms. Individually they have passing resemblance and don't have much in common other than the base concept of their silhouettes, but when they're coming out together it does feel like an intentional homage.
After the last post where I took detailed photos of some large NPC ships I decided to do the same for some of the playable ships.
Perspective and lighting really are important because even the Frontier and the UC Prison Shuttle, which are two of the smallest ships in the game at around 40m long, appear like massive hulking pieces of metal that they are when their photo is taken in-game. The shipbuilder screen makes them look like plastic toys despite presumably being the same models.
By the way, you can take a photo of your ship while landed and in the cockpit, in which state you can't access the scanning mode, by just pressing ESC and going into photo mode. Took me way too long to realize this.
I previously uploaded a post showing this ship, and I've since gotten better at using the photo mode. I felt I could upload it again, now with better photos.
Again, this is my take on the Nova Corvette, but as a deep space far-range exploration vessel rather than a warship. Original build instructions. The main difference is the addition of a Nova Cowling B with an antenna, attached directly on the Computer Core hab. The idea is that this is the Frontier after my character the Xenobiologist-turned-Ranger has extensively modified the Frontier into a serious exploration vessel.
There's very little change from my previous upload, only some habs and weapons swapped. I shared a lot about my thought process while making the ship there if you're interested.
I wish Nova Galactic had a 3x1 Living Quarter hab like Stroud, that would have been perfect for the top deck.
The huge NPC ships of Starfield have pretty great, interesting designs. But most of the images I could find on the internet were rather low-quality, so I decided to take some high-quality photos myself. I only had access to the Vigilance, the Constant and the Colander as I hadn't met most others.
Taking photos when the ships are getting illumination from suitable angles took some trial and error. Wish the Constant wasn't so bright. I put the depth of field to lowest so that the details are maximized, which does somewhat reduce the sense of scale but the warping due to perspective is also limited.
All the designs are fantastic. You can really see what each ship is made for except maybe the Colander that has a dubious purpose, and the more streamlined, sturdier and better put together look of the M-class ships compared to most of the ships we can make give them really unique looks in the Starfield universe. I'd really like to meet the others and take more photos.
Unfortunately I forgot which planet this is. I was looking for a ringed gas giant while trying to take a photo like this and chanced upon an utterly breathtaking sight.
One of my favorite OCs, Apol is a character who embodies my love for science fiction, fondness for stories set in fictional worlds yet focusing on daily life, and my social awareness and freedom-fighting experiences.
Apol is one of my very few OCs who are both exceptionally beautiful and very conscious of their own beauty, all the way from the concept phase. I combined some appearance traits I fancied, namely blue hair, gold eyes and brown skin, with the vague idea for an OC in a space setting with keywords such as "uni buddies thinking about their working future", "lovely date floating in space", "future humanity that has expanded to the solar system, each planet connected with wormholes like highways". Then I decided on the non-binary gender because it's come to my attention that a common mistake when creating characters is assuming that a non-binary person must have an androgynous appearance, so having my prettiest OC be non-binary felt like a right call. (There's nothing wrong with individual non-binary characters with androgynous appearance, of course, and I have some as well)
Once the name, appearance and basic lore were in place, I've been designing outfits and commissioning various artists. MM12165's absolutely stunning artwork (second image, leftmost face) laid the foundation for all future artworks, and since then I've commissioned them for artworks showing Apol in various situations such as dates, protests, and the aftermath of a particularly brutal encounter with law enforcement. sih3368 has done amazing job converting my ideas for what Apol would wear into visual designs, although sadly they don't do outfit design commissions anymore. Aoi_suzu_ does wonderful "anime key visuals" looking full-body artworks, and I think this is a great time to feature them on the front of my Apol post for once.
I have a lot in store for Apol, Sohla and the universe they're in, and I'm very excited for what I might share here in the future.
Some time ago I received a notification that basically said I'm ghostbanned. I didn't notice the effect at the time so I didn't pay much attention, and now I can't access whatever the links were trying to tell me. I tried not doing anything on the account for a little less than a week, didn't help.
I did also receive "prove you are a human" requests a bit more often leading up to that notification, which I've since learned is a sign the system is starting to suspect you of being a bot. I can still log in without issue.
The problem is I can't even seem to submit a question and appeal. Closest thing is for locked or suspended, but my situation isn't that so I can't use this. Is there a way to submit a generic, uncategorized ticket? Or should I try just choosing some other option that isn't about shadowbans but does allow me to just type out my problem?
I've used this account for over 8 years and I have many long-time friends there so it really would be nice if I can get some advices. Thank you.
Andromeda Kepler has been my longest-standing non-Constellation follower, whom I recruited even before meeting Sam, Vladimir and Andreja I believe. Non-Constellation members' interactions are very limited so I never really bothered doing much with them other than assigning them as crew, but one day I decided to ask Andromeda some personal questions and she had a whole backstory laid out. And she seems to have new things to say as the game progresses, presumably based on main storyline progress.
I won't list everything she tells me, but what I found interesting was that she believes in a relation between the concepts of probability and the divine, that there's some higher being whose will on the universe manifests as chances. And that the captain has been chosen by that higher being. If somebody said this in our universe I'd laugh, but based on what we know about the Unity, the captain and the Sanctum Universum, she might actually be on to something.
The most surprising thing I learned was that she in fact met Ervin while he was living and was even invited to join Constellation, although that went nowhere because of the Colony War and Ervin's death. She'd been serving as basically my First Mate on my ships since even before Sam and Andreja while I went about doing Constellation things and I'd never known that. Extra neat because I was already entertaining a headcanon about her eventually becoming a full member after hearing about that belief of hers.
I'm very excited to try asking other followers personal questions too. Really should have done that earlier with characters like Lin and Heller.
So Genshin Impact put us in a rocket and sent us to the moon in the latest update. In this game, pressing space while already midair causes you to open your Windglider, basically a parachute.
And even though I've known how this game's traversal system works for 6 years, jumping in low gravity on a moon causes my mind to default to my Starfield instincts and double press space expecting to boost, and instead start gliding down before even reaching the top of the jump.
Had similar difficulty adjusting to the different controls when I got back to playing Star Citizen, where I tried to press A/D to roll while flying the ship. But at least that was the same genre.
Anyway, space exploration on two games is great.
2 and 3 aren't photography material but you get the point.
Context: there was a POI where I could see dead Ecliptics, and as soon as I tried to go in some 12 cockroaches jumped out of the ground. After I sprayed everything I had from afar, I used Sense Star Stuff and there were still two remaining. Now imagine what I'd have seen if I used the power before entering.
Anyway, I'd never seen a planet with such an intense and unique atmosphere color before. I was extra surprised when the planet had life. Still a lot of wonder to find in the galaxy.
I'll let the images and their captions speak for themselves. The circular thing (that doesn't even provide a connection point, which is also very annoying) was bugging me like hell. I finally decided to sacrifice some performance, grav jump distance dropping from 28LY to 23LY which isn't even such a huge change... and my beloved Polaris looks MUCH better now.
You really got to sometimes embrace the looks even if it means sacrificing some functionality.
The circle thing at the tail end of the grav drive of my ship always annoyed me, but that was the best I could install.
But installing a different grav drive that provides maximum jump distance of 23LY instead of 28LY, in exchange for getting rid of that circle and replacing it with a cool glowing orb, and also looks like the whole tail fins and the grav drive are connected? Absolutely worth it.
Doing the The Perfect Recipe quest. It's a sweet little quest. I love it when a game with huge scale and big stakes focuses on the smaller slices of life. So there my character goes, hunting an alpha Ashta, removing its huge scales and making a big steak out of it.
I wish the chassis could be like 0.5 habs longer, but it's what it is. I'm not very satisfied with how it looks but I think I did my best within the self-imposed constraints of keeping the ship's length within 60m and having the cockpit on the ground level, to preserve the unique identity of the Razorleaf.
