Tigris Types

Paint the town with pride!

Happy Pride Month to everyone!

You are valid, you are normal, and you are loved

Trans rights are human rights, full stop, no debate

I'm glad so many people like these uggie little dudes!!

What Essek thought he meant when he said he was going to do something important with his research: I am going to learn things no one else knows, do what no one else has, and be better than all of my Den in the process

wordle in 2: misleading. you may think that this is the highest achievement, but it suffers from the same disappointment of a lucky guess that wordle in 1 causes. your second guess is a strategic choice, but ending the game this early just isn't interesting

wordle in 3: the peak. your starting word gave you some information and then your second guess contextualized that information into a solvable position. your sharp intuition and restraint is what truly separates you as above average.

wordle in 4: statistically average, par for the course, the baseline against which all other wordles are compared.

wordle in 5: you're sweating. you made a mistake at some point, or your starting word was effectively useless, and it took an extra guess above average to close things out. wordle in 5 comes as a relief.

wordle in 6: crushing humiliation. you have technically succeeded but at what cost. your thirty square grid will stare back at you like barrels of a firing squad. a failure in all but name.

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

I'm slowly getting the hang of it hehe :^)

It takes me a minute to get specifically to this theory, so bear with me.

Originally, the idea that there would be a Sundered House ritual at the theater stemmed from the worry that Thjazi was (unwittingly) doing the work of the Sundered Houses because he was tricked or his work was compromised (24: Good Tidings; 24: Good Tidings):

On top of this, there's a general sense throughout Schemers of uncertainty over Thjazi's intentions and methodologies and how ruthless he may or may not have been and a general sense of paranoia—"Look at you, you're paranoid, I'm so proud of you"; "Too paranoid or not paranoid enough?"; the above "Not paranoid enough is its own trap"—from the Schemers, who generally felt pushed to question every action the players in this game have taken. To quote Bolaire this latest episode (28: Chasing Shadows), they feel that they're only pawns in Thjazi's game.

I feel like this is generally the backdrop under which Murray / Marisha is thinking and theorizing. There's a groundwork here in Schemers that Thjazi and rituals of House Tachonis are connected in some way, that Thjazi was taking rather ruthless and unsavory approaches to everything, and that all plots and actions should be approached with suspicion. It's an environment that's really specific to the Schemers table, a la the genre whiplash joke earlier in Convergence. I personally feel that this is the root of a lot of the frustrating theorizing that the Schemers table, largely through Murray (though this is limited neither to her nor to her table), has brought to Convergence that's seen a lot of commentary. Specific ideas came up in Schemers that stayed around long enough to become sticky enough that their residue remains even after the core idea is disproven by new information or context in Convergence. Portions of an earlier logic are shed under new information, but auxiliary ideas or conclusions further down the chain continue to linger even without the original presumptions that gave rise to them.

On to the theory of the hour, Murray states that her reason for pitching the god-Thjazi idea as: "It seems like a lot of what Thaz was trying to do was thwart what was to come by trying to get there first. So why wouldn't he think that he could step into this role if it meant that a celestial Tachonis god of undeath is the alternative." Now, on its face, I think this is fairly reasonable logic for what is, well, I agree, a left field theory. However, I think the crux of this logic has been overturned by now.

This idea, specifically as framed in the second sentence, that Thjazi was working to subvert House Tachonis's machinations specifically by enacting these rituals before they can feels disproven by what we've learned in Convergence about the nature of the paints, the relationship of "making plowshares" to magic and magical objects, and Occtis's realization that the only connection between the plans of Thjazi and House Tachonis is the Stone of Nightsong. The Cloak was maximizing their limited resources by stealing items the Sundered Houses were interested in or poking around their work sites, which is in line still with what Murray said, we know that Thjazi and the Cloak were transforming objects against their original purpose: the paint rendered from the River Gavizdra is the inverse of what it was meant for, hence why it is a photo-negative of another method through the afterlife (the Stone of Nightsong). A massive element of the Cloaks work is to reshape these objects into another purpose, as Thaisha goes to do with the Pariah Blades and sees Shadia has already done so, and thus their work is to use the tools that interested House Tachonis and use them for different rituals. It is at cross-purposes to House Tachonis, who use and profane similarly old means for their own ends where that desecration is not making inverse nor creating entirely new purpose—the intent is simply a few degrees off.

That is to say, I think this distinction was lost while Murray / Marisha is trying to problem solve Thjazi's goals here even under new context concerning why he has a couple of tools in common with House Tachonis (the Stone, the coffin as mentioned in a Tannesar letter) and what Thjazi's methodology is (inversion), one that we see is vastly different from House Tachonis. That residue of an earlier idea remains, that Thjazi pursued the same tools thus must have been looking to enact the same rituals with the same ends as House Tachonis to lay claim to those ends first, even if it does not fit that new context of reforging tools to serve new purpose and create new magic as a sword to plowshare.

This is where this god-Thjazi theory is born from, because this isn't the first time she floated the idea that someone is trying to bring back a god. She previously pitched this as a possibility that House Tachonis is doing so (24: Good Tidings):

Azune’s Alter Self Einfasen makeovers are starting to pay off! And not just to the level of psychological maneuvering Azune was planning on. Otto and the rest vibed so hard with him that the implication has become a joking (?) suggestion that Azune is a blood relative?

Following the latter, Otto locks in so hard on this theory—or at least on the presence of his sorcery and Azune’s own lack of knowledge regarding its source—that in the middle of all this prep work for this big Sundered House meeting, he makes a note that research is in order. Research on what? Azune’s magic? His family tree? If the latter goes too deep, will that endanger his origin story told to Harondus? Or even avoiding that, will it dig up some lore that was better left buried than in the Einfasens’ hands?

Also hooray! Azune’s promoted to Captain! …Helped by Captain Fazir’s desk being already cleared out prior to this meeting! Meaning Harondus was already intending to plant Azune there to further the Einfasen takeover of the Revolutionary Guard! And anchoring Azune to a desk job means it will be increasingly difficult for him to do his undercover street patrols to meet up at the Archanade, Pentevral and Hallowed Round! Wheeeeeeeeee!

New hammer? New hammer! I wonder if it’ll come with new art since the design is different from the original head. (Plus he needs the staff for his arcane focus, doesn’t he? Maybe he’ll just swing two weapons now. Hammer 1 and Hammer 2.)

Something something Azune has spent his entire boyhood, adolescence and young adulthood in thankless toil and danger and double lives for the Good of the Cause, getting nothing but pep talks when he breaks down in order to keep him marching, caught in perpetual plotting mode, fresh from a solid day’s worth of having his face rubbed in the fact that his closest friend in the city (bar the soldiers who just now showed up and will likely ditch soon post-climax) provably sees him as less of a priority compared to other youths in need of protecting, was prepared to send him away empty-handed before a stranger’s non-platitude comfort embarrassed her into caving, and just spent a night verbally wringing him out with her kneejerk distrust and accusations and actual threats if her Sweet Honey Bear Baby Boy student gets done wrong by him, only for the fucking villains to clock all his hard work in one shot, immediately drown him in earnest accolades, tangible benefits, and an unofficial implied adoption something something

Which means when Victor wakes up to the Creature standing by his bed like ☺️, and Victor freaks out and runs away, the Creature could have ostensibly wandered into the hallway after him, only to be met with a pack of incredibly drunk-after-an-all-night-1818-rager yet well-meaning frat boys.

Who were so blasted that they were just like, "Dude, what, do you play rugby? Holy shit, he's fuckin' huge, look at this fuckin' guy! Absolute unit!" And they all whooped and hollered and just ushered the Creature into their dorm to keep the party going.

And the Creature was just like, "?????" but very pleased to find other people vaguely shaped like him, so he lets them because he may be just minutes old but he knew early on all he really wanted was one (1) buddy and now there's, like, a herd of them and they're all having a blast.

When the guys inevitably pass out, sloshed beyond all sense, he just sits and waits for them to wake up and when they do, later that morning, he's poking at one of them to make sure the guy is still breathing, and the kid wakes up and yells for a second and squints at the 8 foot-tall (rugby???? player????) guy in their dorm and is like, "Shit, what is that?"

And another one squints at him and goes, "I don't fuckin' know, bro, but he can throw us so hard. Did you see how David just...fuckin'...flew out the window last night? Just hurled David like it was no big deal. That was awesome."

David groans and puts his head under his pillow because his headache is awful but he lets out a pained, muffled, "that was awesome" in agreement.

So in a rare case of wholesome frat boy camaraderie, this herd of college roommate boys, all of whom are dumb as rocks but well-meaning, just take the Creature in because, "There's this huge fucking monster guy and it's the coolest thing we've ever seen."

This would possibly mean the Creature is socialized to be a dumb-as-rocks frat boy, but because I cannot allow that to happen and because there is no universe in which he would not be into poetry, he somehow also gets socialized by liberal arts majors and is just as Sensitive™, it rubs off on his frat buddies, who start saying things like, "No, man, it's Sturm und Drang, it's, like, the fuckin' vast rolling of the soul that, like...fuckin' eschews Enlightenment rationalism."

But some of the boys' lingo inevitably rubs off on the Creature so when, months later, Victor comes back to get all of his things with Henry post-mental breakdown, he bumps into a crowd of rowdy guys playfully jostling each other, and that crowd includes an 8-foot tall dude in a letterman jacket holding a volume of Goethe in one hand and a tankard of beer in the other, and he scoffs down at Victor and goes, "Accursed Creator! Why didst thou abandon me in my hour of need? Fuckin' lame."

The Amur Leopard and Clouded Leopard (which recently celebrated its 50th cub born at the zoo!)

The Sumatran Tiger

The Red Ruffed Lemur and Ring-Tailed Lemur

The Cotton-Top Tamarin and White-Cheeked Gibbon

The Colobus Monkey and De Brazza’s Monkey

And the Mexican Spider Monkey!

They want to build this in the zoo parking lot and act like its no big deal