#...and way fewer characters

[magicpaint]

would anyone be interested in layouts for fields of mistria?

[invinciblerodent]

Ngl, some people's "I wasn't allowed to be an irredeemably evil shitbird, ergo Veilguard is not an RPG" argument is extra funny to me, because I don't actually think there is a conceivable narrative in which, if your Rook did something as objectively amoral as selling people into slavery, they wouldn't wake up the next morning floating untethered in the raw Fade with Neve's bootprint on their ass, and the Lighthouse no more than a distant blip on the edge of their vision.

Like there is a lot to get into here that I just don't have the time or the spoons to go through, but I'd argue that one of the biggest strengths of Veilguard's writing is that the main cast are all very well-defined characters with their own sets of morals, ethics, and goals, and they collectively have more than enough of a backbone that if Rook did something that proved them incapable of leading the team to the story's climax and/or proved them to be of no benefit to them, they wouldn't fail their quest: they would just swiftly and efficiently get rid of Rook.

[readerattheend]

Han Yoojin is "normal."

Everyone sees him as "normal."

The story makes sure we know he's "normal."

And we get to see that being so undeniably human is miraculous when you're surrounded by these people who don't show their human mundanity.

This is a guy who takes spam calls for fun, and the god-like Sung Hyunjae makes him breakfast and knits for him.

This is a guy who is excited to meet a celebrity and the best water-based Hunter in the world goes to school because he tells her to.

This is a guy whose ability is just to love and be loved, and he is so, so loved by a being who is more monster and more fire than human.

He doesn't just bring out existing humanity. He sparks humanity.

[toskarin]

miss Toskarin you’re not convincing me that Skyrim was the ruin of all western rpgs. In fact you’re convincing me that the issues began with oblivion.

I'd better be careful or else I might convince you of my less loudly-held beliefs

[majorasnightmare]

okay so like. mizora

im pretty sure we're in agreement that the conditions for wylls pact were sus as fuck right? like there just happened to be a fully formed cult to tiamat rarin to go right outside baldurs gate mid ritual, and the home of high harper and nosy grandma JAHEIRA didnt notice shit?? nobody saw anything and no one could confirm wylls story despite baldurs gate having an active enough night life to sustain 7 actively hunting vampire spawn for at LEAST 200 years AND a sewer murder cult committing covert assassinations and murder sprees??? with a cult of bane conducting weapons trade deals and the knights of the shield operating a smuggling ring??? the flaming fist didnt even see anything to pointedly ignore??? not a single chickenshit recruit filed a report about observing a dragons head in the night sky with a filed dismissal by a senior officer claiming they probably drank too much. Saitama_Okay.jpg

im personally of the opinion that zariel didnt stage that particular incident but DID utilize agents to provoke tiamats cult into action while also stifling potential witnesses. we know raphael does similar because of his stupid chess themed letters to his own agents, so its not unreasonable to suspect zariel is doing the same. but i think the REAL prize of that particular operation was not the destruction of an active tiamat cult, but instead something more subtle and with a potentially higher payoff: the ear of duke ravengards son. a dragon cult getting annhilated was a bonus, and a convenient call to action besides

mizora, by karlachs admission, was part of zariels personal inner circle (by choice, as devils are ambitious creatures with a drive to climb the ladder). this means that, through mizora, zariel herself took direct personal interest in wyll ravenguard. wyll himself was only 17 years old by this point: he had yet to achieve anything of note and was drifting through noble highborn society as the odd man out, son to a lowborn duke who rised through meritocracy and raised to appreciate the down-to-earth rural pasttimes his father grew up with, like fishing. wyll himself had nothing to offer to a devil besides his heritage; baldurs gate is full enough of self sacrificing do-gooders to keep the harpers regularly staffed, and The Urge regularly sated. for mizora to target wyll specifically makes the most sense if the real target was his connection to the current grand duke of baldur's gate, a city home to a practicing diabolist, several evil cults, and itself has been a hotbed of planar activity thanks to the dead threes meddling for YEARS. that ulder also commands the flaming fist, the gates de facto policing force, is also a point to consider.

this is also reflected in wylls pact, and the terms we experience of it. wyll specifically states that the terms of his pact primarily target the evil, the monstrous, and the heartless. remember, this is BEFORE he was the blade of frontiers. he became a warlock 7 years before the game, but only became the Blade five years prior to the plot. thats a two year gap of being a warlock but not the blade, where his pact STILL primarily targeted monsters. this is. a REALLY weird pact for a devil to offer! like firstly, its overwhelmingly in wylls favor. there is very little wyll does FOR mizora, and the targets she assigns to wyll near exclusively align with his moral code. he sees no reason to doubt mizoras portrayal of karlach, and has to be prompted into sparing her even as he hesitates, because past experience has told him that mizoras targets DO deserve to be slain as judged by HIS beliefs, as indicated by his line of participating in a mummers farce, and him playing his part all too poorly. wylls upset at himself for not thinking to question mizoras target and considering his hunt of karlach to be just. clearly thats because, in every other instance, wyll believed that to be the case!

thats REALLY FUCKIN WEIRD for a devil! like yes mizora gets to take down political rivals using wyll, because wyll knows devils are evil, but. thats a really weird pact to sign in return for destroying a cult mid god summon? like you could extort a LOT more for that and be assured youd get it, cuz its ALL OF BALDURS GATE and the RETURN OF TIAMAT on the line. and it doesnt seem to be a case of poor dealmaking, unlike raphael, whos every deal overwhelmingly reeks of desperation. he'll translate astarions back if you kill yurgir, because he really really really needs you to kill yurgir before he figures out raphael played him and he gets out because of it, and the clock is rapidly ticking down on that because balthazar is already in the temple, interacting with the dark justiciar skeletons, and actively looking for yurgir because the orthons annoying him. we are literally a single step removed from balthazar casually dropping the fact theres a dark justiciar hivemind in the bodies of 100 rats and raphael getting his ass beat for setting yurgir up. raphael really really wants you to hate the emperor and free orpheus because the only bargaining chip he has is the hammer, and in the midst of THAT deal literally spells out its location for you and why youd want it, for free. raphael the crown of karsus is almost in reach but to defeat the absolute ill need the plastic card you dad keeps in his wallet, make sure you send me the 16 numbers on the front, the 3 on the back, and the expiration date! hurry raphael we dont have much time!

comparitively mizora only ever bargains from a perceived position of strength. she can afford to make demands of wyll because he has no way to stop tiamats summoning without her. then, later, she has the easiest and most accessible source of information for wylls father knowing his life is in danger as a political prisoner. these are very strong bargaining positions! shes only ever undercut by the players presence bargaining on wylls behalf. its a quick and easy way to show that her inflated opinion of herself isnt entirely without merit, although her second pact is framed as choosing between two potential agreements, save wyll and kill ulder, or save ulder and damn wyll, when in reality shes proposing a new pact that has no authority over wyll OR ulder until signed (which is why you can save ulder because she doesnt actually have the pact given authority to insta kill him the way she implies, she can only throw thwartable assassins at him like anyone else with a grudge). shes a manipulator with plenty of skin in the game and a good amount of success behind her that justifies her position within zariels court. the point of this is make a point of highlighting how *little* mizora actually fucks with wyll *as enabled by the terms of the pact*. mizora is cruel, she is manipulative, she is condescending and rude, and she makes wylls life awful with her presence, but takes very few ACTIONS towards those ends, and relies primarily on verbally demeaning him. when he violates a clause in their pact, mizora utilizes a loophole to make karlach qualify by its terms and then punishes wyll by infusing his soul with infernal essence. thats... really it. you can watch wyll backtalk her, but she doesnt even do that leash yank she does in act 1. if you blenderize her, wyll dies by the pacts terms, but like. mizora literally also dies, and is REALLY upset by it to boot. you break wylls pact, tell mizora to fuck off with her second one, and she just kinda stomps her foot and fucks off for a bit before loitering in your camp still. as a warlock you can even mention to wyll that she very easily could have snatched his soul about the karlach thing but she doesnt.

in terms of "classic warlock struggles" we barely see mizora do anything beyond being an Unpleasant Person wyll is forced to interact with. theres none of the classic "being compelled to do something evil for self serving ends at risk of suffering The Horrors", mizora barely even tries to corrupt him. wyll is never forced by mizora into circumstances where he has to evaluate his code of ethics against an action he needs to take and decide what parts of his moral code he needs to capitulate on and what to keep, wyll keeps almost every single line in the sand he ever draws! his biggest character conflicts are actually between his OWN ideals, whether to live within the heroic persona of the Blade of Frontiers, or to accept his own capability of failings and live as Wyll Ravengard. like. being a warlock barely factors at all into those decisions and the closest it comes to mattering is choosing whether or not wyll breaks his pact or saves his father, which you can expose as a false choice by just rescuing his dad anyways. mizora exerts that little influence over wylls interior world. for a literal devil on his shoulder, bargaining from the greatest position of strength a negotiator could ask for, that is so fucking WEIRD.

okay thats a whole lotta post pointing out that mizoras motivations for even makin the damn pact in the first place needs examining, so now several paragraphs in let me actually get to what i MEANT to talk about. so firstly weve established that 17 yr old wyll doesnt have anything unique to entice a devil beyond his connection to the grand duke. weve established that the pact is weirdly in wylls favor, and that its pointedly not a Skill Issue but seems to be intentional, and furthermore that the POINT of the pact doesnt seem to be corrupting a good soul into the embrace of the Hells to make a new devil, because the pact seems to be made to allow wyll to just Be Himself comfortably without much internal conflict or moral sacrifice. we know that wyll made the pact before he became the blade of frontiers, and thus the pact was not made with the Blade of Frontiers persona in mind, which removes another layer of potential justification for the extremely loose terms of the pact. we know zariel is interested in wyll through the usage of mizora as his patron, and we know that stopping the summoning of tiamat without any external aid from the myriad conflicting interests within baldurs gate almost definitely necessitated a good amount of smokescreen work behind the scenes, but also that it most likely wasnt staged in its entirely because it benefits zariel to thwart tiamats ambitions. so. why is wyll ravengard a warlock pacted to mizora? i suggest the following hypothetical: that mizoras goal, and by extension zariels, was to have a morally agreeable framework within which to make a pact with duke ravengards son, such that hed be guaranteed to agree to it, and then to hide the evidence of the pacts circumstances to allow themselves greater reign to act within baldurs gate. that the goal was to have a devil on the shoulder of the dukes son, to push their relationship into strain so as to make ulder ravengards behavior more predictable and thus vulnerable to manipulation, and that through mizora (through wyll), zariel would have a first hand source to the inner political workings of baldurs gate, and the movements of the flaming fist and the goals they were pursuing. through the fist, zariel could keep track of the cult elements they were investigating (and thus what rivals need deposing), and through wyll and his father, zariel could monitor the movements of the gates upper class and utilize mizoras skillset to ingratiate wyll further into high society and put him in close proximity to those capable of mustering meaningful resistance to an influx of infernal influence. wylls relationship to his father prior to his pact was good, we know ulder was a firm but loving father and that wyll was generally well liked in baldurs gate in general, and that wyll openly admired his father and sought to follow in his footsteps. it is in fact extremely reasonable to suspect that such a good relationship was more than a single incident away from breaking. its in fact more reasonable to presume that a major political figure would be aware of the adage of keeping ones friends close, and enemies closer, such that you could monitor their movements. its reasonable to believe that one would assume good intentions on the part of ones son, who himself has made it known that he desires to be like you. to assume, in good faith, that even with all signs of dragoncult activity removed, that ones son clearly lost his eye and gained new scars *somehow*, through *some* kind of incident related to his new fiend pact. all of these are logical and reasonable things to assume and plan for, when you have made a point of manipulating people, of reading their intentions and catering to them like a monkeys paw.

that ulder ravengard would not just chastise wyll, but banish him from baldur's gate entirely, must have been a horrible shock, not just for wyll, but for mizora. i doubt the uneventful two year gap between taking the pact and becoming the blade was purposeful. it makes more sense to interpet that as mizora simply having no fucking idea what to do with her warlock now, as the pact she dictated (designed so that wyll never felt it was unjust enough to make a point of breaking it, no matter how often he thought of doing so, because it was so in favor of him and aligned with his moral code), simply had no vehicles for any of the usual courses of action. cant force wyll into tricky moral quandries, because she can only ask him to kill evil, infernal, monstrous, or heartless beasts. cant ostracize him through the pact to isolate and grind him down, wyll cant talk about it. what do you even do? now your both stranded in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the pact to show for it

and heres where i veer into hot take interpretation country. i think mizora genuinely likes wyll. when you blenderize her in moonrise towers (before reloading a previous save ofc), her screams are oddly... genuine? confused, frightened, upset. its odd than an otherwise vindictive and catty individual isnt angry upon being killed, but confused and hurt sounding. i think in a lot of ways mizora both relies on the consistency of wylls moral code, while also considering it a hinderance, not to her plans (thoroughly derailed thanks to one ulder ravengard) but to wylls own personal development as a person. shes a devil, she doesnt have the kind of personality where she can be genuine and vulnerable and kind. but she was stuck as the only authority figure wyll had to rely on, for seven whole years, after being kicked out of the only life he ever knew and the only home he ever had. i think in a weird fucked up way, she really does want whats best for him, its just that her opinion of that is filtered through the lens of Literally Being A Devil. none of this is to say she was *good* to wyll. how wyll feels about mizora is pretty blatantly stated, and would be a much shorter post, and im not here to interrogate that or question it, because being stuck with a devil who can use your eye to spy on you is just an awful experience even without regular verbal degradation on top of it. im mostly just intrigued by the other end of that relationship. mizora clearly cares enough about keeping wyll as a warlock to go as far as trying to make a second pact with him if you succeed in negotiating the first one to be broken. which, as weve established above, is really weird because Wyll himself brings next to nothing a devil would value to the table. Mizora isnt trying to corrupt him into breaking his ethics, really the only thing she pushes is sacrificing his father instead, a decision a recruited minthara finds value in as "patricide is often the first step to greatness". i think mizora might have ulterior motives for wanting ulder ravengard dead, and i think its because she believes that wylls love for his father is holding him back. any time wyll is selfish in pushing back on her, mizora indicates some measure of being impressed on wylls behalf. if you encourage wyll to not sign the second pact, mizora taunts him with his fathers death but still says shes genuinely impressed that hes choosing himself over his father

genuinely i think what mizora wants is for wyll to become a more assertive person. a more selfish, self interested, less heroic, less self sacrificing individual. i think mizora considers wylls tendency to bend over backwards to help people to be actively detrimental to him, and i think shes invested in his growth as a person by virtue of being a guide and companion for seven of the loneliest years of wylls life, and in a fucked up devil kind of way i think she invests her pride into it. that, with her plans so thoroughly mangled, the LEAST she can do is forge wyll into a warlock worth the cost. wyll has so much potential he refuses to take, as minthara (another ambitious prideful character) will note, and its explicitly because he would rather give something up than take for himself. i think thats part of why mizora is so cruel and demeaning towards him, to try and push wyll to be pettier or more spiteful, instead of endlessly self sacrificing for the benefit of others, and this is even consistent with her punishment of wyll! she turns him into a devil and specifically notes that he wont be able to be the heroic persona The Blade of Frontiers anymore! ie the facade thats swallowed up wyll ravengard completely at the beginning of the story! i think her investment in wyll as a person is why shes so upset if you kill her at moonrise, because i think she genuinely thought that wyll would always save her and turning him into a lemure was a kind of bluff she didnt expect to cash in.

this would also explain why the terms of her second pact are so comically extreme. eternal damnation and serving zariel forever in return for maybe possibly getting to save ulder from a dangerous situation where he might die anyways from the absolute crisis and WILL die in a few decades from old age even if all goes well? its almost like shes taunting wyll. give it up, give up everything youve ever worked for and sacrifice everything you want to achieve to lock yourself into the worst evil you can think of for someone who banished you who might not even survive anyways. make this overwhelmingly stupid self sacrifice because thats just what you do wyll, never think of yourself or whats best for you, only other people, trade away all of eternity for the CHANCE of someone else getting another day, if THAT. this contract is so blatantly overwhelmingly unfair i DARE you to think so little of yourself youd agree to it. of course she wont congratulate him for choosing himself over his father, shes a devil and she has to rub salt in the wound, but that doesnt mean she disapproves of the choice. the only way wyll ever gets away from her is by thinking of himself and mizora takes every chance she gets to punish him for sacrificing himself and i think its because she knows he can do more if he just takes it for himself instead of passing it up. its the only kind of affection a devil can have. and every time i sit there and talk wyll through breaking his pact at moonrise and bully mizora into giving him a rapier (one of the best in the game, made specifically for wyll, made specifically out of his pact, when she doesnt have to give him anything and least of all something good, how its a reward specifically for wanting more from her and demanding it and not letting a circumstance where you have power over her go), i keep seeing hints of it underneath the surface.

a genuine devilish compassion for a warlock who rightfully loathes her, a loathing she encourages whenever she can. does wyll need an enemy to keep him from getting complacent? something to strive for thats just for his own benefit? it doesnt benefit anyone else for wyll to break his pact. most people benefit from him keeping it. its why he HAS kept it, all these years, despite hating mizora. i think mizoras taken it upon herself to do what the duke refuses to, and thats making sure Wyll becomes someone who can thrive in the world as she understands it. someone who has the ambition to reach higher, someone selfish enough to step on somebody else to get what they need, someone who refuses to get themselves killed just for somebody elses sake, somebody who doesnt give unless they receive in equal or greater value. someone who sees a situation where they have power, where someone needs them, and gets all they can out of it. and if not for people they want to protect, then at LEAST exploiting the people they HATE. does mizora demean him so much so that wyll is more comfortable firing back? so that wyll doesnt have to feel like hes becoming a worse person if he treats her as bad as he gets? if he treats his help as conditional, for her and only her, does he get to walk away feeling like he hasnt done anything wrong because he knows mizora does worse, and more often, and at least wyll will eventually help?

when he breaks his pact, and tells her no, he wont sign another, when he saves his father anyways, when he tells her off and gets everything he wants without sacrificing a damn thing, underneath the bluster and rage, is mizora proud of him?

things to consider sometime.

[sapphicjigsaw]

its been fun yall see you when splatoon 4

[artifeast]

some more telesphore :3

[mabaris]

no youre completely right - im a gay (trans)man and i legit wanna see so much more about the women bc There Is So Little. I wanna make a lesbian oc who gets bent in half by taash. im very normal.

i’m just tired man!!!! it feels so obvious how disproportionate it is when you’ve got. a cast of characters that we know almost equally little about. and a few of them explode in popularity and it’s like spongebob sticking his hand out the curtain. literally all a character needs to do numbers is to be a light-skinned man

[just-sp-in-inginthevoid]

I feel like I'm doing such a disservice to Verso by having my brain being more curious (and by such, more interested) in non-Painted Verso. Like. He's already going through that a lot, and I'm here. Also being more willing to think about the tragedy that is Non-Painted Verso than him

[innocet]

I do think gallifreyan gender Matters but also I’m talking about lungbarrow when I say that and probably no one should listen to me if they’re trying to find any ideas about the current show that make any goddamn sense. However I do think that insisting the term “time lord” is gender neutral and that it is Unwoke to call characters like the rani “time ladies” is bizarre in its own right. “Lord” is not gender neutral either hello

[slightlycomicobsessed]

so we got rahne telling kitty to tell dani she loves her

and now yana and dani.... the other half of those pairs... in the same comics....

do you think allen will follow in the footsteps of claremont. bc i don't think my heart will be able to handle a "illyana --- tell rahne i---"

[bonefall]

grr pregnancy and birth is such an ick for me that i genuinely cannot comprehend how the erins thought that bright stream was a good idea. ugh. like its so gross that its too awful to even be like, a good decision to darken the story WHAT ARE THESE WRITERS ON

sorry. i hate dotc can you tell.

The obsession with birth and biological parentage in DOTC borders on pathological at times, it's almost fascinating. I'm actually not icked out by the topic of pregnancy but...

Like, it is the logical conclusion of their awful mindset in DOTC. If only your biomother and your biofather have a Super Special and Meaningful connection to you to the point of just, inexplicable, innate knowing, then of course it doesn't fucking matter if you were raised by those people or not, or even BORN in the first place. It's inherent to your very genetics.

Clear Sky's Fetus Children were magically close to him at their very conception, just like how Tom means more to Turtle Tail's children than the man who actually raises them. The bond between a bioparent and biochild isn't "formed," it's just this natural thing that you're built with.

It's the antithesis of 'found family.' The COMPLETE opposite. It's womb magic.

And it's used for Clear Sky's man pain. Like. To be very frank. All of this is for the narrative purpose of making him sad. Bright Stream dies this gruesome and horrific death and takes his unborn children with her to set up a "reason" for him to abandon his next son. He's "too scared" to lose another family. And then he loses Storm too and it man pains him into dramatically announcing "I cannot BEAR to ever be so sad ever again oouugh. I will now hit anyone who is mean to me."

Gray Wing "sees through this" to recognize the sad boy and beloved brother under it all, the "goodness" he had all along while he was beating and slaughtering innocent people because he was So Scared.

This is why I don't shut up about the idea of Clear Sky's "Redemption Arc" being the crap axis upon which the shittiness of the arc spins. EVERY. SINGLE. BAD CHOICE relates back in some way to trying to keep him "redeemable." Even the infamous Angel Fetus Children scene, during Gray Wing's fucking DEATH, exists to reward Clear Sky after all of his ""growth""

So like to answer the question; The writers were on Clear Sky Fartsniff. A very powerful drug, lmao.

[snow-lavender]

just remembered that during the corruption arc (which was two years ago holy shit) sherbert made a tiktok using audio from brennan lee mulligan's yes or no monologue. i wonder if they were going "tee hee they don't know :)" while filming that.

[vexic929]

oh Wicked was actually phenomenal, I don't even care that I was stuck in a dark theater for like an hour halfway through because the power went out lol

[shivunin]

I am perpetually grateful I stopped following the cullen tag lol. I'm so much happier without the discourse.

[deus-ex-mona]

series i’m gatekeeping from my family vs series i’m ✨ok✨ with my family knowing i’m into: