#Oath of The Good Guy tm

[salokorai]

Another deffinitly-good-guy! Guillevan is a very very good person. At least he is very charismatic and seems to be kind to those he likes. And my players love him for that! (I didn't mean for this campaign to turn evil, but everyone is on board and in love with my evil NPCs)

Provost Marshall Guillevan Durn is here as Strength. I really... Really changed the meaning of this card, right here. At least the visual meaning of it.

[antianakin]

So I'm not the world's biggest Doctor Who fan or anything, I haven't done more than Tumblr watch it in years, but I happened across a quote from the Christopher Eccleston season that struck me as an interesting quote to use to discuss Anakin, his choice to save Luke, and why it doesn't really work for me.

You let one of them go but that’s nothing new. Every now and then a little victim’s spared because she smiled, ’cause he’s got freckles. ‘Cause they begged. And that’s how you live with yourself. That’s how you slaughter millions. Because once in awhile—on a whim, if the wind’s in the right direction—you happen to be kind.

-- Doctor Who, Boom Town

I don't remember the context of the quote really, so I'm not going to discuss that.

But that bit about how one small act of kindness doesn't really... mean anything? THAT'S what's getting me here.

This is why Darth Vader isn't redeemed. Because yeah, sure, he did one kind thing. But Luke is probably not the first random person he decided to spare because, on a whim, he decided to just let someone run or escape.

The one act of kindness isn't truly about the person on the receiving end of it anyway, it's about HIM, about living with HIMSELF. Because he wants to believe he's a hero even though he's doing evil selfish things and he KNOWS he's doing evil selfish things but he can't face that so he just keeps telling himself he's a hero, and it's probably easier to tell himself that if, every so often, when the wind's going the right direction, he decides to be kind.

But it's still selfish.

Saving Luke is still selfish. Because he wants to be a hero TO LUKE, he doesn't want to live WITHOUT Luke, so he saves him. He saves him so he can say "tell your sister you were right." He lets himself die so he doesn't have to live with the consequences of anything he's done. That's how he slaughters millions and dies thinking of himself as the hero still, after everything.

[tw-neo]

Character Intro: Orath

Meet the first (and only) Durge I've lorecrafted for (frogovich calls her Our Durge which is pretty accurate as well, shoutouts to him for helping so much). She uses she/her pronouns, and is probably my most fleshed out Tav/Durge. She's a Wild Magic/Vengeance Seldarine Drow Sorcadin during the course of the game, and romanced the Rizzard of Waterdeep. She's around 350 years old during the events of the game (she can't quite remember but she thinks around there is right). She was my first character I finished the game with, and the first character I played multiplayer with someone with! Her multiplayer friendo was Tin Copperkettle, a little druid/rogue/fighter deep gnome… thing? Frogo said his build came to him in a fever dream and Tin somehow became a one-man artillery. The 'main team' on this run typically consisted of Orath, Tin, Gale, and Wyll.

Originally, I planned her to be a much more serious character than she ended up being, similar to Niseke. But the Urge (ha ha i am hilarious) to make a serial killer into a Silly Guy(tm) was far too strong, and here we are. I've described her as a weird combination of Astarion's pickup lines and the 11th Doctor's immaturity with a very loose cannon attached, and I have yet to come up with a more precise descriptor for her.

Her ending is good. She rejects Papa Bhaal and moves back with Gale to Waterdeep. She continues down the path of a paladin, now switching her oath from Vengeance to Watchers, as her "I hate this specific mf" oath was fufulled upon defeating Gortash, Orin, and the Netherbrain. She picked up Watchers to both help Lae'zel in her fight against Vlaakith, and for her own fight against the remaining Bhaalists (and honestly she just has a grudge against gods now...).

I have so many intricacies plotted out for Orath, far more than Niseke or Bugg, and she is easily my favorite. She is also the one the longfic-in-progress centers around, although Niseke and her son feature in it as well. Therefore, I consider the Orath universe my 'canon' universe. Different characters are in Orath's fic, such as Qanexes and Niseke, however they were not tadpoled, nor did they run through the game.

[monsteraficionado]

Hey everyone!

A lot of recent happenstances have made me consider everything that is Ryan Bergara, and what a wonderful, wonderful man he is.

I know I don't have to really tell y'all this, because I know my dashboard is full of fellow Bergirlies, but still, so often it feels like the fandom and the world at large could appreciate Ryan and all he does for us much more.

So! Why not have a Ryan Bergara Appreciation Week? This event will be running from Monday, November 21st leading up all the way to Ryan's 32nd birthday on Saturday, November 26th.

Please join me in posting any and all forms of love for Ryan Bergara: fanart, gifsets, moodboards, screenshots, edits, fanvids, playlists, text posts and everything else you may think of!

Though really you can post anything anytime throughout the week, I have thought up some prompts for each day, if you are in need of inspiration:

Monday, November 21: Ryan Bergara is a talented creator, so it's time to speak up about the things he makes that you love the most! Perhaps it's one or more of his shows, perhaps it's his acting(tm), or perhaps it's the Unsolved voice, let's celebrate everything!

Tuesday, November 22: Ryan contains multitudes, and this day is dedicated to not only the ways he is, but also, the things he wears and the ways he looks. Do you love his incredible attention to detail, and the way he sacrifices himself for the good of the internet? Maybe you wanna celebrate his beautiful, beautiful bergiggles, or maybe you want to make a collection of posts where Ryan is wearing his orange ghost hunting beanie!

Wednesday, November 23: Dedicated to the things Ryan says, because he is a funny guy and his turns of phrases are honestly, really unique. How did Shane put it? Bergaraisms, if you will. What are your favorite Ryan quotes? Time to share!!

Thursday, November 24th: Whether it's all the oaths he and Shane have taken, his competitive friendship with Steven, his devotion to Mari, the way he took almost all of his Unsolved family over to Watcher, Ryan is beloved by many people, and so, this day is dedicated to his relationships to the people who love him, and to Ryan, looked through the lens of them.

Friday, November 25th: Ryan is many things, but one of them is being a passionate dude about a variety of things. Let's celebrate all the things Ryan loves, be it basketball and the Lakers, films (especially horror ones!), theme parks, Paddington, and even his newly found love for baseball!

Saturday, November 26th: Finally, we come to our final day: Ryan's birthday! This is the day for anything that you feel didn't quite fit in the rest of the week, as well for sending Ryan the bestest birthday wishes!

Be sure to tag your posts celebrating Ryan with #ryanbergaraappreciationweek2022 so everyone can easily find them and so I can round-up and reblog all of them!

As always, if you have any questions, be sure to shoot me an ask and I'll do my best to clear them up. I hope everyone is able to participate!

(Also, a big thank you to Sophie, Mariah and Emily for helping me with inspiration for the prompts, much love to you <3)

[vonlipvig]

I write this from my panic room, hiding from the worm that kicks my ass every time it sees me…

Dearest Jules

This game is amazing and I love it. Also this game is a bastard and I hate it. I had to operate on FIVE people IN ONE GO who all had evil fish in their lungs. This went about as well as you could expect, and it took me eight attempts to get past patient No.2, fortunately here my glorious incompetence finally paid off, and in a rare moment of empathy, the game decided that I could stop at three actually, and help arrived to bail me out.

Then, as I sat, wrapped in a shock blanket and sipping a hot drink, THE FUCKING TRIANGLES CAME BACK WITH NEW GASEOUS THORNS!

Needless to say this drove me to my limit. The patented Eleanor Smith Method (TM) of nocking them out quickly with the grace and care of a back alley dentist was no longer cutting it for me. Brought to my lowest point I was driven to do the impossible and understand how Triti actually works. It took a lot of swearing, dead patients, and at least three separate YouTube videos, but Jules, I have done it! I finally understand these damn triangles now! All of gods secrets now are mine to know! (Then I lost two more patient because I went over the time limit)

Afterwards, Angie asked me (the surgeon who had to pause surgery to pull up YouTube) if things were getting easier for me. And surprisingly it turned out they were, because now the triangles were gone, and I could focus on the easier task of killing squid. I only lost two patients!

It was at this point, I realised how much I’m invested in this story, and how much I like these characters. I think the read hot crucible of back to back surgeries meant I’d spent a few days away from proper character interactions and narrative chapter parts, so when it returned I was like: oh I’ve missed this, this is great!

I love watching these guys interact, I kind of wish I could watch them just on a regular day. What do you think the office party is like? I bet the dialogue there would be great.

Anyway our New Dad (Sidney), seems to have fucks that he gives, and entered a new and exciting rebellious phase, effectively telling the political bastards to go fuck themselves because people are dying, and then calling Victor to ship out the new drugs regardless of what those assholes say. Victor was, of course, fully prepared for this exact scenario, and had the files all ready to go…. along with his own secret weapon, an anonymous tip to the press. Victor comes through for us so much, and I’m not just saying that because he’s kinda hot and let me take a break from surgery to play Professor Layton (a game I’m good at).

We also had a very serious discussion about our combat capabilities, and I love the looseness with which Tyler ‘I’m a healer but…’ Chase holds on to his Hippocratic Oath. Even having witness his final fuck disappear freely over the horizon, I was still a little surprised that Sydney agreed to his plan of catching these terrorists ourselves, with the only addition being to make sure every group had a combatant in it. I was also a little surprised that Victor doesn’t have a taser squirrelled away somewhere for just this eventuality, because honestly he seems the type.

Anyway the plan went like shit and Cybil got infect by an evil, worm who I hate and fear in equal measure, but I must press on for Cybil, who is cool, and who might tell me what’s going on between her and Original Dad (Greg) if I save her. The time has come to stop shaking and crying in terror, and step from my panic room a grown w- (the worm tunnels into my heart, killing me instantly)

we gather here to mourn the passing of our dear friend and mutual, eleanor bagadew, whose untimely passing at the hands of Evil Worm signifies a true loss, not only to ourselves, but to the entire field of medicine 🙏🏼.

OH MY GOD YES I REMEMBER THE 5X OPERATION. like, this game truly had no mercy at times. i'm surprised i didn't scratch up my ds screen with how furiously i was tapping and slashing at it with this, tbh.

oh, i'm really getting a kick out of derek, in the middle of the operation, going "ok angie, please hold the phone like this, yes, thank you, ok...triti tutorial, triti tutorial...here it is, let's go, quick! AH GEEZ THE ADS", miss thompson you have to deal with so much, thank you for everything, queen ♡.

YES YES i love these characters so much, sidney my MAN ♡ (love love loveeee his relationship with victor, ngl iiiii kinda ship them lmao, same with victor and tyler). they're all written so well, and sure, the story can get Wild and Crazy at times, but the characters really do ground it so much. and YES, what i would give to just have scrubs the tv show but with the caduceus gang lmao.

go forth now, save queen cybil, do it for all of us (and greg, of course ;3).

[ariminiria]

Hi, i hope I'm not bothering you, but you seem to be a good person to ask questions about the new DND movie.

I have actually avoided it ever since the director came out and said, prior to its release, something about how it's "fresh and fun to emasculate men" (or something along those lines), as if every single movie and tv show made for the past five years hasn't been doing that. And I have no interest in supporting the girl-power-by-making-men-weak movement. I prefer my women to be strong and competent amongst a group of equally strong and competent men and women, and not only be "strong and competent" in comparison to the weak, idiotic, incompetent, emasculated men around her.

Does this movie actually do that, or was the director just... using the Hollywood Talking Points(tm) he was told to use when promoting it?

I had heard that too and was a little worried. But a friend of mine saw it, and reassured me that the film actually had nothing to do with that; he said he didn't know why the director even said that. So I went and saw it for myself, and I agree with him.

The guys are kind of goofy, but so is everyone. Chris Pine is competent, if a little flippant. The Sorcerer's character arc is about learning how to be competent, so he may seem a little useless at first, but that's because he's supposed to. The Paladin is OP, I'd say he's the most 'traditionally' masculine character, and he's full of gentleness and kindness and is dedicated to his oath.

The himbo character? Is a woman. Beefy and a little dumb, but not an idiot. Smart in a street sense way, so low INT, midling WIS.

The Druid? She's clever and capable, but a touch naive/inexperienced.

Each character has balanced strengths and weaknesses that support and counterbalance each other when they come together as a group. With that in mind, I can confidently say that the director was blowing smoke out of his ass. Why? I don't know. I almost didn't see it when I heard that quote, so they risk eliminating a portion of audience by saying that...

But anways, I'd highly recommend the movie, it's very wonderful and true to the spirit of the game and it stands on its own two feet as a movie too!

[cityandking]

🧱, 🤷‍♀️, 🙏 for dai, minah and bran!

thanks my dear! // prompts I'd like to receive

[ 🧱 ] how would you describe your muses’ morality? what are their core values?

DAI — he's just an upright guy. save what you can, leave places better than you found them, defend those who need defending. he's a big believer in doing what's Right(TM) and helping those in need. his oath of the shield tenets are valor, discernment, resolve and character which pretty much sums it up.

MINAH — she's sorta *wiggly hand gesture* tbh. she's a rogue so obviously she's not an Upstanding Citizen, and she's also pretty selfish at the end of the day. it's easy to be open with little things, but with anything big or meaningful she's going to keep it close and be unwilling to share and unwilling to help if it requires her to stick her neck out too far. she's so used to living and surviving for herself, and unlearning that might take some work. but when you get past all of that she has a fairly decent sense of moral responsibility. mostly she just values Being Alive (for now)

BRAN — while bran does crime(TM) and says Fuck The Empire she's still got a heart of gold. very much the noble robber character. does she want to keep the cool shiny treasure? yeah but she'll also rescue someone from a bad situation at the cost of her own safety and stand for the defense of your city and adopt your band of ragtag adventurers when left saddled with them before someone slips away in the dead of night with only a letter left behind. she cares about people a whole lot. she values freedom above all, for herself and for anyone else who seeks it—freedom from station, tyranny, and also taxes. seriously fuck the empire

[ 🤷‍♀️ ] how does your muse approach strangers? how does this compare to how they interact with close friends or lovers?

DAI — if it's a situation where there's a clear goal or defined rules of engagement he's perfectly happy to step in and just say whatever needs saying. he's awkward yeah but he's pragmatic and a big fan of getting shit done. if it's small talk or making friends or something without a defined purpose or rules he's just an uncomfortable little dude. he's much better with people he's close to. he just doesn't do well with artifice and he hates lying and being lied to (and the high insight means he almost always knows when he's being lied to)

MINAH — with a smile, and often a cap out for a few coins after the show. she's pretty charming and personable and while she doesn't love strangers as a rule she's good with people and good at meeting them. sorta have to be as a performer. honestly it's not all that much different with how she acts with people she's close to—she tends to keep her most important cards close to the chest

BRAN — is great with strangers. she likes people! she likes stories and entertainment and especially loves being both of those things to others. she's gotta perform, babey! there's a very very small core group of people who get to see past the performance and know bran herself. not that the performance is artifice—she really is that big and bright and friendly—but she keeps the quieter sides hidden from everyone except, like. well honestly hakson. the party was starting to get close when the game ended I think, but not quite there yet—they were too busy with their own shit for Branwen to worry about sharing hers

[ 🙏 ] what does your muse need? this can be something material or something abstract.

DAI — a rez

MINAH — oh god. therapy probably. a whoooooooole lot of therapy.

BRAN — her fucking SHIP BACK and the endless horizon

[mirekat]

I posted 996 times in 2021

269 posts created (27%)

727 posts reblogged (73%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 2.7 posts.

I added 822 tags in 2021

#ds9 - 204 posts

#art - 93 posts

#kira nerys - 88 posts

#jadzia dax - 87 posts

#star trek - 81 posts

#important - 78 posts

#personal - 60 posts

#academic lyfe - 51 posts

#birds - 44 posts

#voy - 36 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#and what i'm sure is a hell of a well-organized mutual aid and rapid-response infrastructure bc these things don't just happen spontaneously

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Like, to follow up on that Insufferable DS9 People joke...I want to stress that I don’t personally endorse picking on New Trek series. Picard and Discovery and Lower Decks have all engaged me in different ways and pushed Trek in interesting directions (even if I found some of those directions infuriating) and I’m certainly going to keep consuming whatever narrative vegetarian mycoprotein Paramount throws fans like me.

But what I will say is that, for me, DS9 gets me in ways hardly any other tv series has. When we started watching it last year, amid all the cynical politicization of the pandemic and the police violence and...all that...I really wasn’t in a place to put my faith in institutions. So I appreciated DS9′s willingness to point out the ragged edges of the Federation, the ways its utopian rhetoric falls short. But DS9′s critical attitude toward institutions is coupled with a deep optimism about people. And this is why it’s become so important to me. The main cast is made up of people who fundamentally don’t want to harm other people, despite having to face the reality that some people do want to harm other people and that some power structures make it possible for those few people to do a whole lot of harm. Even Quark, who claims that every social relationship is an opportunity for exploitation, often ends up behaving in altruistic ways: he helps save the whole crew in Starship Down, he sets the resistance free during the occupation of DS9...And then you have someone like Kira, who in a lesser show might have been either forced to repudiate her terrorist past or, in a kind of Whedonesque twist, whittled down into a Badass Action Girl(TM), but who, in DS9, doesn’t have to do that. Doesn’t have to be that. She hurt people, yes, because that was the only possible response to an intrinsically violent colonial system, but she’s refused to make that capacity for violence part of who she is. Every time someone tries to get her to wax poetic about war (Thomas Riker, Dukat in ‘Return to Grace’, even--kind of--Jadzia, in ‘Blood Oath’) she’s emphatic: killing people kills part of yourself, even if, sometimes, that’s the only choice you have.

Anyway, I think it’s really unusual how DS9 manages to balance the individual and the systemic that way--to acknowledge that everyone has the capacity for harm, but that both intentions and power relations have a meaningful impact on the nature and extent of that harm. It allows the captain to collude in a murder in order to save the Alpha Quadrant, but never suggests that this one act makes him the equivalent of Gul Dukat. It acknowledges the neocolonial attitude of the Federation and yet never draws a false equivalency between the Federation and the Cardassian Occupation. It lets the good guys fuck up profoundly and still never dilutes the idea that there is not, in fact, Zero Difference Between Good and Bad Things.

IDK. When we started watching DS9 last year I was slipping into a place where I couldn’t imagine any kind of future, and while obviously it wasn’t the main reason I decided to stick around--Em is that reason, always and forever that reason--it did give me something else to hold onto. A philosophical touchstone, sort of. The Federation will always be a work in progress, was what DS9 told me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting for. And if you choose to fight--DS9 told me--there’ll be a whole lot of people fighting alongside you. 

253 notes • Posted 2021-10-13 21:21:02 GMT

#4

Em’s side of Tumblr is currently obsessed with this descriptive ethics AI (they took a deep learning prototype and trained it on r/AmItheAsshole responses) so of course I couldn’t resist:

So, case closed, folks. The collective wisdom of Reddit agrees that if Sisko had to do it all over again, he should.

253 notes • Posted 2021-10-20 16:25:26 GMT

#3

As Witches Abroad wraps up, taking a moment to appreciate Greebo: a horrible cat written by someone who clearly loves cats, or at least is intimate with cats. So often cats are written as these kind of like elegant, epicene villains and it’s like, no, cats are chaotic little bundles of id cloaked in a faint aura of menace that dissipates the moment they realize they’ve overreached their competencies and mostly this is delightful but when they are horrible they are horrible in precisely the way Greebo is horrible. Is my two cents. Anyway, the point is reading Human!Greebo was one of the most enjoyable voice-acting gigs of my bedtime reading career.

301 notes • Posted 2021-06-13 15:36:05 GMT

#2

Love the way Dax queers the strictly-gendered Klingon mating ritual by snarling romantic poetry at Worf while attacking him with a bat’leth.

436 notes • Posted 2021-10-23 14:50:37 GMT

#1

Y’know what I appreciate about ‘Threshold’, as someone who watched it for the first time several months ago? The fact that, for the first half of the episode, it looks like it’s going to be a normal, if hackneyed, Trek narrative about daddy issues and scientific hubris. I remember looking at Em and wondering aloud, ‘Why is this considered peak Bad Voyager?’ And then Paris shouts ‘PEPPERONI!’ and all hell breaks loose and I spent the next 20 minutes of my life clutching my chest shrieking ‘WHAT? WHAT IS HAPPENING? WHO LET THIS HAPPEN?!?’ I knew lizards were involved somehow, but nothing could have prepared me for the lightning turn ‘Threshold’ took. And that is, frankly, beautiful.

754 notes • Posted 2021-01-29 20:20:37 GMT

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