#and you can disagree with any part

[stickandthorn]

I think this episode is a good example of when bad luck stacks to make what seems like a very tough, but not unbeatable situation; look like a fully unbeatable situation in all scenarios.

They had an absolute jungle of disadvantages, beyond the ones Matt put specifically as a challenge. They were already drained, they all failed dex saves when she hit the crawler, they all rolled very poor on initiative while Otohan rolled super well, they committed hard to a plan of action that was probably the least likely to succeed (fight), which made it very hard to switch to run, they rolled pretty poorly in the fight while Matt rolled well, or made choices that ended up being the wrong one, I could go on and on.

They worked well within their disadvantages, pretty damn well, actually, but they were also just shit out of luck. Even if every choice wasn’t ideal, it is so hard to make the ideal choices in that scenario. No one did anything categorically wrong, but no one was in a good position. Meanwhile, Matt was giving them every advantage he could. I know it didn’t seem like that, but given his DMing style, he was. Matt is very committed to raw and full agency sandbox with almost no retcons. If a player makes a choice in the story, that happens, whatever the consequences (good or bad) be. He runs simulations. He puts components in a scenario, and watches what happens, and he won’t pull back for his or his player’s advantage.

But, he also always aims to help the players when they’re up against a wall. He will never take that wall away, but he’ll ease the gap a little, or, in the worst scenarios, try to point them in the most survivable direction away from the wall.

You can see it here, he gave them opportunities he would never give in other situations. Always ruling in favor of them on contentious rules, letting them do mild retcons of actions, giving them time to think and communicate as players that he usually doesn’t, stuff like that. But most importantly, he didn’t start dragging Imogen towards the conclusion of needing to give in until he knew it was their only option. Perhaps that was always the most successful solution, or the one they were most pointed to, but he didn’t start nearly forcing it till he knew it was pretty much their only way out.  And the things is? This kind of thing just happens in games. I’m not saying you can’t dislike what happened, or you should “get over it,” or you have to agree with every ruling or choice, or anything like that. But I’ve seen some people who seem personally mad at Matt for what happened, and treating it like he purposefully railroaded them to this exact outcome, which I find a little ludicrous.

It can change depending on your table, but generally speaking, this is always an option in any game you play. Bad luck, tough scenarios, no major punches pulled. This can happen, and it can suck, but it isn’t a personal attack from the DM to the players. The game is about random chance, it’s built on dice. There is always the possibility that this will happen. A bad scenario going to a totally fucking fucked scenario happens. I’ve been in them before.

So, yes, you can have whatever opinion you want. If you think Matt shouldn’t have balanced the encounter this way, or anything like that, I’m not here to stop you. But I do want to remind everyone that this isn’t something Matt had to specifically engineer to end like this, this is an example of the worst case scenarios that do exist in dnd.

[canisalbus]

have vasco & machete ever gotten into any big arguments?

.

[twinstxrs]

the gorgug-porter conversation is interesting to me because like. yea for the overwhelming majority of the conversation porter’s being shitty & trying to fit gorgug into a box that gorgug just does not fit into by trying to make gorgug’s relationship with his rage more focused on the aggression aspect of it. but then there’s also this specific thing that brennan brought up again in the ap, which is that gorgug’s relationship with his rage is wholly “this is a tool i use to protect my friends.” which isn’t a bad thing! but that’s his Whole relationship with it, & gorgug seems to place next to no value on his rage in relationship to himself. which is problematic, because it’s first & foremost his rage.

being raised in a household with a sort of toxic positivity largely meant that, whether or not it was his parents’ intention, gorgug internalized the message that more traditionally “negative” emotions such as anger are the wrong response to something. part of the reason he prioritizes his artificing is probably because it’s “fixing” things. in comparison to being a barbarian, which gorgug associates with “breaking” things. good vs. bad behavior, in his eyes.

it’s a totally unacceptable bar to measure a 16 y/o by, but i do think part of porter’s reasoning for not letting gorgug multiclass is him recognizing that gorgug generally does not value anger as a valid emotional response to something, at the very least for himself. & that directly conflicts with what being a barbarian is, because whether you like it or not, that rage is what fuels you. but again, barring a kid from pursuing something they deeply care about in part (not entirely, porter has a lot of more bullshit reasons) because of their fundamental values & world outlook is crazy.

so yes, 98% of porter’s reasoning is pretty shitty, immature, rife with a toxic view that there’s only one proper way to access rage, & generally not a good thing to do as a teacher, but also within that reasoning is the 2% of ‘there is a fundamental part of yourself that you only value if you can use it to take care of other people & you need to accept that as something that can take care of you, too.’ but that’s something to discuss with a therapist or a guidance counselor, not something that should hugely impact gorgug’s academic future.

[liesmyth]

would you be able to give examples/explain more about how race only impacts gideon in the tlt-universe? not being facetious or condescending, genuinely asking. thank you!

Hi anon! If you mean my tags to this post, I wrote

#earth conception of race doesn't impact any character in the series except the canonically brown main antagonist

By which I mean my Worstie and main antagonist of the series, John Gaius (PhD).

I don’t think TLT as a series engages with race in any especially meaningful ways. It’s set in a post-Earth society with entirely different social norms, and there’s no concept of race and ethnicity within the population of the Nine Houses. Physical descriptions of the characters are scarce to say the least, and they rarely spell out the kind of features that suggest specific racial connotations, because the POV characters don’t seem to think it’s something worth remarking upon. iirc, it takes until halfway through HtN for the narrative to confirm that Harrow has brown skin.

[See also Tamsyn’s GtN characters description post. It quotes passages from the book, and you can see how minimal the descriptions are, and she repeats several times that her characters’ appearances are up to the readers’ interpretations. It just doesn’t seem to be a big concern of hers]

Then there’s John, who grew up in twenty-first-century New Zealand and IS explicitly Māori in a way that absolutely impacted his character arc. It's not A major theme of his Nona chapters, but it’s there if you read between the lines. The boarding school he went to, which IRL had a high percentage of low-income Māori students on scholarship. The depth of his climate anxiety, his uncompromising “Nobody left behind” stance before the cryo project was halted, and his fervent hatred of ‘the trillionaires’ afterwards... these are all informed to some extent by his background as an indigenous man imo, and so was the global reaction to his developing powers. The “We were going to put you fellas in jail, weren’t we?” the way his initial attempts at publications are all flat-out ignored by the scientific community and dismissed as culty gimmicky faith healing until he leans into it.

John being Māori is just one of the many pieces of his backstory, and far from the most impactful to what eventually went down, but my point remains that he is the ONLY character in TLT whose racial background 1) affects his story arc and 2) is relatable to the audience. Everyone else is ten thousand years removed from Earth, and I’m just not very interested in using racial identifiers when exploring these characters and their dynamics, because the characters themselves don’t care and neither does the narrative.

[unethicalexperiments]

is it me or is everyone on this website so fucking miserable about everything these days. about every show every movie every book every musician/band every post regarding social issues every art piece. actually not even just on this website on all social media type platforms. the sheer amount of posts/youtube videos i see titled “x is bad and here’s why”. y’all talk about people/problems that have never even remotely crossed my mind as a possibility of existing like it’s plaguing the earth as we speak. things that people act like are major problems in [x fandom] or whatever that i’ve straight up just never seen before. in circles i’m active in. not even in a “let people enjoy things!!!” type of way. just why are you so hung up on something minor clearly making you so upset. i’m a guy who loves to fight but like why are we fighting when it’s not even fun for either of us. and you know what i’m probably guilty of this too at this point but jesus christ. whatever. can we all just sit outside in the park and smoke a blunt and chill out like we used to.

[cloudprincesslady]

the reason i always hate taliesin's characters is because he makes them arrogant in a way that just does NOT sit right with me. and that's his prerogative. but fucking hell.

[majoringinsarcasm]

“I hate people who mindlessly praise RWBY and deny any of its awful writing choices”

I have no idea what circles you’re in that have people like this. I won’t deny they exist bc I’m certain they do, but I’ve seen so many ppl who love RWBY with all their hearts talk about multiple things across the volumes they didn’t like or wish had happens differently or where a scene was weak or where the pacing was off. Especially after people politely explained issues they had with V9 while still throughly enjoying the volume as a whole.

Again I’m not denying the existence of mindless praise but I have to ask WHO you’re coming across who In Earnest and not as a joke say the show is 100% Perfect For Real. Bc in the 10 years I’ve been watching the show I have not seen those people. Which maybe means I’m lucky?

But I feel like RWBY specially gets so much hate and shade and ppl talk about “bad writing” every other episode for the past six volumes like. Bruh if it’s THAT bad HOW are you still watching? There’s thinking it’s bad and hoping it’ll get better and then there’s hate watching and being confused why people seem to love a thing you hate and that doesn’t sound fun At All

[officialhouseguest]

idk man i just don’t think you have to only root against people who are bigots, sometimes they can just be the people you’re rooting against

[firebirdsdaughter]

Sigh…

… The relationship between Nate and Eliot from Leverage is, despite being very strongly written and generally equally balanced out with the focus of the rest of the inter team relationships, one of the most underrated relationships on television. Eliot is almost exclusively viewed through the lens of his relationship with Hardison and Parker which, although definitely a massive factor and an extremely strong and interesting relationship, is often over-credited as the nigh exclusive reason behind his character development to the point he is occasionally portrayed as prioritising them above all else, or them being the only people who care about him/treat him as a person. While semi accurate, as a result his other relationships are often pushed by the wayside, with the one with Nate suffering the most due to a view of Nate that exacerbates his flaws and neglects the good parts of his character, especially in regards to his interactions with other characters. Nate is often viewed as an overly controlling, callous, alcoholic manipulator who uses Eliot as a weapon and is reckless and arrogant, but this is a gross misrepresentation of their relationship and its nuances. Eliot’s loyalty to Nate is integral to his loyalty to the rest of the team, as both the cause and the result, and the beginnings of it are well displayed at the start of the series, and it’s for this reason that it is the focus of the third episode, with the following episodes driving it home. The difference between Eliot’s loyalty to Nate and the rest of the people he’s worked for is that Eliot chooses to follow Nate’s orders rather than ever feeling under pressure or forced to; Eliot can openly argue with him without ever having to worry about assassins being sent after him later or something like that. Nate may huff and puff and talk shit—hell, he might give as good as he gets, but that’s all he’ll do, and when he’s not on a bent, he may even listen. It may not look it, but that’s a display of trust, the emotional honesty of arguing. The actual point is that Nate does not use him as a weapon—rather, he proves to Eliot that he can have a noble purpose again, something Eliot thought he’d never be able to have back, and gives him something good, pure, innocent, and beautiful to protect again. Nate is the first person Eliot has honestly chosen to follow in years, and his absolute loyalty to the former is apparent in a whole slew of different ways over the course of the series, from following even unexpected orders to standing up to Nate when he disagrees with something to being willing to kill for him (and knowing Nate would never truly ask that of him) to be willing to kill to keep him from killing to the seamless way he manages and corrals the team on jobs to working in concert with Sophie to manage Nate’s self destructive behaviour. Eliot is a lynchpin of the team, and his relationship with Nate is just as important to his development as his relationships with the rest of the team, and besides Sophie, he is Nate’s most trusted confidant. In this essay I will thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[spideyhexx]

i was literally just talking to my sister about rachel. like can josh fight!! she’s everything

she’s really so pretty like I find myself just in awe whenever I see a new picture of her, like just staring for a little

edit: sorry I had a lot of thoughts on the topic in the tags dbdbcbdbdnd but !! we support her here

[jamietxrtt]

1x09 all apologies is the best episode of the show actually

[unpopularly-opinionated]

Ideally people would learn that racism doesn’t just mean “omg they mentioned a race while stating an opinion I disagree with” but at the same time every time I get called a racist for that post it makes me laugh, so I guess it’s alright. Stay dumb, I guess.

[cuntwrap--supreme]

Well, he was talking to me again. Now he's gone. Approaching three days now with no word. Legitimately don't understand. How can you be telling someone how much you want them and then not say shit for several days? This is what happened last time he stopped talking to me, too. It's as if he has to go do a hard reset for a week any time he shows vulnerability. I get that so many men are taught that emotions = weakness, but this is wack. Pack that toxic masculinity bullshit up and fucking kiss me already I swear to god.

[saturnsuv]

hate philosophy profs <3

[rantsofabookworm]

I don't give a flying fuck how much sex they have, how many people they do it with, or if they used birth control. I don't care if they were "asking for it" or whether they consented to sex.

EVERYONE should be able to get an abortion. I don't CARE what happened in the bed or with who. no one gets to tell them what to do with THEIR bodies. THEIRS. fuck you with your 'they knew what they were getting into" fuck you for saying you're pro choice and then arguing that women who have sex shouldn't get to make their own.

[mlchaelwheeler]

Writers can’t write women without men. El’s story? About men. Joyce’s? Finding Will and Hopper? Robin’s? There’s always Steve in scenes with her. Max’s? Billy. Nancy’s? Steve and Jonathan