#bloodmoon giver

[bardbouquet]

Yarrow is a master thief and a scoundrel, an eternal wanderer beholden  to none. He has only one problem: The tall, dark, and handsome werewolf  that he can't seem to shake from his bed... or his heart. Bloodmoon Giver is an erotic fantasy novel about a ne'er-do-well, a warrior, and the fates that bind them, set in the universe of the webcomic Petalfall. 

Find it here for only $4.99! 🐺🍯

[raayllum]

like maybe it’s late and maybe i’m tired but it is truly fucking exhausting, sometimes, to see the way parts of the fandom discuss something as emotionally rich and nuanced and selfish and tragic as TTM. and i could talk about lujanne in that comic, or callum, or rayla, but rayla is the one that people misunderstand the most bc... people are teenagers and Dumb, i suppose??

like, literally every part of rayla’s character led up to her decision at the end. literally every single notable, character defining scene and relationship in her life, particularly with her family.

runaan leaves ethari at home and takes rayla off the mission. rayla sees ethari survive and she is the only one of her troupe to survive, ergo, leaving callum at home and taking him off the mission will ensure his survival. that is, quite literally, a Surface level reading of the text. that’s not even getting into how tdp is about trauma and grief and how ttm just enforces that tenfold.

it’s not even talking about how rayla has been Left so many times she’s developed the obvious coping mechanism of leaving first. that she struggles so hard in believing that other people actually need her. she thinks callum can complete her mission without her (“just keep [the egg] safe” in 1x03, “if i don’t come back, you and ezran can get zym to xadia” in 2x07, “you and ezran should take zym, but i can’t leave” in 3x08) but she doesn’t feel the same way: “because i don’t think i can do it without him.” how their relationship has evolved from rayla realizing she can depend on him to saying it’s okay if he can’t help her because she values him beyond what he can do to her telling him not to come with her because she can’t handle more loss.

how rayla has broken both her word stated in bloodmoon huntress, that she would never kill anyone or leave someone she loved behind, showing that she’s surely already going to rapidly change over the course of the novel. at the end of s3, she fulfils her mission by killing the king of katolis - and simultaneously fails again, just like in 1x01 by sparing marcos, because viren isn’t actually dead, and in her mind, it’s her fault. “you let him live” and “you killed us all” are deeply connected.

that her self loathing issues have been evident since 1x09 (“this is all my fault [...] i let you both down. i let the world done”) which is why 3x04 repeats this almost word for word: “it’s me, and it’s all my fault. i failed them. i let them all down” and how even saving zym, both times, by going nearly off or actually off a cliff wasn’t enough to soothe her core wound. that her self loathing directly feeds into her belief that there’s something fundamentally wrong with her (“i’m sure it would’ve flopped when it was my turn”), that she will always lose people because of it (“i can’t lose you like this”), that the guilt and restlessness she carries around is something she has never been able to entirely put down. that she’s cracked and so far gone that she won’t believe she’s ever Paid the Price enough until she isn’t just already dead, but actually dead. because it’s her fault if viren is alive and if viren is alive he’ll hurt callum, and in her mind, that will be on her. it’s all her fault. of course it’s her responsibility to make it right. (it always is).

that her last words to callum are “just... remember me, okay?” and leaving a letter in TTM because in her mind, her parents forgot her when they left and forgot their duty, because runaan and ethari forgot their love for her when they turned their backs on her, because she is terrified of being left, she is terrified of being forgotten, again, of having another person she loves die and be ruined.

because rayla is working from a fundamentally flawed viewpoint where she moves, and grows, becoming more emotionally open, understanding what she wants to fight for and protect, because she is so much like runaan it hurts (aka exactly where she got her “i bear it so my loved ones don’t have to”) but even amongst all that growth, she’s still trapped in the same cycles. she’s still repeating history.

it’s the way i’ve been waiting for this sort of plot beat since s2 and see the way that 1x02 and TTM perfectly parallel each other with rayla trying to ultimately spare callum’s life, and “i’m sorry. i have to do this. i don’t want to, but i have to,” because when has what she’s wanted - what makes her happy, what keeps her safe - ever truly mattered in a life wrapped up in war and grief? (“it doesn’t matter what happens to me”)

when will she get to choose to Stay and not feel like the floor is going to fall out from under her, again

[noblexcelestemorningstar]

Reverse Unpopular Opinion: Morrowind

I'm going to do a self-imposed Ultrahardmode and *not* talk about the Tribunal, The Bethesda Softworks Weird Ideas Guy, or related topics. That's too easy and I want to be fair here.

So I'm going to repeat a bit of a common take on Morrowind. Or at least a take I think is common???

One of the best things about Morrowind is that it tries to convey that its people are, yknow, people. It's very much a game about the land and the country and people of Morrowind as much as it's a game of about the main plots and quests. You're basically forced to get to know the place before you go and save it like the big, sexy Nerevarine you are, and that's Good Actually. I'm going to chatter below about some of the ways the game does this because I have not the Executive Function to make this an organized essay.

Before we start, most of this is buoyed through writing that varies from "Skyrim Good" to "This is the best damn writing I've ever seen". Some of this stuff would be horrible if done bad, but since it's done well, it's done REALLY well. Also the game is from 2002 so I'm probably going easy on it.

Evidence and examples under the cut

"Sign on with the Fighters Guild, or Mages Guild, or Imperial cult, or Imperial legion, advance in the ranks, gain skill and experience. Or go out on your own, look for freelance work, or trouble. Then, when you're ready, come back, and I'll have orders for you." -Caius Cosades

So you can't really just.... barge through the game like you can with most Bethesda properties. Fallout 3/4? Oblivion? Skyrim? You really can just fucking waltz on through the main quests like you don't give a fuck and beat the game in a few hours. Game isn't going to stop you. Game damn well expects you to do so. Morrowind forces you to slow the fuck down, get some levels, and involve yourself in some clubs and afterschool activities adventuring.

I mean it doesn't force you, persay, the game is notoriously relatively laid back. However among the first things the first main quest-giver tells you to do is

In your time in whatever factions you choose to join, be that Imperial, Dunmer, Religious, Local Murderhobos, Vampires, Bloodmoon Factions or whatever combination thereof you join, you immediately start helping people. Most of the time you're going to be going out into the world to do talk to people who send you to do questing things. A lot of the time, who you are and what you have on you can affect how you can talk to them. If you're talking to an alcoholic, if you have booze, you can offer them a drink to get them to talk. When you're doing a playthrough of the Tribunal Temple questline, a copy of Sayori's Sermons is your best damn friend in the whole world. You're consistently forced to interact with people and get to know them to do what you need to do.

While this is signposting of the least subtle kind, it does serve a purpose here, and that purpose is to introduce you to the world you're going to save. And if you rush ahead, the game sets you up against an enemy and a dungeon that act as a rude awakening to your impatient ass.

What this does is it forces you to interact with the next parts of these.

You also get to see how the communities function as communities. Who knows who and who needs what, and who does what. In the course of most quests, along with interacting with the quest giver and the person who needs help, it often behooves you if you're not forced to ask around to learn more about those involved. Heck, if you're not using a guide like I am, you might have to ask the locals where the person you need to find even is. Even outside this, just talking to the locals you see what they think of certain people, what their role in society is, and who does what in their town. it's an option for damn near every person.

While yeah, a lot of the dialogue is generic and shared between many characters, most if not all non-guard NPCs have at least a line or two of unique dialogue, and what generic dialogue they do have is varied, with most towns having no two NPCs with the same exact sets of lines (or maybe I've been lucky, idk). You also unlock more and different dialogue as your character progresses. You wear some fancy threads? NPCs will commend on your drip outfit. They have new lines if you join a faction they're a part of or dislike. Gaining reputation makes some NPCs change both text dialogue and voice acted greetings. Some NPCs even react to specific quests. It ends up telling you a bit about the person you're talking to and I for one think it's amazing.

The Devs put real effort into making sure the way people acted made sense both in-character and in-universe, even at the player's expense. If a character's too damn poor (or inconveienced) to pay you in money for a quest reward, you'll probably be paid in goods or even just thanks. Some quests, especially Redoran and TT, only pay you in reputation, information, or introducing you to an NPC. If you're collecting on debt, you might be forced to sell something the debtor gives you for the debt money, or you have to pony up the money yourself (You can also do this if you feel nice). People stop paying attention to you if they think you're annoying. It's a nice contrast to other games, even other Bethesda Games, where everyone magically has money to give you, you're never asked to sacrifice a reward, and non-material rewards are a unique rarity. Oh and they always like you.

My personal favorite thing they did is actually unique to Morrowind. Outside of the town guards or the Ordinators salivating for your blood, everyone (who is still a person) is named. Everyone. Every bandit, every farmer, every egg miner, every merchant, every traveler has a name. It's such a small thing, but it really ads so much to the feeling of the NPCs being actual people that I'm grateful that they made that choice. Most other games, even other Bethesda games, will have unimportant NPCs have labels such as "farmer", "bandit", "prisoner" instead of names. I didn't realize how weird that is until I played Morrowind, and I really appreciate how everyone has something as basic as a name.

You yourself suffer along with the people of Morrowind. You face the hellish ash storms, you face the frustrating local corruption, you have to fight for your life against bandits, you deal with a strict TT deciding that you've overstayed your welcome, you get fucking Corpus, the literal fucking plague making so many suffer, and I get fucking lost in the Ashlands too. It's said that suffering forges a bond, and a bond has been forged. I feel like in Skyrim the suffering common people face is separate from what you have to face and this lessens the experience. I never face the petty issues that farmers in Skyrim face, and outside of pre-scripted events the farmers don't deal with dragons. When I do it's wooden quests that don't feel at all organic, and I come away feeling like I did a quest and not like I helped someone. In Morrowind I go "yeah fucken mudcrabs, if you need help again just ask"

There's a thematic point to all of this, and the point is something like "the Nerevarine is connected to the land and it's people, even if the prophecy the game centers around is only myth" or "Your connection to the people of Morrowind is why you are the Nerevarine, not some damn Prophecy". Or even "The Real Nerevarine Qualifications Were The Friends We Made Along The Way". I get that this isn't just to pander to the player and that for Bethesda to do this again, they'd need an exceptional reason. One so exceptional that it's never going to fucking happen again. And I get that this is a *me* thing too, that it's my overinvestment and misinterpretation.

But goddamn it, this is why I really fell in love with that damn game. I like the Backstory Lore, and I'm going to play around with the Backstory Lore because it's fun and tragic, and really, I can't do much worse than c0da, but the reason I like and keep playing the game and don't just like the lore on the sidelines is that the damn game made its world feel real through humanizing it's NPCs and it scratched an itch I didn't even know I had!

In conclusion?

..... Ok, one thing about the Tribunal.

I'm 90% sure Almalexia banned levitation as a direct slight against Vivec. Every time I look at the available evidence, I'm even more convinced, and even though I don't think it's ever addressed in lore, I can't convince myself otherwise. I know on a doyalist level it's just to make sure you don't go over the city walls and ruin the illusion in a 2002 game, but it's a headcanon I can't shake. I just find it utterly hilarious, and a tragic sign of how the Tribunal have fallen and grown distant, but mostly utterly hilarious.

[spectracious-blog]

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