#fatalistic

[howifeltabouthim]

'I live according to my circumstances, as I must.'

Iain Pears, from Arcadia

[env0writes]

Cicada Sentences Vol. 2, 7.24.24 “Somber Summer"

@env0writes C.Buck �� Ko-Fi & Venmo: @Zenv0 Support Your Local Artists!   Photo by @env0

All is quiet Before it happens Before they come In droves marching lines of ants Workers and soldiers and lovers and loved It is all quiet Before the sun rises to wake them To shed light upon thr right path to take In droves and in waves Do they descend upon the day Upon the field of view Dust devils that will dance in the breeze Plaid plainclothes pedestrians off at some pleasant pace All is quiet Before they surmount the wall of silence Clasped tight pursed lips Fearful of contributing to the orchestra Rustling through the full leaded branches Creaking in adjustment All is quiet Not a bird will whistle nor chirp Overhead is a plane Is a plan To also reach some destination But even this is just wind Crossing the country and continent When i move I will join them In chorus or solo Overheard or heard at all I am roaming Thoughts line my skull like cloudtrails Stir up my guts and my entrails Marching ants skitter This and thither Cacophonous until my coffin is thus Six feet deep Then all is quiet

[zehpeh]

"SCARRED" - acrylics/ink on watercolour paper - February 2024

[tenth-sentence]

The English in Jamaica, he claimed, were fatalistic and dissolute.

"Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History" - Kyle Harper

[prokopetz]

Making the Werewolf: The Forsaken/Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist situation worse on purpose by running a game jam whose only rule is that each submission's title must abbreviate to "WTF".

[pinacoladamatata]

dreadwolf spotted in crossroads

[perplexingly]

Catharsis

[ominouspuff]

I Can Despair No Further / From Here Each Step is Defiance

REQUESTS / BLOG EVENT

Request from @husborth - Palette #1 - Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker - Death of the Cynic in Me

[gimlilithegreat]

My ideal sequel to The Hobbit (ignoring LOTR, the OTTrilogy can continue being perfect forever as a completely separate concept) is a vaguely slapstick groundhog’s day style redo where every time Bilbo dies he’s sent back to the day Gandalf arrives to invite him on an adventure.

It starts off enthusiastic because Bilbo is going to do everything right this time, he’s going to tell Gandalf immediately so they can fix everything and save everyone and stop Sauron.

But Bilbo keeps dying and everything keeps going wrong in new and incredible ways. They try the whole eagle thing. They try going with a massive army. Bilbo tries sneaking past Shelob, so many times.

He dies to orcs, spiders and old age. He dies falling off horses, tripping off cliffs and on one memorable occasion of a heart attack.

He lives through wars and councils and losing everyone over and over again.

And eventually Bilbo is a defeated hobbit with too many deaths in his memory to count and nothing left in him to give. He wakes up after his latest failure and decides to just go on the stupid quest to Erebor because if nothing else it worked last time.

He finds himself enjoying it, enjoying spending time with these dwarves who are confused by the tiny little war veteran in their midst. He’s weirdly laissez faire about dying and surprisingly good with a sword considering he’s a hobbit.

They get attached and work together to stop their little companion from walking into oblivion and Bilbo slowly remembers what living felt like and is starting to get his motivation back. This time with the desperation that this time will work out specifically because he loves these dwarves and no other versions of them will ever be the same. He has family now and he doesn’t want to leave them behind.

Bilbo’s learnt a lot over hundreds of life times and he uses all of that knowledge to get them through safely.

Facing off with orcs, brow beating stubborn elves and whipping the gold sickness straight out of dwarves.

He comes to the end of the journey, his dwarves are safe, Erebor is reclaimed with shockingly minimal loss of life and he has the ring and the willingness to try again for Mordor - when Bofur’s like, “what do you mean Mount Doom’s the only place it can be destroyed? Sounds like you just need lava. Follow me laddie.” And takes him down to the deepest and darkest parts of the mines under Erebor where dwarves have dug the deepest and uncovered great chasms at the bottom of which flow molten rivers of magma.

They drop in the ring.

It floats on the surfaces for a moment before it cracks and dissipates with an unsettling scream.

In the distance to the east a tower falls and orcs and goblins watch with horror as the eye melts and shatters.

Down the depths of Erebor Bilbo lets out a great sigh of relief.

“It’s almost four Bilbo, we should get you some tea before that stomach of yours starts a revolt.”

And Bilbo goes back up into the sunlight to settle in for a nice afternoon visit with his dwarves in the garden they built for him on the slopes of Erebor.

[lizzybeeee]

Personal take: One of the weirdest things Veilguard did, outright baffling, in fact, is how it feels like they reset the status quo of the world to Origins - even further back, if anything.

The game avoids (at all costs) meaningfully delving into exploring what these events/lore reveals mean to the world and characters at large. But the entire time I was thinking: holy shit this is bad.

What happens in game has very, very bad implications for the rest of Thedas and how they're going to look at groups like the Elves and Mages. I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone whose played all three previous games, not from the perspective of datv which really brushes over all moral complexity and sociopolitical issues. Of course, it's just my interpretation but its based off what happened in previous games.

Elves

The Elvish Gods of legend came back, blighted, and ended up wiping out the majority of the South - I find it hard to believe that the elves would not be 'roped in' as being responsible somehow.

Elves could sneeze in a previous game and people would blame them for causing a plague and purge the alienage -> life is shit for an elf and the events of datv would have absolutely made life a thousand times worse.

Would there be purges of alienages? Are there groups like the chavaliers or mobs of humans going about an killing elves because 'It's your Gods. It's your fault.'

Obviously, it isn't. But there are plenty of examples in Thedas' history of people acting rashly/cruelly out of terror and anger - and it's the most vulnerable people, like the Elves and Mages, who are targeted.

The Dalish Elves, what remains of them, would likely be perceived as 'Blight/Old God worshipers' - people would chase them off for the 'crime' of living too close to them in the woods in DAO.

Terrified, angry people would not care if the Dalish said they had nothing to do with what's happening - there would be bloodshed.

If anything improved for the elves from the time of Origins -> Mahariel, Tabris, Lavellan, or Briala...it's likely back to ground one as the best possible outcome, and closer to the Exalted March on the Dales at it's worst.

Mages

Mages could, potentially, have been living a life of unprecedented acceptance if Leliana was Divine -> along come the Evanuris, mages, who are allied with the Venatori who are causing devastation in Orlais and the Free Marches specifically.

Missive - Message from the Front -> The Tide Turns "The Venatori and the Orlesian royal armies clash daily in Orlais. Val Royeaux is now under control of the rebels, and from there the Venatori launch attacks as far east as Kirkwall."

The original magisters (evanuris) wielding the Blight and Old Gods 2.0 x2.

Any templars who remained, who had the old mindset and outlook of how mages should be treated, absolutely would be pointing at the venatori and saying "we warned you what would happen without the Order."

Normal people wouldn't give a shit that it's only a 'few' mages -> their entire home is gone, their families are dead, and the people responsible are wielding magic.

Fear of magic would likely be at an all time high - If the Order doesn't exist people would likely be demanding for them to come back.

The mages - whatever goodwill they earned - are likely being faced with suspicion and terror because this is proof of what magic can do in the hands of power-hungry douchebags.

Maybe they help to fight and people don't get so suspicious of them - who knows! This game doesn't want to address the previous games so it's in limbo.

Spirits

Other people have done great posts about how the spirits were completely tossed aside in this game. Three games worth of humanizing spirits, with Justice and Cole, only to go back on it with Solas reinforcing the Veil and...maintaining the status quo?

He so earnestly discussed with us his perspective on spirits and how they're just as 'real' as those on this side of the Veil - we saw it with Cole firsthand. But I guess they can all chill in the Fade till Solas dies or whatever.

I'd argue that the elves and mages are in an even worse position than they were in Origins. It's just not fulfilling, to me at least, to see the World I got so invested in just regress to the status quo after three games of challenging it. For it to not be meaningfully discussed or spoken about in-game, just brushed aside...I may not have liked the decision to do this but it could have been interesting (at least) if they actually discussed it.

Also, people don't just 'band together' because of the Blight - Origins showed us very well that in times of strife and pressure peoples petty/deeply ingrained beliefs, prejudices, and values come to the forefront. Alistair's comment about “You know, one good thing about the Blight is how it brings people together" -> was him being snarky about how everybody as Ostagar was on the verge of throwing hands with each other. They were united in cause not in belief - the cause being to eradicate the darkspawn.

It's just so grim, and with how they handled sociopolitical issues and moral complexity in datv (not at all) I have no hope that they'll be able to address this at all, if they even bother to and don't just...ignore it, I guess.

Maybe this is what the devs meant when they said that the 'tone' was similar to Origins - just straight up erasing whatever strides was made in the previous games and setting it back to square one lmao

[fiyero3305]

I just wanna make sure everyone knows you can headcanon absolutely anything you want post-finale and it wouldn't even require retconning or fixing anything in canon.

Five said they would be wiped from existence, but guess what? His word is not law. He knows almost nothing about Marigold, let alone Daruga or whatever the thing in Jennifer was called. There's no reason to believe that his speculation is true.

Do you wanna believe they reunite in the afterlife? You can! Wanna imagine they're reborn in the new timeline and find themselves pulled to those 8 marigolds blooming under that tree? Perfectly valid.

The writers & showrunner wanted to make this finale feel like it was the unequivocal end and no one could try to continue the story, but they don't have that power.

[zehpeh]

"ULTIMUM" - acrylics/ink on watercolour paper (+digital) - February 2024

[shallowseeker]

when jack said "can you tell them i'm sorry" about the angels being angry i fell in love with him as a character. he's just a little guy!!!

Imagine. You're a new life and one of your earlier emotions? Being sorry.

After hearing angelic voices, perhaps he's hearing their anger, their panic... and he's sorry for being born. Or perhaps he's just sorry for hurting the people who'd been kind to him, for the people caught up in his out-of-control power.

//

//

///

[Sam is also visibly relieved, as Jack sits on the cot opposite him and folds his legs up criss cross applesauce style] JACK: I'm sorry. SAM (confused): What? JACK: Will you tell them that I'm sorry? SAM: Yeah. Sure. Of course. (long pause) 13x01

///

Then Jack gets stabbed and:

...is confused, then horrified.

After all, the other person who got stabbed this episode?

Not exactly fine.

Jack looks on as Sheriff Barker rushes Clark out of the building, Clark suffering from a severe stab wound from the exact same kind of weapon.

Jack notices.

Notices how different he and Clark are.

///

So in 13x02, he's still struggling with that blossoming realization, that horror:

Jack already knows:

This appeal is for a reassurance that can't be given...

Something about godforsaken monsters and their little monsters. It's so painful.

But also so reminiscent of another moment of unsettling, possibly evil, intrinsic invulnerability:

There's something so piercing about this off-key parallel.

My brother thinks you can* be saved & You don't believe that // You don't think you deserve to be saved

[prokopetz]

Could you run a good game of WTF by Discord? What sorts of things would I want to know if I were to try running it? I've brought it up with a gaming group (not TTRPGs, though) and they seem interested, but none of us know how to play.

I'm not convinced that Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist is playable outside of a text-based medium for most groups. There's so much stuff that needs writing down on an ongoing basis that a face-to-face game really wants a dedicated note-taker, and it's hard to take minutes and play at the same time.

As for what you'd need to know to run it, there are a couple of things I find helpful to keep in mind that can trip up folks who are accustomed to conventional tabletop RPGs:

While WTF does have a nominal GM role in the form of the Weaver, in practice everyone at the table has GM-like responsibilities, which the game's rules divide into three broad categories: curators of the setting's lore (Fatalists), adjudicators of the game's rules (Theurgists), and facilitators of the table's social contract (Wishers). This can help ease folks into exercising GM-like prerogatives by distributing the load, but it can also result in players getting boxed into roles they don't enjoy because they didn't realise their choice of stats comes with real-world responsibilities. This is likely going to be challenging for you, because if most of your group has no prior experience with tabletop RPGs, it may not be possible to determine in advance which parts of GMing the game would be the best fit for each.

Under all the discursive philosophising about game design as a discipline, what WTF is is a nomic whose voting procedures consist of playing a tabletop RPG. If you're introducing your group to the game, it may be worthwhile to do some reading up on nomics as a genre and the common pitfalls of conducting one.

[goddidntdothis]

haunted breath

[pinacoladamatata]

blink and you'll miss it moments around skyhold....