crazy how in c2 they'll have three extensive convos checking in with each other while traveling like an hour in-game meanwhile in c3 they've been on the moon for days and still haven't discussed the following:
laudna fucking ate a guy
imogen's mom is a mythical legend amongst the enemy
orym vs. laudna's response to imogen giving into predathos
how did chetney suddenly learn to make hypnotizing toys
delilah briarwood
"some of us are expendable, we should get captured"
anything and everything they said during the trust exercise, including but not limited to:
laudna not being able to distinguish her thoughts from delilah's
imogen's disgust at delilah's inevitable presence
chetney's fear that his new family will leave him
orym's feelings about dorian
fcg relieving stress through murder
fearne's insecurities about their chances of success
ashton's guilt about the shard
and more!
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sometimes people will say “going dark” and then what they’re actually talking about is just people no longer presenting a carefully constructed version of their emotions and experiences.
like. emotional turmoil is not the same as darkness. laudna in this Fictional Universe that has tangibly different stakes wrt to death and killing than our own, is at best like . morally neutral for what she just did like. man has been secretly trying to kill you, and then just tried to do so again, killing him back is a fair choice. and even if i was someone who is excited by delilah’s inability to escape from the narrative, this shit isn’t about delilah. laudna made a choice. if delilah is back or whatever it’s a choice that laudna made because something in that grants her more control than her existing conditions did. this isn’t some Delilah Takes Over, it’s Laudna Expressly Makes The Choice To Call Forth Something within Herself to remedy the lack of control that’s been thrust upon her. if y’all want to Continue to limit Laudna’s agency (as the cr fandom is so, so want to do when a female character makes a choice that isn’t Good according to some weird system of virtue ethics) go ahead.
likewise with orym. little guy is not “going dark” because he has finally made direct action about his emotional turmoil in dealing with a situation which has similarly left him without control and has also placed him in a position where his stalwart conviction towards protecting and honouring those he loves and has lost alike is constantly met with other people he cares for going well.. what if they had a point/we are killing other peoples loved ones/etc. which like . yeah that might be frustrating and in fact might lead him to go, actually, i can’t afford to try and maintain some abject morality where I carry a locket that will literally only provide guilt. orym is completely committed to his beliefs, the locket and what it represents has never been a limit to what he will do, only a reminder of the consequences of what he might cause in those actions. but they Are at war and orym has a billion things on his plate. he can put down the locket. especially when bor’dor is the explicit manifestation of that locket’s symbolism. the subtext rapidly became the text and orym doesn’t need a reminder. it’s there in the fact that team issylra is walking away with two friends, not three.
these are character who have at every turn denied their own emotions in various forms while still being acutely aware of what they deny, whether that awareness was/is fully realized or not. many of laudna’s early convos with ashton show us that there is some awareness to the lighthearted spooky goth girl and how that persona fades when she thinks too much about what has led her and maintained that reality. likewise the entirety of orym’s story thus far is defined by his grief in a very literal sense, it Has extended from that grief to also the commitment he had to the purpose of figuring out the assassination attempt on keyleth but as we have seen, that purpose has fallen apart. paired with the quasi-reopening of his grief that was getting to see will again only to have to turn away, i don’t think there’s a lack of awareness in orym of how much he hurts. but between his actions and 4SD, that hurt tends to get buried under guilt or Responsibility.
and now, finally, both of them have admitted to that Not in the safety of small introspection or one-on-one conversations but with actions that they cannot shy away from or deny. laudna killed bor’dor and orym encouraged her to. and it Is a complex situation but truly I don’t really think it’s a “going dark” one. because they’re not giving into some overhanging Darkness of Morality™, they’re admitting that they are hurt and have long been hurting.
or, y’know, tldr for those who continue to deny laudna and orym agency or fully villainise them for whatever weird reasons . you could listen to laudna and ashton’s conversation that pretty much lays it out explicitly. laudna claims she’s weak for having chosen to kill bor’dor. ashton denies that and affirms instead that, no, she’s hurt.
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fcg: i enjoy eating silver more than copper
imogen: i am genuinely scared to meet my mom again
chet: it is well known that wood is better than metal
laudna: deep down inside, both delilah and i kind of want the shard
laudna: i don't want [the shard], fearne should have it, but i don't know anymore what's my opinion or desires or feelings or [delilah's]
imogen: i love laudna deeply, but i'm disgusted at the thought of delilah looking at us all the time
orym: i'm super lonely all the time, especially at night. doesn't matter if i'm bunking with one of you guys
fcg: sometimes i pity some of you because you have beating hearts and opportunities and you don't do enough with them
fcg: chetney you have so much love to give and it doesn't seem like you're interested in anything, in ANYTHING, other than wood. there's people out there who you could love and experiences you could share with someone else, but all you care about is wood
orym: i've always laughed it off but i guess i do kinda wonder if chetney is my dad
ashton: i am the reason that the jiana hexum robbery went fucking wrong and the reason why i got thrown out of a fucking window
ashton: (laudna: is that why you feel like you deserved to have the nobodies leave you?) yeah.
fearne: i feel like we are very ill-equipped for this job and we're gonna fail at saving the world
chet: while wood may be the superior material to metal, i do fear that with the dwindling interest in it that children will find my toys and thereby myself obsolete every year that i grow older
fcg: i think it's something buried deep down in my circuitry, but every time i hurt or kill something, it feels really good. it makes me sorta relax a little bit and some of my stress goes away
imogen: i know we're supposed to save the gods but i've tried talking to them my whole life and none of them will ever respond. i think i'm tainted. i don't know if i want to save gods that don't love me
laudna: you know we could all ripcord out of this at any moment, and i don't mean this scavenger hunt, i mean saving the world, right? andsometimesifantasizeaboutitallthetime
fearne: sometimes i do stuff to you guys while you're sleeping. not weird stuff, i just like to look at you closely and...you know, just look at you. you look so content and comfortable and i can get up and look at you really well. and maybe twiddle your hair and like braid it. nothing bad! nothing bad!!
ashton: any time it's too quiet, i start worrying that one of us, most of us, are gonna end up killing another one of us accidentally. all of us. orym...very gently, but probably–orym may be the only one i worry about the least, but genuinely everybody else. i have panicked thinking about what happens when one of you kills another one of us
orym: (laudna: do you have any strong feelings one way or another kind of being the normal guy in a group of freaks who are all ticking time bombs? are you okay with that, do you have any strong feelings?) i have all the faith in the world in you guys, all of you. and i have also spent time thinking how to neutralize each of you
fcg: i kinda worry that i put all my eggs in the changebringer basket and she might betray us all, i had a really weird conversation with her and i think she's just out for herself and she might not really care about me
imogen: fearne, i was really disappointed in you for running away from your power, you should take the shard (laudna: you should take the shard)
orym: i really miss dorian, and sometimes i think that's okay and sometimes i think it isn't
pate: [laudna] is my creator, i don't have feelings, i'm a construction
ashton: i feel fucking worse that i just fucked up fearne's life way more than mine, and i should've died instead of that happening
chet: i grew up in the bramblewood outside of westruun, and when i was a kid, i came back from learning how to make toys and found that my whole family had left. all they left behind were toys. and they ran when errevon the rimelord was running across the plains so i'm kinda afraid of dragons. and i had five siblings, alabaster, pepper, sugarplum, hermey, and chad, and i was so mad that they left, i never looked for any of them. and now i'm pretty sure they're dead, so i think that any family i have is just gonna look for a reason to leave me, that's why i don't get attached to anybody
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