Ok i know I'm like REALLY really late to the party (I probably even missed it) but I just got the chance to read Bloodmoon Huntress and I just wanna say...
OMFG IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW! THAT'S WHY RAYLA HATES WATER! BECAUSE OF KIM'DAEL!
I can't imagine what it was like for her in that moment. If it wasn't for Runaan saving her and Ethari's magic mouse finding her, she would've drowned. It must've been traumatising. I wonder how she'll deal with her water fear in season 5 considering the fact that they will probably spend almost the entire season on a boat which is in the water.
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I saw some confusion among people thinking that Eramis' appearance was random and that she had no business being on the station with access to the Warsats. I'd like to try and clarify some stuff about that.
Eramis was a constant presence this season; more so than Xivu Arath. It has been explained that Xivu Arath cannot invade with her army until the specifics of a ritual are fulfilled and that moving her army through the ascendant plane takes an extraordinary amount of energy and resources.
Some of Xivu's forces were here and acting on her behalf, yes, but largely the main enemy this season was Eramis. Eramis is already in the system and was very explicitly used by the Witness as the one who would act often and faster. The Witness spent a lot of time turning Eramis' friends and soldiers into Scorn for this purpose.
These Scorn are the ones that had the Seraph Station under constant siege. Every time we attack Seraph Station, it's canon because Scorn come back to life so every time we clear it, we have to do it anew. They've been digging in the Station for months, trying to gain access to the Warsat network and preparing for the final assault.
Eramis was not randomly on the Seraph Station; she was there because she's been trying to get there for months. We were fighting their attempts by uploading a virus into the network each time we're there, but that's never been a certain way of stopping Eramis and the Scorn army from wrestling control over the network away. Which is the point of us having to do it multiple times.
I know the Seraph's Shield mission only played dialogue once so if anyone needs a refresher:
Elsie Bray: I've gained remote access to the launch facility's subsystems, but someone is already in here. House Salvation Splicers are hacking the launch mainframe.
Eramis had splicers working on hacking into the station. As a matter of fact, they gained access to the station first.
Ana Bray: She's here? Of course. That must be how Xivu Arath plans of co-opting the Warsat network. The Hive can't do it on their own, so the Witness sends Eramis and her Splicers in to assist.
Ana explaining how Eramis being there makes sense because Xivu cannot gain access to the Warsats on her own, she needs Eramis to assist.
The whole seasonal story hinges on Eramis hacking the station to get to the Warsats and the Seraph's Shield mission was explicitly about us trying to stop her week by week. It just so happens that she succeeded hacking it at the end, before Rasputin was fully operational and ready to be uploaded without negative consequences.
Is the setup a little bit clunky? I think so, yeah, because the whole season is doomed from the start. We have to stop our enemies but it's the nature of the end-of-the-year story for enemies to win in some capacity. I also think that we didn't really have to kill Rasputin for the same effect and for the enemies to somehow get the upper hand; I think it would've been fine if Rasputin simply had to destroy the Warmind stuff but that he could've remained with us as an Exo.
But Eramis having access to Seraph Station and the Warsat network is not random or out of nowhere nor is it nonsensical. That was her entire plan the whole season. Actually her first big win, possibly also saved her life. Not sure how many failures from Eramis the Witness would've tolerated.
I guess the issue is that with the current seasonal structure, we expect the seasonal goal to be fulfilled and for us to walk happily into the sunset until the next season because that's how it worked so far. It can feel like we've been fighting our enemies for 3 months for nothing given that we've essentially failed and it almost caused a catastrophe. But I'm not sure how else to create a story (seasonal or otherwise) where things don't go as planned or where we fail.
There were multiple fronts to fight on this season and there's one where we dodged a massive bullet; Xivu Arath. We lost to Eramis because we had to think about the bigger picture and that is Xivu's invasion. Our loss to Eramis also took the Warsats out of the equation now so that's also a loss to Xivu. It's what we needed; a stalemate. It's not flashy or happy, but it's better than the alternative which is Xivu Arath's portal over Earth. So in that regard we succeeded. We lost the Warsats and Rasputin and almost the Traveler, but all of that was to prevent Xivu Arath from invading which we managed. For now.
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It's gonna be so funny whenever I end up updating ITNL bc my opening notes r gonna be like "hi sorry for being gone for so long, I wrote a vw smut one-shot (link in the end notes), got a new girlfriend, started playing BG3 (The Time Sucker), quit my job ive had for 8 years, and THEN my dad died so I've been dealing with probate and packing his house up and moving his furniture. Been a busy few months. Anyways, lets get to it,"
Like it really has been so eventful. God damn.
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I made the mistake of scrolling the dash last night, hoping to re-engage my Loki fandom feels, only to be reminded of why I've more or less quit this fandom - which, for the record, is bc I don't know if it's purity culture or "woke" culture or just "for the love of god, I'm begging you to touch grass" culture, but I'd like to engage with my blorbo without running into posts spouting takes like "saying Loki has small, slender hands is a feminization kink (and therefore bad)." Like?? I think there's something inherently anti-genderfluidity(?) to assume that men can't have small, slender hands or that having small, slender hands is automatically a feminine trait, and also Loki does have small, slender hands, and also even if it is being written as some kind of a kink, so what? Why are we kink-shaming?
I mean, I don't know, it just seems like there are more and more and more things that are being shamed, or criticized, based on an arbitrary sense of morality that undermines fiction as a creative, explorative form of art and it's just beyond exhausting - and fucking obnoxious - at this point.
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