chetneys

[chetneys]

the fact that the archheart took selena because he loved her and wanted to give her peace, and in the process left her suspended in an eternal static torment because he doesn't understand how something as fragile as a mortal soul works feels like a summary of the good intentions/bad long term outcome situation with godly soul custody. it makes sense that the gods would end up keeping some of their special followers! the first mortals to get in tight with the gods probably asked for it! the ego death of proper reincarnation is terrifying compared to staying up late hanging out with your buddy pelor. asmodeus and the hells aren't being half as kind about it yet the core motive remains—that hoarding instinct to keep what you love(or hate) and never let it go.

but you and i aren’t meant to be eternal. the kryn use anamnesis to ensure the continuity of self through endless lifetimes and they’re still losing themselves to it. selena was turned into a nighmarish human-faced star because the god she made out of metal thought that they could understand each other and she hung there in his domain burning, her last wish forever repeating on her lips, for a thousand years until he could release her. mortals don’t want to fully die and gods don’t want to let them go but nobody can stay in their frozen crystalline palace of eternity forever. eventually everything in the Real gets to change.

[chetneys]

So many people in the tags seem to think Bell's Hells can just ignore what the Arch Heart said in c3e107 and everything will be fine. But it's a game of chicken, right?

They could defeat Ludinus and still end up facing the Calamity 2.0.

They could prevent Predathos from being released and still face near complete destruction of the world they know.

Because it's about who blinks first. How long will the gods wait to unleash their attack knowing that their own existence is at risk? How long do we trust them to wait because we know, thanks to Downfall, that while the Primes may love mortals as their children they value mortal lives less than their own. And from a near-immortal perspective it makes sense. Lives that are gone in the blink of an eye and are soon replaced by a near endless supply of other mayfly lives vs those of your own family who can be with you forever? If you have to make a choice?

I'm not saying killing the gods or chasing them off are either one good ideas. I'm not saying we can trust Predathos won't do terrible damage to the planet or the people living there even if the Arch Heart and Ludinus are correct about them only being interested in eating gods. Orym was right, ants can still die even if they aren't the intended target. I'm saying that not treating a new Calamity as a real threat and an imminent risk is a sure way of being unable to prevent it. Bell's Hells need to consider what they're willing to do and not do to address that risk. And a lot of fans need to think about what they're willing to let go of for the continued presence of the gods of Exandria.

It's not hard to imagine a variety of terrible scenarios.

Bell's Hells. Dead. The Mighty Nein. Dead. Vox Machina. Dead.

Whitestone. Gone.

The Menagerie Coast. Decimated.

The Wildmother alive, but the Clays all dead and the blight they have fought spreading beyond the Savalirwood to engulf a larger part of Wildemount.

Rosohna hollowed out to create yet another set of ruins on that site and the people of the Kryn Dynasty who lived there turned into refugees.

The ruins of Aeor destroyed to prevent any more information and weapons from coming out of them, but done with the might of the gods so that it takes out all of Eiselcross and maybe Uthodurn with it.

Jrusar, Heartmoor Hamlet, and Yios. Gone. Bassuras still around because, let's be real, even a second Calamity couldn't kill that place.

Maybe this is the fight that succeeds in taking out Vasselheim?

If Predathos isn't released then Ruidus and the people on it might survive. But if Predathos is released AND the gods step out from behind the Divine Gate, does everyone and everything on that moon die in their attempt to stop the god eater?

This is obviously not an exhaustive list of the possibilities, just scenarios that are at the top of my mind. And it's not a foregone conclusion that anything like this will happen, but all of these things could happen. Think about every beloved place and favorite NPC and imagine them all gone. Because if the gods come out from behind the Divine Gate, they will all come out, not just the Primes. And once they are all out, how willing are the gods (as Braius said, ALL the gods) to go back to the old status quo, something that not all of them were happy with in the first place? You could have a situation where the fight with Ludinus over Predathos is over fairly quickly, only to be followed by a longer, more devastating fight between the Primes and the Betrayers, take 2 (or 3, or whatever number we're up to at this point).

How long does it take a group of gods to destroy a planet, even if they don't intend to do so?

[chetneys]

I do find it fun that the gods all kept the genders they present as, and so you've got the nonbinary god of beauty over here whose current gender is Robot. He might be using he/him pronouns at present, but motherfucker still wasn't "assigned" fuck all at birth/creation except a job. He occupies a space where gender doesn't even apply, hiding as one of the beings allegedly created without the aid of and existing apart from divinity.

[chetneys]

biting and gnashing my teeth over the vampiric sterility of the gods in Downfall. they are flash-frozen at the moment they came into this world, the moment all their infinity congealed into singularity. asmodeus is always enraged and burning, obsessed with family. sarenae cannot be anything but a soothing comfort, pelor a guiding light. melora is the yearning, hungry wild, forever eating itself, forever innovating. erathis is the laws of physics that keep her limited, and the laws of reciprocity that keep the scales equal. corellon is the beauty and kord is the storm and torog is the weeping flesh. they can’t be anything else! imagine being stuck forever in the moment of your greatest grief—no wonder pelor believes their brother wanted to die. death was all he could think about for thousands of years.

it captures so perfectly my favorite implicit horror of godhood; the nightmare of being two dimensional. gods are born a perfect epitome of their domain and they die the same way. they can be people too but it’s a flat kind of personhood, the personhood of clowns, of archetypes, of monsters.

[chetneys]

Here are some more Downfall thoughts because I am still chewing on wires about it. This time, specifically, I am thinking about the portrayal of Imri/Asmodeus here.

Specifically, how Asmodeus interacts with The Everlight. This word choice sounds childish maybe, but I'm specifically so interested in how mean he is to her.

He taunts her after nearly killing her. He revels in the damage he's done. It's something to take delight in.

He doesn't act like a kid who got hit a little too hard by his sibling and reflexively hits back harder, it doesn't have that reflexive anger. It's not the somber tone of 'I didnt have to do this, you made me do this'. It's intentional and specifically malicious.

(And in way, it makes sense, right? the Betrayers were locked in a prison for hundreds of years by their siblings. I imagine that soured them quite a lot)

As this post says (and it's a great post) Asmodeus is more interested in punishing his siblings than reuniting with them (despite the fact that he also seems to have disdain for the Matron, the one who stole another of his siblings from him), and a large part of him is clearly reveling in that punishment.

And all of this, this mocking, this desire to punish, this anger...it's all against the backdrop of a very open and eager Imri who is thrilled at the thought of a new game, who wants to see the new thing first, who 'isn't everything, but is something' and will leap to his assumed death to try and save his family.

And Asmodeus is what he's become, all these millennia later.

(I am once again pointing at the epic family drama of it all)

[chetneys]

You know, I’m so curious if the Priest of the Dawnfather thing was already in the works for Father Milo by the time his Asmodeus anamnesis kicked in and he just kept on that path because he thought it was a funny coincidence. Or if he deliberately chose it after he remembered who he was because he knew he could use it to fuck with Pelor when they were inevitably reunited. Either is juicy and hilarious in its own way.

[chetneys]

Okay, I know the Dawnfather and the other primes are running interference, but we NEED to get a full, one-on-one conversation between Asmodeus and Raei (I need it. So bad.) It would hurt so much but so GOOD. I know the hardest bars would be dropped, fucking "My greatest heartbreak...is that I will only have eternity to punish them" levels of bitterness and resentment.

Especially considering what we learn about them in the intro! Imri was straight up ready to die for Luz! Fucker threw himself into the goddamn flames for her!

You know there's so much angst over that. Over how she apologized before healing him. Is Asmodeus hung up on that? About how he sacrificed himself out of love and all she gave in return (in his mind obvs) was guilt? Does he think that's why she tried to save him during Calamity? Not out of love but out of guilt for trapping him?

Asmodeus, who was changed (change, a thing he hates above all else) for her. Who refuses to be changed ever again. Who would hurt the ones he loves in his pursuit of revenge. Who loves his hatred more than he loves his siblings.

The Everlight, who was just trying to help her brother. Who was just trying to help the world. Who got stabbed in the back for her efforts. Does she regret it? Trying to help him? Does she regret saving him on that ship in the first place?

Perhaps Torog is right. Perhaps death would have been the greatest mercy for him. Anything that isn't pain, that isn't all-consuming hatred.

Imagine if she told him that. How much that would fucking hurt him (them both). If it was a lie, would he know? Would he call her out on it?

Probably, I imagine. He'd probably say something like: "Mortals think we are different. That you are honest while I am not. But between us, you've always been the better liar. The greatest, cruelest lie that's ever been told, is that there is any mercy to be found in this wretched world."

TLDR, this miniseries is driving me insane.

[chetneys]

something something pike's desperation to redeem percy and sarenrae's desperation to redeem asmodeus...

[chetneys]

One of the last things Imri said before changing into Asmodeus was saying I love you to the being who later became Everlight and being hugged by her. This hug, this love being the only thing keeping him alive as unfathomable and realer than anything else heat and fire struck him. This hug, this love being the reason he became Asmodeus, the Lord of the Hells, the King of Lies instead of perishing. Does he despise her for that? Does he envy her for taking the light while he was given only unbearable heat and destruction?

[chetneys]

The tragic idea that the Betrayers loved their siblings so much that it ended up being what drove them apart. They didn't want to settle for anything that could hurt their family, and mortals were doing so, either directly (a mortal usurping one of them) or indirectly (emotionally hurting them during the Schism by just. dying so much). To the Betrayers, it wasn't worth it. They wanted their beloved family to leave and go somewhere that wouldn’t hurt them.

To them, it's the primes who are the betrayers. The primes were motivated by more than just love for their immediate family - they loved their creation, too, and more than that, felt a responsibility for it. They would rather fight their own siblings than leave it.

We saw all the gods love and protect each other during the opening of Downfall. The Betrayers were not uniquely evil from the start. They wanted to save themselves and their family from hardship and suffering, even if it meant leaving their creation, their game, and in response their siblings locked them away. Not only do they not love mortals, they view mortals as this corruptive force that somehow turned their family against them. Do they think that, if they succeed in exterminating them, the Primes will be freed from their influence? Maybe - perhaps some of them are waiting to forgive and embrace their siblings, but far from all, I suspect. Asmodeus certainly expressed during Calamity that he didn’t so much want to be reunited with his siblings as he wanted to punish them. He was betrayed by the ones he loved most for the sake of a game! Maybe togetherness and forgiveness was once an obtainable goal, but not anymore. Even if the Betrayers succeeded in ending Exandria, the Primes would never forgive them, and they would never forgive the primes. Their family can never be whole again because of, as they see it, the toxic influence of mortals. So they hate mortals for this influence, but more than that, they hate their siblings for being so weak as to fall for it.

[chetneys]

the archheart being an aeormaton is SO great because he is the god of arcane magic. a god of the arcane infiltrating the blackened heart of contemporary arcanum, a divinity in the guise of the city's greatest arcane achievement: life created without the gods. what a concept

[chetneys]

orb time!

[chetneys]

The Matron taking part in this plan is so insane because she WAS a contemporary to Aeor. Imagine discovering the secret to divinity, ascending to godhood and returning once more to mortaldom to face the specter of the society you yourself originated from. The Matron is on another level with this one

[chetneys]

brennan, bringing an absolutely masterful, tense, cinematic, beginning rp-sequence to an end: -and you wake up.

travis, speaking for all of us, voice quivering: i think i'm in the wrong class-

[chetneys]

[chetneys]

you & me & the devil makes three

hehehe colored these evil widofjord au sketches bc i still think the concept is Big S*xy

[chetneys]