#also saying the genocide was only Alluded to is WILD when you see actual fucking skeletons in the original show.

[meteorherd]

live action atla rewriting sokka to not be sexist because it's "problematic" and then priding itself for "more explicitly" showing the airbender genocide because the show only "alluded" to it...quite possibly the weirdest implications of what "progressive media" means that i've seen in a good while

[iturbide]

Hfjdhjf can I please have more information?? I think the reason I managed to float by so spoiler free was half because up until recently I never was super interested in Three Houses, and my knowledge was limited to what I was told about the routes. WHICH WAS APPARENTLY VERY LIMITED. V E R Y.

friend of course you can have more information

legit though I am so impressed that you’ve managed to stay spoiler free regardless of the context, I am massively spoiled for fandoms I’m not even in and yet you’re managing to come at it fresh like I did when I started my Golden Deer playthrough.

also this came in and frankly your wish is my command

But okay.  So.

Dimitri is honestly fascinating and a tragic, deeply flawed character in his own right.  But understanding his break requires backstory.  His mom died when he was still pretty young due to a plague that swept through Faerghus, and when he was around ten his father re-married an Imperial woman named Patricia von Arundel (who is also Edelgard’s mother, hence the step-siblings thing).  Edelgard, as it happens, had come to the Kingdom with her mother and uncle, Volkhart von Arundel, in order to escape the chaos caused by the Insurrection of the Seven, where the Imperial nobles seized power from the Emperor (Edelgard’s father), and the two became friends: she taught him to dance during the three-ish years she was in the Kingdom, and just before she left Dimitri gifted her a dagger, symbolic in the Kingdom of a hope for someone to cut their own path forward.

Two years later, Dimitri’s life basically becomes hell.  While he and his family are traveling through the neighboring lands of Duscur, their caravan is attacked: his father Lambert and his bodyguard Glenn are both brutally murdered, his step-mother goes missing, and he is the sole survivor.  He witnessed the people responsible, but although he tried to tell people what happened, the people of Duscur were blamed for the attack, and the genocide soon followed.  The whole incident came to be known as the Tragedy of Duscur, and it left Dimitri with massive trauma that went completely unaddressed: he suffers from survivor’s guilt and PTSD, he completely lost all sense of taste, he’s had a constant headache since the incident...oh, and also he sees hallucinations of the people who died.  So there’s that.

Now, because Dimitri was only 14 at the time and he couldn’t take the Faerghus throne until he reached his majority at 18, his uncle Rufus stepped in as regent in the meantime.  Rufus is pretty fucking terrible!  In fact, he sent Dimitri at age 16 to go put down a rebellion in Western Faerghus -- and again, Dimitri is a traumatized teenager who’s been getting no help or support.  The people around him, notably Gilbert and Felix’s father Rodrigue, are trying to foster him into the next King of Faerghus rather than tending to his very real mental and emotional needs following the events of Duscur, so Dimitri has been silently bottling up all of his problems for the better part of two years.  He...kind of snaps during that rebellion, and it ends up as a brutal slaughter; Felix bears witness to it, and ever after he treats Dimitri like a wild animal, calling him a beast and a boar.

This is all just piling on the trauma, as you probably noticed.  He manages to hold it together and keep up a calm exterior, though he’s deeply afraid of the darkness within him, and does his utmost to bury it and keep it under control.  At age 17 he comes to Garreg Mach, and over the course of the school year things just get progressively worse: he starts slipping and growing more violent over the course of repeated encounters with the Flame Emperor, since he recognizes the masked mages from the attack on his family’s caravan in Duscur and believes that the Flame Emperor must have been responsible for the Tragedy.  But he pretty much snaps during the revelation at the Holy Tomb, where Edelgard is unmasked as the Flame Emperor -- in the Blue Lions route, he literally crushes an Imperial soldier’s skull with his bare hands in his attempts to get at Edelgard.  It’s shocking, especially since up to that point the super strength that came from his Crest was played for laughs more than anything else.

He continues slipping in the weeks leading up to the attack on Garreg Mach, publicly alluding to his hallucinations and how they whisper to him and vowing to take Edelgard’s head himself.  CF is the only route where he actually stays pretty sane, so we’re going to focus on non-CF routes: in the battle for the monastery, Edelgard’s forces end up victorious, and he’s forced back to Faerghus, expecting to take the throne and rally a counterstrike against her...only to arrive and be accused of regicide when it’s revealed that his uncle Rufus has been viciously murdered.  Cornelia (who is, in fact, a Twisted agent) takes power in the Kingdom and basically hands it off to Edelgard as the ‘Dukedom of Faerghus,’ then orders Dimitri be imprisoned and later executed; but before he can be killed, his vassal Dedue manages to break him out of prison, though the escape attempt apparently costs him his life (he can be saved by other Duscur survivors depending on the results of an earlier paralogue, though -- the important point is that Dimitri thinks Dedue is dead).  After that, Dimitri spends the next four-ish years wandering alone in the Faerghus forests, the isolation exacerbating his already poor mental health until he’s openly conversing with his hallucinations; he also starts attacking Imperial forces he comes across in Faerghus and basically ripping them apart, leading to a lot of rumors about a wild beast on the loose.  Also, somewhere in this five year span he loses an eye.  No, we have no idea how.  Fandom burns for answers.

Now, Dimitri’s fate varies significantly depending on playthrough here.  In Silver Snow and Verdant Wind, he’s literally consumed by his rage and guilt and his desire for vengeance on behalf of those taken from him, and he ends up dying in pursuit of it.  In Azure Moon, he’s lost any real ability to tell reality from hallucination, and believes even Byleth is nothing more than a figment; he continues his single-minded pursuit of Edelgard, committing atrocities of his own and admitting to being nothing but a base murderer, the beast Felix accused him of being so long ago.  But eventually, through the intervention of Byleth and his classmates, he starts to come around a little more -- though it takes Rodrigue’s death and his final words, encouraging him to live for himself rather than those who have already gone, to really wake him up and get him moving forward.  The game takes the turn a little fast, but it’s still really touching to see Dimitri coming back from the edge and recognizing the importance of his own desires.  The campaign continues, they retake Fhirdiad, there’s a parley with Edelgard where she refuses to back down and continues to insist that war is the only option, things get crazy with the final boss like holy shit, but in the end after Edelgard’s been defeated, Dimitri offers his hand to her...and her final act is to throw the dagger he gifted her when they were children at him, and he instinctively kills her in retaliation.

Look, Dimitri doesn’t come out of this smelling like roses.  He killed a lot of people in very, very violent ways.  But he recognizes that what he did, even if he wasn’t mentally sound at the time, was pretty atrocious and spends the rest of his life seeking peace with as little bloodshed as possible.

But okay I have gone on for a long time about Dimitri so if you’re still here, congratulations let’s talk about my favorite Lord.

Claude is a mystery wrapped in an enigma.  That’s literally how he’s presented in the game, and it’s great.  He’s sociable, amiable, friendly, mischievous, and has a reputation as a schemer.  He jokes about his own reputation a lot, especially when he’s called out, but he’s wickedly smart, especially where tactics, information gathering, puzzles, and secrets are concerned.  We literally go through the whole first half of the game getting only the tiniest hints about him personally and what his aspirations are -- we don’t even know where he came from, he legit just showed up out of the blue when Duke Riegan named Claude as his heir -- and meanwhile he’s out there trying to unravel the mystery behind Crests, the Church, and the Flame Emperor -- and while he doesn’t manage to succeed before the timeskip hits, he manages to uncover an alarming amount of information.  Also, despite his reputation as an untrustworthy trickster, he cares deeply about the people around him and does his best to keep them safe, even if it means resorting to underhanded (but ultimately non-lethal) methods.

Once we hit the timeskip, we find out more of the secrets that he’s been hiding.  For context, Fodlan’s neighbor to the east is Almyra, and relations between the two nations have been...tense, to say the least: a few hundred years ago Almyra invaded Fodlan and a bad time was had by all.  In order to prevent it from happening again, the Alliance built a fortress called Fodlan’s Locket in the pass connecting the two nations (the pass being called Fodlan’s Throat).  Presently, the Alliance is headed by a communal council of nobles from the major families, who meet at regular round tables in order to debate business that affects their territories and pass legislature; the round table is headed by Duke Riegan, who had two children, a son set to inherit the title and a daughter who went mysteriously missing years ago.  Unfortunately, House Riegan and House Gloucester have never been on the best of terms, and when Duke Riegan’s heir was attacked and killed on the road while traveling to visit Duke Gloucester, there were a lot of rumors that Lorenz’s dad might have been involved, though nothing was ever proven in that regard.  It left Duke Riegan in a tough spot, though, since he was getting on in years and suddenly had no heir...at which point, Claude ‘miraculously’ steps in with his Crest and is named heir to House Riegan.

Turns out?  Duke Riegan’s daughter didn’t go missing: she eloped with an Almyran.  And that Almyran, as it turns out, became king of Almyra.  So Claude’s an Almyran prince.  Turns out, he didn’t exactly have a great time growing up, though: Almyrans view the people of Fodlan as cowardly and weak, so they viewed Claude’s mom as such...and Claude himself, too, since he was half-Fodlan.  No matter how much he argued or fought, it never seemed to matter.  He got bullied a lot, and started picking up tactics and poison mixing as ways to defend himself...but more than anything, he hated how small-minded Almyrans were when it came to him and his mother.  Then Duke Riegan’s heir died, and his grandfather reached out to his daughter, hoping to have Claude tested for a Crest -- which, as it happens, he bore.  Claude was so excited, believing that things in Fodlan would be different, better...

...and instead, he found that things in Fodlan were exactly like they were in Almyra.  People hated him for half his heritage -- just this time, it was for his ‘savage’ Almyran half instead of his ‘cowardly’ Fodlan half.  It was hilarious, in a sad way, how alike the people of Fodlan and Almyra were when it came to hating things they didn’t know...and that was how he decided on his goal.  What Claude wants to do is destroy the borders between people and forge understanding between them.  He found through hard experience that people always fear the outsider -- but if you break down the walls, there’s no ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ anymore.  There’s just people.  What he wants to do is unify the Alliance, then Fodlan, then perhaps even the world...not through force or subjugation, but by bringing them together, uniting them through what they share in common and helping them understand and find value in their differences.  His aspiration is to ensure that no one has to suffer like he did growing up.

And so, once things are all settled in Fodlan (and he’s assured that he managed to achieve his goal in small scale with his friends in the Alliance), he leaves Byleth in charge, forgoes leadership in the Alliance, and heads back to Almyra to continue working toward that aspiration.  He becomes the king of Almyra so that he can start working toward that larger goal from the other side of the border, intending to open roads toward peaceful diplomacy and trade with Fodlan.  He knows their bonds are strong, even when they’re apart, and he knows that they’ll all be reunited someday.  Also Claude is the only Lord who has the possibility to live in all routes (barring Silver Snow but he’s only listed as ‘missing’ not ‘dead’ so I hold out hope) which I think says a heck of a lot about how great he is.  He’s just so good and so kind and cares so much about people and he makes my heart warm and yes I’m done yelling about how much I love Claude for a moment.

So hopefully that fills you in a little on the other Lords at least in part please enjoy my novel-length ramble.

[greyias]

Hop on the Crazy Train Guys! Spoilers and Rampant Speculation, Ahoy!

Hey guys, are you ready to hop on the Crazy Train? Find your tinfoil hats as I leap from the “Oh, that might make sense” discovery decrypted from the 5.4 Datamining into full on Conpsiracy Theorist mode. Full disclosure, I realize A) how ridiculous all this sounds; B) the extreme unlikliehood of this being the ACTUAL storyline is… low. But if it were. It would be a-MAZ-ing!

This my new pet Master Theory of the (SWTOR) Universe. And the answer, is not 42, as Douglas Adams might have us believe, but in fact 7-18-1-22-5-19-20-15-14-5. You can pry this ridiculous headcanon from my cold dead hands.

Spoilers, and wild speculation that grasps at the thinnest and most fragile of canonical straws, below the “Read More”. Leave your suspension of disbelief behind, because it’ll just drag you down.

So at the end of the revised letter discovered in the 5.4 datamining, in each of the variations on the letter that Theron sends, there’s an error message with a string of what appears to be random numbers. If you apply an alphanumeric cipher to them, it looks like he’s trying to say “It’s Zildrog” and gets cut off, hinting that perhaps everything is not as it seems. (Seeing as how we have to wait until next Tuesday to see if we do indeed receive this letter, well…)

So, anyway, let’s leap onto the crazy train guys. Starting where this whole traitor nonsense first cropped up, which was RageBot Tyth’s CAPSLOCKKKK speech at the end where he’s revealing that, *GASP* there’s a traitor in our midst. (This was pretty heavily hinted at from the first cut scene, that something was up). Let’s look at that speech, in all its Shifty, Capslocky glory:

YOU HAD NO CHOICE. YOU WERE LURED HERE. BLINDED BY DUTY. DISTRACTED BY TRUST. YOU DID NOT SEE THE BLADE TO YOUR NECK THE RAGE IN YOUR SHADOW. THE TRAITOR. YOU ARE BETRAYED.

There’s a dialogue option here that gives you three branched answers (if I’ve pulled from the proper datamining spot on TorCommunity), where you can be all “Bzuh? Why?” Or “You’re trying to trick me” or “I KNEW SOME MOFO WAS UP TO NO GOOD”: ONE MARKED BY ANGER. PAIN. HOPE ERODING. // RAGE FEEDS ON TRUTH // SUSPICION CORRODES

The first one… is interesting.

THE BETRAYER LURED YOU TO IOKATH. IGNITED WAR. SPARKED THE ENGINES OF RAGE, ENVY, PASSION, HATE, SORROW. THE BETRAYER NOW OFFERS YOU: SACRIFICE PRIME. FUEL FOR THE SIX GODS!

There’s an extra bit he says at the beginning too that’s interesting, but I’ll circle back around to that later, because it’s a bit of a tangent.

So, he specifically mentions that we’re blinded by our duty (doesn’t say to what), and we’re distracted by “trust”. There’s a “rage in (our) shadow”. They’ve lured us into this death trap with the specific intention of waking the old Zakuulan gods, in theory, to bring about the end of all organic life in the galaxy.

And if you’re thinking “Well, minus the genocide of the entire galaxy that sounds like it could be Theron! I mean, unless we’re like dating him and trying to rebuild everything and doing exactly what he has indicated that he wants up to this point”–hold on! Stop wallowing in despair, because I’ve got a better idea! It’s the Order of Zildrog!

Actually, I’ll do one even BETTER. It’s not just the Order of Zildrog. It’s Zildrog. As in, the old Zakuulan serpent demon who likes to sleep in the Endless Swamp, test warriors, and eventually wants to bring about the destruction of all life. Because that’s what crazy serpents of death do in their spare time. I mean sure, I could be 100% off base, being played by my own hopes, expectations, and cipher substitutions and grasping at the thinnest of straws here, but hear my crazy butt out!

After that speech, we all assumed that the traitor he was referring to, one who’s been at our side from “the beginning of it all” was person in the Alliance. But what if it wasn’t… a person? But still a member of the Alliance. An in fact, vital member of the Alliance.

What if it’s the Gravestone?

Okay, whoever hasn’t slowly backed out of this post at this point and unfollowed me, I assume you had picked “sentient warship of death and destruction” in the “Who is the Traitor?” betting pool as a joke, and are suddenly sweating and looking nervous. (“Am *I* a Scion? Can *I* see the future? That was a joke! I thought the theory of several jawas standing on each others’ backs wearing a robe made more sense!”)

And in a strange sort of way, this makes… a tiny bit of sense? There have been some things that have been nagging at me since we started KotFE/KOTET, but I had brushed them off as dues ex machinas and just weird plot holes. (I mean, they might still be. Sometimes things in SWTOR can be subtle as an anvil landing on your head) While this speech was going on, there was a tiny voice in me asking: What does this giant raging metal god of death care about me? How does he know this about some random person in my Alliance?

But a fellow mighty war machine from Iokath? Tyth just might know a thing or two about that.

“But Grey,” you say as you reach for a sedative as my ramblings start to reach a fever pitch, “you said this was about Zildrog. What does that have to do with the Gravestone? My lovingly loyal warship that I rescued from a swamp and has followed me into battle ever since?”

Well, what I’m saying (as I dodge that sedative to get out the rest of this wild hair that is likely unmoored in reality) is that the Gravestone IS Zildrog. And he’s finally making his move after pretending to be a loyal, stupid spaceship after all this time.

Hold on, let me put on my tinfoil hat and explain my insanity more. Because there are hints peppered throughout KotFE and KOTET that actually back this up. Ambient dialogue on Zakuul with both the Heralds of Zildrog and just random Zakuulans allude that Zildrog is like kind of the rebel of the God Pantheon (some don’t even consider him one of the Gods), hinting that maybe he fought with the other Gods. After the Iokath storyline, we find out that the Gods are actually Giant Mechas intended to play war games all over the galaxy, and Zakuul was one of their favorite worlds to destroy over and over, decimating that population constantly.

If you run about the place there’s all sorts of strange bits of lore about Zildrog that don’t seem to connect to the KotFE/KOTET storyline. Forgive me for I’m stuck at work and can’t go find all of the actual pieces of dialogue verbatim, but I just heard a lot of them this weekend running KotFE Chapter 7 (for unrelated reasons) and it goes something like this: Zildrog is a mythical “dragon” who is “sleeping” out in the Endless Swamp. Waiting to be awakened so he will one day return and “raze the world” and bring ��death to all who did not believe”. He’s even got his own Death Cult! Cool! They’re just as insane as this theory, and fervently believe the Apocalypse is an Awesome Thing™. If only there was a way…

So, here we are, Outlander Extraordinaire, and we find this ancient warship out in the swamps. It’s called the GRAVEstone. A name that seems to indicate something ominous about its origins. It’s been whispered that its the only thing that ever stood up in a fight with the Eternal Fleet (which we now know also came from Iokath. As part of their War Game scenarios). It’s been a while since I’ve played that chapter and paid attention to the dialogue, but I recall Valkorion being a bit… vague about it. Like, possibly that he had no fucking clue it was there. (Or he did, hard to tell with Voidy McLiarface). It has this mysterious room that we spend at least two scenes in, and we’re like “Wow, this is weird”, and the game’s like “Yeah, isn’t it? Hahahaha, we better go stop Arcann now shouldn’t we little Outlander?” and you promptly forget about it until your next playthrough and you’re like “Yeah, this is still weird.”

Then we’ve got Scorpio, another Iokath droid, one of the more intelligent ones. She can talk to the Gravestone, interface with it directly. She tells us it has intelligence, an intelligence almost rivals hers. I think she even hints that it has its own purposes but that it won’t say what those are. Before we can delve into “Wait, are you saying that my brand new ancient starship is sentient?” oops! We gotta go stop Arcann again!

Then we’re in KOTET, we’ve just disarmed a fucking quantum bomb on board the Gravestone, when all of the sudden EVERY SINGLE SHIP IN THE FLEET + THE GRAVESTONE suddenly gets pulled back to its point of origin: Iokath. This is a really weird side trip considering its only purpose in the bigger plot of KOTET seems to be to explain the Fleet’s origins as well as give us some shiny new shield upgrades for when Vaylin attacks in Chapter 8 so we don’t immediately die. But hey, our Love Interest was super duper cute with us during this chapter and that was touching.

And then we defeat Vaylin, the Eternal Fleet goes feral and we have to tame it, we kick that stupid ghost out of our head once and for all, and we all live happily ever after! Yay! GO TEAM!

And then. We have to go back to Iokath. Everyone has to go back to Iokath, because a mysterious third party has suddenly slipped in information about these superweapons that literally no living character has memory of, or any reason to have memory of. Specifically, memories of ancient war machines that have been known to decimate entire organic populations, just because. One of their favorite hangouts being Ancient Zakuul, who built up an entire pantheon around them. The only justification for Theron knowing about this is that he plugged in during the Iokath chapters, but his behavior during that and subsequent chapters is either the best acting in the world, or suggests that he doesn’t know this at all. He in fact is the one who plugs back in, and finds evidence that explains the purpose of the superweapon. Dialogue on mine (because Light Side ftw baby!) indicates that maybe it’s Scorpio who’s giving you this information? But it’s vague, almost as if it’s someone else… like, say, an ancient artificial intelligence that lovingly takes you around the galaxy and lets you play with it’s big old Omnicannon? And it’s ignited another conflict, that has the potential to spread throughout the galaxy.

Oh yeah, and then there’s you. The latest in a line of people with control over the Eternal Fleet. Something that has been shown to mercilessly rain destruction on inhabited worlds like a mad dog unless someone is holding its leash. And hey, if you were, to say, be killed while sitting on a throne that information was planted for one of your trusty sidekicks to find, maybe it would be free to go about it’s business raining destruction on the galaxy. Oh, and those old slumbering “Gods” might wake up too, and go cause a few apocalypses of their own. And while everyone is distracted with all this dying, maybe that dark presence in that weird room might finally wake up and watch it’s handiwork.

Being limited as an AI on a warship, it might, say, I don’t know, send vague and cryptic messages to various opposing intelligence organizations. Possibly it had communication with that whole Death Cult that formed around it and lived in the swamp where it lived. Maybe it sent them some messages too, once the coast was clear, and the Eternal Fleet was no longer in opposition to it, now that it’s unwitting puppet had taken out every Zakuulan who had sat on the throne controlling it.

Or you know, Theron changed his clothes for the first time in his fucking life, threw on his Evil Cloak of Evil™, and said “Sorry bitches! It’s Apocalypse time! God I love dying horribly! Mwah ahahaha!” and rigged a train to explode. Because he’s just Extra™ like that I guess!

I mean, you know, who can say which theory is right? The straightforward one we’ve been led to believe with the 5.4 datamining retconning five years of character development for a pointless shocking twist, or the one with an ancient evil sentient warship that just wants to watch the Galaxy burn? I mean, they both have arguments in their favor, amirite?

Because I mean, I don’t know about you, but the only thing more bizarre than Theron being the traitor all along would be that we weren’t betrayed by a person all along, and no matter how many people Theron and Lana interrogated would they discover the culprit. Because who would think to turn to that giant hunk of metal parked outside and say “Hey buddy, sent any super secret encrypted transmissions with that intelligence we forgot about for 1.5 expansions?”

We were betrayed. By a fucking warship. OUR GODDAMN SHIP HAS BEEN PLAYING US ALL ALONG WHAT THE HELL BIOWARE I’M LAUGHING AND CRYING THIS IS SO INSANE IT CAN’T BE TRUE

Join me next time in “Insane Theory Land that Will Not Be True”, as I argue that Tenebrae/Vitiate/Valkorion, Master Manipulator and Devourer of Worlds was outsmarted and used by a sentient spaceship because lolololol. And—OH WAIT ONE LAST THING:

Back to Tyth’s speech. At the very beginning he says this: I AM ONE OF SIX. THE SIX BOW TO NO ONE.

The six gods in the Zakuul Pantheon: Izax, Scyva, Tyth, Aivela, Esne, Nahum. Zildrog isn’t included in that. Some believe he’s another form of Izax, the chief among the Old Gods. I’m nowhere near my PC right now and can’t double-check who is listed on the Iokath Operation, but… it was five bosses, not six right? Am I correct in remembering that Izax wasn’t listed?

Because there’s another funny thing about Izax you guys. There’s this whole “Watcher Izax” that’s mentioned by the guard captain in Chapter 6 who had gone off to the Core Worlds and didn’t come back. And then there’s Guss’s recruitment mission, where his master is named “Isaac”, and when we get back from that Sana Rae is very clear that there’s something very powerful, and very dangerous about this guy.

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED. UP IS DOWN. NORTH IS SOUTH. WAKE UP SHEEPLE YOU KNOW I’M RIGHT.

(Okay I’m probably wrong.)

I mean, there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered: Why did the Gravestone start attacking the Eternal Fleet? If it’s part of the fleet, why is it the only Iokath ship, that looks different from all the rest by the by, that doesn’t need a Gemini droid to control it? Why did the Gods go to sleep? Why didn’t the Gravestone just wake itself up? Is the mud on Zakuul that sticky? The world may never know.