#and it's intriguing as hell

[transingthoseformers]

Thinking more about protoflesh, how maybe the amount of such can vary, and how that affects the mecha.

It's all a game of advantages and disadvantages, after all. More flexibility but it's harder to repair.

[mebssann]

"You'd be living in a castle with food and medicine and trained squirrels to tend to your every need."

bonus ver w/o text and extra doodle:

[apolloknightly]

Last doodle for a bit,

Wanted to throw in my version of Danny as Little Baby Man because uhhhh

Creachur

Lil dude

:)

I forgot his goggles though :(

Oh hey look he has goggles now

Edit as of Feb 6th: Y'all are crazy, it's almost at 800 notes as of me typing this. I've never had this high of a number before (i.e I never really actually posted anything on here much honestly. My first genuine post instead of a reblogs!)

Also there's a post I did with Sam and LBM, you can put your request there for LBM shenanigans if you want, or here!

[melonthesprigatito]

I feel like everybody who's freaking out over the Typhlosion folklore story from the Teraleaks needs to be introduced to this video

[utilitycaster]

I like that the Raven Queen, who made the decision to take on an immense and (at least to her understanding at the time) unending responsibility is the one who calls Bells Hells out on their endless indecision.

It's been...interesting, shall we say, tracking this "party of NPCs," and tracking the fandom response throughout. The initial reception to "party of NPCs" was actually a rather cold one. This took place early in the campaign, prior to the Gnarlrock fight, and at the time a lot of people who shipped Imogen and Laudna were actually extremely resistant to the idea that Imogen was the "main character" of the campaign (as seen in the fallout from the gnarlrock fight, in which the bulk of attacks from the fandom were on Imogen). I've had complicated feelings on Taliesin's reads of this campaign specifically - he tends to have a very good understanding of his own characters that doesn't necessarily expand beyond them - but that phrase was indeed pretty valid. I think about the WBN interludes, in fact, in which the cast plays using NPC statblocks, and what a true party of NPCs for Bells Hells would look like, since it would be quite simple to draw up.

Allied NPCs in TTRPGs rarely act without guidance from the PCs. I've cast a critical eye in the past towards certain meta (particularly romantic in nature, regarding Yeza or Essek or Gilmore not making moves) for this reason, because while villains and antagonists move throughout the world generating obstacles, allies exist to be directed. They have their limits, of course; they have their own priorities and motivations and cannot be persuaded against their nature, but they can be guided at oblique angles from the GMs initial intent given enough work from the PCs. They're still people with thoughts and feelings and dreams, to an extent, but rarely do they make decisions that would conflict with those of the PCs.

That's the problem with a party of NPCs. NPCs take direction. They serve as support, but they're not in the driver's seat. And the Raven Queen has noticed.

The attitude within the fandom towards "Party of NPCs" became far more positive over time, and I wonder if it should have. People began to lean perhaps too heavily on how Bells Hells were people from nothing and nowhere, discarded. This is of course objectively false when comparing across parties (can we really say Imogen had a worse childhood than Vex? Chetney to Caleb? Even Ashton to Fjord?) but were it true, that in and of itself wouldn't be a problem. D&D backstories are often tear-stained and blood-soaked, full of unjust accusations, dead or neglectful parents, failure and regret. D&D is a game about coming from very little but a disproportionately good stat block for a commoner. It is unavoidably about amassing power. Starting off as a party of NPCs is fine. You should not still be a party of NPCs at the endgame.

I mentioned the gnarlrock, and I've mentioned an emphasis (or overemphasis) on this party's lack of agency and I think that remains the problem. Ludinus's villainy is rich, complex, and multifaceted, but a consistent element of it is his eternal false insistence that he - Martinet, founder and head of the Cerberus Assembly, Archmage - is just a little guy, chaff in the wind of the will of the gods, without free will of his own (he says, as he places his thread outside the reach of the Matron). That too is a theme in fandom discourse: free will and intent. Is Imogen justified in being angry at Laudna for breaking the rock if that wasn't Laudna's intent? (yes.) Is Orym on a quest of vengeance, with a death wish? (no, but if he were it wouldn't matter.) Was it wrong to pressure Fearne to take the shard instead of letting her make her own choices? (yes.)

Did any of you, perhaps in preschool or kindergarten, since that's about the age when this happens, have someone pull your hair and for adults to say "it's because they like you?" I find this is a good way to convey the importance, or unimportance, or intent. Because when your hair is being pulled, at least if that is the extent of the problem, it doesn't matter if it comes from the misguided affections of a four-year-old admirer who doesn't know how to use their words, or a six-year-old who just grabbed the most obvious material with which to test the limits of the safety scissors, or an eleven-year-old bully. Your hair is being pulled and you want it to stop. It doesn't matter if the person secretly likes you or if they want to hurt you; it matters that no matter the intent behind it, they are doing so. And if you reject the affections of your fellow preschool classmate because you think they might pull your hair, that's a fair consequence.

Bells Hells' indecision is some sort of cosmic hair pulling. They have reasons for faltering, and some of those reasons are understandable balking at an immense weight placed upon them and some of those reasons come from a deeply self-centered place in which their individual pain is used to blot out the suffering of countless others. But in the end, even that doesn't matter. Their histories don't matter. We don't need another series of introductions of where they come from and what they've done. We need people who can make decisions and who will act.

The Raven Queen seems to have been convinced they will. I'm not sure. But I think we are in agreement that inaction is, regardless of the intent behind it, no different than active harm. It would be irresponsible to continue to be a party of NPCs; if they truly are lost and forgotten fuck-ups, they have a responsibility (as the god of death once did) to abdicate and find a replacement.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

So, I started watching Link Click...

[dear-ao3]

hi :] quick little query: can i make george russell (f1) have written the delaware post in my fanfic pls and thank you with strawberries on top? 🥰🥰🥰🥰💞💞💞💞

you know i really cant think of a more fitting person to have written the Delaware post tbh. but like. has he just written the post or does he also run this blog? is he me????

but im more fascinated by 1. the fact that you had to clarify who george russell was to me and 2. why on Earth is this a Plot Point in a Fanfiction

[wispurring-moss]

alright. i have held my tongue long enough but i can do it no longer.

i'm gonna something that the whippersnappers aren't going to understand & the veterans will probably take psychic damage from reading. but. consider, if you will:

Husk♦️Angel

...that's it, that's the post x'3c

[konakoro]

Dan Stevens is in 3 movies this year and he's chomping on the scenery in each one like a starving dog given a slab of meat and bless him for that

[puppyeared]

43. For the ask game

43: Sexiest person that comes to my mind immediately

going straight for the jugular arent we

[krastbannert]

Having a rare dose of Thoughts I want to Share while playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

I got to the third cutscene where you talk to Solas in the weird Fade-That's-Not-The-Fade place, and it occurred to me: Solas is probably one of the only people in the world who knows what Rook is going through.

Rook is leading an unwinnable battle against people of unimaginable power, power they can't even hope to come close to matching, just like Solas did thousands of years before. They're staring in the face of horrors they can't even imagine, power that can reshape the world in hours, and they have no real counter, nothing except bad choices.

And yes, maybe Rook doesn't like Solas. Maybe they hate him for trying to tear down the Veil, for trying to wreck their life and their world and not showing the slightest bit of remorse. Maybe Solas hates him for ruining his plan that had been decades in the making, maybe Solas is frustrated because he's trapped in a prison of his own creation. Maybe they really, really do not want to see each other.

But maybe...maybe every time Rook sleeps (when they do sleep, because they don't want to see Solas, because they don't want to listen to his ideas or his half truths), maybe they see Solas. Maybe at some point, out of sheer boredom, they spend more time either of them think they should talking to each other. Maybe at first it starts as arguments. Then maybe it becomes debates. Then maybe it becomes conversations, and ideas, and maybe even a chuckle, now and then.

Maybe they're in a horrible situation, but they're the only people either of them can talk to who have been in a situation like this. And maybe Solas decides that Rook, this young kid who's trapped in a horrible situation by circumstances so far out of their control that he can't even begin to fathom how they got there, really isn't so bad. Maybe he decides that even if Rook ruined his plan...he can help them deal with the Gods.

Maybe they don't become friends. But Solas and Rook...I think they reach an understanding. And I think they can't put a name to it, but in some weird way, they trust each other, and they know that if one of them needs it, they can talk to the other, at least for a little while.

[tifa-simp]

Time for more parallel!

The framing of these 2 scenes are quite similar, aren't they?

Remake

Rebirth

They both focus on the condition of Sephiroth, while Remake frames Aerith like she knows that he's still alive, Rebirth lets Tifa questions Sephiroth mysterious 5 years gap absence. Which leads to quite an interesting situation:

Cloud, who used to have his suspicion, is now even more sure of his knowledge about Sephiroth at the end of Rebirth. So he's likely to not gonna change his mind about Seph, as in he firmly believes that he knows the truth. Which, as we all know, is gonna bite him in the ass one way or another.

Aerith definitely knew about Sephiroth more than she lets on. But throughout 2 games, either intentional or not, she refuses to tell people the whole picture and seems to follow her own plan. Seeing the end of Rebirth, let's assume that her plan works. So Aerith had reason to not reveal her full knowledge to the gang and also has no way to tell us anymore with the way she is now.

Which leave us with Tifa with her titbits and intuition against the big mystery. So far she has 3 important questions:

What is messing with Cloud's mind?

What is Aerith's secrets about the future?

What is Sephiroth up to?

And for now, she knows that Cloud believes his unstable mind is due to SOLDIER's cells degrade, that Aerith has her memory taken away by the Whispers, that Sephiroth is fighting with the Planet and losing (at Gongaga at least). But as the story goes, she becomes more lost.

Both Cloud and Aerith are out of question now, so the only one can give Tifa the all answers is Sephiroth. But obviously she won't get anything directly from the man himself. Bold guess, but I think Tifa will involve in some way in Vincent's arc in part 3 since his story is so tightly tied to Sephiroth. No matter how Vincent arc turns out, there's no way Tifa won't get something out of it. Either she knows how he messes with Cloud or what's he been doing in those 5 years.

If Vincent arc doesn't give her all the clues then the Weapons are next in line. She's already had some ideas about the Lifestream works, next is how the multi worlds work. I believe Tifa is smart enough to figure that out by herself. I mean, she comes up with this on her own

Making Tifa our lead will be the right choice since she's in the dark about everything as much as we do while not so blindly determined like Cloud or so omniscient like Aerith. How cool it'd be if we can see Tifa playing detective in part 3 and slowly piecing everything together to clear up all the mysteries, not just with Cloud's memory problem but also Sephiroth's plan and the principle of multi worlds.

Tifa has always been the one staying behind to observe and analyze the situation in 2 games, it's time she steps up and makes her move in part 3.

[pixelprofligate]

"But we have one more special announcement"

and we proceed to watch a 5 minute advertisememt for porsche, adidas, sony, etc. The AAA games industry is but a bloated corpse hanging on to any scrap of life it can as its limbs rot off one by one.

[dynamitekansai]

wwe: Sami Zayn saved Roman Reigns, Jey and Jimmy Uso from a post match brawl… but tonight was not the way any of them wanted this to go. 😮‍💨👎

[wikitpowers]

CASSIE TALKING ABOUT TWP BEING THE END OF TSC IN HER INSTAGRAM VIDS ALWAYS GETS ME :(

[butmakeitgayblog]

Alycia's role as Nikki will be her last time as a blonde. End of an era from Saint X and TLFOAH

And I?

Will cherish

Every

Single

Moment 💕

(No you are Nikki/whoeverthefuck 😘)