#but bh are my babies

[greenteaandtattoos]

i think today should be a national holiday tbh bells hells coming back after 3000 years 3 long weeks

[skybristle]

rbs > likes

something evil happening 2 me i fear... thank you @localceilingdevil for design help ...... i already also want to do sparks aauughhh

[ruvi-muffin]

I spent too long on this

C3e111 spoilers:

SO I MAY BE READING TOO MUCH INTO THINGS ????

But i Feel like when beau was like "why isn't it us? Do u think these kids can pull it off?"

Like textually, she's being condecending af, (the ushe, il her), but i feel like subtextually, she's like.. genuinely worried bc she's spent seven years working to prevent people in power from using kids as weapons for war ?????

Like she's got an aloof image to uphold, sure, but i Feel like she actually rly cares and is worried. AND worried x2 that her worry will endanger the nein and the mission.

Fjord consequently catches on and is like "Bro ur So Overworked, u need to focus on u for a bit gd"

Maybe i just miss tm9 so much and am reading into things but hhhhhhhh brjeaus go brrrrr

[pinsterwglasses]

Poppy from Bistro Huddy

[wrylu]

i can't get this damn old man out of my head

[sadtimbitz]

beavis and butthead fics got me like this lately

[rosescries]

Once Dust Coated and Can I Keep You are finished, I'm likely going to take a bit of a break from Undertale for a bit. I feel as though I'm growing apart from it..

That's NOT to say that I'm discontinuing Bad Habits and Goodbye to Spring!!!! I am going to continue those two fics, they are not dead. I can assure you all of that. It's just going to take me a while to get back to them again.

[utilitycaster]

26. freebie question, a good while back (before the party split) you mentioned that a possibly interesting ship would be Imogen/FCG. Obviously canon has not gone that direction, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on Imogen and FCG's relationship :D

It is interesting because Imogen hasn't interacted with FCG a ton. I think that friendship sort of fizzled out once FCG started believing in their personhood and particularly after they began building a relationship with the Changebringer. Imogen was not terribly supportive of that (possibly jealous, or possibly just not sure how to engage with it) and so there really hasn't been much.

They are really interesting as parallels, actually, though actually pretty much everyone in the party except for Orym and Chetney fit in this to some degree. Like Imogen (and Fearne), FCG was given particular powers by a megalomaniacal entity, for the purpose of furthering those goals. I think Predathos grants somewhat more agency to loyal Ruidusborn than Aeor entrusted FCG with, though that is to be seen, but there's something very tragic, in my mind, from Imogen's perspective, about how FCG was the tool of a destroyed empire, and so while he still carries those scars and consequences, he actually does have the freedom to be his own person. FCG has to manage a serious chronic condition, essentially, but they don't have missions, and unless some of the wilder theories are right (and they could be, though I have my doubts) the ones who did this to them are long dead. Is this her future? Will she be left with dreams and telepathy even if they defeat Predathos? Will they be the upsides (controllable sorcery powers) or the downsides (nightmares, uncontrollable sorcery powers)? Why did FCG get to just sleep through the hard part and she has to fight her way out?

It really is a fascinating thing about the party: Fearne and FCG were designed to be who they are (though Fearne's upbringing at least was her own). Ashton was partially created in a cult ritual (though it remains unclear if they were the intended recipient or merely the one it happened to stick to). I don't think Imogen was planned a la Fearne, but I do wonder if Predathos or the Weave Mind did specifically target Liliana to ensure her daughter would also be Ruidusborn. While the nature of Laudna's sorcery abilities hasn't come up (and, to be fair, a lot of sorcery abilities in D&D are just like "well that happened to your baby, idk what to tell you") she was used by Delilah for that as well. So much of this party shares this with Imogen and FCG but I think they are the most extreme examples (Fearne is mostly unaffected physically/mentally though obviously learning of her origins is unsettling and upsetting, and Ashton and Laudna's situations mostly hurt them and not as often others, though Laudna's is increasingly a crapshoot) and I think as this became apparent and as they both grew more comfortable with who they were they sort of lost that connection.

They do still share a lot of powers though and I'd love to see them talk again - Laura and Sam always play off each other well, and those earlier interactions where they both tried to read each other's thoughts, or coordinate probing Ashton or Ollie's mind, or the first casting of Shared Dream were all delightful - but they have drifted apart since.

[pstelwitchcraft]

I miss bells hells 🥺 I miss them so much 😭😭 give me moon shenanigans!! Give me my sweet little time bomb psycopath antiheroes!!! Give me ashton and fearne titans of sexual tension!! Give me imogen and laudna reuniting on ruidus!! Give me ol' grandpa chet and montessori mom FCG trying to corrall the group of wet cats in a bag that they call their friends!! Give me bells hells, Imma start eating the dry wall 😭😭😭

[lavender-temult]

why do baby otohan’s colors look like fuckign TOOTHPASTE in this version 😭😭😭

[skybristle]

RBS > LIKES

SHE IS ON THE LOOSE I REPEAT SHE IS ON THE LOOSE!!!!

just a rnadom clip because i got like an hour of footage and got too lazy to comb through it. sorry. BUT SPARKS REAL IN HIT GAME RAIN WORLD!!! i would have made her tail but i dont really know how rw sprites work sooooo wires must do :pensive:

what crimes will she commit ....

[bhdoneart]

She’s like sooo totally exited guys!!!

[oglegoggle]

It bothers me when folks insist that there are literally no good reasons to surrender pets because it destroys their hearts. Like…. My dude…. That evil fuckin cat that slashed my literal eyeball should be surrendered. I found new homes for my three cats because I couldn’t take having multiple panic attacks triggered every single fucking day because they’ve got claws and I’ve got a new dose of fresh PTSD caused by that demon slashing my eye. I still can’t sleep well because of the nightmares about it. The pain and the blood and the temp blindness in that eye and the extreme fear. It’s been months. My life was fucking destroyed and my love of cats ripped from my soul. But I’m the villain? No. Needs drastically change sometimes and it sucks for everyone involved. It wasn’t good for me having cats around. It wasn’t good for my cats to have their only human destabilized and constantly rejecting their affection. They’ve got a new home where all three miraculously got to stay together and are dearly loved again as they deserve to be.

[abysskeeper]

In honor of the GS weekly for doing quests on warrior or knight, I made hot boi Sith, main character syndrome’s older brother.

In all seriousness, these two have been gnawing at my mind lately. Tel’s the oldest brother of three and the original heir to his (as of yet unnamed) family. Circumstances (read: scandal) forced his mother to remove him as heir and he instead went off to the economic sector, where he surprisingly thrived.

Tali then became the family’s heir. However, responsibility and an unwanted arranged marriage pushed her further and further away from wanting the position until she finally managed to convince her mother to let her go out on her own and discover more of the world. A bit of makeup to cover her tattoos, blasters instead of lightsabers, and a new name--Ember--and she’s been working as a hired gun with no one the wiser. She has no intentions of going back, now just to tell her mother that, and her twin...though Talun should be delighted to finally become the heir apparent.

No one is sure how the siblings are full-blood related since their father died after Tel was born, but well before their mother became pregnant with the twins. Of course, no one mentions that in polite company.

[monnikiska]

oh man. ohhhhhh mann. i like a couple of bleachers' songs so i thought getting call me after midnight might be kinda nice... but. but. why is it like that. what did they do to my babyy😭 like i thought it might even have ryan on it...👎

[arabella-strange]

The archival empire argument is really effective for this representation of the Gods of a mortal world, because -- as the arguments about the history and nature of an archive point out -- an archival authority decides what counts as knowledge. In this framework: Some things aren't serious enough, some things are too old or too small or too weird or too unimportant to count as worthy of being kept in the archive and used for authoritative purposes. But some things are too dangerous, and these, too, cannot be allowed to persist in the eyes of the powers (the Archeons) who dictate what forms of knowledge are legitimate and which are not. And some people will never understand, could never understand, are lesser and deserve to be so because there is "something above [them]" that has power and vision and control.

The powers that be insist that they are the ones who hold balance -- that they know what balance is, and it's them. The status quo can be changed... but only to a point. To overthrow everything that seems inevitable is, at best, ungrateful and at worst, absolutely unacceptable. (So they say.)

Of course, IRL all societies draw moral and ethical lines around what kinds of knowledge are free and permissible, which are restricted (whether to a closed class of Superior™️ hierophants or to those whom that society has determined are unlikely to harm or cause harm upon gaining that knowledge), and which are suppressed. What's always worthy of debate is why and under what conditions/terms any knowledge should be restricted or (if ever) suppressed. And the morality of that is deeply vexed, deeply loaded.

Brennan (and Matt) and the players for this mini-arc brought out the paternalism of the gods in LOUD and repeated terms: the Gods are parents and the mortals are "children," or even (for the Betrayers) playthings. (I think it's so fucking rad that Brennan had IOUN, of all the Primes, become indistinguishable and actually turn out to be Asmodeus! The Mistress of Knowledge herself, the neutral deity of learning, being interchangeable with the Lord of Lies and the destroyer of the height of mortal mental achievement.)

So yeah, I think the thing for us as viewers is that the debate is an extremely difficult but important one. What is a reasonable framework for the ethical and moral advancement of mortal ambition? What is legitimate knowledge? And how much of that depends on how it is -- or could, or should be -- used?

Love me some neo-Romanticism for my Prometheus and Hyperion feels:

'Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.'

I've talked about this before, but with the final episode of Downfall and the Cooldown that followed it I feel the need to write about it again.

The morality of saving the gods of Exandria was never going to be clear cut. Stopping Ludinus, stopping the Ruby Vanguard maybe. But there's an important conversation to be had about the nature of divinity that needs to be had. And Downfall makes this discourse more salient and pressing than it's ever been.

I really liked what Brennan brought up in the Cooldown, about "achieving enlightenment on their terms," or suffer the fate of "not being able to understand." The gods as they exist have protected and will continue to protect the way of being that allows for their continued existence. They dismiss anything that challenges that existence - anything that makes them confront the nature of mortality, as Brennan elegantly phrased it - as something not worth considering. As something that simply doesn't grasp what one needs to grasp to do what must be done.

And if doing what must be done means calling a truce in their great war. If that means collaborating with the very siblings on the opposing side of that conflict, which has led to so much loss of mortal life and desecration of the face of Exandria, then so be it. It has to be done. We are mere children, we wouldn't understand.

I'm reminded of Ann Stoler in her book "Along the Archival Grain," along with Avery Gordon's "Ghostly Matters." Both authors talk about the lengths and extents colonial states go to legitimate and justify their existence through the policing and curation of knowledge. It is in the best interest of the colonial state to produce and maintain knowledge that justifies its being. They are doing what they do because they define it to be right, to be just.

And those contradictions? The holes in colonial logic born out of the anxieties and fears of losing that legitimacy? Those inconsistencies that necessitate their reproduction and continued existence? Poor child, you do not understand. It is the right thing to do. There are things at play that are beyond fathoming for you. It simply must be this way. It is right for it to be this way. Fallicies and contradictions in colonial logic become justified and legitimated via the production of knowledge produced from the colonial archive to reproduce itself.

The knowledge of the divine killing weapon. The people, the complex, ephemeral, fleeting, textured, beautiful, pained, vibrant lives of those that held that knowledge. That knowledge that was spread to touch every soul on that floating city. All of it could not persist. For them to persist would mean the possibility of the way things are, the way things are ought to be from those who know better, could come to an end.

So it must be this way. The city must fall, despite its infinite arcane beauty. Lives must be lost, and so too must their chance for redemption, for a new beginning. All things must come to an end, if that means preserving the infinite. Family must persist. *They* must persist. And so it must be this way.

I say all this to highlight the fact that the morality underlying the theme of this campaign is not clear cut. The nature of it prevents that. The members of Bells Hells are not good or bad because some of them remain ambivalent to the existence of the gods. No single one of them is inherently right or wrong.

But you cannot argue there is a "right" answer when it comes to the gods. They simply are. Much like anything simply is. And what their existence means, especially for what it means to the lives of mortals on Exandria who must suffer the consequences of that divine existence, must be reckoned with.

I really am impressed with the bold scope of thematic ideas that Campaign 3 introduces and continues to grapple with. It is phenomenal story telling, and is strikingly resonant with the enmeshed struggles that permeate the very real world that informs the lives and experiences of its creators. All of them continue to blow me away every Thursday night!