#discourse & meta aren't my thing

[spite-and-waffles]

"But it's not like that in canon at all!" ok but have you considered I. Don't. Care

[negativepeanuthoarder]

.

[ignitesthestxrs]

there's something about the way people talk about john gaius (incl the way the author writes him) that is like. so absent of any connection to te ao māori that it's really discomforting. like even in posts that acknowledge him as not being white, they still talk about him like a white, american leftist guy in a way that makes it clear people just AREN'T perceiving him as a māori man from aotearoa.

and it's just really serves to hammer home how powerful and pervasive whiteness and american hegemony is. because TLT is probably the single most Kiwi series in years to explode on the global stage, and all the things i find fraught about it as a pākehā woman reading a series by a pākehā author are illegible to a greater fandom of americans discoursing about whether or not memes are a valid way of portraying queer love.

idk the part of my brain that lights up every time i see a capital Z printed somewhere because of the New Zealand Mentioned??? instinct will always be proud of these books and muir. but i find myself caught in this midpoint of excitement and validation over my culture finding a place on the global stage, frustration at how kiwi humour and means of conveying emotion is misinterpreted or declared facile by an international audience, frustrated also by how that international audience runs the characters in this book through a filter of american whiteness before it bothers to interpret them, and ESPECIALLY frustrated by how muir has done a pretty middling job of portraying te ao māori and the māoriness of her characters, but tht conversation doesn't circulate in the same way* because a big part of the audience doesn't even realise the conversation is there to be had.

which is not to say that muir has done a huge glaring racism that non-kiwis haven't noticed or anything, but rather that there are very definitely things that she has done well, things that she has done poorly, things that she didn't think about in the first book that she has tacked on or expanded upon in the later books, that are all worthy of discussion and critique that can't happen when the popular posts that float past my dash are about how this indigenous man is 'guy who won't shut up about having gone to oxford'

*to be clear here, i'm not saying these conversations have never happened, just that in terms of like, ambient posts that float round my very dykey dash, the discussions and meta that circulate on this the lesbian social media, are overwhelmingly stripped of any connection to aotearoa in general, let alone te ao māori in specific. and because of the nature of american internet hegemony this just,,,isn't noticed, because how does a fish know it's in the ocean u know? i have seen discussions along these lines come up, and it's there if i specifically go looking for it, but it's not present in the bulk of tlt content that has its own circulatory life and i jut find that grim and a part of why the fandom is difficult to engage with.

[pessimisticpigeonsworld]

On the "Choose a Side" Discourse

With HBO leaning veryyyy heavily into "pick a side" for their promos, the "no team" people are crawling out of the woodwork. I want to preface this post by saying that I'm not saying people shouldn't have favorite characters who aren't mine, nor that people should just be totally invested in fandom discourse.

I already made a post about the issues with the arguments of the "no team" people, so I'll just summarize my thoughts from that real quick. A majority of their arguments and metas are thinly veiled anti Rhaenyra thoughts. That's still true of this new wave of this group.

Now, one thing I will agree with them on is: GRRM did not write this story to be one of choose a side. However, that is not because the Blacks and the Greens are equally bad or the Targaryens are all evil. No, it's because the Greens were always in the wrong and GRRM makes this abundantly clear to us in F&B.

Let's look at some facts from the Dance. While male primogeniture is tradition, it's not the law; the king's word is law, something ASOIAF has established time and again. The Greens took the throne through underhanded ways. They left Viserys' body to rot for days while they prepared for Aegon's coronation to prevent Rhaenyra from learning and coming to KL. They forced the smallfolk to attend and most didn't cheer for Aegon, with some even calling for Rhaenyra while most were confused and angry.

Aemond drew first blood by killing the unarmed thirteen year old envoy, Lucerys Velaryon. A majority of the realm declared for Rhaenyra; 53 houses supported her, while only 28 supported Aegon. The Greens committed the greatest atrocities of the Dance: Aemond burning the Riverlands and Daeron massacring Tumbleton. They also committed the greater number of atrocities.

The Greens also lost the war. The Blacks weren't just fighting for Rhaenyra, they fought for her heirs as well. This is why they swore to her and Jacaerys; later for Aegon III after the deaths of his older brothers. The Black forces continued to fight after Rhaenyra's murder and took KL. Aegon was murdered by his own men when the Blacks were marching on KL; in other words, the Greens knew they were beat, so they killed Aegon in an attempt to save themselves. Since Aegon left no heirs aside from Jaehaera, Aegon III was crowned and married to Jaehaera. The Blacks won the war.

Aegon the Usurper's bloodline is destroyed with the deaths of Jaehaera and Gaemon Palehair. This is the final affirmation of the Greens being in the wrong. GRRM's books punish usurpers by wiping out their bloodlines; Maegor and Robert Baratheon being the most obvious examples. Aegon and all the Greens have no descendants, their bloodline is dead.

Rhaenyra's bloodline, on the other hand, continues all the way through to the main series. Daenerys Targaryen, the most powerful character in the series, is her descendant, as is Jon Snow (unconfirmed as of now in the books) who is another of the key five. Rhaenyra may have died, but her faction won the war and her bloodline will save the world through her two greatest descendants (alongside the rest of the key five).

The Dance of the Dragons is, ultimately, a story of the damage the patriarchy does and how misogyny is destructive to the world. The Dance caused the death of the dragons and a great loss of power for women in the realm. Queen consorts after Rhaenyra had markedly less power and there was a drop in female leaders of the great houses. The loss of the dragons caused the weakening of magic in the world as a whole.

The Dance isn't about who your favorite war criminal is, nor is it about the evil of the Targaryens. It's about misogyny; something HOTD seems to have forgotten. Even before they started pushing TB vs TG so hard, they still missed the point.

It doesn't matter that Rhaenyra isn't a perfect, or even a good, person. It doesn't matter that Rhaenyra is non-conforming, plays the political game, and exploits her father's favor. Rhaenyra could have been as pious and well-behaved as Naerys and the Greens still would have usurped her. Rhaenyra could have had children with Laenor, and still the Greens would have usurped her. HOTD tries to paint the usurpation as partially being on Rhaenyra and her choices, but nothing Rhaenyra could have done would have been good enough.

The Blacks are the protagonists of the Dance. Are they perfect? No. Are they heroes? No. GRRM loves his gray characters, the Blacks are no exception. If you people want a story with black and white morality and perfect protagonists, go read another book. Just because people aren't perfect and don't operate exclusively in what's right according to our modern standards doesn't mean they aren't the protagonists.

In conclusion: there isn't a TB vs TG discourse in the Dance because the Greens are the antagonists and completely in the wrong. The point of the Dance is that the misogyny of the Greens damaged the realm. Rhaenyra is the rightful queen, there is no actual argument for Aegon or any of his allies.

Rhaenyra is the rightful queen to Westeros, go cry to George if you don't like it.

[dunmeshistash]

Hello!

I'm Cyan (or anything you wanna call me) this blog started as just a stash for Dungeon Meshi extras and worldbuilding details but expanded as people asked questions and I did my best to answer! Hope you find it as useful as I do. I try my best to categorize my posts so they're easy to find but sometimes I forget.

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Tag list under the cut

Types of post

For referencing - Canon things and other information you might want to go back to. Now I'm also using art reference when relevant

Compilation - Posts where I compile lots of canon art/sketches about a specific subject.

Dunmeshi thoughts - My own non canon thoughts. I also use the tag speculation when relevant

Dunmeshi complaint - Tag for more negative subjects/discourse in case you wanna block that. I usually go back and delete the ones that don't seem productive

Asks - Since I post quite a lot of asks I decided to divide them into some tags so they're easier to filter: Lore ask | Character ask | Meta ask | About Cyan

Parties

Laio's Party: Laios Touden | Marcille Donato | Chilchuck Tims | Senshi of Izganda | Izutsumi | Falin Touden

Kabru's Party: Kabru of Utaya, Diamond of Sadena, Mickbell Tomas, Kuro, Rinsha Fana, Holm Kranom

Tansu's Party: Tansu Floke, Yarn Floke, Kiki Floke, Kaka Floke, Namari of Kahka Brud

Shuro's Party: Shuro (Toshiro Nakamoto), Hien, Benichidori, Maizuro, Inutade

Canaries: Mithrun, Pattadol, Lycion, Fleki, Otta, Cithis

Races:

Tallman

Dwarf

Elf

Gnome

Half-Foot

Ogre

Demi humans

Orc

Kobold

Sources (<- check this if you're confused where the extras come from):

Adventurers Bible

Daydream Hour

Monster Tidbits

Bluray

Other tags:

Worldbuilding

Maps

Magic System

Post Canon (Extras about the story after the story)

Clothing (Details about character's clothes and in world fashion)

Dunmeshi Extra (extra comics that aren't in the main story)

Rooms

Modern Clothing

Dunmeshi anime vs manga (comparisons or panels missing from the anime)

Monsters:

Red Dragon

Chimera Falin

Mermaid

I'll be updating as I add posts/figure out how to tag stuff

About me: Cyan - Adult - She/He - Brazilian

[utilitycaster]

In the end, it is misogyny but in the form of that Imogen (and most of the female cast, if we are being fair) gets reduced to just being a woman to the point that criticizing any real flaw, wrong doing, or "hey i personally maybe perhaps don't like that she did this" is turned into an attack on her because she is a woman, because after all, all women are perfect and so so dainty they must be protected (sarcasm)

Without mentioning the attacking real women in the name of the fictional one

It really is the "God forbid a woman do anything" but in it's worst form

Sorry for venting, been having thoughts about the fandom for the past 5 years

YUP. I do recommend Unlikeable Female Characters by Anna Bogutskaya which I devoured in like, one sitting over my winter break and posted a bunch of excerpts from but this discourse is extremely not limited to the CR fandom. I mean, think about all of the endlessly churning nonsense about the women of Gone Girl and Midsommar. I am going to see Love Lies Bleeding tomorrow and have steered well clear of really any discussion because I simply would like to see buff lesbians in a crime drama but apparently the discourse is rancid.

Of course there are people who assume ill of female characters while excusing men. That is absolutely a big problem. But again, we can barely talk about that. I recently made a post about how Laura is not a particularly chaotic player, and indeed is one of the most cautious players in actual play, and again I think there is a serious and important conversation to be had about how there's probably a reason why, say, Travis and Taliesin are more likely to make extremely bold moves, because they didn't get raked over the coals during C1 for stealing a cool broom from a guest character! I actually think Marisha has managed to hang on to some of her boldness and it makes her a stronger player but I would not have been surprised if she retreated after the hate she got from Keyleth. But yeah, in actual play, bold moves are pretty important. We can't even talk about how real-world misogyny holds back the actual actors without some moronic wretch being like "FIGURES THAT A MISOGYNIST CUNT LIKE YOU LIKES A MALE ACTOR."

When a character who is a man - or in some cases, characters who are not men but are played by men - does something people don't like we can say "wow, I didn't like this, but it was an interesting choice by the actor!" but we aren't allowed to either talk about the reasons why a real world woman might hesitate to play a character who does ugly things - because of the misogynistic backlash that will land specifically on her as a real person - nor can we compliment her for going for it and playing a complex flawed character, because how DARE you say a woman is anything less than some kind of Divine Feminine ideal. At best you're allowed a two-dimensional caricature of She's So Sweet And Good But Sometimes Gets Angry (this also happened to my friend Keyleth).

And this might reveal my own biases but like. I as a woman don't love being called self-centered, but that, personally, would probably lead me to some reflection. If you call me a girlfailure, even jokingly, I am going to break your nose. It's really telling that like...one of the absolute no-brainer "hey stop calling grown women girls" feminist tenets has gone by the wayside particularly with the set of people who think that meta that fails to put women on so high a pedestal they are untouchable is misogynist. They are awful towards women, fictional and real.

A line that always stuck with me from, bizarrely, a book about wordplay, was that Victorian men would treat women of their same classes as their superiors, but never their equals - they would coddle them and protect them but they wouldn't actually engage with their thoughts and foibles. (This happened to my friend Jester).

Anyway my personal solution is to keep going. On some level, as my previous post indicates, while I don't want the harassment it also only underscores my point, that a lot of these people are way more invested in being a dick to women on the internet than writing meta about the pretend women they think they like. I have to imagine they're doing this because either think they're entitled to meta they like from people who can actually fucking write it because god knows most of the people making this complaint have the most "if you can't dazzle them with brillance, blind them with the most purple-prose bullshit you can muster" attitude; or because they literally are just champing at the bit to attack women online with the ostensible veneer of "but it's FEMINIST to call THESE women cunts because they said my blorbo wasn't saintly and flawless." However, again, I know that I'm pretty bullheaded and forcibly unlearned the uh, patriarchal idea that women should not be confrontational. I do not blame people who look at this whole situation and say "I'm going to keep my thoughts to myself because this is so unpleasant."

[tired-fandom-ndn]

I'm in a new fandom where the main tag tends to be filled with self-insert shipping and the most popular ship (which manages to be both super popular but is also considered problematic which feels almost unheard of these days lol). And people complain about these things in the tag but they never post anything they *want* to see? They could be posting gifs or meta analysis or headcanons or shitposts or screenshots but they don't. They expect other people to provide it for them. I think being a lurker in fandom is fine, but you can't then complain because the people not lurking are just doing fandom in a way you dislike??

[context]

Yeah. Honestly, I get it because I was just a silent lurker in fandoms for a long, long time (long time followers may remember that I didn't start really making my own posts and interacting with people until I got into TUA) and the only "content" I made was complaints and discourse posts.

I think a lot of people are in the same boat I was in, where they think that because they aren't an artist or a strong writer or something, then no one wants to hear what they have to say and they have nothing to offer to a fandom and that is so so so far from the truth. Even if all you're doing to create fandom content is making some tumblr posts or writing fics that took you 15 minutes, that's still something and if you keep doing that, then you're going to build up a nice little space for yourself with other people who like the same kind of stuff you do and like to hear what you have to say.

So like. Instead of making another post complaining about how the sort of content you like doesn't really exist, why not make a post about the thing you like? If you want more of a ship, make a post about that ship. If you want more of a certain trope, make a post using that trope. If all you ever do is put down what other people, then even the people who are into the same stuff you are aren't gonna want to be around you.

[grimgiggles]

Sigh.

I dislike jumping into discourses as contentious and subjective and BIG as the discourse over Ludinus' conversation with BH in the last episode, but there is a point that I haven't seen anyone making (idk, maybe people have been making it and I just haven't seen it) about his side of the argument, and I think it's worth consideration.

Ludinus values being right over being good.

Most people are thinking one of two things right now:

1. Yes, obviously, so?

2. What's the difference?

Let me put it another way: Ludinus values being correct over being kind. To him, Truth is more important than Compassion. He is the kind of person for whom a hard, blunt truth is a greater expression of love than any expression of softness or gentleness that is not 100% true. I hope that clarifies it.

At this point I want to make it clear that nothing that follows is a justification of Ludinus' actions, or an attempt to make him more sympathetic or anything. This is all exposition and analysis, on my part.

So, when I listened to his conversation with BH, I did not hear him trying to justify his own actions while condemning the gods' very same actions, and I didn't hear him trying to deflect blame for the wrongs he has done or that others have done for him. He admitted that he had done much wrong in pursuit of his goal. He knows the (many different) kinds of people he works with. He knows that there are parallels between him and his enemies (the gods), he KNOWS that he isn't the Good Guy (none of this matters to him). Every time it sounded (because that's what people expected to hear) like he was defending himself, what I heard was factual correction. He wants people to get their details straight. Because that's Truth.

But he believes, he KNOWS (and we don't know if he's right or wrong) that if he accomplishes his goals, everyone in the world will be, on balance, better off for it. For him, this is a labor of love (and sure, it's also motivated by hatred for the gods born from trauma, the two things aren't mutually exclusive). It's a very non-personal, universal - you could even say clinical - kind of love, but it is love.

But (and I know this from experience) it is SO difficult to convey earnest conviction and humility at the same time. It is almost impossible to say "I know I've hurt people and I know that's bad but I swear I swear I SWEAR I am doing this FOR you please LISTEN to me" without coming across exactly the way that Ludinus does: as a villain trying to justify himself. And he knows this, so he doesn't bother trying to make himself look like the Good Guy (again, he doesn't care about being Good, he cares about being Right), even while he DOES try to present his case in a way that he hopes will be understood.

He IS a villain, to be clear.

He has fallen into the classic INTJ villain trap (whaaaat meyers-briggs? In my meta? BTW this is a legitimate mbti stereotype, it's kind of messed up), which goes:

1. The INTJ experiences grief.

2. The INTJ identifies the cause of their suffering as a universal cause of suffering.

3. The INTJ processes their grief by intellectualizing it and devising a way to eliminate the cause of suffering completely, forever. They see this as not only personally cathartic but an act of service to everyone.

4. The INTJ gets tunnel vision about their goals.

5. The INTJ's methods hurt people, which forms an opposition to their goals.

6. Attempts at peaceful resolution fail because the INTJ is usually quite bad at connecting to people and making themselves understood on an emotional level (despite usually being very good at understanding, at least on a surface level, the motivations of others), and most other people simply don't even realize that they are not understanding.

7. One party or the other succeeds, usually with disastrous fallout for both sides. The only way to prevent this is to make a strong personal emotional connection with the INTJ - which is extremely difficult because the grief back in step 1 caused them to retreat WAY behind walls of Intellect, Pragmatism, and Cynicism - and through that connection remind them that actually the ends don't justify the means.

The other thing that makes Ludinus a villain is that he wants to commit genocide (technically he wants to enable genocide). He wants to eliminate an entire population of entities who are, he even conceded himself, basically just people. And he's okay with that, because it will, in his mind, be a net benefit for everyone else, and because in a truly wild subversion, he sees the gods as less than people. His hatred of the gods has morphed in his mind into a weird doctrine of mortal supremacism. He may or may not (personally I'm leaning toward probably not) be Correct about what will happen if he succeeds, but he is Wrong either way.

I digress. I veered a little off my point there, just to make it absolutely clear that I do not agree with Ludinus. He is a Bad Guy who must be Stopped.

We just saw step 6 fail, predictably, because BH and Ludinus spent the whole time talking at cross-purposes. Imogen probably got closest to actually communicating meaningfully with him, with her line of questioning on Predathos, but she didn't get very far because he has no reason to trust her with everything he knows. They were just fishing for more information, and he was just fishing for angles to hook a vessel.

My point is this: that conversation in Aeor was nothing. BH did not score any points, and neither did Ludinus (although he came pretty close with his little trick with Delilah, and he got away with the orb). Neither party came any closer to actually understanding the other or making themselves understood.

All these posts going around celebrating how BH "got him" or whatever are completely.

Misunderstanding.

Ludinus.

And so is BH.

[mumms-the-word]

A Faerûnian Masterlist

I write mostly SFW fluff, angst, and adventure fic. Below you'll find plenty of cute moments, witty banters, angsty arguments, action scenes, and the occasional slightly NSFW hint that fades to black. Most of my writing can be found under the tag my fic.

Contents:

⭐️Popular One Shots⭐️

✨Tav/Durge Masterlists✨

🔮Gale Fic Masterlist🔮

🔍Deep Dives Links🔎

📚Masterlists for Multi-Chapter Fics📚

Click here to read all my works on AO3

Enjoy!

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⭐️Popular One-Shots⭐️

The top three things that have been Doing the Notes the most

Choosing to Live - Gale x You/Reader in which Gale struggles with the complicated emotional fallout of not obeying Mystra's command to self-destruct in Moonrise Towers (AO3 link) Ascension, Return - Gale x You/Reader where you're witness to Gale's ascension to godhood before he leaves to give the Crown of Karsus to Mystra...and you're a little scared he won't come back. (AO3) A Final Death - Gale x gn!Tav where Gale has ascended and has returned to his chronically ill lover in order to ascend them, only to realize that they have died while he was exploring godhood. He departs for the Fugue Plane to find their soul and offer them divinity once more. (AO3)

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✨Tav/Durge Fic Masterlists✨

🎻 meridan “dani” zavrai ✶ mephistopheles tiefling ✶ college of lore bard ✶ entertainer ✶ chaotic good ✶ romanced gale ✶ fic master list ✶ ao3 ✶ tags: dani, meridan zavrai

🏹 ardynn harrow ✶ half wood elf ✶ beastmaster ranger ✶ outlander ✶ neutral good ✶ romanced halsin ✶ fic masterlist ✶ ao3 ✶ tags: ardynn, ardynn harrow

⚔️ freyr ✶ human ✶ eldritch knight fighter ✶ the haunted one ✶ chaotic evil > true neutral ✶ romanced minthara ✶ fic masterlist ✶ ao3 ✶ tags: freyr

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🔮Gale Fics Masterlist🔮

Masterlist of the various Gale x You/Reader or Gale x gn!Tav oneshots that I wrote whenever the urge struck me (ao3 link to the series)

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🔍Deep Dives🔎

Long posts that sparked my hyperfixation and had me red-string-theory connecting lore dots until I landed on a narrative that made sense in my head

tags to other metas: bg3 meta, bg3 lore, bg3 discourse, deep dive

Gale and Mystra (and Mystra, and Mystra...) - Meta post that dives into Forgotten Realms lore to discuss Mystra's multiple lives/deaths, how Gale fits into the timeline, when Mystra visited Gale, etc Shadow Curse Events series - Meta posts that dive into Ketheric's descent into Sharran zealotry, his war against the Harpers and Druids, and the first 40 days of the shadow curse. Illithid Souls series - Meta posts that dive into the D&D lore about illithids and souls before turning to look at how the game uses/changes that lore by examining Tab/Durge, Orpheus, Karlach, and Gale after they become mind flayers. When was Gale Chosen? - Another timeline combing Faerûn lore with Gale's timeline, along with a poll where a couple hundred people voted on Gale's age when he was Chosen. (not a deep dive, but could be helpful)

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📚Ongoing Multichapter Fics📚

A Macabre Masquerade Masterlist

Plot: One year after defeating the Netherbrain and saving the city, Dani and Gale receive a mysterious invitation to a masquerade ball. The invitation specifically invites them to participate as the Heroes of Baldur's Gate. However, when they get there, they soon realize they aren't the only Heroes of Baldur's Gate that got invited.

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In Fathoms Below Masterlist

Plot: The island city of Nautera disappeared over 4500 years ago, if it ever existed at all. Now not a single, legitimate record of Nautera exists, save for one. The Nauterran Account. Long thought lost, it has recently been retrieved from the depths of Candlekeep’s archives and placed into the capable hands of one Gale Dekarios. With the Nauterran Account in hand and an eclectic team of Baldurians and other allies mounting an official expedition, Gale journeys to find the ruins of Nautera…but hopes to find so much more.

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[bananasfosterparent]

I'm gonna be real, I'm very worried that Larian is going to try & make AA even more overtly the "bad choice" in their next patch (they promised some epilogue animations). I just really don't understand why the antis have to be so obnoxiously loud telling a company to change THEIR game because of a way they choose to interpret something. Isn't the whole point of an RPG that you're allowed to craft a narrative around the narrative-- but to pressure the writers into editing their hard work because they "don't like it" is just so,,,,..ugh

I just wish people would stop infantilizing the crap out of Astarion as a character. They give him all these sweet HC when half of them are just Wyll.. Like the "I can fix him" complex has rotted our society

Honestly? I'm not worried about it at all.

Mostly because I don't think Larian cares lmao At least, not in that way.

Get ready, it's 1am, I had my meds, and had some caffeine, so here comes ramble :D

They want to please their fans, and while spawn fans make up a majority of the Astarion side of the fandom, and there may be (speculated) peices in place to make AA seem worse in-game with these updates....I honestly don't think Larian as a whole cares enough to join in on the one-sided righteousness battle.

They made this game for the purpose that most AA fans (at least, ones I know) use it for: roleplaying, as you pointed out. And I'm very sure they aren't blind to just how one-sided the discourse is.

For example, on the official Larian Discord server, AA fans voiced their opinion on the Tav/Durge expressions in the new AA kisses. And from what I saw, the opinions were presently respectfully and with the roleplay experience in mind. How the expressions aren't ideal for evil roleplay. But after that, the same suggestions thread got clogged with anti-AA players begging Larain to "not destroy the narrative" they've apparently been telling and to not listen to us "delulu" AA fans. And the threads were locked by a mod and cleaned up, to "prevent bullying". I think Larian sees clearly who is focused on quality of roleplay and who is focused on arbitrary arguments.

Because the evil endings aren't supposed to be satisfying to those who don't play them. They aren't supposed to be a moral lesson to the player. It's not that meta (no matter how some people want it to be). It's not that type of game. The evil endings are supposed to be satisfying for those who enjoy playing those endings.

It's supposed to be a different experience. Empty and lonely, sure! But it's still meant to be rewarding for the player. Otherwise, it would be pointless to offer as a roleplay style.

I don't think Larian anticipated so many of us would prefer playing evil like this. I think the idea was for it to be a thing you do after you get bored of playing a few good solo runs. It also doesn't make any sense to spend time and money on an ending, just to slap the player on the wrist for choosing it. They see from the stats how often people make certain choices. People play evil in this game for a lot of reasons, but one big one is because it's just good, devious fun! And without any actual, real world consequences. And I think they see that more than anything. I assume you're also talking about the new evil ending updates?

This phrasing from the first article I saw about it is promising to me that these updates will be satisfying for those who actually enjoy playing/romancing evil--as a positive dark romance and not as some abusive romantic tragedy.

I hope "satisfying narrative conclusions" means that the player can enjoy it for their roleplay. And doesn't just mean the endings are rounded out, but the player gets "punished" in the end. I mean, what are you being punished for exactly? Having fun? SERIOUSLY. Any anti-AA fans lurking the tag care to explain exactly WHY you want people to be punished for playing evil in a video game? I really don't get that. And I don't think Larian cares to do that to their consumers.

Truthfully... I'm hoping the new evil ending fixes will fix Minthara's bugs for one thing. But I also am hoping that it will give us some good AA content. I don't even want to speculate... I'm just gonna wait and see!

AND YES. The infantilization of Astarion and the whole concept of "oh what a cute helpless silly lil bby gorl who needs saving from himself, must be protected and shown who he should be because my Tav/Durge knows best for someone they barely know who's a different creature from them entirely" is...just...

They want a mix of Wyll and Gale but with Astarion's face, voice, and body.

[gffa]

Idk why but whenever on I see Jedi discourse, it feels like I'm being gaslighted into thinking that I don't understand the film's.

I have no idea if you're saying that Jedi-positive or Jedi-critical meta is making you feel this way, but I'll address it earnestly either way: If you feel like you're being gaslit by fandom, please stop reading those posts. Unless those people are coming after you individually, you have the choice to just not read that commentary, you can walk away and not have to have that experience. I understand that you're most likely being hyperbolic about this, I don't think you seriously mean that you feel like you're being gaslit, but my advice is still the same--if a sub-section of fandom is getting to you and it's not like anyone is coming after you specifically, then it sounds like you need to take some steps back. I'm not sure what else you want from me or that I can tell you--other people aren't obligated to change their meta for you (the only thing we're obligated to do is treat real people as more important than fictional stories, to treat real people with care and compassion), just as you're not obligated to change your views because someone else disagrees with you and has written a post about their views. I'm assuming that commentary has nothing to do with you specifically, which means they're just doing their own thing and it's up to you whether you want to emotionally engage with it or train yourself to scroll on by without reading something you know is going to affect you. I wish you all the luck in that, it's not an easy path to learn to ignore stuff and scroll on by, but I promise--as someone who has to work at doing that every day (I have been working so hard on letting shit go in the DC fandom, let me tell you)--it gets more rewarding as you learn to do it more. It's fandom, don't let it have power over you that you don't want it to have. If you're enjoying that experience, by all means, continue! If you're not enjoying it, train yourself to walk away, you'll be better off for it.

[the-knight-of-destiny]

Okay, so long long ramble under the cut about the nature of Ratgrinder Discourse™, I'll preface by saying that I don't want any of this to get hostile with anyone, because I think that's frankly silly to do over a webshow. That said I am also open to critical discussion so if anything I say doesn't make sense, or doesn't track I'm open to critique on it! Obviously spoilers up to Episode 19 of Fantasy High Junior Year underneath. Also it is a VERY long post, several pages, so don't click read more if that'll be overwhelming/too much at once. I just had to get my thoughts into words.

So, this will be long but I'll try to break it up. For clarity I want to establish my main point and give a quick TL;DR here, so here's the short version, long version even further below. My main points are as follows: 1: It is okay to not be happy with how a narrative is going in a show/story you enjoy. Critique is not hate, if anything it's a form of praise in a way. People wouldn't be having such long and frequent discourse about D20 and it's current season if they didn't feel strongly. 2: Similarly, we as an audience have a very different perspective of the entire story unfolding compared to the Intrepid Heroes/Cast. I think a lot of people jump to assumptions about the cast's thought process when that really isn't something we can gauge beyond what they say in episode and on Adventuring Party. 3: For me at least, even if I am left unsatisfied by an ending it doesn't ruin the fun I had in a work. Now if you just wanted my bullet point thoughts without elaboration, there they are! The rest of this is going to be an insanely long ramble (seriously, exit now if you aren't up for that, it's pages long) that I don't expect anyone to read, but I like to get my thoughts outta my brain. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, in regards to the Ratgrinders dying in the fashion they have, there's been a lot of discussion on literally every place there is to discuss Dimension 20, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, I'm sure other places as well. Really it all comes back to one thing, Dungeons and Dragons is a game, but Dimension 20 is a show. We as viewers have some level of narrative expectation, now for everyone that's different. Some folks have specific hopes for plot and character arcs. Others just want a general vibe, but the cast are players. Sure they are performers, but they are players in a game in equal measure. I've alluded to this before but a lot of the sincere vitriol to antagonists thus far (and especially the Ratgrinders) comes from the fact that the players have been fully immersed in a world and as characters where the Ratgrinders have been a constant thorn in their side for tens of hours of play time. Obviously one can still not like how they've engaged with them (I'm still not sure how exactly I feel about it,) but a lot of it is coming from that distinct perspective. When Fig took Ruben out, she specifically was frustrated because she 'wasted her season' on him. There's a meta level of Fig being angry with Ruben as a character who shares a world with him, versus Emily being frustrated as a player that a lot of her in-game actions did not hash out. That's actually totally natural, by the way. The interesting way that DnD serves both as a narrative of the characters in the setting, but also of the players rolling dice is part of what makes actual play like Dimension 20 so interesting. It's why I think SOME of the disappointment with Brennan and the Intrepid Heroes comes from a strange place, we literally cannot experience the story the same way the cast have. We get a week between chunks of story, they film the episodes in batches. We can think for as long as we want about our critical thoughts, they have to improv on the fly. We get to watch the Ratgrinders as antagonists in a story, the IH are actively hindered in their gameplay by the Ratgrinders as enemies.

That said I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried about some aspects of Protagonist Centric Morality™ in this. Oisin having a mildly flirty conversation with Adaine once when he had ulterior motives is a deeply awful manipulation, but Fig catfishing Ruben the better part of an entire year is her trying to reach out and understand him (?). Kipperlilly threatening to desecrate Eugenia's grave is deeply fucked up, but Riz openly advocating mutilating Oisin's body for tactical reasons, and Fabian loudly declaring he intends to do the same to Ivy for literally just his own self-satisfaction are 'fun unhinged moments'.

Before I go on, obviously the Ratgrinders are the bad guys. They're taking part in an evil plan, they've done villainous things throughout the season, especially very recently, etc. This isn't some argument that the Bad Kids are secretly the real monsters or something, obviously not. I just think it's odd that people read into the Bad Kids' actions in the best possible light at all times and the inverse for the Ratgrinders. This protagonist centric morality also comes down to the true reason behind any and all of Fantasy High's villain redemption. Ragh gets redeemed because the player characters think he's possibly useful and/or endearing. Aelwyn gets redeemed because she personally helps Adaine. The only one that Brennan really pushed forward on his own was Zayn, who they barely engaged with. People compare the Ratgrinders to Penelope and Dayne a lot, and understandably so. However I think this is sort of the complication and in my opinion, the silver bullet to understanding what's actually happening with the Ratgrinder's narrative place, Dayne more specifically. He does very little evil on screen. I mean, he injures Fabian and is most likely the one who killed Zayn, but comparatively to Aelwyn, he does almost nothing. He gets killed without so much as a thought, and in a fun (?) parallel to current Ratgrinder discourse, does actually have his body desecrated after death by Fabian. Because he hurt Fabian personally. Aelwyn gets forgiven of doing a lot of terrible shit (and this isn't Aelwyn hate, she's like my favorite NPC.) because it didn't directly affect any of the Bad Kids besides Adaine, and even the bad stuff that did affect Adaine can be sort of off-loaded onto their parents. So it's why I say this discourse is tough, people inevitably say "Well, the Ratgrinders are villains, of course they'll get killed." And this isn't inherently a wrong statement, they look at the bad things the group is doing and understand they must be stopped, why are people upset clearly bad guys get beat and/or killed in DnD games? Because they aren't actually getting killed in such brutal ways because they're bad guys, it's because they personally annoyed or hurt the Bad Kids. This is also why Ratgrinder fans often feel both frustrated and vindicated at once (I speculate, but I feel it's a safe assumption,) because on a meta level Kipperlilly is literally right. Her friends and likely herself are getting ripped to shreds because they crossed the special protagonists, because they started to really frustrate the Intrepid Heroes. The Bad Kids have forgiven atrocities before, but the Intrepid Heroes are really quick to dismiss and kill people they find annoying.

The ultimate example I feel of this, is Mary Ann. Ruben gets blasted into hell because his actions personally annoyed the players, Ivy gets stabbed to death while being repeatedly insulted and threatened with mutilation because her actions personally annoyed the players.

But Mary Ann is the one they all think they can redeem or save, because her personality is more cute and endearing to the players. That kind of says it all better than I ever could.

[drconstellation]

What the Tartan Tells Us

Or, Tales from the Tartan

(I wanted both titles!)

Updated 10 Nov 2023

I've been reading up a bit about tartan today to what it can tell us, and it seems its not too hard to do. The clues are more in the colours, and the overall pattern, there aren't any particularly rigid rules that need to be stuck to.

For the colour analysis, I'll be referring to my recent colour meta All the Colours of the GO Rainbow for interpretation. I need to tweak the interpretation for red on it, though, based on what I'm seeing here, and some other information I just got. That's OK, red and yellow are the two hardest colours to pin down, they are quite complex in their meaning and perhaps not what you expected them to be, and I expect that it will be a meta that evolves a bit over time anyway.

So for a warm up, let's start with the tartan blanket Aziraphale provides to cover the naked Gabriel on the first day he arrives at the book shop.

Lets lists the colours we can see:

White - for his base angelic nature that is showing since he misplaced his memory.

Oystershell gray - for his high angelic ranking as Supreme Archangel Gabriel.

Teal* - Blue mixed with green, Heaven mixed Hell, Lawful mixed with Chaos; which is one of Aziraphale's signature colours.

Black - that hint of a mystery in play. What is being hidden?

Dark Gray - the thick cross stripes, which are interesting. "Shades of gray" are something we associate with Aziraphale and Crowley. That's the world they walk in on Earth together, where their two sides blend together. Another hint that Gabriel was starting to see something else than the one-sided thinking of Heaven?

[*I've bounced around a bit on this colour while writing this, but I'm going back to my original thoughts on it. It's not Heaven blue, its tainted with green, and its the same colour Saraqael and Muriel wear (see below) so its something else.]

Next, let's look at Aziraphale's own tartan. We mainly see it in his bow tie, but it also appears on the bike rack he miracles onto the Bentley when they give Anathema a lift back to Jasmine Cottage in S1E2. I'm going to use the examples from this older post by bluebandedagate back in 2019 called A Discourse on Tartan, as they make it quite clear, and when I looked at it closely again after doing my colour meta I actually gasped. Because it tells us there is very little of Heaven left in Aziraphale, despite what he openly says, and one other very revealing fact.

Here is the tartan swatch. It's called "Heaven's Dress Tartan," despite there being next to no Heaven in it.

For a start, there is no white base, which we night expect with an angel. Its all been removed.

We have a beige base instead, which is one of the working angel colours, probably there as part of his Earthly duties.

There are some wider dark gray stripes. My interpretation here is this is the work of Crowley, who has made him question the morality of Heaven over time - the shades of gray.

Then we get the thin black stripes - the mystery of his unpredictable nature. You never quite know what he's going to do next... Plus the constant effort to hide what he is doing with Crowley.

And finally the red. Red is never a colour associated directly to angels in the present day, so it can only mean one thing - a declaration of his bond to the one who does wear that particular shade of red - Crowley.

Red is not necessarily a demonic colour per se, its more a colour of devoted passion. Shax also wears red, usually a darker red, and she is devoted to climbing the ranks of power in Hell with a passion. And the Red Team in the paintball battle at Tadfield Manor represented the faction devoted to management and following the rules.

The other noticeable thing about Aziraphale's tartan is the tightness and intensity of the pattern. The stripes are quite thin and they repeat often.

Saraqael's tartan is:

Purple, for royalty. they rank high, somehow, or they're aligned with Gabriel's office.

Oyster-shell gray, for the Archangels.

A pinstripe of primary blue, for Heaven.

White for angels

A wide stripe of dark gray (on the collar.)

Wow. That's some heavy hitting in combinations of colours there. We've recognized them as one of the "dark horses" in the series, and their Tactical Turtleneck backs up the idea that they are now involved with surveillance and spy work in Heaven (eh, they were certainly watching and spying on Crowley and Muriel during their little jaunt in Heaven in S2E6. And I sooo wish I could get a good look at their ring, but there just isn't high enough resolution to do so.)

Muriel's tartan is very similar to Saraqael's but has a pattern with a teal theme in it as well. It's a bit hard to tell the shade of blue-green here, but a closer look at Saraqael's trouser leg reveals all the colours in their tartan displayed in a strip down the outside seam. Purple and silver-gray dominate, but the teal-blue pops out as well. It looks very similar to the shade of teal in Jimbriel's blanket above. Yep, a dark horse, indeed. I wouldn't trust Saraqael, if I were you.

There is some question as to whether Muriel reports directly to Saraqael, but I am wondering if this marks them as one Saraqael has to keep their eyes on as well - because of something that happened in the past. How does one become a lowly 37th ranked scrivener? I mean, c'mon, doesn't that just sound...ridiculous? What did they do to get demoted so far down? And how many others were demoted before them? Questions for another day, perhaps.

Edit: I missed this example in my original post - Jimbriel wearing a dressing gown with a similar tartan to Saraqael and Muriel. This occurs right at the beginning of S2E3, if you are looking for it. It's all the same colours - royal purple, archangel silver-gray, white but also a cross stripe of black and a wider cross stripe of dark gray. He only wears it in this one upstairs shot. There is some metaphorical context here - Jim is looking out and down over the "Outside" as everyone moves about on Whickber street below, much like an angel looking down from Heaven at humans moving about on Earth (yes, you should think about the upper level of the bookshop as corresponding to Heaven...it is "upstairs" after all.)

The other tartan I saw was on the kilts of the angelic soldiers behind the quartermaster in S1E5, when Aziraphale has discorporated in the portal and gone up to Heaven. The tartan there is just in two to three different shade of working-angel beige and off-white, in big wide stripes. Fairly ordinary, run-of-mill stuff. Rank and file, if you will.

I couldn't get a good look at the colours of the tartan on the thermos of holy water Aziraphale gives Crowley in S1. When you enlarge the images they go a bit blurry as they are not high-def enough. I can't tell if its green or gray stripes running vertically, and if the horizontal ones are black or red, or both. If so, that's an interesting colour choice for Aziraphale to give to Crowley, and it's certainly not the same pattern as his bow tie. I could understand if it was just a wider pattern of the beige-grey-black-red. If anyone can help out I'll update with a description and analysis.

[max1461]

I think one of the main things that separates me from most rationalists is this: I think that rationalists have a tendency to bullet-bite object level claims to make their meta-views coherent, where I have very strongly the opposite tendency, to bullet-bite meta-level claims to make my object level views coherent. Thus wackier inclinations of mine like "there's nothing particularly wrong with hypocrisy" and others of similar type, which emerge out of a kind of radical disinterest in the elegance of the meta-level...

Uh, that might not make a lot of sense. Let me approach this from another angle. Rationalists, coming out of the econ bloggosphere and tech world as they have, seem to me to often be very interested in equilibria, convergence, and other notions of coherence between disparate things. They want meta-beliefs that commute nicely with their object-beliefs. To continue on with the previous example, if you believe that hypocrisy is wrong, then in some sense you are asking that the following diagram commute:

or commute up to some weaker notion than actual isomorphism, or whatever, for just actions and just statements. This is a kind of coherence condition on one's object-beliefs and meta-beliefs.

Now, to be clear, I don't feel that rationalists are particularly concerned with the concept of hypocrisy, at least not more so than any other group. But most people are somewhat concerned with hypocrisy. So my point is that I feel I am far less inclined towards interest in meta-coherence than the average person, whereas rationalists are often far more inclined towards it. Thus ideas like "finding your own utility function in order to maximize it", which I've encountered in rationalist spaces, and which seem to rely on the assumption (or imposition) of certain coherence conditions between certain object-level and meta-level preferences that one has.

And, anyway, it seems to me that the object level is very often a mess of random bullshit, and so demanding these kinds of coherence conditions is something of a big ask. This means that if you want a pretty looking meta-level, you often have to bite the bullet on a lot of object-level propositions, hence the heavily "bullet-biting" character that a lot of rationalist discourse seems to take relative to normie discourse.

I, on the other hand, am much more willing to bite the bullet on having nice looking meta-views. I don't think my meta-views satisfy any good coherence conditions, really. This is a less obvious form of bullet-biting, but I've always noticed it at least somewhat when talking to others, and I've noticed it especially strongly when talking to rationalists. Thus I think the characterization that I've received from a few people on here, that my ethical views seem to be (in so many words) made entirely of a big list of a priori carve-outs. Of course they aren't, I have various more universal convictions, but when it comes down to it I will much more rarely privilege one of these universal convictions over a considered intuition to the contrary on the object level.

Cf. this post about eating dog meat for some views of mine that might initially seem contradictory (or at least opposite-valence) to the ones I've sketched here, but which I don't think really are. Uh in fact I think that perhaps they're only contradictory if you impose the exact kind of coherence conditions I am saying here that I don't care about. But I'm not sure.

[bonearenaofmyskull]

There appears to be a conflict between those against the Hannigram ship and its supporters. Some individuals opposed to the ship are trying to convince people to leave the ship or the fandom altogether. If you've noticed people feeling uncertain about the relationship, do you have any advice for them? I've seen many posts expressing confusion on my feed.

I think the best defense is just to watch the show a lot. Someone told me (IDK if this is true, I'm not in a position to judge) that their impression of new fans is that they watch the show, get excited, go to Reddit which has like 75,000 members, and there through pinned metas that are heavily biased toward the dark!Will Graham view of Hannigram, and they let those biases dictate their understanding of the show. Then everything gets one-sided, people who don't agree get frustrated, and then people get driven out of those spaces, and they end up here having the same facile discourse that they were having there.

IDK. Sometimes people just need to put down other people's opinions and go back to the source material, and remember why it was that they loved it, and to forget all the noise. The fandom also has a lot to offer besides discourse: there's memes and gifsets and fanfic and fanart, and if you ask three meta writers their opinions on things, you'll get four different interpretations.

And if that nuance isn't happening, then maybe they're asking the wrong people.

So let's just remind people that the loudest voices aren't always the most insightful or even the most popular. And there can be enjoyment in reading multiple opinions before you form your own.

[skaruresonic]

see, that's the thing. exactly how would you pull off meta commentary on an interactive medium in a non-interactive medium?

putting aside the fact that the comic never really established Sonic vs. Eggman as a thing - you'd need to be in-the-know to even know this is a thing, and what's more, be dialed into Sonic fandom discourse to know the gist behind "Sonic vs. Eggman is old hat" - how would you use comics to comment on video games when you lack the interactivity needed to acknowledge the player's role in all of this?

it's like. yeah, I guess you could accuse Sonic of having main character syndrome due to....... being the main character......... but what exactly is the point you're trying to make? that Sonic being the main character is wrong when he's literally the only thing standing between the world and Eggman's schemes? that Sonic needs to acknowledge the people he failed to save or prevent from becoming traumatized, even though he's not morally responsible for those deaths or trauma in the first place...? like, how many explosions does he have to leave Eggman behind in before you have to concede that he's done literally all he can?

"Sonic makes the choice to let Eggman go and everyone else reaps the consequences" - no, he doesn't? and hell, sometimes Sonic suffers the most direct consequences of Eggman's schemes, if they aren't just straight up "Eggman trying to kill him." my boy did not spend six months locked in a cell in space just for you to say he's some Pollyanna with his head stuck up his ass.

"Why does he never dwell on things?" - beeeecause he's... Sonic the Hedgehog?

...I don't know, it's just such a cynical view of Sonic, especially compared to ST's view of Sonic as a "fairy"-like being who shows up when needed and dips out when he's done. I can't fathom it being an appealing one if you have any love for the character. Because he does have flaws, but "not dwelling on things" isn't exactly one of them.