#i don't like her as a person by any means but her character is literally more interesting to me than some of the main marauders characters

[angelsndragons]

so my forever gm needed a break. given that this was my only in-person game and i wanted to retain that connection to my community, i volunteered to run the next campaign so she could take a break and just enjoy playing.

i decided to go with a module i knew, having been a pc in it a few years prior: storm king's thunder. i took her copy of the book and started reading.

and nearly threw it through a window in frustration.

for those of you who don't know, the core giant races in the book are very star trek hat-esque. they have Their Thing and that's it. almost all of the giant npcs are evil and out to destroy the world of smallfolk using their delegated hats. there was a shakespearean drama happening at certain points behind the scenes but nothing else in the book supported that level of complexity with the giants or with the scripted encounters in the book. okay so you're telling me a small goblin tribe has holed up in a cave system and when a bunch of villagers flee into said cave, they...take them all prisoner and go raid their village? after learning that the villagers were fleeing from a giant attack on said village? after learning that most of the guards are still in the village proper, defending the broken keep? really? nah, man, that's just not engaging with the goblins as a culture and people.

i think the worst offenders are the hill giants. they're given heinously low soft stats, are treated as nothing more than glutinous sacks of hit points, and they're the fucking butt of the joke. two hill giants can't navigate their way back to their home base after an attack (meaning that the players can't use said hill giants to scout and find the place either). they're tricked at every interval. the big hill giant plot is for the chief to eat literally any and all food her minions can bring her so that she'll grow to be the biggest giant in existence. yes, she too is treated like the butt of a joke for daring to think that that plan is good or viable. she's so fat (and the book goes into this over and over) that she can no longer walk and the wagon she's seated on is broken and hasn't been repaired. she is in fact so fat and so stupid that she forgets that she has a macguffin the party needs. oh and the book goes into great detail about how slovenly and disgusting her place is and then has the nerve throw in a "overbearing wife beats and bullies her husband" joke in there just to round out the misery. this whole ass culture of bad guys is treated like they are goddamn animals, not people.

needless to say i have chucked a great deal of this. the goblins are practical survivalists (we are small and easily squished, if we can't hide we go along until we can escape) and when ogres and giants moved in, they decided to follow orders to gather food right up until the party gives them a legitimate out. thanks to their intervention, this group of goblins are off the board as future enemies and will in fact be appearing as occasional help (one of my players decided they liked the goblins so much that they created a new character to be from that group).

the hill giants now have traditions surrounding food preparation and preservation that go back thousands of years and much of the small folk's current tech in that department is based off of hill giant innovations, which the party is learning about. their ancestors sleep in the hilly regions of the world, growing and growing together, their sometimes living bodies make up the very ground that the small folk walk on and find nourishment from. the hill giants, along with their stone and cloud brethren, are the only giants who remember that giants become one with the land. one amongst many slowly dying giant races and they choose to, well, not embrace it but find peace in it. they're still gullible and still view size as incredibly important but one's skill in the culinary arts can propel them to leadership. chief guh is a culinary visionary who perfected the art of preparing dragon meat and as giants and dragons are enemies beyond memory, that is quite the feat. will the party come to blows with her? i mean, maybe. but at least she and her people won't end up as 'dumb, slow, fat' person jokes.

framing is so important you guys. it's work but it is so worth it. i had my players spitting nails at the racist, isolationist elves whom the village the party was helping were counting on for survival. i had them tearing up as they decided to knowingly walk a group of orcs to their deaths at the hands of the racist, isolationist elves because it was the only way the elves would agree to supply the village through a brutal winter after the village lost everything. one elf, just one, was curious, if completely incorrect, about the outside world and mostly respectful to the pcs. one of the players is now penpals with him and has sent him a history of the sword coast he otherwise doesn't have access to because his people Do Not Care about the world beyond their borders. the campaign is richer for delving deeper into these cultures and people

Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book

[synchodai]

"Mystra groomed Gale" takes rustle my jimmies like no other. I get how some people who don't know much about her beyond BG3 may have this interpretation, but if you're like me, a woman who's been playing since the days of AD&D, you'd understand why accusing Mystra of being the bad person in this scenario may hit a nerve.

TL;DR: Did Mystra take advantage of Gale's devotion to her as his goddess? Definitely, she's a Faerûnian deity — they subsist on worship and adulation. Does that make her his abuser? Eh... man, maybe it's high time that a lot of us learn different terminology for unhealthy relationship dynamics other than abuser-victim. I've seen a couple of posts that are really gung-ho about forcing every companion character to be some sort of abuse victim, because that's what they've decided the game is about. I mean, they're free to interpret the game that way, but damn, we're really out here flattening god, the very concept of magic itself, into the role of an abusive ex, huh? A fantastical, nuanced relationship between mortal and immortal set against the backdrop of a rich palimpsest multiverse digested like a YouTube drama video.

Let me try to explain my perspective by going through the history of Mystra, how she's utilized in Forgotten Realms lore, and treated within D&D games in general.

MYSTRA THE MAN-EATER

Since her creation, she has always been depicted as the sexy goddess whose main purpose was to be a wizard player's muse as well as their patron. Back then, D&D (and TTRPGs in general) was a heavily male-dominated hobby, so Mystra (and Mystryl, her avatars, and all her other incarnations) was catered and shaped by that demographic.

Because it's the player characters and Wizards of the Coast who have narrative agency and many of them want to fuck a goddess, they make stories where Mystra comes on to them because their character is just so good at magic. They designed Mystra to be a mysterious, beautiful love interest because they wanted to use her as the crown jewel of their power fantasy of being a super cool and powerful magic man. You can pretty much see this in the Elminster books and the Avatar series with Midnight (one of Mystra's avatars). Gale himself seems to be an exploration of this typical kind of wizard character.

As far as power fantasies go, making the goddess of magic have an intimate relationship with a mortal character is fine. It's the ultimate validation for a burger-flipper when the god and all source of burger-flipping is head over heels in love with them. It also doesn't have to have a sexual component to have "magic" and the magic system itself enamored with a character — depending on the game and DM, Mystra's favor can be entirely symbolic and metaphorical. A fine power fantasy in the power fantasy generation game.

So because everyone literally wants a piece of her, you end up with Mystra having more Chosen running around than any other god. Understandable given what she has to do to maintain her massive portfolio. It fits her as the personification of magic — someone who entices ambitious young spellcasters but burns them out through obsession and overreaching. Consume any Forgotten Realms-related media, and you've probably come across at least one campaign, novelization, or character backstory that use Mystra for the role of sexy sorceress goddess that's the alluring (yet often demanding) patron of some magic man. Whomst amongst our wizards haven't been visited by Mystra in the night ordering him to do plot point, he rolls to seduce her, and she has no choice but to admit that she's actually attracted to him because the dice said so? It was a community inside joke passed around tables: Mystra the Man-eater.

But then some BG3 fans started taking the joke seriously...

MYSTRA THE GROOMER AND WHORE

This piece of dialogue has done so much irrevocable damage.

Some (Galemancers specifically) have interpreted this to mean that Mystra is known to go after young men. She does not. She has more documented Chosen than other gods due to her massive portfolio and power level, but there are just as many female Chosen as there are male Chosen. Minsc, like most of us in this fandom, is speculating and doing so in a way that uplifts Gale at the cost of taking a bit of a jab at Mystra.

"Mystra's a whore. She boned Kelemvor and Elminster and so many of her Chosen, taking advantage of them as a goddess," they say as if she didn't have her romantic relationships all as different people and in different bodies. Her avatar Dasumia was the one who had an intimate relationship with Elminster, and it was the human Midnight (who later ascended to become Mystra) who was Kelemvor's lover (who himself was a mortal adventurer at the time).

This is why Mystra is, how other people put it, "a whore." Because WotC canonized a handful of those stories where different sexy female mage love interests whom otherwise have nothing in common are slapped with the Mystra label for one reason or another. Sometimes they're mere avatars or magical projections, sometimes they're actual people possessed by Mystra, and sometimes they're destined to be the new Mystra but don't know it yet. But those sort of nuances are lost to people who learn their lore secondhand from deliberately provocative tweets and reddit posts, flattening extremely fantastical relationships to clumsily fit a more relatable framing that'll net them more online engagement.

I don't want to argue what is and isn't grooming. But I have encountered arguments taking Gale's mentions that he was "a young man" to mean Mystra groomed him as a child. But I doubt he would have said "young man" if he meant child...

Mystra took off the gossamer veils from her body to fully reveal herself to him — or whatever romanticized way Gale tells you that they were intimate. The man speaks in half-abstraction and metaphors because it's revealed later on in the romance that all their love-making happened outside the Material Plane. They were very intimate, but never physically had sex (or had any physical contact at all because gods are only allowed to interact with mortals through their avatars or projections). If Mystra "groomed" Gale, so did every other god who revealed themselves and made themselves vulnerable to their followers. Shar grooms her justiciars when she brings them into her dark embrace. Umberlee grooms her clerics when she swallows them up and gives them her wet kiss.

MYSTRA IS A FAIR GOD ACTUALLY

Look, gods in D&D-verses are, more often than not, dicks. They have to be or else there would be no need for adventurers to fix wrong-doings if the gods weren't so detached to the suffering of mortals and regularly making earth-shattering calamities.

Mystra, as a patron, is actually one of the more fair and hands-on dieties. She's one of the few gods who rewards benevolent ambition and punishes destructive hubris, knowing the line between the two. In the Elminster series, she (or one of her avatars) assists Elminster in taking down one of her rebel Chosen who has abused her blessing to become a tyrant. Azuth, one of her Chosen, has achieved godhood through her. In fact, she is divinely obliged — forced against her will, some might say — to help mortals she would personally rather smite. There have been so many instances where Mystra has to be the bigger person. As far as gods abusing their followers go, Mystra is low on that list.

There are barely any stories of magic abusing spellcasters, but there are cautionary tales aplenty of spellcasters abusing magic.

ON GALE SPECIFICALLY: HOW IS MYSTRA THE BAD GUY HERE?

Gale is the first to tell you that he "violated her boundaries." Mystra told him not to mess with the Tome of Netheril and he did it anyway, so he's fully aware that the orb in his chest and his fall from grace is his own fault. Mystra didn't cast him aside just because she felt like he was getting too big for his britches. His actions actively endangered her and the Weave.

(Mystra is wrong about certain details on the Karsite Weave if we're going by Forgotten Realms lore, but she's not wrong about its existence being a danger. BG3 takes a lot of liberties with the world Faerûn, so I can't definitively say whether Mystra being wrong was her lying, Larian rewriting canon, or this incarnation of Mystra not knowing the true nature of the Fall of Netheril. I could go on about what effects the Karsite Weave actually would have on magic, but this post is already long enough. )

Gale only starts to resent Mystra when she asks him to detonate himself. Elminster makes it sound like an order, but from the way she doesn't punish him in the epilogue if he chooses to keep the orb, it feels more like a suggestion. If Mystra wanted Gale well and truly dead, she has so many options.

Throughout Faerûn's history, Mystra herself has constantly been betrayed and taken advantage of — her power coveted by ambitious men who claim to worship and love her. Honestly, as far as goddesses with traumatic histories of being killed by ambitious men go, she's pretty chill about Gale. The fact that she allows him to become the god of ambition in the end if you choose that path? Well... let's just say she's not the one who looks like the evil ex who was only with their partner to take advantage of them in this scenario.

CONCLUSION

Mystra isn't the only goddess to have romantic relationships with her followers. I've already yapped on about how Forgotten Realms writers and D&D players love to make goddesses fuck their heroes, and all that pearl-clutching over "power imbalance" and "consent" is moot when the mortal party is actively rolling to seduce the divine entity.

But notice how the male gods rarely have intimate relations with their mortal charges? It's almost as if Mystra was objectified for years by horny nerds to be the sexy sorceress who validates the more important male hero. Fast forward years later, she's now being slut-shamed for all the lore of her sleeping with the more important male hero by a new crop of fans who would love to think they're more progressive than the horny nerds of the 80s, but fall into the same trap. Mystra has so much potential for complexity, but they choose to flatten her because they ultimately don't care about making stories involving complex female characters.

Instead, one of the most powerful beings in Faerûn has no bigger role in this universe than to be your girlfriend or your current boyfriend's evil ex. Wow, the realms of your creativity and respect for women truly know no bounds.

[erinwantstowrite]

A while ago you liked a comment of mine on TikTok where I said that there should be no second Batman bc having Bruce retire/die means his fight should be over and he should be able to rest properly, (idk if that’s exactly what I said but I think it’s in the ball park) so can I ask what you think about a legacy Batman? And who would you have be the second Batman? Also your art is amazing and I love leap of faith, hope you have a great day

i remember that comment!!!!

i honestly believe that having a "legacy" for every single hero is just,,, boring. the reason this happens is because they are never going to NOT have Batman. how else would they make money??? so they just keep giving us reasons why his mantle has to be there. just like the Joker HAS to always come back, why new characters are always tied in to existing characters somehow, etc.

in a perfect world, we'd get new characters sometimes and overarching storylines that aren't regressed the second we make any headway on character development. we'd have new villains by now that make a name for themselves outside of the original villains, we'd see an impact on our settings and characters, all that jazz. and in this perfect world, we wouldn't have so many legacy mantles

and i mean, like, one of the supers taking up the Superman name? that's cool. they're a family, thematically it works. even with the Flash family, I accept how they do it (though I hardly keep up with their comics)

but Batman?????

STOPPPPP

Every other Batfam member has an arc where they branch away from Bruce and the name, save for Tim and Cass, I think. Tim is... a gray area. I only put him here because he's back to being Robin (because DC can't let go of that money maker!). It's an insult to their characters to put them into the Batman mantle, but in universe, this keeps happening because "Gotham needs Batman."

No! No they do not! They do not need Batman specifically. They need his ideals! His kids do not need to be Batman to have Batman still be around after he's put up the cape or died, because they are that future without the cape! There is no magic tied in to that stupid cowl, they just see it that way because Batman is this larger than life figure. Of course they think their dad is impervious to the world, that the cape that protected them is special, that they need Batman. But that is NOT the case.

Just like with any family, life will move on. The legacy continues through the lessons that the kids learned. In many ways, they are better than Batman because they learned from his mistakes, too. Just like every kid does with their parent.

But they don't want to be Batman. And it's kind of insane to keep putting them in someone else's suit, basically someone else's identity. Dick is a great Batman, but his biggest fear is losing himself in Bruce's shadow. What happened to Jason was because of Batman's failure, and it isn't healthy to put him in the Batman suit. Tim should be allowed to move on from Robin and finally get his own mantle because he has always used someone else's. (Yes I am purposefully forgetting that Drake existed do not remind me.) That and the existence of Gun Batman. Do NOT put him in that suit!!!!!!! Damian is branching out of vigilante life altogether, which is so so so good for him. Him becoming Batman after struggling so much with his identity, purpose, and blood ties, is a spit in the face to character development. I think Duke should get to choose his own name for a hero mantle (because Bruce thought of Signal), and thematically I don't think he fits into the Batman role. He is a shining light the way Robin was, but this time more literal because of his powers. Batman is very human, that's what makes his character. Duke deserves more than being Batman.

The best person for that job is Cass.

Not only does she understand the No Kill Rule in the way that Bruce understands it, she is also his equal or superior in every way. Whether it's her physical abilities, or her intelligence, or her morals, Cass fits the bill. She's one of the strongest members of the Batfam and I think she would be able to take on the burden without crumbling under the pressure or feeling scared of that responsibility. She's fit in to the Batman role before, has mirrored him in many ways, and is also her own character (and man I just really love Cass). She strikes the same amount of fear into people that Batman does, a master of the shadows, the dark, and she has a hope that I think Gotham could need.

But she doesn't need to be Batman to do it. She just has to fill in that role. Sure, she could pick up the name Batman, it won't kill me. But so long as she fills in the space that Bruce left behind, becoming the next leader and mentor, she could be anyone.

I think it's more powerful that way to show that the time has passed. That Bruce's time as a vigilante made an impact. Gotham has changed. His kids have grown up. And the Dark Knight is still there, at home.

[ruleroftheimps]

Things that genuinely bugs me about some fics with the Vees that I need to get off my chest. No hate, just a bit of incoherent venting.

As a preface, I'm not necessarily saying any fic that uses any of the following stuff is inherently bad, I've seen a LOT of good fics that use these, but it just drives me crazy when it's all I see and it's very surface level.

For starters, Velvette.

Almost ANY time I see a fic with an abusive staticmoth relationship dynamic (The ones that are playing off of the Voxtagram posts- I have something to say about them too honestly), it's always something along the lines of 'Oh, Valentino's so cruel to poor Voxy, and Velvette's his only true friend, ahhh, they're so close'. Istg this drives me insane. I don't know if it's just the type of fics I read or what, but what about Velvette do you all think shows she's a nice person?? (I mean, the same can be said for Vox, but we're focused on the doll rn) I've seen people say they think she's the most likely to be redeemed of the Vees, and why?? What makes you say that?!?

Literally- If you want to be nitpicky, the only Vee we've seen that hasn't mistreated his employees is in fact Vox, which, his woobifiecation has a part later. But why does everybody make Velvette the nice one!?! I don't know, just, if you want to make Val abusive to Vox, make Velvette the same?? It makes more logical sense too, since Valentino and Vox have known each other for years, and they're close, but Val's still a piece of shit. So why is Velvette nice!? She actually, in canon, treats Vox... worse than Valentino does!? So why is she always portrayed as the 'nice one' in abusive Staticmoth fics?

Also, anybody who says they think she's the brains/backbone of the Vees!? No??We see her do one (1) smart thing, which is identify Carmilla Carmine's reaction, but like. Do we really think the Vees, who were very open about being a team, didn't talk about it beforehand like they did with Pentious?? And she clearly can't be bothered to deal with Valentino, so why do you believe her when she says she's the backbone?!

And Valentino, omg. Like, yes, his character is objectively shitty. Yes, he's Not a Good Person.

But why do so many fans (I'm big on Radiostatic, so I'm mostly talking about those fics) make Val the Big Bad in other Vox ships?!? Like, toxic Staticmoth is amazing, yes. But, outside of the now retconned Voxtagram posts, Val is never too horribly bad to Vox. In fact, they're really close. So WHY is it this hard to find a Vox x literally anybody else (platonic or romantic) where Val isn't a piece of shit to him. (And no, I'm not saying every fic is like that, just that a significant portion is.)

Vox. I swear.

Honestly, I can understand the woobiefication for him more than I can understand Velvette's or Valentino's... just, people removing all his good traits. He's portrayed as pathetic the most, he's the one with the most focus, he's actually, from what we've seen, the most decent of the Vees beyond his comment to Pentious. (Velvette makes love potion and verbally abuses her employees, while also not caring about them at all, Valentino's... Val, Vox does manipulate the masses and all that, but like, not in a way that's extremely bad compared to his business partners? Really, his worst crime atm is being an enabler and being horrible to Pentious.)

But why. Why must he be portrayed as so overtly pathetic? Like, I get it to some extent, and it's hilarious in fandom, but when people start thinking that he's that pathetic in canon, it rubs me the wrong way. Yes, he's my favorite and I'm biased, but like. He's not that pathetic people.

Tl;dr, Velvette being protrayed as a super nice person (to Vox, in fics where Valentino is portrayed as abusive) and the most decent/smartest Vee, Valentino having all his good traits removed, and Vox being treated as overtly pathetic drives me crazy. It's still fun to read sometimes, but when people say they think it's canon, I actually can't believe it.

[serpentface]

Faiza performing the Kagnoma Odo (pretty literally 'lion dance'), a weapons dance and one of the more important ritual duties of Odonii priestesses. A relatively new addition to this traditional dance involves the musket as the primary weapon, which is fired mid-twirl into the ground at the climax of the dance. Faiza is experiencing an 'oh fuck' moment because her shot is more than ideally diagonal, but she’s being so cool with it.

This is a wholly ceremonial performance at the onset of the pilgrimage, performed in full regalia and lion skin (of the small, semi-domesticated strain) but no armor. It’s also distinctly a display of political allegiance between the powerful and beloved Odonii priesthood (and its loyal military) with the increasingly reviled and destabilized imperial family, with Faiza prominently wearing a bracelet of the royal serpent, which was gifted (along with the musket) by the usoma Stavis Amanti himself (Usoma is the Wardi word for king, which has been retained in the context of emperors).

The Kagnoma Odo is the ultimate demonstration of the Odonii as an embodiment of the Lion Face of God and living vessel of military might and sovereignty, demonstrating her fitness and proficiency with weapons and as a spiritual unifier for soldiers. It is accompanied by drumming and occurs in stages, running through the three keymost weapons used in war- the spear, the sword, and the musket. The musket is of the most significance, given the weapon has developed a particular esteem as the ultimate embodiment of might and superiority. Assistants (almost always other priestesses, occasionally high ranking soldiers) load and prime the musket to be fired at the climax of the dance, where it is shot into the ground as the priestess leaps out of range of the shot. The firing signals the end of the dance and the rite itself.

While not the utmost exemplar of trigger discipline, only fully inducted and senior (and therefore very thoroughly trained) Odonii are permitted to perform the dance, and injuries during actual performances are quite rare (though are known to occur during training, more than a few Odonii have burns and wounds on their feet).

The most important renditions of this dance are performed upon declarations of war and before battles (in this case, generally done in full armor along with the lion pelt). It is also done during some trainings (while a dance, it is carefully choreographed to include naturalistic maneuvers of the weapons involved and helps soldiers limber up and learn to move their weapons). It is regarded as an impressive and motivating sight and a morale booster, and, seen at a distance, potentially intimidating to enemies.

A special variant of this dance is performed as means of fully incarnating the Odomache, which is done in full nudity with the body covered in the blood of the freshly sacrificed lion and cloaked in its raw pelt (the lion has become the corpse of Odomache in the moment of death, as part of its recreation of God's sacrifice). Her public, full nude appearance once (and only once) in this act is what allows the Lion Face of God to incarnate within her. Those in attendance see the spiritually vulnerable, naked human body obscured with the sanctified and deified blood and cloaked in the sanctified and deified skin. It is a merger of the contradictions of mortality and divinity, the boundaries between the two indistinct in flickering firelight and the flash of musketfire. She is witnessed by her people, dangling in between humanity and divinity and leading them in dance, and and is thus transformed.

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

debate

(topic: how many and what configuration of kids do they give off vibes of having (either at present or in the future)(partner is irrelevant in most cases, some could be single parents for all i care))

[girl-drink-drunk]

still nutty to me how people's legit trauma from things that main characters do are just swept under the rug or mocked. william kaplan, a thirteen year-old boy who didn't do anything, is killed in a car accident and no one even knows because billy/teen took over his body (i'm not blaming him at all i doubt it was on purpose, but a boy did die and no one knows). sharon davis was roped along to the road, mocked the entire time, killed, and then mocked some more. ralph bohner is the closest we get to someone actually saying "what happened was a nightmare and it fucked me up," but even his story is full of jokes that are only made tragic because evan peters is delivering them in such a way that it's clear that it's because he's that mentally unhinged from what happened. the mcu is a place where people get hurt and are made fun of because they couldn't stop it

[silusvesuius]

n*loth not being able to bag anyone over the (human term) age of 25-30 at most is the only logical and real conclusion to me because it can be just explained away as him wanting to prove and control everything and anyone (Cus he's a man!) but being stuck in that demographic because his unbearable and vile personality is a force that nobody can look past once they've outgrown the possible fear and idolization period of anyone but also n*loth in particular.

[dreamsicle262]

if the reading comprehension of some people who do make dead plate text posts is so bad (as i've had at least two people tell me in the tags) then maybe i SHOULD start analyzing every little detail in the game.

[navree]

people doing this whole "look at how rhaenys acted with corlys's bastard son vs how catelyn acted with jon snow" to demonize one or the other is weird because, like, maybe it's just me, but i think that catelyn and rhaenys had different reactions because they're different people in different situations.

[lunchtimebedamned1997]

Y'all ever love a character too much to draw them???

Like oml I adore them but... I get the art scaries so bad with them that it usually doesn't even occur to me that I could XD

[sskk-manifesto]

Ep 5!!!

[fluffykitteninabox]

me at 15 reading about ocd on the internet: oh that sounds like a nightmare I don't think I could live like that, so glad I definitely don't have it

me getting diagnosed 7 years later:

[lconoclasts]

Can't add the exact timestamp (it's at the end) but they just??? Jump off screen???? Do they not die???

My general consensus with this fight is that it's just extra content and... in-between canonicity. They don't show up in the credits (in a scene) regardless if you kill them or not, and the pupils are alive(?) or possibly some other ones are alive as they could just look similar/be reused sprites

long speculation under the cut

Fitzroy is lore for sure which contradicts some of the implications about trancending that we get but like. Royal is kind of a dumbass AND is being told all of this from mother/one concern. There's multiple implications of the "ancestors" (both isi and Him followers) coming from somewhere else/resetting the planet and leaving instructions/tech for their respective people to use. Fitzroy seems to fit in the between stage before the concern has studied the tech, but AFTER the Ancestors arrived/reset the planet. In The Tower and the Bastion there are images of famous earth landmarks (taj mahal, new York, pyramids I think) implying that some sort of Earth was destroyed/minerals drained (more connections to the themes about environmentalism) and that humanity was "reset". RIGHT BUT CANONICITY. Fitzroy is more lore... If u want him to be. The true past of humanity is still foggy ESPECIALLY with conflicting views from Him followers and the Isi. The concern claims to have longer records of history, and has aforementioned images, but they shape it to their beliefs and leave out certain parts intentionally as well as only educate people deemed more faithful (concern staff) and censor/mysticize parts for the common folk and ESPECIALLY city one residents. Cough cough 'merica haha but not really I doubt he was thinking about Americans specifically. This is more likely a commentary on religion specifically they larger ones and how they shape societies views and history! (Remember when we used B.C?) I'm not going to say this is an effective commentary or a scathing remark on Christianity (I believe that Christianity is used as a reference as it's the poster child to westerners for what "religion" is. He probably intended for this to be about religion as a whole but like. Come on. It's definitely Christianity with a few changes to make it a "generic religion" especially with the focus on punishment and ascension to a "good place". They also use sin/sinners a few times but that may be for familiarity especially since he had a whole npc for explaining terminology) that aside. Canonicity. Again. The history behind the Starworm followers vs the Isi is intentionally left a mystery! Fitzroy and Leticia are real as fuck (if u think they're canon) and provide some ideas for what actually happened in history but who knows! I should get back to my conversation I got distracted haha.

[princesscedar]

Trying to tell mom "hey maybe don't call j ewish people rats even unintentionally" event leaves 10 dead thousands injured

[elysianymph]

i’m curious about the walburga defender!! (like genuinely not like a gotcha thing) because i see most people hate her and whatnot so i wanna know more about how you see her

ooooooh thank you for giving me a reason to talk about this 🤭🤭 this is gonna be really long bc i gotta talk about the entire black family if i wanna explain this properly and it differs a lot from how the majority of the fandom views them

i used to be one of those people that didn't really care for walburga, like i just didn't think of her at all. i thought the idea that the fandom had of her was a little weird bc they seemed to be putting all of the abusive traits onto her and completely ignoring orion in the black family dynamic. all i saw was walburga being portrayed as the only abusive one between the two of them, the crazy mother using the criciatus curse on her children and it left a really bitter taste in my mouth

bc then again, the wizarding world is very patriarchal and orion would've had the last word no matter what walburga would say or do. so even if walburga was the only outright abusive one orion would've been at least silently supporting it, if not actively engaging in that abuse alongside her.

in my head the family was very divided bc walburga and orion didn't like each other at all. walburga used to be a very loud and outspoken as a child, she was raised to believe she was better than everyone else because of her blood and she acted like it. then when she got older, her family pushed her away to be silent and obedient, to fall in the shadows of her younger brothers bc at the end of the day she was a woman. she couldn't be the heir, all she was useful for was marriage. her and orion's marriage was arranged obviously and she absolutely despised him bc she thought he was weak (and he was if we're talking about magic) and undeserving as the heir of such a noble house. in a similar fashion orion hated her because he thought she was crazy, too independent and sure of herself when she should be obedient

because of this animosity between them, when sirius was born walburga immediately took sirius under her wing to make sure he was raised 'right'. she thought orion would only mess him up. she saw potential in sirius because of how powerful he was even as a child, she was satisfied with him and thought he would make the perfect heir. she saw a side of herself reflected in him, the wildness and freedom of her younger self lived inside sirius and because of that she almost had a soft spot for him. she let him have a lot more freedom than she did and orion saw this as a bad thing, he knew sirius would take and take until walburga realized she had made a mistake but by then it would be too late (and to his credit, he was right)

because walburga had taken to raising sirius and was proud of the progress he was making, she kinda left regulus behind. he was less talented, less powerful, naturally quieter than sirius and she saw all of those as weaknesses. orion saw it as an opportunity to raise a child in the way he wanted without walburga getting in the way so he basically raised regulus to be his perfect son and manipulated him so he would be easier to control.

a lot of my view of walburga is dependent on the relationship between her and sirius specifically bc i see them as broken mirrors of each other. sirius was everything walburga could've been (free) and walburga was everything sirius could become (cold and cruel). the world wasn't kind to walburga, she was pushed aside as a child and forced into a toxic marriage that she had never wanted but sirius was a little light in her life and in his early childhood she genuinely cared for and loved him. she never stopped loving him even as he grew and broke free of the clutches of his family. to an extent the love was conditional because that was all walburga had ever known but i don't doubt for a second that sirius leaving hadn't broken her heart.

i truly believe she had mourned for him when he left because that was the biggest loss for her. the son that she had single handedly raised had left and now the house was left with an unworthy heir. that's specifically why she had pushed regulus into taking on the dark mark even though he was so young. she needed him to amount to something, to do what sirius couldn't even though she knew regulus couldn't measure up to the greatness that was lost. in a way she was resentful of sirius because deep down she wished she had been able to do what he had done, to run away and break free, but it was far too late for her.

losing regulus was the last straw for her, all hope for the house was lost. losing orion was almost a relief, she could finally breathe without him there. finding out sirius was sent to azkaban was heartbreaking because she knew what sirius was like, she knew he would've never done it. she went to visit him, still wearing her mourning robes and not even knowing for which son she was wearing them, but he wasn't there when she arrived. she had cried then, begged for sirius to come out so she could see him but it went unanswered.

she died resentful and lonely, losing her mind after everything she had dedicated her life to had been destroyed.

in my head she's just a product of her circumstances, unable to escape the cycle because she was given no opportunities. i don't think people realize how lucky sirius was that the stars literally aligned for him to be able to escape and live (somewhat) normally (for a couple years at least 💀)