#i still think that third one right over his iris was 100% intentional

[fascinationstreetmp3]

every time daniel's glasses reflect purple light im like yaaay!!! wahoo! because maybe we won't ever get his alexandria's genesis violet eyes like in the books but we will still kinda have them in spirit

[4ragon]

oh can we please hear the magatama essay??

Oh boy oh boy, let’s go

Ahem

How to Lie to the Magatama

An essay by JJsADragon

Unlocking Psyche-Locks with the Magatama is a really fun mechanic throughout the Ace Attorney series. It’s introduced in Justice for All when Pearl charges the Magatama Maya gifts to Phoenix with spiritual energy. She describes it thusly: “This is the power of the Magatama. Only you can see these "Psyche-Locks", Mr. Nick… The more someone wants to hide their secret, the more locks you will see. If it's only one, I think you can easily unlock it.” 

Basically: If someone has a secret they don’t want to share, you have to present in-game evidence and break the locks. Things get a little more complicated with the introduction of Black Psyche-Locks, but the general gist of it stays the same. Someone has a secret they don’t want to tell you, and you can unlock that secret with evidence.

This, I believe, is fundamentally wrong.

Why do I think that? Well, I always really like picking apart these mechanics, both as in-game mechanics and how they would work in the real world. In particular, I think the most interesting way to see how something works is to figure out its shortcomings. What does and doesn’t set off Apollo’s bracelet? Why doesn’t Athena notice The Phantom’s whole deal? And, more to the point, when does the Magatama straight up get things wrong?

There are several moments I want to focus on. We have seen the Magatama fail several times throughout the series. Or, to clarify, we have seen at least one time when locks should have appeared where they did not, and several times where the chains did appear and the answers uncovered were either incomplete or just straight-up incorrect.

So, let’s find out how and why the Magatama fails us. First up: 

The False Negative: Farewell, My Turnabout

Fortunately, I think this one is the easiest one to understand. The Magatama has one very clear false negative in Justice for All: Farewell, My Turnabout. Phoenix asks Matt Engarde if he murdered Juan Corrida, and he replies, “Just so we're clear, dude, I didn't kill anyone, and that includes Juan Corrida, OK?” And he’s correct. He didn’t kill anyone. He did not actively commit any murders. And on that technicality, the Magatama does not go off. He did not kill anyone, and he knows it. He believes it. He feels no residual guilt over it. His hands are clean. Hell, he seems kind of gleeful about the fact that he was ‘technically right’ when the truth comes out later.

So, why didn’t a Psyche-Lock appear? As I said, it was a technicality. He wasn’t trying to hide it from Phoenix, he just truly felt no responsibility for what happened. He felt no guilt about it. The Psyche-Locks don’t appear until Matt’s secrets come up. 

This, of course, lines up neatly with our understanding of the Magatama. This instance very clearly falls within what we know about Psyche-Locks. If you’re not trying to hide it, if you truly believe what you’re saying, it’s not a secret the Magatama will alert you to. So, what about these other instances? Do these line up as neatly in the rules of the Psyche-Locks?

The Half Truth: The Cosmic Turnabout

This one is a little strange so I’m just going to touch on this.

In day one of your investigations for The Cosmic Turnabout, you run into a conflicted Bobby Fulbright. When pressed, two Psyche-Locks appear, and unlocking them leads you to three conversations: 1) The bomb threat before the launch, 2) Why Simon Blackquill was given permission to prosecute, and 3) The mysterious Phantom.

So why do I call this a false positive? After all, he is technically hiding all these things. And yet, a lot of how this Psyche-Unlocking goes down doesn’t really make as much sense when you consider that Bobby Fulbright is The Phantom. It really doesn’t make much sense how much information he’s feeding them about the situation, unlocked Psyche-Locks or not. Especially the way he goes about the whole thing. 

We know in hindsight that The Phantom doesn’t actually care about Simon Blackquill or solving the crime that he committed. Every display of emotion is an act. So why does he make a big show of feeling conflicted? Why does the bomb threat that he made lead him to divulging all of these worries about Simon going after the Phantom? Was him revealing this information part of his game? Since we know he was trying to cover his tracks, was he feeding us half truths for a reason? Did he want to feed us this information?

If that’s the case, that leads us to a new problem. Since the question asked was “Why Are You Being Cooperative”, why wouldn’t the fact that he was the Phantom ping the Magatama? He was being cooperative so that he could feed you information, not because he cared about any of the things he was ‘troubled’ by. So why does the Magatama only pick up on half the truth? After all, the Phantom wasn’t knowingly tricking the Magatama.

(Also if you haven’t read this comic I thought it was a super interesting theory. Not sure I ascribe to it 100% but it was a really interesting take.)

I think it’s important to note in this example that, no matter how you interpret The Phantom’s actions, all signs point to him wanting to divulge this information for one reason or another. There was an intent about it. He may not have known a thing about the Psyche-Locks, but he very clearly was baiting the protagonists with an intent. And technically, without knowing it, he was also baiting the Magatama. 

This means that, in the end, the information he actually revealed to the protagonists was not a closely guarded secret of the heart. Yes, you still needed to present evidence and draw it out of him, but I think The Phantom wanted the characters to draw it out of him. It’s not a secret that a bumbling detective was having trouble hiding, it was information that a spy wanted planted. There was intent here, no matter how you look at it. And that leads us to our third example.

The False Positive: The Stolen Turnabout

Unlike the previous two cases, this is the first time that someone has straight up lied to the Magatama. Trials and Tribulations: The Stolen Turnabout. I always get so mixed up by this case. It took me three playthroughs to finally get the hang of who was doing what where and when. And do you know why that was? It was because of one lie that Luke Atmey told us early in the investigation.

Phoenix: Detective Atmey... You were knocked unconscious by the thief, weren't you!?

Atmey: Ha ha ha! Surely you must be joking... You think that I, Luke Atmey, could be knocked unconscious so easily!?

Phoenix: This sword proves it!

Atmey: ...! Th-That's...

Phoenix: Before the theft, this sword was in the hand of the statue of Ami Fey. Furthermore... at that time, it was not bent.

Atmey: Aaah... Err...

Phoenix: ...There's only one explanation. You were struck on the head and knocked unconscious by this sword! Well, Detective!? What about it!?

Atmey: ...I'm impressed. You truly are an "Ace Attorney"...

Unlock Successful

Unlike every other instance, this is just a straight-up lie. This is not a technicality, like with Matt Engarde. This is not pieces of the truth, like The Phantom. This is just factually incorrect. Luke Atmey was not knocked unconscious by Mask☆Demasque. In fact, this not only is a lie, it’s a calculated lie. Without knowing about the Magatama or its capabilities, Luke Atmey used it to convince us that he was knocked unconscious by Mask☆Demasque at the scene of the crime to disguise the fact that he was Mask☆Demasque, which is even wilder when you realize later that even that was a lie! He was covering up a lie with another lie with another lie. It was not just a ploy to fool you into thinking he was attacked my Mask☆Demasque, it was also a part of him convincing you that he was Mask☆Demasque when he wasn’t.

So why the FUCK does the Magatama go off?!

There’s of course a meta answer. The writers weren’t thinking that hard about it. They just wanted to use the Psyche-Locks to make the story more interesting. But that’s boring. I want to go deeper.

Luke Atmey, like The Phantom later on, wanted information planted. But he couldn’t simply tell everyone he was attacked by Mask☆Demasque. After all, he knew admitting to it would put his credentials under scrutiny. So he needed someone to organically draw it out of him. Again, he wanted this information out there. Otherwise, him agreeing to Phoenix’s conclusions, hell, him setting up this scenario with the Shichishito wouldn’t make any sense. Plus, it was only behind one Psyche-Lock and led to him revealing a photo of the crime, one that he was very meticulous about taking to create an alibi.

So. What does this all mean? How are people confusing the Magatama? How are people lying? I think that the element that Pearl got wrong in her initial explanation is that the Magatama reacts to secrets that, deep down, a person wants to divulge. After all, with enough evidence, you can eventually draw all sorts of information out of a person. Some are certainly more closely guarded secrets than others, but in the end, I think the Magatama reacts to secrets that a character wants to share but is not willing to do so without that prompting. It doesn’t have to be real, it just has to be something the person is keeping secret with the intent of finding a way to plant the information.

This can even apply to Black Psyche-Locks. Unconscious secrets that are hidden even from the person hiding them? Those are deep hurts that I think drive a lot about these characters’ personalities and motivations, and I think things like that are the kinds of stuff that a character wants to confront but is unable to do so out of fear, so they push it from their minds.

Let’s look at a few more examples. In Bridge to the Turnabout, Miles demands info from Larry, and he’s able to completely circumvent the Psyche-Locks by divulging something completely irrelevant about his crush on Iris. When Miles realizes his mistake, he discovers a completely new set of Psyche-Locks. Or when Phoenix confronts “Iris” about the presence of another Iris at the crime, “Iris” (cough Dahlia cough) uses that to start planting these ideas about Iris as the original betrayer, as the one who had wronged Dahlia in the first place. I feel these are both things that the characters did want to share, despite not wanting to do it unprompted.

Anyway, uh, that’s most of what I got. Perhaps there’s a stronger answer out there for why the Magatama may react in places it shouldn’t. Maybe there’s some other hidden rule they haven’t mentioned. Or maybe it is just as simple as “The writers didn’t think that hard about it.” But hey, I think I like this interpretation better.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Higurashi Gou Ep10

I’d like to make some sort of jokey light-hearted intro, but this episode was just straight up painful [in a good, intentional way]. Ryukishi clearly has a lot of personal experience dealing with child abuse and the ways that social services operate, and this is the part in Higurashi where that really starts coming through.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

My memory of how this whole arc plays out in the VN is super foggy, so it’s hard to tell exactly how this compares to it, but I think this is still continuing to be like 90% the same as Tatarigoroshi, at least, but there’s still lots of hints that things are gonna start diverging heavily soon.

I haven’t actually watched the 2006 anime yet, but going by the Wikipedia plot synopses for it, it seems like this episode pretty much covers up to the same point as the second episode of the Tatarigoroshi anime adaptation, with them both ending with Satoko’s panic attack in the classroom. So things seem to be going at a pretty similar pace, and we know that this arc will be five episodes long, like the old Tatarigoroshi anime arc was, but I think the next episode will be where things start to heavily change as a result of the foreshadowing we’ve gotten in these last two episodes.

Going by what Wikipedia says again, the third episode of the original Tatarigoroshi anime arc is where Keiichi comes up with and then executes his plan to murder Teppei, but I think it’s pretty likely at this point that that won’t happen this time. This episode started with him having a flashback dream to him killing Teppei in Tatarigoroshi, which I think is a pretty big hint that things will play out differently this time. I think in this episode he was also notably less aggressive and over the edge about the whole abuse situation compared to the VN, so I think the dream ended up subconsciously pushing him away from the idea of going into murderous rage about the whole situation.

I don’t think the situation is going to be resolved quite as diplomatically as in Minagoroshi, but at the moment it feels like we’re in a middle-ground between that, and having Keiichi jump straight to murdering Teppei. But even if Keiichi ends up not resorting to murder to try and solve the situation, that probably just means that at this rate someone else is gonna end up murdering Teppei instead.

I still think it’s very likely that we’ll see Shion at least try to murder Teppei, even if she doesn’t go through with it. I like the theory that she was pretending to be Mion for at least some parts of this episode, but apparently some of the stuff with Mion being kinda zoned out and forgetting stuff already happened in the VN, so I dunno how much I want to read into that. But one way or another she’s probably gonna find out about the abuse situation, and going by her being in more or less the same place as Minagoroshi, she’d probably immediately start plotting to murder Teppei.

From a meta perspective, I think that Shion should probably be the ‘culprit’ in this arc to make up for how Watadamashi ended up being more of a Mion arc than a Shion one, and it’d be pretty fitting if we get a ‘Keiichi decides not to murder Teppei, but Shion does it for him anyway’ development, considering how the last two arcs were specifically built around the idea of having tragedies occur even when Keiichi makes the right choices and learns from his past mistakes.

It’s possible that the two of them will end up teaming up to kill him, but that seems unlikely. And maybe Rena could end up getting involved, but at this point that doesn’t seem to be where they’re going with it.

There’s always the possibility that Satoko herself will murder Teppei this time, but I’m really not sure how I feel about that. But in general I have a lot of mixed feelings on what I think is going on with Satoko at this point, lol.

After how this episode went, I really don’t think she’s some kind of actively malicious, antagonistic force in the story like some people think. I’m also getting a lot more doubtful of the idea that she’s experiencing the time loop.

I’ve seen people speculating that she might have been faking her whole panic attack, but I really doubt it. It’s not impossible, but I think people are just being nitpicky about how they think the scene was directed, and they’re trying to fit it into their existing theory. I also just think that the idea of her going that far to fake a panic attack seems extremely implausible for a variety of reasons, and I also just kinda feel like it would be an insensitive portrayal of trauma and abuse in a way that Ryukishi just wouldn’t do. This episode does touch upon the idea of ‘faking abuse’, but there’s a drastic difference between Satoko calling social services and lying to them about being abused, and everything she did in this episode. So I think everything that’s going on with her at the moment is more or less the same as in the VN.

It’s still possible she’ll end up killing him, but I don’t really think she has any meta awareness of what’s going on, or anything like that.

I do think she’s going to be important to Gou’s overall meta-narrative, but rather than her being the villain, or being some kind of looper, I think it’s more likely at this point that a witch might be using her as a piece, for some reason or another. Or maybe there actually isn’t any important meta stuff going on with her, lol.

On the whole topic of Gou’s meta-narrative, I’m starting to think that maybe these arcs are like forgeries that someone’s writing about what happened in Hinamizawa. I think we’ll have more evidence one way or another by the time this arc ends, but there’s various things that make this feel like a subtly warped version of the original story written by someone who has incomplete knowledge about what was actually happening.

Mainly this just stems from me thinking about how they’re going to handle stuff like Takano, the virus, and the GHD later on. Especially if we assume that this will just be a self-contained 24 episodes with no sequel. Like I’ve said before, I think that Takano isn’t going to be the villain anymore, and they won’t really have as much time as the VN and the 2006 anime had to get into the background political conspiracy stuff, but there’s still elements to Gou that point toward the Yamainu still being around, the virus still existing, and Takano still having been adopted by her grandfather.

So I’m wondering if maybe this is basically being written by someone post-Matsuribayashi where the GHD never happened in the first place, and information about the virus, Takano’s villainy, and the background politics surrounding everything, got suppressed. So they’d only have a surface-level understanding of Hinamizawa’s history and the nature of the curse. Which could explain the idea of Takano seeming to be the same as the VN in the surface, but not actually being a villain this time, if the ‘author’ knows about her but just thinks she’s some random nurse. And they could have a vague awareness of there being shady people working with the Irie Clinic, without actually knowing what their whole deal is. 

Which raises the question of who could be writing forgeries about Hinamizawa, if it’s anyone specific or important at all, and going by the OP I think it’s safe to say that it could easily be Featherine. It’s 100% her sort of thing to learn about Hinamizawa’s history and to write her own murder mysteries based on it. We also know that in Umineko she’s Bernkastel’s master, and that she likes to get people to read her stories for her, so it’s entirely possible that Gou’s whole plot is about Featherine getting Bern to read her forgeries about what happened in Hinamizawa, and we’re seeing the process of how Rika is going through these different fragments without knowing what the actual purpose of this all is.

If this is anywhere close to being accurate, then it’d make me even more salty if we don’t get any type of Umineko anime remake after this, lol. But either way we’ve literally seen Featherine in the OP, so it’s pretty likely she’ll be relevant to this somehow, and that in general Gou might exist to help bridge Higurashi and Umineko. 

I think that sometime in the second half of Gou we’ll flash forward to Rika as a teenager post-Matsuribayashi, and we’ll see how she ended up coming into contact with Featherine, and probably ended up giving her enough info on what happened in Hinamizawa to write her own stories based on it.

Lambda might also be involved in all this, but I’m not really sure how that’d work. 

Anyway, about how this arc will pan out over the next three episodes, I still think that at the end they’ll include Keiichi’s letter from Onikakushi, since there was a line from it in one of the PVs that hasn’t been used yet. So maybe Keiichi will end up going down an Onikakushi-style path of paranoia even if he doesn’t kill Teppei.

My main question about how this arc will end is if it’ll involve the GHD, since this is the first arc in the VN where it really comes into play, and whether or not it happens here would go a long way to confirm or deny some of the theories I have about what’s going on.

I’m also gonna be keeping an eye out for what goes on with Takano and Tomitake in this arc, since I still want to figure out what exactly is going on with Takano this time around.

I think this might also more or less be the final ‘question arc’ for Gou, so this would be the last time to cement any patterns and provide any big hints about what’s going on. Going by what little we know about Gou’s structure, I think the fourth and fifth arcs will be the two ‘answer arcs’. It’s possible that the fourth arc will be another question arc, and only the last arc will be an answer arc, but I kinda doubt it. There seems to be an intentional divide between the first 13 episodes of Gou and ep14 onward. I think the broadcast schedule will be adjusted for the second half, with there maybe being a one week break between ep13 and ep14, and I’ve heard rumors that for ep14 and onward the subtitle of the show will change, which would imply a shift into Gou’s equivalent to the answer arcs.

With that in mind, I’m still going with my theory that the next arc will basically be Gou’s version of Meakashi [but probably more specifically focused on the flashback content since it’ll only be four episodes long], and then the final arc will probably be a mix of going back and directly revisiting the first three arcs, and showing the whole teenage Rika time period in more detail to tie the whole story together. 

By extension I think that they’re entirely gonna skip Himatsubushi, and instead of Rena getting her own answer arc, I think they’ll just dedicate part of arc five to revisiting Onidamashi from her side of things. For all I know that might take up most of that arc.

Anyway, I think we can all agree that the main take-away from this episode is that watching Satoko suffer never stops being super painful.

[Also, shout-out to Satoshi for finally getting a proper appearance in Gou, lol. I’m still hoping we get more of a satisfying resolution to his whole role in the story this time, but we’ll see how it goes]

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E61 (May 7, 2019)

Hi, everyone! @eponymous-rose​ is out from a pain in the butt situation, so I’m stepping in to bring that average quality down a solid five or six points. Tonight’s preroll: guess who! No, literally, Guess Who:

Tonight’s guests: Travis Willingham & Marisha Ray.

Tonight’s announcements: earlier today, Ashley joined Taliesin for a Gail Force 5-themed action game episode of Mame Drop. VOD available now! On Saturday, May 18, Marisha will be DMing a live event for D&D Live’s Stream of Descent. Cool!

And now, Episode 61: Agreements

CR Stats! It’s been one week since Beau saw Dairon. Only one week, huh. Uk’otoa has threatened Fjord twice in the last week. It’s been 35 days since Fjord broke the second seal. Everyone marvels it’s been simultaneously that long & that little time, and Marisha & Travis both have a loooong drink. Brian has an electronic mug that keeps his drink warm. It has an app. It tells him when it’s at its desired temperature. Travis calls him Douche McClure, but holy smokes I want one. 

Brian tells a story about how he thought Travis was falling asleep one episode, but he was pondering the mysteries of the universe “a la Liam O’Brien.” Marisha empathizes with the trap of being told by the internet to READ YOUR SPELLS, only to try to do that & miss the last round of combat, then to be told PAY ATTENTION.

There’s no difference between Fjord & Travis’s reaction to his depowerment (sheer terror). Marisha talks about how he missed a solid twenty minutes of gameplay afterwards from being so distracted. Travis says he was “movie breathing” too, so hard it was audible on the mics. (Laura has to tell him to stop breathing so loud in movies a lot.) Brian, who’s been with Travis in haunted houses & knows when he’s genuinely scared, realized how terrified he was in the moment even through the laptop screen. 

Dani: “Uk’otoa is exactly the IRS.” Brian: “How about the IRIS?” Ugh.

Everyone points out Travis is cosplaying Steve Jobs tonight. It’s uncanny.

On Beau’s relationship with deities: she’s the only non-magic person in the party, and a lot of the other party members get their magic from very powerful beings telling them they’re special. Even Caleb was pulled to a school as a labeled prodigy. Now Beau is questioning why she’s “the average person in a group of extraordinary people.” Brian wonders if part of it might be her feeling like she gets her own strength without the need of powers granted by gods. Marisha’s exploring the powers Beau now has (that people saw in her earlier as a flaw, especially given her criminal past), possibly as something she might be remarkable for after all. She wonders if she should be talking to Ioun the way everyone else is talking to their gods.

Fjord fears his powers’ loss because of both his inability to hold his own with his friends and as his last tangible bond with Vandren. He desperately wants to reconnect with him (”You’re okay? Are you okay? I’m okay, if you’re...wondering...”). He also recognizes he’s a half-orc with a strength of 11 if he doesn’t have any powers. Brian: “Do you regret picking your class?” Travis: “I REGRET ALL OF IT!” Marisha: “I felt really bad, because as soon as the cameras went off I could see Travis was freaking out, and the first thing I said was, ‘This is why I never fuck with warlocks!’“ Travis: “I can do what you do! Stunning strike! Pap-pap! I got no nothin’!” He imagines his sword just flopping out at his feet in the middle of a tense ambush and having to wish everyone else well.

How does the Krynn dynasty recognition, the house, & the growing acclaim of the M9 affect the relationship Beau has with Dairon? She has no idea. It depends on how well Beau explains her perspective of it all being all knowledge. Marisha tells us that when Nott first exclaimed that blue cloth they found was Dairon’s, she secretly 100% thought it was as well, even when she verbally denied it.

Travis remembers none of this under the loud heartbeat in his ears at the time.

Travis, as a fan, loves the “Thunderlord’s” style of worship. Marisha likes the seamless relationship Caduceus has with the Wildmother. Brian has a hard pass on both “Travis’s thing” & the Traveler “obviously evil,” but also likes the Wildmother. Marisha wonders if Travis will lose his powers if they free & then kill Uk’otoa. Travis, almost crying: “I don’t know!!”

Holy smokes, guys, there are so many quick references and jokes in this one I can’t get them all. Seriously, this is so entertaining! Catch a VOD if you can.

Travis actually had no intention of talking to Wursh in the last episode. He only went there because Yasha came after him. He would have just wandered around if she hadn’t forced the issue. Marisha: “That’s a healthy way of coping.” Travis: “You’re saying that to Fjord, right? Travis is a very responsible person and a good friend.” He and Marisha are being SO SILLY TONIGHT, g’dang.

Reminder, GIF of the Week has been suspended; the replacement will be announced next week.

Beau’s generally forgotten about the precarious nature of their humanity in the Dynasty until Waccoh’s reminder. She’s generally headstrong, and it was a good hint she might need to rein it in a bit.

Fanart of the Week: @thealeksdemon with a gorgeous portrait of Fjord that is apparently nowhere else on the internet. 

They’re doing another Space Jam??????? Whattttt??????

Beau thought the super-fried talking goblin corpse was a bit weird. It was also a little odd he carried the goblin for several hours on his back.

Marisha & Travis both miss a question because they were posing artfully. These two are so goofy. 

Fjord keeps himself close to himself; he’s not comfortable with the recent leadership, as well as all the new powers. Beau is still thinking about Dairon’s instructions to avoid getting close to people.

Travis confirms Fjord shouts “Eldritch Blast” out loud every time. He’s dead certain the group will think less of him if he can’t pull his own weight. “They’d hold auditions! For the Mighty Eight!” He also mentions that he can’t take care of anyone without his powers. Marisha says they’d have offered to help him quest to get his powers back: you know, toss him in some salt water, let him get a little briny, leave him in there “not beyond the threshold of a revivify...” Travis: “Oh, wow, you’re trying to reset the hard drive!” Marisha: “Fuck, you guys, he’s BSODed.” She admits the plan might need a little R&D.

Is it worse when the check engine light turns on or off?

Beau is conflicted about participating in the military industrial complex. She’s aware it’s going to be used to kill families.

There’s an extended, hilarious aside where Beau tries to say the M9 have become the bad guys, but basically implies that Beau alone is just straight-up evil. It’s tear-jerkingly hilarious.

Fjord’s hesitant to tell everyone because he’s fallen in love a bit with his new self. He has no idea what his agreement (if there even was one) with Uk’otoa was/is. For Fjord, going back to being “normal” would be awful. “He still has work to do, too.”

Beau likes tweaking the noses of powerful people, she’s just trying to be more judicious about it.

Travis straight up quotes Jurassic Park over Liam guest-star-cuddling Henry. This episode is seriously amazing.

Travis says he “doesn’t know anything about an accent drop” as far as the breakdown last episode. Unclear if serious! He’s fascinated by the connection to Vandren as a past Chosen of Uk’otoa.

Yasha’s past reveal was an “oh shit” moment for Beau. When asked if this changes how Beau feels about Yasha, Marisha delicately says, “I don’t want people to overestimate Beau’s intentions towards Yasha,” but that she also doesn’t want to hurt people’s internal canons. Travis very directly tells her that she’s played it how’s she’s played it, and what people infer from that is on them. Marisha nods and decides she doesn’t want to add anything else.

Fjord doesn’t care that Beau’s wearing Avantika’s coat.

Being denied access to the library makes it 100% more enticing for Beau.

Fjord feels....goooood about having a new house/family as long as things stay the way they are (in re: his warlock abilities). Marisha recalls Fjord telling Beau to take care of her family because it was the only one she had...but now she has this new family that she likes as well. Only a few people know about her little brother, so it’s a weird family dynamic. Travis: “There’s the family you have and the family you choose.”

This is Fjord’s third family, since his first found family (Vandren) got ripped away.

We out! Is it Thursday yet?