#kinder as a system

[khattikeri]

there's something so odd yet fascinating about how fanworks for mxtx's books tend to misinterpret the literal protagonists of her stories more than any other characters

[thesorcerersshadow]

“you have to show everyone that you were right and they were wrong.”

i’m so fascinated by what gwen says here because there are ways in which it feels almost antithetical to a more surface level reading of her character (that does, at times, feel like the one the show wants us to engage with.) she doesn’t say that exposing valiant is the Right Thing To Do or appeal to a sense of honor or justice in the broader sense, even though i’m sure she does think that and believe those values apply here.

what she says here is… so self-interested, on merlin’s behalf. she believes him pretty implicitly (she asks once if he’s telling the truth, he says yes, she doesn’t question it) and her main reaction is “you have to do something to prove you were right.”

and i think part of that comes from just, like, really liking merlin right away / seeing the good of humanity in him (something i will maintain forever is mutually a big part of what they see in each other) and being offended on his behalf, feeling that he’s been Wronged. so like, justice is at play in her mind here, but it’s on a far more personal, intimate level than just being about Doing What’s Right.

and i also don’t think it’s a reach to say gwen might be doing some projection here. it might not have been on the same level/with the same stakes, but how many times do you think gwen had to bite her tongue when she knew she was right about something? morgana is kind to her as an employer at this point—far kinder than many nobles would be to their servants. but there is still and uneven balance to their dynamic, and even if morgana is willing to hear her out about certain things, in front of other nobles, in front of court, in front of uther—gwen knows her word doesn’t count for much, either.

[eightspringdays]

sometimes im just vibing like a normal well adapted to society individual and then I remember the meronia height difference and I just

[tentative-wanderer]

Thinking that Yue Qingyuan is attached to Shen Jiu the way one would love a younger brother, because you see parallels between Yue Qingyuan’s behaviour and your own behaviour as an elder sibling, is correct. BUT thinking that Yue Qingyuan is only attached to Shen Jiu the way one would love a younger brother is incorrect. I hope you don’t have a broken bloody thread of fate between you and your sibling. That would be very inconvenient. 👀

Not saying that what went on between them at the stage it was at in the book is definitely classified as romantic. Their minds were likely too occupied by the weight of their pasts to think of more. How does one define the sort of love whose owners died before it could come to fruition?

(One incomplete answer is: a tragedy. Couldn’t live long enough to muddle out how to love you properly. So I turn the “what could have been” into “is” in alternate universes. Hm I was talking about fics but that came out fancier. In perhaps cruder words, qijiu is like a miscarried foetus that I turn into a person in fics. A human foetus is still human and not some other species of animal, even if you don’t call it a person. Do you get my drift?)

[bpdohwhatajoy]

Every mentally ill, neurodivergent, and disabled person deserves $1000000000000000000000000000 yearly just for existing so they don’t have to worry about how they’re going to get money when they can’t work or sustain themselves

[iamfuckingsorry]

"Do you know where we are going next?" I asked ART.

Y'know what, I think maybe I don't need any more Murderbot books. I think maybe ending things here is fucking perfect and as much as I love Wells's writing I'm genuinely not sure it can get better for me.

Like, so much of the books are about MB learning how to be a person, about becoming okay with being a complete individual with everything it entails. The first thing it does once it's actually allowed to decide on its own is it runs away from it all (admittedly to go on a mission to confirm some things about its past, because it genuinely just wants to be *good*). It shoves all its emotions away as much as it's able to. Then shit happens, and it makes its first friends, makes decisions based on these friendships, goes through a lot of emotionally intense situations...

And we get to this point here. MB having zero doubts about going with ART says a lot about its relationship with ART, but it also says a lot about its relationship with its humans - it knows that wherever it goes, when it comes back, the humans will still be there. Its humans actively acknowledge its struggles with being a now-free SecUnit and MB is willing to entertain the discussions to an extent and share information about its deeply personal experiences. Hell, System Collapse ends with MB admitting it might be somewhat broken, but that's okay as long as it can keep doing its job, and agreeing to basically do counselling - this is the guy what would rewatch its favourite TV show again and again in order to avoid acknowledging it even had Emotions a couple books back.

Reading this, I know that MB will be okay. It has hopes and goals and genuinely believes in itself and it has an amazing support system that its willing to lean on for the first time in its life. I'm convinced it'll go on to do great things with ART. And that's really the only thing I need to know.

[cream-and-tea]

heyyy don’t mean to bother you but did you know that um. You, now - the ones listening to my idling progress from back home in Glottage - you’re telling yourselves; Val cannot possibly be growing angry over something like this. How dare she? The hypocrite. How can this thing, this monster, this battle-saint, possibly find any kind of righteous anger in her twisted and repurposed heart for the lives of the fallen foe? How does our terrible Val think she can justify any kind of anger at the sight of the flattened and buried corpses of enemy civilians and enemy children, when we’ve already been listening to her murder police officers, soldiers and townsfolk single-handedly in turn? How can she be furious when we’ve heard her butcher her way through the little old ladies of the CLS in the hopeless effort to murder her own faraway mother? (Mockingly) See? You can be sacred and yet self-aware. Yes, I am culpable. I am dreadful. I have been responsible for great atrocities and I will commit a great many more before I’m done. And still - I am growing furious, as I walk through the devastation of this town. Because the wound of Sutler’s Weald is not like any wound I would make. It’s clumsy, it’s crude. It’s thoughtless. I begin to tell myself, as I walk - I wouldn’t have murdered them like this. I would have been kinder. I would have killed them quickly or gracefully, and there would have been beauty and strangeness in the manner of it. And even that’s all deception, even if I had been cruel and slow and lingering in the massacre of these innocent people, upon my whim - I would at least have looked them in the eyes, and I would have borne the weight of my cruelty. If they’d asked me to, I could have killed this town beautifully. And I’d have borne witness to the horror, and I’d have rejoiced in it - and it would have been considerably less vile and ugly than this. The ones back home, the ones who are listening in, I don’t think they know what they’ve done here. The line of connection between the victim and the victimiser, the sacrifice and the god - it’s long, and tangled, and indistinct. A god should not be able to avert her eyes. What a terrible thing it must be, to be monstrous and not even know it. And even if all of this is lies, even if I am just as bad and just as careless as the people back home who did this to Sutler’s Weald… …well, then, let me hate them, pure and simply, for being just as bad as me, because people - -people should be kinder than the gods that eat them. The town square is largely intact. A few burning cars, a single shrine and statue to some goddess of victory, her snapped-off arm raised in imagined triumph. I sit down upon the pavement in the ruined heart of the town, and I tell the dead people of Sutler’s Weald beautiful lies. I tell them that they survived, in their hundreds - miraculously and inexplicably, dodging the bombs. Not a single victim, not one death. An act of divine mercy. When that doesn’t work, I tell them that they were buried properly, according to whatever rites or customs they happen to cherish. When that doesn’t work, I try and turn them into my mother again, in the hopes of making the dead people hateful to me. When that doesn’t work, I tell them that I’m sorry. I tell them I wish they still had ears to become all the wondrous imaginings I had in store for them. I tell them… …that all things considered, they deserved a better avenging and foreign god, a better tormentor, a better oblivion, than the one that was forced upon them. (With cold fury) I tell them- I will find a way to give them something better.

[peiskos-and-apricity]

History is going to look back on the people who voted for Trump the same way it looks back on the people who supported Nazis and I'm not even exaggerating. Be joyous in your victory now, but know that when your grandchildren talk about their family tree they're going to erase your name out of pure shame. I hope your heart weighs heavy with the pain you have brought to future generations. I hope it hurts.

[creatively-cosmic]

once again debating breaking my own rules again by putting guy (blue) who has not been introduced in mn officially in a rp interaction... itd be so funny. silly perhaps. its not like hes a secret its just what hes Doing that's a secret

[gachagon]

So I just learned what the NBA Bubble is

You mean to tell me a bunch of rich people who like Basketball went ahead and just made the Blue Lock facility IRL so the players could play during covid????

What a weird wacky world we live in

[kurushimiangel]

IMSOBBING I CHECKED MY EMAILS AND I SEE AN INVITE TO A MINI PIZZA PARTY FOR BEING A TOP BORROWER AT MY SCHOOL LIBRARY????? I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS A THING LMFAOOOO HLEPME

[divinekangaroo]

The joys of a system that require you to serve a notice to your own mother-with-dementia regarding the hearing that'll take all her financial and medical decisionmaking authority away from her.

[ythmir-writes]

im so thankful for people posting their pulls because now i can see just how hard it is to r2/r3 these solar pairs and i can manage expectations. i have a month to save for Zayne's solar pair and you bet your ass im gonna do everything to get him at r3 no matter what

[thats-a-lot-of-cortisol]

2 & 3 from section 1 for peri and 7 from whichever section has a more interesting #7 for diodore -moss

oooh these are fun ones!

2. Describe their tent set-up (outside and inside) (Peri)

I think Peri's tent is constructed similarly to Gale and Astarion's (boxy, fabric walls, little covered area outside). Deep blue fabric w/ golden astronomical embroidery, mostly the sort of thing you see on star maps. Little golden tassles around the edges of the tarp (?) and the doorframe. He'd have a small, circular, dark wood side table short enough that you can use it sitting on the ground, and a dark blue pillow next to it; there would be some parchment and a bronze miniature astrolabe on the table. The inside would be just. full to the brim with the gaudiest night-sky-themed pillows you've ever seen. No bedroll, no palette, just a nest that would put those cube pits in trampoline parks to shame. There would be two bird perches for his familiar Medani: one taller one next to his tent and one shorter one under the overhang. The shorter one would have a crow-sized bow-tie hanging from it. Rugs on rugs on the outside area ofc. 3. What would their character quest be titled? Why? (Peri)

This is a hard one! His tav ending involves taking over the Waterdeep arm of the Harpers, so I think his arc would have something to do with that. He'd be pretty bitter about being dropped into another near-apocalyptic mess when dealing with the last one a few years prior was supposed to be a one-time thing. Something-something ptsd in a world that doesn't have the words for that yet, something-something 'once a hero always a hero', something-something the weight of responsibility...he's a planeswalker so I think part of it would be whether he decides to stay on Toril long-term and directly help rebuild the Waterdeep Harpers or if he continues to run travel around afterwards, so maybe The Far Traveller/The Far Walker?

Harpson/Fae-son are also potential options. "Fae-son" nods to him being a changeling without it being super obvious (like Astarion's "The Pale Elf"). It would also mimic his backstory reveals from RoT ("oh he's not 'from here' so, like, the Feywild" -> "OH he's not from here"). 7. Describe their arc. How would a player help resolve it? What choices can be made? Can your Tav be turned down a dark path, or pulled to a lighter one? (Diodore)

Buckle up because we're in for a long one here. I've thought about Dora's story arc a lot because she's the first of my tavs that I truly made for the game while having full control over her backstory, etc. (versus Corentin, who had their arc baked into the story as a durge). Dora's a paladin of Corellon (oath of ancients) and her story arc as a companion would have to do with whether or not she should accept capital-r-Redemption, the process by which a drow can be truly "freed" from Lolth and rejoin the ranks of the rest of elven society. It involves all of the Redeemed drow's memories being erased and them being reincarnated as a surface elf. The implication seems to be that without that, regardless of a drow's actions, they'd be thrown back to Lolth when they die? Or at least that their eternal fate is unknown (which is the way I prefer to think of it for. personal reasons). Under normal circumstances, Dora would be a long way from Redemption being presented to her at all (she's not even 200 yet and has only been on the surface for a couple decades), but like with the other gods' Chosen among the companions, near-apocalyptic circumstances tend to speed up those sorts of things.

Of course, you'd have the themes of faith & relationship with deity when they're all unequivocally real and are also mostly all assholes; maintaining or breaking generational cycles; facing the unknown; morality when none of your choices are "good" (and how that interacts with morality vs self preservation); power vs freedom; identity outside of the people who made you; etc. The choice would first be presented to her sometime in late Act I/early Act II, likely the first long rest after the group resurfaces from the Underdark and you've probably gotten some of her backstory already. I have no idea how Larian would have characterized Corellon, but he's considered one of the more benevolent/open-minded deities iirc, which could be interesting to see contrasted with Mystra, Vlaa'kith, and Shar. How much that open-mindedness would extend to a drow, even one who has been a faithful follower even before she escaped to the Surface (and who inherited that faith from her father), is unclear. At the beginning of the game she would be leaning towards accepting Redemption, despite her own misgivings about whether or not she would still be her in that case.

Her final decision (at the ending pier scene) would depend on the relationship she has with the PC and the other companions. Her best ending, imo, would be her not accepting Redemption but continuing to be a force for good. If she has a good relationship with the PC, she would have something to lose. I think seeing the House of Mourning would affect her too. After all, the thing Corellon is offering to her as a way to find peace is the same thing the Sharrans are using as a way to manipulate and control others.

She's viscerally aware of how she was socialized and very actively chooses "good", so pushing her towards a darker path would be incredibly difficult but not impossible. If you side with the goblins she'll leave immediately, and turn on you if she's in your party when you attack the grove. But if you decide to try and control the cult in Act II, depending on your over-all actions before then and how you've interacted with her, you could disillusion her to the point of convincing her to break her oath. That path would entail convincing her that controlling the cult is actually the best idea. I'm sure there would be other times that her oath could break that wouldn't necessarily lock her into an "evil" path, especially with how Oathbreakers are handled in the game. Knocking out Minthara instead of killing her outright and letting Auntie Ethel go in Act I instead of killing her are two things that come to mind.

If she doesn't choose Redemption she would be at the epilogue party, of course. I'm a bit undecided on what would happen if she does choose Redemption. She may not be there at all, w/ Jaheira, Halsin, Minthara, and/or Astarion mentioning running into her in her new, reincarnated state. Or she would be there, confused, and mention how the PC seems familiar in a way she can't quite place. In that case, she would ask them how they know each other and mention something about feeling a twinge of grief looking at everyone, but that she doesn't know why she feels that way. It would be up to the PC how much they tell her (if they tell her anything at all).

[carcinized]

i have srsly had irl queer people make fun of me for being queer + liking sports and tell me that is like, not gay or something. like ok just say youre chronically online. womens soccer is the queerest thing i have ever been a part of hands down. also youre an awful person

[waywardsalt]

ive spent like 20 minutes trying to world this eloquently but i give up; im a big fan of linebeck just. not being capable of watching over kids not the person to be the guardian of a group of young people he struggles to take care of himself at times and has so much shit going on that it takes about one conversation with oshus for the old man to realize that this guy is. not doing great