#no longer spoiler free

[acourtofquestions]

I FINISHED CRESCENT CITY 3 HOUSE OF FLAME AND SHADOW!!!

[devilledminion]

[lightbulb-warning]

today i offer you prompts 11-20 for isat month!! ignore your calendar THANKYUUUU <3

[fear-no-mort]

favourite thing: his new habit of saying uhuh/mhm and also this

[caemidraws]

---

[daily-odile]

exhaustion

[happycattail]

Think about what it looked like to the rest of the Bell's. Orym's eyes turning green, dark flowers blooming around him as he knock 2 villagers unconscious. He leaped onto the WIllmaster's head, grappled them and then hit them in the face with a dark hex elbow. A feral creature of the fey wild attacking.

[lovetommyactually]

Seeing people saying that tommy being weirded out/grossed out is something he shouldn't do just because he has "medical" training is extremely funny to me

See, I am a medical professional with experience in the ER, and on the field, and also worked in several inpatient wards (in regard to the topic here, i worked icu, burn unit, observation bay...etc)..

and i can NEVER handle seeing/working with boils and skin conditions in general, while i have absolutely no problem working with severe *graphic* accidents.. meaning i dont mind seeing blood, cuts, and bones

Call me unprofessional or wtv, but I'm not a dermatologist for a reason, a pretty much very common reason with health care professionals actually lmao

And tommy isn't even in the health care line. He is a first responder (shocking. In the first responders show? Uff) . That, children, is a completely different scope actually (again shocking) 🤯.

Now if we are watching grey's anatomy or the good doctor, and one of the characters was grossed out AND refused to treat a patient (notice how i said 1) they refused to treat them, cuz being grossed is normal even with doctors/nurses, we are humans you all tend to forget that lol, 2) i said patient, not a family/friend even in these shows lol), then sure thats weird ig

But lets say now that Tommy encountered something like what's happening to buck in a call. Should he control himself and handle the situation perfectly? Sure ig, theoretically (i still stand with the fact that he isn't a medic and he isn't required to handle that, as long as its not life/death situation it is not his responsibility 🤷🏻‍♀️), but thankfully he isn't on a call/working while he is with Buck. He is not a professional at the moment. He is the boyfriend (family) of the patient, and he is actually not required to be professional at all 💀

[firefletch]

The main takeaways from Dracula so far:

Communication is good and healthy and important and if you stop doing that everything will go horribly wrong and people will die (based of him honestly and I agree)

Everyone who is smart and intelligent keeps a diary

[echosong971]

[wip] "It's No Longer You, Cayde"

CONTEXT: this scene takes place pre-Forsaken, and the horned Exo is one of my ocs Paradox-9, a Thanatonaut Titan who managed to get a hold of Future War Cult Vex tech. So, combining those together allows them to get into a state where he can see the past and future bleeding together

(note: I still haven't done Excision! Pls no spoilers!)

Song: No Longer You from EPIC: The Musical

[pepa-is-drawing]

i, me, myself

[ratcandy]

Big Huge Irritated Rant About The Latest COTL Update's Story Choices and the Implications

So the lore drop in the new Cult of the Lamb update, Unholy Alliance, pisses me off. The writer's confirmation of what that lore drop means pisses me off more.

Why? Because it's unnecessary recontextualization that was made pretty obviously in favor in one character in particular, and somehow in that process makes that very same character way less interesting. I think it's incredibly detrimental to the story and I will Explain Why in a second.

But before I do, I just want to put this out there: Prior to this update, my opinions on the Bishops and Narinder and that entire plotline were pretty neutral. I'm an NPC enjoyer, I spend my time thinking about that moth with two lines of dialogue. I did not previously have strong opinions on Narinder or Shamura outside of mild dislike for fandom treatment. So I'm not coming from a place of bias here (or at the very least I'm not trying to be). I genuinely, wholeheartedly, 100% believe this writing decision was unnecessary and the Wrong one to make, and I think it severely undercuts the original plotline because this was a retcon and one that sucks pretty bad.

Ok we're on the same page here? Ok awesome. Long rant ahead, and obvs spoilers for the Unholy Alliance update

So first, what the hell am I talking about? What part of the update do I not like? Let's clarify that first.

It's Shamura's dialogue. Like, all of it. For ease of understanding, here is all the dialogue I will be talking about:

"Ah... we gathered here, the four of us, a council of war and I the general. I have not forgot. I did not tell them that chains to bind a God must be forged of Godly matters. What matter of Gods? What matters of Gods? I have not forgot. The betrayal of kin, the breaking of spirits, blood spilled, his and ours. ...the sacrifice of what we had sacrificed so much for... ...shaped into shackles for our own brother. And our wounds always to weep. Such sharp claws..."

--

"He sought to break nature's own laws. Death was his, yet he placed his sacred duty in peril. His experiments... Experiments I encouraged. I am not... blameless. My soul, stained... yet I do not... Ah, The story. Yes the story... He wanted to open the doors between Life and Death, to... to allow their return. Those mere... mortals. Even though he knew their sacrifices, their faith, their fears sustain us. Death must be the end. Otherwise, what use would they have for Gods? They began to flock to him. What he promised, we could not match. He swelled with devotion... while we waned. Would he have let us perish? I could not take... the risk... the hunger... You are lucky there are none left to force such a choice on you. Hail, Lamb. Last God... lonely God... Ah... I feel... unburdened..."

And for fun, before anyone tells me I'm misinterpreting any of this or that it's left up to interpretation or is intentionally vague, Word of God (the writer of CoTL):

And it's this being Word of God that's spurred me into making this post to begin with. Because prior to this, I just seethed about this dialogue's implications in my server and hoped I was wrong. But now it's been confirmed what this means, and I'm . Disgruntled, to say the least!

And since I've started writing this post, there's been another addition made to further clarify parts of this. But I'm going to go over that addition more towards the end, because it also irritates me for separate reasons.

So, let's get this straight.

Prior to this update, the specifics of what happens between Narinder and the Bishops were pretty vague. We were told Narinder was "gluttonous in his ambition," per Shamura's previous dialogue, and that they "introduced him to ideas of change" but "Death cannot flow backward." Heket somewhat elaborates on this by saying he preached "heresy" and "noxious ideals" that would not be tolerated. Heket also notably refers to Narinder as a flat-out "monster." Narinder attacked his siblings and left them each with a big, symbolic wound. Then he was chained by the four of them, with Shamura the one to lead it (in their own words).

There's a lot of talk of betrayal, but before this update, it was unclear if the betrayal was meant to just be Narinder's experimenting with death (which even then was pretty heavily suggested to be resurrections) or the wounds inflicted upon his siblings. There's also a lot of talk of sacrifice, i.e. from Leshy if you kill Heket before him: "After everything we did. After everything we sacrificed. He will not be satiated."

Regardless, the picture this painted was of Narinder being this ambitious, evil, violent God that even his fellow Gods (Kallamar) feared and felt needed controlling. The idea that the wounds could have been in the nail in the coffin to this entire ordeal made sense; as they were obviously planned by Narinder to some extent (otherwise why be so intentional about who got what wound?) and a fair reaction to Being Mutilated would of course be to chain him.

Then of course there's the idea that the wounds were given while he was being chained and in self-defense, which only seems possible if you think Narinder could take on all four of his siblings at once like that and only manage to lose his claws in the ordeal (which was only revealed in this update to be something he's implied to have lost thru the relic). I thought this at first too, but realized it seems pretty impractical for that to have been the case if the wounds were also purposeful in who got what. I mean, sure, they could all be coincidentally symbolically appropriate for each Bishop, but I have doouuubts?

but now we're here, with this update, and all has been revealed.

And what's been revealed exactly?

Narinder's thing he was doing was indeed resurrections (we knew that)

Shamura encouraged him to do it (we also already knew this)

It seems like he did literally nothing else outside of that

His siblings got pissy about this because it made their domains purposeless and got all their followers to flock to him

"Would he let us perish? I could not take the risk" - Implies they literally did not even ask him

Shamura knew that in order to forge chains that could keep Narinder down, it would require a sacrifice of their bonds AND their flesh

They DID NOT tell the other Bishops this

Their wounds were requirements to chain him. They had to get the wounds they bear now in order to chain him. ONLY Shamura knew this. That means they allowed their siblings (and themself) to get attacked knowing full well what would happen. They may have even encouraged it, perhaps provoked Narinder into it, seeing as they knew the wounds were necessary to have him chained. (Or they just knew he would retaliate. Which, like. Yeah. They're condemning him after he went down a path they encouraged and, as far as we can tell, nothing else.)

And for... what?

In this version of the story, Narinder was experimenting with resurrections, and Shamura told him to keep doing that. Then he was successful, mortals turned to him, and his siblings (including Shamura, the one who told him to do it) got mad. That's it. That's their reasoning for chaining him. There's nothing else given. "Would they perish?" We have no idea. Is that how it works? Seems like Shamura doesn't know either. Or at the very least doesn't know if Narinder intended for that at all. Gives the vibe that literally no effort was made to talk to him and figure this out. They don't even really go down the "it puts nature out of balance!" path, which would at least have some merit, maybe. It's literally just "we are no longer sustained. What's the point of Gods in this world?" <- idk babe you had all the other ones slaughtered. So you tell me

And then Shamura just took it into their own hands, leading their siblings to their shared wounds (WITHOUT consulting them) and their inevitable destruction because of........... reasons, I guess. (I mean, if you think about it really hard, they probably also already knew what would happen following all this. With the lamb genocide and Narinder's resurfacing and etc. And they had their siblings wounded anyway. For no god damn reason)

And now why does this make me mad?

Because, honestly, in and of itself, there's not anything necessarily wrong with this added context. It's not contradicting anything in the main game. Shamura knowing what was needed makes sense, after all.

But it's... unnecessary. It screws up the motives and makes them more shallow, less nuanced, more... petty. Making gods petty is cool and all, I love doing that honestly, but in this case it just feels like a waste of potential.

But beyond all that. But most importantly.

This entire recontextualization of events REEKS of being made specifically to absolve Narinder.

I mean, come on. He's made out to be the victim, here. Shamura knew what he would do, knew what he would become, and knew exactly what would happen to their siblings if they sought to chain him (without doing so much as talking to him beforehand), and yet they encouraged it.

All blame is being shifted on Shamura. All Narinder did specifically against his siblings was inflict the wounds, which at this point seems to be hinted as self defense or a retaliation against threat or insult (assuming he was provoked into attacking, somehow). Because the wounds were part of the process.

And almost equally irritating, this seeks to arbitrarily absolve Leshy, Kallamar, and Heket as well, as they had no idea what the plan was and were just strung along. Which is just kinda worse, right? As far as they are aware, Narinder did just randomly attack them for no reason, and this wasn't foreseen, and surely couldn't have been stopped. All because Shamura didn't tell them any of it.

Shamura is being made into the big bad. Shamura is at fault for everything, for all of it. Narinder is a victim of Shamura encouraging him down a path they later condemn him for, their siblings are victims of Shamura and Narinder both (the latter of which could have been resolved at any point prior), and now any possible intrigue about Narinder being this big bad guy who tore apart his siblings due to his own ambition getting the best of him is ERASED.

It's GONE. All in favor of making him more sympathetic.

And sure, about a million different excuses could be made for Shamura, or could be used to headcanon whatever you want about exactly what happened. But with what we're given right now, just from the source, no attempt as made to stop Narinder before it got to this point. It is literally suggested they didn't even talk to him.

"Maybe they were too scared" - For the other three, maybe. Shamura is the eldest and clearly the most respected one, by Narinder as well (he holds some amount of respect for them even STILL. After EVERYTHING). They at any point could have stopped this.

"Narinder could still have been a bad guy outside of the attacks" - Sure, but we're given little to nothing on that front. In the old dialogue, literally all that's mentioned is the resurrection stuff and the wounds. Shamura is the one who said his ambition made a glutton of him, by the way. And hell, this isn't even touching the very real possibility that all of the Bishops (Narinder included!) are unreliable as hell.

"But Kallamar feared him even before his chaining, that suggests he was still a bad guy beforehand" - Sure, it could! But that's about all we get! And hell, in this new update, Kallamar's fears are fucked with, too. He states:

"Once, long ago, Followers would worship at my altar just to glimpse the beauty of my temple… of course, it could not last forever. Perhaps my siblings did not understand this, but I have always known. It did not make me less afraid. Cowardly Kallamar, ha…"

Here, it seems Kallamar's fears have been changed to be more about the decline of his temple and the loss of his followers, which was happening because of Narinder. He refers to Narinder's plans as "foolish" as opposed to... idk, horrifying, or threatening, or whatever. He also fully takes on the 'cowardly' title, giving the impression that his fears were somehow unfounded, which wouldn't make a lick of sense if Narinder indeed sucked ass outside of the wounds.

Not to mention he "didn't want to hear it" when Shamura "revealed the plan," but we know because of Shamura that they didn't mention anything about the wounds, so Kallamar didn't want to hear that they... had to chain Narinder? That's literally all he could've been told about the plan. Why wouldn't he want to chain Narinder if he was scared of him up until that point?? Doesn't make any sense!!! EDIT AFTER I POSTED: On reconsideration this might just be referring the lamb genocide plan, but that's hardly better, because now this update absolves Narinder, Leshy, AND Kallamar by making them blameless in everything (both Leshy and Kallamar expressed not fully understanding the plan for the slaughter or, in this case, not wanting part in it). What's up with THAT. Why is Shamura getting the blame for LITERALLY EVERYTHING.

Anyway, my point is

This was a story decision made to make Narinder sympathetic. It's so blatant. And it's so, so irritating. It gets rid of so many potential cool flaws of Narinder and replaces it with "Actually, Shamura was the bad guy the whole time! Huzzah!"

And honestly, had the entire game come out like this to begin with, released at the start how it is right now, I don't think I'd care this much. But being added now, as an afterthought, after the fandom and devs alike have grown to favor Narinder above all others, it just...

It reeks of favoritism. It smells of revising the story to make Narinder more likeable. It's just erasure.

And for what. Like, I don't want to be That Guy, but I cannot help but notice that one of two nonbinary characters (outside of the Lamb/Goat themselves) is being this heavily demonized in favor of absolving a Man of his crimes. What's, uh. What's up with that.

Oh, and that addition by the writer I mentioned was made while I was writing this.

This was made after Jojo was questioned whether this was a retcon as to who caused the wounds, as this whole thing could also certainly be read as Shamura being the one to directly wound their siblings (which I didn't think was the case, but still).

"I don't know if they thought it would be so severe" - How do I put this in a nice way. This feels like a weaseling out answer. This feels like giving Shamura an out only after being questioned on this writing choice. How could they possibly not know how severe it would be. This spider is Knowledge. This spider has Foresight of some kind. And how do you not know what they thought. You are the Writer. If you want to clarify something like this you gotta say it with your full chest.

Not to mention a good portion of the fandom probably won't even see these tweets, so this context is all missing from the story presented in the game. This is Tacked On Context on top of already Tacked On Context. It's unnecessary retconning all the way down.

Anyway. I realize the fandom at large will not care about this, because (and I mean this in the nicest way I can manage) the Narinder favoritism in this fandom is already impenetrable, but for me personally? This retconning that was so clearly done out of that favoritism?

It ruined Narinder's character for me. More than the fandom possibly could have. I mean, if it's fanon, it can be ignored. But this was canonized. Because Narinder is the dev team's favorite guy.

And I can't stand it.

[natp20]

i have become unreasonably fixated on the raven queen potentially being a champion of the god of death a Very Long Time Ago, so utterly devoted to them that she was willing to help them die, and the hypothetical future of that particular domain becoming a title of succession should the primary exandrian pantheon bite the dust

[robinmage]

It's curious to me, how the general consensus among others when it comes to Chise's curses are "bad; we need to get rid of it (we just don't know how.)" Which, considering they are both curses made of pain and suffering, makes sense why someone wouldn't want to keep those around.

We (the audience) know vaguely how the curses interact with each other. The dragon's curse: made from strong emotions of anger and despair, provides Chise with her strength and durability against both magical and physical elements, at the cost of her own strength one day tearing herself apart. Cartaphilus' curse prevents her from dying, but offers no protection against injury or decay. Together they "keep each other in check"-- Cartaphilus will keep her alive, the dragon will keep her strong.

A lot of things have happened in the past arc that make it easy to forget the fundamentals of the first season. When the series started, Chise was a few steps away from walking off a roof. Even after she arrived in England, it took a long time before she decided that maybe life wasn't so bad. Her entire life up until that point had been nothing but misery; abandoned and alone, she had no one to protect her from the constant targeting and harassment by both fae and humans alike. She believed that the only way to escape her torment was through death... I think its a facet of her character that goes unfairly unrecognized a lot (especially after the first arc).

When she's in England and is going through her mental/psychological character development, she is still facing the imminent threat of her weak sleigh beggey body constantly failing her. Using magic exacerbates her condition, causing her to be sick and/or incapacitated for significant stretches of time. It's painful, it's uncomfortable, it's frustrating. By the time she realizes she wants to live, her clock is already running quite short.

Her solution is handed to her on a rusted platter. To be "just like everyone else", for once. Finally.

Going to school, hanging out with friends, using magic without it killing her-- all things shes never been able to do before. All thanks to the curses trapped in her. These things that should be considered a horribly tragic fate have now become her salvation. Both physically and mentally, she's the strongest and most resilient she's ever been. Yet, when faced with the idea of liberating herself from her curses...

The curses only work the way they do because they're in sync with each other. Taking away either curse would leave her vulnerable to the other-- the dragon's curse would slowly overwhelm her into a brutally agonizing death, while Cartaphilus' curse would leave her to live and suffer through the constant breaking down of her sleigh beggey body.

When told about the reality of her curses and just how severe they are (not just to her, but to the people around her), she doesn't seem to completely understand what that may mean for herself and her future. Or perhaps, she just doesn't care. After a life where pain and suffering was her "normal", she finally has the means to create something meaningful and positive out of herself. How could that possibly be a bad thing?

She understands on some level that these curses were only ever meant to be temporary. Elias' original goal, to keep Chise alive in spite of her sleigh beggey curse, has not changed. Tacking on two more curses was not a part of the plan, and though they've offered a temporary solution and some time, curses are called curses for a reason. They cannot be relied upon. They've got to go.

But getting rid of those curses (both, or either) essentially puts her back at square one. Back to the pain, discomfort, and illness. She probably won't be able to use magic without hurting herself, too. She's gained freedom in both mind and body for the first time in her life. Sure, she encounters a few hiccups, but considering what she's used to, this is a big step up.

Something has finally given her the power and freedom to spread her wings and fly. Would she be able to clip her own feathers just because that power is "supposed" to be "bad"?

Could she? Could you?

Through it all, everyone she's come across has appointed her curses as a problem. Everyone, except...

[booasaur]

Warrior (2019) - 3x03

[arthursfuckinghat]

"I got it.. beatin' a man.. to death.. for a few bucks"