#rambly DDW

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Dragon Age: Lore reminder

With Veilguard coming out this year, it is time to remind people once more how Dragon Age lore works. Dragon Age lore is written like a historical document, this means that reading ANY piece of lore requires you to do some source criticism. Every piece of lore in DA has an author and that author has a bias. Whether it's the Chantry's take on the Fade, Dalish keeping their mages a secret, Tevinter nobles denying blood magic, etc. When reading DA lore, you must also look at the source of that lore. Who said it? Who or what is it about? What is the relationship between the author and the subject? Is there information you -know- the author got wrong? This applies to the characters as well, they can be wrong, prejudiced, predicting doom, etc. So before you blame Bioware for getting their lore wrong, please make sure the actual lore is wrong and not the source.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Social Darwinistic people are interesting to study, because their thinking relies on a very faulty perception of humanity. Basically, they see living as a competition. Not just survival, everything is a race to the top. Even things that don't actually benefit them.

It is from these people that the whole 'alpha,beta,etc' male thing comes from. What makes it interesting is that the truest alpha is someone who is alone both socially and emotionally. The same people also think the only reason we have a society that cares for the weak is because of the laws. At times those laws are treated as stifling. This is best seen in how in some post-apocalyptic movies/games/comics the lone wanderer is treated as the truest expression of personhood. While any effort to rebuild society is doomed to fail because people are selfish and with no government they don't have to follow laws anymore.

Social Darwinists have more in common with big cats than social predators. They are alone, they want to be alone, and they will remain alone.

them: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST MEANS HUMANS MUST BE INDIVIDUALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT AND COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT

biologist:

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

One of the things that Guild Wars 2 really masters, that I don't often see in other setting, is treating species and an individual as two different things. And that no species is truly evil. You can see this in the core game with how only a few factions are made up of one species. Even then, those are usually the 'evil' faction within the species. All others can have Charr, Asura, Norn, humans and Sylvari as random mooks.

Through the Living World story, we also get to see members of the 'bad' factions redeem themselves. Flame Legion is now trying to be better and Gorrik was a former Inquest member. It doesn't even stop at playable species, because by Living World season 4's end, the Awakened are free from Joko and resume their lives with their families. Cue a lot of complaining from people whose parents are now undead and nagging them. Or, with the latest Living World story over, the Kryptis. What at first seemed like mindless horror hordes are actually just people. You get to see these creatures that look like standard baddies try to paint or get nervous over jumping from a diving board. I think this is great, because it goes into the message of unity the game is about. Every species has their arseholes and saints, even those that at first seem evil.

[purkinje-effect]

I’ve been wanting to redo the cover art for First Instar for some time now, and I finally let myself. Hopefully it scans visually as a high rise office. Rambling under the cut.

If you’re interested in The Anatomy of Melancholy, the most recent chapter’s always pinned on my blog, and a table of contents link is at the top of it. All likes and reblogs welcome. (Extensive CWs for horror esp. body horror, drug use, insects, and miles of characters with grey-to-scalding karma including the MC. I try to label CWs as thoroughly as possible at the beginning of each chapter: do heed them. There’s two DDW chapters in First Instar, and I mean that warning very strongly, especially as I illustrate these things from time to time. This fic is not suitable for minors or the squeamish.)

I didn’t break up AoM by Instar until about halfway through Second Instar. Lexington & Concord was supposed to be a placeholder until I thought of something better. Location wordplay’s going to be the common tie for all five Instars, I think, and I like this subtle change a lot.

I really liked the original 2019 cover when I did it, but I didn’t think it was all too representative of the fic itself. Too, it’s the first book of the pentalogy: it’s deserving of something a little more intense than what I had, now that I’m more capable of putting it together. That, and I really needed to include the visual detail that he’s a wheelchair user. For being one myself, I sure don’t draw them as often as I’d like.

I’d never really been happy calling the DDW chapters “Rexford Press” because it suggests ‘Choly ends up with a printing press in Goodneighbor, and at this point I seriously doubt it. The Rexton Nova’s his typewriter, owing to his Naked Lunch roots.

I promise I’ll do a revision pass soon and add footnotes and author’s notes to the first two Instars. Thanks for sticking with me almost five years now!

[pilotheather]

 idk what crawled into my skull and made me NEED to ramble abt all this again . i need to follow more ddw blogs so i can vent my Nonsense thru here more but i simply dont.... Foolish of me <3

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Well he still wanted to take down the Veil, we just interrupted him moving the Evanuris to a safer spot so they wouldn't come back. Basically making a safety save.

But to answer your question; The man is not only bad at communicating and letting others in, he is also stubborn and refuses to give up once he has decided he wants to do something. It took Coryfish Blight savescumming, nearly all of the south becoming a warzone, a year with the Inquisition's motley crew and potentially Lavellan romancing him for Solas to go "Wait, these are actually real people!?" And he STILL decided to go off alone, not trusting his friends to help him and then creating a situation where the Inquisitor has to give up their arm powers and gets the worst impression of him. Enough that everyone of the companions, even Spirit!Cole, is like 'we need to stop him.' As far we can see, Solas is alone doing the ritual. He has his spies but he can't trust them to help him. When Varric tries to get him to stop, Solas doesn't even try to say that he is NOT doing that and in fact he is putting the Evanuris into a safer box. He lets Varric and the rest think he is bringing down the Veil at that moment. Which means they will try anything to stop him.

The funny thing is that his two modern tries at destroying the Veil have both gone awry because he didn't consider other people to also have plans.

I'm confused why, if Solas just wanted to move the Evanuris to a stronger prison, why he didn't just SAY that?

[papakennmedia]

PAPAKENN RAMBLES: "MIDNA, SCALPERS, & DDW"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-R6BZlo32Q

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

There is a sort of sad hilarity to how Werewolf the Apocalypse exposes people's indifference towards nature, thinking environmental preservation and such is childish and naive or just outright nihilistic doomerism. I have seen so many takes that boil down to a refusal to believe things can be fixed, feeling fixing things in fantasy is unrealistic or don't want things to be fixed at all. Or they ask what is horrifying about nature and its loss ("Hippie Horror")? Wanting personal horror instead. And often, these reactions are very telling.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Why the Apocalypse in the title matters and how W5 fails to address it

Even if it is by this point a joke, all WoD games have a title what creature it lets you play and then one of the core elements of it.

Yet, it is odd that a werewolf game puts the end of the world as one of its most central concepts. After all, werewolves aren't really associated with the apocalypse in myths. The closest is Fenris-Ulf in Norse myths, but Fenris was a monstrous wolf, not a werewolf. Shouldn't Changing or Fury be a better descriptor?

Well, WtA's werewolves draw from older material than the movies and the focus is not on being a werewolf. The focus is on the state of the world, the way nature is being destroyed and such. In the game, being a werewolf is more akin to a spiritual guardian than a cursed being.

The Apocalypse in the title not only refers to the literal end of existence but to the little apocalypses happening every year. Species dying, people losing touch with their ancestral cultures, etc. WtA is about looking at the state of the world and feeling the horror of just how hard it is to fix it if not impossible. Never mind the sadly now very real horror of greed over care and ennui towards your fellow humans and nature.

This genuine approach and call to action has, of course, created an opposite reaction that calls WtA's tone childish. More recently, as we actually start seeing the effects of climate change, the reactions have also become ones of denial, apathy and fear of doing the wrong thing.

It is the latter that W5 shows the clearest in its depiction of the apocalypse.

The apocalypse in W5 is invisible to normal people and other supernaturals. At most, it is the fall of the garou nation as the climate change happening in the real world. Despite this, W5 is very clear about discouraging its PCs from taking action further than locally.

In effect, W5's apocalypse and what it wants the players to do about it is toothless. The game spends page space detailing what not to do, but very little on what to do and what the apocalypse looks like. Because it is afraid to take a stand, instead focusing on passive-aggressive remarks here and there.

W5, despite its blurb stating it is about striking back at pollution, isn't willing to have its PCs be eco-terrorists (though some do slip through) and actively calls direct action the wrong method.

It isn't just what W5 tells the PCs shouldn't do, it is also how much the PCs don't have to do. It's the end of the world as we know it and you can still go to McDonald's in peace. The world is lost and you still have to go to work. If we weren't told the apocalypse was raging, we'd assume it was still in the future. The game is, intentionally or unintentionally, saying that there is no need to do anything. Even if the world is ending, it won't inconvenience you.

To put things plainly, W5's apocalypse is the way it is so there won't be paid sick days for the employees. It is an end that preserves and protects the status quo.

Of course, an apocalypse that changes nothing is not really an apocalypse. Indeed, W5 wears the apocalypse label more out of legacy than any real intention of addressing it. It wants to focus on werewolf packs and caern tending, not something as serious as the fate of the world.

In fact, I'd say W5 doesn't want to be about the garou at all but instead about werewolves. It wants to be Werewolf the Fury.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

The more I see Tumblr's brand of reading text and its way of handling justice, the more I'm glad my schooling was focused on analysis and making your own conclusions.

Because so many here are so quick to assume the worst and drop any sense of scale if something offends them.

I grew up online, I was 13 when we got broadban in my house. I say this as someone who knows what it is be a minor in a very hostile world.

We need to stop leaning onto violence so easily. We need to stop assuming and start questioning our own conclusions. We need to start accepting that our experiences are not universal and that it is a good thing they are not.

I've been through a lot of shit for something that was purely fictional being taken as personal opinion. I've literally been made to choose between friends and a membership to a server.

We need to start having empathy on general.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Poppy Playtime: Why Catnap is such a good antagonist

There are plenty of characters who have a gray morality, especially these days. But sometimes we need villains who just are villains and convincing them to change is hard or impossible. (I am not saying any redemption AUs for Catnap aren't valid, I am only talking about canon here.) First of all, Catnap is given a backstory the explains his motives. He was basically a labrat to the scientists at Playcare and the ARG shows he also had trouble fitting in. So we can assume he was not an infant when he lost his parents. The only person who gave him any attention was the Prototype, enough that Theo/Catnap was willing to risk his life for it. He messed up and the Prototype, instead of leaving him to die, saved him at the cost of its freedom. This act made Catnap's loyalty to the Prototype iron-clad. He would do anything for it, even kill. Being turned into not only a Bigger Bodies creature but one that limited his ability to express himself, made the already simmering hatred for Playcare into an inferno. In short, Catnap was the perfect follower for the Prototype. At least, for the Hour of Joy. Despite his tragic past, Catnap is far from a good person. For one, he took part in the Hour of Joy and still reminds his followers of it. Second, Catnap is incredibly cruel. While this stems from his undying loyalty to the Prototype, Catnap's actions are his own and how he handles his prey and heretics is telling. Through chapter 3, Catnap could kill you at any point. But he prefers to stalk you and make you squirm. Like a cat, he loves the chase and he loves the power he has over his prey. Then there is the way he treated Dogday. While the common headcanon is that Catnap cut his legs off, the game indicates a worse fate. Catnap tied Dogday and possibly other Smiling Critters into their cells where they could not move and then let the smaller critters use them as a food source. Dogday wasn't bisected as much as he was slowly eaten alive. Catnap also ensured he would stay alive as long as possible by tying that belt around his waist. So his guts wouldn't fall out and kill Dogday prematurely. Nothing indicates the Protype ordered Catnap to punish the heretics this way, it is all Catnap's own zealous and twisted invention. He could have taken Dogday out fast, instead he lets the dog suffer for his heresy. Ironically, I think this is why Catnap became a liability to the Prototype. Catnap was content starving and playing his twisted games and praying to the Prototype. The Prototype needs those who still want out, not a high priest performing sermons in its name. This is why I think Catnap is one of the best villains in modern media. Sure he has a tragic past, but he is Judge Frollo levels of cruel and zealous.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

RPG Thoughts: Dealing with Snowflakes

If there is one thing that has shadowed my experiences playing roleplaying games, It has to be the way special characters are treated. In World of Darkness circles, these are called Snowflakes from the 'special little snowflake' mockery people use. And I feel so much of the frustration towards the Snowflakes comes from how they take attention away from the other characters and how the GMs/STs/whatever focus plot on them. So here are so thoughts and suggestions I have for both players and gamerunners regarding how to not make other players feel bad. (I'll be using World of Darkness terms, because I know them the best. But this should be applicable to any game.) For the players; 1. If the ST says no to your concept, accept it.

As simple as that, if the ST doesn't want to run certain stories don't push for them. You want to ST to WANT to run your plots, not grit their teeth about them.

2. Give the character more depth than just their special factor.

Let's say you make a garou with 5 PB on White Howlers. While this might inform some aspects of your character, it does not mean it is all they are. Does your character have a hobby they like, do they want to learn a specific rite or a gift. What kind of relationship do they have with their (adopted) tribe? The Howler blood is something that should not come up often, so your character should have more to them than just a pedigree.

3. Involve other characters in your personal plots.

This is one of the biggest tools to avoid frustrating the other players. Your plots are their plots, they get to have a stake in your story just as much as you have a stake in theirs.

4. If it fits the concept, don't make waves.

If you play a type of character whose special factor might get them in trouble, consider how likely they are to draw attention to themselves.

You Howler blooded garou might avoid any higher position and try to work in the background. They'd avoid anything that might expose their lineage like raids to a Hive and instead choose to guard the sept. You should still have your moment in the spotlight, of course. But it should not be any more than your fellow PCs.

5. Work WITH the ST, not AGAINST them.

When you create a special character, you need to ensure that it never makes the ST's job harder or goes against their plans. Often, having some ideas for plots ready for the ST can be helpful for the both of you.

For the Storyteller/Game runners;

If you do not want it in the game, do not allow it.

Simple, you are the ST, you call the shots when it comes to the types of characters you want to run the game for.

Do NOT allow a special character in so you can punish the player for making it.

This is cruel and it just creates hostility between you and the player.

Communicate with the player of the special character about any concerns you have.

Tie the plot to the most average character. Use the special character's special trait as an obstacle rather as a spotlight. Give the other characters as much attention and give them reasons to WANT to join the special character's plot.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

To be fair to Inquisition, Calpernia and Samson were the 'face' of Cory for most of the game. And I think, had he been given the chance, Cory would have been an interesting villain. After all, he and the Inquisitor had the same goal: To make Thedas stable again. Just their methods differed. Back to Veilguard, though. I agree pretty much with all of your analysis. I do want to voice some thoughts on why Veilguard's story in broad strokes did not work. For one, unlike every other game and DLC, Veilguard had no real surprises. All it did was build upon what Origins, DA2 and Inquisition already revealed and make no large lore revelations of its own. We already knew the Evanuris fought the Titans, we just learned more details on how. It was pretty clear Solas imprisoned the Blight with the Evanuris. The only new information was how much Solas himself did. But that, in my opinion, made him do a bit too much for one character while leaving only your basic villain stuff for Elgy and Ghilly. This lack of surprises also applies to the time-honoured tradition of one of the mage companions doing something unexpected. Veilguard's mages are all honest and trustworthy. This all makes me think Veilguard should have been to Inquisition what Awakening was for Origins. A longer DLC with a new main character that still tied to Inquisition's themes/story.

A Spoiler-Filled Rant about Veilguard

This isn't spoiler-intensive, per se, but there is one thought that has been rattling through my brain through the entirety of playing Veilguard. And it has to do with how villains are presented in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II, versus how they are presented in Inquisition and Veilguard.

(Minor) Spoilers to follow under the cut.

Dragon Age: Origins presents the Darkspawn horde as a traditional fantasy villain trope. It's easy to understand, easy to get the depth of the problem, but it's difficult to counter. Because the entirety of Dragon Age: Origins isn't about fighting the Darkspawn. It's about fighting the problems that get in the way of you fighting the Darkspawn.

You need to gather allies, and it's in the gathering of allies that you encounter your trials and Hero's Journey. And they are all poetic, in a way.

In Redcliffe, to recruit the local Arl, you find him poisoned, further complicated by his son being possessed by a demon. Your attempt to recruit a political ally with ties to the Chantry is confounded both by politics and blood magic.

For the Elves, self-styled guardians of nature, you find them at war with nature itself.

For the Dwarves, stalwart fighters bound by tradition, you are forced to decide for them to either break with tradition, or become enslaved by it.

There's a theme to each ally, and a cleverness to your struggles. And while the Darkspawn are your primary enemy, the end goal of the campaign, the ultimate antagonist of the story is Loghain, a beautifully written enemy (I refuse to call him a 'villain') because he is very complicated in his motivations and goals. He has reasons -- good reasons, albeit short-sighted and misguided -- for doing what he does. He is a patriot. And it is that patriotism that may ultimately doom his nation.

In Dragon Age 2, Meredith and Orsino are presented as the villains of the story. They have complicated motivations and reasons for doing what they do. Meredith wants to protect regular people from Mages and blood magic. Orsino wants to protect Mages from overzealous Templars.

But the antagonist of the story is ultimately Anders, your own party member, who knocks over the board and makes an overcomplicated mess into a veritable clusterfuck. He damns himself and all other Mages by purposely making himself the villain of the story to begin a war. He seeks to make himself and all other Mages in Kirkwall martyrs so that others around the world will unite under one banner, declaring, "No more."

Whether or not what Anders does is Good or Evil is for every individual player to decide. Even if you side with him and try to defend the Mages from the wrath of the Templars, you can still come to the conclusion that his actions were Evil. There's nuance. It's great. Dragon Age 2 has a lot of flaws and some disjointed storytelling because of its format, but where it succeeds is in the questions the antagonist forces you to ask yourself.

And now we get to Inquisition and Veilguard.

They both have Solas. And they use Solas as a crutch. Inquisition does it in a clever way. You aren't aware that Solas is the Great Orchestrator. You think the villain is Corypheus, a D-tier villain with boring motivations and cliched dialogue.

Inquisition would have failed as a narrative if not for Solas. Corypheus was a good villain for a Dragon Age 2 optional DLC. He was a shit antagonist for a full game. He was bland, his goals were bland, his methods of achieving them were bland, and his allies were bland. Everything he did was Generic Fantasy white bread bullshit.

And that's okay. Because he wasn't the Actual Antagonist. Solas was. And I've seen so many interpretations and theories and reads over the years on what really defines Solas, that I can't help to feel that most of them are at least a little bit true.

Is he an Elf-supremacist? Maybe. Does he look down on Humans and Qunari? Debatable. Is he 'just trying to fix things he broke'? Probably. Is he living in the past, unable to move on? You bet.

And then we hit Veilguard.

And we know the main villain of this game is Solas. It was originally titled 'Dreadwolf', after all. But Solas is stuck in a prison of his own making for the majority of the game. So, instead, we get Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain.

And honestly, these two... Elgar'nan is Corypheus 2.0. Ghilan'nain is What if Corypheus Was Also Hojo from FF7.

We just had this formula last game. It *barely* worked. And it only worked in the end because of a surprise reveal. Solas was a complicated antagonist, to be sure, but it worked ultimately because we didn't know he was the antagonist.

So, now we're doing the exact same formula as Inqusition. Present a Very Boring Villain as the surface antagonist, but because the stakes need to be higher, we are given two Very Boring Villains as surface antagonists. And to really hammer in that the stakes are higher, hey, remember how Dragon Age: Origins was about fighting an Archdemon in command of a Blight? Well, now we have two Archdemons. At the same time.

And that's what Veilguard is ultimately trying to do. It's giving you everything you've seen before, but upping the stakes and fewer moral complications and poetic twists. There's no dramatic irony to be had here.

Elgar'nan's entire character arc can be summed up with one phrase:

"WHat DO yOU meAn yOU do NoT All WAnT To bE mY slAVEs?"

Ghilan'nain's:

"WHat Do yOU meAn yOU do NoT All WAnT To bE eXPerIMeNTs?"

We are given two entitled assholes as villains, whining they do not instantly get total and complete dominion over the entire world and all of reality, and are expected to take them seriously. There is no pathos, no sympathetic motivations, no nuance, nothing.

The only depth to any villainous character we get is in Solas. And all that work had already been done in Inquisition. Veilguard coasts on that. Some part of me hoped that maybe Elgar'nan wasn't 100% evil. That maybe some of what he was saying and what he was doing was right. That maybe the war with the Forgotten Ones led him down a dark path of hubris and tragedy. That Elgar'nan was trying to save the world from horrors beyond our comprehension. That Ghilan'nain was preparing us for a war we could not win. The Forgotten Ones, or the Forbidden Ones, or some other grand threat, could have been presented as a Reaper-equivalent Mass Effect style antagonist that they were preparing us against. We could have had that story.

We didn't get it.

We got two selfish nepo-babies instead. And then that final conclusion to the Solas 'problem.'

I've said before. I like Veilguard. I am not here to condemn the game. I don't want to sound like I hate what we got. But damn, we could have had so much more.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

W5 critical: Absence is not inclusivity

Critical of Werewolf the Apocalypse 5th edition, please don't read if you like the edition.

Few weeks ago, I saw a post stating that the removal of the cultural ties from (almost) all of the tribes is a good thing, because it means anyone can now be a member of any tribe.

What this mentality misses, however, is that the absence of culture is not the same as being inclusive. Sure, everyone can be anything, but from my experience, that freedom does not result in actual diverse depiction. After all, we have data that you can be as diverse as you want in your character creation options, most players will still make a white brown-haired cismale character.

In the same vein, all of the released adventures for W5 have been set in the US. Even though anyone can be anything, we have fallen back to treating the US as the default setting. Paradox is a Swedish company and Sweden has plenty of stories that fit WtA. This is no longer the case of a US company writing for a US audience.

What is worse, now that there are no specific tribes from Turtle Island, they don't have to be included in the stories set on their own lands. Instead, all characters can be white and the ST doesn't have to consider how the native people of the land see the white characters.

Even though the Legacy books often fell on their face when it came to depicting anything not a WASP American, the presence of cultural ties had a purpose.

Garou are creatures of community, they are people who band together not out of desperation or survival but because they like to have people around them. Unlike Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse is about honesty. Garou want friends, they want allies and a family without ulterior motives.

What this means is that each tribe was not just a group selected by a specific patron. They were communities of shifter and kin who all shared a culture and had for generations. A tribe is a garou's support network, their source of history and so on.

Of course, Werewolf the Forsaken's tribes aren't culturally tied. But the difference between the W5 tribes and those of The Moon is that there are only 8 or so base tribes and even then three of those are the 'bad guys'. The tribes in Forsaken are archetypes, werewolves of similar goals. But the game has always made a point that there are cultural differences depending on the country and there are plenty of lodges that are local to a specific area.

In W5, you have 11 tribes that were originally built to have ties to certain culture or broad concepts. Now, with most of the context removed, there are multiple tribes in W5 that could be cut and the setting would not change.

More than that, the tribes of W5 (aside from Cult of Fenris for some reason) are alone. Even the Uratha in Forsaken need to have contact with their potential tribe to join one, but in W5 the tribe patrons simply choose a fitting garou with no input from others of the tribe. This loneliness is further shown in how little thought is dedicated to a pack having a patron. Unlike every other WtA book, W5 does not come with a list of patrons. Instead the book, in a sidebar, recommends picking a tribal patron among the tribes of the pack. With an added mention to do contrition to other patrons who did not get picked. Even then, each PC is still expected to follow their tribal patron's ban on top of their pack patron's.

Meanwhile, in Legacy, the ties to various real life cultures give direction and community to the garou. When the pack chooses a patron, that patron is often not from any tribal brood. The pack, in Legacy, is important.

In W5, community, pack, family and all that are not only gone but also treated as the source of the garou's evils. Better be alone, better be without roots, it says.

No person is an island, yet that is what W5 wants things to be.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

WtA: Red Talon mindset

(Wrote this to the official forums but I like it enough to post it here.)

Consider this; There is an alien species that is higher tech than you. It has taken vast amounts of space that once belonged to humans and made it impossible to live there. They have also taken over stores and made it so a human cannot buy anything from there legally. In hunger, your brother tries to steal from the store but gets caught and shot. Later you find his skin in the alien living room.

These aliens also hunt humans for sport, from their spaceships. They at times go into houses and kill parents, leaving the kids to starve.

And all the while, they are poisoning everything so it gets harder and harder for humans to survive while they thrive. The aliens have also made this pseudo-human that is eternally around 14 and keep it as a pet.

How hard would it be for you to not see these aliens as evil? How much sympathy could you have for them?

This is what Red Talons face with humanity. So it is not that they are psychotic misanthropes hellbent on killing every human, they just wouldn't shed a tear for us. The 'every human must die NOW' Red Talons are badly played and don't really address WHY Talons hate humanity.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

HH Critique: Zero Impact

Warning: Critical of Hazbin Hotel, please do not read if you do not like that.

One thing that keeps bothering me about Vaggie's 'fall from grace', is how she basically did nothing to 'earn' it. She chased a sinner but stopped and looked at them more closely. This sinner was a child of the cannibal town. It isn't that hard to guess that Vaggie stopped and went "Hey, wait, IS this a sinner?" since they aren't allowed to kill hellborn.

Now, Lute's reaction is perfectly in character for her. Lute is a zealot and an extremist, she would see any hesitation from the exorcists as a betrayal. Adam, for his part, is very much just into killing sinners for the lols. Neither would care if some hellborn were 'accidentally' killed.

Here's the thing, though, the situation Vaggie's fall is revealed in is during a court hearing regarding whether a sinner deserves to enter heaven. Adam and Lute, happily, just showed how they intended to kill a fellow angel for stopping even just a bit. The same fallen angel is present at the court, having been healed by a hellborn.

In essence, Adam and Lute just showed their asses to the court. The purges were already a secret to most of heaven, but now the two people running it are also shown to also be willing to hurt fellow angels if they aren't extreme enough.

Yet none of that matters and Charlie is 'defeated' and sent back to hell. Even after Adam, who isn't supposed to kill hellborn, outright said he'd target the hotel he is only verbally warned. The scene happened in a vacuum with no impact outside Vaggie being revealed as a fallen angel.

The irony is that if the court had reacted and actually made Adam and Lute face the music, their attack on the hotel would have made more sense. Rather than an officially sanctioned extermination, Adam and Lute attack the hotel in revenge before they are convicted. That would explain why Lucifer had to step in and why the stakes were so high; Adam and Lute weren't playing by the rules anymore.

The court not reacting to the revelation and just letting Adam and Lute do whatever doesn't feel like a depiction of its double standards. It feels like the scene only mattered as far as a shocker. If the goal is to present heaven as an actual end goal, it needs to be shown with some positives outside Emily.