#rogue one preference

[andorerso]

"Cassian's best friend is a droid" isn't meant to be the sad sentiment some of you all seem to believe it is. what's sad is that Cassian has no other attachments to anyone, he has no one besides K2, BUT there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a droid as a best friend. droids aren't inherently inferior to organics. start treating them with a little decency, please. and stop devaluing the bond between K2 and Cassian. Cassian was visibly devastated when K2 died. K2 used his last moments to envision a scenario in which Cassian survived and made it off Scarif. their friendship is just as real and beautiful as it would be if K2 was an organic.

[chamerionwrites]

I don't wanna be wanky here but am I slightly perhaps just the tiniest bit put out that so many people are all "🤩I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see😍" about Luthen when Cassian Andor's other tall sandy-haired spymaster came in for so much flack over (checks notes) ordering a hit on the lead engineer for THE DEATH STAR? Maybe so

[deva-arts]

nate being the only doctor makes me wonder what he's had to do for the others before

Nate does a lot for the crew. (Also woo look at his human disguise!)

When he's not actively treating or checking on them, he's constantly working to compare studies and test data to understand how to treat his friends, seeing as they have widely different genetic makeups and could react in ways that are *catastrophically* unexpected.

He can't use human rules when working on them, which greatly complicates things when he's educated in treating humans. Sera and Vince naturally have nucleated blood cells for greater oxygen input since they're always in rigorous activity, but this is a sign of leukemia or other major deficiency in humans. How do drugs interact with their bodies? what reaction will their immune systems have? do they have an intolerance to certain chemical developments?

This is partly why Vincent underwent so much testing and experimentation- to catalogue and document an atlas for the reproduction and understanding of this hybrid Variant species, and how every facet of its anatomy works in that respect. Like a rough draft you don't care about messing up, and use only to learn from.

Sorry Vince.

It's a wonder how Nathaniel was able to successfully recompile enough information to save his friends at all. It's a lot of stress on one guy with no nurses! That goes without saying for Amon (who is a beastshifter) Sonia... (Who is a living chemical synthesis lab) The various other people who end up joining... (Who shall remain incognito)

...Yikes.

He has likely seen all of them naked at least once, due to emergencies. He's extremely professional, so it's like it never happened... But it's still never fun to have to use that kind of ER protocol on your injured friends and associates.

Everyone except for Vincent, since V never lets Nathaniel treat him for anything, even when he needs it.

Instead, everyone caught a harrowing and unwanted glimpse of Vincent when he landed back home after streaking in the rain. He now flies with his pants duct-taped on. And goggles. For the glare and the overwhelming surplus of bugs he slams into at twice the speed of a f1 car.

[asthewintersun]

on the one hand, there's something enchanting about a one-off tragic love interest who only lasts a single episode... on the other hand, i'm an intense sucker for a slowburn, so every time 15 and rogue were having a moment, i just kept thinking how much more invested i'd be in it if rogue had already been around for a few episodes...

[roobylavender]

considering what you have spoken about regarding selina do you also get frustrated with like…i cant quite explain it but sometimes especially in more recent years shes been posed or positioned like some sort of damsel that needs a big strong man to save her and like im not saying she should be portrayed with the “hollywood level feminism” for lack of a better term im just think about how old versions of selina would have hated that. like im just thinking of anytime in the reeves movie where bruce grabs her or forces her mouth shut or even when he didnt allow her to kill falcone and im just thinking she should claw the fuck out of him for that. i just miss a version of selina who wouldnt allow anyone to walk all over her personal autonomy like that

oh absolutely! in fact this is specifically why i can't stand loeb's take on her character lol (and as we both know that was a significant point of reference for the reeves film). it's really jarring to transition from her volume one and two canon to the long halloween / dark victory / when in rome. i think a lot of people tend to latch onto these books because tim sale's art is to die for and it's obv hard not to enjoy a good murder mystery. in that aspect they're still books i can enjoy in isolation. but i find it very difficult to enjoy them as a selina fan specifically because in every single one it's like she's looking for solace and security in a man and i'm not sure why. like what was so bad about her original backstory of having a deadbeat dad (whether you ascribe to the volume one or volume two version of him) and why did she need to go looking for her "real" father in carmine falcone. why did she need to seek out temporary boytoy relief in italy. why did she dream about being saved by bruce. none of it really has a reason other than to create a "lack" in her for the sake of it being there, because she'd never needed a man like that before in her post-crisis narrative. as you mentioned it was quite to the contrary and she was fiercely independent and protective of her own peace, esp from men. when she felt empty or without a connection or lifeline to someone real, it was mostly about people like maggie or holly or arizona. her people

what i think it ultimately comes down to are two things: the first thing is the diminishment of her post-crisis origins. after all, it's convenient to ignore how distrustful selina is of people, and of men with power at their leisure to abuse specifically, when her post-crisis origins are no longer relevant to her personal characterization. although selina's status as a sex worker is more prominent now, it was more or less completely swept under the rug for the bulk of volume two. loeb also refused to engage with it in any capacity. it only really resurfaced with the conclusion to volume two because it drew direct parallels to how we initially found her in volume one, and then brubaker expanded on it once again in his take on the character, which was notably juxtaposed against a pre-existing romance with bruce and brings me to the second thing. i've already waxed about this at length so this may very well be recap but i really don't think selina's lack of control over her personal autonomy can be divorced of the modern portrayal of the romance. when selina looking for security and understanding and comfort in bruce is what drives the romance forward there's not much room to maintain her original values and guarded demeanor, if not her outright defensiveness and hostility. a lot of people look at the extensive trauma selina has experienced and argue that she deserves to be in a relationship with someone who allows her to let those walls down. this isn't incorrect in theory. but it does repeatedly ignore who she is. it's kind of like the point i was making about bruce yesterday. exploring the inherently abusive nature of robin or of bruce's right to his children in light of that fact is interesting to do, but the actual execution has rarely managed to take into account who bruce actually is

for however nice it might be for selina to let her walls down romantically and look for solace in bruce—and i say this mostly for the sake of argument, personally i would argue against its necessity—it's realistically not something she's actually going to do. at least not as willfully as she's been portrayed to. realistically she's going to make it extremely hard, which if anything is precisely the appeal. i love it when selina gives bruce a hard time. i love that it's not supposed to be easy or maybe even a possibility for him to win her over bc there's so much about his own ideological stances that's flawed and in opposition to her own. she doesn't have to be any less unrelenting in her principles and worldview for that romance between them to be compelling bc at the end of the day the entire crux of it is that against all odds bruce cares. for however wrong he thinks she might be in a given moment or in her stance against the government, he knows who she is and how hard she's fought and what she's survived and it makes him sympathetic to her because she's real. she's a wonderful character through which to explore the logical limits of bruce's self-righteousness and categorization of crime, as well as a wonderful mirror to hold up to his face as he starts to ask himself whether what he's doing is really the only means of keeping the city safe. and the novelty of it all is that you don't have to sacrifice her character for any of that to be true. writers have simply deluded themselves into believing that they have to and that's why we are where we are today

[mugiwara-lucy]

Jesus Christ Julian 😂

[invinciblerodent]

DEVASTATED to learn that there IS romance banter not related to the NPC/NPC ships, I just felt so caught up in dragging everyone's bond up to be mostly equal that for the better part of act 3, I had to bench all my favorites, and was more or less stuck with Emmrich and/or Lucanis (whose bonds were progressing slowest), rather than dragging my actual boyfriend and best friend through Northern Thedas as the Maker had intended.

This is one genuine little gripe I have, and kind of why I wish we still had three person parties: they probably wouldn't ever shut up, I know, but having one more person around would mean that bringing everyone's bond to a comfortable 8-9 by the endgame wouldn't leave me feeling the need to choose party members based not on who I actually want to be there, but on who has the lowest bond.

And the part that stinks is that I don't even really know if that did anything. Like if it mattered in the endgame or not. Idk.

[martyrmarked]

sidri trevelyan, debuff queen

[recalcitrantlycaffeinated]

DND: session 1 (The Drug Fog)

Our DM (making his first appearance) immediately opened our session by telling us that the planet we were approaching was covered in a mysterious fog. Seamus looked out into the fog and had to do a wisdom save, which he failed, so he started seeing things. When he said something about the fog didn't seem right, Traps immediately stuck his head into the fog saying, "Really? let me see!" Since it was a wisdom save, I obviously failed it, and was treated to a false memory vision of my childhood, involving a series of woodland animals getting married.

"I think this fog is drugs," I said with full confidence. "I've done drugs before, and I think this is a drug fog." Seamus got fully on board, except HIS theory was that somebody had drugged our beer we were drinking earlier.

A distress signal came through the fog, and a ship pulled up alongside. The man on the ship had an Irish accent, so he and Seamus were buddies for about five seconds, before he introduced himself and his Trading Company further, leading Seamus to characterize them as unjust colonizers. He offered us a great deal of gold to come down and help them with their fog problem. Not only was the fog causing strange and terrible visions, but fifty people had mysteriously been taken in the midst of all this, including everyone from the governor's manor. We were not particularly interested in being helpful, but between him threatening to call the cops on us for being thieves and murderers, and the fact that Hex (who was piloting the ship) is obsessed with gold and murdering, we accepted.

We took a skiff down to the planet, piloted by one of their guys (I was never quite clear on whether there were two or three of them because Irish accent + beardy DM + my bad hearing in group settings was NOT the best time). Amidst the fog, everything was a little off. Anybody who tried to figure out what the fog was got hit with more visions. Hex even had one where they saw our own skiff coming back from the other direction, full of our own dead bodies. I did not have any of these extra visions because I was not trying to figure out the fog because it was OBVIOUSLY a drug fog.

And then the pilot crashed the skiff. Three out of the five of us failed dex saves and got thrown into an iron gate (instantly halving my hit points). And then three out of the five of us failed our wisdom saves and got hit with fog visions of what we feared most. (Seamus and I failed both saves; Paladin Dad failed neither.) Seamus saw his first wife and child, who had died in a fire, and ended up so afraid he was fully petrified and needed to be healed by Paladin Dad, who did this by slapping him and yelling "Get in a fight, Seamus!" Hex saw spiders, and got so afraid, they ran away. I saw my elementary school teacher. [Clearly, Seamus and I take roleplaying very seriously in VERY different ways.] I tried to attack him.

Then a spider in a lab coat, which was probably real and not a vision, started attacking by blasting blue streaks out of its arms, and some human guys started trying to take the bodies of the Irishmen away. Xander and Paladin Dad tried to attack them, but only one type of damage seemed to work on them. Seamus said "Prayer is overrated," and chose to attack instead, and rolled a Nat 1, very nearly injuring himself, while the (priest) DM told him "This is what you get for saying prayer is overrated!" I ran over to the lab coat spider and yelled dramatically, "Spiders can't do science!!" aaaaand immediately stabbed myself in the leg with my rapier because I rolled another Nat 1. At this point, Seamus yelled that we should retreat, so we all joined Hex in fleeing combat towards the manor, as in the background the Irish NPCs got picked up by giant fog hands.

I have 10 hit points. Our paladin has one heal left until we rest. And our cleric-rogue can't come to the next campaign session at all. If I die without ever getting to roll sneak attack damage I will be devastated.

[flythesail]

"Jyn and Cassian were exclusively platonic" arguments still happening in 2023 is so funny likeeeeee 😭

[electric-rabbits]

A lot can be said about the Doctor and Rogue's kiss, and if it is or isn't a first for the show, but there's no denying one thing: Russell T. Davies puts his money where his mouth is:

After years of insinuations, throw-away lines, kisses that conveniently only happen once one of the characters changes their gender (looking at you Missy. I love you I miss you but come on), and, especially, after all of the wasted potential of Yas and the Doctor, where both actresses were fully on board with a romance and the text seemed to support it but they didn't even get a kiss, my man Russell did it in, what, 4 episodes?

Congrats to Doctor Yaoi, you will always be famous

[cxpperhead]

Dark Earth Zodiac

The Underearth

The Underearth is a place of slow-shifting roots, the quietest and most constant life of the forest. Those who find themselves aligned with the Underearth are those who find their truest selves not in the eyes of another or the light of the sun, but in private acts of creation. They tend to be dutiful, capable, and thoughtful, whilst also often being slow to change, awkward, and anxious. While many pass the Underearth by without notice, those few who make it past topsoil and into the heart below are held dear. It is rare that someone can delve to the true center of those under this sign. The earth keeps its secrets close to its chest-- sometimes, so deep that it cannot find them when it does choose to look. The Underearth are devoted to their work, able to criticize and peek and prod just where it needs, but they have no such luck with probing the self. People under this sign can be enormously generous. Though less showy than some of the other signs, when the Underearth does choose to shine, they are like a clean cut gem, brilliant, sharp, and precious. They tend to favor gifts of their own making, paying close attention to what it is that delights those around them. They prefer to avoid being the center of attention themselves, however, and often do not know how to react to being shown the same care that they show to those they love.

Tagged by: @mirrordread (thank you!!! ♡) Tagging: @question-marked, @umbrellamedic and whoever would like to do it?

[grinchwrapsupreme]

going from a tiefling ranger tav to a dragonborn sorcerer durge feels like i've been blasted down to hard mode like where is my dark vision?? where is my speak to animals?? where is my armor proficiency?? where is my weapons proficiency?? hello??? larian are you there??

[bereft-of-frogs]

I had been toying with the idea of rewatching the Kenobi series because I’d always intended to (I long suspected it would be a better binge than an episodic release), came really close to starting it on Saturday - but I genuinely don’t think I can make it all the way through without completely losing my mind again that they crib an entire episode from Fallen Order and then never mention it.

And then they had the audacity to set Survivor at approximately the same time, so what now every time Vader’s offscreen I have to be like ‘oh is this when he’s on his little side quest to murder my favorite character’ like what did I do to deserve this

*I’m aware they’re just set in the same year and there is probably some confirmation of the timeline but I’m deep in Survivor avoidance mode so I will have to live with the uncertainty

actually, second thought, having Survivor take place after would add so much to the unintended humor of essentially copy-and-pasting Fallen Order (the unintended humor being the only saving grace of this creative decision) imagine Vader gets through the whole thing and when he’s back in his little sadness recovery pod he’s like ‘well that fucking sucked, and I’m down another Inquisitor due to a last hour turn back to the light, the last time this happened, oh yeah, some dumbass Jedi broke my fortress and dropped the ocean on me so this has happened twice...hang on, did I ever get revenge for that? You know, I don’t think I did...”

[nerendus]

Okay, fuck it. Rogue Traders intro post.

Alwena Von Valancius (Iconoclast)

My first Rogue Trader, and by default, the 'canon' Rogue Trader.

She is a self-described "recovering serial killer," having spent her years on the voidship she was born to hunting and killing her fellows to "harvest" their organs. She's extremely farmercore because the other games I use her in are all farming sims. The organs mainly go to her cousin, Mianno, who runs a crime business in the system she often visits. Where do the others go? Don't worry about it.

Alwena is a "sanctioned" psyker, AKA, she was born with psychic powers but did not want to go through the trouble of sanctioning so she called upon her cousin to help her forge a new identity. Hence why her in-game portrait looks nothing like her. Perks of having white hair means that no one can question why she doesn't look like her portrait. It's from the stress, guys. The ambiguous stress she never elaborates on. What did she have to do for her cousin in order to get the new identity? .......Don't worry about it.

Her journey towards redemption begins the moment the game starts up, because her controller got Kim Kitsuragi'd so hard by Abelard that she had to immediately leave her ideals of mass destruction and become a goody two shoes. Which is why she uses the madwoman voice despite being the most normal person in the room. She is constantly thinking about murder and wanting to inflict chaos upon the galaxy, but every word that comes out of her mouth is based around helping others and making others lives more tolerable. By the end of Act 2, she's been completely converted into a Good Person. She's still a major sadist, but it's definitely something.

Her morals are still very loose, but only in terms of bits. She will abandon all her ideals if she thinks it would be funny. She would have done so many numbers on TikTok....

She makes a terrible girlfriend. She meets someone new and immediately starts flirting with them and calling them the love of her life. The next day, she breaks up with them, and the entire voidship has to deal with her Emotions. Music that plays at the end of a film about a monk killing himself plays on the vox for a week while she cries and rants about her love life to anyone that will listen--even to the person she is currently trying to kill. If someone tries to break up with her, it elicits no strong reaction out of her. If anything, she'd just say "Well I didn't love you anyway." And it would most certainly be the truth.

Heinrix and Jae are both of her exes. Heinrix didn't last two days before she broke up with him. Jae lasted two years, but that was mainly because she had access to a lot of Jae's "friends" to share with. She does have a real love--but it's for Pasqal and while in my heart of hearts AdMechfucking is real and possible, she never gets to marry her favourite coghead. :(

After the end of the game, she marries a noble from the Winterscale house that she had recently destablised by killing their leader in an attempt to reunite the unstable house under her rule. Roughly twenty years after the game, she is murdered in her sleep--an axe wound to her skull. Many believe she was killed by her power-hungry son who ended up taking her place as Rogue Trader, while others believe that it was all a fabrication and that she is still alive somewhere. Probably being a genuine farmer now.

In the Iconoclast society she created after her death, she becomes canonized as a saint--but only for the territory owned by the Von Valancius dynasty. She is often depicted with her prosthetic arm cradling her opposite hand engulfed in flames at her chest, blood running down her face from the wound, and wearing the simple nightgown she was murdered in. Other territories that align their ideals with the authoritarian Empire view her as a heretic and frequently try to purge those possessing talismans in her image.

Mianno Von Valancius (Heretic)

I have...significantly less information on Mianno since I have not done a complete heretical playthrough.

She is a crime boss in control of an entire system as well as some solitary planets across the galaxy. However despite this lofty status, she acts more like an underpaid intern instead of a terrifyingly powerful crime lord. She's in a constant state of staring dead eyed in front of her and speaks in an extremely monotone and exhausted voice. I do not think she has slept in her forty years of being alive.

Mianno had a...shaky relationship with Theodora. Her aunt occasionally came to her when she was in need of illegal goods, but she has a bad case of insulting everyone who tries to make conversation with her, and more than one interaction with the two has resulted in bloody threats.

The burn across her face marks her first exchange with the Chaos Gods. I have absolutely no idea what occurred, she won't tell me, but the moment they offered her violence, she just deadpanned "okay" and has been working on the side of Chaos ever since. All of the dialogue choices that involve her laughing, it's important for you to know that she is saying each individual "ha" with absolutely no emotion whatsoever.

Her relationship with her cousin Alwena is definitely shady. Suffice to say, they are not beating the cousinfucking allegations. Their relationship is basically this image:

With Mianno being Rogue Trader, Alwena essentially serves as her lap warmer. No one has ever seen them kiss...but the energy they exude is definitely not familial love. With Alwena as Rogue Trader, nothing major changes with Mianno. She continues being a crime boss and having no strong emotions towards anything around her.

In terms of her canon love....it's no one. She is physically emotionally mentally incapable of being in love with another person. She does fuck with Marazhai, but that's only so she can imagine all of the lower deck as the infuriating employees she had to deal with as a crime lord. She does not think about Marazhai outside of murder.

I haven't completed the heretic run, so I don't know what that one's ending looks like. But suffice to say, whenever her death comes, she greets it without much emotion and a simple "Okay."