#there are other things

[notebooks-and-laptops]

in no way i mean to offend you but. my friend. your version of sebastian is just. i mean down to the last bit it's just leliana.

Hello! I'm actually glad you sent this because I've been thinking about their differences and similarities and would love the chance to talk about it.

So, heres the thing. I feel like its easy to model a Better Sebastian off Leliana. They are both people with awful pasts, who enjoy violence and try to rationalize it, and who find comfort in their faith. Also, I think it's easy to type cast a character as "religious" rather than exploring the personal links that person has to their faith and how it may differ from others.

But ultimately, my better version of Seb that lives in my head? He's still pretty chantry conservative compared to Leliana. And the violence thing is s l I g h t l y different. Leliana is a lot of things but I wouldn't say her main motivation is often revenge, whereas Sebs defo is.

1. Theology

Leliana, you'll recall has some WILD opinions about the maker. Her opinions remind me a little of Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth century anchoress who hints at universalisation, believes god spoke to her directly, and had intense views about the love of God (Leliana and Julian is a seperate post but god I'd love to chat about it someday). Leliana believes:

Members of the chantry should have sexual and romantic relationships including the Divine. These relationships are not only morally correct, they are gifts from the Maker and divine in themselves

God did not abandon creation but instead is in creation, everywhere

God can actively talk to individuals as God did to Leliana, usually in visions. He uses this to shape the world

Meanwhile, Sebastian is waaaaay more conservative. Like. St Anselm sorta vibes of the poor man running into the ditch and getting punished by God for it vibes. I mean. Think of all the changes Leliana makes if she becomes divine, even to scripture itself. Do you think Sebastian would uphold any of that?

And that's not necessarily a bad thing! I want Sebastian to think about what it means to be holy, but I don't think he should abandon basic chantry principles because he IS a conservative character. He's a member of the royal family! He has a lot to gain by sticking to tradition and will have been raised to do so.

So yeah, Seb should realise Anders and many others do more for the poor than the chantry. But also he should maintain basic principles of faith such as the maker has abandoned his children, people need to do penance before the maker to atone for their sins.

I mean, the REASON Seb is the way he is is that he thinks that a lot of what he wants/desires is sinful and that he should be punished for that. He's got the Catholic guilt that Leliana couldn't even dream of having.

Also I want Seb to be celebate for the right reasons (he thinks it's what the maker wants him to do rather than something he has to do to stay in the chantry) but that doesn't mean I don't want him to think that the maker wants him to do that. THE MAKER WANTS HIM TO DO THAT. It's how he remains close to the maker.

Basically, Sebs Theology aligns more with Cassandra than it EVER could with Leliana

Why did they turn to religion?

Leliana may have been a bad person before, but she hid in Lothering Chantry because she was already devout and religious. She had suffered tremendously, been tortured and her faith had steadied her through that.

Sebastian Vael? He's a prince and he was basically forced into this. He was an unruly third son so they bonked him in the chantry to try and make him well behaved.

And that's SUCH a difference between the two? Sebastian will ALWAYS feel that struggle between who he was and who is he now, and the fact that he was cohersed into the chantry even if he approves of it now. Leliana wasn't cohersed into anything and found a way to reconcile both her love of violence and her job with the chantry. Speaking of...

What is their violence used for?

Also. Another thing is. Seb doesn't use violence FOR the chantry. The closest he comes is invading Kirkwall for harbouring Anders, but again, that's more personal revenge than violence for the chantry itself to further the chantrys aims. Sebastian instead draws this VERY neat line between violence which is "more fun than the chantry" and the chantry itself which is a life of prayer and devotion.

For Leliana, by Inquisition, she is using violence FOR the chantry. Leliana believes that she is skilled at violence and enjoys using it, but it's not about revenge narratives for her, it's about furthering the cause that she deems right (which is why imo hardened divine Leliana is the most dangerous, because like. Hmm. That is a woman who could VERY easily start a crusade and feel it was justified). While her killing Marjolenne if you go down that route is revenge, it's also...practical? Lelianas violence is strategic, it's thought out, it's done for specific aims and reasons. Marjolenne could VERY easily become a threat again and stop Leliana entering Orlesian society once more. Her death frees Leliana in a very practical way. And most of Lelianas other violence we see in inquisition, the books or DA2 just. Isn't for revenge at all.

What motivates their violence?

For Leliana I think it comes down to the fact that she's good at it, that it's fun, and that it gets her where she needs to be. It's both entertainment and practical. She uses it FOR other people and herself, to further the aims of her in-group be it the chantry or her lover or the inquisition. Violence is mediated before it's enacted and it's enacted to get the correct outcome.

Violence for Leliana is also not really...personal? She can kill and hurt with such coldness and detachment as she shows throughout inquisition. She can even do so with old friends.

For Sebastian, violence is intrinsically linked to revenge and so is ALWAYS personal. Revenge is at the core of Sebastian's character. Every act reminds us of that. Leliana is, in her way, merciful particularly softened and I think that's her natural inclination. Seb? He's revenge driven. He can't see Mercy without a strong religious hand to make him. Kill those who hurt you and the ones you care for is basically his motto. He doesn't know how to exist outside of this paradigm of revenge and shows he hasn't learnt by the end based on his decision to invade Kirkwall because Hawke didn't kill Anders. And he doesn't ever really think about the outcome of these things? Like. Annexing Kirkwall?? Seriously?? That's gonna have huge political implications but Sebastian can't care because Elthina is dead and that's PERSONAL.

So yeah. Big picture Leliana vs. personal small picture Seb in terms of how they operate with violence.

How well do they know themselves?

I think Leliana is VERY honest with herself and very self reflective. Even in inquisition when she "nearly lost herself" she still thinks hard about how to get what she wants. She KNOWS she's an instrument of violence and she knows she's good at it and is going to use it self conciously to further the inquisitions aims. Otherwise she wouldn't be as good as she is at it! She clocks exactly why she might have made a mistake and if her emotions got involved. ("I was being sentimental" about pulling back her scouts)

Sebastian is deceptive. He's deceptive from himself. He wants to be the good guy and he pretends he is, but he's actually a shadow of revenge sneaking about. When he wants something he tries to justify it over and over even if it isn't logical to the rest of his belief system because hes the good chantry boy and he needs people to believe that because HE needs to believe it because otherwise he's a bad person and he wants to be good SO bad.

Leliana is okay being religiously a bit of a weird one and so doesn't need to conform to some ideal standard. Hell she LIKES being seen as a bit odd as the gauntlet for the sacred ashes reveals. She likes being unique. Seb doesn't want to be unique he wants to be the perfect religious choir boy....he just also wants all this other stuff that's counter to that so he has to be self deceptive about it.

To conclude

In my head, Seb and Leliana are distinctly different characters. They may have some surface level similarity and they are arguably two of the most overtly religious companions in the games, but Seb is personal, vengeance driven and conservative and Leliana sees the bigger picture, is self conscious and very liberal in her theological thinking.

[delicatebluebirdruins]

I like Shannon but I hate her setting up the camera in the den. I hate it. I hate her using it.

I hate Maddy not really being allowed to be angry about it for long afterwards

[crazywolf828]

God I really do miss writing fics... The worst part is the reason I'm not writing is literally because I'm going outside 😭

[captainobviois]

Training my parents to be funnier

[koobiie]

shoutout to everyone who wants to infodump but cant string together coherent thoughts to form sentences and instead just look at you like this

[some-pers0n]

I hate how people will look at popular indie artists who had one or two songs go viral on TikTok and start making fun of anybody who listens to them. "Oh you listen to Lemon Demon, Will Wood, Jack Stauber, Glass Animals, and Mother Mother? Tsk, don't you know that is stupid TikTok neurodivergent white transmasc preteen music? It's so mid and bad you should listen to real music–" you are a pit of misery

[chiimeramanticore]

it's got solitaire btw. if you even care

[icewindandboringhorror]

(also feel free in the tags to clarify Why you made the choice you made!! :0c)

[swan2swan]

Whoever conceived and animated this moment, I hope they're doing well and thriving. This is S-rank romance stuff here.

[the-moon-loves-the-sea]

Shared here today by Matthew Boroson on Facebook. (ETA: Gaining inspiration from other authors is great. Lifting passages and avoiding giving credit isn’t.)

Tanith Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel, for the second book of the Flat Earth series. She died in 2015. You can buy Tales From the Flat Earth here and here .

[keirahknightley]

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

🎬 Peter Jackson

+ IMDb trivia (FotR trivia)

[doubleddenden]

In Legends Arceus, you had to fight for your life as Pokemon tried to kill you in a mostly untamed wilderness, mimicking the real life conditions of pre colonized Hokkaido

In Legends ZA, if you go out after dark, the French will mug you, mimicking the real life conditions of modern Paris

[riddlemearose]

There were a couple of things for me.

The first was realising the plot, especially the opening tutorial area, was a copy-paste from BOTW. Ghost King, area secluded from the rest of the map where you have to complete four shrines to leave, etc etc. It didn't have any of the importance that I felt the Great Plateau did. Hearing Zelda's voice, watching the Calamity awaken and envelop the castle, and finally having Rhoam himself be the one to ask you to save Zelda and the rest of the Kingdom hit hard, and I didn't get any of that w/ Rauru and the sky islands.

The next thing was the loss of the Sheikah tech like everywhere - and finding out that the devs were like "yeah it just vanished". Umm what? The Sheikah and the ancient technology is one of the two cores of BOTW's whole narrative, with the other core being nature. Number 1 how do you just strip that away, especially when it's so key to Hyrule's history? And number 2, what's replaced the Sheikah tech then? The answer is nothing. The Zonai were introduced to be a replacement, but the writers never went in depth with anything about the Zonai. They lived, they died, we get to use their stuff for free.

The Secret Stones. Wtf is up with them? It feels weird that Ganondorf is causing the regional phenomena to stop people from finding the Stones or something, when literally no one knows wtf a Secret Stone is, nor would be able to or have any reason to go access the temples where they're kept. Ganondorf causing the regional phenomena is the direct reason anyone gets a Secret Stone. If he didn't do anything (like he does w/ the rest of the plot), then Link wouldn't have a single Sage?????

The biggest thing for me is the plot. For an open-world game, TOTK has an extremely linear and extremely shallow storyline. The thing about BOTW is it literally doesn't matter what order you do anything in; the story is the same and, better yet, it's wholly unaffected by your choices (in a good way obviously).

Totk does not have that. For example the devs don't want you to get the Master Sword before you find all the other Dragon Tears, Mineru and clear the Great Deku Tree, despite giving you the technology to get to the Light Dragon.

So if your story is reliant on people following it in a linear way otherwise they either get massive spoilers about important plot points, then it shouldn't be in an open-world game.

And finally Ganondorf. Oh my god, Ganondorf. This might get catch some shit but I dunno how they managed to make him more bland. His entire character is literally summarised perfectly by Yunobo in-game as "we don't know anything about the Demon King other than the fact that he's bad news and super strong".

Writers that is your main antagonist! We should know stuff about him? We should know his motivations and they should be more complex than "wants to destroy everything bc Power"?? What are you doing???

I was done w/ the game by the time I got to Ganondorf. Walked into the boss fight w/ several rocket shields, at least two 5-shot Lynel Bows and about 800 bomb flowers from exploring the depths to hide from the plot. Whole thing was over Very Quickly.

To summarise, here are my thoughts on TOTK Cons: the entire plot Pros: Glide Armour

wont have time to work on anything for a few days probably, so uh, since i love reading comments/tags of people sharing their experiences- as part of the preparation for the totk rant script i got another question to ask :3

if you dont like tears of the kingdom, was there a moment that "broke" you, as in, the moment you knew this game is worse than you thought/hoped, and if so what was it?

personally, while i was suspicious after seeing its last trailer, i told myself its just me again and i kept up my hopes for a long time into my playthrough- its hard to point to a specific point since it was a growing feeling of something being off, things didnt make sense and i ever so more wondered how they would pull this all together (they didnt)- i do think the moment i stopped being in denial about it was when i found the shrine of life, the beginning of botw, and found .. nothing, a dingy cave practically licked clean of any traces of the shiekah tech like it never existed, instead of the medical bed a pathetic puddle of water that healed you, no one caring at all, like it actually never happened- i felt like the game pointed and laughed at me for caring about botw, pretty sure i was struggeling to keep it together on stream bc it forced me to realize this game truly is everything i hoped it wouldnt be, even if that sounds a little weird, at that time zelda and especially botw was so much more important to me, a passion for the franchise this game really did end up killing.

[marlynnofmany]

If that doesn't have potential for some fairytale nonsense, I don't know what does.

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

It's always so weird to come down from the biology heavens to see what the average person believes about animals, plants, ecosystems, just the world around them. I don't even mean things that one simply doesn't know because they've never been told or things that are confusing, I'm talking about people who genuinely do not see insects as animals. What are you saying. Every time I see a crawling or fluttering little guy I know that little guy has motivations and drive to fulfill those motivations. There are gears turning in their head! They are perceiving this world and they are drawing conclusions, they are conscious. And yet it's still a whole thing if various bugs of the world feel pain or if they are simply Instinct Machines that are Not Truly Aware of Anything At All????? Help!!!!!! How can you look at a little guy and think he is just the macroscopic animal version of a virus