#vanguard is the way to be

[revvethasmythh]

I think it's inevitable that a certain group of people will take Orym's statement about not being able to put down the lens he see the world through as further proof that his perspective is subjective and therefore untrustworthy as it applies to the Vanguard, but imo it serves as a stronger indictment toward those who are able to view the Vanguard as anything other than awful and predatory and murderous. Other people have the luxury of being able to see this through another lens if they so want to--Orym cannot. Because once a group like this has murdered your family, for the sake of a practice run no less, a test, it is impossible to view the situation in any other way. He is walking proof of the harm that the Vanguard does. His loved ones have been deemed "necessary collateral damage." His lens is not one that can or should be set aside in the assessment of the Vanguard, because if they are willing to commit such heinous crimes and excuse them as necessary collateral for ends that are so uncertain, then they are fundamentally not an organization that can be reasoned with or even should be sympathized with

[liorlen]

started watching the reboot and got nostalgic :)

[kaiserouo]

this WILL become a competition among hunters

[utilitycaster]

@thmtrnfrvns replied to your post “ok so I was wrong about The Emissary and the...”:

didn't matt say that if you popped the bubbles those people turned to dust? Like the bubbles are the only thing preserving them? I might be totally wrong but I keep seeing this question being asked so I'm confused

​He hasn't, and I actually want to cover this. The lore has thus far been noncommittal, both from an out of world perspective (ie, the EGTW, for which this serves as a potential plot hook should people wish to explore it) and in-world (ie, in the canon of Exandria from the main campaigns and other canonical works such as The Nine Eyes of Lucien). We don't know if it's possible; we also very much don't know that it's impossible.

Which is what I want to talk about, because it's weird to me that this idea spread so much within the fandom - that the bubbles are an outright lost cause. I mentioned it before, but the argument the gods should be destroyed (even from behind the Divine Gate) in some sort of retribution for Aeor barely holds up as is; it certainly won't bring back Aeor, and the Divine Gate serves to hold back the gods already so destroying it only in order to kill them is purely an act of vengeance. But it really falls apart if there could be survivors of Aeor.

It's very easy to hold yourself up as the champion for people who cannot speak. They can't contradict you; you can say their motivations and desires are whatever you want. This is something explored in modern political thought, both in the many critiques of the anti-abortion movement (fetuses are fundamentally agency-less things) and in, for example, Dara Horn's People Love Dead Jews. Obviously this is true for any fictional character - none of them can respond to their advocates directly - but especially one who can't even in canon speak on their own behalf. If you say that Ashton would be on Ludinus's side, Ashton might, within the narrative, prove you wrong; but if you say the Aeorians would be, well, who knows. They're dead. Unless they're not. Bringing back anyone from the stasis bubbles fucks over that argument twice: now there are survivors, and those survivors can speak. (Worth noting that the two Aeormatons we've seen in C3 directly have not been in Ludinus's favor, and that his generals at least had no vested interest in sparing the Aeormaton they knew about; this isn't about the people of Aeor or what was lost, it's about pointing at corpses and saying they'd have your back if only they weren't dead.)

This a pattern for the people making arguments in Ludinus's favor. They invoke the titans (dead long before the narrative, and the person who killed the last two of them was Laerryn Coramar-Seelie, whom they don't seem to condemn for it, and they never really talk about what life for the titans must have been. It's not about the titans). They invoke FCG (dead, and they didn't really like them much when they were alive because of, you know, the whole faith in a deity thing, but now that he's dead they can pretend he's a mouthpiece for them. It's not about FCG, or Aeormatons, or Aeor.) They tried invoking the characters who were vaguely critical of the gods in the past but didn't have the lore to back it up and those characters (Keyleth, Essek, Percy) have all sided very clearly with the Accord, so now they stick only to people who can't weigh in and disprove the point. They make up hypotheticals about Bor'Dor and Petrov, the former of which is, again, dead, and the latter of which is a minor NPC with but a slim chance of appearing again whether he lives or dies and both of whom are equally representative of how the Vanguard preys on disaffected young people and chews them up and destroys them while telling them it's for the best, and ignore the many, many living who have been irrevocably harmed by the Vanguard.

It might end up being true that the stasis bubbles are a dead end, and I think it's pretty likely they won't get explored in-game, but if someone says they're absolutely a dead end - especially when Ludinus is going to invoke the fall of Aeor - it's worth exploring why they're saying that. Are they just misinformed (in which case you should still examine their argument, for, you know, not knowing the source material sufficiently well to craft accurate premises from which to argue)? Or would even acknowledging the possibility that they're not a lost cause destroy their argument?

[khainovo]

twitter trend w/ aichi

[astralleywright]

i will say, the switch around from people claiming that the backlash against ashton was bc he failed to represent the anti-authoritarian, politically leftist ideology of many punks to those same people turning on ashton for expressing the anti-authoritarian, politically leftist ideology of many punks is so funny

[hauntilily]

kaiai sketch page

[pinkieroy]

I was looking for a different essay and found this one instead, and it feels relevant right now (the whole thing here)

[knightofspades]

Happy Birthday, Kyou

he is such a character

[echosong971]

she wanted snuggles

[revvethasmythh]

The research notes on distilling dunamancy found in Brenattos apothecary are so interesting actually. It’s not outright stated who’s notes they are, but with a retrospective lens it’s quite clear that they’re Ludinus’. There are fragments there about his musings on some of Trent’s protégées showing proficiency with early dunamancy, that he is planning to incorporate it into his own skill sets to aid him in his pursuits, and he records how it seems the Kryn have been quote unquote “learning to bend and break the threads of destiny for hundreds of years. Be this truth, I cannot imagine the Raven Queen looks down upon them favorably either, though the thought brings a laugh to my lips.”

[stormbluestories]

masanori is the funniest possible addition to the divinez cast because it means all the other fated one holders are legally obligated to put up with him

[utilitycaster]

You know what's interesting to me? For all people keep claiming at every juncture that perhaps Bells Hells will come around on the gods and see the harm they do (which, as discussed extensively, is, half the time, simply not intervening) not only have they never done so, but also they never quite cross the line into saying the party should join the Ruby Vanguard or aid them - and indeed, they defend against it - so what does this achieve? It feels like they're asking for a story in which the party stands idly by, which isn't much of a story nor, if I may connect this briefly to the real world, a political stance anyone should be proud of.

That's honestly the frustration with the gods and the "what if the Vanguard has a point" conversations in-game. What do we do then? Do we allow the organization that will murder anyone for pretty much any reason that loosely ties into their goals run rampant? The group that (perhaps unwittingly, but then again, Otohan's blades had that poison) disrupted magic world-wide, and caused people who had the misfortune to live at nexus points to be teleported (most, as commoners, without means of return). While also fomenting worldwide unrest?

Those were the arguments before the trip to Ruidus; with the reveal of the Vanguard's goals to invade Exandria, the situation becomes even more dire. Do you let the Imperium take over the planet?

And do the arguments against the gods even hold up? If Ludinus is so angry at them for the Calamity, what does it say that he destroyed Western Wildemount's first post-Calamity society for entirely selfish means? (What does it say about the validity of vengeance as a motivator?) What does it say that Laudna told Imogen she could always just live in a cottage quietly without issue before the solstice even happened? (Would this still be true if the Imperium controls the world?) What does it say that when faced with a furious, grieving party and the daughter she keeps telling herself was her reason for all of this, Liliana can't provide an answer to the question of what the gods have done other than that their followers will retaliate...for, you know, the Vanguard's endless list of murders. (That is how the Vanguard and Imperium tend to think, huh? "How dare your face get in the way of my boot; how dare you hit me back when I strike you.") She can't even provide a positive answer - why is Predathos better - other than "I feel it", even though Imogen and Fearne know firsthand that Predathos can provide artificial feelings of elation. Given all the harm Ludinus has done in pursuit, why isn't the conclusion "the gods should have crashed Aeor in such a way that the tech was unrecoverable?"

Even as early as the first real discussion on what the party should do, the fandom always stopped short of saying "no, Imogen's right, they should join up with the people who killed half the party," it was always "no, she didn't really mean it, she just was trying to connect with her mother." Well, she's connected with her mother, and at this point the party doesn't even care about the gods particularly (their only divinely-connected party member having died to prevent the Vanguard from killing all of them). So they will stop the Vanguard; as Ashton says, the means are unforgiveable. As Laudna says, it's not safe to bet on Predathos's apathy. As Imogen says, she's done running; the voice that she used to think of as a lifeline belongs to someone she doesn't trust. So I guess my question is: if they're stopping the people who are trying to kill the gods (and defense of the gods isn't remotely their personal motivation)...do you think the next phase of the campaign is Bells Hells personally killing the gods? Reconstructing the Aeor tech and hoping none of their allies notice? How does this end? Does your ideology ever get enacted? Or is this entirely moot and pointless and the story ends with Bells Hells saying "well, I'm really glad we stopped the people who [insert list of Vanguard atrocities from above]; none of us follow the gods or plan to, but honestly, the status quo we return to is preferable to whatever nightmare Ludinus had concocted in his violent quest for power and revenge"?

[khainovo]

day 2 // favourite team

they are all drunk and having fun :)

day 3 and day 4 are going to be posted together because tomorrow is the heaviest day of our midterms wish me luck besties

[pixie-lated]

I understand and really enjoy the characters debating it in-world, but every Critical Role post about how maybe the gods of Exandria should be hunted for sport because, after all, who elected them deities, is just... such a wild take on divinity as a concept and on Exandria in particular.

From what we understand of The Founding, the shapes the gods take and the edges of their domains are largely defined by the consensus of the faithful, so it's not like they handed down a bunch of prescriptive commandments and laws. The gods have followers and churches because people did that, just like the Traveler could be Jester's "deity" when he objectively wasn't a god because Jester wanted it to be that way. Divine Intervention is a player ability, and pretty much the only means by which the gods directly interfere on our side of the Divine Gate.

And man do I have a lot of thoughts about the Divine Gate and the notion that the Prime Deities even could oppress people through it. The closest examples we have to anything remotely like that are Vax giving himself over to the Raven Queen (something which he initiated without any incitement on her part) and Kash's situation with Vesh (not actually a god and not behind the Divine Gate). Sure, they communicate through it with those willing to hear them, and it seems like they act in the world through their followers, but, with how Matt plays it, it's usually hard to distinguish actual word-of-god deific intent from the characters' interpretation of their will.

As far as the known cosmology and history of Exandria goes, Ludinus lacks any real basis for his description of faith as the gods "farming" mortals as a resource. He has all the credibility of a teenager so up his own ass about how cool and smart he is that he treats his parents like shit and feels vindicated and oppressed when they tell him to stop. His one solid, valid criticism is that because the Betrayer Gods done did a Betrayal, there was a massive cosmic war with a catastrophic death toll. To which the Prime Deities responded by baby-gating themselves and their siblings for the safety of the mortal world.

Ludinus Da'leth is a little bitch who never got over that time in his twenties when his uncle slapped him for calling his mom 'a waste of a brain' and it shows.