#why are all the npcs so good

[wardensantoineandevka]

[blows a kiss out to sea] for the Mighty Nein pirates arc

[thexgrayxlady]

Yeah, Rolan absolutely gets Most Useful Non-Party Ally. He put Mage Armor on Gale when I forgot. He stayed a reasonable distance from the main melee. He thunderwaved his shitty mentor and several elementals off a balcony, killing several and softening the others up.

[kaseyskat]

hi it's nyx here once again to talk about lark vs henry and what that meant for sparrow because i swear every episode that shows even a Little bit of sparrow's actual personality is controversial.

"nyx what do you mean by this" well it's a very blatant fact that sparrow does not get much nuance in the fandom: this is especially prevalent when examining hero's conversation with normal where she explicitly calls out lark and rebecca alongside sparrow and yet sparrow is solely blamed. because of this, every time we do see sparrow be his genuine self in the show - from talking to scary and shielding her from violence to taking charge of grant and lark and wanting to help the teens to the most recent episode's case of him not believing in animal captivity - i've noticed people quickly jumping on him for being hypocritical but nobody asking why he would be hypocritical, or why he's made choices that clearly do not reflect his actual beliefs.

so let's talk about that, shall we?

i know i've talked about this before but it bears repeating: sparrow is complacent. he has consistently made decisions that go against his own beliefs, bottling up his actual thoughts on the matter in order to "keep the peace". we know this, this is a canon fact, he said as much about lark and rebecca's affair!

why does he do this? well to me, what makes the most logical sense is that this stems all the way to lark and henry's conflict. if the rogue card is only predicting anger and not enforcing it, that means there is more to lark's anger than just what happened with walter. part of that is his fear of being unable to protect the people he cares about, being helpless in situations where he could've done something, yes, but i do believe there's another root cause to his anger, one that would fuel him for decades: sparrow.

...well, more specifically, how henry changed sparrow.

we know that lark wasn't the happiest about the lovewolf split. after the lord of chaos arc, sparrow starts very slowly developing a separate personality, enough so that he and lark aren't necessarily the same kid, one unit, the same person twice. sparrow tried to teach lark his new philosophy, it was ultimately rejected. lark doesn't understand it! but he loves sparrow regardless. that disappointment, that resentment of how sparrow had changed... it goes back to henry, to henry giving sparrow that speech and reinforcing those beliefs!

we also know that originally, sparrow didn't want to pick a side. he wanted them both to get along! to reconcile! and we know that lark didn't tell him about what he saw on the throne, which has me believing that there were, perhaps, other things that lark didn't tell sparrow in crucial moments: such as his decision to release the doodler, since we really don't know if sparrow knew. sparrow would've been happy to reconcile the two, and it makes sense if this was something he didn't know but something that shakes his perspective: aka, what happens if lark doesn't confide in him. to get lark back on his side, he has to be on lark's side irrevocably, which means abandoning his peacekeeping and mediation to choose lark wholeheartedly.

so by the time the ep23 flashback happens... sparrow has lost that bit of personality he had started to form in s1. he's lark's other half again, helping him with plans, sharing his ideas. he has... you could say, lost his confidence in being a lovewolf, because despite his best efforts, it only brought more strife to his family and he doesn't want to lose lark. we know this! he doesn't want to lose lark!

and then, they find out the prophecy, that one of the twins will have a kid who will save the world. think about everything we know about lark, how stubbornly persistent he was on fixing things Himself since he puts the weight of the world on his shoulders alone. lark doesn't blame sparrow or henry, he only blames himself. would he jump at having a family to fix his mistakes? no.

but sparrow would.

so sparrow takes that burden from him. sparrow has hero when he is twenty, and lark gets to be the cool uncle who helps around the house and hero blames both twins equally so we know they did this together. sparrow doesn't want to lose lark again, he doesn't want to be himself, he adapts to rebecca's views because it's easier than admitting that maybe he shares some of the same- definitely makes him marrying a vegan centrist make sense, right? he can use rebecca as a scapegoat and it Works. his own personality gets shafted in favor of being the same man twice with lark, he bottles everything up, he disapproves but never says as much.

and he fucked up with hero. clearly, he knows that. hero has a regular life now at a private school with a job and an internship and she's a massive dweeb and i don't think any one of you could look me in the eye and say that lark approved that. it was sparrow's decision! and we know what lark thinks about sparrow's parenting: i need every one of yall who truly believes that lark would be a better father to normal to go and relisten to normal's introduction scene in ep1 and then to the end of ep24 again where lark explicitly tells normal that being the mascot is a waste of his time when he could be learning "actually useful" skills (like hunting and survival- and yall still think sparrow was the one having hero kill deer?) and that he's too soft-hearted and naive and that is sparrow's fault for being too nice. normal would not be the same kid if lark was raising him and that is NOT a good thing lmao

all of this to say. i am so tired of people understanding lark's nuance and understanding grant's nuance and understanding the s1 dads and their nuance and how their trauma fucked up their relationships with their kids and yet sparrow is the one yall bash every other week repeatedly without ever wondering like. huh. maybe it is strange that his actions now don't hold up against his actions in the past. maybe there's something else going on that is consistent with literally every other aspect of his character. it is so tiring to go into his tag and see the same things over and over and over again repeated on loop every time we see sparrow's actual personality slip out beyond him perpetuating the "same man twice" persona. he's nuanced! they're all nuanced! and that's a good thing!

sparrow's biggest issues are his complacency, the way he upholds decisions that might not really be the best decisions because it's easier. his love for lark and his desire to fix things clouds his judgement and yeah, that means he goes against his own morals frequently; or at least, he did. so far in the season though, with how he's treated normal being in the line of fire and getting into his mess, he's definitely already realized this and is putting in the work to ensure that normal doesn't go through what hero did- something that lark is not doing. sparrow's also been the best towards the other teens consistently, the most willing to listen and change his perspective (as demonstrated again in ep24- really i just think people need to relisten to ep24!) and he's definitely not the best dad but that can be said not just about all the kiddads but also about literally every dad in this podcast, because that's what this podcast is about. thank you for reading and i hope i don't have to make this post again in a few weeks <3

[bad-as-me]

every time i make or share a miquellla analysis post i need you to imagine me pacing frantically around a room like a cat at 3am

[kittykatinabag]

Mark my words, the next country/area we're getting in Infinity Nikki is Cicia.

[mechahero]

@asurastro asked- “Character Setting!” send me “character setting!” to learn about my muse’s home! (accepting!)

There's a lot more of the city than one would think! Instead of expanding outwards though, it expands downwards. Given that there's at least three levels of the city, it kind of makes sense? However the origin for the downwards level is kind of sweet. The downwards level is home to Steve. Elevator Steve if you want to be fancy about it.

The hollowed out ground underneath at the time was the only place where he could fit, seeing as he's a massive eldritch squid from outer space and understandably, dealing with a Ridley issue isn't fun. (I.e., he's too got damb big to fit.) Of course, though, having him just live in dirt while everyone else gets to live in a nice city seemed rude, no matter how cool Steve was with it.

So it lead to the creation of the downstairs portion of the city. It's large and roomy enough for Steve to fit in plus so much more and is all grey stone and chilled, which makes sense given it's underground and well.. stone. It's not just Steve that lives there though as it's also home to monsters that simply can't be out during the day or have a house topside without running the risk of accidentally getting cooked to death via sunlight peeking through the curtains.

It's not all housing though as the downstairs section is also home to just as many places to eat and shop as well as another open-air market!

[supernovaae]

You can’t be serious

[dullahandyke]

and like sidenote if i can make a post with a target audience of zero. i feel like fhsy was to d20 what aa3 was to ace attorney but aa3 pulled it off better for reasons i cannot explain

[boneskullravenriver]

Me looking at the art in the red rising comics:

[icewindandboringhorror]

Hrmm... put together a roommates quiz finally after years of thinking it would be an interesting idea lol.. Though obviously not meant to be taken super seriously, I just like thinking about this aspect of personality compatibility. Like yeah, maybe you could get along with someone just chatting with them, but living together is such a different thing. .. curiouse...

[candycryptids]

“Why choose me, who does not even offer up prayer in your name, to be your Champion? Surely you could pick another, anyone else, surely, there is someone better suited to your trials than I,”

Felt inspired after seeing This Artwork and thoroughly toasted my brains doing posing ;w; lighting, my nemesis…

[huni-bii]

I think I messed up guys :)

[bokujou-monogatari]

I answered this in an ask I got before but my top 5 favorite games are

1. Tree of Tranquility

2. Story of Seasons (3DS)

3. Save the Homeland

4. Story of Seasons Trio of Towns

5. Animal Parade

[voidsentprinces]

People ship with Aymeric. Which is a problem because OTHER people also ship with them and have decided to make it their sole miserable mission in life to make others so miserable they STOP shipping with Aymeric. From stray posts I see after the fact here and there its either because Aymeric is somehow considered the "Basic Bitch" option which like, so what? Get a fucking life. People like pretty elf boys, because Aymeric is THEIRS ONLY THEY AREN'T ALLOWED TO SHIP WITH THEM DONT YOU KNOW THEY HAVE NINETEEN KIDS AND A TV SPECIAL PLANNED!?! HOW DARE YOU RUIN THEIR RELATIONSHIP, HE IS TAKEN levels of absolute batshittery, or others are just miserable so they gotta bully you off Aymeric by harassing you ceaselessly.

Like...I am not DEEP into shipping dramas so I only occasionally see stray "Oh, you ship with Zenos? You must be the worst person in the world" level posts here and there. But from my own tiny corner of the internet, even I have seen posts about people being actively harassed off of shipping with Aymeric and it is almost always AYMERIC. I read a post back a while that during Heavensward the community were just not entirely "down" with shipping with NPCs in general so back lash over shipping with anyone was prevelant which doesn't make it any better but it was more so because, aforementioned Aymeric, pretty boy elf. I cannot say I am an official word on the matter, but that is just what I've read here and there. So...

[balconyswirls]

dragon republic is making me want to pull my hair out

[robotiv]

sims 4 rly hurt my feelings today !!!!! rambling explanation in the tags