The way some of yall mischaracterize Ratio as being stoic in chill when in reality he is 24/7 resisting the urge to rip everyone around him a new one is crazy to me like. He cares so much, so much. It’s unhealthy, he loses the idgaf war every time because Ratio is the least nonchalant person ever like
He was this close to breaking character and throttling Sunday like you cannot tell me he wasn’t planning a murder in this scene. Ratio straight up calls Sunday a crazy bitch but everyone brushed it aside 😭
Honestly his entire conversation with Screwllum is just him tweaking, watch it on YouTube the VAs performance is amazing, you can here just how much He Cares
Genuinely, Aventurine is way better at concealing his true feelings that Ratio. Ratio may be acting for the sake of the plan but the way he truly feels about anything he’s doing always seeps through, it’s why he apologizes to Aventurine in 2.0 in their staged argument scene. It’s why he is as mean to Sunday as he can be. It’s why him pretending that he “hates” Aventurine makes him act so silly. Ratio can’t fully commit to the bit, he can’t force himself to not care or to be someone he isn’t, because fundamentally Ratio CARES and that is something he is incapable of hiding, alabaster bust or not.
The problem is that him expressing his care is often done in a rude and/or blunt manner which people tend to interpret as stoicism or apathy when it’s anything but. Ratio’s vial that he gives to Aventurine is short, sweet and gets straight to the point, because that’s the easiest way for Ratio to express his emotions, even if it’s often detrimental for him and anyone else around him. However Aventurine understands him quite well, and knows that although brief, Ratio telling him to “stay alive, survive this and keep on living” is how he truly feels towards Aventurine, and that’s enough to keep him going.
Underneath Ratios carefully crafted marble facade is a man who cares so much and is so bad at expressing it and I wish the community in general, especially Aventio shippers would acknowledge that more. Ratios true moments of sincerity are brief, but they are anything but stoic. Let the man be soft, it’s in character.
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i'm surprised i haven't seen any text posts yet about the Unsubtle Differences between astarion’s tiefling party/high approval forest scene and the one you get after the goblin party.
there’s something so terribly interesting about how the conversation afterward plays out depending on which variation you pursue.
like, most people have seen the tiefling party version by now. astarion basking in the sunlight the morning after, playing off most of what tav says with relative ease, even when they ask about his scars and he tells them about cazador. his cadence is smooth and composed, his smile almost friendly, even though you know, as the viewer, he’s playing a game of manipulation at this point. the only real crack in his demeanor is if tav notices that cazador’s “poem” was written in infernal, which, understandably, startles him.
but recently i watched the goblin party version of this same scene, and everything reads so differently. unlike at the tiefling party, it’s still the middle of the night when astarion tries to leave, thinking tav is asleep—almost immediately after the act, in fact. when tav does speak to him, he’s visibly nervous, halting and stammering in the middle of lines delivered unflinchingly in the other version of the scene. he gestures broadly and fidgets more while talking, his smile comes and goes. there’s even some of his distinctive high pitched, fake laughter sprinkled throughout the exchange, almost identical to later scenes where he's very, very obviously uncomfortable (like if raphael mocks him and magics off astarion's shirt to show the party his scars in act 2, or when confronting the gur children in their cell in act 3, etc etc).
siding with the goblins represents something deeply familiar to astarion, a level of cruelty he's more than familiar with and embraces likely because cruelty and duplicity, to him, go hand-in-hand with the power and freedom he craves so badly—but he won't stay the night with this tav, even if he approves of their actions. no, in this case, he'll keep to what's familiar and attempt to leave them in the forest under the cover of the very same darkness he resents having been cast into by cazador. when he gets caught, it sets him on edge, and everything he says becomes such a blatant lie to save face that tav would have to be completely oblivious not to see through him, or maybe just not care enough to.
but if tav saves the refugees? challenges his worldview and comes out victorious? oh, he'll complain of the poor rewards for his trouble at the party and whine about it being boring, but he decides to stay with tav through the night while they're asleep and on past dawn. he takes a moment to enjoy the morning sunlight, returned to his life after two centuries without. the same is true if you have high enough approval that he asks before the party, in which case, you've almost certainly hit his biggest approval gains: trusting him and supporting his safety. maybe he doesn't trip over his words when he speaks because, well, maybe this is someone he doesn't have to worry about. someone who's already more than proven themselves a foolish, heroic sort with a bleeding heart or otherwise demonstrated that they're already in his corner. in other words, not a threat—at least not to him.
does any of this make sense. i wanna study this guy under a microscope.
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one of my favorite things about zedaph is that on a server full of people that find strange and oft-overlooked minecraft mechanics or rare events and then see just how far they can push them in the name of spectacle or efficiency or world-breaking, zed is over here finding these mechanics in order to do the weirdest things he can think of in as entertaining a manner as possible
like i 100% have faith in zedaph's theoretical ability to be just as efficient or spectacular or world-breaking. if he wanted to do that stuff, i trust that he absolutely could. but thats so far from being his priority. instead, hes going to spend around a week of irl time focused entirely on eventually having the good luck to spawn in something insanely rare so that he can convert it into something even rarer, the result of which being something that 99% of the server reacts with complete and utter shock that it even exists in the first place, just because its zany and funny and he wanted to. and i love that
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