so. i'm still thinking and taking too seriously the different possibilities on "Why the Wilderness™ killed Laura Lee?" and especially thinking about the Wilderness killing Laura Lee specifically as a way to punish/hurt/control Lottie
first of all, obviously, this is all going along with the assumption that the Wilderness™ is ✨something✨ real and purposeful and powerful, etc etc
Now, Lottie and Laura Lee were holding hands as the plane went down right? they had a connection before ever setting foot there. fun fact that i want to include here: both of them voted against going down to the lake btw (like jackie, resisting going deeper into the wilderness). but then they reach the cabin! and Lottie starts acting weird, she stays behind, it's her first moment of isolation (i think). she starts to "feel" bad things. she ran out of her medication of course but we can assume it's the beginning of her "hearing" the wilderness
if we keep going along this route, you could say Lottie got officially "chosen" by the wilderness during the seance, and who interrupts it and breaks her out of it? Laura Lee! maybe the beginning of the Wilderness' beef with our girl Laura Lee
if we accept what Lottie said in the s2 finale to be true and the Wilderness chose her because she was the only one that could listen to it, it would make sense that the Wilderness needed her, and it needed her alone, all to itself, believing and trusting only what she heard and saw from the Wilderness
when Lottie goes to Laura Lee to explain away the visions, when she goes along with Laura Lee's baptism and idea that the visions come from God, it goes against the Wilderness' wishes. you could even say that Lottie's vision of Laura Lee's death during the baptism was the Wilderness giving her a final warning, an opportunity. maybe if Lottie had wholeheartedly believed in her visions back then instead of in Laura Lee's words, she would have done something to stop her from getting on the plane
the Wilderness killing Laura Lee was It proving its power to Lottie, telling her to never doubt it again
and, by killing Laura Lee, the Wilderness got rid of Lottie's closest friend, strongest connection, and last tether to sanity and civilization and the group. it had Lottie isolated from the group and free to manipulate and share the messages it wanted, without a translator that believed in other gods
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Have you ever wondered exactly what's going on with all the dead bodies in the Wyrm's Rock audience hall, if you leave and come back after Gortash's coronation?
I did some in-game research while working on a fic recently, and in the name of sparing anyone else from having to lay all this out, too—here's a list of the victims, and some notes-based educated guessing on Gortash's motivation here.
(Beyond Iron Counsul Nuff's summary in the screenshot above: "My lord requires a clear path to his magnificent future. We cut away the troublesome bramble.")
Lord Petric Amber
Lord Amber's Bodyguard
Lady Ailis Belt
Lady Haeril Birch
Baron Callem Bormul
Lady Alia Durinbold
Lady Durinbold's Bodyguard
Lady Durinbold's Attendant
Lord Sarken Eomane
Admiral Peil Hullhollyn
Lady Winstra Hullhollyn
Lord Raylen Jannath
Lord Jannath's Bodyguard
Duke Dillard Portyr
Lord Portyr's Attendant
Lord Portyr's Bodyguard
Lady Beatrice Provoss
Lord Myer Ravenshade
Lady Silifrey Sashenstar
Lord Rugger Shattershield
Lord Shattershield's Bodyguard
Lord Shattershield's Attendant
Lord Milton Tillerturn
Lord Randolf Vammas
Lady Madeline Whitburn
9 Unnamed Patriars
First I'll note that not everyone you see lingering after the coronation ends up dead: I could talk to Lady Eshvelt Guthmere, Lady Ruth Linnacker, and Lady Freida Oberon, and their bodies aren't present in the hall later.
It also doesn't seem to be connected to vocalizing support for Gortash or not—you can overhear Portyr and Shattershield challenging him in the ambient dialogue after the coronation, but when you walk around and talk to everyone else the only one who has anything negative to say is Silifrey Sashenstar. Everyone else on the list above sings Gortash's praises.
So, here's what I think it is!
In the corner of the audience hall, you can find this note:
The Parliament of Peers is the body that's responsible for electing new dukes, and they held a formal vote to raise Gortash as Archduke and dissolve their own political body. Note the numbers: there's 23 members.
So who are these members? Up in Gortash's study, you can find this note discussing bribing, blackmailing, and threatening members of the Peers, which gives us the names of eight:
Five of these eight end up dead in the audience hall (Portyr, Jannath, Whitburn, Sashenstar, and Eomane).
As for the three Peers listed who don't end up in dead in the hall—Lady Ruth Linnacker, Lord Hir Rillyn, and Lady Haeril Vanthampur—let's look to this note:
Gortash has leverage against Ruth Linnacker through the abduction of her granddaughter, and I don't think it's unfair to assume Hir Rillyn and Haeril Vanthampur are similarly under Gortash's control, whether tadpoled or blackmailed (this is the one big assumption I had to make—bear with me!).
The other two with non-murderous leverage against them in the note above do end up dead, but I think there's some added context: I imagine Raylen Jannath is the husband of Wisteria Jannath, who Gortash canonically had an affair with (maybe it's personal? Maybe Raylen didn't care enough about the leverage of his own affair, if he knew she'd had one too?). For Portyr, there's the following in Gortash's study, noting he considers him a threat that shouldn't be underestimated, so he may not have wanted to stop at threats:
The inclusion of Portyr on the list of eight Peers could imply that the other three dukes are members of the Parliament of Peers, too. There's a book in Franc Peartree's house about the current state of who the dukes are, which I don't have my own screenshot of, but here's the relevant text from the wiki:
We know Belynne Stelmane is dead as part of the Bhaalist plot. Ulder Ravengard is tadpoled. The fourth duke was Thalamra Vanthampur, who's dead. They were waiting to replace her until Ravengard was found or confirmed gone—and Gortash was given this seat.
So, back to the original list of people murdered after the coronation. I bolded the names of those who aren't seemingly collateral damage (the bodyguards and attendants, and the unnamed patriars): there's 17.
17 killed after the coronation
Plus three Peers controlled through blackmail or other means
Plus Duke Stelmane and Duke Ravengard, dead and tadpoled respectively
That adds up to 22.
Add in Gortash's own vote, which he would have from taking (Thalamra) Vanthampur's seat, and you get 23.
The same number as the members of the Parliament of Peers.
Gortash didn't just orchestrate the Peers naming him the city's first Archduke, and he didn't just influence them to dissolve the political body that could vote another duke in. He made sure the individuals were destroyed, too.
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what your favourite dunmeshi ship says about you
farcille: you're classic, you make sense, you like to see the lesbians winning and also you're a bit of a monster fucker: you may or may not specifically have a wing kink
chilshi: you like your men hairy and fat, also you are not immune to panty-shot propaganda, your love language is acts of service
chilaios: you have a size kink
labru: you would literally settle for any ship as long as it's mlm even when there is wonderful, incredible yuri happening, you think character foils should fuck
laimar: your favourite trope is friends to lovers, also you like to see the bisexuals winning, you're also.. what the poets might call.... weird
marchil: your favourite trope is enemies to lovers, your love language is banter, and you're the kind of person who says 'i can fix him' far too often
kabumisu: your ship could burn down the world and violate the geneva convention and you would still call both of them babygirl, also you like angst
laios x monsters: you like tentacle porn
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Please stop taking away the clones’ agency.
They are HUMANS.
They fuck up.
They make mistakes.
They make bad decisions and choices.
Because they are HUMAN.
One of the best parts of TBB is that we get to follow different perspectives of the clones: those who want to fight the Empire (Rex and his rebels), those who want to settle down (CF99), and those who WILLINGLY serve the Empire (formerly Crosshair, formerly Cody, currently Wolffe).
What makes these characters interesting—and HUMAN—is that they fuck up. They are not perfect. And they make decisions we do not agree with. Because they are HUMAN.
Crosshair served the Empire willingly.
Wolffe is serving the Empire willingly.
They are both complex characters who chose/choose to serve the Empire based on their own decision-making.
Stop taking away their humanity just because you don’t agree with their decisions.
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So long as the political and economic system remains intact, voter enfranchisement, though perhaps resisted by overt white supremacists, is still welcomed so long as nothing about the overall political arrangement fundamentally changes. The facade of political equality can occur under violent occupation, but liberation cannot be found in the occupier’s ballot box. In the context of settler colonialism voting is the “civic duty” of maintaining our own oppression. It is intrinsically bound to a strategy of extinguishing our cultural identities and autonomy.
[...]
Since we cannot expect those selected to rule in this system to make decisions that benefit our lands and peoples, we have to do it ourselves. Direct action, or the unmediated expression of individual or collective desire, has always been the most effective means by which we change the conditions of our communities.
What do we get out of voting that we cannot directly provide for ourselves and our people? What ways can we organize and make decisions that are in harmony with our diverse lifeways? What ways can the immense amount of material resources and energy focused on persuading people to vote be redirected into services and support that we actually need? What ways can we direct our energy, individually and collectively, into efforts that have immediate impact in our lives and the lives of those around us?
This is not only a moral but a practical position and so we embrace our contradictions. We’re not rallying for a perfect prescription for “decolonization” or a multitude of Indigenous Nationalisms, but for a great undoing of the settler colonial project that comprises the United States of America so that we may restore healthy and just relations with Mother Earth and all her beings. Our tendency is towards autonomous anti-colonial struggles that intervene and attack the critical infrastructure that the U.S. and its institutions rest on. Interestingly enough, these are the areas of our homelands under greatest threat by resource colonialism. This is where the system is most prone to rupture, it’s the fragility of colonial power. Our enemies are only as powerful as the infrastructure that sustains them. The brutal result of forced assimilation is that we know our enemies better than they know themselves. What strategies and actions can we devise to make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land?
We aren’t advocating for a state-based solution, redwashed European politic, or some other colonial fantasy of “utopia.” In our rejection of the abstraction of settler colonialism, we don’t aim to seize colonial state power but to abolish it.
We seek nothing but total liberation.
Voting Is Not Harm Reduction - An Indigenous Perspective
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