Imogen's immense capacity for empathy for things wriggly and "wrong" and lonely, things grotesque on the outside with a pure sort of want a sincerity, a truth on the inside.

Ashton, feeling fundamentally broken, fighting for good, for a purpose, telling her she has quite a crew of broken things following her. Saying there's a reason for that. Himself and Laudna.

(Ashton counting themself and Laudna as kindred spirits, Ashton looking at Imogen and seeing some reflection of what Laudna sees.)

(Imogen saying - Ashton is good. That they're special. Imogen who does lethal things when it needs it, who has almost taken a level of satisfaction in Ashton's approving assessments of her lethality, her decisionmaking.)

Imogen says she likes the All Minds Burn, she actually does, Ashton agreeing, thanking her for backing them. Imogen and things cast away, things found as horrifying, and an almost inexplicable empathy. Ashton and things to fight for, things to throw their lot behind until the light in their skull goes out.

Its like, both so sudden and also- no i kind of get it. I get it. They're complimenting each other very intensely, openly, they're both laughing with a weird seed of a telepathic brain between both of them, walked into a den of danger and back out again and like. No. I get it.

imogen meta: "you know you saved my life, right?"

tw//suicidal ideation

i'm so sorry for another meta but this line has been sitting in my brain for DAYS now, and there are a few things about it that are just so striking and so so sad-

for one- it puts imogen's farewell to bertrand into a much greater context.

"i'm glad the noises stopped for you. i'm glad you're at peace."

how long has imogen been longing for that kind of peace? she's been dealing with her powers for a decade, now, and it seems like only in her time with bell's hells has she really been able to get a stronger harness on it.

how many times, has death seemed like the only escape? ever present, ever alluring, in the corner of her mind?

it's a layer that i couldn't quite pick up before, because there was context for what she said, but there also wasn't- but now, with the idea that "i don't know how much longer i would've lasted" at the forefront-

she's had a decade of pain, and ostracization, and voices she can't control, with no sign of reprieve, no sense that it would ever end, and for a long period in her life- with no one to support her.

it's been so obvious for so long, given the angst of imogen's past, but i've struggled to connect the dots of just how deep imogen's pain runs. laura has been dropping clues- her farewell to bertrand, talking about how bad it had gotten during what the fuck is up with that, her mentions of her father- but this was the final piece, to make it all so painfully clear.

these past few years, they've been everything.

because what did imogen have before, really? what reasons did she have to keep going? an absent mother, a distant father, and chronic, overwhelming, agonizing pain and dreams haunting her in her sleep?

who did she have to turn to?

no one, and no glimmer of hope.

and so of course she would be drawn to laudna. her musical thoughts a balm to her aching mind, her cheerful attitude a bright spot in the darkness of imogen's life, her support almost foreign to a young girl who has never had the stability of someone to lean on-

and of course she would be devastated, when that's ripped away from her again, when laudna dies. that hope, that happiness- it's intoxicating, and it's horrible when it's gone, and she's taken back to that place of hurt and anger and fear.

and of course she would do everything to bring laudna back. but it also paints her ritual contribution into a greater context- of course she wouldn't make laudna come back, either. she won't make her return to her home full of trauma, she won't make laudna leave the sweet embrace of death.

because who is she, to deny someone that tranquility, that escape- when she's been tempted by it herself? if laudna needs to go, to not hurt anymore, she'll let her, because she loves laudna so much that she wouldn't ever take that away from her, if that was what she wanted.

(however, if laudna didn't come back, imogen would most certainly struggle. especially since i don't think she's fully processed otohan's attack yet, she's been so determined on giving laudna that choice that she herself has thought about).

but it's also so beautiful- how two lonely, shunned girls could find such light and hope in each other, and find ways to battle back against the world. and it shows such depth to their love, and their devotion to each other.

it's such an intimate thing, to tell someone that they saved your life. and though it wasn't a romantic confession, it's clear that they love each other very, very much.

It’s so interesting that Imogen thought that the lightning marks on her arms grew the more she used her magic. And how the revelation that its the dreams not the power that’s making them grow will change her relationship to her magic and how she uses it. A young Imogen being afraid to embrace her own power, her own magic. A young Imogen thinking she will die if she walks into the storm. Imogen, now, embracing her magic. 

You know, it must be nice and quiet in that portable hole for Imogen. It’s its own pocket dimension. No thoughts to over hear but her own. She could let down her walls and just relax for a bit, so long as the other Hells stayed out of it.

okay, i know i might be risking a lot here but since last night's ep there's been a thing, stuck in my proverbial mental teeth regarding Imogen.

now, Imogen is fascinating to me as a character. i think Laura has been portraying her with a lot of layers and nuance and i do think that there's a lot of depth to Imogen (as there almost always is to Laura's characters; she is extremely good at giving us glimpses behind the curtain). Imogen is a person who is dealing with A Lot, constant background noise and static and overwhelmingly intrusive thoughts that aren't hers. they're unwanted earworms for her and she doesn't have the option to turn down the volume or turn them off. there's no choice for her, not the way FCG can choose to hear or not. this ability sets her apart from other folk, and automatically alienates her, even from those she loves (like her father).

(admittedly i do not know if, mechanically, Laura will be able to later opt in to setting up some sort of mental or psychic defence or dampening option for Imogen; i am not familiar enough with the sorcerous origin, so if anyone can enlighten me, that would be welcome!)

however. Imogen is careful around her friends and allies, not delving into their minds deeper unless she asks outright (witness the scene with Letters a couple eps ago where they chose to 'look' at each others' minds). she does not pick at Eshteross or the people from whom she needs assistance or knowledge. this implies that she understands fully the issue of consent and what could be considered violation.

i will say that it's...different, Imogen speaking to her friends and allies mentally; she is speaking, putting something out there, not listening or rummaging about. on a psychic level she is putting something on the table, not going through the china cabinets. if that makes sense.

but Imogen will indeed poke at people she is...not as familiar with. people she suspects that she will have little interaction with down the road. people she doesn't care for or outright dislikes or simply doesn't resonate with. she'll dig and search and look--all in the name of protecting herself or her friends, yes, all for the 'right' reasons, but it is still digging.

last night, though, when FCG dug a bit deeper than they should have (and let me just say here, clearly, that i do not think any malice was behind their act when they did so. i think FCG does not quite grok the murky notion of boundaries when it comes to the soul-touched and how those lines differ from individual to individual. i think, genuinely, that since he had delved deep with Imogen before that it was very nearly like an open invitation to do so again at any time--'Imogen is my friend and she agreed that one time, so it must be all right now.'), Imogen rightly emphasised that what Letters was attempting was not okay by any means. she made it clear that consent is not an open door, that it needs to be gained over and over and over. you check, you ask, again and again, especially with your friends. good for her! we love to see boundaries reinforced!

and i think that she got a glimpse of her own into what it's like when she tries to unearth something in someone else's head, when someone she trusts tries to do it. not in a 'haha, here's karma for Imogen' way, but in a more 'oh shit, is that what it's like when i do it to others? ew!' fashion.

and it makes me wonder: if Imogen tries this in future with other folk they encounter (and she almost certainly will; our girl is curious about others and it's almost too damned easy to lift people's mental rocks with a stick to see what's underneath; god knows i would be Tempted if i had that ability) and Bell's Hells become closer to those individuals, how is that gonna play out for Imogen? will she feel bad for looking? will she apologise? will it even matter after a certain point? will it still feel like a transgression she even needs to examine?

it's very interesting to me from an ethics standpoint, i mean, because after all, Imogen can't just turn off her mind, and some folks are loud as hell mentally.

So Imogen started having powers much later than I thought. This changes things.

Relvin was always described as "distant" but I thought it was bc Lilliana was gone and he had to raise a super powered teen in a small village.

Lilliana was on the picture at least for a number of years after Imogen was born (who knows how many years) and Imogen was practically an adult when the cursed bullshit began.

If she really bloomed that late, it must have hit harder in some ways. She had a taste of "normal" life before Ruidus. A whole childhood and teenagehood without bad dreams or headaches, a normal life and a normal future, suddenly crumbling with the bang of thunder and lightning.

Teenagers and kids are more vulnerable to certain things, but they are also more flexible to changes. They adapt quicker, they learn easier. Imagine having to learn how to deal with all of Imogen's curse once you're an adult (there are some interesting parallels with real life conditions and chronic illnesses that I can't relate to, but other people have posted about and I recommed looking up).

Still, Imogen is not a reliable narrator. There are memory issues here again, which is becoming an odd coincidence with a not insignificant portion of Bells Hells. We don't know if her father was always distant, or if they had a normal relationship before Ruidus (and oh, it would be much worse if they separated after 18 years of a loving relationship bc of something out of their control). We don't know what's going on with her mother.

If she started changing so late, does that mean that the curse is quicker than we thought? Just exactly how old is she? Is Imogen changing faster and faster? (I need to know what's up with that new feat because Laura's face reading it was Something)

I don't know, something about the Ruidus Fuckery starting so late rubs me the wrong way. Could it be memory issues, Time is a Weird Soup again or me being particularly anal about something insignificant? Yes to everything, I guess

Going to throw my hat into the “Liliana sucks” arena with this piping hot take: She doesn’t really love Imogen.

She loves the idealized version of Imogen she’s built in her head over 25 years of absolutely no contact with her. She loves the innocent little girl that needs her mommy to protect her from the big bad gods. She loves the daughter who will be grateful to her for all the hard decisions she had to make.

Her denial and self-absorption were enough to protect that ideal of her daughter from actual Imogen begging her to reconsider; she could tell herself that Imogen just didn’t understand what was at stake, or why these hard decisions had to be made.

But Imogen finally crossed a line that Liliana couldn’t reconcile with her idealized little girl, and that’s why Liliana broke so dramatically. Her “daughter” is dead, replaced with a hardened adventurer who’s willing to make her own hard decisions, and isn’t going to thank Liliana for the carnage she and Ludinus have left in their wake.

C1E60 || C3E88

I was thinking about that post about redemption I just reblogged, and I think it’s worth pointing out just how difficult and time consuming it would to de-radicalize or “redeem” Lilliana. And I think Essek’s redemption in campaign 2 is actually a really good example of what I’m talking about.

First of all, what the Nein did to redeem Essek was not slowly and politely talk him through why what he did was wrong. They didn’t even know he did anything wrong. What they did was continually reach out to him and give him a support system of friends he did not have before. Notably, friends who he could be comfortable sharing his worldview around: he was an atheist* in a theocratic society who had to hide his worldview in order to have any social, academic, or governmental standing. The mighty nein were probably the first people he could be himself around, and creating a change in his personal life is what led to a change in his ideology. Notably, he did most of the actual deconstructing of his ideology on his own, some before the big betrayal reveal and a lot after. The Nein helped with that directly a little, but the main thing they did was offer him a personal connection he had stakes in, and a people in his life with different world views he hadn’t seen up close before.

This is pretty true to life, in the real world, most people who leave radical or bigoted groups leave at least partially because of a change in their personal life. Even if they do leave because of someone directly challenging their worldview, it’s usually someone they care about who challenges them in a non-aggressive way. It’s still personal.

Secondly, this took a lot of time. I can’t remember exactly how long they spent in the Dynasty, but they befriended Essek over a really long period of in game and out of game time. The cast spent actual real world hours talking pretty much one on one with Essek, and the party spent weeks, maybe even months slowly getting to know him and bringing this support structure into his life. Essek spent even longer actually thinking through and deconstructing on his own. The change in his worldview between the ship and the outpost really shows this, he did a lot of the thinking that led him to change by himself over a lot of time we weren’t there for. They could not have gotten him to actually change his mindset, fully realize what he did was wrong of his own free will, in anything approaching a short amount of time. This was a time consuming process.

All this to say: this is the kind of effort it would take to legitimately de-radicalize Lilliana. She has been in the Vanguard for ~25 years, she most likely joined when she was in her early to mid 20s, and she gave up all personal connections, even her daughter and her husband to join. Not only has her entire ideology been built around this being the right thing to do, her entire personal life is contained within the Vanguard. It’s most likely where she gets any housing or money or really anything from. It is her whole life, and she believes wholeheartedly in it. The level of time and effort it took to get Essek to organically change his mind is most likely the level it would take to get Lilliana to change hers, if not more.

And they don’t have that time. Lilliana is actively doing harm now, she is helping the Vanguard release Predathos right now, they simply do not have the time to redeem her. It sucks, but pragmatically speaking, it is simply not worth the time and effort. Essek gave away the beacons in the past, but also, the Nein did not know he did that for their early friendship. If the Nein had known, they probably would not have put in all the work it took to get him to change. They probably couldn’t have. Lilliana might be able to be redeemed in theory, but so can a lot of people who do very bad things. Focusing on that redemption process is prioritizing Imogen’s complicated feelings over the harsh reality that this is a war, and Lilliana is a key figure in that war doing a great deal of harm. It sucks, but I do think it’s time to move on, and I think Imogen is now leaning that way.

*atheist is a loose term here, it’s hard to be an atheist in a world where gods are proven to exist, but it gets the point across

the fact that orym, chetney, and imogen primarily guided the communication exercise gives so much insight into the leadership structure of bell’s hells. even the ways that each of them did it—orym giving rapid fire instruction and adjusting the direction based on response. chetney sticking to one mode (clock system) and being direct and methodical. imogen holding pace with thought and encouraging with every step—keeping emotions calm. granted that’s also the players’ communication styles coming through, but still.

at this point, i would say that they form the base that bell’s hells revolves around. orym as the lookout, as the one on alert both in and out of the party. chetney observing and learning about the environment physically and personally. and imogen guiding decisions by calming emotions.

Laudna going through a spiral about whether Ashton is a bad person because he wanted the power of both shards and did something stupidly dangerous to do it vs. Laudna deliberately feeding Delilah by using Hunger of the Shadow on Bor'Dor and Willmaster Edmuda.

Absolutely love it. Girl please keep projecting your worst fears about yourself and destructive habits on your friends and get scared of them without ever stepping back and assessing your own actions, it is delicious.

Bonus points that Imogen and Laudna are the biggest enablers of each other and not at all inclined to check each other's negative behaviors. Imogen still has a healthy fear about her powers, though, especially right now.

Meanwhile Laudna is still convinced that Orym is fine and the stable one while no one questions how Orym got Hex or that he's willingly using Ludinus' Quintessence Array to drain Edmuda of her life force. A totally normal stable good guy thing to do. Definitely no nosedive here. Although Laudna is irritated at him for pressuring everyone to keep going and not back down, and that he got the Quintessence Array use and not her. (Because again, she is trying to feed her own need for power.)

Somehow Fearne is the only one who's beginning to think they all might be going too far and getting scared, but they're not really listening to her. She saw her potential to become Dark Fearne and actually reevaluated her life. (Even if she's still a chaos being.)

Bell's Hells are great because they're like NPCs who ended up as the B-Team who keeps happening to be in the right place at the right time to be in the middle of all these events leading to this cataclysmic events that are so much bigger than they are. It's FUN that it's happening faster than they can recon with it and they're getting more and more desperate to not go under in a way that is actually making them go under faster.

They're seeing it in each other but not in themselves. That's the tragedy. They're so desperate to win it doesn't matter at what cost anymore. They're all just competing to see who can sacrifice themselves for the cause first while dragging their enemies down with them. They're going to end up being the monsters someone else has to fight, even though they kept trying to do good and fight the darkness.

Like. Isnt it GLORIOUS though. All these shared mistakes. All these unfortunate patterns. All these missteps repeated in betwen three people who care about each other. Liliana doesn't talk about her powers until late on, and Relvin isn't sure if she was hiding it all along. Imogen asks about her mother, and is shocked when her father actually responds. Relvin tucks the information away from Imogen in a vain hope it makes things easier. Liliana pulls away, and away, until it is too late, until she's gone.

(Imogen doesn't quite talk to her friends about everything. Imogen climbs out of a window and calls her mother in the dead of night. Imogen left. It was supposed to be a kindness.)

Liliana says: Run. Before my storm sweeps you up.

Relvin says: She was worried you were going to follow in her footsteps.

They say: It seemed easier for you to not know. Its best for you to run, before you get swept up in my storm. I think it was for your protection.

They say: I wish she had told me. I wish you had told me. I wish-

What a gesture of love, trying to protect your loved ones, trying to keep them away from things that will hurt them. What a heartbreak, to be the thing that will hurt them, to lock yourself away, to isolate, to hurt, to leave.

What a thing, to be told: Don't follow in my footsteps. Don't do as I did. And learn the same lessons, the same way, the same mistakes, written in love and loss, written in red.

"i know i cry a lot" | imogen meta

okay now that i've kind of caught up-

can we talk about the conversation that the group had about imogen's emotional health?? because it was both really good to talk about but also really... not helpful at all?

you can tell that the group sees right through imogen when she say's she's fine- but they also don't seem to really follow up with their concerns?

"she goes to sleep every night crying," fearne says, and here's the thing- imogen doesn't disagree.

though that just might be a laura joking thing- that's so sad??? that someone could even say that about imogen's life and it is even plausible that it's true??

and THEN: "i'm not going to do that anymore, i'm strong" - imogen

is also both healthy and not healthy??

not to get meta but laura said once (i forget where) that in college/young adulthood that she was so sad that she decided she was going to smile and trick her mind into being happy because she didn't want to be sad anymore- and she said herself that it's a terrible coping mechanism

genius of her to use that as imogen's coping mechanism here, now.

but once she says that there's some singing of "survivor" and then... just no follow-up?

orym moves the conversation along and i can't help but notice... that imogen despite what she's just said... does still like she's going to cry.

and just. ugh.

our purple haired sorceress is going through it :(

Imogen and Invisible Illness and The Gnarlrock

This post is a sort of sequel to my post about Imogen and Invisible illness and how interesting it is to view Imogen and her struggles through that lens. It wasn’t until the last episode and this post by @utilitycaster that I realized that the gnarlrock and Imogen’s attachment to it makes a lot of sense through this lens as well as well as her devastation at the events of the end of the episode. 

Imogen’s focus on understanding her powers/dreams/mind throughout campaign three so far has resonated deeply with as someone who struggles with invisible, chronic illnesses. As someone who struggles with a chronic illness that debilitates my day to day life, I am always looking for more knowledge and understanding, solutions and paths to stability or management to make life more livable, and maybe on the distant horizons a cure. It means constantly looking into and trying new treatments. However, this is a fraught process in a way that I think well people don’t often understand. The sicker you are, the more treatments haven’t worked, the more treatments come with side effects, tradeoffs, and consequences. Often, a treatment can help with one thing while causing other problems in the background and you have to decide if its worth it. Treatments with little consequences that magically take you back to a time before being sick are rare and if you’ve been sick for a long time you have probably tried them and they haven’t worked. For me in particular, one of my most common side affects for treatments is affecting my mind and mood, making me feel not like myself. 

I say all of this about my personal experience with illness and treatment to color the way Imogen might be looking at the world and what the gnarlrock could mean to her. Imogen is someone struggling in a way very similar to chronic illness and as such, her life is devoted to trying to find answers and peace and stability. She has also notably spent a long period of time in pursuit of these answers with little success. She has threads that she is slowly pulling but they are far from guarantees.

The shard of the gnarlrock. The gnarlrock has always seemed dubious - it was found in the broodmother’s lair. And from nearly the start has been implied to have consequences, side effects. FCG tells Imogen that “where it resides, everything around it mutates and twists.” It’s interesting to note that its Imogen who seems the most trepidatious about it. And yet, the gnarlrock offered her comfort in her dream and later seemed to provide a path forward in the dream that wasn’t running or death. Imogen seems to be aware of the gnarlrock’s influence saying “I don’t remember feeling so explosive or frustrated about things before.” And yet, it has, alleviated some of her pain. Provided some stability and comfort and a path forward. This dissonance of treatment and side effect, solution and consequences is something people who are ill have to reconcile, something we saw Imogen struggling with in the conversation leading up to the destruction of the gnarlrock.

I, myself, am often the most wary about new treatments. I, after all, have to face the side effects and consequences. But when you’re desperate, when illness has debilitated your life, sometimes you will try almost anything to find stability even if it affects and corrupts your own mind. 

And this puts the destruction of the gnarlrock and Imogen’s anger into a new light. If looking at Imogen’s powers and struggle through the lens of chronic illness, the gnarlrock was a treatment, one with side effects, one with consequences, but nonetheless a tangible path forward to a more livable life. In this light of course its destruction was devastating. A potential path forward, an option, a solution suddenly gone is absolutely gut wrenching. 

I can't stop thinking about just how emblematic everything in those conversations of Ashton being "a child" are of how, even at her most beaten down, triggered and traumatized, Laudna is not and will not be what Delilah wants her to be.

For Delilah, "they're still a child" is dismissive, a bit derisive, but doesn't even merit being truly hateful. She doesn't find Ashton worth the attention Laudna is giving them, not when there are such more interesting, important things to pull the attention of an adult. Children are only important when they are useful. She will indulge Laudna on the subject, because Laudna is useful, is her vehicle for action in the world, but she only cares about it in the context of getting Laudna to do what she wants. Calling someone a child is calling them unimportant. (Laudna is a child to her)

But for Laudna, who loves children and who understands intimately what it's like to have the helplessness of child, to be trapped under the authority of someone who will never treat you as a full person, even when they are being ostensibly kind, to be so confused and lost and powerless...a child deserves attention more than anyone else. Of course children lash out. Being a child IS in many ways quite awful because the world is so big around you and you don't know yet how to react to any of it, how to soothe yourself - and if you aren't given the attention, you never learn how. Ashton never learned how. Her instincts - instincts trained into her by manipulation and abuse from inside and the world around her - may say kill him, but she fights them the whole way because her heart is stronger and her heart says that the angriest, most volatile child needs care as much as any other. More, even.

Laudna hears Delilah call Ashton a child and agrees on the word, but they have diametrically opposed understandings of what that means, and diametrically opposed instincts on how to treat a child. Laudna doesn't want to hurt anyone, especially children. She loves children. She loves so much and so selflessly. And Delilah is so very very good at manipulating her but she has tried for 30 years to change the bedrock of Laudna's psyche, the truer thing that drives her beyond the base animal instincts of survival, and it hasn't worked.

I want Imogen to go the absolute fuck OFF at Liliana the next time they meet. I want her to show her mother what Otohan did to Orym, to Fearne, to Laudna, to Chetney, and to FCG.

I want Liliana to grovel because Imogen has grieved more for relationships that have existed for a few months (a few years in Laudna's case) than she has for her own mother.

I want her to finally choose which side she's on.

And I want them to end it once and for all if she chooses wrong.