Slay The Princess Ramble

Ok I have been having Thoughts about the Voice of the Contrarian and am not afraid to share them. Will start under read more link because this might get a little long.

Ok, one of the Main Things about the Contrarian is that he doesn't follow the narrative, and I accept this, but I cannot emphasize enough just how Different he is from the other voices.

Ok, let's start at the tip of the iceberg here. Change. Born as counterparts to the Shifting Mound's Princesses, it makes sense that the Voices remain static in their personalities. Broken is submissive. Cold is apathetic. Hunted is animalistic. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But Contrarian actually changes over the course of The Stranger path. He sees what he's done to the Princess, recognises that it has hurt her, and just ... drops the jester act immediately. The only other Voice that really changes at all is Hero, and that's because he's literally always by your side. And that's not even getting to how you find him Strange Beginnings.

Strange Beginnings. Oh, do I have Feelings about this ending, but I'll focus on just the Contrarian (for now). Out of all the Voices, all the cabins, the Contrarian is the only Voice other than the Hero himself that can join you in the finale. Maybe it's because his change has made him closer to the Shifting Mound than any of the other potential voices. Maybe it's because inside of The Stranger's cabin was the first you saw, rather than the Princess'. Maybe it's something else altogether, I don't know. However, what I do know is that once again, he's changed. He's ... honestly more downtrodden than even the Moment of Clarity version of himself. Only making jokes when he notices Hero's concern, accepting the knife without a second thought, (even calling himself the worst part of the Long Quiet in the most recent update, I've heard). But that's still not the end of things.

I think what interests me the most about Contrarian, though, is his relationship with the princess. He. Does. Not. Have. One. She is a literal stranger to him. He is not the Stranger's true counterpart, not really. Nothing about him contradicts her, unlike how all the other Voices have been named after their actions relative to their Part I Princesses. Instead, he is the Contrarian because he contradicts the Narrator. I can not emphasise enough how wild that makes my brain go. Because it explains SO MUCH about why he's Different from the others. Long Quiet is a foil for the Shifting Mound, his Voices are foils for her Princesses. Everything about them is static, unchanging. Because they are a single being, spiralling further into itself with every decision you make, only ever changing if you refuse to follow the path set out for you. And then there's him, the reflection of an echo of a mortal. (If he was there in the Spectre route, would she see him as something Other as well, something that once belonged but has been fragmented off of its given path).

Gah I'm obsessed with him. I want to dissect him for science. I want to tear and rip and pull him apart until I can understand what mysteries still hide behind the facade he shows the world. What are you hiding, you smiling little freak of nature?

astarion sketchies

GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY, THE NEXT BOOK 7 UPDATE FOR THE JP SERVER IS SET FOR MARCH 1ST.

HOW WE FEELIN LADS!?!?!

AHHHHHHHH NOOO I'M NOT READY, I thought we'd be getting the fourth anniversary first and then Sebek's birthday and then maybe some more episode 7, I didn't -- I didn't think it'd be Friday --

oh god and they're rerunning the story cards, they didn't say this was the final part but it feels like...maybe the penultimate chapter? could the end of episode 7 finally be looming in the distance?! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO

im sonormal I'm normal

>be me >make a friend >hang out with him >he gets hurts due to hanging out with me >mfw my only friend might die because of me

i have another 2.1 character dynamic post in the recesses of my brain but i need to get this out first

star rail's 2.1 update main plotline leans a lot more into existentialism and absurdism than i thought it would which is a really nice surprise

like i thought before 2.0 that at most it was just going to be some "oh no capitalism bad ipc bad cults also bad" thing but honestly what we got is so much more interesting. the spoilers start now

also massive disclaimer i am not a philosophist and actually i really don't like philosophy because it makes my brain hurt and i would much rather just look at logical nice things like math and plants so. if i get anything wrong please correct me

acheron's past and how she became an emanator of nihility reminds me somewhat of the absurdist theme of how people always look for meaning when there isn't any, until they finally realize that the universe is meaningless

and the entire path of nihility basically is a road towards that realization that people tread on, and the difference between the real world and star rail is that in the real world here we have people who will see that and then go write a book about a guy not crying at his mother's funeral, whereas in star rail it seems that just accepting that the universe is meaningless turns you into a pathstrider or even emanator of the nihility (not sure if i remember the details, correct me if i'm wrong)

and then aventurine's whole motivation is trying to understand why the universe is so cruel to him, and to find meaning when you have everything except freedom, both of which are absurdist themes

the leap of faith argument often attributed to søren kierkegaard claims that even though there is no rational logic for believing in god, you should do it anyway because the alternatives are madness, suicide, and ignorance. this was one solution to the problem of confronting the universe's meaninglessness: choosing to believe in a higher being regardless

later world wars i and ii both contributed heavily to the rise of absurdism as people returned from the war, having seen so many others die around them, and then just going back to a normal society with none of what they as individual soldiers had contributed seemingly doing anything. and then it happened again, but on a much greater scale with even more deaths. both wars and the destruction they brought led many people to start questioning why a supposedly moral god could allow this suffering, and this is where camus comes in and says that actually religion and nationalism both aren't good solutions, and instead we should just accept meaninglessness and keep living despite the absurdity

and i think dr ratio's scroll thing kind of relates to that

he tells aventurine to open it when he's about to die, or when he's completely out of answers for the question of how to confront absurdity

and dr ratio's answer for aventurine is to just tell him to keep living, good luck

which is. yeah

it's the argument that there are more answers to nihilism than just 1) going insane, 2) pretending like it doesn't exist, and 3) dying

it's the bold claim that despite everything, you can still choose to live

sure nothing makes sense but that does not detract from your life. it doesn't need to make sense at all

and with the understanding that things do not need to fit our human definition of meaning, we can continue on knowing our true place in the universe

and with that aventurine walks into the very big black hole like look at that thing you cannot tell me there is no symbolism there

let's go back to acheron.

in the part where you get a snippet of acheron's conversation with some guy just before this cutscene, the other party states that "[IX] leave[s] woven strands of fate for humans to walk, and together THEY weave a great shadow...And this shadow silently envelops them."

which to me sounds like a statement on how people across time and space have again and again come to the same question, what is the meaning of life?

and acheron's whole color thing seems to mean that she is one of the few who, after walking so far on the path of nihility, somehow have not died yet, be it from madness or something else

like it seems implied that many many more have seen the meaninglessness of the universe and have not reacted as well as acheron has

ok i have more to say about the elation and how it in turn relates to the nihility but that will have to come later but there is. a lot of interesting things there to explore

once again disclaimer: I Am Not A Philosophist And Do Not Know What The Correct Definitions Of These Words I'm Throwing Around Are. thank you for coming to my ted talk that was more of a longwinded ramble

something that is like the baseline of amys entire character to me is that shes lonely. shes clingy and physically affectionate in a way none of her friends really are, shes always getting pushed aside and left behind. yeah, she helps out people she doesnt know because shes a nice person, but also, she sees part of herself in them. she wont leave someone else behind because she knows the feeling —and more importantly, hates the feeling. if she doesnt have somebody to stand by her and be there for her, then shes going to be that person for everybody else. something something her obsession with sonic is really just like a manifestation of that desire for closeness with someone, and she thinks that romance is the only way to get that. idk... this hedgehog can have so many abandonment issues.

(un)happy late Valentines

dynamic

if you’re still taking sketch requests, would you mind drawing race for me?

HES FAMOUS ‼️

Love being able to write. I can do whatever i want. I can make Ryuji interact w Lala-chan and u literally cant stop me.

Demyx (my beloved)

Frankly I think Alistair being mildly shitty to that mage in Ostagar seems pretty in-character for the guy he is before the massive, life-altering trauma that is the Ostagar massacre wherein he sees all of his Grey Warden comrades, his beloved mentor/father figure, and his beloathed half-brother/convenient-target-of-projection absolutely torn to shreds by literal Thedas boogeymen. IIRC Morrigan and Flemeth both comment on his wack behavior after Ostagar and then by the time we get to Lothering Alistair just fully surrenders any and all responsibility (and, frankly, agency) to the player's Warden for the foreseeable future. It can then take anywhere from a couple IRL hours to the entire second act of the game for him to retake almost any amount of it back. And depending on the player's choices in dialogue, and especially whether or not they choose to romance him, we may only see flashes of that guy we met at Ostagar before he potentially morphs into almost someone else entirely (hardened!King!Alistair). All that to say, I don't actually think it's a useful criticism of "characterization" to bring up Alistair's glibness as compared to his behavior in the majority of the game because from where I'm standing (looking directly at his snottiness about Cailan, his complaints about being assigned to the Tower of Ishal, his Templar-esque focusing on Morrigan and Flemeth being apostates, his generally pretty brusque manner with the Warden recruits) it seems fairly in-line with the rest of his behavior at Ostagar.

(chuckles) Im so good at reading comprehension and my meat is huge

tdov was like a week ago already but I just wanna say when I came over to vacation slash help my sworn brother move flat he told me, "ever since you said you wanted to get top surgery I've been thinking about it. it's straight up number two on my bucket list"