Because they made me alive 💛

One last bitch comment for old times sake 😔💛

YASHAAAAA

I did this a lil bit ago, but my gosh she’s become my favorite character by f a r- I think the Mighty Nein might be my fist piece of media though where I genuinely don’t have a character that I don’t like, like I just love all of them so much- anyways I did other lighting versions down below v

I have a class on Wednesdays that makes watching D20 not an option and I am just. falling behind because of how wild my schedule generally has been lately, and so it really is like. I have 3 episodes totally about 6 hours. Do I binge that this weekend or do I watch everybody do the Wenis, which is a dance, for six hours on loop.

People getting mad at Orym for contacting Dorian instead of the Hells for emotional support, while very silly for multiple reasons others have already articulated, does make sense from a shipping perspective; either you ship Orym or Dorian with someone else or you think it takes attention away from a ship you like better. But it also makes sense from another angle: if Orym is in love with Dorian, and furthermore allowing himself to be, that suggests he has made peace with Will's death and is moving on—and if you've been spending a year and change arguing that Orym is consumed by revenge for his dead family as an excuse to dismiss his entirely valid perspective because you want the Vanguard to be right? That implication is something you want to avoid accepting at any cost.

The funniest detail in "Resolve" is that Sherman is shown to keep his abacus on a hook by the front door of his apartment. Meaning it's apparently something of a convention in the Highest Light to keep your abacus in roughly the same location as your coat or keys, and that Jonas Spahr, known pretentious asshole, decided on the most EXTRA possible way to do this

I know this is going to come off as "our noble archetypes vs. their barbaric tropey caricatures" but I do think you can tell when someone either actively seeks out works likely to have developed interesting characters of their certain type, or who happens to simply gravitate to those characters in the fiction they happen to enjoy; vs. someone who walks around with a single mold they then squash the first character in each work they see into regardless of actual fit and say "omg they're JUST LIKE ME FOR REAL"

This was entirely tangential to this post from @utilitycaster which is why this is its own post, but the tags made me think about what feels most compelling about Liliana to me, and it's really because there's such an interesting approach to redemption in terms of the sunk cost fallacy to be had there.

There have been plenty of comparisons between Liliana and Essek, but I don't think they're really situations that can be compared. Essek had done one horrible thing (that was of relevence to the story; it is implied that he's taken other actions that he feels were wrong, but we don't know what those entail nor do the Nein care enough to ask, so per narrative convention, they do not matter for analysis) and was only still involved in it to the extent that he couldn't take it back, so to survive he had to continue covering his tracks. But he was also incentivized to otherwise act in alignment with the group that was not those on behalf of whom he had made terrible choices, because he was still living in the Dynasty, and as such wasn't actively perpetuating those actions beyond the cover up.

Liliana on the other hand is acting with the Vanguard and has been furthering if not personally committing atrocities on their behalf for a number of years, continuing to the present. Like Essek, she believes her involvement in the cause to be a difficult choice that was made for noble reasons, and now can't see a way out. But she is also relieved to be told to stay, though at the point that they discuss her leaving, she is alone and outside the immediate range of contact or oversight from the Vanguard. It seems reasonable that she could disappear with a decent headstart, and perhaps become untraceable quickly enough to be safe from anyone following. With this context, returning to the Vanguard with the intention of feeding information to the opposition feels like the riskier choice, but crucially it is the devil she knows.

I actually liken this more to Cassandra de Rolo than Essek. Cassandra was manipulated against her brother by the Briarwoods, but this was also spurred by having watched Percy seemingly leave her for dead. There are legitimate reasons why the Briarwoods, as the people who rescued her and then kept her alive for many years, are the easier option in which to place her trust. She knows what she's getting from that vantage point and how to handle it. She doesn't inherently have faith that someone she only knew as a young and helpless child, who ran from the hardships she's faced, would have the strength or willingness to do what she has found necessary for survival.

I think that Liliana's actions are more willful, not least because she was not a child nor in mortal peril when she joined the Vanguard, but she sees herself as having made difficult choices when only faced with difficult options, and I do think they have been difficult. She didn't want to leave her family; she doesn't want to hurt the young Ruidusborn under her care; she is probably genuinely sorry that innocent people were considered a necessary sacrifice for what she sees as the greater good. It is psychologically taxing to feel as though one is always picking between bad options, which is a significant contributing factor for why people buy into a sunk cost for so long. And over time, those hard decisions become easier, because you know what to expect from the outcome. Though Liliana is well aware that she might be killed for a misstep among the Vanguard, she already knows how to act to maintain their favor, but how she might be received on Exandria by those fighting the Vanguard, even with the Hells vouching for her, is anyone's guess.

This is a very real reason why people remain in cults and struggle to push back against this kind of conditioning: because the decision to leave feels more immediately perilous than the decision to stay. (On a certain level making these kinds of choices and actions habitual is a fundamental basis behind a lot of military conditioning.) And if you are acting in the interests of your own survival, but that survival comes at the cost of that of countless others who have not, in fact, made any threat or harm against you to begin with, then is the nature of your survival morally defensible?

This analysis isn't a question of whether Liliana will commit to her role as double agent and turn fully against the Vanguard, or even which one of these is a "better" story; this is about what the story might say if she doesn't. Yes, she might commit to a different path than the one she's on and make an effort to redeem herself, but it is also a perfectly coherent and interesting story if she doesn't.

hey hey hey

Assigning you a song that makes white people go nuts (from experience)

Apologies, but can you elaborate on what you meant with

"As of late, the banner of those wronged by the gods has shifted from any of Bells Hells to those of Aeor, and that is a bad sign in a D&D campaign. If you need to set aside the PCs in order to rely on NPCs who have not shown up in the current narrative? You are clinging to a melting iceberg, my man."

Sure, so...among the people who are advocating that the Only Good And True Solution is for Bells Hells to kill the gods (a position that has already required frantic backpedaling from "what if the Vanguard is good" due to the murders), the poster children for "those wronged by the gods" are now "the people of Aeor."

Now. I do not deny that the gods destroyed Aeor. I think if you are holding the gods to the standard of "They should have prevented Calamity", and the two things they've banded together about have specifically been "stop Predathos" and "destroy Aeor" and Aeorians were creating a god-killing weapon the plans of which are being used now in the Predathos plot, I think it's worth considering whether you believe that self-defense is inherently unjust if your reason is "but i really wanna fucking kill them" but that's a whole other discussion.

The point at hand is that as a rule, in a D&D game, the enemies of your D&D party are, uh, going to be the enemies in the story. And so:

Chetney: wronged by some random werewolf and by a dude named Drixlitch; killed by Otohan, a Vanguard general

Laudna: wronged by and killed by Delilah Briarwood; killed by Otohan, a Vanguard general

FCG: arguably, made to be an unwitting killing machine by Aeor. Sacrificed himself when the unwitting killing machine abilities took over, depriving a nearly TPK-ed party of their healer; took themself out to kill the Vanguard general (Otohan) that was going to kill all of them.

Fearne: specifically designed to be Ruidusborn by Zathuda, working with the Vanguard; Zathuda's relationship with her mother has some really worrying veiled portions re: how consensual it all was while we're at it. Killed by Otohan, a Vanguard general

Imogen: Honestly Predathos's relationship with the Ruidusborn seems rather predatory and manipulative but that's another conversation; abandoned by and generally treated like a morality pet by her mother, a Vanguard general. Otohan would have killed her too, regardless of her Ruidusborn status.

Orym: Father and husband permanently killed by Otohan, a Vanguard general. Killed by Otohan, a Vanguard general.

Ashton: nearly blown up/sent to a faraway desert and orphaned by elemental titan-worshiping parents; nearly killed by magic possessed by or committed by Jiana Hexum, who was at minimum collaborating with the Ruby Vanguard on imports.

In case you noticed, unless you hold the gods accountable for all bad things happening...none of them have been wronged by the gods. They have, at best, been ignored by the gods (which was earlier on an argument against the gods but people gave that up, on account of it being dumb as dogshit stupid). On the other hand, man, sure feels like that Ruby Vanguard did a whole bunch of killing. If you have to ask the viewers to ignore the feelings of the main PCs in favor of the [dead, can't disagree with you although uh, FCG sure did] people of Aeor*...you have, quite literally, lost the plot.

*You know what's interesting? There's people stuck in stasis bubbles in Aeor, and there's a growing number of Aeormatons, too. If the issue is "Aeor was an incalculable loss" why is your focus "we should plunder the Malleus Factorum - something that was controversial and caused massive unrest within Aeor itself even it its time - and awaken the god-eater, which had long been sealed by the time of Aeor" and not "holy shit we could seek out and interview and assist the Aeormatons and revive a bunch of Aeorians!" If your issue with the Calamity was "there was an incalculable loss of life" why is your solution "create a murder cult"? If your issue with Vasselheim is "they are hiding crucial information about Ruidus and they are colonizing small towns in central Issylra" why is your murder cult murdering all the moon researchers who also worked against Vasselheim and why are you allying with the empire that took over the entire moon and wants to do the same to Exandria? If the issue is "the gods have too much power and use the power of others" why is Predathos any different, and frankly, Ludinus looks pretty fucking fishy too.

Hello! Could you expand on what you meant by your tags on the dorian and orym post you recently shared about people eliding their past (just out of curiosity!)

Orym's been friends with Dorian longer than anyone in Bells Hells other than, obviously, Fearne; he, Fearne, and Dorian met in late 842 and the start of Campaign 3 puts them six months into 843. Even with Dorian having left, he's spent more time with him than with anyone but Fearne, since Bells Hells have been together for almost exactly three months. Not only that, rather than it being pure backstory (eg, how Caleb and Veth had been traveling together for 6 months before the start of C2, or how Imogen and Laudna had been traveling together for 2 years before the start of C3) we've even seen a decent amount of that through EXU Prime. So acting confused as to why Orym might wish to talk to a longer-standing friend who he's been thinking about regularly in their time apart because "Bells Hells are right there!" feels like people are, again, disingenuously ignoring that history.

Basically. There's a bunch of entirely normal and even, I might argue, healthy reasons why Orym might really want to talk with Dorian specifically, and trying to erase those...look, I don't know if people want to discredit Orym, if they don't like Dorian, or if they don't like the ship or if there's something else at play, but it feels like either they're being stupid by accident or being stupid on purpose.

these are the same

Fjord

The Mighty Nein

Critical Role

The cowboy warlock turned british paladin is done. He took quite a few redesigns. A good few colour palette attempts. A lot of grumbling about the shade of his skin. Etc.

I also debated what last name to put but none of them feel like his real name. So I'm rolling with the Vex/Vax line of thinking of if the characters doesn't identify with the name or claim it as their own, I probably ain't gonna use it

I'm warming up more to m9 characters now. It's taken nearly 80 episodes but I'm getting there. It will likely never be vm levels and don't get me wrong. I've always enjoyed the group dynamic as a whole. But the characters are finally finding a place in my heart somewhere.

I'm excited to see the physical print soon.

my mind has been consumed by Nott (brain rott)

anyways. I like the lineart of the first drawing better but whatever. I painted the pen doodles from earlier though and I adore them

humbly making my contribution to the dorian wearing the dorian shirt pile!!!!