so. i've replayed the demo once more, and this scene baffled me at first, his indifference and displeased face like?? hello??? what happened to our knight in shining armour?? and then i realized it's one of the very few moments he lets himself be real.

it's clear that leander doesn't like getting involved when he might look bad to one of the parties, so this is such an honest and raw reaction when he has to act, when he has to choose between the loyalty of his followers and the potential gain of doing 'business' with mc, and he hates it. also the way he slides back into his good guy mode in the last sprite is just so tasteful 🤌

i think he chooses to take mc's side not because he likes them so very much, but because it's the path of least resistance: bloodhounds are most likely to stay loyal anyway, someone mentioning the senobium is obviousy not a big deal — well, not big enough to go into a fight with your leader, — and the bandaged hands, on the other hand (what a lame pun!!!!!!! sry), are a very promising tidbit (remember that information is currency). like i'm sure leander guessed there was something wrong with mc from the start, just didn't know the details. btw mc noticed his act — the practiced speech of help offering and his suspicion about mc needing a magical solution.

also i'd like to pinpoint that he's the only one eliciting that vital piece of information from mc to potentially gain leverage. it's not like we as players have any choice here but hear me out: even ais and vere (!!!) are showing some kind of respect regarding mc's hands. ais stops mc before they undo their bandages and vere is 'careful not to disturb them' when grabbing mc's arm. did leander reaalllyyyyyyy have to go that far (also if mc hesistates to touch him, he will grab their hand himself :DDD)??? he wants to make sure you need to trust him and him only like dude. i'm still not over the piece of a dialogue below i mean how can he be so honest and manipulative all at once?!?????

"you were right to hide this from me (but now i know). that curse of yours... it's unlike anything i've ever dealt with (i can't help you). i can tell you're discreet (praising) but you'd best not go showing that off to anyone else (so that only i know your secret)"

and the most fascinating thing? i don't think he's a genius mastermind or anything of sorts, he just gets people, operates on an intuitional level, it comes to him naturally, and most of the times he believes that he's doing good.

tl;dr leander is one of the most interesting characters i've ever come upon and it's captivating to see him slip out and back into his goody two-shoes persona and i hope we'll get more moments when he's raw and real soon 👀

thoughts on Fable LU

I know most creators in the LU circle like to make Fable be a nice, gentle person in contrast to Legend- the sweet to his sour if you will, but you know what?

I want Fable to be the most ice queen level sort of screwed up that, when the chain find out Legend has a sister, they THINK she's the sweet one- only to meet her and realize that Legend is the nice one in the family.

I want a Fable that lost her mom and dad because Ganon's servants were hunting her family down for ages, killing off every Hylian Knight as they sought out the hero, hoping to eliminate him before Ganon emerged. I want a Fable that knows her father was betrayed by his best friend and cast into the dark world. I want a Fable that's watched the king make dubious decisions for years and has come to accept them as normalcy. I want a Fable who doesn't hesitate to kill for the good of her kingdom. I want a Fable that's well aware of how dark the world is and grew up with that knowledge.

I want a Fable who has watched her brother tear himself apart for the world they protect, who's seen him go from innocent child to grief-ridden young man; full of guilt and still desperately wanting to save everyone. A princess who contrasts her hero, but not in a way that makes him look cruel, but highlights the humanity of the saltiest hero.

A princess who is cold to outsiders, in contrast to how Legend befriends other kingdoms with ease. A princess who will kill, where her hero shows mercy. A princess who makes the tough decisions, because she won't force others to do so for her. A princess who is dangerous and cold, someone who makes even the heroes doubt which side she stands on.

I want a Princess Fable Hyrule who has set her sights on being strong- not because she wants to be 'great' or because she wants power, or even to go down in history. Not even for Hyrule. (She never got to see Hyrule or know it's people, it makes no sense that she'd love them with anything like someone who actually knows anything about them personally, not like her brother). No, she wants to be powerful for one reason: so her brother can stop forcing himself to be strong.

She called this little boy to help her and watched him make his first kill and sent him on a mission that slowly tore him apart and reforged him into a hero. Like her predecessor, she blames herself for stealing his childhood, except Legend is her brother, and she has no way to give back what he lost. So, instead, she tries to create a place where he no longer has to remain what he became, and maybe can go back to being what he was before; carefree, content, and happy. (He won't, but she wants him to have that option anyway).

She's a wildfire to the court, to her enemies she's a storm, but she's a warm, gentle thing with her baby brother.

She's the scary Zelda to me. I think all of them should be affected by their worlds and experiences, but I feel like she, of all of the princesses, has the best potential to be hardened. After all, she's been through most of the same hell as Legend, only unable to change it. She's been powerless long enough, I want her to be just a bit power hungry in the wake of it.

I want Fable to be scary!

WIP excerpt for Cheshire behind the cut; Billy adopts Conner and it actually goes pretty good! (( chrono || non-chrono ))

Is that bad, maybe? That he’s this glad about Lynn being easy for him to like? He’s gonna take care of him the best he can no matter what, just . . . it helps, a little, that Lynn’s this easy to like. Makes it feel less . . . intimidating, maybe. 

Billy likes a lot of people, technically. He likes most of the other League members, and he likes a lot of people he’s met on the street, and he even liked a few of the kids he met in foster care, and obviously he’s always liked Tawky, but . . . 

But it wasn’t really easy to like most of those people, he has to admit. Not after . . . everything. 

He tries. He really tries. But it’s just–not always easy. And he knows it won’t be easy all the time with Lynn either, but . . . 

But it’s nice, just meeting somebody he likes right away. 

“Okay,” Billy says, glancing reflexively towards the windows even though he already knows what the weather’s like. They were just outside, after all, and even if they hadn’t been, the windows are big enough to make it hard to miss either way. “It is a good day for a walk, if you don’t mind another one.” 

“. . . sure,” Lynn says, just a little hesitant again. “Um. It’s . . . okay? To be . . . out that much?” 

“Yeah,” Billy says, wondering where he can even get as much lighter fluid as he’s gonna need to burn down a whole fifty-two levels of underground lab. That might be hard, kinda. Batman would probably wanna know why he’d bought that much, is all. Like, he’d definitely at least ask. Maybe Billy can figure out how ATMs work and just pay for it all in cash, though. That’s an option, anyway. Like, for plausible deniability and whatever. “You can be out as much as–okay, um, not all the time, but mostly as much as you want. Like, if it’s not bedtime or after curfew or anything like that. And, um, please take your phone when you’re out. Definitely take your phone when you’re out. No offense, just you’re still really little and you just got out of the lab, and I don’t want you to get lost or in trouble and not be able to get ahold of me if you need something, you know?” 

“You’d let me go out unsupervised,” Lynn says. It doesn’t really sound like a question, but . . . well, it still kind of sounds like a question. “And if I got in . . . trouble, you’d . . .” 

“I’d come get you,” Billy says immediately. “Or answer your questions or whatever. Whatever you needed.” 

“. . . okay,” Lynn says, shifting his weight a little. Billy wouldn’t really notice, except mostly Lynn doesn’t shift his weight like that. He’s really, really still, actually, and takes up as little space as possible for a kid his size. 

Billy wonders exactly how big that pod actually was, come to think. 

That’s . . . kinda depressing, as a thought. Thought maybe for Lynn it just felt, like . . . like being swaddled, or something? Babies like that, right? Well–he’s overheard people talking about that before, and the wisdom of Solomon seems to agree, so . . . maybe it felt like that, for Lynn. Like, safe and secure and–

Oh. Is that why he was in the closet for so long earlier? 

. . . Billy’s not sure if that’s depressing either. Well–not if it makes Lynn feel better, obviously, and if it is kind of the same idea as being swaddled, he’ll just grow out of it anyway, right? 

Billy definitely needs parenting books. Like–ones for teenagers and newborns.

“Do you wanna go now, or wait like twenty minutes for lunch to settle?” he asks. Little choices, he figures. So Lynn doesn’t get overwhelmed with a whole bunch of them or anything. Also, he still doesn’t know if Lynn did accidentally overeat, so just in case . . . 

“Um,” Lynn says, a brief flash of hesitance flickering across his face. “I–don’t know.” 

“Okay,” Billy says. Still better than a definitive answer that isn’t true, he figures. Like–way, way better. Like–the honest answer is always better, as far as he’s concerned, at least in this kind of situation. 

Lying to supervillains and bad guys is morally and ethically okay, like, eighty percent of the time at least. 

“Spit the difference and wait ten?” he suggests, and Lynn pauses for a moment, and then just shrugs. 

Again: still better than a definitive answer that isn’t true, so Billy’ll work with it. 

“Ten minutes, then,” he says, and then doesn't really know what to do with himself so just . . . goes and sits down on the couch again. They can maybe just talk a bit, he figures. They already had the “no” conversation, and that'll probably need to come up again because it's hard to change behaviors like that, but for now they can just talk about lighter stuff. Small talk or something. He doesn’t wanna overwhelm Lynn with a ton of serious stuff or complicated conversations all in one day. They’ve just met, and Lynn is so young. It’s just, like–weird, if he does that. Like, expecting way too much. Especially after Cadmus force-grew him and stuffed years worth of information into his head all at once. 

Billy thinks it’s fair to give Lynn a break, after that. More than fair. 

Lynn looks at his shoulder instead of meeting his eyes. Billy isn’t worried about it, but notices it. It’s not very subtle, is all. 

“Do you know what kind of books you like?” he says. “Or–well, stories, I guess. Or nonfiction. Or, uh . . . subjects, maybe. Maybe that’d be better. I just dunno how many stories Cadmus told you or if you even like stories, so . . .” 

“Cadmus didn’t tell me stories,” Lynn says. Billy . . . pauses.

What is Essek's Wisdom score?

(aka, a totally unnecessary ramble about one drow and his dnd mechanics by me, a tumblr user who should be asleep)

Last episode, we got a rare hint about Essek’s Wisdom score, in the form of Fearne’s attempt to sneak a look at his feet while he slept. Whatever Essek’s passive perception is, it was ‘just enough’ to catch Fearne, with her Sleight of Hand check of 9. I made a joke about this giving Essek a pretty low Wisdom score, and several people pointed out that because Matt halves his characters’ passive perceptions when they’re sleeping, Essek’s Wisdom would actually be around the 18-20 mark. But this… might not necessarily be the case.

Now, I did honestly mean that post as a joke and not any actual theorising on Essek’s mechanics, but since people got me thinking, let’s crunch some numbers! (Huge thanks to the folks over on the Essek discord for helping me with the maths here! Also, disclaimer that all of this could be disproven next episode, and I am fine with that. I enjoy doing dnd maths anyway, because I am a nerd.)

So: if Matt remembered the house rule about halving the passive perception while a character sleeps (and he doesn’t always), this would give Essek a passive of 18-20. But does this mean his Wisdom is 18-20? Actually, no! For a start, if he had no other bonuses to perception (and I’ll get to that in a second), this would give Essek a bonus of +4 or +5, which would make his awake passive just 14-15, and his sleeping passive 7. Not enough to catch Fearne. But: it might well be the case that Essek simply has Perception proficiency, in which case, he wouldn’t need a Wisdom of 18+.

While Essek, being an NPC, obviously doesn’t conform to PC rules, it’s worth bearing in mind that all elf PCs get perception proficiency for free from their Keen Senses trait. Perception would therefore be a pretty reasonable proficiency for Essek to have, even if it didn’t make sense from a character perspective – which it does. He is, after all, constantly having to look over his shoulder for assassins (and even before he was, having a keen eye out for trouble would be a useful asset in his former courtly intrigues.)

So what does this mean for his passive perception? Well, he appears to be the equivalent of a level 17-20 wizard, if his use of a ninth-level spell slot is anything to go by. With the caveat that he doesn’t have to use player rules (just attach that caveat to, uh… everything I say in this post) that would give him a + 6 proficiency bonus. If this is true, then all Essek needs for a waking passive perception of 18 is actually a Wisdom modifier of just +2, i.e. a Wisdom score of 14 or 15. (A baseline of 10, plus 2 from his Wisdom, plus 6 from proficiency). This would allow his halved passive to be at least 9, and let him catch Fearne in her sneaky feat of feet-peeking. If we make his Wisdom any higher than this, I don’t think we can qualify Matt’s ‘just enough’ statement.

But wait! There are more options! Unlikely ones, but options worth bearing in mind, nonetheless. We know Matt is on board with giving his allied NPCs feats; indeed, Essek himself has the War Caster feat. So it’s entirely possible that he might also have the observant feat. This would be a very logical choice from a roleplaying perspective considering Essek’s current status as a fugitive.

Having this feat would add +5 to his passive perception. Let’s say Essek has no Wisdom bonus at all, but has this feat and is proficient in perception. In this case, his passive while awake is 21 (a baseline of 10, plus 5 from Observant, plus 6 from profiency). That's a sleeping passive of 10: just enough to catch Fearne in the act. We could actually dump his Wisdom into the negative and he'd still be able to just barely notice her.

If you shook me and asked me to tell you what I actually think Essek’s Wisdom is, I’d guess at his Wis being at that ~14 mark I pitched earlier. I think this would make sense from what we’ve seen of him – yes, he has done some completely dumbass things, but he’s shown a level of self-reflection and self-awareness, especially after his redemption arc kicked off, that I think a Wisdom of about this number is justified. I wouldn't be surprised to find it was lower or higher, though; Wisdom is a wibbly stat to define at the best of times and you can make a case for Essek being just about anywhere on the number scale.

A stat of ~14 also works for me from a character construction perspective: we already know he has an Intelligence of around 22, and a decent Charisma; back in campaign 2, the Nein regularly had to roll Insight checks of 20+ to see through him, indicating a high Deception. So I’m hesitant to pitch his Wisdom too high; this might just be my own personal preference as a DM, but I’d be unlikely to roll up an NPC ally with high numbers in all three mental stats. Give ‘em some lower scores to keep things spicy, y’know?

(As a side note, Essek’s Dexterity is a very serviceable 16, and I suspect that his Charisma is at least equal to that. Having scores of 16+ in four stats would be a bit much, imo, even if his Strength and Constitution are probably much, much lower.)

A final point: one thing we can rule out is Matt allowing Essek to use his regular, un-halved Passive while trancing, since he didn’t remember that Essek could trance until Laura reminded him (bless them both), and I’m pretty sure the Fearne incident happened before she did. Though I should say again, considering that Matt can and does forget rules from time to time… it is also true that Matt might’ve just forgotten about halving the passive score. If he did just forgor, this entire ramble is meaningless but oh well.

Tl;dr: we don’t know, but a reasonable guess would be to say that his Wisdom is about 14. I guess I’ll just sit here and hope that Matt may eventually release his statblock (and an explanation of how he made his dad so mad he died. Hi, Matt Mercer, not to beg but please –)

the vacker family and their fucked relationships with food <3

tw: eating disorders

Alden - He's mostly okay (in this aspect), but sometimes forgets to eat because he gets so wrapped up in his work, or he'll get up to eat and then end up watching the fish for half an hour before sitting back down. Usually he only misses one or two meals a week, but the longest he went was like 45 hours, and nobody noticed, since they only have meals together when other people are over or for special occasions or holidays.

Della - she's had an eating disorder since she started dating Alden, which wasn't Alden's fault, more like Della thought she couldn't be good enough to be in the Vacker family. It spiraled out of control a few months into their relationship, and was really bad for a year or so, but now she manages it. She has a certain amount of calories she allows herself to eat in a day, and measures food out very carefully, never eating anything if she doesn't know what went into it. She fasts all day once or twice a week. During family gatherings, parties, or other events, she lets herself eat anything she wants, especially to keep up appearances, as long as she throws up not long after. Edaline noticed once, but Della told her it must have been something in the food. Eda worried for a while, but years went by and she eventually put it in the back of her mind.

Alvar - He hated himself since he was a kid, and he noticed Della's eating habits, and how little she ate, and picked up on that in his early teens. He tried to force himself to eat less and less, then he started binging late at night, then he felt terrible about it and made himself throw up. At some point he started doing this nightly, and somehow found comfort in this routine, despite how much it hurt and how bad it was for him. He sought help from Elwin once he started the elite levels, since it had been messing with other parts of his life. He slowly got mostly better, but he'd sometimes binge and purge on bad nights. Once, Keefe walked in on him forcing himself to throw up after Alvar had snuck a bunch of food, while Keefe was with the Neverseen. He was having a bad night because he thought a little too much about his family and how he can never go back.

Fitz - Like Alvar, Fitz also observed his mom, and over time started to become obsessed with his weight, especially after the attack in flashback, where he was unable to eat much for a long time and ended up losing a lot. He weighed himself after going back to Everglen, and the stress with Alvar being there made it hard to have an appetite anyway. That was the lowest weight he was, and when he noticed he'd gained after starting to eat more normally, he freaked out and started eating less. Biana was the only one who noticed, and she started to get concerned. Fitz admitted to her that he was trying to lose weight, but he had it completely under control. Spoiler alert: he does not.

Biana - She doesn't really have an eating disorder, but she often diets and tries to limit her food intake, because she never sees herself as good enough, pretty enough, etc. She tends to overeat when she's stressed, and then tries to make up for it by eating less afterwards. She used to try to force herself to throw up, but never succeeded, and eventually decided it wasn't worth it. She's been doing better now than she used to, now that she has real friends who she can talk to, and who love her for more than what the world sees her as.

Now…this may be a dumbass question…feel free to say so.. HOWEVER i really do not understand whats going on with billy rn. Like you DO make it clear what his thought process is but like- WHAT IS THIS MAN DOING 😭 For someone who wants to “hit his head against the wall until he passes out” because he’s so upset about what just happened, he’s uh not making decisions that make sense regarding his boytoy. Cuz like- was it not a sub-point of the killings to be together afterwards?? ‘No one will be in the way’ so they can be together now‼️ Only no they cant because Billy’s like, Ha ha no feelings are scary🚶. So does he not think about the fact that Stu almost died FOR and BECAUSE OF him? Like wheres the sense of obligation? Wheres the duty? Wheres the ‘okay i need to make up for being such a shit head’? Im sorry i just don’t understand him rn 😞👍🏻🔊

I get the confusion, he’s contradictory and he’s not the most reliable narrator. But also maybe I should have made this more obvious in my writing? Idk.

The reason Billy ran away isn’t just that he’s afraid of having feelings for Stu, it’s about the fact that those feelings make it devastating to lose him. Billy got a taste of how that would feel when Stu was in a comatose state and it scared the hell out of him. To him the pain and stress he’s experiencing by leaving Stu is only a fraction of what he would feel if he lost Stu involuntarily, so this is like ripping off the bandaid. A little pain now to avoid a lot of pain in the future.

Maybe this is just a me thing, but sometimes when I get something good I get scared and I want to run away because it hurts less to walk away than it does to have that good thing taken away from me involuntarily. So that’s kind of what’s happening here. It’s paradoxical but sometimes I want to run away because I want something very badly, and wanting something is scary because of the way it feels when you don’t have that anymore.

You also ask about a sense of obligation and duty, but the thing is that this is fundamentally selfish. Fear makes us selfish, and for Billy running away is an act of self preservation. Duty doesn’t matter when you’re terrified, it just becomes something to hate yourself for because you know you’re failing to meet it.

There’s also a not insignificant amount of guilt at play here. Billy sees the hand he had in Stu’s near-death experience, remembers feeling out of control when he stabbed him, and as a result he doesn’t totally trust himself anymore. So on some level he thinks Stu will be safer with out him, and he’ll be safer without Stu.

(Cough cough he’s in his new moon era)

So anyways yeah I hope that helps explain a little?

im gonna need phuwin to stop being so good at being a broken lonely boy in a messed up world that watches everything being taken from in front of his eyes and has only ever been hurt by opening his heart to anyone. it’s not doing good things for my sanity.

So does he, Gallagher.

So, having finally come to the conclusion of Astarion's questline--having romanced him, too--I think I finally understand what bothers me about the whole train of thought of "fixing him" that seems so pervasive. It's that helping him choose to be the better person, to do the objectively right thing, IS NOT the start of a redemption arc. There is no real redemption for anything he did in the past 200 years; he says this himself. There is no "fixing" anything, people's lives have been irrevocably ruined, STOLEN from them, and he may not have done it himself but he is 100% to blame for having gotten them there in the first place. HE KNOWS THIS.

There is zero redemption for Astarion, but again his story isn't about redemption. Astarion's story is that of a victim overcoming the centuries of trauma and abuse and deciding, no, I can be something BETTER than what you made me. I CAN BE BETTER THAN YOU.

Astarion, with enough care and pushing from the PC, can choose to end the cycle of hatred and abuse by cutting it off at the source. From there he can choose to cast it off and free the other victims rather than using them for his own ends. He can make the choice to BE BETTER. That does not absolve him of his guilt, which he has pointed out several, SEVERAL times previously, and he'll have to live with that. BUT he gets to live it as a free man making his own decisions and having cast off the shadows that bound him into a form he no longer recognized.

Astarion does not need to be redeemed and the writers knew this. What he needed was someone who cared enough to show him that he could be better than what some abusive cockwaffle told him he could be, that freedom did not have to come at the expense of other victims, and that not everyone in the world only wanted to use him. Astarion is as much a victim as everyone else, and you can see how Cazador's exact thought processes went if you talk to the skull of his sire. That is what Astarion can be, depending on your own choices and how you approach him, or he can be himself and take the time, once the tadpole situation is dealt with, to figure out EXACTLY who that is now.

one thing I’ve seen a lot of portwells/ej stans mention is that the wildcats were “bad friends” for not helping ej with his stress/pinning more specific blame on gina for not helping her boyfriend when he was stressed. for one, this is kinda blatantly not true. besides the fact that ej refused to ask them for help (and understandably so) by not revealing that he was director at the beginning of 302 or inviting miss jenn to outsource help, for example, most of them helped him/offered to help in one way or another. gina constantly shared her faith in his abilities and even offered to step back on their relationship while at camp to allow him more free time. val appeared to fulfill a lot of the directing role with casting and helping to organize the readthrough. maddox helped with organizing auditions. carlos (along with val) organized rcosl to help get more drama. I could share more examples but they serve to highlight that when ej was drowning, he was not left at sea. a lot of his stress was intrinsic, and even all the help in the world was going to prevent it because of pressure he imposed on himself. to blame his friends, who were there to have fun, with the only responsibility on their plate being to learn their lines, is a misunderstanding of why he was stressed and how he could be helped. the best thing they could do for him was learn their roles for opening night. in fact, miss jenn literally tells him “if they know their lines, they’ll be fine.” i also wanna mention that ej didn’t really seem to be failing at directing. it was more of a combination of personal doubt and the introduction of the production being filmed. the latter likely placed stress on all of them and there was nothing that they could really do to change that for themselves, let alone ej. anyways, all this is leading up to my main question: what did you guys want the wildcats to do for ej? take on directing parts of the show while also learning their lines in under two weeks? magically find him a way to please his father? the stress that ej was under sucked. but it wasn’t the fault of his friends, nor could it disappear in the presence of sweet words. I just wanted to pose this inquiry to his stans and open it up for respectful debate!

yall ready for this post canon supernatural (where i have chosen to resolve plots i didnt like off screen, aka the empty, chuck, and billie being evil for NO REASON-) that lives in my head? Good! I will make note of what i made end differently if I feel like it but whatever everyone is living in MY supernatural pony crossover

anyway part 1

I need to put them through such a situation they will never recover from

There's this weird and very gory French + Canadian film called Martyrs (exercise caution when looking it up in terms of images if that stuff freaks you out) and the basic concept is like. Some cult trying to understand what happens after death by bringing people to the brink of it in the most traumatic and agonizing ways possible. And I just realized that that's really some William Afton shit, both for the original motive and for remnant extraction.

(Accidentally wrote an essay in the tags so, ah. Read those I guess)

Song of the Day: April 15

"Something in the Way She Moves" by James Taylor

why does fame decay SO FAST like bro you don't do anything fame related for ONE DAY and you're already a nobody

gorou is one of my favorite little guys and i hate how the game just treats him like yae's personal punching bag and (by extension) like he's just miss hina ? like thats his whole thing now where its supposed to be funny that yae constantly makes him uncomfortable and upset and ignores his boundaries and no one says anything about it :/