Just checking.... We all pronounce Miette like My-TAY in our heads, right?

It's "mne-eeh-t." "Mne-eht" said with that soft tongue on the upper palette French sound or "mee-yet". I put the "n" because the pretty tongue roll on the "y" kinda sounds "n"-like to me.

I've been saying it Mee-yet in my head. Like the French word for "crumb."

[ID: A tumblr post from @/dkpsyhog that says, "My favourite kind of poll is ones where OP clearly made a VERY incorrect assumption." End ID.]

imodna modern pride

bonus of ze best boi

Happy lesbian visibility week to imogen temult specifically

one time i had a dream that tiktok users deemed “kid” as a slur and that you HAD to refer to them as minors otherwise you would get harassed and threatened with doxxing. you couldn’t say “when i was a kid” anymore for example you HAD to say “when i was a minor” instead

You were like one site off.

Zephrah actively postpones ruidusborn births. It is believed that the actual number of ruidusborn in exandrian history is much larger than has been officially recorded because the stigma of it was so intense that people lied about it. Alyxian, one of the few recorded ruidusborn heroes of the calamity who received direct blessings from three different prime deities (our very own Changebringer, the Archheart, and the Moonweaver) , has been all but forgotten (read: likely erased) by history.

The Archive of knowledge that revealed the truth of Predathos and Ruidus was never some forgotten thing—it was intentionally hidden by the elites in Vasselheim. And we have no idea how long they have been operating with that knowledge. We have no idea what they have been doing with that knowledge, what silent wars have been waging for years or decades or centuries. But we saw what they were willing to do, in Hearthdell. We saw the violence and suppression they were willing to commit. We saw the pettiness of the exandrian pantheon in the Dawnfather’s response to Deanna’s: “Are you worth saving?”. In the Changebringer’s manipulative change of course in her pleas to FCG. In the Wildmother’s rejection of Opal. In the knowledge we have that Imogen spent so much of her miserable time in Gelvaan begging the gods to aid her to no avail—just for Kord to reach out only to demand that she not let them down.

Liliana’s point that Vasselheim and the other faithful elite of the world will hunt ruidusborn down to negate even the potential of this happening again isn’t new, it isn’t something this solstice and the machinations surrounding it caused, and it isn’t some unsubstantiated, fearful claim—it is has been happening.

The vanguard—and Liliana—are unequivocally wrong in their means. But can you really fault them in their desire? Can you really fault the conclusions they have drawn from the experiences they have lived? If you spend your entire life being rejected by the people and the pantheon of your world for means you could not possibly control, would you not seek out someone and somewhere that would accept you? And if you found it, if some being that has been connected with you your whole life welcomed you home and wrapped you in an embrace that felt like your mother’s and says that it is starving; well, aren’t you, too?

There is likely a holy war brewing. At the end of it all, is it truly the sole fault of the people and not the organizations and society that expelled them?

Oh, Ludinus is definitely using predatory tactics to indoctrinate marginalized groups into following him. I don’t blame the members of the Ruby Vanguard for being lured into Ludinus' cult, to be clear. That can happen to anyone.

Like Orym said to Bor'dor after the fight at the Dawnfather's temple, the gods have done a lot of good, AND a lot of bad. Having beef with the gods is plenty valid. But destroying them completely?

Even putting aside whatever collateral damage could happen if Predathos is released and there's a conflict between it and the gods...

Do thousands of innocent Exandrians deserve to lose their healthcare for the sake of your cause? Clerics are the main healing class, and once the gods are gone, they'll lose their powers.

Do thousands of innocent Exandrians deserve to be left vulnerable to the incursions of Demons from the Abyss, as we saw when the divine protections keeping them at bay in the Grey Valley were undone?

Do thousands of innocent Exandrians deserve to be subjected to the brutal authoritarian rule of the Imperium, who already oppress thousands on Ruidus? Willmaster Edmuda implied pretty heavily that the Imperium's plan wasn't just to settle on Exandria, but to take over more territory and expand their empire.

It's not that there isn't fault on both sides, or that the members of the Vanguard don't have nuanced reasons for joining. The problem is that following Ludinus' rhetoric is leading them to do irreparable harm to thousands of innocent people, and that's also not okay.

Ludinus is a fascist dictator, who has allied with other fascist dictators (and in fact may be responsible for their rise to power - the Weavemind didn't found the Imperium until AFTER Ludinus first contacted them, based on what's been said in-game). You CANNOT give quarter to fascists without opening the rest of society (especially its most vulnerable and marginalized people) to a fascist takeover. When enough people hear the propaganda long enough, they'll start to buy into it enough to do terrible things. Regimes like this don't start with war crimes, they start with struggling people buying into flawed rhetoric. It doesn’t make the on-the-ground members of the Vanguard inherently evil, but it does make them extremely dangerous.

As much as I'd love to see every member of the Vanguard be deprogrammed from their cult brainwashing and assisted in living better lives, the existential threats they're facing are too great. Deprogramming takes a long time and a lot of therapy, which is not something they have time for right now.

Anyway, Matt's worldbuilding is very good, and I am chewing on it.

I 100% agree that the vanguard is bad, and that their reasons don't justify any of their means (including, of course, the suffering of exandrian citizens)—I say (or, imply, maybe) as much in the og post.

Where I disagree is that these people are unsalvageable due to either danger or time. In fact, I think that's exactly what the same organizations and societal leaders that ostracized these people (ultimately creating the environment where they would find themselves able to be manipulated so deeply) to begin with would want people to think.

Something people pretty consistently look over when it comes to the vanguard removing the gods (which, to be abundantly clear, is obviously not a good thing) is that they genuinely believe (read: have been convinced) that that will not happen.

They don't think they're depriving people of clerics or paladins and their abilities. Obviously we, the audience, know that's wrong. And it's incredibly easy to brush it off as these people being stupid but I feel that's a massive, massive misunderstanding of just how effective and intentional cult manipulation is (further clarification: this part is not in direct reply to you, rather than an observation of fandom on the whole. again, we largely agree!).

Frankly I think Liliana is already the ultimate example of this. If she, who has been here for 25+ years, can be even slightly swayed (and she has been, after a grand total of three conversations with her daughter, nonetheless) then I don't think it's a stretch to say the recently joined 16 year old can be saved.

(the imperium/weavemind is an entirely different beast to tackle. I didn't mention them bc I consider both them and, honestly, ludinus to be separate entities than 99% of the vanguard)

Bonus:

+bonus:

Day 281

Imodna has been canon for 40 weeks (13 days in-game)

“Imogen?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Endless Bells Hells

God this has to be the worst scheduling situation of all time though. You think your story's reaching a natural break point with the party returning from the moon so you can smoothly switch gears to another party and instead you have a character permadeath but you can't just easily reschedule the several busy actors you have on standby so the party gets 0.2 seconds to react to everything that happened and then whoops here comes a different thing, surprise!

When Phantasmal Force finally works

FRIDA

How do you want to do this?

—

Goodbye, Faithful Caregiver.