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normal-thoughts-official · 5 months

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i need mal to have a mental breakdown so bad it makes me look stupid

this is the part where i beg you to hear me out. listen. mal's been a bit more like himself these last few chapters but his route still feels stilted. i know you know what i'm talking about. every time there is one of those "one of the LIs reacts to you getting hurt or something of the surt" things, mal's is always the most lukewarm, if not outright cold. the passion and personality only really comes out when we kiss. and like, listen, i romance almost exclusively women and POC (usually Black or brown POC) in this app (I'm pretty sure Aerin is the only white male LI I've ever had anything with? lol), so i'm very very used to my LIs of choice having obviously had a lot less thought when their routes were written. but this is different. it feels almost intentional. and his book 1 route wasn't like this, either

and what calls my attention the most is that mal almost never smiles lately. in book 1 smiling was pretty much mal's default sprite. i think mal was smiling, like, 50% of the time he was on screen, if not more, and the other expressions had to share the rest among each other. but in book 2 we go entire chapters without mal smiling once. and if you pay attention he almost never looks angry or sad, either (he never looked sad a lot but he did look angry often enough, i know because i always laugh at his angry face. rip king ily but calm down). he is in his neutral expression sprite 90% of the fucking time. he looks neutral more often than tyril does (although tyril obviously smiles a lot more in book 2 than he did in book 1, it's noticeable. still, though, he's tyril)

and we know that mal used humor and an untouchable persona as a defense mechanism in book 1, it's been said. so it makes sense that mal was smiling all the time; i remember mal felt more real when his face turned neutral, at least to me. and mal keeps making the same jokes as before, so - why is he not smiling?

and like we know that mal is not okay. it's been shown. the self sacrificial tendencies, the overworking himself, the self doubt. it's been said in text. but i think the neutral sprite is the biggest clue here. because a lot of the time, mal is being objectively funny, but his neutral sprite makes his jokes feel flat. mal feels flat. and i think it's because he's trying to cling to his old coping mechanisms - charming, funny personality - but he doesn't have the energy to anymore, because he's changed, because he's exhausted. and he's said that he felt like he was trying to keep the group together on his own, and we know that mal, for all his damn posturing, takes his responsibilities seriously when he accepts them. he learned how to patch a roof at age 6 so wren could sleep better. he paid off her debt before he paid his. he built a fucking orphanage, for fuck's sake. when mal decides that he's gonna do something, he gives it his all, and he refuses to be stopped. he's going to the goddamn thieves guild to help MC. he's been on the run from the guild for fucking years and they never found him despite him being in whitetower. this mf is dedicated

all of that is to say: during this last year, mal wouldn't stop. he refused to stop. going to the garden every day. building the orphanage. keeping tabs on imtura (i'll never shut up about it HE KEPT TABS ON IMTURA). trying to keep the friend group together. taking care of and feeding a bunch of fucking orphans. the only way to keep yourself going with this much responsibility at once is by repressing every fucking feeling hard and not thinking about anything else. which explains the constant neutral face. mal can't feel anything, because he barricaded everything inside himself so he could keep going. the only way he can ever express himself is physically, when he kisses MC, and that's about it. and so he never quite expresses any feeling, even concern for MC, or smiling, or anything, because he's too busy not stopping, because if he stops he'll crumble

so like. for this to have any closure at all. mal has to crumble. i think he's past the point where he can talk about this healthily and avoid a major breakdown. there's too much threatening to burst, and he's too tired. i genuinely cannot see any way for this to be resolved that doesn't involve mal fucking breaking down, and finally acknowledging how much he's hurting. he's gonna have to stop and look at this, and clearly this will only happen once it comes bursting out of him

and i want it, god damn it! i want mal to fucking lose it. i want that catharsis and i want the angst and i want the drama. fuck!!!!

but if there was ever a time for mal to lose his shit, it was chapter 13. i even wrote about it at the time. i mean, he had just been talking with MC about how much he was hurting when they were gone. fixing the roof and talking about how he feels like he's dragging the group down and he's the least important one. and then MC disappeared. again. in the shadow realm. with valax. and he had no idea where they were. and... nothing. nada. "don't do that to me again 😐". so i struggle to imagine what could possibly be worse than that to trigger a breakdown. MC full on dying and ressurrecting nia style? i mean, seriously

and so i'm climbing the walls because if mal has a breakdown? then everything up to this point will have been good writing. the way every scene felt stilted, most jokes fell flat, everyone felt that distance between mal and MC, that shitass "reunion", it will all have been part of his arc and i'll love it and hold it dearly because oh yeah, i fucking love emotional repression for the sake of self sacrifice, sign me the fuck up. but if not then i don't see how any of this can be part of a coherent arc, and so it'll just have. sucked. after his route in book 1 being so good and satisfying they just, what, gave up? lost their groove the first few chapters and then regained it later but never really addressed it? i don't know, man. i really hope whatever's coming is good but i'm used to choices letting me down, so

this post doesn't have a beautiful conclusion or anything i'm just kinda anxious and frustrated. this is why i hate reading things that aren't finished. god damn it

#aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa #playchoices #blades of light and shadow #bolas #bolas2 spoilers #mal volari #choices book club #meta #of sorts. idk im tired #i shouldn't even be writing this i should be finishing my assignments but i'm proscratinating by writing something else instead #overflowing trashcan

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author-a-holmes · 6 months

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What's your favorite part of making a title?

Heya hun, thank you for the ask. Hope your Saturday went well.

I don't always figure out the title, sometimes they just come to me, but whether it's that easy, or whether I have to do some brainstorming sessions, my favourite part is always figuring out how it ties into the themes or plot of the book.

(Edit: I went on a bit of a tangent here, so I'm gonna shove it under a cut...)

So, for Stolen, there's the obvious connotations where the story is about thieves, and severral thieves guilds, etc. But it's also a romance where once character steals the others heart. But there's also a sub-plotline running through the whole series that is built around theft of something that changed the very makeup of the magic in Moryann. So the theme "Stolen" goes several layers deep through the book, and series.

For Changeling/Darkling/FeyTouched I wanted the titles to reflect the tone of each book, more than specific themes. The words I used for the titles have very specific definitions, which play into the tone of each book in the series, and I include those definitions as almost an epigraph.

And Faith of the Grim used to be titled "A Grim Awakening", but after a bit of market research I found there's another series by the same name so I had to change it up. I originally chose Grim Awakening because there's lots of things the main character, Krysis, realises throughout the course of the book, but when I had to change the title I knew I wanted it to refocus on the connection she builds with the second main character. It's her faith in him that resolved the plot in the book, but there's a secondary layer again in that the faith, and the things Grim Reapers believe in shape the afterlife that gets explored through the book too.

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wherethewoofwoofsgo · 1 year

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A Quick Introduction

Hello. You are getting... as close to the spiel I give all my friends and coworkers and anyone who will listen about my babygirl as I can replicate in text format, which means it is not gonna make any damned sense. Bear with me.

If you know anything about D&D, there's some basic concepts copped from it, but honestly I fucking hate D&D's lore, so I mostly stole it and did whatever the fuck I wanted.

The majority of our story takes place in Silver Port, but we can't start there. We gotta start, instead, in the dwelling caverns (Think drow and you got a start.)

In the caverns, a scandal is brewing.

Severity, daughter of Clarity, has had a child outside the approval of the matchmakers. Even worse, the child is a second son--An extraneous boy past the one already alive. She's not telling who the father is, but thankfully the answer for what to do with the child is the same as what to do with any second son: Feed him to the goddess who created them and walks every cavern's halls: Ezphe.

Given we have a story, it doesn't quite go like that. For her efforts, Severity dies--There's only so long you can push against the spell of a dweller name.

Fourteen hours train ride away, in a world vastly different from our own but where cellphones and shit still exist, Shame, son of Severity arrives in Silver Port, a sunny, deserty, highly human and dwarven city, and is promptly adopted by a pack of dogs who make a living by stealing who rechristen him Beloved of the Dogfell pack.

There's a lot wrong with the life, obviously, but he grows up feeling loved, and not just by dogs.

He's involved with the local thieves guild from a young age(a group rendered a more respectable position than your average thieves guild by Silver Port's unique stance on theft), several religious organizations that provide regular meals (though he always remains more interested in the gods of the dogs), an eccentric elven woman who decides she's his aunt now, his local unhoused movements, and probably some other shit I haven't thought of yet. He's involved in his community, as are most people in Silver Port--It's a hard city not to be.

One thing he is lacking in, or maybe two: elven education in general, and dweller education in specific. It's bound to happen when there just aren't that many elves in town and what ones there are are spread out as shit.

Basically ya boy thinks he's grown at 25.

A QUICK NOTE FOR POSTERITY: Here's how elf age works here. Simplest way: From 20 to 100 you're 19 but you need to be 23 to vote.

A bit more complicated: At 20, in an ideal world where your family is rich and you all get along, an elf chooses their sixteen most interesting relatives. They will then spend the next eighty years doing five year apprenticeships with each, searching for a passion, and at the earliest at 80, though more likely at the earliest 90, declare themself an adult.

Obviously it doesn't often work out like that because bitches are not that fucking rich and you take what you can get, but that's the ideal.

But what do you do when a bitch is raised by dogs and born to steal?

That's the dilemma facing the elves of the thieves guild who are like "there is no way we can let this literal infant declare himself an adult." (They give in when he's like 48, he gets the tattoos to go with it and everything.)

Now at 50, dwellers reach the age of religious responsibility--They still aren't the age to vote in our example of 19 and 23, but Ezphe will kill them if they act up too bad.

And it is at that age that Ezphe appears in Mr. Dove's dreams and is like. "Hey. I'm your goddess. I literally made you. You need to come home and worship me." (She is playing favorites with his family.)

Now keep in mind. Dove is now a full grown man with full grown man responsibilities. So like any full grown man he says. "No."

Do you think a goddess is gonna take that well?

It is this period of 40s to early 100s that I am currently most interested in exploring. Please ask me questions and I will post things as I think to and want to, peace and love on planet Earth.

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lesvegas · 3 years

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anon who just started oblivion here again, it actually made stealth fun, which is very hard to do in a lot of games for me. like normally i hate when i can't kill enemies and have to stealth through but the thieves guild questline was so fucking good that i didn't mind it at all so i'm gonna do dark brotherhood next and make a second character for a warrior build. like with how open the opening is to interpretation (unlike "YOU'RE THE CHOSEN DRAGONBRON OOOO" skyrim) i'm gonna have him get sent to the arena after being in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and my thieves guild character is the one who managed to get him sent there instead of rotting in the prison or sent to death.

in oblivion to pretend your characters are in the same universe as each other you just need to be like "oh yeah this one was in the cell with the emperor but escaped, and after he left they threw in a different character but they found the secret passage on their own" whereas you need to do some real mental gymnastics in skyrim to have the same effect

Oh you're gonna LOVE the Dark Brotherhood questline, each quest is just as if not more unique than each Thieves Guild quest. But YEAH you can actually like... roleplay in it pretty well without mods. Hard to do in Skyrim imo. Anyway please get back to me as soon as you finish the Dark Brotherhood questline, I wanna hear ur thoughts on it :)

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retphienix · 3 years

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youtube

THIS WAS NUTS.

Aaaand this run, my final run, had a visual bug where he leaned back awkwardly. Whoops.

So I decided to tackle the rest of the arena before attempting to join the morag tong before finishing the thieves guild etc etc

It was a fun time, I've been in love with arena fights in games since Oblivion gave us that taste so I loved seeing it here!

BUT I WASN'T EXPECTING THIS.

I came into this fight, got some good licks in, and died to a wombo combo on my first run. I could have won as is, but I thought "Wait, I have all this sujamma sitting around, I'm gonna go hit him back."

It took a few runs before I was satisfied though, my game doesn't "love" this fight lol, I fell through the map a great lot of times and the champ got stuck a couple times as well.

I also had a run where I drank too much sujamma and chunked him way too fast to appreciate things

(that was one fast swat I believe).

Sadly, the best runs were the first few and I didn't save those since I planned on trying again. I tried runs without drinking more than a few times and was getting close but kept forfeiting because I'd fall through the map too many times and decide the recording was forfeit.

This is the one I decided to stay with but he still visually bugged a bit which makes it less awesome to see but forget all that!

This was unexpected and SICK, his attacks are varied, his animations are nuts, and he's fun to fight. A TRUE challenge.

This is from the Welcome to the Arena mod by Kalamestari_69, and I really do recommend this one.

The fights throughout are a nice tough challenge from start to finish, especially at lower levels, and this final fight is unique and fun!

I'll be honest and say after tackling this fight something like 9 times, it's challenging enough to warrant to ridiculous gear you get from him.

I assume you're not "supposed" to loot him, because in this mod looting the enemy disqualifies you- but this is the grand champ so that flag doesn't seem to be in place.

But even ignoring that- looting him gives some BIS equipment, but he's also a fight that warrants it, so I don't think it's remotely a matter of "Mod giving you OP stuff for free", this is earned as hell.

Sick mod, had fun.

Bonus commentary: Uploading this video was fucking hilarious. The boss music is apparently 7 days to the wolves, and it got flagged and prevented monetization (I don't do that anyway so literally no effect to me).

BUT THIS GOT ME.

WHEN YOU WIN IN THIS MOD THE CROWD ROARS.

THIS CROWD WAS COPYRIGHTED BECAUSE IT'S SAMPLED FROM THE BEGINNING OF A LIVE PERFORMANCE BY FLEETWOOD MAC.

A 6 second clip of people screaming at a concert got not just copyright claimed, but BLOCKED WORLDWIDE.

HEY FLEET, YOU DON'T OWN THE SOUND OF PEOPLE YELLING, EAT MY ASS. IT'S NOT EVEN THE BAND! IT'S THE CROWD DOING THAT GENERIC 'ROAR' THAT A BIG GROUP OF PEOPLE MAKE WHEN CHEERING.

IT LITERALLY SOUNDS THE SAME AS STARTING A FUCKING SONG ON GUITAR HERO 1 OR SOME SHIT.

Modern copyright is a joke, my lord.

Anyways if you want some combat centric content added to morrowind, as a complete newbie to all that morrowind has to offer and all the mods available to it- I do recommend this. If only for this fight in particular, he has a lot of interesting spells he makes use of and his does all these flips and somersaults around the map to be harder to pin down, it's genuinely a good fight and challenge.

#RetPlays #Morrowind #TES #The Elder Scrolls #Youtube

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daggerfall · 5 years

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Hi! I'm wondering if you could talk a bit, if you want, about the Night Mother not being Mephala? Because where I am as a lore-beginner-ish, it seems not wholly implausible that she could have been Mephala at some points? I know she's a corpse with a voice in Skyrim, and she's depicted as a probs-living person in 2920 (though idk what that author's source is), so it seems like her ID varies. And given that the M. Tong worships Meph and the DB broke off the MT, could she never have been Mephala?

I’m gonna preface this with the fact that @the-greymarch wrote most of this word for word and I’m posting that instead of my own research since it’s so much better written and researched than what I could have come up with.

The TL/DR is that there’s only one book that says the Night Mother is Mephala, and it’s written by someone with an agenda against the Brotherhood. That’s the whole point of TES lore, that the narrators are unreliable and typically have biases. Looking an in game evidence, we still don’t come to the conclusion that the Night Mother is really just Mephala in a trenchcoat, even ultimately we don’t come to ANY singular conclusion on who the Night Mother is.

Anyway here we go.

The book that offers the explanation of the DarkBrotherhood’s Night Mother being Mephala is Fireand Darkness: The Brotherhoods of Death. This in-game text – written by aMorag Tong assassin - says that before the Morag Tong worshipped Mephala, theyrevered Sithis. The author claims that the Morag Tong STILL revere Sithis, inthe same way that the Brotherhood does. They claim that the schism lies in theNight Mother – when the False Gods of the Tribunal took over, the Morag Tongceased to worship Mephala and turned their sights to Vivec in order to continueoperating as they were.

“TheNight Mother, my dear friend, is Mephala. The Dark Brotherhood of the west,unfettered by the orders of the Tribunal, continue to worship Mephala. They maynot call her by her name, but the daedra of murder, sex, and secrets is theirleader still. And they did not, and still do not, to this day, forgive theirbrethren for casting her aside.”

So Fire and Darkness implies that Mephala is the NightMother and the split between the Tong and the Brotherhood was due to the Tong’sexchange of Mephala worship to Vivec, who was said to be her Anticipation.

One other crucial piece of information we get from Fire andDarkness is that 2920: The Last Year ofthe First Era is a piece of historical fiction. Well researched, accordingto the author, but still fiction.

2920 is a seriesof 12 books, one for each month of the year 1E 2920. In this series, the NightMother is shown as a living woman – a leader in the Morag Tong. Fire and Darkness disputes thisdirectly, saying that the Night Mother has never historically been associatedwith the Tong, only the Brotherhood.

There is on other text that claims that leaders of the MoragTong were known as a/the Night Mother is TheBrothers of Darkness. It claims that all leaders of the Tong, and thenafter that the Brotherhood, have been called Night Mother, as a title. Whetherit’s the same woman they’ve been commanded by since the second era is claimedto be unknown.

“What isbelieved is that the original Night Mother developed an important doctrine ofthe Morag Tong-the belief that, while Mephala does grow stronger with everymurder committed in her name, certain murders were better than others.”

However from my reading of this text, it seems to besuggesting that the Tong no longer exist.

“It is more difficult to date theEra when the Morag Tong re-emerged as the Dark Brotherhood, especially as otherguilds of assassins have sporadically appeared throughout the history ofTamriel.”

One other book that mentions the Night Mother is Sacred Witness, a supposedly trueaccount of the author meeting with someone who calls herself the Night Mother.In this one, the Night Mother supposedly claims she was a thief at the verybeginning of the thieves guild, and she claimed that she suggested a part ofthe guild be dedicated to “the arts and sciences of murder”.

“TheMorag Tong was around long before my time. I know I'm old, but I'm not thatold. I merely hired on some of their assassins when they began to fall apartafter the murder of the last Potentate. They did not want to be members of theTong anymore, and since I was the only other murder syndicate of any note, theyjust joined on.”

The assassination of the last potentate was in 2E 324 when Versidue-Shaiewas assassinated by a Morag Tong in its infancy and his position taken over byhis son who was assassinated along with all of his potential heirs in 2E 430[which ended the Second Empire].

Yet ANOTHER book, The Night Mother’s Truth, claims that theNight Mother was once a Dunmer woman who was a member of the Tong. Supposedly,after the murder of the Last Potentate, Sithis itself spoke to her and shebecame pregnant with five children, and two years later she killed her childrenas Sithis ordered. The townspeople were so horrified by her act that theykilled her one night. Then 30 years later she spoke to a man passing by and shenamed herself Night Mother and named him Listener.

“And sothe Unholy Matron set her servant on his path - he would found a neworganization, a guild of assassins known as the Dark Brotherhood, in servicenot to Mephala, but to the Dread Lord Sithis.”

So as you can see, the in-game books are extremelycontradictory to each other! And it’s no wonder – the series relies prettyheavily on the concept of “unreliable narrators” – that is, you can’tnecessarily trust what people are telling you in game OR reading in thesebooks! Think Holden Caulfield in Catcherin the Rye; you really shouldn’t believe much of what he’s saying.

So if the books aren’t reliable, where do we turn? Let’slook at the Night Mother(s) in the games!

There has been a character with the title of Night Mother inevery main series game since Daggerfall, where the title belonged to a Khajiitwoman (according to the game files). In Morrowind, the “Night Mother” title wasgiven to Severa Magia, the local Dark Brotherhood leader who became anassassination target for the Tong [who the Nerevarine must kill if they jointhe Tong]. In Oblivion she appears as a spectre who speaks only to theListener, which is similar to her appearance in Skyrim where she is a corpse ina sarcophagus and speaks only the Listener.

In ESO, the Night Mother is mentioned a few times – once byElam Drals, who gives you minor contracts in the brotherhood. He brings her upa couple of times in dialogue [“I'm sure the Night Mother feels the same way.You don't see us marching armies out for slaughter, after all." And “Aslave dies slowly, one arduous task at a time. It's enough to make the NightMother Weep!"] and there is also a book in ESO called The Black Hand that states the confusion around whether the NightMother/Dark Mother is a person or a deity or what. The author of this bookclaims that the leaders of the Brotherhood sanctuaries are called Matron ratherthan Night Mother themselves, as several other books claim and is true for Oblivion,Skyrim, and ESO.

Additionally, Speaker Terenus, who recruited you, brings herup at least 29 times based on UESP control-f “night mother”. The way he talksabout her is very similar to how Lucien Lachance, speaker who recruited you in Oblivion, did; Bride ofSithis, mother of all us assassins, being who whispers contracts to theListener, all that. And despite ESO taking place an entire era before all otherTES games, it is more similar in its representation of the Night Mother toSkyrim and Oblivion than Morrowind and Daggerfall. Probably a consequence of itbeing release more recently, but the point still stands. We don’t ever meet theNight Mother or Listener, since we only advance to Silencer, but all of thesigns point in that direction.

So! With all of this conflicting information, where do weend up? There isn’t really an overarching answer to be found on the identity ofthe Night Mother. In Daggerfall and Morrowind the title belongs to the leaderof a sanctuary, and in Oblivion, Skyrim, and (implied) ESO, she is a spirit ofsome kind that speaks only to the Listener.

I think at least one conclusion we can draw is that NightMother is not Mephala. There is exactly one piece of evidence in favor, and itis a book by a Morag Tong member who likely has a vested interest in saying so.Other accounts, though contradictory to one another, at least have more thanone confirmatory piece of evidence elsewhere.

I’m sure buried somewhere in this mess is the truth! But Ican’t tell you what it is, just a little of what it is really, really unlikelyto be.

Maybe we’ll get even more different info in TES6! Who knows?

#night mother #dark brotherhood #long post #mephala #lore #topsecretespeonage #asks

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bubonickitten · 6 years

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'#i'm apparently incapable of playing anything other than a sneaky khajiit rogue who steals everything their gay little paws can carry' ok um first MOOD

i’ve TRIED playing other character builds but for some reason i always end up being like “no wait,,, if i can play as an anthropomorphic cat why WOULDN’T i??” and then i just default into like... playing the whole game in sneak mode and sniping people from the shadows and stealing literally everything. once i managed to play two-handed melee for awhile and got my skill pretty high, used wuuthrad as my main weapon. but i got bored of it before i maxed out the two-handed skill and went back to all archery and one-handed. and i’ve never done heavy armor because i need all the carry weight i can get for my compulsive thievery. so i spend most of the game maxing out sneak, archery, light armor, lockpicking, smithing, and enchanting and then setting them to legendary over and over again so i can keep gaining levels despite neglecting every other skill tree.

also like. i’m incapable of playing an elder scrolls game without being chaotic neutral. i’ve TRIED to do a good aligned character but the thieves guild and dark brotherhood are some of the most fun questlines so i failed at that pretty quick lmao. kinda wish skyrim had the same fame/infamy system that oblivion had, though, and with more repercussions than just “the gods won’t give you their blessing” -- if i’m gonna have my character make some evil choices, or just chaotic choices that result in other people suffering, i want to face repercussions for it in-game. i like when games do that, like undertale and dishonored. makes it more immersive. maybe the next TES will bring back that feature.

#the elder scrolls #skyrim #moonsbf

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