Sketchy

“I’m probably not saying that correctly”/“sorry for my pronunciation” = 👍 understandable! foreign languages often have sounds that aren’t used in English and learning to correctly pronounce unfamiliar phonemes is genuinely difficult even with help

“lol I’m not even gonna TRY to pronounce that 😂” = 👎 THIS is the problem, if treats languages other than English like they are inherently ‘weird’ or ‘overly complicated’ just because you aren’t familiar with them

sees some incest mpreg

lake inferior

lake normal

lake offtario

lake hurton

This is what Primus Tachonis says:

The window has closed. We were running out of time. We completed the ritual on perhaps the last day we could have. It is no longer a threat.

And I think, specifically, “we were running out of time,” would have been too dishonest for a Zone of Truth spell if there wasn’t some real external deadline that Primus was aware of.

It still may be untrue—only Yanessa Halovar knows if there was any trickery involved with the spell itself or if Primus simply successfully resisted. I think it’s much more interesting story-wise if he was telling the truth.

Brennan is an information-heavy storyteller crafting an epic mystery. I think it’s a mistake to discount any new information he drops for the party.

Some people in the notes of this are continually calling the Tachonis “sloppy” and equating that sloppiness with arrogance. And it’s true, they are arrogant and overconfident. But that doesn’t mean that their overconfidence is the only reason they rushed ahead. That is an assumption made by the PCs and encouraged by Brennan. Much the same as Lady Amariya/Termina being out of the way and safely dealt with in the casket was an assumption made by the PCs and encouraged by Brennan.

It’s comforting to assume that the Tacchonis are sloppy and arrogant and prone to stupid mistakes.

I say this as someone who sells pottery, and many people who see my art assume I am using art as an outlet to “express myself.”

I am not.

I use art to challenge myself. A lot of what I do is the equivalent of doing a hard sudoko or a half marathon, answering the question of “can I do this?”

I use art to question things and explore ideas. Finding physical synthesis between concepts and working out a design to its end state.

I use art to make money. I make some things just because I suspect they’ll sell well, and I keep making them when they do.

This idea that an artist is “putting themselves out there” every time they create is not only stupid, but harmful, and it kills critique and analysis.

Yes every creative work is influenced by its creator, but the most preliminary step of analysis is to define the purpose of a work of art (functional, narrative, entertainment, persuasive, decorative, ceremonial, etc.) and a vanishingly small percentage of that is self-expression. Even then, it’s generally tied to the self’s relationship with something else—perception, society, etc.

It’s very tiresome to have people assume they know you because they like (or dislike) your art, to make assumptions about who you are and how you approach the world. It’s nothing new— people called the Impressionists insane and the Fauvists degenerate. And now people are expected to hand out their identities and traumas to prove they have the right to explore certain subjects.

Because artistic expression can be incredibly deep or maybe not, but the point is it’s not usually about the artist’s self.

It doesn’t need to be about the self to be meaningful.

Hell, so much of the art made by humans throughout history is religious, and deeply meaningful, and for most of human history across the world, religious art is very much not tied to the self.

Really the first time we get a visual art movement that’s strongly linked to the self is Surrealism—and not even all Surrealists! de Chirico was engaging with metaphysics and Nietzsch more than his own psyche (okay he’s kind of a proto-surrealist but still.)

What’s frustrating for me is that people look at or engage with art—especially art they don’t understand—and instead of thinking about its purpose, it’s place in history, and the ideas it’s trying to grapple with, they assume the art must be about the artist. That everything is personal and tied to the artist’s emotions and inner life.

It’s such a narrow point of view to approach art with. Especially since many artists write about how and why they make things the way they do. You can approach things with your own critical reasoning or just read! What they wrote! About their art!

I’m glad this post has resonated, and a lot of people do get what I’m trying to say. It’s good, I’m glad they do.