Dungeons, Dragons, Dissociation👽

i dont know the context but i cant stop watching this tiktok

the drama???? the energy???? the facial expressions???

Before I was a Noun

My mother was my Father

My father was a Clown

He wore a pretty Costume

And danced in purple Smoke

My father was my Mother

But only as a Joke

He taught me Shattered Mirrors

And Painting Your Grotesque

And how to Laughing With Them

At Aching In Your Chest

I cannot be a person

Just Schadenfreude Fodder

I long to be my mother's son

He knew the "correct" decision in that moment, the one that would save his life

He also knew it was not what the character would believe he would do

But now, wicander has killed a woman in cold blood, and for no great pay off either, just his life - just for his sake

He couldve done more to pit the tachonis and the halovar against each other if he had died, he couldve martyred himself

And now, Sam is gonna have to do the work of "how will wicander recover from such a truly selfish act", given what he, in all his innate goodness, believes

oh wicander, wicander, wicander

It's so easy to believe in goodness and kindness when you have friends who can hear you yell "HELP"

but here you are, alone in the dark, with no one to save you but yourself

So you take the knife and you kill a woman in cold blood

So you hunt down an angel and you make his blood yours

So you do whatever it takes to survive

Where I take screenshots of the characters in some of their most miserable, isolated moments of the first few seconds during the cold open

in honor of pride month, here is a short selection of examples showing why wick comes off as super duper asexual to me

the moment that started it all: post-grandfather in the basement reveal in episode 3, now that Wick is aware the Creed is all a lie, Yanessa makes a careless comment about "By the way, now that, you know, you've disabused yourself of some of these extremely oppressive convictions, if there's any treats (winks, taps nose several times) you have been missing, accommodations can be made when you know the truth." Wick: "Oh. I've been keeping my body pure for all these years." Yanessa: "You've actually been- Is that true?" and comments about how much diligence that must've taken, and Wick is still too stunned to really respond. This kind of exchange is something that to me becomes a pattern with Wick, which is him being comfortably celibate while everyone around him is extremely allosexual, to zero response.

in episode 9, for example, wick brings up armas, the actress he keeps a photo of, and only describes her as "Not a girlfriend, no, just we connected on a- When you go to the theater, you let go of yourself a little bit and feel emotions and portray yourself in a different way and it can be very romantic, that's all. We just felt a bit of a connection." Romantic, but even then his emphasis is on the way they connected as human beings. (Probably because the only friend he seems to have at all is Tyranny, and she's been here 6 months. Armas liking spending time with him completely separate from his association with the Creed must've been really special to him) Tyranny/Whitney is the one who says, suggestively, that he stayed up "all night" praying after that, not Wick, and when Thimble jumps in with "Are you celibate?" he says "I don't think that's any of your business" and clarifies "And that's a choice, to be celibate. I could be, I could do either." One: he's rightfully pushing back that his lack of sex life is not any of the party's business, which was refreshing, and two: celibacy is not a requirement of the Creed and he does not feel pressured into it, he is just not interested.

then in episode 29, Lux Adora was coming off really intensely to Wick after the Charm Person (to the point when I first watched I really thought she was going to kiss him or something), saying multiple times how "beautiful" and "radiant" he is, that "penmanship or companionship, whichever you wish can be yours" whilst Wick is extremely uncomfortably repeating "Oh, oh dear." He actually seems relieved and more confident when the conversation turns to the fairfolk: "Oh! Yes. ... They certainly are [bad]." Once Bolaire comes in, it's also notable that after Bolaire's crack about the lux being really horny that Wick mentions "this whole thing feels icky to me," though that could just be referring to Bolaire's bodystealing. This is the first time I can recall we've seen flirtatious behavior directed at Wick, and while the fact the lux is their mark for Bolaire to bodysnatch does complicate the motivations behind his behavior, he seems completely uninterested and even repulsed.

After this, when his mother Iris arrives, she brings up on her own the idea Wick slept with Lux Adora with "Don't want the D'Antonios [family he is to marry into] to find out you have, you know- Maybe not in our private chambers, Wicander. Propriety, etiquette, you put the young lux here in a terrible position" to which Wick replies "Oh, I would never." It's another example of a family member highlighting the way he can flout the rules of the Creed (about 'purity') by assuming that of course he would want to have sex, when by all accounts Wick's behavior should show he's not interested.

So all in all, Wick is a character who has a defined romantic interest in one person, in which he only characterizes the bond as emotional, and stands firm on his celibacy at every occasion to party members and to family, while even potentially showing repulsion to the idea of getting physical with someone. In a meta sense, I also personally got the impression (back during the overture and soldier's arc) that the other players- and many viewers- kind of saw Wick not having sex or drinking as a challenge, because oh, he's deconstructing from his evil religion, obviously that means he needs to drink and have sex now! Meanwhile, what I see is a character who isn't interested in those things because he's not someone who is throwing out all of the Creed or beliefs stemming from it, he is someone who wants to burn away the evil shadowing it and keep the good.

in the tale of aramán, we are aware of three distinct planes of existence all with their own life forms and hierarchies and politics: aramán, tír cruthú (faerie) and na'ahavri (the pit). there are also the tenebral reaches (the underworld), which isn't its own plane but rather something directly linked to aramán

na'ahavri is the home of demonkind. it was once ruled by a queen but now there is a prince. a shadow of suffering. yes, this sounds ominous. but much like tyranny, we are learning that there are people worth making suffer. however, it is not a place mortals are sent to by a god on high to suffer as punishment for sins. mortals who end up in the pit signed contracts, made bargains or otherwise had pacts with demons that involved the collection of their soul. it is not generally an afterlife for mortals, but the final destination of specific mortals under specific constraints. demons who die in other planes likely return to the pit (per conventional DND mechanics), but that's really it as far as it's connection to an afterlife.

the pit is not hell. it's a place where a people live. those people are frightful and strange to those who are not of the pit. they have different values, different ways of life, look different and speak differently. they want different things. yes, it is a realm of unchecked chaotic swirling energy where cruel demons might torment souls of mortals who made pacts with them, but demons like tsul'reckshi who want nothing more than to free those in chains also came from there. like every place, like every race, there is potential for great good and great evil within demons. there are demons who love the pit and demons who wish to find any way to never go back.

the candescent creed is not christianity and does not preach christian theology. but there is a major element of christianity that they're trying to harken to with the demons and that's old school missionary work. the demons aren't biblical demons as in creatures from hell. they're pagan savages from a far away land that the creed has tamed and made "civilized". they've wrangled them into dresses and taught them how to pray and now their souls will be with The Light when they die. isn't that miraculous? (the joke being on us because the aspirants will have the same afterlife as many of the faithful of the creed. and that's the pit.)

something happened during the reign of the shapers that made some demons flee na'ahavri. because the shapers colonized aramán, bent the tenebral reaches to their will and used faerie for their own people, it stands to reason that the pit suffered similar indignities that may have driven demons like tsul'reckshi, who values freedom above all, into hiding in the mortal world.

ksha'aravi remained. and he makes deals with ambitious humans like yanessa. and he takes filament from her. and he sends his daughters with the intention of causing suffering in the mortal world. but as tyranny has slowly discovered, that doesn't have to be evil. there are people to hurt. ksha'aravi's intentions are unclear. he clearly has rigid ideas about what his daughters are and should do, but that's hardly dissimilar to yanessa and primus, and tyranny seems to feel he loves her, all the same. whatever it is he wants, whatever it is that drives him to give his daughters mortal names and ask them to spread strife among the humans, i expect we'll learn eventually.

ksha'aravi isn't the devil. the pit isn't hell. it is no more inherently wicked than faerie is good.