"Josh"

"Where's Elik Silverfist?"

could rly use a wish rn

merle as a baddie xoxo

which is like, simple enough. but this piece of dialogue in particular kind of made me realize what other points in the instances might have meant

“a place of memory and feeling, where thoughts are real…”

im only bringing up this point because of the shadow merle fight that happens when we chase mellori deeper into her mind and what comes after that battle

because the shadow magic in our soul twists dreams into nightmares, and the reverie is a place of thoughts and memories, this sort of implies that the shadow magic twisted the dream into something that we, the wizard and scion, have been afraid of hearing — something internal (stress from saving the spiral dozens of times, as well as fearing the idea that everyone harbored ill intentions + feelings towards them) that was made external through the manipulation of shadow magic (those fears were thrown in their face)

The first instance I can recall him being against us is in A Dream of Wizard City. We’re in Morganthe’s memory of her expulsion of Ravenwood, and significantly, we are Morganthe in this moment.

This hits us so hard. All through the game we, the Wizard, have been Ambrose’s favored student. Morganthe was his favored student once, too. 

And now, that favor and trust he had in us and Morganthe is severed, because Morganthe’s use of Astral magic had disastrous consequences.

We have Astral magic too, though. AND SHADOW. Perhaps this ONE scene made us fear for our place in Ravenwood. Something will go wrong and we, with our aberrant and taboo and forgotten magic, will pay the price. We will lose Ambrose, and all our magic, just like Morganthe had.

But this is only one of two scenes where I can recall Ambrose’s aggression against us. So what’s the other? The beginning of Empyrea Part 2. In this moment, the Arcanum scholars are desperately trying to revive Mellori, almost resorting to experimental magic, and Ambrose barges in.

Notice how Ambrose barges in SO quickly that we can’t even decide when to move on from Zander’s idea to Ambrose’s intrusion. His understandable anger literally leaves the PLAYER with no control over the situation.

He puts Scholars in quotation marks, as if he doesn’t believe the Arcanum is a legitimate place of study. He doesn’t believe that WE are legitimate wizards anymore, having joined the Arcanum. Ultimately his anger isn’t actually directed at us and instead he first came to bring us to Ravenwood to heal Bartelby, but we’re caught in the crossfire of this moment.

When we confront The Headmaster in the Dream Shrine, he asks about our allegiance with the Arcanum.

the way he phrases it indicates that the wizard was too busy saving the spiral to get a proper ravenwood education with electives and such. i don’t have screenshots of it, but ambrose also makes comments early on when he sends you to a new world about making sure we’re excused from our missed work, and cyrus drake’s tutorial tips for new spells often snarkily ask if we’re too busy “gallivanting through the spiral” (or other similar phrasing) for our coursework.

i think perhaps the wizard feels guilty for it. we’re clearly hero-worshipped by current ravenwood students and adults, and i wonder if our graduation and people viewing us as educated and intelligent gives us some sort of imposter syndrome because we never even technically completed the curriculum. and comments like cyrus’, even though he is, you know, cyrus, might not be rare. perhaps from other students in our year if we missed a test.

first pride101 winner :)