So Here’s My Thought, Because I Don’t Think The Archheart Is Wholly Wrong About The Gods Needing

A bit of a strange question, but if there were any of your videos you were to "remake" today for any reason (ex: you feel like you misrepresented the original text or spread misinformation), which would it be and why? None of them is a perfectly valid answer

Again: bit of a strange question, but I've been thinking about my own creations and how I could have done so much better with some of them, but I also know that is a sign of my growth and constantly chasing "what if I did this instead" isn't always healthy for nurturing a creative mindset, and I was wondering what your opinion might be as a Creator of Things with a bit more experience than I

There's been a few trope talks where I've thought later of other angles I could've explored that might warrant sequels or part 2s, but I don't dislike any of the summaries enough to justify a rework.

I always find "I could've done this better if I made it now" to be a bit of a fallacy. I'm only better at making things now because I made all those earlier things. If I knew everything I'd learn from making a project before I started the project, it wouldn't come out the same.

I think when it comes to the "rework remake perfect" instinct, it helps to zero in on what the impulse is really grounded in. In my experience, more often than not, it's not actually about making the art better, except incidentally. It's usually about showing that you are better. It's demonstrating your competence and your higher standards and your skills, and more importantly it's overwriting the proof that you were once less than perfect. If people look at your old work and think that's all you're capable of, they'll be judging you poorly!

If that's the motivator, it's a very unhelpful one. You can't control for being harshly or incorrectly judged. It's a fruitless effort to stave off potentially upsetting outdated criticism, and it's not even going to work. Fear of critique is an unreliable and untrustworthy motivator.

If it really is about making the art itself better, perfecting your magnum opus with your newly leveled-up skills, that's a little more solid. But from where I'm standing, it's always better to use those skills to make something new instead of polishing something old. The older, unpolished work has already acquired its audience that finds it appealing for reasons that might never occur to you. Trying to bury or overwrite it just deprives that audience of the thing they like, and maybe makes them feel bad for having liked it in the first place. Also, usually when you look back on the older work, you'll conclude that the problem is everything and it'll need to be torn down and started from scratch. I know when I revisited the first three chapters of the comic, when I let my critic brain spin up, it wasn't shading or lineart I wanted to fix - it was panel composition, overall pacing, the entire structure of the chapters as a whole. I would've had to make them all over again to be happy with them, and they wouldn't be the same story by the end.

I've been thinking a lot about the Discworld through this lens lately. It ended up over 40 books long, but everyone agrees that the first two are not what you should start with, because they're the worst ones. They're entirely parodic, purely referential of at-the-time major fantasy series, and borderline mean-spirited in places. If you haven't read Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Dragonriders of Pern, you're not gonna understand like a full 50% of The Colour Of Magic.

It's clear that when he started in on them, Pratchett was entirely focused on taking the piss out of a genre he found mostly shallow and unimpressive. But the Discworld wouldn't leave his head, and everything he made fun of he clearly eventually found himself overthinking. He'd make little one-off jokes in the early books about Dwarves having no women and a hundred words for gold, and then twenty books later he'd have a Dwarf gender revolution make waves across the Disc, and then he'd write Thud!, a book that delves deeper into the nuances of Dwarf societal structure than Tolkien ever did.

If you look for them, there are continuity errors everywhere in Discworld. In his introductory book, Carrot defused a dwarf bar full of rowdy brawlers by guilting them all into writing to their poor lonely mothers back home. Shortly thereafter, Carrot will be outraged at the mere concept of an openly female dwarf. Pratchett even eventually wrote Thief of Time, a book that loosely explains that the Disc makes no sense because history has been broken and put back together incorrectly twice, and therefore any continuity errors are because of that.

He's the writer. He could've gone back and fixed it, edited the reprints to be less disruptively discontinuous with the later books. Instead he continuously moved forward and allowed the world he made to grow without cutting it off from its roots. And because he didn't bury his older, far worse work, we have the privilege of following the Disc's evolution from the very start, and seeing how this shallow, stock fantasy world parody became something incredibly rich and complex without ever pretending like its early installments never happened.

Anyway, that's why I think it's better to move forward. You make more good stuff that way.

We must protect them

Good Evening Mr. Phelps.

30 years ago, the city of Aeor created the Latimus Princeps, a device that prevents divine entry and scrying within the city of Aeor. Since then, our covert agents within the city have learned that Aeor has neared completion of a god-killing weapon known as the Factorum Malleus. In addition, they have created a failsafe protocol spread throughout the city, wherein should they feel there is a threat to the Factorum Malleus, they will disseminate knowledge of how to build it across the globe, ensuring its recreation. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to infiltrate the city of Aeor in the guise of a mortal, sabotage the failsafe mechanism and Latimus Princeps, and destroy the Factorum Malleus. As always, should any of you or your IMF team be caught or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.

This message will self destruct in five seconds.

there's an angel (insect) and a devil('s coach horse beetle) on each shoulder

thinking of opening a small shop next year... these would be a set of 2 stickers :>

the most depressing part of winter is that there are no little bug friends on campus

Carabidae / ground and tiger beetles

Agonum viduum - 2023

Violet Ground Beetle (Carabus violaceus) - 2024

Carabus - 2024

Carabus coriaceus - 2024

I feel like this fandom shouldn’t be this mean and divisive about having different takes/ predictions about A STORY THAT IS STILL BEING TOLD

At the end of the day we’re all just responding to improv. Yes, Matt has likely put together some key plot events but his work will only take us so far without the choices the players make.

People can bring up lore/canon/past texts but at some point we do gotta recognize that the path forward is ultimately being decided by Matt and the players.

Use lore/canon/past eps as a guidepost but don’t get superior in thinking your prediction of how things will go is going to be the Correct Version and everyone else “lacks media literacy” (whatever the fuck that overused phrase even means anymore)

"It took me TWO years to finish this sketch book!" Well that's cuz you're not fuckin sketching. Those are fully painted pieces dawg that's a renderedbook. I've gone through four sketchbooks in my off time this year alone I just draw stupid faces and shit for fun. pussy up like the rest of us and start drawing stick figures with guns

As a hardcore Corellon Larethian fan from the moment I read the deity’s canon 5e lore, I admit to have always been disappointed by how underrated they are.

Corellon is prideful, egotistic, cocky, simultaneously the deity with domains of Magic, Music, Arts, Crafts, Warfare, Poetry, Trickery and Knowledge. Their battles with Grumsh and his ex-wife Lolth are legendary. They have an organization called “Fellowship of the Forgotten Flower” which just realm hops to recover elven relics.

Seeing their representation in CR Downfall brings me so much joy! I understand that the Exandrian version of Corellon has differences with the canon 5e version of the Elven Prime Deity, but honestly just seeing them on my screen fills me with joy.

Abubakar does such an incredible job! I hope my elven prime deity daddy (genderfluid) starts getting more recognition now!

My personal theory is that his especial intrigue with death is born from the fact that there’s probably not a lot of beauty right now. There’s been a lot of talk of how Asha is withering and not in a good place right now because her domain is withered, but I can’t imagine ANY of the gods have a healthy domain right now. The Sun is choked with smoke, the “last bastion of civilization” is festering with hatred, nature is withering, redemption just had all her followers wiped out.

And people are trying to survive. Not make art not find beauty in the world. Survive. The arch heart carved out a beautiful space, one. But can he really be happy if the last beautiful place in the world is nestled like a parasite in the heart of a place that despises him? If it has to be secret and guarded because it can and will be destroyed if found by the wrong person? If he knows the moment he creates it that it will not fade gracefully like a flower or a painting or a glorious sunset, but it will be destroyed abruptly and painfully?

If the Arch Heart is still around, I think the reason is likely that every god has done a lot of healing, and is doing a lot of healing from the Calamity. But it’s important to remember in the moment we find them, none of them have flourishing domains and all of them are coping in different ways.

It's interesting to bear witness to Emhira/The Matron's offer to kill S.I.L.A.H.A/Corellon because they were tired and intrigued by the notion of permanent nothing. Mostly because it raises a very interesting (and important) question for both Downfall and C3's narrative:

What, if anything, changed?

It's been hundreds of years since the Calamity, and The Arch Heart is still a prominent and heavily worshipped deity across a wide range of groups. Corellon, and any others sharing their sentiment, still have not made the choice to die, despite the means and motive being presented to them a long time ago. Even now, when threatened with the return of Predathos - they're moving in tandem with all of their other siblings, marshalling their forces and gathering strength

Did the Arch Heart have an epiphany between the start of Downfall and the end of Calamity? A moment where they realised that they genuinely do not want to die? Or perhaps they're still intrigued by the notion of nothingness, yet only stay alive to continue fulfilling their purpose to their siblings, worshippers, and Exandria?

It may very well be a question that gets answered in Downfall Part III, but for now it'll keep rotating in my head like a lazy cat on a lazy susan