A bit late, but I agree with Birds, those omake are really good. I'm a bit jealous of that Velvet... but then again, she apparently lost Jade...
I already have Diamond Tiara babysitting 2: Electric Boogaloo planned in my mind. It'll be so good.
"good"...
Ha!
Don't lie to me. Or maybe don't lie to yourself.
Look back. No, no seriously, look back with me a moment. When? When have we and the thread ever considered The Filthy family anything more than an ends to a mean?
Velvet DOES consider him a friend. NOW he considers us a "good friend" thanks to Mareinette, but there WAS a pre-existing bond before.
On the other hand Velvet cares NADA about Spoiled Rich, except maybe a bit for the influence she has on her friend (Filthy Rich) and on of her daughter's friends (Diamond Tiara).
I try to make all the characters interesting, even if not necessarily likeable. I try to ensure that Velvet stays humane (well, as long as your decisions remain humane). And when it comes to Filthy Rich himself, I even remember sprinkling him in
on a certain situation that could be considered gratuitous. But in my mind, those just make sense. I mean, he's the only actual "father" character that you know, other than your own Stormchaser. He's the only real parent on your contacts list, if you think about it.
very true. I kinda forgot the scene you quoted in which they shared a "parent" moment I admit.
But anyways. My point is that, despite all of that, this quest has still been absolutely plagued by AP hell. Any claims that "things could have gone differently" carry the unspoken "at the expense of something we did". And I personally like the current Velvet, WITH her regrets (and I mean the non-Wolf ones) to the point that I am happy where she currently is.
Well, we'll never be
satisfied... but while we probably could have done better, we also could have done FAR worse.
and by the nature of the game, and random rolls, known knowns and unknown unknowns... we can never be certain what other choices would have been better.
And sometimes we were just unlucky. We DID try with Twilight. We DID make a few, if late, attempts with Windy.
We don't know if bringing Selene to Celestia would have been the better choice (PROBABLY not, she likely would have used the mirror). We don't know for sure that breaking Twilight's faith in Celestia would have been better (PROBABLY yes, but we might have failed an hidden roll about her follow up actions...).
We could have introduced her DIFFERENTLY to the Master. we could have revealed different things.
We could have
avoided sharing the Windigoes.
We could have forced the issue and gone to the Changeling Hive, maybe taking advantage of the situation to "rescue" and recruit Twilight...
Many things we could have done better, about as many that could have gone far worse.
. I still don't feel bad for Spoiled though; when your own daughter is more willing to call her teacher mom than you you know you've screwed up. I just feel bad that they'll keep their crappy loveless marriage as-is on our Name's advice.
the "call the teacher mom" is not the bad part.
the bad part is how she THEN went "how dare you, I AM YOUR MOTHER, ONLY I!"
she KNOWS she sucks as a mom, even if she likely lies to herself about it. Why would she get so offended at this minor slip otherwise?
Personally when it comes to Wasn'ts my main regret is the Woods.
There was so much we hadn't satisfied our curiosity of!
that's definitely up there. Not befriending the other cultists, particularly Starry, is probably mine.
Twilight's fate is also up there.
Having a high Grail lore and a close relationship with someone should already rate as mind control. This Sacrament is just formalizing the deal.
While other personal Sacraments include murder, murder, three murders, and a different flair of mind control aimed to only deeply traumatize someone. And the other Grail Sacrament is murder and cannibalism, with expectations for more down the road. Because both Mareinette really won't be satisfied with just one instance and the action itself indicates PC's character realignment on what's is acceptable. (That's why I was baffled by some statements upthread in the vein of 'let's befriend Mareinette with just a single sacrifice and thus solve her problem forever', because there definitely would be some further expectations to maintain this friendship)
So morally it's very middle of the pack, together with the Moth one, less clean than the victimless Sacraments, but still far from the 'murders with extra steps' kind of Sacraments, miles less reprehensible than the alternative. Its problem is our dearth of Minions and no clear recipes to obtain more.
When we're talking about Grail, things are kinda complicated.
When does Grail go from "just helps you be more convincing, like knowing what words to say" into "mind control"?
Is an Influence mind control? Technically speaking it's "bending the Laws of the world a bit". It gives more weight to your actions when acting in the proper "direction".
The Leash? THAT is definitely mind control of a sort, but even so that makes what's already there stronger, it can't create feelings from nothing. Isn't it, in a way, kind of what Cadance supposedly does when she "reignites" the love between two ponies?
Grail and consent and mind control are complicated topics to me, most of the time.
That said TO ME "PERMANENT" Mind control / Brainwashing is in a way kind of equivalent to murder.
if the Leash is a bit like taking advantage of someone after making them get drunk, then permanent minion status is kind of a lobotomy.
It's removing their ability to choose. And, in that sense, it's a bit like killing them.
Worse, we have to do it to
someone that already trusts us completely, either naturally or through the use of the Leash.
Which means that while with Personal Lantern or Mareinette Grail we can target people we can rationalize to ourselves as "they deserve it" (or at least "they were bad people, so it's not as bad"), and with Winter we can go "I'm not picking who lives and dies, is this that much more different from death of natural causes?" HERE Velvet is SPECIFICALLY targeting her FRIENDS.
People she CARES about.
That, to me,
makes it worse. It's a worse betrayal.
Pitt did say that Velvet considers a friend. Not the thread.
For as much as we may be in part Velvet's 'subconscious', she does have a personality separate from this chaotic gaggle.
partly this, partly what I said before.
"Being a good person wears you down" innit?
It HAS been 21 turns and multiple IRL years of REALLY difficult choices.
Gegh. You strike the right balance. It always feels like if we just had one more turn with where we were, at any point in time, we would be able to catch up.
It's good that we can't just do everything. Makes us have to choose, have to prioritize.
I like the Velvet we have here. Liked it enough that I hopped on even at the very tip-tail end of the other place. Liked it enough to keep checking on it despite the quiet, and to join here.
Here... we want to be perfect. But we can't. And every step keeps getting hit with "To handle this, you need to do something you are less comfortable with doing right now."
That... that pull? That tug between what is good, what is helpful, what is right and what is... clean? Wrong word, but close feeling.
I love it. Over the moon about it.
I'm happy. Just... man.
100% agree with this.
It's... Velvet found herself, partly by chance and partly by choice, in a position of power.
And people in power HAVE to make difficult choices.
She's not perfect, she has her favourites (her family), and while she TRIES to be "good" she sometimes is faced with the choice between what she wants and what she
needs.
And many, MANY choices of the "can I afford to take this risk, or should I do Evil Thing X so I won't have to?"
And...
there is no right choice.
We saw many examples of this. I don't think there was an objective right choice in how to approach Twilight's situation both pre-being captured and post-capture.
There was no objective right choice
in how to deal with the Master.
There was even no real objective right choice in what to do about Luna/Selene.
but Inaction is WORSE than a suboptimal actions, at least in Velvet's mind... and so she chose. and so she saved some people,
and doomed others.
Hello everyone!
I've been following this quest as a lurker for over a year now, and though it may be somewhat late, I want to participate in it regardless. Very few stories have gotten me to buy a game that it's based in, much less in a genre I'm unfamiliar with and had no reason to believe I'd come to enjoy as much as I have.
That said, I have some thoughts I'd like to share.
A path to an ending has finally revealed itself with All In, but I think one of the things we're missing is that we don't have a defined, clear picture of when to commit. We want to shore up our resources in Name friends and sacraments, but the questions of which ones (of the latter, really) are needed and how difficult the expedition will be are standing questions that would probably direct the rest of the quests decisions.
It's more or less a given that we'll have Baldomare scry, but given that this is an endgame expedition, I'm expecting a pretty high resistance value to Tapestry. It'd be expensive, but I'd suggest a LV4 Lantern reagent when possible, or even using that LV4 artifact if/when it becomes most convenient. Every interval of 20 is going to matter. The more info we can get on the expedition, the better we can prepare ourselves preemptively.
I wouldn't prepare for this on this turn given that I'd prefer Forge's Redemption now, but I'd want to do this next turn for certain.
It's a bit late to think of a plan myself, but I'll consolidate my thoughts on current plans tomorrow.
I hope everyone has a wonderful night.
Actually I think we're leaning towards NOT scrying the "All In" expedition.
It's been mentioned that scrying or scouting it would be risky, and truth is that... well, we'll go ALL IN on it anyway.
We'll try to get all the Sacraments we can, to befriend Axe and Baldomare at least, to study and gain more artifacts so we can use their bonuses during the expedition, to summon more summons like the Mares-in-the-Light to support us... We'll also likely give ourselves and our allies influences and AotLs too, ANYTHING that can give us an advantage.
So... how would knowing what dangers are ahead actually help us? Mechanically speaking, at least.
We might get some minor bonuses, maybe skip some rolls for traps? But there's the risk of tripping some kind of alarm ward. It might just not be worth it.
You, know, considering that the thread generally doesn't want to use Mareinette for people we actually want to befriend genuinely (last I checked)...
We had a couple of old options from before about the merchants. They're not listed anymore, but iirc Bird said before that they're still valid options to take. This would probably be a social thing that can abuse Mareinette's +90 to social stuff, right?
Since we should probably use the Grail Name for her specialty while we still have her.
Or maybe we could just keep sending her out to make new contacts until we finally meet the other two Elements.
We're no longer managing our family's activities in Ponyville though, so it makes a bit less sense to take those actions.
We have far more soft power though through our reputation, so I SUPPOSE we could involve our brother in that and THEN it would make more sense...
I'll post this now, I'm not sure I can read the rest before having to leave...
