I am breaking my long term hibernation to esotericpost because this game has consumed my thoughts 👍
(and yes, I have an ellipsis problem........)
#ee dialogue: for all your obscure dialogue or compilation post needs
#rambles: assorted "analysis" (I use that term incredibly lightly here) and commentary posts from yours truly (often snell/ragn flavoured because I cannot help myself)
#mining woes: the one stop shop (or containment tag) for my abundant woes borne from attempting to dig into this game's files with 0 programming knowledge
#applepost: unserious posts with varying degrees of "humour"
Snell: Today still kind of feels like a fever dream.
Ragn: Really? I'm surprised we did all that under a tenday.
Snell: A tenday doesn't even cover it! I'm surprised that we did all this under a month!
Ragn: Haha! Imagine what we could have done with a month.
Snell: Probably flip all of Norvik upside down at that rate, heh.
Ragn: Maybe only half, its a big city after all.
-
Thank you to @clitemneste for suggesting this! They had been cloud watching and hanging out like this in my mind all this time, but I never gotten around to fully draw them doing so until now :D
so we're all intimately familiar with the conversation in Snell's apartment where Ragn panics upon being questioned on whether he's... been with anybody.
BUT! if you go to Ever-Glad and confess that you're a virgin before having this conversation...
...then you get some alternate dialogue at his apartment acknowledging that Snell already knows this. And instead, he reassures Ragn :)
in a rather... interesting manner, might I say.
(+ ramblings below the cut)
When I first posted about trying to figure out the triggers for this dialogue, @appleboyprayers (I FOUND IT BTW!! WAHOO) and @aster-art-disaster shared their interpretation that this line—
"I don't know if it's a cleric thing or not, but you could probably land a nice gal or guy if you wanted."
—can be read as something a closeted person might say when they're in a conservative environment and trying to determine what the other person's stance is.
(if you fail the passive CON check here btw, it says "Gut punch." instead)
He starts off with a well rehearsed story, as DEX/CHA so kindly point out:
Maybe he just tells it so often because he thinks it's funny that the girl ran out so quick. OR MAYBE... and walk with me here... it's posturing. Like, bro-talk. Locker room stuff. Maybe he isn't the fondest of it, but he makes the first move in order to preemptively get ahead of any questions/assumptions.
And rightfully so! Because when he doesn't get ahead of things, this happens:
There's also the conversation you can have with Snell about family...
This conversation can happen at any time, including when you first recruit him. In other words, Snell likely doesn't know where Ragn stands at that point in time, and so he's evasive and uncomfortable when discussing the specifics of why he isn't going to have kids. I'm sure loads of us queer folk outside of cishet relationships have fielded many questions and conversations about kids and so Snell's exhaustion here is very relatable!
Also interesting to note that the DC to tell he's uncomfortable is very low. Most dump stats hover around the 8 point range unless you're really min-maxing. Snell's discomfort is obvious even to a relatively unobservant Ragn... which means he's really uncomfortable. Blatantly so.
Back to Ragn. Given that his internal turmoil is about his lack of experience and not Snell's choice of words (seriously, if it were a problem, STR would probably comment on it but he doesn't... which, again, is interesting), Snell can reasonably deduce that Ragn is, at the very least........ chill.
Which is great for him. And it is also something he refuses to think further on (SNAGN HAT FIRMLY ON)—
—Why didn't the Cleric question the phrasing? Is he... you know? Like you? Would it be better or worse if the Cleric called you out on it? Would knowing change anything? Why does the thought snag in your chest?—
anyways. you can take this in a lot of different directions. does Ragn only stop to question Snell's phrasing when he retires to bed later that night? Does it send him down the rabbit hole of self-discovery right then and there? Meridoc also uses the woman/man phrasing when discussing marriage with Ragn (which prompts a similar "Lack of Ladies" line from Charisma here btw)...
(SUDDENLY UNDERSTAND GENDER SEXUALITY.)
Does he feel doubly bad now that he could've had chances with more than just women and still he failed? Charisma says he's suffering from a terminal Lack of Ladies but...... he's never considered that there were other options.
this is a lot of yapping to just conclude that THE QUEER SUBTEXT IS THERE. YOU JUST GOTTA REALLY DIG FOR IT—
something something ragn gets a shitton of promotions post-pillar in rapid succession. all great, except that snell starts to look at him differently. it feels almost as if his strings are tugging away from his, and ragn hates it. he resigns.
