Quote Originally Posted by Conit View Post
You're saying Elan is not confident attending the meeting because he's been made to believe he won't be contributing anything, which is a fair interpretation.
But here's how I interpreted it. Elan is not confident attending the meeting because he knows he won't be contributing anything. Look at how Serini describes the meeting "a plan to plan a plan", they're strategizing. Elan's expertise is on what would make a good story, but Elan himself has acknowledge that doing something because it makes for a better story often puts people in danger (see 938), so creating a strategy based on it making a good story is a bad idea. Conversely, a person devising a strategy, and executing it without flaw not a great story. A good story is antithetical to a good strategy, so Elan does not have the strategic insight to contribute anything of value to that conversation, and Elan knows this.
When Elan suggests a plan it's usually total nonsense (see 80) and Elan is well aware of that. When Roy seems to seriously consider one of Elan's plans, Elan is genuinely concerned (see 1027) because he knows what he just said should not be taken seriously.
That doesn't mean Elan's input on a plan isn't valued by Roy or the party, we see in 1218 Roy relying on Elan's bardic expertise to decide the next course of action. Elan is extremely valuable for providing feedback on a plan, but basically useless for the creation of that plan.

Planning is not where Elan thrives, in fact quite the opposite. Elan's strength is spontaneity. When plans fail, Elan is almost always the one who pulls some surprise out his pocket (see 223, 386, 445, 478, 767, 794, 930). Elan's not a planner, that's why both of his opposites (Nale and Tarquin) are such meticulous planners. Elan is a wildcard, and in a universe where a plan's success is totally reliant on what will make a better story? (see 836) you're always gonna want to have a wildcard.
So not only would Elan participating not be beneficial, it would actually be detrimental. Again Elan's strength is spontaneity, if everyone knows all his abilities and items, then they're no longer a surprise and if Elan can't do something surprising then he's much less effective.

You say Roy and the party are not accommodating for Elan, however I argue they actually are accommodating for Elan by allowing him to not attend the meeting.
Imagine you're the boss of some tech start-up and you had the world's greatest coder on your team, tell him to code anything and he'll have it done in a hour, but he has absolutely no insight when it comes to designing an application (ex. he could code a search bar for a web browser easily, but ask him if a web browser should have a search bar and he'd have no clue). Would you force him to attend the design meetings, where he can't contribute and will feel worthless, or do you let him not attend those and instead just do what he's good at?

I think this is actually a good message for neurodiverse people. A neurodiverse person often cannot contribute to a team in the same way a nerotypical person could. What's being shown here is, it's ok to not be able to contribute in that way, you don't have to, that doesn't mean you're not valuable to the team.


I don't think we can blame the party for Elan forgetting his own abilities, that's literally one of his most well established character traits, he even straight up chooses to not realize things because it makes a better story (see 793). This is a strength btw, it makes him more spontaneous which again is his strong suit.
Also Song of Freedom requires a minute long uninterrupted performance, there's no way Elan could go 10 rounds without getting interrupted by Zz'dtri, Qarr, or Yuk Yuk. Even if Elan could do the full 10 rounds, V would still tell him to go to Durkon because he can free Haley and wasn't aware of the Linear Guild's presence, so all Elan using song of freedom would do is waste a minute.


I fundamentally disagree with the sentiment of this. I believe an artist can portray something as acceptable, or even portray it as something good, and still not be advocating for it. Look at The Punisher comics, a core theme of those comics is deplorable irredeemable criminal gets away with disgusting crime through judicial loophole. Frank Castle decides if the legal system won't enforce the law, he must be the one to do it.
Often the people Frank Castle kills are completely irredeemable, and the world is genuinely better off without them. The Punisher comics seem to portray Frank Castle's vigilante justice as not just justified/acceptable but also a genuine benefit to society. However the comics' authors are usually not advocating for vigilante justice, in fact many of them actively condemn it.
One can argue that, even if the artist isn't advocating for it, it's still irresponsible to portray a harmful thing as acceptable because it could influence people to believe it's acceptable. However the problem becomes should art be censored from portraying harmful things as acceptable because some people might actually believe it? If so, then shouldn't we be censoring theft, murder, leaving someone to be tortured and killed, lying about suffering from a mental illness (this one's deemed acceptable by literal gods), disenfranchisement of a political opponent (through attempted murder), or what about the destruction of an uncountable number of universes. This stance is honestly quite similar to Miko's ideology.
There's also the fact that it's very difficult if impossible for an artist to control how someone interprets their art.




I don't think "stress brings out the true person" applies to that event. Yes Roy was stressed, but Roy was also angry, even more so than he was stressed, and most people would agree you're not your true self when you're angry. Roy was furious at himself for "letting" Durkon die, that's why he said that.

I've never begged for a reply before but I spent no joke 10 hours writing this comment, so please reply so I can know I didn't just waste half a day.
I do NOT have ten hours to respond, but I wanted to recognize and the you for your efforts in writing this post. I hope the person it is written to will read it and , at least, consider your arguments even if they don't agree.

Respectfully,

Brian P.