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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 9245506" data-attributes="member: 6796468">Without getting too deep into it:Coming of Age Rituals are generally speaking not meant to be -dangerous-.Scary, often. Painful sometimes. But no one is expected to occasionally die during their Bar Mitzvah or their Quinceañera. It's typically a test to show you have learned enough about the subject of being an adult that you qualify to be considered an adult by the community.For some people this means getting your hands repeatedly bitten by ants for a set amount of time. For others it's studying important scrolls. Here and there it's getting a tattoo or climbing a specific mountain or having a footrace against an animal. And sometimes it's finding your way home in the dark.For at least one group it's "Toss off all the rules of our society and go be wild and crazy, then decide if you want to be under our rules. If you do, come back. If you don't, go with love."So. Y'know. YMMV based on culture.But calling "Walk home in the dark, child we think is old enough to be treated as an adult within our society" child abuse is just bonkers to me.I mean... kinda?Mostly it's weird 'cause you're telling the same story (Abusive authority figure) six times in six ways and the most lenient and supportive abusive authority figure in the story is a Half Devil who bargained for Wyll's soul but not only keeps up her end of the deal the entire way through outright gives him tangible rewards (That rapier, tho) and -helps- at the end, directly. Yeah, she's rude along the way, but so was Cordelia Chase and she had the best arc in Buffy -and- Angel.Like... Don't get me wrong. It's messed up she's going to keep him in Hell forever as a devil in the Blood War which is going to suck. But compare that to Vlaakith demanding perfect obedience and then killing you anyway. Or Mystra demanding you kill yourself and doom the entire Sword Coast. Or Shar torturing you just because she enjoys torturing you and spiting her sister.Like... It's -weird- that none of the religious origin characters have a decent relationship with their deity and a separate problem that they're dealing with, instead. None of them have their god actually in their corner trying to support them.I'm not even looking for a more hopeful take. If Shadowheart spent the entire game as a Sharran with no "Redemption" storyline option and Shar was actually in her corner and helping her to fight against the Absolute rather than torturing her -just- to torture her... That'd still work for me in the context of the weirdness, here.Ketheric Thorme was willing to do terrible things to get his daughter back and Myrkul was like "Bet. Here she is. You can have her." and their relationship was totally equitable... But Mystra's like "Doom the Sword Coast and kill yourself to achieve my goals and I'll forgive you for foolishly trying to give me a gift that one time or trying to get on my level for a romantic relationship that doesn't have the worlds most TITANIC toxic gap."Like... is this supposed to be a representative sample of what relationships with your religion in the Realms are? Or is this meant to be three outliers with bad relationships in one story that aren't emblematic of the whole setting? I think it's meant to be three outliers, because otherwise no one would follow any of the gods, but it's weird to do it that way, to me.</blockquote>

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