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#nix talks apex book lore
fyeahnix · 3 years
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Pathfinder's Quest — Bangalore/Wraith, Voidstrike Shipping Speculation? (7/7)
I'm going to talk about my thoughts on the Apex Legends lore book in a series of smaller posts. I have a LOT of fractured thoughts on this book and it would be unnecessarily long if I were to list them out in the same post. If you want to skip to some other post because the content in this one doesn't sound interesting, please do so! I will be numbering the posts and tagging them with "nix talks apex book lore" if you'd like to follow these specific posts and "apex book spoilers" if you'd like to avoid them.
This special post will strictly be about Voidstrike speculation. Keep in mind that this is speculation with a theory based on available lore. You don't have to take this seriously, but if you ship Voidstrike in any capacity, you might want to read this. Caution that this post will be very long and will contain quite a few images from the book as well as Broken Ghost and other supporting material. Let's go!
Book Content + Supporting Material
All right. I've been waiting an entire month to write up this post. You all know by now that Voidstrike is my OTP for Apex Legends. The unfortunate problem with this ship, like some other ships in Apex, is that they have the bare minimum of interaction with each other. Even in this book that proves to be true, except for one interesting little exchange through Pathfinder...
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Do you see this comment? I asked Tom Casiello, Senior Writer of Apex Legends and Target of Internet Scorn (just poking fun at his twitter bio here), about it on Twitter and this is what he said:
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Yes, that's right, y'all. These two have beef. I can imagine Wraith is little pissed about the whole "headcase" thing from Season 5's Broken Ghost quest:
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I mean, can you blame Wraith? Anita’s kind of an asshole in canon, if we’re being honest, so Wraith wanting to get back at her in some way makes sense. She went the fuck off on Mirage when he made a similar comment about her in the Season 6 comic posted on Twitter. What's even weirder is Anita's response when Pathfinder tells her what Wraith said:
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Now. I know what you’re thinking. “Nix, it’s not that deep, Anita’s just being a sarcastic dick.” And you would likely be correct, and I would not disagree with you. On the next page, however, this exchange happens:
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First of all, why would Anita ask "why would Wraith tell me anything?" Has she tried talking to Wraith before and Wraith may have been closed off and/or hesitant? Or maybe she doesn't fully trust Anita because Anita has such strong feelings about the IMC? Is she... hurt by Wraith not telling her things? Did Wraith try to open up once before, get shot down by Anita's reaction to the IMC, and Anita's been a little salty about it since, henceforth, the shitty "headcase" comment? Maybe Wraith is being a little shit and getting back at her in a weird way. This comment initially sounded vaguely flirty but what do I know except the writers haven't been known to just write things for literally no reason...
Lots to think about here, but I'm hoping we'll get a follow-up to this in-game at some point.
And second of all, why would Pathfinder ask if they're best friends? I know he has an interesting view of who he considers friends...generally people who have talked to him for more than a minute:
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But a “best friend”? What would give him that assumption about these two? Is it because they have some things in common? Or has he seen them interacting more than we (the players and lorehounds) know of? Is it because of their one exchange in Broken Ghost? I don’t think so at all. Granted, right on the next page Anita calls Wraith a lab rat (pretty shitty!), but as we learn later on, she is really sensitive and defensive about people who speak badly about the IMC (more on this in my post about Bangalore). I'm thinking Path mentioning Wraith being IMC pissed her off because Wraith, overall, blames them for what happened to her.
In any case, it's an interesting question to ask, and I do have to wonder if Wraith and Anita have been seen talking to one another for more than a minute lol. But Anita's answer is intriguing. She doesn't flat out say no. We know Anita to be very direct—sarcastic, sure—but generally you'd expect a straight fucking answer from her. Here, she doesn't even give one. She beats around the bush for an answer. What I think is happening here is about the same as her talking about Octane and Mirage. Remember that loading screen from Season 3? No? Well, let me refresh your memory...
Send in the Clowns (Season 3 Loading Screen)
Numbnuts! That’s what Mama used to call guys like that. You know the type. Big jokes, big trucks, big wallets...they need all that big to cover up what’s small. I got four brothers. Real gentlemen, raised with respect. They don’t have to woo-hoo their way through a battlefield like it’s a joke and they’re the punchline. Sorry, Laughtrack. The only punchline is you’re going home in a box.
Maybe Silva isn’t so bad. He’d take a bullet for anyone… mostly ‘cause he’s already fifty paces ahead, charging in with no game plan and even less strategy. Witt’s had my back more than once. And whatever, he’s gotten a chuckle out of me. Occasionally. Maybe they’re good. For morale, I mean. I mean… I just need them to stay out of my way.
She's just... like that. Anita is the type of person who won't openly admit that she actually likes or respects anyone. She's guarded, and she's probably been this way since her brother Jackson died. And that's where Loba comes in.
See, I think Loba has been making Anita rethink some things about opening up. Anita initially pegged Loba wrong, and in her chapter, Pathfinder basically figures out that she initially hated Loba because Loba reminds her of her older brother's shitty girlfriend:
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I think Loba's purpose in her and Anita's budding friendship is to eventually lead Anita to opening up to others, especially Wraith, since Path mentioned they have a lot in common, which is something I've been saying for fucking months. Now, Wraith and Anita haven't really had any interaction that we know of outside of Broken Ghost and the book, but there have been some....very minor hints/foreshadowing. I'm going to preface this by saying you may think I'm being a little...out there with these points, but trust me, we'll touch on why these matter later. For now:
Back in Season 1, both Bangalore and Wraith were the first two Legends to get Legendary skins in the Legendary Hunt themed event. First occurence is an incident.
In the Season 3 opening trailer, Caustic throws a gas canister inside a room and you can vaguely see Bangalore and Wraith in the room on the same team:
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In the Legend select screen, these two were right next to each other up until they were separated in Season 6. They were together. Five. Straight. Seasons. Was there another, more subtle reason they were separated? Common sense would say no, it's because we're getting more Legends and the UI needs to change to accommodate. Shipping and speculation sense would say maybe it's metaphorical and foreshadowing a story element. Maybe something happened between them that we aren't aware of yet and they've separated.
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At the end of Season 6 for the Fight or Fright Halloween event, we got a bundle of skins called the Wicked Wraith bundle. Guess who's in it? Bangalore and Wraith plus some gun skins. But only these two Legends.. Hm.. Two's a coincidence.
In Season 7, we got the Black Friday event where we got both Airship Assassin and Outland Warrior back in the shop, two beloved Wraith and Bangalore skins respectively. Three's a pattern, and with this lovely banner:
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In Season 8, for the Two-Year Anniversary Event, both Bangalore and Wraith received stat trackers of their concept art... We typically only get two Legends' trackers per each event with a prize track, and we got these two for this event? I predicted back in October 2020 that they would get stat trackers in the same event, but I didn't expect this event out of everything.
If one's an incident, two's a coincidence, and three's a pattern, then what's four very similar occurrences?
If you've read up to this point, you're either deprived for Voidstrike content like I am, or wondering just how much further I'm willing to dig for hints to support this ship. Trust me, I have a little more.
I am predicting that Anita and Wraith will start having some interaction starting Season 9 or 10. Why? Well, back at the start of Season 7, there was a Reddit AMA with the senior team members of Respawn. It was mostly to address the battlepass issue, but Manny Hagopian, the Lead Writer for Apex Legends, was also there answering questions, so I took a shot and asked him one:
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You can totally chalk this up to typical “I can’t say anything right now” PR talk, sure, but I think he's hinting that this was in the plans. Tom has also said something:
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Now, granted, this is Tom and mostly everyone takes whatever he says with a grain of salt, myself included, but it's worth keeping an eye on since what Manny says kind of lines up. We were supposed to get a follow-up to Broken Ghost, but that story, whatever it was, ended up being... let's say, "altered"? Tom has a thread on what actually happened on Twitter (that I did link here, but removed for fear of this post not appearing in the tags), but the follow-up was essentially "axed" and bits and pieces of it had to be kicked down the road in various different formats in the lore. What does this have to do with Season 9 and my theory?
Well, there's supposed to be some crazy stuff happening in Season 9 and I think we're going to start to see some elements pop up from what was supposed to happen in Broken Ghost. Why? Well another thing Tom said from that same Twitter thread:
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I think whatever Tom was working on was related to IMC, Bangalore, and Wraith. And the reason I believe this is because of a now-deleted video from Chris Edgerly’s twitch stream from back around May 27th, 2020 or so where Tom was a guest. I unfortunately didn’t think to archive the page or video so I don’t have it, but I can say with confidence that I asked a question about Anita and Wraith having some future interaction about the IMC stuff, and the answer he gave was...suspiciously vague. He said something along the lines of:
"I just started writing something dealing with that and you should get to see it before the end of the year [2020]. And that’s all I’ll say on that :]"
I know that’s...well it doesn't say MUCH, but it is making me think that it's the same content he may have been working on. I have a feeling it may be in comic form, but who knows how the format may change. Season 9 is supposed to be fairly game-changing for Apex overall, according to the devs.
The last bit I wanted to mention was character development. I said earlier how I think Loba is helping Anita open up a bit more overall, and eventually that will turn towards others as well as Wraith. Anita, compared to other Legends, has seen character development through voice lines. And Wraith is kind of doing the same. Like sure Loba talks to Anita, but she hasn't really...progressed as a character much. She's remained fairly flat so far. We're actively seeing Anita's walls break down as she becomes more vulnerable as a person. And no one else is really doing this much except for, arguably, Wraith.
Wraith has had some very introspective voice lines to herself while on Olympus, basically wondering if the Rift explosion was a result of her experiments, wondering what type of person she was to have partnered with Singh. Wattson even mentions she looks more lost than usual, and Wraith responds that she needs to handle this on her own for now. We know from the end of Season 6's comics that she's learned she was apparently a shitty person in her past life with anger issues and a severe lack of empathy. She wonders about this and is actively working towards... not being like that lol. She's also fairly sarcastic as we've seen with her voice lines with Rampart, but she's developing as a character, albeit slowly and more subtly than Anita.
So now that that's all out of the way. Where do we go from here? Well, this brings me to a theory I've manifested due to the points in the post so far.
The Theory
What if Anita and Wraith were on pretty okay terms with each other previously and we just haven't heard about it yet? What if they’ve known each other for a while?
Anita has been in the Outlands with a small group of IMC soldiers, her brother Jackson and General Lewis included, for about 18 years. She's been in the Apex Games for about 3 years and the Hestia incident happened about 3 years ago:
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That lines up. Since the start of the Apex Legends lore takes place in 2733 (as of Season 8 we are now in the year 2734 in lore), that would mean she had to have joined around 2730. What about Wraith?
Well... I think Anita and Wraith joined the Apex Games around the same time. In the book Wraith mentions that she took a few years to hone her skills before she ended up in a qualifying match:
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She arrived at our Kings Canyon in 2727. If she took a few years, she had to have joined around 2730-2731. What if they met and actually were amicable? Closed-off on both ends, but mutually respectful towards each other as coworkers? And maybe this is what causes Pathfinder to assume they're "best friends" in the book.
...That is until the Repulsor incident happened and the IMC labs under Kings Canyon were eventually unearthed. Wraith learned her real name and what the IMC (ARES more specifically) did to her and so did the rest of the Legends she was somewhat close to—Mirage, Pathfinder, and...Anita.
What if Anita took the IMC disrespect personally, thought Wraith was placing blame on the IMC instead of taking responsibility for her own actions like Anita mentions in the book, and Anita blew up about it? Wraith would probably feel extremely hurt by this and withdraw from opening up even more. At this point, Anita would hold a bit of a grudge about the IMC bad-mouthing.
They continue to work as coworkers and on a team when necessary, but the mutual respect has been...lost. Wraith finds friendship elsewhere in Wattson. Fast forward to the events of Broken Ghost. Anita is stressed, annoyed, dealing with too much shit at leading the operation, and hurls an insult at Wraith, the infamous "headcase" comment. It's extremely shitty and uncalled for and while Wraith doesn't explode at her in the moment because of dire circumstances, she absolutely doesn't forget it. It hurts her deeply.
What if after the events of Broken Ghost, their connection is severed. There's some bad blood between them. Wraith's friendship grows with Wattson while Anita's friendship grows with Loba. That separation in the Legend Select screen starting from Season 6 onwards seems a lot more metaphorical...
So fast forward once again to Wraith's comment directed at Anita in the book. It was an opening Pathfinder inadvertently provided and it was an opportunity to take a jab at Anita. But instead of being overtly shitty, she makes a relatively teasing comment. Maybe an olive branch to squash what they have and move on? Anita's response is to thank Wraith when she sees her again. Sarcasm? Maybe. But what if she's being genuine? What if the comment was a joke reflective of the type of humor they shared when they were on better terms with each other?
Anita has been opening up more to Loba, and though shes's still sensitive about the IMC, what if she's more willing to...apologize for the initial shitty comment?
The Theory Continued
Anita has recently, in canon, mentioned Jackson to Loba. Jackson is a VERY sensitive topic for her, and so far, the only two people we know of who have heard her discuss Jackson are Loba and Pathfinder. An interesting thing about Jackson that can be tied back to Wraith is this:
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Anita clearly does not accept the ARES Division as part of the IMC, but more than that...Jackson found out the ugly truth about the IMC overall and believed it. Wraith was part of ARES Division and it's why Anita doesn't consider her IMC. Here's where the connection can work:
Continuing the same theory, what if Wraith reminds Anita of Jackson in the worst way possible because of what he told her about the IMC and ARES? Wraith revealing her name and what happened to her conjured up old, painful memories and caused Anita to lash out and close herself off again. Now that Loba is bringing out discussions of Jackson in canon, what if this leads to Anita and Wraith coming back together and rekindling their friendship? There's a lovely quote from Jackson's letter in the book that I feel could foreshadow that happening, too:
"...But in all seriousness, I'm so proud of you. And always remember, what's broken can be fixed. What's shredded can be mended. And what's torn apart can always be put back together again. Love always, Jackson." (82)
What if eventually—slowly, but surely—rekindling this lost friendship leads to Anita opening up to Wraith again? What if it leads to Anita being open and vulnerable enough to learn more about the IMC and ARES Division with/through Wraith via the labs under Kings Canyon? That place is a goldmine of classified information and she very well can see and hear firsthand all the terrible shit they've done. It would be extremely hard to do this, of course. And that's where Manny's comment from the Reddit AMA comes into effect: "...There's much more for both characters to learn and when they do, it's very possible to experience a moment between them, but patience is important."
This is, of course, all just a theory based on what we know about the lore. Is it ridiculous? Possibly! But I also don't think it's entirely farfetched either.
In Conclusion...
I imagine once we get to Season 9—potentially 10 at the latest for quarantine padding and last-minute changes—maybe we'll start seeing them begin to acknowledge each other in some way, and I'm thinking mostly negatively at first. And I don't think it'll be a lot either. Maybe a snarky location voice line or two. Maybe a little mention in a comic or Twitter lore bit. But only a little.
I definitely do think we can expect to see them getting to the point of interacting in the future, but it'll be a slow ride and slow burn. And hey even if we don't... I'll have this post to keep me warm for the rest of my days playing Apex.
Anyway, that's all I have for you! Thanks for reading if you made it this far, I do appreciate it. I love this pairing a lot, and this was really fun to write! Remember, it's just speculation based on....stuff, haha. You don't have to take it or like it at all, but what else am I to do when I'm starved for interaction of my ship? :]
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fyeahnix · 3 years
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Just a reminder that tomorrow (March 2nd), I will start posting tagged apex book spoilers. they're basically little mini essays I wrote about my thoughts on the book.
if you'd like to follow the posts (or don't care about my thoughts at all), I'll be tagging them with "nix talks apex book lore"
if you DON'T want to see these posts because of spoilers, I'll also be tagging them as "Apex book spoilers" I'll also be tagging any other book spoilers under this tag.
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fyeahnix · 3 years
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Pathfinder's Quest — Rampart (6/7)
I'm going to talk about my thoughts on the Apex Legends lore book in a series of smaller posts. I have a LOT of fractured thoughts on this book and it would be unnecessarily long if I were to list them out in the same post. If you want to skip to some other post because the content in this one doesn't sound interesting, please do so! I will be numbering the posts and tagging them with "nix talks apex book lore" if you'd like to follow these specific posts and "apex book spoilers" if you'd like to avoid them.
This very short post will strictly be about Rampart Let's go!
Okay, so like, can I just say that I actually love Rampart? She's only 21, yet seems very wise beyond her years, and I honestly love it. She's arguably the most "normal" Legend of the bunch, aside from not officially qualifying to get into the Games. That's it. She owns a weapons modding business, got into Gauntlets matches on Gaea and just generally lives day to day by sleeping all day and missing her phone calls lmao.
Like holy shit she's so damn chill and go-with-the-flow despite probably stressing due to anxiety and whatnot. And we see how good of a person she is in the book. Pathfinder is looking for Mirage but finds her instead. He's worried that he might not be a good person (yes I am once again calling Path a person) because Revenant was being a dick to him and she's like "nah mate that dude's fuckin' with ya, and even if you turn out to have been a bad person, come back to me and we'll figure out what to do next."
Like man.....she's so great, and I love it. We need more lore about her, but I'm really hoping she remains just an average person compared to the rest of the Legends. It's nice having someone without a ridiculous or overly sad backstory
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fyeahnix · 3 years
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Pathfinder’s Quest — Wraith and Wattson (5/7)
I’m going to talk about my thoughts on the Apex Legends lore book in a series of smaller posts. I have a LOT of fractured thoughts on this book and it would be unnecessarily long if I were to list them out in the same post. If you want to skip to some other post because the content in this one doesn’t sound interesting, please do so! I will be numbering the posts and tagging them with “nix talks apex book lore” if you’d like to follow these specific posts and “apex book spoilers” if you’d like to avoid them.
This post will strictly be about Wattson and Wraith. If you’re looking for Darksparks content/speculation, I am sorry to say you won’t find that here. Let’s go!
Wattson
I doubt this will be that long, but I wanna talk about the ghost story a little. I was NOT expecting to like this story as much as I did. Just as a quick recap:
Fifteen-year-old Wattson found a solution to how the ring could potentially work and tried to tell her father, but he was being a bit of a dick about it and yelled at her. She ran off to the labs to go find materials to work on her experiment and ended up seeing a “ghost.” That ghost turned out to be homeless ass Wraith living in the labs with her head sticking out of a phase portal:
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Wraith scared her out of the labs and Wattson went on to conduct her experiment in the Glass Forest (the Shattered Forest area on Kings Canyon) during a thunderstorm:
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A lightning bolt hit the generator she was using, caused electricity to travel up the wire for her probe and electrocuted her. She got thrown back into a tree and was paralyzed. She 100% would have died there if Wraith hadn’t come outside to check.
Through this story, we get a little about Wattson as well, and it’s this point I want people to read and fully understand. Wattson is not some innocent fucking child. She clearly knows wtf she’s doing and who she’s involved with. Granted, she’s not the best at reading social situations or emotions, but she knows damn well the Syndicate is awful. She grew up around the shit. Her quote is, specifically:
When you’re on the good side of organized crime it’s not always a bad thing. Especially when organized crime doesn’t answer to anyone, eh? (47)
On a sidenote, this will be a good quote to remember for future lore reasons and for like…fanfic reasons, haha.
Wraith
As tragic as some of this story is, Wraith’s side of the story is FUCKING HILARIOUS. No, the story of her logs makes no sense and is very awkward to read, but I still found it funny. Tom said she just wasn’t in the right frame of mind, and that makes sense, but man. She’s like “welp this ring fits me… this dude ain’t attractive at all, but if he’s my damn husband, you better fucking believe I’m defending him from this ASSASSIN.” Holy shit, calm the fuck down, Wraith… so damn extra…
It’s funny because this is…an interesting point about Wraith. Headcanon-wise, I had the idea that Wraith is the one to get a little jealous in a relationship, but overprotectiveness, too? This is wonderful~
In addition to this, now we know why she doesn’t like using her real name. I remember Tom making a point about this many months ago, and I specifically told myself that unless I’m writing an AU, I won’t be referring to Wraith as Renee until I knew for sure why she doesn’t use it. And now we have an answer. She doesn’t like it or dislike it, but it means nothing to her and she even tells Path “please don’t” when he asks if he can call her that:
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Anyway, Wraith has a very dry sense of humor as well that matches mine so basically I'm more in love with her than before. :]
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fyeahnix · 3 years
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Pathfinder's Quest — Overall Thoughts + Pathfinder (1/7)
I'm going to talk about my thoughts on the Apex Legends lore book in a series of smaller posts. I have a LOT of fractured thoughts on this book and it would be unnecessarily long if I were to list them out in the same post. If you want to skip to some other post because the content in this one doesn't sound interesting, please do so! I will be numbering the posts and tagging them with "nix talks apex book lore" if you'd like to follow these specific posts and "apex book spoilers" if you'd like to avoid them.
This post will strictly be about the book overall plus my thoughts on Pathfinder as a character. Let's go!
Pathfinder's Quest, The Book
So let me start off by saying, holy fucking shit, this book is a ride. It's nothing super intense until the end, but there's definitely a story. The writers definitely did say to read it in order and don't just skip around to certain chapters. There's a story here, that much is very evident. It starts off pretty nice with Lifeline explaining her life story, background, and her parents' company dealings, relationship with Octane, etc. And the story progresses to other Legends from there.
I have to say I'm actually happy that they decided to take this route instead of giving us a straight up encyclopedia. With the amount of shit and lore this series has, I feel like that's the best way to deliver the story, that way everyone who has the book can read everything from cover to cover and not miss anything substantial because they skipped around.
That being said, I'm also glad they decided to tell the story from Pathfinder's perspective. I don't think any other character would have worked as effectively. Path is sort of a blank slate? He knows some things about the Outlands and the Frontier but considering his memory files were corrupted or something, it's a nice storytelling explanation to give information about the world to the reader.
As far as the stories themselves go, I'll talk about a select few of them in separate posts but it was definitely interesting to read how different they were. Straight up prose, a screenplay, journal logs, data tables, recounting, etc. I think most of them were pretty good except for like maybe one in particular that I will def discuss in another post. But yeah. Overall, meaty content.
What I was bummed about was the lack of basic information. I was absolutely expecting us to get some statistics for the legends like birthdays, likes and dislikes, basic shit. But I was prob expecting too much on that front lol. I will say that this book has left me with more questions despite all the answers we got. This truly is the beginning of the lore and it's interesting to see how much more it'll develop from here.
Pathfinder Himself
So this'll be short. I've never hated Pathfinder as a character, but I've never like... LOVED him. But this book man.... I'm seeing him in a much different light. Path is soooo goddamn adorable it's not even funny. He's like a child. It's cute! Dude truly doesn't have a bad bolt in his body. He's so innocent and curious and it's the cutest thing ever. I can't with him. It's funny too because the Legends are like "wow you ask a lot of questions" but then in the end they're like "ok you're not so bad I actually kinda like you" and that's so wholesome. Even someone as hardened as Bangalore got to the point of acceptance when he managed to say some very sweet things to her at the end of her story.
And the final story. Man that was a tough read towards the end. He's always been good and got all the best parts from the people who made him and that's just....man that makes me so emotional. It also explains why he's so unbelievably good at certain things like combat and science and being nice and awful at others like...being serious and lying lmao.
Anyway Pathfinder is best boy. And his birthday is Feb. 4th. How exciting!
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