chaosroid

[chaosroid]

so funny in dragon age inquisition where everyone was like "hoooly fuck. can solas shut up. can he stop talking about spirits and the fade for 5 fucking secondsss." is like if you had a coworker who texted you nonstop like "broooo I love surfing i love the sea 💦🏝⛵🌊 haha water and shit yo. man let's hit some waves let's cowabunga let's swim with the fishiessss haha hmu" and then you find out he's poseidon

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let it be said that i'm hopelessly in love with monster women

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this isn’t meant to be judgement on what other people choose or their opinions and there are reasons why there is no actual ideal solution, but if I’m playing the game in which I want every character to get what I feel is the best outcome for them personally, Shadowheart is always ending the game with her parents alive

There are a couple of reasons for this. I’ve done both endings with the Selûnite path for her, and I literally just let her pick what she wanted the first time (which ended in her parents dead) and seeing both, I do think she’s happier with her parents alive in general. I think, as with other characters (specifically Lae’zel comes to mind in her romance) you have to kinda challenge them on what their first immediate response is when giving them an option in order to get to what actually makes them happiest and what they’re afraid to admit

But if we’re not even taking like the arbitrary measure of happiness into account, I do think that thematically, keeping her parents alive is the only real option if you don’t want Shar to win.

The options here are either let her parents die and Shadowheart is free of the pain in her wound, or save her parents and Shadowheart spends the rest of her life with the threat of the wound hurting her at any moment. Basically no parents and no pain or parent and chronic pain for the rest of her life.

Harsh options either way, and especially when you phrase it as “chronic pain forever” being the thematically correct path, but look at it from the angle of rejecting Shar and what those options really signify form a Sharran angle.

If her parents die, she has no pain, which is good, but she also has no parents. She has no way of learning about her past other than random scraps she might find or maybe eventually remember somehow. She also has no attachment to her Sharran cloister anymore and no attachment to any Selûnite community either. She’s void of everything, including the physical pain. Now there’s obviously like emotional turmoil she’s feeling, and you do get a scene where she expresses that, but it’s from her loss. She only has loss now. The Lady of Loss gave up her physical hold on Shadowheart and in doing so, made Shadowheart embrace loss. Shar might not win completely, but she doesn’t really care about her individual followers and communities as much as they want her to. This is still a win for Shar because she still got Shadowheart to make Sharran choices in the end and embrace losing everything: the pain, her parents, her community, her past.

Hell, the desire to free oneself from pain entirely is a very Sharran pursuit. It’s why we see people turn to Shar. Ketheric turned to Shar as a way to get Isobel back and free himself from grief. One of the people that can lead you to the Sharran cloister is a man who remembers nothing about himself except that the House of Grief helped him because he was very sad and now he isn’t. Nevermind the fact that he doesn’t even know where he lives now or that Ketheric didn’t get what he wanted, it’s the motivation of freeing oneself from some kind of pain that drives people to Shar.

That is why Shadowheart received the injury in the first place.

I jokingly call it a shock collar sometimes, but that is basically what it literally is. You can get Shadowheart’s dad to reveal more about it if you control her and go talk to him in camp. The wound is because Shadowheart was constantly misbehaving and her parents weren’t converting, and they needed something to keep her in line and also motivate her parents. Shadowheart’s pain was supposed be negative reinforcement for her not to act on her kinder inclinations and for her parents to finally fall in line and reject Selûne so that they would stop seeing Shadowheart in pain. The desire for no more pain was supposed to drive Shadowheart and her family closer to Shar.

And all of this on top of the fact that Shadowheart’s memory was wiped repeatedly to an extreme degree, even by standards of the evil memory wiping cult. She was supposed to be a blank slate that only desired to feel nothing by the end. The perfect Sharran.

So if she keeps her family alive, what does she get? A life time of guaranteed pain from Shar, but also her family. Guilt over learning all she’s done to her parents over the 40 years they were held captive, but also answers about her life before Shar and kinder memories with them after Shar. She doesn’t get to not know all that she’s done and all that’s been taken from her, and she’s forced to feel all the negative emotions that come with that, but she gets comfort and positive feelings too.

The moment I keep going back to is the scene you get after she saves her parents where she’s clearly distressed. You get a similar version of this if her parents are dead, but if her parents are alive, they show up at the end of the scene when she’s crying because of the guilt she’s feeling toward all that happened to them. The specific moment in that which I obsess over a bit is when Shadowheart apologizes to them and says that they shouldn’t have to see her like this (because they just walked in on her crying). And it’s her mom’s response to that which makes me a little insane

It’s the emphasis on feeling that really gets me, and I think is the most important part here.

Because Shadowheart was apologizing specifically for them seeing her feeling. She was in this moment apologizing for them having to see her crying and in a very vulnerable emotional state over her own personal struggles and the immense amount of guilt she feels over seeing the extent of what was done to her parents, some of which she did. She’s not supposed to feel anything about that, as a Sharran. She’s not supposed to feel at all as a Sharran, good or bad.

But it’s her very visibly feeling something that her mom points out wanting to see. it’s the one word she puts emphasis on, because that alone is proof that Shar doesn’t have a hold on her. If she’s feeling something, even if it’s bad, then Shar isn’t winning and isn’t controlling her. Shar literally had to resort to trying to coax her into wanting nothing more than to be free of feeling in order to get her to behave, after all.

If Shadowheart accepts that she’ll have pain for the rest of her life in order to save her family, Shar doesn’t get anything but the shock collar she already had. And the point of the shock collar was to eventually never use it. Hurting Shadowheart wasn’t what Shar wanted. Shar wanted to eventually stop hurting Shadowheart because that meant she was a good perfect little Selûnite-turned-Sharran who had been properly corrupted. Pain wasn’t the point and was supposed to have an ending if Shar got what she wanted.

So when Shadowheart rejects the loss of the pain, that’s about as close as she can get to telling Shar to go fuck herself. Her plans didn’t work, not even a little. Shadowheart isn’t wiping her slate clean (again) and rejecting feeling things just because they’re painful. She’s reconnecting with the past that they spent 40 years trying to erase and she’s doing it even though it’ll be hurt.

Basically by keeping her parents alive, she’s doing every single thing Shar has spent four decades trying to stop her from doing and giving Shar absolutely nothing in return. Shar gets nothing besides the ability to hurt Shadowheart, which isn’t even something she wanted in the first place.

And proof of this is shown in the epilogue, where if you romance Shadowheart and kept her parents alive, you both point out what Shar hasn’t been triggering the wound much lately. She triggers it a lot and randomly in the end of the game, and it’s clear she’s pissed off, but by the time six months have passed, it’s apparently barely happening. Because pain wasn’t the point and it wasn’t what Shar wanted. The pain was Shar throwing a tantrum because she didn’t get what she wanted. Shadowheart calls it petty in the game and that’s literally what it is. Just pettiness from a god. And it’ll probably happen to some extent for the rest of Shadowheart’s life, yes, but it’s clear that Shar is bored and realizes it’s not going to work. She might try some other ways to get at Shadowheart eventually, but in making that choice, Shadowheart denied her any ounce of power that Shar actually cares about. Even if the pain is there, the fact that it’s there is proof that Shar failed.

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Shadowheart

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Howl chapter 5 is here!

it’s finally here! I went through a huge life change these last couple months, and it took some time to get this chapter ready to go. but, it is here! I made some art to go with it as well. hope you enjoy!

You can read the newest chapter here!

[chaosroid]

A closer look at the sticker, plus an update on shipping!

I’d intended to have everything shipped out by today, but it’s looking like it’s going to be Wednesday that everything’s in the mail, and then restocks will be up and available by this Friday at the latest! Thank you all for your patience, and pls don’t hesitate to contact me through email or messages if you have any questions or concerns! 🤲❤️

[chaosroid]

Thoughts on religious trauma and leaving religion in Baldur's Gate 3 and real life

It is rare to see religious trauma in popular media - in fact, I struggle to bring any other examples to mind besides Shadowheart's journey in Baldur's Gate 3.

I was so excited to see an experience so many go through finally being acknowledged to the world at large. Leaving religion is an experience I have had myself, and the fanfic that I'm writing over on A03 is partly influenced by those experiences.

So what stacks up from Shadowheart's journey in Baldur's Gate 3 with real life?

Firstly we see in Act 1 and Act 2 that Shadowheart is subtly suffering from cognitive dissonance - holding two or more opposing ideas in mind at the same time.

For Shadowheart this is a tension between her religious dogma and what she (mostly unconsciously) really feels, or in actions that don't line up with her beliefs (see her "there'll be penance later" line after saving the refugees at the party, and her surprise at how good it feels to care about them). There is a rare line that can come up in Act 2 where Shadowheart says she is distracted and "it's almost like I'm conflicted about something" which shows that her cognitive dissonance is slowly coming into her awareness. Cognitive dissonance is a common experience for people trapped in unhealthy religion but not enough on its own to leave. It's something that takes a lot to even be aware of, but there's also plenty to keep people from acknowledging it. For Shadowheart we see an extreme response from the religion: the uncurable wound, punishing her whenever she goes off the Shar-approved trajectory as a sick example of attempted behavioural modification.

I think a key reason Shadowheart is able to start "seeing the machine" behind her beliefs is because the whole incident with the nautiloid has unwittingly removed her from the cult environment that has kept her imprisoned in her own mind for so long. Never underestimate the power of shared routines and behaviours, and their power to keep people in one place without questioning. If you have a friend or family member who gets sucked into a cult, one of the tactics to try and free them is in fact predicated on an environment change that opens them up to being able to question what has been going on without the constant bombardment of indoctrination and behavioural manipulations.

By contrast we start to see Shadowheart in Act 3 making decisions to put a line under her time as a follower of Shar. The fear that she describes, about having to chart her own future is a very real one for a lot of people who leave toxic religion. All the guard rails and scaffolding of religion that makes life certain and safety are suddenly gone, and being the one in charge, after letting others lead you around, can be a very disorientating experience. Especially if the toxic religion in question encourages a significant level of co-dependency. And in all fairness to Shadowheart, it's why I'm particularly proud of her decision, at the end of the final fight, to invite Tav to enjoy the life Shadowheart wants to live - not just mould herself into something she thinks Tav wants.

The Act 3 scene where she is at the statue of Selune, considering how she feels about Selune now is a very powerful one for those who have left a religion. It is hard to suddenly go without all the trappings of daily rituals, a ready made community and easy certainties and some people do find themselves exchanging one religion for another, because of the "easy" comfort it brings. Leaving a toxic religion is very strange for a while when days of religious significance come up - a little like the first time after a bereavement that you experience the birthday of the person who has died. Shadowheart's line about how she sees why "it's so easy to bow" and have your life dictated by a deity is particularly poignant.

Whether Shadowheart still has the incurable wound by the end of the game depends on your decisions, but regardless of your decision, shock and grief over what has been lost and uncomfortable reminders of the past are certainly completely normal.

(Check out the fanfic).

[chaosroid]

took a few hours to draw for myself 🖤 im on BlueSky

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finally how to train your dragon can shed its childish character design and lighting and evolve to instead have the bold and engaging art direction of a car insurance ad

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There's nothing he wouldn't do for his girls

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the Blasphemous series is the only media I've ever seen that understands what makes Catholicism interesting as a mythology. Not as a religion, but as a mythology.

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The arms 💪🏻

Cosplayer: Quinn

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laughing at the entire conceit of live action httyd being "animation is for babies so we HAVE to remake this shot-for-shot in live action" but also they need to sell a new wave of plushies at universal studios orlando so toothless still looks like a fucking cartoon character

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dark haired vi save me

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Aria T'Loak 01/??

You run Omega?

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