#[ I can understand the sentiment ]

[whotookmysenbon]

then are there any pillow criteria that your date should meet?

Not really. If they’re even more boney than I am (looking at you, Hatake,) they usually use me as a pillow. I’ve also had apprentices room with me and they sometimes sleep next to me when they have a nightmare or after a particularly rough mission. Shizune uses me as a pillow when she stays in town but that’s usually because she fell asleep on me while we were working on a project. Any other time I’m usually being hugged like a teddybear and as long as I get a good chest or strong arm beneath me I’m out like a light.

[coalballbaby]

sixshot nation are you hearing me

[hephaestuscrew]

Prior to the revelation around the aliens receiving his logs, Eiffel's logical expectation is that the only people who'll listen to his logs are people at Goddard Command. And yet the way he speaks in those logs is often not really addressed at Goddard staff. For example, in Ep8 The Empty Man Cometh, he says:

Oh, hell, speaking of logs... I guess you caught all of that, so you might be able to pick up the effect your twisted experiment had on us. Hint: IT WAS AWFUL. Sorry if things got a bit crazy for a while there, dear listeners, but... well, you see the kind of things we have to deal with.

The first part of that quote is obviously directed at Goddard staff, at the people who create many of the situations Eiffel and the rest of the Hephaestus crew have to deal with (such as the empty man panic). But the second part - the part addressed to Eiffel's "dear listeners" - feels like a switch, like it's directed at a sympathetic audience who are witnessing Eiffel's plight without having any role in it. In other words, it feels like it's directed at us. Before the aliens come into the picture, we are the "dear listeners".

There's no logical reason for Eiffel to make this kind of switch between the listener he blames (i.e. Goddard Command) and his more sympathetic "dear listener". He's mentally constructing a listener to his logs who is on his side, when he has no in-universe reason to believe that there is one. It's an interesting kind of coping mechanism - potentially linked to the unconscious, perhaps misdirected, desire for connection that led him to transmit his logs into deep space.

There are other signs that the "dear listener" Eiffel directs his logs towards has very little to do with Goddard, such as the way he explains things that Goddard staff would obviously know (which is obviously useful from a storytelling perspective, but also feels in-character and in line with his other behaviour), as well as telling the listener things that could land him in trouble with Goddard.

Eiffel is the kind of genre-savvy character who is regularly on the brink of fully breaking the fourth wall. He doesn't know he's in an audio drama, but he's so prone to narrating his life that he might as well know. He's always constructing the narrative of his life in his head, so perhaps he finds that it helps to imagine someone on Earth who is listening sympathetically to the story he's telling himself. In his world, at the beginning of the show, he doesn't have that listener, or doesn't believe he has. But his words reach across from the universe of his story into ours. And his voice finds the kind of dear listener he was imagining without hoping for - someone who has no role in anything that happens on the Hephaestus but who is willing to listen to his story. In pressing play on your podcast app, you become the listener he was longing for.

[saltyowlets]

Alt text:

Vivienne is not pro-templar as many would think. She is just using the resources she has in hand in order to work with a system that would rather throw her and the rest of the mages into an inescapable pit. Vivienne's insistence of using the templars is indicative of her awareness of the dangers of magic but she has made it clear that as much as magic serves man, templars serves mages as protectors. She does not trust templars as much as the average mage but knows that there is no easy solution to the weak Veil and the lack of protection the mage rebellion has brought upon other Circle mages. Vivienne does not hate or look down upon other mages as her efforts are clearly to support the mages if she is made Divine. Additionally, her quest was initially supposed to be about collecting phylacteries in order to keep mages safe from templars and mage hunters. She cares about mages enough to chain the templars and if you have a good relationship with her, allow the College to exist.

[pheyphem]

the things i would do for more dan and phil trombone champ

[lazy-toad]

"just go on hrt!" THAT WOULD BE FUCKING NICE WOULDN'T IT

[garden-bug]

Is being critical of Sabine’s force sensitivity ‘gatekeeping’ the force or it is about how it undermines the established magic system and was not well written?

I’ll give you a clue it’s the second one.

[brucestalia]

"being a talia fan is hard" "being a selina fan is hard" you know what's harder?

being a fan of both talia and selina. like please, ladies (and gents), can we take a moment to just admire two beautiful, fantastic, amazing, gorgeous, capable women AND pass the bechdel test?

please?

i love women!!!!!!!!!!! ૮ ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶ ა

live. and let them live.

[cornertheculprit]

i think dhurke's decision to send apollo away but not nahyuta was a total thought fumble on his part. like i think he thought long and hard about it and went "hm. if i died in a foreign country would i want my son to be dragged into a rebellion against said country. No. I would want him safe and sound" and then he sent apollo away and just fucking. let his firstborn son be dragged into a rebellion against said country LMAOOOOO. like i know there had to have been other factors to it (for one thing nahyuta's hair + eyes + forehead tattoo were distinct enough that he'd absolutely be recognized as amara's son no matter where he went) but like. hdnzksjdjsndgsjn. dhurke. my man. what

[daemon-in-my-head]

Back to my usual grim business, but like, who decided Gortash is past the point of saving? As far as I can tell, nobody ever even attempted to save him and if fucking Durge, who was the leader and the worst out of the old dead 3, can be redeemed, who's to say Gortash can't?

I mean, heck, he's ready and willing to kill even Durge the second they get in his way, despite what some people (hi, it's me) hc they may have had. Give that man a good argument and an option he'd never see himself, and he'd probably do it. He's practical, screwed up and has 0 morals (which is to be expected given his bg) but practical, and you can use that. After all, he wants to become/be seen as a hero. As someone benevolent. If you can convince Keteric, who's just straight up given up on life and everything within it, I do think it's possible to save Gortash too.

I personally wouldn't want to redeem him cuz I like their rs dynamic of 'is it manipulation or admiration' far better, but fr, who said he's too far gone? Yeah, sure he might be kicking and screaming throughout it, but that's a lot of ppl in therapy, isn't it? That's what some of your companions did for three whole acts, isn't it?

Idk man, I don't see a reason why he's 'beyond saving' except for the narrative of the game demands it. BG3 is all about saving people who didn't see anything wrong with their ways, so why is he written off like that? Is it cuz he's old? Astarion's certainly far older, and he can be saved. Because he isn't handsome? Well, I think he is. Cuz he did human experiments? Durge straight-up performed vivisections frequently. Cuz he fucked with Netherese/Karsus magic? A kind reminder that Gale has a piece of the karsite weave in his chest.

Genuinely, I don't understand that notion.

[mercymaker]

re: gatekeeping

i've seen this argument come up again and again across multiple blogs and i feel like it's doing such a disservice to the creative community of this fandom and is worth speaking about (especially considering that some people expressed their reluctance to create in response to the recent events)

and i just wanted to say that YES. no one owns specific scenes. YES. people are allowed to gif the same characters. hell, as far as i've seen this community is incredibly creative and generous, sharing their mods and reshade presets and scenic locations.

to me PERSONALLY, the line is crossed when there's no transparency. when it's a repeated behavior. when there's no respect or regard to your fellow creators or their wishes.

i want to be very clear that this was all brought up in regards to a VERY specific case. a very nuanced case with a lot of context and i don't think it should be used to view the community as a whole.

outside of it and on the bigger scale, this community is full of incredibly skilled and creative individuals. helpful individuals. ones that WANT to inspire and encourage others to create. that share and help and give tips. that support each other. that put a new, exciting spin on 'the same old' game with its limited scenes.

and while, surely, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, i feel like there have been some really thick brushstrokes applied when talking about the bg3 fandom creatives as a whole. and it just doesn't sit right with me.

[puke-ur-gutz]

i will cashapp $10 to the first person who can name 3 real life harmful things bob bryar did without accusing him of thought crime

[ilynpilled]

why must everything that the text clearly states atp be misconstrued like i really dont get it he has plenty of flaws in that relationship but we, and cersei, know that he was ready to kill robert for just the disrespect of the cheating if cersei said the word. he doesnt concern himself with the personal consequences, he is reckless, detached from a lot of things, and can close his eyes at the future if he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. also the concern over the “shame” and ned type judgement feels so overestimated to me atp. he never regrets aerys, he is mad at how he is perceived (but again, notably doesnt try to rectify it by telling the truth for a lot of complex reasons), but he would never take it back. if he believes its the right thing to do, and is not overdosing on copium trying to juggle vows he cares about, he will do it, reputation be damned. though he has selfish concerns regarding being viewed as good, the internal matters so much more than the external: see weirwood dream: who actually shows up? what makes the fire go out? “it was not him. it was never him”, see the trebuchet fiasco, see the choice in adwd. why shouldnt we take cersei at face value when she implies that if jaime knew about the physical abuse he would have killed him? he loves and cares about cersei to an insane degree, even if he can be selfish toxic and unhealthy too. not to mention he would be glad to kill robert anyway lol. i really find it very very difficult to imagine that he wouldnt have killed him based on almost every single part of his characterization.

[apinktrashcan]

Something something Prims baby clothes being kept long after she needed them but getting sold once Mr. Everdeen has died as a sign of lost hope… something something

Of all the things she could have chosen for katniss to desperately try and sell– which makes sense, not being able to sell baby clothes in a world where your children get reaped for a death game– WHY baby clothes. Maybe they couldn’t sell them just as katniss couldn’t, but it’s still fabric that might be utilized for something else. Mr. Everdeen is said to be a good negotiator.

Why keep them when there’s no one to wear them? Because there was a possibility. It doesn’t even have to be taken literally as “we might have another baby” it’s just… an end. To the warm family of her childhood, to safety, to full bellies and hope and being a child herself

[wortsandall]

this is how i know im not cut out to be an autobot bc if i was mirage in the comics-id be crashing the fuck out man.

like if sunstreaker was the real one who sold us out and yet everyone was accusing me and i got my autobot mark destroyed and beat up by ironhide...im gone. im absolutely gone. that would be it. fuck that shit man. hes better than me 💀

[moonshapedbox]

put my two weeks notice in at work today and no one tells u how hard it is to say goodbye to everyone…i was so blessed to love and be loved by so many of my coworkers and i’m gonna miss them so bad :(( i had to say goodbye to a lot of the ones i was close with today and it was so difficult i teared up multiple times….their reactions were so sweet and encouraging and some of them hugged me….i’m gonna miss them so so much bc they made that place bearable for the last year and a half and it’s gonna be hard not seeing them anymore….and idk i feel sad bc i don’t feel like i have enough time to say goodbye and thank everyone and tell them what a positive impact they had on me