#He and his family embraced her

[accidentallyycreated]

Saw an Instagram reel saying when the “family means everything” boy meets the “family means nothing” girl and the first that my brain screamed was PERCABETH!

[fusionsprunt]

Non-canon instance where Beatrix accidentally falls into another dimension in which Holloway's Comet didn't make it to planet Zona.

[drenched-in-sunlight]

people bending over backwards to scream Marika never loved Messmer when he alone has more blessings personally bestowed by her than any other demigods combined are so funny to me. also the fact that it's implied he used to live in Leyndell too 😂😂

also she killed an entire god herself and made sure said God is called all manner of names and depict as ugly forever. for him 😂😂

[botanicallyinclinednerd]

have you ever thought about how out of all the gods/powerful people Odysseus has met throughout epic, Circe is the only one who respected his no

This genuinely just stopped me in my tracks and caused me to stop breathing for about 5 seconds. No, Fluffy, I have not thought of this. What the fuck. Circe is also the only powerful being he met that encouraged the good in Odysseus

[wildsaltair]

on my knees begging this man to save me from the clutches of desire

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

not to beat a dead horse but there's something kind of illuminating and warmie yet sad about the fact that Taylor's parents are attending Travis' game with her and regularly. I know the "you never saw--" joke is old, but the idea that [redacted]'s family did actually occasionally attend events with Taylor (including at what it seems may have been a difficult time), but after a certain point she herself didn't/couldn't attend his in turn, never mind her family, and it's just a testament to how different things are now, how different her life is, and frankly how integrated their family life has become. Idk I'm just really happy for popstar bestie because I feel like this is probably everything she ever wanted and didn't know she could have at one point.

[hanafubukki]

I hope when Silver is put to sleep, we can see him visit the knight of dawn and his mom.

Let them have a chat before he gets awoken.

So he can feel the love of both family.

Let him hug them and be loved by them one more time before waking up in the arms of his diasomnia family.

I also want this for Malleus as well, let him see his mother before his OB breaks.

Let him see how loved he is by everyone, not worshiped, but loved.

Let him accept that his birth brought so much joy to others, like Lilia and maleficia.

That he’s not alone

Let these two brothers be loved

[mc-critical]

1.06 / 2.09 (33)

[nebulousfishgills]

As much as I love playing embrace Dark Urge runs (discussion in therapy pending), there's something so narratively satisfying about how a Resist Durge playthrough can go once you get to the Bhaal Temple. Your character steps into the ring with Orin, it's intended to be a duel, but odds are you're getting eviscerated pretty quickly. You then switch to one of your other characters in your party and throw an attack, effectively breaking the duel and setting the whole temple upon you.

(Adding a cut because this ended up being longer than I thought)

But, I think it's a very satisfying way to play. Your party members have grown fond of your Durge, seeing them as a friend, a family member, even a lover. They've watched you and your pain over your Urge and what it makes you do or want to do. Maybe you've slipped up once or twice, but you've been trying so hard to be the hero they know you can be, that Faerûn needs. So, when it comes time to finally face your demons and you're getting so horribly hurt in the process, they can't help but rush to your defense. It'll put all of them in danger, but it doesn't matter because they want and need to help you, their ally and companion.

Bonus points if you select your character's romanced companion as the savior/duel interruptor to make it extra delicious. They've fallen in love with you, stayed with you when your Urge craved their blood the most, maybe by this point in the game you've helped put their demons down as well. They see you in pain, a final valiant effort to overcome your Urge against the power of Orin, a whole cult, a god of murder himself. They want to protect you, save you as you saved them.

I'm also fond of the extra beauty of Astarion being your Resist Durge romance since it puts the two of you in very similar situations. Fighting against the will of your masters, finally defeating your demons with your newfound companions' help and being offered the greatest power you could ever fathom... only to deny it, ignore power in favor of your party and your love.

This isn't even mentioning just how goddamn good the Withers resurrecting you cutscene is. This skeleton in your camp with unknown and unfathomable power (also apparently supposed to be Jergal himself if I've done my research properly?) is able to bring you back to life, free of your Urge. The line along the lines of "Bhaal could only destroy what of you that he knew, but because you've grown past your Urge and become your own person, he couldn't destroy that new growth" is just so weirdly powerful narratively. Tav may be a default character for you to create upon making a new save file, but Durge is the canon protagonist and I think that entire scene shows it the best. It's a beautiful secondary climax of the narrative (primary being battling the Netherbrain of course).

And, perhaps it's just an oversight on Larian's part or something that'd be a bit difficult to work into the cutscenes mechanically, but I think that it could only get more impactful if your companions could comfort each other during these moments. Everyone and their mother wishes you could hug Astarion after he kills Cazador, but also imagine your romanced companion cradling your body after Bhaal kills you. It seems just a little odd that they all (meaning your party) kinda just stand around staring at your corpse, especially with how close y'all have gotten.

Idk, I have a lot of thoughts about this section of the game in this particular type of playthrough and some of them are hard to articulate into words. It's just such a damn good narrative peak and can really make you feel things.

I've completed I think two resist Durge runs and just hit this point on my third and it really stuck out to me this time (then again my new antidepressants are kinda fucking with me so that might be playing a role). I left it as my last mission before dealing with the Netherbrain and I think it helped build the anticipation of that moment. Everyone else has been helped by you, and now it's your turn to come into your own. I really felt so connected to my character walking into the temple, feeling like everything has been building to this, that regardless of what happens our suffering will finally end. And you have your party there to help you in your time of greatest need as you've done for them.

There's a reason this game was Game of the Year, the narrative is just so powerful and the replay-ability is just insane. I've beaten this game ten times, heading for my eleventh and it truly just never gets old and never fails to make me feel so many things so strongly.

[pynkhues]

first of all, thank you so much for sharing your take on the rebecca/iwtv parallel. rebecca is one of my fave books growing up and the metas i've seen so far have always rubbed me the wrong way. and i totally agree that there's a strong tendency in the fandom to water down the loustat dynamic into a gender binary (as evidenced by that anon with the accusatory tone even tho they explicitly headlined their msg as a race issue lol). anyway, i mainly wanted to say that I love your take on the agency vs autonomy question, bc i've always thought that one of the biggest and perhaps most controversial adaptive changes in the show, lestat dropping louis in s1, was precisely hannah/rolin's attempt to address lestat's lack of autonomy in the books, which to me was a brilliant move. but it also led some of the lestat-critical (or straight-up hating tbh) part of the audience to accuse the s2 writing of 'defanging' him, aka having things happen to him and being powerless to fight back, which, as you perfectly summarized, is exactly what happened in the books. and i think it can easily be read as one of the weaknesses of anne's storytelling (i did when I first read the books years ago). and for me, the drop (and lestat's subsequent guilt) reinjected some autonomy into lestat's arc, and was also very onbrand of him to commit such a horrific act stemming from rage, heartbreak, (and fundamentally) love that will forever impact his dynamic with louis. so i'm very happy with how the writers have balanced this issue so far, and very excited to see what they'll do in s3, and of course would always love to hear more of your thoughts on it.

(x)

You're very welcome, and thank you! Really interesting that you read Lestat dropping Louis as reinjecting some autonomy into Lestat's arc! I hadn't thought of it that way, but I think you could be right particularly now with the shifting context of their fight and the violence that preceded Lestat's act of brutality.

It's been interesting re-reading TVL lately and getting to the scene where Lestat badly beats Armand after getting triggered with memories of Magnus after Armand forcibly drinks from him. It made me wonder how much that scene informed the way Rolin and Hannah wrote the drop? It's of course not the same - Armand and Lestat have a very different power dynamic, especially at that point, to Lestat and Louis - but I wonder if it was also a way to both depict Lestat's very masculine and powerful temper, but also his knee jerk trigger point as a traumatised character? Both are so central to TVL and QOTD in particular, so to depict that in an intimate relationship early on in hte series' run is interesting to think about!

[sylustra]

Sylus saying "...don't run" to MC when they're finally being openly honest about their desire for one another and their trust and shared spaces.

[widowshill]

VAMP ROGER AU QUESTION! how would he and barnabas interact together (if they ever interact)? :3 💜

tagging @tortoisesshells because she's my co-conspirator <3

excellent question! this family and their sharp-toothed men will be the death of ... well, several community members of Collinsport, i suppose.

to start — Barnabas gets out of the box slightly differently than in canon, which colors his relationship to Roger and the rest of the household. Roger kills Willie after his attempted assault on Carolyn and Vicki (who is, by that point, his wife); Willie's mysterious disappearance and Roger's suspected involvement makes Jason that much more panicked, desperate, and correspondingly aggressive. Liz goes searching for the lost family jewels in a last-ditch attempt to buy Jason off, and, inadvertently, lets their ancient family sin out of the tomb.

ergo she's made Barnabas' thrall instead of Willie, but this goes unnoticed for a while — even though her brother would, in theory, recognize the signs, and his suspicions are raised, but she's already acting so much unlike herself with Jason around that he doesn't suspect anyone else of doing her harm. yet.

at the start, he and Barnabas get along very well, even before they discover their shared affliction: they're both relatively sophisticated, well-traveled, intelligent people, and for all that Roger decries Liz's emphasis on the Collins name, he leans towards familial connections instinctively (Roger hasn't got much in the way of friends outside of the house even in canon, and he's even more isolated as a vampire).

after he finds out Barnabas is also a vampire, things get a little more complicated, but overall, they're still friendly. Roger doesn't have much sympathy for Barnabas' relentless self-pity and decrying his doomed fate to live as a monster, because Roger on the whole enjoys his vampirism and has made a decent un-life for himself out of it (thanks in no small part to Vicki). but having someone like him around is a comfort in ways he wouldn't have expected, he's no longer solitary or uniquely monstrous out of the Collins family, he has someone else around through the night, and someone who understands the sufferings of bloodthirst and being shut out of the sun.

furthermore, Roger's very much interested in his family history and stories of the past, the building of Collinwood, Jeremiah's ships – and Barnabas was there. there's potential for some very interesting conversations about the past, and the arc of the Collins family history to the present, not to mention literature, travel, fashion, politics and the rest. Roger's his cousin's mirror in modernity in many ways, and that's something potentially interesting to explore: the world changes around them, but Collinses do not.

as an aside, they both have a funny sort of relationship to Burke. Barnabas hates him for his resemblance to Jeremiah and envies his friendship with Vicki and thinks he's crude, and Roger ... well. it's complicated. it's closer to antagonism than not, and Burke has tried to kill him once in this au, and Roger resents his flirting with Vicki, but then there's everything else with their past. so I don't think Barnabas' treatment of him would sit particularly well with Roger, he'd take the attitude of hey, only I can be a dick to Burke >:(

the definite fracture point is Barnabas imprinting on Vicki. Roger's already jealous and possessive by nature, and it's amplified by the supernatural nature of his relationship to Vicki (being closer, bodily and mentally; being necessary to each other; being, quite literally, sustenance) so he's already a little on edge when Barnabas starts paying attention to her, giving her presents, and appreciating the scenery — Barnabas doesn't, exactly, tend to have much in the way of moral inclination to leaving women alone when they have prior engagements, but it's fair to point out the irony of everything Roger was doing with his bloodbag governess when he was still very much a married man.

anyway: Roger finds foreign bite marks on his wife's neck, and he's understandably immensely upset by this. partially out of territorial sentiment, but he also knows Vicki, and he knows that she wouldn't have invited another vampire willingly — which means that she was forced, or hypnotized, or attacked in secret, and there's only the one potential suspect. this is already enough to lose his good will, but he might have been willing to let Barnabas go with a "hands off," had this discovery not lead to finding out what he'd also been doing to Liz. the combination of the two is unforgivable, and it's Barnabas' error to have made an enemy who is very personally aware of all his vampiric weaknesses, and Burke's already carved a stake.

[wonder-worker]

Anne de Pisseleu had exercised a form of power that was intrinsically extra-institutional and dependent entirely of the king’s favor; her role was clearly understood by political insiders. Criticism took the form of conventional hostility to the role of women in power, yet in the king’s lifetime had to be circumspect and oblique. However, she lived more than half her life after the death of the king whose love had given her power and wealth. In this, she weathered the storm of disgrace remarkably effectively, carved for herself a new role and ended her life a moderately wealthy woman whose assets became a matter for ferocious competition among her relatives.

-David Potter, "The Life and After-Life of a Royal Mistress: Anne de Pisseleu, Duchess of Étampes"

[forlibcrty]

at any given time i'm thinking about how the name given to charles lee by the mohawk translated to "boiling water" because of his temper. they really called him Tantrum Thrower and he bragged about it like that was a badge of honour.

[oakwolves]

Darius Deamonne hate is rooted in antiblackness idc

[aahsoka]

a) i cant believe she was inspired to pursue a career in animation bc of hu yeong thats so cute

b) i can usually sympathize with the reasons characters just fuck off somewhere in dramas. I never like or agree with the choice to not tell ur partner but I can sympathize with the reason usually. However with this guy I don’t give a shit its one of the flimsiest reasons I’ve ever heard. also how do u afford a plane ticket if ur ‘penniless’