#I'm obsessed with my own edit and I've seen it 50 times

[omg-hellgirl]

I guess being a womanizer and a modelizer at the same time leaves him two steps beyond.

[rielzero]

I can't find any concrete information on any of the main companions ages, but given that most headcanons put ages pretty close to each other, I might just make my own headcanon on the ages, just so that If age is mentioned in my comic I can be specific. This is me just going off from my own interpretation of interactions and supposed life experience. Please know I am not an expert and my opinion may be flawed, weeeh. I might miss vital information.

Astarion: 200+, immortal. it would be inconsistent to assume he was with Cazador exactly 200 years, it could've been 197 for example, or 202, we simply don't know the exact amount. The dates in the game and grave are unclear, some sources state Astarion is 350, while others say he is 239... I think Astarion would be the kind of guy who avoids giving you his exact age, either due insecurity or simply because he doesn't know anymore. Elves stop aging physically for a while around 20, so he might've been much older than 39 at death.

Gale: 30-35? I'm picking 34. He looks pretty young, 29 wouldn't be too far fetched? greying hair early is genetic. His speech pattern and expressed experience within life makes me think 33 or 34 is a safe bet. Tara and family keep urging him to have kids obsessively, so mid thirties makes sense.

Karlach: 28-32 Suppose 29 fits best. Karlach mentions she was ''a kid'' when she was given to Zariel, so she was either 18-19 when she worked for Gortash, and she focally expresses her pent-up ness with her sexuality in the hells, I think she must've at least have had some relationship experiences in Baldur's gate before Gortash ruined her life. She was enslaved by Zariel for 10 years.

Lae'zel: 24. Stat! Most folks say She's 20-22, but I think 24 would be closer. She's young, but also somewhat more experienced in life. As for social situations and awkwardness, that may be more a cultural difference, in her culture kids get trained from a really young age. They kill each other as a culling too, so not much of a childhood to go on there.

Shadowheart: 48-50 I'm sticking to 48. As a half-elf, her appearance stops aging beyond 20 for a while, she sounds more experienced in life, but often lacks memory to fill in the gaps to why. Which explains some of her behavior and interactions with other characters. She comes off both young / older at times due this. If you look at her mother and father's appearances, I'd say 10 year old Shadowheart was stolen by Shar's cult. So her mother must've been stuck there for about 30+ years. If her mother was 30 when shadowheart was 10, then she would be in her sixties, which matches her appearance. But this is just my guess. Wyll: 24-35 Oh? I think he's 29 tbh. From what I've seen, Wyll had the widest range of age guesses from others. People put him either close to Gale's age, or much closer to Lae'zel's guessed age. I think he's closer to Karlach's age, so I'm sticking with that. Wyll has a lot of life experience- he's been super busy, but he's mostly been on his own since 17. It's not super clear to me for when Wyll went out as blade of frontiers if he had made much friends on the road- I think he just went from place to place or wherever Mizora sent him to, so he didn't stick around anywhere for too long? He's socially confident, but not used to being around a variety of personalities for too long maybe? He tries to see the good in everyone because that's his default. He's a good guy! But he's also nuanced as a monster hunter. (Else Astarion would be dead the second he joins, lol.) Edit: Wyll is confirmed to be 24! He became a warlock at 17, and his origin intro mentions he was exiled 7 years ago, which means he's 24 during the start of the game.

Halsin, Jaheira's Minthara's and Minsc ages are pretty much confirmed, all being older than the main companions. Minsc is a bit of an odd case, given that he gets frozen in stone(?) Every once in a while so he can come back. Jaheira mentions that he does not mentally process that the world around him changes, he thinks people don't change as a result. Minthara's life experience has been influenced by with her culture, but she also mentions she's been around for a WHILE, same as Halsin. Halsin is not super familiar with city life, which surprised me personally. Druid been around for a while but cities ain't for him.

[lee-scribbles-and-doodles]

My Top Ten Overlooked Movies With Female Leads In No Particular Order

Note: When you see this emoji (⚠️) I will be talking about things people may find triggering, which are spoilery more often then not. I mention things that I think may count as triggers so that people with them will be aware before going in to watch any of these.

Edited: 3/16/21

Hanna (2011)

So, before I get into why you should watch this movie, I just want to take a moment to say why it's near and dear to my heart. Growing up as a queer kid in the early 2000s, seeing portrayals of people like or similar to myself on anything was rare at best. It was mostly in more "adult" movies or shows that my parents would occasionally let me watch with them that I'd see any lgbtq+ rep at all. Often times they were either walking stereotypes, designed to be buried, evil, or all three.

Then here comes this PG-13 action thriller with a wonderfully written main female lead who, at the time, was close to my age, and who got to kiss another girl (her very first friend, Sophie) on screen in an extremely tender and heartwarming scene. To say the least, it was a life changing moment for me personally.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, Hanna is a suspenseful movie about a child super-soldier named, you guessed it, Hanna (played by Saoirse Ronan) and her adoptive (?) father Erik Heller (played by Eric Bana) exiting the snowy and isolated wilderness of their home and taking on the shadowy CIA operative, Marissa Wiegler (played by Cate Blanchette) who wants Erik dead and Hanna for herself for mysterious reasons.

It also has an amazing soundtrack by the Chemical Brothers, great action scenes, and it has an over arching fairytale motif, which I'm always a sucker for.

⚠️ Mild blood effects, some painful looking strikes, various character deaths, and child endangerment all feature in this film. However, given its PG-13 rating, a majority of viewers are presumably able to handle this one. Still, be aware of these going in.

Sidenote: It's recently gotten a TV adaptation on Amazon TV, although I have not watched it, and do not know if Hanna and Sophie's romantic/semi-romantic relationship has transferred over.

A Simple Favor

A Simple Favor is a "black-comedy mystery thriller" centered entirely around the relationship between two mothers, the reclusive, rich, mysterious, and regal Emily (played by Blake Lively), and the local recently widowed but plucky mommy blogger, Stephanie (played by Anna Kendrick). When Emily suddenly goes missing, Stephanie takes it upon herself to find out what happened to her new best friend.

It's a fantastic and entertaining movie throughout, with fun, flawed and interesting characters. The relationship between the two female leads is also implied to be at least somewhat romantic in nature, and they even share a kiss.

⚠️ The only major warnings I can think of is that the movie contains an instance of incest and one of the main plotlines revolves around child abuse, although both of these potentially triggering topics are not connected to each other, so there is thankfully no csa going on.

Edit: I legitimately forgot there was drug use in this movie until now. So, yeah, if that's a trigger, be careful of that.

I Am Mother

I became mildly obsessed with this movie when it came out. I Am Mother is a sci-fi film that centers entirely around a cast of two woman, and a female-adjacent robot who is brought to life on screen with absolutely amazing practical effects.

The plot is such, after an extinction-level event, a lone robot known only as Mother tasks herself with replenishing the human race via artifical means. She begins with the film's main protagonist, Daughter. Years go by as Mother raises her human child and the two prepare for Daughter's first sibling (a brother) to be born. However, on Daughter's 16th birthday, the arrival of an outsider known only as Woman shakes Daughter's entire world view. She begins to question Mother's very nature, as well as what's really going on outside the bunker she and her caretaker call home.

⚠️ This movie features child endangerment and reference to child death.

Lilo and Stitch

When I decided to add a single Disney film to this list I initially thought it was going to be hard but almost immediately my brain went to Lilo and Stitch, and specifically about the relationship between Lilo and Nani.

On the surface, this film is about a lonely little girl accidentally adopting a fugitive alien creature as a "dog," but underneath that the story is also about two orphaned sisters and the older sister's attempts to not let social services tear them apart by stepping up as the younger sister's primary guardian. Despite its seemingly goofy premise, Lilo and Stitch has a very emotional and thoughtful center. It's little wonder how this movie managed to spawn an entire franchise.

Despite the franchise it spawned (or possibly because of it), I often find that Lilo and Stitch is overlooked and many people only remember it for the "little girl adopts an alien as a pet" portion of its plot, and I very rarely see it on people's top 10 Disney lists.

⚠️ This movie could be potentially triggering to people who were separated from their siblings or other family members due to social service intervention. There's also a bit of child endangerment, including a scene where Lilo and Stitch both almost drown.

Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind

Unlike the above entry, I did struggle a little bit with picking a single Studio Ghibli film. Most media of the Ghibli catalogue have strong, well-written, unique, and interesting female leads so selecting just one seemed like quite the task.

However, I eventually settled on this particular film. In recent months, Princess Nausicaä has become my absolute favorite Ghibli protagonist and I'm absolutely enchanted by the world she lives in.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world overun by giant insects and under threat of a toxic forest and its poisoness spores, Nausicaä must try to protect the Valley of the Wind from invaders as she also tries to understand the science behind the toxic forest and attempts to bridge the gap between the insects and the humans.

For those who have never seen the film, I think Nausicaä's personality can best be described as being similar to OT Luke Skywalker. Both are caring, compassionate, and gentle souls who are able to see the best in nearly anyone or anything. She's an absolutely enthralling protagonist and after rewatching the film again for the first time in well over a decade she has easily become one of my all time favorite protagonists.

Whenever I see people talk about Ghibli films, they rarely mention this one, and when they do mention it, it's often in passing. In my opinion it's a must watch.

⚠️ This movie contains some blood, and the folks who either don't like insects or who have entomophobia may not appreciate the giant bugs running about throughout the movie. (Although most insects do not directly relate to real life bugs, and are fantasy creatures).

A Silent Voice

A Silent Voice is an animated movie adaptation of a manga of the same name. While I've never had the pleasure to read the manga, the movie is phenomenal. It covers topics such a bullying, living in the world with a disability, the desire for atonement, social anxiety, and depression in a well thought out manner that ties itself together through the progression of the relationship between its two leads, Shoya and Shouko. It's also beautifully animated. Although very popular among anime viewers, I've noticed that it's often overlooked by people who watch little to no anime. So I suppose this is me urging non-anime viewers to give this film a chance.

⚠️ As mentioned above, the movie deals with bullying, anxiety, and depression (with this last one including suicidal thoughts and behaviour). If discussion of those topics are triggering to you, than you may want to proceed with caution or skip this movie all together.

In This Corner of The World

Another manga adaptation, this one taking place during WWII-era Japan. In This Corner of The World follows the life of a civilian Japanese woman, Suzu Urano, as she navigates simply living and her new marriage as the wartime invades nearly all aspects of everyday life. I think this movie is a good representation of what it must be like to be living as civilian in a country at war where the fight is sometimes fought on one's own soil. It was also an interesting look into pre-50s Japanese culture in my opinion. It's also beautifully animated featuring an art style I don't see often.

Despite it being well known among anime fans, I never really see it be brought up, even among said anime fans themselves.

Side note: I've seen many WWII dramas centering around civilians but they've almost always been about American or UK civilians. This was the first movie I'd seen that features the perspective of a Japanese civilain.

⚠️ Features the death of a child and limb loss. There's also a disturbing scene featuring a victim of one of the atomic bombs near the end.

Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki

This film follows Hana, a Japan-native woman who fell in love with a magical shape-shifting wolf-man, and her trials with raising their children, who can also magically shape-shift into wolves, on her own. It's a very heartfelt movie about a mother's love and the struggles of doing right by your children when you have limited resources to actively guide and care for them. All the characters feel unique and alive in my opinion. Also, the animation is so good that my sister and I initially mistook it for a Ghibli film.

Again, like the previous two anime entries, I don't see it ever brought up outside of anime circles.

⚠️ There's some child endangerment present in the film, although none of it is the fault of Hana as far as I can remember.

Roman Holiday

Roman Holiday is about the fictional Princess Ann (played by Audrey Hepburn), who while on a whirlwind tour of Europe, finally reaches her breaking point over having her entire life be one big schedule and all her words and actions being rehearsed. In the spur of the moment, she runs away in hopes of experiencing what life is like for other women. Unfortunately, she was previously given a sedative, meaning she doesn't get too far before it takes effect. Fortunately, she is found by the kind reporter Joe Bradley (played by Gregory Peck). Believing her to be drunk and unable to get an address from her (because she has none) he ends up taking her home for safety's sake and allows her to sleep off her suppose drunken stupor. The next day, he realizes who she is, and decides to take her on a fun sight seeing trip across Rome in hopes of getting the big scoop. Along the way, they begin to fall for each other.

This is my favorite black and white, old romance film. I think the relationship between the main characters is absolutely beautiful and I have a lot of fun watching it.

⚠️ I'm not entirely sure what kind of warning this film would need. However, it was released in 1953, so values dissonance will probably be at play for many viewers to at least some extent. For example, early in the film Ann is given sedation drugs by her doctor for her behavior, something that is very unlikely to happen today. Also, Mr Bradley deciding to take Ann home to keep her safe rather than call the police or an ambulance is a very pre-90s decision in my opinion.

[caliversatile]

CALI-BLOG!

Blog title: "Introducing Me, CAYLIE VEGA!"

Written in: July 29, 2020

Edited: April 10, 2020

Hi fam! So this is yours truly, Caylie Vega aka Caliversustheworld. And yes I'm a foreign invader from outerspace who's quite obsessed with writing, daydreaming, reading, making cartoons/arts, binge-watching animes, and listening to music especially rock. I used plenty of pseudonyms before settling down to my new name (Caylie Vega aka CVTW), due to some "personal" reasons of course.

Moving on from that part, I started becoming a writer since I was like 9 years old. I am a certified bookworm and I wanted to write the idea that just popped out of my head, so my first story was like written in a stolen piece of yellow paper from my parent's room, and it was a tale about a certain magical angel mermaid whatsoever. Let's just say that she was a product of both Angel and mermaid blah bla blah. That story was followed by another children's masterpiece which was entitled, "BEA THE BEE" and had some cute illustrations in every page. And just as when I fin'lly reach my last year in Elementary (writing for academic purposes since 4th grade isn't counted) I wrote another fairytale story again, and this time was about a statue princess. Innocent as it may be seen, those pre-writer works are all just made out of unutterable boredom, no aspirations involved. What truly moved me to dream of becoming a published author someday is when I discovered about the glorious existence of electronic books. Teenfiction e-books are totally different from the usual non-fiction/academic books I used to read during my boring childhood. The context is awfully written and there's so many loopholes and grammatical errors like adding some unnecessary things like emojis or exaggerated sound effects like, "BOOOOOOGGGSHSHSH!" "SPPPLUUURTRT!" "SKADOOOSHHHHH!!!!". I also noticed that the authors are prefer informal character point of views instead of using the omniscient perspective. However, It's not like I'm criticizing those minor flaws but I rather find it amusing in a way that I like how funky and deviant it is from the standard — it's like eating ice cream in a new flavor. In simpler terms, I fell in love with e-books like how should girls my age fell in love with their first love.

And because of that stimulus, I began to aspire writing novels — solely for fun and curiosity. However, if you think that I've already published a lot of works already because I started from that age, well that's a big mistake. In fact, I haven't. I do but can't even finish one due to my "writer's block" syndrome. Having this as a condition is one of my greatest challenges in this endeavor. It makes me frustrated enough to doubt myself, if whether I was born to become a writer or nah. Year by year, I always come up with a lot of good story ideas (a whole village of 'em) but none of them are finished or even written in the first place, 'cause it's either I keep them hidden in the darkest part of my mind or I always ends up stopping after losing all the enthusiasm in the middle of writing it. I know, that feeling is horrible. I also wanna smack myself but what else can I do anyway? I'm emotionally vulnerable, I easily get inspired and fired up like how I easily get tired and depressed at the same time. Whenever I get the chance to read other people's works, I always tend to feel frustrated with my own when I shouldn't be comparing my chapter 1 to other people's chapter 50. Guess I should've known better.

I kept on asking why God seems like preventing me to do it, until 2020 happened to me. Amidst this life-changing global pandemic, I have learned a lot of things not just from my own self-realizations but also from the online communities I recently joined in. I finally understood that making novels isn't meant for me during my younger years because it's waiting for my growth as a writer now. Before, I thought writing is just a hobby, but now it feels like a permanent career opportunity that I would love to do even when I grew old. I used to think that novels are just written for fun, now I am seeing it in a better, professional perspective. I wanna be a writer whose works give positive impact to my readers. I wanna be a writer whose works are written beautifully like how great painters do their crafts. I wanna be a writer whose works passed the ethical and moral standards of my target demographics and also to our community. (but If I'd still crossed some borderlines, I'd always put a warning about reader's discretion)

So, I decided to break the barricades and write a story for real starting this year — without stopping halfway anymore. I also tried to assess what could possibly be my mistakes from the past (of why I'm feeling the WB syndrome) so I can make a new strategy that I can use against it. From an innocent-writer-wannabe, I finally graduated as a plotter novelist. Yes, I plot my stories now before drafting them. I'm also setting a writing schedule daily so I won't miss the deadline I pinned for myself.

Anyways, thank you so much for reading aliens! Watch out for my next update while stay safe from COVID19. Keep invading and get crazy romantic! 🌷