#Same with Karlach and Gortash

[beeribas]

Hot take: we don't need another sad white boy in media. I swear to the gods if I see one more sad white guy whose abuser is a BIPOC/BIPOC coded man I'm gonna commit arson. Most aren't bad story wise, but the trope is horrible for so many reasons and I am so tired of seeing it.

[flymmsy]

Genuinely believe Gortash saw Karlach as his protege.

The amount of respect he would’ve had for her as a poor kid who literally brawled her way out of poverty is unreal.

And the admiration he had for her is mentioned multiple times, even from other characters who knew them both.

But what would trouble him is her indomitable goodness. He would see it as her weakness, believing her to be delusional to protect herself from the realities of the world.

So he slowly starts to expose her to the more heinous sides of his business. And every time, Karlach still goes right back to her sickeningly bright spirit no matter what.

So he sells her to Zariel. Why not? As much as he despises the devil, Raphael made him who he is. Perhaps a devil is what Karlach needs.

And then Karlach comes back an even better person in the ultimate show of how she was never like him. She was better (and though he’d never admit it, a part of him knew that.)

[foxtrickster13]

It's interesting how I see nobody simping for Orin but instead simping for Gortash and Raphael.

You can excuse slavery and hostage-torture but draw the line at murder?

[thecityofdoors]

i know the gortash coronation reveal for dark urge is already kind of underwhelming but i keep thinking about how little sense it makes that wyll and lae’zel’s responses are identical to telling them you’re a bhaalspawn

it’s one thing to just be a bhaalspawn when there are already well known stories of Gorion’s Ward. if you have wyll in your party and have a good relationship with him, it’s not hard to predict you might be on a similar trajectory to the bhaalspawn hero who defied their nature.

but it’s an entirely different thing to have been one of the people who orchestrated the whole plot and, by the looks of it, kept everyone else in line. it’s obvious from the few interactions you’ve seen that the Chosen are in shambles without you. Gortash openly expresses that he misses you and wants you back. that’s a huge deal but the companions rarely comment on it.

lae’zel especially should be pissed. you helped usher in the illithid grand design!! you aided her biggest enemies!! it’s so ooc for her to be reacting so neutrally to a revelation like that, even if you are now committed to putting a stop to it. you should have to assure her of that at the very least. it makes sense for her to ‘not be surprised’ that you’re a bhaalspawn, but to say the exact same thing when she finds out you dominated an elder brain?? if she’d truly suspected that all along, she never would have given you the time of day.

wyll would probably be nicer—he tends to want to see the good in people. but i imagine him having a more im-not-mad-just-disappointed disposition about it, but somehow his disappointment stings worse than if he had just screamed at you like karlach (or lae’zel should have). maybe he quotes his father—some wisdom about cleaning up your own messes. he believes you’ll do the right thing, but he’s definitely still shocked.

i like the reaction dialogues that do seem to match the severity of the situation (karlach, astarion, jaheira, shadowheart, gale), but i hate that they just don’t go anywhere. karlach says she needs a lot of time to process this & then never brings it up again??? at least with jaheira and astarion’s dialogue there’s a kind of conclusiveness at the end.

[crossdressingdeath]

A thing that bothers me: Durge and Gortash ran a heist on the Hall of Wonders, a museum in the Upper City, for Bhaalist relics and also the corpse of one of Durge's siblings that the museum had for reasons (very museum-like). However! The plans for the Steel Watch apparently came from the House of Wonders, a temple to Gond basically right across the road from the Hall of Wonders. So, did they get these things on separate occasions? Or did they go to the Hall of Wonders and have such a delightful time they decided to take the party across the road to rob a temple as well?

[khadame]

Battle against Auntie Ethel

Smokepowder barrels are the most powerful weapon

[justanotherignot]

Karlach After Meeting Lorroakan (Gortash Dead)

[maybe-the-madman]

loving gortash and karlach at the same time is just being drawn and quartered metaphorically

[gabumonisbestdigimon]

To my friend who convinced me to start my dark urge run last week. They are destroying me emotionally. 😭

Give me a character who fights so hard to be good and a character who is good but forced to fight. I'll eat it right up.

[maegalkarven]

Also Enver's bewilderment after the first confrontation with Raphael and the team's reaction.

They saw him weak, a pathetic spiteful mess of a man who STILL lets Raphael get under his skin.

And in response the entire team went: Yep, we're killing the devil.

?????

I believe it's the moment he becomes one of the team. Because he is evil and fucked up and has no remorse, but also what?? His parents did what? Sold him to who? How about we just ruin everything Raphael ever planned for then? ]:^)

[5mcsinatrenchcoat]

Karlach and Sera are the "they put us in different universes because they knew we would be unstoppable as best friends" kinda characters, methinks

[girlmadeofclockwork]

I think the potential hilarity of Durge/Karlach is not capitalized on enough, cause imagine being Gortash, the subordinate you sold to the devil ten years ago is back foiling your methodically laid out plans and out to kill you in vengeance for what you did, and then just to add insult to injury she stole your murder-girlfriend as well. L’s up on L’s for this man.

[thats-a-lot-of-cortisol]

I know this has been ragged on a million times but I gotta

[sunnibits]

y’alll her in gortash’s clothes thooo 😩😩

[sequesteredbhaalspawn]

Really though the least interesting part of BG3 is the Mindflayer stuff. The personal stories of the Origin Characters are much more interesting and should of had a greater focus (especially Wyll's and Durgre's, due to both of them not getting the focus and scope they deserved. Wyll just not getting the same amount of content as other companions in gernal too), in my opinion.

Things that where the best parts are letting the companions make their own choices and you get things like Shadowheart freeing the Nightsong and Astarion not doing the ritual and freeing his fellow spawn, etc, without needing to be pursued.

The mindflayer stuff isn't impactful it doesn't really mean anything to the characters involved. Lae'zel's story doesn't even really revolve around it, hers is "do I stay loyal to the tyrannical Vlaakith (the 157) or leave her and live for the even more tyrannical ideals of Gith and her son? (but pretend it makes me a good person, and have the game pat me on the back for it)"

[vulpixelates]

canon dnd devil lore is so utterly boring...

absolutely MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING (and racist) that anyone would write an entire race as just being purely evil in the first place, but what sense does it make that the bringers of justice after death would be pure evil??? chaotic, perhaps, for some of them, but entirely evil? no way

i will die on my hill of "alignments" between gods and devils being entirely based on what their "purpose" within the deity system is and the personality of the entity themselves and this being INFINITELY more interesting than "gods good and devils bad :)"