#and choosing reserved and sane character choices the whole time

[emptyjunior]

You don't understand I Need varric as a constant companion cause I need him to think he's finally found a sane, logical effective guy to follow and then I am going to make my PC go absolutely sopping simpering blushing in love with that old man necromancer, just giggly and attempting to woo a senior citizen and varric will just slowly put his face in his hands as he realises it happened Again, he's following a little freak Again

[dendrophalaen]

can we talk about baldur's gate i've been dying to talk about baldur's gate

(spoilers below, mostly about act 3 and the ending)

i'm sure these points have already been discussed MANY times and by people who are better at articulating their words than i am. BUT I GOTTA TALK ABOUT THIS STUPID GAME CONSUMING MY MIND (brain worms (real) (tadpole) (not clickbait))

very rambly

i am a cut content truther

i did not play Early Access but bring daisy back!! i think she is more interesting than what the guardian became

daisy can still be the manifestation of the tadpole and the guardian is there to steer you away from its influence. plus down by the river gets to make sense again

obviously the guardian is the emperor, who does have an interest in convincing you to embrace the tadpole powers in canon HOWEVER. in my silly little fanon, the emperor wants you sane and/or manipulatable enough to work with him to defeat the elder brain, so he would discourage the use of the tadpole

why would he NEED tav to be a mind flayer too? 🤨 like buddy what if i'm a STRONGER rogue illithid than you are and i ruin your plans?

there should've been actual consequences for consuming tadpoles/using the powers (even with the emperor's/orpheus' protection) → as in: you start to lose control and your sense of self because you are accelerating ceremorphosis

not sure how that would work game mechanics-wise, but it gives more weight to the dilemma of choosing to use the tadpole or not than just "raaa i am upholding my morals and values i want to stay 100% non-illithid raaaa" (which i think is a valid reason but feels a bit flimsy)

speaking of orpheus, i think he should've had a more active role earlier on in the story than being reserved for the very very end, whether that be actually being freed from his prison or just a way for tav to interact with him

just some way of getting to know him better instead of just taking voss' and lae'zel's word for his character (i guess taking the gamble on if orpheus is trustworthy IS part of the story and my tav was stupid enough to do that, but i feel like there are many companions/other tavs who would rather make a more informed decision) lol

emperor... what a guy (it/he)

it would've been so funny to play up his straight man/Only Sane Man role, especially for a tav who is easily distracted off doing side-quests

no fun allowed (emperor) vs yes fun allowed (daisy)

anyway he is SO frustrating like he says he's Special and not like other mind flayers because he still has his personality, but at the same time he says "i can't help it i'm a mind flayer"

WELL WHICH IS IT (this may be the point. to cast doubts over trusting his words. i am still allowed to hate it though)

was balduran already an asshole. is that why his personality stayed

ooohhh OOOOOHHH BALDURAN/ANSUR. WHY DO THEY GOTTA BE DIVORCED OLD MEN (affectionate)

dear ansur.... i'll always be your balduran....

I WOULD TREAT ANSUR RIGHT

(← dragonborn tav)

let me ride this undead dragon into battle just to kick the emperor's ass

SPEAKING OF kicking the emperor's ass, i hate how freeing orpheus makes the emperor throw a tantrum about trust and join the netherbrain

mfer i can trust you WHILE ALSO disliking the idea of imprisoning and exploiting a whole ass PERSON

YOU SAW WHAT I DID FOR NIGHTSONG

i've seen people speculate that it's because the emperor believes he has a higher chance of survival by siding with the netherbrain and willingly allows himself to be dominated by it

but i think it is so. stupid 😭 cmon man it can't just be two binary choices for you (get killed by orpheus vs join the netherbrain) i'm sure there's a secret third option we can work out

it would've made more sense to just have a fight in the astral plane right then and there over the netherstones (but he wouldn't initiate an unnecessary battle where he would be outnumbered lmao)

plus that choice/ending should've factored in more of what your relationship with the emperor was (making overall positive/cooperative choices over the course of the game → chance of convincing the emperor to stay on your side or something)

IT'S JUST SO SUDDEN

i had more things to say but i forgot them all. the emperor scrampled my brain and i would let him do it again

also i'm still early in act 1 in my dark urge playthrough, so i do not have thoughts on how durge aspects fit in with everything yet :]

i love this game i like to think about it

[lothiriel84]

Just a few random considerations after my latest rewatch of series 1 of BBC Ghosts last night. 

Ghosts vs. the living

It’s extremely interesting that while as a rule humans are completely unable to see/hear ghosts, (some) animals are in fact shown to be able to sense the presence of a ghost, to the point of attempting to interact with them - see Tali (?) the dog barking up at Robin, and then wanting to be petted by Pat. 

It remains unclear whether that’s down to some kind of sixth sense specifically possessed by animals (dogs? bears? any animal at all?) as opposed to humans, or it somehow implies that the animal in question had a scrape with death at some point in the past. (Although the latter doesn’t sound very likely when it comes to Barclay’s dogs, or I should hope so, at least.)

Another interesting point is how often exactly do dead animals turn into ghosts. So far, the only animal ghost (or should that be ghost animal?) we’ve been shown is Button House’s resident pigeon - could that be because animals don’t often have any real unfinished business barring their access to whichever sort of afterlife is reserved to their kind? (But more importantly, was Arthur Shappey right in believing heaven is, in fact, full of otters?)

Schrödinger’s (attempted) murder

As I mentioned elsewhere - probably in the tags while reblogging someone else’s gifs, to be honest - I believe Julian being genuinely unable to tell whether he successfully pushed Alison out of the window or she basically lost her balance and fell as a consequence makes for a much more interesting scenario. 

To be absolutely clear, that would make no difference when it comes to him being guilty of attempted murder; he is shown to have no qualms whatsoever about killing Alison, and when all is said and done, it hardly matters whether his goal was reached by his own hand or through dumb luck (plus a non-indifferent dose of carelessness on Alison’s part).

All I’m saying is, think back of how much trouble he had with pushing a vase which was comparatively not all that bigger than a cup. And even if he did know for sure - admittedly, he might be capable of feeling the reaction of the object he pushes against, should he succeed in doing so - I, as a viewer, would very much rather be afforded a little room for doubt. Not for the sake of Julian’s character, but as I feel it somehow raises the stakes of this particular storyline.

Alison as one of the coolest characters ever

Not only does Alison figure the whole seeing-dead-people situation mostly by herself - with a little help from the ghost therapist at the hospital, but she could have easily written off the entire episode as yet another of her alleged post-traumatic hallucinations - but more importantly, her reaction when she realises she’s effectively stuck with a haunted house as well as a potentially bankruptcy-inducing mortgage is one of the coolest moments in the entire series. 

I dare say most people would be inclined to lose the plot a little bit, when faced with such simultaneously dire yet completely absurd circumstances; Alison, on the other hand, simply unbuckles her seat belt, gets out of the car, and confronts the ghosts head-first. And not only that, but she’s smart enough to call them out on their real reasons for haunting her, to the point they actually confess what they really want from her. (Which sums down, in most cases, to trivial requests such as being allowed to watch war documentaries, or having an incriminated portrait removed from a room.)

Forget her questionable choices when it comes to financial matters, she’s a feisty young woman capable of handling a herd of recalcitrant ghosts, and that’s more than can be said of almost any other character in the show. 

The Captain and the morality of choices

It’s hardly a mystery the Captain is a bit of a bastard, and we all love him for that. Right at the beginning, he is presented to us as someone who would make a show of wanting to ‘say a few words’ about the dearly departed just so he could immediately proceed to ‘bagsy her room’. I’d say his general mindset could be summed up as something close to the end justifies the means - with the caveat that we actually know very little about him aside the military persona he chooses to present himself as all the time. 

If I had to hazard a guess, facing everything life death throws at him as a military campaign could either be a subconscious defence mechanism, a habit so deeply ingrained he couldn’t shake it off if he wanted to, or something he elects to do as a way to cope with the listlessness that comes with being stuck in limbo (potentially) for eternity. And, quite possibly, a combination of all three. 

The main thing is, rules are important for him, but so is winning whichever military campaign he embarked upon at each particular moment in time. When his plan to enroll the plague victims as his new army fails, he resorts to strategic subterfuge in order to win the war; as they say, all's fair in love and war, and more often than not, battles are won by military tactics rather than such things as a superior army. He is very much the Odysseus of Button House, with the significant difference that he’s not so much attempting to conquer an enemy city as he’s fighting to take back control of an outpost he used to be in charge of.

In this (probably unfortunate) parallel, I’m afraid the poor Kitty serves as the infamous Trojan horse. (Juan Domingo, please, we’re not getting into this all over again.) The Captain knows Alison trusts her, and his subterfuge will therefore go undetected until it’s too late; and yet, remarkably enough, he still decides to offer Kitty a choice on the matter. Admittedly, he’s already counting on the fact that Kitty is neither particularly smart, nor in any way prepared to give up on Alison anytime soon - however, he still offers her a choice, and I feel like that is very much relevant to his character. He is, for all intent and purposes, tricking Kitty into fooling her friend/the person she loves; but while he’s concealing all the important facts from her, he’s not robbing her of her choice entirely. 

(Should Kitty have decided to prioritise Alison’s happiness over her own, I daresay the captain would have come up with yet another plan to overcome the temporary setback. Neither scenario makes him any less of a bastard, but he’s still a man of principles after his own fashion, and that’s how I choose to read him, regardless.)

A final note on Robin

I’ve made no secret of how Robin is my favourite character by far, just as I believe he is for a significant portions of fans of the show. As mischievous as he loves to be - which is, all things considered, a comparatively tame reaction to being stuck as a ghost for an incredibly long time, with very little hope of ever moving on - his pranks are mostly harmless, and he is at heart the kindest, most emotionally mature of all the ghosts. (Yes, even when he’s scampering around, marvelling at the builders’ equipment. If anything, it’s a sign of his natural curiosity and intelligence; we are, after all, repeatedly shown he is particularly good at problem solving as well as playing what basically boils down to blindfold chess.)

As often as the other ghosts tend to remark upon his language skills or lack thereof, they should probably pay more attention to all the occasions in which Robin’s brains made the difference, and I’m including his emotional intelligence in that category. As others pointed out before me, he’s a trickster with a heart of gold, and the only sane man among what is basically a swarm of squabbling children. 

And he faces all of that armed only with his peculiar brand of humour, and his enthusiasm for new things to discover, including - why not? - new ways to scare the living daylights out of Alison, just for the fun of it.