#because people didn't read the letter themselves and just assumed that must be true!

[katebihshop]

there is a world of difference between "this person was fired for supporting palestine" and "this person was fired for being a raging antisemite" and you do in fact need to actually look at what that person said to determine which it is. it sets a dangerous precedent to consider any support of palestine inherently antisemitic but it is just as dangerous to excuse antisemitism under the guise of supporting palestine.

[faneposting-my-beloved]

I know the replies are off for a reason but I have, uh, info that is usually lost to dos-only players. Lucian's character in dos2 was absolutely mishandled and miswritten. (Not to mention the main villain of the game should be uh God King not poor old protagonist that literally did nothing wrong to Larian but I digress) Dos2 development was a turmoil in and of itself. With the number of cuts made to the original concept, we could just call it a slaughterhouse. Things (in usual larian fashion, make no mistake, they've been in the exact same spot 5 times before) went to shit. Badly. Now, Fallen Heroes is a whole new can of worms but one thing has to be made clear - it's not THE Seal the Veil ending. I mean, Larian would gut themselves if they made Source nonexistent now because it's EVERYWHERE in the sequel following dos2 - Dragon Knight Saga; and I am SURE it was the new writers who forgot about the tiny teeny pivotal facts that mind-read (dos2 info), Dragon Knighting, ghosts (also dos2 established) all require Source to function. And they have a key role in the sequel. So the ending cannot be as it was (overdramatically) painted. And they did backtrack on things heavily with FH trailer. Dead Origins? Not a thing anymore. Source skills? Still present!

Blessed and cursed surfaces (very Source-dependent)?

Check! Now, to get to the point. I can't phantom how much cut content Lucian has had, but I assure you - he was dealt the worst cards. I know many people don't have this emotional connection - but Lucian is the player character in Divine Divinity, and he has been lovingly expanded on by a fan through the Child of Chaos novella, and then made into an unlucky hero by Jan Van Dosselaer in Dragon Knight Saga. Dos2 spits on it all - depth and characterization - for no reason. And it is not to say a *main* character cannot go astray, but this sadly requires an arc that Lucian was devoid of - he's turned into this machiavellian character because...Because. That is the answer. But!! Larian (Jan Van Dosselaer) did a downfall of a good character masterfully before. Maxos' arc spans two games, 10 thousand years! And it's a story of goodwill and hubris that leads to a terrific fall. To see him go from a wise scholar doing everything in his power to save Rivellon from itself to this exact desire turning him into a self-proclaimed god is a story to behold. Lucian sadly had nothing like this in the end product. But there had to be something before the end product, right? Now it wouldn't be a faneposter post if we didn't do some lore digging!

I found this in the dos2 text file, I couldn't track it to any in-game content so it's safe to assume this has been cut.

It appears to be a letter from Lucian to Alexandar, where Lucian warns him about the Seven Gods, we assume it was meant to be placed somewhere within the Academy of the Seven.

Alexandar. My son. You have come. You have fulfilled your potential, as I knew you would. Alas, you will not find what you seek. I don't doubt you feel abandoned, as I would. I led you here so you might prove your worth, your strength - so you could see you have earned the right to be called Godwoken. Yet you cannot yet claim the mantle of Divinity. That is because Divinity is still locked within me. And there it must remain so that we can be free of the Gods tyranny. For they do not mean to guide you, my son, but to use you. And as long as the Gods exist, our suffering will never end and the Void will forever encroach. Only without the Gods can we be free. Only without them can there be peace. Without Divinity, they will fade, one by one. Until the day comes when we can return their Source to a deserving world, you must resist the Void with all you can muster. You may think your voyage here pointless now. But that isn't true. Your voyage here gave you the iron will required to face whats yet to come. Stand fast. Your father, Lucian

This seems much more in line with Lucian that old Divinity players know, and more often than not grown to love. I don't know why dos2 strayed so far from everything that has been established before, I don't know where old ideas weren't finally honored as they were supposed to (Atlantean undead, Raanaar). This is half lore dump and half a desperate plea to look beyond the confinements of the unfortunate title in the series that dos2 is. There's more to the story I assure you.

You know what, I’m relatively chill when it comes to the Discourse and wank over canon considering it’s a running half-joke for people to constantly be dunking on the canonicity of various stories - maybe the most annoyed I’ve been was at the ME3 ending and that wasn’t even that strong a feeling since it’s easy to personally handwave all that nonsense and do my own thing

But you know what! I finally found my one thing! My one piece of canon that I will let myself get madder about!!! I’m talking to you, Larian! I’m talking to you about your choices regarding Fallen Heroes, which you know what!! I’m gonna say it!!! I’m glad it’s been put on hiatus because FUCK THAT NOISE

Not only do you disrespect me by choosing the Seal the Veil ending that puts the old man back in power, which honestly I could have excused by itself, BUT!!!! You are telling ME!!!! You want me to believe!!!! That Ifan, the character who canonically can spit on Lucian’s grave and much more!!!! Would go back to be in his army???? After all that??????

And fuck off with that “ambiguity of player’s choice” deal WE ALL KNOW THAT OPTION WAS BULLSHIT!!!!!!

How. Dare. You.

[sophiamcdougall]

This helps crystallise some of my unease at the backlash I see fairly regularly -- sometimes from randoms on Tumblr, but also from actual historians -- against many LGBT readings of history. This is where it all leads.

I've seen a cutesy uwu cartoon about how a medieval monk is actually more progressive than you, because he doesn't believe in "putting people into boxes." Which is of course a terrible thing to do. Even though some people have fought pretty hard for those boxes.

I've seen historians who are deeply offended at the idea that there could be anything homophobic about resisting the notion that, say, a passionate exchange of letters between two people of the same gender at least potentially indicates a sexuality we would understand as queer. "I'm not saying they were straight either!" they insist. "I'm just saying they didn't understand themselves that way and so you are being harmful if you say apply those terms to them! They didn't categorise people as gay and straight! You are being anti-intellectual if you think there is anything problematic about the idea that these identities only pop into being as they are named. " Even assuming, for starters, that it's true to say that until very recently no one really understood themselves as [whichever LGBT+ identity]...

Isaac Newton didn't understand himself as being autistic. And it is quite fair to say we can never know with absolute and final certainty if he was autistic. But we can say that autistic people existed in his time, even if unknown, and there is reason to think Newton might have been one of them. The fact that that the category was not established at the time does not mean that autistic people recognising him as perhaps one of their number are doing anything unreasonable. The idea that autistic people did not exist until they were named does not apear to be particularly widely accepted as far as I''m aware-- and thank goodness, because it is a profoundly troubling one.

The thing is "I'm not saying they were straight, I'm rejecting straightness AND gayness AND everything in between as valid categories!" isn't some academic lens that only apply to historical figures. It is highly current, applied by real, living people, to real, living people. And it tends to suck:

There are exceptions, but most people -- even homophobes -- can agree that it's unfair to blame someone for something that's genuinely an inherent, inborn part of their nature. So they don't, in their own mind, persecute gay people for being gay, they don't accept that orientation of any kind exists in the first place. They believe that people are simply choosing to act a certain way. They could choose not to, and therefore it is reasonable to hold them accountable for those choices. It is therefore kind of a lot when you insist that we must not merely be aware of this belief, but effectively share it when examining same-sex relationships in the past. A frequent extension of the idea that people in the past perceived sexuality only as an action, not an identity, and that we must discard all other lenses when examining the past, is that it was also not that bad to be subject to the explicit prohibitions placed on sexual/romantic relationships between people of the same gender.

"They thought it was a sin, but not a worse sin than say, lying! Or having the wrong kind of straight sex!" Again, this is an entirely modern attitude held by (at least) millions of people.

Have you talked to anyone about what it feels like to be on the receiving end of it? When there will never be any non-sinful way you can act on your sexuality? When falling in love puts you, at best, in the same category as someone obsessed with the desire to lie or to steal? (And it is worth mentioning that "theoretically not worse than [minor sin x]" does not necessarily guarantee that two sins were treated as equivalent in practice. They certainly aren't now.)

It's not wrong to remind us this way of thinking exists and has existed for a very long time, but it is galling to see it as held up as liberating or even kind of cute, when it's functionally indistinguishable from the TERF quote which prompted this whole post. Now, there can be a tendency to exaggerate the miseries of the past: all women were married at 12 (and somehow tight-laced to the point of fainting regardless of period) no one knew how to wash, and all queer people's lives were defined by oppression and possibly burnings-at-stake. Of course it is worth correcting that. Of course it is important to explore the way that queer people did manage to thrive as well as the institutional burdens placed upon them. But to do that you have to be able to name them, and to recognise continuities both in identities and in suppressions of them. Finally, before someone says otherwise -- I am not saying we have necessarily arrived at a final, perfect end point in our understanding of sexuality and identity! I understand myself as an ADHD, bi woman. The traits that lead me to identify myself thus existed before I found names for them and, I assert, would exist if I had never found them. But if some future age is able to look at those traits and others I am unable to even pinpoint, and armed with greater knowledge and precision they say "maybe, she was actually what we would call [x]" -- fine! Good! In fact I ardently hope someone comes up with a more accurate name for the appallingly inadequate and clumsy "ADHD". But, these inner experiences are real, they are part of me as they have been part of uncountable people throughout history, whether named or not.