#codex between this and that

[helyannis]

Caranthir and Haleth for @feanorianweek

[yuelaos-codex]

Wedding Ship Meme

link to template by @heyneon

tagging @bbrocklesnar @alexxmason @captmactavish @onehornedbeast @finding-comfort-in-rain @carlosoliveiraa @tao-tgsh @ghastlyrider @captastra and anyone who wants to ✨ no pressure ofc!

Decided to do both ending 2 (my canon) and ending 3 to show how different yet similar the routes are!

++ some rambles/explanations under the cut:

ASCENDANT ENDING

THE PRENUP

this is sending me bc i have this long ass timeline that leads to them signing a prenup:

- astarion ascends, then breaks up with selene bc she didn’t want to become his spawn

- selene comes with karlach and wyll to avernus, but she doesn’t last long (she’s a lover not a fighter 💀) karlach convinces her to go back to faerun. she tells her that she has been on autopilot ever since, and she has not had the time to process the breakup. the constant fighting in the hells was not helping

- hesitantly she goes back to waterdeep, where she learns that she is being summoned back to evereska. she journeys there and gets celebrated as the savior of baldur’s gate. she starts creating songs abt her adventures. somehow, she still felt as an outsider in her family despite getting acknowledgment. she goes back to waterdeep where she feels more at home

- she slowly builds her reputation. the reunion party also happens during this time.

- 3 years pass by. she goes back to baldur’s gate ever since the brain. not as a hero, but as a performer this time 🥳

- they see each other again ever since the party

- zariel arc begins(!) selene recruits astarion (and the gang!) to help defeat zariel. this is where they rebuild their relationship, whatever it was. they make house of hope their homebase

- before the final fight, astarion, desperate and pissed off that selene was not jumping on his advances, propositions (again 😩) to turn her. they get into this massive fight. selene tells him that the only way that they can make this work is to enter a (magical, hell-powered) contract, where he can’t compel her and in return she can’t leave or betray him. astarion, who was planning all along to turn selene into a vampire bride (where he actually can’t compel her) instead of a spawn, agrees to it since the contract was heavily in his favor. BOOM PRENUP. they both sign it. astarion turns her the very same night 💀 they’re basically married at this point

- they defeat zariel yay, slowly take over baldur’s gate while also getting a vacation home in waterdeep while also traveling the world yadda yadda. then they have a wedding despite already being married for years bc why not ✨

THE WEDDING

at this point selene is a very famous singer, and astarion close to becoming the shadow ruler of baldur’s gate. their wedding gets called the wedding of the century— think the royal wedding, imagine the masses crowding on the gates trying to see what’s going on inside 💀 they hold it during the daytime to squash all the rumors of them being vampires. their motif is white and gold, and is heavily influenced by elven culture. selene’s gown’s train is around 20 ft long. their cake is 3 minscs and 8 boos tall. the festivities lasted for DAYS. lots of hedonistic debauchery occurred ehehe

THE SONGS

so i chose songs that had wedding vibes but also toxic when you listen to the lyrics. chemtrails over the county club is about choosing to live in your own safe and comfortable bubble despite the ongoing horrors outside (cue in my snow globe symbolism for them). there’s also this line where it says “it’s never too late, baby, so don’t give up” which makes me feel that there’s still hope in the relationship becoming healthy… eventually 🤡 (i mean, they actually have forever between them). you belong to me is very fitting bc astarion can let her roam the world freely, but ultimately she can’t leave him. (this also aligns with one of the voicelines a!astarion has if tav leaves with karlach to avernus as a spawn— he tells them that he allowed them to go with karlach bc he’s not some “controlling monster”. he could summon tav back beside him if he wanted to.)

SPAWN ENDING

THE WEDDING

as for the spawn ending, at first they want to hold it with just the two of them but then word gets around, and now everyone was excited for the wedding! they didn’t expect so many people would want to congratulate and celebrate with them. imagine 7k+ people wanting to attend 💀💀💀

they hold the wedding reception in the underdark, but made their vows privately under the night sky 🥹😭 MOON AND STAR MOTIF LFG 😭😭😭

THE SONGS

just a quick one: there’s this line in your universe that says “you can thank your stars all you want but, i’ll always be the lucky one” which i think perfectly sums up how he views tav/selene. bc who in their right mind would help a vampire— a monster, let alone give them their blood? only tav/selene. (which also aligns with his voiceline saying “other people don’t have a heart like that. you’re… you. no one is like that.”) ANYWAY ENOUGH RAMBLING THANKS FOR READING 😘

[baeshijima]

anyway ive now finished the lantern rite quest with just under an hour before it goes and

[thefloatingstone]

Remembered this song from a boss fight early on in NieR Automata, during which a cult of robots had come together to pantomime the concept of religion. (the robots in the game are all trying to strive for a sense of purpose in being alive by mimicking behaviour of humans who have by now gone extinct but there's not enough time to go into all of that here).

And this cult of robots come to the conclusion that their version of gods if they follow the human translation of the word is "the creator" which to them are organic beings. And so if they are pantomiming religion in an effort to find purpose in being alive, then through the practice of religion you are supposed to ascend to a higher state of being equal to that of the gods.

And so, if you are a robot and your creator is an organic being, what is it that separates you from your creator? That is of course the realities of being an organic being, and being tied to the reality that being organic means having to die one day.

And so this robot cult comes to the conclusion that to ascend to a higher state of being is to become as gods, and for a robot to become as a god, their creator, is to ascend to that of organic being, and to do so is to embrace what separates machine from organic which is death.

And therefore, to die is to become god.

And then they all attack you and this song plays called "become as gods". Which includes the robot cult chant of "We'll all die together and become as gods" while the choir chants in the fictional language of the NieR series which is its OWN separate dump of lore, but which is roughly labelled and understood as "The language of the gods". That being a weird translation of the GATTACA code which makes up human DNA.

....

NieR Automata is a good game. It's one of only 2 games that managed to make me bawl my eyes out at the end. Not for a story reason, but for how the game directly connects you with every other human being who has played the exact same game and the concept of sacrifice to help another in ways I don't want to spoil because if you've never played and finished the true ending of NieR Automata there is nothing in this world that will prepare you for its ending and I would not dare to spoil that for you.

Anyway I rambled a lot but it was needed to explain the full force of this song for you to understand why it's not only a banger but a banger with some deep fucking WEIGHT behind it.

(btw this is genuinely unrelated I just remembered at time of post it's the Steam Summer Sale and Nier Automata is 50% off right now but that was not the point of this post)

[magistralucis]

Love is... stored in the translation... 😌💖

[wonderful101gecs]

they should create a prog metal band with good audio production

[the-guild-codex-and-other-things]

Hunting a Bounty

Kai: When we get our payout, you can burn money to keep you warm.

Ezra: I'm going to pay someone to burn my money for me.

Kai: Why don't you pay someone else to pay someone to burn your money for you? That's what the big players do.

Ezra: You know what the really big bosses do? They pay someone to pay someone to-

[selezione-innaturale]

Warhammer 40k headcanon:

Despite being an official enemy of the T'au empire, Commander Farsight is a massively popular figure among its inhabitants. You can find T'au from the empire with Farsight posters in their house, wearing his shirts or reading his biographies

[shadowiie]

Sonic is aro confirmed

[exhausted-archivist]

On the topic of the inherent racism in the Qun and its people, with how baked in racism is, you can't buff it out and reformat. You can't remove it, and BioWare has only been doubling down on it up to Tevinter Nights in 2020. Which means you need to be careful with how you interact and build on it. At least that is how I approach it, in general I don't like to engage with it because it's just so difficult and not in any thought provoking or insightful way. So I refrain from doing so as much as possible in public spaces anyways, because it is so inherently unsafe for me to do so. From an interaction with fandom level, but also on a personal level because some of it makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

I am extremely weary of how da4 is going to portray them, I hope it will be better since the writing team has been moved around and there have been some acknowledgements on poor writing of stereotypes and biases in 2020. Which I take with a salt mine worth of salt, especially with the way the new comics like the Missing having lingering themes and stereotypes remaining. How Patrick Weekes described the rebelling antaam in Three Trees to Midnight (Tevinter Nights 2020) was the biggest red flag, followed by the yellow flag from As We Fly short story by Lukas Kristjanson (short story 2023).

With how BioWare has racism and harmful elements baked into the Qun and people in general it is going to difficult for them to fully separate it, update it, or reformat it. But I hope they do. I hope that they actually attempt to make it better like they have suggested they would. Because it is so harmful and they should. I don't think they'll get it right on the first try, but I hope they try. It won't magically fix the racism in the fandom but I would like to not feel the need to crawl out of my skin when playing a vashoth. I would like to see the franchise grow and become better than it started out as. I don't want it to stay stagnant for the sake of "consistency" which it doesn't have by design.

[arolesbianism]

Heartbreaking! My suspicions abt Wagstaff having some fucked up timeline shit going on were correct and now I have to scramble to come up with an excuse to not have to completely overhaul my entire swap au (it won't be hard my excuse is that it's an au so I can do what I want)

[partystoragechest]

It's been a whole year since I posted the Prologue of Unwanted on a ridiculous whim. I did contemplate doing something special for this event, but I think we'd all prefer if I just got on with writing it instead.

[yuelaos-codex]

Tagged by (thank you! 💖)/tagging @onehornedbeast @madparadoxum @captmactavish @alexxmason @bbrocklesnar @captastra @inafieldofdaisies @carlosoliveiraa @tao-tgsh @ghastlyrider (no pressure ofc) and anyone who wants to! Just say I tagged you 💕

[sergeantsporks]

CANNOT believe Orpheus and Eurydice are divorced in Hades. I have been FROTHING AT THE MOUTH to get the game to let me tell Eurydice I know Orpheus and vice versa, only for it to be like "Oh, yeah, she doesn't want to see him again and he, guy who is famous for how much he loves her to the point of going to the underworld for her, has given up on reuniting with her." What. How dare.

[greyias]

Trying to connect tiny snatches of SWTOR lore and arrange them into a coherent understanding of canon for reasons

[death-rebirth-senshi]

This is a tiny nitpick considering all of Bayo 3's sins but I kind of wish Madama Styx had a bit of a different vibe and personality instead of just being Madama Butterfly 2.