#had they paralleled that with wyll's own transformation

[drizztdonturden]

Wyll's Act 3 questline could have involved political scheming to threaten Gortash's hold on the city--instead of having Gortash just sit around twiddling his thumbs, his version of the Sarevok quest could have been to take out his political allies. It was right there. It would have given Wyll more involvement in Act 3, it would have made Gortash feel less lazy, and with the removal of the Upper City, they placed Lady Jannath in the Lower City anyway, where she's in the middle of a party. We were so close to having something like that.

everyone talks abt wanting an undercover high society/party mission in bg3... that should've been part of Wyll's questlines.

[coriphallus]

The Dark Urge thoughts (and prayers)

anyone whos been following me knows im absolutely not normal about durge and i wanna share some tidbits that are implied, but not necessarily canonised, from their story;

I already made a post about it but it seems like bhaal has a degree of control over whether they live or die. he can deny them death, if they fail the duel with orin.

bhaal can command the slayer. he forces orin to transform if you talk to her about sarevok and the scene makes it clear that its against her will.

bhaal manipulates his kin in a subtler way. in the colony you can find a letter from old durge thats apologising to his father for 'liking' gortash. you can interpret their relationship as something deeper but even if it wasnt, this reads to me as terrified and desperate.

the reason being, if you have a LI in act 2 you get the famous bondage scene. coupled up with the letter above makes me think this is a pattern. bhaal can use their feelings against them. he did it with sarevok and orin's mother, orin's mother and orin, etc... it's not as straightforward as 'if you disobey ill kill the one you love'. you will. durge will.

bhaal is testing them in act 2, he revels in chaos, sure, but in the grand scheme of things he doesn't care about isobel. even if you tell scel that you'll kill her you're told that youre too late, you ignored your urges. from durge, bhaal doesn't expect calm calculated murder, he expects blind obedience. failing to receive that his first punishment is to take away something they cherish. there are no half measures, theres no bargaining with a god.

we get so many snippets of information that this has happened before, their foster family being their first victims. theyre made to kill their support system with their own hands, with no one to blame but themselves. they are actually apologising to their father for being fond of gortash because (in my humble opinion) theyre genuinely afraid.

how many times could this have happened, how many nights durge couldve woken up covered in the blood of someone they love until they gave in, became daddys obedient puppet?

durge is groomed for murder. scel says 'you always failed to conduct yourself without me' and given who he is i dont think hes talking about table manners when he says 'conduct'. durge needs 24/7 oversight to set themselves right lest they get tempted by softer things. lest they dare to step away from bhaals grand plan.

durge do have a choice. just as shadowheart had a choice, just as wyll or astarion had a choice. its a choice only in name.

theres no ending besides refusing bhaal that their friends and LI wont die by their hands. the entire lore of bhaalspawn is that theyre meant to conquer the world in his name and slit their own throat a top the mountain of corpses. as cazador aptly put, 'theyre made to be consumed.'

you can pray to bhaal and the narrator says he won't accept [any offering] but the entire world.

durge (and bhaalspawn) do get some sort of euphoria from murder. they crave it like an addict, but bhaalspawn (on prev games) don't constantly have to grapple with these urges as durge does.

now durge is a slightly special case but not in a good way. its implied that theyre not like a regular bhaalspawn, that theyre made by bhaal directly -so to speak-. which is to say, if youre playing a drow, they are bhaals closest approximation of a drow rather than a drow flesh and blood.

thats why theyre fighting tooth and nail against these urges every step of the way, they are literally bhaal himself(in essence). the personality they develop, the person who calls themselves 'tainted' and 'wretched', the character thats making choices throughout the game, theyre the tumour.

theirs is the story of cycle of abuse cranked up to 1000 and it is in parallel to all other origin companions.

[mlmshipbracket]

ROUND 1: POLL #2

ROUND 1 ALL POLLS [HERE]

PROPAGANDA BELOW

Astarion Ancunín/Wyll Ravengard:

Wyll and Astarion play out as a story of parallels and contrasts. 

Wyll is a monster hunter, and Astarion is a vampire. However, Wyll can be surprisingly reasonable when he learns of Astarion's true nature, to the point that he makes a "pact" with a player character Astarion to not hunt him if Astarion promises not to drink from innocents.

Both Astarion and Wyll are trapped in a relationship with an abuser--Astarion with his vampire sire, Cazador, and Wyll with the devil he contracted with to receive his powers as a warlock, Mizora. (Spoiler: Both Cazador and Mizora cause monsters transformations in Astarion and Wyll.) The way the two react to their bondage contrasts in interesting ways: Astarion latches onto behaving selfishly, his centuries of slavery without any aid convincing him that he needs to focus on gaining power to protect himself, no matter the cost. Wyll responds to his own abuse by clinging to his folk hero persona, the Blade of Frontiers, leading to him being selfless to the point of great personal cost--at one point in the story, Wyll can choose to (spoilers: be bound into his contract with Mizora for an eternity to save his father--the father that banished him from Baldur's Gate at the age of 17 because of his contract.) There's a good chance for them to push each other away from the extremes of selfishness and selflessness to end up more toward the middle, particularly if you choose one of them as the player character. (Spoilers: Astarion can be talked out of sacrificing 700 souls in a demonic ritual to become the Vampire Ascendant with a charisma check, and Wyll's highest stat is charisma. If you're playing as Astarion, you can offer to use your past as a magistrate to try to help Wyll get out of his contract, and it's pretty in character for him to argue against giving up on ever breaking free from it to save Wyll's father.)

The way their romance paths play out also have an interesting mix of contrast and parallels. Astarion is an incorrigible flirt and very quickly pursues a sexual relationship with the player character as long as he reaches a relatively low approval score threshold, while Wyll refuses sex in his romance until the end, because he wants to have a slow, romantic courtship as portrayed in the bardic tales he loves so much. However, (spoilers: Astarion eventually comes to the realization that being forced to prostitute himself to lure victims for Cazador has damaged his self image and relationship with sex, and admits he was initially seducing a romanced player to try to secure protection for himself. Once he hits that point he asks the player to halt sex in their relationship until he can figure out what he himself actually wants. Between this and dev notes found in the game's script that details that Astarion actually DOES want to have non-sexual intimacy, there's a good argument to be made that Wyll's style of romance is actually much closer to what Astarion truly wants in a relationship.)

Both Astarion and Wyll are attracted to all genders, and make comments indicating attraction to each other. Wyll frequently mentions that he finds Astarion charming and beautiful (particularly commenting on his "well-coiffed" hair), and Astarion immediately responds "Wyll" when asked which party member he wants to drink from the most, and eventually admits (if somewhat derisively) that "Wyll's the sort of prince-type I would have once dreamed of marrying. When I was about thirteen."

And the cherry on top of all of this? You can choose to play the game as either Astarion or Wyll, and romance the other. So you can, in a sense, choose to make this pairing canon, at least in your playthrough.

Juno Steele x Peter Nureyev:

[SPOILER] They're actually insane the had crazy gay sex the second episode and spent the rest of the currently five seasons recovering. They were divorced and then they got married and then they got divorced again and nureyev is trying SO hard to stay divorced but Juno WILL NOT ALLOW IT [END SPOILER] it's all spoilers for everything past the second episode basically

[wormskullsblogging]

an interesting parallel (& inversion) between Astarion and Wyll:

Wyll's humanity & soul is imperilled by him making selfless choices and can only be saved through a selfish decision, while Astarion's humanity (humanoidity?) & soul is imperilled by him making selfish choices and can only be saved through a selfless decision.

note: i'm using selfishness/selflessness as a tool -- the choices faced by Wyll & Astarion are too complicated to perfectly fit into that dichotomy, but i think it's the best for illustrating a comparison. i'm also not attaching any moral judgement to the dichotomy.

Wyll entered into a contract with Mizora and became a warlock in order to save Baldur's Gate from destruction, with no one but him knowing of this heroic deed. the only thing he gained from selling his soul was saving people; this is understood in the game as a selfless choice, even if potentially a foolish or bad one. even when he kills people on Mizora's behest, he doesn't (or at least believe he doesn't) target innocents. when he is faced with killing an innocent (Karlach) he refuses, and in turn loses his humanity, becoming a (pseudo-)devil; another selfless choice.

throughout the game, he constantly has the threat of losing even more of his humanity and his soul hanging over his head, with Mizora being able to drag his soul to the Hells (completely his transformation into a devil) as punishment. the only way to free him of his contract--rather than simply breaking it, which would cost him his soul & humanity--is to accept Mizora's ultimatum and sacrifice Wyll's father. this is a selfish choice (though not necessarily a foolish or bad one). in essence: Wyll entered into his contract, putting his soul and humanity at risk, through a selfless choice, and can only leave it, preserving his soul and humanity, through a selfish choice.

Astarion, meanwhile, becomes a vampire spawn through (at least comparatively) a selfish choice: choosing to live (or, rather, not die). (there's also potentially him being a corrupt magistrate, but that's mostly speculation so i'll leave that to one side). whether Cazador would have respected the choice to die is uncertain (personally, i'd place my bets on no), but it is important for this parallel that 'saving' Astarion was framed as an 'offer', one that Astarion accepted. (Wyll and Astarion also share in their original choice, the one that gave them their warlockhood and vampirehood, not being much of a choice at all). unlike Wyll, he had far less free will in his relationship with Cazador and when he killed, he was forced to target primarily innocents. the moment he did gain free will, from the tadpole, he immediately begins prioritising himself again; he acts in his own interests, and approves of selfish decisions.

as a vampire spawn, like Wyll with his warlockhood & (pseudo-)devilhood, he straddles the line between possessing his soul and being soulless, between being humanoid and being undead. and like Wyll, the story provides the possibility of crossing that line, losing his soul and human(oid)ity in the process. unlike Wyll, he wants to step across the line not to save innocents but to gain power (and, within his view of the world, safety). it is only by convincing him to make the selfless choice--by not sacrificing 7000 souls, at the cost of losing his ability to walk in the sun and the 'safety' that comes with power--that he remains in possession of his soul and his remaining human(oid)ity.

so, effectively, Astrarion's soul is endangered by his selfish decisions and can only be saved by a selfless choice, while Wyll's soul is endangered through his selfless decisions and can only be saved by a selfish one. they are inversions and i think that's really interesting, that bg3 can explore the nuances of prioritising yourself vs others through the parallels between their characters (and in the rest of the cast as well).

[rowanisawriter]

7. pick three fics that were a struggle to finish. why was it so difficult to write?

thanks bestie! from this ask game here

1) lifespring (ff7) - this one i struggled with because i felt i wasnt bringing my Vision™️ to the fic. its basically a first time fic in a sacred place in the game between a worshipper/worshipping couple kinda… i kept thinking while i was writing it that it wasn’t imparting the worship part of the first time correctly?? idk it felt wrong as iwas writing it and it ended up sitting in my wips for a few months while i added and removed and moved around parts until it matched what i had in mind lol

2) another transformation (bg3) - this ended up being about transformation parallels between wyll and astarion but when i was writing it months ago it was also about monster/monster hunter, bad decisions/regrets, it covered a lot more time across the game, and it was really just a sprawling and unfocused mess for what was supposed to be a one shot. i kept ditching it and coming back to it but eventually just thought ok i have to focus this and remove some of the sprawl, so i kept it focused on the transformations and it ended up working out lol but that was a struggle my god

3) a catalog of non-definitive acts (dragon age) - this was exchange fic which i always struggle with, i have some trouble working with constraints even with simple prompts, and with this fic i did struggle A LOT trying to write with another person’s oc, of course it ended up fine in the end but i really panicked with this one when there was like a week left before it was due and i wasn’t sure i could deliver something that was good, fulfilled the prompt, and also met my own standards lol misery