#he's a fascinating bastard

[bardandbear]

Look, I unapologetically love Raphael BG3 and I will forever be angry how he gets shafted for the plot (even if it is appropriately extra).

I want to ramble about why I love his ego though, because the way he acts hits different if you consider where it might come from. (Literally all the spoilers, obviously).

Raphael is just a cambion - half human, and therefore fallible, to the point that it's one of the first things your level 3 party comments on immediately after meeting him. The actual disrespect!

He's the son of Mephistopheles, who seems to be at best a very absent parent. Despite it being implied that Mephisto knows Raphael is plotting to try and take over the Hells, the most he does to stop it is sending him an incubus to distract him. None of the Archdevils show any other interest in stopping him at any point. There is a good chance that in the majority of playthroughs, the upstart heroes he's been trying to deal with will instead decide to just rob him blind instead of working with him - in no small part because they think they can.

Sure, he writes his own planar domination fanfiction, he's dramatic and ostentatious, but why? No one else takes him seriously. He's just a cambion. He's just Raphael. He has to be his own hype man because literally no one else will be. Mark my words, mans has an inferiority complex at the root of that ego. I, for one, respect the hustle.

[dykedvonte]

My only defense of conceptual follower Benny is that he was a warrior nomad and a raider, that still has it in him if we take the All Roads comic into consideration, and how he is not like a real dainty soft hand city slicker, cause it’s mostly an act.

So in scenarios where he is forced to travel with the Courier I 100% think he’d be like “What do ya mean you can’t scale a mountain, pussycat? Watch how the pros do it.” And then you see him scuttle up a cliff face scarily fast only to have to save him when he bumps into a Cazador nest.

[foe-paw]

I CAN FIX ANYTHING!

[mangyraccooon]

I’ve seen the fandom take a bastard character and make them a poor little meow meow, twice now

Which isn’t a lot but it’s fucking disappointing.

[missholloween]

Ted Spankoffski is a character who defines himself through others.

After Jenny leaves, Ted decides to turn himself into a "pushy asshole", as he thinks only pushy assholes what they want (aka love). Rejection pushes him to make a radical change in his life, one so drastic he builds a new version of himself around it, and never lets go of it. He knows he is a pushy asshole, and he enjoys being a pushy asshole. Or at least he did.

During Time Bastard, we see how Ted has grown bitter and sour because of being a pushy asshole. The good things that persona had, aka getting laid, don't work anymore. He's just a shadow of the person he had constructed.

That's why, when Kilgore calls him "time bastard" and he understands how time travel works, he fastly clings to that identity. Not only he has power over others as the time bastard, but he can change the errors of his way and return to Jenny. And even better yet, because he's learned what being a pushy ashole is, and he can show Jenny. Surely this time they'll end up together... Won't they?

I'd lastly want to mention the Hatchetfield Ape-Man. Even though he first wanted Lucy just for her money, he ends up falling in love with her. Ted becomes Cronk to please her, as she loves Cronk, and he can be loved through that persona. He even decides to die as Cronk in the episode, not as Ted. He dismisses his identity just so that he can be loved.

[electrozeistyking]

Turgid Passion Play

[orionshounds]

its been played up alot in the sonic franchise that other characters find shadow unnerving or even downright terrifying, which has always been funny to me because he has never really looked scary

but watching the movie trailer made me see something different......seeing his power being demonstrated in a more "real world" setting, watching those glowing red eyes as he speeds towards something......for the first time ever, even if just for a second, i felt actually frightened by shadow the hedgehog

[moggettt]

HERE IT IS!! after Many moons of chipping away at this OC song comic for my scifi-noir android character Whitney and his bodyguard Bast, it is finally as complete as it shall ever be;; I’m proud of the work I put into this one! Pretty niche, but maybe some folks out there will enjoy UuU

ps: there's also a video for easy viewing!

[halfyearsqueen]

something about rhaenyra and motherhood, something about the fact she’s the first of the targaryens we know of who’s death at the hands of a dragon she’s explicitly torn apart and eaten. that she died with her surviving child watching who goes onto be known as the dragonbane – the fact sunfyre showed no interest in her at first until they cut her breast. the fact aegon had to be torn from her arms and was made to watch

[the-everqueen]

y'all are cowards for using the verses of "eat your young" for romantic dreamling fics instead of using the chorus for a fic that grapples with hob gadling being a hedonist who has always valued his own survival above anyone else.

[prince-raisins-art]

i ♥️ soggy and pathetic men 🥰

[inkspottie]

The apartment scene reminds me a lot of coraline honestly, like mr lopee being the other mother and the crystal being like the buttons. This specifically reminds me of the scene where coraline is first offered the buttons

Yesss absolutely. Lopee is doing his best to try and convince Seb to give him what he wants. He wants Seb to take the bait, take the deal.

He’s a mixture of Dr. Facilier and the Other Mother FOR SURE.

[axemetaphor]

sendin my love from the other side of the apocalypse

[grimmjowjaegerjaquez]

when youre trying to live alone out in your field lab but then these two yahoos follow you out there and now they wont leave????

[talentforlying]

@normaltothemax: Ooh meta about John and children. How he sees himself vs. how he actually is with them <3 — SEND META TOPICS.

oh he thinks he's horrendous with children. he thinks nobody in their right mind should ever let him look after a kid / spend time with their kids, because he's terrified about being a bad influence or turning his back at the wrong moment. even when he really makes an effort to do everything right by your most puritanical housewife's standards — no smoking, no swearing, no drinking, PG movies — he's always convinced that something's going to happen, some accident or tragedy that he won't be able to prevent, especially someone looking to get to him and using the kid or their family to do it. it's happened several times before, and it'll probably happen again. it's one of the reasons he can't really see himself being a dad, even though on some level i think he would have liked that. (in his new 52 verse with his daughter rose porter, he is very much a helicopter parent for this reason; he's always terrified of something happening to her because of his reputation.)

aside from the obvious life-or-death fears, he tends to feel out-of-place and clumsy and careless when he's around kids; he's someone who works best with a plan, even just the kernel of one, but around kids he's always improvising, with their clever questions and inane curiosities. he also has zero concept of what constitutes a normal response to an average question, most of the time, because it's not like he's lived a normal life; turns out the right answer to "sometimes i see a scary man in my closet" is not, in fact, "well he's probably dead, so."

in reality, he's mostly only a bad influence insofar as swearing and normalizing obscene amounts of cigarette-smoking; he's actually really fucking good with kids. he had an awful childhood and he remembers vividly all the ways he used to wish adults in his life would treat him, all the times he wanted a hand to hold or a hug; to inflict any kind of hardship on a child would mean he's become his father, and that's a fate worse than death to him. he's incredibly protective of kids, he's a genuinely good listener, and he communicates with them like they're adults (which isn't always a good thing, considering the way he communicates with other adults, but he doesn't condescend or brush them off). he's childish enough to know & engage with what they might consider fun, and he's always willing to risk embarrassment to play along with a game or coax out a smile. he would risk absolutely anything if it meant saving a kid's life, and he will ruin the existence of anyone who so much as thinks about hurting a child. (even though he has pushed the occasional snotty bastard into a duck pond before. he stuck around to make sure they could swim, though.)

now, the intersection of the two is this: sometimes he's so good with kids, and they like him so much, that they start to emulate him. which includes getting involved in the occult and starting down the same path he did when he was younger, with all the pitfalls and harsh learning curves and horrors that come with it. this is what happened with his niece gemma, and he regrets that every day of his life.

all things considered, his primary strategy towards dealing with children is that he doesn't. it's safer for them, and it's less stressful for him.

[britneyshakespeare]

if i were george duke of clarence and you were my assassin you would really feel something while i'm pleading for my life right? if i were george duke of clarence imprisoned on my brother the king's suspicion and my other brother richard duke of gloucester sent you to murder me for rich reward, you would at least think of not killing me right? you'd hesitate forsooth? which of you if you were a prince's son being pent from liberty as i am now if two such murderers as yourselves came to you would not entreat for life? a begging prince what beggar pities not?