#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.

[ravencromwell]

Rereading Dickens Christmas Carol for the first time in a long time. And the more I reread, the more it strikes me how seamlessly a queer reading could slip within these pages. Not an especially twee reading, wherein all Scrooge's troubles start and end with grief over Jacob Marley's death. For we know that Scrooge was a "Tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" And we know that he and Marley were "two kindred spirits"

And perhaps that very fact makes the similarities to queer life, unintended as they most likely were by Mr. Dickens, achingly poignant to me. Scrooge is, we're told, "secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster." How much that resonates, for so many of us who shield our innermost selves but from a select group of friends. And we know that Scrooge and Marley were, at the very least, certainly that for one another. Scrooge is Marley's sole mourner; his sole executor and beneficiary; and even Dickens notes, "friend." How reminiscent is that of queer couples across history, estranged from their families?

Scrooge lives in a set of chambers that once belonged to Marley—clearly Dickens wanted us to believe Scrooge gave up his own dwellings after Marley's death to economize. But with only a flicker of change, those chambers become _their chambers, rented by Marley as the senior member of the couple. The place is so desolate Dickens notes "one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again." The perfect abode for two queer misers who wanted no one prying into their business.

Marley's name is still above the door of Scrooge's counting-house: a mark by which, no doubt, Dickens meant to convey Scrooge such a penny-pincher he couldn't bother to have it changed. But a thing can be both! mark of frugality to ludicrous excess and! mark of mourning. "sometimes," Dickens opines, "People new to the

business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him."

This is why "death of the author" matters so much, in expanding our interpretations of texts. It is vastly far from the lens Dickens would have intended. But, the idea of a ghost of queerness, so taboo in the society it could barely be glanced at sidewise in this tale that is all about the inexplicable and yet that lingers over everything becomes an astonishing lens through which to read this book. Thinking of Scrooge as a queer man, his "melancholy dinner at his usual melancholy tavern" becomes a eerie prefiguring of the hollowness of days spent by Isherwood's A Single Man. In this universe, little wonder Scrooge doubly hates mention of time with family, marriage, etc. when the precise nature of his grief is both unacknowledged and unacknowledgable.

And readings like this are vital, because the uncomfortable truth is, discrimination doesn't "discriminate between sinners and saints", to borrow a Miranda phrase. It is easy, in my liberal circles, to fight for queer people who hold "the good sorts of politics". But what about men like Michael Hess, culpable for supporting Reagan even as his contemptuous homophobia let the aids epidemic run rampant? How much harder is it to remember Michael had a partner? That he deserves empathy and compassion for being practically tarred and feathered out of the party upon his own aids diagnosis?

Expanding our imaginative universes to include queerness, not as redemptive panacea, but merely as one aspect of identity, personality, often in vicious conflict with others. Even! as we consider those stories equally worthy of being told feels vital if we're ever to truly express the complexity of what queer humanity looks like.

[setevulpo]

lovingly pointing out that the cat king did to edwin what edwin did to his cat

step by step, even. offered him something he wanted (even if only deep down), put a binding spell on him, then asked for something he wanted in exchange for freedom

obviously they wanted different things, but it's funny that the cat king just decided "let's copy paste the crime as the punishment"

[library-windows]

Pentiment can get you going down some silly little rabbit-holes sometimes. The way this came up was that I reached a passage in The Name of the Rose where a character starts rattling off the names of demons to curse somebody, and I thought "huh, I wonder if those are the demons on the summoning circle in Pentiment as a very quiet reference", and then they weren't, and obviously then I had to find out where they got those names. Especially my personal favorite, Tryboy

Well as it turns out ☞ this book is in the game's bibliography, which would no doubt have saved me a few minutes if I'd like remembered to look at it, but here we are. I got there in the end I suppose

So Guy was telling the truth about the ritual not being intended for murder;

the stuff Andreas finds in the abbatoir is for, not just a period-typical recreation, but an actual recorded ritual because the Pentiment devs are bonkers (complimentary);

and I assume Guy re-read the book, realized he'd have to sneak into town and whiz on Otto's house undetected, and decided to take his chances on Father "It's one partridge, Brother Guy, what could it possibly cost? Ten groschen?" Gernot being just as unable to parse the account books as Ferenc and Mathieu are

[howlsofbloodhounds]

Killer having curiosity and fascination as his substitute for joy and happiness for the longest time up until color entered his life and lit up his world yay or nay

[daincrediblegg]

I really love Catherine Standish on a conceptual character level so fucking much. Yes. She is the overworked secretary who everyone thinks is one dimensional and has nothing but a boring life to hang onto. But she has been that for god knows how many years to people at the very top of the charts at MI-5 from the bureaucrats to the field agents. Was she ever trained? No. But from her peripheral knowledge alone somehow she is easily then probably (with the exception of lamb ofc) the top agent working at slough house. She may have lost years to alcoholism but I’ll be damned if that meant shit for how much she clearly absorbed from the people she’s worked for.

[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!

[mollysunder]

I've been turning this over in my head for a while, but it feels like Mel's getting her own version of Viktor through Swain. Not purely because their both cane users that are dealing with the ableism of their respective societies. It's that just like Viktor, Swain is an ambitious and charismatic (enough anyway) man who truly believes he can bring change to his home. In that regard they are comically similar because they know that the only way they can be responsible for themselves and the destruction they know their ambition will create is by making someone else responsible for them, i.e. by killing them. Viktor has Jayce, and soon Swain will have Mel.

He is haunted by Noxus and probably identifies that belief in Mel.

He driven

[fascinationstreetmp3]

anne rice making daniel be so gentle and kind and patient with marius in prince lestat sucks to me. if he has to he can live/be with marius, fine, whatever, but their relationship vibes should at least be more along the lines of "have a safe flight" "i don't really have a say in the matter do i" "okay die then bitch". at the LEAST. they should be having years long disagreements over things that will never ever get settled. marius should be so condescending about everything daniel likes and does and daniel should be criticising every word that comes out of marius' mouth. the unmentioned presence of armand should be looming over the whole thing. instead, daniel's "pleading in a gentlemanly fashion" when he wants marius to come clubbing with him? and he's all understanding and nice when marius doesn't want to go? and daniel apparently only ever feels grateful, he never wants to defy marius or leave him in any way and doesn't feel trapped at all anymore even though marius still tries to control him? well. i don't know who that man is but marius could not have tolerated 70s/80s human daniel that's what i think.

[electroniccollectiondonut]

I have not been in this fandom long enough to reasonably judge others' takes however. "EPIC fans are so silly to characterize odysseus as feeling guilty for his actions don't you know he's a war criminal" is definitely a wild one. like first of all to each their own so settle down and let people enjoy things ok. and secondly making choices with a bad outcome, even knowingly and deliberately, does not exclude the possibility of feeling bad about it later. in fact it makes for a much more in depth character because then you get to explore what he does or doesn't feel guilt over, and why, and if that guilt ever edges into regret or not.

[staticymaticyyourlifeisatravesty]

Since I do have it in Lilith's lore she was fed blood by Sanguinius, I am crossed between the choices before me. There's a bird and a bat way, and then there's the slightly more humane way of just Sanguinius just feeding her his own blood. I am crossed because I like to make Sanguinius just a tinge more animalistic at times, and by god do I love me some weird behaviors that shouldn't exist in humans which brings me to him quite literally regurgitating blood for her. It's entirely possible the Blood Angels french kiss to share blood with their less fortunate brothers, especially in say the Blood Drinkers chapter. However, Flamingos also regurgitate for their young. I know Sanguinius is more bird of prey then the brine shrimp eating Flamingo, but I'm like do I give him that horror? I mean if we go by vampire bats, mothers absolutely will feed their pups regurgitated blood, this behavior even seen in the father and older siblings; what I'm saying is that let's add a bit more Vampiric weirdness to Vampire Birb and let him regurgitate blood for his baby. To be fair vampire ground Finches exist, but their diet isn't entirely made up of blood, it's only in the dry season they do. However, the sight of Sanguinius regurgitating blood for Lilith, and then proceeding to be both concerned and confused over what the fuck he just did is beautiful and majestic. Also because we don't actually see too many vampiric headcanons for Sanguinius so I am giving the same method of feeding offspring as Vampire Bats do their pups.

[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