#in my quest to read moby dick I've felt really validated by ishmael

[outeremissary]

3 and 4 from the ask list? or any that'd you'd be excited to answer?

Thank you Alistair!!! I have done my best but this has made me remember I am. Highly incoherent trying to explain why music sticks to things in my brain. I hope. Something gets through here.

[prompt list]

This went under a cut because I, writing this late at night, also got out of control wordy. Not my best stringing thoughts together

3) What song describes your OC?

I have many ungodly OC playlists but because this is dealer's choice I need to show you the song that has been RUINING MY LIFE over Kasander for the past week and a half, the week and a half it has been out there, sorry

(if the spotify thing turns out fucked up sorry I'm not fixing it I do Not understand that website)

At the very least, paladin DUrge is clear cut here I think. Kasander has this bright spark of hope to them, this optimism about the world and joy in existing in it, that's constantly at war with the reality that they actually exist in- the skin they live in, the person they are.

You can see it. It is clear.

The song just conveys a whole arc (which is of course for the character of Don Quixote, amnesiac vampire, in the game it's actually from) that for me really really maps onto Kasander's over the course of BG3. Especially recovering the understanding of their actual reality, because Kasander starts the game certain from what little information they have that they are a paladin and must be a Hero and a Good Person and it does break them a little to know that they were the furthest thing from that and parts of them still cling to that existence. But there's also that movement towards acceptance, assimilating the harsh truth and still maintaining a sense of identity. And this repeated line near the end stands out to me as well.

To me the real character breakthrough they have post-amnesia isn't really that they become a Good Person, it's that for the first time in their life they become able to see themself in their entirety, with all their conflicting desires and experiences. There are parts of them they don't understand and which frighten them, and also some of those initially incomprehensible parts have given them the ability to move forward in a life of hardship. Asperia could never accept those paradoxes, was too afraid of them to begin to untangle them. And that's why Asperia could never see herself completely- it was too terrifying to imagine that a part of him was "Kasander" and held so many forbidden desires and urges. To see themself and embrace themself- the parts of them that are Kasander, that are Asperia, that are neither- that's the self-actualization baby!!!!!! Or the beginning, at least. This is such a waving my hands wildly Understand My Vision but like. Understand my vision. If you do not know Kasander that's okay the song is perfect it all makes sense here just listen to the song it will all be clear

(kas quixote to back my words)

4) What song describes your OC and their partner/love interest?

Okay back to Kingmaker. Although Sarenrae it's hard to actually narrow this down because 1) the playlist is Long and 2) in 2020 it seemed like a great idea to organize it chronologically and that makes it Weird to pick out any one thing as the Definitive Song. Genius move, past me.

Anyway this might be an Insane Pick vibes wise out of everything but it's a good one for pulling lyrics without having to endlessly contextualize in timeline

yes I know it's seven minutes long.

*points* understand my vision. you know. it's like. you know.

But more importantly, this chorus

Like there's really a big like. Core of it to me. That they aren't really alike in a lot of ways, but that they kind of come to see each other and for each to understand the precarious position the other stands in. The unbalanced sense of self, the pull of so many obligations, so many masks. And I guess to me there's something very precious about having someone who releases you from the obligation to have the right desires, even if you don't share them.

I guess a lot of that also comes to my read on Tristian, which I know not everyone shares- I see Tristian as strongly driven by a need to align sense of ideal self with actual self. As we meet them, Tristian is a failed angel in the most literal sense, having lost their supernatural status entirely. But like... before that, Tristian still had a sense of needing to be someone/being owed recognition as something that they were not. The desire for recognition as an exceptional person and as a hero and as something above their station- it's both striving higher than they stood and also sinking beneath what they're meant to be, because that hubris has an impurity to it. Being an angel, being an angel in a particular way, feeling like they exist in the world wrong, and then having that snatched away again and being confronted with the starkest ways they fail to exist as an "angel" in any way.... I'm compelled by the way humanity clings to Tristian. Human ambitions, human follies, human failures, human desperations for safety and glory and acknowledgement. The release from the need to pretend at humanity or to exist as a perfect angel. That's what I mean.

I feel like I do so much Balthazar posting that the opposite is probably pretty obvious, but like- and this is some story arc thing- also in reverse, the understanding that Balthazar is not, never has been, and does not desire to be an angel, something that many people have refused to see in him. That he clings desperately to what is petty and mortal and flawed in himself and makes a shield out of his ugliest pieces, and also that the need to define himself against his heritage has slowly carved away at what he feels he can be, whether he realizes it or not. He has a brightness that's his own, a vivacity that peeks through the layers of performance and sometimes makes them real. And there's not any reason to change to nurture that. It's always there, it's always been there. It just goes unseen.

Anyway this stuff about hidden pieces and the public eye vs. the private self, this is what I mean with it. The not changing. Not becoming someone else. That it's enough to see and accept and see again. Thumbs up

I was going to put a more fun and tonally appropriate song at the end as the extra thing but actually I saw this out of the corner of my eye and needed to be Deeply Unserious instead

This is. Not representative of the playlist I think. Good god