#thank you Larian for my life

[finderedacted]

what kind of freaks does larian employ? i love them

[griffinsanddragons]

Started playing Baldur's Gate 5 days ago, and I am not normal about Gale! Prepare to be sick of me!!!!

[quinn-of-aebradore]

Astarion hug scene my beloved

[nikomedes]

it is 4am so whatever but. that poll about game PCs becoming OCs ur rly into blew up my whole spot. i was SUCH an OC hater from ages 13-19 for no reason, i just had this superiority complex like “why would u make a character without it being for a story (or ttrpg). just to have a doll to play with? i, a Storyteller, know the only worthy context in which to Make a Guy is in an original story that shapes them and is shaped by them in turn. STOP having fun.” i made OCs but i was SO scrupulous and bothered about having them be attached to original short stories i wrote

and then around 19 i started writing mass effect fic with shep/liara in a no reapers AU, in my spiral notebooks for class. i still have this somewhere, just a sheaf of paper i hand-numbered so i know there was a good 30-some pages of this fic, and mentally i was still going “my shep is a character in the context of a story still. im not weird. this isn’t weird.” and having OCs period isn’t weird but i was so worried

and then like… it must have been 2014. that was dragon age: inquisition and fallout 4 the same year. blew the damn doors off my joint. i only wrote one thing for da:i but i wrote ASSLOADS for f4. (my pet theory there being that da:i had enough compelling story content that i just wanted to fill in the edges, whereas f4’s story sucked so bad i couldnt help but try rehabilitating it with three different OCs and, i just counted, 45 pages of fic.)

in the years since as ive replayed things and let go of that weird teenage hangup, ive written so much. and its i would say 80% unposted. its just been for me. but i can say 100% that it made me enjoy the games more to bring that much story into it. i just checked my folders and ive written something about an OC for almost everything in that poll, with my lone wanderer of fallout ruling the roost at 20k words for his detailed outline and written story. add also pokemon to that list, for whatever reason. (the big pieces are for swsh and im putting that down to the f4 phenomenon again bc boy even for a pokemon game, those games are story light.) and im not fucked up about any of it. EXCEPT

EXCEPT

todd’s terrible trick. where he made a game so bad, but i was able to make such a huge, thick woman with the CHEF origin, that i put 20 hrs and this many words into the utter lack of game that is starfield

im so glad i 1) did not pay for it and 2) stopped playing, bc that game turned into such a nothing burger that if my usual decent base game story to fanfic ratio held, i would even now be 200 pages deep in a doorstopper novel about this space chef’s rich internal life

[the-muffin-master]

"Since the Netherbrain fell, you and Astarion have seen more of Faerûn than you ever thought possible. One night, he tells you that these last six months of happy memories are the counterweight to two hundred years of misery."

idk what's up with my obsession with drawing astarion being happy and cared for but I'm sure it's not gonna come up in therapy. AFFECTION BEAM!!!!

[nots0br0k3nghst]

This probably was said multiple times already, but...

Gale's hands

Of course everything in Gale is beautiful and enticing, but I am drawn to his hands. Oh, to hold them gently, to place a tender kiss to his knuckles, to his wrist, to his fingertips and palms. To leave a trail of kisses all the way to his shoulder and then to the mark on his chest...

I bet this would make him so flustered, but I really would do this to him just to make him feel appreciated, desired. I would love to worship him.

Gods, I need serious help...

[fleshcarverfugitive]

PATCH SEVEN FOR MAC TODAY LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOO

[vvitchering]

one moment with you could sate me for a lifetime

[aeterna8amantes]

In honour mode Astarion dumped my tiefling barbarian Urii for being a miserable, manipulative, maladaptive fuckboy of a bottom.

They ended up remaining friends somehow, so Urii brought him Cazador's broken body as a gift like a mutilated bird a cat brings for its human. Somehow, Urii rebounded upwards and got Halsin to go goth for him.

Much debauchery was had by all, and our awful, tadpole-eaten lads 'saved' the world with a hope, a prayer and a huge pile of explosives. Don't ask what happened in the epilogue...

[forcedhesitation]

nothing I write could truly capture the way I feel, having finished corydalis' campaign. god. what a game. what an adventure!

[finderedacted]

i have finished my first playthrough of full release baldur's gate 3 and i'm going to be in my feelings about everything that happened in-game for a long time.

i also have a very strong urge to invent some kind of suncream for vampire spawn so poor astarion can enjoy the outdoors with me (my character is a DRUID) until we figure out a permanent solution to his whole "i catch fire in the sun" deal.

youtube clip has all the possible outcomes of this convo with non-ascended astarion after the final fight and cutscenes (except breaking up with him, which frankly i do not want to see because i could not do that to him)

in any case

i have a lot of broiling thoughts about how the game deals with themes of power, control, trust, survival. i am thrilled with how larian created a game where my character could also grow and change throughout the game alongside the companions. what a superb work of art they have made.

[judasiskariot]

5 comfort characters, 5 tags. Sweet @damadisangue tagged me, so here we go:

1. Astarion (Baldur's Gate 3, the whole party gives me comfort + my Tavs ❤️🌞)

2. Albert Wesker (Resident Evil)

3. Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy (The Witcher)

4. H.M. Murdock (The A-Team)

5. Rin Matsuoka (Free!)

My tags (feel free to do so if you are in the mood and have time, no is always an option 😉):

@blazingsaza @an-drawer @goromimii @nihil-ism @onlyancunin

[sanasanakun]

The Dark Urge: Who Are They Really?

After discussing this (for way too long) with a friend, I’m gonna voice my thoughts out to the void like the nerd I am.

I’ve never been a huge fan of amensia narratives because I think they’re cheesy and lazy. But The Dark Urge is so Drakengard-coded that I locked onto them immediately. The Durge and I are a match made in Heaven. And this is where my friend comes in. He doesn’t want to play Durge because “you’re playing a monster.” I argued back that, technically, they have no memory of who they are and can change. Basically Durge-in-game =\= Durge pre-game (depending on how you play obviously). But my friend, let’s call him Zach, argued it doesn’t matter if Durge works towards being a “good” (good can be subjective) person because they’re guilty of unforgivable crimes including ones we probably don’t hear about. Zach argues Durge’s origin as Bhaalspawn does complicate things, but that it doesn’t excuse it. Durge is shown as able to resist the urge (even at great physical pain). He doesn’t count “remote” killings as in when Bhaal overrides Durge (ex. Alfira).

This got us discussing the philosophy behind such a scenario. Is the original’s persona dead? Does this mean the Durge we play is a new person, and Durge from before is dead? Or is this the same person? What changed within Durge (if they’re repenting) to cause them to reject their old life and ways? It brings to mind John Locke’s argument about “Day” and “Night-man” in which Locke insists that a body may share a soul but not be the same person. Locke states:

“For granting that the thinking Substance in Man must be necessarily suppos’d immaterial, ‘tis evident, that immaterial thinking thing may sometimes part with its past consciousness, and be restored to it again, as appears in the forgetfulness Men often have of their past Actions, and the Mind many times recovers the memory of a past consciousness, which it had lost for twenty Years together. Make these intervals of Memory and Forgetfulness to take their turns regularly by Day and Night, and you have two Persons with the same immaterial Spirit, as much as in the former instance two Persons with the same Body. So that self is not determined by Identity or Diversity of Substance…but only by identity of consciousness” (Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding).

Essentially, he believed the conscious could change while the body and soul remains the same. A new person is born out of a change in consciousness. A Jekyll and Hyde situation (at its worse in Durge’s case). This sentiment sits at the foot of Zach and I’s “fight” (not a fight lol). I believe Durge-during-the-game to be a completely different person, while Zach sees them as a bad person with no memory of being terrible. For Zach, they are the same person, terrible traits and all, and so they deserve no sympathy (aside from the obvious like their lack of body autonomy at the hands of Bhaal and Orin). But from a purely philosophical question, I don’t know the answer. I know my opinion and Zach’s opinion, but we couldn’t come to an agreement.

Idk I just really love The Dark Urge and their complicated psyche lol thanks for making them enough of a freak, Larian, that my friend and I could discuss this for like two hours in the break room at school.

[kimjunnoodle]

p -patch 6

th e res forehead kisses

[dismalzelenka]

NOBODY WARNED ME HOW FUCKING PRETTY THE ASCENDED TAV GALE EPILOGUE WAS!! I WAS NOT READY!!!!!

[syrinq]

my fucking achilles heel power going "huh i wonder what happened to that wukong game they showed 183937338303 years ago. is she okay"

literally no less than 5 minutes later, trailer drops with the game awards & a release date & a steam page

me getting too tired (it's past 3am at this point) using my achilles heel power once again, that just because i'm going tf to bed it'll show something like monster hunter world 2 or some shit

no less than 30 min later, monster hunter wilds. actual open world monster hunter game and you can ride a "monstie" like in monster hunter stories. everything i ever fucking wanted from a monster hunter game at this rate

alright next elon musk will drop dead and i'll inherit all of his 10,000 billion moneys and my life is fucking blowjob sex awesome as heck