#there's probably more to this but as I said my experience with this game is limited

[ablobwhowrites]

I feel that player is now abnormally advanced then any human because of what happens at playtime co making them learn how to fight, code, react abnormally fast, survive toxic gas, survive without eating for long periods of time, hold breath without passing out, carry HEAVY item that even bodybuilders would have trouble with all that good stuff

I honestly love this though cause imagine when y/n is hangout with friends (don't worry the toys are being babysat by y/n's grandparents) and going to some kind of pop up arcade and y/n doing that punch power game and ended up physically breaking it and their friends are just standing there shocked at how this motherfucker just broke that machine. Also imagining like y/n just doing the almost heaviest set of bench presses they can do also imagining like once y/n's friend lost sometimes under a car and y/n is like. "Oh I got it" and lifts the far up so y/n's friend can just crawl under and grab it. Also imagining that they challenge y/n to a arm wrestle and immediately lose and y/n's just wondering if their friends are just pulling a prank or letting him win as a joke but it's not, it's cause y/n is just so god damn strong from having to survive the factory and do almost having every single near life and death experience known to man, like having to be fast at reacting cause of how many hostile things where in that factory. Having to starve and basically go on long periods without food and water cause most of the water down there is probably contaminated with something cause no way it's clean.

Then having to survive toxic has and the same has that is a high level explosion device also pending with basically almost being eaten alive by other staving things in playtime co that have given y/n long lasting scars and major blood loss because what I said, there is absolutely no way they are coming out unscathed without like any wounds and pretty sure they may have unchecked broken or fractured bones. Also being electrocuted is one to because of the doctor and that one trap basically sending god knows how many volts through y/n's body cause the grab pack holds on for a pretty good almost minute. Plus dragging those heavy ass boxes like nothing and you have to build some crazy leg strength and even without the grab pack pretty sure their arms are probably jacked to because of how much they use the grab pack that requires your arms and to physically use your arms for every function of the grab pack plus so much more that basically makes them a beast cause I imagine no other person surviving that.

I don't imagine sometimes y/n uses his fast reaction skills to try and keep things from falling off or some like that but the object just doesn't fall but y/n being already prepared to catch something ends up looking likes their going crazy. Bro need to catch up on a lot of sleep cause I know they ain't processing things normally and is still on survival mode at this point.

(that's it for my yap session. If you like this please don't feel shy and request any ideas for y/n's or stories. But for now please stay safe and drink water!)

[tyrantisterror]

Wife Goals: Edelgard von Hresvelg

Alright gang, after covering Morrigan from Dragon Age Origins last time, it's time for another RPG gal here on Wife Goals, the emotional breakdown masquerading as a series of personal essays that I swear won't go more than seven entries! I swear! It's going to be video game ladies from here on out actually, both because the interactive nature of that medium makes it REALLY easy to form these unhealthy parasocial attachments to fictional ladies, AND because it's the most socially acceptable way to project your desire for romance on made up people! Huzzah for video games! Huzzah!

I don't remember exactly why, but I was in a bad headspace when Fire Emblem: Three Houses came out. It was probably just the normal "why have I accomplished so little in my life why am I still alone oh god I've wasted my time on earth" thing that's always gnawing at my brain, IDK. What I know is that the void inside me was GNAWING and I needed to fill it, preferably with something new, because replaying my age-old favorite RPGs, while soothing, would also feel... sad. You gotta try new things to trick yourself into thinking you're going somewhere, you know?

I had played Fire Emblem Awakening, and it was pretty good! Pretty fun, it had an evil witch in it who was romanceable, and that was fun. I didn't finish it, but I sunk a good few hours into it. I had also played Fire Emblem Fates and.... I shouldn't have! It's bad! It's basically Incest: The Game! Don't play it! So, you know, I didn't exactly have full confidence in Fire Emblem: Three Houses when I picked it up, but the gnawing void needed some new content, and if it was as good as Awakening, or just less incest-y than Fates, it'd scratch the itch for a bit.

Guys... Three Houses is so much better than Awakening. My void was eating GOOD that summer.

The conceit of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is that there are three nations who send their most promising young people (i.e. mostly the rich kids) to an academy located in the monastery of the Fantasy Vatican - by that I mean it's owned by the leaders of the church that forms the primary religion in all three nations. Each nation has its own "house" in the academy - fraternities, basically - and your Player character is a mercenary who's been more or less forced to be a long term substitute teacher for said fraternities despite being about the same age as the students. You're the honor student who's forced to play teacher by a struggling school district, basically, only if said honor student was hired because of their experience in killing bandits.

Which house you choose matters immensely, as the OTHER conceit of the game is that all those friendly college-aged students of yours are destined to inherit important political roles in a war that is beginning to brew, and when that war breaks out, you and your students are going to be seeing one nation's perspective in the three-way conflict that ensues. Those perspectives, or routes as they're officially called, differ DRASTICALLY, in part because the leaders among the three groups of students you have to choose from have vastly different goals they're trying to achieve. And one of those students is Edelgard von Hresvelg, heir to the Adrestian Empire.

The first thing you need to know about Edelgard is that she is heavily villain-coded, both in general and in the Fire Emblem franchise specifically. Fire Emblem is a franchise with so many entries that it has its own recurring tropes. There are specifically archetypes that recur a lot, and one of the most common is The Big Villainous Tyrant Wearing Red. They often lead a big, villainous empire that's trying to take over the world, as you do. And Edelgard's nation... has red on their banners. Edelgard's customized school uniform includes a red cape and red tights. And the title she stands to inherit is Emperor - i.e. a title that you specifically get by owning more than one nation, and it's stated that the Adrestian Empire used to own ALL of the continent before it was fractured to its current state, which is exactly the sort of setup that led past Fire Emblem villains to start world-conquering.

She is going to grow up into an empress in red. She's the Big Bad. Maybe not right now, but if you know the genre, and specifically the Fire Emblem tropes, you KNOW she's inevitably going to be the villain. Or at least a villain - often the Big Villainous Tyrant in Red is, in normal trope terms, The Heavy, i.e. the villain you fight the most, but not the FINAL villain. The Darth Vader, if you will, with a Palpatine who reveals himself towards the end.

This is why Edelgard's route is the only route that bifurcates - there is a crucial moment, the moment right before Edelgard proves she is very much the Fire Emblem trope you'd think she is, where you have to choose whether to stand with her or not. You can choose to side against her, and if you choose to do that, or to do either of the other two routes, then Edelgard is exactly the villain you think she is, and as such, you have to kill her before the game is done. And that's all she is - another Evil Tyrant in Red, an emperor to be slain, a villain through and through.

...but this is a game about different perspectives on a war, and wars are never black and white. They're messy, and the game is very good about showing that while most of the people in this conflict have good intentions, NONE of them have all of the facts, and none of them made completely perfect choices, in part because there were very few perfect choices to make.

We get to know Edelgard very well before the crisis moment in her route. As you'd expect of a royal heir, she has a lot of weight on her shoulders from the responsibilities that leadership will bring. But she also has weight from a lot of unexpected sources as well. She's tight-lipped at first, but it becomes clear that this young woman has some horrific trauma in her past - she keeps waking up with night terrors about rats trying to eat her, night terrors that you find out are suppressed memories.

Edelgard, it turns out, is not just a royal, but also the subject of the fantasy equivalent of horrible genetic experimentation. So were all of her brothers and sisters - the only difference is that Edelgard is the only one who survived. She spent her childhood being tortured physically and psychologically to make her stronger, all while watching the same things happen to her siblings until they died one by one. Her night terrors about rats come from the time she spent in dungeons with her dying siblings.

See, the magical fantasy world of this game has a society that buys into what is essentially fantasy eugenics - noble houses are marked as such because they bear "crests," i.e. magic powers that make them stronger and more durable than normal people, which can be passed down through familial lines. Crests are said to be gifts from the gods that the Church is devoted to, so the Church explicitly supports and provides propaganda for this eugenics-based hierarchy of nobility.

Everything Edelgard suffered as a child was because of a scheme endorsed by some nobles to put two crests in one person's body - a scheme to make an ubermensch through eugenics. If it weren't for the crest system and this idea of noble, divinely ordained bloodlines, Edelgard would not have had such a horrendous childhood.

So, rather than make a girl who embodies the ideal of this system, the people who experimented on Edelgard ensured that she knew one thing was true above all else: the crest system, and everything that supports it, needs to be burnt to the fucking ground. And hey, what do you know, she now has superpowers AND is the heir to a fucking empire. With some clever scheming, she could turn the tables on the people who planned to make her a pawn, destroy the entire hierarchy of the continent, and remake society into a place where bloodlines don't matter. It'd take a lot of work and ruthlessness, but it was possible. She could make a world where no one would suffer like her again.

And, like, she's not the only one suffering! In her house alone, you have students like Bernadetta, who has become an agoraphoric wreck as a result of her father trying to force her to marry men she doesn't know to secure their bloodline's place in the hierarchy, and Dorothea, who is a commoner that had to scrape and strive just to get to this monastery in hopes of marrying into a family that will let her live without the specter of poverty hanging over her. In the other houses you have characters like Marianne, whose family's crest is said to be cursed and feels she deserves to die because of it, or Lysithea, the youngest student at the monastery who knows she's going to die in a few years because she suffered the same experiments as Edelgard did, or Mercedes, whose father was so desperate to continue his crest's bloodline that he, uh... tried to do a Fire Emblem: Fates on her. The crest system sucks, nobility sucks, the Church created and enforced all of these systems so it sucks, ALL of this shit needs to be BURNT TO THE FUCKING GROUND!

So think about that big choice in this route again. You can look at what the tropes tell you - that Edelgard is a villain, that she is starting a war that will cost hundreds of lives, and that it would be perfectly morally defensible to stand against her. If you make that choice - that very genre savvy choice - you will become the champion of the Church, literally the organization that stands for the Status Quo above all else, crush Edelgard's rebellion, and forever brand her as the villain she so definitely is.

...OR

You can see her point, and stand with the woman you took as your pupil. You can make the choice to allow yourself to be branded a villain by history if it means fighting for the possibility of a better world - and that very well could happen, because one of the secrets of this game is that you're villain-coded too. The default player character name is Byleth, after all - and that's not just any name, it's one of the fucking arch demons in the Lesser Key of fucking Solomon! You're a mercenary dressed all in black with the name of a fucking demon who just spent half the game tutoring a Tyrant in Red. If Edelgard fails, it will not be hard for history to smear your name alongside hers!

But you can be brave and do it anyways. You can say fuck it, let me be the villain, because this system needs to burn.

Edelgard makes some horrendous and evil choices in the other routes, but one of the great things about this game is that playing all the different sides allows you to make sense of the actions of other characters, and that's SO important to Edelgard's route. You are, in many ways, the crucial component Edelgard's plan needs for success. She has, until meeting you, been more or less on her own - I mean, yes, she has Hubert, her loyal minion who acts and dresses like a Dracula, but Hubert's flaw is that he is slavishly loyal, to the point that he is unwilling to tell Edelgard she's wrong. You, however, are an ally that does not treat Edelgard as a superior, but as an equal - you provide her counsel that's willing to contradict her, and as such provide insight that allows he to find better solutions to problems.

With you on her side, Edelgard never gets so desperate as to take the more drastic and cruel choices she does in the other routes. She's able to stick to her ideals without risking survival, she's able to be her best self, to offer mercy and reduce casualties as much as possible.

And it's not a one-way relationship, either. Byleth, your player character, was also a sufferer of magical genetic experimentation - Rhea, the head of the Church, basically tried to make her dead mother (who's also the main god of the church, it's a whole thing) reincarnate by implanting her crest stone into Byleth as a baby, an act that killed Byleth's mother in childbirth and resulted in Byleth always feeling half-dead as a person. In the other routes, Byleth ascends into a sort of demigod, absorbing those godly energies but never fully manifesting as the old goddess reborn.

But in Edelgard's route? You kill Rhea, and in doing so, that crest stone in your body vanishes, and your heart beats for the first time in your life. Protecting the status quo makes you a demigod - but burning it down let's you finally be yourself. Your mortal, human, living self, with a heart that's you're own, not something someone forced into you.

Edelgard does not remain emperor long when she wins - she keeps the throne long enough to put all her reforms in motion and make sure anyone who'd bring the old crest system back is dead as dirt, then appoints a successor and retires. She lives a normal life, with you if you choose to romance her, content to have made sure that the horrors she and others witnessed under that hierarchy never happen again. That was her goal, her big villainous scheme.

I don't know about you, but I think that's fucking rare in fiction - to have character look at the systems in place, think, "this shit needs to burn," and, in at least one version of the tale, be 100% right on the fucking money. God, I love her so much.

(Also, if you need additional convincing: Rhea, the leader of the church and basically Edelgard's archenemy, is a green-haired milf with a dumptruck ass who turns into a dragon, and I still chose Edelgard over her. Do you know how hard that is for me, specifically? She's got an enormous butt and turns into a dragon and I still said "No thanks, it's the albino for me!" instead. That's how much Edelgard fucking rules!)

[slippinmickeys]

I have come to you for information, O Wise One. o.o

Can you outline what is normal and not when it comes to showrunners, producers, and executive overhead? For example: what was normal, what was abnormal, and what expected in Chris's battles with Fox? How much control was he already expected to have before The X-Files took off? What are lies or obfuscation on his end? What is the truth behind his claims? Or how can one decipher without an intimate knowledge of behind-the-scenes workings? (For my part: lots and lots of interview deep-diving.)

He often said he had to protect his vision from outside forces... but as far as I've seen, CC ended up getting his way most (if not all) of the time. On the one hand, I get preserving inspiration to keep an endeavor close to one's own "truth"... but on the other, it seems his protective streak went into overdrive more often than not. And, even more often than not, when it wasn't warranted. (I get it stems from his childhood circumstances and etc., but there comes a time when leniency needs to be met with reality. )

I'm not really sure what I'm asking because I don't know what to ask. So. I lay this out to you and hope you can spot and inform my ignorance. :DDDDDDD

I’m not that wise, I’ve just been around the game a long time, have a lot of friends who write for film and television (including showrunners) and have seen a lot. With the initial caveat of pointing out that I have far more experience in film than I do in television—I’m certainly not an authority, though I’ve been around the block—I do feel like I can at least speak to what I’ve seen.

As I’m sure you already know, in television, showrunners are the ultimate authority. They oversee not just the creative direction of the show—running the writers room, hearing pitches on story, shooting down bad ideas, running with good ones—but also the budget, the physical production, post, everything. They’re the intermediary with the studio, who hold the purse strings, and can wield some control, but if you’re a wily enough showrunner, you find a way to get your way, and I think Chris Carter is as wily as they come. It’s a hard job. You have to wear a lot of hats and juggle a lot of everything, and the burnout rate is HIGH. For someone to last as long as Chris Carter has and did (on a show that got as big globally as almost any show ever has) speaks to his capability and guile. (I speak to his capability and guile as Hollywood animal, by the way, I have as many problems with his choices on story and show direction as anyone else.)

Before the show took off, he still would have had a decent amount of power, just in the inherent nature of Showrunner As Position. And Fox was such a young network at the time, I think he was probably a very capable smooth talker, able to navigate his way in order to get his way amongst the various machinations of a studio that was still finding its way. As the show got big and the network got bigger, I think he was given the benefit of the doubt…a lot. I can’t speak to all the battles he had with the network, but I think we have to take him at his word that he won most of them. For better or worse. This was a man who made Fox a LOT of money. I think he’s a guy who knew how to navigate the system he was in and ultimately stayed on top of the snow in every avalanche.

As for lies, truth and obfuscation on his end? I can’t speak to that. I wasn’t there, I don’t know. I can only follow the things that happened as were reported at the time—as you are so capably (honestly, I bow to your skill) doing now, all these years later. You ask how one can decipher these things without an intimate knowledge of behind-the-scenes workings? One can’t. behind-the-scenes workings are different on every show, within every network, and things now don’t work exactly like they used to due to the nature of the ever-evolving beast. Bottom line, only those who were there really know.

What I can say is that I have spoken to him in an intimate setting (as intimate as you can get eating lunch with twenty other people, though I sat directly across from him, and due to the nature of my life experience and job, wasn’t as nervous as I think some of my peers were, so I feel like I was able to absorb a lot), we spoke mainly about the show, and a lot of the stuff he told us “Clyde Bruckman’s prediction of Scully’s immortality informed all the choices I made after that, including Tithonus!” I fucking believed it as I was sitting there. (In retrospect I’m kind of like “…god, really?” But he has an undeniable charisma. And I gotta say, I get why he got his way.)

I wish a lot of things when it comes to this show and his choices. I wish he’d kept a show bible, for one. (“I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist.” JESUS FUCKING CHRIST) But I do respect a lot of what we DID get, and I think we have to give credit where it’s due. Even if David Duchovny and Kim Manners and Gillian Anderson and whoever else wielded their influence where they thought it was necessary. The buck stopped at Chris Carter. That’s just the nature of the television beast. And for a man to survive in his position as long as he did…that man had some serious game. Again, for better or worse.

I’m not sure I answered your questions. Maybe I’m talking completely out of my ass. But this is how I see it.

[cbk1000]

Do you guys want some hobby drama?

So, there's a game called Kingdom Come: Deliverance set in early 15th century Bohemia which is a 1st person RPG following Henry, the humble son of the local blacksmith, who Gets In the Shit of Local Warfare and Politics after his village is razed by an invading army. This game was developed by a small, independent company that prided itself on historical accuracy, and came out in 2018. It was a fairly niche game, and apparently released with quite a lot of jank (I played it years after it came out, after patches had tightened everything up, so I wasn't privy to this).

It was also the subject of a small controversy; namely, a gaming journalist called it out for not being diverse enough because there were only white people as far as the eye could see, and the developer said that was because of Historical Accuracy, because at that period of time, in that setting, there wouldn't have been any black people. Admittedly, while I have read fairly extensively on the Middle Ages, my focus is on medieval Britain, so I'm not going to argue this particular point as I really know pretty much nothing about medieval Bohemia; I'll just sideeye it the way I do any time someone claims they only feature white people in their story because of historical accuracy. (In fairness I will note this does take place in small villages, not urban centers, and that even the modern day region is fairly ethnically homogenous. On the other hand, I did just recently read an article on some recent archeological evidence that there actually might have been a larger population of African immigrants/traders in the area than was originally thought to be the case, but I do not know if this discovery was before or after the developer's assertion, and again, this was probably in larger urban areas. But I digress. Also, if you are an expert on 15th century Bohemia, please feel free to nerd out with Fun Facts on this post.)

Now, for the record, I only got into this game last year, long after it came out, and long after the controversy, so I did not experience it in real time, and I am not part of any gaming communities. I found this out thanks to the drama surrounding the sequel which just released. What I'm reporting here is things I've gleaned from people talking about the old controversy in relation to the new controversy, some screen shots of the OG Debacle, etc. This is not coming from an insider, just someone who stumbled in while everything was on fire, pulled out a bucket of popcorn, and asked the guy in the lawn chair with snacks how it all started.

The developer was, according to some claims I've seen, part of Gamer Gate, which I'll admit I've seen referenced many times, but I still do not actually really know what that is. But his role in this was as someone who became a hero to the 'anti-woke' crowd, because his game was about a white Christian man, and he pulled the ol' 'but it's just historically accurate to exclude black people' for these chuds who always claim to have non-racist, non-homophobic, and non-misogynistic reasons for only wanting straight white men in their video games. (Because, as we all know, women, gays, and black people were only just invented in 2010, therefore 'historical accuracy' is a perfectly reasonable reason for exclusion.) There’s a picture of him wearing a Based shirt, and he apparently made fun of people for wanting more inclusion in the game, because he refuses to sacrifice historical accuracy for the sake of pandering. White men once more felt Seen. Blessings upon his house, etc.

Cue the sequel, which has been quietly underway for years, and was just announced late last year, and dropped February 4th.

Some leaks start to emerge that trouble the anti-wokers. There's a black person in the game?? And Saudi Arabia banned it for an UNSKIPPABLE GAY SEX SCENE??? Many pearls were clutched, and much gnashing of teeth.

Developer confirms, yes, there is a black character. There is actual historical reasoning for his role, and part of this game takes place in a city that would have been more ethnically diverse; he's not just wedging the character in to appease those goddamn SJWs, no sir. Also, there are absolutely no unskippable cut scenes period. You can now pursue a male love interest for Henry, as it's an RPG and this gives more player choice. But all romances are optional, including the gay one.

People are wailing. The curtains are on fire. They're angrily taking sledgehammers to the pedestal they put this man on. He is a TRAITOR to the Anti Woke Cause. He put a single, solitary black man in his game and gave people the completely avoidable option to be gay!!! He caved to the Woke Mob!!! Who can they trust now in these times of turnoil???

Then speculation starts that one of the gay options is a character from the first game that becomes close to Henry, Hans Capon. Hans is a freewheeling, womanizing noble who likes to have a good time, and who, frankly, was always a bit suspicious to me because one of the side quests involves him inviting Henry to hang out with him by taking a bath with him in the same tub, but I figured the gay romance option was going to be some rando NPC you encounter once on a side quest and can have some fade-to-black porking with.

The game drops. Review embargos are lifted. IGN publishes a guide on how to romance Hans Capon, who it turns out IS the gay romance option! My ship is sailing!!

This really caused a meltdown. Hans is a HETEROSEXUAL STRAIGHT MAN WHO BANGS WOMEN WITH BIG BREASTS HOW COULD KINGDOM COME DO THIS TO THEM. People handled it so well, guys:

A boycott was in order. Go woke, go broke!!!

Oops, the game made back its entire budget on the first day of sales.

Now it's time for Old Faithful: accusing liberals (i.e. people who think not everything has to be only for straight white men) and The Gays of pedophilia.

It's decided that the gay sex scene is a depiction of pedophilia and should get the game banned because the real life historical person on which Hans Capon is based was 15 at the time of the game. Now, note that they've already taken some liberties with the timeline, as one of the villains died before the game takes place. Also note: there is no actual canonical mention of Hans' age in game, but his voice actor who did the motion capture and on whose physique the character is based is a 31-year-old fully adult man, he and Henry are portrayed as contemporaries close in age (I'd guess early 20s based on the way they act in the game), and if the game is trying to pass off this 31-year-old man as a minor child, I have a bridge to sell cheaply too. Also note: none of these people screaming about pedophilia had a problem with Hans whoreing it up with women in the first game.

Here are a few screenshots of the character they are trying to claim is a tiny infant child being mounted by a woke-infested pedophile puppeteered by Captain Super Pedophile, their former hero:

Maybe I'm just looking at this through rose-colored liberal pedophile glasses, but that looks like a grown adult to me.

[barblaz-arts]

Thank you for taking my ask so seriously!!!! A lot of people would have just said no and move on, but now you've activated my secret infodumping card >:3

First of all, I went through the notes and I promise you the comic isn't as angsty as the premise makes it out to be. A very central theme is friendship, and connection, and how relationships can save us even in the worst times. These guys are already dead and they're finding time to have group hugs and blood pacts <3 they're so stupid n I care them a lot 💖💖💖💖

And all the characters have such fun designs!!! They're all very distinct and full of personality, with very fun interactions, and I genuinely think you'd have a blast putting those beasts in situation. Since their personalities are so unique the fandom (me) looooves making silly little aus where they can do whatever and not. Yk. Fight for their lives.

The art is great and the whole world building with the spectre forms (kind of similar to the full demon forms from hazbin) are genuinely so cool and so fun to speculate about, and wonder what else is going on in the very vast world of the story.

But, ultimately, the best part is the lead romance. And girl. If you like couples who are devoted to each other Annabel Lee and Lenore are the best thing to ever happened. That devoted that's leaning into "Oh there might be something toxic goin on here!!!!" They have burnt down houses, trapped friends in walls, and almost fell of balconies for the other. Absolutely bonkers bananas.

They're honestly what makes the comic so if you think they're not your style idk if it's going to be an enjoyable experience. There's also some bloody scenes (ex: someone's eye getting scarred) but they never get gory, and some heavier themes (esp madness and the condition of women in the early 1900s).

Soooooo idk. I'm mostly sending this ask bc I love being in the same fandoms as you and hearing your takes :D

I mean, both my hyperfixations are on hiatus rn and there aren't lot of content for them anymore, so why not? I could try other media while im waiting.

Ngl the toxic element im hearing about the romance isn't pulling me in all that much cuz I'm not a big fan of that. I'm more for wholesome shit. But the plot itself does interest me. Especially the spectres. I love seeing transformations.

And im fine with gore so long as it isn't straight up, idk, torture porn. I've ended up seeing some nasty shit because of previous hyperfixations lmao the most violent media I got into was this game called Corpse Party when I was a teen(if you dont know it, it's fine. Ur probably better off. But in denial baby gay me was obsessed bcuz of the yuri) so yeh I'm fine with a little violence

Thank you tho! It's one thing to be liked for my art or fic, but to have my insight valued too means a lot! I can't promise if or when I'll check it out, cuz i dont wanna get anyone's hopes up, but I'm not gonna write it off. It does genuinely seem interesting.

[synchodai]

Despite all my yap, it appears I have not made some of my points clear. That's my fault, so let me lay it out. The TL;DR of my reply is highlighted for readers tired of my yap.

People are free to interpret Mystra as an abuser.

Or groomer or rapist or whatever word appropriately conveys her level of villainy to them. If that's their interpretation of the text, more power to them. In the post, I express my distaste and disagreement for these approaches towards her character, but I was careful not to outright say they're wrong. Readings like that are subjective and there's no point in arguing over subjective interpretation.

That being said, I have not seen a single "groomer" interpretation that doesn't trigger my main gripe with these kinds of things.

My gripe with "Mystra is a groomer" posts is that they are deeply uncritical and unproductive.

The point of this post is to explain why I think that most "Mystra is a groomer" takes are intellectually lazy, incurious, and sometimes outright dishonest. They often rely solely on personal bias to make their arguments, and actively eschew parts of the source material.

They refuse to engage with Mystra outside of her relationship to Gale. They ignore her place in the Forgotten Realms canon, saying that old D&D fans' attachment to Mystra is a hindrance to analysing her as a character. The times they do engage with Mystra's lore, they flatten her into a static, one-dimensional character to fit their argument.

If you (general you) are not interested in Mystra outside of the part she plays in BG3, that's fine. But don't then go on cherry-picking the Forgotten Realms wiki for evidence to support your "Mystra is a vengeful ex" reading, misinterpreting and removing all the context from the "facts" you used to bolster your objectively wrong statements (like Mystra goes after young men, Mystra damned Gale's soul to a fate worst than death when she cast him out, etc.)

I have seen posts sympathizing with Gale as a victim that are meant to be jumping off points for the OP to share their own experiences with their faith or religious authority figures. There is nothing wrong with these. I was not complaining about that kind of post. Those write-ups are less about analyzing Mystra as a character and more about the OP relating their personal experiences to Gale.

I was talking about people who put time and effort to (often erroneously) cite Forgotten Realms lore and pick apart in-game dialogue to slap Mystra with monstrous crimes, all so Gale can have a villain on the level of a Cazador or Viconia that his white knights that vanquish. I have never seen Mystra brought up as a groomer to explore what abuse looks like in a world where magic and gods are indisputably real. They are clearly and primarily written to villainize her and justify negative feelings towards her, as their conclusions never go beyond the reductive "Mystra is a villain and this is why you should hate her as much as I do."

That sort of pretense, using the serious issue of abuse for nothing more than to justify petty grievances over a fictional character, is ultimately why this discourse frustrates me (and the commenter judging from what they wrote).

I do not care about convincing anyone whether it was "actual" abuse, grooming, or rape.

There are probably good discussions out there in the world wide web tackling the power dynamics of mortals and immortals in the Forgotten Realms. I do not care to join them. This post was not made to define what "actual" abuse or grooming in this scenario is, because I don't and have never claimed to know. If you want to have those discussions, I sincerely support you in that endeavor, but this was never one of the points I was trying to make:

I also strongly disagree with the idea that power imbalances are moot if the mortal half of the couple actively wants to sleep with the immortal half.

This was never meant to be a statement about the ethics of mortal-immortal relationships in general. (These scenarios will never be reality, so I don't see a point in having an ethical stance on it, but more power to you if you do and you see value in it as a thought experiment.) But I understand why what I wrote can be read this way, so let me clarify.

In D&D, where one party is a real person roleplaying a character and the other party is a non-player character whose decisions are all decided by dice roll, the other players around the table do not get to accuse the DM of setting up a rape scene when the player character sleeps with the the much more powerful, immortal goddess. This is what I meant by my original statement:

I've already yapped on about how Forgotten Realms writers and D&D players love to make goddesses fuck their heroes, and all that pearl-clutching over "power imbalance" and "consent" is moot when the mortal party is actively rolling to seduce the divine entity.

I see Mystra and her character as inextricable from the TTRPGs tables she was designed for. That's why I went into so much detail about how she was used and characterized in those tables.

I wrote that not in reference to pearl-clutching over Gale and Mystra, but to Mystra's relationships with mortals in general, seeing as how they've been misconstrued as evidence of a "pattern of abuse" and how she is "canonically a female predator." In reality, it was never meant to be a pattern. It's unconnected writers and players horny for Mystra slotting her into the same archetype. It's different playthroughs of a the same game being re-interpreted and then distributed as an anthology of her "conquests."

It's the ignorance and disrespectful approach towards the medium that rankles me. These "Mystra is a groomer" takes cannot make it more obvious that they don't care about D&D. Mystra could have been a telenovela character and it wouldn't make a difference to their analysis of her.

If you want to examine Mystra in the vacuum of Baldur's Gate 3, then by all means. But litigating the "power imbalance" between Gale and Mystra the way a lot of these posts do is so reductive and betrays such a limited understanding of the text. Never mind the mechanics of magic, never mind that gods in Faerûn are not omnipotent or omniscient, never mind the complex powerplay between deities and their worshippers, never mind the history of gods being usurped and betrayed, never mind how powerful Gale would have to be to call himself an archmage. None of those "Mystra is a groomer" takes seem to take any of those into account. They reduce all that to Mystra = immortal and therefore she has more power than mortal Gale and therefore she is the abuser in this scenario, and anyone who brings any nuance beyond that are hypocritically dismissed as D&D nerds who can't see past their attachment to Mystra. I'd call these "analyses" a close reading to the point of myopia if these were actually critical readings and not callout posts feigning at analysis.

Debate the ethics of Mystra and Gale's relationship if it sparks joy and camraderie, more power to you — your conclusions are yours at the end of the day. But think carefully on what point you're trying to make in the first place. (Again, generic you, this is not directed at the commenter specifically; they had a good point about framing this relationship as abuse in the context of exploring the subject religious trauma). I have no interest in playing judge in these characters' divorce court. Why do you, though? What do you get out of striking your gavel and declaring to our online void that Mystra is unquestionable abuser and Gale is her unquestionable victim? What does that judgment add to our experience of the text and its themes? Does your worldview really not allow you to read this relationship, with all the history and lore that led up to it, as anything beyond that?

"Mystra groomed Gale" takes rustle my jimmies like no other. I get how some people who don't know much about her beyond BG3 may have this interpretation, but if you're like me, a woman who's been playing since the days of AD&D, you'd understand why accusing Mystra of being the bad person in this scenario may hit a nerve.

TL;DR: Did Mystra take advantage of Gale's devotion to her as his goddess? Definitely, she's a Faerûnian deity — they subsist on worship and adulation. Does that make her his abuser? Eh... man, maybe it's high time that a lot of us learn different terminology for unhealthy relationship dynamics other than abuser-victim. I've seen a couple of posts that are really gung-ho about forcing every companion character to be some sort of abuse victim, because that's what they've decided the game is about. I mean, they're free to interpret the game that way, but damn, we're really out here flattening god, the very concept of magic itself, into the role of an abusive ex, huh? A fantastical, nuanced relationship between mortal and immortal set against the backdrop of a rich palimpsest multiverse digested like a YouTube drama video.

Let me try to explain my perspective by going through the history of Mystra, how she's utilized in Forgotten Realms lore, and treated within D&D games in general.

MYSTRA THE MAN-EATER

Since her creation, she has always been depicted as the sexy goddess whose main purpose was to be a wizard player's muse as well as their patron. Back then, D&D (and TTRPGs in general) was a heavily male-dominated hobby, so Mystra (and Mystryl, her avatars, and all her other incarnations) was catered and shaped by that demographic.

Because it's the player characters and Wizards of the Coast who have narrative agency and many of them want to fuck a goddess, they make stories where Mystra comes on to them because their character is just so good at magic. They designed Mystra to be a mysterious, beautiful love interest because they wanted to use her as the crown jewel of their power fantasy of being a super cool and powerful magic man. You can pretty much see this in the Elminster books and the Avatar series with Midnight (one of Mystra's avatars). Gale himself seems to be an exploration of this typical kind of wizard character.

As far as power fantasies go, making the goddess of magic have an intimate relationship with a mortal character is fine. It's the ultimate validation for a burger-flipper when the god and all source of burger-flipping is head over heels in love with them. It also doesn't have to have a sexual component to have "magic" and the magic system itself enamored with a character — depending on the game and DM, Mystra's favor can be entirely symbolic and metaphorical. A fine power fantasy in the power fantasy generation game.

So because everyone literally wants a piece of her, you end up with Mystra having more Chosen running around than any other god. Understandable given what she has to do to maintain her massive portfolio. It fits her as the personification of magic — someone who entices ambitious young spellcasters but burns them out through obsession and overreaching. Consume any Forgotten Realms-related media, and you've probably come across at least one campaign, novelization, or character backstory that use Mystra for the role of sexy sorceress goddess that's the alluring (yet often demanding) patron of some magic man. Whomst amongst our wizards haven't been visited by Mystra in the night ordering him to do plot point, he rolls to seduce her, and she has no choice but to admit that she's actually attracted to him because the dice said so? It was a community inside joke passed around tables: Mystra the Man-eater.

But then some BG3 fans started taking the joke seriously...

MYSTRA THE GROOMER AND WHORE

This piece of dialogue has done so much irrevocable damage.

Some (Galemancers specifically) have interpreted this to mean that Mystra is known to go after young men. She does not. She has more documented Chosen than other gods due to her massive portfolio and power level, but there are just as many female Chosen as there are male Chosen. Minsc, like most of us in this fandom, is speculating and doing so in a way that uplifts Gale at the cost of taking a bit of a jab at Mystra.

"Mystra's a whore. She boned Kelemvor and Elminster and so many of her Chosen, taking advantage of them as a goddess," they say as if she didn't have her romantic relationships all as different people and in different bodies. Her avatar Dasumia was the one who had an intimate relationship with Elminster, and it was the human Midnight (who later ascended to become Mystra) who was Kelemvor's lover (who himself was a mortal adventurer at the time).

This is why Mystra is, how other people put it, "a whore." Because WotC canonized a handful of those stories where different sexy female mage love interests whom otherwise have nothing in common are slapped with the Mystra label for one reason or another. Sometimes they're mere avatars or magical projections, sometimes they're actual people possessed by Mystra, and sometimes they're destined to be the new Mystra but don't know it yet. But those sort of nuances are lost to people who learn their lore secondhand from deliberately provocative tweets and reddit posts, flattening extremely fantastical relationships to clumsily fit a more relatable framing that'll net them more online engagement.

I don't want to argue what is and isn't grooming. But I have encountered arguments taking Gale's mentions that he was "a young man" to mean Mystra groomed him as a child. But I doubt he would have said "young man" if he meant child...

Mystra took off the gossamer veils from her body to fully reveal herself to him — or whatever romanticized way Gale tells you that they were intimate. The man speaks in half-abstraction and metaphors because it's revealed later on in the romance that all their love-making happened outside the Material Plane. They were very intimate, but never physically had sex (or had any physical contact at all because gods are only allowed to interact with mortals through their avatars or projections). If Mystra "groomed" Gale, so did every other god who revealed themselves and made themselves vulnerable to their followers. Shar grooms her justiciars when she brings them into her dark embrace. Umberlee grooms her clerics when she swallows them up and gives them her wet kiss.

MYSTRA IS A FAIR GOD ACTUALLY

Look, gods in D&D-verses are, more often than not, dicks. They have to be or else there would be no need for adventurers to fix wrong-doings if the gods weren't so detached to the suffering of mortals and regularly making earth-shattering calamities.

Mystra, as a patron, is actually one of the more fair and hands-on dieties. She's one of the few gods who rewards benevolent ambition and punishes destructive hubris, knowing the line between the two. In the Elminster series, she (or one of her avatars) assists Elminster in taking down one of her rebel Chosen who has abused her blessing to become a tyrant. Azuth, one of her Chosen, has achieved godhood through her. In fact, she is divinely obliged — forced against her will, some might say — to help mortals she would personally rather smite. There have been so many instances where Mystra has to be the bigger person. As far as gods abusing their followers go, Mystra is low on that list.

There are barely any stories of magic abusing spellcasters, but there are cautionary tales aplenty of spellcasters abusing magic.

ON GALE SPECIFICALLY: HOW IS MYSTRA THE BAD GUY HERE?

Gale is the first to tell you that he "violated her boundaries." Mystra told him not to mess with the Tome of Netheril and he did it anyway, so he's fully aware that the orb in his chest and his fall from grace is his own fault. Mystra didn't cast him aside just because she felt like he was getting too big for his britches. His actions actively endangered her and the Weave.

(Mystra is wrong about certain details on the Karsite Weave if we're going by Forgotten Realms lore, but she's not wrong about its existence being a danger. BG3 takes a lot of liberties with the world Faerûn, so I can't definitively say whether Mystra being wrong was her lying, Larian rewriting canon, or this incarnation of Mystra not knowing the true nature of the Fall of Netheril. I could go on about what effects the Karsite Weave actually would have on magic, but this post is already long enough. )

Gale only starts to resent Mystra when she asks him to detonate himself. Elminster makes it sound like an order, but from the way she doesn't punish him in the epilogue if he chooses to keep the orb, it feels more like a suggestion. If Mystra wanted Gale well and truly dead, she has so many options.

Throughout Faerûn's history, Mystra herself has constantly been betrayed and taken advantage of — her power coveted by ambitious men who claim to worship and love her. Honestly, as far as goddesses with traumatic histories of being killed by ambitious men go, she's pretty chill about Gale. The fact that she allows him to become the god of ambition in the end if you choose that path? Well... let's just say she's not the one who looks like the evil ex who was only with their partner to take advantage of them in this scenario.

CONCLUSION

Mystra isn't the only goddess to have romantic relationships with her followers. I've already yapped on about how Forgotten Realms writers and D&D players love to make goddesses fuck their heroes, and all that pearl-clutching over "power imbalance" and "consent" is moot when the mortal party is actively rolling to seduce the divine entity.

But notice how the male gods rarely have intimate relations with their mortal charges? It's almost as if Mystra was objectified for years by horny nerds to be the sexy sorceress who validates the more important male hero. Fast forward years later, she's now being slut-shamed for all the lore of her sleeping with the more important male hero by a new crop of fans who would love to think they're more progressive than the horny nerds of the 80s, but fall into the same trap. Mystra has so much potential for complexity, but they choose to flatten her because they ultimately don't care about making stories involving complex female characters.

Instead, one of the most powerful beings in Faerûn has no bigger role in this universe than to be your girlfriend or your current boyfriend's evil ex. Wow, the realms of your creativity and respect for women truly know no bounds.

[velvetjune]

remedy games are very good and people should play them

[archersartcorner]

Back in Far Harbor gang… I get they probably didn’t want to extend a cutscene where the player had no control out too long, but I do wish in the Acadia meeting that you can eavesdrop on they brought up Nick 😭 but they do Not so here’s me making up scenarios. The Usual. 😏

[loregoddess]

*slaps the roof of Unicorn Overlord* This game can fit so many self-loathing characters, tragic siblings, siblings with complicated relationships, children with complicated feelings towards their parents and/or parental figures, parents mourning their dead children, and characters who are generally a little bit fucked up but doing their best in it.

[nikuknight]

Actually I want to answer this too!

The gameplay, like other people have already said, is top-tier. And, with the time crystal mechanic (thank you SoV for introducing that) I don't even get anxiety about having to restart the map if I mess up too badly.

I also really love how bright and colorful everything is! It's just so refreshing. The designs all look like they would be really fun to draw. I'm usually not interested in drawing humans but the designs just look so fun!

Then the story is probably one of my favorite things. It's cheesy but it's also got a flair for the dramatic, with highs and lows that I can get behind. I dunno I just think it's neat.

I think the weakest area (if I had to choose one) is the supports. I was genuinely cringing at a couple of them, but then again I also get secondhand embarrassment REALLY bad so I guess it's to be expected.

But that's just the main game! The DLC is awesome too! Its story is even MORE dramatic, so of course I love it. The fact that the difficulty is basically static ('cause it sets the levels and promotions of your units for you) is a super interesting choice. It's also a boon because your army doesn't gain any extra experience from completing the DLC story maps.

My main complaint about the DLC is that the maps to get the DLC Emblems in the main story are LONG, like holy shit they're such a slog. And your army DOES get experience from them, so it could result in some serious overleveling if you're not careful.

Overall Engage has beaten out Awakening and Warriors for my favorite Fire Emblem game. I know people disagree with the things I like about it (most people think the story is too basic) but everyone has different taste, so I thought anon would appreciate the variety my thoughts bring to the metaphorical table.

Genuine question: what do people see in Engage that makes them like the game? I'm one of those people who were disappointed in it to say the least, and I would like to hear what people on the other side of the opinion spectrum think (sorry if I'm coming off as judgemental or anything - I'm genuinely just curious).

? literally the exact same stuff as every fe game. fun gameplay, fun characters, good story, looks nice, great music, etc.

[xerith-42]

There's a version of Minecraft story mode in my brain... Okay hear me out on this and know that all, and I mean ALL of my familiarity with this game is playing it's early chapters when I was a kid, followed by watching some pig guy play it and complain the entire time.

But in Chapter 2 there's two different paths you can go down, and I find the difference between them and how that would hypothetically effect Jesse fascinating. Because Redstonia (god that's a dumb name) is a relatively chill place. Everyone there is weird, but you went to the nerd town, you met the nerds, you do some nerd stuff, it gets dangerous for a bit, and then you leave.

Meanwhile in Boomtown Jesse and Axel are literally fighting for their lives from second one and are constantly in the trenches the entire time they're there.

So we take two different designs of Jesse and just make them twins. One of them is named Jesse and the other is named Jessie and they refuse to change their names. They're basically inseparable, but then that can be part of the emotional climax that happens in chapter 1 when they realize that they have to separate from each other during a serious situation.

Jesse goes with Axel and comes back with hearing damage, new scars, a hatred of loud noises, and a lot of weird hand cramps. Jessie meanwhile gets to go on a nice little vacay with Olivia where they do a bunch of redstone and nerd out the entire time. Gives them a different outlook on things going forward that's bound to change when they reunite and other Horrors of the story happen.

[gifti3]

its been a long time since i found a game that had me excited for whats to come

this is a me thing that im talking about below... usually when i play games, its mainly about it preoccupying my brian with tasks and goals. this is why i gravitate towards sim and management games! to me thats whats enjoyable

i feel like its rare that i just play something just cause its fun to me if that makes sense. and i think infinity nikki is managing to do that like im not progressing through the story super quickly and kind of just letting myself explore, dress up and take pictures at my own pace and im really hoping it stays like this for me for a long time

[st4rstudent]

I AGREE its so crazy how zap gags weren't a thing.... like TTCC really popped off with that one! i understand TTR is moreso sticking closer to the way TTO was but WOW zap just feels so natural with a REALLY good mechanic that uses strategy in using squirt and its just so good.... also my favorite track

YEEEPP!! That's how I feel about it. Squirt and zap just mix well together. I also think the addition of an 8th gag track was also a good move, allowing for a nice rotation of combinations (like how lure-trap and throw-drop are together as a combo). And also its a nice even number. I also think it helps utilize squirt, idk just feels good to do in general. Of course, I don't really have anything to compare this to and it's just me speaking as a player of (currently) one server, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

It's my favorite too, zap warriors UNITE!!

[arolesbianism]

I may be failing my plan to not make any isat aus. So there's this guy her name is Euphrasie right. What if I took her and combined what could be 3 separate au concepts into one. And in the process forced myself to go back and reread a bunch of shit to make sure I know how to maximally fuck over this sad wet puppy of a woman

[the-acid-pear]

I never tried the option myself bc it'd probably mean skipping the Reason You Suck speech at the end (fire for speedrunners though) but I Love that you can frame your Phoneys in 3, especially so if you've already killed the previous two. Like yeah couldn't send you off to die so i'll let the goverment do it for me 🧸 like its just Peak evil imo.

[xaymak]

i think about asian link all the time. theyre asian to me like... "oh its not realistic theyre pale and blue eyed and blond" do u wanna know whats unrealistic. in the legend of zelda series thats fantasy/adventure. the way no ones just moved out of hyrule already just make a bridge and leave!!!! place keeps getting overrun!!! leave!!!!!!!!