#2am things

[beyond-borderline-x]

I feel… exposed 👀

[glkr-xo]

“I’m so tired of being here,

Suppressed by all my childish fears

And if you have to leave,

I wish that you would just leave

Cause your presence still lingers here, and it won’t leave me alone.

These wounds won’t seem to heal.

This pain is just too real.

There’s just too much that time cannot erase.”

— Evanescence 🖤

[satsuma-saturn]

i like knights, especially narukami, a normal amount (im lying)

[so-tired-of-dying]

How long, has it been?

Since we last spoke?

A year, or maybe

Two?

Try three on for size.

And so much has happened,

Since we last spoke

My dear,

I have seen both heaven

And hell,

Since we last spoke.

I have lost

Some of those

Important to me.

My birthday buddy

And my best furry

Friend.

I’ve been bruised,

And even scarred in

Invisible ways.

I got passed through

The lost

And found.

And yet

Though you abandoned me,

I have thought of you. At the end

Of the night.

When I let out my heavy sigh,

And finally breathe.

I think of you.

Warm and gentle,

It’s soothing.

And then only

The worst.

The words

And feelings.

The empty left inside,

As with you,

Went my trust.

That was so

Slowly built.

And then

I make a choice,

Of letting down a wall.

Maybe, you are safe?

But what if,

The kindness and warmth.

The words?

are only scrapes left behind.

Caution

Remains.

Words tickling the brain.

Promises,

But could be false.

A new feeling,

With reservation, hesitation.

But excited.

Heat rises through me,

A warm desire.

What if,

I let you in more?

Give in a little

To the pressure.

Meet you,

Halfway even when you don’t

Understand my pain.

Why is it,

Like no time

Has even passed?

Like you

Never hurt me?

Like you

Have always been there?

Like we

Never paused?

Like I

Never cried

Over you?

Like we

Spoke last week?

[broccolitown]

"Don't be oversensitive, don't overthink" they'll say

Internally it's soul crushing, heart breaking

You wait for the catharsis, but it never comes

You wish the pain will go away but it deepens

You want to run away but you're too afraid

"Cut them away" you'll say

But every word is like a knife deep in your chest, salt to your wounds

When will this ever heal, you wonder

Tired, exhausted, thinking it'll never end

Asking yourself why you were born if they wanted to abandon you

"This path is what I'm meant to walk" I'll say

To learn to love others as I've never been loved

To see beyond the forced laughters

Embrace the struggling and unloved

And when you have children you'll know gender does not matter

"I am loved, I am secure" They'll say

As you embrace them

As you see their identity grow with each birthday

You'll know you were meant to experience this

To never make the same mistakes they did

[lazylittledragon]

'i'll just do a couple of doodles of mombin™/platonic stobin parents' nevermind, borderline graphic novel

[pencilscratchins]

atla renaissance pt 3 calls to me like a siren

[half-asleep-artist]

2am doodle of ranboo eye reveal

[heartorbit]

holy quintet looks kind of different

[anarchythephoenix]

NO ONE needs to call me out THAT SPECIFICALLY

[beyond-borderline-x]

🙃🙂🙃

[glkr-xo]

I hate that I betrayed myself for you

[zillychu]

assorted brainrot from like 2 months ago

[delta-lethonomia]

There's a reddit thread on the BG3 sub where the user u/InklingRain posted a spreadsheet they made with all the companion approvals. Super useful in general both for playing the game and for fic, so I thought I'd post it on tumblr and play around a little!

There's a top row with the average approval by companion, but I didn't find that very useful, so I changed it to the count of approvals (i.e. count of approvals & disapproval total, how often a companion had a reaction to something). We all know Astarion gives a lot of disapprovals here and there, but they're only -1 at a time, so no big deal, right?

No. Minsc has the least at only 45 reactions, Halsin at 95, Minthara at 145, and of the main companions, Gale is pretty average at 198, Lae'zel at 224, and Shadowheart, rather opinionated at 258...

but that's nothing compared to Astarion's 406. That's almost 150 more than the next person!!! That's more than Minthara and Shadowheart combined! Babygirl really woke up one day and decided to get in a snit over everything that happens 😂

(Longer post about count of positive and negative opinions, sum of approvals and disapprovals, and some major outliers below. Picture with values at the very end.)

But that's a bit disingenuous. If we look at the ratio of positive to negative opinions (not taking value into account), Astarion's pretty average at 30% (negative count over sum count, so let's call that negativity). This is similar to Gale (31%), Karlach (30%), and Lae'zel (32%). In theory, getting Astarion's approval or disapproval is just as easy as any of theirs, with a 20% bias towards positive approvals. Later companions are weighted heavily towards the lower end of the spectrum, with Jaheira at 13% negativity and Minsc at 9%. As you only get them very late, it's pretty clear that the game gives you a lot of opportunities to get their approvals and thus open up more of their quests and dialogue.

However. We have an outlier. Wyll Ravenguard, clocking in at an indecent 38% negativity! Which really just goes to show, while Astarion is the most opinionated, Wyll has the most disapprovals, making him the judgiest companion of all 🤣

However, this really wouldn't be a good post if we didn't look at the value of approvals. Karlach, for instance, has the strongest disapproval value of -100 (given if you sleep with her and then call it a mistake). Ouch. This is clearly at outlier and doesn't say much about Karlach's changeability of opinion in general. If we look at the sum of positive and negative opinions, this is a very heavy swing, making up 100 points of her total 191 disapproval points possible to her 281 approvals total. Another outlier is Minsc, who currently possesses a 43% disapproval percentage (a heavy -50 disapproval given if you sacrifice him to Sarevok. Jaheira, by contrast, apparently doesn't give a damn, or her value might simply not be included in the dateset.)

Removing outliers is really a matter of opinion here, so I'll only remove the most extreme swings, such as the above mentioned disapprovals.

The otherwise strongest swings are Astarion (-15 for telling him it was a mistake preventing him from drinking Araj's blood, or saying you only wanted to sleep with him, not deal with his trauma) and Wyll (+20 for siding with Karlach during his confrontation with her, which really shows he didn't really want to kill her and is very grateful you stopped him). Halsin gives +40 for reuniting Oliver with Thaniel, which...lifting the shadow curse is sort of his life's mission, and a bit of a unique case, so while it makes sense, I think it's such a unique event that can't be topped by anything else and will remove it. Jaheira give +20 for extending the Emperor's protection to Minsc, and, for funsies, Minthara's heaviest disapproval is -5 for donating to Lolth at the Stormshore Tabernacle. (lol)

I only chose to remove the aforementioned Karlach, Minsc, and Halsin values, as they're all very large swings and rather character-defining or personal to the individuals mentioned, so I don't think it says much about them in a more general day-to-day sense.

Now, using the sums of our negative and positive values, Gale is our most Negative Nancy, clocking in at 37%, which goes to show that while he's pretty average for the amount of things he cares about, when he disapproves, it's a strong one. Next up is Astarion at 35%, and Wyll at 34%. Lowest are Jaheira and Minsc at 7% and 4% respectively, which makes an intuitive sort of sense: Jaheira is old and just over being upset by the players poor choices, and Minsc is an insanely positive person overall. The next most positive companion is Halsin at 13%, which also matches with his vibe pretty well, followed by Minthara at 17%, Karlach at 24%, Lae'zel at 26%, and Shadowheart at 28%.

Tl;dr: Astarion has many, many opinions, but Wyll is the most judgemental (most disapprovals compared to approvals possible). However, when it comes to the strength of those disapprovals, Gale reigns supreme, followed by Astarion.

If don't break Karlach's heart, help Halsin achieve his life's ambition, or sacrifice Minsc, then they're pretty positive overall. Later companions are heavily weighted to approve of your actions, and Minthara is comparatively judgemental, but overall far more easy to gain approval than disapproval from.

If you take the average of all these values and include the later companions to look at as a personality "baseline" of how judgy and how strong those disapprovals may be, then...the Act 1 companions are all dramatic af, which really should come to no ones' surprise, while Karlach is the most willing to give the benefit of the doubt imo.

[broccolitown]

Good for you but

Cringe for me

Consistently, ugh

Continously, pretentious

[lils-cards]

making my friend guess my current milf crush is SO funny