#AS WAS THE CASE IN ACT 1

[deathbydarkelves]

Damn okay so apparently you actually cannot romance Karlach if you don't make a move in Act 1. which i did not. guess I'll just twiddle my thumbs then because I am way too far in on both saves to start over -_-

[mipexch]

magic is fuel??? hatred is magic??????

[hrokkall]

You do not need to smile.

[itsscottiesstark]

Okay but genuine question.

How do you think Crowley would respond to someone flirting with him? Like, we know Aziraphale would get all possessive and Eastern-Gate-Guardian on their ass but what would Crowley do, if Aziraphale wasn't there?

Would he embrace his demon tendencies and flirt back maybe? Nothing too serious, but just to rock the boat a bit? Or would he blush and look around for helplessly waiting for his angel to appear and smite them? Because this looks an awful lot like (yes, innocent, maybe just playful but) flirting to me:

Like, the smirk??? The drawl??? The head shake???

I'm all for Crowley being a total simp for Aziraphale but he must enjoy a couple flirty comments now and again.

[blackfilmmakers]

Alright I finally watched Castlevania: Nocturne

I can now confirm that people complaining about Annette being a one-dimensional total badass, and never showing vulnerability like her game counterpart are just being racist

[sleepylawr]

But so much as happened since I left the Underdark is like a dream of somebody's else life. I... do not know myself anymore. Except tonight. Tonight I wanted this - for myself.

[lemonhemlock]

so, i'm going through your anti team black tag and living my best life, but one post in particular that you made got me thinking.

“george made damn sure rhaenyra’s bloodline sat on the throne at the end bc, if the hightowers won, house targaryen would have been reformed, and he couldn’t kill them all off at the end of the main series”

i'm pretty sure this might've just been a joke, but it makes me curious. do you think something like a targaryen reformation would be possible, hypothetically speaking? i certainly wouldn't mind it in a "greens win" AU scenario, but that's just me. i wanna know if anyone else sees potential in this. 💚💚💚

Hello, yes, this was mostly a joke, as it happens. 😅 (anon is referring to this post) To introduce another lengthy parenthesis, I remember at the time that some of the reactions to that post were in the range for "why doesn't anyone understand that the Hightowers are also feudal lords vying for their own interests and not some great reformists out to save Westeros", which... Listen. 😄 To put equitably, this fandom has a considerable issue with knowing when to level criticism and when to just treat banter as lighthearted horsing around and not take it too seriously. Something which even I'm not exempt from, I don't think. 🤷‍♀️

So, in the interest of making a meme, that post was kind of half-true in that it simplified a more nuanced concept (that was never an avenue that the author decided to explore anyway) for the sake of humour. I have, in the past, detailed my thoughts on House Hightower and what I think is their role in the wider narrative. This is based on the information we have on them presently. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. Who knows, maybe Lord Leyton and Melara plan on blowing Oldtown up for shits and giggles. We don't have to guess everything correctly - another aspect this community struggles with in their fandom wars and obsession with having the most correct, morally pure take.

Regardless, yes, the Hightowers obviously are a privileged family at the top of the social food chain, benefitting from the exploitation awarded by feudalism - a political-economic system based on vast inequality. Therefore, any type of reform they might be willing to undertake will be limited and not really something that significantly changes the status-quo. Just like the beloved, fan-favourite, and mostly confirmed "winners" - the Starks. A third element that our fandom has trouble accepting is the concept of incremental change. I feel like it would basically be a truism to point out that incremental change has been the most reliable vector of socio-economic evolution throughout human history. So, bad news for them, I suppose, but any superficial study of history will reveal that feudalism hardly collapsed overnight. Which leads us back to the idea that any small change, no matter how limited, does matter in the long run, because, as time passes, it will be compounded with another small change and so on.

Anyway, coming back to the question. Would Targaryen reformation be possible? Certainly! GRRM could have made up any story he wanted. Anything is possible if you plan for it and it makes sense within your worldbuilding. As it stands, the Targaryens are foreigners with a questionable culture, hailing from a land that used to engage in practices that even the feudal Westerosi found backwards, distasteful, barbaric or immoral: slavery, human sacrifice, incest, great feats of violence such as pillaging and conquering neighbouring lands for the sake of feeding their population to their volcano gods etc. The Targaryens also have fire-breathing monsters that, while not exactly enough all the time to prevent any rebellions from happening, are weapons that no one else has access to and that can cause a great deal of damage that no one else can replicate.

So, in order to "reform" and integrate, they would need to renounce all that. They would need to do it the traditional way. They do some of the work, but never go all the way. They accept the main religion of the land, but they don't let go of inter-marrying, because they don't want to lose their access to dragons. There are attempts to integrate, but, by the time of the events of the main series, they have returned to incest. Funnily enough, Aegon V plays a role in both - he marries outside of the family and has no dragons left, but his succeeding son and daughter marry each other and, eventually, Aegon decides that bringing back dragons is not such a bad idea after all. I do think that the symbolic weight of Daenerys having both her parents and her grandparents as brother-sister sets is laying the "dragon blood" metaphor thick - and that it holds more magical weight than any mathematical calculation of her actual watered-down Targaryen DNA.

In any such scenario where GRRM decided to go down a Targaryen reformation path, IMO it would have been thematically-relevant to ease into it via a marriage alliance with one of the oldest families in Westeros - a well-respected, rich house that also has close links to both the only centre of higher education and the main religious organization in the land. Hence the meme. :) But it doesn't last and the Targaryens go back to their dastardly ways eventually, that's the point of them in the story, because the author chose it to be the point.

[mantisgodiveblog]

(Part 13 is here)

Back at it again, boys. This time: The House.

Nothing changed after Isa's confession, or with picking the Very Clearly Not Looping Option, rather than the "still". As the orbs scene is still the same, and none of the pillars seem to have unique dialogue, we've skipped right to the Sadness - though calming Mirabelle's nerves is valuable, we're fairly sure that the tutorial won't have unique dialogue, and even if it does, we can come back to see it later. Test us getting things blatantly wrong, et cetera.

This way, we can also potentially set the pace for later on - if we can get into a headspace where we can force the party to Proceed, rather than lingering, we might be able to trigger the party into simply Going Forward with the Death Hallyway, rather than dallying and potentially setting off a time-based trap. Set the momentum, keep it moving. Though this might make things worse in the short term, it'll keep her from getting worse in the long term - cutting it off by simply doing it, we can avoid the anxiety spiralling by fear of what might come, and cut short the ramp up. Oftentimes, after all, the fear of could is worse than the fear of actually doing it.

And there we go. Cut it off, nice and clean. This will likely affect the atmosphere later, of course, but in the moment... we can test variables later.

Anyways, a note, while going through profiles - Mirabelle requires more experience to level up than the rest of the party! Quite interesting, honestly. Now...

THIS is interesting as well. For the floor-jumping, we assume? So, if we grind, it'll be recorded as well, we assume. There IS that one achievement for getting all party members to max level, if we recall correctly - so that won't just be an Ouroboros Gambit? It'll remain, if we save it? Interesting. VERY interesting. We wonder if it's the FIRST variant you save with it, or the highest... something to experiment with, to be sure.

[vegaseatsass]

Every time I see another theory that puts Perth on Non's side as his witness protector or his mafia escape artist or his BROTHER !!! or his boyfriend (no one has this theory. This is an agenda of me myself and I) I go a little more feral. Honestly I'm just a teething snuffling raccoon creature at this point

[vagabondfromkanto]

@vindicta-reliquiae

Now that's a familiar face. Well, yeah, sure, it's her own damn face, but as used as Ryuko had grown to different versions of herself popping up from the depths of some multiverse, this one seemed even more familiar than usual. Like they had crossed paths before, some time, some place.

Narrowing her eyes a bit, just checking one last time to be sure, she couldn't help but smile.

"Well, I'll be damned. You still got that dragon tattoo of yours?" Why settle at a mere 'hello' when casual familiarity feels even better.

[selfabsorbed-selfdeceived]

back in my falsettos era because writing a 12 page paper for a musical you've been obsessed with since middle school as your first college final will do that to ya and god. act one marvin is asshole through and through let's get one thing clear. but he is a relatable asshole (hear me out)

the super heavy leaning into a hypermasculine role and trying to mold his relationship with whizzer to resemble a stereotypical heterosexual marriage because he can't be comfortable with his queerness? the losing everyone you love and destroying your life because years of deeply ingrained internalized homophobia shaped your self destructive behavior? he's horrible. and also so me

and all of this makes his turn around in act two hit so much harder. because that is also me. making very important queer friends that save your life. learning to be comfortable in your queerness in its entirety. finally being okay with expressing what a lifetime of societal indoctrination deems as "weak" and "gay" and "feminine". reconnecting with the people you've lost. apologizing and rekindling old relationships. building up your life again to something even better than what you had prior to coming out. god i love marvin. insufferable asshole (affectionate)

[superel]

SHOCKING: world's nicest friendliest man you know is actually lonely. more at 7.

[pureanonofficial]

To be clear, I'm referring to the full song, not A Taste of Pity/Pity the Child # 1/whatever you want to call that short preprise.

[xxfalfa]

the thing about shadowheart in act 1 is that I play a Lolth Sworn Drow guy, so everytime she tells me about Shar i'm like

"Huh. Yeah. Sounds normal :) "

and then we move on

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

So you know this party banter between Aveline and Carver?

Aveline: I don't like some of the people you've been associating with, Carver. Carver: Talk to my brother/sister. He/She's the one in charge.

If you're on the rivalry path with Aveline, she says:

Aveline: Who says I don't mean him/her too? This city's full of people who are dead set on ending badly. I don't want to see you end up the same way.

I just- Aveline, you- you're so- hhhhnnnngggggg

I always rival Aveline when I play a mage, and if you think Edgar Aristide Hawke, who practically raised Carver and Bethany after Malcolm died and Leandra became a distant mother in her grief, wouldn't stop dead in his tracks at Aveline heavily implying he's a bad influence on his brother and Carver shouldn't hang around him so much since apparently Ed's someone set on ending badly...? Absolutely not.

This is another case of me wishing Hawke had the option to jump in during party banter with different options, because Ed would've chewed Aveline out for that.

Oh, and then there's:

Carver: Would asking you to stop spying on me help in the least? Aveline: No.

Aveline...................stop it.

[maramahan]

my bg3 experience so far is just. i wanna be friends with everyone but Astarion Does Not Like Me Very Much