#Courses Excel

[humming-fly]

was anyone gonna tell me shadow saved rouge's life in sa2 or was I just supposed to find that out playing the game myself

(this worked out as a rather fitting closer for the Final Day in Year of Shadow haha, hope ya'll have a fun new year! 🎉🎉🎉)

[merrigel]

I want it back = I drag its dead weight forward

[spirkbitch]

Rewatched A Piece Of The Action with my siblings and they were very amused at the amount of spirk there was

First there’s Spock trying to Spare Kirk’s feelings over how bad of a driver he is (feelings are illogical unless they’re my husbands feelings)

Then we have a series of completely logical and emotionless reactions from Spock

‘Why is this man touching my husband?’

‘WHY is my husband touching this man? Right in front of me’

Then his look to McCoy after ‘ah, no need for concern, he’s getting me a suit too’

Spock realizing he was kinda into it when Kirk started ordering him around

Then Kirk’s reaction to Spock copying him is also adorable of course

This one’s a bonus since it isn’t really spirk, I just love how Kirk’s master plan was distracting them for a minute and then flipping the table. Spock reacts immediately, naturally, and then it’s all topped off by McCoy executing a beautiful neck chop

All around perfect episode, loved it from start to finish

[pearlore]

david attenborough voice. The L D Shadowlady

[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.

[trekscribbles]

Sophie loves to go dancing, but she rarely goes with Nate. He takes it too seriously, and he always get involved in the dance hall politics. Plus, as technical and detail oriented as he is, he isn't really good at dancing. He can do the steps, but he doesn't understand how to let himself get swept away by the music.

The first time she asked Eliot, he laughed at her. Said there was no way he was going to spend his night off in some dusty ballroom when he could be at home relaxing. She'd shrugged it off, having anticipated his refusal, and had gone by herself, intending to find a partner when she got there.

Except when she showed up, she found Eliot dressed in jeans and a button-down shirt, his hair pulled back in a pony tail, mumbling something about not wanting her to have to go without a partner.

The next time she asked, he complained about how slippery his shoes were and how handsy Mrs. Gunderson had been during the open dance, but he picked Sophie up at 6 and dropped her off at 10 and smiled most of the time between.

A week after that, she found a flyer for a foxtrot competition slipped under her door, with the note "I'm free on Saturday" scrawled across the bottom.

(They won.)

They go several times a month now. Hardison laughs when he finds out, but Eliot says it's good exercise. Parker is very excited about their trophy but loses interest when she finds out it's plastic. Nate comes to watch sometimes, because as much as he dislikes dancing himself, he appreciates the skill involved.

(Maybe he's picking up pointers. He'll never tell.)

[fantastic-nonsense]

got a message out of the blue about that 'why Batman doesn't kill' explanation I left on someone else's post like two years ago but it was just "wait is Alfred dead????" and I sort of forgot that most of tumblr Batfam fandom doesn't actually read comics and so largely has no idea that Bane killed Alfred back in 2019 and he's stayed dead since

[mizgnomer]

David Tennant promoting the 2025 EE BAFTA Film Awards

for Tennant Tuesday (or whatever day this post finds you)

[puckpocketed]

i don’t forget about too much

[okyum]

bucktommy get back together and break out the pet names for the first time on screen. tommy with the fond, exasperated, "honey" and buck bluescreens so hard hen needs to check for a pulse

[eighthwholove]

Regenerated.

[primus-why]

I love the idea of Ratchet being captured while badly injured. It wasn't necessarily on purpose-- he knows the Cons would love to take him prisoner in order to utilize his medical skills, he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once they realized he was a medic they pulled him from the rubble and got him on a slab pretty quickly all things considered. The trouble is there's a reason the Cons value medical expertise-- he's bleeding out, they don't have enough supplies, and at this rate Ratchet knows he's gonna die. So with whatever strength he can muster he gets the attention of one of the grunts working on him.

Ratchet: H... hey... I need you... to pass on a message...

Con 1: To who, your Prime? Not gonna happen.

Con 2: Yeah we don't really do the 'any last words' thing.

Ratchet: No... *wheeze* to Deadlock.

Con 1 & 2: *go still*

Ratchet: Tell 'im... I'll... be waiting... for him...

Con 2: Wait a klik...

Con 1: ... You don't think--?

Con 2: -- Frag! Oh frag!! His vitals!!! Dealock is gonna kill us!!

Con 1: Scrap! Get Soundwave on the line, have him patch to the DJD!

Con 2: He's not gonna make it! I don't want them to know my face!

Con 1: It. won't. matter. If we wait, it'll look worse!

Con 2: Oh Primus, I hope they don't pick up...

Con 1: Just go!!!

Ratchet: ... I'm waitin' to... kick his aft... *passes out*

[starleska]

seeing Lux's glorious chompers here gave me flashbacks to when we realised the Toymaker has way too many teeth in his mouth 😭😭

[polaritydisturbed]

With the new episode and the return of the Catkind (yes, that is actually what they’re called), I feel obligated to remind everyone that it is canon—like, actual from-Doctor Who: The Monster Vault-canon—that they only exist because:

A) Humans accidentally left some pet cats on a planet (Tandon), B) A few billion years later those cats evolved into humanoid cat people, and C) When humans eventually stumbled back onto that planet, a woman named Brooke looked at a Cat prince and said “yeah, I could work with that,” had his babies, and that created Catkind.

So basically: humanity lost their cats, forgot they did that, came back eons later, found out the cats had gotten sexy, and "danced".

[theofficialpeanutgallery]

I like to imagine Gordon getting increasingly flustered at the vortigaunts' nonstop praises. Just like, face slightly going pink, rubs the back of his neck and looks away all "aw, shucks".

Like, yes, Gordon Freeman is an unstoppable force of nature, but he's also like. Just a guy. He's a nerd and probably a little overwhelmed with suddenly being this Big Hero™️ that everyone is in awe over.

He's the guy who single-handedly WRECKED the Citadel with nothing but the gravity gun, destroying everything and/or one in his path, but like. They kidnapped his friends. NOBODY touches his friends without feeling the wrath of ten thousand supernovas.

But he's also the guy who fiddles with stuff in his friends' labs like a kid in a candy store. He's a man of multitudes.