#but I'm not sold on either

[horsechestnut]

The only thing stopping me from writing a Stranger Things Batfam AU is that I don’t know who Jonathan, Mike, and Dustin are.

[mikadll]

i'm gonna be honest, i am highly annoyed by the fact that this is one of the few times we actually get to see medic involved in direct combat and the comics decide to just kill him for the sake of, what, motivating heavy to face off classic heavy? boring ass writing decision

don't get me wrong i love the comics but i highly dislike how they played up medic to be important only to kill him off just to further the plot and give heavy more screen time 😐 they made him as disposable as a connery-era bond girl and it sucks ass so bad. what was the point of subverting the "passive healer who can't fend for themselves" trope with medic's entire character in general when you end up playing it straight for drama in the comics anyway? Fuck's sake lol

[jahiera]

You mentioned in a previous Astarion analysis post:

"But, I think, given his behavior, his casual flirtiness, his "You want to lose yourself in me," (another line I can squawk about endlessly in terms of character analysis)"

I am encouraging you to squawk. I think you've got a really good grasp of his character and I love your posts!

UPDATE***written during EA

@littlemisstrancy Sorry for the late reply! I fell down another rabbit hole of replaying haha.... Aww, thank you! I'm so glad, a good grade in Astarion is a Normal and Reasonable thing to want to achieve. But YES, I find his entire sex scene to be extremely interesting (going off of what Larian said that, paraphrased, nonsexual intimacy with some will mean more than sex with others, because of the nature of the relationship.)

What I find most interesting about Astarion's romance scenes is that the scene itself is remarkably much more syrupy than he, by nature, really is. We can point to, "darling," "my love," as evidence of his tendencies for the dramatics, yes, but given that these are petnames he'll throw out to a Tav he hates as much as a Tav he enjoys, the surface meaning and connotations of dramatic flirtations and even more dramatic pre-sex speeches.... shifts.

The way we filter these interactions shifts because we have to filter what is, at first glance, a typical romance scene, through the lens of the character giving the spiel. If Astarion associates dramatic seduction and slinky purring as simply the easiest way to get what he wants--or, perhaps, more than that, the expectation, the only way for this interaction to occur, because hollow dramatics/play-acting have been likely the only pseudo-""romance"" he's engaged in in the 200 years he's been with Cazador, that changes the meaning of everything, including the line: "You want to lose yourself in me." <- sure laddie, just keep objectifying and disconnecting yourself from the experience itself and repeat the habits of behavior that you've learned from 200 years of being someone else's toy and tool where you weren't even a willing participant in what was happening, merely a mandatory one. that'll be really great. no backfiring here whatsoever.

Okay, sorry, under the cut the rest of this goes because I went off on three different tangents to try and tie them all back together again. This is mostly my background reasoning for above. WHAT DOES THE REST HAVE TO DO WITH TAV. Honestly I'm not sure anymore I started talking and then I didn't stop talking.

It feels like so much of the overarching realities of their circumstances fall away for Tav, but it also haunts the entire interaction with Astarion. Shallow charm. Winning over people. A pretty face opening doors. I'd chalk it up to sexy-video-game-scene-writing if it were any other game, but the other romance scenes aren't nearly so grandstanding and are written I think intentionally to subvert that, so this is an Astarion Thing, and likely goes deeper than that first glance. As it stands, Astarion barely even knows who he is now that he's outside of Cazador's control. "Another thing that I've lost." -- His personhood has been nonexistent, and he's been a tool, and he's been, for lack of a better word, dehumanized to the fullest extent for an insurmountable amount of time. So of course the thing he learned best is that the easiest way to get what you want, or get what you need, is to be easily projected unto. He can't keep the facade up for very long, I don't think, but in that scene his "don't ask too many questions just look at how hot I am" mindset is fully on to me.

The thing is that his circumstances with Tav here are entirely different than the ones he's been in before, but just because the circumstances are different doesn't mean that the behavior will be different, or that habits formed out of severe distress/torture in his own words will be so easily let go of. My ULTIMATE POINT is that charm and flirtations are things Astarion clearly separates from himself and his actual beliefs, and he treats what we conceive as "charming" behavior fairly flippantly--once again, that "my love," means... not... a lot. we just met 2 weeks ago, pal. And I don't think he's interested in using it like that anymore, because he's not making a super great effort to be perceived as likeable. It comes out mostly in scenes where flirting and charisma are expected of the interaction and then they're pushed to their most exaggerated format, when he isn't actually typically like that in other conversations. Dramatic and foppish, yes, and enjoys ridiculousness in several formats, yes, but not nearly so egregiously saccharine, at all.

If he is starting to give a fuck about Tav, or even the group, that's something else to grapple with, and it's still at this point I think partly wrapped up in the idea that Tav makes for a "good ally." His scenes where he says: "we're more alike than I thought" "You're stronger than I gave you credit for," feel more genuine and honest to me in some ways than his sex scene speech. His fondness for Tav and his idea that strength/power/security can be found by sticking close to Tav can be true at the same time, in an interesting dance between his growing connection to them and his general ideas on people, power, and control.

So secondary: is Astarion a manipulator who's using this sex scene to control Tav emotionally and that's what he's got going on here? Eh... maybe yes and no? He wouldn't ask Tav if he wasn't interested--as seen by how he'll shut you down if he can't stand your guts. If he's using sex for that, it's up in the air, open to interpretation, depends on your HC, I can see both interpretations and I'm not going to claim one is more true than the other, since there's evidence for both "manipulating" and "not manipulating" and to me, the truth falls somewhere in the middle. I'm sure the thought has probably crossed his mind, but I don't actually think he's good enough at charm to follow through on that, which I will now elaborate on in INTRICATE detail....

Astarion isn't actually concerned about being likeable, or wanted within the group--or, rather, he may be concerned about it (because there's both safety and danger in a group setting), but he also isn't concerned about it enough to not advocate entirely for self-preservation and selfishness at generally every turn. He also isn't concerned about winning over the group enough to abdicate his firmest belief: that the tadpole is an advantage they should use, and a power he intends to keep.

And, if you relent to the group, he calls you spineless in the face of everyone else. So he's not afraid to insult you, Tav, either, certainly not to preserve some loose semblance image of ""charming,"" which he's already really bad at maintaining in general, because his brand of everything can just as easily piss people off as compel. Bad taste central.

Hell, his intro scene displays this best: He lures you in with a silly little lie that makes him sound weaker than he is ("You can kill it, can't you? Like you killed the others!") and then he strikes when your back is turned. Shallow charm is an accessible tool, he doesn't have the patience for long-lasting plots or extended slinky charm. Or if he does, and he's been manipulating all of us, he's not doing a great job, since half the party is making faces at him the whole time. Buuut....

During the mirror conversation, if you tell him vanity is a weakness:

(Text - Astarion: It's an indulgence, I'll grant you, but a weakness? A well-presented face can open a lot of doors.)

There is an awareness of beauty and charm that Astarion references often. He isn't really afraid to objectify himself for his own means, or being perceived as weaker than he is (except in certain circumstances). He knows these things are quite relevant, socially. Beautiful people are treated better. Beautiful people typically can get away with more. Actually I could probably approach this from a Class and Wealth related lens too, because his history as a magistrate probably also influences this mindset a lot, but that is. a THIRD separate essay.

He seeks to be strong enough to beat Cazador, at least partly through the same means that Cazador himself uses. The tadpoles give us absolute authority, in the end, and Astarion has zero qualms inflicting onto others what was inflicted onto him when we use them. But prior to the tadpole, what tools did Astarion have at his disposal? Very few, and most of them revolved around empty charm, quick-thinking, and trying to predict unpredictable moods and then enduring whatever came of those moods. That hollow charm falls under these kinds of tools, which gave him very short-term influence over at least the people he would lure back to Cazador. Likely the only form of control or power he had within all of that, and where he himself was without control as his entire being was under someone else's thumb. And those habits will likely persist for awhile, until he relearns who and what he wants to do and be outside of Cazador's purview. Which could mean anything, this is not to make him sound softer than he is or sweeter than he is. His vainglorious bitch syndrome is 4D chess of truth and not truth, empty cloying, vicious lashing out, and 10 degrees of identity issues wrapped up in all of that, so it's difficult to pin down just one thing as Real or Not Real, and I don't think even he knows what's Real and Not Real right now.

[iwasbored777]

It makes me wanna facepalm whenever I remember how hard Poppy was crushing on Creek cuz she's so in love with Branch now and that could've been Creek but he was a fucking idiot and blew it

[colorful-bees]

I gotta say, I absolutely adore the VA they got for Volo. When it comes to voice actors for Masters, it can be a real swing and a miss because sometimes they just don't sound like what you think they should. But Volo's voice is so perfect imo; his voice doesn't sound out of place at all to me.

[morrigan-sims]

More Pirates...

Left: Healer/Surgeon (Elf, he/him) Right: Sharpshooter/Gunslinger (Human, she/her)

(what can I say? the pirate brainrot is strong right now)

[lovinglapislazuli]

This was supposed to be a warmup before continuing the color wheel piece, but I liked the idea of MK doing the Lupin run so much it escalated into a full piece😂 I did a full background for this! A background!! The power of MK's inspiration u.u I want to see a paintball challenge again, it would be so much fun!! Sneaky MK could actually be good at it 👀

This is the Lupin run btw:

[spd-magenta-ranger]

Look at her.

LOOK. AT. HER.

[ekat-fandom-blog]

Gods & Goddesses AU

Ghosts are gods. Like Clockwork is god of Time, Undergrowth is god of plants, Nocturn is god of sleep, Skulker is god of hunting, Ember is goddess of music, etc.

Gods are made in different ways. Some gods were always there like the Ancients, some were born like Frostbite and Pandora, some gradually rose to god-hood after a long period of gaining belief like Ember and Spectra, and some were human before being chosen by the Infinite Realms to become a god like Danny and Vlad.

[minqies]

the tickets have been acquired! mission was succesfull <3

[ukulele-mixtape]

revisiting sa1 like almost a decade or so later has been so therapeutic and fun. genuinely i remember why is it that i fell in love w this series so hard

such a charming, quirky, and genuinely goofily self indulgent little game. obvious gameplay jank aside (played dx so yeah there's a bit more than usual but that's also the version i grew up w so shhhh lmao), i had so much fun revisiting the first video game i ever finished on my own as a kid :)

as an aside: i was heavily surprised to realize that sa1 is, like, wayyyyy less slippery than i remember in comparison to sa2. like every time i try to play sa2, it's so much harder for me bc this shit feels like i'm running on ice a lot of the time. never really had that problem w sa1 during my replay. is that an uncommon opinion??? idk????

i'm planning on revisiting sa2 anyway to get my feet wet w it once more. playing sa1 really revitalized my desire to actually pick up my controller and start playing shit again. maybe this is just what i needed...! (maybe i'll tackle the whole series at some point as a countdown to sonadow gens who knows hehehe)

[coldgoldlazarus]

I've got a lot of mixed feelings on the Avatar: The Last Airbender reboot, but I think probably my biggest source of internal debate now is my parents; specifically pop and stepmom. Been wanting to show them ATLA for years now; stepmom has seen some of it but not all and not in proper order, and Pop I don't think has seen any of it outside of maybe a couple clips.

The big issue is kinda, running up against that cultural "Animation is for kids and thus not worth my time; and furthermore animation that is aimed at kids especially, clearly can't have anything of substance in it and is extra not worth my time." issue with them. Even if not said directly, that is very much the vibe I've picked up on whenever I've tried suggesting it, there's always been something else that takes precedence.

And now that a live-action Netflix version is on the way, they're suddenly all over it. "This is gonna be so cool it'll be like the thing you've been wanting us to watch but in live action!" (And ergo implicitly more mature and worth our time.) And setting aside any concerns over how faithful or not an adaptation it may be, (though the trailer released today has mostly alleviated those worries) if we assume it'll be essentially a shot-for-shot remake for the most part, I've still got kinda mixed feelings relating just to the reception.

Because part of me is like, fine, whatever, as long as it works, right? If this shift in style makes it more palatable to people like my parents and the actual story remains intact, it is still a Very Good Story that I want them to be able to experience, and so if this is what it takes for that to happen then so be it.

On the other hand, it is still unfortunate that this may be what it takes, and part of me is just kinda dreading the inevitable "Oh this is so cool, I really love how they've taken the original storyline and added in all this thematic depth!" and having to try to explain to a brick wall that that depth was always there in the original.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[ashtonisvibing]

i'm so tempted to go hunting for wherever my mom might've put my skyrim cartridge

curse you cakejumper and your cheese quest for making me wanna try playing again-

[skadi-hunt]

((red eyes for a request for Astarion from Baldur's Gate 3))

[vickyvicarious]

I always try to give my polls all ten options, and I try to make them increasingly less hinged as you go down. I had to really work to tie in the paprika though. Option 9 is time loop but I ran out of characters. I'm glad you enjoy it! I'm less glad that an option I actively dislike is winning :/

I was definitely picking up on that trend as I went down the list, ahahaha. Alas, that is the downside of the polls if you actually have your own opinion on the results. It's still early in though, plenty of time for the lead to change!