#but when I wanna share poetry and add tags so other ppl can see it

[blue-as-the-languid-skies]

[menkhu]

just finished pathfinder wrath of the righteous and i have. thoughts. spoilers ofc

hOW are y’all finding this and liking it two years later and actually do not tell me i will simply continue to pretend that this is my private little diary kept locked with a little plastic key and no one can see how many times i’ve doodled my name with my crush’s last name inside

lol if for some reason you’re here on this post i made like a year ago that isn’t in any main tags, i’ve. been updating. adding new thoughts i just have so many i finished an azata run and i loved aivu sm she reminds me of a friend

the updating does mean that this is going to become incomprehensible pretty quickly because new thoughts are inserted where i feel they’re relevant and the surrounding text is not edited bc the effort isn’t worth it when this is entirely for my own gratification so if you’re reading good luck

OK not to be hvaing Daeran Thoughts™ in this the month of december 2023 but. i just wanna talk about how “i thought you didn’t want to lose me” and “see? i’m indispensable” are two voice lines of his. this man? who doesn’t acre about how other people see him? who never wanted to be on this adventure in the fisrt place? is worried about being unwanted?? i am clenching this thought in my powerful jaws and i am frantically shaknig my head like a dog with a bone

ahahahahah gonna be playing for a third time. i think i’ll do the trickster mythic path? i have a strong distaste for evil shit and a mild distaste for lawful shit, which make demon, lich, and aeon not particularly appealing. i could also switch to dragon or smth; i was tempted in my last playthrough but didn’t want to potentially lose aivu, so.

ajshdfjgka playing as a man this time to maybe hit on sosiel we’ll see and when i went to retrieve woljif i lost it when he called me dreamboat i just wasn’t expecting

working through a lich playthrough now and in chapter 3 it’s actually been really sick. my favorite little touch is how, when controlling the crusades, each victory adds more undead to your forces. in order to get myself to choose the option i had to go hardcore into the roleplaying. my commander is maya, a druid, worships urgathoa, doesn’t like being human and is honestly indifferent to human suffering. she spends most of her time in wild shape. ppl confuse her and her leopard companion, lilia, often. probably would have disappeared into the sunset except that she found being made commander extremely funny and then developed a possessiveness for the crusaders so she’s actually trying to lead well.

i am physically incapable of choosing the dialogue options that let you start arueshalae’s romance like i am not grabbing anyone’s hand and telling them i’ll teach them how to love (if i had the power to rewrite, i’d have the line be something more like. i’ll help you thru this every step of the way. anything you need. anything you want.) similar problem with camellia. i refuse to lay on thick compliments and butter her up by talking about her social stature. and then the next chance to express interest is when she’s high off committing murder and wants to fuck like. nah. it’s impossible to romance any ladies in this game whoops

sosiel’s romance is also kinda,,, painful. i cut it off w him start of the 5th chapter because i just couldn’t feed into his fairytale romance novel bullshit and pass on something that felt more genuine (yay 3rd time romancing daeran.) it’s p easy to follow his route by being kind and showing that you appreciate the gestures he makes without fully buying into it. and like. being inexperienced in love and trying to express your feelings by writing bad poetry is actually super charming. but sosiel darling if you’re going to give an ultimatum while extolling the beauty and virtue of love shared by two people while your competition says that my heart doesn’t have to belong to any one person you’re just asking me to give up something good that comes at no cost for the privilege of being trapped a role in your fantasy. nah.

started lann’s romance. i do not like him. it’s fitting that i’m having the commander i don’t like romancing him. lmao it’s only my second time not romancing daeran; first was with arueshalae (pinched my nose and made those starting choices, found the whole thing kinda lackluster? tbh?) hate the way lann is sometimes straight up mean. and how he tries to frame it as a joke. hate how he’ll say you should hang crusaders who commit petty theft. hate his weird hero complex that’s incompatible with the way other’s lives aren’t a priority to him and mostly arises out of. idk a sense of ego? still holding out hope this’ll be interesting even if exploring the character in this manner isn’t the most appealing to me. (LOL i cut it off with him. he was just like. oh look at me being so pathetic trying to date you it’s crazy how could someone like you ever take an interest in me i’m so pathetic and i was like. okay. maybe you are pathetic. maybe i don’t have an interest in you. and then i was running the lich path so this saved his life actually lol. lmao. lmfao.)

ember is my daughter

i’m kind of surprised that that was the final chapter. it was an appropriate end and everything but the way crusade management was set up, it felt as though there was more to come. like. events dumped three free generals into my lap when i already had the map cleared out. there were some references to generals reaching level 20 but none of my three (the ones i actually used) got anywhere close to that. there were so many different types of units but for most of them, there wasn’t any reasonable way to accrue a usable number. with the way galfrey mucked things up, i was frantic about getting the armies in order to face big things to come and those big things just didn’t come. the fact that crusade management wasn’t rewarding is probs my second biggest complaint.

i’m really glad there’s a wimpy baby difficulty mode because w h y are so many enemies able to rip me apart when i have 57 ac and w h y are there so many enemies with absurd spell resistance and ac high enough that you can only pray to crit

lol @ this previous paragraph because i have a playthrough on core difficulty where i fought most of the extra bosses for the achievements and leveling the characters myself from the ground up gave me a good understanding of their abilities. i definitely am not an advocate of the autoleveling; either the builds are inherently mid or just incompatible with the way i play. also dispel magic is so strong.

pretty sure i’m going to be playing through again though because i want to see other mythic paths (my first playthrough i didn’t look up anything about unlocking them so i only had angel and demon available at first lmao) and to spend more time with some of the companions. i never found all the masks for nenio :(

(edit: after azata path i did find all the masks for nenio and we became friends ! there was a lot of content there jfc. i do not recommend playing when u have a migraine and ur memory is diminished but it was neat. i do like puzzles even if some of them are obtuse it’s fine we all have the internet to help with that.)

ran into a lot of glitches which i guess will happen when you dive in headfirst on release day. there were a few times people didn’t recognize the choices i had made. at one point i had a dialog option with camellia that implied we had a salacious history except no such thing happened and also i was playing as a lady and she’s straight. wasn’t able to finish a quest because the necessary items didn’t exist.

lol i had an entire companion glitch on me. i had literally no interest in greybor and i accidentally killed the dragon before i went traveling with him anyway so when he met up with the group and told the commander to hire him or he’d be forced to kill her i was like sure okay buddy you can do that. he did not die. he showed up wherever companions were supposed to show up, but i could never talk to him, just attack him. he didn’t realize he had already been rejected how embarrassing

(idk if greybor glitched again or if i did something wrong but azata playthrough i really did try to recruit him but he got pissy after the fight when i wanted to pursue the dragon and even though i tried i failed but maybe i did something wrong?? waited too long? did very little to endear him to me tbh)

(trickster playthrough and i finally have greybor as a companion. i’m hoping to like him better after spending more time with him but. he really is just a wannabe manly man’s wet dream of a roleplaying character. in a want to be him way, not a want him way. haha unless)

kinda surprised that i ended up romancing daeran but tbh no regrets. the more i got to know lann the less i liked him (the final part of his questline was. ugh. why are you so whiny about how i kept you from killing yourself.)(i swear sometimes he says things just to remind you that his alignment is lawful neutral)(one of my first impressions of him was scaly alastair but that might be disrespectful to alastair tbh)(actually he and daeran told me to choose btwn them at one point and i was like???? lann i said it’d be cool if you wanted to hang out without making up stupid excuses like sparring matches meanwhile daeran has been doing all sorts of wining and dining what sort of incel bullshit) (there’s some party banter with ember where she’s like, lann jokes but really he’s just sad and i was like yea i feel that)(it’s like he isn’t even committed to his jokey persona) and arueshalae was wonderful but i’m not a fan of the teaching someone how to love narrative (i wanted to. i really tried but i just couldn’t bring myself to choose the dialogue options where you like. take her hand and tell her you’ll show her how to love it’s too much.) daeran has the best banter and also he filled the war room with flowers so a+ partner

(his alignment is evil but honestly i don’t see it? he can be vengeful ig? not that he’s never shitty but i’d put him at neutral maybe leaning evil bc the good counters the bad. like he only punches up he regularly condemns evil acts and he’s sweet with the other companions so it’s not difficult to be fond of him)(FURTHER. something i put together after uhhh some number of playthroughs. there’s banter where daeran asks arue if she’s actually good with desna having taken control of her life bc the same thing happened to him with the other and it was terrible and he hated it. so. all those times he tries to tempt her. he’s not just being awful. he’s trying to give her a choice.)

more thoughts abt his relationships with the companions!!!! it’s actually rlly funny that my instinct was to say that he was sweet with them bc on a replay i became aware of just how shitty he sounds if you fully take his words at face value. you can’t, though. he acknowledges himself that venomous is his default affect and that he has trouble expressing his kinder emotions. he also says that when he has a problem with someone, he isn’t afraid to let them know it. there’s a bit of banter where lann says anything less that an insult from daeran is p much a compliment which i think is an oversimplification but just drives home the point that even others can see that when he’s being mean, it’s often more about having fun than genuine distaste. when coming from him, things that might seem mean are actually meant as playful teasing. 

when i say he’s sweet with the companions, i mean that he lambasts paladins frequently, but always lets seelah know that he isn’t talking about her; he likes her. (yOu’rE nOt LiKe tHe oThEr pAlAdInS is maybe not a great worldview but)

he lets sosiel know that he appreciates his art. there’s banter where he tells sosiel that he would be quite the catch ;)

he’s actually protective of ember; he warns her to be careful about cultists and zealots. this one really gets me because the two have such fundamentally different views but i don’t recall him ever castigating her for it. rolling his eyes from time to time, maybe, but mostly nudging her away from what he sees as dangerous.

he’s happy to play along with nenio’s dumb experiments. finds them amusing.

he and camellia can be so bitchy about other nobles together it’s like they’re on the same team and it’s great.

don’t even get me started about his relationship with woljif ok. woljif is everything high society hates so of course daeran latches onto that right away. i love the banter where he talks about introducing woljif to parties with other nobles, which of course could be interpreted as him looking to rope woljif into those things for a few laughs, but what really gave substance to it for me was an exchange they had in the thousand delights. woljif is excited to be in a brothel and daeran is like. listen we don’t consort with demons they’re miserable creatures instead, when we get out of here, i’m going to give you a whole bunch of gold and give you a tour of the brothels in absalom. he so easily tells woljif that he’ll give him the things that he desires. he commits to making this trip with him. there is very little to gain there for daeran; he could easily tour the brothels alone were he so inclined, but instead, he agrees to do this for a friend.

actually i feel like in banter, the others are more likely to be making fun of him than he is of them? he’s both perfectly self aware and he likes who he is so he’d mostly be amused by it. in general i don’t think a companion insulting daeran (or he them in the case of those like lann and seelah who can bite back) is a sign of a bad relationship.

(enough about daeran back to the other companions lmaoo)

i like nenio more than i expected she’s so funny. she seemed cold at first what with her refusing to remember your name and all but after a while, with her earnest enthusiasm for what she does, it became endearing.

actually i’ve discovered that having good banter is one of the most important factors in how much i like a character. like i have no problems with seelah or sosiel but since their banter tends to be flat i just never fell in love. also i’m not really into camellia’s whole thing but i have fun with her because of the noble code switching she and daeran will do, like referring to each other by title.

i think a lot of the reason lann fell flat for me was because of his inability to maintain the funny guy persona? everyone thinks of him as the guy who makes jokes, but. i remember first talking to him and he tells you he wants to make a difference. and when you ask for clarification he’s like imma invent a new type of salad :) jk actually i hate myself and i want to die in battle because i’m afraid of my death being as meaningless as my life. took like no prompting for him to switch. rewrite of that exchange bc it frustrates me

lann: i’m going to invent a new type of salad and have it named after me

commander: a new type of salad.

lann: what, not aiming high enough? fine, i guess i can take the culinary world by storm and have enough food named after me to serve an entire buffet, but only if it’ll make you happy

commander: it might not be well received if you’re making mongrel food. your people have...interesting palates.

lann: ah, but that’s my secret advantage. by including mold, i can guarantee that my salads will be one of a kind.

commander: what is it really tho

lann: not the salad, no surprise there. not the buffet either, though i like how you encourage me to reach new heights. it’s more that...i want to fight on the front lines. if i’m risking my life so that others don’t have to, then i’ll know i’m making a difference

unsurprisingly, i like lann more in the context of his interactions with daeran.

wish we could have irabeth and anevia as companions. love them.

(azata playthrough, galfrey lived and i was so pissed. never again.)

anyway daeran and woljif are best friends forever and it’s so funny have some screencaps