#this has taken up like my whole day

[phantom-does-a-thing]

Me having ideas to write and wanting to write them:

Merry-Go-Round life grabbing me by the jugular:

[averlym]

(click for better resolution, etc.)

[pinguuu-ni]

hello guys <3 i've been absent for a looooong while but i want to know, how have you been doing?!

[mattodore]

i’ve been pretty quiet on here and avoiding my activity and dms these last few weeks because october was easily one of the worst months i’ve had in a very long time and i lost my family dog of seventeen years and had a medical scare for not only myself but my cat and just all these things happened at once that felt incredibly hard to bounce back from mentally… but aside from being sick atm things are starting to get better for me and my family so hopefully i can actually start being. normal. again soon 🧎

[kimjunnoodle]

i’ve never been one to 100% games but i stayed up till 4 just to get this

[afterthefeast]

re lrb in any case to me astarion’s arc is less about regaining agency than becoming aware that he already has it and has to act like that. there's a distinction between agency as a material fact, ie having the ability in theory to make your own decisions and act on your desires, and the awareness of having that agency.

i'm no psychologist, but in my experience one of the most helpful steps in recovering from mental illness has been the awareness of my own agency ─ yes, sometimes I feel as though my life is completely run by my intrusive thoughts, but invariably getting out of that place has involved a recognition that ultimately, I am the one in control of my thoughts and I have the agency to work through them. that doesn't mean that it isn't hard, or time-consuming, and sometimes I don't succeed in the way I'd like, but nonetheless the ability to at least try is and always has been in my power.

in baldur's gate 3, your companions appear with varying degrees of agency (aside, obviously, from the tadpole they all share). they range from gale, whose current situation physically and magically restricts him but who at that moment in time doesn't have many other immediate restrictions on his day-to-day actions, to wyll, whose every move is watched by his abusive warlck patron.

nonetheless, your companions benefit from being shown that they not only could have agency at some point in the future, if they break their pact/shar's curse/free cazador/free orpheus/fix the infernal engine/get the crown of karsus, but they have agency now and must therefore use it responsibly. wyll is already to some degree aware of this, i think, even if it's only because he is so morally forthright ─ he's one of your companions who remains actively trapped by their abuser during the game, yet he refuses to kill karlach because he knows that would be wrong. even within his severely limited circumstances, he makes a choice, he demonstrates agency. in the shadowfell, shadowheart ─ a cult victim subjected to extreme psychological and religious abuse ─ has the choice whether or not to kill aylin, and can make it either way.

astarion, at the point at which you meet him, has just been given freedom for the first time in, essentially, his life. it's no surprise that he doesn't know what to do with thise newfound agency, and doesn't recognise it for what it is, given that he literally cannot remember ever having control over his own life. that's deeply tragic, but it doesn't erase the fact that he has control over the things he does during the game. those actions (for example, given i am still talking about that last rb, talking about the children he kidnapped and gave to cazador as though they were nothing), are things he has agency over and is responsible for. nonetheless, he acts as though he does not, lurching from one attempt to gain power to another (killing the druids to suggesting you use whatever's in moonrise to your advantage), because his own self-perception as someone completely powerless is so overwhelming. he must accrue power because that is the only way he can make sure he's safe and can never be hurt again. it's just that that self-perception is not completely accurate, he does have agency; if he makes choices that result in moral wrongs, those moral wrongs are his to bear.

i'm not getting at astarion here, I don't mean to imply that he's at fault for this attitude. it is, obviously, the natural response to 200 years of enslavement and abuse. kind of the whole point of the game, of all of your companions' quests, is that if people are hurt and abused often they will feel as though their only avenue towards power is to do the same to others. but being severely traumatised doesn't make his behaviour okay; he doesn't get a free pass to do whatever he wants because of cazador. you can like him, literally who am i to say otherwise (i like him too!), but don't just excuse everything he does or get rid of the most interesting parts of his character because you're unwilling to grapple with the fact that as it stands in the game, he's morally incredibly complex.

i think there's a tendency to assume that a character either must or must not have agency, and to present it as a binary, because for some reason it's used as a shorthand for moral culpability, when in reality the relationship between agency and culpability is significantly more complicated. i haven't really been getting into coerced choices here because that's a whole other kettle of fish (though i will give the necessary disclaimer that my stance on this is quite clearly influenced by the fact that deep down i'm a bit of a virtue ethicist). nonetheless, while this is my pop philosophy take and i'm not trying to impose this overall moral framework on people, i think it's pretty reasonable to say that lack of agency does not mean that what you did was not wrong.

implying that astarion is at fault here would be indicative of the very attitude I am trying to oppose ─ the idea that people either have agency or don't, and if they do bad things with agency they are evil, but if they don't have agency they are victims. astarion is both ─ he is the victim of horrendous, harrowing trauma and yet he has done bad things and in fact visited that same trauma upon other people. there's no escaping this, and i think it would be bad for astarion to just brush everything he did for cazador under the rug because he did it for cazador. he still did those things ─ he might not be culpable, i do not think he can be considered as such, but there's no way you go through all of that and don't feel guilty for it.

notably, if shadowheart kills aylin and wyll kills karlach (if he can? i actually don't even know if he can do that, but hypothetically), they are still responsible for that action and it was still morally wrong. they have to deal with that: part of dealing with it can be to recognise the coercion they were subject to, but the fact that they lacked agency doesn't just erase the wrong or mean it was never wrong in the first place. likewise, astarion becoming the ascended vampire is still obviously a terrible thing to happen for him and everyone else, and is in no way justified just because it might finally give him the sense of safety and control he craves. the whole point of that moment is that even when he is being retraumatised, when he has returned to the place and person that hurt him, astarion has the capacity to choose, and to choose the right thing. acting as though his trauma means he has absolutely no agency whatsoever and so never has to address the fact that he can, at various points, greatly fuck up, just removes one of the biggest themes of his whole character.

tldr: astarion has agency, one of his greatest challenges is realising that he does and that he must use it responsibly, and acting as though that is not the case does a disservice to his character and the story it is trying to tell. also it is deeply deeply boring. the end.

[hirazuki]

You know, normally I see an update; get excited about reading more of the story and seeing more of Hoshino's gorgeous art; am ever so slightly confused with some details while reading because updates are so sporadic and I haven't had the chance to go back and give everything a proper re-read; and, unfailingly, leave with a wistful longing for Lavi (12 years real-life time since we last saw him and counting ✌️). This has been the pattern for the last several years --

but

but

BUT

This? I never thought I'd see this. I never knew I needed this. Link's expression? His posture? The direction their relationship is developing in? The lighting??

I am 100% okay with Lavi not appearing in this chapter, actually.

[tsukisdiary]

sometimes i think about the fact that rick's mom canonically didn't give a shit about his achievements when he was growing up and after his daughter died he had to encounter multiple versions of her who were constantly frustrated due to having their potential nipped as a teenager because of something that happened when they were seventeen without even knowing that in multiple realities the same event that changed their lives was also orchestrated by the same fathers that abandoned them. and how angry he must feel with everything; with the citadel, with other ricks, with himself for even leading the fucking other ricks to begin with. and just being so angry he can't shoulder all the guilt so he chooses to project it on his son in law who happens to be an incompetent, egotistical, idiot

[savage-rhi]

🫂😪

[gibbearish]

am finally back home and can say without a doubt that i am just fundamentally not built for long distance travel however the train was much nicer than planes

[quietwingsinthesky]

I just think Sam should have missed Lucifer more post-s5. Cage torture an optional addition to the dynamic. What I needed was for Sam to be like 120% more obsessed over the fact that he was never going to be Lucifer’s vessel again and to be angry with himself that he could ever miss that and be unable to stop himself from still wanting it.

[raksh-writes]

Tfw I have so much to do, and so much I want to do, but my body hits me with the "is it a migraine? Or am I actually getting sick?" episode of the miserable sunday variation.

Fun :)

[tytrack]

it actually makes me so angry that people are not there for you the way you need them but in a way that wants to make them feel good

[dylanconrique]

it's been far too long since i last had a parking garage scene.

[famewolf]

also been struggling again with allowing myself to rest ... had a lot of plans today that went awry. getting that Anxiety of not feeling like i accomplished much of anything on my days off despite that not being true

[ironmanstan]

My dad will cause a whole fight w my mom arguin about how he doesnt wanna pick me up from school and wants to drop me off and then drop me off late every time he does