#with interesting storylines

[blackberry-s0da]

Mercy waiting for me to give him any sort of story that doesn’t involve him lingering naked in an invisible background

[theminecraftbee]

anyway, so the hermit permits: this feel VERY MUCH like the hermits going “we did not like how little we used the shopping district in 8 and 9, we want to create a mechanism that not only brings it back but hopefully forces more collaboration by preventing one guy from having the super shop”. I’m here for it! interested in seeing how it plays out going forward, it definitely at the very least intrigues me! as does iskall mentioning that if he doesn’t keep up with demand the other hermits are allowed to rebel and take his rocket permit, sir what does that mean,

[greatpistachiopie]

our destiny's children

[silver-horse]

if we are talking about the lost dream lover/daisy scenes from act 1 then we should talk about why those scenes were so good and why the loss of that storyline is so disappointing. because it's not just "oh those scenes looked better or whatever" it was a completely different character and storyline.

even though the companions pushed back way more and the whole narrative was telling you to resist the dream lover, it was somehow far more tempting. you were constantly tempted in dialogues to use your powers and if you did, you slowly started to lose yourself, the narrator said you could feel something slipping away, something you will never get back. You were giving yourself over to the fantasy, a mindflayer illusion

the game asked you during character creation "who do you dream of at night?" obviously meaning "what are you attracted to?" rather than just "you need a guardian. choose one." there is already a different implication there. I wonder how people interpret "guardian" if they don't know about the original dream lover. they might not even create someone they find tempting. a guardian sounds more like a mentor figure, rather than your ideal fantasy partner.

During early access the dream lover not only offered us power, they also showed us a tempting future where we are powerful and important and beloved and we are ruling the world. such universal temptations and desires. and we were resting on a peaceful field with the person of our dreams. it was peace in the dream world vs the real life struggle.

In the end it seemed obvious where this was leading... if you use the tadpole too much, you would have turned into a mindflayer. and whatever is left of your individuality and consciousness would have stayed in that fantasy world with your perfect fantasy partner. the mindflayer illusion forever trapped you. the song "Down by the River" was written about this fantasy dream lover. and what a banger and creative storyline this could have been. what a tragic ending! to just give up, lose yourself in the fantasy, the easy way out. choose this beautiful fantasy over the imperfect real world. and choose your perfect imaginary partner over the flawed real people, your companions. truly I mourn what an incredible storyline this could have been. It would have resonated with basically everyone.

and you would have been constantly tempted. to avoid this fate you would need to struggle constantly while the easy fantasy is dangling in front of your face with a zero difficulty ability check.

turning into a mindflayer wouldn't have been something you have the option to choose. and you can get cured no matter how much you indulged in the tadpole powers. lmao I kinda hate that there is no consequence for any of that now

[damnamour]

HOTEL MONDIAL ― S02E05

[starflungwaddledee]

Oooo starstruck dee has little stars at the bottom of her feet! Are they just aesthetic or would they make imprints into the ground? (like pawprints)

exactly like that! though she's not the only one...

edit: might need to add some additional dialogue to this to make it more clear, but a clarification in the interim; he knows about his own footprints. he's just surprised to see something similar already there when he knows he's only just landed. he lifts his own shoe to confirm that they're not identical (and also to reveal this to the viewer). seems his stoicism beat off the clarity in this one, sorry 😭

[oplishin]

le’garde as this... pathetic wannabe christ figure is such an interesting storyline to me. he’s a man who wants to ascend to godhood, he lets himself be tortured horrendously because he sees it as necessary, he sees himself as the bringer of a new era. 

and he just. fails and dies pathetically a lot. 

the ACTUAL christ figure, his daughter, is also meant to be a bringer of hope, but because he just abandons her, she becomes the opposite. her suffering isn’t some noble sacrifice, it’s just the result of apathetic cruelty. she ushers in a new era of fear and hunger (tm)

there’s just something about the fact that he wants godhood to help humans,  but because he’s so caught up in that, he neglects his actual Ascended God daughter who COULD actually accomplish similar goals. And so he fails

he sees himself as godly but he’s just so pathetically human.

[somethingoriginal127]

everyone thinks the annabeth having a crush on luke storyline is insanity but honestly him treating her as a little sister while she develops a crush and then him later using that against her is very much villain behavior

it’s gross but very much him grabbing at anything to keep her on his side. he clocked the crush and used what he noticed to try and sway her to go along with him because he was well aware of his impact on her

it’s been a while since i’ve read the first couple of books but from what i remember her never behaves like he likes her romantically BUT will use that language in order to manipulate her and get inside her head which is him using the crush to his advantage

he doesn’t ever actually act on it? (right? bc i genuinely cannot remember)

anyway bottom line the whole point is he is manipulating her. he screams family but knows she’s young and knows he’s one of very very few male protector figures in her life so he can switch up the language because she’s confused. she doesn’t know exactly how she feels about luke other than love, this is HOW he can successfully manipulate her.

[centaurianthropology]

My thoughts on C3E77

So apparently this one was controversial?

I'm going to say right now, I really loved everyone's decisions. They all fit the characters, but more they fit the players. I know that there are claims that Tal ignored all the warnings, but I actually think Matt may have misjudged the situation going in.

Ashley made it clear on 4SD that she did not want the shard. I think she's not really feeling the Dark Fearne storyline (and that's fair), and Matt seems to have missed that she genuinely didn't want to go down that route. Maybe he thought she was playing coy? Maybe they've been playing together so long he thought he knew a story she'd enjoy and missed her signals that she wasn't into it. I've done that before with some of my long-term players.

However that went down, Tal and she had a conversation after 4SD about what they wanted to do, and it was clear going into the episode that they at least had it planned out who was taking that shard, and it was going to be Ashton from the off. The fact that Matt was not expecting that somewhat surprises me. As Taliesin said: he put a big red backstory-shaped button in front of Ashton, and Ashton is terrified of losing people. If Fearne didn't want the shard, Ashton was going to dive on that grenade head-first. And part of Ashton wanted it. They are told they can't do something, and they will go about proving that old tree and everyone else wrong in the most self-destructive way possible. They are intensely punk in that way.

Matt may have designed the shard for Fearne, but this is not the first time that an item meant for one player ends up with another. Deathwalker's Ward was made for Percy, but through the events in the Sunken Tomb, it ended up with Vax and led to a hell of a story. And now something meant for Fearne goes to Ashton, and I have a feeling we're now in for another hell of a story. Because Ashton is now, essentially, a lava genasi, with three impossible things crammed into their broken body. Will they survive the campaign? I have no idea, but it has become clear that they don't expect to.

And honestly? This may well be what the Hells need, not in terms of power, but in terms of really realizing how self-destructive they all are. Marisha may say that no one loves a martyr, but Laudna was very much ready to play that role earlier this episode. Imogen is very self-destructive. So is Orym. So is FCG. The only two who have shown any degree of self-preservation are Fearne and Chet. The rest are bombs waiting for the most poetic moment to go off.

And today one of them did for a moment. They finally saw the end result that their self-destructive tendencies get them: Ashton blown into a thousand pieces, scattered across the top of the ziggurat. Deanna's ring saved him. Fearne's Aura of Life and FCG's Aura of Vitality saved him. Ashton could only roll and take damage.

Matt may have not designed it this way, but this was absolutely Ashton's 'where do you get your strength from' moment of the campaign, but in a very different way than Grog or Yasha experienced them. Because Ashton might just need this realization slapped into them by all their friends: this was dumb and they would have died because they didn't trust their friends. Because their strength and their salvation truly came from the people that love them.

Ashton has been, up until this point, a bit gung-ho to die for his friends. Honestly, they all are, and it's about time he and all the others learned how to live for their friends.

Anyway, hell of an episode, and a brutal but thrilling last hour. I was grinning right along with Sam. The mad fucker pulled it off by the skin of his teeth and by the grace of two friends dumping every bit of healing they had into him.

[definitionofacritter]

I just know that this is going to be a situation where Matthew has to post about boundaries/trust/etc because the fandom is going to be so at war over Taliesin's actions. Oh boy.

[cywscross]

I ALREADY SAID I WANTED HER BEFORE I EVEN STARTED PLAYING, I CANNOT BELIEVE SHE CAME HOME RIGHT IN MY FIRST 10-SUMMON, LITERALLY THE FIRST CHARACTER I PULLED, IT WASN'T EVEN FROM HER BANNER??? CLEARLY THE REVERSE GODS LOVE ME A WHOLE LOT MORE THAN THE TWST GODS BLESS.

[sittinginsunflowers]

Okay, maybe this is just me, but the fucking whiplash from the way Sandra Lynn and Jawbone are with Adaine over Fig or Kristen is so crazy to me. It's gotten to such a point that Emily called it out in this last episode. Like, you're telling me that Sandra Lynn can acknowledge that the bad kids have helped raise each other and fulfill emotional needs their parents haven't, but can't put together that there might be a fucking reason Fig is protecting Kristen and Adaine created a simulacrum? Jawbone, as both a guardian and counselor, just let it go that a highly competent rouge capable of finding the rouge teacher straight up admitted (1) she wanted to murder Kristen and (2) she is upset at Fig for keeping her from getting close? All this after years of being obsessed with the bad kids?

Meanwhile, they see Adaine as this competent, low-maintenance, emotionally mature adult instead of recognizing that she was taught from an early age that adults would not meet her emotional needs?

[avnasace]

some of the buddie takes im seeing on this goddamn site this week are awful

like what do you mean you want them to kiss at the bachelor party?? (which would be cheating???)

or for buck to say eddies name instead in bed???

or for tommy to be the one to realise AND tell buck that hes in love with eddie???

it genuinely just shows that people dont care at all about the fact that we got a beautiful later in life coming out story for buck, just that they just want only these specific two guys to kiss like???

we gained another queer character and buck gets to have a love interest that actually cares about him for once! these are wins!

[silver-horse]

unfortunately I have opinions about the ascendant astarion ending and I have been holding back from saying it. but it's a problem that applies to the whole game and it's been annoying me

what's actually weird about the ascendant "romance" scene is that the writer considers it a tempting option for the player. They wrote it to be bad, but they also think it's a fun and sexy option. Same goes for the haarlep scene which they also wrote that way because they find it sexy. Except finding this sexually appealing entirely hinges on the idea that the player is a submissive. So RIP to a scene that the rest of us could have found sexy because the lead narrative designer was a submissive. lmao

In this game you can have a scene where you have to kneel for a male character. But you can never have a male character do the same for you. (Halsin doesn't count. It's a vanilla scene, he is not submissive there and we are not even asking/telling him to kneel down) You don't get such options, not even if you play a drow female! RIP the number one reason for playing drow female to be honest. lol You can kneel and fully submit to ascendant astarion or fully submit to mizora or fully submit to haarlep or submit to lae'zel or submit to minthara. you can get whipped by abdirak or you can tell him "touch me and lose a hand" he even responds positively to this remark and yet the possibility to flip the dynamic doesn't exist. There is never an option where a male character truly submits to the player. RIP to a scene that would have been the opposite of the traditional dynamic. the potential that existed but they never used the opportunity

By the way, how interesting that Lae'zel is dominant but she is a woman so ofc you get the option to tell her “no you will submit to me”. You never get such switch options with any of the male characters... Obviously it's not ascendant where they could have made that an option. My point is that it's NEVER an option among so many male characters.

It's a cool idea that the bad ending in a romance means "I saw this character as a sex object" except it falls apart when the scene is very sexually unappealing to anyone who is more dominant leaning. If I see a character as a sex object then I would place them in sexual situations which are appealing to me. so the message doesn't quite work. because there isn't anything that I can selfishly choose for myself just because I like it and I find it sexy.

[socksoinabox]

four days left til prime 1b :]

[sbd-laytall]