satellitesunone

[satellitesunone]

y’all know that when people talk about Wyll’s content disparity that we’re not just talking about the amount of scenes or the amount of hours he gets right?

to talk about the content disparity we are taking it in with the whole context. And the fact of the matter is Wyll receives very little content as his own independent character. Almost every single one of his scenes is dependent upon his relationship to Mizora or to his father. We are talking about how much character development he gets. And he gets very little not in direct relationship to him essentially being a slave. We are talking about the racist undertones (if you can call them that) within the content and that much of his worth as a character tends to be dependent on Mizora. Wyll does not occupy a lot of space in his own story. And he is an origin character and a romanceable companion.

you cannot ignore the whole context that people are speaking on. Yes we can just take the data and compare hours and say it’s “not that bad” but break down those hours to how much of it is about Wyll vs how much of it is about Mizora and about him essentially being enslaved and you’re going to notice the content disparity that people are talking about.

when you enter a conversation about fandom and in game racism you do not have the privilege nor are you allowed to ignore the whole and larger context that people are speaking on. To cherry pick and share only some of the information at hand and not what is being criticized at large and as a whole is very ignorant and does unfortunately, and unintentionally, further enable fandom racism.

please be mindful of how you speak and the pre existing conversations you are entering into

#just finished his quest last night and fuuuuuuuck man #planning a fix it fic but i genuinely don't know where to start #the bugs made his final dialogue play really weirdly and the grand duke shit really came out of nowhere at the last fucking second #i also don't know why they swerved into a whole nother character's storyline at the end wtf was that? #it just reeks of not knowing what to do with wyll and we've seen this in media time and time again with bipoc characters #in a piece of media where you can commit genocide and child trafficking and do war crimes with the in-universe version of nukes #the 'good' storylines are very centrist very 'woke but not too much.' don't wanna be too liberatory in our politics #why make the only black main character have a cop dad and make him cape for carceral punishment as part of his quest? #the story/interpersonal tension that relies on fantasy racism doesn't actually serve a purpose if you don't have shit to say

[satellitesunone]

Been thinking about Astarion and his disapprovals when you help people. I think that yes, it's partly about envy that no-one was there to help him, but also about choice and control. (BG3 is always a game about autonomy, after all.)

So hear me out: back in the pre-turn days, Astarion was a magistrate. And if Baldur's Gate is anything like our medieval and Renaissance eras? He would've had to sign off on some pretty damn awful punishments. (Look at how he talks in the Justice test about how one has to punish thieves, and the Early Access bit where he talks about how killing Arabella would be too harsh for her stealing... they should've cut off her hand instead, the "proper" punishment for thieves and what he would've sentenced her to. He handed down an edict bad enough on a Gur tribe that he was essentially murdered in revenge.)

So how do you justify this to yourself? Well. He had money, societal power, and pretty privilege - this is almost certainly why Cazador chose him, too - and was kind of crap at empathy. And we know he likes seeing people get their comeuppance, likes seeing them taken down a peg. So he carefully ignores all the ways he's been lucky, all his privilege, and pretends he got there all by himself. He goes, "They had a choice. There's always a choice. They weren't helpless. They should have got a job, not begged, or stolen. They earned this. They brought it upon themselves. I'm simply serving them the consequences. Don't look at me like that." (I think this also ties into that later-retconned part about him giving prisoners to vampires. They're just criminals, after all, the same way the Gur are cutthroats and goblins are trash. They chose this life. They chose not to matter.)

So then he falls painfully from privilege, and gets the full horrible buffet of helplessness at Cazador's hands. He "resisted least" - see, surely there's a way to be punished less if you just do the right things, if you say the right things. The spawn who resist are doing it wrong. They made their choice. (He ignores that he's never the favoured spawn, ignores the pliers coming out again, and tells himself this.) If he can say that, he can pretend he still has control - and he so desperately wants control. His old self-justification has been turned up to eleven by the trauma of Cazador.

And suddenly... tadpole. He's free. He's also, as said, traumatised. He tells himself he's never going back to Cazador - look, Cazador can't compel him, look, he can walk in the sun, look, he's seducing Tav. He knows what he's doing! He's in control! The tadpole just being luck? He can't afford to think about that. Luck can change. Which means Cazador, and everything else, no matter what Astarion does or prepares or succeeds at, can happen again. He's helpless. But no. No. He's not some helpless damsel in distress - his first meeting with you was mocking the very thought!

But look. These people are showcasing their helplessness, almost proudly. And it's horrifying. And they keep saying familiar things - they're saying things he's said, in his more vulnerable moments. And Tav keeps saying things like, "They had no choice - we have to help them." But of course these people did. They got themselves into this situation, they can damn well help themselves out of it.

Because if they didn't have a choice... then neither did all the poor bastards he sent to their deaths or horrendous punishments over the years. Neither did those he brought to Cazador. Neither will all the spawn he's going to sacrifice in the ritual. Neither did he. All that separates them from him is luck, and luck can change. He's not in control. The thought is horrifying, so he pushes back against it. "They're weak, pathetic [...] We are better." Even as he approves of getting Wyll out of the pact and getting Mayrina away from the hag, even as he wants Lae'zel to "break her chains", because he feels a kinship with them. Even as, in a rawer moment, he tells the story about being locked in a crypt and tells Tav not to judge him for what he had to do for Cazador. If he stops to examine that too much, he'll panic. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug. So move on, keep desperately snobbing.

He keeps trying that even when Tav meets his siblings and treats them with empathy (empathy that confuses and horrifies him). "They lured thousands to their deaths," he tells Tav. "I doubt Baldur's Gate will miss them." Or him. If they had control, he had control too. Life before turning taught him that if you're punished for what you've done, with cruelty or with death in a ritual, the punishment implies you still had a choice. He vacillates wildly between victim-blaming and talking about them as helpless unfortunate sacrifices while he tries to get his head round this. Even while, as Tav insists on saying, all that separates him from them is a tadpole. His victims are "criminals and brothel-goers," he tries desperately to tell Tav later - look, they deserved it!

The breakthrough is when he finally admits that the spawn are "the innocent, idiots, and the unlucky." Just like the others whose chains you've helped break, through the acts (his approval slowly starting to turn round on some of them, as this realisation creeps up on him and gains speed). Just like him - he was unlucky. (Which means he didn't deserve two hundred years of enslaved misery, and the people on this journey didn't deserve what happened to them, either. Which means he deserves to be treated with kindness, and so do others.) He can turn from that, and keep desperately scrabbling for control with the ritual (he can command others! He'll "never have to be afraid of anyone, ever again"), or he can stay a spawn, and accept that.

The kind of control he wants is an illusion. You can never truly control others without losing yourself in the process. All you can do to change people is decide whether to help - to reach out and hope they reach back. He's seen this time and time again with Tav, saw it even before he woke up in the ground. It's just that finally, he's stopped outrunning the thought and accepted it. Sometimes he still backslides, sometimes he still sees those who hurt him in the ones Tav wants to help, sometimes he's still rather an arse... but he's starting to see it now.

#i have a series of almost 4 fics i haven't published very much in this vein #like explicitly confronting astarion with how much luck plays into survival under oppression #and him observing healthy group dynamics with distrust (at first) #the first one wasn't even supposed to be about astarion i was trying to process telling arabella about her parents #and basically turned into astarion freaking out because tav is insisting that children deserve childhood

[satellitesunone]

[satellitesunone]

"I didn't bring Wyll around because I didn't know how to use a warlock" i literally played bg3 with zero knowledge on anything DND related and he was consistently in my party and incredibly useful at that. say what you really mean next time

#also you can reclass him?? #like i will fully admit that i have had a much steeper learning curve than most players and i don't particularly care for warlock powers #so after we rescue karlach and mizora punishes him i tend to treat it like a career change #given the questlines it's always good to have someone in the party who can do more radiant damage so i've been giving him the paladin class #and since i really really dgaf about the christian themes in the game it doesn't bother me if there's any inconsistency #his storyline will play out the exact same way

[satellitesunone]

a.) if you don't long rest very often you miss out on a loooot of companion dialogue and opportunities for approval. on my first playthrough, i was treating long rest purely as a game mechanic and not an opportunity for storytelling and didn't get his approval up above neutral by act 3.

b.) if you miss out on the scenes with gandrel the monster hunter or araj obludra, it is really difficult to get to the meat of his romance arc. the monster hunter thing alone pushed me up from neutral to fair approval.

c.) not knowing that his evil scheme proposals can often be defused by simply asking him how he's going to accomplish said scheme. poor guy

d.) it's by design. astarion a very good performance of someone deeply traumatized and masking their pain. not a lot of folks actually know how to navigate that.

Me, baffled that Astarion isn't a more commonly completed romance: ???

My non-tumblr friends: "Yeah he shot me down at the tief party" "what no of course I don't let him bite me" "ugggh he's impossible to get approval with and still be a good person" "I have no idea what he wants" "He just randomly broke up with me in Act 3 bc I didn't get his approval high enough in Act 2 and I'm not going back that far."

My Tav, a chaotic goodboy cleric who has never faced anything short of total adoration and devotion from Astarion: "Did I just get an A in vampire smooching?"

#that being said i will bring up the critique that there's not a lot of genuine reciprocity in the romance arc #maybe some folks don't need that but i would love scenes where astarion shows genuine interest in you and your life/emotional state #like yes - he needs lots of care and reassurance by the nature of his story #but also it would be nice for a good aligned partner to see that growth reflected beyond one big test of character that concludes his quest #the vocal performance as the approval changes gave me butterflies don't get me wrong but its flirting not relationship building #even halsin has a chance to ask tav to share about themselves and he's got a third of the content #one of the things i enjoy most about astarion is how curious he is and how excited he is to experience new things #i think it would be so enticing if you start to see a shift where he gets to be curious about you

[satellitesunone]

#i need a version with the hampster too

[satellitesunone]

i like how her greetings in camp evolve as you gain approval with her. she goes from commanding to receptive. "speak">"you must have questions">"i'm listening">"is something burdening you?"

she's not a good romance option for me but she is extremely friend-shaped and fun to write dialogue for.

People do not talk enough about how amazing Lae'zels voice acting is. Devora Wilde put her whole ass pussy into some of those lines but nobody pays attention and calls laezel one note and angry. But have you listened? Have you heard her voice shake as she cries "what good - this heart of stone - for it to be shattered?" Have you heard the conviction where she declares that Vlaketh has sinned against her? Have you listened to the fear in her voice, the slight tremble when she is talking of becoming a mindflayer and the way that she has utter awe in her tones when she experiences something that is truly spiritual to her? Like. It's such a subtle and great performance.

[satellitesunone]

may i suggest a burnt clove instead of kohl ala 18th century beauty? and if you break up with karlach for astarion, she's really nice about it apart from calling him a ruffly-collared leech and threatening to throw his pomade in the river if he's mean to you, so, bang on.

I just think if you dunked Astarion in water he'd be unrecognizable for like 10 seconds. There is no way in hell he has naturally black eyelashes. There is no way that coif can be achieves without pomade and a comb, and there is no way that it would be water proof.

MOSTLY THOUGH I just wanted to like a nautiloid crash vs. on-the-road Star. Suspicious stranger vs. my favorite little creep whose head is like a lovely dandelion.

#my fave silver haired anime prince in western media #apart from elfquest's skywise

[satellitesunone]

I am not a random Kpop hater. I work with folks who have survived sex trafficking, who have received trafficked individuals for medical attention, who have been intimately involved with collecting information on the traffickers and their clients. I have knowledge of the systems that feed into a global industry.

When I say Seungri should be in prison, that his behavior is that of a predator and that he has profited from men who want to buy Asian girls, I have a solid reference to compare him to. Big Bang was my first group. From trainee days to now, Lee Seunghyun has exhibited a lack of personal accountability, a desire to manipulate the narrative about himself, and opportunism especially as it regards women. Just as Harvey Weinstein had a reputation for abusive behavior for years before his crimes came to light, Seungri is known for crossing lines to the point of it being an industry joke and a frequent talking point on variety shows. I will never stop calling for a real investigation into his ties with the sex trafficking industry, his connection with the idols who raped and filmed their targets, and the release of the names of the men who were alleged to have been his customers.

I have nothing to lose by being wrong about him. If I’m right, then there is a web of law enforcement officials, people in the idol industry, foreign investors and clientele who are profiting off the sexual violation of women in South Korea. As soon as the police themselves were implicated in Seungri’s crimes, another independent investigative body should have been in charge. Lee Seunghyun is not an innocent man.

#Big Bang is four #if they even can escape the connection with Seungri #my radar is up on all of ‘em but there’s more evidence that they didn’t know #Lee Seunghyun is a sex trafficker #even if we are only going by the rapes at Burning Sun #Seungri for jail

[satellitesunone]

(191031) olivia hye, full moon

#how to cop that makeup look??

[satellitesunone]

Can Seungri go to jail now? Please? Can he please go to jail now????

[satellitesunone]

if he can do it, so can your faves.

[satellitesunone]

Lim Jaebeom 임재범 • January 6, 1994 ↳ I looked up at the green light from everyone, and they were like the stars. I will try my best to make the stars stay with us forever.

#Trying to remember the sweetness #while figuring out accountability stuff

[satellitesunone]

happy birthday jaebeom! • 1994.01.06

I want people to remember me as an artist. I will try to write more songs for my albums. I will write from my heart, and show sincerity through my music.

#Foodie??? #I mean I feel like by that measure Kirby is a foodie

[satellitesunone]

man in black & jang chen

#that facial hair makes him look like my friend Ethan #which is to say normie jb looks like he smoked cloves in high school and now talks about sound systems and processors too much

[satellitesunone]

Happy birthday, Jaebum! ♥
#IThinkILoveJBDay

[satellitesunone]

happy birthday to a man of multiple colours! whether you’re going by jaebeom, JAYB, def, or any of your other nicknames, I know that everything you do will be amazing. 2019 was an amazing year to experience and take joy in all the different sides of you and I hope to see even more in 2020.

#He has meant a lot to me for sure #am kinda at a crossroads with kpop (again) #but i’m down to celebrate this man today