Idk My Brain Does Somersault About These Two

collection of useful things tumblr has taught me:

even if you can't fall asleep, laying down with your eyes closed will still rest your body

you don't have to brush your teeth standing up

you don't have to do any chore standing up, from dishes to showering

you don't have to shower with the lights on

if you can't brush your teeth, flossing and a tongue scraper gets rid of plaque and bad breath

if you can't do that, mouthwash kills a lot of bacteria

eating "unhealthy" food is better than eating no food

you can make the same meal everyday for however long you still want it

some pills come in syrups or chewables if you can't swallow them

kids nutritional shakes can be a quick way to get fuel if you can't eat/don't have time

if walking hurts/exhausts you on a regular basis, canes and rollers are for you, no matter how young you are

we have free will—if doing something "out of the ordinary" makes life easier for you, do it

Honestly the Halsin romance frustrates me so much, because he makes it so clear that he wants something more and you just… have no option to give it to him?

“You’re all that I want” he says but then you’re literally not allowed to tell him that he’s all YOU want!!! He’s so moved when you say you want to go with him to take care of the kids and help out with rehabilitating the (formerly) shadow cursed lands, but you don’t get to stay with him!!!

Like sure maybe he doesn’t want an exclusive relationship, but I think if you put together all the context clues of his unexplored trauma and loneliness, he probably doesn’t understand what he wants! And he deserves to have the opportunity to have his partner help him work through that and stand by him and offer him actual love and support, rather than just having him be the tacked on third to a relationship that functions entirely without him.

Be polyamorous with him. But by god, they could have had a scene of the THREE people in the relationship interacting, or at least allowed Halsin to feel like he was as important of a partner as your other one!!! Having him just say “I know you’re in love with someone else but I’m in love with you so I’ll accept the dregs” is pretty horrible, FROM A POLYAMOROUS PERSPECTIVE.

If they didn’t want to program in triad endings (very stupid if they were going to allow you to be polyamorous) they should at LEAST have allowed you to choose a paired ending with Halsin over a paired ending with your other partner. I want to help him take care of the goddamn kids and put down roots with him!!! Why can’t I? There’s nothing antithetical to polyamory in that. Polyamorous people can settle down with a partner they like, and Halsin expresses over and over through word and deed that he likes the player!!!

It just frustrates me that I feel like even when I say yes to him I’m still hurting him. He deserves so much more love and attention than the game allows him to have.

Ok, so I've been giggling like a loon for the past hour at the thought of a Paladin decked out in full wartime armor, with fury in their heart and the wrath of heaven in their eyes, declaring in a voice that will command the heathens and sinners to listen:

"GET READY FOR MY ALMIGHTY SMITE-Y!"

Bonus points if they're smacking a wooden paddle in one hand while shouting that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Larian doesn't abandon BG3 and continue making new patches and adding new content. Hovewer, I find it very exhausting: I played the game when it came out. I saw how unfinished it was. I played the prologue when they released it. But I still have either the same or similar issues with the game since the day they released it?

Halsin's trauma (and his personality somehow) is still being taken as a joke. He still isn't an origin companion and doesn't really have much lore behind him.

Astarion, as great as his story is written, still has the most interactions with the character you're playing as, the most quests. They poured a lot of resources into him at the cost of forgetting everyone else (especially Halsin and Wyll).

Lastly, what about people that can't bring themselves to replay the entire game for the second, third, fourth, fifth (etc) time? Why do I get to experience the "finished" game at the release and then a year, two years later I learn that there's tons of new content I'm missing on because it became clear that the devs actually didn't finish the game when it came out of Early Access?

Technically, I can replay the game. But I find it way too boring, exhausting, and overwhelming to do all the quests for the second, third time. I can't even push myself thought the main quests, knowing I'm missing on so many missions, and interactions, and leveling up, and romance. So I just... don't?

I just want to experience the game the way it's supposed to be. Like wiyh red Dead Redemption 2—what a masterpiece. Rockstar took their time and created exactly what they wanted people to experience. How is it too much to ask for BG3, too?

Yeah, patch 7 is live. That's great. They couldn't made it into the finished game, though? Upon release? The game should've been in early access for another year or two. And have much more closed beta testers of every kind. They wouldn't get such a huge feedback as they got after "full" releasing the game, but they could've still improved it tremendously.

I don't know, man. I'm sad and exhausted. I want to experience all those new interactions, but I don't have the energy and motivation to do so. It's way too repetitive and, as I already said, overwhelming.

For me, personally, Bioware's Mass Effect romances has soured me a lot towards the bashful, hesitant tropes, because they were frequently Femshep's while Maleshep had clear and present interest from Tali, Liara, Jack and Ashley ahead of time. There was another tendency for every one of Femshep's male LI options to talk about their past lover. Kaidan had Rana, Garrus had that turian scout, Thane had Irikah, and Jacob had Miranda.

It's not that people shouldn't have had past relationships, it's that the frequency of them discussing their ex, in glowing terms, is not a turn on before trying to start a romance with that LI. I mean, if you're Maleshep, only Miranda and Jack's romances ever involve discussion of an ex. None of his other potential female LIs ever talk about another in sad, wistful tones. Curiously, his male options do.

Those two things combined with Vega's literally ending in a date rape have forever put me off of any LI who seems like they're dragging their feet about a relationship the entire way.

Ok, I’m probably very set on who I’m romancing my first playthrough of Veilguard, but then I was wondering what might make me change my mind. And then I was wondering what everyone else’s dealbreakers might be (and i wanted to ask before we learn much more about them!)

(Also to be clear, i’m just asking this out of curiosity, and not saying that any of these options are good or bad. this is just for funsies & i wont hold you to it 😂)

Ghoulcy ❤️

NPCs

Sometimes my mind keeps going back to that one Bhaal cultist who wanted things to be quiet and I wonder what if she was a far more tragic figure than anyone would ever know. It's no surprise that most are sadistic, most are mentally ill or simply craved power, but what if that one's desire was born from trauma? What if she had once been a child, born in an abusive environment, unable to relax because it'd make whoever she was around angry? What if her days had consisted of fear and pain, a constant theme of screaming and yelling that scraped her nerves raw while she was silently wishing for things to be quiet? What if she had been praying for the gods to answer, only to be met with shattering glass and deafening thumps of pottery and metal hurled at her head?

Day in, day out.

The noise just won't stop.

Why won't it stop?

Why won't they be quiet?

When will it stop hurting?

Until one day, something snaps and before she knows it, she's standing in the middle of the room, hands bloodied, her tormenter(s) dead.

And for the first time, it's quiet. So blissfully quiet.

A lost soul that begged for mercy and peace. And Bhaal was the only God who answered her pleas.

i haven’t been able to finish my current me3 playthrough yet due to my brother hogging the xbox so he can play ARC: Evolved but here’s a list of things i remembered i hate in the OT in no particular order

the elevators

the asari

mark meer’s voice acting in ME1

liara’s writing if you don’t romance her (wtf bioware)…especially considering that the reason i generally DON’T romance her is because in ME1 at least, it feels like an adult dating a teenage girl.

femshep’s romance options and how most of them get fucking shafted to shit in ME3

how heteronormative ME2 was

jacob taylor’s loyalty mission and how racist it was

how racist and lazy the writing for jacob taylor was in general (ofc there are many reasons i dislike jacob in and of itself, but some it can be chalked up to bad writing)

jack’s chuppy ass default outfit in me2 (really bioware??? a woman could have the smallest titties in existence and she still wouldn’t be able to strap ‘em down with just a fucking belt. even if this game was written by mostly men, that’s still dumb as hell)

miranda’s largely unnecessary ass-shots

thane’s death

kai leng

that fact that you can’t call out kaidan for his bullshit cheating accusations in ME3 if you DO choose to romance someone else in ME2 as femshep if you romanced him in ME1, but mshep can do that to ashley (????? BIOWARE!)

the fact that an aro ace shepard it practically impossible to play after a certain point in the series without being a complete dick (and if you play the citadel dlc, impossible as femshep! because if you don’t romance anyone you wake up next to javik! lmao)

the fact that the dlc for the ME2 and 3 literally never goes on sale on pc like it does for the console versions, forcing me to pirate shit i already fucking paid for because i am unwilling to shell out £200+ on this shit again because EA and bioware are lazy money-grubbing fucks thanks ea thanks very much for your business practices

related to the above, but why did they never sell me2 or 3 with all the dlc included? that shit would sell like no one’s business…oh wait, EA…again.

the elevators

Being a Halsin fan is....a unique experience in that you're frequently prone towards running into all sorts of taunts and insults from being called "mentally ill" for liking him because people assume you're into his "deviant behavior" to hearing that there's only "7 romances" because he doesn't count, to hearing that he's a sex pest, constant reminders of how players kill him in a feedback or fan thread about him, him being seen as fit for only being left as "Orin bait" by a few Astarion fans (who hate him because they see him as a sex pest) when I'm meanwhile turning Astarion down only to run into Astarion canonically admitting that he sees Tav's denial of consent as a "dire mistake to be corrected":

Or, frequently running into complaints as to why he's there when Jaheira is around for the Druid role (he was around first so it's clear why they're not acknowledging that).

"He's just fanservice that didn't need to be there! Why can't we have Alfira?!"

"We could have had a werewolf instead of him?! Wasted opportunity!" (Fans datamined that and discovered that Helia was dropped long before they added Halsin so it wasn't a toss up between them that fans think)

"He's a cheater trying to get you to cheat!"

Ironically, another fan found a post that not only was this wrong, Shadowheart and Astarion approve of the player sexually harassing a married NPC:

His point and click lines have still not been fixed despite requests to address them for months now.

Requests for more depth from his days in Early Access has not happened.

Pleas to Larian to please fix the writing that has him making fans uncomfortable has only just now been addressed but the damage has been done.

I see all these moments that get other characters amusement and affection while seeing Halsin vilified for stuff that doesn't even happen. I see acknowledgement that Gale's Weave scene was a bug, Wyll's dance scene where you couldn't avoid him trying to kiss you as "not a big deal" (until they were corrected) and I agree, that's exactly what they were: unintended side effects of poorly thought out writing/coding/scripting.

And yet, Halsin's presence has to be justified every step of the way.

There is so little sympathy for this character. So little sympathy for fans of this character. It even feels like Larian wrote him off when their attempt to make him a companion backfired.

I'm not even sure why fans want more romances added when this one ended with such hostility. I'd rather they fix and expand on the current romances like Wyll's, Minthara's and, yes, Halsin's (he does count as a romance).