A Little Personal Response / Tribute To "here's The Life I've Always Longed For" By Anna Haifisch. The

The Mountain Goats, “Heel Turn 2” // Topaz Winters, “battlefield” // Lilith Kerr (me) // The Mountain Goats, “This Year” // e.e. cummings // Tumblr user @girlroach // Angus & Julia Stone, “Make it Out Alive” // Gang of Youths, “Achilles Come Down” // Gloria Gaynor, “I Will Survive” // Mary Oliver // Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” // Richard Siken, “Snow and Dirty Rain” // Lilith Kerr (me) // Lilith Kerr (me), “rebirth” from unloving the knife (2023) // Gwendolyn Brooks, “To the Young Who Want to Die” // Lilith Kerr (me again; sorry, I was running out of material lmao) // Tumblr user @daisies-on-a-cup // The Mountain Goats, “Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1”

Matthias has a problem…that maybe the Paranormal Detective can help with

it don't come natural to me to think

that you'd want me for me

the line in matthias's skill showcase is so creepy. what do you mean the invitation sender is the only other person who has never expected matthias to be like louis. BRO?

Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.

new friends.

i think the thing that really gets me about pre-canon durge is their absolute sense of duty, and their utter isolation outside of the cult of bhaal.

most of the cultists seem eager to see durge upon their return, and one even says they were the first to feed him flesh. gortash tells them of an exhibition of a bhaalspawn's corpse and another bhaalspawn's creations and durge immediately plans to attack the hall of wonder to recover them. they then apparently entrust said bhaalspawn's corpse to sceleritas fel to "restore" through taxidermy. they deride orin for her artistry with corpses explicitly because "bhaal will never care" and because orin "[does] not understand lord bhaal".

even their infamous prayer for forgiveness is framed around their absolute submission to bhaal's plans, and the crime that requires forgiveness? admiring his rival's chosen. that's one line, and the next three paragraphs are swearing to carry out his plan exactly as they've been told to, all for his forgiveness.

hell, even their room reinforces this. orin has barely touched the place aside from installing her mother's corpse and her manifesto - and that is some of the only decoration. what was it before orin, an empty room with skulls, a bed, a desk, some chests and a wardrobe?

the durge didn't have any semblance of a life outside of bhaal, aside from gortash. and is it any surprise? the only other hint they ever had a life outside of the cult is the flashback of kid durge murdering their adopted family, all thanks to their father's urging.

bhaal even tries to force them back into isolation after they've been tadpoled by forcing them to kill alfira, and then trying to force a durge who resists him to kill their lover. if they continue resisting, bhaal kills them. bhaal will not allow them to have a life outside of him and, if it weren't for jergal, he would've succeeded.

“There's all sortsa different people everywhere. You can't say everybody of one place is any one thing. It's no different when you're talking about Fódlan or Almyra or anyplace else. And wherever you go, you see people in power keep the weak ones down.”

KICK BACK

bungus