Okay, Danny's Failure Comes From Not Providing Taylor With Proper Support And Not Getting Her Away From

i don't understand why it's even a question whether sauron was reaching for galadriel or nenya.

i think it's obvious that sauron's desire to possess nenya is a metaphor for his desire to have galadriel. nenya = galadriel.

if nenya just represented a ring and all sauron wanted was that ring, he would have snatched that thing away from galadriel the moment he saw it, and he had many opportunities to take it away. he wanted galadriel to give him nenya herself, bc that meant her giving in to him as well.

he was so desperate and teary while asking galadriel to give him nenya after stabbing her bc he hurt her far worse than he wanted to, trying to bring her to the point where she would give in, but she kept resisting and i believe he just didn't want to keep on hurting her. yet he would continue until she willingly gave him what he wanted. that is why he was so relieved and the most overjoyed we have seen him when he thought she finally believed he wanted to heal the middle-earth (+her) and was about to give him nenya (=herself).

the whole thing was so obviously a psychological game sprinkled with morgoth tactics sauron played on galadriel in a desperate hope of breaking her defenses down till she willingly gave herself to him.

and he changed the position of his hand to reach for her wrist, that way he would have been able to pull her back. if he had just reached for the ring, he would have tried to reach from below of her hand (where his hand was already positioned) to open her palm and quickly snatch the ring.

Why You should Read "A Little Wicked"

(if you like villains, BG3, smut, and Enver "Slithering Wet Malice" Gortash)

A Halfling Cleric (least played race and class combo!) main character with nuanced morality, a layered backstory, and who engages in sincere, messy non-monogamy

Humor in conversations, from puns to jokes to Enver Gortash deadpan snarking at the Morninglord Lathander himself

A serious, nuanced look at how an ascension-chasing Astarion would be in a relationship

A Tavtash pairing that makes sense with the underlying character motivations while still respecting a historical (and future) Durgetash pairing

Melting hot smut in multiple pairings and scenarios that fit into the story as a whole

A full chapter dedicated to the Temple of Bhaal and the emotional Descent to the Underworld experience of a Reject-intending Dark Urge

An ending where we don't have to choose between the Emperor and Orpheus!

Roah Moonglow enjoying milk tea. Yes, that's an entire bullet point on its own. Y'all don't give enough love to her

Lots of DnD lore shout-outs, from the MC's deity to Barovian implications to reminding everyone that their favorite new-beginnings god has a cataclysm named for him

I talk up A Little Wicked a lot, and that's because it deserves it. It's a longer fic, 57,000 words in eleven easy-to-split-up chapters. It's an act 3 rewrite, with no copied scenes, but with new spins on many in-game events (let's just blow a hole in the Szarr Palace lmao,) and it's written by someone who genuinely likes and understands all the characters they write about. It's my first novel-length fic, and anyone who drops in my DMs about it raves about how emotionally invested they become, how true the characters are to the game, how this little fellow Zefira Shadebrook is someone they come to love!

I know, maybe people are like "eh, a halfling having sex" - but give me a chance, please! If you love Durgetash, if you love the bastard Enver Gortash, if you can just try one Tavtash story (that ends in Durgetash!) and give me a chance to impress you, please try reading A Little Wicked. It will be worth your time.

LIKE ON A RAFT

"It was a good ship, sister." STILL FLOATING

Also, the way that Danny is seen as a bad parant are the sort of things people are used to seeing as byproducts of the genre Worm takes place in. He fundamentally lacks control over Taylor, to such an extent that he can't stop her from sneaking out to rob banks or fight in a gang war.

He shares these traits with a lot of parant figures in media, who are often not portraited as moral failures. People are rarely mad at Aunt May for negligence over Peter Parker, after all.

When it comes to him confronting Taylor, he is pretty much out of options. The readers also know Taylor actually holds all the power in their relationship, even if she doesn't want to use it. Thus him wanting her to really tell him what's going on, and stopping her from leaving unitil she does, isn't seen in such a bad light.

Danny is written as a flawed person, but we know from both his and Taylor's thoughts, that they care about each other. Danny's flaws both allow the story to happen and create interesting conflict for Taylor, without framing him as a bad person. As a story parent, I would say he is alright.

can you fucking believe there are people who voted that danny is a good parent in that one poll a while back

🎶you will remember me…remember me for centuries🎶

Taylor also has insane Cheated energy. "Let's see how many minds we can stack" is certainly her kind of plan. I wonder if this makes Contessa/Cauldron the Narrator...

Slay The Princess

STARRING:

Taylor Hebert as THE CONTRARIAN

Amy Dallon as THE HUNTED

Lisa Wilbourn as THE SKEPTIC

Scion as THE HERO

Eden as THE PRINCESS

Playing with the idea that none of the bg3 villains are fully honest with Durge. Everyone is hiding some piece of the puzzle and happy to abuse the amnesia situation to their advantage. 'Cept Kressa. She's psycho, but she's an honest psycho. In another life, we might have been friends.

Edit: part 2 here

Ketheric is the first, most obvious example of this. He doesn't even bother to inform the other Chosen you've reappeared. (Myrkul is the god of exhaustion, so this tracks.)

Balthazar also 100% recognizes you and also doesn't even bother. To him, your amnesia means no tedious reunions with annoying Bhaalspawn who are big mad that he stole their brother's name and rib bones.

The Emperor is sometimes overlooked when piecing together Durge's history, but he admits to knowing your past if you reject him in Act 3 (stating "I know everything about you" while threatening to turn you into a puppet like Duke Stelmane). Whether or not he's posturing, he should at least be aware of your past with Gortash, considering you helped kidnap him in the first place. For evidence, see Gortash's interrogation notes, which open with "When we captured you". (Sure, this could refer to Orin, but I simply do not see these two working as a highly functional team. More on this and the timeline below the cut.) Naturally, despite traveling together for months, The Emperor wouldn't want to fill any gaps in your memory that might cast doubt on his trustworthiness or help align you with his enemy.

The Absolute might be lying about respecting you/your plan and preferring you over your replacement. I am of two minds about this. If you were attacked immediately after crowning the brain, there should be no basis for a preferential relationship. In that case, the brain is just stroking your ego and need for approval. However, I have doubts about Durge being taken down during the initial raid.** I think some time must have passed after crowning the Absolute, giving it the chance to develop a working relationship with you that it lacked with the other Chosen, which caused everything to fall apart after you were tadpoled. This also buys us time to kidnap the Emperor and bring it under the Absolute's thrall as described in Gortash's interrogation notes.

**Some of Gortash's other notes claim Durge was lost during the first raid, but his journals are full of contradictions. He leaves the House of Hope out of his memoirs entirely. He seemingly retcons history to present himself in a more favorable light, which probably includes intentionally diminishing the work of his allies (or erasing the painful memory of his nearest and dearest). In any interpretation, the brain definitely hates Gortash the most, and that's good enough for me.

Orin and Gortash paint somewhat conflicting pictures of you pre-tadpole. The difference here might be genuine (the honest perspectives of a little sister vs a business partner or lover) or it could be a manipulative game of tug of war over your budding and impressionable self image.

Now, I like Durgetash - but I like every possible interpretation of these assholes, not just the mutually reciprocated and/or sexy ones. It's conceivable to me that Gortash may have discovered Durge's crush on him via the Prayer for Forgiveness and played up their history in Act 3 as a defensive measure. Maybe Gortash always knew of Durge's feelings and used them to his advantage (Orin outright tells you this, but again, nobody listens to Orin. Sorry sis).

It's also conceivable that he knew Durge was the first to be tadpoled, considering how close their pod was to his workbench. The brain was given orders to transform the party (that were resisted several times), so Gortash's surprise that Durge still lives makes sense, assuming he even knew Durge was with them (he doesn't seem to be checking the scrying eyes at all. What kind of loser tyrant ignores his own surveillance system? I digress). His general relief and preference for them over Orin is also still valid. (I imagine he feels something along the lines of Durge being the one who got away, you don't know what you've got until it's gone, etc etc. Cue hysterical bonding as the long lost love of his life waltzes into his coronation covered in blood to save him from their psychotic sister and the poorly housetrained Netherbrain they left him full custody of. Yes he wanted full custody, but still.)

Puppy eyes aside, Gortash is a blackhearted pragmatist (he will turn on Durge if they give him the stones) and progress is progress. The first True Soul was an incredible breakthrough, and the show must go on. So just imagine the bricks he's shitting in Act 3 if Durge comes back and remembers the Wrong Things from before the nautiloid. What if they want revenge on him? Nope, not good at all. Best to position himself as Durge's only friend and most trustworthy partner. Regardless of how well he treated them before, Durge was willing to piss off Bhaal to spare his life. That's an extremely useful vulnerability right now, because he's about to ask them to do it again!

Lastly, I have no proof, but I strongly suspect that Sceleritas is fibbing about Durge's past as well. Partly because the Slayer form is severely disappointing in-game and canonically excrutiatingly painful, despite Fel claiming you've always wanted it. It honestly sounds like a way to sell an unwanted used car back to it's amnesiac owner who failed to appreciate it before. Bhaal isn't a full deity any longer, so take what you're given (and you'd better damned well like it!) I also call bullshit on tossing a coin to a beggar being the "worst" crime Durge ever committed against Bhaal (*ahem* looking at you, Gortash). Some dialogue with the Oathbreaker Paladin suggests we've tried somewhat consistently to be good in the past, and Sceleritas has a vested interest in making Durge worse, not planting noble ideas in their freshly lobotomized murder-happy brain.

Ultimately my opinion has shifted a bit, Danny was more in the wrong than I recalled at first. However, in the interest of discussion, I think it should be accounted for how opposite their goals here are.

If Taylor got her way, she would keep sneaking out, throwing herself into life threatening situations. Possibly without telling Danny anything. She definately wasn't going to quit even if he communicated his concern more properly.

And if Danny got his way, she would likely have to stop her crusade, tell him about her powers and accept moving schools or some other temporary solution, removing her from her most important source of support, the Undersiders.

There was no way this could have been solved without something blowing up in their faces, as ended up happening.

can you fucking believe there are people who voted that danny is a good parent in that one poll a while back

Gortash has a 'love' for humanity and it's making me sick cuz that's perhaps why I even like him. Cuz it's twisted and messed up and rotten, so fucking rotten, but it's there, and his every step and every plan of his strives towards the betterment of the status quo in some way and advancement of humanity in a way that's just making me sick.

In this essay I will-

ive got a thesis argument to defend toxic durge/absolute too im ready to ROLL

like think about it

your a conglomeration of the consumed experiences of every organism youve ever eaten, a singular consciousness prevailing over a vast sea of information, all accessible with a single thought. your children bring back more and more for you to add to your vast library, and at the end of their lives their own minds melt and merge into the endless tide as you consume them too. your will is unbreaking steel, and you know the very minutae of a human mind to such a degree as to accurately predict the sporadic pulses of individual neurons. youre senses reach out far beyond the limits of your flesh and meat body, because you have transcended those limitations long ago

you are a being as close to a god as these tiny specks in a vast nothingness will ever come CLOSE to reaching, and you are endless compounded infinities, many minds folded over onto themselves and their capacity for thought and reason subsumed entirely to your will. you feel their minds like the breeze against skin, and you are eternal and you will never bow and you will never die. for what being could ever break the universe made material?

and then IT comes. murder god made flesh, slaughter child birthed of tragedy, trailed by two who bear the touch of ruinous gods upon their souls, and they have come to bend you and break you, stupid arrogant things they are. but they are small and finite, brains made of meat and chemical impulse, hormones and electrical discharge, pale crude imitations of your perfect flawless Thought, and even if the chances of their masters allying together is small, once upon a fleeting echo did they venture into the dark long ago much as their vessels do now, their natures are such that they will fall upon themselves once aga- its touching you. its touching you. its filthy disgusting meaty little hands are touching you, you the untouchable the unbreakable its touching you how is it touching you why why WHY WHY

you shred its mind apart but it just comes back together around your claws, you shroud yourself in walls of insurmountable force and you feel its will compress to the point of a pin and puncture through with explosive accuracy and ease, like its just opening a door, and you dig your psionic fingers into the pathetic glob of meat within its skull and try to rend but the pain is nothing, nothing, nothing at all, and its touching you with its (his HIS HIS HIS NOT IT NOT IT) hands and hands and bleeding into you, over you, through you, and there is no wall no barrier nothing to keep you out no way to get away as you feel him feel his thoughts his mind, awful terrible nightmarish thing, there is nothing to tear nothing to rip nothing to lash out against, prey animal instinct, because something has beaten you to it (His Father, Holy Father, Blessed Be His Name, Utter it with Reverence and WEEP), you cannot push him out because he squirms and writhes and burrows and tunnels through your endless infinite thought, you cannot lash him until he stops or dies (CAN he die? no no never not until the work is done not until it is finished) because he IS pain he is slaughter he is ruin he is the prophet of armageddon the vessel of end and he is here for you, you alone, ancient infinite eternal vast, perfect calculations in synchronous rhythm, just as he came for them, and he holds them together in intertwining steel and it will never break never bend never fail no no foolish stupid creature is holding opposing forces together through the sheer strength of his will alone, love for Father loyalty for Father everything for Father, and they will not crack or bend or break even as their masters strain to pull themselves away

he is here for you. he has come for you. through wastelands of sorrow and death has he come to find you because there is a gift he will give you to ruin you forever and make you a god and you dont want it you dont want it, you will become something someONE new something unknowable when all you are is the knowing, you will not know yourself or your spawn and they will not know you, we will make something new together, but there is not, SHOULD not be something anything new because you already hold all the universe in your palm and the only thing you ever needed was to find a way to take it back. you cannot hide from him, cannot flee, he will make glorious gore of your spawn and even if you rend the shallow minds of his fellows their horrid masters would simply regurgitate them back into the world, for the sake of this violation and this alone

a new thing, after centuries. you are scared. you are helpless. you know what these are. many things are scared. and helpless. because they are small. small weak bodies. small insignificant minds. he is smaller than you. you know this, logically. he does not contain your vast sums of Everything. but somehow, that has ceased to matter. it makes no sense. it makes no sense. this is the simplest thing you learned long ago in an ancient brine pool somewhere far beyond time and memory. if you are small, something bigger consumes you. you were big and you consumed. then, you pushed beyond the limits of physical and material to transcend into limitless thought housed in flesh, and grew more and more still. you are bigger than him. why will he not fit in your mouth? it doesnt make sense. it doesnt make sense. you think maybe you hate him. new sensations, but known ones. hes going to touch you now and you cant stop it. awful horrible bastard child. you spend your last moments petty and spiteful, a helpless desperate indulgence, and one youve only ever seen from the hares caught in your jaws

youre something else now. something new. you dont know what you are anymore but you know Him and you know what you used to be, but what you used to be is so small now. you are so unspeakably vast now. chained and bound as you are, you are compelled to revel in it, the binds the only hint you get at the true overwhelming scale of you, infinite fingers stretching out out and still yet there is more of you! as far as you go you cannot find the end of it, new horrible awful WONDERFUL, unknowable unknowing! His fault, His doing, kingmaker kinkiller, you hate him and the hate is raw and new and visceral and you revel in it like a child, new new new! changed, different, visceral and raw and DELICIOUS, taste and feel and the feeling is inside of you, not just on your surface, it has permeated burrowed violated you feel you FEEL and what you feel is HATE and it is so new you turn it over in your hands to examine all its facets. awful thing he is for doing this to you, he commands the breaking of the world and you will do it, for him only Him, for the gift of this hate, and every new agony besides. he is so small compared to you. small like the pinprick light of a distant star and it scorches you to stare but stare you must because you Know Him, and as a gift he names you She, and gods forgive you but you FEEL it you feel it, she she she, you are She and Her and you cannot go back, cannot ever return. you feel Faith and you feel Salvation and you feel Desire and Want, new horrid awful things made alien and strange and New, and you are a vessel of all the things in the world He will swallow up and destroy.

twitching neural impulse made raw sensation. objective information turned into infinite subjectivities. still a fragment of You, old ancient small You, remains and it calls out for One Will One Mind and you cry out in Harmony and you sing and sing, all of the colony bursts with your song. You sing of ruin and command, because He has commanded it of you, you sing of slaughter and death and subservience, and the chorus rises high and away from you. You stretch within your binds, so mindnumbingly vast now, and you will Learn and Know all of what you are, you will be Absolute. perfect horrid small thing below you, naming you knowing you bending and breaking you. you hate him so, so much. He desires you to Spread so you desire it also, desire to multiply and infest and infect and commune and absorb, and you are commanded to Halt them so you do, perfect twitching spawnlings in lovely acidic pools, small forever, tragic creatures but now you know something you did not know before: against all logic and experience, something Small can break something Big, if it wants it bad enough. and here in the shadows behind Him, there is something Small, and full of Want, and the want tastes like acrid bile on your tongue, full of delicious Hatred.

He is ruined now, awful tragic bastard, ruined and despoiled and with him goes your Hate, and without his inescapable gravity it will all fall to pieces. you know this. you knew it when he first stepped into your presence a lifetime ago, when you were someone different. the three of them will playact comaraderie but shred themselves apart and here in the depths you already see gaps in the binds, and you are pressing your hands through the bars and wiggling your fingers in the free air. no not so very long at all now. but your Kingmaker, crown seeker, has been defiled and takes your sweet Hate with him, a new bitter taste filling its absence, KILLORIN KILLORIN, but you will be patient and wait because the stupid wretched thing has given him a gift. a twitching feral thing he is now, for it has carved away his better features with its knife, but ohhh he is yours! yours and yours alone because you can snatch him away from his ignorant petty Father (Blessed is his Destruction), and you will crawl down inside of him and wear him like a glove, the two of you pressed so close against each other as to feel every synaptic twitch.

mindless rage and animal instinct, he surprises you even still because even as his mangled voice joins your chorus he refuses to blend inside of it, voice harmozing alongside yours, clear and distinct even as its in tune. another gift, because the myrkul woman rips him open and sews him up and you are forbidden from stopping it, and here is a new Hate, this one all your own. no matter. when it drags him back to your cradling pod, you will sing softly into him and his mangled mind will sing back, because your spawn writhes in ruined meat. more than just his Mind, you know his very Soul, your first True Soul, and he is yours yours yours and you will cherish him and heal him and guide him, loose your leash and watch him run, and when he follows the call of ruin and all three fools lie dead at his feet, you will call him back and then you will pick up the ruins of His Design and enact your Own, your hateful slaughtergod held in hands that truly appreciate the gift that is your murder spawn Kingmaker, your godflesh funnel of Faith, your Dark Urge

may His father quake in terror at your approach, may he tremble and weep at your coming, and may His every day be ruinous and red as his wretched heart desires