Inktober Day 4

🎶you will remember me…remember me for centuries🎶

What made me like the Emperor is the perspective that he acts in a lot of ways more like a "player" than a character. He is more removed from the direct action, creates an avatar to interact with the others in the world, and ends up getting more attached to his "tools" than he would have thought.

As a person before the tadpole, from what we see, Balduran was an architypical adventurer, someone who valued his freedom above all else. This likely resonates with a lot of "main character" Tavs.

In-game it is an interesting mystery to what degree the Emperor has maintained his personality post-ilithid form, and is a perspective on what might happen to Tav. It leaves a lot up to interpretation about his past and Tavs future.

I get that he is quite divisive, but Emps is a really fun character to engage with out of game, with interesting themes and questions in-game. Not every character would/should wibe with him, but personally I find him oddly likeable!

Next playthrough I gotta figure out a way to like the Emperor... what do so many people see in him... he feels like a simulator for dating a 36-year-old when you're 19

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

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.

What if this is Gortash's way of having a plan to betray the others. Just as Durge is planning to end the world, with himself and Gortash as the last living beings, what if Gortash was planning on "liberating" Durge from their bhaalspawn flesh and blood. Durge would be a part of Enver's perfect order. Maybe both of them are hatching plans to subvert the other for their cause, tyranny and murder respectively. This is a wild rabbit hole indeed.

Let's say, Durge somehow defies daddy Bhaal and Gortash does not bite the grass.

Let's say, despite tireless efforts Bhaal doesn't rly like letting go of his kids, esp not those crafted from his own flesh and blood.

Let's also say, Gortash, the mad unethical scientist, would find 'ways' for Durge to get rid of the burden that is their Bhaalspawn body (essence may be gone but that body still Bhaals property technically).

And now, cuz I'm feeling funny, what if the Steelwatch and the whole consciousness/souls bit Gortash got going on is precisely with that in mind? After all, Gortash is a tyrant obsessed with freedom. And Durge is his equal. So of course he'd assist in their escape from their own hell, too. And if what they need is a new vessel to store their consciousness, well, Gortash and his mechanical puppets are happy to oblige.

I'm onto smth I know it (and this is definitely not just a scrapped ending that I've been reconsidering again)

Jack Slash goes full barber only to accidentally summon Barbatorem. The two have a standoff, it doesn't end well.

the only thing to complete jack slash's aesthetic would be scissors

Finally, an exuse to fuse some of my favorite pieces of media. I would drop Taylor, Blake and Sylvester in to Slay the princess. It's a visual novel dealing with both body and cosmic horror. Of course, it is also a love story. To save time, the gang will enter the story all at once, taking on differnt roles. Heavy spoilers will follow.

In the story of Stp, a man desperate to save the world from ending imprisons the consept/god of change and splits it in two pieces. One of these pieces is the player character, a bird-man like creature, and one is a princess. The man, known as the Narrator, will attempt to persuade the player into killing the princess, to stop the end of the world.

Taylor will take the role of the Narrator. She is comfortable with "the ends justify the means" rhetoric and will complain constantly about how this all would be so much easier if everyone just worked together. As the Narrator, she can lightly change the environment or at times take control of the player, wich is very fitting for our dear queen administrator.

Blake is the player character. Not only is it his nature to be active and force the world to react, he is once again in conflict with a piece of himself, that is nearly doomed to end in violence. At least he is in a bird themed body from the start. Although Blake is canonically hot, his drive to move forward, slay the bigger monsters and bad Karma will make it easier fir Taylor to push him into a fight with the Princess. They struggle and both die in their first encounter.

The princess herself is an eldritch being, whose form and personality change based on the watcher's perspection of her. Very Stranger. In the base game, when you die, you awake in a new world, with a new voice in your head, and the princess has changed based on your actions. Enter Sylvester!

This time, Blake wakes up with Sylvester's voice in his head. A devastating time for Taylor as well. In this version, as Blake struggles and fights with the Princess, Sylvester tries to shake the box, possibly flirting with the Princess in the process. Sy's dynamic with her resembles either his relationship with Mary or Mauer, depending on Blake and Taylor's reactions.

In the end, when all is revealed, Blake' s empathy and Sy's desire for freedom will win out, and the two will escape Taylor's prison with the Princess, who possibly joins the Lambs in a faraway universe. Thank you for anyone who has read this far, clearly I have fanfiction I need to write. This was a fun prompt and I highly recommend anyone curious to give Slay the Princess a try, it is a wonderful story. Each of Wildbow's protagonists fit the game like a glove filled with glass shards.

Since people liked the last question I asked, here's round 2 for y'all

Each Wildbow Protag is dumped into the last romantic-comedy you've watched/read/played (visual novels are allowed).

How badly do they ruin the romance?

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

Contessa/Eidolon where Eidolon is hyperparanoid the entire time because what if her path to victory really does work on me and this has all been a setup lasting decades and Contessa is hyperparanoid the entire time because her path to victory really doesn't work on him and what if he's gone crazy like Manton did and he's luring me in to kill me and ruin humanity's chance of survival. It would be incomprehensibly bad for both of them. I would read 1.6 million words of it.

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-