Conclusion: Dinosaurs

Ship Tournament, Round 1 — Match 11 / 30

Karlach/Minthara

"minthara respects strength, and karlach is basically walking proof that joy and softness don’t make someone weak. i think that would mess with minthara’s worldview in a very fun way. karlach is kind, yeah, but she can also throw a grown man across a battlefield while on fire. minthara would be taking notes."

"They’d clash on morals but not on courage. Karlach would absolutely hate a lot of Minthara’s worldview, especially the casual cruelty and the drow noble “power is the only language anyone respects” thing. But Karlach also knows what it’s like to be owned, used as a weapon, dragged into someone else’s war, and forced to survive in a place built on violence. She wouldn’t excuse Minthara, but I think she’d understand more than Minthara expects. And Minthara with Karlach is interesting because Karlach is so emotionally honest. She doesn’t play court games, doesn’t hide behind piety or politics, doesn’t pretend not to care. For someone raised in Menzoberranzan, that kind of sincerity must look almost deranged. Threatening, even. Minthara would keep calling her foolish and then slowly realise she trusts Karlach more than almost anyone."

vs. Astarion/Gale/Halsin/Karlach/Lae'zel/Shadowheart/Wyll

"Tadpolycule. Do not separate. (Does Halsin have a tadpole? No. Is he an honourary Tadfool? Absolutely. Besides, you look me in the eye and tell me any one of the six Origins wouldn't be Down For That and vice versa.)"

noisy birds abundant in my undisclosed rural hometown in South East Queensland, Australia

"Mononoke" anime series new project announced. Visual & teaser PV unveiled

Ship Tournament, Round 1 — Match 10 / 30

Ansur/Emperor

"THE doomed exes ship. ansur loved balduran enough to search for him, shelter him, try to save him, and then couldn’t accept what he’d become. the emperor loved him enough that killing him is still framed as this huge buried wound centuries later, even through all the mind flayer emotional repression and manipulation. it’s horrible because neither of them is uncomplicatedly “wrong” in the emotional sense? ansur sees the person he loves transformed into something he believes is a monster. the emperor sees the person he trusts most deciding that mercy means killing him. they loved each other and it still ended under the city with a dragon’s corpse and a sword in the dark. what the fuck man."

"sometimes romance is a dragon looking at the illithid wearing your lover’s memories and going “i can’t live with this” and the illithid going “i am alive, why is that not enough”"

"Is the Emperor still Balduran? Is Ansur loving him, mourning him, or rejecting him? Is the Emperor’s anger betrayal trauma or the cold self-preservation of a mind flayer? It’s messy and awful and romantic in the gothic “this ends with both of us ruined” way. Exactly what I want from a dragon and his fucked up squid ex."

vs. Astarion/Halsin

"There’s something really tender about Astarion, who has spent 200 years being used and controlled, ending up with someone so patient and grounded and deeply respectful of bodily autonomy. Halsin is horny, yes, obviously, but he’s also very much about consent and freedom and letting people come to things in their own time. Astarion needs that so badly it makes me ill."

GetUp Australia issue media statement on the National Press Club stunt:

The way she said thank you both now and in previous episodes, it's gonna get to the point where she uses that weirdly soft sincere tone of voice and Julien just folds

Thimble always insisting to take watch with Julien at night just so she can stare at his shadow flickering in the light of the campfire

When they fight together holy shit they're both gonna be monsters in combat

Thimble uses her Get Big ability just to fuck with Julien, like she's flitting around Tiny Size being annoying and when he shoos her away and she gets big to trip him (he doesn't go down without taking her with him)

On those late nights they talk about their two different views of the Golden Orchard growing up, especially when they finally get there and see it razed to the ground

Thaisha, standing in the centre of their massive ritual site where they channelled the whole-ass Gavzidra into the threshold of a theatre, centred on a play that called out to the very soul of the orc people, anchoring a whole damn afterlife back onto the world in one fell swoop, saving dozens and possibly hundreds of souls and creating an entire new species of celestial in the process: “… You should have clarified that in your letter.”

Like. I love this. Mara: you were supposed to start fucking small! Thaisha: Well no one told us that!

Holy fucking shit, the extent to which we have been balls to the wall fucking winging this from start to finish is incredible. Like, Azune stuck his hand into the middle of this ritual and it accidentally summoned a dragon, a creature not seen in centuries, as a byproduct, and it was a tiny and incredibly helpful sidenote to this whole venture.

No wonder Mara’s only response to seeing the Hallowed Round was “Holy shit!”

Like. People. Planning. Testing! Fucking anything! We do not just start with …