Mordred

A couple pauses for a cigarette in snowy Central Park, February 19, 1956.

Photo: Phil Greitzer for the NY Daily News via Getty Images

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shaking six year old me by the shoulders YOU WERE RIGHT. YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT LOVE AND ABOUT FAIRNESS AND ABOUT SHARING IS CARING. YOU WERE RIGHT. THE ADULTS DON’T KNOW ANY MORE ABOUT TRUTH THAN YOU DO. KEEP BELIEVING IN THE FAIRIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GARDEN. NOTHING IS “JUST THE WAY IT IS”. I AM SORRY THEY EVER CONVINCED YOU TO FEEL SHAME. YOU ARE REAL AND A PART OF THIS WORLD. YOU WERE RIGHT.

My Baldur’s Gate 3 hot take is that debates about whether or not Emperor Balduran is trustworthy or or not are a waste of time because a great deal of the point of the character — narratively and gameplay-wise — is that he’s an extension of you. YOU interpret and decide on his personality, nature, and choices the same way you do with your Tav.

If you want him to genuinely be the flawed and odd-thinking but ultimately noble and heroic “token good Mind Flayer” that he presents himself as, then he will be like that simply because you treat him as being such. He’ll be trustworthy and dependable, totally truthful about only wanting what’s best for Baldur’s Gate and about wanting to free the Illithids from Elder Brain control and make ceremorphosis a consensual choice, while also being open to compromise in the name of forging bonds. He’ll be the unlikely hero who, with you by his side, uses the Stones to destroy the Absolute and save his beloved city.

If you want him to be and treat him like a backstabbing, manipulative liar and potentially dangerous monster who is at best disconnected from basic reality, at worst a murderous narcissist trying to bend you to his will, then he’ll act like it. His interactions with be tense, snappish, and uncomfortable. He’ll threaten you, make unreasonable demands, never compromise, and try to assert control over the party while making clear that your alliance is one of convenience and necessity. And ultimately, he’ll either betray you and defect to the Absolute’s side because he can’t control you or, at your urging, hijack things and use the Absolute to take over the world.

His past is designed to be interpreted in massively different manners depending on what kind of person you want him to be. He killed Ansur either out of justified self defense because Ansur wouldn’t admit that Balduran was still himself beneath the changed form, or because Ansur was trying to stop his evil plans. He dominated Stelmane’s mind because she was a bad person and he wanted to turn the Knights of the Shield into something good, or because he’s an evil manipulator who dominates those he can’t charm. He withheld information from you because he was being cautious and wasn’t sure if you were going to be an ally (like your party members), or because he was manipulating you by making himself seem more sympathetic. He never freed Orpheus and doesn’t want to free him because as an Illithid he rightfully fears a Githyanki Prince and that freeing Orpheus will allow the Netherbrain to control him again, or because he’s an malevolent bastard who knows that Orpheus would ruin his plans. It’s up to you to decide.

He can change tune on a dime, make self-contradictory choices and statements, abruptly do things just because of something you decided to say because you wanted to see what would happen. Just like you do as a player, because he’s as much your PC as Tav. It’s why you get to customize the form he appears in your dreams with. The Emperor is good or evil or whatever depending on what you WANT or MAKE him to be.

Genshin Impact | Freminet

Monster / Epic the Musical

Two Matthias posts in one day? More likely than you'd think.

This is an absolute crack theory but HEAR ME OUT.

What's a speculated ability Matthias may have? Being able to turn into his puppet.

What would he have to do to turn into his puppet? Put his consciousness into it.

What happens to most survivors during the manor games? They die/get murdered.

My theory is that Matthias' ability comes from him dying during the manor game and possessing his puppet to take revenge or smth idk. We know that ghosts possessing special objects to them is possible in the IDV universe from Wu Chang's umbrella and all the drama in game 5 so I'm just saying it's possible and we won't know until like a year or two in the future when he finally gets a damn letter because netease doesn't like to update their lore regularly because WHY WOULD THEY-

Tl,Dr Matthias' ghost possessed Minitthias to take revenge on whoever killed him in the manor game

B’s-LOG June 2021 - Shuuen no Virche Special Feature Translation [Illustrator Comments]

Comments from the illustrator, Yomi, on the boys' designs.

Yves

I received a request for an “orthodox knight”, so I was careful not to lose his sense of knightliness not only in his main outfit, but also in his alternate outfits.  His image changed several times along the way as I was drawing, but I think he always had the appearance of a young man with a smile that looks like he’s on the verge of crying.

Lucas

I designed him with the template image of how Japanese people imagine beautiful Western Europeans (platinum blonde hair, blue eyes, etc.).  At first, his outfit was baggy and didn’t show off his body line. But in the final draft, it ended up fitting him perfectly. How strange. I tried to make his hair hide his eyebrows to make it harder to read his expressions and make him feel less human. But he’s definitely a contender for possessing the most masculine eyebrows.

Mathis

I kind of had an idea of how he should look when I sketched him out on the very first piece of copy paper. But as I reviewed the setting several times and began to draw it out digitally, I thought, "somehow, this doesn't feel like Mathis.” So I flipped the table over, handed over most of Mathis’s initial draft from the neck down to Yves, and I reworked it from scratch to create the current Mathis.

Scien

He seems like someone who’s hard to approach due to his position and setting. But I didn’t want him to be invulnerable. I wanted him to have openings. So I made his clothes disorderly in various spots. I decided to place the crest on his neck on a whim, but the more I got to know him, the more I felt like “unbeknownst to himself, he was constantly being strangled by his own creation.” And I thought his neck was the perfect place after all... (this is just my personal opinion).

Adolphe

I had a vague image of a "man who lets sunlight pass through him.” I don't really understand it myself, but I often think that way when our eyes meet while I'm doing my colouring work. I aimed for his appearance to be the most manly together with Hugo, a mutual friend of Yves’s, but what do you think…?

Ankou

I hope I was able to create the feeling of someone who can be seen but not touched even if you reach out to them. Someone who is frightening but also captivating. When I received the proposal, I was contemplating a pure white costume, like an elf king’s. However, it turned out the complete opposite in the end.

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[DO NOT USE OR REPOST MY WORK W/O PERMISSION, THANK YOU]

“A third way to react is self-isolation is where you prevent yourself from any further opportunity to be ostracized, by being by yourself, by being alone, by not allowing the possibility for rejection, exclusion, ostracism. This also allows the person to regain some of the needs that have been threatened [by ostracism]: it gives them control, you can't fire me, I quit. You end up taking control of a situation and preventing ostracism by not allowing it to even happen in the first place.

We know that some people become what we call rejection-sensitive. They experience rejection and exclusion early in their life and then they expect it to happen all the time and so they're always on the lookout and prevent themselves from getting in the situations where they could be rejected. They see it when it's not happening, and so on. While both aggression and self-isolation fortify the needs [threatened by ostracism] neither one of them lead to re-inclusion.”

– Kipling D. Williams, Full PreFrontal Podcast Episode 191

mordred moodboard for his birthday