If Amy Actually Did This She Would Instantly Become One Of My Favorite Characters. Insanely Good Take

Honestly this is one of the reasons Bloodborne's rally mechanic works so well. Oh, you hit me cause I got greedy. Fuck that, I'm going to hit you again and keep hitting you after you fall dead to the ground. Wonderful combination of game mechanics and in-lore flavour.

the only mistake I make in elden ring and other soulslike games is not being unable to dodge or block in time, it is quite simply that I got fucking greedy.

i want that bitch dead and I can't help trying to get an extra hit in even though they rock my shit and punish me every time.

I will not apologize nor will I ever stop.

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.

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

Danny not confronting Lisa's authority really sells how little confidence he has on himself as a parent. The guy just keeps making mistakes.

you know what. im going to follow my heart so we can move on with the wormread and just copy-paste what i said about danny in chapter 6.9 on discord with some minimal editing because it's not pretty but the general thesis is there and i don't feel like making it into proper paragraph form

okay so the thing thats fucking killing me abotu 6.9 is that danny is literally like. he tries to call taylor a nickname only her mom called her once he realizes he's fucked up bad and is trying to recover whichi s insane [because it's obviously going to be upsetting to her by reminding her of her mom being gone, and it also indicates that his fall-back for something going wrong w/ taylor is to try to appeal to her by poorly copying someone else's parenting style] and he also randomly tells her about how her mom wanted to move her a grade ahead but he wanted her to stay in school with emma to make her happy. and he's been Stewing On That despite knowing it's objectively not his fault (and i am reminded of how in his interlude he spends time Stewing about how he wishes annette were there to give advice) and he also cops up to the fact that that the whole thing about "being her parent and not her ally" (<- demented thing to say for obvious reasons) wherein he locks her in a room and demands emotional vulnerability from her even as she's becoming visibly upset & compares his actions to emma's was her grandmother's idea and then. here's the real kicker. once lisa shows up and prepares to take taylor away there are any number of actions a parent confident that they're doing the right thing for their child would normally do in response--not, like, Good actions, but things that a parent would be likely to pull. threatening to call the cops bc blah blah you're my daughter, wanting to speak to lisa's parents, any form of power move pulled over these two teenage girls but instead he speaks to lisa like she's an equal authority over taylor and seriously asks if she's "okay with this" (i should remind you of the concussion chapter where lisa is doing some insane power move shit over taylors dad covertly establishing herself as more competent at caring 4 her than him lmao) which is just like. it's so glaringly wildly obvious how this guy has Zero confidence in himself as a parent so he generally does nothing and then while he's doing nothing he oscillates btwn rationalizing it to himself as allowing her privacy/dignity, getting angry at himself/calling himself a coward, or getting mad at TAYLOR and blaming HER for not being the one to take initiation to be vulnerable with him and, like. he literally does make functional decisions prior to this for a bit! he's good and supportive at the meeting with the school board about the bullying!!! but it doesn't immediately solve literal years of distance between them that have led to taylor having to take decisionmaking for her wellbeing entirely into her own hands w/o being able to tell him about it [& having literally no route for human connection or support other than the undersiders] so he just completely crumbles on his own calls and seeks out/takes completely shit advice from taylor's grandma instead so i very much think what's insinuated here is like. especially given that he knows he has anger issues and never wants to Be Scary with them. he might have frequently leaned on annette for parenting decisions before she died and/or is really fucking haunted by the time(s) he didn't listen to her and it went wrong and now that she's gone he's just kinda floundering and trying to toss the baton for parental decisionmaking onto anyone else, including, at one point, the literal teenage girl who shows up to help taylor run away from his house. insane ! also. thinking about how taylor says her grandma (maternal) never liked her dad. that man would literally rather talk to the mother of his dead wife, who hates him, and take her advice than go 'yeah ithink im gonna keep using my own judgement for compassion towards my daughter' fucking worst anyones ever done it this guy has the spine of a twizzler it's great

...and then doing All That & severely triggering taylor's trauma from the bullying in the process completely shatters any trust he had built with her, catalyzing her realization that she wants to be able to have meaningful relationships with the undersiders & leading to her running away to leave with them! i don't think anyone can say for sure whether or not danny Not doing this would have led to taylor turning the undersiders in before realizing that she would regret it, but oh fucking boy does he make SURE she doesn't go thru with it. and it would be bad to call the cops on a bunch of systematically neglected traumatized teenagers regardless of how much crime they're doing so you know what maybe we should actually thank danny for his Shit Parenting stopping taylor from being a narc

I'd consider this worth it. Now if only we got to see apes with rocket launchers...

This really comes to play in a fun way later, after talking to Mystra. Gale will justify being given ultimate power by saying something to the effect of, "you know me to be a moral and reasonable person, right?" The very same Gale who you can convince to do atrocities and break the rules of magic with.

This is such a fun aspect of Gale that is not often talked about. He is polite, even caring towards the struggle of others, but his moral center is aligned with your character in such interesting ways. The ways that he mirrors the player characters morality makes him a real joy on both good and evil playthroughs!

now I'm curious...who is Gale morally imitating?

I know you haven't played the game so I'll write this through that lens, but I think he imitates the player! More so than the other companions, he is willing to go along with what you suggest including some pretty morally abhorrent choices (which he pushes back against... but he doesn't leave unlike two of the more explicitly good characters). He voices support for seeking power even when it's through pretty questionable means. I have often said he's more nice than good and part of that is if he develops a close relationship with the player, he'll go along with their version of morality, the prioritizes the people close to him far more than any broader moral obligations... this can be beautiful like wanting to stay with you if you become an illithid brain eating monster but also beautiful because you know he'd definitely help you source the brains to eat. he'd find a way to justify it for sure

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

🎶you will remember me…remember me for centuries🎶

What if, after barely surviving Leviathan thanks to their power, they now know they will die whent the injuries are distributed back. Now they have to deal with their upcoming doom/race against time to find a healer.

Brute power where damage is distributed back through time. Almost a thinker power in some regards. Injuries spread our over longer periods to lessen the damage at the initial moment and after, but the cape always aware where they will be hurt and how badly. A cape heading into Leviathan painfully aware this may be the fight they die in.