Pretty sure this only applies to the 1 fandom I'm involved in but yeah! The fat and the hairiness and the bits of masculinity alongside the femininity is good character design okay?

umm. bhaal thoughts nd stuff under the cut. ive seen a lot of stuff mischaracterising/interpreting/whatever and it bothers me. i like him.

bg1+2+3 spoilers btw.

i dont wanna seem uhhh. confrontational or anything so this is just me airing thoughts out cz its true u dont rly Hear from him much directly in bg3 so i guess i get why ppl wouldnt know or think certain stuff. and im not the worlds expert on the topic as much as id like to be. but writing gods in stuff is never easy i think, especially as a fan, since they function on totally different ideas and have worldviews we could never possibly understand, etc etc

i think what bothers me the most is the misconception that bhaal would give a shit what the urge does. he definitely doesnt. the canon bg1+2 is a human male goodguy (derogatory) and even he was still supposedly favoured by bhaal (in that achieving slayer form was from a feeling of 'divine hatred' and not an actual gift since bhaal at the time was dead and he was favoured not for this but in that he was the strongest of all his spawn (this is bg2 stuff btw i highly recommend u play both those games if u liked bg3 durge)) i actually miss how bg2 introduced that form its way better than in 3 but thats a big tangent ToT and i get why since the durge was quite literally made with it in mind anyway he didnt care about the prev spawn because their only purpose was to die anyway. but he doesnt care abt what durge does either. he would not care if he was fucking gortash. the one constant w him is that all he cares about is the end goals, the process doesnt matter at all. i cant be bothered putting screenshots in rn but both the durge's old diary and sarevok say "bhaal cares only for death. death in numbers, death in droves." and the ingame proof is in that even if u refuse to kill isobel u can still get the slayer form by agreeing to accept his gift in the temple. whether u killed isobel or not just determines if u get slayer form early. the other proof is orin, who doesnt follow him as he would ideally want either (too focused on making 'art' with death instead of actually killing) but still gets to be his chosen if u play as tav instead of durge (he also doesnt like the way shes loyal to sarevok more than him) hes pretty pragmatic

also the other thing... abt the butlers. sceleritas isnt there to ensure u are loyal, thats his own prerogative and pride as a butler. tho i think the specifics of him in general are left intentionally vague. the rest of bhaals butlers are always imps, and his own was also an imp (theyre made in his imps image after all), bt sceleritas is made in bhaals image. since he has a glued on nose and the colouring on his face looks like a skull. and the earrings are mirroring the slayers facial horns. thats a bit of a tangent tho umm anyway, my point is that durge got a very special butler for reasons we can only guess at. (tho i enjoy thinking that he really was meant more as a nanny/standin parent figure)

anyway that got sort of long. i love dad a lot. everyones durge can be different frm canon obviously... bt bhaal is an established char, nd a super interesting one (i have a lot of thoughts abt the similarities w mystra+shar especially cz of bg3 and the way sheart+gale narrative's play out bt again thats uhhhhh a HUGE tangent and im not even sure how to word my thoughts)

anyway tldr bhaal is a very hands off parent and doesnt give a shit what u do as long as u get the job done (and i love him very much 🥺)

oh also if u math the years out, durge is 20yrs old at max. and that takes the assumption that bhaal made u ASAP after he was resurrected. trivia. if u wanna read the thing wheree he gets rezzed, its the 'murder at baldurs gate' story which also comes with a rly intensive worldbuilding manual for the city which could help w fanfic or whatever u want. i enjoyed reading it (helping w dnd stuff T_T).

another edit: i doubt anyone except me is rly interested bt i have soooo much to say on the topic of how bhaal treats the urge (positively+unconditionally), sceleritas in general, and the way the urges journey mirrors bhaals own fall from grace and coming back stronger, etc etc, i already wrote half of it on twitter anyway so if theres interest i can share it here too

Can I be honest? As a football fan ( who's also a queer woman btw ) it's quite sad on how Louis isn't tweeting about the World Cup, some people here with LITTLE knowledge of what FIFA does and made a literal discourse on why Louis shouldn't tweet about the WC like it's one of the biggest problem in the world. The fact that England won and how they play is quite great GOD I WISH TO HEAR LOUIS' EXCITEMENT AND COMMENTARY ON THAT, like babes, Louis is JUST supporting England, not the whole movement of what Qatar is doing and two, some takes people said about the WC was so Xenophobic in so many ways and I swear- the fact Harry was also watching the WC and what happened 🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗🦗, like there's no day that this fandom wouldnt hate Louis for being Louis and it shows, quite sad actually in so many ways. The fact some of them who said he's a toxic masculine person and hated him for tweeting about England had the audacity to say "I miss Louis 🥺" like babes stfu. Really hoping that Louis isnt tweeting because of the amount of stupidty some people enforced him to do.

Hey, anon! I agree with a lot of what you said there and I very much respect your opinion. I think there are a lot of issues concerning the world cup this year (I mean... there always is, but this year specifically the human rights discussion is very relevant). There are 1000% a lot of xenophobic takes and I absolutely understand where you're coming from because I've seen some shit that left me baffled, it's unbelievable.

I'm not into football myself but since I come from a country where football is such a massive cultural identity, I really tried to educate myself (and I'm still trying, so if anyone wants to talk about it my DMs are always open) about all the shit that was going down in Qatar. I think a lot of things are just heartbreaking and should be dealt with empathy and sensitivity. For me, it has been important to be vocal about it and to support the things I personally believe as a human being. So if I were Louis, I'd probably choose to comment on that, maybe very vaguely, but I don't think he's indifferent to any of it and I do think he has a lot of opinions about it. And it's just his cup of tea, so that would be a good opportunity. But since he didn't say anything we obviously think differently and I mean- that's fine, I'm sure he has his reasons, I still think he's a good guy. But again, that's what I would do. Which is different from what he *SHOULD* do, and that's the bottom line for me. I'm going to say he needs to shut the fuck up about football at any time of the day because he's super obnoxious 😂 because England is not going to win, because I don't like football, because it's hilarious how much he stresses over it! But like, come on.... actually thinking I'm entitled to say what he should or should not be doing sounds absolutely insane to me. He can do whatever he wants to do.

There are a few corners of the internet these days (especially twitter) that ppl don't know how to suck it up, so they think they can tell people what they should or shouldn't post, what they should or shouldn't talk about. And I'm sorry but I can't interpret that any other way than targeted harassment, oppression... it's so mindblowing on so many levels. So, like I said, although I would deal with it differently, I was shocked when I saw the comments under his tweets and people were dead serious saying he needed to stop tweeting. So I'm not surprised he's not tweeting about it. I'm not going to pretend I'm sad about the lack of "it's coming home" but yeah... it's for all the wrong reasons and it really sucks! So I imagine that since you're a football fan you're probably a hundred times more frustrated. It sucks. People suck.

why do i keep overcomplicating my designs grrrr grr gr grrr