reddit comment: What so far has been your favorite part of making Divinity and what has been your least favorite part?
Swen: Least favourite: Answering questions about AI.
Favourite: All the rest :)
ok so, i was not gonna buy it before, not i most definitely will NOT be giving Larian any more money, out of pure spite now lol.
idk shitting on women for their romantasy ‘read in 2025’ piles……. at some point u ppl are going to have to ask urself why u have this energy for women and their fuckass tiktok books but not men and their self help bs or men and their manga or men and their sci fi or or or like ur always making it about women and the dumb shit they do for fun. idc. that elf porn they’re reading doesn’t effect me and it doesn’t effect u either. go read ur beloved Babel again if it helps
shit man tomorrow is christmas eve i swear yesterday was June 2010
As is tradition in tumblr culture the locals unearth the corpse of a long deceased figure and drag it across the streets merrily, laughing at what is preserved of the person’s words. This custom, seen as morbid in other cultures, is instead done gleefully and with an unmatched enthusiasm
I wanted to highlight some thoughts that I have about masks and duality in this game as it is shown clearly in the game. For the companions are torn between their true self and some name they bear their own skin. A way to justify their marginality – as they're stuck with the constant feeling of inadequacy, bearing a name that doesn't correspond to their identity.
It is most relevant with the Red Prince and his thousand epic epithets. "All-Conqueror", "The World Tamer", "Spouse of the Sun", this is a clear ironic picture of fantasy heroes ( see Daenerys from GOT, for example ) : such titles made him superior to his peers, but also marginalized him. He is the Red Prince - the unnatural one - the child of prophecy, his very identity being inextricably woven with fate. And it shows with his questline : not once does he wander off his path. I could even say that his very identity revolves around the expectations laid upon him.
Ifan ben-Mezd and Marcus Miles bear their titles as if there was no other identity. "Silver Claw" – "The Beast". See the clear animalization, which leads to deshumanization. They're mere tools to a purpose, no matter what it is. They're the frightening Other, enemy to civilization, enemy to the status quo in which the powerful linger, in a justified way or not. Finding again their own worth is to embrace their name once again. Their name they rejected, being linked to what they hated ( the Divine Order for Ifan, dwarven royalty for the Beast ). Yet, I would like to show you one final thing :
Marcus is dead. I am the Beast of the Sea. And you will address me as such.
The man you speak of is not who I am. Anymore. And I'll not become him again for the likes of you.
Ifan and Beast's ending quests mean the funeral of half their identity. They embrace a face, reject the other, to become whole once again. And it's striking to see that Beast embraces the future, rejecting royalty, and Ifan embraces the past, finally rejecting the Lone Wolves.
Fane and Sebille are half empty shells of themselves, and it shows in their very name. Fane isn't Fane's name, just a homophonic word to his own name, "easier to pronounce". His identity as an Eternal, already disrupted by the drastic change of world, is made all the more clear as he needs to adapt to a new name, and so, a new identity. A mask is needed, and not just a physical one - thus the importance of such a name.
Sebille is given her full name only if she choses the path of alienation. "Your name is Sebille Kaleran", she's told. Only, she's offered her complete identity for but a brief moment. She will become yet the Mother Tree, and thus bear hundred of names, each of them aren't her own. The path of freedom is the path of incompletude : she's doomed to walk with this half empty name, only the half of who she was.
Similarly, Lohse hasn't any surname of her own. Lohse the bard - Lohse the possessed. You would say, "hey, but she always had her name ? Surname isn't proof she belongs nowhere" and while this is very much true, I see her being possessed by Adramahlik as a struggle with keeping one's own name. After all, knowing names can be a great power for and towards demons - Adramahlik probably knows that, and uses Lohse's name against herself. Jahan says to you that the demon "hadn't only coiled around her heart - it had become her heart". Lohse's body is both a vessel for her and for Adramahlik.
Of course, there is much more to say about the companions and their struggling identity - this analysis only scratches to the surface.
northern hemisphere babes we made it to the longest night of the year. we made it. for the next 6 months, every day will give us a little more daylight than the last. let's go. take my hand. climb out of the darkness with me
larian openly admitting to using generative ai was NOT on my 2025 bingo card lol
btw, the whole "millennial in highschool going thru a break up so they changed their msn status to some sad lyrics" shit he has going on with his profile rn is FRYING ME
I don't know what you thought about the new trailer, but it quite sticks with me through the whole day, and, i don't know... i'm quite skeptical ? like larian tries to repeat you again and again that what they sell is dark fantasy, ( i would like to argue that gore and sex aren't enough to make a dark-fantasy world, but i don't think they're ready for that talk ) to the point where gore becomes way too much (but maybe that is a matter of taste). There's no mention of something known before, no mention to any game, so I guess we need to wait a little to be able to understand the whole lore displayed there.
also larian didn't learn a thing and decided to do bigger than bg3, and so here we are again. prepare yourself to a rushed last act and wasted potential. don't want to sound bitter but it seems to me they took the worst traits in bg3 and decided that was the formula to go with.
anyway, let's see how it'll go on. i'm still very glad they decided to continue the franchise.
it just occurred to me that darth vader, master engineer, probably looked at the death star plans at some point and noticed the flaw, but didn’t bother to tell anyone about it because he despised everyone who was involved in the project
“Unfortunate”
Meanwhile Vader, expert ace pilot, acts well below rank to supposedly fight off the attackers. Attackers who, as far as anyone else knows, can’t hope to do shit to the Death Star.
Convenient.
Lol there are some ppl on here all “oh he was feeling a little Light so he knew he had to destroy it to do the Right Thing!!!” like nah. I love my boy but he’s a bag of stinky garbagé at this point and still totally evil.
He just despised the Death Star cuz everyone was all “nyeh heh this thing can do ur job for u u LOSER” and he actively loathed every single person who was on board it. Of course he was petty enough to ignore its self-destruct button. He’s just that bitch.
this seems entirely reasonable sidebar: apparently thrawn treason is, like, mostly Krennic and Tarkin hating each other and i have never read a thrawn book but i might just read that one
Vader is high-key insulted by the existence of the Death Star, the effort and expense thrown into making it, and the way everybody’s praising it as the new ultimate power in the universe, and probably the worst part of the whole affair?
He has no one to bitch to about it.
Even the Emperor’s jumped on the superweapon hype train. Even the tolerably-competent officers like Tarkin are all #TeamDeathStar, and then there’s smug assholes like Admiral Motti who just won’t shut up about it, and honestly?
Vader’s probably been on the email CC list for the design since the project started. Years of enduring shitty design and interdepartmental bickering and watching some smarmy asshole in an inferior cloak prance about bloviating about his special superweapon like somebody who has an anime body pillow of the superlaser housing.
And then there’s this one scientist who keeps going on and on about this thermal exhaust problem.
Just. Huge amounts of emails on the subject, going on and on and on about it.
Vader is totally the only person who actually reads these after the first, like, five of them. Everybody else just skims through them with a side of “Seriously, Galen? Another one? Force-dammit, Krennic, couldn’t you have left him on that mudball with his family?” But Vader is bored out of his skull with 90% of his job anyway, and it’s not like he has anything better to do. Besides, viciously judging other people’s design abilities is the closest thing to pass for fun when there aren’t any Rebels to slaughter or armies to curbstomp, and there’s plenty of shit design for the judging.
He spots the flaw in the reactor the first time it appears in the plans.
He’d have shit himself if it wasn’t for the suit.
He promptly makes a bet with himself on whether anybody is going to spot it.
Nobody does.
They’re a pack of idiots. Every last one of them.
Maybe he contemplates telling them for like two-thirds of a second. It would be fun to lord his actual mechanical expertise over that little shit, Krennic.
But then he considers that he can only tell them once, and what if it were after the thing blew itself right the fuck up, what if that? He can still point out the flaw, and he can throw everyone’s stupidity right in their stupid faces, but also there’ll be no more Death Star.
So when Galen Erso sends out Thermal Exhaust Problem Analysis Report #6,109 and buried in paragraph 37 is a suggestion of an extra exhaust port, and Krennic responds with “SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT YOUR GODDAMN THERMAL EXHAUST PORT, GALEN, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT!” and Erso goes, “So you approve the solution?” and Krennic goes “S***** F*** LKJDGJFKL!!!!LJF$%#$DJF! YES!” Vader saves the email exchange for posterity and is downright cheerful the rest of the week.
True, he acts in its defense, chasing down Rebels when the plans are stolen. Of course he does. They’re Rebels, and hunting them down is his job and one of the very few pleasures of his existence. But it’s not for the Death Star. In fact, if one of them were to escape with its plans, and hide them successfully, and keep their location secret through torture and worse, and if another of them were to fly a starfighter well enough to keep from being destroyed long enough to drop a torpedo through that vulnerable exhaust port and touch off that reactor instability and turn the whole massive, ridiculous, wasteful, absurd, and vaguely insulting contraption into so much spacedust …
… well …
… oops.
Vader’s only regret about the whole affair is that Krennic predeceased it and is therefore unavailable for gloating to.
It doesn’t stop him from snagging a copy of the Rebels’ footage of the Death Star blowing up and posting it anonymously to the holonet with the added caption “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
sorry to put this post back in your notes op but this is probs my fave text chain i’ve ever participated in and reblogging it whenever i see it always brightens my day xD
It’d be hilarious if it goes absolutely viral and nobody knows it’s THE Lord Vader, just some random insider in the Empire. Just like I dunno, Matt or Rick or some other third guy but no.
It’s Vader. The last guy you want to see. The guy who’s basically a galactic boogeyman. He doesn’t have Krennic to mess with but he’s MORE than happy to watch it again and be all like…
‘They were all idiots. I wouldn’t put the exhaust port there, no way.’ It was basically a ‘Fuck you all specifically.’ move.
The notes are broken. This is what tumblr is all about apparently.
THE NOTES ARE BROKEN! This has been reblogged so many times, Tumblr just shrugged and said “infinity”
