Scissorlines - ScissorLines

Love love love characters that present themselves as emotionally open social butterflies but the more you see of them the more obvious it is that they’re the most closed off fuckers in the story. Sure, they want to help you with your personal problems and messy emotions, but if you turn that shit back on them, they’ll shut down or deflect every time. Why are you sticking your nose in their business anyway? It’s not like it matters. They’re not a person, they’re just a role being played. They’re the guy who fixes things and saves people. Please ignore the man behind the mask, he’s fine. Everything’s fine.

i really like in fiction when they're like oh no!!! the bad guys are about to win!!! and Character Who Keeps Trying To Sacrifice Themself For The Greater Good is like. gentlemen i have an idea

your unreliable narrator fucking bit me

"came back wrong" what about Came Back Afraid. You used to be brave. Too brave maybe, defying the odds at every turn, a fighter, cocky, playing with fire, first to throw yourself at the enemy. Until one day it all caught up to you. You came back, somehow, but now you know all too intimately how it feels to lose, to die, to be destroyed. Now you flinch and freeze and cower at the slightest provocation. Who even are you now if you can't be brave? The grave may have let you go, but the mortal fear still grips you tighter than ever.

Apolocheese if this is a question you've already answered, but I was wondering, if Tumeric was a companion in bg3 rather than the player-character, what would her story be like throughout Act 1, 2 & 3? Her personal quests etc? Would it follow the same beats as Graveyards? And how could a Tav influence the outcome? I hope this question makes sense lol - and no pressure to answer!!

(P.s. adore your writing btw, and loving all the new characters popping up in Wings/Talons)

Oh, no bother at all - thank you so much, I very much appreciate the chance to ramble about my disaster girl - and what a long ramble it has become, I'm going to have to add a read more in there.

Turmeric's arc as a companion probably wouldn't really start until Act 2, I think. Before then, she might talk about Klear as the person who got her into being a bard if you had high approval and pushed her a little, but other than that she wouldn't be sharing anything. To compensate for the lack of information in that regard, she'd encourage whoever the player character was to talk about themselves instead (which would probably mean a multiple choice backstory for custom Tavs), which she would hope would also have the rather convenient side effect of getting them to trust her more, if it worked.

That aloof but friendly image would start to break a little in Act 2, especially if you brought her to areas like the House of Healing, or if she was there when you saw Isobel for the first time - giving you a chance to jump in and ask her if there's something wrong. You'd have a few chances at perception/insight and then persuasion checks depending on where you took her too. If you had high approval she might come to you herself in a long rest and tell you she's... familiar with the area, if she thinks sharing her knowledge of the place might help - but I think if you played it right, and missed/failed all of those checks and then played it right, it would be entirely possible to get through the whole game with her without ever learning a single thing about her past.

If you passed those checks, she'd admit her past as a nurse in the House of Healing to you, but she wouldn't go beyond that. Knowing about her past would change her comments around the Shadow-cursed Lands, though- she'd openly talk about what it used it be like there/people she used to know/parts of it she didn't know about/how things have changed.

The conclusion of her Act 2 arc would depend on whether you knew about her past/whether you brought her to final confrontation in Moonrise. If you knew about her past but didn't bring her, she'd just stay back at camp and talk to you about what happened later. If you didn't know and didn't bring her, she'd just turn up by herself anyway because the pressure of keeping it all to herself would drive her to confront Ketheric anyway.

Either way, if she's turned up by herself, or if you chose to bring her along, she'll get kidnapped by Ketheric when he takes Aylin as well (like in More Graves to Dig, but she wouldn't have the prism with her, so they'd just teleport straight there as he normally does with Aylin, no need to complicate things) and what happens in the confrontation in the mindflayer colony will depend on whether you know about her past.

If you know, it's up to you - you do all the talking, and if you manage to talk Ketheric into the pit she'll run away from him and rejoin the group, if you don't and you're just fighting Ketheric, she'll start the fight prone and on a fixed low initiative as Ketheric throws her to the ground and out of the way - he might attack her, but he'll only aim to knock her and not kill her- he still needs her for his little plan, after all.

If you don't know - she'll do the talking, manage to convince Ketheric into the pit, and then immediately let herself get killed by Myrkul.

Unlike the fic, you'd then get a chance from Withers after the fight to go into the fugue plane waiting room and talk to her, if you want to (you can just choose to leave her dead and not bother if you'd rather) - finally having a definite chance to learn about her past even if you failed all the checks before. You get a chance to convince her you want her alive even if she's a bit of a liar, easier depending on how high your approval is with her, and if you succeed she'd promise to tell you the rest of it, and then you get a dramatic cutscene of her coming back to life in your arms like a disney princess that people would use for romantic model swaps all the time.

If you fail to convince her, she'd stay dead, and you'd get a shot of her corpse in the cutscene when you left the shadow-cursed lands - grim if you didn't break the curse, a touch hopeful if you did- flowers blooming around her, new life, that sort of thing.

At the start of Act 3, if she was alive, she'd tell you about the rest of her history- like Exhuming the Past- though probably using the tadpole connection for some visuals so that her just talking wouldn't bore the player to death. You could really easily get her approval from Neutral 0 to Exceptional 100 right here just by accepting her and comforting her at regular intervals, which would help later- I think I'd put it just after killing either Orin or Gortash, whoever you went with first- when you'd get a cutscene with her where you could talk about your player characters plans for the future after you defeat the Absolute, and you'd get your chance to romance her here - yeah, you wouldn't even get a chance to start a romance with her until Act 3 (you could try to flirt before, but she'd laugh it of or deflect and it wouldn't really go anywhere). But, she's polyamorous - so you could romance someone in the meantime if they're chill with polyamory, which would merge very nicely with Halsin's romance if you're otherwise only dating him (undoubtedly leading to some of the horniest party banter you've ever heard between them).

OR, in a way round learning about her past at all - in a cheaty/meta-y/safeguard way - if she was already dead for whatever reason before you went to Moonrise and you only resurrected her with Withers after the fight with Myrkul was over, that part of the quest just wouldn't trigger and you could skip over it without her getting kidnapped, or learning about her past. This would effectively end the quest and skip the rest of her storyline as well (including the chance to romance her), as it would be too late for her to consider talking about her past now, so up until the epilogue all you would really know about her is she's just some bard from Baldur's Gate, which is kinda funny.

Hopefully this answered your question, and thank you again for asking! I hope you'll continue to enjoy my writing in future- knowing people like it makes me very happy, and really motivates me to write more! ^_^

Pros of re-reading your own fic

a good time;

Has exactly the tropes you like and the characterization you want to read;

Gratification: yes you did finish a thing and yes you did do good;

just a very fun time all around.

Cons of re-reading your own fic:

Is that another TYpO

[cazador voice] now we can only complete my kickass immortality ritual if astarion makes it to the ritual site. so don't forget to lock the ritual site behind a door that's coded in a language he doesn't speak whose dictionary is currently being held by the cursed corpse of a child he doesn't know. and also my signet ring. and don't tell him any of this. really the joys of the ritual are secondary to standing here on this platform with all of you for three weeks, waiting, while astarion sort of fucks around in my house trying to figure out how to get here

“source?” divine intuition, gut instinct, and cryptic symbolism from my dreams

Astarion: “No one ever cared about me >:\”

Karlach, standing 10ft away: “ME I CARE I CARE SO MUCH”