E Is For Equal

A Baldur's Gate portrait inspired by the style of the Disco Elysium portraits. She looks away from the light, maybe because she is taught to do so, maybe because she feels like she does not deserve it. Talking to her is difficult, most of her memory is blank, as if she misses parts of herself.

I'm new to Sleep Token; this is them, right?

Doodle of Astarion going from starved and newly freed to eating better and getting chubbier

Controversial, but i'm six-pack hater. Out of romanceable male companions only Wyll should be allowed to have defined abs. Thank you for coming to my ted talk

The patch 8 animation was just trolling the Astarion fans I swear. Deliberately pronouncing his name "wrong" in the song because people keep arguing about it even though there really shouldn't be an argument. His characterization really felt to me like it's poking fun at how fanon so often turns him into a caricature of himself. Plus all the little easter eggs referencing popular fanart, edits, and other quirks of the fandom. They knew what they were doing and it's so funny. The stupid song is still stuck in my stupid head.

He's getting the chance to explore his hobbies and passions 🥺

When the player first meets Wyll you can ask him about his stone eye and he'll reply: "It's made from pure Bloodstone, carved from the Galena Mountains just north of the Moonsea. A reminder that sometimes, blood must be shed and sacrifices must be made."

And I, knowing nothing about Wyll at the time, took one look at his eye and went: "No, the fuck it ain't!"

See, if you know anything about bloodstone, you know that it's called that because it looks like it has drops of blood trapped in it:

[Heliotrope (aka Bloodstone) from Wikipedia]

The plain light grey stone of Wyll's eye is clearly not bloodstone, even at a glance. So, why would Wyll call it bloodstone?

While I don't think Wyll is above lying, and he tells a good story, it's an odd lie to tell in the first place. Any lie that can be dismantled by somewhat common knowledge is a poor lie. (Or maybe I'm the weird one for immediately clocking that it wasn't bloodstone.)

What if it wasn't a lie?

We know that Wyll's eye is a sending stone and Mizora uses it to track Wyll and to give him orders. In EA Mizora could even use the stone to spy on Wyll, though there's no evidence of that in the full release.

As per DnD 5e, there aren't any rules about what type of stone has to be used to create sending stones, only that they are created in pairs and are carved identically in order to help identify the other half of the pairing. We know that Wyll lost his eye during the battle with the cult of Tiamat and we know Wyll's scarring was designed with the intent to be a "physical, intimate sign of the contract between him and his patron" and to look "like his face had been grabbed very painfully by claws or sharp nails". Coincidence? I think not. 

Wyll would have been exhausted, having just survived his encounter with the cultists. Unable to fight back, Mizora could have simply plucked his eye out of his head and before he could even ask why she would have replaced it with a stone eye. This, she might have mentioned, was an eye made of blood stone and a sending stone that they would use to communicate. She might then explain that 'blood stone' (with a space in the middle) is a type of stone found in Avernus, imbued with special properties due to its hellish provenance. Or, she might not explain it at all. This type of stone might be why Mizora is able to track Wyll (there is a magical item in DnD called a 'Blod Stone' which has this ability). There could even be further abilities from this type of stone.

And Wyll, hearing that it is bloodstone, simply comes up with a different story to explain where it came from, thinking like all good liars that it is better not to stray too far from the truth and damning himself to being discovered in the process.

(Information pulled from Wyll_InParty2_Nested_FreedMizora and Wyll_InParty2_Nested_BladeStory dialogue trees)

Thanks, I hadn't cried yet today

silence

Again with poor Wyll:

I was randomly reminded of this scene the other day and how you have the option of talking Wyll down from wanting to kill Mizora. It's framed as a good thing, like you're steering him away from a dark path of digging two graves, but is that really what this is? I think he has every right to want to kill her (monster hunter that he is), not just for himself, but to protect anyone else she'd take advantage of and hurt in the future. I understand that what this line is saying is us telling him that he might do more good in taking on enemies as needed rather than putting all this time into a single target, but if that's the case I don't like how it's phrased.

I get that Wyll is the most morally righteous of the companions, and being driven by revenge isn't exactly a good thing, but he has every right to want it. She forced him into a slavery contract, directly violated his bodily integrity at least twice, supported the death of the most important person in his life, and has been mentally tormenting him all the while.

Wyll is absolutely the type to fight out of love and the desire to protect rather than to hurt and avenge, yes. But I still think it's really condescending to tell him "revenge is bad", when (to my memory), we never tell Astarion that wanting revenge on Cazador is wrong. And Shadowheart taking out the Sharrans is seen as a grim and unfortunate but necessary public service. Even with Karlach, I think the most we say about her wanting end Gortash is "let's wait and be smart about this" (if you're planning to kill him at all, that is). Either this is another example of Wyll not getting the same treatment as other characters (and dare I say, being reductive of his trauma), or I'm just projecting. Maybe I'm misreading this whole thing — let me know.

But telling him to "let it go" is kind of wild no matter how you look at it.

(to be clear I don't think murder and revenge are "good" things. But killing devils seems to be framed as like killing a monster rather than a person, and even then, killing people is commonplace in this game. I'm just saying the morality should be consistent.)

In the spirit of the "two cakes are better than one" sentiment, in regards to fanfic, I would happily read 100,000 different versions of a scene where magic is used (Mirror Image or something) to let Astarion see his face for the first time in 200 years.

An exhaustive list of everything wrong with Wyll:

He likes clowns

Nothing else

He was mean to Astarion a few times but we can forgive him for that