u/shnn_twt

He is giving me the best kind of brainrot because of how he evades easy categorization.

His identity, and what shapes his choices, are so interesting to think about, and I love how the game approaches this in regards to illithids. As someone that got into the game without any prior DnD knowledge I perceived the Emperor as a person, who happened to be a mind flayer, making choices that were rooted in his values and experiences rather than his nature. and I love that we have Omeluum who contrasts him as a kind mind-flayer, with a different personality, priorities, and circumstances. When you look beyond their species and consider their pasts like we do for humanoid characters you see two individuals who were shaped by their distinct paths and experiences.

There isn't much (or any) conversation around the psychological underpinnings of the Emperor. I think his past is far more central to understanding his character than most discussions even acknowledge. His entire existence as an illithid has been defined by persecution, hiding, and the constant struggle to maintain his autonomy. His earliest formative experience is his closest friend rejecting his new identity and trying to kill him, unable to see him beyond his illithidness, perceiving his self-acceptance as the death of Balduran's self, instead of respecting his right to self-determination. It's heartbreaking when you realize how much these two loved each other. It is clear to me that this was a mutual tragedy, affecting the Emperor as much as Ansur.

written by the soulless evil mind flayer btw

He has to keep hiding and struggling to stay free, becoming a slave twice, carrying these memories after having paid the price for being vulnerable as an illithid. This is the kind of shit that leaves an immense psychological scar on people. The Emperor acts very similarly to someone who has intellectualized every negative experience or emotion, so instead of being visibly angsty, he's internalized it all, quietly shaping his mindset and approach to life. The refusal to let go of control, the refusal to ever be powerless or vulnerable again, the near-defensive insistence that he's evolved, he's better, greater (while caring so much about how he's perceived)

let me love you bitch damn

...reminds me of Astarion. And my own self too actually lmfao. The escalation of "I want to have control over my self" to "I want to control the circumstances that impact me" to "I want to have control in every situation over every person because the alternative is 100% annihilation" is real as fuck and before you realize it you're out there lobotomizing your partner-in-crime and (potentially) enslaving the whole world and perpetuating the illithid stereotype because that's better than facing your fears. (he's just like me fr)

Also eughuhdhfhfdf I'm a little insane about how Balduran's personality appears to persist so strongly, which has become especially noticeable now that I'm reading a little bit of his lore outside BG3. The ambition, the ego, and concerning moral behavior???

\"conscripting\" locals and yeeting someone into the sea, dare i say this is emperor coded. or is emperor balduran coded?

There are so many different opinions about Balduran/Emperor, with one of the popular ones being that the tadpole consumed Balduran, and the Emperor is just a mind flayer performing personhood, which never sat right with me not just because of narrative/thematic reasons, but also because how much of a genuine anomaly the Emperor is considered to be. It's rare for a mind flayer to break free and become independent, and perhaps even rarer for one to be good. It's almost unheard of for one to retain so much of its original personality, and even more unheard of for it to regard itself as a continuation of the person it once was. I've come to learn that's the illithid version of a severe mental illness; and The Emperor becomes way funnier when you realize that he's a double outcast cause he's too illithid for humans and too human for illithids and no one wants his deluded weirdo ass. He's walking around with this baggage insisting he's fine. me too buddy, me too

yep....

that is Balduran alright lmfao

I'm of belief that ceromorphosis, or rather his eventual acceptance of it changed him in a sense that it amplified some of his worse traits and made him more detached. I don't think one identity overwrote the other. What we see in the game is, to me, the product of a hybridization of Balduran's identity and an illithid psyche. And that keeps him in that grey area, where you can never quite be sure who the fuck is speaking to you and how much of what he says and claims to feel is real. There are two wolves inside him and both are terrible manipulators but one is also lonely and kinda of angsty. or Maybe both are? I don't know. But that won't stop me from balduring his gate till the end of times!

I don't know what shaped me to be like this. Whether I was always depressed, or if it was undiagnosed ADHD, or if I was born with a defective brain. I don't know, but I always found reality to be dull and depressing. I learned about maladaptive daydreaming a few years ago and spent some time checked out, living in my daydreams. I was severely depressed back then. But even in my default state, i simply have no desire to remain present. I like when i zone out and let my brain go to sleep. It brings me relief. The only activities I can tolerate are the ones that allow me to zone out and go on autopilot.

I'm tired of investigating, researching, reading, and trying to remedy this. I know nothing, i understand nothing. I think the only thing that'd help is if someone split open my skull, injected all the right chemicals in my brain, changed its' chemistry, and inserted it back to my skull. The makeup of my brain is all wrong and needs to be rearranged.

This is destroying my life and I have no clue how to bring it up to my psychiatrist and therapist. Talk therapy doesn't do shit and I don't know what else to ask for, what I need, I don't know. Maybe i lack patience? maybe I should go back and sit in those sessions and keep yapping endlessly, intellectualizing my emotions, and never addressing the direct source of my dread. Maybe eventually i'll find a way to articulate whatever this is.

Sorry if the flair is wrong.

There are no words to describe it. Today, I was medicated, observing my inner state as I typed away on my work computer. I felt okay. Not good, not bad, but relatively stable.

Yesterday, in this very seat, I was absolutely falling apart. I was trying to hold in tears. The dread was so all-consuming that I had to pause working every few minutes and just give myself a moment to collect myself. I had to leave 2 hours early because I was non-functional.

Dread. It's always dread. Always this immeasurable despair. Hopelessness of incomprehensible proportions. Everything is over. There is an abyss beneath me, dark and cold, closing in. Under me, around me, all around me. There is no help coming. There is no salvation. My mind is on fire, producing dreadful thought after dreadful thought, challenging itself to make each thought worse than the last. No amount of logic helps. There is no comfort. I realized as I'm typing this that I described Christian hell. The absence of god, eternal darkness, endless despair, complete absence of (His) love, etc. I'm not religious, so it's a little funny. If that's truly what hell is like, then I regularly live it.

What gets me is how unreliable my mind is. It's horrifying to carry this knowledge that you simply can't rely on your own self when things get hard. The squishy organ in your head is actually your enemy, and god forbid it ever catches you slipping, because it will absolutely destroy you. Isn't that lovely? It's not enough that I have to worry about life outside my mind, I have to worry about my flaming garbage mental health too. I have to keep relying on 2 small pills for the rest of my remaining life, 50 something years, and if I am ever unable to access it it's game over for me.

Fuck this. fuck this. fuck this. fuck this.