janusfranc15

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new theory: the Baleful Observer Theory

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My Job Coach is Black and British. Absolutely wonderful woman, and has a very strong Northern Accent.

Also fascinated with the Yoruba, as she’s got Nigerian ancestry.

Point is, she IS British, culturally, that is.

Vaguely related- but I’d also add that a few non-British dishes such as Tikka Masala… were specifically invented IN Britain by SAsian (some claim Bangladeshi) cooks.

Or according to one source, in Scotland, by a Mr Ali Ahmed Aslam (However, this has been criticized by others who mention the dish existed BEFORE him)

Specifically to cater to British Tastes. (Ie: make it milder and sweet and add a Sauce to the dish). Which is to say- acting as if Tikka Masala, or other local variations of Curry was stolen or Appropriated imo isn’t actually that Woke a statement, considering it was intentionally invented by the UK’s South Asian community.

british is not synonymous with white

european is not synonymous with white

the world is not divided into USA (melting pot), white countries and brown countries

"um you know the type of person I mean when I say british" hey do you think this line of thought may have Implications

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british is not synonymous with white

european is not synonymous with white

the world is not divided into USA (melting pot), white countries and brown countries

"um you know the type of person I mean when I say british" hey do you think this line of thought may have Implications

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Beautiful. Also I think I’m seeing the template for all those Elden Ring Ruins now.

Lindisfarne, Northumberland, England, UK

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Purring kitty

(via)

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Nice. 10/10.

This fanfic shit easy as hell

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OP Where is the Hot Buff Descendant of Andraste that engages in Extreme Heresies

actually i need to forcibly self-review my tags for a minute:

this would've been SO neat if it happened in da4? think of it this way:

there are all these small heretical cults that have been around in the chantry for ages - after the chaos of the the breach, people start getting more into them. some of them have a "the maker is going to Literally Return and smite evildoers" type of ideology. as the black city's seals weaken, this cult starts getting funky little dream visions + the locations of highly powerful ~maker blessed~ (they're just elven) artifacts that they use.

solas, frantically, is trying to tear the veil, reach the black city, and reclose it again but better, before the blight and evanuris fully leak out and doom thedas. he arrives at the black city, and... immediately falls into Regret Jail. for 2 reasons:

he did not notice that flemythal was playing him the whole time, and actually wanted elgar'nan released so she could kill him herself and take his power. she interferes with his ritual to get this done, and the veil remains relatively intact.

the evanuris got "woken up" when the magisters first entered the black city, and had not been idle - knowing that solas is the Regrets Georg of the pantheon, they built a regret jail in there to immediately catch him, bc they knew he'd have to come back eventually.

now, thedas is faced with: incredible tumult. "the maker" is literally creating eclipses and frying people with his glorious radiance, people actually like him bc there was a coincidental outbreak of really creatively fucked up monsters, that his priests easily destroyed when no one else could. also andraste(?) (it's flemythal) seems to be angry at him and is raising a rival force.

the chantry is in shambles; the official stance of the divine is that this is all fake and a test of faith bc none of it is making any sense. and the maker is not supposed to be publicly divorcing andraste and setting entire towns on fire and looking unsettlingly blighted. but, no one is really listening to that lmao.

meanwhile, the remaining old god cult supporters in tevinter are Mad about this. so is the qun, actually. rare unifying factor? do you want to ally with either of these people against elgar'nan and ghilan'nain? that's ✨grey morality✨. the dalish are also not happy about this - many of them were already on solas' agents faction, but the remainder are like "this is disgusting. i hate it here. our lord elgar'nan, the stern but respectful patriarch, would NEVER stand for this chantry bullshit >:(".

also meanwhile, solas is banging on the walls of his regret jail and trying to get his agents to somehow salvage this situation. his ancient elven lieutentant, reva, is there and she's hot and mean.

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So basically Drakengard / Nier levels of Fucked Up.

Yeah that seems like the logical conclusion to all of Veilguard’s many plot threads.

i feel like you could make a Truly Harrowing Grimdark fic out of veilguard if you actually just. take the offscreen events seriously, and retain the previous stuff like "blight is incurable" and "elves are oppressed" and "evanuris are unkillable through any means found in millennia, even when they kill each other" and "the black city is already 2 steps away from breaking open, and it's inherently tied to the veil"

so then it's really like:

rook interferes with the ritual, releases 2 evanuris and the blight into thedas. multiple countries begin collapsing under darkspawn and famine. i think even orzammar goes quiet? i don't agree with the "oh ferelden got blighted and it was fine!" argument, bc this is now like 3 countries over a huge geographical area, and it's said that famine is looming and the survivors are few enough to fit into individual cities. that's REALLY bad.

everyone is now aware that the cause of this is the Evil Elven Gods, from their religion already banned by the chantry, but that elves were known to practice in secret. retaliation begins. all the elves in thedas are now seen as suspect at best, and responsible for this at worst.

rook's team is busy having coffee, organizing a book club, and cooking for each other cutely. occasionally bickering with solas, but not asking him any useful questions about this whole trainwreck, or about what his plan actually was, before.

tevinter and the antivan crows remain powerful through everything - tevinter is now completely unchecked, bc no other part of southern thedas would be able to repel their influence. tevinter practices mass slavery of elves, and the antivan crows do as well, in a slightly different way, in that they bank on elves being considered attractive and good honeypots for assassinations. and that's not good, because...

it's revealed that not only did the Evil Elven Gods cause all this recent carnage, they also invented the blight! this is a huge W for tevinter. their greatest national embarrassment can now be pinned on their ancient enemy. they immediately argue that the original magisters were actually just being brainwashed by the Evil Gods, and actually, thedas is SO lucky that tevinter destroyed arlathan. it was an evil place worshipping evil gods!

elves across thedas are, presumably, facing violently forced conversion to andrastianism at best, or massascres, exile, and enslavement at worst. in this trying time, at least they have. uhhh. bellara's white guilt to help advocate for them, as she said maybe they shouldn't be trusted after all? oh ok. well if the elves themselves say they can't be trusted...

in most people's eyes, this immediately reframes the entire chant of light. if shartan was an elf, and he wanted to give his people a nation where they could worship Evil Elven Gods... how could he have been truly allied with andraste? did HE betray her, actually? is this why the dales never helped with the blight and deserved to be destroyed?

harding discovers and reconnects to the titans - concludes that, despite being alive and sapient and having their literal blood being mined out of their bodies by their estranged children, their time is over. presumably, they stay comatose and in eternal suffering until uhhh. idk. either the dwarves run out of lyrium or the titans lash out into mass earthquakes when they reach their limit(?). who knows!

you can prop up a regime of... immortal mages in nevarra. having mages with immortality went super well for the elves, no problems. imagine if, say, the chantry was destabilized and these immortal mages no longer have anything to fear from anybody else? surely they wouldn't take power forever. haha. don't worry, these ones are really nice, they're just into uhhh. summoning spirits into corpses to create huge labour forces. and they're goth.

meanwhile, the Evil Elven Gods have been killed! yay! but actually, are they going to stay dead...? all the evanuris ganged up together to kill mythal, and she survived for millennia. they would've certainly known about her dragon and tried to kill it, too - if they failed after that, that means they're truly unkillable in some way. solas was trying to kill these guys for however many centuries - if it was as simple as "boss fight the dragon and then the evanuris" he would've done that instead of some galaxy brain reality-altering stuff that knocked him into a coma?

so, they're gone for now. luckily the blight and the veil can be held up! by one guy who's uhhh. in eternal solitary confinement, watching the last of his people get hunted down by the chantry. and he's not really immortal. and tevinter may be gunning for him anyway, and they now have enough slaves to access huge amounts of blood to reach the black city again. and the veil thins by itself whenever there's anything like "war" or "suffering" so... it's about to turn into swiss cheese.

anyway, what if dragon age was about a young witch in a fully post apocalyptic setting, looking for unblighted food and water while dodging rival warlords and tevinter slavers, and elves have become reclusive and nearly extinct, and the veil is so thin, and the black city is so close, that it can actually be seen in the sky like a portent of doom. also there are book clubs still.

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No no, I like this Fucked Up but Realistic Consequence of Veilguard. I mean. I don’t LIKE what’s happening but at least it feels internally consistent and realistic. If also depressing.

But yes. Once Thedas discovers the Elves are technically responsible for the Blight (!!!!!) they’re essentially Doomed.

Unless the Blight hammered Human civilization enough that they CAN’T get ‘retribution’ or ‘vengeance’, which just means they’re going to be Very Very angry and bitter at a people who, in their eyes, ruined literally everything and started the apocalypse out of greed.

the world of thedas vol 3 project looked VERY neat, but i fear i have too much... inherent salt in my physiology. and if i contributed anything it would be like: "this is how the events of veilguard would logically lead to a full on exalted march against every elf in thedas" or "look at how fucked the entirety of southern thedas is with blight and famines" or "if mythal survived 5000 years after all her peers tried to kill her, no way did elgarn'nan and ghilan'nain die from a few boss fights. rumours are spreading of their return" or "hey remember how the veil tears on its own with any bloodshed? how IS southern thedas looking with that?" fdkjhfjdg. which is probably not the vibe people would want in a zine ;-;

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What prev very much said.

A lot of people hate to hear this, but they in particular really need to understand it.

If you were raised in the US, and you weren't specifically raised as a specific religion other than Christianity, then you are culturally Christian. Yes, even if you were raised atheist. Yes, I know you hate that idea. People who were raised in specific other religions in the US are usually still influenced by it, just not as thoroughly.

But specific Protestant values and attitudes have worked their way so far into US culture that we do not ever think about. (They've gotten into US Catholicism, too, Catholics elsewhere are frequently WTF at US Catholics, or so I'm told.) The "Protestant work ethic" is one of them, that "manager in your head" you should kill. Purity as a principle. The nobility of suffering (very Calvinist specifically). The prosperity culture (again, very Calvinist). A whole list. I'm honestly not good enough at Christian history to list it all. After all, I wasn't raised Christian myself. But I can see and acknowledge that I was raised in a culture with a Christian hegemony. If I pay attention, I can see where it's affected how I think. And when I do pay attention and look at it, I can change it. I can root out those patterns in my head. It's a lot of work, but it's well worth doing.

Denying that you are culturally Christian on the basis of your absence of Christian upbringing, or absence of Christianity now, just shows that you don't understand what cultural Christianity is. It is the culture that you have marinated in all your life, if you grew up in the US. The same way you've marinated in racism, classism, sexism, right on down the line (and generally they are all one thing). All of that affects you, and the only way to fix it is to acknowledge it and work on it.

This isn't a "hot take". It's just a fucking fact.

I'm posting at 10:30pm US Pacific time on a Sunday night, and fucking nobody is going to see this. Or reblog it. But I feel better having said it.

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Was talking to a coworker today who explained that her grandfather was like Snow White “but Californian. And an old man.” in that the creatures of the forest would follow him around and presumably duet with him.

“When he died the ravens sat in the trees outside for a week, watching. Taking turns. A horde of raccoons tried to break into the house every night, tearing at the siding. Eventually they gave up, but it was unsettling.”

“Aww. They were checking on him!” I said, like a normal person. Internally, I thought “Maybe you could do the thing you do with dead pets, where you show them to the living pets so the living pet understands they’re gone. But I guess if you did that to a bunch of scavenging species, they’d be like “Well, that’s very sad but he IS food now.” So what you’d need, for human sensibilities, is some sort of transparent corpse barrier. Like a see-through coffin oh that’s what the dwarves were doing! You’ve stopped paying attention to this conversation about the loss of a beloved family member you gotta phase back in.”

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Don’t forget to meetbup and fuck each other’s Brelns out.

could this be love

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Oh. So that’s what this sounds like.

✨ Please reblog the polls to make them reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind 💖 Artists and titles will be revealed after the poll's conclusion, check the original post for an update! ✨

Please don't spoil, this is not a quiz. :)