nealran

[nealran]

20% ‘no’ on the “does gale dekarios eat pussy” poll is crazy—opinions on his character aside—solely because his voice actor stood in that recording booth multiple times to deliver at minimum three separate lines of dialogue reiterating that the man eats pussy. the writers said “let’s not leave this up to guesswork” and mr. downie collected his paycheck

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hello OOTS fandom on tumblr (all three of you)

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This is pure pedantry, but please, folks: it's nepotism if the unfair advantage is because of your relatives. If it's because of your friends, it's cronyism.

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Lucanis and rook watching a sunset in Treviso. I wanted to capture something softer, reflecting the quieter romance while still acknowledging the bit of mutual pining present in a Rookanis relationship.

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Lyra, my beloved cat of 13 years, passed away this year on Father's Day. She's been by my side through very difficult times and was my little rock of steady and unrelenting love. I struggled a lot drawing this, and struggled a lot posting it, but I know I would've wanted to read a comic like this that validated my grief for her when I lost her.

Wherever you are, Lyra my little summer star, I love you always! Thank you for being the best thing in my life.

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So I’ve never actually watched The Princess Bride with closed captioning. All the copies I own/have owned didn’t come with that option. Well, it’s on Disney+ now, and it DOES have captions. I decided to watch it tonight because apparently half of my coworkers haven’t seen it and that made me sad.

AND WHEN I TELL YOU I WAS APPARENTLY MISSING THINGS-

I now know ALL of Fezzik’s rhymes from the boat.

I know exactly what fighting moves Westly and Inigo were saying in that EPIC fight.

I can understand what Fezzik is saying when they break into the castle (I love Andre the Giant, but his accent is so hard for me to decipher)

AND

Apparently I have missed something in the twenty years I’ve been watching this movie. When Inigo is drunk in the Thieves’ Forest, a member of the Brute Squad comes around the corner of the building after Inigo proclaims this is where [he’ll] stay, that he will not be moved.

“Ho, there!” he says.

Now. I always assumed Inigo just repeated the man’s phrase.

Oh no. The closed captions read as follows:

“I do not budge. Keep your Joder.”

Because he’s a Spaniard, in the movie it is pronounced exactly like “Ho, there.”

THAT. IS. NOT. WHAT. THAT. MEANS.

Joder means fuck in Spanish.

So when the guy comes around the corner, I can only assume Inigo’s sloshed brain just heard him shout “fuck” at him, and THAT is how he responded.

NO ONE I KNOW realized this for nearly FORTY YEARS!!!!!

Closed captioning, y’all. It’s not just because you can’t make out what they’re saying. It’s also for recognizing jokes people were slipping into movies and past censors from before you were born.

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I knit a lot.

My grandmother also knit a lot. All the grandkids had sweaters she made when we were little.

Because we lived in a different part of the country we didn’t see her regularly and because sweaters are time consuming (looking at you giant mess of a cable knit sweater in my lap) she didn’t keep knitting sweaters for a whole bunch of growing kids.

A few years ago my mom pulled out the box of sweaters grandma had knit my brother and I as kids. Seeing them as a now experienced knitter and not as like an 8 year old My GOD!

She was a master of kitting in a way that would make me quit. I remember seeing that she always had the cheapest of plastic needles (something I don’t enjoy. At all) and often used acrylic yarns (different strokes for different folks).

What I didn’t realize was the woman was an intarsia Queen. I say this with awe and absolute respect. Aside from socks or the occasional collars/cuffs, I am not sure she ever knit in the round.

She passed away yesterday at a ripe old age. But in her honor I want to say there are a whole lot of ways to make stuff and no one way that is right. Don’t be a materials snob and don’t feel bad or inferior because the materials you like or can afford aren’t top of the line or “special” or whatever. Make stuff with love and work in a way that works best for you.

Cheers Helen 💜

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In time travel movies, when the time traveler asks 'What year is this?!?' they're always treated like they're being weird for asking.

When in reality, if you go 'What year is this?!?' people will just say '2024. Crazy huh.' and you go 'Wtf where has my youth gone.'

And if you ask 'And what month??' people won't judge you, they'll just go like 'SEPTEMBER!!! Can you believe it?!?!' and you go 'WHAT?!? Last time I checked we were in May?!?'

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I do actually care marginally about the guy in that reddit screenshot who voted for Trump and is now worried that he might lose his medicaid funding because I did not fucking stutter when I said healthcare is a human right but the people losing their internships and job offers to the hiring freeze are straight up hilarious.

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Huge thanks to Richard of the Order of the Blade for throwing me around!

(If you’re in the UK, consider checking them out! The order are a combat school with a really fun and welcoming ethos)

And as always, more bows, swords, and nonesense on Patreon

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There's something to be said for how, at the core of the experience of every Dragon Age game, there is the act of turning over rocks. The hearts and souls of the games lie nestled in the idle banter of random townsfolk, in obscure codices that you would never know if you'd missed. The flavour is stashed carefully away at the ends of puzzles; teasingly dangled in the implications of offhand comments the companions and NPCs make.

It's what makes it possible to go down rabbit holes on the wiki. There are holes to go down in the first place because none of the games hand you their beating hearts for free. You have to find them, to go through the loving act of digging in the first place.

I think that's why perceptions of Veilguard will grow more positive over time. The wiki will grow to fit everything in the game. People will play it 4, 5, 6 times (or more) and unearth all the best bits of it enough that they become somewhat public knowledge.

Until then, I'm going to be here, quietly digging. Turning up rocks, finding more and more to love.

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I think a significant part of this whole neo-Victorian sexual moral panic is down to the fact that society en masse simply isn't prepared to confront the incomprehensible nature of what the average person gets off to. Since time immemorial, normal people have been getting off to weird, gross shit in the privacy of their own heads. With the internet giving us mass, unfiltered access to each others' raw sexual expression, we're all just freaking each other out.

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thinking of jesus at the gay bar again………

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I'm going to say something controversial. I think there's something Veilguard does better than any other Dragon Age game. Namely: incorporating the companions into the plot.

Look, I love Origins as much as everyone. But to be frank: you could cut every companion except Alistair, Morrigan and Loghain and the plot could still work. Once you've finished the mission where you recruit a companion, there aren't other main quests that involve them in any way.

Oghren and Wynne could have stayed home after their recruitment missions for all the difference it would make to the main plot. Sten, Leliana and Zevran could vanish and nothing would change, because once they're on your team, they don't interact with the main plot at all. (There's the Temple of Sacred Ashes, I suppose - but even then, you'd be going on that quest whether Leliana and Wynne were there or not, and it's very telling that they can both die here and next to nothing in the rest of the game is impacted.)

Again: I love Origins. This doesn't detract from any of these characters being great, or from the story being great. It just means there's a layer of separation between the two. They're involved in the story, but they're not driving it, and you seldom get to see them have strong feelings about it.

DA2 is a huge step up. Your companions' personal stories are integral parts of the main plot. You can't do the Deep Roads expedition without witnessing Karl's death and its impact on Anders. You can't enter Act 2 without seeing Varric's brother betray him, or watching your sibling either die or begin a new path in life. Act 2's climax happens because of choices Isabela and Aveline have made. Act 3's endgame is all about Anders making one enormous decision. Even Fenris and Merrill, who have the fewest ties to the plot, have strong reasons to be invested in the Mage/Templar conflict.

And then Inquisition just... backslides. There are multiple companions you don't need to recruit at all, or can send away with zero alteration to the main plot. Your companions don't like Corypheus because he's bad, but no one - except maybe Varric - has any strong personal feelings about him. They have no personal stake in defeating him, not like Alistair has a personal stake in opposing Loghain, or Anders in opposing Meredith.

We go to the Winter Palace, and Vivienne is not made a part of that story. We have a whole subplot about the Wardens, and Blackwall only gets a couple of extra lines, if you even bring him. Their personal arcs could have been somehow impacted by these missions, and they're just... not. Sera is packed with internalised self-hatred that manifests as trying to distance herself from elven culture, to the point of sometimes lashing out at other elves. And despite all the missions you do where elven history features... Sera's growth past that flaw happens entirely offscreen between the base game and Trespasser?????

IMO, this is one of the biggest reasons why Corypheus is such a bland villain. He doesn't make anyone grow, except by starting a plot for them to be part of. He doesn't challenge them emotionally. No one is invested in him. Because no one interacts with the darn plot.

Veilguard, though? Veilguard keeps your companions interacting with the story the whole way through. The Treviso/Minrathous choice affects both Lucanis and Neve heavily, and impacts who they become for the rest of the game. These cities are personal to you, even if you're not a Crow or Shadow Dragon, because your companions love them.

The Siege of Weisshaupt is beyond personal to Davrin and Lucanis, both of whom are entrusted with major parts of the quest: trying to kill the archdemon and Ghilan'nain. Lucanis is affected by his failure to kill Ghilan'nain for ages afterward. Davrin is haunted by survivor's guilt; he should have died when he struck down the archdemon. He's alive. How can he live with that?

Whenever killing the gods becomes a possibility, Rook hands the lyrium dagger to Lucanis. When the squad go to fight the gods' dragons with the Wardens, Taash is the one to flush the first dragon out. When you infiltrate the Venatori, Neve tricks your way in, and everything that happens is especially weighty to Bellara, whose people have been abducted. On Tearstone Island, because of how Lucanis and Spite have grown, they strikes true.

Did you not hate Elgar'nan before that mission? Because you probably will after you watch him capture Bellara or Neve, and see his fellow god kill Harding or Davrin.

You know what's a great piece of writing? There's no reason Emmrich shouldn't have been an option to deal with the wards on Tearstone Island; he's one of the ideal options to take out more wards with the Veil Jumpers in the final mission. But you can't select him to do it. Because Emmrich has far less personal investment in the Elgar'nan battle than the other two. This is Neve's city. This is the monster who tries to call himself Bellara's god. The game makes sure the characters who take control of the Blight at the end are the ones with the greatest stakes in doing so.

One of your companions, not you, wrests command of the Blight from Elgar'nan. The final mission depends on how well you've come to know each companion's skills. They're just... always involved.

And they're invested, too. The companions all have serious personal reasons to hate the antagonists by the end. Lucanis and Neve have either seen their city burn, or know it happened at the cost of their friend's (and potential partner's) hometown. Davrin has seen his order devastated. These are Bellara's and Davrin's supposed gods, and instead of helping the elves reclaim their history and culture, they're trying to enslave the world. Harding learns that the Evanuris maimed and destroyed her Titan ancestors.

Emmrich and Taash have perhaps the smallest emotional tie - and sadly I do think Emmrich especially gets underutilized in the plot. But heck, Taash is still hella motivated by the way the gods are abusing dragons. And Emmrich is tied thematically to the main conflict. He's facing the question of immortality, while nigh-immortal beings are right in front of him, proving how that gift can be abused. The final choice of his personal arc is whether he's willing to embrace his personal, mortal attachments, at the cost of consequences that terrify him... you know, the same question that Solas faces at the end.

And don't even get me started on how everyone is emotionally tied to Solas. Harding and Neve watched him kill Varric in front of them. Everyone not dead or captured has to watch him drag Rook into the Fade. Just about every companion faces some kind of huge regret or failure at some point, in constant foreshadowing for Solas's prison of regret: both the literal one he sticks Rook in, and the mental one of his own making.

Veilguard has its problems, but it absolutely shines at keeping its characters involved and invested in the main story. It gives them things to do, it gives them reasons to care. For all the flaws this game has, this part is good writing.