nonethewiser202

[nonethewiser202]

MINOR VEILGUARD SPOILERS BELOW THE CUT

I did it, I beat dragon age the veilguard after waiting for 6 years. Only took me 80 hours heh.

I think the entire game was worth it. Are there point I’m sad about not getting? Absolutely. Did I wish there was more or things were different? Certainly. But considering the HELL this game went through to get made we are so incredibly lucky to have it at all.

I have problems, and critiques. But all in all, it was an incredible journey, a wonderful game, and an enjoyable experience I will do another playthrough of.

Inquisition is made worth it to me through Veilguard, and that truly is all I ever wanted out of this sequel. Inquisition does not feel lesser or not as important to the story because of Veilguard. I do not feel cheated in the slightest.

Things wrapped up satisfyingly enough to me and I truly truly think Rook stands as a phenomenal Bioware protagonist. Rook feels so a part of this world even more than I think the Inquisitor does. (Don’t hang me please). The story beats and consequences were very Mass Effect 2 and I think I cried as hard at this game as I did at Mass Effect 3, which is a HIGH BAR.

I did a female Mourn Watch Mage Rook for my first playthrough and I romanced Neve

Next up thinking about a male grey warden warrior romancing Emmrich

[nonethewiser202]

the commodification of friendship is the most annoying thing to come out of the internet in ages. like actually i love to break this to you but you're supposed to help your friends move even if it's hard work. or stay up with them when they're sad even if you're gonna lose sleep. you're supposed to listen to their fears and sorrows even if it means your own mind takes on a little bit of that weight. that's how you know that you care. they will drive you to the airport and then you will make them soup when they're sick. you're supposed to make small sacrifices for them and they are supposed to do that for you. and there's actually gonna be rough patches for both of you where the balance will be uneven and you will still be friends and it will not be unhealthy and they will not be abusive. life is not meant to be an endless prioritization of our own comfort if it was we would literally never get anywhere ever. jesus.

[nonethewiser202]

Grieve AND organize.

Good article by David Hunter on how to survive the Trump presidency, both on the personal and on the political plane.

[nonethewiser202]

“There are other forces at work in this world besides the will of evil.”

[nonethewiser202]

you guys are so annoying. why do i have to see discourse every year that's like "was tolkien really a woke king or was he your conservative uncle?" the guy was a devout catholic and a genteel misogynist who maintained lifelong friendships with queer people and women, and this isn't even paradoxical because that was part of the upper-class oxford culture he was immersed in. tolkien told the nazis to fuck off (and in doing so demonstrated a real understanding of what racism is and why it's harmful, beyond simply "these guys are bad news because they're who my country is at war with right now") but his inner life was marked by internalized racism that is deeply and inextricably woven into the art that he made. he foolishly described himself as an anarcho-monarchist, and it's kind of crazy to see people on this website passionately arguing that he likely never meaningfully engaged with anarchist theory, because...yeah, no shit, of course he didn't. tolkien didn't have to engage with most sociopolitical theory because as an upper-class englishman of his position, he was never affected by any of the issues that this theory is concerned with. what is plainly obvious from reading both his fiction and letters is that tolkien's ideal political system was that the divinely ordained god-king would rise up and rule in perfect justice and humility; he didn't want a government, he wanted a king arthur, even though (obviously) he was aware that outcome was impossible. why is it so hard for people to accept that he was just some guy! his letters aren't a code you have to crack. no amount of arguing or tumblr-level analysis is going to one day reveal a rhetorically airtight internally consistent worldview spanning jrrt's fiction, academic work, and personal writings, thereby "solving" the question of whether he was a woke king or your conservative uncle. his ideology was extremely inconsistent because, at the end of the day, he was just some guy.

[nonethewiser202]

Vote.

No buts. No 'all evil candidates.' No excuses. No bullshit. You either give a shit about what's happening to you in the United States or you fucking don't. No pleasantries, no argument to hide behind, this is it. Been seeing a lot of Propaganda cropping up again in my feed and I am 10,000% not here for it. I have officially hit my absolute limit for complete and utter nonsense spouted by right-wing bots and plants as some psyop to get the chronically online to not vote.

Bite your lip. Hold your nose. Hell, complain the whole time if you want. But fucking vote. If you care, you fucking vote. That's it.

[nonethewiser202]

as far as i'm concerned all "yuri" is "toxic yuri" because women are ontologically evil thanks to eve's original sin

[nonethewiser202]

absolutely flabbergasting to see people who have so enthusiastically succumbed to despair. like okay denethor, but some of us are gonna actually face the armies of mordor in battle nonetheless.

[nonethewiser202]

Thinking of the larger context of LOTR and like, the fellowship swapping old war stories and shit and Sam just says “Yeah I killed a huge spider…Shelob, I think?”

And Gandalf just blinks and is like, “You what now?”

“Yeah, killed it. Had to save Frodo”

Gandalf elects not to tell Sam that he killed the spawn of a primordial demon.

[nonethewiser202]

I'm just going to leave this here, because this woman said what I've been trying to articulate for ages much more effectively and succinctly than I've been able to

[nonethewiser202]

The changing seasons.

[nonethewiser202]

🛐

[nonethewiser202]

alright gang, the rumors are true. The Edge of Sleep is now live (US only ig) on Amazon Prime Video. and i get what some of y'all are saying, "there doesn't need to be marketing because of mark's rabid fanbase!"

But guys. Guys. This is not a YouTube project. I hate to say it but even 30+ million Markiplier fans is not enough for what needs to happen here, unfortunately. This is ultimately about breaking out of the YouTube-fanbase sphere and getting this show to mainstream viewership. That's the goal-- this is about showing that a "YouTuber project" (even though Edge of Sleep was made by a professional production company and isn't really that) can have appeal beyond a preexisting audience. It's about, big picture, legitimizing the contributions of online creators in making films and television products for casual viewers.

So yeah, it's time to break out not just The Plan, but The Strategy. What is that, you ask? You'll see--check back tonight. This is a call for all hands on deck.

We ride at sunset-- the edge between day and night when the world starts to go to bed. We ride at the edge of sleep.

[nonethewiser202]

"This is not farewell, my precious... I love you."

[nonethewiser202]

The best part about coming back to the source material after a looooong time is you sorta get a fresh look at canon in comparison to whatever the dominant strains of fanon have become. Or, in fact, whatever your own dominant strains of headcanon have become.

I mean, yes, Garrus “I’m not a good turian” Vakarian gets infinitely cooler (and more competent!) by pretty much every metric as the storyline progresses. He does. But fresh out of ME1 and into ME2 through his recruitment, I find myself genuinely amused by how thin the veneer of badass is over a pretty dominant core of straight-up nerd sprinkled with idealism mixed with self-doubt.

When you have Garrus in the squad all the time (and thus get all his ambient dialogue and remarks), you really pick up on the number of times he calls out bad behavior, unethical actions, cruelty, and rule-breaking, especially in ME1.

He’s not actually a hothead who can’t abide rules of any kind. In fact, most of the time he’s pretty pro-law-and-order, and he gets amusingly hall-monitorish when people are breaking rules he considers important and worth following.

Fundamentally, Garrus chafes when his sense of what is just is at odds with what the authorities do about that injustice (or what they stop him from doing). And I would hazard a guess that the reason his actions seem so intense or harsh or "of course we should have shot down that ship in the middle of the Citadel" is indicative not of his impatience but of the degree to which he thinks the authorities have failed to uphold that justice. We know he can be patient. He's a sniper. His whole modus operandi on Omega is precision kills without civilian casualty. But when that long fuse finally burns down, he goes from zero to shooting down ships in the middle of the Citadel in what looks (from the outside) like a heartbeat.

And yes, injured pride hastens the burning of that fuse; he doesn’t like losing. Or admitting defeat. Or failing.

Having just replayed his recruitment mission, a few things really stood out to me this time.

The merc bands really hate him--and they also reluctantly admire him (he's described as smart, resourceful, dangerous, idealistic, brave, slippery; they all agree they only way they managed to get this far is by isolating him and employing dirty tactics). I mean, there's literally a station-wide announcement that Omega can return to "business as usual" once Archangel is out of the picture because he was disrupting things so completely.

The way Garrus blames himself for the deaths of his squad is so freaking turian. Failure reflects on the leader who places his people in danger they can't handle, not the individual who fails. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Yes, Sidonis betrayed him, but the person Garrus blames the most? Is himself. For trusting Sidonis in the first place. For raising Sidonis to a position where he had the means and opportunity to harm others--and the weakness of character to turn coat, to save his own hide, instead of dying to protect the others.

Garrus mentions more than once that he was trying to emulate Shepard. And his tone always implies that he knows he failed because Shepard would never have let a Sidonis into the fold. Again, he's blaming himself. Like a good turian. Yes, he wanted to avoid the red tape and bureaucracy of C-Sec, but his code--Archangel's code--certainly aligns with Paragon Shepard's morality (with a Garrus Vakarian twist).

And since it wouldn't be meta without adding a Tara's Headcanon Twist ... I've always wondered why "Archangel" when it's such a ... human concept. But this time, when I noticed how he spoke about Shepard's influence, and how quickly he brushes aside the name when she asks him about it, I wondered if it wasn't actually his way of honoring the mythology of the dead woman whose example he was trying to follow. Not that Shepard is a God he's worshiping, but ... there is something about the way he talks about her. Garrus doesn't make himself over in the image of a God, though; he's the soldier, the right hand, the avenging angel responsible for carrying out divine punishments suited and proportional to the crimes committed, the rules broken, the selfishness or cruelty of the perpetrator.

[nonethewiser202]

Can you hear me, Erik? I'm talking to you

[nonethewiser202]

In this house, we love and respect our woke and unhinged bisexual nonbinary gremlin.