#(WOW SO THIS IS LOOKING LIKE A SHIP)

[risibledeer]

joel being a Disney princess

look everybody my art is arting properly again! also pls send me any asks as i'm awfully bored lol

[veinsfullofstars]

“Any more stupid questions?”

Bonus live reactions to being saved from a Dark Matter ambush:

Started 07/13/24, finished 07/27/24, updated for color correction 11/02/24. | Kintsugi AU Masterpost

[itslilacokay]

"i should probably be careful posting when ava ships are involved, maybe i should keep ava shipart stuff to myself"

i say as i post victim and agent being extremely fuckihg gay

[crismakesstuff]

two sides 🃏♠️

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[azurecoffin]

my reaction to the whole reaction to the news

also here's a chibi goober reed for your enjoyment make him suffer guys

[luck-of-the-drawings]

POOR GABRIEL MONTEZ! YOU NEVER SAW THIS COMING DID YOU? ALL YOU WANTED WAS POWER. SECURITY. SAFETY. & THATS EXACTLY WHAT YOU GOT! JUST IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR BODY. LETS JUST HOPE NO ONE FUCKS THIS UP. LETS JUST HOPE YOU WONT HAVE TO CLEAN UP THE MESS.

[jamiethebeeart]

I don't know where all these Spinaraki shippers came from in the last few months but hello hi welcome thanks for being here I love that y'all are here

[foolsfrogg]

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!!

fun fact: I’m ace!

im also. very cringe 😔

the only two good drawings in (slightly)better quality under the cut

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[cerealmonster15]

[vibrating a little too fast] Do You Understand My Vision Yet

[feketeribizli]

heard others like these two together too so im posting some fremika doodles :-)

[necrotic-nephilim]

Sorry if this might be a rude question but why don’t you just make a seperate account for your nsfw fics?

not rude, it's a valid question! tbh it's a combination of a couple reasons.

i started posting anonymous dead dove batcest fics long before i had the balls to make a tumblr. at first i was content to just leave them unassociated with each other because i didn't really care about them being tied to me. i made this blog to actually show solidarity to my partner who wanted to make a sideblog for Sandman comic stuff so we could cheerlead each other and be brave together, since i've wanted to make a batcest sideblog but i've been nervous about actually having to get it going. (mal ik you're reading this go be brave and actually make your blog so i can cheerlead you damnit-) only did it dawn on me then that i should probably mention the fics i've written on the blog after like, three of them were posted anonymously. and it would've annoyed me to have half of them anonymous and half of them not, because notifications for them would've gone in different places. i could go back and take my fics off anon if i wanted to, but i can't switch the account they're on without taking them down entirely and that'd fuck over people who have them bookmarked already.

which, ties into my second reason, if i made an entire second ao3 account it'd be harder for me to see notifications, reply to stuff, and post things for both accounts because i'd have to constantly switch. and honestly i'd be terrified of accidentally posting on the wrong one on a brain fog day. posting fics is always the most tedious part of writing them for me lol. it's easier for me to stay logged into one account and have all of my stuff in one place for me and just use the anonymous collection when i feel like it. if ao3 pseuds worked like tumblr blogs, where you can't see all my side blogs but i can, i would've used pseuds, but since you can see all pseuds on an ao3, i felt it was a moot point.

and the last reason is i just feel more comfortable being anonymous on ao3 because of the rise in anti culture. on tumblr it's very easy for me to just filter that out and find the people i want to follow and block the people i don't. i don't mind getting hate, on tumblr or on ao3. but i think, for whatever reason you want to blame it on, there's been a massive boom of antis on ao3 who are very entitled about how they read on ao3. i tag extensively, but i just feel safer from getting targeted attacks if everything i write on ao3 isn't attached to one profile. if people like a fic i wrote, want to find more i always link my tumblr in the notes, but if an anti wants to get huffy with me, they can't easily track down my other things. they definitely could if they wanted to, but being anonymous on ao3 just makes me feel more secluded, in a weird way. it's like saying "if you want you can come find me but on here i'm just a weird faceless guy throwing stuff in the void". i've used ao3's anon feature a lot, actually, i used to be a hydra trash party dumpster kid back when that was in it's prime.

i also used to be vaguely popular on a different tumblr blog and my main ao3 and while i think it'd definitely be cool if i got a decent chunk of followers on this blog too, i don't really miss having fanfiction do so well i got targetted hate on all of my fics from the same people, i had my fics stolen, etc. it was really exhausting for me. i have 120+ works on ao3, not counting what's anonymous, and that level of exposure tires me, even when i use my main ao3 to post things that aren't trashy. it's just a weird feeling knowing so many people are subscribed to you on ao3 and what if you post something they won't like because you jumped fandoms again, or you're posting something niche, or you don't think it fills enough fandom tropes to be well-liked. i used to obsessively think like that, and it made me not write the things i wanted to because i cared about numbers. and i don't want to slide back into that hole. writing on anonymous is mostly to remind myself i wrote this for me, and if other people like it, they can come find me, but i don't have to perform like that anymore. if i get a really weird fucked up idea, i can write the really weird fucked up idea. at the end of the day, just makes me more comfortable! but i get it's a super confusing set up from an outsider perspective so, i really don't mind the question, thank you for asking!!

[mrstsung]

I'm doing this shang tsung MY WAY!

Which ignoring canon that he was in. And placing him in my version of mortal kombat. (Which aligns more to the original timelines)

So a young shang tsung,who was once an earthrealm warrior,felt betrayed and was cohersd by shao kahn to join his court in outworld and fight on "his side" so to speak.

As for the dark magic/soul magic. He was always curious,but only curious. He only dived deeper because he was 1. Forbade to without so as much as a decent explanation on why it's "forbidden" and 2. Because he was trying to help earthrealm in any way possible,by any means. But he was again told no. So in his mind. It's like "wtf do you want me to do? It's like i bring a solution and you don't like me playing by the rules you created,which i try to follow yet. I get it spat back in my face" type deal. Course there's nuance to this and it's mainly raidens falt for not telling shang properly and handling things better. And yes,shang was his chosen and student before great lao. Great lao came in a tad bit later. Then came the tournament. He was actually trained by the shadow priests,who worked for shao kahn but revered shang. As they saw a prodigy in him. And magic aside. That man was a fucking excellent warrior,deadly as is. Add sorcery to him and he's a beast. <3

But anyways

Like i have a whole backstory more on shang tsung and i feel alan lee's shang is a good baby days shang tsung. Freshly cursed,freshly courtly mage,etc.

When we get tagawa's shang,is only after he gets his island. Which i hc was given to him by shao kahn as a gift. He wasn't gonna use it. So it was shang's dominion. In doing so he kinda fucked up because now,shang tsung was a lord of his own realm or pocket dimension. He has full jurisdiction and power over his island. The island's natural soul well was fortified to work in shang AND ONLY SHANG TSUNGS favor. He made the island self sufficient. (More on shang's island in another post) now. Only after spending years there,gaining knowledge,power,secrets,etc and a bit of forcefed defeat. Does our lovely sorcerer become more of the shang tsung we know and love. Wisdom and decades even centuries of knowledge gained.

Now back to young shang.

Young shang(alan lees shang/ mk12/mk1 shang) is a tad more prideful,maybe even jovial,always ever confident but in a youthful way. A spirit never breaking no matter how many times kicked down. These traits are amplified in his youth. He gets chiller and more relaxed and composed as he becomes more and more like out like elder shang tsung (tagawa's shang tsung/mk 95/mk11 shang) so that being said. Not too much difference,yet the aura is different and more of someone genuinely scholarly. Tagawa's shang is already a master,to get to that part. We need more development.

Now Lee's shang has great potential but i doubt that nrs ever would give him that genuine opportunity given how the script and story is being written. It feels its holding him back. And that kills me because it's such an amazing talent.

Now a young shang tsung to me is ever the curious. Not that ever stopped. But in his youth,he was always asking why or how. He wants to just know. He has to know. That can bite him in the ass or save his ass. Either way that is a core trait.

Shang tsung not being given an opportunity to join earthrealms warriors is a crime and honestly really really stupid on nrs.

It's rushed and they know it but they dont care because $$$ and micro transactions...

Anyways. Young shang tsung to me also needed a lot of reassurance not because of that lack of confidence,nah it's more of a reminder of "is this good? Is this wise? Am i crazy for feeling this or is this pride getting in the way?" He is confident in skills,he is not with other aspects more so he just doesn't want to disappoint. And Because he doesn't want to screw things up for the long run. But as trial and error happens,he gets more confident in his decisions.

He has his moments too and showing vulnerability and humanity in antagonists is very important. But not done in a backhanded slap to the character and audiences intelligence. Which unfortunately mk12/mk1 kinda does unfortunately.

And honestly,i felt bad for him. More than i ever did.

In conclusion,young shang tsung should be shown and given an opportunity to show with that an insight into shang's mind,heart,and things we actually don't see.

And some things in mk12/mk1 shang i absolutely am like "YES YES YES!" but because of everyone else,it's hard to enjoy because everyone else is insufferable.

Genuinely. Insufferable.

Like compared to shang tsung who gets something real,raw,human,believable,grounded,and interesting.

Nobody else in the story feels like characters,they feel like action figures playing along. And in a way that feels forced and fake to fit a boxed in trope. The script and writing feels ai generated.

Shang tsung seems to be the only one given some kinda agency and not even 100% either. It's not the greatest and it has flaws but by comparison it's great. Comparing that shang to every other shang tho? Kinda rushed and sloppy. And a disappointment. But it sucks because i want to really like that shang tsung.

So i jusy said fuck it. Im rewriting that shang.

Young shang tsung,mr. Alan lee. You deserve better. And honestly i think it's a wasted opportunity to have a shang centric game for once. It would be different,fun,and a change of pace.

*kisses forehead* lemme save you from shitty narrative and writing shang. Plz.

[tutterypuff]

Do you play MMOs? Do you want FREE ART? do you want FREE ART of your WOW, SWTOR, or LOTRO character? You're in luck! Because I, puffball, am laundering clout here on Tumblr once again. I tried to be on twitter and couldn't stand getting my eyebrows blasted off by foul takes every five minutes (and now it's some other website? weird.), and though mastodon is my home, my art doesn't get much interaction (because I post it on my extremely insular self-hosted instance that sees no traffic and doesn't allow new users). so I'm here on Tumblr back on my old tricks, opening requests like it's 2011 Deviantart and I'm going on the free art forums in exchange for followers.

send an ask or reply here and god willing I will draw your little guy

[hermitcraftx]

just got a dm abt one of my posts and y'all please don't try and show the hermits (or any minecraft youtuber or content creator for that matter) my posts, i'm uncomfortable with it and don't want any of my posts shown to a cc. if they stumble upon it naturally that's unfortunate but i can live with it since i do maintag a lot (something i REALLY need to stop doing tbh i already know i need to make a tagging system just for my blog that wont clog results) but going out of ur way to show a cc is entirely different and something i am not comfortable with.

no hate to the person at all but even if i wasn't a little silly and weird with it sometimes i wouldn't be comfortable with it, i want my blog to be a purely fandom only space with none of the creators involved <3 please respect this