#(but the game was like 'NO REALLY IT'S SUPER BAD DON'T DO THAT')

[blushingdread]

The thing about Cold that gets me the most is that Cold barely gives a fuck about any of the vessels, the only one he feels anything about is Fury, and he talks about how he hopes your actions put the Adversary's spark out. This man is a little asshole who doesn't care about anything. Anything but change

What does Cold hate the most? Boredom, endless nothingness, doing the same thing over and over again... which is sorta of what he is. Both in the sense that he's a part of the Long Quiet, God of all those things, but also because Cold is the most stagnant of all the voices. He's resistant to pain, emotions, changing, everything except boredom, really. The only time he's ever changed changed is in Molment of Clarity, where he's a lot more terse and seems annoyed the entire time

On top of that, Cold is the most comfortable and intuitive about your godly nature. Poping in at the Tower Fury fight when she calls you noting and he immediately is like "yes,". When going into oblivion, he says it feels like home. He seems to be kinda subconsciously aware of what you are in a way the other voices aren't

So, Cold. The voice that most embodies stagnation, being frozen in time if you will, that seems to grasp the true nature of TLQ the best absolutely hates boredom and is constantly seeking out change. He's constantly seeking out their other half, the Shifting Mound

I think that in the same Wild and Stanger are "a smaller version of me" and "a peek behind the curtain" to the Shifting Mound, Cold is like that to the Long Quiet. He is kinda like TLQ at its most basic, cold, and unmoving, constantly seeking the waves of change to crash upon him. Constantly seeking her, while she constantly seeks him, going around and around getting what their missing from each other

But thats not all!!

Cold talks like the Shifting Mound. They share similar thoughts on what exactly "the end of the world" means

They also feel similarly about all the horrible things that happen during the game

Cold doesn't care if what he's doing is good or bad, good or bad don't even register on his radar. The only thing that matters to him is new and interesting experiences

A perspective that's also surprisingly close to how the Shifitng Mound feels except she's affected by her emotions and about the other person in this lol

I don't really have an end point with this, I just think the Cold and Shifting Mound are neat

It's just. So !!!!!!! that the most Long Quiet nothingness voice is both super into their other half as her entire domain and not just a single vessel and sees the world in a parallel way

What if there was a part of me that was so much like you that loved you more than anything that seeked you out in everything??? What then

BTW, can you imagine Cold and Wild together? Cold being plugged into eveyrhing? Connected to the Princess in the most direct way possible. Change would be constantly happening around him because he'd be interconnected to her. He'd be able to feel it all, and maybe her powers would even push through his eternal apathy and make him feel something like Fury did, but even more

Would Wild like that? Like him? Having a rock to wrap around and anchor herself to? Cold doesn't really feel hate except for the Narrator, so him getting mad at her wouldn't knock them out of being connected to each other. Would she drop her sorta mind control that made the voices much more willing to go along with being one than they frankly would otherwise because of this trait of Colds? Would she find his apathetic temperament comforting and grounding, able to keep her from violently trashing from calm to agitated

Unsure, but it think they'd have an interesting dynamic

[littleglutton]

Bare with me, I never post anymore, but with the release of Caleb's trailer, I have the need to SCREAM.

I am so excited because let me tell you, I firmly believed the only way they could do it right was by bringing him back as THE villain. Not a villain, mind you, THE villain.

Now, hear me out, ok. As someone coming from both the original launch of both MLQC and LADS, I've been playing these otomes forever. Am I an expert? Absolutely not. Have I poured an obscene amount of time, energy, and even money into these games because they bring me joy? Hell yes. #noragrets

Mind you, this is just me speculating and having fun, take what resonates with you 😜

Let me ramble a bit more.

Slight spoiler ahead for mid MLQC lore, so maybe skip or come back to this later if you need to

I thought for sure that when Sylus was introduced, he was the be-all, end-all bad guy. But nope, what he got instead was a super delicious, badass mafia boss whose interests actually end up aligning with MC (because honestly, what he really wanted was YOU), therefore eliminating the truly antagonistic part of their relationship, even if it started that way. Don't get me wrong, Sylus is absolutely morally gray and suspicious, but for the most part, he's not malevolent.

Now, idk bout y'all but the entire VIBE of Caleb's trailer was dark. Stormclouds, abundant. Lighting, striking. Traumatic memories/dreams, all of the above. The best part, watching Caleb suit up into that delicious black uniform. Did that honestly look like a uniform the good guy wears? Because I say hell no, not with those eyes and smile that are suddenly less endearing and more unnerving! Also, let's take a quick peek at those handsome eyes for a second, hmm? What color are they, again?

VIOLET

In film and media history alone, purple is definitely a color associated with the more suspicious/villainous characters. And if we're going by Paper Games alone, you know who else has the dark hair/violet eyed wombo combo?

This shady bastard, right here:

My first love and the original, truly villainous LI of MLQC: Lucien, aka Ares.

When I first started LADS, being a Lulu girlie, I immediately gravitated towards Zayne, obvi. But then I realized the only thing that was really similar was their stoic personalities. While they are also similar in terms of looks and professions, they share completely different motives. In reality, Zayne's arc mirrors more of Gavin's - reunited childhood friends. And while Zayne is typically an icy person in general, throughout the story he opens up so much to MC, allowing their relationship to grow. And while he is secretive about some things, for the most part, he's honest, almost to a fault. I never got the feeling or vibe that there was always another shoe to drop, or that he was hiding one hand behind his back while distracting us with the other like a certain someone listed above. And that is Lucien's draw. As soon as you find out his alter-ego, you're never TRULY sure which Lucien you're talking to from that point on. Are you Lucien, or are you Ares? Also, much of the time, especially in the traditional-themed cards, Lucien is almost always referenced with a snake to really hit home the duality and suspicious nature of his character.

I honestly think we're heading this direction with Caleb. Caleb, whose symbol is an apple. (Original Sin, hello.)

I feel like he's been in-the-thick-of-it longer than we realize. Like...he was recruited for a reason and it's not what we think. That wasn't a rookie's uniform, guys, that was a big boi uniform 😳 if you go to his character profile, it blatantly states he's a COLONEL. WHAT THE HELL!

Why am I excited about this? Aside from the copious amounts of angst we're going to get, it means that Caleb is already established in his career just like the others and that makes him more sure of his personal motives and decisions. (And his bad decisions, I can't wait for his bad decisions 🫠) This is what's going to drive the tension and antagonistic relationship between himself and MC. Because I can tell you right now, whatever that boy is doing, HE probably firmly believes it's the "right" thing to do. There was not one ounce of insecurity or hesitance when he put that uniform on. Is he tied to Ever? I'm going to say, absolutely. The speculation before the trailer was the only thing keeping me interested. I feel like they gave us a bland start to Caleb on purpose so the reveal would hit a little harder. And now that this seems to be the route we're headed, I'm INVESTED.

Food for thought, before I wrap up this long-winded rant:

Caleb is also supposed to be a direct foil to Zayne.

We already know that personality wise, they are quite opposite, but let's check their physicality.

Physically, they are very similar: tall, pale-skin, dark shaggy hair that's cut only slightly different. So where is our visual cue to really cement this foil? Well, it looks like again, it's all in the eyes. Because, what's across the color wheel from purple?

Green

This is just my take on things. Could be right, could also be dead wrong to which I will come back to this post and say so and leave it up for posterity's sake. 😆

At the end of the day, let's all remember that it's just a silly otome game that we all enjoy and in this house we love ALL 5 of our boys, (10 if we're adding MLQC 😂) so if you're gonna say something disrespectful or mean, please scroll on. But if you're coming with fun takes and theories of your own, I'm always free to chat!

[omagpies]

No way! Another person who has spent way too much time on apex! Who's your main? I'm guessing BH but I don't want to assume. How did you feel about the BH/Fuse engagement? Do you have any heirlooms? Sorry, not very many people play apex on here.

Also, do you have any apex art? If not that's totally cool but I would love to see it!

you have activated my trap card!! many drawings ahead

my main is indeed bloodhound. i also whip out fuse, mirage, and to a lesser degree octane, but mostly i'm a one trick bloodhound. they were what got me into the game in the first place back in season 7 when i heard their 'i'm afraid of heights :(' voicelines (a cool hunter nonbinary character voiced by none other than allegra clark? sign me tf up), and even though i am Very Bad At Shooting and don't actually like battle royale-type games apex stayed my brainrot for over two years. the brainrot is definitely over now and these days i play it as a social thing, but that's how i acquired 2k+ hours lmao

also they released a magpiehound recolor called 'frosthaven' that i gleefully snatched up and have been wearing it ever since (ft the magpie holospray and the magpie mural on their latest map. i think they are catering to me specifically)

i am. truly Not Good. i am here just to clown and gossip and make poor life choices. my impulse control is too non existent for someone whose best skill is shooting a perfect outline around the enemy and not a bullet within

i had SO MUCH bloodhound art over on twitter good god. out of the following two drawings, the first one was bought out by allegra to sell as signed prints, and the second one was reposted onto apex's IG account, and in general this was the one time i genuinely had a blast on twitter interacting with all the devs and vas before everything went downhill both in respawn and on twitter lol. also i have to say, s10 and the whole White Raven thing fed me so. so so. SO well. the existential angst was incredible.

i participated in a couple of zines/projects as well! i have many thoughts about their canonical(!) respawn system and the resulting unimportance of death. adds to the existentialism and to bloodhound's religious themes

overall it was a very, very prolific period for me, and there are many pieces i'm still very happy with to this day

(^ the second to last one is a reference to the fusehound confession scene, and the last one is related to one of my fics, wooden bones (forest deity!bh au))

shipping!!! miragehound was my initial and most prominent ship, and i will never forgive respawn for not expanding on their backstory (their mothers worked together COME ON. they might have met as children! COME ON!!!!! i have a whole series exactly about the What Could Have Been)

their backstory with boone also fascinated me for a very long time, and my friends and i spent many a yap session dissing the dude until we stopped and thought, hey, what if he really was Just Some Guy who made mistakes, what if he wasn't evil, and that's what pulled me right back into the brainrot when i was already starting to slowly recover from it. boone now has a very elaborate backstory and lore and i hope to god respawn never puts him in the games the way we did because a) they don't GET him and b) i don't trust the fandom with him lmao. i'm super down to blabber about him though just say the word. he's everything to me, my big, sad, hairy man

we also invented in-game stuff for him. he had abilities and skins etc etc (the top row of skins is his titan pilot backstory + talos era + 'default' in-game skin)

this diptych still lives rent-free in my head, i think i really won with this one

where miragehound and boonehound flourished, mirageboonehound wasn't far behind! i wrote how it came to be and all. also Рorn. so much Рorn. seriously.

also this was the first time i redrew the twelfth night as my otp. the second one was mouthwashing

fusehound was an absolute delight to watch blossom, especially since we know it wasn't planned and just Kind Of Happened. i felt that lmao. characters be like that. i'm a bit sadge they shelved the whole talos plotline in favor of romance but at this point i gave up on expecting good lore from apex, especially after they fired herr frozenfroh. i didn't draw fusehound nearly as much, BUT i do have one fic that was basically a dream i had lol

honorable mention goes to revhound!! this is the ship that went really hard with artists and writers. deeply painful, deeply compelling, absolutely incredible. mindblowing angst and just as mindblowing рorn, together or separately. best shit. the one ship i didn't write for because compared to the fandom's behemoths i never felt like i'd be able to contribute anything meaningful lol, i just got to sit back and enjoy

bonus: as one of my friends eloquently put it, bh and their bhitches :)

i was going to put in more pictures but hit the 30 images limit!!! my twitter is now abandoned but if you scroll down just a little you can see all the stuff that didn't make it into this post.

apex and bloodhound also REALLY, REALLY got me writing. i came into the fandom already relatively warmed up after a 170k fire emblem fic, but i ended up writing 200k+ for miragehound, mirageboonehound, and fusehound combined. i was unstoppable. it was insane. i've linked some already but you can peep them all here. bloodhound's pov was especially fun to write for, purple prose my beloved

also you asked me about heirlooms! i'm a lucky motherfucker who managed to get one set of shards from the 500th box and another from just the random 0.4% chance. so i have bloodhound's and fuse's as they are my most played characters :)

[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

[greyias]

The day after Logan proposed, he asked to ride around town with Aria while wedding invitations were handed out. Logan apparently really is into holding hands and his hand will magnetically reach for hers if they're still for 0.5 seconds.

They stopped in Martle Square to try and get their bearings to find the next person on their list to invite to the wedding, Logan reaches out and grabs Aria’s hand when suddenly OUT OF NOWHERE Ernest comes sprinting down the street and--

just starts staring creepily over their shoulders

Logan is blissfully unaware, meanwhile, Aria senses a deep disturbance in the Force

He looks like he's going to murder them in their sleep

or is just very upset he didn't get an invitation: "I WILL REMEMBER THIS FOR MY NEXT fanfic NOVEL, ARIA"

[honourablepranksinatra]

Maple Leafs discourse on their team social medias makes me lose brain cells because wdym they're first in their division and coming off a 5 game win streak & people are commenting that the top players are only in it for the money and have no drive, that particular players are useless and need to be traded asap, that they're a garbage team, that they'll never make it past the first round just because they lost one game.

Apparently because they are being payed handsomely the players must be mindless automatons who perform perfectly every night. It drives me absolutely nuts how quickly alleged fans will completely turn on their own team.

[thefirstknife]

Getting real sick of a certain subset of Destiny players complaining that it’s a baby game and crying to Bungie to nerf exotics and abilities when their ENTIRE POINT IS TO BE STRONG in specific ways as if they are being locked into using them.

IF YOU WANT AN EXTRA CHALLENGE STOP BEING SUCH A DPS GOBLIN AND JUST EQUIP SOMETHING THATS NOT TOP TIER META AND STOP COMPLAINING JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

MOOD. Go off.

It's incredibly annoying to me. They always use the argument of "the game should FORCE me to do things, I should not SELF-IMPOSE challenges." And like. ? I'm sorry but what? It's a video game for a big audience, it's here to be playable and accessible to the widest possible playerbase. There are plenty of ways to make the game difficult for yourself, so knock yourself out if that's your thing, but don't force others into it.

Like, I enjoy hard content, I regularly at least attempt day 1 raids, I do master raids, GMs, solo and solo flawless content and all that. But only when I want to. Sometimes I don't and I don't want to suffer in a patrol zone or struggle in a seasonal activity I'm doing for the story. The majority of the players don't want that. Designing games for the professional gamers only has NEVER been a good idea and never will be. Fifty streamers can't sustain a video game. It needs casual players who will want to come back to the game instead of feeling defeated.

One of the reasons I really enjoy helping others is because I know that casual players tend to struggle in stuff that's basic activity for me. I've seen people unable to get through a strike. I've sat for 10 minutes rezing someone who couldn't do the jump in a seasonal activity. I want those people to be able to play basic content without feeling frustrated and I want them to know that there are people out there who will help them out.

And this doesn't apply just to basic content, although it should start with that. I think all dungeons and raids and everything should be things that all players can complete. Fine, doing a master raid with all challenges should be tough, but it should be achievable with time and practice, not impossible. What a lot of these "pros" want is just completely divorced from reality.

It takes days and days of practice every time a new master raid is out for me and my team (all with thousands of hours of playtime) to get comfortable to finally finish it. We're far from casual players and it still takes a lot of time to be able to finish hard content. Making it even harder is insane to me. Like, if something is so hard that my team full of people, each with 5000+ hours of playtime and a coordinated team that's been raiding together for years now can't finish it, that means it's absolutely impossible for probably 90% of the playerbase. That's wild to me. Raids and GMs should have more people playing them. If master raids are too easy for you, Mr. I-Play-Destiny-For-A-Living, that's on you buddy. Unequip the super god tier god roll meta guns and loadouts or play something else.

And ofc, another excuse they make is "if I don't use meta, I am not going to win a raid race!" Then don't. Idk. Let me play you the tiniest violin. This affects literally nobody except a grand total of 50 people. Run your meta in day 1, and play with random shit otherwise. Play raids with all white weapons. Play without mods. Play without a HUD. Do things solo only. I don't know, make up a way to spice things up for yourself. I'm not interested in that and neither are 99% of the players out there. The game is genuinely hard enough for the majority of the players. On top of that, I am here to feel like a powerful space fantasy superhero. I am NOT here to die to dregs in patrol zones. If there's ONE thing that I know for a fact that put people off from Lightfall (as in this year of Destiny), it's the difficulty changes. They're annoying, frustrating and for some a barrier to entry more than anything else.

[tenojan-in-tevinter]

Honestly I really want to be able to side with Solas in dreadwolf. I think it'd be super interesting to play as an elf in Tevinter and be able to just go "yeah actually I think Fen'Harel is right let's tear down that veil." I mean I assume the main conflict will be Solas trying to convince your character to join him, or your character being told they have to try and stop him, and there are not enough games that let you side with the presented "villain" character. I want to see what the world is like with no veil I'm so interested. Also so interested to see what full-on Fen'Harel Solas is like. Is he still as empathetic? Or is he more conniving and distanced from "mortals" like the old stories would have us believe?

[aquilamage]

I haven’t been insane about Vi enough lately so time to pour out some random thoughts. free association thinking time:

been thinking about her “It's my savings. I wanna be rich, okay? So I can travel, eat well, buy cool stuff… So no one can say I can't do something!” And none of the following will really be insightful or revelatory because it’s just what she says here but. yeah! that’s vi! the main reason she’s so big on money is because she has to be to get what she wants out of life! it’s what lets her say no to people telling her what to do, and that’s important to her because she has no choice but to be independent and support herself. because no one else will. No one at the Hive had anything positive or supportive to say about her being an explorer until she went out and did it (to a ridiculously successful degree, too. I have to wonder if/how it might’ve differed if she was on a regular accomplishment level team. not the one leading them all to the mission to the Hive). she never had a choice not to be. I could also see that being a little part of why she starts out not really being a teamwork person. past experiences have taught her she can’t rely on anyone else for support. (does make me wonder about what if she’d met Chubee before leaving the Hive. obviously she still would’ve left, but how might even a bit of support have changed other things?)

I feel like we don’t talk about the fact that The Beemerang Is Also Knives enough

ok so at one point there was this post talking about people with money and how it affects their life like. if you can afford to get a nanny then you can only do the fun parts of childcare and when you stop feeling like taking care of the kid you can just hand them to someone else to take them away. and again likely not especially revelatory but I would guess that’s the kind of way queen bianca handled the bees as her daughters (she does care about them. absolutely. but not in the same hands-on attached way as we usually associate with parents) and thinking about how that kind of treatment would then apply to vi....hm

in universes where discussions of Gender and Pronouns etc happen I think she has moments where she gets frustrated with the everything of Being Referred To and Having Complicated Identity She Hasn’t Quite Figured Yet and is like. gender is cancelled how dare you refer to me. but especially anyone else calls me a girl ever i will be stabbing them

also I think a lot about what circumstances she finds out about gayness/Gender being things. and whether she’s thought about it in herself before and whether she’d been dismissed on it/told it wasn’t a thing etc. most circumstances she ends up angry about the finding out times because of (un)consicious internal conflict stuff

underground tavern stuff implies she was definitely doing quests and stuff for money with them precanon. would kill to know what specifically it was. but also the first talk with utter implies that she was doing stuff off that questboard as well which is even more intriguing. utter’s spy also implies you don’t have to be an explorer to do them but otherwise you would think you did I feel. so again very curious what was up there

[girlfox]

━

[0fps]

really loving wuwa so far, it still lags a bit here and there but it kinda feels like it just has to marinate for a while? first 10 minutes are painful but after it seems like it has its assets cached or something and it isn't as much a problem anymore. it also looks like kuro games has been working overtime putting in patch fixes asfdjlkadfsj god speed to the devs fr

[merlinmerlot]

i finally finished bg3

and it only took me [looks at steam]

SIX HUNDRED HOURS

[backpackingspace]

Hey this just in? Ptsd sucks balls

[asmidge]

where was Yamcha in resurrection f 😐

[silverselfshippingchaos]

I had a dream where a 3rd J.udgment game was announced and M.ine showed up for one split second in the reveal trailer with this super hot evil smirk on his face and Twitter was going batshit crazy over it

Then I woke up and got really disappointed

[immortalarizona]

girl help I do believe I'm having a depression