#But the creativity to do THIS with it?? absolutely insane

[manicandobsessive]

I beg you to listen.

i have learned time and time again that while you can admire someone and appreciate their work you do not KNOW them. and most likely you never will.

while it is insanely disappointing to see this, it’s not surprising in the absolute slightest. men will be men. at the end of the day.

there is 0 excuse for that type of behavior on either end. especially from hugh jackman of all people. the parasocial aspect of it, while insane, is partially valid. this man is portrayed as one of the “good” ones. while we know damn well that doesn’t exist. not in the same space as him, at least.

and while i appreciate the work people put out, idolization at its core is toxic. we all love these things because we need an escape, a creative outlet, a distraction, whatever the case may be. HOWEVER, the world is still spinning, life goes on. and overall i really just feel sorry for his wife and kids. he must be a very insecure man inside.

ANYWAYS, i will always and forever be a wolverine girl. the man existed before hugh and will exist after him. life goes on. and in our current state of the world, america especially, there’s much more to focus on.

[selemina]

He's about to board his opponent for a heart to heart, litterally!

We love a Gildedguy that does not fuck around! :D

[catstar91]

Ok phandom peeps, I need to get something off my chest. I cannot stop thinking about it, it’s so funny that this happened to me!

So I’ve been casually perusing the DP fandom for a while, right? Like for several years at least! What can I say? I like art! So at various points I had talked to my aunt about some stuff related, like fun stuff about the phandom and the existence of ghost king aus and stuff. Recently though, I found a fanfic that I spent AN ENTIRE DAY reading and doing nothing else! Like I stayed up late the night before, woke up to immediately read more! I don’t normally read fanfics, let alone any long form story, cuz my attention span is shit and has been shit basically all my life! So in the evening when I was a good chunk of the way through the fic, I talked to my aunt about it! Cuz it’s funny! I found a lot of things in it very amusing and wanted to share!

And then she asked for a link…

The next thing I know, within a few months, probably 3 months later at most, my aunt starts telling me about phandom lore I had never even heard of before! She literally made an ao3 account!!! Guys I am floored! I’ve been idly watching from the shadows for so long, and then I accidentally get my aunt into the phandom and she starts telling me about a red duck candle that’s apparently been integral DPxDC lore for YEARS!

What have I DONE???

[thedrotter]

average minecraft gameplay of elementary school kids (+the og doodle of it I did like. months ago)

[corviiids]

jesus ive posted EIGHT (8??????) fics (/chapters) this year and FOUR of them were in june. happy pride?????

[br1ghtestlight]

kinda funny that the prize for winning a season of inanimate insanity is literally just the Responsibility of running a small business full-time with no employees and also you don't even get paid. like they're literally just spending their money to have MORE responsibility and do more work. why would anyone want that

but i guess its cute that they love each other so much that they're willing and even excited to get the opportunity to do that work for each other with NO benefits

[allthetropes]

OKAY, AO3 CHILDREN, GATHER ROUND

peek = verb = to take a look

peak = noun OR verb = the summit, to come to the highest point

pique = verb = to rouse

The boy peeked around the corner at the peak of the mountain, his interest piqued by the noise he was hearing. If I have to read one more fic that says something like "this will peek your interest" i'm gonna lose it

oh, that's another one

lose = verb = to fail or misplace [looz]

loose = adjective = baggy, not tight [loos]

and while I'm at it

affect = verb = to change

effect = noun = a change

blond = adj = male with yellow hair

blonde = adj = female with yellow hair

brunet = adj = male with brown hair

brunette = adj = female with brown hair

fiancé = adj = male betrothed

fiancée = adj = female betrothed

( yes all of those suck, blame the french )

revenge = noun = a victim gets their own back on the person that made them suffer

avenge = verb = back-pay is given to a bad person in the name of their victim but not by the victim themselves

desert = noun = large wasteland

dessert = noun = meal course, typically at the end of the meal, usually consisting of something sweet

breathe = verb = to inhale and exhale

breath = noun = the air that is inhaled or exhaled

bridal = adj = belonging to a woman on her wedding day

bridle = noun = tack for around a horse's head (can also sometimes be a verb meaning to restrict and lead somebody or something)

[bandzboy]

telling kpop stans to see idols as human is like talking to the biggest brick wall in existence

[puppppppppy]

save me old flipnote studio MVs.......

[essektheylyss]

What are the Midst appendices? I’ve been vaguely meaning to listen but that sounds super interesting conceptually

They're REALLY interesting! Basically later in the day after every new episode, Midst puts out some kind of found document(s), often related to the episode, but also sometimes not!

The range of these is pretty broad, from magazine covers to the contents of someone's desk to excerpts of textbooks on different aspects of the universe, so you get a really interesting set of perspectives on small aspects of the world, and the worldbuilding for Midst is utterly buckwild in the best way, so it's SO fun. (This week's was a public transit map, and I had some delightfully punctilious conversations about the weird nuances of how transit even works in that particular location.) There's weird stuff about megafauna! The timekeeping is wild! This society has its own version of Teen Vogue and Jonas Spahr is the sexiest man alive!

Midst is such a delight of a show because the attention to detail is painstaking and astounding and if you like lore and worldbuilding, it is really phenomenal and a master class. (Genuinely, I will keep saying it, but it makes me writhe with envy.)

Also, if you do listen, I gotta plug the episode coverage over on @encyclopediacr which now has all of the appendices linked on their episodes list (and in individual episodes' infoboxes)! Which is much easier than trying to sort through the hellscape that is the twitter feed.

[soutsuji]

There's an English class on Golden Age detective fiction being offered next semester but the prerequisite for it is the intro to literary study class required for all English majors (which I haven't taken because I'm in a hard STEM major and don't have much time for electives, which means that I have to be really picky with my electives and only go for stuff I like AND doesn't have an awful workload) and also even if I did have that prereq, I wouldn't be able to take the class because it's at the same time as one of my major reqs. And also I'll be in two labs next semester and one of them is pure hell so like I literally don't have the time to take more than 13 credit hours (as tempting as it is to keep up my streak of taking 17-18 every semester even though it's been like really pretty bad for my social life and hobbies). Sigh. (Pressing my hand wistfully against the glass) maybe someday they'll offer the class again

[cleargreyskies]

7 months, 7 days, and I have finished campaign 2 of Critical Role.

[raplinesmoon]

i think the thing that no one tells you about being forced into being a high achieving child/teen is how much it comes to fuck you over later in life when you can’t do anything without holding yourself to an insane level of perfectionism and then you realize it’s basically leeched all the fun out of any hobbies you created for yourself and left you with a shell of a personality

[jvzebel-x]

🦋

[lovinglin]

Hm, I kinda wanna change my ta—

Also me, holding me in a chokehold: Do. Fucking. NOT.

[notmeowse]

That AMA marks the end of Dragon Age.

In my opinion.

I'll start by saying that I have played all 3 of the previous games repeatedly, I've loved the series for 15 years, more than half my life. These games inspired me to become a writer and they've shaped a lot of my tastes and interests in shows and writing -- to say they were formative is kind of an understatement. Don't want to go on and on about how much I loved them, that's not the point here.

I didn't care for Veilguard for pretty much all of the reasons people have already discussed at length on Reddit and Tumblr. The writing is comprehensively bad, the romances are easily the worst Bioware has written by pure virtue of having the most cookie-cutter pacing and shallow characterization I've seen across their games, the lore has been shafted in every direction, and the nuanced storytelling and roleplay I came to expect from the series has been taken out back and shot in the head.

All, apparently, in the name of a "clean slate". It seems to me that, rather than familiarizing himself with the existing lore of the game he took the creative reins on, Epler clearly had a vision for Dragon Age (or perhaps a different IP entirely) in his head that he decided to transplant into the game (and possibly Trick? But they've said so little beyond defending their work that I can hardly theorize what direction they were coming from). That being a sanitized, wildly self-contradicting, morally absolute shitshow focused on distancing itself from the previous games as much as possible. Now, I know it's unrealistic to blame one person entirely, and I don't blame him entirely. Corinne was there. Trick was there.

But if it wasn't already evident from the numerous interviews Epler's given on the game as well as his participation in the Q&A's (while the actual lead writer of the game has been completely absent in not just the marketing, but in most fan-related interaction pre and post-launch outside of BSKY), this AMA seems to have confirmed, more than anything else, that Epler doesn't understand the game nor does he understand its audience. Neither does Corinne Busche, who despite being Game Director for only the last two years of development, has been answering lore questions a) like she has any fucking clue and b) like she thinks Dragon Age is a cozy-gamer IP, meant to appeal to people that want uplifting stories with uncontroversial characters, morally upright heroes, and unquestionably evil villains.

So as of today's AMA, I think I've finally had enough. We're just outright retconning the lore in Reddit AMA's now, I guess. Among other things. I'll provide a few examples, just so we're all on the same page.

This was part of Epler's response to why Solas didn't have his cult following in the game (insert "We Kind of Forgot" meme here):

Solas' experience leading the rebellion against the Evanuris turned him against the idea of being a leader. You see it in the memories - the entire experience of being in charge ate at him and, ultimately, convinced him he needed to do this on his own. And his own motivations were very different from the motivations of those who wanted to follow him - he had no real regard for their lives or their goals. So at some point between Trespasser and DATV, he severed that connection with his 'followers' and went back to being a lone wolf.

The fact that this (the not caring bit) directly contradicts the writing in the actual game is absolutely INSANE to me, moreso than the lack of Solas's spy network (which he apparently carried with him for 10 years only to conveniently drop right before the ritual? Because he clearly had them research Rook?). But in regards to the not caring -- here's a line from Solas's memory of killing Mythal in Veilguard, which. I'll get to Mythal in a minute:

Why should I not tear down the Veil, and bring back immortality to all the elven people? They deserve it!

Which is it? Does Solas care about the people he's saving (the venn diagram of people he's saving vs. the people following him is surely a circle, i.e. elves) or not? Does he even care about the spirits trapped behind the Veil anymore or is it just convenient to abandon them and have him only care about elves, now? What happened to saving The People? What happened to him not identifying as an elf in his conversations with a Dalish Inquisitor? And what the absolute fuck happened to him wanting to bring back the magical marvels (that the ancient elves did in fact achieve) that were greater than anything we see in Thedas today? Here's what Epler has to say about elven magic, now:

I do agree that the elves have had their place in the sun at this point. [...] The thing about the Evanuris is that, ultimately, they were able to take a very specific type of magic and shape it into doing what they wanted. But even their understanding of magic was only skin deep [...] Even the magic that Tevinter wields, the magic of the Southern mages, is different from what the Evanuris used. The magic of the Evanuris is powerful but it's sterile, and it's constrained. So while the Evanuris have made magic work in a way that's more predictable and understandable, it's not the only kind of magic out there, and even then, I'd say they understood it at a very surface level. People were confidently describing how the natural world worked back in the 16th century. Very few of them were right.

First of all, Tevinter has been stated in previous games to have clumsily adapted ancient elven magic for their own, but they did adapt it. To the point where even Solas is surprised that Corypheus achieved effective immortality -- by binding himself to a dragon the same way the Evanuris did. So, cool, more contradicting the lore here. "They understood it at a very surface level" you mean when all of the magic of the Fade wasn't locked behind the Veil? You mean when magic flowed freely through the world? What do you mean, Surface Fucking Level? The entire point of the Dalish elf culture is what they lost; this wasn't the ancient elves thinking the sun revolved around the earth, the Veil was their fucking Library of Alexandria burning. Oh my god. I still cannot believe he said this.

And how have the elves had their day in the sun? I'm sorry, was Arlathan not given to... the Veil Jumpers? Instead of the Dalish? What happened to all the Dalish clans in the south, who had no infrastructure when the world was apparently blighted to hell? I guess they're just gone now! They've had their day! The story of the Dalish and the Evanuris is over (also confirmed in this AMA), and it apparently ends with the final snuff of the candle that is their culture. Congratulations, Chantry, you've won! Only took two genocides and a double blight, but we're done with the Dalish now! We get your mind-numbingly superficial factions instead!

What happened to Mythal, by the way? What happened to "She was betrayed as I was betrayed, as the world was betrayed! Mythal clawed and crawled her way through the ages to me, and I will see her avenged!" What happened to the reckoning that will shake the very heavens? John's answer to this:

People grow and change over time. Mythal's essence - and in particular, the fragment of her spirit that Morrigan carries, that she got from Flemeth - is not the same Mythal who he knew millennia ago. Centuries of living in this world and being around the kinds of people Flemeth found herself around - the Hero of Ferelden, Hawke, the Inquisitor - changed her views, and made her realize her own culpability in turning Solas into the kind of person he is now.

Oh, right, okay. So she was pissed for like a thousand years, got her big speech about the impending "reckoning" out 10 years ago, and then she just chilled out because the last 3 heroes were neat people. What a fucking joke. And yes, here is the confirmation that the Evanuris story is over --

The story of the Evanuris is done - the gods are dead (or imprisoned) and Thedas is in a state of flux and uncertainty. I imagine that whatever happens next is going to be a surprise to everyone, including the people of Thedas."

So I guess Mythal's reckoning is never coming. One of the most fascinating characters in the series, shrouded in mystery for those first 3 games, PROMISING US a blaze of glory, only to fizzle out in this one. Again, and I can't emphasize this enough, for Epler's clean fucking slate. And we've not just tied up her story, but also the Veil and the Blight:

When Solas bound himself (or, depending on your ending, was forcibly bound) to the Veil, it severed the connection that the Blight had to the waking world. The reality is that the Veil has been leaking ever since the Magisters first entered the Black City, and the dreams of the Titans gave it its terrible and awesome power. Now that the Veil is fully repaired, the Blight lacks that motive force, and being so close to the epicenter of that change has stripped the Blight in Minrathous of its vitality. It's calcified now - dead - and Bellara/Neve no longer suffer its effects. If they'd been anywhere else, further from that epicenter, it would've likely been different and they still would be looking for a cure.

So the Veil is permanently fixed now because our half-dead Dread Wolf bound himself to it (a decision I still don't understand) and that somehow fixed every single hole ever poked in it. Fully repaired. No more holes, no more "Veil is thin here" because tons of people died in the same spot, nope, we're washing our hands and leaving it (and the spirits) behind us because we've wrapped up both the series-long Veil storyline and the blight storyline in a big red bow.

And Epler tells us Solas not only bound himself to the Veil but fixed it entirely in one fell swoop, no ritual required, just a little slice to the hand. Again, all in the name of a clean slate, so any future installments or media centered around Thedas can turn away from this story.

Then there's this. What we can expect from future installments, I freaking guess. The aforementioned roleplay getting taken out back and shot:

Q: "What lead you to the decision to step away from active conversations with the companions as in previous Bioware games, where you can initiate them at any moment and ask exhaustive questions?"

John: "For us, because of tech limitations, it became a choice between exhaustive investigate conversations, or letting the companions move more freely around the Lighthouse. With the kind of experience we were going for, one where seeing the team grow around you is paramount, we felt that seeing them interact in common spaces (and in each other's rooms) made more sense."

Literally confirmed that they chose companions moving freely about the cabin over ... interacting with them outside the handful of cutscenes we got. Who in their right mind would think this was a good call in a Dragon Age game? A series that quite literally prides itself on complex character interactions and storytelling? So they could... sit in different places? Are you kidding me?

They don't see an issue with the game's reception. They don't have any interest in addressing or responding to criticism. They're either happy with their choices or EA's got a gun pointed at their heads, I'm honestly not sure anymore. I used to believe the latter was true, but looking at both Epler's and Busche's responses today, I'm inclined to believe the former.

So I think that's it for the series. Not that I thought it was going to get another game after this, but on the absolute off chance it did, what would be the point? The best stories were ruined. Anything left they have to tell is going to read a lot like Veilguard -- superficial, morally absolute, flagrantly disrespectful to the lore, and delivered in a very poorly written package.