#I can say so myself lol

[vaguely-concerned]

the strength it must have taken for illario to not immediately go full 'lmao since when have you even had a kiss hello lucanis' sibling violence mode during the café talk. inspirational. rook and lucanis really were doing all that right in front of his salad huh

[choccy-milky]

herbology class 🌹🌿 (from chap 2 of my fic!)

[waytootiredstudent]

Why the CDU/CSU can go fuck itself

Time for another one of these. a quick(ish) summary for all the non-german speakers about why we're freaking out and the state of our democracy.

Spoiler. its not...good. Not catastrophic (yet). But the alarm bells are very, very loud.

Tl;dr: The CDU, party currently prognosed to win the election, has basically worked together with the afd to get a migrationbill to pass that is very strict. The afd are the nazi party that is getting backed by Musk. This might forshadow a cooperation between AFD and CDU. That would put the far right in power. The current response from the general public are demonstrations against that. Like. there are a LOT of protests currently.

Alright grab a drink and lets go.

First, groundwork: Who are parties and who is the guy we currently all want to punch in the face?

on top: Careful, risk of confusion. on the left: on the board of a sleazy cooperation. not interested in the enviroment. Real. On the right: on the board of a sleazy cooperation. not interested in the enviroment. comic figure.

This guy here is Friedrich Merz. no, not the guy on the right. the guy on the left. I know. Easy mistake to make.

He's an asshole. He's also the current boss of the CDU and their chancellor candidate. He's very likely to win according to recent polls.

The CDU has a complicated history, but to simplify it: They were in charge for sixteen years before the now broken apart Traffic-light goverment and are responsible for a lot of shit that we're currently dealing with. Like crumbling infrastructure for example. They were more interested, as a party, to preserve the status quo at all costs, than to invest anything. You could argue that a lot of the enviromental issues we are facing and the reason why Germany is currently pretty stagnant, can be traced back to the one and a half decade the CDU was in charge. They are conservative, not a fan of migration and like to throw around 'tradtional values'.

They are, generally speaking, or better were, center right. More on that later.

The other party that is going to be a major pain in the ass to outright fucking dangerous, is the AFD, short for 'Alternative for Germany'.

this is Alice Weidel, she's the current chancellor candidate for the afd. here is her wikipedia article and lets just say her 'controversies' part is longer than her 'political positions' part.

Those are the, to put it bluntly, Nazis. They are dangerous but also a fucking mess. Like, to just list a few of their hits: They've been getting money from dictators (different ones btw, not just one), infigthing is a sport to them, they try to glorify the nazi-regime, the german intelligence agency is watching them because they are officially considered radical right-wing and a threat to democracy, there is a petition to ban the afd and that is a high bar to cross, the demonize immigrants, hate queer people, you know, the usual. Also of course political correctness has gone too far and climate change isn't real and we need to leave the EU. Elon Musk, you know the rich guy who did the Nazi-salute, also has been appearing and is actively supporting them. Just in case we were unclear before on where they all stand.

(btw the whole 'elon is supporting them' thing is pretty scary bc you could argue the reason that the afd is able to win so many votes is bc, frankly, they're good at social media. Do i need to elaborate why that is a dangerous combination.)

to put them into perspective: The afd is too right for the other alt-right parties in the EU parlament. There is a coalition in the EU Parlament for the right, made up of all the right wing parties from other nations and the afd is too right for them. So. yeeeeaaah.

that should do it as background information.

Now. back to current events. where both of these parties are getting more and more support.

For a short history of why we currently have a non-functioning goverment, i made a post about that. Be aware that it was made as a product of its time and doesn't have all the information. For example back then we didn't know that FDP had actively engineered that break up and wanted it to happen for a while. Yes. They wanted to topple the goverment they were in. on purpose. It's been a fun time over here in Germany as well.

anyways, lets get to the meat of things. Since we don't have a functional goverment currently, Merz has introduced a harsh migration bill. This has been in the wake of an attack with two murders, where the current suspect is a migrant. while this is a tragedy, its getting brutally misused by all out rightwing parties to scream about how we need stricter migration laws and that migrants are a danger. Which to be so fucking clear about this, is such bullshit. It's been proven so many times how that is bullshit. I'm gonna be real and not even bother. They're just the newest scapegoats everything can be blamed on.

But because nobody has a majority, all attempts at governing so far have been pretty stalled.

(our goverment currently)

Quick information from the past:

in 2018 the CDU basically stated they wouldn't, in any sort of way, cooperate with the AFD, declaring basically a Brandmauer (fire wall). This basically means that yes, the afd had been given seats in the parlament, but nobody would give them any power whatsoever.

This has been the position of the cdu. It is why people still considered them center-right.

Merz has repeatedly said he didn't care who voted with him. now with a slight majority, 348 to 344, the cdu has won, with the support of the afd. Many see this as the fall of the Brandmauer. It's not good. Merz has more and more talking points that sound exactly like the afd and that is SCARY. There is still a vivid memory alive here about why having a far-right goverment is dangerous. There is a reason why there are currently a lot of massive protests all over the country loudly proclaiming that 'never again is now'.

This also puts for many the cdu from 'center right' to 'right'. There are calls from inside the cdu to 'stop demonizing the afd'. This is scary. This could mean that we get not just a conservative goverment in a few weeks, but a rightwing one. One who is comfortable cooperating with radical right wingers if it suits their needs. To cooperate with a party that even our own intelligence agencies consider a threat to our democrazy.

So. that is why your german mutuals sit there like

Now. To another part. What exactly is that migration bill merz had wanted to pass so desperateldy?

Well first of all it calls for a national emergency, using the beforementioned murder as reasoning, for the danger of immigration. It calls for closing and controls at the borders permanently, not temporary as is curently the case. They want for people without valid ID to be refused entry, even when they are searching safety. People that are already in Germany but need to leave should be thrown in jail until they actually leave.

Which. just to be clear about this. this what the bill they had, that had the support of the afd, says. This is not a wish list. This what they want to be law.

But to be also clear, lots of this is against our current law, against Basic EU law and principle and also a pretty big violation of our constituation.

Which is what makes this situation so fatal. This bill is going to be fought. In court, in politics, with demonstrations on the streets. this bill is controversial. Merz knew that. he knew that a lot of this wouldn't pass. This is a publicly stunt. This is testing the waters. How much will the public allow? how far can he push? Is cooperation with the afd possible for him? How does everyone react?

It was never about immigration or that bill. All the people this is going to impact, all the lives that are going to be lost because of this shit they are pulling - this is to them all just collateral. Its testing how much is possible, tolerated even. The chances of this bill making it law is slim. It needs to pass again in a different body of the goverment with a two thirds majority and that is nowhere in sight.

Also, lets take a look at who voted what:

it was about four votes. So my german friends who also read this - look at this and be aware of who voted what. Who abstained to vote and gave up the four votes it would have taken to stop this. who accepted that to get what they want they would need to get the support of the afd, no matter how much Merz now claims that he still doesn't cooperate with the afd and that there were no talks between them. Look at the numbers. Look how and with who they voted.

To be frank, i am pretty pissed off. I don't think much about wallowing in self-pity and despair. i am pissed off about what is happening. i am pissed off that these people don't have a spine, i am pissed off at the FDP for enabling this in the first place, i am pissed off that we have Nazis in out goverment, i am pissed off that we have people who are willing to cooperate with them. I am pissed off that i need to settle for damage control instead of being able to see something finally move forward.

Now here we come to the less depressing part of this whole thing. And i want you to pay attention to it.

People are protesting. loudly. And in the thousands. There have been ten to a hundred thousands of people all over the country in the last week, protesting against the rise of faschism and the far right. Its all over the country, in different cities. Where the afd appears to talk, so do the protesters. There are 35 afd people to 1300 protesters. People loudly say 'never again is now'. And they show up to back that claim up.

This shit is vile, yes, but it's not going to be unopposed.

I know this all reads as depressing as fuck but do not give into the temptation of falling into despair. This is far from over. Yes those are the alarm bells and they are ringing loudly. But there is still things that can be done. Don't let the afd lure you into thinking this all pointless anyways. It's not. This is all not good, yes, but no reason to fall into blind panic. The bill isn't law yet. Merz is facing massive backlash for his little stunt. This is not a hopeless situation. It's just a shitty one.

[puppppppppy]

my attempt at making a fursona

[aliettali]

out of your friends which are you?! (skilltobers 13, 15, 16, 17, 18)

[deoidesign]

One of my first digital pieces (2010) versus one of my recent ones (2024)

We all start somewhere!

[welcometogrouchland]

(ID in alt) I literally said I was gonna post this month's ago and then never had the wherewithal to describe it and so I didn't Lmao (said with pain). But since I'm thinking of opening my commissions I figured I should remind ppl that I. Yknow. Can draw.

Lots of Steph here (I had major art block making all of these and my brain worms for her kept me going) + some sprinkles of stephcass for Cass nation to enjoy!

[wtfforged]

reattempt at some kind of sona/oc thing

[randomalistic]

Cool awesome reminder that you don’t need amazing technical skill to be a good artist/storyteller

[spoiledskullz]

sonic movie monkey paw: knuckles is more popular now than he was prior to 2022 but it's movie knuckles and his character is still misunderstood

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

pygmalion and galatea for aroace people

you should tell your friends what I look like, riz gukgak.

[crazyw3irdo]

okay, i think any time anyone asks what superpower we’d like to have most everyone on this website would say shapeshifting but what kind of shapeshifting would you like

type 1- wild shape, you can turn into any animal, real or fictional

type 2- mystique, you can turn into any real person

type 3- cosplay, you can turn into any humanoid fictional character

type 4- jake the dog, you’re super stretchy

type 5- character creator, you can alter your own appearance- like changing voice hair length texture color, changing height and weight, transing gender, etc, but you can’t add anything non-human (ie horns, wings, claws, etc)

type 6- additional features, you can add things like snake eyes, horns, cat ears, tail, claws, wings, mermaid tail, but you remain humanoid overall and can’t change things like height or gender presentation or hair color. you can still change your voice tho

type 7- were-wolf, we all know what a werewolf is, lads. can be any kind of animal. can be straight up wolf or more monstrous wolf form that’s up to you.

type 8- furry, you just become your fursona. or any kind of fursona really you can change between them

type 9- antman, can become small or big

type 10- other, say what kind ya want

[invinciblerodent]

See, the Treviso vs Minrathous choice would be cool! It's a good choice on paper, but it's executed... not so great (the game's framing as "if you don't save this city it will have Political Consequences vs if you don't save that city All The Civilians Who Can't Flee Will Die because the whole water supply will get blighted" when you have to make your choice is kind of ass, as a baseline) and then it gets further undermined when the final battle is in Minrathous so the city gets fucked up and the venatori mostly take it over in the chaos anyway because Rook gets stuck in Fade jail for several weeks. It turns the decision into "do I want to blight one city or both?" on a second playthrough which does, indeed, have a 'morally right' answer.

And that's the problem with this 'complex and interesting moral question'. This is why people are unhappy with it. Because it completely fails to stick the landing.

See, this is nothing against you, but I knew I was going to get messages like this, even before I would have hit "post".

I'm not saying that either decision is "right". That's the point of it all, that there is no "right" answer, and arguments can be (and are, within the game) raised in favor of both. That's what it's supposed to be about, that from Rook's point of view (as a character, not your point of view, as the player), there are good, significant reasons to save both, but they can only aid one, because they are only one person. It's meant to make your character feel small, and to highlight the enormity of the foe that they are facing. Its purpose is to make Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain feel like they have all the tools to win the war, even when they lose a battle.

Now, ngl, I'm just going to straight up ignore the "oh Minrathous gets blighted in the endgame anyway so there's no point" line of reasoning altogether, because Rook has no way of knowing that. That's metagaming, and if that's the way you want to play your game, you're obviously welcome to do so, it's no skin off my back, do whatever you want forever... but characters in linear stories should, theoretically, only be capable of acting within the confines of their narrative. If we want to actually talk about the ramifications of certain decisions, it doesn't make sense to me to act as if a character should have the ability to make a decision based on information that they have no way of having. I don't think that's productive to the conversation.

(plus, I would argue that adding that as a potential regret, the knowledge that them dooming Treviso ultimately didn't accomplish nearly as much as they thought it would, is far more compelling from a character- and a storytelling point of view, than going into it all with the intention of making All The Right Choices, with Rook secure in the knowledge that at least they are going to be proven "right" by posterity. That does far less for me, personally. I think your Rook is allowed, even encouraged, to have complex, contradictory feelings about the decisions they make.)

Second of all, for three games now, we have been told that Tevinter and the constant, decades-long war they have been engaged in with the Qunari is the only thing that stands in the way of the Qunari expansion towards Orlais, Nevarra, the Marches- there is a reason the occupation starts in Rivain and Antiva, the coastal regions of the mainland furthest from the Imperium.

For two games, we have known that the Venatori (due to many of them being old money, old blood, powerful magisters) have infiltrated the highest ranks within the Magisterium, that they are cunning and dangerous and lying in wait, and that they pull the strings from many directions, with not much besides a handful of Magisters (Dorian and Maevaris included), the Shadow Dragons, and the Archon (who, if the Inquisitor kept Radonis in power, is not only an ally to the Inquisition, but also vocally opposed Corypheus, and, by proxy, the Venatori) to stand in their way.

Yes, there are always many civilian lives at stake. Yes, Treviso is devastated in the attack and its aftermath (physically to a much more extensive degree than Minrathous), and yes, the immediate threat of the dragon causes more obvious destruction there- blighting the canals, causing a staggering loss of life, all of these effects will stretch far into the future.

But in Minrathous, the dragon is not the focal point. It's a distraction.

In Minrathous, the dragon is there to create chaos, to rampage and destroy all it can in order to sow discord and divert protection away from the Archon's palace (notably the place with the cannons that it very well can't turn onto itself), so that the Venatori can break through the Archon's guard, and successfully pull off a bloody coup that then puts them unequivocally in control of the capital city of one of the most powerful and influential countries of Thedas: military, magic, power all together.

And while saving Minrathous at that moment doesn't result in the city being perfectly peaceful, all fine, great and dandy, the Archon still dies as a result of the attack, it does at least ensure that their defenses are not stretched too thin, fighting on two different fronts at the same time. As a consequence of that, it ensures that the Black Divine, one of the pivotal people standing in the way of the Venatori expansion, doesn't contract the Blight. It stops members of the abolitionist group that's known- and respected for standing up for the needs of the disenfranchised and oppressed from being openly decimated, and strung up in the streets like Christmas lights.

It stops the Venatori, who then have next to no one to oppose them, from doing damn near irreparable damage, and tossing all the political progress of the last decade into the nearest shitter to catapult Tevinter back to times when nobody bat an eye to the rich and powerful using people as furniture.

(And, though this is pure speculation, this can be disregarded, however fractured the Antaam is, however many of their forces they have diverted towards Rivain and Antiva, I don't think it's such a stretch of the imagination to say that it'll likely only take them time to realize that with their allies now in control of Minrathous, they have an open avenue through Tevinter to enter Orlais, seize Val Royeaux, seize the Marches city by city, and force the Blight-ravaged south to fight on two fronts at the same time.)

I don't think any of these are things that I'm pulling out of my ass, or something that Rook isn't made aware of. Neve doesn't hammer it home quite so clearly, she also doesn't have the gift of foresight, but in the blind panic that she is communicating in that moment, she does say that her primary concern is the Venatori coup, and the player has been introduced to the Shadow Dragons and told of their significance before that, even without the context that Inquisition, Trespasser, and the comics provide. We've met the Viper, we've met Maevaris, we've met Dorian- we've talked to all of them, and we know what they're up against.

It's not an easy decision, and it's not meant to be one, or one you're meant to think about as "well you're either siding with X and are right, or with Y and you're wrong". This is not the mage uprising, where the choice falls flat because one side's point of view is "no genocide good", and the other's is "church-sanctioned genocide good".

I think that this choice is a relatively early game decision that is meant to make you think about whether your Rook, right then and there within their arc in the story, is the kind of person who would do anything to save even one civilian life even if politically it's devastating, the kind of person to think about the big picture and consider all the political ramifications even if it means a sacrifice of lives- or, alternatively, the kind of person who would do anything for a place that they call home, even if it means dooming another and letting down their friend.

You say that it fails to stick the landing. But that's very easy to say if you are the one yanking the mat from under its feet.

[thedocs-in]

You cannot convince me that this didn't happen.

Also, yes, I know, said I was gonna get the second part of the fic out. But I've been busy the past few days and out of the house, so now I can finally sit down and do shit. And I draw faster than I write, and I wanted to christen my new art tablet with a meme of an art piece. And the comic was mostly started.

This thing, this damn comic, has been sitting in my folder for about two years I think. The reason I say that is cause the original version I drew that's in my old style I started like a year or so ago. Never finished it, never plan on finishing it. Looking at my old art style makes me cringe lol. But, I actually started this one like, back in July I think.

[theexorcistiii]

CD art for Feelings by David Byrne