#I don't know 🤷

[fangirl201sworld]

More Chimi: Daughter of Vucub AU headcanons (sorry, this is a bit disorganized but here it goes)

This is part 1 of the history of the AU:

As I said before, Chimi was raised by Vucub after the residents of the Jungle Lands abandoned her in the jungle. He takes her to the Underworld, but she leaves her hidden from the gods for 5 years.

After 5 years in hiding, Chimi came out of her hidden spot, following her father to Mictlan's temple. Unfortunately for her, the gods found her and Mictlan was furious, so much so that he wanted to kill her. Vucub intervened, pleading not to kill her. He convinced him to let her live by promising that she would serve him as one of his warriors once she grew up. Mictlan reluctantly agreed, already having plans for her.

Years passed, Chimi was trained by Vucub and became a very skilled warrior and archer. Sure, she went on missions from the age of 14, but not without the company of both Zatz and Acat, who were companions and friends. Vucub gave her golden bow when she turned 15.

What Mictlan didn't know was that a rebellion was brewing against him. Among them Vucub, Chimi, Zatz, Camazotz, Cipactli and Cabrakan, along with Micte's help, of course. The rebellion was formed in Zotzilaha, The House Of Bats. Acat is also involved but desperate to get Mictlan's approval, she had no choice but to reveal the secret. Mictlan, went to Zotzilaha along with his army to destroy it. Unfortunately, Zotzilaha fell and with the death of it's god, Camazotz. (Yeah...both Zatz and Chimi are not spared from the trauma)

Some time has passed, the rebel gods went into hiding because Mictlan had been hunting them. Chimi and Zatz stayed under Vucub's care in the jungle, being accompanied by all kinds of animals, including bats for Zatz. They both didn't want to see Acat again since then.

So, this is part 1 of this AU, I will post part 2 soon. Oh, and I don't know if I should post headcanons of the Zatz x Rico AU, because we had some ideas for it ;)

[tragicotps]

Masriel + freedom

[aimedis]

damien is freelancer's lacy and freelancer is damien's lacy

think about that.

[butchvamp]

i finished the game last night, here are my unpolished thoughts about the final act and what i liked & didn't like. this is very long and probably incoherent lol

what i liked:

the whole final battle was awesome, i loved the combat, and i really enjoyed the huge cutscenes of everyone fighting together. i had been really disappointed earlier about the lack of a battle scene at weisshaupt a la ostagar in origins, and this definitely made up for it

i liked the suicide mission and actually getting to assign people their roles in the battle

i LOVED Solas's betrayal, that whole section in the fade prison with the statues was one of the strongest scenes in the game, i think the entire relationship between Rook and Solas is really well developed. as the player, we know Solas is manipulating them, but i think they did a good job making it so it's still believable for Rook to fall for his tricks, especially with the Blood of Arlathan quest before this. (also it's very obvious Solas is Weekes' favorite, wish they would have just stuck to him and not all that other dogshit...lol)

i liked the idea of Varric's role here, but not the execution. i'll come back to this lmao

the giant dread wolf and archdemon fight was cool as fuck. no notes. that's just classic rule of cool, baby

also i had Davrin in my party while fighting alongside Solas and i really enjoyed his banter with him and how hard he laid into Solas's ass. it was very satisfying. yippee go Davrin!

okay. now. what i didn't like (sorry not going to bother with bullet points, it's going to be longer down here lol):

while i liked the suicide mission structure, i hated how the game all but told you who to assign where. there were no stakes at all, there was no way to get it wrong unless you did so intentionally.

this also brings me to. The Choice. between Davrin and Harding. i understand the need for a "fallen hero" here, it ties into the entire theme of regret with Solas as we see in the fade prison, it was necessary for Rook to be the person "at fault" (aka directly make the choice that ends with someone getting killed) but this choice was dogshit. it also was really fucking stupid to see Harding climb up and stand atop a giant stone pillar, and then NOT use her stone magic!!! i don't hate the idea of someone dying here, but this was just a series of failed choices over and over again. we should not have pitted returning fan fave Harding against the single Black companion (who comes in late and barely even gets his own story outside of his damn pet)-- it should have been Harding (narratively satisfying, she's been here since the beginning and dies for the fight) or Lucanis (he is literally the guy taking the shot), we also shouldn't have tied all the dwarf lore revelations to a character that can just fucking die at the end, and we shouldn't have had her stand on a giant stone pillar when she has STONE MAGIC!! i knew this choice was coming but her death still caught me off guard cus i was fully expecting her to collapse that stone pillar on her, not use her stupid puny bow 😭

i think this choice is also weakened by the fact that it's THEE only choice. it's obviously an echo of the earlier Treviso and Minrathous choice, which also didn't really seem to affect much outside of potentially losing the corresponding factions (and i think Lucanis's romance gets locked out?) i saved Treviso, so i got the Treviso questline later, and i assume that you get a Minrathous specific questline with the Shadow Dragons if you save the other instead (haven't seen myself tho so i'm not sure, just guessing). but it's very easy to recover the Shadow Dragon's reputation, and the final battle takes place in Minrathous no matter what. the only way for companions to die or the battle to fail is to just straight up ignore quests. you can't lose a faction's support at all unless you intentionally try to do so. i don't even think you can lose companions at all unless you intentionally ignore their quests and place them in the wrong spot. though the game still holds your hand through the battle and basically Tells You who to put where so they survive.

and to be fair. this is true for the suicide mission in mass effect 2, but the thing is, there is so much more dialogue and variations with how you can play your character and interact with the companions and the world than there is in veilguard, it makes it feel like you do have more control over your character and the narrative, even if it's just the illusion of choice.

and then with Solas, it doesn't matter, he always ends up trapped/linked to the Fade, it just changes how he feels. (they also do this with the First Warden. i was excited for a potential variation between punching/not punching, but all it changes is his attitude when you find him later in Davrin's quest) okay.... well. is he going to return again after that post credit scene? and are they really going to write 3 (or 4, with lavellan i guess) different branching personality variations?

i think the powers that be just wanted to get rid of him in a way that would still leave the dragon age setting ultimately unaltered and open for more games in the future. especially given the secret post credits scene. which i also have an issue with. we're going to go from "it was all the Evanuris fault" to Actually, it was this secret third thing and everything we did was for nothing! AGAIN! if they want to make more dragon age games, they can just... start a new story. do they know that. (the fact they're implying Loghain was influenced by some outside force to do what he did at ostagar actually has me livid lol. leave origins alone!!!!)

anyways. now the fade prison. i have two issues, my main one being Varric. i actually started to suspect early on something was up with him, because he just sits in that damn infirmary the entire game, no interactions, barely any dialogue. i think Varric was horribly underutilized in this game, and it results in all of the emotional beats around him falling flat for me. of course, it's emotional for ME, the player, because Varric is a fan fave returning character and one of my own personal favorites. as far as i've seen in game, though... Rook has no relationship with him at all. i think this game would have been vastly improved with short playable origins that showed the two meeting and developing a relationship, and also he really really needed to have more scenes and dialogue in general. he's barely in the second half of the game, literally just sitting all by himself in that damn room, and even when he is in the cutscenes he has one single line that everyone obviously just ignores. it sucked. very disappointing finale for a really beloved character... it could have been so good if it was good....

because i DO love the idea of Solas using him to manipulate Rook (and i really like Varric and Solas's relationship & the way they contrast against each other), and also the idea of how being tricked in that way would actually affect Rook-- what's real, what's not, can they even trust what they're seeing at all anymore? especially when Solas "glitches" between Varric and Lucanis (idk if it's always him or your LI? would be cool if it's your LI, that's what i assumed) after slaying Ghilan'nain-- this could have tied in with the final romance scene. but of course the game doesn't get into any of that at all.

and now issue 2. how the fuck did Solas do that LOL. how did he switch places, how did he get out, how did it take Rook in his place when it was designed for elven gods? where are the other elven gods (did i just miss this explanation? did the other two just kill them in there)? 🤷 when did this place suddenly turn into a prison of regrets? was that Solas's presence influencing it, or did he do that intentionally for Rook? dont know! who cares. moving on...

i romanced Lucanis, and i was really disappointed with his romance. the final scene was sweet, but.... i think particularly with Lucanis you can tell so much of his story and arc ended up on the cutting room floor, it feels disjointed and as if we're missing pieces, and you can feel it in his romance, too. i also really didnt understand the "keep flirting (not a lock in) or end it now" choices that didnt feel like they did anything at all. why was i given like 3 different times to break up with him when we weren't even dating yet lmao. the romance was a bummer, of course i love the setting and the story but i go into these games expecting strong romance along with it and i was really banking on that being the highlight in this mess of a game but. alas

this also segues me back into the whole "trapped in the Fade prison" section. why was there no reunion with both your LI and everyone else? apparently Rook was in there for WEEKS!!! they hardly communicate this and Rook just reappears and jumps straight back into leading the team, no tears or questions asked about how they found them, how they got out, what everyone was thinking while they were gone... we also get a deus ex machina knife, how convenient that they did all that while i was gone and no explanation is given as to how it could possibly fool Solas, just trust us bro! 💆 i feel like trying to craft our own copy of the knife should have been something actively happening in the background throughout the entire game, and it gets finished while Rook is in the Fade. but this truly came out of nowhere lol

again i think it's obvious things were cut and rewritten and maybe this was the result of a frantic scramble to come up with something that would work, and i'll be generous and blame it on that, i guess...

when we finally get to the final confrontation with Solas, i was very excited, because again i feel like Rook and Solas's relationship is the best in the game, Solas's writing is consistent and strong, i knew this scene had to be good.... and i guess it was? but it felt so unsatisfying. i chose to fight him (my Rook would do anything to get him to shut up) and i was hoping for. an actual fight. you can do it with Mythal earlier in the game, and we already saw his giant wolf form, i was so excited. and then. no<3

okay! sure. we beat him with the power of friendship (not surprised and not even making fun of it here, it makes sense narratively, i knew some version of this was coming after the whole comparing Rook versus Solas bit in the Fade) but come onnnnn i wanted to fight the giant wolf.... sigh. i did check out the other endings as well, and it's clear the redemption ending is the "true" ending and also the best written one imo.

overall. this was a bad dragon age game. i had a lot of fun playing it though, so it's not a bad game game. the gameplay loop never got boring, i never got tired exploring or doubling back, i loved the maps, i loved the combat, and i did love the companions. but the writing is atrocious and racist. this is a horrible dragon age game. i don't know where i fall on recommending this. again, i've had a lot of fun playing and dissecting it, but i dont know that i could recommend this to dragon age fans. this would have been way more successful as a completely different fantasy game. the changes to the lore, disregarding the majority of the games that came before it, the horrible depictions of returning characters (the inquisitor and isabela were the worst offenders for me) the setting and characters feeling watered down and incomplete, the complete lack of the classic "grey morality" shtick (even if it's not always been implemented well)... idk man. bummer! it's obvious there was a cohesive vision at one point, i do think this game is a casualty of the current state of the gaming industry (i was honestly surprised it was functional on launch. not shade at bioware just in general that is rare to see now) we know EA thrashed bioware throughout development, and bioware made a lot of really bad choices, too (the racism is absolutely their doing, they made that choice back in inquisition). but we can see, particularly in the artbook, that there were good ideas & an intention to actually tie everything together and give this story the finale it deserved... but it all got lost along the way in a very ugly, chaotic development. and the game really suffers for it.

[running-in-the-dark]

okay, Flynn fangirling over Darrington Dare might be the cutest thing ever

[lulu-draws-stuff]

Here is is!

The last one in the trio to get all dressed up :]

[roachfun]

Hot take: you gotta be stupid if you believe this is geto and not kenjaku

[spriteofmushrooms]

Ask game: 1 chengqing

1. things you said at 3am

Two days after Wei Wuxian died, Jiang Cheng woke from a dream of the dirty Wen child who clung to his leg. Heart racing, skin clammy, he flew alone to the Burial Mounds and scoured the remains, all for nothing. And who could he ask? So the warmth of a little body haunted him on the nights he rocked Jin Ling.

Until a small Lan with a Gusu-softened Qishan accent tripped and fell into him during one of his visits to Lan Qiren, apologizing so desperately that Jiang Cheng couldn't help but focus on him. A sweet, anxious expression modifying Wen clan features. The earnest need to ensure all adults stayed calm barely obscured by Lan-trained restraint.

Just like a-jie, Jiang Cheng thought.

"Are you treated well?" Jiang Cheng asked, interrupting the boy. What was his name?

The little Lan blinked and nodded, going mute from Jiang Cheng's gruff voice.

Jiang Cheng's eyes stung, and he turned his face away. "Be careful."

At least Nie Mingjue was dead. In time, the boy's accent would fade, and the danger would pass. Perhaps his mother's features would develop in time, too, obscuring his resemblance to a skull mounted outside of Bujing Shi.

The nightmares continued anyway.

Two days after Jin Guangyao died, Jiang Cheng woke from a dream of starry black eyes. It was impossible, and yet Lan Sizhui lived and Wen Ning persisted. After another frantic flight, this time to Jinlin Tai, Jiang Cheng found himself in front of a groggy Jin Ling.

"There was a doctor," Jiang Cheng said.

Jin Ling blinked at him. "Okay."

"She might be alive," he gestured at the walls, "somewhere hidden."

Jin Ling was a good boy, so he only complained the necessary amount before dressing and organizing the search. Jiang Cheng held little hope--Jin Guangyao's memory was exceptional, so he had left few notes. Still, servants see more than most, and so Jiang Cheng carefully questioned people until they had several possibilities.

With Jin Ling and a small group of Jin cultivators, they searched the areas of Jinlin Tai that seemed most suspect. Most inspections led to nothing, the result of hindsight casting shadows over Jin Guangyao's every movement. Two ended with Jiang Cheng standing aside as Jin Ling beheld his grandfather's and shushu's legacies.

One, though. One led to a small, dark apartment that locked from the outside.

It was tidy. The first room was filled with shelves and a table. Jiang Cheng picked up the ink stick, rubbing his thumb against it. High quality. Ink he couldn't have afforded for the first seven years after the war.

Like everything else, it was covered in dust.

"Jiujiu," Jin Ling said, and then stopped.

Jiang Cheng ignored him, using a light talisman to check the books and scrolls. Decisive, bold strokes filled many. The writer's thoughts had flowed easily; her brush had not faltered.

"Jiujiu, I'm sorry."

Jiang Cheng shut the book in time for his tears to fall on the cover.

He'd thought she died the same day as Jiang Yanli, as Wei Wuxian. He'd thought Jin Guangshan had burned her with the rest. He had dreamed about it, about begging her to let him save her as she walked with Wen Ning to her death. Not once in sixteen years had she ever turned to him.

This, though.

"Do you want me to check the other room?"

"No," Jiang Cheng said.

A bed. A chest with Wen red robes. A pair of slippers.

Jiang Cheng knelt in the dust and clung to the robes.

"Who was she?"

My zhiji, Jiang Cheng thought, and said nothing.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

That feeling when you're correct that your estranged parent did have a surname that's also associated with being jewish in origin and you have no definitive conclusions about that or, like, half of who you are 🥲🙏🙏🙏

[emmavakarian-theirin]

i know as a garrus fan i can't really talk and i don't want to cause a whole Dilemma but the artwork for the mass effect board game is pissing me right off because it's so clear 90% of the effort went into liara and then everyone else is just tweaked screenshots and they claim there's no use of ai but shepard's face doesn't look right either or it's cut/pasted off something

[screwpinecaprice]

Actually took a day off to rest my eyes from screens. And of course I picked up my sketchbook and scribbled whatever.... which ended up being almost all from my Distant Future (Canon divergent?) AU that I still rarely touch on. lol (Except for that last image.)

Something just reminded me of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past, which was one of the inspirations of this AU. (The inspiration mostly from book 2 and 3, The Dark Forest and Death's End. Had to listen to it a couple of times for my smooth brain to kind of understand stuff from that book. RIP)

.... The horror of not being able to use the transform tool and undo button tho. ;-;

[wundrousarts]

Hi folks! It seems like people are discovering that there are people online who write some WEIRD! 👎 stuff for Nevermoor. Some tips and tricks for dealing with that:

Don't engage. Don't read the fics. Don't even comment to say how much you hate it.

Don't spread it around. It's gross as hell, I know! But being like "ew, guys, I found this gross fic" just means you're causing more people to seek out said gross fic, and that's just not great. If you don't want to see it, no one else wants to either.

If you can: block, mute, or filter. I don't really use any fanfic sites to know if these functionalities exist, but I'm sure people online have found ways. Edit: here's a way to do it on Ao3.

TL;DR: Ignore, Ignore, Ignore. 👍

(PS: Same thing goes for when people send weird inappropriate anon messages. Just delete them from your inbox and don't subject others to them.)

This is unfortunately something that's been present for years in the fandom, on both Ao3 and Wattpad. This is also why I essentially don't read Nevermoor fics unless they're for Mogtober, and even then I'm cautious. I have seen some weird stuff written about my favorite characters that I wish I could pluck from my brain and set on fire, or worse! But when I stumble across that stuff, I just quickly close the tab and pivot to something else to get my mind off of it.

We should not entertain these types of people in a fandom full of minors about a middle grade series, so: just don't engage with them, ignore them, filter them out, and maybe even drown them out with some fics of your own.

[suave-hogan]

I haven’t shared the whole reason why I can’t listen to Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’ the same way anymore, have I?

Well here it is since the movie is coming out this week✨

The clip is from Season 2 Episode 5 of The TWRP Show. Timestamp 43:35

[drivemetomars]

I need to apply for this job but I have never made a cover letter but I will be worth it and I will make 21/hr and work in an office setting and get *experience* with that so I can soon apply for Government jobs and they will go ooooooo would you look at all of that administrative experience and I will say thank you so much I can learn anything and learn it quickly you just have to incentivize me with money and benefits. I am a simple gal like that. Okay bye thank you for coming to my hype up. If I put this in the world I force my hand to follow through. I have 24 Hours and a updated resume. Sexy forever okay let's go. 💖

[genericwizard]

If Remurians wrote music as an attempt to become masters of their own fate, and the arcane power of fate within music is a power that even predates them (Ruggieros notes in Bravais's study), then perhaps I'm winning once again vis a vis Venti’s poem to Kaeya?

Though I guess that depends on whether verses of a poem from the mouth of a powerful bard count as music.

[walterdecourceys]

i have ocd = boring, trite, clinical, ohhh look at this guy he's self-aware enough to correctly identify which behaviors are caused by mental health disorders. like a loser

there is an angel on my shoulder who yells at me every day = mysterious, whimsical, makes you sound like a character in a mid new york times bestseller who is never diagnosed and whose mental issues are simply part of their quirky protagonist charm