#I will be FIGHTING for a good tier

[planetarythorns]

Chat I think I overshot 10k a little.

[turtleblogatlast]

I love Raph and haven’t said that enough so to be more specific I love that Raph is a soft boy who loves bear plushies, a gross boy who eats an assortment of things that are definitely better left alone, a smart boy who is more than capable of taking down villains through planning and fortitude alike, a strong boy who is dedicated to training his muscles and fighting prowess, a teenage boy who loves his brothers but is more than happy to tease and roughhouse with them, an angry boy who sometimes lets his anger take a hold of him to cover the fear, a gentle boy who is generous with hugs and affirmations to those he loves, a capable boy who takes on more than should ever be expected of a teenager, a good boy who just wants to be a hero and slowly comes to realize the cost of that duty, a good boy who has no reservations about putting himself in the way of harm coming to his family, a good boy who’s a great brother and son and person and deserves only the best the world has to offer.

[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

[xmrnothingx]

Morrigan Aensland from Darkstalkers and Spider-Man from Marvel Comics

With Marvel Vs Capcom finally back I got in the mood to draw my favorite chill succubus: Morrigan. Found some cool official art for Morrigan while looking up references and thought she looked really cute with her original eye-bags and cool in that one anime ova. Also Spider-man

[farewell-superiors]

(Ordered) Tier list of the persona game openings

Persona 3 fes is the cutoff point for a bad persona opening, as having the best and worst of the series (I could rant about that opening for a while) cancels out to it being true neutral.

As you can see, persona 4 is the best persona game /j

[lostyesterday]

I think Michael and Book are my favorite canon Star Trek romantic relationship. I mean, a lot of the canon Trek romances are poorly written so it’s not as if there’s much competition, but I really think their relationship is so, so compelling and interesting. For one thing, the actors have great chemistry, and both characters are fascinating on their own. And I love the progression of their relationship from initial antagonism and lack of trust mixed with an undeniable spark of connection to a gradual realization of deep, caring friendship. I love that they are shown to be friends before they become lovers – that it is so clear that these are two people who deeply understand each other and genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Too many Trek romances try to convince me that two characters who don’t even seem to enjoy spending time together are a well-matched couple, but Michael and Book in late season 3 feel like partners who are best friends too.

And then in season 4 when everything is broken for Book irrevocably, their relationship becomes no less compelling. To see your partner go through such a horrible, traumatic experience and be able to both deeply relate to it and yet unable to imagine the pain of it at all – to try desperately to help when you know in your heart that there is nothing you can do that will heal this wound no matter how much you desperately want to – these are such compelling character moments for Michael, a character whose desire to save others has defined her life.

And then Book and Michael find themselves on opposite sides of a moral dilemma with such far reaching consequences that they have no choice but to oppose each other. And they comprehend each other so completely that neither doubts the positive intentions of the other – that each can deeply understand the other’s point of view, and yet neither can change the other’s mind. The conflict is deep and fundamental, and yet it has little to do with their personal relationship and how much they love each other. Because they still love each other so much despite everything. And they still love each other in the aftermath too.

[aturnoftheearth]

people in the sims 4 modding community are fightinggggggg bc one of the build cc creators is paywalling their stuff for months before releasing it for free to the public when most cc creators range from like. 2 weeks to a month?? anyway it’s a fight to the death between people who say anyone having a problem with it should just make their own and is automatically entitled and get ur bag know ur worth etc and people who say yeah sure but don’t be so rude to people asking why you’re releasing holiday content to the public in february. anyway i see elements of both sides so im watching the arguing like a cat watching christmas tree ornaments

[kingcrimsonsalt]

DRAGON BALL TURNED 40 YEARS OLD!! BIG FOUR 0!!

IMPROMPTU DRAGON BALL APPRECIATION POST REBLOG IF YOU LOVE BUFF MEN PUNCHING EACH OTHER

[seduceme-lovestruck-thearcana]

@megatraven

I’m watching Alex (again) and I got to this part in their S2

Ik it’s a sudden thought and probably obvious, but I bet it was heartbreaking to learn she has Hera’s potential. Like, in this scene we see them connecting the dots in real time and I bet it hurts so much. They know they can lose her, and it’s all of a sudden and oh…..I bet it hurts a lot. Even when they deny the possibility by saying Aphrodite would’ve sensed it, I bet a part of them was wondering if she was hiding it and not telling the truth. They later call her out (if I’m remembering properly) and it’s even more painful to have the truth suddenly and have Ares of all people knowing about it and then basically damning her in Olympus. And they have to WATCH!!

It just hit me for a second and it hurts😭.

EDIT:

Oh, honey……..

[ethanrayne]

went to bed at a reasonable hour for once (bc i stayed up "late" playing bg3 with a friend [@jennycalendar is the actual best]). somehow am still up at the hour i would have been otherwise bc. uh. i woke up early bc my heart rate was through the roof bc. uh. bc i was so happy and excited about how fun yesterday was that even my subconscious was vibrating about it.

baffling. apparently if you have too much joy you just end up with less sleep about it.

[starrysharks]

zeno's ultimate pokemiku tierlist ⁉️(it's all his opinion and he loves them all regardless⁉️)

[fansonfansonfansonfans]

AOAOAOA Ep 121: For decades, the legendary daytime talk show "The View" has been home to iconic hosts from all sides of the political spectrum engaging in heated debate . But you may not have heard of "The Look", a similar show hosted by three opinionated women and one absolutely ancient one.

[lovethisfatcryptid]

The other day Sir and I got into a very rare argument, well really it was just a misunderstanding and I was very upset. But he listened and apologized and his apology included "I love that you're emotional, I love that you're a dependent person, and I love being the person you depend on. Don't give up on me." And idk I just love that he says stuff like that because the BPD tells me I'm too much all the time and he makes me feel like I'm perfect the way I am.

[kittykatinabag]

Mark my words, the next country/area we're getting in Infinity Nikki is Cicia.

[xserpx]

When the sapling seed finds a crack in the mountain, over long years its deep roots will burst the very rock apart. So the Bloody-Nine strained with every muscle and let the slow time pass, hissing out his hatred into the Feared’s twitching mouth.

— Last Argument of Kings by Joe Abercrombie

I'm sure I've said it before, probably with this quote, but I love how the Bloody Nine's POV is full of poetic devices. It really makes him into an epic figure fit for generations to sing about long after, and using Homeric similes and other metaphors related to nature, it shows how the B9 sees himself as a force of nature: he is the hand of death. It also enhances the flow of the action, which isn't as unique to Logen but I love that hyper-focused quality of the prose, where every moment matters, the senses are heightened, it puts you right in the character's head. I don't think I'll ever get tired of reading Abercrombie action scenes.

[highly-opinionated-nerd]

(Makes myself insane thinking about acts of self sacrifice in Homestuck)