#I'll put the tag just to be sure

[beestandsforbiancanottheanimal]

has this been done already? i don't care

[breakbeatbun]

Customizable Player Models // Blockbench model for ... me again :) it's my rabbit Breaks with a New Outfit.

on the left is my default fit to match my vanilla skin, and on the right is what it looks like when i put on armor. neat little feature

bonus pics & expressions under the cut!

www.buny.info

stills of the above gifs so you can see it w/o compression, my custom elytra animation, and some alt fits/accessories and expressions! i gave up my whole hotbar just to puppet this thing & honestly i still have a lotta cleanin to do LMAO but i'm pretty happy with how it all performs :) thank u for looking

[seventh-district]

Making Incorrect H:SR Quotes Until I Run Out of (hopefully) Original Ideas - Pt. 3 - Random Screenshot Edition

[Pt. 1] [Pt. 2] [Pt. 4] [Pt. 5] [Pt. 6]

[owlheartt]

Something I really like about timebomb is that Ekko actually knows what he's getting into.

I'm not really seeing it get talked about but in season 1 they mention that Ekko and the firelights help people addicted to shimmer get off it and lead more fulfilling lives within the community. I should probably rewatch the scene for the exact wording (might be misremembering tbh) but that comment implies A LOT.

First: Ekko's mission is helping people where he can, he would probably try and help Jinx even if he wasn't in love with her

Second: He has experience dealing with severe mental illness as that often goes hand in hand with drug abuse, namely depression/suicidal ideation like what Jinx was exhibiting

Third: He's probably mapped out best course of action FOR dealing with this and has already figured out his own limits/boundaries. Meaning he knew what he was getting into trying to talk Jinx out of suicide, and was thus more equipped to deal with the aftermath

Fourth: He's probably helped ex members of Silco's gang. The firelights seem to have a theme of healing and repairing and recovering, so they've probably also learned to forgive. If they're mission is to rebuild the lanes into a safe space, they can't exclude people they don't like, they have to make room for them. I think they fought Silco out of necessity, and I doubt Jinx would be the first person they help who's killed one of them.

These all might be a bit of a stretch but I think it really fits. Beyond that, it shows that Ekko can ACTUALLY help Jinx. As much as unconditional love can do, Ekko has the tools for Jinx's recovery and a path ready for her. He also probably knows that her "healthy" will look different from AU Powder's "healthy." On top of that, I expect he knows how to respect her even in the middle of psychotic breaks and won't agitate her already frail mental state

[chinzhilla-main]

thank you mr. guzman for personally yanking me by the scruff of the neck back into this madness

[mikimeiko]

Arcane | Main universe vs AUs

[onboardsorasora]

My dash is very sad right now and I get it, it feels like the end. But please understand and appreciate that I do not share the sentiments that this is 'it'.

This is allllll too very fishy and weird and the more I think about it, the more i step away from the emotion of it all. The more I'm sticking to my guns that this isn't over.

This is entirely the media's fault.

They kept badgering him while he was mentally and physically exhausted. If he kept hearing it over and over- we can't blame him for starting to believe it.

Anyhoo. I hope he has a lovely break at home, fills his cup and lets his team deal with holding RBR/VCARB responsible for this shit storm. And when he comes to work in COTA I hope he's tanned and happy and doing the most.

[clfixationstation]

idk if this is a hot take but I don't think Armin is friendly. I think people find him generally off-putting. Like, people think he looks sweet, but also find him strange; for the topics that interest him, the way he didn't stray far from Eren (& Mikasa) socially, and his general demeanor.

I think that as Armin established himself more as he grew up, he developed better interpersonal skills that compliment his rhetorical prowess. I think he's the type of person who sees value in life and in minimizing harm. He offers kindness to his friends and understanding to all. But I don't see him as particularly "friendly"

[tee-dohrnii]

Here's Gale practice I did yesterday! Challenged myself to capture his likeness with only 4 colours and with as little detail as I could while looking at a reference photo.

[onesidedradiostatic]

PATHETIC SHOWDOWN 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

made a pathetic poll before, vox absolutely SWEPT against lucifer last time, pondered on it and thought hey out of all the people who could possibly evenly match up to vox in patheticness, ADAM might have a chance. SO

POINTS (feel free to come up with your own I am grasping at straws here):

Adam

FOR

got cucked by lucifer TWICE

what's more pathetic than getting left by your wife? getting left by BOTH your wives

an actual dudebro

dumb as bricks

just look at him

"HES UGLY" "PUT THE MASK BACK ON"

actually fucking dies

and not even by lucifer by fucking niffty

AGAINST

is actually a really powerful angel who could destroy alastor's shield with one punch and almost killed alastor

mentions that he does in fact fuck in episode 1

could possibly be argued to still have bitches with lute

Vox

some of these may just be copy and pasted from the last one. against will have new points to juxtapose adam though

if you've been around my space long enough you know these well

FOR

lost his own diss track against his rival

sings an entire number about not giving a fuck about his rival's return while being the only person TO give a fuck

tried to physically block a radio, an AUDIO output device as if it'd stop anything, failed at doing even that

his screen calls out the reason for his crashes and he seemingly can't control it

causes a city-wide blackout because his rival announced to everyone he rejected him

there is a non-zero possibility he was/is in love with said rival but said rival will never love him back

purposely avoided going to an overlords meeting and called his co-worker up at the very last minute to attend for him

the guy he appointed as a spy ended up being the very person to prove a sinner can be redeemed

coward who constantly hides behind screens

episode 8

AGAINST

he is capable in literally any context outside of alastor

debuts actually acting cunning

capable of coming up with something on the spot without hesitation (voxtek angelic security)

actually smart (able to interpret val's "put something inside them" comment as appointing a spy)

feared by his employees

well he didn't get left by anyone in an EXISTING relationship... he just got rejected in one that never started

he has bitches (yeah it's valentino but bitches are bitches okay!!)

is in fact not dead

[honeydots]

chrom and robin bust comm for very~~!!

(my comms are open!)

[charmre]

Salt in my lungs, Holding my breath Making peace with my inevitable death I guess I did alright considering Tried to be a halfway decent friend Wound up a bad comedian An honest fool with more bad habits Than you can count

[exn0bis]

So. Completed Veilguard. I have lots of thoughts.

Regardless, I don't think I'd be saying anything that hasn't already been said.

For my part, I went in with the expectation it was going to be bad. I was pleasantly surprised by some things, certainly by the technical aspects, but it fell about where I expected in most other ways.

But first, the good.

It was extremely refreshing to see a AAA game actually release so well optimized for once. I'm running an older system at this point, with a GTX 1080 TI. Even so, out of the box, I was able to run things on the Medium preset perfectly. After some troubleshooting the latest Nvidia driver, and updating the games native upscaling to FSR 3.x, I was running things on a mix of High & Ultra with minimal to no frame drops. This was way beyond what I expected, and made the play experience more enjoyable. While I do think that, like many games in the past few years, there is some over reliance on upscaling to make it look its best, Veilguard still maintains excellent visual fidelity without it.

On that note, the game is objectively gorgeous, regardless of how one feels about the art style (which I did personally like, too); I'm also extremely impressed how they adapted a simulated strand hair system into something playable in real-time without it being overly taxing. Would love to know the technical breakdown for that specifically, but either way, I would not be surprised if we start to see more games released with something similar going forwards.

Veilguard very much proved you can make something look gorgeous and still have it be playable on more than just the latest and greatest systems, and I hope it will encourage more studios to focus on how they optimize and implement their work.

I also found the general gameplay mechanics to be, overall, enjoyable. I was hesitant going in, as I'm 1) bad at games, and 2) from a CRPG background, so the real-time style of combat is not generally something I'm good at. I was also concerned about the stripping down of party mechanics, etc, that was a big part of the previous games. And while I do wish the party tactics had been a little more varied, I ultimately found combat fun and responsive, and that they struck a reasonable balance between simplicity with party, and overly tactical. It did have way too many buttons & combos for me, but that is definitely a me being bad at games thing and not a fault in the game.

I also was extremely impressed with how smoothly the game transitioned from gameplay to cutscenes, and I really liked the more open maps/elimination of excess loading screens.

Unfortunately, that is about all the praise I have for the game.

I'm not really going to talk too much about the complete disregard for the world state built by previous titles, because I think all that needs to be said about that has been. I agree that, from a development standpoint, they needed to find a way to simplify things. However, going so totally scorched earth that character creation literally states "you don't need to customize your previous choices if you don't want to because it doesn't really affect anything" only serves to insult and infuriate the very dedicated player base.

It's very clear that the goal of Veilguard is to wipe the slate clean for the purposes of rebranding and bringing in new players for future installments/capital. Considering the mass layoffs at Bioware, and EA's generally established business practices, this sort of tactic isn't really surprising, no, and was truthfully only a matter of time. But that doesn't stop it from feeling like a slap in the face.

That being established, the total disregard for existing lore, world state, impact of previous titles, glaring plot holes within Veilguard itself, etc, is unfortunately to be expected. No point in picking it apart individually, as it's all just a symptom of the goal of a clean slate reboot.

Which isn't to say I wasn't cursing at my screen by the end of it, but I digress.

I had hoped I could at least enjoy the game as something new, turn off the part of my brain that associated it with Dragon Age and just play it as a stand alone thing. This even worked for the first chapter or so, as I was really enjoying the exploration and gameplay. And then I started recruiting more people. And the main plot started to really get going. And turning my brain off suddenly stopped helping.

The writing is awful, full stop. It's all incredibly surface level and sanitized, and it treats the player with such ineptitude I started to feel like the game had actual disdain for me for trying to play and enjoy it. If I had a dollar for every time an NPC explicitly repeated a plot point or goal immediately after a cutscene that had already painfully spelled it out for me ended, I would have recouped the price of the game three times over. I get that reading comprehension is at an all time low, but holy shit. I paid for a sweeping fantasy narrative, not a degradation simulator that treats me like a moron.

If we manage to put that aside, we're left with a narrative that spends every spare second trying to convince you of how high the stakes are and how important your relationships will be to get through it... and then never actually manages to deliver on any of it. The game repeatedly shies away from showing you anything actually bad, or building anything actually meaningful.

Yes, we see the Blight being gross and a few choice deaths, but that's it. The mass devastation we're told is constantly happening all over Thedas? The staggering amounts of death taking place? The oh-so-vile practices and punishments of our main antagonists? Anything and everything that has to do with the extremely prevalent theme of slavery? That all happens off screen, if it happens at all. Somewhere nice and clean and safe for it to exist, sanitized of any tension or emotional impact. I cannot decide if the flagrant pacing issues in the narrative are a product of the missing tension, or their own problem.

And those important relationships we're told about follow the same pattern. Even if we ignore how everyone speaks to each other like they're reading the script of an HR Workplace Togetherness video, their personal stories are devoid of the stakes we are assured they have. I wanted so desperately to care about the things these character's cared about, but I left still unconvinced the character's themselves even gave a shit.

And with a shallow plot comes a shallow character; I felt no attachment to any of them, despite telling myself they'd grow on me as I progressed. Of course, I also didn't dislike any of them, either; I just didn't care, and I find that infinitely more damming.

I think what I find most frustrating is that the potential in the characters is there, at least. They're each interesting concepts with interesting themes, and every so often I'd get a cutscene that actually got me to feel something, to react, and I'd get excited thinking 'oh, this must be when it gets good.' But no, as soon as you're out of the cutscene, it's situation normal again. No more feelings, no more tension. That all happened off screen, again. Any emotional turmoil the character in question was in moments before is now gone in favor of Group Togetherness.

Rook is no exception to any of this, either; exactly as tepid as the rest, but coated with an even less polished illusion of substance. This is not helped by the fact that the game makes an active effort to remind you that Solas is the actual main character of this story. Rook, you as the player, are just sort of... there.

The headcanons I've seen from fans do more justice to this entire cast than the game ever does.

In summary, it's sad, I think. It's ultimately what I expected, but it's sad. Many of us have a very deep attachment to Dragon Age, the story and the community that built up around it. I literally met my wife through the Dragon Age fandom. I learned to explore some deeply personal things about myself through how I related to the story and characters because of how much depth and nuance there was to examine. To see all that reduced to what amounts to a very prettily polished turd is just... yeah. Sad.

I'm really happy that there are people who have enjoyed the game. Genuinely. I hope they'll continue to do so. Myself, I'll probably still go on a screenshot binge and enjoy how pretty it looks, too. But Veilguard is very much the end of Dragon Age, for me. And I'm sad about it.

[sainteclectic]

whole tried to make out with someone when he was like 15 (knowing nothing about what that meant besides "there's tongues i think?") and ended up biting the other person's tongue so hard they had to go to the nurses office. to this day it still haunts him. making out is so so scary now

[sunshades]

wait i never posted these here... hi

[remyfire]

The thing is that when it finally clicks for BJ Hunnicutt that there are actually no rules and you can do anything you want, everyone needs to get out of his way for their own safety. He's about to turn into a hurricane. Man who goes on a month-long bender where he ends up in a kinky polyamorous nudist commune smoking weed and milking cows while stoned and painting ceramics and having as much gay sex as possible in countless configurations and doing a lot of "Hey guys, watch this" which all end with him having very interesting scars to tell stories about later. And then one day he is going to wake up a little more sober than usual, think for about three seconds, say "Well, glad I got that out of my system," and then walk to Maine.