#I'm genuinely upset about this

[bethagain]

I can't believe they fridged Izzy.

[f-ferrari-forever]

(Chain of Thorns spoilers)

So, for Chain of Thorns, I applied my "spoilers are a way to see if it's worth reading" method. My conclusion, sadly, is that it isn't. While my expectations were heavily related to Fairstairs, I came out of all this posts and experts reading feeling like my least favourite characters are now my favourites. And they got the worst ending ever.

Grace and Christopher were different than any relationship Cassie has ever written. The love triangle was old news. This ace-coded, deep and gentle relationship was new. And it never even got to fully happen. Don't even get me started on that cursed family tree. Is there evn an updated version? If there is, I couldn't find it.

Even more so, please, somebody write a fix-it-fic. I can't phantom that the character with the most tragic backstory of the series (it's not Matthew, I was wrong. It's always been Grace) didn't get a happy ending. Sure, I assume the idea is that Grace has Henry to rely on, Lucie, Jesse, even Gabriel and Cecily maybe. She is very likely to have a wonderful career, and I, again, assume the idea is she will become an Iron Sister, thrieve in the sisterhood and invent many cool things. A happy ending doesn't mean a relationship, of course. But you're literally telling me that having the girl who lost her parents and got horribly abused by her adoptive mother lose the one person who made her feel seen and accepted for who she really was isn't the biggest bullshit ever? They could have been best friends, that's it. Doesn't change the fact that he understood her on a level nobody else did. And she lost that. He lost that. Every other happy ending fades away compared to this tragedy.

[angered-box]

btw i accidentally fell asleep yesterday at fucking. 6 30 so I missed the play. this can't keep happening

[magnetic-rose]

not trying to be funny or start anything but if you think billy kaplan actually looks good in agatha all along i have to assume you're on crack-cocaine. look how they massacred my boy.

[bixels]

I'm not explaining why re-imagining characters as POC is not the same as white-washing, here of all places should fucking understand.

[konigsblog]

Just saw a 13 year old call themselves "worthless fuck meat" and claim that their body is only made for a man's pleasure. Jesus Christ.

I feel nauseous. I don't even know what to say anymore. And to see full grown adults (people in their FIFTIES) message this kid, are you fucking kidding me????

Do parents give two fucks about their kids safety?? I will never understand parents not downloading parental controls onto their kid's phone. If you don't, you're a lazy and irresponsible parent. These parents don't deserve to have kids. It's your job to take care of them and to protect them from predators, and you're doing absolutely fucking nothing about it.

[deoidesign]

I'm so mad that post was misinformation because there is actually an EXTREMELY important conversation to have about the production schedules artists are forced into. There's no need for exaggeration, the conditions are bad.

I work for webtoon. My publication schedule is weekly. While publishing I'm required 10-15 pages a week. Fully colored.

This means I'm finishing a 150 page fully colored graphic novel every 10-15 weeks.

When my comic is not updating, I am not getting paid. Any time writing, editing, or off is out of my own pocket. I don't get healthcare. They do not provide any assistants. They expect me to promote myself; they chose to deprioritize me before I even launched and gave me an end date half a year in. I never had a chance.

And this is the industry standard! Every company has artists forced into crunch hours, overtime, and burnout. Artists are literally dying early due to it. So many of my friends can't afford to go to the doctor.

It's unsustainable and untenable, and it's also the expectation our audiences have.

If we want to have this conversation, there's plenty of conversation to be had with the realities of the situation. It's bad as is.

[raavenb2619]

Examples include Star Trek (2009) where Uhura kisses Spock after Vulcan is turned into a black hole, and multiple occasions in Heartstopper Season 3 (which inspired this poll).

[hilacopter]

So I'm assuming a lot of us have seen the "Creators for Palestine" thing plastered on our YouTube homepage. I'd be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt if A. it wasn't giving to PCRF, which isn't a reputable charity and donations to it go into Hamas's pockets B. the literal first person on the list wasn't antisemitic tankie piece of shit Hasan Piker. I'm so heartbroken over so many of my favorite YouTubers on the list.

[ratuszarsenal]

very funny to me that every polish person who watched 1670 on here is writing posts begging non-polish people to watch it. including me.

[frogayyyy]

me after expressing any emotion: what if i cried

[not-your-bro]

the closest paul hollywood's ever felt to god

[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

[fireheartedpup]

I'm just gonna say it. Almost every time someone posts a pic, all excited because they got to meet their favorite actor, I feel more and more isolated from Baldur's Gate 3 community.

I've tried my best to share factual information about covid. I don't really understand how people are missing it, because it wasn't that hard for me to find. I just follow people who are sharing relevant information, and they're paying attention to the data.

They're still actively tracking what they can, in spite of the fact that major governments have simply stopped supporting research on a virus that is still just as disabling as it was from the start.

And 99% of this community can't even wear a mask.

It wouldn't be that hard to incorporate it. Just add a bandana that's an appropriate color and call it an accessory. It's not the best protection ever, but it's better than nothing.

Dave got covid and no one cares. Oh, people said they hope he'll get well soon, but with covid there's no guarantee that he'll ever get it out of his system at all. It's a latent virus, like mono.

We know that chicken pox eventually morphs into shingles. We have no idea what covid is going to do in the long term. It's surprised the experts from the very beginning, because they haven't encountered anything like it.

Dave was face to face with so many people at that con. He probably passed on the virus to pretty much everyone who met him that day.

Yet there's no talk about safety precautions. There's no talk about providing air purifiers foe meet and greet tables or masking up so that we can prevent this from happening again. He had to miss the awards ceremony, something that's only going to happen once, because he didn't take precautions. And he's damn fortunate if that's the only thing it knocks him out of.

Covid is a direct threat to their careers. It affects the lungs, and can make it hard to breathe. Permanently. This would make voice acting harder. It can give you a persistent cough. This also makes voice acting harder. It can make you so tired on a daily basis that you can't think or even sit up, which means that they won't be able to work at all.

And yet they don't care. There's absolutely no sign of any precautions whatsoever. And fans keep saying, look! I met them!

I share the posts because I'm happy for everyone, but I see people who are passing around a virus like a game of hot potato when i look at those photos.

It's extremely demoralizing. I can't even enjoy the things I love without getting reminded that most of the fandom doesn't care about the health or safety of other fans.

This isn't just fear mongering, this is epidemiology. This is how viruses work. This is how covid works. Ignoring it and pretending everything is fine doesn't make it go away.

[crimeronan]

pretty much everyone positions modern AU philip wittebane as a hyperconservative westboro baptist style cult leader for obvious reasons, which i think he 100% could be, like. that's not a stretch.

HOWEVER.

in my heart of hearts. if you REALLY want to preserve the Horror that is belos and How He Is in the canon....

....then. modern AU philip wittebane is a christian psychologist.

[youphoriaot7]

just saw a heart-wrenching edit on tiktok (sad music and all) about q!cellbit and the way he interacts with the eggs and i just...

i remember when i was still getting into the qsmp (which i did from cellbit's pov) and was scrolling the wiki on the daily, trying to figure out past lore and relationships and everything

and every single time i clicked on an egg's page i would end up seeing cellbit's face somewhere in the relationship box. and it always made me grin so wide because it was just...cute. and then i realized a lot of them had even mentioned things like him being one of their favorite tios or whatever and i'm just so. fucking. soft. about the idea of just-

this guy. comes to this island. in the middle of nowhere—doesn't really know how he ended up there, doesn't remember much about where he came from, nothing. and, like, it's natural to be a bit skittish or at least defensive, especially when there's already so many people here, because you don't know what they will do to you, how they'll react to anything: they are essentially unknown entities.

and if you really think about it, that completely includes the eggs. because although they're just kids, q!cellbit was canonically in a war at, like, age 15. he's definitely not one to underestimate someone because of their age—he is damn well aware of how scary people can be, regardless of what their age is.

but then they start interacting, and, like—tallulah gives him flowers, and ramon picks him for a partner in the boat race, and he's able to joke and play around with chayanne and bobby, and...in a way, it's like seeing himself, or rather, what he could have been.

because he never got that; he never got to do that. he can see the relationships they have with their parents—tallulah and chayanne with phil, ramon with fit, dapper with bbh, bobby with roier and jaiden—and he sort of comes to realize, like, "these kids don't know." they don't know what it's like to be at war. they don't know what it's like to end up in jail. they don't know what it's like to not be able to live because you're too focused on surviving. whether it's been that way in the past and they don't remember or not, they don't know.

and, inwardly, he decides he's going to make damn fucking sure it stays that way.

so he starts collecting flowers, to give some to tallulah the next time they meet, and the way she beams assures him he'll continue. and when ramon makes a mistake in the boat race and starts beating himself up about it, he empathizes and reassures him. (practically makes the poor kid cry.)

he sees the way chayanne takes the lead around the younger eggs and takes note, making sure to joke around and play with him whenever he can—because he may be the oldest, and the most responsible, but he deserves to have fun, too.

all of this includes richas, of course. in fact, it's even more exaggerated, to the extent that (in some ways similarly to fit) he mostly lets richas do what he wants, only growing concerned or stern if the kid's life is in danger. (because he saw what happened to bobby, and he's not going to let it happen on his watch.)

because there's enough pain in the world. chaos runs rampant on the island, from the federation to the codes, from the kidnappings to the tasks, from the bombs to the capybaras. there is death at every turn, and this island can be deceiving, because it doesn't seem like it. it seems perfectly fine.

but he knows.

he's been in this position before, where everyone and everything is trying to kill him. he's familiar with the concept of survival. and this island is survival.

but these are kids. they don't need that. hell, he had that as a kid, and look how he turned out. no, if he has anything to say about it, nothing will seem out of the ordinary. as much as he can help it. he will gives flowers to tallulah, he will make jokes with chayanne, he will explore with richas, he will spend time with ramon and dapper—all to offer even a semblance of normalcy.

so uh the fluff part of this train of thought is over so click off now if you don't want the hurt <3

but then things start to change. bobby dies, and the federation teases them about it, dangling the child above their heads. the codes ramp up their attacks. the kidnappings start to increase. people die and respawn more frequently. and the more he tries to get free, to get away from the island, the worse things get for the current inhabitants.

he meets pomme. this terrified egg that's been trapped behind a wall since before he even got there. and he realizes that he won't be able to shelter them forever.

things are going to happen, one way or another, to shatter the fragile illusion of reality the islanders are trying to create for these kids. in some way, the curtain is going to fall, and it is going to hurt. it's going to hurt as badly as it hurt him when he was thrown into battle. it's going to hurt as badly as it hurt him when he ended up in a top-security prison when he was barely an adult. it's going to hurt as badly as it hurt him when the wool was yanked away from his own eyes by that white bear not a week after his arrival on the island.

so whatever you do, don't think about what it must've felt like to find that book. don't think about what he must've been thinking as he flipped through those old, yellowed journal pages. don't think about him reading that lost egg's words, and just thinking, "god, this could've been me."

because it very well could've been.

the book literally talks about not wanting to survive, but wanting to live, and all he can think about for the rest of the day is how it was abandoned. same as him—only one was on a battlefield, and one was in this tiny-ass room. and there was no warrior in shining armor, no police officer taking pity to pull this egg out of there. he had someone. this egg had no one.

so of course he switches out the keychain on his backpack. because carrying that egg with him is like carrying a piece of himself, in just the same way that all the eggs feel like a piece of himself.

he can't protect the eggs forever. he knows that. but that doesn't mean he can't try.