#ITS THE SAME ACTOR????

[cthulhum]

does anyone realize how crazy it is to have the actor of a mostly headcanoned queer ship say the fans were never crazy and they were right all along after 10+ years of everyone just absolutely going nuts over the said queerbaited ship

[bayeis]

I haven't watched this show a day in my life

[mothcrayon]

[thetreyceratops]

Gozyuger's plot in a nutshell (probably)

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

perhaps my most #cancelable videogame take i can post on this website is i think that the kind of people who say that anyone who picks the "morally wrong" or "mean" options in video game dialogue should, as a player, feel bad about their own choices/morals in real life. is that those people are just another flavor of the kind of dudes who play Disco Elysium and get mad for not being rewarded for picking the facist options. both of these groups are reducing games to "a thing I want to agree with me and everyone else who doesn't either suffers or does not have the option to play a character who behaves otherwise" rather than "a medium where you get to (or even Have to) explore different kinds of characters in order to experience the full depth of the story and characters in it."

When I want to pick options in a game that are mean, negative, arrogant, or ignorant, it's because I want to explore what would push a character into becoming that kind of person. Sometimes I want to see how the NPC characters who I-The-Player like/agree with react to someone who is fundamentally different from them. I think it's GOOD actually when the narrative allows you to push limits and especially when it has the option to then punish you for it in some way, such as losing options/routes later on, or companions straight up abandoning you for your choices. It DOES often make me deeply, viscerally uncomfortable to make choices in a game that are so counter to my own, but it means I get to experience that discomfort in an isolated environment and also think about what it means, what would push the character or even yes a real person into actually feeling those things. And I get to play with what ways the narrative could challenge them/make them grow over the course of the game--or on the other side, it can let me make a character who does start off more open/accepting but let the events of the narrative push them into being more reactively closed-minded instead.

I like that we have invented a medium where you can play a game multiple times and experience it differently depending on the character you play as. Books and TV and movies are all static--the greatest draw of games to me is the ones that are responsive, that can tell a slightly different story every time--when other characters in the game respond differently to you because of it, or some paths open up and others don't. And so yes it did disappointment me when a franchise that previously had these elements, Dragon Age, did not include them in the most recent installment. I don't think games should have options where you get to just hit a button to say something racist with no consequences or exploration into why a character would do that. but like, if i can only ever play a game as an upstanding person who is morally right all the time in basically the same flavor for every dialogue. I only get to truly play that game Once, you know? And I only get to see the way the companions react to someone they like and trust. And never really go deeper than that.

So like... I just sit and think about the scenes you can get in Inquisition. with Cassandra breaking down, because she fears she placed a would-be tyrant at the head of a powerful organization--that she searched and searched and chose wrong. Of Varric who is desperate to convince you not to become a monster, like the last person he feels betrayed him. Vivienne intentionally pissing you off because she wants to see how far you'll go when angered, how much she has to worry about your reactions. They say so much about the companions, what they fear most, and where they will draw the line. And especially in Inquisition, at these crisis points--you don't have to double down. Your character can have a come-to-Andraste moment where they go "woah... is that really how people see me? is this what i want?" and I think that kind of option can do way more for encouraging actual players to examine the choices they make in stories, more than locking the player into supportive, non-aggressive options does.

now. do i think all games execute these flavors well? no. writers and devs will have their own biases and blind spots, even if they are otherwise well-intentioned. and I don't think the ends of the scale need to extend from "absolute angel" to "horrible bigot", because the real complexity of course lies in the middle. I am not asking for games to let me be bigoted at every turn, what I want is games that let me make the protagonist deeply flawed in one or more ways--fearfully closed-minded to things outside their upbringing, or afraid of change to the status quo, or who want to advance their own aims regardless of consequences to others. I actually agree that the game was correct not to include any options for disrespecting Taash and their personal journey for example, but I do wish... idk maybe that we could have had a scene where if for instance the player character avoided outside-world missions relating to clearing away blight, they could confront us on how this might devastate the natural world and its creatures like dragons, and push us into trying to resolve it. Or in the other direction, if you spend the (currently meaningless) time giving money to background NPCs begging in the cities, Neve could could have a special cutscene thanking you for your attention to people otherwise beneath notice. You know?

And of course not every game can do this, I can write those sentences up there that represent hundreds of hours of dev time, of course they can't do it all. But the prior games usually did have at least a little of this, and that was enough to make me really fall in love. I KNOW the tumultuous development cycle, restarts from scratch, interference from higher-ups all contributed to why Veilguard was unable to hit those same marks this time. And we probably won't ever know how much of the loss of options/reactivity was intention vs a side effect of these things. But I wish people wouldn't frame players who miss these aspects as insane/morally corrupt. When for most of us it's because we genuinely enjoy challenging and exploring these aspects of reality in fiction in a way entirely unlike what we actually support in real life. i fully acknowledge not everyone desires to play this way. and that's fine!!! i am glad people can enjoy doing a "good" run each time that brings them joy. but for me it really limits the potential bounds of my enjoyment i guess. I like media that is complicated and messy and makes me think, and extra so when I get to see how playing that way impacts the greater story around it.

[finelythreadedsky]

JSTOR Wrapped: top ten JSTOR articles of 2023

Coo, Lyndsay. “A Tale of Two Sisters: Studies in Sophocles’ Tereus.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 143, no. 2 (2013): 349–84.

Finglass, P. J. “A New Fragment of Sophocles’ ‘Tereus.’” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 200 (2016): 61–85.

Foxhall, Lin. “Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault’s History of Sexuality.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 167–82. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Garrison, Elise P. “Eurydice’s Final Exit to Suicide in the ‘Antigone.’” The Classical World 82, no. 6 (1989): 431–35.

Grethlein, Jonas. “Eine Anthropologie Des Essens: Der Essensstreit in Der ‘Ilias’ Und Die Erntemetapher in Il. 19, 221-224.” Hermes 133, no. 3 (2005): 257–79.

McClure, Laura. “Tokens of Identity: Gender and Recognition in Greek Tragedy.” Illinois Classical Studies 40, no. 2 (2015): 219–36.

Purves, Alex C.  “Wind and Time in Homeric Epic.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 140, no. 2 (2010): 323–50.

Richlin, Amy. “Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 202–20. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Rood, Naomi. “Four Silences in Sophocles’ ‘Trachiniae.’” Arethusa��43, no. 3 (2010): 345–64.

Zeitlin, Froma I. “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia.” Arethusa 11, no. 1/2 (1978): 149–84.

[deoidesign]

important distinction.

Testing a few different things with this one

[sha-brytols]

inquisition and veilguard are the only games ive ever played a guy all the way through. i think i'm picky about the voice acting.?

[laurmaus]

my friendly friends

[swallowtail-ageha]

Anyways today i replayed castle morne and i want to brainvomit a bit about it because i genuinely think its brilliant in both buildup and execution of themes, and especially as a way to denounce the supposed righteousness and the imperialism of the Golden Order so early in the game

(Putting a cut because holy moly its long. Also i apologize in advance for the run along sentences)

You first reach the weeping peninsula and the first npc you speak to is Irina. She is standing alone, without any weapon and blind, in the middle of a bunch of her family's garrison's corpses (and i think that the fact that the models used are the models of soldiers of godrick, whom thanks to Kenneth Height we know are particularly cruel to demihumans and the likes, is significant). As she herself says, she is being hunted down: her family's servants have rebelled and her father corageously stayed there to keep the postation and the home's ancestral sword, while she had been ambushed and her garrison died to save her.

And this is the perfect set up for people who are less genre savy and expect a more linear story, where the young girl and the kind father have been kicked out by the intrinsically evil, inhuman creatures that don't look human and don't seem to be very intelligent, and where the kind knight helps them to defeat the big bad leader of those creatures to take their castle back. Good ending!

Alas, it isn't like that. If you have already finished Kenneth's questline before, the whole setup feels weird. With the injustice that had been inflicted on the demihumans by the common soldiers, we already have the seed of doubt regarding the whole righteousness of the situation. As deformed and weird they might look like, demihumans, and therefore misbegottens too, are also people with thoughts and social structures and that maybe using them as mindless workforce is wrong.

Upon reaching the castle's walls, you are faced with a sword memorial, and if you read it you are smacked in the face with another revelation: the castle hasn't been built by irina's family and didn't actually belong to them, but instead has been taken by force by Godfrey's forces after he had slaughtered the previous clan that had it and even its last survivor who had made a desperate last stand in vengeance. Irina's whole narrative suddenly becomes even more shady.

Anyways, you finally enter Castle Morne, and the first sight you stumble upon is an horrific one: hundreds of corpses set in a pile on which several misbegottens are standing triumphantly. On the rampartarts household soldiers and other misbegotten are still fighting. Of course, again, if you take the whole narrative at face value, without reflecting on the sword memorial and Kenneth's questline, you might be still thinking that the whole situation was still black and white. However there are two, definitive moments that shatter that illusion, one more overt, the other less, but still as powerful

The first moment is finding Irina's father, Edgar, the castellan. One would think that, at least, you'd find him surrounded by corpses (i don't say in battle for obvious npc logistic reasons). And yet no. He is alone, sitting in a secluded place of the ramparts, with no signs of battle around.

Then he speaks: we learn respectively three things

-His main goal is to keep the castle (however he doesn't seem like he's done much fighting and only takes action once we go to kill the rebel leader ourselves. Fittingly enough, even fighting him as an invasor is extremely easy), but not because of any strategic importance or sentimental value. No. The reason why he's protecting it is to not permit that the heirloom of the caslte, the grafted blade greatsword, whom was forged by the Hero of Castle Morne as a tool of vengeance and has likely been kept around as a symbol of Godfrey's mightiness for having defeated him. The whole thing comes less as something about honor and more as something about simple vanity, or, better, about keeping intact the superiority of the Golden Order towards his opposers, something that cannot fall in the hands of such things as misbegotten (proof of that is also the ghost of the noble begging to not be eaten by them as he's nobility and doesnt want to get sullied by their lowlyness)

And

-That he is a Godrick loyalist and has been placed in the castle by him (therefore the idea that the family has been living there for long is rendered moot), and 3) that he is sickeningly racist towards misbegotten.

These two last points, now, have made your alarm bells ringing non stop. Maybe if this is the guy who is allied with a man who is known for his cruelty and maybe if he's so hostile against misbegotten, perhaps they had a good reason to rebel like that.

This brings us to the second moment:

After speaking with Edgar, you go in the back of the castle and reach the gaol section of the structure. As we can see, they are dirty, tight, and cramped. But most importantly, we find there a whip, which was specifically built as a way to torture and punish servants for their slightest disobedience. This is the final piece of the puzzle of *what* caused the misbegotten to rebel: not envy or any intrinsical evil, just the hellish condition that they were put in. One really can't blame them for organizing and revolting against their slavers.

You can see the leader of the revolt from afar, sitting in the grave of the hero's clan, having him too become the hero, for he in the name of vengeance for his species treatment started a rebellion.

But in the end, he'll have the same destiny as the Hero Of Morne.

You reach the Leonine Misbegotten and you kill him (perhaps even with the help of his slaveowner!) but the mood after the fight isn't triumphant. You stand alone, light rain is falling, the music is somber, in a massive graveyard dedicated to the one who lost his entire family to the golden order's imperialism, after killing his spiritual successor, perhaps even his descendant. You successfully put down a slave revolt for nothing, as the reason you did all of this, Irina, unbeknownst to you, has already been long dead by the time you take the castle back, killed by the same species whom her family exploited (The name of the site of grace of the graveyard, the Gravemoaning of Morne, really is fitting).

Her death prompts Edgar, the father, the lord of Castle Morne, the slave master, to start his own futile journey of revenge, becoming in the meanwhile too the Hero, bringing the story full circle

[neilien]

IT'S ME!🎵 YES IT'S ME!!🎶 I KNOW YOU WERE ALL WAITING FOR ME!!🎵🎶

[clumsypuppy]

mascot

[faunandfloraas]

Clicking on any video with lee know in it and seeing 400 million "Wow his visual is no joke. He is most visual member. Do you guys even know he is conventionally attractive? Because he is visually conventional attractive. It's time for his kdrama. He is kdrama visual. He should be acting in kdrama bc he is conventionally attractive." Girl be quiet

[br1ghtestlight]

personally for 95% of my humanizations i want them to look like real actual ppl and have their personality/character make sense for how they look like. what would their fashion sense be? would they realistically dye their hair or have piercings?? etc

like it tends to be more about vibes than just taking their object and making a humanization of that without taking their character into account. so almost all my humanizations have natural hair colors or look like boring regular everyday guys. cuz that's beautiful to me <3

[souporsaladnatural]

While I would love for misha collins to show up in the boys as a cameo, I know in my heart that eric kripke won't make the same mistake twice

[c-kiddo]

(about cr2 rewatch again) i litrally love tmn so much i will frow up. theyre so good. the cast are so good at embodying them. they dont sound like people trying to be characters sm of the time they sound like just (weirdo) real people it makes me crazy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!