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preciouslittle-bhaalbabe · 7 months ago

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Thoughts about Ascended Astarion! (This is a long one, and I'm not trying to change anyones opinion, just highlighting the fact that the player is in complete control of the situation at all times. This game is about choices.) First off, I don't usually prefer to ascend him. But I love all versions of Astarion. His character is so well written and all of his arcs deserve praise and attention no matter what your personal opinion of them are. The devs did an incredible job. If any parts of his arc (ascended or spawn) make you uncomfortable, then romancing him isn't for you. If the dynamic between AA and your character makes you feel scared or upset, don't ascend him. That dynamic is supposed to be 100% consentual. He's a tough nut to crack and his story can be very triggering. I myself broke down a few times hearing him talk about what he went through. There are other companions with lovely character development that you can choose. When people go "ugh he's ruined I didn't want this" My dear, with all due respect. This is the dark fantasy romance option. Emphasis on the fantasy. You didn’t get his approval by being nice. It's not like he's the only option. You chose to romance the vampire. The game warns you of what exactly you're about to do multiple times. You willingly help him murder thousands of people for freedom. A vampire who was a literal slave for longer than he was even alive for just got a MASSIVE amount of power. Were you expecting he was gonna just be a good guy now? He has had NOTHING for so long. His entire life trajectory changed within moments. He’s still figuring himself out. You as the player are still completely in charge. He owes everything to you and he knows that. You can walk away at literally any point. He asks you to kneel and obey to establish trust and a dynamic. To confirm this is what you want. YOU CAN SAY NO. Then, he gets right down on the floor with you. He's either gentle or rough based on your choice. If you don't like the vibe just break up with him at that point like he literally lets you do. Or, even just reload the save. But just remember. "That's what you want, isn't it?". When Astarion ascends, Neil says it best. His mask is off and he's allowed to be at his most terrible with no fear. He doesn't have to perform or be aloof as a distraction from the pain anymore. He was never good aligned. But now, he has the power and ability to give himself and his favourite person the life he thinks they wanted. Otherwise why would you ascend him? His love language becomes acts of service and gifts. He ADORES tav to almost obsession. He's always doting on them and calling them his. The ritual only amplifies that. "but what about what he says if you convince him not to go through with it?"

He’s not lying. He knows tav saved him from himself. It is technically the “good” ending. But that’s not what matters here. The ascension is for characters who are not good aligned. It is for characters that are just as much of a power hungry monster as ascended Astarion is. They want to be a monarch that rules the world over. It’s a role playing thing. Is it wrong? That’s for you to decide for yourself. Not others.

"but what about karlach? He's a massive jackass to her when he ascends" ...Yes. He's not a good guy. Karlach is basically the goodest character in the game. It won't work. And if you do break up with him, he lashes out and says some extremely hurtful things. Because you just broke his heart. It's a perfectly normal response from someone being completely blindsided. He thought you wanted this. You said you wanted this. After everything you both did you get here, he feels betrayed. Not even to mention ascended Astarion does not make you just a regular spawn. You quite literally become his vampire spouse. He thanks you for putting your trust in him. Then eventually you become a true vampire with time. He wants to make sure tav doesn't go insane after being turned. If you wanna learn more about vampire spouses in DnD I highly reccomend doing some google searches. It's fascinating. Is ascending him the right thing to do? No, but it's not "wrong". The game doesn't work that way. Is keeping him a spawn the right thing to do? Maybe, if your character thinks it is. Either route has their sets of pros and cons. It's up to you which ones you think work for your playthrough.

I almost always convince him not to go through with the ritual. But ascended Astarion + durge is a power couple and the vibes are immaculate for evil runs. Just have fun with the game! The devs made all these character arcs for you to explore! Thanks for reading <3

#baldurs gate #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #astarion #bg3 astarion #astarion baldurs gate #ascended astarion #spawn astarion #vampire spawn #dark consort #dark romance #astarion analysis #ascended astarion analysis #let people enjoy things

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spitblaze · 22 days ago

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Mouthwashing spoilers below cut, played through it again today bc i accidentally nullified all of my achievements through the dev console. oops

Okay so the first time I played through it I was high and it was very late at night. Already a great start but it means I missed some shit my first time through and I'm already not exactly stellar at more abstract literary analysis. LUCKILY this site is full of people who are way better at that than I am (and im convincing my partners who are also way better at it than I am to play it soon too).

Luckily I'm better at lit analysis than whoever the weirdo on the Steam forum saying this game is bad because it 'doesn't punish Jimmy for his actions enough' as if this isnt a horror game primarily about his guilt-induced mental breakdown and if i have to see anyone else say that anya is a poorly written character im going to poorly write them out of existence because I'm inclined to believe that if you think that you either weren't fucking paying attention or have subscribed to the Joss Whedon school of feminist writing which is 'good writing of women is when they are girlboss'. like sorry shes too much of a depressed traumatized Fawn Response rape victim for your liking. jesus christ

Anyway the game being short DOES lend itself well to multiple playthroughs, which honestly is for the best because its really one of those stories that reveals a lot more on a second viewing. There's a Lot going on here but as far as I can tell, the biggest themes here are what it means to 'take responsibility' as well as autonomy and the loss thereof. The responsibility one is for sure the most obvious one, how many times in the game does it directly say 'take responsibility'? How many times does Curly say 'I'll fix this', how many times does Jimmy say he'll 'fix this'? And ultimately, how successful are either of them?

Curly's a good leader, sure, but how much does he just let slide for the sake of 'the big picture'? Daiske was a last minute addition. He's a good kid, but he didn't make a stink about it. Gotta think about the big picture. Anya has told him about what Jimmy did to her. Nothing. 'What would you do?' 'Anything.' But nothing. Absolutely nothing. I'm not gonna sit here and say that Curly is 100% every bit as evil as Jimmy, if someone is raped the blame falls squarely on the rapist- but it's completely on Curly for not taking action against Jimmy for the sake of the big picture. He really could've done anything. Fucking anything. It's not necessarily on Curly to foresee that Jimmy's stress response would be to end it and take everyone else with him. But it was on him to do something about a known violent assault and its perpetrator before anyone else got hurt. He's not a perpetrator, but he's an accessory. He may not have deserved the punishment he got. But he's nothing if not agonizingly aware of the consequences for not taking responsibility for the actions of his crew.

Jimmy, meanwhile, is obsessed with responsibility despite the fact that he's incapable of actually handling it, from the very start. It's not clear when exactly he assaulted Anya, but I assume it was after Curly broke the news to the crew. The moment even a shred of consequences emerge, the minute Anya tells him that she's pregnant, his first course of action is to deliberately sabotage the ship. Murder-suicide. He says he's sorry. That he made a mistake. As if there were not multiple, deliberate steps at which he could've stopped and realized what he was doing. After everything, he tells the crew it was Curly's fault so he could have more of that responsibility he desired so much. Not that anyone respects it except maybe Daisuke.

But he can't handle even the most basic of responsibilities there, either. A handful of menial tasks and he fucking snaps at the woman he hurt to begin with, even when she only ever acts the way she does around him to avoid further hurt. 'Take responsibility'. But he can't. Over and over he'll tell the vision of Curly he's made in his heads that he's sorry, that he'll fix things, that they'll all make it. And then he just keeps making things worse. And worse. And worse. Anya's going to hurt Curly, she's suspect and violent. Swanson won't let them into Utility. That's suspect, he's going to get out of here and leave everyone else behind. They both have to be stopped. Don't you trust me, Daisuke? Don't you trust your captain? That's why YOU have to go through the vent. He cannot fucking take responsibility, only goad others into doing things and handling things as underhandedly as possible. No wonder Curly laughs when he takes the gun. Anya spent all this time trying to keep it from him. And he got it anyway, because that'll all Jimmy knows how to do. Take and resent and hurt. His own twisted version of 'responsibility'.

It genuinely pisses me off how many people write off Anya as being 'badly written' or write her off altogether, especially considering the VERY OBVIOUS character she's based off of, being Wendy Torrance in The Shining (Yes I'm aware there's baggage around that particular character's strength of writing too, but I'm not about to go off on a rant about a movie ive only absorbed through cultural osmosis). Like...she's not a perfectly written character, no- her arc is less about her as a character and more about the things that have been done to her. Sexual assault used as a narrative device, nothing new there- it's at least less egregious in a horror story, where fear and trauma and terrible things happening to good people is kinda the whole thing. My big issue with Anya's writing is that we didn't get more of her- more exploration of how Jimmy's actions affected her, more exploration of how her and Curly are that much more alike after the crash- it's not a very long game to start, and given her character and the situation I don't necessarily disagree with her going out the way she did at the time she did. It just would've been nice if they'd utilized the nonlinear structure of the whole thing to explore her more, y'know?

Given Jimmy's PoV it makes sense that he's more fixated on the consequences of raping her than on the woman herself, but from the Doylist perspective, like...c'mon, give us SOMETHING more to work with. And like I said before, it pisses me off that people see a woman who doesn't immediately fall into the 'girlboss' role when shit hits the fan and then write it off, as if the premise of the story isn't about everyone's reaction to a hopeless situation spearheaded by a violent, manipulative, self-centered shithead. Swansea's the most capable person here outside of Jimmy and Anya, and I've yet to see anyone saying his character was weak because he spends most of his time drinking and raging instead of taking action. I'm mostly just upset that I don't have much more to say about her outside of her relationship to the rest of the crew. One could argue that most of what we are is defined by our relationships to others, and the nature of the game means that we don't really get a deep peek into anyone's psyche besides Curly and Jimmy.

I like how she invokes the metaphor of that dead pixel, the detail that sticks out like a sore thumb to her, always in the back of her mind, ever-present, that Curly can't see and never will because he's too busy looking at the big picture. I like how they establish the nature of Jimmy and Anya's relationship without being too direct, putting up that brave fawn act while he's there- she has to, the ship is only so big and they're so off course that rescue seems impossible- but she doesn't sleep in the same room as everyone else, she won't confide in Jimmy, and his mistreatment of her was what finally drove her over the edge. Jimmy's more concerned about what she might do to Curly that what she might do to herself, and he KNOWS that she's prone to mental breakdowns- often caused by himself, if not by Curly's state. The whole thing is tragic, but Anya's case is particularly saddening. Even after her death, she's paraded around like a puppet so that Jimmy can have his macabre little party. He doesn't care about her. He never did. And yet he's haunted by her, the 'sexual thoughts of cartoon horses' intermingling with his strange psychosexual hatred of the nurse just trying to do her job, haunted by the consequences of his actions because he's too much of a fucking coward to really, honestly and truly, take responsibility.

Swansea and Daisuke I have less to say about, ultimately. They feel a lot more straightforward in their narratives, at least from my perspective. Daisuke's a dumb kid with a shitty internship and he's so upbeat and positive that it genuinely pisses Swanson off, which means that he does ultimately care about the kid. A+ dynamic. Seems like a prick on an initial playthrough, but on the second run through I get it. He's old enough, he's seen enough, he knows exactly what Jimmy is and doesn't buy his responsible act for a second. He's not a captain. He's just some shithead who acts like he can handle it but flees in the most destructive way possible the second the consequences rear their head. He's a man that, even in the throes of substance abuse, does a better job of taking responsibility than Jimmy ever could, and arguably better than Curly ever did. Instead of just shrugging his shoulders at a last minute intern, he took him under his wing and started training him. When shit hits the fan, his instinct is to protect Daisuke- the one person who IS his responsibility. When he really, truly does not believe there is anything else that can be done, he puts him out of his misery. Maybe he was saving that cryo pod for him, too. It's hard to say, but the fact that he's the only one who stood up to Jimmy and saw him for what he was makes him that much more likable.

Daisuke...oh, Daisuke. He couldn't have known this was coming. He was doing his best, he just did what he could, he tried to be helpful and kind and be a good person. And for that, Jimmy used him and got him killed because he was too much of a goddamn coward to apologize to Anya, to see her as anything besides a nuisance at best. I get why Jimmy is so fixated on his death- as far as he's concerned, his first real failure, since Anya was such a non-issue that he didn't even have anything to say about her lifeless body. It wasn't just his inaction that got this kid killed, it was his actions. He had every opportunity to use even a single ounce of his brain and recognize that there are other people on the ship besides him and Anya, to recognize that these psych evals aren't just for the sake of the individual. And for that, Daisuke died. Way to go, hero.

The autonomy shit...god. Psychological trauma can be just as incapacitating as physical harm, can't it? Anya completely changing her demeanor after being assaulted, her body no longer just her own. I want to see the horror of that from her perspective, the invasion and the terror and revulsion of having something like that growing inside you. How sickening it must feel, how just the knowledge of its existence makes living that much worse. How the man who did it is still nothing but despotic. Curly, finally seeing Jimmy for who he truly is firsthand. It's all well and good to believe in someone, to trust them and want to help them overcome their struggles. But being choked and beaten and abused by them, day after day after day, because you had the audacity to sit a little higher on the totem pole than they did, because you had what they wanted, because they couldn't stand seeing someone better off then they were.

It's kind of mind-boggling, honestly. I've...kinda been there, with people who I know are still there, they're fully in there and aware and the same person they've always been, but their means to communicate with the outside world is cut off. I was fortunate enough to have been listening to a lot of disability activists around the time my aunt started losing her speech. It seemed a lot of times that the only people who really recognized that she was still there were me and my uncle. Even my mom, her older sister, inseparable for life, started treating her like she was suddenly a different person, not capable of really understanding her or wanting or doing things for herself.

So, like- not trying to be selfish or anything, just doing the autistic 'oh i can relate to this' bit, particularly about Jimmy projecting all of this shit onto the captain when he barely has the capacity to laugh or cry, let alone speak. His savior. His best friend. His bitter enemy. Beating him relentlessly while giving him his medicine for having the audacity to be an inconvenience. Let's eat some cake. I want to go home. Curly is just a man, and Jimmy regards him as helpless, antagonistic, and a god all at once. He'll thank me for this one day.

So uh. Many thoughts, head full. After the end of the bizarro sequence with Curly heading to the cockpit, the door is very small. A black pixel, the one stuck in the back of Anya's mind. A graveyard full of mausoleums, every one of them with the same epitaph as the bizarro one for Daigo in ch 14, and the one you can enter with his face on it. Not a single one for Anya. The Polle at the end having the same blue text as Anya, haunting the narrative just as much as Curly, just less overt. I'll fix this. I'll take responsibility. God. God jesus fuck damn hell christ son of a bitch. Fuck capitalism for putting their employees on such tight strings and skeleton crews that a collective pink slip can send people into this kind of spiral (or rather can give Jimmy a good reason to convince everyone else that all of them are completely fucked except for the captain and Daisukle) and fuck Jimmy. Fuck him. My one other complaint besides the feminist critique above is that theres some sequences that go on a bit longer than they really should (ch. 14 getting the mouthwash, most of the vent segments).

Fuck you, Jimmy.

I hope that gunshot hurt.

#spitblaze says things #mouthwashing #mouthwashing spoilers

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thebirthofvenusfly · 4 months ago

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i've had a handful of people ask me Things in regard to my fic and personal ISAT headcanons so here are some rapid fire thoughts and questions:

(heavy emphasis on headcanon. none of these are necessarily canon in the real game. but they are MY canon in MY fanfictions)

-i am not a fan of the narrative that the party breaks up (in general, but especially) a year-two years after the events of ISAT so i will not be writing with that as a goal or possibility in mind and that will never be my canon in any works i create

-during ISAT's duration, odile fills in for bonnie's schooling as a tutor between their missions and endeavors. i feel like there's no reason this necessarily has to change post-game ( + there's a Lot of information they can learn more from, from travelling and having new experiences with new people and cultures first-hand) so this is something i adamantly keep canon in my works

-nille is a character too!! she is not IN ISAT itself, but she is a person with her own thoughts and feelings and qualms and disagreeable traits and emotional baggage! she was forced to runaway with and raise a baby in her teens, for goodness' sake!!! so yes i will write her with just as much focus and depth as i'd write any of the characters who DID appear in ISAT, i think they all deserve the spotlight :,)

-"what is siffrin's language based off of?" i don't know. i had specific language emphasis in mind based off ones i've studied myself, but... i don't know. i've heard in the discord that The Island is based off of guadeloupe, then i've heard that there is not supposed to be any confirmed 1-1 parallel and the island is purposely left up to interpretation. i genuinely don't know. all i was able to surmise is the island's food has some caribbean roots and that is literally it. i have been trying to do research on guadeloupe still and write from that perspective but it is a culture im very unfamiliar with and trying to write with tact and respect. i'm trying to make work what i can and would appreciate your patience with that (and if you are from guadeloupe or a similar area that shares some similar roots and influences, any help would be appreciated)

-odile is an only child, mirabelle is an only child, isabeau is a middle kid, bonnie is the youngest, siffrin was an only child with a younger sibling on the way and they've always had a natural connection with kids in their neighborhood (and around dormont!) which had made looking out for bonnie natural for them

-we don't get much information about mwudu and poteria outside of some small implications and dev notes. ex. poteria is said to be based quite a bit off italy and is a hot spot for its theatre and theatrical productions; bonnie can read mwudu (leading me to think bonnie and nille may be of mwudu diaspora) and in SASASAP odile regards samosas as being foreign to her iirc isabeau comments on them being smth only really popular near the coast (which is close to The Island + Mwudu); samosas seem to have south asian and middle eastern origins in Our World, leading me to generally base mwudu off of india from some research ive done on them. that being said, ISAT creates unique and new religions for Vaugarde, The Island, Ka Bue, etc. so idk at all what poterian and mwudu religious beliefs or influences would look like (which may not really matter, as bonnie seems to have very comfortably preferred vaugardian customs anyways? still smth im curious about though). generally, i headcanon bonnie and nille as first generation vaugardian-mwudu with their parents having immigrated to vaugarde prior to nille's birth

#i am very prickly about emphasizing these are not necessarily canon #so please do not kill me for misinformation #please chatters #isat #in stars and time #isat spoilers #in stars and time spoilers #my headcanons

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berlingotesque · 8 months ago

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What do you think about the upcoming canon designs of the characters in the illustrated novel DCTL? Will you only draw according to the canon? Because a lot of people are already afraid that the designs will be bad. To be honest, I really like your designs, and I hope you will continue to draw them! 🥺💗

Oh boy. This ask aged like milk 😬

So. What did I THOUGHT about the upcoming canon designs of the characters in the illustrated novel DCTL ? That they were going to be bland and disappointing. That the graphic novel was going to visually portray the characters in such inaccurate ways that it was going to be very uncomfortable to watch.

What do I think now : that even though I didn’t expected much, I was still INCREDIBLY disappointed and upset. Once again, I’m waiting to see Sammy and Tom to express myself on these ‘representations’, but oh boy. It's off to a very, VERY bad start.

Will I only draw according to the canon ? : lmao NEVER. Firstly, because these designs aren't canon (as M*ke Mood announced a few days ago on Twitter) and because, out of respect and love for the characters, I'm not going to rely on the designs of artists who obviously haven't read the book carefully and had probably never heard of Batim before being hired to illustrate DCTL.

About the fact that a lot of people were afraid that the designs will be bad, turns out they were right to be worried ! Given what was done to Norman, I really fear the worst for Tom and Sammy. Not to mention the movie to come..

And finally, I'm delighted that you like my designs <3 of course, there's no way I'm going to stop drawing my comfort characters just because some stubborn, arrogant devs decided that the characters they'd created deserved neither respect nor depth. If a medium lacks representation, it's up to the artists to pick up the slack !

#I’m sorry for the small rant but I had to get it off my chest #let’s all cross fingers for Tom and Sammy #and thank you for your ask anon !#I’m glad you enjoy my designs <3 #batim #bendy and the ink machine #dreams come to life #dctl graphic novel #sammy lawrence #thomas connor #norman polk #ask response #berlingot’s asks

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jewishvitya · 2 years ago

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Rowling had nothing to do with Legacy and I think most people forget that. She wasn't even consulted. WB bought the license and the devs did whatever they wanted. "Sirona" is a beautiful, feminine Celtic name associated with healing, and "Ryan" is an extremely common Irish surname. I feel like people are looking for reasons to be offended, especially when it comes to trans characters and antisemitism. The goblins are not and have never been Jewish stereotypes. They're a fictional race. They're based on Tolkien's goblins and old English folklore dating back to the 1400's, where they have always been depicted and small, ugly, and greedy. Rowling herself was shocked by the antisemitism rumors and staunchly stated they weren't true. Just like the rumors saying lycanthopy is a metaphor for AIDS. Just... who thinks of this stuff?

What's really sad is people have argued that Sirona was never meant to be trans, but a male character that the devs rendered to look "more feminine" at the last minute. People have made fun of her voice and said it's "too masculine", so obviously WB just hired a man to voice her and changed her gender later. But that's not true! Her VA is actually a trans woman and the backlash against the character must be devastating to the VA.

Okay, so, I don't think you're here in good faith. You're here to be dismissive. But I'll reply anyway, just in case I'm wrong.

One thing at a time.

I'll start with the one point you made that I agree with: the VA. She doesn't deserve to have her voice scrutinized and criticized. That's horrible, no one deserves that. I did see - and share - the misinformation that Sirona Ryan was voiced by a man, and I regret that. I edited it out of my post as soon as I knew, but this is tumblr and unedited versions do go around. I hope more people will see that corrected, and leave the VA's voice alone.

Now for the mess you threw at me.

Hogwarts Legacy is related to Rowling by virtue of existing within the world she created. It's still her goblins, since she gave her permission to create this, and she let it be added to the canon.

Rowling's world is the context.

I don't care that she wasn't consulted about the details, that just means the other creators are bigots too. When you build within a world that has such large issues, where so much time and effort was devoted to highlighting and criticizing those issues, and you create a story that continues all the problems from the original canon and adds to them - that's a choice that I have a right to criticize. They had the benefit of being a google search away from knowing how to be respectful about all of this, and they did the opposite.

Sirona Ryan IS a beautiful real name, that's not the issue. I already wrote this post where I tried to explain the reaction, but I accept that maybe my feelings about this name come from cultural ignorance. If that's the case, I apologize, and I'd love to be corrected.

My real issue with the game is the antisemitism.

You say "folklore dating back to the 1400's" as if that's far too old to be influenced by antisemitism. Fun fact: antisemitism is older than goblins. Antisemitism is literally millennia old. At least as old as Christianity, which is the root of many antisemitic ideas. It's older than many European mythological creatures, and it infuses a lot of European folklore and mythology, down to the depictions of witches with their pointy hats. Stories about goblins being used as a way to dehumanize Jewish people is not new. And using a fictional race of non-humans as stand-ins for real groups of marginalized people - either intentionally or not - is a very common practice in storytelling. Most fantasy races have those roots to them. But even then, where, in the original lore of the goblins, did they control the banks?

It doesn't matter if Rowling was shocked by the claims of antisemitism and it doesn't matter if she denied them. The reality of her story is that she created an antisemitic depiction. I can believe that it wasn't her intention, but that doesn't mean it's not what she did.

You don't get to look at an antagonistic group that embodies EVERY SINGLE TRAIT THAT WAS ASSIGNED TO MY PEOPLE TO DEMONIZE US and tell me that's not antisemitic.

I already made this list, but let's do it again. All antisemitic traits that can be found in Rowling's goblins. I'll break it down to the original book canon, the movies, and the game.

Books - Rowling's actual canon:

Short, with clever swarthy faces, sallow skin and pointed beards

A guttural language

Ruthless and known for their greed

Pursue someone who owes them money with violent threats

Have cultural differences that make them impossible to trust

Harmed by dark wizard but still suspected to support them

Only worth associating with for their metalworking and control of the economy

She placed a goblin's rebellion in 1612 - the same year as the events that led to the Fettmilch uprising, which resulted in pogroms and Jewish deaths. Rowling stated that wars and political unrest parallel between the muggle world and the wizarding world as the two societies influence each other

The most prominent named goblin character, Griphook, betrays Harry. Harry is a Christ allegory - literally sacrifices himself to save everyone, and then comes back to life

Movies:

Hooked noses - the best known antisemitic feature

A six pointed star in the building they chose for the bank - I don't believe this was intentional, but it's an unfortunate choice and they could have covered it

Here end the parts I blame on Rowling directly. And the game was built on these foundations.

Game:

A historical time frame of pogroms, where our people were murdered in large massacres that often had support from authorities

Explicit ties between the goblins and the dark wizards

Aiming to undermine wizard society - the goal assigned to us in every antisemitic conspiracy theory

Kidnapping of children for their magic - literally just look up blood libel

A character says the goblins can't appreciate art. It’s absurd to say considering the quality and coveted status of goblin-made artifacts. In the real world, this is a claim that was made against Jews by the Nazis (and it targets other groups hated by white supremacists as well)

A ram’s horn artifact that strongly resembles a silver plated Shofar - a Jewish ritual item. Said horn is from 1612, from the same rebellion mentioned above. According to the item’s description, it was blown to rally the goblins and to annoy witches and wizards. It was stuffed with gorgonzola to mute it, a specifically non-kosher cheese (most kinds of cheese are kosher). It's so disrespectful I still don't have the words to fully convey it

Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, those traits became associated with Jewish people as a group through hateful propaganda. Putting all of them on a non-human race isn't better. It just adds to the dehumanization of it. It's not just Rowling's fault. That's shared by every single person who had a hand in the creation of this story. For the issues in the game, I blame the people named here more. I see no reason to extend grace to far-right bigots.

But to focus on Rowling. You brought up lycanthropy. You seem to think we made up the idea that it's a metaphor for HIV. We didn't. She said that. In the ebook Short Stories From Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship, and Dangerous Hobbies - she said that. She said it before that, on Pottermore.

Lupin's condition of lycanthropy (being a werewolf) was a metaphor for those illnesses that carry a stigma, like HIV and AIDS. [...] The wizarding community is as prone to hysteria and prejudice as the Muggle one, and the character of Lupin gave me a chance to examine those attitudes.

This is a quote of her thoughts. It still exists on Lupin's page on her Wizarding World website.

And it's actually a pretty good example of how it's absolutely possible to be awful about depicting a stigmatized minority through a fantasy stand-in.

HIV+ people are stigmatized through no fault of their own. But in her books, it seems reasonable for the wizards to fear werewolves. And she did that, she made prejudice reasonable. We have: Remus Lupin, a named werewolf who is good and kind, and tries to avoid hurting people. Even then, he nearly does cause harm more than once. He turns in front of our heroes and spends a night loose in the forest. He tells the heroes that as a student, he almost bit people while out with his friends. So even while well-intentioned, he's a danger. That means we don't have a single safe HIV+ allegory in her work. The other named werewolf is Fenrir Greyback, who intentionally targets children to turn them young and raise them to hate the society they came from - which is fucking homophobic, whatever she intended, because of the way HIV gets associated with homosexuality. And the rest? A whole community of werewolves who side with the Death Eaters.

Did she mean to make a whole community of marginalized people into wizard Nazis? I DON'T CARE. SHE DID THAT.

I don't care to argue about her intentions while writing the text. I can't read minds. I can read the text she wrote. I can see what was put into the game that was added into her world. I can read about the history of my people and their persecution. I can see how disturbingly similar this game's story is to the propaganda that led to my grandparents suffering through the holocaust and losing their families to it.

If she cared about the antisemitism in her works, she wouldn't just act horrified and say "No, of course I wasn't being hateful to Jews!" - she'd look at whatever she lets people put into her IP, to prevent further harm. I do blame the other writers of the game more than I blame her for that plot, but it's not better that she gave her approval without being consulted. It's her IP, it carries her name, she gets royalties, it's her responsibility.

And at the very least, she doesn't care about antisemitism enough to worry about minimizing harm. I know that, because I know her friends. I know TERFs and Gender Criticals. Rowling saw an anti-trans event with white supremacist speakers, and she chose to criticize the counter-protesters. She went out to eat with Maya Forstater and Helen Joyce, who participated and spoke in events organized by Posie Parker - who explicitly includes far right groups in her events, and shares platforms with white supremacists. Rowling bought merch from Posie Parker. She wrote about Magdalen Berns as a "brave young feminist" - as if she didn't push the antisemitic George Soros conspiracy theory and share Breitbart articles. She praised MATT WALSH. The people she associates with now, read from Mein Kampf in their rallies.

She didn't put the antisemitism in the game, but she's very comfortable with antisemitism. Don't tell me she was horrified by the idea that her goblins could be called antisemitic. She just didn't want the label applied to her. If you willingly associate with Nazis, you're a Nazi. And enough of her friends don't seem to mind that.

I stand by what I said: playing this game, even pirated, is like printing out an antisemitic caricature and hanging it on your wall, saying “well, I didn’t pay the artist, I just like this art.”

#riki babbles #hogwarts legacy #antisemitism #homophobia #JKR doesn't care about Jews #She just likes invoking the holocaust #HP #JKR

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funnyscienceman · 2 months ago

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Ok but like WHYY did ubisoft have to insist with the one game a year thing. Why couldnt they let syndicate cook in the oven more. Why do they have THREE queer men in the same game and not do ANYTHING with them!!!

Like yes, yes, i get it, i get wanting to for once make a story in a fun setting where you dont have to think about real life prejudice and hardships and bigotry and just have characters be silly, i love that too. I do! And id be all for that if doing it just didnt waste a potentially banger study of the characters and the setting ;-;

Like god i go back and forth on this constantly. I already love syndicate as it is, i think it's fun and neat and the happy gaming vibes about it is core to its identity, it's just that simultaneous to that, three queer men in the same game!!!

like GOD im still miffed that there are only, like, two or three fics about this, and so far i havent found any discussion or anything of it, but oh my god how different all three of them are from each other. You could do so much just with having any of them in the same room — and they are often enough in the same room (jacob and either ned or roth at a time), but nothing's really done there!

we have roth who sees fcking nothing wrong with getting kids hurt, because he doesnt actually care about anyone or anything, he's just some fucking joker wannabe that yeah, sure, probably has some anger and resentment at society because he's a gay man in his 40s or 50s by now, but jesus fucking christ retaliation against homophobia does not equal rampant needless unproductive violence roth!!!

then we have ned, who — i mean he doesnt ever give his opinion on whether kids deserve any respect or anything but considering in every other department he's pretty much just Some Guy, it'd be fair to assume he also has the extremely average stance of 'dont fcking kill kids and dont blow up buildings for no good reason??' in the grand scheme of the templar-assassin stuff he has just about as much relevance as roth: roth was just the boss of the blighters, ned just finances the fryes by virtue of them working for him. He probably doesnt even know about it, and tbh i dont even know if he'd care??? But like i imagine roth doesnt care in the way of 'as long as you dont get in my way, it's all set dressing,' ned i imagine would be smth like 'are yall fckin serious? are you kidding me rn? i have to skirt around transphobes on a daily basis, now youre telling me there's a secret society on top of that with even worse ideas?? What the fuck???'

like uh, not caring about it as in 'I cant deal with this rn i need a nap'

HE'S JUST AN EXTREMELY REGULAR PERSON (besides the crime lord stuff) IS WHAT IM GETTING AT.

then there's jacob, who's the youngest out of these guys btw, fckin 21 good god he should be at the club not trying to disassemble systemic oppression— ANYWAY

(ned is 27-28 over the course of the game, btw; we dont actually have a solid timeline for anything, just the year, so tbh jacob could've also been 20 and not 21 yet during the game. both he and ned have late birthdays, just a month apart)

so, yknow, being extremely early 20-somethings, both frye twins just take a train to london completely on impulse and dive headfirst into undoing the templars that've had an iron grip over the city for basically as long as they've been alive, yknow, as you do; and throughout the game jacob has to deal with goddamn daddy issues and fighting with his sister and insecurity and trying to be an assassin — and that's a lot for a guy to handle!! Especially one who's still just a couple years out of being a teenager! That's a fucking lot and if the devs are right, then he hasnt even realized that he's bi yet! Not until roth fucking kisses him while jacob's got a knife in his throat for the aforementioned indiscriminate, unproductive violence!

i mean, granted, yeah there were gay undertones during sequence 8, but i have to admit my bias here because i honest to god cannot take those missions seriously. Roth fucking preaches this and that about freedom and whatnot and then im plopped into the mission and it's the most rule-heavy shit ive ever seen in my short life as an assassin's creed player. Like what the hell, those missions were atrocious. Apprently i need to detonate the bombs a specific way, i cant just shoot them from a distance, i have to hold a button crouching down right next to the bombs, and then run the hell away! I have to avoid THIS and THAT while kidnapping xyz! Like there's freddy's apprehend missions and then there's THIS.

at least with ned's missions all you have to do is get the shit and go… i'm still salty that ubisoft cut his questline because they fucking insist on releasing a game a year >:((

my battery's dying. All these guys are different flavors of queer on top of just being pretty different and pretty similar in various ways, and there's just… barely anything about it. Ned especially, since he's just a quest giver whose screentime totals to, like, 2-5 minutes. I just wish they really did more with the setting; not just the queerness and these three specifically, but like, evie, henry, the class conflict — like there are shreds of it, seeds, but there's not much before you kill starrick and credits roll :((

idk. im just gonna refresh ao3 again cjemddjekjx

#assassin's creed #assassin's creed: syndicate #jacob frye #ned wynert #train guy my beloved #maxwell roth #ramblings #venting #ig because this is all really disjointed and unplanned im just really desperate for more ned stuff

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thefandomenchantress · 2 months ago

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youre also a fellow ace superfan and acevid/acevi shipper right😭 how we holding up? cause im not doin too hot rn.

*Loud sobbing can be heard in the distance* /hj

I’m…Yeah, really sad that Ace might die. I wasn’t expecting this. While I’ll respect the dev’s decision if he does bite the dust…I really, really, REALLY hope he doesn’t.

I, of course, refuse to accept that he is the culprit just yet, though. I will continue to claim it’s Eden until 100% proven otherwise, haha. Though I was a Culprit!Eden truther before part 2 even began, so it’s not completely out of Ace bias.

Though, over time, I’m slowly accepting the fact that there is a chance Ace will die. And I was being a bit dramatic thinking I’d have to just up and leave the fandom if that did happen. I’d definitely stick around for a while longer, I bet, I just wouldn’t be super active for as long as I thought. But I’d at least stick around for the bonus episode, if there is one! Or an ask game, or the 0.0001% chance we eventually get an official Ace MV. Even if Ace dies, I’ll be here, obsessing over him. And I’ll keep watching DRDT even if he’s no longer there.

I keep going back and forth on “…it’s Ace isn’t it…” and “wait but Eden makes so much sense because—“ and I simply cannot pick a side. Well, I can, Culprit!Eden, but still.

As for acevid, they officially sorta kinda had an interaction in episode 14 so I guess that’s a win, haha. And acevi…Well, the new episodes definitely changed my perspective on it, that’s for sure.

So yeah, I'm also not doing so hot. But I’m sure that if Ace dies, the end of the trial will give him the great send-off he deserves.

Since I’m not sure where else to mention this, I’m thinking about making one of those DRDT one-shot fics where people request one-shots, except it’s just for Ace. As in, he has to be in the one-shot in order for me to accept haha. Because I’m afraid I simply don’t have the dedication to other characters like I do Ace. Time will tell if that fic will be a celebration of Ace not dying, or a way to help Ace fans cope with fluff. I think it’d be fun.

#danganronpa despair time #drdt #drdt spoilers #ace markey #answering inbox message thingys

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dalekofchaos · 5 months ago

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Okay, I watched the DE livestream and even with my justified complaints before, I am most definitely not playing this game.

it feels like they killed any chance of Chloe, Warren or anyone from Arcadia Bay of appearing.

There was a dialogue option of Din- I mean Safi asking about "the girl with the blue hair"

And a dialogue choice appears between "We were just friends" "We were high school sweethearts"

"WERE" Are you fucking kidding? They said they'd respect both endings, but How the fuck is it "were" when they said they will respect both endings.

Sacrificing an entire town, killing nearly all of your friends and your love's mother is not "high school sweetheart" WHO FUCKING WROTE THIS SHIT?

Now this could've just been someone who chose the "save the Bay ending" in the livestream, but Max would not leave Chloe if that were the case...

Looks to me like they wanna split Max and Chloe even in the timeline where Chloe is alive. There probably will be just short mention of her or at best short cameo but that's it.

Like if they are no longer together/friends what would be even the point of Bae ending.

The idea that she'd leave her behind after destroying an entire town to save her doesn't really validate the ending. It just seems like a cop-out for a story that originally went with the Bay ending as canon.

As for the Bay ending. I doubt Warren will get a mention. Maybe a "There was this boy I liked, but it didn't work out because I just couldn't get over the loss of my friend and my own trauma, I didn't want to burden him, so I left. He deserved better than me." or worse, they'll demonize him and paint him how the fandom perceives him. I doubt Kate will get a mention. Maybe Max and Kate do stay in touch but they don't show Kate anymore, because god fucking forbid we get people we actually wanna see.

A lot of what made the first game so likeable is completely lost here, the art style, the ability to rewind freely, Max and Chloe's relationship/friendship. This feels more like a fanfic with a bunch of mediocre OCs shoved in than an actual sequel.

The majority of people who wanted Max back are those who also wanted Chloe back. It's going to be very surprising if they attempt to make it seem like Max and Chloe just lost touch or were just casual crushes in school. That isn't how the original game is at all.

Between this and the devs saying Max wants to forget and leave her past behind I’m taking this as confirmation that Chloe, Warren or anyone else from AB isn’t appearing at all which is pretty upsetting.

Zero interest in the game if they go this route. They should have just made a new character instead of completely shitting on Max' original story while using her for name recognition only…

Just remember. Deck Nine was outed for protecting a bigoted groomer and did nothing as a fucking Nazi put white supremacist imagery in their games and they so happen to release a game with "Max" in it. A Max without Chloe, Warren or Kate. A Max who learned nothing and fucked over reality over someone she just met. They got caught with their pants down and they slapped Max's name and voice on a completely new character because they panicked.

Anyways, I choose to believe MY Post LIS 1 headcanons or my Save Rachel game pitch, because that's how DONTNOD wanted it to be, a story we could choose after the game was complete.

I don't know who DONTNOD thinks this is, because that's not Max Caulfield #notmymax

#Life Is Strange #Life Is Strange Double Exposure #Max Caulfield #Pricefield #Chloe Price #Grahamfield #Warren Graham #Kate Marsh #notmymax #Not My Max

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