#Must be fucking nice

[meonlyred]

Finally got around to look into DAV, all I say I don't want to step foot into the tag again. DA fandom, never change

Braving than any US marine. I will never go into the tags. I get enough that leaks into my dash as it is.

I have blocked more DA fans in the past month than I have tumblr bots. I knew this was coming. I was joking with my friends on discord that I couldn't wait to block most of the DA fans. That the 17 of us on that server are the DA fandom to me.

I am going to use this opportunity to rant a bit. Sorry. I have been very good at trying to keep it all contained to private conversations. I deserve to take people to task as a treat. (And threat.)

I am trying to be as light one spoilers as I can. This also ended up being a fucking shit load longer than I meant. I just have a lot of bitching to say.

I have criticism for the DAV but they really come down to very personal tastes. For example, I miss DAI's tinting station for armor. I miss the Golden Nug so I can just have all the armor looks I want right off the bat. (But that was added in later DAI patches. I can't recall if the tinting station was too. It been too long. There might be hope for that.) I was also upset at how long the bug that kept resetting my Rook's appearance took to get fixed. That really sucked.

Besides that, there is nothing that takes substantially away from my enjoyment of DAV. It was another Bioware game that did that to me.

I thought the pacing at the beginning of DAV was way too quick but then I remembered how Bioware games usually go. Ostagar, Haven, the Citadel, and the Nexus is what I liked to call my Bioware graveyards. Its where all of my new characters go to die. The plot comes to a screeching halt at these areas. Bioware has always does good with their openings; action, intrigue! Let's go! But once you get through the flash opening... now wander around for a few hours picking up fetch quests and talking to 30 people all with so much dialogue to dump on you. Some of it is not bad dialogue but some of it is wholly unnecessary or way too much in one go. Like Varric's 10 minutes of "remember what you did in the last game?" Its bad when I dread talking to Varric of all people or just skip through his dialogue.

I appreciate the quick pacing much more on subsequent play throughs. It keeps me moving until well after recruiting Lucanis. By then its even out into a steady pace that keeps me engaged.

As for the fandom, which I hesitate to even call them that, because I don't think they even like Bioware games, has some of the most bizarre criticism. Again, I excepted it going in, but the subjects of their ire has me so confused and disappointed.

I have seen people saying that Hans fucking Zimmer's soundtrack for the game is bad. Which?????? No???????? Its not?

This song playing while fighting dragons with Taash has me so pumped. I want it in my veins.

The romance theme (that also plays at other moments) is beautiful and heart aching. Which fits the tone of the scene when it plays. The saddest banging ever.

And those Inquisition leitmotifs really got me good. Never thought DAI nostalgia would hit me so hard but here we are.

I have also seen people mad about the ending credits song. And I can't say that I'm not EXTREMELY fucking suspicious as to why they don't like the ending credits song. Is it because its R&B performed by a black woman and not sad indie white woman????

(But thanks Bioware for introducing me to another amazing artist to add to my collection.)

Another thing that sticks out to me is the polarizing topic of Mary Kirby writing Lucanis with the intent for him to be pansexual/demisexual. Which she didn't need to say that for me to pick up on it when I was playing through his romance. One of my most beloved OCs is demi. (And I kind of think I might be too. But labeling my own sexuality is something I really don't bother with.) Detractors seem to bad for ????? I don't understand know why. Because demi doesn't mean his romance with Rook or Neve is a chaste, no sex/little sex, relationship. They clearly fucked in the romance scene. The best way I can explain demisexuality is sexual attraction might not happen until a strong emotional bond it formed. Which is exactly how it plays out for his romance. It also explains why he won't romance Rook if a certain game choice is made. I know demisexual falls under the ace umbrella but I know a lot of people who have been wanting a strictly no sexual ace romance. So when the dev said there wasn't an ace romances, I think they weren't lying.

However, I also despise are the people who were asking Mary Kirby if Lucanis was a virgin. And I am seeing "Virgin Lucanis" tags on Ao3. And let me preface this by saying I visceral hate anything concerning the virginity of characters or people. Because I have never not seen it used as a way the track someone's purity or as a way to disparage them. Making them out to be a naive clown. Virginity such an arbitrary thing, a made up concept that people hang a lot of hats on. It triggers an immediate flight or fight instinct in me.

In my experience and the experience of other queer people I know, your journey to understanding yourself is not always a clear defined path. You experiment, you do things that you realize afterwards don't fit with who you are. Sometimes you know from the beginning, and yay, good for you. I am sure you are very proud you got it in one.

But sometimes you aren't sure you're a lesbian until you have sex with a guy and realize nope, definitely lesbian. Sometimes you think you are cis and try to live that way and realize you hate it. And sometimes you are ace and had sex and realized it wasn't for you. These journeys are just as valid an any other and there are myriad of reasons you make decisions that you do. My point being Lucanis can be demi but also not a virgin. It doesn't fucking matter. Running to his writer on Bluesky to have her tell you point blank that he is a virgin is weird and inappropriate. Stop it.

The handing out of "good stars" pisses me off. It screams the same kind of homophobia I got when people found out I dated a bisexual guy and "ew, aren't you disgusted he sucked dick before? Aren't you afraid he'll cheat on you with a guy?" This being said to my face when in the back of my mind I was thinking "I like guys and girls too. But you will never know that about me because now I know I can't trust you."

So why does anyone care if an ace/demi character had sex before? Why do you really care? Hm?? All I hear with people asking if Lucanis is a virgin is "ew, he hasn't had SEX before, right?! I don't want to touch him if he has!!"

This is an extremely sore topic for me because I additionally I grew up being told that my worth was directly tied to me not having sex. Spoiled goods and all that.

Virginity is not a real thing, fuck off about it.

And then also that Lucanis and Neve can start a relationship if Rook doesn't romance either of them. I have see the most vile shit about Neve because of it. She isn't stealing your man. No, Lucanis does in fact care for Neve as much as he does Rook if they are in a relationship. There is no such things as soulmates, there is no such things as people being "meant" for each other. Rook and Lucanis' relationship is different than Neve and Lucanis' relationship because shock/horror they are different characters.

As much as I do ship some BG3 together, this is exactly why I am glad Larian didn't do this. Not because I don't like companion entering relationships together. I love when they do actually. I just knew people could not be fucking normal about it.

Speaking of Neve, I never unfollowed and blocked someone faster than "Bioware is wrong Neve only likes women." Queer characters in media are only barely starting to catch up with varying levels of blink and you'll miss them quality. Neve is already a queer woman, she already is queer representation in media. This fandom is just so fucking mask off biphobic.

As for romances being "too short" in general. I know I am ruined forever by BG3's romances. I knew I would be, I curved my expectation accordingly. It also helped that I went back and replayed DAI right before DAV's launch. Replaying, I remember just how short the romances were. DA2 more so. DAO, y'all don't remember DAO's unmodded romances.

Okay I am being unfair with the DAO dig. The talking part of the DAO romances were nice. Just those cutscenes, oof. ME1 came out just 2 years before DAO and it's romance scene wasn't this rough. More fade to black was the right call actually. Bioware you need to hire Larian's intimacy coordinators please.

But it is true we have had 10 to 15 years to make up in our heads how these romances played out. Years of art and fanfiction to make us make it more than it was.

I was privately streaming my DAI with some friends. We got to the part in DAI where Morrigan reveals herself to the Inquisitor. One of my friends who was watching is younger than us. He was too young to play DAI when it first came out and made fun of who jerky the animation of Morrigan descending the stairs was. Another friend and I explained about how rewatching it now, we were both caught off-guard by it too. Because in our heads we remember Morrigan floating gracefully down the stairs. When in reality that wasn't the case and it was all in our heads. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

Continuing, I have seen some people mad about a character from the books who is in the game. A character who is corrupted by the Blight. Who does bad things. People are mad they "did this character dirty." You mean the character corrupted by the evil Blight does things that are corrupted and evil?! Did they expect being horrifically Blighted would make them good????????? Man, DAO/DAA ruined Tamlen and the Mother too, huh?

And this is super fucking controversial, I think having only 3 imported choices was the right call. I would have like maybe a couple more choices carrying over but that is neither here nor there. The choices in Dragon Age Keep were so fucking bloated is was not funny.

Quick without looking her up: who was Ginnis and why was there a flag option in for whether or not she was alive? Who was Ghyslain and why did it matter if he was told his wife was dead or not? Why was blackmailing Ser Thrask a thing? Has getting Cammen and Gheyna together ever come up? What about Athras' wife? What about Zerlinda and her kid? I don't see anyone upset that Ignacio didn't show up in the DAV Crow story line. Why were any of these flags there in the first place? Did the writers think it was ever going to be brought up again if you feed the prisoner the guard's lunch? Even looking at Dragon Age Keep and the wiki I barely remember these characters. There was no reason to have these flags at all.

Speaking of killing your darlings. No we were not robbed when we saw the concept art. Its concept. Putting all of it in DAV would have been bad. Sometimes you have to leave things on the cutting room floor because including is not worth it in the end. And use as players will never know why it didn't work out. Use the concept art the same way as the devs did. Its there for inspiration. Now go draw it or write fanfiction about it.

People like to say that choices in DA used to matter, no they did not and never did. How was DAI actually different if Hawke chose to support the Mages over the Templars? You know, the crowning choice in DA2? Was the mages stronger in DAI? No, Fiona tells you that they are losing the war. The mages didn't have bigger numbers. You don't get any kind of stat or narrative boost. All choices in all the games are a net zero gain. Aside for some dialogue flare. The world state does not change crossing from game to game.

I do like that call back as much as anyone. I liked Hawke talking about their love interest in DAI. But if I wanted to truly experience that romance I have to go back to DA2 and play it again.

I have also seen people bitching about Taash's gender journey realizing they are non-binary. I am sorry I have a hard time caring about stranger's negative opinions about it, when I have loved non-binary friends talking about how they were deep touched and got emotional over Taash's story. Maybe Taash's story isn't your story but it is someone's.

We don't have the token trans character this time. We have three non-binary character. One a companion, one an ally healer, and one who turns out to be a bad guy. Which is in fact okay to have villain queer characters when you have many more queer good guys. We also have two trans characters who play more than passing roles.

Speaking of "trans" is "too modern" of a term. Trans is a Latin word. Tevinter speaks pseudo Latin. Next.

I just do not understand. If year after year you get so fucking upset about Bioware games, please just stop playing them. You don't have to buy them, you don't have to buy them at full price. Just go do literally anything else.

There are games I was going to play this year then saw something I didn't like about them and went, I'll pass. I didn't make hating that game my entirely personality.

Edit: Oh I forgot "DAV isn't dark fantasy like the others." No you are thinking about DAI. DAI was pretty much high fantasy with a couple kind of dark parts. DAV has too much body horror and bio horror to not be horror. Giant cysts and boils of blight organic matter that infects people and turns them into corrupted zombie like creatures. How much corrupted tentacles, human centipede trees, people getting ripped apart, eye teeth, and literal bloodbaths do you need until "dark fantasy"?

[backlikeineverleft]

to be heard and seen 🥹

[reallivegeekgirl]

With Sandman, we saw what happens when you kidnap and abuse a muse, and we saw what happens when Dream finds out about that and seeks vengeance.

I feel like Taylor Swift is what happens when you become bffs with a muse. Like just the absolute best case scenario for your treatment of a muse.

[vibrantiris]

It’s really really painful to entirely restructure the way you operate and every belief, thought and pattern you ever had.

—Loz, brutalrecovery via instagram stories

[flxwer]

i hate linkedin

[lesbianballofgender]

Happy 55th birthday to our feral, light and fluffy, serious actor and truly just the nicest person: Michael Sheen!!

[smol-jo]

Literally just testing the waters with this man and he tells me it's the best sex he's ever had in his life like. Damn. Some people really out here just not trying

[keferon]

OKAY OH MY GOD THIS FIC IS GREAT I HAVE ONLY READ THREE AND A HALF CHAPTERS AND IM ALREADY IN LOVE

I originally wanted to make both of these pieces in color but I’m gonna be honest I have no fucking idea how to draw Ricochet…he is described as black and red and…mmhhmmm does he have canonical (canonical for this fic I mean) design? Do I need to design him myself? Idk I’ll figure this out later

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[lucabyte]

Perceptive kid, I wonder just how much they pretend not to overhear.

[bass-alien]

my toxic trait is that I give a fuck

[a-literal-toaster-wtf]

bbc ghosts fandom can we plsplspls pls talk about isabelle higham more pls. she was under the impression that the love of her life didn’t love her back and didn’t have the guts to tell her to her face, and then he died defending another woman’s honour in her own backyard. and then coerced into an unfulfilling courtship based on materialism and prestige rather than actual love while she was vulnerable. like that is so horrible and fucked up i have so much love for isabelle where are the isabelle fans where are they pls!!!!!!

[marzipanandminutiae]

people really watch/read that scene in Emma where she talks to Mr. Knightley about how he can say whatever he wants because he's never been a dependent, and doesn't know what it's like to "have tempers to manage" and say "wow that's so sad that this adult woman has to walk on eggshells to keep the people who control her life- specifically, a man, her father -happy, and thus keep her place in the household"

and then turn around and insist that it's women's job to keep men from trying to violently take our human rights away, by just being ~sweet and kind~ to them at all times

[try-set-me-on-fire]

The thing about social media aus is that Eddie was out of the country with little to no internet access roughly from 2010 to 2015. Instagram and Pinterest launched in 2010. Google drive came out in 2012. Vine only existed 2013-2016. He was absent from the internet at a time when it was changing drastically and rapidly. He wasn’t there when social media was becoming what it is today. That’s fascinating to me! What does that do to his internet presence?

[grif-hawaiian-rolls]

"Hey baby, bet I could help you with your daddy issues!"

~

"Pft- five," Simmons snorted, leaning on Tucker's shoulders. "Out of ten." "Aw c'mon, really?" He groaned. "Why'd that one get such a low score?" "It just- it sounded more creepy than flirty?" "I think that's just the Donut-effect kicking in, man," "Yeah, well, try again then because no one can undo the Donut effect," "Tell me about it. Okay, okay... hey baby-"

[senselessalchemist]

Bow problems (+ other nonsense)