#Now that’s what I call a win

[bluehexagone]

DA pixel art gifts!

[lucabyte]

A belief in Nominative Determinsim

[cozylittleartblog]

when valve has enough money to buy god, but they let bots ruin their game for 5 years and dox people 🤖🔫 #FIXTF2

everyone who signs this 100k+ petition will have their name printed and sent to valve HQ. this shit is unacceptable.

[synthshenanigans]

a friends mom said funky jash looked like hes from the 70s & i got bored sooo

theyre rlly cool u should follow them btw...

she make s such amazing art. u should go eat said art :D

[hunter-burton]

Here’s Ship Art I did

I am A gabv1al fan I can deny it no longer

AND DAMNIT I REACHED 30 TAGS.

[feelingthedisaster]

okay, being 100% honest, dont pull a josten and lie to me

if exy and all the aftg stuff was real, would you actually like exy? if someone mentioned kevin day/neil josten/etc, would you recognize their names?

and if the answer is yes, would you be a hater, a stan, indiffent?

remember, you cant lie

[trappedinafantasy37]

All forms of media (video games, TV shows, art, movies, books, etc) are all meant to be social and/or political commentaries. In fact, I can't think of an example of a recent creation that isn't political in some way. And Baldur's Gate 3 is not an exception. It is political. And if you think it is not, it is because you are not paying attention, or you are failing to extrapolate the lessons of the game into real life. One of the points of fiction and entertainment is to provide us with a safe way to view and interact with the evils of the world. To show us how evil happens to begin with, and how it is allowed at all. If we can see what evil looks like, and how it comes to pass, then we will be able to recognize it in real life and potentially stop it.

No, I'm not saying that Larian made this game to be a commentary of the US specifically. The things that happen in the game are happening somewhere in the world. Right. Now. It is fantasy for some, but reality to many others.

There is a reason why so many people, most especially women, flock to a character like Astarion. And no, it's not just because he's a pretty bad boy vampire. But because millions of women (and men) in the world understand what it's like to be sexually assaulted. To be enslaved. To be someone's property and a toy. To be used and abused and denied your autonomy. To scream and cry and yell and shout and beg for mercy from the gods. But no one is listening. No one cares. And they say that it is all your fault. Women cling to him because they find comfort in his story and they see a reflection of themselves in him. And they have extrapolated his character into their personal lives to help them heal from their traumas. Astarion is not real. But he represents the millions of people in the world who have been raped.

There are many different ways you can interpret Shadowheart's story, but I always found it to be an allegory for queerness / transness. She knows who she is deep down, but she has been beaten and indoctrinated over and over to believe that who she is wrong. Everytime she exerted a will of her own, she was forced into conversion therapy and had her mind wiped so she can be reprogrammed. And when that began to fail, her god inserted a permanent tether into her soul. To remind her that god is always watching, and will punish her for her sins. Shadowheart rejects Shar because she feels that she is in a safe environment to do so. That those who are around her will not judge her, ridicule her, or treat her like she ha a moral failure for just being who she is. But that rejection comes at a price where she has to choose her parents or chronic pain for the rest of her life. But if Shadowheart does not feel safe to live as herself, she goes into the closet forever and denies herself and has to put up an act for as long as she may live. She forces herself to subscribe to this dogma because she feels she has no other choice, and to be a blind follower means to be without pain. Shadowheart is not real. But she represents the millions of gay and trans people in the world who have been outcasted and abused by religion and the law. Where they feel it safer to deny who they are, then run the risk of the wrong person finding out who they love.

The grove conflict, is a very real reality right now. Innocent people are experiencing a genocide. And the people conducting such genocide have framed these innocent people as evil monsters. These actual literal genocidal lunatics truly to their core believe that they have the god given right to kill these innocent people because they are an affront to their god and that the land they occupy does not belong to them. There are children in the world right now who are burning alive in a genocide because the people who are burning them believe these children to have been born evil. Of course they claim that these refugees are hiding weapons of mass destruction, how else are they going to justify destroying safe places like schools, hospitals, and actual refugee camps? And the people who have the power to do something to protect these innocent refugees, would rather they be tossed out and left vulnerable to their murderers, because that is more convenient than helping them. That the people who can help are purposefully closing their borders, because they too see these refugees as lures for danger. The tieflings are not real. But they represent the millions of Palestinians and many others who are dying in a genocide right now.

And this man is not real, but he is the president elect of the United States. Gortash won. The Absolute won.

And I wish we had a simple and easy explanation of 72 million Americans have tadpoles in their brains and were forced to vote for Gortash. But in reality, not everyone in the Absolute had a tadpole. Not everyone was a True Soul. A mass majority were willing participants of the Absolute. They never once communed with the elder brain and have never received direct orders from it. They saw what the Absolute is, they saw what it can do, and it was not a deal breaker for them. They chose to follow along with it willingly, thinking that the Absolute was here for them. They were not mind controlled, but they were brainwashed in their own way. And for those who are not brainwashed, they simply do not care. They want to revel in the Absolute's cruelty and how it is going to hurt the people of the world because they themselves want to deal the cruelty.

Gortash is a slaver and a tyrant and he is very up front and in your face about it. He feels no guilt, he feels no shame, and he is well aware of how he induces suffering on those around him. And the moment he became Archduke, he slaughtered everyone who got him into power because he didn't want to share it nor run the risk of them turning against him. You may be able to make a deal with Gortash but he was never going to keep up his end of the bargain. Just like an embraced Durge betrays their romance partner, Gortash would have betrayed you (and even Durge). Because tyrants do not share, and they do not step down. Tyrants are not just tyrants only on day one or for just one term. They are tyrannical always and will do everything they can to stay in power permanently. Tyrants do not play fair. They get into power through perceivingly legitimate means. But when you find out it wasn't legitimate, it's too late. They've removed your ability to not only remove them from power, but prevent you from getting anyone else to replace them.

Gortash didn't just come from nowhere. He has been a duke in the city for a very long time. People know who he is and what he is about. The people at his coronation were there out of genuine support for him, knowing exactly who he is and saw no issue with what he was doing because they all benefited from it. The only one at that coronation who was not a willing participate, was Ulder Ravengard (A BLACK MAN). Gortash used a literal puppet government to get himself into power and silenced all dissent.

I do not know about you, but who Gortash represents was pretty damn obvious to me. The game demonstrated how people like Gortash can get into power at all and remain in power. Gortash manipulated people's fear of the world, and he used religion to do it. He implemented the Steel Watch and militarized the police, and to have constant surveillance on the people. Where any slight transgression will be met with hostility, and the people will cheer because they see violence as a necessary means of keeping the peace. Where if you just didn't step out of line, then maybe the Steel Watcher wouldn't need to pulverize you in the street. He uses the media and is constantly pumping out propaganda to love him. He created a problem, news of the problem spread, and then he sold a solution. He promised to keep everyone safe, protected, and made promises of law and order against this unruly chaos (a chaos he created). Where any opposing opinion is othered and regarded as being too radical to be a sane or legitimate opinion. He enslaved a group of racial minorities and used the livelihoods of their children as collateral. And instead of putting the blame on the slaver, radicals like Wulbren put the blame on the slaves.

The events surrounding Gortash and the Absolute have been unfolding here in the States for a very long time and all of this did not just come out of nowhere. This didn't just start happening 8 years ago in 2016, this was decades in the making and there is still plans for more to come. This wasn't an accident, everything is working by design.

Gortash is not real. But Donald Trump is. That should scare you.

[shower-phantom-ideas]

Another DPXDC post for the first time

Yall remember winged danny? Yea me too the good ol days lads

But imagine Danny in Gothem cause hes either on the run from his family or the GIW you decide boys on the run and probably alone.

He gets picked up by the Waynes at some point and eventually he goes to have the “im not normal talk” but they all know. He is a meta or something. They have been waiting for him to be ready to tell them, if ever. They would accept him no matter what.

Except the time comes and he just “I have wings” and like everyone is shocked™️ Danny gets the idea hes about to be rejected and starts to fold in on himself and someone better snap out of it before the kid cries. Alfred is the one to speak first probably.

Just everyone so shocked but I mean it’s more a shock that they missed this instead of that Danny has wings. After that they fully accept him and apologise. Someone says the “we thought you were about to tell us about your powers!” Danny just has his own little moment before shouting “YOU GUYS KNOW I HAVE GHOST POWERS!?!?!!!?”

Anyway they move on and Danny hardly brings the wings up again but he does get seen around with them every once in a while. But eventually they find out hes not taking care of them as he should. It’s probably Duke who sees Danny with his messy wings and offers to help him.

Let Danny get help with self care ok. The Bats would all go nuts learning how to take care of Danny if he ever asks.

Now imagine the reverse of this and they all know he has wings but not that hes the High Ghost King Phantom.

[guaxinimraccoon]

I’m not sure if anyone’s asked you this yet, but if they didn’t, what would happen if Alex were to spot Toby? Would he recognize his son cause of the blue hair or red hat, or would Alex not know who he was? Would he pretend to not know anything, or would he come clean to Brad and Toby? There are so many possibilities and they are rotating in my mind, so please help my brain calm down

After I'm a free human once again I'm actually planning on making a few comics to play around with the idea of: if Alex and Elisa were to find that their sons know each other, how that'd happen?

I have some ideas and I'll 100% work on them to explore this so awaited and requested meeting

But to give you a lil spoiler: Alex would instantly recognize Toby because of his hair c:

That's all I'm saying for now hihihi

[billdenbrough]

cannot possibly express enough how strange this one is. ok. @naturecalls111 prompted me (technically for microfic monday, but it was quickly determined to be untenable) kevaaron + frogs. there was an additional, informal element to the prompt she wanted that rocketed it from 488w (already egregious) to 1.6k (don't look at me), but i'm already wrestling with my psyche enough abt this one lmao. we'll leave that part to be a surprise so i don't have to think about it anymore HAHA. i guess. anyway. kevaaron + frogs, for mina.

“This is your fault,” Aaron says.

Kevin is affronted. “How could this be my fault!”

“Nobody cares enough about what I do to curse me,” Aaron points out, huffy. As huffy as a frog can be, anyway. “But you? Absolutely. You’re also really annoying.”

Kevin sulks.

“How sure are you?” Neil asks, following Nicky into the room. “I mean. Frogs?”

Nicky gives him an incredulous look, then snatches Kevin off the desk. Kevin makes the world’s most indignant croak, which everyone rudely ignores, except Aaron, who rolls his eyes.

“He has a queen mark,” Nicky exclaims, brandishing Kevin at Neil. “What kind of frog has a tattoo?”

Neil stares at it, then sighs. “Okay. Sure. Why not. So it’s Kevin. How do you know it’s Aaron with him?”

“Kevin wouldn’t leave without him, so it had to be one of us,” Nicky explains. Kevin thinks this is an optimistic reading of his character. “Which already probably meant Aaron, but I’ve confirmed he’s the only one also missing. So.”

“How did this happen?” Neil muses, sitting down on Kevin’s bed. His bed is right there. Kevin strongly considers kicking him. Except he doesn’t have the right feet.

Almost immediately after he has that thought, his mouth opens—without his express permission—and his tongue goes flying, a projectile aimed right at Neil’s face.

Neil barely manages to dodge, throwing up his arms and falling backwards quickly enough that Kevin’s tongue narrowly misses his skin. (Thank God.) 

Nicky squawks, dropping Kevin, who thankfully lands on the desk. Aaron is watching Neil with interest. And Kevin—

Kevin is just pleased his aim and ability to forcibly correct Neil’s behaviour is still intact.

“Oh, gross,” Nicky complains. Neil looks relatively unruffled, though he shoots Kevin a slight glare before moving to his own bed. Thank you.

“Yep, that’s Kevin,” Neil mutters. “I wonder how Aaron got wrapped up in this.”

Nicky cocks his head.

“Assuming turning people into frogs is a real thing—which, okay, yeah—then I have to assume it doesn’t happen randomly,” Neil says. “And as annoying as Aaron can be—” Aaron rolls his eyes. Again. “—It’s gotta be Kevin, right? The reason?”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Nicky says immediately. Which is so rude.

“Maybe they were together?” Neil muses aloud.

“Or it’s like a fairytale,” Nicky says. At Neil’s confused—and slightly judgemental—look, he elaborates, “You know, like, The Frog Prince! Or The Frog Princess! Or—that movie coming out, the Princess and the Frog!”

“This is too many frogs,” Neil mutters, but looks attentive. “So what’s the common theme? Other than frogs.”

“You know, normal fairytale stuff,” Nicky says, waving his hands through the air. On the desk beside Kevin, Aaron has gone still. It’s weird that Kevin can tell—it’s not like Aaron was especially mobile in the moments prior, after all—but paying attention to Aaron isn’t that big of a surprise, these days. “True love’s kiss, all that.”

Neil goes still too.

Aaron is looking at Kevin, gaze watchful, eyes intent.

Kevin looks away. Unfortunately, this means he’s looking at Neil, who is observing him with a calculating expression. At least Neil can’t expect a response, Kevin thinks. Small victories.

“Well,” Neil says. Kevin assumes he’s talking to Nicky—as strange as Neil is, conversing with a frog is probably out of even his realm of behaviour—but he’s still looking at Kevin. Ugh. “That might explain it.”

“Huh?” Nicky asks.

Kevin cannot look at Neil anymore.

Aaron is still looking at him.

“Neil frequently has bad ideas,” Kevin says, a pre-emptive defence.

“I don’t disagree,” Aaron says. It’s fucking weird. He’s a frog. Green and disproportionate legs—maybe he should try keep those when they get back to normal, Kevin thinks, suddenly daydreaming of a genuinely tall defence line; and then his thoughts shift a little to the left, Aaron’s knobbly knees but now they’re green and his calves are endless, pressing against Kevin, and wow, okay, Kevin is shelving that one before he gets too anatomically-confused, what the fuck—but still so Aaron. It still feels the same, him looking at Kevin, and now there’s something in Kevin’s throat to swallow past. He’s not even sure if he still has a throat, technically.

Neil and Nicky are still talking in the background, a buzzing noise that Kevin can’t focus on.

“Fairytales aren’t real,” Kevin says.

“We are frogs,” Aaron enunciates. Which is a reasonable counterpoint.

“This is ridiculous,” Kevin mutters.

“Kevin,” Aaron says. This is going to do something insane to Kevin’s dreams, he thinks, dismayed. Aaron croaking his name, and it being completely understandable. Life is so hard.

“Ugh,” Kevin says. His tongue goes flying past, apparently the frog equivalent of throwing one’s arms up in exasperation.

Aaron watches it go past, then looks at Kevin. If they were normal, he thinks Aaron’s eyebrow would be raised, or face tilted to the side, or something to that effect. People don’t think of either twin as especially expressive, but Kevin knows Aaron’s face, has mapped all its mountains and shifting planes. He misses it, suddenly, fiercely. More than the consistent pulse of exasperation and disbelief at their situation, the underlying desire to get back to normal. It’s an active, immediate thing: he wants to see Aaron’s face again, a deep-seated ache.

“Careful,” Aaron says. “If you keep throwing that tongue around, I won’t let you put it in my mouth.”

Kevin chokes. His tongue tangles itself on the way back into his mouth, his eyes bulge, and he makes a sputtering noise. Neil and Nicky don’t even pause their discussion.

If there’s a way for a frog to look calm in the wake of their friend (?)—also a frog—almost dying in response to an implication of flirtation, Aaron does.

“Aaron,” Kevin wheezes, once he’s got his tongue safely back inside his mouth and has reminded himself how to be a person.

“Kevin,” Aaron returns. He sounds so calm. So sure. And Kevin still knows him, down to his bones, but in this body, he can’t figure out his tells as easily. He can’t watch the movement of his knee, the furrow of his brows, the curling of his fingers into a fist. There’s no jaw to tighten, no hair to run his hands through, and while he still has eyes, they’re not ones that Kevin has memorised the way they soften.

“Is that a joke?” Kevin asks.

“We’re frogs,” Aaron reminds him. “We’re already the joke.” Before Kevin can decide how he feels about that, Aaron says, “Kissing you? Sure. Why not. Worth a shot.”

“Why not,” Kevin echoes. “Worth a shot.”

Aaron looks at him again. Kevin thinks maybe this is what it looks like for a frog’s eyes to soften, but who knows? Maybe he’s just looking for what he wants to see.

God, this whole thing is fucking ridiculous, but maybe the most unsettling part has been realising how much he misses seeing Aaron’s face. He’s gone longer without seeing it, obviously, it’s just—he’s never had to look at Aaron without it being Aaron. He can’t explain it better than that.

“Maybe I wouldn’t mind,” Aaron says suddenly, “if it were a fairytale.”

Kevin blinks. (Oh, that was weird.) He thinks that over.

“Oh,” he says, then smiles. He thinks he smiles. He’s not really sure what his mouth is doing. It’s unnervingly large in relation to the rest of his body.

“Oh,” Aaron echoes, but he hops closer. One hop. Two. His legs are very strong, Kevin notes, but then he stops thinking about it, because Aaron is really close.

Kevin cannot believe he’s maybe—probably—almost certainly—about to kiss Aaron for the first time. And they’re fucking frogs.

Kevin hops that last step, moving in closer.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi,” Aaron says, rolling his eyes again. Kevin has never seen a frog do that before, though jury’s out as to whether that’s because normal frogs can’t, or because Aaron Minyard brings a level of exasperation previously unknown amongst the species.

Kevin leans in, and kisses him. It’s the weirdest sensation he’s ever had—their bodies are approximately 30% mouth right now, which is a lot to deal with—but then Aaron’s mouth is open a little, and Kevin’s weird, powerful tongue darts in and tangles with Aaron’s.

This is fucking insane, Kevin thinks, and then there’s a sudden whoosh of air through the room, and suddenly the desk crashes and he and Aaron are sprawled across each other on the floor.

Human.

And naked.

“Oh my god,” Nicky says. “You’re back!” And then, tilting his head at Kevin, “And naked.”

“We’re leaving,” Neil announces, grabbing Nicky by the elbow and tugging him out of the room. His expression is dismayed. “I don’t want to see you today,” he says over his shoulder, which Kevin would like to apply to Aaron, but probably mostly means him.

Aaron is beneath Kevin, which luckily means his modesty is protected, given his usual hangups (Aaron and Neil often tell Kevin that it’s not that everyone else has hangups, but that Kevin is entirely too open with nudity; Kevin largely ignores this); unfortunately, it does mean Kevin landed on him, and now he’s groaning.

Kevin gets off him, then looks at him. At his face. God. He missed that face.

“Why are you staring at me?” Aaron grumbles.

“After everything that just happened, that’s your question?” Kevin asks, incredulous. Fucking fond, because of course it is.

“Everything else has a root cause of you being annoying,” Aaron says. “This—”

Kevin leans in, cupping Aaron’s jaw with one hand.

Aaron shuts up.

“Take a guess,” Kevin says. His voice is – soft. Too soft to hide behind.

There’s so much going on Aaron’s face, eyes quick, expressive, roving all over Kevin’s, taking him in, figuring him out. Then his expression clears.

“You’re so annoying,” Aaron says, and then he surges up and kisses Kevin.

It’s much better, Kevin thinks, getting to do this as them.

[aleisters]

i made a joke post about raphael being unconcerned, unbothered, moisturised, staying in his lane, etc when haarlep fucks someone else even though he can feel every second of it

except i am thinking about it so much actually 😳

because when you're given raphael's boudoir invite, you're told it's where he conducts business and pleasure. you're explictly told to share yourself with haarlep

if you give yourself over to haarlep entirely, they say that you're going to be a loving doll for them and their master, that you're going to pleasure all the beasts in the hells

why would he be concerned about haarlep fucking anyone in his house when it is always a good outcome for him. he's creaming his pants in some devil meeting(tm) on a different plane and maybe he gets a brand new toy

good lord the man may not get fucked by anyone except haarlep but he's into an endless list of gloriously fucked up shit

[frogayyyy]

so has anyone got any idea what the fuck we're supposed to do in this general election? particularly when you're in a constituency where a vote for anyone except labour is a vote for the tories and a vote for labour is also a vote for tories (ie. tory policies.)

"democracy" it's an actual joke

[defiledtomb]

4 other applicants have come in clutch for the apartment I'm hunting. If I'm still eligible I'll know tomorrow, but only to be called for a showing, if the others in the queue accept and have better conditions than me, I'll lose it. But my agent is still hopeful. Fingers crossed.

[chimchiri]

something went up on Patreon 🍑

[banditblvd]

More waffle duo doodles and some traditional doodles from before the JRWI brainrot started :-)

[ratatatastic]

Guess Who? Global Series Panthers edition.

my favourite dynamic for dumb games that don't particularly matter is sore loser who's trying not to be a sore loser and man who acts like winning means he gets the keys to the city rather than just a participation sticker