#Would I fucking get a job if I just

[assigned-marcille-at-breakfast]

Lol nothing like waking up to an email from a job telling me I'm "not fit" for a job I applied to. A job that is literally an entry position in the specific field I studied and got a college degree in.

Like not even like it's in the realm of what I studied. It's literally Exactly What I Studied. My degree is in it. I got my degree to do this. My electives expand on this specific field. I've been continuing to work in and learn more about and integrate into this field after college as a hobby. Like. This is literally what I live and breath.

From a fuckin smaller studio too not like some big major company or massive thing that has their pick of hundreds of skilled people. Like at least fuckin say some HR bullshit like "we are moving in another direction" or something.

Not a fucking fit for the position.

God I really am never gonna get a job beyond some bullshit part time shit that doesn't respect me or my skills and won't pay me enough to live huh.

Fuck me I guess.

[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.

[bastardlybonkers]

feetman

[sheerakk]

[bacchuschucklefuck]

while teen while goblin while aroace while injured while doing your best

[deoidesign]

Ray of sunshine

(pre-launch page for their comic)

[dendroaspis-viridis]

I'm begging you, BioWare... Learn from the mistakes of Baldur's Gates past...

[tippenfunkaport]

That viral post that's going around about how people who write "book quality" mlm fic are too "normal" to publish and have real jobs so only "weird" people publish their "shitty" fanfic is so completely out of touch with reality and I am giving a massive side eye to everyone reblogging it.

Not only is it completely, easily verifiably untrue (you cannot enter any professional writing space without tripping over a dozen grizzled scifi writers who got their start by filing off the serial numbers and publishing their Star Trek fanfic even going back decades ago??? it's a whole thing?? plus how can you look at the mlm category on Amazon right now and say with a straight face that people aren't publishing shitty Spirk and Stucky fanfic??? Oh, honey...) it's also the perfect example of this kind of sneering elitism that true artists would never sully themselves by seeking profit, they do it only for the purity of the thing that always somehow leads back to, "no one should be paid to make art, actually."

The only reason you're seeing more published fanfic right now has nothing to do with the idealistic purity of your hypothetical government employee written smut of the past vs the debased scribbles of those awful straights of today and everything to do with the fact that a) self-publishing has created a voracious readership that wants a ton of content so it's become a viable, flexible income stream for many, especially disabled people b) anyone can publish now with self-publishing tools so there are less gatekeepers and c) lockdown got a lot of people into fandom and therefore writing who never tried it before.

And if you really think there's no "shitty" published mlm and no "book-quality" m/f writing out there that started as fanfic, then you are clearly not a reader so why are you even talking about this?

[eggy-the-boy]

*poking my blorbos with a stick* 

[casualavocados]

Chen Yi isn't here? Yi-gē said he'd be right back. He asked you to wait for a moment. I see. You can leave now. Okay. Hey. How… How have you all been doing?

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME Ep. 10 Bonus (many moments later):

[epicfirestormer]

What I love about Hellboy and Abe Sapien's dynamic in the comics is that, if you came into this blind, you'd expect Abe to be the voice of reason or the straight man to Hellboy's impulsive and hotheaded personality. But no, Abe is more often than not the crazy one. Hellboy would deal with fighting evil monsters and bad guys by just sighing and getting it over with, while Abe is going rabid over tearing the creature apart when he does get into a fight. Hellboy acts like it's a 9-to-5 job and will reasonably talk things out with a guy that had nearly killed him before, Abe acts like a madman in a slaughter house and his first instinct is to shoot first kill second and ask third. They're both insane, but on completely different levels.

[mohntilyet]

Personal headcanon about the "you picked the wrong dellamorte" line, I don't think illario actually likes rook outside the context of them being someone close to lucanis. Like rook on their own isn't much to him, but when they meet it's yet another person talking about his cousin (why isn't he good enough for whatever job they're hiring for?) and on top of that they somehow bring him back from the dead (another whole can of worms for illario). Now he starts turning on the charm, but whether he's actually interested or this is just one more thing his cousin has that he doesn't and it gets under his skin, who knows. Either way, rook ignores illario, the guy who lives off his charm, and is instead interested in the guy who's never even dated before and thinks giving someone a knife is how to flirt. Infuriating

NO THANK YOU !! i am genuinely sorry if i have ever implied illario is into rook like i see some takes about it and unless it like ties into your rook's personal backstory i don't seriously think he's romantically jealous. at all. my enjoyment of that line stems from illario's pathological need to make it about himself and not see his strengths but what lucanis has, and therefore what he doesn't. he's annoyed enough to try and goad you in the middle of a fight about the 'wrong' dellamorte and completely blind to the fact that the venatori are at best, a stupid fucking alliance, and at worst, a cult that will devour the crows from the inside out and illario would have been the one to give them the keys. he sees lucanis make allies, needs his own, and instead of charming the other talons/houses as he should, he (probably spitefully) picks the venatori. or maybe he just thought it would be easier. ugh he makes me want to telekenetically throw him around

[vaguely-concerned]

every so often, varric will write a black fox story. not anything fancy or for publication or anything, just for fun and because he knows hawke has a soft spot for them. ("an intrepid hero getting into and out of all kinds of trouble and the merry band of misfits following inseparably in his wake? can't imagine why".) some of them are experimental, some of them are straightforward retellings; they're generally pretty short and quick to do, so he allows himself to play around with form and genre and language more than he does in his professional work. stretching over the span of almost twenty years as they do, they contain some of his favourite pieces of his own writing, and some of the most '...was I huffing lyrium fumes or drunk or both for this one, hawke? what the actual hell is this' pieces. hawke keeps every single one of them. varric speculates that this is either because they're just that sentimental, or possibly that it's for future blackmailing purposes. he usually has one ready for their birthday. they have so much blackmail material on him anyway by this point, he figures, what's one more piece of ammunition going to do one way or the other.

varric finishes one of these black fox tales a couple of nights before he brings rook with him to minrathous ��� the last one. it's about the very last black fox story, the one where the black fox and his friends all disappear together into the depths of arlathan forest, where those in the know say you can find them to this very day, if you know where to look, or if you ever find yourself in trouble and in need of a helping hand. they'll turn up to aid a traveller in need, and disappear back between the shaded trees again once the day is saved, squabbling all the way, seeking treasures and unlikely quests yet unfound and unimagined.

they say on some days, you can hear them as laughter and friendly bickering on the wind from a couple of clearings over. it's not the end, it's just other adventures, some other place. that's the thing about stories. they're funny that way.

(once he wrote a book for his mother on her deathbed and read it to her through the comfortless and drawn-out hours of the troubled nights, and he burned the book the day she died and never spoke of it again.)

after he finishes the manuscript, he sits with it for a long time in the quiet and the candlelight before he wraps it up properly and sends it off back home to kirkwall. he attaches a note -- a story, to the best of all my stories, the one I'd tell forever if I could. take care of each other while I'm gone. first one to arrive saves seats at the bar, right? happy birthday, and send all my lack of love to the merchant's guild, as always. —Varric

he sends that to hawke. just in case. and then he gets up and he goes to find rook — it's time to get going.

[dunmeshiminimumwage]

back when i worked at [large chain coffee store], i tried to unionize my workplace. my manager sat me down and gave me a very guilt trip-y talk. lots of "but i thought we were a family :(" and "you don't *really* know what unionization does, do you?" i played dumb and managed to avoid being fired, but. chilchuck momence.

[dykedvonte]

I hate the stretch lines in the front of Curly's uniform because that means the devs rushed to make a model in like a month or so and thought "They gotta at least know he has huge knockers, gotta know he's got back pain." Cause like what is the thematic importance of his tits having overhang?

What responsibility is that representing? Breast reduction? It shows an inherent greed in his character due to the excess and heshouldletmeholdone and that he clearly is blinded cause if he tries to look down his damn ladder all he's seeing is his own cleavage.

[batboopp]

i like ghostmaker and batman as narrative foils not in the “ghostmaker is incapable of forming relationships with or feeling empathy for others, therefore batman is better” way but in the fact that ghostmaker IS better. literally. more stronger mentally, emotionally, physically. stronger in the way he carries himself and how he sees himself and how he treats others (depending on your definition of strong) and yet, he’s still so so miserable. he can lie to himself all he wants, or ignore everything but blatant fact, but it still doesn’t change the fact that even though he follows batman’s “I work alone” rule better than the actual batman ever could, he still loses to bruce in some way. bruce was willing to shoot someone for khoa, willing to follow and stay, and khoa straight up couldn’t handle it. therefore, he is worse in the one thing that makes batman, batman. that nothing will ever tie him down, no matter what. not Bruce or his city or his rouges.

except, that’s not entirely true anymore, is it? because this time, he does stay. he meets Bruce’s kids and indulges bruce in banter and playfighting and even fake ‘dates’. he stays, and leads, batman inc. and he does it considerably better than batman. of course, he still kills people. he can barely stand batmans kids and the feeling is entirely mutual. he still treats others as expendable next to his mission. but, he stays. he stays with bruce, with someone, in some way this time. he’s learning, he’s willing to learn.