#advertising aside

[nebula-gray]

battle network 5's microserver incident is so intriguing to me because like... on the surface, it's really silly. dr. regal's ultimate plan for a world of evil is to make every extremely pissed off, and it leads to some really funny dialogue.

and i've noticed that people have a hard time taking it seriously, which is fair because... look at it. it's not taking itself seriously. but if you stop and think about it, it's terrifying.

everyone is so caught up in their own emotions, society can no longer function. people want to destroy things, start fights with other people, stop working, and all around cause chaos. in a world where almost every problem is solved through netbattling, people are resorting to physical violence. imagine how quickly things would fall apart if everyone was like this, how soon people would die if no one could cooperate.

and the thing is, battle network couldn't possibly show the real consequences of a scenario like this. it would quickly become too dark for a game aimed at children, and wouldn't mesh with the tone of the series. i understand why they went the silly route, and i'm glad they did so.

unfortunately, i think it leads to people taking the plot and the villain less seriously. dr. regal is already hated by a lot of people, and i truly believe this is due to bad writing rather than a flaw in his own plan. like, if soulnet had worked and people were like this forever, it would be disastrous. way scarier than a typical take-over-the-world plot, because you're directly manipulating people's emotions to make them suffer. and the only reason lan and megaman can fight back is because they have literal plot armor. if not for that, there would be no fighting back, no fixing this. it's scarily effective, and it makes me sad that no one seems to give regal credit for this.

i just... i love battle network 5, and the microserver incident is so interesting to think about. i hope i can get people to look at it in a different light the next time they play.

[aroaceleovaldez]

just read the plot summary for Wrath of the Triple Goddess and. wow this is. painful this just sounds painful to read.

Why is Grover the incompetent inciting incident character? That is not his narrative role ever, really. That's like, the fanon conceptualization of his character where he's reduced down to comedic relief and nothing more. He's mostly exposition and support. Why not have the inciting incident be something about Annabeth's hubris - something that has gotten the gang into situations tons of times before in a way that doesn't put down any of the characters? Heck you could have even tied it into some Sea of Monsters stuff, like Circe having told Annabeth that she'd make a good sorceress. That'd be perfect for how this book literally just exists to be advertising for s2 of PJOTV. Or maybe call-back to Percy's introduction, where he talks about how he doesn't try to cause problems but problems tend to find him. Or use the established personalities of Hecate's animal companions from HoO, since we know they have attitudes. Just what are you even doing here????

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[aibouart]

is it puritan brain of me to be too afraid to share links/acc names for my NSFW content despite this being a SFW acc and me saying "no minors allowed" or is there a genuine problem w me sharing it on my SFW platform(s) (where I know minors can be around) cuz my art is SFW and stuff?? is it irresponsible of me to share knowing that they could see it, even if i preface saying i don't want them going there at all?? do i just let the accs find their own audience and people might find it's my stuff ?? cuz i don't know a way to let my adult audience know who might be interested without risking that

this is /gen btw idk if these thoughts are exaggerated and from purity culture or legit concerns, i struggle a lot w this even if it might seem obvious to people so please don't tell me i should just know ;__;b i want other's opinions on it so i can better inform my own.

is there another way to share w/o asking users to DM me cuz i think that's too involved and i'd rather just not mention it at all if i have to vet every person and make people DM me.......... too much work for something i update maybe once every 4 months at best.........

i have never shared the accs outside just DMing my friends abt it so i genuinely don't know what the general consensus is on sharing. please let me know..!! ;o;;b

i am not planning to share any of that content on here ofc, i won't be changing my SFW accounts to mixed content out of nowhere.

[lacquerheadd]

Next time you're bleedin' to death, just think: Dr. Zed!

[hide-your-bugs-away]

Quite a zoo you got there, Connie... 👀🐾

(more photos under the cut!)

[amiizuki]

it amuses me how RWBY Beyond was advertised as "see what was happening in Remnant during V9, while RWBYJ were in Ever After", and yet the 2nd episode out of 4 of the series is about what Jaune was doing after V9. yeah, he talks about stuff that happened during V9 (or, technically, before, since it's about events from when he was with Alyx and Lewis), but the whole thing still takes place post V9, with him telling all those stuff to Oscar.

and then there's the 1st episode, which, while indeed taking place during V9, is just comedy filler, that supposedly continues with detectives joke from RWBY Chibi (I never watched RWBY Chibi, I only heard from other people that that show also had Sun and Neptune act like detectives) with no actual relevant info about what was happening with Vacuo, or the Atlas and Mantle refugees, or how people and the ruler of Vacuo were handling a whole ass nation of people just suddenly dropping onto their doorstep, or anything like that. the only sort of plot relevant info was showing that Summer Maiden is in Vacuo, but then again, her identity was still hidden from us and Kerry quickly jumped off from that plot point as soon as it was introduced with his """hilarious""" "nuh-uh, no more new characters lmao XD" line.

this 2nd episode isn't really that bad, it's kinda alright, certainly better than the 1st one, but, again, when I read that the series will be about what people of Remnant, who aren't RWBYJ, were doing during V9, I kinda thought it'll be about Atlas and Mantle citizens trying to get used to their sudden new life in Vacuo, or Oscar/Ozpin talking to Theo and all 3 maidens to figure out what to do next, or, hell, maybe even focus on Tai's feelings on everything that happened, with him thinking if he did the right thing by letting Ruby and Yang leave, since now he doesn't even know if his daughters, his last remaining family, are even alive, assuming he knows about the fates of Vale, Atlas and Mistral. (yeah, Tai's still at his house I think, but the description did say that it's about "what was happening in Remnant", not just Vacuo. yeah, Vacuo is a more important location right now, with everything except Menagerie and Mistral literally getting nuked just so the writers wouldn't have to go back to those places, but then change the description to "see what was happening in Vacuo during V9" if your only gonna focus on that location).

but no – the 1st episode is basically useless (and also very unfunny, but that's just my opinion) and the 2nd one, while okay on its own, takes place after V9 and doesn't focus on other people of Remnant, focusing on Jaune instead.

if the next episode is gonna be about bumbleby going on a date in Vacuo and telling everyone about how they got together in Ever After I'm gonna eat my own chair

and if the last episode will be the only one with any actual plot relevance, useful into or big reveal I'm gonna eat another

[mossyflowers]

I can't do this anymore just take it. Take the ace combat art. I'm going to explode

[bleue-flora]

if a therapist came to the dsmp to treat the characthers they would need therapy after doing it probably

[context]

You and @piscespixiewastaken think alike it seems.

Indeed they would. In fact, this point actually pushed me to ask my sister-in-law, who is a therapist/counselor about it just out of curiosity. 

Here’s what I learned:

Despite what my counselor said, not all therapists were required in school to do counseling themselves to get certified. Some counselors have actually never even been to therapy themselves (not sure how I feel about that to be honest… not to deter people from going to therapy - please do if you are able) something my sister-in-law didn’t seem to be a big fan of.

When asked if she felt like she needed counseling after/because of a specific client she said that yes that can definitely be the case. She noted that empathy fatigue is often common after listening to people all day, which makes sense and that would be a common reason for some needed personal counseling. As expected, while she hasn’t had to deal with a lot of it, she did note that dealing with people with antisocial behavior disorders (ie narcissistic, histrionic… think sociopath disorders) can be especially taxing.

Given that the dsmp is a group of povs of the same story and events, I was curious on whether she often found herself taking sides when she does couples counseling. She said that there can be an initial bias at first when the base facts are presented to her, which is something she often has to check herself on, but that actually she finds that usually there is truth and wrongdoing on both sides and there is no true ‘bad guy.’ Though she did add that she has not dealt with any relationships involving more intense abuse especially relating to antisocial behavior disorders. In other words, the couples she sees likely came willingly and are sound enough in mind on both sides to want to fix the problems, if that makes sense.

So in other words, there are, much to my surprise, counselors who do not go (may not have gone) to therapy themselves, but that doesn’t make it healthy and considering the characters in the dsmp it would likely be recommended that this counselor also see someone. I will say though the implication that people in the dsmp are more problematic then real world people are is perhaps an underestimation of irl mental illness. Just because the dsmp members wear armor and carry around weapons doesn't make them more troublesome than people irl, though perhaps that is me viewing it from their world standards which I assume the therapist would be from. In either case, whether the therapist was from the realm of Minecraft world circumstances or more irl, I do imagine they being either inhumanly sane and not need a therapist of their own, or they get together with another therapist and perhaps drink over all the dsmp insanity. And whether they would be inclined to take sides I think is hard to say since there are definitely some characters who need a psych ward. Anyways… hope you enjoyed my info dump. :)

[vaugarde]

man i clicked on crow callers “unwind” video expecting some cathartic justice for not liking what i read of book one back in middle school, but now they have me wanting to give it another chance (really confused and botched reproduction rights discussion and anti native racism aside)

[myheartisonthetrain]

WHAT WHY

😭😭 OUT OF ORDER. UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOUR. GO TO YOUR ROOM

[ultraphobic]

Vamp - The Rich Don't Rock (1989)

Please don't repost gifs anywhere without linking to original post thank you <3

[eriexplosion]

Still thinking about the finale of course and how little sense it makes for the sacrifice to be final because like... all the things people compare it to were people sacrificing for a good reason.

Kanan died on a mission to get Hera out, they succeeded and they rescued her and he died to protect them. He died to protect the woman he loved, the child she hadn't told him about but he might have sensed, and the squad that had become his family. Narratively his death pushes Ezra to the place he needs to be to accept the loss of his parents and resist Palpatine's attempt to make him give it all up to get his parents back. It sets the stage for Ezra to sacrifice himself less fatally in the endgame of the season.

The Rogue One crew died to get the plans to the Death Star out - their sacrifice is the reason A New Hope can even happen and we have the context to see why it's worth it.

Vader sacrifices himself and kills the Emperor and the reason people hate Somehow Palpatine Has Returned is partially because it negates that. We know the impact of the sacrifice.

But look at Tech's decision to drop. If he dies here then he dies to save his family... on a mission he insisted they go on in the first place, where they did not accomplish their goal to track Hemlock and they did not figure out where Crosshair was being held. And immediately after they literally crash anyway and Omega almost dies. This instantly puts them to Ord Mantell where they get betrayed and Omega is captured.

But what about character arcs? Surely it had some kind of payoff for the character decisions? Well, Hunter wants to go back to Pabu. Understandable. He also wanted to do that anyway because he thought this was too risky a way to try to get Crosshair back (turns out he was right) so Tech's sacrifice didn't change his direction. Wrecker and Echo are still pretty much on the same trajectory. Omega is sad but her actions to get her brothers back are exactly the same as what she would have done prior.

And unlike the other examples, that's the end of the season, if they have a narrative planned to redeem this we aren't going to see it for a while and the fact is still that if he dies here then he dies as a result of his own decision to push to take this risk and find Crosshair, creating a situation where if he hadn't been so eager to save someone he would still be alive, Omega wouldn't be captured, and they would still have the opportunity to save Crosshair another way.

His death moves nothing forward, changes nothing except to make life harder for the heroes, and doesn't motivate any of them in a direction they weren't already heading in. It's also given no narrative time to breathe before we're thrown into the Omega captured and has a sister subplot. It would be pure shock value in a way that these writers are better then. But a fakeout that moves him into place for a third season narrative payoff? Then we're getting somewhere and the lack of time devoted to the Aftermath makes sense.

Like I've written a lot of things about why I think Tech is alive but when it comes down to it, I think it's the better narrative decision and I don't actually think the writers are bad enough at their jobs not to be able to convincingly make a main characters death feel important.

[juniperjelly]

oh yea they gave the mob vote the axe, good on ya mojang! genuinely wasn't sure you could manage it

[sonnet-of-anarchy]

I love the national consensus that inflation is hereby measured in Freddos, and all references to capitalist alterations or the modern stock market shall be made in accordance with a small, frog-shaped chocolate bar in the seventies.

[vonlipvig]

steam reccommendations are so funny. this is how i see suzerain, btw.