#also im sorry i literally can't write anything short for the life of mine.

[icharchivist]

The thing that keeps killing me about the Veil discourse and the fact Solas was planning on destroying the world by removing the Veil is that, especially after Veilguard, we have the confirmation that inaction would have been worse.

It's made very clear in DAI and Trespasser especially that the Veil is failing. It's becoming thinner in thinner. Each Blight's bloodshed are so terrible that some places have a Veil that never recovered. There are already hole in the veil in DAO for the Warden to try to fix in places where the Veil has been torn into pieces (Soldier's Peak and the Blackmarshes especially). And Arlathan and Sundermont where also regions that were said to have had the Veil permanently sundered because of the terrible horrors that happened then.

Solas acts panicked when he learns the Wardens are trying to kill the last archdemons saying it will make the situation worse, and for years I argued that the archdemons are probably seals that held the Veil in place and if all of them were killed, it will collapse. At the time i thought it was an elaborated plan by the Evanuris - i didn't think there was a bond between them unless it was true the Old Gods were the Forgotten ones, but that by using the Blight from the Fade the Evanuris were trying to affect those seals to thin the Veil and either a Blight will punch a hole in it, or once all the archdemons will be dead they will be freed.

This isn't the conclusion Veilguard took but i still had a point where it mattered the most: The Archdemons' lives were tied to [the Evanuris who's lives were tied to] the Veil and if all of them died [and killed the Evanuris linked to them by doing so while separated from their respective Evanuris, as evidenced by there being only 2 Evanuris left in Veilguard], the Veil would collapse.

When Solas awoke, it was barely ten years after the 5th Blight. He didn't even know until then that the Blight had leaked from the the prison he had made.

Corypheus acted up on the Wardens' mind BEFORE Solas got involved with him. We know that from Legacy since it's when it started for Corypheus (and Solas supposedly awoke a bit before Mark of the Assassin according to the webseries Redemption).

Corypheus was affected by the Blight he got from the Evanuris, and wanted to do anything he could to tear down the Veil to get to the Black City.

If Solas hadn't offered his orb to Corypheus, if he had stayed in slumber even, The Wardens may have killed the two last archdemons in panic. Or, and that even if Solas gave up on his goal in Inquisition, eventually centuries down the line the two last blights would have happened and the Veil would have collapsed.

There is no scenario in which Solas doesn't get involved that doesn't end with "The Veil falls down and the Blight locked in the Fade is unleashed on Thedas".

Solas' plan is specifically to take down the Veil in a way that doesn't unleash the Blight and the Last of the Evanuris. He will try to salvage as much as he can doing so but that's the core of it.

Leaving aside all the others dilemma about the People, about the Spirits, about Slavery, about everything that has motivated Solas on top of it all: IF Solas didn't act, the Veil would have collapsed on its own and the world would have ended in a way worse way.

We can debate forever about how deadly Solas' plan would have actually been. In Veilguard he says a few thousands of people would have died because he took precaution. I still believe one of the major reasons people would have died are tied to the way Curing Tranquility Also Leave People Who Were Tranquil In a Vulnerable State That Easily Get Them Killed and it would have been the same for people to reconnect so deeply to the Fade (re why Solas asks Cassandra if she thinks it's worth it to still cure the Tranquils and why it mattered).

We can also argue whether this was the only possible thing that could be done.

But like one thing is certain: even if Solas killed absolutely everyone except the elves by collapsing the Veil, it would still be less damage than if the Veil just collapsed on its own. Which would have happened sooner than later. It wasn't an IF. it was an WHEN.

The "Elven God's blood can keep the Veil up and fully repair it" was a full cope out that makes genuinely No Sense (they were NEVER gods to start with, and personally the reason i liked the Archdemons to be the seals more than the Evanuris was bc of what Yavana says in the comics about the dragons being the blood of the world, something much, much bigger than the elves ever were) just to punish Solas anyway.

But the fact people still act like Solas taking down the Veil was him planning the End of the World and It's Bad are just not interrogating themselves on what the Veil is doing.

It was either a controlled apocalypse that will avoid as much damage as possible, or one that will happen at random and will leave no possible chances of salvation.

Just letting the world end by inaction isn't exactly any better than trying to do something.

It's somehow the same logic as Rook and Varric never being blamed for unleashing the final blights. Accidentally triggering the end of the world, or just knowingly letting it happen are fine, but trying to actually do control damage is bad actually.

The Alternative should have been to find another path. One Solas was too prideful, too blind to newer ways, too isolated to have considered himself. One that could remove the Veil without this amount of destruction. Not to reinforce the Veil all together.

And i just think it's unfair to look at Solas plan of destroying the world as the basis to judge he's a bad person without ACKNOWLEDGING what the options actually are. Not even in term to defend Solas, but in term of, do you understand what's at stake????

[animalinvestigator]

any manga recommendations?

yessss oh my gosh always, gladly. so honored you would ask little ol me about such a thing... i haven't been reading much lately so here's just a little list of things ive picked up in the past few months or things i've liked for a long time..... all of them are on mangadex so just look em up... Im editing this to put them under the cut sorry i didn't do it before ive been on the clock for like 4 hours and im tired Lights cigarette

fool night yasuda kasumi !!! it's currently ongoing and i recently got caught up... if i had to describe it in two words.. "post-chainsawman." it's very similar in a lot of ways, but has very different priorities.. what i really like about it is that it has kind of a tighter focus on the "poverty and capitalism" angle that chainsawman definitely covers but doesn't really devote its full attention to. in a world where the sun no longer shines, plants can't grow, so humans are constantly at a deficit of oxygen... to combat this, government facilities offer a payout to desperate people who can't afford to live if they allow themselves to be "transflorated" -- basically fed on by a magical spiritual plant that will eventually kill them and release oxygen in their stead. one such desperate person undergoes the procedure only to find he has the special ability to communicate with transflorated bodies after theyve passed... and then he becomes a Plants Detective and shenanigans ensue. Super good it made me cry... art is beautiful..... definitely worth a read if youre looking to pick up something ongoing

babel no toshokan by tsubana - stumbled upon this after reading the artist's other work "wakusei closet" on a whim... this shorter story is much preferred and has engraved itself deeply on my heart. a girl with a strange set of beliefs about reality enters a strange relationship with a boy who can read everything that's ever been written just by touching an identical sheath of paper..... seriously so good. give it a go if you want something short and sweet

planet laika & scorched earth of love by mayuri yoshida, this is a short manga and one shot bundled with it that has been one of my favorites for like FOUR YEARS NOW!!! mayuri yoshida's sickly cute animal people + loving intricate lineart combine to create a really unique visual aesthetic. its about the titular laika , as in, the dog launched into space, who has since become the ruler of a planet of dogs, and her plot to take revenge on humanity. also she has a lesbian wife. the one shot is so good too SO DONT MISS IT!!!

anyone who has heard me talk about comics for the past year or so probably knows i've been trying to get Just yknow everybody on earth to read dead dead demon's dedededestruction by inio asano. nothing i could ever possibly say about it could do it justice it's seriously my favorite manga of all time. it's about being in love with your best friend and the end of the world and aliens and politics and the internet and stuff. asano's art is truly breathtaking and unlike anything else on earth, the characters are all infectiously lovable, and it's just like... endlessly life affirming and heals my heart in a way i have a hard time articulating.

and last one... not strictly manga but i have really enjoyed keeping up with wanan's webcomic no home recently... its a long one, but i read about 275 chapters of it in like 3 days, because it's that hard to put down, LOL... extremely inspiring character writing and also just insanely fun, eunyung became an all time favorite character of mine on impact and it has one of those casts where you can't help but have fun watching them be together in literally any situation. it's about a bunch of kids with shitty family situations trying to figure out to learn to live with eachother. its an extremely good example of mundane character drama being written so compellingly that it will make you start slamming your head on walls at work. Speaking from experience.

miscellany... everyone tells you to read witch hat atelier, do it its good... everyone tells you to read dungeon meshi do that its good... Chainsaw man part 2 is getting crazy right now ...... uhhh... i have a billion more so if none of those interest you let me know and i'll share more. thank yew so much for your interest in my opinions and i hope there's something here you can appreciate!!!~~

[str4wb3rry47]

Greetings and Salutations. Back for a jiffy: Just getting to your recent poems, and, I like the fragmented style. Not just trendy, but so fitting. The God Complex is such a powerful poem. It reminds me of the good doctor (Dr. Lecter), who had "issues" with God because God disappointed him in more than one way (some stuff was very tragic, but I won't be talking about it - so depressing). The Who Am I that you ask yourself in another poem reminds me of the famous "I'm Nobody" by Emily Dickinson. If there is anything I could say about you, other than you are extremely talented, is that you are a unique individual. Most people are tediously boring to me. I could really read your poems all day long, they are that good, but you know what scares me the most? The kindred spirit I see in the mirror. Your poems reflect my own sorrows though I have passed the point of my worst suffering in life (or so I would like to believe). Your writing is not only therapeutic for you, but for your reader too. It's a privilege to be allowed rare entry to your sophisticated mind. My coping mechanism is what is called transcendentalism in philosophy: mainly nature and intuition. I am going to give myself an anon if it's alright with you: 🐢for turtle, because I am slow as molasses, and take forever to write, to read, to get stuff done, and to decipher beautiful poetry! Also, because I like to hide in my shell; I am an asocial introvert loner.

Hey hey again! Sorry my reply took a while. I've been quite busy lately! Im really curious though, how do you have all these things in the back of your mind? It almost seems impossible. I really tried making my poems more aggressive lately, and what better way than using caps and enumeration for that? Though I'm having a hard time believing all you say, it seems too nice to be true, knowing I have no background in poetry yet having someone enjoy it so much while other people quite literally skip it, it almost makes me paranoid. But let's say you do like them as much as you say you do, thank you SO much it truly means lots to me. Though I do have a question, if you like them so much, why do you hide yourself? I don't believe you've liked any of my posts, so it gets me thinking.

To be honest, you are right on that comparison. I do, too,have a few issues with God and Gods. Why, for some reason, God or concepts of godly things always get named in my poems. Also you seem to like short poems, all of the ones you've told me about are quite short compared to mines, so that adds onto it too, why do you like my poems if they're so different?

Thank you, actually. What you say flatters me. I think that living and being like everyone else is awfully boring, and I hate boredom, so saying I'm unique really does mean lots, another thing we have in common, I believe.

It's quite funny to me, you seem to spend so long reading my poems, so much time that I think you'd know more about me than I'd be able to explain, scares me because what would you do with such informations? Either way, this is random, but I love the words 'kindred spirits'. From the day I watched Anne with an E, it became my favorite word. I believe I was a lot like her in the past, but instead of pursuing what I liked, I decided to shut up for good. Anyhow, I try to make my poems vibrate what I'd feel at that moment so much, enough for people in the same situation to feel called when they read it, so I'm really glad it works with you.

I actually like that philosophy, transcendentalism I mean. It's quite peaceful, I'm glad you've found a healthy coping mechanism like that. Though I often prefer not to listen to my intuition, as I am a VERY paranoid person.

Of course it's alright, it's an honor for me to have you even want to have a little emoji for yourself, tells me you might make other asks in the future. I quite love receiving them, even more when it's from anons.

I like how you chose one that describes you, I can't say I'm asocial, but I am antisocial, so I certainly do find a bit of myself in what you've said.

Again, because of my paranoia, but if you are honest and actually do mean what you have said, thank you so much. Those words are marvelous, and they honestly make my day. keep it up, I'm sure you're as wonderful as your intentions through this 🫶

I hope to see you again soon, little turtle!

[imunbreakabledude]

I never got why after all these leagues there isnt some kind of dupe protection in place. I know that runescape is like the grind personified into a game but at least in a limited time mode i should be able to throw back dupes like how you can in blue moons for a chance at a new unique, if not a cap on how many dupes you can get because not being able to finish your build because you got rng'd feels horrible. I also feel like some ideas could be yoinked and retrofitted from rs3 about bad luck mitigation for leagues. I fear im becoming that guy who always finds a way to shove in the thing he likes into a conversation that isnt related to it lol

Also also i really agree with you about toa in general, its a really nice looking raid and I love the music and sound effects but like 80% of it is just such a slog to get through. None of the puzzles really feel difficult or interesting since runelite auto solves like 2.5 of them and i have a special disdain for monkey room pre max hit change, its not so terrible now but i will forever hold a grudge. The puzzles feel like autopilot meh or built to annoy me specifically. I really want to like the raid because i love almost everything desert related in both games but like the only good part of it is wardens and i just dont have the patience to sit through the rest of it or god forbid i get caught on one of the zebak waves and have to weigh resetting for purple chance or just finishing the raid, can't imagine going through it on an iron pre fang and lightbearer since those are so good for actually doing toa. Every time i go into toa i always have the thought 'damn i could be doing cox right now, or like anything else'

Also also also i'm not sure if you know the trick for getting consistent one downs on het puzzle so ill just leave this short video here, if you already know about it just ignore me. Anyways sorry for yapping into your ask box and i hope osrs, and life in general, has been treating you well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA1B90KmS7U

lol i got lots to say about all this too so buckle up

first - this is funny because I actually did type more of a rant about the het puzzle which got deleted by tumblr because APPARENTLY you aren't supposed to write thousands of words in the tags... but I did know the trick for 1-downs, I learned it when trying to get the combat achievement in the maingame, but personally I find it hard to get the right position/timing for it with many of the puzzle layouts. there's like one where it's pretty easy for me to get lined up right for the 1-down and for all the others I'm sure it's possible if you set it up right but it feels like so much effort for something so stupid. and it really pisses me off that it's like, if you're tick perfect you can avoid doing the same puzzle twice but if you're one tick off you must do it twice to remove 3hp left on the statue. I don't mind perfect timing/setup being rewarded, that's cool, but I like it best when that saves you a BIT of time but it still feels viable if you're ALMOST perfect? like it just feels so annoying to know you were 0.6sec or one tile positioning away from literally cutting the room in half... especially when it's so dull to do. tbh I should just get 99 mining so i can one-down without having to be tick perfect (definitely viable to knock out 99 mining before going back to toa in leagues, maybe not in the maingame LOL)

with the toa puzzles, it's tough bc I feel like Jagex wanted to mix it up and make this raid feel a bit different than just a boss rush but I don't know that they realized just how stupid they'd feel after doing them every time? yes you can make the argument that everything in runescape is repetitive and gets boring after a bit, but at least with CoX puzzle rooms you don't always get the same ones in every raid, and some of the "puzzles" are actually combat (ice demon), and they're also just a bit faster & have a few different strategies you can use depending on solo/group and skill/gear level, versus ToA puzzles that... well, I assume Jagex wasn't HOPING everyone would instantly use plugins to solve the puzzles for them, but they had to know it'd happen. because even if you enjoy figuring it out yourself the first few times it just gets dull to do it manually after a while... so it feels like a design mistake to have 2/4 puzzles that are the equivalent of clue scroll puzzle boxes, but taking 1-2 minutes to do.

also, comparing it to another aspect of the game that gets complained about a lot - gauntlet prep - I don't hate gauntlet prep, personally. it can also be frustating if you're "on the cusp" and lose 8min of work to a close bossfight BUT unlike ToA challenge rooms it's a bit more varied and has more skill expression. and it also ties into how you face the fight - toa puzzle rooms might be more engaging if how you solved them affected the boss that comes after them? but they don't. they're just extra steps, so they feel annoying. granted I'm saying that I don't mind or even slightly LIKED gauntlet prep after getting fairly lucky at CG, but... I did that prep 300+ times and don't hate it, while I've done the ToA Challenge rooms maybe... 30 or so times and already hate them.

zebak waves are the bane of my existence too... i mean that's hyperbole but they piss me off because they are so EASY to dodge in theory and yet somehow I manage to accidentally path into them once every 5 or so raids. i remember when ds2 came out and I had done ZERO pvm that galvek fight was super hard for me to beat and his wave attack was one part i really struggled with, bc it instakilled you, but yknow what, I hate that less than zebak. bc it's just rude how zebak's waves DON'T instakill you except they give you such a pitifully small window to 'recover' that you end up just watching yourself die slowly instead of instantly while clicking in vain to try to escape. Zebak is annoying bc he feels like both the easiest and hardest boss to me - generally very easy BUT he's also the one where if things go slightly wrong... i just die. so i've been doing him first every time because I really struggle if he's leveled up by Walk the Path whereas with the other bosses i barely notice if they're leveled up.

I'm so annoyed about this raid already with leagues making me super OP so I dread going back to the regular game where i will hit zeroes. lmao. the fact that fang and lightbearer are so common (relatively speaking) definitely feels bad for mains but good for irons bc they're accessible upgrades to help doing more ToA but it's definitely rough starting out... and hey, Shadow also reallllly helps with ToA so why didn't they make that as common as fang? (/s of course lol)

re: dry protection. I feel split on dry protection in Leagues for similar reasons I feel split on it for the maingame. I'm not worried about the economic effects or anything; I think as it is already, bots and RWT fuck the economy way more than dry protection ever could. what makes me split about it is that, for better or worse, the randomness is part of this game? and the feeling of getting lucky hits different when you know how unlucky you COULD get; likewise, the feeling of going dry and then finally getting it is a really rewarding feeling... at least for SOME drops. but the fact remains that certain grinds feel way worse to go dry on, and when one person gets very unlucky and goes dry a lot of places, that just... sucks. so I'm not totally opposed to a gentle version of dry protection where the longer you go without a certain unique, your rate of it increases... I'm not in favor of guaranteed pity drops in general EXCEPT for specific situations like Vorkath's head, for simple untradeable upgrades, especially those that you already had to do a quest to unlock (side note, it pissed me off that ancient icon didn't have the guaranteed drop like vorkath's head, feels like it should).

in leagues I see the argument for it being a limited time mode so we should make it as fun as possible BUT it's a fine line to me. because as annoyed as i am not getting what i want from raids, I also don't know that it would be that much more fun for me if I knew I'd get a new purple every raid? because then it'd just become a checklist of like, "I'll do ToA ~8 times, then do CoX ~15 times, then go back to whichever one's faster for me to get other megarares for all the tasks" and the league would feel "over" even faster than it already does? as i said it's a fine line. because going dry sucks especially in a temp mode, but on the other hand, if I knew I was guaranteed to get all the highest-end drops in a certain amount of time, it would just feel like a routine to unlock it quickly then have no reason to continue. idk. it's hard to say. I've always been a proponent of making your leagues build in such a way that you know you'll have fun even if you don't get rare gear because it's kinda hard to get some items even with 5x rate. and I'm enjoying my build as it is even without full masori/tbow. I see the argument for it but idk if I fully believe in it...

I do think it was a great choice by jagex to put dry protection on the echo orbs/echo items though. because those are things that are ONLY available in this limited time mode, so making sure everyone can access them reasonably helps ensure everyone gets to try out the specific fun that's unique to this league. whereas if you can't get a tbow/shadow/whatever in th league, that might be disappointing, but you still can hypothetically enjoy those in the main game. but this is literally the only chance to play with the echo stuff.

I think they also made a great call with the megarare vouchers and making multiple purples possible for a team in ToA/HMT. and take my opinion here with a grain of salt as someone who didn't raid in past leagues and hasn't raided much in the maingame. but it still feels a LITTLE wonky now... ToA and TOB feel much better as raids to grind in leagues now, right? but now CoX feels awkwardly bad? it had the advantage before of being the only one where multiple purples could be obtained in a team (i think) but now it doesn't have the same guarantees for teams AND it has the lowest megarare chance out of the 3 raids? as someone with both zeah and desert I would go back and forth between cox and toa to mix it up but it just feels so silly when a tbow would make cox so much easier and a tbow could be obtained faster from toa, yknow?

yeah lol anyway there's all my rants about raids in leagues... definitely feeling the tiniest bit of regret over not going morytania now but this trio made sense for the build i wanted, and i might do an alt with something like VTM melee if I have the time/energy after getting dragon cup.