#and i'm still excited to talk about them

[abovetherainandroses]

“A lot of it is trying to impress each other,” Wentz admits. “I'll write something and think, ‘Oh, wait ‘til he sees this.’ Or I'll get a call at 1 o’clock in the morning and it's Patrick playing a riff into the phone while I'm half asleep.” -- Alternative Press #193 (August 2004)

[sysig]

Ellen McLain’s commentary from my trivia playthrough

[buckevantommy]

it's so wild to look at s1!buck compared to s7!buck

[beeholyshit]

My little bebes ❤️

[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

[brynnmclean]

saw a post questioning shipping Senua and Thórgestr and started to reblog it with a tag novel-- felt weird about doing that since this is lengthy and potentially derailing, so making my own post instead. Spitballing under the cut:

First off, any time someone is like, "the real reason people ship this is because they find the dude attractive," this is SO funny to me as someone who doesn't find men attractive IRL and has fiercely loved Senua since I played the first game, like-- actually I find the dynamic between those two characters to be compelling and interesting precisely because of all the baggage between them re: their backgrounds, the rough (put mildly!) beginning of their relationship, all the things they don't talk about, and them finding a common enemy/common ground to work with. The explicit parallels between them stated in-game scratched an itch in my brain. The minute they pointed out the dark rot on his arm, it was like, "oh! hello there! NOW I'm interested in whatever your whole deal is" for me. Also, idk man, I too would follow Senua around after she knocked me into the dirt and then showed me a way to fight the giants that I very much wanted to fight instead of appease.

The idea that Thórgestr was part of the Orkney Raid that killed and mutilated Dillion is VERY interesting food for thought, even if I don't personally have that headcanon (surely there are more viking raiding groups than just the Bjorg). I think the Furies or the Shadow said something similar about Fargrimr (his kin murdered yours, you shouldn't save him, etc.) so I completely get that line of thought, but I think the game left it ambiguous enough that it's up for interpretation. Would I read fic with that premise? Yeah, I'd check that out. Could Senua forgive Thorgestr if his people were involved? Sounds fun to explore.

If (ha, when?) I write fic, I'd have to think more about it especially wrt timelines, like when did the Bjorg start specifically raiding for slaves for giant food sacrifices vs. killing people for resources and wealth? How far off are we from the old gods "dying" and the volcano erupting? Was it indeed a different group of raiders who made a deal with Zynbel, attacked Senua's home, and made the sacrifice at that time to Hela?

At the very least, I think there's a time jump between the end of Hellblade I and the beginning of Hellblade II since Senua wasn't alone on that slave ship and at least one of the (brief) survivors knew her by name. I wouldn't mind exploring that gap of time, too.

In any case I do agree that it would take a VERY long time for Senua to consciously catch feelings for anyone let alone Thorgestr with all their collective baggage. The idea of them having a relationship beyond friendship in the far off future of an AU where he survives is the only one that can make sense in my brain, personally. It would take time! Time they didn't get in the game! But I think there are a lot of different roads that could take, and some of them might be healthier than others. Shipping them certainly isn't forgetting or excusing what happened to Dillion-- or even mutually exclusive from still shipping Senua and Dillion. Or, frankly, also shipping Senua and Astridr, because I can see that ship too.

One of the nice things about all the details Ninja Theory didn't expand upon and that they left that ending so open is that the sky's the limit. I'm VERY interested in seeing fandom tackle this game as we get farther from the initial release.

[2hoothoots]

i was having a chuckle to myself last night about Gristol, and how his plans are basically:

Restore Ford Cruller's memory

Find Maligula

???

Profit

but then... of course they are, right? this is Gristol we're talking about. Fatherland Follies drives home again and again that he's still operating on a child's logic, a warped and reductive version of the world that he never bothered to grow out of. both of his memory vaults center on the images of his childhood, this idealized version of the past that he clings to no matter what. and that's still how he remembers Maligula, too - as this saviour figure, who rushes in to help him when he's in trouble.

[ID: Two slides from Gristol's memory vault, Glory to Grulovia! Left: Gristol clings to Maligula's back as she summons waves to sweep away his assailants. Right: Gristol and Maligula waving from a balcony as the people cheer. Gzar Theodore brandishes a dagger in the background.]

like so much else, Maligula represents a return to this idyllic childhood - to the peace and simplicity of his youth, when he was free from worries and responsibilities. in his mind, he doesn't need to make any further plans - once Maligula's back, everything will go back to normal. Maligula will make everything better.

...is what i thought, but then i remembered this line:

[Screenshot source. ID: Gristol, in Truman's body, bows on his hands and knees in front of the newly-awaked Maligula. The caption reads: "Yes, High Priestess! I am here to correct the mistakes made by my father!"]

and that's kind of interesting, right?

to be clear: this happens directly after Maligula sees Helmut-in-Gristol's-body, and recognises him. her line before this is:

"Little Gzesaravich! Have you come to pay for your father's sins?"

my first thought was that Gristol hadn't expected to still be in Truman's body by the time he managed to find Maligula, and this was him trying to placate her and buy some time until he could explain the situation. but watching the cutscene back, that's clearly not what's happening here. Gristol is answering as himself, and his response of throwing himself to his knees before her is, as far as i can tell, genuine.

so what is going on here?

in Fatherland Follies, there's this line in the ride narration that stuck out to me:

"Why didn't the Gzar help Maligula in her time of need? No one knows, but historians agree - it is Gzar Theodore's biggest failure."

other lines mention Gzar Theodore's "mistake", and it's wording Gristol himself echoes in the screencap above. evidently, he believes that his father abandoned Maligula, leaving her to her fate at the hands of the Psychonauts, and it was that mistake that lead to them being driven out of the country - that mistake which he seeks to correct. maybe he even feels like he has a debt to repay to her for his family turning their backs on her all those years ago.

the 'High Priestess' thing, though - that's kinda weird, and threw me for a loop the first time i played the game. it took me until my second playthrough to connect the dots, and remember how the room in the Lady Luctopus - Gristol's room - was full of Delugionist scribblings and symbols.

[Screenshot source. ID: left, the walls of the hidden backroom in Gristol's hotel suite, covered in scrawlings of eyeballs and Maligula's name. Right, the pinboard from the hidden backroom. On its surface are photographs and newspaper clippings connected by pieces of string.]

i mean, look at this stuff! he had a whole conspiracy board and everything!

we learn very little about the Delugionists and their beliefs as a whole during the game, but i think drawing the connection here suggests two important things. one: that Gristol was in deep with this stuff. i don't know how he linked up with them - maybe via old family connections, or just good old-fashioned digging (we know he's skilled at worming his way into peoples' good graces, after all) - but it seems likely that he's begun to internalise their ideas, maybe even warping his own memories of events. and two: the Delugionists themselves are, if you'll pardon the pun, pretty far off the deep end.

like... i understand why PN2 didn't go heavy on the "mass-murderer cult worship" aspect of things, in the end, but man this is such a tantalising glimpse into the wider mythos around Maligula. Gristol is proud and haughty and thinks himself above everyone else; the fact that his first reaction seeing Maligula is to throw himself to the ground at her feet says so much about the way he's come to see her. he's not just trying to bring back Maligula, his childhood bodyguard. he's trying to bring back Maligula, the High Priestess of the deluge, the semi-mythical figure whose supporters believe even death couldn't stop. he doesn't even flinch at the way she confronts him, and maybe it's because he's bought in so completely to this deified figurehead, this idea of Maligula; more a living force of nature than a person. and it all comes back to the same place: an abdication of responsibility, not just to the person who protected him when he was little but to this avatar of floods and destruction. Maligula will make everything better.

i'd write more about my thoughts on the Delugionists but that'd be taking a hard turn into speculation, and this is already kind of long and rambling so i'd better end it here. but what an unexpected and evocative line, right? it's some of the only stuff we have to go off of regarding the Delugionists as a whole, but i think it does such a good job of hinting at the wider story - at teasing another layer to the mythos surrounding Maligula, one whose ripples we see throughout the game but which never quite breaches the surface.

[peanutbutterandbananasandwichs]

Sometimes I really am just hit by the sadness about how this fandom treats Sam.

[thisshitisridiculous]

actually i hate watching a show where the actors and writers have articles every week about what's going to happen, like what do you mean ever take involves some quote from someone where they literally can't tell you what's going on because that's a spoiler, just watch the show, the show will tell you everything you need to know

[necrotic-nephilim]

-debby ryans at you- how are you feeling about that thunderbolts* trailer, snookums. your old blog is trying to crawl from its grave.

you are an unhinged rat for sending me this ask i hope you know <3 you already knew that but i'm telling you anyway bc you're a rat bc now i have to explain myself-

this is from @eebuckley my partner <3 i've alluded to it in the tags of this blog but i used to be a semi-popular MCU blogger from like 2018 to 2020. (semi-popular for the ship i wrote, anyway) and since like, probably Infinity War/Endgame i have been slowly more and more disillusioned by the MCU ranging from only passively being interested in projects to outright despising them if i saw them. which sort of sucks, given how much i loved the MCU at it's height. i was like. aggressively into it. like a "i had asthma attacks watching trailers bc i got so excited" level of into it. maybe cringey in hindsight, honestly but yk. whatever brings you joy, ig.

and anyway- my partner witnessed my very real and normal reaction to the Thunderbolts* trailer and now i'm *mad* bc i'm actually excited about it. it made me feel about the MCU a way i haven't felt in years, especially after a lot of announcements that rlly pissed me off.

cannot believe it looks like we might actually get a comics-accurate Yelena and a comics-accurate Bucky. i'm such a sucker for Bucky Barnes, he's one of the only Marvel characters i actually read Marve comics for and i'm forever bitter how badly he got screwed over. if that movie is good i'm going to end up writing fanfiction. probably crossover fanfiction bc over my dead body will i write just plain MCU fanfic. and i'm a Jason Todd/Bucky shipper anyway so i could make it work, i think-

anyway TLDR is i'm excited and i'm mad about it and how dare yo expose me for being an MCU fan on THIS blog. you coulda send this ask to my MCU blog that still exists and i have occasionally used. but instead you *exposed* my ass on my refined DC blog as a filthy Marvel fan. i will be divorcing you again. ty gn ily

[deoidesign]

I was scrolling and saw your art and it made me really happy because I realized you made time and time again!!!

It’s literally one of my favorite things I’ve ever read, so cool!!!

This is so sweet, thank you for sharing!

It's sort of "illusion breaking" so to speak, to think of my art being both out there in a way that someone could happen upon it, and then further that someone may happen upon it twice, and finally that on doing so they find it recognizable...

I always think of myself and my work as something that sort of sits behind the curtain. The idea that it might take up space in this way is unreal!

This is the kind of thing that means more than you could imagine.

So thank you!

[ichorblossoms]

lots of respect for ppl who don't post/talk abt certain oc things due to not wanting to spoil their own stuff, however i will not be doing that. by the time any of this stuff is finished it'll probably be different anyways

[fruchtfleisch-art]

It's been a little quiet around here, but I promise I'm still writing! This fic is going to be a 20k monster at the very least (my final drafts are always longer than my first drafts), and I've been trying to make it to the finish line this month so I can start the long, long process of shaping it into something readable. Have some snippets of weird little boys, past and present!

[arctic-reptile]

sent my fanzine pieces to some friends and most didn't acknowledge them at all and the only one who did just went "nice" and nothing else :(((

[eddiemunsonsmum]

Just saw this comment on a story posted a month ago.

*cries in Eddie Munson Solo Series no one wanted to read, interact with or request for*

No shade to the person that commented this on their own fic if you recognize it. It's not their fault. I'm not mad at them. More crying in the tags.

[seaofreverie]

Success, my dad told me today that he listened to Flood at work, and TWICE at that. Could it be that the TMBG propaganda is also working at last