#and it gets at things that i think are erased even by a lot of sex positive discussion

[maaenyo]

I'm not responding to this for you, rather i'm doing it so whoever finds the post is not so mislead by your bias. Really, your attitude at the end of the post is unfortunate, like who died and named you master of the lore?? Specially when you're getting it wrong.

I don't know where you got that from, i've played the game enough and don't recall such a statement. The Blight is contained in the Black City, that's why it's black. There's hardly any doubt about this idek why it's a point at all

The Fade has spirits, spirits represent or mirror emotions, ideas, concepts. Some are positive, others are negative, they're still spirits. The Veil separating reality changed everyone's perception of things, spirits once used to the fluid nature of the Fade were suddenly faced with a stagnant reality that didn't adjust to their will; crossing the Veil becomes a traumatic experience that literally changes their composition. This resulted in aberrations and other scary things that humans called demons. Whatever humans fail to understand always gets demonized. In the harrowing of a circle mage Warden we meet Sloth, a so called demon. The Fade is full of desire demons tempting mages all the time. We have seen this many times both in games and other media like the comics. Nightmare was not an anomaly only present because of Corypheus, call it demon, spirit or whatever, it was always there to begin with because fear is one of the most ancient and natural emotions of life. I agree demons are spirits too, but the lore states very clearly they don't just turn negative by crossing through the Veil, they ARE already present in the Fade from the start.

Another idea you pulled out of..somewhere, idk, i've never read anything like it. The Veil choking?? the life and magic out of Thedas? The Veil is an unfortunate by-product of the Evanuris prison, whatever went wrong in Solas' ritual caused the barrier meant to contain the Evanuris and the Blight in the Black City to extend further and contain the entire Fade apart from the rest of the world. And it's a VEIL. Not a wall, not just any barrier, but a VEIL. Veils are usually of see-through fabric, they're not rock solid, they allow for some things to pass through, and the Veil gets thinner in some places, making that even more likely to happen. And things have been passing through, pushing through for ages; it's only been ripped open in places a few times (Magisters Sideral, Corypheus, the occasional mage fucking shit up). A Veil ripped open is what we see in Inquisition, with the Breach and the tears all over, and in future Redcliffe as well, a Veil torn and taken down carelessly. It's not a wall -unless you count the shield Gaxkang drops called "Fade Wall" which if you think about it is indeed a way of seeing the Veil-, if it were it'd take more than a knife to open it. I think there's a confusion between the Veil, the Fade and the prison Solas made. The whole thing is like a freaking onion, i once posited all the circles in the murals were a barrier between a barrier and i was correct, there's the Veil surrounding the Fade -an accident- and the containment around the Black City. You don't wanna consider it, fine, but that does not erase the fact DAV clearly states multiple times that the Blight is in the Black city and Elgar'nan is trying to break in to get it out; it's not just chilling everywhere in the Fade.

I'll just point this out because I think is hilarious you did it: first you say he doesn't lie. Massive retcon, right? Oh he doesn't lie. Then you say he's an absolutely terrible liar. Which one is it? Either he never lies, or he lies poorly (which is still lying, mind you), you can't have both. Also, every damn single time he uses the "i saw it in the Fade" excuse he IS lying. We know he didn't see shit in the Fade, he lived it, he was there when things happened for thousands of years. Tricksters trick but also lie, a lot, lying it's a big part of their trickery. You failing to grasp this is entirely on you, and sorry not sorry but you don't get to define any aspect of the lore like this when even you contradicted yourself! This is the point that got me to write a lengthy counter because it is ridiculous, and i say this as a lore fan, who played all the games, dlc, got all the books, comics, i even watched Redemption ffs, also as a Solas fan, a Solavellan even. Solas has lied more times i care to count. Not just by omission, but actively lied. He spent all of Inquisition lying "oh i saw it in the Fade, i saw it in the Fade" dude you were there when it happened!! LOL Are you for fucking real? You literally went just "nuhn unh, Solas doesn't lie cause i say he didn't".

You can dislike the game all you want, but do yourself a favour and heed your own advice, listen to people who know the lore. Right now you just proved you don't know it as well as you think, and that your interpretation of it is tainted with your bitterness over a game you didn't like, which whether you accept it or not will always be a Dragon Age game, and the lore it presents, whether you accept it or not, will always be Dragon Age lore.

I'm relegating you to the list of people who didn't understood shit about the lore and Dragon Age as a whole. I've spent YEARS diving into the lore, analyzing everything, got a whole blog dedicated to that, got a considerable number of things right in the process, but i always phrased things as maybe, might be, could be, because i'm well aware my word is not the law. Your attitude is the most annoying part of your post, you can have any headcanons you like but you're not a lore master and you don't get to twist things in your anger like that.

Do whatever you want, believe whatever you want. And using Veilguard as any sort of source for anything remotely related to canon Lore is just ridiculous. It's so... awful, IMHO, to use it to defend any sort of point.

I'm not certain if this would be considered critical, so I'll put it under a cut. Potentially critical of Veilguard.

Though I'm really just talking about the Lore.

I point out 4 massive retcons in Veilguard that blew my mind and that I see people commonly using as arguing points. And yes, if someone wants to pay me for the time, I can prove all of it with sources.

What little canon Lore they actually used in Veilguard? They twisted beyond recognition.

Just a few examples.

1. The blight is NOT, in fact, (or even in Veilguard) 'everywhere in the Fade'. It has always been contained to the Black City, that floats disconnected from everything else in the Fade. It's why the previously golden city is black ffs! Even in Veilguard, it's really damned obvious that the Fade isn't full of blight. We hop in and out of the Fade throughout the whole damned game like it's a shopping mall.

2. The Fade is not full of demons. Demons are spirits (people) of emotion. What usually twists them into demons is coming through the veil! The only reason there was the big demon in DAI is because it was attached to Coryphyfish. There's probably some, but it's an arguable point that an emotion spirit of, say, anger, or spite is actually a demon. Emotions aren't bad. They wouldn't automatically be demons simply because they reflect a negative emotion.

3. The veil has been canonically choking the life and magic out of Thedas for thousands of years. If the veil didn't come down, there would be no Thedas. This is clearly spelled out in canon. The veil was never meant to be part of the world. At the end of Trespasser, the veil is as holey as my grandmother's doilies. It's not as they tried to depict it in Veilguard, a firm, whole wall holding hordes of demons and the blight of blights back. That's such a bullshit retcon, and I make weird faces every time I try to figure out the mental gymnastics necessary for someone to come up with that idea.

4. It's also a massive retcon that Solas lies. (Sigh. Yes. It really is. No matter what you believe.) He canonically does not. They rewrote his character for DAI so that he doesn't lie because it weakened the character. He was originally written as much more similar to Blackwall. They decided it weakened Solas as a character and made sure he doesn't lie. He obfuscates, misleads, doesn't answer, and is really good at letting people make assumptions or even leading people to make assumptions. Because that is what a Trickster does! But in all of DAI and Trespasser, he does not lie except once. At the Winter Palace when you ask him where he got the experience of court. No. A 'lie of omission' is not a lie by the definition or philosophical understanding of what a lie is. You, as the player, not paying close attention to what he says doesn’t mean he lies either! He is not the 'god of lies'. That's Epler's hate shining through. Throughout 3 games, many dlcs, books, comics, short stories, the Dread Wolf is known as the Trickster. The god of rebellion and sometimes the god of betrayal. He is never once referred to as the god of lies in anything pre-veilguard. It's. Bullshit.

And Solas is an absolutely terrible liar. He stumbles all over himself trying to do it in the winter palace. It's hilarious tbh.

There were more retcons. But I need to go help with dinner.

Just, even if you liked Veilguard, don't use it as a defense in any sort of discussion of Lore. Perhaps listen to us Lore fiends, instead? Because they shat all over the Lore for Veilguard.

Real talk? It makes you look ignorant to anyone who actually has been paying attention to the Lore.

FWIW? I'm not in the best of moods right now. Please think twice, then a third time before responding/reblogging in disagreement. (Unless you're polite and actually have sources I haven't seen. I'm usually willing to have polite discussions or answer questions. I'm also willing to stand corrected if people actually can prove me wrong with sources attached. A 'nuhn unh, Solas lies cause I believe he does', won't get you far with me.) Nor will using anything from DAV to support an argument. I've relegated DAV to the graveyard of not-canon because of the complete disrespect of the Lore.

And I'll just laugh at you if you try to attack me. Internet randos filling my responses with shit doesn't phase me, bother me in the slightest, or make me upset. I find it incredibly, laugh out loud amusing because I've lived through so much more than that in my life.

[rederiswrites]

[read it on AO3]

It had been a week since they’d found D’Meta’s Crossing. A terrible, helpless week, in which they’d turned up no new leads, no next steps. No way to fight back against the vastness of this cruelty and destruction. A horrible emptiness and fatigue had crept into Arden’s every waking moment.

“I don’t know, Varric,” he said. “I just don’t–how can something so cruel exist? Why would any thinking creature do this?”

There was a moment of silence as Varric shifted in his cot, trying to sit up more. Arden got up quickly, arranging the pillows behind him, until Varric settled back with a nod of thanks.

“You know, I like to pretend I have a knack for words, but that’s one I can’t explain. People do a lot of evil. Sometimes they’re just so tangled up in their own hurts, they think they’re just protecting themselves. But this? I think this is something different.” Varric stopped, scratching his chin where the stubble was getting thick. “Solas said they were Blighted. Well, that’s like Corypheus. Like Meredith, at the end, given what we know about red lyrium. I think they were always cruel people. But the Blight made everything so much worse. And if that’s true–Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, they’ve been Blighted for thousands of years.”

On the floor next to Varric's cot, Arden put his head in his hands, pressing his palms against his eyes. He leaned into his hands hard, trying to gain an inch to think. Maker, why couldn’t he just think?

“I feel so…bad!” he finally burst out. “Varric, why do I feel so bad? What’s wrong with me? I can’t sleep, and I can’t wake up. I ache! And there’s this…this burning in my chest, and it just won’t go away. It’s like I could swallow it down but I can’t.” For a second, he felt himself shake, as if he were about to cry, but as always these past days, no tears came. “Am I Blighted? How would I know?”

“No,” said Varric. “No, I don’t think that’s it. Rook, you ever lost someone? Someone close?”

Arden looked up, confused. “I mean, my grandmother.”

“The one that called you ‘boy’ and liked to tell you they should’ve left you on the battlefield as a baby?” Arden nodded. “Yeah, not sure I’d call that someone really close, then,” Varric said dryly.

“Why? What’s that got to do with it?” Arden asked.

Varric sighed. “Because I think what you’re feeling is grief.”

The two of them sat in silence, the shadows of the room wrapping around them. Arden stared at Varric, but Varric was looking into the invisible distance, seeing who knew what.

“Grief?” It didn’t make sense. 

“Grief,” said Varric, “is a terrible thing. It eats everything around it. It drains you, body and soul. You feel it in your heart.”

Arden sat with that, eyes closed, and at last he felt the bloom of tears against his eyelids. He took a shaky breath.

“D’Meta’s Crossing. All those people. Children. There were children, in the–” he couldn’t say it, and couldn’t erase it. In the pulsing, tangled masses, amidst the boils and sickened roots. In the piles of dead, heaped up by the uncaring hands of people who had once loved them. “All dead. And how many more, Varric? How many dying right now, and I’m just sitting here, and I can’t even pull it together.”

“Yeah, that’s the grief. I’m sorry, Rook.”

“How…how do you manage? How do you live with it?” There were tears on Arden’s cheeks now, but it was no relief. “It’s crushing me!”

“I know. I know, kid. I’m sorry. It–” he broke off, closing his eyes for a minute. “It gets lighter, bit by bit. You go for stretches where you forget. Sometimes you wake up in the morning and it’s not the first thing you think about. But it’ll hit you again, out of nowhere. You just…get used to it.”

“It feels impossible.”

“Yeah, but people do it every day. And it’ll teach you something, too.”

“What’s that?” Arden asked.

“To value what you have, while you have it. To make sure you love things while they’re here.” Varric sighed again. “Especially if you didn’t do that before it was too late.”

It hurt so much. Arden took breath after breath, but every time it felt like he wouldn’t be able to take the next one.

“Nothing can ever be the way it was,” Arden choked out. The burning in his chest was so strong; it was agonizing. “Can we even stop them? Can we save anything? Varric–” and he said the name like a plea; please, please tell me it’ll be okay, but it can’t. It can’t be okay. “Varric, this is my fault.”

“Hey! Hey, look at me.” Arden obeyed, looking up at Varric, vision warped by the tears. “We’ve been over this. If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine. Well, mine and Solas’. You did what I asked you to.”

“What difference does intention make if it destroys so much!?” Arden was nearly shouting, now. “What I’ve let out–it’s worse than anything Solas was doing! At least he meant there to be a world left when he was done! This–this is going to destroy everything!”

“Okay, you want to talk about fault?” Varric snapped. “Let’s talk about fault, because we’ve been over all this before but I know you’re forgetting. Who was it that found that knife in the Deep Roads, back when it was red lyrium? Me. Who was there when we freed Corypheus? Me. Sure, I thought what I was doing was good then, too. How many people have died? Nobody can count. We’re still fighting the red lyrium. Maybe we always will be. I’m too old to pretend about this, Rook. Almost every damned time something went straight to the Void in the last twenty years, I was right there in the middle. So do you hate me?”

“No!” 

“What about Solas? His ritual. His dagger. His war, that we’ve gotten sucked into thousands of years later. Do you hate him?”

“I don’t…I don’t think so? I mean, we’ve seen what he was fighting. I don’t even know what to think, any more.” Arden swiped a sleeve across his nose, trying to stop sniveling like a child. “I don’t know, any more.”

“We didn’t create all this cruelty, Rook. We just…tripped over it, I guess you could say. Tore the wound open. And maybe I should hate myself. And maybe some days I do. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. A lot of really big mistakes.” Varric stopped, taking a deep breath. “Maybe that’s why I don’t want to give up on Solas, who knows.”

“Varric, no–” Arden ached. Varric almost never opened up like this, and it was terrible to see.

“But you aren’t one of those mistakes, kid. You’re one of the best decisions I ever made.” Varric nodded to himself. “And I know that you’ll find a way through this.”

“How?”

“For now? One step at a time. Just figure out the next step, Rook. It’ll get easier once you’re moving.”

[deimosatellite]

like idk it just seems actually nefarious to take one of the very few widely known instances of queerness in older history being a symbol to show queer people that we've always existed and aren't alone for CENTURIES and taking away the queerness from it. like. i know some people say that ''the queerness isnt important in the book" which i mean in my opinion i could go off for 10k words in an essay as to how basil's love for dorian is integral to the story BUT EVEN APART from that its really just. having a real explicitly queer character in such an old and widely regarded classic novel is HUGE for queer history and this is just. literally like. its 2024. why are you doing queer erasure to DORIAN GRAY

[ropebunnykant]

i fear the ending of agatha all along is once again making people confuse “i didn’t like the ending/the ending made me sad” with “that was bad writing”

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Outdrawn

f/f contemporary romance

two cartoonist who’ve been rivals since uni, and now have competing webcomics online, have to work together on the relaunch of a cult classic at the comic press they both work at

they both struggle with art-related physical and mental health issues, and complicated families

[brick-van-dyke]

If there's one thing I've respectively noticed from Zionists and defenders of Israeli war crimes, it's that every source, argument and potential avenue to explore each explanation is riddled with cherry picking, moving the goalposts and mental gymnastics to explain why their conclusions, which typically are barely even related to the sources they use, somehow overshadow literal reality and what we see with our own eyes.

While scrolling, one example I came across was the repetitive misrepresentation of BLM, antifa and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, as well as statistics, scholarly journal articles and government website information. These are all good sources, yet every single time they're mangled completely until the only possible "interpretation" of any of them is "well Israel is right to defend itself after shorting rockets beforehand because the retaliation was brutal and all Arabs are bad by default therefore". As if any of these sources are even about individual exceptions of Israel versus hatred towards Arabs.

I think what I find most absurd, as someone in the middle of their own studies, is how every bit of critical thinking and logic goes out the window as they do every single thing possible to do what professors worldwide say NOT to do when evaluating sources. It's like watching a race to see who can tangle and misconstrue scientific information to fit their world view the fastest. Then said people say "um actually I studied at university before so it's actually not wrong that I'm doing this exact this everyone is warned not to do because I have a permit". Ignorance I can forgive, but willful and arrogant manipulation? That's another thing entirely.

[daviesroyal]

Whenever I think about the sentiment that the Dragon Age games have declined since Origins, this is the kind of reasoning I come back to. 2 and Inquisition may have improved in some ways, mostly technical, but there's been a creeping hesitance to engage with the complexity of the world they built.

That's not to say I don't enjoy those games, or that I think they're somehow "unworthy" of being in the same franchise as Origins; 2 almost beats out Origins as my favorite DA game, and I actually enjoy the open world and expanded politics of Inquisition.

What bothers me is that, as the player character, you are given less and less agency to engage with the world. Inquisition is especially bad at this, and I keep saying that all the warning signs for Veilguard were in Inquisition. How much can you really push back and challenge companions? Why can't I interrogate Cullen about his past as a Templar instead of being given a couple vague lines and no further dialogue options? Why do I have to keep him as commander when he's obviously struggling with his addiction and even wants to leave? Why is it we only have a shallow conversation or two with Dorian about slavery, instead of constantly being able to bring it up like he needles Bull about the Qun? Why can't we ask Bull a lot more questions about the Qun? Why can't we challenge Vivienne's assertions about Circles, or the Dalish mages, things she says as absolute fact yet can clearly be disputed? Why can't we talk to Sera about her internalized racism, without being snide or dismissive or cruel? Why is it, when you discover the cure for tranquility with Cassandra, you don't even get to suggest that it should be given to the mages, especially if you know what the Occularum are?

I like that these are questions sparked at all, but the fact that as the player character I am not allowed to push, to keep asking, to explore this world, is off-putting after Origins. An RPG, in general, should not just allow but encourage you to engage with the world it has built.

Inquisition also had a lot of binary choices to make, even when it came to companions and determining complex solutions (looking at Cole's whole questline) whereas the previous two games offered a lot more nuance. There's multiple paths, with good and bad consequences, and sometimes you have to dig deeper to find a good solution - acting in haste can lead to poor outcomes. Inquisition tried to erase the complexity from choices, and that was exacerbated in Veilguard. I'm trying to think of a single decision in that game where you had more than two different outcomes. Sometimes (a lot of the time) it was the same outcome with different flavors. (The ending has three different flavors! Is Solas alone in the Fade, with Rook, or with a romanced Lavellan?)

I can't tell if Bioware was becoming increasingly aware of the kind of story they were telling, the kind of critical analysis of both their stories and their motivations as creators and as a studio they were opening themselves up to, and decided to make Veilguard as "uncritical" as possible - or if they genuinely thought this was what people wanted. Unchallenging, insubstantial fluff to escape from the dark world we live in.

Veilguard, to me, is the game equivalent of cotton candy. Dragon Age 4 deserved better than this.

i feel like all of my pondering and analyzing and criticizing veilguard over the past few months has actually truly given me a better understanding of what dragon age meant to me, what about it specifically was so meaningful, and why, as a result, veilguard felt so wrong. it took a while for me to figure it out. about three full months of relentless essay writing, actually. but i think if you had asked me a few years ago what the core of my love for dragon age was, whatever answer i gave would not have truly gotten to the root of it, because i think i had to experience the disappointment of veilguard to fully understand why i love dragon age. and ive realized that core is that i loved how the previous dragon age entries demand so much of the player, and deliberately prompt introspection and critical, often political, thought.

dragon age games have historically forced the player to be self-reflective and introspective about their worldview and beliefs. solas is obviously a fantastic example, as he was deliberately written to be a reflection of the player in order to prompt them to reflect on how they treat people, how our expectations of people influence their behavior, and how people are pushed to extremes and turned into monsters or saved by love and kindness. how do people become monsters? what drives them to blow up buildings or start rebellions or destroy the world as you know it? are they right or wrong? does it even matter? how did you contribute to this? are you innocent? it puts these insane, politically and morally charged situations in your face and forces you to confront them. slavery, a refugee crisis, poverty, class disparities, racism, foreign occupation, the list goes on, and you are not given the option to look away or be a bystander. you have to ACT. you have to choose, you have to make judgements, you have to take responsibility and explore your role in this world as someone with the capacity to act upon it, to make your will a reality, to fail, to make mistakes. i honestly can't think of any other video game that does this to the same extent? nor any media at all because the act of being IN the world as one of it's people through the act of role-playing is essential to how it provokes this experience in the player. its ballsy. they deliberately try to make you uncomfortable. these games are full of liars, deceivers, betrayers. the games themselves lie to you. its character try to deceive you. did you catch it? or were you fooled? what else might you be fooled by? who else might be lying to you? in the game? in real life? and then you get to play it again knowing the end, and what the game prompts changes with your new knowledge. now it asks, do you forgive them? what makes someone worthy of forgiveness? where do you draw the line? what do you think?

i dont think i realized until recently how impactful this was for me considering how i first got into dragon age at 16 years old. i dont think i had experienced anything up to that point that would put a situation like judging a war criminal who ordered the deaths of children or another war criminal who just left me to die and orchestrated a near-coup or a traumatized terrorist who just blew up a church right in my face, and said MAKE A DECISION. and i didnt know it at the time, but looking back i can see how valuable it was for me at that age to have what was effectively an avenue of exploration and self-expression of all of these moral and political issues that i was grappling with as a young adult. i played inquisition for the first time just months before i voted in my first presidential primary. i already had a political consciousness at this point, but it was nonetheless new and vulnerable and still blossoming into something more concrete. inquisition, then, almost provided a sort of political, moral and personal sandbox for me from ages 16-20 to better help me understand myself in relation to the world. the RPG-ness allowed me to put myself into these situations - like the mage-templar war and its metaphor for mass incarceration and police brutality - while i was also simultaneously grappling with and trying to understand these issues in real life. having dragon age to help me further unpack my own beliefs and conception of these issues was undeniably impactful. it provided a space, through a narrative i enjoyed and cared about, to make choices and judgement calls and better understand who i was, and what felt right to me. it asked, "what do you think?"

veilguard lacks this. completely. and lets be clear that the previous games did not always do a perfect job. many of these depictions are messy and harmful and problematic, but they at least, by extension of their own existence in a narrative that forces you to THINK and JUDGE and DECIDE, give me the space and opportunity to judge them as messy, as problematic, as harmful. i can confidently say that i think da2 is too sympathetic to the templars as an organization because the fact that da2 presents me with so many narrative conflicts regarding the templar organization allows me to not just make in-game decisions and play as a staunch advocate for mage freedom and circle abolition, but to form opinions on the game itself by extension. i can confidently say that i believe the qunari's portrayal is islamophobic because the game has prompted me so many times; what do i think about the qunari? what do i think about the oppression of the elves? what do i think about dorian being a seemingly good person but defending the practice of slavery? who should rule orzammar; the progressive asshole or the conservative traditionalist? do i forgive loghain? do i forgive anders? do i forgive solas? this in-world critical thinking about issues in thedas leads to meta critical thinking. further questions naturally follow -> what message did the writers intend to send through anders? how can i notice the echoes of how this story came into fruition in the shadow of 9/11? what do solas's endings tell me about the writers view of retributive punishment? how is bioware's portrayal of the dalish, as inspired by indigenous north americans, reflective of deep-seated anti-indigenous canadian sentiment? why did the writers stop prompting these hard questions at all in veilguard? did they only like it when it was about characters, not when it led to critical thinking about them and the company as a whole? through these processes of in-world interrogation, i am inevitably invited to analyze the effectiveness of their narrative portrayals and the writing itself. perhaps this is why dragon age is so famous for its discourse lol.

ive said before that im not sure that veilguard could ever have been as impactful for me as the previous games, partly because when you are 16 everything is more impactful because your brain is an eager sponge, unless it did something that really resonated with me as an adult. but what it should have been, at the very least, is something that could have been as impactful and formative on a current 16 year old that sees a gif on tumblr and decides to check out the game, as inquisition was to me 10 years ago. and im sure there are teenagers and younger adults out there playing this game and loving it and loving the characters and the world and thinking its great, good fun. thats great. however it fundamentally cannot have the same profound, developmentally catalytic experience it had on me because it simply does not challenge the player. it does not prompt them to question their own beliefs and the power structures within their lives. it does not prompt them to reflect on the political narratives they may have been fed all their lives. it does not confront them with the sorts of topics that get books on banned lists in florida and force them to bear witness, to think deeper, to feel guilt or horror at the outcome of your own poorly-made decision, to make moral judgements, to make mistakes, and to live with the consequences.

i think i now understand why veilguard was so disappointing to me and ultimately would be a failure in my eyes no matter if i enjoyed the combat or the exploration or whatever other shiny coat of paint sits atop it. veilguard does not ask much of you. it does not prompt any sort of introspection or interrogation of your presently held beliefs. it does not demand anything from the player except to dodge at the right moment. this is a fundamental, core departure from what made me fall in love with dragon age in the first place. if you love dragon age because you want "fantasy escapism" and fun characters to smooch, then i am happy for you. but i would remind you that can find fantasy escapism all over the steam library - farming sims, cozy games, a witch looking for her cat in the alps, etc. what you cannot find are games that are willing and brave enough to challenge and provoke the player into a better, more thorough understanding of themselves in relation to our world and it's many, complex and daunting political and moral issues. to have lost such a thing, when media like this has become so few and far between, and during a time when we need it more than ever, is a devastating loss.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

@ducktoothcollection (I can't tag you for some reason!) replied to this post:

I haven’t seen it before! Where is it from?

The quote is from the book Epistemology of the Closet, by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, from the introductory section "Axiomatic". In one part of this chapter, Sedgwick lays out a series of "axioms" for the different ways in which people might engage with or conceive of sexuality, as examples of the ways in which our current taxonomic systems of understanding sexual orientation or sexuality are not necessarily sufficient for conceptualizing the multitude of ways people can align or diverge from each other re: sexuality. Or, to put it another way, people who are categorized as having the same sexual orientation can have sharply different attitudes towards sex and sexuality, approaches to sexual practice, etc - and people under different taxonomic labels can have surprising points of commonality.

The list itself has been very soothing and affirming to me in lots of ways, and I feel comfortable saying it has been for others as well. It's kind of a breath of fresh air in the same way much of her work is for me. Transcription of the list under the cut:

Even identical genital acts mean very different things to different people. To some people, the nimbus of “the sexual” seems scarcely to extend beyond the boundaries of discrete genital acts; to others, it enfolds them loosely or floats virtually free of them. Sexuality makes up a large share of the self-perceived identity of some people, a small share of others’. Some people spend a lot of time thinking about sex, others little. Some people like to have a lot of sex, others little or none. Many people have their richest mental/emotional involvement with sexual acts that they don’t do, or even don’t want to do. For some people, it is important that sex be embedded in contexts resonant with meaning, narrative, and connectedness with other aspects of their life; for other people, it is important that they not be; to others it doesn’t occur that they might be. For some people, the preference for a certain sexual object, act, role, zone, or scenario is so immemorial and durable that it can only be experienced as innate; for others, it appears to come late or to feel aleatory or discretionary. For some people, the possibility of bad sex is aversive enough that their lives are strongly marked by its avoidance; for others, it isn’t. For some people, sexuality provides a needed space of heightened discovery and cognitive hyperstimulation. For others, sexuality provides a needed space of routinized habituation and cognitive hiatus. Some people like spontaneous sexual scenes, others like highly scripted ones, others like spontaneous-sounding ones that are nonetheless totally predictable. Some people’s sexual orientation is intensely marked by autoerotic pleasures and histories—sometimes more so than by any aspect of alloerotic object choice. For others the autoerotic possibility seems secondary or fragile, if it exists at all. Some people, homo-, hetero-, and bisexual, experience their sexuality as deeply embedded in a matrix of gender meanings and gender differentials. Others of each sexuality do not.

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Still haven't messaged my mom back. And I don't think I'm going to.

[tempestmothstorm]

Thinking about human versions of the tadc gang. I think they would work great in The Office (they would suffer immensely)

[sysig]

New toys ✨ (Patreon)

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i feel like i should start making more of an effort, when i talk about something in a piece of media being Upsetting to me, to distinguish between 'cathartic' upsetting and 'gave me psychic damage' upsetting. sometimes i mean OUGH OW MY FEELINGS THIS FUCKS ME UP IN A MEANINGFUL AND RESONANT WAY, MY LIFE IS ENRICHED FOR BECOMING AWARE OF IT and sometimes i mean that it is genuinely distressing and i want to shake the creators and ask what the fuck they were thinking

[punkshitposts]

something I think is actually hilarious is that if you go left enough you start having more stances in common with (individual) conservatives, and if you go right enough you start agreeing with (individual) leftists. like i have a pretty close friend who's self described as "just far enough right that I hate politicians" , whom I hard disagree with his overarching political stances. but the finer details of it... yeah we agree with each other. gun control/gun rights opinions taxation opinions pro-small government opinions slight separatist opinions anti two party opinions anti-corporation opinion ect ect ect.

we stand on opposite sides of a standard political compass but I genuinely think if I were to count stats, I'd agree with as many of his stances as I would a liberals/democrats stances. my hs gov teacher described the difference in right vs left to us as "everyone's goal here is the betterment of mankind, they just think the best ways to do it are different" and that's literally the best way, to me, to describe what the difference in right vs left is regarding anarchism specifically. we got ESSENTIALLY the same opinion but the ways we think are the best ways to go about enacting said opinion are what makes us different. and something abt that is really painfully funny to me. envisioning a world where an-something is the major world thing, not capitalism.... and there's STILL right vs left... but The Anarchist Versions. christ.

sorry for the book i wrote in the tags. ignore typos I am NOT retyping any of that to fix them xoxo

[snekdood]

im not gonna act like its as severe as hindutvas make it out to be but if you deny hinduphobia exists you're just a dumbass i think

[byanyan]

oops, got myself thinking again about byan having a little hoard of weird and random trinkets and shiny things hidden away under their bed in the same way that some cats have collections of bottle caps under furniture.

like, none of it is particularly meaningful and they don't wear any of the jewelry that's under there, but they like to pull it all out once in a while to look at and are always adding more

[roughentumble]

There is no justice for Junpei since his gf trapped him in a murder game twice and never apologised for giving him horrendous PTSD and somehow it feels like everyone except for me is just chill with it

[999/zero escape spoilers for anyone who cares]

i am actually also one of those people that thinks its fun and sexy that akane is off the walls and a conspiracy theorist and trapped him in a death game, sorry 😔 but i agree that he literally does Not get enough love or attention from the fandom, i really like junpei's character, and akane literally couldve picked ANYONE to be the pivotal person but it was junpei she knew, junpei she trusted, it was junpei who cared enough to pull through. he kept fighting no matter what!!! he was funny and nice and tenacious. like she was a little tiny baby girl who was going to die and she screamed out to the universe for help, and he heard her and he reached back for her.... even tho he was about to die too........ how could junpei's love for akane not rewrite your brainnnnn it was so GOOD. that's jumpy!!!! my best friend jumpy!!!!