#blame it on EA!

[obigem]

Later that morning, Cordie had met up with Zella in the resource center where the two decided to make friendship bracelets. It had clearly been ages since anyone touch those crafting kits as billows of dust errupted from each box as they got to work.

As they worked, they chatted, getting to know each other even better.

"No way! So you have to mamas?" Cordie said incredulously.

"Kind of. There's my mom and then my step-mom, Gem."

"Hmm, I don't think I'd like it much if my mama was doubled." Cordie pondered.

"Well, she's not really doubled. Gem isn't like my mom, she feels more like a big sister."

"Oh, well that could be cool, I guess. But I think I'd still miss having a daddy."

"I have a daddy, he just doesn't live with us anymore."

"Why not?"

Zella shrugged. "They'd fight all the time, and then one day he wasn't there anymore and my mom told me they were getting divorced."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"It's OK. It happened when I was 4, so I'm used to it. I used to see my dad on weekends, but when my mom married Gem, we moved."

"He's a contractor and does a lot of work in San Myshuno, but Evergreen Harbor is pretty far from there, so sometimes it's months before I see him."

"I'd hate to go months without seeing my daddy."

"Yeah. Sometimes I wish I could live with him, but my mom says he isn't stable."

"Stable?"

"I don't really know what it means either. I like living with my mom and Gem, but sometimes I wish I could be with my dad. Especially to get away from the bullies at my school."

"Are they really mean?"

"They make fun of me a lot for liking bugs and science stuff."

"My mom asks me all the time if I'm OK with everything. I think she feels bad for moving us far and all the changes in the last few years. I don't wanna make her feel bad, so I tell her things are fine. She thinks I have tons of friends, but the truth is I don't really."

"But it's OK. Mimic and Metronome are the only friends I need."

"Mimic and Metronome?"

"My crickets! I keep them in a terrarium. I talk to them and they chrip back. They're super cute and the only friends I've got."

"Not your only friends. I'm your friend now too!"

"Really?"

"Of course!"

"But after camp, you'll probably forget about me." Zella got shy.

"Never! We can friend each other on Social Bunny and exchange numbers to call and text. Camp friends are for life!"

Zella smiled so warmly, Cordie could tell she was happy to be friends.

"So…is it OK if I give my friendship bracelet to you?" Zella asked shyly.

"You wanna give it to me?"

"Well, yeah. Mimic and Metronome don't really have wrists."

"I'd love to accept it!" Cordie smiled.

But just then their excitement was interrupted.

"FRIENDSHIP BRACELETS?!"

[moonhze]

anadius has made it so so easy and safe for people to obtain ts4 and all of its packs without paying for them and i really wish more people knew about this bc the only way to get EA to pay attention to the terrible state of the game is to literally stop giving them money, 🏴‍☠️ the packs to keep playing the game u enjoy but know they only care about appeasing their shareholders/investors/whatever they are and they're all driven by money and have very little interest in the playable state of the game in terms of bugs and features unless the game is so broken that people are actively demanding refunds in mass or just not buying the packs at all.

[gikairan]

More than ever, i feel like executives should be the first people in a corporate structure to see a pay cut before any employee is laid off

THAT is where the wasteful spend is. In CEO and other executive suite salaries. The actual people making the product being sold arent the waste

[agirlking]

The Veilguard subreddit has not heard of critical thinking or expecting quality out of something you pay for. It is insane over there. "It's not bad at all! GoTY!" Holy shit.

Btw this post isn’t for anti Solavellan people. Stop blaming us for liking a ship and acting like that made DA4 what it is. BioWare has been on a downward spiral for a long time, the game was in development hell, and many people were fired. The fans mindlessly giving them money right now (who are NOT only Solavellans) are contributing to future issues by giving them a pass, but even they didn’t create these problems.

[scaryanneee]

I finished Veilguard!

After the cut is my very quick and completely vibes-based review. No spoilers. 💜

Veilguard is like… a declawed cat.

Still cute, still a cat! But missing all of the sharp edges it’s supposed to have. The claws that make it cat-like.

And that’s not the cat’s fault - clearly people who didn’t love or care very much about the cat came in and mangled it at some point, probably in an attempt to make the cat palatable to more people. They’ve been trying to get someone to adopt this cat for like 10 years, after all. And I’d much rather the cat be declawed than like, put down, I guess???

But it means that the experience of the game was that it’s pretty bittersweet to have to just watch it… limping around. And I wonder what it could’ve been like if the people at EA, with their very misguided and profit-based ideas about cat-rearing, had never gotten ahold of it.

Don’t get me wrong - despite all this, it’s still SUCH a friendly, sweet cat. Still recognizable as a cat we know and love. But I liked the cat’s claws!! And all the unique cat stuff it did! And I really wish that hadn’t been taken away.

[ayrennaranaaldmeri]

Deeply sorry (not really though) to say this but there is no way in hell EA told Bioware to put all the stupid shit they put into their stupid game or interfered to the extent that the game has all these aggressive flaws because EA.

[zombolouge]

guys i don't think Bioware is doing very well

[eta-volantis]

There has been quite a lot of conversations (and discourse but we're ignoring that) around whether Neve/Lucanis ship was well done/well implemented/etc. and I think my conclusion is yes. It is, in fact, a good ship. The problem isn't them.

What I suspect happened is that Neve/Lucanis ship was the intention, but what came later than city choice is the romance blocker. As we have now found, the previous intention is that both Lucanis and Neve is meant to have hardened romance routes through existing (and fully rendered and voiced) game files. I can't remember the source, but there was also dev talks around city choice being a late addition and from the fact that Lucanis hardened romance has cutscenes I'd say the blocker came even later. I'd be surprised if they rendered and voiced them and have them in game if the block was the original intention. And what I also suspect is that when Neve/Lucanis ship was written, Rook and Neve like every other companion/NPC ship were very much on equal grounds of reconciliation if the relationship were to continued to be pursued. Neither are better for him, they were simply different people that can forge a relationship with him in different ways.

When the city choice and blocker was introduced, it causes a lot of problems with existing content that was not written with that in mind. Which is a lot, actually, Neve/Lucanis ship included. Quite a few things were probably rewritten and added, but many things were also missed because as much as people keep saying there are not enough choices, the effect around just what we have on the game narrative is vast in practice. Especially with Rook having 6 possible backgrounds that all affect in game dialogues quite massively, not even including racial and mage additional dialogues. It's why it feels so jarring on Shadow Dragons Rook choosing Minrathous and why parts of his route feels inconsistent. (Hearing Ivenci talk at Shadow Dragons Rook who saved Minrathous at the final Treviso quests almost actually made me laugh tbh guilt-tripping someone loyal and dedicated to their home by telling them how loyal and dedicated they themself are to their home and how dare Rook isn't loyal to Treviso is... something.) I think they had ideas and intentions around the blocker and it's not just something they added because [insert ridiculous reasons here]. Essentially, the emotional turmoil and conflict with Rook that comes out of that is actually an interesting idea to explore but because dev hell and time, it is likely left as it is, which is unfinished in terms of the dev's vision and what they want to do with it.

The Neve/Lucanis ship isn't bad and/or preferred. It's everything around it being changed without going through the rest with a fine tooth comb to iron out kinks like Shadow Dragons Rook having their background entirely ignored so many times when the city choice comes up despite the place they saved is their home and not just some random place that causes the issues. The writers didn't prefer Neve/Lucanis because when it was originally written, it is likely that Rook and Neve were on equal grounds. Stuff like this just goes to show how difficult choice based RPGs are to make imo, any changes that you think are small and little things that you may think are negligible can end up affecting things that are narratively important or player experience. And with EA constantly trying to gut Bioware and firing people mid-production while the studio is developing 2 new games for their biggest IPs, it's a miracle the game is as good as it is.

[nightmareonpeachstreet]

After 40 minutes of cooing and coddling, Arlecchino finally gets Furina to tell her why she’s been crying all morning

It’s because the House of the Hearth kids gave her a Mother’s Day present and she was so overwhelmed by happiness she had no choice but to wail in the closet for two and a half hours

[joplays]

I love apex women, love their style, their lore, their skins, but there's one thing i hate... spaghetti arms. Because what do you mean RAMPART a mecanic that literally holds a minigun with her bare arms and MAGGIE a REVOLUTIONARY LEADER THAT HAS BEEN FIGHTING SINCE SHE WAS 12 has this fucking arms???

This also goes for all the other Legends like Valky, Wraith, Horizon, Bangalore etc..

[butchvamp]

i absolutely understand there was no way to account for every single choice ever made-- that's literally impossible across so many games and so many years and so many changes. i do, however, think that 3 games worth of established lore should be worth something and like.... addressed. there are always going to be things that are retconned over time, i even said previously that i liked some of the changes around the qunari that happened back in inquisition because it felt like a step in the right direction and finally fleshing them out and establishing their culture in a meaningful way. but that's not what's happening in veilguard. they do the opposite. with everyone, the qunari and the elves and the dwarves and even the humans. they get reduced to generic, bland, homogeneous, nonreligious groups that all get along amongst themselves. the dalish elves are either just dead in the background (which to be fair has always been a consistent feature of these games lol) or absorbed into the veil jumpers, who are a huge mix of humans and qunari and elves, etc. kal-sharok gets literally Nothing despite one of the main companion quests taking place there-- there are no dwarven politics like we've seen previously, the kal-sharok aren't even especially isolationist nor do they take any time to explore their proximity to tevinter (and what they did to keep trading with them), or the blight and darkspawn (and how it's changed them and their relationship to orzammar). the qunari are all antaam, just faceless bodies for rook and co to kill because they needed more enemy variety, and what we do see with shathann and taash does not cohere with what we've learned previously about gender in the qun. the chantry is basically nonexistent despite two games setting up this massive conflict between mages and templars, despite veilguard literally revolving around massive revelations of faith… and i know we're in northern thedas so the chantry and templars do function differently, but our only two templars we get a lot of interactions with are "good guys" (and rana specifically can get up on her high horse about it with neve with no option for us to give her the third degree like she's not a fantasy cop whose coworkers are paid off by rich magisters lol) like... these are huge, glaring changes that do not align with a lot of what we've seen in previous games and also have nothing to do with complex branching choices.

[star--nymph]

Get home early, get cosy in bed, take a nice little nap, have some mashed potatoes, makes some tea for myself

then sit drown and start reading the Veilguard AMA with the same expression as an old war veteran who is seeing a second war being put into motion as we speak

[phantomsies]

my last time speaking on this bc I’m back to my smut and stupid shit afterwards (cause yk this is my safe space 🤪😜🫶🏾👍🏾) , but I’m genuinely scared, not just for this presidency but my local leadership too. Hence why I always make such an emphasis on it. I live in a small town and it’s very much class/racially divided. The sheriff (a white woman btw but a woman nonetheless) has been actively trying to harass and run everyone from my side of town. She pretty much wrote off this area as a bunch of drug addicts and says ‘she hopes we all just kill each other’. (My family has never done, sold or even been around drugs and yet her dumbass cops are convinced bc we’re black with nice vehicles, that we must sell). She’s also pushing for the gentrification of our area so all of her rich cohorts can come and tear down our houses and build a suburbia. Just the other day, a cop made me move my vehicle from in front of a store I park at all the time bc im disabled and even the closest parking spot is far on this leg and he did it just to be an asshole. I can’t even cry abt this presidency yet bc I’m now worried that my local leaders are going to make our lives hell. Not to mention, they voted no on abortions and gender affirming care as well. I hate it here so fucking bad.

[silentgrim]

lil dinner date w their daughter!

[sifloopboning]

kingedfrin anon hi hello ive been thinking about it all day pretty much because im normal. anyway wrt you talking about him manipulating sif to do whatever.... it wouldn't even be that hard. it would not take all that much. he could take a ridiculously soft approach and still end up with siffrin doing literally anything for him because that freak has low self esteem and honestly might idealize the concept of a codependent relationship because he likes feeling useful and needed and shit. straight up desperate for attention & affection. as long as king strokes their hair every once in a while while they're choking on it, they'd get down on their knees for him every single time he asked without fail. do you see the vision here.

I SEE THE VISION LIKE ITS KINGS 1HITKO ATTACK. thats what im fucking talking about like exactly!!!! itd be so so so so easy! even in canon where he has the party sif has ZERO standards as to how they should be treated! so if they met pre-party theres no fucking way sif wouldnt do or become anything king wants so long as he is giving them bare minimum attention and affection! manipulating that gay little traveler is like easy baby mode even for like. an average person who isnt necessarily inclined to do things like that. for king? it'd be easy as breathing.

i started elaborating further and it turned into a small king analysis before i even got to siffrin so. im actually gonna make that a reblog addition to this ask in a minute bc its wordy and has pictures.

anyways hard agree with everything you said. i know king could get sif to do literally anything and everything for him with the promise of love and affection, providing a sense of security/safety in terms of being cared about (even if no one cares about or wants sif, so long as they're trying their best for him, king always will), and giving them a reason to keep going. like tbh i think he could get sif to a point where the sexual shit is nothing. im giving an example under readmore bc its well. a heavy topic and appropriately fucked up for this whole thing:

off the top of my head in these specific circumstances, i have no doubt that king could get sif to the point that he could break every one of their limbs one by one and have them thank him for it. because king wouldn't have bothered to do that if he didn't care about and for siffrin in some way. he wouldn't do that if he didn't like or want siffrin, whether it's for him as a person, his origins / common roots with king, or even just his body. he wouldn't be so determined to keep them with him so much that he's willing to go to such extreme lengths to just to keep siffrin with him. even though (in sifs mind) siffrin is stupid, disgusting, pathetic, clingy, needy, and has no inherent value beyond what little he can do to be of use.

so! something as worthless as siffrin should be grateful to be so very cherished by someone as smart, powerful, and driven as king that he'd even bother to prevent them from leaving. hurting sif isn't a punishment; it's a lesson and an expression of love. it's a gift. so siffrin really should appreciate it. he should be thankful. after all, the pain and fear king makes siffrin feel while disciplining him is what makes the love, gentle affection, and comfort king gives him in the aftermath so euphoric. because it means siffrin has earned that love and care by paying his dues for his mistakes! it means they're forgiven, it means they're beloved, and most importantly, it means they know for a fact that he will never, ever be alone like before ever again. whether they like it or not!

[skaterboisims]

Watching simblr fight with the wall for the past couple days lmao