#but i've already rambled too much lol

[noverturemusings]

So.... How are we about dav?

We are processing it for sure... Had to think about this ask for a bit.

I don't have the game and can't play it for a long while yet so I've just been receiving second-hand information, and watching my partner stream it (we're technically playing together since I'm picking the dialogue options with them...?) So I'm still trying to get as much as I can about it and then sitting with it.

I know some people have been having an absolute blast, while some have already told me they're disappointed and/or upset. I'm glad people are enjoying it and feel satisfied with the story, that's amazing. It's been a needed closure for sure after ten years. On my end, I'm personally a little underwhelmed.

Because look, I can see the creative direction, and I can see the messages and themes and all these beautiful narrative frameworks that the writers wanted to convey. I can see the story they wanted to tell, but the execution has suffered because the writing couldn't hold it up. Which is a shame because Dragon Age has always shone with its writing. It hasn't always been perfect but it's been solid. I've already been apprehensive and worried because of all the layoffs and turnovers, and I can definitely feel it in the final product.

I'm gonna ramble for a bit, I'll put it under a read more. Woe, spoilers ahead, including the ending!

Everything feels too clean, I'd say, which has been a common criticism for this game and I do agree with it. Dragon Age hasn't always been perfect with it, but it's still presented a lot of its conflicts in a morally grey light. It facilitated discussion (and discourse) about the characters' actions and motivations. But Veilguard's been very didactic about what you should feel. "This is bad, look how bad it is. We think this is bad. This is so bad. We don't condone this."

It feels like the game is backpedalling so hard out of fear that something will be presented "wrong" or that it will be problematic, and this ends up stripping the narrative and characters of their nuance to the point that it starts feeling generic and lifeless.

I've also noted the handholding in the dialogue but I've been told it eases up some later on in the game so there's that at least. I know it's to cater to new players, but at points you end up feeling like the game thinks you're a goldfish with short-term memory loss.

There's so much telling too in the dialogue. Off the top of my head, an example would be the point when you're first approaching D'Meta's Crossing and Bellara notes that this port used to be busy and so forth and it's always busy and then Neve remarks something isn't right. The dialogue feels clunky to me here. Yes, I can see that. The environment is already doing the storytelling. I can see crates and fresh produce and stacks of bags along the port. I can infer it used to be busy. You've set up this uneasy lighting and fog and desaturation so you feel something isn't right. Your environment is showing the story, so rely on it a bit more. There's no need to double down on it.

But again, this is just the first bit of the game, and maybe it gets better.

Then you have Mythal. Oh, Mythal. You are so interesting, so tragic, and so complex. But something about how her character was executed felt so... scattered? Something's nagging at me. Her character doesn't feel fully realised. I still have to get my thoughts in order about her, this is already getting too long lol.

I'm also baffled as to why the Inquisitor doesn't play a greater role. I honestly thought they would since this is a direct continuation of Inquisition. They're the reason Rook was even recruited by Varric in the first place.

Honestly, a lot of past choices just feel like they don't matter at all, which is also a shame because that's another charm to Dragon Age. You get to see this world that you've built over the course of the games, but that's just. Not here. I guess. Oh, and the Crows are good now, apparently? Did they go through a reform since Zevran's time or something...?

Look, I have a lot more thoughts on the game regarding other points, but maybe that's for another day. Can't reliably comment on the companions either as I haven't explored a lot of their stories yet.

Don't get me wrong, Veilguard has its strong points too. The environments are absolutely gorgeous and Ghilan'nain has a chokehold on me but that's just my love of body horror and female scientists who've thrown the book of ethics into the bin showing.

Also, FELASSAN. My boy!! I get to see and hear my favourite novel character at last! I'm so happy I got it right that he was a soldier. Got the rank wrong; he's a general, not a lieutenant, but close enough haha. His voice for sure surprised me but I loved it.

It's also so interesting to see the Dread Wolf side of Solas. He's not trying to hide anymore. Except, he still is. In Inquisition, the humble apostate was his armour. Now, it's the Wolf. It's a very fascinating intersection. The Solas we see now is running on fumes and desperation and has presumably been isolated for a decade (also, where the fuck are his agents??) and he's pulling out every trick he knows in the book just to get his goal done.

And the endings? Well, they're okay. I know some are happy with it, some not so. I'm lukewarm about them... I did enjoy the tension and I think 'satisfying' is a word I could use for it. But satisfying in the sense of "yeah okay, I'll take it". I can see the destination, and I can appreciate it, but the strength of the writing needed to get there didn't quite reach for me. Could've been way worse though (saw the alternate in the artbook for Veilguard), so small mercies with what we got.

A few parts shine for me still. I love Solas' body language in front of Mythal when she shows up. He looks so broken. It's so TELLING. That, for me, did so much more to convey their dynamic than the murals, I think. I also loved when Solas gets outwitted by Rook and he does that bitter chuckle and calls himself a fool. Delicious. Gareth David-Lloyd fucking killed it yet again with his voice acting in this game. I was also reminded a little of Loki's ending. Trickster god in a green realm and upholding the structure of the world anyone?

But yeah. Look, do I think Veilguard is a bad game? No, not at all. It's got its strengths and again, I can see the creative ambitions the writers wanted to get at, but it just wasn't fully realised. Likely due to all the complications during development. I think it's a good game if it's standing on its own. But as the fourth game in the franchise? It's mid for me...

Again, I'm genuinely happy for the people who are enjoying it and think it's delivered everything they've ever wanted. I'm also happy for the people who feel seen with the exploration of gender and identities in the game, and those whose headcanons have been confirmed. That's such a fantastic feeling. Definitely did a little dance myself at the whole "blight was sealed away" and "Solas was a spirit" confirmation, though those ones, I feel, were among the more obvious ones haha.

Let's be real though. We all know what the real best parts of the game are.

Assan and Manfred.

[lunarharp]

played dragon age 2...just simple scribbles

[sysig]

for requestober ! my heart's been aching for yanderapy for a while and i would like to get something about them :3 i don't have a specific prompt . i do like to see them more on the angsty-unhealthy-relationship side lol like some of the requests you made last year . overall , just seeing anything about them would be nice . X3

Day 1 - Sodium Chloride Couple

[silverselfshippingchaos]

that moment when you're trying not to develop a crush on a guy but his boss theme is really good so you keep listening to it, meaning you're always thinking about him

[fedoraspooky]

I haven’t been here long. What irritating changes have been made?

Credit where it's due, some changes have been good, like polls and stuff! But the big recent changes thus far that I would classify as irritating are:

- The UI change. This one may be less irritating for newcomers because it's basically the same layout as twitter and instagram, but for a lot of folks who've been here a long time, it feels cramped and like a loss of identity for the site. For many, the appeal of tumblr is that it ISN'T an algorithm hell like twitter or insta. Also, there's the annoyance of having to relearn where everything is, because it all got moved around.

- The users being lab rats for various tests the devs wanna pull out of nowhere without consenting to beta testing new site features- like the one that took away user icons on the dash for like half the site. They finally put them back after getting enough feedback that said NO, but users were so used to their feedback being disregarded that they were half expecting the change to be pushed through anyway.

- The Netflix tie-in advertising being pushed even to people who had PAID tumblr for a no-ads experience. Complete with them somehow thinking it would be a good idea to put an unescapable-by-scrolling spooky clown on peoples' dashboards that u had to use ublock to get rid of. While I'm not scared of clowns and often find them quite charming, it sucks that staff didn't take coulrophobia being a common fear into account.

- A wave of fully sfw trans posts being wrongfully marked Mature and staff doing little to nothing about it. Not sure if this is still ongoing, but it destroyed a lot of trust and good will. (LGBT+ users have been having to fight a constant war against censorship ever since the adult content ban on tumblr, so yeah... Nevar 4get the list of banned search words that would bring back no results, like 'girl')

- The site gradually moving away from customization. Tumblr is a BLOGGING site. But it seems to have lost sight of that fact, because most new users don't even know you can fully customize your blogs with css and stuff (an option that is now off by default for new accounts!), because of the in-dash viewer giving you only how blogs look on mobile, which is a lot more uniform. There, it's more like every other site- you get a banner and icon. Oh, but you can change colors and fonts from a drop-down list too, that's cool I guess. Though they recently took away custom color schemes on Message windows, just another little bit of personalization taken away.

- TUMBLR. LIVE. Basically tumblr teamed up with a skeevy dating app partner to allow for livestreams- but not the cool kinda livestreams like on twitch where you can draw or play games, no- to a site full of people who value anonymity, they decided to push phone cam only livestreams. Not only that but by agreeing to the terms, you're giving out tons of personal data including your location to said skeevy dating app partner and all of THEIR third-party ad partners. Needless to say, most people didn't wanna use it, so instead of users it's flooded by p*rn bots (which is ANOTHER issue we've been dealing with for a long time and have been getting an even bigger influx of FROM tumblr live) and scammers. And thus, since tumblr likes to put a carousel of current streams on people's dashes, you often get softcore p*rn thumbnails from the bot streams with no way to avoid it except for toggling off tumblr live entirely.

- Oh wait. That's right. You CAN'T toggle it off. Because you can only snooze it for a while until BAM, you're jumpscared by a carousel of ladies licking your screen again! But hey, at least they made the snooze 30 days instead of the 7 it used to be, right? Yeah, except for the fact that you can't get rid of the tumblr live button itself on the app anymore, and now it's front and center with a NEW notification tag on it, overlapping your dash and cramming useful stuff like the search button out of the way.

NOW- A lot of this stuff CAN be at least mostly fixed on desktop by installing ublock and xkit and tampermonkey + dashboard unfucker... But that's a lot of stuff just to make the site usable, you know?

[doodlingwren]

The brainrot is speaking... I need to create a side account for my DnD AU of Saint Seiya or I might turn evil for real this time

[sskk-manifesto]

Next time we should just skip over ep 3 and do a chapters 84-87 reread

[kyouka-supremacy]

Failed a social interaction 0 injured 1 killed (me)

[the-incapable-hero]

yesssssssss please loredump abt nagisa and his sword and the wasteland (rubbing my hands together)

the worldbuilding for your au is so intricate and cool, i love reading all these! it's clear a lot of love went into it across the years~ (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

askljhdkajshflkaj thank you! I'm genuinely so glad that someone's enjoying it! Like I mentioned earlier, this is wildly indulgent for me, so the fact that it's enjoyed by someone else too makes me really happy! Also...

Mwahahahahaha! You've fallen into my trap! With this ask, I can now talk about the (supposed) main storyline of this AU! <-was going to do that anyway

Sorry in advance, this will not be short.

But uh, as a writer, the best way I know how to do this is through a pseudo-story. So that's what we're going to do! And here's a read more for convenience.

So! A few years after the formation of the wasteland Artists, Nagisa joined them following a personal tragedy in his life. He threw himself into the work, and he managed to procure a very interesting item.

It was from him that they got the idea of using swords in the first place. The reason is because he was a prodigy; extremely resilient, focused, and was able to survive being in the wasteland for days at a time. But his trademark was the sword that he wielded.

This sword, the origin of which nobody knows (for now), had an incredible ability: the power to stop the process of corruption of someone, keeping them from losing their minds or the ability to talk. This was a huge step in figuring out how to combat corruption, starting a movement of hope for people to finally get some answers about this disaster.

And Nagisa was the one to spearhead this movement. He was a hero, a legend, a protector, and a ray of hope. So he went from city to city, recruiting new wasteland Artists. This was essentially his crusade.

However, not all was well. His sword was not a magical cure-all and could only pause the process of corruption. Not to mention, in order for a person to benefit at all from it, they had to first survive being stabbed with it. Only after they recovered from such a big wound would they have any hope of living their life as normal.

But it was either risk immediate death and have the chance of a normal life, or give up on that chance and slowly lose your mind.

Despite the wave of popularity, it wasn't long before some started to fear him, and he spent more and more time in the barracks as the wasteland spread, taking more and more Artists with it.

He had a second-in-command: Subaru. Originally, he was meant to wield the sword when Nagisa could not, but unfortunately, the sword seemed to require more than just skill to wield; the same energy that could pause corruption did not flow when held by Subaru, nor many other wasteland Artists who tried.

Nagisa, for being so exceptional and for being able to wield such a unique weapon, began to wear a red uniform, as opposed to the trademark green that symbolized the plantlife the Artists wanted to return to the wasteland.

Mao, who was under Subaru, began to suggest that they travel to the epicenter of the wasteland to investigate a potential source of the corruption. Nagisa agreed, but as Artists tried and failed to make it to the center, the cluster of the swords they left behind as they went mad were stabbed into the ground, and the look of their abandoned weapons gave the epicenter the name of the Steel Garden.

As the day grew closer for Nagisa to lead their best Artists into the Steel Garden, they began to prepare. Mao had tried, just like every other Artist, to wield Nagisa's sword in case he got corrupted one day, but the same outcome happened. The energy did not flow correctly.

A year before the trip, Midori also tried the sword. At first, people were ecstatic; it worked! The energy flowed exactly like Nagisa's! Except it gave him horrible nightmares and a feeling of sick dread as soon as he touched the hilt. He refused to touch it ever again, but he was the other Artist to wear the red uniform, much to his immense dismay. They did keep trying among the remaining Artists, but only one succeeded, only to react exactly like Midori and corrupt just a week later.

As the year passed and more Artists corrupted, there were soon just four left: Nagisa, Subaru, Mao, and Midori. Deciding that it was now or never, Nagisa led them into the epicenter.

When they arrived, they were confronted by someone. A tall figure with dark hair and a calm aura.

I won't give all the details just yet, though.

In the end, they presented Nagisa with a deal. An opportunity. And Nagisa, thinking back to someone close to him that he lost long ago, took the deal, and plunged his sword into the ground among the hundreds of others. Subaru ordered a retreat, which Mao followed. Midori was frozen with fear, but eventually, he was let go as well, only after he was purposefully spared by the stranger and supposed hero. He ran away as fast as he could.

After all, though Nagisa's sword would have been useful, Midori just couldn't bring himself to pick it up.

He ran back to the barracks, leaving the mysterious person and Nagisa behind. He searched the place, expecting Mao and Subaru, only to find the whole area empty, not a soul in sight. He sits down, terrified, and desperately wonders what to do now.

That is where my story starts.

[babacontainsmultitudes]

[just venting a bit into the void you understand you understand 😌] Lately I've been feeling very caught between "I have a lot of thoughts on Sparrow and Normal and all that with the ending and teen talk and feel like I need to get them out and voice them for my own piece of mind and resolution" and "I am lacking the strength and energy to actually sit down and write it all out and kind of really just want to fully move on to other things (AUs, fics, anything else)" but my brain can't seem to commit to either and that's quite frustrating cause it's just left me very restless. *Sigh*. Idk! Just needed to complain about that a bit ig, it's silly but this is what has been ailing me as of late.

[fitzselfships]

So crazy how I can go from having a great day to all of a sudden remembering an upsetting dream I had last night and it just. Instantly ruins my mood </3

[katyspersonal]

I know we don't talk and there's stuff we may not agree with. But I am truly sorry you've dealt with a lot of drama over fictional crap. And I'm sorry if my posts in the past ever contributed to that. Hope you have a better day.

Hey... That's all fine, don't worry! After all, it takes a lot of time and Insight to realise that Gehrman is a very gentle and respectful man and Godrick is an absolute gigachad kdkdkshdffhhgfds /lh /lh

But yeah, on a serious note. It was quite frustrating to find out the real motivation under all that... mess was something so pathetic, but at the same time this is what happens when people make engagement with media and fandoms a moral, political act. Not necessarily a problem, after all, I was the one who concluded that the way a fan judges fictional characters and other fans will very well reveal how cruel they are to real people who do something bad, or how much they will forgive based on personal sympathies. And my mad ravings about caring about female characters! I think the problem comes when a fan is so insecure that they have nothing else besides this defence of ideals through fandomry. If your only way to assert yourself is to be a good guy punishing the bad guys, and that mad raving loredigger discovers there is NO bad guy, what is left of you?

This is why it is crucial to have passion for nurturing rather than for undermining! I think if you speak like this, you've found this truth too? This is true that I don't know you very much (mutual-in-law thing), but to be honest.. you didn't poison my fandom experience at all? I tend to never be aware about discourse until someone basically calls me for help fhdhgsdgdfs Can't scout the fandom tag regularly!

But not only it actually was a quite long ago I saw a "negative" post from you, but also I've seen through the posts that my friends liked or reblogged from you that you've actually became very eager person to defend people's passion and interests! I think the post that particularly got stuck with me was when you resented seeing someone's light die after some Redditor asshole "well aktualy"'d a thing they were excited about creating (not exact wording but maybe you remember too)? Like... you are fine, man. At that point I realised that you were a good fan and in the end valued people's creativity and passion over personal preferences. That you never wanted to be THAT guy, even if your interpretation could not be further from someone else's. Coming to terms with what actually matters in fandomry is very mature and I am happy to see this attitude!

I am still glad that you messaged me about this though; I did not expect this, but thank you! I think I will continue getting involved in fictional discourse because my autistic senses cannot ignore factually incorrect takes with a clear insidious motive, and.. eh, sooner or later, I'll piss off the wrong guy again. Don't feel bad for me when it inevitably happens :p I've accepted the shortcomings when I decided to be the debate guy. Simply laughing at some gremlin starting a discourse with the girls in DMs and not stressing over it is only funny until I realise that newer fans could get misinformed right off the bat.

[umemiyan]

i need to use my PTO and take a vacation but i have no idea what to do that would be interesting but not cost a lot

[donuts4evry1]

i am suddenly struck by the urge to write a light novel

[theultracharmingladynoire]

i am considering deactivating for real tbh

[sskk-manifesto]

(*・ω・*)b♪