#but in a beneficial way

[ectoodle]

gongyi xiao got covered up big time by my watermark, so here they all are...luo binghe's wives

[vaguely-concerned]

how much have the crows actually been sanitized outside of the very narrow view you get of them both in place and in time in veilguard, and how much is caterina deliberately putting her most presentable and pr friendly foot forward because she needs HELP with both the grandson and the antaam situations and is already playing from a weakened overwhelmed position. is she going to show off all the dirty laundry the crows undeniably have in front of the people she's courting for an alliance? is rook going to be looking a gift crow in the beak too closely when help is offered, go digging through that laundry basket on their own initiative on principle, knowing what you might find further down in it isn't pretty and might still be sharp, while the world is burning? is it entirely coincidental that the people caterina picks to interact with you most is teia -- the youngest, most charismatic and notably most weirdly idealistic of the talons -- and viago -- who is perhaps none of these things naturally but is dependable and logical and sharp and also down so cataclysmically bad for teia that when she runs in shouting 'TEIA YES!!! >:D' he sighs with longsuffering resignation and goes '...viago also yes. I suppose. under duress, let the record note' and follows.

surely parts of how each house functions would be left largely up to the individual talons, right? as long as they produce crows capable of doing the job and keeping up with the competition, I doubt the first talon micromanages how they get there (...for good or ill. lots of dead fledglings buried under that laissez faire policy, probably). they're very far away from a monolithic structure, they're constantly competing merchant houses/families striving to gain the upper hand held in check by little except 'if enough of the other houses shake hands and gang up on us for pushing our luck we're fucked, so don't push it too far'. like I believe lucanis says at one point, even calling them an organization is stretching the definition to a breaking point in some ways lol this is fully herding cats territory. all this to say that in this game we spend most of our time in teia's house. andarateia cantori, of the firm genuine conviction recognized as mildly unhinged by all the other talons that the crows truly are her family, who loves them with her whole unstoppable foolhardy thinks-she-will-die-young-and-live-eternally-in-song-and-story heart for it. teia, who won't leave the cantori diamond even to go home to sleep because she doesn't want the fledglings to have to see the place empty. do I think the way teia cantori would run her house is indicative of the average experience of being trained as and living as a crow? no. obviously. why are people seeming to assume that so immediately? sometimes I do wonder if I'm going insane.

between that and the antaam situation -- which turns the romanticized image antiva already is eager to reach for with the crows (the same way european literary tradition through the ages sure LOVES a knight, no matter what knights were actually like when you had one kicking around in real life) into an effective and recognizable symbol of resistance from an outside force (at least these awful little guys are home grown in a way we're kind of proud of despite it all and also they are deeply inescapably cool)... perhaps indeed a symbol of resistance and freedom that momentarily covers for a multitude of sins. I don't think we need to draw definitive conclusions about what the crows are like universially, historically or in different contexts from what we see in veilguard. sort of like the british in the pop cultural understanding being 'the good guys' when we think about WW2, and the sheer ludicrousness of that characterization of the british empire seen in any other context or angle lmao. I DO think there are some genuine writerly '*handwaves established ugliness aside aggressively* just uuuuuh don't worry about it! not important right now! you can feel at least ok hanging out with the cool theater kids but with murder they're like. comparatively chill in this context it's fine and they're fun' going on too. and you know what. they are fun. invenci is unfortunately objectively right, but the crows are sooo much more fun. and in fiction land that trumps all. absolutely baffling writing choice when you read through to the political/ideological conclusion that's reached from it of course (sort of accidentally? I think???), but would it really be a bioware game without a few of those. it's how you know you're home (derogatory and affectionate)

in short there are writing problems by god are there real problems here. obviously. and it'd take smarter and more knowledgeable people than me to properly untangle all of that. glorifying organized crime is a time honoured tradition in fiction that perhaps... shouldn't be quite so much and is uh risky, you're always playing with fire there. but I frankly don't think the 'de-edgeifying' for lack of a better term is that much of an inescapable one or that it erases what we knew of the crows before, we're just getting the angle on them in one very specific time and place in history and with specific individuals involved setting the tone. eight little talons killing off most of the established leadership beforehand so it's mostly only teia and viago who get to keep their full power base (even caterina and the dellamortes takes some losses in the apparent death of lucanis before the start of the game) probably figures into that somewhere too lol

[proffbon]

I don't know if there's a sufficient explanation hidden somewhere in the game or if all of this is just one big retcon, but for me the reason why Veilguard Crows seem different from what Zevran described is one part just different Houses handling their recruitment and training differently, and one part the Crow characters just acting normal despite the horrible shit that happened to them because they either don't know any better, have come from a worse background (cough Mien cough) or just re-contextualize it in their heads as necessary. Like that one friend who starts fondly reminiscing about something that happened to them in their childhood only for the other person to sit there thinking 'this is extremely traumatizing'.

[dykedvonte]

there’s something i really adore about curly being revealed to being this beautiful blond man after we see him post crash like what happens to him is so awful and dehumanizing like he really loses everything but especially as a viewer/player watching this game i love the commentary it’s silently making and this uncomfortable feeling in my chest that i have to wrestle with. love it when stuff makes me feel

I think it’s so poignant that Jimmy never hallucinates or sees Curly as his pre-crash self. He only speaks to Curly about and in terms of his own thoughts and projections and rarely lets him have his own inner personal thoughts. Even before the crash it is like this. He is the perfect captain to him and to an extent the rest of the crew even if he is more actualized around the others.

So much of how Curly is dehumanized by Jimmy and the rest is representative of how the Pony Express and capitalism strips workers of their identity, into objects of service. Once he can’t do anything who or what he was is no longer important, worthless, a burden. He is both the dandy dish in HFIM, the idea of going up being before the crash, while the ball is after the crash, his forced decent downwards.

There is an argument he is dehumanized to less than an even object with how his ID card lacks a name and face in Jimmy’s hallucination. Even Anya gets her name, and identify. He is just an empty spot, a role to fill to a lot of them, which is think is why so many fans have a hard time pin pointing who Curly was before the crash and what he stood for.

So much of what we saw of Curly was a man on duty, a man serving under his job and starting to find conflict with that. We don’t really get to see Curly acting for himself and it think it tells about the way he has been molded along with the way he was trying to reshape himself outside of P.E before it was too late.

I always finding intriguing how people almost prefer to draw post crash Curly, to draw his suffering and continue, to an extent, him being the scapegoat, faceless and facing repercussions other characters and entities should. Being a figure to vent frustration to because he can’t fight back, we don’t know what he would say or how he would feel or what he would’ve done. We don’t really know that when he had skin either…

[communistkenobi]

I don’t like when people ask how many books you plan to read/have read this year one because I think that’s a weird relationship to have to books and two because I think even reading a chapter or a portion of something is valuable. this is especially true with non-fiction but even with fiction I think any amount you read, even if you don’t read the entire thing, is not a failure or ‘incomplete’

[rmbunnie]

I think everyone can do what they want forever, but i have to say if people find Jason Todd attacking Titans Tower that interesting I do kind of wish they would read the issue where Jason Todd attacks Titans Tower

[ofswordsandpens]

im sorry but I do think its a little funny that there's maybe like... a handful of people actively critiquing the show compared to the overwhelming praise its receiving, and yet there's a portion of the fandom acting like they're either being held at gunpoint and forced to read every criticism, or that they've personally been appointed by RR himself to defend the integrity of his works, and I promise you, you really don't have to do either lol <3

[gingerswagfreckles]

Well they caught him. If he wasn't the exact kind of person tumblr loves, the conspiracy theories about this being a random person being framed would have continued to spread. But he's an attractive 26 year old white man who was caught carrying a manifesto about corporate America and has an internet history that matches up with tumblr's general politics. So everyone is going to get excited about how he's a martyr and go back to acknowledging reality in that there isn't a conspiracy to frame the wrong guy.

The discussions over whether or not this man should be lionized as a hero are honestly not as relevant as the comfort with which people are going to drop the conspiracy theory they would have been fully committed to if this man's politics turned out to be nuts. The ease with which the userbase of this website switches between realities based on whether or not they confirm their biases is really alarming. I just hope people understand how weird it is to claim a random person is 100% going to be framed by the FBI on one day, and then drop that by the next day when it becomes clear that the person being "framed" is the exact kind of communist you had hoped.

[ellmovy]

My theory on why the whole 'you can never escape hetalia' thing is so real is the counting sheep audios. There's no way listening to those in some of your most formative teenage years doesn't do something irreversible to your brain.

[lylahammar]

It always kills me to see big youtube video essayists talking about fatphobic trends and the downfall of body positivity without knowing about/mentioning fat liberation 😭 I'm quite literally begging in comment sections for people to look into the movement and make videos about it to raise awareness

[idliketobeatree]

eternally funny to me that in the book Aziraphale's moral compass is "I'm an angel. I can do no wrongs. I go along with Heaven! jk haha I would kill a child if necessary" and Crowley has a whole personal list of the 10 Demonic Commandments he won't cross

[rxttenfish]

honestly i just sit and think sometimes over like, miravi isn't toxic yuri or anything, they're DEEPLY functional with each other and it's much moreso a cheetah and dog situation where they both get a lot more stable with someone to balance them out.

but the way it looks like is often a lot of arguing and them not being afraid to snipe at each other or call the other out on bullshit. and i keep feeling like everything about the current shipping Moment would suggest that this is toxic — even though this quality, in of itself, is what they like in their relationship and what helps them best. which is a form of relationship that very much works for people! and works well! there's a lot of benefit in having someone you can be upset with and show that upset with without them taking it personally, or in using it as a means to immediately point out and begin working out problems in a constructive manner, problems that would have become a lot worse if allowed to simmer, and the emotional vulnerability needed to do this in a constructive way with someone else! it's actually my preferred form of relationship, because i'm bossy and mean and contrary and i like not being forced to dull my edges and having someone who can dish it as well as they can take it.

it's a bit like arguing for fun, i think. for those who like it and find it really works for them, there's no hard feelings at the end, it's just a way to get everything on the table and debate over a solution. it feels good, giving the high of the exertion but coming back down with emotional reassurance to ensure it's really not any hard feelings. but, for the majority of people, it's so deeply concerning and distressing that they can't even imagine someone like that, that something has to be wrong because they cannot imagine ever doing it constructively, or they cannot ever imagine not taking it personally.

and it's just very odd sometimes, as someone who has a ship like this as a main ship, that people don't understand that kind of dynamic.

[marvel-lous-guy]

Sam: I can't believe you still use a flip phone

Bucky: At least I don't have to worry about being tracked by the government

Sam: Yeah, because they're still using carrier pigeons to send you messages.

[ballsbalb]

btw don’t think we’re forgetting half of yall armchair barca experts wanted ferran, frenkie & fermin out like a month ago 🥴🥱

[pop-punklouis]

I have been getting weird vibes from Liam for a while. Every time he interacted with Louis or Niall, or mentioned One Direction, it always felt like he was doing it to stay relevant. I do feel bad for him because of what he went through in the band, and his mental health and substance abuse, but does not mean that he can get away with this? no! These things can not be used to excuse his behavior. He went through terrible things but so have the rest of them. They all deal with things in different ways and it hurts them differently, but abusing your girlfriend is never ok.

I have seen talk about his issues. they may explain his behavior and it is sad he is struggling, but he still needs to be held responsible for his actions. he needs help, and to stay away from social media. even if he were to put out a statement, I don't think an apology will be enough, especially now with what is coming out about him and fans.

I'm not sure how much Louis Niall Harry and Zayn know about Liam and the situation, if he went to them for help or to tell them, if they reached out after Mayas book released., but I hope they do not get involved. I do understand them wanting to help him but I feel like they have tried in the past (mainly Louis- at least publicly) and it didn't seem to help.

I wish for Liam to get the help he needs.

grey, i feel like you took all the thoughts in my head about the situation and put them into words.

this. this is where i've been for a while tbh

[blueskittlesart]

I go to an art school and 15-20 minutes per person is pretty much standard for crits here because class sizes are small and they want to make sure you get thorough advice on whatever you’re working on. so it’s kind of funny in like a “oh wow my experiences are NOT universal” way seeing you suffer. Sorry lol.

See i understand spending 15-20 mins on the piece if it NEEDS that amount of attention, but this was A) 20 minutes for EVERY SINGLE PIECE regardless of how strong the work was (and she WOULD NOT move on even when we straight up told her the piece was strong enough that we didn't have anything else to say), meaning that the crits on stronger work very quickly devolved into nitpicking as opposed to actual helpful advice, and B) it was NOT A SKETCH CRIT, this was a FINAL crit, so we're showing work that should, in theory, be in its most finished form. 20 minutes for sketches or in-progress work makes more sense to me because your work is less finished at that stage and you have actual time to implement the suggested changes, but for FINAL CRIT??? it's just BEGGING to have everyone leave discouraged and angry imo. it's one thing if the work isn't up to the standard of a final piece and NEEDS substantial crit, but there's no reason to force students to spend 20 minutes nitpicking the details of a portfolio-ready finished piece. it just wastes everyone's time.