#but ive EXPERIENCED that before with people so

[mythalism]

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.

[juliesque04]

Radfem and gender critical in the sense that I understand that within a society that has created a concept of gender, it IS understandable to "feel like a man/woman" because we subconsciously associate certain traits/behaviors/activities with male and female, however also being reasonable enough to conclude that these vague definitions of gender are social constructs, and complying with them harms everyone because it leads to perpetuating stereotypes associated with both sexes.

I'll use myself as an example. I identified with men/'nonbinary' people for multiple years because I did not "feel like a woman," and I was raised mainly by my father (who for whatever great reason lacks any sense of conservatism and raised me identically to my brother) and have very few female relatives, so I naturally shared more in common with men. Like, literally, I was raised with the stereotypical "crying is weak" father, except he extended that policy to both his children and didn't exempt me from it because he thought I was inherently weak due to being female.

I'm assertive, i'm ambitious, I'm competitive, i'm driven, i'm very literal and down to earth, I like working with my hands and am very physical, I dislike being given princess treatment and enjoy much more giving said treatment and serving others, i'm highly independent, i often struggle with reactive aggression and am very out of tune with any other emotions, and I often get along well with men before they discover i'm female.

I've also never experienced key markers of what society deems "womanhood." I have never worn makeup in my entire life. I still don't know how to do it, nor do I have a desire to. I've never regularly shaven, only my armpits. Ive worn "boy" clothes since childhood because I like their practicality. I've known I was sapphic since I was 10, and lesbian specifically since 14, and because much of what we deem "womanhood" revolves around men, I lack that aspect of "femininity." I've never had an emotional connection with children nor particularly maternal instincts; I feel the urge to protect children physically and keep them safe, but not much else. I've never felt particularly connected to other women besides our physical bodies.

It makes sense why I thought I was born as the wrong sex; internally, I am very similar to many men and cannot relate with what society deems "womanhood" to be. So obviously I fell for the idea that I wasn't a woman. I'd make a great man in the context of what society deems to be masculine.

But this only lasted until I was, like, 15 and realized that what society considers feminine and masculine is extremely culturally specific. There was nothing inherently masculine about me. I'm only "masculine" in the context of the society I live in. There is no objective definition of masculinity or femininity; they're merely the traits a given society associates with and expects out of males and females, but they're not inherent or sex-specific.

This can also be extended to gender in general. We've come to a point where "man" and "woman" have been stripped of their literal definitions and reduced to vague and ambiguous senses of identity that are extremely specific to every person, but generally follow the pattern of sex stereotypes that exist within the given society. When you comply with these stereotypes and identify as a different sex because of your traits not aligning with what society deems feminine/masculine, you are implying that these traits are inherent to male/female people (also known as bioessentialism.) If i were to identify as a man/male because of my traits and say i was "born the wrong sex," that would imply that these traits cannot be found in female people. That's obviously a ridiculous idea since I am myself a female person who has these traits, and every transmasc is also a female person who naturally has these traits. The ideology is inherently harmful because you continue to perpetuate the idea that certain behaviors/traits are inherent to females, and others to males.

Additionally, not my main point but worth mentioning, having to separate the use of men/women from "male human" and "female human" is linguistically a pain in the ass; we no longer have words to describe male and female humans because we can no longer correlate femaleness and maleness to the words due to the idea of gender. Man and woman (literally) are like stallion and mare: they tell you absolutely nothing about the individual besides their sex.

So yes, I am a woman, but not for any reason aside from my biological sex. I do not "identify" with being a woman, it is not a personality trait nor sense of self, it is merely a descriptor of my physical body. I do not feel discomfort being female, I feel discomfort with a misogynistic society. Gender isn't real.

However, this is also the reason I am not particularly hostile towards trans people. I do not think most trans people identify as such out of malice- their actions don't exist in a vacuum. It is perfectly logical to believe you're the other sex when you have traits that society continually tells you are inherent to the other sex. But to deny physical reality is delusional.

[kekisu]

tfw you try to for real date people but youre actually too aroace for this shit and you realize that no in fact you cant just keep praying you end up feeling something soon

[daisybell-on-a-carousel]

"Jason was the happy robin" this, "jason was the angry robin" that. Let's all be fully honest here Jason was the lonely robin

[ghost-proofbaby]

telling myself to continue on like normal and write like normal but how am i supposed to do that when i know my world is ending in 24 hours?

tw for tags: i accidentally rambled on and aired out all my grief for my dog

[macbethz]

RIVER: So Missy, if it's not a personal question, why did you decide to, uh, upgrade your gender? MISSY: If it's not a persona question!? You can't GET more personal. RIVER: I know, I'm incorrigible. MISSY: The answer is, I don't know. I just woke up one day even more fascinating than usual. RIVER: So it wasn't deliberate? MISSY: You've regenerated haven't you? RIVER: Yeah, a couple of times. MISSY: Then you'll know. Sometimes, it's like playing pin the tail on the donkey during an earthquake. If you come out the other side with the right number of eyes that counts as a win. RIVER: So, do you feel different from how you were? MISSY: I feel like me. I felt like me before. Silly question.

There is no official transcript for me to screenshot and be annoying about so you get the whole audio clip. She is so transgender to me. like she gets it

[skunkes]

[skrunksthatwunk]

skimming through the ryokira tag for shits and gigs and these posts being tagged like #satan #Jesus Christ (<- like they're tagging him as a sorta character not as a like omg jfc thing) is so fucking funny. like. struggling to explain it but it's like if someone tagged their yaoi #george washington carver like we're not gonna distinguish these concepts at all??? jfgskshsg

[ambersky0319]

OH YEAH WILD AND UNPLEASANT CUSTOMER INTERACTION THIS AFTERNOON (early in my shift too)

below cut cause uh. tw racism

so first words outta this assholes mouth are to comment on my "pretty blue eyes". i dont say anything, just ask what he would like. he tells me one of the salads, and as im grabbing the stuff, he says "you probably go to university right? you look like a university girl"

i say yeah, cause i have no reason to keep that to myself. he says "probably a doctor or lawyer, huh?" and im like "nope, writer" as im beginning to put his salad into a container

and then this bitch says "what do you think of the arabs in the university higher ups?"

ALARM BELLS FUCKIN RING IN MY HEAD

"i dont really care," i say. because i dont, good for them.

he continues, saying that the arabs and syrians are gonna replace us and steal our jobs and at this point im just tryna very quickly finish up this interaction cause i am this 👌 close to saying something that would probably get me fired or purposely provoke him which while could have been fun. would mean having to interact with him longer than necessary. so i tell him im not allowed to talk about these things at work

to which he says "well i can" and then something unintelligible about his relationship to the government? idk i was tuning his ass out at this point, asked if he would be getting anything else, and as soon as he said no i escaped to the back to tell my managers wtf just happened

after this interaction too the blue eye comment made me EVEN MORE uncomfortable to think about

[puppppppppy]

i feel shy talking here when i dont have anything worth sharing but i cant help feeling like ive said things in the tags that could be brought up in court

[caffeinatedopossum]

I think I know now what it is about life that makes it worth living and I hate that I can't tell anyone. I can't write it down for me to reread when I forget because it's... just a feeling. And maybe you aren't supposed to be able to put that into words or hold onto it. You just have to trust that you'll feel it again

[windys-xp]

comfy ^_^

[milkweedman]

Genuinely spending 2 hours a day just prepping the fiber, RIP

To be fair at least a third of that time is pushing the executive function button so I can start the next nest. They're unfortunately one of those activities that has enough steps that each one feels like it's own separate thing, so I have to Start Task each damn time. So there's a 5-10 minute cooldown between them.

Got 9 nests, I think (on top), middle is some fleece that's already had a lot of locks picked out so it's kind of jumbled, bottom is combing waste.

[yooniesim]

some ppl that work in healthcare... really shouldn't work in healthcare.

(heavy heavy tw for medical situations & death/child death in tags, do not read if you're sensitive to it... I'll delete this later just had to vent)

[bunnyboy-juice]

oughghgh

[constantvariations]

So either Wilt turned into a giant phillips head screwdriver offscreen, they’re trying to imply that Beacon wasn’t the first time Adam stabbed Blake, or the writers forgot their character’s canonical injuries. Again