#but yeah I think I made my point anyway

[brick-van-dyke]

While, yes, there is evidence of this being some of the case, I think it's important to also consider two important things: where the company who produced this source sit and how much of what's out there was propaganda for Russia or by others (and how this may somewhat overlap considering anti US government sentiment is something shared by both the Russian government AND US communists who are legit leftists).

So who owns WIRED? How reliable is it and how much weight should this article be given? The simple answer is, yes, it's all true, but also we have to be aware of the framing of this article and, most importantly, what is being omitted and what is being highlighted. There was absolutely interference in the 2016 election, this has also been proven in courts and in other sources beyond just the one given, so WIRED absolutely checks out with its facts as being true. However, not everyone who had this opinion was a Russian spy and certainly people who hated and still hate Hillary are Russian spies at all. However, many are leftists who are radical communists or anarchists who hold an agenda similar to that of Russia; the growth of communist ideologies and anti us government sentiment.

That reflects today and it's not only true for the US, but for Palestine as well. For those unfamiliar, Russia has been pushing (along with China) for a single state solution for Palestine and have been very aggressively anti Israel. This isn't because what Israel is doing is wrong though, this is because Israel is aligned with the USA and NATO, which is exactly what Russia's target was during election interference in the USA before and would be once again today. It's entirely to undermine the capitalist/ liberal USA government and always has been since even the Vietnam War and the Cold War.

What needs to be considered in this case is this then; is it an enemy of the capitalist system only or the existence of the USA at all? Would a new purely leftist government taken through revolution be Russia's goal, or the destruction of the government in order to win in a war? I actually don't know, but I do know that I can agree that democrats have committed horrific acts to keep NATO existing and that NATO itself is an imperialist power.

This is where a lot of nuance comes in here, do we accept that there is Russian propaganda that happens to align with leftist ideals or do we reject our own ideals because we don't want to confirm to Russian interference? It's hard to know what way is the "right" way since there is a lot of geopolitical factors at play here. It's hard to know what would be the overall best. Ultimately, I think it depends what type of future we, as individuals, want for the USA. If you're a Trotskyist, for example, you may align with Russia's perspective already since you already happen to believe in the same ideologies. Likewise, you may be against the fall of the government overall and want internal change through peaceful means and no use of force, which means voting blue anyway regardless of who it is even without this interference or knowledge of it. I think, in this way, as much as it is important to know all of this, it isn't as earth shattering as one might think at first glance. There's nuance and context behind it that, when you think about it, isn't all that surprising.

Essentially, it really depends on your beliefs and how ""susceptible"" to said propaganda you are. Especially since this propaganda isn't just "Russian propaganda" but specifically communist propaganda, which will push people into being radicalised into far left circles, which...isn't really a bad thing depending on where you sit. Of course, this isn't for everyone and those who are more centrist/ moderates would see it as a very bad thing for so much far left propaganda to exist and push for revolution. And overall, of course, both sides would have at least some concern that it's from a foreign country, no matter how inevitable it is due to the geopolitical context that said country would do this in any situation that could radicalise people into communism.

For people who don't remember the 2016 Tumblr was full of Russian trolls who posed as progressive social justice blogs and urged young liberals to throw their vote away on a third party. You can read more about it here :https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-russia-trolls-propaganda/ This camapign was extraiordinary succesful and third party voters were a key reason why Trump one( if you look at the electoral results you will see that the race was so close that if the third party votes had gone to Hillary she would have easily buried Trump) Sadly we didn't know that this was a orchestred camapign until Tumblr released the data itself and told us who the blogs were. Those were not simple spam blogs. They were pros. They knew how to talk to people, they made real posts and interacted. They tried this in 2020 but we were wary because the memories were still fresh But now thy are trying again. I just found this guy who is running the EXACT same play book as in 2016. Pretending to be a person of color , poting progresive posts while at the same time urigng everyoe to vote third party. As soon as I called him out he immedately blocked me beause he knew I outed him. So now i's up to you guys. Don't let Trump supporting Russian trolls run their psy ops here. Report en masse and get them now instead of waiting for months for tumblr to tell us they worked for Trump REPORT THIS RUSSIAN TROLL NOW. DON'T LET THEM PULL THEIR GAMES AGAIN: https://www.tumblr.com/decolonize-the-left

[bunnieswithknives]

How much can you fit under your skin?

For @warning-heckboop's AU :3

[sacchiri]

Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.

Ein wunderliche und erschröckliche Hystori von einem großen Wüttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen

A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death

[random-lil-illing]

gone is my dead poets society phase, back is my fnaf phase 😔

i will still interact with my dps mutual(s) and try to add on to their posts, but now when (or, more accurately, if) i post, it will be mainly about fnaf

speedpaint under the cut!!

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[skitskatdacat63]

Roleswap anyone??

Tell me Fernando wouldn't make a fantastic general/emperor, and that Napoleon wouldn't make a fanastic driver/tp!!

[what-is-it-to-be-pk-esque]

Ok I know I'm heavily biased here but like I kinda love that Astarion's romance is one of the few in this type of video game where you basically end up canonically unmarried and childfree in his "good" ending? Just travelling the world??

Like it's honestly the millennial dream lmfaoo cannot believe i chose what would undoubtedly be my favorite option, first try

[cobaltfluff]

where should they eat ???

[marcmorrigan]

@fenglianweek day 6: memories/growing up

the best thing thats ever been mine

[moeblob]

Right and his work menaces (Brent and Karen).

I don't remember last I mentioned it but apart from crude nicknames to people (except Chris), he also just puts them in his phone really weird (except Chris, who is literally in his phone as Chris). And I bring this up because in Right's phone, Karen is saved as "Lawful Obligation".

[bonetrousledbones]

ngl i still dont fullheartedly believe in the knight papyrus theory solely because i will never pretend to have any clue on what the hell ever goes on in that dog's brain but i do think the funniest argument people ever make against it is when they say undertale and deltarune are two totally separate entities with no overlap of important characters whatsoever. its like they got to the part in chapter two where everyone fell asleep and then closed the game

[perilegs]

i know astrology is fake but i'm not too keen on how a lot of people on this website seem to be clowning on it as a hobby a bit too hard. i swear the woman who thinks it's neat how she and her friends with the same sun sign are all similar isn't trying to say that you are who you are born as and there is nothing you can do to change it. it's a hobby. an interest. what happened to finding meaning and joy in the small things. does it affect you if someone enjoys tarot reading or crystals. does it make you upset someone has interests that they enjoy.

[crystallizsch]

ian, i have a question regarding your ocs if you don’t mind!! we often see your ocs in their nrc uniforms or in event outfits, but what would their everyday outfits look like and/or how would they dress if they could get their hands on their dream wardrobe (i.e. no limitations by idk… being whisked into a new world with no money or belongings)? in the same vein, do any of them have body mods like piercings or tattoos?

partially motivated by the aspect that clothing can reveal a lot about a person/character and one of my first questions for ocs being “okay now what piercings does this dork have” :>

also hiiii new moot, i’m still super giddy about that :]

OO HI HI THIS WAS REALLY FUN TO THINK ABOUT CASUAL OUTFITS HERE THEY BE 💥💥💥

okay uh unskippable monologue below the cut beware because i just went on a design/outfit tangent hfndndjd

━━━━━━✦

SURPRISINGLY (other than in her intro post) i think i’ve only drawn yuusha in her main casual fit in these posts with jamil -> (💜) (💜) (💜) where they’re in kinda like their silly dating arc which i dont know where to place in their relationship timeline so i just figured it’s an au of some sort

(firstly i’m not 100% aware of fashion/clothing terms so forgive me, i’m just gonna use the generic terms)

ANYWAYS yuusha loves loose fits or just generally clothing that feels comfy and breathable if that makes sense, especially around her upper torso because sometimes it makes her feel self-conscious that she doesnt have a noticeable chest.

the way i would describe her casual clothing is just like- effortless-looking clothing while still managing to look nice/pretty/fashionable somewhat. she dresses for comfort AND style.

she’s fine with tight/flexible pants though, like leggings so she can move around more freely and that it’s breathable.

other than that, overall she just likes casual/warm/cozy fits that aren’t too “loud” like, just monochrome and soft colors.

but when it comes to special events, she’s more confident in dressing like a gentlemanly lady killer while still keeping that feminine vibe bc what better way to channel your feminine prowess is by beating the guys at their own game.

personally i could never do piercings/tattoos but i LOVE seeing them on others. (for piercings the most im kinda comfy having/giving my ocs with is ear piercings but otherwise it’s awesome seeing different kinds of piercings/tattoos when it comes to others) so for yuusha, i think the most she’d be willing is a few tattoos and some ear piercings.

also omg matching couple tattoos aaagh maybe i’d give yuusha and jamil one post-nrc

━━━━━━✦

fun fact: when i was designing yuuna, their features weren’t usually my go-tos when making personas (the only thing was my usual was hairstyle and eye color) bc i thought i’d be over and done with twst after a bit (but look where i am now and yuuna had quite grown on me 😔)

theyre my pink barbie doll where i channel all the whimsy, cutesy fashion choices that i wish i could wear lmao 😭

similar to yuusha, they’d wear anything regardless of gender presentation. but their preference leans towards more feminine.

yuuna’s fashion choices are definitely more “loud” like more patterns, more brighter colors, etc. anything to stand out. (i know it doesn’t show in the doodle i did but hfbdjsjs i love outfit designs but i'm not super skilled in that area yet) they also like warm/cozy outfits but instead of monochrome colors, it’ll be more colorful.

and if THEY COULD, i can see them in various kinds of lolita fashion. yuuna would absolutely walk around in those if they could.

(thanks again to @/0honeybones0 for the name dividers 🙏💕)

[p1x1x]

[xxplastic-cubexx]

Pet store clerk gives Charles a bag of free treats for his ""dog"" all while Charles can feel Erik Looming in the BG

the real mortifying day is after months of getting small bags of dog treats one day the bag of dog treats has like. perfectly normal human candies/pastries or something inside

Of Course charles is confused and impulsively asks what it is/how it's different from the usual only for the clerk to reply theyre Whatever Erik's Favorite Treat Is and its that day forward erik is adamant they just do their shopping online

[spaghett-onaplate]

depression is really weird actually wdym i spent 2.5 years of my life in bed