#but yeah the like one review was like

[fernsnailz]

been reading through various usps reviews this morning and i've started to notice some trends

[ricky-mortis]

Have some Ted doodles- as a treat.

[apostaterevolutionary]

Oh man, I actually haven’t been this mad at bioware in years lmao (see my last reblog if you’re seeing this without context somehow). It’s oddly refreshing. Almost comforting even. Like ah, yes, of course they did something stupid, that’s just the world working as it always has. Sky blue, water wet, bioware making an absolutely massive fumble that fills me with burning rage. Normalcy

[marciliedonato]

So... Apparently UA s4 is a massive flop.... I'm not saying we need to start bullying* showrunners and writers and networks/streamers (*putting pressure on them to do right by beloved pieces of media with passionate fan bases so much so that they feel they'll get the guillotine if they do anything less than perfect and justice by the story/characters) but.... We need to start bullying showrunners and writers and networks/streamers again. These mfs have gotten too comfortable

[ttrpg-smash-pass-vs]

On the left, Yuan-ti Malison! These actually come in three flavors: Snake head, Snake arms, or Snake legs! That is having snakes instead of arms, for those curious. Outside that, basically just a person that can plant a suggestion in your head.

On the right, the first thing we ever polled, the birds that DMs fear, Aarakocra! Roughly 5 ft (1.5 m) tall with a 20 ft (6.1 m) wingspan and comes in all sorts of plumage! The males are also known to be notorious flirts!

[theusernameiwantisntavailable]

It is so pivitol to me that you guys know that in my nothing goes wrong ever and everyone lives all is well grieves trio au, that Bernard becomes a chef for one singular reason. He moves away to go to a chef school (I'm gonna seperate them temporarily in every au it is vital) and when he comes back opens an Italian restaurant as physically close to the Aquista headquarters as possible. Darla does absolutely everything in her power to shut it down but it doesn't matter what she does it fails miserably each time

[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

[sergle]

it. is. CRAZY being like "oh I want to keep my pet healthy, maybe I should look into upgrading to a higher quality food" and you do a bunch of googling abt what percentages of fat/protein/etc a food should be and you find the stuff that's the Most Recommended for dog health or whatever it is, and then you look at the reviews for what is apparently a very reputable brand and it's like DOG DIED DOG HAD BLOODY DIARRHEA DOG IS LOSING FUR I FED MY PUPPY THIS AND HIS KIDNEYS ALMOST SHUT DOWN AT 3MO OLD DOGS VOMITED HAD TO BE ON FLUIDS AT THE VET like. huh... I see <-- doesn't get it at all

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

ways journalists have really described alex turner and miles kane:

"Wearing matching outfits, gazing into each other's eyes, talking about their instant connection… Alex and Miles' claims that they wrote the Shadow Puppets' album about 'a girl' weren't fooling anyone. Quite simply Alex and Miles are hopelessly, madly, enviably in love with each other. Please lads, just be true to yourselves, embrace your feelings, and have a massive snog - we can't bear the tension any more."    - NME

“If there’s one sexual dynamic at work tonight at the Usher Hall, it’s homoeroticism. The Last Brokeback Mountaineers are a camp pair of strutting cocks, to be sure.”  - The Wee Review

"Speaking to them together feels like interrupting a conversation that's been going on since 2005." - NME

“Looking over at his manspreading counterpart, Kane gleefully points at Turner’s exposed bulge. Not wanting to be rude, I look away.” - SPIN

“Watching them finish each others’ sentences, agonise over their answers to how well they know each other and embrace when it’s time to leave... well, you’d need a heart made of Hoosiers CDs not to find it incredibly sickly sweet.” - NME

“Alex Turner and Miles Kane turn towards each other with fond looks when we suggest they’re best friends. Like doodle in each other’s notebooks BFF status. After spending 15 minutes with them though, we’re pretty convinced they’re going to grow old together in matching tracksuits.” - Sidewalk Hustle

“Miles Kane looks like he’s gagging for a great big man-hug (and maybe more...) off his buddy. These two have spent overly long admiring themselves and each other.” -  The Wee Review

“As soon as I decide to just get started without Kane, Turner accidentally Facetimes him from his pocket, and the two erupt into a fit of giggles, our conversation veering off course for the third time in as many minutes.” - Consequence

“While Turner stares on the ground during his answers, Kane watches him like a lovestruck teenager from the side.” - Musikexpress

“Say this for Lennon and McCartney, or Plant and Page: they never had their own romantic rock ‘n’ roll portmanteau. But “Milex”—Miles Kane and Alex Turner, for the uninitiated—have just that enviable kind of bromance. The two even moved to Los Angeles in tandem a few years ago. No wonder multiple “Milex” pages have cropped up on Tumblr, breathlessly re-posting the duo’s every embrace and droll quip; there is fan fiction, too, the kind that would make a coal miner blush.” - Interview Magazine

'"Alex Turner is like a princess in need of his prince Miles's assistance to get down from a tower." - Dutch Review

"You'd be forgiven for barely noticing anything beyond the front of the stage, though. Like a pair of teenagers egging each other on, Turner and Kane are the most infatuated frontmen since the Pete Doherty and Carl Barat." - Hot Press

"If Miles Kane had a 'hard on' for being a front-man before The Last Shadow Puppets, he's grabbed the opportunity Turner's patronage presented him with both hands. So to speak." - Q Magazine

"The feeling is contagious too, as though we're looking in on star-crossed lovers finally reunited." - Hot Press

[a-physical-avatar-of-scribbles]

most normal guy ever. I Promise

[couriernewvegas]

reviews for yuri manga online are crazy . tried to read the summer u were there and it wasnt clicking so i looked at reviews online and the top one was like “i was a bully as a kid too (racism) but i never had the balls to own up to it and apologize which is why i admire this story so much etc etc” . Why Are You Telling People That . Why Did You Specify (Racism)

[crow-caller]

my anonymous assumption is that you read warrior cats as a kid in an attempt to fit in with all the other kids reading it but you never really got into it. you liked the roleplaying at recess that came from it though

you're nearly right but underestimating my autism. cats were my first special interest (*i highly doubt this is unique for autistic babies). my first word was kitty. I made a songbook where I wrote out the lyrics to varuous public domain singalong songs and changed most of the words to 'Cat' or 'Kitty'. I made a warrior cats role playing card game and played it on my own. I was roleplaying at recess and friends' houses until we were 'too old'. I missed it terribly.

my username is based on an incident that happened when I was in the woods pretending to be a cat.

I belong with the warrior cats.

[venndaai]

after actually watching that big negative Veilguard review video I honestly feel way better lol, because nothing he complains about is remotely new for the franchise (except a lack of companion conflict, and I'm kind of coming around to that as just a new kind of party dynamic.)

[fuckmeyer]

girl please, Charlie Swan is Team Werewolf and you know it

[edwinisms]

love seeing that the tag is trending. as if it means anything

[lokh]

Im gonna need your like, whole musical rec list, bc literally every song you have posted has not flopped once, give me your faves i need to eat them

OUGHHH YOUVE UNLOCKED THE BEAST ARGSHHFHJDF....

in the interest of making this both easily accessible but not stretching the dashboard, im embedding bandcamp links when i can, otherwise linking to youtube when unavailable

in no particular order, inclusion based mostly on what im still actively into LMAO but also just things you should give a go at least once:

list of artist recommendations

zeal and ardor: described as a mix of african-american spirituals and black metal. try devil is fine, you aint coming back, wake of a nation or church burns

bloodywood: indian folk metal, literally nobody is doing it like them. recently featured in monkey man (2024), try chakh le, yaad or dana dan

stromae: if youve never heard any of his songs WHAT ARE YOU DOING..... incredible lyricist, described as a blend of hip hop/electronic. papaoutai made the rounds on tumblr a while back, but you should also try santé and l'enfer

alamat: pinoy pop. a youtube commenter described them as sounding like 2nd gen kpop which probably also explains why i took a shine to them LMAO, notable for the amount of filipino culture on display and the diversity thereof (singing in different languages, themes). first heard them thru kasmala either here or on twitter lmao, try aswang or maharani

andy bull: alt-pop. a lot of poppy and upbeat songs with a melancholic undertone imo. an australian artist, try it's all connected or keep on running

cosmo sheldrake: electronic, wikipedia also lists him as folktronica and baroque pop. you may have heard the song come along on an apple ad - hes known for sampling sounds from nature. pliocene for example features sounds from endangered ecosystems.

if you like cosmo sheldrake, you might like hidden orchestra (electronica, ambient). also making use of field recordings, i really love the archipelago mixtape but its a hard sell at about an hour lmao. if you like the following song then i implore you to give it a go

son lux: experimental, you may have heard from them in the entire soundtrack for everything everywhere all at once (!!!!!). try dangerous, dream state (brighter night) or live another life.

ammar 808: electronic/world fusion, also behind bargou 08 (folk rock you should also listen to). i just cant get ain essouda out of my head, but i also love geeta duniki

miyavi: j-rock, used to be a visual kei artist. these days he might be known more for anime openings like flashback (kokkoku) or other side (id:invaded), or for work like snakes in arcane (or actually inspiring and voicing a character in it), but ive always been partial to his early work like sukkyanen myv or ashita, genki ni naare

songs/albums

'threads' album by now, now (indie rock).

'dream to make believe' or 'what to do when you are dead' by armor for sleep (rock, emo). here's the truth about heaven from the latter album

i already posted about it but denzel curry's 13lood 1n + 13lood out mixx (rap, trap) is extremely good

the guilty gear soundtracks and im so serious im not fucking joking. different kinds of rock and metal and all sorts of influences put in, a genuine labor of love. xrd and earlier games are mainly instrumental with some vocal tracks (try give me a break or big blast sonic), while strive pretty much always includes vocals (of course i need to rec rock parade, but also try requiem. its genuinely hard for me to pick and choose lmao)

not an album and not an artist

coke studio pakistan and coke studio bangla knocking it out of the fucking park, im particularly a fan of harkalay and kotha koiyo na. you could try the other coke studios too (tamil, india, etc)

triple j like a version is when the radio station triple j brings in artists and has them do a cover of a song (artists choice). i liked denzel curry's cover of bulls on parade and flume's shooting stars (video for this one is incredible, man had a vision you just have to stick it out), but you get a lot of interesting interpretations like the wombats' running up that hill, gordi's in the end or, infamously. the wiggles' elephant

ive DEFINITELY missed out some, but thats what my music tag is for LMAO i hope someone discovers something they like here!!!!