#come on line delivery!!!!!!

[leclercari]

MARY & GEORGE (2024) - Episode 5 "The Golden City"

[sophsun1]

There was a light in his eyes. A light I had not seen for years.

Interview With The Vampire – 2.07: I Could Not Prevent It

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

putting my prediction on record now that the coming decade is going to see the rise of viral-marketed fancy at-home water filtration systems, driving and driven by a drastic reduction in the quality of U.S. tap water (given that we are in a 'replacement era' where our current infrastructure is reaching the end of its lifespan--but isn't being replaced). also guessing that by the 2030s access to drinkable tap water will be a mainstream class issue, with low-income & unstably housed people increasingly forced to rely on expensive bottled water when they can't afford the up-front cost of at-home filtration--and with this being portrayed in media as a "moral failing" and short-sighted "choice," rather than a basic failure of our political & economic systems. really hope i'm just being alarmist, but plenty of this already happens in other countries, and the U.S. is in a state of decline, so. here's praying this post ages into irrelevance. timestamped April 2023

[clockworkreapers]

Thank you to all the people on discord who have been supporting by buying bean style commissions!

[detective-shirogane124]

I had my faith placed rightfully in Austin Tindle cause the boy sounds DERANGED.

20/10-15 more years have been added to my life. He's so goddamn annoying (affectionate)

[moleshow]

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Zuko: Aang, promise me. If I become evil, you have to kill me. Aang: Ok, I will. Szeto, inside Aang's mind: Hey what's all that crashing noise? Some of us are trying to sleep. Yangchen: That's Kyoshi. She's breaking the furniture. Szeto: Why? Kuruk: She does it when she's upset, I think she got it from her wife. Szeto: And that damn sobbing noise? Yangchen: Oh, that's Roku. Szeto: The Fire Avatar after me? Sigh *pinches the bridge of his nose* Why are they throwing a fit? Kuruk: Aang just promised to kill his best friend. And both of them have hang-ups on that particular issue. Szeto: And that is? Yangchen: Kyoshi's killed Yun. She didn't want to, fought it every chance, but her hand was forced. I don't want to speculate on what's she's feeling, but perphaps she's upset because people always call her a monster for doing such a thing. But with Aang it's "oh, he has to make a tough call." Kyoshi: THIS IS SUUUUUUUCH FUCKING BULLSHIT! Kuruk: Ooo nice, you hit the nail on the head! -hi-fives Yangchen- Szeto: And Roku? Kuruk: He couldn't kill his best friend. Szeto: I don't see how that's bad- Yangchen: That same best friend later genocided all of my people. Szeto: ................................................................ Szeto: I apologize on behalf of the Fire- Yangchen: Ah ah, save it. I don't want to hear it. Szeto: Fair. So he doesn't want Aang to make the same mistake he did? I can understand, but why is he sobbing so damn much- Kuruk: Also, the guy that's Aang's best friend, is Roku's great-grandson. Szeto: ........................well that certainly is a conflict of interest. Roku: Aaaaaang! You gotta do it buddy! Don't be like me! ;w; Kyoshi: Nah Aang, fuck it! See what happens! Follow your instinct, kid! Roku: What? And wait for him to stab Katara before doing anything like you did?! Kyoshi, picking up Roku by the throat: YOU WANNA DIE OLD MAN?! Yangchen: Uh-oh it's getting heated. Better go break them up. Kuruk: Now is Kyoshi siding with not killing Zuko because his sister looks like Rangi, or does she just want to be Roku's straw man to spite him? 🤔 Kyoshi: Get off! Get off of my back Yangchen! Aang you listen to me! If you don't fight for your friend, then you are scum! You better at least put some fucking effort in lil' man! Kuruk: Ahhhhh, nevermind. I'm sorry for doubting you, kiddo. 😔 Szeto: Nah fuck this, y'all are crazy. I'm going back to bed.

[andyridgeley]

[seilon]

certainly feeling some things about the fact that simon. bullied edwin, yes, because he clocked him being gay. but not out out of hatred for him because of it. instead it was because he thought edwin was cute and felt sad and confused by edwin not paying attention to him. because simon is also gay. that is some beautiful and tragic storytelling and such a good way to come back around and give edwin some amount of closure on that chapter of his life wow

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

Darcy going "that was pathetic. And you call yourself a king" 😳 m... mommy...

[butterflydm]

"You lost someone important. Guilt's part of that."

*goes off and stares into the sea for a thousand years*

I do kinda feel as if I bought two games in one, because Veilguard is such a different experience in the second playthrough (this is not a complaint).

Grief. Regret. An ocean of it. And how to move past it. How important it is to be able to move past it and not let yourself be trapped by all your pain.

[endgame spoilers below]

Varric "goes to sleep" after your first big talk with him and then you can't talk to him again until after you've meditated and reached Solas (who is never far away, though you don't realize it).

It is amazing how Solas is able to criticize himself so strongly (via the memory of Varric) and then keep on doing everything that he's doing. He truly is the ultimate master of the sunk-cost fallacy.

Wisdom twisted into Pride. It is so painful to think that the thing that made Solas so furious and heartsick in his personal quest in DAI -- watching a spirit of Wisdom get twisted into Pride because it was brought into the mortal world to be a weapon -- is exactly what Mythal asked of him. And the anger that he shows towards those mortal mages (who he can and will kill unless you stop him) is thus displaced anger that he doesn't feel like he's allowed to feel towards Mythal.

So... what's up with the Rings of Power tag? It's about Solas, of course.

You meet a guy who is a lone wanderer. A vagabond, who claims no particular importance but somehow seems to understand the powers that are key to the world's salvation. He helps you out for a while. He's pretty arrogant - prideful, you might say.

You find out that he's essentially a demigod who has been lying to everyone for... weeks, months, idk. And that he actually is the person who helped break the world and make it what it currently is today... and he wants to fix the world. Except... well, except that fixing the world involves a whole bunch of people dying and basically destroying the world as it currently exists in order to create the 'better' world that exists in his imagination/memory.

His intentions may be good but every time he goes forward with his plans, it destroys so much and hurts so many people. His methods suck and his imagined perfect world can never exist. And he lies, over and over and over. He betrays you, over and over.

God of lies.

The Great Deceiver.

I've only finished one playthrough of Dragon Age: The Veilguard so far. And, in it, I gave Solas a good ending. The happiest ending that he probably could get. In which he doesn't get any of the things that he was trying to get during the game, but he does get a chance to atone for the many, many people that he's hurt and what he's destroyed. He gets shown a different path and is convinced to take it. He has someone who loves him enough to walk that path with him. "Where I'm going is terrible," he tells his love. "It won't be terrible if you're with me," she tells him.

Solas makes the choice that (Second Age/Rings of Power) Sauron couldn't make -- he chooses to stop trying to break the world in order to fix it. To atone by doing what the people of the world would want from him, rather than forcing his own vision on them. He stops. That's what Sauron can't bring himself to do. He can't stop trying to fix the world.

So finishing up Veilguard after watching Rings of Power let me play out a little power fantasy of: what if you could get him to stop? What if you could get him to see that his attempts to 'fix' the world are only making things worse? What would that look like?

Solas is able to admit -- after a lot of work by the protagonist to get him there -- that the world doesn't need him to fix it. By contrast, Sauron is going to double-down on his attempts to 'heal' Middle-Earth.

But it's interesting to get a chance to create a situation where a character who does have quite a bit in common with Sauron is able to have a different kind of ending.

As is tradition when I play RPGs like this, my first playthrough is for discovering a character and letting myself be fully led by the story, and now my second playthrough is to poke at all the choices and the seams of the story to figure out what I like best. And then I usually do a version of my first character again but 'perfected' in taking the alternative choices that I liked better than my first time through. So this second run is going to be for going through all the rest of the options and romances to see if I like them better than what my heart instinctively led me towards (Lucanis).

So this is my game plan for my second run:

Flirt with everyone. Make sure I do all Treviso quests before I go to get Davrin. Choose to save Minrathous (this is why I made my second Rook a Shadow Dragon -- Treviso seems so vulnerable to me, so I really have to stack the deck to get my Rook to choose to go to Minrathous). Sadly mourn that I cannot romance my Lucanis in this runthrough (my second Rook recently did the quest to acquire him and I found myself instantly enchanted all over again by his introduction. Thank goodness saving Minrathous takes him off the table; I don't see how else I could resist him).

Keep flirting until I get to the 'commitment quest' for each of the characters, and play through everything else until that's about all I have left. Then do separate saves for each romance. So six separate 'endgame runs' for this second Rook, allowing me to try out a variety of endgame scenarios.

Then, armed with lots of information, I plan to run as a dwarven Rook for my third runthrough, and do a run-through that uses my favorite choices now that I know how they shake out, and take a new approach with Solas. Probably a rogue. I've tried out the gameplay for all three classes, and rogue was my favorite (this is not a shock. Rogue has been my favorite in literally every DA game).

And now a collection of images I like to call:

They assumed Rook knew Varric was dead when these conversations happened.

Looking forward to what other conversations may happen where Rook is having an entirely different conversation than the other characters are having.

A collection of images I like to call:

Foreshadowing

A collection of images I like to call:

Ouch ouch ouch

One particularly excellent choice that the game made, imo, is that only Neve and Harding knew Varric already (of the companions). The rest of the team is assembled by Rook, and most of the team does not know Varric and doesn't even realize that there's a hole in the team, because Rook is already filling the position that she believes that Varric is meant to have. She is Varric's hand-picked second-in-command, and he trusted her to be able to handle this job. He chose someone with that thought in mind.

He knew the risks, and planned accordingly. He knew there was a chance (an excellent chance) that Solas was not going to listen to him. He had to try anyway, but he knows -- he says in the beginning -- that if it comes down to a fight, they will not be able to defeat Solas. He knows that if he can't talk Solas down, then he's probably going to die. And he goes in there anyway, because Solas is his friend.

He made a choice. Several choices. He chose to talk to Solas, knowing that it might lead to his death. And he chose Rook as his second, believing that Rook could save the day if Varric failed.

That's how Varric saved the world -- by finding the right person to finish the job.

[daincrediblegg]

I know we've all been going insane about hari murder comeback of the century in envy of the entire wwe league but like. CAN WE FUCKING TALK ABOUT HARI "THE FUTURE IS WRITTEN EVERY SECOND! WRITE A BETTER ONE" ?!?!??!? CAN WE???? PLEASE????

[amelikos]

Spinel.

[auronstory]

Favorite character dynamics: —Auron and Yuna

[vancalox]

some people confuse a reckoning with an ending.......

so you seek reform ???

i seek.......... regeneration