#despite the series ending...

[redpapercraness]

to lose you

[mienar]

the wandering painter, part one

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[sopuu]

canary’s ascent to death

[nocek]

Day in life of Miguel O'Hara, one unlucky bastard.

[bluegiragi]

konig is very good for ghost and soap in the soapbox saga finale <3

read the full comic (29 pages) on patreon!

[vaguely-concerned]

To the ‘themes I am picking up on in Veilguard’ list, let's go ahead and add what I have a sneaking suspicion will actually turn out to be The theme:

— the world has changed and can never be as it was again.

— I have been changed and can never be who I was again.

— in this simple unavoidable truth there is endless grief and endless hope.

And I… may be getting a bit emotional about it haha. Let me show my work a bit: 

if da:o is a game about people who are already dead or half ghosts in some form (through societal forces, psychologically, functionally, literally, in body, through the joining etc.) coming together anyway to save the world from being swallowed by total nihilism and despair (symbolized by the blight) through the power of love and friendship and also this sword/potential heroic sacrifice that I found, da2 is a game about people who have lost their homes and been set adrift finding and building new homes in each other (while completely failing to save the world. also through the power of love and friendship. as well as years of petty bickering <3 we must imagine kirkwall if not happy then worth having been because the love was there the love was there and that's the only sanctifying force we can ever have in this doomed world and city of ours), and da:i is a game about old stabilizing-but-unjust comfortable lies vs. disruptive but potentially liberating uncomfortable truths, and the power of friendship to help us distinguish the one from the other and navigate through them...

folks… I'm starting to think that veilguard might be a game specifically about moving towards recovery and acceptance after trauma — about how even in this flawed, severed, scarred state, what is here right now is worth loving and worth caring for. even in an imperfect and impermanent world and self, there is worth and joy. and of course the first real tragedy — and threat — of Solas is that he just cannot find it in himself to accept this and move on, to let go of what was, the regret won’t let him go or he won’t let go of it. which means that even though on the surface it’s Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain (and the will to subjugate and violate they represent) who are the main villains, the real antagonistic force in this story beneath that is the Dread Wolf’s despair. A despair Rook must make an answer to by the end of the game, one way or another, compassionately or with righteous fury, triumphant or pyrrhic.

The world will change again and again and so will you — BUT the crucial element is that so will everyone else who exists along with you, you are fundamentally not alone in this existential truth. all we’ll ever have is each other and my god that is plenty, my god that is enough!!! Which is the second thing Solas just can’t accept, he keeps himself separate and completely alone out of an awful mix of fear and pride and feeling himself unworthy of anything else. Rook and the player want to save the world of Thedas because it’s where everyone we love lives, Solas wants to go back to the past because that’s the only neighbourhood where he can still visit those he loved — and the person he himself was, before. A very sympathetic and human instinct/trap to fall into when touched by trauma, I think, if only it wasn’t backed by godlike power, a fundamentally oppositional personality, and a catastrophic lack of therapy to make it literally everyone else’s problem too lol. It’s varric and solas’ banter about the man on the island and where meaning in a life comes from all over again, writ large and with detail work — and the added idea of ‘what if there are also other islands out there, though. With other people on them that you could find if you reach for each other’. Rook with the best of intentions has to make choices to which there are no perfect outcomes and live with what happens — and not cut themselves off from everyone else around them even when there is regret or shame. You get back up every day and you make a life with other people doing the same and you do your best, and that’s the only victory this world will give you. In the end, that is more than enough, that is essential. And I um. I love that. So much. It’s why some of the writing clumsiness on top can’t hurt me because this thematic spine is so solid and so beautiful to me. It’s DA2 all over again that way for me personally — I forgive this story for what it isn’t and couldn’t be, and I love it with my whole stupid open heart for what it actually is. Thank you for coming to my TED-talk and goodbye etc.      

(For my fellow TLT heads out there — you know what this story is reminding me of most of all, actually? It has some big Nona the Ninth vibes down there in the deep. It’s about… the horror and unspeakable beauty that can only be found in liminality, and the role of love in making that basic fact of existence bearable. And also even more unbearable at the same time. I'm so sorry.)

[heavyhandedhex]

“i know you would forgive me because you’re so nice to me all the time!”

[cartoonwishes]

I'M NOT OKAY

[hellspawnmotel]

I finished wild arms yesterday! what a great game

[chinzhilla]

Only Friends episode 1: What's Your Role in a Bar? premiered August 12, 2023

[veinsfullofstars]

🍭 Kirbtober 2024 Day 31: Darkness 🍭

(ID: Kirby series fanart of Kirby - dressed as a mummy - happily dashing by and carrying Gooey - wearing a purple, star-striped witch hat - on his head, each holding an Invincible Candy and leaving a sparkly trail of other treats in their wake. END ID.)

Happy Halloween!

Previous Day | Compilation | Prompt List (made by @/paintpanic)

Started on 10/20/24, finished on 10/21/24. | Kirbtober 2023 Comp

[spokenfromtheheartandsoul]

nick............he's one of us fr

[leonardcohenofficial]

in thinking about the ways that people write meta and analysis on this website i think a great number of people have a hard time distinguishing between deliberate intentional meaning and naive interpretation / what can be read in a work purely but was unintended by the creator and to conflate the two to support a One True Reading of a work is quite frankly stupid lol

[kelsochronicles]

There’s two extremes to my art 🤣

[spookygibberish]

Made a faintly insane list of of every animated movie I have good enough memories of to feel confident ranking, although some of them I would probably move around if I saw them more recently....

[sentienceisoverrated]

Kinda crazy how if anyone else had won double life everyone would be drawing 6 stain-glass portraits instead of 5