#except more upsetting

[annmariethrush]

My brain keeps providing me with the outline for a trans Viktor pregnancy fic where he decides that the solution to him dying and being able to do nothing about it is to secretly give Jayce a child that can replace him even though it will surely kill him faster than his disease already is.

It would be body horror and angst and whump. There would NOT be a happy ending. Viktor’s discomfort with the constant reminder of his femininity as he grows a baby. The physical toll that it takes on his body as he is physically unable to eat enough to grow it. The feeling of it hollowing out his already brittle bones, sucking him dry for resources as he pours out his limited reserves away from trying to keep himself alive any longer. The isolation of doing it alone and without Jayce’s blessing, knowing full well that Jayce would never have had sex with him if he thought they weren’t on the same page about how dangerous it was for Viktor to have children.

Jayce does not figure out that Viktor is pregnant until he is so far along that there is nothing to do but hope the baby is viable before it kills Viktor. He beats himself up for not realizing sooner— for thinking it was just the illness ramping up. He quickly loses the energy for rage and instead shifts straight to grief, unable to enjoy the little time left he has with Viktor and the impending arrival of the child he has always wanted.

The baby is born very prematurely by emergency c section after Viktor’s lungs aren’t able to get enough oxygen for him or the baby. Viktor survives the birth but is simply unable to recover in any meaningful way from such an invasive surgery and passes away a couple days later. The baby is in the nicu for three weeks, born small and quiet, but eventually gets strong enough to breathe on its own and fuss when it’s hungry.

Jayce doesn’t know how to cope with the fact that he couldn’t convince Viktor that he was worth every second Jayce could possibly have with him. He doesn’t know how to cope with the constant reminder that Viktor loved him enough to give him a something to live for after he left but not enough to let him take care of him while he grew this final gift.

Jayce moves back in with his mom. He names his daughter Laska. She has golden eyes and little wisps of dark brown hair. Jayce thinks about killing himself but can’t waste the gift that Viktor has given him.

[aroaceleovaldez]

underappreciated Nico detail that I like - he seems to be an angry crier! very frequently he's angry when he cries and he cries when he's extremely angry. very AuDHD of him. emotional regulation sucks my guy and he's just going through it.

[pianokantzart]

:)

[b0nelessdoodles]

messed up my back and had to call out of work about it so have some doodles i forgot to post from a bit ago

[obsessedoverwater]

Becoming a Knuxadow fan truly feels like I'm eating moldy bread and sometimes I occasionally get a piece that's only stale. If I'm lucky maybe it'll be mildew instead.

[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

[waitineedaname]

when I started orv I expected it to be a story where lots of main characters die, like i was coming at it as someone who's read homestuck, I fully expected a lot of major character death, I expected no one from that first subway car to survive. and then as I kept reading, it really struck me just how many people survived and how aside from kim dokja dying a dozen times, no one in the main party has died, and now I've realized that is extremely intentional. this is a story where a lot of people are supposed to die, it's a story that's supposed to force repeated sacrifice, and kim dokja looked at that story and went "absolutely the fuck not, that's not the story I want to tell" and pulled that burden of sacrifice onto himself over and over because he refuses to be part of a story where his friends die

[akkivee]

hypmic always beating me to everything lmao, but they’ve dropped a two part video series speedrunning the drama tracks so you can easily hop back into the series!!!!!

here’s part one and part two!!!!! if i find whatever clip with the most recent drama tracks that they’re talking about, i’ll let y’all know lol

[mukuberry]

any character pairing with muu is peak. the other character will pour their heart out about the goals they're desperately pursing and the rigid rules they live their life by even though it hurts and only makes things worse for them and muu will just respond "hmmm muu doesn't really care about that though? that sounds tiring you should just do whatever you want forever. anyway muu wants a milkshake go make her one or she'll cry"

[dailydegurechaff]

I feel like I should take some of the blame for this because of Marya Week

Should

I wouldn't use the word blame per se, that implies you've done something wrong. I think I'd perhaps say credit, bc you created a wonderful little event.

now, while I have you, go forth my dailydegu-ers. follow @embroideredequations

[frogwen]

hiiiiii ❤️‍🔥 thank you @mousepal for tagging me! the game is i pick 4 of my favorite characters and then you vote on which you most connect with me 👍

hopefully even if you dont recognize the character, you still get the vibe. and im realizing belatedly that the only vibe is "guy who suffers" 💀 buuuuut this was genuinely fun to think about, so plz give it a try and tag or dm me if you make one too so i can see and vote :3

anyone, everyone @steevejr @foolishbeanwoman @nineofswords @eleventeenthealbum @wawek @nutongzhi @buttcheek2 @lycheeboy (sid mini bracket ? 😳) @archdemoning @twoticky @misevolimo @kirby97 @handweavers OR IF YOU SEE THIS ON YOUR DASH- IM TAGGING YOU. tumblr wont let me edit poll posts so this is the end of personal invitations lmao

[grandwretch]

for the millionth fucking time, the difference between the princesses and the party is so obvious unless you're being pedantic

"We're not so different, you and I," is such a bullshit trope when one side is trying to wipe out existence itself

like yes the party are still main characters and inherently selfish but you know what the real difference is? the reason why the party can't be the same as the princesses?

because they love people who aren't.

thats the whole point. ylfa would never want to erase her grandmother. pinocchio would never want to erase his father. rosamund is the only character who doesn't have another character of her story that she would do anything for, but her whole story is about wanting and searching for that kind of love.

the princesses have people they loved, sure, but they don't care about trying to save them. for all cinderella is upset about her mother, she'd rather erase her from existence than try to save her, because her nihilism has overwhelmed her love. snow white is alone. rapunzel is alone. la bête is alone. they may have loved, once, but now all they care about is erasing their pain.

and thats understandable, and I think everyone who has dealt with trauma and abuse has a phase where they have to grapple with that kind of numbness, but I think the whole point of the story is that eventually you have to move past that

I believe, ultimately, love will be what inspires mira and hopefully elody to turn away from the daughters of the crown. because they have people they love in these worlds, and even their memories are worth preserving.

[beeprich]

genuinely lamenting the lost relationship between mike hanlon and his parents in every IT adaptation

[goldkirk]

Sharing one of the more powerful quotes from this current chapter of The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945.

The situation, where even heroism was denied the men of the democratic Left, came about in no small part because of the failure of the Social Democrats to understand the nature of Nazism. Just as their basic premise in the years before Hitler came to power was the erroneous assumption that the Nazis were essentially Putsch-ists who could not possibly attract a mass following, so their basic premise after Hitler came to power was the equally erroneous assumption that his would be a government similar to the others of the Weimar period.

The most eloquent document on this was the set of instructions sent out to SPD Locals in District Hanover on March 23, 1933. It was filled with instructions about sending for handbooks on Socialist policy in communal affairs and filling out questionnaires; in short, carrying on business as usual. The only reference to the phenomenon of Nazism was contained in paragraph seven;

Will the election of our village and town representatives be approved? That is a question which is repeatedly being asked. The question is unanswerable because we do not know what this government will do. However, in any case, we must, now as always, select trustworthy comrades as village representatives wherever we have a majority. Should they later not be sworn in, then we will take a position on this. Under no circumstances should we value any of our rights cheaply.

This at a time when SPD leaders were having their houses searched in the middle of the night for weapons! This when the officers of the Reichsbanner were being herded into jail by Storm troopers, beaten in the prisons across Germany, cast into Nazi concentration camps! The SPD, the only defenders of democracy in Germany, the men who should have been gathering guns and calling the general strike, or at least developing an underground with passwords, false names, and other paraphernalia of effective covert resistance, were instead being urged to keep the party files in order, to avoid bookkeeping errors, and above all to purchase the latest pamphlet on parliamentary tactics in village councils.

If the central offices of the SPD did not know “what this government will do,” the local socialist leaders in Northeim soon found out.

(the book goes on to describe the experiences of five Northeim Social Democrats over multiple pages of raids, imprisonment, misery, and persecution)

[kimtaegis]

🌧️

[toskarin]

there are too many navels drawn like wounds these days. haunting