#frustrating nonetheless

[dokidokistart]

link to the store here

[disbarredgoose0]

Finding out Olivia Gobert-Hicks has been receiving the worst of the backlash from the most recent commander bans even though she was apparently the only disenting voice is just. I mean I'd say it's suprising, but it's not. Cause like. It's misogyny. It's a problem that has existed in the Magic community for ages and has onces more revealed its ugly head. It's the misogyny. The misogyny that has existed in this—and many other 'nerd' spaces—for years. And it's just... really, really sad to continuously be reminded that in spite of all this time, not much progress has really substantially been made.

[maarigolds]

When the show is good but they keep butchering your favorite characters from the book

[daily-hanamura]

[uncanny-tranny]

I promise you can speak about and denounce undesirable behaviour without attributing it to some in-born, immutable, unchanging trait that you must "civilize" away.

In this specific instance that inspired this, you really don't need to attribute bad behaviour that's done by a man with unchanging character traits. This isn't even solely about men, because doing this affects everyone, men included.

"Men needed to be civilized out of behaving this way!" Who are you expecting to be doing the civilizing and why? This is just defending the idea that women are responsible for training up men - the millenia-old idea that a man's failings are actually a woman's fault, not his.

As a man, I am responsible for my actions. You don't need to dehumanize me in order to preserve your misogyny and your need to hate a group of men. Don't get me wrong, this rhetoric absolutely is not good for men to face. It especially targets men who have experiences with marginalized identities. If you're on my page, you know that this is something I deal with personally, have personal stakes in that affect my life daily. I just also think we really need to remember that this issue exists in a context where women and other folks will inevitably be punished as a direct result of these ideas as well.

I need to make that last part emphatically clear: even if this rhetoric (somehow) only hurt men, it would still be wrong. It would still be wrong! I want to - as a man - remind people (especially those who already have decided to dehumanize entire groups of people) that nobody is safe from being exempt from punishment due to this rhetoric.

[oldrudshore]

What are friends for if not moments like these

[kashmirichaiwithmehr]

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[the-cryptographer]

On the one hand I do feel like a huge part of da fandom kinda fails to acknowledge that Merrill is as smart as she is and that the huge passion in her life is restoring Elvhen magical artefacts and trying to forge a future for the Dalish. And also fail to acknowledge the depth of the things she’s up against, having been shunned by her clan and living in a time where her indigenous culture is fading as more and more elves are assimilated and colonialism runs rampant. So it is good to see more takes of her that acknowledge this but also- asdfghjkl; Guys, I don’t want to read about Merrill being the smart and helpful voice of moral reason and support while thirdwheeling in some fandom juggernaut m/m or f/m ship fic. I want her to make problems! I want her to aggress people! I want her to tell other people’s priorities to go hang because hers are more important to her! I want her ask questions specifically to make the people she’s asking uncomfortable! I want to see her hole get stuffed! I’m horny for her! What don’t you guys get?!

[halfusek]

great. gonna have to glaze/nightshade all my art. its not like i have an over 4500 images long comic. no problem at all

[exalok]

reason: the seven resketchings of one smuch cannot hurt you

the rest of me: mournful wailing

[lemonduckisnowawake]

Having finished the Sumeru quest, I truly believe that the problems in Tevyat keep exponentially increasing per country because you have

Mondstad - standard fantasy quest about defeating a dragon and learning about the power of friendship; the more generic fantasy setting too, with the English-Germanic inspiration it's got going on. It IS good and sets up a lot of the lore, but in terms of thematic complexity, it's very straightforward even though it does go in depth

Liyue - I don't know what to say, man. It's literally just a god faking his death and having fun planning his own funeral and causing issues with a side of discourse about how gods and humans can coexist as society changes (that I think is minorly undermined with the looming presence of Celestia via Visions). Definitely deeper, develops the themes set up in Mondstad, has a unique lore inspired by Hoyo's own country, but still mostly good times (until you get to the Traveler quests, but shhh).

Inazuma - the people in here are NOT having a good time. You have oppressive oligarchies and tyrannies, the abuse of military and governmental power, and the cyclical nature of war/abuse contrasted with how power can be used for good (think Ayaka and Kokomi vs Ei and the other commissions, and Vision Holders vs also Ei) and how eternity DOES mean something only what does it mean when you stopped time and changing at your lowest and most traumatized point (by the way, IMO none of the characters really know what eternity actually is, fundamentally, and yet have skipped to establishing it...causing many issues). Fascinating worldbuilding based on Japanese mythology and ancient society and further plot development that's still pretty mild....and then you get to the Traveler Quests.

Sumeru - yeah, okay, the abuse of academics. Racism and discrimination, both in the narrative and metanarratively (and it's not just the skin color issue, too.) Taking advantage of kind people in power. The importance of education. The inherent classism found in it. Censorship. Government regulation of knowledge. Lowkey allegories for oppressive religious government systems AND radical religious groups. The importance of history. Being remembered and leaving a legacy vs being forgotten to save others. The lore deepens and so does the pain. The worldbuilding in Sumeru is DEEP and yes there are issues with packing two different land areas together but it still stands out REALLY well against your typical fantasy world, blending in elements of sci-fi and horror (right?) with a magic-school-but-it's-a-university setting. Lore explodes as we get more info and teasers that things get way deeper

I haven't gotten to Fontaine, but. Well. French Theater Kids is the vibe I've gotten.

[capillaryspice]

Unpopular opinion rant incoming:

I did not enjoy Baldurs Gate 3

Before anything else I will admit I am biased, as strategy turn based games aren't something I'm usually into to begin with. I mostly ended up playing it because my partners and a friend are SUPER into the game and wanted to do a 4 player run. I do have 30 hours on a solo run I tried to get used to the game with, so I have a decent bit of experience with how it's supposed to run as a single player but I'm not judging companion stories or anything because I haven't completed them.

I do understand why people like BG3, and I don't wanna rain on anyone's parade for a very critically acclaimed game, but I do have some thoughts that I just need to get out of my head, so if you like the game and don't wanna hear me complain about it just scroll on ahead. If you do want to hear me complain, I'd love to hear if anyone else has had the same thoughts, because genuinely I've not really had anyone to talk to that hasn't been head-over-heels for it. (Actual thoughts under the cut)

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With that out of the way, for starters BG3 is a very impressive game. From a technical perspective, from a voice acting quality perspective, the sheer amount of tiny tiny details, etc... it is IMPRESSIVE. Too impressive, I'd almost have to say. Because, despite being impressed by it, I did not have FUN playing the game. For all its details it doesn't draw me in. For all the technical marvel, it's just too janky. It's all of the rules of DND and none of the immersion or fun

I would love to have had a functioning camera position that didn't give me whiplash whenever a new character in the combat of 20+ NPCs decides to do so much as shuffle to the left. It feels like pulling teeth when trying to select/interact with anything, god forbid a reaction happens while you're trying to attack and you just completely lose the action bc the interruption to movement pauses everything and screws u up. I'd love to be able to jump without going through two menu screens and a map to just hop over a gap(I'm never complaining about the Dark Souls jump being too complicated ever again). Also everything moves so slow, I would kill for a fucking Sprint button.

I would have liked anything approaching a streamlined combat system that didn't take a long ass time to set up a move that takes six seconds to play out, and then wait for ten minutes literally doing nothing while the rest of the NPCs in initiative whip the viewpoint around and get it stuck in walls and corpses so I can't even see what's happening while I can't do anything for the rest of the round

A lesser gripe, but just a bizarre choice to not do: Id like to hear the character voice I chose in character creation for cutscenes, instead of just background ambient lines. Like, if the last dragon age game (from 2014 mind you) can have a voiced main character with multiple voice options, this new game that has unique voice lines for every goddamn squirrel on the map and ALREADY PAID VOICE ACTORS TO VOICE THE MAIN CHARACTER TO BEGIN WITH can probably afford to do so. Hell, I'd like some background music that isn't just the tenth rendition of Down By The River in a different key. The bard music is all gorgeous, why couldn't they have reused some of those compositions as ambient music for different locations?

This is a MASSIVE game, and what they've put into it is definitely admirable, but like. Not in the ways that make a game breathable or immersive? The choices in where they've decided to dedicate the anal level of detail seems misguided from a just general player standpoint; There's some gorgeous settings in the game, but I was distracted every time by getting frustrated that I couldn't even get a more-than-vague look at any of the scenery I actually enjoyed because the camera is so limited in its angles. So I can't take a good look around what should be a beautiful temple that I'd love to see closer, but I can individually inspect every moldy apple and tax form on a random dinner table instead. It's a vast open world, but the character models have very clearly defined paths they have to stay within. The amount of unique NPCs is insane, but the mechanics themselves TREAT them as NPCs(i.e., resurrection rules), and they don't react to PCs unless ur doing Violence or Crimes (even og skyrim had NPCs have comments on if u weren't like wearing clothes, for instance). Every shelf and bag and nook and cranny are searchable, but that gets overwhelming very quickly as you have to choose between taking like an hour of real time to clear a cluttered area and possibly find something important but more likely just end up with a bajillion rotten carrots, or move on but have the anxiety of knowing you've possibly missed something vital. There's a million options you can take at any moment with any object or character, but there's rarely anything indicating what will be vital later for general world stuff. But then with the main plot (the Emperor, Raphael, the crèche) it felt very railroaded in the sense that TECHNICALLY you could try and choose between outcomes, but your choices don't actually matter because you die if you choose The Wrong Option (or end up in effectively death sentence combat) and will end up where they want you to go regardless.

BG3 isn't a game I want to spend time playing; it's not a world I can wander around and appreciate the beauty of and get lost in the soundtrack or the environments. The whole combat system is incredibly frustrating to manage, and just feels like Hurry Up And Wait. I'm not gonna knock the romance parts of the game, I've heard good things and haven't gotten far enough in any of em to have an educated opinion on, so really the only thing the game has to offer in spades OTHER than romance is replayability. Which normally I would say is a good thing, but for how long of a game it is and how non immersive the gameplay and world feel, it really just ends up being a game of fucking around and seeing how many things you can get an alternate dialogue for or create new stats around. Like, this is great for completionist folks who love collecting achievements and making the most busted crunchy math-based builds possible, but Baldurs Gate 3 to me just isn't a game I can sit down and have Fun(TM) relaxing and playing.

It's a game that I feel absolutely missed the forest for the trees.

So anyways, essay complete. I've only slept like 6 hours total in the last three days so a lot of this may or may not even make sense. But on so much sleep deprivation finishing this game and realizing I was just frustrated with it instead of actually feeling accomplished for having finished it, it was the final straw and I just needed to get the thoughts down somewhere

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

[bloodmoonlich]

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[designernishiki]

y3 has made me feel many things but one of the things that lingers with me the most about it is how majima takes every possible opportunity and makes every possible gesture to say “please don’t leave me alone again, please take me with you when you leave, I WANT to be right next to you when you need me, I’ll literally do anything for you, just don’t leave me alone again” always indirectly but in strong enough ways that i think it’d be obvious to anyone paying attention EXCEPT Kazuma Kiryu, The Densest Man On Earth, who he’s pleading to in the first place. it’s. frustrating to watch. someone needs to grab kiryu by the shoulders and tell him. for the love of god. this man loves you so much and you keep leaving him when all he wants to do is help you and be with you please just take him to okinawa oh my god

[barschter000]

Barok felt a new kind of completion, and under the weight of the jewelry, he straightened. The pendants shone proudly through the dim of the attic as if its place on Barok's chest had restored them to a glory no one else had been able to awaken before. ...It's the dust, Barok reasoned, I must have removed it by chance while I handled the stones. Merely the dust that had been lifted off everything, under which the necklace had waited and his eyes welled with tears.

I've not had the words to properly write recently but still wanted to do something with my fics, so I decided to illustrate a scene from my transfem Barok fic that I really like. More of it under the cut

⎯⎯⎯

He suddenly considered speaking a prayer for her peaceful rest in the afterlife, now that after all these years, the thought of her was so present in his mind again. But he quickly decided against it; her gaze from the grave was already more than enough, he did not need to call another pair of distant eyes on himself.

“Vergeeft u me, Moeder.” He opened the jewelry box.

Lifting the lid released a new wave of the attic’s endless supply of dust and Barok snorted. Still, the dust revealed that the old shimmer of gemstones and gold in the little compartments had survived: the bejeweled bracelets and ornate brooches, the dainty necklaces and hat pins; his mother’s preserved beauty.

His throat contracted. This felt immoral. This was immoral. He was robbing a dead woman, essentially. And what for? Uncertainties and impossibilities. He should simply turn around and go back downstairs and lock himself in whenever those thoughts arose again.

It hadn’t work, had it? The thoughts always returned. Barok hoped that a measure this extreme would banish them once and for all.

One piece of jewelry caught his attention.

It was a wedding gift, he had been told. A beloved necklace that his grandmother had passed to his mother when she had married, and was to be passed to his sister-in-law in turn. However, Klint had considered it a bad omen: he did not want to burden his wife with the tragedy that had been their parents’ marriage and death.

Klint’s precautions had mattered little in the end; and whether his prudence towards the accessory was reasonable or not, Barok thought a bad omen might be of use in the situation at hand.

The necklace was a delicate work of exquisite craftsmanship – pale blue moonstones suspended from a fine gold chain, smaller than his palm. His mother had worn it practically all the time that they had shared. He remembered her habit of fiddling with the chain, how it only got worse whenever she was told to pull herself together.

Not unlike himself.

Barok pulled out the necklace, careful to not awaken any more dust, and settled down at an old dressing table. Like the other furniture in the attic, it had not been used ever since the last woman of his family had left the house, and was now doomed to rot away in darkness. Barok just couldn’t convince himself to throw it out.

The light of his candelabra illuminated the grime on the mirror, half-obscuring his reflection. It was for the better.

One last time, Barok sighed. He opened the clasp and put it on.

It should have felt wrong, not familiar. Nostalgic at best. If anything, the sparkle of the gems could have evoked reminiscence of childhood curiosity, of plump fingers in his mother's arms reaching out to catch the reflections, of older but still bright eyes always darting back to the shimmering that he had been forbidden to touch – not this.

The coolness of the metal through his collar should satisfy the young boy of his memories. The weight should ground him, bow him down to pay last respects to his mother and to let the necklace slip off his head and release him.

Instead, Barok felt a new kind of completion, and under the weight of the jewelry, he straightened. The pendants shone proudly through the dim of the attic as if its place on Barok's chest had restored them to a glory no one else had been able to awaken before.

...It's the dust, Barok reasoned, I must have removed it by chance while I handled the stones. Merely the dust that had been lifted off everything, under which the necklace had waited and his eyes welled with tears.

He tore off the jewelry and threw it against the mirror.

Barely a second had separated that damning realization and the crack! and chink! of split glass and chipped moonstones.

Destruction had become a habit in the past decade. It was an addictive means to control – quick, effective, satisfying.

Finally he, the broken heart, was the one to break what he loved most. Finally he himself could choose his pain.

He struck the mirror. The shards loosened from the frame and dropped onto the dressing table; small pieces bore into his fist.

[hongssami]

one thing about chip is they will always put words in the tags. and I read them and laugh

literally lost my mind w this ty chip 😭❤️ and I'm glad u like the coloring but I woke up this morning and only liked it Slightly more

it's not easy, but somebody has to put on the court jester's shoes and i would gladly do that for the preservation of whimsy in my mutuals' tags

just an average day of me on the tumblweeds ^^