#i am very bad at it but I'm having fun :)

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]

[ryllen]

x

[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

[coyoteclan]

There are 330 following this blog now HI

Thought I'd share some territory concepts I've been working on! Both for Coyoteclan and a second clangen blog I've been debating, which is set in the wild west :)

I'll write a little blurb for each little area under the cut for those curious about these locations (and separate images)

Coyoteclan

Fallen-Tree Coyoteclan's Leader den and clan meeting place. The tree is ancient and hollow, the entrance coated in the scratches of long-gone cats. The Leader calls meetings from atop the tree, while the deputy sits on the rocks below.

Thunder River A small collection of waterfalls that eventually lead to the sea. From here, you can hear an ominous, melodic sound coming from the beach.

Graves of the Fallen The resting place for Coyoteclan cats. Coyoteclan prefer to commune with their dead here, but still go with the other healers during halfmoon.

Sweetwater Wilds

Trail of Blood Untamed land filled with bandits and danger. Not only are there plenty of predatory animals living here, but it's a popular hiding place for many outlaws.

Canyon of Stars A place for communing with the stars. Sheriffs and Healers visit often for guidance, though some bandits are known to come here in secret.

Hareshade's Dawn Not really a place but this is the Sheriff of Sweetwater Wilds lol I really like her but she's SO TRANSPHOBIC she is BULLYING the only trans cat in the clan and I cannot stop her

[mysticalcats]

fellas. my friends said they ACTUALLY want to watch cats 2019 with me and i was SHOCKED because like. who would. want to do that. i am delighted. HOWEVER it will take everything in me to not pause it and clarify every five minutes about my opinions on the movie

[sysig]

Growing closer than expected (Patreon)

[nellasbookplanet]

This is so funny I was watching this video on the topic of reylo fanfic-turned-traditionally-published-novels (it's a good video, watch it for a frank yet non-judgemental take on the topic) and in curiosity dug out this fanlore list of fics-turned-novels and found multiple novels on it that I've read, enjoyed (one in the last couple of months!) and fully didn't catch the fanfic roots of.

Really highlights the silliness of people who proudly proclaim their unerring ability to pinpoint whether a story started out as fic or not (and then proceed to point out various books completely unrelated to fandom simply because the author has written fic before, such as the locked tomb series or red white and royal blue), or who loudly state the assumed poor quality of said books despite themselves having read non of them.

[scificrows]

I scrolled through a reddit AMA with Martha Wells and someone asked what show from our world Murderbot would re-watch to calm down and she said The Great British Baking Show!!!!!

Now I am in desperate need of art of Murderbot with a chef's hat and a silly apron in ART's galley covered in flour and cursing next to a failure of a Tarte Tatin or whatever, because turns out that when you have never even touched a food item in your life, baking is WAY less relaxing than watching a show about baking.

[rapidhighway]

gonna vent for a sec but im so tired of this "don't wanna be an inconvenience", people pleasing shit ngl.....do people who do this know that they just come off as really rude and like... it just feels insulting each time

[oopsallmabari]

....why are the youtube comments so mad lol don't y'all like to have fun. don't we like to have fun here

[moondyad]

so i kinda want to talk more about this. The Acolyte and Qimir.

Qimir's true identity was a surprise to me because it felt like there were no smart hints at him being sith. none of the jedi got funny feelings around him. Mae didn't even recognize that the person behind the mask and her goofy accomplice were similar. he mentioned Mae's master would be mad she was using weapons because she wasn't supposed to but? he was her master and let her do it? the reveal seemed so out of left field, shocking for shock value alone. i read that his identity wasn't even supposed to be revealed until season 2, so maybe there was supposed to be more buildup to that moment? doing a subversive character who appears one way but is actually another takes a lot of nuance that just wasn't there. it's extremely hard to change a character from "just a lil guy" to big baddie. and yeah, i know he's in hiding and the whole point of this front is to trick everyone into thinking he is actually harmless (y'know aside from making poisons and whatever other malicious side jobs he does). he literally kills some of our main characters as soon as he's revealed (rip Yord, i'll miss you). but because of his previous presentation it just felt like a joke to me? their deaths all had this dreamlike, this isn't real quality to the point i have to remind myself that these characters are actually dead. i could not become invested in the rest of the episode because him being sith took me so far out of the immersion. idk if this is going too far in the crybaby direction, so i'll just say this characterization was not executed well in my opinion.

i must have missed it, because i was so confused, but apparently Kylo's theme plays after he's revealed? which i read was a very intentional choice. so, my preferences aside and lore cap on... is Qimir possibly the founder of the Ren? the concept that the knights of Ren are based on? This is the gist of the ideology:

which actually does track so far with Qimir's seemingly random choices. also, Ren, the person Kylo kills to become the leader of the knights of Ren, wears a helmet which is vaguely similar to the one Qimir wears. both helmets have the eyes entirely covered by metal. this would essentially make the wearer blind, if they weren't force-sensitive. "The Ren" is a lightsaber Ren carries on him (i know this is all very confusing, bear with me). perhaps as a tie into the sequels, Qimir's saber eventually goes on to become The Ren. this all could mean that the ideology Kylo attaches himself to all the way in the sequels has roots in sith history in the high republic era. i do love a tie-in, but i wish this reveal hadn't been rushed.

the person, the lightsaber, and the ideology are all called "Ren". don't know who decided that, but it makes explaining or reading about it impossible.

[fayeandknight]

I don't think agility class is a good option for dogs struggling heavily with reactivity - particularly if they are constantly lunging at other dogs.

That is not to say that I think dogs struggling with that level of reactivity are bad dogs. Nor do I think they should be sequestered away in their homes and never allowed to be out in the world.

Heck I'm not even of the opinion that they shouldn't learn agility. Just that private lessons would benefit the dog more than a class setting while they are working through reactivity.

Because the thing is, agility is super stimulating for most dogs, whether participating or watching. Even more so if it's an intro class where the team is learning to navigate the equipment and handling. Additionally keeping the dog from going after others is stressful for everyone involved. And I just don't see it as a kind or fair setting to be introducing something as complex, and let's be honest - potentially dangerous - as agility.

I also don't think there's any shame in realizing that an agility class may be too much for where the dog currently is in working through reactivity and taking a step back. Dog training in all its flavors isn't always linear. But I do think it's important, for the people both handler and instructor, to ensure the dog is being set up for success even if it doesn't look the way we'd hoped it would.

Much love and compassion for folks working through reactivity with their dogs. Your dog is not a bad dog. You are not a bad handler. Y'all are working through something difficult and I wish you kindness and patience in your journey.

[torchickentacos]

I'm reading poetry at 1 am and spiraling over like 45 emotions at once, which is how poetry was meant to be enjoyed, I think

[kanerallels]

Sometimes I feel like I don't care what other people think and other times. Sigh

[sysig]

maybe you should doodle however many or few starcon/helix/damned characters as you like (in human or alien form) in cute halloween costumes! imagine... ZEX dressed up as Ariel thelittlemermaid...

Day 26 - "I hadn't realized humans also had aquatic subcultures!" "Oh, well, uhm..."

[ismyteadoneyet]

bro getting myself an audhd assessment for the sole reason of making the rest of my family realize that THE HAVE IT THEMSELVES is getting more and more tempting by the fkn day I SWEAR TO GOD