#idk someone else come up with something maybe

[glisten-inthedark]

So I watched someone's byler analysis video on youtube, and their perspective on the van scene blew my mind for some reason? Idk why I never even considered this. It seems so obvious, but it's made me think thoughts.

I love speculating abt what Mike was thinking during the van scene... but yeah they said that Mike probably knew that Will was talking about himself during the veiled love confession.

Most people think Mike is oblivious, but I have a feeling that Mike REMEMBERED that El doesn't know about the painting + that it was for 'someone Will likes'.

If Mike really, truly thought the painting was from El, and that those were El's feelings that Will talked about, why all the lip glances? Why all the longing stares and gulps and breathing? Mike felt so moved by the painting and by Will's words... if he thought they were from El, wouldn't he just stare longingly out the window or anywhere else OTHER than WILL?

The byler analyst also said that Mike's 'Yeah?' at the end was one of uncertainty - he was subtly asking for confirmation that these were Will's feelings. Like it's just dawned upon Mike that Will might have feelings for him, and his hopes are getting up. He said that sort of to 'test the waters.'

People also wonder why Mike didn't say anything when he saw Will cry into his hand. But I think:

They weren't alone, so anything said would have to be veiled anyways.

Mike and Will often speak to each other under the guise of talking abt El... it happened at Rink-O-Mania too. It would be difficult for Mike to say anything directly to Will after that van conversation, maybe?

Mike may have saw that Will needed space for a bit? Or Mike himself needed time to process their conversation and revel in the painting?

The byler analyst also said that this conversation led Mike to almost break up with El at the pizza place, which I agree with too. It very much looked like a mutual breakup about to take place. I feel like Mike has wanted to break up with El for a while now... he keeps on telling Will about his relationship problems, as if he subconsciously wants encouragement that breaking up would be the right choice for them.

Anyways, when Will said, 'You're the heart' whilst El was choking, a switch might have flipped in his brain. It went from:

Will? sees me as the heart?

Wait... it really was El who sees me as the heart... wait... so it was all El all along? Not Will? Not Will at all? But I thought-

Which explains the confusion and distress on Mike's face as Will probed him. As the byler analyst pointed out, if Mike REALLY thought all along that the painting + Will's words were from El, there is NO reason for him to seem so confused when Will reminded him that 'You're the heart.'

And that's when Mike's hopes fell again. Anyways, would love your thoughts on this!

Hello! How are you?

Ok, so at first I wasn't entirely sure Mike figured out the feelings Will was talking about were his, but the more I think about the scene, the more convinced I get that even though he didn't know everything, he knew enough.

Finn claimed that he asked the Duffers how Mike could have been that oblivious but I think he's a lying liar who lies because he did not play that scene as if he didn't know that his character didn't know. No, he played as if he was entranced by Will - not by the painting that was supposedly coming from the girl he loved - but by the person giving it to him.

So I totally believe that he knew, how much he knew I can't say for sure, but he knew something which explains Finn's acting choices, because like you said, if he truly thought the words were from El, he wouldn't have looked at Will like that.

And is the perfect setup for more misunderstandings, because as soon as Will tells Mike he's the heart, he figures he misunderstood the entire thing, he probably felt like he was such an idiot, which also explains his expressions, and it leaves the writer in the position of allowing Mike to be the one pining and believing his feelings are unrequited.

OH THE ANGST!!

[bookshelfmonkey]

Ok but imo (as a trans guy) the dress moment could also work very well as an ftm Gender Moment.

I feel like the basis of the dress moment being so significant (or even being included in the show, although god only knows what the creators meant it to show) isn't that he's* considering wearing a dress. We see many other crew members wearing dresses at the party, laughing with everyone else and generally having a good time, and it's never brought up again, because it's a costume worn to a party. To Fitzjames, it seems to be more than a costume, hence his reluctance, hence the significance of the scene.

The common transfemme angle (as I see it, correct me if I'm wrong) is that this represents a moment where Fitzjames confronts the fact that his desire to wear the dress runs deeper than a desire to dress up for a night. This is more than a costume, this is a significant, meaningful expression of a desire that he's hidden for years, a desire that he knows (has been taught) is shameful, and now he has the opportunity to show that part of himself and have no one bat an eye and he just can't do it because it feels too vulnerable.

The transmasc angle is more complicated, so I'm going to explain my own experience real quick. When I was younger, I had to wear dresses and I hated it, but it was what was expected of me, so I didn't feel like I had a choice. Refusing to wear dresses and presenting masc was an act of rebellion for me, a hard won victory. It was also, up until I medically transitioned relatively recently, the only way I could pass. So I have that background: the years of having to wear dresses, and many more years of being pressured to wear them even after I'd repeatedly expressed that I didn't want to. But, now, I am living as a queer man. A lot of the men I surround myself with are more androgynous/feminine than I am, and none of my friends would bat an eye if I wore a dress. I also pass pretty much 100% of the time, and if I went out in public in a dress, I'd just be seen as a man in a dress (which comes with its own issues, but I don't have time to get into that right now). So I could wear a dress, and not massively run the risk of no longer being seen as a man, something that means a lot to me because it took a lot to get to that point. But I still haven't worn a dress since I stopped when I was 7. Look, I've got some internalised shit going on, it's not necessarily healthy, but it does help mimic the kind of shit that would be going on in the mind of someone living in 18th century england. Wearing a dress would-- to put it simply-- make me dysphoric. Not because I see dresses as something only women wear, but because it would remind me of when I had to wear them, and because I'd feel like that would be all people would need to see through me to my past and start seeing me as a woman again. To bring it back to ftm Fitzjames, this could easily apply. He knows that the crew see him as a man, he knows that a cis man in his position could (as many do in the show) wear the dress as a costume, have a good time, and never experience any kind of consequences for it-- he knows that he could do that. But it's more complicated, because, although he knows that it'd be fine, wearing the dress feels too vulnerable, too familiar. It breaks down the performance of the perfect (cis) man that he tries to keep up at all times, and so he doesn't do it.

Or maybe I'm just projecting, idk.

* just gonna use he/him throughout the post for consistency

i don’t think we consider ftm fitzjames enough like yes of course we had the dress scene which was crazy but also have we considered a guy who is So Obsessed with living up to the victorian masculine ideal despite everything going against him from birth. and yet somehow he is able to rise above all of that until they’re stuck in the arctic where society has all but forgotten them. and he can only really accept that it’s okay not to be this perfect heroic guy when he becomes friends (lovers?) with another guy who has long stopped trying to be the perfect victorian man because him being irish and lower birth status means society will never accept him as such. and again i recognize the Gender Moment of the dress but from the ftm angle the whole fucking show is a Gender moment

[pulchrasilva]

"Save my people and I'll follow you to my last breath" what I'm hearing is that Igneous will marry Chip but he's gotta save everyone on the island as a dowry first

[solarpunkani]

"Oh no, someone's attracted to the aesthetics of my -punk movement but doesn't know the praxis and history behind it like I do--"

OK. Tell them. Make it a teaching moment. Everyone who's in your movement learned the background from somewhere at some point, maybe this is that point for that person. Give them a jumping off point that they can dive into later.

"Oh but I shouldn't be responsible for teaching baby -punks about the history and the how-tos and--"

OK. Then don't tell them. You don't have to be responsible for teaching people with a budding interest in your group the ins and outs and how-tos. That's fair and valid! It can be a lot of work. Someone else will handle it

"But I'm annoyed that they would try to claim to be part of/be interested in my community without knowing all the details that I know after being in it for months/years/decades, they're dumb, they're posers, they're--"

OK. Then don't engage with them, if it's that bad. Maybe someone else will come around and tell them the history, maybe they'll pick it up on their own, maybe they'll just enjoy the fashion elements for awhile.

"But they shouldn't claim to be part of the -punk community if they don't know the--"

I feel like we have a few options here. People can either talk to them, share the history, share the values, share the praxis. Or they can just chase off anyone who even thinks about dipping a toe in their community, and then wonder why it's dying off later down the line.

I dunno, maybe I'm too naive and patient or whatever. But if people are entering your -punk spaces without knowing The Rundown of what you feel they need to know, maybe being nice about it and informing people instead of immediately assuming stupidity and malicious intent could help you make a new friend. Even the loudest voices in a space had to learn from somewhere, and not everyone has the luxury of being in the space as the History was Happening--whether it's an age thing or a not being aware of the space thing. Or maybe I just don't see what the big deal is behind people hating people who like the aesthetic of something and don't know the behind the scenes history about it yet.

Because I believe in the word 'yet.' No one comes into this world knowing everything about everything, and we're all constantly learning new things. I'm not gonna degrade someone and call them a poser for not knowing what I know. Because if it were me, interested in a scene but getting chased out and called a poser? I wouldn't hit the books and study up, I'd go 'that fuckin sucks, those people sucked' and then avoid anyone and anything having to do with it.

So chase people off and call them posers if you want. But if your community starts dwindling, don't be fucking shocked.

[perilegs]

i know astrology is fake but i'm not too keen on how a lot of people on this website seem to be clowning on it as a hobby a bit too hard. i swear the woman who thinks it's neat how she and her friends with the same sun sign are all similar isn't trying to say that you are who you are born as and there is nothing you can do to change it. it's a hobby. an interest. what happened to finding meaning and joy in the small things. does it affect you if someone enjoys tarot reading or crystals. does it make you upset someone has interests that they enjoy.

[lilyrealm]

i lied i changed the tag immediately. anywayyy maybe ill just start typing and see if inspo comes to me. i think itd be kind of funny if in this au ei and makoto arent even related, ei is just an actual android body double commissioned for makoto. i cant rmb, inazuma didnt know makoto existed right? did they just not know there was a handover 500 years ago... but yea thats gonna add a little identity crisis to the mix (remembers fontaine) wait... ok we'll get to there when we get there!! inazuma first

i suppose yae is just made for the shrine... everyone else that has like a normal job, just assume theyre made for their normal job ok. ittos is not a normal job tho. UNLESS... genius strat where they make a "gang leader" that is actually harmless and even plays with kids, but is capable of overpowering other gangs, thus. no actual criminal gangs!! we onto smth here. kuki wouldnt be needed tho but since she has that shrine story she can be one of those that had their purpose changed perhaps. how? well either its sentience or someone behind the scenes 🤷‍♀️ dont think abt it too deeply

who else... everyone else is kind of self explanatory i think. they just... do their jobs/help people they work alongside. i suppose kokomis different since shes in a position of power, and they have that family line jazz, so its kind of weird for her to be a commercial (celestia) android. maybe we can just assume technology is fairly advanced in this era so theyre not all commercial? people can just make their own. oh yeah this ties back into daydreams' original concept of like... broken down models being fixed up by readers... who knows, maybe people even make imitations. hm. maybe that should be neuvillette since hes an enemy of celestiaOkay i keep jumping to fontaine for some reason

should i keep it to one nation a reblog or just keep going. imma keep going. now how do we fit in rukkhadevatas whole thing... i also dont claim to be very knowledgeable about all the desert stuff (and havent finished the pari quest😭) but its probably also not celestia approved so maybe its also a separate faction? wait hold on. the forbidden knowledge can just be. a virus. and some buggy code is left in rukkhadevatas memory so nahida had to delete her loooool okay with how tech they made sumeru this fits really nicely.

im gonna say cynos bad jokes+tcg interest was not scripted at all cuz idk why theyd do that unless some engineer was like wouldnt it be funny. i mean thats also possible ig but like with kuki, sentience is an option... i think this entire au was (partially) inspired when i read smth (an anon on daydream's blog maybe?) about alhaitham and nahida being school guides or something. alhaitham proobably wouldnt be a teacher type i think he just helps them do admin and is fully aware the sages delegate a lot of work to the "scribe" bc they know hes an android. oooh but maybe they keep it quiet and not even everybody knows hes an android so hes like Lol if youre gonna masquerade me as a human you better treat me like one and give me time off and holiday pay etc. yeah thats funny

...i have no idea how to fit in his and kavehs roommate situation. it would be funny if kaveh wasnt an android and just had no idea (bonus angst when he finds out and is like uve been lying to me?!?!) though i did start this thinkihg vision holders would all be androids. WAIT WHAT DOES THAT MEAN FOR THE VISION HUNT DECREE. oh i guess its just "deactivate that mf" huh. no thats weird cuz yoimiya wouldnt be able to be "alive" for the coup... maybe it fr just disables their elemental powers. which could be connected to their ambitions who knows, that could be the original concept.

okay now weve got that squared away, back to sumeru. ill put kaveh on the backburnerWait. what if there was like a. make someone into an android a la nikke bc theyre dying or just because. and he did that but now hes broke bc of the payment for it. okayy maybe.

also im thinkin if usually the ppl in charge commission these droids (i mean that might spoil a lot of the rebellion plotlines) maybe celestia also just randomly releases models that werent commissioned... okay what i wanted to get at was, the sages wouldnt have commed nilou (unless they were more lenient on the arts in the past which is possible i just cant rmb) but if not i guess she can just be a random celestia release. who the fuck made layla

aaaand ive been avoiding the elephant in the room... scaramouche. i do love the idea of each of his forms being different models. ahhh it would be cool if ei actually did make him, not celestia. using her own knowledge and power but shes not perfect and neither is he (ok thats not why she deemed him unsuitable) (omg. it was bc he cried on birth and she was like ah hes too soft (human) HaHaHa that would be really Funny if it reminds her of makoto Lol)

so... kabukimono escapes his holding and tatarasuna happens... damn the whole irminsul-history-wipe thing doesnt really work here. unless, if we are still setting this in the original universe with magic and stuff, just with MORE androids, then i guess irminsul could exist. just that instead of being a corrupting Thing in rukkhadevata, the forbidden knowledge is a corrupting virus. 👍

back to scara. there isnt much to change here, he can absolutely still have his human crisis because none of the people he stayed with were vision holders so he never met a fellow android. and hes also different from fellow androids anyway since ei made him! wow! double whammy! anyway dottore

everything is just the same actually. like this doesnt change anything in the plot they still make that fuckass robot. okay is there anything else in sumeru im missing. oh right earlier i was like why would they make layla cuz i was like. they should not encourage sleeping in class. but it could be like, yk, relatable to students, but she still gets work done so yk no excuse (except that shes an android)!! i also know she has some identity issues but i havent done her hangout yet so... gonna leave it there, idk if itll affect this too much. faruzans just a teacher, etc etc, dori could be a plant or just commissioned/made by the black market lol

cyno and sethos' Thing... hmmmmmmm. i guess, instead of kids they just made two androids to be the host for the the soul of h. im trying to remember but all thats coming to mind is hamarhaft which is a weapon in bg3. quick google: hermanubis. yes. oooh so maybe cyno isnt commissioned by the sages at all! yeah okay that makes things make sense!

hmmmmm. collei. she didnt have a vision in the manga, right... perhaps dottores experiment is to "fix" eleazar patients by combining them/putting their brain into an android? yeah that sounds plausible (dottore fans dont gut me cuz i never read too deeply into his experiments)

that should be all outliers in sumeru? onto fontaiWAIT I FORGOT ABOUT KAZUHA. hm. hmmm. yk its possible that the inazuma clans comm their own androids, so like, the kamisatos... (i also think itd be an extra layer to ayakas angst if the public didnt know they were androids.) so maybe the kaedeharas made one on the last of their money lol. his friend is i really dont know he could be anything, all that matters is hes an android (had a vision) and was killed by ei (driving a sword through an android should probably fuck it up. especially if the sword is empowered by elemental magic and ei was part of the original archon lineup).

then he fucks off to explore the world. definitely not a commercial android. haha even though he and scara would be popular choices (not necessarily tgt) but i accidentally made them one of a kind so no you cant really go to the market and buy a scara android. though i suppose that does delve more into "genshin plot is just a story the company made to drive sales" rather than "genshin plot is happening right now".

baaaack to fontaine. oooh boy oh boy. to start, focalors was against celestia from the start, though i dont think itd be too bad to say they made her and she went r—wait i forgot, the previous hydro archon passed the title to her. side note what the fuck are oceanids in this au. androids lite. nah maybe they can still be oceanids. so the prev hydro archon (egaria? no its egeria) passed the title of archon to focalors. perhaps she did an ei and made her own droid? how does passing the archon title work with this though... unless archon isnt really assigned the androids, thats just what they called the initial lineup and those that still have that initial model treat them as gods. so egarias the commercial bot that went rogue. or something im looking at her wiki and the history is... um a lot more complicated im not even sure if she was part of the original archon lineup. okay thats not important. whats important is: what the fuck is furina???

furina is supposed to be part fontainian, so part oceanid... magic fuse an oceanid with a droid and bam...! but splits them in two... shit then the droid is the one hiding instead lol. but hey with all their pneuma ousia shit maybe it needs to be a droid converting all that energy! but normal fontainians are not immortal the way furina is/was sooo... idk we're mixing scifi and fantasy magic so theres probably something connecting the two of them to each other, some battery inside them, or maybe furinas like 1/4 droid while focalora is 1/4 oceanid. that could work.

WHAT THE FUCK IS NEUVILLETTE. clearly not made by celestia. lol since they stole the power from the dragons its just an old company that maybe pioneered this tech but celestia stole it!?!? i feel like i should be thinking about khaenriah here. but anyway. neuvillette canonically isnt pure dragon so maybe its like... the creators have lost some of their materials or process due to celestia so they cant make a proper dragon again. so they just make a humanoid also to masquerade under celestias gaze (spoiler: they aint even notice?)

so how does the transfer of power work... focalors kills herself, WHAT THE HELL IS THE WHALE DOING HERE, and gives up her "archon powers"... which, here, can be some kind of magical tech that neuvillette takes. bit more manual work perhaps but we ball

okay. the fatui. the tsaritsa (glances at wiki) isnt even the original cryo archon, but otherwise we dk much. but i think its prooobably fair to assume she makes the fatui. or does nikke shit like dottore was gonna do except like better. and delusions? just. fucked up versions of the elemental magic (visions) other bots have ORRR its just terrible for mortals since its not that bad for visionholders. spews toxic shit idk. REGARDLESS. okay obviously not all the fatui are from snezhnaya... maybe she makes the normal fatui army looool ok ignore ALL of this since we dont really know anything about her, i was just trying to figure out the house of hearth 😭😭😭

so. we have to remember the fontainian oceanid thing. hold on what the fuck then fontainians cant be androids here since theyre full human(ish). hmm. hmmmmm. alright, so, hm. fuck. i dug myself into a hole. OKAY. lets see. what if the fontainians are all actually a kind of oceanid-droid egeria made. its just that focalors has extra archon tech in her from egeria. so all fontainians have like (i was gonna say kill switch which im not sure is better than dissolving to water honestly) a latent ability to become magical (get visions) to make up for... celestia not giving them any because they were like what the fuck, egeria.

i mean its also possible celestia also sent normal androids there you just cant tell. and its not like everyones tested the primordial water, maybe they actually wont be affected (who would even want to risk it lol), you really just cant tell. like we can just say all the playable/important chars we know never touched primordial water (well obviously. cuz theyre. still alive)

pause i just saved this as a draft just in case i accidentally like close the app and i realised i DO have another draft talking about inazuma bots. and it had this crazy idea of the real ayato and ayaka dying so they made bots of them. but the other stuff i wrote there about ei is not as interesting as the one i wrote here tho so scrap that. i did have one interesting line about venti and zhongli not being their original prototype archon model anymore and ei still was because she just makes new models/upgrades. then its funny cuz im like yea rukkhadevata probably figured that out with the irminsul (nahida must be a new model) and fontaine has its own problem so its just. venti and zhongli. old ass men being the originals. WAIT WHAT IF VENTIS APPEARANCR WAS JUST THE NAMELESS BARD AND THEY NIKKEFIED HIM. what is a wind spirit. actual wind spirit or little ai lmao.......

ok so back to um, the HoH. arle only gets her vision after becoming the knave, right, she fights the whoever orphanage mom with her own blood powers first (wtf is that btw i feel like theres no explanation in game but ig it doesnt appear much in game either so its okay...?) maybe just a defective bot or smth... MOVING ON i just wanted to get to the trio siblings...

wow okay i wanted to get to them cuz i like them but now that im here im like... what could i say. theyre the "doing jobs" droids again. cant even say theyre fatui made bc of the fontainian thing and most of them are just normal people. sorry damn. damn i think the rest of the chars are also just "doing jobs" droids. oh well

i havent touched natlan at all so i cant say anything about them 🤷‍♀️ JESUS THIS WAS LONG AF WHATS WRONG WITH ME (the undiagnosed autism, my oomfs would say)

SHUT UP OMG i just looked at my drafts again, i had ANOTHER inazuma draft written where id alr come up w the idea of makoto being human. ah well. Wait this doesnt mesh with makoto also considered an archon before ei took over LETS WORRY ABT THAT LATER CUZ that short draft also had an extra concept for the kamisatos which is. parents couldnt conceive so they commed ayato and ayaka without telling the public theyre androids. so its either they start androids or replace humans... im thinking start because theres not really enough time between the familys deaths to make new models of them. unless their deaths were separate and earlier and somehow kept very hushed up... yeah no. they were always androids. WHEW NOW WE'RE DONE. I PROMISE. MAYBE

i simply think it is so fun to imagine a world where a company makes a bunch of androids to assist people and provide companionship so they give the androids stories and release them in certain themes or lines and those androids are the genshin characters. credit to @yandere-daydreams for the idea. i love it so much. yes we all want x character to be our boyfriend or girlfriend and we have sex with them yes but i think its fun to imagine their roles when theyre not being yandere...

also the read more is very long i just went off about my ideas for most of the mondstadt characters. nothing wrong with me

if this is set in teyvats world imagine amber being like a gliding instructor in mondstadt. good engineer too, maybe the first bot that can fix other bots/have intricate knowledge of them (because she made baron bunny).

for human injuries theres barbara and jean, but with different temperaments for different patients. or if we're still set in teyvat, then jean (and the rest of the favonius knights characters) are actually android assistants to the actual human knights. basically the androids replace vision holders??

but yeah kaeya would also be a knight assistant, noelles story is she trains super hard but still isnt a knight (because shes made to help actual trainees!). lisa of course manages the library. yeah sorry thats it. makes tea

and i had the idea (this is all stolen from my own twitter thread from *checks* last year? anyway) that they would tease the release of bots like diluc, rosaria and razor through voicelines from kaeya, barbara and lisa. really like the idea of razor originally being some sort of surveillance android for wolvendom/integrating with them in some way for research and sort of became a guide for people who get lost in wolvendom.

diona and diluc are two different types of bartenders, one is good against people who cant say no to a cute (angry) kitty and the others... are those require some intimidation.

VENTI. god, i think itd be cool if they had prototype models for the seven archons and actual venti bots now definitely play into the "broke bard who plays for alcohol" thing. but of course anyone with eyes knows that his original model was the barbatos android.

oh!! and bennett and fischl being adventurers buddies. bennett is "unlucky" but hes actually like, wired to be hypervigilant and take hits for you while he shrugs it off. and fischl comes with oz if you need some chuuni speech translated, but you can disable that if you want to go full rp with her.

*looks at my thread* oh yeah "Albedo is made for the alchemists in the Knights, and he was meant to be released with Klee, but there was a delay because his ai kept experimenting on its own copies (Flowerfell Albedo?)" ngl i didnt play the albedo event and never bothered to watch a video so i dont know the full extent of his lore here. oh right and i added "sucrose is made to keep an eye on him in the labs" lmao

klee is. i suppose made for the knights. a cute energetic girl to keep morale up, whos fireproof and thus able to scout dangerous areas/bomb them if you so wish.

oh yeah i wrote that the church was not happy about the rosaria bots being made so they relegated her to guarding dragonspine against foolish adventurers. as to why she keeps appearing in bars, well, uh. No comment — Celestia Inc.

the lawrence clan wanted in on this business and sponsored a representative of their family, but mondstadts opinion of them is less than friendly, so the knights compromise and make eula, a lawrence knight.

whew okay for some reason i was able to churn out a lot for mondstadt and then everyone else i was like uh yeah. they exist and do things similar to what they do in game like xiangling being a cook's aide. yep. idk why the mondstadt worldbuilding gripped me so hard like that.

also my last thought is that maybe the hilichurls are just the verryyy alpha version of their bots, the khaenri'ah line (i think daydream mentioned this) and maybe just broke down and went rogue/abandoned. so now they make better bots to fight them and keep people safe. go figure. earns them a ton of cash though. lol imagine if getting them was a lottery too....

[demigod-of-the-agni]

Forgive me, forgive me. I ask, I beg, I pray, but it never comes.

You know I find it incredibly bewildering to see just how much kalki reflects myself in him like YEAH Duh of course he does, he’s my little guy it’s like his full time job. But at the same time he is a fully functional facet of my being and he is at the mercy of my whimsies, and whatever he discovers in his arduous journey of self realisation is ultimately a reflection of what I discover in the real world. It’s also incredibly funny because ffxiv lore for dark knights is really baked into the idea of (re)discovering yourself amongst the bloodshed and continuing to live and love and thrive despite the world working against us. who would have thought such a raw message could come from an mmorpg side quest about edgy emo boys of all places

also adamantite armour of fending i would lay down my LIFE for u

variant + phone bg version + ID below the cut

tch as if you guys are actually going to use artwork of my little guy as your phone background. i know. how dumb. let a girl dream. i should make an alternate version but it's of Fray and Myste

[START ID: A picture with a red background focusing on the character's bust that is placed to the left of the image's centre. He is coloured with a dark blue overlay, contrasting with the red background. He has brown skin, long black hair that falls over his shoulders, and is wearing blue and gold armour and earrings. He is looking at the viewer, right eye dark brown and the left an glowing unnatural red, with an expression that looks determined and angry and yet bitter and forlorn. In the foreground and on the right side of the piece, a miniature version of the character stands coloured in a light blue overlay and wearing the same blue and gold armour, looking as if he is glowing. He is facing towards the left of the piece, or perhaps at the character bust, his expression unreadable. Above the miniature character's head is the symbol representing the FFXIV dark knight, coloured in gold. END ID.]

[deus-ex-mona]

pretty minor thing to think about, but i find it interesting how chapter 7 is the first chapter illustration to show chizuutan as chizuru (instead of chuutan)

like, i get it’s a flashback chapter, but we hardly got to see her as chizuru in the previous few chapters thus far… maybe we’ll get to see more of her as her true self after the hiyori fight/make up? only future chapters may tell, i guess…

[theirloveisgross]

.

[aeantizlkamenwati]

So I'm adding to this after about twenty more hours playing it.

Yes it's a long ramble again. The last line sums it up for you.

Again I don't think it's a bad game; it's fun (once I removed the combat essentially. It does get repetitive very quickly though). Sometimes it does make me genuinely laugh. The music sometimes feels...Mass Effect. Like literally there's a few tracks that are too futuristic and I swear to every god I hear the main menu piano bits from one of the Mass Effects in a few. It's also...bland? There's no real identity to it. Like I can think of several tracks from previous games in a heartbeat, or just other games in general (DOS2 & Hades will forever be my favorites), but Veilguard...nope. It doesn't even get the benefit of my absorbing it unconsciously like Skyrim's. It's just...file not found.

But it's still so sanitized. It feels like Rook is supposed to be the protag of a Pokémon game? The type where it's all sunshine and rainbows and everyone gets along and power of friendship, you know?

Part of the problem, I think, is everyone in the game knows Rook's backstory, we don't. Rook knows their backstory; we don't. I saw someone mention there should've been like a handful of protagonist slides in the beginning, and I agree. It would've helped me to understand BioWare's MC, maybe care a little bit about them. But instead we find out about Rook's backstory via bits and pieces. Like Mercar apparently was found as a baby after a skirmish? And here I was thinking maybe they were orphaned or cast out onto the streets. Silly me. No. Mercar has never known anything but privilege I guess? Idk what the other Rooks familial status is (aside from the necro one) or if it ever gets brought up. But like knowing it up front would help me connect with this...person who has to be always funny (honestly the witty Rook is the only dialogues that make sense tonally for me?)

I get it. They want to be as inclusive as possible, but it comes at a very high cost. I don't really do evil routes myself, I'm more the redemption arc or anti-hero or just really reluctant hero type, so I get everyone is like "why do you want to be evil?" I don't. I just wish Rook had more personality, or our tonal choices matched what came out of their mouth? If I choose stoic/stern, I expect to be stern/stoic and not...impatient? I guess? Witty is the only one that always matches everything, everything else is just kinda blah, which begs the question why make it a choice? It takes away part of the roleplay.

And it's made worse, for me, by the fact that it is so sunshine and rainbows all the damn time? Again I understand they want everyone to feel seen, and some people don't like things like fantasy racism or classism or religious problems...

But...the major conflicts in DA involved those things? And now they are just swept aside and we are one musical short of a Disney movie.

So everything just lacks punch. Again we are told something is bad, but never allowed to witness why. It's like Bioware is an overly protective parent shielding our innocent eyes, going "oh no it's too terrible for you, we don't want you to feel bad."

So I, as someone who lives for angst because that's cathartic to me, just stop connecting to the characters because everyone's going to be nice, and there's no real conflict and the "hardening" makes no sense if you remember these aren't teenagers but fully fledged, battle-seasoned adults who know full-well Rook did send help but apparently the Veilguard Elite Force is useless without Rook...cough. Sorry, got salty about that again. (Don't get me started on Taash).

And all this light, this lack of something to balance it out makes the triumphs blah. Because...

Like I think of Hawke and the Warden on how invested I was in their story. Going through the prologues in Origins made me feel for those characters. I can still remember the gut punch and rage I felt playing a female City Elf, and knowing what was going on and murdering the entire castle, and feeling sick seeing Shianni. Or playing Mahariel and flirting with Tamlen, feeling like the "young love was in bloom" and having it all ripped away, and then him showing at camp? Oof, messed me up. I CRIED playing a Cousland and the sheer emotion in the goodbye scene. I teared up when my first Hawke lost Carver and then her mother and seeing the awkward and lack luster scene with a companion trying to comfort her...it hurt.

But that made the triumphs, the light moments, the humor, the storylines all the more sweeter.

The shadows that infested Thedas gave the characters depth and emotion. It made the journeys the characters went on mean more because I knew how bad it COULD be, and it felt like we could grow together as a team through the hardships and horrors.

Veilguard doesn't have that. There's no conflict between personalities or biases that need to be checked or opinions to change. Rook doesn't witness hardships and doesn't get a "COULD ONE THING IN THIS FUCKING WORLD JUST STAY FIXED?!" moment (so far...closest thing I got was telling Solas (still sickeningly polite for the angry option) to stop pretending he was doing a good thing (seriously the tone and the dialogue did not match the short "Quit the bullshit" tag; be angrier Rook! Tell him off!).

I replayed DA games so many times I can quote an obscene amount of lore, history, and direct lines. I did it because they were comforts to me, an escape from my own shitty life where there was something equally shitty going on and the characters reacted to it (like normal people, not witty one-liners) and even through that darkness I found a home in the characters, their stories, their journeys. We had ups and downs, and yes I'm a people pleaser so I memorized how to win everyone over completely, but that didn't detract from it, from getting to know these characters. It made me feel connected to them. I didn't love Varric because he was charming, I loved him because I could understand his need to slap a smile on and ignore the pain. I loved Fenris despite his hostility towards mages because I could understand it (I hate Anders because he is a toxic waste dump but I guess other people love him). I thought it beautiful that Fenris had to go on a little journey with me, learning to accept one mage at least and trust them.

Inclusivity does not mean pastel and rainbows; it means treating the dark topics with care and respect, giving warnings maybe or a toggle. Which I think is my main problem with the game.

Bioware forgot the darkness they scrubbed away...it's what made the light parts shine so bright.

Veilguard Thoughts

I just need to get my thoughts out of my head and the Void seems like a perfect place since I can’t write a review on console. I’m all for civil discussion, but at the end of the day this is my opinion/feelings after 20 hours. Perhaps it'll change once I finished the game, but I doubt it. Beware minor spoilers.

Warning: Incredibly long. TL;DR at the very end.

I’ll start this off by saying it’s not a bad GAME, just a bad DRAGON AGE. It runs nice (only had one crash, and minimal amount of stuttering on fidelity mode, one time the screen went completely black but the dialogue and music continued which was vaguely terrifying. Some movements are janky in cutscenes, but overall, not bad). It's pretty, I like some of the new designs. The music is nice.

I’m not a fan of this style of combat (never could jive with God of War or Bloodbourne; my preference for real time action is like Hades and DMC) mostly because I can’t cancel an action with dodge/block and the AI focuses solely on Rook so you end up getting swarmed and unable to properly see the flasher plus the timing is weird af. I tried playing on what I assume was supposed to be Casual mode (Keeper) because it said “emphasizes party composition over reflexes” and well…it lied. To the point that I was not having fun because the game is 70% combat, 20% exploring and 10% story. So I turned it to Story mode because I could not be bothered and enjoyed it slightly more. It feels very MMO, team-based, looter imo. The UI, how it handles, the depth of the story and how it goes about it (the Mission Accomplished Journal screens specifically), the emphasis on combat over anything else…

And here we get to my problem: I only enjoy it when I pretend it’s just a generic fantasy game and not Dragon Age. Because it doesn’t FEEL like a Dragon Age. It feels as soft as everyone’s skin texture. I don’t care about the story or the characters and it boils down to the writing.

It feels juvenile.

Like I loved DA because it was willing to confront the worst in humanity. The disgusting parts of war like Loghain selling elves to slavers, or the nunances of blood magic. Presenting choices that are morally grey like sacrificing the Circle or the Templars in DA2 (yes that choice was heavily forced and stupid but still). It didn’t shy away from it. There was levity, but the characters had multiple sides. They could get angry, they could get snappy or sappy. There was GROWTH to them. Zevran’s romance arc if you choose to reject the earring without more commitment was beautiful. DA2’ romances were…a little stilted, but I still enjoyed them. Inquisition also had lovely little arcs, depending on the romance. But even friendships felt natural as you got to know these people.

And Veilguard falls flat. They were okay with pissing off the culture war babies with trans/nonbinary options, but not with showing us the bad things. The game TELLS us “this is bad”, but doesn’t show why. They have their soap box moment of “slavery bad” like it’s not 2024 and anyone worth the air they breathe knows that, how about you still show that since we are IN THE HEART OF THE SLAVE TRADE?! Where’s the option to maybe be an escaped slave? An escaped Saarebas? They refuse to give us blood magic because “it’s messy” Yeah. It is. That’s the point. Maybe let me decide if that's a line I'd like to cross? No? Necromancy is fine? It’s like we traded the dark adult themes for better sex scenes.

The major choice I’ve gotten to means NOTHING outside of metagaming. It’s like they were trying to show they could be edgy or that “now now you can’t save everyone because we say so and we are going to force one of your companions to hate you”. And it boils down to who you want to romance, who is vital as a support character, and which faction do you prefer? Has nothing to do with anything else and there’s no way to fix this forced hardening, so have fun with that I guess? It’s not like I chose the dialogue options or anything, it feels as shoe horned in as DA2’s ending tbh. Like here have a shitty decision for no other reason than we want you to.

Then BioWare seems to have tried to both cater to the newbies and the ones who read/watch/listen to the extra media and fail to find a middle ground. It relies too heavily on codexes and journals and other media (which was my gripe with Inquisition) to do the heavy lore lifting (for example as someone who did not read Tevinter Nights yet nor listened to the third-party podcast, I have no connection to Rook's backstory).

But at the same time, it treats us like we are stupid? Going back to how juvenile the writing feels: it repeats itself a horrific amount. Every time Solas says “the Evanuris” it’s apparently a contractual obligation for him to say “or the elven gods as you would call them” immediately after. The amount of freaking out about them CONSTANTLY is like they are afraid we forgot after an hour. And again I kept thinking: how about you stop telling me they are terrible and why I should be scared and SHOW me?  D’Meta did nothing because I didn’t see it happen like watching Loghain call the retreat after watching darkspawn slaughter the army. Another example in the beginning is after you get the dagger, you speak with Harding and you can discuss magic. Rook notes they know dwarves are called Children of the Stone. Five seconds later Harding goes in the most “I’m speaking to a toddler” tone: “Dwarves call ourselves Children of the Stone. Some of us have what we call Stone sense.” Like…Rook would know that??? If newbies are confused they can go look in the glossary (isn’t that what that’s for?) or give an option to ask a question. It just feels so fucking patronizing.

Then it spoils so much of the story with the Varric interludes, or repeats itself AGAIN when I think they are there for style and suspense. Like Varric I already know they need to craft a red lyrium dagger, they straight up TOLD ME. That scene didn’t need to be in there at all. Solas’ little monologue rehashing everything in the beginning was unnecessary, and honestly him just telling us who we were against without us first seeing how bad it was…just…It took the suspense out of it. Like imagine if Inquisition straight up told you that Corypheus was the baddie just immediately in the Temple of Sacred Ashes prologue scene. That’s what it felt like.

Which brings me to the dialogue and characters I suppose. The companions have the depth of a shallow pool and Rook has less. They have moments where I like them, but tbh I don’t really care for any of them because how could I? I can’t talk to them. It feels empty. I like that they have lights telling me when I have new dialogue, but I miss having conversations with Dorian or Zevran, getting to know them before I started flirting with them. But nope. None of that. And good god the flirting is cringey because of it. Just comes out of nowhere and feels like teenagers. Again, there are moments where I’m like: THAT DO THAT, but it goes right back to the blah stuff. Like whoever wrote the Crows, good job. I loved Teia almost immediately. Viago great. Illario, I’m intrigued. Lucanis by default also interests me, but unfortunately, I don’t get to explore his character much. Irelin is also good. I liked the Veil Jumper fight you could get into with Strife (felt like witnessing a father/child yelling match). Where’s that sort of dialogue with everyone else?

And ROOK. Oh god Rook. They make a big deal about us not being able to be a people pleaser, and yet that’s the only personality Rook has. My favorite moment of Inquisition was in Trespasser where the Inquisitor could FINALLY have a human moment and BREAK. It felt like they had been bottling it up for so long and they just couldn’t anymore. I don't foresee Rook getting that sort of moment.

Rook is just three flavors of customer service. There’s no option for them to be anything but the dashing hero who has boundless optimism like a puppy. Where’s the option be the reluctant hero? The ruthless “hero”? They are just a bumbling idiot with witty one liners.

They feel like a teenager’s first protag as they try to give them “flaws” but never show those flaws. Nothing you do matters, just how you say “yes I’ll help”. There’s no nuance. No places where I think Rook can grow without ME. Rook is just a blank doll without me projecting onto them and even in BIG supposedly heartwrenching moments, Rook is just an idiot. And put them with the juvenile and forced dialogue of the companions? It feels like they are a pre-teen who’s been put in charge of a bunch of toddlers while the nice uncle tries to soothe them and the abusive dad yells.

The abusive dad is Solas btw. Varric says he views us all as children, to which I want to reply: yeah and he’s a piece of shit dad who rubs their toddler’s face into their diaper going “LOOK AT THE MESS YOU MADE BAD BAD BAD!” Like honestly, you can tell it’s not the same people writing these characters. Solas feels like they decided the low approval Solas was the canon no matter what. In Inquisition I truly felt like he was redeemable. This Solas? Nah, I want to stab that bitch first chance. Like he’s giving me no reason to like him and he’s being a dick for no fucking reason. Maybe later on we learn a reason, but in 20 hours there’s ZERO. That’s a problem if you are trying to get me to see his side of things. And the tonal shifts from when he shows that he regrets stabbing Varric? Feel forced, like my dude I think you are lying just because you seem to be unable to comprehend half of this is YOUR fault.

Which ties into my last gripe: this is not MY Thedas. The decision to make only the last fifteen minutes of a paid DLC mean ANYTHING (and tbh I have yet to find where the hell it actually matters in 20 hours. I have two saves about the same amount of progress: one Solavellan and the other Dorian, they are basically the exact opposite choices. I can't say I've found where anything has changed, so what was that about them not wanting to do one bit of dialogue???? At least in Inquisition within the first two hours I could find those bits of dialogue) that decision made it where none of these characters matter to me. They feel more like carrots dangling in front of long-time players trying to entice us closer, but when you grab the carrot…it just vanishes.

That’s not MY Morrigan. That’s not MY Varric, MY Solas, MY Dorian. They are NewBioWare’s versions of them. The Inquisitor? The character I played over 100 hours as isn’t MINE. They are a stranger because they tore away any agency I had. They just picked whatever personality they wanted and said LOOK SEE CONNECTION. But there’s no history, no connection, NOTHING. There’s so many places where I can see where they could’ve done something. And if I can see them, why couldn’t anyone at BioWare?

They forgot that DA’s uniqueness wasn’t just the companions (and these ones are just below DA2’s since we didn’t get to interact with them either, so…), it was the world and how it reacted to choices in previous games. How new heroes might have to deal with the consequences (and to be fair, no DA game has ever actually managed to deliver on that, but they at least TRIED).

This though…

TL;DR: this should’ve felt like a homecoming and instead it feels like BioWare demolished my home, spray painted the ruins with soft pastels and is trying to tell me it’s the same, if not better. And it’s not, and probably never will be again.

[mars-ipan]

god i cannot wait to be off these steroids…

[magpie-trove]

There’s this trend toward kind of villainizing self sacrifice going on and it’s honestly kinda baffling

[end-orfino]

I know it's not a new idea (idk where I heard it before. But I did) but I don't really think Felix was like. The only one orchestrating all the murders and all

[gregoftom]

pretty sure i’ve seen romance movies with scenes like this

[saline-coelacanth]

So I decided to actually clean out my inbox and delete all the old asks that had been building up in there for a while now, and as I was reading through some of them I realized that there were quite a few of them that were basically people telling me about their aus that they wanted me to create for them.

And I don't mean this in a "Oh, they were just giving vague ideas for me to work with" No, they were full on giving me a synopsis (sometimes with quite a bit of detail) on the au and the plot and all that stuff. And like... idk it's weird. Cause it's very clear to me that these people want me to do all the work in making these aus and stories for them, which makes me sad because that's the fun part of making aus. It's getting to write it or draw it yourself because it's your creation, even if it is based on preexisting media. One ask specifically made a point to mention that they didn't know how to make comics which is why they were asking me to do it. And if for some reason that person is reading this, I have a little secret: I didn't know how to make comics when I started. Hell, I still don't entirely know what I'm doing when it comes to comics, but everyone has to start somewhere. And I know it's the piece of advice that EVERYONE says, but it's true that you do get better with practice.

So I guess if there's anything I really wanna say it's this: Don't be afraid to make your own stuff. Even if you think it's not gonna be good, do it anyway. Don't go to other people begging them to make your ideas for you because for one, that's rude, and two, if you have the ideas for it you can make it yourself. Creating stories and aus can be so much fun and I don't want to discourage anyone from doing that, I just don't want you coming to me or any other artists to have them make the content and ideas for you.

[sskk-manifesto]

Atsushi's back in the game!!! ۶( ˆ o ˆ )