#just find this aspect to be disappointing

[knife-eared-jan]

Ok, as much as I have been hyping and playing 12 hours a day since it got out (still in Act 1 though, bc I'm a slowass player and completionist), I feel like I have to say something that is getting hard to ignore at this point... and I wanna preface this by saying that I am loving a lot of aspects of the game and I adore the writing when it comes to the companions, who I am obsessed with.

And maybe this will get better yet, as I generally heard the writing picks up once the story progresses beyond picking up all companions..

But I'm starting to get quite upset at the way the writing just does NOT care about the established lore and the politics of Thedas like at all, when to me - and many others - that richness, nuance and depth of the world is what makes the games so special.

(Spoilers below)

I looked past the way the elves in Arlathan just seemed to know that their gods are evil and Solas is "kind of a dick" but was right about that. When, you know, that made him basically the Satan of their pantheon up to now.. It was after all the tutorial stage of the game and I understand that you wanna ease newcomers into the lore. I could also handwave it in-universe with Morrigan being there - she could have filled the Veiljumpers in on the discoveries of the Inquisition or even what the Well told her.

It felt a bit weird that our contacts in every other faction just accepted this huge revelation without a blink, but again it was the early stages and I also get that having a discussion about it 6 times with different faction leaders would have been incredibly tedious. So I ignored that. And yeah, at least the First Warden found it hard to swallow.

The fact that they brushed aside the gods finding elven subjects - many of whom after all still worship them - with one sentence from Solas was disappointing though. Instead they chose to ally them with the Venatori and the Antaam who are the pure evil factions with no nuance or motive to side with them besides a comic book level of hunger for power. They didn't even throw in a sentence about the gods maybe speaking to the Venatori through the Archdemons to get them on their side or how it's very ironic that the Venatori, who want to make Tevinter great again, stoop to working with the pantheon of the people they oppress because they see them as lesser and other. No political exploration of the massive lore implications at all.

It really hit me when I picked up Davrin and he commented how Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain blighting the world would really endear us (elves) to the rest of Thedas - this was the first time anyone actually mentioned the political impact of the elven gods being real, freed, evil and blighted on modern day elves at all, when this should be HUGE. It should be ugly. It should be complex. It should be explored in as many examples as bloodmagic and the oppression of mages was in DA2. It should be a central point of Act 1. (This btw made me love Davrin so much in that moment because this was the first time in the game for me when I actually felt like talking to a Dragon Age elf and even just that one line felt like home.)

And now I just did Taash's first companion quest and it seems Qunari lore is also being ignored (except for the gender aspect of it, which I look forward to). Taash's mum was a scholar and had a baby and the only problem about that was that it could breathe fire and was special but otherwise all would have been dandy? Like she would have just been allowed to keep Taash long enough to find that out about her baby if she was living under the Qun? That directly contradicts everything we know about how the Qunari's culture around reproduction and childcare works.

Sorry to be negative and talking myself into a rage - I know it's not something people want to see rn. But like, I realise you have to brush over some lore intricacies for brevity and to make it digestible for new players. But this is a world initially inspired by Wheel of Time and ASOIAF, both of which are interesting because of the depth of ficitional cultures, lore and politics, and hence it's also what gives Dragon Age its appeal. And now they take us to the most politcally interesting areas on the world map and just get rid of all of political depth?

That's really disappointing. Imagine if Winds of Winter dropped all political themes just because there's several previous books and it's been some a lot of years.

Also, I managed to play DA2 before I ever played Origins and they could introduce me to a vast established background of lore just fine back then.

Sorry. Rant over. But I had to get that out of my system.

[nomdepen]

If I'd known from the start how we would've ended up, I'm not so certain I would have ever been a gentleman.

"I find that hard to believe. Even in the throes of passion, you're a perfect gentleman." Pen quirked her lips into a sweet smile, a renewed flush creeping onto her cheeks. She knew she was lucky to have found someone like Ben, and that such a someone loved her as intensely as she loved them. Pen had nearly accepted the fact that her life would most likely be devoid of love. She might learn to love a husband, if she had been fortunate enough to find a man willing to marry her, but she had never expected to find a love match. And yet she had been proved wrong time and time again.

"Yes, actually." She teased, arching her brows in defiance. "I would like you to reenact the story of the handsome, charming foreign soldier who seduces the insipid wallflower with his smile and devilishly sharp wit. Are you familiar with that one?" Perching her hands on her hips, she tried to maintain a neutral expression but she found it hard when her body was still thrumming with electricity. "I don't think there is a single thing in the world you could do to disappoint me, Benjamin Tallmadge."

You know I love it when you give commands. Pen bit at the inside of her cheek to suppress a grin. She'd been told on multiple ocassions that she had a tendency to be too bossy. She liked to be in charge of things, especially when so much of her life seemed to be entirely out of her control. Whistledown had afforded her the luxury of controlling the narrative of scandals in the ton, but there were often times her pride spilled over.

"Is that so? I do enjoy giving commands every once in a while. I think it runs in the family. Perhaps, one day, a son of ours will follow in their father's footsteps. Though, I wouldn't mind if they decided to become little poets and authors instead."

Although she knew she would support her children in whatever endeavors they found themselves thrown into, Pen wasn't entirely eager to imagine her sons off to war. Even so, she refused to dwell on such a thing. Those were matters for the future, problems to be dealt with when they arose. For now, Pen was satisfied with living in the moment and planning for the near future instead.

"You must not give me so many compliments this soon. I'll hardly have any motivation to do better if you spoil me too much. Lucky for you, I'm a dutiful student."

Pen let out a soft giggle, reaching up to rest her hands on his arms. The idea of going a single day without him was tortuous, even though she knew it would be worth the wait. If they were to behave properly, it could be weeks until she felt his arms around her again. She was sure she would go insane in that much time, but at least she would be able to relish in the memory of him until then. The idea of a special marriage license was terribly tempting, but Pen knew that it would be near impossible to get. A lady of the ton marrying a foreigner was not likely to earn a favorable compliance by Her Majesty. Instead, she resigned herself to her fate. If nothing else, it would prove to be a good practice of patience.

"If leaving you now is so difficult, I can't imagine how hard it will be once we are properly wed." She sighed, nuzzling into his touch. Although Pen was determined to not be an overly needy or nagging wife, she had a feeling she would be following him around like a puppy for most of the honeymoon--and long after, as well. She had spent her entire life searching for a place to belong and now that she'd finally found it in Ben's arms, she wasn't in a rush to part with the feeling.

"Do you really think anyone would even notice if I just stayed here forever? Surely, Mama is far too enraptured in planning the wedding to notice and its not as though anyone would miss me otherwise." Even as she teased, Pen knew there was some truth behind her words. Her mother was enjoying the party planning aspect of the wedding and Pen didn't mind handing over the reigns since such a thing was far too overwhelming to handle. All she wanted was to hide away from the world and be with her fiancé.

"I suppose I cannot delay for much longer, so this is where we must part. The weeks ahead are sure to be long and arduous." Turning around to face him, Pen whined, lips puffed out into a pout. "Promise you won't forget about me in the time we're apart?"

Benjamin's expression softened at her declaration, his cheek nudging into her crown as he lowly assured her, "You already are the perfect wife. We don't need to be married for me to know that, Pen -- though thank God we will be, seeing how otherwise, we'd continuously be embroiled in scandal." Chuckling, he released his hold on her waist in favor of straightening her chemise. "If I'd known from the start how we would've ended up, I'm not so certain I would have ever been a gentleman."

Penelope took his hand in hers, gently squeezing before she pressed a kiss to his knuckles. Though quick and chaste, the moment of affection sent a jolt through his heart, warm and vibrant as they locked eyes.

"I wouldn't mind seeing you wielding a musket and sword. Perhaps one day you can show me how skilled you are at that, too."

Benjamin chuckled. "And will I be re-enacting a hero from one of your stories, perhaps? I placed my weapons upon a shelf long, long ago, but for you, I'll bring them out of hiding... Just don't be disappointed when I pale in comparison to any of your dashing knights."

Penelope spoke of belonging to him, and that same warmth from before surged into his stomach, deep and electric. "You know I love it when you give commands," he teased. "Perhaps you should've been the one wearing my major's sash."

Penelope smirked, beaming up at him with a look he instantly knew would be his undoing. “Well, you certainly were not terrible, though I'm not sure I can say the same for myself. I think I still have a wee bit of studying left to do."

Benjamin grinned, incredulous. "If you were terrible, then God will surely strike me down, because to agree would make me into a liar," he said. "However, I have no qualms with that studying you speak of, so long as you put it into practice..."

Penelope burst into a small fit of giggles, her cheeks pink and her eyes shining. “If you can just help me get the gown over my head, all that will be left is to button the back. Do you think you can control yourself long enough to button my dress?"

"A challenge of the ages," Benjamin retorted, though he was laughing too. "Truly, Pen, must women have so many buttons and laces? If we were in a true hurry, I'd literally be caught with my pants down."

Taking her gown in hand, he carefully draped it over her head -- there was no sense in mussing her hair any more than he already had -- before tugging it gently down over her frame. Once properly in place, he secured the garment with each individual button, pressing a kiss to her neck with each successive fastening.

"Is this what you'd call controlled?" Benjamin wryly asked against her skin. "Because I can certainly confirm that you're keeping me quite under your thrall...even if it's not for the best of intentions." Embracing her from behind, he gave her a fond squeeze before brushing another kiss against her temple. "I swore I would behave, so I will... I just needed to get that out of my system. It may be, after all, quite some time before I'm allowed to hold you again."

With a regretful look toward his casement clock, he added, "Well, the clock has struck midnight, and neither of us are mice or a pumpkin, so I guess that's a good sign..."

[daemon-in-my-head]

I'm gonna say smth and I need people to read and understand what I mean.

It is perfectly fine to critique games. It doesn't matter what exactly you critique. You don't like the story? Say it. You don't like the combat? Say it. You dislike the way previous lore has been handled? Say it. You dislike the character creator? Say it. You think certain aspects of the game feel lazy or odd? Fucking say it.

Games at this point of time cost 60-70 bucks. Just the game itself. And it's often not even a physical copy, just a digital key they can revoked at any moment if they feel like it. If you want an advantage or a pretty limited skin or what have ya its gonna be 80-150 bucks. Yes that's how outrageous the prices are becoming. Let alone any future DLCs.

And again, it's 60 fucking bucks for just the base game. That's a lot of money for games. Not too long ago you'd be chased with pitchforks and torches had you said your game was that expensive. Some phones are as expensive as two AAA games, games that usually shine with a shit ton of flaws, bugs, missing content, messed up lore and generally feel like the publisher just wanted to make a quick dime. And considering how little time they take to develop, the later often holds true.

But yk what else? If you don't express your disgruntlement or your anger with these practices it's gonna keep going. Shit is only gonna get more expensive while also providing a worse playing experience. Y'all know what the big guys said about BG3. That we, the players, shouldn't expect that to be the new standard.

But hey, listen, we fucking should. It's our money and time. Our enjoyment of long established series or the first title of many. We should expect it to be fucking good and finished especially for such a great prize. We should expect to find entertainment in the things we buy exclusively for entertainment.

So please for the love of god stop attacking people for voicing their very valid and personal opinions. In fact do the opposite and join them and encourage others to do the fucking same. I'm so god damn tired of publishers doing everything only for the sake of sales rather than the art behind it. And yes of course 'the poor employees' and whatever excuses there are for these attacks. Guess fucking what buddy? You encouraging the Publishers behaviour by shutting down any and all criticism and buying whatever the fuck they slapped a name on is just telling them they get away with treating their people like less than shit.

Criticism is healthy. Criticism is required for a system to work and develop in positive ways rather than whatever tf is happening now. Voicing your opinion and critiquing aspects you find poorly handled is not hating a game. It's being disappointed that something you love and are absolutely passionate about was not treated well because some rich guy wanted yet another bonus check.

If a game is shit, call it out. If a system was handled poorly, call it out. If publisher try to limit the content and systems you're exposed to in the first 2 hours because you can still return the game in that period of time, call it the fuck out.

[irisvault]

i can't help but think that sirius and remus must have felt eternally disappointed with their lives.

remus wasted away for 12 years, alone, resenting the man he once adored, the family he had built by seventeen being taken away from him in a single night. he spent the majority of his life miserable and in pain, never knowing much more than suffering. he spent those 12 years reflecting on his relationship, wallowing in his sadness, wondering for just how long sirius had been so evil.

sirius likely reflected thousands of times on his decision that fateful halloween night to find peter, regretting his choices and having to come to terms with the idea that his moony, a man who shared his hopes and dream for the future, is now the man who feels sick when he hears his name, who resents him for everything he is, and considers him to be no better than the rest of his wretched family.

then, to top it all off, they hardly had two years together before fate stole sirius from remus' hands once more, leaving him to suffer even more deeply, mourning the loss of the man who loved every aspect of him, saw his faults as something to take pride in.

what a waste of something so beautiful.

i hate peter

[laughhardrunfastbekindsblog]

I was considering writing a longer post about why I'm still sad about how the CXs were ultimately handled in Bad Batch, and I still might, but really what it comes down to is this:

Those clones were tortured and brainwashed beyond what even the inhibitor chip was able to accomplish, the show really seemed to be building up sympathy for them (and rightly so)... And then we end the series with an abrupt about-face where we're apparently supposed to cheer (or at least be relieved) that they all get killed without any chance whatsoever at being (re)reconditioned and reclaiming their original identities.

If the CXs were intended to be considered evil, they should have been choosing for themselves to follow orders and acting under their own volition.

[volivolition]

WAIT SINCE WHEN DID FURY OF A SHATTERED MIRROR UPDATE HELLO HELLOOOOOOO??!!!!?!?!?????? (POSITIVE)

[franeridan]

tbh i think oda meant to reach wano and make it all about zoro the same way he reached whole cake and made it all about sanji. I mean like, at the very beginning, back when he made him japanese and then said "there is a country that's one piece's japan, btw, and that's not where zoro's dojo is" - I think that's why his original backstory is so simple, it was supposed to follow the same trend as luffy's and sanji's and turn into this whole grand thing once they reached wano and discovered that he's the only direct descendant of one of the last daimyo and also of the greatest samurai ever lived, those are great bases to start some form of conflict on? tbh? and also directly mirror our finding out that sanji is some form of prince himself, but then instead we got to wano and the only thing we found out on page was that kuina's relatives were from there, and everything about zoro is revealed in a sbs family tree with oda going "I don't think I'll ever say this in the manga at this point so here". Imho what happened was that oda wanted to form some kind of conflict between zoro's family rights/what was expected of him in wano and his belonging in the crew, but then the way he evolved as a character through the story made it so that his only plausible reaction to finding out all that would be some form or another of I don't care and you don't really write an arc on that, do you. zoro's so simple minded and goal oriented that it's impossible for him to have any serious drama that's not about luffy, at this point. I do prefer it like this, though? everyone in the fandom likes to draw comparisons and parallels between zoro and sanji one way or another but my favourite one is the narrative foils one and zoro's lack of a proper backstory and complications to his being part of the crew make for a great black-and-white situation with them. something like sanji's story being all about running from his past and zoro's being all about running towards his future, I love that so I'm glad this is the zoro we got in the end

still, would be cool to know what oda had planned for him exactly

[lion-buddy]

being the resident nezuko liker is such a challenge sometimes

[blindfoldcd]

ooc. Man, I really missed the rp community, particulary Tumblr’s.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

If I See You Again Tomorrow

YA contemporary/light sci-fi

follows a boy almost a year into a time loop, who has almost given up on finding a way out

until a new boy shows up at his school - which has never happened before - and he’s motivated to step out of his monotony and maybe find a way out

exploring loneliness and social isolation

[lesbiancarat]

i will never forgive junhui for the time he recommended a c-drama that he pitched as a wholesome found family show so i started watching it and it was so good and emotional and i cried like every episode for the first 10 episodes only to find out like 20 episodes in that the found family aspect turned into a psudo-incestous romance drama where both of the brothers fall in love with the sister. like that's 20+ hours of my life I'll never get back i will never forgive him for that 😔

[arshem]

[aeide-thea]

[fic crit, amatonormativity (blogger's own) cw]

revisited a story that i remembered really enjoying, but have had difficulty digging up for a reread because, as it turns out, it's a good 200 pages deep in the relevant pairing tag, and—

turns out that i do still really dig it, and also that the other thing i remembered about it is equally still true, which is that it totally fails to really resolve the emotional side of things! like, it's a fic full of Plot and briefly- but vividly-drawn OCs, and people from the main characters' pasts who show up in ways that work for the story but are also random enough to lend verisimilitude, and we get to see the elements of the foil's day-to-day life—what keeps them busy and burnished when they're not off Adventuring with our protagonist—in generous, engaging detail, and all of that remains really satisfying and compelling to me; but it's billed as a fic ft. a pairing, and yet all we see of that is an established, undiscussed level of ambiguous intimacy that's lovely and warm but queerplatonic at absolute most, and doesn't get tied into any sort of bow by the end, even a friendly one.

and the thing is—there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! if it weren't for the pairing tag i probably wouldn't even find it unsatisfying: it'd just be lovely warm plotty genfic, and i'd enjoy the hell out of it! but i am, for better or for worse, amatonormative enough that when i see a story with a pairing tag, i do personally expect some combination of Romance Feelings and/or sex to appear on the page, unless the author's notes inform me the relationship is queerplatonic or similarly asterisked, and having that expectation go unmet feels like a disappointment even when the fic is on all other fronts the opposite of disappointing. which i'm fully ready to accept is my own failing, rather than the story's! but. idk. pondering and processing. :)

[toytulini]

im willing to believe yellowjackets is a good show but im not sure im willing to forgive it for that title which makes me have to specify "yellowjacket BUG" if i want to see the actual bees

[pa-pa-plasma]

just finished watching Blue Beetle & the dude who's lines were 90% "my name isn't Sanchez" is listed as "Sanchez" in the credits

[hedgehog-moss]

I usually buy one stere of firewood per year, one and a half at most, but this year I saw an ad at the farm store promising a discount if you ordered 5 or 10 steres and I thought, well, I have a brand new wood shed, so let's go, five steres, why not!

Then a big truck came to my house and threw up this lava flow of wood in front of my shed and I realised that my mental representation of 5 steres, in terms of volume, was a bit off.

But that's okay! My friend D. was coming to visit. She's very convenient to have around in early autumn because she enjoys the real-life Tetris aspect of stacking wood—not only that, but she's uncannily talented at spotting blackberries, and September is blackberry season. (I do also invite her in other seasons so she doesn't feel exploited for her gifts.)

I was a bit concerned about the wood-stacking part of her visit though, partly because of the truckload of wood awaiting us and partly because this year's wood is completely shapeless and looks like whimsically sea-sculpted debris from an ancient shipwreck.

(On the left: the pretty logs that /I/ cut, which are shaped and easy to stack. On the right: the nonsensical wood that I bought.)

(My friend saw this and almost went on strike. She was like, "Not a single log has a shape that makes sense with the others... it sucks. That's not Tetris 😠") (Me: "Think of it as having reached a higher, more challenging level of Tetris." Her: "😠")

On top of that, because of the cold and rainy summer we've had, blackberries were very scarce this year, like everything else. Brambles are so ubiquitous in my woods I used to think I would always get more blackberries than I know what to do with, but last month I actually had to go look for them which I'm not used to doing. Every fence is usually covered with blackberries in September, and in some parts of the woods there are hazel trees taken over by brambles so that blackberries are dangling in front of your face temptingly and you don't even need to bend down to pick them. But not this year.

I feared this visit would be quite disappointing for D. if the wood stacking and the berry picking were less fun than usual—but the fact that blackberries were much harder to find than the previous years made her amazing berry-dar all the more necessary and appreciated, and she enjoyed our blackberry hunt. We'd get lost in mazes of giant broom bushes and I'd be like, let's go somewhere else there are no blackberries to be found here, and she'd stop dead and go, "Here!" And here they were!

I don't know how she does it.

One fun thing that happened is that at one point, while D. was somehow finding kilos of blackberries in a field I'd already searched two days before and which had seemed empty of berries, I wandered away into the forest to photograph some pretty mushrooms. Then I heard a strange bird call which, when I looked up and paid more attention to it, sounded more like my friend calling my name from afar. I figured I was being called out for getting distracted from the berry harvest, so I returned to the field. She was crouching down at the other end of the field with her back turned on me and didn't look like she'd just called me.

Half an hour later, when it was getting dark and we were about to go home, she told me, "Hey, did you have something to show me earlier? When you were in the woods." Me: "No, why?" Her: "You called my name."

...

Me: "I didn't call your name. You called MY name." On second thought, she said that it sounded quite shaky and high-pitched, not like my voice, more birdlike. Me: "I initially thought it was a bird too!" Problem: our names sound nothing alike.

We stood there mystified for a minute, wondering if there could be a bird capable of articulating both of our names, or if it was some other animal or thing that somehow knows our names. (We were quite sure there were no humans in the area, because Pandolf is very good at sensing nearby people and always wants to go say hi to them.)

We looked at the woods, then at my car parked nearby, then went, "Okay! Time to go home and never investigate this further 😊"

My friends are a good influence on me—there were people a bit concerned about my sanity in the notes of that post where I talked about going out into the woods at night because something was screaming, and I think they'll be happy with the moral of this story! We went home and sat by the fire eating blackberry tart and talked about what a great decision it was, all things considered, to not try to figure out what sort of creature wanted us to wander deeper into the forest at dusk. The end.