#like wish I could say this was the worst

[freyadragonlord]

Finished Heavenly Tyrant and my first comment is.........

......... Qin Zheng was WAY too funny for how much he sucked. Made me feel so conflicted.

Anyways, Heavenly Tyrant is an amazing book, highly reccomend!!!

Power to the people ✊️

[egophiliac]

he's coming

I'M NOT READY

[dysfunctionalcreature]

obviously all the characters in Interview With The Vampire have such tragic pasts, and they each have so many good lines of dialogue that beautifully capture that trauma, but the one I just keep coming back to is Armand saying, voice shaking, "No one has painted me in over 400 years". It's the sadness and resentment in his voice, the implications of it, partly he just misses Marius I'm sure, but I really think that it's more than that, Armand is so deeply insecure, I can't help but think that maybe he doesn't consider himself worthy to be painted, he says "No one has painted me in over 400 years" and I can't help but hear "It has been 400 years since I was worth painting"

[lemontarto]

fitz fans do NOT read unraveled it is like stepping into an active war zone

[myokk]

Guess which outfit I wore on my only public outing to the grocery store today and what I’ve been wearing to draw outside, clean like crazy, and give my dogs a spa day😭😭

Plus my studio ghibli redraw of Seb and Eloise🥹🥹🥹 they look like BABIES😭♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

honestly some of the wish hate i'm seeing is valid and some of it is the most insane opinions you've ever seen in your life. once again i am saying to ppl like "this is the worst disney movie" go watch beauty and the beast 3: belle's magical world and come back to me on that ok. watch the live-action mulan. if you didn't like the plot of wish at least it looked fucking spectacular. have you seen hunchback of notre dame 2?? you cannot tell me that wish is irredeemable garbage until you have watched hunchback of notre dame 2. "well that wasn't made for theatres–" chicken little. ralph breaks the internet. pocahontas has been spitting on the memory of a dead indigenous girl since 1995. it's okay if you went in expecting something as good as encanto and didn't get it but the absolutely insane takes of "the entire thing was just bad references" "magnifico was right and asha and amaya were the villains" "it was ugly and disrespectful" like shut UP and sit through mulan 2.

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

perhaps my most #cancelable videogame take i can post on this website is i think that the kind of people who say that anyone who picks the "morally wrong" or "mean" options in video game dialogue should, as a player, feel bad about their own choices/morals in real life. is that those people are just another flavor of the kind of dudes who play Disco Elysium and get mad for not being rewarded for picking the facist options. both of these groups are reducing games to "a thing I want to agree with me and everyone else who doesn't either suffers or does not have the option to play a character who behaves otherwise" rather than "a medium where you get to (or even Have to) explore different kinds of characters in order to experience the full depth of the story and characters in it."

When I want to pick options in a game that are mean, negative, arrogant, or ignorant, it's because I want to explore what would push a character into becoming that kind of person. Sometimes I want to see how the NPC characters who I-The-Player like/agree with react to someone who is fundamentally different from them. I think it's GOOD actually when the narrative allows you to push limits and especially when it has the option to then punish you for it in some way, such as losing options/routes later on, or companions straight up abandoning you for your choices. It DOES often make me deeply, viscerally uncomfortable to make choices in a game that are so counter to my own, but it means I get to experience that discomfort in an isolated environment and also think about what it means, what would push the character or even yes a real person into actually feeling those things. And I get to play with what ways the narrative could challenge them/make them grow over the course of the game--or on the other side, it can let me make a character who does start off more open/accepting but let the events of the narrative push them into being more reactively closed-minded instead.

I like that we have invented a medium where you can play a game multiple times and experience it differently depending on the character you play as. Books and TV and movies are all static--the greatest draw of games to me is the ones that are responsive, that can tell a slightly different story every time--when other characters in the game respond differently to you because of it, or some paths open up and others don't. And so yes it did disappointment me when a franchise that previously had these elements, Dragon Age, did not include them in the most recent installment. I don't think games should have options where you get to just hit a button to say something racist with no consequences or exploration into why a character would do that. but like, if i can only ever play a game as an upstanding person who is morally right all the time in basically the same flavor for every dialogue. I only get to truly play that game Once, you know? And I only get to see the way the companions react to someone they like and trust. And never really go deeper than that.

So like... I just sit and think about the scenes you can get in Inquisition. with Cassandra breaking down, because she fears she placed a would-be tyrant at the head of a powerful organization--that she searched and searched and chose wrong. Of Varric who is desperate to convince you not to become a monster, like the last person he feels betrayed him. Vivienne intentionally pissing you off because she wants to see how far you'll go when angered, how much she has to worry about your reactions. They say so much about the companions, what they fear most, and where they will draw the line. And especially in Inquisition, at these crisis points--you don't have to double down. Your character can have a come-to-Andraste moment where they go "woah... is that really how people see me? is this what i want?" and I think that kind of option can do way more for encouraging actual players to examine the choices they make in stories, more than locking the player into supportive, non-aggressive options does.

now. do i think all games execute these flavors well? no. writers and devs will have their own biases and blind spots, even if they are otherwise well-intentioned. and I don't think the ends of the scale need to extend from "absolute angel" to "horrible bigot", because the real complexity of course lies in the middle. I am not asking for games to let me be bigoted at every turn, what I want is games that let me make the protagonist deeply flawed in one or more ways--fearfully closed-minded to things outside their upbringing, or afraid of change to the status quo, or who want to advance their own aims regardless of consequences to others. I actually agree that the game was correct not to include any options for disrespecting Taash and their personal journey for example, but I do wish... idk maybe that we could have had a scene where if for instance the player character avoided outside-world missions relating to clearing away blight, they could confront us on how this might devastate the natural world and its creatures like dragons, and push us into trying to resolve it. Or in the other direction, if you spend the (currently meaningless) time giving money to background NPCs begging in the cities, Neve could could have a special cutscene thanking you for your attention to people otherwise beneath notice. You know?

And of course not every game can do this, I can write those sentences up there that represent hundreds of hours of dev time, of course they can't do it all. But the prior games usually did have at least a little of this, and that was enough to make me really fall in love. I KNOW the tumultuous development cycle, restarts from scratch, interference from higher-ups all contributed to why Veilguard was unable to hit those same marks this time. And we probably won't ever know how much of the loss of options/reactivity was intention vs a side effect of these things. But I wish people wouldn't frame players who miss these aspects as insane/morally corrupt. When for most of us it's because we genuinely enjoy challenging and exploring these aspects of reality in fiction in a way entirely unlike what we actually support in real life. i fully acknowledge not everyone desires to play this way. and that's fine!!! i am glad people can enjoy doing a "good" run each time that brings them joy. but for me it really limits the potential bounds of my enjoyment i guess. I like media that is complicated and messy and makes me think, and extra so when I get to see how playing that way impacts the greater story around it.

[nomadic-star]

can we all collectively agree that this video sucks so much ass

[utilitycaster]

re that post about the warping of valid discussion into something really stupid from last night, obviously that's about real life but I think as with many things it's helpful to use the same analysis for fandom contexts. To use the same pattern:

"Misogyny is a huge problem IRL and in fandom" absolutely true

"If a character is a mother, people tend to judge her primarily on that basis and not as a complete person who exists outside of the context of motherhood" also extremely true

"it's misogynist to dislike a specific character who happens to be a mother" you have to provide some more analysis if you want to make an argument, otherwise you're just kind of like, the equivalent of a toddler putting their hands over their eyes and thinking people can't see you; also you better have a perfect track record of stanning characters who are mothers yourself if a single character can make or break this.

[halfbaked00q]

office work CC culture is so funny to me. sometimes the person you email just CCs a random person or several random people in with no explanation, and you never find out who these people are or why they needed to be included in. They never say anything. Do they even read these emails? maybe it just clogs up their inbox

Also funny is ppl who care about the nebulous hierarchy of importance or power as represented by listing order in CC. OBJECTIVELY funny thing to get worked up about; and yet, some people do

I can't decide if Q should have no opinions on this, or sets of Highly Nuanced And Specific Opinions about it.

Maybe it's both-- *he* doesn't care, BUT he knows exactly who DOES, and absolutely weaponizes it when he deems necessary.

for example

"Dear Quartermaster,

Thanks for taking care of xyz! Just as a gentle reminder, emails should be listed in the CC field in order of importance of the receiver's role in the project.

Best regards,

Janet Walker"

"Dear Ms. Walker,

Thank you for the very valuable contribution on this highly significant project. However the receivers list was correctly configured. If you have concerns about the division of duties within the project feel free to discuss this with your supervisor offline.

Have a good evening,

Q"

Like. it's gotta be fun, right? to be able to snark so openly but plausibly deniably. It's, like, recreational. Like if you're gonna PVP *him* about it oh boy you better be ready to catch rocks.

[gillespiejr]

heartwarming! their shared antisemitism bridges all political gaps!

[wiwi-w1sp]

hi guys. did you know thta i love my friends. becuase i do. i love you guys /p

[lecliss]

The world's worst stick figure and the bravery it takes to post it online has more value than anything genAI could ever do

[inseparabiles]

For the next like, two days, Boys and Wolves will be tagged with Geta & Cara instead of Geta/Cara.

I do not anticipate this state to last any longer than that, but presently the & team of demons in our head has scored a win.

I fucking hate tagging this fic I swear to god. No matter what we do with it it's going to give the wrong impression to someone. The A/N section to explain the relationship tag is several miles long and even that I don't think helps.

Like yes it's platonic. No they're not being platonic about it. Questions? Me too.

[mod2amaryllis]

who else haunted by an apology you never got the chance to make???? 🤪🤪🤪