#like damn you really hated him

[cloggedarteri]

somus can really suck a bag of dicks

bro is like i know you'll never forgive me but i hope you'll be able to understand I did what id done for the benefit of our people

im sorry i hurt you but lol not THAT SORRY i literally ripped everything you held dear from your hands OUT OF ENVY

yea somnus

i hope you understand these nuts

[beeduoo]

i really like that one tiktok

[gunstellations]

In the world I love

_

In a different world

[dykedvonte]

Its really interesting that Jimmy’s chair is the one tilted away from the screen in this shot:

It’s indicative of how his and Jimmy’s dynamic was. He’s not staring ahead at the screen, he’s not paying attention to what they are doing. Curly is the only one looking forward. Jimmy quite literally couldn’t see the responsibility Curly had or was doing. Jimmy likely slacked off and avoided most of his duties. I mean the one time we know he pilots the Tulpar he steers it wrong and loses the team 4000 credits. Even in the positions they held objectively, Curly was always taking responsibility for Jimmy. Not to mention the “We can fix this” and only one chair at attention. Jimmy never had intentions to fix anything, throughout the game, throughout his entire relationship with Curly. Curly always fixed it? Why would it be any different here?

If he even took the slightest bit of responsibility, he would’ve stayed in the cockpit to see his plan through. In the end Curly did what Jimmy always expected him to do for him and took responsibility. Did what he always did and took responsibility at the wrong time…

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm sorry I let down my guard.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[quietwingsinthesky]

i really do think the desire to paint ten as unambiguously The Worst™️ when it comes to his relationship with martha is out of this desire to uncomplicate their relationship. to decouple them as friends and people who profoundly impacted each other’s lives. it’s just an easier narrative to swallow: that ten was Awful to her and then martha kicked him to the curb when she realized she was too good for him. easier, maybe, then dealing with the troubles of unrequited affection don’t have to be anyone’s fault, or that ten shut martha out in a lot of ways but let her in in others that he wouldn’t let any other companion near, or that they were still friends, they still wanted to see each other and be around each other, even though it was messy and sometimes hurt. you know?

[gingermintpepper]

“Pallas Athena,” he greets softly. There is no affection in his voice, barely any intonation save for stiff, long-practiced neutrality. He continues wringing the water from his hair like she’s not intruding upon the sanctity of his purification ritual, “Have you already had your fill of victory?” 

His calmness is… off-putting. Unnatural. Like the stillness of the sky before a horrible storm. She’s grown accustomed to his icy silences, the dark looks thrown when their father isn’t watching, the barely restrained disgust when he’s forced to hear her speak of her tactics and methods for obtaining unquestioned victory. She knows Apollo isn’t weak-stomached - of all their kin, he is perhaps the most practiced in death - but he is not a warrior. He finds no glory in death-bringing, no meaning in the intricacy of war-work. For him, it is a job, a task that must be completed for the continued equilibrium of the mortal world. It means he can still be hurt by war’s savagery. And he had been hurt. Repeatedly. She had personally seen to it. No matter how good he was at his work, Phoebus Apollo was still an emotional creature. Not weak-stomached perhaps, but still soft. Tender. 

“I’ve something important to discuss.” 

He’s languid when he unpins the remaining length of his hair. It falls in heavy, swirling waves, rich gold which threatens to drag upon the ground if he hadn’t deftly grabbed the ends and tied them round his thigh. “I know you have little concept of ceremony but this is a bit ridiculous don’t you think?”

His dark hand reaches for one of the vases of oil stacked neatly on a little jut of rock that acts as a ledge. Athena intercepts him, standing a little taller to convey her graveness. “It’s very important. I only need a moment of your time.” 

She expects him to sigh, to cross his arms petulantly over his thin chest and complain that the war is over and so is her access to him every hour of every day. She expects to have to remind him that the battle isn’t finished ‘til the Acheans have vacated Trojan soil, to coax him from the little solitary cave of mourning he’s obviously built himself so he can see his job to its total completion. 

Instead, she gets another look. Calm. Dark. Horrible.

Apollo does not sigh, but it is a very near thing. “A moment and nothing more.” 

“The Acheans will begin their preparations to return soon,” she takes hold of the vase and carefully passes it to him. It smells saccharine, like rosewater or something similar. Like perfume to hide the stench of death. “I need your word that you will not hinder them on their journeys.” 

Their fingers brush as Apollo accepts her offering. It’s always odd the way his warmth radiates past all logical barriers. Athena can feel the chill of the water alongside the heat of his fingertips. Somehow, it is the cold that lingers despite all his warmth. “I do not make impossible promises, Athena. I want Neoptolemus,” he says. She stops as though struck. “The rest will have my blessing if they but ask.” 

“Phoebus— “

His eyes are like congealed blood when he looks at her, dark and tar-like upon an altar’s surface. “I want Neoptolemus. And I will have him.” 

How similar his tone has become to Father’s in these long years acting as his mouthpiece! Though his words are soft, the finality in his voice brooks no argument. How easy it is for her heart to soar at the prospect of a fight. Her warrior’s mien shutters all her feelings away like she’d never taken her helmet off. Her clawed finger pokes harshly into his chest, he’s marble hard under her touch. “You already had Achilles. You’ve no right to his son.” 

She regrets the words the moment they leave her lips. A stupid mistake; a feint when she should have dodged altogether. 

Apollo’s face goes slack and still. Serene, one would say, if they were a fool who had never before seen the shape of his wrath. He stands to his full height, broad shouldered, the flickering ends of his hair the only signifier of his displeasure, “Who said a thing about Achilles?” She huffs but does not answer, unsure of where his anger lies if not at the foot of Pelides. “Polites. Eurypylus. Priam. Helenus’ jailor. Andromache’s conqueror. If it weren’t Odysseus’ lot, Neoptolemus would have thrown Scamandrius from the tops of the balcony himself. What other reasons do I need?”

[suja-janee]

I love Lucy Maclean, she’s such a sweetheart

[hplonesomeart]

I’m getting so antsy about finishing this—Oh how I long for the day I’ll be able to share the full thing in motion. Alas that day never comes because I keep making it increasingly more complicated for myself to get done lol. Maybe give it another month

[ccbatman]

what if i said hal's mom called him "hally" specifically as a play on halley's comet, huh. what if i said she did that because she knew no matter how far he went, he'd always come back to her, hm. what then.

[bumblingbabooshka]

My name is [BRUTUS] and my name means [HEAVY] so with a [HEAVY] heart I'll guide this dagger Into the heart of my enemy

Something about having absolutely no choice in who you marry. About being literally forced by the law to spill blood - to accept this stranger as your husband over a man you truly care for or accept the fact that the man you love might die because you put him in danger. Something about risking becoming the wife of a man you've never even seen before a few minutes prior because you know anything would be better than putting your beloved in harm's way. Something about the trust inherent in that decision and in the way she speaks of it after. Truthfully, T'Pring doesn't know the captain and she doesn't know Spock. Either one of them could have taken her as their wife but she does know Stonn. She knows that Stonn will remain by her side no matter what. They made a plan together. They have an agreement which T'Pring believes will be upheld even though the plan changed with the arrival of Kirk. Stonn will always be there, always, and Stonn will be hers. Something about the language used around T'Pring: Ownership, subservience, non-personhood. T'Pring is an object that Spock can win. She cannot reject him, she has no say in the matter other than having Stonn 'claim' her instead. Even when Spock leaves after being very clearly rejected by T'Pring he says "Stonn, she is yours." as if despite her clear rejection he still owns her and is must formally 'give' her to Stonn. But the language T'Pring uses around Stonn is a break from that: "There was Stonn who wanted very much to be my consort, and I wanted him." Stonn who wanted very much to be HER consort and she WANTED him. The language here is very particular - It's not, for example: "Stonn wanted me to be his wife" - he is HERS. And she WANTS him. There's a mutual affection there and a strong trust - a trust which seems to be well founded since Stonn (though silent) stands by her side at the end of the episode. <- That might seem small but if Spock would reject her for 'daring to challenge' (again, the language is not 'because I don't want you' but more of an implied disgust at her having the AUDACITY to reject him) then it's not a stretch to assume that it'd be considered an insult in the TOS Vulcan society to NOT choose Stonn as her champion after a prior agreement. Anyway T'Pring was a woman in an impossible situation within a society which saw her as more of an object than a person and she wanted Stonn and Stonn wanted to be hers and she trusted that he would understand if she had to publicly pick someone else to ensure his life would be spared and he did understand.

[risingsunresistance]

sorry him saying he has no idea where the misogyny thing comes from when ludwig just talked about how he sent him a big apology for calling his friend a whore when it was about THE WRONG WOMAN is funny as fuck

i dont think he realizes that the reason no one gives a shit about his apologies and honestly just straight up ignores them is because EVEN IN THE EVENT THAT THEY ARE TRUE he's been proven to lie soooooo many times to the point where you really cant believe a word that comes out of his mouth. he says something and im like "damn maybe i was wrong about that one... i'll look into it" and you get more info and go "oh. he just made that part up. and misworded that. and lied about that part... oh it was actually WORSE than i initially thought!"

[lizzybeeee]

(Same anon) It's also just a lot harder for me because Solas in Inquisition was trying to take down the Veil in a world that was genuinely shitty to elves, mages, and spirits (nvm that until this game I was 100% sure that he was trying to do this more for the ancient elves, like why else imply there are more out there to Abelas? I guess he was just being polite?) Veilguard depicts Thedas as being largely okay with mages and spirits even outside of Tevinter and pointedly doesn't depict racism against elves outside a handful of throwaway lines. So they had him going at this with the same conviction from DAI, of a man trying to reverse the slow genocide of his people, but they've boiled his motivations down to "The Veil is unnatural" Like. How much more awesome if we could have convinced him not to destroy the world because of a culmination of choices in this game and all the others that made Thedas a kinder place idk man. ngnegnwgnf sorry for ranting in your inbox, I still liked Solas enough in this game but it was really bittersweet that they just dumbed down his motivations. I love your idea for influencing the Inky though, it definitely should have been a choice closer to the end and allowed for more variations (ideally all Inkies should have that, not just the Solavellans)

Hello again, Anon! :)

100% agree that the sanitization of the world and lore absolutely hurts Solas's motivations - especially if you look at it solely from what Veilguard gives us and with no background from previous games. All of the previous games, mostly Origins, were really effective in conveying how shit life could be for an elf - and how inbuilt this prejudice against the elves was in all aspects of Thedas.

The chant of light removing the canticle of Shartan, the march on the Dales, the struggles of the Dalish to simply live, the treatment of elves by the ruling class/chantry/ and others in general...it all painted such a bleak outlook for the elves and showed how ingrained this prejudice was in all aspects of Thedas. They had no way out - the structures of power in Thedas would fight them at every turn - which was why Solas being set up as a way for them to fight against all these systems was so compelling! You want the elves to win - but it will be at the cost of everything else if Solas goes ahead with his plan.

(You can definitely also make an argument that perhaps he's using them just to restore the world from before -> Felassan argued with him about this: to see the world as it was as real and worth improving.)

DATV felt divorced from the previous games, and its reluctance to meaningfully go into issues surrounding the lives of elves in Thedas - all the ugliness that brings - really did nothing to add to Solas's motivations for bringing down the Veil. If anything, I got the impression that he does not see anyone in Thedas as being 'real' and that he's simply doing it out of regret and to soothe his own ego/guilt. If this game wanted me to be sympathetic towards Solas it didn't do a good job of making me feel it, especially when you look at the totality of everything that Solas has done.

What I took from Trespasser was that Solas wanted to heal the wound he had left on the world - the Veil - and what he had inadvertently done to the elves. He had given everything he had to free the elven people from oppression and tyranny, only to inadvertently leave them vulnerable to the same oppression from others -> taking away their magic and long lives in the process. He was so blinded by his goal (stopping the evanuris) that he failed to see what his own actions might have wrought in the process.

Trespasser set up the 'Elven Rebellion 2.0' with a Solas who was torn between the world he once knew and the world it had become in spite of his intentions. Does he truly care about the elven people in current Thedas? Or does he just care about the world that came before? In DAI he was such a fascinating character because he could be so polarizing! People loved him! People hated him! Both were correct!

But starting the game with the ritual, sanitizing the world (no real signs of conflicts about spirits, mages, elves, anything really etc...), and simplifying his motivations to "fix fade -> be immortal/magic -> profit"...it just feels so shallow.

Solas: "Long before we met, I failed my oldest friend. She died for that failure. If I leave the Veil in place, I am destroying the world she wanted."

He spells his motivations out pretty clearly at the end and it's just...Mythal? He doesn't seem to care about the elves that are currently living in Thedas - not even Lavellan. Like you said, in Tresspasser I also got the impression that he wanted stop the slow genocide of his people. But apparently it was 'Mythal All Along'!

The lack of supporters/agents really gives him no credence to say that this is anything that the elves want - elven Rook can even call him out on it and he doesn't care. For a character whose own trauma began with bring coerced into a body he didn't want he doesn't give a shit about doing the same to thousands of other elves.

It's far less compelling, to me at least, than what I felt was set up in DAI: the Dread Wolf, god of rebellion, rallying elves after ages of systematic abuse and oppression with the goal of liberating his people and restoring the world that was - the world he inadvertantly denied them with the consequences of his actions. Instead it's just Solas doing his own thing because he's right and he needs to fix what he did wrong for Mythal.

It would have been great to be able to convince him to change his mind/ pursue another path as a result of the culmination of our actions throughout the series. It could be a nice nod to our past decisions and a nice conclusion to see the results of those choice in missives/codex entries. Same as the 'south can repel the blight' counter idea, have their be some kind of 'convince Solas to pursue another option' tally that demonstrates that this world is willing to change and he should be too.

[spywhitney]

How I sleep knowing I'll never trust anyone that hates Sydney but worships Richie:

[izzymalec]

anyway. fuck the ebu.

[ihopeitruinsrocknroll]

ughh i have so many feelings about characters that are backed into a corner, snarling and bleeding and dying but instead of letting themselves die and fade into obscurity they get up and keep fighting. they don’t just let themselves get swept into the wings of the heavens—instead they grit their teeth and make their death mean something. if they’re going down, if there’s no other option—their death is going to mean something. if they’re dying, they’ll take another dozen, hundred, thousand of their enemies with them. even if it’s meaningless in the end, even if they won’t survive to see the happy ending the bloodshed won them. they’d rather plunge a knife into their heart and make the world watch than pass away in a hospital bedside, they’d rather bleed themselves dry out of spite to cover up the sight of their foes celebrating.