#like tragic i have so many feelings about them?????

[inbabylontheywept]

Babylon and the Duck of Butter

I have a gift for falling in love with random objects. One time, my aunt got me a little rubber chicken, and whenever I squoze it, a little egg thing popped out. Very silly. Except that chicken became something like my best friend. I carried it with me to school, and I kept it with me in my pocket, and whatever social hazards there were about Being The Guy Who Got Stressed Whenever His Rubber Chicken Was Missing were far outweighed by being The Guy Who ALWAYS Had a Rubber Chicken On Him. There's a lot of comedic opportunity that comes with always having a good prop on your person.

Of course, the chicken did eventually. Explode. And such was my grief that I did not eat for 36 hours. This was very stressful for many people. Mostly my mom. I was a very strange child to work with. She took parenting so incredibly seriously, and then I'd pitch her these curve balls like refusing to eat for a day and a half because my rubber chicken died. No parenting book tells you what to do when that happens. You just have to feel it in your heart.

A less tragic story of an object that I fell in love with was a large, foam toad that I found in a trinket shop. The toad was the size of a very large grapefruit. Much too large to carry with me to school (thank god) but enough that I could move it around the house, to keep me company during my solitary pursuits. If I was reading, the toad was there, and if I was tinkering with legos, the toad was there, and even when I slept, I would wrap the toad up in layers and layers of blankets, and then spoon it. I did this until the rubber coating on the foam started to wear out, and the foam started to get brittle and break down and leak this repulsive yellow powder. Then I simply put the toad in the playroom and would consult it on matters of great importance. Eventually I stopped doing that, and someone took the opportunity to dispose of it. Not sure who. By the time I noticed its absence, too much time had passed for me to actually be sad. As an adult, part of me thinks I would have maybe liked burying the toad, but part of me also thinks I might have refused to part with the toad, which would have resulted in it leaking more repulsive yellow powder into the house. So I understand why that decision was made. 

I want to state that this does not happen often, and it does not happen on purpose. I don't choose to fall in love with random objects. And it's always a little bit embarrassing when it happens. 

Which brings me to my wife. 

Before meeting my wife, I did not often go to places with crowds. I didn't really think of it as avoiding them - those places just didn't seem fun to me. But she liked those places, and I really liked her, and being with someone who really likes something can kind of sell you on liking it too, so I'd take her to places and watch her Visibly Enjoy the Fair and go: Alright. The fair is pretty sweet.  

Which is a thing that happened. After fourish months of dating, I took her to the fair. And she fell very visibly in love with a large series of quilts, and she stayed near them for a while, which she thought was very embarrassing, and I got to pretend to be understanding as an outsider, because I thought it would be much more impressive than also being the type of person that would fall in love with a quilt. 

Do not do this. The gods punishment for my hubris was that the room next to the quilts was full of butter sculptures, which was an entirely new thing to me, and I immediately fell embarrassingly in love with all of them. It was like the biggest, sappiest non-sexual crush you've ever had, but not only did the other person not recipropcate, they could not, because they were made of butter. I actually got yelled at for pressing my face against the glass, which is fair, but also, I hadn't realized I was pressing my face on the glass, I just started leaning forward because after approximately 30 minutes of staring wistfully at a cow made of butter my legs got tired. And I think I should be given some grace for that.

Anyway. My wife was very patient with me taking more time to look at the butter sculptures than the average person might spent at the Louvre, and she also felt much less embarrassed over falling in love with a quilt, and we had a good laugh about it on the ferris wheel. 

A few weeks after that was my birthday. And I don't know what I expected, exactly - but I did not expect what she did. 

Dear reader, she made me a butter sculpture. Of a duck.

She picked a duck, because our first kiss was at a Japanese friendship garden. It was our second date, and she'd made up her mind not to do any kissing until the third date, but as we sat on the grass, a duck walked past me, and I'd just seen the hold-duck-gentle-like-hamgurber meme,

so I sort of impulsively reached out and snatched it. I honestly didn't think it would work. I don't know who was more flabbergasted, me or the duck. But we looked at each other, and then I looked at her, and then she looked at the duck, and she looked so incredibly envious that I assumed that must have wanted the duck so I just handed it to her.

It turned out she was actually envious of the ability to just grab a duck as it walked by, but she accepted the duck and stroked it a few times before releasing it. (She also made up her mind to kiss me in that moment, which was very nice.)  

Anyway.

She made me a butter duck of my own. Obviously, I fell in love with it immediately. I cleared out all of the freezer-portion of my mini fridge, and I put the duck in there, and for the next several months, when I felt sad, or lonely, I would open the door up and spent some quality time. Just me and my duck.

But this is, of course, not the end of the story. 

Because.

After several months. 

The mini fridge died. 

I really didn't use it that often. It was mostly my duck storage container. But one day, I walked by it, and it struck me that it wasn't humming. So I opened the door, and it was just. Far, far too late. The duck was dead. Dead dead. Turned into a foul-smelling slime dead. 

I cried. I did. After the rubber chicken thing, I thought I had changed, but I had not changed, and the unexpected death of my butter buddy left me pretty shook. I texted my then-girlfriend now-wife about how sad I was, and she actually came over to help me say goodbye. We didn't even bother scraping the duck out of the mini-fridge, we just said our goodbyes to both and threw them together in the nice dumpster behind the chapel, because it seemed appropriate to put it in God's dumpster. And it did actually help quite a bit. I certainly did not go 36 hours without eating again. 

And that was, for some time, the end of the butter duck. 

However. Three (or four?) years ago, for my birthday, my wife was looking around thrift stores. And she found something interesting. 

The original butter duck had an odd pose. She'd sculpted it laying flat, intending to raise it up later. But the butter was less flexible than she thought, and she was afraid of cracking it so she left it down which left the duck with a very elongated, very in-motion appearance. And she found a brass statue of a duck in the same, running posture.

It wasn't the original. But it was oddly on the nose. It was a yellow brass, it had the same strange posture, the same crude little face feathers. 

I think it was $3, but it remains perhaps the most thoughtful gift I have ever received. I got very choked up when I unwrapped Butter Duck, The UnDying. 

Pic provided.

[infiniteglitterfall]

Incorrect.

Happy 50th anniversary to the first article that came up when I googled "'transsexual lesbian' 1974."

(I picked a year at random, and searched for transsexual instead of trans because nobody was using trans as shorthand back then.)

Gay Community News.

February 22, 1975

"The Lesbian/Transsexual Misunderstanding."

By Margo. (Illustrated by a large grayscale photo of a long-haired lesbian doing a sort of show-offy squat pose in a pleated floor-length maxi skirt. actually she might be sitting on a stool we can't see, idk my image processing skills are crap. The photo is captioned, "This is Margo!" I'm going to bold things here and there for emphasis and easier reading; the original just bolded the beginnings of some paragraphs for easier reading.)

Being both a radical Lesbian and a male-to-female transsexual, I find myself at a vortex of conflict between the Lesbian and transsexual communities. In my more pessimistic moments, I sometimes feel as if the whole Lesbian community is down on me for being transsexual, and vice versa; in my more optimistic moments, I feel like writing articles like this one.

Although a few people have made Lesbian/transsexual controversies an arena for sheer hatred and bigotry, my hope is that honest misunderstandings between the overlapping Lesbian and transsexual communities are at the root of most problems.

To begin with, I myself as a Lesbian feminist have observed a great deal of sexism and heterosexual chauvinism among male-to-female transsexuals which must be upsetting to any Lesbian or even any straight feminist.

For example, Jan Morris (on the Dick Cavett Show) spoke about the "tragic" case of a male-to-female transsexual who desired Lesbian relationships after surgery: Cavett commented that the idea of a transsexual choosing Lesbianism was just too confusing to discuss further. As a Lesbian who considers love between women to be simple and very natural, I was depressed and angry.

Yet often transsexuals on television and other media make Ms. Morris seem feminist. They extol home and family as the essence of femaleness, reject gayness as immoral or unnatural, and define themselves in relationship men. When I hear such interviews, I find myself virtually crawling up a wall; it does not surprise me that other Lesbian women react in the same way.

At the same time, I have experienced a great deal of pain from the conduct of some Lesbians toward me as a transsexual. The dilemmas I face are almost identical to those faced by Lesbians in the feminist movement a few years ago. If I proclaim my transsexualism, I will be perceived as separating myself from my natively female Lesbian sisters; if I say nothing unless and until I am asked, I will be judged as hiding some vile secret.

Last year I became involved with a group of Lesbian anarchists; I was immediately accepted as myself, a very freaky Lesbian. Then, at the beginning of the next meeting, everyone froze toward me; I had become a "problem" to them, as Lesbians were a problem for straight feminists not so long ago. "Was it true?", they asked in so many words, as if this were the Fifties and I was rumored to be a former Communist. In the end I won at least temporary acceptance; but I did so by apologizing for rather than celebrating my struggle of 22 years to become the woman I felt was me.

On another occasion I was at a feminist bar, where I met a woman who did not know me but who had put down Lesbian transsexuals in general. We got along well; she related to me simply as a Lesbian woman (which I am), and I discovered that she also was a sensitive human being. Yet I was haunted by the feeling that if she knew my past she would probably have rejected me, even at the same time as felt that my past should be irrelevant.

It is like being Gay in a job situation where the boss does not know. You are not hiding it, you are just being your natural self; but you wonder how the boss would react if she/he knew. There is a strange closety tension about it all. Can I feel comfortable among other Lesbians who accept me as the real person I am, but would reject me if they knew how I got there?

At this point in time there are many transsexuals who would throw Lesbians to the patriarchal wolves as long as they could live in their desired submissive "feminine" roles; there are some Lesbians who would ignore or even trample over transsexuals if this served their neat and rigid "revolutionary" plans. I would like to explore why it is that transsexuals ignore or even ridicule Lesbians and vice versa, but first we must deal with some aspects of human sexuality which are often confused.

In discussions of both gayness and transsexualism, there are three concepts which often get tangled or confused. First, there is one's overall feeling of being female or male, which I will refer to as gender identity. Secondly, there is one's preference in forming intense love relationships for one or both sexes (or even for a compatible human being regardless of sex), which I will call sexual preference, although I might prefer the term "amatory" preference in order to stress the element of love whether or not it is genitally expressed (more on this later). Finally, there is one's conformity or defiance (or simple ignoring) of sex roles, the arbitrary sexist definitions of what is supposed to be "feminine" or "masculine."

To begin with, many confuse gender identity with sex roles; and such confusion makes it impossible to understand transsexualisin. Perhaps I can make the distinction clear by considering a situation which many natively female Lesbians experience.

A radical feminist may challenge all sex roles: she may joyously celebrate her "masculine" strengths: she may repudiate all patriarchal definitions of what it means to be a woman; yet she still feels that she is female, and that all women are her sisters. Let us refer to this total affirmative feeling as femaleness.

In contrast, the patriarchal system speaks of femininity; this means being submissive, being a sex object, and above all being attractive to men rather than to oneself or one's sisters. Thus radical feminism means celebrating femaleness (sisterhood, women's culture, etc.) in our own terms while rejecting all sex role barriers (e.g. accepting both sensitivity and strength while rejecting both submission and domination).

I have found that living as a woman full-time for the past 16 months, celebrating my femaleness, has made me much stronger and more "masculine" in many ways. Musically, I find myself belting out some very gutsy Blues which border on screaming; I find this one of the heaviest expressions of my femaleness and Lesbianism. Recently a gay male at a coffeehouse called me a diesel dyke; I thanked him for letting me know that I have character!

In other words, as radical feminists we feel a deep sense of being women and sisters, but this feeling is beyond any definition or stereotype. This is true of us whether we are natively female or transsexual. We all face the same paradoxes and dilemmas. Once this is understood, a lot of Lesbian/transsexual tension may suddenly vanish.

Sometimes feminists have asked me why, if I consider sex roles both unjust and ridiculous, do I not just live as a man and express both my "feminine" and my "masculine" qualities in that way? In doing this they are assuming that somehow I have chosen to be a woman so that I can be "feminine."

In fact, I have chosen to live as a woman simply because that is what I am, and because only by affirming my femaleness and sisterhood with all women can I be myself, strong and filled with energy as well as sensitive. How would these feminists feel about living as men? Obviously they would consider it a masquerade, and would demand their right to celebrate their femaleness. So do I.

Moving to another confusion which many Gay people have battled against, gender identity must not be confused with sexual preference. Lesbians (as opposed to female-to-male transsexuals) are not biological females who have a male gender identity: they are simply women who love other women. Gay men (as opposed to male-to-female transsexuals) are not biological males who have female gender identities, but are men who love men.

People who are trapped in the het trip often find it contradictory for me to be transsexual and Lesbian, because they assume that to be a woman is to love men and vice versa. Thus my parents alternately would suggest that the main reason I wanted the change was to relate in straight ways to men; or, they would argue that if I were going to relate to women, why do I need to be a woman myself. My parents are two of the best meaning straights I have met, but I guess that they are still a bit confused.

However, there is no reason that my situation need be confusing to Gay people. Regardless of my native genitals, I feel myself to be a woman who loves women, or simply a Lesbian. As I wrote above, I consider love between women to be a natural thing, whether the women are native or transsexual. The problem is that sometimes even Gay people apply het logic to transsexuals: and I would say that a great majority of male-to-female transsexuals apply het logic to themselves and everyone else. For example, I read an interview in which a transsexual defined Lesbians as "women who want to be men. If I had been at that interview. I would have had some interesting comments to make!

Finally, of course, sexual preference is different from any stereotyped adherence to sex roles. We all know that gay and straight people cannot be separated in general on the basis of sex role behavior: even more importantly, we are struggling to get totally away from the butch/femme trip. For me, being a Lesbian woman means being both strong and sensitive, for love requires both qualities.

Unfortunately, my sister Lesbians sometimes hold anti-transsexual attitudes. By anti-transsexual attitudes, I mean prejudices which would exclude from the Lesbian movement those transsexuals who are living full-time as women, and would exclude them for any reason which would not equally exclude their native sisters. Opposition to sexism in any people, including both transsexuals and Lesbians, is of course necessary! Anti-transsexualism does not refer to this kind of opposition. Rather it refers to prejudice and exclusion directed against transsexuals as a category.

Before analyzing the reasons for anti-transsexualism among Lesbians, I feel it necessary to challenge one argument against even raising this issue: unfortunately, it is an argument which has gained currency in the Gay/feminist press in Boston.

According to this argument, the discussion of transsexualism causes disagreement in the Lesbian movement; and, after all, how many Lesbian transsexuals are there? The conclusion is that the suffering of a few strange people can and should be put safely aside until "after the revolution.

Further, it is sometimes even argued that transsexuals must take the responsibility for this dissension among their native Lesbian sisters; to use the favorite macho-radical phrase, transsexuals "are objectively counter-revolutionary" because they are distracting their native sisters from much more important things. I have been given this argument not only in print but in person.

In the year 1862, a number of Blacks met with President Lincoln to demand emancipation of the slaves. Lincoln replied that the important thing was preserving the Union, with or without slavery. Further, he argued that the slaves and Black people generally, were responsible for the Civil War, since without them there would be nothing for white people to fight about!

In the early 1960's, during a peace march in the American South, it was argued that segregation should not be raised as an issue, since that would alienate the white population of the region from joining in the struggle against nuclear war. After the world was saved, some people argued, then Jim Crow could be tackled.

Later in that decade, when women first demanded their rights in the male-dominated Left movements, they were put down: after all, women did not constitute a class or oppressed group, according to the going macho ideological definitions.

Little things like feminism could be dealt with after the working class (or Third World or whatever) was liberated. Further, women who demanded their own freedom were accused of being counter-revolutionary, since they were causing division and conflict among their male comrades.

At about the same time, Gay people were also accused of being "bourgeois decadents;" furthermore, they were obviously capitalist agents who would even stoop so low as to challenge the revolutionary government of Cuba for a few minor imprisonments of homosexual perverts.

Last but not least, around 1969 and 1970 straight feminists attacked Lesbians for "dividing the movement" and for raising issues "irrelevant to the majority of women, irrelevant to the main focus of our movement." Betty Friedan went so far as to call Lesbians "the Lavender Menace," and to suggest that Lesbians were CIA agents sent to disrupt the respectable feminist movement.

Thus it is not surprising that transsexuals should be treated in the same way that Blacks, women, gay people, and Lesbians specifically have been treated, and all in the name of "revolution." We also note that whites, men, and straights find it easier to postpone other people's liberation in the name of radicalism than to confront their own prejudices now. All Lesbians (transsexual and native) should reject this logic of slavery and hypocrisy, and all transsexuals who respect themselves should challenge it aggressively and without hesitation or apology.

At the Congress to Unite Women in 1970, the straight feminists in charge blocked a workshop on Lesbianism. About 20 Lesbians staged a nonviolent takeover of the Congress, in which they humorously and effectively presented the justice of their cause. They demanded that women be united by supporting Lesbian liberation rather than by ignoring or denouncing it. The time has come to unite women regardless of native genitals, and to unite them by all nonviolent means necessary.

Now we come to the specific reasons for anti-transsexualism in the Lesbian community. Of course, one reason is the very genuine mood of anti-Lesbianism among many transsexuals. It is important that we as Lesbians, avoid the classic prejudicial practice of judging all the members of a group by the actions of some.

However, coming to the other reasons. we find that misinformation and outdated sexist attitudes are crucial. The causes are basically: 1. Misinformation about transsexualism; 2. Overly narrow concepts of Lesbianism; 3. Misguided notions of polarization in the Lesbian/feminist struggle; and 4. Clinging to patriarchal definitions of sex and gender.

(This is not the end. Look for more of Margo in future issues.)

And here's a close-up of the sidebar, transcribed in alt text:

[jane-d-ankh-veos]

Some people aggressively tried to convince me that it's 100% canon that the Hexcore has its own malicious will and fully controls Viktor, and, well... usually I'm only glad when there is a wide variety of theories – I love exploring them and can peacefully ignore those I don't agree with – but I really can't stand this kind of arguing. Leave others some freedom to have their own interpretations, please...

So, why persuading me into adopting this one is a waste of time and effort: I don't like that it deprives him of responsibility and meaningfulness of personally taking it. The mage admitted that he had chosen a wrong way and attempted to set it right, and this is such an admirable rare strength. It's an important part of his character: staying true to his "in the pursuit of great, we failed to do good" and desires to lessen humanity's suffering, his intentions were always for the best, so he is able to consciously renounce evil when he sees that the consequences betray his ethics. This requires immence willpower and intelligence. His own. He isn't simply cleaning up some unruly magical orb's mess after being its puppet, he acts like a complex personality.

(Just imagine, for example, how boring BG3 would be if instead of its interesting vivid characters all the communication/flirting/teamwork was in fact happening only between their illithid tadpoles...)

Even the original Machine Herald, despite being devoted to the Glorious Evolution for a longer time and certainly not going to abandon it, is also capable of genuine self-introspection and honest abidance by what he thinks is right. (My precious ironclad cinnamon roll ❤️)

As for the argument that the Hexcore recoiled from him in S1 like a living creature, even our own world's nature has a lot of things that can react to a potential threat without necessarily having sentience. Some of them can even learn and distinguish:

What I could somewhat accept is the version that the Hexcore was given life by his blood. If its alleged independent mind is a direct creation and part of Viktor himself, then at least it's more logical than appearing from nowhere (or from the Void that is almost a whole continent away and would have already destroyed Piltover and Zaun long before these experiments if it was somehow involved), has actual on-screen basis and doesn't take away his responsibility so entirely.

Anyway, even after their fusion, there are so many scenes clearly showing that it's still this same Viktor who speaks, watches and makes decisions:

Or his monologue at the end of S2's sixth episode. The character himself explains his reasons, that's why I don't get those saying that there were none so the eldritch influence can be the only possible explanation.

Speaking of which, I do get his logic in some of my own personal ways. The heavy burden of empathy... The constant frustration... The feeling that only some near-impossible universal change would be able to make things better because life is so fundamentally injust and so tragically vulnerable to evil/violence/illness/death/pain... But this would require a whole another post, I'm afraid, and would be highly subjective.

What I see as actual villainizing influence is his own despair. First he had already been about to take his life, then he was horribly killed within an arm's reach of achieving a better future for Zaun, then his hopeful commune was destroyed, a close friend/lover shot him, etc... Anyone in his place would run out of patience to act rationally and nicely, so I understand and forgive him wholeheartedly.

[andarans]

a love letter to dragon age.

i’ve been trying to cope with the news that all the dragon age devs have been laid off or reassigned these past two days, and i just…. it’s hard. it might sound silly to say but i’ve barely been able to do anything because i feel as if i’ve lost a family member. took today to have a good cry. dragon age was such a formative series for me. i joke all the time i got into it for the romances and stayed for the lore but really everything about it i love, dearly. i love that each companion and side character had stories that moved me and made me cry, stories i could relate to even in a world with magic and dragons. i love how the lore is presented, including the brilliance that is the codex—that you’re never quite sure who to believe, that discovering the truth requires you to be an archaeologist. i love how my choices always mattered, that decision i made in origins affected my playthrough in inquisition. i loved the message dragon age as a series sent, about corruption, about power, about propaganda. dragon age influenced so much of my fantasy tastes and own writing and art. it left such a huge mark on my artistic inspirations and work. hell, my first ever dnd character was a tiefling that pretty much looks like a qunari with having a backstory that affected the world she was in, reminiscent of the depiction of elves in dragon age (still one of my favorite and nuanced takes on elves in fantasy, btw). even with the dnd campaign and world i’m writing now, i see dragon age in nooks and crannies. i wrote so much fanfic and drew so much fanart and made so many theories and anxiously followed every bit of news for the development cycle of veilguard. i’d watch the game awards every year with my friend hoping for dragon age news. speaking of friends, god i made so many friends because of dragon age. that common interest sparked so many fun conversations and ideas. i even was a writer for an anders focused dragon age charity zine.

above all i loved the community around dragon age. sure, fandoms all have its moments and toxicity, but by and large my experience with the DA community was wonderful. i love getting to see people’s OCs and world states because i also obsess over my DA OCs and world states. i love getting to see people write theses about dragon age’s themes and masters worthy character studies. the communal love for this world and its characters is so, so profoundly inspiring.

i’ve spent so much time moping but i do want to highlight what i loved about each game and my favorite characters.

DAO: my first intro to the series. by god the gameplay was so slow but the story and characters and lore and writing made it SO worth it. made me appreciate CRPGs too. alistair ended up becoming my favorite character, i remember actually gasping and blushing at the rose moment in his romance. the landsmeet is still one of my favorite quests, i love fantasy political intrigue. morrigan also was my best friend, when she called my warden a sister i cried.

DA2: one of the most underrated games by far. i loved the smaller scale, i loved how personal hawke’s story felt, i loved every single companion and this found family. fenris was my first romance and one of my favorites, he is so complex and misunderstood and secretly has the best sense of humor. i think anders ended up becoming my favorite though—god, anders. i could speak about him for hours but i appreciate the DA devs for what they did for him and letting us romance him. anders made me appreciate his character archetype so much; he is such a tragic man transformed by bitterness and vengeance and rage. “ten years from now, a hundred years from now, someone like me will love someone like you, and there will be no templars to tear them apart.” i love you anders.

DAI: i love the inquisitor. i love how tragic of a character the inquisitor is, ripped from their life and forced to become an idol for a movement they might not even believe in. a lot of people criticize DAI for being “the chosen one” cliché, but it’s not. it’s a critique of that very trope and how it destroys a person. the inquisitor is forced to become an idea, and it does not matter who they actually are; they have all autonomy taken from them, and that is horrifying. cullen ended up ruining my life for a good amount of time, his romance is my favorite in all the series and god he got such a good redemption and ending. (i even bought cullen themed soap from a local convention, lol. i’m telling you i was obsessed). and in my replay solas’ romance absolutely destroyed me, turning him from my dearly detested to my dearly beloved. god trick weekes i will miss you so much, thank you for writing solas.

DAV: i know how contentious veilguard is. believe me i have many of my own criticisms. but i still love it anyway. i love the companions, all of them, i love how act 3 absolutely fucking gutted me and made me cry twice. i loved the amazing visuals and character creator and ost and environments. i love the QOL improvements. i loved seeing the cameos and my inquisitor again. there’s so much to love in veilguard and i’d rather talk about how much i love it than what i didn’t. lucanis was my first romance and while there wasn’t as much content as i was hoping for, i sincerely appreciate what we did get. i love how ride or die he is, how his love language is acts of service, how he’s afraid to hurt rook. i love his facial animations in his romance, i love zach mendez’s performance. i’m hoping to play emmrich and davrin’s next, and i’m sure i’ll love them too.

it’s hard to accept the fact that dragon age is probably over. it makes me sad knowing we’ll never find out about certain lore questions or know what DA5 could’ve looked like. and i’m still so angry for the developers and how they’re so callously treated and thrown away by EA/bioware. sometimes i wonder if the same thing would’ve happened if veilguard sold more. but it’s not helpful to dwell on these what-ifs, because we’ve seen how the industry treats both successful games and what they deem as failures: layoffs and no remorse. i hope the team finds work soon. i hope they realize how loved their work is. i hope someday the game industry is completely, wholly unionized. i’m glad at least we got veilguard to answer the biggest questions we’ve had.

thank you, DA devs, for everything. thank you for answering our silly questions about your characters favorite coffee flavors and perfect date nights. thank you for bringing them to life. i won’t stop playing the games or making art or fic. i won’t stop being inspired. dragon age lives on in my creations, in my dnd characters, in everything. i hope to be back in thedas soon, one day. dareth shiral.

[brynnsasha191]

why do you hate aaravos?

Complicated answer. I think he's really interesting and complex. I guess it's just because I don't think he's justified. What happened to Leola was horrific and those stary murders who are my main opps and sol regem deserve punishment for what they did to her, the rest of the world don't. They don't deserve to die and suffer because of something beings from the stars did over a thousand years ago, while Aaravos may not necessarily want to directly punish them and he's just gunning to destroy cosmic order, he's still doing this to them and making them suffer. And destroying the world will arguably affect them more than the freaking stars. Some people also defend him saying he loves and defends humans against the mean elves (lowkey don't understand the elf hate in this fandom) but when he says he wants to help humans, it's a straight up lie. And ik there's the whole 'Aaravos doesn't lie' thing but he literally unleashed eternal night on all of them, including humans, he claims to like humans but he uses them as puppets and preys on their weaknesses for his own gain. He literally doesn't care about anyone or anything other than Claudia beyond his own goal/endgame. (His relationship with Claudia is very interesting and complex and I'd love to get into it some other time)

And idk if this is what they call an "unpopular opinion" but I'm also just starting to get really sick of the 'villain with tragic backstory/heart of gold' trope. Maybe it's just because I've dealt with so many narcissists in my life, but I desperately want people to understand that some people are just bad. Some people just want to hurt you and want to see you suffer. Not everyone is a poor uwu baby who are carrying around a heart of gold that was buried by a tragic backstory, some people are just bad because they are. And that trope wouldn't annoy me nearly as much if there were only a couple of these stories but I literally cannot escape the villains who aren't really villains trope these days, every damn villain has a tragic backstory these days and I hate it. That's why I was a huge Aaravos fan before the Leola reveal because he was just bad, he was a real villain. It's ironic that the Leola reveal actually made me dislike him. (Not hating on the Leola scenes in and of itself, it's a beautiful and tragic sequence and no matter my feelings I'm glad it saw the light of day)

Not even talking about Aaravos now and idk who needs to hear this but please remember that not everyone deserves your forgiveness or sympathy. Not everyone is sorry for the way they hurt you, and not everyone didn't mean to hurt you. Just because the person who victimized and abused you was once the victim and abused does not give them an excuse for hurting you and you don't need to make excuses for them. Some people don't have tortured golden hearts buried inside. Some people are just bad.

[prideblades]

every day goes by I think about how Byakuya really is the most tender person but very few see it because he's nobility and upholds an unfair and unjust system because it is his birthright duty.

[sigsfigs]

never thought i would be without you

i wish you love

i wish you well

i wish you roses

while you can still smell them

[evelynpr]

Might be a hot take as a bkdk and tgck truther here, but I find izuocha endlessly fascinating, beautiful, but also tearfully tragic.

I see their love for each other as something representative of their innocence and naivety when they only knew so little about who they were, and what was to come.

I think the main barrier of their relationship is that its rooted in how they see each other very idealistically, specifically that they're attached to the image of their Best Heroic Selves, and not the deeply selfish, destructive, freaky, and egotistical parts of them. To each other, they need to keep fulfilling that image or else that same person they looked up to would almost die in front of them, and that would be too cruel. Although that hero is still there, that same person they looked up to is not the same now because of...well...everything.

Izuku had barely even talked to girls when he first met her. She was Izuku's first ever real friend (Sorry Kats, everyone and him knows he was terrible), so he saved her in that entrance exam even if it was so dangerous. She gave a new meaning to his derogatory nickname just by being a friend that believed in him. After that, she saved him several more times (Blackwhip and Megaphone are the biggest samples iirc). It makes perfect sense that she is Deku's hero.

Ochako hardly knew what it meant to be a hero when she first got into UA. Just by reaching out to some kid tripping, she made a new friend who would then save her in that exam, then save him again in return. This boy then became someone who was always working so hard to save everyone in trouble, and she realized she wanted to be just like him too. "I want to save people"

But...Deku changes. The weight of One for All is on his shoulders and he needs someone to carry this burden with him. He continues to want to save other people at the expense of himself, still not letting his true selfishness and ego ever show- and it only grows more and more unbearable.

Then...Ochako fell in love with Himiko. Truly, relentlessly, selfishly and devotedly in love with a girl who then dies giving her blood to her- the greatest expression of love Himiko could ever give.

Not that they can't love each other because of this happening (and...so many other things oh god), I'm honestly not sure how to explain it- But them ending up together after losing that innocence and naivety? After Ochako will forever grieve the girl who showed her love in its most beautiful and ugly form? After Izuku changed so fundamentally as a person that the butterflies of a nice girl talking to you doesn't exist anymore? After that simple image of being a hero and being in love has completely changed for them both?

Even so, I believe they still love each other. There is no label I know of that can properly describe them though. They are each other's image of being a hero when it comes to saving people. Aside from Shoto, no one else can grasp the grief of the person you tried to save dying in your hands. They would no doubt try to cope with these losses together, and just try to get better together...but so much has changed. They've changed. The world changed. What are they now? Who are they now?

"What happened...to us?"

[r0zzk1ll]

"this man, is weird.. CRAZY weird.." "he was always very bright.."

[hiraganasakura]

Hi so me being me I've decided to hyperanalyze the conversation Qrow and Raven had in Higanbana practically line by line bcus I have Many Thoughts and this is the best way I can think of to get them all out. If you can't tell I'm absolutely obsessed with these two. Btw.

Thanks to the RWBY wiki for providing transcripts for every episode, otherwise I definitely would have missed smth despite having just watched this scene recently lol

I put it under the read more for easier scrolling due to how long this post got!

I immediately noticed smth in the very first lines of the interaction:

Raven: "Hello, brother." Qrow: "...Raven."

You'll notice throughout the whole conversation that Raven never calls Qrow by his name, only condescendingly referring to him as "brother" this one time and never calling him anything else. Meanwhile, Qrow directly refers to Raven a total of three times throughout the conversation, and only one doesn't call Raven by her name (which we'll get to shortly)

On the other hand, Qrow doesn't bother with even so much as a greeting beyond simply stating Raven's name

It's different ways of communicating their distance. While Raven holds her relationship with Qrow over his head — never once, even outside of this scene, does she call him "brother" with affection iirc, only derision and condescension — Qrow doesn't seem to rly know how to greet her. He hesitates before saying her name and approaching her, as if trying to assess the situation before acting

Qrow: "So, what do you want?" Raven: "A girl can't just catch up with her family?" Qrow: "She can, but you're not. Now how 'bout we get on with it? Unless you plan on keeping these [drinks] comin'."

Again, Raven seems to bring up her familial ties with Qrow as a tactic to get him to do what she wants — in this case, stick around to talk to her despite him not seeming to rly want to. Frankly, it feels manipulative. We're gonna put a pin in this for now and come back to it in just a moment

Additionally, Qrow already knows that Raven's not just here for a friendly chat between two siblings, and sees right thru her facade that it is. Raven is here bcus she wants smth from him. But interestingly, it is Raven in V5 that says, in an almost frustrated/disappointed tone, "Family. Only coming around when they need something." There's another pin; keep both in mind

Raven: "Does she have it?" Qrow: "...Did you know Yang lost her arm?" Raven: "That's not—" Qrow: "Rhetorical question, I know you know. It's just obnoxious that you'd bring up family and then carry on like your own daughter doesn't exist." Raven: "I saved her." Qrow: "Once. Because that was your rule, right? Real 'Mom of the Year' material, sis."

Qrow dodges Raven's question about the Relic and instead brings up her hypocrisy in how she treats family. And it's a good point. Here she is lording her siblingship with Qrow over his head while simultaneously defending and upholding her rule that she is only obligated to help her own daughter a single time. Another pinpoint on our little conspiracy board

Also, here's the one time in this conversation Qrow refers to Raven as "sis". Like Raven's use of "brother", Qrow's use of "sis" is very pointed and with intent. But it's not to manipulate Raven, it's a snarky jab meant to rly hammer home Qrow's point

Raven: "I told you Beacon would fall, and it did. I told you Ozpin would fail, and he has. Now you tell me. Does. Salem. Have it?" Qrow: "I thought you weren't interested in all of that." Raven: "I just want to know what we are up against." Qrow: "And which 'we' are you referring to?"

A few things of note here. At some point in the past, Raven expressed an outright disinterest in Ozpin's inner circle, at least to Qrow. Qrow also feels excluded in the "we" Raven mentions being against Salem. To me, there seems to be a distinct possibility here that it wasn't that Raven felt personally disinterested in Ozpin's operations, but that she somehow felt excluded and feigned a lack of interest in order to protect herself. An idea that is further supported in my eyes by the following dialogue:

Qrow: "You should come back, Raven. The only way we'd beat her is by working together. All of us." Raven: "You're the one who left. The tribe raised us, and you turned your back on them." Qrow: "They were killers and thieves." Raven: "They were your family." Qrow: "You have a very skewed perception of that word."

And there it is. Raven's problem is laid out here for us, loud and clear: She feels like she was the one abandoned, not the one running away. She says it outright! "You're the one who left." To her, Qrow is the traitor, the one who left their family behind. If you ask Qrow (or, for that matter, Tai, Yang, and even Summer based on the scene in V9), it's the opposite

Bcus they have different definitions of family

Another thing to pin (I promise this will all become clear soon)

Raven: "I lead our people now. And as leader, I will do everything in my power to ensure our survival." Qrow: "I saw. The people of Shion saw, too." Raven: "The weak die. The strong live. Those are the rules." Qrow: "Well, you've certainly got someone strong on your side. I've seen the damage." Raven: "We couldn't have known the Grimm would set in as quickly as they did." Qrow: "I'm not talking about the Grimm. And I'm not talking about you, either."

Notice Raven's shift from "the tribe" to "our people". More of that guilt tripping!

Additionally, Raven is *obsessed* with rules. One save. The weak die, the strong live. Raven lives and breathes rules, even seemingly arbitrary ones. Guess what this is? Another pin!

Raven: "If you don't know where the Relic is, then we have nothing left to talk about." Qrow: "I don't know where the Spring Maiden is, either, but if you do, I need you to tell me." Raven: "And why would I do that?" Qrow: "Because without her, we're all going to die." Raven: "...And which 'we' are you referring to?"

Qrow's "either" here implies that he also doesn't know where the Crown of Choice is, which is... interesting. He's one of Ozpin's closest lieutenants, and is in the dark on where Beacon's Relic is? Wherever it is, it is such a closely kept secret that even Ozpin's best spy doesn't know where it is (maybe so that in the event Qrow gets captured by Salem he can't be forced into giving her the information?)

Meanwhile, Raven's "And why would I [tell you]?" implies that she does know who the Spring Maiden is (obviously. Raven's the Spring Maiden lol) but refuses to disclose to Qrow

A lantern sputters out after Qrow says "Without [Spring] we're all going to die." Now, I genuinely can't remember if this is headcanon or canon, but iirc Misfortune seems to act up when Qrow's upset. He's clearly tired of this little game of dancing around topics that Raven's been playing with him

And once again, Raven indicates a feeling of exclusion from Qrow's life in the iconic final line. She gets the final word in before leaving

We've finally reached the end of the conversation. Now what does all of this tell us?

And here is where all of those pins I wrote down are relevant. As I mentioned, the twins view family very differently

Qrow's view is pretty obvious: he views family as the ppl in his life who matter most to him. Unlike Raven, he does not view the tribe as family despite the fact that they raised him, disgustedly referring to them as "killers and thieves". It's implied that he was, in fact, neglected and/or likely abused by the Branwen tribe, saying in V6C4, "No one wanted me... I was cursed..." further explaining his distaste for them. Furthermore, despite not being related to Ruby by blood, they clearly consider one another family throughout the series, and he even seems closer to her than he seems to his niece who's actually blood related to him (I personally headcanon that he keeps more of a distance from Yang bcus she reminds him too much of Raven, who he feels abandoned and hurt by, but that's neither here nor there). Bloodlines and debts are secondary compared to loyalty, if they're considered at all. He is obviously furious that Raven only insists on saving Yang once and never directly interacting with her beyond that, despite Raven constantly guilting Qrow over abandoning his so-called "family" of the tribe. And yet. And yet. He still offers Raven a place back in his life, even if only to unite against Salem

Raven's view, to me, has been an enigma for a while. But after hyperanalyzing this conversation, after noting down all of those points of interest, I feel like I've finally cracked the code. Raven views family as an obligation, an exchange that always has an ulterior motive behind it. She seeks out Qrow only bcus she desires smth from him despite showing distaste when someone does the same to her; condescendingly calls Qrow "brother" more than his actual name and calls the tribe their "family" to try guilting him into doing what she wants; and feels fierce loyalty to the tribe but barely interacts with her daughter, only seeming to count one of the two as true family. She views the concept of family with cynicism and seems to feel an obligation to the tribe, as if she "owes" them for raising her

I think the two's perceptions of what defines family are all to do with the way the tribe treated both of them. This crosses a bit into headcanon territory, but as you can see by the above quotes and analysis, I rly don't think I'm just making it up entirely

As I already mentioned, I think it's implied that the Branwen tribe neglected/abused Qrow. In fact, we could probably blame their treatment of him for the deep self-loathing he has due to his "cursed" Semblance. But what about Raven?

Well, it's simple: I think she was abused, too, just in a different way. While Qrow was likely shown and told on a consistent basis that he was unwanted, unloved, undeserving of good things, Raven may have been shown and told she was wanted, loved, and deserving of good things... if she did what the tribe told her. If she repaid them for raising her and her brother, for being her "family". The way she uses her familial ties with Qrow as almost blackmail may be exactly the way the tribe treated her. Her obsession with following rules may stem from the fact that she had to follow the rules the tribe set for her in order to be accepted and deemed worth smth

As for her distance from Yang... honestly, I wonder if Raven is aware that Yang deserves better and keeps her distance as her way of doing that. When Summer confronts Raven in the V9 scene, Raven says, "...You're better at that life. Better than I was." She seems to have a fear and insecurity about being a good family member, a good mother, and maybe that's why she fled. Maybe she was scared of being like her abusers due to how she emulates them as a self-preservation tactic in so many other ways. Not entirely sure about this point tho

And I think too this is why the twins don't rly understand one another. They may have been unaware of the different ways in which the other was treated. Qrow, constantly unwanted and loathed, can't understand why Raven sticks around with the tribe; Raven, who obeyed the tribe and, in doing so, garnered enough of their favor to even eventually become leader, can't understand why Qrow can't just be "good", earn respect, and stay

This dissonance between the two experiences may also be completely intentional on the part of the tribe; abusers will often eliminate their targets' support systems in order to make them completely reliant on the abuser, so it's highly likely that the wedge was intentionally driven between the two siblings so that they could not find support in one another. This would also tie into why the twins seem to feel excluded from one another's lives and abandoned by one another: bcus they were made to feel that way by their common abusers, and did nothing to challenge these assumptions bcus they saw no reason to — and only seemed to keep proving one another right if they did

Which rly has some disturbing implications about how the Branwen tribe works. Like, do they just pick orphaned kids up off the street and abuse them into being perfect little bandits, molded to be of the greatest possible use and discarded if they're deemed worthless? Plus Qrow says his Semblance is how he got his name, which implies that the tribe also renames the kids they scoop up (possibly as a form of control or a way to make sure they can't be tracked down by any remaining family)? Plus there's the whole thing where Qrow and Raven were originally sent to Beacon to learn how to kill Huntsmen, which carries with it the implication that the Branwen tribe grooms literal orphan children into becoming stone-hearted murderers? What. The heck.

And if I'm right, if the Branwen tribe is that severely abusive, then like... wow, no wonder Qrow and Raven are Like That. They're both very deeply hurt people expressing it in different ways

I was considering adding their conversation at the Battle of Haven to this post, but I think that would be better as its own thing. Also I haven't gotten there on my rewatch yet so I may miss some details if I try to analyze it rn; it's better to wait overall methinks

But I have reached the point of my rewatch where we see Weiss and Whitley interact, and I think it would be very efficient to sum up what Qrow and Raven's relationship seems to be by using those siblings as a point of reference. Qrow = Weiss, actively trying to break free from and fight back against their abusers in different ways, while Raven = Whitley, continuing to do as their abusers want and have wanted as a method of self-preservation. Only, unlike Weiss and Whitley, Qrow and Raven have yet to come to a point where they can understand one another. I think that's a good way to briefly summarize the uh. Absolutely massive post this is.

In conclusion, I may have cracked the majority of the Branwen twins' pre-Beacon backstory purely by hyperanalyzing a single conversation. Oopsies

[rainbowberriesandcookies]

Pain is being an ulquihime shipper but having to block/avoid most of them because they are weirdly anti-Orihime, anti-bleach ending, or "anti how Kubo wrote Orihime" even though she's one of the most consistently and well-written female characters in Shounen as well as the fact that they try to make Ulquiorra care more about Orihime than he actually did in the manga or even god forbid try to say that Ulquiorra cared more about Orihime than Ichigo did.

[wardensantoineandevka]

wait, wait, wait, are some people SO upset about the Those Across the Sea stinger that they're offhandedly framing it as a matter of debate about whether Meredith is awful and horrific as a narrative agent? yeah, like, the oppressive systems of the Chantry is the real root cause here, but one part of the material expression of the awfulness and evil of those systems within the narrative is in how it enables people like Meredith to do all that and pursue her prejudices in that manner without resistance? like, DA2 isn't really presenting Meredith herself with a lot of nuance and is kinda landing simply at "Meredith is kinda evil / doing evil things (for whatever measure of evil even is)". what drove her to develop this perspective and what ALLOWED her to do and accomplish all this harm and enact all that violence because of her prejudices and fear is where a bit more complexity comes in, but the fact that she is doing awful shit is not really, like, that up for debate, and I'm kinda baffled that this is something that's being put out there by some because they didn't like the stinger.

[worstloki]

been thinking of Loki as a vengeful ghost/demon that tries to kill Thor after dying on Jotunheim except instead of killing Thor straightup Thor's on a quest following a trail of weird clues and strange happenings across multiple realms sort of? so Loki is just leading him around not showing himself but very much heartbroken in the distance about how Thor just 'moved on'. Meanwhile on Thor's end it's very evident in how Thor handles quests once Loki is gone that he still follows all the advice and suggestions Loki made, and tries to consider what Loki would have done when he does things.

[the-acid-pear]

Yesterday I was replaying Deltarune and I was going really insane about it picking up on things I missed on my first playthrough and something that fucked me up hard was this line here

The little ellipsis at the end, almost like you can hear the regret on their voice. Voice of an ad who is realizing maybe they fucked up on this one. But it also made me think of... The possibility of this being a reaction to Spamton's actions.

Because I don't think this was an automatic thing, I feel like their drifting off was gradual. Sure, their jealousy had won them over (I'd have killed the guy or myself if I was them so I don't even blame them) but Spamton was too getting busier and busier the more famous he got, and as they say, that never stopped. He only kept getting bigger, until it all came crashing down. And when it did it was one of them who tried to go find him, after all that.

But I digress, let's focus on the original quote from my favorite sigma enby themselves, Pink Addison. There's obviously not only the regret to it, but feeling like they were abandoned too. Both parties lost a lot and the real tragedy is just how easily it could've have been avoided! Or rather, how beyond their control it was...

But I'll get off topic if I keep speaking so I'll leave it at that. The sheer tragedy that there is to everyone involved just makes me insane. Like I said in a post previous to this; you cannot trace down a good guy or a bad guy in this tale, it's just desperate people taking awful decisions and living to regret their actions.

[turtlespancake]

me when i write a character who is prone to dooming themself and then they run off and doom themself. core traits are stubbornness and a willingness to disregard their own humanity gET BACK HERE IM NOT DONE WITH YOU

[cloudbends]

Oh god. OH GOD.