#long and messy post

[gogandmagog]

✨Anne Blythe’s (Anne Shirley-Blythe’s namesake granddaughter) father is not Jem. It’s Shirley. It’s totally Shirley, you guys. It’s gotta be.✨

And like, Ieading right off by saying of course there’s no definitive answer to be had here, since Maud obviously isn’t available to confirm or refute any hypothesises, but I do big persist in suggesting that a very rational case can be presented for Shirley... one that at least outweighs what I now see as the generally baseless widely accepted assumption that Anne is Jem’s daughter. Keep in mind, I’m in no way trying to dog on this. The assumption is ready and easy to make, and I’d accepted fully this theory too, until about a week agooo.

ABOUT A WEEK AGO, I was poring over various Wikipedia entries for the Anne book series, and inevitably also ended up looking through the edit history of those pages. While sorting through the edit history (super extensive and interesting, by the way), the username ‘blefebvre’ popped into the archive, contributing a ton of information to the Anne pages overall, around 2008 and 2009 particularly. And literally, who else could this user be besides THE Benjamin Lefebvre? Brilliant Maud scholar and essayist, inexhaustible editor and publisher of ‘the Blythes are Quoted’? Welllll, one of these edits, a written family tree of Anne and Gilbert’s grandchildren, mentioned Anne Blythe... and pointedly noted that she was either the daughter of Jem or Shirley.

Reading that? Already a huge jump-scare surprise to me. This immediately challenged what I thought I knew about the third generation of Blythes. I sat straight up in bed, brain doing a nosedive, like wait wait wait wait wait… hold on, what? We don’t know for sure? We don’t know for sure? 

Guys. We don’t know for sure. 

Whichhhhh sent me on an immediate hunt to gather up what we do know for sure. The facts we do have. And it wasn’t a huge task, either… there’s really not a lot to collect.

But here it is:

In ‘the Blythes are Quoted’, Anne Blythe is mentioned in only one story, titled “The Road to Yesterday” (not to be confused with the TBAQ abridged predecessor book of the same title 😅).

All we really have of her is her name, and a couple of superficial second-hand anecdotes from a guy named Jerry (who is impersonating a fellow named Dick, but more on this a little later).

Her paternity is unconfirmed, but because her surname is Blythe (not Ford or Meredith), we can logically eliminate the possibility of her belonging to Nan, Di, or Rilla. Walter was, of course, lost in France. This leaves Jem and Shirley. 

Tiny details about Anne.

As a matter of housekeeping, let me try to get the jump on any potential counter-arguments, and clear the air.

The only reason I’ve seen Jem credited with Anne is because…

1. Jem was married.

That’s the entire basis.

And I’ll grant you that. This is more than we got for Shirley. But let’s remember that at the end of ‘Rilla of Ingleside’, we only had a canon engagement between Jem and Faith... it takes getting around to ‘the Blythes are Quoted’ to absolutely conclude that their marriage went through. With the added extra bonus of finding out that they have children.

But even allowing that, ‘the Blythes are Quoted’ as an epilogue isn’t all inclusive. It isn’t a complete picture. It’s half a picture at the very best. Maud, pressured greatly, basically dumped all her disorganised, non-chronological and unedited Anne relevant WIPS + short stories + poems on her publisher's desk two days before she died. This is not a book that Maud put together, as a tailpiece collection. It was an assortment of partial works and in-character conversations that she’d tinkered with over decades. Works she never intended to see being published. They were vague ideas she was forming, little seeds. (It took a lot of effort from Benjamin Lefebvre to put TBAQ together in a readable way that made sense.)

Maud was over Anne. Over Anne by twenty years, at this point. So much so that noticeable character details and world building started slipping in Ingleside and Rilla… for obvious instance, in the lack of continuity around Shirley’s birth year, and the way readers saw almost no closure/representation for Shirley and Di, with varying degrees of near erasure in the original books. 

But this doesn’t mean that Maud didn’t have plans for these two characters... their incomplete or unsatisfying stories certainly weren’t nefariously intended to be that way (there’s no secret meaning to the exclusion); Montgomery was just depleted and had been feeling ruinously dispassionate about the Blythes stories since ‘Anne of the Island’.  

In ‘Reading Rilla’ we see in Maud’s many pages of left-out notes, that an ultimately scrapped journal entry from Rilla indicates that Diana Blythe wrote to their mother of her engagement to a foreign overseas officer. It’s unclear if this officer is the same ‘Austin boy’ that an older Glen woman in ‘the Blythes are Quoted’ privately wonders about (if Di 'really is engaged to him or not'), but this contradictory bit is probably just erroneous gossip from an unreliable narrator.  

Anyway. All of this to say... that just because we don’t have a canon marriage for Shirley, it doesn’t disqualify him from having had a wife and kids in Maud’s post-war Four Winds. TBAQ stories were, to reiterate, half-pictures. Pictures that did/could drop a plot bomb in a single sentence. Looping back to Di, canonly we don’t have a marriage for her either... and yet, we do have two engagements that half-register. One engagement was definitive, reported by Di herself. The other a passing curiosity from someone not close enough to the Blythe family to know.

So... clearly, Maud had active intention, a plan, for Di and her own little happy epilogue. The same can be believed for Shirley. (I’m dying for the day the ‘Rainbow Valley’ and ‘Ingleside’ manuscripts get published, I’m convinced there’s more Shirley be found in the notes.)   Now, let’s dig in to Anne Blythe herself.  

‘The Road to Yesterday’ is a short story about a woman named Susette (a spinster at 28), who is on the brink of an engagement to a wealthy man named Harvey Brooks. She expects the next day to be proposed to. On a whim and feeling nostalgic, she drives to Glen St. Mary, where she lived in her girlhood, for the evening. While there, she runs into a fellow, whom she believes to be Dick, her childhood bully who she hated profoundly. Except now, they’re grown and capable acting chummy over their shared memories. The weather takes a bad turn, and they take shelter and a meal together. Susette spends most of the time, all their ‘do you remembers’, being irritated by Dick’s constant name-dropping of the Blythes. He claims to have been kind of secret friends with Anne Blythe, which is contrary to Susette’s memory that Anne hated Dick. (In the end, it turns out that Susette was right… this isn’t Dick she’s talking to. It’s Jerry Thornton, Dick’s cousin.)

For the official record every Blythe mentioned in ‘the Road to Yesterday’ is as follows: Doctor Blythe, Mrs. Doctor Blythe, Rilla Ford, Jem Blythe [Jr.], Di Meredith [Jerry and Nan’s], and Anne Blythe.

It’s mostly a bunch of school yard talk, but the big takeaway for this purpose is that the Blythe/Meredith cousins all hung out together as school children.

Here’s some direct examples:

*****

*****

*****

The cheap boiled-down version of this exchange, for those who haven’t ‘the Road to Yesterday’ is basically: Susette is having strange feelings during this interaction with ‘Dick’, she’s attracted to him, declaring to herself that she won’t fall in love with him, and is clearly irritated with the near constant Anne Blythe (especially)/Blythe references. Though she herself was very fond of Jem Blythe Jr. herself, during their childhood, ‘Dick’ mentioning Anne Blythe so fondly is increasingly Not Cute to Susette. Meanwhile, ‘Dick’ is enjoying this kind of teasing, and is lowkey successful at getting a rise out of Susette, not matter how determined she is to look unaffected.  

But here’s the kicker... when ‘Dick’ finally leaves off mentioning Anne Blythe, guess what topic he moves on to? 🥁

The Royal Canadian Air Force.

And just who do we all know that was in the Royal Canadian Air Force?  

Shirley.

Only Shirley.  

First, it tracks that ‘Dick,’ soon enlisting (we’re on the brink of WWII timeline-wise), and thinking himself funny, would choose to move on from Anne Blythe to instead a subtler rib… what he, as a once good pal of Anne’s, would know was Anne’s dad’s war faction. It’s also in the realm of possibilities that thinking on Anne so much drew up this correlation. I also ALSO think it’s worth mentioning that the only other time that the Canadian Air Force is mentioned in TBAQ is a very passing drop for Rilla, thinking of her son Gilbert Ford enlisting with the CAF. That’s it. Just those two times.

Additionally important to note is the overall subtext tone in TBAQ, which is Maud’s very greatest collection of double-vision, double-speak and intertextual reference works. There’s a beautiful scholarly essay on this, in relation to TBAQ particularly HERE.

This doesn’t only apply to cultural references in TBAQ. It also adds layers to Maud’s own existing Anne series. It really could be considered a companion piece, with X-Ray vision, e.g. how we got a ton of ‘missing’ insight into Anne and her children’s lives and minds, during the Rainbow Valley era, in Part 1 of TBAQ.

Part 2 of TBAQ (where we find ‘the Road to Yesterday’) asks us to apply what we already know to the new text we’re given.

So, understanding this … if we’re going off what we already know from ‘Rilla of Ingleside’…

What’s the reason we have the Canadian Air Force mentioned in the same story that we learn of the existence of Anne Blythe? The connection?

It’s Shirley. 🥹

A weaker argument that I’ll only mention in mild passing, because it is very weak in terms of convincing evidence, is that the text unambiguously tells is that Anne Blythe has taught ‘Dick’ from Susan’s famous recipes. Susan is another Shirley tie. It’s there to be stated. BUT. I do admit that I think Susan would’ve taught every willing Blythe grandchild with the same zeal, maybe some partiality given to the Little Brown Boy’s kid(s).

BUT, for me?

I’m properly convinced here.

Shirley was a dad, ya’ll.

[soosoosoup]

Funk branch au

Au and branch design by @bbc-trolls

[chaewcake]

LONG BIOS

ㅤఌㅤ𝑖𝗍   𝗐𖹭𝗎𝗅𝖽   𝖻𝖾   𝗌꯭𝗍𝗋꯭𝖺𝗇꯭𝗀꯭𝖾   𝗂𝖿   𝚤   𝖽𝗂𝖽𝗇'𝗍   𝖿𝖺𝗅𝗅   𝗂𝗇   𝗅𖹭𝗏𝖾   𝗐꯭𝗂𝗍꯭𝗁   𝗒𖹭𝗎  

ⴘ𝗈𝗎   ⽔  𝖺𝗋𝖾  𝖺  𝗉𝗂𝖾𝖼𝖾  𝗈𝖿  𝗆𝖾,  𝗂  𝗐𝖺𝗇𝗍  𝗍𝗈  𝗅𝗂𝗏𝖾  𝗂𝗇  𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿  𝗮𝗿𝗺𝘀  𝖿𝗈𝗋𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋  

ꕮ   𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗇  𝗂  𝗋𝖾𝖺𝖽  𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾  𝗉𝗈𝖾𝗆𝗌,  𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋  𝖿𝖺𝖼𝖾  𝖺𝗅𝗐𝖺𝗒𝗌  𝖼𝗈𝗆𝖾𝗌  𝗍𝗈  𝗆𝗒  𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗀𝗁𝗍𝗌  

ꮽ   .  and   at   that   moment   i   knew   it   was   you,   the   love   of   my   life   

🦢◞  𝒊𝗍'𝗌  𝖺𝖻𖹭𝗎𝗍  𝗌𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗂𝗇𝗀  𝖺  𝗅𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍  𝗐𝗂𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗎𝗍  𝗵꯭𝗮𝘃꯭𝗶𝗻꯭𝗴  𝗍𝗈  𝗍𝗎𝗋𝗇  𝗈𝖿𝖿  𝘀꯭𝗼꯭𝗺꯭𝗲꯭𝗼꯭𝗻꯭𝗲 𝖾𝗅𝗌𝖾'𝗌  𝗅𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍. 

͟𝒊  𝖿𝗂𝗇𝖺𝗅𝗅𝗒  𝗋𝖾𝖺𝗅𝗂𝗓𝖾𝖽  𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍  𝗂  𝗐𝖺𝗌𝗇'𝗍  𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠  𝖿𝗈𝗋  𝗆𝗎𝖼𝗁,  𝗂  𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝗃𝗎𝗌𝗍  𝖺𝗌𝗄𝗂𝗇𝗀  𝗍𝗁𝖾  𝗐𝗋𝗈𝗇𝗀  𝗉𝖾𝗋𝗌𝗈𝗇.

✰۫  𑊐   𝒍𝗈𝗏𝗂𝗇𝗀  𝗒𝗈𝗎  𝗐𝖺𝗌  𝗍𝗁𝖾  𝗆𝗈𝗌𝗍  𝒃꯭𝒆𝒂꯭𝒖𝒕꯭𝒊𝒇꯭𝒖𝒍  𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀  𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍  𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋  𝗁𝖺𝗉𝗉𝖾𝗇𝖾𝖽  𝗍𝗈  𝗆𝖾 

[spoiledmilks]

Okay maybe im not normal

[anniilaugh]

2 years worth of wild moss/seaweed overgrowth in salty sea air. Sanji malfunctions.

@uniquetosmbody had such a galaxy brain prompt in twitter and my samurai aesthetics loving brain inhaled the bait, hook and sinker immediately. : D Thanks for being an inspiration! <3

Reference under the cut~

/casually foams/ How dare this man de gozaru

[robo-milky]

Paper doll Rollo!

Hehe his hat is detachable- I really wanted an excuse to make his ahoge and show it

Oddly enough for my first paperdoll (I’ve made paper children before), I just gotta recreate one of the most complex designs for some reason idk why??? Rollo was meant to be practice and goddamn did struggling on him force me to problem solve- I do hope to make Rook and Cloche <3

[Process] (In the form of IG stories + ramblings)

[lorephobic]

“the class commentary in saltburn was shit” WHAT CLASS COMMENTARY???? NOT EVERY MOVIE WITH RICH PEOPLE HAS TO OR SHOULD HAVE CLASS COMMENTARY. EMERALD FENNELL KNOWS VERY WELL THAT SHE IS NOT THE RIGHT DIRECTOR FOR A MOVIE ABOUT CLASS COMMENTARY WHICH IS WHY SHE DID NOT WRITE A MOVIE ABOUT CLASS COMMENTARY.

[kedsandtubesocks]

Satoru Gojo appears out of thin air before you, blocking your path. The smuggest most annoying grin dances on his face. You glare at him.

“Yo.” He beams.

“Don’t you have assignments to work on?” Huffing, you walking around him.

“Come on! Didn’t you miss our meetings like this?” Gojo pouts. You flat out reply no and he sobs dramatically.

“Didn’t you hear? I got married a few weeks ago.” Gojo says bright and excited, walking in step with you.

“Oh? Congratulations. I’m sorry for the poor soul that got stuck with you.” You deadpan.

“Rude!” He exclaims horrified. You dully glare at him.

“Oh wait? Are you perhaps jealous?” Twirling on his heels, Gojo keeps his covered gaze on you now. He practically walks backwards like the show off strongest sorcerer he is and smirks unbearably smug.

“I’m not.” You steadily reply. “I’m happy for you.”

“I’ll have to let my husband know.” You add. He gasps incredibly loud.

“Husband?! You have a husband?!” Gojo screams.

You shush him, a hissing reprimand. There were others still here at the school trying to work.

“So what’s he like, huh, huh?!” He inquires eagerly.

“Someone who can kick your ass.” You tell him simply approaching the assistants offices.

Gojo barks a bright incredulous laugh. “Really now? I’d like to see that fight.”

One of the newer assistants warmly greets you as you hand her your paperwork for the week. Thanking her, you ignore how Gojo practically swarms around you pestering for more information about your husband.

The assistant blinks a bit confused turning to you with a confused smile.

“Um, have a good rest of your day Gojo-san.” Nodding brief, she bids you goodbye.

You can’t even nod back before a lanky arm snakes around your shoulder, and in a blink you’re gone. When you arrive teleported to a high rooftop, you shriek smacking at Gojo’s arm.

“You can’t keep doing that! We have work to do, Satoru!”

“I still wanna hear about that husband of yours.” He says amused sliding his black blindfold up to reveal his crystal sky blue eyes that twinkle.

“Won’t have much to say because I’m actually thinking about divorcing him soon if he doesn’t stop bothering me!” You hiss.

“Aw!” Gojo sobs. “Why can’t you just let me enjoy newlywed bliss?!”

You’re about to open your mouth about how he very much already throughly enjoyed all the newlywed bliss, when suddenly his large warm hands slide up your cheeks. Satoru draws your face to his.

He kisses you with the most delicate tenderness, like you might flutter away from his grasp at any moment. You instantly melt into him. These soft kisses really are beautiful reminders of how your soul is so irreversibly bonded to this headache.

“Get back to work Satoru,” you sigh against his lips.

“Yeah, yeah.” He huffs drawing back with a pout. He’s too handsome for his own good. So maybe wanting one last goodbye for yourself, you pull him down for a deep kiss. Greedily, he drags you close.

“Let’s go mess around in my office.” Satoru mutters dark, and you laugh a bright no.

“Fine.” He groans defeated. In a blink, you’re teleported back in the walkway. Before he pulls his blindfold down, Satoru winks at you.

“See ya at home, Gojo-san.” With the biggest pride shimmering bright in his eyes, your husband grins disappearing into the wind.

[danostre]

BORDERS

ㅤ𓈒 ͜  ͜  ⭒ ͜  ͜  𓈒

⩊⩊⩊⩊

━━╋━━━╋━━━╋━━ 

[‿][̲̅‿][̲̅‿]

◞◟·̩͙ ͜  ˳꣑୧ ͜  ◞◟·̩͙◟

ᴗᴗᴗᴗᴗᴗ

⎯⎯

◡◡◡◡

୨୧┈୨୧

︵‿୨ TEXT ୧‿︵

⌒⌒⌒⌒

࿙࿚ ︶ ᧔ ✧ ᧓ ︶ ࿙࿚

⁔ ㅤㅤ ︵⏜︵ㅤ ㅤ⁔

୨୧ ︶ ︶ TEXT ︶ ︶ ୨୧

︶.⏝ ꒰͡ ࣪ text ࣪⠀͡꒱ ⏝.︶

..𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚𖹭࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤..

　·ི̩͙ ◞ ͜ ◞ ۫ . ᧔ꪫ · ◟ ͜ ◟·̩͙ ྀ

◞◟ི ͜ 𝜗℘ ͜ ◞ྀ◟

▹ 𝆤࿙๋࿙࿚⊱𖹭⊰࿙࿚๋࿚𝆤

.𝆤࿙𝆤 𖹭 𝆤࿚𝆤.

𝆤࿙⃛࿚⃛࿙⃛࿚⃛࿙⃛۶ৎ࿚⃛࿙⃛࿚⃛࿙⃛࿚⃛𝆤

࿙⃛࿚⃛࿙⃛࿚⃛࿙⃛࿚⃛࿙⃛۶𖹭ৎ࿚⃛࿙⃛࿚⃛࿙⃛࿚⃛࿙⃛࿚⃛

.𝆤࿙⃛࿙⃛࿚⃛࿙⃛.𖹭.࿚⃛࿙⃛࿚⃛࿚⃛𝆤.

֪٘ ︶ ͝ ٘⏝𖹭⏝ ͝ ٘︶٘ ֪

︵ ⏜ ︵ ୨ ୧ ︵ ⏜ ︵

.࿙𝆤𝆤࿚'𝆤࿙𝆤𖹭𝆤࿚𝆤'࿙𝆤𝆤࿚.

࿙⃛͜࿚⃛࿙⃛͜࿚⃛࿙⃛͜࿚⃛࿙⃛͜࿚⃛ ୨୧ ࿙⃛͜࿚⃛࿙⃛͜࿚⃛࿙⃛͜࿚⃛࿙⃛͜࿚⃛

𓎟𓎟𓎟𓎟

𝆤࿚࿙𝆤𝆤࿚۶ৎ𝆤࿙𝆤𖹭𝆤࿚𝆤۶ৎ࿙𝆤𝆤࿚࿙𝆤

༻︶𓏶︶༺

༻︵𓏶︵༺

[khattikeri]

one of my favorite things about mdzs is that for how heavily its plot involves politics of classism and misogyny... even the characters most directly impacted by it can't and don't free themselves from it. literally the closest exception is mianmian.

meng yao being the "son of a whore" wasn't some sort of commie awakening for him that led him to wanting everyone to be socially equal. he played the political game, climbed the ladders, sucked up to and backstabbed and murdered people, including other prostitutes who actually had nothing to do with how he and his mother were treated at the brothel he grew up in.

he put in so much extra excessive effort for even a fraction of the same respect that members of gentry cultivation clans got. and he did deserve to be treated more humanely! but he feeds into the exact same system that created him, leading to his own undoing.

his efforts were for a fragile upward mobility that was never going to hold up. he never surpassed his origins nor did he empower others in similar stations, because the society he lives in is not one that would accept that.

the second he got caught and all those crimes exposed, he was scapegoated to hell and back, replacing wei wuxian as society's terrible one-sidedly evil boogeyman overnight.

speaking of not-quite male gentry, i think it's interesting that wei wuxian explicitly doesn't try to climb the ladders in BOTH lives, knowing full well that anything he does will be punished just for the sheer fact that he is wei wuxian.

wei wuxian is scolded for giving intelligent and correct answers in school. lan wangji does the same and is praised.

wei wuxian occasionally lounges around with fellow disciples and is punished. jiang cheng does the same and mostly escapes.

wei wuxian refuses to carry his sword around in public (after losing his golden core, which nobody knows) and is scorned as an arrogant upstart. nie huaisang has been doing the EXACT SAME THING for YEARS and nobody bats an eye.

unlike jin guangyao, wei wuxian knew subconsciously from the start that his acceptance was superficial and that he could be cast out any time. when he was 10 and recently taken in by the jiangs, he canonically would not eat or use "too much" food and water because he thought they'd find him a nuisance for "wasting their things" and kick him back out.

now away from just the classism, yu ziyuan is a proud and strong noblewoman in a society that belittles and derides women for everything they do. her strong cultivation doesn't matter. she's victim to the vicious rumors of her husband loving another woman who is strong like her but apparently had a more likeable personality.

it doesn't matter even if jiang fengmian didn't cheat or that wei wuxian is wei changze's son with cangse sanren; yu ziyuan can't bear with the humiliation of herself (and by extension her children) not being "good enough". she's ridiculed for "failing" in that one duty as a wife, mother, and woman.

she lashes out and takes out that anger on everyone present for years, giving her children lasting trauma and also being a key element in how the jiang family and yunmeng jiang sect are effectively wiped out at the hands of the wen clan.

madam jin doesn't even have a name outside of the fact that she's married to jin guangshan. i don't even remember reading anything that indicates if she's a strong or weak cultivator, or what, which in itself proves that to most people, it doesn't matter. she's "just" a woman.

of course she's angry at her husband's affairs and all the bastard children they bring in. but she also can't do anything about them, so she lashes out at the few people she can: servants. non-cultivators, probably. those very same bastard children.

shoutout to meng yao getting shoved down a flight of stairs at age fourteen, because if madam jin tried that move against her husband instead, it would make her lose even more face, which as a noblewoman she'd never do.

and that's not getting into how jiang yanli is consistently sidelined for being physically weak.

that's not getting into how mianmian was actually a good cultivator, but was mocked by everyone around her for trying to stand up for wei wuxian when everyone was turning on him. how everyone scoffed at luo qingyang's words as "just some lovesick woman" who "obviously wants to marry or bed him since he saved her".

luo qingyang is the only one of these characters who HASN'T died. she didn't play society's games like jin guangyao. she didn't dig her heels in confidence of her own abilities like wei wuxian.

she didn't bitterly lash out like yu ziyuan and madam jin. she didn't gently accept it like jiang yanli.

she just LEFT.

she married an ordinary merchant and cultivates separately from mainstream cultivation society, and therein found her own peace and happiness.

mxtx doesn't bother with particularly class conscious or feminist vocabulary to hand-hold readers into understanding these disparities, but that choice highlights them & the deeply entrenched politics of their society even more. i really love it.

[bitsbug]

wait holy shit imagine that hunter scenario happening but hunter has a slugpup prior to rotting out. Epic Rot Parent Blast

Thank you anon! I will be crying

some bonus stuff

[chaewcake]

random bios

𝒍  ─  𝗅𖹭𝗏𝖾,  𝗒꯭𝗈꯭𝗎   𝖺𝗋𝖾   𝗍𝗁𝖾   𝖻꯭𝖾꯭𝗌𝗍   𝗉𝖺𝗋𝗍   ✿𝒇   𝗅𝗂𝖿𝖾ㅤมวแ   

✿ 𝅼 𝓨𝗈𝗎  𝗌𝖺𝗂𝖽  𝗒𝗈𝗎  𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾𝖽  𝗆𝖾,  𝖻𝗎𝗍  𝗐𝗁𝗒  𝗁𝖺𝗏𝖾  𝗂  𝗇𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋  𝖿𝖾𝗅𝗍  𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍  𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾 ?

[   ☕  ]   𝒊   𝗅𝗈𝗏ᧉ   𝗁ᧉ⍺𝗋𝗂𝗇𝗀   𝗒𝗈𝗎   𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀,   𝗒𝗈𝗎𝗋   𝗏𝗈𝗂𝖼ᧉ   𝗆⍺𝗄ᧉ𝗌   𝗆ᧉ   𝗁⍺𝗉𝗉𝗒  

.. 𝑖   𝗅𝗈𝗏𝖾   𝑦𝑜𝑢   𝗌𝗈   𝗆𝗎𝖼𝗁   𝗍𝗁𝖺𝗍   𝗌𝗈𝗆𝖾𝗍𝗂𝗆𝖾𝗌   𝗂 '𝗆   𝗈𝗎𝗍   𝗈𝖿   𝖻𝗋𝖾𝖺𝗍𝗁.

─ㅤゑㅤ𝖺𝗇𝖽  𝗂𝗍  𝖺𝗅𝗅  𝗌꯭𝗍𝖺꯭��𝗍꯭𝖾꯭𝖽  𝗍𝗈  𝗆𝖺𝗄𝖾  𝗌𝖾𝗇𝗌𝖾,  𝗂𝗍  𝗐𝖺𝗌  𝗃𝗎𝗌𝗍  𝘆𝗼𝘂  𝖺𝗇𝖽  𝗺𝗲 .

ꕮ   ̼   ⴘ𝗈𝗎   𝖼𝖺𝗆𝖾   𝖺𝗇𝖽   𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗇𝗀𝖾𝖽   𝗆𝗒   𝗅𝗂𝖿𝖾,   𝖺𝗇𝖽   𝗐𝗁𝖺𝗍   𝗐𝖺𝗌   𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤   𝖻𝖾𝖼𝖺𝗆𝖾   𝖻𝗋𝗂𝗀𝗁𝗍𝖾𝗋   𝖾𝗏𝖾𝗋𝗒   𝖽𝖺𝗒  

[koaluark]

⠀⠀⠀⠀ rosé ⠀ ⠀ ⚘ ⠀⠀ blackpink ⠀

[acommonanomaly]

I drew Moryo as a late birthday present for @nixiegenesis! I hope you like him, best elf remains best what can I say.

[sabo-torao]

redrew some of my (many) favorite manga panels of sabo from chapter 1082 to 1086 in honor of those chapters getting animated soon!! i can't wait to see my bobo in action once again <3

[vigilskeep]

now that you finished inquisition, what did you think of it? like favorite things, least favorite, etc?

oh man okay

things i love about dragon age inquisition:

capturing the specific feeling of bonding with a group of people you have absolutely nothing in common with because u all had to go through something long and specific together

the maps can be so pretty and in places really calming and lovely to spend time in. it does make me want to explore and i have no explorer’s instinct

i love the war table and judgements i think those are really fun features

i like that approval for many major decisions applies to everyone regardless of who you bring to specific events/quests. it feels a lot less like you have to manage that really hard, as you sometimes do in the other games and also really noticeably to me in something like baldur’s gate 3. it’s irritating when i have to plan ahead and can’t take who i want to hear from

i like how attached you can get to little npcs who wander around

i loveeeee fighting dragons and how beautiful they all are

little puzzles <3

the collectibles are also mostly fine by me i am a magpie by nature. as long as i can find them, obviously, bc if i can’t they suck and this whole game sucks

the templar specialisation is fun and i enjoyed that part of combat a lot. wrath of heaven/spell purge combo is a power trip

i thought my character was pretty :) i defeated u in the end dai character creator. may you be as merciful when we meet in battle once more

i’m not a huge crafter but being able to tint things is rlly nice

blackwall’s romance is good

vivienne is there

they let me briefly tame a dragon at the end there

things i don’t love about dragon age inquisition:

some genuine cruelty in writing the dalish in a way that feels shockingly callous to the real world cultures the writers took inspiration from

never giving the dalish or the rebel mages any kind of voice of their own and making the player do all that work if they care, which i also feel limits my roleplaying creativity

refusing to let you challenge any of the often overwhelmingly conservative views expressed by other characters without receiving only derision and disapproval. inquisition is a game that punishes you at every turn for having your own opinions, in a way that could be interesting if it was willing to truly let you develop complex or antagonistic relationships with those characters, but ends up mostly just feeling mocking when nobody ever even tries to see your side, while simply agreeing with these people always rewards you with content. origins was capable of letting you engage in discussion, and da2 let you form rivalries that mattered; inquisition, despite starring some of the most intentionally controversial characters, does neither

the game engineering conflicts against groups like the freemen of the dales or the avvar that mean nothing to the player and range from vaguely to seriously upsetting in their assumptions about who it’s normal to just start killing en masse. it’s both boring and distressing

odd, for lack of a better word “casting choices”, like having the fantasy impoverished racial minority all be white within the party while the wealthiest and most privileged are characters of colour, or for a more in-world example having the elves express the most distaste towards elves and the mages express the most caution about mages. i don’t know that i quite have the vocabulary to fully discuss why these weird me out, but it all feels... disingenuous? and chosen to forestall criticism based on real world comparisons in a game series that i wish had the nerve to openly confront what it’s talking about if it’s going to try to make any of its conflicts feel relevant

most of the companions, and indeed most of the quests and time spent playing the game, feel disconnected from the main plot. it’s hard to feel any pressure when the game tells you we need to deal with the main plot “right now!” and “get there before corypheus!” when the bulk of the game is doing other things while you’re supposed to be doing that. the majority of companions could be cut without changing anything. and when you finally want to deal with the main plot you just click to start it. it’s not engaging

the game fails to fully expand dialogue for the player character options it provided, particularly notable with its confusing chantry focus when you’ve said for the dozenth time you’re not andrastian

the 2-handed weapon whirlwind ability sound effect is an exercise in creating the worst and most grating sound effect for someone to constantly hear

they didn’t let me romance vivienne

they killed my dragon :(