#losses all around

[robertsbarbie]

this is what the "fake" setlist said meaning no hey now 😭😭

[synodicsoma]

Stan quite literally chewing his was way out of that trunk he got shoved into and left for dead ✨

[juniemunie]

[Abandoned by the Lightners, his heart became cracked with hatred.]

Hitting a lil' too close to home?

[dramiserable]

I saw Miku at the village festival the other week trust me

[chaikachi]

"It's okay, it's okay, you're still here." "It's okay, it's okay, I'm right here."

[celerydays]

✨ Commission for @silverxstardust ✨

Taking a bit of a break from their studies to practice some dancing (and maybe study the soft glow of the candlelight on each other's faces instead 🥺)

Thank you so much for trusting me with your commission! Seriously the cutest scenario 😭💗

[sunlight-shunlight]

thinking about veilguard and bioware in general, i think we are reaching a point where people need to grapple with the inherent limits of what stories can be told in our Current Society and in AAA gaming companies.

on a labour level: mass layoffs, tons of developers leaving despite previously talking about how passionate and happy they were to be involved, not even paying severance, and crunching employees to the point of burnout. this is unfortunately pretty standard for AAA game companies.

on a cultural level: it is SO white and SO centrist-ly Canadian. i wrote up these asks outlining how. it is a repeated pattern of writing in which they go into tortured racial oppression allegories at best, while constantly peppering in a "but BOTH SIDES were wrong and made mistakes :( :( :(", in between their fictional atrocities that are clearly mirroring irl genocides and enslavement. or at worst, it's "the qunari are radical islamic borg" which has even less nuance. i personally thought, since dai came out in 2014, and a lot has changed since then about the world and in public awareness, that this would have filtered into the narrative and resulted in more satisfying and historically grounded writing. unfortunately not the case. it's shocking if you compare it to how sharp and aware and unflinching something like disco elysium is.

so what does this mean?

under these conditions, it is unavoidable that we get development by people who are rapidly cycled out of the company or demoralized into burnout. we get digestible, easy little soundbites of lore without much substance, because any complexity needs more time and coordination rather than the process of "quick, we have these assets, a lot of people involved in making them just got laid off, we need to make Something by next quarter to show the CEO". we get very little cohesion between games, despite the clear intent from dai to have so many plot points set up to follow through in a sequel, because the team and development are so chaotic that they can't hold onto a vision and complete it.

we also get this inherent caution and "conservatism" from the narrative, because on an ideological level, they're largely white people who want cops to be included in pride. so any major change to even a fictional society is Bad and Scary, and shouldn't be done without making sure that every character finger-wags appropriately at non-state violence. there is clearly not much ideological or even ethnic diversity within the leadership; or at least not enough that anyone there felt comfortable even speaking up on minor issues like the Incredibly Orientalist Isabela Outfit, let alone anything larger.

i don't personally think there's too much value in trying to analyze veilguard's plot or lore at this point. the final product is chaotically developed and does not seem to reflect the goals of the creators as set up in prior games, it's basically a ship of theseus in terms of the people and ideas involved in making it. this is sad for all of us, who were interested in the story, and attached to the characters, and were creatively fulfilled by engaging in the fandom. it's probably worse for the developers who have lost their jobs, burnt out, or feel unhappy with the game that they spent years of their life working on. it's certainly miserable as an indictment of The Industry, as well as the general societal climate of white Canadian centrism.

the solution is to create a society where people can develop games in peace and prosperity and stay on projects for longer, rather than constantly getting turfed out without severance pay. and to get some genuine leftists, poc, and indigenous people on staff who can weigh in and provide significant input, rather than a Council Of Liberal White Edmontonians every time.

in the meantime, at the very least, let's please stop preordering AAA games and supporting companies who notably abuse their employees.

[leal-hound]

in another life i found you sooner

[wingsthephoenix]

hello alternative horror tumblr. do you hear me

[novantinuum]

somewhere up above the stars the wreckage of a Universe floats past

an AU ancient lonely god Steven I have. his moniker is Astra and I am obsessed with him right now.

[housecow]

Do you think you could lose weight even if you tried?

i think i could !!! done it before—i’ve lost 40+lbs two separate times.

i just need a vice loll, in the past that’s been weed and/or coke zero 🤷‍♀️ from there i just start moving more and eating less. with that it comes off pretty fast.

that being said, i’ve never tried to maintain weight loss, so who knows? the main issue is motivation, i’m wayyy more motivated to gain than anything else haha

[not-poignant]

I was thinking back to the post I made about ebooks being so much more accessible for so many people compared to paperbacks/hardbacks and the other thing I wanted to add is the vast, vast majority of the time, the author gets so much more profit comparatively for an ebook than a paperback/hardback.

That's not a problem for huge huge huge authors either way, but for small-time authors, or authors with small publishing houses, the difference in profits can sometimes be $2.00 or $3.00 per ebook sold vs. $0.50c or $1.00 per paperback. Really. You pay more, but the author gets a lot less.

In the case of indie authors like myself, ebooks give the highest returns always.

This isn't necessarily something most readers think about, but I have had readers assume that because the book format cost them more, that automatically means more goes to the author. In fact it's often the opposite. There are very few exceptions (university texts come to mind). But in the case of your run-of-the-mill indie fiction, if you genuinely want the most profit to go to the author, get the ebook.

[star-struck09]

I tried calling your phone once so I could hear the cadence of your voice in your voicemail. I fear it is as they say—there is so much love left after death.

[raceweek]

as some of you who have been following me for a while might know i have some brain issues, and things have recently taken a bit of a turn so ive been taking some time to just process things and will probably take some more so im going to be a bit more sporadic on here.

im mainly posting this to say im really sorry to my friends who i love so so much who i dont have the guts to talk to personally (coward boooo) but i do love so so much and im sorry ive been distant and haven’t spoken to you directly i hope i will be better soon so i can be back to my old self xxxxxxxx

[risartblog]

#miqomarch day 11 :: Loss

Overwhelming.

[galedekarios]

if you are genuinely out there claiming that gale "succeeded" in everything he "wanted" by becoming a god and that's why it's a good ending for him, you truly are a testament to the slow and steady death of media literacy congrats lmao