#modern blight

[glamfellens]

hello. im having mixed feelings about veilguard. also. if i had a penny for every time a long awaited sequel absolutely obliterated and went scorched earth on a favourite place/faction of mine **this year**, i'd have two pennies, but its weird that it happened twice.

[temporary-tats]

Decided to whip up some cover art for my Lumity Soulmates AU, Soul Ties!

I'm currently working on edits and future chapters, as the first 10 chapters are so are due to for an upgrade! Updated chapters will be released alongside new updates. Check Soul Ties out on AO3 if you feel so inclined:

[chadsuke]

"[the Blight]'s a much bigger threat in Veilguard than in any Dragon Age before it"

[cat-appreciator]

I’ve just read a fanfic that had me literally actually laughing out loud until I wheezed so naturally I must share it. 37k words Lumity boarding school AU (and they were roommates!), so it’s playing all the tropes the way you’d expect it to - it does what it says on the tin - except that ending. Oh my god. AASJDDJEHSK.

Sometimes you just want to open up the teapot an author is hiding in and give them a little treat for doing a good job (I don’t know why I picture fanfiction authors as tiny gremlin creatures living in teapots but I think we can all agree that I am Correct in this assessment).

[waterfire1848]

Luz: We have decided that if anything happens to me and Amity. We’d want Hunter and Willow to be Azura’s guardians.

Willow: That is great news! Azura, when something terrible happens you’re going to be all mine!

Amity: It really is an ‘if’ situation.

Willow: All mine!

[witteautism]

TOH Modern AU: character summary

Luz: A teenager with an hyperfixation on The Good Witch Azura, a fantasy saga. Goes to Gravesfield High with Hunter, a boy that arrived to the town a while ago with his uncle. When she was a child, she encountered a antique shop called "The Owl House" after visiting Manny’s grave, and found out the owner was a lady with an owl and her dog with a strange birthmark forming a skull.

Camila: Luz’s caring mother. She is a secret nerd who has a Cosmic Frontier group chat. She was a close friend of Caleb, Hunter’s father.

Philip: Hunter’s grieving uncle. His family comes from a conservative town close to Gravesfield. After Caleb’s death, he decided to come to Gravesfield with his nephew in order to escape from the pain and heal. He is an old man who does conspiracies and invents things; despite him being an inventor, he does not understand modern day technology. He tries his best to raise Hunter. He is a bit distant with affection, since he has troubles manifesting his emotions. However, he cares about Hunter a lot.

Manny: Luz’s deceased father. He shared a room with Caleb when they were in the hospital before coming to Gravesfield. They were close friends as well.

Caleb: Hunter’s father and Philip’s older brother. He died of an unknown disease. He was married to Evelyn. Philip refuses to talk about him. Friend to Camila and Manny.

Eda: The mysterious lady of the antique shop; Luz thought she was a witch.

King: Eda’s pet dog, he has a strange birthmark in a skull form.

Hunter: Caleb’s son and Philip’s nephew. He has an hyperfixation on Cosmic Frontier, sharing it with Camila. Thanks to his father and Camila, he grew up close to this saga. He often fights with Luz about which saga is best (although this part comes later in the story timeline). He is in a Cosmic Frontier group chat. He also has a bird whom he rescued when he was a child, and an internet friend.

Willow: Neighbor to Hunter. She goes to Gravesfield High.

Amity: Luz’s girlfriend, shares interest with her.

Gus: He is Hunter’s online friend, they appreciate each other a lot. (Will elaborate on the AU)

Evelyn: Caleb’s wife. She disappeared after a fight with Philip when Hunter was a child. She misses Hunter a lot but can’t maintain contact because she can’t stand Philip.

[ask-beta-lumity]

[fallenrosepettals]

Sweet Potato

i redrew something from 2021 and omg look at my improvement

[citylitlena]

Pictured: a traditional burial tomb, circa 2022. The subjects are prepared for an eternal boys night in the afterlife and surrounded by treasured possessions.

[gbhbl]

10 Great Modern Horror Movies to Watch This Halloween (That We Think You’ve Never Seen) – 2024 Edition

For the fifth year in a row, we want to talk about modern horrors we think you should definitely be checking out this Halloween season. Movies that you may have missed, movies that delighted us and movies we think are good enough to recommend.

For the fifth year in a row, we want to talk about modern horrors we think you should definitely be checking out this Halloween season. Movies that you may have missed, movies that delighted us and movies we think are good enough to recommend. Now, our definition of modern is ‘released’ in the last 5 to 6 years. Some might be brand-new (released this year), others may be a couple of years old and…

[somelonelywordmonger]

We see some of the most misinformed anti-trans and anti-gender-affirming care comments use phrases like "forced sterilization of children." This proves how little they know about gender-affirming care as well as biology. And when you correct them it becomes a nuisance because they don't wish to change their bigoted stance.

If you want to talk about forced sterilization, then how about talking about the forced sterilization of American Indians! This modern form of genocide that has and is causing harm to the Nations is something many don't talk or know about.

[diderots]

don’t know what anyone is talking about, like im not even on your earth anymore, who is that? when did this happen and also don’t answer, i don’t really want to know

[t-a-c]

Folks, I promise you Company did not realease Product to cover up Scandal. Companies are always releasing Products and always embroiled in Scandals. Companies do employ a variety of very real, very effective tactics to cover up Scandals (bribes, spun press releases, NDAs, litigation, general public apathy, etc...), but announcing Product is not one of them. This is like actual conspiracy theory thinking come on now.

[king-and-his-consorts]

Going Somewhere?

Justine Blight Manor (Dark Modern AU) - starter for @kaizokugaris

_____

Luffy couldn't actually remember the last time he had a shitty birthday. Makino, Dedan, and his brothers had always worked really hard to make his birthdays fun and memorable. And well, this was definitely gonna be memorable, but shitty as hell. Luffy was already not enjoying be eighteen.

The hand around his bicep was dragging him, pulling him towards the street. He stumbled, following the police officer pulling him. He looked back at the house. Dadan and Makino stood on the front porch, both looking close to tears as Dadan struggled to keep Makino standing.

A weight settled in Luffy's belly. He was marched to the bus' door. He frowned, narrowing his eyes at the name on the bus: JUSTINE BLIGHT MANOR. Everyone in town knew about the manor, just no one ever expected to actually go to it. It was a place to stick young adults who did not legally have parents. People always whispered how it didn't make sense but still nothing changed.

"Hey!" Luffy cried out with a snarl. He turned around to face the officer that had just taken his hat. "That's mine!"

"And you can have it back if you behave." There was a rough shove, pushing Luffy into the bus. "Now get in."

Luffy gritted his teeth. Hands flexing as the door closed and locked behind him. Bitter grumbles escaped him as he trudged to the back of the bus and took a seat.

This sucked!

[knife-eared-jan]

Ok, as much as I have been hyping and playing 12 hours a day since it got out (still in Act 1 though, bc I'm a slowass player and completionist), I feel like I have to say something that is getting hard to ignore at this point... and I wanna preface this by saying that I am loving a lot of aspects of the game and I adore the writing when it comes to the companions, who I am obsessed with.

And maybe this will get better yet, as I generally heard the writing picks up once the story progresses beyond picking up all companions..

But I'm starting to get quite upset at the way the writing just does NOT care about the established lore and the politics of Thedas like at all, when to me - and many others - that richness, nuance and depth of the world is what makes the games so special.

(Spoilers below)

I looked past the way the elves in Arlathan just seemed to know that their gods are evil and Solas is "kind of a dick" but was right about that. When, you know, that made him basically the Satan of their pantheon up to now.. It was after all the tutorial stage of the game and I understand that you wanna ease newcomers into the lore. I could also handwave it in-universe with Morrigan being there - she could have filled the Veiljumpers in on the discoveries of the Inquisition or even what the Well told her.

It felt a bit weird that our contacts in every other faction just accepted this huge revelation without a blink, but again it was the early stages and I also get that having a discussion about it 6 times with different faction leaders would have been incredibly tedious. So I ignored that. And yeah, at least the First Warden found it hard to swallow.

The fact that they brushed aside the gods finding elven subjects - many of whom after all still worship them - with one sentence from Solas was disappointing though. Instead they chose to ally them with the Venatori and the Antaam who are the pure evil factions with no nuance or motive to side with them besides a comic book level of hunger for power. They didn't even throw in a sentence about the gods maybe speaking to the Venatori through the Archdemons to get them on their side or how it's very ironic that the Venatori, who want to make Tevinter great again, stoop to working with the pantheon of the people they oppress because they see them as lesser and other. No political exploration of the massive lore implications at all.

It really hit me when I picked up Davrin and he commented how Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain blighting the world would really endear us (elves) to the rest of Thedas - this was the first time anyone actually mentioned the political impact of the elven gods being real, freed, evil and blighted on modern day elves at all, when this should be HUGE. It should be ugly. It should be complex. It should be explored in as many examples as bloodmagic and the oppression of mages was in DA2. It should be a central point of Act 1. (This btw made me love Davrin so much in that moment because this was the first time in the game for me when I actually felt like talking to a Dragon Age elf and even just that one line felt like home.)

And now I just did Taash's first companion quest and it seems Qunari lore is also being ignored (except for the gender aspect of it, which I look forward to). Taash's mum was a scholar and had a baby and the only problem about that was that it could breathe fire and was special but otherwise all would have been dandy? Like she would have just been allowed to keep Taash long enough to find that out about her baby if she was living under the Qun? That directly contradicts everything we know about how the Qunari's culture around reproduction and childcare works.

Sorry to be negative and talking myself into a rage - I know it's not something people want to see rn. But like, I realise you have to brush over some lore intricacies for brevity and to make it digestible for new players. But this is a world initially inspired by Wheel of Time and ASOIAF, both of which are interesting because of the depth of ficitional cultures, lore and politics, and hence it's also what gives Dragon Age its appeal. And now they take us to the most politcally interesting areas on the world map and just get rid of all of political depth?

That's really disappointing. Imagine if Winds of Winter dropped all political themes just because there's several previous books and it's been some a lot of years.

Also, I managed to play DA2 before I ever played Origins and they could introduce me to a vast established background of lore just fine back then.

Sorry. Rant over. But I had to get that out of my system.