#my kind of player

[bluespring864]

Welcome to another installment of tennis analysis with Daniil Medvedev

This time: How an overthinker returns serve

[asked about his amazing returns on 230km/h + serves]

“The thing is that, in a way… well. It’s much tougher to return a serve 230 than 190, but in a way, when it is 190, you kinda have small time to think ‘what do I do?’ Here, you don’t have any time, so it’s pure reflexes and sometimes it makes life even easier, because, as I say, you don’t think much. If you don’t return it, you are not even disappointed. Whenever there were some second serves and I missed it, I was disappointed, so [shrugs and smiles]”

[catecorno]

my WIFE ♡

[knightofleo]

Angela Orosco Silent Hill 2

[wormtime123]

surprise i've had another insane person AU bouncing around in my head, it’s based on martyn's lore and the gist is gem gets brought into the games as a listener agent to investigate what's up (with the limlife swap being the test run <3)

all that said:

[mellosdrawings]

Can we know more about Kinga? She's so butc- I mean pret - I mean step on m - I mean DAMNIT!!! You know what I mean.

Hahaha yeah xD

Kinga is a guard at Sunset Savanah palace. She's been friends with Imani (Falena's wife) for a very long time and has been her personal bodyguard for years.

She's had a fling with Leona when they were young teens but between him running away to NRC and her duties, it never went anywhere. When he graduated from school they became friends again (though with Leona now having two boyfriends they never flirted again). She has been appointed as Leona's bodyguard a few times.

After Leona's wedding, Leona came to her to ask about helping him get a biological kid. She was off duty due to injury (a few broken bones, nothing major) and agreed to it. Since Koffi's birth she became her nanny when she's not busy doing bodyguard duties for Imani. Koffi considers her more like her close aunt than her actual mother, but the two are still very close and spend a lot of time together.

Kinga is regularly invited to family dinners (involving both Falena's and Leona's sides of the family). She is close to everybody there, but she does get along the best with Leona, Imani, and Jamil.

She's strong headed, stubborn, and unapologetic. A real fierce lioness whose claws and fangs are particularly sharp. She will do anything to protect her wards and is very duty oriented.

She has a soft spot for hamsters and she knits and does bead work in her free time. Her favorite flowers are Chinese lanterns (Physalis alkekengi) though she doesn't really like the taste of their fruits.

(And tho nobody asked here's some more of Imani)

[kagoutiss]

pelican town, ‘72

[yudol-skorbi]

a friend

[insomniac-arrest]

It pays not to be a gamer because any time someone complains about Arcane being attached to a video game and it means nothing to me. This is a show about cycles of violence and contains quantities of cool ladies and narrative symmetry that I could only dream. Look at it.

No one can make me learn anything. I could not be made to care about League of Legends before and I am thriving knowing even less about it now. I am eating story with both hands while ignorance cradles me in a gentle embrace.

[obsob]

one thing u can count on me for is being normal about Some Guy

process under cut where u can see me losing my mind trying 2 figure out what i was doing in real time! :3

[crow-perch]

After approx. 4 days of nonstop drawing, I present to you my AU idea!

Current working name is "World's Soul", but that might be subject to change in the future, I dunno.

This is my first true comic I've ever made. I'm much too used to just doing character designs and portraits, so I'm stepping out of my comfort zone for this. Getting to blend my hyperfixations is the best part of being an artist ^_^;

[PROLOGUE] -> [NEXT]

[screechingfromthevoid]

AND ANOTHER THING

Dorian has always been super specific about his love for Orym.

In the threat scene Dorian says "I care about you more than this" which, I thought before I rewatched the scene, I was misremembering. I thought he really said "I care about you all more than this", making it about the collective, not wanting to leave the group. But no. He said he cared about Orym more than he cared about the crown.

Another thing I thought I misremembered was "no debts between us". For whatever reason I thought Dorian said "no debts between friends" but no. He was very specific with his words and inflections. "There are no debts between us"

"my heart aches that I cannot be there to help you" "sending you fairer winds" "I just like to see you happy" "you're the reason I'm here" "let me comfort you for once."

It has always been about Orym. It has been. It always will be.

[junewild]

Watching Sam & Brennan talk about the beauty of frivolity, of adults playing silly games just as seriously as they fight to survive, and... yeah. There are some things that keep us alive, and there are some things that make life worth living, and I think games are one of those things that fall into both categories. Games make our lives better and they make us better at being alive. I think that's pretty cool.

[vaguely-concerned]

This might be due to the fact that on my first playthrough I ended up creating a Rook more emotionally guarded than any of the companions except Minrathous-route Lucanis and perhaps Neve, so I was primed to look for it, but I never got the sense that the companions don’t care for Rook (the thought never even occurred to me until I saw other people post about it) — to me it seems much more like it’s Rook who keeps the last bit of distance, Rook who pulls away when the companions try to extend their care or worry too directly, who keeps themselves slightly apart. (Rook who is so full of grief they cannot know as grief and thus process that there’s no room inside them to let anything else all the way in, perhaps.) They deflect and flinch back when someone gets too close or approaches them too overtly about their feelings — especially when it brushes up against the theme of grief. They can offer care to all the companions who are grieving, come along to any number of funerals as emotional support, but the moment someone turns that towards them they shut that shit down Immediately, like when Taash almost gives the whole game away with ‘Like you’d know? You act like you haven’t lost anyone!’ and Rook just blandly responds ‘We’re talking about you’ and doesn’t engage. But they can also admit that they struggle with accepting compliments, or knowing what to say, or having confidence in themselves without Varric’s help.

Despite all their determination and even in their most stoic no-nonsense incarnation, Rook is awkward, with the struggles that entails. Someone who is eager and happy to be the helper wherever they can, and helplessly unequipped to know how to be the helpee, as it were. It’s not that the companions don’t return Rook’s attachment to them, there’s MUCH more of a ‘okay so what are the ways you will allow me to be good to you??’ desperation of care vibe behind all their invitations to conversations and hangouts together, to my mind. They bring Rook to their favourite places and share the things they love with them, they ask to spend time together (many times just to have their company, not because they have a problem they need help with! Sometimes the problem arises anyway b/c video game quest narrative of course), they bring them out for some direly needed grass touching, they introduce them to their families. Everyone is clearly getting the sense that Rook does Not want to talk about Varric especially (this is in fact what Harding says in banter, if she’s still alive after the reveal :’( ), but they are absolutely SCRAMBLING to find ways to show that they’re there for them even so. AND from the companions’ perspective, with the situation as they have the means to understand it, accepting that Rook isn’t ready to have that conversation and backing off is also a kind thing to do. (tl;dr: To Me Rook is that weirdly socialized friend who is a great hang once they’re actually there but you have to directly invite them or they don’t quite know how to initiate the contact themselves lol) 

Just as a crushing sense of responsibility for their family is a trait that is built into Hawke no matter how you play them or how you make them respond to that, I feel like Rook — however helpful and earnest, warm, charming, jocular, stoic or straightforward they seem at a surface glance — is always someone who struggles deeply with connecting to themselves and other people. (Emotional Intimacy, the Final Frontier.) As, indeed, is the case with all of the Veilguard companions too! It’s clearly a deliberate theme. These are all lonely people struggling with their sense of identity and belonging in some sort of way. AND having, working on and eventually starting to overcome these difficulties also makes Rook a direct foil for Solas, who doesn’t learn that lesson unless you corner him at the end of the world to force feed him his medicine lmao. They don’t manage to break out of the regret prison under their own steam, it’s because even struggling and grieving they have managed to create mutual bonds with other people who show up for them in turn now — and with all the protective walls of denial around what happened to Varric crumbling and making them less of a stranger to themselves, Rook is finally able to let them. An outcome Solas seemingly didn’t even consider to guard against, because he’s become that deeply entrenched in his loneliness, the utter isolation of the self — he can no longer truly imagine an alternative. (It’s not that he can’t form these bonds, obviously, it’s that he resolutely refuses to value them. Whether it’s because he feels like he doesn’t deserve it or out of a need for control or the martyr complex where he must sacrifice everything he loves on the sacrificial pyre of fixing his mistakes, all of the above and more, the result is the same. Mind!Varric, who I think is mostly Solas speaking, even calls this out directly. So yet again a situation where he has some self awareness about it and it doesn’t help At All haha. Solas falls to the temptation of making people into tools again and again and again, no matter how many times it comes back to bite him in the ass and the eternal solitude it traps him in.) 

And that deep deep loneliness… There but for the grace of… well the theological state of thedas being what it is right now, let’s just go with the grace of Something, Presumably go you as well, Rook. The same capacity/tendency to pull away from connection clearly lives in them as well in some form (again, for whatever reason and with whatever motivations and instincts behind it for any individual Rook). Solas and Rook coming together to create a blood magic paper doll of the mind Varric in response to acute loss and loneliness is one of the most deep , deeply fucked up and invasive acts of intimacy I’ve ever contemplated. I don’t think that’s accidental, there’s something There’s Something Wrong With You (there’s something wrong with you that’s also wrong with me (derogatory)) here that resonates no matter how both parties would hate to hear it. (A fitting legacy for Varric and his wild ‘I made my best friend into a story because it’s the only way I know how to love with this desperation of sincerity’ brain to leave in the narrative, methinks. I feel he’d appreciate it on a craft level, if nothing else.)

If you read through all of Rook’s potential backstories, one of the common threads through all of them, along with a certain maverick ‘I’ll do whatever it takes’ streak, is a sense of profound alienation. They did something or have some sort of quality that made it hard for them to fit in with the group they’re from, causing a conflict that cuts them off from parts of their identity as it’s been up until now. All of which also adds to how important Varric is to them — he was clearly able to break/see through some of that and be closer with them, even in the relatively short time they spent together. No matter what else goes to shit, they can trust that a) Varric sees them, b) he genuinely likes them and believes in them not despite who they are, but for it, and c) he’s got their back, we’re in this together kid. And then he is gone, and it takes them the whole game to be able to bring themselves to accept that and know themselves again, be able to let new relationships in fully. The very understandable ‘the last time I let someone in, they got stabbed before my eyes and the world ended’ flinch away, even if they’re not consciously aware that’s what it is. Anyway I love Rook. So much space to play around in here as to WHY they might feel or react like this, even when the framework is more defined.

[c-0f-chaos]

I depend on you to finish my mission

I'm late but I don't care, I had to draw the idea it gave me

I'm 95% sure I unconsciously got inspired by @oyasumikudasai , then I noticed it half way though and it became 100%. Their art lives in my brain. It's amazing

With no text and the og drawing

[guardian-angle22]

I can see TK being the typical sports dad if Jonah ever does sports as he grows up. He'll be so supportive and passionate to the point, he's embarrassing Jonah.

Jonah better buckle up.

Not only would he have a passionate whistle-loving TK...

He'd also have Carlos.

Just imagine the amount of loud, rambunctious, wonderful love and support these two would absolutely shower Jonah with from the stands. They would be The Most Embarrassing by miles and that kid would be so lucky.

[mersei47]

baron doodles