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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

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Linkrot

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

Here's an underrated cognitive virtue: "object permanence" – that is, remembering how you perceived something previously. As Riley Quinn often reminds us, the left is the ideology of object permanence – to be a leftist is to hate and mistrust the CIA even when they're tormenting Trump for a brief instant, or to remember that it was once possible for a working person to support their family with their wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/27/six-sells/#youre-holding-it-wrong

The thing is, object permanence is hard. Life comes at you quickly. It's very hard to remember facts, and the order in which those facts arrived – it's even harder to remember how you felt about those facts in the moment.

This is where blogging comes in – for me, at least. Back in 1997, Scott Edelman – editor of Science Fiction Age – asked me to take over the back page of the magazine by writing up ten links of interest for the nascent web. I wrote that column until the spring of 2000, then, in early 2001, Mark Frauenfelder asked me to guest-edit Boing Boing, whereupon the tempo of my web-logging went daily. I kept that up on Boing Boing for more than 19 years, writing about 54,000 posts. In February, 2020, I started Pluralistic.net, my solo project, a kind of blog/newsletter, and in the four-plus years since, I've written about 1,200 editions containing between one and twelve posts each.

This gigantic corpus of everything I ever considered to be noteworthy is immensely valuable to me. The act of taking notes in public is a powerful discipline: rather than jotting cryptic notes to myself in a commonplace book, I publish those notes for strangers. This imposes a rigor on the note-taking that makes those notes far more useful to me in years to come.

Better still: public note-taking is powerfully mnemonic. The things I've taken notes on form a kind of supersaturated solution of story ideas, essay ideas, speech ideas, and more, and periodically two or more of these fragments will glom together, nucleate, and a fully-formed work will crystallize out of the solution.

Then, the fact that all these fragments are also database entries – contained in the back-end of a WordPress installation that I can run complex queries on – comes into play, letting me swiftly and reliably confirm my memories of these long-gone phenomena. Inevitably, these queries turn up material that I've totally forgotten, and these make the result even richer, like adding homemade stock to a stew to bring out a rich and complicated flavor. Better still, many of these posts have been annotated by readers with supplemental materials or vigorous objections.

I call this all "The Memex Method" and it lets me write a lot (I wrote nine books during lockdown, as I used work to distract me from anxiety – something I stumbled into through a lifetime of chronic pain management):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

Back in 2013, I started a new daily Boing Boing feature: "This Day In Blogging History," wherein I would look at the archive of posts for that day one, five and ten years previously:

https://boingboing.net/2013/06/24/this-day-in-blogging-history.html

With Pluralistic, I turned this into a daily newsletter feature, now stretching back to twenty, fifteen, ten, five and one year ago. Here's today's:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/#retro

This is a tremendous adjunct to the Memex Method. It's a structured way to review everything I've ever thought about, in five-year increments, every single day. I liken this to working dough, where there's stuff at the edges getting dried out and crumbly, and so your fold it all back into the middle. All these old fragments naturally slip out of your thoughts and understanding, but you can revive their centrality by briefly paying attention to them for a few minutes every day.

This structured daily review is a wonderful way to maintain object permanence, reviewing your attitudes and beliefs over time. It's also a way to understand the long-forgotten origins of issues that are central to you today. Yesterday, I was reminded that I started thinking about automotive Right to Repair 15 years ago:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/right-repair-law-pro

Given that we're still fighting over this, that's some important perspective, a reminder of the likely timescales involved in more recent issues where I feel like little progress is being made.

Remember when we all got pissed off because the mustache-twirling evil CEO of Warners, David Zaslav, was shredding highly anticipated TV shows and movies prior to their release to get a tax-credit? Turns out that we started getting angry about this stuff twenty years ago, when Michael Eisner did it to Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911":

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/05/us/disney-is-blocking-distribution-of-film-that-criticizes-bush.html

It's not just object permanence: this daily spelunk through my old records is also a way to continuously and methodically sound the web for linkrot: when old links go bad. Over the past five years, I've noticed a very sharp increase in linkrot, and even worse, in the odious practice of spammers taking over my dead friends' former blogs and turning them into AI spam-farms:

https://www.wired.com/story/confessions-of-an-ai-clickbait-kingpin/

The good people at the Pew Research Center have just released a careful, quantitative study of linkrot that confirms – and exceeds – my worst suspicions about the decay of the web:

https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/

The headline finding from "When Online Content Disappears" is that 38% of the web of 2013 is gone today. Wikipedia references are especially hard-hit, with 23% of news links missing and 21% of government websites gone. The majority of Wikipedia entries have at least one broken link in their reference sections. Twitter is another industrial-scale oubliette: a fifth of English tweets disappear within a matter of months; for Turkish and Arabic tweets, it's 40%.

Thankfully, someone has plugged the web's memory-hole. Since 2001, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has allowed web users to see captures of web-pages, tracking their changes over time. I was at the Wayback Machine's launch party, and right away, I could see its value. Today, I make extensive use of Wayback Machine captures for my "This Day In History" posts, and when I find dead links on the web.

The Wayback Machine went public in 2001, but Archive founder Brewster Kahle started scraping the web in 1996. Today's post graphic – a modified Yahoo homepage from October 17, 1996 – is the oldest Yahoo capture on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/19960501000000*/yahoo.com

Remember that the next time someone tells you that we must stamp out web-scraping for one reason or another. There are plenty of ugly ways to use scraping (looking at you, Clearview AI) that we should ban, but scraping itself is very good:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

And so is the Internet Archive, which makes the legal threats it faces today all the more frightening. Lawsuits brought by the Big Five publishers and Big Three labels will, if successful, snuff out the Internet Archive altogether, and with it, the Wayback Machine – the only record we have of our ephemeral internet:

https://blog.archive.org/2024/04/19/internet-archive-stands-firm-on-library-digital-rights-in-final-brief-of-hachette-v-internet-archive-lawsuit/

Libraries burn. The Internet Archive may seem like a sturdy and eternal repository for our collective object permanence about the internet, but it is very fragile, and could disappear like that.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/21/noway-back-machine/#pew-pew-pew

#pew #pew research center #linkrot #internet archive #wayback machine #copyfight #glam #archiving

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acealistair · 8 months ago

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard GameInformer Article Transcribed

I saw some people lamenting that they had no way to read the GameInformer article, and while MVP dalishious posted screenshots of the article here, I figured that might be a little difficult to read, plus people with screen readers can't read it of course. So I've gone ahead and transcribed it! Full thing below the cut!

As a note, I transcribed it without correcting any typos, capitalization errors, etc. that the article itself had (as much as it pained me, omg the author capitalizes so many things that shouldn't be and vice versa). There may be some typos on my part as I did this as quickly as I could, so apologies in advance for any you might encounter.

I have also created a plot-spoiler-free version of the article for those who would like to learn more about the mechanics of the game without learning more plot info than they want!

Throughout my research and preparation for a trip to BioWare’s Edmonton, Canada, office for this cover story, I kept returning to the idea that its next game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard (formerly subtitled Dreadwolf) is releasing at a critical moment for the storied developer. The previous installment, Dragon Age: Inquisition, hit PlayStation, Xbox, and PC a decade ago. It was the win BioWare needed, following the 2012 release of Mass Effect 3 with its highly controversial and (for many) disappointing ending. Inquisition launched two years later, in 2014, to rave reviews and, eventually, various Gameo the Year awards, almost as if a reminder of what the studio was capable of.

Now, in 2024, coincidentally, the next Dragon Age finds itself in a similar position. BioWare attempted a soft reboot of Mass Effect with Andromeda in 2017, largely seen as a letdown among the community, and saw its first live-service multiplayer attempt in 2019’s Anthem flounder in the tricky waters of the genre; it aimed for a No Man’s Sky-like turnaround with Anthem Next, but that rework was canceled in 2021. Like its predecessor, BioWare’s next Dragon Age installment is not only a new release in a beloved franchise, but is another launch with the pressure of BioWare’s prior misses; a game fans hope will remind them the old BioWare is still alive today.

“Having been in this industry for 25 years, you see hits and misses, and it’s all about building off of those hits and learning from those misses,” BioWare general manager Gary McKay, who’s been with the studio since January 2020, tells me.

As McKay gives me a tour of the office, I can’t help but notice how much Anthem is scattered around it. More than Mass Effect, more than Dragon Age, there’s a lot of Anthem - posters, real-life replicas of its various Javelins, wallpaper, and more. Recent BioWare news stories tell of leads and longtime studio veterans laid off and others departing voluntarily. Veilguard’s development practically began with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. When I ask McKay about the tumultuousness of BioWare and how he, as the studio manager, makes the team feel safe in the product it’s developing, he says it’s about centering on the creative vision. “[When] we have that relentless pursuit for quality, and we have passion and people in the right roles, a lot of the other stuff you’re talking about just fades into the background.”

That’s a sentiment echoed throughout the team I speak to: Focus on what makes a BioWare game great and let Veilguard speak for itself. Though I had no expectations going in - it’s been 10 years since the last Drag Age, after all, and BioWare has been cagey about showing this game publicly - my expectations have been surpassed. This return to Thedas, the singular continent of the franchise, feels like both a warm welcome for returning fans and an impressive entry point for first-time players.

New Age, New Name

At the start of each interview, I address a dragon-sized elephant in the room with the game’s leads. What was Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is now Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Why?

“These games are reflections of the teams that make them, and as part of that, it means we learn a lot about what the heart and soul of the game really is as we’re developing it,” Veilguard game director Corinne Busche tells me. “We quickly learned and realized that the absolute beating heart of this game is these authentic, diverse companions. And when we took a step back, as we always do, we always check our decisions and make sure they still represent the game we’re trying to build.”

Dreadwolf no longer did that, but each member of BioWare I speak to tells me The Veilguard does. And while I was initially abrasive to the change - lore aside, Dreadwolf is simply a cool name - I warmed up to The Veilguard.

Solas, a Loki-esque trickster member of the Elven pantheon of gods known as the Dread Wolf, created the Veil long ago while attempting to free the elves from their slave-like status in Thedas. This Veil is a barrier between the magical Fade and Thedas, banishing Elven gods and removing Elven immortality from the world. But players didn’t know that in Inquisition, where he is introduced as a mage ally and companion. However, at the end of Inquisition’s Trespasser DLC, which sets the stage for Veilguard, we learn in a shocking twist that Solas wants to destroy the Veil and restore Elves to their former glory. However, doing so would bring chaos to Thedas, and those who call it home, the people who eventually become The Veilguard, want to stop him.

“There’s an analogy I like to use, which is, ‘If you want to carve an elephant out of marble, you just take a piece of marble and remove everything that doesn’t look like an elephant,’” Veilguard creative director John Epler says. “As we were building this game, it became really clear that it was less that we were trying to make The Veilguard and more like The Veilguard was taking shape as we built the game. Solas is still a central figure in it. He’s still a significant character. But really, the focus shifts to the team.

“[We] realized Dreadwolf suggests a title focused on a specific individual, whereas The Veilguard, much like Inquisition, focuses more on the team.”

Creating Your Rook

Veilguard’s character creator is staggeringly rich, with a dizzying number of customizable options. Busche tells me that inclusivity is at the heart of it, noting that she believes everyone can create someone who represents them on-screen.

There are four races to choose from when customizing Rook, the new playable lead - Elves, Qunari, Humans, and Dwarves - and hundreds of options to customize your character beyond that. You can select pronouns separately from gender and adjust physical characteristics like height, shoulder width, chest size, glute and bulge size, hip width, how bloodshot your eyes are, how crooked your nose is, and so much more. There must be hundreds of sliders to customize these body proportions and features like skin hue, tone, melanin, and just about anything else you might adjust on a character. Oh, and there’s nudity in Veilguard, too, which I learn firsthand while customizing my Rook.

“The technology has finally caught up to our ambition,” Dragon Age series art director Matt Rhodes tells me as we decide on my warrior-class Qunari’s backstory, which affects faction allegiance, in-game dialogue, and reputation standing - we choose the pirate-themed Lords of Fortune.

Notably, instead of a warrior class, we could have chosen mage or rogue. All three classes have unique specializations, bespoke skill trees, and special armors, too. And though our Rook is aligned with the Lords of Fortune faction, there are others to choose from including the Grey Wardens, Shadow Dragons, The Mourn Watch, and more. There is some flexibility in playstyle thanks to specializations, but your class largely determines the kind of actions you can perform in combat.

“Rook ascends because of competency, not because of a magical McGuffin,” BioWare core lead and Mass effect executive producer Michael Gamble tells me in contrast to Inquisition’s destiny-has-chosen-you-characterization.

“Rook is here because they choose to be, and that speaks to the kind of character that we’ve built.” Busche adds, “Someone needs to stop this, and Rook says, ‘I guess that’s me.’”

Beyond the on-paper greatness of this character creator, its customizability speaks to something repeated throughout my BioWare visit: Veilguard is a single-player, story-driven RPG. Or in other words, the type of game that made BioWare as storied as it is. McKay tells me the team explored a multiplayer concept early in development before scratching it to get back to BioWare basics. The final game will feature zero multiplayer and no microtransactions.

Happy to hear that, I pick our first and last name, then one of four voices, with a pitch shifter for each, too, and we’re off to Minrathous.

Exploring Tevinter For The First Time

Throughout the Dragon Age series, parts of Thedas are discussed by characters and referenced by lore material but left to the imagination of players as they can’t visit them. Veilguard immediately eschews this, setting its opening prologue mission in Minrathous, the capital of the Tevinter Empire. Frankly, I’m blown away by how good it looks. It’s my first time seeing Veilguard in action and my first look at a Dragon Age game in nearly a decade. Time has treated this series well, and so has technology.

Epler, who’s coming up on 17 years at BioWare, acknowledges that the franchise has always been at the will of its engine. Dragon Age: Origins and II’s Eclipse Engine worked well for the time, but today, they show their age. Inquisition was BioWare’s first go at Ea’s proprietary Frostbite engine - mind you, an engine designed for first-person shooters and decidedly not multi-character RPGs - and the team struggled there, too. Epler and Busche agree Veilguard is the first RPG where BioWare feels fully in command of Frostbite and, more generally, its vision for this world.

We begin inside a bar. Rook and Varric are looking for Neve Gallus, a detective mage somewhere in Minrathous. The first thing players will do once Veilguard begins is select a dialogue option, something the team says speaks to their vision of a story-forward, choice-driven adventure. After a quick bar brawl cutscene that demonstrates Rook’s capabilities, there’s another dialogue choice, and different symbols here indicate the type of tone you can roll with. There’s a friendly, snarky, and rough-and-tough direct choice, and I later learn of a more romantically inclined “emotional” response. These are the replies that will build relationships with characters, romantic and platonic alike, but you’re welcome to ignore this option. However, your companions can romance each other, so giving someone the cold shoulder might nudge them into the warm embrace of another. We learn Neve is in Dumat Plaza and head into the heart of Minrathous.

Rhodes explains BioWare’s philosophy for designing this city harkens back to a quick dialogue from Inquisition’s Dorian Pavus. Upon entering Halamshiral’s Winter Palace, the largest venue in Dragon Age history at that point, Dorian notes that it’s cute, adorable even, alluding to his Tevinter heritage. If Dorian thinks the largest venue in Dragon Age history is cute and adorable, what must the place he’s from be like? “It’s like this,” Rhodes says as we enter Minrathous proper in-game.

Minrathous is huge, painted in magical insignia that looks like cyberpunk-inspired neon city signs and brimming with detail. Knowing it’s a city run by mages and built entirely upon magic, Rhodes says the team let its imagination run wild. The result is the most stunning and unique city in the series. Down a wide, winding pathway, there’s a pub with a dozen NPCs - Busche says BioWare used Veilguard’s character creator to make each in-world NPC except for specific characters like recruitable companions - and a smart use of verticality, scaling, and wayfinding to push us toward the main attraction: Solas, attempting to tear down the Veil.

All hell is breaking loose. Pride Demons are rampaging through the city. Considering Pride Demons were bosses in prior games, seeing them roaming freely in the prologue of Veilguard speaks to the stakes of this opener. Something I appreciate throughout our short journey through Minrathous to its center below is the cinematography at play. As a Qunari, my character stands tall, and Rhodes says the camera adjusts to ensure larger characters loom over those below. On the flip side, the camera adjusts for dwarves to demonstrate their smaller stature compared to those around them.

This, coupled with movie-liked movement through the city as BioWare showcases the chaos happening at the hands of Solas’ Veil-break ritual, creates a cinematic start that excited me, and I’m not even hands-on with the game.

Eventually, we reach Neve, who has angered some murderous blood mages, and rescue her from danger. Or rather, help… barely. Neve is quite capable, and her well-acted dialogue highlights that. Together, Varric, returning character Lace Harding, who is helping us stop Solas and is now a companion, Rook, and Neve defeat some demons. They then take on some Venatori Cultists seizing this chaotic opportunity to take over the city and other enemies before making it to Solas’ hideout. As we traverse deeper and deeper into this hideout, more of Solas’ murals appear on the walls, and things get more Elven. Rhodes says this is because you’re symbolically going back in time, as Minrathous is a city built by mages on the bones of what was originally the home of Elves.

At the heart of his hideout, we discover Solas’ personal Eluvian. This magical mirror-like structure allows the gang to teleport (and mechanically fast-travel) to Arlathan Forest, where Solas is secretly performing the ritual (while its effects pour out into Minrathous).

Here, we encounter a dozen or so demons, which BioWare has fully redesigned on the original premise of these monstrous creatures. Rhodes says they’re creatures of feeling and live and die off the emotions around them. As such, they are just a floating nervous system, push into this world from the Fade, rapidly assembled into bodies out of whatever scraps they find.

I won’t spoil the sequence of events here, but we stop Solas’ ritual and seemingly save the world… for now. Rook passes out moments later and wakes up in a dream-like landscape to the voice of none other than Solas. He explains a few drops of Rook’s blood interacted with the ritual, connecting them to the Fade forever. He also says he was attempting to move the Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, part of the Evanuris or Elven gods of ancient times, to a new prison because the one he had previously constructed was failing. Unfortunately, Solas is trapped in the Fade by our doing, and these gods are now free. It’s up to Rook to stop them; thus, the stage for our adventure is set.

The Veilguard Who’s Who

While we learned a lot about returning character but first-time companion Lace Harding, ice mage private detective Neve Gallus, and veil jumper Bellara Lutara, BioWare shared some additional details about other companions Rook will meet later in the game. Davrin is a charming Grey Warden who is also an excellent monster hunter; Emmrich is a member of Nevarra’s Mourn Watch and a necromancer with a skeleton assistant named Manfred; Lucanis is a pragmatic assassin whose bloodline descends from the criminal House of Crows organization; And Taash is a dragon hunter allied with the piratic Lords of Fortune. All seven of these characters adorn this Game Informer issue, with Bellara up front and center in the spotlight.

The Lighthouse

After their encounter with Solas, Rook wakes up with Harding and Neve in the lair of the Dread Wolf himself, a special magical realm in the Fade called the Lighthouse. It’s a towering structure centered amongst various floating islands. Epler says, much like Skyhold in Inquisition, the Lighthouse is where your team bonds, grows, and prepares for its adventures throughout the campaign. It also becomes more functional and homier as you do. Already, though, it’s a beautifully distraught headquarters for the Veilguard, although they aren’t quite referring to themselves as that just yet.

Because it was Solas’ home base of operations, it’s gaudy, with his fresco murals adorning various walls, greenery hanging from above, and hues of purple and touches of gold everywhere. Since it’s in the Fade, a realm of dreams that responds to your world state and emotion, the Lighthouse reflects the chaos and disrepair of the Thedas you were in moments ago. I see a clock symbol over a dialogue icon in the distance, which signals an optional dialogue option. We head there, talk to Neve, select a response to try our hand at flirting, and then head to the dining hall.

A plate, a fork and knife, and a drinking chalice are at the end of a massive table. Rhodes says this is both a funny (and sad) look at Solas’ isolated existence and an example of the detail BioWare’s art team has put into Veilguard. “It’s a case of letting you see the story,” he says. “It’s like when you go to a friend's house and see their bedroom for the first time; you get to learn more about them.” From the dining hall, we gather the not-quite-Veilguard in the library, which Busche says in the central area of the Lighthouse and where your party will often regroup and prepare for what’s next. The team decides it must reach the ritual site back in Arlathan Forest, and Busche says I’m missing unique dialogue options here because I’m Qunari; an Elf would have more to say about the Fade due to their connection to it. The same goes for my backstory earlier in Minrathous. If I had picked the Shadow Dragons background, Neve would have recognized me immediately, with unique dialogue.

With our next move decided, we head to Solas’ Eluvian to return to Arlathan Forest and the ritual site. However, it’s not fully functional without Solas, and while it returns us to Arlathan Forest, it’s not exactly where we want to go. A few moments later, we’re back in the Arlathan Forest, and just before a demon-infested suit of mechanized armor known as a Sentinel can attack, two new NPCs appear to save us: Strife and Irelin. Harding recognizes them, something Dragon Age comic readers might know about. They’re experts in ancient elven magic and part of the new Veil Jumpers faction. The ensuing cutscene, where we learn Strife and Irelin need help finding someone named Bellara Lutara, is long, with multiple dialogue options. That’s something I’m noticing with Veilguard, too - there’s a heavy emphasis on storytelling and dialogue, and it feels deep and meaty, like a good fantasy novel. BioWare doesn’t shy away from minutes-long cutscenes.

Busche says that’s intentional, too. “For Rook, [this story’s about] what does it meant to be a leader,” she says. “You’re defining their leadership style with your choices.” Knowing that Rook is the leader of the Veilguard, I’m excited to see how far this goes. From the sound of it, my team will react to my chosen leadership style in how my relationships play out. That’s demonstrated within the game’s dialogue and a special relationship meter on each companion’s character screen.

Redefining Combat Once More

Bellara is deep within Arlathan Forest, and following the prolgoue’s events, something is up here. Three rings of massive rocks fly through the air, protecting what appears to be a central fortress. Demon Sentinels plague the surrounding lands, and after loading up a new save, we’re in control of a human mage.

Following the trend of prior Dragon Age games, Veilguard has completed the series’ shift from tactical strategy to real-time action, but fret not: a tactical pause-and-play mechanic returns to satiate fans who remember the series’ origins (pun intended). Though I got a taste of combat in the prologue, Veilguard’s drastic departure from all that came before it is even more apparent here.

Busche says player complete every swing in real-time, with special care taken to animation swing-through and canceling. There's a dash, a parry, the ability to charge moves, and a completely revamped healing system that allows you to use potions at your discretion by hitting right on the d-pad. You can combo attacks and even “bookmark” combos with a quick dash, which means you can pause a combo’s status with a dash to safety and continue the rest of the combo afterward. It looks even cooler than it sounds.

Like any good action game, there is a handful of abilities to customize your kit. And, if you want to maintain that real-time action feel, you can use them on the fly, so long as you take cooldowns into effect. But Veilguard’s pause-and-play gameplay mechanic, similar to Inquisition’s without the floating camera view, lets you bring things to halt for a healthy but optional dose of strategy.

In this screen, which essentially pauses the camera and pulls up a flashy combat wheel that highlights you and your companions’ skills, you can choose abilities, queue them up, and strategize with synergies and combos, all while targeting specific enemies. Do what you need to here, let go of the combat wheel, and watch your selections play out. Busche says she uses the combat wheel to dole out her companions’ attacks and abilities while sticking to the real-time action for her player-controlled Rook. On the other hand, Epler says he almost exclusively uses the combat wheel to dish out every ability and combo.

Busche says each character will play the same, in that you execute light and heavy attacks with hte same buttons, use abilities with the same buttons, and interact with the combo wheel in the same way, regardless of which class you select. But a sword-and-shield warrior, like we used in the prolgoue, can hip-fire or aim their shield to throw it like Captain America, whereas our human mage uses that same button to throw out magical ranged attacks. The warrior can parry incoming attacks, which can stagger enemies. The rogue gets a larger parry window. Our mage, however, can’t parry at all. Instead, they throw up a shield that blocks incoming attacks automatically so long as you have the mana to sustain it.

“What I see from Veilguard is a game that finally bridges the gap,” former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah, who left BioWare in 2021 before joining the Veilguard team last year as a consultant, tells me. “Uncharitably, previous Dragon Age games got to the realm of ‘combat wasn’t too bad.’ In this game, the combat’s actually fun, but it does keep that thread that’s always been there. You have the focus on Rook, on your character, but still have that control and character coming into the combat experience from the other people in the party.”

“This is really the best Dragon Age game that I’ve ever played,” he adds, noting his bias. “This is the one where we get back to our roots of character-driven storytelling, have really fun combat, and aren’t making compromises.”

Watching Busche take down sentinels and legions of darkspawn on-screen, I can already sense Veilguard’s combat will likely end up my favorite in the series, although admittedly, as a fan of action games, I’m an easy sell here. It’s flashy, quick, and thanks to different types of health bars, like a greenish-blue one that represents barrier and is taken down most effectively with ranged attacks, a decent amount of strategy, even if you don’t use the pause-and-play combo wheel. Like the rest of the game, too, it’s gorgeous, with sprinkles, droplets, and splashes of magic in each attack our mage unleashes. Though I’m seeing the game run on a powerful PC, which is sure to be the best showcase of Veilguard, Epler tells me the game looks amazing on consoles - he’s been playing it on PlayStation 5 and enjoying it in both its fidelity and performance modes, but I’ll have to take his word for it.

Pressing Start

The start or pause screen is as important to a good RPG as the game outside the menus. Veilguard’s contains your map, journal, character sheets, skill tree, and a library for lore information. You can cross-compare equipment and equip new gear here for Rook and your companions, build weapon loadouts for quick change-ups mid-combat, and customize you and your party’s abilities and builds via an easy-to-understand skill tree. You won’t find minutiae here, “just real numbers,” Busche says. That means a new unlocked trait might increase damage by 25 percent against armor, but that’s as in-depth as the numbers get. Passive abilities unlock jump attacks and guarantee critical hit opportunities, while abilities add moves like a Wall of Fire to your arsenal (if you’re a mage). As you spec out this skill tree, which is 100 percent bespoke to each class, you’ll work closer to unlocking a specialization, of which there are three for each class, complete with a unique ultimate ability. Busche says BioWare’s philosophy here is “about changing the way you play, not statistical minutiae.”

Companion Customization

You can advance your bonds by helping companions on their own personal quests and by including them in your party for main quests. Every Relationship Level you rank up, shown on their character sheet, nets you a skill point to spend on them. Busche says the choices you make, what you say to companions, how you help them, and more all matter to their development as characters and party members. And with seven companions, there’s plenty to customize, from bespoke gear to abilities and more. Though each companion has access to five abilities, you can only take three into combat, so it’s important to strategize different combos and synergies within your party. Rhodes says beyond this kind of customizable characterization, each companion has issues, problems, and personal quests to complete. “Bellara has her own story arc that runs parallel to and informs the story path you’re on,” Rhodes says.

In Entropy’s Grasp

As we progress through the forest and the current “In Entropy’s Grasp” mission, we finally find Bellara. She’s a veil jumper, the first companion you meet and recruit in-game (unlike Neve, who automatically joins), and the centerpiece of this issue’s cover image. Because our mage’s background is Veil Jumper, we get some unique dialogue. Bellara explains we’re all trapped in a Veil Bubble, and there’s no way out once you pass through it. Despite the dire situation, Bellara is bubbly, witty, and charming.

“When designing companions, they’re the load-bearing pillars for everything,” Rhodes says. “They’re the face of their faction, and in this case [with Bellara], their entire area of the world. She’s your window into Arlathan Forest.” Rhodes describes her as a sweetheart and nerd for ancient elven artifacts. As such ,she’s dressed more like an academic than a combat expert, although her special arm gauntlet is useful both for tinkering with her environment and taking down enemies.

Unlike Neve, who uses ice magic like our Rook and can slow down time with a special ability, Bellara specializes in electricity, and she can also use magic to heal you, something Busche says Dragon Age fans have been desperate to have in a game. Busche says if you don’t direct Neve and Bellara, they’re fully independent and will attack on their own. But synergizing your team will add to the fun and strategy of combat. Bellara’s electric magic is effective against Sentinels, which is great because we currently only have access to ice. However, without Bellara, we could also equip a rune that converts my ice magic, for a brief duration, into electricity to counter the Sentinels.

As we progress through Arlathan Forest, we encounter more and more darkspawn. Bellara mentions the darkspawn have never been this far before because the underground Deep Roads, where they usually escape from, aren’t nearby. However, with blighted Elven gods roaming the world, and thanks to Blight’s radiation-like spread, it’s a much bigger threat in Veilguard than in any Dragon Age before it.

I continue to soak in the visuals of Veilguard with Arlathan Forest’s elven ruins, dense greenery, and disgusting Blight tentacles and pustules; it’s perhaps the most impressive aspect of my time seeing the game, although everything else is making a strong impression, too. I am frustrated about having to watch the game rather than play it, to be honest. I’m in love with the art style, which is more high fantasy than anything in the series thus far and almost reminiscent of the whimsy of Fable, a welcome reprieve from the recent gritty Game of Thrones trend in fantasy games. Rhodes says that’s the result of the game’s newfound dose of magic.

“The use of magic has been an evolution as the series has gone on,” he says. “It’s something we’ve been planning for a while because Solas has been planning all this for a while. In the past, you could hint at cooler magical things in the corner because you couldn’t actually go there, but now we actually can, and it’s fun to showcase that.”

Busche, Epler, and Rhodes warn me that Arlathan Forest’s whimsy will starkly contrast to other areas. They promise some grim locations and even grimmer story moments because, without that contrast, everything falls flat. Busche likens it to a “thread of optimism” pulled through otherworldly chaos ravaging Thedas. For now, the spunky and effervescent Bellara is that thread.

As we progress deeper into the forest, Bellara spots a floating fortress and thinks the artifact needed to destroy the Veil Bubble is in there. To reach it, though, wem ust remove the floating rock rings, and Bellara’s unique ability, Tinker, can do just that by interacting with a piece of ancient elven technology nearby. Busche says Rook can acquire abilities like Tinker later to complete such tasks in instances where Bellara, for example, isn’t in the party.

Bellara must activate three of these in Arlathan Forest to reach the floating castle, and each one we activate brings forth a slew of sentinels, demons, and darkspawn to defeat. Busche does so with ease, showcasing high-level gameplay by adding three stacks of arcane build-up to create an Arcane Bomb on an enemy, which does devastating damage after being hit by a heavy attack. Now, she begins charging a heavy attack on her magical staff, then switches to magical daggers in a second loadout accessed with a quick tap of down on the d-pad to unleash some quick attacks, then back to the staff to charge it some more and unleash a heavy attack.

After a few more combat encounters, including one against a sentinel that’s “Frenzied,” which means it hits harder, moves faster, and has more health, we finally reach the center of the temple. Within is a particular artifact known as the Nadas Dirthalen, which Bellara says means “the inevitability of knowledge.” Before we can advance with it, a darkspawn Ogre boss attacks. It hits hard, has plenty of unblockable, red-coded attacks, and a massive shield we must take down first. However, it’s weak to fire, and our new fire staff is perfect for the situation.

After taking down this boss in a climactic arena fight, Bellara uses a special crystal to power the artifact and remove it from a pedestal, destroying the Veil Bubble. Then, the Nadas Dirthalen comes alive as an Archive Spirit, but because the crystal used to power it breaks, we learn little about this spirit before it disappears. Fortunately, Bellara thinks she can fix it - fixing broken stuff is kind of her thing, Epler says - so the group heads back to the Veil Jumper camp and, as interested as I am in learning what happens next, the demo ends. It’s clear that even after a few hours with the game’s opening, I’ve seen a nigh negligible amount of game; frustrating but equally as exciting.

Don’t Call It An Open World

Veilguard is not an open world, even if some of its explorable areas might fee like one. Gamble describes Veilguard’s Thedas as a hub-and-spoke design where “the needs of the story are served by the level design.” A version of Inquisition’s Crossroads, a network of teleporting Eluvians, returns, and it’s how players will traverse across northern Thedas. Instead of a connected open world, players will travel from Eluvian to Eluvian to different stretches of this part of the continent. This allows BioWare to go from places like Minrathous to tropical beaches to Arlathan Forest to grim and gothic areas and elsewhere. Some of these areas are larger and full of secrets and treasures. Others are smaller and more focused on linear storytelling. Arlathan Forest is an example of this, but there are still optional paths and offshoots to explore for loot, healing potion refreshes, and other things. There’s a minimap in each location, though linear levels like “In Entropy’s Grasp” won’t have the fog of war that disappears as you explore like some of Veilguard’s bigger locations. Regardless, BioWare says Veilguard has the largest number of diverse biomes in series history.

Dragon’s Delight

With a 10-hour day at BioWare behind me after hours of demo gameplay and interviews with the leads, I’m acutely aware of my favorite part of video games: the surprises. I dabbled with Origins and II and put nearly 50 hours into Inquisition, but any familiarity with the series the latter gave me had long since subsided over the past decade. I wanted to be excited about the next Dragon Age as I viewed each teaser and trailer, but other than seeing the words “Dragon Age,” I felt little. Without gameplay, without a proper look at the actual game we’ll all be playing this fall, I struggled to remember why Inquisition sucked me in 10 years ago.

This trip reminded me.

Dragon Age, much like the Thedas of Veilguard, lives in the uncertainty: The turbulence of BioWare’s recent release history and the lessons learned from it, the drastic changes to each Dragon Age’s combat, the mystery of its narrative, and the implications of its lore. It’s all a part of the wider Dragon Age story and why this studio keeps returning to this world. It’s been a fertile franchise for experimentation. While Veilguard is attempting to branch out in unique ways, it feels less like new soil and more like the harvest BioWare has been trying to cultivate since 2009, and I’m surprised by that.

I’m additionally surprised, in retrospect, how numb I’ve been to the game before this. I’m surprised by BioWare’s command over EA’s notoriously difficult Frostbite engine to create its prettiest game yet. I’m surprised by this series’ 15-year transition from tactical strategy to action-forward combat. I’m surprised by how much narrative thought the team has poured into these characters, even for BioWare. Perhaps having no expectations will do that to you. But most of all, with proper acknowledgement that I reserve additional judgment until I actually play the game, I’m surprised that Veilguard might just be the RPG I’m looking forward to most this year.

#da4 #dragon age veilguard #datv #da:v #da:tv #dragon age #dragon age 4 #da: veilguard

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saywhat-politics · 14 days ago

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Andrew Taake’s legal troubles might not be over — even though the Texas man was just pardoned by President Donald Trump after being convicted of spraying police with bear spray and using a metal whip to assault them while they defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

According to a review of public court records and confirmed by the Houston district attorney’s office on Monday, Taake is still considered “at large” for the alleged 2016 crime of soliciting a minor online under 17 years old with the expectation that the individual “would engage in sexual contact” with him.

#january 6 2021 #u.s. capitol riot #andrew taake

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doctorofmagic · 11 months ago

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Doctor Strange's disability: a (much needed) chronological review

In view of recent ableism and drama on the other social hellsite involving Doctor Strange's disability, here's my response, based on *CANON* material. (link to the thread on said hellsite here)

Stephen disability is established since 1963, back in Strange Tales #115. The story is focused on a flashback which portrays his journey from the decay of his medical career because of a car accident to his path towards the mystic arts.

Note that, in this very same issue, the Ancient One never says he would heal Stephen's *hands*, but perhaps Stephen would find the cure within. In other words, Stephen was supposed to heal his heart and soul from arrogance and egoism through magic, not a physical cure.

Also note that there are limitations within every aspect of comic books' universes. In this case, we're talking about magic. Magic is not a miracle thing. It demands training and, most recently as established by v4, a cost (Doctor Strange v4 #4).

Another clue that "magic can heal anything because it's fantasy" is not a valid argument within Marvel's magic world, as seen in The Oath. Stephen had access to the Otkid's Elixir, which could heal any disease, but the formula was lost in order to save Wong's life.

One last example comes from Spider-Man Family #5 (2007), featuring Morbius and Spidey. It establishes that healing demands the exact same price when it comes to magic.

Long story short, it's clear that the magic side of Marvel does not offer a solution to diseases through magical miracles. So this argument is totally invalid ~within~ this established universe.

Now back to Doctor Strange... No, he isn't using magic to heal his hands unlike some misleading accounts are claiming. In fact, there are several panels which show that he's actually in constant pain. Here's some examples:

- Doctor Strange - Sorcerer Supreme #48 (1992).

- Captain Marvel v10 #6 (2019)

- Doctor Strange v4 #1 (2015)

He also struggles to hold a pen and write, relying on magic to do so, as seen in the Book of the Vishanti.

Then comes the stupid argument I saw.

"Oh, but Google says his hands are healed!" is not a gotcha moment you think it is. We had FOUR MAIN BOOKS after that (Surgeon Supreme, DODS, Strange v3 and current v6). Allow me to clarify the details in chronological order.

Stephen indeed made a "magic" gamble and healed his hands. That much is correct. But it's not all (panels from Doctor Strange v5 #19 - 2019).

Waid continued this storyline in a new book called Dr. Strange (Surgeon Supreme), which would portray Stephen's duality as the Sorcerer Supreme and a brilliant surgeon. Except the book was cancelled at issue #6 (2020), leaving the character in a kind of limbo. Now enter MacKay.

MacKay kept a little bit of the former storyline as seen in Death of the Doctor Strange #1 (2021). On top of that, his hands appeared healed. However, that lasted only until Kaecilius murdered Stephen and stole his hands.

Stephen's temporal duplicate used a regenerative spell to bring original Stephen back through Kaecilius' body and the stolen hands. In here, we can see that his hands are scarred just like after the car accident (DODS #5 - 2022). OG Stephen died a second time with scars as well.

Stephen is indeed seen writing in v6 but it's not clear if he's using magic or not. Besides, he's not working as a surgeon anymore. Moreover, MacKay considers Stephen disabled as seen in this recent issue of v6 (#7 - 2023): "My own connection to the aether, the magic of the world, the power of the Vishanti, the power of the Sorcerer Supreme... Gone. Without all of that? I am just an old man with useless hands and a blade in his stomach."

In conclusion,

As of CURRENT DOCTOR STRANGE RUN by Jed MacKay and Pasqual Ferry, in the year of our lord Vishanti, 2024, Stephen Strange is a disabled character and no magic or ableism will erase that. Thank you very much.

#doctor strange #stephen strange #tw: ableism #marvel comics #character analysis #meta

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bqstqnbruin · 3 months ago

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Just Friends - Part 1

Hello friends here we are with a new/old fic. like I said with the prologue, this is a rewrite of a fic I started back in 2021 so here we go

General Warnings for all parts: Swearing, drinking, sex, parental death, panic attacks

WC: 4147

Read the prologue here

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The last thing Emeline wanted to find when she got home from work that day was Francesca and Maddy in their apartment with the music so loud she could feel the vibrations through the door. If their neighbors hadn’t complained yet, as someone did just about every single time the two of them were home with Emeline with them, there was no doubt they were going to. The fact that they hadn’t gotten kicked out of the building was baffling, if Emeline had to admit it.

“There’s no way you can hear anything,” Emeline yells over the music, dropping her bag on the floor and kicking off her shoes.

“What?” Fran yells back, she and Maddy showing no care to the fact that Emeline was unusually late getting home and dancing to Maddy’s ‘feral pop punk garage rats’ playlist that Emeline didn’t need to hear right now.

Emeline reaches over to their speaker and turns the music down a little, ignoring Maddy and Fran’s protests. “Why is it so loud?”

“Music is meant to be heard,” Maddy protests.

“Yeah, heard, not blowing out your ear drums.”

“Aw, did someone have a hard day at school?” Fran teases, giving her roommate a playful shove on the shoulder.

“Notice what time it is?” Emeline gestures to the clock she had hung over the TV when they first moved in, 8:15 flashing on it when she normally got home around 5:30 every day.

The three of them sit down in their living room, Maddy on the floor, Fran in the chair she had claimed as hers for the last two years, and Emeline cross-legged on the couch, the music just loud enough that Emeline could still feel the vibrations the sound waves were sending through the apartment, not helping the growing dehydration headache she had.

Emeline recounts her day, from the lab that she had set up the night before for her honors students somehow dismantled and parts of it thrown out, knowing that the janitorial staff had a habit of mistaking some of her lab equipment as garbage at times, which meant she had to scramble to reset it before her AP students showed up to review for the test they had that day. The two free periods she was banking on using to take down the honors lab and set up the college-prep lab she wanted to do last period were both taken away because everyone in her department was getting sick, so she had to go cover other classes and use that time to plan out a new lesson for them for last period. Then, since she can’t say no to her students and they found out she played lacrosse in college, she then had to go to practice despite the fact that their season was in the spring, and it was fall. Once that was over, she finally had time to set up the lab, forgetting that she also still needed to prep for the next school day.

“So what you’re saying is, we’re ordering pizza, drinking wine, and definitely getting drunk this weekend,” Maddy says, already tapping away on her phone their usual pizza orders.

“Have fun with that. Keelan is coming over tonight, too.” Her roommates groan at the mention of her boyfriend's name. “We haven’t seen each other in two weeks since that weird conversation about the guy in the elevator. Order his pizza, too.”

“I knew I was happier these last two weeks,” Fran snides. Maddy and Fran had a strong dislike for Keelan since the four of them met during their freshman year of college. No matter how often they were together, no matter what he did for the girls, they never warmed up to him.

“Knock it off,” Emeline tells them, getting drowned out by Maddy turning the music back up, louder than it was when Emeline first walked into the apartment. Emeline groans, lying down on the cushions and putting one of the pillows over her face. She really wanted to just go to her room and rot in her bed by herself after the day she had. If Keelan wasn’t coming over, she could have changed into one of the hoodies and pairs of sweatpants she had stolen from him and sat in the dark with something on Netflix that she wouldn’t pay attention to playing in the background.

“Do you guys hear that?” Maddy asks, pulling Emeline out of the trance she fell into. “Is someone knocking at the door?”

“We would know if the music wasn’t so loud,” Emeline mutters, definitely not loud enough for either of them to hear it.

“Nose goes,” Fran says, her and Maddy holding their finger to their nose like children, pointing at Emeline to get up from the couch. “Have fun, Em.”

“I bet it’s Mrs. MacGregor,” Maddy laughs, their senile downstairs neighbor constantly coming over to tell them that they were walking too loud and it was disturbing her parrot.

“If it is, you’re buying dinner this weekend,” Emeline calls, hoping their eighty something year old neighbor wasn’t on the other side of the door. “Oh, hi.”

Two guys she was sure she had never seen in the building before were standing in front of her, practically towering over her. “Your music is kind of loud,” one of them says, his cheeks turning red, shoving his hands in his pockets like he was afraid to tell her. There was something about him that she found endearing. His beard was a different shade than the rest of his hair, adding to his charm, the nervous shake of his voice making her wish she met him in a different circumstance. If she wasn’t in a ‘murder everyone’ type of mood, she would have actually wanted to be nice to him.

“No, it is loud,” the other says, clearly not amused with his friend trying to sugarcoat the subject as Emeline makes a face at them. There was something about them that made her briefly think that they were brothers, cousins, some sort of genetic relationship had to exist between them. Either that or they were both just guys with brown hair and she was too tired to comprehend anything else.

“I know.” The shorter her answers, the shorter their conversation, right?

“Who is it?” she hears Fran calling from her chair. Emeline can picture the smug faces they had as they hoped it was Emeline who had to deal with Mrs. MacGregor and not them.

“People telling us your music is too loud.”

“Tell them to come in and say it to our faces.”

Emeline rolls her eyes at her roommates' antics, gesturing to the strangers to come in despite not knowing who they are or why they were in their building in the first place. “They could be murders that you’re inviting in,” she points out.

“We aren’t murderers,” the nervous one says to her before turning to Fran and Maddy once she leads them into their living room. “We aren’t murderers.”

“We just got back from a trip that was way too long. We’re eating dinner and then going to bed, but we can’t do that if the music is too loud,” the other one says.

Maddy scoffs, finally turning the music low enough that Emeline can finally think without the music interrupting her thoughts. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Murderers,” Emeline mumbles, reclaiming her spot back on the couch.

“We’re your neighbors. I’m John, this is Jeremy.”

“Well, John, Jeremy,” Fran starts, leaning forward on her chair, “We were just about to order pizza. Want to join us?”

Emeline glares at Fran. She knows what a long day means for Emeline’s social battery. She knows that there is nothing more that Emeline wants than to go to her room and go to bed, Keelan coming over or not.

The nervous one, Jeremy, starts to stammer. “Uh, no, it’s fine. She doesn’t really look like she’s in the mood for company, we don’t want to bother you.”

“If you’re buying, I’ll eat,” John shrugs, plopping down on the floor next to Maddy as she hands him her phone to put in what he wants.

“Johnny, we can’t.”

“Emeline is fine. She’s just grumpy,” Fran mocks her. Emeline throws the pillow at her, silently wishing she had something harder. “Exhibit A.”

��It’s been a long day.”

“Ours was longer,” John counters.

“It’s not a competition,” she shoots back. Before they can say anything else, she gets up, leaving the four of them in the living room. She didn’t need this. Her room was calling. Her sweatpants and sweatshirt were on her bed waiting to be changed into.

Someone knocks at her door just as she pulls the sweatshirt over her head. She really wasn’t in the mood for Fran to just barge in like she did. “Can you at least be nice to them for like, an hour? They’re cute. And Jeremy seems to be nervous around you,” Fran tells her in a sing-songy voice.

“So?”

“He likes you.”

Emeline scoffs, tying the strings on her hoodie just the way she likes them. “He just met me.”

“He said he’s seen you around the building and he’s been wanting to talk to you.”

“So he’s a stalker. How does that get brought up in the less than five minutes I’ve been in here, anyway?”

“Jesus, Emeline. Not everyone is looking to commit a felony.” Emeline avoids looking at her roommate, really just wanting to be left alone. “The pizza is gonna be here soon, the guys are nice, and I’ll even be nice to Keelan when he comes if you come back.”

“You’re annoying.”

“And you love me, anyway,” Fran tells her, throwing her arm around Emeline and dragging her back out to the living room, finding Jeremy on the couch still looking nervous when she comes back.

Emeline sits down on the other end of the couch, tucking her feet under her. She tries not to stare at the two of them in their apartment, but Fran was right, they are cute. John looks a little younger than the three of them, but Jeremy is about the same age, she guessed. There was something familiar about both of them, though.

“So, uh, Emeline,” Jeremy starts, not making eye contact with Emeline. “Fran and Maddy said that you’re a teacher?”

“She teaches chemistry.”

“I can speak for myself, you know,” Emeline tells Maddy.

“Not according to that one guy,” Fran points out, she and Maddy exchanging knowing looks about the one coworker that Emeline hated talking about the most just as her phone vibrates.

Her roommates really did forget that she can order sulfuric acid with a few clicks of a button on her computer.

“Should we ask?” John asks, noticing the scowl that was forming on Emeline’s face.

She rolls her eyes, knowing that thanks to her roommates, these guys would find out anyway, checking her phone and groaning, throwing it to the side. She was outside contract hours, he couldn’t make her work. “My department head is a dick. He takes my lessons and my labs and passes them as his own because he claims his ‘department head duties take up so much of his time he can’t plan on his own.’ He just texted me asking what I was teaching to college-prep so we’re ‘on the same page.’”

“Do you think he’s the one who took apart the lab you set up yesterday?” Maddy asks, Emeline noticing she stole a glance of Johnny while saying it.

“Either him or our custodial staff thought some of it was actual garbage so they threw it out,” she shrugs. “Which, reminds me, I have to order more filter paper tomorrow, remind me to do that.”

Fran and Maddy exchange looks, both of them knowing that they were going to forget to tell her, scrambling for their phones to put a reminder in for themselves.

“That sucks,” is all Jeremy can add, still not looking at her.

Emeline shrugs, her phone buzzing beside her, probably another text from Anderson. “Eh, I have some of the guys in the department who try to stick up for me, and my students seem to like me, so who cares?”

“One thing you’ll learn about Em is that part of being a teacher is that she can never check out from being one,” Maddy explains, Johnny being the one to steal a glance at her this time. “It’s constant.”

Fran, Maddy and John fall into conversation, Emeline trying to process that even though she knew it was true, while Jeremy just sat there awkwardly on the couch next to her not saying a word. Emeline was getting more tired by the minute, and Jeremy was still too nervous to say anything to her.

“You left the door unlocked again,” they hear, interrupting their conversation. Fran and Maddy roll their eyes, Emeline’s anxiety growing suddenly as Keelan lets himself into their apartment. “Do you know how many people could just walk by and rob you when you do that? I’ve told you not to -oh, hi.” Keelan stands there, clearly expecting to only lecture the girls about their door. His face turns red, a cup from Dunkin in his hands.

“Keel, this is Jeremy and John, they’re our neighbors,” Emeline explains as he walks over to her, kissing the top of her head and handing her the drink. Emeline took a sip, grimacing at the tea he had brought her, way too sweet for her own taste despite the fact that she had told him multiple times she didn’t like sugar in her coffee or tea.

“Huh, it’s like a triple date,” he says, leaving to drop his bag in Emeline’s room, the three girls exchanging equally confused glances.

“He really had to come tonight?” Fran whispers.

“He’s staying over, isn’t he?”

“Yes, and yes, stop it. You knew he was coming. You said you would be nice to him.”

“I said I would be nice to him, not about him.”

John and Jeremy sit there in awe, trying to figure out what they had just walked into. Before her roommates could protest more, Keelan comes back, sweatpants and sweatshirt on just like Emeline. Both were wearing Boston College lacrosse gear, Emeline definitely changing into the old gear because it was comfortable after what had been a day from hell, Keelan only pulling it out because the guys were there, despite the word ‘club’ written on the breast of his sweatshirt being the noticeable difference between their clothes. That didn’t matter to Keelan in the moment; Emeline didn’t even have to ask, she knew he never wore that sweatshirt unless he felt threatened by something.

“Did either of you play lacrosse?” Jeremy asks, trying to break the awkwardness.

Keelan puts his arm around Emeline, pulling her close to him faster than she was expecting. “We both did, actually. That’s how we meet.”

“At BC?”

“We all went to Boston College, we all played lacrosse. Three of us did all four years, too, on an actual varsity team, not the club team,” Fran snides, a not so subtle dig at Keelan, causing him to roll his eyes and hold Emeline almost uncomfortably close.

“That’s because there’s only a club team for men. For some reason, the AD decided the women having a team was more important despite you losing in the championship three years in a row,” Keelan tries to counter, only earning an eyebrow raise from Fran who was, without a doubt, about to say something much worse to him.

“We only lost twice and won the championship our senior year,” Fran corrected him. “BC hasn’t had a varsity lacrosse team for men since 2002. If you wanted varsity, you should have went to BU.”

“What time is the pizza getting here, Mads?” Emeline changes the subject before the dick measuring contest between her boyfriend and her roommate somehow ends with her roommate winning. Fran was, as usual in her verbal sparring against Keelan, remaining calm, while Keelan himself was two seconds from saying something that would result in him getting kicked out of their apartment permanently.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were ordering pizza,” Keelan snides.

This was awful. This was the last thing Emeline wanted to deal with when she got home. If she went to her room, then Fran or Keelan would just follow her. As soon as the pizza was there, all she wanted to do was eat it as fast as possible and run away to her room. She needed peace. She wanted quiet.

“I’m getting a drink, who wants something?” Emeline asks, wriggling free of Keelan’s grip and heading off to the kitchen with the practically full tea still in her hands. Emeline sighed, leaning against the counter with her eyes closed. It was already pushing 9:30 pm, half an hour from when Emeline normally went to bed happily since she had to wake up to take her train way earlier than she would like to every morning.

“Hey,” Jeremy startles her, causing her to bump her hip harder against the cabinet, making her wince at the pain that would definitely turn into a bruise. “Sorry, we can go if you really don’t want us here. We just wanted the music to be a little quieter.”

Emeline sighs, knowing that she was acting like a bitch. “No, it’s fine. It was just a long day that was part of a longer week. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” Jeremy says, quietly. He shrugs. “It happens to all of us.”

Emeline looks at Jeremy, her entire being feeling calmer with him standing there for whatever reason. “Thanks.”

Jeremy swallows, clearing his throat. “Uh, the pizza should be here any minute. If you want, you can just take it to your room instead of staying out with us,” he tells her, somehow reading her mind, “I don’t think any of us would mind. Well, Fran seems like someone who might.”

Emeline can’t help but laugh. “She means well.”

“She seems to want what’s best for you. And for Maddy. I can respect that.”

“She’s very protective, that’s for sure,” Emeline says, throwing out the tea and grabbing a glass of water. Without asking, she pours one for Jeremy, him taking it and smiling at her, sending a shiver down her spine that she didn’t quite know how to process. Fran had been there for her and Maddy’s darkest moments during college, which sounds dramatic, but she really was the first person either of them wanted to call if something was going wrong. She just cared, probably a little more intensely than either of them asked for.

The two of them go back into the living room without saying anything else, glasses in hand. The pizza had arrived, Maddy and Johnny passing them around, reading off everyone’s order.

“Why’d you order me this?” Keelan asks when Emeline sits down, box in hand as Maddy passes off the last two to her and Jeremy.

“You always get the honey barbeque chicken one,” Emeline points out, opening up her box, her favorite pizza making her suddenly excited. She didn’t realize how hungry she was, or remember the fact that she hadn’t eaten since her lunch at 11 that morning.

“Yeah, you have made a very big deal about how you always get that one pizza, because it’s your favorite,” Maddy continues, spraying bits of her own pizza everywhere.

“You’re a creature of habit, as you love to say,” Fran deadpans, not looking away from her own food.

“I don’t want this. What did you get, Emmy?”

Emeline freezes with her mouth open as she was bringing a slice to her mouth, already knowing where this conversation was going to end up. She tried to ignore Fran mouthing ‘Emmy,’ to Maddy, mocking the nickname Emeline admittedly hated that Keelan always used for her. “The White Greek pizza.”

“It’s fine, we can just switch.”

“But,” she starts, looking at her own pizza. “I don’t like barbeque. You know that.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want this.”

The two of them stare at each other for a minute, Emeline’s mind trying to process the fact that Keelan even had the audacity to ask her to eat his pizza when he knew she detested the entire thing. They were nice enough to buy him a pizza, a surprise that he wasn’t expecting, and here he was, demanding that she give him hers? She had called him on the way home and told him all about her day and what happened, and now he was adding to it? “Take mine.” Both of them turn to Jeremy, him already holding his box out for Keelan. “I thought I ordered the barbeque one anyway, not the buffalo one, it was my mistake.”

“Hey, thanks, man,” Keelan says, all too happy to take the pizza from someone he just met.

Fran, Maddy, and John start to have a conversation, tuning out the three of them on the couch. Not that they were saying anything. Emeline was too mad to eat the entire thing, only picking off the olives instead. Jeremy was trying his best not to cringe at the overly sweet pizza that he had never had any intention of ordering. Keelan just existing at that moment was enough to make Emeline irritated.

“You know what,” Emeline says, closing the box of pizza, all five of them startled and suddenly turning towards her. “I think I’m going to turn in.”

“Are you sure?” Jeremy asks, a sound of panic in his voice.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m tired, I have to wake up early and I have another long day tomorrow, anyway.” Emeline leaves before anyone can protest.

The five of them watch Emeline leave, Fran and Maddy sending death glares at Keelan.

“Why must you have the personality of a guy who’s had back pain his entire life? What is wrong with you?,” Fran scolds him, throwing a napkin at him.

“What kind of insult even is that?”

“‘I don’t want this,’” Maddy mimics in a high pitched voice. “What adult talks like that?”

“Go apologize to her or I’m going to shove my foot so far up your ass you’re going to taste that instead of the pizza you took from Jeremy,” Fran threatens.

“I offered it to him,” Jeremy tries to diffuse the situation.

“You love buffalo chicken though. Linus has fed you buffalo wings in the locker room before,” John points out.

“We’re going to talk about that in a second,” Maddy starts, “but Keelan, come on. You know how stressful this time when lacrosse starts back up for her. You could have just taken the pizza she was nice enough to order for you.”

“I knew I should have let you starve.”

Keelan huffs, putting the pizza down on the table in front of them. He knocks on the door to Emeline’s room, not waiting for her to invite him in since the lights were already off. He sees her in the dark, lying on her back scrolling on her phone. “I’m a dick.”

“I know.”

He sits down on the bed next to her. “I’m sorry.”

“For?” she asks, treating him like one of her students.

Keelan sighs, lying down. “How long have you known Jeremy?”

“I met him like an hour before you got here.”

“He was the guy in the elevator.”

Emeline groans. “I thought we were past this.”

“Well.”

“Well?”

“Well, he likes you, Em.” Emeline can’t help but scoff. “I mean, I obviously can’t blame him. But, Em, he hasn’t taken his eyes off you the entire time he’s been here. He didn’t take his eyes off you in the elevator either. John even said Jeremy had mentioned that he’s been wanting to talk to you.”

“Oh, for fucks sake,” she groans again, putting her phone on her stomach and covering her face with her hands. “So what? That doesn’t mean he likes me, it means he’s kind of a creep. And if he does, what does it matter?”

“I’m afraid.”

Emeline reaches over to turn the lamp on, wanting to get a look at Keelan for this, this confirmation she was waiting for. She studies his face as he stares up at her ceiling fan. “Afraid of what?”

“What if I lose you?”

Emeline lets out a little laugh. “To Jeremy? Please.” She rests her head on his chest, Keelan wrapping his arm around her and kissing her forehead. “At most, he can be a friend. Just like Jack. Just like Marc,” she says, referencing his college teammates.

“Jack and Marc didn’t so obviously like you.”

“Jack and Marc both tried to hook up with me multiple times during college.”

Keelan sighs, pulling her closer. “Just a friend?”

“Just a friend.”

#jeremy swayman #jswayman #jeremy swayman fic #jeremy swayman imagine #nhl #nhl fic #nhl imagine #hockey #hockey fic #hockey imagine

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covid-safer-hotties · 1 month ago

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Old news, but good to review: Many of the issues Dr. Leonardi has been predicting since 2021 have emerged in our countries' "let her rip" strategy.

Also preserved in our archive (Daily updates!)

#mask up #public health #wear a mask #wear a respirator #pandemic #covid #still coviding #covid 19 #coronavirus #sars cov 2

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angstics · 2 years ago

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i finally articulated my opinion on my "is gerard way doing drag" question. my definition of drag is when a person impersonates, exaggerates, or appropriates a mode of gender expression. drag can be artistic or political (or both). drag can be an identity. drag and transgender identity are confused as the same thing. for some, it is. what is considered cross dressing can also be considered drag. it's important to note that drag is essential to queer culture, and how the us government harasses queer people through cross dressing, and now anti-drag, laws. we wouldnt be here talking about pop artists doing drag without drag performers and nonbinary-trans-gnc people.

to some people, a self-identified man in a female-identified dress is drag. "cross dressing" depends on cishet norms. queer people, especially nonbinary-trans-gnc people, have called to dismantle the assignment of gender to clothing. under that lens, a man in a dress is just a man in a dress -- for it to be drag, context and intent matters. that's how you get women doing female drag, or androgynous people doing what gerard way's been doing this last year on tour.

in asking "is gerard way doing drag?", im assigning importance to the topic. does it matter? within my understanding, drag is about intent and context as much as gender presentation. intent and context is what makes something important. therefore: understanding why the question is important solves it.

male music artists have a long history of cross dressing and doing drag. there's a good chance plugging any dude into a search engine with "drag" or "skirt" will bring something up. bowie, queen, nirvana, manic street preachers, placebo. here's a list. newer artists: lil nas x, harry styles, anthony green, pete wentz, young thug. some are impersonating female caricatures, some are masculinizing female clothes (long, ill-fitting, straight). some, like molko and lil nas, wear feminine clothes without exaggerating or masculinizing. gerard is in that same grey area.

male music artists have a long history of cross dressing and doing drag -- photos: "i want to break free" mv by queen (1984) / placebo in london (oct 1998) / lil nas x at audacy beach festival (dec 5, 2021) / fall out boy at rock for people (june 17, 2022)

all that history is why it was so weird when kerrang called gerard's riot fest "dress and heels" "a compelling show of contrarian anti-rock star eccentricity". it is not anti-rock star, at least not as described. it may be compelling, contrarian, and eccentric, but no reviewer really cares to analyze why. the closest they get is by identifying non-binary connection (them.us) and its relation to the "minefield that is American gender politics today" (latimes.com).

fans were struck by way's outfits for a lot of other reasons.

1. we have to get it out of the way that they just looked hot -- gerard is perpetually attractive, skirts are pretty. easy equation.

2. he has a long history of gender nonconformity. more on that in my #mcr queer studies tag. gerard is a 45 year old famously androgynous person who doesnt do labels, aligns himself with gender nonconformity (2014 reddit ama, 2018 advocate article, 2015 he/they tweet), and doesnt seem to care to be known as a man.

3. the tour outfits were well-fitted. many were crafted by skilled designer marina toybina and her team. which leads to ->

4. the outfits were very casual and very feminine. as mentioned, most men opt for masculine, ill-fitting skirts. which is to say they are NOT showing leg and they are definitely not showing ass. gerard doesnt steer clear from shortness or tightness or movement. he also dresses in ways people dress day to day -- the miniskirt is as casual as the shorts as casual as the jeans. there's some discussion to be had about what casual means -- he could be imitating expected presentation or just using basics, like his frequent shirt and pants.

the miniskirt is as casual as the shorts as casual as the jeans -- photos: firefly music festival (sept 23, 2022) / uncasville (sept 1, 2022) / eden project night 1 (may 16, 2022)

5. there was variety. many outfits, many types. he wasnt just doing pure femininity. some looks were high concept, some low concept. some gendered, some genderless. some feminine, some masculine. it was playful. its honesty evident in its fluidity yet cohesiveness. expanded in the next points ->

6. they incorporate elements of masculinity and gender neutrality concurrent with the feminine. his aggressive, energetic performance style often doesnt mind what people are seeing when his skirt lifts or shirt droops. he has little to no make-up -- if he does, it's stage and not glam. the closest he gets is the agender black swan look at boston night 1, the stage contour at wwwy night 3, and dubious lipstick at firefly. he also maintains the same hairstyle: barely styled, not straightened-curled. pinned a few times, gelled back some other times.

he has little to no make-up -- if he does, it's stage and not glam -- photos: boston night 1 (sept 7, 2022) / when we were young night 3 (oct 29, 2022) / firefly music festival (sept 23, 2022)

7. the character outfits weren't caricatures, like green's sleazy hooker or queen's uptight housewives. gerard's characters were appropriated but not exaggerated. cheerleader, nurse, manson girl, jackie o, princess diane, st joan. all figures of pop culture. he wore them as they were. even comparing green and way's similar white-green cheerleader costumes there's a difference in presentation. green wears long leggings, way wears shorts. green's costume is based on a stranger things character, way's is a custom remade vintage outfit. green exhibits the masculinization of feminine clothes which way subverts. this comparison highlights what makes way's outfits different, and therefore exciting to talk about.

green exhibits the masculinization of feminine clothes which way subverts -- photos: saosin in garden grove, ca (oct 27, 2022) / mcr in nashville, tn (aug 23, 2022)

8. and when he played with masculinity, it was in a way that was dubbed "boydrag". the new jersey night 2 casino singer look was a dramatic caricature that heightened masculine features until they were pure style... the defintion of camp. he had a mustache -- thin like john waters or a confirmed bachelor, and drawn on with eyeliner. he had a suit -- a pink-gold, glittery woman's cut jacket with a glittery bowtie and pleated shirt. the dramatic flair is accentuated by the black eye make-up, the frank sinatra "my way" cover, the drum tag: "the house always wins".

the defintion of camp -- photos: new jersey night 2 (sept 21, 2022) 1 / 2

when i asked which outfits others considered drag, all replies identified the casino singer and jackie o as drag and the rest as "just clothes". this relation made me understand why the rest couldnt be drag despite all the connections i talked about above. the jackie o outfit doesnt exaggerate the source like casino singer, but the source itself is both highly dramatic and highly gendered. cheer is gendered but not highly dramatic, st joan dramatic but not highly gendered. diane is gendered and dramatic, but not highly. the list goes on and on. it's a fine line. especially cheer could tip into drag for me.

but the source itself is both highly dramatic and highly gendered -- photos: mcr at riot fest (oct 12, 2022) / jackie kennedy onassis (jan 3, 1971)

if drag is understood in this way, simply wearing gendered clothes isnt drag. the look itself has to be about the performance of gender, however that may be presented. that’s the importance of classification. we can see what the artist is doing.

#mcr #gerard way #mcr queer studies #mcr performance studies #qessay #mcr fashion studies

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