#oversimplifies-

[serialgirlposter]

Testament i drew on waayyy too small of a canvas.

[liorlenn]

(KCD2 SPOILERS)

So. I’ve been laughing about this like all day and I need to talk about it. My gay ship just went canon in the most male power fantasy game of all time.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 recently released (I’ve been playing it, it’s good). It’s an RPG set in medieval Bohemia. You play as Henry, a blacksmith’s son. The first game, released back in 2018, starts with your village being burned to the ground and everyone either is killed or has to flee. The rest of that game is you trying to, among various things, deal with your trauma and get revenge. It’s a very well executed story in my opinion.

A notable character in the game is Lord Hans Capon, who was a real guy but the game version is a bit loosely based on him. Hans and Henry become rivals then friends. Their noble/peasant dynamic is reminiscent of Arthur and Merlin in BBC Merlin (though I would argue the class dynamics are far better executed and more nuanced). Like ten people including me decided to ship them.

The first game was a bit rough but overall good. It garnered a decent audience, including a notably large audience of straight white men who really like medieval history but not enough to know much about it beyond swords are cool. You get the picture.

The second game is announced. Those guys I mentioned are super excited!

Well. As it turns out there’s going to be a homosexual relationship in the game, according to an announcement made by the director at the end of January. Uh oh. W-well as long as it’s not the main character-

Cue release day, February 4th. IT IS!!!

HANS AND HENRY. It’s THEM! They have sex ON SCREEN. No nuance about it (though it’s important to note this is an option you have to CHOOSE).

The guys go crazy. KCD has gone woke they cry. And to make it worse there’s *gasp* a black man in a Bohemian court! DEI!

I can’t believe Warhorse Studios did it. I’m genuinely amazed. I have never been so vindicated in my life.

Everyone play this game for the love of god. The combat is tough but there’s plenty of guides online. It’s worth it I promise. (However, caution that the co-owner of the studio is a bit of a shithead. I just try to ignore him, but I get it if that’s a dealbreaker.)

[cobblestone-butch]

Love love love watching Pearl, Etho, and Tango talk game balancing and rule clarification. Pearl sees games as a skill to master, and her perspective is concentrated towards what feels both achievable and fair, throughout a journey from beginner to pro. Etho sees games as a puzzle to solve, a system to optimise, and his concerns about game balancing focus on where the loopholes are or what could be exploited in a way that produces skewed results. Tango's role is creating and running a game that is engaging, so he curtails pure 'game design' suggestions by asking if something is going to be fun, for the players of all levels and the viewers, too. In conversations between them, the points they raise are how they show their personal investment in their game and its players. I think that's neat

[charcubed]

Love Transcends Severance

"My Love, Mine All Mine" Mark Scout / Gemma + Petey + Helly

Twitter | Youtube

[warblogs17282]

idk if this is a controversial opinion but screw it, I do like the fact that they decided to make Millie straight.

Before you all start assuming things, I love how much queer rep is in helluva boss, encompassing a lot of different sexualities and more, I just simply love how unapologetically queer helluva boss is.

With that out of the way, the main reason why I like the choice to make her straight is because the show has made it very clear that she's a straight ally, which as we know, straight allies are important in the real world as well, so because of that, I am glad that the show has given us a clear example of a straight ally.

Plus, her being a straight ally with a bisexual husband, a trans lesbian sister, and her being incredibly supportive of a pansexual imp with strong feelings for a gay owl makes Millie cool as fuck imo.

[significant-narratives]

never forget that ‘politics have no place in sports’ is just code for ‘politics that we don’t agree with have no place in sports’ which is really code for ‘we will not allow actions and policies that may shift the power dynamics of historically white, patriarchal, capitalist institutions to be platformed lest we lose our place atop the social food chain’

[elbiotipo]

It's fascinating to me that for our modern (at least on European-influenced societies) thinking, the classical Roman way of life is so familiar. When you read about it, the rethoric of the speeches feels modern, a society based on contracts and laws and litigation, with public works, a state bureucracy and standing army and trade economy and even spectator sports, a concept of philosophy separated from religious dogma and tradition, with even a limited understanding of a government by 'the people' and 'citizenship', even the names all sound familiar even if in completely different contexts, and no wonder since they inspired our current politics.

This all in contrast to medieval feudalism, which is completely alien to me. A society created upon family connections and oaths of fealty and serfdom with no such thing as an overarching state, not even kingdoms were any more real than a title one person holds, and all held together completely, utterly, to an extent I cannot emphasize enough, by the institution of the Church and the Christian faith. In a way we just aren't used today in our secular world. I simply cannot overstate how everything, every single thing, was permeated by faith in the Medieval worldview and the Church which took its power from it, we have an understanding of it but I think people just don't realize it.

[anghraine]

I finally read a good article about Austen and eighteenth-century socioeconomics that gives rough approximations of eighteenth-century prices/incomes in modern (I think c. 2014) currency, but is appropriately emphatic about just how rough those approximations must always be given drastic differences in the economic worlds we live in. It's actually much more about the economics than Austen, and particularly about how much descriptions of "middling" incomes and what was affordable to people who had those incomes is still a conversation about a tiny, tiny elite in terms of the overall population at the time.

Austen-wise, though, the author also found room for a tangent in which he goes off on a scathing condemnation of Mr Bennet in socioeconomic terms, which I do love to see. Most baronets generally had land and incomes far closer to Mr Bennet's than Darcy's and yet Mr Bennet can't be bothered to even slightly provide for his children's futures beyond what was legally required by his marriage settlement (even the girls' meagre inheritances mostly come from Mrs Bennet's money rather than his). The author acknowledges the passage about Mr Bennet saving to counteract Mrs Bennet's extravagance and also how this is an indictment of Mr Bennet as well as Mrs Bennet, something that criticisms of him often skate past, and even points out how enthusiastic Mr Bennet is about the convenience of Darcy paying for it all in a way that can be read as funny and endearing, but also as distastefully shameless.

Anyway, it was nice to enjoy an academic text again, lol.

[stgroversfire]

i do really adore the tgcf/mdzs top dynamic of "i love this extremely traumatized man so im going to follow him around and enable him to do whatever he wants"

[randomstuffjustrandom]

Presents

Tony: Present time!!!

Avengers giving each other gag gifts and stuff.

Natasha, handing Clint a present: Here, Clint.

Clint, shaking the box: Ooh. I hope it's HYDRA heads. Please be HYDRA heads, please be HYDRA heads.

Clint opens the box: It's HYDRA heads. (The head of some HYDRA ppl)Awww, how did you know?

Natasha, smiling: Merry Christmas

Avengers: *horrified silence*

[fnord888]

It's funny how the "voting themselves bread and circus" antidemocracy myth is totally backwards. The voters will vote themselves counterproductive austerity while the technocrats will fantasize about a coup allowing them to force the masses to accept the economically optimal amount of bread and circus.

[egophiliac]

Hi!!! I just wanted to say that I really love the way you draw/write Vil in your little comics! I think you do a great job at capturing the more fun side of him in addition to the “pretentious, wine mom” look that’s often portrayed. It just makes the character feel more real.

Also, I was wondering if there was any way you could post that other version of Vil’s unique magic poster to the drive? The one with the full body shot? That’s one of my favorite pieces! (If not it’s totally chill - just figured I’d ask)

Thanks and have a great day!!!

thank you! 💜 and yeah, sure! I popped it in there as "Fairest One of All (Alternate)", and I apologize in advance for your black ink. (secretly though I also love how that one came out, so thank you for the validation. :') sometimes I do good!)

confession: when Twst was still in pre-release, I was not expecting to like any of the pom trio (the website descriptions are kinda terrible for everyone, and especially them). fortunately I was immediately proven wrong when it turned out that they're less ~mysterious aloof beauties~, and more the very weirdly specific dynamic of "Team Rocket except James got all the camp (and also Meowth is their weird little feral child they're trying to pull a pygmalion on against his will)".

(it's a good dynamic)

[waterlilyvioletfog]

FUNDAMENTALLY! Word of Honor is about the epic romances had at the Villains Retirement Home. Okay we’re talking the ex-spymaster with erectile dysfunction 4 the world’s most shameless old mob boss looking to marry his cherished daughter off before he dies. And the plot is the two of them getting divorced and getting back together like 10 times because they keep meeting up with exes, or getting into fights about the spymaster’s terminal cancer, or they disagree on parenting the random orphan they’ve picked up, or like, if we’re retired shouldn’t we stop murdering people isn’t that kind of a young man’s game anyways? Meanwhile there’s a plot happening with a macguffin that is NOT the point

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

broke: haru hates akechi and doesn't talk to him ever again after he comes back

woke: haru chooses to be kind without forgiveness and akechi doesn't know how to live with her genuine compassion because it'd be so much easier if she hated him instead

[orions-garden]

shoutout to alessandra strong. showed up beefing with juno steel then kissed him on the lips in the same episode and disappeared for a season and a half only to tell him about her future wife and mostly to tell him to get his shit together. then fucked off of mars never to be seen again. iconic.

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe Skeleton Crew was the fairy tale that our generation needs, just like how Star Wars was the fairy tale the '70s needed.

Star Wars showed a big, evil, unstoppable Empire and said, "Don't worry! We'll win and everything will be better!"

Skeleton Crew goes, "Everything's not better, but that's okay! There's still good out there and we can keep fighting for it!"

The first was a reminder that in fairy tales, good triumphs over evil.

The second is a reminder that in fairy tales, the forest has scary things, but also has good things.

The first is hope for an ideal future, the second provides hope in a messy here-and-now. Both are important, but the second is especially relevant to our inescapable-news-cycle times.