#project based learning theory

[aspamschool]

Project-based learning (PBL) has become increasingly popular as an educational strategy in recent years. With this method, students work on an important project frequently created to solve a particular issue or difficulty in the real world. Learning in the best schools in Delhi NCR is focused on inquiry-based learning, in which students work with their peers, ask questions, and perform research to get a deeper grasp of the material.

[ameliajohnson2608]

8 Interactive Learning Methods for Better Engagement

These learning approaches motivate students to connect with the content and significantly improve comprehension and recall while creating a pleasurable educational journey. Unlike sitting passively to read or hear lectures interactive learning motivates students to take part through tasks like role-playing and projects. By using these strategies students learn to solve problems and collaborate effectively in practical contexts. Interactive quizzes such as Kahoot! create a competitive and enjoyable learning environment. By using hands-on projects and digital simulations effectively students further their insight into the concepts. Using peer instruction and whiteboard activities inspires partnership and dialogue to improve student participation. Active learning strategies establish a vibrant and involving atmosphere that encourages students to take part enthusiastically. Consequently, student achievement rises along with their enthusiasm for learning.

Group Discussion

In study group discussions, students can present their opinions while obtaining fresh viewpoints and resolving uncertainties about coursework . In a cooperative environment students discover various perspectives that typically result in a profound grasp of the subject matter. In these discussions students actively participate and think critically by sharing their opinions and interacting with peers. Participating in group discussions lets students teach each other about concepts which deepens their collective knowledge. This participatory strategy successfully transforms tough subjects into clearer aspects by breaking down complicated material.

Interactive Quizzes

Interactive quizzes change the learning process into a fun and challenging activity. With Kahoot! and Quizlet available to them students can gauge their skills in a fun and interactive manner. These quizzes enable students to recall information and also point out spots needing additional emphasis. Students are prompted to take an active role by the competitive nature; instant feedback helps them fix their misunderstandings immediately. Quizzes that are interactive boost retention and create a more fun learning journey. Quizzes prove useful in revision times by providing excitement and reinforcing vital principles.

Hands-On Projects

Practical assignments present a real-world way of studying that fortifies theoretical ideas. When students create models or run experiments they must interact closely with the subject. When students practically utilize their knowledge they improve their insight and gain essential problem-solving techniques. Through projects students engage in experiential learning which drives them to create original ideas and relate theories to actual practice. Engaging in these activities builds teamwork and collaboration notably in group efforts making hands-on projects an excellent approach to strengthen learning and improve recall.

Role-Playing

Role-playing changes topics such as history and literature into engaging learning opportunities by enabling students to perform scenarios. Performing historical scenarios or presenting scientific methods assists students in acquiring a clearer comprehension of theoretical ideas. Using this technique involves different senses which makes the subject easier to remember and quickly accessed. Active engagement and creativity arise from role-playing activities that create a delightful learning experience. Students improve their memory and use their skills better at tests by taking on the role of a character or idea.

Gamified Learning

Mechanics such as levels and points in gamified learning increase student involvement. By incorporating these elements into their systems Duolingo and Classcraft encourage learners with a fun and challenging atmosphere. By creating challenges within lessons gamified learning ensures that students stay engaged and encouraged to meet their objectives while delivering instant rewards and a sense of achievement. By using this technique students engage more actively and frequently achieve higher retention scores as learning becomes tied to positive moments.

Peer Teaching

In peer teaching students assume a teacher's position making it an effective educational approach. Guiding classmates on concepts needs a firm grasp of the content that amplifies their learning and refines their interactions. Students team up to make complicated subjects clearer and to address queries in this method. When students teach each other they not only build their own confidence but also create shared advantages. Evidence suggests that individuals frequently keep information more clearly when instructing peers facilitating sustained retention.

Digital Simulations

Learning complicated topics in physics chemistry and economics becomes easier for students using digital simulations. With tools like PhET simulations in hand students can tweak variables and catch the real-time outcomes transforming theory into clearer insights. These interactive tools enable students to explore and interact with difficult concepts like chemical reactions and economic principles which standard textbooks may find hard to illustrate. Through participation in these activities students improve their ability to solve problems and develop a better grasp of the theory. Learners can safely examine different scenarios using digital simulations which nurtures their understanding and consolidates their knowledge.

Interactive Whiteboards

Interactive whiteboards play a vital role in encouraging joint effort and original thinking in classrooms. This platform enables students and teachers to jointly tackle challenges and develop concepts using visual tools immediately. These tools enable students to create and edit content right on the board improving interaction and involvement in the learning process. During collaborative moments interactive whiteboards encourage dialogue and inventiveness urging learners to involved and express their ideas. By using this visual and teamwork method students can better remember information and enhance their understanding and recall

[the-cosmic-cauldron]

Your Mars sign can indicate the activities you engage in regularly. Here’s the breakdown based on element:

Fire Mars

Go to the gym, take walks, engage with different people, go to clubs, attend parties, hang out with friends, go on random adventures, create artwork, make music, gamble, work a labor job, exercise at home, meet new people, go on dates, ask for people’s numbers, work on your passions, hook up with people, attend gatherings, spend time with family, play video games, cook, public speaking, play pick-up sports, dance, drive to get away, have debates, take pictures and upload them to social media, spend time in nature, try new food spots, attend events.

Earth Mars

Follow morning and night routines, work long hours, study for school, work towards goals, play an instrument, nap, go out to eat, order food delivery, spend time in nature, get nails and hair done, visit a spa, do Pilates or yoga, sit in a sauna, take a warm bath, shower routine, go on dates, be intimate with a partner, read books, write, clean your space, improve an interest, check emails, attend appointments, run errands, organize and manage others, help out a friend or family member, work on your resume, look for job opportunities, shop, spend time with family.

Air Mars

Socialize with new people, come up with theories, read books, search questions on Google, use ChatGPT, think of ideas to execute for the future, learn something new, solve current life problems, talk to friends or family, help others with their problems, flirt with someone, try to get everyone on the same page, dress up, apply makeup, visit aesthetic places, work on a project with a friend or family member, talk on FaceTime, message throughout the day, use your phone or PC, interact with gadgets at home, play video games, take time for yourself, volunteer, use social media to bring awareness to social causes or humanitarian issues, do puzzles or mentally stimulating games, debate, share opinions, date different people.

Water Mars

Stay home in bed, cuddle, eat at your favorite food spots, binge-watch movies or TV shows, take naps, cook or bake, listen to music for long periods, journal, spend time with friends and family, bring food, gifts, or something needed to others, decorate and set up your space, be a listening ear, have existential crises, do tarot, read astrology content, reflect on situations that happened earlier in the day, week, or month, engage in intimacy, go on dates, vent to a trusted person, cry, do art, daydream, play video games, have a drink of wine, smoke weed, or spend time alone.

[grey-sorcery]

New to witchcraft? Awesome! Here's some things you should pursue.

An understanding of sympathetic magic: Correspondences, their metaphysical and theoretical framework, and their derivation.

Magical systems that incorporate the entire gender spectrum.

Energy work that isn't based on visualization.

The means of manifestation: How, where, and when spells affect physical change. The physical mechanisms through which witchcraft manifests beyond just willpower/intent/wishes/etc.

The history and subsequent influences of, and on, popular contemporary practices like Hermeticism, "Ceremonial Magick"/Golden Dawn, Wicca, and New Age/New Thought/LOA/Reiki.

How to approach and practice magic with critical thinking skills.

Influence of consumerism on contemporary practices.

Divination as systems: all methods of divination beyond tarot, their statistical applications, and their different methods of use.

The anthropology of medieval Arabia, Europe, Near East, and Asia relative to the magical or occult publications of the era. What is purely religious, parareligious, or syncretist and what does that mean for the interpretation of the text?

The genuine limits of our knowledge of the ancient world, what's possible for us to know and what can't we know?

Conversations with practitioners of closed or semi-closed practices and perspectives of POC when it comes to what the western world would label as "witchcraft".

The differences and similarities between superstition and the practice of witchcraft.

An understanding of the influence of colonialism on modern witchcraft and the language used to discuss magic.

Critical Race Theory (CRT), Queer Theory, and systems of oppression.

Botany and herbology: An understanding of the physical and medical properties of plants.

Building a personal lexicon for modern and/or colloquial terms used in and by the witchcraft community to describe and discuss practices.

Spell design: What makes a spell a spell? What is the smallest or slightest action that can be considered a spell and why? What are the most important and influential elements of the design and application of a spell?

Altars: Their use, design, and potential; whether or not an altar would benefit your practice or goals for practice.

A critical approach to spirit work and astral projection, being able to discern between personal narratives and probable experiences.

A safe and solid community to become a part of. One that does not allow the influence of personal narratives (Without addressing them as such), doesn't allow for the mixing of adults and minors, and with established and enforced logical and reasonable rules.

Collect and cross-reference correspondences from as many sources as possible, then start to create your own.

Try to find a STEM subject that interests you and study it through any non-dogmatic avenues available to you.

The items highlighted in blue are things I highly recommend!

Here is a list of things to avoid.

This is, of course, not an end-all-be-all list of possible responsible and healthy pursuits.

You can learn more about me, find my master-post, check out my Patreon, and suggest content here.

[planckstorytime]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard: Strangled by Gentle Hands

*The following contains spoilers*

“You would risk everything you have in the hope that the future is better? What if it isn’t? What if you wake up to find the future you shaped is worse than what was?”

– Solas, Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014)

I. Whatever It Takes

My premium tickets for a local film festival crumpled and dissolved in my pants pocket, unredeemed as they swirled in the washing machine. Throughout that October weekend in 2015, I neglected my celebratory privileges, my social visits to friends, and even my brutal honors literary theory class. All because a golden opportunity stretched before me: a job opening for a writing position at the once-legendary BioWare, with an impending deadline.

The application process wasn’t like anything I’d seen before. Rather than copy+paste a cover letter and quickly swap out a couple of nouns here and there, this opening required me to demonstrate my proficiency in both words and characters – namely, BioWare’s characters. Fanfiction wasn’t normally in my wheelhouse – at the time, I had taken mainly to spinning love sonnets (with a miserable success rate). But I wouldn’t balk at this chance to work on one of my dream franchises – especially since the job prospects for fresh English BAs weren’t exactly promising. So, I got to work crafting a branching narrative based on the company’s most recent title: Dragon Age: Inquisition. Barely two months prior, I saw the conclusion of that cast’s story when the Inquisitor stabbed a knife into a map and swore to hunt her former ally, Solas, to the ends of the earth. Now it was my turn to puppeteer them, to replicate the distinct voice of each party member and account for how they’d react to the scenario I crafted. And if it went well, then maybe I’d be at the tip of the spear on that hunt for Solas. Finishing the writing sprint left me exhausted, but also proud of my work.

The folks at BioWare obviously felt differently, because I received a rejection letter less than a week later. Maybe they found my story trite and my characterization inaccurate, or maybe they just didn’t want to hire a student with no professional experience to his name. Regardless, I was devastated. It wouldn’t be until years later that I learned that, had my application been accepted, I likely would’ve been drafted into working on the studio’s ill-fated looter shooter, Anthem (2019), noteworthy for its crunch and mismanagement. My serendipitous rejection revealed that sometimes the future you strive to build was never meant to match your dreams. What seemed like an opportunity to strike oil actually turned out to be a catastrophic spill.

Still, my passion for the Dragon Age series (as well as Mass Effect) persisted in the face of BioWare’s apparent decline. I maintain that Inquisition is actually one of the studio’s best games, and my favorite in the series, to the point where I even dressed up as Cole for a convention one time. The game came to me at a very sensitive time in my life, and its themes of faith vs falsehood, the co-opting of movements in history, and the instability of power all spoke to me. But I will elaborate more on that at a later date. My point is, I held on to that hope that, in spite of everything, BioWare could eventually deliver a satisfactory resolution to the cliffhanger from their last title. Or perhaps it was less hope and more of a sunk cost fallacy, as an entire decade passed with nary a peep from Dragon Age.

As years wore on, news gradually surfaced about the troubled development of the fourth game. Beginning under the codename “Joplin” in 2015 with much of the same creative staff as its predecessors, this promising version of the game would be scrapped two years later for not being in line with Electronic Arts’s business model (i.e. not being a live-service scam). Thus, it was restarted as “Morrison”. The project cantered along in this borderline unrecognizable state for a few years until they decided to reorient it back into a single-player RPG, piling even more years of development time onto its shaky Jenga tower of production. Indeed, critical pieces were constantly being pulled out from the foundations during this ten year development cycle. Series regulars like producer Mark Darrah and director Mike Laidlaw made their departures, and the project would go on to have several more directors and producers come and go: Matthew Goldman, Christian Dailey, and Mac Walters, to name a few key figures. They eventually landed on John Epler as creative director, Corinne Busche as game director, and Benoit Houle as director of product development. Then came the massive layoffs of dozens of employees, including series-long writer Mary Kirby, whose work still made it into the final version of DA4. Finally, the game received a rebranding just four months before release, going from Dreadwolf (which it had been known as since 2022) to The Veilguard (2024) – a strange title with an even stranger article.

Needless to say, these production snags did not inspire confidence, especially considering BioWare’s been low on goodwill between a string of flops like Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) and, before that, controversial releases like Dragon Age II (2011) and Mass Effect 3 (2012). The tumult impacted The Veilguard’s shape, which scarcely resembles an RPG anymore, let alone a Dragon Age game. The party size is reduced from four to three, companions can no longer be directly controlled, the game has shifted to a focus on action over tactics a la God of War (2018), the number of available abilities has shrunk, and there’s been a noticeable aesthetic shift towards a more cartoonish style. While I was open to the idea of changing up the combat (the series was never incredible on that front), I can’t get over the sensation that these weren’t changes conceived out of genuine inspiration, but rather vestigial traces from the live-service multiplayer iteration. The digital fossil record implies a lot. Aspects like the tier-based gear system, the instanced and segmented missions, the vapid party approval system, the deficit of World State import options, and the fact that rarely does more than the single mandatory companion have anything unique to say on a quest – it all points to an initial design with a very different structure from your typical single-player RPG. The Veilguard resembles a Sonic Drive-In with a mysterious interior dining area – you can tell it was originally conceived as something else.1

That said, the product itself is functional. It contains fewer bugs than any previous game in the franchise, and maybe BioWare’s entire catalog for that matter. I wouldn’t say the combat soars, but it does glide. There’s a momentum and responsiveness to the battle system that makes it satisfying to pull off combos and takedowns against enemies, especially if you’re juggling multiple foes at once. Monotony sets in after about thirty or forty hours, largely due to the fact that you’re restricted to a single class’s moveset on account of the uncontrollable companions. Still, this design choice can encourage replay value, as it does in Mass Effect, and free respec options and generous skill point allocations offset the tedium somewhat.

While the character and creature designs elicit controversy – both for the exaggerated art direction and, in the case of demons and darkspawn, total redesign – the environmental art is nothing short of breathtaking. I worried that this title would look dated because of how long it had been in development and the age of the technology it was built upon. Those fears were swiftly banished when I saw the cityscapes of Minrathous, the cyclopean architecture of the Nevarran Grand Necropolis, or the overgrown ruins of Arlathan. But like everything in The Veilguard, it’s a double-edged sword. The neon-illuminated streets of Docktown, the floating citadel of the Archon’s Palace, and the whirring mechanisms of the elven ruins evoke a more fantastically futuristic setting that feels at odds with all three previous titles (even though all three exhibited a stylistic shift to some extent). It aggravates the feeling of discordance between this rendition of Thedas and the one returning players know.

All of these elements make The Veilguard a fine fantasy action-adventure game – even a good one, I’d say. But as both the culmination of fifteen years of storytelling and as a narrative-based roleplaying game – the two most important facets of its identity – it consistently falls short. Dragon Age began as a series with outdated visuals and often obtuse gameplay, but was borne aloft by its worldbuilding, characterization, and dialogue. Now, that paradigm is completely inverted. The more you compare it to the older entries, the more alien it appears. After all these years of anticipation, how did it end up this way? Was this the only path forward?

Throughout The Veilguard’s final act, characters utter the phrase “Whatever it takes,” multiple times. Some might say too many. I feel like this mantra applied to the development cycle. As more struggles mounted, the team made compromise after compromise to allow the game to exist at all, to give the overarching story some conclusion in the face of pressure from corporate shareholders, AAA market expectations, and impatient fans. Whatever it takes to get this product out the door and into people’s homes.

This resulted in a game that was frankensteined together, assembled out of spare parts and broken dreams. It doesn’t live up to either the comedic heights or dramatic gravity of Inquisition’s “Trespasser” DLC from 2015, despite boasting the same lead writer in Trick Weekes. Amid the disappointment, we’re left with an unfortunate ultimatum: It’s either this or nothing.

I don’t mean that as a way to shield The Veilguard from criticism, or to dismiss legitimate complaints as ungrateful gripes. Rather, I’m weighing the value of a disappointing reality vs an idealized fantasy. The “nothing”, in this sense, was the dream I had for the past decade of what a perfect Dragon Age 4 looked like. With the game finally released, every longtime fan has lost their individualized, imaginary perfection in the face of an authentic, imperfect text. Was the destruction of those fantasies a worthy trade? It doesn’t help that the official artbook showcases a separate reality that could’ve been, with a significant portion dedicated to the original concepts for Joplin that are, personally, a lot closer to my ideal vision. I think it would’ve done wonders to ground the game as more Dragon Age-y had they stuck with bringing back legacy characters, such as Cole, Calpernia, Imshael, and the qunari-formerly-known as Sten.

I don’t necessarily hate The Veilguard (I might actually prefer it to Dragon Age II), but I can’t help but notice a pattern in its many problems – a pattern that stems from a lack of faith in the audience and a smothering commitment to safety over boldness. As I examine its narrative and roleplaying nuances, I wish to avoid comparing it to groundbreaking RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023) or even Dragon Age: Origins (2009), as the series has long been diverging from that type of old-school CRPG. Rather, except when absolutely necessary, I will only qualitatively compare it to Inquisition, its closest relative.

And nowhere does it come up shorter to Inquisition than in the agency (or lack thereof) bestowed to the player to influence their character and World State.

II. Damnatio Memoriae

No, that’s not the name of an Antivan Crow (though I wouldn’t blame you for thinking so, since we have a character named “Lucanis Dellamorte”). It’s a Latin phrase meaning “condemnation of memory”, applied to a reviled person by destroying records of their existence and defacing objects of their legacy. In this case, it refers to the player. When it comes to their influence over the world and their in-game avatar, The Veilguard deigns to limit or outright eliminate it.

Save transfers that allow for the transmission of World States (the carrying over of choices from the previous games) have been a staple of the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises. Even when their consequences are slight, the psychological effect that this personalization has on players is profound, and one of many reasons why fans grow so attached to the characters and world. At its core, it’s an illusion, but one that’s of similar importance to the illusion that an arbitrary collection of 1s and 0s can create an entire digital world. Player co-authorship guarantees a level of emotional investment that eclipses pre-built backgrounds.

However, The Veilguard limits the scope to just three choices, a dramatic decrease from the former standard. All import options come from Inquisition, with two just from the “Trespasser” expansion. One variable potentially impacts the ending, while the other two, in most cases, add one or two lines of dialogue and a single codex entry. Inquisition, by contrast, imported a bevy of choices from both previous games. Some of them had major consequences to quests such as “Here Lies the Abyss” and “The Final Piece”, both of which incorporated data from two games prior. The Veilguard is decidedly less ambitious. Conspicuously absent options include: whether Morrigan has a child or not, the fate of Hawke, the status of the Hero of Fereldan, the current monarchs of Fereldan and Orlais, the current Divine of the southern Chantry, and the individual outcomes of more than two dozen beloved party members across the series. Consequently, the fourth installment awkwardly writes around these subjects – Varric avoids mentioning his best friend, Hawke, as does Isabela ignore her potential lover. Fereldan, Orlais, and the Chantry are headed by Nobody in Particular. Morrigan, a prominent figure in the latest game, makes no mention of her potential son or even her former traveling companions. And the absence of many previous heroes, even ones with personal stakes in the story, feels palpably unnatural. I suspect this flattening of World States into a uniform mold served, in addition to cutting costs, to create parity between multiple cooperative players during the initial live-service version of Morrison. Again, the compromises of the troubled production become apparent, except this time, they’re taking a bite out of the core narrative.

Moreover, the game’s unwillingness to acknowledge quantum character states means that it’s obliged to omit several important cast members. At this point, I would’ve rather had them establish an official canon for the series rather than leaving everything as nebulous and undefined as possible. That way at least the world would’ve felt more alive, and we could’ve gotten more action out of relevant figures like Cassandra, Alistair, Fenris, Merrill, Cole, and Iron Bull. Not to mention that The Veilguard’s half-measure of respectful non-intereference in past World States ultimately fails. Certain conversations unintentionally canonize specific events, including references to Thom Rainier and Sera, both of whom could go unrecruited in Inquisition, as well as Morrigan’s transformation into a dragon in the battle with Corypheus in that game’s finale. But whatever personal history the player had with them doesn’t matter. The entire Dragon Age setting now drifts in a sea of ambiguity, its history obfuscated. It feels as gray and purgatorial as Solas’s prison for the gods.

Beyond obscuring the past, The Veilguard restrains the player’s agency over the present. When publications first announced that the game would allow audiences to roleplay transgender identities and have that acknowledged by the party, I grew very excited – both at the encouraging representation, and at the depth of roleplaying mechanics that such an inclusion suggested. Unfortunately, The Veilguard offers little in roleplaying beyond this. The player character, Rook, always manifests as an altruistic, determined, friendly hero, no matter what the player chooses (if they’re offered choices at all). The selections of gender identity and romantic partner constitute the totality of how Rook defines themselves, post-character creation – exceptions that prove the rule of vacancy. Everything else is set in stone. The options presented are good, and should remain as standard, but in the absence of other substantive roleplaying experiences, their inclusion starts to feel frustratingly disingenuous and hollow, as if they were the only aspects the developers were willing to implement, and only out of obligation to meet the bare minimum for player agency. In my opinion, it sours the feature and exudes a miasma of cynicism.

Actual decisions that impact the plot are few and far between, but at least we have plenty of dialogue trees. In this type of game, dialogue options might usually lead to diverging paths that eventually converge to progress the plot. You might be choosing between three different flavors of saying “yes”, but as with the World States, that illusion of agency is imperative for the roleplaying experience. The Veilguard doesn’t even give you the three flavors – the encouraging, humorous, and stern dialogue options are frequently interchangeable, and rarely does it ever feel like the player is allowed to influence Rook’s reactions. Relationships with companions feel predetermined, as the approval system has no bearing on your interactions anymore. There are so few moments for you to ask your companions questions and dig in deep compared to Inquisition. Combined together, these issues make me question why we even have dialogue with our party at all. Rook adopts the same parental affect with each grown adult under their command, and it feels like every conversation ends the same way irrespective of the player’s input. With the exception of the flirting opportunities, they might as well be non-interactive cutscenes.

Rook’s weak characterization drags the game down significantly. With such limited authorship afforded to the player, it’s difficult to regard them as anything more than their eponymous chess piece – a straightfoward tool, locked on a grid, and moving flatly along the surface as directed.

III. Dull in Docktown

On paper, a plot summary of The Veilguard sounds somewhere between serviceable and phenomenal: Rook and Varric track down Solas to stop him from tearing down the Veil and destroying the world. In the process, they accidentally unleash Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, two of the wicked Evanuris who once ruled over the elven people millenia ago. With Solas advising them from an astral prison, Rook gathers a party together to defeat the risen gods, along with their servants and sycophants. Over the course of the adventure, they uncover dark truths about the origins of the elves, the mysterious Titans, and the malevolent Blight that’s served as an overarching antagonistic force. Eventually, Rook and friends join forces with Morrigan and the Inquisitor, rally armies to face off with their foes, and slay both the gods and their Archdemon thralls before they can conjure the full terror of the Blight. As Solas once again betrays the group, Rook and company have to put a decisive stop to his plans, which could potentially involve finally showing him the error of his ways.

The bones of The Veilguard’s story are sturdier than a calcium golem. Problems arise when you look at the actual writing, dialogue, and characterization – the flesh, blood, and organs of the work.

I’ve seen others chide the writing as overly quippy, but that better describes previous titles. Rather, I think The Veilguard’s dialogue is excessively utilitarian and preliminary, like a first draft awaiting refinement. Characters describe precisely what’s happening on screen as it’s happening, dryly exposit upon present circumstances, and repeat the same information ad nauseum. This infuriating repetition does little to reveal hidden components of their personalities, or their unique responses to situations. You won’t hear anything like Cole’s cerebral magnetic poetry or Vivienne’s dismissive arrogance. Many exchanges could’ve been uttered by Nobody in Particular, as it’s just dry recitation after recitation. It almost feels like watching an English second language instructional video, or a demonstration on workplace safety precautions. Clarity and coherence come at the cost of characterization and charisma.

Words alone fail to make them interesting. Most companions lack the subtlety and depth I had come to expect from the franchise, with many conversations amounting to them just plainly stating how they’re feeling. Most rap sessions sound like they’re happening in a therapist’s office with how gentle, open, and uncomplicated they feel. Compare this to Inquisition, where every character has a distinct voice (I should know, I had to try to copy them for that stupid application), as well as their own personal demons that it betrays: Sera’s internalized racism, hints of Blackwall’s stolen valor, Iron Bull’s espionage masked by bluster, or Solas’s lingering guilt and yearning for a bygone age. These aspects of their characters aren’t front and center, but things the audience can delve into that gives every moment with them more texture. The Veilguard’s companions lay out all their baggage carefullly and respectfully upfront, whether it’s Taash’s multiculturalism and gender identity issues or Neve’s brooding cynicism towards Tevinter’s underbelly. You’ve plumbed the depths of their personas within the first few minutes of meeting most of them.

Small exceptions exist. Professor Emmerich Volkarin stands out from the rest of the cast as a particularly inspired character: a charming, Vincent Price-like necromancer. His attachment to tombs and necromancy as a way to cope with his crippling fear of death makes for curiously compelling melodrama. The way in which he ultimately has to face his fear – either by foregoing his opportunity for immortality to save his beloved skeletal ward, Manfred, or by allowing his friend to pass on so that he can transcend into a new type existence – rises above the other binary choices in the game by being both narratively interesting and legitimately difficult to judge. Still, I feel Emmerich’s whole “lawful good gentleman necromancer” conceit, while a unique and clever subversion of tropes, would’ve worked better if it actually contrasted with anyone else in the party. Instead, the whole crew is full of unproblematic do-gooders who are forbidden by the game to nurture any meaningful interpersonal conflict. While I’d appreciate this lack of toxicity in my real-life relationships, fictional chemistry demands more reactive ingredients.

The Veilguard’s developers frequently positioned the game as “cozy” and about a “found family”, but I can guarantee you that there’s more tension at my Thanksgiving dinners than there is anywhere in this title. This family would get along swimmingly even during a presidential election. The thing about the “found family” trope is that it’s more satisfying when it’s earned. Here, it represents the default state, the starting point, and the status quo that they will always return to. Any minor squabbles (Harding wanting to sleep in the dirt, Emmerich taking too many books on a camping trip, Taash not liking necromancy) are introduced and squashed within the same scene. They all feel so extraneous. There’s so little friction among the companions here that you’d think it disproves Newton’s Third Law. The previous games never struggled in this regard, which makes the choices here all the more baffling.

Beyond the intra-party dynamics, characters lack grit or darkness to them – even when the narrative absolutely calls for it. Remember how I described the necromancer as lawful good (to use traditional Dungeons and Dragons alignments)? Yeah, that’s every character. Even the demonic assassin. Lucanis is a notorious hitman possessed by a demon of Spite, and possibly the weakest character of the game. This may or may not be due to the fact that his writer, Mary Kirby, was laid off mid-development. Regardless, he has noticeably less content than the other party members and generally feels unfinished. The demonic possession storyline goes nowhere; he doesn’t exorcise Spite, nor does he learn more about it or how to live with it. Instead, Spite is just an excuse to give Lucanis cool spectral wings (which he will use to fail several assassination attempts). The demon itself mostly just comes across as rude rather than threatening. The biggest issue, however, stems from the absence of any edge to Lucanis. When confronting his traitorous cousin, Ilario – the man who sold out Lucanis’s family to an enemy faction, kidnapped his grandmother, and made multiple attempts on his life – our grizzled, hardened assassin, pushed to the brink, demands… due process. Seriously, if your choices have led Lucanis to have a hardened heart, his method for dealing with the grievous traitor is sending him to jail. That’s The Veilguard’s idea of vindictive brutality among a clan of unforgiving murderers-for-hire. By contrast, Inquisition features Sera insubordinately murdering a stuck-up nobleman for talking too much. I believe that if modern BioWare had written The Godfather (1972), it would’ve ended with Michael Corleone recommending his brother-in-law to attend confession and seek a marriage counselor.

The writers seem intent on making the cast wholly unproblematic, with no way that the audience could ever question their morality or taste the delicious nuance of seeing someone you like do something bad. Measures were taken to child-proof every aspect of the good guys so that they couldn’t possibly be construed as anything else – even if it constricts them to the point of numbness and eventual atrophy.

To make things as palatable and accessible as possible, the language itself was dumbed down. Characters make frequent use of neologisms and bark phrases like “Suit up,” or “These guys go hard.” It emulates popular blockbuster superhero stuff rather than staying true to the diction the series traditionally employed. It’s all about the team, and the entire Dragon Age world has been stripped down into simplistic conflicts and recognizable stock characters.

This is why The Veilguard’s story largely fails. Despite being ostensibly being about the characters, they come off as an afterthought. Most of the time, only the sole requisite follower has anything to say on a given mission. Even in combat, their wholeness as fully-implemented party members falls short of expectations. Their damage output pales in comparison to the Rook’s, they have no health and cannot be downed in battle, and they mainly exist to give the player three extra ability slots. That’s the game’s true ethos for the companions, whether in combat or dialogue �� utility, tools to make things happen rather than elegantly crafted identities. We end up with the largest amount of content per companion among any game in the franchise, only to have the weakest roster.

I know these writers can do better, because I’ve seen them do better. Trick Weekes wrote Iron Bull, Cole, and Solas in Inquisition, as well as Mordin Solus and Tali’Zorah in Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3. Mary Kirby wrote Varric throughout the series, as well as Sten and Loghain in Origins. Plenty of other experienced writers, such as Sylvia Feketekuty and John Dombrow also contributed, so I can’t put any of the blame on a lack of skill. I don’t know if the mistake was trying to appeal to a wider audience, or if the constant reorientations of the DA4 project drained the crew’s passion and left them lacking in time to polish things.

I personally suspect that the writers had to rush out a script for all of the voiced dialogue. A video from August of 2020 showed off the voice actors for Davrin and Bellara, more than four years before the final game’s release. I think the codex entries, letters, and missives that you find throughout the game, which consist of only text, are much better written than the dialogue. My theory is that the writers had more time to revise and spruce up these tidbits, where edits were minimally invasive, as far as production is concerned. But my knowledge is limited; after all, BioWare rejected my application almost a decade ago.

Still, there are aspects of The Veilguard’s plot that I enjoy. The lore reveals were particularly satisfying2, and many felt rewarding after a decade of speculation. I called that elves were originally spirits, as well as the connection between the Archdemons and the Evanuris, but I wouldn’t have guessed that the Blight formed out of the smoldering rage of the Titans’ severed dreams. I’d concisely describe The Veilguard’s story as the opposite of Mass Effect 3: Whereas ME3 did excellent character work, the characterization in The Veilguard leaves much to be desired. Whereas ME3’s tone was overwhelmingly grim, The Veilguard feels inappropriately positive. Whereas ME3’s lore reveals ruined much about the series’s mystique, The Veilguard’s helped tie the setting’s history together. And whereas ME3 fumbled the ending about as much as it possibly could, The Veilguard actually coalesces into a spectacular third act.

While I think the twist with Varric’s death is weak (outright pitiful compared to the Dread Wolf twist of Inquisition), the actual events that make up the finale carry a momentum and urgency that the rest of the game severely lacked. Everything from the sacrifice and kidnapping of Rook’s companions to the slaying of Ghilan’nain to the awe-inspiring battle between the Dread Wolf and Archdemon Lusacan – the whole affair takes the best parts of Mass Effect 2’s Suicide Mission and elevates it to the scale of an apocalyptic series finale. Ultimately, Solas takes center stage as the final antagonist, and the drama crescendos to a height the rest of the game desperately needed. He remains the most interesting character in the game and perhaps the franchise, and thankfully, the resolution to his story did not disappoint me (though I would’ve preferred the option for a boss battle against his Dread Wolf form if the player’s negotiations broke down). So in that sense, I think the worst possible scenario was avoided.

But is that really worth celebrating? Averting complete disaster? Exceeding the lowest standards? In many regards, The Veilguard still could have been – should have been – more.

IV. A World of Tranquil

In my essay on Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (2024), I briefly discussed a trend in media to sand off the edges so as not to upset the audience in any way. The encroachment of this media sanitization seems to be an over-correction to the brimming grimness of late 2000s and early 2010s fiction (to which the first two Dragon Age titles belong), which earned comparable levels of criticism. Like Solas, I occasionally feel trapped in a cycle of regret, where it feels like our previous yearning for less aggressive, mean-spirited content led to a media landscape that prioritized patronizingly positive art. Now it’s clear to me that, in order to have a point, you need to have an edge.

Dragon Age historically drew a very progressive audience, and many of them congregated around Tumblr in that website’s heyday. Tumblr has garnered something of a reputation for overzealous discourse and sensitivity among its userbase, and I think that the developers of The Veilguard, in an attempt to cater to one of their core audiences, may have misunderstood both that passion and the fundamental appeal of their products. They became so concerned about optics, about avoiding politically charged criticism, that they kneecapped their world-building, rendering it as inoffensive and sterile as possible. It’s not so much “PC culture” as it is “PG culture.”

To that end, the various governments, factions, and societies of Thedas lost their edge. Dragon Age previously presented itself as anti-authoritarian by showcasing the rampant abuses of power across all cultures. Whether it was the incarceration of mages under the Chantry, the slavery practiced by the Tevinter Imperium, the expansionist anti-individualism of the Qun, the restrictive dwarven caste system, or the rampant racism against elves, social strife abounded in this world. I think that’s one thing that drew so many marginalized fans to the series. But the correlation of fictional atrocities with those of real life frequently prompted volatile discourse, with many concerned about how allegedly allegorized groups were being represented. You began to see countless essays pop up by folks who use the phrase “blood quantum” more than any healthy person should for a setting about wizards. BioWare responded to this by making Thedosian society wholly pleasant and the people in power responsible and cool and the disparate cultures tolerant and cooperative. If nothing’s portrayed negatively (outside of the cartoonishly evil gods), nobody can take offense, right?

For starters, the Antivan Crows have gone from an amoral group of assassins to basically Batman. These figures, which previously purchased children off slave markets to train them into killers, are now the “true rulers” of Antiva, by which the official government derives its authority. The Crows in The Veilguard stand against the insurgent qunari army as heroes of the common folk. They’re not an unscrupulous faction that Rook is reluctantly forced to ally with for the greater good; no, the Crows are simply good guys now. When the pompous governor of Treviso rails against them, with such audacious claims as “assassins and thugs should not represent the citizenry,” we’re meant to laugh at the governor’s foolishness. The unintentional implication this sends is that lethal vigilantism and unchecked power are cool because the people who use it are cool and stylish. The slave trade goes unacknoweldged; Antivan children want to grow up to be assassins now. The Crows never do anything wrong in The Veilguard – the governor is later revealed to be cooperating with the invaders for their own power. BioWare avoids the unpleasantness inherent in the Crows’ concept by pretending it never existed.

Perhaps more ridiculous is the Lords of Fortune, a new faction of pirates and treasure hunters based out of Rivain. Except they don’t really do piracy or treasure hunting. The game goes to lengths to ensure that the audience knows that the Lords don’t steal important cultural artifacts from any of the tombs and ruins they raid. What do they steal, then? There is no such thing as an ethical treasure hunter – plundering indigenous sites for souvenirs is inherently problematic – but the writers wanted to reap the appeal of adventurous swashbucklers without any of the baggage, regardless of whether it makes sense or not3. It comes across as a child’s idea of a pirate: they’re not thinking about the murder and looting, just the funny men with eye-patches who say “ARRR!” The developers want us to like the Lords of Fortune, and to that end, they can’t do anything culturally insensitive – even fictional disrespect toward a made-up culture. This is doubly amusing because the Lords are represented by Isabela from Dragon Age II. The same Isabela that kicked off a war with the qunari by stealing their holy book, the Tome of Koslun. This irony goes unacknowledged by the game.4

When these rogue buccaneers aren’t busy giving land acknowledgments to displaced Dalish elves or whatever, they’re enjoying their nonviolent coliseum. Pirates revel in bloodsport, but only so long as no actual blood is spilled. The Lords refuse to fight prisoners or animals in their arena, as they find such acts too cruel. I guess they’re all big Peter Singer readers. Instead, they summon spirits to adopt the visages of common enemies so that the player can kill them with a clean conscience. It’s another example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too – they wanted to create a glory hunter/gladiator faction, but couldn’t stand the underlying implications of such. So they twisted and bent them to fit into their unproblematic paradigm, leaving the Lords flavorless and lame. They barely even contribute to the main story, and they’re practically the only look we get into Rivaini society (which remains criminally underdeveloped).

More tragic is the handling of the qunari, once one of the most unique and nuanced civilizations in the Dragon Age setting. The Qun, as portrayed in the first three installments, is a society that demands all of its composite parts work in harmony. Thus, they have predetermined vocations for their children, rigid gender roles, strict codes of conduct, and an ambition to “enlighten” the rest of the world. While the Qun has often been presented as antagonistic toward the heroes, the series has commonly balanced its portrayal by showing how seductive its absolutism can be for people without hope. In some cases, life under the Qun is preferable, as is the case with former Tevinter slaves. Conformity becomes comfort when the world is regularly threatening to split apart.

The Veilguard opts for a different approach. See, Rook’s not fighting members of the Qun in this game – they’re fighting the Antaam, the former qunari military. The Veilguard constantly reiterates that the Antaam, which makes up one of the three branches of the Qun, has broken off and decided to invade, pillage, and stoke chaos. BioWare didn’t want the questionable morality and complexity of fighting an invading people from a humanized, multi-faceted culture, so they removed their culture. Their efforts to turn the non-Western-coded qunari into something digestible for their mistaken conception of a modern audience instead results in two caricatures: one being a fetishized, perfect society where there are no perceivable social ills; and the other a bunch of rampaging brutes.

Contending with a realized conception of Plato’s Republic mixed with the Ottoman Empire makes for more compelling drama than a horde of murderous giants. Again, BioWare wanted to have it both ways, and they still needed nameless, faceless orcs to kill. So every bit about the qunari’s militancy, imperialism, and repression coexisting alongside some of their more progressive ideas and communal unity is stripped of its context and meaning. Blame is placed solely on the Antaam, who no longer represent (and retroactively, never represented) the Qun’s ideology. It’s a cowardly compromise, attempting to pin the blame of all the Qun’s failings on a renegade military and seeking to exonerate the political and social apparatuses of their culpability.

At one point, a minor character named Seer Rowan lectures to an ignorant human (a proxy for the audience absorbing these retcons) that qunari society has always been egalitarian in practice, with mages enjoying freedom there. Previous games showed that the qunari shackle their “saarebas” mages, stitch their mouths, cut out their tongues, and teach them to commit suicide if they ever stray from their masters. However, we’re now assured that this is only practiced under the Antaam, and No True Qunari would ever do such a thing. Ignore the fact that, in Inquisition, we witness the enslaved saarebas under the supervision of the Ben-Hasserath, a subdivision of the Ariqun (i.e. not part of the Antaam). In fact, the Antaam that Rook fights in The Veilguard never command saarebas at all. They’re completely absent from the game (likely because the image of the bound, mutilated minority was too much for The Veilguard’s sensibilities). Seer Rowan’s weak, conciliatory retcon can’t even justify itself in its own game. The scolding diatribe communicates an intrinsic misunderstanding of the Qun by the writers – namely, it continues the pattern established with the Antivan Crows that the mechanics of power in society are fundamentally good as long as aberrant forces aren’t in charge. While I understand the desire to be conscientious about the portrayal of fictional cultures that draw upon non-Western traditions and iconography (which have historically been demonized in media), glamorizing the Qun and stripping it of its realistic nuance does little to alleviate any problems with representation. If anything, it creates new ones.

But hey, now we have our faceless orcs to guiltlessly slaughter. That’s what the Antaam’s been reduced to, bereft of the ideology that made them people. We kill them because they’re strange and scary and foreign and seeking to destroy our cities for fun. They remain the most prominent representation of the qunari in-game, barring our party member Taash. BioWare’s attempts to reverse what they viewed as problematic components to the qunari instead devolved into the very tropes they wished to avoid.

Which leads us to the elves. Much of the series’s discourse has surrounded the portrayal of the long-suffering elven people, who endure slavery under Tevinter, expulsion from their homeland in the Dales, confinement in ghettos, and the general disdain from other races. The games’ stories use symbolic shorthand of real-life oppressed peoples to communicate these tragedies, and this has led to a variety of intense, emotional interpretations over the years. The unending misery of the systematically marginalized elves hasn’t gone unnoticed by the fanbase – and their criticisms haven’t gone unnoticed by the developers. To quote The Veilguard’s creative director, John Epler, in an interview with Polygon:

“Dragon Age has not always been the kindest to the Dalish [elves]. Somebody once made a joke to me, and it’s not untrue, that it’s possible to wipe out a Dalish clan in all three of the games in some way.”

He and others on the development team must’ve thought elves needed a break, because the omnipresent racism against them vanishes completely in The Veilguard. Tevinter, an empire built on the back of chattel slavery, doesn’t show any of that. Consequently, it feels like players in the know still haven’t seen the true face of Tevinter, despite spending half a game there. The notion that the capital of Minrathous gives now is one of a prosperous city that’s centuries ahead of the countries down south, rather than a cruel regime cracking the whip at every opportunity. Perhaps the writers weren’t comfortable portraying this, or felt that their audience might not be amenable to it after years of incendiary argumentation. Nevertheless, it castrates their established world-building and robs us of the opportunity to witness true elven liberation in the climax. With both the fall of Minrathous and the toppling of the tyrannical elven gods, we could have delivered a much needed catharsis after four games of oppression, but The Veilguard forgoes this storytelling opportunity to play it safe.

I worry that this hesitancy originated from anxieties about the sensitivity of depicting marginalized peoples in brutal, dehumanizing conditions, and how that might look to more fragile viewers. But I think it’s important for all players, watchers, and readers to know that, though there might be aspects shared between them, fictional minorities are distinct from real ones.

Dragon Age’s elves are aesthetically Celtic. Their residency in alienages evokes images of Disapora Jews in Europe. Their Long Walk after being driven from the Dales calls back to the Trail of Tears, sharing an experience with Native Americans. Their subsequent migratory nature is reminiscent of the Romani people. And their ancient empire of Arlathan, with its large columns and temples of worship, headed by ascended humanoid (for lack of a better term) deities that cast down an enemy called the Titans, and which has since had its religion and culture co-opted and renamed by Roman-inspired Tevinter invites comparisons to classical Greece.

My point is, the elves of Dragon Age don’t represent one group of people, because fictional cultures are constructs drawing from countless inspirations. If they represent anything beyond themselves, it’s the idea of a proud people that’s fallen under the yoke of conquering powers – a supervictim to embody all. The idea that one must be limited in their storytelling options based on how the portrayal might reflect upon or disrespect an existing culture is flawed, in my opinion. In the overwhelming majority of cases, coding cannot be read as a 1:1 allegory, especially in speculative fiction like science-fiction and fantasy. I believe the most mature way to evaluate a story isn’t to try to pigeonhole what it’s trying to say say about who, as if there’s some insidious encrypted message in the text. Rather, it’s to see the forest through the trees and interpret the work as a complete whole in itself.

On that basis, I ask: would it have been so bad to see some of those enslaved elves, praying for salvation, side with their manipulative, nefarious gods? To add some nuance to the conflict with Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain, would the story of elven liberation not have been better if the game actually engaged with it? Could we actually have a moral quandary with those whom Rook ends up fighting, even if the content might be seemingly problematic?

Epler might respond in the negative, per the Polygon interview, claiming that the gods “simply don’t care” about the elves.

“Those blighted, decrepit gods, they’re not bothering with the soft pitch. Their pitch is, We’re going to make a horrible world. We’re going to give you a lot of power, and maybe you’ll be OK.”

Like a chess board, the core conflict of The Veilguard is black and white. BioWare abandoned the chance to make Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain more interesting villains because it was too risky.

Similarly risky was Solas’s role as an antagonist, since his motivations, as explained in “Trespasser”, are deeply sympathetic. Perhaps too much so for the developers’ comfort. Unlike the Evanuris and their disinterest in the elves, Solas wants to restore the elven people to their former glory. At least, that seemed to be his pitch in the last game. Frustratingly absent from The Veilguard are the Agents of Fen’Harel – elves who swore fealty to Solas’s cause. They infiltrated and compromised the Inquisition, effectively precipitating the final decision to end the organization in its current form. The idea that Solas had amassed an army of common folk who found the idea of a renewed elven empire appealing made him appear formidable and intimidating. “Trespasser” implies that a mass uprising of elves under Solas’s leadership was imminent, and anyone could be in on it.

None of this happens in The Veilguard. Not only does Solas lack an army, but their absence isn’t explained or even acknowledged. As a result, Solas remains a passive antagonist until near the end, since the player has no disciples of his to contend with (either physically or ideologically) along the way. It wastes a side of his character that had been foreshadowed in a decade-long cliffhanger – that of a charismatic leader, capable of coordinating a rebellion that could spell disaster for its own followers.

In a Reddit AMA after the latest game’s release, Epler answered where the Agents of Fen’Harel disappeared to:

“Solas’ experience leading the rebellion against the Evanuris turned him against the idea of being a leader. You see it in the memories – the entire experience of being in charge ate at him and, ultimately, convinced him he needed to do this on his own. And his own motivations were very different from the motivations of those who wanted to follow him – he had no real regard for their lives or their goals. So at some point between Trespasser and DATV, he severed that connection with his ‘followers’ and went back to being a lone wolf. There are Dalish clans who are sympathetic to his goals, but even there, there’s an understanding that he’s too dangerous to have a more formal connection with, and that he will, ultimately, sacrifice them to his own ends if necessary.”

I find this explanation unsatisfying, not the least bit because the narrative offers next to nothing to imply this. The disappearance of Solas’s agents represents my biggest bugbear with the game, depriving it of the full potential of its highly anticipated antagonist in favor of the more generically villainous Evanuris. Moreover, this omission fits into the aggravating blueprint for The Veilguard’s inoffensive direction. The motivations, emotions, and backgrounds of the Agents of Fen’Harel would be sympathetic, and therefore might problematize the otherwise cut-and-dry conflicts. Epler seemed concerned that audiences might think Solas was “a little too sympathetic in his goals,” according to an interview with GamesRadar+.

But that’s the thing: sympathy isn’t endorsement, and portrayal of sympathetic characters isn’t endorsement either. But neither does that invalidate the emotions and experiences that generate that sympathy, even if the character’s actions ultimately turn toward evil. I’ve noticed a trend (especially in symptomatic criticism, which I generally dislike5) to view art as propaganda, and to evaluate it from a moralizing, top-down perspective. Antagonists with complex or understandable motivations (in this case, revolutionary villains) are often judged by this framework as tools for stories wishing to champion the status quo. Common arguments that I’ve seen imply that the relatability that we often find in villains is not a strength of the writing, but a devilish trick of ideology by which writers can reinforce conservative doctrine, to scold us away from certain beliefs. Any decent writer knows this isn’t the case, and that people don’t write morally or emotionally complex antagonists for didactic purposes. Instead, characters such as these embody the anxieties of their creators – the fear of losing yourself to your passions, the fear of going about things the wrong way, the fear of sacrificing too much to achieve your desired ends. The concepts and feelings that compel these characters remain authentic to the writer’s heart and the connection they established with the audience.

Art isn’t propaganda. To read it as such reduces it and promotes intellectual dishonesty and foolhardy myopia. Stories are irreducible (otherwise, we would not waste our time with them), and so I believe interpretations should be formed from the bottom-up, rooted in the text as much as possible. The “message” cannot be imposed from the top-down, but symptomatic readings, in their focus on tropes and cultural context, frequently condemn without a trial. Hindering your story in order to future-proof it for the sake of optics is a safeguard against this, and one that leads to bad stories. Artists should have confidence that their text will hold its ground on its own. To quote Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “A Message about Messages”:

“The complex meanings of a serious story or novel can be understood only by participation in the language of the story itself. To translate them into a message or reduce them to a sermon distorts, betrays, and destroys them… Any reduction of that language into intellectual messages is radically, destructively incomplete.” (67-68)

BioWare’s doctrine of passive writing violates this wisdom by surrendering to their fear of (bad) criticism. The Veilguard lacks punch, stakes, and empathy and becomes incongruous with its established lore because it’s not willing to take risks that might alienate or upset players. They’re more concerned with making sure their work is inoffensive than they are with conveying a moving story.

I believe all of this was inherited from an incestuous feedback loop between a vocal minority of critics, of which I might’ve once counted myself among the blameworthy, and the apprehensiveness of out-of-touch corporate board room decision-making. Dragon Age’s genome mutated, and it slowly lost its teeth.

Over the course of a decade, we bred the Dread Wolf into a Dread Pug.

V. What It Took

The Veilguard’s lack of confidence in itself and lack of faith in its audience contribute to its capitulatory nature. In many respects, it feels like the developers lost their passion for it over the course of the ten year hellish production and just wanted to be done with it. This resulted in a decent game that nonetheless feels divorced from what came before it. It tries to juggle being a soft reboot while also trying to close out the series’s biggest and longest running story arcs, but inevitably fumbles.

Nearly everything done by The Veilguard was handled better by Inquisition. And Inquisition was certainly the more ambitious title. Perhaps more returning characters would have established a sense of continuity between the two, or at least made it less awkward by having them present for the story’s grand finale. For as strong as the endgame is, it could’ve benefited from the presence of slave liberator Fenris, elven history aficionado Merrill, possible Evanuris soul vessel Sera, or Divine Victoria (any of them). The core pillar of Dragon Age is the characters, and The Veilguard’s under-performance (and in some cases, outright dismissal) in that regard sabotages its integrity. Without this to anchor it, the changes to gameplay, visuals, and roleplaying depth become more alienating.

Personally, what do I take away from this? The Veilguard is far from the game I dreamed about for ten years, and not the one that loyal fans deserved either. I’m no stranger to disappointment at this point in my life, and yet this still leaves me with a hollow feeling. Will I still be able to return to Inquisition, a game I truly adore, and see it the same way as before, knowing now where all this is leading? The true cost of The Veilguard, for me, has nothing to do with the price tag: it’s the loss of that perfectly tailored dream, now that the possibilities of the future have shut their gates.

Where do those dreams go? Are they doomed to fester in their lonely, incommunicable agony? Will they be twisted by their enmity, like the blighted dreams of the Titans, and spread their corruption into those important happy memories?

In 2014, I was depressed as fuck, and Dragon Age: Inquisition helped me to see the light and come out of it. In 2024, I was depressed as fuck, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard made me feel nothing. There’s no less favorable comparison in my eyes. It’s disheartening to behold something that once meant so much to me and be greeted with numbness. I have to wonder if that affection will ever return, or if I’ve just grown out of it.

But as I wandered the streets of Minrathous as Rook, I heard a familiar song. It was one of the tavern songs from Inquisition, its nostalgic chords filling me with wistful sentiment. I know, deep down, there’s still something there. Maybe I just need to dig it up. Maybe it’s time to look back…

To be continued…

– Hunter Galbraith

Further Reading

Le Guin, Ursula K. “A Message about Messages.” Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, Abrams Image, 2018, pp. 67–68.

Incidentally, this was an anomaly my friends and I pondered over and eventually solved. It turned out to be a former Wienerschnitzel. ↩︎

You could argue that this credit goes more to Inquisition and the previous games for laying the groundwork for said reveals, which were obviously planned out ahead of time, as confirmed by the aforementioned official artbook. Regardless, the payoff satisfied me and gave me proper closure. ↩︎

I’ve been informed that there is a hidden conversation that explains that the Lords of Fortune do, in fact, sell cultural artifacts at times, but only to the rightful owners. This just makes me wonder what they do with the artifacts if the prospective clients can’t pay. Do they shove them back in the ruins and re-arm all the booby traps? ↩︎

I would argue that this does not represent character progression on Isabela’s part, as her (possible, depending on the player’s choices) return of the Tome of Koslun in Dragon Age II was a pragmatic sacrifice she made to save her friends and the city, rather than an acknowledgment of the qunari’s inviolable ownership. In fact, in many continuities, she never returns the Tome at all. ↩︎

I prefer more formalist criticism because it allows the text to lead the dance, not the critique. I think it’s only fair, given that the creators likely spent more effort crafting the piece than I spent consuming it. Symptomatic criticism mandates that the reader consider everything around the text, typically at the text’s expense. In the worst cases, symptomatic critics make their arguments about seemingly everything besides the text in question. ↩︎ Link to article: https://planckstorytime.wordpress.com/2025/01/01/dragon-age-the-veilguard-strangled-by-gentle-hands/

[tonalwhiplash]

PROJECT EDEN'S GARDEN SPOILERS!

Chapter 1 spoilers

Theory concerning wolfgang's whole deal

Okay so like. His mom's mega dead, right?

"Whoa! Back up! Where the fuck did you get that from?"

Alright sit down, lemme show you something.

Remember the prolouge?

I sure didn't! So I rewatched it!

Take a look.

Wolfgang freaked out over Wenona claiming that Cara was the aggressor, implying her murder was justifiable.

At the time, Damon along with all of us just assumed he was being a lawyer about it and had put himself on the side of the injured party. But I don't think it was that simple.

I think he was having an episode. The only evidence for this in the prologue itself is the in-game acknowledgment that Wolfgang's arguments had shifted to being based on emotion alone. It's literally used for a tutorial!

And he says himself in his FTEs that he doesn't normally conduct himself that way in an actual courtroom. So his freak out wasn't his standard, but he doesn't give a straight answer for why he acted how he did.

But chapter 1 as a whole gave us what was necessary to start connecting some dots.

Have a look.

The blackmail Damon got. The photo of Wolfgang's parents.

Look at his mom.

Now look at Cara.

By no means are they identical, wolfgang's mother has a mole on her face, which Cara lacks, but I want you to note the hair and eye color specifically. Keep it in mind.

Now let's look at the back of the card.

"Like father, like son"

"Beneath a sheep's skin hides a wolfish mind"

The game sorta hands you a part of this. Wolfgang's father did something bad. Something that, allegedly, Wolfgang either has repeated or simply had the capacity to do himself eventually.

So what did Wolfgang's father do?

That much isn't told to us, but from Wolfgang's hallucination induced meltdown, I have an idea.

I think wolfgang's father killed his mother.

Let's get into it.

Starting with his hallucinatory episode.

When Wolfgang initially sees Diana, I think he sees his mother. The way he talks. The way he apologizes to her and calls himself a failure for not being like her. We learn in his FTEs that his mother is the only other lawyer in the family and his sole reason for becoming one himself.

However, when Diana walks over and takes his hand, he switches and becomes angry and violent. Going as far as to attack her with a knife.

I think, when Diana grabbed his hand, either something she said or something she did caused the hallucination to switch from a vision of his mother to the vision of his father.

Suddenly he's no longer sad when he says he's not like the person he thinks he's speaking to. Suddenly he's smiling at the fact he's "not like them." Because he's talking to his father now.

He wants to be like his mother and never wants to be like his father.

The line "bring her back" implies that his father, the person he was hallucinating in Diana's place, took his mother away from him.

And the reason I think that's it, relates back to his smaller scale meltdown during the test trial.

Wolfgang started talking about how it was inexcusable to kill a woman.

Though that could be chalked up to chivalry or what have you, I think there's a much more personal reason as to why he felt so strongly about it.

Because his father's actions were inexcusable.

They weren't self defense.

And witnessing a dead woman who bares resemblance to his late mother be accused of deserving it may have struck a nerve.

The killer for the mock trial had no identity given, making it all the easier for Wolfgang to project his father, or a man like him, onto that blank stand in.

I can paint a scene

Wolfgang in the courtroom as a child, maybe even a witness to the murder, watching as the defense lawyer for his father makes every excuse in the book for him. Claiming that his mother was the aggressor, that she had a weapon, that his father had no choice but to "defend himself" from her attacks.

While, in reality, Wolfgang had seen a very different situation play out. Whether he spoke up and was dismissed for being "too young" or was unable to properly testify due to the traumatic experience that is simply being in a courtroom at all, he was unable to bring his father to justice.

He was unable to do right by his mother.

I think that'd be a pretty good motivator to practically race into law school as a teenager. To become the ultimate lawyer at 22 years old. So he could make up for his previous failures.

I think Wolfgang has been carrying a heavy burden from a very young age. And to return to the "like father like son" comment, I'm willing to call that a misdirection. I think when Wolfgang is implied to have "a wolfish mind beneath sheep's skin" or " being a wolf in sheep's clothing," the actual truth is that he's a deeply emotionally scarred person who has no choice but to force a facade of stability and confidence to push though it all for the sake of those around him and his goals. Basically, he's masking.

So, technically, just like his father, Wolfgang is a mentally troubled man pretending to be okay. And the kidnappers used that misdirection to imply he had sinister intention for pretending just like his father had pretended to be a man his mother could trust. When in reality, their motivations could not be any more different.

Or maybe I'm just being silly. Teehee! 🧡

And a small side note. The word "wolfish" implies intentions other than violence.

Lust, hunger, and greed mostly. Though, I'm willing to sidestep those options cuz Tozu is absolutely the kind of bitch to reword a common phrase to make it sound more flowery only to unintentionally imply some nasty shit.

Wolfgang gives no tells towards being a creep. Not a single Freudian slip left that man's mouth. Not even in FTEs. Grace would have been the killer for chapter 1 if he was like that. They literally shared a bed. And, despite their cute dynamic, if the two had actually done anything canonically, we'd get more obvious tells in the game. Those walls were shown to be pretty damn thin...

There's a bit more under the hood of this theory, but this post is big enough, and all other supporting information requires enough explanation and red string to justify their own posts.

So stay tuned for:

• Further theorizing about wolfgang

• And the possible parallels between wolfgang's hallucinatory episode and Eva's execution

[randomly--accessed--memories]

RAM Plot Summary

So, now that we're coming up on the one-year anniversary of the start of RAM, I finally decided to write up a relatively short summary of the main plot of this AU. Vox whump, Vee angst, one-sided Radiostatic await below.

RAM (Randomly Accessed Memories) is a collaborative Hazbin Hotel AU based on the theory that Niffty is a former overlord that Alastor drove insane, and asks the question: What if he did the same to Vox?

Animation commissioned from @/__shmoki__ over on Twitter

Seven years ago, Alastor and Vox had their final battle. After fifty years of rivalry, Vox finally gained the upper hand; in a moment of desperation, he used his hypnosis against Alastor… and it worked. Briefly. Terrified of what Vox might do if he managed to gain power over him, Alastor lashed out and knocked Vox unconscious. He knew he had to neutralize Vox somehow, but he found himself hesitant to finally kill his old friend. Instead, he chose a different tactic.

Alastor took Vox to the basement of V Tower and began a broadcast, torturing him live on the air for all the city to hear. Valentino and Velvette, believing that the two were most likely at Alastor’s radio tower, rushed off to rescue Vox, unknowingly leaving him to his fate. After hours of torture, once Vox’s physical and mental defenses were lowered, Alastor was finally ready to enact his true goal: using his powers to reach into Vox’s mind and remold him into something more palatable.

Once the broadcast was finished, Alastor dumped Vox’s dismembered body in the lobby of V Tower and then vanished for the next seven years. Valentino and Velvette were initially relieved when they discovered Vox was still alive, albeit comatose, but once his body was repaired and they finally turned Vox back on, they immediately knew something was wrong. Vox had no recollection of the past fifty years; his memories of his life after his falling out with Alastor were simply gone. Worse than that, he appeared to be trapped in a perpetual state of channel surfing, unable to stay focused on anything for more than a minute and forgetting new information soon after learning it. On top of it all, Alastor was now the center of his world; Vox asked for him constantly, wouldn’t hear a word against him, and his only goal seemed to be to reunite with him.

Valentino and Velvette, unwilling to kill Vox but knowing that if anyone discovered his condition, it would put a massive target on all three of their backs, confined Vox to a private suite in the tower and told the public that he had died. Vox spent seven agonizing years locked away in the tower with only Vark for company. Valentino and Velvette visited frequently, trying to coax non-existent memories out of him or at least trying to build a new relationship with him, but Vox’s memory always reset after every interaction with them. Valentino fell into a self-destructive spiral upon losing his lover, taking out his grief and frustration on everyone in the vicinity. Velvette had no choice but to take on Vox’s role as CEO of VoxTek (renamed VTek) and spent the next seven years trying to project invulnerability to the public, even as she was overwhelmed with her new responsibilities, trying to ensure Vox was safe and taken care of, and dealing with Valentino’s destructive outbursts.

After seven long, miserable years, Alastor finally returned. Eager to see if his plan worked, he slipped into V Tower and, at long last, reunited with Vox. Vox was ecstatic to see Alastor again and begged him to rescue him from his “prison,” andAlastor happily obliged. Alastor was thrilled with his handiwork; Vox was once again the man he had known all those years ago. He finally had his friend back… right?

Alastor brought Vox along with him to the hotel, ready to begin a new era of their afterlives— one where Vox would never change and always do as he was told. Charlie and Vaggie didn’t recognize Vox, so saw no issue with accepting him into the hotel. Angel Dust and Husk, on the other hand, were fully aware of who Vox used to be and what Alastor had done to him but were forced to keep quiet by their respective contracts. Alastor assigned Vox the role of hotel handyman, and he and the other staff members settled into their new lives at the hotel.

Valentino and Velvette were horrified when they discovered that Vox had gone missing; they were livid when they learned that it was Alastor who took him and brought him to the princess’ new hotel. However, fearing that if they made a move to attack Alastor/the hotel he would simply take Vox and vanish into the ether again, they were forced to bide their time, waiting for an opportunity to rescue their friend.

Vox spent the next six months at the hotel, participating in the canonical plot of the show. His frantic, high-energy behavior, volatile memory, and habit of frying the electronics he was meant to be fixing often made things difficult, but hesoon found his place among the Hazbins. He became very close with Niffty due to their shared decade of death and the fact that they were the only people who understood how the other’s mind worked. Vox also ended up forming a friendship with Sir Pentious, who had been sent by the Vees to keep an eye on Vox and spy on the hotel. However, as time went on, things between Vox and Alastor became more strained. Alastor gradually came to realize that his plan hadn’t worked quite as well as he’d hoped. Vox was stuck in the past and saw him as his closest friend, but he wasn’t the person Alastor had once known. Vox’s erratic behavior began to grate on him, and Alastor eventually realized that he had liked the way Vox used to challenge him— now, he was little more than a sycophant or a needy pet. However, Alastor could not admit he had made a mistake; he was in too deep now, and there was no undoing what had been done.

This AU has multiple endings, but the one I consider “canon” consists of Vox participating in the hotel’s battle with Heaven and getting noticed by some reporters once the dust has settled. All of Hell now knows that Vox, the former Television Overlord, is alive and at the Hazbin Hotel. Charlie, horrified to learn what Alastor did to Vox and Niffty, kicks him out of the hotel. She contacts the Vees and starts trying to negotiate with them for Vox’s return on the condition that Valentino break his contract with Angel Dust. The details about what happens next are a bit murky, but in the end, Alastor disappears once again, and Charlie’s deal with the Vees goes through. Vox is returned to V Tower, although with far more freedom than he had before— all of Hell knows he’s alive, so why bother keeping him locked up? The mental block Vox has regarding retaining information about Val and Velvette lifts in Alastor’s absence, and the Vees are finally able to start rebuilding their relationship. It's different from how it was before– always will be– but that doesn't make it any less valuable. Change is inevitable, after all.

[heartlilith]

Astrology Observations

Here are some of my observations and opinions on various placements - Part 5

🖤Pay attention to the degrees in your natal chart, as they influence the energy projected by a specific planet/placement. Here are some quick notes:

0° - Marks a fresh energy, beginnings, a lot of things to learn, growing into this placement, can make this placement more naive/immature.

1°/ 13° / 25°- Aries/Mars energy - Makes a placement more aggressive/brave, extroverted, and quick. Brings more of a leadership energy to the placement.

2° / 14° / 26° - Taurus/Venus energy - Can make a placement more polite, grounded, sensual, and down to Earth. This degree can also signify wealth. Makes a placement more appealing and agreeable.

3° / 15° / 27°- Gemini/Mercury energy - Placements with these degrees can be more curious, detached, less grounded, more talkative. These degrees can also signify high intellect or a duality.

4° / 16° / 28° - Cancer/Moon energy - Can make a placement more soft, adds feminine energy or placement could be highly influenced by feminine energy (MC in 4° can signify working with women or women having a big impact on your career for example), can make a placement more emotional.

5° / 17° - Leo/Sun energy - The fame degree! Makes a placement more recognizable, popular, self-centered. These degrees also add creativity, boldness, and confidence to a placement.

6° / 18° - Virgo/Mercury energy - Adds more logic/analytical energy to a placement, adds wisdom and nervous energy, makes a placement more "neat" and confined.

7° / 19° - Libra/Venus energy - Emphasizes the beauty of a placement, politeness, creativity. Can make a placement more apt to romanticize (ASC - how you see the world, Venus - how you see love, Mars - liking romantic sex more than casual sex)

8° / 20° - Scorpio/Pluto energy - Signifies a lot of transformations for a specific placement, a lot of breaking and healing in the area of this degree. Can add obsessiveness/powerfulness/mystery/depth to a placement.

9° / 21° - Sagittarius/Jupiter energy - Adds a more "happy go lucky" vibe, more free flowing, popularity, brings luck and wisdom. Jupiter is expansions it could also expand whatever placement you have this degree in (Mars - more physical energy, Sun - more egotistical, 5th house - more children, creativity).

10° / 22° - Capricorn/Saturn energy - Can slow down a placement (Venus - won't be in a relationship until later in life, Mercury - might talk in a slower pace). Brings lessons and trials to the area of this degree, maturity, ambition, seriousness.

11° / 23° - Aquarius/Uranus energy - Brings something unique to a placement, gives a placement some shock factor and flare. Can make a placement more easy going and inclusive.

12° / 24° - Pisces/Neptune energy - Makes a placement more delulu (lol). Higher octave of Venus so it adds to the beauty of a placement (Sun - adds beauty to your energy, Mercury - adds beauty to your writing/speaking abilities, Mars - adds beauty to the way you physically move (like a dancer)).

29° - Can add mastery, maturity, karmic lessons to a placement. Can signify something that is ending, lessons learned, an almost finished book.

🖤There's so much more I could say about degrees and degree theory but that would take me all day. Here is a link that goes more in depth: 360 Symbolic Degrees

🖤Jupiter is the planet of luck and expansion, therefore looking at the sign and house that Jupiter is in can signify how to lean into that luck. Sign = how, house = where. For example, I have Jupiter in Gemini in the 5th house: using my writing/speaking/communication abilities (Gemini) can help me earn luck especially if it has to do with creativity, children, and romance (5th house).

🖤The sign Mercury is in can have an impact on your learning style. Water: Reading/Writing, Fire: Auditory, Air: Kinesthetic, Earth: Visual... (this is strictly opinion based)

🖤When I look at someone's chart that I'm interested in romantically, I like to make a Venn-Diagram in my head with their Venus and Mars signs (this is the most Virgo Moon shit I've ever written). For example, Sagittarius Venus + Capricorn Mars = Detached, money-minded/materalistic, likes to take things slow, hates possessiveness and feeling "anchored".

🖤THANK YOU FOR 1,000 FOLLOWERS🖤

Masterlist

[tmbgareok]

Evening Mr. Flansburgh!

I am an aspiring musician! I really want to create my own songs, but since I'm an absolute beginner starting from the ground up, I am soul-crushingly daunted by which skill I should focus on learning first, especially with the amount of resources available to me online (Singing? Lyric writing? Learning a particular instrument? Mixing? Music Theory? etc).

Do you remember what skill(s) you focused on doing first when you were just getting into music, or have any recommendations about the order to do then in?

Much appreciated!

JF: reflecting on it, my experience was extremely organic, slow-evolving and combined so many of my interests and obsessions I am not sure it is necessarily that universal. (For instance I was kinda obsessed with recorded sound before I started writing and recording songs on a tape recorder, which I did for a couple of YEARS before I ever played in front of another human being). So I came to writing songs with some extra skills that actually facilitated my earliest efforts.

An art history professor of mine said "Art is foisting your obsessions on the world" and I think he was right. Another art professor of mine said if you embark on a dozen creative projects, the odds of creating an inspired one greatly increases over simply working on one. I think this is very good advice, and is echoed by a lot of folks writing about the nature of creativity.

If you can't play chords, or move your hands around a keyboard or a fretboard fast enough to play a chord progression, saddle up to a screen with a movie and practice scales so your fingers get stronger. Do it everyday for some time. Then practice toggling back and forth between two chords as quickly as possible. Get a metronome. You know why!

Yes, a song is exactly the confected thing your mentioned in your request--it's a lyric, a melody, a progression, a beat, an evolving musical notion. But those parts are often created at separate times and simply smushed together. It doesn't have to be done in one go, and if the whole enterprise seems odd, or your skill set is underdeveloped in one way or another, assembling a song from the various moving elements might be an easier way to approach it.

(also a couple of days ago someone was asking about singing and I pointed at a few ideas there--essentially taking advantage of these free online vocal warm up videos)

I think you should gather a small clutch of tools--a tape recorder or a DAW that is simple enough to master quickly--there are multitrack recording apps that you can install on your phone that are intuitive. A couple of instruments-a guitar or keyboard, maybe an auto harp.

Find a place to work where you can make noise and not be heard.

I think you should start writing in a physical notebook where you can write down your ideas and revisit them. I wouldn't do it on a computer. It's slow writing, and the screen just creates distractions.

Write a bunch of lyrics without trying to write music: Make one about you but write it like it's about someone else, one about someone else's experience but sing it first person, write one about a group of people. Be positive. Be negative. Be regretful. Be optimistic. Express anger. Be as extreme as you can stand. Experiment in writing in every mode you can think of. Here somebody would write "express your own ideas", but ALL of your ideas will be your own! You are making choices based on musical notions that inspired you, but what comes out of you will almost certainly be different enough, and if it's too close to something else, shimmy it around so it isn't distracting! Write a few chord progressions. (A two chord progression that just sounds interesting going back and forth. A four chord progression. Make a beat, or find a beat online, and write a bass line or just a sequence of single notes on a keyboard or guitar to make a pleasant, evolving line. And see if you can write a "song" or two with a two or four chord verse, and a chorus that is a different chord progression.) Write it down and revisit it! Record it slow. You might want to speed it up later when it's "under your fingers."

Pretty soon you will have all the component of what you need to put lyrics to music. You can also try just singing lyrics over a beat, and then figure out the chords underneath AFTER you have a notion of a melody.

That's enough free advice. Go write some songs!

[creature-wizard]

A warning for trauma survivors looking for online support

You may have come across the acronym "RAMCOA", which stands for "ritual abuse, mind control, and organized abuse."

If you search the Internet for RAMCOA, you might come across a result like this:

If you click the link, you'll be taken to a site that briefly describes what RAMCOA supposedly is, with content like:

MC - Mind Control. A shortened form of TBMC, standing for Torture Based Mind Control. MC is also known as programming, where victims are repeatedly tortured starting at a very young age to intentionally cause a system of dissociated parts that function perfectly to suit the abusers' needs.

alpha : a base program, one of the very first implemented. it trains the victim's mind to accept every order given by handlers willingly. parts with alpha programming will often have no will of their own, and very little personality outside of following orders.

aiw : alice in wonderland. typically split into 3 different sections : black alice, white alice, and crazy alice. ideally, a system scripted with aiw would have all three. white alice makes sure the system forgets the trauma, black alice makes the system feel like theyll be a danger to others if they remember the trauma, and crazy alice makes the system think theyre making it up or going insane if they ever remember it.

Literally all of this comes from a conspiracy theory - specifically, the Project Monarch alter programming conspiracy. It was developed and pushed by far right conspiracy theorists. Most of what people run into specifically traces back to Fritz Springmeier, a man who claimed in the 90's that the fight for gay rights was part of a plot to enthrone the antichrist in the year 2000. The Project Monarch conspiracy theory was always adjacent to the Satanic Panic, if not a somewhat niche part of it. If you start checking citations, you will find many of these people citing Svali, a conspiracy theorist who gets a lot of her material from Springmeier. (Example 1, example 2.)

This is no accident. The term RAMCOA was created by the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), which was created by and for psychologists who believed in the myths promoted during the Satanic Panic.

The RA part comes from "satanic ritual abuse," which was coined by Dr. Lawrence Pazder of Michelle Remembers (cw for descriptions of horrible abuses) fame. Lawrence Pazder is the man who effectively started the Satanic Panic. It cannot be overstated that Pazder, now a known malpractitioner, was considered the expert on ritual abuse during this time.

The MC part comes from "trauma-based mind control," which was coined to refer to the alleged abuses inflicted in Project Monarch. Parts of this conspiracy theory that can't be traced back to Fritz Springmeier can usually be traced back to Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips, two other (really racist) conspiracy theorists.

Ultimately, the entire conspiracy theory is constructed from tropes that go back to The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (a known antisemitic hoax), blood libel, and early modern witch panic.

Searching the Internet for RAMCOA resources, ritual abuse, or trauma-based mind control will always bring you to conspiracy theorists.

(Also, the term OEA, which stands for "organized extreme abuse," will lead you to conspiracy theorists as well.)

So yeah, if you're looking for support, be very wary of this stuff. It will absolutely not help you heal; just the opposite.

[luffyvace]

The Luffy Package ☠️📦

(General & relationship headcanons as well as Luffy quotes (relationship implied) for his big day!!)

had to go all out for my fav 😊🤭

General Luffy headcanons:

Luffy has nails so short dirt can’t get under it 😭

not necessarily the booty diggers 🤭

but just really short, like almost booty digger ig—but not it

he has like 1% nail

its not intentional, they just never grow

i have a feeling someone taught luffy how to dance

idk who

it was likely makino, shanks or some else he cares deeply about

but he learned early on and has been a great dancer ever since!

maybe at parties since they happen a lot in one piece ⭐️

But just because someone taught him doesn’t mean he was awful at dancing at first

maybe he was a natural!

feel the rhythm typa thing 🎶 🕺

it’d be funny if he was

cuz imagine a guy that can dance but can’t sing

how you gon dance on beat to a out of tune song?? 😭

at least to uta anyway

ive always loved Luffy’s singing‼️

he never thinks about what the one piece is

but would be the most disappointed if it isn’t something cool

this dude is NOT interested in books so if the one piece really is just joyboy’s tale i don’t think he’ll be satisfied..😭 (I’m talking about the theory)

he definitely wouldn’t say it was all for nothin tho

he still has nakama, treasure and is the pirate king!! 👑

but…the one piece as books is just a mega L for him

Robin will enjoy ♡

you know that thing he does where he stretches his face real big? Like the time he was tryna cheer nami up when she was sick? And it scared vivi and zoro?

he scared himself when he first realized he could do that too

he was bored and started messing around with his devil fruit

at first he was outside and he stretched his mouth, and when realized he could see inside it, he was like ‘I wonder what this looks like’

so he went inside and did it into a mirror

he somehow managed to trash the whole bathroom running away from his reflection

he quickly got over it and realized it was kinda funny

he showed Ace and sabo who also found it terrifying

then preceded to scare people with it ever since

d end! :)

I feel like he’s thought about what the ‘D’ in his name stands for too

He came up with a bunch of outrageous names that likely aren’t it..

”Dingus?”

”Donkey?”

”Demarto?”

”Doorbell?”

”Dinosaur?”

yeah, dinosaur seems the most plausible 😊

Luffy Dinosaur Monkey!

‘HEY THAT SOUNDS COOL 🤩’

yup, that’s probably what it stands for 😁

sneaks into the usopp factory whenever he’s not in there

he ends up playing with his creations and destroys, it, other projects, and the factory altogether in the progress

he then runs out laughing

usopp later returns to the ruins only to find his months work of his greatest creation yet named “ultimate captain usopp three thousand smasher” has been reduced to fragments of metal nothing ☺️

listen idk if oda has confirmed Luffy’s favorite color but I would say it’s none

why? The same reason why you can’t ask a toddler their’s, it’s just gonna constantly change and you know it’s not the truth

arguably, if I had to pick an actual color based off canon, (IK it’s a shade but wtv) it’d be white

why? wym? Don’t you remember that one ep where luffy sang a song about how he loves snow cuz it’s so white?

(one of his lesser talked about songs 😭💗)

Relationship Luffy headcanons:

Luffy as a partner is really rambunctious and loving

But do note that loving doesn’t always mean romantic

for him it means loving you a lot but not being lovey dovey when showing it

you need protecting? He’s on the case!! He can’t and he has to beat someone up? One of your nakama’ll do it so stay with them!

your strong? Perfect! He’s gonna go fight this guy so you go beat up that one!

why am I mentioning that? Because it shows he has a great sense of trust and faith in you

Of course he does with all his friends but your reasoning is different

not only are you his nakama, your also his partner!! Which means he loves you in a intimate way!! Not just platonically

I say “just” because I swear sometimes Luffy’ll feel like a friend with you (best friends and lover typa thing 💞) he’s just as goofy and chaotic with you as he is Usopp and chopper

he feels extra lively when around you and always wants to play, whether you like this or not. Your personality depends a lot on how your relationship with him is but I won’t dabble into that today because it’s his birthday. 🎉 but honestly it doesn’t matter if you punch him like nami or laugh like brook-

he’s still gonna bug you! 💖 seriously you can’t get rid of this dude 🤨 Luffy will drag you on every single one of his adventures so I hope your either brave or fearless like him. The only time you two separate and he allows it is when he’s fighting the boss type thing LOL. Like Doflamingo or smth.

that said Luffy isn’t clingy he just likes being around you and seeing what your doing. Especially when you haven’t landed on an island yet and he’s bored. He’s always singing, playing with your face (ironic cuz he’s the stretchy one) or trying to get you to play some silly game he made up

that usually somehow manages to tick everyone off. 🤷‍♀️

will grab your hands randomly and make you dance to some song he made up about literally anything he sees or feels

he even made one about YOU once :3

”OOOOOHHH your my partner! Yes my partner! We’re having lots of fun! Going on adventures- YAHOO!! And dancing a ton! We’ll dance all arcross the grand line!! Take your hats off and let them fly!! YIPPIE!! We’re having a graaaaand TIIIIIIIME!” 😁🕺

Luffy quotes: (implied relationship between you two)

”HEY LOOK DO YOU SEE THAT ISLAND!! Cmoncmoncmoncmoncmoncmon!! HURRY UP I WANNA GO EXPLORING!!”

”can you sneak in the kitchen and steal some food from sanji? I’m really hungry and he won’t let me in anymore!!”

”LETS HAVE A PARTY!!!” — “we don’t need a reason! CMON!’ CHEERS!”

”lets tame that thing and make it our pet!!”

”what should we name em?” — “Junpi? SOUNDS GOOD TO ME!!” (You didn’t get a chance to respond 💕)

”HEY LOOK A RESTAURANT!! Grab on I’ll rocket us there!! HURRY UP IM HUNGRYYY!!”

”hey! Do you have any food on you?? I’m hungry!”

”Liar!! I can smell it!!”

”take a bath?! I don’t stink!!— EUGH!- okay yeah maybe….but I don’t wanna take a bath!! I’ll get all tired!”

”I’ll leave you with that guy! So go kick some butt! I’ll deal with that red forehead guy!!” (AN: There’s no actual red forehead guy that’s canon, I made it up 👍)

”⁉️ HEY WHAT HAPPENED?! Did that guy beat you up?! I’ll send him flying!! 💢”

”Shishishishi! Shh! Watch this! I’m gonna drop this on Usopp’s head! 🤭😂”

”Lets play a gaaaaame!! I’m so bored! 😞”

”can I have some of your food?” *Already stuffing a piece in his mouth* (the point is it’s not the whole thing ⁉️😱)

”HE LOOK MY BOUNTY WENT UP!! 🤩🤩‼️“

”Isn’t this fun?! 😆” (having a near death experience)

”don’t worry! My injuries don’t hurt at all! See? I’m dancing! I’m having fun!”

”oops. Sorry.”

”look!” (Two chop sticks stuffed up his nose and mouth)

”WOAHH A MAN KILLING BEAR!! LETS GO CHECK IT OUT! 🤩” (even if you wanted to say no your already being hoisted over there because you weren’t running fast enough for him)

”plan? Never mind that!! Let’s go! We’re gonna kick that butt head guys’ butt!!” (AN: another fictional villain I made up on a whim)

”HOLD ON TIGHT” (Gum Gum Rockets with hardly any warning)

”let’s play a game!! It’s called steal zoro’s swords without waking up zoro!! 😁”

”nyop!” (Puts you atop his shoulders 💓)

”nyop!” (Jumps on your back almost knocking you over 💝)

”look at my disguise! Nobody will suspect us! 😎👍”

”Cmere!” (Pulls you into his lap)

”HI! Is it almost time for dinner yet?” (Plops down in your lap)

Thanks for supporting me and my work—as well as my random disappearances too 💗🤗

Everyone! Say it!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUFFY‼️‼️

[genderkoolaid]

still fucking pissed about the way im being treated by my professor. she basically told me to my face that my trans experiences & opinions were too advanced and complicated for our class, & that she had to teach them the basics...

and what exactly are those basics? cis people. cis experiences. cis opinions. this is not intersectionality. "basic feminism" should not mean white cis feminism. & i feel like she is projecting onto my classmates, many of whom seem very interested in what I have to say. one cis boy in my class even tried raising questions about nonbinary people based on those in his life, and she shut him down because she refused to understand what he was talking about. she's just fucking obsessed with her idea of feminism while trying to feel like an intersectional ally yet the minute ANYONE brings up trans people when she doesn't want them to, she throws a little fit.

just. when exactly are cis people supposed to learn about us? i am used to having to explain transness to cis people. i am willing to do that! i am willing to simplify it if need be! but cis adults & older teens can handle being challenged a little bit. in fact I'd say it's pretty healthy for them to be introduced to trans theory as part of their introduction to feminism, especially in an age where transness is a major part of the ongoing culture war. but noooo god forbid this cis woman's ego is challenged in the slightest. god forbid i have an original thought about gender that i didn't get from her fucking textbook

[romanticfistfightz]

@painlandweek day 4 - domestic AU!!

i thought it'd be fun for edwin to make charles read some magic theory after charles made him learn boxing <3

double art day! i wrote an extremely short fic based on this art ^_^

[flamingpudding]

Ghost Kitten

A/N: I got fascinated with the idea of Danny being Selina's son and then during work this sort of idea formed in my head.

Danny wasn't supposed to know yet. Jack had it all prepared for when Danny would get to learn about this. But this, this was not how Danny was supposed to learn about his origins yet. Jack Fenton wasn't sure how to react, so he ended up possible reacting in the worst way possible if he judged it by the way his sweet little boy was looking at them.

Jack tried to remember where it went wrong. Jazz had come to them, told them Danny wanted to have an important talk. That it was so important that she needed both of them to focus on him seriously. It had worried Maddie and him at first and when they sat down on the couch facing their children they weren't sure what to expect. But then his boy told him about the accident he had in the lap, about how things changed even asking them if they ever noticed how Danny's behaviours changed.

Jack had to admit then, that he hadn't really noticed and it made his mouth taste like dirt. He didn't like where this was going. He saw how his children exchanged a glance and then his sweet boy told them the truth and Jack could feel the horror overtaking his entire mind. The accident had changed Danny even worse.

He couldn't help but remember a term he had last heard long ago before his collage years even. Meta Human. His son had become a Meta human with ghost based powers and had kept it a secret from them for so long. Jack didn't know how to react then and still didn't know now. All he could think about were the horrors he had put his sweet little son through. All the times he had offhandedly said he would tear him apart molecule by molecule. In how much fear did his son have to live until he gathered enough courage to tell them, most likely only because Jazz was there to support him?

Jack didn't want to imagine it anymore. All he wanted was to hug his little boy and tell him that everything would be okay but before he could do anything. Maddie, his until then wonderful, wife told them something in return they had an agreement over when to tell them.

"You're adopted. You are not my child."

Until then Jack had always thought Maddie loved Danny just as much as he did but as he locked at his wife and saw the steely coldness flickering in them with distress. He wasn't so sure anymore. Torn between being angry at Maddie for the first time after so long and wanting to comfort his boy, Jack could do nothing but sat frozen as his beloved family broke apart before his eyes.

Suddenly Maddie and Jazz got into a headed argument, Danny was starting to draw into himself, making himself smaller watching his mother and sister fight. Until Maddie stormed out fo the room. Jazzie gave him a challenging look but Jack didn't know what to say so instead, what he had planned to tell his son when he turned 18 he was going to tell him now.

"Danny you know how we have barely any contact with family from my side? There is a reason behind it. But the important part here is that the only one I do keep sort of contact with is my fourth cousin and even that is nothing more than a couple messages ever few months."

"And what does that have to do with Danny?" Jazz pressed on while his little boy finally got the courage to look up at him.

"Dann-no, I need for you to now that no matter what you are or what I am going to tell you, you are my little boy, my son." Jack did everything he could to stare reassuringly at his boy and smiled once he saw him smile just a little too, he was most likely relieved that he was taking the news better than his mother.

"About 16 year ago, my fourth cousin contacted me out of the blue, till then we had only exchanged a couple of words and theories and projects. But that time was different. She was panicked, unsure and distressed. I don't know the specifics, all she told me was that she had gotten pregnant with a child from a fling who she wasn't sure wanted a relationship with or not and that she couldn't take care of a child in a city as dangerous as where she lived."

Understanding dawned on his daughter's face and Jack smiled fondly, Jazzie-pants had always been a smart cookie. "She didn't want to put the baby into her system, nor let a stranger take care of it. So she asked me and the moment I saw the little baby the first time. I knew he would be my son no matter what or how long she would want for me to take care of him."

Danny blinked wide eyed at Jack as finally his boy also understood what he was telling him. "Technically you are my fifth cousin, but I would prefer for you to stay my son for as long as you want."

He left his children after telling Danny the truth of his origin. Jack new he would love his son no matter what he was or his reaction towards the truth of his origins. Still he hoped this would not tear his family apart and that it would only take a day or two for Maddie to cool off for things to go back to an adjusted normal. Jack mused that he would have to diele back on the ghost ripping comments, he wouldn't want for his little boy to live in fear in their own house.

That what he thought until he saw his wife stewing in their bedroom, muttering about theories and how their boy wasn't their boy. He knew his wife, and dearly loved her. But it was because he knew her that he did the next thing he felt like regretting the next moment.

Danny is no longer safe with us. - J

He didn't get an answer from his cousin and the next morning he knew why. He did expect for her to want to remove Danny from their care, but he did not expect her to visit him with barely any time delay the next day.

All he could do was to stare and watch as Selina appeared on his doorstep with a man that was glaring at him and Jack might have only seen in magazines before, asking if she could meet her boy and how much he had already told Danny about his birth. And when he saw his baby boy's reaction to the two he wanted to do nothing more than hug and cuddle his little boy but once again, he got beaten to it by his fourth cousin.

His poor boy looked so unsure when Selina hugged him that Jack really wanted to take him away again, but he had no other choice, if he wanted to ensure his boy's safety.

[themindcastlesystem]

Another crackpot "Project: Eden's Garden" theory

(Sunny, they/she) hi again it's your girl I'm going insane again so I'm back with another theory

NOTE: Unlike my chapter 2 theory, which is more cohesive and at least has some Biblical parallels and narrative themes to back it up, this theory is COMPLETE speculation based off of only a few observations - so keep that in mind while reading.

THE THEORY

So uh. Cassidy sus. *points at her* amogus! amogus!

For real, though. Does anyone else get the feeling that she's a bit... out of touch, emotionally? Or that she's the most fourth-wall-breaky of the group, like she keeps feeding her jokes and references to some sort of viewer (whether the player or the literal broadcast viewers in-universe)?

This could most definitely be just a comic relief thing. Or maybe a "streamer" thing, since that's what she's known for - and streamers are notorious for not being totally authentic, especially when they're in front of an audience. It's not like half of their audience really cares about how they feel, or if they're having a bad day - they want entertainment. I could see a character arc where Cassidy becomes a bit more expressive and authentic with her emotions across the rest of the game, learning to let her actual feelings show instead of masking her fear/sadness with smiles and jokes. I would love an arc like this in a DR fangame.

But, personally, I have other suspicions. There's a few pieces of "evidence" that make me suspect her of being the mastermind (quote marks because it's not conclusive and could be interpreted in other ways). I know there might not be a traditional "mastermind" in P:EG, especially since the creators said not to expect canon DR tropes, but just take "mastermind" to mean someone in the main cast that's working with Tozu/Mara/any other killing game organizers, whether willingly or under duress.

THE "EVIDENCE"

She's a streamer. As I said, this could explain why she seems so inauthentic and that's that - but that is ignoring the tangible benefit that her platform would have for the masterminds if they decided to use it. She easily has the biggest live following of the group - while there are other individuals with mass followings, like Wenona (who runs a huge business) and Kai (who has a ton of social media followers), Cassidy's thing is livestreaming. This killing game is being livestreamed. And if the killing game organizers are broadcasting it, it would make total sense for them to take advantage of the Ultimate Pro Gamer's live audience - and this would be easier to do if she was in on it, rather than if they had to hack her account to get a stream going or something.

Her actions during chapter 1. The two most important things she does are: a) kick down everyone's doors so they're forced to leave their dorms, and b) organize the game tournament during which a murder happens. The reason she says she did this was to get people to be more active and do something fun with each other, to boost their spirits. But it is possible that she wanted to force people to be out and about so that there would be more chances for people to kill each other - and/or to keep things more entertaining for the viewers (similar to how she feeds jokes/references to the camera). There is also potentially an argument that she might want to get people to trust each other in a less overt way than someone like Wolfgang or Diana - by getting them to let their guards down. With people's guards down, it becomes easier for a wolf in sheep's clothing to strike. (Hahaha get it because-- *gets shot*) You could even say that everyone's caught in her spider's web and they don't even realize it. (Hahaha get it because-- *double gunshot*)

This fucking picture. (Everything before this was already speculation, but this is EVEN MORE SPECULATIVE!) I have no idea what it means, and I know it was Diana that Wolfgang hallucinated as being his mother when he was in the boiler room, but Cassidy looks even more like her. Like, other than her eye color, she has the facial proportions of Wolfgang's dad and the eyes/hair of his mom. (Haha your mom.) Maybe they're siblings/half-siblings, I don't know. But it does strike me that Wolfgang's last words were "I won't stop until the world knows me as--!" before he died. Which... could mean he knows who the mastermind is, or has some involvement with the killing game, or maybe his parents did and he knows about it ("like father, like son..."). I have no clue, this is just me guessing based off of a facial similarity and two lines of dialogue lmfao.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

I don't know. Try again later.

Uh, but if I had to come up with some sort of potential motive for her to be involved - assuming she's a willing participant and has some sort of ideological or personal motive - then... here goes.

The first thing that comes to mind is something Damon says multiple times in the prologue: "Ultimates are charged with the betterment of society." And, well, he thinks everyone's doing a shit job - except for maybe Wenona, because she's a billionaire and runs a big business that feeds people. Basically everyone else, he thinks is totally useless.

Well... I can see a way that Cassidy might feel similarly, but in sort of a reverse way. She's a streamer and a pro gamer with a huge audience - and so far, she actually seems like the least harmful popular figure in the group. Compare her to Kai Monteago - who's a total dunce and who seems to really only care about his own fame when it comes to his talent. Or Wenona - who's a billionaire, a wealth hoarder whose profile literally says she owns over 90% of the agriculture industry and she dislikes unions.

We don't really know anything about Cassidy's platform (that I can immediately remember) other than "she's a gamer" and "they're called Cassidy's Comrades" - but even in just that, there's already communist theming with the "comrade" joke. Though that could just be a "haha Soviet Russia" joke and nothing deeper, I will also point out that one thing streamers are known for doing is charity streams - oftentimes long ones that become widely talked about because someone decided to stay on stream for 24 hours straight to raise money for a charitable cause. Also, because of the live nature of streamers' relationships with their fandoms, it's much more common than other industries for streamers to be publicly put on blast for things like microaggressions or giving money to bad people - something that could easily influence someone like Cassidy. What is a killing game broadcast, but a livestream where all these Ultimates are put on blast - with their first murder motive being cryptic blackmail about some of the worst things they've done?

In my "Cassidy = mastermind" hypothetical, where Damon's hatred of the Ultimate title and the people who have it comes largely from his ego and distrust of others in general, Cassidy could hate the Ultimate title and the people who have it because she thinks they're not doing enough to help others. Ultimates have been charged with the betterment of society, and they're failing. In this hypothetical, Cassidy also puts herself above others and distrusts others - but expresses it very differently from Damon. Surprisingly, much more pessimistically, given the whole murder game and all.

Well - that's if I'm right. I'm probably not. But it's a fun thought, right?

[urautismdiagnosis]

Peso

Peso my lil Habibi <3 <3 <3

hes just a top tier character

my Hispanic coded son, mylil guy who's learning how to believe in himself

i just I lovepeso guys he's so pure and supportive and caring and lighthearted and silly and he's really doing his best??

he could probably cure my mentally illness with a bandage I'm sure

imgonna be so real I think he has game tho, like I'm 300% he could pull any maiden

he can become friends with like any sea creature too probably

hes my hero and my son and I think he low-key judges everyone internally

cuz like idk if y'all have met people who refuse to swear out loud verbally and hate confrontation, but the internal dialogue omg

i just know one of these days if he gets pushed too far hes gonna threaten someone with his slappity flippers

like y'all know the look birds do where they just sideye you??

that glance???

i think he does that whenever people do things that are stupid

like he loves them all dearly but shellington why would you touch The THing That Will Hurt you, no shellington you cant eat that for science-

Also I think he and dashi would listen to music together i think they might spend evenings relaxing together. I mean their rooms are right next to eachother so like I'm sure they've had some lovely little evening conversations and stuff 🥰 i can just imagine dashi tryna teach peso yoga and like 😩🙏his penguin body wasn't built for it but he still slays

Hes like the little sibling but in the actually I am the most mature way???

I think its cuz he looks up to alot of the other members (altho he's definitely gotten alot more confident as the show has progressed) but he also like..

He gives me the vibes of the oldest sibling of not just the siblings but of all the cousins??? This might just be me projecting but like why did u even become a medic for such a wide range of medical creatures and sign up to join the newly formed highly experimental water nasa???

I think he probably had alot of high expectations on himself because everyone just always believed he could do anything. And that sounds super supportive in theory but when ur like tryna be the oldest and first one to support ur family and everyone is always looking at u because like.. most other people in ur family are younger or ehatever.. that pressure and extra attention can cause alot of perfectionism and high self standards

That mixed with being The Caretaker in your family especially as a child is a pretty good recipe for getting anxious about any big goal in your life and how others perceive you. I think he tried to like humble himself by saying oh no I'm not really capable of all those amazing things so pls don't have those huge expectations hahaha but then it just turned into not believing in himself as much???

Also we slay genuinely caring and kind people having alot of pent up frustration they never show because they love everyone too much. It still hurts inside tho.

Anyways uhhhhhhhhhhh this totally ain't me projectin or anythin.

also hes like a mixed kid, but he's mostly gentoo penguin id say based on my own design

speaking of penguins I think that their homes would be actually made of stone lol. Their homes would have like different smaller homes for privacy around like communal areas.. they still gotta deal with predstors like albatross or ehstever tho. But their albatross for example might work in groups or even be larger.

Friendly reminder my lore for the octonauts is a bit different than the Canon. Sure People People being like hunted is wayyyy less common than irl but They're basically still playing their evolutionary roles kinda like how we see with sea otters in the show.

I'm gonna make the post for their social norms and etc on this within the next few days actually lol but back to peso

Do u guys ever think peso wouldve jumpscared the crew by being like "oh no the shelf is too tall!" And then busting out the "hey did you know that penguin legs are just folded and much horrifically longer than ud think they are?" On them 😩🙏

"Wh- why would ye show me this??"

" because no one will ever believe you"

Hes very sweet but I think he deserves to be a little bit of a sneaky sht

If uve made it this far thanks for reading the brainrot I hope it was comprehensible pls lmk ur headcanons about him cuz I need more ngl