#s: we are bound
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"Why he was conducting the survey wasn't completely clear"
Well that dog whistle is loud and clear to my trans ass. The reason is eliminationist. Full stop. It's to make us even more second class citizens than we currently are. To push us further into the margins. To make is pariahs to distract from their disasterous policies. To direct the fears and anxieties of the public on to us and have them do the dirty work of eliminating us. The history of politicians targeting an extremely small minority to demonize is... Well, do I even need to say it?
And I'll reiterate: it was never about "protecting kids." Nearly all University students are adults. That excuse is dead, the mask is off.
If you give even the smallest shit about trans people as just human beings that deserve rights and even just to be alive then you have to do something. Anything. We are begging you.
#trans#transgender#lgbtq#lgbt#nonbinary#we are living in the era of extreme backlash that was bound to come from all the progress of the 2010's#boy i sure do wish time wasnt cyclical
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Gift
#jshk#aoi akane#mirai#jibaku shounen hanako kun#jibaku shonen hanako kun#my art#I get to be emo about them yay#toilet bound hanako kun#tbhk#Akane giving a name to Mirai is really personnal#same for Mirai being the only one calling him just Akane#12 yo clock keeper Akane making cameos let s gooo#proclaiming the title of the clock keepers fan n1 since there is no one else in line sojdjkd#we re dropping in the stratosphere with this one boys#they destroy me
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"Okay! Off to change the past, then!"
#terukane#minamoto teru#aoi akane#jibaku shounen hanako kun#jibaku shounen hanako kun spoilers#jshk akane#jshk teru#jshk#jshk spoilers#NOTHING COULD HAVE PREPARED ME FOR THE INFORMATION WE GOT ABOUT THE NEW-PRESENT.#I can't believe Teru and Akane are in their break-up era...#Teru looked s t a r t l e d at the thought of his “new situation” with Aoi#Akane went through all 500 stages of grief on the student council floor#toilet bound hanako kun#tbhk teru#tbhk akane#tbhk
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I am working from the airbnb today while my mom & sister take the baby out on various beach adventures + ice cream/cheese factory tours. i made them send me pictures and WAHHHH. i love that little baby and i love seeing my family love him. i feel like in the first month or so of his life i spent a lot of time feeling sad about the fact that i didn't have a partner who was equally invested in our baby and was there to witness and share all the little memories with me. i am really enjoying being a solo parent and have no regrets about my choice, but i worried it would feel lonely to love him on my own and not have someone to share that love with. but in the months since i have just been so struck by how much our family structure feels more open to the world instead of closed-off in a traditional nuclear family type of way. obviously both types of families have things to recommend them! like, there are lots of good things about a two-parent household and having a larger extended family where you have two sets of grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, etc. but having a one-parent, one-extended family household also has its own beautiful advantages. he gets to spend so much more time with my parents and my sister especially - both because i want it that way and because i have to rely more on my family for help since there's only one of me. i don't have a partner whose schedule or preferences need to be taken into account, so we can join my mom and sister on a spur-of-the-moment vacation. i also don't have a partner who can be responsible for the baby while i'm doing work on vacation, so my mom and sister got to take him out for a whole day of sightseeing and adventures with just them there. idk i'm not sure i'm articulating this well but i think there's a joyful flexibility and openness to this family structure that i wasn't anticipating and that i think/hope will really enrich his experience of the world. he gets to have all these alloparents who love him and know him well and have real responsibility for him. it's beautiful!
#i also have a theory which is i think that people feel much more invested in a baby when they have real responsibility for them#and get to like hold them and take care of them and take them places without their parent(s) there#because then it's not like#oh i'm holding the baby as a favor to mom while mom does something#it's like oh we are on a little adventure together and we can bond and figure out who we are to each other#so i am also trying to seek out opportunities to like#leave him in the care of others even just for brief periods - not just babysitting but like idk#the other day i had to drive from the park to M&A's house but they were walking back#and so he just went on the 15-20 min walk with them while i drove#and got to spend time hanging out with them without me there#idk! lots of thoughts.#i think my brother who is parenting in a much more traditional family structure#is kind of bound by more traditional parenting norms as a result - like they don't really like to leave him with other people#or let other people hold him or go places with him on their own unless there's no other option#but idk i think there's a freedom to being like#i can't be everywhere at once and i don't have the capacity to be both parents to him#so i can open things up to more people and reap the benefits of him having lots of experiences with other people#and more experience with other people's caretaking styles too#(of course i also cried that he was seeing the ocean for the first time in his life without me. but like that's par for the course.)#parenting tag#baby tag
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A Critique of ACV: The Last Chapter (SPOILERS!)
I wanted to hold off on sharing my thoughts about the new content until I’d given The Last Chapter time to breathe, because I was honestly hoping that maybe if I gave it some time, I wouldn’t dislike it so much. But the more I think about it, the more I find things to dislike about it. Which is why what started out as a quick write-up of my thoughts immediately after playing The Last Chapter has now spiraled into this very long critique that got so long I needed to add subheadings to break it up.
Sorryyyyy.
I’m basically spoiling everything from The Last Chapter here, along with Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and parts of its expansions. I also briefly mention a few other Assassin’s Creed games, mainly Odyssey and one of its DLCs. My point being, if you don’t want to know anything then please look away now. Or don’t. But I know I would have appreciated a warning before diving into this mess. 💀
As a disclaimer: this essay is not meant to be an attack, nor is it meant to place blame squarely at the feet of Darby Mcdevitt, or any of the other writers or developers involved with the game. There are so many moving parts in a game as expansive and with as much add-on content as Valhalla, and I can only guess what happened behind the scenes that brought us to this point. I don’t know who wrote what, who made what creative decisions, and I therefore don’t feel comfortable placing blame on anyone in particular. I have never worked for Ubisoft and I can therefore only speculate about their internal culture based on what has been leaked from the company over the years. Furthermore, this is not an invitation to personally attack anyone involved in the development of this game on Twitter or wherever else. This is purely an attempt on my part to articulate why me and so many other fans of Valhalla and of Eivor feel so profoundly emotionally betrayed by this ending, as well as outline some factors that I believe contributed to the way the game was mishandled.
So. I think I had already accepted when the trailer released back in September that something like this was going to happen. I had already done my mourning for the fact that Eivor would never get the send-off she deserved, which is why I think I’m a lot less upset than I would have been otherwise… but that doesn't make this suck any less. The Last Chapter was completely underwhelming, it was emotionally unsatisfying, it completely butchered Eivor's character, it felt incomplete, and rushed, and it felt more like a teaser for Mirage than anything close to the conclusion Eivor’s story deserved.
The (Character) Assassination of Eivor Varinsdottir
When we first meet Eivor as an adult, she is overconfident, brash, and she has just gotten in over her head and gotten both herself and her crew captured by the enemy. She is in the 17th year of a quest for revenge she has been in pursuit of since she was nine years old. She has spent more than half of her life hunting Kjotve, the man who stole her parents, her clan, and her childhood from her, and is fully prepared to die if need be to kill him. She is an orphan who was taken in by the Raven Clan after the slaughter of her own people, and she considers these people to be her new family. Her love for her family and community are central to Eivor’s character right from the beginning. While she learns and grows past some of her flaws throughout the game, her love for her community and her loyalty to them is what sticks with her.
Eivor also starts the game carrying an immense amount of shame for how her father died, laying down his axe in the hope that the rest of his clan would be spared, only for he and most of his people to be slaughtered anyway. Through her time spent acting as a leader to the Raven Clan–first as a warrior and later as their Jarlskona–Eivor finally understands by the end of the game why Varin did what he did, because she realizes that she would make the exact same choice to protect her people. Eivor, too, would choose to die in “dishonor” if it offered even the smallest chance to save her loved ones.
Eivor is the reincarnation of Odin; she carries his memories and his thoughts, unbeknownst to her. She has visions and prophetic dreams and hears his voice in her head, but spends much of the game not understanding the meaning of it all. The part of her that is Odin pushes her toward chasing personal glory, toward the pursuit of knowledge, toward selfishness. But she chooses to abandon all that in favor of the people she loves, even as Odin rages and screams insults into her ear and calls her a coward–the one thing she has always been most fearful of becoming. Odin is a representation of everything she has been told to value in life, and she is (literally) pulled in the opposite direction by Sigurd, Randvi, Hytham, Valka, Gunnar, Soma… everything else.
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Eivor never truly seems to grasp the meaning of her connection to Odin, Sigurd’s connection to Tyr, Basim’s connection to Loki, or anything about the sages or the Isu at all. Not in the base game or in any of the DLCs. She never really acknowledges it explicitly until The Last Chapter.
Put a pin in that.
Family and community are central to Eivor’s character. Loyalty is central to Eivor’s character. Honor is central to Eivor’s character. That’s why it makes absolutely no sense for Eivor to drop everything, seemingly out of nowhere, to go back to Vinland alone and live out the rest of her days learning from Odin, the part of her that she explicitly rejected at the end of the main game. And it certainly doesn’t justify Eivor deciding to leave Ravensthorpe in the middle of the night without a farewell, regardless of who she supposedly said goodbye to offscreen. It doesn’t justify her completely sudden and out of character decision to walk away from her clan, her family without a true goodbye. Eivor spends the entire base game acting as Jarl in Sigurd’s stead in everything but title, because Sigurd has all but completely abandoned the clan in order to chase his own ambitions, only for Eivor to supposedly do the very same thing? No. It’s completely incongruent with her character and actively contradicts facts that were established in the main game.
There are so many other inconsistencies, including the fact that I highly doubt Valka–the same Valka who we saw warn Eivor against digging too deeply in her visions in the intro to The Forgotten Saga–would simply accept Eivor departing for another continent to delve deeper into her visions. But the way they miswrote Eivor’s character was particularly glaring. There could have been a version of the last chapter in which Eivor's motivations actually made sense, but that version needed so much more evidence for it to be believable. Reading between the lines is one thing, but expecting players to accept the conclusions you’re feeding them without planting any seeds beforehand is just lazy writing. [insert “HE WOULDN’T FUCKING SAY THAT” meme]
The RPG structure is the root of all evil (I know just… hear me out on this)
I think applying an RPG structure to Assassin’s Creed was a mistake, and have thought so for a while, but not really for the reason you’re probably thinking of. The “but we’re reliving another person’s memories in the animus, so how can it possibly make sense to allow us to make choices that affect the narrative?” reason. My criticism of the addition of choices is mainly this: I think that by trying to “expand” the story by adding RPG elements and dialogue options, they instead ended up severely limiting themselves. Because the problem with adding dialogue options to Assassin’s Creed is they can never take those choices to their conclusion. They can never truly have consequences.
Trying to tell a linear story with a non-linear structure like this doesn’t work, or at the very least, it hasn’t worked in Assassin’s Creed thus far. Odyssey came closer, I think, because it had multiple distinct outcomes and player choices actually had an affect on the trajectory of the plot (Mostly. Hi, Legacy of the First Blade. I’m coming for you in a minute.). Odyssey's multiple endings present a different problem entirely in the context of Assassin’s Creed because despite the input of choice, there is still a canon version of the story and a canon ending. It leaves those players that arrived at a different outcome feeling alienated, and like their choices were incorrect or simply didn't matter.
But in Valhalla, all roads lead to more or less the same destination and most decisions have no impact on the trajectory of the story. The problem that arises from this is that players will make their choices and expect some sort of payoff, as they should. But they won’t really get it. As per Darby McDevitt, for example, Sigurd always goes back to Norway at some point, regardless of whether a player ends up with the “good” or the “bad” ending. Sigurd returning to Norway is a fixed point and the timeline will always course correct, so to speak, to reach that end.
(Thank you @/vikingnerd793 for the screenshot!)
Everyone gets more or less the same version of The Last Chapter, with the siblings’ interactions only varying slightly after the “bad” ending to reflect the fact that Eivor and Sigurd haven’t seen each other in a while. But even with the tiny variations in dialogue that exist, a few changed lines in a scene that doesn't last any longer than two minutes still fail to make Eivor and Sigurd's supposed off-screen reconciliation feel even remotely earned. Ubisoft wanted to offer “choice” while not following through with emotional payoff for those choices because they only wanted a single ending. Even if a player ends the main game with Sigurd deciding to stay in Norway as a result of Eivor’s “betrayal,” the consequences of that to their relationship are never truly explored.
Having only one ending with no variations in an RPG means that they couldn’t address any of the plot points that could have been affected by player choices. Interpersonal conflicts are watered down or only vaguely referenced. They couldn’t truly address the state of Eivor and Sigurd’s relationship because that would depend on what endgame the player reached. They couldn’t give Randvi an actual goodbye because some people didn’t romance her and therefore it might feel “forced” to those people, despite her being a major character. Vili–despite apparently being Eivor’s best friend–can’t appear because for some people, he’s busy being the Jarl of Snotinghamscire. There is no true emotional follow through for any of the choices made throughout the game. The end result is a goodbye tour consisting of Aelfred, Guthrum, and Harald, three people who Eivor has little to no emotional attachment to, but whose roles in the game are fixed no matter what choices the player makes, which means they’re safe to use. To be clear, Hytham’s role in the narrative is also fixed, but the reason I separate him from the other three is because he is actually emotionally significant to Eivor. His goodbye, unlike the other three, feels earned.
To be clear, I don’t place the blame entirely on the writers for this because, as I’ve said, they were given a franchise that revolves around linear stories, told to put dialogue options into it, and make sure all those choices still lead to the same conclusion. As an extension of that, they brought back people who worked on the base game two years after its release to tie up loose ends that should have been dealt with years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if those same creators have all since moved on from this story and its characters, both creatively and emotionally. It's been two years. Even longer than that since they actually worked on the game. I wouldn't fault them for not having the same enthusiasm they once did. But the end result is a last chapter that feels almost completely devoid of emotion, and ties up absolutely none of the loose ends that most people would expect from a permanent “goodbye.” It fails to reach the emotional highs and lows that a conclusion with two years of build up should have.
Which now brings me to Randvi.
Oh, Randvi, now and forever shackled to her map table.
I know this will be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people, but I always suspected that they would never actually follow through on making Randvi and Eivor's relationship canon despite the fact that it is indisputably the most fleshed out romance in the game. They are hinted at right from the beginning, in the form of Randvi’s clear dissatisfaction with her marriage to Sigurd and in Eivor’s lingering gazes. It is the only romance option in the game that has any effect on one of Eivor’s core internal conflicts: remaining loyal to her brother. “The wind calls [her] back to Randvi” after almost every single regional arc, whether players choose to pursue a romance or not.
But Darby McDevitt Official Headcanon or no, I never thought Ubisoft would "force" another romance after the backlash from Odyssey's Legacy of the First Blade (I told you I’d come back to it). I truly believe the company will and has happily suffered criticism from the Queer community for forcing a relationship on gamers who played Kassandra as a lesbian. Kassandra who, prior to the DLC, also never shows any interest in starting a family, or becoming a mother, or “continuing the family line”, as would become Ubisoft’s flimsy correction to the storyline after the criticisms started rolling in. But I highly doubt they would be okay with alienating the bigots who seem to form the loudest portion of their player base. That would be too much of a risk to their bottom line.
To me, the romance plotline in Legacy of the First Blade was the inevitable result of Ubisoft wanting to tell a linear story with a non-linear structure. I think they did so without thinking through the implications of letting players choose their character's sexuality, only to then backtrack on it later because they needed Kassandra to have a baby. And what they seemed to take away from that was only that all forced romance is bad, without grasping the nuance of why that particular forced romance was so bad. This isn’t to say there should be any forced romance at all but that it should have served as a lesson of why one shouldn’t make a game with so much emphasis on player choice, only to take that choice away and even retroactively nullify those choices when it suits the needs of the plot. But that wasn't Ubisoft's takeaway. So in Valhalla, they pulled back. They made all player choices matter just a little bit less.
Eivor and Randvi’s relationship is inarguably handled with more care than any of the other romances in the game. It is inextricable from the narrative, whether it is a romantic relationship or a friendship. But despite any amount of blatantly obvious subtext that exists, Valhalla is still an RPG and the creators cannot confirm or deny any of the choices as correct or incorrect. And because they have to cater to all possible endings, they cannot address Eivor and Randvi’s relationship in any capacity because it might be misconstrued as being forced. Despite every overt piece of evidence that exists, Valhalla is still technically an RPG and at the end of the day, plenty of people did not choose Randvi. No amount of narrative director headcanons or heavy subtext will change the fact that Randvi is a seemingly meaningless choice in a sea of meaningless choices, and has now remained so permanently.
Ubisoft just really sucks as a company, actually
Everything that I am about to say in this section (and honestly, most of the next one as well) is conjecture because again, I don't know how certain creative decisions were reached behind the scenes. This isn't just about Randvi, or about Eivor's sexuality. It’s also about Ubisoft’s long and storied history of internal misconduct and suppression of marginalized voices. It's about Ubisoft's history of employee abuse in general. It's about the fact that Ubisoft suddenly decided to let players choose their gender, but only once they finally got around to making mainline titles starring women. Syndicate’s Jacob and Evie share the role of protagonist, and would have also shared equal screen time if Evie’s role hadn’t been significantly minimized throughout production in favour of her brother. Aya was originally meant to replace Bayek as the main playable character early on in Origins, but was later reduced to a side character who is only playable in a few missions throughout the game. Aya, the founder of the Hidden Ones. The order that would later evolve into the Assassins. The order that is the namesake of the entire franchise, just to be clear. Odyssey was originally conceived as Kassandra’s game, before the developers were made to allow players the choice to play as Alexios. Every female protagonist in the franchise thus far has been minimized in some way, and Eivor is unfortunately no different.
Assassin's Creed is a huge enough brand at this point that they could have easily released Odyssey with only Kassandra, and Valhalla with only Eivor. But instead of taking a "risk" and doing just that, they added the male options to cater to a small but vocal minority of misogynistic piss babies who don't want women to exist in their video games, period. At least, certainly not as fully realized characters with personalities and thoughts and feelings of their own. That would require acknowledging women as people, rather than as identical playthings that mostly exist as a social stealth mechanic for them to hide behind when they need a cover.
It’s especially funny because it was such a futile effort. That very same group of people was never not going to complain about Assassin’s Creed going “woke” for having female protagonists, even if they were optional. Those people were going to complain no matter what, and they absolutely have as evidenced by the fact that they've been having a conniption on Twitter for the past few months now that Eivor is suddenly getting even half of the attention from the marketing team that Havi has gotten for two years. The comments section on every official social media post featuring Eivor is a sea of people complaining about how “female” Eivor being canon makes no sense, how her voice sucks, how she is just the result of Ubisoft pandering to a “woke” demographic. The “fan” response could not be more blatantly misogynistic. What’s more, Ubisoft bases the trajectory of their games at least partially on fan responses. It’s a toxic feedback loop of them making creative decisions built on sexism and the fans responding in turn.
Ubisoft deciding to implement gender choice as a mechanic didn't happen because they suddenly had a change of heart after happily ignoring their female players for years. It happened because they got busted for the "women don't sell" comments and the company's history of burying sexual assault allegations, and because they finally caught on to the fact that catering to gamers that aren't cishet men might actually be profitable. And it wasn't for lack of trying from the devs within the company because again, Origins was originally conceived as being Aya's game, Evie and Jacob were at the very least supposed to have equal screen time when development on Syndicate was in the early stages, Elise's role in Unity was also reduced... you get the idea.
Letting people choose to play as a woman or letting people choose to play as a Queer person is great. But it's an obvious cop out when your company also has a history of suppressing those very same voices, has done next to nothing to remedy the toxic company culture that encourages that behaviour in the first place, and when you've been dragging your feet as a developer about making your games even just a bit more inclusive for years. It’s an empty gesture when those female characters need to be watered down just enough for their male counterparts to make some amount of sense in the story, and when the marketing for the game hides them away like some kind of shameful secret.
Suddenly making games starring female protagonists because you’ve realized that it might be profitable, while also making it optional anyway, isn’t exactly the win for representation they seem to think it is. Especially when the marketing favours the non-canon, male protagonists so totally that most people would assume Eivor and Kassandra are skins of their male counterparts. Because heaven forbid the poor baby boys have their escapist fantasy shaken if they have to play as a woman who’s better at getting girls than they are. Making your representation optional makes your representation look half-assed and while I absolutely adore Eivor and Kassandra, I mourn what they could have been if their stories were allowed to be fully theirs.
Perhaps I’m being overly harsh and Ubisoft simply decided to implement gender choice in Valhalla in good faith. I honestly wouldn’t care if I thought it had, or if AC games had always allowed players to choose their gender. But considering the company’s history, and considering the game’s marketing, I somehow doubt that. Especially when, in their first game featuring a canon male protagonist since before AC pivoted to RPGs, they are not giving players the option to choose their gender.
Hi Basim.
Now don’t get me wrong. I obviously understand why Mirage doesn’t allow players to choose their gender; Basim is a pre-existing character, and it really wouldn’t make sense. But it is so transparent that they are willing to jump through narrative hoops to explain why Alexios is playable as the Eagle Bearer, but the same thing can’t be done for Basim. I suppose the importance of coming up with convoluted reasons as to why your protagonist’s gender is so easily changeable fades away when you’re not trying to replace a woman.
But what’s this? By God it’s–it’s Mirage with a steel chair!
The final content update for Valhalla feels like a teaser for Mirage. Full stop. If you think I'm being too harsh or unfair, then that's your prerogative. But in The Last Chapter, in the long-awaited conclusion to Eivor’s story, we don't even get to play as Eivor. The entire questline (if it can even be considered that much) consists almost entirely of cutscenes, which we view through Basim's perspective while Eivor is relegated to a side character. It’s a collection of Eivor’s memories that are supposedly filtered by emotional intensity, as Basim puts it. Grief, longing, sadness: all emotions that I fail to see being presented in the memories they gave us, at least for the most part. For the first time in Valhalla, we are voyeurs to Eivor’s memories rather than experiencing her life through her own eyes. The role of the animus user in past Assassin’s Creed games has always been pretty unobtrusive, but The Last Chapter constantly reminds us that Basim is there and watching. "Animus magic," as Basim calls it, was less of a necessity to the plot and felt a lot more like Ubisoft's marketing department gone awry.
I'm thinking about what Basim says at the end of the base game, when he is in the modern day and speaking to Eivor's remains. When he says, "I can take from you anything I want... your memories, your skills, your secrets. They're all mine." It's so ironic because he really stole Eivor's ending right out from under her, and I would have to laugh if it didn’t suck so much. It's all I could think about while I was watching Basim flippantly scrub through some of Eivor's most "emotional" memories which for some reason include… saying goodbye to Guthrum, a character we spend very little time with in the grand scheme of things, and who Eivor has next to no emotional attachment to. I understand the desire to tie up loose ends in terms of the historical events that were happening around this time, and they absolutely should have done all that because Assassin’s Creed has always been, in part, an exploration of history. But it should not have happened at the cost of providing closure for characters who were such significant figures in Eivor’s life.
I thought the Roshan quest was fun and I loved her and Eivor’s dynamic, even if we only got a small glimpse of it. But it was development time that could have been spent on wrapping up Eivor’s narrative instead of making another timeline agnostic add-on stealth mission in a game that has always had notoriously janky stealth mechanics. I look forward to seeing more of Roshan in Mirage and can now rest easy knowing that she is going to survive to the end of that game (although I cannot fathom why they decided to spoil that so early on). But they used what was apparently very limited time to give us a quest, very clearly a nod to Mirage, that does more to promote their next AAA title than serve the narrative of Valhalla.
Using the ending of a game to lead into the next is fine and is to be expected. But that transition should not come at the cost of a resolution for the story you're leaving behind. And really, it seems there was far more thought put into Basim and William Miles' first meeting than how Eivor came to the decision to leave for Vinland.
I think Basim is an incredibly rich, complex character, and it will be interesting to see what direction they take his prequel. But as someone who has actually been really excited for Mirage, the way they've dealt with this transition between games has left me feeling so conflicted, not least of all because of how quickly Ubisoft dropped the ball on Valhalla as soon as Mirage was announced. I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at everything we will be gaining with Basim in the next game without also feeling bitter about everything we lost with Eivor. It’s not terribly surprising, since Ubisoft has never treated Eivor’s character with any amount of respect; not in the marketing, and not in most of the post-launch content that has come out in the past year.
The post-launch that launched absolutely nothing
Darby has now said that The Last Chapter is meant as more of a direct follow up to the epilogue of the main campaign, to be played right after Gunnar's wedding. This is why they didn't feel the need to show a goodbye between Eivor and her people; the wedding functions as a sufficient goodbye to the Raven Clan.
But even if that was even remotely satisfying, it doesn't explain when Eivor came to accept her role as a sage, a role that she has yet to understand by the end of the base game, even if she is perhaps beginning to question it at the very least. It doesn't explain why it was never truly addressed in any of the some 100 plus hours of content that have been released for this game since then. It doesn't explain why Eivor and Randvi might finally pursue a relationship, only for Eivor to suddenly pick up and leave for Vinland, alone and permanently. It doesn’t explain why Eivor would leave for distant shores without saying goodbye to Ljufvina, or Vili, or Stowe and Erke, or Broder, or Oswald and Valdis, or Swanburrow, or any of the many other people whose relationships Eivor cherishes throughout the game.
If anything, The Last Chapter being played immediately after Gunnar's wedding and the rest of the Hamtunscire epilogue makes it even more important for Eivor to say goodbye to her people, because that whole arc only cements Eivor’s devotion to her people, as well as how much her “encounters” with Odin have shaken her faith. Even then, that doesn't even touch on when or why she came to the decision to leave in the first place.
Due to a “play anytime” approach that Ubisoft–for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom–decided to take with all the post-launch content for this game, all DLCs for Valhalla are exactly that: they can be played at any time. They go to great pains to avoid spoiling story points from the base game, they rarely make references to events from the base game and, perhaps most critically here, they don’t build on any of the plotlines of the base game.
Remember that pin we stuck in Odin earlier? Hi. He's back.
None of the DLCs released in post-launch–from Wrath of the Druids to The Siege of Paris, to smaller, free additions such as the River Raids–touch on Eivor’s connection to Odin or her understanding of it, or any of the other potential threads left behind by the base game. Other more mythologically inclined entries like the Mastery Challenges, Dawn of Ragnarok, and The Forgotten Saga scratch the surface of it, but never dig deep enough for Eivor to put two and two together. Even in the Odyssey crossover with Kassandra, who has intimate knowledge of the Isu and their artifacts, Eivor remains completely clueless about her role as a sage despite it being the perfect opportunity for her to learn more.
At no point is Eivor shown to make any wild revelations about her Isu heritage that could justify her decision to leave. There is a gaping hole in the narrative where that development should be, and therefore the jump from “everything else” to “I’m older now, and I want to learn from the god who lives in my head,” is unearned and comes from completely out of nowhere. The DLCs could have remedied this easily by giving us deeper insight into how Eivor interprets her visions, specifically how she interprets her relationship to Odin. They could have dug into how and when she comes to terms with that connection, and the same could be said for how she comes to know about all the other sages, including Harald, who Eivor and Sigurd suddenly seem to know about being the reincarnation of Freyr despite not seeing him in more than a decade and never mentioning it before. But they can’t, because the DLCs are playable at any time, and therefore cannot discuss things the player may not yet understand.
The brevity of this DLC was especially jarring, even as someone who went into this with low expectations. Because after two years worth of updates, including some sizable free ones, I thought that surely Eivor’s conclusion would be considered important enough to receive the time and attention it deserved. After all, Kassandra got her own surprise ending in the form of the Crossover Stories, announced completely out of nowhere two years after the last DLC for Odyssey was released. After all the time and effort and love that clearly went into that crossover, it seemed reasonable enough that the ending for Valhalla, a game that was still being supported, would have the same amount of effort put into it, if not more. Instead we got a barely there wrap-up that lasts maybe 45 minutes at most, if you’re being generous, and fails spectacularly at offering the catharsis that should be a no-brainer in a story where the main character’s death has been a mystery to be unraveled, right from the beginning.
Eivor is dead. She has been dead for centuries, buried across an ocean from everyone and everything she knew in life. The how and why of Eivor’s burial site is a question that follows us through her entire journey and throughout the entire game. One that was never resolved… until now, with some vague notion about leaving everything she has worked for and everyone she holds dear behind in an attempt to find herself, all with the help of an entity with whom her relationship has been tenuous at best. Eivor decides to banish the part of her that is Odin because she doesn’t like that part of herself. That second soul, the part of her that values personal glory above all else. Even in The Last Chapter, she describes Odin’s memories as “malicious.” So why backtrack so completely?
I have no idea.
It’s possible the developers weren’t given enough time to give this final chapter the breathing room it needed to make sense. It’s possible they had lost enthusiasm, and just wanted to rip the band-aid off and get this thing over with. It’s possible Ubisoft wanted to cobble together the scraps of a potentially satisfying ending so they could say they did it, before turning all of their attention to their next title. As it stands, I wish they had just left Valhalla alone, with an open ending, instead of providing a non-answer that feels like an afterthought. An incomplete conclusion to a story and a cast of characters that many of us still care so much about, but Ubisoft seemingly gave up on long ago.
Eivor deserved better.
The Raven Clan deserved better.
Valhalla deserved better.
We, the fans, deserved better.
If you actually read this far then there is a good chance that you also need therapy
This whole affair really reminds me of the last time I felt this profoundly disappointed by a piece of media I loved. It reminds me of how I felt after watching the second season finale of The Mandalorian, when it hit me that the whole season had just been a series of various cameos and fan service moments that only made sense to the plot at a stretch. It hit me that I had just spent the previous eight weeks watching the show runners completely sideline their main characters–Din Djarin and Grogu–and lose the plot in favour of promoting future Star Wars projects. When it seemed like all the good writing in the show previously had been entirely accidental. But the major difference between The Mandalorian and the ending of Valhalla is that I knew there would be another season of The Mandalorian to potentially patch things up and pick up on some of the plot threads that were dropped. For Valhalla, this is it. There is no more content upcoming that will patch this up and, in hindsight, there are plenty of other things added to this game in post launch that I think would have also made me feel the same way I feel right now if I knew they were the last piece of content we’d ever see.
Am I overthinking this? Perhaps. Am I being melodramatic? Probably. But to me, this ending for Eivor feels like yet another perfect example of what happens when corporate interests are allowed to dictate creative decisions.
I say all this as someone who has and will continue to defend a lot of Valhalla’s faults, because if writing this whole thing has done anything, it has served to remind me how good the core narrative of the base game really is. It has depth, it has heart, and I hope that other people who enjoyed it as much as I did–and are as disappointed by The Last Chapter as I am–are able to reconcile the beauty of Eivor’s character arc in the main game with the way it was seemingly undone in The Last Chapter.
I’m trying my very best to not let this ending retroactively take away all the joy I’ve found in this game for the past year. And in spite of how negative this critique has been, writing it has actually really helped me do just that. Because in writing this critique, I was also looking back on Valhalla’s narrative, its highs and lows, its major plot points, and I was re-watching clips. A speed run of Eivor’s greatest hits, if you will.
I was reminded of why I connected so strongly with Eivor in the first place. I was reminded of her strength, her kindheartedness, her love of children, her wit, the poetry of her dialogue, her sense of duty. I was reminded of her rage, her single mindedness, her sense of loyalty that is often to her own detriment when she offers it to those who don’t deserve it. I was reminded of her character arc from someone who spends so much of her life on a single minded quest for revenge, to someone who becomes a beloved leader to her people.
I was reminded of the Valhalla sequence at the end of the game, a sequence that still makes me cry just as much now as it did the first time I played it, if not more. When Eivor, who has spent most of her life feeling nothing but resentment and shame toward her dead father, finally learns to understand why he did what he did. When she understands why he laid down his axe, the very same axe she holds now, in the futile hope that his daughter, his wife, and the rest of his people would be spared, only for most of his people to be slaughtered anyway. When Eivor has finally realized, through years of acting as a leader to her people, why Varin did what he did, even in opposition to everything she has ever been taught to value. When she has grown enough to realize that she too would make the exact same choice her father did, her cowardly father, because she too would die in dishonour if it offered even the slightest chance to save her loved ones. When Eivor, who has spent her life trying to justify her existence by being useful, finally accepts that her parents died because they loved her and not because she didn't do enough. When Eivor is holding the very same axe now that her father held then and the High One himself is offering her wisdom and glory and power and she, like her father before her, drops her axe and turns her back and chooses love instead.
That is the version of Eivor I will remember. Not the hastily cobbled together ghost of her that we saw in The Last Chapter.
#this ending and this review is the reason i start therapy next week#like i mean not actually. but the timing lined up pretty perfectly did it not?#the main problem with assassin's creed is that it has potential to explore some really interesting ideas and concepts#but it's also owned by one of the most shit for brains companies i have ever fucking seen#anyway now that i've purged this from my system i will not be thinking about tlc ever again#unless anyone specifically asks#and for shitposting#and writing fix-it#because as we all know my hubris knows no bounds and my track record for finishing things i start is stellarrrrrr /s#assassin's creed#ac valhalla#eivor varinsdóttir#eivor varinsdottir#eivor wolfkissed#ac spoilers#ky posts text#this is a writing tag#ac.txt
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I have a rich inner world abt both iterations of Miguel and the relationship to fatherhood <- literally just hc
#90s miguel would explode on the spot if he spontaneously became a father shdjdjfjfjf he’s barely grappling through the emotional arc of#trying to become a better man AND he has the most hang ups ever regarding parents in general.#BUT. but. his biggest issue w being a dad would honestly be his own tendency towards self sabotage AND the fact Miguel is like. desperately#scared he’s bound to his own blood. he’d honestly probably fuck up being a dad not because he lacks the capability to be a kind man (all of#2099 demonstrates he DOES have the ability and desire to change) but because#he’d be scared he’d intrinsically fuck it up and in that fear. actually fuck it up. and then see those mistakes as further proof he just#isn’t capable of this.#not to mention like. given just how complicated his relationship with his family is I don’t think fatherhood would EVER have been something#90s miguel would’ve even THOUGHT of. he’s too busy been terrified he’ll turn into his OWN father(s)#atsv miguel on the other hand. difficult to draw too many concrete strands of analysis from because we don’t know how his past will be#conceptualised. BUT I personally like to think he’s very similar to the 90s counterpart except he sees a version of himself as a father.#and he sees that version of himself be HAPPY as a father. be a *good* father. someone who raised a sweet daughter. who lives with definitive#proof that you aren’t bound to enact pain upon your children. that you CAN be a better parent than the ones you had.#I think THAT would shake Miguel. and I like to think atsv Miguel didn’t know he wanted to be a dad - didn’t even THINK of it - until he saw#a reflection of himself that said this was possible. that you can go on and have a family of your own and you can choose to make it a good#and loving thing.#ANYWAYS. ✌️ she came. she posted a huge Miguel rant. she left ✌️#tunes talks spiderverse#tunes talks 2099
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…
#rough day today with an emotional mess at the end#rough as in it wasn’t BAD just… I had low energy the entire time and lost the day really#I don’t know how my mom does it. she has it worse than me and she expects me to be more bounding and alive and USING my energy#buddy. pal. I got rude and angry because I was LOW and I DO NOT HAVE YOUR PAIN TOLERANCE THRESHOLD#on MULTIPLE levels. physical and emotional#you went to dental school in Otago in the 90’s. I did animation school 2019-2023.#you escaped communism and were a stranger in a strange land and married my father who became a bat from hell and you had to escape him#AND keep the kids in good schools and in God.#I didn’t. I was the child who had it worst on the spectrum and had the PTSD to crawl out of during high school.#of course THAT put a dampener on me growing up in several ways (and uh. being on this hellsite in 2014 didn’t help either)#mom I love you and you love me. we are clearly NOT the same ever#I’m a little over the age dad married you at first now. I do not have the same threshold nor tolerance as you. I AM more sensitive yeah#and I’m trying to work through it but damn it it is hard trying to stay soft in a world getting crueller.#and yet! I have my father’s face and eyes in anger! I wish I could be more kind and loving on low energy and I’m sorry!#I am genuinely an ass when I’m tired and ticked off and want none of your help and I wish I wasn’t! alas!#I do not! have! your threshold nor tolerance!#when I finally get myself together and have a full place to call my own. with bills and all to pay.#I will finally allow myself the relief of lying down onto the kitchen floor and sobbing.#in the knowledge and safety of solitude.#Chris rambles#AUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH#vent
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thank you @skijjiki for tagging me!!!! i love these types of tagging games so much!!
last song: Tokyo Calling by ATARASHII GAKKO! (pls watch the music video. its so good 😭) im kind of, sort of, obsessed with this and i have been listening to it non-stop like my life depends on it. anyway
youtube
fav color: hmm im really feeling brown right now (wow! that sounds awful! im not changing my answer tho. brown rules.)
currently reading: im able to read only fanfics at the moment because anything that involves a book and new characters feels like too much work for me for some reason and also like im cheating at my classes in university. both of these suck big butt and i hate being like this but it's true. anyway please read a million times along the way by starsqwub. its a bokuaka fic, it hasnt updated since 2022 and it made me cry every chapter. its about love, its about friends, its about being a weird person in a normal world and, more importantly, its about bokuto and akaashi. oh! also manga like chainsaw man and toilet bound hanako-kun!! and some webcomics as well too.
currently watching: the wall mostly but also dungeon meshi! and ive been trying to be up-to-date with the one piece anime!!
spicy/savory/sweet: sweet <3
relationship status: i was reading a bokuaka fic and i was crying. take a wild guess.
current obsessions: listening to Tokyo Calling and ATARASHII GAKKO! apparently and im starting to feel like reading the ending of Haikyuu!! which is probably a bad thing?? (im scared. i really dont want it to end :'((( )
tagging: @livingonyoghurtandspite, @horson, @clementinethekitten, @pierogish, @alcieside, @mars-matrix, @peachybeesplease, @mangatxt.
#get tagged#guys. we get (got?) the movie this year. really scared to ask whats next.#i had goofy funny things to share but i forgot them while writing this im sorry u_u#i went home to my mom for a few days and i had 'the end of the beginning' by djo stuck in my head the whole time#and i visited my friends from high school and im kinda sad about the years passing. a quiet kind of sad but sad nonetheless.#like 'my childhood room is too small for me now' kind of sad and nostalgic#i have many things in my brain that are rolling around like pointy rocks and i need to get them out somehow without hurting myself#anyway#pretend i said something really funny and truly profound here instead of. whatever that is.#also i have listened to ATARASHII GAKKO!'s whole discography and its really really good#and i STILL havent been able to read bnha!! :((#i havent been able to be up-to-date with chainsaw man or toilet bound hanako kun and i also NEED to read dungeon meshi AND haikyuu and-#i really love dungeon meshi so far. its so good and i got so excited on the last episode when they put falin's bones in order. that was#so cool. and the bath scene............ yeah.#if you dont want to do this guys is okay btw. im always saying this but i do need you to know because i feel anxious when i dont do them bu#also when i dont tag people. i dont want you to feel like that.#onion talks#ok thats all! bye bye!! hope you have a nice day!!!!!#Youtube
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Hmm.... ~
46 chapters before...
If that happened, then we shouldn't have waited for 80 chapter to get a confirmation about what Tsukasa is in ch 95.
#we could have simply known about this fact in ch 21.too early on.about 6 chapters after the chapter Tsukasa appeared in for the first time#if that happned it wouldn't have taken about 6 years and a half. instead it would be half the year only.#why didn't you think about this with Tsukasa before? he came into the story a long time before Sumire.right.Nene?#.................#thinking about it... it's way too early for us to find out so....#i think that's why you didn't notice a thing...#even though the discovery in ch 95 didn't really make such a difference...since i guess all the fandom knew about it?#since long ago?#and... even after nene knew in ch 95. it wasn't brought up again... nothing was said to Hanako... so..?#maybe we will get back to this fact again when it's finally No.7's time to rise and shine.#after we're done with No.1 and No.3 and maybe some characters backstories#in ch 200 or something...#such a long time...#jibaku shounen hanako kun#jibaku shonen hanako kun#toilet bound hanako kun#hanako kun#jshk#tbhk#yashiro nene#yugi tsuaksa#akane sumire
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already was musing on how like, here's an intro that's Establishing Things, and it's like, does it matter that we were given a quants interaction of winston being like "hey you were nice to me there, actually. it reminds me of how" only for rian to pull the nice maneuvers of not wanting to listen to him share anything, being willing to just issue an order to someone about what he gets to do (talk for ten seconds) and doing so, then some underwhelming flair used to insult him surely, i guess that he's so stupid(tm) or whatever. like, wondering does that mean anything really that that was just about rian being an asshole, as has been sprinkled in before, just little moments that deadend with winston just feeling Disheartened b/c rian was shitty for no reason. does it mean anything that she did anything for the quant duo before that in refusing a chance to not sit next to him. theoretically just a [we're still tmc] kind of choice to stick together, and sure didn't move her to even treat him like a person she dislikes, just a nonperson she also dislikes
and relatedly it's going to be just as hilarious as rian, what, implying winston hasn't heard / of the french language, that the theory that rian and dollar bill become some kind of duo based on being Hilarious(tm) but also just terrible to any & everyone and bullying people has only more plausible, And that this episode of billions' introduction / establishment of dollar bill is decidedly centered around "yeah nobody likes this guy or can stand to deal with him. not even the people paid to be there, not even the self-declared Too Nice guy who kept choosing hanging out with dollar bill & his bullying over working & hanging out with his friend taylor" so it sure doesn't seem like that's leaving much room for [oh that was an oversight] if dollar bills going to fuck off into mpc hq on the regular and rian's immediately going to be like of course i can roll with this fuckin asshole
and truly a distillation of "rian's supposedly gets the 'good' treatment of More Material & being taken more seriously by other characters, but this only meant that instead of any sense of character &/or her own actual subplots ever, she's whatever a different more prominent character needs for their plot at any given time; winston's peripheral funny little guy unimportance & insulting treatment is still so much better re: being a character" if winston gets the worst treatment of being shoved out of mpc by episode three and rian is graced with hanging around most or all season only to be judged & condemned to now have that loss of [quant duo] replaced with being insufferable bullying horrible person dollar bill's New Friend and like, right away, with ease. and like i was saying like i would not argue with that, if rian had the consistent principle of treating anyone with basic respect she wouldn't be treating winston as a nonperson, and of course she has a broader capacity for being an asshole to anyone at any point that's just drier and less [outbursts of physical aggression] than dollar bill's style.
no idea what rian's overall arcs could be when yknow, why is she here, why has she stayed here, her most relevance right now gets to be "has the dialogue capacity to talk about getting prince with a sex scandal. also has zero thoughts on how power factors into one rather than that you just need to be polite about it?" which only feels truly character specific when held up against "rian was supposedly bullied but also Above even hating the people who did it. but she is also a bully and not even especially emotionally detached about it, even though how she treats winston is more important than how she feels about it" like basically "also a bully" is her most coherent deal. and it's just Interesting that simply being mean to winston is again basically pointed out, and her future bestie or [put in the same shots duo status] dollar bill is Impending but the episode was like "yeah of course everyone hates this guy, for being awful" and the joke nonjoke the whole time that unfortunately rian might get along just fine with bill as workplace (and probably also life in general, it's not a honed strategy they limit to the office) bullies
so that That's what rian gets for getting to stick around, while winston Might get to be shoved out of the fund hq with any character flair from him and, i do unfortunately have to wonder harder now, maybe any relevance afforded to the way people have treated him, indeed maybe rian especially, his personal bully and abusive friend. and because other people also see rian as better than him & maybe also winston as [not a person], if winston does anything that's indeed deliberately petty, mean, Angry, etc, towards rian, That will be seen as unacceptable vs the yknow checks notes years of cruel interpersonal treatment from rian to winston, but nothing hangs in the balance on that front, people won't suddenly be like "nice. winston's a person to me now, which, why am i even in a position to Decide that" if he's shoved out & goes quietly & politely and creates no problems in return. and, very much like dollar bill, i don't think rian will change, but for winston's own sake it would be Heartening if he voices his experience such that we know he knows it was bullshit, even though of course rian, and probably anyone else, isn't going to choose to listen past 5 seconds, least of all when he's clearly indicating a general state of irritation. rooting for flair and idiosyncrasy for him and indeed that the best sources for that could be with taylor, please, the person he's always been here for, rian, the person for years now bullying him more than she does anyone else or more than anyone else does to winston, and even fun if there's anything with tuk his apparent genuine friend tuk, and by "fun" i mean "such a delight i daren't really think much abt it From Canon"
anyways the tl;dr i suppose is that winston getting apparently thrown away in the first third of the season is insulting treatment but rian getting to stay and be dollar bill's wretched bestie is truly the worse fate and basically that distillation of like. oh winston's bringing it on himself he's so annoying nobody likes him, while in actuality all the ways he's never fit in or done things "right" and how he would never have been hired if taylor hadn't done it are all compliments and endorsements. while rian's been viewed as a capable valuable person by all from the start and treated as Better Than even others who are still also seen people, but her "success" and the shit she gets to continue to do in how she treats people b/c nothing about being at work stops that and some things facilitate & reward it, see: also dollar bill being around the whole time & now also back, definitely include treating a friendly coworker any which way, which she usually chooses to be: badly. and of course shoutout to the thread of taylor being like "if you stay btw you'll probably get all fucked up" but like also rian just Brought the [i'm a bully but it's fine when i do it. it's bad when it happens to Me] stance from the start, but like, obviously always the opportunity to get worse and just be left off with that implication of Never Trying To Learn, just like your new good friend dollar bill
real tl;dr As Fates Go winston being shitted on & fired / driven to quit >>>>>>>> rian sticking around, befriending dollar bill. and like not in the way i'm arguing that the fate is worse like In Conceptual Quality. it's just a hell of a potential condemnation / indirect illustration of like, here's this person it's horrible to be around, here's a reminder rian is cruel to this coworker on a dime anytime, here's rian deciding the horrible person is Alright anyways. maybe they'll be busy with a bullying power struggle the whole time. and maybe winston will get to appear outside the fund actually. just really something to be going like "oh my god lmao rian and dollar bill might actually be specifically getting along well as fellow [be horrible to coworkers] bullies and assholes who feel Above It, it being many other people, this being a kind of requirement there" and to be wondering if billions will make this fact that rian's job is being an asshole more relevant at all, if even to be like yeah leaving off with a lost cause here, including that i really doubt winston can Get Through To her even with his ability & willingness to air his grievances, and like, as though oh actually winston brought it upon himself b/c rian just didn't knowww, that's on him and his visible pain & verbal expressions of that pain & requests that she stop which Weren't Enough, and as though maintaining that onesided dynamic for bullying and demeaning and shutting down and abusing was like an unconscious accidental coincidence every time and not its own Active Process, regardless of what the other person does or doesn't do, and with the agenda of maintaining that [i'm the person who chooses how things go; they're the object that reacts accordingly like it's laws of physics level of demands of reality] one-sided relationship, so they'd only just be looking to react to what that other person does or doesn't do in ways that serve those purposes anyway. sometimes rian's "nicer" but she's still the one deciding how everything goes, winston can only roll with it like a ball at the top of a ramp like, of course, unquestionable. cue space winston, zero gravity
haha another tl;dr. winston being disposed of is a warmer Fate to assign a character than rian's potential "of course she's friends with dollar bill now" like lmfao Ouch. but yeah of course.
#one wrench in things is no idea if [winston :/ing at rian hugging taylor out in the open] will play into anything#didn't seem to affect him now and if it was absolute Need To Know we might've been reminded. but it's billions; no guarantees#and similarly; whatever bullshit gets him shoved out &/or leaving on his own is bound to be unguessable#already dealing with tmc problems; being on on the floor; not much taylor time; though their being Away is new / unknown#winston billions#rian could've at least been nonbinary. but they can't be like no NO rian is not [still Questioning] [and in part thus still closeted too]#winston quant billions sees his new nonbinary person he wants to impress & will be penciling in [swoon about it] immediately#at least with taylor he's just largely had to deal with that distance / lack of access already in general#re: rian it's like yeah here's your new devoted bully to sit next to you who Doesn't actually want you to Never talk to her#b/c he has to have hopes to be dashed & speak up to be made to shut up & be more Available in general than if he Avoided her in general#iconic to take your autistic bestie's interest & hang out to engage w/them abt it until you lash out at them over it for chatting abt it#[rian calls winston a slur] is truly there in spirit even if it doesn't manifest#or that the difference in her & dollar bill is in just variations in affect & specific strategies. not in spirit#like she might do the office: you don't call [rworded] ppl [rwords]. it's bad taste. you call your friends [''s] when they're acting [''ed]#but that's also in a world where it's an episode abt everyone hatecriming winston for being himself Out as autistic#and idk if rian would refer to winston as a friend. she would if it kept him strung along with that hope on his end anyways but#5x05 through 5x07 riawin really had so much potential but it's being realized in taylip#and itself became ''yeah rian could get along fine with dollar bill'' b/c she won't regard winston as a person#true of many other people but they want to ignore him most of the time vs use him as a chew toy so
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Your tags on that one poll holy shit
I'm not gonna be able to stop thinking about this now that's such a goddamn cool and plausible idea
The steam page does say 'only one ending..?' and that'd be. such a good way for that to technically still be true. You didn't truly reach an ending - try again and don't kill everyone this time.
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
^ emotions at any type of flattery
#chatter#'that'd be. such a good way for that to technically still be true'#i'm reminded of people musing about how snowgrave has a limited impact outside of noelle#despite it being about exiting the realm of chapter 2's story to enforce a kill-all run#there's musings on whether future chapter's will have weird routes#but it's probably all one whole storyline - it'd be better for exploring certain topics/relationships#(will berdly come out from the library? anyways)#i assume that means that continuing weird route chapters will continue bucking away from the established world#character arcs change - the goals shift from (close dark worlds) to (sabotage the leader & rescue kris) - party setup changes#what happens when we break out of bounds? softlock the game?#option a: erase your file (if you wanted to do this you already would have)#option b: edit your file back to an usable state - if it is too damaged - reset it back#deltarune#kinda late response
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It's so funny critics and people who got invited to see the premiere are all saying the teen wolf movie was trash
inserting 'i'm shocked, this is shocking news' gif here
#Anonymous#the minute we found out they were recycling s3's plot without arden or stiles it was bound to be a car crash#but ngl reading the spoilers has me cackling#everything seems to break canon and be an absolute mess#also not them breaking up stydia after taking SO long to get them together agsksl#sorry i have to laugh bc it's the biggest mess and people will pay to see this dumpster fire???
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i hate how all the actually interesting and cool races in the forgotten realms are either always chaotic evil xp fodder* or are some obscure low population race briefly mentioned in some tie in novel or a 2e monster manual entry that just says "yeah these guys exist i guess. always neutral. treasures types W, T, F. 69 XP" and then forgotten about until suddenly appearing in a 5e splatbook
or they were 4e races that weren't lucky enough to escape the 4e memory hole like the drsgonborn somehow did
* except the bdsm femdom elves who became popular enough to be playable because of drizzzt + horny factor
“The forgotten realms” why do I keep having To hear about them then huh. Maybe we ought to call them the ubiquitous realms
#5e did obould many arrows absolutely dirty#we could of had bara orcs with fat bulges threatening to explode out of their chainmail battlethongs and protective cock cages#but no we got photo negative elves who are chaotic somehow despite living in the most hierarchal rules bound society in the realms#that makes bane the god of boots pressing down on human faces forever look like s goddamn hippie
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Stuck on the idea of vampires as a kind of reverse fae, or like someone's twisted, perverse attempt at moulding humans into fae.
They're repelled by liminal spaces.
A vampire could never enter fairyland, not just because they'd never be welcomed, but because most of the usual entry-ways are naturally barred to them.
They can't cross running water. They can't be seen in mirrors. They will wait forever at a crossroads, unable to pick a direction to go in. They can't even step over a thresh-hold unless there is absolutely no ambiguity about whether they are welcome inside.
They crave human blood, iron and salt, but are repelled by herbs and plants. They are supernaturally prevented from harming you unless the rules of hospitality have been invoked.
A fairy may replace your newborn child with something unnatural and ever-hungry. A vampire will do the same, but with your grandmother's corpse.
The fae are typically associated, even in stories where they're the bad guys, with flourishing and purity. Vampires, even in stories where they're the good guys, are typically associated with decay and corruption.
The fae turn ancient human burial mounds into fancy halls for their courts. Vampires take ancient human castles and let them grow mildewed and cobwebbed, exchanging the beds for coffins, turning them into burial places.
Fae don't tend to live among humans, but can generally pass for them with relative ease if they so choose. Vampires nearly always live among humans, but tend to find not revealing themselves a huge struggle.
I can't think of many stories I've read where fae and vampires even exist in the same universe, let alone ones where they actively interact. I feel like their enmity is almost more inevitable than that between vampires and werewolves, however.
The rivalry between vampires and werewolves is, essentially, the rivalry between two apex predator species who share a territory. (Even in stories where the werewolves aren't actually hunting humans.)
The vampires hate the werewolves because the werewolves interfere with their access to prey. The werewolves hate the vampires either because they consider themselves aligned with humans (the prey species), or because they are also predators and the vampires are competing with them.
By comparison, I think there's some story potential in the fae finding something genuinely creepy and uncanny valley about vampires.
They're immortal, like them, but also dead. They can be beautiful, like them, but that beauty is something they actively require humans to sustain. They like to inhabit beautiful and ancient ex-human dwellings, like them, but they actively work to make those places dark, damp and empty.
Fairies who are unflappable in the face of all sorts of Otherworldly monsters, can look an eldritch horror in the eye(s) without blinking, and have never been phased yet by any human, but will recoil from even the weakest vampire.
Vampires who hate fairies just as much, but in a more envious way. The way that the creature for whom immortality is a curse is bound to hate the creatures for whom immortality is an eternity of sunlight and laughter.
Maybe their touches burn each other. Maybe vampires can't stand physical contact with anything so alive and vital. Maybe immortal fairies become ill from too much exposure to the undead.
Maybe they fight over the human population when their territories overlap. The fairy need for servants and people to make deals with, competing with the vampire need for thralls and blood to drink.
Just… fairies and vampires. We need more stories about them interacting.
#vampires#fae#fairies#fantasy#fantasy headcanons#urban fantasy#now imagine all this in the context of an enemies to lovers story
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she still has a part of my soul and I still have part of hers
#words s#ritualis#literally and metaphorically#“why do i still think of him all these years later”#because we're soul bound and im sorry#alao we were each other's first love and first time to my knowledge so#forging your name on a letter i wrote
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.......
#tw death#vent#yoy ever get news that a close relative in your life literally just died‚ and you want to feel bad‚ and you want to offer support-#but also the relative that died‚ and all relatives that are deeply upset/destroyed by this are all people you have a -#shall we say‚ turbulent relationship with? not persay you hate them but... they've pretty much caused a lot of your mental health-#issues‚ but also sentimentality‚ and frankly a moderately friendly relationship keep you bound to them#so insteaf of sleeping‚ you're baking cookies‚ and making your sibling(roomate)s breakfast and lunch for the next day#i still have no idea how to process death in a healthy way either‚ and generally can't cry unless alone.#and I also have not cried at... pretty much every other human that's died in my life. even animals I have a fairly low probability of-#crying from. that's more so because I was never given a healthy time/place to grieve.....#anyways‚ back to baking
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