#she picked up at the second try

[caduschka]

I just called the doctor for an appointment and when the voicemail asked for my name and phone number I got so spooked that I hung up 😭

[fictionadventurer]

They call me the Baby Whisperer.

[faething-n-frothing]

Umitober day 1: Favorite Character

[howtodrawyourdragon]

Isha not just hugging Jinx, but Vi as well when the sisters reunite with Vander is so special to me.

[sieglinde-freud]

ok i think im done i think ive finally done it. i have completed the awakening ship chart with the second gen. except for nah sorry nah. yes i do love rarepair hell thanks for asking im never leaving

[moeblob]

Erin, to her crush: You're a dick

Mason, the crush: I won't argue! But to clarify -

[nellasbookplanet]

I just finished my most recent Mass Effect playthrough (and I'm a big girl and absolutely didn't cry) and am once again thinking about the endings. I've spoken before about how the endings work weirdly against the core themes of the trilogy (tl;dr: Saren and the Illusive man argue for synthesis and control, and are both proven to be wrong and indoctrinated, yet they are presented as valid and equal endings; cooperation with the geth and EDI prove that peace between synthetics and organics is possible, yet destruction of all synthetic life is, again, a valid and equal ending), but as with the Arrival DLC I once again feel that my frustrations lie largely with the fact that it could so easily have been fixed, had only the narrative been ever so slightly nudged.

The endings are not only about making a choice, but making a sacrifice. You sacrifice your morals, your ethics, your allies' lives or agency, your own life and humanity, all for the sake of stopping extinction. And this isn't bad! It goes well in hand with the themes of choice and sacrifice throughout! But not only does it fail to take these previous choices into account (frankly, renegade and paragon endings should've looked wildly different even if you pick the same option), it also fails to make the choices you have feel feasible. (and then the extended endings seemingly caved to pressure and painted them all as wholly happy endings, while completely burying the inherent tragedy every choice brought with it, leaving you with a weirdly disjointed final product)

We know coexistence with synthetics is possible despite it being argued against by many characters because there is also a running theme of disproving it: in ME1 Tali's dialogue shows that the history of the geth is more complicated than them simply wanting to wipe out organics; in ME2 Legion and EDI show that cooperation is possible; in ME3 actual peace can be achieved. Yet none of this same care is shown to synthesis and control. Saren is disproven, the Illusive Man is disproven. There are little hints - such as EDI and the geth having reaper code and Shepard having A LOT of implants and interfacing with geth - that reaper upgrades or a mix of synthetic and organic could work, but it isn't enough of a running theme for it to rival the absolute dismantling of the arguments prior. Adding them as options feels, well, like the reapers' last attempt at derailing Shepard from destroying them (as I've said before, there's no wonder the indoctrination theory caught on). But they aren't. The endings are legit, no matter how out of left field they feel.

So, my recipe for fixing the endings: either actually do the indoctrination theory (they would have to change very little), or plant the seeds for control and synthesis being feasible without indoctrination throughout the game for narrative satisfaction, while also incorporating renegade/paragon in the epilogue for individual player satisfaction.

[sejarcus-archive]

Dancer! Sejanus, in which he is given the lead role alongside one of Marcus’s best friends, and Marcus can’t take his eyes off of him for the entire duration of the show

[daisywords]

\

[calware]

i'm thinking about vriska

[greenconvor]

Me, at 11:48 at night: Alright, I’ve decided to stop staying up so late. It’s a good decision, a healthy one. I’m really glad I’ve settled on this. Let me just check my phone one more time before I go to sleep.

Me: *opens up ao3 and immediately finds a 50,000+ word fanfic with my favorite pairing and an intriguing plot*

Me:

Me: Welp. Sleep is overrated anyway— LET’S GOOO!!!

Bonus:

*The next morning*

[sleebyconfy]

..

[helpimstuckinafandom]

Me starting another bg3 run where I will make virtually all the same decisions in mostly the same order as if there isn't different branching paths

[doedipus]

a large amount of time I've been spending on -untitled undefined scope original fiction project- since the last time I posted about it has been trying to develop the protagonist concept I came up with last summer or whatever into like, a character that would feel real and era appropriate.

it's fun research to do. naturally a lot of the details I assigned to her are things that I already think are cool, so it's been a lot of fun trying to trace her traits back through the relatively recent past, getting reminded of how much things have changed, or where the gaps in my intuition are, and then doing a flurry of reading to get a sense for exactly how someone like her and the people around her could have happened and what her life was probably like leading up to her present day. hopefully this results in some good good verisimilitude.

[algolagniaa]

in Washington I had a friend who was a year older than me and who from the first time I saw her I was really struck by how attractive she was. like conventionally attractive and feminine in a way I’m usually not attracted to at all but when it was her I was because it was like enchanting ethereal beauty. and she had a lot of her identity wrapped up in how pretty she was and had a pretty big internet following based solely on thirst traps. and we were really really close friends for most of the time I lived there (she wasn’t a very good friend but that’s another story) and when I moved to California we kept in touch for a while and then shortly after her 30th birthday I tried to visit a different friend in Washington but through a series of whacky hijinx (my other friend was on meth lol) I ended up hanging out with her the whole time instead. and a lot of things happened that totally soured me on her as a person but one of them was she spent an inordinate amount of time sitting in front of her vanity trying to look pretty and she DID look pretty and I kept giving her genuine compliments but somehow everything I said made her feel worse about herself, like “omg your hair looks so pretty like that!” “yeah :( it always looks good until I move and then you can see how thin it is :(“ and then she would take about 10000 selfies and complain about how she looked in all of them and then make me take selfies with her and complain about how I looked but then also paradoxically complain that I looked better than her and then she’d post a selfie to instagram but a few hours later get upset that it only got 100 likes and take it down and cry about how she looks 30 now and men only like women who are under 30. and I remember looking at her sitting at her vanity asking me for reassurance she didn’t look 30 for the hundredth time because she never believed me when I said she didn’t and just having a moment where I saw her with new eyes and went….. oh my god you actually do look old and frail. you look like a sad old lady playing dress up. and since then that’s all that I saw when I looked at her and i can’t see the ethereal enchanting beauty I used to see even when I try and that’s a big part of why I’m such a believer in mindset affecting physical aging

[poorlydrawnwhispangle]

So i was gonna finish the drawing for Tangle's birthday but just due to recent adjustments on new medication and stuff i only had the energy to sketch and write a bit. most of my mental energy can write at the moment tbh and while i would be happy about that the current fic im writing is not a birthday fic and is actually a whispangle comfort fic related to the metal virus 💀 happy birthday tangle! a plushie from your partner, cake, and nightmares related to your virus trauma!

(wont count this as a day because it's an overall mess akjdhfksjgf)