#shitting my fucking pants

[datcravat]

It seems there's a new lawyer in town!!!

[vaguely-concerned]

the strength it must have taken for illario to not immediately go full 'lmao since when have you even had a kiss hello lucanis' sibling violence mode during the café talk. inspirational. rook and lucanis really were doing all that right in front of his salad huh

[trasho-pando2011]

[heckblade]

nothing to see here. having a really normal one on this episode of game changer

[loopsisloops]

YOU GUYS

IM GONNA SEE TOM AT PALEY FEST IN LA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ALSO MEETING @mochie85 MAY HAPS?!?!??????? 👀👀

I’m like 7 rows from the stage, including the 2 VIP rows in front of the stage. I- I don’t know how to process this.

@thunderclit @lokisgoodgirl @gigglingtiggerv2 @ladyofthestayingpower @superficialdomina @goblingirlsarah @tallseaweed @lokiandbuckysdoll

Alright everybody hold hands

Time for a group manifestation

I really want this to happen

Everybody cross your fingers

By this time next week I will have what I want.

By this time next week I will have what I want.

By this time next week I will have what I want.

[helmbarte]

Cleaned a sketch of him and pixel crunched it

Closer to his in comic sprite ⬇️

[butchvamp]

i do think that for me personally. there is no version of taash's storyline that i can get down with except one where they reconnect with their qunari side. my main problem with their arc is that it perpetuates this idea that someone has to "choose" one culture, that they have to turn their back on parts of their identity in order to be the right kind of trans (the white western kind) and all of it just makes me so viscerally uncomfortable. and to be clear this is not me like... trying to make anyone feel bad, there are parts of taash's story that i personally connect with as well, like there is nothing wrong with the way taash does gender in general and there's nothing wrong with it resonating with people. it's when we put it all together in context within the game that it becomes a problem for me.

we know the qun does not have the same ideas around gender as the rest of thedas, we know that their identity, including gender, is connected to their duty. and so it doesn't make sense that taash's mother cares about them wearing dresses. why would she care about that. i'd ask if we've ever even seen any qunari in dresses but i'm pretty sure we've only seen three qunari women total and two of them are in veilguard and are scholars wearing what i personally consider a robe. the third is in trespasser and is ben-hassrath, and is definitely not wearing a dress. if anything, their mother should be concerned about the fact that they fight, since the whole point of leaving for rivain was to avoid taash being designated as a soldier. and to be fair, we get this a Little bit with the fire-breathing. but everything else about shathann's disapproval doesn't make sense in-universe.

and we also already know about the aqun athlok, which shathann even tries to bring up but the game shouts her down because....? i get that shathann is meant to be overbearing and kinda shitty, but this is not the way to do it. all this does is imply that aqun athlok is "wrong" and not as progressive as this other identity that rook has to teach taash about (and that also isnt even specific to rivain, or related to them connecting to their rivaini culture. it's the shadow dragons that teach them all of this along with rook. in general transness and the nonbinary identity are not integrated into the world in any meaningful way which makes it feel even worse). there are various cultures that have their own specific gender identities that do not adhere to the gender binary, and taash should have been given the chance to connect to their own culture in this way. and even if they really wanted to make it so taash just didn’t feel right with aqun athlok, that identity still should have been properly discussed as an option and handled with respect, rather than so carelessly thrown aside as “wrong” (though again not a depiction i would personally like but it would still be better than what we got).

and just. i really disagree with the idea that gender identity under the qun is More Rigid than elsewhere. it’s different, as we know from comments from iron bull and sten-- and we could argue in circles about inconsistencies with the things they say, obviously there have been retcons previously in an attempt to better develop the qunari beyond what we see in origins and da2, but i think this kind of development is a good thing, and is exactly why the regression with taash irritates me so much-- but when we look back at characters like warden tabris, dorian and his father and tevinter's obsession with bloodlines, the entire experience of playing f!hawke in da2 (and also da2 literally has a whole subplot about women being murdered for like 3 years and no one cares. these games just have a misogyny problem lol) and even tarquin in veilguard commenting about how his father forced him into being a soldier because he's a man(!!)-- there is a lot of rigidity, expectations, and violence around gender throughout thedas. but for some reason these rigid gender ideals and a lot of this gendered violence is held up as the status quo and not challenged at all by the writers in the way the qun repeatedly is. the exception being dorian (though you're still incentivized to forgive his father), but a lot of the characters in tevinter-- magisters, templars, the literal black divine-- are still allowed complexities and to be the good guys working with the shadow dragons, a grace not given to any qunari character besides iron bull (who ultimately still has to leave the qun or die later). i’m not trying argue that the qun is perfect and can never be criticized-- i like the flawed characters and societies within dragon age. but the qunari also deserve to be given the same depth, complexities, and engagement as everyone else, too. and it’s worth pointing out that it’s always the qun that’s depicted as backwards for the same harmful “rigidity” every other culture in the game reinforces.

and ultimately with the way the game inserts this very modern, anachronistic, and condescending language in a poor attempt to be as "correct" as possible to "teach" the player, while simultaneously writing such a careless, racist arc about their culture kinda just , makes me feel like they were actually trying to imply that one identity is more correct and progressive than the other. or, if nothing else, it's a bias that got amplified due to their unwillingness or inability to engage with taash's character beyond using them as a mouthpiece for corporate "representation."

there absolutely are people out there that are like taash, who don't necessarily have or want a connection with certain parts of their culture, and maybe they do identify closer with one aspect of it over another. this is all fine! this happens in real life, everyone has different relationships with their identity and heritage, there is no universal experience, and people are allowed to write about their own. but the thing is. this is dragon age. and taash was written by weekes. and both dragon age as a whole and weekes specifically has a repeated pattern of racist writing when it comes to depicting the qunari. and taash's quest along with the way the antaam are portrayed-- faceless, voiceless, basically naked bodies for you to kill-- makes this a series of poor choices that i don't feel generous enough to excuse.

and it sucks. so bad. that this happened. i want to like taash so bad. but.... man.

anyways if you read this far you should read this article, which is far more eloquent than anything i could write and really dives into the whole "civilized versus savage" binary that we see in a lot of fantasy RPGs and is really epitomized in taash's quest-- in dragon age, it's always the qunari and dalish elves versus a (usually white and/or human) andrastian:

[heyimkana]

Glimpses of Sung Jinwoo in Solo Leveling: Ragnarok

[coleslawmaw]

i’d like to know why you are all alone while i’m lost at sea

[triple-pupil]

Because I think he deserves both sides of the coin.

[manga-and-stuff]

Source: 'Day Dream Hour 4' Rakugaki Artbook

by Ryōko Kui

Link to the full Artbook

[justaz]

semi-dark king merlin au, someone from ealdor tells king cenred about merlin and he is captured and held as a slave in essetir. since merlin despises captivity and servitude, he’d rather be dead and free than alive and in chains so he acts out and pisses people (especially the king) off so they’ll think him too much trouble and kill him. at first they stick to beatings until merlin manages to get his chains around a few necks and now has a body count so they kill him…..only he wakes back up a few hours later and king cenred is Intrigued and keeps him close. merlin keeps acting out but no matter how many times they kill him, he won’t stay dead. merlin has this moment after waking up perfectly fine after his twenty seventh death where he is hopeless and believes there to be no escape, not even thru death. a few other sorcerers in chains come and help him clean up and give him a lil peptalk, realizing him to be emrys, and then they revolt and take over the kingdom and crown merlin as king and now uther is like “wtf” bc his neighboring kingdom who was kinda sorta on his wavelength about sorcery, though uther did not approve of keeping them alive, is now a kingdom ruled by magic. he goes to war with them but with magic running free and fucking emrys on the throne, they don’t make a lot of headway. anyways merthur meet on the battlefield, enemies to lovers, you get it

[gh0sdae]

On Daisuke dying immediately after Anya:

[leoisstillalive]

im sorry i just came across the rosquez ai generated twitter photos and i lost my fucking shit. imagine being a fourty five year old retired man with kids and you're super famous.

and you've done an exhausting day of exercising and riding around the flat track with your academy students. now you just wanna kick back and scroll through social media

you get on twitter and BOOM.

a huge fake pic of you and your most hated rival cuddling like lovers with a soft, pink sunset in the background. followed by two more photos in the replies, one of which looks like it was taken in divorce court😭 AND IT'S GOT THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY LIKES mind you.

at what point do you just remove yourself from the public lens forever?

[front-facing-pokemon]

[villagetryhard]

the reason why no elves are actually hot is because you can only be so beautiful before you become uncanny and grotesque. Therefore I am proposing that all elves are creepy as fuck, and therefore all sexy man/woman competitions are void.