#still weird but that feels like it might be the real reason
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zorbik-guligan · 2 days ago
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Not really sure what incongruous means so I'll look it up after but it does feel like as i get older life gets more complex theres more things i understand now that sure i knew about them before but not in great detail but it feels like I've become so fucking complex as a person that if i tried to explain what i actually think and feel it would just overwhelm a person so i try and section myself off into pieces and just use different parts of me with different situations or people and it may just be because ive spent most of my time these past 2 almost 3 years now alone with nothing to do but think and figure myself out that when im asked what i think about something slightly personal its kinda hard to say it just got lost in my head somewhere and that whatever i think will change at a moments notice like i can bring up memories of lots of things and remember nostalgic times but i spent so long thinking about why i feel a certain way or what makes me feel a certain way in order to try and get a better hold of myself that ive kinda forgotten alot of my past like so many memories that i made are just gone because remembering them made me feel a way i dont want to feel like i remember realizing the beginning of 6th grade that i had completely forgotten 5th grade and the reason why was because that time i had was so nice yet not at the same time my brain just frogot because it didn't want a reminder of how good yet not something can be like great teachers who for the first time ever actually seemed to care as far as i could tell class mates who were generally friendly and occasionally checked on me if i seemed off yet i felt so alone cause nobody there really seemed like a real friend like the friends i had before who even when we were in deep trouble wouldn't rat me out and would stick with me who genuinely cared and missed me if i was sick getting older and not having anyone to socialize with for really formative years off my life has made understand those really old dudes who are nice and always up to make friends but just seem extra lonely for some reason despite knowing so many people i guess technically being that alone did hurt me but i kinda learned that im just not alone ever when im outside theres always some squirrels birds or plants nearby that make it more lively its why ive grown so fond of certain forested spots they are always lively and it feels like hanging out with all my friends its also why i enjoy making things like with metal or wood stone or even writing and painting those things feel alive in a way same with music and having time to think so much has made me reflect and realize that no day is the same and even when something changes something else stays the same or gos back to how it was in a weird cycle like growing but remembering where you were growing older for me anyways is like gaining more skills and more knowledge not just on the stuff around me but on myself too obviously people change sometimes pretty quickly too but getting older makes you learn more about yourself which duh that how life works but still it feels weird to be aware of it at 17 when it feels like i should still be trying to figure out my favorite youtuber or something not contemplate who i am as a person and what makes me feel the way i do but its a good kind of weird and theres always more to learn and find so i still have plenty of room to learn more about myself still not being able to really fully let a person know you kinda sucks but to be fair that is a rather special thing its also nice being able to put into words why i feel a certain way so that i can actually explain myself instead of just going quiet cause i dont know myself that well still kinda funny to know your own problems but not be able to jusy fix them when you know its a very deep problem even when it seems surface level and damn i got kinda personal there woops also just noticed that im shaking so might be overwhelmed remembering 5th grade which is probably why i frogot it or at least thought i did
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anybody else feel that being human is like being a long-time syndicated cartoon character watching the world get more complex while your own design stays the same until youre incongruous with the reality around you??
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demigod-shenanigans · 2 days ago
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Hi I’m super stuck on the “Nicknames/Wilderness”  prompt for Day 1 of Lost Trio Week, and for various reasons I only have a week to write something. If you could be so kind as to drop a few hcs/thoughts that might get me inspired to write, that would be very much appreciated! (The writer’s block is real)
Laughing a little bit because that’s the prompt I’m also stuck on
I will share headcanons, too, but a general gentle reminder: if it’s too much or you’re not feeling a certain prompt, you can absolutely participate in lost trio week without participating in every single day. Also not sure how you’re doing it, but personally, I’m not writing these in order. I started with Day Four because that was the one I felt most inspired to work on
That being said:
-If we’re talking Wilderness as in Wilderness School, Leo and Piper clicked the moment they met. I’m not sure what it was, exactly—maybe he made a stupid joke and she was the only one that laughed. Maybe she caught him trying to play a prank on someone and wanted in on it. Whatever it was, they’ve been inseparable ever since. It could be interesting to explore some of those memories, or how they looked like with Jason added, or maybe what it would have been like if Jason had actually ended up at the school with them somehow.
-When it comes to Wilderness as more of a general concept, one of the specific silly things my brain just went to was camping trip. Piper has little to no skills when it comes to that stuff. She’s lived in mansions and had private chefs for most of her childhood. The closest she’s ever come to camping has been missions and the time her and her dad camped in the yard of her grandpa’s old home when she was ten, but that wasn’t real camping. Jason has lived in the woods before when he was very little and probably has skills based on that and some stuff he picked up from survival classes in that context, but living with wolves is very different from regular camping and if he’s ever had to apply his theoretical Camp knowledge, he cannot remember it. Leo has the most practical skills when it comes to sleeping outside but he was just kind of making shit up as he went and didn’t really have equipment. —This is all to say they take like an hour failing to set up a tent. Leo has never been more frustrated in his life because he rebuilt a celestial bronze dragon from scratch but is somehow being foiled by a tent instruction manual. Jason keeps bringing up that sleeping under the stars at age three wasn’t that bad. Piper goes from frustrated to laughing hysterically because this being the thing they fail at after every ridiculous impossible task they’ve mastered is objectively hilarious. The whole trip is a disaster for a variety of reasons but I feel like they end up having a great time
-I’m not very good with Nicknames (neither as a prompt nor as a general concept honestly, I’m not really someone who gives people nicknames a lot), but one of the things that comes to mind there could be these changing over the years? Leo and Piper go from strangers to friends and use nicknames for each other for the first time, and it means something, because Leo’s not stuck around another person for long enough to come up with a nickname in years. Jason getting a nickname from Piper and Leo and not really being sure why it feels as strange as it does since he doesn’t have his memories—Reyna doesn’t feel like she’s the type of person to really use nicknames, and since everyone at Camp Jupiter saw him as a leader, I don’t feel like they’d casually call him by some nickname either. Jason hearing that nickname and it being meaningful because for the first time in ages he feels like a kid instead of a leader. Jason getting to use a nickname for Leo and/or Piper for the first time and it feeling significant for the same reason. Jason and Piper post-breakup trying to figure out what to call each other now because they’re objectively better as friends but it’s still weird and new and everything is different and it’s too strange to keep using the same nicknames they did when they were dating.
Hope some of this was helpful!! Please feel free to use however much or little of it as you’d like! Writing this out actually helped me massively because it made me realize I’m a massive idiot and do have a concept I want to use for this prompt (not any of the above ones so again please feel free to grab them if you’d like!) so thank you for that haha
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zvtara-was-never-canon · 17 hours ago
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The only way i could see Canon Katara interested on Zuko is if he somehow did his Heel Turn long before the start of the show and has become a freedom fighter akin to Jet, but without the murder.
Obviously, this is impossible, there is no way that a young Zuko could become a better person without his exile, his enviroment is just not place that encourage
Sorry for the last question i send, i made a mistake and send it sooner than i wanted.
But anyway, what i tried to say that, even if that ridiculous scenario that i propossed where to happen, Zuko would be a very different characther from his Canon self. Plus even if he has become Katara's type, there is no way to know if Katara would be Zuko's type on that scenario lol
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Once again, guys: pre-scar and exile Zuko was already dealing with a ton of bagagge, and post-redemption Zuko was already a "freedom fighter but without the murder." Katara saw him at this worst during all of book one, at his somewhat less of dick moments (Ba Sing Se), and at his best after his redemption - and she wasn't attracted to him at any of these points.
"I don't support war, genocide and/or murder" is the bare minimum for Katara to not want somebody dead. Compassion is an obligation, not something that immediately makes a guy be a potential boyfriend in her eyes.
We have the answer of what would take for her to be into Zuko, and that answer is not "He can't be a villain anymore" but rather "He can't be Zuko." He can't be a dork that says the wrong thing in a funny way, she'd get mad. He can't want to live in the Fire Nation, there's nothing there for her. He can't be as stubborn as she is, otherwise they're gonna fight (just look at how many times she fights with Toph). He can't take himself too seriously, she'll just mock him for it (ask Sokka).
She wants the guy that literally sweeps her off her feet to charm her, or the guy that notices she's feeling left out at a party, dances with her, and smoothly tells her to ignore everyone's eyes on them because "it's just you and me." She would NOT react well to a guy that screams "SHE'S NOT MY GIRLFRIEND!" in the middle of their date (just see how well it worked for Aang when he went "I mean, if it was between kissing you and dying")
And we do know what Zuko's type is: Mai. Gloomy yet sweet, bitchy yet unbothered, out-spoken yet doesn't feel she owes anybody any explanations ever, can handle herself but likes being pampered, apathetic yet caring, has nothing prove yet can be quite arrogant, stubborn yet understanding, aloof to the world in general yet obviously crazy about him in particular.
Zuko might catch brief feelings for someone like Jin (nice, sweet and cheery), but long-term he needs someone as messy as himself so he can relate, but with the kind of mess that balances him out instead of encouraging his worst traits - the yin to his yang. He was not kidding when he said "You're so beautiful when you hate the world"
Katara loves life in general too much for her and Zuko to relate to each other in that regard. She doesn't even know what the word "apathy" means. She doesn't have an "unbothered" bone in her body. Girl went through a ton of trauma and still wasn't anywhere near gloomy, quite the contrary. And she has a bad temper, just like Zuko, which they both know is a bad combo, hence them surrounding themselves with more chill people (Aang, Iroh, Hakoda, Mai, etc).
They're not each other's type AT ALL, hence there being no spark when they become friends. Hence them being not just embarassed, but weirded our and uncomfortable when people mistake them for a couple.
There's a reason zutara fics re-write their personalities completely: there's no other way to force them together because they're fundamentally incompatible. The real Zuko would NEVER be attracted to the real Katara, and vice versa.
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pennamepersona · 9 months ago
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woke up thinking about the narrative use of astarion & how weird it is that his personal quest doesn't tie into the main narrative At All bc something is wrong with me, etc
ftr, i'm saying all of this as a bigtime astarion fan. love this guy. i keep romancing him and it's begun to feel like a cry for help. And Also, @ larian it's really fucking weird that you made a guy who doesn't tie into the plot at all
i'm putting the rest of this under a readmore. also i'm maintagging this mostly just for being able to find it later, if anybody wants to come @ me then pls know i basically never engage w/ tumblr and you'll probably be disappointed.
best i have for a real justification is that astarion exists in part for players who want to be Evil And Fucked Up. none of the other companions are fully down with using the tadpole powers or trying to take over the cult. and it is genuinely good to have a companion who gives you that option! if players who wanted to explore the fucked up options had complete disapproval from every companion, it would be kinda feelbad and make those options feel less like a real choice you're allowed to make.
why does that matter re: astarion being entirely detached from the main narrative? thank you for asking. it means that "guy who is down for being fucked up and taking over the cult" doesn't come across as secretly being in league with the bad guys the whole time. astarion having no link to ketheric, orin, or gortash means that his power play ideas don't make you suspicious that he's been lying to you and is just waiting to deliver you to the Chosen.
to be clear: still weird that he has no direct tie-in. but this is the best reason i could think of for why he'd be so completely not involved.
the other Point Of Him, i think, is for The Dark Urge. it's no secret that astarion is a killer parallel for durge. i'm not gonna go into that but goddamn, i love it.
and if we're looking at things from the durge perspective, i think it kinda works for astarion to be so detached. he then becomes Random Baldurian Affected By Durge's Actions and it adds more strength to him also functioning as a piece of nuance for the tadpoles. he's the only one who directly benefits from the tadpoles existing! and that on its own is a cool bit of narrative. i think the durge side of things makes astarion's narrative tie in just a bit more. we've now got Dude Who Was Saved By Player Character (Albeit Unintentionally). i think it adds more depth to the durge narrative, and if the dark urge was the only non-origin option and tav didn't exist, i think it makes astarion's lack of narrative relevance a bit less glaring.
tldr; useful for the guy who's down to be fucked up to not be involved with the villains At All so you don't get suspicious of him and the option to be fucked up feels like more of a real option
(also tasty durge & astarion narrative depth)
#bg3#bg3 meta#astarion#still weird. can't emphasize this enough.#i'm a major astarion fan and still @ larian what's up with this guy#i think i'm onto smth with having him as the If You Wanna Be Fucked Up narrative support#and i really do think it makes sense for him to not have any possibility of being secretly involved with the Chosen#still weird but that feels like it might be the real reason#i'm rly tired btw so possible i'm less of a genius than i think i am#fr woke up and almost immediately started thinking about this#wrt to the rest of the companions i landed on shadowheart and lae'zel being the most Necessary ones#wyll adds reason to care about ravenguard and also ansur#karlach ties into wyll and gives more gortash narrative#never thought about it much before but gale is actually v similar to astarion#his quest ties into the narrative but he as a character does not#you could remove gale and lose nothing from the actual plot narrative#the fact that his quest ties in makes him in a whole other category than astarion ofc#but he doesn't actually leave a hole like the others do#though tbh karlach is the next easiest to remove#she adds to wyll and to gortash but mostly she is uninvolved w/ the bigger narrative#wyll should rly get more attention from larian given that he's the guy who gives u reason to care about the Baldurian side of the narrative#the duke is def helped by wyll being around#but the most necessary and narratively useful are absolutely shadowheart and lae'zel#shadowheart has the artifact. could you just find it on your own or have it Appear somehow? sure. but she makes it infinitely less clumsy.#also the Entire thing w/ aylin#rly the whole shadowlands thing would lose a lot w/o shadowheart#and lae'zel is your Singular connection to the githyanki#it isn't *necessary* but you lose quite a bit of Giving A Shit About Orpheus which is y'know#i would say pretty important#none of this is me saying any of these companions are therefore Better than the others btw
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amoebab22 · 3 days ago
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I completely agree with this. I feel like this is one of the worst parts about Veilguard. My Inky is in the South, and while I firmly believe Orlais is the devil, it's very weird that Tevinter is just super chill about my elf Rook when my elf Inky had constant micro-aggressions as well as just out and out slurs hurled at her. Also I'm going on a rant about Mythal.
SPOILERS BELOW
Bellara also seems to just...kind of ignore that I'm an elf? Davrin makes more sense. He left his clan and joined the Wardens because he just didn't really vibe with the Dalish. He'd think of himself as a Warden first, I think. Wardens don't seem to give much of a shit about your race or religion or sexuality or whatever. In The Calling, they canonically don't give a fuck about the gay couple in their little group, or that Fiona is a mage and an elf. Absolutely irrelevant. So Davrin could start to fall into that mindset because frankly, it's a nice way to live. It's just not real outside the Wardens.
So when Bellara is like oh my god our gods are evil and Davrin is like eh, fuck 'em, that's actually about the most realistic reaction we've got re: elves. Davrin is just out here like yo I'm a little busy saving the world fuck them gods. Love Davrin.
Also, in Inquisition, there's concern that knowing Corypheus's artifact is Elvhen will cause violence against elves. So knowing it's the Elvhen gods causing all of this? The consequences of that, even if an elf Rook saves the world, should be looming for a Shadow Dragon in particular. Clearly Inquisitor Ameridan's race did nothing for the elves of Orlais. It was covered up over time. His sacrifice meant nothing to the humans. This should make Solas's plans to restore the elves much, much more tempting.
The way the Crows were presented REALLY bothered me as well as someone who romanced Zev. The Crows *tortured* him, sexually assaulted him, made him feel worthless, because it was seen as necessary. Sure, Lucanis being blood family might give him a very different perspective and experience, but Jacobus is just allowed to be a Crow and start his own house when he wouldn't kill? I mean, I totally agree that prolonged, public shaming and imprisonment is worse for this individual, but like.... That's not how the Crows work. They kill stuff for money. Sure, they run Antiva and would be pretty pissed off about the Antaam taking their territory I'm sure, and they might work with Rook since Rook helped Lucanis and he's a big deal to the First Talon. But like... It should be a hard choice to work with them for Shadow Dragon Rook, because SLAVERY.
I feel like the pullback on slavery is to make Solas's actions seem more ambiguous, and to make it seem like there was some equal power between him and Mythal. But I have a very hard time believing he was never Mythal's slave. Also, a spirit of BENEVOLENCE? Get ABSOLUTELY fucked. She was fine with SLAVERY. Thought she could just slowly phase it out, maybe. Yeah, no .
Because here's the thing: slavery is evil. Whatever you have to do to stop slavery, short of participating or killing slaves, is pretty easy to justify. Maybe I'm just John Brown-pilled from living in Kansas a good chunk of my life, but killing slavers and slave owners and freeing slaves is MORALLY CORRECT. FULL STOP. A "kind" master is still a master. Sure, you can give them a chance to free their slaves and make reparations first, but waiting to vote slavery out didn't work. The US had to go to war. Haiti had to rebel (and give basically all its GDP to France for like two hundred years. Fuck Orlais AND France).
The only reason my Inky was able to befriend Dorian, at first, was their shared trauma in going to the future. That changes people (that whole quest fucked me up the first time I did it) and I think my elf Inky was looking for reasons to trust Dorian and ignore the system he participated in. She didn't have to see it so it seemed less real. He's an altus so he doesn't own the estate. He seems open to other opinions! And some part of him knows it's wrong, or he wouldn't be so awkward upon talking to Inky the first time.
But Solas's inherent and never fully overcome distrust of Dorian isn't wrong. Solas needs to see action; words aren't enough. I don't blame him.
This is the same softening we saw of the Templars in DA2 and Inquisition, but if you read The Stolen Throne and The Calling and play DAO, it's very clear that mages are oppressed by the Chantry and live in horrible conditions. The ones in Lake Calenhad are described as pale and kinda sickly looking (or something like that) because they don't get any fucking sunlight. Fiona is happy to go to the circle at first because she was a SLAVE in Orlais (Honestly Loghain's hatred of Orlais is justified even though his actions aren't). If you decide to allow the right of annulment or whatever in DAO, Zevran calls it genocide. Zevran isn't one to mince words. He doesn't pretend he isn't a killer or that he wasn't tortured.
My Inky and my Rook are both 'no gods no masters' types, which is why I think clan Lavellan sent their First on a risky mission supposedly by herself (got real sick of her shit lol). As a result, she heavily sympathizes with Solas's cause, and would have happily joined him in bringing down the Veil if he'd just agreed to spend time making sure as few people died as possible, particularly after she meets the Avvar and sees how spirits really are. She knows Solas better than anyone, and even without a full explanation, she'd know that his reasons for doing this were morally right. He freed her people. He never meant to hurt them. He can't live with his guilt. Inky (who in my game was more like 30 because I don't think she could have made decisions or led on her own at 20, nor would she have been a studied enough mage) wants freedom for everyone. She's chaotic good.
Rook is a Shadow Dragon who killed slavers a little too hard for an organization dedicated to killing slavers (based Rook). They're also chaotic good, and a bit of an idiot, bless them, who kinda sees everything as a nail because they have a hammer. They see slavery, they fight it. Fuck the consequences. Solas did the same.
So why is Rook not bringing up slavery a lot? Why is Rook only finding out that Solas freed slaves on the regular at the beginning of the game? Did Varric just decide that wasn't worth bringing up to a person whose entire life revolves around ending slavery? Why is Rook not having an existential crisis after talking to Solas and finding out the truth of his past in his memories?
Look, all I'm saying is that I don't understand why more people aren't angry with Mythal and why no one is talking about slavery and racism. The whole point of fantasy and sci-fi, and the point of Dragon Age, is to critique modern society through thinly veiled references. That's why people get so passionate about Star Trek. And yeah, yes, it's necessarily going to make a piece of media more niche, or people are going to bitch about it (especially gamer bros my dude calm down, sorry something is very briefly not about you), but it makes a game *good* and lasting
BG3 did a good job of exploring the themes of trauma and power imbalance, and while some characters I think needed more fleshing out (Wyll my beloved, I owe you a lengthy fanfic for the injustice done to you), it was particularly powerful in Astarion. The people are ready for real exploration of real issues. We always have been. Backing off was a mistake.
ANYWAY I have feelings and none of my friends share my special interest. Here you go.
Why Fenris could Never Cameo in Dragon Age: The Veilguard
In the run up to Dragon age: The Veilguard, I was almost certain that Fenris would be our main legacy character from previous games. Not only has he been central in the comics released between DAI and DATV, he is an escaped Tevinter slave who's plot revolved around magisters, magic and the structural prejudices surrounding elves in Thedas. Not only that, but he's canonically in Tevinter killing slavers currently so he's geographically in the right place for us to meet him.
About halfway through the game though, it was clear to me: Fenris could never cameo in The Veilguard. Because he'd break it.
How the Veilguard treats Thedas is...odd to me, to say the least. I will be writing another post about how much I adored the expanded big lore in this game (the titans, ancient elves were spirits, where the blight came from etc.) and yet while these large lore expansions worked for me, the actual culture of modern Thedas is entirely softened, its sharp edges filed down until it's a sanitised fantasy world devoid of what made the franchise so vibrant and compelling in the first place.
So let's start with Fenris and slavery. In all three games, the reality of slavery is pushing at the corners of the world. In DAO Loghain allows Tevinter Magisters to enslave elves in order to raise money for his war effort. In DA2 Fenris is fighting to be free from slavers who will not leave him be, let alone the reminders that the city was built by slaves which are everywhere. In DAI one of the two possible mini-bosses is Calpurnia who was a slave, and characters such as Gatt and Dorian both show us how much slavery is tied into Tevinters culture and success.
But DATV the first game actually set in Tevinter where we get to see the famed Minrathous...it's like the game purposefully wants to avoid the issue. I can feel it tilting the camera away to not allow me to see. Slavery is mentioned, but never talked about in depth or as a specifically ELVEN problem in Tevinter. This might have been done to be less problematic, it feels ignored.
We are in DOCK TOWN. We are at the DOCKS. You would think that slaves from all over Thedas who are being smuggled and bought by various groups would be everywhere. You would think that the injustice in dock town would be partly built on the back of ships we've seen in the comics crammed with elves in chains. This is the world Dragon age set up for us. And yet...nothing. zilch. A tiny easily skippable side quest where we free a couple of venatori slaves, but only one of whom is an elf.
None of our Tevinter characters seem to have been influenced by their culture even a little bit when it comes to how they view elves; there is no moment when Neve fucks up and says something prejudiced, no moment when Bellara or Davrin are distrustful of her for being a Tevinter mage.
The same goes for Zevran; a character who epitomised the issues with the crows. The crows have consistently been characterised as very morally dubious assassins who kill for the highest bidder and who buy children on the slave market and torture them as they grow in order to assure that they reach maturity able to withstand torture without giving away a client's name. Zevran is very explicit about the fact that if you fail a contract your life is forefit.
Nobody responds particularly to you if you're an elf. Nobody trusts rook less for it in Tevinter. Nobody treats Rook any differently. Even DAI had better mechanics for this; with nobles in Orlais less likely to trust you as an elf.
Considering one of the main plot points of this game and what makes Solas sympathetic is the fact that he was fighting against the slavery of ancient elves...you'd think the game might want to mirror that in modern Thedas. It might want to show us how characters fighting to end slavery in Tevinter are similar to Solas and how the society Solas fought against was similar to the one that characters we love such as Fenris have fought against in modern Thedas. Maybe we'd want to explore how in a world of slavery like this, how could the answer NOT be to tear it all down? Maybe we should have that option at the end of the game so it really can chose whether we agree with Solas and his plans or not.
Adding Fenris to this game would entirely break the game because Fenris refuses to allow you to look away from this horror. He is a sympathetic character who had to learn to trust mages again because of course he didn't trust them. Of course he didn't. Fenris wouldn't allow the camera to shift focus because he's literally covered in the lyrium scars that show how slaves are used as experiments in Tevinter. Fenris WOULD question Neve on how she feels about elves and slaves. Fenris WOULD have things to say about Lucanis and the crows (let alone the fact Lucanis is an abomonation). So he could never be in this game; he'd drop a bomb on it's carefully constructed blinders to the very society its supposed to be set in.
And yet, in DATV, the crows are presented as...a found family of misfits and orphans? The politician who opposes the crows having absolute power in Antiva is framed as a comically evil idiot who doesn't understand that the crows are ontologically good. Yet...they're NOT. Crows in this game act more like a secret rebel group than an assassin organisation. We see no crow taking contracts with the VERY RICH venatori magisters despite being hired killers. We see crows just refuse to kill people despite having a contract because 'its crueler to leave them alive'. The crows don't feel like the crows here, they feel like a softened version of a cool assassin group who are cool because they wear black and purple.
Our pirate group are also sanitised; the Lords of Fortune are good pirates who only steal treasure that's not culturally significant. Theyve clearly read the modern critiques of the British Museum and have decided to explicitly stop anyone levelling similar critiques at them. There is no faction of the Lords of Fortune who aren't like this, no internal arguments about it. Everyone just. Agrees. And is able to accurately tell what a cultural artifact is vs. what treasure that you can have yourself is. Rather than showing us why a pirate stealing cultural artifacts might be bad (like in da2 where such a situation literally causes a coup and a war) it just tells us it's bad. But also pirates are cool so we still want them in our world.
This issue seaps into Thedas and drains it of any of the interesting complexity and ability to SAY anything that this franchise had before this game. It becomes a game about telling and not showing rather than the other way around. The games have ALWAYS asked questions about oppressive structural systems and their interplay with society, religion and culture and how these things can affect even the most well meaning character. Dragon age at its best IS a game about society and how society functions both for and against it's characters and what happens to societies built on cruelty and indifference. The best bad guys dragon age has given us are those who are bad because they embody these systems or have been shaped by them. Our main characters have had to wrestle with questions surrounding how to exist in these systems, fight against them, learn and grow.
Yet every group you come across in DATV is sanitised and cleaned up to the point of being as non problematic as humanly possible. None of our cast of characters have to wrestle with where they came from or the world that shaped them. None of them have to confront their own biases. They start the game perfectly non-problematic and end it that way too.
And this just...isn't what Dragon Age has been in the past. It isn't why I love the franchise. The whole game just felt, in a way, hollow. And this was a CHOICE and it is why the legacy characters are few and far between. Too many dragon age characters are just too...angry and complex for this game. You can feel them pulling their punches on this one. I have to imagine they did this because they didn't want to be criticised or have too much controversy? But I think it honestly goes far too much in the other direction and just makes it bland.
I can't imagine what I say here will be unique, but it is the basis for a LOT of my other thoughts on this game so I wanted to get it out of the way first. The softened Thedas and characters make this game by far the weakest in the franchise.
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derpinette · 8 months ago
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SPERG YOUR HEART OUT
#EVERYONE#NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#& FOREVER#i love it when my friends &/or mutuals post about their interest & Passions i will like your posts but really i Loved them.#i deleted some tags because they might be interpreted as weird(er than usual) but 0_0 i am ♯Passionate about ♯Passion (for fashion - Bratz)#still kind of feel like a worthless human being but i secured another hangout in like a week so yayyy ^_^#I GET TO BOTHER SOMEONE TOO NOW i just wish people did that to me too why am i like always the one raving#literally have to beg my friend to give me updates on her things even if i normally hate it even i go out of my way to look for things#for us to discuss -_- GIRL please i am for real not just faking for politeness who do you think i am I WANT TO KNOW#so effin excited OMG i have like so much to say & the greatest thing is that this girl has no knowledge at all about my Thing#so i can explain from the very beginning You literally have no idea how much i practiced the conversation in my head#ever since she told me & she said she wanted me to go on & talk about it more i have been Devising My Plan#OMG YAYYYY ^_^_^_^_^_^ AIMU SO HEPI AAARRRGHHHHHGSJDJSHSJDHSHSG#& OFC i had to plug it in the first time i met her in person i just could not help myself there was an NF on that day & i told her i wanted#to catch it i had to go in the end for a different reason & BTW it was such a whiplash the show itself was so fun but the winner... 0_0 NO.#next i will ask her about berserk & maybe even read it so we can talk about it because she really likes it#i dropped it when i was 14 because the laptop i was using to read it was complete crap Just like mine is RN#like a section of my keyboard is completely dead T_T so i have to use the on-screen one...
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lupins-hehim-pussy · 6 months ago
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i want top neuvillette who's still femme and a crybaby my god is that so hard
#/lh#my tastes. masc bottoms femme tops#to be fair my dynamic with them is neuv gets pregnant but neuv also tops. so generally speaking. solid switches. but wrio bottoms#he's the king of the underworld after all.#i do think its hilarious tho if you look at the trends across wrlt vs nvwr interpretations#the tops always gets broadened...... masculinized.... aged#and the bottom becomes this waifish wet noodle..........#like ive seen bottom wrio with a baby face. paired with a neuv who's somehow broader than him#and alternatively ive seen the. meatiest. manliest middle-aged man wriothesley with a neuvillette who's back is perpetually arched#and im like the dimorphism is crazy /j this isnt just a strictly wrlt thing tho this is real across. every ship. that has ever existed lol#tho on a more serious note i have a big squick when it comes to bottom wrio interps where an emphasis on their dynamic is........#the fact that he's younger. or that they first met when he was a minor. im like weird thing to emphasize but ok.#disclaimer tho when i say crybaby hes not a Childish Man mind you. hes Sensitive and Awkward but he's still got that weird ancient stalenes#his voice just wobbles sometimes. he often sound like hes at the verge of tears even if his face is perfectly flat#hes autistic like that#and the sole reason why wrio doesnt top That Much is because hes fuckin tired man. eepy. hes like my god neuv if you still wanna go at it#ur gonna have to take the reins. baby im tired.#something something freakish dragon strength and stamina#personally. my hcs are as such. neuvillette is very lean. almost uncannily long if i exaggerate it for funsies. hes slenderman coded. skinn#but you find no texture underneath his skin. you can't feel bones or muscles shift when he moves when you touch him#there's this exceptional discomfort when you see him lift something that looks much heavier than he should be able to manage#almost like his long fingers might impale it. like you are balancing something soft and fleshy on a nail. it doesn't feel secure#like if wriothesley held you. his arms would feel warm and solid. thick and supportive. whereas neuv's feels like it might dig into you#i could yap all day.
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restinan · 2 days ago
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I don't actually think that shooting the ten guys with the wealth has literally never made things better at any point in the history of man. If you actually read my post instead of pattern-matching it to the nearest easy thing to dunk on you might notice that I don't ever say anything incompatible with there being a wide range of outcomes. That said, it really is the case if you read history broadly there are trends in how well countries do if they descend into political violence and civil war. It tends not to make things better. Yes, there's a distribution- it's not a good distribution.
I understand that's a bit rude to accuse you of pattern matching to something dunkable rather than actually thinking, but you're the one who opened by attributing people who disagree with you to propaganda from the US government and fantasy novels. I get that that lets you feel pleasantly smug but there are in fact historically literate people who disagree with you for real reasons.
The American Revolution is probably one of the examples of "just kill some people" working out well you're thinking of here. It's genuinely true that things worked out well, but the American Revolution was a very weird civil war. The American revolution notably preserved most of the existing ruling class and didn't substantially disrupt the general structure of society. If you want to argue that wars of secession specifically have a very different track record from popular uprisings or attempting to use political violence to stabilize a country you'd have a good case for doing so. That said, even in that reference class the American Revolution had much better results than typical.
Perhaps you're not thinking of something so famous and instead thinking of examples like the overthrow of the government of communist Romania?
If you're making predictions from the American Revolution and the French Revolution and a handful of overthrows of dictatorships at the end of the Cold War and not on the banal, boring, usually forgotten peasant uprisings in Early Modern Europe, or the various peasant uprisings and descents into warlordism in Ancient China, or the slow rise of political violence and decay in norms in the Roman Republic (a shiny popular example, but still not one you should leave out- reversed stupidity isn't intelligence and we have a disproportionate amount of insight into this one), or the dozen instances of political violence in the early twentieth century aiding in the rise of the opposed party from the people doing the violence, or the communist attempts to swiftly restructure society in ways that accidentally caused massive famines, or the general outcomes of civil wars in the late 20th century, or the hundred other things in this vein, you're going to end up wrong about things.
Yes, the distribution of outcomes is wide. Yes, it is not entirely negative. That doesn't mean anywhere near as much as it might seem. A lottery which has a 50% chance of killing you horribly, a 20% chance of torturing you before you die, a 30% chance of leaving you alive but worse off, a 10% chance of not much detectable change, and a 10% chance of making things a small amount better, is not a lottery worth playing. That doesn't correspond to the political violence lottery, it's just a simple example.
The obvious response to this is that we should be examining the cases where it goes well to see how to get results like that. That response is a good response. However, to do that you need to know in the first place that violent revolution isn't a magical cure-all. You need to know that it tends negative or you won't even bother figuring out how to make it not do that. You need to know that the present has a larger list of fragile improvements and so you can't just use outcomes from nobility in 13th century France or even 18th century America to make predictions.
Things are legitimately different in the period where wealth flows almost entirely from land and just killing people and taking their land will mostly just work to enrich yourself. Even then, doing a bunch of it via an outside-the-norms-method in a polity and eroding the legitimacy of whatever is stopping the descent into violence from kicking off earlier tends to result in more and more violence over time. That trend really isn't hard to notice. Almost every single time without exception you end up with the place in general being drastically worse off. Usually the people who started the cycle end up very dead and frequently their family ends up extinct or less powerful than they started. Yes, they cared about different things- it was still usually a mistake to kick off a period of violence by their own values. For an example of this, consider literally any period of civil war in the history of China. Yes, someone manages to succeed and end up the next dynasty. The odds of being that someone aren't great. Assassinating your uncle to end up Emperor has a better track record. if not a stellar one. It's also not a mass uprising, and has a lower chance of kicking off a civil war.
If all you do is notice a lot of the people who hold a view are unsophisticated and stupid, find a couple counterexamples, and then smugly posture about how there's nuance, you see, you may legitimately be doing better than the idiots. But you need to actually know the distribution to be right, you can't just notice some other people know less than you and assume that means nobody knows more. Historians can tend kind of stupid in a lot of ways but there is actually something you get from having seen a broad overview of history. Not as much as a lot of historians like to pretend, but "just using a bunch of outside-the-norms violence to try to make things better for you personally was a high risk strategy before the modern world, doing it to make things better for people in general or for the sake of preserving a polity's stability was harder still, and the modern world makes it all work a lot less well" is one of the things that is, frankly, somewhat overdetermined.
What people care about is usually whether something makes slides into dictatorship more likely. Whether it makes famines more likely. Whether it makes instability and a lot of suffering more likely. Whether it tends to make things worse by our values, both when people don't care much about that and even when they do. The answers there are pretty clear. Yes, there's a distribution rather than a universal single outcome. It's not a good one.
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atomiclace · 4 months ago
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who knew that some agere people would be the worst type of people to exist (talking about you spinny)
#dont get your toddler army to do your anon hate and unblock me on discord if u want to talk#ik you act like a baby and thats fine but if youre bold enough to try to get me paranoid (and fail) then u should be bold enough to dm me#yknow without hiding yourself#either do that or leave us alone girl!! move on#like why do you preach about moving on to a new era and then actively seek out trouble ????#get a job or something#trying to make me think my bf is cheating on me is such a weird thing to do and a big low for you spinny. it's actually sad#the worst part youre not even good at doing it. youre making shit up from what you THINK you know & hiding behind ur friend#its okay to fall out of friendships and im not even trying to meddle with your life but you are literally actively seeking out problems#and thats so pathetic. especially when you paint yourself all high and might over us ??? clearly we tried everything for you#until we got to a point where we were literally drowning because we have other shit in our lives too#you keep losing friends and complain about it. maybe consider why??? because of lack of communication and empathy!! youre just mean!#especially to those who've always tried so hard to have your back and defend you! (buka and me!!!)#yet you didnt care. you dont communicate and expect us to read minds & you demand things#and u say that a real friend should know when to reach out & ya but when it gets to a point where i feel like im drowning? no thanks#im prioritizing myself and my mental health im sorry#not to mention i was ALWAYS IN THE MIDDLE IN YOUR BULLSHIT#so grow up. actually. and if you wanna dm me then unblock me and we can talk#if you want to keep hiding behind your toddler friends acting like youre all small and sweet and babies then go ahead but leave us alone?#at least ill have closure and finally come to terms that you're not rlly a good person and u use your illnesses to excuse ur behavior#because i still think about you and wish you were our friend but after everything thats happened (this being the cherry on top for ME)#then maybe you really just are a shitty person and you do more harm than good#soz to everyone else reading this just continue scrolling LOL#its drama cus an ex friend is sending their toddler militia on me for some reason???#delete later
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insanechayne · 18 days ago
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~ ~ ~
#today I am sad about something that I know objectively is dumb#my 30th birthday is next week and the party will be next Saturday and I’m having a dinner at a nice restaurant in town#I wasn’t supposed to make it to 30 and never thought I would but now somehow I have and so this birthday is like…#a really huge deal to me you know#and I always wanted to be able to have a big party to celebrate this specific occasion and in my head I pictured all my friends/family there#I figured this would be one of the biggest parties I’d ever get to throw because to me this is the biggest milestone I’ve gotten to so far#but out of all the people I’ve invited the most that will probably reasonably show is about 10#and even that’s a bit iffy because tbh I’m pretty sure my bestie will flake on me like he always does#and if he doesn’t show up that might just end the friendship but that’s another matter entirely#also iffy because I haven’t gotten a lot of responses still even though I made the event and sent invites two weeks ago#I just… thought I had more friends than that if that makes sense#like I had bigger parties with more people attending in high school and I barely had any friends then#I’ve thrown low key Halloween parties in my mom’s apartment that had more people show up#now I’m at the most important moment of my life (so far) and I’ll barely have anyone with me#lately it just feels like less and less people care about me for real despite how many I know around work or how many are on my Facebook#it feels like my world keeps shrinking and I really don’t want that because it’s been small enough as it is#I just feel like I’m never really going to find my place or have big groups of friends like everyone else#I’m never going to have a group of friends or people I can rely on to spend time with me when needed#as it is planning things gets harder the older we get anyway just due to needing to tend to adult life#guess I still just want what everyone else has and I don’t know why I can’t have those things#and I know it’s stupid and selfish and whiny but I really want to cry because I’m so depressed that I have barely anyone in my life at all#barely anyone to celebrate something so important to me and so few who even seem to care at all either#I’m grateful for everyone I do have honestly#but that doesn’t offset this weird pain in my chest over this whole situation#maybe I should just curl up and cry until this all passes and I can go back to pretending it doesn’t matter#personal
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faorism · 3 days ago
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im feeling real the call is coming from within the house vibes rn, so im going to be kinda nasty for a hot minute because you actually were the reason i came across this post in the first place. my friend and i were so aghast at your racializations of hardison in a fic, that they had to see who the fuck you are. and your own ignorance highlights why this response is kinda bullshit.
incorporating race is absolutely something that fandom needs to be better about doing. absolutely. but up your attempts at doing so show how stomach churning poor follow through can be, where i would have preferred you not give an attempt at all. because in the fic in question, you use the wildly outdated term "ebonics" to refer to hardisons exaggerated speech that he codeswitches into occasionally. my friend and i spent fifteen minutes trying to decipher your implications in the line: "He’s young, or maybe (hopefully) just black, is the first thing."
i did not read your evil!hardison fic, because i didnt trust your ability to write an entire fic focused on him. that said, i felt like a got enough out of this hc post:
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so! i think there's some good points here (perhaps!) about what hardison would look like with a possessive god complex, as opposed to him being a thoughtful provider building homes for the people he loves. and yes, "ownership" is a very contentous topic in the Black community, given how white supremacy has subjugated Black capital. but whatever analysis i would give you credit for—and any brownie points you could get from naming the racialized aspect—is immediately wiped when you fucking compare hardison to a goddamn overseer. you know, like an enslaver overseeing enslaved people? you imply here hardison, a Black man, would be a kind master to his employees. which is just so vile to be casual about.
attempts were made, i can say about your posting and writing. but i don't at all respect it, because you still have so much to really pull together to not be offensive about things.
which gets back to this post. you say your saw weirdness. why the fuck didn't you name it? no, really. did you actually see it or are you trying to save face now? you're not welcome for the labor i (nonblack latinx) and my friend (Black) had to go through to process this post. don't rely on others to do the work of naming racism and antiblackness; do the work yourself, or just don't reblog if you can't give commentary.
and, because i have been nasty and might as well be petty: honestly, there's just so much more work you need to do if you want me to trust you with handling race in fandom when you out here posting shit like this:
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you're the fucking issue here too.
Well, a realization just hit me. Don't know if this is true of not, I don't remember the timing.
Eliot said he didn't hit cops in the OG show. Well now that makes sense. His dad is Black. What do Black parents teach their kids when it comes to dealing with the cops? Part of The Talk. Just do as they say, not that that always work.
He would have at least heard that talk with other foster kids, or teammates, if not given it himself.
And why would he stick to that? Because his dad was upset with him and he was still trying to be a Good Boy in one way.
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latinokaeya-moving · 2 years ago
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semi related kinda actually. one of those super common fat stereotypes that didn’t really stick/make sense to me until i grew older was the idea of fat equaling weak or pathetic like. that’s a really common association right in both media and the average consciousness of ppl. but it was never something i learned to internalise as a kid bc a Lot of ppl in my family including myself had always been built big and broad and everyone was always just so physically strong??? like looking back not in an unnaturally impressive way or anything but just so many of them had been manual labourers in some way in colombia and then they came here to do cleaning and even though it might not seem it that’s Such a physically taxing job especially if you’re doing it for 12+ hours every day and like. the strength that built Showed in the roughhousing at home so clearly ?
like as little kids me and my brother would gang up on my grandma to play wrestle and she would sooo soundedly defeat us each time like she had such solid grip and weight behind her arms even as an old lady she was short but broad and Sturdy and physically strong!!! and my brother is huge and tall and Fat he was the biggest kid in secondary school i’m so sure and he could pick up and manhandle and throw other kids even older than him with ease. he played rugby with these fit lanky guys i knew in my year who would tell me that they would stay the Fuck away from him when they played bc they knew he was unmovable and Would slam them to the ground without breaking a sweat. hell he could right now pick me up and physically slam me on the ground if he really wanted to and im big! i’m heavy as hell! i weigh almost as much as he does!
so growing up surrounded by my family i just. kinda got used to associating fatness with physical strength as this obvious innate thing so when i sorta expanded my horizons n saw the way it was used in popular media as visual shorthand for like. laziness And Therefore weakness it was just very. unintelligible. it didn’t make sense to me at all. i didn’t get it lol
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autism-disco · 1 year ago
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watched all of fleabag in like a 24 hour span, maybe even 12 hours idk. the Feelings haven’t hit yet but hey maybe they will when i play in the fucking cèilidh tomorrow!! what even is a life you get what i’m saying
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rancidarling · 2 years ago
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it's probably such a good thing I didn't grow up in America because anytime I went to someone's house and they had a bb gun, I'd just be obsessed with it and trying to be subtle about how interested I was in using it and also wanting to know what it would be like to shoot someone with it 😍
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ectoplasmer · 2 years ago
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I don’t think I’ve ever truly articulated just how special these characters are to me. I’ve never stayed this interested and invested in a piece of media before, at least within recent memory
#i’m always talking about how the way i feel towards my f/os is ‘different’ but like#i don’t think i’ve ever really explained why it’s different??#with my past f/os even though i would insert them into my life *occasionally* everything i did with them was mostly contained to an s/i-#-that i just projected heavily on#most of the time i wouldn’t even imagine them in my house or with me unless i was having a really hard time#my love for them was still there of course but it wasn’t as nearly direct as it is for my current f/os#with my current f/os something was just… different. that’s what i keep saying#the way i felt towards them was different. the way i approached calling them an f/o was different#i didn’t look at them and immediately go ‘yeah that’s gonna be my favorite character’ like i did for most of my other f/os#this was… different. it felt almost more personal somehow#heck i think the whole reason i got so attached to ryou was because i played nightmare troubadour and got him onto my friends list#maybe it’s because they might’ve played a role in my childhood maybe it was because there was more about them to learn about#the way my love grew for them was just… that. it grew. it wasn’t there from the start but it’s definitely there now#most of my other fictional crushes didn’t work that way. is that weird?#it felt more personal because it took longer for me to feel what i feel for them now. there’s also something about them that just felt more#i almost want to say ‘real’? something sbout them felt more real to me than my other f/os were#even though my f/os face ‘shadow games’ and dark ancient egyptian magic on a daily basis… they felt more relatable somehow#when you really get down to it they’re just… teenagers. teenagers that are lowkey messed up and probably need help#and y’know what? on a much smaller scale i might be exactly that too. and maybe that’s why they felt much more real and understandable to me#any ‘issues’ or similar problems i share with them are obviously much more smaller when compared to their versions of it but#seeing someone else face those issues (even on a much larger scale) makes me feel less isolated in it. less like no one could understand#because i see that *they* can understand how i feel. *they* can feel just as alone as me with a problem despite the both of us sharing it#i can understand them and why they do things because we’re both just. absurd teenagers. and that gives us familiarity#my feelings towards my f/os are ‘different’ because they’re different. they’re more real and feel more familiar than any of my other f/os#and in someway… i think my love for them feels more real too.#quartzshipping#anyway it is absolutely horrific yet amazing that i have been interested in this series for a year and (almost) five months now#i’m happy regardless that it’s gone on this long. sometimes i worry that maybe it’ll end at some point but#i think i need to stop worrying about it and just enjoy it as it is now#it’ll fall off when it falls off. all that matters right now is that it makes me and others happy and that i feel something towards it
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minglana · 2 days ago
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every time i think im finally moving on i think something or read something that makes me realize that i am, in fact, NOT moved on yet
#and to think that before i took that trip i didnt rly think much of our relationship#like i just thought 'yeah we r probably gonna end up together at some point but i dont have feelings anymore'#i barely took a hit when we broke up. this is hitting me harder than when we broke up. probably bc it didnt feel real ig#ive talked this over so much w my friends and every time i still find a new angle to interpret something from#and it always makes me feel like shit#like if i have to explain it to someone wtf do i even say#'yeah no so we broke up 2 yrs ago and we only rly saw each other twice and we dated for like 7 months#and weve been friends for longer than weve been together (pre and post breakup) but i still have feelings for them#even tho i thought i didnt but it hit me hard when we talked abt stuff and reacted unexpectedly to something they told me#even tho i shouldnt have reacted like that bc WE WERE NOTHING AT THAT POINT even though when we last saw each other#we basically acted like a couple??? like we just went right back to how we acted the few times we've seen each other#(which might have something to do w it btw) and idk man the way /i/ acted was completely different from other times#and the way THEY acted was. well. it was how they usually acted w me before BUT w [redacted thing] happening#(which i learned afterwards) thinking abt it now IS WEIRD. and now idk what to do or how to stop thinking abt the whole situation'#like. how do i say all this to someone. without sounding crazy or like im losing my mind#anyways guys im fine soooooooo fine. so so so fine. not like i need to talk to someone about it and wallow in my misery again#not like ive been wallowing in misery for the past like. 3 weeks#actually its been more like. switching between wallowing in misery and seething in anger. no in between.#and also blaming everything on myself. for being in a bad mental spot when we broke up (which was the reason we broke up)#for acting like i did. for being like this w my feelings. for EVERYTHING#z xarre
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