#that certainly is a choice

[messfc]

just saw josemas hair…uhm….

[simplepotatofarmer]

[hedonistbyheart]

I'm slightly obsessed with gen z Crystal Palace looking right at a very dead boy and going "you'd be a fun addition to my body count" babygirl he's already a part of a body count and it's not yours. He's a murder victim!

[givehimthemedicine]

wait this is so funny, that's the same piece of music they use for El announcing that she's found flayed Billy?? (see here toward the middle)

This is what I was talking about here btw

[ofswordsandpens]

I fear that "fire bending didn't come easy to zuko" and "zuko isn't a prodigy" (both true) has somehow snowballed into "zuko is a bad or at best average fire bender".... which simply isn't true, especially by the end of book 3

[reasonsforhope]

Climate change in 2025: So, what now?

Some real talk for the new year, about where we now stand, and what the next years are going to look like.

(Still ends on a “be hopeful!! or else” kind of note, but definitely gets into some heavy truths about the meaning of recent events.)

--

Obviously, between Trump's reelection at the Los Angeles fires, things are feeling a lot more precarious than they did just a few months ago. I know a lot of people are incredibly stressed. I know I'm certainly stressed.

But this isn't the end. This isn't the beginning of the end, either. We're not doomed.

Don't despair.

Yes, things are about to get harder. Yes, the effects of climate change are now becoming truly apparent.

But here's what you need to hold on to:

We have already cut expected warming in half.

More about that including sources here: (x) I'm not going to go into it again in detail, read the source for that. But it's true. In 2000, when I was a kid, they were predicting 4, 5, 6 degrees of warming, plus a runaway greenhouse effect that would boil the planet.

Now, scientists expect that global temperatures will likely land between 2 and 3 degrees.

Which is incredibly shitty, yes. But it's survivable.

And I have for a lot of reasons (check these masterposts on this) to believe with the confidence of knowing that we're going to get expected warming down even further.

And that's something to celebrate.

I’m not saying that the effects of warming aren’t already bad, or won’t get worse. I’m from California, I currently live in LA. My state’s been on fire for half my life. Natural disasters starting amping up early here (and we’re certainly in the middle of another historic number now). And yeah, it's fucking stressful right now.

But like I said, my state’s been breaking horrible disaster records constantly for the past ten years. I've done this before. And you know what? Natural disasters have been getting more and more survivable for years, largely thanks to faster warnings and better mass communication (x).

Does it suck how many natural disasters there are now? Yeah.

Does it suck how many more still there will be? Yeah.

Do we need to keep working our asses off to beat climate change? Yeah.

Are we going to need to organize and mobilize (both politically and especially community-wise) like never before to see as many people through these times as best as possible? Yeah.

But that doesn't mean we should despair. It absolutely does not mean that we've already lost.

An unknown number of the most optimistic futures were foreclosed when Trump won the US election. That’s painful but a reality.

But for twenty-ish of the past twenty-five years, the science said we weren’t going to survive climate change at all.

For most of my life, we were worried that we had set Earth on a course to become like fucking Venus (which is, on average, well over 800 degrees Farenheit). Even if it didn’t get that bad, we were so worried that global warming might wipe out all life on earth - except maybe the cockroaches.

(Literally, when I was a younger the kids at my church put on a play about that. It was like an adaptation of A Christmas Carol where the future only had talking cockroaches. I grew up so worried about this. (Not the cockroaches thing specifically. Mostly the general concept. Only a little about the cockroaches. Also yes my church was very granola why do you ask.))

But starting a few years ago, studies have shown that there wasn’t going to be a runaway greenhouse effect that could turn us into Venus; that earth is warming, yes, but we don’t seem to be in danger of that.

Between that and the fact that the adoption of renewables globally is too fast to be stopped, and we do have the technology and environmental science knowledge to eventually re-lower global temperatures by getting to net negative carbon emissions (x), and most countries and at least 73% of people in all countries for which there is data (x) actually care very much about the climate, yeah, we have closed the door on the lava planet future.

And yeah, I do think that’s worth celebrating.

That’s a massive fucking victory.

There's still more work to do, and I have every confidence that we're going to do it. I also think that, given the loss of the US election, there’s a really, really strong chance the developing world will be what saves us, and we’ll just be lucky to be along for the ride.

Most people have no idea of the kinds of amazing stories and statistics coming out of the developing world and Indigenous communities. The world is changing for the better on the environment, even as disasters (and the US) are getting worse. Solar power is going to revolutionize the fucking world, because it’s going to grant humanity universal access to electricity, and that’s going to revolutionize the world, especially the developing world (aka the global majority). And most people have no idea at all, much less how much it’s going to change.

So, yeah, natural disasters are going to keep getting worse.

But there’s a long, long long fucking way between “natural disasters are going to keep getting worse” and “the extinction of all of humanity and/or the vast majority of life on earth”

So, in the face of Trump, in the face of everything, I still choose to hope. I still choose to celebrate this as a true and profound accomplishment.

Because for over twenty years, I was afraid I’d never get to.

That difference is absolutely worth celebrating.

[haneentifosa005]

Charles proof of life!

Congratulated Max

His eyes set on vice wdc

Posted a photo of him and lewis

Left

[ghost-bxrd]

Prompt:

It’s not that Jason forgot, per se.

But between smuggling a toddler out of the League of Assassins, trekking halfway across the world, and finding a suitable hiding place that’s also child friendly… well, it kind of slipped his mind that he’s supposed to be… dead.

Something that comes back to bite him in the ass when he takes Dami out for some ice cream and just so happens to run into non other than Brucie-fucking-Wayne

[sexhaver]

"actually if you don't vote for the guy who lied about beheaded babies and is currently funding the genocide that enabled to the tune of $14 billion, YOU are the one who wants a genocide, because it could get even worse for [insert random minority group here later - Editor] in America! if you carry this train of thought through to its only logical conclusion and get mad at me for explicitly saying that hypothetical future American deaths are worse than real current Palestinian deaths, i will start monologuing at you like a YA novel protagonist before linking a barrage of HuffPo and Buzzfeed articles about the five things Biden managed to accomplish in between not saving Roe v Wade and not stopping student loan payments and mishandling covid. i am the mature one here"

[chandralia]

I think them calling ochako deku’s “deserved reward for saving the world” and saying “yayy japan’s birthrate is saved!” is probably the worst fucking thing to come out of this.

[newttxt]

i was talking extensively with a friend about reiju’s delicate balance of caring/emotionless and her relationship with sanji

[paper-possum-party-pal]

Our favorite British bastard in situations!

Companion piece to the Stanley drawings!

Closeups!

And an extra older sketch featuring a centaur narrator based on @cosmokrill’s drawings of the narrator as a centaur which tells you I made these drawings after little after June 22! Go look at their art it’s so huggable looking!

[a-chaotic-dumbass]

every time someone uses those excuses of sansa being too southern, not being northern enough, having the tully look, hating the north or having her direwolf killed as a reason as to why she sucks or shouldnt be a ruler an angel loses its wings

[shelleysmary]

sauron is so *sighing facepalm* frustrating. he crawled, walked, sailed across middle-earth, made up the halbrand identity, did a boomer in-person job application tour around númenor, didn't lie to galadriel and he has the mental gymnastics to prove it, sailed back to middle earth with an army, fought a whole ass battle, faced his murderer with a mostly straight face, got impaled... somehow, risked sepsis on a six-day ride to eregion, brainstormed magic rings with celebrimbor, wielded tools and operated heavy machinery after said mysterious injury, clocked that his would-be girlfriend was starting to get the ick around him, took radical action, asked her to be his non-platonic business partner (the business being mass-brainwashing and dictatoring), took the L, regrouped, rode back to the southlands (now mordor) to enact plan b wherein he faces his murderer again, gets beat up, goes on a hunger strike (rage and self-pity are his fuel), relives his murder trauma for The Master Plan, back on a horse, rides from mordor to eregion, sadface emoji because he's not allowed to go in, stands in the square, gets rained on, risks regency-era pneumonia, flatters celebrimbor, comes up with plan b part 2 wherein he is now a representative of the valar with a great haircare routine and possibly a stylist, begins his campaign to gaslight gatekeep manipulate everyone in eregion, balancing a full-time job with psychological warfare...

my guy. you could've lived on a nice farm somewhere. gone on vacation. adopted an elven dog. being "good" is too much effort for you??? what do you call THIS?

[lizzybeeee]

DATV Spoilers - The Handling of Previous Story/Lore In DATV

Quick PSA: If you’ve read my post on the lore/story threads dropped – it’s not a list of what I expected or even wanted to see addressed/answered in DATV.

It’s pretty much a given that Kieran and the Architect were never going to come back in any meaningful way, I understand that. Questions about what happened to Anora, Anders, Cullen’s clinic etc...never expected to get an answer about them – at all. The line of succession in Ferelden and Orlais? I expected that sometime down the line it would have to be streamlined into one option for both nations, not a problem – there’s so many choices it’s impossible to account for, and I understand that.

This is just a list of plot threads left unanswered that will, most likely, remain unanswered.

There’s no DLC planned – the team is working on Mass Effect 5 now. There’s no conclusion to the fate of the south of Thedas outside of some codex entries and some dialogue. They can patch the Executors cutscene out, maybe - perhaps they could even do the same to anything relating to the south of Thedas. Yes, these areas were not completely destroyed by the Blight – they can rebuild – but it comes across as being so meaningless that I ever cared for these places in the first place. To learn that after ten years of waiting all we cared for get devastated and left in limbo...it’s hard to put into words the bitterness I felt at that realization, and seeing that final cut-scene drove the nail into the coffin of how foolish I felt for even caring in the first place.

A codex entry or letter would have been nice – but my expectations for DATV was solely for a good story that added to the lore and world of Thedas. Instead, it felt entirely reductive – glaringly so when you account for the ‘Executives’ twist.

The world of Thedas has been watered down and its worldbuilding/lore diminished - slavery in Tevinter is non-existent, the Crows being an organization that indoctrinated children is never touched upon, any mystery of ancient Tevinter and the elves is answered (badly!), the Dalish have effectively disappeared and become the Veil Jumpers...it all feels so hollow, so shallow, that I ever cared about these things in the first place.

The issue is that the dev’s gave us only three choices, told us that as the story was contained to the north of Thedas – that our other choices weren’t relevant to the rest of the game with their intent being to not effect anyone's head-canons...before doing so with ‘the blight has devastated most of everywhere you went previously’.

These were story/plot threads that were woven throughout the narrative of the first three games – the things that made me care and become invested in the world of Thedas to begin with. In a game that was set-up to be a direct sequel to Inquisition and Trespasser I hoped that, at least, what was brought up in Inquisition would be mentioned.

Perhaps my list is a little too detailed with plot threads and issues – if anything that can be attributed to the incredible world-building done in the first three games! I love those games, I love the world of Thedas...which is why this game utterly baffles me with its choices.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard is a good game but not a good Dragon Age game.

----------------------------------

Edit: DATV absolutely has a lot of problems outside of its handling of the lore and story of the previous games. I would not say its a good rpg in any sense, but as a weird 'action-adventure rpg lite' game I did have some fun moments and enjoy myself. Would I recommend it to anyone? Absolutely not.

I heard someone describe it as a 'junk food' game and I very much agree with that statement. I found enjoyment in it, but to do so I usually had to turn off my brain, which is not a compliment towards DATV.

The game released very well optimized (especially considering how most companies are content to release half-baked games and patch them later) and did create some really interesting visual set-pieces like the Battle of Weisshaupt. But those moments I enjoyed were few and far between, and far overwhelmed by the negatives of the game - such as story, lack of conversation/conflict/role-play options, bad character writing etc...

Calling the game 'good' is, perhaps, a stretch, and I totally get that. Calling it 'mediocre with some good parts' may be more accurate.

[mendelsohnben]

Jack Robinson Perching™