#that's what happened to this game lol

[aro-of-fortune]

Finally having the chance to get Partitio in the global server for CotC is great and all but I can't help but laugh at how phoned-in this translation is compared to the original OTII dialogue haha

[artist-rat]

some epilogue vibes (an excuse to draw some hugs. and my durge so many times)

[vaguely-concerned]

are. are you telling me that if the romanced mage warden dies and alistair is king, he deadass stares greagoir down over her dead body and grants the circle of ferelden its autonomy after ordering it rebuilt somewhere safer. first you have to deliberately leave him behind so he won't die for you and then he does that for you once you're gone, even when you're broken up??? absolute and literal king behaviour of the highest order????? the actions speak louder than words of it all??????? I think I hauve covid

[seefasterdraws]

i loeve you dai gyakuten saiban

[codenamethebird]

I'm loving all the discussion about Melinoe's anti-human prejudice, but I don't see anyone discussing my favorite, so u get more of my rambling. I also got these screenshots from YouTube so you get sketchy Hades, but I actually only just got this dialogue in this patch haha (I forgot to screenshot it myself).

I'm obsessed with this bit of dialogue because it houses some beautiful Hades character development. One of his big flaws that caused like 75% of the problems in Hades 1 was his eternal punishments. Orpheus and Eurydice, forced to be apart. Achilles and Patroclus, also forced to be apart because of Hades contracts. And in this case Sisyphus, being doomed to always push up the rock.

Hades was convinced that they deserved their punishments, that they could not change, so they should never be free. Zag had to go through a bunch of hoops to change their fates, and Hades just grumbled through it all. But people can change, Sisyphus is a prime example of that. The way Hades' voice actor says that last bit "He forgave me anyway" just murdered me.

What an emotionally pogninent moment from a man who has realized his mistakes, but it's too late (to him at least), and now all he can do it stand in chains, in a prison he made, drowning in his regrets.

And then this is how Mel responds:

I just, omfg Mels nooooo babe, your Dad has just had some brilliant character development, what are so saying.

She is so dismissive. She totally missed the point of what he was trying to say. There's like no thought that went through her head, just "fuck that dumb mortal, don't feel guilty dad." Mel doesn't even try to even slightly engage with it, the moment he mentions a mortal, it becomes unimportant.

Hades, while blatantly disagreeing with her, doesn't exactly reply to her dismissal of Sisyphus. Which makes sense I doubt he wants to really argue with her and the context of these chats he is trying to get her to leave quickly considering their location.

But he does name Sisyphus here and reinforce the fact that he was a king. Which I note because Mel just called him "some dead mortal". And he appeals to a much more emotional thread with the whole thing with Bouldy, something Mel would understand a bit easier.

And Mel does call him a king in response, which while not his name, is more personable than "some dead mortal". But ultimately, she respects him because he was kind to her dad, not because she remotely comprehends the emotions and regrets that Hades is feeling with this character development.

And considering what else we know about her, I think it's very safe to say she still thinks Hades shouldn't feel guilty about anything. That this mortal is ultimately unimportant and deserving of his punishment.

But yeah tldr, i find it endlessly hilarous how Hades has this lovely moment of self reflection and then Mels immediately dismisses it with a simple "fuck that mortal".

[shrimpricebowl]

oh thank god

[aardvaark]

the leverage team would have had a games night… once. everyone cheated so much and in such increasingly extreme ways that all mentions of monopoly are banned in their headquarters (this makes talking about marks who monopolize the market very confusing)

[tinyetoile]

I drew this for a timeline thing for my original zelda story but TBH that's coming along pretty slowly and this is funny enough to post on its own.

[shepherds-of-haven]

wish it was cool and acceptable to write fanfiction of your own work, especially before the original work is actually done 😂

[70yearoldmanpussy]

Proship/comship/darkship shipping-centered ask game for you and all your followers to play because there's not nearly enough of them in the world 👍🏻 (by the way the ship and character questions, unless it's talking about fandom specifically, includes OCs and your selfships if you want it to! There are also some OC and selfship specific questions)

❤️: What's your favorite ship ("taboo" or not) of all time? (If you can't think of one, then just go with your current most favorite)

🧡: What is the first taboo ship you *remember* having?

💛: What's your newest taboo ship?

💚: What's the taboo ship you've been into consistently for the longest amount of time? (Doesn't have to be your first one ever)

💙: What's your favorite dynamic (age gap, toxic relationship, different species, incest) in general?

💜: If you like incest pairings, what's your favorite dynamic specifically? (Parent/child, sibling/sibling, grandparent/grandchild, you get the idea)

🤎: If you like toxic relationship dynamics, in what kind of way is your favorite? (Manipulation, blackmailing, gaslighting, psychical, emotional, financial, or psychological abuse, etc)

🖤: What's the most dark/disturbing ship overall (what defines this varies from person to person so just go with what you think) that you like?

🤍: What's the most fluffy/wholesome/pure ship overall (whether or not it has taboo elements) that you like?

❕️: What's a ship dynamic *and/or* (you don't have to answer both) a specific pairing you expected yourself to like, but you just don't?

❔️: What's a ship dynamic *and/or* (you don't have to answer both) a specific pairing you didn't expect yourself to like, but for some reason you really do?

🌻: What's a pairing with a *purely platonic* (not romantic, not sexual) relationship you like?

🌵: What's a pairing with a *purely romantic* (not platonic, not sexual) relationship you like?

🌹: What's a pairing with a *purely sexual* (not platonic, not romantic) relationship you like?

☀️: What's your favorite pairing featuring a human x non-human partner?

✨️: What's your favorite pairing that includes more than two partners? (Polyamorous and/or polygamous relationships)

🌙: If you selfship, what is your favorite dynamic to do with you/your self insert and your F/O(S)?

🪐: What's the "weirdest" ship (crackships, crossovers, just ones that make no sense) you unironically like?

🌌: If you like interspecies relationships, what kind is your favorite? (Human x monster, human x alien, etc. Applies to any species, doesn't have to include humans)

🔪: What's, at least by comparison to your other ships, by far the most popular ship you like (in fandom)?

🗡: What's, at least by comparison to your other ships, by far the least popular ship you like (in fandom)?

⚓️: What's a ship dynamic that's really popular but you could never get into? (Do not use this as an excuse to bash others, just share your own personal opinion.)

📰: What's a ship dynamic/concept (get as specific as you want) that's really unpopular or entirely unknown, that you wished people talked about more?

🚬: What's a taboo ship you disliked initially, but you grew to love for whatever reason?

⚰️: What's a taboo ship you loved initially, but you grew to dislike for whatever reason?

🍷: What's the pairing you like that features the largest age gap out of any of your other age gap ships?

🎭: What's a ship you like/liked that is/was clearly problematic (or just not up to anti standards), but because it was popular and well liked in that fandom, no one ever came at you for?

🎯: If you selfship, who was your first F/O?

☎️: If you selfship, who is your newest F/O?

🎪: If you selfship, what was your first introduction to the concept of it that you remember?

🎱: If you have OCs and ship them together, which pairing between them is your favorite?

🎲: If you have OCs and ship them together, what is your favorite dynamic to do with your characters?

🌸: What was your first introduction to "problematic" ships that you remember?

🌷: What's your favorite rarepair overall?

🎀: If you like lolis, what's your favorite loli character? (What constitutes as a loli can be defined by you)

🧸: If you like shotas, what's your favorite shota character? (What constitutes as a shota can be defined by you)

👑: If you like kodos, (gender neutral/non-binary version of lolis and shotas) what's your favorite kodo character? (What constitutes as a kodo can be defined by you)

♂️♂️: What's your favorite taboo gay ship overall?

♂️♀️: What's your favorite taboo straight ship overall?

♀️♀️: What's your favorite taboo lesbian ship overall?

[14dayswithyou]

tell ren to turn his location on👉👈

I saw one of the posts of how ren does get jealous of pets being loved over him and alll that so now I have the thought of the one meme of ‘ah yes, me, my partner and their [enter normal pet size] foot [pet]’

I don’t have anything else, it did pop into my head though and I thought I’d share with the class.

⌞♥⌝ ItsNotVivy on Twitter actually made that exact meme with Ren a looong time ago!!

[vaguely-concerned]

My two cents on how much of Mind!Varric is Rook’s mind trying to fill the blank space and how much is Solas actively talking through a convenient blood magic paper doll of the mind: I think it's a mix of both, a truly collaborative psychosocial horrorshow if you would, but waaaay more towards the second. It feels too directed and tactical at times to be anything else. Rook's mind is willing to go along with the denial phase as far as it can fucking carry them to not have to face the grief and regret and does its part in papering over details that don’t make any sense, the way brains will strive to create coherent meaning even out of deeply confusing input, but to my understanding it's a collaborateur in how that plays out, not the instigator or control center. Solas is using it as a path to agency and to gather insight into Rook as a person unguarded as he can't count on in his own guise. (That stoic option that leads to him being like 'oh I see you're cautiously denying me access to your inner life. well. at least you still have Varric to talk to. y'know as an outlet :)'. You absolute BITCH Solas! That alone convinced me that he HAS to have an active hand in it on some level.)

My guess is that it takes considerable effort on Solas’ part to make Mind!Varric do anything more involved or complicated than seeming to sit up in bed and give casual commentary, and that’s why he keeps having eerie five minute shallow pep talks with you before he announces he conveniently needs a nap aaanyway good luck kid you got this haha. When he’s just spouting NPC lines from his bedrest, I’m ready to believe that could be Rook’s mind being allowed to improv lines for him more freely because it’s less about Solas trying to get something out of them or working an angle and more ‘Still here! Still totally alive and fine and the mentor figure you know and love and trust :) don’t even worry about it! Thankfully there is no war in Ba Sing Sei, as we all know’ upkeep work lol. Rook’s mind is allowed to set the tone of Varric, the outlines, but not always the content. 

AND, on a (beautifully fucked up) character psychology level, I feel like Solas is indulging in actually getting to be the good supportive mentor figure to Rook with one hand to assuage the guilt he feels about what he's done -- and what he's going to do -- to them with the other. Same internal logic as he uses in Trespasser about the Qun. ‘Almost everyone is going to die from the course of action I’m doggedly pursuing eventually. But at least I can make their last years happier and freer and kinder than they would have been otherwise. and that kind of makes up for it right. a little bit. doesn't it. doesn't that make it better at least. I need that to make it better)'. Did I really take your beloved mentor and friend from you if you don’t know yet that I did? Some philosophers would argue not really! So it’s probably almost ok actually. Isn’t it even a little noble that I’m taking all this grief and guilt on myself and shielding you for now. With undertones that I’m not sure he would realize himself (and might be mortified by if he did) that he is so incredibly lonely, and even a dishonest and indirect emotional connection is more than nothing when you’re that desperate. In this setup he gets idk. Both the control he craves so incredibly badly in relationships and over himself, and the scraps, the fading afterimages, of intimacy and warmth and companionship, even second hand. The one thing Solas and Rook agree on deep deep down is that they really wish Varric weren't gone. They're handshake memeing this in the saddest and most creepy way possible.

I think an important element too is that Solas needs Rook and their team to *succeed* —  up to a certain point. He needs someone to hold the two other elven mean girls off until he can get out of here. Ideally, in a perfect world, even do all the hard work of killing them so he can swoop in at the end and do his thing when both sides are exhausted and out of resources to stop him, and then Bob’s your uncle! Same logic as he was using with Corypheus, and after that worked out so well, too! King of choosing to never learn from a single solitary mistake he’s ever made even though i fully believe he could have the capacity to Fen’Harel <3 The underlying idea isn’t flawed, you see, it was just unforeseen circumstances getting in the way. This time for sure it’ll all work out the way I cleverly imagined it in my head beforehand. Cue By Talos this can’t be happening etc. in the form of a statue almost crushing him like a bug. 

So he's providing guidance and forging Rook into a leader from two angles: one Rook might not trust, and one they probably will. Shaping them into what he needs slowly and carefully. He’s helping you hone your team into their most effective state, as he might have done with his own agents back in the day, setting up his chess pieces even if he has to squint through two glimpsed realities to do it haha. Pincer maneuver of an insidious stealth mentor you never asked for. Also… at one point mind Varric gives you a whole little monologue about how Solas' problem is that he’s always seen his interpersonal connections as flaws and see where it’s landed him, all alone and the worst part? it hasn’t even worked. it’s all been for nothing he’s back where he began with nothing to show for it but his mistakes. Like...that has such strong 'uh okay happy to play your therapist from two rooms away here what the fuck kind of traumadump is this' energy to me, I’m not sure Rook like. Thinks that much about Solas as a private person. So much of Solas' self-loathing and futile insights into his own flaws seem to shine through in Mind!Varric's dialogue all the time — I just can't believe that there's no guiding hand behind it as it were. 

Most of all. I feel like people underestimate the degree to which Solas is incredibly funny. As in, he has a very consistent and recognizable sense of humour. It’s one of my very favourite things about him. We must remember — it is crucial that we always keep in mind — Orlesian accent and wig Solas from May The Dread Wolf Take You (my beloved, the explanation for why I love this dude even with the. All of the everything else. No one does it quite like him). He is not at all above doing things or adding little flourishes for his own obscure amusement, in fact that seems to me to be one of his most consistent traits. The Randy Dowager Quarterly comment Varric has? The ‘Maybe this is the Dread Wolf’s revenge. Forcing us to house sit for him’ thing? To Me this is 100% Solas amusing himself in his boring Fade jail surrounded by the screaming hellscape of all his regrets. Source: it came to me as divine revelation through pure vibes trust me bro 

If nothing else I find it much more narratively interesting personally if the connection between Rook and Solas really is that defenselessly intimate and entwined (and so unbalanced!), and the sense of violation and invasion and betrayal afterwards consequently all the more nauseatingly intense. Even if you kept him at arm’s length in the open, he’s been under your skin the whole time, looking around, gathering what he needs to destroy you, wearing the face of a friend. Regretfully, probably, but choosing to do it every step of the way anyway. (Sound familiar, Inquisitor? Solas doesn’t have that many tricks when you actually look at it, he keeps returning to old tried and true ones like a dog with a bone haha.) Maybe he even genuinely meant some of it as mercy, which only makes it so much worse. It makes his sin against his own core principles of autonomy and the freedom of all beings in mind, spirit and body so much more juicily grave if it’s something he pursues actively and consistently, rather than it half-falling into his lap as a happy accident mainly orchestrated by Rook’s own subconscious. Solas, too, is at his very lowest point, the closest to giving in and becoming his own antithesis fully that he’s ever been, and it makes the choice of whether you still reach out your hand to him one last time or not all the more impactful and difficult.

[cementcornfield]

Joe and Ja'Marr discussing a throw that didn't go well 🥲

[skyartworkzzz]

SOME PRACTICE COTL DOODLES cuz I decided to stop fcking around and just stick with my usual furry style

Also yes Shamura works like a skeleton for me, my Undertale years have served me well 💃

[willyhoos]

the mikes.. the michaels, even...

[roukabi]

it's for real this time you guys trust me it's really gonna happen