#things always have to be so black and white. there can be no nuance. i barely even ship lsers but its so tiring to see All The Time

[velvetvexations]

People Who are like "men oppress women that's basic feminism" no nuance amuse me cause it's like that's some wonderful first and maybe second wave feminism. Do you want a suffragette sash and to campaign for votes for white women because of how it's "unfair" that black men were "given" the right to vote but not white women? Do you want a copy of sojourner truths famous speach so you can rewrite it to seem "less civilized"? Cause that's how you're acting, anti intersectional white cis feminist talking point copiers.

Yeah, like.

Historically cishet White women were zero percent oppressed by Black men. Even ignoring the argument that you can seperate them being Black from them being men in how they experience oppression, if you can understand that it is in fact possible for some men to be outside the wider White cishetpatriarchy you should be able to understand that the same is true of trans men.

And you can say "but they have power over Black women" and that's true to a very limited extent, but three things:

That was never reflected in the White cisheteropatriarchy at all until reletively recently, being purely intracommunity.

Race and gender are two different concepts. Trans women and trans men experience oppression on the same axis.

As I always maintain, trans women and trans men are on the same 'level' - but people who are misogynistic are overwhelmingly likely to percieve trans men as women even within the queer community. They may or may not also be the same way with trans women, and ironically they'd still be transmisogynistic for excluding them.

I said this like, just the other day, but "sex-based oppression" is a bad because of how it focuses too much on that aspect and is prone to framing trans women as having privilege WE don't, but it's also stupid sas fuck to act like trans women are catching strays - strays that are not one bit less horrific, not one bit less painful of a struggle to deal with daily, but strays nonetheless. No one would give a fuck about people AMAB wearing lipstick if it wasn't historically engraved into most of humanity as being associated with people AFAB.

So GIVEN all that...no, just like trans women, trans men are not given male privilege either because they are, I cannot stress this enough, not even seen as men in the first place.

It's almost definitionally impossible for a trans man to have male privilege, not because he isn't a man, but because the system was designed to be cissexist in the first place, and therefore when it decides who to grant power to is never going to go with either trans women or trans men, because we've corrupted ourselves with the curse people AFAB inherited.

(anyone may reblog this <3 I feel like I need to say this when I get realy aggressive lmao please do not stay in your lane)

[mapicccc]

lstwt realize cc boundaries are just them preferring not to see it and not if you so much as think about shipping me ill kill you a thousand times over challenge

[bayetea]

seeing non-black people critique rick's portrayal of black characters is interesting sometimes. only like 30% of the critiques I see make any sense to me to be honest

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

i feel like this site leaning heavily into the "pedophilia and incest and rape kinks are good" angle lately can be attributed to the mass expulsion of sex workers and black ppl on here ngl

[grotto-esque]

I think... people should cultivate a skeptical, questioning mentality towards news reporting, and perhaps especially if that reporting confirms your worldview.

[ginnyvos]

Also, and I can't emphasise this enough: as much as you might have trouble taking someone else's point of view, soliciting empathy from others always always starts with showing them empathy first.

This is hard. It's always hard to empathise with someone you feel is attacking you or the people or ideas you love. But think about it. That's exactly what you're asking them to do.

You're attacking their believes, their identity, the people they love that they know hold the same believes and most of all, their peace of mind.

If you can't empathise with them, can't give them the space and to be a good person even though they hold believes you don't agree with and the understanding that they are not trying to harm anyone, how can you ask them to open up, be vulnerable and empathise with you in turn?

I want to share something for those of you who are teaching and want your conservative students to be more open-minded to liberal ideas that you’re presenting.

I grew up in a conservative family and a conservative town, and like most conservative kids, had been told that colleges were hotbeds of liberalism, so I was already defensive politically when I started college. My first semester or two I was really skeptical of everything political that my professors presented me with.

And then I took a women’s studies course (required at my college). And on the first day, the professor said, 

“You don’t have to be a feminist. There are days when I’m not a feminist. But we’re going to discuss feminist ideas in this class, and you might find that you agree with some of them and disagree with others, and that’s fine.”

And that took the pressure off. By telling me that I didn’t HAVE to be a feminist, that I didn’t HAVE to agree, that professor started me on the road to becoming a feminist. I particularly remember her giving us information about what a huge percentage of the housework was still done by women, even in [hetero] couples where both the man and woman worked outside the home. And after that I remember saying, “I’m not a feminist, but I can see where they’re coming from.” 

Within 5 years, I was claiming the term and coming out to my mom as a feminist.

So when I taught college writing, I assigned politically liberal essays to my students, many of whom came from conservative backgrounds. And before they read the first one, I would say,

“The reading for the next class–I want you to know that you don’t have to agree with it. You don’t have to agree with anything that your professors teach you in college. But the point of a college education is to have your mind opened to other points of view. So you’re not required to agree, but you are required to approach the reading with an open mind. You might find that you agree with some things the author says and disagree with others. And that’s cool! We WANT you to use your critical thinking and decide for yourself what you think about things! But to do that, you need to give people the benefit of the doubt and be open-minded to what they have to say.”

And I have to say, it worked really well for me! I remember in particular that after I assigned the essay “Black Men and Public Space”, one of my students wrote in her reading reflection,

“I was taught in school that racism in America ended with Martin Luther King. I am appalled to discover that this is not true.”

Priming your students to be open-minded, while also encouraging them to use critical thinking, can help to break down some of the automatic defenses against new ideas that students are often taught. Approaching your students’ comments during discussion with an open-minded view yourself, validating their experiences while also making gentle counterarguments, can do a lot as well.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Been thinking about why the argument that OFMD is inherently a bad show because it's based on historical slaveowners so often feels disingenuous to me as a person of color.

HUGE disclaimer up front: if you don't wanna fuck with the show because of that premise right out the gate, that's 100% valid and I completely get that. I'm not talking about that. What I'm specifically talking about is White fandom people in particular who argue that OFMD must be "problematic" because of this, especially when they say this as some kind of virtue-signalling trying to win points in fandom wars, stuff like that.

My big thing is that the resemblance the characters in OFMD have to their real-world namesakes begins and ends with having the same name. The show feels more to me like it's playing with the vague myths around these names, not the people themselves. Can you make an argument that they should have come up with original characters instead? Sure, but let's be honest, even people who study the irl counterparts have very little knowledge of their actual lives, and the average person has all but none. To add to that, this show has absolutely zero interest in historical accuracy; the moment they cast a Jewish-Polynesian man as Blackbeard that became obvious. No one is saying the real-life Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet were good people, least of all the show itself; the point is that OFMD's versions are basically original characters already.

It always feels like an incredibly disingenuous claim to parallel the show to Hamilton, because Hamilton both did care about historical accuracy and also brought up the slave trade. Hamilton is uncomfortable for so many poc because it writes poc into the story of otherwise very faithfully portrayed racists, colonizers, and slaveowners and just handwaves the racism. In OFMD, racism exists, but the stance is always explicitly anti-racist and anti-colonialist in a way that is just so fun to see (whom among us has not wished to skin a racist with a snail fork?).

The other thing that sticks for me is...there's an appropriate amount of slavery I want to see in my romcoms, and that amount is none. I am so sick of historical fiction where Black characters are only there for trauma porn about the horrors of the slave trade. You can make a legitimate argument that OFMD is handwavey about the slave trade, but I'd argue that including discussion of the slave trade is something that should be done with such incredible care that it would leave us with a show that can't really be a comedy at all anymore. OFMD's characters of color are allowed to be nuanced, complex characters with their own emotions, and it's incredibly refreshing to see, and I'd much rather have that than yet another historical fiction show where the only characters of color are only there to make White audiences feel virtuous about how sad they feel for them.

In conclusion, I guess: every yt person who makes this argument to win points in a fandom war owes me and every other fan of color a million dollars

[nightmare-foundation]

Honestly, it always really, really confuses me when people say that Bruce isn't abusive, he "just has a complicated/complex dynamic with xyz", before proceeding to list things that are very much abuse.

Like, it makes... no sense to me? I feel like people hear "Bruce is abusive" and immediately jump to the conclusion that we're saying "Bruce is maliciously/intentionally hurting his kids and he can't he changed". When that's not what anyone is saying- at least not me.

And i feel like trying to insist Bruce isn't abusive while waving around these very abusive moments is. Dangerous? Like it's fine if you don't like or disagree with the concept of Bruce being abusive, more power to you and all that, but I feel like it's very blatant abuse apologia to push these things as not abusive.

People have a very weird view on abuse imo. Abuse isn't as clear cut or black and white as a lot of people make it out to be. Abusers can very much love their kids, they can accidentally harm their kids, and abusers can change.

Imo, what makes Bruce's relationship with his kids/Robins so complex IS his abusive tendencies. We know the reasons behind his actions, as well as his motivations, but at the end of the day, he's still abusive. He still emotionally neglected/abused and parentified Dick (and still hit and beat the shit out of him in Nightwing v3 #30, no matter how much nuance you put into it), he also emotionally neglected Jason, verbally abused Stephanie (iirc, i haven't read her Robin run), parentified and emotionally neglected Tim, and verbally abused and emotionally neglected Damian. None of this was done with the intention to hurt them, but Bruce still hurt them. But Bruce loves them DEEPLY- that's part of why he ends up hurting them.

That's... what makes his relationship with them so complex, especially Dick.

And honestly I'm not even sure how to go into how people label clear abuse as not abusive, purely because we know how Bruce thinks and why he does what he does. As I said, really dangerous thing to perpetuate.

This post is probably very scattered and doesn't make a whole lot of sense since I couldn't sleep at all last night, but TL;DR: you can disagree with abusive Bruce, but labeling his canon abusive tendencies as not abuse and only as a 'complex relationship' isn't the win you think it is and only comes off as abuse apologia.

[meglosthegreat]

So... everyone pretty much hated Veilguard's "secret ending", right? Beyond speculation about the Executors themselves, I haven't exactly seen anyone excited about its presence, and for that matter, haven't seen many people talking about it at all.

The closest way I can describe my initial reaction to it was an immediate, visceral disgust. I think I remember uttering at my screen something along the lines of "Fuck off! What the fuck?! Are you fucking kidding me???" and ever since then I've wanted to put into words exactly why it made me feel that way.

For the 88% of you (according to Steam achievement statistics) who didn't see this ending due to not picking up three very specific codex entries by complete chance, you can watch it here. In short, the clip depicts a mysterious voice who sounds suspiciously like Matt Mercer talking about how a group of shadowy figures has "balanced, guided, and whispered" over scenes of villains from the previous DA games, implying that these shadowy figures have been at least partially responsible for all of the bad things happening in Thedas, towards some unknown nefarious purpose.

Now obviously, this sucks. This is hamfisted, unimaginative writing that simultaneously retcons and re-contextualizes elements from DA's past that absolutely no one thought needed further explanation, as well as being exactly the kind of irritating sequel-bait tactics that people have largely grown tired of these days. But why does it suck so much? Why did I feel such palpable distaste for this scene?

For starters, it simply reeks of entitlement, and a lack of respect towards Bioware's own past games. Remember those villains you loved and thought were compelling? Well, their own personal, very complex and thought-out motivations were really just the Executors whispering in their ears the whole time! Loghain making a difficult and calculated decision at great personal cost for a greater good he truly believed in? Executors. Bartrand succumbing to his own greed to the point that he betrays his only family and devolves into a tragic husk of himself? Executors. Corypheus and the Magisters breaching the Golden fucking City??? Executors.

Ignore the infuriating lore ramifications for a second and consider: what do all of these things have in common? They're all instances of complex character motivation; of people in this world doing things for their own reasons that ended up having massive ramifications. In short, they're not events that can be explained easily in terms of black and white morality. And from what we've seen in Veilguard, the current dev team has a serious inability to work with any story elements that do not have absolute moral clarity: the Venatori and the Antaam are Evil. The Shadow Dragons and the Crows are Good. Any nuance; any potential questioning of this duality is quickly explained away or snuffed out.

And that's exactly what they're trying to do, retroactively, with the rest of the series. Having a hard time deciding whether Loghain was right or wrong? Well, worry not, the Executors are Evil and if they were guiding him the whole time, then what he did must have been Evil too! Grappling with how the plot of DA2 was about the inevitable tragedy of a series of oppressive systems reaching their natural breaking point? Well, wrestle no further, for if the Executors were involved then Meredith and Bartrand must've been Evil, no question! What the Magisters did was definitely Not Great, and what do you know, there were consequences for it that they and the whole world very much did pay for. But if the Executors were behind it all, then it was someone else's fault, some Evil power reaching in and making them do what they did, rather than their actions being the result of a horrific series of power abuses done by actual people.

Which leads me to where my initial disgust comes in. Because in a world which has always had core themes of power and its many abuses, actions that have consequences, and the idea that there are no true higher beings; every horrible thing that has ever been done was done by people, the simple act of putting shadowy figures behind key moments in history completely debases and neuters all of those themes. The whole point of Dragon Age as a series up until this point has been to illustrate the complex relationships people and societies have with power, choice, and morality. To remove that link - to place an external force between those characters and their choices - is to rob the series of any meaning whatsoever.

There is a staggering difference between the messaging of a game that tells you ordinary people are to blame for society's wrongs and a game that tells you a secret shadowy faction of evil forces are to blame for them. The former invites thought about one's own society; it has the potential to be uncomfortable and difficult to reconcile with. The latter assures its audience of the fantasy it is couched in. It gives the audience a boogeyman to be angry at, and in so doing deflects any potential for introspection. And that, I think, is the real point of the scene in question.

In a time where our media has become inundated with bland, unchallenging liberal politics, the idea of "cozy" stories have become a growing trend. These types of stories often sport a broad rejection of complicated themes, painful emotions, and nuance, preferring instead to provide a "safe" place to escape to. And with that "safe" space comes a directive not to engage in critical thinking about a work, and not to draw any message from that work and apply it to the real world. Yet this is exactly where Bioware seems to be heading nowadays.

Veilguard has already been faced with heavy criticism about playing things overly safe; removing anything that might be potentially uncomfortable for the player. And the end credits scene is no different. Don't think about things too hard, it whispers to you seductively, in Matt Mercer's soothingly Evil voice. See? The Bad Guys were behind everything, all along.

[ichiwashername-o]

Hi there. I know you're a fan of wicked, and your scarecrow comics are amazing, but, how do you feel about the wizard's? I know the wizard was a conman, but he wasn't the monster portrayed in the musical or film, he was trying to help Oz, something like Oz the Great and Powerful, and the quote "He was a good man, just a terrible wizard". To me, it feels weird making him worse than he was in the source material, and how accepting everyone is of that. But what about you, you prefer him "wicked"?

Oh, this is such an interesting question, because like everything, it's not so black and white, is it?

I believe that The Wizard, whose real name is Oscar, never intended to be a bad man. He was just some simple podunk hick (his own admission) thrown into a position of power and quickly found himself way over his head. He was admired, practically worshipped, and an entire country turned to him to save them from what we can only imagine was some truly desperate times. There was a famine. People were starving and hurting and when you're starving and hurting you become angry, so what do you do when you have such a volatile population looking to you for guidance?

Oscar's approach was undoubtedly wrong, let's get that straight. Blaming the people's plight on the Animals was objectively the wrong thing to do, but I think the song Wonderful illustrates Oscar's thinking brilliantly.

There are few at ease with moral ambiguity-- people don't want nuance. Nuance is hard. Isn't life so much easier when everything is black and white? Bad People cause Bad Things to happen, so blame them. Oscar's a con man through and through--he has experience working in a traveling circus and his whole gig was putting on a show and making people happy. And I genuinely believe he wanted to make the people of Oz happy.

But life is hard and complicated and there are no easy answers. Oscar knows this. And if he can't make the people happy and magically solve all their problems, they'll turn on him and eat him alive. So . . . he does the only thing he can think of, the only thing he can do.

He lies.

He's a performer. He's a con man. He knows how to lie. And he's really, really good at it.

He had good intentions, but you know what they say about good intentions. He wanted to help but did it in the worst way possible--uniting the people with a common enemy. A very effective strategy--just look at what's going on in the political atmosphere today--and I really hope the movie leans into that nuance more. Can you really call yourself a good person if all you do is lie and manipulate people, even if your goals are in the service of "good" and "making people happy?"

Wicked is very clear on that--no. No you can't be. But of course, everyone's a hero in their own story, so Oscar is the hero who saved Oz in her time of need. Even in the original Wizard of Oz, I don't think Oscar was meant to be a genuinely good person, either. Of course Oscar thinks he's a good man--everyone thinks they're a good person because they'll always find a reason to justify their own actions. Oscar still lied to everyone--he lied to Dorothy and her friends, he lied to all of Oz. He doesn't even really give the quartet what they want--he lies about that, too. He gives them meaningless trinkets and sells them the belief that they're real.

And fun fact, the Scarecrow's incorrect reciting of Pythagoras's Theorem was intentionally written wrong to further drive home the point that the Wizard's gifts were bullshit.

In my opinion, Wicked is just leaning harder into the story of the everyman who was corrupted by power and did terrible things, despite his original intentions. It's a much more interesting take, and I really hope they don't make it so simple as him being outright evil. I don't think they will. Because Oscar can be seen as a very effective cautionary tale about how our actions, no matter their intentions, can lead to serious harm if we're not careful.

[iwrite-sinsandtragedies]

Day 1 — Soulmates ₊˚✧ ﾟ

Submission for @goldengroovy's @olnfweek2024

MC: Micha

Long ass ramble under the cut 😂

Okayokayokay SO-

I love soulmate au's. I cannot tell you how many fics I've read or how many prompts I've played with or media I've consumed or how many bullshit ideas I've come up with in my own head for them, I CANNOT.

It's just - hhhhhhhhhhhh- Soulmate au's and Time Travel au's are just the shit that gets me out of bed some days 😩💖my world weary soul drinks that shit like medicine, okay?

That all being said, it's probably a little ambiguous which au I picked to some, so let me explain: There are two au's I'm mashing up here really, both are from fics I've read back in the day. One being a Clack fic and the other a Thilbo one 🤷‍♂️kind of calling myself out here but w/e, they were good fics.

The Thilbo one is easier to explain - the concept is "Heartsong" which is, literally what it says on the tin. You find out who your soulmate is the first time you hear them sing (and no, that does not mean everyone is just a naturally good singer - they can be ass at music but, the point is, when you hear them their song is the perfect song for you and your heart knows that). There's a lot of little nuances to this one - things like you hearing your heartsong when you dream so you always know the moment you find them. Also people who have quiet dreams because their heartsong died, sometimes before ever even meeting them. etc etc. The heartsong also seems to expand, in some respect, to instruments (as Thorin plays his harp one night and Bilbo starts to hum without thinking about it because it sounds wonderful to him and that's how Thorin finds out).

Overall, it's a very soft and sweet concept to me and as someone who has a deep love of music, it's also one of my very favourites.

The Clack one is a little less easy to explain? I think. Maybe because it's nuances are so round about but I'll do my best. The concept for this one is "I Only See Colour When I'm With You" - anyone who knows how Clack fics usually go knows where this is probably headed 😂 and I am sorry to have hurt you but, overall, the idea is: You live in a noir-esqu world where everything is black and white. This only changes when you find your soulmate, of course, who brings the world into full saturation and lets you see colour for - possibly - the first time in your life (I say possibly because I genuinely can't remember if you start out colourblind or if it's an age cap thing).

Unfortunately, for as much as I adore this concept, it's been a long damn time since I read the fic and I don't even know if it still exists somewhere. So I can't actually recall if it was a 'you have to touch them' or 'you have to hear them' thing but the fic takes place with Zack on the cliff right before Midgar where he holds Cloud and looks at the sky - so I'm willing to bet it's a touch thing.

I also really loved this fic because it was the first one I'd read that brought in the concept of multiple soulmates to me - As Cloud later sits with Aerith and sees the colour he couldn't see with Zack, meanwhile Aerith only sees black and white, because she was only able to see colour with Zack (who was never able to see colour with her, because he needed Cloud for that).

Essentially, they all needed each other to see the world in colour. As a polyam person who didn't quite realise I was poly back then, it was a very comforting (and now dearly cherished) fic.

Anyways! Now that you have the background on the two concepts, you can kind of get what I'm going for with this piece.

Tamarack, Micha and Qiu are all soulmates in a fuzzy, desaturated world (I'm sorry, I'm not cruel enough to but them in complete greyscale LOL) and the way you find your soulmate is by hearing them sing and, when they do, your world is suddenly vivid and bright and beautiful. Suddenly, you can see things as they were meant to be seen and it's a permanent change (unlike the Clack fic) but things are always clearest and brightest when your soulmate speaks or sings 💖

I get a real kick out of the idea that Micha's known for fucking months that Tamarack is his soulmate (if not years) because he's always listening to her play but never says jack shit about it because he's emotionally constipated that way 😂Though genuinely, it's probably because he just doesn't think he's her soulmate and he's a bit against finding out he's right honestly.

Joke is on him, he's Qiu's and Tamaracks soulmate! And he couldn't have picked a better moment to grow a pair an take the risk 🥰

[crazilust]

astrology observations pt. 5 (i believe)

remember, if this doesn’t resonate, leave it, scroll away and forget it. i wanted a summer theme, so i’ll do it on this post why not 💛

🐬🍋🌊🌅 🐬🍋🌊🌅 🐬🍋🌊🌅 🐬🍋🌊🌅

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🐬 I wish I could look a Sag sun in the eyes and tell them that no matter how little or big they achieve, they’re worth something. That they don’t have to chase the next big shiny thing, that they don’t have to be a millionaire by age 30, that they don’t have to « be someone » because they’re already someone.

🍋 We’re always talking about how lucky Jupiter natives are and how free spirited they are, but the truth is, Jupiter is also about expansion and sometimes I feel like that expansion translates in a pressure to be exceptional. And in this society, in this world, being exceptional is only valued at a material level. The number of Sag suns that I’ve met that felt like complete failures at like 20 years old is not normal. They’re so harsh on themselves. I wish I could give them all a big hug

🌊 The power of pisces mercury lies in their intuition. As virgo’s sister sign, it makes sense that Pisces mercuries don’t find their answers through logic and evidence-based facts but rather intuition and feelings. It can be hard for them to trust that gut feeling or to feel intelligent cause if someone asks them « well how do you know? » their answers most likely will be « Eh, just a hunch » But trust it, it’s one of your many gifts

🌅 I used to be so fascinated with people with Aries and Gemini in their birth chart cause I found them so comfortable with people, the life of a party type of people and so damn charming. As I grow older though and begin to see life in nuances of grey instead of straight black and white, I’m able to realize that those people often suffer from people-pleasing tendencies, a sense of self that is either broken or fragile and codependent behaviors. It’s like their sense of worth is tied to how much people like them.

🐬 Cancers are very loyal, I know it’s not a popular sign on mainstream medias and people love to shit on them, but the truth is, Cancers will have your back, no matter the placements. If you’re ever loved by a Cancer, make sure to treat them right !

🍋 People who are not that much into astrology will meet a Leo and be like “omg, you don’t act like a Leo at all, you’re not arrogant or an attention whore” When we look at Leos celebrities, it’s easier to see that arrogant, flashy, extra side. But irl, we rarely meet that “kind “of Leos, right? (Except at bars lol) The reason for it, I found, is that Leos, for the most part, have personas. First of all, they’re a lot more private than you’d think. I believe that most Leos loooove attention, but they also know when it’s appropriate to show it or not. Depending on their other placements, they’ll decide when to grab that spotlight and when to leave it to others.

🌊 I had this girl that I knew that was a Leo sun (and I’m sure a bunch of virgo placements) and everybody was shocked of her sun sign because she was introverted, quiet and observant. But she was still a theater girl, wanted to be the main character (preferred the villain), veryyyy assertive when it came to her boundaries or what she liked and didn’t liked, and very extra and colourful in her outfits. The reason why I don’t like mainstream astrology is because it’s a bit childish in the way it describes a sign. You can love attention but show it in a way other than screaming and dancing on tables. This girl, for example. To me, she was a Leo sun to a T.

🌅 Aquarius placements 🤝🏽 their desires to connect with someone through intellectual stimulation, but refusing to show and acknowledge their deep rooted fear of intimacy and vulnerability

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and that’s it from me, folks.

-B.

[the-rebel-archivist]

Finally finished Veilguard a few days ago and took some time to process and put my thoughts in order. In brief: 8/10 game as a whole, a really fantastic gaming experience, but 5 or even 4/10 as a dragon age game since it does no meaningful exploration of any nuance or moral complexity and seems to have forgotten what made Thedas distinct. My thoughts, critical and positive, coming from a place of love for the series with little to no spoilers:

Thedas has always been special to me because it was a nuanced world. Different groups had different opinions based on their pasts. City elves and the dalish had divergent histories. Injustice against magic was common, but you could understand the justification for it even when you didn’t agree. Now, the worldbuilding is flattened. A mageocracy is fine, it’s only bad apples. Slavery is never addressed. City and dalish elves are basically the same but one lives in the forest. There’s no conflict about what’s best from each individuals’ perception, all groups are monoliths.

“Elves won’t follow the gods just because they’re elves,” yes they would, in past lore. Perhaps not all but some would - these are their Creators. The game refuses to deal with religious belief in any meaningful way, to the point that I don't know if its impact is fully understood. Dalish religion is as much about cultural preservation as religion and it would be CRUSHING to lose that connection to the past when it had been all you could cling to for thousands of years.

And no, seeking out relics of Arlathan would not make up for the foundation of your society shattering and what that would mean to the dalish. Bellara being guilty that her gods are evil is not the takeaway I expected when I thought the dalish would explore that everything they believed was a lie. I'd also like to briefly comment on how an elf can comment that they weren’t raised dalish but adopted their tattoos. Their closed practice tattoos. Closed even to city elves unless they fully joined a clan. Removing cultural boundaries didn’t make the material less 'problematic', it just created a new blind spot.

“They’d never sanitize the Crows” I said before release. Assassins who walked the line between murderer and hero depending on perspective. But in this game they give you absolute truth: they’re freedom fighters. Responsible government who, the mob is benevolent and that is never subverted. They see themselves as the 'good guys' and so they are.

“They wouldn’t put powerful mages in charge of the shadow dragons” I said. “Surely they will explore the nuance of Neve having the privilege of magic in a mageocracy even when she comes from a lower class beyond ‘everyone is welcome in the shadow dragons’.” “Surely if Maevaris is connected her intersectionality as a magister and altus and trans woman will come up - not what Tevinter expects, helping with change, but still privileged and upper class. Surely low class non mages and slaves would be leading the Shadow Dragons, not the powerful being benevolent.”

But no. All factions in the game are black and white, good and evil, no moral complexity. The bad people want power and collect bad people who want power and only bad people do bad things. The antagonists I liked most were the ones with a motivation beyond simply power and they were few.

And that’s setting aside the fact that all of the mystery and fantasy was removed from the setting by the end. The things that mattered before, the religious conflicts, the approaches to history? All false or meaningless now that we know absolute truth. Everything that set Dragon Age apart from generic fantasy was flattened. All of the lore for the world that I had spent hours, days, years in and creating fanfic for became simple groups of good and bad, subjectivity replaced by objective truth. It’s not a world I want to unravel and explore anymore.

That hurts more than the slap in the face that was every cameo and past reference. If they wanted a soft reboot, why include them at all? Every time I saw or heard about a past character or event I felt hurt and angry and it actively harmed my experience of the game. When the choices are pared down to only do something "meaningful" with them and then that meaningful thing is a codex that had been so disdained in dev comments? I do feel pretty let down. Especially when that codex isn’t even personalized.

They never use Rook or the inquisitor’s first name in text once. Vocal I get, but no codex? The Inquisitor, a person depersonalized into a symbol, signing off “Yrs. The Inquisitor” when we input their name in CC was a twist of the knife I didn’t expect. It’s like every time I lower my expectations to grant grace they need to be lowered yet again.

Similarly, the romances in the “most romantic game yet” are paper thin throughout the game depending on your choice, with few chances to truly connect on an emotional level and have deep conversations in some routes. It’s not all about kissing but having the chance to say how you feel, or try to.

But that’s part of a larger problem, that this is a “found family” but Rook is the outsider in it. Rook isn’t asked how they’re handling things or about who they are or what they want except by Solas. The team needs them to fix problems but has little interest in giving back. The companions are lovely, but I can’t help wishing they were friends with me and not just each other. Or wanted to romance me and not just each other, as they begin to flirt before I can and have more banter comments than the player romance. At least if no one got me I know Davrin got me.

These last comments are the reason it’s 8/10 as a game rather than 10/10 for me - the lore I care about but others won’t. The lack of connection is a genuine issue, along with how unbalanced it is depending on romance. I just feel sad at the lost potential to reflect and gain support from companions.

On a positive note, this is the most fun Dragon Age game I’ve ever played. The gameplay is top notch and combat is so fluid and fun. I felt excited to fight rather than dreading the next battle. Really getting into the roleplay of a slippery rogue

The environments are so gorgeous. Lighting, animation, level design, sound design, all spectacular. I’m bad with maps and yet I never got lost and always managed to find my way around. Secret passages to treasure were just the right length to be satisfying. The puzzles were exactly the right amount of investment for the reward. I never felt frustrated by them but also not disappointed by the simple ones, there was a good balance. I had a lot of fun uncovering them. So many areas looked like a perfect representation of thedosian places I had never been to and wanted to visit.

Every time I was in the necropolis it felt like coming home. Maybe it’s because the lore was the most similar to past lore, maybe it’s just because it was cool, but I loved being there. I loved the wisps most of all. And I loved Emmrich’s journey and sympathetic exploration of death. The Hossberg Wetlands were also a standout area. Absolutely horrible (complimentary). Evka and Antoine my beloveds and the environment storytelling was fantastic. Like a hideous combination of the Fallow Mire and Chateau d’Onterre and I was so there for it. Davrin’s story broke my last flight loving heart.

The set pieces and narrative flow in the major battles and main story missions is really wonderful. I also did enjoy the faction reactivity, even if there were few chances to explore the intersectionality of being a particular lineage with a particular faction. I’ll make our House proud Viago!

It’s such a fun game that when I play I can almost forget all of the things that I dislike until a codex or cameo punches me in the face. It has such great gameplay that I can finally discuss DA with my partner who refused to play the other games in the series. But what a monkey’s paw. I know from their previous work that they can foster nuance. From the art book that their instincts were there from the beginning. But somewhere after multiple reboots they made a world with contradiction and complexity removed, more reactive to fan discourse than to telling a complex narrative.

It kills me because if the nuance and subjectivity and moral complexity had been there, I would have considered this the best Dragon Age game ever made. It will always be the most fun. But it is legitimately more fun for people who don’t know lore than people who do, and that is soul-crushing. It's the most beautiful Thedas has ever been, and the least like Thedas it has ever felt.

I’ve played it once. I already started a replay. I enjoy the game a lot when I am playing it, overall. But I miss Thedas, and I miss that the “world worth saving” that I cared for is a slate wiped clean and this new world is a more simplistic place.

[knight-a3]

Heavenbound AU

Masterpost

Husk

Design notes and headcanons under the cut

Husk always struck me as the type that should be more stocky and broad. And he should have a beer belly, since alcoholism is a significant character trait of his. He's a fat cat. He has a few grey streaks in his hair to hint at his age. His clothes are more tattered to represent both his loss of power and his deal with Alastor. And his colors are duller after he lost his overlord status.

Older versions of his character portrayed him as a magician, and I really liked the idea of him using his magician skills to cheat at cards, which is why he got into gambling.

Generally speaking, his canon design is too busy and I simplified it. I didn't really understand why he had wings. Thematically, there's no reason for it and they overcomplicate the design. Instead, I gave him a magician's cape to reference his magician background. His hands are white to resemble the gloves magicians wear. The shirt helps to separate his dark fur from his pants, so they don't blend together too much.

He has card suit symbols integrated into his design. I didn't think to add a shirtless version here(if I get around to it, I'll update this with one), but he does have a spade pattern on his chest. You can see the tip of it around his collar. His nose is shaped like a heart, his tail has a diamond shape, and the paw pads on his hands and feet are clubs.

Human-

He was born in 1907 and died in 1975 at age 68 from liver failure. It's popular for people to design him as black, but I headcanon him with either Slavic or Jewish Russian ancestry. He's lived in the US his whole life though. The chipped tooth sorta just happened and I liked it. It kind of resembles his demon form's cat teeth.

He became a magician and used his skills in sleight of hand to cheat at cards. He became involved with a gambling syndicate in Las Vegas. And he was a heavy drinker(hence his eventual liver failure).

Is he a war veteran? Lots of people headcanon Husk as a Vietnam War veteran. But I'm not sure that works very well. At least, not with my headcanons. The draft for Vietnam went on between 1964-1973. Husk would have been 57 in 1964, and the number of Baby Boomers meant the draft could make more exceptions than in previous wars. So Husk was not involved with Vietnam.

But the draft for WW2 required all men 18-64 to register between 1940 and 1946. There are a few nuances, such as the required ages being narrower at the beginning of that time, but they ultimately don't matter here. Husk was in his 30s through the entire draft period. So unless he had a reason to be exempted, or he dodged the draft, he was probably going. But Husk doesn't actually strike me as a shell shocked veteran. So I'm leaning toward him being a draft dodger.

Syndicat the Gambling Overlord-

While doing Mafia research for Angel Dust, I came across a mention of gambling syndicates in Las Vegas. I realized it fit Husk's background, and decided his name before Husk could be Syndicat. I thought the cheesiness of it wasn't out of place. So here we are.

His magician life led him to gaining magician(mostly cards) related powers. He gambled for souls and won his way to Overlord and ran a gambling syndicate. But he got cocky and others started to catch on. They did different types of gambling that didn't involve things he could easily cheat in. He started losing bets, and he was too proud and addicted to cut his losses. Plus, he was the Gambling Overlord, he couldn't stop gambling!

Eventually Alastor showed up and challenged him to Syndicat's specialty: poker. The offer was practically too good to be true. They were gambling all the souls they owned(their own souls were implied to be included). If Syndicat won, he'd have the collective power of Alastor's souls. If Alastor won, Syndicat would still be allowed to keep his existing power in exchange for servitude.

Alastor was a top tier Overlord, and owning the Radio Demon would surely catapult Syndicat to the top! He thought he had this in the bag. But Alastor has an inscrutable poker face, magic of his own, and his soul isn't even available to be put on the table. Syndicat predictably lost, and his overlord status was officially gone.

It hadn't really mattered either way. The whole thing was rigged. Alastor's soul was never going to be Syndicat's, and Alastor had clawed his way to Overlord in record time(He took less than a week to orient himself, killed his first overlord, and that was it). So even if he lost, it wouldn't take long for the Radio Demon to be back in full force. He could have just destroyed Syndicat and gotten everything back anyway.

The Husk:

Alastor dubbed him a husk of his former self and kept calling him either Husk or Husker. Husk felt too sorry for himself to care, and decided the name fit. (He doesn't hate "Husker" any more than he does "Husk". In the pilot, he was just annoyed at being magicked away from his poker game)

As far as Overlords go, Alastor wasn't actually all that bad to work for. Husk had actually been a crueler overlord to his underlings. For the most part, Alastor let him carry on as before. Husk gambles for cash and drowns himself with more booze than ever before, but he can't gain or lose power while Alastor owns him. Alastor could bother Husk at any given moment without warning and drag him to do whatever, but it would sometimes be months or years between his summons(seven years was significantly longer than normal, but Husk never thought much of it until after). Alastor is mostly just manipulative, confusing, and condescending. He didn't try to hurt Husk, and rarely even threatened to. Husk was still going to be grumpy about it though.

(update notes will go here if needed)

[jemmo]

I don’t think I’m gonna be able to put it into the right words, but I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to watch that final episode of miseinen. bc it is one thing to mention marriage in a show about two men in a country where that’s not legal; it’s one thing to mention it as an inevitable, as just a waiting game, and leave it there, just as it’s one thing to mention it as a fantasy, or as something a couple doesn’t need to prove or certify their feelings. it’s another thing to show, even for just a short 30 minute episode, what that waiting actually feels like, and the kind of feelings being in that no man’s land of wanting but not being able to have can bring up. bc i can’t think when ive ever seen a bl touch on it so explicitly, at least not off the top of my head, or at least not to the extent of dedicating a whole episode to that feeling. bc you really feel how complex and indescribable that feeling is for jin in that episode, and while it’s mixed with that still lingering fear of haruki leaving and one day suddenly not being there, you feel that it’s not just for that certainty that he wants to be married. he wants the whole package of it, because he truly loves haruki. he sees his friends have relationships and talk about marriage, he feels the pressure from his mom and the rest of the people around him to think about marriage. and that’s exactly the thing of it. it’s not just that he can’t get married, it’s the fact that he has to hide the fact he wants it, and hide his relationship altogether. it’s not simply just marriage, it fits into a wider thing of him initially accepting his queerness and now not knowing if or how he wants to share that with other people. it’s just like- i really don’t want to gush but holy fuck it’s just so excellently done. bc you feel how different it is from haruki too, and it goes back to their differences in upbringing, bc haruki, after the difficulties he’s gone through, now finds it easier to accept and share these things bc he’s never exactly had anyone that would be impacted by this, but not only does jin have people to tell, he’s also been raised to follow a very traditional path in life, the one with least resistance, which very much means marrying a woman and having children and all of that. and it’s not that he can’t accept that he won’t do that, bc we’ve seen throughout the show how he has always faced what he’s been told is right with the open mindedness to question whether it is right, or right to him. but we’ve also seen through the show that the people around him do not have that same openmindedness, it’s why he never shared his friendship with haruki with anyone and now doesn’t want to share his relationship. but what i want to stress most is that the show perfectly shows that it’s not black and white. he is not choosing not to say anything, but he’s also not forced to stay silent. you see the greyness not just bc the situation is nuanced, but also bc at the end of the day it’s a human making this decision, and a human does not simply take in inputs and output the right decision and stick by that. you see him want to say something, you see him pull back, you see him be resentful of the way things are but also learn to accept that that’s how they are at the moment. you just… you see him live through having that in his head and what it feels like on any particular day and it’s just so incredibly amazing and important to see that in a character. it feels so fucking human. and i didn’t expect to get so emotional over a special ep about marriage, esp bc ive never much cared for marriage, ive never found it necessary, but when you take the time to show that it’s what 2 characters want, dedicate a whole ep to showing it, instead of just using it as a default happy ending, well… it’s just the cherry on top to a show that’s been absolutely fucking phenomenal. i will stan this show till i die thank you very much.

[saintjosie]

apologies if you’ve talked about something this before, but your post on experiencing exclusion in trans fem circles on account of being an east asian woman who speaks up came up on my dash and it reminded me of something that‘a been troublingme.

i’m also asian and trans, and i’m always really sent off-kilter when i see white trans people idealizing japanese aesthetics and asian people in general. so many white trans people use anime tropes and aesthetics while also othering real asian people, esp other asian trans people. does it feel appropriative/fetishistic to you?

i guess it’s just something that echoes general white-centric society but it feels like a lot of white trans people focus more on their transness and forget that their whiteness doesn’t just go away or get excused, if that makes sense

this is a great ask with no easy answer. the short answer is yes, you’re absolutely right, but there is also a lot of nuance that’s very important to address too.

white people in general have an enormous problem with misunderstanding the difference between appropriation and appreciation. and that applies to appropriating the culture of all people of color because appropriation is a symptom of colonization. part of that is because it’s very difficult to have a catch-all definition that clarifies the distinction between the two because each person approaches the things they consume in a different way, with varying levels of excitement. i simply cannot point a finger at all white people who enjoy anime and say, “this is bad”, because it simply is not true. it would be just as harmful if a white person were to say, “i would never watch anime because i think it’s weird”, because while appropriation is objectively a form of colonization, appreciation is a celebration of diversity. and celebration of diversity is good!

but i think you hit the nail on the head when you say that a lot of white queer and trans people forget that even though that they are oppressed by cis heterosexual patriarchy, the intersection of oppression that exists between oppressed identities and race means that as white people, they still have white privilege. full stop. and so we often have this issue, especially with young queer and trans people (young as in newly realized queerness and transness, not age) where there is a pause in deconstructing whiteness because they are too focused on deconstructing the privilege that they have suddenly lost by embracing their marginalized identities.

and the issue goes even deeper when you realize that people of color also struggle to realize that we often also perpetuate and contribute to oppression of other people of color as well. east asian people in particular forget that even though we are people of color, we do not face the same kind of oppression that black and brown people of color do, and often we perpetuate racism through appropriation of black culture and also just straight up racism. i think most asian people can attest to how often asian people can be racist as fuck. and i’ve definitely seen asian people who think it’s acceptable to make aave and using the n-slur a part of their personality. and at the same time there is an enormous problem with black people fetishizing asian people and latching on to anime and k-pop in ways that perpetuate the oppression of asian people, as well as just being racist towards asians in general.

and root of the issue is that white supremacy affects all of us. EVERYONE has whiteness to deconstruct because we all live in a system that was built on white supremecy, even if we do not have white privilege ourselves. the answer is that everyone period must bear the burden of constantly deconstructing whiteness, deconstructing our own privilege, and doing our part to lift each other up. and while it is true that white people often have the most work to do in deconstructing their own privilege, none of us are absolved.