#this isn't up for debate by the way

[mercuriangelic]

as a catholic, i will never understand the reason behind refusing to let people turn symbols like crosses and churches, angels and other religious figures into a part of their identity. as a vampyr, who's existence is extremely religious centrict, i will never understand disallowing others from incorporating religion into their pronouns or gender. christianity isn't a sacred religion that needs to be kept away from the public, or kept away from other religious individuals. using godself pronouns doesn't make you disrespectful, calling yourself an angel isn't disrespectful, using crosses and crucifixes as an aesthetic isn't disrespectful. not only as a catholic, not only as a religious vampyr, not only as a fictive of a priest, i will never force anyone around me to drop what their doing or just take away their identity for my own comfort. because it isn't my place to do so. at the end of the day we all have our stories, and i will always support your mogai/nonhuman labels and identities.

[vaguely-concerned]

To the ‘themes I am picking up on in Veilguard’ list, let's go ahead and add what I have a sneaking suspicion will actually turn out to be The theme:

— the world has changed and can never be as it was again.

— I have been changed and can never be who I was again.

— in this simple unavoidable truth there is endless grief and endless hope.

And I… may be getting a bit emotional about it haha. Let me show my work a bit: 

if da:o is a game about people who are already dead or half ghosts in some form (through societal forces, psychologically, functionally, literally, in body, through the joining etc.) coming together anyway to save the world from being swallowed by total nihilism and despair (symbolized by the blight) through the power of love and friendship and also this sword/potential heroic sacrifice that I found, da2 is a game about people who have lost their homes and been set adrift finding and building new homes in each other (while completely failing to save the world. also through the power of love and friendship. as well as years of petty bickering <3 we must imagine kirkwall if not happy then worth having been because the love was there the love was there and that's the only sanctifying force we can ever have in this doomed world and city of ours), and da:i is a game about old stabilizing-but-unjust comfortable lies vs. disruptive but potentially liberating uncomfortable truths, and the power of friendship to help us distinguish the one from the other and navigate through them...

folks… I'm starting to think that veilguard might be a game specifically about moving towards recovery and acceptance after trauma — about how even in this flawed, severed, scarred state, what is here right now is worth loving and worth caring for. even in an imperfect and impermanent world and self, there is worth and joy. and of course the first real tragedy — and threat — of Solas is that he just cannot find it in himself to accept this and move on, to let go of what was, the regret won’t let him go or he won’t let go of it. which means that even though on the surface it’s Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain (and the will to subjugate and violate they represent) who are the main villains, the real antagonistic force in this story beneath that is the Dread Wolf’s despair. A despair Rook must make an answer to by the end of the game, one way or another, compassionately or with righteous fury, triumphant or pyrrhic.

The world will change again and again and so will you — BUT the crucial element is that so will everyone else who exists along with you, you are fundamentally not alone in this existential truth. all we’ll ever have is each other and my god that is plenty, my god that is enough!!! Which is the second thing Solas just can’t accept, he keeps himself separate and completely alone out of an awful mix of fear and pride and feeling himself unworthy of anything else. Rook and the player want to save the world of Thedas because it’s where everyone we love lives, Solas wants to go back to the past because that’s the only neighbourhood where he can still visit those he loved — and the person he himself was, before. A very sympathetic and human instinct/trap to fall into when touched by trauma, I think, if only it wasn’t backed by godlike power, a fundamentally oppositional personality, and a catastrophic lack of therapy to make it literally everyone else’s problem too lol. It’s varric and solas’ banter about the man on the island and where meaning in a life comes from all over again, writ large and with detail work — and the added idea of ‘what if there are also other islands out there, though. With other people on them that you could find if you reach for each other’. Rook with the best of intentions has to make choices to which there are no perfect outcomes and live with what happens — and not cut themselves off from everyone else around them even when there is regret or shame. You get back up every day and you make a life with other people doing the same and you do your best, and that’s the only victory this world will give you. In the end, that is more than enough, that is essential. And I um. I love that. So much. It’s why some of the writing clumsiness on top can’t hurt me because this thematic spine is so solid and so beautiful to me. It’s DA2 all over again that way for me personally — I forgive this story for what it isn’t and couldn’t be, and I love it with my whole stupid open heart for what it actually is. Thank you for coming to my TED-talk and goodbye etc.      

(For my fellow TLT heads out there — you know what this story is reminding me of most of all, actually? It has some big Nona the Ninth vibes down there in the deep. It’s about… the horror and unspeakable beauty that can only be found in liminality, and the role of love in making that basic fact of existence bearable. And also even more unbearable at the same time. I'm so sorry.)

[gavinette]

It is so incredible to me how Solas and Lavellan have their own code to communicate to each other. Not only explicitly in lines of dialogue, like the elvhen they use in a room full of people just to have their private moment, or the hallelujah cadence they use in certain moments (like when you meet the Inquisitor the second time).

I'm talking about Lost Elf and the music that plays in the "Atonement" romanced ending in Veilguard. Two instruments having a dialogue while time is running. How the tune changes when Lavellan appears in the scene, shifting from the big Dread Wolf vibes to a new arrangement (dialogue?) of the Lost Elf. The music even stops for one second.

I'm obsessing over this little detail, I know, but I think it shows, even if you don't understand Solas or Lavellan body language to each other in the finale, what is happening. They're having the same debate all over again but it is different, the music is telling you it's different. More elements influence it. Lavellan knows better now, the violin is different and it doesn't have this desperate vibe to it.

I always admired Hans Zimmer since I was a little kid and getting to play Veilguard, save Solas from his worst fear and Hans Zimmer taking his time to do something specific for the solavellan ending makes me feel like it was my birthday.

[ladystoneboobs]

no of fence to jon snow fans who for some reason care about his exact age, but these discussions just annoy me no end. not only bc there's no way any weirwood flashbacks bran has to rhaegar/lyanna will come with time/datestamps, but also bc there's always comments like this:

SEVERAL turns of the moon (ie, months)?! have these people never seen a human baby before or just have no concept of their ages? even if we take into account travel time from the toj to wf, meaning jon was not a newborn too fresh out the oven when catelyn and robb arrived, there's still a difference between a newborn and a 3mo and an even bigger difference between those infants and an older baby 5-7mo. there's very good reasons these lines were cut. whatever birthdates can be worked out internally for jon and robb from when they're first mentioned as 15 and 16 don't matter in the end, bc grrm doesn't care about a consistent timeline and the actual text of catelyn's pov and ned's convo with robert about cheating on her should outweigh any guesstimates about jon's official nameday wrt robb's. catelyn may not have cared for jon, but she would sure as hell have noticed his nameday if it came before robb's and made him ned's firstborn. if jon's birthday canonically came before robb's then either ned's cover story would not involve adultery (not impossible for him to sire a bastard before his wedding), or he'd just give jon a new nameday along with his new name to fit the adultery lie. it makes no sense for him to lie about one and not the other, undermining the big lie with a little public clue of his story not adding up. whatever else she was as a stepmother, cat wasn't stupid and a bastard who was actually the eldest son being raised alongside her trueborn heir could be an even bigger insult than whether he was born of adultery or not.

BUT, the unknowability of jon's true birthday is not the only reason this annoys me, it's bc this is all based on the assumption that jon must be older since rhaegar/lyanna ran off together before ned married cat, as if both boys must have been conceived asap as robb canonically was when his parents consummated their marriage. and that's not how human reproduction works! even if you don't understand how fast babies grow in the first year, you should know that people who get pregnant do so through ovulation cycles and a lucky sperm finding an egg and all that, not just immediately getting knocked up as soon as one has p-in-v sex for the first time. not unless you only know mean girls sex ed where if you have sex you will get pregnant and die. (even tho lyanna did die, there's plenty of canon examples where pregnancy did not lead straight to death. also examples of people who did not get pregnant right away and even some who are/were sexually active and childless without always having moon tea on hand.) we can't know how long lyanna was having sex before that sperm+egg match happened or even how long she was with rhaegar before losing her technical virginity. if they were married, doesn't it make sense to think they didn't consummate their relationship until the wedding night either? that's the only leverage there is to ensure a status as wife rather than just mistress.

and while i just said grrm doesn't care about exact timelines and a lot is still foggy surrounding the rebellion and esp rhaegar, there is one timemarker wrt robert's rebellion he voluntarily threw in, time and time again: that stannis was besieged at storm's end for almost a whole year. that siege, which mind you, did not match the duration of the entire war. it only started after robert won his battles at gulltown and summerhall, returned to storm's end, and then went out and lost the battle of ashford, leaving his homeland open to the reachermen. the same siege which only ended when ned made a detour there after the sack of king's landing, before going to the toj. even if lyanna may not have given birth that exact day ned found her, she could only be waiting in that bloody bed for weeks at the most, not months. so if rhaegar knocked her up the very same night he carried her off and jon was still a newborn when ned found her after the siege of storm's end had ended, wouldn't that mean lyanna was pregnant for well over a year? that's not how human pregnancy works either! so, maybe that's proof that jon and robb, whichever order they were actually born in, were actually very close in age as babies, much closer than if they were both conceived asap.

and really, jon's actual birthdate does not matter imho, when he was raised not just as the bastard to robb's trueborn heir, but with robb also known by catelyn and the world as ned's firstborn (which he was, in any case, as jon was ned's nephew by birth). what difference could a birthdate before robb's make (even were there some means of discovery) after ned, cat, and robb are all dead? if one is looking only at his birth parents then he's only a firstborn child on lyanna's side, but definitely a second son on rhaegar's side. maybe he was always meant to be a second son with a not much older half-brother! even if the aegon fka young griff is not in fact rhaegar's son, he'll still be known as aegon vi targaryen, meaning jon will never be known as any father's elder son. if i may reference mean girls again, it's not going to happen.

[uncanny-tranny]

I think another aspect of conservative thought people need to understand is the idea that it's all about dominance.

The reason why sayings like "we don't want to trans your kids, we want trans kids to live" is because, in the conservative mind, you are replacing their dominance with your own. It can never be about what is best for others, it is always about expressing absolute power and control.

Natural selection, at its ideal, will weed out the people who "shouldn't live." If their existence is a threat to the already-established hierarchy, then it's obvious that they shouldn't exist in order to challenge hierarchy.

While this certainly isn't a "conservative-only" mindset, it's a trend I have noticed more in conservative spaces. This is why I don't always think it's helpful to go on about how, "Oh, we don't want to threaten your worldview. We just want people to live 😊". You will fundamentally be threatening their power in their minds. Therefore, nothing you say can truly take away from the anxiety, fear, and anger at losing control that may be instilled.

[athina-blaine]

i love sincerely love working with dungeon meshi's magic system and the way mana sickness is depicted, like it has the breadth and scope for some truly powerful and wacky fun shit, but you can also easily bring down the hammer when you want to put the characters in difficult situations they can't get out of without a little creativity. i found when writing for baldur's gate 3 that, unless i was in a modified setting, i was hard-pressed thinking up fun ways for characters to solve their problems without just using magic, especially for the small things. i mean, what fun is throwing a character into a river and needing to warm them up when you can just cast prestidigitation?? it's one of the first things a novice can learn and also it's a cantrip, it literally costs nothing!

[introvert-celeste]

It's absolutely sickening seeing what new atrocities Israel is committing every day in Palestine, as well as all the disgusting people who support it. Their response is always "Hamas started it" and "October 7th," but:

1) Using Hamas as a way to justify the murder of Palestinian civilians is essentially islamophobic bullshit

2) Israel has been carrying out this blood feud for decades (since 1948 and even before), long before the Hamas existed (founded in 1987). Hamas did not start this.

3) Attacking hospitals and medical vehicles is literally a war crime, regardless of whether you suspect terrorists are occupying it.

4) I feel like it should be widely known that the way to deal with a hostage situation is to establish communication with the terrorist, de-escalate the situation, and negotiate for the hostages' safe return. Not bombing indiscriminately at where they think the terrorists are.

5) I am morally against killing anyone, save for the most heinous (cold blooded serial killers, serial rapists, etc.), but I'm especially against killing children. Killing children is never, ever justified, not even in retaliation. Last I heard, Israel has killed well over 4000 children in the last month. Absolutely sickening.

6) People are starting to deny that any of this is happening, which is exactly what happened during the Holocaust. We are witnessing a genocide is real time and people are denying its existence, or labeling all the deaths as terrorist kills.

Also, just to clarify, criticism of Israel doesn't mean criticism of all Jewish people, but of the Zionist extremists in power, just as Islamic terrorist groups don't represent all followers of Islam. I also feel for the Israeli hostages in this situation, of course, as well as the Israeli citizens who are stuck under this leadership. They don't deserve any of this. I just hope that all of this will end soon and that real justice--not indiscriminate killing--will be served.

[twitterdotcom]

I know it's been said before, but I think my biggest gripe with Izzy's death is that it felt like it was written and finished before S1 was even done, and then S2 was written like "ok Izzy dies this season so we have to make sure the audience feels sad about it." So they developed Izzy but never went back to the original script for the death scene and instead just went with the original draft despite literally all of S2 (and some of S1) contradicting what was supposed to be the emotional core of it

[mariocki]

Michael Craze pops up as Vince Kelly, a teenage runaway from a borstal centre, in Gideon's Way: Boy With Gun (1.23, ITC, 1966)

[jaythelay]

Don't bother with R's, they'll show you inhumanity and selfishness unseen by your innocent mind.

Send to friends and family, bait and switch comments asking for links to YT videos, say it was an accident, followed by quotes by R politicians, such as Dump's, current, VP pick.

Normal people will have the normal reaction you did reading this. They will not think about it without the external information sharing. Make them. Because R's don't think. They Larp.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

didn't anyone ever tell u it's rude to interrupt, da-ge

[iluvjesus666]

that debate sure was something!

[aonomiki]

*banging pots and pans together* Blue at no point reciprocated Megumi’s feelings for him nor did he lead her on. It was a one-sided crush. I’m sorry you either have bad media literacy skills or you believed people who either had bad media literacy skills or just fucking lied to you! As someone who was a teen girl who had crushes on adults, it’s a very normal thing and it is not weird to portray it in media when it is resoundingly a one-sided thing!

[fooligandan]

i'm long done with making myself mad on purpose with comments and threads etc but my favorite one from that whole thing has gotta be the one that was citing that "There's plot points and concepts that aren't introduced until later games in the [kh] series" as a reason for why it's ~convoluted~

[bijoumikhawal]

putting on my commie hat a moment. Aside from Garak's character feeling off I don't like UMC's books because the politics are so. Urgh. Yeah let's throw in a mention of Berlin during the Wall as a resonance to Cardassia because we're Americans and we don't get that west Berlin was like. Cartoonishly bad. And East Berlin was actually not that terrible! Even before you start playing comparisons.

Random references to France that would be appropriate if you discussed France's role as one of the worst colonizing forces of the modern era. Like. Andy referenced Paris first but it is tied to the Indigenous themes because Garak- in the guise of a human- walks around Paris with the body of a mixed French and North African man. The implication of colonialism is INCREDIBLY direct if you understand anything about France beyond 8th grade history class, and the ambiguity stringly implying Garak is only experiencing this a quasi-divine state of lucid dreaming is another call back to his ongoing struggle with Hebitian identity, which is significant part of that same short story! A Hebitian priestess tells Garak "you are one of us wether you admit it or not and we can help you, but youll be punished just the same if you refuse by other Cardassians". A Hebitian man talks indirectly with Garak about how Hebitians were enslaved to help Cardassia create its beautiful government buildings. Did you know some think the Eiffel Tower is made of Algerian iron?

Like I've bitched before that she completely drops the major themes of ASIT (which she's writing in continuity with) about Garak being of Hebitian descent but the rest of it isn't good either

[cheebuss]

Bro I genuinley cannot fathom hating either Grace Burgess or Lizzie Stark — like bro why tf are you pitting two queens against each other?? Both of them served so hard in this dumpster fire of a narrative ✨️