#thought we'd go for this?

[bytebun]

my piece for @thecodywanzine! thanks to the mods who let me go completely ham and cheese on this bad boy. this one's about living longer than you ever expected and not knowing what to do with it

[minibagel7]

[MHA CHAPTER 424 SPOILERS]

we just keep winning?????

and it's better and gayer than we ever could've imagined???

??????

[dxxtruction]

Honestly, the only one to gain any legitimate benefit from planting those photos would be Daniel, so he could have them distracted long enough to look through the files he had. Notably, he only starts snooping through them alone when he can be sure they’re distracted. Rashid doing it via Raglan's orders. From a writing standpoint this would be really good set up for the later pay off of Rashid doing the same action again so that the truth can be revealed, again.

I also think, it’s possible, Raglan was the buyer of the three furies (he's an avid art collector), which was the first time Daniel had a distraction. I think they were both working together on giving ample distractions, so Daniel could use his Talamasca resources without being caught. This was a way to get Daniel what he wanted (his book and to live), and also get Raglan what he wanted (some paintings, information for his job, and someone who now owes him a favor). This read to me gives a larger plot relevance to Daniel, Raglan, and Rashid, instead of them just being mostly passive actors in the story. This also provides greater validity to some of Daniel's own characterization as someone good at getting angles, and who believes 'honesty is not a tactic'. It also tells us how easy it is to have vampires distracted, thus better legitimizing the plausibility of certain events in the interview. It would also explain why it's Raglan and not some other talamasca member, as he's definitely more the type to get up to sewing discord and such to achieve his greedy ends. That's actually, all his character in the books really is.

I feel this gives the photos far better plot relevance and also simultaneously reveals something about every single one of the characters involved. How do Louis and Armand respond to being on the receiving end of having these photos planted by neither of them? What sort of assumptions and actions do they take for it? These sorts of things are answered, alongside Daniel getting his answers, and this revealing something about him. That getting the truth is more important to him than how he gets it. And that getting his 'score' is more important than even the truth.

[slutforpringles]

Interesting to me that even AMuS highlighted how unusual it was for Red Bull's Head of PR to be with Daniel for his media rounds, while also reiterating that Daniel still has Christian Horner's full backing and support. I also think Visa advocating for Daniel is a HUGE boost for him given their sponsorship deal is worth upwards of 20 million a year.

via: AMuS | Bleibt Daniel Ricciardo bis zum Saisonende?

[owenhcrper]

rip mock the week you would have loved making fun of david cameron's return

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[statementlou]

I do want to say that I feel a but relieved that it was not suicide per say(as it looks like till now) , most likely a drug overdose case gone wrong here. With this, atleast I feel Liam was not actively trying to end things for himself in a way.. it is accidental but all more tragic that it could be prevented if people used their brains!

learning that made me feel better too... but then also worse... but then better again... like it's all just fucking terrible. In the end it does make me feel better that he wasn't suffering that acutely in that way in that moment, that was really so horrific to imagine and live with, and of course for the people in his actual life who survive him the guilt would have been unbearable. I do feel better ever since I, also, reached that conclusion from reading about what happened. But also... he didn't want to die, he wanted to stay around and keep doing things and trying. And he's gone. And that's just so tragic and fucking useless. I let spotify Get me earlier with their 'remember Liam' playlist and listening to him say "I want to get better" and "I want to be a better man" in song after song.... it's crushing. I wanted that for him too, for him to have that chance. There are so many ways things could have been better for him, but now all of those possibilities are just... dead. It's just garbage, I hate death and people dying and I'm really honestly just fucking sick of it.

[littlewrensx]

closed starter for @ofmymanymuses from Tanya.

"Thanks for inviting me." Tanya smiled at her best friend and her boyfriend. Wren and Bennett were having yet another party. Well, Bennett was. Wren of course was there to swoon over him all night. It was nice seeing your friends so in love but they could really stand to get a new room. "You're welcome. But I do need to warn you..." Wren was about to tell Tanya something when she heard a familiar voice behind her. Turning to see who was talking to her, she froze. A face she hadn't seen in quite some time. "What are you doing here?"

[xoluvx]

what a fucking disappointment

[painless-innit-colourful]

Sunset

Their eyes meet, amber flickering in the reflections in Jack’s pupils. Tubbo’s skin is tingling, vision periodically blurring and he feels a little sick: life returning to atoms that were supposed to be done living is a little violent, a little uncomfortable. Tubbo waits for the nausea to subside before he gives Jack a nod, feeling the prickling shimmer of fire resistance in his system, before he turns towards the lava lighting the room and blocking the way. Or, at least, it had been.

“Really?” Tubbo pauses at Jack’s voice breaking the unnatural quiet. “I’m going to go get him.” “How will you get him out? He doesn’t have resistance as well.” “There’s a hole in the cell. We’ll swim out.”

They share a gaze that feels so very final, even after the past few eternities they’ve waited. “I hope you’re right about him.” “I know I am,” Tubbo affirms. “Have a good rest of your life, Jack.” “You too, man. You too.”

—

“You okay?” Tubbo’s voice bounces around the hollow chamber, echoing off warm obsidian. Tommy’s on his knees, cast in light by the fire at his feet, looking up at Tubbo like he’s looking at an angel. Maybe that’s a bit what it looks like. Tubbo’s not completely sure they count as alive anymore.

“Tubbo-” He stumbles as he tries to get up, as Tubbo scrambles down soft-sharp rock to reach him. They each stop a handful of strides from each other, just staring, just breathing, the amber light washing them out and making them look like the ghosts they feel like, and then Tommy closes the distance with a shriek of pained relief and they crash to the floor and they are very corporeal and very real and very alive. 

They are alive.

Tommy’s crying, he realises, tears falling and very quickly drying due to their proximity to the lava in the floor. They almost ended up in the lava due to Tommy’s lunge, but it doesn’t matter because Tubbo’s teary too, and the warm glow around them is nothing to the warmth inside Tubbo that starts in his heart and expands outwards, steadily, steadily, bringing a feeling that might be life back into his bones and sinew. Coming back to life is new to him, but it’s not the worst feeling.

“I’m-” Tommy sputters between sniffs, “I’m sorry-” “Don’t you dare,” Tubbo pulls him closer, tucking him under his chin, like that’s ever had the power to keep him safe before. “Don’t you dare say that. Don’t.” “Oh- Okay…” After a moment, he laughs. “Hello stranger.” Tubbo smiles and kisses him on the top of his head. He smells like smoke and death. “Hello. We gotta get out of here-” “Yeah…” “-We gotta get you home.” “Home?”

He kisses him one more time, before shifting to his elbows. Their eyes meet, and the light in Tommy’s eyes outshines everything else in this godforsaken room. “Home. We gotta go home.”

—

The room is golden with a refracted autumn sunset when Tubbo hears the click-clonk of the front door through the house. He’s still adjusting funnels and tubes as he hears the approaching footsteps get louder and louder, until Tommy’s leaning on the only empty counter by the door, smiling.

“You’ll never guess who I ran into.” “Who? No, don’t tell me,” Tubbo swaps a full bottle for an empty one. “Santa Claus?” Tommy splutters, “Obviously not. No, Jack. Jack Manifold.”

Tubbo stops to look at him properly, “Wait, really?” “Yeah, and-” He ‘rounds the counter and leans annoyingly on Tubbo’s shoulder. He’s so annoying. The Most Annoying. Tommy ‘The Most Annoying’ Innit. Tubbo feels that familiar warmth he feels whenever he’s near.  “Get this- He’s been in the casino this whole time. In Las Nevadas. He’s a fucking gambler!”

Tubbo mulls this over for a moment, “Y’know… not what I was expecting.” “Right? But he says he’s happy enough, says he likes who he is now more than who he was before, and, I figured, that’s good enough, right?” Tubbo smiles, turning the knob on his filtration contraption, and the golden liquid thins to a stop. He pulls off his gloves and pulls Tommy into an embrace. “Yeah. Good for him. And, y’know, hopefully he does alright. Financially.” “That’s what I said too. He was pleasant. Much more than I was expecting actually. Y’know, considering.”

Tubbo closes his eyes a moment, thinks back. “He was a good guy. Just- Just another victim of… of that place.” He gives Tommy a squeeze, “I believe it’s your turn to cook tonight, Big Man, and you’re late.” “Bloody hell,” Tommy pulls back. Standing behind Tubbo’s equipment, the light cast through the window is the rich colour of butterscotch, and Tommy looks like he’s been dipped in honey. His eyes, his hair, the buttons on his coat all shine gold. They share a wide smile, and Tubbo would bet his life Tommy’s thinking the same looking at him - that neither could go into the darkness without reaching out for the other.

Except he already did. And won.

[stardestroyer81]

You ever start to draw something as a joke but then it turns out really good? 🍕✨

[chaos-has-theories]

Girl Genius Van Rijn is named after REMBRANDT VAN RIJN???

As in, famous painter Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, known mainly by his first name????

Rembrandt might be RvR's first name???????

[t4yce]

PAKITA • drag race españa all stars 1.03 heaven, hell, and deadly sins ball: hell

[fullmetalscullyy]

never thought we'd ever have to go without (ii)

summary: 

Their breakup was amicable. They were both going in two different directions with their lives and where Roy was going - the military and the numerous off the grid sites for weeks or sometimes months on end – he wouldn’t ask her to wait for him. She deserved to live her own life, not wait around for him and his ambitions.

When a tragedy befalls their child, Roy and Riza are left devastated. They come together to work through it while waiting for her to wake from her injuries

rated: t | words: 2948 | tags: royai, angst, au, modern au, kid au, parental royai, tragedy, injury, angst with a happy ending, separated parents

read on ao3 | read on ffnet

snippet:

“Mia?” Her voice was desperate. She didn’t care that she hadn’t called earlier. All that mattered was she’d called now. Someone was talking on the other side, but it was in a different language. Riza couldn't understand what they were saying. She blinked in her stun, her stomach twisting painfully as dread settled deep within her bones. Where was her daughter? “Mia? Where is Mia?” Riza gripped her phone tighter. “Where is my daughter?”

read on ao3 | read on ffnet

[airenyah]

FADEL IS SMILING

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

FADEL IS SMILING A LITTLE

[cecoeur]

Good Bones Maggie Smith