#while seeing an older man

[11hearstrings]

i’m currently reading little rot and it is queer as fuck and west african as fuck - Akwaeke Emezi is a fucking lightning strike of an author and everything I hope to be. but little rot feels so completely in line with where I’m at in life ESPECIALLY in my pursuit of pleasure shared with other black women and nbs, with poc too. we do not need white people to Queer things up for us, we have always been here. hedonistic and nasty and inventing types of play white queers could never dream of.

overlook that mild overshare to focus on my main point of: I love when you find a piece of media that only means so much because of the point in your life at which it came to you, how easily it can settle into the gaps formed during the process of your becoming.

[iwasbored777]

The height difference in ITSV vs in ATSV is killing me 😭 Miles and Gwen were so shorter than Peter, now they're almost as tall as him

[kr-yoongi]

Draw Merlin looking up challenge: FAILED

[fatedroses]

Jullus???

[eggcats]

My favorite barely ever considered RadioStatic fact is that, like, Alastor died about 20 years younger than Vox, but has been dead, in hell, about that same length of time, so he's both younger AND the same age as Vox. And then we all decided Alastor was Vox's mentor in hell, and never really acknowledge that this fully grown man is just letting this brand-new adult twink boss him around.

But we've decided (I've decided) Vox is usually the babygirl of them both, anyway. This man is in his 50s and so many of us were just like. Nah, he's babygirl. (We're right.)

Its just funny to me to think that one day they talk about the ages they died, and Vox is just like, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE IN YOUR 30s?!?!" bc he's been calling Alastor "daddy" this entire time, and now he has to reconcile the fact that he's significantly YOUNGER than him, lmao.

[maigetheplatypus57]

Do you guys ever think about the fact that we got to see Maya Fey at a point in time where she's older than Mia was when she died... do you ever think about younger siblings who grow older than their older siblings... who get a glimpse of how it felt for their sibling to be that age... and that their older sibling will always feel older and more mature in their memories, even as they're perpetually stuck as the age they died in while their younger sibling gets to surpass them in years and life experience... do you ever think about that and cry...

[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

[fluffs-n-stuffs]

"Cuhut it out- you guys!" "Nu-uh, not until you're all perked up first! You don't want those gym challengers meetin' with an ol' mopey leader, do ya?" "Whitney's right, dear friend. No need to hide that beautiful smile of yours, alright?~"

What it takes to cheer up Johto's beloved ghost boy 👻💕

[spotaus]

If I have energy I want to draw out some designs for an au I'm spontaneously writing.

(Medieval times, there's a Prophecy. Nightmare rules over this kingdom and is supposed to complete this prophecy, he refuses to because it would harm the people. Dream was sent away and banished by Night because he was dis-illusioned into thinking the prophecy was a Good Thing abd what he was raised to complete. Night collected his Knights (Killer, Dust, Horror, and Cross most recently) and trains them and tells them the truth of the prophecy. They're loyal to him. One day the magic of the prophesy (Apple Magic) leaves Nightmare unexpectedly, returning him to the state he was in before he accepted the mantle. This puts a target on his back and gives Dream a huge advantage in maybe making a comeback. The Knight's decide that their King (newly a young lad and variably scared and frightened) must be protected and they run the kingdom as he normally would, while also ensuring he survives and that the prophecy can't be completed.)

[boarprinceofdelusion]

Recognizing Early Signs of Mental Illness

[good-beanswrites]

Imagine if in OoA, Fuuta wasn't unconscious when Amane showed up during the initial attack. Better for Amane since she's not alone, but probably much worse for Fuuta since he's forced to watch helplessly.

So... prompt? 👉👈

OUGHGH what a concept... You would think the near-death experience is what's most traumatizing to him but no, it's the fact that, yet again, he couldn't be the hero that he thought he was... Thank you so much for the request and uuhh sorry I beat up your boy...

TW for violence/injury, nothing super gory but I did try to detail out Kotoko's canon attacks

He’s probably never even taken a hit in his life.

Kotoko’s fist connected solidly with Fuuta’s jaw. His vision sparked.

And anyway, it’s his own fault. He got himself into this mess.

Her knee jabbed into his gut, knocking the wind out of him before he could gain his bearings from the previous strike. Kotoko had appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the night. He’d been dragged out of bed with a cheap shot to his face.

The voices in his head spoke oblivious to the situation. He hardly processed a single word they said, the sound drowned out by the prisoners’ shouts. By the ringing in his ears. 

He’s so pathetic. 

By the crack of his own bones breaking. 

So weak.

By the choked sounds he could hardly recognize as his own. 

So cowardly.

The room dipped and darkened as his consciousness threatened to give out. His chest rattled with a struggling breath. Kotoko’s arm raised, and he got the feeling this blow would be the last.

Well, whatever happens, he did it to himself.

She paused. Something distracted her from behind. Fuuta was left in a heap, his body unresponsive to his mind’s desperate pleas to escape with this chance. The most he could do was angle his head to see what had blessed him with this moment of relief. 

It took only an instant for his gratefulness to sharpen into panic.

Just think of that poor, young girl. She had her whole life ahead of her.

Kotoko towered over her Amane. She had flattened herself against the cell door. The flickering fluorescents above cast a shadow across her face.

There was too much spinning inside – and blood outside – of Fuuta’s head to make any sense of what they were saying to one another. He got a pretty good idea when Kotoko lunged forward and struck the girl.

And now she’s dead. Because of him.

Fuuta tried to pick himself up. He had to stop this. More blood pooled around him, but he no longer cared. All he could focus on was the new splotches of red that Amane dabbed at with her uniform sleeve.

As hard as he willed himself to move, his limbs refused. He thought emergencies like this were supposed to give you newfound adrenaline. You were supposed to triumph over the pain, not succumb to it ripping through every inch of your being.

Does he think this is one of his stupid video games? This is real life. He’s nothing special. 

He dragged himself an inch or two forward, and that was all. He could only watch helplessly as Kotoko attacked again. Amane sank to the ground after a few harsh kicks to her legs. She lifted her arms to block her face. 

If he wanted to help society, he should have protected people. He should have protected that girl.

Fuuta had never begged for anything in his life before. 

He opened his mouth to beg Kotoko to stop. 

But his body was doing everything in its power to sabotage him. His words dissolved into wheezing coughs. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t save anyone.

He hasn’t done anything useful with his life. Worthless.

Darkness invaded his vision. The horrible sounds within the cell grew more and more distant.  

Amane was thrown to the ground nearby. She lay close enough for him to reach his arm towards her, though still out of his grasp. Her eyes were trained on him. He wished he had the voice to scream at her to look away – to turn her attention to Kotoko, and not the failure of a man who wasn’t going to help her. 

All he could do was hold her gaze until his own eyes slipped shut.

Some hero he was.

Just before the world disappeared around him, he felt warm fingers interlock with his, and squeeze.

[yuripira4e]

I want to preface this post by saying that I love the cat king as a character, especially one that has such a major impact on Edwin and his relationship with his queerness and learning to be okay with it; HOWEVER, I also believe that everyone that genuinely believes he should be a love interest for Edwin should read this. (Also if you just like the cat king as a character and want to understand his character better and why his and Edwin’s relationship is not something that would be healthy or “real” for either)

[tkbrokkoli]

cant believe that after driving the car, riding the train, booking a hotel room, having a nightmare, visiting the father in law, visiting a hospital, making a friend, and escaping an assassin, the incomprehensible Horrors™ are back at it again and harder to bear than ever 🐻

[peachyhoneyadventures]

EDOLISSE AND VARRICK

These Hands, If Not Gods by Natalie Diaz | Still from When A Man Loves (1927) | Snippet from Richard Siken's "Crush" | Still from Lodger (???) | Poem from Margaret Atwood's "You are Happy"

[sylphwing]

hm. i do not like chilshi 🤔

[deus-ex-mona]

no thoughts, just the way the narumi sisters are so different yet fundamentally similar at the same time yk?