#why is this being advertised to me

[silverwolf2765]

I was trying to clear notifications on FB and this was the first thing I saw on my feed. Please tell me what the hell this is and how it's one of the most cursed things I've ever seen

[bunnannub]

why

[aroaceleovaldez]

just read the plot summary for Wrath of the Triple Goddess and. wow this is. painful this just sounds painful to read.

Why is Grover the incompetent inciting incident character? That is not his narrative role ever, really. That's like, the fanon conceptualization of his character where he's reduced down to comedic relief and nothing more. He's mostly exposition and support. Why not have the inciting incident be something about Annabeth's hubris - something that has gotten the gang into situations tons of times before in a way that doesn't put down any of the characters? Heck you could have even tied it into some Sea of Monsters stuff, like Circe having told Annabeth that she'd make a good sorceress. That'd be perfect for how this book literally just exists to be advertising for s2 of PJOTV. Or maybe call-back to Percy's introduction, where he talks about how he doesn't try to cause problems but problems tend to find him. Or use the established personalities of Hecate's animal companions from HoO, since we know they have attitudes. Just what are you even doing here????

[pigswithwings]

you will hear my strong opinions about the care and keeping of fish today by the lord

[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

[barneysbigstompers]

i hate when people say “my favorite case is” when talking about TRUE crime. buddy that’s a real human being that was unfortunately killed wtf do you mean that’s your “favorite” case.

[placid-styles]

personally i find this to be an insane thing to purchase but i do think mac would buy this for his and dennis’ bedroom and dennis would hate it

[poisonedspider]

A year later and my playbill is finally here and it's been such a pick me up like I keep laughing so hard every single page is a literal gem.

[katyspersonal]

Thinking about that time when a popular artist was a prick to me personally (claimed that I "baited" them for a conflict when all I did was pointing out something in lore contradicting their claim, without any rudeness or condescension, and basically told me to go hang out with other autists instead of bothering them) but the reason I blocked them was not that, it was the fact that they've admitted on not even caring about the source material and just using scraps from it to do their own thing. Priorities hfngkfngj

[ciderjacks]

should I finally get around to watching Agatha all along I love gay women and murder and assholes

PLEASSSSEEE DO ITS SO GOOD.. I have rly low expectations when it comes to marvel shows and mcu in general bc. I mean. yeah. but it’s rly good Agatha is such a Character. Tbh I’ve never seen a female character like her in anything before, and so that’s exciting to me too.

the only thing is if u do watch it u also. Kind of have to have watched Wandavision for it to make sense. But both series are only like 9 episodes and 40-30 min episodes

[snaileer]

As a very dedicated energy drinker (addicted to caffeine) who also enjoys the grunge vibes of monster energy(purely because those ragged little lines match my life) and Bang, Red Bull, etc, can I just say

F those stupid fricking aesthetic looking energy drink cans that are becoming the style now.

Celsius I was fine with.

The hundred others that followed with like fruity designs and matte finish cans… 🤢

You should not be able to drink your tasty little 200mg while matching it to your ‘I have my life together’ fit.

You don’t, and I should be able to recognize the hot mess in a can from at least a distance of 10ft. Vision blurred from sleep deprivation or not.

[melancholic-pigeon]

Alright, this is my last comment on the issue, for real this time.

@nerdykeppie is staffed by unprofessional, rude, cruel people who double down on their entitlement to be unprofessional, rude and cruel in public to their former customers.

You should know the sorts of people you're giving money to if you patronize them. The founder is liable to misread your words, lash out at you in anger over something he misunderstood, and generally behave like a tantruming child even if you go out of your way to be polite and give him the benefit of the doubt when he lashes out at you over his own poor reading comprehension.

I'm done getting into this. No, Spider is not ~required~ to be professional on his (public) personal blog which is closely tied to his business. I just think it's extremely stupid to double down on his "right" to be unprofessional on his public blog when he owns a business that is clearly tied to said public blog, because it reflects very poorly on both his personal character and his business. I think it is hilariously foolish and an extremely poor decision to openly advertise and defend your founder's unprofessionalism, which speaks of general lack of professionalism and poor judgment throughout the whole business, not just from Spider (though his lack of good judgment and public unprofessionalism is the most obvious).

So. Best of luck in the people involved resolving whatever problem in their lives that they're taking out on me, and beware interacting with them in any way because they will absolutely be rude as shit to you and then smear you in public and private for (/checks hand) apologizing for a miscommunication because you didn't mean what they incorrectly interpreted you to mean.

I can't fucking believe they still think they're in the right here and *I* am the one who needs to be ~asked not to contact them again~. You answered me THREE TIMES *after* I had blocked you because you cannot let go of the fact that you were wrong about a stupid fucking plastic pumpkin and the fact that I went OUT OF MY WAY to give you the benefit of the doubt.

(two of those three asks were frantic apologies because I genuinely felt terrible, and they were both met with meanness and scorn and snide insults about my communication failures.

Lol. Me. I'm the one who is failing to communicate and has poor reading comprehension because you misunderstood me and started lashing out like I personally strangled all of your pets for having the filthy nerve to apologize and try to clear it up.

Yeah. I'm the villain here. Sure, Jan.)

I'm done now, but enjoy having your unprofessional, cruel, immature nonsense publicly exposed. I stand by my actions (the ones I actually took in real life, not the fake pretend ones you made up because you misunderstood what I wrote) and I look forward to you experiencing the natural consequences of your own.

Don't give money to childish jerks.

[yourdrugisafartbreaker]

Oh this Sam and Max fankid is really cool and it is super polished I wonder who made it!

Wait she’s from a new-ish PBS show???

[br1ghtestlight]

what sort of freak ass advertisement is this tumblr????

[rotisseries]

I'm so unbelievably susceptible to the famous secret relationship trope it's unreal actually

[lord-squiggletits]

I 1000% don't mean this in a moral judgement manner, or saying ppl aren't allowed to like evil characters, or saying that silly fandom stuff means people don't take analysis/real world parallels/whatever seriously

But honestly I have yet to experience as emotionally/mentally jarring of an effect as I did hearing about MTMTE Megatron so positively from the fandom (best Megatron ever! best character in IDW1! sad grandpa! compelling character arc! tragic villain!) only to actually read MTMTE myself and go "This guy is so fucking annoying, self-righteous, insufferable, and an asshole, what are you people talking about." ladjskfjsdalfk

Like I get that Megatron can't go from fresh off a heel-face turn to being an actual hero, and believe me I know that ppl in this continuity are almost all flawed/jerks in some way. But MTMTE Megatron was a special breed of annoying to me like. It wasn't just "he did bad things so I dislike him." In fact, the moments where Megatron regressed closer to being his old self (such as massacring the DJD during Dying of the Light) were the moments I liked him the most.

I don't really know how to describe it, bc it's not the idea of Megatron being redeemed that bothers me (I love redemption Megatron), and I'm not one of those ppl who postures about how I don't like him because his crimes are evil IRL (I literally like villain Megatron more than I like Autobot Megatron). There are characters who have done things that I found shitty/annoying but didn't have a significant reaction to besides going "omg what a jerk (chews popcorn faster eager to read more drama)". It's literally just Megatron where I have this feeling of being viscerally annoyed/pissed at every other thing he says salkfjsdkaf