#why would I want to do that in fiction

[deathricedrawn]

i'm ready to try

[honeysticksz]

Henry Jekyll and Victor Frankenstein are either hardcore rivals that hate each others guts and always claim their science is better than the others. OR. Henry can see this 20-something year old with issues and take him under his wing immediately.

[justagaycryptid]

A healthy Leonard

For funsies I’d say he’s a liver chestnut Arabian since his model has a bit of a dished face and it’s the closest real world color approximation I can think of off the top of my head. Actual horse for comparison:

Was gonna design him some armor since in-game he just has the saddle and the chanfron but I got lazy so this is what I’ve got at least for now

But at least here’s he’s got his cute little button knots

Also plaited his tail so it would resemble a lion’s

[lizzybeeee]

DATV Mini-Rant about the lack of Lyrium Potions in this Game

A small thing that immediately made my stomach drop when playing DATV was the fact that there are no lyrium potions.

I did an elective on game design in university and chose Origins as my game of choice for my final essay because I always loved how much the game incorporated the world/lore in its game mechanics! Call it pathetic or sad (I won't blame you lmao) but this series was the first video game that engaged me so deeply with its story-telling that I wanted to dissect it. That's why I'm focusing on the lack of magical cocaine in a fantasy game series.

Lyrium is a substance that serves as a game mechanic and a major lore/world-building element. It's use is essential if you play the game as a mage or have party members that are mages - it replenishes mana in game, its use is central to being a mage within the story (harrowing, rituals, etc...), and it's a major export/plot relevant resource that is important to the world at large.

So imagine my surprise when I boot up DATV for the first time and there's no lyrium potions as a mage character. My main interest in the game series was for its lore and story (RIP) so I didn't look too hard into developer interviews or videos about the combat itself - it would either be good or bad, but that wasn't my main draw to the game. I kept playing, wondering if I would ever unlock another slot for potions, perhaps, but then it was abundantly clear that it wasn't the case.

It's a small thing, but popping a lyrium potion mid-combat has the same effect that hearing people say 'Maker's breath' and 'Thank the Maker' does. It's this little bit of world-building that reminds me that I'm playing a Dragon Age game. It's not just a 'mana potion' or some other glowy blue magic vial...it's this substance that's important to the world and that has a reason to be there beyond rejuvenating my mage.

It's the major export of Orzammar -> the pillar of its economy.

It's the substance that allows waking mages to enter the Fade -> it allowed me to save Connor Guerrin with the aid of other mages.

It's the substance that the Chantry uses to leash it's templars through addiction -> an addiction I encouraged Cullen to overcome in DAI.

It's the substance used in the Rite of TRANQUILITY.

It's the substance that allows my warrior character to take on the templar specialization in each game -> Alistair and Ser both talk about lyrium and its relevance to training (in DA2 you just do it lmao)

It's the substance burned into Fenris's skin by Danarius.

It's the literal blood of the Titans -> lyrium veins are literal veins (such a cool design choice in DAI to make them look like blood capillaries!)

And all the time in DAO, DA2, and DAI my mage characters were downing this substance like there was no tomorrow.

Even though the combat changed in DA2 and DAI they still kept lyrium potions for mages. Even though they simplified herbalism from DAO in the next two games, they still required the player to interact with the world and find the ingredients for these potions. It was this gameplay mechanic that linked the player to the world -> I know that I need blood lotus to set shit on fire, elfroot for healing potions/lyrium potions, etc... It was cool game design, having game mechanics and lore interconnected like this.

(Not saying that picking up dozens of elfroots was fun or the best game design, btw -> but it's just an example of how they linked the world and game mechanics together, and I like the intent behind it! Cool design does not equal effective design lmao)

What do we get in DATV? No lyrium, whatsoever, just healing potions.

Potions we don't even have to work to find or get crafted! Just break some green shit and there it is! We don't pick up ingredients or discover unique flora to each of these Northern Areas for our own use. We don't loot potions or ingredients from corpses, sacks, boxes, chests (etc...) to replenish our own stock. A healing potion in this game is not a potion you craft, made from ingredients you found, it's a button I press on my controller. It's lost that immersive link - especially when your companions can toss another one at you while being effectively immortal in combat.

The only new flora we hear of is Broma's Bloom which I did like the lore behind! It's used in dye to colour the Warden's armour and its growth is a sign that the damage of the Blight is lessening. I love that! That's a cool bit of lore! Especially since it's named after Andraste's mother in a land that is supposed to be extremely religious. Geographically unique flora and fauna (biodiversity) is just as important as architectural design when designing an area - DAI did this amazingly well with the different creatures and plants we could run into in each area!

The first time we meaningfully talk about lyrium is when we go to Kal Sharok for the first time - a decent amount of game time since the beginning of the game, depending how fast you play. And then, when we get there, the lyrium looks like a bunch of crystals from a 'grow your own lyrium' kit. The absence of lyrium from the game world and mechanics is something that was very hard for me to overlook considering its importance to every previous entry. Especially since in this game we address the fucking Titan's and what the fuck happened to them.

Just...imagine playing a mage in Dragon Age and not using lyrium?

This game is a death of a thousand cuts - so many small, meaningful world-building elements and mechanics brushed off - before fucking godzilla comes along and nukes it all with the handling of the main story/lore.

[zvahlne]

i thought about aphmau & levin & malachi & now i need to lie down .

[super-oddity]

i support ambiguous sexualities and gender-blind attraction within fanon. like i can read a fic with a pairing i don’t think would work in canon and 100% believe (or even love) it if it’s written well enough

[sunshine-zenith]

Henry is a Boyfriend Hoodie Thief your honor

[magenta-malice]

I've been sick for the past few days and couldn't focus on Jaxy and now I feel like I'm losing him pls someone help I don't wanna lose the bnuy I miss him so much........

Jax please come back to me I love you.....

[bowiestarzzz]

God I genuinely don’t get why people hate Nightheart so much. Every reason they have is they’re actually just angry at the authors not at Nightheart lol. Like you’re allowed to hate whatever character u want but I just saw a comment saying the fandom should scalp every Nightheart fan alive and it’s like woah okay. Jesus he’s just a cat dude

[wackywatchdotcom]

knowing pomnis favorite color is red makes me emotional and also slightly more in love with her, for some reason

[seethinglikeme]

i think sebastian would’ve grown up to be either a curse-breaker, healer, or professor. he came way too close to azkaban for him to realistically become an auror imo. my hc though is that he became the hogwarts dada professor and one of his students was dumbledore

[wisteriasymphony]

would you guys call me crazy if i said archetype wise that marinette's status as a Plucky Girl-Next-Door takes priority over her status as an Aspirational Everywoman. cause i have thoughts about this

[jenijro]

Hey, you mentioned on a post "#I can do an essay on this whole topic [gay horror podcasts with a plot] and why it’s an important event in history #even though not many people know about horror podcasts it’s still quite important " and... if it's not too audacious to ask for an essay, I'm really curious?

I know Welcome to Nightvale, Alice Isn't Dead, and The Bright Sessions, and I do have a vague sense that Nightvale in the 2010's was a watershed moment of some kind... but I don't know if I know the gay horror podcasts that you're talking about (also I'd so take recommendations) and I'm sure there's more to the history...

So if you should feel like infodumping, this is a info request ;)

Well. I never thought I’d actually get this question but hey, why not.

Okay so maybe I was over exaggerating a bit about it being a big historical event… but I don’t think I am completely wrong either. I think audio dramas are very important in general and I can give you some reason why. And I just want to say I’m not going to act like I’ve known about audio drama for many, many years because I only started listening about two years ago but I will give you what I know about podcasts since before then. (Not going to do an essay but I will yap a lot)

This won’t be just about “gay horror podcasts with a plot” by the way, it will be about audio dramas in general, whether it’s horror or whether it has an overarching plot or is an anthology, etc. It most likely will be gay though. I mean, it’s kind of hard not to do gay.

Now I’m specifically talking about audio drama podcasts because, obviously, audio drama has been around since the 1920s on radio and even before that, so I’m really not getting into all of that. When we are talking podcasts, usually people believe that Welcome to Night Vale was the first, or that it started it all. Welcome to Night Vale was definitely very important to audio fiction (and it’s also really good), but there were fiction podcasts before it or fiction podcasts that came out around the same time that are also well known, now at least, or sometimes less known. At the top of my head I could think of We’re Alive and Our Fair City, but there were definitely podcasts before that or around then, back in the 2000s.

Since then, people have started making their own audio dramas in the 2010s (after WTNV). Let’s see, there’s obviously The Magnus Archives, there’s Wolf 359, The Bright Sessions, The Penumbra, Archive 81, Wooden Overcoats, and there’s so much more, those were just the ones that came to my mind. I can’t say I know how big the audience base was then, but I can say that it definitely grew in 2020.

Oh yeah. The pandemic.

So… 2020 huh? May have not been the best year for the world, but heck, did it give way to audio dramas. Like I said, I don’t know how the audience base was before 2020, but they DEFINITELY got big. And it inspired people to create their own. Let’s see, podcasts created JUST from 2020 itself: Hi Nay, The Cellar Letters, Red Valley, Spirit Box Radio, Malevolent, Mistholme Museum, The Sheridan Tapes, Hello From the Hallowoods, Midnight Burger, The Scarab Archives, Woe.Begone, yeah I could go on forever. This was around the time when more people decided, fuck it, I’m doing my own thing. And fiction podcasts have only grown since then.

Please stick with me, I’m getting to my point through a lot of yapping.

Since 2020, more people have found out about fiction podcasts and even have decided to make their own. And (this is the important part) it allows creators to express themselves. No no nooo, not just express themselves. I mean EXPRESS themselves. No need for any filters of representation. Wanna make everyone gay? MAKE EVERYONE GAY. Wanna make a podcast with a batshit insane plot? MAKE A PODCAST WITH A BATSHIT INSANE PLOT. Wanna voice act every character in the show? DO IT. Wanna use your podcast to secretly (or not so secretly) talk about some real world problems? DO IT. You know that you can’t get banned. Books can get banned. TV shows and movies get banned or cancelled. Audio dramas can’t. Not easily at least.

Please check out this post and this post from @clinical-space-podcast because boy, do they explain a lot of what I am saying very well.

Have I mentioned the gay part? Audio dramas are probably the queerest form of media we have. I feel like before finding audio dramas, I was sort of struggling to find a story with queer people AND an interesting plot. It’s always “queer person slice of life/trying to get through life as a queer person as the entire plot” and I’m not saying those stories are bad. It’s just that sometimes, queer people can just… exist. Or they can be in an actual story. Also, since audio drama opened up an opportunity to more writers, obviously more writers are… writing (I have such a way with words), and this means there are more stories, meaning there are many more GOOD stories that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. So. Good plot AND queer representation?? I’m eating that up.

The first podcast I have ever listened to was The Magnus Archives and even without the queerness, I fucking loved it. The queerness actually surprised me. I was like “wait… they are QUEER? And the story is NOT all about their queerness? Holy shit.” I didn’t know about the entire platform of audio dramas, so after tma, I just thought “oh. I’ll never get anything like this again” (I was talking about a great horror story with an overarching plot and queer characters in said story. Never even thought I’d find a good story ever again). Boy, was I WRONG. Long story short, I found the whole community and pretty much dissolved my entire life into it.

So finding these podcasts really opened my eyes to something new. They also made me realize “hey… I can write whatever the shit I want”. People won’t force me to tone down the queerness. They won’t say it’s too diverse. They won’t say my writing style of horror doesn’t fit in. And this is what I needed.

That being said… I just want to say here that I will be straying from the topic in this paragraph but there are a few things that have to be said about bipoc rep. Motzie Dapul (creator of hi nay) talks about it a lot too. I wish bipoc podcasts were more popular. I can’t say I know a lot of them because they are kind of hard to find, which sucks all by itself. And this is why I love Hi Nay so much. I see people like ME (queer people of color) in this story, while it also has a great story and lovely writing. But the problem is Hi Nay is honestly quite small, even by standards of audio dramas. I wish there were more listeners. And Hi Nay is literally one of the more POPULAR bipoc podcasts. This is just to say that bipoc podcasts should get more attention. Headcanoning a podcast character who’s not canonically a person of color as a person of color does not make a podcast bipoc. I mean obviously, you can headcanon anything you want for a character (as long as it’s not canonically stated otherwise of course), even I do that, but you should just keep this in mind.

Back to topic. I need to say that there are many other reasons why audio dramas are very important but I’m not covering all of it (I’ve done enough lol). This whole thing is just to say audio dramas are important. To me. And hopefully to you too. And if you read all of this, you can see that I’m not great at the whole essay thing, which is why this isn’t an essay, just a shitload of yapping. But I do appreciate that you read all of this.

This is also to say DAMN, I am tired.

[shimmerandfists]

I definitely don't speak for everyone and I'm aware enough to not die on the incest hill, of all the hills to die on. But guys, you've got to care about something more meaningful.

The way I view ViJinx is 2 adults in canon, who don't live together, can't have kids, and grew up for 7 years in the most important developmental parts of their lives without each other and without the others influence. They're fictional. They're not real. They both appeal to me how they look and they're little paper dolls I smush together. They love each other dearly and that's the main appeal to me.

The incest isn't the appeal, they just happen to be sisters, for me. And some people are into it for the incest specifically. That ain't me, I'm not going to speak on that other than I'm not going to go around harassing people for what FICTIONAL content they're looking at. I don't know what they've been through and they don't need to have been through anything all all either. Frankly it's none of my business I simply block them if I wish to not see it or move on.

All that said I try and be a normal fucking human about what I do, like anything else and keep it out of peoples spaces that don't want it. Which as a default I'm assuming most people. I block people who post anti ViJinx. I ask for them to block me. It's mutually beneficial.

"It makes me want to vomit" damn bro that sounds like it sucks but then you go into explicit details imagining what we imagine. Sounds like a you problem and I hope you get better at moderating your own experiences. You guys have GOT to, got to stop sticking your noses in places you don't want to smell and getting angry when it smells bad to you.

I'm sick of having these real conversations every time content comes up that isn't "the norm". You're responsible for your own life and your own environment to a large extent on the Internet. Go, literally, anywhere else brother.

[gece-misin-nesin]

lowkey think that if jorge really wanted to sell us on the "odysseus is a monster thing" he should have had odysseus continue to stab poseidon even after he begged. bc like. Looking at odysseus now? he's less a monster and more like a morally grey protagonist. All of his questionable actions have pretty good explanations behind them. if you want to tell me he's a MONSTER, you need him to do something really fucking vile. without good justification. killing the baby? (also. he fought in a war. i reckon plenty of babies died indirectly as a result of his actions somehow) zeus literally told him he and his family would die otherwise. blinding the cyclops? pretty self-explanatory. sacrificing the men to scylla? bad, but has an understandable reason behind it and you can theoretically justify it. choosing the crew to die? saving his own life+you could argue they are the ones at fault for eating the cows anyway. torturing poseidon? there's literally no other way poseidon would let him go at that point AND he immediately stops after he begs.

point is, if you're going to tell me a character is a monster then at least make them do something that cannot be defended. something that CANNOT be justified at all. continuing to stab poseidon after being begged would have done that. but who knows, maybe the suitors being killed will be shown as something like that? still unlikely though considering they plot to kill telemachus and rape penelope.

[0xeyedaisy]

Aw man...