#yeah I'll put this on main. why not

[alfhildr-the-word-weaver]

It's also the inspiration for the title of one of my all-time favorite youtube miniseries, The Guards Themselves!

It's a fun little "the superheroes are being used by the rich to further their agendas and the anarchist supervillains have a point actually, though they're not exactly the most skilled supers ever tbh" type adventure with lots of fun memorable characters. It was basically the creator's film school senior project and I think it's pretty well done as low-budget youtube movies go.

But yeah, in this case, the guards are variously the superheroes, the private security force employed by Meyer (the primary rich guy in question), and the anarchists, and there's plenty of exploration of the guarding of the guards themselves!

Also Kyle (the main creator)'s best friend Ian actually teaches Latin--he plays Big Fist in this--and I'm pretty sure he had a hand in the title.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0u5ZHidq4X4QhFAX9FzSiYJLRen74sLF&si=cd6os_w0rL3OFYs-

(General warning for some pretty gratuitous gun violence, but not too much in the way of blood)

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?

"Who will guard the guards themselves?" / "Who will watch the watchmen ?"

It was found in Juvenal's Satires but it may have been added by someone else

Nowadays, it's sually used in relation to tyrannic governments or corrupted law enforcers but it was originally about the moral behavior of wives and eunuchs.

"Who watches the Watchmen ?" is a phrase used several times in Watchmen

In Terry Pratchett's Watch series (Discworld universe), it's super important and is an acab phrase of sorts used by Commander Vimes, the cop main character to keep himself in check in a pre-acab world when these books were published

*Note : the Discworld propaganda isn't mine. I had actually cut parts of my original list of phrases before letting you make picks and this one hadn't made the cut. However, one of you had asked about this specific phrase and I elected to add it to the form

If you want to submit a new form to vote for it, go for it. Same thing if you've changed your mind about other phrases, but please try to remember which ones you have already voted for

[burgycreeper405-blog]

i dont know why brain made me draw this. i guess i just like sickphone4 that much to make him a frikin "ref sheet" lmaooo

[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

[esoraluco]

Power of SPAMTON

[vividviolence]

preen

[lemon-drop-soda]

Hey, catboy likers

Pspspspspspspspspspspspsps

[fourswords]

shadow's sacrifice being ultimately selfish in nature—wanting to save the one person who was somewhat kind to him without any strings attached for the first time in his short life—is one of the best things about the whole thing tbh. like here he is coming off the ass end of vio's betrayal and being vaporized by the light of the four sword and begging ganon not to revive him because he's absolutely terrified of the light and ganon ignoring him and dragging him back into it anyway and suddenly he comes face to face with zelda, shaking and sobbing like the world's most pathetic little leaf in a hurricane, and like. the thing about zelda's words to him is that they aren't even. about shadow??? as a person??? to be honest???

she looks at him and says he can be a hero because he's a LINK. because despite her previous hostility with him she sees this warped image of her best friend come crawling out of the dark mirror all hurt and scared and "faint and twisted echo" or not...he still wears the face of her best friend. and because of that i think she IS kind of projecting her own emotions about seeing her friend's face in so much pain. i mean, hell, when the dark cloud takes her, it's LINK she calls for. when she KNOWS that shadow and link aren't the same person. but projection or not, she gave shadow the first truly kind words he ever heard in his life, even if they were less about HIS character and more about link's. so when she calls for link, he answers. and that's what drives him to take on vio's image, to aid the other links, to smash the chair into the dark mirror and kill himself to take vaati down with him.

BUT! one thing i do love is that his ACTUAL acceptance of the light came when green told him that he was one of them. one panel that drives me absolutely rabid is when shadow is still disguised as vio and green finds him and instantly starts fussing over him—asking him if he's hurt, if he's alright, telling him to lean on him, etc., and when green reaches out for his hand shadow reaches back for him with his own trembling hand for just a moment before rejecting the offer ("don't worry about me." in the fan translation/"i... i'm fine." in the viz translation) and redirecting green's attention to the fact that zelda's in danger. but when green (the second person ever to be kind to him without strings attached, even though, as with zelda, it wasn't strictly for HIM at first) looks down at him and smiles and tells him that he's one of them (that he isn't alone), THAT'S when shadow reaches towards the light and accepts it without fear, wholly and completely. THAT'S him reaching back for green's hand—when green looks at him and actually sees HIM, as his own person, and still counts him as one of them anyway, even after everything. and given that shadow is still alive once the links become link as a whole again, no matter how much i think link and shadow would grumble at and argue with each other for shadow's villain spree and vio's betrayal and whatnot, that interaction is always going to be present in their minds. it's gonna be like "congratulations douchebag! now you're stuck with me no matter what! sucks to be you!" on both their ends and zelda is very kindly not going to point out that they're both grinning like morons when they turn away from each other after butting heads for the millionth time. you see my vision

[somfte]

Flint was morally correct to bombard all the civilians in Charles Town, no I will not elaborate.

[nerochinchin]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BOY EVER

[carnographix]

Holy crap, Lois, it's Mari!

[devil-kiwi]

real

[front-facing-pokemon]

[gible-love-nibles-archive]

A little video of just Scaramouche during that little dance scene for your viewing pleasure because I haven't seen anyone focus on just Scaramouche during that part

What is he doing (affectionate)

[bonestrouslingbones]

btw ik i said i need to use this blog less like an Everything Diary and more like the secret skeleton sex blog it's supposed to be BUT i may have maybe caved and finally made a sims blog

do you like it

[mars-ipan]

baby’s first babygirl

[goldieclaws]

Got to a scene in FFXVI where Clive is just. Completely naked for whatever reason and the game crashed LMAO

I know this is probably for the sake of Female Gaze or whatever but also his winkie could have been touching the cold floor of a dirty cell, I would shatter like glass if that were me.