#you're actually WAY worse ..............

[mohntilyet]

illario + lucanis growing up together means a lot for obvious reasons ofc like the fact they did not have to go through the dellamorte villa torment nexus alone really helps. immediately from the moment they are taken to that house, lucanis has had something to protect and love. the snark and jokes that they share in wigmaker job finally having a chance to shine outside of the only person lucanis is socialised with and he learns that wow, he's actually likable. because up until this point everyone around him calls him a demon and is freaked out by him but ofc the veilguard only know him as lucanis "he banished harding from the kitchen" dellamorte. sure he's a big bad crow assassin but his reputation simply does not carry that much weight with people who are just equally deranged (maybe a de riva rook but that's also a little different) . and then he's able to share and extend that love with his new friends, and able to try being something that he's not had the chance to before, and his goodness is actively encouraged rather than being an unfortunate sidequest that is tolerated. and i fondly think also of how much of that humor is copied and mirrored off illario ("shoulders....... feeling tight...... need a ..... MASSAGE!") and it's his best experiences with illario that turned him into the man he is. wish the game explored this just a little more because the betrayal would have been made a lot more intense if they had just bothered to show any of illario's redeeming qualities. he has them!!!!! nobody is just born a traitor. you have to love someone before they can become that.

[m-a-d-e-l-e-i-n-e]

I hope leftists who think they’re above voting for president or are voting for Jill Stein or whoever because it’s their stupid way of protesting the system feel good about themselves, especially if Trump wins partly because of your negligence 😍 I know you’re not doing shit to plan the proletarian revolution, especially before January, so you guys better not complain about something harming you that you didn’t even bother to try and change

(edit: changed the last part bc I wrote “…if life gets a lot worse for you” cause that does nottt sound right at all and I apologize for writing that)

[rochenn]

Writing real world AUs for SW is the biggest exercise in suspending ur disbelief because of those NAMES.

Obi-Wan? Yeah that's just Ben now regardless of what stage of life he's in. Dooku? Sorry you must mean signore Serenno. Legend has it he's some sort of Italian. Qui-Gon Jinn? Um. Uhhh. He was born to hippie parents in the 70s that's why. Yeah I know that's kinda fucked up. Don't ask about Ben's last name btw

[vintageseawitch]

i get this sick feeling that certain leftists, especially white leftists, who are abstaining from voting or voting third party & are still encouraging others to do the same while being the loudest at complaining about "vote shaming" 🙄 will be the type, if heaven forbid trump wins, to suddenly go silent on them being far left & will GLEEFULLY turn in their neighbors a la the 1940s if only to save themselves.

they've made it clear that only certain types of genocides count to them, they're ignoring actual Palestinians who are BEGGING people to vote for Harris, & they've been glossing over how trump is bibi netanyahu's preferred candidate because they need to focus really hard on punishingnthe black woman. these leftists are death cult accelerationists who are okay with fascism as long as it affects those who "deserve" it, such as citizens of the US & Ukraine & eventually the rest of Europe should trump win, NATO gets abandoned, & putin gets to do whatever the fuck he wants.

these leftists are vile. i don't care that you claim genocide is your hard line because i don't believe you. say as much as you want on your privileged soap box but i'm not seeing you go to prison for not paying your taxes because last i checked ALL of our taxes are funding this so like it or not you're just as complicit & your shiny slogan words won't be able to cancel that.

I DON'T BELIEVE YOU'RE THE HERO YOU CLAIM TO BE. you will ABSOLUTELY throw neighbors, acquaintances, hell maybe even friends & family under the bus after a period of time in order to save your own skin & please the authoritarians in charge. you're a dangerous enemy.

you have no plans about how to handle a trump presidency & all i hear when y'all claim we're already in a fascist country is you saying that without facing any consequences & you being too stupid to miss the irony. you don't know what that word means & you just want to see this country burn while conveniently forgetting you'll be burned right along with thr rest of us. it's stupidly short-sighted. you're hardly a revolutionary if you're so inclined to suicide. please be for fucking real.

[protect-namine]

cheng weimin and shao yuanyuan abandoning cheng xiaoshi at the tender age of 8 years old gets even more fucked up when you think about how they know about the photo diving ability and that bahati is a school related to abilities

like okay listen. one of you has the ability to go back in time by clapping your hands while looking at a photo. presumably you know that abilities are passed on to children. they can activate at any time, perhaps during traumatic moments like with the twins. one of you went to teach at a school for superpowered kids so presumably you know how this works.

and you think you can just abandon a kid with unactivated powers?? leave him with trauma ripe for awakening abilities? what if it wasn't the bridon photo that triggered it huh? what if cheng xiaoshi, at the tender age of 8, cried so hard wondering about his parents and then he accidentally claps himself into a random photo (IN A PHOTO STUDIO! A SHOP ABOUT PHOTOS!! WHERE HE LIVES!!!) with no one to guide him? what if he gets stuck there??? as a kid???

like okay yeah lu guang discovered his ability at 7 years old but apparently someone was there to help him. and also his ability doesn't like, harm him physically. he's not possessing someone or anything. so we're all just lucky cheng xiaoshi never discovered his powers until he was an adult because like. if he discovered that as a kid, lonely as he was?? he'd be so fucked. oh my god. just thinking about it gets me heated like what the fuck cheng weimin. shao yuanyuan. what the fuck. what if your 8 year old kid with abandonment issues got stuck possessing some random person and he doesn't know what's happening. he doesn't know anything. his parents left him and he's not even himself anymore and he's not home and how does he fix this, how does he go back. the horror of it all.

[heywriters]

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffine. i'll write something

[dykeiism]

@ women who identified as trans/nb as teens but later came to realize that they were women: do you believe that there's anything that the adults in your life could have said to you to help you come to this realization earlier and make the process less stressful? or would your sensitivity to invalidation and rejection have made this an impossible task?

[fisheito]

Me: Everything i make is garbage i shouldn't even bother

The eiden in my head:

Me: Sorry eiden you're right my efforts have value

[vaguely-concerned]

Origins is of course the DA game most closely in conversation with and playing around with Tolkien (right down to the walking talking poetree haha) -- and even more so than most works in the larger western fantasy tradition derived from Tolkien's work that DA:O also hails from and owes a lot of its Stuff to, what makes the game so great to me is that it's doing so very deliberately, and is subverting and deconstructing those tropes and entrenched ideas in some very interesting ways without at all denigrating what it's commenting on. (it doesn't have the almost disdainful undertones of the vein of fantasy that seeks to make the world more 'realistic' ala the more tedious reactions to G.R.R.Martin's work, for example, despite having the darker fantasy bent to it.) among other elements it adopts, what I find the most fascinating is the choice to use the same literary device/conceit Tolkien did in ostensibly only having in-universe biased sources and works to deliver the world through (which I feel is an underappreciated thing about his approach but is part of what makes his world so enduringly compelling and real-feeling -- the feeling of real scholarship devoted/applied to a made-up world. the grounding effect of a good diegetic footnote about source criticism, truly).

many things to be said there, and I'm glad each following game has taken on different perspectives and lenses and traditions to view the world of Thedas through because if you stick with that one too closely for too long I fear we could teeter precariously close to Pratchett's famous and bitingly accurate accusation of most modern fantasy of that era just being about rearranging the furniture in Tolkien's attic lol. and while you could accuse DA2 (my perfect wife who has never done anything wrong in her life to be clear) of many things, that's not one of them, they are pulling on some completely different strings for that one and both the game and DA overall is better for it, to my mind. as so many things in this series: worth staying with and exploring for an installment even if it might get stale if all of it was like this! people are understandably sad about the elements from previous games that they liked which were lost along the way, but that capacity for reinvention is to my mind a huge strength of dragon age as a whole.

(I think Veilguard is coming in as a close second in Tolkien conversation-ness if only in outlining/revealing the worldbuilding that indeed may have been planned since DA:O around the animosity that SHOULD by all rights exist between dwarves and elves in this universe (as per Tolkienesque tradition standards). but doesn't really because you see: politics and the many pitfalls of conservation of knowledge over the ages. our ancestral enmity got semi-intentionally lost between the floorboards of history and you know what. maybe for the best. the humans are already up to so much shit you gotta keep your eyes on them at all times you can't be brawling with each other in the deep roads while they're still around getting up to their nonsense or they'll just pile up even more of it)

[uncanny-tranny]

I'm still thinking about how ashamed I was (and am) with being open about my pain because I am so young. It's so hard to feel worthy of having your pain taken seriously when the people around you insist that young bodies are always in pristine, untouched condition and that you must earn your pain through aging. Never is it considered that young people aren't lying or being a hypochondriac for expressing their pain.

Young people can be in life-altering pain. Young people can have debilitating pain. It doesn't matter what age it happens because pain doesn't discriminate. Complaining about pain and doing things to prevent needless pain aren't something you have to "earn" through aging.

If you want young people to be in less or lesser pain, then encourage them to do whatever they can to minimize it. Don't downplay what they're experiencing. Not everything is a lie, not every experience that is different than yours is exaggeration or deceit.

[catsxratsxbats]

Ultimate favorite horror trope is when the monster is also the victim

[iwieldthesword]

Sounds like you need some new, non antisemitic frirnds. may want to avoid antizionist circles for that.

Hey fuck right off. The idea of seeing someone reaching out to community after experiencing bigotry and choosing to mock them for it is so cartoonishly antagonistic and cruel, you sound like a bully in a Disney movie for tweens. "MaY wANt to aVoiD anTizIoniSt ciRclEs" experiencing oppression isn't a consequence for whatever you think is misbehavior, what are you, Catholic? Antisemitism is not a fucking comeuppance for Disobedient Jews, I didn't earn it or deserve it and it's not my fucking fault, and trying to shame me for it or to utilize it to get me to step back in line is pathetic. Apologize to your mom.

But hey, great news! If your reaction to a Jew You Don't Like experiencing antisemitism is gleeful fucking schadenfreude, I don't have to hang out with anyone else to be around antisemites. You'll do just fine.

EDIT: you created a burner account just for this?? Damn, an antisemite AND a coward, what are the odds.

[numbuh]

i just want to put them in the same room and see what happens

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[protect-namine]

.

[princelancey]

Lance is such a let bygones be bygones kind of a guy, we should embrace that energy more often in sports tbh, it's never that serious