#Capability Mapping

[thisisgraeme]

As learners begin using AI tools to outperform curriculum rubrics, institutions face a growing crisis: assessment no longer maps to capability. This post unpacks the rupture between real-world performance and educational validation.

[xia0ming56]

Fellas is it gay to tenderly hold another mans hands in yours

[memorizableusername]

thog don’t care

[naggingatlas]

watched my friend kass play pressure on stream today n doodled sebastian n then she colored him :) super nostalgic shit. add this one to my collection of butch women on t btw

[corseque]

I honestly just wanted one single plot step that I could not predict given the 10 year wait. More behind the cut, I talk about Emet too, and I'm comparing his writing favorably to Solas' writing and why it worked better for me personally, but I am just talking about the writing skill that went into the games and not the dudes themselves, I love them both dearly of course. idk this is a mess and I am not going to edit it for clarity

For me, the game was a series of me saying

"ok I knew that. cool."

"oh yeah, I knew that. I guess it's good that the larger fandom knows about that now."

"nice, but yeah I already knew that too"

"that was something we've been talking about a lot for years"

"this thing they are acting like is a huge enormous reveal that the characters could not possibly have deduced through simply thinking about it in depth over the 10 years... the fans easily figured out by thinking about it in depth 10 years ago. So you would think his girlfriend would be able to figure it out more easily than we did. Like, why couldn't the game have been like 'oh lavellan already figured that out a while ago' it would have cost them nothing"

"this is something I've been thinking about for years, and now that it's being revealed, the companions' reactions to it are very irritating and jarring and unnecessary and I really dislike the experience I'm having right now, in this, the hour of my greatest triumph"

"this thing that is happening on my screen right now is something that I wrote an essay about 2 years ago describing how it would be a letdown if it happened without the correct setup"

"this way that they're characterizing Solas makes him less likable and less interesting than I have been finding him for all these years, and I have had people tell me 'no, he's simpler than you think' for years but I guess I was wrong, he really is simpler than I thought, so that fucking sucks. I wish I could take that information out of my brain."

"this thing is a retcon of information I have been thinking about for 10 years, and so I don't know how to follow along with this new direction, and I'm not sure if I even want to because it's not particularly interesting anyway"

"aw that was sweet"

"why is it like, so very impossible to have an honest back-and-forth with my favorite character about the dilemma that was most interesting to me about the previous game"

and then, as soon as, like, the other fans had caught up to the Solas lore that was really obvious from the other games, the game was.... over without anything surprising happening, or introducing a new element or plot point or perspective, or a real true twist (or two, or three) for those of us who have thought about it too hard for too long. It was very simple and easy, much, much, much, much easier than I was imagining. It all felt sort of like that Nicholson quote:

The thing was, the whole story was so interesting to think about because in 10 years, I couldn't figure out a good solution to it!!!!! It's why I was never able to write post-game fanfic about it. So I was stoked to find out some reveal we never knew about, some new information, in maybe a SERIES of steps of new information, that made the situation more complicated but also something that could be navigated by everyone involved. I know it was asking for a lot, but they had TEN YEARS, and they seemingly had set up the things they did in DAI on purpose, so surely they had some idea of a complex and satisfying narrative that would reconcile everyone.

The reason why I was expecting this is because FFXIV did a very similar story arc, which was started AND concluded WITHIN those 10 years (so it took the FFXIV team far less time to deliver as well). And the conclusion to the story in FFXIV did what I was expecting Dragon Age to do. So I thought, "holy shit, if this is the FFXIV version of this plot, how much more complicated is DA4 going to be!?!?" The DA devs also PLAYED FFXIV so they were completely aware, several years ago, of a satisfying story ending that was pretty darn similar.

People are probably going to think "oh, well Chelsea was disappointed because she spent too much time building it up in her head" but that's exactly it - I actually speculated and thought about FFXIV's story IN DEPTH NONSTOP for a year+ before its ending came out, and the ending absolutely blew me away. FFXIV Endwalker managed to introduce information and new story elements that I was not able to figure out in the YEAR I spent speculating on the ending of FFXIV's story. It took a complicated situation and revealed several several more facets to it that I was not able to predict, but were very interesting and thematically compelling, and took us all to surprising and climactic places that we could not have predicted.

Endwalker ("end" is in the title on purpose) too, was written to be THE ULTIMATE SATISFYING ENDING for a very long-running story in the exactly way that Veilguard SHOULD HAVE for Dragon Age, so while this complexity is being explored, FFXIV also gave catharsis to many different plot threads that have been built up through the previous expansions, until finally it ends with a bang. The story is desperately good to me, I loved it, it gave me closure for Dragon Age long before Veilguard was even revealed, and going back and looking at its story has made this whole thing far less painful for me.

So, I actually did not have a picture in my mind for how things SHOULD go. I just had the thought "I hope it's complicated and there are points of view or facts that we haven't before been exposed to, and the situation is resolved respectfully for Solas, not making him look like a fucking idiot (lol, the only thing I asked for). I don't even care what happens to Solas and Lavellan, I just need the story to be complicated and interesting to think about. Please, god, don't let it be "solas is wrong and he just needs to be convinced" because that's like the simplest story you could tell with this setup"

(btw they managed to tell Emet-Selch's story without making him seem like he's being an idiot on purpose or can never get anything right, and in fact the more the story goes on, the more you think of him as smart and capable and cool, so it is possible to write.... I wasn't asking for the entire moon)

And I played it and... yeah. Most of the story beats were more simple than I wanted them to be, a lot of them didn't make sense in my heart given the writing from Inquisition. (This is another essay, but if Solas' thematic story arc was always about him needing to let go of regrets, why was his personal quest the way it was? After that quest, doesn't he end up regretting not doing more....? Why did he never really talk about regret during Inquisition? If he was so trapped by regret, why was he able to do so many actions? It doesn't mesh well to me. The whole regret thing was very quarter-baked to me, I don't even like thinking about it.) His story never seemed like one that was as simple as being about one man's regrets, but then, I guess, it was always just about one man's regrets.

Emet-Selch's personal storyline (and the way it interacts with and affects the larger story) is very similar but much more cohesive and satisfying to me. It would be difficult to explain why without the aforementioned 5-hour essay. Emet-Selch's story IS about grief and anguish on a world-shaping scale in a similar way that Solas' was apparently always about letting go of regret, but Emet's story was also very pointedly and beautifully about that one theme for the entirety of his story from every tiny detail, from beginning to end - meanwhile, it seemed to me that they tried to introduce 'regret' as the main thrust of Solas' story only in the short story with the Regret demon onward.

From Inquisition just by itself, the closest I personally could get to a story theme for Solas was his inability to trust others hurting him and the world, but his trusting others in DA4 wasn't really addressed to my satisfaction. He is never required to trust anyone before the ending, he never opens up or makes himself vulnerable at all. People find out information about him, he never really dynamically opens himself. So the personal story I thought he had was never addressed at all, while a new one about regret was introduced that never made a ton of sense to me. And I don't think this is just because of my expectations - my reaction to FFXIV proves that I am able to meet good writing where it goes in surprising directions, as long as it's interesting and thoughtful and clear.

And I think this might be part of what people felt was off about the ending - Solas is sort of uninvolved in the revelations that are about him, and doesn't do much to be part of his own ending. Part of what I loved about Solas in Inquisition is that he is not controlled by you in any way, and so he feels like his own person with a very strong sense of character.

Anyway, Emet-Selch, in a very comparable and arguably more extreme plot position, is very involved in the revelations about himself, he always feels like a very strong character who cannot be affected by the player, and the whole situation is handled with deft emotion and care and delicacy. The story is comparatively very uninterested in litigating Emet-Selch or putting him on trial - the story allows you to simply feel the way that you feel in an organic way, and Emet's story spends that energy instead actually exploring his thematic material about grief and legacy, and the larger story theme of existentialism instead, in a way that is very refreshing and interesting. I've seen a lot of western stories tie themselves in knots over "redemption" and frankly it's almost never been interesting at all. Who cares about any of that. lol

(Now, I guess this is a matter of preference, because some people really like being able to shape a character's story, but idk I rewatched the ending of FFXIV and even though there wasn't a choice with Emet, because it isn't a branching story, his story felt more satisfying to me, maybe because there isn't a patronizing choice to be made for him. He is who he is, and he fulfills a very beautiful narrative role and purpose that no other character could in the story.)

I don't know how this could have been improved to me and still allowed players to choose Solas' ending for him, but I can actually think of a few different methods, none of which involve Rook condescendingly and patronizingly lecturing Solas as if Solas had never thought about a single aspect of this horrible situation he's in before that very moment that Rook lectures him lmfao.

All this to say... idk I'm writing this and I am not going back to edit it so it's stream-of-consciousness. But yeah

I just wanted the story to be complicated on a few more levels than I could have predicted. I genuinely don't care what happened, but I thought of a few twists like the Veil coming down and yeah, I was expecting A Single Twist or reveal to happen. In a Dragon Age game.

I wanted Solas to seem cool and capable and noble and smart, and actually feel like he was as old and experienced as he is.

I wanted a clear theme I could sink my teeth into

Like notice I didn't even say anything about Solavellan. Like I never in 100 years thought they were getting a happy ending where they were both alive in bodies, and I like that we got that, but I would honestly trade it for a more complicated story. To me, if a story is sad you can always write fanfic, but if a story isn't COMPLICATED, that's a much more urgent issue.

These 3 things DA4 didn't give me in a way that satisfied me but FFXIV did. anyway idk the way my hyperfixations work, I completely switch to a new subject so talking about Dragon Age is actually hard for me right now.

[heedra]

thinking of maybe going crazy going stupid and getting a flip phone or one of those smartphones with no internet features

[assiraphales]

one of the funniest things is during all nine episodes luffy did not actively have one single plan except "become the worlds greatest pirate and find the one piece". he spent at max a month? less? at sea and everything he accomplished (taking down FOUR feared pirates in like a week, stealing the grand line map, finding a faithful and loyal crew, getting a bounty of 30 million on his head, etc) was mostly by accident. he stumbles into trouble and then proceeds to become the trouble

[theweirdestroller]

Okay- Not a new project in the sense that I've been working on it in the background for a while. But! For the first time on the world wide web I am talking about

✨Prescott Bot✨

Due to some recent bouncing off of my sibling, this little AU got way more info than prior! It's a Transformers Aligned AU taking advantage of Prime and Rescue Bots! Gonna place a read more because this one might get a bit long. It's really just an outline, but there's so many sketches I have for this.

The story- apparently- starts out in the eighties, somewhere in the south-eastern part of Canada.

A Cybertronian ship known as the Eight Track lands on Earth. Inside are two bots, a mass-shifter by the name of Blaster, and his friend the flying car, Tracks. Along with them are Blaster's four mini-cons, Eject, Rewind, Ramhorn, and Steeljaw.

They take a bit to get used to this new planet and make their way down the coast, going south into the United States of America. They end up in this bustling place known as New York City. There, Blaster acquires his boombox alt and the minis become cassettes to go along with it.

This planet is populated with these humans and clearly, Blaster and Tracks won't fit in.

In a bid to fit in with the locals, the two decided they needed some kind of cover. This cover came in the form of Blaster attempting to write "Free Car" on a tiny, human sized piece of paper with an only larger than average sized marker. One of the minis eventually wrote it for him.

Anyway, Tracks, with his new (and gaudy in his opinion) tag, just sat until one curious human, without a car and hellbent on traveling the world, came across them. "Free boombox and car? Score!" Anyway, this human provided the cover needed for the pair, letting Tracks stretch his wheels without any suspicion, and Blaster get to play music whenever this human wanted.

The human frequently left New York, traveling to and fro, often taking Blaster with him. But every time he came back, the car was still there. It never needed gas or tune ups. And as suspicious as that was, why question a good thing?

And so went most of the eighties and nineties. Eventually, there was talk of permanently leaving New York, which was absolutely not going to happen according to Tracks.

The car no longer started, and the human left with just the boombox. Whoops~

Said human made the journey back to his hometown to talk to his brother about his plans. It was here, that boombox Blaster was left, inside a firehouse.

And that is how, in the year 2000, Blaster made it to Griffin Rock.

Obviously, no one in Griffin Rock has need for something as antique and old school as a boombox. So, once it became clear that no one was returning for it, Blaster was taken to an antique store where he stayed very temporarily, being picked up by one Huxley Prescott.

At some point during his stay with Huxley, Blaster mayyyy have gotten a little bored with the boombox stuff, especially since he no longer went to go anywhere. So Blaster mayyyyyy have carnapped Huxley's van and mayyyyybe scanned it just to drive back and pose as it. In his defense, he was bored.

(I will note that there is a possibility that Huxley finds out about Blaster's true nature somewhere around here. Blaster will pull something like "Oh, I'm just a high-tech prototype robot. You know how it is here" and Huxley takes his word for it. They're friends in due time. But there's also the possibility that it happens much closer to the start of Rescue Bots, upon which Blaster's story is immediately backed up by the Team's presence. (it's still backed in the former option as well, there's just more time in between) Still on the fence about this)

And so goes the next eight years. He plays human music over the Autobot frequencies because there's only one around to hear it. Tracks is doing his own thing in NYC (whilst being pelted with Blaster's admittedly good taste in music.)

Somewhere in the western states, an argument has started up amongst a small team of Autobots about the music.

"Hey- Hey, if it were me, not only would you all know, but I'd be playing it louder." -Cliffjumper

It is eventually discovered that the music is coming from an Autobot (or a particularly skilled human that accidentally hacked Autobot frequencies) in Maine.

A comm is sent and a meeting is arranged. One groundbridge later (much later, as to not be caught by humans,) Blaster is in the Omega One Outpost.

Discussions are had, Team Prime finds out Tracks is technically also here. There is talk of Blaster joining Team Prime. Much conversation in general goes as follows:

"Why are you flooding the Autobot channels with music?"

"Up until you commed, there were only two of us"

"Two?"

"Tracks"

"Why did you never attempt to contact us?"

"How long have you guys been here again?"

"I do believe it's been two Earth years at this point"

"Two? Two. I think the real question is; why didn't you contact me!"

"How long have you been here?"

"Since the eighties man!"

Cue the Autobots later asking Fowler what the "eighties" are.

Anyway, Blaster tells them he has a pretty good thing going, and if anything, the team should be moving with him and not the other way around.

They go their separate ways and Blaster spends a year or so longer in Griffin Rock, unbothered. Until-

"Blaster. I have received word of more Cybertronians arriving on Earth. I was wondering if there might be anywhere for them to dwell on Griffin Rock. Particularly if there is a human you trust there, such as your own, who can teach them to work with humans" -Optimus Prime

"Okay. Okay, totally normal request. Uh, you say multiple, so I'll go ahead and assume they need space. This place's got tunnels under it, so- yeah. A lot of tunnels lead under the firehouse. Chief Charlie Burns is very capable if you want suggestions. And probably the only one with room for any bots" -Blaster

And this is how Rescue Bots starts. There's still a lot of stuff, and different tidbits for different episodes, but this has already gone on for a while, so I'll end it here.

[chillfaerie]

Now that the trilogy is complete...

Feel free to add why in the tags c:

[kariachi]

[Image Description: A map of the fictional planet Osmos V, a planet comprised of mostly land with a scattering of inland seas, the two largest of which could each fit all of the smaller seas with room to spare. The topography of the planet is shown with colors ranging from dark green to red-orange with large areas of green denoting low-lying regions and warmer colors showing higher and higher elevations. Around most bodies of water are patches denoting areas that receive regular rainfall, with brighter shades denoting rain and dark denoting heavy rain- red for northern hemisphere summer, blue for northern hemisphere winter, and raspberry where the two overlap. All together, the rainfall zones take up at maybe 20% of the map. /End description]

Hey! Look! Osmos V has precipitation maps now! So, ya know, if you were ever wondering 'but just how dry is this desert planet'... Pretty fucking dry. If it ain't a shade of red or blue, it's fucking dry.

Mad Ben's world? Everyone else is struggling but Kevin and Manny are sat there in the sunshine like nothing's up playing fucking Go Fish.

[parrhesiac]

It's interesting, the little parallels in the Stargate movie.

Daniel says the Great Pyramid is older than we think it is, and the language, too, and the scientific community balks; the Project Giza staff says the cover stone tablets are older than Daniel thinks they could possibly be, and the language too, and Daniel balks.

And we know very clearly, because Daniel says it in his original presentation, that there is no writing in the Great Pyramid, and then he's surprised by the fact that there's no writing in the pyramid on the other end.

The same culture, we might guess, that created the cover stones on this end will have created the inscriptions on the planet on the other end—but of course that culture isn't the culture of the pyramid builders (or designers, since they were probably built with slave labor), it's the culture of the people they enslaved. (Meaning that as far as the movie is concerned, using the series terminology, the Egyptian dialect is not "Goa'uld," at all. We have no idea what Ra's language might be.) And of course there were inscriptions nearby on Earth, at Giza, because they kicked Ra out. At the other end, they did not control that territory.

[sandmangivemedrink]

if you think "you can't play zelda on a midi keyboard! that's impossible! you're crazy!" well it's not and i am . will be throwing myself off of hyrule castle shortly

[elevenfifths]

most of the time i just look at my dissociative disorder like a problem to be solved like i do with most of my mental health struggles. it’s like the only real framing i’ve ever had for them. wren is depressed? fix it. wren is anxious? fix it. wren is unfocused? fix it. wren is a system? fix it.

granted it’s a dysfunction and it sure as shit is disabling me and there are inherent places where this shit is hurtful and not fun for those nearest to me… but i hope someday i can look at myself and see any glimmer of something other than The Sum Of Your Parts Makes You A Problem/Monster/Bad.

it’s so horrifying to have alters that are fundamentally in opposition to all my core values and not let that spin out into a story that i am foundationally unable to Be Good.

[goldensunset]

SHADOW TRIAD JUMPSCARE

[borealopelta]

doing geological mapping on a section of mars and it's like genuinely crazymaking that HiRISE and CTX give us high enough quality images that i can do it in 1:10000 resolution. on mars. you know. another planet

[evermoredeluxe]

today was very fun as a swiftie. only thing i didn’t like? tree literally having to make a statement to clarify travis isn’t sexist