#have to bring the essentials

[piedpiperart]

About to go to the Peace Corp and I am struggling to decide which books and movies to download to keep me entertained for the next TWO years

[ruporas]

it's time to go, my love (ID in alt)

[witchkittymeow]

Dying might seem scary, but being alive is scary already

[ID: art of Eugene from Drawtectives. He's staring forward, surrounded by billowing green smoke and floating golden stars. His expression seems wary or maybe uncertain. End ID.]

[casualavocados]

Learn from who? Learn from you?

Chen Bowen as CHEN YI & Chiang Tien as AI DI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023)

[gaytobymeres]

My essentials for a solo day out

[equill]

The Warden

Panel: No escape.

Ok, now just some silly ideas to share (playing around with the au)

Comic 1: Invading dreams

Extra: no thanks.

Comic 2: Unwanted attention

[arcade-confetti]

Like literally I would absolutely take a boring or nothingburger Jaybin over anger violence route they keep going with like I cannot stress this enough

[writing-is-hard-af]

The way that it's been reaffirmed that Eddie will always have a place at the 118 and the fact that the job Eddie has in El Paso isn't one that exclusively ties him to that place. The way he's been made to only have roots in the house and with Chris. The way it's affirmed that he can of course come back but that Buck pushes him to stay for Chris. Just. the way everything in LA is permanent and everything in El Paso could return to LA.

[macksartblock]

could you do some gothcleats? pretty please

anyone else haunted by snowballs at school dances? no? just me okay

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

In the same way that this blog has given you something to hold on to and look forward to, seeing these comics has given me something to hold on to and look forward to in some bleak times too. Thank you for sharing your art and your journey and your commentary and your jokes. They mean a lot to me and I’m certainly not the only one. Keep “”””””poorly”””””” drawing <3

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey of trying to get by, and learning to stay silly and hopeful.

[kindred-spirit-93]

the peoples princess!

@notsolonedesert ur lovely ctimene has graced my lecture notes <3!! no references we die like my final braincells lol

her sarcasm knows no bounds and odysseus' famous wits have ocassionally paled in comparison to his sisters many a time ;)

sassy lil sister ctimene please and thank you. also stubborn af. idk i need more of them being siblings and and how they grew alongside one another and now tease eachother over meals and reminisce during cold winter evenings childhood shenanigans and laugh boisterously together (they have the same laugh. and a dad sneeze TM) and how they reacted to each others firstborns and and and

[tallymali]

when yuki is having a bad trauma day she haaaatessss to hear my voice. i dont yell at her and mostly im not even looking at or speaking to her. i talk to boyf in a calm quiet voice and she starts yowling and growling about it. i need to get my hands on her previous owners kneecaps🫶

[quibbs126]

I’m thinking about it, and I think Optimus banishing Megatron from Iacon with the High Guard was probably one of the worst decisions he could have made to deal with this situation

Because Optimus pretty much left him alone, outside of his home and I’m fairly certain the only remaining city on Cybertron, so to live out in the wilds of the surface, with a bunch of complete strangers whom they literally call nut-jobs and have a strong belief of “strength of one bot over another”, and are also much older and more experienced than him

And in leaving him with the High Guard, he’s likely isolated Megatron even more than if he was banished alone. Because while Optimus and the others have friends they can be vulnerable with and be comfortable talk about their feelings, Megatron does not know these people, and they don’t know him. But he’s now their leader in a group that values strength above all else, and emotions are usually considered a weakness in these sorts of settings. So not only does he have no one to talk to, he has to bottle up his very strong and raw emotions to appear stronger and worthy of his position, thus making them far worse and probably leading to unhealthy coping mechanisms

This could end up not being the case, and the High Guard are very considerate of his emotions. But it’s also very possible the case that they aren’t, or Megatron believes he can’t be vulnerable around them. They (the quartet I mean) don’t know these people, and they’ve really only seen them be violent and aggressive, and Megatron knows he’s an outsider to them. It’s a more likely scenario that they’ll be harmful to Megatron’s mental state rather than helpful

And again, they’re a lot older than him too, and they probably all know this, at least on some level. And thus, he’s far more likely to be influenced by the High Guard’s mentality and beliefs, which we already know aren’t great (even if it’s somewhat justified why they’re the way they are by this point). And assuming they’re pissed at Optimus as well, they could very well try to have Megatron distance himself from his old friends, and it be more successful than if he was alone

But moving away from the High Guard, there’s the fact that Optimus banished him from his home and left him to fend for himself, which Megatron would absolutely take personally just on its own. He was clearly not in a mentally stable place at that point and I think he thinks what he’s doing is right, he’s the one not being like Sentinel while Optimus is. It definitely isn’t right, but he thinks he is. And the banishment to him could not only be Optimus/Orion standing against him, but essentially him saying he’s given up on Megatron, making him leave his home. And I mean, Sentinel did kind of do this to the High Guard 50 cycles ago, so yet another parallel to be made between Optimus and Sentinel

But note that when I say all this, I don’t mean it as a criticism of the movie, that this is a flaw of the plot. I’m fairly certain this was 100% intentional by the writers. It wasn’t just Megatron that created Megatron and led to the war, it was Optimus too, even if he didn’t intend to

Optimus probably thought at the time that this was the best solution in dealing with him. He doesn’t agree with Megatron’s actions but he understands where it all comes from, and he was someone very important to him. So he probably doesn’t want to arrest him, punishing him for what he thought was right and making himself more like Sentinel, oppressing those who were supposed to be on his side. But he still has to be punished for his actions. So by banishment, he is punished while still being allowed to essentially be free, just not in Iacon, and maybe in turn he’ll see his wrongdoings and come back better. And even if the High Guard aren’t ideal, they did help Optimus and Elita rescue their friends, and maybe he thought at least with them he wouldn’t be alone in his thoughts. Also they agreed with Megatron’s ideals and probably shouldn’t be allowed to just roam free in Iacon, especially in this politically fragile state it is right now

But in doing so, Optimus essentially threw Megatron to the wolves and created the perfect environment for his anger and pain to fester and cause him to become more like the Megatron we know in the future

I’m not sure what the actual best solution would have been to this issue though. Maybe it would have been just jailing Megatron? Granted in the short term, it’d probably sting even worse for Megatron, that his own friend would lock him up, and it’d probably make him even more resentful. But at least there, he’d still be in Iacon, with his friends and people who want to help him, and with Optimus and Elita at the helm, they can probably see that he gets treated well and has access to people that can really help him work through it all and see what he did was wrong

But that’s not what happened

[sunlight-shunlight]

The more concept art gets released to the public by the (former?) art director, the more convinced I become that slavery was always meant to be integral part of Tevinter. Nearly every piece of concept art from there includes it —sometimes even making it center of the composition.

Which makes it all the more baffling the DA leads seemed to do a complete 180. Suddenly, the slavery in Tevinter is downplayed, if not outright ignored.

On top of that, there’s something deeply peculiar about how few POC are shown in Tevinter. For a nation situated in the warmer part of Thedas, it’s jarring to see character after character who looks like they walked in from Ferelden.

I can understand, to an extent, why nine out of ten nemeses end up being white—considered how non-confrontational game ended up being. But when that intersects with a near absence of POC in roles of power, it begins to feel almost racist. It’s hard not to notice how people of color, when they do appear, are either subordinate to white characters or completely expendable.

(The ancient elves, for instance. The only POC characters we’ve seen from that era are Felassan, one of Solas’ agents, or slaves they freed.)

I find it quite hypocritical. Especially after mentioning during marketing all the time and efforts spent making the character creator respectful and inclusive for POC Rooks. That commitment to representation doesn’t seem to carry over into the game itself

the lack of tevinter slavery is..... uhh. i think they were going for "optimism" or, if you believe the more charitable takes (which i do not, bc i don't think the writers were capable of using that much subtlety or research into modern day slavery), a sort of "ohhh, this is actually SO realistic, bc most slavery irl is very subtle, and from the outside, people in those situations just look like they're doing normal jobs!" which elides the fact that you never really speak to a single slave or ex-slave i think. and tevinter is very obviously not doing subtle debt/indentured labour style slavery, it was straight up kidnapping people from all over the place.

so it comes off as more like, in universe tevinter propaganda. where a somewhat liberal magister desperately tries to convince you that his city isn't THAT bad. bc he himself has never really spoken to a slave at length. and really, they aren't even that common in all neighbourhoods! and it's only really noticeably brutal and humiliating when the venatori have them, so it's probably fine otherwise, and a bit better than regular poverty, and all tevinter needs is to Vote for a democratic candidate for archon - [pre dai dorian is forcibly dragged onto the stage by bioware's Centrism Hook, fenris is dragged offstage and smothered with a pillow i guess]

anyway the whole game is so... soaked in canadian liberal white guilt, haha, so i can see why they were too afraid to make the average tevinter citizen look like fenris, or miriam from absolution, or dorian or his dad.... and i guess you can argue that tevinter is a sort of roman empire-esque place where a lot of people would mix, so it's not really necessary to keep that consistent? but also. jeez. i personally think it's completely fine to acknowledge the fact that places like the gulf states/india/many other places have huge amounts of indentured labour and casteism and human trafficking. and if they had a less blindingly white and optimism-pilled writing team that would've been neat for a game to be able to show. and in general i think it would be nice for there to be more characters of colour in fantasy whether it's in "good" roles or not.

[jon-sedai]

It’s interesting how Ned Stark’s dishonor has such far reaching implications throughout the plot. There’s a great irony in how rigid he is in his honor, yet he too fell victim to lust just as many men have before him. It’s not such a big deal if you think about it. I mean, all he did was to father a bastard, and how many men of his station have done the same? So it gives comfort to the rest of Westeros that even an honorable fool like Ned can stoop so low and be just like them. And we see that Ned’s dishonor affects so many characters. Jon Snow internalizes that he’s the shameful product of it and that causes him to join a penal colony, forever driving his need to prove that he too can be a worthy son of Ned. Catelyn Stark is constantly grappling with what it means to be a victim of it (to the point that she resents Jon and fears for her own children’s claims). It’s something that Jaime Lannister references in captivity, reasoning that he at least remained faithful to Cersei whereas “honorable” Ned Stark cheated on his lady wife. Robb probably saw the effects of Ned’s dishonor on his mother and brother, which probably drove him to break his marriage pact with the Freys and marry Jeyne Westerling (something that hastened his doom). Even Cersei dares to make a sexual pass at Ned while being accused of treason, no doubt emboldened in part by the knowledge that Ned at one point fell to lust. And everyone else knows of Ned Stark’s bastard (to the point that Davos gets some random exposition about how Ned dishonored himself on a fisherman’s daughter). Ned’s one act of dishonor is one of his most recognizable character traits and actually has a lot of implications throughout he narrative as it drives how many characters navigate the world around them. So isn’t it funny how it was all a lie?

[asha-mage]

"Sid Meier's Civilization is actually about a group of immortal god kings condemned to forever struggle against each other in a never ending cosmic game in which their empires and nations are but pawns" gets brought up as a funny 'ha ha' joke about Civ, but the thing is that is the most supported reading of the game's mechanics, writing, art direction, and even trailers.

But what's really funny is that each new installment leans harder into this idea then the last. With Civ 7 making it so that leaders aren't even tied down to their 'historic' civilizations (meaning you can't even argue the 'national personification' thing anymore) and since Civs can change while leaders can't, that means that leaders are also the only constant across an entire campaign.

This means, for example, in the universe of Civilization, the likes of Gaius Octavius, Hatshepsut, Napoleon, and even Gandhi are constantly reborn, take up leadership of a small singular village, live for uncountable eons (unless slain by another Leader or dethroned), rebuild the same nation, people, empire over and over and over again with only slight variations, until one achieves victory over the others (be it by sending their people into the stars, building a society that culturally subsumes all others, conquering the world, or otherwise somehow 'winning history' by the metrics they held dear in their mortal lives) and gains...nothing as far as we know.

We don't know if they wither to dust instantly Gothel style, or reign until the heat death of the universe, or begin aging and live out a mortal life for however long remains to them. All we know for certain is that they are right back there again at the stone age as soon as the next game starts, becoming chiefs of a tribe of thatched roved houses on some unrecognizable landmass, with nothing to do but start all over again from scratch. Build the same walls and monuments and wonders, fight the same endlessly shifting battles against the same rivals. Maybe this time Rome is stamped out in antiquity, and maybe this time is launches the first space colony. Maybe Egypt raises up the pyramids once more, and maybe they raise up the Colossus, or the Hanging Gardens, or Statue of Liberty, or the Sydney Opera House. Maybe Napoleon's France finally achieves perfect ideal democracy, or maybe his warring ways lead a coalition of Japan, China, the Gauls, and Sumerians facing off against him all over again. Maybe Gandhi decides mutually assured destruction is the only way to protect world peace. The names change, the lands and continents change, the ages change, eventually even the civilizations themselves change- Gaius finds himself the Emperor of Egypt and Hatsheput the Queen of the United States of America- but the only thing that doesn't change is the leaders. Their configurations vary and sometimes they face off against a newcomer they haven't before, but always it ultimately comes back to a group of immortal rulers- the great and the good, the wicked and the genius, the mad and the unlikely, and the just plain lucky that one and all ended up in the history books- who keep trying to take one more swing, one more run, one more turn at fulling the ambitions of their mortal life, and leading their people to glory.

Because the only way to break the cycle, to the end the game (both in universe and out) is to stop playing. Give up. Stop pushing that glowing little arrow button. Stop following the ambitions, the ideals, the dreams, the hopes that lead them here in the first place.

But just like Civ players and just like humans in general, they never do.