#I just HAD to get this out of my system

[vincent-is-vintage]

Tedesco babygurl

“The Patriarch of Venice”

Prints

[nvaderxim]

"We made the best out of the time we had."

[isettreesonfire]

Walmart or smth Idk I wasn't paying attention

[ethan-elliott]

thinking once again about Edwin in Hell the second time, and about how this is (presumably, based on his reaction) the first time he’s seen his reflection since he was killed. and he hasn’t aged, of course, but it’s hard to reconcile the bloodied, battered face that stares back at him with the boy he used to be. it’s just another thing Hell took from him, he supposes. he doesn’t look a day older but there’s a heaviness to his gaze, the depths of everything he keeps hidden away so much deeper. because so little has truly been reconciled, and so much more torment has been added. and yet, he’s still in there. underneath the blood (physical and metaphorical), like the ship of Theseus he is remade entirely and yet, perhaps, it is still him. at least, he can only assume. he does not remember much of before Hell, only the during and the after, in stark, brilliant detail. his life as an actual, living human being is somewhat of a blur. he hopes they remade him exactly as he was before. that he is still in the same image that God, if He exists, made him, and not Hell’s mockery.

and part of him is horrified. because he is old far beyond his years and yet his face remains the same. he feels he should have been changed irreparably. that his appearance should match the ugly, twisted thing that sits deep inside him like poison

(he knows that, as a ghost, he could control such things, and appear as the hell-ravaged soul that he is. but that wouldn’t be good for the business. besides, sometimes he thinks certain clients can tell. not enough to name their unease but an overwhelming sense of wrongness his very being exudes. that this is what could happen to them, should they end up the wrong path)

and then he enters Despair’s realm, and it is full of mirrors

[catscidr]

im trying to be productive but pv and smilk are all i can think about rn

like, personally, i think pv would have a blockier, rectangular build with strong shoulders (because why would the healer need to be Built if not just because it's. kinda funny. and hot. consider your expectations Subverted) his body mass is a nice balance of firm and soft, too.... he's sortof a wall but not in an intimidating way. you know you're safe with him, even if he's a very passive person

and i'm a firm believer in lean, slight sleeper build smilk. his waist is a million yards away and it makes his shoulders look wide but they're not he's just that snatched. illusions baby!! (which is also very fitting considering his character HA taps temple. im so smart gyuse). his legs are nice and slim too, which only accentuate his inverted triangle body shape, and he's more soft than firm... but you wouldn't know that since he would rather die than be truly comfortable around anyone, hence him being so stiff all the time. relax man your pecs are too hard to squish

.......which leads to how badly i need to be sandwiched between them rn god help me

face smushed in pv's chest, a gentle hold on your waist, smilk behind you with his hands just a biiit lower, right there on the widest part of your hips. pressing himself up against you because why would pure vanilla get to be face to face with you that's not FAIR it should be HIM and an argument between him and the human embodiment of patience ensues right above you. all the while you're thinking about how you wouldn't mind asphyxiating to death if it meant you could die with your face buried in pv's pecs

[betweenblackberrybranches]

Oh look its a new friend

[pickled0ctopus]

No spoiler personal and honest opinion about Dragon Age the Veilguard

[😀]

Battle is really fun. Even though I love DAO, I’m not typically a fan of tactical combat, and this might be the first DA game where I actually enjoyed the battle.

I like the expanded companion quests. I loved Lucanis' the most.

Semi-realistic comic style works better than I’d expected. The visuals and animations were solid overall, at least for me (still thinking about how Lucanis looked at Rook in that romance scene 👁️👁️). Except for the heavy filters and flashy effects; those were a bit much.

[😐]

Too much repetition. The game recaps constantly, which becomes dull. Like they worried old DA fans won’t remember what just happened a minute ago.

Romance isn’t big compare to previous games. Honestly feels like the weakest romance content of any DA game (well I only remember how much I loved and giggled so much in the old games). Maybe it’s because events in this game unfold so quickly? Just don't expect the same level of content as in DAI. Though, this is just my issue—if you don’t care about romance, it’s fine.

Unfinished story potential. There’s good material here, but it feels half-done. A shame... really.

Choices feel fake. You get three dialogue options, but they’re just slight tone variations of the same line. If you like to playing a jerk in BioWare games, you might be disappointed.

Inconsistent story details. I’m not a lore expert and don’t remember all the characters, but even I noticed some parts didn’t add up well—almost like the writers forgot details from past games too so they just brushed them off. Also removing many choices from earlier games didn’t help; it only made things more questionable.

It’s a fun game that I enjoyed a lot and will replay it just to see Solas again, but do I love it as a DA? I'm not sure.

It’s not about new setting or tone. I was fine with a fresh protag. But now, after finishing this, keeping the Inquisitor as the protag for this end of the Dread Wolf saga would’ve made much more sense to me. I would’ve loved to see the old, ragged Inquisitor raging again like in Trespasser, and give a proper farewell to both the Inquisitor and Solas, whether you swore to save him or not. The writing in this game seems just lacking. In any case, I was just glad to see Solas again and listen to him talking💓 Gareth really nailed it again. The emotion in his voice, I just 😭 I swear Garrus and Solas can send me with their voice alone. Now, I'll just go and sobbing in the corner👍

[ikilledtvguy]

watched dear evan hansen for the first time like. a day or so ago + in the performance i watched during sincerely me , connor stroked jared’s chin after the whole “but not because we’re gay!” part. and my brain activated. yaoi

[cloudysarts]

this piece of merch would be really super cute if it wasnt for the Implications. so i redrew it with my redesigns from an au where stolas and blitz are actually good for each other

i don't support vivzie//pop or her shows. reference image under the cut

[catwiphone]

saw a cool art refernce and i kevin dayified it full version coming soon this is just a sketch !!

[raviola-triggers]

my little sillies

[telestorm]

try it, bite it, lick it, spit it. 2k+ words. modern au, mel and samira in a nightclub bathroom. inspired by guess (remix) by charli xcx & billie eilish.

[gizmogirz]

Okay fiiiiine since everyone wanted me to draw Dan SOOOOO BAD (crickets)

[anthraxplus]

lrb i actually got dogpiled on the least transmisogynistic forum (iykyk) for pointing that out. someone asked what to rename the futa thread to be "inclusive" (off to a great start) and i said it wouldn't be possible to be polite because it's basically just the spectacle of a trans woman with a big dick. so many people jumped at me and tried to say that "actually it's just a cis woman with a dick / she drank a magic dick potion / etc" over and over again and were just absolutely allergic to the idea that art of a woman with a dick would ever be construed as a trans woman. a (very prominent!) sfm porn maker jumped in to froth at the mouth about how he always corrects his fans when they claim certain characters are trans because "being trans is a lived experience 😇" and he thought he was being so respectful about it. a fellow tgirl on the forum even went so far as to say i was being exclusionary because not all trans women have penises (ok but what about all the ones that do because they either want to keep it or they cant afford surgery. please think with your brain for a second). people are downright incapable and unwilling to accept that any of the porn they consume might translate to a real demographic, they just want to jerk off in their mind palace and never think about anything that exists in the real world that possibly aligns with what they just busted to. we don't exist to them, not really. we're goon fodder. and if we say we don't want to be that, they look at us like we're crazy. and then they kill us.

[through-the-rabbit-hole]

I'm reading Babel, and, in regards to the research projects that the Hermes Society has been undertaking, there's a footnote attached that essentially complains about how white European translators add too many footnotes with explanatory context in non-European texts, thus leading the reader to read the text the way they want it to be read.

And I just find this funny, because this is the exact criticism I have of R. F. Kuang's use of footnotes. I wonder if she added it in some bout of self-awareness, or if it was just another fun fact. ( Long ramble under the cut. )

Don't get me wrong, the added context is appreciated; there are a lot of people ( myself included ) reading Babel not because they have an extensive knowledge of the 19th century and Victorian England, but because they heard the book is good and popular. The historical context helps the reader understand the circumstances of a situation or the character motives much better.

But it also has a flaw I always notice in a book, which is when the author's voice intrudes upon the narrator's voice. You can clearly hear the author's own grievances and opinions in the tone and the language, even in the choice of highlighted facts. On one hand, I get it: a Chinese-American author is writing a story set in colonial England, told through the third-person lens of a Chinese boy. The story is steeped in commentary about colonialism and racism, and when the protagonist you're following is directly affected by the issues raised in the book, you would expect to see a lot of criticism of said issues. It would he decidedly weird if it wasn't this way.

However, Kuang specifically wrote Robin as someone who is not entirely immune to lies and propaganda. Robin is not as educated, nor did he suffer humiliation at the hands of the white European bourgeoise as, say, Ramy did. Robin is not, at all times, as critical of Victorian England as the real author is, and as the real author likes to emphasize. So in this case, the author is speaking over the narrator when she adds footnotes providing further context that carries her subjective tone. It pulls the reader out of the text, reminds them that this is the real author's opinions and observations; not Robin's.

The funny thing is that I'm not saying an author isn't allowed to show their feelings on a subject unless the author is also the narrator of the book. In fact, R. F. Kuang achieves this in Babel consistently and within full reason: the characters have all the right to point out and discuss the prejudice and injustice they're facing, as well as many other topics that Kuang is clearly passionate about ( this even applies to the discussion of different topics in the field of linguistics in the book ). Like, yeah, of course they would! And this is the ideal place for the real author to do so, where they won't interject themselves into the book.

But by doing so in the footnotes (which, I have never seen so many and such wordy footnotes in a book before), and at times throughout the book, the real author does what, to me, she is exactly complaining about. ( I also have to complain, briefly, about how awkward these sometimes feel, almost like the author wanted to say something more but didn't know where to put it, so it was all thrown into the footnotes. ) I don't think this is a matter of whether these footnotes are objectively correct or not. Her criticism was that non-European texts were burdened with context from white European translators, which implies that this context was subjective, incorrect, misleading, or at the very least, trying to lead the reader to think about the text one way or another. And I agree; context should be objective, it should help fill the gaps where the majority of the reading audience might not be as knowledgeable about a topic, event or person, might not understand a quip or comment because of the missing context.

But Kuang doesn't incorporate these seamlessly enough. In fact, these would be much less jarring, if not at all, if the book was written from Ramy's or Victoria's point of view. Because they're much more aware of the world they live in, are more resistant to and firmly critical of colonial England just like Kuang, because this kind of context, even if it slightly carried the author's voice, would match Ramy's or Victoria's better than Robin's. The point isn't whether Kuang is right to point out the many injustices of the white European man, and whether the white European man is right to add his own context to a non-European text.

The point is how they do it, how prominent their voices are, how much they affect the way the reader will consume and experience and view the book. When you blur the lines between fictional and real communication, when the author is not covert enough in a heterodiegetic narrative, you form a direct, unobstructed line between author and reader that, in this instance, feels out of place. The reader will have to wonder, while reading the text, whether it's the author or the narrator speaking to them, and how this might affect their perception of the events of the book.

Feel free to disagree with me on this, and also I fully admit I am not that well versed in narratology (which is why the terminology is a bit all over the place). In fact, I would appreciate insight from someone who is more knowledge about it than me. These are just my personal feelings on how the author unnecessarily interjects herself into the book, when I feel like it's something that could have been changed during the editing process. I can tell she struggled a lot with the footnotes, because she had a lot more to say without knowing how to add it seamlessly into the book.

(I might revise this, too, at some point in the future; halfway through writing this I stumbled upon Manfred Jahn's Narratology 2.3: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative, and now I'm super curious about it.)

[lab-gr0wn-lambs]

A brief review of The Walking Dead