#heapside kvetching

[postcardsfromheapside]

Very elder Millennial complaint of me but:

If this site does go under, I'm really going to be frustrated - not just because of all the fun things tumblr is, and all the mutuals I'm getting to know being back here.

It's that it's "slow”. It's mostly static pictures and text. It's not a bunch of videos vying for my attention (it helps that it's not based on influence or algorithm).

My brain and my anxiety aren't great right now but they would be immeasurably worse if I were actively on the other apps.

I don't know that Bluesky is going to be even a “just okay” alternative.

I'd say this is just me getting old but I'm pretty fucking sure that the way the youths' brains are reacting to tiktok and the like isn't great either so.

Idk. Capitalism is so exhausting.

[postcardsfromheapside]

When you complain "if only X character had writers who loved them," what do you mean? 

Like what you do actually mean. 

I'm about to go on a rant about a particular character I see this about MOST, but this question is definitely not limited to him - I've seen it about multiple characters.

What is it you want from Anders and the writers. Because what it feels like from the posts where I see this phrase, is that people wanted Anders to be avenged in DA:I, or even Veilguard - for some of the characters to admit that maybe he was correct. Or maybe for there to be codex entries, SOMETHING that would hint that the mad apostate who blew up the chantry was justified. 

Except Dragon Age isn't like that. 

This entire series is about people who do awful things because they think they had a reason to do them, and sometimes those awful acts are completely understandable and maybe you can even justify them in context, but that in no way means that the in-world characters *have* to forgive anyone for anything, and the writers don't have to write them that way, no matter how they feel about the character. 

(I already have heard shitty things about Anders' writer, so before you @ me, please know, I'm composing this A of all, already understanding that context and B, also knowing that sometimes writers create characters who give offense on purpose, and that it's okay to like those characters without justifying their actions. Solas, anyone?) 

It's actually really frustrating as someone who is an Anders fan to see people whine "oh, if only he had a writer who loved him" as if he isn't a well-written character. 

The man is obsessive, annoyingly focused on his goals, constantly leaving bits of his unwanted manifesto everywhere. He's shitty to Fenris (although Fenris starts a lot of it and gives as good as he gets), and he probably deserved the moniker Broody as much as Fenris did. He's harsh to Merrill and quite often an unprompted asshole to Aveline. He's also incredibly kind and compassionate, and really does spend almost all of his free time living his truth: trying to save mages from terrible treatment which is only growing worse - most of which we do not see on-screen so shallow viewing doesn't make it seem quite as bad as he claims. He also freely gives of his healing talents, regardless of who comes asking, at great personal risk. Whatever you say about him, you can't claim he doesn't live what he says he believes. And then there's the fact that he's actually quite funny, and when his "moods" aren't on him, his banter with Varric and Merrill especially is very cute, hinting that there's a different person inside of him, had he not gone through everything he had since Awakening (maybe even before). If you romance him, he's passionate and caring and weirdly funny with Hawke as well, two freaks who "get" each other. 

Strange that I've managed to pull all of this out of someone who apparently the writers "didn't love", this rounded character who has multiple facets to him. 

No one in DA:I is required to forgive Anders, regardless of which storyline you take. Varric sees him as the man who blew up a portion of "his" beloved city, who got a LOT of people killed, and maybe effectively exiled his friend. Cassandra and Leliana, for all their wishes to reform the chantry, still believe in the chantry as an institution. Vivienne still believes in the circles. Solas doesn't give a flying fuck about that guy - mage freedom isn't really on his mind, except in that he's pretending to be an apostate until he sheds his disguise. Who were you expecting to exonerate Anders, exactly, with their own limited perspectives? 

To be honest, I wouldn't have forgiven him either, except in that I too have lived in a world where people's rights were slowly being stripped away by an unempathetic crazy person and the governing body that could have stopped the clown in office collectively sat back and in the end did fuck all about it. 

You're meant to think about these things, just like you're meant to think about the stuff going on in Veilguard on which people have been posting metas. Is Bioware ham fisted at this commentary? 100% But it's there. Otherwise I wouldn't have seen so many good character analyses of Anders (and other characters I've seen this complaint about). 

"If only he had writers who loved him" my sibling in Thedas they did their job, you're out here on this cloutless website crying into the void about your favorite little guy. Now go figure out why you need him to be a hero within the story itself, instead of him existing as he is and you thinking about how many people have flawed or shaded perspectives about the people who try, in different and sometimes awful ways, to change history.

[postcardsfromheapside]

i'm sorry, I know logically that there are people who haven't read Lord of the Rings, and probably haven't seen the movies, but reblogging something off me and tagging it with "lotr spoilers" is so funny to me the book was published in the 50's and the movies came out 20 years ago lmao

I really got burnt on spoiler culture when GoT was still running and people would LOSE THEIR GODDAMN MINDS posting everywhere "NO SPOILERS NO SPOILERS" and then be the first people to spoil things the next day. I do think surprises in a storyline have value, but jfc do none of y'all reread books or rewatch movies. A good story is worth repeating, and knowing a plot point shouldn't ruin the experience.

[postcardsfromheapside]

I guess also what bothers me is that there's a timeless quality to tumblr because we're all just passing pretty rocks around showing them to each other. It doesn't matter if the rock shows up 100 times in your feed, it's still a cool rock.

This isn't true on FB or Insta, where the same post would show up over and over *because their algo is broken*. And since Meta sites were originally about who had a cooler rock than anyone else (and then they tried to add other features, badly), it just became really goddamn annoying in a way even closed communities could not fix.

Anyway this is just me yelling at clouds. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Very elder Millennial complaint of me but:

If this site does go under, I'm really going to be frustrated - not just because of all the fun things tumblr is, and all the mutuals I'm getting to know being back here.

It's that it's "slow”. It's mostly static pictures and text. It's not a bunch of videos vying for my attention (it helps that it's not based on influence or algorithm).

My brain and my anxiety aren't great right now but they would be immeasurably worse if I were actively on the other apps.

I don't know that Bluesky is going to be even a “just okay” alternative.

I'd say this is just me getting old but I'm pretty fucking sure that the way the youths' brains are reacting to tiktok and the like isn't great either so.

Idk. Capitalism is so exhausting.