wait how did kolya die. im p sure it was a long time ago during one of olya's stalker missions or whatever but i dont know the details. what happened to u funni man
dissolved in the grinder. in the incident where olya lost her eye and sergei got all fucked up. it's depicted in the mill n you can see sergei's scars in that one scene in punch it, punk! and some official art. i think nikita got his neck scar there too. iirc sergei saved olya instead of kolya and nikita (kolya's brother?? i think??) was upset at him for it, which.. understandable but also that's a really fucking hard decision to make.
my thing is we never saw his exact death, and we don't know if olya, sergei, and nikita saw the moment he died either (plus trauma kinda changes memories so they may remember it differently); we only know the aftermath. meanwhile with nikita we saw him get shot and like.. heard / saw his final thoughts in message lost (very underrated song btw i sometimes just go listen to it on loop for a bit). it's extremely unlikely that kolya is alive and is probably just getting attention / spotlight bc yura is becoming more entangled with the stalker lifestyle and therefore closer to both past and present stalkers, but i think it's a funky theory and fun to speculate on. i also just rlly like kolya's design, he feels like he'd be fun to chill with (i know nothing about his personality). if he's actually well and truly dead i won't be too fussed abt it but i like theorising lmao
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Blitzø's Name In The End Credits
A while ago, I saw someone point out that Blitzø's name on recent episodes (in the credits) had an X over the O and went to check it out. It turned out to be true and decided to keep track of it until it'll change again.
I wasn't going to search deeper than that, mostly waiting on how it'll go but I decided to check if it was any different than the ø that we're supposed to know. So...
When I saw this in season 1 episode 1, my jaw was on the floor.
I'm sure people have pointed this out before, I've only seen about the recent X over the O but I'm sure this ain't new. Part of me had noticed but when months pass between episodes and you don't actually pay attention to the credits, the change is so minor that it kind of never happened in my mind.
But the fact of the matter is-
all of season 1 had Blitzø's name written with the o. No "silent O", just Blitzo. Until...
Queen Bee.
If people were around, they know Queen Bee did not release after Ozzie's but we're pretty certain it was done way before season 2 began (even though it released in the middle of it). Anyway.
Maybe the change from the o without a line and the ø with the line wasn't so weird when it happened, especially since season 2 was out and the change had already been implemented, as seen below ↓
But it only lasts up until Western Energy. After that...
The X appears.
This is definitely on purpose, I simply can't figure out the purpose. My only theory is that it's supposed to represent Blitzø's declining mental health and severe self-hatred/low self-image taking a hold. I do not know. I can only point out the events on the previous episodes before the changes were done.
Ozzie's/Finale: Blitzø was faced with his past in the most disastrous way, ending with the start of his relationship with Stolas falling apart. His self image crumbled further.
Western Energy: Blitzø was faced with the fact that Stolas can get/be hurt. His view of the immortal/untouchable Stolas crumbled. Assumption, he might blame himself for not being there.
I don't know, I'm just thinking and I'll probably be obsessed with this until we see what else they do.
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I think people forget with Cullen, and characters like Cullen, that indoctrination is a thing. We're lucky to live in an age where we have a surplus of access to resources that allow us to think critically on the structures around us, to the point where we overlook that most people won't and haven't. Cullen was raised in a backwater village where the main educators and leaders were Templars. He was likely taught scripture by Chantry Sisters, he possibly learned to read and write through them. From the day he was born, he was being taught to love and obey the Chantry with out question--and the Chantry teaches that Templars are a force of good.
So I ask you, how the hell was Cullen, at eight or thirteen years old, going to learn about the crimes of Templars? How was he going to unlearn propaganda that was fed him to him every day by people he respected and possibly loved? How was he supposed to be aware that this idolized image of Templars being the saviors of the people and even mages was a lie?
And then he gets shipped off, happily, to be trained a Templar. Again, he's put into this position where he's fed nothing but propaganda. He doesn't get a real taste of the Order being corrupted until he's out in Kinloch and he's not sure what the hell to do because what he's seeing isn't jiving with what he's been taught for nearly two decades. So yeah, he tries to justify it, he tries to have his cake and eat it too by reasoning that mages should be treated like people but also the Order wouldn't lie to him, so they must be right to act like this. The Maker always had a plan, right?
If Cullen had been lucky, maybe he could have realized earlier on that the Order was abusing mages, that he had been tricked, he could have gotten out and unlearned the bigotry that was planted inside him.
But then BAM! the Broken Circle happened and I don't see how no one gets how perfect this is for the Order? They now have a templar that is so traumatized by mages, he will literally do and say anything to justify their abuses because now? Now he's afraid.
And remember, after Origins, Cullen becomes so erratic, he has to be sent off to a Chantry to 'even him out'--where he was more than likely manipulated even further by the Chantry to be this blood thirsty agent for them. When he's shipped to Kirkwall, they could have not delivered to Meredith a better second in command.
So yeah, is it really surprising that he says shit like 'mages aren't people like you and me' when we meet him in Kirkwall? Man is sleep depraved by the looks of him, swallowing all Meredith's frenzied rhetoric on blood mages, he's seeing for himself the damage these mages are doing, he's isolated from his family, he has no actual friends, and he's living with C-PTSD among other issues. Even under the best of conditions, none of what he says or does in DA2 is surprising when you put it all together.
And yet, the man still had enough of that idealistic child left in him to realize see that Meredith was going off the deep end and that he should be protecting the mages. That's text. That's in World of Thedas. The reason why Cullen is able to turn on Meredith in the end is because he was able to see, even clouded by his fear and hatred, that what she was doing was wrong.
And all this isn't to excuse Cullen's wrongs. It's weird how every time someone brings up Cullen's history, it's assumed that it's just a justification for his actions. It's not, it's an an explanation. Cullen was a victim of the Order that became an abuser, a tool, and he is responsible for his actions.
But the thing is, by DAI, Cullen is well aware of his sins and he actively works to better himself by leaving the Order and getting off lyrium (which for most people is a death sentence). People can argue all day about whether or not Cullen's arc in DAI redeems him or was satisfying, or if he did enough to 'prove' that he was sorry or--good god--does he deserve redemption in the first place (which is such a Catholic way of looking at shit by the way; no one 'deserves' redemption; you do it to be better or you fucking don't) but the fact is that Cullen says that he wants to be better, that he sees the Order as--at the very least--flawed.
That, yes, he's still unlearning all the bigotry he held as a younger man and he's ashamed that he was like that to begin with.
You can hate him all you like, and whatever, but Cullen's story--intentionally or not--is about a man born into an oppressive society, raised to uphold its beliefs, used and abused by it, and then awakening to those lies and trying to free himself from those beliefs so he could be a better person.
And sometimes I genuinely wonder if the reason so many people hate Cullen is because they themselves might have dealt with something similar in our own oppressive society where they also had to unlearn harmful bigotry and maybe, just maybe, he hits too close to home.
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So I was right.
It wasn't the first time our grave siblings were caught by their mom in a very compromising position.
This proves that this has happened before and quite a lot, dare I say.
For Renee graves, a mother who neglected her children and was away most of the time to catch onto their act, it must mean they've done this often behind the scenes and the fact that she's incredibly observant in catching these details, too.
(Clearly, she didn't want to raise them afterall they were just a 'disappointment' and 'embarrassment' in her eyes.)
Look how quickly he spun up a cover story
The way he tries to laugh it off to make it appear normal even tho he seemed nervous. He always got his word cards arranged in situations like these.
I'm so excited to see more of his goody-boy mask break as his devious side finally reveals in full display.
Episode 3 is surely gonna be interesting.
—------------------—
Andrew andrew, what have you done this time?
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Behold, The Meme Jacket
This jacket arrangement position is called "LOOK AT MY ARMPITS."
Here's a close-up of the collar and lapels with the jacket laying normally:
The snaps on the lapels hold them open, but can also be snapped closed, which is nice on windy days.
Here's the front of the jacket as it's intended to be seen:
I was very particular about how I designed and arranged these: much like how the back only has color in the middle, I wanted to keep the bright colors to the center. The two brightly colored patches are meant to read like a two-panel comic, or some sort of call-response thing, whatever. The patches along the bottom are meant to read left to right, almost like a four-panel comic. (The Awesome Face patch is just there because it fit.)
What's not obvious from these pictures is that there are inside pockets, which connect to the zippered side pockets! I don't tend to actually use this feature very much, but it does make the pocket space hugely tall in there.
Another feature I don't tend to use very much is the zip-off sleeves. I think I've only ever taken the sleeves off once (plus a few times when sewing patches on, to make it easier to reach where I was working).
The googly eye buttons are holding up moderately well - I might need to replace one of the eyes by next year. If you're gonna do this yourself, you gotta put a metal keyring of the same size behind the googly eye! Wrap the keyring in a piece of fabric (I used the tubular bit from the bottom edge of a t-shirt), and sew it to the button band. Then, glue the googly eye onto the fabric with enough glue to also glue the fabric to the keyring. (I used superglue for this.)
All in all, it's been an incredibly fun project, and one that I get lots and lots of use out of! I'm sure I'll add to it at some point, but I'm calling its current state "done (v1.0)".
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