#me like i cba to talk about this WRITES AN ESSAY IN RESPONSE TO THIS ASK

[trentskis]

I understand you about Trent. I'm so hmm at people so happy and ready to cheer when a confident young black player takes an L. There's been plenty of obnoxious white players this season... crickets when they flop. Hmm.

yeah i'm glad im not the only one who sees this! i can see how he can come across as obnoxious to people (esp rival fans) but it's the way that people (i mostly see it on football twitter) pile on him in comparison to other players and almost take delight in when he has poor form, or knocking him down a peg when something he says ends up going against him. like he's literally trending on twitter rn and no other liverpool player is, and it's all just shit talking. like you said, the amount of cocky white players or white players who have had poorer form this season and i have not heard nearly as much backlash against them!

idk if this sounds silly but i actually love that trent doesn't always try to be palatable it's one of my fav things about him lol

even if u think about how marcus rashford is treated for struggling with his form, how "fans" called sancho a flop for not immediately playing amazingly for man utd after transferring, how there were ppl who actually wanted to chant "you let england down" about saka at the nld?

idk im just like. leave young black players alone they are allowed to not always get it right and their confidence is beautiful to see!

u worded this so perfectly so idk if it even needed my long ass addition but i totally agree

[aldmerii-blog]

I haven't romanced Blackwall, not because I think he's boring, but because he realized that to complete his job he'd have to kill children, and he chose to do so anyway. Like, I get that EVERYONE in these games has killed people, but Blackwall got close to the carriage, heard children singing, and still ordered his men to attack, then left them to their fates and stole someone's identity. I can't really forgive him for that.

(fdjskalf sorry i wasn’t ignoring you, i was out of town)

so first, i know which post this is in reference to and it was admittedly confusingly worded. i meant it as “people met blackwall and assumed he was boring so they didn’t bother to romance him and learn his full story” and not “the only reason people didn’t romance him was because they thought he was boring”. 

and like the tl;dr of my response to this is.... yeah. the whole point of his quest is that he did the worst thing a person can do, but you find that out after you come to know him as gallant and honorable with a disposition towards helping people. it’s supposed to be hard to forgive him, to accept and move past what he did. and so if you choose not to, that’s your experience with his character. 

this all said i’m not gonna pass up an opportunity to write an essay about my mans and why I love him. 

I actually harp on this a lot, but Tumblr particularly has a habit of trying to simplify characters, usually to the end of either making them wholly good and “unproblematic” or making them out to be malicious and evil. Like, I immediately think Cullen. People who love him will insist that he’s done nothing wrong and people who hate him talk about him like he singlehandedly caused the oppression of all mages. And like. No! Talented writers write their characters as complex and messy as real people, and Dragon Age has some very talented writers.

Blackwall is a really complex character. So first and foremost, the fact that he was there and had the opportunity to save Callier family but didn’t comes from a banter with Cole:

Blackwall: You, who heal the helpless... you're not angry about what I was hiding?Cole: You never hid from me.Cole: "Mockingbird, mockingbird." Too many voices in the carriage. Maker, they're young.Cole: If I tell my men to stop, they'll know it was all a lie. Cold, trapped, heart hammering like axes on a carriage door.Blackwall: Stop. Please.

Also important is another banter between them:

Blackwall: Cole, if you knew what I am, what I'd done, why didn't you tell the others?Cole: Everyone hides dead things. Everyone pretends. You wanted to fix it.Blackwall: I'm a murderer.Cole: You don't want to be. You made a new you. You are Blackwall. You killed Rainier.Blackwall: If only that were possible.Cole: You would stand between Rainier and the carriage. But you can't. It doesn't work like that.Cole: So you carry the bodies to remember.Blackwall: I suppose I do.

When we meet Blackwall, he’s sort of this stalwart warrior. He’s not just standing up for the weak, he’s teaching the weak to stand up for themselves. He approves of an Inquisitor who does the same, who is invested in restoring peace and treats people with kindness and respect. He reveres tradition. And I think this is where most people lose interest, because he comes off as everyone’s lawful good human fighter in D&D. What we know about Rainier is that he is a coward, first of all. That he killed the Calliers didn’t come from a position of malice, because he knew it was wrong at the time and wanted to stop it, but was too afraid of his men to do so, and then he ran once the deed was done. He’s arrogant, indicated both through banter with Solas (the “hot-blooded and cocky” line that I cba to find) and through the story about the chevalier who helped him win the Grand Tourney. The picture we’re painted of Rainier and what we know of Blackwall -- they’re like different people. That, to me, shows the depths of his remorse. He realizes the absolute horror he’s done and uses the second chance he bought himself to at least stop being a complete shithead. He was gung-ho to join the Grey Wardens and give himself to a life a service and sacrifice and when that fell through, he did his best to help people on his own. The part about stealing Gordon Blackwall’s identity... I don’t know, I can’t fault him for it because I sympathize. I don’t remember if it’s in the game or if it’s just meta I read once, but he had no idea about the Joining and didn’t know that he probably could have told the Wardens that Gordon died fighting darkspawn and they would have immediately understood. He was already wanted for murder by the Orlesian authorities and didn’t necessarily want the Wardens after him for another murder (one he didn’t even commit). And I think Blackwall himself justifies it best by saying that he traded Rainier’s life for Blackwall’s death -- that he didn’t mean anything malicious by it, that it was better for the world if they didn’t have to lose a good man like Gordon Blackwall. It was easier for Rainier to step out of his past and into a role of service, into being a good man, if he could take on a good man’s name along with it.

I think what it comes down to for me is that I just can’t hate someone who wants to be good, who wants to do right. It is absolutely inarguable that Blackwall does. Regardless of who he was before, when the Inquisitor meets him, Blackwall is a good man. And when he gets another opportunity to face the music for what he’s done, he takes it, even though everything is going right for him.

Cole says Blackwall would stand between Rainier and that carriage now, if he could. Instead, the weight of his crimes sits on him constantly and influences everything he does.

I’m not going to defend killing children, but the game really makes sure you understand that Blackwall has spent the years after doing his best to repent for what he did. If you can’t forgive him, you don’t have to. He sure will never forgive himself. But I find it hard to look at someone who recognizes their wrongs, who dedicates themselves to protecting the weak and maintaining order, who is today changed into someone good and honorable and compassionate -- I can’t look at that person and continue condemning them.

gosh golly gee i sure love thom rainier.

[oh-my--dais]

My completely unsolicited advice for doing your GCSEs (or any other official examination for that matter) - it's super long so if you cba to read, just read the bold :)

1. PRIORITISE YOUR MENTAL HEALTH!!!!! Please read the whole but because the story is important bc there are mini lessons as well. My God, I wish someone had told me this as I was doing my GCSEs. This one's coming first because it is by far the most important. I had some family shizz going on which spun me into a spiral of depression, to the point where I didn't even care about things happening in my life. I completely dissociated from my friends, and when none of them did anything, I felt even more depressed and the anxiety started settling in that they didn't like me. And whilst I hope this doesn't happen with anyone else (my friendship group was fairly toxic and everyone was very self-absorbed, so that could have been partially responsible). But at the same time people won't be able to know what's going on if you don't tell them you need help.

Anyway, I lost contact with all of my friends and I hung out with them because they were there and I didn't want to be alone, but I wasn't invited to any of their gatherings. In the end, after my exams had finished, I told my mum about how I was feeling, bear in mind I'd completely shut everyone out of my life, and she got me seeing a therapist, who I still see on occasion. But it helped SO MUCH, I wish I'd done it before the exam season started because I literally didn't have any motivation to get out of bed, let alone revise. So go speak to someone, it can be a close friend, a parent, a sibling, or even a teacher, don't think you have to get a therapist if you can't afford one or anything. But telling someone about how you're feeling will definitely help.

Bear in mind also that I didn't even realise how bad I was being affected until recently after I got out of my funk, I genuinely thought I was fine at the time (the reason I spoke to my mum was that I was having awful panic attacks before my exams, which were partially brought on by the insane amount of coffee I was drinking to counteract the insomnia).

Wow that was long.

Tl,dr; Speak to someone about the way you're feeling, and recogise that you might not be doing ok and keep your friends close.

2. Don't be afraid to cut out parts of your essays. This is so so so so so important when it comes to essay writing. Even if you think it's a good point, don't be afraid to cut it out. Examiners want to see that you're able to be consice and are able to select the most important parts. English literature coursework, my draft was SEVEN PAGES, front and back, three times the word count, and my teacher just handed it back to me and said that she wasn't marking all that but so far it's very good. So I went home and cut out 6 of the 9 body paragraphs and guess what?

One hundred per cent!

A similar thing happened in my actual Eng Lit exam where I only wrote two body paragraphs and when I told all my friends they kinda looked at me like "errrr" because it was obvious that I hadn't written enough but guess what?

One hundred fucking per cent, again, the first person to do it in my school for 5 years.

So get your points your main points and select the ones which you can put the most analysis into (because that's where you get your main marks).

3. Choose your A-levels wisely. Please please please, for the love of God, DON'T do what you're good at at GCSE. Do subjects which you enjoy and are genuinely interested in, I don't have an anecdote for this one, well I do but I think that's just the main point: if you just do subject purely because you're good at it, you will HATE it at A -level, trust me on this, choose subjects which you wouldn't mind reading a non-fiction book about, or enjoy learning about/would learn about outside of the syllabus.

4. Schedule your revision timetable around your extracurriculars. If you cut out your hobbies/are changing your regular routine too much, you aren't going to be able to stick to it, and set a limit for the amount of revsion you're allowed to do each day and have rest days ever so often (I did 4.5 hours a day with a rest day every 4 days).

5. Practice papers are your best friend. Exams aren't testing what you know, they test whether you're able to apply that knoweldge to other situations, this is something you'll definitely need to know for maths. A boy I know got 11A* in his exams (bearing in mind that the standard for most schools are 9/10 GCSEs i.e. he took an extra exam for which he taught himself the course), and he said that he only ever revises by doing practice papers. He isn't just one example, everyone who I know who got at least 6A*s said that they just used past papers.

I also watched a Ted Talk about how practice papers are the most effective revision technique.

Hope this helped :D