#mostly just a vent post

[eldritchlittleblackdragon]

Astarion spoilers, cw: anti romani bigotry

I noticed in Astarion's backstory he was specifically attacked by people who belonged to the "Gur" people (and it was via this attack Cazador took advantage of Astarion and got his teeth into him), and I figured that was a bit of Forgotten Realms lore I didn't know about and I looked it up and... it seems they're very much supposed to be a Romani analogue.

And Astarion makes a racist comment about them when you talk to the vampire hunter, who also belongs to that ethnic group.

GRANTED, both you and the NPC can call Astarion out on said racism which is good.

Just. idk something about the situation really rubs me the wrong way, especially since I have heard of the anti romani stuff in connection with the book Dracula.

I feel like I'm struggling to put it into words but its like. Everything else about this game and most stuff associated with Astarion is so well done. But this detail bugs me. Maybe just. Makes me think of the whole stereotype of Roma folks being involved in stuff not above board?

Still love BG3 and Astarion but it's like. Hmm. Not sure about that part. Don't like that.

[ilovedthestars]

Sex Positivity post: Sex is good and normal and fine, and people should stop being so weird about it.

Random person in the notes who is probably engaging in bad faith: #not everything has to be about sex #i don't like sex

Sex Positivity OP: You're actually the problem. Not every post has to be about you. Stop being a puritan and censoring other people

Me, an ace person reading this post: I don't actually know whether or not to feel safe with any of the people in this conversation

[basically-neroland]

trying something different today!!

adoptive dad!dante headcanons :3 blehh

bc i see him like a father figure to cope with having a shitty one and i want him to adopt me blehhh sue me (don't)

also there's a depressing lack of dad!dante stuff that isn't x reader and you have a kid. bitch i AM the kid. if you want it done right you gotta do it yourself 🙄

buckle up, it's a long one bc i think/daydream/fantasise about this a lot!! g/n!reader!!!

however he comes across you, he immediately starts trying to be better for you

he tries to keep you at arm's length at first—he doesn't want you to end up like all the other people he's ever given a shit about. he's scared that you'll get hurt too

that being said, if you need cuddles all you have to do is lay down with him or ask. he'll do it no questions asked

he's so gentle with you, he really doesn't wanna hurt you and he knows his own strength pretty well but he'd be scared that he'd slip up at the worst moment. he just wants to keep you safe

he kinda struggles to show it but he actually loves you to bits!! he tries really hard to show it though

he'll do anything to keep you safe and i do mean ANYTHING. he knew it was risky to take you in in the first place but he refuses to lose you too

comes running if you call for him in the middle of the night. he gets so scared that something happened but calms down as soon as he sees you're fine

sits with you in the middle of the night and will let you sleep with him for the rest of the night if you ask

once he gets more comfortable with you and a little less anxious about getting close to you, he's actually a pretty lovey dad!

so. many. dad jokes. it's actually obnoxious oh my gods 🥀

play-fights with you and lets you win

if you have long hair, he'll learn how to braid it for you. he also lets you braid his!!

will let you paint his nails if you ask

he was almost in tears the first time you drew a picture of you two as a family. he never really thought he'd ever have a family again. it didn't even get put on the fridge, he fucking framed it and put it on his desk next to the picture of his mom

honestly all he wants is to make you happy

immediately teaches you how to defend yourself. not even how to fight yet, just self-defense

he honestly gives the best bear/dad hugs. it looks funny as hell too cuz you just. disappear. because he's huge. you want a hug?? bye-bye!! 😭😭

he's not great at spelling—he isn't dyslexic, he just grew up on the streets. anyways sometimes he asks for help like "hey did i spell this right? i can't tell" (this one's kinda personal, i'm rly good at spelling and i love being peoples personal grammarly lol)

blehh i love him i want him to be my dad sorry not sorry

[sortingmyideas]

I don't understand romance why would you wanna participate in something that makes you treat all your friends like an afterthought?

[oh-no-its-bird]

On top of everything else that's happened in the last month or so

(girlfriend breaking up with me / me running off in the night w the friend I was supposed to be maid of honor with bc her (now ex) fiance came home drunk and scared us, while ofc we also both were in swimsuits and had like NO money or even shoes due to incredibly poor timing / Getting stuck in Dallas for TWO MONTHS longer than I meant to be due to bullshit work transfer systems (and admitedly my own inability to remember that deadlines exist) / that same friend going BACK to her shit boyfriend alone to a city 4 hours away from anyone she may call for help if things go wrong / me now no longer having a place in dallas to stay for these next 2 months bc I was SUPPOSED to stay with that friend but her bastard boyfriend doesn't want me in his house anymore bc he knows I'd tell his girlfriend to dump his ass)

I have now lost my fucking house keys.

Anyways I may or may not be way less active for a bit so this is the formal apology and explanation for that. Sorry guys, we are NOT going back to ur normally scheduled rapid fire ninja content as promised for like. A minute. Possibly. We'll see. Sometimes my own motivation wave surprises me.

Tbh it's my own fault for daring to become a fanfic author tbh. Should have known the "sorry I didn't update, my house burned down teehee <3" curse would come for my ass

[zoneofsmites]

Still laughing about how they didn't want to "invalidate" anyone's worldstate. But that is exactly what they did.

Morrigan is the most obvious, I really cannot believe that a Morrigan who was a mother would have so willingly taken into her something like Mythal if she was a mother - of at this point - a 10 year old Kieran. Maybe she would, but it would be for different reasons.

Isabela is the most annoying to me. She's talking about how "Kirkwall taught her about family." as if she couldn't have been given up by Hawke to the Arishok. As if she couldn't have ran away from Kirkwall and never looked back. If I had met an Isabela from a world state like that, she would never have said that.

Harding talking about the Inquisition also feels like it misses some... extra flavour here and there based on actual choices. Like my Inquisitor didn't do well with Blackwall, and he didn't survive to see the end of the game. But Lace speaks about him fondly and in such a way that I don't think she should if the Inquisitor never 'redeemed' him.

Zevran is never mentioned by name, but what if a warden outright killed the assassin hunting them. Or he turned on them in Denerim and died later? Then explain to me that entire banter Lucanis has with Harding about why House Arainai messed up so bad they went trough several Talons about it. And now the Crows don't take contracts in Ferelden anymore.

At that point the reason that was given to us for the lack of worldbuild choices to prevent 'invalidating everyone's worldstate' feels null and void. Because you have. You have invalidated many worldstates already by bringing back these character or have people talk around them in such a way that doesn't make sense.

[tftjaspasaur]

feeling so desperate to be able to feel puppy again to be taken care of and get to turn off my mind again and float in that puppy space it’s been so long now that I feel like I won’t even be able to get there anymore and that feels so sad. just feel like I am really in need of being puppy and taken care of again doesn’t even have to be sexually

[basket-of-radiants]

Why were you so disappointed by Rhythm of War?

This has been sitting in my askbox for years. I've taken several cracks at answering, only to get frustrated with the subject matter and burn myself out every time. I didn't like Rhythm of War. More than that, I didn't like it in a way that tainted my enjoyment of the entire series. And despite what it may seem, I don't actually enjoy discussing things which I don't like. I always want to talk from a place of good faith. Which is why now that my feelings towards the series are a little more positive, I think I can finally answer this.

I'm going to try to stay away from specific plotpoints and story beats for this post, because my goal isn't to nitpick (if for no other reason than it would take a week to write this post), I'm just looking to talk about my overall impressions. I think that might mean the only spoilers here will be structural? idk, if you haven't read Rhythm of War yourself then you should probably do that before looking for other people's opinions anyway. 

I liked Way of Kings when I first read it. I didn't love it at the time, but I liked it. Certainly enough to keep reading once I'd finished. One thing that made me a bit uncomfy, however, was the war against the Parshendi. They were this unknowable enemy which the book was not interested in knowing. An inhuman army. Their main purpose was to kill Kaladin's friends, or else be killed by Dalinar's armies. And yet the Parshendi, and the parshmen in the form of Shen, did show hints of personhood. And so it bothered me how Dalinar spoke so casually about how the Alethi had decimated their numbers, how the others used the war as a means to amass wealth and power. (It didn't bother me in a "this is a bad book" way but in a "these characters are bad people" way.)

One of my foibles as a reader is that when a book is very clearly treating one side of a conflict with more humanity, I tend to be a bit predisposed towards the other to account for that. And with the Alethi clearly being the invading party and superior military force, there was also some underdog favoritism. I didn't really like how the book treated the Parshendi. This is to say that going forward, the singers would be more important to me than any other through line.

So imagine my delight at reading Words of Radiance and meeting Eshonai, one of the Parshendi, who even gets her own point of view sections! They were no longer being treated as a faceless mass, we were getting to see things from their perspective as well. And it became plain to see the damage the Alethi had done to them. I couldn't really bring myself to root for Dalinar or really any of the humans against the listeners. I couldn't even bring myself to like most of these characters. I still enjoyed the book but once it became clear there wouldn't be a peaceful conclusion, let's just say that I wouldn't have wept for Dalinar and Adolin if Szeth had managed to off them. Like everyone in the book, I assumed that going forward all the parshmen would be turned into evil voidbringers in the everstorm and that the listeners were mostly dead. Except for Rlain, and Eshonai because I'd read or been told that book 4 would be Eshonai's book and thus had assumed she was fine. (Oathbringer spoilers, she was not fine.) So ultimately it was still a bit of a downer way to end the book. 

So imagine my delight at reading Oathbringer, where for the first time singers were being treated as people, full and real people, and where the human characters could no longer ignore or dismiss them. We met Khen and the others, common singers who were sympathetic and just wanted freedom from bondage. We see Venli grapple with the loss of her home. We see Leshwi and Moash connecting with and understanding one another. We learn of a history where singers were the original inhabitants of the planet. Parallel to this, Dalinar is having a truly excellent character arc about confronting one's past actions and acknowledging them to move forward and do better. I loved Oathbringer, for some years it was my favorite book, and I was excited as hell to see what came next. At the time, it seemed to me that there is a clear direction the story is going. Two books about needless war, and then a third where the main cast is forced to acknowledge the personhood of their enemies. This was so cool, all of my feelings from the previous installments were being validated, the characters were going to have to face what they've done in the past and outgrow their militaristic mindsets, I was so sure of that.

Imagine my disappointment when that does not even remotely resemble the direction the story went in Rhythm of War. RoW presented a clear, straightforward “us vs. them" narrative, where every character was totally fine with killing singers. Characters aligned with the singers were either flattened into wholly evil versions of themselves (Moash) or were expected to turn on their side in favor of the humans (Venli.) Because clearly there was no reason good people would be on the side that's all former slaves trying to stay free. Maybe there's some sort of accord or understanding between Navani and Raboniel that I might have found meaningful if the seeds of mutual understanding weren't already there in Oathbringer and then apparently ignored for a year by all the characters.

I have a lot of issues with how the listeners are handled in these books. (Here's some elaboration.) Following OB, I had thought that all my concerns were going to be addressed. Following RoW, I knew they never would be. 

Which is my main complaint, because that's the thread that matters most to me in this series.

I have a lot of other Things as well. Gonna just talk about a few big ones. 

One outsized source of disappointment that may seem a little petty, and which probably is, is that I felt mislead by the premise of the book. It had been announced that this book would center Venli and Eshonai, and I was unbelievably hyped for that. That did not really turn out to be the case. The purpose for their backstory chapters felt less about exploring them as people and contextualizing their arcs, and more about filling in gaps of world history. In the main plot, Venli was a POV character and she certainly played a role, but honestly not a very important one overall. To me she felt like a side character in her own book. I don't think it's controversial to say that the main character of RoW was Navani. A lot of people really like Navani and are happy about that. Unfortunately I'm not one of those people, and I found it all the more difficult to enjoy her when it felt like it was coming at the expense of some of my favorite characters. 

This particular gripe somewhat comes down to preference, obviously everyone prefers to read about characters they like more than those they don't, and it can go both ways. (For instance, on a craft/technical level RoW is probably the superior book to W&T, but I liked the latter a lot more because of my stupidly outsized attachment to Szeth and Nale.) But I do think there's something of a real criticism in how the book would rather focus on the feelings of a queen rather than those of a genocide survivor, and how the former's are given significantly more weight and import. It ties in with my main criticism, I think. 

And then there's how human/human racism had also been wholly cast aside as a plot point. Jasnah fixed slavery so that's resolved, and the only person who still cares about structural racism is the evil bad bad evil villain Moash/Vyre, who is now wholly irredeemable and who you're allowed to totally write off because he's sold his soul to Odium. I've already talked a lot about this. Other people have already talked about this, probably better than me. The writing was actually on the wall for me in OB, but again, RoW was when I fully accepted that this was never going to be addressed. 

There's something else that probably deserves its own discussion rather than being quickly tacked on at the end here, but here we are. This book changed how the series approaches war. 

In WoK, war was very clearly portrayed as a bad and inglorious thing. It was brutal, it was painful, those at the bottom died cruelly and unceremoniously and pointlessly while those at the top turned a profit. Every day was a new horror. The enemy were never evil, they were always just more people forced to go through the same thing. Through the next couple books, it felt to me that even if the characters had accepted war as necessary, there was still a tragedy to it. Conversely, in RoW (and W&T) war is basically a series of boss battles, in between which our protagonists can kill dozens of footsoldiers with barely a thought in the same way WoK had criticized.

Final note on all this, it sucks how we have no perspectives from the former-slaves-singers demographic. Those guys are really thrown under the bus, and seemingly get no self-determination now or ever. It was a glaring problem to me in RoW. Conscripted and enslaved humans and singers probably have just as much ground to form mutual understanding as a fused and a queen. (In fact they already had. In Oathbringer.)

In essence, RoW disappointed me because it left me with the distinct impression that none of the series's most important through lines (well, most important to me) were going to be resolved well. I liked W&T, but I haven't revised my opinion very much about the overall handling of these topics across the series. Maybe one of the reasons I was able to enjoy W&T so much more was because I no longer had such high expectations.

[candyheartedchy]

It’s been 4 days since I drew any of my self ships.

[sunlit-mess]

noticing in your vents—

is your sister okay too?

We laugh, sure, but we both know we're not ok.

[stardust--ace]

i need to delete this blog bro it's not even the cringe demon anymore

[venice-1987]

Someone in the discord of my old college's trans club posted a poster for an upcoming talk on transmisogynoir, but said alongside it "v important white t boys learn this stuff" and like, fine, yes. White trans guys need to learn this stuff, as they can perpetrate it, knowingly or unknowingly, causing harm to black trans femmes.

But it the continued villainization of trans men that frustrated me to no end. The language of their post was just so condescending and unnecessarily snide with their use of "t boys" as if college students are "boys" who don't know any better.

But like, also why single us out. Anyone who is not trans femme and black at the same time has the capability of perpetuating transmisogynoir. White trans men do have an axis of privilege not gained by black trans men, but on the flip side, you're assuming white trans men have an axis of privilege over white trans women, which we really just....don't.

This goes into much more transandrophobia theory and trans feminist theory. Other people have better posts than this one just trying to rant about an attitude within trans spaces that is disheartening.

Trans men are not privileged on the basis of gender. Every privilege that we may gain is incomplete and conditional. Trans male is a marginalized gender.

[queenlucythevaliant]

Just to clarify my thoughts (since I've had a number of people ask me about it) re: Job and cursing God. There's a big difference between cursing God as used in Scripture and how we generally would think of cursing at God today.

Cursing someone, in the Bible, has a lot of depth to it. It's not just saying "screw you " in anger, it's got a sense of forsakenness to it. It's the opposite of a blessing, a removal of blessing. If the blessing is presence, your face shining on the person you're blessing, then a curse is absence. In some translations, Job's wife tells him to "renounce God and die," which I honestly think makes a lot more sense to modern ears.

Job says a lot of unpleasant things to and about God in his anger and grief. So do the Psalmists. A number of the Prophets. So can we. God can take it if we come to him with honest expressions of our emotion, including those not-so-nice ones directed at him. I don't think there's anything wrong with getting mad at God and saying, "How dare you, you bastard" when you suffer unjustly. You can say much worse, I think, without sinning, though I don't feel particularly inclined to give examples. But as long as it's an honest expression of your heart, I think you're doing exactly what prayer is for. You're presenting him your heart with an open hand. He can use that. Opposite of love is not hate but indifference, etc.

Job doesn't renounce God. Neither should we. But I think when you're truly suffering, you're gonna have those feelings toward God either way. He'd rather you address them with him directly than try to avoid them. Cursing at God in the modern sense is actually a great way to keep the relationship strong and not end up cursing/renouncing him in the Biblical sense.

[scourgebff]

solidarity

[gl00mpunk]

everyone and their mom, mainly people smarter than me, have talked endlessly about fallout and especially about both new vegas and 4, but fuck it, i'll add my two cents

i think my problem with bethesda's take on fallout as opposed to black isle's/obsidian's is that they're just too caught up on the Aesthetic™ of it. they try going so hard on the "50's retro futurism meets mad max" visual that they forget why that's the case in 1, 2, and new vegas.

the kitschy, 50's visuals are there not just to contrast the modern, post-apocalyptic landscape, it's there to contrast to how pre-war america operated. before the nukes fell, america was a totalitarian, military dictatorship that routinely engaged in human rights violations that wore the facade of idealized 50's suburbia. and 200 years later, it's the only thing that remains of its corpse. in new vegas, this part of the setting is acknowledged, but it's more concerned on the current culture of the mojave and a major theme of the game (if not the series) is how to build a new society that won't destroy itself like the one that came before (it's no coincidence some of the characters that cling harder to the past are more prone to have evil karma)

but to bethesda, there's no underlying point. the aesthetic is the point. here's a bunch of things related to nuka-cola, here's a quest where you play as a silver age-esque comic book character, here's group of people that treat power armour like 50's hot rods (and i have to admit, i actually think that's pretty cool), here's a door to door salesman but he's a ghoul, etc, etc. there's all this imagery and aesthetic choices but none of it seems to tie to any theme or actually try saying anything.

[tearwolfe]

i keep going on the weirdest blog rabbitholes. i often check blogs of people in my notifs and that leads me to discovering odd stuff, whether it's the blog itself or from a blog they reposted from/answered an ask from... bizarre.