#note 5

[loislane-ana]

💙💛🗽, TECHNOLOGY, UKRAINE, ZELENSKYY, handheld xbox, note 5, car restoration

[rivetgoth]

It's honestly crazy that discussion around testosterone HRT skews so much towards the beginning stages of it (to the point that you have dozens of guys thinking their transition is "failed" if they don't pass by like a year in lol) and what the initial changes of the first couple of months to years look like, like the classic laundry list of those early basic changes like bottom growth, voice drop, etc, when IMO literally none of that compares remotely to the depth and intensity of the long term total masculinization you start to experience like 3-5+ years in.

[gorofeet]

I dont understand how people think “but they killed people!” Is everrrr going to convince me to hate a fictional character. I actually like them more because they killed people. In fact, its the main thing I like about them. I would cheer with pom-poms at the mere implication of them killing again.

[800db-cloud]

is this anything

[setaflow]

The dichotomy of Brennan helping with ability score rolls for newer players:

Titan Takedown: Preps high-level base stats for the cast, with everyone having a 20 in their two most relevant ability scores and no one really having a genuine dump stat (no one's character has below a 14/+2 modifier in any ability), which allows the players to play to their class strengths and not have to worry about fucking up as much in a shorter, tighter campaign.

Fantasy High: Ally Beardsley rolls a 4 for Kristen's Dex and has to live with with the consequences of that for 6+ years

[felassan]

Jason Schreier for Bloomberg reports: 'Inside the ‘Dragon Age’ Debacle That Gutted EA’s BioWare Studio'

The latest game in BioWare’s fantasy role-playing series went through ten years of development turmoil. The failure of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, released in October, led EA to gut BioWare

[note: article is below cut after these tweets]

Jason Schreier: "NEW: What went wrong with Dragon Age: The Veilguard? Why was the writing so tonally inconsistent? Why did it feel so shallow? Why were there so few choices? Really, after ten years of turbulence, it was a miracle that anything came out at all. This is the story [link]:" [source]

Jason Schreier: "The fatal flaw for Dragon Age: The Veilguard wasn't just that it pivoted from single-player to multiplayer and back again. It was that after the second pivot, the team was forced to keep going rather than hit the reset button and take the time to create a new plan." [source]

Jason Schreier re: this old tweet from Casey Hudson: "Fun fact: when I first reported at Kotaku in 2018 that Dragon Age 4 was rebooted to become a live-service game, BioWare studio head Casey Hudson wrote this on Twitter. But it was not entirely truthful. In reality, the game was being designed around cooperative multiplayer, replayable missions, etc" [source] Casey Hudson's old tweet from 2018: "Reading lots of feedback regarding Dragon Age, and I think you'll be relieved to see what the team is working on. Story & character focused. Too early to talk details, but when we talk about "live" it just means designing a game for continued storytelling after the main story."

Rest of post/article under cut due to length.

(bold in the text below is mine for emphasis)

"In early November, on the eve of the crucial holiday shopping season, staffers at the video-game studio BioWare were feeling optimistic. After an excruciating development cycle, they had finally released their latest game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and the early reception was largely positive. The role-playing game was topping sales charts on Steam, and solid, if not spectacular, reviews were rolling in. But in the weeks that followed, the early buzz cooled as players delved deeper into the fantasy world, and some BioWare employees grew anxious. For months, everyone at the subsidiary of the video-game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. had been under intense pressure. The studio’s previous two games, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem, had flopped, and there were rumors that if Dragon Age underperformed, BioWare might become another of EA’s many casualties. Not long after Christmas, the bad news surfaced. EA announced in January that the new Dragon Age had only reached 1.5 million players, missing the company’s expectations by 50%. The holiday performance of another recently released title, EA Sports FC 2025, was also subpar, compounding the problem."

"As a result of the struggling titles, EA Chief Executive Officer Andrew Wilson explained, the company would be significantly lowering its sales forecast for the fiscal year ahead. EA’s share price promptly plunged 18%. “Dragon Age had a high-quality launch and was well-reviewed by critics and those who played,” Wilson later said on an earnings call. “However, it did not resonate with a broad enough audience in this highly competitive market.” Days after the sales revision, EA laid off a chunk of BioWare’s staff at the studio’s headquarters in Edmonton, Canada, and permanently transferred many of the remaining workers to other divisions. For the storied, 30-year-old game maker, it was a stunning fall that left many fans wondering how things had gone so haywire — and what might come next for the stricken studio. According to interviews with nearly two dozen people who worked on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, there were several reasons behind its failure, including marketing misfires, poor word of mouth and a 10-year gap since the previous title. Above all, sources point to the rebooting of the product from a single-player game to a multiplayer one — and then back again — a switcheroo that muddled development and inflated the title’s budget, they say, ultimately setting the stage for EA’s potentially unrealistic sales expectations. A spokesperson for EA declined to comment."

"The union between BioWare and EA started off with lofty aspirations. In 2007, EA executives announced they were acquiring BioWare and another gaming studio in a deal worth $860 million. The goal was to diversify their slate of games, which was heavy in sports titles, like Madden NFL, and light in the kind of adventure and role-playing games that BioWare was known for. Initially, it looked like a smart move thanks to a string of big hits. In 2014, BioWare released Dragon Age: Inquisition, the third installment in a popular action series dropping players in a semi-open world full of magic, elves and fire-spewing dragons. The fantasy title went on to win the much-coveted Game of the Year Award and sell 12 million copies, according to its executive producer Mark Darrah — a major validation of EA’s diversification strategy. Before long, Darrah and Mike Laidlaw, the creative director, began kicking around ideas for the next Dragon Age installment — code name: Joplin — aiming for a game that would be smaller in scope. But before much could get done, BioWare shifted the studio’s focus to more pressing titles coming down the pike. In 2017, BioWare released Mass Effect: Andromeda, the fourth installment in a big-budget action series set in space. Unlike its critically successful predecessors, the game received mediocre reviews and was widely mocked by fans. A few months after the disappointing release, the head of BioWare stepped down and was soon replaced by Microsoft Inc.’s Casey Hudson, an alumni of BioWare’s early, formative years."

"Like much of the industry, EA executives were growing increasingly enamored of so-called live-service games, such as Destiny and Overwatch, in which players continue to engage with and spend money on a title for months or even years after its initial release. With EA aiming to make a splash in the fast-growing category, BioWare poured resources into Anthem, a live-service shooter game that checked all the right boxes. One day in October 2017, Laidlaw summoned his colleagues into a conference room and pulled out a few pricey bottles of whisky. The next Dragon Age sequel, he told the room, would also be pivoting to an online, live-service game — a decision from above that he disagreed with. He was resigning from the studio. The assembled staff stayed late through the night, drinking and reminiscing about the franchise they loved. “I wish that pivot had never occurred,” Darrah would later recount on YouTube. “EA said, ‘Make this a live service.’ We said, ‘We don’t know how to do that. We should basically start the project over.’” Former art director Matt Goldman replaced Laidlaw as creative director, and with a tiny team began pushing ahead on a new multiplayer version of Dragon Age — code name: Morrison — while everyone else helped to finish Anthem, which was struggling to coalesce. Goldman pushed for a “pulpy,” more lighthearted tone than previous entries, which suited an online game but was a drastic departure from the dark, dynamic stories that fans loved in the fantasy series."

"In February 2019, BioWare released Anthem. Reviews were scathing, calling the game tedious and convoluted. Fans were similarly displeased. On social media, players demanded to know why a studio renowned for beloved stories and characters had made an online shooter with a scattershot narrative. In the wake of BioWare’s second consecutive flop, the multiplayer version of Dragon Age continued to take shape. While the previous games in the franchise had featured tactical combat, this one would be all action. Instead of quests that players would only experience once, it would be full of missions that could be replayed repeatedly with friends and strangers. Important characters couldn’t die because they had to persist for multiple players across never-ending gameplay. As the game evolved over the next two years, the failure of Anthem hovered over the studio. Were they making the same mistakes? Some BioWare employees scoffed that they were simply building “Anthem with dragons.” Throughout 2020, the pandemic disrupted the game’s already fraught development. In December, Hudson, the head of the studio, and Darrah, the head of the franchise, resigned. Shortly thereafter, Gary McKay, BioWare’s new studio head, revealed yet another shift in strategy. Moving forward, the next Dragon Age would no longer be multiplayer."

"“We were thinking, ‘Does this make sense, does this play into our strengths, or is this going to be another challenge we have to face?’” McKay later told Bloomberg News. “No, we need to get back to what we’re really great at.” In theory, the reversion back to Dragon Age’s tried-and-true, single-player format should have been welcome news inside BioWare. But there was a catch. Typically, this kind of pivot would be coupled with a reset and a period of pre-production allowing the designers to formulate a new vision for the game. Instead, the team was asked to change the game’s fundamental structure and recast the entire story on the fly, according to people familiar with the new marching orders. They were given a year and a half to finish and told to aim for as wide a market as possible. This strict deadline became a recurring problem. The development team would make decisions believing that they had less than a year to release the game, which severely limited the stories they could tell and the world they could build. Then the title would inevitably be delayed a few months, at which point they’d be stuck with those old decisions with no chance to stop and reevaluate what was working. At the end of 2022, amid continually dizzying leadership changes, the studio started distributing an “alpha” build of Dragon Age to get feedback internally and from outside playtesters. According to people familiar with the process, the reactions were concerning. The game’s biggest problem, early players agreed, was a lack of satisfying choices and consequences. Previous BioWare titles had presented players with gut-wrenching decisions. Which allies to save? Which factions to spare? Which enemies to slay? Such dilemmas made fans feel like they were shaping the narrative — historically, a big draw for many BioWare games."

"But Dragon Age’s multiplayer roots limited such choices, according to people familiar with the development. BioWare delayed the game’s release again while the team shoehorned in a few major decisions, such as which of two cities to save from a dragon attack. But because most of the parameters were already well established, the designers struggled to pair the newly retrofitted choices for players with meaningful consequences downstream. In 2023, to help finish Dragon Age, BioWare brought in a second, internal team, which was working on the next Mass Effect game. For decades there’d been tension between the two well-established camps, known for their starkly divergent ways of doing things. BioWare developers like to joke that the Dragon Age crew was like a pirate ship, meandering and sometimes traveling off course but eventually reaching the port. In contrast, the Mass Effect group was called the USS Enterprise, after the Star Trek ship, because commands were issued straight down from the top and executed zealously. As the Mass Effect directors took control, they scoffed that the Dragon Age squad had been doing a shoddy job and began excluding their leaders from pivotal meetings, according to people familiar with the internal friction. Over time, the Mass Effect team went on to overhaul parts of the game and design a number of additional scenes, including a rich, emotional finale that players loved. But even changes that appeared to improve the game stoked the simmering rancor inside BioWare, infuriating Dragon Age leaders who had been told they didn’t have the budget for such big, ambitious swings."

"“It always seemed that, when the Mass Effect team made its demands in meetings with EA regarding the resources it needed, it got its way,” said David Gaider, a former lead writer on the Dragon Age franchise who left before development of the new game started. “But Dragon Age always had to fight against headwinds.” Early testers and Mass Effect leads complained about the game’s snarky tone — a style of video-game storytelling, once ascendant, that was quickly falling out of fashion in pop culture but had been part of Goldman’s vision for the multiplayer game. Worried that Dragon Age could face the same outcome as Forspoken — a recent title that had been hammered over its impertinent banter — BioWare leaders ordered a belated rewrite of the game’s dialogue to make it sound more serious. (In the end, the resulting tonal inconsistencies would only add to the game’s poor reception with fans.) A mass layoff at BioWare and a mandate to work overtime depleted morale while a voice actors strike limited the writers’ ability to revise the dialogue and create new scenes. An initial trailer made the next Dragon Age seem more like Fortnite than a dark fantasy role-playing game, triggering concerns that EA didn’t know how to market the game. When Dragon Age: The Veilguard finally premiered on Halloween 2024 after many internal delays, some staff members thought there was a lot to like, including the game’s new combat system. But players were less impressed, and sales sputtered."

"“The reactions of the fan base are mixed, to put it gently,” said Caitie, a popular Dragon Age YouTuber. “Some, like myself, adore it for various reasons. Others feel utterly betrayed by certain design choices.” Following the layoffs and staff reassignments at BioWare earlier in the year, a small team of a few dozen employees is now working on the next Mass Effect. After three high-profile failures in a row, questions linger about EA’s commitment to the studio. In May, the company relabeled its Edmonton headquarters from a BioWare office to a hub for all EA staff in the area. Historically, BioWare has never been the most important studio at EA, which generates more than $7 billion in annual revenue largely from its sports games and shooters. Depending on the timing of its launches, BioWare typically accounts for just 5% of EA’s annual bookings, according to estimates by Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Even so, there may be strategic reasons for EA to keep supporting BioWare. Single-player role-playing games are expensive to make but can lead to huge windfalls when successful, as demonstrated by recent hits like Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3. In order to grow, EA needs more than just sports franchises, said TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz. Trying to fix its fantasy-focused studio may be easier than starting something new. “That said, if they shuttered the doors tomorrow I wouldn’t be totally surprised,” Creutz added. “It has been over a decade since they produced a hit.”"

Article by Jason Schreier. [source]

[taigarrryen]

My irl buddies were making silly meme mugs at ceramics masterclass today and thought it was funny of me to just paint cactuses on mine, like, you know, a normal person. They think I'm sane. They have no idea I made myself a cactus ring mug.

[mangozic]

archivist be upon ye

[s-ccaam-era-crepe]

i think everyone who's ever had migraines should be financially compensated forever btw

[eastgaysian]

compiling a far from comprehensive list of palestinian fundraisers i'm aware of that are far from their goal (less than 25% raised) and/or stagnating. i will try to update this post at least every couple days - please check the op for updates.

if you can donate at least USD $15 (€14, CAD $20, kr160, £12) and dm me proof, i'll offer a colored sketch commission akin to these drawings (more details here). [EDIT: not accepting new donation comms at the moment until i've worked through my backlog; check back in a week or two!]

even if you're not able to donate that much or at all, please share, and follow the links to the fundraisers - there's much more important information for each one than i'm able to quickly compile into one list.

(created aug 2, updated aug 15)

Hazem Khalil (hazempalestine) - vouched for by bilal-salah0, who has been vetted - €6,015/50k (USD $6,556/$54.6k) raised to evacuate 7 family members

Mohammed Haboub (mohammedhaboubsblog) - shared by 90-ghost - kr85,347/300k (USD $8,108/$28.5k) raised to evacuate 4 family members, along with paying for rent and medical expenses - URGENT RENT + MEDICAL COSTS

Walid Al-Qatrawi (waled-family, waledps) - shared by 90-ghost, instagram - €2,164/€50k (USD $2,362/$54.6k) raised to evacuate a family of 5 with a child on the way - GOFUNDME HAD TO BE CLOSED, DONATIONS STAGNATING SEVERELY

Bilal Abed Rabou (bilalassadabedrabou) - verified by 90-ghost - €7,169/80k (USD $7,814/$87.3k) raised to evacuate a family of 3 + living and education expenses

Israa Alazaiza (isra-elazaiza, sarah-family) - verified #236 - CAD $5,480/48k (USD $3,946/$34,593) raised to evacuate 9 familly members - DONATIONS STAGNATING

Abdelmutei Al-Habil (abdelmutei) - verified by 90-ghost - €8,985/50k (USD $9,794/$54.6k) raised to evacuate 7 family members

Heba Al-Anqar (heba-baker) - shared by 90-ghost - €3,170/60k (USD $3,455/$65,499) raised to evacuate 7 family members + provide for living expenses - DONATIONS SLOWING DOWN

Salahaldin Hor (salahaldinhor) - shared by 90-ghost - €5,032/40k (USD $5,485/$43.6k) raised to evacuate 5 family members + medical and education expenses

Mohammed Atallah (mohammed-atallah) - shared by 90-ghost, organizer's instagram - €11,542/82k (USD $12,581/$89.5k) raised for a bone grafting procedure + rebuilding family home

Fatima Alanqar (fatma93-gaza) - shared by 90-ghost - €4,730/20k (USD $5,156/$21.8k) raised to support a family of 7

Mohammed Matar (matarmoh) - verified by el-shab-hussein - €1,119/€20,000 (USD $1,220/21.8k) raised to evacuate 5 family members, including a 6 month old baby daughter

Mohammed Iwais (mohdiwais) - shared by 90-ghost - kr156,227/500k (USD $14,842/$47.4k) raised to evacuate 10+ family members

Ahmed Abu Shammalah (ahmed8311) - verified by el-shab-hussein - €12,051/100k (USD $13,136/$109k) raised to evacuate 8 family members and provide living expenses - DONATIONS STAGNATING

Wafaa Resh (wafaaresh) - shared by 90-ghost, tiktok - €26,122/100k (USD $28,473/$109k) raised to support 15+ family members

Musab Abed (musababed) - shared by 90-ghost - £3,780/8k (USD $4,838/$8.7k) raised for living and education expenses

Fadi Zakkout (burningnightgiver) - shared by 90-ghost - CAD $10,310/50k (USD $7,423/$36k) raised to evacuate children who have been separated from their parents; their daughter Wafaa needs insulin

Malak Dader (malakabed) - verified by 90-ghost - €5,646/€25k (USD $6,154/$27.2k) raised to support a family of 6 with living and medical expenses + education

Shymaa Taiser (shymaafamily) - #141 - USD $10,878/$50k raised to reunite a father with his children in Gaza and provide for medical expenses

Yousef Hussein (adham-89) - shared by 90-ghost - USD $11,001/50k raised to evacuate 6 family members - DONATIONS STAGNATING

Sujoud Al-Sarsawi (sojid222) - #155 - CAD $10,587/45k (USD $7,623/$32.4k) raised for a single mother and her 3 children - DONATIONS STAGNATING SEVERELY

Siraj Abudayeh (siraj2024) - #219 - CAD $36,515/82k (USD $26,291/$59k) raised to rebuild a family home

[mitchasaurus-r3x]

@jonmartinweek day 2: role swap!!

Did this super quick bc I am busy busy,, didn’t wanna miss another ship week.,.

[loislane-ana]

💙💛🗽, TECHNOLOGY, UKRAINE, ZELENSKYY, apple store, note 5, 1930 ruxton

[phiaks]

(As promised) akeshu make out

+ traumatized siblings

[mistressemmedi]

Maybe if Nelson Piquet said "fuck" then FIA would take a more harsh stance on his presence in the paddock

[800db-cloud]

i’m literally shaking buy them brown contacts pls

[soaked-doors]

“Those two things can exist at the same time. Like you said, it's all—it's all tangled up together, you and me.”

double page spread for one of my favorite luzo fics of all time, poly philtatos (the most beloved by far) by my good friend - @swordsmans!

I knew I wanted to do a double page spread the second I finished this fic and I drafted abt a dozen ideas before landing on what would ultimately become this. There were so many snippets and moments I wanted to illustrate but I ended up doing more of an abstracted version of the fic as opposed to 1:1 drawings of scenes 

funnily enough while the fic itself is told in zoros pov this spread is framed mostly through luffy’s eyes - his tears literally frame comp for their reunion, the moment he loses zoro, and the centerpiece of the first page which is this weird abstraction of him on the beach seeing zoros corpse-not-a-corpse in the waves just beyond his reach. 

gyro put the crane wives’ never love an anchor on the playlist for this fic which i heavily used as inspiration in picking ornamental things for the spread (the anchor, the fleet of ships by luffy, and the nautical rope splitting the second page). also just like. overall really heartbreaking lyrics guys 

there are smaller elements throughout the spread that are 1:1 references though (all i will say for these is if you know, you know hehe) i wish i had more time to do a lengthier piece for fanart for this fic bc it's one of the few luzo fics that have been rattling around in my brain forever now - once again please please please read poly philtatos if you haven't. gyro is a masterful writer and they deserve all the love! ok byeee