#only one way applies here

[ayoooo3]

[starcurtain]

Even leaving aside the obvious ship bait here, this is one of the best examples of character comedy Hoyo has posted in a long time.

The fact that Jade sends Aventurine a bunch of rocks just knowing that his incredible luck will allow him to suss out, without even cutting the stones, exactly which ones are worth processing is funny as hell.

The fact that Aventurine is actually able to answer and picks out the rocks that contain high value jade without hesitation is absolutely hilarious.

Bro is out here using his blessing from a goddess to play blind-box prize games. This is like finding out X-Men's Professor X uses his telepathy to order pizza.

Do you think people ever call Aventurine like "Hey man, is my new relationship going to work out?"

And Aventurine's just over here as the divination champion of Pier Point going "Signs point to no, friend. The vibes are just rancid. Abandon ship ASAP."

And then he trips over his catcake and eats shit because he didn't see it coming.

[domirine]

ever seen a man so beautiful you ram your bike into his flowers?

my full piece for the retrouvailles zine! i had a lot of fun painting it. hope you enjoy looking at the lil details, plants, and the only character who has his shit together (the dog)

[nirobe-sam]

Sorry, I don't have any silly doodles to share this time..

(painted over a drawing on my sketchbook.)

[mainalias]

thinking about compiling screenshots of golden/silver age batman exclusively calling dick his ward to combat the allegations that it was “initially a father-child relationship”

[andromeda3116]

i feel like a lot of Discourse (read: fandom wank) happens in places that have forgotten or never learned the death of the author theory

(which i know is not sacrosanct but it is very useful for handling fandom spaces, particularly fraught ones)

for those who don't know, the death of the author theory goes like this: as far as the work is concerned, the author dropped dead the second that the final word was published, and thus cannot comment, object to, clarify, or expand on anything that is not on the page.

my understanding is that it's most strictly used to mean that that the author's interpretation of the work doesn't matter, but can be expanded to state that nothing which is not on the page matters. imo, the expanded definition is particularly useful for fandoms and needs to be adopted on a larger scale.

because what it means is this:

it doesn't matter what the creator(s) intended. it doesn't matter what they said in an interview. it doesn't matter what the actors think, it doesn't matter what supplemental materials say or imply, even if they're signed off on by the creator(s). it doesn't matter if everyone involved in making it hates your interpretation and says that it's wrong.

they don't get to say that it's wrong. they dropped dead the second the last episode/book ended. their interpretation is simply one more in a vast sea of others.

listen to me, fandom spaces. i am taking your face in both of my hands. embrace the death of the author. you will no longer be bound to the (possibly fickle) words of the creator(s), your interpretation can no longer be the wrong one. if the text can be used to support it in any way, even twisty ways, it's valid. you don't have to jump through hoops to defend it against haters who say you're wrong.

the death of the author. open your heart to it. live it. be free.

[rosehippiefield]

Some people dislike logic route for Shin's inactivity, thinking it is inferior to his previous behavior, but... I feel like him not having energy left is natural. While him not doing much may be yet another trick or manipulation, maybe he's just that tired. For a guy who has witnessed sister figure's death, has lived in constant tension last four days, was hit with a frying pan (given how abnormally weak he is) and on top of that has to deal with ex-friend that had ruined his life Shin is doing relatively alright.

I'm honestly surprised by his ability to still maintain something similar to composure

[ask-elland-n-will]

[OOC rant about HL rp space here on tumblr: Wanted to mention this for a while but engagement requires... engagement. The more rp blogs exchange asks, the more pathways there are to communicate, to create a net of connections, make characters and the world around them come to life. Over the past year and a half I sent hundreds of asks, in anon/as me/as my characters. I understand being shy. I've been there, and it took some great people in this community to get me out of my shell.

But it is just what it is: unfortunately, if there is no reciprocity, there is no dialogue.

You don't have to wait for a green light/talk in DMs first with creating an rp scenario to send anyone an ask or to initiate rp by tagging someone. You can if it makes you more comfortable but don't have to. Most of us have Rules of Engagement but that's all the pre-requisites.

Before I burned out, I sent people asks just to make them happy, give some interactions for their characters. I wanted to find out more about MCs/OCs. But at this point (and I am not alone in this) whenever this turns into a one-sided communication, I am bothered by it, and I stop sending asks after a while.

I get that if I do it with anons, people won't know who to reply to. But even starting small, sending an ask or two for at least some rp people, so that we know you want to engage — it means a lot. It makes us want to continue playing in this HL sandbox.]

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

every time i see someone claim the ancients were a magical indigenous utopia to aspire to (with 'a few little problems'), and any criticism of them as a society is apologia for native genocide, i clutch my head in agony. never change, twitter

[justalittlebluetiefling]

I haven't been involved with coaching for almost 3 months now and somehow I am still getting dragged into the drama.

[sonknuxadow]

it's so wild to me that people talk like sonic and knuckles just now started acting gay in frontiers or that the sonknux ship only exists because of frontiers theyve been gay this whole TIME you just refused to admit it until now

[falinscloaca]

people who characterize marcille as ‘oh that lesbian elf motivated so much by how she wants to bang her s/o’ literally don’t get it. a marcille who KNOWS shes a lesbian would be on a whole ‘nother level of “annoying about it.” insert joke about gay being a characters only trait level annoying. she still writes off her gay shit as gender envy, protectiveness, or solidarity. once she realizes , its all over. shes going to be getting into harmful intra/ter-community discourse on twitter before collapsing into a years-long disillusionment wreckage as all her online buddies either go entirely transmisogynistic or end up overcorrecting and becoming a different kinda queerscourse radical. she even takes the word ‘lesbian’ out of all her urls :-(. not because she isn’t one or its bad but bc its a painful reminder of a sense of pride that now exists only in memory. and eventually she changes it to FALINSC-💥

[thyfggfy]

Me after creating a mental list of my favourite characters from certain medias :.... I may have a type

Female characters that constantly have to prove themselves cuz no one believes in them and there is always someone who surpasses them get behind me.

[mabaris]

i’ve said this before, but my ideal fix for magic in da2 would be the introduction of a stealth mechanic

in origins, you’re under more threat because you’re a warden than because you’re a mage, and honestly you don’t spend that much time in civilization that would care (lothering and redcliffe have bigger things to worry about; the dwarves, the dalish, and the people of haven have different views about mages; etc). in inquisition, the circles have fallen apart and everyone is technically an apostate, so none of it matters

but then there’s kirkwall. you spend the whole first act with the threat of templars hanging over you (or your apostate sister) when literally the first thing that gets you into the city is doing magic in broad daylight, in the middle of the gallows.

certain characters react to the fact that you or your companions have magic (feynriel, fenris, even meredith in later acts!!!) and it’s always hard for me to get invested in a mage hawke because of that dissonance. it’s not like you’re supposed to completely suspend your disbelief!! but in act 1 you can do magic in front of the knight-captain and i guess he just doesn’t notice

a stealth mechanic for magic would have a couple different factors:

does a character have line of sight on you (more directly incriminating) or are they otherwise within earshot (raises suspicion but may not immediately alert them)? is it day or night?

what is the disposition of the bystanders? for NPCs it could be easy enough to code something like “people are much more reactive in hightown, in lowtown/the docks they’ll only report you if you’re really obvious, and no one cares in darktown” but of course, it’s over if they’re a templar or a priest

how obvious is the magic? something like mind blast, horror, or even elemental weapons (enchantment exists!!) are much easier to slip under the radar, as opposed to something like firestorm or stonefist. are you casting at range? or are you fighting in melee with your staff blade, or with spells that could just be explained as an effect of your weapon, if it’s tricked out with the right runes. each spell would have a base value that indicates how noticeable it is, and how easy it is to hide that you're actually casting something

being too obvious or getting caught would lead to a game-over screen (or maybe a unique cutscene in act 3, where you get called into the gallows and have the chance to talk your way out of it, because you Are the champion)

if i'm just creating game mechanics for my own fantasy, this would also be the kind of thing you could turn on and off, if you don't actually care about that level of immersion and just want to play a cool magic user. if you use tactics, it could let you select certain behaviors for your companions, depending on the general Suspicion Level towards them

[teja-has-puppet-autism]

y'know sometimes I go to make a post on this here webbed site, and I almost always end up deletin it cause I measure it through the "how widely applicable is this" + "how horribly can people twist this" metrics and it just stops my little fingies from typin

(this turned into me typing an essay in the tags cause I very much did need to process some shit lmao)

[daz4i]

how and why is there discourse about whether or not certain queer identities exist/if people should be allowed(???) to use them. why is "people know their own identity better than you ever could, and they're the only one who get a say on what they are" such a tough concept to grasp

i think if you find yourself offended by the label someone uses (especially if they're a stranger) or think it invalidates your own, it's a good idea to look inside yourself and question why that may be. more often than not, it's a result of insecurity or uncertainty of your own identity (or many other things, but i won't make a whole list here). whatever reason it is, until you resolve it, you shouldn't take it out on people for having an identity you don't understand

many have said it before but it's worth saying over and over. infighting only helps our oppressors. conservatives don't care if you're a cis gay or a xenogender aegosexual aplatonic lesbian, they hate all of us either way. trying to fit in by going for people who are easier targets for them isn't gonna help you, it'll just alienate you from your own community, and you're never gonna please them. the momentary rush you get from hearing you're not like "one of /those/ gay people" is not worth it and is gonna do more harm in the long run, i assure you

also, it is important to me to say this, but having some less than nice kneejerk reaction caused by confusion about an identity you don't understand doesn't mean you're a bad person or anything. as long as you aren't mean to that person, and you take a second to think smth along the lines of "wait a minute, this isn't any of my business" after having said reaction, you're good 👍 a lot of reflexive reactions we have to things are ingrained into us simply by. well. living in a society 🤡 and you're not terrible for having those thoughts. it's your actions that matter, and your second thought (the "wait, why did i just think that?") is more defining of your actual character and morals than your reflex. i know that having thoughts like this, even tho they're unwanted, can very easily make one spiral, so it's important to me that whoever needs to hear this knows this doesn't make you a bad person 🙏 you're good, keep taking actions to be good, accept other people even if you don't understand them, and you're on the right track :)