#the point of the thing is the connecting. not like. some kind of meaning that i have in my head

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

ok sorry i'm just. ????

rant and spoilers ahead because i gotta yell into the void a little

first of and most of all. WHY does it sound like Solas front and center of everthing now??? Including both Inky's and Rook's stories/motivations???? Like okay i understand that Solas will inevitably be important in Rook's story and that's chill! We knew he was gonna play a part in this story! But why do they make it sound like half or Rook's purpose is just there to further Solas's story/character

and it quickly becomes clear that Rook will have their own unique relationship with Solas, as the Inquisitor did before them. I think what's been fun for us, too, is trying to build Rook as kind of almost a mirror of Solas.

Epler also acknowledges that the Inquisitor “obviously has a very personal relationship with Solas,” one that will need to be reckoned with in The Veilguard.

“And I'd say the Inquisitor, to some degree, feels guilty or responsible for what Solas is doing to the world. So while we're not going to get too far into details about what role they may play, they absolutely are somebody who is going to be interested and invested in the outcome of Rook's journey in The Veilguard.”

Why. are you telling us how our Inquisitor is supposed to feel about this?? When you play DAI you agree to play The Inquisitor, yes, but you don't agree to play someone who Cares About Solas. Like. Yes. I get that he is important. That much has been clear since Trespasser. And i'm ok with that! But how come you say "this is a game about Thedas and a world in conflict" and then also talk like this story is About Solas, Actually.

The other thing i absolutely do not get and do not like. At All

Those decisions are: who your Inquisitor romanced (with the options gender- and lineage-locked in the same way that they were in Inquisition), whether or not you disbanded the Inquisition, and whether you vowed to stop Solas or save him.

?????

No "who drank from the WoS"? No "who is Divine"? No "does OGB Kieran exist"? No "is Hawke alive" (Varric is there. SURELY he cares about this a lot)? No "what happened to the Mages & Templars"? No "were Wardens banned from the south"? Arent't those uh. Really Relevant Decisions???? WHY is one of the whole grand three (3) decisions that carry over if Inky wants to save Solas or not. I mean ok i guess i get it cus that was The Big Decision TM at the end of Trespasser but again. Why is that the big thing that matters. out of all the things that SHOULD matter.

There's not as many decisions you have made up to this point that have an impact on what's happening in Northern Thedas.

But it’s also part of the advantage of moving the setting up to Northern Thedas, Epler says, with the prior games in the series taking place in Southern Thedas, a significantly different region both geographically and sociopolitically.

Uh. Yeah they do. See above points and also some that i forgot probably. Northern and Southern Thedas don't operate independently from one another that's not how this works. Especially again with things like the WoS or the Divine decision. Also half our companions from the other games are from the north?? Like yes ok i know get what you mean kinda and it's true to an extent but not like this

for one, the team focused on choices that they felt they could react to meaningfully – not just a cameo or one-liner.

“There's never a sense of, ‘Oh, that decision doesn't exist.’ But maybe we don't touch on it in this particular title,”

The. Cameos and one-liners are what make it special though?? You can't say "We want those stories to be personal." and then say you're not making any of those small decisions matter. And i don't mean matter as in having A Big Impact TM but i know that a lot of us LIVE for those small tiny nods to previous decisions that make the world feel actually alive and connected. I understand that we can't have full on-screen cameos or questlines or whatever for every little tidbit but not even. idk. Background convos about what's going on in Orzammar? Gossip about Ferelden's monarch? A line from Varric about Bartrand? Dunno man. Again not to mention the Big Things like Kieran. or the Well of Sorrows consequences. Or the Divine (which. yknow. is directly relevant everywhere except maybe Tevinter??). Those were always the things that made importing a worldstate so charming! because you could see the small little impacts that you have on the world. The tiny things like the line about the pigeons in Ferelden in DA2 or a wartable mission with Wade and Herren in DAI are so so special to me

[nemaliwrites]

happened upon this article today, and damn if it didn't get me thinking

i've wondered a lot before about how the same story can be told through different mediums [which primarily can be seen through adaptations] but one thing i don't spend enough time thinking about is how the same story can be told through different word counts

i know people always are like 'a story is as long as it needs to be' but...is it?

i've technically run this experiment a few years ago, with Regrowth at exactly 100 words and Reduce, Reuse, Regrow at over 6000. honestly, it was kind of a fascinating experiment because....are they the same story? really? i guess at their core, you could argue that the plot is the exact same. tldr: giorno turns drug dealers into flowers. and that happens in both versions.

but there is no character in the drabble version, for the OCs and others. we don't get a sense of who giorno is in this story and why he's doing this - all we have to go off of is who he is in canon. we have no idea who tf marco [is that his name? i'm not rereading that to find out LOL] is - versus in the longer version we know about his connection to his family, his botanical garden, the plants he grows, etc. we know about his crush on Sofia. we know that mista saves him, which means giorno thinks he's someone worthy of being saved.

same thing for the police - they don't even get names in the drabble, compared to the names and personalities they're awarded in the longer version.

so...are they the same story?

i've been wondering [and by been wondering i mean i literally thought of this like an hour ago hehe] about how that can apply to other things as well, and this article is a terrific starting point. if you write your longfic as a oneshot, you have to pare down everything that 'doesn't matter' - which i'm using loosely, because as we've established, there are things important to a story that aren't just plot events. but you get such a clear distinction: what are the subplots vs the main plot? who are the side characters vs the main characters? if you have multiple antagonists, who is the one who drives the story primarily? without whom the story cannot exist any longer?

i wonder too if this, in a way, can kind of call back to the snowflake method - which i admittedly have never used but can see how it would be helpful. if you start small, let's say you write your story as a drabble. double it, and double it again. a few more times, and you have something short story length. then novella length. then novel length.

it could also be a way to literally build your story up piece by piece. okay, so you need a couple thousand more words. sure, you could just add a bunch of fluff or 'filler' - or, you could add in a subplot. you could add in a character that is integral to the story. and if you go the other way - from novel to drabble - and can't write a short story without that character, then you know how important they are.

in this way, you can kind of pare everything down to its barest bones, actually. character motivations, stakes, setting.....everything is tied together, which means changing one changes them all.

maybe at some point, you literally get to a point where you can't add anything else - and maybe that's where the story is as long as it needs to be. vice versa, too.

i will run this experiment a few more times and report back o7

[literaryvein-reblogs]

George Orwell: On Poetry

Excerpts from George Orwell's essay, "Poetry and the Microphone" published in The New Saxon Pamphlet, No. 3. March 1945

It is a commonplace that in modern times—the last two hundred years, say—poetry has come to have less and less connection either with music or with the spoken word. It needs print in order to exist at all, and it is no more expected that a poet, as such, will know how to sing or even to declaim than it is expected that an architect will know how to plaster a ceiling.

Lyrical and rhetorical poetry have almost ceased to be written, and a hostility towards poetry on the part of the common man has come to be taken for granted in any country where everyone can read. And where such a breach exists it is always inclined to widen, because the concept of poetry as primarily something printed, and something intelligible only to a minority, encourages obscurity and “cleverness”.

How many people do not feel quasi-instinctively that there must be something wrong with any poem whose meaning can be taken in at a single glance? It seems unlikely that these tendencies will be checked unless it again becomes normal to read verse aloud, and it is difficult to see how this can be brought about except by using the radio as a medium.

People to whom poetry means something

That grisly thing, a “poetry reading”, is what it is because there will always be some among the audience who are bored or all but frankly hostile and who can’t remove themselves by the simple act of turning a knob. And it is at bottom the same difficulty—the fact that a theatre audience is not a selected one—that makes it impossible to get a decent performance of Shakespeare in England. On the air these conditions do not exist. The poet feels that he is addressing people to whom poetry means something, and it is a fact that poets who are used to broadcasting can read into the microphone with a virtuosity they would not equal if they had a visible audience in front of them.

The element of make-believe that enters here does not greatly matter. The point is that in the only way now possible the poet has been brought into a situation in which reading verse aloud seems a natural unembarrassing thing, a normal exchange between man and man: also he has been led to think of his work as sound rather than as a pattern on paper. By that much the reconciliation between poetry and the common man is nearer. It already exists at the poet’s end of the ether-waves, whatever may be happening at the other end.

Poetry is by far the most discredited of the arts

However, what is happening at the other end cannot be disregarded. It will be seen that I have been speaking as though the whole subject of poetry were embarrassing, almost indecent, as though popularising poetry were essentially a strategic manœuvre, like getting a dose of medicine down a child’s throat or establishing tolerance for a persecuted sect. But unfortunately that or something like it is the case.

There can be no doubt that in our civilisation poetry is by far the most discredited of the arts, the only art, indeed, in which the average man refuses to discern any value.

Arnold Bennett was hardly exaggerating when he said that in the English-speaking countries the word “poetry” would disperse a crowd quicker than a fire-hose.

The unpopularity & toleration of poetry

On the face of it, the unpopularity of poetry is as complete as it could be. But on second thoughts, this has to be qualified in a rather peculiar way. To begin with, there is still an appreciable amount of folk poetry (nursery rhymes etc) which is universally known and quoted and forms part of the background of everyone’s mind. There is also a handful of ancient songs and ballads which have never gone out of favour. In addition there is the popularity, or at least the toleration, of “good bad” poetry, generally of a patriotic or sentimental kind. This might seem beside the point if it were not that “good bad” poetry has all the characteristics which, ostensibly, make the average man dislike true poetry.

It is in verse, it rhymes, it deals in lofty sentiments and unusual language—all this to a very marked degree, for it is almost axiomatic that bad poetry is more “poetical” than good poetry. Yet if not actively liked it is at least tolerated.

The hostility to poetry

One must conclude that though the big public is hostile to poetry, it is not strongly hostile to verse. After all, if rhyme and metre were disliked for their own sakes, neither songs nor dirty limericks could be popular. Poetry is disliked because it is associated with untelligibility, intellectual pretentiousness and a general feeling of Sunday-on-a-weekday.

Its name creates in advance the same sort of bad impression as the word “God”, or a parson’s dog-collar. To a certain extent, popularising poetry is a question of breaking down an acquired inhibition. It is a question of getting people to listen instead of uttering a mechanical raspberry. If true poetry could be introduced to the big public in such a way as to make it seem normal, as that piece of rubbish I have just listened to presumably seemed normal, then part of the prejudice against it might be overcome.

More: George Orwell

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[autisticaradiamegido]

thoughts on dave and aradia (<>)?

day 356

BIG fan tbh. in this house we love and respect timerails

truly yall read this log and tell me theyre not cute

[torgawl]

instead of just cross eyes and star eyes distinguishing dynasties in khaenri'ah, why do some khaenri'ahns cover one eye specifically? there’s many things that seem interconnected regarding the lore:

crimson moon turning around to look like an eye; irmin the one-eyed king; the unknown god’s cubes containing eyes in their design (same ones present in the cataclysm as well as the crimson moon), her glitching looking like arlecchino’s, and the four pointed star pattern that appeared when she showed up to the twins; forbidden knowledge and nibelung’s influence; fischl's auge der verurteilung aka eye of condemnation (crimson eye) and her skin's description "o holiest of sovereigns, high princess of immernachtreich (kingdom of evernight)!".

kaeya's note about the alberich saying "i saved this one memento from the fire 'father' made while he wasn’t paying attention. this was in violation of our principles. our clan's affairs should never be recorded" and "though we could not restore khaenri'ah to life, we of the alberich clan should lead lives as those who blaze like fire, rather than those who wallow in the embers [small piece of burning or glowing coal or wood in a dying fire]", father being in quotation marks and references to fire and ashes; the orphanage in khaenri'ah that wanted to house children from destroyed worlds and non-threats that leaked into the kingdom, in hopes of finding beings from beyond the sky who could transcend the gods; perinheri's first memory being transversing something like a chimney, filled with ash and being asked if he wasn't dead just for him to see the eye (crimson moon) and being told he was reborn; dust and the blood of of dragons (or dragon-like beings like durin and elynas) being connected to rhinedottir and the art of khemia; fire as rebirth and life but also, the balemoon blood specifically being connected to loss of memories and loss of memory being equivalent to death (not physical);  despite the orphanage never being able to find that transcendal person, it had many unusual individuals who became knights of the kingdom.

irmin as the first divine halberd (that once pierced the axis mundi [cosmic/world axis, world pillar, center of the world, world tree, etc.] and connected the nine worlds), the prinzessin der verurteilungas (fischl) as the last one; fischl and kaeya comparing themselves to one another and their parallels to irmin and odin; der ring des nibelungen, in which the dwarf (or nibelung) alberich creates a ring capable of controlling the world, using gold he stole from the rhinemaidens (or rheintöchter "rhine-daughters"). the conflict that arises over the ownership of this ring eventually leads to the destruction of the gods and their home, valhalla.

irminsul (irmin + sul) meaning great pillar and being a reference to the yggdrasil, the tree that supports the universe; the description of the item silver twig – collected in the center of the world - talking about a sage that hanged himself upside down in the irminsul tree to gain knowledge of the runes and the cosmos, then going into a secret kingdom down its roots [also a reference to hanged man in tarot that symbolizes wisdom, divination, sacrifice, prophecy, etc.]; odin who hung himself upside down from the sacred world tree, yggdrasil, for nine days and nights sacrificing his eye and throwing himself on his spear (gungir) as a ritual sacrifice in order to obtain secret wisdom; memories, fire and crimson moon hand in hand with the irminsul, king irmin and the concept of fate; the fake sky, the stars and being able to see fate but also fate being a means of the heavenly principles to control the world (neuvillette calling it puppet strings); khaenri'ah, a supposed godless nation but the crimson moon dynasty revering the moon (and hilichurls worshiping istaroth); the crimson moon having an eye on humanity and always being present associated with punishment and destruction (fall of gurabad, remuria and the catclysm).

crimson moon's semblance (arlecchino’s weapon) implying the crimson moon sought vengeance (“few survived the utter destruction of their kind, hiding in the shadows where the sun did not shine, longing for the crimson moon to decree their desire for vengeance be repaid”); the design of the weapon and arlecchino’s boss attacks resembling the double helix present in deathly statuette material dropped by abyss heralds, abyss lectors and shadowy husks, which has a single red eye. it apparently whispers "see, my child. all that lies under the throne of heaven shall be destroyed by upheaval. the eternal peace of the pitch-dark void shall embrace us all.” as you gaze at it.

the abyss order being founded by chlothar alberich and pierro being the first harbinger; the "sinner" – the crystal in chains from the chasm, protected by an abyss herald - not being a god but still worshipped by the abyss order. the voice stating to chlothar and the traveler’s twin that he "[knows their] fate well" and urged them to become a "transcendent one" saying he would "shed a tear at the end of time... as i gaze back upon your life". he also imbued chlothar with the power of the abyss, which alleviated his worsening conditions. the “sinner” refered to chlothar as “dear creature”; dainsleif, pierro and kaeya being examples of khaenriahns who hide their right eye; dainsleif being called “bough keeper”, bough is a branch of a tree, but also his constellation being a snake ring like ouroboros – representing the eternal renewal cycle of life, death and rebirth; the loom of fate being an operation of the abyss order first encountered during "a herald without adherents" quest.

“the threads of your fate lie in my hands” a quote by fischl connecting to the weaves of fate; fischl stating that if she does not obtain the divine halberd “...this world and everything in it is going to burn in hellfire” (legend of the shattered halberd vol. ii). some other excerpts of the book also include: “but unbeknownst to him, this was the greatest cursed sword of all, that had once burned the entire world to cinders: laevatain [in norse mythology, a weapon crafted by loki and the only capable of defeating the cockerel viðofnir, inhabiting the top of yggdrasil], the sword had extinguished after the world was burned, but... it burned bright once more. ‘the whole world... destroyed again...’ weiyang [fischl] fell unconscious as she spoke” (vol. iv), and, "the world is beyond repair. it shall be born anew from the ashes of the last” (vol. vi); dainsleif saying “none will escape the flames. see for yourself” but also neuvillette’s character story including “the puppet strings glossed as "divine rules" would one day be burned away by the fires of judgment” when talking about constellations; burning away the old world, project stuzha by the fatui and the image of dottore burning the irminsul; nahida saying fontaine's prophecy was engraved in the irminsul, implying the tree also contains the history of the future; sibylla, a prophetess who guarded the irminsul in an ancient city located in what later became the high seas (referred to as abyssal depths). she sacrificed her life for the sake of creating phobos, remus' grand symphony, but her lack of a will ultimately caused the project to fail, as her vague desire to "grant happiness to all in the world who are called humans" caused phobos to attempt to satisfy everyone's desires — including destructive and selfish ones — and set remuria towards the course of its self-destruction (possibly tying concepts of will and fate together); thinking of dottore's plan, it would make sense to burn the tree that holds memories with a fire able to erase them (arlecchino's balemoon powers) so that the world can be born anew breaking away from the shackles of fate.

there’s also the improvisation kaeya does during the play in his hangouts. "do you believe in fate? if fate decreed your life was to end in tragedy, what would you do?". he then throws a prop and we interact, choosing if we would face our fate bravely or challenge it and rise above it. kaeya then goes on saying "then so must it be! yes, so must it be! i shall discard this intaglio and rid myself of the shackles of fate", "fate means to send the machinations of war to every corner of the land to fan the flames of conflict till they ungulf the entire world… fate would see my sword tainted with the blood of innocents, that the bright banner of my homeland might fly in every nation known to mankind. but i shall not bow to the will of fate i am no pawn in heaven’s plan. i, qubad, will spend the rest of my days in a foreign land, 'till i breathe my last in a place far from home" and finishes the play with "but i must walk this path, or freedom dies by my hand. goodbye, my tribe and kin. farewell, sweet land of my birth". the prop we get from kaeya, the intaglio, symbolizes the noble origins of prince qubad in the play and the blood-red jewel (blood, red... funny, uh?) is said to be a crystallization of the question kaeya asked us about destiny. furthermore, an intaglio can be a type of engraved gem or metal signet ring.

[fatehbaz]

.

[greenerteacups]

Is Harry a horocrux/ parselmouth ?

What, in canon?

[musical-chick-13]

Regarding the previous post, I think the way I approach trying to evaluate a piece of art is asking "Do I think the positive things I get out of it outweigh the parts of it that I don't like?" And when I call something a "guilty pleasure" song/show/book/piece of media/etc. it's really more in the sense of, "Given who I am as a person, the flaws I've found in this should be complete dealbreakers for me, but somehow they aren't, and it makes me feel like I'm having an identity crisis."

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

And The Sky Bled

standalone character driven fantasy set in a colonised island city below an eternal storm and rift that rains a magical blood-like fuel resource

after 6 months of drought, the reserves are low, and the world is on the brink of climate and societal collapse

three rivals - a thief, slumlord, and heiress with secrets and a connected past all search to find a fabled cache of magic that could save or destroy them

arc from netgalley, out oct 15

[keeps-ache]

been telling my siblings 'you would NOT make it in vulcan academy' when they do smth goofy recently and nobody's been able to refute lol

[sarcophagid]

“nooooo why are kokonoi and inui separated” believe it or not a person is an individual creature and you can live just fine and content without constantly being around someone else. the people you are close to will inevitably change over time, sometimes you are close to someone and you drift apart and maybe you never drift back and thats fine that’s a part of life etc. etc.

[arolesbianism]

Thinking abt my bndori ocs again... I need to draw them more I love them all sm

[violexides]

the American education system needing to be improved and more accessible because as it stands a lot of people lack access to adequate schooling and it has the potential to address really important subjects and provide social support for people

coexists with the idea that societally we should not be trying to pull every piece of information from the American education system because it is not equipped even remotely to address the knowledge that can come from a person's individual lived experience nor provide the information (en masse) that goes against the state that created it.

this is something i thinka bout a lot and try to re-articulate a lot because i am resistant to answering the question "why are you only studying abolition now, through a university?" but i think a lot of things can come out of that line of questioning. because it's not just about academia it's about the people forming those communities to have those dialogues and that is key that is critical. but that doesn't negate the fact that we should have school as a starting place, and a meeting place, for all of that.

[luvsavos]

so not only does genki canonly exist in the reboot but it seems strongly implied that he and doc ketchum worked together at some point??? i do not like that concept At All!

[rearranging-deck-chairs]