#but apparently what they meant was they wanted a 12-hour audiobook

[thenugking]

gayspacejew said: Please…i need details??

I mean I am always happy to go off on “what the fuck even was dragon age legends?” so sure. Its a flash based game that was originally available on facebook, around the time da2 came out. It got shut down because it was Terrible and is now available to download for free online. I never played it when it was on facebook but from what Ive heard, it was Even Worse back then. You have a large party of companions to help you fight countless enemies on map after map and apparently, when it was a facebook game, you were only allowed to use them once before they went on a long cooldown, and the rest of the time you had to get your friends to help you fight. I can;t imagine playing it back then because Id rather not lose all my friends, and honestly? constantly trying to get your friends to play dragon age legends with you is a recipe for losing all your friends.

Anyway the actual game is primarily a turn based combat game as you travel to save this guys son from, idk, something I guess, and occasionally make decisions which have no lasting impact on anything along the way. Also sometimes the game tells you “well if you go one way you can save that village, if you go the other way you can rush onwards” or whatever, but?? doesn't actually tell you which way is which?? But the vast majority of the game is just fighting through maps that get bigger and bigger, with more and more waves of stronger and stronger enemies. Which like, on the plus side, almost every time  plot comes up it breaks lore or contradicts canon but I really cannot stress enough quite how long and tedious this game is.

I mean, look. I expected to get through this game in a couple of days at most. And I enjoy turn based combat so that was cool. And since theres not that much plot I can turn on music while I play! After many hours when it was getting really tedious and I realised I still had a Lot more I began listening to the audiobook of Harry potter and the order of the phoenix while i played. And then to Half Blood Prince. By the time i finished Deathly Hallows, the end was almost in sight. It took maybe ten more hours to get it finished. And I gave up completing 100% of the maps somewhere in order of the phoenix.

So, moving on to the premise of the game, I guess. At the start, theres a little video of a boss fight against the Viscount of the city state of Kaiten, who turned out to be an abomination, that happened 12 years ago, with the main characters of the game. And like. I am fairly certain that these characters started off as someones rpg party, and then they went and made a flash game out of them. These characters are:

Ravi. The nephew of Viscount Abomination Guy and the current Viscount of Kaiten. Hes a templar, apparently. Except he never uses templar powers, despite that being a specialization in the game and shows zero interest in ever controlling mages. Several of the  party members are mages who just have their own little castles and towers, and at least one is canonicaly an apostate. Also Ravi is meant to be your mentor, which I didn't realise until a character said it  part way through the game.

Iselle. A Dalish blood mage who is dating Ravi. Like, he was dating her and then decided to become a templar and?? Ravi do you actually understand what templars are meant to do?? I have no idea what they saw in each other at All. I think the writers just wanted them to have a Forbidden Romance. Anyway, Iselle is the only member of the original party not to appear in the game because she got fridged and died giving birth to Ravis son. Shes also the only woman in the original party. Their son Eiton is tranquil from birth, which is Not A Thing in dragon age. (It turns out later that theres more going on than being tranquil, but spoilers if you're ever actually interested in playing this hell game. The stuff going on still breaks Dragon Age lore though.)

Sendis. The one good thing about this game; Sendis spends all his time snarking about Ravi and I love him. Hes Iselles brother and spied on her and Ravi to make sure Ravi wasn't hurting her, because he is aware that humans suck and templars in particular suck. When you first meet him, you have to kill his possessed clan, because apparently “genocide a dalish clan” is the one bit of Dragon Age “canon” Legends did decide to stick to. Sendis reminds you these are his family and friends you're killing, but theres no option to actually stop or like, comfort him at all. Also neither he nor Iselle have vallaslin. The random dalish elves you have to kill do, but not the two main Dalish characters.

Lukesh. The Wise Old Mage Mentor stereotype, complete with long white beard. He lives in a hut in the wood with Eiton to keep him save. Why did Ravi decide his son would be safer living in a hut in a forest rather than his big defensible castle, with only a mage whos probably an apostate Ravi should have arrested by now for company? Fuck if I know.

Tovez. Tovez is a ginger dwarf who fights with a two handed axe, has the battle cry “meet my axe!”, loves alcohol, is a bit of a dick but a good guy Deep Down, is disliked by a lot of Orzammar, and is the only person there who wants to go to the deep roads to find a missing paragon who went to find the anvil of the void, which they became obsessed with. I honestly dont know how bioware even let Legends do that.

Other companions sometimes get introductions when they turn up and sometimes just appear in your party with no explanation. They include a friendly talking darkspawn called the prankster and who I can only assume is Avelines evil twin, who is pretty much identical to her but left the Kirkwall Guard because she was too Edgy or something, and now hates them. Also if you buy rooms for them in your castle, you get Morrigan, Shale, whitewashed Isabela, Barkspawn, and a Drake as companions, and the downloadable game gives you default male warrior hawke. Theyre all just?? There for some reason.

Later in the game it turns out that the city state of Kaiten is???  part of the city state of Kirkwall. And Im fairly sure someones castle teleports. Theres another Circle in Ferelden thats full of Dragon cultists. At the start of the game, you get two potential companions who want to kill each other (one might be based on Sebastian??) and you have to Choose One, but later on you just have them both and they just?? snark at each other a bit. Some companions are always just several levels above others so theres no point ever using some of them. Theres a load of Novelty costumes your character can find or buy with in game money, like “dress in a gorilla suit” and “just fucking go into battle with a darkspawn sitting on the shoulders”. Idk man, this game is a fucking trip.

#gayspacejew #im sorry this got so long but honestly WHAT THE FUCK WAS LEGENDS #dragon age #dragon age legends #replies post #sexism cw #racism cw #genocide cw

[rememberthattime]

Chapter 52. Finnish Lapland

I’m writing this introduction from our flight from London Gatwick. It is 6:14 AM. Cold and rainy. We’ve been up since 4, and even my few hours of sleep were interrupted by relentless coughing. I should feel tired and angry.

But instead I’m bursting with anticipation - like my body can’t handle the excitement (maybe that’s the reason for my cough?).

This is Chelsay and I’s first weekend trip, and as the plane makes its way to the runway, I’m remembering the #1 reason we moved back: accessible travel, starting with this weekend’s trip to the Finnish Lapland.

Our second round of European adventures began with this road trip to Nellim, Finland, an extremely remote town of 150 people tucked 250 miles into the Arctic Circle, just five miles from the Russian border.

However, before writing about our three days in Finland, I want to quickly cover our first three weeks in London.

I could talk about our return to Richmond Park, about our walks through Soho and the reminders of how “cool” London is, or about how we found our flat in Hampstead within 24 hours of arriving... All of that was great, but I really only want to write about one thing: Indy.

Yes, 12 year old Chelsay’s dream finally came true. As a kid, she’d tell her mom she was going to live in London (...she watched a lot of Mary Poppins). She would have a great job and a nice husband. But most importantly: she would have a border collie named Indiana Jones. This dream came true when Chels and I traveled up to Derby, England to visit a puppy litter. All of the puppies had chubby butts, but our little Indy was easy to spot: tail wagging, stomping over his puppy siblings, and already showing affection to his new parents. It was love at first site.

We won’t get to take little Indy home for a few more weeks, but that hasn’t slowed Chelsay’s “puppy mom” obsession. We bought his crate and fence on the ride home from Derby. We’ve been watching hours of dog training videos on YouTube. I’m receiving dozens of texts each day with the same puppy picture. ...Who am I kidding though? I’m just as much of an obsessed “puppy dad”.

That one Indy story means you’re caught up on our first three weeks in London. Back to our first trip.

There’s always a buzz when you’re going somewhere new, and that’s especially true in Europe. Every country is so accessible yet so unique. Spain is nothing like Sweden nor Morocco. They’re all just three hours away, but might as well be on different planets.

This was proven true as our plane descended into Finland. The landscape was whiter than a Dave Mathews concert. Snow everywhere. No patches of civilization, just patches of evergreen forests covered in more white. We took off in metropolitan London and landed literally in the Arctic Circle.

If this was evident on the flight in, it became especially clear as we left the airport. I asked our rental agent for the car keys and he looked back at me as if it were obvious: “They’re in the car - I started it 30 minutes ago.”

As we stepped out the airport doors, I realized why this should’ve been obvious — and also why his directions to the car were so emphatic. Everything was frozen, including the car had he not started it earlier. Chelsay and I would’ve been frozen too if we didn’t literally dive into the car.

After barely avoiding frostbite, my first thought upon hitting the road was “How can people survive here?” It’s just snow, ice, and sub-zero temperatures for months!

But the Finnish rightly play up their winter wonderland. In fact, it’s close enough to the North Pole that Lapland claims to be the Home of Santa. Yes, of all the places in the entire world, Santa chose Rovaniemi, Finland to set up shop. What an honor.

After a brief stop at Santa’s offices, we hit the road for our four-hour drive to Nellim. This place is remote, and that was exactly the intention. My two goals for the trip were (1) to see the Northern Lights and (2) to walk through snowy, silent Finish forests. Heading as far into Lapland as possible gave us the best chances for both.

The drive was a breeze: we had studded tires for the icy roads, and a James Acaster audiobook for entertainment. Plus the landscape kept us in awe - tall spruce forests lined the roadway and the black concrete was covered in ice, loose snow whipping around in the wind.

We were conscious of daylight on our drive up. In winter, the sun technically rises at 9:30 AM and sets at 3 PM. I say “technically” because there is actually far more daylight thanks to Nautical and Civil twilight, two things I’d never heard of before this trip. Given Lapland’s latitude, sunrise and sunset last about two hours each — rather than have a defined light time and dark time, Finnish days are just caught in perpetual semi-visibility... In addition to being “Home to Santa”, Lapland is apparently also the Twilight Zone.

Stop it Mike.

Anyway, we arrived at Nellim Wilderness Resort after sunset and nautical twilight and civil twilight and any other twilight. It was dark, but there were still a few activities available our first evening.

First, our resort had an illuminated sled hill. We didn’t know about the sledding beforehand, but once we’d seen it, Chelsay and I couldn’t resist.

Our riding styles were absolutely on brand: Chelsay laughed and screamed the entire way down (reminding me of our ride on The Mummy roller coaster at Universal Studios).

Meanwhile, I took sledding to an extreme by riding headfirst (likely breaking my ribs with what Chelsay called “The Salmon Jump”), then later trying to surf down (likely breaking my back with what Chelsay called “The Concussion Tumble”).

We were in the right country to recover from our (my) frigid falls, because the Finns love a hot sauna. In fact, they invented it! 1000 years ago, some Viking named Olaf probably tried that sled-surf thing, and a smoky sauna was his novel therapy!

Luckily the resort’s saunas were private, because similar to sled-surfing, I introduced a new twist to an old tradition: no one in the history of saunas has ever sweat as much as I did. Olaf included.

Outside of sledding and saunas, the other big nighttime activity in Lapland is searching for the Aurora Borealis. The Northern Lights are fairly common this time of year: about 50/50. The problem was the weather was due to be overcast & snowing throughout, so Chelsay and I came in with zero expectation.

We mentioned this to the receptionist at Nellim, but she wasn’t giving up hope. She said to keep our eyes peeled for stars: if you can see the stars, there’s a break in the clouds and a chance to see the Aurora. It didn’t hurt that our room was 50% window.

Just as the receptionist predicted, we saw stars from about 10:30 to midnight. Staring out felt like being on a hunt, eyes dashing from one side of the sky to the other in hopes of seeing a green flash. Eventually I fell asleep, but the resort offers an Aurora alarm in case the lights appear.

Unfortunately there were no alarms either night.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed - the Northern Lights were one of the main reasons for visiting, and the brief star sightings provided a cruel tease of unwarranted hope. But the Aurora is just weather after all, and as the sun rose the next day, we remembered how cool it was to be in Nellim, Finland. Plus, the flip side of this snowy cloud cover was a clean and white-coated winter wonderland.

The fresh snow was perfect for our first activity of the day: dog sledding. These huskies were dying to get out and run, and I’ll never forget their excited gallop as we burst through the trees onto an open, frozen lake.

Chelsay and I switched off as driver, both flirting with danger. Chelsay nearly led us into Russia, while I ghost rode the sled. If you’re not familiar with ghost riding, it’s where you hop out of a moving (now driverless) vehicle and run beside it. Based on the look in our dogs’ eyes, I’m not sure they’d seen this before.

After the morning excitement, Chelsay and I had earned extra whipped cream on our hot chocolates. I’ll briefly mention the dining, which we both surprisingly enjoyed. Finnish food is not traditionally exciting (a lot of lingonberry and reindeer), but the Wilderness Resort came through for each meal: tasty lamb shanks, potatoes gratin, mushroom risotto, panna cotta, and more. And obviously a lot of hot chocolate.

We regained enough energy over lunch for our afternoon activity: snow shoeing. We planned to be out for a few hours, so bundled up in three layers of everything: socks, leggings, sweaters. We even doubled up on gloves.

Now insulated from the sub zero temperatures, we were motoring around the quiet, empty wilderness in no time. Nothing but clean snow and creaky timber for miles. Chelsay said it reminded her of the land of swirly twirly gumdrops from Elf: “Byeee Buddyyyy”

We climbed up hills, slid down slopes, trekked across frozen lakes, forged our own paths through the deep snow, and tracked the only other footprints we could find: wolf and reindeer.

Just as the sun was setting (at 3 PM), Chelsay and I stumbled into a peaceful and perfect grove. It was a beautiful setting and the most memorable moments I’ll take from the trip.

The evergreen branches were coated in snowy white clumps, the crisp air was cold in our chests, and the only sound we could hear was crunch... crunch... crunch... as we gently shuffled across the deep snow.

We returned to our room with that “exhausted but content” feeling. Our quads were burning but we’d accomplished what we came for.

That night, we enjoyed another remedial sauna - this one was somehow sweatier than the last. We didn’t have any energy or unbroken bones left for sledding that night, so we instead stayed in our room and watched Parasite (great movie) while sipping hot chocolate. I doubt I’ll remember what JOMO meant when I read this in 20 years, but this night describes it well.

We were making the long drive back to Rovaniemi around lunch the next day, but had plenty of time for morning walk. This time we attempted to go without snow shoes, but quickly realized that walking through deep snow is hard! Your feet sink with every step, and you have to contort your legs up & out of the snow to make any progress.

Chelsay compared it to the Sahara, except instead of sinking ankle-deep in sand, we were literally waist-deep. Luckily we persevered long enough to stumble across a pack of reindeer.

With our quads burning, we figured the reindeer sighting was a good enough cap to our Lapland adventure. Sure, I wish we’d seen the Northern Lights, but Chelsay and I are still very content with our first trip back in Europe.

I say that without any doubt. Rewinding to our flight from London: Lapland’s frozen landscapes exceeded the “new city” excitement I felt as our departing plane rolled toward the runway.

Lapland is a different planet: part winter wonderland, part uninhabitable wasteland. Its frigid wilderness is unlike any of the previous places we’ve visited, but the craziest part is that it was all so easily accessible. Chelsay and I were 250 miles into the Arctic Circle, literally a short walk into Russia’s northernmost territories, yet remained just a three hour flight from London.

That’s why we moved back: because every trip Chelsay and I take has the potential to bring us somewhere new, special, and completely different from anywhere we’ve ever been.

I can’t wait for our next departing plane to roll its way to the runway.

[theastrophilearchitect]

Let’s talk about manga.

I’ve been avoiding manga and anime for a few years. Why? Not because I thought I wouldn’t enjoy it, but because I thought I would. I knew I would, I would love it, but I had enough things in my life to obsess over already, so I wanted to avoid it for as long as possible.

Then, I tried to get one of my friends to watch Shadow and Bone, so we made a deal: she would watch the show, and I would read the first two volumes of her favourite manga: Death Note. 

Just to clarify, this is not a Death Note review (though I will be mentioning it a lot) but just a ramble about my introduction to manga. I’ve now finished Death Note (which is only 12 volumes) and am planning to read others next, along with watching one of this friend’s favourite animes (because I wanted to read the manga, but then she sent me videos of the characters using their powers, and I just can’t say no to that.

So my friend started Shadow and Bone, and I read the first Death Note volume. At least in this manga, each volume was around 200 pages, containing 8-10 chapters, and I read the first one in its entirety in just over an hour. It was a great feeling--a 200 page prose book would take me about three hours start to finish, and I enjoyed it too. I now know this was partly because it was just the first volume, but it was fast-paced, it set up storylines and mysteries, the story was interesting, and I did like the art style.

I read it so quickly, and was able to log it on Goodreads. This year, I initially set my reading goal at 30 books, because I only read 23 books in 2020 in comparison to my 79 in 2019, but I surpassed that halfway through March, mostly thanks to audiobooks. However, it gave me the ambition to read 100 books this year, but I didn’t want to set that as my goal until i was much nearer it, in case my reading speed decreased (which I was confident it would). I read 12 manga volumes in two weeks. While there is a clear difference between the value of a 200-page manga volume and that of an 800-page book in the context of my reading goal, it was a good feeling. Which means as of today, May 26th, my reading goal is 120 books in 2021, and I have read 60. I’m halfway there, and it’s not even June. (I also would not consider 12 volumes to hold the same value as 12 prose books, but I don’t really care.)

Death Note is set in the early 2000s, when one day, top student Light Yagami looks out of the window in class and notices a black notebook on the ground. After class, he picks it up, and it’s a Death Note, a book in which a person can write somebody’s name with their face in mind, and that person will die. And so, Light takes it upon himself to rid the world of criminals, and becomes the infamous, all-powerful killer ‘God’, Kira. Throughout the series, characters are haunted by Shinigami (Japanese death gods), lose memories, and there is so much deception. In all honesty, I understand like 55% of what happened in the climax, because one person explained how they executed their plan, then the other explained how they undermined them, then the first one explained how they undermined them, and it was just very, very complicated. 

Volumes 7 and 12 killed me. They killed me.

And the biggest shock to me: I loved the format. Reading ‘backwards’ took some getting used to--as in the original Japanese, it is meant to be read right to left, top to bottom, which was surprisingly easy to remember. I was impressed at the character design and the ease with which I could differentiate them. What in prose would have been told in narration was told in imagery, which sent the pace through the roof--and Death Note is apparently a slow manga.

This had a very different structure to typical prose books--where novels in prose have one climax, and the last book in a series has a final, overarching climax, this had several climaxes throughout the series. Sure, they built in intensity with every volume, but not every volume really had a climax. Where I tend to think of stories following a however-many-act structure as ropes, in which various threads are introduced, woven together, dropped and picked back up, Death Note followed more of a domino effect, the issue with which is that very few things mentioned early on foreshadow anything. For example, in the first volume, the Shinigami haunting Light, Ryuk, mentions a deal which will give Light Shinigami eyes, allowing him to see people’s names and lifespans when he sees their faces, at the cost of half his remaining life. This does come into play, but Light denies it and says he would make the deal for Ryuk’s wings--this is never mentioned again.

Also, I hate that I’m putting this bit last, because it means we’re ending on a bad note, but I do have to address it: the sheer misogyny in this series, published primarily in the 2000s, is astounding. The only reason I could put up with it was the sheer lack of female characters (which is not a good thing). Shall we review all the female characters in this series (at least the ones I remember)? It certainly says something that I can think of only four. (And this bit will have spoilers.)

First, Naomi Misora. Misora is female because she is the fiancee of an FBI agent, who obviously had to be male, which makes her female, because heteronormativity. Misora dies in the same volume she’s introduced. She investigates her fiancee’s death (after he was killed by Light), and Light kills her. Simple. That’s it.

Number two. This is the big one: Misa Amane. She’s the most major female character, and is kind of the worst character ever. She’s girly, obsessed with Light, and dislikeable. Also hate the fact she’s significantly shorter and generally smaller than any other character, male or female. At one point, it gave her measurements, and her wait was twenty inches. Twenty. Yes, some people have that, but for 99% of people, it’s impossible. 

Amane has no agency. The vast majority of her actions are under orders by Light, except during her introduction, in which she does what she does with the intention of meeting Kira--AKA Light. Her motivations are to get Light to love her--which he never does. She kills hundreds of people for him, retires in her early twenties to marry him, and does everything he says at the drop of a hat. She gives up three quarters of her life, making the deal for Shinigami eyes to aid Light not once, but twice, after she loses her memory and the eyes in volume 4 or 5. On the plus side, she survives to the end.

Number three: Kyomi Takada. Takada is introduced early on, then dropped, and picked back up. She primarily acts as a middle man, when Light becomes unable to continue Kira’s killings, between Light and the acting Kira. She’s only female because Light communicates with her under the guise of dates, and could literally be replaced by a phone. Also, she dies. Light kills her to save his own hide.

Number four: somebody Lidner. I don’t remember her full name. She is female because she was one of Takada’s bodyguards, and they apparently thought it would make more sense to give Takada female bodyguards. Lidner doesn’t die, but is merely a plot device, as is every other female character.

Four female characters, fine, but when compared to every male character I can name, not so much: Light Yagami, Soichiro Yagami, Ryuzaki, Watari, Near, Mello, Ide, Aizawa, Matsuda, Mogi, Rester, Higuchi, all of whom have more agency alone than the women do combined.

The characters who are women are only women because heteronormativity deems they have to be. Even if we accept heteronormativity, not every other character had to be male. L could be female. Mello could be. Near. Higuchi. Matsuda. Aizawa. Mogi. Ide. Almost every one of them. But, hey, sexism.

But I loved it. I did love it, so when I finally finish a prose book, I’m coming for Tokyo Ghoul.

#manga #anime #blog #blogging #blog post #blogger #mangas #animes #death note #light yagami #yagami #l lawliet #near #mello #misa amane #bsd #bungo stray dogs #tokyo ghoul