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not-poignant · 8 months

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@hellish-cleric replied to your post “I think it will come as no surprise to anyone that...”:

Yeah, everyone in my party, plus most of the players in my d&d group *hated* Astarion as soon as they met him. Meanwhile, I'm Team Ride or Die for Astarion. I'm a little confused at all the hate he gets.

Oh actually I can answer at least some of this!

He's an obviously camp character who was in a gay relationship (a forced gay relationship but w/e) in an AAA game that is mostly going out to dudebros, and frankly the people who overwhelmingly hate him or kill him immediately the most are straight guys. (The biggest complaints for BG3 are not actually the bugs, but the LGBTQIA+ rep, including being able to have a nonbinary character, or trans character). Within that context, there was already latent Astarion hate in the community that was easy for everyone else to pick up on. So some of it is honestly straight up homophobia!

Then on top of that they gave him PTSD over being saved by someone who then tortured him for 200 years and enslaved him in exchange for that rescue, so he reacts badly every time you save someone, because he doesn't trust that.

And then on top of that he's a complete chaos gremlin. After all, he was tortured and forced to torture people for 200 years, and just about no one maintains much of an ethical backbone after that kind of treatment.

And I think the combo of 'so much of the (guy) community hates Astarion so there's already a background vibe that predisposes people to being suspicious of him' and 'he's camp which hooks into the homophobic folks who don't like that' AND 'he keeps disapproving of me when I do heroic things' (which is a lie, he doesn't always disapprove, and sometimes he actually approves, it depends a lot on context) just kind of turns a lot of folks off him.

He's the only character in the whole story who will actually take you aside privately and comfort you if you do a sexual thing with an NPC later in the game and choose dialogue options that say you were disgusted by doing the thing. He literally takes you aside and starts joking and then is like 'actually... I know what that's like, and I'm so so sorry you had to go through that.'

Dude's fun to meme, hilarious to meme, but he's also the only character who comforts you after you get sexually assaulted/harassed, and in an extremely genuine, 'no strings attached' way. I'm ride or die for that fucker, and I laugh at the folks that turfed him because a bunch of dudes laid a path they walked down.

Like don't get me wrong, some folks just hate him because of the way he looks, the constant disapproval if you're playing a Very Good Character is frustrating, or they have no use for a rogue (they hate loot or maybe they're playing a rogue themselves), or because he can be naff in a battle if you spec him badly / don't know how to spec him out, or for a lot of super understandable reasons! Like, if you never talk your way out of situations, hulk smash a lot in battles, and save people, you're going to get his disapproval AND he won't be as useful in those battles. If you don't sneak around picking off folks, and just go in and smash everyone, he's not as useful as Gale and Wyll who have good AoE, or Lae'zel and Karlach who have amazing 'Hulk Smash' abilities.

I'd avoid him too if I was playing a character who couldn't persuade/deceive/intimidate my way out of situations (which is the best and easiest way to earn his approval), and I might be like 'I don't like Astarion' because of it. He doesn't fit my playstyle! I can't stand Lae'zel for example, because I just don't vibe with 'killing the weak and no one is equal' as a political stance!

But some of it re: Astarion is literally 'a lot of folks are implicitly homophobic and he's easy to hate.'

Frankly I think Dorian (from Dragon Age: Inquisition) would have received a lot more of this too if he'd been more morally questionable as a character when you first meet him. But they made him a 'good' queer so he got more conditional acceptance (and even then, he still got a lot of hate initially!!!)

I am very fortunate that everyone I know personally absolutely love him, and I'm surrounded by a lot of Ride or Die Astarion fans in my personal circle/s both offline and irl and that makes me so incredibly happy.

#hellish-cleric #i have a lot of thoughts about this #and i am absolutely turning off reblogs lmao #because i suspect this fandom could easily be a dumpster fire about this #but a lot of astarion hate is just #latent homophobia #HECK IT'S NOT EVEN LATENT #it's on the surface #i honestly don't get folks who don't earn his approval at all #because you don't have to be a bad / unethical / morally questionable person #to keep his approval decent?#i'm saving everyone #and i'm in Act 2 with Good approval with Astarion #but i did trick the Thorm siblings into killing themselves #in the Shadow-Cursed Lands #and that netted like 8+ approvals from Astarion lmao

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assiraphales · 1 year

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anyways (I say this as someone who is deeply critical of the united states government, military, unchecked capitalism, police, etc) I am SICK of people treating america as if it has no cultural value or positives so..... I love u 85 million acres (bigger than italy) of national parks. I love u harlem renaissance. I love u groundhogs day. I love u sweet tea and fried chicken and jambalaya. I love u apple cider donuts and maizes on crisp autumn days. I love u 95k miles of coastlines and new england fisherman and hand knitted sweaters. I love u halloween where millions of people dress up and give candy to strangers and carve jack o’lanterns. I love u small talk and small towns and potlucks and bringing over casseroles to your struggling neighbors. I love u cowboys and ranch hands and arizonian cactus. I love u appalachian trail and dirtbikes and divebars. I love u sparklers and fireflies. I love u mark twain and toni morrison and emily dickinson and henry david thoreau. I love u rock n roll i love u bluegrass and hippies i love u jimi hendrix and nirvana and CCR and janis joplin. I love u victorian houses and jonny appleseed and john henry and mothman and bigfoot. I love u foggy days in the pacific northwest and neon signs and roadside attractions. I love u baseball and 1950s diners and soft serve. I love u native american art and pop art and poptarts. I love u blue jeans and barbecues and jazz musicians

#delete later #im FED up is all #and this is just scratching the surface #Americana

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deep-space-netwerk · 7 months

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So Venus is my favorite planet in the solar system - everything about it is just so weird.

It has this extraordinarily dense atmosphere that by all accounts shouldn't exist - Venus is close enough to the sun (and therefore hot enough) that the atmosphere should have literally evaporated away, just like Mercury's. We think Earth manages to keep its atmosphere by virtue of our magnetic field, but Venus doesn't even have that going for it. While Venus is probably volcanically active, it definitely doesn't have an internal magnetic dynamo, so whatever form of volcanism it has going on is very different from ours. And, it spins backwards! For some reason!!

But, for as many mysteries as Venus has, the United States really hasn't spent much time investigating it. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, sent no less than 16 probes to Venus between 1961 and 1984 as part of the Venera program - most of them looked like this!

The Soviet Union had a very different approach to space than the United States. NASA missions are typically extremely risk averse, and the spacecraft we launch are generally very expensive one-offs that have only one chance to succeed or fail.

It's lead to some really amazing science, but to put it into perspective, the Mars Opportunity rover only had to survive on Mars for 90 days for the mission to be declared a complete success. That thing lasted 15 years. I love the Opportunity rover as much as any self-respecting NASA engineer, but how much extra time and money did we spend that we didn't technically "need" to for it to last 60x longer than required?

Anyway, all to say, the Soviet Union took a more incremental approach, where failures were far less devastating. The Venera 9 through 14 probes were designed to land on the surface of Venus, and survive long enough to take a picture with two cameras - not an easy task, but a fairly straightforward goal compared to NASA standards. They had…mixed results.

Venera 9 managed to take a picture with one camera, but the other one's lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 10 also managed to take a picture with one camera, but again the other lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 11 took no pictures - neither lens cap deployed this time.

Venera 12 also took no pictures - because again, neither lens cap deployed.

Lotta problems with lens caps.

For Venera 13 and 14, in addition to the cameras they sent a device to sample the Venusian "soil". Upon landing, the arm was supposed to swing down and analyze the surface it touched - it was a simple mechanism that couldn't be re-deployed or adjusted after the first go.

This time, both lens caps FINALLY ejected perfectly, and we were treated to these marvelous, eerie pictures of the Venus landscape:

However, when the Venera 14 soil sampler arm deployed, instead of sampling the Venus surface, it managed to swing down and land perfectly on….an ejected lens cap.

#space #space history #venus #NASA #Venera #spost #I will talk all day about venus #ask me about venus floating sky cities #unpopular opinion venus > mars #this is probably my favorite space history story #the surface of venus is made of lens caps #don't try to tell me the universe doesn't have a sense of humor #well #I guess its more that people have a sense of humor and we happen to live in the universe

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champagnemoon · 8 months

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I’m gonna be so sexy in my 30s it’s actually Insane

#I feel it bubbling under the surface #giving volcano

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mumblesplash · 4 months

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i know it’s like years old at this point but i love that one collab mumbo and grian did with tommyinnit bc it’s like the single most concentrated example i’ve seen of mumbo’s Chaos Nullification Powers

you get to see a bit of it on hermitcraft, mostly via his interactions with grian, but until seeing that collab it didn’t really hit me just how completely mumbo can no-sell other people’s attempts to control a situation. tommyinnit is possibly the single shoutiest, most chaotic minecraft youtuber out there, and in most videos i’ve seen he pretty much overwhelms everyone else and sets the tone for interactions because of this. but mumbo just. doesn’t let him. no matter how much tommy escalates in intensity, mumbo reacts with *exactly* the same energy he always does. grian largely comes across in the whole video as annoyed and reluctant to engage with the whole thing, but mumbo’s not even affected. he just rolls with anything he finds funny and basically ignores anything he disapproves of, only seeming more and more unflappable the harder anyone tries to get a rise out of him.

AND imo, this is the key to my favorite interpretation of him as a character

see, when the people around him are being more reasonable/calm, i think mumbo often comes across as anxious and a bit easily overwhelmed. the thing is, his nervous wet cat vibes do not scale. he has one setting. his responses to the last life ‘ah-ha!’ jokes and to hermitcraft 8 starting to crumble to pieces under a falling moon are almost identical.

mumbo jumbo is inexorably and eternally Just Some Guy, but that gets stranger and stranger the weirder his surroundings become. the giggly incredulousness that makes him an easy target for goofy puns looks Very different when it’s also his reaction to the impending end of the world.

#anyway yeah i have this whole idea in my head about mumbo’s friendship with grian from a characterization standpoint #bc i agree with the somewhat? common consensus that being friends with mumbo has made grian softer and friendlier over time #but i don’t think it was in a ‘reflecting back the kindness he’s being shown’ way #i think it’s because the more harsh and chaotic you try to be towards mumbo the more you feel ineffectual and out of control #and grian can’t handle it so he slowly becomes nicer until he feels like they’re on equal footing again #like don’t get me wrong i think they genuinely are good friends #and i don’t think this is necessarily something mumbo is doing on purpose #but i think the power dynamic going on under the surface is much more bizarre and weighted in mumbo’s favor than it seems at first glance #mumbling

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ashleyloob · 19 days

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every time I see non Asians go by Asian names online I get whiplash bc I'm like o shit another one of me!! then I find out they are a white weeb from Arkansas going by Haru that can't name more than 3 countries in Asia

#ppl used to make fun of me for my ethnic name so now i go by a western one....#but now i guess ethnic names are cool again as long as ur not that ethnicity? we have come full circle #huge difference between cultural appreciation and surface level fetishization btw #this is specifically talking about those that dont actually respect asian culture & use it as an aesthetic or accessory

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bastardlybonkers · 2 days

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i feel like not enough ppl are factoring in the cultural clash between laios and shuro and the many micro agressions shuro faced while being in their group. literally the name 'shuro' in itself is one

his name is toshiro 😭 lets also not forget that he has his own communication issues, in the opposite way that laios does- thats literally a factor in their argument, that his envy for laios's ability to express himself sincerely manifested as part of his distaste for him.

ig all this to say like, was their fight heart wrenching, especially when reading laios as autistic? absolutely. anybody whos ever been in laios's position knows how much it hurts to realize someone you thought was your friend doesnt actually like having you around, especially when they didnt tell you and you had no way of knowing due to not understanding their cues. but im begging yall to step back and see the nuance of this situation cause im gonna be real a lot of you are kinda just brushing over it acting like everything is toshiros fault and that hes a terrible person when in reality hes an average guy who really, really clashed with laios and it led to a very long misunderstanding due to their supremely opposite methods of communication. even laios and toshiro, after letting everything out in their fight, were able to come to an understanding and start a foundation for an actual friendship built on better communication

#dunmeshi #dungeon meshi #shuro dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #toshiro nakamoto #dont get me wrong i understand relating to a character and hating whoever wrongs them cause youre protective or you relate really hard #but i think toshiros been getting the short end of the stick for a long time now 😭#even his love for falin is misunderstood #he literally states all the reasons he likes her #and none of them are superficial #but hes so closed off and has such difficulty expressing himself that instead of asking her out or smth he just #proposed to her out of the blue 😭#leading a lot of ppl to just assume that he went 'white woman spotted' and proposed #do Not misunderstand me i am #a HUGE farcille stan #obviously #but i dont think toshiros feelings are surface level and i think theyre absolutely crucial to understanding him and his motivations #as a character in this story

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sparrowlucero · 1 month

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nim from surface (2005)

#its me. the world's last surface fan #how does this have 3000 notes. a win for surface

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beesleeps · 1 month

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"kabru doesn't even like laios"

meanwhile, kabru:

#i dont even mean this as a romantic thing necessarily its just people do not understand kabrus relationship w laios at all #he was chasing after laios the whole time how could you say he hates or doesnt like laios #labru #kabru #laios touden #dungeon meshi #anyway the characters and relationships in this series are so good and so complex but ppl are incapable of seeing past surface level #and its frustrating

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privateolives · 2 months

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This is just a small moment, but I appreciate that you can tell how much Laios cares about Marcille just by his reaction here.

After all, they already established that he doesn't give a flying fuck about these topics, and only keeps his own hair trimmed to not look like his dad:

But the fact that Marcille who loved and cared for her hair both for appearance and magical significance, is so unaffected by the state of it, left him like this

He didn't even notice the change of appearance until this point, but the realization that she's neglected something that important TO HER has him instantly shocked and upset on her behalf.

idk it's just a neat little moment of showing how much he cares for his friends, despite the many themes of dislike and alienation from other people that appears in his story.

#Zeph rambles #dungeon meshi #dungeon meshi spoilers #delicious in dungeon #delicious in dungeon spoilers #Laios #Marcille #The others show shocked reactions #but they don't show obvious upset like he does #Chilchuck showing his on-the-surface detached kindness to do it for her is cute though

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1ncend1ary · 2 months

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