I think so many people are so deeply alienated from themselves that they have no clue how to exercise their free will and autonomy. For some, this alienation runs so deep that they are afraid of their own autonomy and humanity. It is completely understandable why one would have those feelings, but it can be worrisome.
I want to help others who feel this way, so here are small things I have done to exercise my free will:
Add "guilty pleasure" songs to playlists and actually listen to them (I have a ton of late 1990s-early 2000s music I listen to now proudly that I never listened to in the past out of shame)
Getting the décor item, bath set, bed spread, ect. in the patterns you like, even if it's "childish" (I got a dinosaur-themed wastebasket from the kids' décor section and I adore it)
Taking a new route to get to a place you go to often
Eat dessert first
Celebrate well, and often
Collect things that are "odd" or don't seem like an "acceptable" thing to collect (somebody on my "for you" page collects dandelion crayola crayons and it was so cool!!!!!!)
Incorporate one new piece in an outfit you wear frequently (e.g., a new chain, a necklace, ribbons, bracelets, ect.). Challenge yourself to add onto the outfits if you feel up for it.
Sing along to songs without worrying that you sound "good" or your intonation is completely accurate
Read a book from a genre you weren't allowed to read as a kid (comics, thrillers, mysteries, anything!)
Walk without having a specific destination or goal
Pick up a new craft without expecting yourself to master it or to ever be "good" enough. Get your hands messy.
I don't want to shame anybody for not feeling as though they have free will or that they are exempt from exercising it. However, I wanted to give ideas so that you might read this list and find your own ways to express your intrinsic autonomy and will. You deserve to be a person, to feel alive, not just living. That is what our lives are for.
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Touchy subject
"The 501st was one of the best legions during the war. I've lost a lot of good men over the years - some of them would have given even you Mandos a run for your credits. And my general... My general was a good man too, but that's enough of that, I thought you were too old for bedtime stories by now."
Din just tried to figure out what the colour of the clones' armor paint meant, and why he's never heard Rex mention his CO during all the wartime stories and lectures; whereas he's already got to meet Wolffe and his general and even heard Cody mention his every once in a blue moon. (Special thanks to @witchydom for helping with the "dialogue" :3)
The rest of my Star Wars meets Hades AU project is here
I'll take a bit of your time to give a bit of an explanation why I decided to put Rex in Skelly's spot:
During a playthrough when I was looking for screenshots to use as backgrounds the first thing that greeted me was Zagreus calling Skelly "Captain" upon entering the armoury, or whatever that chamber is called. And that really decided it, let's be honest. Rex is Captain, and that is the Captain's spot. End of story.
Reading "still got it" by qigiined even before I got into watching TCW was such a personality defining experience (seriously, this fic lives forever rent free in my brain), that I really had no other option but to put the few clones that I'm willing to work into this AU somewhere around home base (the covert) - so you can guess where Cody and Wolffe are situated. Or will be, hopefully soon enough. Rex needs to be able to hang out with Cody, that's just how it is. (Rebels and TBB canon who?)
Rex deserves to teach some uppity Mando bounty hunters and other warriors who think too much of themselves a few lessons in humility and some crafty tricks. I think it would be very good for him.
As a throwaway note since we are already under the read more section, I've been thinking about sigils and keepsakes (trinkets) and cthonic companions (I know that over a year ago I inaccurately but very self indulgently designed one for Din, Boba and Cobb, that is not the point now) and while Cody can have one shaped like Boga, and Wolffe can obviously get a stuffed loth wolf (and Bo-Katan a very squishy owl)... I have no idea what shaped companion Rex could have. If anyone has any suggestions and would love to share it with me, I'd be very grateful!
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the opening lines of the shadow of the erdtree trailer remind me a LOT of a certain quote from another game:
and with this in mind, i really hope that the direction they go with miquella is less like the manipulative griffith-esque archetype some people are theorizing, and more like N’s characterization in pokemon black and white: someone very intelligent and powerful but naïve, whose honest attempts at creating a better world might bring about more destruction in the end.
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Reading the reaction to Larian's decision to fully step back from wotc/d&d/etc has been interesting
a lot of mourning of the loss of "content"
"we could have had years and years of content" "this is heart breaking to never see these characters again" etc etc
is that what you really want? content? is this what modern media production has come to, that people aren't sated with anything less than milking a property until it's a barren husk of anything it once was?
Why can't we be happy with what we have? I don't think it's unfair to be sad about this news, especially given that it felt like some things were being teased or hinted at, and now they most likely will not come to fruition (at least at larian's hands), but is that really so bad? If you're so dissatisfied with a character's ending or arc, write a fanfiction, draw fanart, boot up the game again and just imagine your way into what you DO want
is that not the fundamental nature of d&d?
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Instagram ask doodle— someone requested Lola as Barbie!
I think of the deleted exchange she had with lebron in SJ2, where she says “Looney is who [Bugs] is and what he does. I’m not like that.” and I mourn the executive meddling. It was supposed to be satirical, critical and maybe even a lil more cynical and all Looney… but too many mandated rewrites left a sour taste in my mouth, especially when it comes to Lola. She doesn’t really have a place in the world of LT outside of being Bugs’ arm candy and “Basketball”…..Sj2 coulda had that conversation. poor gal
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I love Shadowheart. She was my bae throughout my first (unfinished) Tav run. I abandoned that run because Astarion convinced me I needed to restart as Durge for him, but Shadowheart forever holds a very special place in my… well, heart.
I’ve been thinking about the contrast between them and their arcs and the way fandom interacts with them.
They both start off as characters that by D&D standards are “evil.” Shar is an evil aligned goddess, and vampires are evil aligned creatures.
However, Shadowheart isn’t evil. She disapproves of actively evil decisions and approves of kindness to animals and the helpless. She just doesn’t like it if you seem to be putting do-goodery above your search for a cure to the tadpoles. She is fine with killing the grove, but the contrast between her at the tiefling party and the goblin party shows pretty starkly how she really feels.
Astarion starts off the game evil. I will fucking fight anyone on this. He has very very good reasons to be evil, but so does Shadowheart… and she’s not. Astarion enjoys chaos, he likes murder, he likes hurting people. He thinks being “good” is weak and stupid and that might be a trauma response, but it is how he genuinely feels at that point in his story.
And yet. AND YET. For some reason, I have never seen anyone complain about making Shadowheart a Dark Justiciar. If she likes you, you actually have to encourage her to kill Nightsong. Even on my evil run, she spared Aylin if I didn’t tell her not to. You have to either not care about her or intervene to make her evil, and right up to the end where she kills her parents and Shar wipes her memory again, she is just so miserable and resigned to what she’s been influenced to be.
But people do it to get the hotter sex scene or whatever and that’s fine.
But Astarion? The man who spends the whole fucking game begging you to help him take over an evil cult and murder his “family” so he can become a living vampire as soon as he realises it might be an option? The guy who will throw a fit and leave you if you don’t either succeed in a persuasion check or help him eternally damn 7007 people— no matter how close you’ve gotten to him?
Apparently you’re an evil piece of shit if you find his “bad” ending compelling or, dare I say it, hot.
I don’t really care which ending you prefer for either character— I think the game does a great job on its own telling you what you should think and it’s fairly nuanced for both characters. I just don’t understand why Astarion has to be so woobified and his “bad” ending fans vilified as if they’re naive morons with no media literacy.
Shadowheart, the character, hates her “bad” ending way more than Astarion, the character, hates his. And fandom can’t reflect this because I don’t know…
Oh god. It’s sexism isn’t it?
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