yukirandom

[yukirandom]

so many queer ppl will be like "deviating from social norms is part of who we are" and then gleefully participate in fatphobia/diet culture and nearly make being skinny an entire ideology and identity

[yukirandom]

Varric Tethras and the Centrist Agenda

According to David Gaider in a Game Informer interview, Varric Tethras in Dragon Age II was originally a character who the player had to question if they could trust or not. But because of the political tension embedded in the game’s story, his role changed into someone that instead, the player felt was always on their side no matter what. While I can understand the motivations behind this change, I can’t help but sometimes wonder what Varric would have been like, had he been given defining viewpoints of his own. Instead, what we have is a character who has very little distinction outside of his relationship to Hawke. While this improves somewhat in his place in Dragon Age: Inquisition, he still falls flat compared to all the other characters who at least have a backbone, whether you agree with them or not. Because Varric tries to separate himself from the mage-templar conflict by equating them, he just reads as an ignorant centrist at best, or actively harmful towards the mages at worse. Pretending that an oppressed group wanting to end oppression is just as bad as their oppressors wanting to continue the oppression, is at the end of the day, only benefiting the oppressors.

Compare Varric’s centrism to Sera’s centrism: In Dragon Age: Inquisition, the very first conversation you have with Sera after recruiting her is asking her which side she’s on in the mage-templar conflict. When she says she’s “in the middle”, you can challenge this. You can repeatedly challenge her views throughout the game, to in the very least be able to express how your character feels differently. But when Varric share his “both sides have a point” nonsense, there is no such opportunity. Varric is a vehicle for Inquisition’s overall centrist messages, with his established fan-favouritism used to steer this.

I certainly believe it’s possible to write a centrist character in an interesting way, if their centrism is treated as an intentional character flaw that they are forced to confront at some point. But Varric’s centrism is treated like a positive; like he’s simply above the conflict and everyone else is being silly for caring about it. Not once in any piece of Dragon Age media he’s been present in, has he been forced to question his views. Even at the very end of Dragon Age II when Hawke asks for input from all the companions on Anders’ actions, Varric’s response is just “I’m sick of mages and templars.” This would have been a perfect opportunity to finally force Varric to take a stand, but instead he still sees the conflict as being an annoyance rather than an issue about equal rights. With the added context being the intention to create a character that the player can rely on no matter what, the result is BioWare telling the player they should feel the same.

[yukirandom]

how could you not think she’s beautiful

she has such an expressive face! a beautiful expressive face!

[yukirandom]

Not the religious type - bg3 astarion comic

hope u enjoyed

[yukirandom]

I really hate how bioware at the beginning of this year was like "this year we'll have more updates on dragon age 4!" and the updates are "we laid off 50 ppl, most are veterans, including mary kirby who is responsible for the one character we are using to milk this franchise dry :) and we did not give them proper severance pay" and "here's a 49 second trailer telling u nothing but tune in 6 months (again) to find out whether this game is real or not! :)"

[yukirandom]

actually the best ship dynamic is i would kill for you. i would kill anyone who layed a hand on you. please let me kill for you. please let me show my devotion by dirtying my hands, it's the only way i know how. let me destroy anything that hurts you. i've hurt you too. i'm destroying myself.

[yukirandom]

#I love how the wolf is shirtless

[yukirandom]

Non-binary people don’t owe you androgyny

[yukirandom]

[yukirandom]

people are so weird about lae’zel srsly. this woman is so Good i truly do not understand the majority of takes

like shadowheart mentions she’s half-elf once and lae’zel is like ok noted for the next time and doesnt get it wrong again

gale mentions how he’s impressed by her fighting and she immediately offers to teach him

she also answers any and all questions about the celestial realm and mindflayers that EVERYONE in the party asks her

she is the ONLY one with any experience and hands on knowledge about what the party is going thru but will still defer to the leader and help. for all she knows, they will literally be cured immediately if they find the creche but she still sticks around these fucking weirdoes because they ask her to

never speak bad about lae’zel in my presence EVER

[yukirandom]

this guy gets it

#it was made for me #thank you

[yukirandom]

This one is way less serious than the stuff I usually put on here, but here we go: All people who dislike Wyll from Baldur's Gate 3 are not racist, but some of y'all fuckers definitely are, and the Venn Diagram of people I've seen that go beyond simply disliking, but actively HATING Wyll to the point of actively wishing for/working towards his death, and people who stan Astarion to an irritating extent is a perfect circle.

While I'm ranting about this: y'all also confuse me because, somehow, "functioning moral compass" = "boring." People go on and on about wanting less problematic men in media, we get a dude that is practically a Disney prince, and y'all call him boring and headcanon/draw Astarion doing the things Wyll would do knowing full well he wouldn't do half of it. The only somewhat decent Wyll content I can find involving Wyll has him shipped with Astarion. It's fiction, maybe y'all aren't like this IRL, but y'all concern me a bit if this dude has y'all in THAT MUCH of a chokehold.

[yukirandom]

spent entirely too long on this relatively niche meme

[yukirandom]

slightly redesigned the freak du chic clawdeen's stock photo because the way they whitewashed her skin tone completely unnerves me to this day. instead of almost her entire body, the white part is now airbrushed on her face to represent white face paint <:D + darker lips to give her face more contrast. I'll admit the original still has a unique tim burton-esque charm but tbh Id rather they did not whitewash a character for the aesthetic.

you may not agree with this! thats okay! do not come to harass me, most you'll get is a block.

[yukirandom]

[yukirandom]

I think it's entirely fair to compare Baldur's Gate 3's rise in success to the Dragon Age franchise's downward spiral. Same goes for all other big name RPGs, for that matter.

What BG3 has just proven is that people do still love single-player, character driven roleplaying games. What BG3 has just proven is that studios do not need to fill their games with trash like micro-transactions, loot boxes, etc. What BG3 has just proven is that player-engagement can be used for the betterment of your product, and that people care more about feeling valued than potentially “spoiling” something.

But to circle back to specifically comparing BG3 to DAI…

BG3 has consequences to your actions. If you want to be evil, you can be really, really evil, and part of that experience is having the characters and world actually react to your wrongdoings! It’s so fucking refreshing to experience an RPG that has completely gone off the railroad track, unlike DAI which only offers what feels like the illusion of choice in comparison.

The way the player interacts with the all BG3 characters actually affects the course of their journey, as they all potentially change as people. I can only say the same for like, less than half of the DAI characters.

I think the biggest difference though, to me at least, is that BG3 has themes that anyone can relate to. DAI relies so heavily on the single theme of faith, without much else to offer, that it excludes anyone who doesn’t subscribe to that. But BG3’s multiple themes of trust, autonomy, power and corruption, etc. means that it’s far more likely for the player to feel personally invested in the story.

So, yeah. Baldur’s Gate 3 is everything Dragon Age used to be, and maybe that’s why it’s my new favourite game.

[yukirandom]

I think people would armchair diagnose bad people with cluster B disorders much less if psychiatric disorders hadn't all been given names by ableists who of course picked the traits most unberarable to "sane" people to name them rather than, you know, the ways it affects the people that have them. It's like, when doctors are all "this disorder gives you extremely low self esteem. and it's called the Selfish Fucking Asshole Disorder" or "this disorder makes you want to die so bad. and it's called the Hysteric Bitch Disorder" or "this disorder disconnects you from your peers. and it's called the Insane Evil Cunt Disorder" and so on and so forth, so of course you have people going "oh, this person is a selfish fucking asshole, they MUST have Selfish Fucking Asshole Disorder! this further proves that all people with this disorder are like that in the first place!" Do You See It