it is, i think, symptomatic of the way larian has built this brand: bg3 was always marketed as being mature (read: sexual), and that was one of the big draws for players - myself included! especially as media pulls more towards extremes, with mainstream video games starting to get increasingly graphically sexual, graphically violent, and the vogue for 'grey morality' becomes the norm, those boundaries get pushed, and it becomes more and more of a selling point.

larian obviously focused on this, along with the How Do You Do, Fellow Kids brand, the increased accessibility of game devs on twitter, and adopted it heavily into their marketing strategy, and are now pretty reliant on the horny gamer crowd for a lot of their audience, and more importantly, they're doing this on purpose.

which is how you end up in situations like this.

characters (white men) the players want to fuck get centred: they get updates, they get more content, they get favoured. halsin's gone from a side character in EA to a half-fledged romance option, to a full romance option: he shows up in the promotional material, is larian's poster boy for the sex scenes, he gets more content with every update.

now gortash gets more heavily implied situationship lines with the dark urge, because players are horny for him. nevermind that some people aren't playing that way, or that he was originally set up to be a lower-level antagonist; nevermind that if the durge's storyline needed expansion, it should've been with orin and sarevok and bhaal, or that it muddies the writing for the rest of gortash's arc + characterisation: people want to fuck him, so it gets put in the game. it's not even to do with karlach, whose quest so desperately needs expansion! it's specifically catering to the people who want their character to have a Relationship with the slaver, because they're either not interested in or not able to focus on strengthening the weak spots in the narrative: they're just doing things that will net the 'my favourite dating sim' people lmfao.

meanwhile, literal main character wyll gets his quest demoted to a subquest, doesn't get bugfixes, doesn't get a single unique romance greeting after 6 patches and months of requests. he's not a Horny character, so he doesn't get the focus: he's not a player favourite, so he gets nothing. it's just... so unbelievably, indisputably racist, and it's incredibly grim and disappointing to watch it happen in real-time.

Being a batfam fan is funny because people will make a post like “here’s my headcanon-“ and it’s just something that’s directly canon to the story then post about major canon events and get everything wrong.

something we need to admit is that ray toro is one of the most talented musicians of this century and a fundamental pioneer of the movement of rock sound into the 21st century, and yet his talent is largely ignored due to a racist fanbase. we can’t just blame the outside perception of mcr because they’ve been acknowledged as a good band by very large publications and rock legends themselves. ray is the only person of color in the band and his own fanbase ignores him. just think for a second and consider who is really to blame.

if you had read the story of hind raghab, if you had seen the picture of the child hanging from a pole, its lower body shredded, if you had seen the boy carrying pieces of his brother in a body bag, if you had known the soul of my soul, the story of refaat, and the countless war crimes israel has committed just in 7 months then you wouldn’t stream the song skz is putting out with charlie puth, a zionist and overall bad human, and that israeli producer. you would send a clear message that zionism isnt welcome in any capacity in any medium and you wouldn’t want to fund people who support its hateful ideology. this isnt a matter of being a skz anti and im so fucking tired of people painting it as such. where do you draw the line for your morals?

Wow you guys liked that Phantom post. Hi

i think every splatoon player should look up at least some of the band lore bc it’s all so fucking funny. all of it is like

“the frontman of the most popular influential band of all time doesn’t actually know anything about music theory or even how to read music he just makes noises with his guitar that he thinks sounds cool and it works” 

“the lead singer of this band sucks at music and the rest of the band berates him for it all the time. the fiddler of the band is particularly violent about it and has almost dissolved the band multiple times because of it. there is official art of them beating the fuck out of each other”

“the bassist of the most popular influential band of all time left because everyone was too nice to each other. he met a dj who he fucking hated and the two of them fought so hard they formed a duo. they refuse to record together and don’t even look at each other during performances and their music bangs bc of it”

“pearl used to be the lead singer of this band but the rest of the members did not like her so they kicked her out. they replaced her with a 10 year old child they found on twitter”

i have a long post about anti blackness in fandom spaces, specifically in anime fandoms cooking in my drafts.

bg3 modern!au idea where halsin is a conservationist, who mentions kind of despairingly to a younger colleague at a conference the way he's having such a hard time with outreach to get folks in his community aware of the wildlife around them and how important it is. the colleague makes an offhand reference to how tiktok is the way people seem to get connected to that sort of thing most nowadays, although hell if they have the patience to figure out the app, and wanders off to catch up with someone else. they will not realize until later (far, far later) the ramifications of this statement.

halsin is rather quiet for the rest of the event, makes his goodbyes, and then returns home to painstakingly research just how "tiktok" works, with the grim determination of a fighter entering the ring. if this is what it takes to raise awareness, then this is what he'll do. the cause is more than worth it.

the first roadblock he runs into makes him worry the venture will be over before its even started. the first few webpages he finds tell him patronizingly that his phone is too old to work for 'content creation'. and okay, so it's scuffed, and dented, and has maybe taken one or two tumbles into a mud puddle, but it ought to be more than serviceable! he goes outside and finds a patch of wildflowers, pulling up the camera function and shooting a shaky video. he returns to his kitchen table, squinting down at the results. he can see all of the distinguishing features of the plant that would allow him to recognize it in the wild, which means it's good enough to do its job. with a new resolve - that his family would have wryly labeled as stubbornness - he focuses his research efforts until he finally finds a webpage that will tell him how to make the app work with his phone.

when at last it starts up in a blare of sound and over-saturated colors, he grimaces, but presses on. it asks him to set up a username, and he types in his first name. the little circle spins for a moment, then tells him it's taken. he frowns, then adds a random number. 2. it spins again, same response. he frowns harder, then adds another. 6. it spins, spins, spins, then — welcome, new user @.halsin26! upload your first video to start using tiktok!

he decides not to overthink it. it'll either work out or it won't. he looks out the window, and judges there's still just enough light out. he returns to the little patch of wildflowers, and gives it a thumbs up. he starts a recording directly in the app, making note of the 60-second time limit with a grimace. to make the most of the time he has, he doesn't bother with an introduction, just kneels down next to the cluster of plants, careful not to compress the ground too close to their root system, and moves his hand just behind the flowering portion to visually distinguish it, and act as a scale reference. he keeps his voice low, since he doesn't want to overshadow the content itself, and quickly lays out where folks could run into this plant, its importance to its local ecosystem, and ways they could help its conservation. the most important things the average person can do, he states passionately as the timer begins its final warning, is to document the locations where they find said plants, so that the areas can be marked for oversight and protection.

he doesn't bother to look back over the video before he posts it. he knows what he said, after all. he stretches his arms up above his head, then massages the back of his neck where the muscles are growing stiff. as he heads back inside to start dinner for himself, he tosses the phone into a basket on the counter and forgets about it.

the video languishes in the algorithm for the evening, until a random user gets distracted from scrolling away from the potato-quality wildflower video someone's grandma uploaded and chokes on their spit as forearms that very clearly do not belong to anyone's grandmother enter the frame, gently cupping the air around the flower.

god i wish that were me, they type before they can stop themself. debating whether to bother hitting send, they choke again as an absolutely unfair voice begins to narrate the ecological importance of this particular plant. the voice is smooth and deep, just above a murmur with a pleasant backing rumble. they have never given a moment's thought to plants in their entire life, but all of a sudden they are invested. they don't even notice when their thumb hits 'send' on their comment, too busy swiping over to the profile to see if there are any other videos. it's empty of literally everything, default user icon, only-barely-not-randomly-generated username, only one video posted earlier that day. they go back to the video and copy the link to send to their friends, needing someone - anyone - else to understand the experience they just had.

a few more interactions like that, and the algorithm takes notice. it bumps the video to a few more users outside of the current sphere, and those ones like it too. more importantly, they are very likely to share the video with others, increasing the engagement far beyond anything it had right to expect.

by two days later, when halsin remembers to actually check the thing, it is sitting at a comfortable 2500 likes, and there is a whole fleet of comments waiting for him to review. some of them - many of them, actually - don't seem that relevant at all, and he frowns, but then he sees a few that actually seem interested in more information on the plant he'd described, asking questions about how wide its range is, if it could be found in this or that coloration, etc. these he responds to swiftly, then grimaces as he runs up against a 'character limit'? who ever heard of such a foolish thing. after a moment of glaring down at his phone, he sees that it will allow him to answer by video, and does so, stepping onto his porch and zooming in on the plants. (this blurs them into barely discernible blobs of pixels, but he does not notice.)

still others are curious about what other plants and wildlife he might be able to share about, and he leaves short comments under each letting them know that he will plan to upload some more videos soon, if there is an interest. one user has left a comment that he almost files into his mental "ignore" category, but goes back to reread at the last moment.

not convinced this isn't one of those 'booktok bait' things again but i stg there's a big ass patch of those fuckers behind a parking lot somewhere around here?

halsin responds to this one with a video too. now that he's getting the hang of it, it's actually a bit more convenient than having to type everything out. he thanks the commenter for sharing, then asks if they might be willing to do him a favor sometime – only if it wasn't any trouble, of course! – and grab a video or two of the area they referenced, and share it with him — or their local wildlife foundation, at least.

a few days later, he opens the app to check in to find that he's been tagged in a video by some user. bemused, he clicks on the popup, and it takes him to a slightly shaky but pristine quality video of an empty lot filled with tall grass. the person filming moves a bit closer, then zooms in, and halsin spots multiple cluster of that recognizable wildflowers, before the video ends and restarts. there's no narration to this one, only a barely audible music wheel spinning in the corner. the caption on the video says, @.halsin26 just in case you're not actually some weird account for a fetish i haven't heard of before, here's some of those plants you mentioned looking for.

you know sometimes one of the things the fandom does that i like the least is joke about how certain ccs are "lorephobic" because it basically always ignores the lore they actually are really and visibly doing. like, sure, they may not be doing the lore YOU'RE looking at, but, one, lore doesn't just mean "big overarching server storyline" it can also mean solo stuff. it can also mean 'builds that have story built into them'. it can also mean 'fun little storyline between like two guys'. it can also mean character continuity. it can mean many things. two, "this guy doesn't do lore" is NOT the same thing as "this guy doesn't do the specific lore i personally like and want to see them doing" and i don't always think you guys know the difference. all of this, of course, is to say: hey guys did you know zedaph can canonically time travel,

pretty neat game

literally the most cursed thing i've ever seen-

literally the top result of 'is lore olympus ending' is my own dang post talking about the series coming to an end and how poorly the series has been handled leading up to its finale

i said it before and i said it again - the fans should not have to find out from me that their favorite series is coming to an end. this is truly the biggest testament to how much webtoons and rachel are trying to sweep this series under the rug without a hint of hype for its ending.

oh god this is where i become light yagami isn't it-

I DONT KNOW WHAT LIES OF P IS BUT KEEP DRAWING THAT BOY PLEASE I BEG

OKAY o7

I was gonna draw some appropriate things for this blog but have some cryptic sebby instead????

These lines by Apollo, aka Lester, live in my mind rent free

Listen, i have no theory, i have absolutely no idea what is the connection here

ALSO:

I mean HELLO?? A four-thousand-something years old god saying that. plus i might not be knowledgeable about genetics and how it works but doesn’t percy possess these eyes because of Poseidon ?

this is an extract taken from The Lightening Thief:

I’ve been a reader of Rick Riordan for so long that i know he doesn’t just add things randomly

I don’t know what’s happening here, but I do know that Estelle Blofis, the very lovable energetic child who is very much capable of dominating the planet (Apollo’s words not mine) might have an important role in the story

but again, who knows