The Cat Lady

Taking pride in One's own appearance.

"sounds nice... having a partner"

Essek and Caleb both learn the Maze spell and cast it on each other as Wizard Enrichment™. They get sent into a labyrinth with the goal of ‘escape’, and if they can’t get out in 10 minutes, they just get popped back out. No harm, no foul.

It starts out as a fun little activity, but then they start getting competitive about it. First, it’s basic races—who can get the fastest time getting out of a maze. But then, they get into a discussion about how the mazes are generated. Is it random? Is there some pattern to the various layouts? And if so, is there a style of maze that is more advantageous? Does the maze creator have any influence over the design of the maze?

The thing is, Maze only requires a DC 20 Intelligence check to escape. That’s nothing to these guys, and they crack it open pretty quick. So then they ask themselves, can we make it harder?

Their previous toyings with Maze RNG become full on experiments and deep dives to see if they can add increased difficulty. They start adding multiple levels, doors that require you to solve a puzzle to unlock, fetch quests, etc. They come up with the most difficult maps and challenge each other to get their times lower and lower and lower.

They become Maze spell speedrunners and modders is what I’m saying.

Decided to give Dragon Age another try and the first character I meet COMPLETELY wins me over in a matter of seconds-

I'm playing through Dragon Age 2 again and I just can't get over how... idk how to say it exactly, but the way you feel, in every moment of this game, how much Varric loves Hawke. It feels entwined with everything, it breathes through every part of the narrative, it blooms diegetigally through the integration of story and gameplay, makes you a co-conspirator in that love in a way maybe only a video game could.

It's in the way I don't think this story is a defense of Hawke only -- or even primarily -- directed at Cassandra, but at Hawke themselves. Beneath everything else going on there's the quiet, utterly unshakable refutation of Hawke's worst fears: Did you think you mattered, Hawke? Did you think anything you ever did mattered? . . . You're a failure, and your family died knowing it. Rising through the story as Varric tells it there's a fiercely tender voice saying: Yes, you did matter. In tragedy or in triumph, for better or for worse, in love or in hate, you always mattered. The ultimate tragedy of Hawke is always right there in the open before the story even starts letting you in on telling it; they couldn't fix anything. They couldn't stop the downward spiral Kirkwall was set on -- the real truth is that no one person ever could. And yet the point of DA2 is that it matters that they tried, and it matters that there were people who loved and were loved along the way, however badly it all failed in the end. Hawke is the Bioware protagonist who succeeds the least, and they're the character who matters the most, to me. (This is also why the Absolution reveal did not shake me in the least haha, my love for Hawke has nothing at all to do with whether they succeeded or failed at anything.)

What Varric is saying, in the only way he seems to be able to say the really real things -- through stories -- is so simple and so fundamental. You were here, and I loved you. There's the emotional heart of it, at the end of it all, that love and grief and recognition. It's so dizzyingly intimate. There's so much distancing, layers upon layers of obfuscation, to be able to say it. It drives me insane!!!! It makes me feel the same way that 'Poem' by Langston Hughes does:

I loved my friend.  He went away from me.  There's nothing more to say.  The poem ends,  Soft as it began,— I loved my friend. 

He loved his friend. They went away from him. What more is there to say. (Many, many, many things, when you're a compulsive liar and storyteller, but hey sometimes you have to deploy a whole armada of lies to tell one simple truth, I understand, I'm a writer too lol)

hey, remember 2.3? what was up with that event....

redraw of a thing from 2021 which was sorta a screencap redraw from that one cutscene

also oml albedo your in-game model... i am still so sorry to what they did to you and your hair especially.. i hope they go back and revamp it but i dont have high hopes for that happening 😔

I AM GOING GOING FERAL GOING APE OMG KILLING MYSELF IS POSTPONED ALL IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD THE PLANETS HAVE ALIGNED THE STARS SHINES DOWN ON THE WORLD THE SUN IS GLOWING THE OCEANS ARE CLEAN THE ICE CAPS HAVE REFROZEN THE FORESTS ARE REGROWING

MY FAVOURITE GAME FROM MY CHILDHOOD HAS GOTTEN A REMASTER THIS GAME WAS EVERYTHING TO ME IT GAVE ME THE DESIRE TO ANIMATE AND DRAW THINGS OH MY GOD OH MY GOD IT LOOKS SMOOTH FUCKING BEAUTIFUL

The two characters I was weirdly hyped about when I saw them in the Super Mario Bros Wonder Direct

At this point, gender nonconformity is about what the person says their experience is.

If a woman with a beard or a man with lipstick and a mustache says they're gender nonconforming, then they are! If a woman with short hair or a man with long hair says they aren't, they aren't! And that's not even getting into the awesome nonbinary, abinary, genderqueer, intersex, and general genderfuckery that may both be and not be conforming.

So much of what is even considered gender conforming or gender nonconforming is based on a world of exclusion. When we start defining one's conformity with whether they fit into white cishetero perisex standards or not, we play into the idea that there's only a very narrow window of what is considered worthy of time and thought.

do you have any thoughts on zelda not staying as a dragon? me personally I like it and am very cool with it mostly because I think zelda should get to be happy forever (and because I'm smart enough to know she changed back because of recall and not some ambiguous power of love lmao) but a lot of people seem to dislike that it made the draconification inconsequential?

i think there's like. some valid concerns surrounding inconsequentiality/"curing" the physical problems characters have as a way of giving them a "happy ending" but I think those concerns don't necessarily apply to totk in the way people seem to be applying them, especially irt zelda's draconification and link's arm.

most of the time when the criticism of this "magic cure" trope is applied to media, it's because the trope is used as a cure-all to erase a character's suffering or trauma and make them "normal" again, and often ignores the character development or themes of the story in favor of giving the character a happy ending. I don't think that applies to totk, though, because the "curing" link and zelda experience is both within the realm of possibility given the worldbuilding present in the game (recall could easily have done it, as you mentioned) AND thematically consistent with the rest of the game. One of if not the most important central themes of totk is the idea of failure and second chances. we see a hyrule that has been given a second chance after link's initial failure with the calamity brought it to the brink of destruction. we see characters who were deeply unhappy and entrenched in the shame of their precalamity mistakes like purah and zelda become active, beloved members of their communities. we see the people of lurelin village take back and rebuild their destroyed home. we watch this kingdom and its people make an unprecedented comeback after a century of struggle and ruin.

Similarly, totk's gameplay is LINK's second chance, his comeback from the initial mistake of losing zelda, of specifically being unable to reach her with his injured hand when they fell. The consequences of that--the master sword's corruption, the loss of his arm, and zelda's draconification, are all supposed to SEEM irreversible, because that's how LINK initially sees them. he believes that he doomed both himself and zelda all because of that SINGLE moment in which he wasn't enough, a viewpoint which is obviously left over from the pressure he experienced to perform to an impossible standard of perfection pre-calamity. The story of totk is about deconstructing that belief and proving it wrong. the mistake he made caused harm, but it's never too late to repair things. he can fix the regional phenomena ganondorf causes and rebuild those communities. he can revitalize the master sword. he can GET ZELDA BACK, with his own arm, uninjured and able to reach her this time. no matter how impossible those things may initially seem, no matter the perceived finality of his mistakes and their consequences, there is always hope. there is always a second chance. no one person's single mistake can doom an entire kingdom for eternity. the fate of hyrule was NEVER resting on link's shoulders alone. he was never their final hope. there was always going to be an after. the whole POINT of the draconification and the loss of link's arm is that they AREN'T final. they ARE inconsequential, because they were born of one mistake and ONE MISTAKE IS NOT THE END ALL.

I know I want Sansa to go feral (as is her right at this point holy shit) but I’m not sure that would fulfill the point of her character. I can’t really imagine a world where Sansa’s kindness and amazing ability to forgive those who wronged her doesn’t win out (even begrudgingly so). Like there’s a reason she has so much connection to the Mother.

Gentle Mother, Font of Mercy

Soothe the wrath and tame the fury, teach us all a kinder way

Basically, I just want Cersei, the Hound, and Littlefinger to be wrong.

lies of p beloved 🦋

tl;dr if the next time we see accord again she has her hair down you’ll see me on the news