detritus from the internet

[vaspider]

Common Cause put together a $115K deal with the Washington Post in partnership with SPLC to have these two huge ads in the WaPo papers that are delivered to Congress, the Pentagon, and the White House.

When they saw the images, they backed out, presumably bc Bezos doesn't want to piss off the Trump administration.

Well. I can't get these images into Congress, but I surely can start them running around the internet.

[thoughtkick]

“You are not a reflection of the people who can’t love you.”

— Caitlyn Siehl

[sandmandaddy69]

[harzilla]

Reblog to cast healing for your homies.

[honey002]

In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don't let them pretend we never existed.

P.S: Don't like! Reblog! <3

EDIT: Well this got a lot of attention! I got a few users asking to print or repost my art and I am unimaginably grateful to everyone's interest, especially since it's a really simple drawing I made on a whim haha! Anyone who is looking to print these out to hang or hand out or repost on another platform is free to do so, although I ask you to credit me and let people know it's from my Tumblr profile! If anyone wishes to do anything else with my art or post and wants to clarify what I consent to then they can message me privately and I'll explain! <333 all my love to my queer siblings

[existennialmemes]

Listen, if a Bad President can come in and take away our rights and we're dependent on a Good President replacing them in four years to give us back our rights, then we do not have any rights.

If politicians can take or distribute them, then they're not "inalienable" and they're not "rights."

We don't have inalienable rights we have conditional privileges, divvied out according to the whims of whoever currently holds the reins.

And if we want to have actual rights, then we must build a system in which no one has the power to take them away to begin with.

[gwydionmisha]

States that ban abortion are losing residents, new study finds • Idaho Capital Sun

The study tracked population shifts in 13 states, including Idaho, that enacted abortion bans after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade

[eye-in-hand-deactivated20250117]

states: (takes women's rights away)

states: why are we losing residents?

[inbarati]

It's almost like people need control over their own healthcare decisions to the point where they are willing to leave your state to get it. Shocking.

[crossstitchworld]

am from the 1900’s by white-as-styrofoam

[silkfromvenus]

[daturablossomsblog-deactivated2]

When people new to DA say things like "I didn't play any of the previous games before I played Veilguard" that's fine, but to then turn around and say "well, because Veilguard says [lore thing] that means everything in the previous games is false" makes you look willfully ignorant at best and [redacted] at worst. Veilguard did not do a good job with three games of established lore. New players apparently came out of datv not knowing what a Circle is, for crying out loud???

People who wanted to see the Veil removed have a basis for the belief that it might usher in a new age for Thedas that could ultimately make things better for elves, mages, and spirits. Or at least change the world in an interesting, exciting way. That basis was given to us by the first three games. For example:

Flemeth

"We stand upon the precipice of change. The world fears the inevitable plummet into the abyss. Watch for that moment . . . and when it comes, do not hesitate to leap. It is only when you fall that you learn whether you can fly." (DA2)

PC: "Why did Mythal come to you?"

Flemeth: "For a reckoning that will shake the very heavens."

Morrigan: "And you follow her whims? Do you even know what she truly is?"

Flemeth: "You seek to preserve the powers that were, but to what end? It is because I taught you, girl, because things happened that were never meant to happen. She was betrayed as I was betrayed--as the world was betrayed! Mythal clawed and crawled her way through the ages to me, and I will see her avenged!" (DAI)

Sandal's Prophecy

"One day the magic will come back, all of it. Everyone will be just like they were. The shadows will part and the skies will open wide. When he rises, everyone will see." (DA2)

Cole

"The Veil isn’t real. It’s false, fake, fabricated to forbid. Isn’t it wonderful?"

"Cole: Is there a way to save more spirits, Solas?

Solas: Not until the Veil is healed. The rifts draw spirits through, and the shock makes demons of them.

Cole: Pushing through makes you be yourself. You can hold onto the you.

Cole: Being pulled through means you don't have enough you. You become what batters you, bruises your being.

Solas: Yes, exactly. Deliberately crossing the Veil requires that a spirit form will, personality.

Solas: That concept of self gives a spirit the chance to maintain its nature.

Solas: Wrenched into this world unwillingly by the rifts, spirits suffer the same fate as my friend.

Cole: Then we will help them." (DAI)

Morrigan

"Change is coming to the world. Many fear chance and will fight it with every fiber of their being. But sometimes change is what they need most. Sometimes change is what sets them free." (DAO: Witch Hunt)

"Mankind blunders through this world, crushing what it does not understand: elves, dragons, magic . . . the list is endless. We must stem the tide, or be left with nothing more than the mundane. This I know to be true." (DAI)

I haven't even touched on what Solas says, due to his bias/the way some people refuse to consider his insight at all, even though he knows the most about the Veil of any character in the series ever. For obvious reasons.

Due to the above evidence, I completely agree that the Veil coming down would probably be catastrophic to some degree. I disagree that it would have "destroyed the world" or "drowned [it] in demons" as Veilguard loves to repeat over and over, mostly from characters like Varric who don't know jack about the Veil, magic, or spirits. And I disagree that people who wanted to see what would happen if the Veil came down are wrong or misguided--they obviously just paid better attention to what the overarching narrative than some. It isn't their fault that this more interesting and dynamic narrative was retconned to shreds and buried in the backyard.

[the-fallen-blue]

Still cannot believe how utterly, profoundly, and miserably they wasted Flemeth.

[the-fallen-blue]

Like, ok. Consider: what is Dragon Age?

At its best, it is a story about morally complex characters. Villains who are capable of great virtue, whose motives we understand and empathize with even as we condemn the atrocities they commit. Heroes who have deep flaws, whose prejudices and failures have consequences that echo for themselves and everyone else.

At its best, it's a story about rich, thoughtfully-rendered factions, each with their own histories and perspectives and beliefs, whose pursuit of self-interest leads them into conflicts; a story where the protagonist navigates between those factions, and makes decisions about who to support, when to reconcile, when to strike out.

At its best, it's a story with a complicated, mysterious backstory of strange magic and eldritch powers that shaped the world long ago and still echo forward in ways that are poorly understood and inspire wonder and curiosity... but which keeps, in the foreground, far more relatable, mundane questions of the small lives of normal people and the vast and complex modern politics that govern those lives.

And what is Flemeth?

A murderer, a savior of heroes, a mother who deeply loves her daughter but also abused her for twenty years to attempt to turn her into the same monster who raised her. A woman responsible for the death of half a terynir and also essential to the salvation of multiple nations. A human and an elf and a spirit and a mortal and none of those things, deeply intertwined with the history of the Dalish clans, their city-dwelling ancestors, and the most powerful human nobles; someone who no one would be the least bit surprised to find was deeply involved with the dwarves or Avaar or qunari or anyone else, as well, because that's just how she is. Someone woven into the very fabric of the setting, a creature out of the ancient lore of elves and the founding of the kingdoms of men, but also just a crazy old woman in a swamp. Someone equally invested in heroes who shake nations, and irrelevant refugees who can do no more than watch their cities fall apart. And also, not for nothing, someone who is a fucking dragon.

In other words, Flemeth is Dragon Age. She is the distillation of the entire franchise into a single obnoxious, charismatic, meddling, necessary Q figure. She could cameo in every game forever, in any scenario, doing anything to support or interfere with any protagonist at any level of relevance, and it would always fit. She would always belong there.

And it matters, here, too, that she's a woman who holds this role. That the most powerful and knowledgeable figure in the setting, someone who can only be begged from or bargained with, someone who can't be meaningfully punished for her crimes, someone who is strange and important and unrepentant and holds all the secrets and can't be compelled to give a single one before she's ready, is a woman. This is not a role, even here in the year of our lord 2024, that women often get to have. Back when Origins was made, it was even more rare (Origins itself has enough gender problems that it was remarkable even by Dragon Age standards that this happened at all).

But with Veilguard, the devs made the choice that Flemeth's last act, whatever she was doing with the Eluvian in that scene, was just flavor text rather than the creation of some phylactery such as she gave to Hawke; that her last words to a player character, a promise of future vengeance and a plan yet in motion, should have no meaning or fruition; that the smartest and most cunning character in the setting had no backup plan and was totally blindsided by being betrayed by the god of betrayal; that a woman who has repeatedly failed to die to the most dramatic defeats is, indeed, just unceremoniously totally fucking dead to a simple knife in the gut; that all that should continue of this character into further games is a broken fragment of one part of her complex construction, a pale shadow with no power, no agency, no wisdom, and no purpose other than begging her own murderer to stop being a dick so he can get a happy ending; that Flemeth is no longer needed in the story, and that her role of eldritch manipulator henceforth should be filled by said murderer instead.

And okay, sure, for what it's worth, Solas is also a really well-drawn morally ambiguous character. He has all the same moral depth as Flemeth. But I shouldn't need to tell anyone how unremarkable it is for a dude to be written as a sympathetic bad guy who gets to get away with his crimes and be crucial to the heroes' story because the fans like him. And that's the only criterion he meets. Solas has no connections to any living faction - not only does he have no interest in any political grouping of humans or dwarves, his active disavowal even of modern elves is a crucial character trait in two different BioWare stories. He is deeply bound up in the ancient backstory and lore, but he has no interest in any mundane part of the setting, be it people or politics; it is in fact a core character trait that he refuses to even consider any such connections in order to preserve his own motivation, and the plot politely offers up the contrivance of his restriction to Rook's brain to turn that preference into an unchallengeable physical fact.

Hell, they even make a point of him being the only Evanuris who doesn't have a goddamn dragon!

But maybe it's not surprising that the pathetic whimper of a torch-passing from Flemeth to Solas came hand-in-hand with the abandonment of any depth to or interesting conflict between factions, any real flaws or moral complexity to the characters, and any real pretense that the political conflicts we faced had even half the relevance or meaning to the writers as the bombastic mythological conflicts. Flemeth is Dragon Age. And in many meaningful ways, Veilguard simply is not. Perhaps it was inevitable that she would have no place there.

[inbarati]

I wrote nearly 200k words of fanfiction for Inquisition. They ruined this series and the worst part of it is I wasn't even surprised after a decade spent abandoning it for Anthem and Andromeda and chasing live service cash and beloved creators being treated so poorly they eventually left. I'm crushed. These were my favorite games, and there is nothing quite like them. It's over, and due entirely to mismanagement and on a terrible note. I hope they treat Mass Effect better, but something tells me shafting DA isn't going to improve the quality Bioware puts out.

[memingursa-deactivated20250625]

Gotta admit the headline is a banger.

[technofeudalism]

rolling stone: every person in a position of power in the US collaborated together to do this to you. the media sold you out for profit and aided in the indoctrination of millions to right-wing xenophobia via instilling a fake crime panic. Biden sold you out by putting his own selfish ambitions before the wellbeing of 330~ million citizens by running for a 2nd term and failing to undo any of the cruelty and pain done to people who were hurt under Trump and in some cases making the pain worse. the rest of the Democratic party sold you out by falling in line, normalizing Trumps rhetoric and becoming Republican Lite. Federal law enforcement sold you out via Merrick Garland doing absolutely positively nothing to prosecute right-wing extremism, falsely adding to the Trump narrative that it wasn't all that serious. and most of all, corporations sold you out as they always do, by working together to falsely inflate prices over the last 4 years, causing the economy to appear far worse to the (yet again) unwitting public who have been totally devastated and in some cases made homeless. this also dooms the Democrats on the economy for the foreseeable future. hold these institutions accountable.

you, a person completely immune to being radicalized through propaganda: the american people really dropped the ball here

[krems-chair]

I'm missing the Inquisition nerds today.

I loved slogging through hours of the Hinterlands only for Solas to pop up with another burst of energy to be like "actually if you think about it wolves are exactly as dangerous as we force them to be."

I loved coming back from a mission and having Dorian chucking books over his shoulder (I assume Solas is running around beneath like the Lilo and Stitch sandwich game to catch them all) because he's so mad none of them have what his diligent researcher brain seeks.

I loved Cassandra having an encyclopedic knowledge of fine literature (that's fine *wink* literature to you) and delighting in getting new chapters amidst the impending end of the world.

And then ofc shout out to Bull, Cullen, Dorian, Leliana, and Solas for apparently all being chess fiends.

Their hands were bloodied, their minds were sharp, their hearts were dedicated to the cause, and I miss themmmmmm.

[pastimperfection]

Porn addiction is fake and it is also bad feminist theory to posit that men need special misogyny training videos to hate women and relate to women in toxic and self-defeating ways when *gestures at everything*

[adaloveslace]

the ‘boys learn this by watching porn’ argument is both ahistorical and not in keeping with how modelling behaviour actually works. even children distinguish fiction from reality all the time, porn has never been an exception. it can inculcate weird beauty standards and expectations during sex but it is not responsible for the misogynist status quo nor for the existence of sexual violence

[bunnymagia]

also the op said this but i cannot stress it enough: porn addiction quite simply is not real. it does not describe a real phenomenon

[fiddlertoad]

if anything, the beauty standards we see in porn are a reproduction of preexisting social standards

if porn is misogynistic it's because society is misogynistic. not really the other way around

[kandimouse]

to those of you who are moving here from tiktok, from someone whos used both tiktok and tumbr for years...

1. DO NOT censor your posts

dont censor sex, abuse, suicide, dont censor it. we dont have censors like tiktok does, you wont be banned for talking about these things and tagging them properly helps people avoid them (also, we dont have shadowbanning here)

2. we dont really have an algorithm

you follow who you follow, and you see posts from who you follow or what you search. the 'for you page' is basically useless here. this also brings me to my next two points

3. dont crosstag

we get it, on tiktok you have to crosstag for reach, but thats not really a thing here. just tag your posts properly (also posters often leave more info about the post in the tags!! and when you reblog stuff you can leave your own notes in the tags, kind of like the old "repost comments" on tiktok)

4. dont expect to go viral/be famous

"viral" isnt really a thing on here (at least not for the average blogger). your posts will probably get 2-10 likes and you wont get nearly as many followers than on tiktok. thats just how tumblr is

5. blocking is your best friend

tiktok is VERY discussion based, and while tumblr is much more discussion based than other social medias, its still not a good place for ragebait/discourse. dont interact, itll make your experience worse in the end, just block and move on

6. you cant go into someone elses house and start rearranging their furniture

this is tumblr, not tiktok. dont diss old tumblr users for how they use the site or try to change them, thats like going into someone elses house and trying to rearrange their furniture. we've been here longer and we're familiar with the site and its culture, either find your niche, adapt, or find a different app

[goingknowherewastaken]

Another important point

You need to actually reblog posts for this site to work as it should.

Liking posts only saves them in a spot that no one checks except for the user who liked them. Most people have their liked posts hidden.

Also, this site has a spam bot problem. One way we weed those out is to check the blog to see if it's actually being used to post legitimate content. If there is absolutely nothing on your blog you're getting blocked and some users may just straight up report you as spam as a precaution.

Not to mention that the posts you reblog will only be seen by you and whoever follows you. Tagging it "fyp" does absolutely nothing.

[paxamericana]

👍

[thetyrannosaur]

are people actually surprised that the world's oldest catholic isn't pro abortion?

[visibilityofcolor]

But vote blue no matter who am I right???

[inbarati]

Dead Kennedys -Nazi Punks Fuck Off (lyrics)

[inbarati]

What's Wrong with Capitalism (Part 1) | ContraPoints