[buffycaps]

Rest in peace to the incredible Anthony Stewart Head (20th February 1954 - 1st June 2026)

RUPERT GILES in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1997-2003)

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

Garrett + Being Wrong About Mostly Everything

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

Garrett/Hannah I Love You's Followed By Kisses

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

#A Husband That Knows The Way To His Wifes Heart Is Through A Sandwich

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

[yenvengerberg]

"I love you. Of course I love you."

[yenvengerberg]

BENEDICT BRIDGERTON & SOPHIE BAEK Bridgerton, Season 4: 'The Passing Winter'

[yenvengerberg]

"It is quite the fantastical tale. Maid… gentleman… in love."

[ros-sauce]

I love that the insane shit people say about bluesky is like. True

[ros-sauce]

You'd think people are being hyperbolic when they're like "you could say it was a little cloudy out this morning and someone you've never seen before would quote you with a caps-heavy reply about how trump's mind is clouded and he must be impeached" but no there are thousands of users who are actually like that

[bombsniffingpomeranian]

[xoshepard]

new favorite audrey fit just dropped :) (thank you @inquisitioneffect as always for giving my girl the best fits)

bonus closeup:

[miseria-fortes-viros]

your weird obsession with moral purity is degrading your critical thinking skills and poisoning your ability to empathize with other people btw

[spirulin4]

what ppl defending kids on ipads don’t seem to understand is that there are other ways to keep kids occupied. my mom had a whole bag full of little toys and games for me to play with while waiting in lines at disney world. once your kid is like 7 or 8 they can read a book. they can color. or they can literally just sit there and imagine things. i did that a lot as a kid.

[spirulin4]

thanks for putting your wrong and bad commentary in the tags where i still have to read all of it. most of what you said is untrue.

[imyselfamstrange]

OP: giving children too young to process things so much access to ipads isn’t good for them maybe.

People in the notes: So you hate moms??? You’re ableist?? You think we should go back to the Dark Ages?? (My personal favorite because it makes no sense) you’re poor shaming??

Why is it so difficult to explain that children not developing fine motor skills and losing their attention spans is bad actually??

[purplesweetpotatoes]

also children can end up being entertained by just about anything. I remember building "bird nests" with sticks in the backyard when I was like 7 years old. That was it. It took up my whole afternoon and I was entertained the entire time.

[atomicjellycat]

I worked at a kindergarten for a year, and Jesus Christ these kids are falling behind on so many milestones

Everyone knows who the iPad kids are

I've seen it all from kids who don't know how to use scissors, and can't perform the motions right compared to other kids in that age group, to kids who can't write the alphabet or spell their names (the older ones)

And one of the most startling thing I encountered was every now and then we have a country day, where we choose a country, color in the country's flag in the colors and watch a little film about said country.

And I was overseeing the coloring, and one boy just refusing to color

It happens, stubbornness, bad days, 'just don't wanna' s happen, but I sit with him and continue to try and encourage him and figure out why he doesn't want to

And he keeps saying he doesn't know how to color

And I'm like ??? Just pick up the pencil and put it on the paper buddy, cmon

So I'm showing him how, and he refuses to try over and over

So then I try like, coloring while guiding his hand, and again this is a flag were coloring it's a giant rectangle, not much precision is needed

And I realize while I'm helping him, literally moving his hand to color for him, he's CLEARLY never colored before. He's 4, there is no excuse for this when kids start coloring at like, 2 maybe younger.

By 4-5 kids can generally color inside the lines well enough and draw recognizable figures like people and landscapes and pets

Eventually he got into it, understood how to do it and requested to continue on by himself, which was great! I told him I was proud of him and we continued on with our day but it absolutely shocked me that these iPad kids are so beyond stunted like jesus

He didn't know how to grip a pencil, he didn't know the wrist movements and motions, he didn't understand the pressure control, he had no control over where or how he was coloring like, these kids NEED TO learn these things it's STARTLING how many kids don't have these milestones and are just not developing these fine motor skills

Ask any kindergarten attendant and they'll tell you the same thing-

The best thing you can do for a kid is buy them a shitton of construction paper, decorative child-safe scissors, and coloring books

Please please please kids need to cut paper up and color. It helps them develop so many fine motor skils

Now don't be mistaken, the percentage of these kids are low, for now. It's definitely not every kid, and thankfully not the majority but it is still a problem

[betterbemeta]

Even if a parent SAYS, 'this is my son's iPad,' it's not his. it's an expensive piece of electronics with opaque rules, it has other functions than play, it needs to be charged, maybe it's parental-locked, and the parents control access to it at all. In the past, 'computer time' was different from 'play time', however much privacy a kid HAD using the computer because:

Toys, on the other hand, belong to the child. A specifically nasty parent may say otherwise, but children experience toys as their own. As stated above, anything can become a toy in a pinch, beyond the parents' control. Even if we just discuss electronic toys there's a serious difference in dynamic between "my son's gameboy" and "my son's iPad."

Even if we aren't talking about 'motor skills' and 'imagination', replacing toys with an ipad definitely sounds bad for kids because it pretty much eliminates the agency of 'my things!' and changes it to 'thing my mom lets me have/use!'

And compared to a desktop computer and even to a laptop, an iPad is REALLY easy to revoke, you don't even need to say 'no more computer time!' You can simply take it away, physically. It's hard to take EVERY TOY away from a kid unless you go to extremes.

And also, an iPad is a computer that doesn't teach any computer skills while using it.

This all seems like a good prep for being an eternal renter of all things, though.

[smallcloisville]

I adore them 😂😂💞💞✨✨

[notebooks-and-laptops]

There's this interesting new rebuttle I've watched become popular regarding criticism of Veilguard. Essentially it boils down to: Dragon Age was never very good at politics, nobody should have expected Veilguard to be any different. And this...is so disingenuous to me it's wild I've now seen it popping up as a dominant narrative. At the very least it's deliberate and ridiculous strawmanning.

When people who critique Veilguard do so because of veilguards politics I dont think this critique is being levelled because they went into DAtV expecting disco elysium 2.0. nor do I think that those same fans were expecting Bioware to overcome their well documented centerism-both-sides-are-valid-but-the-one-who-values-less-change-is-better that has dominated most of their IPs. The way Bioware has historically treated characters who question systematic oppression in Thedas has...not been great. Anders, Sera - hell, even the way that talking darkspawn are almost completely written off after DA:O:A just so they can go back to being a mindless hoard you can kill without guilt.

The difference between DAtV and the first three games in the series is not that DAtV is less progressive/Marxist/revolutionary. It's not the issue that DAtV has bad politics or bad messaging or anything like that. It is that DAtV refuses to engage with politics at all. Id go further and say that if we get to the heart of it, the 'politics' fans are missing is that companions and NPCs in the franchise have always had different views on what's 'right' which Veilguard refuses to give them.

There is such a stark difference between even inquisition and DAtV when it comes to questions of politics. DAtV is uninterested in examining anything at all that might be controversial; it's not just that they don't want to show the reality of slavery or create evil slave owning characters it's that there's barely any reference to slavery in the whole of the game despite the fact that it has been a key theme surrounding Tevinter for the whole of the franchise. It's not just that they don't want to show the reality of the crows or create evil crows it's that the crows are no longer even allowed to be questioned or thought about beyond 'cool faction in cool clothes'. It's not just that they don't want to show the dalish as good or bad it's that they don't want to engage with the dalish and their struggles and beliefs at all.

I mean seriously, think about just a few of the things the other games made you think about:

DAO has a succession crisis with no real 'good' option, a civil war with people on all sides, questions about circle annulment, the castless in orzammar, questions about when have a people been punished 'enough' with the werewolves. It asks you whether a rude and arrogant but ultimately skilled ruler for Orzammar is better than a well meaning ruler who doesn't think things through.

DA2 is all about refugees, about justice and whether such a thing can ever exist, it's about the cycle of violence and slavery is a huge theme both for the current mages held in the gallows and Fenris and the Tevinters.

DAI asks you to think about who is best to rule during a crisis; a military leader who may later push expansionism but would provide a better army against the current unstoppable evil or the safe choice of a empress who may not be as useful to you in the short term. It asks you to think about structures by making you question the organisation you've built and it's own power and corruption. It asks you whether or not a conservative chantry leader who is nevertheless a mage is better than a liberal chantry leader who wants to abolish the circles entirely.

DAtV is constantly asking you to look away from any questions that could be genuinely impactful on a structural scale. In it's worst moments it ignores this entirely - none of the companions can have differing or problematic views or even really disagree with each others worldviews. When it's trying a bit harder it tends to make the issues it wants to explore personal rather than structural. And any time anything that comes up that could be genuinely morally dubious (having to work with the smugglers in dock town for example) it goes out of its way to say ACTUALLY THESE ARE NICE CRIMINALS AND THEY NEVER DO SLAVERY OR SMUGGLE ANYTHING BAD AT ALL. Nobody you work with can be morally dubious or have bad motives; even the treasure hunters and pirates are very unproblematic guys.

And yet, on top of this refusal to engage with any questions that might genuinely get the player thinking or require the player to think about power structures and different views...the game also repeats the same shitty racism that has been apparent in all DA games but perhaps never so openly as this. DAtV is a game that says 'yeah u can be non-binary but you CANNOT be multicultural'. It is a game where the absolute worst of the racist tropes that have plagued the Qun since Gainer called them a 'militant islamic borg' are played up to 100.

So yeah Dragon Age hasn't always had the best politics. I don't think anyone ever expected it to? But it's always been interested in asking questions about politics, about differing views, about what is right and what is wrong. It's always been interested in examining structures and whether or not they're good or useful. It's always been interested in very morally ambiguous or 'grey' characters like Loghain, Blackwall, Anders, Isabela, Zevran, Sten, Oghren, Leliana, Vivienne, Bull-- the list just goes on and on. And DAtV isn't interested in any of this at all.

So yeah. This criticism is weird to me. Wish people would stop using it.

[dulcidyne]

BioWare’s handling of their political metaphor in the overall narrative has never been ideal, but the role of politics in characterization has always been fundamental. And its absence is one of my biggest gripes with VG.

Almost every character in the prior games has a set political/religious viewpoint and it informs who they are and *why* they’re there. It was the writers’ technique for world building, they would have characters ground the larger politics of the world for the player, giving larger world conflicts a comprehensible perspective. The writers critiqued their own decision not to represent the political realities and perspectives ofTemplars in a companion prior to Cullen. And it doesn’t matter if you agree with Cullen, or even like him, his belief system is why he works as a character. If he agreed with the player all the time, even if the player was pro-mage and anti-Andrastrian, he’d be a worse character. Characters *need* belief systems and those belief systems don’t have to reflect the audiences‘. In fact, often it is best if they don’t.

Because real life people have belief systems that aren’t always perfect and that we don’t always agree with. If you met someone who seemed to change their core morals and beliefs on a whim depending on what you say, you’d think they were a sycophant and lying. We don’t buy it in real life. And in fiction, characters molded to fit audience beliefs often feel pandering and flat.

So when we miss out on larger world conflicts that exist beyond darkspawn/Gods bad, we miss out on well developed characters as well. Individual motivations get papered over into comically black and white stakes. Which is why most of the character ‘arcs’ in VG fall completely flat. They have no real motivation to be there besides ‘pro bono saving the world’, no cohesive belief systems, no connection to the world building.

They’re likable, but devoid of depth, because depth means we don’t always agree with them. So we get flat characters for an empty sandbox that was once the rich and complex world painstakingly crafted out of three games’ worth of character perspectives.

[literary-illuminati]

It's very #problematic of me I'm sure but if they must do either I really desperately prefer authors coming up with fancy always-italicized elf words for being gay or trans than having preindustrial warrior aristocrats and barely-socialized monsters have a vocabulary that casually includes 'demisexual' and 'enby'.

This is only slightly a principled stance (queernorm fantasy worlds are very obviously not trying to have any sort of realistic political economy of gender, which I only slightly judge them for), mostly just painful aesthetic mismatch.

[sister-hawk]

this is exactly why Taash’s whole…situation in Dragon Age: The Veilguard is so unsettling. the use of super modern terminology (like “non-binary,” and “demi-gender”) is painfully out of place in this medieval fantasy world. there’s a lot wrong with the writing and the overall tone of that game, and it is painfully obvious it was written by much less experienced and less skilled writers than the previous entries in the series.

Dragon Age has always had queer characters, and they have always found a way to explain their queerness without resorting to words that stand out like a sore thumb. No one ever had to say that Leliana and Zevran were “bisexual,” it was understood when they talked about their past love lives. Dorian and Sera found a way to say that they were gay without having to use the word. Iron Bull describes the Qun’s nearest thing to being “transgender” as “a person born as one gender but living as another,” to explain Krem’s identity to the Inquisitor.

but the writers of Veilguard seemed to be so preoccupied with making it the queerest game you’ve ever seen (and openly patting themselves on the back for it too), they they didn’t even bother to try to make it fit!

Taash can still be a non-binary character! but you know what would have been a better way to introduce that information to the audience? “I’m not a woman, don’t call me that.” another character could have then asked a followup, like “so what are you then, a man?” and they could have either shown visible confusion (assuming the writers were particularly attached to the “questioning teenager trying to figure out their identity” angle), or they simply could have said “i’m nothing, don’t worry about it,” or something else to that effect. instead they have Maevaris hand Taash a book that reads like someone’s tumblr bio c. 2014.

it’s a little bit maddening to see such sloppy writing and world-building in such a high profile series.

[thunderwhenhepurrs]

This this this.

Veilguard was so obsessed with putting on a facade of queerness they ended up not only making it weird— they invalidated the stories of already queer characters.

Dorian’s entire personal story is about him being a disappointment to his Tevinter family because he is gay, to the point they were going to try blood magic conversion therapy on him. Krem had to run away from Tevinter because he was outed as a trans man.

Then Veilguard went nope, know who the bastion of queer rights and perfect modern queer terminology is? The Tevinter Shadow Dragons. Maevaris is a trans magister and apparently there’s no problems with that whatsoever? Despite Krem having to flee the country?

I know this is beyond the original scope of terminology in fantasy worlds but. I think it all stems from the same place of being so obsessed with Being Correctly Queer that it breaks the believability barrier of the world.

[lavellaned]

veilguard isn't about regret, it's about futility.

morrigan fought through the entire trilogy to escape her mother and not get possessed by mythal. she gets possessed by mythal in veilguard.

the hero of ferelden went through all that in order to keep southern thedas from falling to the blight. southern thedas falls to the blight in veilguard.

davrin's development is grounding in him finding a purpose outside of sacrificing himself. he's one of two options you have to sacrifice in veilguard.

dorian struggled under the pressure of his family wanting a pavus to be archon, and later was dedicated to changing tevinter and helping people. tevinter is the same as it ever was and dorian can end up archon in veilguard.

solas sacrificed everything to free his people from oppression and corruption. the veil is still up, elves are still in the same social tier as they've been since the beginning of the series, the dalish are straight up annihilated, the blight is still around, and spirits continue to be corrupted by the living in veilguard.

and then add in the godawful executor mess and it really is just the final kick in the teeth.

nothing anyone has ever done in thedas has ever mattered, veilguard made sure of that.

[hallabun]

the most unintentionally hilarious moment in me1 will always be after virmire. where the scene opens to shep and kaidan, romanced or not, having a really involved back and forth. like it's a whole conversation. and the framing includes ash's empty chair, which while i understand the intention, only makes it look like they're the only two in the room.

and then we get the hard cut reveal that the Whole Entire Rest of the Team is on the other side of the room just politely waiting for them to finish. it absolutely sends me every time.

like yeah commander, excuse me for interrupting whatever the fuck is going on over there

[spacevixen2024]

The rest of the crew be like...