#bld stuff

[bittylildragon]

I'm loving the Murderbot show so far. Especially Mensah. I was so worried about her casting, but she's perfect in every way. I'm so excited to see Murderbot to grow increasingly devoted to her and her family.

[bittylildragon]

Watched the first two episodes of Severance and AJFSKDJFLKSLF FUCKING GODDDDDDD

Who else has seen this show that I can scream about it with?

[bittylildragon]

Finally saw the Barbie movie. Loved the first half, which was a fantastic artistic and comedic experience. Honestly hated the second half though! All of the worst, most damaging parts of white cis feminism, neatly packaged up into a fun aesthetic. Because all feminism boils down to is women using patriarchal forms of abuse ON men so that women can gain the exact same oppressive power, right?? Because feminism has nothing to offer to or heal in men, and cannot possibly involve equity and mutual care and support between people of different genders, right???? (Yikes)

Felt pretty binarist and cissexist too despite there being a trans Barbie. Literally the culmination of the movie is Barbie getting to experience "humanity" by spontaneously developing cis female genitals. Which. Sure feels like a message.

So anyway. I'm going to do my best to just forget the second half of that film now. Because that was pretty rancid.

[bittylildragon]

I have an overzealous immune system ready to kill anything that so much as looks at it wrong, which you'd think is great until you have to live like this

I just got the latest covid vaccine, and it has nuked me and my overzealous immune system from orbit (30+ hours of my whole body hurting, extreme fatigue, and being simultaneously burning hot and too cold at the same time)

Go out and get your latest covid vaccines y'all, even if they nuke you from orbit, because this hell is still infinitely better than long covid

[bittylildragon]

So I was doing body doubling with a professional colleague of mine, and this colleague was playing Ghost as our background music. I've seen fanart of the Ghost band floating around, and run into images of their shows before, and thought: that's silly and fun, I like that. So I looked them up, curious, and it turns out they're touring to my city soon.

So I guess I'm gonna go to a Ghost concert, just to have a good time. Wish me luck!

[bittylildragon]

A really fun thing you can do is recreate your favorite character from a different franchise in any game that allows for character creation. This means that I am currently playing Ciri in BG3 (which, hilariously, may even be canon, if we assume that BG3 takes place either before or after the events of Witcher 3) and have played as Geralt in pretty much every farming sim available to me, because I love the idea of him getting a peaceful happy ever after. I have also created Jaskier, Yennefer, and Geralt in BG3, and they're all actually very easy to make in that character creator.

[bittylildragon]

Finished playing Veilguard!

Mixed response to the game overall, which is typical for Bioware games. It gave me lots of good feelings, in terms of game design and playability it's very good, and I think it holds up okay compared to the other games in the series. Some of the characters are fantastic, some of the writing is great, and it was overall an enjoyable experience.

But, as is ALSO normal for Bioware games, there were some bits that I found were deeply offensive, some bits that felt like crappy writing by committee, some bits where it felt like the authors hadn't understood the characters they were writing at all, and many MANY parts where their effort to make a Dragon Age that's marketable to kids hampered the depth and integrity of their writing. It was extremely obvious that this game wasn't solely for adults anymore - and never in a good way.

Bioware is famous in part for its romances, and the romance option I chose in this game at least (Lucanis) felt so backburnered and minimized compared to the romances in other games that it was almost nonexistent and quite forgettable. It held no depth or complexity at all, and felt more like bad, superficial fanfic about Lucanis more than a real romantic story about him. It added nothing to his characterization, and indeed at times felt like it detracted from his complexity.

I was also frustrated by the ending in several ways. Someone in fandom pointed out to me that the whole thing with Varric felt more like the game writers thought they needed a "twist" than a real thing that advanced the plot or needed to happen. I would have been much more interested/moved by it if Solas had done a lot MORE mental manipulation and editing of Rook's experience than just hiding the fact that Solas has in fact already murdered Varric. Or, alternately, if Solas was manipulating Rook's mind solely because Solas is so ashamed of murdering Varric, and is such a pathetic loser that he needs to play pretend about it with blood magic in someone else's mind, the game could have leaned a lot further into the kinds of mental manipulation an insecure, creepy man would perpetrate on someone who has no idea how they're being manipulated.

Also, while this is maybe not be a fair criticism of the game if they were just trying to have workable worldstates to use in a later game, the ending I wanted and thought things were building towards - that we would have to make a choice to either support Solas in tearing down the Veil or go against him - never happens. Tearing down the Veil is not an option at all. After the game spent SO LONG telling me "Oh he's a master manipulator, of course he'll convince you to see things his way and do what he wants," there being no way to actually say "Okay yes you've convinced me of your goals" felt like a weird oversight. I do think that should have been an option - for you as the protagonist to have been convinced that the Veil needs to go, even despite the mind control. If their sole reason for not having this as an option is to have a single workable worldstate for future games, it would have been easy to say that your companions will stop you from doing this. But the combination of telling us the whole game that he's a master manipulator, and then having no option to say he convinced you, felt like it just made the writing cheap and "telling rather than showing".

The game's handling of the Crows specifically felt so stilted and hampered by marketing it for kids. Previous games, and even inferences in this game, make it clear that the Crows are a thoroughly terrible organization. They buy child slaves to turn them into child soldiers. It's very clear that sexual coercion and honeypot missions are a normal part of their M.O. But in this game, they're treated just like any other organization, no better or worse than the Shadow Dragons, despite being unambiguously worse in every way. I EXPECTED one of Lucanis' loyalty choices to be whether to stay in the Crows or leave them and make his own way, but nope. Because that would require acknowledging how bad the Crows are as an organization, even if they include many lovely people.

But having the Crows and Shadow Dragons held up as equal organizations by the narrative felt so buckwild that it really detracted from the believability of the plot and characters. And there are a lot of things like that in the game.

And again, that's setting aside the obviously offensive character choices with Taash, where you have to make them "choose" between parts of their multicultural heritage. The fact that this was greenlit all the way to production and nobody pointed out how offensive that is says nothing good about the company or writing team.

Again, I did really like getting to play as a canonically trans character, and I did like supporting Taash through coming out. There are lovely moments in the game. But it's hit and miss, in classic Bioware fashion.

[bittylildragon]

While I still stand by the criticism that some of the early plot writing in Veilguard is kinda clunky/awkwardly executed, I've been really pleasantly surprised by the writing later in the game. I'm enjoying the game a lot at this point, nearing the end, and have been very moved by the companion missions I've played so far. I'm being increasingly pleasantly surprised by this game! I'm already starting to try to plan my 2nd playthrough.