#speak faust

[ammoniteflesh]

honestly any depiction of adult Ace as anything other than a stone butch anarchist rings false to me. where is the butch Ace content. show it to me!!!!!!!

[ammoniteflesh]

can everybody manifest a doctor becoming available so they can confirm if my partner is well enough to go home please. the person in the next bed over watched Family Guy at full volume with no headphones earlier. i'm a police abolitionist but this should be illegal.

[ammoniteflesh]

I really think everyone is underestimating what a good position the innies are in as of that finale. Yeah, there's a chance Mark and Helly will only be together for ten minutes - but I think the odds are pretty severely in their favour, actually.

Between Choreography & Merriment, Mammalians Nurturable, and O&D (who MDR already have contact with and could likely bring on-side without difficulty), that's got to be about 100 innies working together.

If they refuse to leave the severed floor, that's about 100 Lumon employees who don't return from work that day, with zero warning or explanation. This is already a PR nightmare for Lumon.

They can't go in with force, because the kidnappers are also the hostages. Besides which, if they just mow them down with bullets, they risk murdering Helena Eagan - and Helly is absolutely the kind of person to make the most of this fact by bodily shielding people.

And if they decided to use force anyway? I simply don't believe they have those kind of resources. We've been shown repeatedly that Lumon relies on exactly one (1) security guy - Graner and then Drummond - and that all their failsafes go to shit if said guy is taken out of the picture.

Lumon doesn't operate on the logic of the repressive state, it operates on the logic of the company: they cut costs and they rely on everyone else buying in to their authority. Could they get the government to help them out? Quite possibly - but that's the kind of thing that takes time to co-ordinate.

I reckon the innies could hold out for at least a week. O&D can make weapons. There must be a catering department that does the melon parties and the egg bars - if they find it, they've got access to a food supply. Both the stairwell and the lift are very easily defensible. They've got access to the overtime contingency if they want to contact the outside world. They've got access to the testing floor if they want to speak to their outies.

Perhaps most importantly, though: their hostages include Dr Mauer. With both Reghabi and Cobel gone AWOL, that guy's probably Lumon's best chance at recreating what they did with Gemma. That's a HUGE bargaining chip.

The Severed Floor Autonomous Zone is looking pretty good, guys.

[ammoniteflesh]

nobody tagged me but I couldn't resist (template here) (ages listed are at the beginning of their respective games)

[ammoniteflesh]

Musings not directly about but coming out of the qunari discourse

Thing is, Bull's qunari route actually is incredibly bleak - because it's contrived to be. It didn't NEED to be 'Bull leaves the qunari' or 'all his friends get murdered'. The writing goes out of its way to make qunari Bull the bad end, which is in of itself Revealing (read: racist).

More broadly: I am really not a fan of giving characters two routes where one is straightforwardly 'better' than the other. It's just... less fun and interesting.

Human Cole vs spirit Cole does SLIGHTLY better on this front, even if the majority of the fandom seems to be of the opinion that human Cole is the better option. My partner (who is constantly giving me galaxy-brained Dragon Age takes but refuses to post them on tumblr lol) suggested that a fun way to problematise that choice a bit would be having human!Cole murder that guy and I WHOLE-HEARTEDLY AGREE.

[ammoniteflesh]

*clenching my fist as I fill out a highly repetitive and boring form where I have to repeatedly talk about how forgetful and scattered and incapable of functioning I am* maybe if I get ADHD meds I'll be able to finally get back to TPoAB

[ammoniteflesh]

*looking around at my psyche and realising that i'm really struggling and have been for a while* aw fuck

[ammoniteflesh]

Annual tweak of Ghila's face morphs, because I couldn't get the idea of giving her braids out of my mind. my beautiful infected daughter <3

pre-DA:O. Baby girl. Baby.

post-Eluvian. The Blight infection is juuuuust beginning to show. A little gaunter from her two days spent unconscious.

Ostagar. Very visibly Blighted now, and even gaunter - though she's eating, her body is just spending too many resources fighting the corruption.

pre-Avernus. The Joining has helped slow it down, but the Blight is still killing her. Plus she's mega depressed and not taking much care of herself - her braids became so badly maintained that she decided to just take them out.

post-Avernus. One near-death experience and an experimental potion later, she's got a new lease on life. She's more Blighted, but now it's actually stabilised - she's actually gained some weight back. She's putting effort into her hair again, but keeping it out of the way while they're on the road.

Awakening. At this point, she's more shriek than elf. This is meant to be the Dramatic Haircut Era (following the messy breakup that was the Dark Ritual) but I couldn't for the life of me find a good close-cropped afro hair mod so the hair is the same, rip. If anyone knows of one, pls do lmk 🙏