After being nagged to play this game series for almost 5 years I ran through all of them, twice, in like 4 months and Im so unwell now. I am so obsessed with my little guys that I had to draw them so I could see them all next to each other.
it really is kind of interesting how attached people are to the idea of the improvised line and the genuine reaction in film. nearly every single famous moment or line has some sort of claim floating around that it wasn't in the script and was either made up on the spot by an actor or was sprung as a surprise on the actors to get their 'real' reaction. you know, sometimes people do come up with good lines in advance and write them down, and sometimes people can pretend to be have a convincing emotional response on screen
today i'm thinking about how dave malloy inverts the theatre proverb of when emotion becomes to strong for speech you sing; when it becomes too strong for song you dance by having the single moment of spoken dialogue in great comet be the one moment where pierre is too overcome to either sing or dance when he tells natasha that he loves her. like he can't even move he's so struck by the gravity of the emotion he's experiencing and his voice breaks not just because of the emotion in it but because he's trying to express himself in a way that is completely foreign to the world he lives in, that singular declaration of love and the resignation that it cannot yet be brings the whole show to a stop like a breath caught in the throat and then we're back to singing we're back to dancing as if the whole world hasn't been remade on a new axis as if pierre didn't effectively create a new form of communication because the only ones available to him were so full of artifice and spectacle that he had to create something new so he could tell natasha how he feels. it's really such an incredible moment that makes my heart fall out of my ass every time. In This essay I will
In addition to the unique Eluvian SFX for main locations I mentioned in a fact a while ago, the locations we visit during Harding’s personal quests (Kal-Sharok/Deep Roads and Isana Negat) also have unique sound effects you can hear while standing next to their eluvians.
Vivienne de Fer (Dragon Age) vs. Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Vivienne de Fer
Buffy Summers
Voting ended onAug 6
Propaganda below the cut:
Vivienne de Fer:
Vivienne is the one of the only Black women companions across all 4 games. Her race and gender inform both her writing and the fanbase's reaction to her. She is disliked for not kissing the player's ass, and saying things she never outright says because so few people actually talk to her and if they do they do not listen. There's one particular white man who has said and done far worse and he is babied and beloved as the fandom's adorable awkward husband character despite the reason people claim to dislike Viv being tied to the exact bullshit he has said whereas she has a far more nuanced take. Her writing is tinged with misogynoir, its clear the writers wanted fans to mistrust her on the basis of her being a Black woman because she gets villain iconography in her design and quest titles, despite her being completely honest and there being THREE MEN WHO LIE TO YOUR FACE AND WHO WILL BETRAY YOU which Viv never ever does. She has an ending that makes people hate her even when the white girlboss character does the same thing BUT WORSE. Fandom does what it does and brutalizes her in fanfiction, outright ignores her or just posts hate instead of appreciating that she is a fascinating character. THEY DONT EVEN KNOW HER NAME. "de Fer" IS NOT HER LAST NAME, ITS A CRUEL NICKNAME SHE RECLAIMED.
Vivienne is my favorite companion in the game. She is a nuanced and multifaceted female character who dares to not kiss the player's ass. She literally froze a racist with magic. If you play as a man romancing another man, she will defend you and tell a homophobe to fuck off. She gives you a platonic friendship ring if you manage to achieve high friendship with her, something that is deeply rewarding and sweet. Discussing the politics of the series is a lot but tldr she can become a religious leader in a theocracy without actually being religious at all. She has awesome lines like "I never worry, darling! A leash can be pulled from either end." and other characters describe her as being unapologetic. But this front she puts on belies her compassionate heart, and she deserves to be beloved for that instead of scorned by a racist fanbase that never gets to know her and never dares to criticize her racist misogynistic writing.
Typical "how dare this woman have an attitude and be confident in her skills and not bend to my character's whim" misogyny combined with regrettably equally typical fandom racism. One of the only things worse than a woman is a woman of color.
Personally I think we should love women who don't make themselves palpable. I also think politically it is worthy of admiration how she manages to elevate her position in society, whatever you think of her methods. I think it pays to remember the struggles she faced and the shaky position she is in during the events of the game. And as far as her being pro Chantry goes, well, that doesn't stop anyone from liking Cullen, does it? I may not agree with her stance, but it certainly does not deserve less respect than all others. As a mage, she certainly has a voice regarding the system of her own oppression, not to mention that she knows when to keep that voice low. Regardless of what she says to the Inquisitor (a head of a self-proclaimed religious movement), if she is made Divine you can clearly see her actual intentions are nothing but the best for the mages. She's clever, she's perceptive, she's a survivor of both the Circle and the Orlesian court. She's also a beautiful inspiring woman. Besides, if you actually become her friend, she's incredibly attentive and caring. Doubly so in Trespasser.
Buffy Summers:
The fandom and punishes her for having relationships outside their OTP of choice
Fandom blames her for Spike's attempted rape of her and in general acts like she owed him her love. In general, fandom is very focused on fighting over which of Spike vs. Angel "deserved" her.
She's an iconic hero with cool hair and deserves better than being reduced to a reward for either manpire.
She gets reduced to just the question of which hot vampire she's going to end up with and then people say crazy victim blaming shit about her to top it all off.
She's the TV Protagonist of All Time.
Moderator's note: this next propaganda entry was too long to put in list format (at least according to tumblr, i tried) so it's indented instead:
I've seen a lot of people in the notes confused at Buffy's presence in this tournament and claiming that she's universally beloved. And I sort of get why they think that. From what I've seen at least, in recent years Buffy Summers has become a lot less controversial due to a variety of factors. And I get how that can make it seem like she's not actually subjected to much fandom misogyny. But what people need to understand is that a big part of the reason that Buffy (the character) elicits such defensiveness in some fans is because a lot of us witnessed literal decades of absolutely rancid misogynistic bullshit directed towards her.
When I first joined the fandom (circa 2012) like every other take I saw was about how Buffy was the worst part of her own show. This is an insane opinion to have, not only because Buffy is just such a fantastic character, but also because I cannot stress enough just how central her character is to show. It's her bildungsroman, everything is a metaphor for what she's going through. The tone and vibe of any given season is entirely dependent on how Buffy's feeling at the time. Like half the characters are there to be narrative parallels to her. The supporting cast is great, don't get me wrong, but I don't think I've ever seen a protagonist who protagonisted harder than Buffy Summers. So I genuinely don't understand what there is to like about the show if you don't like her.
Anyway, as I was saying, she was hated on constantly, called whiny for having what is essentially textbook clinical depression, called selfish despite constantly sacrificing her wants and needs for the sake of everyone else, victim blamed for being sexually assaulted by her ex, and generally punished for not grovelling more for forgiveness for her every mistake. Newer fans might not be aware of all that, hence the confusion, but I was there Gandalf. I remember.
And you don't just have to take my word for it, I have proof.
gabriellabelle ran a livejournal dedicated to Buffy between about 2006 and 2012. It's honestly kind of a miracle that her livejournal is still up. It's a really valuable resource, in part because a lot of her meta still holds up (I don't agree with everything she says or anything, and some of her takes are certainly of their time, but she does have some interesting and insightful analysis that I'm glad is still readily available) but for my purposes, it's also a very well-organized reminder of what the fandom was like back then. gabriellabelle was a Spuffy shipper who actually liked and cared about Buffy as a character, and this put her in conflict with a lot of other Spuffy shippers (not all of them obviously, and it's worth noting that misogyny in the Buffy fandom was certainly never a phenomenon exclusive to Spuffy shippers, that was just who this blogger specifically responded to most because it was her corner of the fandom) who often reduced Buffy to being nothing more than Spike's love interest and reward, while also simultaneously hating on her for not being nice enough to Spike. And I think you can really get a sense of just how dire things were by reading what accusations she had to defend Buffy from. So here is a sampling:
In this post, she argues against the legitimately common take at the time that Spike's actions in Seeing Red should not be constituted as sexual assault. If you're not familiar with that scene, I'm not going to go into specifics, but trust me, the idea that this was ever up for debate is patently absurd. And for all the many many problems with how the writers handled this scene, one thing they never did was suggest that the nature of Spike's actions were even remotely ambiguous. Multiple characters (including Spike!) describe what Spike did as a rape attempt, because that's just obviously what it was. To suggest otherwise requires a level of mental gymnastics that is almost impressive in its delusion. Truly, these people were shooting for a gold medal in fandom misogyny.
In this post, she responds to a lot of anti-Buffy takes, but the main one she addresses is that a lot of fans felt that Buffy didn't do enough to atone to Spike (yes, that Spike) for her treatment of him in season 6, and demanded that she deserved to be punished more.
In this post, she responds to fans calling Buffy selfish, which again, that's just a very very odd thing to say about Buffy Summers.
In this post she defends Buffy from people who call her whiny for having depression.
Also, she wrote this crackfic that was a parody of a lot of Spuffy fics from this era in which Buffy has to beg for forgiveness from Spike and her friends for how horrible she is. It's a pretty accurate if over-the-top summation of what a lot of fic at the time was like.
There's probably a lot more you can find by looking at this livejournal and older fandom stuff in general. I just need people to understand that the state of the fandom on tumblr now is not reflective of how things used to be. And to be clear, it's not like there's no modern day fandom misogyny directed towards Buffy. I've seen posts from this year where people victim blame Buffy for the bathroom scene, and the only real difference between those posts and the type of shit people were saying back then is that nowadays people use woker language to try to obscure the fact that they're doing textbook victim blaming, whereas back then people were comfortable saying whatever. But things used to be so so much worse, so it annoys me when people (unintentionally) whitewash that by saying that Buffy has always been beloved or whatever.
This isn't all the Buffy propaganda that's been submitted, there's also this ask and this ask but tumblr is really giving me trouble with the lengthy propaganda under polls, so i'm just going to have to link those two.
titsay
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
izzy806
kianamaiart
stormborns
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
