Latest Posts by pluckedchicken - Page 4

while i was trying to wade through the large amounts of people trying to leave the central subway station, everyone abruptly came to a halt in front of the subway turnstiles. two french girls had misunderstood the tap-out process, and one of them was now stuck behind the gate. as i was wracking my brain on how to explain the tap-in tap-out process of the milan metro to both of them with my rudimentary french while they both got increasingly upset at the closed gate between them, a young teenager suddenly pushed me to the side.

i was just about to give him my most scathing disgruntled glare when he took out his ticket and, after realizing they had no common language, started gesticulating wildly in front of the french girl left behind. he pointed at the ticket, then at her, and very seriously said: “on three, we go.” she nodded, and after he counted to three, holding up his fingers so there could be no confusion, they sprinted through the gate together, giggling profusely afterwards as if they had just pulled off the heist of the century,

it was just a small moment during the morning commute. but i realized then and there that the time i had spent trying to intellectualize the problem and wondering if my lack of language skills would be awkward the situation could have already been resolved. and that while i had been mad about being pushed aside, the teenager got it exactly right: no questions, no fear or shyness, just direct action to help where you can and rushing there to do so. i think about him every time now when i run to lift someone’s pram or ask a lost looking person if they need my help despite the fear of being rude. on three, we go.

Me, a shitty little Canadian, shopping in Canada: Okay. Last item is frozen strawberries. Yay

In the frozen department: [A series of plain white bags with red fruit on them, all flipped to the French side]

Me: Oh hell yeah c'est framboises

Me: (grabs two)

Me, arriving home with deux sacs ds frambois congelée, remembering I havent spoken fluent french in over 10 years: Ah. Mes fraisers

Literal definition of spyware:

Also From Microsoft’s own FAQ: "Note that Recall does not perform content moderation. It will not hide information such as passwords or financial account numbers. 🤡

Was explaining some gender things to a straight cis friend today vis a vis gender presentation VS gender identity when it suddenly dawned on me with much the same horror as getting to work and realizing you left the stove on, that unless you've been immersed in a queer culture for some time you'd have no way of knowing that appearing androgynous/indeterminate/wildly gender-nonconforming is HOT

ghosta nova 👻🎸

(youtube)

So, uh. This is real:

This is 100% a a thing that has happened.

What even is this timeline?!

I'm dying. Oh my stars.

you cant even begin poems with "i will sodomise and facef uck you" anymore. because of woke .

I have a hot take.

And I understand that a lot of it comes down to opinion and interpretation. The "official canon" for the game is your own damned canon, and I frankly love that for all of us. It's beautiful and freeing and sets us up to celebrate a variety of different worlds and that's pretty rad.

But (of course there's a "but") I'm coming to understand that…

…my canon interpretation of this line is very different from a large majority of this fandom.

And I guess it's not really a hot take. No one's interpretation is wrong, and I would never want someone to think that. No one should ever have their fun taken out of the game, it's a game. I think mostly I'm just looking for folks who read this the same way I do. Because to me?

Solas' greatest fear is not to literally die all alone.

Like, all by himself.

Not only do I believe that that's a large oversimplification of the meaning behind that statement, but I'd also argue that dying all by himself is precisely what Solas intends to do. He has had every opportunity to avoid it, especially in a Solavellan run, yet he's made zero moves to do so whatsoever.

At the end of Inquisition, he was still a member of the single most powerful and influential religious and paramilitary organization across the entire southern half of their continent. Aside from defeating a sea of demons and darkspawn horrors, and closing a breach in the sky between the Fade and the material world, they've also singlehandedly redesigned the flow of commerce between two nations, they've seated a ruler on the throne in Orlais, and chosen the next Divine to serve on the Sunburst Throne in the Chantry. They're responsible for shaping the future for the whole of southern Thedas, and the leader of that organization is potentially very sympathetic to Solas' beliefs and perspectives. There was much they could have accomplished together, and yet…

He left. Vanished into thin air, even, for two years. With no word.

And when we finally got the chance to confront him, and wrestle a larger kernel of truth out of the man, he told us that he walks the din'an shiral. A journey of death. And he made it unequivocally clear that he intends to walk it alone.

By himself.

There are a lot of ways to interpret what the din'an shiral even is, but the solemnity and weight he used when he referred to it carried a sense of finality. He intends to bring about the death of the world, that much we know is true, whether he sees it that way or not. But could his own life be the cost?

His ritual artifact is a blade, believed to have been fashioned from his red lyrium idol after having been recovered and cleansed. But it could've remained an idol, or it could've been made into an orb. It could've been a staff or a crown, or a necklace with the jawbone of some other critter. But it's a blade. Is it simply because rending the veil involves a certain act of piercing or tearing? Or is it still a weapon? An implement of violence or self-defense? Or even… of self-harm?

Regardless of the interpretation, there's nothing about Solas' future that suggests to me that he's safe. Or accompanied by anyone who intends to keep him safe. And there's nothing about Solas that suggests to me that he isn't acutely aware of all of this.

I don't think Solas has any fear whatsoever of literally dying all alone, at least according to my personal canon. To me, I think Solas views his death as his duty and he will not bring anyone down with him.

I believe that "dying alone" means something much bigger and deeper and more meaningful to Solas than it does to us, the player. And he goes to great lengths to identify and define what this fear means to him through a series of conversations he has with Varric during party banter.

There's quite a bit of self-discovery Solas conducts through this dialogue. It starts when tells Varric that he read Hard in Hightown. He then asks him if there are other trickster figures in dwarven literature, presumably because stories of Fen'Harel stated he walked as kin amongst both the Evanuris and the Forgotten Ones and there could could be some tie or some clue about that here, whatever that means. He goes on from there to begin asking pointed questions about Orzammar and what he perceives to be a lack of dwarven ambition. He makes remarks about how they could have a larger hand in shaping global affairs through their control of the lyrium trade and he seems genuinely confused why Orzammar would never consider reuniting with Kal-Sharok.

But he really circles down into the heart of the matter when he asks Varric if he ever misses a life beneath the stone. Varric responds by asking how he could miss something he'd never had, having been born a surface dwarf. And he tells Solas that even if the stone called to him in the manner he's describing, he's very happy with who he is and the life that he has, and he has no wish to change anything.

And from there, we watch Solas grapple with his answer. To him, Varric is someone who is just as sundered from his own identity, and he cannot fathom finding satisfaction in a life like that - a mundane life without magic or the song of the stone. He cannot rationalize it against his guilt and his regrets and his pride, and cannot let it go. So he then spins up an anecdote of a man he saw in the Fade.

He saw a man, alone on an island. His tribe had fallen to beasts and disease, and his wife had died in childbirth.

He was the only one left.

He could have left to find a new land or a new people. But instead he stayed. He spent his days catching fish in a little boat and he spent his nights watching the stars and drinking fermented fruit juice. (That's wine, Solas. That's called wine. You can just call it wine.)

To Solas, this man has surrendered to his defeat. And he gives us our first glimpse into what his fear might actually mean, right here.

"Knowing it will all end with you."

From there, Varric even asks him, "What's with you and all the fallen empire stuff, anyway?" And they go on to discuss what it means to give up and what it means to fight back, what costs are truly associated with each, and how those meanings can vary so widely between individuals whose lives have been so different. The analogy we didn't see at the time however, that we can now examine through hindsight, is that the man on the island wasn't just a representation of the old dwarven empire, but also of the Elvhen.

The man on the island was supposed to be representative of Solas himself.

(I also think it's cool that Varric mentions Orzammmar being too proud to ask for help.)

We are supposed to hear the anguish in his voice when he asks Varric whether he has any concept of what his capitulation to live as a surface dwarf has cost him.

Because Solas knows. For whatever reason (that we're about to discover in Veilguard), the remaining Evanuris were so horrific after the death of Mythal that the only solution he could devise that had any hope of protecting the world was to create the Veil and drive a wedge between the dreaming and waking worlds. To create a divide between magic and reality. To silence the song from the stone. To create a barrier that the blighted gods could never cross.

But one that also trapped the spirits.

And afterward, while he slept a dreaming sleep for centuries, the toll of creating the Veil having been so great, he watched as his people also began to quicken and die. He watched as their spirits also crossed the Veil to be trapped behind it forever. Everyone he ever knew and loved. All the chains of slaves he broke were for nothing. They simply traded one cage for another. Because of him.

And while Abelas and his company still guard the Well of Sorrows, they are bound to Mythal. (Also, I'm pretty sure you can make a choice to kill them? I never have, but I think you can?) They are still creatures that are beholden to her, and thus they are expendable. Mythal was even willing to sacrifice Flemeth to gift her power to Solas, to cure his weakened state after waking from uthenera, and hopefully prevent the risk of future mistakes being made. Like Corypheus.

Even Solas is expendable in the line of his duty, if it means he will succeed. He would gladly sacrifice himself to rectify his greatest mistake, and restore his people to themselves. Because they've been sundered for so long, they've forgotten who they are. And they are not his people anymore. He will make them remember.

He will restore their connection to the Fade, he will reveal lost paths to ancient libraries, and he will reawaken their relationships with their spirits - archivists, and spirits of purpose and wisdom and valor and faith and all of their ancestors that lived before them. He will make them what they were, as they were when he knew them. Because without that, they are incomplete. The spirits are incomplete. He is incomplete.

Our job in Veilguard will be to either help him find a better way to accomplish his goal, or help him find a way to find satisfaction and completion in this world. (Or, you know, kill him, but not in my canon, thanks.) Either way, we have to get him to accept help.

Because the burden that he carries within himself is the sole memory of a vast nation, and it is heavy. Far too heavy to bear alone. He is the last living key, a fragile remnant, a final, solitary link through dreams to the history, the knowledge, and the entire cultural identity of the Elvhen people. (The People people? Is that redundant?)

And without him, all of that is lost.

Forever.

To him, he is the last of the Elvhen.

So, my interpretation of Solas' greatest fear is not that he is afraid to die all by himself. It is something I feel is truly much more heartbreaking.

It is that he is afraid to die the last of his kind.

He is afraid to die alone.

Uriel really is just a kid smashing two barbies into each other face first trying to get them to kiss

all day, a breeze dances in and out of the apartment. the windows, wide open. the sky gets dark around 7, and I turn on a low lamp and light two candles, content in the half-dim living room. a rain rolls in and I can hear the long-dry earth breathe a wet sigh of relief under its shower. the tv stays hushed and sleeping. my dishes from dinner wait in the sink. the candlelight flickers shadows across my notebooks. after a nap by my side, the dog pads over to the window for a better listen of the cars slicking over street puddles.

I've missed this. living alone. the way a night deepens my solitude. how each decision through the day has come to this: a quiet apartment, save for the sounds of my typing. four walls, warm and dim and perfumed by the sky just beyond it. I've missed this, closing down the kitchen on my own. watching the space around me fall asleep. comforted by the knowledge that I made this feel like home. I made this feel nice for me. every corner, a letter of self-love.

me.

A hummingbird thought a man’s orange hat was a flower [x]

I used to have public sex all the time. Back in the 90s there was no internet or after school programs for lgbtq kids. We'd go up bull tail holler and on the back side of the reservoir there was a rundown poorly maintained picnic pavilion and playground and that's where all the queers that weren't old enough to go to the one gay bar in the county I lived in would hang out. And it was colloquially called queer holler in fact. It was in the holler right next to the mall so you could just have your parents drop you at the mall or catch the bus if you lived in town. We'd hangout there and have sex and make out and what have you. Every now and then the law would raid it and wouldn't you know the kids and young adults they could round up would be charged with public indecency and contributing to the delinquency of minors because 18 is 18 and other public sex charges. Of course in the process you would be outed to your parents and if you were over 18 you got your name printed in the newspaper in the police blotter which is fun (not really). So yeah I'm all in favor of legalizing public sex. Because though we've came a long way there are still a lot of queer youth who have no where to fuck their partner and being labeled as a sex offender shouldn't be a consequence of doing what millions of cishet teenagers and young adults do all the time.

girl what's wrong? are you experiencing the sylvia plath fig tree in your head again?

it’s fun to stay at the Y

It wrinkles my brain that Jupiter’s moon Europa has oceans that are sixty miles deep, while Earth’s oceans only reach seven miles deep at most. I’m willing to bet good money that there’s life in Europa’s oceans. Like five bucks. You hear me, NASA? I bet you five bucks that there’s life on Europa… Now that there’s money and reputation on the line, I bet they send a mission there real quick.

is it me or like, have movies been getting worse?????

Here is what they don’t tell you:

Icarus laughed as he fell. Threw his head back and yelled into the winds, arms spread wide, teeth bared to the world.

(There is a bitter triumph in crashing when you should be soaring.)

The wax scorched his skin, ran blazing trails down his back, his thighs, his ankles, his feet. Feathers floated like prayers past his fingers, close enough to snatch back. Death breathed burning kisses against his shoulders, where the wings joined the harness. The sun painted everything in shades of gold.

(There is a certain beauty in setting the world on fire and watching from the centre of the flames.)

netflix… if i see you in the streets…

Marie-Helene Bertino

God bless Deadpool.

current mood:

me @ whoever at netflix made that decision:

Lemons! Limes! Oranges! You can do this with pretty much all citrus! Candied Lemon Peel 2 cups water 2 cups white sugar The peels of 3 lemons

{watch}

Quick! The first OC you think of is dropped in the world of the last movie/show you watched. How are they faring?

Also I love that when the stream got banned the whole chat was spamming

CAPTAIN???

Captain!!!!

Captain??!!!!

CAPTAIN!!!

Repaired my fave jacket, got emotional, drew something about it

reblog to fucking bite the person you reblog from

New concept for a packer:

a packer made out of glowstick material, so that if you get punched/kicked in the dick you’ll hear a crack and your crotch starts glowing. I will call my creation the Glowdick