Alysa Liu (USA): Promise | 2025 World Championships, SP
Alysa Liu of the USA leads the women's short program with a personal best of 74.58, the highest international sp score of her career!
Hey, PSA that tumblr is gonna dabble into AI shit so if ur an artist/writer/anyone really that does NOT want that, go into your settings and look for this option under "Visibility".
like i wont even try to argue that dragon age is perfect with how it tackles these issues because it isn't. it has a LOT of problems with its handling of the nuances of racism and class inequality and misogyny and whatnot and bioware is far from innocent of perpetuating some of the more damaging social narratives surrounding fighting against institutionalized violence. but to pretend as if the answer is to just scrub the media you create clean of all of that content because it's too icky or hard is fucking ludicrous and to imply that there must be something insidiously wrong with the people who are frustrated by the sudden sanitization of their struggles is downright insulting
me, unloading a fitted sheet from the dryer: *squinting* what's that you've got in your mouth
fitted sheet: nothing :)))))))
me, prying open its twisted jaws: na-ah!!! give it to me RIGHT now!!
fitted sheet: *resentfully spits out a wad of 3 very damp dishtowels, a pillowcase, and a pathetically sodden washcloth*
over the last 3 months i have seen myself called (and sometimes blocked for being assumed to be):
- a racist/a bigot
- homophobic/queerphobic/transphobic
- ace/demi-phobic
- a fascist
for expressing opinions such as "I found the characters and background stories in Veilguard weaker and less interesting than previous Dragon Age games" and "i miss the amount of tension and conflict that we used to get to explore with the player character depending on their in-game background and life history" and "i did not feel Lucanis' character and romance arc was fully satisfying while I was playing through it".
and since this all started we now have:
- seen the entire DA staff laid off from Bioware
- heard many now-former bioware devs talking about how toxic the workplace was during the development of DA4
- seen allusions to Bioware/EA executives overriding plot/plans that the Dragon Age writers/devs would have preferred
- extracted large amounts of cut content from the games that show things like increased emotional response range for Rook, or alternate endings for companion arcs (NOT concept art content, but actual written and even voice-recorded dialogue in the game files), or increased impact from decisions you could make in the game
IN ADDITION to what we ALREADY knew about how many times the game changed direction/leadership changed/the mid-process layoffs, etc.
so can we maybe not keep putting "people who come into the Dragon Age universe from a place of love and were ultimately disappointed with the latest installment" in the same trash bucket as "dudes on twitter who were mad there were trans/nonbinary characters in their AAA game". can we FUCKING as a community acknowledge that there are many reasons someone might not jive with a change in direction other than jumping to "they disagree with me so they must obviously be horrible people, whose opinions shouldn't be counted anyway" (<-if this is your first impulse maybe examine that also).
i am so tired and i am never gonna get an apology for any of it but NOW that a lot of the people who were posting/reblogging these sentiments are hearing/seeing all these other things add up. it's like suddenly now it's "acceptable" to have problems with aspect of Veilguard or want more from it, because the writers/devs have shown they probably did too during it's creation. whereas when I said these things right off the bat (because the only thing we had was the game we got. not the game we can pretend they wanted to make instead) it WASN'T because apparently expressing opinions on my personal tumblr counts as "being mean to/harassing devs who worked hard on the game" or, again, assumed I am a racist/bigot/facist/queerphobic.
you're allowed to still like Veilguard. it's fine i promise. you can love the game if you love it and my not loving it has nothing to do with your own relationship to this piece of media. i am happy there are people who truly can enjoy it without massive Caveats. but i am still seeing like 3-5 posts Per Week express those opinions and it is really destroying my love for the community i once enjoyed.
hawke couldn’t be in the veilguard because the second they found out what happened to varric it would’ve completely locked you out of any kind of redemption or good ending for solas. It wouldn’t matter what the inquisitor or rook did it would simply be over because hawke would immediately make it their mission to end solas themselves. the egg would have been scrambled