Summers-night-dreams - Summers Night Dreams

a good example of a “social construct” is national borders. bc like:

arbitrary and made up

but strongly enforced 

often unfair & unreasonably defined

used as a tool of oppression

can be changed at any time but only by the powerful (and so are usually only changed to benefit the powerful)

individuals spend their lives accommodating them at great cost

so when we say “social construct” we don’t mean “not real.” we mean “hey we control the way this thing works, and the way it exists now is hurting a lot of people. so we should probably design it better & make it less rigid. which we can do, bc we built it.”

really is bizarre the way fandoms largely do not like women at ALL. it’s been happening for ages but when you see people straight up just hating on women characters more often now (+ the general rise in misogyny) and then you come on here and everyone’s just pretending women don’t even EXIST in any media ever. it’s like that’s not much better. fandom isn’t activism but it does reveal people’s internal biases. like women being excluded, sidelined and erased in everythingggg. people will take characteristics that are compelling in a female character and give it to a man in fan content just so they don’t have to engage with a woman ever. fics, fan art, ships, etc. a hollywood produced movie/tv show won’t even sideline a woman as much as the average fandom blogger will

This is so great and impressive!!

OUTLAWS AU MASTERPOST

Ive linked all the important information/comics below

(If anyone wants to make fanart of the characters or your own in this au or even cosplay, you have my permission. Plz tag me!!)

COMIC SECTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CONCEPT ART SECTION

Gale & Astarion Character Sheet

Gales Bandages

Whole Party Character Designs

Horsies

BACKSTORIES

The Flayers

Companions Summaries

Astarions Backstory

Dame Aylin, Cazador Szarr, Bhaal details.

Ketheric, Gortash, Orin, Raphael.

The Gith

The Gur

RANDOM DETAILS

Astarions chronic pain + Saddle

Gales Sickness Stage Progression

How Gale Treats His Sickness

Companion Fighting Styles

I love dinner & diatribes because Hozier’s just like babe your friends are boring and this party SUCKS. peg me please

— James Baldwin, from If Beale Street Could Talk

the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.

So Disco Elysium is the only game you've ever really liked

I get it! It's a phenomenal game with superb art and writing, and its themes are consistent and deeply explored. It sets a high bar for video games. But there are other really, really fantastic games out there. This is a list that is 100% my own taste of things that aren't necessarily similar, other than the fact that they're really fucking good. (A lot of these are on sale for the Steam Summer Sale until July 11 2024!)

In Stars and Time

In Stars and Time is a time loop game where you play as Siffrin, the rogue of a party at the end of their quest to save the day by defeating the King, who is freezing everybody in time! But something is wrong: every time you die, you loop back to the day before you fight the King. You're the only one who remembers the loops, so it's up to you to figure out why it's happening, and how to break out.

In Stars and Time is a heart-wrenching dive into mental health, friendship, and love. It's about feeling alone, and how awful it is when the people who love you don't notice (and how awful it is when they do). It's about falling deeper and deeper into your worst self and your worst tendencies, and how to come back from it.

The creator also did one of my favorite Disco Elysium comics ever, which is only tangentially relevant but worth mentioning.

Roadwarden

In Roadwarden, you play as the titular Roadwarden for an undeveloped and "wild" part of the kingdom. Monsters roam the forests and roads, and it's your job to keep people safe. On paper, anyway. Your real mission is to find out what is of value in the area, and how to take it from its people. How well you perform this task is up to you. It's an oldschool text-based RPG, and I take a lot of notes by hand when I play.

Roadwarden explores exploitation and industrialization by making you look in the face of your potential victims. You can only learn what your bosses want you to report on by getting close to the residents, after all. There are mysteries to be solved, secrets to be gathered, and hearts to win.

The Longing

The Longing is an adventure-idle game where you play as the solitary servant of a sleeping king. Your task is to wait for him, for four hundred days. Time in the game passes in realtime (for the most part). There are caves to explore, books to be read, and drawings to make.

The Longing is about loneliness and depression. It's about whether or not you decide to stay in that hole, and if you do, what you do with yourself while you're there. Maybe you'll wander. Maybe you'll stare at a wall. Maybe you'll just sleep until it's all over.

Papers, Please

Papers, Please casts you as a newly hired customs officer in a country that is rapidly tightening its borders as its fascist government tightens its fist. This game is stressful. Sometimes you intend to help out the revolutionaries when they asked, but then you got so stressed out trying to make your quota so you can feed your family and pay your bills that you didn't notice the name of the person they were hoping to contact while going through their papers. Sometimes someone puts a bomb in front of you and expects you to defuse it. Sometimes someone suggests you steal people's passports so you can get your family out, and with the horror you see daily, the idea tempts you more than you'd like.

Papers, Please is all about hard choices and testing your moral fortitude. Everything you do has consequences. Being a good person in this game is hardly ever rewarded, but not in a way that feels overly cynical. Papers, Please asks you what kind of person you want to be and what you're willing to sacrifice to get there.

The Return of the Obra Dinn

From the creator of Papers, Please, The Return of the Obra Dinn is a game where you play as an insurance investigator for the East India Trading Company. The ship the Obra Dinn has just floated back into port, its entire crew missing or dead. It's your job to figure out what happened aboard the vessel. For insurance reasons.

I don't know how to go into the themes of this too deeply without giving away too much, but the mechanics of the game itself make the game worth playing. You have a magic stopwatch that allows you to go back to the moment of a person's death, allowing you to try and figure out who (or what) killed them, and how. And the soundtrack is extremely good.

Outer Wilds

In Outer Wilds you play as an unnamed alien, and it's your first day going to space! Your planet's space program is pretty new still, so there's still lots to explore and discover on the planets within your system. There are ancient ruins from a mysterious race that once lived in your system, long before your species began to record history. Why were they here? Where did they go? How are they connected to the weird thing that keeps happening to you?

The fun of Outer Wilds is in the discovery and answering your own questions. The game never tells you where to go, and it never outright tells you anything. There are clues scattered through the system, and it's up to you to put them together and figure out your next steps. It's about the way that life always goes on, no matter what, even when it seems like the end of everything, forever. I'd recommend NOT reading anything else about this game. Just go play it. Seriously, the less you know, the more fun this is.

If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers

In If on a Winter's Night, Four Travelers, you explore the circumstances of the deaths of four individuals.

This is a short one that took me about two and a half hours to play. If for no other reason, play it for the stunning pixel art. The game explores sexism, racism, and homophobia in the Victorian era and leans heavily into horror themes. Best of all: it's completely free!

Pentiment

Pentiment takes you to the 16th century, where you take the role of Andreas Maler, a journeyman artist working on his masterwork in the scriptorium of an abbey. When someone is murdered, Andreas takes responsibility for finding the culprit.

The game is set over 20~ years and you get to watch how Andreas' actions affect the village in various ways (who's alive the next time you come by, have people gotten married and had children...). It's an exploration of how the past affects the future, and what parts of that past we choose to keep or discard. It has beautiful art, and fans of both Disco and Pentiment often compare them.

Other games you might wanna check out

Night in the Woods, Dredge, Oxenfree, A House of Many Doors, Inscryption, Slay the Princess, Citizen Sleeper, Chants of Sennar, Loop Hero, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, The Pale Beyond, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, Elsinore, Her Story, Before Your Eyes, Pathologic (not delved into above because the venn diagram of Pathologic fans and Disco fans is basically a circle)

Hey guys, you know about the Same Energy website right? has someone made a post about that? Cuz otherwise im gonna sing its praises to high heaven for its artistic references

Omg I'm so excited, this seems like it's going to be very adventury and I can't wait

The Intrepid Heroes return for a new season of Dimension 20, arriving on Dropout starting June 4th!

Prepare to go upward, skyward - nay, Cloudward Ho! ☁️