GERONIMO

1. Internet Archive. Has plenty of videos to watch, plenty of games you can play that are emulated right on the website. You can also find entire collections of roms. For emulators, check out Emulation General Wiki to find the best emulator for the system you want to emulate.

2. r/piracy has a wiki full of safe places to read comics and manga, to watch anime and cartoons, and to watch movies.

3. Virtualbox, you can set up a Windows XP virtual box and get old PC games from Internet Archive. You can also check out CD Game World if you need a no-cd patch.

4. Saltybet. A Livestream of MUGEN with thousands of characters fighting against each other, sometimes things get hilarious. Runs 24/7.

5. The Cutting Room Floor, spend hours reading up on cut content from your favorite games.

6. Lost Media Wiki, read up on lost movie, books, animation, video games, etc.

7. Neocities, learn coding and make your own website!

8. WebDSR, explore shortband radio

9. Radio Garden, listen to radio stations from around the world

10. Every Noise At Once, explore the widest archive of music genres, with samples and Spotify playlists

“It’s all memes?”

I think the post-haven scene with her when you have high approval is really sweet. She is a very controlled woman, and doesn't let that mask slip very often, but it's that moment when it truly hit me how much warmth she was truly capable of. When she takes a little moment to fuss over the inquisitor and check in on them before moving along to solutions and next steps. It was just... nice. Really mundane perhaps, but I think the story really needed that. She cares so very deeply, even if she is in a position where she can't show it openly all that often. Watching the difference between her Strictly Correct performance when guiding an ally that she dislikes on a personal level and her checking in on someone she cares about is like night and day, and I really think that says a lot about her.

I also think that her introduction showcases her cleverness. No matter how you respond to the question of "what would you have done with this person that tried to draw a sword on you?" she spins it so you come off looking good. If you respond by saying you want him dead, its only the reasonable response to such behavior. If you say to let him go, then you're generous, and everyone should remember. If you brush off the incident as beneath you then beneath you it certainly is! why would such an important figure as one of the leaders of the brand new, held together with chewing gum and a dream inquisition care for such petty nonsense as having a blade drawn on them? It's such a clever way to display her political adeptness in real time. its fucking WILD to me that she's a powerful enough figure that she can literally kill a dude with magic in the middle of a party and no one bats an eye. like, this is Orlais! there'd be EVERY reason to expect all those nobles to start yelling for the templars! I think she sort of... positioned herself as doing it on someone else's behalf and that made the difference. Clever again.

She's really, genuinely soft for people that are nice to her, and repays that friendship. I find one banter really interesting, the one where Cole realises that she had a moment of concern about him. Like, i know that seems back-handed, but i do think that its significant that vivienne cares as a reflex so often that even a lifetime of being told "hey! this thing here is a scary monster that will eat your soul and then we'll have to kill ya!" can't totally snuff the instinct out. I think it ties back to the fact that she's so reciprocal with kindness in other relationships.

VERY small point but iirc shes the only companion that greatly approves of saving everyone in Haven. Like... she cares so much! people act like she's haughty af and a snob going "fuck you, got mine" but she really, really cares for the little people.

Idk, I really like her and I wish ppl saw what i saw. If I want to be generous, I could say that people come in guns blazing abt the "hey mage prisons Bad" thing and meeting the coldest, most professional, most disapproving version of Vivienne. Combine that with the fact that her personal quest is a pretty short sad end to a love story that's trying to bait you into thinking she's the villain half the time rather than an exploration of any of her personal philosophies or a look at the perspective of why she might believe that the best way to stay safe and protect those she cares about (she cares so much about so many people) is to gain power "legitimately" and the experience is "well i argued with her and she said all this stuff that I hate that was Incredibly Wrong so i do not like her"

And like, the writing does clunk in a lot of places, but im not feeling generous. It's the racism folks! Misogynoir specifically.

Yes

No

Instead of making this a poll, as someone with epilepsy I would like share that warnings are important, even when you don't have epilepsy. Lots of people end up having seizures in their life because of this (eyestrain, bright colors, and flashing lights), which is why companies and whoever is creating the thing should make sure to have warnings. Even when there are no flashing lights and just bright colors or eyestrain, people with epilepsy will sometimes have seizures from that, speaking from years of experience.

if you're a rabbit, the boss rabbit is the one who gets groomed by its subordinate rabbits.

but if you're a cat... the boss cat is the one that grooms the other cats.

If I go spend 20 dollars at a restaurant we wouldn’t call it a micro-transaction, but if I spent the same amount of money in a video game then it is a micro-transaction?

Then they made their way to video games. And it used to be that they presented a reasonably comprehensible bargain:

You get to play a full-featured videogame for free, in return for which the game will occasionally advertise a premium cosmetic or unlock of some kind, for prices like $.99 or a couple of dollars. This was considered slightly annoying, especially in the mobile gaming space, but the trade-off was clear. Free game, paid optional content for less than the price of a cup of coffee.

The absolute maximal price you'd pay for a League of Legends skin was about $30, and those skins were considered an absolutely outrageous expense for totally dedicated League of Legends lifers, and were expected to be the absolute peak of technical possible quality. And those were still mocked as ridiculous expenses for weirdos, the sort of thing that no normal or average player should ever be expected to blow money on.

Bethesda was mocked for MONTHS for trying to sell $2.50 horse armor cosmetics in Oblivion. Microtransactions? In a premium product? In a sixty dollar game? Absolutely unacceptable! That was a breaking of the bargain!

But Bethesda's transgression was the thin end of a wedge. More and more of those post-launch monetizations started creeping into premium products, and by sheer erosion, by sheer slow grinding normalization, they started to multiply and the prices started to creep up and up and up, and day 1 DLC became normal, and ultimate and premium editions and super ultimate exclusive digital deluxe collector's editions and battle passes and lootboxes and... yeah.

It used to be a... not amazing, but at least a reasonably fair bargain. A transparent bargain. You get to play a game for free, and the price you pay instead is the soft pressure of microtransactions—actually micro transactions—being advertised to you.