I’m so excited to live vicariously through your GW3 opinions, I can’t play video games anymore (nasty vertigo) but I was an avid gw2 player and I miss it so
Thank you! I'm very sorry you had to lose video games (as a fellow vertigo sufferer, though in a much more mild way, I've got a lot of sympathy for how disruptive it can be), but I do appreciate hearing that my specific gaming obsession is something some people enjoy and not only the price of admission for the megafandoms, lol.
They're planning to release more art and such of places like ye olde Arah(!!!!!), details about the original Six Gods (still present in Tyria in this era, which is super exciting to me personally), and more about the setting in which the plot actually involves guilds...at war... (*gasp*). The description mentions that it's built around rewarding both solo and group play and incorporating memorable NPCs, which as a frequently-solo player is definitely intriguing me.
The main art that struck me so far:
To me, the characters look kodan, human, asura, and spirit mount, though it's set longggggggg before the dwarves' tragedies and they might also be around!
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I was looking up a detail about Orr, incidentally, and read an old interview that included this highlight:
ArenaNet (Ree Soesbee) : I think it’s less that Jormag won’t corrupt a woman and more that as they are being corrupted, the Sons of Svanir will just kill any woman who is caught being given Svanir’s gift.
ArenaNet (Jeff Grubb) : Jormag doesn’t care. Jormag really does not care.
we stan an equal opportunity corrupting elder dragon <3
Maybe I'd feel more tolerant if not for the excruciating neck pain of the last 12 hours, but: I haven't used Bluesky for months bc microblogging is not my thing for obvious reasons, even if I appreciate the lessons learned from the nuclear block. However, ArenaNet posted their teaser for whatever the new thing is over there, and I was following the GW3 ??conspiracy? theory breadcrumb trail that ended up linking to their post, which is how I learned they had a Bsky account at all.
me: Bluesky was the least obnoxious microblogging platform for me, maybe I'll see what it's like atm *scrolls down literally one post in my feed*
an author I followed over a year ago: I'm not saying you can't enjoy the movie but STOP talking about the director as any kind of visionary. he's a pathetic nepo baby. but he graduated from the broadly accepting big state school so of course he's mediocre hahaha
me, an alumna of said school: huh, yeah, now I'm more clearly remembering why I found the vibe here off-putting
(tbh I found the environment at our mutual(?) alma mater more intellectually enriching and challenging than in the R1 where I did my grad work. And I was part of the undergrad cohort that voted to expand the creative writing program, which actually happened; I went back this spring to visit, and found the English department had been drastically expanded instead of reduced to a ghost town including the specific measures I voted for over a decade ago. And it's the only program I've been in that retains most of the faculty I knew rather than 90% getting driven off by budget cuts. So if there's a rationale other than snobbery here, I don't know what it is.)
Speaking of GW1 and GW2 ... I've had plenty of complaints over the years about how GW2 has chosen to handle and retcon human-centric GW1 lore, the framing of the human gods, etc. That said, I've recently been appreciating that GW2 has retained a particular element of GW1's treatment of humanity and their gods that I've always really liked.
Humans in the GW universe are not really generic everymen, as humans so often are in fantasy settings. Nor are they so wildly varying and unpredictable that there's no sense of humanity having its own distinct flavor like the other playable species do. In many ways, they occupy a vaguely "elvish" position in the world—they've been on this world for a very long time and used to be a major power, or rather, made up many major powers with various warring factions that sometimes found common cause.
But in more recent eras, many of the ancient human civilizations have dwindled and/or suffered various atrocities and/or lost their minds. And culturally, humans tend to have a strong affinity for the mystical and even more for the divinely mystical, which their political power in previous eras was directly tied to. The vast majority of humans in this world are faithful worshippers of a human pantheon of six gods (formerly five).
Not all humans are magical or religious, to be sure, but a lot of them are, to the point that this seems their most distinctive cultural quality. Minor NPCs tend to have background dialogue invoking the gods ("By the Six!"), or referencing one of the gods (often but not only the goddess Dwayna, leader of the Six). The main human NPC of the core game, Logan Thackeray, continually references the gods, as do most of his military fellows.
Most interestingly, though, if you choose to play a human, you will automatically be a devout adherent of the faith of the Six regardless of any other choices you make. In addition, human PCs are blessed by one specific god among the Six whom you choose at character creation.
This mostly has minor flavor effects in practice. A priest of the god you chose permanently hangs out in your home district, and sometimes other priests of your god can perceive some mark of their deity's favor when they look at you.
Howeverrrrr, when I say "their deity," I don't mean that they exclusively worship the god they've dedicated their lives to, or that "your god"—the god whose favor you enjoy as a human PC—is your god in any remotely monotheistic way. Humans faithful to the Six are faithful to all the Six until one of the gods falls to evil. And when that god becomes the villain of the second GW2 expansion, various human NPCs are shown going through a crisis of the soul regardless of whether he was their particular patron or not. Having a more specific personal tie to one of the gods, or being particularly blessed by one of them, or being specifically devoted to a life of service to one of them, does not in any way prevent humans from devotion to the rest of the pantheon.
Mechanically, this means that no matter which deity you choose as your particular patron, your human PC starts the game with the ability to pray to Dwayna, goddess of life and air and healing. When you pray to her, a blue image of Dwayna materializes, heals you, and vanishes. As you level up, your human-based skills will extend to prayers to the other gods.
Praying to Lyssa, goddess of illusion/chaos magic and water and beauty, confounds foes by inflicting random conditions on them and random blessings on you. Praying to Kormir, goddess of spirit, order, and truth, will free you from negative effects like immobilization. The final prayer you can use, iirc, and the most powerful, is the prayer to Balthazar, the god of fire and war who ends up going super evil. If you're playing a fragile class like an elementalist or mesmer, praying to him is actually great, because he blesses you with two fierce hounds made of flame who fight alongside you and soak up damage. (Praying to Balthazar does feel a lot weirder in retrospect, I'll admit.)
In any case, the point is that you can pray to ANY human god and receive a brief visitation from that god, because the entire human pantheon are your gods even if you're only special to one of them. A similar dynamic is at work for NPCs as well. A recurring NPC in the core GW2 story, for instance, is Rhie, a priestess of Grenth, god of cold, darkness, judgment, and death (he's not evil, just goth). Even by priest of Grenth standards, Rhie is greatly favored by him, and as a result is able to perform powerful rituals dealing with the boundaries between life and death. But there's no expectation that this means she should abjure the other gods in any way, and she certainly does not (in fact, she provides a Human Religion 101 rundown about the gods in general in her first appearance in the human storyline).
And it's so common in fantasy, I feel, that polytheistic cultures are conceptualized as giving adherents a wider choice of gods to be the one they actually worship for real, often with the implication that worshipping one god in the pantheon naturally translates into hostility or apathy towards other gods in the same pantheon. And so I do enjoy playing a religiously devout character who has a special patron deity blessing her and who is emphatically polytheistic throughout her entire original storyline.
Okay, doing the meme from @betty-fran properly from my computer: represent yourself using 10+ (iirc) pictures you already have saved, without saving any new ones.
I'm tagging @bretwalda-lamnguin, @inziladun, @ladytharen, @heckofabecca, @brynnmclean, @melyzard, @steinbecks, @sqbr, @veliseraptor, @venndaai, @uss-emberprise if any of you want to!
The explanations:
The concept art of Ebonhawke from Guild Wars 2: the stronghold of Ebonhawke is tightly bound up with my favorite character from the whole series, Gwen Thackeray, and my favorite people I still have super intense feelings about, the Ascalonians. Also, um, to be very normal about it, I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT GUILD WARS REFORGED AND GOING BACK TO MY 20-Y-O ASCALONIAN CHARACTERS HOLY SHIIIIT
Empress Theodora: I've always loved Theodora's presence in the painting as well as lavish paintings of Byzantine figures in general.
I screencapped the bookmark because it was such a ... typical experience of fanon (Austen mentions very little about anyone's coloring in Pride and Prejudice and literally nothing about Darcy's, so my fandom crime was against a completely baseless fanon). I'm always deeply tempted to respond to every tantrum over blond Darcy with "I did it to attack you personally" (though I never have), which is very me as well.
The assassination of Julius Caesar: I was born on the ides of March and have been delighted about it since I discovered what that meant as a middle schooler. BEWAAAAARE
My Tolkien books: classic Anghraine essay writing set piece :P
Elizabeth and Darcy 1980: it's my favorite P&P adaptation and I've always loved how both Garvie and Rintoul light up in the engagement scene.
Secret of Mana was the first video game I fell in love with, and also inspired me to start writing my own stories, which became a long-running project that is still my main original fic one. Also the game ruled.
D&D spell book: figuring out formatting for my dissertation was a nightmare, but naturally I used that knowledge as God intended, for the most organized D&D cleric spell book.
Tiny Anghraine: gpoy
Looking at Kirk's chair from my favorite iteration of the Enterprise, the ORIGINAL, with my OWN EYES as a Kirk girlie (gn) is such an experience, all the more as I live in Washington... I had to keep pulling myself away to keep my nose from touching the glass/my body from ascending to another plane of existence.
Byzantine fashion: it rules.
The Peace Arch: I grew up in Blaine, with the Peace Arch as the emblem of the town and my school, getting taught to memorize the Canadian provinces and "O Canada" as well as the US states and "The Star-Spangled Banner" etc, and was baffled that I was supposed to feel some solidarity with people in Florida and New York that I wasn't supposed to feel for friends and acquaintances I actually saw and cared about in British Columbia. Growing up in high school during the Bush administration and its awful, asinine jingoism while living on one of the main border crossings into Canada enormously influenced my entire concept of the world tbh.
Cascadia flag: this is from the era of "fuckyeah[whatever]" blogs, but I stand by the sentiment :)
The piano harp: playing the piano is one of my most purely self-indulgent and expressive hobbies; I'm a very repressed person IRL in many many ways and the one thing I've never wanted to develop into a disciplined skill rather than vibes-based expression was music. My parents scraped together enough money to buy my piano in a chance encounter with a piano hoarder when I was a tiny Anghraine some 30 years ago, so I could learn on a real one instead of a tiny keyboard; much later when they had better jobs, they got it fully refurbished and it turned out to be a quite nice upright grand over a century old, with the original paint on the full-size harp inside and with a lovely rich sound, but it's been out of tune for a long time and I haven't been able to vent my feelings upon the keys for ages :(
Canon quotes for my Austen toxic yuri pairing of ultimate destiny
Bellingham Bay: Bellingham is the nearest city to where I grew up and I spent a lot of time there: J and I would go to the mall (or Fairhaven, the bougie but very cool old part of town) as teenagers to have something to do, Blaine didn't have a hospital and I had terrible asthma and spent a lot of time either at St. Joseph's or the Asthma and Allergy Center, I did a program in high school that let me go to college in Bellingham in lieu of my senior year of high school and used to wander around the city and spend hours in various bookstores and coffeeshops after class, he went to college there and I'd stay at his apartment, my family did all our shopping we couldn't do in Surrey or White Rock in Bellingham—the city and the bay and Mt. Baker are very much the face of "home" to me.
Between the Mountains and the Sea: this was a cover I made in MS Paint (lol) many years ago for my Gondor fanmix, and I included it because it's hard to overstate how deeply I love book Gondor in Lord of the Rings or how much it influenced me as a fantasy-loving teenager writing original SF/F fic. (It's also probably one of my favorite fanmixes+graphics I've ever made, but I included it for GONDORRRRRR feelings!)
Triss art: I've never played The Witcher games or watched the show and I don't know anything about them; I happened across the art many, many years ago and was startled by how perfectly the art matched my sense of one of my original fantasy protagonists, especially given that I'm not super visual. So that's there to represent the original project, which I've expanded into an interconnected set of novels / novellas / short-stories / world building etc since I was a kid.
Experts xkcd comic, early modernist edition: for some, this version will be completely accurate, but my early modernist pals and I have definitely tripped into "we don't assume everyone's an early modernist, they've probably just read Shakespeare's plays and some particularly famous other revenge tragedies and some notable Roman influences like Seneca and Ovid..." that, uh, often turns out to be untrue.
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Taking a brief intermission from Star Trek to have feelings explosions about
:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧ ✿ GUILD WARS ✿* :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧
20 years after the first game rewired my brain, it got updated today and naturally I justified a new character slot because, well, the chai I'd been going to get was actually free today and would cost more than the new character slot, so really it didn't leave me further behind at the end of the day than I'd anticipated this morning!
And obviously I chose to start in the original-original campaign (Prophecies) even though the vast majority of my characters are Prophecies characters and I already did the whole campaign and all the bonus missions back in the day. And naturally I chose to play my favorite class, mesmer, despite having many characters of that class. And I'm going to do the Legendary Defender of Ascalon route, even though I finally earned the title for my account a few years ago. ANYWAY
Unrelated to ST, but I was genuinely very sad that I had missed the 20-year anniversary of my beloved Guild Wars when I had pneumonia and didn't play it (or even GW2) at all at the time.
But apparently plenty of people didn't miss it, to go by this!! I'm not sure exactly what it will entail but as a GW1 player since 2005 I'm excited anyway :D :D
